Daredevil 2015 / Tropes C to E

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C

• Call-Back:
  • In the first part of Season 2, characters make repeat references to Wilson Fisk, making clear that Fisk had major influence in the criminal underworld and the power vacuum left open in its wake.
  • In "Semper Fidelis," Matt and Karen reminisce about the night they first met. The cinematography is very similar, but the roles are reversed (Matt gets a glass of water from the sink in the first scene; the second time around, it's Karen. Their positions on the couch are switched, with Karen sitting on the end closer to the window and Matt sitting on the end closer to the door).
  • In the very end of Season 2 the theme for Jack Murdock's death plays during Karen's monologue.
• Call-Forward: When Karen reveals she can speak Spanish, just like Matt, Foggy quips that if the firm needs anyone to speak Punjabi, he's their man. Later, when we see a flashback to how they met in law school (as roommates) Matt says he's taking Spanish class, whereas Foggy is taking Punjabi.
• The Cameo:
  • Stan Lee makes an appearance as a photo at the 15th Precinct.
  • Stone, one of Stick's pupils from the comics, also makes a cameo at the end of the episode "Stick."
  • Jeri Hogarth appears in the Season 2 finale to offer Foggy a job at her firm.
• Cancellation: Which leaves the Sequel Hook The Stinger of Dex becoming Bullseye dangling. At least until the sequel series Daredevil Born Again released.
• Canon Foreigner:
  • The majority of Wilson Fisk's associates are all-new characters created exclusively for the show.
  • Marci Stahl is a new character created for the show, but she does have some traits of Deborah Harris (Foggy's wife in the comics). This is very apparent in Season 3 after she encourages Foggy to run for District Attorney.
  • All of the FBI agents in Season 3 with the exception of Dex are original characters.
  • Foggy's family is introduced in Season 3 and is somewhat different from the comics. Here, Anna Nelson is his biological mom instead of his stepmom. And instead of having his sister Candace, he has an all-new brother named Theo.
• Cardboard Box of Unemployment:
  • Matt and Foggy pack some Banker's boxes as they prepare to quit their internship at Landman & Zack to go strike out on their own.
  • After getting fired from the Bulletin, Ben Urich is shown bringing home a Banker's box with all his office memorabilia including his framed front page articles, just in time for Wilson Fisk to choke him to death.
  • Season 2 Episode 12 sees Foggy packing up his office knick-knacks in a Banker's box as Matt pulls the plug on Nelson & Murdock.
• The Cartel: A Mexican drug cartel is another target of the Punisher, who hangs them up on meat hooks in their own locker after killing them.
• Catapult Nightmare: Karen has one after she kills Wesley and imagines Fisk telling her that it will be easier for her to kill in the future.
• Charles Atlas Superpower:
  • Reconstructed. Matt's physical strength is that of a normal human, albeit a very fit one with an entire life of martial arts training. Because of this, he is constantly shown being exhausted, getting wounded, and requiring dozens of blows to take down even a single foe.
  • Stick lacks Matt's chemically-enhanced senses, yet can still fight him to a standstill because of his Spartan lifestyle.
  • Downplayed with Wilson Fisk. He is frighteningly strong, but it's not more than the strength you would expect of a really big, really burly man; and he augments this strength with a lightweight body armor sewn into his suits.
  • Frank Castle is just as dangerous as Matt, even without enhanced senses or ninja training (although he does have combat training). In melee combat Frank trades off agility and martial arts for sheer brutality and pragmatism.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Leland Owlsley quips about dusting off his old taser in "World on Fire" in light of Matt's conflict with the Russians, and Fisk having just killed Anatoly. Two episode later, in "Stick", he gets to use it on Matt when Matt is distracted by Stick showing up. In the Season 1 finale, he tries to use it to stun an enraged Fisk, to no effect.
  • Foggy remarks to Matt early on in "Stick" about how Karen carries mace on her keychain, while also holding his softball bat. Later in the episode, when Karen gets jumped outside Elena's building, she uses the mace to stun her attackers, though it doesn't do much to stop them until Foggy shows up to provide some assistance with his softball bat.
  • At the beginning of Season 2, Turk, due to being out on parole, references how he will be put on house arrest after Daredevil beats him up. In the Season 2 finale, his ankle monitor is used by Karen to call for help when Turk and Karen are kidnapped by The Hand.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Marci Stahl, who appears originally just to demonstrate that Landman & Zack are shady attorneys and provide humor at the idea of her being Foggy's ex-girlfriend, turns out to be vital in locating Hoffman and taking down Fisk by copying files on Fisk and Owlsley's finances because Foggy reminds her of how she "used to have a soul."
  • Brett Mahoney, Matt and Foggy's Friend on the Force; he is one of the few clean cops in the NYPD that Hoffman can safely turn himself in to.
  • Detective Hoffman, initially just one of various corrupt cops on Fisk's payroll, later becomes the key to dismantling Fisk's criminal empire.
  • Colonel Schoonover, who appears to be a Cool Old Guy character witness during Frank Castle's trial, is actually the druglord who killed Frank's family. Or one of three main players, as Frank's own show reveals.
  • Turk Barrett, a minor criminal Matt encounters in Seasons 1 and 2, actually plays an important role in the Season 2 finale as Karen uses his parole bracelet to notify the police of their location.
  • When Fisk is removing his personal possessions as he is being admitted to Rikers, there's a very brief and seemingly pointless shot of an inmate sweeping the floor nearby who is staring at him intently. Moments later, he's seen again as a guard is getting Fisk his new white institutional apparel. This inmate turns out to be Stewart Finney, who introduces himself to Fisk shortly thereafter at the cafeteria and appeals to Fisk as a fellow businessman. He ends up becoming Fisk's new right hand man who assists him in collecting intelligence on Dutton and the other inmates for the duration of his stay in Rikers.
