History Manga / DetectiveConan

[[quoteright:299:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/conanmain02.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:299: ''"With a keen eye for details, [[GivingSomeoneThePointerFinger only one truth prevails!]]"'']]

''Detective Conan'' (aka ''Case Closed''), written/drawn by Gosho Aoyama (''Manga/MagicKaito'' and ''Manga/{{Yaiba}}'') and published in Shogakukan's ''Shonen Sunday'', is a '''very''' long-running manga and anime series. The manga began serialization in 1994 and the anime began airing in 1996; both are still ongoing. [[http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=266 Seriously, with over 1000 episodes]], the anime is currently at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anime_series_by_episode_count 16th place]] in terms of total number of anime episodes,[[note]]or 10th that is still in production.[[/note]] and having surpassed 1000 issues, it's in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manga_series_by_volume_count#Manga_list 23rd place]] in terms of manga volumes.

Shinichi Kudo is one of the world's foremost detectives, and he's only in high school. His sharp analytical mind connects clues faster than anyone else, and local law-enforcement agencies frequently ask him for help.

One day he happens to witness a crime committed by two men in black and is knocked out by them. The men force-feed him an experimental poison that is supposed to kill without leaving a trace, and flee the scene. However, Shinichi survives thanks to a [[MillionToOneChance one-in-a-million]] failure rate and discovers that the side effects of the drug have instead de-aged him into a six-year old body.

Assuming the alias of "Conan Edogawa" to conceal his survival (a combination of [[Creator/ArthurConanDoyle Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]] and Ranpo Edogawa, two famous mystery writers), Shinichi must now find and apprehend the two men who poisoned him while keeping his friends and loved ones in the dark, lest the men in black kill them all for knowing too much. The fact that he witnesses (and subsequently solves) about three murders a week in the process doesn't seem to slow him down.

As with most prominent manga, it has a number of spin-offs, including ''Detective Conan Special'' (mainly produced by Aoyama's assistant artists, and aimed at a slightly younger audience), ''Zero's Tea-Time'' ([[spoiler:focusing on AntiHero Furuya "Bourbon" Rei's day-job at the Poirot Cafe]]), ''Wild Police Story'' (a story about a group of police students, takes place before the main series), and ''Hanzawa-san the Criminal'' (a comedy starring "Hanzawa-san" aka the shadow figure appear in place of the criminals before their identity were revealed).

The North American dub is titled ''Case Closed''. Some believe Conan Properties International demanded this under the impression that the [[JustForFun/OneMarioLimit only Conan in existence]] is Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian (Creator/ConanOBrien ended up paying them to use his current show's title). Others think a distributor [[http://theblogthattimeforgot.blogspot.com/2010/08/another-conan-kerfuffle.html demanded a unique trademark]]. However, as elaborated on the YMMV page, it was requested by the Japanese marketers.[[note]]Creator/DiscotekMedia uses "Detective Conan" for their release of ''Anime/LupinIIIVsDetectiveConanTheMovie''. The inside cover of Episode ONE special Blu-ray release also feature Detective Conan branding instead.[[/note]]

There's also a FandomSpecificPlot [[FandomSpecificPlot/DetectiveConan page]].
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!!This show provides examples of:

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[[folder:A-C]]
* AbortedArc: When Shinichi is first shrunk into Conan, he attempts to report the arms dealer the Black Organization was blackmailing before he got drugged, but the police don't believe him. After realizing his mission against the Black Organization, the arms dealer is never mentioned again.
* AbsenceOfEvidence: In the second episode, the daughter of a wealthy businessman has been kidnapped and Conan figures out who the kidnapper is when he remembers that no one reported hearing the sounds of dogs barking the previous night. The [[TheButlerDidIt butler]] who claimed to have witnessed the kidnapping said that the kidnapper climbed down a tree, but the businessman's dogs routinely barked at anyone who got near the tree. Therefore he must be the guilty party.
** This doubles as a ShoutOut to the Sherlock Holmes story, "Silver Blaze".
** Again in episode 570 ''The Crime with Zero Possibility to be Proven'', the evidence was destroyed when a robber happen to rob the crime scene [[spoiler:which Conan has to resort to in order to reveal that the murderer's sister who believed that the victim was responsible for her misery and death, actually really did love her and tried to become a better person and apologized to the murderer for every bad thing he had done as he promised to her sister before she died.]] The murderer then confessed and broke down in tears.
* AccidentalPervert:
** Because Conan is believed to be a small child, he's bathed with Ran on a few occasions.
** Ran herself played the role of accidental pervert on a case when she managed to see all of the male members of a drama club naked. [[spoiler: This causes the murderer to believe that she saw an important clue to his identity and target her.]]
* ActorAllusion:
** When Conan runs into Two-Mix, everyone notices that he sounds like Creator/MinamiTakayama (she plays his voice).
*** Minami Takayama voiced herself apart from Conan in that episode. Although the joke isn't easy to get if you don't know about Japanese voice actresses and J-Pop, many foreign dubs made the actress voicing Conan also voice Takayama. The only exceptions are the Latin American dub, as both Conan and Takayama are dubbed by different voice actresses, and the Filipino dub, where Conan was voiced by the same male voice actor for Shinichi, ruining the gag.
** [[{{Gonk}} Sayuri Tokomae]] is voiced by Creator/{{Kujira}}. VisualPun anyone?
** Xander Mobus is the current voice of Kogoro Mori. In the movie "Zero the Enforcer", he gets framed for a criminal act that he didn't do. And unlike the protogonist (Ren) from Persona 5, he was nearly convicted of being a hacker.
* AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: In the anime, the members of Detective Boys got speaking roles in the first episode, before Shinichi was shrunk.
** 3-year-old versions of the Detective Boys appeared in the Magic File #2 prequel OAV, in which middle-schooler Shinichi helped a man prove his alibi.
* AdaptationDistillation: The anime tends to build the cases' backgrounds and characters further than the manga (after all, TalkingIsAFreeAction). Therefore, cases like the murder of Mina by her sister Masayo over a misunderstanding or the asshole writer killed by his twin brother become [[TearJerker much stronger]], since we see a smooth transition between the murderers keeping their cool to becoming completely deranged.
* AdaptationInducedPlotHole: The first episodes of the anime removed several references to the [[TheSyndicate Black Organization]] and its members that existed in the manga, causing two examples of this trope:
** In ''Shinkansen Bomb'' case (animated as episode 5), originally it was the men in black who gave Shinichi that fateful FountainOfYouth that planted a bomb on the train, and during the case Conan (i.e. the alias Shinichi took after being shrunk) overheard their {{code name}}s: Gin and Vodka. In the anime, the criminals are no longer members of the Black Organization, instead they just happen to be lookalikes of Gin and Vodka, leaving a plot hole in the anime that was never adequately resolved-- when these names were needed in the third season, Conan just mentions them without any explanation on how he knew in the first place.
** ''The Billion-yen Robbery Case'' involves the death of [[spoiler:Akemi Miyano]], a member of the Black Organization, in the hands of the same Gin and Vodka. In the anime (Episode 13), the Black Organization aspects of this case were completely removed-- Akemi did not die, and she wasn't injured by Gin and Vodka either. This caused a case of SchrodingersCast as the aforementioned death is essential to the plot, and she became the focal point of many, many backstories. An anime original episode was thus made into it's place to cover up said plot hole.
* AdultFear:
** There are several things involving Conan or other children being in danger. Conan has been held at gunpoint or knifepoint by a murderer or taken hostage several times, and more than once said murderer would have no problem [[HeKnowsTooMuch silencing Conan or another child]] for being witnesses.
** ''Many'' cases have children as either victims of murder/injury/etc., or as [[HarmfulToMinors witnesses]] of murder/injury/etc.. In the first case types, someone whom they loved will kill to attempt to kill the {{Asshole Victim}}s as punishment; in the second ones, the now grown-up victims will exact revenge ''themselves''.
** The 6th [[NonSerialMovie movie]] ''Phantom of Baker Street'' has the computer Noah's Ark taking fifty children participating in a virtual game system as hostages (where at least one child out of the fifty needs to WinToExit or else, all of them die in real life) while forcing parents to watch as the capsule containing their child turns grey, signaling a "game over" for that child.
** The 11th movie ''Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure'' has [[spoiler: Ran and Sonoko got taken hostages by two treasure hunters/wanted criminals, who used them not only as baits for the sharks living near the underwater ruins they're diving into, but also to test out the traps laid in the ruins themselves when they got there as well. Kogoro understandably has a massive FreakOut when he learns of this, but he cannot do anything except to wait and pray as the weather is too bad to send a ship out.]]
** The 15th movie ''Quarter of Silence'' has [[spoiler: Conan being BuriedAlive under an avalanche and everyone rushing to find him before he runs out of air]]. And said movie has the attempts on the life of [[TraumaInducedAmnesia an amnesiac fifteen-year-old boy]] as one of the biggest plot points.
** Also there's the fourth movie, ''Captured In Her Eyes'', where [[spoiler: Ran, the one who [[TeamMom always takes care of Conan]] [[ChildrenRaiseYou and Kogoro]], is struck with TraumaInducedAmnesia and can barely handle herself]]. Seeing someone who has always been there for you need help desperately, but you can barely do anything for them...[[spoiler: and that's all before she got targeted by the culprit as she saw his face before she got amnesia]], '''ack.'''
** There's the Magician's Suicide Case (chapter 131-134/episode 96). [[spoiler: The victim's six-year-old daughter, whom the killer sort-of used to make the victim surrender to him so they could kill him? The little girl has disappeared. ''And the murderer is the one who has her''. It's a BIG relief when said killer brings her back unharmed.]]
** The premise of the series in general is this. You're in a place that should be very public and friendly, only to be attacked and nearly killed. You cheerfully go off somewhere alone and promise to meet your best friend later, only to all but vanish for [[ComicBookTime who-knows-how-long]]. Against all odds you manage to survive something that should have been fatal, only to find that you can't go back to your old life. Instead, you have to watch as your friends cry and wonder where you are, while you ''can't say a thing to them''. Because if you do, ''they will be targeted by the same evil group that did this shit to you''.
* AdultsAreUseless: Any and all adults, even if competent detectives or policemen otherwise, are not nearly a match to Conan's lightning deduction (and sometimes the unique benefits of having a child's body).
** Though Kogoro/Richard gets played like this most of the time as a CluelessDetective, he keeps up with the other adult characters and sometimes surpasses them. With some help, he's shown to be ''very'' good. What keeps his talents from flowering are his laziness and impatience, especially his tendency to stick with the very first theory he comes up with. In some cases, he has the edge over Conan, as being older, he has some insight into people's emotions better than Conan/Shinichi (for instance, he can point out the difference between jealousy of a lover or a father). In a number of episodes, Kogoro ''almost'' manages to solve the case by himself (with just a little prompting by Conan), but can't quite make the last connection. (And he's actually ''solved'' a few without Conan having to step in.) Plenty of times, Kogoro is missing the last connections because Conan finds more evidence... that and these quite elaborate cases are outside of what a ''lot'' of detectives would assume and solve. Sometimes, even ''Conan'' would be clueless as to how to get the true culprit arrested if it wasn't for a stroke of luck.
*** And when it comes to apprehending correctly-identified criminals or defending innocents, he becomes ''scarily competent''. Especially if [[TranquilFury said criminals have pissed him off]] [[ItsPersonal personally]] or [[PapaWolf threatened Conan and Ran]], or if children are at stake. His black belt in judo isn't just for decoration, and it is revealed in the second non-serial movie ''The Fourteenth Target'' that he is an excellent pistol marksman as well.
*** The one time he was very competent when it comes to observation was when Eri, his wife intentionally lose her wedding ring. He notice that her ring was missing because she's wearing glass while drying up her hair, which he said a normal person won't wear it unless they are looking for something like a ring. He even remarks that she must've purposely show up her left hand just to get his attention. Conan even thought this would be great if he's this good at observation all the time.
*** In fact in the 9th [[NonSerialMovie movie]], ''Strategy Above the Depths'', Kogoro not only figured out who the real murderer was before Shinichi, he got it ''right'', when Shinichi accused someone, being wrong. Sort of. It's hard to explain, it being a GambitPileup.
** Shinichi's and Heiji's fathers are great detectives, even better than their sons, they just basically never show up. Yusaku is just ''not'' interested in being a full-time detective, being quite happy as a mystery author, and Heiji's father is probably busy with the administrative kind of police work. Ran's mother, Eri, is pretty effective at being a detective as well. Probably why she's such an effective lawyer. She's just so rarely involved that it doesn't matter.
* AerithAndBob:
** In the dub, the children of Oscar Hotta are Ryan, Kevin, Karen...and Famke. Famke? While yes, technically it's a real name of Dutch origins, it's so uncommon they might as well have just kept her original name, Fumiko.
** In the original, "Conan" is definitely not a normal Japanese Name let alone being spelled with "C" instead of "K". One of the episodes also features a suspect named "Moyono", an extremely unusual female name.
** "Ai" is the Kanji Version: no one in the right mind would use the Kanji for "sorrow" as their child name.
** Taken UpToEleven in the first Latin-American Spanish dub, which sometimes used very old-fashioned and never-used-in-this-era names. i.e, Miyuki Hyuuga's dub name was "Penélope", a name that younger people have probably never heard of outside of ''{{Anime/Hamtaro}}''...
* AesopAmnesia:
** During the episodes in which Ran suspects Conan is secretly Shinichi, she treats him with more respect, runs interference for him to investigate, and just generally pays more attention to what he has to say. But let him convince her the resemblance was all in her imagination, and she is back to scolding him for "interfering" in Kogoro's investigations again.
** At one point Kogoro is told by the doctor to stop drinking so much--and for a few episodes he actually does. But not long afterward, he is back to boozing as heavily as usual.
* AllClothUnravels: In episode 722-723, a series of bizarre and improbable events results in Haibara's sweater unraveling until she's down to her underwear, while trapped in a freezing cold delivery truck.
* AlmostKiss:
** Takagi and Satou, so many times. [[spoiler:Finally resolved when Takagi was in the hospital.]]
** Shinichi and Ran during the [[spoiler:Desperate Revival arc, the New York arc, the Lupin III crossover special (Ran's dream), and after she answers his London confession at the Kiyomizudera Temple in Kyoto.]]
* AloneWithThePsycho: [[spoiler: Mitsuhiko during his disappearance case (episode 289-290/chapter 358-360). He was with a serial killer (Numabuchi) from Volume 19, who wasn't the killer in the Osaka Serial Murder Case. The actual killer in that was the police officer who used him for the blame. Numabuchi escaped, apparently, from police custody later.]]
* AlwaysMurder: Proportionally less than ''Manga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles'', but with enough magnitude to be [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in ''Anime/LuckyStar''. Most, if not all of the non-Black Organisation culprits are so mentally unhinged that somehow their response to any slight they had with their victim is to ''straight up kill them'' while turning into some genius criminal that can fool the average detective. If it wasn't for Conan and company, Beika Town would have became the next [[Franchise/{{Batman}} Gotham]] within the first few hundred episodes.
** There are in fact a few ''very'' rare examples - two early episodes were about a kidnapping and a slashed flag. Another episode involved Michiru solving a scam mystery. In general, even the episodes where a murder does ''not'' happen, it will either be attempted outright or be somehow related. (Such as another early episode where Ayumi of the Detective Boys mistook two actors for murderers when they were going to a play that was ''about'' murder.)
** However, one case (involving a film set murder) was actually self-defense - the AssholeVictim attacked the "perp" who had brought a knife to threaten him, but stabbed him unintentionally.
** There are also cases that were suspected to be a murder... [[spoiler: but it turns out to be suicide.]]
* AlwaysOnDuty: In almost all murder cases taking place in Tokyo, Megure and his team are the policemen in charge. Similarly, other policemen have been established to take this role in regions outside Megure's jurisdiction. Somewhat justified for Inspector Yamamura, who is a known {{Fanboy}} of Kogoro and therefore frequently gets assigned to cases involving him.
* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Sometimes happens InUniverse, when it turns out that the AssholeVictim wasn't as bad as the suspects thought, or someone turns out to be a BitchInSheepsClothing.
* AlternateCharacterReading: ''Very'' commonly used, especially in {{Dying Clue}}s.
** A strange use happened in ''Moonlight Sonata'' case: [[spoiler: Seiji Asai [[DisguisedInDrag pretended himself as a woman]] just by changing the pronunciation of his name from the masculine ''Seiji'' to the feminine ''Narumi''.]]
* AmusementPark: Tropical Land, Miracle Land (primary setting in the 10th movie, The Private Eyes' Requiem.), and Tohto Aquarium (primary setting in the 20th movie, The Darkest Nightmare).
* AndIMustScream: Reika in ''Billionaire Birthday Blues'', who was thought to have been missing (or even been the one responsible for the murders), but was actually bound and taped up in a bathtub, with the cover placed over her... while it gradually filled up with water and drowned her.
** ''The Suspicious Spicy Curry'' gives it some strong competition - here, the victim (an old man) is [[spoiler:forced to hold a noose just barely aloft with his ''teeth''. As soon as those teeth give out: snap goes his windpipe.]]
* AnimalMotifs: Shinichi describes detectives as sharks.
* AnimeAccentAbsence: Americans in this series speak more or less fluent Japanese, peppered with GratuitousEnglish.
** There is some justification for this, though it's mostly glossed over. [[spoiler: Almost all of the Americans (and foreigners, come to thing of it) that are frequently encountered are drawn from either the FBI, the CIA, or the Black Organization. All of these organizations would require their agents to fluently speak other languages, as accents are very distinctive characteristics of an individual's voice. They can give away a lot of information to the informed mind. Like Conan, for one.]]
** Subverted in the London Arc episodes, where all the English Speaking characters speak in Queen's English (and only a few speak Japanese when justified to) while the Japanese characters speak in accented but understandable English and Japanese.
* AnimeThemeSong: This long-runner has (as of February 2020) 51 openings and 61 endings, and is the premier outlet for artists of Being Group.
* ArtEvolution: Compare the Conan in Volume 1 to the Conan now, especially the chin. Also, there wasn't originally a horn on Ran's hair in the beginning.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology:
** The whole Apoptoxin plot. The apoptosis thing is true, when explained. But one wonders where Haibara and Conan gained enough nutrients for their cells to multiply so quickly. And wouldn't their risk for cancer exponentially increase each time they take the antidote? Let alone that [[ImprobableAntidote Baigar Is The Antidote]]...
*** The theory of utilising apoptosis to invent a FountainOfYouth can count as such. Even if they succeed, unless they also erase memories (which effectively kills the purpose), the brain will eventually overload and degrade due to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_theory Interference Theory]]. Eternal youth is pointless when your brain is pretty much useless in the long run.
** On the other hand, Detective Kogoro is knocked out 50 times over the course of the manga with a tranquilizer potent enough to knock out an elephant. [[https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2019-03-04/physician-confirms-that-detective-conan-kogoro-would-not-survive-conan-stun-gun/.143964 In reality, the detective would be dead 50 times over by now, according to anesthesiologist Kappei Matsumoto]].
** In the ''Hanzawa the Criminal'' spinoff, Professor Agasa recruits Hanzawa as test subject for his new tranquilizer formula, which was adjusted to compensate for Kogoro's built-up tolerance over the years. [[spoiler:Hanzawa went out for ''three weeks'']].
* AscendedExtra:
** Takagi was originally an unnamed sidekick under Megure in the anime and CanonImmigrant; later show in the manga and ascended to major character status with his long love story with Satou.
** Conan's wonderful toys tend to have a ''lot'' more prominence in the anime, ''especially'' the movies (in the manga, the only ones he uses regularly are the watch and the bow-tie). The turbo-powered skateboard that appears in just about every movie and quite a few of the anime-only {{Filler}} episodes? It appeared in a grand total of ''two'' storylines in the manga, which were more than ''six hundred chapters'' apart (it was actually smashed to bits at the end of its debut arc, and for a long time it was implied that Dr. Agasa didn't bother fixing it).
* AssholeVictim: Very often, the killer is in a RoaringRampageOfRevenge due to the victim committing one or more acts of KickTheDog. You can often predict the victim in most of the episodes by seeing which of the newly-introduced characters acts like the biggest jerk.
** {{Subverted}} in "The Forgotten Bond" (episode 121-122/chapter 197-199): [[spoiler: Mindy/Masayo murdered her sister Maya/Miina because she believed that she had knowingly stolen her boyfriend Kenneth/Kenji (which also was the corollary of Miina having spent years imitating her, something that Masayo at first found cute but later thought of as creepy), but the truth was that Kenji fell for Miina all on his own. Miina didn't want Masayo's feelings to be hurt by the fact that Kenji had chosen her over Masayo so she pretended that she had seduced Kenji. A good sister until the end, when Masayo sent her to buy two bottles of cleaning solution (which she intended to mix together and create the poisonous gas that would kill Miina), Miina read the label at the counter, realized that the two chemicals could be dangerous if mixed together, and switched one of them out, not wanting to put her sister's life in danger.]] Once Conan reveals this, the killer has a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment and breaks down crying over her victim's body, [[PleaseWakeUp begging her to wake up.]]
** Also subverted in the Karaoke Murder case. The murderer was [[spoiler: the manager of the band,]] who killed the lead singer for [[spoiler: insulting her constantly, despite the fact that they had been going out when they were younger, and she still loved him, to the point that she got plastic surgery, wanting to look nicer for him.]] Unfortunately, he [[spoiler: hated the fact that she'd changed who she was for him. Not knowing how to say this, he started being a JerkAss to her, eventually leading to her]] killing him. To add insult to injury [[note]](...so to speak...)[[/note]] [[spoiler: It was revealed he had written a new song for her, planning to tell her everything]]. Ouch.
*** Also subverted in the "Kaitou Kid and the Four Masterpieces" case. After losing the ability to paint following the death of his wife, the culprit planned to only have a set of three paintings. However, because his father-in-law had scammed people into buying the third piece (in order to help pay for the wife's medical treatment), they needed a fourth painting. The culprit plans to claim the painting has been stolen by Kaitou Kid, but the father-in-law tells him that if he didn't find a way to make a fourth painting, that he would have a plan of his own. Thinking that his father-in-law plans to reveal the truth, he kills him. After the truth about the murder comes out, the culprit learns that [[spoiler:his father-in-law had been practicing painting with his mouth (having injured his hand) in order to imitate the culprit's art style so that he could give the culprit a fourth painting to sell]]. The culprit is appropriately horrified when he learns this.
** Completely inverted in at least one case. [[spoiler:In the clam-digging case, the victim is far and away the most ''decent'' man in the group, since he was the only one with enough of a conscience to still want to report a past hit-and-run to the police. All of his so-called friends were happy to let sleeping dogs lie.]]
** Also inverted in "The Culprit Is Genta's Dad". The culprit turns out to be the leader of a group of robbers that's been known to kill people, while the whole reason the victim started the contest to find the best "Kojima-san" in order to find and kill the culprit because he cruelly decapitated his dog during a robbery (since the only clue he had was that they shared a surname).
** Also used straight the first time Ran suspected Conan's identity. Ran mentioned their PE teacher is marrying. Conan asked "Since when can gorillas get married?" OhCrap.
