The Hunger Games is a trilogy of young adult novels written by Suzanne Collins that take place After the End in Panem, a nation in what used to be North America that is divided into numbered districts and a large capital city.

In the first book, heroine Katniss Everdeen takes her sister Primrose's place when Prim is chosen to be a contestant ("tribute") in the Hunger Games: an annual televised Deadly Game wherein 24 teenage contestants are locked in an arena to fight to the death until only one remains. Her struggle for survival ends up igniting a firestorm that quickly goes beyond her control, until she finds herself embroiled in an all-out war that almost makes the arena look like Disneyland.

The three books are:

  • The Hunger Games (2008)
  • Catching Fire (2009)
  • Mockingjay (2010)

A feature film adaption, The Hunger Games, was released in March 2012, staring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, Liam Hemsworth as Gale, Woody Harrelson as Haymitch, and Donald Sutherland as President Snow.

  • Accidental Murder: Peeta accidentally kills with poison berries. Also, in Mockingjay he accidentally
  • Acquired Poison Immunity: Subverted in that it wasn't perfect, and he carried long-term damage from it.
  • Action Girl: Katniss and most of the other female contestants.
  • Adult Fear:
    • The point of the Hunger Games was for the Capitol to show it has so much control over its citizens, that they can kill their children publicly and there is nothing they could do about it.
    • Also the fact that Katniss has sworn off the idea of marriage or children because she knows that any children she had would have to face the Reapings just as she had.
    • A girl who's barely a teenager is mercilessly blown up
  • Aerith and Bob:
    • On one hand, you've got normal names like Annie and Johanna, but then on the other you've got more unusual names like Katniss, Peeta, Twill, Plutarch, and Beetee.
    • During the 74th Games, Katniss comments on the odd naming conventions of District 1 (which result in names like Cashmere, Gloss and Marvel) once she learns Glimmer's name.
  • Airstrip One: The Districts are numbered and segregated by industry.
  • After the End: Some combination of wars and natural disasters destroyed the entire population of the world except for Panem. There are implications that Panem consists of less than 100,000 people and represents the entire human species. District 12, the smallest district (possibly excluding 13), has a population of between 8,000 and 10,000 . That would mean the bare minimum population of the districts 1-12 would have to be about 96,000, and most likely more, since districts 2 and 11 appear to be several times the size of 12.
  • The Alcoholic: Former District 12 champion Haymitch Abernathy. In fact, it seems that a lot of Games champions end up with some kind of drug or alcohol addiction, due to a combination of too much money and time on their hands, having no real way to cope with the horrors they faced in the arena, and having to mentor new tributes year after year who seldom if ever come back alive.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: The people in the Capitol have some strange fashion ideas, among them body dyes. At least one person mentioned has dyed her whole body pea green.
  • Ambiguously Brown:
    • Rue and Thresh are both stated to be dark-skinned, but it's never mentioned how dark. Word of God says that they are black.
    • Katniss, Gale and Haymitch sport the "Seam look", meaning olive skin, dark hair and grey eyes.
  • Animal Motifs: Metaphorically, Snow as a snake. Visually, Katniss as a mockingjay. Tigris as a cat-person as both.
    • Also Foxface from the first book. The reader never even learns her real name.
  • Annoying Arrows: This happens unless Katniss hits a vital area.
  • Anyone Can Die: The Hunger Games is actually an interesting example. Many of the characters are guaranteed to die, due to the format of the Games, however, as with most other works, main characters are very rarely if ever killed (depending on who you'd be willing to count as a main character), and only in major events. Katniss, as the first person narrator, inevitably survives the entire series.
  • Apocalypse How: In the backstory. It's continental societal disruption at the least, leading to the creation of Panem.
  • The Archer: Katniss. Also Gale.
  • Artistic License Animal Care:
    • In Mockingjay Katniss stuffs Buttercup into a bag and carries him over her shoulder, even elbowing him to get him to be quiet. She also bounces him against the floor. In the book, this only causes yowling, but in real life this probably would've caused him a great deal of injury.
    • Katniss also picks Buttercup up by the scruff of his neck without supporting his rump. He's a grown tom cat. Any pet owner will tell you that is a humongous no-no.
    • After Buttercup is forced into a bag, he allows Prim to tie a ribbon around his neck and hold him in her arms. After being bagged? Both of these actions would probably cause a cat a great deal of distress (possibly causing the animal to retaliate in violence) in real life.
  • Artistic License: Biology:
    • In Mockingjay, Katniss sees Peeta planting evening primrose and the only part she registers at first is rose. Fortunately the thorny roses Snow leaves and primrose are not even mildly similar to look at, so she realizes her mistake pretty quickly. Mistaking one for the other would be more or less impossible.
  • Artistic License Pharmacology:
    • to get into power. Apparently the Capitol can neither run basic autopsies nor test surfaces for presence of toxins.
    • In Mockingjay, Katniss describes morphling as making her feel numb and empty. For opiate addicts (who've begun to grow 'immune' to the effects) this may be the case, but morphine makes non-addicts feel relaxed, warm and happy, even through emotional depression.
    • Hijacking , as further explained in Hollywood Psychology below.
  • Artistic License Physics:
    • Beetee's electric trap in Catching Fire would not be capable of killing all the sealife and the Careers on the beach like he claims. (Ever wonder why lightning doesn't kill fish in lakes?)
    • Planes are supposedly not be able to fly very high because of some sort of vague, inadequately explained "destruction of atmosphere." This is either implying that there are issues of human ability to survive in aircrafts because of low pressure, or that destruction of atmosphere causes the atmosphere to lessen in physical size rather than density. With regard to the first, planes alread fly in much lower pressures than what humans can survive on their own (think cabin pressurization and those emergency oxygen masks)--the height of planes' flight ability in-universe is given at 100 yards and accounting for current ability to fly in low pressure, if planes are limited to 100 yards, sea level would not be within comfortable, easy to survive human pressure. This would make the tall buildings in the Capitol extraordinarily implausible (unless all of these buildings are pressurized, which is in and of itself implausible). With regard to the latter, destruction of atmosphere would cause atmosphere to expand to fill the same space, not a lessening of physical size in the atmosphere surrounding the earth. In other words, "destruction of atmosphere" is not a reason that high-flying planes would not exist.
  • Artistic License Psychology: After months in completely solitary confinement, most would be psychotic, and almost no one would be able to function around human beings. Sort-of justified in that it often helps to find something to occupy your mind with.
  • Asian and Nerdy: Everyone from District 3 (which produces electronics). "Nuts" Wiress and "Volts" Beetee, the two engineers in Catching Fire, "are small in stature with ashen skin and black hair." The explosives expert in The Hunger Games is described by Katniss as "scrawny, ashen-skinned" and by Rue as "not very big." The narrator of the Scholastic audio books puts on a distinct stereotypical Asian accent that is especially noticeable in Catching Fire.
  • Ax Crazy: Some of the Careers. Clove would've given Katniss a Glasgow Smile if Thresh hadn't stepped in. And Cato explodes so violently when Katniss takes out his supplies that he snaps a nearby boy's neck. Enobaria rips someone else's throat out.
  • An Axe to Grind: Johanna Mason in the Quarter Quell; after all, she's from the lumber district.
  • Babies Ever After: have two kids.
  • Babies Make Everything Better:
    • deliberately invokes this trope Apparently not even the bloodthirsty denizens of the Capitol seem to want to watch a pregnant woman be killed.
    • Subverted in the series epilogue: while .
  • Bad Dreams: Katniss and the rest of the victors seem plagued by them.
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: This occurs with regard to
  • Band of Brothers: The victors in the second book.
  • Battle Couple: Katniss and Peeta in the first book, but subverted in the second when Finnick is Katniss' lancer.
  • Battle Royale With Cheese: Subverted in that
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Brutally subverted. By the end of the first book, Katniss has several wounds, at the end of the second she has a nasty scar on her arm, and by the end of the third .
