Calling the Old Man Out: Gaal calls Hari out on using her and Raych to achieve his ends, engineering things so neither would ever be near the other and happy, all in service of his plans, and also on his secrecy on why he is taking her to Helicon while insisting she trust him despite everything, and wanting to use her without her consent and instead tricking her over and over. He counters that she chose her fate because she didn't participate in the math competition anonymously, and later lied to the Emperor to save his life. In the end, she's able to force him to let her leave by engineering a situation where keeping her prisoner would kill her.
Computer Equals Monitor: Gaal destroys Seldon's ship's heatsinks by smashing the computer screen displaying their status.
Evil Is Petty: Cleon XIII manages to both complete his Vision Quest and gain the blessing of senior Luminism priestesses, defeating Halima in her attempt to show the Cleons are soulless clones. This isn't enough however and he has Demerzel kill Halima with subtle poison to appear as natural causes. Demerzel is visibly upset by this, and she herself is often ruthlessly efficient in protecting the Cleons.
Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Demerzel and Halima are talking about the former's loyalty to the Cleons, when Halima realizes that Demerzel only doing what she's told means that she's only speaking to Halima because she's been sent to kill her.
Eye Colour Change: Hugo is introduced with blue-green eyes, and later reveals he was originally from Thespis but is "blood neutral", which allows him to travel many ports and avoid the anti-Thespin persecution. In this episode, he radios the remaining Thespian authorities about Phara's plan, notably reverting to his native Thespin and original name. In the next episode his eyes are now the more common Thespin indigo purple, making both a visual and practical cue of him returning to his roots.
Vision Quest: Cleon XIII walks the Spiral to prove to the increasingly radicalized Luminist leadership that he does indeed have a soul, succeeding after he reaches the cave and has a vision of a sacred flower whose symbolism links the genetic dynasty with Luminism's tripartite goddesses. Except it turns out he lied about having the vision, knowing how important the flower is and the impact describing it would have.