** Lampshaded in Episode 878: when Conan tells Masumi, Ran, and Sonoko what he witnessed in an argument earlier, Sera predicted that the RichBitch Ritsuhiko Sashihara would end up getting murdered. Sonoko then calls out Masumi for TemptingFate. A few seconds later, a department store employee finds Sashihara strangled in one of the dressing rooms.
* AuthorAppeal: It's clear that Gosho Aoyama enjoys his classic mystery novels. He even brought in his characters from his first ongoing so they could match wits like Literature/ArseneLupin and Literature/SherlockHolmes.
* AwfulTruth: Ai keeps insisting that if Ran were to know the truth about the Black Organization and Shinichi being Conan, then she will ''not'' smile. She will be ''burdened'' by the truth.
** Dr. Agasa also cautions against telling Ran, but for the far more practical reason that she--and everybody Shinichi/Conan knows--might become a target of the organization.
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Kogoro and Eri, so much. Kogoro ''acts'' like a LovableSexManiac, always chasing after pretty women and maintaining a crush on IdolSinger Okino Yoko, but never actually seems to take the act further than ogling or, at most, platonic dating. This behavior always takes a sudden turn for the worse whenever Eri is around, which causes Eri to get about ten degrees colder whenever Kogoro is nearby. On the other hand, they actually try to do nice things for each other once in a blue moon. (In one manga issue, Kogoro actually bought Eri a birthday present[[spoiler:--except that he got the day wrong and accidentally gave her the wrong gift box]], and some White Day chocolates [[spoiler:(though Kogoro ''claimed'' he just didn't want to waste Yoko's present, Conan observed they were in a different wrapper than the ones Kogoro had been carrying around for her)]].) And sometimes Eri has been known to make Kogoro dinner (too bad she's a LethalChef). And both Kogoro and Eri have turned PapaWolf and MamaBear respectively when the other has been suspected of murder.
* BabysittingEpisode: Episode 566 basically has Conan taking care of a 2 year old. Silly since Conan is believed to be a six year old.
* BackBlocking:
** "Illustrated Murder". A police officer's back fills the screen some while [[spoiler:he was preparing to tie fishing line around an intercom to copy the murderer's trick]]. He moves aside to reveal it in place.
** In the movie ''The Fourteenth Target'', While Conan saw someone on a motorcycle with a crossbow in a crack in Dr. Agasa's house, Dr. Agasa soon enters the screen blocking him and Conan's reflection.
** Episode 488 "The Devil of the TV Station", happens 2 or 3 times with Professor Agasa while Conan is using him to solve the case. The camera starts at the back of Agasa's head, then pans down to Conan behind him.
* BadassFamily:
** The Kudos -- The son (Shinichii/Conan) has become a world-famous detective by 17, can come up brilliant and complicated plans, and has a powerful soccer kick. The father (Yusaku) is even ''smarter'' than his TeenGenius son. And while the mother (Yukiko) isn't a sleuth like her husband or son, she's a MasterOfDisguise who is willing to help out her family and friends.
** The Mouris -- The daughter (Ran) is a karate champion whose physical prowess borders on superhuman, and while not an AmateurSleuth like her LoveInterest, she ''is'' quite perceptive. Her father, Kogoro, may have gotten his fame thanks mostly to Conan and is mainly used for comic relief, but when he gets serious he can even out-deduct ''Shinichi'' and he's also a judo master. And Kogoro's wife, Eri Kisaski, learned judo from her husband, is quite perceptive, and ''and'' got the nickname "[[RedBaron Queen of the Courtroom]]" because she has yet to lose any of her cases.
** The Hattoris -- Heiji is an AmateurSleuth whose skills are on par with the titular protagonist, not to mention he's a kendo practitioner. His father, Heizo, is the Osaka Police Commissioner and is able to solve a case ''faster'' than his son. And the mother/wife, Shizuka, is a kendo master.
* BadassMustache: Richard Moore/Kogoro Mouri. Inspector Megure and Dr. Agasa as well.
* BandagedFace: A couple of cases included one.
** A murder happens aboard a boat with a costume/masquerade party, where some characters are dressed as mummies. Also, the detective who solves the murder, thought to be Shinichi but actually Heiji in disguise, is dressed up as the Invisible Man.
** Another example - The victim wore bandages on his face [[TheAtoner after he deliberately burnt down a motel, despite the scars are easily removed by plastic surgery.]] That fact was used by others to create alibis for the real murders—they disguised themselves as him after he committed suicide.
** The first ClosedCircle case of this series involves this as well. There are several other examples in YMMV.
* BatmanGambit
** Vermouth and Conan both rely on Haibara's MartyrWithoutACause tendencies during the Mystery Train arc to enable their plans to respectively kill and protect her, as they expect her to go somewhere quiet, age up with a temporary antidote, and let herself be killed to protect Agasa and the kids. This is also why Conan kept Ai LockedOutOfTheLoop for his plan until it was time to bring her in.
** Okiya Subaru being more than he seems was a long-running thread. [[spoiler:Simply put, he is Akai Shuuichi. Starting from the beginning can already be confusing... the FBI had Rena Mizunashi/Kir under surveillance in the hospital, but the Black Organization wanted to bust her out and bring her back into their folds. Rena made a plan with Shuuichi and Conan for her to return to the organization has a double-double-agent (having originally infiltrated as a CIA undercover agent), under the condition that her original CIA-goal took higher importance than their goal. She rejoins and Gin demands that Kir meet up with Shuuichi and kill him. She does by shooting him in the head, Akai Shuuichi is pronounced officially dead, and Okiya Subaru entered the scene. Hundreds of chapters later, Akai Shuuichi turns out to be alive -- ''Conan'' had a plan with Shuuichi that started before Reina was returned to the organization. The organization had a henchman checking hospitals for Rena's presence, and Conan made up an excuse to get the henchman to touch his cellphone, who used his right hand for this. At one point, Shuuichi touches Conan's phone with his right hand as well, which Jodie later uses to determine fingerprints found of the corpse believed to be Shuuichi. The plan was that Shuuichi put glue on his fingertips to prevent his prints from touching anything, so that he can [[FakingTheDead fake his death]], which allows Rena to keep staying in the organization without suspicion, and takes a long-standing target off of Shuuichi's back. This explains Shuuichi's words when Rena met up with him to kill him. Shuuichi said, "Who would have thought it would come to this"... meaning how impressed he is that Conan ''figured out the resulting steps of the organization'', including that Vermouth (and Bourbon) would take turns appearing as 'Scar Akai Shuuichi' to see if Akai Shuuichi really ''was'' dead, and believing it to be true based on the FBI agents' reactions. And Conan even went further, making sure that Akai Shuuichi appears alive at a time when Amuro/Bourbon is checking if Okiya Subaru is Akai Shuuichi disguised. Sheesh!]]
* BatmanInMyBasement: Both Conan and Ai did that, and they both went to Dr. Agasa's house; for Conan, it was because he is his neighbor; for Ai, she just passed out in front of the Kudo residence.
* BatDeduction: Due to a lot of cases [[LostInTranslation relying heavily on Japanese wordplay]], this became a bit of a necessity when the series was released overseas and given a localization.
* BeamOfEnlightenment: When someone resolves a case (not only Conan, but also Heiji and/or Kogoro), there's an onscreen flash shaped as a light beam.
* BelligerentSexualTension: Heiji and Kazuha.
* BerserkButton:
** Among all the murderers and criminals he deals with, Conan absolutely ''loathes'' {{Yandere}}s and [[CuteAndPsycho Cute Psychos]]. Criminals of such types often get the most scathing, harsher "ShutUpHannibal" speeches from him.
** Any time Kid pretends to be Shinichi, and ESPECIALLY when he flirts with Ran, Conan nearly blows his cover in his rage. Actually, anyone flirting with Ran or suggesting it gets the Glare of Death. He can be THAT much of a CrazyJealousGuy over her.
*** At same time, Ran gets quite peeved when she thinks that Shinichi may be committing infidelity (even though they're not in a relationship).
** Say what you will about Kogoro, but if there's one thing he truly cannot stand, it's being either tricked, double-crossed, or used as an UnwittingPawn.
* BestServedCold: After all, the main plot is to finding ones relating to the organization that turned Conan into a kid.
** Also the motivation of many, many murderers over the course of the series.
* BewareOfHitchhikingGhosts: The Japanese legend of the ''yuki onna'' (snow woman) is discussed by Shinichi's father as a subtle clue as to how the murderer set up the crime scene so he could have an apparently air-tight alibi. In his version of the story, a man unwittingly picks up a yuki onna on his way home, and though she was intending to freeze him to death, his concern for her causes her to melt instead.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Does this ever come into play. Generally, if a suspect acts like one of the nicest people on the planet, then there's at least a 50% chance they're the killer in the episode, usually for [[SympatheticMurderer tragic]] reasons. Most people don't believe they had it in them, several times even the killer him/herself.
* BeyondTheImpossible: Usually averted, as Conan is down-to-Earth and stays true to its 'no magic or super natural' setting. However one of the openings shows Kaitou Kid [[ImpossibleThief ''stealing the moon.'']] it's meant to be symbolic, but still. Then again, [[HotWitch Akako]] appears to be in the same universe, so it's played with.
* BigScrewedUpFamily: Beginning with the Hatamoto clan in Volume 3, about every four or five arcs, Conan will visit some old, prestigious family out in the country, who will more often than not follow this trope. Expect recluse children, jealous siblings, and some kind of squabble over the family inheritance, not to mention skeletons in everyone's closets.
* BilingualBonus: In the ''Chinatown Deja Vu in the Rain'' arc (chapter file 347-349/anime episodes 284-285/), the name of the Chinese restaurant which Kogorou, Ran and Conan visited literally means "Conan Doyle Block" in Chinese.
** In another case, it goes even one step further: the clue to the culprit is the word 'elf' which everyone assumes to be English, meaning the mischievous imp type. In the end it turns out [[spoiler: the word really used was the ''German'' word elf, meaning eleven, pointing at a soccer-playing person]]
* BitchInSheepsClothing: Oftentimes, the murder victim in a case normally presents themselves as a mostly nice or pleasent person up until their death rather than act as a Jerkass and the revelation of them being an AssholeVictim isn't really revealed until the denouement at the end.
* BitterAlmonds: Conan can smell that smell from cyanide victims' mouths.
** In manga file #757, Conan points out that there's an element of FingertipDrugAnalysis to this: he smells an almond scent coming from a corpse's lips, but [[http://dctp.ws/V72-Reader/V72-6Read/A3.html cautions one of the others on the scene against sniffing]] because he's an "amateur".
--->'''Conan:''' The almond scent is the smell of gas that results from the potassium cyanide reacting with the acid from her gastric fluids!! If you breathe in too much of it, you'll die!!
--->'''Everybody Else:''' ...
--->'''Conan:''' <{{Sweatdrop}}> At least, [[ObfuscatingStupidity that's what they said in the detective drama]]...
** He then goes on to [[GenreSavvy point out the difference between the smell of bitter and sweet almonds]], as mentioned on the trope page.
* BittersweetEnding: With the [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters loads and loads]] of [[AssholeVictim Asshole Victims]] and [[SympatheticMurderer Sympathetic Murderers]] over the series long run, many of the resolutions fill you not only with a satisfaction of having the [[MysteryOfTheWeek murder of the week's]] perpetrator being caught, but also with sadness as you listen to the tragic motives of the murderers and wonder that they were not bad people in the first place, but were driven down this path by their extreme circumstances.
* BlackAndWhiteMorality: No matter the reason(s) behind a crime, Shinichi/Conan will state that it is ''still'' wrong and the criminal must face the consequences for their actions.
* BlandNameProduct: Whenever a recognizable product logo is shown, it invariably has some letters changed around, such as the commonly witnessed WcDonalds (properly called ''Wonder Burger'').
** The most commonly used one, using Nichiuri for any media provided, is the ''least'' obvious for viewers outside of Japan--it's a combination of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_TV Nippon TV]] of Tokyo and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomiuri_Telecasting_Corporation Yomiuri TV]] of Osaka.
** Both a Danny's Restaurant ''and a Donny's Restaurant'' can be found in Beika City.
** There's a major video game publisher called [[Creator/{{Nintendo}} Mantendo]].
** There's also a car company called Yotsubishi, which symbol is ''four'' diamonds (Mitsubishi means "three diamonds" and ''yotsu'' means four).
** If a smartphone shows up, expected it to be the [[Creator/{{Sony}} Ony Xperian]].
* BodyOfTheWeek: It's a murder-mystery series, so its natural. Occasionally subverted; in one episode the "body" in question was a torn-up flag.
* BodyguardingABadass: An old man protects his late friend's nephew from Brazil by pretending to be his late friend and having the nephew pose as the bodyguard. In reality, his goal was to be the decoy when one of the family members tries to kill the old man to get a larger inheritance.
* BookcasePassage: Used at least twice, most notably in the NonSerialMovie ''Last Magician of the Century'' (where the mystery of the final Faberge eggs were disclosed), and the Blue Castle case, where the "hidden treasure" was really... [[AllThatGlitters the sunset from the attic]].
* BoundAndGagged: Appears during the ''Company President's Daughter Kidnapping Case'' (anime episode 2/manga chapter 4) when the young kidnapped victim tries to explain the location where she's held.
* BreakoutCharacter: Ai Haibara. Introduced more later in the manga, Ai has become one of most important characters in the series with more screen time. She is also very loved by fans thanks to her personality and the ShipTease with Conan.
* BriefcaseFullOfMoney: Just before Gin attacks Shinichi and gives him APTX 4869.
* BrokenPedestal: During the ''3 Ks of Osaka'' arc (manga chapters 293-295/anime episodes 238-239), Conan realizes that his idol, the famous European soccer player Ray Curtis, [[spoiler:is the murderer of the week. Not only that, but the rumors about his heroin addiction were, in fact, true.]]
** Which results in Conan giving him the 'I believed in you, you traitor' speech entirely in broken, badly-accented but absolutely beautiful English to Ray in person, just to show him ''exactly'' how broken-hearted he is. Technically, you could mark it as the one time he's completely shed his mask on anybody not related to the plot.
** Another instance involves a woman who worked at a pastry shop and was kind to Ayumi...[[spoiler:who had lured her downstairs neighbor under her window and dropped a flower pot on her head. Poor Ayumi didn't want to believe she could have done it, and was broken-hearted when it turned out she did.]]
** It happened again when the Detective Boys investigated a case of self-defense by a man Mitsuhiko idolized and discovered [[spoiler:it was actually premeditated murder.]]
** Ran and Sonoko had a teacher they loved and admired... [[spoiler: and happened to be the SympatheticMurderer of the ''Ski Lodge Murder Case'' (manga chapters 139-143/anime episodes 84-85), going as far as setting a WoundedGazelleGambit by drugging Sonoko and then pretending somebody else attacked ''both'' of them.]] And before that, it was ''barely'' averted when Ran learned a karate champion she fangirled was the killer in the ''Night Baron Murder Case'' (manga chapters 72-77/anime episodes 68-70)... [[spoiler: but he was trying to ''deliberately'' look like the suspect, since the murderer was his BrokenBird girlfriend. In that particular case, he was arrested for TakingTheHeat anyway.]]
** And then there's a subversion... In the "Memories of the Cherry Blossom" case, [[spoiler: Shiratori is genuinely saddened when he meets a girl who seemed to be his [[LoveAtFirstSight "girl of destiny"]] who inspired him to be a policeman, and it turns out she's a BrokenBird[=/=]WomanScorned who has just killed her boyfriend [[LoveHurts after he screwed her over]] ''and'' tried to use him and the Detective Kids to strengthen her alibi... but soon he finds out she ''isn't'' the girl he's been pining for. [[ChildhoodFriendRomance And he later finds out]] [[HotTeacher who she *actually* is]].]]
* BlackAndGreyMorality: Yeah, sometimes they're murdering to avenge a loved one, to take revenge for a dire offense, or some other understandable, non-crazy, non-utterly-evil motivation...but that doesn't excuse ''murder''.
* BusmansHoliday: No matter where he goes, people die. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] after a while by whichever of the police officers happens to be on duty in that area. Megure in particular begins to wonder if Kogoro is actually the Angel of Death, later on more accurately shifting his joking suspicions towards Conan himself[[note]]in ''The Revolving Sushi Mystery'' arc (manga chapters 655-657/anime episodes 549-550)[[/note]].
** By the ''Coffee Aroma with Murderous Intention'' case (manga chapter 629/anime episode 513), Megure even lampshades the lampshading, saying (after he wonders aloud why Kogoro is at the scene of a murder yet again), "I should just let it drop. It's becoming silly."
** Also lampshaded during ''The Final Screening Murder Case'' (manga chapter 222/anime episode 138) where the Detective Boys are watching movies in a theater and Ai tells Conan he should relax and enjoy a "child's vacation." When someone is killed at the back of the theater, Ai remarks, "It seems you never have time for a vacation."
** In episode 141, Heiji says about Conan, "Every time I see that guy a case occurs," ... about thirty seconds before a scream is heard and a body discovered. Hell, when you get those two together the bodies literally start falling out of the sky. While on fire.
** And during ''The Mystery in the Net'' case (manga chapters 311-313/anime episodes 246-247) where the Detective Boys and Ran and Sonoko independently wind up at the same beach, Sonoko says of Conan, "The reason we didn't bring him was because there are always cases when he's around!"
*** Later in the same episode, Haibara learns where Conan and the others are after they're late returning to their hotel (having discovered a murder while she was not present) by asking the hotel staff if there is a murder being investigated nearby.
** At the beginning of the first file of the paper airplane case, Conan notices how he seems to be running into cases all the time. This is the ''first'' time he's ever noticed, and this is over 600 chapters into the manga.
*** Except that in the very first chapter of the whole manga, he tells Ran that murders "happen all the time", which implies that encountering a lot of murders is ''normal'' to him. The rate of cases must have ramped up even further for him to notice that something is odd.
* TheButlerDidIt: In episode 44, the ''Three Hotta Siblings Murder Case'', [[spoiler: the butler reveals that he killed Mr. Hotta because his son was driven to suicide due to his treatment, even though the shunned daughter appeared to have a motive and was quite glad when her father died. However, PoorCommunicationKills once again when she reveals that she still loved the dead son.]]
** There is a case where the butler ends up being arrested. [[spoiler: However, it turns out that it was just a ruse to trick the actual killer into revealing himself. It worked.]]
** In episode 2, the butler was the culprit and the kidnapping was a setup to get the father to spend more time with his child, but a second kidnapper actually takes the daughter hostage and asks for ransom money.
** For the most part, this trope is averted - the Butler or Housekeeper is usually the ExpositionFairy to Conan by providing insight into family drama that family members don't want to reveal. It's outright defied in Billionaire Birthday Blues where [[spoiler: The housekeeper has ''arguably'' the most visible motive out of anyone in the house - since ''both'' victims had been responsible for the death of her granddaughter.]]
** ''The Night Before the Wedding Murder Locked Room'' inverted this trope by having the butler as the victim.
* CallBack: If you pay real close attention in "The Forgotten Bond", you'll notice a poster of Tatsuya Kimura from "The Karaoke Box Murder Case" [[spoiler: in the killer's room.]]
* CallItKarma: See PoorCommunicationKills below. But also…
** The culprit in episode 599, "A Friend of Justice", actually literally ''did'' call his act of murder karma [[spoiler:(having found out that the murder victim bilked a friend of his out of a great deal of money, leading to her death of shock—though he was ordinarily a kindly and forgiving man, this he could ''not'' forgive)]]. However, in a rare example of Call It Karma turning into ''real'' {{Karma}}, it turned out that [[spoiler:the friend had actually ''forgiven'' the con men, because of the example the murderer himself had earlier set in being forgiving toward people. In his rage after finding out how his friend had been conned in her diary, he hadn't read her final entry. (Further, one of the surviving ''con men'' broke down in tears after finding out the woman had forgiven him.)]]
* CallingTheOldManOut: ''Brutally'' deconstructed in the Phantom Corpse case ([[spoiler: File 559-561). Short version: a woman abandons her baby at a local Buddhist temple; eighteen years later, she shows up and begs the head monk to let her see her son, claiming to have kept tabs on him from afar the whole time. Not only does she fail to pick her son out of a photo album of all the temple's monks, she didn't even realize the apprentice monk who brought the album ''was'' her son. Subsequently, the head monk gave her a massive TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, which broke her so badly she ''killed herself'' right in the temple, a fact the head monk spends the story desperately trying to hide from her son.]]
* CanonForeigner: Officer Tome, the only recurring character created for the anime that never appeared in the manga.
** There's also Reiko Kujo. A lawyer and Eri's rival. She has appears in the anime for the total of four times so far however.
* CanonImmigrant: Shiratori (from the movies) and Takagi (from the anime)
** Arguably Kaitou Kid. (Originally a series on its own before Gosho began Detective Conan.)
** Don't forget Hakuba and Nakamori (They were in the series too).
** Eri's assistant also appeared in the anime before being introduced in the manga.
** Shinichi's iconic catchphrase ("There is only one truth!") is actually an invention by the anime writers, by Aoyama's own admission. It appeared in the anime from the very beginning, but didn't show up in the manga until Chapter 95 (Heiji's intro story).
** Inspector Fumimaro Ayanokoji had recurring appearances in the movies (and one filler episode) before being introduced in the manga (where he somehow knows who Conan is, despite never meeting him before).
** Yuya Kazami, an agent of the Public Security Bureau and Furuya Rei's subordinate, debuts in Movie 20: The Darkest Nightmare before making his first manga appearance nearly a year later assisting Rei, Conan and the Detective Boys in the missing phone strap case (chapter 998).
* CannotSpitItOut: A common theme for many of the characters who are in love with someone.
* CanonWelding: ''Detective Conan'' has the tendency to merge with the universe shared by his previous works, especially ''Magic Kaito'' and, to a lesser extent, a Manga/{{Dragonball}} clone called ''Manga/{{Yaiba}}!''.
* CantLiveWithThemCantLiveWithoutThem: Kogoro and Eri.
* TheCaseOf: ''Case Closed'' unsurprisingly, uses this for several episode titles, including "The Case of the Mysterious Gifts", and "The Case of the Hijacked Department Store". The original also does it in its own Japanese way, usually as a variant of "The ___ Murder Case."
* CastHerd: With 70+[[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters recurring characters]], it is needed. Story arcs usually select from one of the following herds: the Mouri family itself, the folks in the Metropolitan Police Department, the Detective Boys, the Osakans, the {{Eagleland}} law enforcement, and so on. There are times when the herds overlap, though.
* CastingGag:
** Shuichi Akai and Tooru Amuro being both {{the Danza}}s as well as being named after the most famous ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundam Gundam]]'' characters. Their rivalry is also intentional.
** Rumi Wakasa being voiced by Creator/FumiHirano, who is famous for her role as [[Manga/UruseiYatsura Lum Invader]]. Aoyama already made a [[PunnyName joke about Rum being Lum]], and Wakasa is [[spoiler:one of the major suspects regarding Rum's identity]].
** Creator/NorioWakamoto as Goro Otaki, considering that he was in law enforcement confronting pro-communist student and labor groups in the 1960s and 1970s before he shifted careers.
* CatchAFallingStar: Kaitou Kid has pulled this maneuver a few times over the course of the series, including [[spoiler:when Conan is tossed out the window of an airship]] in the 14th NonSerialMovie, ''Lost Ship in the Sky''.