  • Because You Were Nice To My Friend: Thresh spares Katniss because she helped Rue out
  • Becoming the Mask: Katniss pretends to be At the end of the first book, she's prepared to kill him to save herself. Contrast the end of the second,
  • Bee-Bee Gun: Katniss uses a hive of lethal, genetically-altered wasps to kill some of her opponents. And almost kills herself in the process.
  • Being Tortured Makes You Evil:
  • Betty and Veronica: Peeta is the Betty and Gale (despite being Katniss' best friend from early childhood) is the Veronica to Katniss's Archie: Peeta is nice and fairly sweet, while Gale has a revolutionary mindset and a ruthless streak. This picture sums it up nicely.
  • Big Bad: President Coriolanus Snow.
  • Big Brother Is Watching: Cameras are waiting to catch every minute of Katniss and Peeta's lives once they become contestants in the Hunger Games. Life in the districts is also very closely monitored, leaving people afraid to say anything that might come off as negative about the Capitol. President Snow even .
  • Birds of a Feather: Katniss and Gale, though ultimately inverted when to balance her own personality out.
  • Bittersweet Ending: at the end of the third book
  • Black and Gray Morality
  • Black Market Produce: Katniss makes her living poaching game and selling it on the black market. In addition, most food that isn't made from grain rations is expensive and rather rare in the Districts. The decadent Capitol, on the other hand, has tons of food of all kinds.
  • Blood From the Mouth:
    • Subverted by President Snow, since it's neither overt nor a sign of his impending death.
    • The first tribute Katniss sees die suddenly sprays blood onto her face while fighting with her over supplies, due to a sudden and terminal case of throwing-knife-in-back. Katniss herself narrowly avoids succumbing to the malady a few seconds later.
  • Blood Knight: "Careers" are kids who train all their young lives to win glory in the Games, volunteering for them if they're not selected by lottery.
  • Blood-Splattered Innocents: About thirty seconds into the 74th Hunger Games, the boy from District 9 coughs blood into Katniss' face after getting knifed by Clove.
  • Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: Invoked with Katniss's wedding dress:
  • Blue Eyes: Prim, Mrs. Everdeen, and Peeta. Implied to be a trait of the merchant class.
  • Boomerang Comeback: This is how won his game.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Bread and Circuses: Panem et Circenses. Discussed Trope in Mockingjay.
  • Break the Cutie: Peeta's Trauma Conga Line is significantly longer than that of most of the other characters, though for the most part he takes it all in stride.
  • Breakfast Club: People who have won the Hunger Games tend to become close friends and stick together, because only other tributes can understand what they have gone through.
  • Brief Accent Imitation: Gale at the beginning of the first novel, inciting one of about five times where Katniss actually laughs.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu:
    • In the first book, .
    • In the Quarter Quell, .
  • Brother-Sister Team: Gloss and Cashmere.
  • The Brute: Cato, in the first book, and the aptly named Brutus in the second.
  • Bureaucratically Arranged Marriage: The Capitol plans to do this to . This is later subverted in the end of the third book, where .
  • Butt Monkey:
  • Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: The addictive painkiller in use around Panem is called "morphling" (morphine) and the people addicted to it are called "morphlings."
  • Captain Obvious: Played for Laughs by in Catching Fire. After running head-first into the force field at the edge of the arena, he goes into cardiac arrest and gets saved by . response? He mentions there's a force field ahead of them.
  • Cats Are Mean: Buttercup is to everyone who isn't Prim.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Nightlock berries and
  • Chekhov's Hobby: Frosting cakes turns out to come in really handy.
  • The Chessmaster:
  • Children Forced to Kill
  • Closed Circle
  • Close-Knit Community: District 12
    • District 11 gets less limelight, but are this as well.
  • Conditioned to Accept Horror: The whole point of life in the Districts, and the Games. Katniss takes a lot of horror in stride in the first book, but over the course of the trilogy the conditioning wears off.
  • Consummate Liar: Haymitch, Snow, Coin, Johanna, and Peeta.
  • Contrived Coincidence:
    • In-universe. Family members of past tributes are disproportionately likely to be selected as tributes themselves. Katniss figures the drawings must be rigged that way to create extra drama.
    • The odds of Prim getting reaped in her first year, without any additional buy-ins is staggeringly small.
    • In the first book, Katniss finally collapses from dehydration mere feet away from water.
    • If Katniss ever thinks that she doesn't want to kill a person during the games, .
    • When Katniss is thinking about betraying he very conveniently and then gives command to her so that she doesn't have to technically betray anyone.
  • Convenient Miscarriage: Invoked: .
  • Costume Porn: Each tribute gets a personal stylist. Looking flashy outside of the arena serves a practical purpose, though: tributes who catch the audience's eye are more likely to receive sponsors who can help them survive the arena.
  • Covered in Mud: Peeta uses a large amount of mud with plants on top to disguise himself as part of a riverbank when he is too injured to move. This probably helps his infection along.
  • CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: In Catching Fire performs CPR on (whose heart has stopped) for several minutes before he coughs and sputters to life. After being thrown backward by an electrified forcefield.
  • Crap Saccharine World: The arena of the second Quarter Quell (Haymitch's) is this. At first glance it's the "most breathtaking place imaginable." There're blue skies, puffy white clouds, songbirds flying by, crystalline streams, luscious fruit, gorgeous flowers, butterflies, etc. Then everyone realizes everything is deadly poisonous. And the fluffy, golden squirrels are carnivorous.
  • Crapsack World: Most of the districts are horrible places to live. The people are poor, starving, and oppressed while those in the Capitol live outrageously decadent lives but are also extremely closely watched and more likely to be punished or even executed for speaking out. And that's even without mentioning the eponymous Deadly Game.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
    • Haymitch Abernathy seems like a useless drunk, but he did actually win a Hunger Game after all. In Catching Fire, we learn that Haymitch survived his Games using extreme cunning.
    • Johanna Mason famously exploited this trope to win the games, appearing to be helpless when she is actually a ruthless killer.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Anyone who's died in the Games, really. And the last book.
  • Crystal Spires and Togas: The Capitol is described as being full of colored glass, and the people are obsessed with fashion. Technology also seems to have advanced to the point that it can be completely hidden from view. Although no one wears a toga, Capitol residents almost all have Roman names, establishing them as a decadent and technologically advanced society.
  • The Cuckoolander Was Right: Wiress knows what she's talking about. The trick is figuring out just what that is.
  • Dark Action Girl: Pretty much any female Career tribute by definition, but Clove fits the trope to a T. Annie is the exception.
  • Darker and Edgier: The whole series is pretty dark to begin with, but the series finale, Mockingjay, is much more hopeless than even the first two.
  • Dead Little Sister: Katniss' father dies five years before the first book, forcing her to toughen up and learn to hunt to support herself and her family. Later, , awakening her killer instinct. The threat of this trope becoming literal drives the whole trilogy.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Haymitch and Johanna.
  • Death Course: The Hunger Games, especially when the tributes settle down into a comfortable recovery period / stalemate.
  • Defector From Decadence: have fled the Capitol. This was also the goal of Lavinia, the redheaded Avox, and the boy she was with when Katniss first saw her, but they didn't make it.
  • Deprogramming: Has to be done to in book 3.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Katniss passes over it in a matter of paragraphs And the rest of the series from there consists of it getting worse.
  • Defictionalization: You can actually buy mockingjay pins. Interesting, because the citizens of the Capitol displayed this exact behavior in Catching Fire.
  • Did Mom Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: At the beginning of Catching Fire, the president drops by for a terrifying "chat" with
  • Disappeared Dad: Katniss and Prim's father died in the mines a few years before the book begins. Gale's father also died in the same accident. It's concealed in somewhat of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but Haymitch's father might have been this as well. Haymitch has told Katniss that but a father is never mentioned.
  • Disposable Woman: in the first book. In the others, gets almost no screentime and dies to instigate the ending.
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The Hunger Games are hateful, deplorable, they ruin their victors psychologically, and the series as a whole is viciously anti-war... but a major part of the story's appeal is the actual excitement of the Hunger Games sequences... For both the Capitol and the readers!
