The hospital is attacked by the Hand, while Karen meets up with Frank to seek answers.
Tropes present in this episode include:
- Affably Evil: Madame Gao is once again nothing short of polite towards Daredevil, giving him valuable information about the Blacksmith. They part on, if not friendly terms, then at least polite. Matt even thanks her on the way out.
- Almost Dead Guy: Stick sends two drivers to tell Matt about Elektra. She stabs them in their car but they manage to drive long enough to wreck outside Matt's apartment and tell him what is going on before dying.
- Anger Born of Worry: Matt is not happy to find out that Karen has been investigating the Castle case as part of the Bulletin staff. Given her conflicted feelings towards Matt right now, she ends up snapping back at him that she has no need of his protection.
- Big Damn Heroes: Matt shows up in the nick of time to save a mook and convince Castle to work with him to find the Blacksmith. Also, he helps Castle get closure because he stops him from killing the wrong man. He's only able to get to the boat because Gao told him to head to the docks, and then he hears gunfire.
- Big "NO!": Claire in response to Louisa's death.
- Blatant Lies: Two lines, two lies.Elektra: [sais in hand] We need to talk.
Stick: [raising sword] I'm all ears. - Bling-Bling-BANG!: Brought up when Frank is discussing Karen's titular .380 pistol.Frank: People who don't know shit about guns usually go for something shiny. You know, something with a... with a fancy grip.
- Cliffhanger: Elektra with her dual sai faces off with a katana-armed Stick.
- Creepy Child: The children who had been captured by the Hand are obviously Brainwashed and Crazy as well as having unknown substances pumping through their veins. They spend most of their time staring creepily at people, waiting for the Hand to come rescue them. Also, at least one of them killed his own father.
- Danger Takes a Backseat: Elektra hides in the back of Stick's car to ambush his two underlings.
- Destination Defenestration: Claire shoves a Hand ninja out a window with an IV pole. Not long afterword, she's thrown out the same window by another ninja. Luckily, Daredevil is able to catch her mid-fall.
- Diner Brawl: Frank lures a couple of hitmen to the diner, unbeknownst to Karen. Once they enter, he savagely beats and kills them. Karen is horrified.
- Ditch the Bodyguards: Karen accepts police protection; they put her up in a hotel and set up surveillance outside, but the minute the police step into elevator, Karen slips down to the carpark to rendezvous with Castle.
- Enemy Mine: Madame Gao is willing to give Daredevil all the information she has regarding the Blacksmith, since she wants to see him gone as much as Daredevil does—he's her chief competition in the city's drug trade.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: One of the gunmen guarding Madame Gao's dry-cleaning front complains that another gunman's kid is playing with the clothes rack again. Except the kid's at basketball.
- Everyone Can See It: Even Frank could tell about Karen's feelings for Matt, because of the looks she was giving him in the courtroom.
- Every Scar Has a Story: One of the ninjas has an autopsy scar on his chest, causing Claire (but not the hospital staff) to ask how he could have been killed twice.
- Facial Horror: Two examples:
- The beating Frank gives one of the hitmen is pretty graphic, with broken bone sticking out of his cheek. He does this after shooting him.
- Frank himself has a downplayed example, as the beatings he took from Wilson Fisk and the other inmates have left him with enough cuts and bruises that most people don't recognize him walking around in public, or avoid looking at him directly, despite his face being on television and the internet as a fugitive 'serial killer' loose in New York.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Stick's men get into their car, the camera pans away just as we hear a gasp from the first man to get into the vehicle, before the driver then finds a sai protruding from his chest.
- Foreshadowing:
- One of the Blacksmith's men shouts, "It's been a long time, hasn't it Frank?"
- Marci drops a hint that there's a law firm that might be willing to offer Foggy a job.
- Grappling-Hook Gun: The ninjas use these to scale the walls of the hospital.
- Hand Cannon: Castle complains about these, how people realize they "kick like a mule" and they become "afraid to use it".
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Claire's coworker gets stabbed through the chest by one of the Hand's ninjas.
- Just You and Me and My GUARDS!: Daredevil threatens to break the legs of the guards coming to help Madame Gao. She sends a girl to order them to leave once he makes it clear he's there to talk rather than fight.
