Mr. Robot: "We still have other battles to fight."
Elliot, smirking: "What else is new?"
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Tropes
- Acceptable Break from Reality: Even though it makes no sense that Dominique was not carrying her service-issue pistol before the shooting, she manages to snag one from another dead agent anyway.
- Alternate Universe: Discussed. Zhang ruminates the possibility of a world existing where 5/9 never occurred.
- And I Must Scream: Kareem is injected with succinylcholine which leaves him paralyzed and unable to do anything but watch as his death approaches.
- Bilingual Bonus: The lullaby that Joanna sings to her son is Danish in origin and fairly common. Called "Solen er så rød mor" (The sun is so red, mother), the lullaby tells the story of a boy experiencing what seems like existential horror for the first time, and his mother reassuring him that the darkness of night will be conquered by the morning sun. Interestingly, in the previous episode, Alexa describes the sun swelling into a red giant and engulfing the Earth after Dominique asks when the world will end.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: According to Joanna, giving someone a reason for murdering them separates her and Mr. Sutherland from being heartless killers.
- Bolivian Army Ending: Dominique is trapped by Dark Army assassins who have killed everyone else, and Elliot is getting beaten to within an inch of his life.
- The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House: Inverted. Joanna learns through the feedback in her mysterious phone call that the person on the end is right outside her house.
- Cliffhanger: Elliot is kidnapped by Ray's thugs and beaten for discovering Midland City, Dominique is caught in a shootout between two Dark Army assassins, Angela agrees to join fsociety in hacking the FBI, and Joanna receives a call from presumably Tyrell, whom she later discovers was outside her house.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Elliot is tempted to bring down Ray and Midland City, but this need for justice once again lands him in hot water.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Two Dark Army assassins armed with automatic rifles wipe out almost an entire room full of trained FBI agents.
- Disapproving Look: Played for Laughs when Dominique bluntly inquires about the Dark Army's involvement in 5/9... to Zhang, the Chinese Minister of Security (and also Whiterose). While the other FBI agents are stunned into silence, Zhang shoots Dominique this look before graciously accepting her request for information.
- Drama Bomb Finale: The most random and chaotic in the show thus far. Just as it seems like everything is going to wind down to a quiet ending, Dominique is thrown into a shootout with no escape, and Elliot is dragged in front of Ray and brutalized.
- Easter Egg:
- The episode begins with five seconds of garbled static, which a vigilant YouTuber put into a spectrogram and found a hidden image of the "Hang In There, Baby!" cat meme. This same poster is later seen when Angela is being initiated by Whiterose in the finale.
- Sifting through Midland City's source code which is shown as Elliot creates the logic bomb will reveal a hexadecimal string that translates to the name of a Swiss philosopher: Henri Frederic Amiel. If you sort the values after the keys, you will get a quote from Mr. Amiel: "Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin."
- Evil All Along: Ray was shady to begin with, but having R.T. murdered and Elliot punished for looking at Midland City firmly cements him as a villain.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing:Dominique: "I'm definitely going to need more caffeine to survive the day."
- Foreshadowing:
- Angela enters the subway through the twenty-third street station. Interestingly, Angela later has to plant the femtocell on the twenty-third floor of E Corp, where the FBI is stationed.
- The nightmare that the FBI agent has is a rather foreboding hint at what will happen in China: she descends a hill and finds a masked man waiting to kill her at the bottom.
- Friendly Enemy: Zhang invites Dominique to his private quarters to learn more about her and even show off his "sister's" wardrobe. Considering what happens after, many interpret this scene to be Zhang sizing Dominique up for his own morbid curiosity.
- Genius Bonus:
- Elliot's logic bomb, when observed by a programmer, is just a slightly modified version of a real Samsung Knox exploit that was written for Metasploit by Rapid 7.
- The painting in Zhang's quarters is a piece by Fang Lijun, called "1999.6.1". If you know the meaning behind it (essentially the angst of a people during the revolution), then it perfectly mirrors the pathos of the show.
- He Knows Too Much: Kareem is snuffed out once it becomes clear he is too unstable to stick to Joanna's plan.
- He's Back!: Elliot is hacking at last, and he is far from rusty.
- Honor Before Reason: Mr. Robot tries to convince Elliot to avert this, not only because the FBI hack is a more pressing matter, but because Ray is resourceful and actually dangerous, unlike a certain coffee shop owner.
- Jump Scare: Mr. Robot pounding the keyboard while Elliot and R.T. are communicating.
- Killed Offscreen: R.T., quite possibly.
- Meaningful Name: While not his real name, R.T. is an acronym for "Rat Tail", which is his hair style. Humorously, Rat Tail is also the individual who busts open Ray's business and allows Elliot in. In other words... he is an actual rat. It's even lampshaded by Lone Star:Lone Star: "Never trust a tech guy with a rat tail."
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Whiterose sends two Dark Army assassins to ambush the FBI delegation in China, presumably to halt the 5/9 investigation. She is successful, for the most part.
- Noble Bigot: Jesse is part of the FBI's 5/9 investigation, but is disgusted by China's cuisine, calling them "savages" for it.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- Lone Star holding out R.T.'s hair, which appears to have been scalped. We never learn just what happened to the poor guy apart from that.
- Very short, unfocused glimpses are all we see of Midland City, and it manages to be just as disturbing.
- Most of the ambush in China is obscured by the counter Dominique is hiding behind. We hear gunshots, bullets flying, people screaming, and then silence. We only see the assassins for a total of ten seconds.
- Red Herring: Darlene hacks Angela by capturing an image of her laptop's hard disk presumably for leverage, but it is never brought up again.
- Room Full of Crazy: One part of Zhang's quarters are filled with clocks of all shapes and sizes, incessantly ticking away.
- Shout-Out:
- "Dread Pirate Roberts" is Ray's log-in ID as well as the pseudonym of one Ross William Ulbricht, who founded the real-life Silk Road.
- The "life's but a walking shadow" quote from Zhang is lifted from Macbeth.
- Villain Respect: Zhang seems to respect Dominique enough to want to learn about her personal life and share his own.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Jesse shines for roughly three minutes before he gets blown away in a shootout. The same goes for Dominique's fellow agent who has a recurring nightmare; she is not even named.
- Wham Episode: Fitting for an episode titled "eps2.3_logic-b0mb.hc" to be structured like a bomb blast.
