This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Air Vent Escape: Defied; the Planet employees check the air vents along with every other possible exit during their search for an escape route, but all of them have been sealed off as well.
- Back in the Saddle: Fate returns to hero duty at the end of the episode.
- Body Horror: After a shoggoth attacks and invades Jimmy Olsen's body, his stomach starts to bulge and twitch as though something inside is struggling to get out.
- Changed My Mind, Kid: Fate decides to help Superman after all.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: Karkull is unimpressed by Superman and dismisses him as a nobody since he doesn't have magic. While he does kick Superman's ass, Superman lands a bunch of hits on him.
- Defiant Stone Throw: Jimmy grabs a canister and throws it at a shoggoth trying to attack him. It passes right through it without injury.
- Determinator: Superman himself. Becomes a plot point when this is what convinces Fate to return and help him.Dr. Fate: Till then I thought it was only the forces of evil that wouldn't give up. I was wrong.
- Dwindling Party: Played pretty quickly with the Planet staff trapped in the building. Once Karull decides to unleash his power and opens the gate to the dark dimension, he sends his spirits after them. One by one they end up possessed till only Jimmy and Lois are left. Jimmy tries to fend them off but it's useless and he likewise ends up possessed. Lois gets distracted watching this, allowing one of the creatures to catch and possess her as well.
- Doomed Moral Victor: Superman looks like he'll die doing the right thing, but Fate turns the tables.
- Eldritch Abomination: Karkull, or so it's hinted.
- Honor Before Reason: When Fate refuses to help him, Superman goes back to fight Karkull and to try to save the Planet's employees, in spite of not having a snowball's chance in a blast furnace. Played with when this very attitude is what causes Fate to come after him.
- Invincible Hero: Averted. Karkull could actually kill Superman, and both of them know it.
- Lovecraft Lite: You didn't think that it would be full-on Lovecraft in a Superman episode, did you? Karkull is eventually stuffed back into his can and everything returns to normal.
- Morphic Resonance: The demon that turns Lois into its body decides to keep her hair.
- New-Age Retro Hippie: Rainsong whom Superman and Turpin encounter while outside the Daily Planet. She doesn't really play much of a role other then tell Supes what they're dealing with is magical in nature, which prompts him to go seek out Dr. Fate. Though humorously she and some of her wiccan friends show up to try and break the barrier to Turpin's annoyance.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Unusually, Superman gets this from an ally. When he goes to Doctor Fate for help, Fate explains that he has retired from superheroics, weary from the endless battle. He tells Superman that the two of them are similar, both masters of their own fate, and Superman should join him and likewise leave behind the petty conflicts of humanity. Superman, of course, explains that they are nothing alike.
- Recycled Animation: When Karkull blows up a police car, the ensuing explosion is reused footage from a scene of "My Girl", in which Mr. Eelan blows a vat of hot lead off its support.
- Remember the New Guy?: While this is Dr. Fate's debut, Superman does have a history that we don't know about prior to the episode.
- Restored My Faith in Humanity: Doctor Fate has his faith in humanity restored when Superman refuses to give up in a fight against an Eldritch Abomination.
- Retired Badass: Dr. Fate until the end of the episode.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Karkull, at the beginning of the episode.
- Shout-Out:
- A shop called "The Dancing Hobbit" appears.
- One of the artifacts stored in the warehouse in the opening scene looks a lot like the Pazuzu statue.
- Stopped Caring: Dr. Fate, due to the unending nature of the battle against evil.
- Transformation Horror: The shoggoths have some pretty nasty effects on the Planet staff. The first human to be possessed, Ron Troupe, drops to the floor, crouching and clutching his head as his eyes begin to glow. Later, it looks almost as though the shoggoth shreds the skin of its human host as the transformation completes itself.
- Transformation of the Possessed: Demonstrated on the Planet employees.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The episode starts with a burglar stealing a tablet from an antiques store and reading its inscription out of curiosity, unwittingly letting Karkull possess him and causing everything that follows.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Fate gives one of these to his wife when she gives Superman something that will allow him to go back into the fight. She fires back one of her own at her husband for letting him go back alone.Dr. Fate: You've just sent him to his grave.Inza: What do you care?
- The Worf Effect: The Villain of the Week actually manages to make Superman bleed.
