Karen and Foggy continue working with Frank on a defense, while Matt continues avoiding the trial to work with Elektra.
Tropes present in this episode include:
- After Action Patch Up + Scar Survey: Played for the usual UST between Elektra and Matt, though as the latter is involved with Karen nothing happens.
- Artistic License – Linguistics: The Asian Studies professor says he put the Japanese alphabet through a cypher. Japanese has three scripts and none of them are technically alphabets (two syllabaries, one logographic).
- Bottomless Pit:
- Invoked by the massive digging the "Yakuza" have made. Matt throws a flashlight into it and we never hear it hit the bottom.
- The flashlight falls for 20 seconds between Matt throwing it and the credits rolling. Under standard gravity* , the flashlight would have fallen 1,961 metres (6,435 feet). Of course, Matt's hearing is probably not good enough to hear a flashlight hitting dirt at that distance.note
- Base-Breaking Character: Frank Castle is seen as this In-Universe. The beginning of the episode has some potential jurors sharing a low view of what he does, while others go so far as to applaud him as an actual hero.
- Bilingual Backfire: Two prostitutes are complaining about what a creep the professor is. Unfortunately he's the guy the Yakuza use to develop codes in their own language, so Asian languages are his specialty.
- Call-Back:
- Matt recalls his fight with Nobu, and the building Fisk got for Nobu and his associates.
- Matt and Karen reminisce about the night they first met.
- When speculating on the shipment's contents Matt recalls that the last "Yakuza" shipment he interfered with was a child.
- Destination Defenestration: Done as an Implied Death Threat when Daredevil throws the professor up against the window and starts slamming his fist into the glass.
- Disappointed in You: Zigzagged; when Matt misses the opening speech, Foggy and Karen aren't too annoyed as Foggy is able to wing it. But when Matt reveals what's been going on with Elektra, Foggy is furious and gives Matt hell for not dedicating himself to the case he got them involved in in the first place.
- Double Speak: Karen's remarks about what is going on in Frank Castle's head come off more as her recalling her memories of her as yet unrevealed past:Karen Page: Just for a minute... try... try to be Frank Castle. To be solely fueled by... by a single cluster of seconds. One moment in... in your entire life... And every time you close your eyes, you relive that moment. And every time you open them, you find only the... the briefest peace before you realize that that nightmare is real. That nothing has changed. Your family isn't coming back. And so you watch them die... all over again right in front of you. We're not talking about something that happened to Frank Castle, we're talking about something that is happening to him.
- Every Scar Has a Story: Matt shows the knife scars he got in season 1 to Elektra. Most of them were inflicted by Nobu.
- Flag Drop: When Castle is first brought into the courtroom, the American flag is behind him.
- High-Altitude Interrogation: Matt throws the pervy professor up against the window (thirty stories up) and keeps punching it, making it break more and more until the professor cracks worse than the window.
- Interrogation Montage: The screening of jury candidates plays out this way.
- Mythology Gag: Matt says the train cars don't have any "negative space," apparently meaning "voids," since they're filled to the brim with what turns out to be dirt. The artistic use of negative space
is a big part of the Signature Style of Frank Miller, and was one of the things that revitalized the Daredevil comic under his hand. - Never My FaultFoggy: Stop acting like these things just happen to you! No one is making you go out at all hours of the night fighting bad guys, and nobody makes you lie to your friends over and over again! Elektra is not the problem, Matt. You are.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Elektra threatening the Medical Examiner and telling him to confess that he doctored reports involved in Frank Castle's past means he was put under duress and his testimony is inadmissible, eliminating a major witness for Nelson & Murdock. Matt rightfully calls her out on this action the very second he next meets up with her (quite violently).
- Thanks to his vigilante activities, Matt sleeps in and an unprepared Foggy has to give the opening speech to the jury. Then when Matt belatedly reveals what's been happening with Elektra, it threatens to tear apart Matt's relationship with his friends all over again.
- "Not So Different" Remark:
- Matt gets uncomfortable when Karen seems to find little difference between vigilantes who kill (like The Punisher) and those who just save lives (like Daredevil).
- When Matt gets angry at Elektra for screwing up the Castle case, she just shoots back that she's playing by his rules—if something doesn't work legally, you go out at night and fix it illegally as a vigilante.
- Poor Communication Kills: Thanks to Matt keeping his work with Elektra secret, he has to explain to Foggy all at once that the former girlfriend who nearly caused him to fail law school is back in town as their well-funded client who is now a Yakuza-fighting vigilante that has just ruined their best chance of winning the case...unsurprisingly Foggy completely loses his shit over Matt's sheer irresponsibility.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: It's subtle, but for a brief moment near the end when Matt and Elektra break into the Hand's hideout at Midland Circle, Charlie Cox slips back into his natural English accent when he says, "We're alone."
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Foggy tears into Matt with even more anger than he showed in "Nelson vs. Murdock", and both of them seem on the verge of physical violence at one point.
- Percussive Therapy: After Foggy storms out of the men's room where he was arguing with Matt, there's an Offscreen Crash before Matt leaves as well, implying that he vented his rage on a bathroom mirror. Then after Matt tears into Elektra, he rushes off to inflict a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on a bunch of Yakuza goons single-handedly.
- Properly Paranoid: The security at the prison where Frank's being held don't even let Karen bring paperclips in with her, and Frank is being Shipped in Shackles.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: Played for drama when Matt denies that Elektra is his girlfriend, Foggy sarcastically comments that he might explain that to his actual girlfriend Karen.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Frank rejects using PTSD as a defense for his actions, because he sees it as unrelated and an insult. Not against him, but to all the veterans who are actually suffering mental trauma from their service and not going out and hurting people. Ironic, given that Karen later describes how Frank is reliving the deaths of his family over and over again, trapped in that moment, and this is a very common symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder... it's just not related to Frank's combat experience.
- Sidebet: Elektra tries to get Matt make one over what's in the train car. They'd have both lost as it turns out to be full of...dirt?
- Subtext: The conversation between Matt and Karen over the Punisher is made more awkward by the secrets each is hiding from the other. Karen is pro-Punisher because she's killed a man and is seeking to justify it, while Matt is anti-Punisher because he wants to differentiate what the Punisher does from his Daredevil activities.
- Villainous Face Hold: A rare heroic version when Matt grabs Elektra's face while venting his anger over how she's screwed up the Castle case.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Foggy hands one out to Matt, combined with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, for lying to him again and possibly screwing up the entire trial. When Matt curtly brushes off the argument when Karen wants to know what happened, she in turn points out that she's not just his secretary, and has done more work on this trial than he has.
