Recap / Castle S 5 E 23 The Human Factor

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• Carpet of Virility: The victim's son, Sean, wears a v-neck shirt to show off his.
• Death from Above: Subverted. Castle and Beckett are strafed by a drone with a mounted machine gun while on a suspect's property. On its second pass, they shoot it down with their pistols (Castle claims he dealt the fatal blow), at which point they discover it was firing blanks. Castle is disappointed at his negated act of heroism.
• External Combustion: It appears the victim died this way, but a closer examination of the evidence revealed the involvement of a drone-fired missile.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: The show opens with a little boy flying his remote control plane into the soon-to-be victim; a few minutes later, the latter is killed by a drone.
• The Gadfly: Late at night, Beckett wakes Castle up by putting his remote control tank on the bed and then piloting his remote control helicopter to make him think the machines are taking over.
• Oh, Crap!: The pilot in charge of the drone is in a panic after it gets hacked. It gets worse when the drone targets a civilian car.
• Parental Abandonment: The victim was killed by his son, who wanted revenge against his father for cheating on his mother.
• Shout-Out: Castle and Beckett get attacked by a drone (firing blanks), Castle lampshades that it was just like North By Northwest.
• The Stool Pigeon: The victim was a professional whistleblower. He is portrayed both negatively and positively for this; he certainly did a lot of good and revealed a lot of corruption to the public but at the same time, his obsession with it all ruined his and his family's lives.
• Troll: Inspector Stack briefly messes with Castle by claiming he's not just a deniable agent with a fake ID, but he's wearing a mask.
  Castle: Really?
  Stack: No.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Castle theorises so. Beckett later uses this to screw with him.

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