Planet of the Apes

"Somewhere in the universe, there must be something better than man..." —George Taylor's reason for leaving Earth, as related to fellow astronaut Landon.

A media franchise based on the French novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle consisting of seven movies in three continuities, a live-action series, and an animated series.

Original novel

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The protagonist's romantic partner Nova absolutely hates the apes for various reasons, such as wiping out her tribe, capturing her and selling her off for science. If she was out of her cage she would not hesitate to kill an ape, but while at their mercy and reliant on their handouts, isn't too proud to beg like a dog for food.
• Alien Among Us: This with Ulysse observing the simian society from the view point of lab animal.
• Aliens Made Them Do It: In this case alien apes from another planet make two characters, Ulysse and Nova, who originally had no sexual relationship, copulate for science.
• Aliens Speaking English: Averted. They speak their own language. Ulysse has to learn it.
• Always Save the Girl, Ulysse makes it clear that his priority is Nova, despite having just met her and her being the cause of his mosfortune. After surviving a hunt, the man having been captured by the apes and is in a cage, scrutinizes all the corpses of the women that the apes claimed as trophies, in hopes that Nova is not among them. Later he does this again but through a proxy of Nova, when a girl that could resemble her sister is being mercilessly electrocuted by the apes in an experiment. And by the end of the book, Ulysse abandons his only crewmate in favor of escaping the planet with Nova and his child they made together.
• Amazon Chaser: Arthur and Ulysse wanted to pursue trying to communicate with Nova, despite her killing their pet chimp and Professor Antelle's suggestion of relocating to a more civilized location.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The apes ten thousand years ago, took over Soror and then force the Sororians into the roles of animals. Then establish industries to maintain the new order of subjugating and exploiting their former masters and their descendants. And conduct repetitive experiments of sexual behavior to instill mating rituals and other methods to cull the intellectuals. It works and eventually the apes forgot their betrayal against their masters. And when it's rediscovered the apes rather than make amends, decided to cover it up and destroy the evidence.
• Apocalypse How: Civilization on Soror is ten thousand older than Earth and yet the apes are less advanced. Later its discovered humans once ruled the planet but were somehow replaced by the apes.
• Appropriate Animal Attire: Nakedness was normal to the men of Soror.
• Art Imitates Art: The apes replicated the art techniques of the ancient Sororians, adapting them to simian motifs, such as “portraits of celebrated apes, country scenes with lascivious she-apes around whom fluttered a little winged monkey representing Cupid, military paintings dating from the time when there were still wars and depicting terrifying gorillas wearing flamboyant uniforms.”
• Artistic Licence Biology: After living a few months among savage humans, the old scientific genius Professor Antelle loses his memory, his speech, and even his conscience, becoming totally animal-like like the others… that's a bit radical.
  • Put electrodes on a woman's head, stimulate specific areas of her brain, and she will awaken memories of what her ancestors said ten thousand years ago. No, really!
• Bag of Kidnapping: Apes do this to their human captives. Though the humans were already taken captive after being driven from their nests, caught in nets and thrown into cages to be transported into the city. When they reach the research institute where they were sold to, ape handlers bag each man and woman in bags to drag them to their separate cages.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: All men and women on Soror are stated to all be quite handsome, as described by Ulysse, are in the end are the victims to the apes, who by contrast are portrayed as ugly and vile.
• Believing Their Own Lies:
  • Zaius refusing to admit Ulysse is anything more than an animal, despite proving his intelligence as it would run contrary to the doctrine man was just a beast.
  • The apes of Soror are inferred to have invented a theory to explain their origins and hide the truth that they were originally animals and stole the mantle as civilized beings from the native Sororians. To explain their rise and legitimatize their claim over Soror, they believed that apes being equipped with four hands contributed to their spiritual evolution, allowing them to climb trees and conceive three dimension space which then came to lead to a taste for tools, which the apes believed that they had the potential of using due to their greater dexterity. In contrast man having only too legs were pegged to the ground and slumbered without any drive to evolve. On Earth the exact opposite theory would have been explained for man's rise to wisdom, that being on two legs led them to explore beyond the jungles and the trees. After millennia the apes have since forgotten their origins and believe this theory to be how they came to be.
  • When physical evidence if found of a human civilization, a report about apes making men able to take at a research institute, and Ulysse's son being able to speak, the simian government decide to that they need to prevent the possibility of the resurgence of a species of man who are the rightful rulers of Soror. Thus are willing to hire the disgraced scientist Zaius to study Sirius and later eliminate Ulysse and his mate Nova to cover up the idea man is an intelligent being.
• Body Double: Later at the end of the story, a family unit posing as Ulysse, Nova and Sirius are used by the chimpanzees to take family's places at the Institute whilst the latter family assumed the former roles in manning a satellite to reach Ulysse's ship.
• Break the Haughty: Ulysse in his interactions with the apes while recognizing that they are intelligent as men from Earth, view them as lesser. He gets satisfied upon finding evidence that the apes on Soror did not develop civilization but merely imitated it from a previous civilization of men. Though his haughtiness is broken when he learns how the native Sororians lost their place on the food chain, and how easily they gave up their heritage to the apes finding some shame in this.
• But You Screw One Goat!: Is how the apes reacted to when Nova is pregnant with Ulysse's child. Ulysse being a higher being from the stars, mating with a common beast draws disgust from the apes as it proves they are the same species.
• Carpet of Virility: The man with hefty shoulders, a sort of hairy-chested colossus, who started dancing around Nova, embarking with frenzied ardor on the curious love display eager to mate with her when Ulysse refused to do so.
• Cassandra Truth: Ulysse tried to show his intelligence to the apes holding him captive, but they all regard his intellectual feats as trained animal behavior or instinct. Even Zira was dubious of his rationality, until she draws Nova and a solar system does she become a believer. Zira then tries to suggest this to Zaius, but he is already set on what he thinks he knows about the man, and doing anything more would be suggesting scientific heresy. Even her fiancé Cornelius didn’t believe her and only agreed to meet Ulysse just to humor her.
• Caught in a Snare: Ulysse after escaping being shot by gorilla hunters ends up being caught in a net strung throughout a section of the jungle.
• Chained to a Bed: A couple who are “strapped down on two parallel divans and conducted in an experiment that forces them to account their past memories.
• Character Development: Ulysse can be said to be this. In the beginning of the novel, he view himself superior towards both the apes and native humans of Soror, mostly due to the apes being imitators and less advanced compared to his civilization. For the humans he is embarrassed by them due to their pathetic animal behavior. Though after he learns how they are descendants of an ancient human civilization that was taken over by the apes, he expresses sympathy and even declares them his kin.
  • Nova, Ulysse's lover can be classified as having developed in character, as she rises from a beast to a rational being.
• The Chief's Daughter: Nova was the daughter of the leader of her colony.
• Child Prodigy: Sirius as he was already talking at only a few months time. He helped teach his mother raise herself from a beast.
• Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: Nova and Zira are two females that Ulysse has affection for both of. One physically and the other intellectually. One is a beast and the other is a sentient being. Though he has a child with Nova, she still an animal, but slowly overcomes this due to his influence, he finds Zira more engaging despite her being engaged. However by the end of series Ulysse's love interest firmly becomes Nova after she embraces her motherhood and rationality, while Zira finds that she could not come to love Ulysse not just due to her commitments but because Ulysse is too unattractive as he is a human.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Nova is mostly this when it comes to Ulysse interacting to Zira.
• Coitus Uninterruptus: Nova and Ulysse are forced into this by the apes when they begin a study of human sex. They become just like every couple that the apes observed while mating.
• Come to Gawk: What any man out in an ape city experiences when surrounded by apes as man is an exotic animal. Most men and women though are put on public display at zoos or circuses for the apes amusement.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Generations of living as beasts have left the humans on Soror unable to perceive anything beyond being hunted and abused by the apes. Though instead of taking it with a smile, they take it with emotionless blank looks of indifference, having forgotten how to express them.
• Constantly Curious: Nova is fascinated with the strange humans. After her tribe dragged them to their camp, she continued to follow them from a distance. When they were hungry she gathered food for them and later helped them build nests. She was very attached to Ulysse and was interested in learning how to smile and continued to learn from him.
• Convulsive Seizures: A unconscious young woman is subjected to an experiment by the apes. One in which there is a long duration of electrical current via electrodes on her face. At first it starts to just Finger-Twitching Revival on her left hand. The movements of her fingers become more frenzied, gradually spreading to the wrist, the forearm, then the upper arm. The twitching spreads more to the hip, the thigh and her left, all the way down to the toes and then to the muscles on her face. Pretty much after ten minutes, the whole left side of the girl's naked body is shaken by convulsive spasms that grow more rapid and violent under the observations of the apes.
• Cry Cute: Nova having at last learned to express her emotions cries when she sees Earth.
