"You've just been erased."
— John Kruger
Eraser is a 1996 action film, directed by Chuck Russell and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vanessa Williams, James Coburn, James Caan, Nick Chinlund, Michael Papajohn, and Mark Rolston.
The main story concerns the Cyrez Corporation, a company that creates and manufactures weapons for the United States military. A senior executive, Dr. Lee Cullen (Williams), discovers that their latest magnetic acceleration rifle (personal railgun), the EM-1, is going to be sold on the black market. In the hands of terrorists like Sergei Ivanovich Petrofsky (Olek Krupa), the weapon would make them unstoppable, as it fires aluminum shells through solid objects at relativistic speeds, i.e. it is far more powerful than any other man-portable weapon in the world. So, Lee copies the evidence to two discs: one for the FBI, one to go public. She spends too much time in an area she wasn't supposed to be, and her superiors soon find out her plans.
Cue John Kruger (Schwarzenegger), an ace agent of the Federal Witness Security Protection Program (WITSEC). He has been nicknamed "Eraser" for his ability to erase any trace of the people he is protecting. Now he has to protect Lee, but there are dangers ahead. The conspiracy extends further than Cyrez itself and is headed by Daniel Harper (Andy Romano), the Undersecretary of Defense. Worse, Kruger has been warned by his mentor, Robert DeGuerin (Caan), that there is a mole within the Program, responsible for the deaths of key witnesses in top-level cases. Lee could be next.
Good advice. Too bad DeGuerin is the mole and has been hired to kill both Lee and anyone actually trying to protect her. Now Kruger must "erase" his opponents in a decidedly more lethal style.
Eraser was one of the first four films to be released on DVD when the format debuted in Japan in 1996, alongside The Fugitive, Assassins, and Blade Runner: The Director's Cut.
A Direct-to-Video remake of the movie titled Eraser: Reborn was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital on June 7, 2022, and will also be available for streaming on HBO Max in Fall of the same year.
Provides Examples Of:
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Tropes A-M
- The Ace: Kruger is described as such in-universe and seems to be skilled enough to back up the claim, being a crack-shot, expert melee combatant and being able to tell a real ID from a fake by touch.Deguerin: He thinks he's the best guy in the game. I think he's right.
- Actor Allusion: This is yet another over-the-top, formulaic action movie where Schwarzenegger uses a mook as a human shield.
- This wasn't the first movie that ended with James Caan using a cane.
- Affably Evil: Tony Two-Toes and his crew. They may be part of The Mafia but they're civil and amicable, and they have lines they won't cross. They notably team up with Kruger when they learn that their docks are being used without their permission.
- Armor-Piercing Response:Kruger: A major defense contractor is selling out to international terrorists.
[Tony Two-Toes and his crew all laugh.]
Tony: Mr. Sixty Minutes, tell me something I don't know.
Kruger: It's going to happen tonight, on your docks.
Tony: (stops laughing) ...That I didn't know. - Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Johnny Casteleone's mobbed-up relative gathers his crew to help out Kruger because there are Russian terrorists using their docks to move black market weapons, and are using non-Union personnel to do it.Tony Two Toes: No one screws with the Union.
- Artistic License – Medicine: The Cyrez infirmary doctor treating Casteleone tries to defib her patient while he's actively conscious, talking, and fighting her attempts to shock him. It's basic medical procedure to carefully monitor vital signs and immediately stop defibrillation when it's no longer necessary in order to prevent any risk of serious injury. Doing this in real life would demonstrate such shocking
incompetence that it's a wonder the doctor managed to get a medical license (which would be revoked very quickly after this). - Artistic License – Physics:
- Dr. Cullen explains to Kruger that the EM-1 rail guns fire projectiles "at almost the speed of light." Even if the gun could fire projectiles that fast, recoil would make the gun more dangerous to the user than the target. Hand Waved with the line: "They said the physics were impossible."
- And the projectiles can easily shoot straight through solid walls, but on impacting a human body they throw the target several yards across the room.
- X-rays don't work this way.
- If you did fire a metal projectile close to the speed of light in an atmosphere, air friction alone would be enough to heat it up to the point of becoming hot vapor, which would just expand and drift up in the air. And if you get really close to c, you end up with this situation.