* CelebrityParadox:
** Creator/MinamiTakayama, the lead singer of Two-Mix, appears in manga chapters 144-146/episodes 81-82 as herself. However, she's already in the show anyway - as Conan's voice actress.
** Again during the 3 Ks of Osaka case: Kogoro is commenting on all of the famous singers at the party...all of whom have sung an opening for the anime.
* CensoredChildDeath: The closest this series has come to killing a child on-screen was the start of the sixth NonSerialMovie ''Phantom of Baker Street'', which [[StartsWithASuicide starts with]] ten-year old [[ChildProdigy Hiroki Sawada]] jumping off a skyscraper. He removed his shoes and stood at the ledge of the balcony before [[GoryDiscretionShot cutting away]] to a scene minutes later when his superiors, who have been trying to get into his room, find [[BarefootSuicide his shoes]]...
* CentralTheme: Everyone deserves justice, even [[AssholeVictim someone who doesn't seem to deserve it]].
* CerebusSyndrome: Together with ArtEvolution; what started as a cliché mystery comedy started getting serious in its third year of serialization.
* CharacterFilibuster: Ai and Hiroki were used for such purposes in the NonSerialMovie ''Phantom of Baker Street''. It's kind of jarring to see the latter switching between a {{woobie}} in the two ends of the movie and this in the middle.
* ChasteHero: While it may just be part-SingleTargetSexuality for Ran and part-{{Squick}}, since the girls involved either were or had the body of seven year old's, it's still worth noting that the only thing Conan noticed upon running into a women's hot spring where Ayumi & Haibara had already stripped down was the male dead body. Also, upon realizing why the one who was [[OlderThanTheyLook older than she looked]] was upset about the incident, Conan thought [[http://www.dctp.ws/V69-Reader/V69-6Read/A10.html "I only saw your butt"]] would reassure her. It... [[BerserkButton didn't.]]
* CherryBlossoms: Movie 7 (Crossroad in the Ancient Capital) starts out with a flashback to when Heiji saw [[spoiler: his first love, a girl in a kimono, under a flowering tree, with blossoms floating around her]]. And seeing how [[spoiler: ObliviousToLove]] Heiji is, you can pretty much guess who it is.
** The ''Anime/LupinIIIVsDetectiveConan'' TV special involved a blossoming cherry tree as a major plot point [[spoiler: related to a double murder that takes place during the show's opening act]].
* ChekhovsGun: The Night Baron computer virus, introduced in episodes 68-70 as a MacGuffin, becomes a recurrent plot point throghout the series.
* ChildhoodFriendRomance: Gosho Aoyama LOVES this trope. Right now, there's Shinichi/Ran, Heiji/Kazuha, Kogoro/Eri, [[spoiler: Shiratori/Kobayashi (technically not friends, but they met when they were children and he held a torch for her for ''years'')]], Detective Chiba/Naeko Miike and so on and so forth...
** And quite a few of the suspects/potential victims they run into along the way are childhood friends who become couples.
* ChildrenAreInnocent:
** The Detective Boys have retained much of their cheerful innocence despite all the murders and other crimes they've been witness to.
** An anime episode had a culprit try to exploit this trope. Having met Haibara and noticed she's smarter than the average first grader, the culprit kidnaps her, poses as a kidnap victim alongside her, and manipulates their surroundings as a way of establishing an alibi. The culprit's goal is that Haibara will provide a sufficiently detailed testimony whose honesty won't be questioned because she's a child.
* CleanFoodPoisonedFork: The story "Karaoke Box Murder Case" had Tatsuya Kimura being poisoned by Mari Terahara using potassium cyanide, with the poison kept on Tatsuya's jacket. The poison was applied to the place's Tatsuya was known to handle his jacket whenever he took it off, before he ate using his hands and ended up being poisoned to death.
* ClearTheirName:
** In the movie ''Zero the Enforcer'', Kogoro becomes the prime suspect in an explosion on a conference venue that killed at least one police officer and injured several others, [[spoiler: Furuya]] and Kazami included. It turns out [[spoiler: the former intentionally made Mouri the scapegoat partly so Conan would get involved in the investigation of the true perpetrator and partly to prevent the MPD from ruling it as an accident and thus closing the case.]]
** In the following movie ''Fist of the Blue Sapphire'', KID brings Conan to Singapore for this exact purpose, as he has been made the scapegoat for the murder of a lawyer and later on that of a secretary. TheReveal shows that [[spoiler: Rishi planted a KID card in the first crime scene in order to draw him to Singapore and throw a wrench into Leon's plans, as the latter needed the jewel as a bargaining chip with the pirates.]]
* ClingyJealousGirl:
** Kazuha gets a little irrational when she believes that Heiji is seeing someone else; Kazuha's ''first'' scene in the anime has her confronting Ran because she believed Heiji was interested in her. She's ''most'' embarrassed when Ran cleared it up. And in her second appearance, she even gets irritated because Ran is wearing a similar outfit with Heiji.
** Ran, too, gets terrifyingly intense whenever any perceived infidelity on Shinichi's part pops up.
** Ayumi is similarly jealous of Ai's relationship with Conan until Ai assures her she doesn't care about Conan in that way.
* CloakAndDagger: Subverted. The Black Organization, a crime syndicate, seems to have this going on, but many members seem to have romantic and familial ties to one another.
* ClockDiscrepancy: Also happens occasionally; once, a police officer realized that his roommate was up to no good because he kept all of his clocks 5 minutes fast to make sure he was never late to work, but the roommate reset the clocks to read accurately as part of his plot to fudge with his alibi. (Fortunately, more substantial proof of guilt is also found.)
* ClothesMakeTheSuperman: Conan wears a pair of shoes, a watch, bow tie, suspenders, and later a belt that give him super-human powers in order to defend himself.
* CluelessMystery: The stories play fair, but some might as well be clueless in the U.S., given culturally specific, untranslated (untranslatable) clues and sometimes the just plain weird and obscure "evidence" the writer sometimes tries to pull.
* CodeName: High-ranking members of the Black Organization use the names of alcoholic beverages as their code names. So far, women have exclusively used wines or wine-based cocktails.
* ColonyDrop: The CopKiller culprit of the movie ''Zero the Enforcer'' hacks a decommissioned satellite to send it straight to the MPD headquarters. While Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Ayumi [[spoiler:successfully separated the capsule from the rest of the body by blowing up the latter with Agasa's drone, the former's parachute fails to deploy and its trajectory ended up heading straight for the building housing tens of thousands of evacuees. Conan and Amuro eventually made it in time to alter the capsule's course such that it grazes said building and crashes down to Tokyo Bay.]]
* ComicBookTime:
** A more extreme case, as it frequently references the current time of year, with some holidays celebrated more than once, yet after over 20 years of chapters/episodes, Conan is still in the first grade. Granted, this is necessary to the whole point of the series; if Conan aged in real time, he would be older than he was before the de-aging.
** The characters are always shown to be using whatever technology was current when the chapters were written in published. Over the years, there have been noticeable upgrades in electronics such as cell phones, portable music players, tablets, and computers.
** There have also been changes in relevant Japanese laws over the course of the series. For example, when the series first started, the statute of limitations for murder in Japan was only 15 years, which is mentioned in several episodes. Over the course of the series, this has changed to 25 years. More recently, Japan has eliminated the statute of limitations for murder, meaning that no more episodes can be based on finding the killer for an old murder just days before the limit runs out.
** A clear example can be seen during the time Conan is investigating Eisuke Hondou; the "Shadow of the Black Organization" arc combines two cases that take place at [[UsefulNotes/JapaneseHolidays New Years and Setsuban]] respectively, while his disappearance in the next plot arc happens at the end of December. The latter arc keeps things vague by referring to an event that happened a few hundred episodes before Eisuke Hondou even appeared as "several months ago".
** On multiple occasions, specific years are referenced, however the relationship of those years to the current year are not consistent. The anime universe is ahead by two years because the manga came out in 1994 and the anime premiered in 1996-- in episode 33 (a filler episode), it was 1978 "16 years ago"-- hence it was 1994 when the episode happened, yet Conan writes a 1996 date in the special place mentioned by Dr. Agasa in his treasure hunt. Chapter 303 states that the year 2000 has already passed.
** The series still maintains that only a few months have passed though: in the recent Aquarium Case (Manga chapters 882-884 / anime eps. 772/773) Ran reminisces that she went to the same aquarium with Shinichi just a few months ago.
--->'''Ran''': It hasn't been a year, but it seems like it happened so long ago.
** A huge problem with this 'only a few months have passed' statement is that even if one were to condense the series down to its plot-and-character-relevant episodes, ignore the [[TechnologyMarchesOn upgrading technology]], and dismiss the repeated holidays/changing seasons, it still amounts to well over a years worth of events.
** Another glaring example is the case that occurred in chapters 972-974, which happened 10 years prior to the story, yet Yukiko was able to take pictures with a '''cellphone''' and send them on Yusaku's notebook and the latter was also able to read freshly reported news on the internet. If we pretend that the case happened in 1984, it's very implausible from a realistic perspective.
** According to arc 301 (manga chapters 1047-1050, the first ''217 cases'', or chapters 1-752, all took place within the space of just six months.
* CommanderContrarian: In cases where all or most of the suspect pool are old friends, some will go out of their way to nay-say the heroes' deductions at every turn (especially if the actual perp is too meek to speak up for themselves). Depending on the context, these naysayers can come off as sympathetic or even heartbreaking[[note]]Such as the senior monks in the Tengu Murder Case, who're desperate to believe the temple's youngest member didn't do it[[/note]] or [[HateSink just plain obnoxious]].
* CompulsorySchoolAge: See ComicBookTime, above.
* ConnectTheDeaths
* ConvictionByContradiction: Happens a bit, sometimes with FridgeLogic. Not as much as in some other series, though. Partially justified in that Conan/Kogoro usually forces the accused person to come clean.
* ConvictionByCounterfactualClue: A few cases were solved by stuff that wouldn't prove anything in other parts of the world, or not everyone would believe it.
* CoolOldGuy: Jirokichi Suzuki, uncle of Sonoko/Serena. Kept publicly challenging Kaitou Kid with highly elaborate setups [[spoiler:and had Conan steal the limelight every damn one time]].
* CoordinatedClothes:
** In her début scene, Kazuha is very jealous when Ran [[DressesTheSame accidentally shows up in the same shirt]] as Heiji, and so Ran changes out of it. Kazuha and Heiji are childhood friends who claim to be LikeBrotherAndSister but they're really a couple who just haven't started dating yet. Kazuha thought that Ran was the person Heiji was secretly talking to over the phone and wanted to meet with in person, and she interprets the outfits as intentional.
** Two identical [[spoiler: necklaces]] are a subtle hint that another pair of characters are romantically inclined.
** At the end of the mystery, Ran and Kazuha end up switching shirts for a BrickJoke. Ran's wearing a shirt that happens to be similar to Heiji's current outfit, so she has Kazuha wear it instead. Kazuha feels super embarrassed, but Heiji is oblivious as to the romantic implications. Conan snarks to himself that those two are more like a straight-man and funny-guy duo than a couple.
* CostumePorn: In-universe case: the "Kimono Goddess" {{filler}} case happens in an inn that possesses [[KimonoFanservice LOTS of beautiful and very pricey female kimonos]] (which make Ran [[CutenessProximity squeal in amazement]]) and is near the shrine of the aforementioned Goddess. [[spoiler: The {{Asshole victim}}s, Asuka and Ema, appear dead in carefully-arranged crime scenes that involve such kimonos: this is because they caused the death of a girl who was a big devotée of the Kimono Goddess.]]
** Even more so, there's a backstory to the myth of the Goddess, and it also brings up the trope. According to it, a NaiveEverygirl named Koharu received a trunk of beautiful kimonos as thanks from a daimyo whose life she saved. The jealous daughters of the village leader accused her of theft to get them, and poor Koharu was executed. That same night, the two girls were found dead -- also in carefully-arranged scenes involving these kimonos, which were supposedly caused by Koharu's soul which had become a vengeful spirit. To appease her, she was from then on referred to as the Kimono Goddess.
** Then there's a case that involved an ElegantGothicLolita girl. the anime version gives us a brief tour through her ''amazing'' EGL wardrobe. [[spoiler: Too bad she's the victim of the case]]
* CouchGag: Part of the opening and ending are always clips of that episode.
* CranialEruption: After the DopeSlap.
* CreatorCameo: In-universe example in ''The Phantom of Baker Street''. Dr. Agasa, who helped program the game the kids are trapped in, and Shinichi's father, who wrote the scenario for it, appear in a photo as Watson and Holmes, respectively. In addition, Irene Adler's appearance and personality were [[WriteWhoYouKnow based on Shinichi's mother]].
* CriminalMindGames: A number of episodes (especially the longer TV specials) involve some criminal leaving a trail of clues--either because they secretly want to be caught and stopped, or because they're just AxCrazy. For whatever reason, many of these seem to involve bombs.
** One TV special had Conan and Heiji running all over a baseball stadium to try to catch a would-be stadium bomber who sent them clues via abandoned mobile phones with a specific time limit to find the next one.
** "Trembling Metropolitan Police Headquarters: 12 Million Hostages" involved a mad bomber who sent a clue to his next target to the timer screen of his current bomb…seconds before its detonation.
*** This one culprit did it as part of a SadisticChoice; Either one of the police he hated so much would [[HeroicSacrifice die to get the hint]], or they'd defuse the bomb, saving their own life and dooming hundreds of innocents.
** The London Arc had a bomber leaving a trail of Sherlock-Holmes-themed clues all over London for Conan to chase down in order to stop his next bombing.
* CrossOver: ''Anime/LupinIIIVsDetectiveConan''. There's also [[Anime/LupinIIIVsDetectiveConanTheMovie a full crossover movie.]]
** The 11th NonSerialMovie's opening gambit involves a FakeCrossOver wherein it turns out that the robbers in a car chase are wearing Lupin and Fujiko ''masks'' and Satou is a fan of the manga ("How dare he wear the mask of my first love?").
** For that matter, the Lupin III crossover special probably also counts as "fake", from the point of view of overall series continuity. When Lupin is a manga in the movie and a person in the special, and the TV series tends to use LawyerFriendlyCameo names to refer to other TV shows ("Kamen Yaiba", "Urban Hunter", "Gomera"), it's hard to tell ''what'' Lupin's relationship is to the "main" Conan continuity. Possibly intentional, given Lupin has NegativeContinuity, this may be carrying over for when he appears to Conan.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: It's easy to forget about Kogoro's black belt in Judo and marksmanship skills given the way he's portrayed most of the time. He's also got a pretty good head on his shoulders, he just doesn't take time to use it. However, when it's personal, children are at stake, old friends are involved, or the criminal threatens Ran or Conan, he breaks out of it. Takagi also has his moments.
* CutAndPasteNote: Often used in blackmail.
* CuteLittleFangs: Sera Masumi.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:D-F]]
* DancingTheme The 8th opening has Conan ''para-para'' dancing in a very... serious way.
** the 51st opening saw Conan dancing once again, though this time in 3D.
* DarkerAndEdgier:
** The Funimation dub of one episode made the killer's motivation ''considerably'' less sympathetic (which made his breakdown and confession considerably more creepy); in the original version, [[spoiler:the killer wanted revenge on the man who let his wife die; in the dub, the two men conspired to kill the wife to collect on a life insurance policy and the killer turned on the accomplice to keep him from blabbing.]]
** The dub of another episode kept the motivation, but [[spoiler:changed the killer's fate. In the dub, a desperate woman who had killed a man who'd been threatening her (and was planning to make good on his threats) is sentenced to life in prison; the original version had ended with her being able to rebuild her life.]]
** Also, some of the {{non serial movie}}s are pretty dark themselves. Movie 17 had the cast ''finding a severed arm on a table''. They also still show some of the [[DiesWideOpen corpses with open eyes]], something the anime has abandoned by 2004.
** The Holmes Revelation arc features a killer far, ''far'' worse than any Conan has dealt with in the past. It was so dark that the killer's past deeds in the manga had to be [[{{Bowdlerise}} toned down]] in the anime.
* DarkSecret: Some cases deal with the victim threatening to some kind of big secret that happened in the past with the culprit killing him/her to keep the secret hidden. The secret usually comes out during the deduction.
* DatedHistory: In the 3rd NonSerialMovie ''The Last Wizard of the Century'' (released in 1999), it was revealed that Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia survived the Russian Revolution and escaped to and settled in Japan with the help of a Japanese craftsman. This revelation, while plausible (though far-fetched) in 1999, is no longer historically possible today as her missing remains were found in Russia in 2007 and confirmed in 2009.
* DatePeepers: Satou and Takagi have a date in an AmusementPark, with half the police force trying to make it fail without being seen. They go so far as to send Agasa and the Detective Boys there (as "thanks for helping solve so many cases"), then call Agasa away in order to saddle Satou and Takagi with the kids.
** If he doesn't manage to tag along with Ran whenever she's out on a date, then you can bet that [[GreenEyedMonster Conan]] will be doing this.
* DeadpanSnarker: Shinichi has his moments, particularly when Kogoro/Richard is around.
* DeathBySecretIdentity: Pisco, a member of the [[TheSyndicate Black Organization]], figures out Ai's identity, but he's executed by Gin for screwing up on an assassination before he can say anything.
** The same scenario occurs in the 13th NonSerialMovie, with operative Irish executed before he can share his discovery of Conan's identity. Subverted by Vermouth; she also knows, but keeps mum due to her friendship with Shinichi's mother [[spoiler:(and because Shinichi and Ran saved her life the previous year)]] and perhaps also a desire to see whether or not Shinichi succeeds in taking the organization down.
* DeathInTheClouds: Featured in both ''The Locked Room in the Sky: Shinichi Kudo's First Case'' (anime episode 162/manga volume 21) and the 8th NonSerialMovie ''Magician of the Silver Sky''.
* {{Deconstruction}}: The spinoff series ''Hanzawa-san the Criminal'', written by Aoyama himself and drawn by Mayuko Kanba, tells the story of a CountryMouse who moved to Beika and comedically portrays the reality of life in a city where gruesome murders happen several times a month.
* DemonHead: This happens a lot beginning in the late 100s to early 300s when one character is yelling at another (usually in the more comedic episodes). Is usually Ran or Kogoro but could be anyone.
* DetectivePatsy: Several [[MonsterOfTheWeek Killers]] of the Week hire Kogoro as a detective to use him in their alibi. This would usually work if it weren't for Conan, but considering Kogoro's undeserved [[FamedInStory reputation]] as one of Japan's [[GreatDetective greatest detectives]], [[TooDumbToLive it makes those killers look like idiots for choosing him of all detectives]]. Once the culprit actually didn't recognize him when picking him as her patsy and was shocked when he revealed himself as Kogoro Mori.
* DeusExMachina: Oh dear, we need Conan to complete a task we've never shown him having any skill in? No problem! Just say he learned it while he was still Shinichi on a trip in Hawaii with his parents. Shooting a gun? Check. Driving a car? Check. Driving a speed boat? Check. ''Flying a helicopter''? And so on and so forth. (''All'' of these examples come from the [[NonSerialMovie Non Serial Movie]]s, which tend to be more action-oriented than the series and are not necessarily considered canonical, so it's understandable that they might play a little more fast and loose with Conan's backstory.) [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in [[http://skyechan.deviantart.com/art/DC-The-Running-Joke-220183105 this comic.]]
* DiegeticSoundtrackUsage: The Detective Boys keep singing openings/endings of the series when they go camping. The theme songs also frequently appear when characters sing karaoke.
* DiesWideOpen:
** Detective Conan basically ABUSES this trope for most of the manga. The anime followed the manga most of the time up until ''The Revival of the Dying Message'' (episodes 172-173). Episodes between the aforementioned case and ''Head-to-Head Match with the Black Organization: A Dual Mystery on a Full Moon Night'' (episode 345) still played the trope straight, but with decreasing frequency. MoralGuardians and ExecutiveMeddling may have played a part here.
** It's in fact a clue in the ''Princess and Dragon Palace Arc''. The first victim, Taira, was laid down peacefully with her eyes properly closed while the second victim was brutally murdered which [[spoiler:revealed that the murderer knew that Taira was Mistress Miyako Kaneshiro, who disappeared six years before the story.]]
** In the only case since Episode 345 to play this trope straight, ''Bathroom Where Ran Collapses As Well'' (episodes 740-741), it was also used as a clue. [[spoiler: The victim hid her killer's contact lens on her open eye.]]
* DisproportionateRetribution: The motive in quite a lot of cases. Even the general cases can qualify for this due to the fact that often the culprit's first instinct is to ''murder'' the person that did them wrong, directly or indirectly. Does everyone in this world have a few screws loose? However, below are some examples that truly take the cake.
** Your son practiced baseball too hard, and was hit by a truck clearly due to his exhaustion? You get pay back by blowing up the company that owns the truck, and attempting to blow up a baseball stadium, potentially killing thousands of innocent people.
** There was a Sherlock Holmes related arc in the manga where the murderer killed an author and his own girlfriend, because he wasn't happy the guy wrote a critically lauded story where Irene Adler laughed at Holmes. That's right, the guy murdered two people in real life (and attempted to kill a third) because of ''fanfiction''.
** The ''Golden Apple Arc''. A stage actress named Rose killed her co-star actor because she didn't want anyone else but him to be the "Angel Michael".
** In Episode 345, the killer was motivated initially to kill the host and producer of the Halloween cruise because he hated the new movie series said host was working on. He complained on several Internet discussion boards until the Organization approached him with a working murder method. He initially refused, but then was forced into it because he was sent pictures of his wife and children.
** The NonSerialMovie ''The Fourteenth Target'' is all about this. The killer's main victims [[spoiler:injured him in a car accident which made him lose his sense of taste and ruined his profession as a sommelier]], which was a dick move on their part, but killing them in return was pretty excessive. Then he also [[spoiler:blinds and tries to kill a man just for ''teasing'' him about his profession,]] which unfortunately for the near-victim, was SeriousBusiness for the killer.
* DopeSlap: Kogoro does this to Conan quite often when he catches the boy snooping where he shouldn't. More often than not he uses his fist (and sometimes even gives Conan a full noogie), resulting in CranialEruption. But this is still played for laughs.
* TheDragon: Arguably Gin and Vermouth to "Ano Kata."
* DramaticIrony:
** In the June Bride Murder Case (episode 18), the killer attempts to get back at the police officer who accidentally killed his mother years ago by poisoning the officer's daughter via her favorite drink... but after the killer almost succeeds, it's revealed that she was [[spoiler:his childhood love]], and it was ''he'' who [[spoiler:got her into drinking Lemon Tea/Punch in the first place, because he'd bring them to her all the time!]] Thankfully, it does have a better ending, as Conan reveals that[[spoiler: the two still got married years later; and that the culprit was given a light sentence because the bride, having already figured out that her husband-to-be was the boy from her memories, willingly drank the poison]].
** Also in the Luxury Liner Serial Murder Case (episodes 22-23), it's rather ironic how the new groom was the person with the most ''motive'' to kill the Hatamoto/Hannigan family. The family company bought out the company belonging to ''his father'', who later committed suicide and left him to be put into foster care. He did want to get close to the family at first, but decided to let bygones be bygones after falling in love with his now-wife. The actual killer of course is well aware of who the first suspect would be.
