The King's Man is a period spy and war film directed and produced by Matthew Vaughn. It is a Prequel / Origins Episode to the Kingsman film series, which is loosely based on a comic book series created by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander, Harris Dickinson, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Charles Dance, Stanley Tucci and Alexandra Maria Lara.

Orlando, Duke of Oxford, is a former war hero who swore an oath of pacifism and transferred to the medical corps after the Afghan Wars. While making a delivery of Red Cross supplies to a British Army camp during the Boer War, the camp is attacked, and his wife is an accidental casualty of the battle, with their son Conrad a witness to her death.

A decade later, Conrad is near grown, and wants to enlist in the Army. But Orlando, out of respect for his wife's dying wish to keep their son safe, refuses to let him. Unfortunately, a man calling himself The Shepherd has created an international plot to start a world war that will destroy England, and a seemingly chance meeting with General Kitchener, a former Army friend of Orlando's, while getting Conrad measured for his first suit from the Kingsman tailors places the Oxfords into the path of this plot, and they soon find themselves England's only hope against a plot that only they know exist.

The film was released on December 22, 2021.

Previews: Teaser👁 Image
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The King's Man contains examples of:

• Actor Allusion: Ralph Fiennes as Orlando gets several:
  • He wears a suit and a bowler hat and carries an umbrella (with a sword in it) at one point. It all screams John Steed.
  • He wears a familiar-looking pair of glasses in a couple scenes and says "Every man I killed, I killed a piece of myself", similar to the concept of Horcruxes.
  • Orlando ends up becoming the head of a British intelligence service.
  • It's not the first time Tom Hollander has played an English king named George. Or his first time playing George V.
• Advertised Extra: For all the build up Rasputin gets in the trailers and other marketing material he's only a henchman to the real Big Bad and dies fairly early on in the movie.
• Almighty Janitor:
  • The Big Bad is General Kitchener's assistant, who commands the loyalty of the likes of Rasputin and Lenin.
  • Shola is implied to have been a soldier who served under Orlando's command in Afghanistan, explaining why he's such a good fighter, but there's no explanation given for why Polly the Nanny is an expert sniper, spymistress and codebreaker.
• Almost Dead Guy: The British spy lives long enough to give Conrad the intel he gathered then dies as Conrad carries him out of No-Man's Land.
• America Saves the Day: Zigzagged. America's participation is shown as being vital to the Allies winning World War I, but the President and his ambassador are seemingly more concerned with preserving the integrity of the office by not allowing his scandalous affair to become public knowledge. It's only after the incriminating evidence is retrieved by Oxford and his associates that the United States joins the fight.
• Anachronism Stew: The "Dulce et decorum est" poem read out by Orlando hadn't even been written yet in 1916.
• Animal Motifs: The rings given out to the Flock have animal icons engraved on top. Noticeably, Rasputin tries to trade with another member for the bear-adorned ring.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age:
  • The German shock troops carry trench raiding clubs👁 Image
    along with knives. There were rifles, artillery and machine guns during World War I, but the need for close combat weapons arose with trench warfare, especially with nighttime operations, which is what they were doing.
  • Lampshaded when Polly criticizes Shola and Conrad for training with knives when firearms are used these days. However as mentioned above, Conrad has to fight with a knife when encountering the German shock troops, as neither side can risk firing a shot that would bring a fusillade down on them from both sides.
  • In the climax, Orlando brings both Gun And Sword when attacking the Big Bad's lair. Being a villain, the Big Bad challenges Orlando to a sword fight...and then tries to shoot him.
• Artistic License – History:
  • For a film that dives fairly deeply into the politics and causes of the First World War, not even the word "France" is uttered throughout the entire movie, nor the Ottoman Empire, while Austria is present but plays a minor role.
  • During WWI, Adolf Hitler was simply a foot soldier who has yet to formulate his political ideologies, let alone traveled to Russia. The film gives him a Historical Villain Upgrade to become the assassin of the Tsar (replacing the group of communist revolutionaries who were actually responsible). Furthermore, given that Hitler already displayed antisemitic and German nationalist views during WW1 and later blamed "Judeo-Bolsheviks" for the defeat of Imperial Germany, it is unlikely he would have worked with a radical Jewish revolutionary on the opposite end of the political spectrum.
  • The film portrays Tsar Nicholas II abdicating the throne in front of Vladimir Lenin. In reality, the Tsar abdicated on a train coming back from the front. At that time Lenin had no direct involvement in the February Revolution and was not even in Russia, being in exile in Switzerland. A provisional government took over, with Lenin taking power after a second revolution, in October 1917.