- Asshole Victim:
- What little we see of Cullen's ex-boyfriend Daryl paints him as a stalker that can't take "no, our relationship is over" as an answer (he broke into her home and Cullen mentions that he has been calling and leaving messages pinned to her windshield). He gets Blown Across the Room as the first railgun-induced casualty of the film.
- All three masterminds of the railgun plot get locked inside a limo parked in the path of an oncoming train.
- Ate His Gun: See Driven to Suicide.
- Ax-Crazy: DeGuerin, he seems to enjoy relishing in the bloodshed of his inside job.
- Award-Bait Song: Where Do We Go From Here?, sung by co-star Vanessa Williams.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The EM-1 gun is hyped up as the most powerful assault rifle ever. But there are two flaws. 1) The X-Ray vision cannot tell friend from foe (Which Arnie takes advantage of). And 2) There is an obvious big green flash light that tells anyone it's aiming at to hide or run.
- Badass Bureaucrat: Beller, the head of WitSec comes across as a worldly man well aware of how powerful the defense contractors are, pushpin hard for the case, personally login into the field during manhunts and keeping an open mind when Kruger has been framed, while still being firm and cautious.
- Badass Longcoat: Kruger sports one when he walks to the Wit-Sec building.
- Bait-and-Switch: This exchange:Little Girl: Is this [parachute] yours?Kruger: Do you like it?Little Girl: Oh yeah.Kruger: How about a trade [for your dad's old truck]?Little Boy: Fifty bucks!Kruger: Fifty bucks?
- Barrier-Busting Blow: Kruger bursts up through the floorboards.
- Batter Up!: Little Mike knocks out a couple of henchmen at the docks with a baseball bat.
- BFG: The railguns.
- Big Bad: U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Daniel Harper, the mastermind behind the plot to sell the EM-1 rail-guns offshore.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: DeGuerin turns out to be one of the bad guys.
- Bombproof Appliance: Kruger protects himself from a flechette grenade with a fridge; unfortunately, for this to work he has to hold the door open and gets a spike in his exposed hand.
- Bond One-Liner:
- Kruger says, "You're luggage," to a rampaging alligator after killing it.
- Kruger says that the Big Bad Ensemble "caught a train" after their limo was hit by one and it exploded.
- Even DeGuerin manages to get one in. When an overzealous junior agent nearly catches DeGuerin performing a False Flag Operation, he convinces the young man that it was part of Secret Test of Character:Monroe: So how did I do... on my evaluation?
[DeGuerin shoots Monroe, killing him]
DeGuerin: A-plus, kid.
- Blown Across the Room: Being shot by a railgun does that to you.
- Broken Pedestal: Subverted, as despite respecting and admiring him a great deal, Kruger rapidly suspects DeGuerin's duplicity and doesn't waste any time mourning the loss of his mentor.
- Bulletproof Human Shield: Kruger protects himself from a group of armed mooks with one of the armed mooks himself. It's slightly more plausible in this scenario, as the guy is wearing a bulletproof vest (and actually survives being used as a shield because of this... though not Kruger's follow-up grenade attack).
- The Cameo: Chuck Zito briefly appears as one of the security officers before Kruger and Cullen get into the van that explodes. But his presence is so peripheral that being able to notice it amounts to a Freeze-Frame Bonus. And given that it was before Zito himself became a recognizable name in the movie industry, it can also amount to
Retroactive Recognition. - Car Cushion: Kruger lands in a car wrecking yard after barely getting his parachute open.Kid: Oh man, did that hurt? It had to hurt; I saw it!Kruger: Where is this?Kid's sister: Earth. Welcome!
- Chekhov's Gun: Donahue's office where he commits suicide. It later comes in handy when Kruger and Lee return to the Cyrez building to read the encrypted disc she made a copy of.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Johnny Casteleone, whom Kruger saves (and his wife) at the beginning of the movie. Out of gratitude, Johnny did say if Kruger needed anything...
- Computer Equals Tapedrive: The Cyrez mainframe is shown as a terminal attached to a robotic tape library.
