Fanfic / The Sins of the Father

The Sins of the Father is a Daredevil fanfic written in 2016 by ayy_zajjy.

Elektra Natchios is brought back to New York when her father is assassinated and his country estate is burned down. In her quest to exact her revenge, she crosses paths with her ex-boyfriend Matt Murdock, who finds himself facing more than one ghost from his past.

Tropes

• Absence of Evidence: After Bullseye is arrested, Matt overhears Elektra talking to the police who inform her about it. He realizes Elektra's not out of the woods yet when he notices Fisk didn't tell the police about Elektra being there.
  “Why didn’t Fisk tell the cops I was there? Why didn’t the priest?”
  “Well, I’m sure the priest said whatever Fisk told him to,” Matt said, cradling his ear. “As for Fisk, well…” Matt thought for a moment. Any answer he could come up with wasn’t comforting. “You know too much. And you still have something he wants.”
  “The ledgers,” Elektra said. Matt nodded, then flopped onto his back with a groan.
  All he ever wanted to do was keep her safe, keep her far from Fisk's notice. Even with the sniper behind bars, it didn’t mean she wasn’t squarely in Fisk’s crosshairs now. And worst of all, Matt knew what she was thinking: Come and get it. Fisk had thrown her across that church like a rag doll, and still she wanted to confront him. And, of course, with Wilkerson keeping his mouth shut, it meant there was no legal alternative Matt could convince her was the right - and safer - course of action.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • While Larry Cranston is a crooked lawyer, he's not a crime lord.
  • Eric Slaughter in the comics was an early rival of Fisk's in the criminal underworld, not Hugo Natchios' friend. Although he's known to have had ties to organized crime in the past.
• Amoral Attorney: Larry Cranston is on Fisk's payroll. He is responsible for coercing Carl Hoffman into discrediting himself before getting assassinated, then oversees a defense strategy that ends in Fisk being acquitted, and turns out to be blackmailing Fisk for more money over the evidence he has connecting Fisk to the murders of several mafia dons.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Fisk's reason for abducting Matt and Elektra with the intention of torturing and killing them is because he wants to take away every last person that Daredevil cares about.
  "Now," Fisk said, looming over both of them. "Tell me about the man in the mask."
  Give it a few minutes, and you can ask him yourself. Aloud, she said, "What does it matter if you know his name? What he does for a living? You just want to kill him, anyway."
  "No," Fisk said. "I want to destroy him. I want him to watch as his life crumbles around him. I want him to watch as I take away everyone he ever loved, everyone he ever cared about or associated with. I’m going to start by sending him pieces of you."
  Elektra swallowed hard, in spite of herself.
  "Then it will be Murdock, here. And then his partner and their secretary."
  "You're even worse than I thought."
  "We have your friend in the mask to thank for that. Now..." Fisk took a threatening step toward Matt. "You will tell me about him."
• Armored Villains, Unarmored Heroes: Matt and Elektra are abducted by Fisk's men on Christmas Eve, Elektra while visiting her parents' graves, and Matt as he's returning to his apartment. They are brought to a warehouse where Fisk plans to torture and then kill them. Despite the disadvantage of Matt not wearing his Daredevil suit, and Elektra not wearing the one Melvin recently made for her, they're just barely able to defeat Fisk and his two bodyguards in the subsequent brawl.
• Blackmail:
  • Fisk blackmailed Hugo Natchios into smuggling heroin for him by threatening to expose a tax evasion scheme Hugo was running. Hugo tried to counter-blackmail Fisk by offering to hand over his ledgers with information on the shipments, which prompted Fisk to have him killed.
  • Larry Cranston is blackmailing Fisk by sitting on evidence linking Fisk to the murders of Don Rigoletto and several other mob bosses.
• Bloodstained Glass Windows: When Matt and Elektra learn from Cranston that Fisk and Vanessa's wedding will be taking place at an Episcopalian church in Hell's Kitchen, they decide to crash the wedding and attack Fisk. Unfortunately, Bullseye hears about the wedding as well and decides to crash it too so he can settle his beef over the fact that Daredevil made him miss, and also demand that Fisk give him the money he's owed for killing Hugo and Hoffman. He ends up killing several of Fisk's guards and wounds Matt and Elektra before Matt overpowers him and carves a bullseye into his forehead.
• Boom, Headshot!:
  • Bullseye, as usual, goes for headshots. He kills Hugo Natchios and Carl Hoffman in this way, as well as several innocent people and cops at Fall Fest, and several of Fisk's guards during the attack on Fisk's wedding.
  • At the end of the story, Elektra finishes off Fisk by shooting him in the head with one of his bodyguard's guns.