** Ran not knowing that Conan is really Shinichi counts as this for the whole series, although she does come close to discovering it on more than one occasion.
* DreamingOfThingsToCome: In episode 118, Heiji dreams that Kudo gets stabbed in the chest and dies. [[spoiler:He later gives Conan his good luck charm, and the PocketProtector prevents Conan from being fatally wounded by a knife.]]
* DrivenToSuicide: The aforementioned AssholeVictim was often revealed to have caused one in the past.
** Shinichi has also saved at least two suspects from committing suicide after he'd done his PullTheThread thing, and feels that one of his [[MyGreatestFailure greatest failures]] was the inability to prevent such a suicide.
* DrivesLikeCrazy:
** Kogoro is called out for being a bad (though not necessarily "like crazy") driver in a number of episodes, beginning all the way back in episode 2. (He rents cars rather than owning one, and hence does not have as many opportunities for practice.)
** Shinichi's mother, Yukiko, also drives like crazy but at the opposite end of the spectrum: she is an expert driver in all respects (perhaps as a result of her roles as an action movie heroine), but drives only high-performance sports cars and believes that speed limits only apply to other people ("Shinichi's New York Case," "Secret of Tohto Studio").
** Officer Satou is another crazy-good driver whose unmarked patrol car is a high-speed sports car. She has the endearing habit of screaming at the top of her lungs because it helps her concentration when she drifts around curves.
* DubNameChange:
** [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-Zagged]]. In the Funimation dub, where most characters (with the exception of Conan) got American names, however TMS eventually ditched this as recent English material [[note]] such as ''Conan'''s appearance in ''VideoGame/GranblueFantasy'' as well the ''Detective Conan Runner'' app (renamed ''Case Closed Runner'' in some territories including North America) [[/note]] as well as the dubs of the ''Episode One'' special, movie 21 (''The Crimson Love Letter'') and movie 22 (''Zero the Enforcer'') has kept the original Japanese names and terminology as is with the only remnant of this being Creator/VizMedia's translation of the manga.
** The first Latin American Spanish dub had this [[note]] With Shin'ichi's name being "Bobby Jackson" in that dub and Conan's last name being "Blassy" [[/note]], but much like in English, this too was dropped in favor of the Japanese names.
* DudeShesLikeInAComa: Subverted. Takagi looked like he was passed out during file 637, a bit before Satou kissed him. He was perfectly conscious afterward. The Shonen Tantei Dan had used the excuse that Takagi had just taken medication before, so Satou and Takagi actually got to kiss, instead of the usual issue where they almost kiss, but always fail.
* DyingClue: Multiple examples listed on that page. One really has to marvel at the amazingly intricate code messages most normal people in this series can conjure from out of nowhere ''while bleeding to death''.
* DysfunctionalFamily: There's usually a case revolving around a very troubled, combative family.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
** Mostly averted (much to the consternation of many fans), as the series' [[StrictlyFormula formula]] was set down almost immediately after the OriginsEpisode, and Aoyama rarely budges from it. Early-manga Ran, however, is noticeably more HotBlooded and petty than her later AllLovingHero characterization; in the ''Art Museum Murder Case'', Conan/Shinichi implies she ''regularly'' busts out karate moves on furniture when she doesn't get her way.
** The early volumes try to play up Dr. Agasa as a BunglingInventor, with Shinichi saying ''to his face'' that his lab's turned out nothing but junk. Later volumes? Intelligence agents flat-out admit he's making toys [=MI6=] could only dream of, and everyone ([[NoHeroToHisValet except Ai]]) treats him with unflinching respect.
** Before the Stun Gun Wristwatch was introduced, Conan used blunt force to knock Kogoro out (like kicking an ashtray upside his head).
** Sonoko was a lot more vindictive towards Ran in her first appearance, which shows when she considered seducing Shinichi to get back at her because a guy she liked was more interested in her. This is odd for two reasons: 1. It's later established that she doesn't like Shinichi due to his disappearance causing Ran so much distress. 2. It's incredibly out of character of her to act so spiteful to her best friend.
* EasilyForgiven: Shinichi tends to forgive people more easily, when their actions haven't killed anyone yet, are based on misunderstandings, and/or the perpetrator is regretting their actions. He will then keep quiet and not report anything to the police, if that is the wish of the victim as well.
** In Chapter 78-80, the victim forgives the culprit, her fiancé, quickly, as she understands that he poisoned her out of revenge for his mother (he also regretted it after learning that they are each other's {{first love}}s). He also got a lighter sentence, because she knew her drink was poisoned and she drank it willingly. Three years later, they finally married.
** In Chapter 163-165, a woman poisons her stepbrother's fiancée out of jealousy. However, she is aware that she was just a HopelessSuitor and killing her future sister-in-law would only make her brother unhappy. After her victim is saved and wakes up, she apologizes for subjecting her fiancé to a SecretTestOfCharacter, unknowingly hurting the feelings of the perpetrator.
** In Chapter 322-324, a pop star attacked her former band member, because she thought her friend was about to marry the man she loves. The victim only wanted to make the man she ''really'' loves jealous, and didn't inform the culprit of it. Almost killing her friend drives the culprit to suicide, which Conan barely prevents.
** In Chapter 801-803, a man stabs his wife in the chest, because he is fed up with her mood-swings and because she destroyed his relationships with his friends and co-workers behind his back. However, he is relieved to see her surviving, then feels guilty for stabbing her and making it look like self-defense to get away with it, which [[DrivenToSuicide makes him want to kill himself]] (which Haibara and Conan prevent). In truth, his wife was just concerned that, since her husband has a very rare blood type, activities like mountain climbing are dangerous and can injure him, and his friends then decided to not invite him to protect him, his (female) co-workers actually wanted more than just friendship, and her mood-swings happen because she is pregnant.
* ElephantInTheLivingRoom: Conan's increasingly noticeable failure to act as a normal little boy arouses suspicions from just about everyone in the cast not privy to his secret, yet nobody really thinks of just sitting the kid down and asking him just how on earth does he knows so much, rather preferring to harbor vague suspicions forever.
** Takagi does get the chance to ask Conan during one of the most famous cases of the series, but Conan replies that he'll tell him in the afterlife. Somehow, Takagi forgets all about it.
** Usually Conan catches their weird looks and claims that he learned it on TV. This is lampshaded by Kogoro in chapter 716, after Conan gives his Condensed History of the Rooster Festival spanning three very wordy panels: "And I suppose all of that was on TV, huh?"
* EmbarrassingOldPhoto: In one episode, an old college professor is killed by one of his former students over two of these. The student had plastic surgery done after graduating and became a fashion model, and the professor wanted to leak two old pre-plastic surgery photos of him to tabloids, including a photo of the student dressed in drag.
* EnemyMine:
** Even though catching the Kaitou Kid is one of Conan's chief aims, second only to busting up the Black Organization, Conan often ends up working together with Kid to catch bad guys or otherwise avert disaster, especially in his NonSerialMovie appearances. (For that matter, he has occasionally worked together with Black Organization agents against ''other'' Black Organization agents, as well.) His TV-special team-up with Lupin III would probably count as well.
** In one case, KID teams up with [[spoiler: his self-proclaimed arch-enemy Jirokichi Suzuki]] out of all people. The reason for this is that [[spoiler:his dog, Lupin, had been locked up in a safe together with the instructions to open said safe, and Jirokichi asked KID for help to open it.]]
** In the Mystery Train arc, [[spoiler:after deducing who Kaitou was disguised as, Conan convinces KID to dress as Sherry and fake dying in an explosion in order to deceive the Organization.]]
* EntertaininglyWrong: On one of the early occasions when Ran suspected Conan of being Shinichi, Shinichi was able to temporarily grow back to normal size. While grown up, he took Ran on a date and she admitted that she had suspected that Conan was Shinichi de-aged by some invention of Agasa's. Shinichi noted internally that she wasn't too far off.
* EpisodeOnAPlane:
** The "New York Arc" started with a flashback episode in which Shinichi solves a variant "locked room mystery" that took place on board a plane in flight.
** A case featuring a disgruntled former relief pitcher was solved when Conan realizes that the suspect had taken the same flight they did.
** Two thirds of the 8th NonSerialMovie, ''Magician of the Silver Sky'', is set on a plane. [[spoiler:Ran and Sonoko end up taking the plane in for a CrashCourseLanding, aided by Conan and Kaitou Kid.]]
** Almost all of the 14th NonSerialMovie, ''Lost Ship in the Sky'', is set aboard an airship.
* EurekaMoment: Played straight AND subverted. A lot of Conan's epiphanies come in this way and the Detective Boys' sole reason for existing seems to be triggering these; however Conan later makes a habit of artificially creating these moments to lead others in the investigation. After a while, most of the cast seems to be consciously aware of this, with varying degrees of suspicion.
* EveryoneIsASuspect: Pretty much every case, although sometimes you can narrow it down based upon a few hints and the obvious. (The main characters never did it.) [[spoiler: During the "Billionaire Birthday Blues" case, you can spot that one person isn't shown drinking coffee, other than Conan. They actually give a closeup of everyone's face, but the killer actually deliberately avoids holding the coffee up to his mouth.]]
* EverybodyLives: Even without counting the non-AlwaysMurder cases, this happens occasionally, especially if the victim has been hospitalized.[[note]]One early filler episode - "The Deadly Cooking Class" notably averts this; the victim is delivered to the paramedics but dies offscreen.[[/note]] If, after the case has been solved, a policeman bursts into the scene saying something along the lines of "Inspector! The victim, (s)he's...", then you can bet that on the next page they will finish with "... going to be alright!" Notable instances are the poisonings of [[Characters/DetectiveConanOneSceneWonders Sayuri Matstumoto]] and [[Characters/DetectiveConanPeopleFromNotableCases Kiwako Todou]].
* ExtraLongEpisode: Has several of these every year. In particular, the first episode of the year is usually two hours long.
* EyesAlwaysShut: Sonoko's older sister, Ayako, is never seen with her eyes open. (Also, "Sleeping Kogoro's" eyes are always shut when he is "solving the case," though granted this is because he literally ''is'' asleep.)
** Some guest characters are also fox-faced, and Okiya Subaru's eyes are just evil little white dots in the middle of black eyelid lines.
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: If Conan's identity is revealed, Kogoro and Ran (among others) will be targeted and likely killed by the organization that shrunk him.
** Likewise, if Conan is ever permanently restored to his adult identity, there will no longer be a "Detective Conan" for the show to be about.
** Ironically, played in Conan's favor for the same reasons whenever it comes to his identity and the Black Organization. Vermouth excluded, any Black Org. member who discovers his or Haibara's identities is instantly given an appointment with ThePlotReaper scheduled at "just before you get to tell Gin".
* FakeOutMakeOut: Ai Haibara talks one of her classmates into faking intimate contact so she could figure out whether she was being tailed by the Organization, only to scare him with the intense expression on her face.
** Earlier, Takagi and Satou had pretended to date on a few occasions to tail a suspect (Takagi couldn't enjoy their time together at all because Satou is pretty damn scary when in Work Mode).
* FakeUltimateHero: Conan's deductions are credited to Kogoro, boosting Kogoro's reputation as a detective. Kogoro is typically unconcious, but takes credit when he wakes up regardless.
** Sonoko will do the same thing whenever Conan has to use her instead.
* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: From Chapter 1, someone is decapitated on a roller coaster via piano wire. Notably, it's the last crime Shinichi solves before he reverts to a kid.
* FantasyForbiddingFather: : The "Luxury Liner Serial Murder Case" has a fantasy-forbidding ''grandfather'' as the first victim; Gozo Hatamoto is an all-around jerk, but especially belittles his grandson for wanting to be an artist and is even shown smashing one of Ichiro's works in a flashback. [[spoiler:Naturally, Ichiro is the killer, a spur-of-the-moment act when he couldn't take the man's abuse anymore, both because of Gozo's opinion of his work and because he wouldn't allow Ichiro to marry his cousin Natsue, Gozo's favorite relative and only heir, and had in fact, immediately after this refusal, granted another man permission to marry Natsue; the wedding had occurred just days before Gozo's murder.]]
* FatSuit: The murderer in [[spoiler:''The Mountain Villa Murder Case'']] wears one. It not only ensures that no one suspects him of being the (very trim) masked attacker who's on the loose, but also allows him to transport the various props he uses in the murder without anyone noticing. [[spoiler:He tries to kill Ran when she accidentally walks in on him when he's not wearing it.]]
%%* FingerLickingPoison
* FingertipDrugAnalysis: At least once when Conan identified heroin, in the Moonlight Sonata case.
* FirstNameBasis: An arc had as a side plot Ayumi trying to work up the nerve to call Ai by her first name. She's the only one of the children (including Conan) who does so (or has permission to).
%%* FiveManBand: The Detective Boys.
** TheHero: Conan
** TheLancer: Ai
** TheSmartGuy: Mitsuhiko
** TheBigGuy: Genta
** TheChick: Ayumi
* {{Flashback}}: TV episodes adapted from manga, especially multi-part episodes, frequently employ flashbacks and in-dialogue recaps to pad out the run time (as well as occasionally replaying the last several minutes of the previous episode as the beginning of the current one), since otherwise there wouldn't be enough material to fill the full episode length. It's not uncommon to have seen the same footage 3 or 4 times (counting the first time it was shown) by the end of a multi-part episode. (It's especially noticeable when viewing multiple-part episodes in one sitting.)
* FountainOfYouth: If not for APTX-4869, there's no Conan Edogawa or Ai Haibara.
* FourEyesZeroSoul: Subverted in anime episode 799. An old woman's glasses go into this in flashback just as Conan is realizing she was responsible for the death of that episode. The subversion is that the death was accidental. The criminal was a burglar who performed crimes via {{Wall Crawl}}ing. On a stormy night, she saw him through her window and, out of reflex, brandished a washing machine hose she was carrying at him. The water from the hose sprayed the window, startled the man, and caused him to lose his grip which sent him plummeting to his death.
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** Possibly a coincidence, but after one of Kogoro's drinking binges, he says he had "some gin, some vodka, bourbon." [[spoiler:"Bourbon" being the current mysterious Black Organization member.]]
** One of the hints that Shuichi Akai was really [[spoiler: Subaru Okiya]] in disguise was given as early as the latter's introductory case, where a child described him as "red."
** In Opening 31, there's a scene where Akai and Scar Akai pull a gun on each other, [[spoiler:hinting that they are two different people.]]
** Possibly a coincidence, in Chapter 1 where members of the Black Organization first appeared (Gin and Vodka), there was a crow ominously looking over the rollercoaster. [[spoiler:This was way before Karasuma Renya was ever mentioned and also before the link between him and the Black Organization became known. "Karasu" is Japanese for "crow".]]
** The Organization has been subtly and deliberately linked with crows even further:
*** The first concrete lead Conan gets is from Miyano Akemi, who tells him as she dies: "They like to wear black clothes that make them look like crows." While the line at first sounds like an simple comparison she's making to describe how they like to dress, it can also be interpreted as [[spoiler:her telling him that the Organization dresses in black ''specifically'' to mimic crows.]] The latter, of course, turns out to be true.
*** When Conan figures out the phone number of the Boss, he's able to do so because the number pattern plays out the melody to the folk song "Nanatsu no Ko" - specifically, the first line, "Crow, why do you cry?"
*** And of course, in [[spoiler:Karasuma Renya's introductory chapter, over ''700'' chapters before we learn about his link to the Organization, we see his personal symbol--a crow--and hear about an organization he famously headed fifty years prior to the storyline, before the massacre in the house. Considering Haibara had said prior that APTX 4869 (and thus, Shinichi) was a part of a research project that had been going on for '''fifty years,''' and that these hints collectively establish that the Black Organization specifically mimics crows and fits exactly with the timeline this implies, it's rather a wonder Karasuma wasn't suggested as a suspect earlier...]].
** During Conan's close encounter with Gin and Vodka in Volume 38, he ends up hiding in a coin locker with the number 0219. The 219th episode of the anime? [[spoiler:The first episode of the Sunset Mansion case, which first introduced Renya Karasuma]].
* {{Frameup}}: This happens a lot; the murderers make fake proofs to frame up innocent people.
* FramingTheGuiltyParty:
** In one episode, the killer is [[spoiler: a woman named Tina. Her boyfriend found the crime scene and saw that the victim wrote "Tina" in his own blood as he died, so he changed the message to "Ringo," the name of another suspect. Then Ringo found the crime scene and changed the message again to a phrase that happened to indirectly point right back to... well, you know.]]
** Note that this example is taken from the English version; the original Japanese version does the equivalent with kanji characters [[spoiler:that are changed by adding strokes]] (but this was obviously LostInTranslation).
** Also subverted on at least one occasion where the killer tried to plant evidence to suggest she was framed. It didn't work because Conan found much more conclusive evidence pointing to her.
* FreeRangeChildren: The kids are basically allowed to run off anywhere in Tokyo without any adult supervision as long as they are home by bedtime. Then again, this ''is'' Japan, a country perceived to be safer than the standards.
** Deconstructed in a backstory arc when Eri and Kogoro, before separation, found Yukiko and Yusaku's laissez-faire parenting as a bit annoying.
* FromTheMouthsOfBabes: Referenced by Kogoro when talking about Conan during an investigation.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:G-I]]
* GagBoobs: In one story, Yukiko rides a motorcycle cross-country carrying Conan in her cleavage.
* GambitPileup:
** Volume 26 of the manga, or the "Desperate Revival" arc of the TV series. Dr. Araide's was to make out with Ran, which was ripped apart by Shinichi showing up. Heiji was planning on showing up, dressed as Shinichi, to help him out of Ran's suspicions. This was ruined by Kazuha, who ended up the SpannerInTheWorks. Haibara's was to have her dress up as his little kid identity, while he tried the prototype antidote, to allude suspicion. Sonoko's, which was spur of the moment, was to get Ran and Shinichi to hook up. [[spoiler: This ended up being ruined by the murder. Ran's was using any occurrences to her advantage to get Shinichi to confess, though it wasn't planned out. This was ruined by Haibara's plan. Shinichi was, if you listen to the fans, going to propose to Ran, but this was ruined by the murder. And the second murderer's plans were ruined by Shinichi.]]
** The climactic confrontation with Vermouth is also one of these: Vermouth, posing as Dr. Araide, attempted to kidnap Ai--but Ai was under the protection of Jodie, who was trying to lead Vermouth in a trap set by an FBI agent. Except Vermouth figured this out and dismissed the agents while disguised as Jodie and set off her ''own'' trap--and this is when Conan dramatically reveals that he's been disguising himself as Ai (while Heiji, elsewhere, pretended to show up as Shinichi).[[spoiler: Then ''Ai herself'' shows up, intending to turn herself in to the organization, which causes Vermouth to knock Conan out with his own needle. Just as Vermouth is about to shoot Jodie, Ran, who was hiding in the trunk of the car because she saw Jodie's pictures of her friends in the bathroom and assumed that Jodie was spying on the school, jumps out to protect Ai from both Vermouth and the sniper. When Shuichi Akai shows up to take out the sniper and disables Vermouth, Vermouth manages to get away by taking Conan hostage and [[EveryCarIsAPinto blowing up the other car]]. Except Conan had anticipated Vermouth's get away (or at least was CrazyPrepared) and hooked himself up to a wire to capture the cell phone number Vermouth called. But Vermouth got the last laugh, as she knocked them both out with sleeping gas, then forced herself awake and slipped into the night, but not before destroying Conan's equipment.]] Phew.
** The Mystery Train arc features no fewer than five plots going on at once. Believing Sherry is aboard, Gin and Vodka plan to destroy the train at its final stop, Bourbon plans to capture Sherry alive while the train is in motion, while Vermouth plans to kill Sherry while the train is in motion. Kaito Kid is aboard with plans to do a heist on the train, and Conan has a plan to fake Haibara's death should the Organization turn up. To top it off there's the inevitable random murder. In the end, the winner is [[spoiler:Conan, by identifying Kid early and blackmailing him into helping his plan. As a result, Kid is chased off the train before he can steal anything, he convinces Bourbon that Sherry was killed so Gin and Vodka call off their plan, Vermouth realizes they were duped only after it's too late to do anything about it, and Conan solves the murder, too]].
* GivingSomeoneThePointerFinger: The exposition sequence at the beginning of the movies always end with Conan pointing at the camera to deliver his ultimatum. ''There is only one truth!''
** Also, the detectives often point dramatically at the suspect when making their accusation. (Especially Mouri Kogoro, who is usually wrong.)
* GratuitousEnglish: This series has its share of Caucasian FBI/CIA agents and American members of TheSyndicate, yet when they speak English, they speak Engrish. In fact, Heiji Hattori speaks far better English than any supposedly-American character in the show (save for a few noteworthy exceptions who ''do'' speak SurprisinglyGoodEnglish). Also, the famous "Need Not To Know" in the fourth NonSerialMovie.
** "A secret makes a woman woman." (Granted when Vermouth says it it sounds more like "ooman", but I digress.)
** In one episode, Conan is able to tell the difference between a British accent and a Texan accent in spoken English--which is really quite impressive when you consider that the words were actually spoken with a "read phonetically by a Japanese actor" accent.
** Engrish pronunciation was the key to figuring out the culprit of a case during the Clash of Red and Black arc. "Shiranpuri" = "Sit down please"?
** ZARD, we love you and all and although it still might be too soon to mention this after your death, "Glorious Mind" has some of the strangest Engrish ever.
* GrayAndGrayMorality: Several cases actually have this show up, in which the motive was revenge for something else. Sometimes it's actually because they caused the death of a loved one or ruined their life somehow.
** A shining example of Grey and Grey Morality comes in the June Bride case. The culprit in this case is the [[spoiler:groom, trying to get revenge on the bride's father. 20 years prior, the bride's father (a police officer) was chasing a culprit, and a woman was struck by a car. The woman's son (the murderer) tried to get the police officer to help, but the officer didn't see the woman and though he was just a kid in the crossfire. The mother died, and the boy was adopted. He then meets the bride, and hatches a revenge plot. The sad part was, the bride and groom were actually knew each other in childhood before it happened, and were each other's first loves. Even Conan, who often condemns murderers using Kogoro or Sonoko who justify their acts, could only think he was a sad man.]]
* GreatDetective: It's in the title, after all.
* GreenEyedMonster: Shinichi, Ran, Kazuha, Heiji, Satou, Ayumi, etc. have all shown jealousy when someone hit on/liked their respective love interest or their respective love interest showed 'interest' in someone else (though more often than not it was just a misunderstanding.)
** The Detective Boys are a veritable love parallelogram in the making: Mitsuhiko and Genta have crushes on Ayumi, Ayumi has a crush on Conan, Mitsuhiko also has a crush on Haibara and Haibara is believed to have a crush on Conan.
** In a rare vulnerable moment in episode 246, Haibara expresses jealousy of Conan's feelings for Ran, comparing herself to a cold shark and Ran to a friendly dolphin (they're on the beach at the time). Conan, naturally, [[ObliviousToLove completely fails to understand]] what she's talking about. She expresses similar jealousy of Ran in the 14th NonSerialMovie, ''Lost Ship in the Sky''.