• Creepy Souvenir: Besides killing men and women in the jungle and taking pictures of their corpses, she-apes dig hair from the women. Like feathers they take a lock and pin it to their hats.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: This would include the naked men and women being hunted through the jungle, driven to terror as they are herded into a shooting range by the apes. Later their bodies collected and mounted on display by their killers.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: When Nova attempts to build a ladder to reach a food basket by following Ulysse she accidentally causes it to fall.
• Cute Mute: Nova.
• Dead Guy on Display: The gorillas extract the bodies they collected from the drive proceed to furnish the bodies into three rows. To make it less gruesome rearrange the limbs and smooth out the hair of their prey. They proceed to then sit on the bodies or place their feet on the kill as a photographer documents the scene.
• Defeat by Modesty: Ulysse and his friends were incapacitated by the wild men and women of Soror, who ripped off their clothes, leaving them vulnerable.
• Dehumanization: Men on Soror is an animal to the apes, and many refuse to acknowledge man can have a soul, or capable of rational thought or intelligence. And is further denied when proof is shown to the contrary.
• Delusions of Doghood: The humans on Soror after being behaviorally trained to enjoy being animals for thousands of years by the apes are this. They are fully capable of regaining their intelligence, though are just hindered by various factors, like over-hunting, or the more gifted specimens expiring past their prime due to the apes experimenting on them.
  • This happens to Professor Antelle, when he is sold to a zoo. Being amongst the savage men causes him to go insane and start emulating them to the point his loses his mind.
• Ditto Aliens: To most of the apes, the differences between an individual man and another do not strike them.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The "stock exchange" scene. It certainly looks nothing like reality.
• The Dog Is an Alien: Ulysse is this when Zira leashes him through town. He's technically an alien, who just so happens to resemble an animal on Soror, that being man.
• Domestic Abuser: Ulysse is sadly this trope, though done out of necessity, as Nova tends to get between him and Zira when they discuss simian culture, throwing straw at the ape for drawing attention from her mate. To keep her quiet and alerting the handlers, Ulysse was forced to indulge in the brutal behavior of smacking her across the face. And later when she disturbs Ulysse while he is reading his secret stash of books he keeps hidden in the straw, he uses a flashlight's beam to scare her away and make her dash back into her corner. Ulysse now the absolute master of their cage appears to relishs the power he has over Nova and even fantasizes terrifying his mate by brandishing the flashlight at her and force to crawl back to him.
• Don't Like, Don't Read: Nova reaction to Ulysse's books given to him by Zira is to sniff at them and bare her teeth at them as if they were dangerous.
• Doomed Hometown: Ulysse and his friends leave Earth unaware to the fact that centuries later it would be conquered by the apes and humanity regressed as animals.
• Doppelganger: Ulysse meets a young woman who greatly resembles his mate Nova, though he found her being electrically tortured at the Institute and tried to intervene to stop the experiment being done on her.
• Doppelganger Replacement Love Interest: Averted in the novel. Ulysse while touring a section of the Institute that conducts brain surgeries, encounters a young woman who reminds him of Nova. Upon seeing her being electrically shocked by the apes and her physical discmfort, Ulysse voices his outrage at her treatment. But before he could intervene to remove her out of her torment, the apes usher him out.
• Dung Fu: Oddly in the novel there is no mention of the human captives relieving themselves on the straw bedding which is provided in their cages, possibly to make it more clean for reader. Though the straw is mentioned to be soiled, from absorbing body waste, and needs to be changed often by the gorillas. While not exactly poop, Nova throws straw as a substitute from the cave she shares with Ulysse at Zira.
• Dying Like Animals: Nova's tribe are running to their deaths toward a killing field by the beaters.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Nova’s femininity and nudity takes the breath of the Earth astronauts when they first see her.
• Electric Torture: Men and woman held captive at the Institute are subjected to varying degrees shocks that stimulate parts of the body so that the apes can study pain. Such experiments mostly involve running a current through the leg, arm or shoulder which causes the appendage to jerk or twitch. Though its gets more ghastly down the line and conducted on children and women
  • One has a boy who's jaw muscles are electrically stimulated, causing to endlessly clamp his mouth in a disturbing grin.
  • And lastly has a young woman who's a favorite subject to experiment on by the apes. The electric current is applied to her face, which causes her fingers on her left hand to move. But unlike the rest of the captives, who were only exposed to a few seconds of electric current, the woman duration is longer which leads the movements of the hand to become wilder, gradually spreading to the wrist, forearm, upper arm, shoulder, before spreading to her hip, thigh, leg and done to the toes. Withing ten minutes her body's left side is convulsing in spasms and growing more violent.
• Endangered Species: Man on Soror is in this predicament. Despite them outnumbering the apes on the planet, the latter's population is on the increase while former is in decline. This is mostly due to the hunts organized by the gorillas who capture men and women for researchers but also like to indulge in shooting. Ten thousand years ago the apes were in the same boat and the ancient humans took them in as pets.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Ulysse after being captured and witnessing the desecration of his friend's corpse by the apes, mentally struggles to find a logical reason for his situation, in that he was hunted and caged as an animal by apes. He pieces to together a feeble explanation in that civilized beings, humans, had trained apes in rational behavior and talk and used them in labor such as the hunt he unwilling participated in. Instead of accepting a simpler explanation that the apes were the dominant species on Soror, Ulysse clung to this belief in hopes to meet these civilized humans so he could reveal himself. Though all hopes are dashed when he see irrefutable proof that the simpler explanation was correct, upon being taken to an ape city.
• Emotionless Girl: Nova is unable to produce facial expressions at the beginning of the book but eventually learns at the end.
• Exposed to the Elements: Nova and her tribe despite their lack of clothes move through the trees easily. Feeling little or no fatigue while the Earth men have their feet bleeding and exhausted. Given that the temperature on Soror is 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the heat makes it bearable for humans to be without clothes. Though at night it gets colder, resulting in humans nesting with each other for body heat.
• Fanservice: Instances of attractive naked men and naked.
• Female Intuition: Nova appears to develop a sixth sense after Sirius is born. Even though at the time she still has animal behavior, Ulysse claims the birth of her child raised her a few degrees higher on the human scale. Even though she does not understand what's happening outside her cage, that the apes are conspiring against her and her family, Nova is on edge. Later the same thing happens when Nova steps foot in Orly. Frighten at first but soon her fear is legitimate as a gorilla appears to meet her family, proving the apes had taken over Earth.
• Feminism: Subverted in the novel as human women alongside with their men are animals, with some having it worse for why they are hunted and treated by the apes. A more humiliating small fact was that the female ancestor of the Sororian women had developed a suffrage movement, a far cry from the modern women who are hunted for their locks of hair, beg for food, and used as breeding material in the labs.
• Femme Fatalons: The men and women of Soror have shown to use their nails like claws, most likely being unkempt and unhooked due to their feral lifestyle. This indicates that they are quite sharp as a family is digging in with them on a deer carcass. Some like Nova have been show to raise their nails in response to danger or threats. She does this when Ulysses approaches her to hug her after being relieved to see she survived the massacre of her tribe, but responds with her nails as she does not understand the gesture. And later when someone enters her cage to protect her son Sirius.
• Fluffy Tamer: There was an lady-animal tamer who lived 10,000 years ago on Soror. She worked in the circus in an act with a dozen orangutans until they escaped and placed her in a car with the rest of the circus performers and them to become the act. Given the time of when this novel was written, during the 1960s, a woman as na animal tamer was a bold occupation at the time. Though the character becomes an epic fail as a Faux Action Girl after her descent into beasthood. Instead of directing the act, she becomes the act of a naked woman walking on all fours and turning somersaults.
• Fluffy Fashion Feathers: The she-apes after smoothing out the hair of the kills especially the women's. They proceed to cut locks from a specimen and pin them to their hats like feathers.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Arthur Levain has a relevance at the beginning of the story, but after being killed off and his body displayed by the apes as a trophy, he is never mentioned again even after Ulysse leaves Soror.
• For Science!: Zira's main motivation for emancipating Ulysse.
• Friend Versus Lover: Zira versus Nova.
• Full-Frontal Assault, Nova appears to attack Hector a pet chimpanzee of three French astronauts, strangling him with her bare thigh au naturel, killing the poor monkey. However its subverted when the more intelligent apes of Soror arrive and Nova and her people flee because they are playing their role as naked animals. Ulysse, one of the astronauts, Nova's eventual husband and stranger to the planet Soror attempts to stand his ground when the apes approach, but the din they make causes him to flee just like the other men and women. Later when he comes across a gorilla hunter armed with a rifle on the look out for prey, Ulysse initially thinks to stop acting as prey and confront the ape with a good beating, but is too immersed into being hunted like an animal to properly execute this plan.
• Fur and Loathing: A twisted version of the trope as instead of fur, the apes collect locks of hair from the corpses of women to decorate their hair after their male companions committed wholesale slaughter on a defenseless human colony. For them to just shot men and women for fun and desecrate the corpses of their victims in insulting positions, and then keep souvenirs show how immoral they are in regard to human lives.
• Gag Boobs: When Nova is first introduced they are jutting right at the explorers from Earth. Later after the hunt the gorillas make a presentation of their trophies. The scene includes three rows of bodies; both men and women alternately laid on their backs side by side like deer. The middle row containing women whose numbers side by side created a long line golden breasts..
• Genetic Memory: Plays with this trope.
