Silo

"What we see is not what's out there. It's what they want us to think is out there."

— Allison Becker

• Aborted Arc: Judge Meadows, the almost-omnipotent head of Judicial and unofficial head of the Silo, disappears almost immediately after being revealed as a depressed, powerless puppet for IT sick with a mysterious illness. She makes a return in season 2 for a different plot.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul:
  • Deputy Marnes is initially more suspicious of Juliette than in the first book, where he is friendly and supportive from the start.
  • Juliette comes to trust Billings a lot more in season 1 than she did in the first half of the book.
  • Walker and McLain are old lovers instead of mere fellow members of the Rebellion, which also makes Walker willing to betray the other engineers, which Walker would have never dreamed of doing in the books, to keep McLain safe.
  • While it is implied in the book that Solo might have killed some of Rick's loved ones in a panicked encounter years before he and Juliette find the group in hiding, the kids seem unaware of this, while the show outright has the older family member call him "The Killer" and constantly hide from or stalk him in the hopes of avenging their past losses.
  • Lukas doesn't start the show as a Naïve Newcomer trusted protégé of Bernard but rather is first viewed as a dangerous maverick by Bernard before being made a Boxed Crook.
  • Sims aspires to be Bernard's shadow and will blindly follow his orders (at least for the first season and a half), while he views Bernard as merely a bodyguard charge in the books.
• Adaptation Name Change: Several characters in the novellas have their names changed in the TV adaptation.
  • Peter Billings in the novellas is changed to Paul Billings in the TV adaptation.
  • Jimmy Parker is changed to Jimmy Conroy.
  • Donald Keene is changed to Daniel.
• After the End: The narrative unfolds 350 years after an obscure catastrophic event rendered Earth's surface uninhabitable.
• Ambition Is Evil: Sims is motivated primarily by ambition rather being a Well-Intentioned Extremist like many of the other villains. Bernard points to this as one of the reasons why he did not make Sims his shadow. The Head of IT has to care about the whole Silo and its people and not only about himself. Though this is later turned on its head when Bernard cites a lack of selfish curiosity as a reason.
• And Starring: Tim Robbins receives the prestigious "And" credit placement in the opening sequence, highlighting his status as an established star within the ensemble cast.
• The Ark: The network of fifty silos functions as humanity's last refuge, each designed to sustain exactly 10,000 people with carefully engineered systems for air, water, food, and population control — a modern Noah's Ark buried beneath the poisoned world.
• Artificial Outdoors Display: A central mystery revolves around the question of whether the authorities are deceiving the population by projecting fake images of the outside world onto the viewing screens to discourage them from leaving the Silo. This theory is eventually disproven. The deception lies in the helmets, which display a virtual reality environment when someone exits.
• Artistic Title: The visually striking title sequence employs abstract imagery and symbolic elements that foreshadow key themes of confinement, surveillance, and hidden truths.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: The shift from standard 16:9 format in Season 1 to cinematic 2.35:1 in Season 2 visually signifies the expanding scope of the narrative as the world beyond Silo 18 is explored.
• Authority in Name Only: Nominally, the Silo's Judge is the head of Judicial. In practice, however, the position is just a rubber stamp, with the real power in the department being the head of the Raiders, who in turn answers to the head of IT.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Multiple characters successfully bluff their way through staircase checkpoints by confidently invoking higher authority and threatening guards with consequences if delayed, a tactic that never fails to cow the guards.
• The Beforetimes: The literal In-Universe name for the period before the world was destroyed and what was left of humanity were left locked away in the Silo. This knowledge was deliberately suppressed when Salvador Quinn and his rebellion 140 years ago systematically destroyed all historical documents, leaving society disconnected from its origins. Additionally, the citizens were administered drugs to erase any memories of the past, ensuring complete separation from their history.]].
• Big Brother Is Watching: Judicial stamps out anybody who questions the structure of their community. Gloria turns on the faucet while asking Allison some subversive questions, claiming they have "listeners"; Billings later confirms this and says that the "listeners" aren't even recorded citizens.
• Born After the End: Everyone living in the Silo was born centuries after the outside world was destroyed and rendered toxic, and records of those times have long since been lost, so even when anyone stumbles on something left over from The Beforetimes, they tend to have no idea what it is. The family unit acting to opposition to Solo in Silo 17 were born after the majority of that Silo's population were killed trying to exit, rendering even the remnant of civilization contained there extinct; they don't even know what things like music or last names are.
• Central Theme: Characters repeatedly face moral dilemmas between serving the collective good of the silo and protecting their personal interests or loved ones. The narrative consistently shows how choosing self-interest, while humanly understandable, often triggers devastating consequences.

  Bernard to Sims: We are facing extinction, and you chose to protect your family before the Silo.

