History Main / WorkingTheSameCase

* OlderThanTelevision: This trope has been around a while. In almost every ''Literature/HardyBoys'' book, the boys and their Police Chief father were Working The Same Case.

* And in Nancy Drew's own series, this often happens with Nancy and ''her'' father.

* In ''ComicBook/TheSimpingDetective'', Jack discovers that he and Galen Demarco are working the same case. Jack is investigating the deaths of several mob underbosses, while Galen is looking into the disappearances of alien prostitutes. Galen wants Jack to back off, until [[ComicBook/JudgeDredd Dredd]] suggests they work together. [[spoiler: Turns out, Bob, the bartender at [[BadGuyBar The High Dive]], is drugging the girls with a chemical which [[DeathBySex reacts violently with semen]], causing [[StuffBlowingUp massive explosions]].]]

See also StrangersOnATrainPlotMurder, MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot.

** During the World Tour arc, the Avalon travelers team up with the Guatemala gargoyles to fight Jackal and Hyena. Jackal sends Hyena to destroy the artifact that keeps the Guatemala gargoyles from turning to stone during the day. Hyena is thwarted by Broadway and Lexington, who had no idea that they had just saved their friends’ lives.

* ''Series/StrangerThings'': In the first season, three distinct groups of people (the kids; Hopper and Joyce; and Jonathan and Nancy) all run around independently trying to figure out what is going on until converging for the finale. Each group ends up 'specializing' in a certain area of the investigation. The kids do the most research into the science and idea of The Upside-Down while also befriending Eleven. Nancy and Jonathan are mostly dealing with understanding and fighting the Demogorgon. Joyce and Hopper are largely dealing with Eleven's origins.

** In "Mr. Monk and the 12th Man," where Monk is called in to a homicide at a toll plaza. Later, to a strangling at a movie theater. The connection: sequential $10 bills at the crime scenes.
** In "Mr. Monk and the Buried Treasure," this is the case, with Monk and Natalie accompanying Dr. Kroger's son and his pals into the hills following a supposed treasure map, which is actually tied to a bank robbery that Stottlemeyer and Disher are investigating. The TwoLinesNoWaiting trope is clearly present since, in the first half, Stottlemeyer's and Monk's investigations are intercut.

*** In "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife," Stottlemeyer neglects a bank robbery case because he's so fixated on finding the sniper who shot two truck drivers, and in the case of his first shooting, indirectly put Stottlemeyer's wife Karen in the hospital. The perp is the same in both, having shot the tow truck driver that hit Karen so he could recover from his repossessed car a gun that connected him to the robbery.
*** In "Mr. Monk Gets Fired," the police commissioner is furious that Stottlemeyer and Disher are focused on solving an arson-murder at a wig shop instead of a headline-grabbing dismemberment case, and the commissioner is also dealing with someone stealing his nice fedoras. [[spoiler:Paul Harley burned down the wig shop while destroying evidence that would've connected him to the death of his mistress, the dismemberment victim. He then began going after the Commissioner's hats because he found out that his mistress's hair had been made into the Commissioner's [[DodgyToupee toupee]]]].
*** In "Mr. Monk Stays in Bed," Natalie feels [[ItsPersonal personally invested]] in solving the murder of a pizza deliveryman who died en route to her house, but the police are too busy looking for a missing judge. It's when Natalie breaks into the house of the man she identifies as the killer in her case, and stumbles upon evidence that ties him to the judge's disappearance, that the two cases end up connected: [[spoiler:the judge's lover killed her with a baseball bat during a heated fight in his house, and then killed the pizza boy when he tried to intervene.]]
*** In "Mr. Monk and the Really Really Dead Guy," Monk and co. are investigating the death of a woman at a gas station who got killed in a lover's quarrel, only to be pulled away by the case of a dead street musician who seems to be the first victim of a serial killer who threatens to kill every 36 hours. It ultimately turns out that the second victim was a distraction thrown by the killer of the first victim so that evidence that would link him to the first murder would be destroyed.

** In the L&O:CI episode "Purgatory", Eames gets a temporary partner to investigate the shooting of a dealer and two tourists. Meanwhile, a suspended Goren is working undercover as an enforcer for the big dealer suspected of ordering the hit.