• Glasgow Grin: A boy at the Encephalic Section that studies pain, is subjected to anesthesia and electrodes are implanted on the area commanding his jaw muscles. The resulting electric current causes the boy's jaw to keep clamping making him have a ghastly grin while the rest of his body remains motionless.
• Gilded Cage: Not so much as a gilded cage but an actual cage where the protagonist Ulysse is a naked animal, but learns that there are perks. Ulysse after being held captive as an animal in a lab considers that his life is not so bad, as he shares his cage with a beautiful and his needs being attended to by the apes. He has shelter, provided food, his soiled caged is cage, and he has a hot naked woman as his sexual partner.
• Give Him a Normal Life: Upon Nova's nascent ascension as a rational being and the birth of Ulysse's son Sirius, Ulysse wants nothing more to raise a proper family with the two. He desires Sirius to be raised as a proper man, not as a savage animal in a cage like his parents were forced to endure. However fate is different as the apes conspire to separate the family to eliminate the threat they pose, forcing the family to flee Soror.
• Going Commando: Despite there scenes of undressing, strangely there's no mention of characters wearing undergarments. Though in the Hungarian comic adaption, the three astronauts are depicted to wearing boxers or briefs. In the book, it's hinted that the apes do not wear undergarments, given Ulysse, after being given his freedom is lent clothes such as pajamas sized for a chimp and a suit. Which is understandable given apes imitated the human ancestors fashion on the surface, additionally having fur makes wearing additional clothes to be impractical, and also various undergarments like women's lingerie would be useless for female apes, given their lack of busts.
• Going Native: Two ways, Antelle loses his mind and becomes a beast like the native humans on Soror. For Ulysse he originally had a disdain for the humans on Soror due to their animal savagery, but after learning that they were the original masters of Soror, he pities them and regards them as his fellow brothers and sisters.
• Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: Ulysse and his comrades suffer this. After putting back their clothes on, it agitates Nova's tribe and they attack them, more specifically the men's clothes until they are naked as they are. In the movie though this is what happens.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: When he was assigned to mate with Nova by the apes, Ulysse refused as it was humiliating. Though he finds Nova attracted it takes a scene where Nova is bundled away to Ulysse's neighbor who begins the mating ritual. Thankfully this is enough to convince Ulysse he wants Nova back before the other man touches her.
• Gut Feeling: Ulysse has an instinct as he investigates the origins of the ape civilization that it is not all as said, that it sprang up miraculously and apes were truly the first species to rise to intelligence. Later he is proven right after learning the native Sororians existed on Soror and the apes imitated them. Nova develops her own instinct of danger, despite being confined in an isolated section of the institute and giving birth to her son Sirius. Somehow she senses that the apes mean ill-will towards her and her child, making her always prepared to attack anyone who enters her cage.
• Hand or Object Underwear: Averted, as despite Ulysse being forced to be naked in public to match with the expectation of the apes, he is extremely embarrassed to be walking naked in public, feeling indecent under the eyes of the apes. Though makes no move to cover his body.
• Happiness in Slavery: Ulysse almost learns to like his life in captivity. Though it gets subverted. Life as an animal causes Ulysse to become nearly complacent until he does some self-reflection on his situation and becomes disgusted with himself to finally act and convince the apes he is intelligent. The ancestors of the humans on Soror fell into this trap, those captured by apes and had their roles reversed soon enjoyed being treated as pampered animals.
• Harmless Electrocution: Several experiments in the Encephalic Section are focused on the body's reaction to electrical current. The apes assure the protagonist that they are safe but the sight in unnerving that causes the subject to convulse violently.
• Hates Being Touched: Nova only likes to engage in physical contact when she permits it. She allowed herself to sleep with Ulysse in his nest but after being caught by the apes, Ulysse attempts to embrace her only raise her hands like claws.
• Held Gaze: This is how Nova and Ulysse's relationship began. At first Nova was fearful of maintaining eye contact with Ulysse but after sharing a nest with him, she becomes intimate enough to hold his gaze and look himin the eye, a rare trait as many of the men of Soror can no longer to so anymore to each other or the apes.
• Human Aliens: The humans on Soror resemble their counterparts on Earth, though mentally they behave live beasts.
• Humans Are Bastards: Subverted. Soror's humans before being overwhelmed by the apes, aren't so much depicted as bastards (although they do nasty experiments on them, but so do the apes afterwards) than a decadent species no more fit to survive natural selection, with a "mental idleness" and a total incapacity to organize and resist against the rise of the apes. Ulysse lampshades that a race that submitted and resigned itself so pitifully easily might as well be replaced by a "more noble race".
• Humans Are Ugly: When Ulysse and Zira are about to kiss she pushes him away and confesses that she cannot do it as he is too ugly.
• Human Doorstop: Author Levain's corpse is used as cushion by a she-ape while taking a picture.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: The start of Ulysse's account in the novel is first read through the eyes of Jinn and Phyllis a chimpanzee couple.
• Identical Stranger: A young girl that resembles Nova in the Encephalic Section.
• Implausible Deniability: Zaius denying Ulysse's intelligence, reasoning that it is evidence of him being a formerly trained man. Later at the symposium where Ulysse directly addresses the ape council, Zaius still refuses to admit to Ulysse's sentience before being drowned out by the assmebly.
• Innocent Cohabitation: Nova and Ulysse started out as bed-mates in a nest. Later after be sold to a research institute they became mates. Ulysse never considered her as a woman only as an animal but eventually comes to regard her as a soul mate.
• Inescapable Net: The gorilla hunters use this to capture any survivors of Nova's tribe who managed to avoided having a target on them when the cross the killing field. It was concealed in the foliage of the jungle, stretched avoid the ground, covering a large section of the forest. Those that ran through it found themselves entangled in the large pockets, catching a large number of survivors. Despite their frenzied attempts to break free the nets merely wound more tightly. Once the hunt is done, the gorillas, carefully extract every man, woman and child they snared from the nets and throw them in cages ready to be sold.
• Informed Attractiveness: All the women ins Nova's tribe are declared to be beautiful, though Ulysse confesses none could rival his love interest.
• In Harmony with Nature: The humans living in the jungle seem to have a better handle in living in the wild.
• Inhumanly Beautiful Race: The men and women are Soror are golden skinned handsome specimens of humanity.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Nova never wears clothes, nor do any of Soror's humans.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Ulysse and Nova's first night in bed together counts as this. Both lovers seemed to get something on, as there was a lot of physical interaction but no sex. However what killed the moment was the gorilla hunters creating a din in the jungle and the terror of being hunted.
• Interspecies Romance: Depends if you consider Soror's humans as a different species.
• Invisible Subtle Difference: Despite humans, at least to apes of looking the same, the gorilla hunters are still able to make a distinction between the more aesthetic-looking specimens. Ulysse and Nova was sorted among a group of handsome men and women who were elite lookers in the tribe.
• It's Not Porn, It's Art: This involves scenes where naked men and women are placed in suggestive poses, and could be considered pornography but the purpose is for artistic purposes:
  • The scene where the apes use the bodies of the men and women they hunted and killed, lining three rows of bodies, two composed of all men and one of women. The dead latter arranged to have their breasts lined up. The grisly scene though has nothing to do with sexual content, but all for attractiveness to display the hunters and their kills.
  • Nova while in captivity is used as a nude model by Ulysse after he snatches Zira's writing instruments and draws a artistic drawing of the woman. While it was partly to show his admiration to the girl who is his mate, he did so to show Zira he is an intelligent ma capable of creativity.
• Jumped At the Call: Ulysse after an interview with the celebrity scientist Professor Antelle is offered to join his expedition to Betelgeuse which he takes to get a story.
• Killer Space Monkey: The apes on Soror and later Earth.
• Kissing in a Tree: In the park ape lovers are seen doing this and make love in the foliage of a tree.
• Lecherous Licking: While Ulysse and Nova an intimate in their nest in the jungle, the former brought his face closer to hers. Nova responds to this gesture by rubbing her nose against his, then by passing her tongue over his cheek. The act surprises Ulysses who imitates the gesture in a clumsy fashion.
• Licked by the Dog: Nova after awakening beside Ulysse in their nest licks her nest mate and he does the same.
• Likes Older Women: Averted with Ulysse when Zaius tries to force the journalist to mate with Nova, by replacing her with an elderly matron and taking Nova away to be mated to another man.
• Likes Older Men: Nova is described as being a young girl and is attracted to Ulysse who is many years older. Professor Antelle was elderly, but after turning feral, managed to land himself with a mate, who is said to be relatively young in age compared to her partner.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Women on Soror wear nothing save for their long tresses that hung to their shoulders. Apes recognize long hair to be a trait of women, and prize it as a keepsake like an animal's coat or fur.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Nova displays this while in captivity, observing Ulysse and his action it motivates her to imitate him. Even when he rebukes her in favor of the intellectual Zira she still continues to seek his approval. After he is released from his cell, it only drives her to be recognized by her former mate. When Ulysse tries teaching the men in the Institute how to speak Nova shows the most promise, saying her name before he even asks. Later after she becomes pregnant with his child and becomes a mother she is closer to a rational being than beast. her condition improves after escaping Soror and journey to Earth becoming a true lady.
• Love Triangle: Nova, Zira and Ulysse.
• Mad Scientist: Zaius the traditional orangutan who authorizes many experiments studying human behavior, that includes intelligence, reflexes, sex, etc. And Helius the chimpanzee who has an interest in studying pain and memory.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: Mostly these experiments involve the brain and Helius has his own section that he is in charge of.
