"It's about time."
— Mark Grayson
Invincible is a 2021 adult animated superhero series based on the comic series of the same name by Robert Kirkman (who also created the TV series) and Cory Walker. The series is developed for Prime Video, and is a rare instance of an animated show utilizing an hour-long format.
Set in a world of superheroes, where Nolan "Omni-Man" Grayson (J. K. Simmons) is seen as the most powerful of all, his son Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) tries to live a life as an Ordinary High-School Student before he's drawn into the world of super-heroics himself. Mark realizes that he's finally inherited his father's powers after his seventeenth birthday, and becomes the superhero Invincible as he works to master them while balancing his two lives.
However, an unthinkable tragedy soon strikes the superhero community, and Mark is forced into a dangerous position that he doesn't fully understand. With his new superhero allies, Mark quickly learns that there is much more to the world that he's inherited than meets the eye — and that there are twists and turns that will make him question the true nature of his role on the planet.
Invincible boasts a rather impressive voice cast; in addition to Simmons and Yeun, it stars Sandra Oh as Mark's mother Debbie, Zazie Beetz as his love interest Amber, Walton Goggins as GDA boss Cecil Stedman, Gillian Jacobs as superheroine Atom Eve, Jason Mantzoukas as her hothead ex-partner Rex Splode, Zachary Quinto as resident smart guy Robot, Khary Payton as veteran hero Black Samson, Mark Hamill as supe outfitter Art Rosenbaum, Clancy Brown as demonic detective Damien Darkblood, Kevin Michael Richardson as the Mauler twins, Mahershala Ali as superpowered gangster Titan, and Seth Rogen as alien explorer Allen, with Jon Hamm, Ross Marquand, Chris Diamantopoulos, Djimon Hounsou, Jeffrey Donovan, Grey DeLisle, Fred Tatasciore and Reginald VelJohnson in various other roles.
The first three episodes of the series premiered on March 26, 2021, with subsequent episodes dropping every Friday through April 30. On the latter date, it was then announced that the show had been renewed for second and third seasons. Robert Kirkman has indicated that he believes that the series could have anywhere between five and seven seasons to adapt the full story from the comics.
Season 2, unlike the first season, was split into two four-episode halves that aired weekly. The first half of the season premiered on November 3, 2023, just in time for the comic's 20th anniversary, while the second half premiered on March 14, 2024. New additions to the voice cast for Season 2 include Peter Cullen, Sterling K. Brown, Rhea Seehorn, Ben Schwartz, Ella Purnell, Phil LaMarr, Josh Keaton, Kari Wahlgren, Jay Pharoah and Lance Reddick (in one of his final roles), among others. Ahead of the first half of the season, a special Prequel episode focused on Atom Eve hit Prime Video on July 21, 2023 as a surprise for that year's San Diego Comic-Con. Around the same time, the show's version of Omni-Man was added as a Guest Fighter in Mortal Kombat 1.
Season 3, which went back to Season 1's release model (three episodes to start, followed by one a week) premiered on February 6, 2025. New additions to the voice cast this season include Aaron Paul, Simu Liu, Jonathan Banks, Kate Mara, Xolo Maridueña, John DiMaggio, Tzi Ma, Doug Bradley, Christian Convery and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, among others. Season 4 followed up on the established release model, premiering its first 3 episodes on March 18, 2026. Respective additions to the voice cast include Lee Pace, Danai Gurira, Matthew Rhys, Indira Varma, Zoey Deutch and Frank Welker.
In June 2025, it was confirmed that the series would be receiving a Fighting Game titled Invincible VS, released in 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows. The game was developed by Quarter Up, a new studio made up of multiple developers who previously worked on Killer Instinct (2013).
This series provides examples of:
General trope examples:
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A-F
- 555: Visible phone numbers start with 555, such as Amber's phone number and the phone number to the SOS support group.
- Abuse Escalation: Omni-Man, a.k.a. Nolan Grayson, starts the show as a pretty decent husband and father, but after the events of the first episode which see his son Mark unlock his powers and see Nolan massacre his fellow superheroes in secret, his behavior towards his family gradually shifts for the worse, which they take note of as he acts increasingly cold and off. Little over midway through the season, Nolan from a distance sees Mark get beaten to within an inch of his life by supervillains, and he does nothing to help. It comes to a head during the season finale when Nolan is unable to convince Mark to join his people's Alien Invasion of Earth, not least because Nolan has just dismissed his human wife as little more than a pet (which she overheard), and Nolan turns into a massive abusive alien parent in response to his son's resistance (and implicitly his own crushing guilt which he's trying to override): slaughtering innocent people in front of Mark's eyes by the hundreds, including using Mark's own body as a ram to eviscerate a train full of them, and finally attempting to beat Mark to death while loudly dismissing him as replaceable.
- Actor Allusion:
- Mark attends Reginald VelJohnson High School. In Season 1, Episode 5, VelJohnson cameos as Principal Winslow, named for his character Carl Winslow in Family Matters. Principal Winslow looks exactly like VelJohnson circa mid-1990s.
- This marks the second time Seth Rogen voices an extraterrestrial. Not only that, but one of the two human companion of his character in that movie wore an Invincible shirt at one point!
- Episode 6 opens with an egotistical burping alcoholic voiced by Justin Roiland, whose most famous creation/role is an egotistical burping alcoholic.
- Conquest is voiced by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who played the villain Negan in another Robert Kirkman adaptation, where he killed a character played by Steven Yeun (Invincible's voice actor).
- When the team is on a space ship about to take fire, someone asks about shields. Robot says that this "isn't Star Trek", something his actor knows a thing or two about.
- Josh Keaton playing a spider themed character? Yeah, about that...
- Adaptational Badass:
- In Invincible #7:
- When Omni-Man lured the Guardians of the Globe into their home base and violently murdered them, it took Omni-Man only a few seconds to kill them all. In this series, the Guardians of the Globe actually put up a fight with Omni-Man to the point where they wound him. Though Omni-Man still wins the battle and the Guardians of the Globe are killed, he was so hurt that he faints.
- Aquarus was a total Gag Character in the original series. Here he proves to be a sincere and formidable fighter.
- Atom Eve herself. While undeniably powerful in the comics she’s mostly overshadowed by Mark, her Love Interest. In the show her Imagination-Based Superpower is dialed up as she uses it in a variety of creative and badass ways that she didn’t do in the comic (as demonstrated in her special). In fact she makes her first appearance by saving the less competent Mark and later unleashes a massive Ground Wave on the invading Flaxans, and in the next episode she defeats Doc Seismic and saves Mark’s butt a few more times for good measure. In Season 3 she puts up a much longer fight against Conquest, rather being quickly taken down like in the comics.
- Damien Darkblood seems much more capable here than in the comics, where he was largely a joke and got laughed off when he showed up and revealed it was Omni-Man who killed the Guardians of the Globe... months after that had become common knowledge. Here, he seems to be suspicious of Omni-Man from the get-go and actively investigates the matter. In fact, he figured it out so much earlier that he had to be Reassigned to Antarctica in order to not interfere with Cecil's plans. The news articles seen shows that he has at least one case where he ended up vindicated after having his theories laughed off.
- The Flaxans in the comics mostly just existed to show up, try to invade, and retreat once their method of fighting off their Rapid Aging has been neutralized. Here, they stage three back-to-back invasions over the course of a single week (which from their vantage point would be literal decades) and by the third, they've outright circumvented the aging effect altogether. Omni-Man showing up was the only thing that saved the Teen Team from dying by their hands.
- In the comics, Shrinking Ray regularly bemoaned the uselessness of his shrinking ability. Here, Rae gets to demonstrate just how useful shrinking can be from her introduction by taking down a larger and stronger opponent by attacking their inner ear, and later on using it to put a villain in a tight chokehold.
- In Invincible #7:
- Adaptational Curves:
- Played straight with Lucan. In the comics, Lucan had a traditional muscular build like the other Viltrumites. The show instead gives him a noticeable gut, giving him the build of a power-lifter.
- Downplayed with Thragg. He retains almost all of the proportions as he did from the comics. But one small difference in the show is that his face is much rounder and has a less angular jawline compared to his much stronger face in the comics.
- Adaptational Diversity: Compared to the comics. The characters in the show come in a lot more variation in terms of facial features, appearances and many more characteristic to allow the show to have some amazing variety:
- Various have their Ethnicities changed in the series. Instead of being White, Mark and Debbie Grayson are Korean-American, Amber Bennett is Black, Rex Splode is Mediteranian. Some who are male in the comics are Gender Flip in here, most notably being Shrinking Rae and Tech Jacket.
- The Viltrumites here are lot more diverse than the ones in the comics as the show introduces a lot more females of the species as well as varied ethnicities shown in the little montage. Some like Vidor have more variation in hair color like blonde and brown rather than the more limited shades of black and gray in the comics.
- Adaptational Intelligence:
- Debbie in the comics doesn't realize that Nolan is bad news until she sees him and Mark fighting on TV, and even then she blames Mark for him leaving despite him doing nothing wrong. Here, Debbie begins putting together the clues even before Damien Darkblood gives her a push. Eventually she finds out the complete truth with the help of Art and even confronts Nolan about it, then refuses to hear any of his excuses before attempting to find Mark.
- Amber was somewhat of a Dumb Blonde in the comics, who never so much as suspected Mark of being Invincible. Here, however, Amber figured it out on her own and months ago - although it happens off screen.
- Adaptational Jerkass:
- Rex Splode was already a Jerkass in the comics, but it is more pronounced in the show, where he is more abrasive and cowardly when it comes to fighting crime. He also has zero remorse towards letting a bus of innocent people be injured/killed, showing that he cares more about being seen as a superhero than actually saving lives, but he gets better.
- In the comics, Omni-Man was Evil All Along at the start, but kept that part of himself completely separate from his superhero and civilian lives. Here, Omni-Man becomes more cold and domineering after Mark gets his powers, openly displays apathy around his family despite "losing" his colleagues and shows clear signs of narcissism and disregard for individual people's lives. He also ignores a dragon attacking innocent people simply because he's on holiday with his wife and watches as Mark is nearly killed by Machine Head's mercenaries and doesn't lift a finger to help him out despite Mark being on the brink of death.
- Adaptational Nice Guy:
- The Immortal was quite condescending and smug when dealing with criminals in the comics compared to the show where he is far more benevolent and lacks the Hidden Disdain Reveal towards Omni-Man, even believing that he was being controlled when he killed them.