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?:
    • In District 11, the dark-skinned population is forced to farm and are treated with particular brutality. This sounds a lot like slavery in the American South.
    • Panem and are nuclear powers locked in a stalemate. Panem is decadent, wealthy, and corrupt. Its citizens enjoy outrageous luxury while they exploit the surrounding communities to feed their enormous appetites. , on the other hand, is a dull and drab place, ruled by an a totalitarian regime that regiments every aspect of its citizens' lives. That's pretty much how the US and the USSR portrayed each other during the Cold War.
  • Doomed Hometown:
  • Dogged Nice Guy: Peeta.
  • Drowning My Sorrows: Haymitch becomes a drunk due to the horrors he has witnessed.
  • Drunken Master: Haymitch is a hopeless alcoholic, but his knowledge of people and tactics is astounding.
  • Due to the Dead: Katniss covers body with flowers and sings a funeral lament.
  • Dying Alone
  • Dying as Yourself: Peeta's wish before going into the arena.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Go figure.
  • Dystopia: Panem is not a great place to live.
  • Early-Bird Cameo:
    • Johanna Mason gets a brief mention in the first book, then appears in the flesh (literally!) a book later.
    • Delly Cartwright is mentioned in the first part of the first book in passing, but doesn't appear until the middle of the third.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: More like earn your bittersweet ending.
  • Eat the Dog: "No one in the Seam would turn up their nose at a good leg of wild dog."
  • Elaborate Underground Base: .
  • Embarrassing First Name: While the people themselves don't seem to be, at least Katniss notes that a lot of District 1 should be embarrassed by their names, the likes of which include Glimmer, Marvel, Cashmere, and Gloss.
  • Enemy Mine: Temporary alliances are all part of the Hunger Games. In Catching Fire, the doomed tributes hold hands in a show of solidarity against the Capitol.
  • Enforced Method Acting: Often used in-universe with Katniss.
    • She's never warned about Peeta's interview strategy so that her reaction will be more genuine.
    • She's dropped into the warzone to film her candid reactions for propaganda, since she can't act at all.
  • Establishing Character Moment: The first two things we learn about Katniss are that she loves her sister and that she has no problem drowning kittens.
  • Mr. Fanservice:
    • Gale maintains a surprising harem in the fandom for someone who was a tertiary character for the first book.
    • Also, Finnick, both in-universe, and out.
  • Everything's Better with Monkeys: Inverted. A group of deadly monkey muttations show up in the arena in Catching Fire.
  • Everything's Worse with Bees: Tracker jacker wasps.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • The gamemakers frown on certain behaviors in the Hunger Games, but moreso because it will draw a poor reaction from the audience rather than out of moral disdain. They will not tolerate cannibalism, nor will they allow a psychopath to become a victor (unless they can be charming about it, as the Career Tributes tend to be somewhat... Ax Crazy).
    • The Capitol citizens will gleefully watch children fight to the death, but send a young woman who's alledgedly pregnant into the arena and they'll call it barbaric.
    • In the third book, He states that he would never kill someone if it gave him no advantage.
  • Evil Gloating: When Clove catches , she decides to give her something to think about. Followed- as usual- by a Thwarted Coup De Grace.
  • Evil Smells Bad:
    • President Snow smells of blood and cloying roses. It seems symbolic at first, but a reason for it is given in Mockingjay:
    • Snow uses the overpowering smell of roses to intimidate his enemies, especially Katniss. The lizard mutts in Mockingjay were specifically given this trait to screw with her head.
  • Eye Scream: When Katniss is hunting squirrels, she shoots them in the eye (to spare the meat).
  • Face Heel Turn: has done this when she "attacks" her. She assumes must be in on it too.
  • Fantastic Drug: "Morphling," a heroin-like addictive drug that is obviously a reference to morphine.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Panem is basically a futuristic, sci-fi version of Rome. The country's name is an adoption of Rome's "Bread and Circuses" motto. The Capitol is an incredibly authoritarian superpower that brutally reigns over conquered territories to feed the decadent desires of its own citizens. The gladiatorial parallels with the Hunger Games are obvious, of course. The parties feature guests who induce vomiting so that they can consume more food, which is popularly thought to have been common at Roman banquets.
  • Fail O'Suckyname: Plutarch Heavensbee, Effie Trinket, and just about everyone in the Capitol. Except Seneca Crane.
  • False-Flag Operation: Toward the end of Mockingjay.
  • Feed the Mole
  • A Fete Worse Than Death: The Capitol requires the Districts to treat the Games as a festival.
  • Fighting From the Inside: during a fair bit of Mockingjay.
  • Filk Song: Even if one ignores the many versions of Rue's Lullaby, there are a considerable number of these floating around including:
  • Film of the Book
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Katniss and .
  • First Kiss: Katniss has hers with Peeta. All she feels is that his lips are very warm, because he has a fever.
  • Five-Bad Band: The Career tributes from the 74th Games.
  • Five-Man Band: One of these forms during the Quarter Quell:
  • First Boy Wins: Subverted.
  • Flashback Nightmare: Used rarely.
  • Flat Character: Prim. Many of the minor characters. Arguably, many characters (including Katniss) qualify for this; their motivations are not generally complex. (Survive, hunt, run, and survive.)
  • Flaw Exploitation: Katniss exploits the Capitol's .
  • Florence Nightingale Effect: The second one, with Peeta and Katniss, respectively.
  • Flower Motifs: Several characters are named after flowers or plants, the President reeks of roses, and of course there's scene.
  • Flowery Insults: Zig-zagged by Peeta .
  • Fog of Doom: A nasty example is encountered by Katniss and her alliance in the Quarter Quell. It's poisonous to the touch, burning skin and clothes and causing seizures and temporary paralysis.
  • Food Porn: Early on, Katniss describes just about everything she eats in detail, which sort of makes sense considering she spent a good portion of her life nearly starving to death.
  • Foreshadowing: In the first book, Katniss mentions she first met the avox in the train while in the forest with Gale.
  • Fragile Speedster: Rue, who can move deftly in the treetops, but can't face anyone in a confrontation.
  • Freudian Slip:
    • After Rue is , in a panic, Katniss refers to her as 'Prim' in her narration, though it's not really a secret that Rue has been a surrogate Prim in Katniss' eyes before that.
    • And reversed in a later book Katniss sees Prim after and calls Prim 'Rue' in the narration.
  • Fridge Horror: As Katniss sings a song by her father called "The Hanging Tree", she notices, many years after first hearing it, that the point-of-view character is the guy who was hanged there.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Prim seems to befriend any animal she meets, and can't bear to go hunting with Katniss.
  • Full-Circle Revolution: Nearly.
  • Gallows Humor: Katniss and some of the other Hunger Game tributes/victors learn to have a very droll outlook on their Crapsack World. Finnick takes it somewhat literally in Catching Fire by tying a noose and pretending to hang himself as a joke.
  • Gender Flip: Katniss is the Action Girl and is proficient at hunting with a bow and arrow. Peeta bakes and paints, and is more emotional of the two. They're an inversion of Manly Men Can Hunt and Feminine Women Can Cook, respectively.
  • Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: More literally than usual. Genetically engineered beasties are the Capitol's favored weapon of war, or at least are coequal with troops and air power. Proper nukes are still around, though.
  • Generation Xerox: Katniss looks like Mr. Everdeen, has inherited his hunting abilities, singing voice and, like him, . Prim looks like Mrs. Everdeen and has inherited her passion for healing. Also Mrs. Everdeen was close friends with Katniss' friend, Madge's mother, as a teenager and the father of Katniss' love interest Peeta had a crush on Mrs. Everdeen.
  • Genghis Gambit: In order to rally the people in the Capitol on her side and end things early, .
  • Genre Savvy: After spending a life watching the Hunger Games, Peeta knows what storylines will excite the audience, and uses it to his advantage. . Katniss, by contrast, has Genre Blindness.