  • Forgets to Eat: A man who is unable to recognize his favorite food and slowly starves. A nurse is forced to plunge his face in a trough that prompts him to eat. Others rendered artificially blind.
  • Doesn't Know Their Own Child: A young mother becomes Maternally Challenged after an experiment and is unable to recognize her own child and constantly pushes it away.
  • Lobotomy: The Institute had intelligent man before Ulysse. He was able trained to a great degree to accomplish many things. However the apes lobotomized him and now has become the most stupidest man.
  • You Won't Feel a Thing: That is what is claimed by Helius for his test subjects. However it's more or less a lie as he only gives them a mild sedative to dull of their torturous experiments he conducts on their unconscious bodies. His reasoning is that giving them any more would leave the test results falsified. The patients are said to feel no pain but contradictorily the experiment is a study of pain.
• Male Gaze: Ulysse takes time in describing Nova’s physical characteristics when he first meets her.
• Mama Bear: Nova upon giving birth to Sirius senses that her child is under some threat, due to him being akin to a Messiah for humans on Soror, and so when her cage opens readies her nails like claws.
• Mating Dance: The humans of Soror have this dance similar to birds in which the women stands in the center as the man moves in an ever decreasing circle before copulating.
• Meaningful Funeral: Inverted in the stances with Arthur, as his death and the fate of his corpse are anything but respectful or meaningful as his body ends up being taken as a trophy by the apes and used as a cushion for a she-ape to take a photo. Worse it looks like Ulysse never bother to find out what happened to it after he was released from the Institute and give Arthur a proper burial.
• Medieval Stasis: The ape society has been stagnant for at least ten thousands of years due to their imitative nature.
• Meaningful Name: Justified. The humans called her Nova because they thought she was beautiful.
• Men Are Generic, Women Are Special: Humans on Soror are referred as men.
• Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty: Men are depicted as physically stronger than women on Soror. Being more able to perform various tricks to impress apes at the zoo. Men on Soror appear to be much stronger than apes, even gorillas, as it takes two to subdue an adult human. And women likewise are viewed be to extremely beautiful.
• Message in a Bottle: The Framing Device is two scientists finding the story in a bottle floating in space.
• Mighty Whitey: A Caucasian male in a world of gold skinned humans, becomes their representative in a world of apes who see humans as animals.
• Mission From God: After finally understanding that the men and women on Soror are not creatures that evolution had abandoned as beasts but were forced into this role by the apes who stole their works and legacy, it pains Ulysse that he must go into exile from apes who fear he might embolden the captive Sororians to rise to reclaim their inheritance. Ulysse though vows that he will return to liberate the men and women of Soror, believing it is a mission from God he must retire their birthright.
• Monster Progenitor: Sirius the son of Ulysse and Nova. The apes feared him as he was able to talk and cry like an intelligent ape. They fear he represents a new species.
• Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Helius is definitely this as he is in charge of a ward that performs experiments on men, woman, and children of all ages that is akin to torture with a specific research field in pain. Worse it doesn't seem to bother him that he is studying suffering or he has crippled many humans in his charge. And with the testimony from a woman who has access to accounts of her ancestors memories to the days when the apes usurped Soror from her people, it seems to infer that the entire ape medical industry has a real ulterior purpose in ensuring the Sororians remain in their savage state. And since all ape accomplishments were not really discovered by merely repeated and replicated from the Sororians, all medical and technological developments that they claim to have made at the expense of man seems pretty dubious.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Nova has proven to be this, as she is the only human to have actually killed an ape.
• Murderous Thighs: Nova uses them to kill a chimp.
• Ms. Fanservice: Nova.
• Nature Versus Nurture: The humans of Soror having been stripped of civilization succumbed to their primitive natures after generations of living in the jungles and being treated as animals by the apes.
• Naked Camouflage: Ulysse after he convinces Zira he is an intelligent man brings him out of the Institute on a leash. He is adverse to waking in public without clothes but Zira states he would look ridiculous and draw unwanted attention. When he walks out in the ape city, pedestrians do stare at him with only a curious glance but no more. This is not due to his nudity but that he is a man. His presence evokes the same reaction as a exotic animal with adults taking it in stride while children gather around him in a crows. Thanks to this guise Ulysse explores and learns more about simian culture without too much trouble.
• Naked Freak-Out: Ulysse having been stripped of his clothes by Nova's tribe, learns to accept his nudity. Though this was while he was confined in a cage as a lab animal. When Zira gives him the opportunity to see the ape world beyond his cage bars, Ulysse is grotesque at the idea of walking around with nothing as he feels indecent with the apes looking at him.
• Naked People Trapped Outside: This is what the apes did to their masters ten thousand years ago.
• Nipple And Dimed: Despite women in the book are naked only three instances where women's' breasts are mentioned. First when Nova gives Ulysse and his friends a beautiful view of her breast thrusting out towards them. Second when the apes in an insulting fashion use the breasts of the women as a marker to line up the women parallel to one another. And lastly when Sirius is nuzzling Nova's chest.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: The relationship between Nova and Ulysse doesn't have this, as for Nova such gestures are alien to her, given her upbringing as an animal. A hug to her causes the woman to react in aggression raising her nails like claws. For Nova, signs of affection are limited to human couples nuzzling their faces against one another, clasping hands or licking each other faces. Eventually Nova learns that an embrace is of no danger when she becomes rational. In contrast Zira who is another love interest to Ulysse understands hugging and kissing. She manages to do the first with Ulysse in emotional situation, but the last is too much as even love cannot overcome the species divide, as Ulysse is too ugly to kiss.
• No One Gets Left Behind: Averted, Ulysse and Arthur leave behind their mentor Antelle in their flight from the gorilla beaters. And later Ulysse does it again, leaving his mentor on Soror while he returns to Earth with his mate and son.
• Nubile Savage: Nova.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Professor Antelle, before his descent into madness after being kept in a zoo for months with feral humans and constantly being an object of ridicule of the apes.
• Our Nudity Is Different: Apes don't consider naked humans to be indecent as nakedness is considered normal for men and women on Soror. Ulysse found out this when he was walked outside his cage by Zira. He was gawked at by the apes nevertheless not because he was wearing nothing but because he was an exotic animal in the middle of the city.
• Outdoor Bath Peeping: When Nova meets Ulysse and his friends by the pool of water.
• Parental Neglect: Thankfully artificially induced, where in the novel, a young mother and her child held captive as one of the apes experiments. The mother having highly developed maternal instincts, loses it, after the monkeys interfered with her brain. This left her unable to recognize her child. The apes in a cruel twist leave them together still, but the mother constantly pushes her child away when it approaches her.
• People Farms: The Institute for Advanced Biological Study, serves this function as not just to experiment on humans but also conduct human selectivity. It's how Ulysse and Nova produce their son Sirius, In the ancestral memories of the ancient humans, there testimonies from various men and women who were driven into the jungles and kept as pets by the apes. Seeing that the memories of the past are inherited by a female descendant who was captured in the wild, it can be assumed that the apes may have done some forced breeding of the species to boost the numbers.
• People Zoo: Ulysse visits a Sororian zoo where he finds his mentor interned there as part of an exhibit dedicated to man.
• Playing with Syringes: The young chimpanzee scientist Helius conducts experiments of humans of all ages in the name of science.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Inverted in the novel. Ulysse when he first meets Zira apologizes to her for his state of undress. Later when he convinces her of his intelligence and learn to communicate, Ulysse tries to convince her to allow him to wear clothes while outside his cage, but is refused as he would look ridiculous in the eyes of the apes. Apparently it was all he could think of as mentioned by Zira when Ulysse is introduced to Cornelius and once offers his apologies for his nakedness.
• Pretty Boy: Arthur Levain's corpse was described as boyish and childish at the time when Ulysse saw his body being used as a cushion for a she-ape.
• Primal Stance: Various instances such as Nova mewing or whining, extending nails like claws, growling, etc.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Ulysse mentions that he knew a wretched mad girl once. And compared Nova’s absence of expression comparable to the other girl.
• Public Exposure: The naked bodies of men and women are photographed by the apes as part of their kill.
  • Nova served as a model for Ulysse when he drew a picture of her in their cage.
• Quality over Quantity: Although the current men of Soror are mentally inferior to the apes, it's inferred in the novel that the apes are much physically weaker in terms of strength. Even the gorillas who are the physical most imposing ape species, require themselves to work in pairs to handle wild men that are captured in the hunts. This proves to not just be the case for men, but women are treated with the same care.
• Ready for Lovemaking: Ulysse has to commit to a mating dance to court Nova.
• Relationship Upgrade: Nova from a platonic pet to a mother and wife for Ulysse.
• Roswell That Ends Well: Professor Antelle's expedition being stranded by the primitive humans destroy their equipment and shuttle. Later it was found by the apes who guessed it to be extraterrestrial in origin. The last surviving member of the expedition is strand and held captive but later regains his freedom and also leaves the planet with a wife and son.