• Bruce Wayne Held Hostage: On Christmas Eve, Fisk kidnaps Elektra, and plans to coerce her into giving up information on Daredevil. In an attempt to get her to talk, he has his men kidnap Matt, and threatens to kill Matt if Elektra doesn't tell him what he wants to know. Of course, Matt himself is Daredevil...and Fisk realizes that when Matt regains consciousness, headbutts him, then viciously disarms and beats up Francis.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Foggy realizes that Fisk's decision to hire Bullseye is a weakness in his criminal enterprise. Fisk hired Bullseye to assassinate Hugo Natchios and Carl Hoffman because he's a skilled marksman capable of making impossible shots. But Bullseye also has a bit of an ego and thrives on attention that Fisk really can't afford.
  "Foggy, we could barely find anything on Fisk before," Matt said. "And now he’s going to be even more careful to cover his tracks."
  "You're right. His tracks," Foggy said. "But he has people working for him who might not be doing such a good job covering their own."
  "Another Carl Hoffman?" Karen asked, annoyed. "Have you forgotten everything that happened in the last three months?"
  "On the contrary," Foggy said cheerfully. "That's exactly what I’m thinking about. He hires a guy to kill Hoffman and, uh...well…"
  "My dad," Elektra said. "I'm not going to fall to pieces if you say it."
  "Sorry," Foggy muttered. "He hires this guy to kill Hoffman and...Elektra's dad. Then that guy goes and shoots up a public event and kills a bunch of random people? He only made it out because the cops screwed up. That's not someone who's covering his tracks very well. But crazy or not, the guy is some kind of professional hitman. He's not going to be someone Fisk can just take out when he becomes a liability."
  Only Matt and Foggy knew the full circumstances behind that awful night at Fall Fest. Matt still considered his choice to take on the sniper incredibly foolish, but the gunman's plan was every bit as reckless. And Matt also knew that this guy wanted to make some kind of public name for himself, which pretty much ran one hundred percent counter to Fisk's priority of keeping all his illegal activity silent and buried. For the first time since the verdict was read, Matt could actually feel a little bit of hope flickering in his chest.
• Call-Back:
  • Fisk's abduction of Matt and Elektra plays out almost identically to the circumstances of Wesley's abduction of Karen. Like with Karen, the victim is forcibly sedated and brought to a warehouse. And the encounter ends with the captive turning the tables on the abductor. Where things differ is that unlike Wesley, Fisk doesn't make the mistake of leaving Elektra unrestrained. He has her tied up to a column, and tries to use the leverage of threatening to beat Matt to death to get her to talk.
  • Elektra gets out of Fisk choking her with his bare hands in the climax by jamming one of her nails into his eye, drawing blood. Karen did the exact same thing to the guard sent by Fisk to attack her in her jail cell.
• Calling Card: When Bullseye breaks into Elektra's apartment looking for her father's ledger, he leaves a calling card behind for her, in the form of a picture of Hugo with a bullseye drawn on his head.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You:
  • Foggy observes that Fisk's use of a sniper like Bullseye is very risky. Bullseye is a very reckless psychopath who thrives on attention, as evidenced by his attack on Fall Fest, but he was initially hired by Fisk to carry out the killings of Hugo Natchios and Carl Hoffman. His reputation as a professional hitman means that Fisk can't simply have him killed the second he becomes a liability.
  • Eric Slaughter reveals to Matt and Elektra that Fisk was Rigoletto's henchman who collected the debts that Hugo owed to Rigoletto. When Matt notes that Fisk has done everything to bury his past and anyone who was involved with it, Slaughter posits that Fisk only spared him and Hugo because he thought they were still useful to him alive. This usefulness ran out, though, when Hugo tried to get out of smuggling heroin for Fisk, prompting Fisk to have him killed.
• Chainsaw Good: Melvin goes after the Enforcers with a chainsaw to avenge Betsy's death, which they committed on orders from Fisk.
• Chekhov's Gun: Early on, as Elektra is going through her father's ledgers, it's noted that Hugo ran an import tax evasion scheme where he bribed customs and duty officials to report shipments as being lighter than they actually were, and split the profits with his partners who were in on the scheme. She notes to herself that it's highly unlikely that someone had Hugo killed over unpaid taxes. In chapter 26, Eric Slaughter reveals to Matt and Elektra that Fisk blackmailed Hugo into smuggling Gao's heroin by threatening to expose the fraud scheme.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • When Matt invades the Enforcer rowhouse looking for Ox, three of the gang's members are occupying the place at the time. As he's fighting two of them and trying to get them to talk, the one Enforcer who doesn't participate volunteers Ox's hiding location to Matt. Matt notices that the man doesn't seem afraid and seems pretty eager to rat on his friend. This member turns out to be Fancy Dan, and is later revealed to have sold Ox out so he could take over the gang.
