Daredevil 2015 / Tropes I to P

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I

• I Am the Noun:
  • "I am the ill intent, who set upon the traveler on a road that he should not have been on..."
  • Season 2 also has this with Frank embracing the Punisher name as he starts raving at his trial.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: While Fisk is in prison awaiting trial, he makes sure Vanessa is looked after by using the majority of his remaining money to set up a protection fund for her. When he learns the FBI plan to have her arrested on accessory charges if they manage to track her down, he immediately makes a deal with the FBI to sell out other criminals (who just so happen to be competitors of his) in return for her continued protection.
• If We Get Through This…: The Season 2 finale has Matt declaring his love for Elektra and her talking about traveling abroad, right before they face off against Nobu. She dies protecting Matt from Nobu.
• Impersonation Gambit: Fisk has Dex dress up in a red Daredevil suit and commit crimes to smear Matt.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Dex's specialty is that he's able to pull off virtually impossible trick shots when he's got a gun. And when he doesn't have a gun, he's still able to easily turn anything that's not bolted down into a projectile that he can aim at Matt and other targets with deadly accuracy.
• In Prison with the Rogues: Season 2 had Frank Castle being apprehended and put into the same prison as Wilson Fisk, who had managed to take over the compound and was running it as his own personal kingdom. There Frank is tricked into a trap where Fisk unleashes a whole block of angry inmates on Frank. However Frank manages to kill every single one of them with nothing but his bare hands and a few weapons he managed to snatch off the criminals.
• Informed Attractiveness: Lots of people talk about how handsome Matt is. It's even one of the first things Foggy says to him.
• Informed Attribute: Foggy rarely hesitates to mention how Matt is a consummate ladies' man with tons of short-term relationships, but we rarely see Matt so much as hit on anyone outside of Karen. The characterization goes toward the theme that Matt keeps most people at arm's length due to the advice of Stick, and he allows Foggy to assume that his nights are spent in the company of dates rather than running around beating the shit out of criminals. Season 2 further complicates this characterization when it's revealed that Matt was in a long-term relationship with Elektra during college, and Foggy recalls how miserable Matt was after the relationship ended. But Matt's supposed "intrigues" could be seen as his way of compensating...
• Insecure Love Interest: Matt and Karen are the "two people who are obviously in love with each other but afraid to show their feelings (for various reasons)" type of couple. Much of their sexual tension stems from them each feeling the other is too good for them, due to their dark secrets causing them to put on metaphorical masks where they hide their darker side around each other. Even after Matt does come clean to Karen about his secrets, Karen's still insecure during The Defenders about her feelings for Matt not because she knows he cares for her, but because she's now afraid of how he'll react if he ever learns about what she did to Wesley.
• Insistent Terminology: Wilson Fisk is, and should be only, called James Wesley's "employer." It's something that is so entrenched in Wesley that long after Fisk has become a public figure, he inadvertently makes a slip ("sorry, old habits") while threatening Karen.
  • In the third season, Karen repeatedly refuses to acknowledge she was a secretary for Nelson & Murdock. Instead she insists she was "Office Manager"
• Instant Sedation: Averted in "Penny and Dime". One of the Kitchen Irish goons manages to stick a syringe in Frank Castle's neck containing a sedative, but with his Marine training and adrenaline, it takes a full minute for him to go completely down during which he gradually grows more unsteady, and he's able to still kill a couple of the Irish. It takes a couple of them firing tasers at him to actually bring him down..
• Interchangeable Asian Cultures: In-Universe:
  • Leland Owlsley seems to think that Nobu would speak Chinese, despite his being Japanese. And he still seems confused even when Anatoly points it out to him.
  • Philip Cabroni, the slimy college professor in "Semper Fidelis" that Elektra roughs up to decode a Hand ledger, tells the two Asian prostitutes he hired that he wants to eat moo goo gai pan off their naked bodies. When one of the women tells him they aren't Chinese, he just shrugs it off and says all Asians look alike to him anyway. He teaches Asian Studies at NYU.
• The Internet Is for Cats: As Ben Urich prepares to launch his war against Wilson Fisk in bloggerspace, Fisk dismisses his efforts since people only use the Internet to look at "celebrity weddings and videos of cats."
• Intrepid Reporter: By the end of Season 2, Karen has moved into Ben's old job and office. As Season 3 progresses, though, she becomes disillusioned with the job as Ellison refuses to let her pursue leads on Fisk, and she's fired after Dex attacks the Bulletin and she refuses to give a wounded Ellison the real Daredevil's identity. She ultimately settles on returning to Nelson & Murdock.
• The Irish Mob: After Wilson Fisk is taken down, the Triads and Yakuza leave. Season 2 starts with the Kitchen Irish and the Dogs of Hell taking Fisk's departure as a prime opportunity for them to move back in. They're attacked by Frank Castle before it can happen. Later the Kitchen Irish regroup and hunt Frank down to get back the money he stole from them after massacring some of their men.
• Irony: During the rooftop argument between Matt and Frank Castle, Frank says, "You throw 'em in jail, everybody calls you a hero, right? And then a month, a week, a day later, they're back on the streets doing the same goddamn thing!" Fast forward to Frank himself getting into jail after being manipulated by Fisk into throwing his trial. He's out within a few days without even actively trying, and proceeds to do the same things that put him there in the first place.
• It Works Better with Bullets: When Wesley takes Karen hostage, Karen is able to take his gun from him and holds him at gunpoint. Wesley quips that he'd never leave a loaded gun sitting within reach of a captive. Except he doesn't realize that Karen, who had previously shot a boyfriend of hers to protect her brother, does know the difference in weight between an unloaded and loaded handgun.

J

• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Almost every episode contains some form of torture. Whether you're a hero or a villain, the best way to get information in this version of Hell's Kitchen is to just start beating on someone.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • For the first couple of episodes, Foggy seems more interested in money than in helping people,^note If only for pragmatic reasons, since he says to Matt at a few points that they'll need to take a few not-so-innocent clients if they want to be able to pay the bills but he's immediately uncomfortable with dealing with the assassin that James Wesley hires them to defend (this after having eagerly accepted Wesley's paycheck while Matt had been wary of Wesley), has reservations about defending Frank Castle, and goes out of his way to help others who are being pushed around by shady people, even outside of work. He even spends an episode working on Elena's plumbing.
  • Marci Stahl, Foggy's ex who works at Landman & Zack, and later Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz. Comes across as a straight Alpha Bitch, but when the chips are down cares about doing what's right. To quote Amy Rutberg, "Marci is always straight and brutally honest with Foggy, more so than Matt or Karen in a way. She has his best interest at heart because she loves him and knows him. She may not always be right about what he needs, but it comes from the right place — protection and love."
• Jury and Witness Tampering:
  • In "Rabbit in a Snowstorm," Nelson & Murdock gets hired by Fisk (by way of Wesley) to defend John Healy, an assassin of Fisk's that has been arrested for bashing a gangster's head in with a bowling ball, mostly to learn more about his boss. Though he knows his client is guilty as sin, Matt is committed to playing his part in a fair trial, so when he discovers one of the jurors is being coerced by Fisk's men, he forces the thug blackmailing her to tell her to get herself excused. The jury hangs anyway, with strong implications that Fisk just found other jurors to coerce, and more strings are pulled behind the scenes to get Healy off without a retrial. Matt coerces Healy into revealing Fisk is his boss soon after, and he kills himself in fear of Fisk's retaliation.
  • Elektra tampers with the crooked medical examiner before he testifies at Frank Castle's trial, rendering his testimony inadmissible and driving a wedge between Matt and Foggy.
  • When Matt and Foggy are successfully able to get Ray Nadeem to testify against Fisk, Fisk simply threatens the jurors to keep them from indicting him.
• Just a Flesh Wound: Nadeem gets shot in the side midway through Season 3 and bites through the pain for several episodes. We never see him get any medical treatment, but after a while the show just stops acknowledging that he still has an open bullet wound.
• Just Train Wrong: A minor one, but in "Rabbit in a Snowstorm," Mitchell Ellison tells Ben Urich to do the subway line piece ("Rumors Bubbling: Will Hell's Kitchen Finally Get a Subway Line?"). He tells Urich to take a poll on what color people in Hell's Kitchen might like, saying "Y'know, we've got a blue line, we've got a yellow line, we're running out of colors." New York City's subway lines are not referred to by colors, but by a letter or number. The line colors, aside from the G train and the shuttles, are based on which trunk line they use in Manhattan.^note So the "blue lines" are the IND Eighth Avenue Line, the "yellow lines" are the BMT Broadway Line, etc.