- Titan in the comics simply wanted Invincible's help usurping Machine Head to rule his criminal empire under a misguided belief that it would be better under his authority. Here, his motivations are much more sympathetic as he wants to provide for his wife and daughter, plus appears to genuinely care about the people in his neighborhood and city.
- Adaptational Slimness:
- The art style of the show made it so that a lot of women who had large breasts in the comics are much more modest with their busts in the show. Eve, Dupli-Kate and Anissa are rather noticeable examples of this.
- Allen the Alien after his near-death power-up becomes an absolutely enormous mountain of muscle in the comics. In the show, while he does get more muscular, it's not to the same extremes.
- Adaptational Sympathy: Conquest was nothing more than a sadist in the comics, while in the animated show he reveals to Mark in a whisper that he’s desperately lonely and wants a better life, but is unable to be anything more than a genocide machine for his empire.
- Adaptational Villainy: Nolan aka Omni-Man gets a massive dose of this in the Season 1 finale. Yes, in the comic he still killed the Guardians of the Globe, destroyed a city while fighting Mark and intended to enslave Earth for Viltrum — but he was still deeply reluctant to betray his family and the world he spent so much time on. In the comic, Nolan was still saving lives as a superhero right up until the Immortal attacks him in revenge and forces Nolan to drop the act. In the show, Nolan’s Tragic Villain nature is offset by his brutality and cruelty being dialled up, as once Debbie learns the truth and leaves him, he immediately starts murdering people. While fighting Mark, Nolan is also much crueler than his comic counterpart, deconstructing his son's heroic ideals and protection of humanity by going out of his way to kill everyone Mark tries to save, even using Mark as a bludgeon to reduce an entire train to a thin red paste. He does ultimately regret hurting Mark, but much more after the fact than his comic counterpart, only realizing the impact of his actions after he's very nearly beaten Mark to death.
- Adaptation Deviation: Much like the adaptation of Kirkman's other famous work, the show shuffles things around to the point that certain key events happen at different times and characters can end up a part of arcs and stories they previously were not around for or cut from arcs they were a part of. There is also a bit more backstory, agency, and even competence given to smaller characters.
- A change that occurred in-universe. In the comics, Mark's favorite comic is called Science Dog. In the show, his favorite comic is Seance Dog. It seems the character went from being a scientist to a wizard due to copyright issues.
- Episode Six, You Look Kinda Dead, changes quite a few things from the comics. D.A. Sinclair and the Reanimen appear much earlier, Amber wasn't there or even Mark's girlfriend at the time, and Mark's reason for wanting to go to college is completely different. Also William's hatred of nicknames is never brought up.
- When Mark finally reveals his identity to Amber, instead of her being star struck and forgiving him for "abandoning" her during the Reanimen attack, she instead reveals she had figured it out weeks ago on her own and cuts ties with Mark briefly over not trusting her with this information.
- Adaptation Distillation:
- Black Samson and his power suit. It follows the same route of the comics that Samson lost his powers and had the suit built, and rejoined the Guardians under Robot's leadership. Left out was after he built his suit, his butler Sanford stole the suit to try to kill the Guardians for "firing" Samson. Sanford never got the chance as Omni-Man killed them.
- The show's tone is altered somewhat from that of the early arcs in the comics, which sought to draw more laughs and "edgy" status out of Vulgar Humor that has fallen sharply out of fashion since the early 2010s. It notably removes a prominent Running Gag regarding the word "gay" as a pejorative term (most notably a Running Gag of how Mark carried men while flying).
- The timeframe in which D.A. Sinclair can turn someone into a cyborg, the Reanimen, is vastly shortened. In the comics, it took Sinclair months to turn his victims into Reanimen. In the show, Sinclair is able to turn Rick into a cyborg within the span of a few hours, a hard contrast to the comics where Rick is missing for months.
- Adaptation Expansion: Zig-Zagged. While for the most part the series is a Pragmatic Adaptation, some events are actually expanded for better pacing, and some stuff that happened off-screen in the comic is actually shown here.
- We actually get to see Omni-Man and the Guardians of the Globe in action with a sequence at the White House and the full sequence of when he kills them all.
- Titan's personal life is explained as his motivation for his criminal activities, as he has a wife and daughter.
- The Mauler Twins' cloning method was first shown off in the show.
- The fight on Thraxan has the short chase between Lucan and Mark removed; to compensate, we're actually shown the fight between Nolan and Lucan, and how he was badly wounded by the latter.
- Donald realizing he's an android was entirely off-screen in the comic, while here the first half of Season 2 devotes significant screen time for the mystery behind his resurrection.
- Adapted Out:
- The entire early story arc of Mark and Eve encountering their teacher who has been turning popular students into human bombs, basically making him Invincible's first real supervillain, is missing. His storyline is briefly alluded to in a background news report.
- Characters from other Image Comics works who made cameos in the original comic or who had full-on crossovers with it don't appear at all, likely due to rights issues and to streamline things.
- Aerith and Bob: The Viltrumites have names like Thragg, Kregg, Conquest... and Nolan.
- Age-Down Romance: Monster Girl was a full grown adult, now in the body of a pre-teen. Robot, an adult, begins to have feelings for her. He eventually transfers his mind from his true, decrepit body to a cloned body that is about her age.
- Age-Gap Romance:
- When the Immortal and Dupli-Kate get into a relationship, her friends see it as weird, given that he's thousands of years old, and she's apparently in her twenties.
- While they appear to be about the same age, Nolan is almost a thousand years old and Debbie is somewhere in her 40s.
- Alien Invasion: The All-Out Attack appears to be a periodic threat to Earth from multiple alien races which the superheroes always fight off.
- It's revealed at the end of the first season that Omni-Man is the all-out/infiltration combo, as his original mission was to infiltrate Earth and weaken the planet's defenses before annexing it for the Viltrumite Empire, and it's indicated that the rest of his species are actively doing this to other worlds across the cosmos.
- Mars gets invaded by the Sequids' All-Out Attack.
- Aliens Are Bastards: The series has various science-fictional and supernatural creatures whom are essentially on the good guys' side, including a fish person and a literal, came-from-Hell demon, but aliens? Not all of the aliens we see onscreen, but certainly more of them than not, tend to be antagonistic or outright monstrous.
- The Flaxans are your typical alien invaders, dropping in the middle of a populated area and killing as many people as possible, and they go out of their way to try again and again for decades to conquer Earth out of little more than spite at their past defeats.
- The Sequids are a horde of hive minded alien organisms that, upon gaining a sentient host to focus their hive mind, set about swarming over and overrunning an entire planet's civilization while grinning and laughing about it.
- The Martians, barring Martian Man, are far from the worst aliens in the series, but they're somewhat xenophobic and ignorant, and they're immediately willing to murder foreigners on their planet for the justifiable reason of preventing the aforementioned Sequids from completely overrunning their civilization.
- Battle Beast is a bloodthirsty alien psychopath who enjoys brutalizing other combatants to near-death, savagely maiming Invincible, Black Samson and Monster Girl.
- And Nolan/Omni-Man, the Superman expy who is the sole member of the original Guardians of the Globe not originally from our solar system? He ruthlessly murders the rest of his friends and colleagues because he actually hails from a race of totalitarian intergalactic conquerors who slaughtered half of their own population just to weed out weakness within their ranks, who commit genocide on any planets that resist colonization, and who — according to the benevolent Allen the Alien — blow up occupied planets if they're about to lose them to their enemies. Nolan/Omni-Man was sent to conquer Earth single-handedly, although the love he formed for Debbie and Mark during his infiltration has compromised him massively.
- Alien Blood: Mostly averted, but there are some exceptions:
- Thraxans have blue blood.
- Martians have grey blood.
- Sequids release pink goo when squished.
- The Data twins bleed green.
- Zigzagged with the Unopans, who are shown bleeding purple/magenta in season 2, but averted in season 3-4.
- Aliens Speaking English: Everyone from aliens to demons speaks English, even when there aren't any humans around. It's never explained whether it's justified by Translation Convention or Translator Microbes or whether it's just a coincidence. Apparently some of them even use the Roman alphabet too (as seen when Allen mixes up "Urath" and "Earth"). It's occasionally lampshaded:
- Allen the Alien's speech is always heard as English, though when he uses the word "funk," he stops to explain that it's a Unopan word and is surprised when told that it means the exact same thing on Earth.
- Mark is surprised that Martians speak English. A Martian soldier counters, "We speak Martian!"
- Alliterative Name:
- All of the superhero teams are alliterative: Guardians of the Globe, Teen Team and Fight Force.
- Additionally, several Guardians members have alliterative names, such as War Woman, Green Ghost, Martian Man, and Red Rush.
- Not to mention Damien Darkblood, Demon Detective and Battle Beast.
- All There in the Script: The names of some of the TV-original characters, like Throwbolt or the head Flaxan being called Slash, is only mentioned in the trivia viewable on Amazon Prime.
- And Starring: The Season 2 trailer focuses a lot on the slew of guest stars, but ends with the announcement of legendary Transformers actor Peter Cullen joining the cast as Thaedus.
- Anyone Can Die: Would you expect anything less from the creator of The Walking Dead? The end of the first episode throws Plot Armor right out of the window full speed when the Guardians of the Globe are all brutally murdered by Omni-Man. The second episode drives this point home with a large number of civilians dying, with Mark learning the lesson that no matter how hard you try not Everybody Lives.
- Apocalypse How: Viltrum experiences almost a class 3a as a result of the scourge virus reducing the Viltrumite population from several billions to just 50.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Happens during the final fight of Season 1. Having just beaten Mark half to death, Omni-Man asks his son what will he have after a few centuries, when all his friends and possibly Earth itself will have been long gone. Mark simply replies that he will still have his dad, meaning that even after the thorough thrashing he's given his son and the countless lives that have been slain by his hand, Mark still loves his father. Omni-Man leaves the planet in tears moments later.
- Arc Words: "[He/she/they] made me do it." is uttered by different characters in different contexts throughout the show—sometimes as part of sociopathic rhetoric, sometimes when characters are backed into a corner.
- Artistic Licence – Physics:
- In the first episode, Mark and Nolan each throw a softball around the planet. This isn't impossibly fast (at lightspeed it takes only 1/8th of a second to travel around the planet), but playing catch like that is impossible. Any object thrown fast enough to travel around the world in a couple of seconds wouldn't go around the world: it would fly away from the planet in an almost straight trajectory. Also, they hear the ball coming even though the ball would have to be traveling far faster than the speed of sound. Also-also, the softball would be destroyed by the extreme pressure of moving that fast through the atmosphere.