*** At the end of ''Lost Ship in the Sky'', Conan is left wondering what it was Kaitou did to Ran that he (Shinichi) wouldn't have done that gave away that Kaitou really wasn't Shinichi after all. [[spoiler:(He thinks it's kissing her—but it was actually groping her bottom ''while'' he kissed her.)]]
** ''Almost every unmarried man in Megure's department'' has a crush on Officer Satou, to the point of forming a "defense organization" to try to torpedo the budding romance between her and Takagi (whom they resent). (Shiratori was the ''leader'' of this organization until [[spoiler:he met Kobayashi-sensei and realized his affections had been misplaced]].) Because Satou is ObliviousToLove, she doesn't notice any of this…and her mischievous co-worker Yumi shamelessly takes advantage of this blind spot to pull pranks on those jealous men. (Such as the time she [[spoiler:innocently gave Satou a ring to wear]]…)
* GroinAttack: The first time Masumi meets inspector Nakamori, she knees him to see if he isn't actually KID in disguise (and maybe to get back at him pulling her cheek for the same reason).
* GyaruGirl: One case involved an investigation into violent attacks on ganguros and yamanbas, and the murder of a ganguro.
* HeroicSacrifice: An extremely notable one is Honjo Nanako who [[spoiler:choose to step out of the elevator to allow the rest of them to live, all of them remembered her very well]].
* HeroStoleMyBike: In the first NonSerialMovie, Conan stole a bike from a boy to dispose of a time bomb he found.
** Somewhat subverted since it's implied that Conan would have returned it if he could, and actually asked Kogoro to replace it.
* HesDeadJim: Practically every episode with a corpse. Sometimes a pulse is checked on those without obvious injuries, but usually they are immediately proclaimed dead. Dead people are usually depicted open-eyed, with the pupils the size of pin pricks and the mouth agape.
** Subverted once, as it was used as one of the clues to the killer in one case.
* HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood: Usually PlayedForLaughs, Kogoro would yell at, throw, and even punch Conan for simply opening his mouth. Though, it seems punching is a valid form of punishment in this show. He even went as far as placing his fist on Conan's head and saying [[CallingYourAttacks "Killing move... DRILL PUNCH!"]] and delivering the noogie from hell.
** While she doesn't show up nearly as much, Yukiko has ''also'' been shown conking her son for petty reasons (though at least she knows "Conan's" real age). Even Ran's done it once or twice.
* HitodamaLight: In an early case, the detective boys think a house is possessed by a ghost when they see a light in the window. [[spoiler: (It turns out to just be from a candle.)]]
* HollywoodToneDeaf: [=Shinichi/Conan=], whose mastery of music is so bad his old elementary school teacher almost discovers the truth about him because she ''recognizes his terrible singing''.
* HolodeckMalfunction: The NonSerialMovie ''The Phantom of Baker Street'' is basically this; specifically, [[spoiler:[[BrainUploading Noah's Ark]] hacked into a [[InsideAComputerSystem VR gaming system]] and took the 50 players as hostage: WinToExit, or their brains will be ''literally'' fried!]]
* {{Honorifics}}: The way Shinichi/Conan refers to Ran in particular has some focus. At one point, Ran scolds Conan for using the wrong name/honorific when speaking to Hattori. (Conan is addressing him as an equal, when from Ran's point of view he should be addressing him with -san.)
* HotSpringsEpisode: There are a number of episodes set at ''onsens'' over the course of the series (given that Kogoro/Richard is a big fan of hot springs).
** In an early episode we have one of the more memorable scenes where Ran and a rather shaken Conan return from the springs after they bathe together. Kogoro notices that Conan is unusually quiet and, when Ran tells him what they've been doing, he wonders out loud if he's dumsbtruck after seeing Ran naked, and Conan has an epic NoseBleed at the suggestion. Later the episode, we have Kogoro: [[spoiler:This time, both the victim ''and'' the murderer were dear friends of Kogoro, so he goes into a full ItsPersonal mode and we get to see that with a bit of nudging from Conan (who wanted to solve it at first but was [[ThisIsSomethingHesGotToDoHimSelf moved by the other's determination]]), Kogoro ''can'' solve cases by himself.]] The bathing scene actually gets a nice ContinuityNod a little later in the manga. When Ran accuses Conan of being Shinichi, a number of newly embarrassing scenes from the earlier stories flood back. The memory of her bathing totally naked with Conan certainly explains the strength of her anger and embarrassment. Additionally, in the anime Yukiko tells Conan that it's a good thing Ran didn't find out who he was "because had she realized you took a bath with her as a kid..."
* HyperAwareness: Unavoidable since we have {{Great Detective}}s here. In one case, Shinichi sees a girl reaching for her murdered boyfriend's bag on a cabin overhead luggage compartment, remembers something, tells her story and then pulls the bag off the compartment. What we notice is the story she told us, what Shinichi notices is that she used her right hand before she told her story, and then she switched to her left hand afterwards. It was important because [[spoiler:the murder weapon is a sharp object; the bra worn by the girl is underwired, one piece of which is sharpened. She wears the bra during the scene (since she can't throw it away) and the sharp edge grazed her skin when she raised her hand and hence, she switched to her left hand.]]
* IdenticalStranger: Several.
** Shinichi Kudou and Kaitou Kid. Also Okito, the high school kendo champion.
** There are so many Shinichi look-alikes it's not even funny anymore. [[spoiler: [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] by the one murderer who underwent plastic surgery so he could ruin Shinichi's reputation.]]
** In the ''Anime/LupinIIIVsDetectiveConan'' crossover, Ran and Princess Mira look enough alike that Mira makes Ran her [[EmergencyImpersonation unwilling royal double]] for a while [[spoiler:--and then Ran is drugged and taken back to Vespania to [[FakeKing continue the role]]]].
** The Detective Boys' schoolteacher Kobayashi-sensei has an uncanny resemblance to Officer Satou with glasses. Only way to tell them physically apart is Kobayashi's hair is straight trimmed on the side, while Satou's isn't. [[spoiler:In later manga issues (ep. 568-9 of the TV show), Shiratori realizes that his affection for Satou was misplaced because he had met a police-obsessed Kobayashi at a bookstore when they were both children, and had subsequently mistaken the adult Satou for her.]] At one point, Satou doubles for Kobayashi to take care of a stalker [[spoiler: who wanted Kobayashi dead for witnessing his crimes.]]
** There's another person who looked like Satou, Nami Kasakura, whom Shiratori met just before Kobayashi. [[spoiler: Bad thing, she was the killer of the case]]
** There are two people who superficially look like Kogorou, both pretending to be him for various reasons. [[spoiler:Poor Yamamura, believing that his idol would be DrivenToSuicide]].
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Most anime story arc titles end in "murder case."
* IdiotBall: Sometime Conan acts like he's holding one. Asking questions or saying something that might sounds stupid to adults, (particularly Kogoro) but it will make people think how it can related to the case and guide them to the truth.
* IdiotsCannotCatchColds: Often used if somebody within the Detective Boys gets a cold, and then Genta gets involved.
* IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten: Gin forces [[spoiler: [[TheMole Kir]]]] to kill FBI agent [[spoiler: Shuuichi Akai]] to prove her loyalty to the Organization.
* IllGirl: In general, {{Ill Girl}}s are used as a motive and {{Ill Boy}}s are character attributes in this series.
** Female Examples:
*** A strange variation happened in one case: our Villain of the Week had a bad heart, but it was she who killed the loan shark who [[DrivenToSuicide drove her boyfriend to suicide]] over the money for "that operation." (See FingerLickingPoison for the murder itself.) God, is she a bitchy ''chain smoker''. In her confession, she mentions that her boyfriend was her MoralityPet and the only one who ever loved her after her parents' deaths. As {{Orihime}} of Wiki/ThisVeryWiki says, be careful when threatening an IllGirl's loved ones: if she gets better, she'll kill you!
*** In another ({{filler}}) case, this was played [[TearJerker heartbreakingly straight]] with Kaori, a young girl whose brother Toshiya Todakoro is the ghost writer for the VictimOfTheWeek, writer Daisuke Torakura, who used to pay for her hospital bills in exchange for the guy's hard work. [[spoiler: We later learn the horrible truth: Kaori actually died six months ago, because Torakura actually ''bribed her doctor into keeping her on '''painkillers only''' instead of paying for '''crucial''' and expensive treatment abroad (as per his end of the bargain)'', so Todakuro would remain as his subordinate indefinitely. This lack of treatment ultimately killed her. And when poor Todakuro found out from the guilt-ridden nurse who used to tend to the girl, he went nuts with grief and murdered Todakura.]]
** Male Examples: Prominent enough to have them listed on the character sheet.
* ImMelting: The rare de-aging side effect of APTX makes survivors feel like their bones melting and ''smoke'' comes out from their bodies. [[BodyHorror OWWWWW]]! Shinichi lampshades the trope when his body is shrinking, as his inner thoughts say "I feel like my bones... are melting away. They're melting away! MELTING AWAY!"
* ImportantCharacterImportantEvidence: Minor characters will only find evidence if it's there to throw them off track.
* ImpairmentShot (Volume 9, Ran was nearly drowned after being drugged. She assumed that her savior was Shinichi {It was him, as Conan, before the whole ImprobableAntidote incident.) This also occurs whenever anyone in the anime goes back and forth when they were being shrunk by apoptoxin or going back with [[ImprobableAntidote Baiganr.]] with funky colors and blurred outlines. The manga has a negative version of the outlines and is either black or white, besides when Shinichi first became Conan and Aoyama decided to show his eyes wide and his entire form literally ''steaming'' as his insides 'melted', leaving you to wonder exactly how that feels.)
* ImpossiblyAwesomeMagicTrick: Most of Kaito's tricks simply aren't possible with real-life stage magic.
* ImprobableAntidote: The toxin can be temporarily canceled out by [[spoiler:a certain type of liquor and a head cold.]]
* InnerMonologue: Conan uses it constantly, and other characters such as Ran do so to a lesser extent.
** Often used for somewhat redundant recaps during multi-part cases.
* InnocentFlowerGirl: An anime case revolves around ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikebana ikebana]]'', therefore it has two of them. [[spoiler: One is a woman named Nozaki, who reaches the DespairEventHorizon due to her corrupt sponsor Shiraki supporting her rival Rika Aokano and stealing her secret formula to make flowers bloom eternally, so she commits suicide before the case comes up. The other is her younger sister Midori... the SympatheticMurderer: she manages to drug and kill Shiraki, but gets caught by Conan before she finishes her ThanatosGambit that would've killed both herself ''and'' Rika on stage.]]
* InnocentInnuendo: Between Heiji and Kazuha.
* InsideAComputerSystem: The main premise of the NonSerialMovie ''Phantom of Baker Street'' is the virtual reality gaming console "cocoon" that puts players into the gaming world by ''neural stimulation''. Of course, being a movie, we have the obligatory HolodeckMalfunction...
* InspectorLestrade: Most police officers, but specially Megure.
** The few notable exceptions include Misao Yamamura, the thoroughly incompetent inspector from the Gunma prefecture, and, on the other side of the spectrum, Kansuke Yamato and Taka'aki Morofushi, who somewhat get to hop into the CompetenceZone and keep up with Conan. The case of the latter two are [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by their ThemeNaming; for example Morofushi's name refers to... [[Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms Zhuge Liang]]. (Specifically, the characters of Zhuge Liang's courtesy name, Kongming, is read in Japanese as "Koumei"... which also happens to be an alternate reading of the characters in Morofushi's name.)
* InstantSedation:
** Played straight with Conan's wrist-watch tranquilizer needle gun. Kogoro barely has time to mumble a few words before keeling over. Ditto with other attackers or culprits.
** Also nicely subverted in that Conan, who is stuck as a six year old, will go down quicker when knocked out compared to the teenagers and adults... But the method of sedation is normally a cloth covered in narcotics or chloroform, instead of intramuscular injection.
** Averted by Gin who stays conscious long enough to shoot himself in the arm to keep awake -- and then climb down a chimney into a burning room to murder a fellow agent whose cover was blown and then climb back up said chimney using said wounded arm.
** Subverted in the first Lupin III crossover, when Conan [[spoiler:hits Zenigata with the darts to give the cases' answer, Zenigata goes out just as quick as anyone else... he just doesn't ''stay'' out as long as most people do, it being implied that he's gained an resistance to such toxins from all the stuff he's gone through chasing Lupin, over the years.]]
* IntergenerationalFriendship: Shinichi and Agasa.
* InterruptedDeclarationOfLove: A RunningGag in the relationship between Heiji Kazuha which Heiji lampshaded in chapter 1067. At one point, they were even interrupted by a zombie.
* InterserviceRivalry: The FBI versus [[spoiler:the CIA]].
* ItOnlyWorksOnce: Conan's tranquilizer-needle wristwatch only has one shot, which means Conan has to save it until he really needs it. Sometimes Conan uses the watch early in the mystery (or, less frequently, misses his shot or the watch gets damaged) only to discover that the next time he needs to use it he's already shot his one bolt (and he must then work by the slower method of dropping hints or else find some other way to knock Kogoro out).
* ItRunsInTheFamily: Shinichi's father is the mystery writer who does not investigate because he is BrilliantButLazy; Heiji's father is a well-known police investigator; Ai's parents were scientists; and even Ran's parents were highly proficient in martial arts. This made the AuthorFilibuster in the sixth NonSerialMovie pretty weak, as Nozawa borrowed the mouths of Ai and Hiroki (whose father is also a proficient programmer) to do that.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:J-L]]
* JackTheRipoff: A man is murdered in a similar modus operandus as a serial killer whose original slayings neared the StatuteOfLimitations, but Conan deduces that [[spoiler: the victim ''was'' the murderer, killed by one of the victim's' vengeful family members]] through the victim's DyingClue. ([[spoiler: The dead man put blood on the CTRL and C keys and died grabbing the mouse by its cord to imply that the murderer was a copycat.]])
** It was {{defied}} in the ''Naniwa Serial Murder'' arc, when Heizo, like what the trope page's lead mentioned, withheld some information from the press [[spoiler:(Namely, a knife was stabbed through the victims' wallets)]] so that he was sure further incidents were ''not'' due to this trope.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold:
** While Kogoro may appear to be an egotistical jerk, he does have his moments where he shows that he does care about Ran and Conan, and also shows quite the moral restrains towards killers and some co-workers.
** Shinichi himself, who can be really high-and-mighty and pushy as well as snarky, but his heart is in the right place.
** Shiratori is very full of himself, rather snobbish at times and comes off ''very'' strongly between Satou and Takagi, but he holds a high respect for the law, does want to help and protect people, and the idea of ''actually'' harming Takagi doesn't seem to cross his mind. [[spoiler: And he sincerely loves and care for Kobayashi, his "girl of destiny".]]
* JigsawPuzzlePlot
* JustAKid: Applies to the high schoolers as much as the elementary age kids.
* JustOneLittleMistake: Literally almost every episode ends with this, immediately preceding the MotiveRant.
* JustTheWayYouAre: ''Very'' cruelly applied in the Karaoke Murder Case. An IdolSinger is murdered by his scorned ex-girlfriend, who dumped her because he turned psychologically abusive to her after she had a nose job. It turns out that not only he liked her better when she was just a sweet GirlNextDoor, but the woman had specifically gotten plastic surgery ''to please him'', which he could never forgive her and himself for.
--> Victim (in a flashback, talking to an old friend of both him and the killer): Can you imagine it? She altered her face for me! I ''never'' asked her for anything like that, I loved her so much when she was herself! Why, why did she change '''just to please me'''...?
** ''And'' she didn't even get a hint when he made her sing ''Rudolph The Red '''Nose'''d Reindeer''. Conan categorized this as PoorCommunicationKills.
* KansaiRegionalAccent: Heiji Hattori's usage is most noted by characters, also Maria from episode 460. Also, the Black Organization agent Tequila is also mentioned to have spoken in Kansai-ben.
** The Kansai dialect is sometimes used as a source of humor. In the "Holmes Freak Murder Case," when Conan imitates Heiji's voice to solve the murder, he notably has trouble speaking in the unfamiliar dialect (and Heiji, who wakes up partway through, ribs him about it later on). But in one of the [=OAVs=], which involves a speaker of the Tokyo dialect whose voice is otherwise identical to Heiji's, Heiji is shown to be unable to speak a simple phrase in Tokyo-ben.
** Kansai-Ben is also used to smoke out a murderer. In the Ama-chan case, after Conan outs the culprit, he starts talking in an exaggerated Kansai accent so the murderer will blow his top and admit he's from Osaka.
* KidnappedFromBehind: When Conan is escaping from the woman who claimed to be his mother and then revealed herself that she's affliated with the Black Organization, Conan notices Professor Agasa in front of the latter's house. Right when Conan is about to call him, the woman narcotizes him from behind and kidnaps him, bringing him to an abandoned house where she and her masked partner are discussing their next murder. In the end, after a series of shenanigans, it turns out that [[spoiler:his kidnappers were his real parents who pulled a prank on him]].
* KissingCousins: In one of the earlier cases, the killer's motive for killing his grandfather, was that he had been in love since childhood with his cousin [[spoiler: and the heiress of the family fortune, as she was the old man's favorite grandkid]], and the older man ''brutally'' forbid them to marry and mocked him. The killer's parents were also cousins, and the patriarch only ''very'' reluctantly agreed their marriage. Note that Japanese culture considers cousin marriages as more or less acceptable, though it's treated as a large revelation here.
** [[spoiler: In a Q&A with fans in Singapore, Gosho confirmed Akai Shuichi and Miyano Akemi are actually cousins. [[https://clyp.it/mwoiwshx Here's the interview, it's around 34:23]]]]
* LadyLooksLikeADude: Masumi Sera. In her first appearance, nobody even realizes that she's a girl until she shows up in her school uniform.
** In the "Blue Mermaid Heist", Kid impersonated her and HE was shocked that she was a girl. HilarityEnsues.
* LampshadeHanging: At one point, Haibara wonders why all the detectives the group knows are, in her words, late-blooming, thickheaded, troublesome morons.
* LampshadeWearing: Kogoro is a heavy and frequent drinker, and possibly borderline alcoholic (at one point, his doctor advises him to cut back, and he actually obeys this for a few episodes until [[{{snapback}} the audience forgets]]). He is often depicted as drinking, sometimes to the point of tying his necktie around his forehead. (Though he sobers up quickly if he is in this state when a murder happens nearby.)
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: Ran has a habit of forgetting things she finds unpleasant; in one NonSerialMovie, this resulted in forgetting about ''everyone'' in her life because she witnessed [[spoiler: someone getting shot and she believed it to be her fault]].
* LatexPerfection: KID seems to have brought this down where he can fool Shinichi [[spoiler: that he is Ran, or vice versa. This is scary (and at the same time, hilarious, seeing as Shinichi has known Ran for years.]] Yukiko (a prize-winning actress) and Vermouth also manage to do this. Enough that throughout the series the only way {{muggle}}s can make sure someone was not impersonated is by literally pinching their faces.
** Subverted in the 8th NonSerialMovie, ''Magician of the Silver Sky'', and the 14th, ''Lost Ship in the Sky'', as well as the OAV "Kid in Trap Island". A number of times, Kaitou takes advantage of his close physical resemblance to Shinichi to disguise himself ''without'' a mask, so he passes the pinch test.
* LawyerFriendlyCameo:
** [[Manga/DeathNote ''Kiss Note'']], anyone? Or [[Manga/CityHunter ''Urban Hunter'']]? The ''Urban Hunter'' appearance is especially noteworthy since the [[ActorAllusion voice actor for Kogoro at the time was also the voice actor for]] ''City Hunter'''s Ryo Saeba.
** As well as the popular kids' action show ''[[Franchise/KamenRider Kamen Yaiba]]'' (which is also a namedrop of an otherwise-unrelated manga called ''Manga/{{Yaiba}}'' from the same mangaka as Conan). This one has been lampshaded in the ''Conan vs. Kaitou Kid vs. Yaiba'' OAV in which the Detective Boys meet Yaiba [[spoiler:in an episode-long dream sequence]] and accuse him of lying about his name because he is obviously not ''Kamen'' Yaiba.
* LeftHanging: Elena Miyano's last message to Shiho on some tapes she recovered.
* LethalChef: The direct reason for Kogoro and Eri's separation is the latter's cooking was too awful ([[spoiler: aside of him once having to [[ShootTheHostage shoot her to save her from death]]]]). Even Shinichi knows how bad Eri's cooking is.
** If that's true, doesn't that make [[http://www.tenmanga.com/chapter/DetectiveConan266/140070-15.html this scene]] from their (second?) reunion case together count as AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther?
** Subverted in one story, where Ran makes a lemon pie for the first time. It comes out ''looking'' terrible, but it tastes fine.
* LetsGetDangerous: In precious few situations, Kogoro can be motivated enough to devote his full attention to a case and actually do an excellent job.
* LittleOldLadyInvestigates: In episode 219, Kogoro is invited to a gathering of other famous detectives in the adult category as opposed to Shinichi's teen detective peers. Numbered among them is a little old lady detective who seems to have worked frequently with the two-fisted man of action private detective perhaps because their opposite strengths combine effectively. [[spoiler: Turns out that the "little old lady" ''was'' the killer after all.]] For extra information, Heiji was invited, but couldn't make it, as was Hakuba, who we actually got to see with a gun. Which was both awesome and freaky, given [[spoiler: he pretends to threaten a female detective while being as chivalrous as possible--and then was seemingly shot himself]].
* LiveActionAdaptation: There have been two live-action adaptations of the manga.
* LivingWithTheVillain: The possible identities for organization member Bourbon were Subaru Okiya, Tooru Amuro and Masumi Sera, who are living in Shinichi's house, working part time in the café beneath the Mori's home as well as Kogoro's "[[HypercompetentSidekick assistant]]", and Ran's classmate, respectively. [[spoiler: It's Amuro]].
* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The official anime website listed 47 characters at one point. Even excluding important one-off characters, the count of recurring characters is currently at 70+.
* LocalizedNameInANonLocalizedSetting: In the ''Case Closed'' anime adaptation, the setting stayed in Japan, but lots of characters had their names changed.
* LockedRoomMystery: Many. [[SarcasmMode And they STILL look shocked every time they discover one]].
** One of the first examples in the series is possibly one of the creepiest ways to go about this - a Japanese diplomat is found poisoned in his office, with opera playing in the background to cover up any noises he made and the key in his trouser pocket. Heiji deducts that [[spoiler:the criminal used a simple trick with a piece of string to pull the key into the pocket - but he's actually wrong because this is physically impossible. The murderer (his wife) actually poisoned him when she ''brought Conan and the gang into the room'' and set up the Locked Room scenario by unlocking the door to show them in.]] Shinichi downright called this an application of a ''psychological'' locked room.
* LoliconAndShotacon: Referenced. Haibara asks Conan if a specific man ([[spoiler:Shuichi Akai]]) was a loli-con. Conan's reaction was pure shock, so she said, "I was right, then?" (Doubles as a ShoutOut, as [[spoiler:Shuichi Akai]] is based on [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam Char]] [[MemeticMolester Aznable]])
** Later, Sonoko wonders excitedly if Masumi Sera is a shotacon due to her interest in Conan. Naturally, [[spoiler:Masumi is Akai's sister]].