• City in a Bottle: Each silo exists as a completely self-contained vertical metropolis with its own power generation, manufacturing, agriculture, governance, and culture that has evolved in isolation over centuries.
• Closed Circle: Trapped within their silo, the inhabitants have no escape. The hostile wasteland outside ensures that leaving isn't an option, turning the silo into a claustrophobic microcosm where every choice, rebellion, or secret reverberates within its unyielding confines.
• Cruel Mercy: The Silo's regular method of capital punishment is to send offenders outside into the world, where some of them wanted to go in the first place. The problem is, no one's ever lasted three minutes outside.
• Dead Man Walking: The cleaning ritual becomes a form of public execution with plausible deniability. Anyone who requests to exit (or is forced out) becomes a walking corpse marked for certain death, with the cleaning serving as their final act of service to the community.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Posted outside the silo is a camera showing the outside world. The silo executes people by sending them out to clean, the expectation being that cleaners will inevitably die on camera and reinforce that the silo is the only safe refuge. The flaws in this become apparent in the season finale and into season 2: Juliette is able to survive longer thanks to having her suit sealed with better tape, and Solo relates how his silo went into a full rebellion simply because their last cleaner just walked around the back where no one could see him die.
  • Mechanical is frequently demonized for problems because they're at the bottom of the silo, both quite literally and in terms of social structure due to how long it takes to get down there. It seems not to occur to anyone that the people who can shut down the silo on a moment's notice (or worse if they're very desperate) probably shouldn't be antagonized. Knox even exploits this once the latest rebellion starts picking up steam, leveraging Mechanical's control over the power to drive a wedge between the upper floors and leadership. That this cycle has repeated itself several times and hasn't doomed the whole silo is nothing short of amazing, and it did in fact doom Silo 17 because their Judicial stupidly flooded the lower levels and no one could fix their sabotage in time.
• Enforced Technology Levels:
  • The Pact specifically prohibits the Silo residents from building an elevator or any other mechanized means of transportation up and down, meaning a giant spiral staircase is the only way for residents to travel. The Silo is way too big to constantly travel on foot, so residents generally stick to the same few stories, leading to a natural class divide between the three zones.
  • The Pact also prohibits magnification beyond a certain power. Juliette's mother runs afoul of this restriction when she builds a magnifying machine to assist with surgery.
• Fictional Holiday:
  • Freedom Day, the annual celebration of the last rebellion's defeat. It is a day of rest and jubilation for most, and citizens congregate at the Silo's central shaft to listen to the mayor give a speech of commemoration.
  • Silo 17 previously celebrated Founders' Day to honor the builders of the Silo.
• Final Solution: Whoever created the silos built in a failsafe that pumps in enough poison to kill everyone in the silo. In the season 2 finale, Juliette learns of the failsafe and rushes back to the Silo to warn them and possibly stop it, based on what she learned from Silo 17 successfully blocking it in theirs.
• Foil: Billings and Sims are both bearded black men who hold leading law enforcement positions, get promoted, work hard to keep people obeying the Pact while secretly violating certain parts of it, ultimately end up doubting and opposing the mayor on key issues, and are loving husbands and fathers. But Sims enforces the rules as part of his involvement in conspiracy, murder, and political scheming and feuds with Bernard because Bernard assigns him to a figurehead judge position while replacing him at his vital old job with a less competent subordinate during a time of crisis, all the while refusing to give him the desired promotion that would increase Sims' power and give him better understanding of the purpose of his lifelong task. Billings is a By-the-Book Cop who obeys the Pact because of respect for the law (except for hiding a medical condition he has) and a desire for people to be free and secure. His acts of defiance after being promoted to sheriff come to realize that the mayor may be a murderer who is hiding important information about the surface world and only made him sheriff due to thinking he'd be a blindly obedient stooge.
• Foreshadowing: The series is fond of this.
  • In the first episode, Holston says that if everyone likes him, he's not doing his job as sheriff. He is considered the best sheriff the Silo's ever had, yet has never arrested or even investigated its most dangerous and prolific criminals.
  • The big twist at the end of the first season can be anticipated by a few scenes.
    • Allison investigates the old drive and sees the footage of a lush exterior with birds flying by in formation, leading her to believe the image of the outside has been faked. When Sheriff Holston is sent out to clean, he sees the lush exterior and the birds flying by in formation. The same formation. At the same time.
    • Allison is sent out to clean and quickly dies still wearing her suit, and if the outside is safe as she assumes, then this would suggest the suit's air supply is either rather small or poisoned in some fashion. Holston pops off his helmet, but dies just as quickly.
    • Juliette stole some heat tape from IT when Mechanical ran out, and they seemed really pissed off about, by her estimation, sub-standard tape they could have easily replaced. This tape is used to seal the suits when people are sent out to clean. As Juliette learns when she goes out, had she been given the crappy tape and not the good stuff Mechanical is supplied with, she would have been poisoned by the toxic air.
