< The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files/Tropes A-M


The books of The Dresden Files have many, many tropes. These are tropes A through M. You can find tropes N through Z here.

Please make sure spoilers are properly tagged. The series has a lot of them, so try not to ruin everyone else's fun.


A-C

  • Absurdly Sharp Blade:
    • The Swords of the Cross are able to go through just about anything. Amorrachius, for example, can go clean through a steel fire door and kill the man on the other side without any real effort on Michael's part.
    • Swords wielded by the Wardens are enchanted on several levels, including, apparently, being able to cut through anything. On at least one occasion, one cuts through a whole tree with little effort. In the RPG book, this is represented as an option to make it hit for Weapon:6 damage. For comparison's sake, the swords are normally Weapon:3, and Weapon:4 damage and above is usually reserved for powerful spells and/or battlefield explosives.
  • Abusive Parents: Hello, Lord Raith. Justin also counts, being Harry and Elaine's adoptive dad.
    • Ivy's mother might qualify too. It might be only one act of abuse, but wow, it is seriously messed up.
  • Action Girl: At Dragon*Con 2010, Jim was on a panel about gender roles. The only reason he could figure out why he was up there was because, "I write women who kick ass."
  • Affably Evil: "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone can be nice and charming when he wants to be, and Harry has to keep reminding himself that, no matter how often Marcone assists him or even saves his life, he is still a bad person.
    • Nicodemus also counts as this in the earlier books in which he appears. He is an immortal monster, slaver, traitor, and murderer who willingly works with a fallen angel, one of the most evil beings in all of Dresdenverse. He is one of the oldest characters in the series, and has been committing horrifying atrocities for most of his life. He is also well-spoken, unfailingly polite, and actually seems to enjoy bantering with Harry at times.
  • After-Action Patchup: Charity uses iodine.
  • Alien Blood: Black for Red Court vampires, a paler shade of red than usual for the White Court, all over the map for the more exotic beasties.
  • All Crimes Are Equal: How the Wardens and the Council view Black Magic, regardless of intent or circumstance. The theory is that black magic is addictive, so any at all can lead to more and will eventually warp the minds of those who use. The thing is... they are not wrong.
    • They don't really believe in leniency either, no matter how good the argument might be. For a Complete Monster of a warlock, this is understandable. When it's Molly, it's because they're losing a war and can't afford to have any combat-capable wizard distracted by a potentially evil apprentice.
    • They also have a point about dark magic being addictive. Molly used dark magic to cure her friends' drug addiction, but Harry has to keep a VERY close eye on her over the next few books to make sure she doesn't keep using dark magic
  • The Alleged Car: Harry's car, the Blue Beetle is, not to put too fine a point on it, junk. It suffers much of its damage over the course of the series, but his mechanic is good enough that he can keep the thing running about 7 days out of 10. By Changes it has been destroyed beyond repair.
  • Allergic to Love: Completely literal. You are protected from the attack of a succubus (or incubus) if the last person you were intimate with loved you and was loved by you. If a succubus (or incubus) tries to feed on you, they get horrible blister-like burns, even if they are the person you loved.
  • Almighty Mom: Michael's wife, Charity. Touch her children and die.
  • All Myths Are True: Yep, all of them. Particular emphasis tends to be given to the Western mythologies and beliefs (Christian, Celtic, Greco-Roman, Norse, et cetera).
    • A fourth type of vampire, the Jade Court, is briefly mentioned, but hasn't been seen yet. As the name would indicate, they operate out of East Asia. One can only assume that, given the cosmopolitan nature of Chicago, they and possibly other Eastern myth creatures will be showing up.
  • Exclusively Evil: The Council's opinion on any vampire, although the White Court are at least capable of acting civilized and not sucking the life force from anyone they meet. That does not make them any less monstrous.
  • Anchored Ship: Harry/Murphy. The anchor looked to be being pulled up right at the end of Changes, but subsequent events again put the end destination in question.
  • Angels, Devils, and Squid: There are angels (and Fallen Angels). Both of these are separate and distinct from the demons, sidhe, wildfae, old gods, demigods, vampire lords and Outsiders hanging around the place, to the point where it reaches Fantasy Kitchen Sink levels.
  • Anti-Hero: Harry has always been deeply convinced that he is one of these. Early on this was clearly just in his head and he was really a straight-up hero who occasionally caused some collateral damage, and this was frequently pointed out to him by those who knew him. As the series progressed his friends and allies began to grow concerned that he was beginning to edge closer to the dark side of the morality scale, but afterwards always explained that they had faith he would remain focused and on the side of the righteous.
    • Now that Harry has taken up the mantle of the Winter Knight, this will bear watching.
  • Anti-Villain: "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone, the Chicago mob boss is more often help than hindrance to Harry; while his empire of crime is vast and increasing, he maintains order and reduces violence. We ultimately learn from his Start of Darkness in White Night that the motivation that drives him is to prevent Innocent Bystanders from harm, and he is desperate to heal a young girl in a coma from a bullet meant for him. In Small Favor, he refuses to be freed first until the Archive is rescued, and during the subsequent escape, shelters her and makes sure she is the first person on the rescue helicopter.
  • Anyone Can Die: Carmichael, Morgan, Susan, and even Harry himself.
  • Armor Is Useless: Generally averted; while Kevlar vests are usually not sufficient against most supernatural threats, everyone who knows what they are up against makes sure to include mail of various kinds, generally chain or plate, to deflect claws or blades. Charity even gave Murphy a bulletproof vest with titanium chainmail fitting underneath for Christmas.

My faith protects me. My Kevlar helps.

"Demon," breathed Rudolph. "Jesus, can you believe this shit?"
"Jesus did believe in demons," Michael said, his voice quiet.

