As the Legends protect time in lieu of the now nonexistent Time Masters, Mayor Oliver Queen receives a visit from a man claiming Ray and Sara are in danger.
Tropes:
- All Women Are Lustful: Sara gets quite a bit of action, being seduced by the wife of King Louis XIII and "corrupting" several village women of 1693 Salem.Sara: In my defense, they were happily corrupted.
- Ancient Astronauts: Rip and his team have made it into several historical records, including Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting the Waverider.
- Artistic License – History:
- There's no historical evidence that Anne of Austria was lesbian or bisexual, though French aristocracy of the time did tend to turn a blind eye to this kind of thing. She also likely didn't have a modern-day French accent, being from Spain.
- While the workings of the atomic bomb were based on Einstein's theories, he was in no way involved in the practical application of those theories that actually produced the bomb. So kidnapping him (let alone Mileva Marić, who would know even less about how to build a bomb) would hardly be the best way for the Nazis to acquire an atomic bomb. It would be far more efficient to kidnap the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project
, which began in the same year this episode takes place. Since the Nazis are being helped by a time traveler from the future, they should know this.
- Artistic License – Physics: No one person could build a nuclear weapon from scratch, without any knowledge of how to do so. It took an entire team of theoretical and practical physicists and engineers, as well as a huge number of support staff performing mathematical calculations, several years to work out all the details.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Darhk per usual. He wears a nice gangster outfit in 1940s New York.
- The Beard: The King and Queen of France are apparently this to each other. The former is only implied to be gay, but the latter is confirmed to be at least bi.
- Bearer of Bad News: Nate Heywood's introduction, where he tries to tell Mayor Queen that the Legends are possibly dead.
- Been There, Shaped History: Rip's team has made it into several historical records in 2016.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Darhk and Eobard Thawne have teamed up to mess with history for their own goals. Unlike with his Partners in HIVE, Darhk genuinely enjoys working with Thawne; this is most evident when Dahrk addresses Thawne by his first name.
- Broken Pedestal: Played for Laughs when Stein meets Einstein. He expects Einstein to be a saintly professor, only to discover he's actually a Dirty Old Man. It also seems that his ex-wife is actually smarter than he is who really came up with many of the nuclear breakthroughs credited to Einstein. Just to twist the knife further, Einstein prefers Rory, of all people.
- Burn the Witch!: Averted. In keeping with the reality of the time period and location, the villagers of Salem want to hang Sara after accusing her of being a witch.
- Call-Back:
- Sara wants to futilely kill Darhk for killing Laurel.
- Darhk fights Sara hand to hand, because he hasn't received his magic totem yet.
- Chewing the Scenery: Dahrk dials it up a notch, especially when he's yelling in German on the u-boat.
- Clarke's Third Law: Jax entertains a medieval English prince with his "magic mirror" (a smartphone).
- Cliffhanger: Just as the Legends are about to leave 1942, the Justice Society of America arrives and confronts them.
- Continuity Cameo: Oliver Queen appears in two scenes just in case anyone forgets that this show is part of the Arrowverse.
- Contrived Coincidence: Sara has already been preparing herself to wage a campaign of revenge against Damien Darhk, and it just so happens the latest time-travel potential disaster is caused by him.
- Court Mage: Stein and Jax are ones for a spoiled prince in the Middle Ages.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- After Mick gets woken up, he flies into a blind rage and attacks Nate and Oliver, only for the latter to quickly subdue him and threaten to break his arm.
- As good a fighter as Sara is she's really no match for Damien Darhk, a man with centuries of experience (the fact he hasn't become reliant on his magic yet also helps).
- The Nazi mooks on the sub are no match for Eobard Thawne.
- Dare to Be Badass: When Heywood protests that finding the Waverider was just supposed to be a salvage mission...Oliver: Who are you kidding? You've been waiting your whole life for this.
- Dirty Old Man: Einstein is just about to seduce two vastly younger women when the team gets to him.
- Dramatic Irony: Nate tells Oliver that the latter's friends are causing anomalies in history. Nate is referring to the Legends, which is correct, but he does not know (or probably even aware) of another friend of Oliver's who also contributed to it numerous times.
- Everything's Sexier in French: The Queen of France is certainly an eye-candy.
- Fan Boy: Stein is very excited to meet Einstein.
- Flynning: Ray engages in this while disguised as a musketeer.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Jackson thinks so, after he easily guess that Sara had sex with the Queen of France.