- The Mars Expedition ends with Invincible leading four astronauts—each carrying a 200 pound astronaut suit (which weighs about 80 pounds on Mars)—away from a horde of Martians troops on horseback (well, alien-horse-thing-back). The astronauts outrun the Martians ... somehow.
- Art-Style Dissonance: The series has a bright, colorful art style akin to the earlier seasons of Young Justice (2010) but it's incredibly violent and visceral just like its source material.
- Avengers Assemble: The first episode ends with the various members of the Guardians of the Globe called away from their lives to assemble at their headquarters, where they are all killed by Omni-Man.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- The first episode of season 2 opens with an alternate version of Earth where Mark joined Omni-Man in subjugating the planet. We see Mark on a large screen in a ruined city talking about how they can make humanity better than before but only if humanity bows down to them. He concludes by stating who he is, with a short pause making you think it is going to Smash Cut to the show's title as it did every episode of the previous season. However, after a moment he properly says his superhero name, and the scene just continues.
- Great Thaedus tells Allen that there is a mole in their midst. When Allen leaves, he's immediately ambushed by Viltrumites. At the end of the episode, Thaedus turns off Allen's life support, implying that he was the mole after all. In his next appearance, however, Allen has recovered and is stronger than ever. Thaedus reveals that he turned off Allen's life support in hopes of him becoming stronger. He's not a traitor after all.
- Bait the Dog: Omni-Man comes off as a well-meaning father to Mark as well as husband to Debbie, before he ends the first episode bringing together the Guardians of the Globe and violently murdering them.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: In a flashback in episode 7, we see The Immortal was Abraham Lincoln.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Monster Girl and Rex Splode get into a fight almost immediately after meeting, but Robot reveals later that Monster Girl has a crush on Rex. For his part, Rex is creeped out at the thought of sexual tension with someone who looks 12.
- Black-and-White Morality: Cecil accuses demons of viewing the world as such, while he needed things to be a bit gray.
- Blessed with Suck: Monster Girl's powers are the result of an unspecified curse that allows her to turn into a large goblin-like creature at will. However, every time she does, the curse makes her younger. If she uses it in just the right amount, she could effectively become immortal, but she looks to be 12 rather than her actual age of 24 by the time she appears in the show, showing that she's been using her powers too much.
- Bloodier and Gorier: Even more so than the comic book (an outstandingly amazing feat considering that the comic book itself was extremely gory), since we get to see all the gore in full motion. The scene with Omni-Man killing the Guardians is much longer than the couple of pages in the comic and, therefore, has more time to show their deaths in every brutal detail. Especially with Red Rush, Darkwing, and Aquarus, the latter of which gets his head bashed so hard, it resembles hamburger meat.
- Blood Knight: Battle Beast, who came to Earth on Machine Head's promise that he would be fighting worthy opponents.
- Bloodless Carnage: In stark contrast to the rest of the series, the fight scene between the original Guardians of the Globe and the Mauler Twins at the start of the first episode is almost entirely devoid of blood, which makes Omni-Man's gory massacre of them at the end of the episode all the more shocking. The fight between the original Guardians and the Lizard League in Atom Eve's Origins Episode is similarly bloodless.
- Bookends:
- Atom Eve's personal storyline in episode 3 begins with her walking in on her boyfriend (Rex) with her team-mate Dupli-Kate. It ends with her going to see Mark, whom she's friends with, and stumbling on him making out with Amber. Notably, her relationships with them led to the different ways she reacted.
- In a sick sense, the first and last episodes both revolve around Omni-Man training Mark.
- In the First-Episode Twist, the Guardians believe that Omni-Man is being mind controlled by someone. At the beginning of the season one finale, Mark thinks the same and attempts to get Omni-Man out of it, only to find out he never was.
- Bowdlerise: In the animated series, Debbie's reaction to her husband revealing himself to be an intergalactic conqueror and purportedly seeing her as nothing but a "pet", seeking solace in alcohol, was considerably toned down (in the series, she was just shown to drink a few glasses of wine from time to time, in the comic, she often drank enough for her son to find her passed out on the floor).
- Brick Joke: Mark first learns about his powers when he accidentally tosses a bag of trash sky-high. The following episode begins with that trash bag landing in the United Kingdom. For bonus points, the characters in the UK were brought up in a Seinfeldian Conversation in the first episode's first scene.Son: I didn't know they had a Burger Mart here.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Make mentions that Nolan has gone through a portal to fight aliens. Debbie casually brushes it off saying, "That's just Tuesday."
- Butt-Monkey: The superhero team Fight Force is regularly derided by other heroes despite the team never being seen on screen.
- The Cameo:
- Sean Patrick Thomas as Steve's coworker in the series opening scene.
- Zehra Fazal as a young wife and female astronaut in Episode 4.
- Gary Anthony Williams as a newscaster, umpire, and scientist in Episode 8.
- Saitama from One-Punch Man can be seen as a background superhero in a few episodes, such as visiting the funeral for the Guardians of the Globe.
- Cannot Kill Their Loved Ones: Played for Drama. Despite Omni-Man being willing to kill the Guardians of the Globe along with countless civilians, as well as inflict a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Mark for refusing to join him in conquering Earth for the Viltrum Empire, Omni-Man is unwilling to kill his wife Debbie and his friend Art Rosenbaum. He also cannot bring himself to kill Mark after beating him, especially after Mark declares he would still have him as his father even after outliving everyone else he cared about, which leads him to abandon his post and leave Earth out of guilt. While this does prove that he cares about his family on some level, the fact that he still harmed them horribly through his actions makes it clear that they're not happy about being spared. Debbie and Art are last shown in Season 1 drowning their sorrows, not knowing if they understood the real Nolan Grayson and questioning why he spared them in the first place. Mark is left heartbroken by his father's actions and remains conflicted about him despite the atrocities he's committed.
- Cape Punk: The show presents a realistic take on a world loaded with superheroes and supervillains, especially on a young man who has just entered this world.
- Cast of Snowflakes: The main and supporting characters have unique character designs. Even the Aliens from foreign worlds have different designs and feature depending.
- Casting Gag:
- This isn't the first time that a The Walking Dead character with red motifs played by Michael Cudlitz had his head crushed. In fact, all of the Glenn-era The Walking Dead-voiced characters die by their heads getting crushed, except for Steven Yeun's.
- This also wasn't the first time a character voiced by Andrew Rannells, was captured by a college Mad Scientist who turns people into in-human minions. William however was a little more luckier than Bobby.
- Principal Winslow of Reginald Vel Johnson High School is played by none other than Reginald VelJohnson, in a subversion of an Ink-Suit Actor.
- In the Mexican redub of the show, Omni-Man is voiced by Humberto Solórzano, which previously voiced Raditz and King Vegeta, both members of a race of warriors bent on conquering other worlds. Likewise, and overlapping with Ascended Meme, he also voiced J. Jonah Jameson in the live action movies, the character from which he is compared with.
- In the Mexican redub, Emilio Treviño (as the titular hero) already voiced another hero whose father is a murderous bastard.
- The casting of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Conquest was confirmed by Kirkman to be an intentional meta rematch between Glenn and Negan, except this time, Glenn wins.
- Peter Cullen voices Thaedus, the wise and powerful leader of a resistance movement fighting against his own people for the freedom of all sentient beings in the galaxy. Now where does that sound familiar? To further hammer the point forward, Frank Welker voices his archenemy, Emperor Argall, the tyrannical despot who believes Might Makes Right and seeks to subjugate the galaxy under the rule of their peoples' empire (and was killed by Cullen's character). One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall indeed...
- Catching the Speedster: Flash Expy Red Rush falls victim to Omni-Man after pressing the offensive one time too many. It leads directly to his death.
- Central Theme: A big theme of the show post-season 1 is the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. More directly, if it's justifiable to do evil things for the sake of preventing a greater evil, and the impact such actions have on a person. And on the other side of the coin, if being an idealist who refuses to dirty their hands can lead to more people dying.
- This is the crux of Cecil's character as the head of the GDA. Cecil's goal is to protect the Earth, and he's willing to resort to extremely brutal and immoral actions for the sake of the planet. It's revealed that he didn't start out this way; Cecil was once an idealist, but his own refusal to cross his moral lines lead to people dying, and it wore him down to the point where he has no lines he will not cross. And yet, he also admits that it didn't make anything easier, admitting to Mark that the stress of it all has led to premature aging.Cecil: We can be the good guys, or we can be the guys who save the world. We can't be both.
- Mark deals with this, particularly in seasons 3 and 4. First Mark has to learn to work with Cecil's own questionable methods, in a mirror of how a once idealistic younger Cecil had the same arguments with his own amoral boss who felt the ends justified the means. Then in season 4 Mark chooses to kill an innocent man to save billions, without being sure if it was the only way. This leaves him conflicted for much of the season, especially as he finds that once he's done it once, it's really easy to slip into Murder Is the Best Solution as mindset, and tell yourself you have valid reasons for it. (It leads him to wonder if he's that different from his dad.)
- Hell runs on this. That torture in hell acts as the Cosmic Keystone keeping hordes of horrors from swarming the entire planet and killing all of humanity.
- Thaedus runs on this. He unplugs Alan's life support, banking that this will make it so he Came Back Strong, though he does later admit he had no idea this would work. He also unleashed the scourge on his own people, which wiped out all but fifty of them. And as he admits to Nolan, upon learning how effective the Scourge is, he contemplates killing himself when it's done. But at the same time, he's preparing an improved version of the scourge as a weapon of last resort, and justifies all this by the fact that the Viltrumites have performed far worse.
- This is the crux of Cecil's character as the head of the GDA. Cecil's goal is to protect the Earth, and he's willing to resort to extremely brutal and immoral actions for the sake of the planet. It's revealed that he didn't start out this way; Cecil was once an idealist, but his own refusal to cross his moral lines lead to people dying, and it wore him down to the point where he has no lines he will not cross. And yet, he also admits that it didn't make anything easier, admitting to Mark that the stress of it all has led to premature aging.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Omni-Man faces a Kaiju who is trying to eat a ship in one episode. Bet you forgot about it when it comes back near the end of episode 7 in season 1 sent by Cecil to delay Omni-Man's meetup with Mark.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Monster Girl has a bad case. If she regulated her use of her power (apparently once a week), she could effectively freeze her aging and become immortal. Instead, she uses her powers so much that she's turned back the clock 12 years and now lives as a child. She even joins a superhero group, where she'll be responsible for using her powers whenever they need her even though that could make this worse.