  • Asteroids Monster: Several critters in the series have this ability. Certain trolls, for example, shed lots of little trolls when they are wounded. The Denarian Tessa while in mantis form also bleeds countless tiny bugs which recombine into her primary body as a sort of T-1000-esque regeneration. The guardian centipede in Lea's garden on the other side of the Nevernever from Harry's apartment splits into two separate insects when Harry slices it in half, prompting Lea to complain that now she has two gaping maws to feed.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: The Senior Council of the White Council of Wizards is composed of the seven wisest and most powerful wizards on the planet. The leader of the Senior Council, the Merlin, is supposedly the most powerful wizard period. Though there is shown to be a lot of politicing and deal-making that determines who gets appointed to the Senior Council, not even Harry (Insubordinate wise-cracker though he is) disputes their power and skill.
    • This applies to pretty much the entire Dresdenverse. Justified in the case of the supernatural community, since supernatural power grows with age, so that someone's climb through the political hierarchy will correlate with growing supernatural power. Though Marcone and arguably Murphy also qualify. Subverted in the case of Lord Raith, who used to be an ass-kicker, but lost most of his power thanks to Maggie's death curse.
  • Back-Alley Doctor: Coroner Waldo Butters plays this role for Harry, especially when the hospital is not a safe option.
  • Badass: Harry is a true personification of the Rule of Cool.
    • "Hat and spurs next time, I swear to God."
  • Badass Abnormal: The Knights of the Cross.
  • Badass Family: The Carpenters. There's the father, mother, eldest sister and now, as of Ghost Story, her younger brother. With plenty of other siblings to come.
  • Badass in Distress: Harry gets stuck in James Bondage on a regular basis and can not always get out on his own.
  • Badass Longcoat: Harry wears a duster. A magically reinforced, black leather duster "with extra billow" that can repel almost any physical attack, and occasionally gets made fun of because "You look like you belong on the set of El Dorado." In Fool Moon, Dresden laments the lack of his duster when he steps through a wall he just vaporized because of cool effect it would have had. In Changes, Lea turns his coat into a suit of armor resembling a Conquistador turned Jedi Knight as made by Games Workshop. He finds it rather silly. After it reverts back at noon the next day, the coat decays into nothingness.
    • He started out with a canvas one; the leather one was a gift from Susan. It has some of the same practical enchantments, but lacks the "extra billow" and in general is kind of the poor-man's knockoff of the leather one in terms of both utility and effect.
      • For added hilarity, when the coat needs to be cleaned after getting hit by slime demons, Harry takes the most practical route: he throws it in a fire. I mean, hey, when you enchant something to be the next best thing to wearable indestructibility...
  • Badass Nickname: "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone.
  • Badass Normal:
  • Badass Santa:
    • Harry mentions once that Saint Nick is a fairy, and a much more powerful one than he would ever dare to summon, even if he knew his Name. At a DragonCon interview, Jim Butcher has said that Santa Claus is the Winter King, which would make him about as powerful as Mab or Titania. Jim has stated that he would love the opportunity to namedrop Santa Claus in Mab's hearing, just for the chance to write her reaction.
    • There is a wizard named Klaus the Toymaker who is both powerful enough to be considered for the Senior Council, and (per word of Jim) is apparently in the same weight league as Ebenezar McCoy.
  • Bad Dreams: Harry has them. A lot.
  • Bad Powers, Bad People: The White Council believes that using any magic that breaks any of the Laws of Magic (No killing humans with magic, no transforming others, no Mind Reading, no Mind Control, no necromancy, no Time Travel and no summoning Eldritch Abominations) is addictive. So anyone who does any of that, even if for a good reason, is likely to do it again, more frivolously, or to do another one of them.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness: Sort of; most of the good characters are very attractive, but then so are most of the high-powered supernaturals. It works out to something like ugly = bad; beautiful = good; really, really, amazingly beautiful = RUN AWAY.
  • Being Good Sucks: For doing the right thing, your friends will suffer and die, your allies will suffer and die, your family will suffer and die, and you will suffer and die.
    • Let us put it this way: Harry would really enjoy being able to store beams of sunlight for later use, seeing as how delightfully effective those are at fighting vampires. Except he can't no matter how he tries, because you need to be happy to do this.
  • Beneath the Mask:
    • If a wizard looks anyone in the eye, something happens called a "Soulgaze". Each person sees the other for who he or she really is, with no chance of deceit.
    • Wizards can use an ability known as the "Wizard's Sight", which shows them literally everything about whatever they look at with it. Anything about the item, object, person or whatever it is will be made visible to the wizard, also with no chance of deceit. For example, Harry catches a glimpse of Murphy in Grave Peril with his sight, and she appears as an angelic figure in pure white robes.
  • Big Bad: At least one super-nasty per book. Additionally, it seems that most of the events of the series so far have been orchestrated by what Harry calls the "Black Council," serving as the Big Bad for the series.
  • Big Badass Wolf: Billy and the Alphas, especially once they grow up and fill out. Billy in particular is noted as being particularly muscular in human form, which translates to the wolf form. And per the RPG, he and Georgia, and by implication the rest of the Alphas, have the Inhuman Strength and Inhuman Speed powers, making them that much more deadly.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Harry and Thomas are both prime examples. Also, Harry to every young girl he comes across in the series - Kim, Molly, Lydia, Faith....
  • Big Damn Heroes: Harry and company frequently arrive at exactly the right moment, often with only seconds to spare, to save the day and rescue everybody. Well, almost everybody...
    • Because of the Knights of the Cross's Contrived Coincidence Super Power they the often arrive exactly when they are needed, Harry even counts on this in Proven Guilty.
  • Big Friendly Dog: Harry's dog Mouse, who started out as a puppy whose size merited the name. He has grown quite huge (waist-high on a man who is six-foot-nine-inches tall), and has proven that he has human-level intelligence. He knows that his size would scare the Muggles, so he plays up the sweet, friendly dog act. Mouse, or more properly Thomas' preparations for the care and feeding of Mouse in Blood Rites, prompted the best final line of a book in the history of the written word: "Thomas, why did you buy Large Breed puppy chow?"
  • Bigger on the Inside: The living area or sanctum for Bob inside his skull. Harry visits it during Ghost Story and finds it to be a pimped-out mansion on the level of James Bond, decked out with home theater, every videogame system known to man, and other comforts. Harry initally questions why Bob would ever want to leave. Bob replies, "A gold cage is still a cage, Harry."
    • In the same book, Harry says almost the exact trope name in reference to Molly Carpenter's mental "command center": on the outside it looks like the Carpenter kids' treehouse, but on the inside it looks like the bridge of the USS Enterprise. The really really cheesy version from TOS.
  • Big Screwed-Up Family / Royally Screwed-Up: The Raiths.
  • Bilingual Bonus: See that picture on the main page? The characters on Harry's staff are Japanese; specifically, the are the katakana for "matorikkusu", which is how the Japanese would write "matrix", but as you would see in a mirror.
  • Bishonen: Thomas, who is so pretty and handsome that Even the Guys Want Him.
  • Black and White Morality: Harry often views himself as somebody on the edge, and he frequently teams up with Marcone, but the series is very firm on the concept of right and wrong, good and evil, etc. Harry himself refuses to break, no matter what. The story universe at large is filled with Black and Grey Morality, as even the "good" White Council has its own serious problems, but the primary protagonists never compromise. Period. Until Changes. In Ghost Story, Harry realizes how badly he messed up by making that fatal compromise - but it is also not entirely Harry's fault he chose as he did.
  • Black Magic: Killing someone using magic, necromancy, using Mind Control and summoning an Outsider are the main forms we have seen. Addictive, and it comes with a death penalty if you get caught. Word of God states that every time a Muggle is killed with magic, indirectly or otherwise (as in throwing someone off a building using a magic gust of wind), it breaks the first law and makes the forces of darkness even stronger. If the RPG previews are correct (and they have enough Word of God on their side to say it is), even seeking information about anything beyond the Outer Gates is a no-no. Exceptions probably exist for the Merlin and the Gatekeeper, and definitely exist for the Blackstaff (that is his purpose).
  • Blessed with Suck:
    • When Harry looks into a person's eyes for the first time they both see each other's inner nature. This is such a turbulent experience that for every day of his life, Harry has to avoid looking into the eyes of any person he talks to. He focuses on the nose instead. Similarly, The Sight, which functions on the same principle as a soul gaze. It lets him see the true nature of anything he looks at, and the memory never fades. Ever. This can be very bad considering how nasty a lot of stuff out there is. Looking at a skinwalker left Harry a gibbering wreck for about an hour afterwards. It is mentioned that wizards who spend too much time looking at things with their Sight often go insane.
    • The Archive knows everything that has ever been written or committed to paper (yes, this means Porn, Hate Speech, and even Purple Prose), and the Archive itself itself is passed down from mother to daughter along with the personal memories of each previous Archive. This means that, in addition to knowledge and power, one woman gains all the trauma, heartbreak and memories from countless previous lives.
  • Blue and Orange Morality: The Fae, who simply do not view the world the same way humanity does. Lea, for example, honestly does not understand why Harry would object to being "protected" by being turned into a faerie dog.
  • Book Dumb: Played with. Harry is clearly pretty well-read and generally seems well-educated, but he never finished high school and compared to most of the White Council he is hopelessly ignorant. In Turn Coat, when he was in a room full of wizards that contained a guy who went back to med school every ten years or so to stay current and others who had so many doctoral degrees their stoles were stretched from the little markers, he considered that he would like to embroider "GED" on his in red, white, and blue.
    • The fact that Harry never finished high school probably has less to do with his intelligence and academic aptitude and more with the whole shebang with Justin DuMorne, He Who Walks Behind and the Doom of Damocles that hit the fan when he was 16.
  • Boom Stick: Harry's blasting rod is basically a stick he uses to burn everything in sight.
  • Boring but Practical: Despite being incredibly boring, Martin is an incredible fighter and gun master. He is boring for a reason, and uses his unobtrusiveness to his advantage, easily blending into crowds and being able to take on other appearances.
  • Brass Balls: "You can say what you like about Gentleman Johnny Marcone, but he has a set of brass balls that drag the ground when he walks."
  • Brown Note: Harry does not respond well to some of the stuff he sees with his Sight. He just about broke his brain at least twice looking at very powerful, incredibly nasty things, and you never ever forget what you see...
  • Buy Them Off: Weregilds, which are paid for deaths throughout the supernatural community.
  • Call Back / Brick Joke: In the early novels, Lea wants to turn Harry into one of her hounds, in order to protect him. She gets her chance in Changes, when the group needs to get to Chichen Itza from the Ways quickly.
  • Canis Latinicus: Lots of it, Harry uses it for all his spells. Elaine uses Dog-Babylonian and Egyptian. Morgan uses Ancient Greek. As of Changes, Molly seems to prefer Japanese. The explanation given in Fool Moon is that they provide a wizard's mind with "an extra layer of protection against the magical energies coursing through it". The protection is thinner if you use words you are too familiar with, as the words will be close enough to your thoughts that the two are near impossible to separate. Thus, wizards use words that are either made up or from languages they do not really understand.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: If Harry could just fit his mouth around "I can't tell you, it's a 'Wizard Thing'", 99% of the angst with Murphy could be dispelled. This actually becomes less of a problem in the books after Summer Knight, when Harry finally spills the magic beans to Murphy about the supernatural world.
  • Can't Have Sex Ever: Thomas, with Justine only. If he tries, his Allergic to Love nature gives him horrible burns. Justine figures out a method. It involves cheating on Thomas, but it works. Though from what we see, Thomas seems more or less okay with how it works...
    • Harry and Susan as well, because pleasure makes her lose control and might lead into biting him and turning into a full vampire. Eventually, Harry solves the problem by tying her up.
  • Cast from Hit Points: A Wizard's Death Curse, which uses up the life in their body for a final spell.
    • Soul Fire, which burns the soul itself - and no soul means no life. Nice thing about the soul, though: It's a renewable resource.
  • Catch Phrase: Harry has two: "Hell's bells!" and "Stars and stones!" Thomas has, "Empty night." Word of God has said that those three phrases will also be the titles of the Apocalyptic Trilogy that ends the series. In Butcher's own words, "there's a reason those are curses."
    • It should be noted however that those three are not completely exclusive as Elaine has been seen to use the first two and Lara (presumably along with other Raiths) use the latter.
    • The Catch Phrase of Harry's musclebound-barbarian PC in the Alpha's role-playing adventures is "Enough talk!"
  • Cerebus Syndrome: The ratio of funny to horrendously depressing has changed in the last few books. To the point where, before reading a new book, one might ask "Is it worth the Crazy Awesome to have my heart ripped out and stomped on?"[1]
  • Character Development:
    • Know that JRR Tolkien quote about wizards? Harry's always had the "quick to anger" thing pretty much covered, but over time he is getting better at the "subtle."
      • He's also getting much more magically powerful. The first two books had him struggling to use magic after a few powerful bursts, and Fool Moon has a point where he's worried he may have burnt out his magical batteries permanently. Since Grave Peril, he's been throwing around more and more major mojo without showing any signs of weakening, to the point that the only thing that stops him from using magic is lack of consciousness or severe pain.
    • Ghost Story takes place six months after the end of Changes, during which Harry was out of contact with most of his friends and allies. The changes are somewhat startling. Molly has grown up, Murphy has wised-up, Butters has toughened-up...the list goes on.
    • Billy and Charity both start out a bit flat, but become full three-dimensional characters by their second and later appearances.
  • Chaste Hero: Averted. Harry likes sex just fine, the trouble is that the majority of women who are eager to sleep with him would kill him or enslave him. Plus, he would rather not indulge out of sheer carnal pleasure, but love. As if this were not handicap enough, he is also kind of clueless about women. Taken to tragicomic extremes at the end of Changes: Harry and Murphy, both traumatized by events, agree to meet up and have mindless sex in an hour... but just before he goes to meet her Harry is shot dead.
  • Chekhov's Gun: In any book where Harry brews a potion or two for a specific use early in the story, they turn out to be vitally important at the climax -- which, needless to say, is not the purpose for which they were originally made. And there are a whole lot more.
  • Children Are Innocent
  • Christianity Is Catholic: Although other denominations are mentioned (Shiro is a Baptist), Catholicism is featured the most out of the Christian faiths.
  • Chronically Crashed Car: Harry calls in his mechanic to fix the Blue Beetle's damage and breakdowns time after time. Most of the body isn't even blue anymore. It finally gets destroyed for good in Changes.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: We are looking at you, Harry.
    • Michael too, although for him it's a welcomed calling rather than a "Dammit, why me?" obligation.
  • Church Militant:
    • Michael kicks ass for the Lord, in a very positive, idealistic, non-Knight Templar fashion, and is heavily hinted to be carrying the real Excalibur. The other Knights of the Cross are just as ass-kicking, but heavily subvert the "Church" part: one, a non-native English speaker, accidentally converted to Baptism when he was at an Elvis Presley concert and completely misunderstood the phrase "meet the King," and the other claims to be an agnostic despite receiving his holy sword direct from the hand of an archangel. He argues that the "angels" and "demons" could be Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, or he could just be hallucinating the entire thing.
      • As of Ghost Story, Amoracchius has been confirmed to indeed be Excalibur. The two other swords, Esperacchius and Fidelacchius, are Durendal and Kusanagi respectively.
    • Father Forthill is revealed in The Warrior to be connected the Ordo Malleus (The Inquisition).
      • The villain in that story was a Knight Templar who was tired of having the swords waiting for wielders in the hands of a wizard.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: One of the main principles of magic is that you have to believe in what you are doing or it will not work. For example, in Proven Guilty, Harry sets up a defensive spell network using blue Play-Doh, telling Murphy that blue will work best. When she asks him if that is how the rules of magic works, he tells her that it is irrelevant because he associates blue with safety in his own mind so it works best for him. This is also the basis for the Oblivion War; it is fought by a small cadre of agents whose mission is to erase all knowledge and memory of the worst of the old demons. Any knowledge of them is enough to bring them back to the world in some measure.
  • Classical Movie Vampire: The Black Court Vampires (or, to quote Harry, blampires). In fact, Stoker's book was written and published on the orders of the White Court in order to help teach muggles how to fight the Black Court.
  • Cluster F-Bomb