  • Larry Cranston appears in two chapters early on, where we see his part in Fisk's plan to discredit and then kill Hoffman. After managing to outsmart Matt by getting him on tape, he doesn't show up again until after Fisk gets out of prison, when Foggy brings up information suggesting that Cranston might be the key to finding a link between Fisk and the hired gunman.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames:
  • Since Larry Cranston is just a corrupt attorney here, he never goes by the name "Mr. Fear."
  • Inverted with the Enforcers, who are only known by their street names and not by their legal names.
  • Fisk's hired sniper never calls himself Bullseye. Like Daredevil, the name is given to him by the press, who dub him "The Bullseye Killer".
• Confess to a Lesser Crime: Of all the crimes Fisk is being charged with, the only one he pleads guilty to is a charge of resisting arrest (from his attempt to escape custody, before he was stopped by Matt and taken back into custody by Brett Mahoney). He pleads not guilty to everything else, and as a result of his sabotaging the trial by arranging Carl Hoffman's murder, ends up being acquitted on those charges.
• Cop Killer: Bullseye is hired by Fisk to assassinate Carl Hoffman, and later kills several cops during his fight with Matt at Fall Fest.
• Conspicuously Public Assassination: Hoffman is assassinated in public on the steps of the courthouse, in front of dozens of news crews.
• Contrived Coincidence: It's only by pure chance that Matt finds out the Enforcers are allied with Fisk, through a conversation he eavesdrops on.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Hugo ran an import tax evasion scheme with his associates at the docks, which involved bribing duty officials to declare shipments were only a fraction the size of what they actually were. He even roped Elektra into the scheme when she was an adult, with her job being to carry out the actual bribing since the officials were likelier to take a bribe from an attractive woman. This later indirectly contributed to his death, for in 2013, Fisk found out about the scheme and used it to blackmail him into letting Fisk use his company's ships to transport Madame Gao's heroin from China to New York.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: As Matt regains consciousness from being drugged by Fisk's men, Fisk lets his rage loose and grabs Matt with the intention of strangling him to death. Matt instinctively headbutts Fisk hard enough to send him reeling. Francis immediately tries to attack Matt, but Matt disarms him of his gun, breaks his arm, and then his neck. And in the process, Fisk ends up realizing that Matt is Daredevil.
  "YOU!" Fisk thundered as Matt desperately did a pat down of the guard's clothing, looking for something to cut Elektra free. "Murdock! You…!" Fisk searched for words while Matt searched the other man’s pockets. "It's…you!"
  Matt realized that whatever Fisk's plan had been for him and Elektra was now eclipsed by the man’s overwhelming need to destroy Daredevil.
  He wondered if Fisk had let him take down the guard on purpose, to see just how well the blind man could fight. And now Matt was sure Fisk was thinking he must have been faking his blindness all along, even as Matt's eyes were unable to quite meet his glare.
  Whatever confusion this may have caused only bought Matt a few seconds to slide the guard's pocket knife into Elektra's hands before Fisk plowed into him, sending Matt sliding across the floor on his back.
  He tasted blood in his mouth. His chest and shoulder screamed in agony.
  Get up, Matty. Come on.
  All Matt’s anger, his frustration and pain caused by Fisk and his people over the past two years, caused by the men who had shot his father twenty years ago, coalesced into pure, red rage. The scared, little boy in the alley had grown up. And he wasn’t afraid anymore.
  Matt leapt to his feet, shrugging off his coat and suit jacket. “Yeah,” he said. "It's me."
• Deadline News: Carl Hoffman is gunned down on live TV in front of a crowd of reporters as he's being escorted out of the courthouse.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: As Fisk had others do his dirty work for him, his legal team's defense strategy is to blame James Wesley for anything that they can't deny, since he's too dead (on account of Karen killing him) to say otherwise.
  "Fisk kept himself pretty well insulated from all the illegal shit he was doing. He had that Owlsley guy handling all the money and his assistant - that guy who hired us -"
  "James Wesley," Foggy provided.
  "Right. Wesley. He had Wesley acting as his mouthpiece. Who’s to say they weren’t doing all this behind his back?"
  "Not the two of them, because they're conveniently dead," Foggy said. "Along with just about everybody else who took orders from Fisk directly."
  "It might be enough for reasonable doubt," Matt said with a shrug.
• Dirty Coward: When Matt and Elektra find out where Larry Cranston is hiding, Cranston is initially smug and defiant...but is quick to fold when Elektra threatens to burn his illegal money.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Matt goes to meet Larry Cranston in a parking garage to find out how much he knew about Fisk's plan to kill Hoffman. He beats up Cranston before leaving. Unbeknownst to him, Cranston had a dashcam in his car that recorded the whole thing. He sells the footage to the press and claims that Matt took credit for killing Hoffman.
    It seemed Cranston had outsmarted him after all. Matt had spent all day berating himself for not noticing the camera in the dashboard, even if there was no way he could have short of going inside the vehicle. He knew a lot of people didn’t buy what Cranston said, but it still made him furious.