- Kitchen Chase: A variation when the fight takes Castle and the hitman behind the bar of the diner, where they make use of various cooking implements.
- Little Useless Gun: Averted when Frank appreciates the .380 pistol (it appears to be a Llama III-A) Karen was armed with—not a Hand Cannon she couldn't control, nor some overly shiny weapon that would indicate she was making a choice based on appearance rather than practicality.
- Must Have Caffeine: Frank and Karen stop briefly at a diner when searching for the Blacksmith, and Frank asks the waitress to bring him "about as much black coffee as this place can pump out."
- My God, What Have I Done?: Claire spends a lot of time angsting over the fact that she pushed a Hand assassin out a window.
- Never Found the Body: Frank apparently dies when the heroin ship explodes.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: If the mook at the docks hadn't yelled "Been a long time, Frank!" and identified himself as a former fellow soldier, Castle probably wouldn't have been able to make a beeline to the Blacksmith.
- Nice to the Waiter: Frank and Karen have a thoughtful conversation in the diner, during which Frank is kind and charming to their server, unfailingly polite. Then he tells everyone to hide under something made of metal and brutally tortures and kills the hitmen the Blacksmith has sent after Karen.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: Played straight when Matt jumps to save a falling Claire and catches her before they go through Soft Glass.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Despite being initially furious with Daredevil, Frank becomes disturbed when 'Red' tells him that, in the case of the Blacksmith, he should probably break his no-kill rule. Frank even tries to talk him out of it, because the rule can't be broken "just once."
- Out-of-Genre Experience: With the creepy children, undead enemies popping up out of nowhere, and the flickering lights, to say nothing of the obviously inhuman Madame Gao, this episode feels a lot like a horror movie.
- Punctuated Pounding:
- Frank delivers one to Daredevil after the latter interrupts his assault on the Blacksmith's boat.Castle: When are you gonna learn? Mind your own... God! Damn! Business!
- Subverted, when Daredevil easily escapes Frank's assault and proceeds to beat him into submission.
- Frank delivers one to Daredevil after the latter interrupts his assault on the Blacksmith's boat.
- Put on a Bus: Claire quits her job and warns Foggy that if their "mutual friend" requires medical attention in future, he'll need to find someone else.
- Also, it's hard to get an employee to help you with a cover-up, especially if you have screwed her over enough times in the recent past that she doesn't have much to lose if she refuses.
- Real Men Love Jesus: Matt crosses himself when telling Castle he's willing to allow him to kill the Big Bad.
- Red Shirt: Claire's co-worker Louisa, who takes a Hand katana meant for Claire through the chest in the episode's opening.
- Save the Villain: 'Red' appears Just in Time to stop Castle killing the man he thinks is the Blacksmith; justified in this case because he's not the Blacksmith and killing him would just create a literal dead end to the real Big Bad.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Claire quits after finding out that the hospital would rather get paid to keep silent about the unrecorded patients than report to the authorities about what they find from the autopsy of the Hand ninja that Claire killed.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The hospital agrees to cover up the affair with the Hand attack and claim Louisa's death was at the hands of a junkie after they receive a large, anonymous donation.
- Self-Made Orphan: At the hospital, Daniel kills his father, Stan, the Roxxon accountant being forced to work for the Hand.
- Smoke Out: A ninja delays Daredevil long enough to escape by cutting a hole in a steam pipe.
- Soft Glass: Averted. When Matt rescues Claire by diving out a window after her, they crash through a window. They are both injured in the fall, and can barely even move for several minutes afterwards.
- Title Drop: Done courtesy of Frank Castle.
- Too Dumb to Live: Turns out, attacking someone by scaling a building and climbing in a window in full view of them is a really bad idea, especially if you have no ranged weaponry, as one hapless ninja discovers.
- Treating multiple patients at a hospital without giving them any sort of admission form is quite stupid, as it leaves the hospital liable and allows for a relatively easy cover-up if any of them die, as there is no paperwork.
- Trailers Always Lie: When Claire tells Matt, "It's not your city anymore," she has her back to the camera and the tone is different. In the trailer for season 2, we get a closeup of her face when she says it, and in a much angrier tone.
- What the Hell, Hero?: As soon as Karen realizes that Frank has been using her as The Bait to lure out some of the people hunting her, she calls him an asshole. He admits that yes, he is.