  • The ESU sniper hired to shoot Detective Blake has an Ace of Spades playing card in his backpack, that is visible when he's assembling his rifle. It's a subversion though, as Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter is an FBI agent in this adaptation.
  • When Dex is introduced in Season 3, he looks like just another SWAT officer assigned to the FBI detail transferring Fisk to the Presidential Hotel. Then the Albanians ambush the motorcade while it's in transit, and just as all seems lost, we see Dex kill the entire squad with cold and calculated precision and some very insane trick shots.
• The Chosen One: It's strongly implied that Matt may unknowingly be this, given Stick and Stone's comments about how he needs to be ready when "the doors open".
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: A prerequisite to working at Nelson & Murdock. Matt and Karen feel obligated to right wrongs and protect the weak and the abused, even at the risk of their own safety and well-being. Foggy does so too, but not to the reckless extents that the others do.
• Civvie Spandex: During Season 1, Matt's superhero costume is just black civilian clothing and a hood. Following his return to Hell's Kitchen in Season 3, he returns to the old costume, as the red armor was damaged beyond repair under Midland Circle.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: In contrast to Matt's preferred Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique (the 'heroic'' kind of torture!), some of the more vicious villains are singled out with this;
  • Finn Cooley tortures Frank Castle with an electric drill to the kneecaps.
  • The Hand torture Stick by forcing bamboo under his fingernails.
• Cold Sniper: Frank in Season 2, and Dex in Season 3.
• Color Motifs:
  • Matt Murdock is frequently associated with red (primarily) and black, naturally. When Claire asks him what he sees, he states that he sees a "world on fire".
  • Likewise, Wilson Fisk is wearing an all black suit for most of the season. He later starts wearing an even fancier gray suit after he begins a relationship with Vanessa, who is often wearing a white dress to contrast Fisk. In addition, Fisk is fond of a painting of a white background which he says embodies his loneliness.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: The first season has been called "Year One" for Daredevil and his Rogues Gallery so no one has their codenames yet.
  • Matt only gets his nickname "Daredevil" from the media after he takes down Fisk. Till then, he's just "the Devil of Hell's Kitchen," "the Masked Man", or "the Black Mask," even in subtitles. Even after he acquires his name, the main characters have a conversation about whether it sounds dorky. And even with the 'Daredevil' name, the old 'Devil of Hell's Kitchen' moniker lingers on, with Karen, Brett, Frank, even Matt himself using the old name, and even in The Defenders, the Hand leaders use the Devil of Hell's Kitchen name.
  • Wilson Fisk is never referred to as 'Kingpin' in Season 1. Although there are many references to his nickname in Season 1: Ben Urich uses a playing-card motif to chart out the conspiracy, and refers to Fisk as "the King of Diamonds"... with a large white pushpin stuck through the card; at one point Blake calls him "King Freakin' Kong". In Season 2, Fisk finally adopts it as a moniker after having disposed of Dutton, the previous kingpin of the drug trade in the prison, and finally gets his signature white suits when he gets out of prison in season 3. Ultimately in season 3, the "Kingpin" name becomes the codename that dirty FBI agents on his payroll use to describe him in briefings and whatnot.
  • The Owl is only referred to by his real name of Leland Owlsley. Though in this case he's an old man with no powers instead of a supervillain... but he mentions a son...
  • The Fixer, Roscoe Sweeney, is only referred to by his last name.
  • Melvin Potter is never referred to as "The Gladiator," but he keeps posters of Roman gladiator movies on the walls of his garage, and in "Penny and Dime" in Season 2, he's wearing the Gladiator armor under his work shirt and offers to show it off to Matt.
  • Strongly subverted with Frank Castle, as his nom de guerre "The Punisher" is a nickname created by the DA's office, but is commonly used by the public (even Matt, Karen and Foggy on occasion), not to mention the criminal underworld. The news media fervently embraces it. And Castle himself screams that he is this when he snaps during his trial.
  • Bullseye is introduced in Season 3, but only goes by his legal name Benjamin Poindexter, and is usually just known as Dex for short. The closest we come to getting to him being called "Bullseye" is a visual nod when Fisk is walking through Dex's medical records, and is interpreting the incident where Dex killed his baseball coach with a baseball. Said coach was wearing a cap with a bullseye on it.
  • While individual members of The Avengers are alluded to several times, only Captain America is mentioned by name all of once, when Foggy says, "I might as well be Captain America. Doesn't put wings on my head."
• Completely Unnecessary Translator: Wilson Fisk's allies all have varying degrees of fluency in each other's languages that they've deliberately kept secret, to Wesley's embarrassment.^note Though one could argue Wesley is annoyed at Madame Gao figuring out his and Fisk's act The Russians speak broken English, Nobu speaks it fluently, and both Fisk and Gao understand all four languages.
• Compromising Call: While in the midst of threatening Karen, Wesley's phone picks an incoming call from Fisk. Wesley looks down at his phone and prepares to answer it, which is enough of a distraction for Karen to grab his gun and shoot him to death with it. Karen brings it up later when taunting Fisk with the details of Wesley's death:
  Karen Page: What was it like for you when he disappeared? Really, it's those first 24 hours that are the worst, aren't they? When you call and you call and you call, and there's just NO answer. It becomes an obsession. The calling. The never-ending loop of a ghost's voice wail in your ear. You worry. You wonder. You swear "Goddammit if he's still living I'm gonna kill him myself." Is that what it was like for you? Did you rage at him? 'Cause you thought he betrayed you? Because I wonder what would be worse for you? His duplicity or his death?