Harry: "Hell's holy stars and freaking stones shit bells."

  • The Collector of the Strange: Harry Dresden has a collection of vampire fangs (not the hinged plastic kind), parts of rhino horns, depleted uranium dust and spell/potion ingredients.
    • Also a lion scrotum. It was a gift. Stop looking at me like that.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture:
    • Lloyd Slate, the Winter Knight. Mab basically tortured him from the end of book four to the middle of book twelve. To put that in perspective... these books take place about a year apart. Each.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Harry will do whatever he can or needs to do to win, using whatever he can get his hands on (as long as it does not violate his personal ethics or the laws of magic). He is not the only one, as Kincaid mentions that his preferred method of destroying a Black Court scourge is to just bomb the entire building, and he mentions that if he ever needs to go after a wizard like Harry he will simply pick him off with a rifle at kilometer range. Even the faeries sometimes decide to abandon their traditional style in favor of pragmatism, as one Gruff hit-squad comes with sub-machine guns and tries to just shoot Harry.
  • Complexity Addiction: If your plan is not insanely complicated the White Court vamps will not respect you for it. Needless to say, they do not respect Harry very much.
  • Cool Big Sis: Molly. Subverted by Lara.
  • Cool Car:
    • Thomas' Hummer is so cool Harry refuses to admit it aloud.
  • Cool Pet: Mister and Mouse. Mouse is a Temple Dog / Fu Dog with unspecified magical powers and human level (at least) intelligence. Mister is an enormous house cat (30+ pounds, but no excess fat) who loves Coca-Cola and food from Harry's favorite pub. He is so awesome that his true form and the way he appears to normal sight are exactly the same. Mister is too dignified to abide by such silly things as the laws of physics.
  • Cool Sword: The swords wielded by the Knights of the Cross, each imbued with Holy might and one of the nails of the Crucifixion. They're named Amoracchius, Fidelacchius, and Esperacchius. Or, if you wanna go by their more famous names, Excalibur, Kusanagi, and Durendal.
    • Among others; apparently most of the big name magic swords of history were one of the three.
  • Cool Versus Awesome: Quoth Jim Butcher: "Wizards are cool." And the fans have noticed that so are zombies, werewolves, vampires (be they Dracula, Anne Rice, or Succubus types), The Fair Folk, fallen angels, Eldritch Abominations, and evil wizards. And when that first wizard does Crazy Awesome stuff like riding a zombie Tyrannosaurus into battle, well...
  • Cosmopolitan Council: The Senior Council.
  • Covers Always Lie: The covers of most of the books depict Harry with a fedora-like hat. Not only is such a hat never mentioned in the books, but one short story ("Heorot") has Harry mention at one point that he needs to get a hat, and in Changes he comments that he hates headgear.
    • Harry is a little over six and a half feet tall, and his staff is six feet long. The covers show his staff as being as tall as he is.
  • Cowboy Cop: Ortega accuses Harry of meting out "cowboy justice" to the Red Court in Grave Peril.
  • Crazy Prepared: Harry. Half of the reason he survives through most of the series is because he either prepared for just such an eventuality or he knows who to call or where to go to get what he needs. The rest, he makes up as he goes.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Averted. One time, Harry blocked napalm with his shield and burned his hand to a crisp nonetheless -- his shield could block the physical elements of the napalm, but the heat was still able to make it through. His next shield bracelet is made to cover for this, among other things.
  • Cool Guns:
    • Murphy uses a FN P-90 from White Night and onward, mostly because the compact size of the weapon makes it ideal for her small size. The weapon she uses was bought for her by a Kincaid as commemoration for something that happened during their vacation in Hawaii. She eventually adds a red dot sight and a silencer to it. Murphy also alternates between using a Glock and an unspecified SIG model.
    • Sanya always makes sure to pack a Kalashnikov of one kind or another. He is a progressive Knight of the Cross.
    • Other assault rifles are mentioned throughout the series, but the precise models are not specified, as Harry generally does not know the difference and does not use assault rifles much. The aforementioned P-90, for example, is referred to by Harry as an Assault Rifle in Ghost Story though it's a Personal Defense Weapon, closer to an SMG.
  • Crime of Self Defense: The White Council believes that all killing using magic is bad, even in self defense.
  • Crossover Cosmology: Big G God exists in the Dresdenverse and is fairly active, and so are all the demons and angels that come with Him. However, the Fae are real and there are various demons, loa, and other supposedly mythological spirits and creatures around that Dresden can call up. The Norse gods formed a corporation relating to magical security.

"...there are beings who aren't the Almighty who have power way beyond anything running around on the planet...Old Greek and Roman and Norse deities. Lots and lots of Amerind divinities, and African tribal beings. A few Australian aboriginal gods; others in Polynesia, Southeast Asia. About a zillion Hindu gods. But they've all been dormant for centuries."

  • Curse: Several varieties, including a Wizard's Death Curse.
  • Cuteness Proximity: Ivy, the all-knowing Archive in Death Masks, is all business when introducing herself and her purpose for visiting Harry... but goes to full 7-year-old little girl mode when Mister enters the room. Or, in Small Favor, goes to full 12-year-old little girl mode when she sees otters. Otters!