- Clark Kenting: Several superheroes do nothing to cover their face like Omni-Man and Atom Eve, yet it took Mark seeing the latter in person to realize she's a popular girl from his school. According to Eve, this is psychological rather than some superpower:Eve: If you don't expect to see a superhero at your school, you don't see superheroes at your school.
- Clothing Damage: Invincible's costume at times takes just as much of a beating as he does — and he takes some brutal beatings. Titan makes sure to take his non-invincible clothes excluding his pants off when he's on the job.
- Comic Books Are Real: It seemed that way when Seance Dog, a character from Mark's favorite comic book series, shows up at Mark's door, but it turned out to be an alien in disguise.
- Compressed Adaptation: The show excludes several minor events within the bigger arcs, preferring to actually expand solely on the bigger and more important plot threads. This leads to a more streamlined narrative without getting side-tracked. A perfect contrast would be the expansion of Omni-Man's whole arc, at the expense of making build-ups like Robot's deeper motives happen faster and within Omni-Man's bigger overarching plot thread.
- Corrupted Character Copy:
- Rex Splode is based on Gambit, who is known for his charming suave, while Rex is known for being a bad-tempered jerkass. However, he starts getting nicer from Season 2 onwards, before his death near the end of Season 3.
- Todd represents the classic Spider-Man bully Flash Thompson, but he lacks any of Flash's redeeming traits while ramping up the Bully Brutality. Though the season 2 premiere does have Todd console Mark over the apparent loss of his father. (Which is still a sore point for Mark for reasons Todd doesn't know, but it's the thought that counts.)
- Titan is inspired by Luke Cage, but while Luke is an ex-delinquent who turned his life around and has a very strong sense of honor, Titan is a villain to the last and is not above manipulating a rookie superhero into helping him take over a criminal organization.
- Omni-Man, who is a clear case of Beware the Superman.
- Inverted with The Immortal, a heroic version of Vandal Savage.
- Crapsack World: Despite the bright art style and color palette, the show's version of Earth regularly endures attacks from vicious alien civilizations, and the city in which Mark and most of the main characters live is dominated by crime and an assorted array of powerful and vengeful supervillains (not that other cities or places are spared or any better) with frequent massive and devastating battles with thousands of civilian casualties each.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Mark finds himself on the receiving end of these a lot in the first, second and third seasons, most notably against Battle Beast, Omni-Man, Anissa and Conquest.
- Thragg pretty much delivers one to every character in "Don't Do Anything Rash" where not even Nolan and Mark (who at this point has become a very strong Viltrumite capable to killing Conquest and going neck-and-neck with Anissa) are able to do anything to him.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Or at least give him a job. After arresting D.A. Sinclair, Cecil comments Sinclair has done amazing, if horrifying, work with the cyborg technology. In Episode 7, Cecil has Reanimen attack Omni-Man, and Sinclair is shown working for Cecil, though still in custody.
- Dangerous Super-Powered Patient:
- Monster Girl's superpower lets her transform into a super-strong, super-tough troll-like behemoth. When she's brutally beaten by Battle Beast and carted off to the emergency room, her power ends up activating just as the doctors are trying to prepare her for a blood transfusion and she lashes out, launching both an IV stand and one unfortunate doctor into the wall.
- A downplayed example, but during Atom Eve's birth, her mother Polly suffered contractions that were accompanied by surges of atomic energy, slowly burning her from the inside. While professor Brandyworth managed to bring Polly to a hospital, the surges ended up building so much that the last one resulted in an energy explosion that knocked out all of the electrical equipment, as well as every doctor and nurse in the operating room, except for Brandyworth himself.
- The Dead Have Names: Downplayed, but Cecil takes every death under his watch personally, and when speaking to Nolan again for the first time since Nolan slaughtered the people of Chicago in his battle with Mark, he effectively reveals that he thinks about it every day and throws Nolan's entitled attitude toward risking his life for Earth back in his face."Nearly die 2,341 more times, and then we can talk."
- Deconstruction: The series deconstructs the mentality of Long-Lived characters in fiction, pointing out how someone who is both Long-Lived and from a culture or species separate from another, shorter-lived group would likely see the shorter-lived group as lesser because they 'seem inconsequential in comparison. Though Nolan makes a lot of arguments about why Mark should help him conquer earth, the main argument is that Mark will outlive the rest of the people he knows and loves by several magnitudes and is thus above them. Mark - who, raised by humans, only has a human perception of time - is aghast at Nolan's lax attitude towards killing humans by the cruiser-load, since he doesn't see humanity the way Nolan sees humanity. Nolan ultimately likens Debbie to being a beloved pet at best, and only relents on his conquest of the world because of his concern for his son, the one person on earth he knows will outlive him.
- Developing Doomed Characters: At the start of the first episode, we see the Guardians of the Globe in an action sequence that wasn't in the original comic. At the end of it, we see the various members of the team during their everyday lives. All of them are called away from what they are doing to take care of an emergency. And then they are all brutally killed by Omni-Man.
- Devil, but No God: Heavily implied in Season 4. Satan and Hell are depicted, and when Mark asks one of the demons whether Heaven is real too, said demon says they never saw any evidence of Heaven ever existing. It should be noted also that this Hell is very much NOT a metaphysical kingdom of evil where sinful human souls are sent to, but simply a physical underworld inhabited by what are, basically, demonic-looking Ultraterrestrials. And Satan and the demons are good. Sort of. Most of them still enjoy torture and violence, but it's basically to keep in check even more dangerous and eviller races of Ultraterrestrials.
- Don't Think, Feel: Mark's father explains that flying is like this, comparing it to learning to walk and to balance yourself without even thinking about it. Initially, Mark needs to focus on what he wants to do and where to go but eventually it'll become second nature to him.
- Dramatic Irony: Rex cheats on Eve, claiming it was "obvious" that something was going on between her and Mark. Not only did Mark back off from asking her out when he learned of their relationship, but his storyline for that episode was about balancing dating a civilian (Amber) and being a superhero.
- Dramatic Space Drifting: Episode 2 of Season 4 had a ring of dead Viltrumites floating over their depopulated homeworld after large death tolls from Scrouge Plague. This would play more in Episode 7 with corpses of both long and recently dead Viltrumites being emphasized after their home planet was destroyed.
- Driving Question: In season 1, the question of "Why did Omni-Man kill the Guardians?" is a major plot point.
- Early-Bird Cameo:
- Multi-Paul, Dupli-Kate's twin brother, appears as a prisoner in Season 1, Episode 3.
- Season 1, Episode 8 sees appearances from General Kregg, Conquest and Thula much earlier than they originally appeared as part of the montage showing Viltrum becoming a warrior society; on top of that it also shows Titan's initiation with The Order, through Mister Liu's appearance.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Planet Viltrum suffers this fate in Don't Do Anything Rash. After Thragg attempts and fails to convince Nolan to return to the empires side, Nolen realises that so long as the Viltrumite race thinks that their home can be returned to its former glory, his people will 'never surrender. So he decides to make it clear to them that no, there is no restoring Viltrum. And so, he has Space Racer fire the Infinity Ray into Viltrum while he, Mark and Thaedus follow in the blasts wake, piercing clean through the planet and dragging it's liquid core out behind them, Viltrums surface splitting open with volcanic fissures as earthquakes wrack the planet, before finally detonating as it's gravity becomes unable to hold the crumbling world together, leaving only a shattered astroid field interspersed with long dead Viltrumite corpses from the planets ring behind.
- Empathic Environment: Viltrum. In the flashbacks to Emperor Argall's prosperous reign, and also in the flashbacks to a then-indoctrinated Nolan's teenhood before the Scourge virus, the landscape's weather and lighting is colorful and idyllic. When the Great Purge happens at the onset of Thragg's reign, the sky abruptly takes on a more somber, twilight hue, and it remains that way to the Purge's end. When the Scourge virus is decimating the Viltrumites' population into near-extinction, Viltrum's landscape becomes sickly gray and green with overcast weather. In the present, where the Viltrumites have been revealed to be on the brink of extinction due to the Scourge virus' fallout (and continuing to self-destruct through their refusal to mend their ways), Viltrum's landscape is completely gray, the buildings deserted (with nowhere near enough Viltrumites to occupy them), and the sky is coated with thunderheads — even the vegetation on the tomb of Argall is an autumnal red, reflecting how the Viltrumites' clinging to an idealized past is causing them to rob themselves of a living future.
- Establishing Series Moment: The very first scene of Episode 1, rather than any sort of expository narration or an introduction to the main heroic cast, or even at the very least a dramatic title sequence, *Invincible* instead opens on...a Cold Open with two security guards operating the car checkpoint of the White House. Guard 1 complains about the "Superhuman Evasion Training" they're going to need to do next week, questioning how exactly they're supposed to "tuck and roll away" from people with superpowers, while the older Guard 2, already conditioned from the job, just says it's a part of the job and ribs him because he won't be here for it, casually changing the subject from training to survive against superhuman attackers to a trip to Paris with his step-son; getting briefly emotional and heartfelt when he talks about how anti-social and violent his step-son was when he first came into his life, but he refused to give up on him and he's proud of how much he's improved since. Immediately setting up Invincible as being a much more down-to-earth kind of superhero story, focusing more on the effects, and consequences, the superhero world has on the normal people that have to live inside it, with an emphasis on emotional character interaction. And then it's series establishment is solidified with the very last scene of Episode 1, with Omni-Man brutally murdering the Guardians of the Globe demonstrating that Invincible is going to be taking the story in much darker directions than most in its genre.
- Everybody Knew Already: Cecil already knows, or at least suspects, that Omni-Man is directly responsible for the Guardians' deaths. He wants to at least know the reason before making his move, which can't happen if Damien Darkblood continues to investigate the incident. Such is the reason why Cecil banished him to Hell.
- Evil Is Deathly Cold: Every time Damien Darkblood is seen, the air turns cold and small things, like plants, freeze.