• Run or Die: Pretty much the choice the gorilla hunters gave to their human prey.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: During Ulysse’s first encounter with the apes, being the ape beaters he thought the most logical course was to stand firm and confront them, but infected by the fear of the running men and women of his newfound tribe he caves into his base emotions and flee. Self-Destructive Charge: Ulysse while hiding on the edges of the thicket between the ape beaters and the gorilla shooters, the man considers the idea to take the upfront path by approaching one of the gorillas and give it a good beating than be engrossed as prey. But this is averted as Ulysse is too scared to try that method.
• Shameful Strip: It's inferred that the apes in the ancient past did this to their former masters after they role reversed them.
• Shower Scene: Avoided in the novel, there's only one actual scene where the characters washes themselves and it's in the jungle before they are captured by the apes. Oddly the novel never mentions the apes showering their human captives in their cages, only cleaning the straw litter.
• She's Got Legs: Nova used her legs to choke Hector the pet chimpanzee. Later by encircling a tree with her thighs she climbed to gather fruit for the Earthmen.
• Skinny Dipping: The astronauts from Earth find a pool in the jungles where they enjoy the water in their birthday suits. There they also encounter Nova who is likewise naked. After they accidentally scare her off the astronauts return to the pool where Nova has brought her entire tribe and the group engages in play with the strange men.
• Sleep Cute: Nova snuggling next to Ulysse in his nest, making them like the other sleeping couples in her tribe.
• Sleeps in the Nude: A norm for the wild men and women of Soror. Ulysse adapts to the practice by necessity, but finds it to be not all bad. The first night on Soror he made a nest of branches and shared it with the lovely Nova who offered the warm of her body against the cold night. He does so the same when he is a captive at the Institute, on a bed of straw in his cage. Though after being freed and given an apartment by the apes, Ulysse finds her is nostalgic for the straw creaking and feeling Nova's body against him.
• Sliding Scale of Beauty: Ulysse admitted that there was a difference in level of beauty with Nova compared to her fellow sisters in her tribe, with Nova being at the top of all the beauties.
• Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: For humans, men and women on Soror appear to be equally valuable and targeted by the apes as biological material, though for women their assets, such as breasts and longer locks make them more attractive as hunting trophies which hunters use to form a line-up when the latter gender is put on display as trophies or get souvenirs to decorate their hats like feathers. In the ancient past it seems that women were developing a suffrage movement as evidence by the Women's Journal. Ape society appears to be a reflection of that, as male apes appear to dominate society. And plus story-wise there is really only one female ape. Though for the women of Soror it looks like the gender inequality has slide to a dismal levels where they are no longer respected but objectified and possessed.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Ulysse acts like this, seeing himself as a creature man in God's image. Due to his intellect, he looks down on the humans of Soror. The apes are seem as slightly more better, but no less inferior given their technology.
• Status Quo Is God: The apes, particularly the orangutans refused to revise their scientific dogmas even when evidence proved them wrong. This led to many scientific inaccurate in ape culture such as the sun revolving around the Earth. It goes more extreme of when the humans on Soror are discovered to be the former precursors of civilization and could potential regain their sentience through the influence of Ulysse. Rather than accept this truth the orangutans conspire to eliminate the main character and his family to bury the truth.
• Stock Animal Diet: Humans are partial to bananas.
• Strapped to An Operating Table: The apes do this to their human captives while operating or conducting brain experiments. Suffrage and Political Liberation: 10,000 years ago there was a periodical called Women's Journal. And while it reported the first instance of when apes began speaking, it suggests that Sororian culture had a suffrage movement.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: : Zaius refusing to admit Ulysse is an intelligent man, maintaining that he was a trained man that had escaped captivity previously.
• Swapped Roles: A lady animal tamer found herself caged and made to perform tricks; a medical researcher used as a lab animal, etc.
• Talking Your Way Out: Ulysse while helplessly entangled in the ape hunters nets with some men and women, tries to initiate a conversation with the apes to tri to explain that there is a misunderstanding, but gets a glove stuffed in his mouth and thrown into a cage with the other captives. He doesn't fare much better when he is sold at a research lab and tries to explain to the ape staff that he is an intelligent being, but they can't understand him and assume he is speaking gibberish.
• Techno Babble: When Antelle explains the equation of the rockets of the ship that will take them Betelgeuse, speed of light minus epsilon.
• The Grand Hunt: The aristocratic ape hunters massacring Nova's colony fits this trope.
• The Missus and the Ex: Nova originally hated Zira but eventually got over her hate and came to trust Zira.
• The Power of Love: Nova coming from a animal to a woman due to her attachment to Ulysse. When it conceives their son Sirius, Nova obtains enough rationality to let her hatred for Zira pass, and even permits her former love rival to touch her child.
• There Is Only One Bed: Nova assisted Ulysse in building a nest for him to sleep in. When night falls, she needs to find somewhere to sleep and though the two just met, she invites herself next to him.
• There's No Place Like Home: Although Ulysse believes that he is given a divine mission to raise the men on Soror from their savage state and liberate them for the oppression of the apes, having a family he reluctantly agrees taking them back to Earth is the safest and best option. At least until the end of the book where Ulysse meets a nasty homecoming.
• They Would Cut You Up: Ulysse being strangely intelligent man, would have had his brain dissected. Thankfully Zira blocked any attempts by Zaius to do so.
• Triang Relations: There was subtle indication that Arthur Levain was attracted to Nova upon first seeing her. Both he and Ulysse were the ones to insist pursuing a dialogue with her more for personal reasons than scientific. He was envious when seeing Nova assist Ulysse in building a nest together. Becoming vexed he went to sleep at the point with his back towards them. He never had a chance to woe her as he is later killed off by a hunter.
• Trophy Room: Not so much as a trophy room but a hunting lodge and a display of game after a hunt. After the apes finish killing and capturing the members of the human colony the main character was dwelling in the survivors are brought to the lodge where the she-apes are waiting for their male counterparts to decorate the game.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The apes originally were an endangered species on Soror, until the Sororians took them in as servants resulting in a population boom. Eventually they humans began to regress and the apes mentally evolved to match their masters. The change in regime was gradual, some humans beginning to notice that the apes were opposing their treatment and began giving orders. Most choose to retreat to camps outside the cities and towns. Others found their roles reversed, them becoming animals to the apes. The camps were also raided, but instead of firearms the apes committed one last insult to their former masters using whips.
• Twist Ending: Completely different from the movies. The scientists who are reading the human's diary turn out to be apes. After finishing their read, they scoff at the notion that a human would ever be that intelligent.
• Unable to Cry: All men and women, to even their infants have lost the ability to cry thanks to the conditioning of the apes. Though it can be relearned and reinherited as showed when Nova learns to weep after exploring facial expressions from Ulysse and Sirius having his father's genes.
• Vapor Wear: Averted in this case, she-apes don’t show any evidence of any undergarments. Given their fur the need is pointless and impractical. Later prove true when Jinn and Phyllis were sunning themselves nude. Which means when Nova escape Soror and started wearing clothes, she didn’t have any lingerie as they were never developed by the apes.
• Waterfall Shower: The deuteragonist Nova was swimming in a pool in the jungle with a waterfall, presumably bathing/cleaning herself before having to hide when she senses the Earthmen approaching.
• We Have Become Complacent: This is said by an Sororian who lived 10,000 years ago as they watched how their society was slowly being subsumed by the evolving apes while the humans regressed into feral animals. Later the same thing happens to humans on Earth.
• Wham! Line: Ulysse's last line. "It is a gorilla".
• What a Senseless Waste of Human Life: Ulysse has this moment when he runs into a killing ground of men and women being hunted as game by ape hunters. Later after being captured as a lab animal, he learned from Zira this practice is commonplace with the gorillas who hunt humans as a pastime. To Zira its a terrible waste seeing so many potential test subjects lost to science, and Ulysse responds dryly of the wasted human life of it being a "terrible shame".
• What Does She See in Him?: Zira is a little contemptuous towards Ulysse and Zira, given one is an intelligent alien while Nova is a mindless animal, so she can't understand why Ulysse has an attraction towards her at first.
• What If the Baby Is Like Me?: Ulysse has this question though his ape friends believe that the baby will just be any other human child Soror.
• Winged Humanoid: Apparently the apes appropriated the idea of Cupid in their modern art which they copied from the ancient Sororian, a winged baby but changed it to a winged monkey.
• Would Hit a Girl: Ulysse unfortunately has been forced to employ physical violence on Nova, when she got between him and Zira's conversation. To keep her quiet the man would smack her across the face.
• Would Hurt a Child: Hélius the chimpanzee scientists appears to have no qualms in using human children in his experiments.
• Women Are Wiser: Nova appears to prove this as she displayed more intelligence. The apes also seem to think so, given Helius's brain experiment in making a woman repeat her ancestors' testimonies shows that the woman provides much more clarity than her male counterpart.
• World Gone Mad: Soror appears to be a worse place to be a human being, as you either are shoot as an animal or dissected as a lab experiment.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: Ulysse by his own worlds states that the women in Nova's tribe are all beautiful but none rival her.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Ulysse realizes this at the end when he learns apes have taken over Earth, forcing him and his family to flee to the stars and find a new home.
• You Must Be Cold: Nova invites herself into Ulysse's nest snuggling against him providing him warmth. And learns to do this when they share a cage. Later Nova ends up shivering all alone due to Ulysse being emancipated. Professor Antelle does this with his own girl he has.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

