While Barry and Ralph tackle bus meta Janet Petty, Breacher would ask Cisco a favor.
Tropes
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not made clear, but the implications are frightening that a certain temporal cockroach is rearing his head yet again. Then again, Harry is a very good liar.
- Amnesia Loop: Marlize creates a video to remind herself that DeVoe is brainwashing her. She then finds out that she created the exact same video before...and that DeVoe was aware of it as well.
- Awful Truth: Breacher has lost his powers due to old age, and even S.T.A.R. Labs doesn't think it's possible for them to find any potential way to ever restore them. Breacher ultimately finds out, and while he naturally doesn't take the news well at first, he eventually is able to make peace with it and comfortably retire.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Ralph is not very persuasive while playing bad cop as "Joe West". He insists a lot on being Joe and being the bad cop.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Averted. Barry is right to be terrified of uncontrollably floating to the atmosphere; even with his powers there's no way he's going to survive space.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Ralph's former friend Earl and Breacher make another appearance.
- The original, Morena Baccarin-voiced Gideon comes back, having not been seen since Season 1.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Janet Petty takes great delight in robbing people and has no problems whatsoever with putting innocent lives at risk in the process.
- Casting Gag: Kevin Smithnote and Jason Mewes appear as security guards. As usual, Kevin plays the silent one.
- Celebrity Paradox: Cisco mentions From Dusk Till Dawn, a film which includes Danny Trejo.
- Character Shilling: Barry calls Ralph the best addition to the team, when Ralph has been acting cowardly and unhelpfully so far.
- Chekhov's Gag: Ralph pranks Harry with a whoopie cushion, which he brings up a second time during his heart-to-heart with Barry. When Null sends the Flash into the air, Elongated Man stretches and inflates into a giant whoopie cushion to catch him.
- Continuity Nod: Breacher still mistakes Ralph (or rather, a standee of him) for a Plastoid.
- Creator Cameo: Kevin Smith (who directs this episode) appears as a security guard.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Breacher's loss of his blasting powers plays out a lot like erectile dysfunction, right down to Cisco offering him "little blue pills" as a treatment.
- Feeling Their Age: Breacher is having a hard time fighting. His Vibe powers are weakening to the point they stop working all together.
- Freudian Excuse: The reason why Ralph constantly cracks jokes in serious situations is that when he was 10 years old, his father walked out on him and his mother. Whenever he's afraid, either he hides or makes jokes to help push the fear away.
- Freudian Slip: DeVoe telling Marlize that there are two metas still out there instead of three, since she doesn't know that he has the Weeper in his possession.
- Impersonating an Officer: Ralph impersonates Joe to make Earl speak about Janet Petty.
- Gender Flip: The comics Null is pretty obscure (he appears in a handful of issues of Hawkworld as one of the metas who live under Chicago and refuse to get involved in heroes vs. villains), but he's a dude.
- Internal Reveal: Subverted, in a cruel manner. Marlize seemingly finds out about her husband drugging her to keep her compliant...but then it turns out she already found out about it previously numerous times, and each time Clifford drugged her again and erased her memory.
- Ironic Echo: In "Therefore, I Am" Clifford told his wife that "he's nothing without her". But here?DeVoe: And I love you...but you're nothing without me.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- Ralph suggests creating a superhero improv group, going to Washington, DC, and calling themselves the "DC Comics".
- When she's reactivated, Gideon comments that it's been 1,078 days since she talked last talked to "Wells".note
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: Janet Petty does not fool around, immdiately trying to kill Flash and taking civilian lives as leverage to escape
- Older Than He Looks: While he doesn't look young by any means, Breacher is apparently even older than he looks like, though the audience doesn't get his exact age.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The team learns that the new meta has gone through so many handles because of her criminal life, that they just resort to calling her Null for the rest of the episode.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Breacher is surprisingly polite towards Cisco, even adressing him with his real name instead of calling him "Cisci".
- Our Vampires Are Different: Cisco finds out that Breacher's enemy Crucifer is not vulnerable to sunlight.
- Outside-Genre Foe: The episode briefly introduces the DC villain Crucifer, an outright vampire that would probably be more at home in the mystical side of the Arrowverse rather than in the more sci-fi oriented Flash.
- Passing the Torch: Breacher wants Cisco to take up his mantle after coming to terms with his powers no longer working properly.
- Power Incontinence: Breacher's powers stop working properly due to his age.
- Pungeon Master: Ralph makes a few of them throughout the episode, much to Barry's ire. For example, he calls Barry a leightweight when floating in the air due to Petty's powers, or calls himself swollen with pride, after just having shapeshifted into a giant whoopie cushion.
- Race Lift: Not only is comicbook Null a dude, he's a white dude.
- Saying Too Much: DeVoe telling Marlize that they only have two bus-metas still unaccounted for, when to Marlize's knowledge, there are supposed to be three (the third one being the Weeper, and it's revealed she didn't even know he was her husband's prisoner). This appears to be repeated near the end, after DeVoe wipes Marlize's memory, and their conversation from that morning is replayed, except DeVoe then adds that Janet has been captured by Team Flash, so the count is correct now.
- Sherlock Scan: Barry figures out the crate was broken by going at a huge speed, even from the distance he has to take due to his suspension from the CCPD.
- Shout-Out:
- Ralph calls DeVoe Doc Ock thanks to his mecha-tentacled chair. He follows up with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles references when he uses his powers to withdraw his head into his torso.
- There's an extended one to The View Askewniverse with Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith appearing as two comical warehouse guards. They act an awful lot like Jay and Silent Bob, though they are of course never referred to as such.
- Cisco calls Crucifer From Dusk Till Dawn.
- When Breacher tells Cisco he's retiring and is thinking of visiting a dragon farm on Earth-47, Cisco calls him Khaleesi, causing Breacher to defensively scream that he's not "a Khaleesi", implying that he's not familiar with the book/show.note
- After Null makes him float, Ralph suggest Barry should try burping to get down again, just like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
- Ralph makes a humorous Darth Vader impression.
- Skewed Priorities: Ralph does nothing but try to be funny while Team Flash are planning a strategy to save his life.
- The Stinger: Harry walking into the Time Vault, placing his own Thinking Cap where the Reverse-Flash suit once stood...and reactivating Gideon!
- Villain of Another Story: Crucifer, who was involved with a fight with Breacher previously and appears shortly in one scene.
- Virtue Is Weakness: This line from DeVoe, showing just how Eviler than Thou he is to his wife:DeVoe: I knew that the same thing in you that I fell in love with had the potential to destroy us: your humanity.
- Wham Shot: Harry enters the Time Vault, leaves his thinking cap where the Reverse Flash's costume used to be and reawakens Gideon. Is he really Harry or has Eobard Thawne stolen the identity of a Harrison Wells once again?
- What the Hell, Hero?: Barry gets pretty pissed at Ralph for seemingly taking nothing seriously.
- You Monster!: Marlize eventually calls her husband this after all he's done to her.