  • Solo's childlike speech pattern and nostalgia about visiting an old classroom while remembering the students are both strong hints about just how long he's been alone and how old he was when it started.
  • When Judge Meadows tells Bernard about The Wizard of Oz and The Man Behind the Curtain, he thinks she's comparing him to the Wizard before she clarifies it's referring to her own figurehead status, and she compares herself to the Wizard leaving in his balloon by saying she wants a suit to go outside herself. In the season finale, Lukas telling Bernard what he's learned about the forces controlling the silos causes Bernard to conclude that he really is just as powerless and trapped as Meadows and the Wizard despite his apparent omniscience and authority, driving him to decide to go out in his suit just like Meadows wanted to.
• Great Offscreen War: The Rebellion, a long-ago insurrection against the leadership of the Silo, is constantly mentioned as an event that helped shape many of the current rules of the Silo.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: Bernard explains to Lukas that Salvador Quinn's erasure of history ushered in 140 years of peace—without knowledge of the past, the silo's inhabitants have no reason to rebel against what they've lost.
• In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face: The suits' helmets feature internal lights, illuminating the wearer's face even in the darkest corners of the silo or beyond.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Judicial has access to a drug that induces amnesia over a set period, depending on the dose.
• Lost Common Knowledge:
  • People in the silo have very little knowledge of the world outside, and even basic skills like swimming have understandably fallen into obscurity because there's no large body of water apart from the reservoir at the lowest levels. Lukas is considered dangerous because he independently deduces the nature of the world and the stars, basic concepts that the silo does not teach. In Season 2 when Juliette tells Solo how she deduced that the video shown of the outside is fake, she can only describe the birds flying in formation as "creatures", Solo correcting her on the proper name.
  • Rick and his group have no idea what music or last names are.
  • Silo residents who are up to something take precautions to avoid being overheard, to the point that Regina Jackson has coated her entire apartment in metal plates in an attempt to block the microphones. But they've never heard of videos and have very little knowledge of cameras, let alone hidden cameras. IT can freely spy on every corner of the Silo, without even making much effort to hide it, because regular residents have no idea that IT can see them.
• The Needs of the Many: The governing principle by which silo authorities justify questionable or even cruel decisions. Bernard's explicit statement that "the needs of the many require the sacrifices of the few" encapsulates the utilitarian philosophy underpinning the silo's social order.
• Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer: Characters habitually tease discoveries with vague enticements like "Come and see" or "I'll show you." Solo exemplifies this when urging Juliette to follow him to the crucial Safety Procedure document rather than simply explaining its significance.
• Never Suicide: George died by falling off a rail with no witnesses. Juliette maintains that it was murder, not suicide, because he was intent on telling her something important the day before, and spends the show trying to verify her suspicion. It's eventually revealed that he killed himself after all — but only to avoid interrogation and torture by Judicial agents.
• Ominous Multiple Screens: IT's control room features an imposing wall of monitors, enabling constant surveillance of the silo's citizens.
• Population Control: Living in a giant underground silo means that romantic relationships have to be sanctioned. Sex for procreation is heavily regulated, and everyone has mandatory birth control. The first scene of the Beckers' married life is when they are delighted that they have been approved to try for a baby. They have one year afterwards to get pregnant. There's even more control behind the scenes, as it's revealed that doctors are sometimes instructed not to actually remove certain women's birth control implants to prevent "the wrong people" (either because of undesirable genetic traits or because they ask too many questions) from having children. It's implied that Pete Nichols was told not to remove Hanna's birth control implant when they won their lottery, but he took it out anyway—twice.
• Secret Room: The large, restricted area beneath Mechanics, known only to a select few and concealed behind innocuous "Do Not Proceed" signage, serves as both literal and metaphorical representation of the silo's buried secrets.
• Shout-Out: The series includes numerous literary and film references:
  • Judge Meadows secretly possesses a forbidden copy of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' and negotiates with Bernard to exit the silo like the Wizard departed in a hot air balloon.
  • Solo introduces several cultural touchstones:
    • Playing "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's on his record player.
    • Comparing Juliette's generator dive to Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
    • Quoting Romeo and Juliet in clever wordplay with Juliette's name.
• Sinister Surveillance: Ordinary citizens remain largely unaware of IT's extensive monitoring capabilities, which extend into private homes and personal conversations, creating an invisible system of social control.
• Stacked Characters Poster: The series' poster has Juliette as the protagonist prominently positioned in the center, towering over a selection of supporting characters stacked beneath her.
