Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- John Wick being upset with Viggo and unwilling to talk on the phone makes a lot of sense. Viggo couldn't be bothered to at least show Iosef a picture of John Wick and command him to leave him alone for all the service he provided by the bodies he buried to make his crime family so successful.
- Some subtle Brilliance comes from John being called the "Baba Yaga". If one remembers, depending on the story, the Baba Yaga was a very feared entity, The Dreaded if she were crossed, and treated as something of a bogeyman. In a sense, given that Viggo said John was the one "you sent to kill the fucking boogeyman", he's seen as more dreaded than the feared Baba Yaga.
- Although we have Word of God's confirmation that the police in this universe have a deal with the criminals that grants them immunity as long as nobody innocent dies, officer Jimmy really didn't have any crimes that he could charge John with even though he saw the dead bodies in his house. Those people were intruding on John's property, armed and ready to kill him on sight. Even if Jimmy arrested him for it, John could just claim self defense and he'd be out in a few hours.
- When John kills Iosef, there's some fridge brilliance in how he blows up the escape vehicles. The vehicles explode after he starts shooting the guards outside, indicating that John snuck into the building, planted the bombs, then snuck back outside and started killing the guards with the sniper rifle. He wanted Iosef to feel terror and know John was coming for him, and to cut him off from all of his men by killing them one at a time before finishing him off. While he does finish Iosef off with brutal efficiency, the lead up to it was him deliberately cutting Iosef off from escape so that the puppy-killing bastard could feel the same fear and helplessness that John felt, right before the final gunshot.
- It also shows John's cruelty too. He purposefully took out everyone else first because he wanted Iosef to feel exactly how he did when Iosef assaulted him in his home and killed Daisy. He wanted to make sure that Iosef felt completely alone and helpless in his final moments before finally putting him down. In a way, it shuts down complaints from viewers that John didn't get the chance to grievously torture Iosef before killing him; the torture may not have been physical, but it was most certainly meant to be psychological.
- Traditions aside, there is actually some practical sense for the High Table and the assassin underworld to employ dated technology. It is much harder to trace than conventional means of communications, making it easier to keep things a secret from law enforcement.
- Moreover, it's significantly less liable to becoming lost or corrupted should something holding it fail due to random errors or glitches, or even deliberate attacks. A computer suffering from a virus can lose a ton of data and be completely bricked. Even cloud servers can eventually have issues. A file of physical documents, on the other hand, can pretty much last forever as long as it doesn't suffer any physical damage.
- Minor in comparison, but before reprimanding his son on how badly he fucked up, Viggo offers him a glass of vodka, which Iosef accepts. It is after Iosef drinks (while the vodka is still traveling down) that Viggo punches him in the gut (forcing the vodka to come back, a process that is very unpleasant to say the least).
- Kirill has probably been in Viggo's employ long enough to know and work with John back when he worked for the Tarasovs; the two don't exactly seem to be bosom buddiesnote , but when he tells Iosef that he should be scared of the "fucking Boogeyman" that's probably personal experience speaking, as much as plain good sense.