- Evolving Credits:
- The title screen in the first episode comes near the end of the episode, and is pristine blue with yellow font, representing the main character's costume. Every episode afterwards adds a little more blood to the title. 80% of it is covered in blood by the end of the season. This serves to tell the audience how violent the show is and how much Mark will have to endure if he wants to be a superhero, especially when he learns the truth about his father.
- Season 2's title card continues this, by covering the Season 1 title card entirely in blood, changing the logo to black with red font. For each subsequent episode of the show, the title card slowly cracks and crumbles to reveal another blue background, this time with the text in black. While it may not mean much it first, it implies that Mark will strive to become his own hero. More importantly, it's a Foreshadowing to a costume change for him in Season 3.
- Season 3's title card flashes into a different color in each episode. This serves as a major Foreshadowing for episode 7 when villain Angstrom Levy summons multiple evil versions of Invincible to attack Mark's dimension.
- Season 4 does a similar approach to how Season 2 did their title cards, in that each subsequent episode has the title card chip away to reveal another background behind it. Due to the season having a greater focus on space adventures, this new (slowly-revealing) title card background has the logo zooming through the vacuum of space itself. At the end of the season, the title card flashes into a new background...foreshadowing whats to come for the next arc in the show itself.
- Exact Words: Thaedus tells Allen that there's a mole among the Coalition of Planets. He later disconnects Allen from his life support, making it look like he's the traitor... but it later turns out he was trying to make Allen Come Back Stronger. However, he is still a traitor, just one to the Viltrum Empire.
- Expy: Many of the superheroes have parallels to pre-existing superheroes in comics. How closely they relate to their counterparts, though, is up for debate. See the sub-page for more details.
- Extreme Libido: After getting together, Mark and Eve are shown to be very sexually-active with each other when not being superheroes. This causes Eve to have an unplanned pregnancy.
- Eye Scream:
- Steve shoots one of the Mauler Twins in the eye, and he spends the rest of the fight with the Guardians with his eye shut and bleeding. By his next appearance, his eye is better.
- In an early scene, Red Rush has his left eye slowly (well, from his perspective, anyway) pushed out as Omni-Man crushes his head. Cecil's forces step on the discarded eye when they charge into Guardians base.
- The Flaxan leader gets hit by a piece of rubble that scars the right side of his face, taking out his right eye. This scar becomes the feature that distinguishes him from the other Flaxans.
- The Immortal jams his thumbs into Omni-Man's eyes to gouge them out. The Immortal getting ripped in half before he can finish the deed mixed with Omni-Man's Super-Toughness means he fails to do any lasting damage and merely leaves his eyes bloodshot.
- Allen has his eyeball punched out of his head, which he talks about later.
- Facial Horror: A common fate of those who end up on the wrong side of a Viltrumite. Mark himself ends up with his face brutalized by Omni-Man to the point of being barely recognizable, and he seems to have learned from this experience, as he later delivers utterly horrific injuries to Angstrom Levy and Conquest. The former of whom recieves injuries so extensive it can be safely described as his face being flattened.
- Fair-Weather Friend: Kate's cheating with Rex comes off as this since she didn't even check his story with Eve first before hooking up with him.
- Fan Disservice: On the men's side, Rudy is shown in his underwear after taking a shower in "I Gotta Get Some Air", but any sembelencence of people finding this remotely attractive is left to the dust when he barfs up a Sequid and it begins to attack him.
- Final Solution: To stop the Flaxans from invading Earth, Omni-Man invades their home dimension and proceeds to destroy their homeworld, taking out most of their civilization in less than a minute (in our reality, at least). It's a complete curb-stomp battle. However, he leaves enough alive to send him back to Earth, and the Season 1 finale reveals that the survivors are 'still planning to return, now just to get revenge on Omni-Man.
- First-Episode Twist: The first episode plays out like a standard story in which an established superhero helps his son become a superhero himself. Then it ends with the older superhero violently murdering his allies, the Guardians of the Globe. The Saturday morning cartoon visuals and lighter tone up until then help leave a bigger impact after witnessing the bloody, gory massacre.
- Flying Brick:
- All Viltrumites have this power set, including Omni-Man and Invincible. Unlike Superman, they lack other powers like super-senses and heat vision.
- The Immortal is also a flying brick, with Super-Strength, endurance and flight. He's apparently a better fighter than Omni-Man, but not as strong or tough.
- Allen the Alien has this power set, though he's a bit of a pushover compared to the other examples. This changes in season 2, when he powers up and becomes a match for Viltrumites.
- The Fog of Ages: The Immortal is married to Dupli-Kate, but in the far future, he doesn't even recognize her name, admitting that he's had hundreds of wives over his lifetime.
- Forceful Faceplant: When Mark stands up and challenges Omni-man, he quickly finds himself in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by his father. At one point, Omni-Man holds his head in from of an oncoming passenger train, using Mark's face to split the train down the middle, and killing many innocents in the process.
- Foreshadowing:
- While destroying the Flaxans, Omni-Man tells them: "Earth isn't yours to conquer!" That's right, it's not theirs to conquer — the Viltrumites are the ones who will do it.
- In the Previously on… segments of the season 2 episodes, a few of the heroes from the first incarnation of the Guardians of the Globe are shown from their calling to the lair up until their deaths from the first episode. Expect to learn more about the relatives, close friends, or affiliations of whatever Guardian(s) was/were shown from the segment.
- A number of moments hint at the big reveal that the Viltrumites are secretly a Dying Race of less than fifty individuals.
- In Season 1 Nolan explains that the Viltrum Empire became so big, that a more practical system of sending a sole Viltrumite to conquer a planet had to be created... and their population is so low that really, it's the only method they can do. Following on from this, one of the biggest groups of Viltrumites seen are the three-person team sent to hunt down the traitorous Nolan, which still seems small even for how strong they are.
- In Season 2, General Krieg's willingness to make Mark a Viltrum agent despite the latter's resistance takes on another layer of meaning from the fact that Mark is really the only person available to take over from Nolan.
- In Season 3, The guards to the Viltrum prison, filled with dangerous individuals like Nolan, Allen, and Battle Beast, are ray-gun wielding aliens who get slaughtered quickly when the three escape. The Empire has to rely on its client-races, simply because the Viltrumites are spread so thin.
- In Season 3, the insistence on making Nolan "whole" as a part of his ritual execution seems to stem from the fact that the Viltrumites can't afford to just kill even a treasonous member of their race. In the comic, Nolan deduces that his execution was delayed simply because it took time to get two available Viltrumites to legally perform it.
G-L
- Gender Bender: Monster Girl is female while in human form, and male as a monster.
- Gender-Bent Alternate Universe: It's implied that these exist in the multiverse, with a female Angstrom and female Mauler Twin shown amongst other variants. Zig-zagged with one universe Angstrom visits later; their Invincible is still male, but there are female versions of Cecil and Donald.
- Gender Flip: Green Ghost, Shrinking Rae and Tech Jacket are all female here - compared to their comic counterparts.
- Genius Bruiser: The Mauler twins have Super-Strength and endurance as well as genius-level intellects.
- The Ghost: Fight Force are a running gag in the series, but are never actually seen on camera.
- Ghost Planet: The home planet of the Viltrumites is revealed to have become this ever since all but 50 of them were wiped out by the Scourge Virus hundreds of years ago, with the remainder leaving it to search for a race who they can interbreed with. Scenes taking place on its surface in the present reveal a vast but desolate cityscape compared to the lively planet it once was in the flashbacks, and orbitting around it is a massive ring made of over billions of dead Viltrumites who perished from the pandemic. When Thragg asks Nolan to return home, the latter remarks, "There is no home; this place is a tomb."
- Give Him a Normal Life: In the "Atom Eve" special, Brandyworth was hired by a government organization to create a superbeing. When it came time for the girl to be born, the mother begs him to give the baby a normal life, before dying. Brandyworth gives the baby to a couple who had just lost their own baby in childbirth. Then, years later, when the girl's powers start to manifest, implores her not to use them, lest she attract attention from the government.
- Good Is Not Nice: Rex Splode may be a superhero, but that doesn't stop him from cheating on his girlfriend, antagonizing everyone around him, and complaining at every opportunity.
- Gorn: It's used to shocking effect at the end of the first episode, in which the Guardians of the Globe are killed in gruesome, disturbing ways after a generally bloodless episode preceding it. The violence in the series amps up from here illustrating the damage superhuman abilities can do to the body. The most notable examples of this are the Season 1 and Season 3 finales, which are extremely violent and gruesome throughout the vast majority of each episode's runtime, but as a whole, the show is very gruesome in every episode.
- Grievous Harm with a Body:
- In the Season 1 finale, Omni-Man holds up Mark in front of an oncoming train. Mark's invulnerable body acts like a brick wall against the train and all of its passengers, covering Mark in blood and guts as their bodies are splattered against his by the train's forward inertia.
- Conquest does something similar with mark in the Season 3 finale, using him as a battering ram to tear through people in Monaco.
- Groin Attack: Amber does this to Todd to stop him further beating on Mark.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Mark's mother is human, while his father is Viltrumite.
- Hive Mind: The sequids, a race of three-legged squid creatures, have a weak one linking them together. Bonding with a more sophisticated creature, like a human, allows them to organize and ravage the land.
- Hollywood Encryption: Robot offers the Mauler Twins an encrypted flash drive containing specs for a mind control device they want. When the job is complete, Robot tells them the encryption key is the entire text of the novel Frankenstein. Any real life code breaker can confirm that using a publicly available text as an encryption key is a bad idea, as it can encrypt the contents to entropy and everyone has access to it.
- HULK MASH!-Up: Monster Girl is a Super Gender-Bender version.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Mark gets recruited to kill the Immortal, who has become a Death Seeker. When Mark asks why he doesn't simply fly into the sun, the man retorts that suicide is for cowards.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The show's episode titles are all direct quotes from the corresponding issue or story arc the episode is adapting.
- Immortal Apathy: In Omni-Man's Motive Rant, he explains that humans don't have any sentimental value to him because his species will outlive them by thousands of years.
- Immortality Begins at 20: Viltrumites age extremely slowly, and the speed at which they age decreases over time. Mark ages to adulthood at a standard human rate, but once his Viltrumite powers kick in, Omni-Man asserts that he'll enjoy a lifespan many times that of humans.
- Injured Self-Drag: In Episode 7, Nolan retaliates against the GDA soldiers that were sent to kill him, with one of them having her body distorted upon getting blasted out by force, only attempting a Futile Hand Reach towards the surveillance group at the nearby house after dragging herself before dropping dead.