D-F

  • Deadly Decadent Court: The White Court Vampires, complete with institutional Complexity Addiction.
  • Death by Childbirth: Harry's mother, although it is later revealed that this was the result of a curse.
  • Death of the Old Gods: Most of the old gods have effectively gone into hibernation over the last few centuries. The Lord Almighty (as Harry calls the Christian God) is still very active in modern times, and not all the Old Gods are completely out of the game.
  • Debt Detester: The fairies, although it's not so much that they dislike being in debt as that if they make bargains they're compelled to keep them.
  • Defective Detective: Harry has big woman issues.
  • Defector From Decadence: Literally Thomas. Thomas disagrees with the White Court's views of humanity, and struggles with his own identity as a vampire. Until the Naagloshi tortures him, bringing his demon back to power in his mind and making him start feeding again, thus averting this trope.
  • Depraved Bisexual: The Raiths, as most will sleep with either gender. At one point, Lara flirts with both Harry and Luccio in the same scene. Notably averted with the White King himself, which is part of the reason Thomas' father did not turn him into a slave like his sisters.
    • The bias against male homosexuality as Lord Raith's personal preference is significant, since the Raith's control the pornography industry. In-universe, his influence is the reason why modern mainstream society believes two drunken girls kissing is "hot", while two men doing the same isn't.
  • Destructive Saviour: Harry's tendency to destroy a lot of buildings has become a Running Gag. Frequently lampshaded. In Side Jobs, the foreward to one story describes its early planning as finding a nice mall in the Chicago area for Dresden to destroy.
  • Diary: The series may be a collection of these, as they are told in the first person and it has been revealed that wizards of the White Council are expected to keep journals which they pass on to their apprentices (along with the journals of their teachers and their teacher's teachers). The RPG actually refers to the books as case files.
  • Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Harry lives for this.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Michael Carpenter has a history of this. He is known to have rescued his wife-to-be by slaying a dragon. (See Our Dragons Are Different.) Holy swords are particularly good at that sort of thing.
  • Dirty Business
  • Discard and Draw: Harry lost the Hellfire and immense knowledge he gained from Lasciel's shadow in White Night, then picked up Soulfire from Uriel in the very next book, Small Favor, and forged a mystical link with a sentient island in the book after that (Turn Coat).
  • Damsel in Distress: The subject of what amounts to a Running Gag, with Harry inevitably helping her (even when it is unwise) because he has a chivalrous streak he can not seem to override. He even puts himself back under the Doom of Damocles again to save a girl.
  • Divided We Fall
  • Don't Fear the Reaper: The Naagloshii and Mab.
  • Don't You Dare Pity Me!
  • Double Meaning Title: Jim Butcher seems to have a lot of fun making these up.
    • For example, the title of Storm Front, which is about people being murdered with a curse, was going to be Semiautomagic.
      • Still a double meaning. Victor Sells was using thunderstorms to fuel the curse and the incident was the beginning of the metaphorical storm that has been Dresden's life since then.
  • Doom Magnet: Harry. He can not even get a day off without mayhem.
  • The Dreaded: We know Harry Dresden is a Hurting Hero and Sad Clown. Everyone else, like the Faerie Queens, Fallen Angels, and White Council? Not so much. They know him as a possibly-not-so-former warlock who shows a glaring disrespect for Faerie Queens, Fallen Angels, the highest nobility of the vampire courts, and even his seniors on the White Council and gets away with it, continually gaining more power in the process. As far as they're concerned, he is the guy that killed the Summer Lady, fought off Outsiders, and stopped the Darkhallow with a zombie Tyrannosaurus, succeeding Morgan as the "Most Infamous Warden on the White Council." This reputation is enough to give a half-dozen Wardens pause when they are told to arrest him. It has reached its peak by Changes, when a Red Court vampire assassin, the most badass of the vampire badass, one of the most feared vampire assassins in the world sees Harry... and screams in terror and runs the other way.
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: Using Black Magic almost inevitably leads to the temptation to use it again, ultimately leading to this trope. There are examples of characters who have been able to withstand that temptation, Harry among them, but the only person actually immune to it is Ebenezar McCoy in his capacity as the Blackstaff.
    • The last one has its downsides. Those black veins that appeared on his arm did so for a reason.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: Harry has managed to defeat multiple black wizards, demons, and vampires, played a pivotal role in the war between the White Council and the Red Court, saved Chicago from a horde of necromancers, prevented a death plague from taking out most of the United States and saved the entire world from the faerie Courts being thrown out of whack, just for starters. Unfortunately, the only kind of respect he gets from most members of the White Council is the sort of respect with which one might approach an unexploded land mine.
  • Dumb Muscle: Harry's enemies sometimes accuse him of being this, due to the fact that he a) has a whole lot of power (magically speaking), but isn't so good at fine control, and b) he usually doesn't let that stop him from bringing on the mayhem.
    • Also the kind of character that Harry plays when roleplaying with the Alphas. His preferred character? An extremely dumb barbarian.
  • Dying Alone: In Dead Beat Cassius uses his death curse to tell Harry, "Die alone." Later his father tells him that death is by its nature something you do alone, but that does not mean there can not be people with you when it happens, or people to meet you after it does, and the curse could mean nothing. In Turn Coat Morgan dies, and Harry reassures Luccio that he was with him when he did. In Changes Harry dies alone.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: The White Council headquarters is underground beneath Edinburgh, and if the Ostentationary is not elaborate, nothing is.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Outsiders, vast demonic creatures which destroy reality and can only be turned back by the most powerful of wizards... working together. And, in Turn Coat, the Skinwalker.
    • Or just Harry. Actually, he can do a lot more than just "turn back" Outsiders.
  • Elvish Presley
  • Emotion Eater:
    • The White Court vampires draw their sustenance from lust (House Raith), fear (House Malvora) and despair (House Skavis). In Proven Guilty, there are phobophages -- creatures from the Winter Court of Faerie that feed on fear and they are perfectly willing to beat some humans to a pulp, kill them or drive them permanently insane to create the fear they need in others.
    • Skinwalkers are said to be able to draw power from people's fear so potently that even so much as talking about them can strengthen them. Subsequently, the Navajo tribespeople who know of them tend to not discuss them with outsiders, meaning that those who encounter them will probably not recognise them, which also leads to fear of them.
  • Enemy Within: Subverted. Harry does have an inner subconscious persona, but he is really harmless, or at worst annoying. Harry thinks his inner self pronounces words like "issues" funny and lampshaded in his first appearence.

Harry: Wait, I've seen this before. I'm good Harry and you're bad Harry, and you only come out at night.

  • Even Evil Has Standards: More than a few villainous characters have worked with Harry for this reason.
    • Thomas Raith's motivation for helping Harry out. He lied. It is actually because Harry is his half-brother, through their Mom.
    • "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone is perhaps the best example of this. He is an unrepentant criminal and vice lord, yet he refuses to tolerate anything or anyone that exploits or harms children. Indeed, in Even Hand, it was shown that he personally executes anyone who dares to deal drugs to kids or pimp out children in his city.
    • Mab and Bob, both of whom are highly amoral, are disgusted with Heinrich Kemmler, who singlehandedly engineered World War I just to get a supply of bodies to work with.
  • Even the Dog Is Ashamed: Mouse's remarkable degree of common sense leads to a few instances of this, especially in Turn Coat.
  • Even the Guys Want Him: Thomas Raith, who apparently inspires sexual feelings in... well, everybody.
  • Everybody Has Lots of Sex: Inverted. If you are a prominent character, you can forget about getting any. Examples include Harry and Susan (she doesn't feel like losing control after being turned into a vampire), Murphy, Thomas after nearly killing Justine, Raith Sr. due to a curse, Butters and surprisingly enough Ramirez.
    • Played straight with, of all people, Michael and Charity. There's a reason they have so many kids, and they've even Squicked their kids a little from the frequency and volume of their lovemaking, especially when Michael is about to go out on a mission. Justified by both of them knowing that despite a certain degree of heavenly protection, sooner or later Michael won't come back and they want every minute to count.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Averted with The Archive. Everybody did just call her "the Archive," until she met Harry. Now she is "Ivy."
  • Everything's Worse with Bears:
    • The first Denarian ever seen in the series is, appropriately, a giant demonic bear...with six limbs, horns, and four eyes.
    • One of the forms the Skinwalker in Turn Coat takes is a Biological Mashup of a bear, a cougar, and some sort of lizard.
    • Listens-To-Winds. Minibus-sized war bear. Pure awesome.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Mouse.
  • Evil Feels Good: Black Magic and vampires.
  • Evil Mentor: Justin DuMorne, who tried really really hard to turn young Harry into a Black Magic practitioner. Almost succeeded, too.
  • Evil Overlord List: Lampshaded Harry suspects Nicodemus of having read it.
  • Evil Plan: A case could start out as somebody hiring Harry to look into why their sock got lost in the wash, and by the end of the book it'd still turn out to be connected to one of these.
  • Evil Sorcerer: Given that it is a supernatural detective story there are a lot of them. Victor Sells, Leonid Kravos, Corpse-Taker, Cowl, and Justin DuMorne just to hit the high points.
  • Expecting Someone Taller: Ferrovax the dragon to Michael, dragon-slayer: "I thought you'd be taller."
  • External Retcon: The White Court of vampires convinced Bram Stoker to write Dracula in order to expose the weaknesses of the Black Court of vampires, one of several factions of vampires that each conform to different vampire mythologies. This resulted in the near destruction of the Black Court, as almost all of humanity learned their weaknesses.
    • According to Word of God, H.P. Lovecraft wrote his books to spread knowledge of Outsiders. Furthermore, Abdul Alhazred the "Mad Arab" was killed by the Gatekeeper and the Necronomicon was a book of rituals that got distributed by the White Council after his death to lessen its power (each ritual can only give so much power at once and when too many people try to draw on a ritual's power source, it is rendered so weak as to be harmless).
  • Extra-Strength Masquerade: Harry quotes statistics on missing persons to point out that, if a dozen people got eaten by trolls or vampires in a good-sized city over the course of a year, no one would really figure out that there was a supernatural menace as long as the bodies did not turn up. In addition, anything magic is Walking Techbane, which among other things makes cameras of all kinds almost completely useless as evidence of something magical. No matter how many zombies, ogres, vampires, werewolves, other faerie tale creatures and dinosaurs run around Chicago, somehow the general public remains convinced that anything apparently supernatural is actually the result of a hoax, hysteria, or hallucination brought on by moldy bread.
    • Everyone knows there is no such thing as magic, so witnesses are never believed. Most just convince themselves they imagined it because the alternative means that the world doesn't work the way they think it does, challenging their entire concept of reality.
  • The Fair Folk:
    • Harry has a faerie godmother, only she is the Leanan Sidhe and there is nothing nice about it. Think "vampire fae who grants poets and artists inspiration in exchange for a vastly shortened lifespan." Also, for a while there she was trying to "protect" Harry from being hurt or killed in the real world by attempting to trap him in Faerie and turn him into a dog. Permanently.
    • Harry also has two Queens of Faerie furious with him at the moment: Titania, one of the Queens of Summer, because he killed her daughter, Aurora, in Summer Knight, and Mab, one of the Queens of Winter, because Harry managed to rain destruction on her capital, Arctis Tor, in Proven Guilty...and used Summer fire to do it.
    • On the other hand, Toot-Toot the fairy and his pixie buddies are quite fond of Harry, to the point of putting together the "Za Lord's Guard". As a result of Summer Knight, he also has a faerie housekeeping service he can never mention (except to the reader) or they will leave forever.
    • Then there's Mab. Harry's new boss. Hoo boy there.
  • Fairy Companion: Toot-toot and "the Za-Lord's Guard".
  • Faking the Dead: Several important characters.
  • Fantastic Catholicism
  • Fascinating Eyebrow: Harry is a fan of the inquisitive eyebrow arch, and his narration in Death Masks describes it as Spock-like.
  • Faux Yay