• Composite Character:
  • Claire Temple's role of patching up Matt after fights makes her similar to the minor Marvel character Night Nurse.
  • While Karen Page maintains her initial job as Nelson & Murdock's secretary and Matt's love interest, she ends up taking over Ben Urich's duties as Matt's newspaper informant beginning in Season 2.
  • Bullseye's arc in Season 3 is similar to Nuke's role in the Born Again comic storyline.
  • Nobu Yoshioka is a mixture of the various Hand Daimyōs Daredevil has squared off against in the comics.
• Commuting on a Bus: Fisk in Season 2 only gets two episodes due to being locked up awaiting trial, but in that limited screentime, he single-handedly sets up the third act of the season and orchestrates a major retaliatory move against Nelson & Murdock. It also sets things up for his return to being the main antagonist in Season 3.
• Confronting Your Imposter: The fight between Matt and Dex when Dex is masquerading as Daredevil to ruin his reputation.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu:
  • In Season 1, Matt was nearly killed by Nobu. In Season 2, he fights groups of ninjas and despite protective gear, being more experienced, and having Elektra by his side, he still has trouble beating them until he learns how to focus his senses in such a way as to trace them.
  • In the Season 2 finale, Matt goes head-to-head with Nobu, holding his own fairly well, a ton of Hand ninjas go after Elektra. She handles them all fairly easily... until there's only two of them left, and they actually manage to pin her to the ground (albeit briefly.)
• Continuity Nod: Has its own page.
• Continuity Reboot: The series is completely unconnected to the 2003 Daredevil movie. It also counts for the Punisher in Season 2 onwards, who is completely unrelated to any previous versions of the character.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • Despite being shown in multiple posters for the show, Avengers Tower is nowhere to be seen in the show itself. Instead, what really exists there, the MetLife Building, is seen in its place (look at the Midtown skyline in the background when Karen is meeting with the Union Allied lawyer in "Rabbit in a Snowstorm" for a good example).
  • Flashbacks to the time Matt met Elektra indicate they happened "ten years ago." Except Season 2 is implicitly set in 2015, and Matt (who is shown to be friends with Foggy at the time) only started college in Fall 2010. And a look at Foggy's Bar card in Season 3 (when Matt steals it to gain access to the prison for a lead on Fisk) shows that Matt and Foggy passed the Bar in 2012.
• Contrived Coincidence: In Season 2, the fact that the druglord responsible for the shootout that got Frank's family killed was Castle's former CO who had gone into the heroin business. At least, until The Punisher reveals it's not so coincidental at all...
• The Corrupter: In Season 3, Daredevil gets a devil over his shoulder in the form of a fantasy of Wilson Fisk, who pressures Matt to give into his blood-thirst. The fantasy is effective enough to tempt Matt into beating down a group of FBI agents and considering breaking his rule against killing.
  "Yes, let the Devil out!"
• Corrupt Politician:
  • Wilson Fisk has numerous city officials, cops, and at least one state senator (Senator Cherryh) in his pocket who use their influence to change the zoning regulations in Hell's Kitchen on his behalf.
  • Fisk's father was a Corrupt Politician-wannabe. He ran for office specifically so he could then become wealthy from the bribes and kickbacks.
  • Samantha Reyes, the District Attorney of Manhattan, has a reputation for backstabbing her own subordinates to save her own ass.
  • Rosalie Carbone, a political fixer and crime lord who is an associate of Fisk's in Season 3, and who used to do business with the late Mariah Dillard in Harlem.
• Costume Evolution: Matt starts with a black athletic outfit with a black bandana serving as a skullcap, which he adds additional protective gear to over the course of Season 1. After meeting Melvin Potter, he gets a red devil costume made of a custom Kevlar-esque fabric, an armored helmet and armor plates. In Season 2, Melvin continues upgrading Matt's costume with new gauntlets, boots and padding, and gets a new helmet after Frank Castle cracks his old one.
  • Fisk wears all black suits at first until Vanessa picks some out for him in lighter shades. When he is released in Season 3 his suits start as a mix of black and mostly white. When he and Vanessa get married in the finale he finally wears an all white suit. This transition reflects him coming out of obscurity and into the public eye.
• Crapsack World: How New York City and Hell's Kitchen is portrayed in the show. The whole show does a good job of depicting an environment so dark and corrupt for so long, it actively creates people like Daredevil, The Punisher, and Wilson Fisk himself. To clarify, the city is infested to the brim with gangs, criminal organizations, mobsters, gangsters, drug lords, extremely violent people, corrupt officials, dirty cops and junkies. There is vulnerability of rights in many of its citizens, particularly those with few opportunities, and most people live in constant terror because of the ineptitude of the authorities and rampant corruption. The first season already presented us with a very dark environment, where many criminal organizations want control of Hell's Kitchen and half of the police are blackmailed by the mob. Basically, Wilson Fisk and his mob control the police and the press. And that's not to mention the Russian mob, a heavily armed syndicate of ruthless gangsters who kidnap and sell women and children on a regular basis. Season 2 gives us an even worse view of the city, even without Wilson Fisk's involvement. After the imprisonment of Fisk, we have an extremely brutal vigilante known as The Punisher fighting The Irish Mob, the Mexican cartel, and practically everyone involved in the death of his family. And it is without mentioning The Hand, a very powerful Asian crime syndicate that kidnaps and poisons kids. And finally, in the third season, Wilson Fisk makes all his effort to get out of jail, establishes a criminal conspiracy that involves other mob bosses, and this time he's in charge of the FBI for his protection. You know that something is really wrong when the same law enforcement agencies are vulnerable and many of them serve as minions of the same mobsters they fight with. To say that the city is a modern Gangsterland is an Understatement.
