After being falsely accused of the murder of Clifford DeVoe, Barry may have to reveal his identity as Central City's hero to prove his innocence.
- Amoral Attorney: The prosecutor in Barry's case is a real piece of work, having no qualms about emotionally manipulating the jury and even going so far as to accuse Captain Singh of covering up for Barry even though there's no evidence to back up that claim and the latter has been entirely cooperative with the investigation.
- Anti-Villain: Fallout is actually a very nice guy. His problem is that he has absolutely no control over his powers (and is horrified by them) and everything he does is by accident.
- Armor-Piercing Question:
- Iris asks why Marlize is so hell-bent of destroying Team Flash's lives. She responds she's merely doing what she has to for her husband. She then turns it around by asking Iris if she's willing to do the same for Barry.
- Slater also asks Singh if he really believes that Barry wants to uphold the law and help victims of crime, after bringing up all the evidence against him.
- Artistic License – Physics: Barry creates a vacuum to "contain" Fallout's energy. Except that nuclear radiation is, as the name suggests, radiation. As such it doesn't require any medium to propagate, and would have spread throughout the city regardless of the presence of air in the immediate surroundings.
- Bait-and-Switch: Harry and Cisco vibe to a location where they think Fallout is in, only to see that the nuclear readings are actually coming from a waste truck in the area. Embarrassed, they dismiss the truck driver, not knowing that he is in fact the meta they were looking for. Harry almost slaps himself in the face as he realizes his mistake when STAR Labs' facial recognition registers him later.
- Being Good Sucks:
- Barry reasons that if he reveals his identity he'd be putting target on everyone on Team Flash's backs and by extension their allies on Team Arrow and the Legends.
- Barry leaves the court during closing arguments to stop Fallout, which unfortunately gives the judge and jury the worst impression.
- Bittersweet Ending: Barry prevents Fallout from nuking Central City, but he's found guilty at his trial and is sentenced to life without parole in Iron Heights, which is basically a death sentence for anyone in law enforcement.
- Cardboard Prison: Brought up, since no prison could actually hold Barry. He rejects this notion though, as he doesn't want to become a fugitive.
- Character Development: Ralph shows how much he's grown when he stops Joe from planting evidence, realizing he was wrong to blame Barry for ruining his life.
- Combination Attack: The Flash runs around Fallout to contain his radiation and Vibe conjures a large wormhole above the city to siphon it all off.
- Comes Great Responsibility: It is constantly mentioned that even if/when convicted with murder, Barry could easily uses his speed to escape Iron Heights. However, Barry instead fully accepts his sentencing to life in prison, and places his trust in Iris, Joe and the rest of the team to prove his innocence.
- Continuity Nod:
- Cisco shows a video feed of Barry's ramblings his first day back out of the Speed Force during "The Flash Reborn". Barry says that he doesn't remember anything he said.
- Coincidentally, Harry suggests that they refresh their memories and bring up the rest of Barry's gibberish in case they might be a sign of things to come, quite similar to how Team Flash proposed to get ready for the night Savitar kills Iris.
- Tracy Brand gets mentioned, as Fallout is being sent to her lab for further treatment.
- The DA's opening statement mirrors Barry's "I need you to believe in the impossible" speech from the Pilot Episode.
- Contrived Coincidence: Barry ends up in the exact same cell in Iron Heights that his father was in...assuming it wasn't done intentionally.
- Courtroom Episode: It's right there in the title.
- Crocodile Tears: Marlize sports some while testifying against Barry.
- Downer Ending: Barry is sent to jail.
- Dramatic Irony: Considering how the audience knows that Barry is innocent, they can't help but flinch whenever the judge and prosecutor call Barry inhuman and evil. The Jury delivers their guilty verdict just as the Flash and Vibe team up to save Central City, and shortly afterwards Barry's condemnation in court is juxtaposed with Chief Singh's commendation of the Flash's efforts to the press for good measure.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Ralph post-Character Development doesn't want to help Joe plant falsifying evidence, and even talks Joe out of it.
- When Barry had to answer an SOS Cecille basically asks him if now's really the time to bolt his own trial, until Barry shows her the SOS; Cecille immediately quotes a rule that allows Barry to go because he has to.
- Facial Horror: Barry, having spent the longest time closest to Fallout since he was running circles around him, had burn marks on his face afterwards. However, his Healing Factor easily fixed the damage later.
- Framing the Guilty Party: Joe wants to do this, but Ralph talks him out it knowing that by doing so he would ruin his own life for nothing.
- History Repeats:
- Ralph finds himself in a situation where he has to plant evidence again, but this time around he's an unwilling accessory to the actual planter, Joe.
- See also Like Father, Like Son down below.
- Hollywood Law: Barry's trial is completed within a day. At best, a trial like this would take at least a couple of weeks as the prosecution would have more witness besides Singh and Marlize, and judges usually sentence defendants at a separate hearing. In addition, the prosecutor is clearly arguing his case during the opening statement, which is generally frowned upon.
- Also, Cecile interrupts the prosecutor's questioning of Marlize to grill her about the photo of her and DeVoe/Dominic, immediately after receiving it. First of all, each side needs to wait for the other to finish their direct examination of a witness before cross-examining them. Also, one side can't use evidence, even newly-discovered evidence, without first giving the other side a chance to look at and object to it.