I was going to kill Thomas.

  • Fearless Fool
  • Femme Fatale: Too many to list. Once again -- subject of a lot of lampshade hanging.
  • Fertile Feet: The more powerful Summer fae like Eldest Brother Gruff or the Summer Lady do this.
  • Fiction 500: The White Court in general, and Lara Raith in particular.
  • Fiction as Cover-Up: Inverted by the White Court, which arranged for the publication of Dracula in order to expose the rival Black Court's secrets and vulnerabilities.
  • Fingore:
    • One way Mab shows to Harry that she really has control of him, and then she freezes the wound just for spite.
    • Deirdre of the Knights of the Blackened Denarius also likes to employ this trope in torture.
  • First-Person Smartass: Harry Dresden, primarily, though Thomas Raith exemplifies this trope in the novella Backup.
  • Five-Man Band:

The Hero: Harry.
The Lancer: Murphy.
The Big Guy: Michael.
The Smart Guy: Butters, or Bob. In Ghost Story Bob belongs to Butters now, so they're counted together now.
The Chick: Molly.
The Sixth Ranger: Thomas.
Team Pet: Mouse.

Everyone else who lets me ride on their dinosaur calls me Carlos'.'

  • Flat Earth Atheist: Sanya (see Church Militant example above). Sanya has a pretty sophisticated and logical personal philosophy on all the supernatural stuff. He lives in a world with ridiculously powerful beings who are not actually worshipped or called gods, and it is possible for mere mortals to gain near-godlike power. So why assume that one particular powerful entity really is a god, or God? And his mission, as he points out, is worthwhile whether he was given his task by a real angel or not, because either way he is still helping the helpless.
  • Flowery Elizabethan English: The Sidhe and other immortals have a tendency to talk this way.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: In the novel, Proven Guilty, Morgan is said to have cut his way through a Red Court army, coming within feet of the Red King himself.
  • Foreshadowing: Tons of it, all throughout the series. One-off commentary by a character in one book becomes a whole lot more meaningful when re-read a second time, with knowledge of how the plotlines develop. There is a lot of material that gets subtly foreshadowed, particularly in Grave Peril and Proven Guilty. The latter, for example, has a moment where Harry and Ebenezar discuss the traitor within the White Council, and Harry comments that no one has shown up with mysterious sums in their bank accounts. Morgan's frame-up in Turn Coat involves exactly this. Murphy and Harry's discussion about their relationship foreshadows Harry's daughter in Changes and Murphy's taking up of Dresden's mantle as the protector of Chicago in Aftermath.
  • Formally-Named Pet: Harry Dresden's cat is named simply Mister.
  • Friendly Enemy:
    • Harry and Lasciel's shadow, in the end.
    • Harry and Marcone. They are civil and have some mutual respect, and Marcone extends great courtesies to Harry when it suits him. The RPG Rulebook has fun with this. Nearly every time Marcone is mentioned, there is a sidenote by Harry that has him disparaging Marcone for being criminal scum, then admitting Marcone has good qualities like a Morality Pet and a tendency to help Harry himself, then cursing Marcone for almost making Harry like him.
    • Harry and Lara, who always seem to end up working together and mutually hate and respect each other.
  • A Friend in Need: Poor Murph. She got demoted for helping rescue a teenage girl from monsters, then fired for saving the world.
  • Friend on the Force: Lieutenant Karrin Murphy.
  • Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: Subverted; although some vampires like to portray themselves this way, especially to human groupies to be used as food sources, most of them are really nasty monsters. Thomas may be an exception to this subversion, but then again he is half human (like all White Court vampires) as well as Harry's half brother.
  • Full-Contact Magic: A Squishy Wizard, Harry is not.
  • Full-Name Basis:
    • Very serious business for a wizard, since knowing the True Name of a magical creature allows you to summon or exercise influence over them. This works just as well for humans, but it is a limited-time threat since human self-image changes over time and learning a humans True Name will only remain their True Name for a few months. In Grave Peril, a dragon in human form displays its power by sending Harry reeling, even though it only uses his first and last name (leaving out the two middle names). In White Night, Harry is trying to make telepathic contact with Elaine, and he uses her full name along with his own in a desperate attempt to reach her.
    • Harry very nearly gets himself casually obliterated by the Archangel Uriel, near the end of Ghost Story, merely by casually referring to him as "Uri". As it turns out, an angel's name is tantamount to the angel itself, and forgetting the -el part of his name is close to blasphemy. For clarification, Uriel means "Light of God". Given that his stated role in the universe is to bring truth and balance when the forces of Evil try to cheat, it is a big deal for him.
      • In particular, the -el part of his name is the God part, explaining the blasphemy a bit more clearly.
        • He had no problem with a nickname though. "Well, aren't you Mr Sunshine." Mostly because, angelogically speaking, Uriel IS in charge of the sun.
  • Functional Magic: While it generally runs on life energy and (by proxy) emotions, a lot of rules govern it, and not just the White Council's laws against using it to kill, either. For example, any faerie can be forced to comply with a promise if they say it three times, a symbol of faith can be used to consistently ward off or hurt certain creatures, anything with iron will hurt or ward off faeries, a loup-garou werewolf can only be killed with something made from inherited silver, et cetera. One reason that Bob is such a valuable resource to Harry is that Bob has an encyclopedic knowledge of the current state of the rules.

G-I

  • Gender Is No Object: For a group of people characterized as notoriously behind the times, and for which the ruling group has been alive since--in some cases--women could be considered property, the White Council is very egalitarian as far as the sexes go. Two of the High Council members are women, there are women wizards casually mentioned throughout, and the leader of the Wardens--the most badass of combat wizards--is a woman, even after she loses a good chunk of her magical power.
    • Likely due to the fact that magical power is more likely to be passed down by the mother.
  • Genre Blindness: Several villains seem absolutely determined to underestimate Harry, regardless of the foes he has faced and prevailed against, and the fact that other, more savvy bad guys keep trying to recruit him.
  • Genre Savvy: Most anyone mortal has seen the movies and heard the stories necessary to recognize a trope when they see one.
    • Murphy once referred to hunting Black Court vamps as "living the cliche." Harry also described killing Black Court vamps as "doing the Buffy thing." Thomas also shows up for a vampire-duel in a Buffy shirt. See the Our Vampires Are Different note below.
  • Geometric Magic
  • Gilded Cage: The inside of Bob's skull (or at least how Dresden perceives it) is a luxurious mansion that can contain anything Bob wants. However, since he needs permission to leave it, he hates it.
  • Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: It is implied that this trope even EXISTS because of Lord Raith's personal tastes. House Raith controls the pornography industry, and by extension has their thumb in cultural perceptions of sex and attraction. Because Lord Raith isn't into male-on-male (to the point of murdering his own sons rather than dominating them through sex like he does his daughters), only female-on-female is considered "hot" by the mainstream male audience.
  • Giving Them the Strip: Happens a lot, e.g. when the loup-garou eats one of Harry's cowboy boots.
  • Glamour: The Fae.
  • God Guise: The Lords of Outer Night, the heads of the Red Court who posed as the Mayan pantheon - the Red King is implied to have done a stint at Kukulcan. Played with in that there's a point where the Lords of Outer Night show fear in the face of a divine assault, and Harry wonders if they just picked up the mask when the actual deities got out of town and they're afraid they're being called on the carpet.
  • God Save Us From the Queen: The Faerie Queens of Summer (Titania) and Winter (Mab). They are not so much evil as ruthlessly amoral and self-interested.
    • The theory since Proven Guilty is that, for some unknown reason, Mab has completely lost it, even by Faerie standards.
  • Gods Need Prayer Badly: The entire point of the clandestine Oblivion War. Less than two hundred people in the entire world (of which Thomas, Lara, and Bob are three) know of the... past... existence of unfathomably powerful demons/gods/entities that preyed on mankind. Their power derives directly not just from belief, but from sheer knowledge of their existence. So, in the past, certain people went to rather extreme lengths to remove all knowledge of their existence and make them into unthings. The war continues to this day, with agents of Oblivion taking any measures necessary for this secret knowledge to stay secret, as opposed to others who want to bring these things back (either for power or just For the Evulz).
  • Good Guy Bar: McAnally's Pub. It is accorded neutral ground under the Unseelie Accords, giving Harry and friends a safe place to eat, drink and recuperate.
  • Good Is Not Dumb
  • Good Is Not Nice:

"I am not Yoda."

Harry: People like you always mistake compassion for weakness. Michael and Sanya aren't weak. Fortunately for you, they are good men. Unfortunately for you, I'm not.

    • The White Council of Wizards as a whole is judgemental, hypocritical, isolationist and violent. However, even Harry eventually agrees that their bloody actions are exactly what is needed to protect humanity from supernatural threats, and perhaps even from wizardkind themselves. Their tendency to execute without a second glance is not because they enjoy the blood, but because there is no other option.
  • Good Is Not Soft: The Knights of the Cross will try to persuade the Denarian-possessed to turn away from evil, but won't shy from taking heads if refused.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Harry has taken a whole lot of abuse over the years. Small Favor has a partial list, but he has acquired even more since then. Including one of those "badass" eye scars, thanks to a psycho with a knife in Turn Coat.
  • Good Shepherd: Father Forthill.
  • Goth: Molly.
    • Perky Goth, specifically. She has the piercings, heavy makeup, and artfully tattered clothing, but she is also quite cheerful most of the time. Not to mention the technicolor hair.
  • Guardian Entity: Harry has a literal Fairy Godmother.
  • Guilt Complex: Harry suffers from this in spades. Harry often stretches things very far in order to blame himself for things.
  • Hand Blast: Harry pulls this when deprived of his staff and blasting rod.
  • Hanging Judge: The Merlin, according to Harry.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: Various supernatural species get their strength, agility and stamina for free, which pisses Harry off because he has to exercise to achieve a fraction of their result.
  • Hes Just A Friend: Harry to Mouse.
  • Healing Factor: Explained in detail by Butters. Wizard DNA is different from that of normal humans, in that wizards do not heal until their bodies are fixed -- they heal at the normal rate, but they heal until every trace of the wound is gone and the injured body part is back to normal. As in, no scar tissue, no fractures in bones, nothing. This perfect healing (or close enough to make no difference) also slows down the normal cellular deterioration that causes aging, giving wizards a lifespan measured in centuries rather than decades.
    • Certain supernatural creatures have more enhanced versions. The RPG rulebook puts it at three levels, the highest of which allows a creature to heal from something that would normally take months or years within minutes.
  • Held Gaze: There's even has a name for this - the Soulgaze, where two people catch a glimpse of each other's souls because they share a gaze. One of them has to be a wizard to trigger it, though.

"For me, meeting someone's eyes is always risky. Every human being knows what I'm talking about. Try it. Walk up to someone, without speaking and look them in the eyes. There's a a certain amount of leeway for second, or two, or three. And then there's a distinct sensation of contact, of intimacy. That's when regular folks cough and look away. Wizards, though, get the full ride of a soulgaze." Harry Dresden, White Night.

  • Hermetic Magic: Most magic in the series is either this or Summon Magic. Both may be powered by Life Energy, but especially this.
  • Hero of Another Story:
    • Michael Carpenter, The Fist of God. Retired as of Small Favor, but Sanya still counts.
    • Carlos Ramirez, commander of the West Coast Wardens
    • Karrin Murphy and the rest of SI.
    • Warden Morgan.
    • Billy Borden and the Alphas.
    • Thomas Raith, participant of the Dominion War.
    • "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone, mortal representative on the Unseelie Accords as of White Night and financial power behind the defense of Chicago against supernatural threats as of Ghost Story.
  • Heroic Fatigue: Harry goes through this all the time. Often he will forget to eat or sleep when he is on a case and the world needs saving from supernatural doom. By the time he manages to solve everything he is usually so strung out that he often ends up just blacking out from exhaustion.
  • Hidden Depths: just about everyone.
  • Honor Before Reason:
    • Harry will tell the reader repeatedly that he is not a good and decent man, but any time the opportunity occurs to do the right thing at great personal cost, Harry Dresden steps up without a second thought. Receives a rather cruel Lampshade Hanging in Grave Peril, when an enemy of Dresden's mockingly gives him a tombstone inscribed with the epitaph "He died doing the right thing". She then promptly gives him the choice to either walk away safely, or risk a tenuous peace and the lives of himself and others. Harry sees the trap, and goes in anyway.
    • When a bunch of super powerful warlocks are about to use the population of Chicago to turn themselves into a new God of Death, the Wardens assigned to deal with them stop slaughtering their way through the army of zombies to protect trick-or-treating schoolchildren.
  • Honorary Uncle: Harry to the Carpenter clan.
  • Hope Spot: Seems to happen at least once per book.
  • Hormone-Addled Teenager: Molly Carpenter is a Perky Goth version of this. When she first becomes important to the story, she's dropped out of school, gotten a bunch of tattoos and piercings, started hanging around with the wrong crowd, and dresses like, in the protagonist's words, "Frankenhooker."
  • Horny Devils: White Court vampires of House Raith.
  • Hot for Teacher: Molly for Harry. Also Morgan towards Luccio. Both times unrequited.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Harry is 6'9 tall, while Murphy is five foot even. Also Kincaid and Ivy.
  • Humans Are Special: what differentiates humans from all other beings in this series is that humans are the only ones with free will. Other beings--the fae, the angels, the demons, the vampires[2]--have no choice; they act according to their natures. That humans alone do have a choice, and that those choices do matter, is perhaps the central theme of the series.
  • Hurting Hero: Harry's life sucks.
  • Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The Nevernever, or at least the parts closest to the mortal world, are fraught with faeries, demons and other dangerous creatures. The parts further away from the mortal world are worse.
  • An Ice Person: Mab, Queen of the Winter Court of Faerie and Lord of Air and Darkness, is very definitely An Ice Person but very definitely not A Nice Person.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The first 11 books had formulaic titles: two words, the same number of letters in each, with some kind of pun or double meaning in the title. Summer Knight, for example, is set around the summer solstice, and it is about investigating the murder of a man who held the office of Knight of the Summer Court of Faerie. Blood Rites is about family ties, with a B-plot about vampire-hunting. The 12th book breaks this pattern with a one-word title: Changes. With books 13 and 14, he returns to the older pattern with Ghost Story and Cold Days.
  • I Gave My Word: Promises are binding in the supernatural world; a wizard who swears by their power and breaks the promise loses some of their talent, while a denizen of Faerie who breaks their promises suffers indescribable agony. A bearer of one of the Swords of the Cross who breaks a promise runs the risk of unmaking the Sword completely. The only supernatural beings who routinely break their word without consequence are the Denarians. However, the nature of binding is to the letter of the promise given, not the spirit, and the Red King points out in Changes that he never even spoke to Harry, instead communicating through a translator, and thus never actually gave Harry his word at all.
  • Ignore the Fanservice: Practically a running gag, though he does have to exercise some forced methods of control. One time Harry winds up dumping ice water on his crotch. The next time he dumps the water on the temptress.
    • Molly is really bad about this, though. In White Night, when Harry and Murphy talk about Murphy's sexual escapades with Kincaid in Hawaii, Molly, who is reading a book, drops the book on her face in surprise, then tries to act uninterested.

Harry: It would have been a lot more convincing if she wasn't reading the book upside-down.