  Frank Castle to Matt: "Look around, Red. This city, it stinks. It's a sewer. It stinks and it smells like shit and I can't get the stink out of my nose. I think that this world, it needs men who are willing to make the hard call. I think you and me are the same!"
• Cross Through:
  • Samantha Reyes in Season 2 started out in the Season 1 finale of Jessica Jones.
  • Karen has a recurring role in The Punisher Season 1, set in between The Defenders and Season 3 of Daredevil.
  • Rosalie Carbone in Season 3 crosses through from Luke Cage Season 2.
  • Benjamin Donovan is a back-and-forth type, introduced here in Season 2 as Fisk's replacement consigliere, but then having a recurring role in the first two seasons of Luke Cage prior to coming back to Season 3 of Daredevil.
• Crucial Cross:
  • In the third episode of season 2, Matt dreams of a wooden crucifix with blood coming from Jesus' hand, with a nun washing Matt's wounds with the same blood. When he wakes up, Daredevil finds himself beaten and bound by the Punisher, who he will spend the rest of the episode trying to convince that there is still good in the sinners of the world and that they are even worth dying for.
  • The first thing in focus when Matt wakes up in the "Resurrection" is a crucifix. Matt may not have literally died in The Defenders, but he will spend the rest of the season reckoning with how to live after suffering so much in battle with the Hand.
• Crucified Hero Shot: The first shot of Season 3 is of a silhouette of a cross falling towards the camera. As it gets closer, it becomes clear the cross is Matt Murdock with his arms outstretched, right after his legal death in The Defenders. The symbolism is a little confused, since while Matt did sacrifice himself for Elektra in The Defenders, his sacrifice didn't save her. In fact, his real death in the season is a spiritual one that leads him to renounce God, the exact type of thing Jesus died to save humanity from. Ultimately, though it takes longer than three days and doesn't happen in the episode "Resurrection," Matthew Murdock does rise from his personal Hell and ascend even beyond his former glory.
• Cruel to Be Kind:
  • Matt keeps Foggy and Karen out of his superheroics to keep them safe(r), even if it means pushing them away. Stick recommends this. By the Season 2 finale, he realizes that shutting his friends out doesn't make anything better, leading him to come clean with Karen. In Season 3, he vacillates frequently between doing this, deciding to let his friends help him, and going back to this when they're put in danger. Ultimately, he abandons it by the end of the season and reconciles with them instead.
  • Wilson Fisk sees himself as this as well — yes, he has people evicted, disappeared, even killed, but all for the sake of helping the city "live up to its full potential". The omelette he makes every morning reflects this "you have to break a few eggs" philosophy. After finding out the truth, Foggy asks Matt point-blank how his rationale is any different from Fisk's.
  • Tammy Hattley denies Ray Nadeem promotions on the grounds that she's trying to protect him, as his poor FICO scores make him a recruitment target for criminals. Which turns out to be a ruse as she's working for Fisk.
• Cult: Madame Gao, as one of the Hand's founders. She claims her employees serve her due to faith. Her runners voluntarily blind themselves, thinking it will free them from worldly distractions and are willing to blow themselves up on her command.

D

• Da Chief: Tammy Hattley is the SAC for the branch of the New York FBI office that Nadeem and Dex work for. She has also been blackmailed into working for Fisk.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Matt was blinded in a car accident at the age of 9, and his father shot dead after refusing to take a dive not long after that.
  • Karen was a drug addict when she lived in Fagan Corners, and shot her drug dealing boyfriend in defense of her brother, only to end up accidentally killing Kevin in an accident just minutes later when she took her eyes off the road.
  • Wilson Fisk killed his own father when he was a child, to save his mother.
  • Dex is a sociopath who killed his baseball coach with a ball to the back of the head because the coach wanted to give the other players a turn. While he was trying to get better with help from a therapist, once she retired due to a terminal illness, he was left feeling lost once again and struggling not to backslide into his own ways.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Thanks to Netflix's laxer broadcast standards, the show can get away with violence and mature content never seen in the 2003 Daredevil film, the MCU movies, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Agent Carter. This is subtly reflected in the writing, which has far fewer jokes and gags than other MCU works.
  • Matt himself becomes this in Season 3 as a result of his near-death experience at the end of The Defenders, where he has taken a level in cynic as he undergoes a crisis of faith, is cold and distant with his friends in an effort to push them away, and plans on killing Fisk as he believes it's the only way to stop him.
• Dating Catwoman:
  • Foggy has Marci Stahl, who works for rival firm Landman & Zack in Season 1, and later goes to work for Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz after much of L&Z is indicted for aiding Wilson Fisk. This is mostly because Landman & Zack have hated Foggy and Matt ever since they chose to start their own firm rather than join the team.
  • Platonically, there's Matt and Foggy's friendships with Sgt. Brett Mahoney, a police officer. Brett's a cop and Foggy and Matt are defense attorneys, two professions that generally make enemies of each other (which they even lampshade).
  • Also, Matt and Elektra, though who's "corrupting" whom at any given moment is matter for some debate.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • "Shadows in the Glass" in Season 1 is primarily focused on Wilson Fisk and explores his relationship with Vanessa, and flashbacks to his childhood.
  • "Karen" in Season 3 focuses, well, on Karen's mysterious past, previously only hinted at over the first two seasons. The first 29 minutes are dedicated to Karen's past, while the last fifteen minutes are about Fisk dispatching Dex to attack Karen, and Matt rushing to stop the attack at the church where Karen is hiding.