- Godwin's Law of Time Travel: For an episode that involves both time travel and the Nazis, surprisingly averted. Despite the Nazis getting their hands on a nuclear bomb ahead of the allies, and destroying New York City with it, they still lost World War II (which did however last 2 years longer in this timeline and resulted in 12 million more deaths).
- The Heavy: Damien Darhk throughout the episode, though it ultimately turns out that the Reverse-Flash is The Man Behind the Man.
- How We Got Here: The bulk of the episode is Mick telling the story about how the Legends got seperated to Oliver and Nate.
- Hypocrite: Eobard Thawne, the man who has lectured Barry Allen about the dangers of messing with time, proceeds to help Darhk and the Nazis blow up New York with a nuke apparently just for kicks. Part of this may be due to the fact that the Time Masters aren't around to govern history anymore thanks to the Legends' efforts last season.
- Insistent Terminology: Einstein keeps correcting the use of the word "nuclear" to "atomic". This is accurate, as nuclear weapons really were called "atomic" at that time.
- It Runs in the Family: It seems the Lance family has been in law enforcement for at least three generations - Laurel Lance was an Assistant District Attorney, her father Quentin Lance was a cop, and in this episode, Sara reveals that her grandfather was an FBI agent in the '40s. Although she may have been lying.
- Lampshade Hanging: Nate Heywood's explanation for how he figured out Oliver Queen is the Green Arrow.Nate: It doesn't take a historian to see a calendar and figure out that a week after you came to this city, Robin Hood showed up.
- The Man Behind the Man: The Reverse-Flash to Damien Darhk.
- Mythology Gag: Sara telling a taxi driver, "Take me to Conway and 5th."
- Neck Snap: The Nazi sub crew found themselves on the business end of one thanks to Thawne.
- Nerves of Steel: Darhk's reaction to a bunch of people with vastly advanced tech and superpowers attacking his men? Calmly turn his back on them and walking away. It seems to be a side-effect of immortality.
- Party Scattering: Rip created a program appropriately called "Time Scatter" which sends the Legends sans Mick (who possibly wouldn't survive due to his injuries, and put into stasis instead) and himself to different time periods.
- Piggybacking on Hitler: Darhk helps the Nazis get their hands on nuclear weapons technology three years before it's even invented.
- Pretty in Mink:
- Anne of Austria is wearing a green robe, trimmed with ermine, when she propositions Sara.
- Sara's disguise in the 40s is a white party dress with a light brown mink stole.
- Recycled Title: The name of the episode is the same as the fifteenth episode of The Flash, when Eobard Thawne finally came out of the shadows and uttered his true name for the first time.
- Revenge Before Reason: Sara wants to kill Darhk both for revenge - at the cost of the team mission - and to save Laurel (which we know is a fruitless exercise as time will see to it that Laurel will die regardless of who kills her).
- Royal Brat: The prince whom Stein and Jax work for as court wizards. He eventually orders them beheaded just because he got bored.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Sara hopes to kill Damien Darhk in 1942, and thus prevent him from being around to kill Laurel in 2016, not realizing or caring that You Can't Fight Fate and that Laurel dies no matter what.
- The Slow Path: The Waverider, and Mick Rory (in suspended animation aboard the ship) take this from 1942 to 2016, until being found by Oliver and Nate.
- Spot the Thread: Rip notices the Nazi kidnappers of Albert Einstein by immaculate (ie. German) stitching on their lapels, which isn't the sort of thing you'd expect on US GI uniforms.
- Those Wacky Nazis: The episode really hammers down how bad the Nazis were.
- Trapped in the Past: The "time scatter" Rip activates leads to this temporarily happening to all the Legends (sans Mick): Sara is trapped in 17th century Salem, Martin and Jax in England in the Middle Ages, and Ray in the Cretaceous Period!
- Villainous Friendship: Darhk and Thawne. As mentioned above, they're even on a First-Name Basis.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Slightly subverted; Dr. Heywood suffers a bit of time-travel sickness on his first trip. A bit of nastiness is seen drooling from his mouth for a moment, but the rest is offscreen.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Ray gives Sara a dressing down for putting her vendetta with Darhk ahead of her teammates.
- You Have Failed Me: The Nazis try to pull this on Darhk after their mission fails. Reverse-Flash pulls it on them first.