A team of astronauts flies into space at near light speed. They are influenced by time dilation: eighteen months for them is over two thousand years for the Earth. They crash onto a mysterious, seemingly desolate planet (losing the sole female on the crew in the process), specifically into a dead lake; this loses them their spacecraft and most of their supplies.

On this planet, there is a mute race of human-like creates, treated as animals by a race of sentient English-speaking apes. Caught in the middle of an ambush between Ape and Man, one of the astronauts is killed, another lobotomized and a third, George Taylor, is shot in the throat, which renders him mute like the other men. He is among the captured men, and taken back to the apes' mostly pre-industrial city. As the talking ape civilisation learn that Taylor, "Bright Eyes" to them, can (eventually) speak and write, they put him on trial for heresy against the ape civilisation's sacred scrolls.

Notable for the famous Earth All Along ending: Taylor escapes from the apes, finding a new life with his love Nova, and eventually discovers the ruins of the Statue of Liberty. He realized that Man destroyed himself, sent society back to the Stone Age, and allowed the apes to conquer.

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This movie contains examples of

• Apes Speaking English: It should have been Taylor's first clue...
• After the End: as revealed at the end of the movie.
• Agent Mulder: Zira.
• Agent Scully: Cornelius.
• All-Star Cast
• Anti-Hero: Taylor is a misanthropic, rather vicious Jerkass. However, he is not without sympathetic traits, such as his affection for Nova and his disgust with Landon's lobotomy. He also seems disappointed that the apes are no better than humans.
• Anti-Villain: Doctor Zaius can be ruthless when pressed though he has fundementally good intentions as he seeks to prevent humanity from causing another appocalpyse and is at least reasonable enough to try and talk Taylor into making a false confession in exchange for his safety.
• Arc Words: "Somewhere in the universe, there must be something better than man..."
• Armor-Piercing Question: "Tell me, Dr. Zaius, why would an ape make a human doll that can talk?"
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: the Trope Namer.
• Apocalypse How: "You maniacs! You blew it all up!"
• Big Applesauce: The end of the film, which lets Taylor know where he really is.
• Black Dude Dies First: Technically (in more ways than one) averted, but Dodge didn't live up to his name.
  • It apparently runs in the family.
• Characteristic Trope: The Planet of the Apes Ending.
• The Constant: the Statue of Liberty.
• Cryonics Failure: Stewart's death while in Human Popsicle state.
  • Age Without Youth: The result of this.
• Cute Mute: Nova.
• Deadpan Snarker: Taylor, even when mute. Also Cornelius.
• Dead Guy on Display: This is what happened to Dodge.
• Despair Event Horizon: The ending.
• Downer Ending: In a nutshell.
• Earth All Along: The former Trope Namer.
• Everything's Better with Monkeys: The whole series, really.
• Evolutionary Levels: the apes' evolution to intelligence in a couple of thousand years. RetConned in the sequels.
• Fantastic Racism: The way apes hate humans. For good reason...
  • Ape society seems clearly divided between chimp, gorilla, and orangutan.
    • There's a story that during film production the cast would segregate themselves by the ape costumes they wore.
• Fate Worse Than Death: Taylor finds Landon lobotomized by the apes.
  • Taylor himself becomes more desperate to escape after learning that he himself is scheduled to be not only lobotomized, but also stands to lose his two best friends (and I don't mean Dodge and Landon).
• Forbidden Zone: a really notable example.
• Franchise Zombie: The sequels and TV shows. Both the second and third movie were intended to be the last in the series (5 were made).
• Fridge Logic: The chronometer showing Earth time is still working after the rest of the ship's power fails (in plot terms, Taylor has to see it immediately before he leaves the ship).
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: There were concerns that censors would object to Taylor's cry of "God damn you all to hell!" The problem was avoided when the producers and Heston explained that the phrase was not an expletive. Rather, Taylor was, literally, calling on God to damn the human race for destroying civilization.
• Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: The astronauts clothes are stolen while swimming in a lake.
• Hollywood Science: Averted. This movie shows a great deal of respect and knowledge of science, far more than would be expected from Hollywood.
  • Nevertheless, the series still portrays gorillas as violent brutes and chimpanzees as pacifists (chimpanzees are probably the most violent of the non-human ape species, and gorillas are generally reclusive and peaceful unless forced to defend themselves), either because they Did Not Do the Research or because Primatology Marched On.
    • Perhaps this was why the Big Bad of Tim Burton's remake was a chimp, and The Dragon (a gorilla) ended up pulling a Heel Face Turn.
      • Apparently Thade was originally going to be an albino gorilla, but Rick Baker told Burton that chimps are meaner.
• Human Popsicle: The four astronauts.
• Humans Are Bastards: Taylor feels this way at the beginning, but after meeting the apes, he changes his mind. Then comes the ending.
• Humans Are Morons: Unlike other examples of this in Speculative Fiction, this is one example where humanity is less civilized than the apes, as opposed to usually being the slightly more civilized ones. This is because humanity managed to blow itself to damn near the brink of extinction, losing its civilized qualities in the process.
• Idiot Ball: Most characters hold it at one point or another. Especially Taylor trying to prove to the apes that he is an intelligent being takes ridiculously long due to one blunder after another. Had he just motioned for Dr. Zira's notepad right away and shown immediately that he could write, things would've been that much simpler.
  • He tried to do just that, they just didn't understand him.
    • Not very well, though. He could have done something like pretend to write on his hand so they knew what he meant.
      • Cornelius says 'human see! human do!' when Zira says he's trying to speak. They would have just asumed he was mindlessly copying the apes writing.
• In Name Only: adaptation of the novel.
  • The only characters from the novel are Zaius, Zira, Cornelius, and Nova.
  • Pierre Boule was apparently impressed enough with the adaptation that he submitted his own proposal for a sequel titled Planet of the Men, which would've ended with the humans taking over the planet and ultimately turning Dr. Zaius into a zoo exhibit.
• Irony: In the first movie, Taylor wonders if there's a sentient race out there that's "better than man." It turns out most of the Apes are hardly any better than the humans they claim to be superior to.
  • Taylor starts off as a cynical misanthrope who couldn't wait to get away from the human race. By the halfway point of the movie, he's forced to become humanity's vocal proponent. And then the ending reveals he was right about humans being bastards all along.
• Kangaroo Court: Zira and Cornelius vs. the ape government.
  • More like a Monkey Trial.
• Killer Space Monkey: The apes, and the gorillas in particular. Until the truth is revealed at the end.
• Large Ham: Charlton Heston ("It's a MAAAAAAADHOOOOUSE!!!")
• Legend Fades to Myth: The religious myth held by the apes in the first movie turns out to be a distorted version of Caesar's rebellion and the human war that allowed apes to come to power as depicted in the sequels.
• Low Culture, High Tech
• Monumental Damage: The Statue of Liberty.
• Motherly Scientist: Chimpanzee Zira, notable psychologist and zoologist, calls Taylor "Bright Eyes", at least until he manages to write his own name, to her surprise. She ends up kissing him goodbye - even though, as she tells him, "You're so damned ugly."
• Meaningful Name: Brutally played with with Dodge.
• Monkey Morality Pose: The Three Wise Judges.
  • Meant to be a private gag for the film crew, but Executive Meddling meant the shot stayed in the movie.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In the "What have you done" variant.
• Nubile Savage: Nova.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The ape society was originally going to be more technologically advanced, akin to the book it was based on, but it proved too expensive and the ape society was made more primitive to cut costs.
• Really 700 Years Old: When Taylor, Landon, and Dodge leave Earth, it is 1978. When they crash-land on the planet, about 2,000 years have passed (Taylor says that Landon is now 2,031 years old), and they still look like they're in their mid-30's/-40's. Given a rather snarky lampshade by Taylor.
• Schizo-Tech: The objects in the ape society have varied levels of technology.
  • Possibly deliberately invoked by the orangutans. It is shown repeatedly that Dr. Zaius is hell-bent on eliminating any trace of ANYTHING that doesn't mesh with the apes' doctrine of law. The implication is that the orangutans possess far greater knowledge of the technology of man than is generally known, and are deliberately thwarting the advance of certain fields of science in order to prevent the apes from becoming the same self-destructive mess mankind became.
  • The real reason behind this was that the production crew did not have the money to build the super-advanced civilization the apes had in the books.
• Shout-Out: To Animal Farm. When asked if he knows why all apes were created equal, Taylor replies that "some apes seem to be more equal than others."
• The Smart Guy: Dodge, for the brief time we knew him. Landon says that he'd walk naked into a live volcano if it meant he could learn something that no one else knew.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Delivered as only Moses can say it. All together now: GOD! DAMN! YOU! ALL! TO! HELL!
• Time Dilation: Taylor's crew ages 18 months while 2006 years have passed outside.
• Tomato Surprise: the Planet of the Apes Ending.
• Twist Ending: the Planet of the Apes Ending.
  • Considering Rod Serling had a hand in the 1968 screenplay, it really shouldn't have been that surprising...
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: When the movie starts out, the year on the ship's onboard calendar reads 1978. When they crash-land on the titular planet, it's 3972.
• Uplifted Animal: Technically Nova is this, as the apes legally see her as an animal. But thanks to the Power of Love and the tutoring from Ulysse she becomes a rational and intelligent woman.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: Viewers are expected to understand the subtleties, such as slowly making new discoveries and realizing that apes' cruelty towards humans represents our monstrous, self-destructive acts.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dr. Zaius, according to Alternate Character Interpretation. In any case, he obviously already knows what Taylor would discover in the ending.

Dr. Zaius: All my life I've awaited your coming and dreaded it. Like death itself. Taylor: Why? I've terrified you from the first, Doctor. I still do. You're afraid of me and you hate me. Why? Dr. Zaius: Because you're a man! And you're right, I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, even himself. Taylor: What evidence? There were no weapons in that cave. Dr. Zaius: The Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages ago. Taylor: That still doesn't give me the why. A planet where apes evolved from men? There's got to be an answer. Dr. Zaius: Don't look for it, Taylor. You may not like what you find.

• What Might Have Been: Scenes were scripted and filmed revealing, near the end, that Nova was pregnant with Taylor's child. The scenes were cut out of the final print, as it was felt that they changed the focus of the ending, leaving the door open to a sequel Heston didn't want (but got anyway).
• You Fail Biology Forever: the ship with the protagonist is sent into space to colonize a new planet. That's why it contains three males and one female. D'oh!
  • Also, portraying gorillas as warlike and violent, chimpanzees as reserved and rational, and orangutans as wise and social. Gorillas are very gentle and docile animals while chimps have been known to exterminate other tribes, including the infants, to take the females and food. Orangutans have a completely anti-social society; males leave upon puberty and live on their own, attacking anyone that comes into their territory.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes

A fellow astronaut, Brent, is sent to find Taylor and rescue him... and somehow also falls in the Planet of the Apes. He first finds Taylor's girl Nova, and with her discovers in a cave a former New York subway station, realizing where he is. The station leads to an Underground Lair inhabited by mutant humans with psychic powers, who have already imprisoned Taylor, and cultivate a "Divine Bomb". When the apes decide to invade the Forbidden Zone and then find the mutants' lair... well, the trope examples below show it's catastrophic.

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This movie contains examples of

• Apocalypse How: Class 6. Possibly even worse.
• Cargo Cult: The mutants' god is a nuclear bomb.
• Collapsing Lair: the underground mutant lair.
• Downer Ending: And how. Not only that, but we don't even get a cool shot of the Earth blowing up!
• Earthshattering Kaboom
• Executive Meddling: Charlton Heston didn't want the original film to succumb to Sequelitis, so he instead rewrote the ending to be the final destruction of the Earth (thus making any possibility of a sequel impossible).
  • It didn't work.
• Fan Disservice: The kiss would have been nice to watch if Brent hadn't tried to strangle Nova
• General Ripper: Ursus.
• Hey, It's That Voice: Paul Frees gives the Insignificant Little Blue Planet speech at the end.
• Idiot Ball: After being generally being sensible throughout the film, Dr. Zaius grabs it with both hands in the last scene.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet
• In That Order: "If they catch you, they will dissect you. And kill you. In that order."
• Just Before the End
• Kill'Em All
• Ominous Pipe Organ: While the mutants are singing hymns praising their god - a cobalt bomb.
• The Other Darrin: Roddy McDowall wasn't available, so David Watson plays Cornelius this time out.
  • McDowall still appears in the Stock Footage from the first film that opens the film, though.
• Prop Recycling: some sets were from Hello Dolly!.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: General Ursus was meant to be an fairly obvious Hitler Expy, but by the finished film, he'd become a more generic General Ripper type with a lot of muddled Vietnam symbolism thrown in.
  • The mutant humans worshiping A NUCLEAR BOMB are just as scary and dogmatic.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Semi-averted. Taylor disappears during the opening scene, before returning toward the end of the film (and getting killed in the final scene thereof).
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Brent.
• Tears of Blood: The Ape Lawgiver statue in an illusion.
• Technical Pacifist: The Mutants. Brent outright calls them hypocrites.
• What Could Have Been: Taylor was supposed to be the main character. But since Heston didn't want to be in a sequel, the script was rewritten to feature Brent. Also, Taylor, Nova, and Brent were meant to survive and help establish peaceful relations between the humans and the surviving apes.
• You Fail Nuclear Physics Forever: Okay, a cobalt bomb would be a pretty nasty weapon, in the "create lots of long-lasting fallout" sense. Not, however, in the "turn the planet's whole atmosphere into a gigantic nitrous-oxide fireball that incinerates the whole surface" sense.
  • Executive Meddling strikes again! The original intention was for it to be just an ordinary nuke that would just wipe out the two warring factions.

Escape From The Planet of the Apes

Taylor's spaceship crashes in 1970's Earth. Inside, are three talking apes - Zira and Cornelius, along with another scientist, Dr. Milo. Milo is killed by a non-civilized gorilla, and this prompts a pregnant Zira to baptize her son "Milo". Considering the dangers of talking apes, the US Military starts chasing them, prompting Zira, Cornelius, and Milo to get hidden in Armando (Ricardo Montalban)'s circus.