  • Matt has a moment of this when he realizes that his and Elektra's plan to get the Enforcers to turn on Fisk and implicate him in Betsy Beatty's murder and the smuggling operation would've probably worked if they hadn't destroyed the last shipment of heroin being sent to the Enforcers. As Fancy Dan points out, the police will find the Enforcers all maimed from being attacked by a chainsaw-wielding Melvin (which will make the judge more likely to be sympathetic towards them), and the only thing the cops will find are guns. So the only thing they'll be found guilty of is a bunch of illegal weapons possessions charges.
  • Fancy Dan calls Matt short-sighted for not considering the ramifications Fisk being locked up would have for those who worked for one of his legitimate businesses. He notes that many of the Enforcers worked for Fisk's construction companies, and when Fisk was arrested, they lost their jobs and ended up turning to crime to make ends meet.
    “You know what it's like to give up your apartment for a check that never comes? You know what it’s like to lose custody of your baby girl 'cause you’re 'homeless' now? I didn't think so. I figure anyone who got the time to run around and beat up on people he don’t even know, well...he don't have any real problems. Half my boys used to be citizens, man. They used to work construction in the Kitchen. So what're they gonna do when it's all suddenly shut down and the head honcho's in handcuffs? They don't give you no severance package for that, man. Bet you didn't think about that when you put him in jail, huh?"
• Dramatic Unmask:
  • Elektra finds out Matt is Daredevil when she rescues him from a severe beating at the hands of the Enforcers.
  • Elektra does one for herself when she and Matt are confronting Fisk and his sniper at the church, when she shoots at Bullseye to keep him from unmasking Matt.
    "Well, well, well," Poindexter drawled, turning his head in her direction. Fisk was looking at her too. "What have we got here? She don't look like one of yours, Billy-boy."
    Elektra knew she should have been afraid. But she felt exhilarated. Vindicated. Finally, they see me. Finally, they will pay for what they've done.
    She pulled her own mask away from her face. Matt had a good reason to conceal his identity; she didn't. Not from these two.
    "I'm Hugo Natchios's daughter. And I'm going to kill you both."
• Even Evil Has Standards: When Matt has to save Fancy Dan and the Enforcers from being slaughtered by Melvin Potter as revenge for Betsy's death, it turns out that while Dan had no qualms about murdering anyone who could prove he snitched on Ox, or about killing Toby Edwards, he drew the line at being asked by Fisk to kill Betsy. Some of his guys went behind his back to do it anyways, and Dan implies that he killed those guys afterwards.
  “That lady?” Dan swore under his breath. “Shit, man. I already took care of that!”
  “Took care of it? What do you mean?”
  “Man, Fisk asking us to take out his trash, like we’re his personal hit squad or something.” Dan sucked on his teeth.
  Well, you call yourself the Enforcers, so… Matt decided it was no time to be pedantic when someone was outside the door with a chainsaw.
  “I said, ‘hell no,’” Dan went on. “Couple of my boys went behind my back and done it anyway. And I took care of that.”
  “You didn’t have a problem taking me out for Fisk,” Matt said. Still, he didn’t think Dan was lying.
  “Shit. You was open season. And I owed you for my boy, Charles.”
• Expy: Larry Cranston's characterization is largely based on Bob Odenkirk's portrayal of Saul Goodman. He's a corrupt attorney in the service of aiding powerful criminals, has cheesy billboards all over town with his face on them, and while the epitome of everything that makes the legal system a target of mockery, is far from a mere ambulance chaser.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Matt is calling up Cranston to arrange a meeting regarding what he knows about Hoffman's murder, Matt uses the story of what really happened on the night he rescued Hoffman from Fisk's dirty cops, figuring that Cranston knows that story...and also knows lots of other things about Fisk's criminal ventures. Not only does Cranston spill the beans about Fisk also having ordered Hugo's murder when Matt is interrogating him, but when Matt and Elektra track him down later, it turns out he's sitting on blackmail material regarding several mobster killings that Fisk is connected to.
  • When Matt and Elektra track down Cranston to his hiding place, Elektra notes that his .22 caliber pistol wouldn't be that effective against Fisk on account of his size (and, as she finds out later before the church ambush, he wears bulletproof suits). In the climax, Elektra takes a gun off of one of Fisk's bodyguards and uses it to shoot Fisk several times in the chest as he advances on her. This doesn't slow him down all that much. And when Elektra shoots him in the head after Matt beats him to a bloody pulp, Fisk manages to survive even that, and is left in a coma.
• Grave-Marking Scene: Elektra regularly visits her parents' graves. In the climax, Fisk's men abduct her as she's making a visit to the grave on Christmas Eve.