  • The film depicts Grigori Rasputin as one of the instigators of WW1. The real Rasputin was vehemently opposed to Russia's entry into WW1, and being of peasant background, knew the effects of war upon Russia's neglected peasantry. He wrote multiple letters trying to convince the Tsar and Tsarina, and correctly predicted that the war would cause the downfall of the Romanovs.
  • One scene portrays Neuschwanstein Castle (the former fancy residence of Ludwig II of Bavaria) as if Kaiser Wilhelm II is ruling from there. Not only was Berlin the official capital and political center of Germany, even in 1914 the castle Neuschwanstein was already mostly a tourist attraction.
  • The film portrays Wilhelm II, Nicholas II and George V as close in ages and having spent their childhoods together under Queen Victoria, and World War 1 as the result of sibling rivalry.^note George and Nicholas were first cousins, as their mothers were sisters. George and Wilhelm were also first cousins, as their parents were both children of Queen Victoria. Wilhelm and Nicholas were more distantly related, being third cousins by blood, though by marriage they were first cousins-in-law, as Nicholas married a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. In reality Wilhelm was 9 years older than Nicholas and 5 years older than George, and was already an adult when he met Nicholas in person for the first time. Furthermore, Nicholas II was not a grandson of Victoria, as the movie outright states, rather it is his wife that was her granddaughter. He was George's cousin via their mothers being sisters in the Danish royal family, not via Victoria. Nicholas first visited England and met George and Victoria only the summer after he became engaged to his future wife. In any case, the war was much bigger than the personal rivalries of royal cousins, and would have happened with or without them (particularly in the case of George V, as the British monarchy had been largely ceremonial for a long time).
  • The film shows a scene of all three rulers as children interacting, and with the implication all three were heirs to their respective throne. Nicholas and George only first met as adults. Wilhelm only met Nicholas at his coming of age ceremony. Lastly, George would not have been the heir apparent to the throne at the time, it'd have been his older brother, Albert Victor (who died when George was in his 20s).
  • The first assassination attempt on Franz Ferdinand involved multiple assassins. Gavrilo Princip was not the one who threw the initial grenade. He in fact got to do nothing as when the explosive blew up the wrong car, the entire motorcade drove away before he could do anything. The movie does however accurately portray the circumstances of the actual assassination, as seen under Shown Their Work.
  • It goes without saying that for the sake of the story, Rasputin's death is very different from how he died in real life. Similarly, Mata Hari didn't produce a sex tape to blackmail Woodrow Wilson.
  • Erik Jan Hanussen was not an adviser to Kaiser Wilhelm and only became active in German politics after the war.
  • The US Embassy in London flies a flag with 50 stars, rather than the historically correct at the time 48.
  • Alfred du Pont died in 1935, not in 1918 as the movie depicts.
  • Mata Hari is handed over to the Americans after being captured, but historically it's the French who arrested her, tried and executed her, and the Americans had no involvement in her trial whatsoever.
• Artistic License – Physics: The elevator to the Shepard's home makes little sense. The platform is a rickety thing made of planks and ropes, yet the counterweight is a huge boulder whose mass far outstrips the weight of the elevator and whatever passengers could ever fit inside, and yet the elevator is to be handcranked by a person at the top.
• Artistic License – Politics:
  • The film implies that King George has the same level of authority in England as the Kaiser and the Tsar have in Germany and Russia respectively, which hadn't been the case for a very long while in the UK.
  • Similarly by the later half of the war, Wilhelm II had deferred all powers to the German High Command, lead by Ludendorff and Hindenburg, after his personal handling of the war proved disastrous. The two basically ruled Germany in a de facto dictatorship. The Zimmerman Telegram was an idea that originated from High Command, not from the Kaiser.
  • The film also depicts Lenin as a believer of political balance between the left and right. The real Lenin in contrast believed in exporting the Bolshevik Revolution into Western Europe, and even fought a war with the newly independent Poland when they refused Soviet troops permission to cross its borders to aid the communist revolutionaries in Germany and Hungary. Ironically, it is Lenin's successor Josef Stalin who believed in pragmatic political policies such as separate spheres of influence.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Conrad's insistence towards going off to war since he believes it's his duty—and not just for the glory—to the point that he even switches identities with another soldier to avoid being stationed away from battle too—is further indicted as when he gets there, numerous others die in front of him; he's forced to kill for his own survival as well; he breaks down over the realization that Orlando was right about not needing to go to battle to prove your worth as a man and after all that, his deception gets him killed by friendly-fire too. Conrad had also made it a point to tell Orlando he would switch to the medical branch once getting his Victoria Cross too. In a cruel irony, he gets it posthumously.
• Beard of Sorrow: Orlando grows one after Conrad's death and starts drinking.
• Been There, Shaped History: Rasputin's death comes at the hands of Orlando and Polly while the Zimmerman Telegraph is intercepted by Orlando's spies and and decoded by Polly.