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This movie contains examples of

• Berserk Button: Apes, when called "monkeys".
• Fainting: Zira, due to her pregnancy.
• Fridge Logic: The humans learn that in the future, apes will talk and treat humans like animals. So they want to prevent Cornelius and Zira from having descendants as their descendants would probably be talking apes. They fail. But does this mean that Cornelius and Zira are their own ancestors?
  • No, because the origin story they told (of an ape slave who one day said to humans what had been said to him a thousand times over - "no") is different from what came to be after they traveled back in time - their son Milo/Caesar became the savior of the apes instead.
  • Probably not. Other chimps evolve by the time of the next film, after all.
  • And their son, Milo who becomes Caesar in that next film loses his son by the time of the fifth and final Ape movie. It doesn't say he and his wife had more children.
    • On another point, it strains credibility (to say the least) that Dr. Milo would be able to raise Taylor's ship from the lakebed, refit its blown hatches and get it working again, just in time to escape the Earth's destruction. Of course, without that rather huge implausibility there'd be no movie, so...
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Mister Roark now manages a circus.
  • Victor Newman as Dr. Hasslein.
• Little No: "On an historic day, which is commemorated by my species and fully documented in the Sacred Scrolls, there came Aldo. He did not grunt. He articulated. He spoke a word which had been spoken to him time without number by humans. He said, 'No'."
• Moses in the Bulrushes: The unassuming chimp baby that was the first to be born in a circus sitting in a cage, saying "Mama".
• Nice Job Breaking It, Herod: Hasslein's obsession with killing Zira's baby merely ensures that nobody notices Zira had switched babies with another chimp mother at Armando's circus.
  • Openly referenced in the movie by the President, played by William Windom, who refuses at first to sign off on aborting Zira's pregnancy, and directly cites Herod's murder of innocent children as a reason.
• Red Shirt: Dr. Milo—although in fairness, his death wasn't actually meant to happen until much later in the film. The actor had trouble working with the makeup prosthetics however, and the character's death was bought forward.
• Sequel Hook: the ending scene was meant to simply connect this movie to the future. Executive Meddling led to more movies.
  • After his experience being forced to write this sequel after Beneath (which was written with as final a Downer Ending as could be done), screenwriter Paul Dehn wrote the ending of Escape as both a link to the future storyarc and with enough wiggle room to squeeze in another movie if the studio wanted it.
• Time Travel
• Together in Death: Cornelius and Zira.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dr. Otto Hasslein; he believes the only way to prevent the fall of mankind (and by extension, the destruction of Earth) is to kill the apes and their child.

Conquest Of The Planet of the Apes

20 years have passed. During them, cats and dogs died of a mysterious disease, and apes became both household pets and servants for mankind. The United States became oppressive and fascist in culture, of uniformed classes and castes, based upon ape slave labour. And Milo, now known as Caesar, is a horseback rider in Armando's circus.

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This movie contains examples of

• Does This Remind You of Anything??: The movie was filmed just as The Sixties were ending, but with the streets still filled with violent riots over Vietnam and Civil Rights.
• Driven to Suicide: Armando.
• Executive Meddling: The original ending had the apes slaughtering all the human characters (even MacDonald, who was one of the good guys) after Ceasar announces that, once humanity had nearly wiped itself out in an inevitable nuclear war, apes would step in and take over, subjugating whoever was left. Studio objections led to a partially re-shot ending, where (following a Little No from Lisa), Caesar reconsiders and instead says that, while the apes would still take over, they'd treat humans with some measure of compassion.
• Five Rounds Rapid: Played very straight with how the humans fight the apes, no matter how bad things get for the humans, they never go to anything more dangerous than riot police with rifles and shotguns.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Who knew Khan was such a nice guy?
• Identical Grandson: Roddy McDowall plays Ceasar here, and in all the follow-ups.
• Meaningful Name: Caesar.

Breck: Caesar. A king.

• • Which also helps explain why later apes bear Romanesque names.
• Rooting for the Empire: You actually want the apes to take over. Especially after Armando's suicide.
• Stable Time Loop: The apes from the future create the apes from the past.
• Title Drop

Caesar: Tonight, we have seen... the birth... of the Planet of the Apes!

• Turned Against Their Masters: The ape takeover happens in this movie.
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Set in 1991, filmed in 1972.

Battle For The Planet of the Apes

Set after a nuclear holocaust in 1993.

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This movie contains examples of

• After the End: The apes are in charge because humanity somehow managed to nuke themselves after the events of Conquest.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: The Trope Namer. Cruelly subverted in the film by Aldo.
• Big Bad: Aldo
• Bittersweet Ending: The apes and the non-mutant humans seem to be reconciled, but Caesar was forced to kill Aldo, violating the most important of his society's laws, because Aldo murdered Caesar's son.
  • The scene of the Lawgiver teaching to both ape and human children suggest that history has changed. But Caesar's statue starts crying, implying that the future of Earth is still doomed.
    • Though the tears could mean Caesar's tears of joy because not only apes and humans will live peacefully, but the world might be saved.
      • Ape and human children are seen learning together, but at the back a human and an ape child are fighting. The writers threw this in as a deliberate bit of ambiguity about future ape-human relations.
• Book Ends: Begins and ends with the Lawgiver telling the story to ape and human children.
• The Cameo: John Huston as The Lawgiver.
• Director's Cut: The extended version included in the Legacy Collection improves the film considerably.
• Fantastic Racism: Humans are treated as second class citizens at best by the apes for most of the film.
• Foreshadowing: Everything involving Mendez.
• General Ripper: Kolp and Aldo.
• Meaningful Name: Mandemus, possibly. His names sounds like the legal term mandamus, which involves a writ commanding somebody to perform a certain action. Possibly appropriate, since his job in the film is acting as Caesar's conscience and guarding the Ape City armory.
• Nuke'Em: Kolp's contingency plan.
• N-Word Privileges: An ape can say "no" to another ape, but a human may never say "no" to an ape.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Virgil.
• Papa Wolf: Caesar. Too late for anything but revenge, however.
• Sour Supporter: Mendez is this to Kolp.

The 2001 remake

An astronaut, Leo (Mark Wahlberg), works in a space station where genetically enhanced apes have been trained to pilot space pods, to search and study a strange electromagnetic storm phenomenon. When it's found a chimpanzee flies into it and after his signal's cut, Leo chases it in another pod against orders, to save the chimp. The storm makes him travel in time, after which he crashes on the planet below, encounters some humans and is captured by highly evolved apes. He is enslaved with the rest of the humans. He is tortured by the apes until one (Helena Bonham Carter) takes pity on him and helps the humans escape. He goes to the apes' Forbidden Zone Calima to discover the crashed space station, which apparently has been there for thousands of years. There, the hero plays a recording made by the ship crew, which tells they decided to go after Leo, crashed, and the apes rebelled and killed most of them. An army of apes attacks and the astronaut responds by hitting them with the fuel from the station's tanks. When the ape army recovers, a large battle occurs until the original chimp returns in its space pod. It remembers Leo and shows affection towards him; the apes revere it as a God, thus they stop fighting and treat the humans fairly. Having achieved peace and become a hero, the astronaut decides to return home through the same electric spacestorm. He goes back to Earth... and discovers the civilization he used to know is now inhabited by talking apes.

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This movie contains example of

• Actor Allusion: Charlton Heston is an ape, and Linda Harrison (Nova) also cameos.
  • Charlton Heston's character bemoaning the human invention of guns (keep in mind this was near the end of Heston's tenure as president of the National Rifle Association).
• All-Star Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan, Paul Giamatti, Kris Kristofferson.
• All There in the Manual: The ending only makes sense if you read the explanation on the movie's website.
• All There in the Script: Most humans of the planet end up not being named on-screen.
• Apocalyptic Log: The Oberon reports.
• Cargo Cult: Leo's chimp is confused with the apes' God, Semos.
• Continuity Nod: So, Zaius, you go from being Minister of Science, proclaiming that apes and humans have nothing in common biologically, declaring that the principles of science and theology work side-by-side, and those who go against it are instant heretics to a senator who constantly reminds those of humanity's destructive nature? No wonder Thade closely followed, and even amplified, your ideals.
• Conveniently Close Planet: Leo flies to earth from wherever the space station was in that tiny little spaceship. It can't have been very far in that ship with no toilet or way to get up and move around - or that craft could really book it.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The ape's religion. Though unlike Jesus, Semos is belligerent...
• Development Hell: The film was announced as early as 1988, and people such as Peter Jackson, Chris Columbus, and Arnold Schwarzenegger were involved before it started to take off in 1999.
• Dull Surprise: Leo doesn't seem nearly as surprised to be on a planet of talking apes as you'd think he would.
• Fridge Logic: The humans and the apes are descended from the crew of the space station. Where did the horses come from?
• Gainax Ending: It is pretty vague, although not necessarily in a bad way. Not in a good one, either.
• General Ripper: Thade.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Kris Kristofferson is one of the fugitive humans.
• Ignore the Fanservice: Leo pays absolutely no attention at all to the drop dead gorgeous Daena.
  • Subverted with Interspecies Romance: Leo and the female ape Ari are clearly attracted to each other, and he kisses her.
• Kick the Dog: General Thade knocks the human-friendly (and unevolved) chimp Pericles against a wall, breaking the chimp's leg; thus cowed, Pericles crawls pathetically back into the safety of his cage.
• Mythology Gag: Senator Nado's wife is named Nova, and Thade's father is named Zaius. Thade's father, (Charleton Heston in a cameo) repeated Taylor's famous "damn you all to hell..." line as he lay dying.
• Negative Space Wedgie
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Leo's search for his chimp causes both the deaths of his workmates and the creation of the ape society.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Nice job, Thade. Pericles was seeing seen as the arrival of apes' god, Semos. Now that you that you wounded him, your "friend" Attar felt betrayed and refused to give you any more help when you needed it.
• Now Do It Again Backwards: Going through a storm pushes you ahead in time, and going through it again in the opposite direction...
• Nubile Savage: Daena
• Obviously Evil: Seriously, just look at Thade's face and listen to his voice.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse
• Rock Beats Laser: A technologically advanced society is implied to be inferior to a simple, agrarian one.
• Science Is Bad: Just one example: genetically enhancing apes to make them more suitable for work makes them later rebellious.
  • Hollywood Science: See above.
• Shout-Out:

Attar: Take your stinkin' paws of me, you damn dirty HUMAN! Thade's father: Damn them. God Damn them all... to hell.