* ''Series/{{CSI}}'' had an interesting subversion in that two twins who were SeparatedAtBirth were killed within an hour of each other. The causes of their death have nothing to do with one another and in fact, it seems that there are two separate murder victims, both of whom are the result of very separate lifestyles. [[spoiler: Then it's revealed that the twins both used the same dry cleaner. Turns out that the one murder suspect was found out by one of the twins to be photoshopping war photos and he decided to meet her when she picked up the dry cleaning, killing the first twin (the one who wasn't his target). He then went to the real targets house to eliminate the proof of his forgery only to be walked in on the second twin (the intended target). In his justified panic, he kills her as well. Gil calls it as both, seeing as how one case was with a motive and the other was a case of "wrong time, wrong place", but they were both killed by one man.]]

** One episode has what appears to be three completely random deaths at Spring Break, all under different circumstances. But while investigating, the team soon discover that the victims were all former classmates and it leads to them finding out [[spoiler: they were all killed by the former "fat girl" they'd bullied at an earlier Spring Break.]]

** Throughout the first part of season 1, Matt and Karen turn out to both be pursuing Wilson Fisk without the other knowing it. Matt is pursuing Fisk head-on through his nighttime activities as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, while Karen is pursuing Fisk through following the Union Allied money trail with help from Ben Urich at the ''New York Bulletin''. It isn't until the eighth episode of season 1 that Matt realizes from conversing with Ben that Karen's investigation is also linked to Fisk. So subsequently, Matt finds himself being able to take on Fisk by day as Nelson & Murdock in addition to his nighttime work as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.
** All three of Nelson & Murdock's first cases turn out to be in some form tied to Wilson Fisk: first is Karen's case, after being framed up for murder and almost killed. Then in "Rabbit in a Snowstorm," James Wesley hires Nelson & Murdock to defend one of Fisk's assassins who botched an assassination meant to curry favor with the Ranskahovs, the Russian gang Matt is combating in Hell's Kitchen. Then in "World on Fire", Nelson & Murdock gets hired by Elena Cardenas, an elderly friend of Sgt. Brett Mahoney's mom, on a tenancy dispute with her landlord, the sleazy Armund Tully, who turns out to be ''another'' lackey of Fisk's. In season 3, Fisk even uses these ties to spin a false tale to Ray Nadeem about Matt being an accomplice to him.
** Through the first part of season 2, all three members of Nelson & Murdock are invested in the manhunt for Frank Castle and know that. But a case of this trope happens in "[[Recap/Daredevil2015S2E4PennyAndDime Penny and Dime]]", as Matt and Karen both find out about Frank's family at the same time and under different circumstances: Matt learns it as Frank [[ActionFilmQuietDramaScene talks to him about his family's demise in the cemetery]] while waiting for the police to arrive, while Karen learns it from [[RearWindowInvestigation breaking into Frank's house]].
** There's a variant of this in season 3. Matt spends most of the time relatively isolated from Karen and Foggy, and while all three of them are once again investigating Fisk, they're all working from different angles and uncovering different leads.

* ''Series/TheWire'': At the start of season 2, [=McNulty=] finds a dead floater in the water, and uses some careful detective work to ensure that Homicide has to take it as a means of getting back at Rawls for dumping him in the Marine unit. A day later, 13 dead sex workers are found in a shipping container at the docks, and once again, [=McNulty=] finds a way to force Rawls to take that investigation. While this is going on, Major Valchek wants an investigation into the dockworkers' union president Frank Sobotka for petty reasons, and gets Burrell to create a detail headed by Daniels to find out where Sobotka is getting his money. This detail is working independent of Bunk and Lester's investigation into the dead girls. Once it becomes apparent that the dead girls were part of a smuggling operation that's bribing Sobotka's union for dock access, Rawls pressures Daniels into taking on the murder investigation.

** The second case of ''Trials and Tribulations'' starts a larceny case. Phoenix manages to get his client acquitted by proving he was elsewhere when the theft happened... except at that very same place, at the very same time as the theft, there was a murder, meaning his client is once again arrested as he has no alibi. [[spoiler:And the murderer was the detective that was supposed to protect the stolen object]].