• He Knows Too Much:
  • Fisk has Carl Hoffman killed because he's going to be the star witness at Fisk's trial, and can directly link Fisk to the police corruption, the bombings, the cop killings, and being ordered to kill Christian Blake (as he received the order directly from Fisk vs. having it given to him by Wesley).
  • Fisk doesn't tell the police about Elektra fighting him and Bullseye at the church is because he still needs Elektra free in order to find her father's ledgers.
  • Both of the Enforcers who witness Fancy Dan selling Ox out to Matt end up dead. Darnell ends up being killed by Bullseye during a confrontation with Matt on Halloween, while Dan kills the other guy who was witness to the interaction.
    "The police will be on their way," Matt said as he shoved what was left of a couch aside. "Tell them everything you've got on Fisk." Dan just laughed. "They'll cut you a deal if you do." Dan laughed even harder at that. "Do you really want to be locked up with Ox?" Matt hissed. "After you gave him up?"
    "Ox don’t know that," Dan said. "Only guys who know that are six feet under, friend."
    "What?" Matt knew about Darnell, but had Dan killed the other man down in the basement that night to keep his secret? He knew the answer without having to ask.
  • Larry Cranston goes into hiding after Fisk is acquitted, as he's gathered a lot of dirt on Fisk that connects Fisk to the murders of several former mobsters including Don Rigoletto.
    "I've learned he's not terribly happy with the amount of knowledge I've gathered about him. For the trial, of course."
    "Psh." Elektra ejected the clip and then pushed the bullets out of it one by one with her thumb. They rattled as they rolled across the floor. "Did you really think a twenty-two was going to stop Fisk? These are like BB's to him."
• Impersonating an Officer: Matt pretends to be Brett Mahoney so he can call Cranston's law firm from the 15th precinct to fish for information about where Cranston might be hiding.
• I Want Them Alive!: Fisk and Vanessa's wedding gets crashed by Matt, Elektra, and Bullseye. As Fisk wants to kill Daredevil himself, and get back the incriminating ledger Elektra has regarding her father's dealings with Fisk, he orders his guards to kill Bullseye but capture Matt and Elektra. Bullseye makes short work of the bodyguards, but is defeated by Matt and Elektra and subsequently arrested. Fisk initially participates in the fight, but is forced to withdraw from the fight when he hears the police approaching. He thus waits for a few days, and then has Matt and Elektra abducted on Christmas Eve so he can torture them into giving up Daredevil's identity.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure:
  • Fisk has Betsy Beatty killed to punish Melvin Potter for having aided Matt and built him the Daredevil armor.
  • After having Hugo killed, Fisk forces Eric Slaughter to continue the drug smuggling for him by threatening to have his wife killed.
• Instant Sedation: Averted. When Fisk's men kidnap Matt and Elektra on Christmas Eve, they use needles to inject tranquilizers into them. The drugs don't kick in instantly, and Matt is actually able to break one of their noses before he passes out.
• Jury and Witness Tampering: Fisk gets himself acquitted by having Carl Hoffman assassinated in public on the courthouse steps, so that Hoffman can't testify to being directly ordered by Fisk to kill his partner Christian Blake. It's implied that afterwards, this also served to intimidate many of the other witnesses into not testifying. And since Fisk mostly insulated himself from the people who carried out his orders, and the intermediaries who relayed his orders are all dead, the prosecution is left with a very weak case that's largely built on circumstantial evidence against Fisk.
• Loan Shark: When Hugo Natchios started his shipping company, no bank was willing to loan him the money he needed to purchase his first ship because, as a Greek immigrant, he had no property to his name to offer as collateral. In desperation, he borrowed from Don Rigoletto, a loan shark based out of Hell's Kitchen. At the time, Wilson Fisk was Rigoletto's henchman, and was responsible for collecting from Hugo after each shipment until the debt was fully repaid. Fisk later took over Rigoletto's criminal enterprise after Rigoletto was sent to prison in the 1990s, and eventually had him killed after he got out in the early 2010s. In 2013, when Fisk began his partnerships with the Ranskahov brothers, Nobu, and Madame Gao, he needed a partner to transport Gao's heroin from China to New York City. He leaned on his past acquaintance with Hugo, and blackmailed him into transporting the heroin by threatening to expose an import tax evasion scam that Hugo and his business partners at the docks had been running for years. Hugo was able to shut down the operation after Fisk was arrested and Gao was forced to flee the country, but less than a year later, Fisk decided to resume the operation with a new local gang, the Enforcers, distributing. He had Vanessa approach Hugo to try and coerce him into restarting the pipeline. Rather than cave, Hugo tried to get out by offering to give up incriminating records he'd made of every one of Fisk's shipments, in exchange for Fisk giving up the dirt he had on Hugo. Fisk promptly had Hugo killed, and coerced Eric Slaughter into resuming the operation by threatening to have his wife killed.