  • I Hate You, Vampire Dad: White Court Vampires are born, not "made" like the other Courts, and become vampires if they feed on someone before truly falling in love. Raith manipulates his children to make sure they turn, then he ensures his daughters' loyalties through disturbing means and kills his sons before they can become threats. This is a large part of the reason behind Thomas' Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • I Know Your True Name: True names (i.e. a person's name pronounced exactly the way they do so themselves) grant a wizard power over the one named, to the point that demons will consider a portion of a person's name from their own lips to be worthy payment for a service. Some dragons are apparently so powerful they only need part of the name, and Harry wonders what he could do with the full one. However, it is pointed out that humans are far more mutable than supernatural beings, so a human's True Name can change over time.
    • Wizards, being human, are also subject to their True Names changing, but because they are long-lived, it takes a significantly longer amount of time to do so.
  • Immortality Inducer: The Denarians are immortal due to the presence of the Fallen contained in the silver denarius coin each one carries. Furthermore, Nicodemus is given extra protection by the fact that he wears the noose Judas Iscariot supposedly used to commit suicide around his neck, which allows him to regenerate damage that would drop even other Denarians who are protected by their respective Fallen.
  • Inhumanly Beautiful Race: The White Court of Vampires, and the fae. The Red Court of Vampires look like the beautiful people in their flesh masks, but they are really not.
  • Inspector Javert: Morgan. He harasses Harry at every turn, accuses him of black magic and cavorting with demons and vampires (which, to be fair to Morgan, Harry does do with Lash and Thomas), and eagerly looks for an excuse to execute him, but this is all because he legitimately believes that Harry is a threat to others. Their relationship mellows (slightly) over the books, and comes to a head in Turn Coat.
  • Internal Affairs: Thanks to her constant adventures with Harry, combined with a grudge-holding former member of Special Investigations, Murphy seems to be under investigation by IA for nearly half the series. By the end of Changes, they seem to have won.
  • In the Back: Harry has absolutely no compunctions about taking opportunities as they are given.
  • Irony
  • It Got Worse: Nearly every single book starts off with bad cirumstances getting worse and then escalating.
    • The series of battles between the White Council and the Red Court in Dead Beat. The Red Court began by capturing several Wardens that had to be rescued or killed to prevent their knowledge and powers from being turned against the White Council. The Wardens rescue them, but the Council gets pursued to Sicily where the Red Court launches a trap that keeps the Nevernever closed for an entire day, resulting in the deaths of dozens of Wardens and other wizards. When they finally managed to open the portal to the Nevernever, the Red Court followed them, summoning demons and Outsiders to help them. Then the Council withdrew to a hospital in the Congo in order to treat their wounded... which the Red Court knew all about so it had human guerillas launch a massive nerve gas attack that killed every single one of the hundreds of wounded and thousands of innocent bystanders in a radius of several blocks.
    • The "Day Off" short story plays this one for hilarity. Harry's day just keeps getting worse and worse, in non-fatal and embarrassing ways.
    • In Changes, the obstacles to rescuing Maggie keep piling up, culminating in Harry having to kill the woman he loves to save her.

J-M

  • James Bondage: Harry gets tied up a lot. The times he weasels out of it on his own and the times he needs to be rescued are split about 50/50.
  • Join or Die: Nicodemus gives Harry an offer: take up one of the 30 silver coins and join the Order of the Blackened Denarius, or have his throat slit after breakfast. Nicodemus believes very strongly in pragmatic villainy.
  • Killed Off for Real: Several characters, notably Shiro, Morgan and Susan.
  • Kiss of the Vampire: The Red Court vampires have a powerful narcotic in their saliva that addicts their victims to being bitten. They also spit into beverages to poison and thrall people that way. Well. They did, anyhow.
  • Knight in Shining Armor: Michael is a literal embodiment of the title and elso exemplifies its meaning, as Harry himself says that he is the closest anybody will ever get to meeting an Honest-To-God angel. Well, most people. Harry has hung out a few times with the archangel Uriel.
    • And Michael is armed with a magic sword to boot, Amoracchius. The sword's real name? Excalibur. Yes, that Excalibur.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: Harry and Murphy.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Enough for a whole store of various lighting fixtures and accessories.
  • The Laws of Magic: The title character uses and names the Law of Contagion and Similarity, as a basic crime-solving technique. He also mentions and frequently uses the Law of Names, as well as the Law of Words of Power (mentioning in passing that you could technically use English words, but there isn't a sense of buffer between the self and spells, so it causes pain to the user).
    • There's numerous other ones that aren't explicitly named, but invoked. He used the Law Of Infinite Data to send Ivy a message, the Law of Pragmatism (numerous times, seeing that he used necromancy to raise a giant dino because it worked), and others.
    • Dimensional travel assumes the Law of Infinite Universes, and there is a wizard with the task of guarding certain dimensions.
  • Layman's Terms: Lampshaded in Summer Knight, when Harry stops to give a massive plant monster a cool name, simply because such a thing needs a cool name.

Harry: "It's a chlorofiend."
Murphy: "A what?"
Harry: "Plant monster."
Murphy: "Oh."

  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Every now and then, Harry says things which are clearly directed at the audience. Probably the most egregious example is in Fool Moon when he jumps out of a moving car and the text reads, without any spoken dialogue, "Don't look at me that way." The RPG refers to the books as his case files, and he quite rightly expect that someone other then himself will be reading those case files in the future.
  • Lesser of Two Evils: A running theme throughout the series is Harry having to deal with these.
    • From the point of view of the police, Marcone embodies the trope: he's a ruthless crime lord, but better than anyone else who might try to take over the role.
  • The Library of Babel: Ivy is this in the form of an adorable little girl.
  • Lie to the Beholder: At one point, Harry uses a spell to make Thomas look like him as a decoy to help him hide from the Fae.
  • Literary Agent Hypothesis:
    • According to Harry, Bram Stoker wrote Dracula at the behest of the White Court in order to weaken the Black Court of Vampires by instructing muggles in their traditional means and weaknesses.
    • William wrote the RPG for much the same reason. The RPG rulebooks are framed as being a first draft written by Billy and company which he has given to Harry to look over. See Painting the Fourth Wall.
      • The Trope is inverted in the RPG as a Running Gag is Jim B. a player of the game who's character is Harry Dresden
    • Word of God is that Lovecraft falls in the same category, and that both he and Stoker died because of what they did. This is actually a large part of the expanded Cthulhu Mythos, written by others writers since Lovecraft's death, whose stories include Lovecraft as a deceased author who revealed many of the secrets of the Old Ones.
    • It becomes a part of the plot in the novella Backup as Thomas is trying to keep various Eldritch Abominations from gaining power by keeping them Unpersons. If Harry gets his hands on the book the the Villain of the Week has, he will turn it into the White Council. This is bad because when the White Council gets hold of a Tome of Eldritch Lore, they publish it, which typically causes the power of the knowledge contained in it to weaken. Harry and the White Council don't know that this particular book would only make things much worse if its contents were made known.
  • Little Miss Badass: Ivy takes this to levels unequaled by pretty much anyone else, ever. For one thing, she can control Mordite, a literal piece of antilife, with needle-threading precision.
  • Living Shadow: Nicodemus has one of these that can strangle people and fly. The shadow is not even his Denarian form. To quote Jim:

"No, he just has his shadow do things for him. You go relying on an alternate form to get things done, that still puts you in personal danger and Nicodemus is more practical than that. He'd rather stand over here and let something else kill and get the work done. Unless it's something cool like a Knight of the Cross, in that case he's still got something to prove."

  • Loners Are Freaks: Harry spends the first few books as a "loner", but less so in the later books when he builds up a decent group of True Companions. It is worst between Grave Peril and Summer Knight, when he is trying desperately to figure out how to cure a loved one of vampirism.
  • Long Running Book Series
  • Love Potion: Played perfectly straight. It is described as not so much mind control or love-inducing, but rather it lowers someone's inhibitions. Bob refers to it as super-tequila.
  • Lying Creator: Jim Butcher explains the reasons behind it here.
  • MacGuffin: Appears a bit throughout the story, but most notably The Word of Kemmler. Harry even lampshades this in one scene by comparing his situation to two similar stories involving MacGuffins.
  • Made of Explodium: Most of Chicago goes up ten points in flamability level whenever Harry is around. One particular instance is when he tries to ground out a magical charge he built up, and Murphy's car randomly explodes. It is later revealed that Harry screwed up the timer on a bomb somebody planted on Murphy's car, but it was still hilarious.
  • Magical Native American: Listens to Wind a.k.a. Injun Joe, although he is also a normal wizard. He seems to be the only one with a familiar, though. The RPG suggests that this is because the White Council frowns on keeping familiars, but Listens To Winds hails from a tradition older than the White Council's influence in North America.
  • Magical Society: The White Council.
  • Magic Knight: The Wardens, The Knights of the Cross.
  • Magic Wand: Molly is shown to prefer wands, and as of Changes is shown to regularly carry at least two.
    • Harry uses his staff to make it easier for him to control evocation magic. His blasting rod, though, is specialized as a Boom Stick.
    • Molly's wands and Harry's staff and rod are both foci, and depending on preference other wizards might use, say, a soup ladle or a pair of earrings. None of them are strictly necessary; fitting with the general Clap Your Hands If You Believe nature of magic, they're just tools to make it easier. For example, Harry casting a fire spell without his blasting rod is like trying to carve a butter sculpture with your bare hands; possible, but difficult.
  • Magnetic Hero: Harry draws people into his orbit and transforms them without even realizing it.
  • The Man Behind the Man: No Dresden book is complete without one or two. Or more. We do not always find out about them until later.
    • Lara Raith eventually comes to rule the entire White Court in this way, after learning her father is unable to feed thanks to Margaret Dresden's curse on him, and then proceeds to literally Mind Rape him into her slave.
  • A Man Is Not a Virgin: The sex lives of some of the guys in the series bring this trope into play straight or with twists. Carlos, the big talker, subverts this in White Knight as he really is a virgin. Harry, needless to say, laughs himself sick.