• State Sec: While the Sheriff's department handles day-to-day law enforcement matters, Judicial is in charge of dishing out punishments, and their Raiders are the ones to handle the crushing of any technology deemed too advanced for the status quo, as well as being the ones tasked with putting down potential rebellions.
• Tampering with Food and Drink:
  • Mayor Jahn and Judge Meadows get killed by Bernard with rat poison.
  • In case of a rebellion in the lower levels, the standard procedure is to starve them out. This not only means cutting all food deliveries to the rebelling levels, but also sabotaging any food stores they already have. When we see it happen, the saboteur used rat poison but alerted everyone to its presence so the contaminated food would be disposed of without anyone dying.
• Technologically Advanced Foe: Played with. The residents of the Silo have never heard of videos, and the only camera that they know about is the one outside. But turns out there are cameras all over the Silo, allowing IT to freely spy on everyone. The computers most people use are clunkers that look like they are from the 1970s, while IT has technology decades ahead of that with fancy flatscreen displays. The Vault has a transparent screen as its main display, and Bernard has a VR headset that shows video of the world as it used to be.
• Terminally Dependent Society: Each silo's survival hinges entirely on functioning power generators, demonstrated dramatically when Silo 17's population perishes following catastrophic generator flooding.
• There Are No Therapists: While we do not see dedicated professional therapists, it is made clear mental health is a priority in the silo. In particular it is implied that everyone is educated on the warning signs to watch out for when someone is suicidal.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • Keeping keepsakes is a character beat for Juliette, who keeps wearing her boyfriend George's watch that he gifted to her past his death, even though it's nearly old enough to be an illegal relic and their relationship was unsanctioned. A flashback in the fourth episode reveals that she also kept one of her younger brother's stuffed animals as a memento.
  • The Georgia kids' travel book that Gloria and her family have kept hidden away for years also counts. Gloria risks everything to get one last look at a picture of the ocean in it.
• Unspecified Apocalypse: For the world as a whole. Some sort of tragedy befell the world and the Silo was built to save humanity, but the why and how of it is a mystery. When Bernard makes Lukas his shadow, he admits to Lukas that no one knows why the Silo exists; it was built three centuries ago by an unknown party and even he can't figure out why.
  • The season 2 epilogue suggests the catastrophic event was connected to a military conflict with Iran, specifically involving the deployment of dirty bombs.
• Urban Segregation: The silo's vertical structure enforces rigid class stratification, with limited mobility between upper, middle and lower sections creating distinct social castes. Residents of each level develop prejudices against those from others, reinforcing the divisions.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Justified by Enforced Technology Levels, manual labor dominates, especially in the grueling iron mines, since advanced machinery is forbidden.

• Bothering by the Book: When Sims attempts to sideline Juliette, she and Billings cleverly turn his own bureaucracy against him, citing specific Pact regulations to authorize his arrest.

  Juliette: You're under arrest for breaking Pact investigation protocol.

  Billings: Section 14, subsection 3, paragraph 12B.

  Juliette: And illegal search and seizure.

  Billings: Section 23, subsection 19, paragraph 6.

• Chekhov's Gun: The heat tape Juliette stole from IT, which initially put her on Bernard's radar, and she doesn't get why they were so mad about it. Turns out that that tape was intentionally of poor quality, to ensure that people who went out to clean didn't come back, and Juliette could have unintentionally blown the whole ruse if she had thought to ask a few more questions.
• Cliffhanger: Episode 8 concludes with Juliette's apparent suicide leap from a railing into the silo's central chasm, only for the next episode to reveal she landed safely on a lower walkway.
• Convection, Schmonvection: In reality, Juliette would probably have ended up cooked in the steam chamber trying to avoid the overheating.
• Destroy the Evidence: Bernard destroys the hard drive with a hammer, later regretting the decision and has Lukas Reconstruct the Remains.
• Destroy the Security Camera: Down Deep residents systematically eliminate surveillance cameras in their territory, reclaiming privacy and limiting IT's control over their activities.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Billings' "syndrome" paralleling LGBTQ+ struggles — he lives in shame, hiding his hand tremors because they're condemned by The Pact, eventually experiencing a coming out moment followed by social sanctions.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: With a hacker's help, Juliette broadcasts a video showing the lush landscape to all monitors in the control room. Bernard commands the staff to avert their eyes and quickly reverses the override.
• Flashback B-Plot: The narrative alternates between present events and Juliette's childhood, gradually revealing formative experiences that shaped her character and connections to key figures.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: During the generator shutdown, the external display briefly shows a lush, green environment instead of the desolate wasteland. This turns out to be a Red Herring when it's revealed that the external display was not tampered with.