- Concealment Equals Cover: Used most egregiously when Kruger is protecting Cullen in her house from two railgun-wielding mooks. They hide behind an overturned fridge, whose metal frame hides their signatures from the railguns' X-Ray-like scopes. However, it's pretty obvious they could be hiding behind it and if the mooks had any sense, would just shoot straight through it, since the guns had that penetrating power.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: James Cromwell's character was the CEO of Cyrez enterprises, which was also selling advanced weapons to Russian terrorists. As soon as he was found out by the FBI... well, his reaction ended up becoming obvious. Also, there is a Corrupt U.S. Marshal involved as well (DeGuerin), as the Undersecretary of Defense Daniel Harper was in on the deal with the Russians.
- Corrupt Politician: Undersecretary of Defense Daniel Harper who serves as the Big Bad even though DeGuerin provides most of the conflict.
- Covert Emergency Call: One of agent John Kruger's last acts before losing consciousness is to text the "bug out" code to key witness Lee Cullen. Kruger's boss Robert DeGuerin drugged Kruger with the intent of extracting the whereabouts of Cullen because DeGuerin is a double agent, working with the villains to silence Cullen before she can testify.
- Crooks Are Better Armed: Up until the climax, Kruger's weapons are handguns and shotguns while the conspiracy has easy access to the Railgun, which leads to Kruger being forced to win by fighting smarter. The conspiracy's final goal is to sell the Railguns to The Mafiya, which will give them an absurd leg up in menace.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: If railguns are so great, why wouldn't a legitimate government want to purchase them? And if not the US military, some other allied nation?
- Similarly, there was a mention of the impending deal being a bigger scandal than Iran-Contra if it got out, and (DeGuerin) claimed that what he was doing was actually patriotism in the face of a weak administration... supplying a group of terrorists that presumably hate America's rivals with sci-fi superguns is just going to ensure that said rivals get their hands on technology that America would have had a monopoly on while also pointing squarely at the US as the guilty provider of said guns.
- For the first point, Donovan stated that the United States military turned down the weapons as being too expensive (and possibly recognized the Awesome, but Impractical nature), and as the United States spent more on its military than any other country in the world even in 1996, it likely follows that no other legitimate government would buy the weapons either.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Isaacs, Lee's reporter friend, gets "peeled like an onion", though it thankfully occurs offscreen.
- J. Scar and a couple of mooks are eaten alive by alligators.
- Delivery Guy Infiltration:
- How Kruger pulls his Big Damn Heroes and saves Cullen from being killed the first time.
- Done again by Johnny helping Kruger and Lee, disguised as medics, to get into the Cyrez building to read the encrypted disc. It works so well that during Johnny's fake seizure DeGuerin doesn't even question his presence, only irritably asking who ordered the pizza.
- Destination Defenestration: Kruger kicks a mook out of a window while hanging on the ceiling during one of his many fight scenes.
- Dirty Communists: While Tony Two-Toes and his crew are preparing to attack the Russian Mafia:Tony: There they are. Commie bastards!
Little Mike: Actually, they're not communists anymore, Tony. They're a federation of independently-liberated states.
Tony: Don't make me hurt you, Mikey. - The Dragon: U.S. Marshal Robert DeGuerin, as he was assigned by Harper to eliminate Kruger and Cullen in order to cover their tracks of the scandal.
- The Dreaded: Sergei Ivanovich Petrofsky is described as such in-universe, with even Kruger calling him "bad news." It's mostly an Informed Attribute as he gets taken out fairly quickly in the finale and it's DeGuerin who provides most of the conflicts.
- Driven to Suicide: Cullen's boss finds out she's carrying a camera and working for the FBI. He takes a revolver from his desk and appears to be about to shoot her, but sticks the gun in his mouth instead and pulls the trigger.
- Dual Wielding: Once with handguns, but most famously with railguns.
- Electric Torture: Johnny Casteleone invokes it on himself unintentionally when, attempting to fake a heart attack as a diversion while Kruger and Cullen infiltrate Cyrez, he removes a heart monitoring device, causing the doctors to try to defibrillate him (while he was still conscious and actively fighting the doctors).
- Elite Mooks: Any member of Harper and DeGuerin's mooks armed with the EM-1. While the villains had thousands of these weapons in their armament, they're still high-tech, heavy-duty equipment and they couldn't possibly outfit all their mooks with the EM-1; those who do are a far greater thread to the heroes, with a few of them easily blowing up a warehouse via concentrated EM-1 fire with Kruger still inside, nearly burying Kruger alive.
