History Recap / BlackMirrorSmithereens

* ButForMeItWasTuesday: [[https://www.nme.com/news/charlie-brooker-discusses-ambiguous-ending-black-mirrors-smithereens-2505334 The whole point of the episode]], [[WordOfGod according to Charlie Brooker]].

* ForMeItWasTuesday: [[https://www.nme.com/news/charlie-brooker-discusses-ambiguous-ending-black-mirrors-smithereens-2505334 The whole point of the episode]], [[WordOfGod according to Charlie Brooker]].

* BeAllMySinsRemembered: Chris was responsible for killing his fiance in a car crash, as he was focused on his phone instead of the road while driving them home one night. But the driver of the other car was drunk, and also died in the accident, so he got the blame while Chris received nothing but sympathy and support from family and friends, which only made him feel more ashamed about what happened.

* HateSink: David Gilkes, the hostage negotiator, is technically just doing his job ([[HeroWithAnFInGood albeit not very skillfully]]). However, his self-obsessed attitude and the impression that he's more concerned with showing how smart he is than with saving lives makes him the only truly hateable character in an episode where everyone is otherwise sympathetic.

* HonestCorporateExecutive: Deconstructed with Billy Bauer -- he's a BenevolentBoss to all his employees no matter how low they are on the corporate ladder and seems genuinely heartbroken by Chris' story, but with how massive Smithereen has become, he doesn't really have any real power in the company any more and has effectively been reduced of a "face" figurehead at this point.

* CuttingTheKnot: In-universe. Hayley's daughter's Persona account password was right in front of her the whole time, but she probably never would have gotten it if Christopher hadn't gotten Billy Bauer to make the call to the Persona CEO.

* NGOSuperpower: Part of the point of this episode is demonstrating how scarily close major tech companies have come to being this. Smithereen's internal investigation is able to turn up more and better intel on Christopher in a shorter time than the actual police -- or even the FBI. Billy Bauer himself is able to ignore a direct order from the FBI and contact Christopher directly, and even his own staff are powerless to stop him.

* HonestCorporateExecutive: Deconstructed with Billy Bauer -- he's a BenevolentBoss to all his employees no matter how low they are on the corporate ladder and seems genuinely heartbroken by Chris' story, but with how massive Smithereen has become, he doesn't really have any actual power in the company and is more of a "face" figurehead at this point.

* BeAllMySinsRemembered: Chris was responsible for killing his fiance in a car crash, as he wasn't paying attention to the road, being focused on his phone instead. But the driver of the other car was drunk, and also died, so he got the blame while Chris recieved nothing but sympathy and support from family and friends, which only made him feel more ashamed about what he did.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Downplayed, but Brian mentions that Smithereen has an entire team of experts researching ways to make the app even more addictive to users than it already is.

* BlindfoldedTrip: Chris tells Jaden to put a bag on his head for the trip. It makes little sense as a precaution [[spoiler:knowing that Chris planned to kill himself anyway]].

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:Either Chris or Jaden died. Which one is never made clear, but we know from Billy's reaction that it isn't good, but one of them survives.]]

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: After the sniper takes his first shot at Chris, the bullet hole it leaves in the windshield is far too high to fit the path his bullet would've taken. He would have to have fired from at least the first floor of a nearby building to hit at such an angle, not from ground level as he did.

* IdiotBall: There's some major op-sec failures by both sides of the standoff -- it's more forgivable for Chris who, however smart he is, is not a hardened criminal and not in the most stable frame of mind, less so for the actual police. Notably, disaster ensues when Chris lets slip the lie that his gun isn't real to the cops -- because of the extremely amateurish error of not muting his own phone mic while he's on hold. However, he discovers this mistake because of the cops' even bigger mistake of letting random civilian bystanders -- bystanders who ''openly have their phones out'' and are ''obviously posting on social media'' -- close enough to an active crime scene to overhear their own radio chatter.