- One of the few things the episode gets right is that Barry not testifying is a huge WTF in a trial. The prosecution can't force a defendant to testify, but if the defense doesn't call the defendant to testify, it throws up major red flags to any reasonable person and makes the defendant look guiltyaf. Assuming the show simply failed to give us a whole lot of other things that didn't make the case against Barry an obvious frame job (how/why did he get Devoe's body into his own apartment without the latter's wheelchair, for example?), the fact that Barry refused to testify in his own defense would have been the nail in the coffin.
- Honor Before Reason: Cisco cracks that even if Barry is convicted, no prison can hold him. But Barry makes it clear that if convicted, he'll serve his sentence without question. While they understand, the team clearly wishes he wasn't such a stickler for the law.
- He also refuses to perjure himself on the stand even if it means he'll be acquitted.
- Hope Spot:
- Everybody on Barry's side sighs with relief when Joe and Ralph present the judge the pictures of Marlize kissing her husband in Dominic's body...only for her to twist the evidence around, claiming that he is her lover, provided by her late husband herself because he couldn't fulfill her physical needs anymore because of his condition.
- Team Flash has a "Eureka!" Moment about using extreme temperatures to contain Fallout, and (after some..."convincing") manages to call Killer Frost out of Caitlin to aid Barry. She freezes Fallout effortlessly, but then his radiation breaks out the ice and he unintentionally hits her with a radiation blast, knocking her out of the fight.
- I Did What I Had to Do: When Iris asks Marlize why she's doing such awful things, she retorts that it's for her husband and a necessary component to his plan of "fixing the world." Of course, neither the audience nor the heroes knows exactly what that entails yet.
- Informed Attribute: Caitlin calls Cecile the best lawyer in town — her performance as Barry's lawyer severely puts that to doubt.
- Irony:
- As Barry is being sent to jail, the Flash is being honored as a hero.
- Barry is sent to the very same jail cell his father resided in.
- Jacob Marley Warning: Ralph telling Joe what to expect to happen to him in intricate detail if the latter goes through with his plan of planting evidence against Marliz, implying that it's exactly what Ralph himself experienced, and Ralph doesn't want Joe to end up the same way.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Joe and Iris are willing to do some pretty questionable things to save Barry. Joe is willing to plant evidence against Marlize to save Barry, while Iris seems to willing to oust Barry's secret to the world.
- Kick the Dog: The judge makes it a point of condemning Barry as harshly as possible when declaring him guilty, followed by giving him the maximum sentence he could short of execution.
- Kilroy Was Here: Perhaps a minor bit of consolation to Barry's sentence is that his cell is the same one Henry Allen was incarcerated in, with the words "Henry Allen Was Here" etched on the walls.
- Like Father, Like Son: A rather dark example, but Barry is framed for the murder of another and sent to Iron Heights prison, just like his father Henry Allen. As if to punctuate this, Barry ends up in the exact same cell his dad was in.
- Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Fallout literally has no idea that he is a Walking Wasteland, and when he finally realized it, was aghast at what he's unintentionally doing to the people around him.
- Mythology Gag:
- Barry clearly states that he doesn't want to be a fugitive; the "Trial" arc in the comics was also supposed to lead to a Fugitive Arc until Crisis on Infinite Earths was greenlit.
- Earth-15 being a barren, desolate world is not just something the episode's writers pulled out of their asses
.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers implied Singh was going to shoot The Flash, but he is actually trying to stop Fallout.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Even Barry himself doesn't know why he suddenly has Time Stands Still powers or how he whisked Iris into it allowing them to talk while everyone around them is "frozen".
- Nothing Personal: Singh apologises to Joe for having to testify against Barry.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: DeVoe shows up at Barry's sentencing ostensibly to mock him but when Barry refuses to give up on the idea of stopping his plans DeVoe notably gets annoyed and just leaves.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Of the famous The Trial of the Flash arc. Rather than be on trial for killing Thawne, Barry is on trial for killing DeVoe. A key difference is that Barry actually did kill Thawne in the comics note , while here he's being framed by DeVoe.
- Pulling the Thread: A key reason why Barry wants to keep his identity secret isn't just himself. He knows that when the public learns Barry Allen is the Flash, it won't take long to figure out the identities of Kid Flash, Killer Frost, Vibe and, by extension, Team Arrow.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: District attorney Slater is right, Barry is leading a double life. But as a hero, not a murderer.
- Time Stands Still: As Iris is about to out his secret to the courtroom, Barry somehow puts Iris into the same accelerated timeframe as him, allowing them to have a conversation with everyone around them frozen. When asked, he himself admits he has no idea how he's doing it.
- Tragic Villain: Fallout. He's just a nuclear waste truck driver who literally has no idea he's causing radiation poisoning in other people, and can't even control it. Luckily he doesn't die, his excess radiation is siphoned off to a dead Earth, and he's sent to Tracy to get treated.
- Undying Loyalty: Marlize tells Iris that there is absolutely nothing she wouldn't do for her husband and asks her if she is ready to do the same.
- The Unreveal: Despite Iris and Barry's prodding, Marlize and Clifford still don't reveal what their Evil Plan actually is.
- Walking Wasteland: Fallout's mere presence is enough for people to faint because of the radiation he emits.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Ralph combines this strangely enough with a subtle "The Reason You Suck" Speech in that he tells Joe that he knows better than to plant evidence to incriminate Marlize.