* LongDistanceRelationship: One murder suspect's motive is that his longtime girlfriend ditched him for another guy while they were separated, and it turns out that said other guy had been hiding the suspect's letters.
** Sonoko's boyfriend Makoto, a karate champion, also travels around a lot due to his schedule.
** And Shinichi has taken considerable effort to make Ran ''think'' that they're in one, despite the fact that they actually live in the same apartment.
* LooseCanon: ''Detective Conan'' has an ongoing {{spinoff}} manga series called ''Detective Conan Special'' in a children manga magazine. While it agrees with most canon elements of the main series, it's not drawn by the original mangaka (and hence has some OffModel issues) and TheSyndicate's appearances are non-canon. Its lack of firm link with the canon can be demonstrated because despite being a long runner itself (45 volumes as of April 2020), only two chapters were adapted into episodes for the {{anime}} series.
** This also applied to ''Zero's Tea Time'' and ''Wild Police Story'' spin-offs.
* LostInTranslation: Any case where the victim left a message or Japanese wordplay is a vital clue is utterly unreadable and unsolvable in any other language. (When the mangaka heard that his series was being translated, he wished the translators the best of luck.)
* LotsaPeopleTryToDunIt: One case plays out like this when an actor is found dead at the theater where he worked. The three other actors each confess to killing him by smashing a vase over his head, with forensics finding skin particles from the victim on each of the three vases. [[spoiler:However, the autopsy revealed the head wounds were not serious enough to kill him. His real cause of death was heart failure due to his wife [[MedicationTampering swapping his heart medication with stomach medication]].]]
* LoveMakesYouEvil: Many, ''many'' murderers have this as their motives, since their {{Asshole Victim}}s are generally people who crapped out ''big'' time on the killers' girlfriends, boyfriends, parents, siblings, children, etc.
** Any time the murderer has no obvious motive for murdering the victim, if you assume the victim killed the murderer's boyfriend/girlfriend/brother/sister in a hit-and-run accident, you will be correct more often than not.
* LowerDeckEpisode: Several chapters of ''Zero's Tea Time'' are focused on minor characters, such as Zero's right hand man Kazami, Andre Camel, and Eri Kisaki's secretary.
* LuckBasedSearchTechnique: Occurs in movie 3, when Agasa accidentally pushes a brick into the castle wall, revealing a secret passageway.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:M-O]]
* MadBomber: Subverted in NonSerialMovie ''The Time-Bombed Skyscraper''. [[spoiler: The bomber is the architect who built all of the buildings he either blew up or nearly blew up. He did it because he was an ''extreme'' NeatFreak who considered all of them {{Old Shame}}s.]]
* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: Some of the murders.
* MagicAntidote: In Heiji's debut episode, Conan is feeling poorly so he gives Conan a dose of Baigar (a kind of alcohol) claiming it to be an old family tradition and a surefire cure for the cold. It does, in fact, make him feel better-so much better, in fact, that it temporarily counteracts the poison and makes him return to his sixteen-year-old self. He literally has just enough time to rush to the scene of the crime of the week, solve it, and rush off so that he can regress again without breaking TheMasquerade. He puts two and two together and tries to sneak a larger dose in hopes of permanently returning to normal, but Ran catches him and chases him off, telling him that it's not really good for children and the first time was a special case on account of him being sick. (Later he succeeds in filching the bottle and drains it, [[spoiler:but apparently his body has built up a tolerance because all that happens is he gets drunk]].)
** Later, he is able to talk Haibara through using the Baigar antidote [[spoiler:(when she is trapped in the liquor storage room of a hotel and needs to be bigger to climb out the chimney)]], and it forms the subsequent basis of her research into a temporary cure that doesn't require booze to use.
* MagicalSecurityCam: A particular episode of Detective Conan when a murder scene recorded on camera was shown even with flashing backgrounds. Subverted in this incidence, as [[spoiler:the killer deliberately place the cam to ''let'' the police see what happened in the way he wanted to be.]]
** Subverted in the Holmes Freak case, where the security cameras placed everywhere in a vacation manor [[spoiler:are revealed to be nonfunctional dummies.]]
* MagicianDetective: None of the many characters who actually claim detective as a profession, but the Kaitou Kid winds up playing this role whenever he shows up and there's a mystery (that he didn't cause), as in [[spoiler:the magic lovers murder case, where easily seeing the trick in a murder done by an amateur StageMagician allows him to help Conan out]].
* MamaBear:
** Ran has gone into MamaBear mode more than once to protect Conan.
** Once, Conan and his friends were almost killed by a ''literal'' [[MonsterIsAMommy Mama Bear]] [[spoiler: who had ''horribly'' lost her cub to a very cruel hunter.]]
** Some of the motives of {{Anti Villain}}s are because of a criminal having been responsible for the death of heir child.
* MarilynManeuver: In "Roller Coaster Murder Case", the first case of the series. There's a flashback moment of Hitomi as Shinichi explains how he can tell she's a gymnast. There was a wind lift of her skirt, revealing frilly, white panties with a bow on the front and he noticed there was a bruise on each of her thighs, which typically is the result of physics of the sport.
** Police officer Naeko Miike near the end of "Co-Investigating with a First Love". A wind gust nearly lifts her skirt to reveal more than intended, but she manages to catch it before her hat is blown off her head.
** Ran in "The Cornered Famous Detective! Two Big Murder Cases" (a.k.a. "Jimmy Kudo Revealed"). One of the suspected magicians, Mako Miyoshi, performs a magic trick that involves doves flying out from under Ran's skirt. Conan comments that her panties are white.
* MarketBasedTitle: As noted above, called ''Case Closed'' in the U.S. due to copyright and trademark issues with Conan Properties International.
* MarriedToTheJob: IdolSinger Yoko Okino and soccer star Ryusuke Higo made a scandal when the two were apparently spotted on a date. When they corrected this mistake, Higo told everyone that his only "lover" is soccer, while Yoko said that hers is singing and acting.
** In the 2018 movie ''Zero the Enforcer'', upon being asked by Conan, Amuro said that his lover is the country of Japan.
* MarshmallowHell: Conan is subjected to this in ''Magic File 4'' by a couple of high school fangirls. Keep in mind that Conan is actually a high schooler himself.
* MasterOfDelusion: Ran almost figured it out in the first volume, with many other close calls. Hundreds of chapters later and she's still clueless. Though, to be fair, ''every time'' Ran has figured out that Conan is Shinichi, Conan has had help from others in on the secret (as well as the otherwise-realistic universe's natural WeirdnessCensor--who would believe that a high-schooler could de-age ten years given any even ''vaguely'' plausible alternative?) to convince her she was imagining things. Ran nearly got it right the first time, though...
--> '''Ran''': ''You took one of Dr. Agasa's weird chemicals, didn't you!?''
** For that matter, she had a similar theory the second or third time time, too ("I thought you needed to hide and had Dr. Agasa create some kind of shrinking drug.") prompting Conan to remark to the audience about how close she got.
* MasterOfDisguise: A significant number of them in the main cast, all of whom are connected to one another:
** Yukiko, Shin'ichi's actress mother, whose skills are often put to the use of disguising heroic characters, and who was trained beside—
** Vermouth, the Organization's go-to disguise artist who in turn often disguises ''as'' heroic characters, and was trained alongside Yukiko under—
** Kuroba Touichi, a now-dead famous Japanese magician who also moonlighted as the original Kaitou KID and accepted his own training from—
** The Phantom Lady, a brilliantly gory phantom thief from nearly two decades ago, who eventually became Touichi's wife Chikage, and between them they had—
** Kuroba Kaito, the modern-day Kaitou KID, whose every case involves a disguise of any gender or age, at one point even disguising as [[spoiler:Genta, a ''six-year-old boy'']].
* MeanCharacterNiceActor: One episode featured a singer named [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Onizuka Satan.]] Who often plays up being a demon, but is a decent guy, [[spoiler: and the episode's SympatheticMurderer.]][[labelnote: Context (Spoiler Alert)]] He befriended a young girl who was a fan of his work, who often write letters to him. However, after obtaining an injury, the CorruptCorporateExecutive wrote a letter impersonating Satan. The letter demanded "sacrifices" for the sake of publicity, and the young girl took her life as she was a very devout fan.[[/labelnote]]
* MeaningfulEcho: "My mom said it's bad luck to waste even one grain of rice", in the 5th Non-Serial Movie.
* {{Meitantei}}
* MercyKill: In one case has the culprit Shimizu killed his girlfriend and partner in crime Oozawa because [[spoiler:she took the blame of the crime they both committed by herself and he didn't want to see her in prison for the rest of her life.]]
* MillionToOneChance: For the other 999,999, our FountainOfYouth is a deadly poison.
* TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody: Averted. Conan and Haibara both keep their mental states in their childish bodies. Played with when [[spoiler: Conan takes an experimental antidote. He has become used to being treated as a child by others and thus slips up twice because of it.]]
* MistakenForCheating: Usually happens between the pairings like Shinichi/Ran and Heiji/Kazuha, even though neither one are in an official relationship.
* MistakenForMurderer: In one episode, Ayumi hides in the trunk of a car [[spoiler: that seems to be carrying a murder weapon and stolen money. Based on overheard conversation through the badge, Conan and the other Detective Boys assume the car's occupants are criminals and they might harm Ayumi if they discover her, and race to the rescue. It turns out that they're actors for a community theater and the money and weapon are props for a play]].
* MistakenNationality: Inverted from the usual case; in the episode introducing James Black, kidnappers mistake Black for the wealthy American owner of a trained dolphin show. Conan explains to the Detective Boys that, [[RacialFaceBlindness just as many Westerners see all Asians as identical, all Caucasians look alike to many Asians]]. At the same time, this is subverted when Conan is able to differentiate Black from the show-owner because he speaks English with a British rather than Texan accent (at least for the show's purposes. However, he ''actually'' speaks it with a "Japanese actor reading phonetically" accent).
* TheMole: [[spoiler: Or "Moles". Vermouth is seen talking on the phone to someone about "gaining trust, per our agreement" with Conan & Co. at the same time mysterious transfer student/teen detective Sera, mysterious houseguest/Sherlock Holmes fanboy Subaru, and mysterious private eye/Kogura fanboy Tooru answer their phones. And it seems that Tooru knows Sera...]]
** [[spoiler: The [[TheSyndicate Black Organization]] appears to be rife with them. If the folder in the Characters page is marked as a spoiler character, chances are they're one.]]
* MomentKiller: Before Takagi and Sato got their first kiss, every time they tried to gets ruined.
* MotiveRant: Almost every single murderer/con artist/blackmailer goes into this.
** Less prevalent in the Shonen Tantei-dan cases; Aoyama pretty clearly understood that any criminal who WouldHurtAChild is very, ''very'' unlikely to win the audience's sympathy, so in most cases he didn't even try. A few such criminals (like the drug-smuggling librarian) border on CardCarryingVillain.
* MouthToMouthForceFeeding: In a flashback, Vermouth confronts [[spoiler:Mary]] and poisons her with the APTX4869 drug. She bites onto the capsule and kisses [[spoiler:Mary]] to make her swallow the drug.
* MuggedForDisguise: During the "Blue Mermaid Heist", an unidentified person is shown BoundAndGagged in a bathroom stall, with their clothes having been stolen by Kaitou Kid. Who Kid is impersonating is left as a mystery until the end of the story, where Conan discovers that the victim was [[spoiler: Masumi Sera]]. The real [[spoiler: Sera]] ends up violently attacking Kid after managing to escape the bathroom.
* MuggingTheMonster: In ch. 814, three guys in an alley decide they need to hush up the people who have collected enough evidence to implicate them for theft--those people being ''Ran, Sera, and Conan'' (and Sonoko). The toughs have a knife and a tire iron. Guess who walks away? Hint: It is not the criminals.
* MusicalPastiche[=/=]RecycledSoundtrack: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuZNfEnJPD8 The main theme]] used throughout the series is a rearrangement of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCVUfRNRwbc the main theme]] from the 1972 detective drama, ''Taiyou ni Hoero!''. Katsuo Ohno is the BGM composer for both series and the reason for the similarity is because one of ''Conan'''s producers specifically asked Ohno to compose a theme similar to the one from ''Taiyo ni Hoero!''.
* MusicalTrigger: Movie 12 ''Full Score of Fear.''
* MyBelovedSmother : A quite weird case. [[spoiler:Conan and the detective kids actually find a "haunted house" where a mother keeps her son locked in the basement to keep him from being incarcerated as [[SelfMadeOrphan his father's murderer]] until the end of the statute of limitations, even when the guy is guilty and ''does'' want to go to jail, to atone for his crime. Eventually, Conan helps the culprit convince her mother to let him go and turn himself in.]]
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Happens to a few of the murderers when Conan reveals that their motives for murder were completely unjustified.
* MySignificanceSenseIsTingling: Although the show is set in a "realistic" universe, and young Shinichi pooh-poohs the idea of clairvoyance in one of the prequel [=OAVs=], certain characters nonetheless exhibit something along those lines. Sherry/Haibara Ai is able to sense when members of the Black Organization are near, and Conan is sometimes able to sense when Ran is in danger. (In the ''Strategy Above the Depths'' NonSerialMovie, [[spoiler:Conan was drawn back to the sinking cruise ship when Ran was trapped inside, though he did not at first know why]].)
* MysteryMagnet: The kid can't go anywhere without stumbling upon a murder or some other crime.
** Lampshaded in one episode when Haibara locates Conan by asking at a hotel front desk whether there was a murder being investigated nearby.
* MysteryWriterDetective: The protagonist's father is a mystery writer who occasionally steps in to solve mysteries when his son is stumped.
* MythArc: All of the recurring story lines fall under this.
* NeverFoundTheBody: Since the [[spoiler:culprits in the Evil Spirit Murder Case (Files 494-498, Episodes 415-417) deliberately misreported the location of a sunken yacht he was on to the police, it was assumed that only three aboard a life raft survived. It turns out a fourth survivor (the chauffeur's twin brother) who managed to swim to shore but eventually lost his memories until he chanced upon his twin, where the two eventually planned to murder two of the survivors of the sinking.]]
* NeverSuicide: Inverted in the ''third'' case of the series, but eventually used straight several times.
* NightmareFetishist: All the teen detectives, ever, and occasionally the Shonen Tanteidan. Particularly Shinichi in the very first arc. ("Stop crying, Ran; this kind of thing happens all the time!")
* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: The Tohto Ring Line that appears in different arcs is basically [[UsefulNotes/TokyoTrainLines the Yamanote Line]].
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: In the thirteenth movie, The Raven Chaser, [[spoiler: Conan has the crap beat out of him at the ending by Irish, gets shot at multiple times, and has no real way of fighting back since Agasa's inventions have been put out of commission by this point.]] To make matters worse, [[spoiler: Ran also loses the upper hand against Irish after trying to protect the injured Conan and even gets slammed into a wall.]] It's hard not to cringe at these two scenes.
** Heck, the first case Conan runs into, he gets the ever-loving crap beaten out of him by the suspect, prompting him to find ways to compensate for his smaller size. (Enter the magical shoes.)
* NoLongerWithUs: When Conan first finds out who Ai really is, he demands to know what she's doing at the professor's house. Ai replies that the professor is "no longer in this world". Conan attempts to call Agasa using his cell phone, but the line is dead. Conan barges into his house... and sees him on the internet. Of course, this was written in 1997, when most people still used dial-up.
* NoOneCouldSurviveThat: Gin and Vodka's original opinion on the effects of [[FountainOfYouth APTX4869]] to Shinichi.
* NonSerialMovie: Conan has gotten one of these per year since 1997. Due to the relative scarcity of arc-based stories in the mostly-picaresque TV and manga series, the movies do not usually pose story-based continuity difficulties the way other series' non-serial-movies can. They do involve a number of considerably different elements to the main series, however, which sometimes makes it a little hard to reconcile the two.
** The movies are considerably more action-packed, giving Conan a lot more physical things to do (and putting him in a lot more jeopardy). Over the course of the various movies he has [[spoiler:crash-landed a helicopter, rocket-skateboarded the length of an amusement park (including along a roller coaster track), parasailed, jumped a car from the top floor of one skyscraper to the roof of another, been shot at by a helicopter gunship on the roof of the Tokyo Tower, fallen out of and jumped out of a helicopter onto a blimp]], and more. His secret identity should have been blown by now from the things ''other people saw him do'' alone.
** And speaking of his secret identity, Kaitou Kid knows exactly what it is in the movies (since the end of movie 3, "The Last Wizard of the Century "), whereas the TV series and manga have always been more cagey about it (and as of chapter 965, the manga has officially contradicted movie material regarding Kaitou Kid's knowledge of Conan). Because of this, Kid and Conan almost always end up working together to some extent in their movie appearances, whereas they're always more at odds everywhere else.
** Events that take place in the movies may be referenced in other movies, but are never brought up in the main series. Also, the movies only rarely mention events from the series except in general terms. (An exception being the 13th movie, ''Raven Chaser'', which built heavily on earlier Black Organization arcs.) Despite this, some things from the movies have been made canon by the author, such as making Inspector Shiratori from the first movie a recurring character, and in movie 13, upgrading Detective Yamamura to police inspector (to the horror of the other characters.)
** Two more points are also disputed by the fandom: should the {{backstory}} between Kogoro and Eri in the second movie be considered canon? And should [[BrainUploading Noah's Ark]] be listed under the people who knew the truth?
* NotSoDifferent: Subverted in episode 119, which involves a supposed suicide that takes place at a party for Kamen Yaiba fans. It turns out to be murder, of course, but once the culprit is exposed, he claims he's not so different from Kamen Yaiba: the culprit's motive is that the victim had stolen the culprit's younger brother's rare poster and the younger brother in question had gotten hit by a truck trying to get it back, so the culprit killed the victim out of revenge. Why, he's just like Kamen Yaiba, who was motivated to fight crime after his little sister was killed by a gang. Then the Detective Boys angrily explain to the culprit that he's nothing ''like'' Yaiba; after all, Yaiba fights crime to protect innocent lives, not to ''hurt'' people.
* NotSoFakePropWeapon: A few cases feature this so the murderer can used it to kill the victim.
* {{Notzilla}}: One episode had the heroes on tour of a studio that featured a spoof of Godzilla and Gamera called "Gomera".
** The whole Gomera franchise reappears in several episodes, similar to the Kamen Yaiba Franchise.
* NowThatsUsingYourTeeth: in one case, it looks like an old man had committed suicide in his room; then Conan deduces that [[spoiler:the victim had his hands bound behind his back, and then the rope that was looped around his neck was also threaded through his teeth so that if he called for help or his jaw gave out he would hang himself.]]
* ObfuscatingDisability: Happens in the first case we see Shinichi solve.
** In episode 96, the second part of the episode involving a case about an inheritance dispute, the big reveal is when the will is read. [[spoiler:"Machiko, Hiromi, Hidekazu, Yoshiyuki, Keiko... Carlos."]] It turns out that [[spoiler:Carlos]], introduced as a hulking bodyguard, is the [[spoiler:Brazilian born nephew of the deceased]]
* OffWithHisHead: The Roller Coaster Murder Case. Particularly gruesome when you add the HighPressureBlood. Even in Japan, they had to censor it by changing the blood into a beam of light in the anime.
** In the Mountain Villa Bandaged Man Murder Case, the victim [[spoiler:Chikako is killed by having her head chopped off '''with an axe''' and have her other remains distributed.]]
* OhCrap: the look on Conan's face when he realizes that the murderer he was confronting alone in the forest at night brought fifty armed men along with him to help dispose of the evidence. [[spoiler:Que BigDamnHeroes moment when Ran and then Makoto show up and beat the crap out of all of them.]]
** The look on Conan's face in the thirteenth movie when [[spoiler: after being caught by surprise by the sudden appearance of a helicopter, he loses his sudden advantage over Irish when Irish takes back his gun and holds it firmly on Conan's forehead.]] Yikes.
* OneDegreeOfSeparation: This series is ''very'' prone to this trope:
** [[spoiler: Despite Kaito and Shinichi meeting by complete coincidence as KID and Conan with no knowledge of any personal connection, Kaito's father was Shinichi's mother's mentor and Shinichi's father's rival and best friend, and in the ''Manga/MagicKaito'' anime adaptation, Shinichi's surrogate uncle, Agasa, is heavily implied to be the long-time friend of Jii, Kaito's surrogate grandfather, and the supplier of the gear Jii gives Kaito to help with his heists.]]
** [[spoiler: Despite Shinichi's encounter with the Black Org being pure bad luck and Haibara's seeking him out for protection being completely unrelated to who Shinichi actually is, the assassin sent after Haibara is the best friend Shinichi's mother, a friendship she made during her mentorship under Kaito's father.]]
*** [[spoiler: An assassin whose life Shinichi and Ran completely coincidentally encountered and saved while said assassin was undercover as a serial killer, completely ignorant of her ties to Shinichi's family or the Black Org.]]
*** [[spoiler: And after saving that "serial killer," Ran encounters Akai Shuichi, the FBI agent who would later partner with Shinichi to take down the Black Org.]]
** [[spoiler:When Sera Masumi returns to Japan to investigate the supposed death of her brother, Akai Shuichi, we learn that her and Shuichi's second brother, by complete coincidence, was actually a long-reoccurring minor police officer's boyfriend, Haneda Shukichi.]]
** [[spoiler: It is implied that the Miyano the Akai families are related. Neither set of children show any awareness of this, but they've all encountered each other anyways in various completely unrelated circumstances during the course of the plot.]]
** [[spoiler: The Akai family has intimately wedged themselves into the Black Org conflict. [[ItsASmallWorldAfterAll Shinichi randomly met the Akai family when he was on a family beach trip as a child, and became Sera's inspiration to be a detective.]]]]
** [[spoiler: During a case in which Takagi is kidnapped, Takagi has a brief arc mourning the loss of his previous police partner and mentor, Date Wataru. Later we find out that Furuya Rei (aka Amuro Tooru aka [[TheMole Bourbon]]) was friends with Date at the police academy.]]
* OnlyALighter: The third episode involves a Statue of Liberty lighter that is not mistaken for something else, but is used to show that one particular character has been secretly trespassing. (Since she knows what it is, despite her claiming to never enter the room it belongs before.)
* OnlySixFaces:
** Shinichi and Kaitou Kid are deliberately drawn alike, and have [[SheIsNotMyGirlfriend not-girlfriends]], Ran and Aoko, who could be identical twins as well. Indeed in some non-canon movies this allows Kid to pass himself off as Shinichi whenever needed, without requiring a special disguise
** Where the series really runs headlong into this trope is in the many, many [[VictimOfTheWeek random people]] around the cast who drop dead of various murder schemes, and their friends and family who may or may not have done it. As of this edit there are more than 500 episodes in the anime and over 700 chapters in the manga... and the typical one or two episode case introduces a minimum of 4 to 6 one-shot characters. That is a ''lot'' of people to make up, so it's no wonder they all start to look the same.
** Even Conan has a "twin"--Kataoka Jun from ''The Kidnapper's Disappearing Getaway Car''. More noticeable when he wears an [[spoiler:outfit that is the same as Conan's except with yellow bow when he finally accepts Sachiko as his second mother.]]
