History Fridge / ThePunisher2017

* When Curtis walks in on O'Connor's corpse in the apartment, he covers his nose from the stench. When Frank comes in later, he walks in without any reaction to the smell. Earlier, when Frank and David were in the chop shop, Frank tells David that after a while, you get used to the smell of dead bodies. Frank has been around so much death, killed so many people, that the stench doesn't seem to register at all anymore. Even Curtis, a fellow corpsman, has reverted back to a civilian reaction at this point, but Frank is still "at war."
* O'Connor gripes about being spat on when he returned home from the Vietnam War. The spat-upon Vietnam War veteran is actually a long-enduring urban legend, as there is no documented case of this ever actually happening, and popular opinion of veterans at the time was sympathetic to veterans, even among those critical of the war. O'Connor is eventually revealed to be a PhonyVeteran, so his belief in this legend became a part of his fiction.

* Frank's story starts in Central Park, when a woman (Maria Castle) and two kids (Frank Castle Jr. and Lisa Castle) die in a shootout. At the end of the first season there is another shootout at the carousel, and another woman (Dinah Madani) and two kids (the teens kidnapped by Billy Russo as hostages) get involved, only this time [[spoiler:everyone survives]].

* In keeping with each of the other Marvel Netflix shows, The Punisher carries a theme of legacy. This time around, it's the legacy of our sins, and the actions we take to avoid the fallout. Each of the protagonists has to accept that they have grievously erred (Micro with his family, Dinah with Stein, Frank with just about everything that goes wrong) and learn how to repair the damage or move on. By contrast, each of the antagonists either attempts to sweep it all under the rug (Rawlins), [[NeverMyFault blame everyone but themselves]] (Lewis and O'Connor), or revels in their wrongdoing due to self-delusion (Russo).
* Rawlins' "I point, you shoot" mentality is best manifested in the battle between Frank and Gunner and the Anvil operatives in the forest. Everyone on that battlefield was fighting for their lives, but Rawlins is over in DC playing real-life ''Call of Duty'' on his laptop. "I point, you shoot" really means "You are my videogame characters and I couldn't care less what actually happens to you. If you die, there will be others to take your place."

* One of the popular readings of The Punisher is as a product of the [[WarForFunAndProfit military-industrial complex]]; the government considered him an expendable resource and molded him into a weapon, which is why he now needs an excuse to fight a war. Given this, it seems fitting that the series takes this reading to its logical conclusion: Frank's SuperHeroOrigin here is literally caused by a secret military conspiracy.
* When Curtis is warning Russo not to let Lewis work at Anvil, he tells Russo about Lewis nearly shooting his father, to which Russo quips "God, I've always wanted to do that." He then laughs awkwardly when Curtis gives him a cold look. Later, we learn that Russo had [[AbusiveParents a fucked-up childhood]]; no doubt that's something he actually has wanted to do.

* "Virtue of the Vicious" is formatted as a Rashomon style episode. The alternating perspectives of the same event, seen in conjunction, offer a clear analysis of an event, specifically how those in power have to alter particular events in order to keep their names untarnished and how pursuing the truth can be far more dangerous than the actual events. As Dinah and Frank are coming together again, they learn an important truth about those with power and how they have allowed their ideas and morals to impugn on their reading of a particular person. Karen’s interpretation of the event allows for clarity about the shady characters and the clear repercussions of a damaged and unhealed soldier like Lewis.

** Karen’s version of the story, showing the senator in an entirely different light, indicates that those in power will continue to keep a story in their favor in order not to soil their name, similar to Billy Russo. The senator cannot show cowardice in the face of the public, or allow it to be known that Karen is the one who saved him or that he sacrificed her in order to survive. The repercussions of the senator’s real actions would be far worse, causing him to lose the only thing that is more valuable to him than his life, which is his reputation.

* According to Ebon Moss-Bachrach, David is a cryptologic linguist in Farsi and Pashto. This certainly explains why he sent the Zubair tape to Dinah Madani, who in an early episode mentions speaking Farsi at home.

* At first, it seems like ''The Punisher'' felt the need to basically retell Frank’s origin even though ''Daredevil'' season 2 had pretty much covered it, but on a closer look, it's not, when one looks at Frank and Billy Russo. Frank and Russo are FireForgedFriends. Both are career military, closer than brothers, and USMC to their bones. They both experience the same situation–being assigned as muscle in a covert operation that even before they find out it’s off-the-books is morally dodgy as hell. And their reactions are diametric opposites.

** Gunner says that when he went to return the knife to his now-dead companion, he saw that the higher-ups were using that soldier's corpse to smuggle drugs. So, there's a real possibility that Rawlins disregarded Frank's warnings because he needed more heroin containers...

* If Lewis had access to a whole bunch of claymore mines, why did he need to improvise explosives?