• Hairpin Lockpick: After being handcuffed to a pipe in Juliette's home, Camille ingeniously frees herself using a bent keyring wire, showcasing her resourcefulness.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Martha says that she called her surrogate daughter Juliette's boyfriend George in for help with a computer problem. There was no problem — Martha built the computer — but she used it as an excuse to threaten him not to hurt Juliette.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: When Juliette is speaking with Bernard in private to inform him of what she's learned about The Conspiracy in Judicial, he asks where she's hiding the hard drive that can expose them, which she hasn't mentioned to him yet. He actually seems annoyed with himself for the slip-up, while she panics as she realizes that he is actually the one in charge of the conspiracy.
• Libation for the Dead: In a silo-appropriate twist, mourners toss half-eaten apples into open graves as a tribute to the departed, recontextualizing mourning in a resource-scarce society.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: During the critical generator repair sequence, Juliette inexplicably abandons the actual repair to her assistant while personally taking on the dangerous cooling task—a narrative contrivance that creates a dramatic drowning hazard sequence for the protagonist.
• Power Outage Plot: The show is set in an underground structure with over a hundred floors, all powered by a large main generator. The generator hasn't been shut down for major fixes in the silo's centuries-long history, but it is teetering on the verge of collapse, threatening the thousands of people who live in the silo with perpetual darkness. Juliette manages to get the mayor to agree to an eight-hour silo-wide blackout as the engineers risk their lives to fix it. This also leads to discomfort among the residents, who are gathered in shelters.
• Public Execution: Because the outside world is thought to be toxic and dangerous, condemnation to go outside and 'clean' the silo's sensors is understood as a death sentence. When Allison says she wants to go outside, Mayor Jahn immediately muses that people will be raring to watch this one because there hasn't been a cleaning in some time. However, it's clear that some of the viewers actually want the cleaners to survive the experience, because that would show that the outside world is habitable.
• Race Against the Clock: The mechanical team has 30 minutes to repair the generator before the overheating steam chamber explodes. They succeed Just in Time.
• Red Herring: Throughout the season, viewers are deliberately led to suspect that the outside world might not actually be uninhabitable, and that residents are being deceived about external conditions for sinister purposes. This carefully cultivated suspicion is subverted in the season finale, when it's revealed that the apparent deception works in reverse—the VR displays in the suits' helmets were projecting false imagery of a habitable environment, while the actual exterior remains truly devastated as originally claimed.
• Right Through the Wall: Allison and Holston have sex in his sheriff's office despite his protests that his coworkers can hear. In the other room, their coworkers' knowing smiles and chuckles inform the audience that they definitely can, though given the population controlled setting, they are indulgent and accommodating instead of embarrassed.
• Rising Water, Rising Tension: In the third episode, Juliette — who has a preestablished fear of water — enters the chamber with the steam valve with a hose to try and cool it down. This buys them some time to fix the generator's rotor blades before the valve blows, but the water slowly rises as Jules screams in fear and pain. Her head eventually goes under, but Cooper manages to get the last rotor blade in in the nick of time, and Jules is rescued by her coworkers.
• Secret Compartment: Due to the pervasive secrecy within the Silo, people have developed methods for concealing documents and artifacts:
  • George's ex-girlfriend hides a family-heirloom picture book inside her doormat.
  • Items are tucked behind duct vents in homes.
  • Juliette uncovers a hidden cabinet section in Holston's office containing files on dissidents like Walker and her mother.
• Self-Surgery: In the first episode, Allison Becker cuts out her own contraceptive implant when she realizes that the Silo doctors are deliberately not removing implants from some people as a way of controlling who has children.
• So Happy Together: Marnes and Mayor Jahns share an intimate scene confessing their love and planning their future together, only for Jahns to die minutes later from poisoned wine, making their happiness tragically brief.
• Spotting the Thread: Both Holston and Allison died thinking they were seeing the true outside world clean and filled with life. Juliette later sees that same video and thus thinking the views of a ruined outside were an illusion so the Silo bosses could maintain control. When, in the finale, Juliette is sent outside, she once more sees the clear, healthy world of trees, sun and birds...and then it hits her that the birds are flying in the exact same formation they were in the "earlier" video. Juliette thus realizes that the feed in the helmets is the faked video and the outside really is poisonous (as proven by the bodies of Allison and Holston nearby).
• Time Skip: The series' prologue concludes with Allison's death outside the Silo, followed by a two-year jump forward in the narrative.
• Together in Death: After being sent to clean, Holston crawls over to his wife Allison's abandoned body and dies next to her. Lampshaded by Juliette who immediately recognizes this to be his intent.
• Trash Landing: Juliette survives a fall down the garbage shaft by landing on a cushy pile of refuse.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The rebellion's scheme to trap the Raiders in the lower levels and free captives above remains undisclosed to viewers—and executes flawlessly as a result.
• Video Wills: George leaves Juliette a recorded message on the hard drive confessing his love and explaining his initial motives for using her, providing emotional closure across death's threshold.