- Enemy Mine: The Mafia teams up with a Witness Protection Agent (who also faked the death of one of their former members) and the Mafia defector in question, in order to take down the villainous Russian terrorist organization — because the terrorists are using their docks to ship WMDs without their permission. Somewhat plausible as the Mafia guys in question are the defector's cousins rather than the guys he actually ratted on.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Apparently, the Mafia aren't bothered by terrorists having WMDs, but they certainly don't like it if those same people are using their docks without their knowledge, and also just so happen to be Russian terrorists.
- They also don't like their associate Canelli, but they still think that Johnny went too far by ratting him out.
- Everybody Knew Already: When Kruger urgently informs Johnny C's Mafia cousin that a major defense contractor is betraying the U.S. government by selling weapons to terrorists, Tony Two-Toes and his whole crew laugh their asses off.Tony: Mr. Sixty Minutes, tell me something I don't know.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: The limo parked on the level crossing explodes spectacularly when the train hits it.
- Faking the Dead: One of John's specialties as a Witness Security agent, with the Batman Cold Open with Casteleone and then using a car bomb on the closing scenes to keep DeGuerin and his goons off keeping hunting him and Lee down.
- Faux Affably Evil: After being outed as part of the conspiracy, DeGuerin acts reasonably pleasant and civil during the confrontation with Kruger on the plane, painting his betrayal as just a way to make money. He has no qualms about abusing his authority or killing any innocent people who get in his way, and for good measure he attempts a cheap shot on Kruger after being put down for the count.
- Flechette Storm: The bouncing-Betty grenade fired into Cullen's house.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Harper is a bespectacled man who is the Big Bad and is clearly motivated just by greed, while ordering murders to cover his tracks without any hesitation or sentiment.
- Friend or Foe?: The receiver on Kruger's shotgun melts, so he throws it at the enemy. A mook picks the shotgun up to examine it and promptly gets shot by the railgun sniper, thinking it's Kruger.
- Friendly Sniper: Sal is a fairly jovial mobster, arguably the happiest to see Johnny alive, and kills a henchman with a scoped rifle in the climax — with a Moe Greene Special, no less.
- Hacked by a Pirate: Inversion; DeGuerin has several scientists shut down the computers when it becomes obvious that Kruger and Cullen are using her former boss's computer console to access the disc copy she had (long story short, she copied a second disc in case it turned out the FBI were going to sell her out), to prevent them from hacking the secrets they had. Upon the computer being hacked, a message pops up that states, "You've Just Been Erased!"
- The Heavy: Harper is the real Big Bad, but DeGuerin is the one who moves the movie forward by actively trying to kill Kruger and Cullen.
- He Knows Too Much: They, rather. Cullen is already in danger because of what she knows, and when Kruger gets wise, he ends up in danger too.
- Hidden Depths: Played for Laughs. Mikey, one of Johnny Casteleone's cousins, comes across as plain Dumb Muscle, but he still has more knowledge of the politics of post-Glasnost Russia than Tony Two-Toes, the group's leader, much to Tony's irritation.
- High-Altitude Battle: A parachuting Arnie with a Desert Eagle vs. a jet aircraft trying to ram him.
- Impossibly Cool Weapon: The man-portable EM-1 railgun, which became a fixture in the arsenal of many first-person shooters of the time following the movie.
- Improbable Age: Lee Cullen seems quite young (Vanessa Williams was 33) to be a senior enough executive at a major defense department contractor to have clearance and access to highly classified and sensitive data involving arms dealing. While not impossible in real life, executives with that much authority generally have a 20+ year career path.
- Infrared X-Ray Camera: Can see through walls and even through skin!
- Ironic Echo: When the villains succeed in destroying the disc being deciphered at Cyrez HQ, they send Kruger a message saying "You've just been erased." Kruger repeats the message to the villains at the end of the film.
- It's Personal with the Dragon: Although Harper is the ultimate Big Bad, DeGuerin serves as Krugers personal nemesis, being the one to betray and attempt to kill him.
- I Work Alone:
- Kruger refuses to work with other agents in the Witness Protection program to prevent the possibility of a leak. Turns out to have been a good thing.Kruger: I work alone. If anyone comes to you and claims that I sent them [hands Cullen a revolver] use this.
- Johnny C. invokes the trope when Kruger tries to ditch him before the Final Battle, telling Kruger that a) I Owe You My Life, and b) his cousin Tony Two-Toes runs the docks where the arms deal is happening.Johnny C.: Oh hey, don't give me this "I work alone" shit!