K

• Karma Houdini:
  • Vanessa and some of Fisk's men escape the city before they can be arrested for their roles in Fisk's conspiracy.
  • Invoked by Matt at the end of Season 3. Even though he knows that Vanessa ordered the murder of Ray Nadeem, he plans to keep this secret and let her go free as leverage against Fisk; if Fisk ever tries to out Daredevil's identity, or hurt his friends again, Matt will in turn reveal what he knows about Vanessa and get her thrown in prison.
• Kavorka Man: At the start of Season 1, Foggy has two sexy women (Karen and Marci) interested in him, despite his doughy physique and being characterized as less attractive than Matt (he is more charming, personable, and friendly though). When Elena talks about the "handsome lawyer," Karen assumes she's talking about Matt. Elena clarifies that she's calling Foggy handsome because he's in love. With Marci, as it ultimately turns out to be.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Throughout Season 1, Matt keeps his second identity as Daredevil a secret from Foggy and Karen. When Foggy learns about it, as the result of finding Matt bleeding out from getting attacked by Wilson Fisk and Nobu, he is pissed off, and while they do reconcile in time to take down Fisk, their friendship is on noticeably thin ice. In Season 2, the strain of Matt's double life and the reappearance of Elektra causes him to falter in contributing to the Frank Castle trial and almost costs him the new romantic relationship he was beginning to have with Karen. The realization that he's been driving them away leads Matt to decide to willingly tell Karen his secret, with everything hinting at a future reconciliation.
• Killed Off for Real: While there have been deaths of a couple characters that have been undone by the Hand, each season has some significant character deaths that stick: there's the Russian brothers (Anatoly and Vladimir), Elena Cardenas, James Wesley, Ben Urich, and Leland Owlsley in Season 1; Samantha Reyes, Colonel Schoonover, and Nobu in Season 2; and Julie Barnes, Father Lantom, and Ray Nadeem in Season 3.
• Kingpin in His Gym: Frank Castle is introduced to the man himself lifting weights in prison.
• Koan: Many characters use flowery and/or metaphoric expressions sprinkled in their dialogue. A few, such as Stick and Madame Gao, drop these in every conversation.
  Matt Murdock: Stick likes his fortune-cookie wisdom.

L

• Lady Killer In Love:
  • Karen is suggested to be the first woman Matt has dated seriously since his breakup with Elektra.
  • Foggy has a one-night stand with Marci to take his mind off dealing with learning the truth about Matt, though they don't rekindle their romance until the end of Season 2, due to Marci being very busy with her job at Hogarth Chao & Benowitz.
• The Lancer: Foggy and Karen function as confidants to Matt in different ways.
• Language Fluency Denial: Exaggerated. Madame Gao hides her being Omniglot and passes herself as someone not able to speak English or indeed any language other than Mandarin.
• Large and in Charge: Wilson Fisk. He isn't quite as big as the Kingpin in the comics since nobody could be that big without critical health issues, but he's still visibly bigger than all of his underlings.
• Last Note Nightmare: Fisk donning his iconic white suit for the first time is accompanied by Bach's Suite for Cello Solo No. 1 in G, BWV 1007: III. Courante, but rather than its normal ending, it gradually descends into a darkly discordant finale. The notes and tempo seem to distend and detune as the camera pans up on Fisk's face, as if Fisk himself is the one sour note in his luxury penthouse.
• Lawman Gone Bad: Dex in Season 3 starts as an FBI agent who has a few screws loose but is otherwise competent at his job. By the end of the season, he's a murderous psychopath.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • The scene in Season 2 where jurors are screened for Frank Castle's trial mirrors a lot of the greatly differing opinions real life comic fans have on the Punisher. Some of the people interviewed say that the Punisher should be applauded because he takes the extra steps cops and other heroes won't, while others say that he's a bully and a violent fascist who shouldn't be idolized.
  • "Penny and Dime" has Matt commenting to Foggy and Karen, "I think that's enough Punisher for one evening," while watching the news of Castle's arrest, which is a nod to the fact that that episode in particular is an ideal stopping point for a binge-watcher and marks the end of the first act for Season 2.
  • When Nadeem is blackmailed into a task force of FBI agents who have similarly been blackmailed into working for Fisk, Dex says that one of the rules in this room is that they are to only refer to him by his codename: Kingpin.
• Left the Background Music On:
  • The first flashback to Wilson Fisk's childhood in "Shadows in the Glass" starts with an establishing shot of kids playing in the street in Hell's Kitchen while "Brown Sugar" by The Rolling Stones plays in the background. The scene then cuts to the Fisk family's apartment, where the song is playing on the radio and Marlene asks Bill to turn the music down.
• Le Parkour: Matt is pretty good at it and puts it to good use when following a car through the city, leaping across rooftops to keep pace.
  • "Date with the Night" plays in the opening of "Regrets Only" as the ninjas race through the streets on their motorcycles, then cuts as they park outside Elektra's penthouse, implying that one of the riders was listening to it.
• Lighter and Softer: Season 3, the final season. Despite the increasingly growing cynism of Matt Murdock, it's still light compared to the previous seasons. With most enemy factions weakened or completely destroyed following the events of Season 2 and The Defenders, what Season 3 gives us most is idealism and hopes for Matt to win against the bad guys, not to mention Karen Page's contribution in discovering much of Fisk's corruption. That, and the happy ending.
• A Lighter Shade of Grey: Matt Murdock compared to Frank Castle. Matt grapples with the fact that he's a law-breaking vigilante in spite of being a lawyer during the day, but he looks like a boy scout in the second season next to Frank, who tortures and kills the criminals from the Central Park shootout without any remorse.
• Lightning Bruiser: Wilson Fisk can move very fast in fights despite his large size.
• Literal-Minded: Melvin struggles to understand sarcasm. When Elektra meets him for the first time and he gives Matt a new billy club with a grappling hook feature, this exchange happens:
  Elektra Natchios: Where is mine?
  Melvin Potter: It's a prototype, I only made one.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: Marci Stahl. When we first meet her in "World on Fire," she makes no secret of being selfish and mostly interested in her own career, but she has moral standards and her open bitchiness can be strangely charming. Karen is incredulous that Foggy used to date her. Marci eventually drops the selfishness act after Foggy persuades her to turn against her colleagues at Landman & Zack and sell them out for aiding Fisk. By Season 2, she's been hired on at Hogarth Chao & Benowitz and has become a somewhat nicer person. By the time of The Defenders, she and Foggy have rekindled a very healthy romance, to the point that they are both thinking about marriage by Season 3.
• Love at First Sight: Karen has a crush on Matt from the get-go. Throughout Season 1, she is regularly giving starry-eyed looks at Matt whenever she's around him, and constantly feels the need to bring up Matt whenever she and Foggy are having a good time on their own. Partway through Season 2, Karen and Matt begin dating.
• Luxury Prison Suite:
  • Downplayed. Wilson Fisk has a large private cell and gets rare steak delivered to him... but he's still eating it off a tray while sitting on his uncomfortable-looking prison cot in an orange jumpsuit. Having the guards on puppet strings gets you a lot of perks, but it still ain't the Ritz.
  • In Season 3, Fisk is released after agreeing to turn informant. He's confined to the penthouse of a hotel and placed under 24 hour surveillance by the FBI, who are working out of a surveillance room attached to the place. The FBI doesn't know that this hotel is secretly owned by Fisk. It becomes this even more once he has the penthouse fully furnished and filled with fine art, at which point it really begins to look a lot like his luxury apartment from the first season. (The exteriors are represented by the Lotte New York Palace)

