To quell the rising backlash over his release, Fisk serves up a scapegoat to the FBI. Dex misses the mark when he runs into a woman from his past.
- Armor-Piercing Question: While being questioned by Agent Nadeem, Karen asks a few questions of her own, specifically about the shell corporations she's been tracking that indicate Fisk now owns the hotel in which he is "imprisoned". Nadeem is shaken by this, but tries not to show it.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Fisk takes a page from Misty Knight's playbook and basically relives Dex's life by reading a few psychiatric reports.
- Bullying a Dragon: Karen tries to coerce The Fixer working for Fisk to reveal his secrets by threatening to expose him in the Bulletin, only to be visibly frightened when he reveals several personal details about her and implies his job is to make problems disappear.
- Chiaroscuro: The flashbacks to Dex's past are all in black and white, and frequently highly stylized with Dex, another person, and Fisk (observing through the extensive notes his fixer got him), all that are visible, spotlighted in darkness.
- Confess in Confidence:
- Foggy has Karen pay him five dollars so her confession to killing Wesley will be covered under attorney-client privilege.
- Young Dex admits to deliberately killing the coach, as it's protected under psychiatric privilege. Presumably this is why the FBI never found out the coach's death wasn't an unfortunate accident, but Felix is not restrained by legal issues and gets the tapes of the admission to Fisk.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- We learn about Benjamin Poindexter's past through Fisk's investigation.
- We get another hint at Karen's past, with The Reveal that she used to be a drug addict and the suggestion that it had something to do with the death of her brother.
- Disproportionate Retribution: As a child, Dex killed his baseball coach by ricocheting a baseball into the back of his head, simply for benching him for the remainder of the game—not as any kind of punishment, mind you, but simply to allow other kids the chance to play.
- Food as Bribe: Foggy jokingly points out to his brother that offering Nelsons famous meats if people vote for him is against the law.
- Frame-Up: Nadeem begins a manhunt for Matt, as Fisk falsely gave him up as one of his former associates.
- Get Out!: Foggy to Nadeem, after the short interrogation is over.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: The episode ends with Matt hearing a BOLO being put out for him as an armed and dangerous fugitive.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Dex lets a few details slip he knows about Julie's life, and Julie realizes that their meeting probably wasn't a coincidence. She goes from creeped out to scared as he continues to mention things he shouldn't know. She immediately runs away.
- Internal Reveal: Karen finally tells Foggy about killing James Wesley, after being questioned about him by Nadeem.
- It's All About Me: Dex admits to being angry at Dr. Mercer for dying, because she won't be there for him any more. Fortunately Mercer is able to talk him out of acting on this anger, convincing Dex it's better for her to die naturally.
- Lack of Empathy: Dex as a child, to the point that his therapist had to train to him to be empathetic.
- Morality Chain: Dr. Mercer advises Dex to find one for himself, and we see this when Dex is about to talk a potential suicide into killing his abusive stepfather instead, only to do a Verbal Backspace on realising Julie is nearby. Mercer also leaves Dex her tapes of their sessions to help ground him if he starts backsliding.
- Mythology Gag:
- The scene with Matt's cab being fished out of the water only for Fisk to discover Matt's body is missing is taken straight from Born Again. There's even the repeated line of "There is no corpse", something that, owing to writer Frank Miller's love of repetition in dialogue, was repeated frequently in the scene in the comics.
- Another reference is The Reveal that Karen Page used to be a drug addict, as the Born Again story started with Karen selling Matt's Secret Identity for a fix.
- The baseball story featuring Dex is taken from a possible made up story of Bullseye's past of when he was a major league pitcher, pitched a perfect game, and then killed an opponent with a ball to the head out of boredom.
- Dex's hat from his kiddy league baseball team has the classic Bullseye costume logo from the mainstream comics.
- Not Helping Your Case: James Wesley hiring Nelson & Murdock in "Rabbit in a Snowstorm" is cited as proof of Fisk's claim that Murdock was working for him, and stealing Foggy's ID so he can contact the Albanians in prison doesn't look good either.
- Obsessively Organized: Along with the Undercrank to make his movements look alien and robotic, the opening scene underscores how odd Dex is by showing how everything in his apartment has to be absolutely perfect. When he's done reading the newspaper, he puts it on a perfectly squared pile of other newspapers. He rinses his coffee cup, puts it on a rack to dry, then makes sure the handle is perfectly aligned with its neighbor. When he closes the door to his apartment, that causes a photo to fall off-kilter, so he opens the door back up to fix it.
- Once More, with Clarity: The last scene is a flashback to Matt returning to his apartment after escaping the sinking taxicab and the FBI raid from his perspective.
- Out of Focus: Matt is almost entirely absent from the episode.
- Put Down Your Gun and Step Away: Karen puts her hand on the gun in her purse when she thinks she's being stalked by hitmen. Fortunately the FBI agent sees she's nervous and tells her to face the wall and keep her hands in place, while he removes her gun himself.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Nadeem suspects Matt is leading a double life, that said double life caused Matt and Foggy's split, and that his and Foggy's taking a case of a hitman working for Fisk back in Season 1 was in service to that. He is in fact absolutely right except that he thinks Matt is a gangster, not a vigilante.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted, as Dex did see one for years, Dr. Mercer. But after she retired, as she had a terminal disease, he felt lost again.
- The Sociopath: In his childhood, Dex killed his baseball coach in a moment of anger, and admits that he fully did it on purpose and enjoyed the feeling. Dex's therapist actually notes that he has psychopathic tendencies, and literally has to teach him how to display empathy for others since he's incapable of naturally having it. At his later job at a Suicide Hotline, he is shown trying to convince somebody not to kill himself... but to murder his stepdad, who is the source of his pain.
- Undercrank: The opening shots show Dex in his apartment, and focus on showing how weird he is. Some of this is accomplished by showing his obsessive level of organization, but the rest of the time his actions are filmed slightly undercranked, so he's moving just a little too fast. The effect makes him look alien, weird, unnatural. The scene is very subtle about this; he is undercranked, but the objects in his apartment aren't. It's very well done.
- Unwitting Pawn: Foggy accuses Nadeem of being one to Fisk, along with the entire FBI.
- Punch a Wall: Dex bloodies his knuckles doing this, getting blood on his pristine white shirt that he then frantically tries to clean.
- The Villain Knows Where You Live: A variation when Felix Manning tells Karen her parents name, their address, which room Karen slept in as a child and the fact that she used to be a drug addict who had something to do with the death of her brother. She's suitably freaked out.