• Deadline News: Midway through Season 3, Fisk sends Dex, dressed in a Daredevil costume, to assassinate Karen at the Bulletin offices as well as get rid of Jasper Evans, the inmate Fisk paid to shank him and who Matt and Karen have managed to track down. Matt shows up just before he can kill Foggy with a baton, and a fight of cat-and-mouse breaks out as Dex and Matt chase each other around the newsroom and Dex turns anything and everything that isn't tied down into a weapon. The fight ends with Dex incapacitating Matt by stabbing him in the collarbone with a pair of scissors and dropping a bookcase on him, then he goes into the room where Karen, Foggy, Ellison and Jasper are hiding. He disarms Karen, overpowers Foggy, stabs Ellison with a pencil, and finally shoots Jasper in the head with Karen's gun. He then flees, fighting off his FBI colleagues on the way out.
• Deadly Sparring: A flashback to Elektra's training as a child under Stick shows her nearly killing one of her fellow students in a sparring match.
• Deal with the Devil: Fisk at the start of Season 3 meets with Ray Nadeem and offers to become an informant for him, selling out his competitors who are in the way of his return to power. Nadeem is skeptical about working with Fisk, but given the criminals Fisk is selling out are ones with open investigations against them, has no choice but to agree to his terms.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Ben Urich is killed off by Wilson Fisk in the penultimate episode of Season 1, when the comics counterpart is still ticking on. As a result, Karen ends up being shifted into the role Ben plays in the comics.
  • Leland Owlsley, if he is indeed the MCU's version of The Owl, doesn't outlive the first season. However, he mentions a son, who may become the actual Owl later on.
• Death by Origin Story: Quite a few. Matt Murdock's father Jack, Wilson Fisk's father Bill, Frank Castle's whole family, Benjamin Poindexter's baseball coach and later his therapist as well, and Karen Page's little brother Kevin.
• Death in the Limelight: A massive subversion with Karen in Season 3 Episode 10 "Karen". The episode opens with a 30 minute flashback about her backstory, she's currently hiding from Fisk in the church, and Fisk has tasked Dex with getting rid of her as revenge for Wesley's death. But just when it seems like Karen's about to bite it, Father Lantom is the one who dies instead.
• Decapitation Required: Stick seems confident that cutting the supposedly immortal Nobu's head off will be enough to make sure he's Killed Off for Real. Iron Fist eventually confirms that decapitation is the only way to permanently kill off those resurrected by the Hand. That, or mutilating the body in such a way that resurrection is impossible.
• Demoted to Extra: Season 2's focus on Punisher pushed some prominent characters into the background:
  • With major roles as Matt's conscience in Seasons 1 and 3, Father Lantom only appears once in Season 2, for Grotto's funeral. He's also only in one scene at the start of The Defenders.
  • Combined with Commuting on a Bus: After being the main antagonist of Season 1, Wilson Fisk only appears in two episodes in Season 2. However, the impact of his removal from the streets is shown in great detail. He returns as the primary villain in Season 3.
• Deliberately Monochrome: In Season 3 Episode 5, we have the scene where Fisk reads through Dex's backstory, with Fisk's deciphering of what's in Dex's medical records being depicted as a stage play shot entirely in black-and-white.
• Department of Child Disservices: The incident that spurred Matt to vigilantism was when he called child protective services on a father that was molesting his kid, but they couldn't find proof of abuse, so they were powerless to stop it.
• Department of Redundancy Department: In one of the "Nelson v. Murdock" flashbacks to Matt and Foggy's law school days, Foggy claims "I'll have you know that Punjabi is the future language of the future." To be fair, he was drunk at the time...
• Destructive Romance: Matt and Elektra; when they were together in college it's said Matt nearly ruined his future because of how much of a bad influence she was on him, and when they reunite in the present, his career and budding relationship with Karen are ruined as a direct result. Meanwhile, Matt's positive influence actually has a negative effect on Elektra; she's shown struggling with self-loathing because Matt's restraint makes her feel like a monster, her strive to be better because of him causes her to reject her teachings and puts her in the crosshairs of the Chaste (who consider her too dangerous to leave as a Wild Card), and ultimately results in her death and resurrection by the Hand when she chooses to side with him against them.
• Determinator: Matt regularly continues fighting even after taking massive physical injuries.
  • Even being maimed, cut up, and barely able to stand won't stop Matt from taking on an entire hideout of Russian thugs to save a kidnapped boy.
  • During the fight with Nobu, Matt gets slashed open half a dozen times, stabbed in the abdomen, and then still manages to defeat his enemy, and start a fight with Fisk. From that point forward in the season, the large gash he received remains constant, and we see that it tears back open every time he gets into a fight. In Season 2, he still has the scars and shows them to Elektra at one point.
• Deuteragonist: Karen's headstrong, investigative nature causes her to advance the plot forward as much as, if not more than, Matt himself. In Season 1, the exposure of Wilson Fisk is as much the result of Matt's interventions as Daredevil as it is Karen's use of the media. It's more apparent in Season 2, where Karen keeps the Punisher plotline going while Matt becomes involved with helping Elektra fight the Hand. In Season 3, she gets an entire episode dedicated to exploring her mysterious backstory.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight:
  • True to fashion, Elektra's first death is in Matt's arms after jumping in front of Nobu to stop him from killing Matt with one of her sais.