• Beneath Notice: Orlando's spy network, who are all domestics.
• Big Bad: The Shepherd, the leader of a conspiracy known as the Flock which engineers World War I as a means to topple the British monarchy.
• Bitter Almonds:
  • The attempt to poison Rasputin involves a bakewell tart, which traditionally made with lots of almonds, to mask the scent of cyanide. Rasputin actually suspects poison when he sees the cake because it is covered in almonds.
  • Cyanide pills are distributed to the Flock in their rings. Gavrilo Princip's one is found on him after his arrest, and Orlando notes its almond scent.
• Blackmail: The Shepherd uses a film of President Wilson having sex with Mata Hari, a member of the Flock to keep America out of the war. Oxford's final mission is to steal the negatives.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: One of the German Shock Troops carries a gauntlet dagger for close combat.
• Blade Enthusiast: Shola is an expert knife fighter and carries several blades on his person.
• Bookcase Passage: The Duke of Oxford's estate has a small bust on a library bookshelf, which causes another bookcase to swing inwards revealing a secret passage.
• Boom, Headshot!:
  • Polly ultimately finishes off Rasputin this way.
  • Conrad is killed this way by an irate Scottish soldier who mistakes him for a German spy.
• Call-Forward: Due to this film's status as the Prequel, there's quite a bit to the previous two movies:
  • The Oxford estate will become the Kingsman headquarters (at least, before it's blown to smithereens in the second movie). Several rooms used in the first movie are also perfectly replicated in this one, showing their original usage and decor.
  • The phrases "Oxford, not Rogues" and "manners maketh men" originates in this movie, though under very different circumstances. The former is explained as a code word referring to shoelace-tying styles in the first movie, while in this one, Orlando's mocking 'rogues' as one of lower class and respect when advising Conrad. The latter, ironically, is the Catchphrase of the True Final Boss.
  • The gadget Eggsy used to kill Gazelle in the first movie is actually created as an improvisation by Orlando to save himself from slipping off a cliff and assisting in his climb back up, by way of stabbing military-style daggers through the ends of his shoes.
  • It won't be a Kingsman movie without a fight with umbrellas. This movie has it in spades, along with other items symbolizing 'gentlemen'... or what passes as one in this setting.
  • Like Kingsman: The Secret Service, one person in the father-son duo dies by the end of the second act, leading to a montage of the other heroes in mourning. Before, it was Harry, but now, Conrad bites the dust.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • James Bond movies exist (or rather will exist, since the film is set during World War I) in the Kingsman universe as Harry Hart and Richmond Valentine talked about them in the first film. More specifically, Harry doesn't seem to like the new ones (in a Take That! to the Daniel Craig era by Matthew Vaughn). Ralph Fiennes plays Gareth Mallory/M in Skyfall, Spectre and No Time to Die, and Gemma Arterton was Agent Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace. Charles Dance (General Kitchener) was Claus (a henchman of the villain) in For Your Eyes Only.
  • Chester King mentions Jason Bourne in the first film. Daniel Brühl played Martin Kreutz in The Bourne Ultimatum.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The Big Bad has a single shot pistol built into his sword, first used to shoot his sparring partner for angering him. He later attempts to use it to kill Orlando.
  • Orlando is given a Victoria Cross that was meant for the late Conrad. This plays a key role in the final battle, when Orlando is holding Morton over a cliff by his cashmere scarf. Morton believes that Orlando won't kill him, but the latter proves him wrong by cutting the scarf with the medal, sending Morton to his death.
• Combat Pragmatist: While initially declaring Let's Fight Like Gentlemen, the Big Bad throws out the rules immediately by first trying to shoot Orlando then later throwing a grenade at him.
• Creepy Souvenir: When Conrad finally enters the war, he walks past a human skull with a German helmet and cigarettes in its mouth that's been put on the wall of a British trench.
• Cyanide Pill: The Shepherd's flock all have these concealed in Flock Rings. Gavrilo Princip attempts to take his after failing to kill Archduke Ferdinand, but gets another chance and is captured before he can take it, while Rasputin uses his to poison Alexey Nikolavitch as part of his plan to withdraw Russia from WW1 so that Germany can focus on defeating England.
• Dance Battler: Rasputin the Mad Monk is clearly a mad dancer as well as seen here👁 Image
  . During their initial meeting, Orlando asks if he's a monk or a ballet dancer.
• Darker and Edgier: The movie is by virtue of being an Action Drama versus the first two movies that were Action Comedies that were Denser and Wackier.
• Decoy Protagonist: The movie seems to be setting the stage for Conrad's story, only for him to die about halfway through, after which the focus shifts to Orlando.
• Disney Villain Death: Morton suffers this and smashes onto a pile of rocks when he lands.