M

• The Mafia: The Italian Mafia used to run the organized crime of Hell's Kitchen and are responsible for the death of Matt's father. In the present day, they are in decline and Fisk's organization is taking over their territory. Most of the old mafiosi are either in jail or choose to retire rather than go against Fisk. The last significant Mafia boss in the neighborhood was Rigoletto, who was killed on Fisk's orders and the Russians take over his drug distribution network. New crews move in at the start of Season 2 after Fisk is arrested, only to get wiped out by the Punisher.
• The Mafiya: The Ranskahovs have a strong presence in Hell's Kitchen, with control over a chunk of its drug trade and a side business in human trafficking. Too bad they make the mistake of pissing off Wilson Fisk.
• Manchild:
  • Wilson Fisk is socially awkward and prone to tantrums. When he gets really frustrated, he balls his fists and contorts his face in a remarkably babyish fashion, usually signalling the onset of a Berserker Rage.
  • Melvin Potter comes across as a really big kid. When Matt shows up at his workshop, he acts like he's going to punished by his parent for it. By Season 2, this character trait is dropped, since he doesn't have Fisk now pressuring him or threatening his girlfriend. In his case, it's a result of being mentally disabled.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Fisk, obviously.
• Manly Tears:
  • Vladimir, when he tells his crew they're declaring war on the man in the mask.
  • Matt and Foggy do this in the tail end of "Nelson v. Murdock."
• The Masochism Tango: Both Matt and Elektra are actively dangerous for each other to be around; Elektra derails Matt's life every time she's in it, while he indirectly causes her to endanger herself trying to be better for him.
• Matching Bad Guy Vehicles: Wilson Fisk travels in a black SUV with several other SUVs accompanying him.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • After Matt corners Fisk for the final battle, a dialogue exchange between the two is an exact match to an earlier one, with the roles now reversed.
    Fisk: I'm gonna kill you!
    Matt: Take your shot.
  • Several of Matt's interactions with Karen as Daredevil are echoes of interactions he has with her out-of-costume. For instance, Matt and Karen walking out of Frank's hospital room arm-in-arm in "Regrets Only" gets echoed in the Season 2 finale when he rescues her from the Hand, as he carries her to safety in the same arm-in-arm pose. Matt cupping Karen's face before he kisses her at the end of "Penny and Dime" gets called back in the Season 2 finale, as he strokes her face again in a very similar way upon cutting her restraints. During the "You're not alone, Matt" conversation towards the end of "The Ones We Leave Behind," there's a shot of Matt standing in the foreground and facing away from a shaken-up Karen, staged very similarly to a shot from the first episode, when Karen interacts with him in the mask after he defeats the assassin Fisk had sent to her apartment.
  • Matt's exchange with Karen while she helps him get dressed for Grotto's funeral...
    Karen Page: You okay?
    Matt Murdock: Yeah. I'm just...recovering.
    Karen Page: From what?
    Matt Murdock: I don't really have a name for it.
    Karen Page: But, you're feeling better?
    Matt Murdock: Yeah. Now. With you.
  • ...gets echoed nine episodes later when Matt locates Karen and the Hand's other hostages and checks to see that she's okay:
    Matt Murdock: You okay?
    Karen Page: Better. Now.
  • Claire's interaction with Foggy in "New York's Finest" when Foggy shows up at the hospital checking for Matt...
    Foggy Nelson: So [Matt] hasn't been here?
    Claire Temple: He have a reason to be?
    Foggy Nelson: Well, you know our friend is fond of extreme sports.
    Claire Temple: You can cut the shit, I know who you're talking about.
  • ...gets echoed in "The Man in the Box" when Brett is asking her to admit into the hospital the kids Matt rescued from the Hand.
    Brett Mahoney: And do me a favor, keep the details of this arrangement to yourself.
    Claire Temple: Details?
    Brett Mahoney: Our mutual friend.
    Claire Temple: I don't know who you're talking about.
• Meaningful Name: Each episode's name is in some form relevant to the plot of the episode at hand:
  • "Into The Ring" establishes Matt's origin story and sets up the theme of Matt being a boxer who gets knocked down and gets back up through the series.
  • "Cut Man" is a boxing term for a ringside doctor who treats boxers' injuries in a fight. Matt is also a "cut man", and the episode introduces Claire.
  • "Rabbit in a Snowstorm" introduces the titular painting, as well as its impact on Fisk (caught up in something bigger/what man you want to be).
  • "In The Blood" deals with the Ranskahov brothers, as well as the idea of not being able to run from something because it's in the person's blood (Ben Urich takes the case; Fisk's criminal enterprise; and Matt's fighting)
  • "World On Fire" is how Matt describes his form of sight to Claire. The episode ends with Fisk literally setting most of Hell's Kitchen on fire as he blows up the Russians' hideouts.
  • "Condemned" sees Fisk use the media and police reception in order to make Matt a terrorist. It's also an apt decription of the dilapidated building where Matt is holed up with Vladimir and a police officer who stumbles upon them.
  • "Stick" introduces Matt's mentor of that name, as well as arms Matt with a primitive version of his trademark escrima sticks
  • "Shadows In The Glass" reveals Fisk's insecurities and how he is haunted by shadows of his former self
  • "Speak of the Devil" not only deals with personal demons, but also weighs heavily on the old saying "Speak of the devil and he shall appear" (ie: Fisk appears at the art gallery when Matt asks Vanessa about him, Fisk appears on TV while they're talking about him at Josie's, etc)
  • "Nelson v. Murdock" — Matt and Foggy have a heated argument now that Foggy has learned Matt's secret. The title also frames this conflict along the lines of how actual court hearings are named (Party A v. Party B).
  • "The Path Of The Righteous" plays upon the idea of "becoming the devil so that others fear you enough to be good people". Additionally, it deals with the continuing costs of walking this path (ie: Claire leaves Matt, Fisk loses Wesley and almost Vanessa)
  • "The Ones We Leave Behind" deals heavily with those lost as well as whom they've left behind. Continuing from the previous episode (ie: Vanessa saved, Wesley killed), the episode also shows how one is almost lost at the start of the episode only to have another truly lost at episode's end (Karen dreams Fisk is about to kill her in her apartment, Fisk actually kills Ben Urich in his apartment)
  • "Daredevil" — Matt is no longer the Devil of Hell's Kitchen and earns the title of Daredevil in both the media as well as resembling his comic appearance (red horned costume with balanced beat sticks)
  • "Bang" — Frank Castle says "bang" before shooting Matt in the head
  • "Dogs to a Gunfight" — Frank Castle uses the dead body of a Dogs of Hell biker as bait for the NYPD and engages in a fight with Matt while under fire from the ESU teams
  • "New York's Finest" — The motto for the NYPD is applied here to Matt and Frank, two vigilantes, but can also apply to Claire
  • "Penny and Dime" — Refers to the children's book that Karen finds in Frank's house, as the last book Frank ever read to his daughter before her death
  • "Kinbaku" — This type of bondage appears in visual form with the knots Elektra uses to tie Roscoe Sweeney to a chair
  • "Regrets Only" — as in "the past catching up with you". Matt is starting to drift apart from Karen and Foggy as he gets more and more focused helping Elektra.
  • "Semper Fidelis" — The episode marks the start of the trial of Frank Castle, a former Marine, who use this phrase as a motto
  • "Guilty as Sin" — Frank sabotages his own trial. Karen catches Matt looking "guilty as sin" when she sees Elektra in his bed and thinks Matt is cheating on her
  • "Seven Minutes in Heaven" — Refers to Frank's massacre of Dutton and the prisoners in his cell block
  • "The Man in the Box" — Ostensibly refers to Wilson Fisk, who is able to cause a lot of carnage from the closed walls of prison by arranging Frank's escape
  • ".380" — Refers to the caliber of the gun Karen carries in her purse
  • "A Cold Day in Hell's Kitchen" — The episode takes place around December, and sees Karen and other Daredevil survivors get taken captive by the Hand as bait for Matt
• Meta Casting:
  • Deborah Ann Woll's real life boyfriend EJ Scott is blind as the result of choroideremia, and she raises public awareness of the disease as a pet cause. This was lampshaded by Woll, as EJ actually dressed up as Matt for the Season 1 premiere. And the show takes this full-circle partway through Season 2, once Matt and Karen start dating.
