Adaptation Displacement: Adopted (loosely) from The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn, which got completely displaced by the film and even the TV series.
Ass Pull: At the end of the movie, Eddie claims he got off the drugs offscreen, but retained all the capabilities though a development.The TV spinoff confirms that he was in fact lying, and had simply managed to manufacture his own supply, albeit he's also made an additional drug to mitigate the negative effects of NZT.
Broken Aesop: NZT makes you superhumanly intelligent - so long as you continue using it and you don't get burned out by continously using it. The film appears to build towards several aesops about this, and then subverts them all. Apparently, drugs are good if you use them wisely. This is further contrasted with the source material, where Drugs Are Bad is not merely an aesop, but the driving force of the plot.
When Lindy takes NZT to escape from an assassin, she uses a little girl as an Improvised Weapon. When she is free of the effects, she doesn't want anything to do with NZT or Eddie.
Any other user hooked on NZT is willingly enough to torture or kill for another dose.
While it's left hanging by the end of the movie, the plot thread about Eddie potentially murdering that poor woman is haunting. Consider the scenario in which he did do it (rather than someone else, like the men pursuing him); NZT is explicitly stated and shown to only enhance what's already there, letting someone access the totality of their memory and the peak of their mental/psychological functions without inherently changing their personality, and the only time Eddie resorts to violence on-screen is when he's defending himself, as he's not naturally a thug like the Russian. So, if Eddie IS guilty, this leaves us with an eerie question: what happened in that hotel room to make him kill an innocent woman?
Additionally, while it gets glossed over by the end of the film, Eddie "skipping" time when his NZT consumption is out-of-control is terrifying. He "wakes up" at totally random points across an 18-hour period, more of an outsider looking in on what amounts to his body running on autopilot, and he genuinely has no idea what he's doing or where he's going at any point in time. It's clear that, when taken for long enough, NZT goes from unlocking your brain's true power to more or less overriding it, and it's a small miracle that Eddie ends the night alive with only a limp, some cuts, and an unexplained stopping point on a bridge to show for it.
One-Scene Wonder: Johnny Whitworth as the delightfully sleazy Vernon Gant, the man who introduces Eddie to NZT. He is killed fifteen minutes into the movie. Also, Eddie's bodyguards who also last only two scenes.
Referenced by…: “All My Friends” by Snakehips features the lyric “Popping the polar opposite of NZT”.
Squick: Not just the aforementioned Eye Scream but what comes shortly before that, to which everyone in the audience went "Oh, EWWW!"
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Eddie is clearly intended to be the character the audience is supposed to root for, his flaws intended as either quirky or the result of desperation and circumstances. Except he just comes off as an incredibly selfish and callous man, even before NZT cranks it up even further (which in turn makes him downright sociopathic). The script doesn't even acknowledging his arc as Protagonist Journey to Villain or making him an actual Villain Protagonist, despite all the things he does or get involved with.
Series
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Brian, out of concern for his audience, tries to spice up his narration so that the audience won't have to see and hear events and topics Brian is uncomfortable sharing be they boring, squick-y, nightmare-inducing, sexual, etc.. This can result in dramatic scenes cutting to things like random YouTube clips, Brian reliving a favorite childhood TV show, or the cast bursting into a Bollywood dance number (complete with Technicolor sets and costumes).
Ensemble Dark Horse: Mike and Ike, having started off as background characters with few lines, became increasingly prominent as the first season progressed.
Escapist Character: Brian is along the same lines as Eddie in the film, albeit less self-centered.
Moral Event Horizon: Other!Finch was willing to throw Rebecca under a bus to get the NZT antidote. Showing similarities of other NZT users.
Narm: In the pilot, we see Eddie Morra as a fetus in his mother's womb as he explains how wonderful NZT is. Then we see the fetus explain, in Morra's voice, that his memories of being in the womb are relaxing.
The second episode involves someone taking control of a car via computer chip and planting a bomb. But that's not what killed the driver. That would be the genetically engineered virus he was exposed to in his favorite coffee shop.
It's worse than that. Another character in the same episode is almost killed, because the woman he was having an affair with was unknowingly exposed to a virus (at the same coffee shop) which would leave her unharmed, but kill him after she, again unknowingly, transferred the virus during a hook-up.
In the sixth episode, Brian starts experiencing multiple side effects of the drug, including hallucinations, psychosis, and massive hearing loss and pain. The scenes are very disconcerting, especially when he begins talking to someone and sees an illusion of a bug crawling out of his ear, complete with disgusting crunching noises. It only gets worse when he looks down and sees a bump moving around on his hand, with the same crunching noises, implying that he is infested with bugs.
After being caught by the CIA he watches three people killed before his eyes. And remember he has perfect recall, he will never forget this.
What happens to Casey and his team after they take a single NZT pill each. Everything seems great and then all of a sudden one of them kills another. They try to cover it up and end up completely going off the rails. This all happens in less than a day.
Bonus points, Casey's cold, Robocop-like demeanor when he's on the pill.
Eddie Morra's speech to Brian in 'The Assassination Of Eddie Morra', especially when he talks about his 'before NZT' persona in the third person and when he asks Brian 'why are you trying to cling on to who you were before?'. That makes the fact that he is shown announcing his candidacy for presidency at the end of the episode even more eerie.