  • Genre Shift: Mockingjay abandons the Games entirely, breaking the base as it does so.
  • Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Just one fight left. Environment is herding the survivors towards the lake for a final brawl.
  • Gilded Cage:
    • The wealthier districts have better living conditions but more brutal and fanatical Peacekeepers. On the other hand, District 12 is one of the poorest districts, but the authorities are far more willing to turn a blind eye to things like poaching and black market trading, or at least until book 2.
    • The Capitol itself could also be seen as this - for somewhere that is supposedly very privileged, we see several people willing to risk their lives to escape. The fact that implies at least a very restrictive society, where you're watched constantly and not toeing the line has terrible consequences. In 'Catching Fire', Effie actually says 'That sort of thinking...it's forbidden, Peeta. Absolutely.' when Peeta tries to hold the Gamemakers accountable for killing children by which implies the Capitol citizens may not quite have the freedom Katniss assumes.
  • Gladiator Revolt: The series, especially the third book, could be seen as a post-apocalyptic version of this, with
  • Good Is Not Dumb: Peeta is kind and patient and , besides being three steps ahead when it comes to manipulating the on-camera narrative.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Invoked in Mockingjay, when has her uglier scars surgically cleaned up, but is left with some more attractive scars, because she's got to have some scars to show how bravely she's been fighting. Averted in the end, however, when .
  • The Good, the Bad, and The Evil / Black and Gray Morality: The conflict really boils down to some truly horrible people who happen to be in power and all the innocents who get caught in-between. Crapsack World indeed.
  • Gorn: How the Capitol citizens view the Hunger Games. In-universe only, hopefully.
  • Gotta Kill Them All: Throughout the Hunger Games, Katniss quite literally counts the number of remaining contestants on her fingers and toes.
  • The Government
  • G-Rated Sex: The act is alluded to at the end of Mockingjay, then skipped over to a brief conversation between the characters afterward.
  • Gray Eyes: Apparently fairly common in the Seam, including Katniss and Gale.
  • Great Offscreen War:
    • One or two of them—the civilizational collapse that led to the founding of Panem (we're never sure just what it was or if a war was involved), and the more-recent uprising (~75 years before the books take place) when the Districts rose up against the Capital.
    • Most of the fighting in the revolution is also off-screen, up until Katniss gets directly involved in District 2.
    • Even then, the majority of the rebellion is off-screen, with the individual Districts' revolts (sans Two and Eight) and even being done away from Katniss and therefore the reader. It helps to emphasize the fact that Katniss is only a tool in the war, not a soldier and certainly not a major player.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Gale tries damned hard not to like Peeta.
  • Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: In the first book:
  • Hair of Gold: Peeta, Prim, Delly Cartwright
  • Hands-On Approach: Finnick uses this to show Katniss how to tie a difficult knot.
  • Hannibal Lecture: Katniss' last conversation with President Snow.
  • Harmful to Minors: Only minors are selected for the standard Hunger Games.
  • Hate Sink: Katniss and Peeta can't exactly attack the directors of the Games, the Capitol doesn't send its children to die in the Games, and most of the other Tributes are from Districts as oppressed as 12. However, "Career Tributes" from Districts 1, 2 and 4 are volunteers, Child Soldiers have who trained to kill other children since they were able to walk. In addition to their loathsome mindset and superior skills, they always team up to eliminate the weaker Tributes, then gleefully kill each other once everyone else is dead.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Gale, especially after
  • Her Heart Will Go On: Peeta tries to invoke this in a More Hero Than Thou dispute. Katniss' internal monologue reveals she'll have none of it.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: Averted. The only character who really seems to use a sword as their main weapon is Cato.
  • Heroic BSOD:
    • Katniss at the end of the second book, and all over the third.
    • Minor one (compared to the later BSOD's) in the first one occurs for Katniss
  • Heroic Sacrifice:
    • Katniss taking her sister's place.
    • in the second book--twice.
    • And all over the place in Mockingjay.
  • Hero Secret Service
  • Hidden Depths: Just about all the sympathetic characters reveal themselves to be more than they at first appeared.
  • Holding Hands: Most notably during the interviews for the Quarter Quell.
  • Hollywood Healing: Due to the advanced medicine available in the Capitol, most injuries sustained by the characters are healed completely. Aversions include Chaff's hand and Peeta's leg, though he gets a prosthetic leg that is rarely referred to again. In the end, .
  • Hollywood Tactics:
    • When the rebels attack the Capitol, direct siege would have included trying to seize or disable the Capitol's nuclear missiles, or else bombarding the Capitol into submission. The narrator mentions that they can't do aerial bombing because of anti-air defenses—but what about plain old artillery? Or maybe the rebels could have first attacked the anti-air emplacements, and then bombed the Capitol flat. Or they could have just declared victory and negotiated the Capitol's surrender. All of these options would probably have been easier than block-by-block urban warfare through a maze of boobie traps.
    • During that same attack, Katniss takes point immediately after being promoted to leader of her squad. In real life, a squad leader never takes point, since the point man is the one most likely to die in an ambush, and the squad leader is someone you don't want to lose.
    • There seems to be a lack of any standard infantry weapons besides assault rifles and pistols. No grenades, shotguns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, mounted machine guns, battle rifles, submachine guns, etc.
    • No one has armored ground vehicles.
    • At one point a character mentions the use of an EMP bomb by the Capitol. Why didn't the rebels just EMP bomb the Capitol to disable the pods?
    • Katniss's combat bow, given to her by 13, is supposedly accurate to 100 yards. This sounds pretty incredible, until you realize that the assault rifles wielded by the Peacekeepers are accurate to around 500 yards, shoot on a much flatter trajectory, don't need constant reloading... and can penetrate body armor.
    • Capitol attack aircraft drop their bombs from the dizzying altitude of 100-ish yards. As though to lampshade this idiocy, Gale and Katniss then shoot down the planes with Trick Arrows. An arrow taking down a bomber. Wrap your head around that one.
    • The third book has Finnick take a trident to war. A trident that he can throw. Tridents are weapons made for spearing and catching things; they are not ideal for killing in a quick-fire situation (though it is certainly possible to kill with one) because things killed with tridents are meant primarily to stick on the prongs. In old warfare, tridents were generally used for disarming (their length and shape allowed them to accurately knock swords out of combatants' hands without having to get too close), but not as a primary weapon except in gladiatorial combat. As for throwing, tridents simply aren't balanced for that at all. Even if a throwing trident were possible, it's extraordinarily unlikely that it would ever be useful in a war fought mainly with guns.
    • There is some very odd squad formation. For some reason, the army of District 13 puts two sisters in the same squad, and allows people whom it knows to be psychologically and emotionally unstable (Finnick, Katniss) to go into actual war . Boggs, Coin's second in command, is frequently put on the front line.
    • District 13 is still shooting propaganda spots long past the point that they would be useful. A huge tactical problem once you realize that people's lives, including the life of Coin's second in command, are put in danger for this purpose.
  • Hollywood Psych:
    • Though Haymitch is an alcoholic, in the first book he very conveniently decides to stay sober only when he needs to be on the condition that Peeta and Katniss not interfere with his drinking when he feels like it. Real alcoholism isn't quite that convenient. Bit better in later books when we see him at least having difficulty sobering up.
    • Catching Fire describes Annie as hysterical when she's reaped for the 75th games, without going into any sort of detail. This is enough to have Katniss think she's completely insane. Later in Mockingjay, we meet Annie and Katniss seems to think she's just a little quirky, though she occasionally covers her ears with her hands for no apparent reason. In real life, a person covering their ears that way would imply that they are hearing things that aren't there. Being that this isn't a one off (she does it "occasionally") it's a pretty big alarm bell for a psychotic disorder not otherwise specified. This is not to mention that she's also implied to see things that aren't there. So yeah.
