By a classical theorem of Harvey Friedman, every countable nonstandard model $\mathcal {M}$ of a sufficiently strong fragment of ZF has a proper rank-initial self-embedding j, i.e., j is a self-embedding of $\mathcal {M}$ such that $j[\mathcal {M}]\subsetneq \mathcal {M}$, and the ordinal rank of each member of $j[\mathcal {M}]$ is less than the ordinal rank of each element of $\mathcal {M}\setminus j[\mathcal {M}]$. Here, we investigate the larger family of proper initial-embeddings j of models $\mathcal {M}$ of fragments of (...) set theory, where the image of j is a transitive submodel of $\mathcal {M}$. Our results include the following three theorems. In what follows, $\mathrm {ZF}^-$ is $\mathrm {ZF}$ without the power set axiom; $\mathrm {WO}$ is the axiom stating that every set can be well-ordered; $\mathrm {WF}$ is the well-founded part of $\mathcal {M}$ ; and $\Pi ^1_\infty \text{-}\mathrm {DC}_\alpha $ is the full scheme of dependent choice of length $\alpha $.Theorem A.There is an $\omega $ -standard countable nonstandard model $\mathcal {M}$ of $\mathrm {ZF}^-+\mathrm {WO}$ that carries no initial self-embedding $j:\mathcal {M} \longrightarrow \mathcal {M}$ other than the identity embedding.Theorem B.Every countable $\omega $ -nonstandard model $\mathcal {M}$ of $\ \mathrm {ZF}$ is isomorphic to a transitive submodel of the hereditarily countable sets of its own constructible universe $L^{\mathcal {M}}$.Theorem C.The following three conditions are equivalent for a countable nonstandard model $\mathcal {M}$ of $\mathrm {ZF}^{-}+\mathrm {WO}+\forall \alpha \ \Pi ^1_\infty \text{-}\mathrm {DC}_\alpha $. There is a cardinal in $\mathcal {M}$ that is a strict upper bound for the cardinality of each member of $\mathrm {WF}$. $\mathrm {WF}$ satisfies the powerset axiom.For all $n \in \omega $ and for all $b \in M$, there exists a proper initial self-embedding $j: \mathcal {M} \longrightarrow \mathcal {M}$ such that $b \in \mathrm {rng}$ and $j[\mathcal {M}] \prec _n \mathcal {M}$. (shrink)

We present a novel, perspicuous framework for building iterated ultrapowers. Furthermore, our framework naturally lends itself to the construction of a certain type of order indiscernibles, here dubbed tight indiscernibles, which are shown to provide smooth proofs of several results in general model theory.