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:One of Chris or Jaden died. Which is never made clear, but we know from Billy's reaction that it isn't good, but one of them survives.]]

* RiddleForTheAges: We never find out the outcome of the hostage situation, and can only surmise from seeing Billy's reaction to it that it was negative. We also never find out if Hayley ever actually got any answers about her daughter's death from her inbox.

* {{Claustrophobia}}: Chris initially intends to make Jaden ride to their destination in the trunk of the car, and it's only Jaden's screaming panic attack at being in a confined place that makes him PetTheDog and let him ride in the backseat. This is what gets them caught.

* BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:One of Chris or Jaden died. Which is never made clear, but we know from Billy's reaction that it isn't good, but one of them survives.]]

** From the beginning of the episode it's clear that Chris has some kind of history with the Smithereen social media service, and later on the police find out his day job used to be teaching kids to code. The fact that he's a geek and a former heavy user of Smithereen prior to his current grievance against it comes up in the thriller plot -- he's savvy enough to know that Smithereen (like Twitter in real life) will give him an ongoing, unfiltered look at the hostage situation from an outside POV, something the cops themselves utterly fail to take into account in their strategy even though the Smithereen staff can see he's logged on.
** Played with with Chris' literal gun. From the beginning the cops speculate it's a fake, and he tells Jaden it's a fake in order to try to calm him down, but GenreSavvy viewers will predict that he's lying and that the cops' attempt to arrest him will lead to it going off.

* DeathSeeker: Christopher had absolutely no intention of surviving this encounter, one way or another. It's implied that he originally obtained the pistol he uses for the purpose of committing suicide, but hatched this hostage taking scheme because he became obsessed with the idea that he couldn't die before telling Billy Bauer his story. His MadnessMantra he uses to calm himself down turns out to be ''reassuring'' himself that no matter what happens, he's going to die today.

* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Assuming he ended up being shot by the sniper during the struggle, Jaden is this considering that despite being held hostage by Chris and repeatedly threatened with a gun, he’s still sympathetic towards Chris’s story, especially when Chris himself is willing to let him go free and not shoot him in the back. His presumably last actions in the car is begging his kidnapper not to commit suicide once he exits the car and when Chris goes to open the door, attempting to wrestle the gun away from him in a last ditch effort to keep him from killing himself.

* NotSoDifferent:
** The one thing David Gilkes gets right is that Chris and Billy really ''aren't'' so different beneath the surface. Notably, they've both taken up meditation as a way to deal with a burden they can't share with any other person -- and it's implied that neither of them has really been successful at managing it.
** Jaden's StockholmSyndrome for Chris is implied to be because he's seen the effects of grief up close and personal after his uncle's suicide almost destroyed his mother's life, and realizes Chris is not so different from her.

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Jaden was finally completely free to go home, safe and sound... and chooses to risk his life (and possibly loses it) to try to save his kidnapper from himself.

* IdiotBall: There's some major op-sec failures by both sides of the standoff -- it's more forgivable for Chris who, however smart he is, is not a hardened criminal and not in the most stable frame of mind, less so for the actual police. Notably, disaster ensues when Chris lets slip the lie that his gun isn't real to the cops -- because of the extremely amateurish error of not muting his own phone mic while he's on hold. (Even in ''normal'' circumstances one should never assume hearing "hold music" means no one is listening to you.) However, he discovers this mistake because of the cops' even bigger mistake of letting random civilian bystanders -- bystanders who ''openly have their phones out'' and are ''obviously posting on social media'' -- close enough to an active crime scene to overhear their own radio chatter.

* TheGhost: For the whole first half of the story, Billy Bauer is never seen, his character is only described in vague terms, and a lot of emphasis is put on the fact that he's almost impossible to reach and even his own COO is reluctant to talk to him. The buildup only increases the deliberate AntiClimax when we learn he's a very ordinary human being, and that his COO was avoiding speaking to him not because he's an intimidating, godlike figure but because she thinks he's too emotionally fragile to handle the situation.