• Walk of Shame: After capturing Juliette, Sims parades her, bound and shackled, from the silo's depths to its peak for all to see.
• Wham Shot: In the final scene of the season, the reveal of the outside of the Silo — a barren, desolate wasteland just like the cameras have shown this whole time — and the dozens of other identical Silos all right next to one another.
• You Have Failed Me: The fate of Trumbull after botching two frame-ups and trying to kill Juliette in front of a massive crowd. Sims gets fed up and chucks him off the stairs, and uses the forged suicide note meant for one of the frame-ees on him.
• You Owe Me: Juliette successfully enlists Kennedy's help by invoking his debt after she previously saved his life.

• Abandoned Area: Juliette finds Silo 17 in a state of eerie desertion and decay, with Solo and a lone family as the only surviving inhabitants in a once-populated structure.
• After-Action Patch-Up: Following their confrontation with Amundsen, Shirley tends to Knox's injuries in an intimate moment that subtly establishes their budding romantic connection.
• Annoying Arrows: Juliette and Solo are both walking around without any signs of pain or immobility within about a day after being shot in the shoulder with arrows by Audrey.
• Bait-and-Switch: Knox announces that he knows who the snitch is. In reality, it's Walker, who is snitching to save her ex-wife. He then visits Walker and tells her that Teddy is snitching to protect his mother. He gives a penetrating stare at Walker when saying that Teddy would do anything for his loved one. He seems to be trying to flush Walker into revealing herself, but Walker doesn't seem to break character, and Knox continues revealing rebellion secrets to her, suggesting that he's not onto her after all. Later, it's revealed that he did know that Walker was the snitch, but it was because she'd already told him beforehand, and everything he'd been saying to Walker past that point was a shared ruse between them.
• Batman Gambit: In the season finale, the rebels leak fake plans to threaten to blow up the generator to Bernard, causing him to send in the whole army of Raiders down to round up the rebels and secure the generator... at which point the rebels use their real bomb to blow the stairs, trapping the Raiders on the lower levels while the captured rebels are freed by the upper level sheriffs, giving them effective control of the Silo.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Cooper's decision to defect to the rebellion stems directly from Juliette saving everyone's life during the generator emergency, personal gratitude overriding institutional loyalty.
• Beeping Computers: The laptop Bernard provides to Lukas emits distinctive electronic sounds during operation, sonically signaling its advanced technological nature.
• Bluff the Eavesdropper: Walker reveals to Knox that she's Bernard's snitch through hand signals, so all of their spoken conversations from that point on become a bluff to misdirect Bernard about their plans.
• Broken Faceplate: In a desperate move, Juliette smashes her helmet's faceplate with a crowbar in Silo 17 to escape suffocation as her oxygen dwindles.
• Chekhov's Classroom: Solo's detailed explanation of decompression sickness ("the bends") and prevention techniques foreshadows Juliette's later need to apply precisely this knowledge.
• Cliffhanger: The season finale ends with Juliette and Bernard trapped in the airlock of Silo 18 as flames engulf the chamber from both sides.
• Confess to a Lesser Crime: In a sense. After Juliette makes it over the hill, Bernard knows that he can't deny what happened because people saw it. Instead, he spins a lie about IT developing a new kind of tape to seal the suits that allowed her to survive for longer, in essence admitting IT knew their tape was crap, but framing it as a flaw they ironed out rather than deliberate sabotage to kill the cleaners. This way, anyone seeking to counter his narrative first has to disprove his story.
• Corpse Land: The wasteland reveals its true horror when Juliette stumbles upon thousands of decomposed bodies—the former inhabitants of Silo 17 who perished in the toxic atmosphere.
• Cradling Your Kill: After poisoning Judge Meadows, Bernard — torn by affection — holds her tenderly on a sofa until she slips away.
• December–December Romance: Deputy Marnes and Mayor Jahn are both getting on in years. Their interactions together have definite romantic overtones, but this is tragically cut short when Jahns is poisoned shortly after.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Cooper succumbs to a Raider's bullet, cradled by Knox and Shirley in his final moments.
• Downer Beginning: This season opens with the residents of a dying silo successfully rebelling against IT and then forcing open the doors to the outside. We see them charging outside full of hope and then we cut to the present where the area around that silo's door is covered in hundreds of skeletons, including those of children.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: A shot of the U.S. Capitol situates the pre-apocalypse epilogue in Washington D.C..
• False Flag Operation: Bernard manipulates public sentiment by staging a firebombing incident involving rebels, following what Judge Meadows identifies as "the Order's playbook" for manufacturing crises that justify harsh responses. He escalates to framing Mechanical for Judge Meadows' murder to rally the silo against Down Deep.
