History Series / HaltAndCatchFire

** In "Extract and Defend", Joanie and Haley are playing a prototype version of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' their granddad brought home from Japan. Gordon and Cameron later tackle the game in "And She Was".

** "Extract and Defend" takes place sometime before September 13, 1985, as Donna's dad Gary had brought home an early run NES with ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' from his latest visit to Japan. Donna's mom says that it will be released in the fall. The NES was test-marketed in New York City, before being launched nationwide a year later.

** In "Extract and Defend", Gary brought home a prototype UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem from his latest visit to Japan; Haley and Joanie play ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' on the system. Also, the Mutiny coders watch ''Film/TheTerminator'' on VHS.

** The NES is more prominently featured during Season 3, where Gordon plays ''VideoGame/DuckHunt'' in "Rules of Honorable Play", and Gordon and Cameron team up to beat ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' in "And She Was".

** Tom Rendon comes to a meeting among Cameron, Gordon, Donna and Joe, and is the naysayer of the meeting, insisting that open source software[[note]]The term would only be applied to software toward the end of the decade, even though the GNU Project was well-known among computer people. Such software was known at the time as "free software" or "freeware."[[/note]] will never be viable and that the potential of the Internet to help unleash the potential of such software is wildly overstated. [[spoiler:It's hinted that he's partly being purposely truculent because he suspects Joe and Cameron of having had an affair.]]

** Joe pulls this off on Cameron in turn "10Broad36" when he wants to raise the price of Munity's time-share to what he charges other companies, but agrees to only increase it by 50 cents an hour if they add more features to the BBS and make a port of it for UNIX [=PCs=]. While Cameron agrees with his demands, the time spent to program the UNIX port at the raised prices would drive Mutiny to bankruptcy, so she and the rest of the team set up an elaborate mock UNIX PC with a C64's guts to run a custom version of Mutiny and fake the modem connection to other users by streaming data from another computer via a coaxial cable, planning to create a proper UNIX port later, but he figures out the ruse when he notices that the chess program only knows a single opening even though he's supposed to be playing against other users and that the fake machine is already overheating from just a few minutes of use because Cameron didn't think it needed to function any longer than that and they didn't have the time to implement any cooling solutions. Joe is still impressed by their ingenuity and after witnessing the trick with the coaxial cable, which would latter be better known as an Ethernet cable, he tells his boss that Westgroup should aim to aquire them.

*** It's tempting to see Rover as a stand-in for Google, but that doesn't fit the 1994 time period. In reality there were many Rover-like algorithmic search engines battling for dominance against Yahoo in the mid-90's. Google didn't emerge with a superior algorithm that clearly outperformed Yahoo's manual categorization until 1998.

** In season 4, the fight between Rover and Comet mirrors the fight between AltaVista and Yahoo. Rover focuses on intelligent search results and a streamlined presentation to get users to their destination quickly. Comet focuses on categorization and becoming a hub for users, like Yahoo.

** In season 4, the fight between Rover and Comet is a precursor to the fight between Google and Yahoo. Rover focuses on intelligent search results and a streamlined presentation to get users to their destination quickly. Comet focuses on categorization and becoming a hub for users, like Yahoo.

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** The "Doherty Threshold", where a system response time less than 400 milliseconds was considered addicting to the end-user, seems to be a made-up concept; however, the concept is taken from [[http://jlelliotton.blogspot.com/p/the-economic-value-of-rapid-response.html "The Economic Value of Rapid Response Time"]], an IBM case study published in November 1982, written by Walter J. Doherty and Ahrvind J. Thadani.
** The above-mentioned PORNDEX.

* SpiritualSuccessor: The series seems to be one to ''Series/MadMen'', due to its period setting and the main character being a TallDarkAndHandsome slick-talking narcissist with a DarkAndTroubledPast.