• Disposable Woman: The Duchess of Oxford; killed in the opening scene so that Oxford can make her dying promise which drives the conflict between him and his son Conrad.
• Disproportionate Retribution: All the drama of WWI happened over one Scotsman's hatred of the English because of the closure of his business.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The Shepherd is Morton, Kitchener's aide.
• The Dog Bites Back: The goat who got one of its horns cut off by Morton returns the favor by impaling his leg with the other horn just before he can kill Orlando.
• Doomed by Canon: Given that it was established in the first movie that the Kingsman Agency was founded by men of wealth and power who had lost their heirs during WWI, Conrad was doomed the moment he decided to enlist.
• Dragon Ascendant: The Stinger reveals that following Morton's death, Erik Jan Hanussen took over the remnants of the Flock as the new Shepherd.
• Drowning His Sorrows: Orlando, after Conrad is killed.
• Easy Impersonation: Subverted. Conrad initially raises no suspicion when he switches places with Corporal Reid and enlists and serves on his behalf. But when he identifies as Reid to the commanding officer, another soldier in the battalion happens to know Reid personally and calls him an infiltrator, and he impulsively shoots Conrad dead before the latter can further explain the situation.
• The Edwardian Era: The film features 1910s fashion and cars as well as the devastation surrounding World War I.
• Enemy Rising Behind: After Rasputin is seemingly drowned, the heroes start tending to their injuries as the mad monk rises out of the water behind them, sword in hand... only to get shot in the head.
• The Faceless: Every scene The Shepherd is in before the climax has his face concealed by shadow, a mask, or an object. This is to hide his true identity, Morton.
• Faking the Dead: In the third act, Morton reveals that he faked his death from the torpedo fired at Kitchener's ship. He claimed that he was seasick, giving him the chance to escape on a small boat.
• Foil: The Orlando/Conrad dynamic to the Harry/Eggsy one. Instead of the mentee being inspired by the death of his mentor to become who he was, the mentor is inspired by the death of his mentee to become who he would have been.
• Foreshadowing:
  • A young Conrad tells Shola that out of the Knights of the Round Table, he wants to be Lancelot. If you watched the past two Kingsman movies, you would realize that everyone who took the Lancelot position in the Kingsman organization died. As such, it tells us that Conrad won't make it out of this movie alive.
  • And during that same scene, Conrad is correct in naming Orlando as Arthur and Shola as Merlin.
  • Rasputin the Mad Monk doesn't so much walk as he glides across the floor, something the Orlando notes is part of a dance routine. A couple scenes later, Rasputin proves himself an adept Dance Battler.
  • Conrad's eventual status as a Decoy Protagonist is hinted at by his dismissal by Rasputin when he tries to seduce him in favor of Orlando.
  • Morton always has his left hand out of sight. This conceals that he's wearing a Flock Ring on it - The Shepherd's, no less.
  • Much focus is given to the historical relations between the rulers of England, Germany and Russia, and we see the Shepherd has agents manipulating Germany and Russia. It might then seem odd he has seemingly no one in England, considering that it his his primary target. Because it turns out his agent in England is the Shepherd himself, Morton.
• For the Evulz: While the Shepherd is given a motivation, this doesn't extend to his flock, who are mostly just doing his bidding for seemingly no discernable reason other than they are evil. Most notable is Rasputin. As he already has a privileged position of power with the Tsar's family, there's no real reason for him to be working for the Shepherd, other than the fact that he's evil.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Also a Rewatch Bonus: the submarine that launches the missile that sinks Kitchener's ship first appears in the middle of angling itself, because it is making a U-turn after picking up Morton.
  • While it's probably easy to see that the same soldier that shot and killed Conrad is the same one burying him, unless rewinding, one might miss seeing the name on the Cross that Conrad's being buried under. It’s his own. While Conrad getting the Victoria Cross posthumously means they figured it out and awarded him as a hero, it means the figured it out even before burying him too—and that the man who killed him by friendly-fire definitely knew and his personally putting Conrad to rest is either a reprimand or his personal penance for doing so.
• Freudian Excuse: The Shepherd is a rabid Scot nationalist who hates the English over the fact that his family business was shut down by an English noble. He starts WWI in the hopes that he can get the Kaiser to destroy England.
• Gas Mask Mooks: Some of the German shock troops encountered in No-Man's Land wear gas masks, no doubt because of the use of combat gas during the war.
• Giant Mook: The minion manning the lift up to the Big Bad's mountaintop lair is a massive man, played by Olivier Richters, that is one of many hitches in the Orlando's plan to seize it for their infiltration.
• Godzilla Threshold: During the nighttime fight against the German shock troops in No-Man's Land, both sides avoid using firearms as the sound would result in both armies opening fire. But when Conrad, one of the last English soldiers is about to be killed, his commanding officer shoots his opponent with his pistol, causing both armies to start shooting.