• Shown Their Work: The evolved apes certainly look more like real apes do than in the original, especially the orangutans.
• The Cameo: Linda Harrison (Nova) as a human slave; Charlton Heston as Thade's father.
• Time Travel
• Turned Against Their Masters
• Villainous Breakdown: Thade degenerates into a screeching beast.
• What Could Have Been: While in Development Hell, several people were attached at various points and vastly different scripts were considered. Had the project been greenlighted at any moment between 1988 and 1999, the movie would have been completely different from Burton's version (except for the apes' makeup: Rick Baker was practically attached from beginning to end). To recapitulate:
  • Adam Rifkin's idea (1988): An alternate sequel to the first film, set centuries later, where the Apes have a Romanesque civilization and use humans as slave labor. A descendant of Taylor played by either Tom Cruise or Charlie Sheen would lead a human revolt.
  • Peter Jackson's idea (1989): Similar to the above, but with the Ape civilization being analogous to The Renaissance and The Hero being a half human, half ape hybrid that a da Vinci-like old chimp played by Roddy McDowall would hide from the Orangutan Inquisition.
  • Terry Hayes' script, based on an outline by Oliver Stone (1994): A gritty reboot with little to nothing in common with the films or the novel, where a scientist played by Arnold Schwarzenegger travels back in time to One Million BC to find the cure of a plague that is decimating mankind and finds himself in the middle of a war between primitive humans and far more advanced, gorilla-like hominids. It got as far as to get a $100 million budget confirmed and Phillip Noyce attached as director before being cancelled when Hayes refused to introduce more comedy.
  • Sam Hamm's script, in collaboration with Chris Columbus (1995): A closer movie to Pierre Boulle's novel, where Schwarzenegger would play an astronaut instead, and the apes lived indeed in a different planet and had a highly-advanced civilization. Almost all of it, however, would be either taken from once advanced ancient humans from the same planet that had wipped themselves out in a war in the distant past, or from TV transmisions from Earth that the orangutans had caught in secret before introducing all the advancements featured as if they were their own inventions, in order to justify their privileged status.
  • James Cameron's idea (1996): An Alternate History of the original saga, where the orangutans had been overthrown by the chimpanzees prior to Taylor's arrival and developed as a result a more advanced civilization. It would begin with original footage from the first film before introducing a second astronaut landing years later, and culminate with the new protagonist meeting Taylor (played by Charlton Heston, of course), now the old founder and leader of a tribe of intelligent humans.
  • Tim Burton's take itself went through different rewrites, having originally an Ari that was an "ape princess" rather than the daughter of a senator, Thade as an albino gorilla, Limbo making an emotional Heel Face Turn instead of remaining a jerk, and Leo crashlanding in New York during his return to Earth instead of in Washington, D.C.
• You Fail Biology Forever: Done intentionally in the case of female apes. In order to make them seem more attractive, they were given eyebrows, something real apes do not have.
  • And human-sized breasts, evident when the female ape is being "sexy" for the Senator Nado.
    • Note that female apes do have breasts, just not as "perky" as human females.

2011 reboot

See Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Comics

• Adaptation Distillation: The Hungarian comic book adaptation.
• Adaptation Expansion: The film adaptations do this sometimes, especially based on deleted scenes.
• Area 51
• Brains In Jars: The Gestalt Mind, leader of the Inheritors, is made up of five brains, with one of them being the biggest.
• Canon Welding: The comics, the timeline in Marvel Comics' Planet of the Apes magazine #11, and the subsequent Timeline of the Planet of the Apes: The Definite Chronology try to fit all the series of the franchise in one universe. With varying success.
• Crossover: Believe it or not, there was an Alien Nation/Planet of the Apes crossover comic.
• Expanded Universe
• Expy: The Ape Supremacists are like the Dragoons from the TV series.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In the comics, Hasslein realized the ape-ruled future was his fault. He created the space-drive for the mission led by Taylor in hopes of a better future, but it has created a Predestination Paradox which caused the end of human civilization, the rise of the apes, and the destruction of the world. He took it upon himself to prevent the dark future he caused, by killing Zira's baby and the apes themselves to prevent them from having another child.
• Servant Race: Mutant Drones.

TV series

• Aliens Speaking English: Strictly speaking, this goes for the humans. After a thousand years, linguistic drift should have made their English near-incomprehensible to the apes and other humans.
• All There in the Manual: The only clue we have about how the series might have ended comes from a series of spots shot for the TV movies, "hosted" by Galen. Apparently, Burke and Virdon escaped, although we don't know if they made it back to 1980. Here's the final spot.
• Apocalyptic Log: "The Legacy."
• Arc Words: "Friend."
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Galen suffers from this.
• Bread and Circuses: Prefect Barlow uses the gladiator games to keep the village quiet.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: Gorillas (black and purple), chimpanzees (green), orangutans (orange).
• Deadpan Snarker: Burke.
• The Determinator: Virdon. He's going to get home, no matter how many idiot balls he needs to carry along the way.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Dragoons, a group of masked apes killing humans.
• Downer Ending: At the end of "The Deception," the Dragoons have been dismantled and their leader taken away for trial. However, it seems clear that nobody else will be prosecuted, even though all of them are accessories to the murder of at least one human. Fauna goes on living with her uncle, who admits that he covered up the murder of his brother Lucian. And, unusually for this series, Fauna isn't cured of her prejudice against humans at the end. Though Virdon inspired her to be more open-minded.
• Dull Surprise: Most of the apes accept the idea of time-traveling humans with remarkable calm.
• Edited for Syndication: Some of the hour long episodes were edited together for local tv reruns as two hour 'movies'.
• Enemy Mine: "The Trap," "The Tyrant."
• Expy: Galen (Cornelius).
  • Urko (Ursus and Aldo).
• Fantastic Caste System: Lampshaded in "The Tyrant." Gorillas do army and police work; chimpanzees are doctors and bureaucrats; and the orangutans control upper-level slots in government, education, and religion.
• Fantastic Racism: All apes vs. humans, but also chimpanzees vs. gorillas vs. orangutans.
• Farm Boy: Virdon.
• Gilligan Cut: Galen, refusing to learn how to fly a makeshift glider, declares, "I put my foot down!" Cut to Galen putting his foot down as he learns to fly a makeshift glider.
• Gladiator Games: "The Gladiators".
• Happiness in Slavery: Many of the humans accept their inferiority without question. Tolar in "The Gladiators" is fully loyal to his prefect.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Tolar in "The Gladiators."
• The Heretic: One of Galen's many, many problems.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Urko is Spock's dad.
• Joisey: In the pilot, Burke mentions he grew up in Jersey City, NJ.
• Lost Technology: All of human civilization, basically. Zaius has some grenades in his office, which serve as mementos of the human capacity for destruction.
• Made for TV Movie
• Malevolent Masked Men Apes: "Deception".
• Meaningful Name: Galen, who is genuinely intrigued by human history and technological accomplishments, is named after one of the great scientists of antiquity. He passes himself off as a scientist in "The Gladiators."
• Missing Episode: "The Liberator" didn't air in the United States during the original run.
• Monkeys on a Typewriter: Comic inversion in "The Gladiators." Prefect Barlow suggests that if you give "fifty humans" enough paint, they'll ultimately manage to create the apes' own great works of art.
• Nepotism: In the pilot, Galen tells Zaius point-blank that he deserves a job because of Zaius' previous connections with his family.
• Only Sane Man: Burke, as far as he's concerned.
• Pet the Dog: Prefect Barlow's behavior at the end of both "The Gladiators" and "The Race."
• Power Trio: Burke, Virdon, Galen.
• Prequel: Set over eight centuries before the first film.
• Propaganda Machine: Even though another set of astronauts landed a decade before the series begins, according to the pilot, the High Council has successfully turned them into tall tales.
• Retcon: In addition to humans speaking, burying their dead with headstones, and the like, the apes treat them as inferior but sentient creatures, rather than as lower animals. Prefect Barlow, for example, proudly displays a human-made portrait of himself in "The Gladiators."
• Science Is Bad: Why Zaius is working to keep knowledge about human technology secret.
• Status Quo Is God: Burke and Virdon make zero progress towards their goal.
• Stock Footage: The gorilla signalmen are the most obvious example.
• Theme Naming: Many of the chimpanzees have classical names, like Augustus, Galen, and Lucian.
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Burke and Virdon began their mission in 1980.
• What Could Have Been: Urko was originally named Ursus (from Beneath), then Urso.
  • He would also have a son named Zonda.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The computer disc.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In "The Cure," instead of being deferential to Virdon as usual, Galen sharply dresses him down twice: first for opening up to a village girl about their real origins, then for having a guilt complex about a possible plague epidemic.

Return to the Planet of the Apes

Occupying its own continuity, yet clearly drawing aspects from the first two films, Return to the Planet of the Apes is an animated series that was produced in the 1970s. In the year 1979, a small space shuttle with a three man crew is launched as part of an experiment in relativity, achieving a speed where one hundred years and multiple days goes past in almost no time at all for them. But then their ship develops a malfunction and goes blasting towards an alien planet, hurtling rapidly through time to the point that, when they crash-land in a lake, over 2000 years have passed for them. Setting out in hopes of finding civilisation, they discover themselves on a strange world of caveman-like humans and advanced, intelligent apes... which are not too welcoming towards the intelligent humans.

• Blue Eyes: The nickname Zira calls astronaut Bill Hudson.
• Continuity Nod: The series is full of Shout Outs to Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Cornelius and Zira the Chimpanzee are scientists with respect for humans, Dr. Zaius the Orangutan is a lawkeeper hoping to kill the space travelers to avoid the destruction of the Ape society, Nova the savage woman... Nova even has the dogtags of Brent, the main character from Beneath.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: The desert region (obviously a Shout-Out to the Forbidden Zone) where the astronauts first land; out of nowhere, an avalanche, fire, and earthquake all appear in their turn, with both the fire and the earthquake vanishing without a sign they were there after destroying the astronauts' survival packs and swallowing Judy Franklin, respectively.
• Fantastic Racism: The apes look down on humans in general as being little better then animals, but General Urko was champing at the bit to exterminate all humans before the space travelers landed.
• Nubile Savage: Nova
• Screwed by the Network: The series was cancelled partway through the creation of its fourteenth episode, meaning only the first thirteen were ever aired.
• Token Trio: Bill Hudson (white male), Jeff Allen (black male), and Judy Franklin (white female) in the initial crew, then Bill, Jeff, and Nova for the series proper, until Judy came back.

Video Games

• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The game takes place in the year 3889 AD. The astronauts came from 2125 AD.