*** Cameron's new game, Pilgrim, is also essentially something only she herself would consider to be a perfect game: while it's graphically impressive for a game released in 1993, it's incomprehensible and unfun to a vast majority of people due to wrong choices bringing you back to the beginning of the game with no obvious right ones and Cameron even considers something as basic as telling the player the controls to the game to be something that "ruins the magic". Donna finally manages to beat it, but not before being subject to multiple cases of GuideDangIt, TrialAndErrorGameplay and TryEverything: one part requires the player to find an invisible wall in a completely nondescript location and use an item or a skill to fill the air with flower petals, which the player can then use [[MoonLogicPuzzle as a ladder to climb to a new room, where there's a number of collectables]] that finally lead them to a new area, and the final puzzle involves standing in front of a bridge leading to another set of collectibles without crossing it, causing it to blow up and the player character to fly down into the ravine where they're finally reunited with their parent.

* WhamEpisode: Season 2 is basically a Wham [[UpToEleven Season]]. Season 3, not so much until the latter half. Still, there are some moments.

** When Joe wants Mutiny to port their programs to UNIX to get a reduced network rental rate, the coders see it as such. While actually porting Mutiny to UNIX is not outright impossible, it is a difficult and time-consuming task, time which Mutiny does not have and cannot afford to lose at $5 per hour.

** In season 4, Joe and Gordon's Internet Service Provider company has to face off against America Online which is aggressively expanding into their territory. Later, it becomes Joe's and Gordon's new independent search engine Comet vs Donna's VC-backed Rover.]]

** In "NIM" Joe and Cameron are at COMDEX 90 and see a booth where two guys are presenting their new printer. They realize that it is the same two guys that Joe and Gordon conned out of their suite at COMDEX 83. The new version of the printer has improved significantly but its creators are still as inept at marketing as they were seven years before. Joe and Cameron troll them about naming their printer The [=SPrinter=] and Cameron blatantly takes most of their promotional lighters.

* {{Jerkass}}: All three main characters are jerkasses in their own way.

** Gordon often neglects his wife and daughters, often due to Joe's ambitions.

** While demoing the Giant at COMDEX, Joe mentions Microsoft's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan Multiplan]][[note]]A precursor to Excel[[/note]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3]], both of which are early spreadsheet programs; the latter was the [[invoked]]KillerApp for the IBM PC and was a de facto benchmark for an IBM PC clone's software compatibility[[note]]Due to Lotus 1-2-3 being written in x86 assembly language and relying on the specific hardware configuration of the IBM PC, addressing the hardware directly rather than using DOS as a middleman[[/note]].

* AdultFear: Joanie runs away after catching Gordon and Donna arguing. [[spoiler: Fortunately, she's just hiding in the back yard.]]

* BookEnds: In the first and final and final scene, Joe addresses a college classroom by saying, "Let me start by asking a question."

* HollywoodLaw: Nathan Cardiff tearing up Joe's check at the beginning of Season 2 and threatening to drag Joe "in front of a jury" for his actions makes for a dramatic moment...but legally it's a useless gesture because the sale is complete and everyone's signed closing documents. If Joe signed proper closing documents, the money is legally his and tearing up the cheque would just leave the entire sale and the company in a legal limbo due to it still having funds it owes to Joe. If Joe had signed a document that forfeited the amount, it would likely be unenforceable and the other amounts would have to be amended to account for the funds (ie Gordon would receive a share of the ~$600,000 Joe didn't get). Cardiff's lawyers would probably face professional sanctions either way, either for handing Nathan the cheque after Joe signed off on recieving it or for tricking him if they had Joe signing off the funds. Joe being Joe, the viewer can't rule out that he didn't care and wanted to start over, but given his business acumen he would very certainly know the above.

* TheAlcoholic: Gordon is introduced with Donna picking him up from what is implied to be a repeat visit to the drunk tank.

* PyrrhicVictory: In order for Cardiff to survive COMDEX '83, Joe had to sacrifice Cameron's ambitious OS from the Giant in order to make it faster and cheaper.

* TheAlcoholic: Gordon is introduced with Donna picking him up from what is implied to be a repeat visitto the drunk tank.