    • Hijacking. but in Mockingjay it really doesn't make sense as a conditioning tool. For one, the brain really doesn't work that way. Conditioning is an unconscious mechanism that can't be manipulated into a deliberate response the way the book describes. This is why the CIA stopped trying to do this in the first place. For another, the part of the brain that controls fear is so separate from your memory that it's unlikely that a drug designed to affect the fear part of your brain would have any affect on memory whatsoever.
  • Hot Wings: Cinna's outfits.
  • Hufflepuff House: Most of the Districts of Panem are pretty extraneous and we learn little about them.
  • Human Sacrifice: Tributes are sacrificed by the Capitol to remember the betrayal of District 13.
  • Human Shield: Snow surrounding himself with children.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: At the end of Mockingjay, Katniss hits this trope hard.
  • Hungry Jungle
  • Hypocrite: Various characters have their moments, but a few from Katniss stand out. One being that she judges Madge for having an expensive pin that could feed starving families, yet isn't bothered when she herself is later clad in incredibly expensive outfits. There's also her judgement of fellow tributes because of their killing, when she doesn't make any attempt to restrain her own killing - on a few occasions, she even mentions how her fingers are itching for her knife/arrows just because Johanna snapped at her. She also complains a great deal about the wasting of food, when she, in fact, does it herself (when she threw out the gift of cookies from Peeta's father, for example).
  • I Gave My Word: Subverted. Haymitch promises Katniss that he'll keep Peeta alive and also tells Peeta that he'll keep Katniss alive.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink:
    • Katniss upon finding out for the Quarter Quell.
    • Haymitch, pretty much all the time.
  • I Was Quite a Looker: Katniss is surprised at how handsome Haymitch used to be.
  • I Will Only Slow You Down: .
  • I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure:
    • Snow's favorite tactic.
    • The entire premise of the Games itself was a way to punish the rebels by making their children kill each other, and to remind them that the Capitol can and will do things like this if they rebel again.
    • Snow directly threatens Gale and indirectly threatens the rest of Katniss' loved ones if she doesn't convince all of Panem (including Snow himself) that she's madly in love with Peeta.
    • Snow also uses the threat against loved ones to .
  • Icon of Rebellion: The mockingjay.
  • Idiot Ball:
    • Katniss and Peeta pass this back and forth in the first book:
    • Katniss seems to be very bad at reading people,
    • Cinna, Haymitch and Effie all tell Katniss that her high score after firing an arrow at the Gamemasters is a good thing, no one seems to notice the big ol' bullseye that this stunt grants her. It had also just been mentioned that high scores have often put big ol' bullseyes on the tributes who received them.
    • Katniss seems to be clutching this ball rather firmly for someone who's quite familiar with nature. The fact that she isn't the least bit perturbed by the monkeys' initial behavior is silly. Even if she wasn't familiar with monkeys, she knows how animals behave, and she knows that the gamemakers stick 'mutts' into the games. Not hard to work out there's something sinister about them.
    • In Catching Fire, when Plutarch goes out of his way to show her his fancy pocket watch, and makes some rather pointed statements regarding it and time in general. It doesn't occur to her until much later that he was trying to drop her a hint about something. And it apparently never occurs to her that .
  • I'm a Humanitarian: A District 6 tribute from a past Games named Titus is said to have gone insane and ate the bodies of the tributes he killed.
  • Important Haircut: Or rather, important lack of haircut. In Mockingjay, all the rebel soldiers have their hair cut short, except for Katniss because she needs to stay recognizable.
    • And, oddly enough, Katniss having her body hair waxed throughout the series. District Twelve has no fashion to speak of, and the citizens have a lot more important things to concern themselves with, so at home, Katniss lets her body hair grow out without thinking anything of it. Her stylists stripping her bare is just another example of the Capitol changing who she is—to the point where by Catching Fire, she considers her fuzzy legs a sign of her freedom, and she's a more than a bit sore to lose them.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Katniss is repeatedly shown hitting small game directly in the eye, seemingly with ease. The fact that her arrows have large enough arrowheads to take down humans and deer and therefore have tips bigger than the eyes of some of the small game she's shooting is never accounted for.
  • Incendiary Exponent: Two of Katniss, The Girl On Fire's first ceremonial outfits in the Capitol fit this theme, though only one of them actually uses fire.
  • Informed Ability: Peeta is mentioned as being good with a knife and Katniss makes a point of giving him one during the Quarter Quell, yet he's more proficient at being The Load.
    • The Career tributes are hyped-up as being trained practically from birth to be efficient, ruthless, cunning, killing machines. They don't know how to treat tracker jacker stings, and seem to think that the best way to flush Katniss out of a tree is to wait at the base of said tree, which is convenient for when someone wants to drop a hive of tracker jackers on you.
  • Inelegant Blubbering: During Katniss' breakdown after the announcement of the Quarter Quell, most notably.
  • Insanity Defense: Used to get .
  • Interrupted Suicide: tries to kill herself at the end of Mockingjay, but stops her.
  • It Has Been an Honor: One of Katniss's prep team.
  • It Got Worse: Pretty much the majority of the series.
  • It Meant Something to Me: at the end of the first book.
  • It Was a Gift: Katniss' Mockingjay pin.
  • It's All About Me: For whom is the Quarter Quell a real ordeal?
  • It's Personal: Between Katniss and Snow.
  • Just Friends: Katniss and Gale.
  • Karmic Death: Marvel got an arrow in his neck from Katniss
  • Kill'Em All: The Games are to end with one person left standing.
  • Killed Off for Real: You never know who will stay alive in the arena until the very end.
  • Kissing Cousins: Gale pretends to be Katniss's cousin to explain his close relationship with her when Peeta is supposed to be her lover.
  • Kiss of Life: When Finnick revives Peeta in Catching Fire, Katniss describes it initially as "kissing" since she's never seen CPR performed.
  • Knife Nut: Clove.
  • La Résistance:
  • Lap Pillow: Reversed between Katniss and Peeta, and once each between Katniss/Finnick and Katniss/Gale.
  • Last Kiss: A couple of times between Katniss and Peeta,
  • Last Request: asks Katniss to sing for her. Despite not singing for years, Katniss comes through.
  • Leave Him to Me: Katniss insists on being the one to kill .
  • Leitmotif: Rue's song.
  • Lockdown: During the bombing of in book 3.
  • Losing the Team Spirit:
    • at the end of the second book.
    • the third one as well.
  • Lottery of Doom: The reaping, which selects tributes for the Hunger Games.
  • Love At First Sight / Love At First Note: If we take Peeta's word for it, that is.
  • Love Hurts: Often literally.
  • Love Makes You Crazy:
  • Love Triangle: Unsurprisingly resolved at the end of Mockingjay.
  • Madness Mantra: Wiress repeatedly says, "Tick, tock" during the Quarter Quell. No one initially understands what she's referring to.
  • Magical Negro: Rue.
  • Maniac Monkeys: One of the many delights of the Quarter Quell.
  • Man On Fire / Wreathed in Flames:
    • Katniss gets lit on fire five times: thrice in the name of fashion and twice in combat situations. There is a reason they call her The Girl Who Was On Fire.
    • Peeta also gets singed
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Peeta is the male version of Feminine Women Can Cook and Katniss is the female version of Manly Men Can Hunt.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Katniss is a real plant. Its common name? "Arrowhead". And its scientific name is Sagittaria, which is a transparent reference to the Zodiac sign Sagittarius, a fire sign whose symbol is an archer.
    • Peeta the baker sounds like "pita," a type of bread.
    • Effie Trinket seems to be trivial and shallow.
    • Cinna was the name of
    • One of the meanings of "Rue" is "regret." Her death haunts Katniss, who failed to protect her.
    • Avox means, in an awkward and incorrect mixture of Greek and Latin, 'without a voice.'
    • "Coriolanus," as in "Coriolanus Snow" refers to a hated Roman who betrayed both sides and died loathed and friendless.
    • Tigris had plastic surgery to look like a human-tiger hybrid. Katniss wonders which came first, the name or the look.
    • A mag is a type of nut. Mags knows a lot about plants and nuts.
