Percy Jackson & the Olympians/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The book series provides examples of

  • Angst? What Angst?
  • Anticlimax Boss: Every big threat in The last Olympian. The Drakon dies in six pages, and Kronos barely fights enough to look strong. Even in the last fight it didn't take too long to bring him down. Even Typhon
  • Non Sequitur Scene: The incident with the Sphinx in the Labyrinth was either this, or an Author Filibuster. Of course, it's entirely possible that it was included because Riordan got frustrated and needed to vent some steam about an event in his personal life.
  • Bro Yay: Travis and Connor Stoll (from the Hermes cabin). Percy and Tyson, too, but the Stolls are never without each other.
  • Complete Monster: Kronos the Big Bad of the series. His actions lead to the deaths of several characters, and he manipulates Luke and several other characters throughout the entire series. He is also completely devoid of altruistic qualities to the point where he savagely assaults his own son, Chiron.
    • King Minos from the fourth book. He started off from a pretty poor position on the morality scale (imprisoning Daedalus and his son in an absolutely horrible prison when someone else managed to outwit the Labyrinth), but he grew worse after death, learning to Mind Rape people he came across in the Labyrinth for no good reason, and manipulating Nico into thinking he could bring his sister back from the dead to suit his own ends.
  • Crack Pairing: Tons. Rachel/Nico, Thalia/Nico, Percy/Clarisse, Rachel/Luke, Apollo/Hermes, etc.
  • Crazy Awesome: The Party Ponies.
  • Die for Our Ship: Rachel is frequently treated to this by Percy/Annabeth fans.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Luke.
  • Mr. Fanservice
    • Ten, if you count the fact that in LO, there's the line "Six Aphrodite girls kissed me on the cheek in excitement."
  • Foe Yay: Luke and pretty much everyone. Particularly Percy, Thalia, Annabeth, and (if you squint) Grover.
  • Fridge Logic: Prometheus' claim that the battle is a reenactment of the Trojan War is true, in a way - but as the Achilles in His Tent situation with Clarisse indicates, he was wrong about which side was which.
  • Ho Yay: Percy and Nico share a bit of this in The Last Olympian. Luke and Percy do, too, particularly in the first book.
  • Genius Bonus: It might or might not be intentional, but the mention of a statue of Susan B. Anthony strangling Frederick Douglass in "The Last Olympian" might be a roundabout reference to how the two civil rights leaders, formerly steadfast allies, became divided over the issue of the Fourteenth Amendment allowing Black males to vote, but not women of any race (and to add insult to injury, it was the first Amendment that explicitly mentioned male and only male citizens).
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: "She made blue waffles and blue eggs for breakfast."
  • Les Yay: Silena and Clarisse, Annabeth and Thalia, Zoë and Bianca.
    • Zoë and Artemis, one-sided on Zoë's part, arguably.
    • Clarisse and Silena in particularly considering they play out the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus to its tragic conclusion. And we all know about them.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Kronos
  • Periphery Demographic: Because of Riordan's attention to detail, some people who're outside the target demographic of young adults find enjoyment in these works.
    • So much, that a college professor a troper knows that teaches Greco-Roman mythology actually listed this series as supplementary reading.
  • Tear Jerker: Bianca's death, which involved just getting a certain collectible which was missing in her brother's collection, Silena's death and reveal as The Mole, Luke's sacrifice in The Last Olympian, and May Castellan's fate. Percy wonders at the end of the book about her, saying that she will be baking cookies for her son who would never come home. These are just a few examples.
  • The Untwist: Percy's origins. Anyone who knows anything about Greek myth could see the title of the series, the cover of the first book, and then put two and two together. It's really not that hard.
    • The fulfilling of the prophecy in The Titan's Curse It says "One will be lost" and everybody assumes it means someone will die But it never outright states dying, so with the usual Prophecy Twist you could expect Bianca to be lost and later found. It turns out she gets Killed Off for Real
  • The Woobie: Everyone not named Ares, Kronos, or Dionysus. And Your Mileage May Vary on Dionysus.
    • Luke's mother, May Castellan, also deserves a special mention here.
    • In The Last Olympian, the narration actually says that Hermes "looked like he needed a hug." If that's not baiting woobiedom, nothing is.

Tropes which only apply to the film

Tropes which only apply to the show

  • Broken Base: Like many book-to-screen adaptations of YA literature, Percy Jackson and the Olympians provoked debate about the number of changes from the source material taken by its producers, directors, writers and even Rick himself, from major changes such as the trio missing the deadline, to minor ones like the alteration of Percy's hair color. Many fans of Percy Jackson have dismissed the show as a watered-down, SparkNotes edition of the books, with a "Thoroughly Modern Disney" agenda to make up for the source material's lack of diversity (such as Annabeth and Clarisse getting a Race Lift) as well as a serious lack of suspense, mystery and nuanced writing (i.e. the characters explaining exposition through dialogue and not figuring things out for themselves). Others have embraced the changes with open arms, even calling them an improvement over the books themselves.
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