• Famous Ancestor: The family that makes wool for the cleanings is descended from Salvador Quinn, the leader of the Rebellion of 140 years ago and the earliest identified head of IT, although they have a different view of his legacy than most people.
• Flirty Step Siblings: Rick and Audrey each lost one parent as young children (if not earlier) and had their surviving parents become a couple and have a son together later on. Now, as older teenagers, they have their own baby together, although there only being one other person their age left in all of Silo 17 makes them coming together that way more understandable.
• Frame-Up: Bernard strategically implicates Shirley and Knox in Judge Meadows' murder, using their supposed guilt to unite the silo against Down-Deep rebels.
• Graffiti of the Resistance: The deepest sections of the Silo have the names of dead people from rebellions written on the walls along with cryptic messages that Knox eventually realizes were meant to warn future engineers about how they always get blamed for rebellion.
• Groin Attack: When a guard attempts to detain Lukas, Lukas incapacitates him with a strategic kick to the groin, followed by an appology before running off.
• Hand Signals: When Bernard is gloating about having triumphed over the rebellion, Walker reveals that Mechanical has developed hand signals to talk non-verbally over the loud roar of the generator. He thought she was feeding him inside information, when in fact she warned Knox about what was happening the second she could, and Bernard has just been led into a trap.
• Hard-Work Montage: Lukas pores over books in a montage, racing to decode Salvador Quinn's cipher.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the Season 2 finale, Pete Nichols stays behind to set off the bomb that the rebels use to destroy the stairs and trap the raiders in the lower levels, after the only timer for it was previously lost.
• History Repeats: The discovery of "Ron Tucker lives" graffiti in Silo 17 creates a powerful parallel to Silo 18's "Juliette lives" rallying cry, suggesting cyclical patterns of rebellion and suppression across the silos.
• Icon of Rebellion:
  • The La Résistance that starts forming in Season 2 marks its presence with the graffiti tag "JL" meaning "Juliette Lives", as Juliette being sent outside and surviving long enough to make it over the hill starts making people doubt what the Silo's leadership is telling them about the world (with Solo later telling Juliette almost the same thing happened with a man named Ron Tucker in Silo 17, graffiti and all). It only takes a few days for items with connection to Juliette to start being traded on the black market as valuable talismans..
  • A man named Salvador Quinn was apparently the rebel leader and icon during the Rebellion that happened 140 years ago. Present day Silo dwellers, including Quinn's own descendants, revile his name for the death and destruction he instigated. In truth, Quinn was the head of IT back then and had to take drastic measures, including making himself into a scapegoat, to quell the Rebellion and protect the Silo from the Safeguard protocol. Bernard tells Lukas that Quinn was a hero.
• I Have Your Wife: Bernard blackmails Walker into undermining Mechanical by promising to keep Carla safe as long as Walker cooperates, whereas resistance would earn her a Fate Worse than Death.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: The Silo 17 sheriff talking in this season's premiere about how someone died because his hand slipped is later revealed to be referring to when he was holding a gun to Russell Conroy's head to make Solo open the vault and his hand slipping referred to the trigger or the safety.
• Impeded Communication: IT can block computer communication within the Silo and even disable radios (which probably require repeaters to get through all that concrete). Bernard is forced to do so when Billings sides with Mechanical after Bernard's attempt to frame them.
• Jail Bake: Shirley smuggles a note to Juliette in her holding cell concealed within a food delivery, employing a classic prison communication technique.
• Kicked Upstairs: After resorting to killing Judge Meadows in a False Flag Operation against Mechanical, Bernard promotes Sims to take her place, because he blames Sims for letting the situation devolve to this point, so he wants to stick him in a position that's Authority in Name Only.
• La Résistance: One starts brewing among the lower levels of the Silo inspired by Juliette managing to survive outside long enough to make it over the hill.
• Lethally Stupid: Silo 17 was doomed because some idiots in Judicial who thought it would be a great idea to stomp out a rebellion in Mechanical by flooding the lower level. They disabled a key water pump and by the time the sabotage was noticed, it was too late. The flooding could not be stopped and when the generator flooded and shut down, the Silo and its inhabitants were doomed and even the sheriff was desperate enough to turn Rebel.
• Let Me at Him!: In an inverse of their usual Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamics, Shirley has to push Knox back from charging at Bernard and Sims after they see Judge Meadows murdered and realize they are being framed for it.
• Locked Room Mystery: A brief one occurs in episode 4 when the body of Patrick Kennedy vanishes from the Down-Deep morgue after the doctor locked it up and went home. Hank and Billings later realize that Patrick is probably still alive and let himself out.
• Mistaken for Name: Solo shares the charming origin of his moniker — when asked who he was with at an event, he replied "I am solo," which a nearby child misinterpreted as his actual name, an identity that ultimately stuck.