- Interspecies Romance: Omni-Man is a Viltrumite and his wife, Debbie, is a human. Mark, as a Half-Human Hybrid, has relationships with full humans, first Amber and then Eve.
- It Always Rains at Funerals: The eulogy for the Guardians of the Globe that is broadcasted all over the world is held on a sunny day, but their actual funeral, held in a secret location to avoid problems, features the typical grey skies and pouring rain.
- Juxtaposed Reflection Poster:
- A Season 2 promotional poster
◊ shows Mark above a pool of blood, which reflects the image of his father Omni-Man instead of himself. It's a good visual metaphor for Mark's internal conflict during the season, since after the dad he idolized his entire life became a mass-murderer, he repeatedly has to tell himself and others that I Am Not My Father. - Since it's an Origins Episode, the promotional poster for the Atom Eve special◊ shows Eve flying next to a building, which reflects her younger Kid Hero self.
- A Season 2 promotional poster
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Episode 3 sees a character with an uncanny resemblance to Saitama from One-Punch Man first attending the Guardians' funeral and then trying out for the new Global Guardians being overseen by Robot. During an AMA, Robert Kirkman joked this character was called "Two Punch Man".
- Lighter and Softer: The "Atom Eve" episode is not completely without blood or Body Horror, but these elements are noticeably toned down compared to the main series.
- Light Is Not Good: Viltrum is always depicted as a sunny, futuristic utopia... even when Nolan is explaining the truth and the viewers see clips of the Viltrumites violently slaughtering each other to purge the weakness from their society.
- Long-Runner Tech Marches On: The comics debuted in 2003, and the technology used by the characters reflects that. The animated series started in 2021 and the technology is updated to that year, such as the characters using smartphones. A clear-cut update is Nolan's means of writing his novels; in 2003 a writer still going vintage by using a typewriter wouldn't be too unusual, but in 2021 it definitely would be, so Nolan writes with a laptop instead.
- Loving Parent, Cruel Parent:
- Invincible/Mark Grayson's parents are a pretty complicated case, but ultimately, Mark's mother Debbie comes out looking like a way better parent and person all-round than his father Nolan (a.k.a. Omni-Man) does. Debbie is a good woman who extolls the virtues of valuing human life and not letting Mark's superpowers get to his head and make him think he's inherently superior to everyone, and she's never in any meaningful way abusive to Mark. Omni-Man on the other hand is eventually revealed to be an infiltrator for the aggressive and genocidal Viltrum Empire who was sent to Earth to conquer it – at the first season's end, he tries to include Mark in his mission on his side, and when Mark refuses, Omni-Man attempts to break him into obeying via mercilessly murdering and massacring people in front of Mark and beating him to near-death.
- Downplayed with Eve's parents. Neither of them are very supportive or understanding of her, but Eve's mother is comparatively a little more empathetic and considerate than Eve's insecure, domineering father is.
M-R
- A Million Is a Statistic:
- Horrifically deconstructed in the final episode of Season 1. Nolan uses this as one of the reasons Mark's struggle against him and the Viltrumite empire is pointless, showing him just how easily a Viltrumite can decimate and kill an entire city of human people by throwing him into a busy street to cause massive damage and using his body as a kinetic weapon against a train full of people. While Omni-Man makes it clear how little he cares about the deaths he's causing, to the point of blaming Mark over it, Mark is completely horrified at what just happened.
- In the third season, it's confirmed that over 2,300 people were killed in Chicago alone during Mark and Nolan's fighting.
- When the Coalition of Planets cause the Viltrumites to flee during the Attack on Talescria, Thaedus believes the lives lost during the attack to just be a mild setback, something Allen calls him out on.
- Horrifically deconstructed in the final episode of Season 1. Nolan uses this as one of the reasons Mark's struggle against him and the Viltrumite empire is pointless, showing him just how easily a Viltrumite can decimate and kill an entire city of human people by throwing him into a busy street to cause massive damage and using his body as a kinetic weapon against a train full of people. While Omni-Man makes it clear how little he cares about the deaths he's causing, to the point of blaming Mark over it, Mark is completely horrified at what just happened.
- Mistaken for Homophobic: Downplayed. When William starts openly talking about how hot Omni-Man is towards the beginning of episode 1, he interprets Mark's grossed out reaction as him being grossed out by gay stuff, when in reality it's because it's Mark's father William is talking about.
- Monster of the Week: Mark is often fighting with a new villain each episode for most seasons, though Season 4 focuses much more on the story with the Viltrumites, with the second half of the season being entirely dedicated to the Viltrumite War.
- Mook Horror Show: During the Flaxan's attack on Earth, Omni-Man intervenes not only by wiping out the invading Flaxan mooks, but takes it up a notch by flying through the portal to their homeworld, murdering their leader by using him as a meat shield through a mountain range, and destroying their cities, culminating in dropping a mountain on their capital.
- Muggle Best Friend: William Clockwell is Mark's best and possibly Only Friend at school, often acting as The Lancer to him while being Locked Out of the Loop about him being Invincible or his abilities.
- The Multiverse: Angstrom Levy has the power to open portals to any dimension, some different and some similar his main one.
- Mundane Utility: Omni-Man and Mark regularly use their abilities of flight and Super-Speed to visit locales across the globe for their leisure, such as getting take-out dinner or taking their loves ones on dates to Paris.
- Mythology Gag:
- Every episode title is a quote taken directly from the comics, even if the quote doesn't actually appear in the episode.
- When Nolan takes Mark to Arthur Rosenbaum in order to make a proper superhero costume for him, Art lets Mark try out one of his unsold costumes that is essentially just Zandale Randolph's (Bulletproof's) outfit. Whom would appear way later in the comics. The same costume was also worn by one of the Evil Mark Grayson's during the comic's Invincible War crisis event.
- After Battle Beast defeats and nearly kills three of the Guardians of the Globe members. He holds Black Samson and Monster Girl up just like he did with Bulletproof and Black Samson.
- A strange case that is actually a mythology gag for one of the inspirations of the series. When The Immortal is having a flashback of his previous experiences, we get a good look at The Immortal's first costume before his modern one, and it's essentially Superman's debut costume.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Viltrumite Empire. Their obsession with forging a Master Race drove them to purge half their population through trial by combat. Then, they began a merciless and bloodthirsty expansion of their territories, justifying it by claiming they were better than everyone else in technology and genes and that anyone who didn't submit deserved to die. When they reach the limits of the borders they can control, they continue to delude themselves of their right for total conquest by sending sleeper agents disguised as heroes and gods to weaken planets through chaos and subterfuge in time for the harvest. And the sleeper agent they sent to weaken Earth? Claims they are Just Following Orders, even as they find sadistic ways to murder thousands of people to "prove their moral superiority''. Cecil outright calls them "Space Super-Nazis" at one point.
- The Needs of the Many: Much of Omni-Man's training for Mark is trying to instill in him the idea that he should focus on contending with larger-scale threats to humanity instead of simply focusing on saving individual people. This is part of his attempt to prepare Mark to help him finally conquer Earth.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: William decorates his side of his and Mark's dorm room with lots of thinly veiled references.
- He has a Lady Yaya poster that is otherwise identical to a poste the real thing put out. Bonus that William is gay and Gaga has a sizable LGBT fanbase.
- A Magnum Π poster (doubles as a Visual Pun) with a man who is the spitting image of Tom Selleck.
- A Lil Bas X poster also nearly identical to one put out by the actual artist. Lil Nas X is openly gay and enjoys a sizable LGBT fanbase.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Has quite a few.
- Atom Eve typically averts this for the most part of the Series. But back in Season 1, she was drawn with more prominent eyelashes than other characters in the show.
- Mr. Liu's eyebrows are drawn very different compared to the simpler ones on most characters. His tends to be a lot more detailed and much more unusual.
- Aquarus, one of the original members of the Guardians of The Globe was drawn to be far more cartoonish than the rest of the cast.
- Noodle Incident: Black Samson wears Power Armor but according to Rex Splode, he had powers but at some point lost them. His experience combined with the suit still makes him a Badass Normal.
- No-Sell: Thragg is such an order of magnitude stronger than every other character that he can no-sell a full-strength punch from a Viltrumite.
- Not Brainwashed: after Omniman kills the Immortal in front of Mark, Mark thinks he's being controlled, and briefly tries to beat the influence out of him, only to hear The Reveal from him.
- Not Where They Thought: Played for Laughs in "Here Goes Nothing" when Allen the Alien shows up to Earth and fights Mark. He was sent on behalf of the Coalition of Planets to evaluate the defenses of a planet called "Urath", but it isn't until he has a brief conservation with Mark that Mark informs him he's at the wrong planet. Making it even funnier is that it's implied he's been coming to Earth for years (and fighting Mark's father, Nolan/Omni-Man every time) and never once realized his mistake.
- Occult Detective: Damien Darkblood, the Demon Detective, is... well a demon who works as a detective, using his powers to help solve crimes. It's mentioned that part of the reason is that each case he solves gets him reprieve from hell.
- Our Clones Are Different: The Mauler Twins are actually the result of a single Mad Scientist creating a clone of himself with the same memories and personality to act as a partner-in-crime and lab assistant, and whenever one Mauler Twin dies, the surviving Twin (whether they be the original or a clone) uses the cloning technology to create another Mauler Twin again. The cloning process involves extracting a blood sample, and Mauler locates a distinct blood cell which he then injects under a microscope, causing the cell to begin replicating. The clone body then grows from the blood sample inside a pod, fed processed meat through a tube to fuel its development. Once the body is fully-formed, it's still braindead, until Mauler uses a separate machine to (painfully) duplicate all his thoughts and memories onto the clone body. Mauler can also use the technology to clone someone else, to copy the mind of someone other than the clone body's genetic donor into it, and even alter the clone body's physical age from that of its donor; as happens when the Twins create a child clone of Rex's body with Robot's mind.
- Parental Sexuality Squick: One of Mark's first scenes is Screw This, I'm Outta Here because his parents are getting too affectionate in front him. He even says that one of the things parents should never do is discuss sex in front of their kids, and his mother lightly remarks that he should be happy that his parents love each other so much. Later on in that same episode, William starts shamelessly thirsting on Omni-Man, oblivious to the fact that he's Mark's dad, to Mark's visible discomfort.
