A crime blogger that accused a lieutenant's death of being a NCIS cover-up ends up dead, calling into question if the blogger's statements were purely defamatory or true after all.
- The Boy Who Cried Wolf: While they are breaking into the police impound, Tony pranks McGee by playing the sound effect of a dog barking. A moment later, real dogs start barking, and McGee brushes off Tony's warning.
- Call-Back: Ziva is still going through the process necessary to re-join the NCIS team, after being rescued from the Somali desert in "Truth and Consequences" and her previous position as Mossad liaison officer no longer exists. At the end of the episode, she informs Gibbs that she has formally resigned from Mossad and is applying to be an agent and an American citizen.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Tim figures out the key "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder element of the case when he goes to his polygraph retest and the tester, who scheduled it for earlier in the day than she usually works, mentions how her coworkers thought it was odd for her to deviate from her regular schedule.
- Grave Robbing: When NCIS digs up the lieutenant's casket to determine if his death was truly accidental, they discover that it's empty. It then turns out that the blogger broke into the funeral home and stole the body before the casket was buried, in order to make his accusations seem valid and gain fame.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Not quite instantly, but there is a delay of only a minute or so before Tony has to eat his words that there are no dogs in the police impound lot.
- Jurisdiction Friction: Since the victim is a civilian and not a navy officer, NCIS ends up butting heads with the metro police, to the point that Tim and Tony end up having to break into an impound lot to examine the GPS of the blogger's car because the police refused to share evidence and get arrested; Gibbs gets their record cleared by letting the police take credit for catching the murderer.
- Never Heard That One Before: SEC Investigator Benjamin Franklin introduces himself to Gibbs and Tony, and says, 1) yes, that's really his name, and 2) "I've heard every imaginable joke, so spare me?" Of course, to Tony this is like waving a red flag at a bull...
- Oblivious to Love: There's a side plot of Tim worried over having to retake a polygraph test. When he finally gets to meet the polygraph tester again, she gently caresses his hand while wiring him up and asks if he's single, and Gibbs later has to spell it out to him that the retest was just an excuse to see him again.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: The crime blogger was correct that the lieutenant was committing fraud, but he made the claim purely for clout, and the lieutenant's death was accidental instead of the cover-up he made it look like by stealing the lieutenant's body.
- Shout-Out: To Turner and Hooch and K9, while Tony and McGee are fleeing guard dogs.
- "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder: The culprit is a deli owner that plotted with the lieutenant to commit insider trading, investing money in a security company that the navy was going to use and then splitting the profits later. However, the lieutenant died in a car crash, and when the blogger made a false accusation of his crimes, the deli owner thought the blogger had discovered the truth and killed him to keep him silent. Tony references the movie directly, as the deli owner and lieutenant knew each other because they took the same train to town every day.