  • Deborah Ann Woll has an aunt who teaches journalism and who she regularly consulted for advice on Karen's actions in The Punisher and in Daredevil Season 3:
    Deborah Ann Woll: My aunt teaches journalism in Washington. So I have picked her brain a ton. In The Punisher, we had the guy who wrote in a threat to the paper. She gave me a lot of information about the Unabomber. We wanted to make sure we follow the line on it. Obviously, it's TV, you have to take poetic license here and there. It's been nice to finally play that archetype.
  • Just like Matt Murdock, Charlie Cox was raised Catholic.
  • Vincent D'Onofrio incorporates a good amount of his own social anxieties into his portrayal of Wilson Fisk, like difficulty maintaining eye contact, odd speech inflections, and, despite taking precautions, having a set routine. He has trouble "clearing his head" at times, and is insecure when out in public.
  • Marci Stahl is played by Amy Rutberg, whose father is an actual judge in Los Angeles.
• Midseason Upgrade:
  • Stick drops by in the 7th episode, not only to give Matt back his escrima sticks, but remind him that meditation can help him accelerate his healing.
  • Matt slowly upgrades his costume after the first episode. First he uses rope to create pseudo-boxing gloves in Episode 2, then gets padded gloves. Later he adds pads for the wrists, and elbows, as well as the escrima sticks. Finally, Melvin crafts Matt's signature red suit in the first season finale.
  • Early in Season 2, Melvin builds a replacement for Matt's first mask after getting shot by Frank Castle, simultaneously very subtle while making it look dramatically better. By the finale, Melvin also builds Matt a new billy club that incorporates a reel of high-tensile wire, allowing him to swing around like his comic book counterpart. He also provides Elektra with a more protective outfit.
  • Matt ends up downgrading back to his old costume in Season 3, due to his Season 2 costume being destroyed in Midland Circle. Midway through the season, he starts wearing muay Thai ropes around his hands and forearms for added protection.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Wilson Fisk doesn't initially seem to have any ambitions in this respect, as he's lost a lot of his resources and is mainly focused on protecting Vanessa. But when Dutton, who runs the prison's underground economy, unwisely attempts to intimidate Fisk, he quickly seizes control and starts making outside arrangements through his crooked lawyer.
• Miles Gloriosus: When testifying at Frank's trial, Colonel Schoonover implies this was the reason he walked his men into an ambush that Frank rescued them from. He's lying to cover up the fact that he was forced into it by Rawlins and disregarded protests from Frank and Billy Russo that they were walking into a trap.
• Millionaire Playboy: When Matt patches up Claire's injuries from her time as the Russians' captive, she briefly wonders whether Matt is one of those playboy types she keeps hearing about on the news. Matt assures her that he does have a day job.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: A construction numbers racket being exposed courtesy of Karen equals the uncovering of a powerful figure controlling Hell's Kitchen.
• Missing Mom: Throughout Seasons 1 and 2, nothing is known about Matt's mom. She's not in the picture during any of the Season 1 flashbacks, and when Stick asks the nuns about her prior to meeting Matt, they tell him "it's a long story". It's not until Season 3 that his mother finally makes her onscreen debut, tending to Matt following Midland Circle. Even then, Matt doesn't learn she's his mother until over halfway through the season. It turns out that she's a nun who'd been involved with his father while she was a novice, but suffered postpartum depression from his birth and wasn't able to take care of him. She took her vows and went out of their lives, though it's shown she feels guilty about it.
• Mistaken for Gay: When they first meet, Foggy compliments Matt on how handsome he is. Matt's expression and stuttering indicate that he thinks Foggy is coming onto him. Foggy is quick to realize the mistake and correct it.
• Mistaken for Racist: Foggy is worried he'll be mistaken for ableist after he compares Matt to a bat.
  Foggy Nelson: Guy's like a bat! [to Matt] Not blind like a—I mean, you know, with the hearing-
  Matt Murdock: Bats aren't blind, Foggy.
  Foggy Nelson: They're not?
  Matt Murdock: It's a myth.
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence:
  • The flashbacks to Wilson Fisk's childhood in the 1970s, using "Brown Sugar" by The Rolling Stones to establish the setting.
  • Played with in the flashbacks of Matt and Foggy meeting in law school. Foggy's blasting a Train song from the early 2000s...while trying to register for Fall 2010 classes.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Fisk is brought down when Hoffman, bitter over Fisk forcing him to kill his own partner and best friend of 35 years, betrays him to the FBI.
• Mob-Boss Suit Fitting: There's a variant involving Fisk introducing Leland to Melvin Potter, his tailor. Fisk himself doesn't need a fitting, of course, because Melvin already makes all of his suits and knows his measurements. The scene is used more to introduce Melvin, as he's the source of all of Fisk's knife and bullet resistant clothing.
• The Mole: Ben Urich believes that there's one who works at the Bulletin that's keeping him from publishing anything involving the state of crime in Hell's Kitchen. He accuses his editor Mitchell Ellison of this, leading to him getting fired. After he's killed by Fisk, Karen firmly believes that Ellison is on Fisk's payroll, but the FBI arrests prove that while Urich was wrong about Ellison, he was right in believing there was a mole in the office: Ellison's secretary.
• Mole in Charge: Tammy Hattley, the SAC in charge of Fisk's FBI detail in Season 3, has been blackmailed into working for Fisk.
• Mook Chivalry: Played with interestingly. Henchmen will often NOT observe Mook Chivalry early in a fight, and Matt can get beaten to shit as a result. After the first flurry of combat most mooks will be down, and the remainder of the fight will involve them recovering enough to rejoin the fight one or two at a time. An excellent example is the iconic hallway fight against the Russians.
• Morality Pet:
  • Vanessa Marianna for Wilson Fisk. Many of his actions in all three seasons are motivated by his love for her, and while he acknowledges that this Love Is a Weakness, he still refuses to give it up.
    • Somewhat subverted as she is also a stabilizing influence on him and keeps his deteriating mental state in check.
  • Elektra was this to Stick, as he treated her much more kindly than he treats Matt or most other people. And as we see in The Defenders, despite knowing what she's become, he still can't bring himself to kill her when it comes to that.
  • Karen is this to Frank. He is very gallant towards her and appreciative of her helping him and seeing good in him. This continues into his own series.
  • In a very dark example, Julie Barnes was this for Dex. After Dex's therapist died, she advised him to find a new "North Star" to guide him to moral actions, and he came to see Julie as being it due to her kindness and compassion. While he stalked her and acted rather creepy towards her, he never actually harmed her at all, and finding out from Matt that Fisk had her killed is what got him to finally turn on Fisk.
• Morning Routine: Fisk makes an omelette every morning like clockwork, then dresses his closet for a standard three piece suit.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black:
  • In Season 1, Matt wears a black costume based on his prototype outfit from Frank Miller's Daredevil: Man Without Fear limited series, an even closer version during a flashback of his first night out. Only prior to his final bout with Fisk does Matt finally get his iconic Big Red Devil costume, which still has more black in it than it does in the comics.
  • In Season 2, the "big red devil" costume has a lot of black highlights, but the red is also a much darker burgundy than it is in the comics. When Melvin builds a similarly-protective suit for Elektra, it's almost all black with some maroon highlights.
  • By Season 3, Matt is back in the black costume, as his red one was destroyed in the Midland Circle collapse.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The show often shifts into this in the vicinity of Fisk, with sumptuous montaged close-ups of fabric and food accompanied by stirring classical music.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page.