- Kruger refuses to work with other agents in the Witness Protection program to prevent the possibility of a leak. Turns out to have been a good thing.
- Kiss of Life: Subverted. DeGuerin shoots a woman in the chest, then pretends to give her mouth-to-mouth when his colleagues arrive to see what happened — he's actually blocking her mouth and nose in order to finish her off and to prevent her from speaking.
- Large and in Charge: Tony Two-Toes is a hefty, serious man with a strong air of control.
- Lending a Backhand: Deguerin stages an alert to evacuate protected witnesses on the pretext that their identities have been exposed. In truth, it's a ploy to establish a Red Herring plot while Deguerin targets whistleblower Lee Cullen. Deguerin pretends to administer CPR to his witness, but in fact, he's suffocating her to cement the ruse.
- Limited Wardrobe: From the shootout at the zoo till nearly the end of the film, Lee remains in the orange sweater and blue jeans she was wearing when she fled the apartment.
- Lock-and-Load Montage: One of these is shown during the opening credits and there is a brief one when Kruger gears up for a federal raid. The one on the opening serves as a Chekhov's Gun in that it shows the audience the belt knife Kruger uses to escape The Mole later on.DeGuerin: I can't believe you nailed me with this cheap piece of mail-order shit!
- Made of Iron: Kruger gets a large wooden splinter driven completely through his thigh, yet just pulls it out and continues running and even jumping. In Real Life, he would be gushing blood, in agonizing pain, and unable to stand, let alone move.
- Throughout the whole movie, Kruger suffers injuries that should put him out of contention, but at the end, needs only an arm sling.
- DeGuerin survives getting dropped from a crane, only needing a walking cane afterward. His injury is even less noticeable than Kruger's.
- The Mafia: Johnny's former employers. Later turns into an Enemy Mine between them and Kruger to get rid of the Russians and DeGuerin's operation.
- Magnetic Weapons: The EM-1 railguns.
- Mistaken for Aliens: Kruger is mistaken for an alien by two kids in a junkyard that see him crash-land with his parachute.
- Moe Greene Special: Friendly Sniper Sal serves one up to a railgun sniper nested on a cargo crane at the docks. As a bonus, the audience gets to see it from the target's point of view as his super sci-fi scope locks on to Sal's muzzle a second before he fires.
- The Mole: DeGuerin.
Tropes N-Z
- Neck Snap: Kruger snaps quite a few necks in this movie, including one where, instead of twisting the mook's head, he traps his head with a fridge door and twists the torso.
- Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters: Maybe not ordinarily, but when someone's selling advanced firepower to the Russians, on their docks, The Mafia aren't going to take it lying down.
- Never My Fault: Before killing himself, Lee's boss Donohue is utterly indignant at being called out for committing treason and insists it's the government's fault for not paying him what he feels his weapons are worth.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: The zoo shootout takes place in a reptile house, and Kruger uses one of his remaining bullets to shoot open an alligator tank and set vicious man-eating gators on the hapless mooks. The one gator that attacks Kruger gets a headshot for its trouble.
- New Meat: Deputy Monroe.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Harper has no combat or law enforcement training and is pure politician, relying on DeGuerin and other corrupt agents to do his dirty work.
- The Not-Love Interest: Lee and Kruger. Any other movie would have had them hook up at some point, but they never do. Even that final melodramatic scene—the shootout is over, lights are flashing, the wind is blowing—that seems ripe for a Big Damn Kiss turns into nothing but... a Big Damn Hug.
- Not My Driver: Just as they thought they could get away with their crime at the end, DeGuerin and Harper are trapped on a railroad track in their limousine by Casteleone, who impersonated their driver. Cue Kruger letting them know they are screwed with "You've just been erased" on the phone.
- Obliviously Evil: The Cyrex head of security mentions having a large number of security guards who will follow orders while they're trying to trap Kruger and Lee, but who don't know anything about their arms dealing.
- Oh, Crap!: DeGuerin and Harper at the end when they realize Kruger had them Lured into a Trap on railroad tracks.
- One Bullet Left: In the zoo shootout, Kruger is down to two rounds in his Desert Eagle. He uses one to shoot a tank full of mook-eating alligators! Good thing he's got one bullet left to shoot the monster gator that comes after him... until said gator knocks the pistol out of his hands. Thankfully, he gets it back just in time.
