History Recap / ForAllMankindS03E10StrangerInAStrangeLand

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Not surprisingly, coming out as gay (especially in this alternate 1995) causes virtually the entire Republican party to turn on Ellen, pushing for her to resign or be impeached.
** Dev tries to get the Helios staff to join him in forming a new company that will lead the development of a colony on Mars. Then Karen points out that they will all suffer a pay cut and lose their extensive stock options, causing them to bail on Dev. To Dev losing a few ''b''illions might be chump change - but his employees have families and mortgages and all other kinds of payments to make and losing hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars - plus what had up to that point been a stable and well-respected gig in a growing industry - is just not an option for most of them - let alone something to do on a whim after hearing a RousingSpeech
** Danny confesses his role in the drill incident and offers to make amends by risking his life to pilot the MSAM in order to get Kelly up to the Phoenix. Ed angrily [[RedemptionRejection rejects]] the offer as he is not going to put the life of his pregnant daughter in the hands of an unstable man who is suicidal.

* AllForNothing: NASA and the Soviets pushed everything so that they could match Helios's launch window...and it turns out that all three of them were beaten to Mars by ''North Korea'' of all places.

* AllohistoricalAllusion: The bombing of the Johnson Space Center serves as the show's equivalent of the Oklahoma City bombing, which also took place in 1995. With the completion of his story arc, Charles Bernitz parallels Timothy [=McVeigh=] by being a former serviceman ([=McVeigh=] was in the Army, Charles was a Marine) who had served their nation with distinction before becoming a mass murder in a domestic terrorist bombing, with the difference being that [=McVeigh=] was captured and later executed while Charles is killed setting off the bomb.

* AllohistoricalAllusion: The bombing of the Johnson Space Center serves as the show's equivalent of the Oklahoma City bombing, which also took place in 1995.

* FireForgedFriendship: By the end of the episode everyone still on Mars (with the possible exception of the North Korean who is now rooming with the three other missions) is on ''much'' friendlier terms with one another than Helios NASA and the USSR are back on earth or their missions were at the start. Just like what happened to Gordo, Danielle and Ed on Jamestown in Season 1, the amount of heartbreak and disaster, as well as the unforgiving Martian environment will either have everyone at everyone's throats - or them getting their shit together and becoming friends. Unfortunately, this does not include Danny Stevens, whose actions have excluded him from the group.

* HourglassPlot: At beginning of the Episode, the North Korean is alone with only a picture of his family for company in a cramped capsule, unsure if anyone has taken notice of his fate, while Danny is surrounded by people who, if not like, at least grudgingly accept his presence and with the opportunity to video-call earth whenever he wishes. By the end of the episode, their fates are reversed.

* SuicideMission: It is very unclear whether the North Korean mission was planned with ''any'' intention of getting the cosmonauts back alive, and it doesn't look like their spacecraft would be able to do it.[[note]]There is mention of "sample return" in an earlier episode which is when a craft takes samples and returns them to earth - ''maybe'' the plan was to hitch a ride back with the Soviets - or maybe that was just the reassuring lie told to those who GotVolunteered to go on the mission.[[/note]] However, given there was a loaded gun in the tiny capsule that had to fit two cosmonauts, their supplies for ''at least'' the trip there and a stay on Mars - plus fuel - it is pretty likely that all members of the North Korean Mars expedition dying on Mars or en route was considered an acceptable outcome by the leadership of North Korea.

Meanwhile it is becoming clearer, that Kelly can only get to Phoenix if she is the ''only'' one to go there. And even then it requires some risky maneuvers to pull it off. Danny confesses to Ed that it was him who destroyed the drilling rig and volunteers for the near-suicide mission of flying the MSAM to Helios, but Ed angrily rejects the offer and tells him there will be a reckoning later.

* FreezeFrameBonus: The newspaper that Sergei picks up in TheStinger mentions the new JSC-replacement being named after Molly Cobb (what "the Senator for space" LBJ gets in replacement is not mentioned, however). If you freeze the image and zoom in, you realize that it's not just "Lorem Ipsum" and that a) [[spoiler: It took them ''seven days'' to find Molly's body]] and b) [[spoiler: The date on the newspaper is ''not'' 2003]].