Producers stated the goal was to "smuggle in social messaging" on racism, sexism, police brutality, and misogyny while ensuring casting "resembled the world in which we live" and avoided an "all-white, all-male" show. This manifests in "Replay," where Black mother Nina Harrison (Sanaa Lathan) uses a time-rewinding camcorder to repeatedly confront a racist white state trooper targeting her son Dorian (Damson Idris), framing institutional oppression as inescapable fate. "Not All Men" depicts a meteor "infection" that unleashes male violence, with the twist revealing it as a placebo enabling toxic masculinity, rape culture, and consent violations; Peele's narration calls it "a plague of the conscience" giving men "permission to ignore decency, consent, and fear," directly invoking the "not all men" trope.