  • Played straight and subverted in Season 3 when Fisk sends Dex to kill Karen in the Clinton church as retaliation for Wesley's death, a scene lifted right out of Guardian Devil. It's played straight when Dex kills Father Lantom as he tries to shield Karen, and he slowly bleeds to death in her arms. At the end of the fight, after Karen knocks Dex off the balcony to stop him from killing Matt, we get a recreation of the panel of Karen dying in Matt's arms after sacrificing herself to save him from Dex (which is what Father Lantom's death took the place of), but with the roles switched so that instead, we have Karen sobbing over an unconscious Matt.
• Dirty Cop:
  • In Season 1, Wilson Fisk has dozens of NYPD officers working in teams in his pocket. They're so corrupt that they're even willing to murder fellow officers who are liabilities. In the finale, he even turns out to have bribed some of the FBI agents in the convoy.
  • In Season 2, Fisk is warned by Stewart Finney to be careful around the prison kingpin Dutton, because Dutton runs over 80% of the contraband in Riker's, and owns the majority of the guards. After Fisk manages to arrange for Frank Castle to dispose of Dutton and Dutton's entire gang, it seems he has all of the guards in his pocket, and they actively smuggle Castle out of the prison.
  • In Season 3, Fisk manages to use a combination of blackmail and manipulation to get the dozen or so FBI agents assigned to protecting him to do dirty things for him. The only one of them who's willingly doing anything for him is Dex, but even that was thanks to manipulation.
• Disability Superpower: In the show itself, how Matt sees things isn't explained until "World on Fire" halfway through the first season. Unlike the 2003 film where it is mostly sonar, here it's a bit more realistic as a conglomeration of all his remaining senses including smell and touch. It's represented mostly through sound effects, especially heartbeats, and occasional lens focusing effects as Matt hones in on a particular thing. We only get one POV shot, where to him it's like a "World on Fire."
• Disc-One Final Boss: Finn Cooley in "Penny and Dime". He's established as the returning leader of the Kitchen Irish, a ruthless and unbalanced mob boss with a vendetta against the Punisher, but he's killed at the end of his introductory episode. With him, the Irish, Dogs of Hell and cartels are all dismissed as villains in favor of larger concerns.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Wilson Fisk is feared because he won't just stop with you if you fail or snitch on him, he will come for everyone you know.
  • Fisk bashes Anatoly's head in with a car door all because the poor bastard had the nerve to interrupt his dinner date with Vanessa, to the point of reducing it to goop. And then he proceeds to bomb all of the Russian gangs' hideouts and kill off Vladimir.
  • When they've finally had enough of him in Season 2, Nobu and The Hand go after Daredevil by kidnapping two dozen people he's saved. You'd think Nobu would know what a bad idea it is to hit DD's Berserk Button.
• Downer Beginning: The beginning of Season 3. Matt is recovering in a convent from his near-death experience in Midland Circle. Foggy is trying to find his footing to make sense of who he is without Matt and has accepted that he isn't coming back, which is greatly straining things between him and Karen as Karen is still holding out hope that Matt is still alive. And Fisk makes a deal with the FBI to get himself out of prison.
• Downer Ending: Season 2's ending is closer to this than Bittersweet Ending. While Frank does survive and escape to go start his own series and Nobu finally dies for real, Elektra is dead and her corpse is taken by The Hand, Nelson and Murdock is finished with Matt and Foggy possibly becoming irreparably estranged, and Matt reveals that he's Daredevil to Karen, which as The Defenders shows is the start of the mending process. On top of all of that, Claire lost her job at the hospital (though Luke Cage shows that she's taken up working with Luke and found a better calling), and Fisk is running his prison with ease and will be gunning for both Matt and Foggy the absolute second he's released due to Matt infuriating him even more.
• The Dragon: Nobu, Fisk's criminal partner whom Daredevil has the most trouble with (outside of Fisk himself). Nobu gets upgraded to the main villain in the second season when the Hand becomes the primary antagonist.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Right in the opening teaser of the pilot episode, Turk loads his bullet with the slide conveniently letting Matt know where he is and that he has a gun. But two minutes later he does it again even after having fired bullets and not putting in a new magazine.
• The Dreaded:
  • Wilson Fisk has this reputation in the criminal underworld of Hell's Kitchen, to the point where even mentioning his name is taboo.
  • Nobu and his organization, known as the Hand, are feared by even Fisk, to the point he doesn't dare to cross them personally.
  • Madame Gao even moreso. Wesley is prepared to oppose Nobu's organization if necessary^note  Though it's implied he's vastly underestimating The Hand, but when Owlsley suggests that Madame Gao might have decided to turn against them, Wesley simply says that in that case, it's been an honor working with him. Funnily enough, it would later be retconned that Gao's organization is also part of the Hand, meaning both her and Nobu are part of the same organization.
• Driven to Suicide: Healy, upon giving up Fisk's name to Matt under torture, promptly impales his head on a spike so that Fisk won't murder him or anyone he loves for naming him.