    • Pollux and Castor, the twin cameramen from Mockingjay are named for the Gemini of Roman mythology. Like the myth, Castor dies and Pollux is allowed to live - only with some horrible mutilation.
    • Titus and Lavinia are names from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Like their counterparts in the Shakespeare play, Titus was known for cannibalism, and Lavinia had her tongue cut out. Given Peeta's comments about 'fingers and toes' an unfortunate implication, given what other things happened to Lavinia in the play.
    • In Mockingjay, the expression comes to mind.
    • Panem sounds like a mutilation of "Pan America", but is meant as a reference to the Latin phrase "panem et circenses", meaning "bread and circuses", or idiomatically, sustenance and entertainment - the two things you need to give a population to keep them happy.
    • In addition to any other possible meaning, a lot of the tributes' names related to their district's industry or their personal profession:
      • District 1, luxury goods, gives us Marvel, Glimmer, Gloss, and Cashmere.
      • District 3, electronics, has Wiress. And Beetee, which invokes "bit" and sounds like TV, CD, PC, etc. (Or BD, as in blu-ray disc). For British readers, it invokes BT - British Telecom.
      • District 4, fishing, Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta.
      • District 7, lumber, gives us the optimistically-named Blight.
      • District 8, textiles, has Twill, Paylor (play on 'taylor) and Woof (another word for "weft").
      • District 11, agriculture, has Rue, Thresh, Chaff, and Seeder. Chaff is a double example. Not only does it mean "the husks of grains and grasses that are separated during threshing," but it also means, "worthless matter." Chaff never becomes important to the plot.
      • District 12 has no set theme for names; they're mostly things that are important to the parents. There's Peeta, after the type of bread (his parents are bakers), and Katniss and Prim were named after flowers their father was fond of. And of course Katniss' nickname, "The Girl On Fire", may refer to District 12's main industry: coal mining.
      • The Capitol uses Roman names, in reference to their technological superiority as well as their decadent culture.
      • District 2 is noted for having the closest relationship to the Capitol, and their tributes also have Roman names: Cato, Brutus, and Clove (derived from Clovis).
    • In Katniss' case it's a nickname but the drama largely boils down to "The girl who was on fire" against President Snow.
  • The Medic: Katniss's mother and Prim.
  • Memento MacGuffin: The pearl in Mockingjay.
  • Memetic Sex God: Finnick is an in-universe example.
  • Mercy Kill:
    • After Katniss puts out of his misery at the end of the 74th Hunger Games.
    • In Catching Fire, Katniss considers doing this for .
    • have an understanding in 'Mockingjay' that they would kill each other before letting the other get captured, to avoid torture.
  • Mind Control Eyes:
  • Morality Pet: Katniss has Prim and Rue, and Gale has his own younger siblings.
  • More Hero Than Thou: In Catching Fire, are each determined the other will be the survivor.
  • The Mourning After:
    • Katniss's mother goes into a near-catatonic depression after the death of Katniss's father, leaving Katniss to support the family. Even when the mother becomes functional again, she never really gets over his death.
    • In Mockingjay Katniss goes into this after
  • Mushroom Samba: A (mostly) extremely unfunny version thanks to tracker jacker venom.
  • My Own Private I Do: In Catching Fire, .
  • Mystery Meat
  • Named After Somebody Famous: People from the Capitol are often named after Ancient Roman historical figures: Cinna, Caesar (Flickerman), Seneca (Crane), Coriolanus (Snow), Claudius (Templesmith), etc.
  • Neck Snap: Cato to .
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • Katniss' main goal through the second book is to find a way to trick Snow into believing she's in love with Peeta.
    • One can say that the entire series is this.
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: President Snow and the Gamemakers.
  • Nightmare Sequence: Katniss's dreams are usually a horrifying mishmash of bad memories and fear-gripped imagination, like everyone getting their tongues cut out or all her loved ones screaming in agony.
  • Nobody Poops: Bears may shit in woods but tributes, apparently, do not. It wouldn't be so noticeable, except that Collins takes pains to make everything about the Hunger Games and the horrors of the arena seem dirty and uncomfortable and horrible, so in the first book at least it's a glaring omission. They do, however, urinate. Possible justification: if you're exercising a lot (say, fighting in an arena) and not getting much to eat (say, fighting in an arena), your body makes use of more of the food you eat. But you'd think Katniss would've noticed the lack of... Well, whatever.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Given the nature of the beast, it's an inevitability. Even outside the arena, . And they never saw him again.
  • No Name Given: Katniss never learns the names of most of the tributes. She doesn't find out until well after the games are over that the boy from District 1 was named Marvel, even though .
  • Not So Different:
  • Non-Action Guy: Peeta, whose sole moment of badassery is so early on in the games that it's easily outshined by his persistent habit of being The Load.
  • Non-Action Big Bad: President Snow.
  • No Periods, Period: Either the books take places very strategically to avoid this problem or Collins simply overlooked it. Even when Katniss becomes well fed and it's never an issue. and See also: Nobody Poops.
  • Not in This For Your Revolution: It takes Katniss a long time to decide to actively help the revolutionaries instead of just looking out for her own survival.
  • Not Me This Time: When confronted with Snow reveals that he had absolutely nothing to do with it, and in fact it was .
  • Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Slowly occurs over the course of the second book, finally setting in for good at the very last line. Taken Up to Eleven in the third book when Katniss' last routine from home, hunting with Gale, .
  • Nuclear Option: Discussed. have nukes trained on each other, but mutually assured destruction of all humanity keeps them both at bay.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity:
    • Katniss remarks this was Johanna Mason's strategy in her Games: everyone thought she was a sniveling, useless weakling and overlooked her... until she turned out to be a vicious killer who ended up the victor.
    • Oddly enough, Haymitch counts—not only is he quite the strategist in the first Games, but he turns out to be a Not bad for someone most people just think of as the town drunk.
  • Official Couple: Katniss and Peeta (at least, as advertised by the Capitol), and Finnick and Annie. In Mockingjay, .
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • The Ophelia: near the end of the third book, after . Annie is also presented as unstable at the best of times.
  • Opposites Attract
  • Ornamental Weapon: Subverted with Katniss' bow. After all, just because it's pretty doesn't mean it can't be deadly.
  • Orphanage of Fear: It isn't actually seen, but the District 12 community home is said to be like this.
  • Outrun the Fireball: One of the Gamemakers' traps.
  • Planet of Hats: Each of the districts has a different primary industry, which serves as its theme. This is an Invoked Trope in the Hunger Games, since the tributes are each trope are traditionally dressed in ways that reference their theme.
  • Perfect Poison: Nightlock berries. Most of the plants in the Second Quarter Quell.
  • Phobia: develops a fear of water after being tortured with drowning / electrocution.
  • Please Put Some Clothes On: Katniss is flustered by people's nudity on several occasions.
  • Police State: Panem is one. is less openly cruel but even more restrictive.
  • Portmanteau:
    • "Muttation" is a generic in-universe term for a genetically engineered creature, probably derived from "mutt" and "mutation". Lots of things count, like those wolves at the end of the first book, or Jabberjays and Tracker Jackers. Many more exotic variants are introduced in the third book when .
    • Poisonous berries called "nightlock" (nightshade, hemlock).
    • The third book features political ads called "Propo", as in "propaganda points", and a "Communicuff", which is exactly what it sounds like.
  • Present Tense Narrative
  • President Evil: President Snow, especially as time goes on. .
  • Primal Fear: Suzanne Collins seems to be a fan of these... both The Hunger Games and the Underland Chronicles are full of people dying in horrible ways thanks to fire, drowning, bugs (sometimes GIANT bugs) and/or savage animals.
  • Promotion to Parent:
    • The death of Katniss' father and her mother's subsequent depression make her the breadwinner of the family.
    • Gale is also the primary provider for his family after his father's death; his mother helps as best she can, but she's only able to bring in a pittance doing laundry.
  • Prongs of Poseidon: Since he's from the fishing district, Finnick is dangerously adept with a trident.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: Pretty thoroughly.