N

• Named by the Adaptation:
  • Foggy Nelson's middle initial "P." initially didn't stand for anything in the comics. In "The Man in the Box," when Fisk is throttling Matt, it's revealed that the "P" stands for "Percy".
• Nay-Theist: Matt begins to think God is cruel and uncaring in Season 3 after his experiences, citing the story of Job and saying he shouldn't have kept faith with a being who'd inflict such things on him. He changes his mind by the end of Season 3 though.
• Nested Ownership: Fisk has shell companies that have shell company subsidiaries of their own.
  • Nobu is retroactively revealed to be one, as despite being the apparent main leader of the Hand during Season 2 and one who controls a large number of men, The Defenders establishes he's just a capo to Murakami.
  • In Season 3, Fisk gets the FBI to put him under house arrest in a hotel he secretly owns through a series of nested shell companies.
• Never My Fault:
  • Wilson Fisk's father was one of these kinds of people. Bill's idea of "making a man" out of Wilson involved demeaning him, teaching him to blame others for his problems (including blaming Wilson himself for his own problems) and playing cruel jokes on him. When he lost the city council election, he believed that the reason he lost was because his wife and son didn't show him enough respect at home, not because he was a vile, vicious, petty loser. This led to him beating his wife with a belt, and caused Wilson to snap and kill him with a hammer.
  • In the present day, Fisk tends to operate on the principle that he should do the opposite of what his father would do in a situation. As such he owns up to his mistakes and then moves on, eventually. But he has his moments: after Matt foils Fisk's attempt to escape from police custody, Fisk goes on a villainous rant, clearly blaming Matt for the downfall of his operation. While it is true that Matt was the driving force, both in his civilian and vigilante lives, behind Fisk getting arrested, this is ignoring that the major factors that led to his descent were due to his own temper tantrums for minor slights (to elaborate, a string of events that began with Fisk brutally murdering Anatoly for simply crashing Fisk's date with Vanessa, which led to Fisk bombing the Russian mafia's hideouts, then sending in corrupt cops to finish off the survivors, then ordering the shooting of Detective Blake for accidentally leaking info to Matt, having Blake be killed in the hospital by his own partner Hoffman when this fails, Hoffman being stashed away by Leland Owlsley, then Hoffman selling Fisk out to the FBI after Fisk kills Leland in another tantrum). Not to mention the fact that he's, y'know, a criminal, and thus deserves to get arrested.
  • Nobu has an example of this in "Shadows in the Glass," after his Black Sky is killed by Stick, when he angrily confronts Fisk about not providing the Black Sky more protection. Fisk points out that Nobu only asked for the docks to be cleared of police interference and he held up that end of the deal, and it was Nobu's responsibility to inform Fisk of the importance of the incoming cargo.
  • Karen repeatedly claims it wasn't her fault that her brother died, despite the fact it was her actions (doing drugs and hooking up with Todd), bad choices (driving while angry and under the influence) and refusal to accept her brother and father's help that directly resulted in Kevin's death. She finally owns up to it when she and Matt are hiding from Dex in the church basement in Episode 11 of Season 3.
• Never Suicide: The first episode alone had not one, not two, but four attempts to cover up a murder as a suicide. Only the attempt on Karen is a failure.
• Newscaster Cameo: NY1 reporter Pat Kiernan appears in several episodes of Seasons 1 and 2, reporting on the shootings of the cops in "Condemned," Wilson Fisk's attempted escape in the Season 1 finale and on the capture of Frank Castle in Season 2, among other things.
• News Monopoly: In Season 3, Fisk has a room in his penthouse with a row of TV screens. After Dex attacks the Bulletin posing as the red Daredevil, we see Fisk watching the screens, all tuned to different stations reporting on the attack.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Karen tricking Ben into visiting Fisk's mother with her gets Ben killed, and gets her kidnapped and almost killed by Wesley (and leads to her killing him in self-defense, which she feels guilty about).
  • Similarly, in Season 3, Karen telling Fisk that she killed Wesley in an attempt to provoke him into attacking her not only doesn't work, but gets him to send Dex after her to kill her, which ultimately results in the death of Father Lantom (who dies protecting her) and several other attendees at the church.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • With the lawyers he could still afford to hire, Fisk might have been able to beat the rap on the charges for which he was originally arrested, especially since Wesley and Owlsley, the two people who knew the most about his rackets, are "unavailable" to testify. However, orchestrating the murder of a half-dozen honest cops and FBI agents in an escape attempt on national television? Not so much. In Season 3, his way of getting out of prison is to manipulate the FBI into releasing him into house arrest.
  • Ultimately, Vanessa ends up being the reason Fisk is taken down in Season 3. If they had gone with Fisk's original plan to simply discredit Nadeem he still would've been out of the way, and any attempts of him going public with his accusations wouldn't have gotten anywhere. But because she orders the hit, she inadvertently allows his final video filled with his accusations to become admissible in court and because it went viral there's no possible way to cover it up after the fact. Furthermore, her doing so in front of Felix Manning means that Matt finds out about this after torturing Felix for info, and he is able to use this against Fisk to make sure that the latter will never reveal his identity or target his friends again, since if he does, Matt will make sure Vanessa goes to jail.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Done repeatedly by Matt to the various criminals, partly out of rage and partly because he's an otherwise-normal man who needs to hit them multiple times to keep them down. Does this a lot to Frank during the first of the second series.
  • Wilson Fisk's favored method of execution (when doing it himself and not through one of his henchmen) is to simply pummel the person to death with his bare hands.
• Non-Specifically Foreign: Vanessa speaks with a foreign accent but only speaks English. She's mentioned to be in the country on a visa, but we never learn what country she hails from. The actress is Israeli.
• Not His Sled: Elektra is killed in this series, which reflects the original comics and the 2003 movie, and then is resurrected by The Hand for The Defenders. The difference is that Elektra is killed by Nobu, well before Bullseye makes his debut in Season 3.
• "Not How I'm Dying" Declaration: While hiding in an abandoned building from cops on Fisk's payroll, an injured Vladimir tells Matt twice that this will not be how he dies: first while fighting back against Matt (whom Vladimir believes killed his brother Anatoly), and second as an Ironic Echo when he joins forces with Matt to escape into underground tunnels. Eventually, however, Vladimir decides to stay behind in the tunnels and hold off the ESU pursuing them while Matt escapes, knowing full well that he will indeed die in the shootout.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Wilson Fisk claims this about himself and the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, though Matt aggressively denies it. At one point, Foggy even questions how Matt's methods are any different from Fisk's. "Condemned" has both Vladimir and Fisk claiming this about him, although he repeatedly tells them they're not the same.
    Fisk: You and I have a lot in common.
    Matt: We're nothing alike.
  • Frank Castle also states how he sees Matt and himself to be very much alike. In his own words: "you know you're one bad day away from being me."
  • Elektra and Stick argue that Matt is not so different from them, and Matt finds himself straying closer to them at times.
  • In Season 3, Fisk recruits Agent Poindexter to his side by showing him how much they have in common.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: For the main trio of Matt, Karen and Foggy, the first big change of dynamics is when Foggy learns Matt's secret identity in "Nelson v. Murdock" and the second big change is when Karen finally learns it in the Season 2 finale.
• Not What It Looks Like: In Season 2, Karen walks into Matt's apartment and sees a wounded Elektra recuperating in Matt's bed, but Matt doesn't explain beyond invoking the trope name and Karen, while clearly upset, says she doesn't want to know. Karen and Matt don't really reconcile until the season finale.