Lara (of Carlos to Harry): A virgin?...Is he a present?

  • Masquerade: Though most of the supernatural creatures do not really bother to hide themselves, the public refuses to believe they exist. Harry himself pays very little attention to the Masquerade, he is in the Yellow Pages under "Wizards". The vampires, demons, and the other supernatural creatures usually try to sweep their tracks, because if normals find out that they exist the general response for all of them will be Kill It with Fire and they will be totally outnumbered.
  • Magical Underpinnings of Reality: The Fae courts control global climate change.
  • A Magic Contract Comes with a Kiss: With Mab, it's a bit more than just a kiss.
    • Maeve tried to ruin Billy and Georgia's wedding by having a friend take Georgia's place. During the Race Against the Clock Harry tries to figure out when it would be to late to stop it. At the vows? No it's the kiss that seals the deal.
  • Male Gaze: Pretty much constant, and not exclusive to Harry's narration either. Even when Murphy is the viewpoint character, mention is made of a female werewolf having 'curves that drew the eye'.
  • Master Apprentice Chain: Harry is actually part of three different chains. The first is Merlin > Over a thousand years worth of Masters and Apprentices > Ebenezar's master > Ebenezar > Harry > Molly. The second is Simon Pietrovich > Justin DuMorne > Harry > Molly.
  • Master of Your Domain: Lash teaches Harry quite a few tricks.
  • Master Swordsman: Shiro of the Knights of the Cross is said to be an artist with his blade. The RPG codifies this, giving him a Weapons skill of 6, with stunts to boost it further in certain situations (for reference, skills top out at 4 or 5 for most non-wizard, non-"Plot Device level" characters), and outright says if you try to take him on one-on-one, you are going to lose. Even Nicodemus, who hates Shiro, grudgingly respects Shiro's abilities. Nicodemus himself is also pretty good due to having more then 2000 years to practice.
  • May-December Romance: Kinda-sorta Harry and Luccio--though she's in the body of a 20-year-old coed by the time their relationship starts, she's actually a 200+ year old wizard who grew up in Italy in the early 1800s.
  • Mayfly-December Romance:
    • Harry and Luccio. He is in his mid-thirties. She is in her mid-three-hundreds. But thanks to a kindly necromancer, Luccio is in the body of a co-ed girl, so she is actually physically younger than Harry.
      • Harry and Luccio are more in the May-December Romance Trope as she may be centuries older but he will live just as long.
    • The complications of this kind of relationship are brought up by Murphy in Proven Guilty when she and Harry talk about their relationship. Murphy notes that she does not have Harry's long lifespan, and he will still be relatively young when she is dying of old age.
  • Mayincatec: The cover for Changes.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Harry's father was a stage magician and Harry himself is named after Harry Houdini, Harry Blackstone, Sr. and David Copperfield.
    • Nicodemus Archleone.

Harry: Seriously? Archleone? As in "seeking whom he may devour"? Could you get any more obvious?

    • Michael Carpenter. Michael, as in the archangel, and Carpenter, as in Jesus' day job, and Michael is an actual carpenter to boot.
    • Thomas' sister Inari. Inari was the god of, among other things, foxes/kitsune in Japan. Given the folklore surrounding kitsune, it was kind of obvious who Inari was before it was said outright.
    • From "Dead Beat", a necromancer goes by the name of Grevane, which is an anagram of "engrave", usually associated with tombstones.
    • In "Small Favor" Uriel disguises himself as a janitor named Jake when Harry is in the chapel questioning God. In the Bible, Jacob wrestled an angel and got some cool perks out of it. Harry gets encouragement and knowledge of soulfire.
  • Mega Neko: Harry's cat, Mister. He is huge. Seriously. Easily thirty pounds and described by Harry as potentially part bobcat. In the comics, he says he feeds Mister sheep.

Harry : I like dogs, they give Mister something to snack on.

  • Merlin and Nimue: Not the Merlin, the official leader of the White Council, but Harry himself. He has a younger apprentice of the opposite sex who he is training in magic and has a strong personal connection with; Harry was friends with her father for years before ever taking her as an apprentice. Harry is also guarding The Sword in the Stone ( or rather, he was until Changes) and looking, when he can be bothered, for a suitable user for it.
  • Mind Control: Molly Carpenter, who has developed a very bad habit of entering people's minds without their permission. Her intent is always good, but the results are not. She has driven her ex-boyfriend into permanent insanity by trying to frighten him away from drug use. She also invaded the mind of Captain Luccio -- and got caught by Morgan. If Morgan had turned them in when he got caught, or had told Luccio what Molly had done, both Molly and Harry would have been beheaded automatically. By Dresdenverse rules, invading another's mind and compelling someone to do something (or not do something) against his/her will not only breaks two of the Laws of Magic and can cause permanent psychological damage to both the victim and the perpetrator, but is highly addictive Black Magic.
  • Mind Rape: A favorite tactic of vampires of all stripes and a decent number of sorcerers. Murphy states that her ordeal with Kravos was practically this. Even in the following book she is having trouble sleeping because she gets night terrors; the only way she can get some decent sleep is through a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills.
  • Mistaken for Gay: In the later books, Harry and Thomas both mislead with this, though for different reasons. It does not help that Murphy and SI wil not let go of the joke.
  • Missing Mom:
    • Harry never knew his mother thanks to Death by Childbirth. Or rather, death by being hit with a powerful entropy curse that killed her through Death by Childbirth.
    • Ivy. In Death Masks, she claims that her mother went into a coma when the Archive passed to her, but Luccio reveals in Small Favor that her mother got the Archive as a pregnant teenager after her grandmother died in a freak car accident. Angry at what happened and hating that the unborn Ivy would get to live a normal life instead of her, she killed herself, and thanks to the Archive containing all the memories of all the previous Archives, Ivy knows this.
  • The Mole: Numerous over the course of the series, but Wizard Peabody is the best example.
  • Monster Progenitor: The Red King to the Red court Vampires.
  • Mood Whiplash: Harry likes to tell jokes to lighten tense scenes. In Death Masks Harry was being tortured and refused to take a bribe to end the pain with, "Sorry, I follow the Tao of Peter Parker." He then followed up by saying the nonplussed villain "must be a DC comics fan." However, it is not always inentional, and it often takes Harry himself by surprise. There is a scene in Storm Front when Harry goes to ask Bianca, a beautiful vampire, about the death of one of her girls. The second he says what he is there for she lunges for him, shifting partially into her real form, assuming he is there to kill her. After he drives her back and explains himself, she changes back, and Harry leaves as she is having a snack. All he can now see is the monster who wants to be beautiful.
  • Monster of the Week: Almost every villain appearing in one of the short stories as opposed to the main books. Includes a Hecatean hag, the spawn of Grendel, a Crazy Survivalist priest, a group of ringwraith and Slytherin house rejects, supernatural fleas, and a maenad.
  • More Hero Than Thou
  • Mr. Exposition: Bob on anything magical. Waldo Butters on anything medical, up to and including trying to give scientific explanations for some of the weird stuff that happens to and around Wizards... and succeeding. The RPG has Exposition and Knowledge Dumping, a Trapping (sub-skill) of Scholarship; on a successful roll, the Game Master can "borrow" the Player Character to use as a mouthpiece to Info Dump about the relevant subject. This effectively cuts out the middleman effect witnessed in most RPG knowledge skill checks (Player 1 rolls, GM relates info, Player 1 says "I tell everyone else".)
  • Muggles: Harry's word for them is "Straights." Harry seems to apply the term specifically to those who have no knowledge of the supernatural at all (IE, Murphy and Butters, both exposed to the supernatural, would not be called "Straights", but Murphy's superiors outside SI would.)
    • He also likes to call them "vanilla mortals."
  • Muggles Do It Better: An ongoing theme is that plain old vanilla mortals could crush all of the supernatural monsters if they were aware of them, thanks to superior technology and an overwhelming numerical advantage. The various Badass Normals are pretty good evidence for this. Harry himself takes advantage of it; there are several wizards, vampires, grendelkin and other supernatural nasties that make the mistake of thinking Harry's only as powerful as his magic, only to find out he is a pretty good shot with a .44, or that his six foot oak staff doubles as a pretty good bludgeon.
  • Multiple Reference Pun: Most of the titles.
  • Murder Makes You Crazy: The reason for the First Law of Magic. Magic is an expression of will given form, so using it to kill someone is particularly warping. Plus, magic is consistently referred to as the power of life, or coming from, life, meaning you're warping the power of life to cause death.
  • My Car Hates Me: The Blue Beetle is prone to giving out at very inconvenient times. However, this is partially due to the law of averages, since it dies the rest of the time, too, and partially justified by the fact that since magic is fueled by emotion, the more distress Harry is in, the more likely he is to make the car short out.
  • My Greatest Second Chance
  • Myth Arc: The Black Council is suspected by Harry to be directly or indirectly responsible for just about everything bad that has happened to him since the events of the first book.

Continued here.

  1. ↑ The answer, of course, is yes.
  2. ↑ White Court vamps, as half-humans, fall into a grey area, as do other Half Human Hybrids; typically this involves choosing their human sides or their vampiric natures.
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