    • With regard to clothing, it starts with Katniss looking down at the shallow, appearance-centered Panemites but then squealing in delight when Cinna makes her look pretty, and continues from there. Earlier she complains in her inner monologue that Madge's pin could feed a starving family for months, but later when she's given a dress covered in jewels, she makes no similar protest, the narrative instead expressing her awe at how amazing she looks in it.
    • Early in Catching Fire, Katniss complains about the Capitol needlessly wasting food. She seems to have forgotten the scene in the previous book where she throws out the cookies Peeta's father gave her.
    • Later in Catching Fire, Katniss is upset that nothing is different in the arena, saying that she'd hoped the tributes would show restraint. This completely ignores the fact that Katniss was the first tribute in the 75th games to try and attack anyone (Finnick).
    • is so lacking in medical personnel and supplies, people are left with unchanged bandages and untreated infections; their hospital is basically a morgue. Peeta alone, on the other hand, gets a whole team of doctors because he's Katniss's love interest. This is never brought up as morally questionable.
  • Protected by a Child: Near the end of Mockingjay, this is what Snow does to protect himself.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Tributes from Districts 1 and 2 tend to come off this way due to those Districts' practice of training children specifically in order to volunteer for the Hunger Games. As a result, these "Career" Tributes are also far more likely to win than Tributes from other Districts, although Haymitch describes their arrogance as a flaw that can lead to their defeat.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: The ending of Mockingjay.
  • Race Lift: Katniss's race is never stated. She has "olive" skin, but her mother and sister are both blonde, so it's unclear if this trope is in effect with the casting of Jennifer Lawrence in The Movie.
  • Rain of Blood: Literally.
  • Reality Ensues: Pretty much what Mockingjay runs on.
    • Katniss's improvised plan to go behind enemy lines to assassinate President Snow .
    • Some fans found death to be unnecessary and lacking in heroism. But that makes sense in a war.
  • Reality Show: The eponymous games.
  • Regional Speciality: Each district's bread is very distinct.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Katniss , who reminds her of her own little sister Prim back home.
  • Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: Peeta and especially Katniss.
  • The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The third book is FULL of this.
  • Romantic False Lead:
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: In The Hunger Games, this is invoked: Katniss and Peeta fake a romance in order to woo the audience of the Games (or rather, Katniss is the only one faking). In the beginning of Catching Fire, President Snow decides to force her and Peeta into a marriage in order to convince the Districts that her behavior at the end of the 74th Games wasn't rebellious in nature. The rest of Catching Fire revolves around . Quite a bit of Mockingjay is dedicated to gaining Peeta back after he's .
  • Rousing Speech:
    • Katniss tries to give one in the middle of a firefight in District 2.
    • In Catching Fire Katniss makes a beautiful speech in District 11, about her ally Rue.
    • Her "If we burn, you burn with us" speech in Mockingjay is implied to be received well.
  • Rule of Drama: Ties with Rule of Empathy, below. The Capitol loves best those victors who put on a great show.
  • Rule of Empathy: Tributes must be able to invoke sympathy from the Capitol and District audiences. Sympathy will equal sponsors and money for necessities in the arena, and could therefore make the difference in the Games. Peeta, it turns out, is a natural at invoking the Rule of Empathy at the drop of a hat. Katniss is not.
  • Rule of Three: Suzanne Collins loves her powers of three. There are three books. Each book is divided into three parts. Each part contains nine (3x3) chapters.
  • Sacrificial Lion:
  • Say My Name: Especially Katniss' incident in the tree during the first games.
  • Scary Black Man: Thresh.
  • Schizo-Tech: Justified in that the Capitol deliberately suppresses technology in the Districts, especially weapons tech.
  • Screw The Rules We Make Them: The Gamemakers.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Peeta (sensitive) vs. Gale (manly).
  • Sex Slave: In book 3, according to , himself included.
  • Shaggy Dog Story: The story begins in the first book with Katniss sacrificing herself to save Prim's life.
  • Shallow Love Interest: The fandom seems to be split on who this applies to. Gale is either truly the other half of the Official Couple, or he's a Paolo. Similarly, Peeta is either a cunning yet rather hopeless romantic, or a total idiot. Of course, there are also those who think this applies to both characters.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: All of the Victors have some form of PTSD.
  • : In the third book, Katniss and Gale's relationship is increasingly strained, especially after . They may have been able to work past that, but it's when they realize that
  • Shoot the Hostage:
  • Shout-Out:
    • Word of God has stated that Katniss's family name is a reference to the Thomas Hardy character Bathsheba Everdene.
    • Katniss (the "Girl on Fire") is in Squad Four Five One, a reference to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which is another dystopian novel with a fire motif.
  • Shout-Out/To Shakespeare: Lavinia, who has no tongue, is a reference to Titus Andronicus. Titus is also name-dropped, a Tribute who goes cannibal in the games.
  • "Shut Up" Kiss: Katniss does this to Peeta in the cave when he attempts to give her an If I Do Not Return speech. He shuts up.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: Katniss and Prim
  • Simulated Urban Combat Area
  • Single-Target Sexuality: Peeta towards Katniss. He fell in love with her when he was 5 and never fell out of love.
  • Slave to PR: A dominating theme. A likable persona for a tribute wins sponsors: for example, Finnick. It culminates in Mockingjay when . P.R. is possibly the most powerful weapon in The Hunger Games.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The cynicism side. Far, far, far on the cynicism side.
  • Slow Clap: Not exactly an applause, but the whole community of District 12 uses a cultural gesture to show their support of Katniss when she takes her sister's place. District 11 tries this as well
  • Social Services Does Not Exist: Avoided. They exist, they're just the worse alternative.
  • Some Kind of Force Field: Prominent in Catching Fire, causing death or serious injury multiple times.
  • Someone to Remember Him By:
  • Speak Ill of the Dead: Clove talks about , while holding down Katniss near the Cornucopia. Of course, karma sweeps in to save the day, via .
  • The Speechless: Avoxes, traitors who've had their tongues mutilated as punishment.
  • Spoiled Sweet:
    • Katniss's prep team, who are simply too naive to be genuinely mean.
    • Though we aren't one hundred percent sure of his financial situation, probably Cinna, who treats Katniss with respect and the games with disgust despite being from the Capitol.
    • Madge who is the Mayor's daughter, very kind and is one of Katniss' few friends.
  • Spot the Thread: The official, "live-action" shots of District 13 are revealed to be Stock Footage by a mockingjay which flies past the screen.
  • Strange Salute: When Katniss volunteers to take her sister's place, the entire crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hands to their lips, and then holds it out to her. Katniss explains that it's an old District 12 gesture that means thanks, admiration, and goodbye to someone you love. It becomes a little more meaningful later on.
  • Stunned Silence: The first response to Katniss' exchange.
  • Star-Crossed Lovers: Peeta and Katniss pretend to be this to garner sympathy. They eventually do become real lovers, but get out of everything alive, so their stars were not crossed.
  • Super Doc: Outside the poorer districts, medicine is far in advance of our own time.
  • Super Happy Fun Trope of Doom: The role of the Peacekeepers isn't as sweet as it sounds. (Bit like in Real Life, then?) Pretty much everything surrounding the Games is treated as fun and entertaining; being a "tribute" is an honor.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: The tracker jacker wasps do not give up an attack once pissed off. Running away doesn't help.
  • Sure, Let's Go with That: When Caesar Flickerman asks Katniss exactly when she first , she's evasive at first (since at this point ) and then immediately goes along with his first guess.
  • Survival Mantra:
    • Although nonverbal, Finnick's compulsive knotting in Mockingjay.
    • Katniss shares Finnick's knotting habit for a bit in the third book, but has one of her own.
  • Take a Third Option:
  • Take Me Instead!: In the first book, Katniss volunteers to take Prim's place as tribute for District 12.
  • Take That: In universe, the mockingjay becomes an increasingly unsubtle one of these towards the Capitol.
  • Taking the Bullet: During the Quarter Quell, .