- Parents as People: Eve's parents aren't villainous and they do care about her. However, the way they try to talk to her comes off as so tone-deaf, toxic, disrespectful, and ignorant that they make the situation worse for her and eventually drive her away.
- Personal Horror: After realizing the horrible implications of what his father Nolan/Omni-Man, and by extension the entire Viltrumite race, did and what are capable to do, Mark spends most of Season 2 trying to prove everyone, and especially himself, that he’s nothing like him and that he’s not a ruthless murderer. Sadly, things get from bad to worse in Season 2 Finale, when he (accidentally or not) breaks his own “No Killing” rule by turning Angstrom Levi into a bloody puddle, after the latter hurt his mother and his younger brother to torture him before trying to kill him. He becomes so horrified by his actions that he spends hours in a meltdown, and even when everyone tells him that he did the right thing, he refuses to cut himself some slack. Worse still, Angstrom Levi revealed to him, that most (if not all) alternative versions of himself in the Multiverse are evil.
- The Plague: The Scourge Virus — which was engineered to target Viltrumite DNA on a global scale. Anyone afflicted with it has exhibited nosebleeds and coughing up blood, as well as dying shortly after. Nolan was among the few hundreds of survivors that recovered from such virus. As the flashback goes on, millions of corpses were piled on the streets before being put into outer space, creating a makeshift ring around Viltrum. According to General Kregg's report, billions upon billions of Viltrumites have perished in total, bringing them close to extinction.
- Planet of Hats: Nolan tells Mark that their race—the Viltrumites—are a race of superheroes who send emissaries from their planet to underdeveloped worlds to protect them and their worlds from anything that could threaten them. In the first season finale, it's revealed that they are actually a Proud Warrior Race of Social Darwinist super-beings whose sense of superiority led to them culling the "weak" from their species (cutting their planet's population in half) and would go on to do the same on a galactic scale in the form of a world-conquering empire. Nolan is one of many Evil Heroes sent to weaken Earth's existing defenses and to gain their trust so that Earth would be ripe for taking. If Earth decides to fight, the Viltrum Empire will annihilate them.
- Plot Parallel: Both Nolan and Mark attempt to distract their partners from asking questions which they give evasive or lying answers to, with various forms of gifts. Believing that doing so is part of some greater purpose that entirely justifies the deception. In both cases this ends up having disastrous consequences for the relationship although in Mark's case he and Amber do eventually reconcile.
- Politically Correct Villain: First deconstructed, then separately parodied with Doc Seismic. He attacks Paha Sapa, aka Mt. Rushmore, accusing the real-life politicians depicted there as being racists, but he proceeds to desecrate the sacred hilltop while indiscriminately murdering people who have no say in any of it. Later, in the middle of a fight with Invincible and Atom Eve, he serves as a parody by insulting the latter's apparent willingness to wear a male-designed, gender-normative superhero costume. When Atom Eve replies that she designed it herself and asks why he cares about that, Doc Seismic says that he has a degree in Gender Studies and a minor in African Dance in addition to his specialization in Seismology.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: The animation revises a few elements of the early plotlines from the comics, some of those being:
- The initial events in which Mark becomes a superhero is quicker to make him realize dealing with real world scenarios is very hard, with plenty of potential casualties at every turn; the comics had that realization be a slow burn-in for Mark, to the point he actually was naïve enough with his first outings to believe being a superhero was actually very easy.
- The eradication of the Guardians of the Globe goes completely different in the animation. Omni-Man seems to put some real effort into taking down the Guardians, and they deal some damage to him, whereas in the comic Nolan annihilated them without breaking a sweat. The bigger change is the tone; much bigger doubt is put into why Omni-Man did all of this, with the Immortal even contemplating if he could be under mind control. Nolan being hurt as well puts an air of mystery towards the event, contrasting with the comic which was quicker to show Omni-Man's intentions. It also fixes a bit of Early-Installment Weirdness from the comics: while the Viltrumites were portrayed as nearly unstoppable in the first few comic arcs akin to Silver Age Kryptonians, the mid-point and end of the comics showed them getting their asses handed to them by a large variety of weird and various opponents portraying them as closer to Bronze Age Kryptonians..
- The Flaxan alien invasion had a greater time-lapse between their return in the comics, the animation has them develop the aging-halt bracelets right from the second advance, that would happen only a while later in the source material. The Flaxans are revealed to still be alive after Omni-Man annihilated their invading force.
- While the comic originally had Nolan's violent confrontation with Mark happen at the end of the second arc—which, in show terms, would happen at the end of the second episode — the show opts to save it for the season finale in order to make the Driving Question of the season reach a more explosive narrative conclusion.
- The Invincible War in the comics had many detailed fights about other heroes from Image Comics doing their damnedest to take out the alternate Marks, some even failing. However, because of the many legal issues and pacing troubles this would cause for a show with only eight episodes, there's only focus on the relevant fights involving characters the audience is already familiar with, and other fights are reduced to snippets or cameos.
- Punny Name: Three of the Teen Team have these for superhero names; there's Atom Eve (Adam and Eve), Rex Splode (explode), and Dupli-Kate (duplicate). Then when the new Guardians of the Globe are chosen, we get Shrinking Rae (Shrinking Ray).
- Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice:
- Mars is currently under a strict quarantine by the orders of the Martian Emperor because the planet is infested with the dangerous Sequids. However, the Sequids require a possessed native in order to form their hivemind otherwise they can't do anything, and the Martians are immune to Sequid possession thanks to their shapeshifting power. In order to prevent the Sequids from gaining a host, the entire planet was quarantined with orders to kill any foreign visitors that are susceptible to Sequid possession. It's also implied that this quarantine is the reason why Martian civilization is currently underground.
- In the Season 4 flashback, Viltrum itself has undergone a strict quarantine while the artificially engineered Scourge Virus has decimated billions upon billions of lives. Grand Regent took extreme precautions by ordering his subjects to cover up this crucial weakness from the rest of the galaxy.
- Race Lift: A few to go around; according to the creators, they wanted the characters' ethnicities to match that of their actors.
- Debbie is Korean-American instead of White, making Mark half-White (technically he's half Viltrumite, but Nolan looks White) and half-Korean.
- Rex Splode has a darker skin tone than his comic counterpart. He is voiced by Jason Mantzoukas who is Greek-American.
- Amber Bennett is a white, blonde girl in the comics. She is an African-American brunette in this show, and her racial identity is an important aspect of her character.
- Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Performed by Red Rush during Omni-Man's assault on the Guardian's headquarters. They eventually deteriorate Red Rush trying desperately to land blows using his broken hands in an attempt to get Omni-Man to stop crushing his head, to no avail.
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old:
- Immortal was apparently some Bronze Age warrior who was zapped by purple rays and became immortal. He's apparently thousands of years old.
- It's revealed that Viltrumites live for many centuries. In season 4, Nolan admits to being almost a thousand years old but doesn't appear to be over 50.
- Reconstruction: Of the Super Hero genre. Yes, the show is Darker and Edgier and Bloodier and Gorier than traditional superhero stories, while presenting a norm of Black-and-Gray Morality, all for the sake of realism. But no matter what, the heroes still protect the world from evil with their idealism and courage.
- Required Secondary Powers: Many superheroes (such as Red Rush, Omni-Man and Invincible) saved civilians with their superspeed, but because of the whiplash, they should be deader than Gwen Stacey, so either they somehow can nullify momentum or it's some artistic license on the physics.
- Resignations Not Accepted: Invoked when Titan attempts to leave Machine Head's service following the repayment of his debt.
- Rule of Three: The alien invasion in episode 2 come from a dimension where time is faster than ours and so they begin to age rapidly. The first 2 times they retreat when they start to suffer from the different time-streams with the third time they arrive completely immune and with weaponry too advanced for the Teen Team to handle. It takes Omni-Man being accidentally transported to that dimension and committing near-genocide to end the invasion once and for all.
- Running Gag:
- Mark is shown to have No Sense of Direction and keeps on asking where things are, such as Mt. Everest, and not realizing how far away things are, like Mars.
- The Mauler Twins' squabbles over who is the original and who is the clone.
- The title card pops up the first time the word "invincible" is used in each episode. In the first season this is done straightforwardly, with the cut-away happening regardless of context. In the second season each instance is Lampshaded in some way (e.g. missing the cue in favor of censoring a preceding swear word) and in the third season it is often Played for Drama instead. Only the last episode of Season 3 doesn't use the word "invincible" as a cue.
S-Z
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: In Season 2, Mark is told he will be travelling to a planet that's a couple of galaxies away from Earth. The next episode, when he decides he wants to go back on his own, he's told there are millions of miles between the planet he's on and Earth. The closest galaxy to the Milky Way is the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located approximately 70,000 light years away. And one light year is approximately 5.88 trillion miles/9.4 trillion kilometers.
- Self-Deprecation: The teaser trailer for Season 3 makes fun of the several year gap between Seasons 1 and 2, and Season 2’s mid-season break of four months.
- Self-Inflicted Amnesia: Prior to the beginning of the series, Donald died thirty-eight times while saving people, got rebuilt as an android each time, and every time upon learning that he was no longer entirely human he requested to have his memory of the discovery erased, so he wouldn't be distracted by it. Following his on-screen death when Nolan finds him and other agents spying on the Grayson house, Donald chooses for the first time not to forget, as he realises that his actions define him more than his cyborg body does.
- Sequel Hook: Several in the first season finale, many of them thanks to an ending montage, most of which are plot threads from previous episodes coming to roost. The Flaxans survived, rebuilding and plan to get their revenge on Omni-Man, who they don't know is no longer guarding the planet. Doc Seismic is alive after all, and leading an army of lava monsters. The Sequids have completely infested Mars. Titan is still a crime lord preparing to make a move against other criminals. Battle Beast is still at large. D. A. Sinclair is working on more Reanimen with GDA oversight. The Immortal is shown being put back together once again. Allen the Alien warns Invincible that more Viltrumites are coming to Earth, but that the Coalition of Planets will be able to provide assistance. And Mark still has to graduate from high school.
- Setting Update: The original comic starts around the Turn of the Millennium, whereas this series begins in what appears to be The New '20s or close to it.
- Shout-Out:
- Episode three has one of Mark's favorite comics being "The Underwater Welder" by Jeff Lemire.
- In episode five, Omni-Man claims to have once diverted an asteroid the size of Texas.
- Also in episode five, we see Darkblood's notebook and its cover looks like a smaller Necronomicon Ex-Mortis from Evil Dead.