O

• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • Wilson Fisk allows Madame Gao to believe he cannot understand Chinese, but later reveals that he is somewhat fluent. His obfuscation has mostly been so that he has an excuse to have Wesley around for their meetings. Madame Gao, who also pretends that she does not speak English and requires a translator, can see through Fisk's ruse.
  • Matt uses obfuscating ignorance in everyday life. He can effectively "see" just fine, can hear conversations from blocks away, and can tell whenever anybody is lying to him, but he has to act like an average blind man anyway and play along.
• Obvious Stunt Double:
  • Averted during most of Matt's action sequences in Season 1 thanks to the mask, dim lighting, and the fact that Charlie Cox and his stunt double Chris Brewster share a vague resemblance. However, it's clear that Cox didn't do too many of Season 2's fights on his own, especially the finale's climactic fight scene as Brewster's face is seen clearly even from a distance.
  • Played painfully straight with Stick, whose action sequences are mostly of a much younger double wearing a wig with a few insert shots of the real Scott Glenn.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: At the start of Season 3, Nadeem is summoned to Rikers to meet Fisk in prison. During the meeting, Fisk asks Nadeem if he has anyone in his life he loves and would do anything for. Nadeem thinks Fisk is threatening his wife, but actually, Fisk is referring to Vanessa, and wants to provide information on rival criminals in exchange for her continued protection.
• Official Couple: Matt Murdock and Karen Page. While their instant attraction to each other in Season 1 is not initially obvious due to their preoccupation taking down Fisk, it's still apparent (Karen thinking Elena is talking about Matt when she refers to "the handsome lawyer" instead of Foggy; Matt insisting Karen continue translating for Elena because he likes the sound of her voice). By Season 2, it's been six months since Fisk has been locked up, giving them more time to explore their feelings for each other, and they finally get a moment of intimacy by sharing a first kiss in the rain after Frank Castle is arrested.
• Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Once Matt and Karen begin dating, Elektra reenters Matt's life and essentially hijacks him, causing him to falter in contributing to Frank Castle's trial. It doesn't help when Karen stumbles upon a wounded Elektra in Matt's bed and thinks he's cheating on her. While they're estranged for most of the third act of the season due to this and their own individual pursuits of the Hand and the conspiracy behind the death of Frank's family, in the final scene of Season 2, Matt privately meets with Karen to reveal his secret identity, hinting at the possibility of them reconciling. By the time of The Defenders, they're back on speaking terms, and their interactions are very intimate, but things fall apart again as Matt is "killed" in the destruction of Midland Circle. By the end of Season 3, while they're back on good terms again, they're still not back in an official relationship.
• Office Romance:
  • Both Foggy snd Matt are attracted to their secretary Karen. While Karen establishes that she and Foggy are just friends, she and Matt have a lot of UST that culminates in a date in Season 2. However, the complications of Matt's crime fighting and love life turn their relationship into a Will They or Won't They? throughout the series.
  • Foggy and Marci by the end of Season 2, now that both are at Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz and are established in The Defenders to be back to full-time dating.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Matt's father beating Carl "the Crusher" Creel in the ring. Even better since from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. we know that Creel had the power to turn any part of his body into any material, and typically hid steel fists under his gloves. The Murdock boys can take a hit indeed.
  • Several moments in the famous one-take hallway fight have Matt disappear through a doorway and continue fighting, sometimes flinging a mook back out the door. These offscreen moments also function as points for Charlie Cox to switch places with his stunt double Chris Brewster.
  • Matt's takedown of the corrupt cops trying to kill Hoffman is only heard, not seen, with the camera instead focusing on Hoffman's closed eyes and fearful expression.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Despite Season 1 ending with Fisk in jail, and Season 2 and other shows in the continuity establishing both that the police have been rooting out his inside men within their ranks and Fisk is running out of money, somehow in Season 3, Fisk suddenly has enough money and influence to buy or blackmail his way out of nearly every single challenge Matt presents, up to and including subverting an entire grand jury that he didn't even know was being convened, and owning half the FBI agents in the city.
• Oh, Crap!: A subtle one during "Guilty as Sin" when Reyes is cross-examining Colonel Schoonover. As she tries to discount his knowledge of what Frank did, he reveals that he was the "idiot that got them trapped there in the first place". And she seems to react accordingly, thinking, "How the hell did we miss his prosthetic arm?"
• Old Master: Stick is a visibly muscular old man who can wipe the floor with Matt or ninjas and is at least a match for anyone he fights, knows how to counter poison on weapons, and is able to resist torture. He is the one who trained Matt in the first place and is still able to match him decades later when Matt is in his prime.
• Old Media Playing Catch-Up: Conversed in "Rabbit in a Snowstorm" by executive editor Mitchell Ellison. He bitterly points to Ben Urich the many benefits of being an online news source.
  Mitchell Ellison: Everybody we know is making twice what we are, writing from blogs, working from home in their underwear. We're hanging on by our fingertips, Ben. Do you really want to be greasing that ledge?
• The Oner: A repeated element.
  • The entire end of Season 1 episode "Cut Man" shows Matt beating on the Russians in a hallway without any apparent cuts.^*There are a few sneakily-disguised cuts during moments of whip-pans or split-seconds of the full frame being black, as well as at least two "Texas Switches" between Charle Cox and his stunt double; all common techniques for "stitching together" oners. That said, it is still a truly impressive scene to behold.
  • The cab scene in "World on Fire," including several orbital rotations, and the start of another fight.
  • Madame Gao's heroin base, and Matt's entry into it in "The Ones We Leave Behind" is another.
