Castle's car is in flames, Beckett's wedding dress is probably ruined and...where's Richard Castle?
Tropes in use:
- Awesomeness by Analysis: The Coast Guard captain was able to determine the area where Castle's dinghy set off from given the range of the boat and the direction of ocean currents.
- Car Fu: Ryan and Esposito find evidence of Castle's car having been run off the road by a larger vehicle.
- Continuity Nod: Beckett mentions Senator Bracken and 3XK as people who might have orchestrated the kidnapping.
- The Bus Came Back: Castle's mafia neighbor Vincent Cardano, whom he and Beckett once accused of murder, is initially a suspect as he owned the junkyard where the kidnappers' SUV was crushed.
- Frame-Up: Castle suspects that someone is setting him up and making it look like he faked his own abduction.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Castle has no memory of the two months in which he was missing.
- Masquerading As the Unseen: When Beckett and crew meet the fake landowner.
- The Reveal: When Beckett and Castle meet the real landowner, it turns out that all of the evidence they had earlier was fabricated by the unknown party that took Castle.
- Time-Compression Montage: The passage of time is demonstrated by a montage of updates to Beckett's murder board showing newspaper clippings mentioning increasing amounts of time since Castle's disappearance.
- Time Skip: Castle goes missing shortly before his wedding and is found adrift on a dinghy off the coast of Delaware two months later.
