History Series / PokerFace

** [[spoiler:"The Future of the Sport" starts like the rest of the episodes, setting up a murder and murderer - but by the midpoint we learn ''neither'' of them was who we thought they were. We see Keith Owens sabotage hated rival Davis [=McDowell=]'s racecar and then the car crash... only to see that Davis ''saw'' Keith doing it, take additional care to so the seatbelt would fail, and make sure that Keith's daughter Katy was behind the wheel when it crashed, forcing Keith to retire from the sport with his reputation destroyed.]] Even more so when [[spoiler:the daughter survives, meaning no-one dies in the episode.]]
** [[spoiler:"Escape from Shit Mountain" is relatively more straightforward, where we see the killer of the episode and the events that lead to the MurderOfTheWeek, and the first act ends with what appears to be Charlie stumbling onto the scene - until the second act starts, and reveals that the victim in the first act was none other than ''Charlie herself'', who survives the hit-and-run, and the exact nature of what the MurderOfTheWeek ''is'' isn't brought into focus until further in when a seeming background element (a missing snowboarder by the name of Chloe Jones) is put into the forefront. The episode itself leans more into suspense than mystery, thanks to Charlie's condition for most of it.]]
** [[spoiler:"The Hook" ''inverts'' the series formula; the episode starts by viewing the events leading up to the murder from Charlie's perspective, after which it switches to the perspective of the killer.]]

* RunningGag: After Marge uses super glue to fix Charlie’s gunshot wound in the second episode, Charlie repeatedly uses the same trick to stitch up her allies throughout the rest of the season. Ouch.

* {{Leitmotif}}: Each episode has a banjo tune that plays when Charlie's introduced and we're about to see how she factors into whatever crime we just saw take place.

** In "Rest in Metal," when asked where she found their idiotic drummer, Ruby cracks "Julliard" before revealing just off an Internet ad. Later, in a talk with Charlie, Gavin reveals he did indeed attend Julliard.

* CoolCar: Charlie's Plymouth Barracuda, while [[TheAllegedCar it's seen better days]], is still a damn fine car.

* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Sterling Sr. is a shady man, and has been emotionally abusive to his son for years. But deep down, he does care for Sterling Jr. [[spoiler:When he finds out that Charlie caused him to commit suicide, he makes sure to have her hunted down so that he can torture and kill her out of vengeance - though by the time of "The Hook" he has realized that this wasn't really Charlie's fault, and decides not to kill her after all]].

* GeniusDitz: Charlie. She's extremely scatterbrained and bad at reading most social cues, causing a lot of people to write her off as an idiot, but once there's a mystery to be solved, she is extremely good at spotting the things that don't add up, even beyond her LivingDieDetector abilities, and piecing together what they mean.

* HaveYouToldAnyoneElse: Done in "Time of the Monkey" as Charlie outlines how the killers did it and they're going to jail as soon as she tells the FBI. One openly goes "so you haven't told anyone yet" and Charlie has a brief OhCrap moment before the two attack her.

* NameOfCain: Kazimir Caine, an oil-rich gambler whose AwfulSecret launches the plot. He's a very bad guy.

* OneHitWonder: In-universe. "Rest in Metal" focuses on the aged members of a band who had one major hit song, but as the long-retired drummer wrote it, she's the one who gets all the royalties while the rest are stuck working gigs in seedy bars. When their seemingly idiotic new drummer reveals a song they all recognize can be a new hit for them, it drives them to murder him and claim the song as their own.

* PunkInTheTrunk: In "Rest in Metal", Cliff tells Charlie she can ride [[TheEasyWayOrTheHardWay in the passenger seat or the trunk.]]

** Creator/JosephGordonLevitt had previously played a teenaged HardboiledDetective solving a murder in Rian Johnson's 2005 high school-set FilmNoir ''Film/Brick''. [[spoiler:In "Escape from Shit Mountain", he plays the other side of the proverbial mystery genre-coin as the murderer.]]