  • Matt's escape from the Dogs of Hell in Season 2 episode "New York's Finest" is cut together to be seem like a one-take fight between DD and an entire group of bikers, starting in a hallway and progressing down a spiral stairwell. There are actually several obvious cuts and wipes used to transition between locations and sequences requiring complicated stunt work.
  • Season 3 episode "Blindsided" went to top all that, featuring an epic tracking shot fight that was fifteen minutes long.
• One-Man Army:
  • Daredevil really is one the MCU's top fighters. A fully geared up SWAT team waltzing into a Russian Mob hideout and taking down every single mobster with no casualties on their side would be impressive. Matt Murdock did it by himself, unarmed, nonlethally, and only hours after receiving injuries that would've killed him without medical aid that came from a nurse with whatever first-aid supplies she happened to have in her home. Keep in mind that this is very early in his vigilante career.
  • Frank Castle's antics are initially mistaken for those of a highly trained team. Colonel Schoonover's story shows that he was almost literally this in the Marine Corps. And unlike Daredevil, the Punisher has no absolutely compunction about killing people if he thinks they've earned it.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Averted as the show has two characters named Blake. There's Detective Christian Blake, and ADA Blake Tower. It's a pretty subtle case as the former is an original character and Blake is his last name (though the only one he's ever called by), and the second is a character from the comics. Also, Detective Blake is dead by the time Blake Tower shows up.
  • Averted. There is Franklin "Foggy" Nelson and Frank Castle in Season 2, mitigated by Foggy being Only Known by Their Nickname.
  • Another aversion is that there are three different "Ben" characters: Ben Urich, Big Ben Donovan, and Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Foggy's real first name, Franklin, is only used a few times in the series; once said in a flashback to his and Matt's law school days, again he's talking with the Dogs of Hell and D.A. Reyes in Season 2, and finally when Fisk is threatening Matt in "The Man in the Box" in Season 2. While his first name isn't said out loud in Season 3, it is seen on his New York State Bar Association ID.
• Only Sane Man: Foggy is probably the only member of the Nelson & Murdock trio to not have a Dark and Troubled Past (as shown heavily with Matt, and heavily hinted with Karen) or to have an incredible knack of leaping into danger without a parachute. In "Kinbaku," his reaction to Karen admitting that she broke into Frank Castle's house is an exasperated, "No-no, we successfully dodged a metaphorical bullet and quite a few literal ones. We need to be done with the crazy, you guys! We need normal!" clearly reprimanding both Matt and Karen for their own chronic hero tendencies.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
  • Charlie Cox's natural English accent frequently pushes through the American accent he puts on to play Matt Murdock in much of the first episode. It's become less and less detectable as time as progressed, especially since Cox now resides in New York. It does, however, still trickle through when sharing scenes with Élodie Yung as she plays Elektra with Received Pronunciation.
  • During Season 1, certain syllables are difficult enough that James Wesley lapses into Toby Leonard Moore's native Australian accent.
• Orgy of Evidence: A variation. Karen Page has a drink with a colleague and wakes up with his corpse in her apartment, clutching the knife that killed him. What Matt Murdock finds suspicious is not this Orgy of Evidence but why she was not charged immediately despite this trope. Either someone wants to delay letting her lawyers see the evidence, or she's being pressured by whoever set her up.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The Hand perform certain rituals to reanimate their dead. They keep their scars and some are even missing organs as is usually the case with reanimated corpses, but they retain their own personalities and intelligence and are as skilled as ever. Iron Fist expands on this further and shows that the process can even be applied before death. The Defenders then shows the resurrection process in detail when Alexandra is reviving Elektra.
• Out-of-Genre Experience:
  • The Black Sky plot in "Stick" hints at more mystical elements that aren't present anywhere else in the show (or the rest of the MCU) as of yet, setting up the more mystical elements in Iron Fist, The Defenders, Season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Doctor Strange.
  • The raid on the heroin plant is close to cultist horror and has more hints of supernatural elements.
  • In the Season 2 episode Regrets Only sees Elektra and Matt going undercover in a fancy dress party to steal secret information, making it seem more like a Tuxedo and Martini style spy thriller.
  • Season 3 episode 5 "A Perfect Game" has the unique sequence wherein Fisk walks through Dex's backstory using nothing more than Dex's medical records. To see how Fisk is processing what he reads, we are treated to a black-and-white stageplay.
  • Season 3 episode 10, "Karen", opens with an extended 30 minute flashback of Karen's backstory, which feels like a family drama set in the countryside.
• Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: In the Season 1 finale, as Leland passes some ledgers over to Fisk, Fisk notices that Leland's hands are trembling. Leland tries to pass this off as shivering due to the cold...until Fisk points out that he's also sweating profusely, forcing Leland to confess to his duplicity.
• Overshadowed by Awesome:
  • Foggy Nelson. Graduating cum laude from Columbia University and getting a job offer at Landman & Zack right after internship would be a spectacular beginning to any law career, yet Foggy is always playing second fiddle to the genius and superpowered Matt Murdock.
  • Season 2 goes a good way into subverting this. While Matt is still extremely competent when need be, due to Elektra coming in and basically hijacking him he becomes unfocused and all but useless during "The Trial of the Century", leaving Foggy to step up. He does so remarkably, outright impressing the legal world while Matt looked terrible. By the end of it Foggy is recruited by Jeri Hogarth, to the point of her even offering to eventually make him named partner, while Matt is left having to run a solo pro-bono practice from his apartment due to his mistakes in the trial. In Season 3, Foggy is convinced by Marci to build a campaign for District Attorney off of this.