• Morton's Fork: When Fisk kidnaps Matt and Elektra, intent on torturing her into giving up Daredevil's real identity and her father's ledgers, he gives her two options: either she talks, and he'll have his men shoot her and Matt in the head, or she can refuse to talk and he will beat them both to death with his fists. Elektra notes to herself that that's not much of a choice.
• Mouth of Sauron:
  • Al Wallenquist, Eric Slaughter's assistant, functions as one for him in board meetings while Slaughter is unexpectedly on vacation (ostensibly trying to stay as far away from Fisk as possible).
  • Vanessa has been acting as Fisk's proxy while Fisk is in jail.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: Elektra reveals her presence to Fisk and Bullseye during the church attack when they're on the verge of unmasking Matt.
  "I'm Hugo Natchios's daughter. And I'm going to kill you both."
• Mythology Gag:
  • The majority of the new characters, including the Enforcers and Larry Cranston, are lifted directly from the comics.
  • The church fight with Fisk and Bullseye ends with Matt carving a bullseye into Bullseye's forehead, something he does in the comics after an attempt by Bullseye to go after Milla Donovan.
  • The police detective handling Bullseye's murders is one Detective Brubaker. He's named for longtime Daredevil comic writer Ed Brubaker.
• No One Could Survive That!: Matt and Elektra's final fight with Fisk ends with them managing to wrestle Fisk to the ground, after which Matt punches him repeatedly in the face, pulverizing him and leaving him barely conscious. Then Elektra shoots Fisk in the head with a gun from one of his bodyguards. Being unable to hear heartbeats, Elektra is convinced that Fisk is dead as she and Matt leave the warehouse. She is subsequently dismayed when the news reports break about the shooting and they say that Fisk is in a coma.
  "You knew!" From the way Matt cringed when she rounded on him, there was no denying it. "You could hear his heartbeat! You knew!"
  "I didn't think he'd make it," Matt said miserably.
  "Then why didn't you tell me to finish it? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because...because that's not our place to decide."
Elektra laughed bitterly. "Are you talking about God? Is that the kind of God you believe in, Matt? The kind of God that let my dad die and saved Wilson Fisk?"
Matt grimaced. "It’s not our place to decide," he said again, barely above a whisper, like he was trying to convince himself as much as her.
"No," Elektra sneered. "Just who gets their face caved in. God dammit, Matt. He knows!" It took several moments more for the ramifications of that to really set in. Elektra slapped a hand over her mouth. "He knows," she whispered, slumping on her bed. "He knows it's you. And he won't stop. He won't stop until...Oh, Jesus..."
"Listen to me." Matt sat down next to her. "He still might not make it. And even if he does...he'll be lucky if he even remembers his own name. He probably won't even wake up. A lot of people would consider that worse than dying."

• Nonviolent Initial Confrontation: Elektra's first encounter with Fisk is when she and Matt encounter him at a charity gala where she's representing her father's company. She makes a big scene calling Fisk a murderer to his face, and Fisk is barely able to restrain himself from attacking Elektra.
• Not Me This Time: After the inept police response to Foggy's tip about Bullseye plotting to attack Fall Fest, causing the situation to turn into a bloodbath, Foggy wonders if Fisk still has cops on the take. Matt doesn't think so, given that the cops who responded to the attack were confused and had no idea what to do. If they were working for Fisk, they would've been calm and composed and also likely would've just shot Matt instead of trying to arrest him.
• "Not So Different" Remark: When Elektra is confronting Fisk and Vanessa at the gala, she freezes up when Vanessa shuts her down by saying, "Well, I think you know very well what it’s like to do unsavory things for a man you love, Miss Natchios." After she and Matt leave the gala, Elektra reluctantly admits to Matt that Vanessa was comparing her carrying out Fisk's dirty work while he was in prison to Elektra being a participant in her father's tax evasion scheme.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During Hoffman's trial, Matt realizes something is off when he doesn't hear Hoffman's lawyer Larry Cranston among those near Hoffman as he's being escorted to the van to take him back to jail. Seconds later, Hoffman is assassinated.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Karen bursts into tears when the news breaks that Fisk has been acquitted, as she's terrified by the prospect of Fisk coming after her if he finds out that she killed Wesley.
  • Elektra's reaction as Eric Slaughter reveals the whole scope of Hugo's involvement with Fisk. When Slaughter reveals that the money Fisk makes from the smuggling is being laundered through the company and paid back to him in the form of stock dividends (as Fisk owns shares in the company under a series of dummy accounts), Elektra feels like she's about to throw up.
  • When Fisk shows up at the charity gala, Matt's first instinct is to try and grab Elektra and run so they can avoid a confrontation with him. Unfortunately, he isn't successful.