• Dwindling Party: Over the course of Season 1, Fisk loses a lot of his criminal associates. In order: first the Russian brothers, Anatoly and Vladimir, go down, killed by Fisk's machinations as retribution for Anatoly interrupting Fisk's date with Vanessa. Then Nobu dies, set on fire in the midst of his fight with Matt. Then Wesley is killed by Karen. Madame Gao splits town. Vanessa and Fisk are separated when Fisk is arrested. This is lampshaded by Leland Owlsley, who says: "We're all in this together. What's left of us, anyway," not too long before Fisk throws him down an elevator shaft, leaving Fisk Lonely at the Top.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo: Similar to how Season 1 of Jessica Jones introduced Luke Cage well before he got his own show, Season 2 of Daredevil was used to introduce Frank Castle, ostensibly as a test to see if he was worth giving his own show, which he passed.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first episode has Turk Barrett taking part in a human-trafficking ring while cruelly tormenting some women he intends to sell into sexual slavery. Such a dark and serious depiction is definitely a far-cry from later Defenders-related content treating him as an Affably Evil low-level thug whose schemes largely backfire with humourous results.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Unlike the first two seasons, the third season ends on a mostly happy note. Fisk is back in prison (likely for good this time) and the corrupt FBI agents working for him are arrested and turning evidence on Fisk. Dex and Fisk are both defeated, and Matt avoided crossing the line and murdering either of them; furthermore, he ensures that Fisk will keep his identity secret and never target Foggy or Karen again by promising that he'll make sure Vanessa ends up in prison if Fisk violates this deal. He delivers a touching eulogy for Father Lantom, forgives him and his mother Maggie, and makes it clear that he wants Maggie to still be in his life. Best of all, after being angry and teetering on the edge of losing himself all season, Matt finally returns to mostly how he used to be and seems to regain his faith in God, and also mends his relationships with Foggy and Karen, to the point that the three of them plan to go back into business together. Really the only less-than-happy things about the ending are that Ray Nadeem is dead (though not before making a posthumous confession video for bringing Fisk down), and Dex is being experimented on and is clearly going to come back to be an enemy again.
• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • It is late in Season 2 when Stick teaches Matt a way to track the ninjas through their breathing. (The ninjas make no sound when moving and can conceal their heartbeats so Matt can't track them like he usually does.)
  • Similarly, Matt doesn't get his iconic grappling-club until the finale of Season 2.
• Embarrassing Nickname: "Foggy Bear". Foggy doesn't let anyone but Marci Stahl call him that.
• Enemy Civil War:
  • Matt's actions against the Russians destabilize their relationship with Wilson Fisk, in turn causing rifts between the Russians and Fisk, and then between Fisk and the other factions in The Syndicate, and finally rifts between Fisk and his own underlings.
  • At the start of Season 2, new gangs are moving in to fill the vacuum caused by Fisk's downfall. The Punisher's attacks on them ultimately causes a gang war to break out, with the blood getting so bad that at one point, Foggy has to break up a skirmish on an emergency room floor.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Wilson Fisk's syndicate is ethnically diverse. In Season 1, the main gangs he works with are the Russians, the Chinese, and the Yakuza. It's mentioned early in Season 2 that some of the Kitchen Irish even went to work for him. In addition, he gets two African-Americans as allies, in the form of his lawyer Big Ben Donovan (on loan from Harlem, and who is taking up a lot of the consigliere duties Wesley used to hold) and incarcerated accountant Stewart Finney. On his release from prison, he starts organizing parlays to impose his new "protection from prosecution" tax on other criminals, resulting in him presiding over a secret meeting that includes members of the Maggia, plus a black gangster, and a Rabbi.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • In Matt's first three scenes he saves a stranger, at the cost of his sight, takes confession with his priest, and snaps a human trafficker's femur with his bare hands.
  • The first thing we see Foggy doing is waking up Matt with a phone call, making fun of his (supposed) sex life, and soft-bribing Sgt. Brett Mahoney with cigars for his mother.
  • Karen fights off a guard who tries to kill her in her cell, establishing that she's capable of defending herself and has a history with violence. Later, when Matt takes her back to his apartment, she starts asking him questions about his blindness, showing that she's curious about people around her.
  • After several episodes establishing Wilson Fisk's fierce reputation, Fisk is introduced at an art gallery, awkwardly hitting on Vanessa and showing very little self-confidence, establishing that he's not your standard mob boss. A short time later, he decapitates Anatoly with a car door for embarrassing him, establishing that his terrifying reputation is well founded.
  • Dex gets two ones that establish his different main character traits. The first is in Episode 2 when he singlehandedly kills a team of Albanians who try to assassinate Fisk during his transfer to an FBI safehouse, and executes the last two survivors as they're preparing to surrender, establishing that he is a very formidable killer. The second is in Episode 4, where he pulls a prank on Fisk by taking a bite out of his burger before sending it in, and then watching Fisk through the cameras to see just how he reacts, which shows that he has a fondness for doing petty things for his own amusement.
• Establishing Series Moment: For some, the opening fight scene with Matt attacking Turk's gang of human traffickers at the docks, as it is far more brutal than we're used to from the MCU, giving people a taste of just what they're in for with this one. For others, it's the one-take hallway fight with the Russians. And for others, it's when Wilson Fisk kills Anatoly by decapitating him with a car door.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas:
  • Wilson Fisk killed his abusive dad to defend his mother.
  • Fisk exploits this trope to get power in jail, enlisting the Valdez brothers as his personal bodyguards by arranging for their mom's rent to be paid out permanently.
• Evil Brit: Felix Manning, Fisk's new fixer in Season 3, is an Affably Evil Brit responsible for making problems disappear.
• Evil Counterpart: Matt and Fisk.
  • Both have the desire to "make their city a better place" and don't hesitate to use brutality if needed. However, Matt generally stops shy of lethal force and tries to direct his brutality towards criminals while Fisk's ambitions often impact everyone including innocent lives.
  • Fisk started off as a meek child who abhorred violence and gradually became murderous. The Murdocks' familial dark side is a penchant for brutality, yet Matt keeps it in check despite being trained as a warrior.
  • Fisk's father was abusive and coerced him into violence, while Matt's father was very loving and never wanted him to fight.
  • Both men were shown to be offered alcohol as kids. When it's shown with Matt, it's a touching scene of father-son bonding. When it's done to Fisk, it's shown as a case of peer pressure.