- Police Are Useless: The FBI doesn't come out of this movie looking very good. In addition to the FBI agents not explaining to Lee the danger she would be putting herself in by testifying against Cyrex (something Kruger calls them out on), the two agents they assign to monitor Lee are taken out easily by the rogue WITSEC agents sent to kill her. The person running the FBI evidence room is also crooked, turning over the disc containing evidence of Cyrex's treason to the conspirators. Had Lee not made a duplicate copy the movie wouldn't have happened due to the FBI's mishandling of the case.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "You've just been erased."
- Protagonist Title: John Kruger is nicknamed the "Eraser" because he's good at making his assigned witnesses disappear completely. Oddly enough, even if he's called "John" much more often (the nickname is said twice, at the most), the end titles have Schwarzenegger labelled as "Eraser".
- Psycho for Hire: DeGuerin, who works for Harper, has traits that would qualify him as sadistic and psychotic.
- Put on a Bus: Johnny's wife is neither seen nor mentioned after Kruger relocates them in the opening scene.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Chief Beller. When DeGuerin tells him that Kruger is the mole and that Lee is in on it, he's immediately suspicious, pointing out how fast DeGuerin seemingly ran prints to identify Kruger as the mole and how Kruger being bought off doesn't make any sense. He hears Kruger out when Kruger tells him that DeGuerin is the mole, and upon arriving at the dockyards and putting the evidence together, Beller orders that the fallen DeGuerin be taken into custody before thanking Kruger.
- Red Right Hand: One of the guys trying to kill Lee has a easy to miss scar around his right eye. Appropriately, his name is J. Scar.
- Reformed Criminal: Johnny and the other witnesses who Kruger gets help from, given Beller's comments that Lee might be the first truly honest person to go through Kruger.
- Rock Beats Laser: In the climax, Kruger and his mobster allies are up against several mooks who use the deadly railguns with Infrared X-Ray Camera. They get the upper hand on them with ambush tactics and normal guns.
- Ruthless Foreign Gangsters: The Evil Plan of the railgun conspiracy is to sell said weapons to The Mafiya, which Kruger and Cullen instantly recognize will lead to a new era of violent terrorism. The leader of said group also heavily implies at the climax that he wanted to have his way with Cullen before killing her, but Kruger's attack made him decide to skip to the "killing her" part (Cullen smashes a coffee pot on his head in response).
- Sacrificial Lamb: Deputy Monroe was shot by DeGuerin as part of the latter's plan to frame Kruger and cover his tracks during the scandal.
- The same can be said for reporter Claire Issacs, as she was murdered by Agents Schiff and Calderon on Harper's orders due to a tapped phone conversation between her and Lee about the scandal.
- Sawn-Off Shotgun: Arnie carries a cut down over-under instead of the usual side-by-side barrel shotgun.
- Scope Snipe: One of the railgun-toting bad guys gets this treatment from Sal using a Winchester Model 70, possibly making this a Lampshade Hanging.
- Shoot Out the Lock: DeGuerin gains access to the central vault this way when Morehart's passcode doesn't work.
- Slow Laser: The EM-1 "railgun" fires pulses that move at about the same speed as Star Wars laser beams. On top of that, it's not even close to the stated effect of the weapon.
- Smug Snake: DeGuerin is a high-functioning example, but he can get very cocky while acting as if he's above being judged for his crimes.
- Sniper Duel: One of the mobsters manages to shoot a sniper wielding a railgun using an ordinary rifle... through the scope. And that's the same mobster, who is earlier stated at being unable to hit the broad side of a barn.
- The Sociopath: Harper and DeGuerin, a couple of traitorous bastards with no hearts.
- Super Window Jump: Kruger and Cullen are out of bullets, so the bad guys are considerate enough to perforate the window glass just before they jump through it.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: After Kruger kills the two mob hitmen sent after Johnny C., he arranges their bodies in a tableau on the front lawn.Kruger: They killed you, then they turned on each other.
Johnny C.: Right... those sons of bitches. - Surprisingly Sudden Death: Schiff and Calderon are both very quickly gunned down from below the floor without a chance to do anything after having survived multiple encounters with Kruger.