• Got Volunteered: An officer needs six volunteers to go with him into No-Man's Land to retrieve intelligence carried by a spy. When only Conrad volunteers, the Staff Sergeant orders five other men step forward.
• GPS Evidence: The Shepherd gave many of his agents cashmere scarves made from the wool of his personal flock. When Orlando figures this out, he takes one of the scarves to Kingsman, which identifies the wool as being from a rare breed of goat that only lives on the mesa where the Shepherd has his Supervillain Lair.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Orlando and Shola both favour close combat, usually with edged weapons, Polly is probably the best shot on the team and usually functions as a sniper out in the field.
• Handicapped Badass: Orlando suffered a serious wound to his leg during the raid that killed his wife, but he is still capable of holding his own in a confrontation for a short period.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Although not averse to firearms Orlando and Shola both favour bladed weapons in a fight.
• Hidden in Plain Sight:
  • Orlando's spy network is centered around domestics, who are everywhere but rarely get noticed.
  • The Shepherd is General Kitchener's aide, who follows him everywhere, sees and hears almost everything he does, and who nobody pays attention to.
• Historical Badass Upgrade:
  • The historical Rasputin was mystic and self-proclaimed holy man whose only claim to fame was ingratiating himself into the favor of the Russian Imperial Family, while the movie depicts him as a master swordsman capable of going toe-to-toe with Orlando, Shola, and Conrad in a fight.
  • The historical Mata Hari was nothing like the dangerous femme fatale seen in the movie—depending on which historian you ask, she was either a low-level spy who had not produced much useful information, or may have been an innocent scapegoat wrongly executed by the French.
• Historical Character's Fictional Relative: The Oxfords are related to Felix Yusupov👁 Image
  and play a central role in Rasputin's murder.
• Historical Domain Character: Rasputin the Mad Monk has a sword duel with Orlando and Gavrilo Princip attempts to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand. King George V, Herbert Kitchener, Tsar Nicholas II (also Alexandra Feodorovna and their children), Erik Jan Hanussen, Mata Hari, Vladimir Lenin, Felix Yusopov, Arthur Zimmerman, General Erich Ludendorff, Queen Victoria, President Woodrow Wilson, and Adolf Hitler also make appearances.
• Historical In-Joke:
  • Rasputin is poisoned, stabbed, drowned, and finally shot before he died, much like how he was allegedly killed in real life.
  • When it seems like their efforts will bring a swift end to the war, Oxford and King George drink a toast to "peace in our time."
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • Rasputin, as so often happens. In the film he is a warmonger pushing Russia into war, while the historical Rasputin was actually against it. Similarly, Tsarevich Alexei's condition is the result of Rasputin poisoning him so that he can "cure" him to control the Tsar, as opposed to the historical Alexei who suffered from genetically-inherited hemophilia and which the historical Rasputin actually did have success in treating.
  • While it probably goes without saying, in reality Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Franz Ferdinand was not intended to start World War One. On a lesser note, in the film Princip is always meant to be the man who kills Ferdinand, whereas in reality he was one of several potential assassins in Sarajevo on that day; he just happened to be the one who succeeded.
  • German psychic Erik Jan Hanussen and American industrialist Alfred Dupont are portrayed as being members of The Conspiracy, with Hanussen manipulating the Kaiser into war and suggesting the Zimmermann Telegram👁 Image
    whilst Dupont blackmails President Wilson into staying out of the war and leaving Britain to her fate. Needless to say, there's no evidence either of them did anything like this.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Shepherd's tendency to kill and maim his goats for emphasis while making points to his followers comes back to bite him when a goat he'd cut one horn off of previously stabs him in the leg with the other at a critical moment that allows Orlando to gain the upper hand in their fight.
• Homage: Orlando and Spencer's shadow's being reflected on the screen during their duel was likely a nod to the famous sword fight from The Adventures of Robin Hood.
• Homage Shot: During the final battle, Orlando crashes through a wall after being projected by an explosion while protecting himself with a metal shield is filmed the same way and with the same color grading as Diana of Themyscira crashing through a wall during the battle of Veld in Wonder Woman (which is also set during World War I). Incidentally, Vaughn's next film, Argylle, had Wonder Woman writer Jason Fuchs at the script.
• Honey Trap: Orlando plans one for Rasputin with Conrad as the bait, due to Rasputin's reputation of liking young boys. Turns out that Rasputin ends up finding Conrad boring, and is much more interested in Orlando himself.
• Hope Spot: Even though the spy ends up dying in the blast, Conrad manages to get back to his side of the trench with some incredibly important intel to give to army command and the act is deemed worthy of a Victoria Cross, a medal which Conrad has been after. Unfortunately, Conrad gets shot and killed, not by the Germans, but by his own side over a simple misunderstanding.