** It's even a plot point in several cases, like one where Ms. Kobayashi gets mistaken for Sato several times in the police station [[spoiler:and worries Shiratori is only dating her for the semblance between the two. ([[FirstGirlAfterAll He isn't.]]).]]
** Also a plot point in the ''Anime/LupinIIIVsDetectiveConan'' TV special, in which [[spoiler:Ran is a FakeKing lookalike of a European princess]].
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: When BigEater Genta doesn't want lunch, his friends know something's wrong with him. [[spoiler:He's afraid because someone is trying to kill him.]]
* OpeningNarration: All of the movies have Conan explaining the basic plot of the series while playing the variation of the main theme specifically for that movie. The first opening for the anime also have him explains who he is and how he came to be Conan, before changing to a unique speech in subsequent openings.
* OriginalVideoAnimation: There are two OVA series.
** ''Shonen Sunday OVA:'' Consists of either an original story or based on other Aoyama's works. (mainly Kaito Kid) 12 of them are made in total.
** ''Magic File/Bonus File:'' Original episodes based on the movies. (Except for the first one which is just a compilation of anime episodes) Only six of these are produced as a standalone release before integrated into the anime.
* OutlivingOnesOffspring: In some cases, there is a topic of a child's death and is sometimes the reason behind a culprit's crime of murder.
* OutOfCharacter: The NonSerialMovie ''Phantom of Baker Street'' is accused of doing this to Conan, specifically:
** Was he a bit too calm in response to [[spoiler:Ran killing herself in-[[InsideAComputerSystem game]] by jumping off with UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper]]?
** Shouldn't he stop [[spoiler:Hiroki from committing his [[BrainUploading second]] suicide]]? (For background info for this, also read the relevant entry in DrivenToSuicide.)
[[/folder]]

[[folder:P-S]]
* PantyShot:
** With Ran usually. In the first episode of the anime, Shinichi forgot that he promised to take Ran out on a date to an amusement park, and when she tried to kick him in the head for that, she ended up giving him one Hell of her panties... when he tried to dodge and ended up with his head under her skirt.
** Happen to Ai in episode 722-723. While inside the delivery truck, the thread of Haibara's sweater gets caught on some bushes and she loses it as a result when the car starts driving away until she's down to her underwear.
** Sera [[http://www.detectiveconanworld.com/wiki/images/6/63/Sera_slide_kick.png while bringing down someone]].
* PapaWolf:
** If a case has threatened Ran or Conan, Kogoro becomes ''far'' more competent, and is ''not'' afraid to demonstrate his black belt in Judo. Similarly, on the occasion where children are threatened, Kogoro also becomes more competent.
** Some of the motives for the {{Anti Villain}}s are due to someone being responsible for the death of their child.
* PaperThinDisguise: The only thing that keeps Conan from being recognized as age-regressed Shinichi are his Clark Kent glasses and other characters' SelectiveObliviousness. He is otherwise not much good at ClarkKenting--he does not make much effort to hide his other Shinichi-like mannerisms (even Ran remarks on how much like Shinchi he is when he kicks a soccer ball around while thinking), and sometimes when his glasses have come off Ran has noticed how suspiciously similar to Young Shinichi he looks.
* {{Patricide}}:
** In the ''The Shaking Restaurant Case'' [[spoiler:Saki Yoshizawa killed Hanaoka who is very implied to be her father because he had abandoned her mother and not even sent her any news which made her pass away while still waiting for him for twenty years.]]
** Before that, during the Detective Boys' very first case, it is revealed that [[spoiler:the son of the mansion's owner killed him because he pressured him too much about entering university. The mother, who wanted to protect her son, arranged the crime as robbery and locked him up until the case expired. With Conan's persuasion, they eventually turned themselves in.]]
* ThePerfectCrime: A number of murderers intentionally arrange to have "{{Meitantei}}" Mouri Kogoro witness their crime, so confident are they that they can have the "Great Detective" himself provide them with a foolproof alibi. (And often they would be right, even with Conan on the job--save for some completely coincidental bit of bad luck that provides the crucial evidence necessary to link them to it.)
* PiggyBank: How the titular client of "A Small Client" pays his fee to Kogoro. [[spoiler:Turns out it doesn't hold much more than chump change, despite the client being a nationally famous child actor; most likely [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome the studio or an agent handles most of his paycheck]].]]
* PirateGirl: Anne Bonny and Mary Read's secret treasure (as well as their [[LesYay close friendship]]) is a plot point in ''Detective Conan: Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure''.
* PlotInducedStupidity: After ''how'' many cases Kogoro solved when he was unconscious, wouldn't people have actually ''realized'' that something was up by now? Especially ''Ran'', considering she's there at almost ''every'' one of his crime scenes?
** Kogoro does lampshade this by saying he doesn't remember most of his cases (in the TV murder episode) so it's probably considered part of his character to practically fall unconscious and ''then'' solve the murder.
** And forget Kogoro - he's a detective, people often would expect this. ''Sonoko'' is often used as a dummy detective when Kogoro isn't available. (At least in the dub, Conan says, "Time to make her say something ''nice'' for a change) Here is a boy-crazy teenaged girl who is somewhat of a ditz...who also sometimes falls unconscious around crime scenes. During which, she mysteriously is able to tell ''who'' did it...wouldn't someone (Especially Ran) point out how out of character it is? Lampshaded in one case, where Conan actually tries to shoot ''Ran'' but she steps out of the way and he accidentally shoots Sonoko.
* PocketProtector:
** In one episode, Heiji loans Conan a good luck charm he wears after having a premonition of Conan's death. The charm ends up saving Conan's life when someone tries to stab him.
** In another episode, [[spoiler:Conan's anesthetic needle hits Ran in the butt after she steps between him and Kogoro--but it was stopped by the hotel baggage claim tags in her back pocket.]]
** Takagi gets his life saved via a bullet catching on a mahjong tile. Fellow officer Shiratori [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on this, commenting how this sort of thing usually only happens in movies.
* PoliceAreUseless: Almost none of the police inspectors seem able to solve murders by themselves. In most cases, this is because the focus of the series is on Conan--hence the only cases we see them working on are the intricate ones Conan has to solve for them as the level of deduction required to solve them combined with how complex they are often makes them beyond the average inspector's capabilities. It can be assumed that they are more able when it comes to routine crimes.
** Subverted in the second case of the Osaka Double Mystery when Hattori Heiji's father rips into him over not stopping a second murder despite the police making the same failure, only for it to turn out that [[spoiler: [[WhatTheHellHero he already knew who the murderer was]] and was using Heiji as bait in a BatmanGambit to catch the perp of a far earlier crime.]]
** The exception that proves the rule is Inspector Yamamura, who is the poster boy for police incompetence—and who, to Conan's chagrin, was elevated to the rank of Inspector solely on the basis of solving cases that Conan is actually the one who solved it behind the scenes.
** Many of the rank-and-file policemen seemed to merely be taking over the crime scene.
* PoorCommunicationKills: Some specially tragic cases in the TV series and manga alike. Often, this could be seen as a form of CallItKarma, or possibly even ''true'' {{Karma}}, as the killer is invariably stricken with horror and grief upon learning that he killed an innocent person because of a misunderstanding.
** For example, we have had an injured American tourist recuperating in a Japanese household and falling in love with a young woman. Because of a mouth injury, at first he could only communicate by writing out Japanese phrases phonetically. As he was leaving, the young woman asked if he loved her, and he wrote down the word [[spoiler:"shine", referring to his earlier words that he wanted a "shining bride", but which she quite naturally interpreted as "shi-ne," which happens to be Japanese for "go die", since the note was handed to her by her sisters who thought Robert was being mean. The woman committed suicide after he left, and when he came back he ended up murdering part of her family in revenge.]] WhatAnIdiot.
** In another episode, a woman named Masayo kills her younger sister Mina for stealing her boyfriend [[spoiler:when in fact Mina had actually asked the boyfriend not to reveal that ''he'' had confessed to ''her'' because she didn't want to hurt Masayo's feelings]]. It certainly didn't help that there was a sort-of sisterly rivalry history before, since Mina kept imitating Masayo by copying her tastes to a degree that creeped the heck outta Masayo, but still...
** In "The Kappa Conundrum", eleven years after the death of a 10-year-old boy in a flooded river, [[spoiler:the boy's former teacher kills the boy's father out of the belief he caused the boy's death by making him dress up as a kappa (Japanese water spirit) to lure tourists to his inn--but it turns out that dressing up had been the boy's own decision and the father simply covered it up out of respect for his memory]].
** In a TV episode involving a male and female comedy duo who were also lovers, [[spoiler:the woman arranges to murder the man after overhearing him making what seemed to be insensitive remarks to their manager about wanting to tell her to quit comedy, and no longer being her boyfriend. Afterward, she receives a note accompanied by a ring that he had arranged to have delivered, telling her that he wanted her to quit comedy for her health, and he was going to "quit being her boyfriend" by proposing to become her husband.]]
** In one tragic early case, the lead singer of a band was murdered. It turned out it was [[spoiler: the manager of the band. They had been in a teen band together, and when he (the lead) started a new band, he asked her to be the manager. She was not very pretty, so before joining, she had plastic surgery done. Immediately after that, he started acting like a total jerk. The night she killed him, he had insulted her yet again, and that was the final straw. The real Tear Jerker came when it turned out he had loved her all along, but hated that she changed her face for him. It was because of that that he had teased and mocked her so. The worst part? That night, he was going to sing a song for her, telling her his true feelings.]]
** In the Café Poirot Mystery, [[spoiler:the culprit attempts to murder the victim over a misunderstanding concerning the former's love interest. It turns out the victim and the woman are half-siblings with different mothers who have to hide it as their father is a politician running for office. In fact, the victim was going to show a video to tell this information to said culprit. Thankfully, the victim does survive and is willing to forgive the culprit, though Heiji lampshades how they could have avoided the whole stabbing part in the first place had they properly talked about the issue.]]
*** [[spoiler:And in each of these cases there is always someone who had some important piece of information but chose to keep silent for some reason or other.]]
* PottyDance: Conan fakes a PottyEmergency during a case this way (in order to PullTheThread on the suspect).
* PottyFailure:
** One arc humorously applied this; Eri BoundAndGagged Kogoro on his sofa, and while Eri was out with Ran and Conan, Kogoro complained about a PottyEmergency... When they came back, they noticed a strange smell from the sofa, which Kogoro said was "dog pee."
** In the "Ran Girl / Shinichi Boy" arc, showing how Ran and Shinichi met at preschoolers, Shinichi notes several acts of favoritism towards Ran by their teacher, one of which was his reserving the naptime spot closest to the door for her. Shinichi inadvertently embarrasses Ran when the teacher explains that he was doing that to avoid a repeat of a previous accident. That however, was not the real reason, as the putting her close to the door [[spoiler:was intended to facilitate kidnapping Ran by placing her close to the door where the actual kidnapper would break in. When explaining his deductions, Yusaku notes that the teacher was also drugging Ran with sleeping pills to cause the original accident and justify moving her]].
* PowerWalk: A number of the [=OPs=] have various members of the Conan cast doing this.
* PrecociousCrush:
** The series plays with this trope in regards to its age regressed protagonists. To outsiders, Ayumi's and Mitsuhiko's crushes on Conan and Haibara would be PuppyLove. However Conan and Haibara actually being much older puts it into this trope even if the other two aren't aware of it.
** Haibara's behavior throughout chapters 925-927, after learning her favorite soccer player Ryusuke Higo is rumored to be dating Yoko Okino, is far more fitting to her grade schooler appearance than her teenage/adult mentality. She deletes Yoko's songs from her phone, hires Kogoro to investigate the affair, and during the inevitable murder case agrees with anything Higo says and disagrees with Yoko, even when they say the same thing. When the case is resolved and the rumors proven false, Higo personally thanks Haibara for her help and even makes a remark about adding her to his team. At the end of the case, Haibara is insisting on playing soccer as the weather turns bad and Conan snarking to himself that a little girl isn't going to join Higo's team.
* PreviouslyOn: In multi-part episodes, the couple of minutes before the title card for episodes after the first one is used for showing what happened in previous episodes. This is often redundant because Conan will provide his own recap in InnerMonologue every so often. (In one episode, "The Alibi of the Black Dress", Conan recapped twice in the first episode (including a fairly lengthy one right before the end) and again in part two, in addition to the "PreviouslyOn" segment!) This may be done as a time-filling method when a manga-based case is too long for one part but not long enough for two.
** But the manga itself is also guilty of this. Since there's no way to know whether the person reading the current issue missed the previous one(s), each segment of a multi-part case after the first will usually feature exposition of the important plot points from earlier issues via somewhat unrealistically-detailed dialogue.
** In episode 345, an especially important plot episode, there is a ''fifteen-minute'' recap covering parts of previous episodes that are relevant to the storyline.
*** Actually, blame it on the fansubbers; they needed that recap since those episodes hadn't been done yet. There was no such recap on TV or on DVD (as can be seen by the more recent fansub of the same episode).
* PublicSecretMessage: In "The Secret of the Sun, Moon and Stars", Professor Agasa and Shinichi Kudo (really Conan Edogawa) suggest that the drawings of the sun, moon, and stars found on various objects in the home of Agasa's late uncle were a code much like the Dancing Men from the Literature/SherlockHolmes story "The Adventure of the Dancing Men".
* PutDownYourGunAndStepAway: The climax in the second NonSerialMovie.
* RealTime: The anime-original episode "Real 30 Minutes" has an on-screen graphic indicating the time. Though in TheStinger, the clock immediately jumps by a few minutes.
* ReasonYouSuckSpeech: Conan often hands out brutal ones to murderers, ''especially'' those who believe that their actions were somehow justified. Often overlaps with BreakThemByTalking.
* RedHerring: Conan can see past most attempts at framing innocent suspects, but he's gone down the wrong track a few times; most importantly, the readers were being set up to expect that [[spoiler: Jodie was Vermouth]], but this turns out to be completely wrong.
* RedIsHeroic: Discussed about the "peach boy" legend.
* RedOniBlueOni: Invoked several times over in this series, with romantic, friendship, and enemy connotations. Ran and Shinichi/Conan are red and blue respectively. Kazuha and Heiji are orange or red and green, KID is dressed in white and Hakuba all in black. The Black Org. is black, the FBI is red, and Conan is blue. Ran and Sonoko are red and blue.
* RedStringOfFate: ''The Time-Bombed Skyscraper'' - confronted with a WireDilemma, Ran can't bring herself to cut the red one because of the association with the String of Fate (which is a good thing, because earlier the bomber had overheard her talking about how red was her favorite color and rigged it to go off on the red wire).
* {{Retirony}}: A high diver in "The Last Dive" / "Sports Club Murder Case".
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:Renya Karasuma is involved with the Black Organization, and is revealed as the unseen boss/"That man".]]
* {{Revenge}}: A ''very'' common motivation.
* RevengeByProxy: In the ''June Bride'' case, a suspect poisons his new bride to get revenge on her policeman father, who'd neglected to notice that the perp he'd been chasing had run over the suspect's mother (and she then bleeds to death later). Subverted in that [[spoiler:the bride found out that the suspect was the Childhood Friend she had a crush on, guessed that he'd attempt something like this, ''and'' willingly drank the poison to show that she had suffered a lot after their separation. And apparently, once he was released from jail, he got her forgiveness and properly got married.]]
** Another in the London case, in which [[MadBomber Hades]] [[spoiler:goes on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge against champion tennis player Minerva Glass for losing a match on which he bet all the money need to pay for his mother's life-saving operation. All the money was lost and [[ItsPersonal Hades' mother died]]. In turn, Hades plants a bomb in a gift lent to Minerva's mother during the Wimbledon Championship that will be triggered at the end of the game so that Minerva will lose her mother in return for Hades losing his]].
*** The London case isn't exactly RevengeByProxy since [[spoiler:it's revealed that the reason Minerva lost the match was because her mother wasn't at the match and therefore the mother is to blame.]]
** In ''The Case of the Mysterious Gifts'', the murderer aims to kill the son of the surgeon who (he believes) let his own son die on the operating table.
* ReversePsychology: KID challenges Jirokichi not to rely on children to protect his MacGuffin. Jirokichi, thinking it's because KID cannot disguise as somebody several heads smaller than himself, promptly asks the Detective Boys for help. [[BatmanGambit Just as KID planned...]]
* ReverseWhodunnit: Used quite a bit.
* RichBitch: Sonoko may be a subverted case, but some AssholeVictims are playing this straight.
** OTOH, a ''very'' spoiled RichBitch once invited Kogoro, Ran and Conan to her huge b-day party as payment for them finding her lost pet puppy...but she and one of her suitors ended up murdered soon afterwards. [[spoiler: A friend of both of them was the culprit, having found out that they killed the granddaughter of the girl's nanny (whom he had feelings for) by letting her drown to save their own lives during a boat wreck. So he first drugged and drowned the man in a fountain with his own hands, and then ''left the bound and gagged girl to drown in a covered bath tub'', to let them know ''why'' they were being killed as well as experience a death similar to the one they inflicted on the girl he loved.]]
* RipVanTinkle: One case (Episode 156-157) featured Conan, Detective Takagi, and the kids trying to prove the innocence of a man who was handcuffed with Sato in an abandoned building ready to be demolished. When the case is solved and Sato is freed, the first thing she does upon free is desperately ask for a toilet (she was cuffed for an afternoon, overnight, and morning). How ironic! Sato and her suspect were cuffed to a (non-functioning) toilet the entire time.
* RodandReelRepurposed: A fishing line is often used by the killer as a weapon or as part of a complicated mechanism.
* RoleCalled: At least in Japan. In America, it was retitled ''Case Closed''.
* RopeBridge: In a number of episodes. Frequently used as something that can be cut and strand the characters overnight in the spooky-old-mansion-du-jour, or occasionally as a hazard that can go out while being crossed.
* RubeGoldbergHatesYourGuts: Quite a few of the murders invoke this trope.
* RuleOfThree: Whenever there are multiple suspects in a case, there is a great chance that they will come in groups of three, either because there were only three other people to begin with or because Conan or somebody else uses some bit of evidence to narrow it down to that. This is particularly frequent in cases involving public locations and just generally any group of people where the participants were not previously established as related. Usually, there will be a big, gruff guy, a kind of asshole-looking guy, and a meek guy or a woman.
** Most of the time, the murders are split into three parts, the introduction of the characters & murdered, the investigation, and the revelation of the culprit.
*** Shinichi/Conan also, so far, has used 3 awake people for his acts, 3 detectives, and has three -later four- aides in the detective boys.
* RunawayTrain:
** There's one in the sixth, ''The Phantom of Baker Street''. [[spoiler: Conan ends up fighting UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper in a TraintopBattle.]]
** And in the 24th movie, ''The Scarlet Bullet'', Conan and Sera find themselves trapped on the "Japanese Bullet," the world's first vacuum-tube super-conducting maglev train, when the villain sends it racing out-of-control towards the stadium where the opening ceremony of the World Sports Games is being held.
* RupturedAppendix: This was the motive on an early crook who wanted revenge on a surgeon's son because his ''own'' son died of appendicitis. Mouri actually asked if that's still ''possible'' in this day and age, and [[ShownTheirWork the doctor explains that while it is, in this particular case the patient was brought in too late]], which is actually correct.
* SatchelSwitcheroo: The Game Company Murder Case (episode 54) involved a double {{invocation}} of this: A wants to kill B, and switched his bomb-loaded suitcase with B's. B, however, is selling information to a member of TheSyndicate and planned to exchange information in the same way... Result: Syndicate member bombed to death.
* SayMyName: Too many examples to even count. Latest instance was [[spoiler: Ayumi calling Conan after he passed out in "Vermilion Bird"]].
* ScaryShinyGlasses: Everyone who has them, including Conan.
* ScaryBlackMan: In episode 96, an old man named Yoshifusa Yamauchi comes back from Brazil to claim his share of his deceased brother's ''huge'' inheritance and brings a SBM named Carlos as his bodyguard. [[spoiler: It's surprisingly averted: Yoshifusa is actually Dickson Tanaka, a man who is [[DeadPersonImpersonation impersonating]] the deceased Yoshifusa ''and is Carlos's bodyguard'', since the supposed Scary Black Man was a harmless GentleGiant - and Yoshifusa's son with a black Brazilian woman, whom Dickson swore to protect from his friend's BigScrewedUpFamily.]]
* SchrodingersCast: Granted, the series (manga or anime) had a case of CerebusSyndrome, and the manga-side change happened after the anime has been aired for a year. The problem for the producers and writers of the animated show was that they had removed all references to TheSyndicate in the first season. This causes two ''very'' gratuitous examples of this trope:
** The ChekhovsGun from episode 12--''TheSyndicate'' killing their {{mook}}--was removed in the anime, by changing it to generic-evil-guy-seriously-hurting-but-not-killing-a {{mook}}. However, Aoyama fired the gun by making the murder victim a RedHerringShirt and the dead older sister of a new character. Result? ContinuityPorn was applied by killing her ''again'', this time by TheSyndicate, in a {{filler}} 116 episodes later. [[LampshadeHanging A lampshade was hung]] by Ran asking Conan if they had seen that character any time before. [[spoiler: This arc is the Billion Yen Heist. It was pertinent because Akemi Miyano had to die under the organization's hands to bring her little sister Shiho aka Ai in, because she is Ai's dead elder sister.]] This also resulted in the series running in a very [[RestrictedExpandedUniverse restricted expanded plot]] so as to prevent ContinuitySnarl by preventing any of the writer's [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's Guns]] to be removed.
** If that wasn't gratuitous enough, see this: in episode 4 (involving the bomb on the train), the villains were supposed to be a duo, and in the manga Conan overheard their names as Gin and Vodka. Again, in the anime they were changed to some other [[BadassLongcoat long coat badasses]]. The anime writers didn't even try to {{handwave}} that; Gin and Vodka's names were ''inserted'' into Conan's memory in the second season! In the German Dub, the names are also inserted in episode 4.
* ScoobyDooHoax: A number of episodes feature this sort of thing--since the series is set in a strictly rational world (with just one or two notable exceptions), ''any'' invocation of the supernatural can be assumed to be a hoax. (That doesn't stop normally-stalwart ActionGirl Ran from cowering whenever [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes she suspects she may be up against ghosts]], however.)
** Any cases featuring Heiji and Kazuha has more than decent chances of being one of these.
** A good number of these cases are set in Gunma Prefecture, which happen to be under the jurisdiction of the incredibly superstitious Inspector Yamamura.
* SecretIdentity: Quite a few characters beside Conan has this.
* SerialKillingsSpecificTarget:
** A serial arsonist turns out to be doing this, inspired directly by ''Literature/TheABCMurders''.
** This could also be said of the culprit from ''The Fourteenth Target''.
* SherlockScan: Played straight in the first episode by Shinichi just for amusement and in the second episode to convince Agasa Conan is really Shinichi, though later on he keeps it to himself as Conan. Used sparingly when he needs and can afford to make a suspect uncomfortable. (Often, Conan will take "shortcuts" in his deductions though — spin them out longer just to impress the one he's scanning, ''e.g.'', spinning out a series of deductions to explain why someone is a tennis fan when he actually noticed a tennis brochure sticking out of his pocket. Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, this sort of ''inductive'' reasoning--working backward from a conclusion to get facts rather than work forward from facts to get a conclusion--is what Conan Doyle actually used to invent Holmes's original ''deductive'' Sherlock scans.)