  • Matt's faith is a major reason he stays on the side of angels. Fisk claims he's never had the mind for prayer or religion, and in the Season 1 finale invokes a bible passage in his "I am the ill intent" speech in the convoy.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Vladimir and Anatoly Ranskahov are very close to each other, and Vladimir is devastated following his brother's death at Fisk's hands.
  • Discussed by Matt in conversations with Father Lantom. Matt considers Fisk to be truly evil, but Fisk has people he cares about, specifically Vanessa, Wesley, and his mother, for whom the feelings are mutual. This makes it much more difficult for Matt to paint Fisk as the monster he wants him to be. Fisk is distraught when Karen kills Wesley, as Wesley was the closest thing he had to a friend.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In "Speak of the Devil", Father Lantom talks about witnessing an event in the Rwanda genocides of 1994 where a militia tried to kill a village elder by cutting his head off with a machete. Then after seeing how much his followers loved him, they couldn't go through with it and just wanted to give him a quick death by shooting him instead. Their leader...he had no such standards.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Marci Stahl stops mispronouncing Elena Cardenas's name after she gets murdered, since she thinks it's cruel to make jokes about people who have been murdered. When she thinks Daredevil caused the bombings, she's reluctant to work with him. She also has disdain for Reyes and her response to the fact that Reyes has a serious shot at the Mayor's chair by building an anti-vigilante platform off Frank Castle's conviction or persecution of types like Jessica Jones, is to take a very bitter drink.
  • Frank has no interest in killing Matt, even when he has Matt at his mercy, as even after all the people he has killed, he only cares about targeting the gangs affiliated with the Central Park shootout. He also doesn't unmask Matt despite having him at his mercy since he doesn't care who he is under the mask. He later tells Karen that he wasn't trying to kill her when he was chasing down Grotto, whom she was protecting at the time, because he only goes after criminals who deserve it. In addition, he has a bit of extra hatred for anyone who'd deal in (or presumably make or read, etc.) child pornography. After buying supplies from a pawn shop dealer, the dealer offers him child porn. He responds by killing the guy with a baseball bat.
    • One of Frank's victims at the Kitchen Irish bloodbath is the son of Finn Cooley. A few episodes later, Finn Cooley captures Frank and is preparing to torture him for...his money that Frank stole. Even though Frank is making it his mission to kill people like this, he's still rather incredulous about this kind of attitude.
      Frank Castle: Your kid's in a box. But you want your money, huh?
• Everytown, America: Karen comes from Fagan Corners, Vermont, a town she describes on her first date with Matt as being less than 400 people and where the most ethnic food was french fries. She doesn't like talking about her life before she came to the big city, given what happened that caused her to leave town: she was an addict, shagging a dealer named Todd Neeman, and who deferred going to Georgetown twice because she knew her father and brother wouldn't be able to run the family diner without her. One night, after a heated argument, her brother burned down Todd's trailer and Karen shot Todd with the gun in his truck as he tried to kill Kevin with a tire iron. While driving home with Kevin afterwards, Karen took her eyes off the road to argue with him at a bad time and ended up crashing into the guardrail of a bridge, flipping the car over several times and killing Kevin (while high, which didn't help).
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Rwanda militia leader Father Lantom mentioned in "Speak of the Devil". Whatever they were talking about, the conversation ended with him beheading the local elder and his family.
• Evil Desires Innocence: Benjamin Poindexter, aka Bullseye, is a sociopathic FBI Agent that works as The Dragon for The Kingpin in Season 3. Even though he displays all the traits associated with psychopathy, Poindexter is still troubled by his own dark nature and desperately seeks a kind-hearted, innocent person to function as his Morality Chain, in this case, Julie, a former co-worker he is obsessed with.
• The Evil Genius: Owlsley, the money launderer who stays out of the day-to-day activities of the group.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Downplayed, but Fisk eminently realizes that he shouldn't have relied so much on someone as unstable as Poindexter, as the only reason Vanessa survives the season thanks to Daredevil saving her multiple times from Bullseye's attempts to murder her.
• Evil Power Vacuum: By the beginning of Season 2, various formerly low-profile gangs are fighting over the territories left open due to Wilson Fisk being taken off the streets and his allies having been killed or gone into hiding.
• Expository Theme Tune: "Beautiful Crime" by Tamer, which was used in number of promotional materials, talks about Matt and Fisk and their world's Grey-and-Gray Morality.
  We fight every night for something.
  When the sun sets we're both the same,
  Half in the shadows.
  Half burned in flames.
• Eye Scream:
  • As a child, Matt got blinded by a poisonous and corrosive chemical being splashed right into his eyes
  • When Clyde Farnum, the guard Wesley blackmails into hanging Karen, carries out the attempt, Karen defends herself by clawing at his face hard enough that her nails draw blood from his right eye. We see that Farnum is still wearing an eyepatch bandage over that eye when Fisk has him killed off later.
  • Matt, at Claire's suggestion, tortures Semyon by stabbing him through the top of the eye socket
  • Healy impales himself on a metal spike through the head, the spike entering between the eyes, rather than let Fisk go after his family.
  • Madame Gao's heroin workers are all blind, with scars around their eyes, implied to have blinded themselves after she showed them something. With her advanced age, and it being revealed in Iron Fist that she is a member of the Hand, the implications are disturbing.
  • In the opening to "Penny and Dime," Finn Cooley kills an underling by stabbing him through the eye with an ice pick. At the end of the episode, Finn himself meets such a fate at the end of the episode when Frank Castle shoots him in the left side of his face with a shotgun.
  • Elektra kills one Hand ninja by stabbing him in the eye with her sai and twisting the blade to burrow it in farther. The sound effects are incredibly gruesome, including the sound of the sai tip scraping against the back of the skull.