- The first episode briefly shows Darkwing's home city, which notably features dark red skies — the visual trademark of Batman: The Animated Series for making Gotham seem distinctively dark.
- Cecil once refers to Damien as a "Horned Holmes".
- One of the Mauler Twins congratulates Robot's clone for having "Won the coin toss", in what might be a reference to SOMA.
- The GDA's Kill Sat is named "the Hammer". It's very likely that its naming is a reference to Gears of War.
- In "This Must Come as a Shock" Will is reading a book titled Total Consciousness by the noted philosopher Dr. Carl Spackler. Well, the Dalai Lama did promise him...
- In the post-credits scene for Season 2's sixth episode "It's Not That Simple," one of the realities that Angstrom Levy passes through before he arrives back in his "home" reality is a reality where zombies exist.
- In "You're Not Laughing Now", as two Reanimen beat down Doc Seismic's allies, the clanking of their fists perform the infamous drum-beat of the Terminator theme.
- In "I'll Give You The Grand Tour", the entire ship Nolan and Allen go on is a parody of the Star Trek Enterprise-D, with even the characters onboard being similar to the Star Trek cast.
- Smash Cut:
- Each episode smash-cuts to the title credit just as someone is about to say the word "invincible", so the word is seen instead of heard.
- The seasons after the first have a tendancy to play with how this trope is used in reference to the title card. From having multiple Bait-and-Switch moments, to using it instead for a Curse Cut Short, to having an entirely silent cold open that you just have to assume "invincible" is said in. There are still examples of it being played straight, though some of those will do it so much to the point of hanging a lampshade on it.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In the comic series, Shrinking Ray died after being swallowed whole by Komodo Dragon. Here, his counterpart was swallowed, but she reverted to normal size in a last-ditch attempt to break out, which failed. Although this left her hospitalised, she's still alive by the end of the fight, and a couple of episodes later.
- Spew and Swoon: In "Who You Calling Ugly?", Shrinking Rae and Man Kong are matched against each other at the preselection for the new Guardians of the Globe. Their fight consists of Rae shrinking herself, hiding in Man Kong's fur and going inside his ear, which causes him to vomit and then pass out.
- Spider-Man Send-Up: Downplayed. While Invincible doesn't have Spidey's arachnid powers, his character is very much modeled after Peter Parker in terms of personality and his high school background. Played completely straight with Agent Spider, who has a relatively brief appearance in the finale of Season 2, complete with a web-patterned costume and the full set of powers.
- Spiritual Antithesis: To The Boys (2019), another adult superhero show on Prime Video. While The Boys is a dark and incredibly violent Deconstruction of the superhero genre in live-action based on a comic by a writer who despises the genre, Invincible is going more towards Reconstruction in an animated format based on a comic by a writer who adores the genre... and it is also incredibly violent.
- Sudden Soundtrack Stop: At the end of the first episode, the music suddenly stops when Omni-Man kills Red Rush, and the rest of the final scene plays without a soundtrack. Just the sounds of the Guardians being brutally murdered.
- Superman Substitute: Omni-Man is clearly modeled after the Man of Tomorrow, which by extension makes Invincible one to Superboy.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When Omni-Man genocides the Flaxians, the show demonstrates that a Flying Brick that accelerates to speeds capable of leaving a planet in seconds is devastating. The sheer velocity of impacts from an entity that can surpass the human laws of physics is like a proverbial nuke going off rapidly and repeatedly with every single collision. Never mind the demonstration on the Starter Villain Slash, who gets pasted into what was left of their head just by being rammed through multiple structures without a single punch thrown.
- Tailor-Made to Terminate: After decades of research (and observing both Mark and his father Nolan), Cecil has created multiple specialized weapons just to fight the Viltrumites. The first attempt is a billion dollar laser, able to give Nolan a nosebleed. Later attempts are more successful, such as giant monster that he drugged up and fed on steroids until it could actually bruise the Flying Bricks, sonic weapon targeting sensitive inner ears of Viltrumites and new alloys actually able to cut through Viltrumite flesh. Alternative versions of Cecil used quantum bombs (sacrificing a huge chunk of their planet's population). Later, the Mauler twins invent a gun that targets the nervous system and disable all superheroes, including Mark, albeit temporarily.
- Take That!:
- When Mark tries to think of a superhero name for himself, he thinks of Ass Kicker, only to retract that since he thinks it's "willfully childish".
- Invincible questioning the practicality of Damian Darkblood's Collapsible Helmet, specifically why it keeps coming on and off just so Damian can talk, which is a call-out to how that trope is used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Darkblood doesn't have much of a satisfying rebuttal besides "looks cool".
- Talk to the Fist: When Volcanikka is bragging about what Mark can do to defeat her, Mark just simply punches her head off while she's still speaking. Due to her powers, she just grows it back.
- Tamer and Chaster: In addition to the early 2000s edgy jokes being removed from the show, it also removes the gratuitous Fanservice it had concerning how super heroines, female villains, and female aliens were portrayed in the comics. Many, if not most, of them were large-breasted, with curves for days, often dressed in skintight Leotard of Power to outright Stripperific outfits, and battle damage leaving them with Male Gaze gaps in their clothing could happen as well. The show has all women more modestly dressed, with more average curves and battle damage is not fetishized in any way. In Season 3 Mark and Eve’s first sex scene is toned down compared to the comic, with Eve wearing a bra rather than being topless. The second love scene in the finale however is much more risqué, and accurate to the comic.
- Telepathy: Enforced and commonly used in space for conversation and banter. Since there's no way to talk, much less breathe in a vacuum, certain characters without external air supply can and need to hold their breaths for a long time. Meta-wise, it saves time from mouths flapping in the animation.
- Teleportation Misfire: Cecil's teleporter is shown to be somewhat inaccurate. Nolan nearly strangles him when Cecil teleports into his living room; Cecil states that he was trying to appear at the front door.
- There Are No Therapists: Despite the Dysfunction Junction being suffered by most of the cast, there are few attempts to go to therapy, and members of the GDA have the option to just have their memories periodically erased to off-load any trauma they develop on the job. The only instances of therapy being utilized so far has been Debbie's attempt to join group therapy and Invincible finally asking to speak with a therapist in season 4, though circumstances prevent it.
- Title Drop:
- Played With in an interesting way; the first time in each episode where the word 'invincible' is used, whether it's Mark's superhero name or just the word itself, it cuts to the Title Screen.
- Parodied in the Season 2 pilot multiple times due to the memetic nature of Season 1's trend, before being combined with an anguished declaration of revenge from Angstrom Levy in the episode's ending.
- Also Parodied in "All I Can Say Is I'm Sorry". Invincible is named dropped more than once at the beginning of the episode, but no title card to use. Later, Powerplex constantly Smash Cuts to the title card for a few moments before continuing his monologue, only cutting to the actual title at the end of his monologue when he demands that he wants justice/revenge on Invincible.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- After getting his ass kicked, Allen recovers and becomes stronger than ever, able to take on the Viltrumites and help Nolan kill one.
- Mark is put through rigorous training in Season 3 and fairs better against stronger opponents from then on.
- Tragic Monster: The show surprisingly treats Conquest as this. He whispers to Mark he’s so utterly and completely alone having been raised to do nothing but kill and conquer since the day he was born and every other Viltrumite is afraid of him. He actually envies Mark’s happiness with Eve, because he himself has nothing and nobody to care about. He doesn’t even have a name, Conquest is just his Red Baron.
- Transforming Mecha: In episode 7, the Mauler Twins give Robot a new human body. Despite his gratitude, Robot still intends to send them back to prison and reveals that the truck he arrived in can transform into a larger version of his drone.
- Underground Alien Civilization: The Martians are shown to live completely underneath the surface of Mars. While Martian society is underground in this series, it's implied that this was a response to the invasion of the Sequids. The Sequids are small parasitic aliens resembling squids that are extremely dangerous and well known for overwhelming planets with their infestation. However, the Sequids require a host body from one of the natives to function, without a host the Sequids do not have a Hive Mind to control and coordinate them. The Martians were able to avoid this because their shapeshifting power makes them immune to being controlled by the Sequids. Despite this, the Martian Emperor still established an official quarantine of the planet and ordered that all outsiders who arrive be killed so that the Sequids do not gain a host.
- Unequal Pairing: Dupli-Kate hooked up with The Immortal offscreen behind Rex Splode's back in the second season. The Immortal is both thousands of years older than her and her boss, as a disgusted Rex points out to her.
- Villainous Exit Denied: When the crime boss Machine Head realizes he's about to be captured, he tries to have his Dragon Isotope teleport them to safety, only to discover that Isotope had already teleported away, having betrayed Machine Head for Titan.
- Violence Is Disturbing: All of the Gorn in the series is played completely seriously and without absolutely any Black Comedy whatsoever, totally unlike The Boys (2019). In other words, whenever the show gets violent, it becomes horrific and dramatic real quick, and all of it is to demonstrate the disturbing effects that fantastical superpowers and technology do to people in real-life.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
- After Red Rush escorts the bystanders away from the White House attack, they start to throw up one-by-one due to motion sickness. Red Rush himself nearly succumbs, but runs away first.
- While cleaning up the site of the Guardians of the Globe's murders, one of the cleaners removes her mask to vomit on the floor from the sight. Due to holding the decapitated head of The Immortal.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: The Guardians of the Globe are all slain after their first appearance. Only The Immortal eventually returns at the hands of the Mauler Twins, lays a brutal smackdown on Omni-Man in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, then gets brutally bisected near the end of episode 7, although he's later resurrected a second time.
- Wham Shot: The Mauler Twin escape from jail by a person operating in the shadows, revealed to be Robot as Cecil walks in and asks him how the new Guardian training is going.
- Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: Most superheroes get their outfits from a very talented tailor named Art Rosenbaum.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The city Mark lives in is unnamed, and its location in the general United States is unspecified. The local college is generically named "Upstate College."
- Given that "upstate" is most closely associated with New York State, it's likely that the city is supposed to be either New York City or a fictional analogue.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: The Flaxan's dimension has a faster time-rate than Earth's. It serves as their weakness that requires them to adapt with technology to be unaffected by Earth's time. Without it, they age quickly and their earlier generations of weapons corrode from time and oxidization.Robot: They seem to have discovered a way to resist our timestream.
Rex: In three days?!
Robot: Three days for us, decades for them.