• Morton's Fork: When the Silo 17 Rebel Leader and his wife discuss whether to believe what the head of IT says about the toxic air outside, they note that if he is telling the truth, they'll be doomed anyway if they stay inside, due to how the flooding lower levels will implicitly keep the Silo from supporting the full population much longer.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Juliette's gamble in the Season 1 finale may have gotten her past the hill and into another silo, but it also stokes the embers of a rebellion that could get the entire silo killed, which happened to the silo she finds. Her driving motivation in Season 2 is fixing her suit so she can get back and warn them.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: A couple thanks Dr. Pete Nichols for enabling their pregnancy, unaware he's meant to sabotage it, unknowingly twisting the knife over his daughter's death and pushing him to defy orders.
• Once More, with Clarity: The first scene of "The Safeguard" shows the earlier events in Silo 17 from Rick and his family's previously unknown perspectives, such as how Juliette's rope broke while climbing because Audrey cut it, and she only didn't drown after the fall because Rick tossed an impromptu floatation device into the water while she was briefly submerged.
• Outside-Context Problem: Meadows warns Bernard that Juliette is special and the coming crisis will be different than anything that Bernard has been trained to deal with. If he tries to follow the standard manual, he will only make things worse. She suggests that he change strategies and try to turn Mechanical into allies rather than enemies. Bernard does not listen and sees the situation spiral out of control once Knox starts to counter the by-the-book attacks.
• Pensieve Flashback: In his family home, Solo relives a childhood memory, watching his younger self and parents argue in the same physical space where he stands in the present.
• Playing Possum: Hope fakes death to lure Juliette in, then springs an ambush.
• Public Secret Message: Salvador Quinn ingeniously embedded hidden communications by strategically underlining specific letters throughout The Pact, which when assembled, reveal crucial information.
• Reclaimed by Nature: Silo 17's long abandonment is visually communicated through vegetation overtaking various sections.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: Hope admits Silo 17's survivors resorted to eating rats after the collapse.
• Revised Ending: The different versions of Romeo and Juliet circulating in Silos 17 and 18 reveal how narratives are manipulated. Silo 18's version features a Happy Ending while Silo 17 maintained the original Downer Ending.
• The Scapegoat: In the event of a potential rebellion, Silo procedure is to demonize Mechanical as the troublemakers and then crack down on them, as they're the lowest level and already predisposed to be untrustworthy of the higher floors. Juliette being from Mechanical and the one to inspire rebellion, however, throws a slight wrench in that plan. Knox finds evidence in the lowest levels showing that this pattern has repeated itself over and over for basically everything that has gone wrong, from crop failures to electrical fires. Knox and his group wind up being the latest targets when they're framed for the murder of Judge Meadows.
• The Siege: When Knox and Shirley escape to the lower levels after being framed for murder, Bernard attempts to starve them out by blocking food shipments so the residents will turn on each other. In response, they enact a plan to cut around the barricade and force the Raiders to move it ten levels higher, securing the farm on Level 122 and increasing their food supply considerably.
• Tattered Flag: Crossing the wasteland, Juliette finds a skeleton clutching a shredded green flag—a haunting symbol of Silo 17's doomed exodus.
• Trail of Blood: When Solo vanishes, Juliette follows an ominous blood trail that ultimately leads nowhere—later revealed as Hope's deliberate misdirection using her own blood.
• Turn in Your Badge: A proxy version occurs in the season finale when Walker lets Bernard know the sheriff's department has gone from following his rebellion-suppression orders to defying them by turning her bag upside down so that all of their badges pour out.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The season splits focus between Juliette's journey in Silo 17 and the escalating rebellion in Silo 18, cutting seamlessly between the dual narratives.
• Unplanned Manual Detonation: In the season finale, a situation arises that demands a Heroic Sacrifice. After the timer for their bomb is accidentally lost during a chaotic skirmish with IT enforcers earlier in the episode, Pete Nichols decides against protests by Hank to stay behind and manually detonate it in order to trap the Raiders in the lower levels.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the season finale, Bernard starts to freak out when he realizes that the rebellion has essentially seized control of the Silo, only to then slip into a Villainous BSoD when Lucas tells him about the Safeguard Procedure, passing the key to the IT vault to Sims before preparing to go outside in a cleaning suit in order to die while feeling some freedom and control. Juliette's arrival throws a wrench in those plans, as the two face an Uncertain Doom when she drags them back into the airlock without knowing about the incineration protocol that sterilizes the chamber.
• Was It All a Lie?: As Juliette investigates George's death and learns more about his history of getting close to people in order to use them, she fears that their relationship was more of the same. In the video he leaves her on the hard drive, he admits that he initially sought her out for her skills, but that he genuinely fell in love with her over time.