• Irony: In the middle of the movie, Conrad was killed by mistake because he never bothered to replicate the Scottish accent of the man whose identity he's assuming. Building up to the final fight, Morton's ability and success to stay hidden depended on his perfect portrayal of the formal English accent, completely removing his native, heavy Scottish accent. Also ironic given Conrad's death was caused by his refusal to act as a General's secretary, a position the Morton exploits the run his Flock.
• Kaiserreich: Kaiser Wilhelm II is portrayed as an complete imbecile whose insecurities about his cousins make easy to manipulate by the film's bad guys. In contrast the German shock troops seen on the front are frighteningly efficient and carry various examples of real-life trench weaponry.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: The movie somehow manages to make Oxford donning a suit so he can go to a meeting at the US Embassy as dramatic as a superhero gearing up for battle.
• Logo Joke: The final trailer has the 20th Century and Marv Films logos shaded gold.
• Man in a Kilt: Conrad wears a kilt as part of his uniform while serving on the front lines of World War I because he switched places with a Scottish soldier so he could fight despite his father getting him assigned to a rear line posting.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It is never explained how Rasputin heals Orlando's injured leg, whether it is an actual mystical healing ability or some type of chiropractic muscle manipulation technique.
• Mistaken for Spies: Conrad changes papers and uniform with a Scottish soldier so that he could fight and the Scot could get the rear-line posting his father meant for him. Later on, a friend of the Scot who he switched places with calls him out for using another man's identity and shoots him as a suspected spy.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The goat who ends up with one horn due to the Shepherd cutting it off and killing its mate earlier. It assists (eventually) Oxford in getting onto the plateau where the Shepherd's lair is, and in the final battle between Oxford and the Shepherd it impales the Shepherd's leg to allow Oxford to kill him.
• Mood Whiplash: The movie begins with some fairly comedic moments including childish insults between powerful heads of state and a wacky Dance Fight with Rasputin. The tone then shifts significantly to show the horror of the trenches in World War One and Conrad's death. The climax goes back to being a bit more lighthearted with an elaborate scheme to beat the bad guys involving some tongue-in-cheek action sequences.
• Mythology Gag:
  • "We are Oxfords, not rogues."
  • Gavrilo Princip and President Wilson are seen drinking Statesman whiskey, a company that would later be turned into the Kingsman's American counterpart.
  • "Looking better, Your Grace." "Feeling better, Polly."
• Near-Villain Victory: During the climax in the fight between Orlando and the Shepherd, the latter gains the upper hand against him when he bests him and corners him at the edge of the climax, and is about to kill him… until the goat that the Shepherd mistreated impaled his master’s leg, allowing Orlando to defeat and kill the Shepherd.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The trailers for the movie seem to build up Rasputin as the Big Bad and the story to be centred around the Kingsman organisation. In reality Rasputin is just one of the numerous historical villains taking part in The Shepherd's evil scheme and the eponymous organisation is only founded at the very end of the movie.
  • The trailer implies the Shepherd started the war to make himself rich (though a 👁 This example contains a TRIVIA entry. It should be moved to the TRIVIA tab.
    Missing Trailer Scene shows Hanussen gloating over a huge state treasury of gold, so that may be the motive of some of his Flock) whereas he wants to destroy the British Empire out of revenge.
  • As the release date was pushed further and further back, the trailers got Denser and Wackier. The first three trailers are much closer in tone to the movie's Darker and Edgier sensibilities but the final red-band trailer ramped up the comedy to make it seem as though the movie would share its predecessors' irreverent sense of humor.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!:
  • Rasputin fixing Orlando's leg allows him to go into the field and defeat the Shepherd.
  • The Zimmerman telegram^note A historical communication in which the Germans offered Mexico aid to reclaim Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, which was intended to keep America out of the war by forcing them to concentrate their attention on Mexico, is intercepted and given to the Americans to give them a reason why they should enter the war. This (minus the involvement of the proto-Kingsmen) actually happened in real life.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
  • Given that the Red Revolution was basically a backup plan by the Shepard to get Russia out of the war, killing Rasputin, who was there to do just that, has a ripple effect that influences the course of history for decades, and indirectly leads to the United States involvement in Vietnam, the rise of the Taliban and 9/11. ^note Mainly due to it influencing the Red Scare and Cold War thus leading to a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan which in the aftermath led to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as the rise of Al Qaeda.
  • King George's actions to protect Conrad accidentally sets in motion the events that lead to his death. To elaborate: in gratitude to Orlando for cracking the Zimmerman Telegraph, George arranges for Conrad to be assigned to a safe post in London. Unfortunately Conrad is too desperate to serve in the war, and switches places with Archie Reid, who was to be shipped to the front. Unfortunately he ends up encountering a friend of this soldier, who immediately identifies him as an impostor and, due to surrounding circumstances, assumes him to be a German spy and shoots him dead.