  • Elektra knows she's in trouble when she wakes up in an abandoned warehouse, and finds she's tied up and alone with Fisk. Moments later, Fisk reveals that he's sending his men to collect Matt because he figures the threat of beating Matt to death with his fists will get Elektra to talk.
    Fisk sent his goons after Matt? A chill went through her that had nothing to do with the cold. Elektra didn’t know whether to laugh or weep.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: The Enforcers are only known by their street nicknames. Fancy Dan is never referred to by his legal name, Daniel Brito, while Ox's legal name of Raymond Bloch is never mentioned.
• Police Are Useless: When Matt learns that Bullseye is plotting to attack Fall Fest, he has Foggy call in a tip to the police beforehand, anticipating that the police will send ESU teams to apprehend the gunman. However, only one patrol car with two beat cops gets sent instead. More help doesn't arrive until after Bullseye begins shooting up the festival and killing innocent people. He manages to kill a couple of the cops before escaping.
• Revenge Before Reason: Fisk's obsessive hatred for Daredevil is such that when he finds out Matt is Daredevil, in the process of trying to get Elektra to give up her father's ledger or Daredevil, any thought of getting the incriminating ledger goes out the window.
  Now that Fisk had realized the man he wanted to destroy was here within his grasp, Elektra knew she was all but forgotten. And that made her furious. Was she - was her father - nothing more than a pawn in Fisk’s game? You don’t get to take my Daddy away and just ignore me.
• Save the Villain: Matt has to save Fancy Dan and the other Enforcers when Melvin Potter goes after them with chainsaws to get revenge on them for killing Betsy on Fisk's orders, since they won't be able to rat on Fisk if they're dead.
• Shout-Out: Chapter 22, right after Fisk's acquittal, starts with Matt having Ray Velcoro's dream sequence from the second season of True Detective, with the initial setup of the hero sitting across from his father in a booth, and the line "you have your father's hands".
• Something Only They Would Say: Matt suspects that Carl Hoffman's lawyer Larry Cranston is on Fisk's pocket and was involved in arranging Hoffman's murder. He calls up Cranston as Daredevil to arrange a meeting with him. When Cranston answers, the first thing he asks is for Matt to provide some proof that he is indeed Daredevil. Matt obliges by describing what really happened on the night he found Hoffman (he fought off some dirty cops who had killed Hoffman's bodyguards and were about to execute him).
• Spotting the Thread:
  • Elektra begins to suspect that Matt is Daredevil long before she has to rescue him from a beating at the hands of the Enforcers.
    "Bruises, scars, not answering your phone while ‘Daredevil’ is running around on live TV? There are only so many coincidences I can take at once. I know how you feel about Hell’s Kitchen, and the way you acted after that asshole shot it up, like it was your fault or something...it all started to add up."
  • Elektra and Matt figure out a way to get to Cranston's hiding place when his secretary mentions to Matt that Cranston isn't taking on any new clients at the moment. The wording leads them to realize Cranston probably has a contact address that he only gives out on a need-to-know basis that allows him to continue doing business but also reduces the chance of Fisk finding him and murdering him.
  • Fisk's reasoning for choosing to abduct Matt and threaten to beat him to death to get Elektra to talk is because he strongly suspects that Nelson & Murdock know Daredevil's identity.
    "I never liked him much. I find him unbearably smug. The man in the mask, he…told Carl Hoffman to hire Murdock as his lawyer. I found it…curious…that he would recommend such an amateur firm to represent such an important witness. And I found it curious that the man in the mask saved that firm’s only employee from the man I sent to her apartment. Why would the man in the mask care about a couple of lawyers that were still wet behind the ears? The only reason I can think of…is that he must know them. And they must know him. If you don’t want to tell me what you know, maybe Murdock will."
• Stay in the Kitchen: The Natchios board of directors view Elektra this way. They look at her with disdain when she decides to terminate their shipping contracts with Summerland's (one of the companies in on the drug smuggling scheme).
• Steel Eardrums: Notably averted.
  • Matt is rendered disoriented when Bullseye fires a sniper rifle not too far from his head. In a later confrontation, when Matt confronts Bullseye while he and Elektra are crashing Fisk's wedding, Bullseye shoots his rifle at a giant church bell, the loud ringing sound further disorienting Matt. In the subsequent showdown between Matt, Elektra, Fisk and Bullseye, Bullseye kicks things off by taking Matt as a human shield, and uses Matt's left ear to stabilize his pistol as he kills Fisk's bodyguards. This renders Matt partially deaf as he subsequently takes on Fisk in a one on one fight, and it is several days before he gets his hearing back.
  • In the climax, while Matt fights Fisk, Elektra gets a gun from one of Fisk's guards that Matt had just disarmed. At one point, Fisk throws Matt at Elektra, and they pile up in a heap. As Fisk advances on them, Elektra uses one hand to cover Matt's right ear while using the other hand to shoot at Fisk, so as not to deafen him again.
