- The episode begins in a darkened screen, hearing the Voice Over (VO) from Elliot. "Hello, friend." A dissociative identity is born: You, the audience, are defined in this narrative as an imaginary singular friend of his invention. And like most dates in this series, special attention has been given to this date of your birth: it is set the day after Angela's birthday party, Saturday Feb 28, 2015.
- The audience's role as imaginary friend might be said to represent the Freudian "super-ego," similar in function to the letters written in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. This compares to Elliot's narrative as the "ego," and Mr. Robot's subconscious desires as the "id."
- Most events of importance in Mr. Robot happen on or over weekends.
- The first face, centered in the first scene of this pilot episode is the face of Tyrell Wellick. He continues to play a pivotal part in story.
- Mr Robot takes Elliot to the Arcade.
- Elliot returns home to find Angela at his doorstep. She is grateful for his timely effective rescue of Allsafe, and wanting to celebrate by getting high and watching Back To The Future II. When they enter, Shayla is asleep naked in his bed, still high on molly/ecstasy. Angela excuses herself, and after Elliot slams the door, Shayla asks "Is it Wednesday? I have to move my car." Elliot demands she leaves so he can go on to research FSociety.
- It is only Sunday at this point, so Shayla's sense of time is greatly impaired here. Funny to note she owns a car, which is tricky for Chinatown in particular and NYC in general. Parking is costly and scarce.
- We're still in the pilot episode, and the 'time travel theme' is already set in motion with Back To The Future II being cited as Elliot's favorite movie.
- Elliot finds news stories about the previous owner of the Arcade. The owner's name is withheld, but the coroner report says he was shot three times in the back. This happened "a year and a half ago."
- Elliot has learned as much (actually little) as he can about FSociety, so he returns to the Arcade seeking Mr. Robot. On the ferris wheel, Robot divulges the plan to bring down E Corp and with it 70% of the world's consumer credit market. Robot assigns Elliot the task of framing Colby with his staion's IP address to be placed in the malware's DAT file.
- During the briefing with E Corp and FBI, Angela uses a laptop to present the timeline of the hack. Her laptop has a single Allsafe sticker on its back.
- When Elliot grabs the blue folder with the falsified IP address that implicated Terry Colby, Tyrell Wellick is watching him closely and suspects there is something up with this switch.
- The IP Address for Terry Colby that Elliot is asked to plant is intentionally invalid: none of the bytes can exceed 255, so the fourth byte "373" is a ridiculous value.
- Nineteen (19) days pass after the meeting, and Elliot is disheartened that there is no news, no arrests, no revolution.
- The black SUV picking up Elliot likely belongs to E Corp or to Donald Hoffman himself (aka "Mr. Sullivan"). It's a Ford Escalade, whereas he drives a Chevy SUV for Joanna and a Cadillac SUV for Tyrell.
- Elliot is taken to an E Corp board room, occupied by Tyrell Wellick and 11 of his most annoying lawyers. Why 11? Because 13 at a table is the tradition of bad luck.
- There are only twelve chairs in the board room, leaving Elliot to stand. This is likely a parallel to the competitive game "musical chairs."
- Elliot has a beta fish named Qwerty. He wastes no time acquiring a second pet this pilot episode when he hacks and confronts Lenny Shannon (aka "Michael Hansen"), demanding his dog "Flipper." Elliot does not realize that Lenny had her microchipped. (It is likely that Lenny used Flipper as a scam prop to appear more lovable.)
- When Elliot calls "Michael Hansen" (Lenny Shannon) to socially hack his security words, he says he's Sam from E Corp... but doesn't think to ask for Michael or Lenny, nor does he ask the name of who the hell answered the phone.
- When Elliot confronts Lenny a second time, Lenny is pushing a baby carriage. He was with his wife, so that was likely his child.
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