< Bones

Bones/Characters


Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel)

  • Action Girl
  • Adorkable: She has her moments of this particularly in lighthearted moments with Booth.
  • Agent Scully: No matter how insightful or useful Sweets is, she persists in dismissing any time he's right as "coincidence" because of her dismissal of psychology as a science.
  • Ambiguous Disorder: Has something going on with the lack of social skills and poor metaphor grasping.
  • Anguished Declaration of Love
  • Badass Bookworm
  • Blue Eyes: Emily Deschanel's peepers rival her kid sister's.
  • Brainy Brunette
  • Brutal Honesty: When you combine her cold-bloodedness, her honesty, and her social incompetence that is pretty much what you get.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer
  • Cannot Tell a Joke
  • Catch Phrase: "I don't know what that means."
    • For a while there was also "Don't call me Bones," but she soon learned to accept (but not embrace) the nickname.
  • Embarrassing Middle Name: Word of God gives it as Beulah.
  • Hollywood Nerd
  • Honest Advisor: She is not exactly incapable of lying. But her concern for the truth is extreme to the point of ruthlessness. This is multiplied by the fact that she barely knows how to use a metaphor.
  • Hot Mom
  • Hot Scientist
  • In-Series Nickname: Take a wild guess.
  • Insufferable Genius
  • Literal-Minded: More than anyone who's not a robot should be.
  • Meaningful Name: "Temperance" means "moderation or self-restraint in action, statement, etc.; self-control."
    • Even more meaningful is the fact that her name used to be Joy before her criminal parents changed the whole family's names to protect themselves from their former partner in crime; they eventually had to abandon Brennan and her brother to keep said partner from finding and harming their children. Many characters point out that Temperance's need for temperance is a direct result of her parents' abandonment and her subsequent experiences in the foster care system, before which she was much more carefree.
  • My Beloved Smother: Christine is barely out of the womb and she's already started, getting suspended from the Jeffersonian's daycare for interfering too much.
  • Mystery Writer Detective: A borderline case as her skills as a forensic anthropologist are far more important to solving crimes than any supposedly ability as a writer.
    • Especially as she only writes the technical aspects and twisted plotting of her novels. The characterization and steamy sex scenes are due to Angela's input. It takes them a long time to even realize this, as Temperance's writing process was to essentially write Michael Crichtonesque murder mysteries, then loan it to Angela to pre-read, who adds the sex and quips. Once they figure his out, Temperance split the royalties with Angela. Back-dated.
  • Nerds Are Sexy
  • No Social Skills: Not quite as bad as Zack but enough to count.
  • Oblivious to Love: To Booth in season five.
  • Pregnant Badass
  • Principles Zealot: Downplayed. She can bend once in awhile but she is on the whole fairly rigid about scientific ethics.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: Her pregnancy this season
  • She's All Grown Up: Kid Brennan, according to a photo of her winning a science fair (at age 11) showed her as kinda chubby. She grows up to be a gorgeous woman (played by Emily Deschanel).
  • That Man Is Dead: She sometimes has that attitude toward her Dark and Troubled Past as the daughter of a bank robber.
  • The Spock
  • The Stoic: In the literal as well as figurative sense. Not only is she inhumanly cold-blooded, she is about as incorruptible as a human could be and Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus are somewhere in the afterlife watching her and smiling.
    • She is surprised when others take it ill at being corrected. As she points out, she would want to be corrected if she is wrong. And she means every word of that. When she says she is the best forensic scientist on the continent, she is not bragging in the least. She is in fact the best and what is there to boast of about facts any more then anything else?
  • Straw Vulcan
  • Sugar and Ice Personality
  • They Do: With Booth.
  • Unrequited Love Switcheroo
  • UST: With Booth
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She once commented, "I find it interesting that I'm only afraid of snakes when Booth is around to be jumped upon".


Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz)

  • Anguished Declaration of Love: It didn't work at first. Then it did.
  • Atonement Detective: Booth seems to have a scale in his head, weighing roughly how many kills he made as a sniper versus how many murderers he's caught.
  • Badass
  • Berserk Button: If any one threatens, insults or mildly annoys Brennan, Booth seems ready to do violence. Also clowns. Even on ice cream trucks.
    • Also don't even think about hurting his son. While we haven't really seen this in action, he is on record that his protective instinct for Parker outweighs his faith in God himself, which is kinda a big deal.
    • It can safely be assumed that this now extends to Booth and Bones' daughter Christine.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Towards his younger brother Jared, to the point where its somewhat unhealthy for them both.
    • Also towards Sweets and Wendell.
  • Book Dumb
  • Cold Sniper: His job in the Army.
  • The Face: He's an FBI agent surrounded by Lab Rats. While they do their geeky science thing he's talking to witnesses and cracking supects.
  • Fair Cop
  • The Gambling Addict
  • Good-Looking Privates: What? He was an Army Ranger. That counts.
  • Hot Dad: To Parker and Christine.
  • Jerk Jock: Booth is a mostly-mellowed version of this trope. While he has outgrown most of the trope's more noxious aspects, he still retains disdain for intellectuals and scientists (although it tends to be more good-natured ribbing with those he gets to know).
  • Last-Name Basis
  • The McCoy
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Most of the cast has realized he's doing it by now, but Gordon is the only one that has straight-out called him on it.
  • Overprotective Dad: Baby's not even out of the womb and he's being this.
  • Raised Catholic
  • They Do: With Bones.
  • UST: With Bones
  • Why Did It Have to be Clowns? Played over the seasons, and after he had his brain surgery, he forgot that he supposed to be scared with clowns. To the point Brennan reminded him about it.

Jack Hodgins (T.J. Thyne)

Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin)

Zack Addy (Eric Millegan)

Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor)

Lance Sweets (John Francis Daley)

Max Keenan (Ryan O'Neal)

Vincent Nigel-Murray (Ryan Cartwright)


Daisy Wick (Carla Gallo)

Gordon Gordon Wyatt (Stephen Fry)

Caroline Julian (Patricia Belcher)

Howard Epps (Heath Freeman)

  • Ax Crazy
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas
  • Freudian Excuse: His mother, a religious fanatic, washed his hands with ammonia (and made him take baths in it) and taught him that sex was evil. Needless to say, it didn't do his psyche good.
  • Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook: He could be a Manipulative Bastard all along, or maybe he learned it while on death row. When we first meet Epps, he's claiming to be innocent and trying to get exonerated, but it ends up he just reveals he's killed even more people than previously thought, so they have to keep him alive while they process the new bodies. When he returns in season 2, Epps is even more manipulative and playing serial killer games, leading the team on a merry chase with body parts as clues.
  • Monster Misogyny: Literally. Booth even theorizes that Epps hates Brennan because she's a smart, strong, confident woman.
  • Moral Event Horizon: His various murders and sick games are bad enough, but when he saws his wife's head off while she's ALIVE, it's pretty clear how evil he is.
  • Serial Killer: Of teenage girls. Fun guy.

Dr. Daniel Goodman (Jonathan Adams)

Clark Edison (Eugene Byrd)

Wendell Bray (Michael Grant Terry)

  • The Everyman: Came from a humble background and has had a lot of less sophisticated jobs.
  • Hot Scientist
  • Nice Guy
  • Romantic Runner-Up: He's Angela's replacement for Hodgins when they break up.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Subverted, as his dad died of lung cancer, and he only holds a cigarette (without lighting it) when he's trying to think like him.

Arastoo Viziri (Pej Vahdat)


Colin Fisher (Joel Moore)

Finn Abernathy (Luke Kleintank)

Finn: Oh, I gotta say ma'am, this is the best damn job ever!

Angela's Dad (Billy Gibbons)

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