• Now What?: Orlando and Shola find themselves at the top of the mesa with the aeroplane, parachute and elevator all destroyed, and ponder how they're supposed to get down. We never do find out how they did, but the ending has them forming the Kingsman organisation.
• Oh, Crap!: The British soldiers exchange a silent version with a group of German shock troops when they run into each other in the middle of the night in No-Man's Land.
• Once More, with Clarity: As soon as the Shepherd's true identity is revealed, we get a montage of scenes from the beginning of the movie, showing the suggestions that Morton made to Kitchener. What seemed like good ideas were actually his manipulations in keeping WWI going. It's followed up by the moment where Morton told Kitchener that he was seasick on the ship, revealing that he actually got away on another boat and launched the torpedo that sunk the ship with Kitchener in it.
  "This debate should happen after we have won the war."
  "I suggest we go to Russia and we sort it out ourselves."
• Parting-Words Regret: The last thing that Orlando ever said to Conrad was that he could not give him his blessing to go off to war, making his death in that war all the more painful.
• Personal Seals:
  • The character who's featured on the first poster👁 Image
    ◊ has a signet ring with the Kingsman symbol on it, and used it to impress a seal into a wax binding.
  • The Shepherd and all of his Flock wear rings as well. The Shepherd's has a crook, while everyone else's is some sort of animal. They all contain a hidden compartment with a Cyanide Pill.
• P.O.V. Cam:
  • We get a first person perspective of Orlando's time in Afghanistan, culminating in him seeing his own blood-spattered face in a mirror as he realizes what a killer he'd become.
  • We briefly see the final duel between Orlando and the Shepherd from the point of views of their swords.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "You're right. I shouldn't let you fall. Only now I have become the man that my son would have been." Cue Orlando using Conrad's Victoria Cross to make Morton fall to his death.
• Purging the Poison: Rasputin pauses his hypnosis session with Orlando to vomit up the poisoned Bakewell tart he'd eaten, though he claims to have built up an immunity to the poison later.
• Rasputinian Death: The Trope Namer himself is poisoned, stabbed, impaled, drowned and finally shot in the head.
• Pretty Little Headshots:
  • Polly shooting Rasputin, despite her using a .45 caliber Bulldog pistol.
  • Likewise when Conrad is killed. There's a small entry hole, and a bit of blood is seen spraying from the back of his head. A .303 round point-blank like that would've had a similar effect on his head to a sledgehammer on a watermelon.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: King George V is the only one among monarchs (and presidents) who wants to avoid the war and then end it as quickly as possible. And at the end he joins the Kingsmen.
• Red Herring: Archie is Scottish, sports a buzzcut, and is played by a name actor, all of which would seem to hint that he's the Shepherd. Not only is he not, he actually winds up becoming Kingsman's first Lancelot.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: King George himself is one of the founding members of Kingsman.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • During the Afghan Wars, Orlando slashed a soldier's neck in front of a mirror. Blood spatters on the mirror's left side, leaving the other side clean. After this, Orlando sees his bloodied self and finds himself at a literal crossroads. Either he continues spilling blood for his country, or he puts down his sword and saves lives instead.
  • During the final sword fight between Orlando and the Shepherd, their shadows are seen on a projected video showing soldiers at the front lines. The two combatants are essentially fighting a secret battle during WWI, where one side's victory can either end or prolong the war.
• Sequel Hook: The Shepherd dies, but the Flock lives on, with Erik Jan Hanussen assuming the role of the new Shepherd. The credits stinger shows Lenin being introduced to their newest member - Adolf Hitler.
• Shirtless Scene: Shola trains Conrad in knife combat while shirtless - ostensibly as the two are using blunted blades dipped in chalk to mark hits on each other.
• Shout-Out: The poem that Conrad sends to his father and that later Orlando reads at his funeral mass is "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen.
• Shown Their Work: While the movie contains plenty of artistic license and historical villain upgrades, it also gets an impressive number of details right. The accurate CGI model of the armored cruiser HMS Hampshire particularly stands out.
  • Despite the wider backstory behind it being fictionalised and the archduke's death shown as more instantaneous than it really was (he lived a few minutes after being hit, pleading for his wife Sophie to live, and other people in the car were initially unaware he'd even been shot), the overall assassination scene shows an impressive attention to detail; Gavrilo Princip is shown sitting outside Schiller's Deli, as he really was in real life (you can even see the sign for it behind him!), and the car stops in front of him after initially taking a wrong turn (although in the film, Orlando takes the place of the military governor who actually pointed this out). They even take care to get the number, sequence and target of shots right; just like in real life, Princip first shoots Franz in the neck, then Sophie in the abdomen. The film also broadly gets the sequence of events of the assassination correct, with the initial explosive blowing up the wrong car, the Archduke escaping, delivering his speech at City Hall, then going to see the survivors of the bombing and getting lost on the way.
