Directed by Mark Tonderai
Written by Iturri Sosa
Military forces arrive to back up Gordon. Nygma confronts Penguin for answers about his condition. Bruce worries about what Selina is becoming.
Tropes
- And I Must Scream: Strange operates on Nygma's exposed brain while he's fully awake and immobilized. The first thing he does after Gordon makes Strange snap him out of it is scream in pain.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The episode ends with Dorrance turning on Gordon, Gordon quickly escaping through the Indian Hill garbage chute, and Nygma, under Dorrance's control, following him down the garbage chute with orders to kill him.
- Briar Patching: How Ed escapes the hillbillies. He makes a big fuss about "please don't electrocute me", then "accidentally" notes how they need to open up the fuel line on their car to make the engine for the chair run better. They do, only for the sparks to ignite the fuel and set the car on fire, letting Ed escape.
- Brutal Honesty: The night Bruce's parents died, Selina saw it but she didn't do anything, not because she was scared, but because she didn't care and was only looking out for herself.
- The Bus Came Back: Hugo Strange reappears for the first time this season, having last been seen in the Season 4 finale.
- Call-Back: Gordon is told to execute a criminal to show that he'll fall in line. Like in the very first episode, he refuses.
- The Cavalry: Dorrance's Delta Force squad shows up to help Gordon retake control of Gotham.
- Cavalry Betrayal: Except they turn out to have their own agenda and ruthless means to reach them, and turn on Gordon when he's not willing to go as far.
- *Click* Hello: Strange hears the click of Jim's gun pointed at the back of his head while he's tooling about in Nygma's head.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Dorrance and his squad kill all of Penguin's men in about one second.
- Dead Man's Switch: Nygma has one tied to his heartbeat ready to detonate the mine booby trap in his library that Dorrance accidentally triggers. Or at least he claims he does.
- Dull Surprise: Strange's reaction to Nygma pointing a gun at him is a flat "Oh my".
- Evil All Along: Dorrance and his forces are introduced as allies for Gordon. By the end of the episode, however, they're revealed to be enemies.
- Evil Former Friend: The leader of the military forces in Gotham, Eduardo Dorrance, is a friend of Gordon's from his army days. By the end of the episode, they're enemies.
- Exact Words: In a previous episode, Walker tells Gordon that she is "working on getting him help". It is revealed in this episode that she was working on a False Flag Operation as a pretext for the government to allow the army to intervene.
- Faking the Dead:
- Turns out, Jeremiah let Selina stab him, so that he could convince everyone he was dead, as part of whatever his larger plan is.
- Nygma himself does this, posing as the next body to be delivered to Strange, who had just dumped a gangrenous corpse down a garbage chute and is audibly complaining to his men about how unsuitable it was for his experiments as they unknowingly bring Nygma to him.
- False Flag Operation: Dorrance and his superior, Walker, used Nygma to blow up Haven so that they'd have a pretext to invade the city.
- Joker Immunity: Jeremiah survives to the audience’s utter shock.
- Landmine Goes Click: The mine boobytrap triggered by Dorrance starts ticking as soon as he steps on it, alerting everyone that he's armed it.
- Man Behind the Man: Dorrance is revealed to be this to both Strange and the mind-controlled Ed. His superior Walker is this in turn to him.
- Man on Fire: Nygma tricks the hillbillies torturing him to open up the fuel line to the car they're using to electrocute him, causing gas to spill onto the ground. Sparks from the exposed wiring on their setup ignite the fuel, setting fire to the man sitting in the car.
- Mind-Control Device: Strange was hired by Walker to plant a chip in Nygma's mind that enables him to be remote-controlled.
- Mythology Gag: Dorrance has a tendency to stand with his hands on his vest in a very familiar way.
- Not So Similar: Both Alfred and Selina point this out about her and Bruce. He doesn’t buy it.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Ed prevents Barbara from killing him on the spot by pointing out "in all our years of double-crosses and plotting, have I ever done anything as stupid as just firing a rocket into a building full of people?" Barbara is forced to admit he has a point.
- Likewise, Oswald is able to convince Gordon that Nygma was set up by reminding him that the man loves puzzles and games (and revenge), not sheer brutality and mass murder.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Eduardo says he and Jim were this respectively back in their Army days.
- The Reveal: Turns out, Nygma hasn't developed another personality that chose to blow up Haven. Instead, he's been the victim of a Mind-Control Device that Walker — the woman Gordon's been communicating with on the mainland — had Strange put in his brain so that she could use him to manipulate events in Gotham to her own ends.
- Also, the tunnel Jeremiah was having built isn't leading to the mainland, but to Wayne Manor.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After his base is attacked yet again, Penguin decides that a change of scenery is in order, implying that he's going to try and escape the city.
- Smug Snake: Penguin cockily dares Bullock to open fire on him despite having military backup. It works about as well as you'd expect.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Bruce pulls this Bullock after their chat in GCPD headquarters.Bullock: (impressed) Kid's fast.
- Storming the Castle: The GCPD and Delta Force assault City Hall in order to arrest Penguin and Nygma.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Oswald openly cites this to his dog.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!:
- Dorrance's reaction to Nygma's boobytrap.
- Also, Nygma's reaction when he realizes this gang of hillbillies are about to kill him as revenge for one of the victims of Haven being... their dog.Nygma: 300 people died in Haven!
Woman: We don't care about people!