** In the two-parter ''In the Wee Small Hours'', both teams were involved. And a fake Nancy Grace. Heavenly.

** Fusco and Carter spend much of the first season working with Finch and Reese without either of them realizing the other is also part of "Team Machine." They finally figure it out in the season finale, "Firewall," to Finch's obvious amusement.

** The season 7 episode "Castle, P.I." has Castle earn his private investigator's license so he's able to investigate along with Beckett despite the DA's edict that he can no longer work homicides. Unfortunately, it doesn't work and he's still booted off the case, causing him to start his own investigation and follow a different set of leads from the NYPD team that lead him to cross paths with them several times (as well as helping to get a strong-but-wrongful suspect off the hook). Esposito and Ryan are both worried he'll crack the case before they do and try to use Beckett to weasel info out of him while he tries to weasel info out of her to continue his investigation.

* The ''Series/{{Elementary}}'' episode "Deja Vu All Over Again" has Watson investigating a woman's disappearance and Holmes investigating the death of another woman who was pushed in front of a subway train. Turns out, [[spoiler: the first woman's husband killed the second woman as part of a complicated scheme to cover up his wife's murder]].

** There's a variant of this in season 3. Matt spends most of the time relatively isolated from Karen and Foggy, and while all three of them are investigating Wilson Fisk, they're all working from different angles and uncovering different leads.

* ''Discworld/{{Thud}}'' - whilst most of the Watch are trying to find out who killed a dwarf rabble-rouser, [[ThoseTwoGuys Fred and Nobby]] decide to investigate an art theft, with the specific intent of staying very far away from rioting dwarfs. [[spoiler:It doesn't work out that way, because it turns out that the dwarves who killed him also stole said painting because they believed it would help lead them to the dwarf and troll corpses beneath Koom Valley.]]

* In ''Series/StrangerThings'', three distinct groups of people (the kids, the sheriff, and Nancy and Johnny) all run around independently trying to figure out what is going on until converging for the Season 1 finale. Each group ends up 'specializing' in a certain area of the investigation. The kids do the most research into the science and idea of The Upside-Down, Nancy and Johnny are mostly dealing with understanding and fighting the Demogorgon, and Joyce and Hopper are largely dealing with Eleven's origins.

** All three of Nelson & Murdock's first cases turn out to be in some form tied to Wilson Fisk: first is Karen's case, after being framed up for murder and almost killed. Then in "Rabbit in a Snowstorm," James Wesley hires Nelson & Murdock to defend one of Fisk's assassins who botched an assassination meant to curry favor with the Ranskahovs, the Russian gang Matt is combating in Hell's Kitchen. Then in "World on Fire", Nelson & Murdock gets hired by Elena Cardenas, an elderly friend of Sgt. Brett Mahoney's mom, on a tenancy dispute with her landlord, the sleazy Armund Tully, who turns out to be ''another'' lackey of Fisk's.

** In season 3, Matt spends most of the time relatively isolated from Karen and Foggy, so while they're all investigating Fisk, they're all working from different angles and uncovering different leads.

** The {{pilot}} for ''Series/{{Monk}}'' included Monk being called in on two unrelated cases, in fact by two different police divisions, only to later discover that the same man committed both murders.

** In "Mr. Monk Gets Fired," the police commissioner is furious that Stottlemeyer and Disher are focused on solving an arson-murder at a wig shop instead of a headline-grabbing dismemberment case. Sure enough, the same killer did both.
** In "Mr. Monk Stays in Bed," Natalie feels [[ItsPersonal personally invested]] in solving the murder of a pizza boy who died en route to her house, but the police are too busy looking for a judge's killer. Of course, the judge's killer also killed the pizza boy.

** Subverted. When a BART engineer named Stuart Hewson is shot and killed in his house, Monk deduces that it is tied to three knifings committed by an ex-con because Hewson's house had a view into the bedroom of the ex-con's second victim, Mark Costa. However, Monk also concludes that Hewson's killers are some crime scene cleaners who he has been around the past week. [[spoiler:Hewson had spotted the crime scene cleaners discovering the ex-con's fortune of diamonds in Costa's house. They killed him because he was trying to blackmail them.]]

* In the ''Series/{{Supergirl}}'' episode "Menagerie", J'onn and Kara are investigating a missing pro-alien politician, while the D.E.O. is tracking down an alien killer. The politician turns out to be one of the killer's victims.