  • Tall, Dark and Handsome: Gale.
  • Taking You with Me: Book 1:
  • A Taste of the Lash: in Catching Fire
  • Tears of Remorse: After Katniss's meeting with the Gamemakers.
  • Teenage Wasteland: Subverted. The kids are all right, adult authority in the form of The Capitol is forcing them to kill or be killed.
  • Tempting Fate:
    • In the first book, Katniss reassures her sister Prim that her name won't be drawn for the Hunger Games... Seconds later, that's exactly what happens.
    • If you're referred to as "the girl who was on fire" enough times, eventually you do get actually lit on fire.
  • Theme Naming: The Capitol and District 2 use Roman names to highlight their decadent nature and fondness for gladitorial combat. The nation itself is called Panem, the Latin word for bread. The districts often use names referencing their primary industry.
  • There Are No Therapists:
    • The districts are implied to have therapists, as Katniss's mother was able to somehow gain access to one in order to get hold of drugs to treat her depression. Largely, people do not seem to seek psychological help, though. This could be attributed to a lack of money, however Katniss's family struggles to eat, so...
    • Subverted in : all refugees are given psychological help and local specialists do everything they can to get back to his old self after a Mind Rape. Before , soldiers are checked for possible psychological problems ( gets sent to a mental facility). Katniss also goes through therapy after death, though one might wonder why she didn't get this sort of help earlier.
  • There Can Be Only One: Played straight
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Here, there and everywhere given the nature of the Games. Big mention to
  • Thirteen Is Unlucky: District 13 is the odd district out.
  • Title Drop: Of sorts. In the third book, "Fire is catching" becomes a slogan for the
  • To Absent Friends:
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Katniss and Prim, Katniss and Madge
  • Too Clever by Half: Foxface.
  • Too Happy to Live: in Mockingjay. As soon as , you knew at least one of them was doomed.
  • Trauma Conga Line: By the end, try to count more surviving characters that haven't suffered one without running out of fingers. This is especially endemic amongst the victors of the games as the Capitol torments them to keep them from using their elevated status to foment rebellion.
  • Trick Arrow: Both the flaming and exploding kinds.
  • Try Not to Die: Pretty much everyone's last words to Katniss and Peeta.
  • Unlucky Childhood Friend:
  • Unwitting Pawn: Katniss feels this way, since she's constantly out of the loop.
  • The Uriah Gambit:
    • Attempted by It fails.
    • Katniss being sent might also qualify, if you believe it was rigged by .
  • Useless Spleen: In Mockingjay,
  • Villain Ball: The Capitol seems to hold this on occasion, especially in Catching Fire. There is a lot of Villain Ball discussion relating to the Games themselves, available on the discussion page.
  • Villains Never Lie:
  • Voice of the Resistance: Katniss and her fellow Victors, throughout book 3.
  • Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: There's a joke that Catching Fire and Mockingjay are written almost entirely in sentence fragments.
  • War Is Hell: Absolutely nothing glorious about it.
  • Wartime Wedding:
  • Was It All a Lie?: Peeta's ongoing question to Katniss from the end of the first book all the way to the "Real or not real?" question at the end of the last.
  • Water Wakeup: When Haymitch is in a stupor, only this will rouse him.
  • Weapons Kitchen Sink: Inevitable, given the fact that the Capitol just spreads them around in the Arena and hopes for a sloppy death scenario to increase the "entertainment" value. There's a blackly-comic aside in Book 1 where Katniss mentions how one year the only weapons provided were horribly awkward maces.
  • What Do They See In Her: It's a bit hard to believe that a girl who is mentally unstable, is The Stoic, rarely shows compassion except in extreme circumstances, and only shows love to her little sister or a surrogate of her would be such a catch. Especially considering that there doesn't seem to be any real basis for a relationship with either Love Interest; Peeta's love came from a childhood crush from watching her sing, while her relationship with Gale seems to come from more of a familiarity and common interests (that of 'survival' and 'hunting') than genuine friendship. Although they are teenagers, and both of them seem to be catching onto her flaws by the third book. Oddly enough, the Love Triangle seems to be resolved because Katniss realizes that .
  • Wham! Line:
    • The very first chapter of The Hunger Games:
    • Chapters have a tendency to end with these, such as,
    • Or how about
    • In-universe, Peeta is the acknowledged master of the Wham! Line, particularly when onstage with Caesar Flickerman. In the first book he sets up the Star-Crossed Lovers thing, and in the second he manages an even bigger one:
  • What Happened to the Mouse?:
    • We never learn why Cinna requested District 12 (as he says he did in book 1) and we never find out if Portia did the same. We also have no clue why he doesn't have the Capitol accent or the Capitol sense of style, despite that not making much sense if he's a fashion designer who's lived in the Capitol for his entire life. However, there is a theory stating that his mother had an affair with a Victor, perhaps from District 12, although that would kind of complicate things rather than resolve them. On the other hand, we never learn what happened to the other Victor from 12 apart from Haymitch and whether that one came before him or after.
    • In book 2, Johanna says everyone she loves is dead. Elaboration? Explanation? Don't count on it. There's a popular guess in fanon, though.
    • In the third book Katniss gets a bow with "special properties." She never once mentions them again, uses them, or even explains what those properties are, besides the fact that it can vibrate to say hello. This could be the reason it's able to shoot down planes, though.
    • In Catching Fire Katniss comes across two refugees (Bonnie and Twill) trying to make it to District 13. When Katniss gets there herself, she asks after them, but learns that they never made it. We never find out what actually happened to them.
  • What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Subverted. and thinks his power to love is much better than her ability to kill things.
  • When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Given the nature of the arena used by the Quarter Quell.
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The Districts have a few geographical clues but otherwise the readers don't really learn where they are. That didn't stop people from trying to map it, though.
  • White Knighting: Gale subtly blames Katniss of being a female version. The only way for a man to get noticed by her is to suffer so terribly that she feels obliged to tend and care for them.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Tough-as-nails is undone by water... because when she was a prisoner of the Capitol, they soaked her and then electrocuted her as part of her torture.
  • Will Not Be a Victim: Invoked and then exploited. It's how won her Hunger Games.
  • The Worf Effect: in Book 1.
  • Working Title: The working title of the first novel was The Tribute of District Twelve.
  • Wreathed in Flames: Part of Katniss's symbology (along with being a mockingjay).
  • Writers Cannot Do Math:
    • In Catching Fire, Katniss describes the Cornucopia as being 40 yards away from the launch platform, which is located in a circular lagoon. There are twelve spokes of land separating the 24 tributes, and Katniss is equidistant from the land strip and the adjacent tribute platform. If you do all the calculations, it turns out that Katniss is about seven yards from the nearest land strip. Katniss has to swim this distance, and describes it as "a longer distance than [she's] used to swimming" back in the lake outside District 12.
    • Reapings are supposed to take place in early springtime. The reaped go to ceremonies, etc, that last about a week or two at most, the 75th Hunger Games last a few days tops, and Roughly four weeks pass between the end of the 75th games and the beginning of Mockingjay, and yet somehow five or six weeks after , it's a week from September.
  • Would Hit a Girl: There are just as many girls as boys in each Hunger Game, ensuring a lot of this.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Isn't that right, ?
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: The people living in the Capitol dye their hair some pretty wild colors.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
    • Leads to Cato snapping the neck of boy in the first book.
    • towards the end of Mockingjay.
  • You Killed My Father:
    • In Mockingjay,
    • Katniss understands that if the conditions were not so bad in the coal mines due to the decadent lifestyle in the Capitol and the corrupt government, her father would not have died in the mine accident.
  • Your Favorite: Katniss at one point receives food including the stew she stated in an interview was her favorite thing about the Capitol. In Mockingjay, Peeta finds a can of the same stew and presents it to Katniss when the team scavenges a meal.
  • X Meets Y: The media tends to treat the series as Twilight with gladiators. The actors have made a point of downplaying the love triangle by answering "Team Peeta or Team Gale?" with "Team Katniss."
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