* TheAlcoholic: In season 4, Donna starts to become a LadyDrunk due to the stress of her job. She eventually gets a DUI and is forced into AA. Thereafter, she politely declines all offers of alcohol.

** In the final episode, Cameron learns that Joe has returned home to the city where IBM is headquartered. When we see him, he's bought a Porsche, wears a slick suit, and carries a briefcase, implying that he's returned to his previous life as an IBM executive. In reality, he's [[spoiler:become a college humanities professor]].

* HollywoodLaw: Nathan Cardiff tearing up Joe's check at the beginning of Season 2 and threatening to drag Joe "in front of a jury" for his actions makes for a dramatic moment...but legally it's a useless gesture because the sale is complete, the company now is being dissolved or has no assets, and everyone's signed closing documents to this effect. If Joe signed proper closing documents, the money is legally his and tearing up the cheque would just leave the entire sale and the company in a legal limbo due to it still having funds it owes to Joe. If Joe had signed a document that forfeited the amount, it would likely be unenforceable and probably lead to sanctions for Cardiff's lawyers given the way it was presented to him, and the other amounts would have to be amended to account for the funds (ie Gordon would receive a share of the ~$600,000). Joe being Joe, the viewer can't rule out that he just didn't want the money and wanted to start over, but given his business acumen he would very certainly know the above.

* CoolCar: Joe's Porsche 944 at the beginning of the series, which he eventually has to sell. In the final episode, he's bought another Porsche, [[BaitAndSwitch teasing]] a return to his former self.

* DeathByIrony: A corporate example. Donna takes a rather limited search algorithm for medical data and turns it into Rover, a Google-like internet search engine. When [[spoiler:Yahoo emerges on the market]], however, she's forced to sell it for scrap to a company who wants to use it to search their medical data. Donna finds this grimly hysterical.

** In the season 1 episode "Adventure", when Cameron finds out that she's being demoted to remedial assignments Lev retorts by saying "Welcome to the short bus," a dated term towards special education students. This being the 1980s, it was common to make such jokes. These days with people having more political correctness a person would be offended at remarks about remedial students.
** Joe has to live as a closeted bisexual man in the 1980s due to homophobia. He lashes out at one business partner who feels comfortable making sadistic and homophobic jokes about AIDS.

* HollywoodLaw: Nathan Cardiff tearing up Joe's check at the beginning of Season 2 and threatening to drag Joe "in front of a jury" for his actions makes for a dramatic moment...but legally it's a useless gesture because the sale is complete, the company now is being dissolved or has no assets, and everyone's signed closing documents to this effect. If Joe signed proper closing documents, the money is his, he would probably receive it via summary judgment, and tearing up the cheque would just leave the entire sale and the company in a legal limbo due to it still having funds it owes to Joe. If Joe had signed a document that forfeited the amount, it would likely be unenforceable and probably lead to sanctions for Cardiff's lawyers given the way it was presented to him without a representative, and the other amounts would have to be amended to account for the funds (ie Gordon would receive a share of the ~$600,000). Joe being Joe, the viewer can't rule out that he just didn't want the money and wanted to start over, but given his business acumen he would very certainly know the above.

** In season 4, Comet has a considerably smaller dark side, as co-founder Gordon Clark knows that he's dying and just wants to enjoy his final days doing what he loves with similarly-enthusiastic geeks, but after his death, partner Joe MacMillan takes over and runs the company into the ground on a quixotic project (creating a search engine that would be optimized for Netscape, which wasn't publicly available back then.)

** Joe's actions at the end of season 1 caused more than $200,000 worth of damage and Nathan Cardiff uses this as an excuse to not pay Joe his share when he sells the company. He then says that Joe could sue him in court but Cardiff 's lawyers will then present as evidence all the other lies and misdeeds Joe is guilty of.

** While demoing the Giant at COMDEX, Joe mentions Microsoft's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan Multiplan]][[note]]A precursor to Excel[[/note]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3]], both of which are early spreadsheet programs; the latter program was the [[invoked]]KillerApp for the IBM PC.