- Taking the Heat: Morehart clearly intends to do this to get Harper and DeGuerin off the hook. Kruger simply "erases" all three of them, rendering this moot.
- Tempting Fate: DeGuerin, Schiff and Calderon are very confident that they've killed Kruger after they've finished shooting up the warehouse. They don't get long to wallow in that sense of self-satisfaction.
- That's Gotta Hurt: Two children witness Kruger landing in a car wrecking yard after barely getting his parachute open. One of the kids pipes up "Oh man, did that hurt? It had to hurt; I saw it!"
- Throwing Your Knife Always Works: Kruger manages to hit DeGuerin's elbow with his belt knife.DeGuerin: I can't believe you stuck me with that cheap piece of 'mail order shit!
- Tongue Trauma: Johnny Casteleone almost gets his tongue cut off by a mafia hitman. Kruger intervenes Just in Time to prevent this from happening.
- Too Dumb to Live: Averted barely. While in witness protection Johnny goes back to his old Mafia-controlled restaurant because he was "dying" for a decent meal after only six months of staying low. He certainly would have died (and his tongue removed) for it had Kruger not intervened. Even Johnny's wife calls him out on how incredibly stupid this was.
- Trust Password: Averted. Lee pretends to have one with Kruger, but only does so to test a man claiming Kruger sent him. He exposes himself by trying to think of something rather than say the truth; that there is no secret handshake.
- Truth in Television: The "safe house" that Kruger arranges for Johnny Casteleone after faking his death earlier in the film is tending bar in a drag nightclub.Johnny: I got one question for you: was it your idea to hook me up with the Village People here?
John: Well, you're safe, aren't you?
Johnny: Well, from the Mob, yeah. I mean no self-respecting wiseguy would ever be caught dead in a joint like this.- This actually is quite true; the Mafia has strict rules against members being homosexual, and if one of their members was indeed that, they certainly would be killed.
- Turn to Religion: Father Rodriguez, who aids the protagonists, reveals that his calling came with the new identity Kruger gave him:Father Rodriguez: Of course, I wasn't always Father Rodriguez. You might say I was born again, with a little help from our friend here. I've been given a second chance at life. I'm using it to do God's work.
- Unions Suck: Implied when Kruger employs his previous ward's mob connections to slow down the bad guys. They show up to the docks where the baddies have set up their smuggling operation and demand they only use Union labor. There doesn't seem to be a big difference between "Union labor" and "mob connections", as far as they are concerned.
- Vamoose from the Vehicle: Kruger escapes from a plane in flight by shooting out a window, destroying one of the engines, and jumping out after a parachute flies out. He catches the parachute during the fall and successfully deploys it, and narrowly manages to untangle the strings after the hijacked plane attempts to ram him.
- Vertical Kidnapping: Kruger takes out his first mook by looping a wire around his neck as he walks out the front door, then yanking him up onto the roof.
- Vigilante Execution: DeGuerin, the Undersecretary of Defense and other high-ups on the EM-1 railgun conspiracy have too much power and access to goons, so even if being indicted they will surely kill anybody they need to in order to remain free (DeGuerin sure boasts he will), so John Kruger, Lee Cullen and Johnny Casteleone decide to deal with them the only way they think will be 100% sure — by having the former two pull off a spectacular Faking the Dead and then killing the big bads by parking their limo in front of a train.
- Vigilante Man: Kruger becomes like this by second half of the film.
- Western Terrorists: Sergei Ivanovich Petrofsky is Eastern European.
- Wham Shot: DeGuerin subduing the man who was holding his witness hostage... only to then discreetly shoot her before anybody arrives, revealing himself as The Mole.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Subverted. Taking Cullen hostage, DeGuerin tells Kruger to drop his weapon, and when he does—Thanks. [blasts him]
- Witless Protection Program: Invoked Trope by the villains: Turns out that the Government Conspiracy that is selling out the EM-1 Rail Guns has members within Witness Security, and so they are able to hunt down and try to kill (and successfully kill one of) the witnesses holding information on the secret arms sale. The Batman Cold Open that establishes the tactics of John "Eraser" Kruger happens because Johnny Casteleone (a Mafia informant that entered the Program and becomes a Chekhov's Gunman) decided to risk being found by the Mafia to go back to his favorite pasta place and eat his first proper (by his standards) meal in months.