P

• Pay Evil unto Evil: Matt believes that beating on criminals is okay, because they are criminals. Father Lantom tells him otherwise: "another's evil does not make you good". The Punisher takes it further, and simply kills them.
• Perma-Stubble: Matt always sports a few days of stubble, even when he's practicing law. He must be a damn good lawyer.
  • Justified, as he's blind.
• Pet the Dog:
  • When he's not strong-arming people, James Wesley tends to be good at this when it comes to helping Wilson Fisk, such as bringing Vanessa over to ease Fisk's anguish after Madame Gao threatens him.
  • After wiping out a Kitchen Irish meeting, Frank Castle adopts one of the dogs they used in their dog fighting rings, and tries to keep it from harm. When the Irish catch up to him and torture him, he only gives up the money he stole from them when they threaten the dog, but even then has anticipated this, by planting a bomb in the briefcase containing the money.
  • After arranging for Dutton to be assassinated by Frank Castle in his cell, Wilson Fisk decides to spend the time Dutton has left near him in the hospital bed so he doesn't die alone. Of course, it's as much an opportunity to indulge in Evil Gloating as anything else.
    Wilson Fisk: The physician says that your condition is grave, that your lungs are filling with liquid. In a few hours, you're likely to suffocate in your own blood. But you won't suffer alone. I'll be here. Because you were right. In prison, there's only room for one kingpin.
  • In Season 3, Fisk devotes a considerable amount of effort to reclaiming a painting that Vanessa was fond of that was taken from him when his assets were seized after his arrest. When the new owner refuses to sell the painting even for several times its monetary value, Fisk decides to pay her a visit, with the implied intent of threatening or killing her. However, when he hears the reason she's so attached to it — she was a Holocaust survivor, and the painting had been in her family for years before it was taken from them by the Nazis — he decides to let her keep it. Unfortunately, Agent Poindexter later finds out about this and, in a desperate attempt to impress Fisk, kills the woman and steals the painting.
  • Stick displays some genuinely fatherly affection towards Elektra when she is a child. He is the only one among the Chaste to show her kindness, while everyone else fears and is repulsed by her due to Elektra being a Black Sky. After she kills one of the students in self-defense when he tries to kill her, the Chaste sentences her to death and Stick saves her by delivering her to a wealthy Greek couple to keep her safe.
• Police Are Useless: Depending on how much influence Fisk has on the outside at any given time, the cops in Hell's Kitchen are either incompetent or outright corrupt. In the first season, the NYPD are very ineffective at doing their jobs because so many cops in the 15th Precinct are in Fisk's pocket. In the third season, Fisk is able to use his influence to turn the FBI into his glorified bodyguards and henchmen.
  • Ray Nadeem becomes a more specific example in Season 3. When Fisk "names" Matt Murdock as a facilitator, Nadeem doesn't even bother doing any fact-checking of Fisk's information to observe that Matt worked for the law firm that took down Fisk, and that Fisk could be using him as part of a vendetta against Matt. It's only after he ends up learning the truth about Jasper Evans that Nadeem begins to realize that Fisk has been playing him.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything:
  • In Season 1, one gets the impression that Nelson and Murdock: Attorneys At Law, spend a lot of time around their office instead of practicing law. This is justified, given that they're a fledgling startup law firm struggling to find clients. And their first two clients both turn out to be cases that are tied to Wilson Fisk. All of its employees are fully aware of this.
  • Subverted then played straight in Season 2. The season opens with Nelson and Murdock swamped with clients, who sadly still mostly cannot pay for legal fees steeper than home-baked peach cobbler pie. Once they take on Frank Castle's case, Reyes starts trying to shut them down, and their perceived bungling of the case (or the fact that they took it at all) drives all clients from their door. It folds by the season finale.
• Playing the Victim Card: After his racketeering conviction gets overturned, Fisk claims he was framed by Daredevil on the government's behalf because he opposed them.
• Playing Card Motifs: Ben Urich uses playing cards and newspaper clippings when trying to suss out Wilson Fisk's criminal empire. When Matt finally gets to Hoffman, the one guy that will topple Fisk's empire, he tosses a card table aside and sends Hoffman's game of solitaire flying.
• Plot Threads: Season 3 juggles six main characters and uses "Deep POV" storytelling where each character is treated as the protagonist of their own story: Matt, Karen, Foggy, Dex, Nadeem, and Fisk, with the six stories weaving into and out of one another.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Officer Sullivan would not have died if Matt had simply told him that the cops in his precinct were crooked and were going to kill him when they responded.
  • It's unlikely that Ben would've died if Karen had immediately told Matt about killing Wesley when he found her in the office, as knowing what had just happened with Karen would've tipped Matt off to the danger that Ben was in. It's implied Karen is aware of this too.
  • Matt has a big problem with this, due to trying to keep his nighttime activities as Daredevil separate from his day job as an attorney. A lot of the conflict in Season 2 would not have happened, and Nelson & Murdock's breakup would've been avoided, if Matt had just told Foggy and Karen right away that Elektra was back in town when she deposited the money into their bank account, rather than wait until Elektra threatened their key witness in Frank Castle's trial to do so. By doing so, he'd also have saved his relationship with Karen because she'd not be led to think he was cheating on her with Elektra.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: The various changes in history in the MCU, such as the Chitauri invasion of New York City, are used as the justification for why Hell's Kitchen in the series is a Wretched Hive similar to its reputation for most of the 20th century instead of the gentrified area that has seen development and rental prices skyrocket in the same time period in real life.
• Prayer Is a Last Resort: In "Please", a flashback shows young Matt using his Super-Senses to hear the desperate prayers of every person in his church. Daredevil says it was hearing people so humiliated and needy that inspired him to become a warrior for God. In the modern day, this very humility convinces him that God has abandoned his people and is silent in the fact of their worst sufferings.
• Precision F-Strike: Frank Castle drops only the second usage of the F-Bomb in the entire MCU. It's sort of easy to miss, though, as he mutters it under his breath while Matt is in the process of very loudly chewing him out.
• Prisons Are Gymnasiums: Fisk spends about half of his scenes in prison in the weight room, doing bench presses. In fact, he's never shown lifting weights outside of a prison.
• Product Placement: Foggy and Matt use Dell computers, various characters use Samsung Galaxy phones, and Melvin Potter is shown drinking a bottle of Yoo-hoo with the logo prominently displayed. There's a can of Progresso bread crumbs highly visible on the shelf in Nelson & Murdock's kitchen, even though there's no conceivable use for them there. In Season 3, we see that Foggy has upgraded to an iPhone X. Sysco is mentioned as the food supplier to the Page family's diner in a flashback to Karen's past.
• Protagonist Title: Matt is the eponymous blind vigilante.
• Psycho Knife Nut: Rance, the assassin sent after Karen when she's retrieving the Union Allied flashdrive, is particularly fond of the knife, especially given that when Wesley threatens Farnum's daughter to get his cooperation, he explains that Rance's methods are "unpleasant".
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The Prelude from Bach's "Cello Suite 1 in G Major" underscores Wilson Fisk's Morning Routine. "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's Turandot is used during the montage of the FBI arresting Fisk's associates in the Season 1 finale.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Madame Gao skips town shortly before Fisk is arrested. She returns briefly in Season 2.
  • Fisk arranges for Francis and some of his bodyguards to safely get Vanessa out of the country as he's being arrested. During Season 2, she's hiding out overseas, living off a special protection fund Fisk has set up for her with what assets of his weren't seized. She returns in Season 3, after Fisk is able to broker a deal with the FBI where he will sell out competitors of his in exchange for accessory charges against Vanessa being thrown out.