• Small Role, Big Impact: A random nameless Scottish soldier mistakes Conrad for a German spy and shoots him dead, driving Orlando into a spiral of despair.
• Snobs Vs Slobs: As is usual for the series. The Shepherd's group are mostly from commoner origins and operate out of a literal goat barn. Meanwhile Oxford is an aristocrat, with his staff, operating out of a manor and later England's most expensive tailor.
• The Stinger: A mid-credits scene shows that Erik Jan Hanussen has secretly become the new Shepherd, now building a new Flock group. He already has Lenin on his side, and welcomes someone credited as the "Moustached Man", who sports a familiar undercut...
  Erik Jan Hanussen: This young man will come to rival your position in this world, my friend.
  "Moustached Man": It is an honor, Comrade Lenin.
  Lenin: And your name?
  "Moustached Man": Adolf Hitler.
• Sword Cane: Orlando carries a stylish cane with a blade hidden in its length.
• Sword Fight: Orlando and The Shepherd engage in a prolonged sword duel at the movie's climax.
• Taking the Bullet: Shola does this in the climax when The Shepherd shoots at Oxford.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Lord Oxford attempts to kill Rasputin with a tart laced with cyanide. All it does is make him vomit.
• Tragic Keepsake: It is revealed that the entire Arthurian naming convention of Kingsman is this, twice over. Arthur, his knights and the way that the round table maintains equality between them is brought up in the prologue by Emily to explain to her son, Conrad, why their family supports the Red Cross shortly before her death, indeed just before the attack Conrad is fantasizing to Shola about their family as the characters of Arthurian legend, identifying Emily as Guinevere, himself as Lancelot, Shola as Merlin and Orlando as Arthur. Later, when switching places with Archie, Conrad's letter to Orlando uses the same Arthurian metaphor, setting up Orlando using he same naming scheme when he founds Kingsman.
• Treacherous Advisor: Several members of the Flock are positioned as this to Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas, to ensure that the diplomatic tensions after the death of Franz Ferdinand escalate to war despite King George's attempts to be peacemaker.
• Trailers Always Lie: The trailers play up Rasputin as the primary villain, but he's not the Shepherd, only a member of his Flock.
• Violent Glaswegian:
  • The Shepherd has a strong Scottish accent and is quick to resort to cursing, threats, and violence, including murdering his fencing partner for attacking while he was distracted.
  • Conrad's killer; a Scottish soldier who shoots Conrad after discovering him impersonating the soldier's friend, who Conrad switch places with to avoid being assigned away from the front, and Conrad is too slow to explain what's going on.
• War Is Hell: When Conrad gets to the war front, he's confronted with the cruel reality of it, seeing many soldiers die in front of him and having to kill to preserve his life, something Conrad gets torn upon after realising that the soldier he has to kill is another young man just like him that doesn't want to die.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never shown what happened to the soldier that shot Conrad, but it's likely there would have been an investigation and he likely would have been at the very least discharged - and given he murdered a duke's son, very likely hanged or 'had an accident' in prison. Even if he had been right he still executed an unarmed prisoner, one that may have had useful information.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Conrad faces off with some German soldiers on No Man's Land, some of whom are presented as spooky Gas Mask Mooks that help paint them as deadly, unfeeling opponents. However, when he manages to pin one down for the kill, he unmasks him, and sees underneath that he's just a frightened young man, who begs for his life. Conrad kills him anyways, but is clearly torn up about having to.
• Wham Shot: After Conrad is killed, the scene cuts back to Archie visiting the Oxford estate, revealing that he's also there to inform Orlando of his son's death.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Conrad's death; having volunteered to join the mission to retrieve the remains of a spy who was cut down in No Man's Land, Conrad and his crew encounter a squad of German soldiers also attempting to retrieve the spy, Conrad not only survives the fight, but when the fight rouses the attention of the gunmen either side of the trench, Conrad is able to duck into a pit, avoiding the gunfire, where he happens upon the still-alive spy, whom he then attempts to carry across No Man's Land, only to be sent flying into the Allied trench. The spy dies but Conrad survives, as does the spy's vital intelligence, Conrad's securing of which gets him lauded as a hero... then, when asked his name he gives the name of the soldier he was impersonating to avoid being sent home, and a friend of said soldier, unaware of why he's using that name confronts him and suspecting him to be a spy, shoots him dead.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: When Orlando has the Sheperd at his mercy, the latter tries to claim as a pacifist the former shall not kill him. This right after Orlando and Shola killed about a dozen of his henchmen moments before.