• Stunned Silence: When Fisk and Vanessa arrive at the charity gala that Matt and Elektra are attending, all of the pleasant conversation going on amongst other partygoers is replaced with silence and scandalized whispers as everyone stares at the released crime boss.
• Tranquil Fury: As Fisk begins to interrogate a tied up Elektra, Elektra tries to get a reaction out of him by revealing that she knows about how he killed his father. Fisk barely manages to keep his rage suppressed as he fidgets with his cufflinks (which his father used to wear).
• Tranquillizer Dart:
  • Elektra procures some tranquilizer darts from an acquaintance of hers to incapacitate Cranston's bodyguards. She also uses them in the church attack to knock out a few of Fisk's bodyguards.
  • Fisk's men use tranquilizers to knock Matt and Elektra out while abducting them. The drugs don't kick in immediately in either case. Elektra manages to land a few hits on the thug who injects her before she passes out. In Matt's case, he manages to knock out Smith and break Francis's nose before passing out.
• Villain with Good Publicity: When Matt arranges to meet with Cranston to get information on Hoffman's murder out of him, he plays into the fact that Cranston, as someone who loves hogging the media spotlight, will never pass up the opportunity to maybe defend Daredevil in court.
• Villainous Breakdown: As Fisk's final fight with Matt and Elektra drags on, he becomes increasingly unhinged.
  “You two deserve each other!” Fisk shouted as he stomped toward them. "You deserve this city and all its squalor!"
  Elektra cradled Matt’s head with her left arm, covering his right ear with her hand. With the gun in her other hand, Elektra aimed at Fisk’s chest and squeezed the trigger. As each bullet struck him, Fisk momentarily recoiled, halting his advance before taking another step forward. He was inexorable. His suits are bulletproof, Elektra recalled Matt saying.
  Before she could take aim at his head, Fisk was upon them. He knocked the gun from her grasp with one slap from his colossal hand. The other hand grabbed Matt by the collar, pulling him away from Elektra and tossing him aside like trash.
  “Is she important to you, Murdock?” Fisk screamed. Elektra tried to scramble away from him, but Fisk grabbed her by the ankle, dragging her back across the concrete. “Watch me tear her apart!”
  As Fisk slammed her against the wall, Elektra punched and kicked at him to no avail. He only needed one hand to wrap around her throat and choke her. She gasped and gagged and could clearly make out what was supposed to be a smile on Fisk’s face, but it just looked like an animal baring its teeth.
  "After her, I'll pay a visit to Nelson! And then Miss Page! What about the cop that arrested me? Mahoney? That nurse you rescued from the Russians? I'll destroy every last one of them! I will erase you!"
• Wham Line:
  • When Matt interrogates Cranston to find out about his involvement in Hoffman's death, Cranston says, “I only knew when and where it was going to happen. That’s all, I swear! I had no idea it was going to be the same as Natchios." Then he goes on to reveal that Hugo was responsible for smuggling Gao's heroin from China to New York.
  • Matt is eavesdropping on Elektra as she and a ship captain are inspecting a new shipment of drugs arriving in New York: "This never happened back when we were working with the Chinese. They’re real professionals, the Chinese. And your father knew what he was doing too. I’ll be honest, Miss Natchios. I don’t even want to be involved in this at all anymore. The money’s just not worth the risk.”
    If Matt had been anywhere near the edge of the deck, he definitely would have fallen overboard. "Working with the Chinese. Your father knew." All the pieces suddenly clicked into place. Her father had smuggled heroin for Gao. And Fisk had him killed, probably because he knew too much, or maybe just because he was no longer needed when Gao left the country. Fisk killed Hugo Natchios. Fisk. It always came back to Fisk, hurting all the people Matt ever cared about.
• Would Hurt a Child: Fancy Dan, the leader of the Enforcers who takes over after Ox is arrested, has Toby Edwards killed for snitching to the police.
• Working the Same Case: Matt and Elektra in the first few chapters. Elektra is busy trying to find the hired sniper who killed her father. Matt is also trying to find the sniper because Fisk hired him to kill Carl Hoffman. When Matt tracks down Cranston and interrogates him, Cranston reveals that Fisk also was behind Hugo's murder, and gives Matt information about a drug shipment that's coming in on one of Hugo's ships.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • Fisk has Hoffman killed for this reason, since he was going to implicate Fisk in Detective Blake's murder and the police corruption.
  • Matt entertains the idea of trying to turn the Enforcers against Fisk by giving them warnings of the fact that Fisk will eventually discard of them like he does everyone else he has no further use for.
• You Just Told Me: How Al Wallenquist gives away to Elektra that Fisk was behind her father's murder.
• Your Head Asplode: Hoffman's head explodes like a watermelon when Bullseye shoots him on the courthouse steps.