** Used in case involving a trip to London, when Conan needed to convince a boy that Conan was "Sherlock Holmes's apprentice" so he would hand over a threatening letter for Conan to investigate.
** Subverted in the [=OAV=] ''Magic File 4'', in which [[spoiler:a number of coincidences lead Conan and Hattori to draw a completely wrong conclusion]].
* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend:
** No, really! We're JustFriends- in fact, we're LikeBrotherAndSister. Heiji and Kazuha could say it a hundred times, but it's not going to change anyone's opinion because EveryoneCanSeeIt. [[spoiler: For example, a random stranger has TOLD Kazuha to ask Heiji out.]]
** Subverted as the series progresses [[spoiler:for Shinichi and Ran. Shinichi is quite acutely aware of his feelings for her (having in fact liked her before she liked him, a rare case for Shonen Manga) while living with Ran removed any possible lingering doubt he might have had on reciprocation]]. As time passes in-universe and [[spoiler:Shinichi continues to remain missing, Ran drops almost all pretenses of 'just friends' behavior and denial whenever he is mentioned or he calls]]. The subversion culminates in later chapters/episodes where [[spoiler:Shinichi has finally confessed his feelings to Ran. The case spanning chapter 1000 to 1004 has Ran confess her feelings by kissing Shinichi's cheek]]. As of Chapter 1005, the two of them have agreed to [[RelationshipUpgrade officially be boyfriend/girlfriend]].
* ShipTease: Conan and [[spoiler: Haibara Ai]]. She even confessed and then threw it off with a "[[JustJokingJustification just kidding!]] ^_^" (though at other times she ''has'' expressed veiled jealousy of his feelings for Ran). This caused quite a lot of ShipToShipCombat (see the entry on the YMMV page).
* ShrineToTheFallen:
** In one case, Conan deduces that the name placard of such a shrine is the hiding place of a valuable stamp.
** In 'And Then There Were No Mermaids', Heiji and Kazuha almost fall to their deaths investigating a memorial rock that has incense placed on it.
** In yet another, a similar rock commemorating the drowning of a young boy is the plot point to the mystery.
* ShootingLessonsFromYourParents: In the movie "The Fourteenth Target", we find out that Shinichi was taught to shoot by his father during vacations to Hawaii, after he [[spoiler: [[ShootTheHostage shoots Ran in the leg]] while she's held hostage by the villian]]
* ShootTheHostage: ''The Fourteenth Target''
* ShoutOut: [[ShoutOut/DetectiveConan Now with its own page.]]
* ShowWithinAShow: Several, including a long-running movie franchise about a {{Kaiju}} who seems to be a blend of Franchise/{{Godzilla}} and Film/{{Gamera}}.
* ShownTheirWork: A kid died of a RupturedAppendix in the past and was revealed during a MotiveRant. While pretty rare in the 20th century, it's explained that the kid died because he was taken in too late.
** The case where Hatsune Kamon, a bride of one of Kogoro's friends, Banba, dies, has this. [[spoiler: The reason why evidence suggests Banba at all is because 1, it was rainy so the clue was compromised and only about 95% usable, 2, Kamon had a rare genetic illness called Turner Syndrome. This illness can have very varied symptoms (hence the syndrome in the name), but the one shown and mentioned is the biggest: a short stature, which she was very selfconscious about and compensated for with heels. Of course this particular symptom can be taken care of with growth hormones... but she seems to be in her late twenties at most, in an episode that came out in about the 90ies, plus she was an orphan so it would make sense she wouldn't get those. Not to mention, Turner is indeed about the only condition where an identical pair of twins can have differing sexes naturally.]]
* ShutUpHannibal: Shinichi's sense of justice is such that he has very little tolerance for even the most sympathetic MotiveRant; he even shut up one suspect with a BreakingSpeech at ''him''.
* SilentWhisper: Practically OnceAnEpisode at the point where Conan figures out the crime and just wants confirmation before the big reveal.
* SilverBullet: In ''The Scarlet Bullet'', sniper Shuichi Akai uses a specially made silver bullet to shoot along the tracks of the 'Japanese Bullet' maglev train: not for any supernatural properties, but because silver will not not be affected by the high density magnets used in the maglev tracks.
* SingleTargetSexuality:
** Shinichi and Ran have only ever been interested in each other. Shinichi has liked Ran sine they were preschoolers and Ran since they were 15.
** Sonoko's boyfriend, Makoto, has only ever liked Sonoko since he first saw her.
** Kazuha doesn't even ''look'' at another guy in a romantic aspect except for Heiji; and speaking of Heiji, while he may have been oblivious to his own feelings for Kazuha most of the series, he also never been interested in anyone else except her.
** There's also Shiratori towards Satou [[spoiler: or so he thinks. Satou's a false positive of sorts, and [[FirstGirlAfterAll his decades-old feelings are actually for Kobayashi-sensei.]] However, because [[IdenticalStranger Satou and Kobayashi have such similar features]], and because Kobayashi idolized police ''and'' back then [[GlassesGirl didn't use glasses]], Shiratori thought [[BecauseDestinySaysSo fate was bringing him together with his old love]] when he ran into Detective Satou. [[RomanticFalseLead Sorry but no, Shiratori]]...?]]
* SingleWomanSeeksGoodMan: A common theme of the show are the female cast falling for one of the male members because of their good qualities.
** The flighty and boy-crazy Sonoko Suzuki from ultimately swears by the trope as her long-distance boyfriend is the GentleGiant Makoto Kyougoku.
** [[KickChick Karate champion]] and deuteragonist Ran Mouri follows this trope too, as the guy she likes is the AmateurSleuth Shinichi Kudou who is very protective of his loved ones and has a strong sense of justice (and unbeknownst to them, he's living with her... as her sort-of little brother Conan Edogawa).
** Local ActionGirl Miwako Satou joined the group, by [[spoiler:choosing NiceGuy Takagi over PrincelyYoungMan Shiratori.]]
** Continuing from the above, [[spoiler: Shiratori]] is ''not'' a Bad Boy; he's a bit of a jerk, [[spoiler:but his jerkiness comes more from pride than from actual cruelty, so he's an honest and hardworking cop, a quality that he's had ever since he was a child... which helps swear by the trope when he wins the heart of local HotTeacher Sumiko Kobayashi, who he helped when they were children - and ''the'' fact that made her fall for him was seeing him deliver a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to a guy who wanted to murder her, unlocking her memories of their childhood encounter.]]
* SinisterMinister: [[spoiler:Priest Tennei, the AssholeVictim from the Kiri-Tengu case.]] Portrayed as an overbearing money-grubber right off the bat, the killer's MotiveRant eventually reveals that he [[spoiler:killed his daughter's sweetheart, ''a monk under his own charge'', just to railroad said daughter into a marriage that would bring his temple more land and money. To add insult to injury, he covered up the murder via a ScoobyDooHoax and used that to squeeze even ''more'' money out of gullible tourists who came to the temple looking for the "monster"]].
* SkyscraperMessages: The Suspect Of the Week uses such a window lighting event to give himself an alibi to murder his victim.
* {{Snapback}}:
** With few notable exceptions (such as Heiji Hattori, [[spoiler:or members of the Organization]]), whenever anyone notices Conan is significantly smarter than he should be or that most of Kogoro's deductions while awake come from hints dropped by Conan, they invariably forget about it by the end of the episode. For example:
*** In "Trembling Metropolitan Police Headquarters: 12 Million Hostages" ([[spoiler:when Takagi and Conan are trapped in an elevator with a bomb and believe they're going to die]]), after Conan has demonstrated a remarkable degree of intelligence and maturity, Takagi asks Conan "who [he] ''really'' [is]". [[spoiler:(And Conan replies, "I'll tell you…in the next life!")]] However, nothing is ever made of this after the episode is over—Takagi drops right back into oblivious ButtMonkey mode.
*** In one two-hour episode where Ran suspects Conan is Shinichi, she observes that he is always "coming up with things" and makes a point of interceding with Kogoro to give him free reign to make his deductions--even lending him a pen to make notes. However, in subsequent episodes (the rest of the series thus far) she is back to scolding Conan for wandering around and "interfering with Kogoro's investigations", and picking him up and hustling him away whenever a police officer complains about a little kid at the crime scene.
*** In another episode where she suspects Conan of being Shinichi because his cellphone beeped when she sent Shinichi an email, she notices how Conan is stage-managing the investigation through hint-dropping--but again seems to forget all about it after she is convinced she was mistaken.
*** It is very much an either-or proposition: outside of the episodes where she suspects Conan is Shinichi, Ran by and large fails to take notice of his unusual intelligence--or if she does, it is trumped by his young age.
** This was somewhat averted after a long while. Many of the less-oblivious characters around Conan (and some guest investigators from other precincts) eventually came to realize that he keeps noticing useful stuff and that things he tends to say (supposedly) at random end up leading them on to solve the cases. Satou caught onto his usefulness almost immediately (and is so sharp in general that Conan has come to realize he dares not pull the "Sleeping Kogoro" act when she is around lest he risk her catching on).
** [[spoiler:The "death" of [[BrainUploading Noah's Ark]]]] in the sixth NonSerialMovie can be said as a minor example, to prevent the risk of adding in ''another'' CanonImmigrant as people who knew Conan's secret are, otherwise, important characters.
* SnoopingLittleKid: The Detective Boys, with the exception of Conan and Haibara, best fit this category--they are not actually smart enough to be true {{Kid Detective}}s. But they sure do snoop around and get themselves into trouble a lot. Though recently, Mitsuhiko (Mitch to Americans) seems to have become better at reasoning and deductions - [[spoiler:to the point of in one case coming up with the correct explanation early on while Conan didn't believe any of it till the end.]]
* SnowMeansLove: Satou gives her boyfriend Takagi a ''very'' happy kiss in the snow of Hokkaido, right after she helps to rescue [[ButtMonkey the poor guy]] from a cruel DeathTrap that ''almost'' invoked SnowMeansDeath on him. Cue to them forgetting [[IsThisThingStillOn that their co-workers were watching over them through a camera...]]
* SocialServicesDoesNotExist: Where does one begin? Obviously, Kogoro is alcoholic and is regularly hung over[[hottip:*:Granted, Kogoro is a happy drunk and isn't shown to be downright abusive - this only raises eyes in the west.]], Conan and Ran are regularly exposed to dead bodies and often ''extremely violent'' murder cases once or twice a week, sometimes are the ones who ''find'' the dead bodies, are sometimes actually ''put in danger'', are often clearly ''in view of the police'' and yet nobody seems to find anything wrong with this. A bit justified though as most of the time this happens it is almost always coincidental and never the direct fault of Kogoro. [[FridgeLogic One can assume the inspector has probably noticed that they don't seem to be too disturbed or injured by it, and has been keeping social services away, especially since Conan seems to be pointing out stuff the police missed]].
** However, Shinichi's parents were no better. They were implied to regularly disappear, Shinichi was living ''alone'' for a while (Even if Ran can take care of herself, she at least lived with her dad and had indirect access to her mom), and they actually ''did'' show up a few times in disguise to take Conan back only to provide some excuse so Conan can stay with Ran and Kogoro longer.
* SockItToThem: A sock full of coins is used as a murder weapon.
* SockPuppet: People in at least two different cases have used this to form an alibi.
* SoftWater: In one episode Conan is thrown several stories from a hotel balcony and lands in the pool, and doesn't even receive so much as a bruise from it.
* SomethingCompletelyDifferent:
** [[spoiler:Chapter 594]] is a rare case of this for the manga. [[spoiler:As a New Year's special, it not only features no murders whatsoever, but is a done-in-one story featuring Kogoro as the main character (complete with PrivateEyeMonologue!); the bulk of the plot consists of Kogoro trying to avoid the Detective Boys so that he won't have to give them their New Year's money envelopes.]]
** Another example comes in [[spoiler:Chapter 699. Once again, it's a done-in-one with no murders--the case revolves around the Detective Boys deciphering and ultimately stopping a man's attempt to commit suicide.]]
** In episode 225, in what could only happen in an anime original episode, Mitsuhiko ends up solving the case while Conan is baffled by how careless the culprit is, as compared to the show's standard murderers, who cover their tracks with overly careful tricks and leave only enough evidence for someone at Shinichi's level of deduction skill to solve it. Conan overestimates everything the culprit does (which allows Mitsuhiko to follow the more obvious clues) and ''scolds'' the criminal at the end for overestimating children and leaving such an easy trail to follow.
* SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay: Subverted and then played straight in episode 2: Conan reveals he knows about the mole on Agasa's butt to try to convince Agasa he's really Shinichi in a kid's body--but Agasa just assumes Shinichi's been blabbing. Then Conan uses a SherlockScan to demonstrate that he really ''is'' Shinichi.
** Used as a red herring later where [[spoiler: Jodie is routinely seen using a catch phrase of Vermouth ("A secret makes a woman a woman"), the Black Organization's master of disguise (who bears some resemblance to Jodie). Turns out that Vermouth said the same phrase to Jodie after killing Jodie's parents.]]
** Used and abused by Kaitou Kid in the 14th non-canonical movie, where Kid [[spoiler: accidentally overhears Shinichi tell Haibara and Agasa that Ran mistook the first airship she saw for a UFO. Kid later uses this nugget of information to convince her that he IS Shinichi, after he passes her pinch-test, but she still suspects him using Shinichi as a cover identity because they have 'similar faces']].
* SpannerInTheWorks:
** Kazuha Toyama, whenever Heiji has a plan that involves him dressing up as someone else. She knows him ''that'' well.
** Ran is this for the killer in the ''Mountain Villa Murder Case'' as by [[spoiler: walking in on him changing, she saw him without the ever present FatSuit that he wears in public.]]
** In the "Ran Girl / Shinichi Boy" arc, a culprit concocts a long-term plan to [[spoiler:kidnap a preschool-aged Ran as a ReplacementGoldfish for his runaway daughter]]. When little Shinichi picks up on suspicious behavior, the plan is moved up and, as a result, the would-be perpetrators are caught.
* StabTheScorpion: Ai and Mitsuhiko are scared away from a crime scene by a gunshot, but Conan eventually deduces that [[spoiler:the man who shot at them did it to keep them from being mauled by a pissed off (literal) [[MonsterIsAMommy Mama Bear]].]]
* StageMagician: The mangaka, Aoyama, seems to be a big fan of stage magic, since stage magicians (both professional and amateur) appear as the subject of episodes time and time again.
** Kaitou Kid is third in a line of famed stage magicians, and his secret identity is known to be a magic fan.
*** Kaito is not actually a 'fan' of magic, but a very good magician himself as thought by his father Toichi, so much so that Nakamori - detective in charge of catching Kid... amongst other things - occasionally calls him to crime scenes to test out their defenses. Little does Nakamori know...
* StartsWithASuicide: The NonSerialMovie ''Phantom of Baker Street'' started with the suicide of [[spoiler:[[ChildProdigy Hiroki Sawada]]]], moments after he was introduced to the audience.
** Also, the [[spoiler: Kimono Goddess]] case starts with the suicide of [[spoiler: [[BrokenBird Sakurako]] [[TheOphelia Suzuka]]. Her sister Eri is actually the SympatheticMurderer, and the cruel {{Alpha Bitch}}es who drove Sakurako to kill herself become the {{Asshole Victim}}s.]]
* StarCrossedLovers:
** Ran and Shinichi. While their feelings [[BelligerentSexualTension have been kinda wavering for quite the time]], as time passed they grew stronger [[spoiler: and Shinichi managed to give Ran a LoveConfession in London]] - but Shinichi has been trapped in the body of a little boy (the titular Conan) for 95% of the story and cannot openly tell Ran who he is, lest she and his friends will be targeted by the same evil organization that shrunk him. In the meantime, poor Ran waits for Shinichi's return...
** A certain case gives us [[spoiler: Hideomi and Miyuki]]. [[spoiler: When Hideomi was a teen, his and his best friend's DeadlyPrank killed Miyuki's parents and he barely managed to save her, but was physically scarred and wrecked with guilt. He tried to help her as much as he could in the following years, trying to atone for his terrible mistake... and when Miyuki gave him a LoveConfession ''despite knowing what he had done'', he crossed the DespairEventHorizon and committed suicide.]]
** In the backstory, we have [[spoiler: Shuichi Akai and Akemi Miyano. He began dating her at first to strengthen his position in the Black Organization but [[BecomingTheMask fell in love for real with her]], yet when he was found out and he told her to come with him, she couldn't leave because she didn't want to abandon her little sister Shiho/Ai. Few time later, she was murdered.]]
** Another case is [[spoiler: Raita Banba and Hatsune Kamon. They were a couple to be wedded the day after the case, and shared hobbies, interests, a birthday, had the same blood group, were both orphaned in the same fire, and could even tell what the other was thinking of. So much so that Hatsune Kamon started to want to know the reason why and had a genetic testing. The results came in just as she returned to the restaurant from the nail salon- they were twins and thus could not get married. She kills herself in despair.]]
* StatusQuoIsGod: Subverted, but only just barely. The plot does move forward and progress is made, but the entire series moves at such glacial pace it might as well be standing still to someone not following it closely. Of course, anything that threatens to cause TOO big a change too quickly is certain to be [[SnapBack rolled back]] almost instantly.
* StatuteOfLimitations: One criminal got caught because time spent overseas didn't count towards the statute and [[spoiler: his plane was held up at the gate due to inclement weather]]; another featured a series of murders that happened as the statute expired on a bank robbery gone wrong.
* TheStinger: A feature of the anime and the {{Non Serial Movie}}s. The TV episodes, [=OAVs=], and movies all have one last scene--sometimes several minutes long--after the end titles roll. The only exception comes in non-concluding parts of multiple-part episodes, which just show the trailer. (Though in the first couple of seasons, even these had content, though it was often just the first scene of the next episode.)
* StrangeMindsThinkAlike: At the end of the fourth movie, ''Captured in Her Eyes'', Conan is just a little disgusted with himself to learn that he proclaimed his love for Ran the same way Ran's father did to her mother.
** This actually seems to be the reason why Kogoro and Eri managed to get married despite being very different in many aspects. It's revealed that during childhood, despite arguing about putting sauce or shoyu on eggs, they ate in the same order at the same time. She also thought gray was a warm color, and it's implied she may not be aware Kogoro thought the same. They also both wore the outfits they wore on their first date on the anniversary of said date, with both doing it independently of each other.
* StrongFamilyResemblance: Yuusaku and his son Shinichi look almost exactly the same (Yuusaku has glasses and a funky mustache, Shinichi has a cowlick and a pointy rat-tail). The same goes for Kaitou Kid and Shinichi; even though nobody knows whether or not they're related. [[spoiler:Supposedly, Gosho Aoyama has said that the resemblance between them is not a coincidence.]]
** Subverted in "The Culprit is Genta's Dad": [[spoiler:The Kojima adult who looks most like Genta turns out to be the culprit but ''not'' Genta's father.]] Genta turns out to look nothing at all like his father--he takes after his mother.
** Also a very important plot point in the Naniwa Murder case: [[spoiler: Yusuke Sakata's ''huge'' physical resemblance to his DisappearedDad Inaba makes a SerialKiller blurt out the truth about Inaba's strange death 20 years ago, allowing Yusuke to start a serial murder spree [[LoveMakesYouEvil to punish whoever had a hand on it.]] And on the other hand, seeing a picture of Inaba is what allows Heiji and then Conan to unmask Yusuke as the SympatheticMurderer.]]
* StuckOnASkiLift: At one point this becomes an opportunity for murder.
* SueDonym: Conan nearly did this at the very beginning, before he came up with Conan Edogawa, he nearly said "Shinichi."
* SuckOutThePoison: Volume 17 of the manga.
* SuicideNotMurder: The despondent ex-boyfriend of Yoko Okino commits suicide to cast suspicion on said singer, but Conan clears her. Another case alluded to was when the ex-CEO of a company committed suicide and tried to frame his former business partner only to be found out by Conan's father. Years later, his son tried the opposite and was foiled by Conan himself.
* TheSummation: Every case. Frequently involves a SummationGathering, often orchestrated by Conan phoning Megure in Kogoro's voice and vice versa.
* SurprisinglyGoodEnglish:
** The Americans' voice actors during the anime adaptation of the "3 K's of Osaka" storyline, and the taxi driver in "Shinichi's New York Case".
** Hattori Heiji's English is almost perfect apart from one or two ''tiny'' pronunciation issues--not surprising, as his voice actor learned English from an American exchange student when they stayed at his house during adolescence.
** In the London arc, most of the dubbers, all the important characters at any rate, speak very good British English.
* SweatDrop:
** Conan, when Kogoro says or does something stupid (especially at the very end of an episode).
** Although not an example of the comedic use of the trope, ''lots'' of people break out in cold sweats during the episodes--usually the murderer, or those who are considered suspects. Sometimes the murderer can be picked out by being the only one out of all the suspects who is sweating, but this is often a RedHerring.
** Also a symptom of Conan/Shinichi's impeding change from child to adolescent and vice-versa. Actually lampshaded by Heiji in the [[spoiler:moving car strangulation case]], where just before the first symptoms are felt by Shinichi, Heiji worriedly notices that he's sweating a lot.
* TheSyndicate: Pretty much the entire Black Org (who have actually been ''called'' "the Syndicate" on some occasions).
* SympatheticMurderer: Many. They ''love'' this trope just as much as they do AssholeVictim. (To the point where one could guess the victim by who's shown to be an asshole before the murder takes place.)
[[/folder]]

[[folder:T-V]]
* TaintedTobacco: An early episode had a victim who was given cigarettes with poisoned filters. However, this turned out to just be a RedHerring, as the victim smoked unfiltered, and was actually poisoned in a different way, by a different person.
* TakeMeInstead: In ''The Case of the Mysterious Gifts'', the father of the child whom the murder was attempting to kill to achieve RevengeByProxy begs to be killed in his place. [[spoiler:Luckily for all involved, the murderer is talked down before he could do the deed.]]
* TakeMyHand: Subverted when [[spoiler: Heiji and Kazuha are in a LiteralCliffhanger. Trying to make a HeroicSacrifice, Kazuha stabs him with an arrowhead to make him let her go. He ''still'' holds on. Both survive.]]
* TakeOffYourClothes: In chapter 249, Heiji tell Kazuha to do this to see any marks her attacker left on her. He didn't explain first and got hit.
* TakeThat: The sixth movie, ''Phantom of Baker Street'', seems to be one geared at how Japanese society promotes conformity.
* TalkingInYourSleep: Kogoro, after drinking himself to sleep in episode 6.
--> '''Kogoro''': No, sir, I'm sure I gave my math homework to the pink monkey in the golf cart...
* TenLittleMurderVictims: In volume 30, {{Captain Ersatz}}es of famous detectives were invited to an abandoned mansion (together with Conan, Ran and Kogoro) and die off one by one. [[spoiler:Only one of them actually died. The rest faked their deaths once they deduced who the real killer was in order to PullTheThread on her]].
* ThatOneCase: Since a large amount of the characters are policemen or detectives, several of them have this:
** Kogoro's That One Case in the NonSerialMovie "The Fourteenth Target" ended with a ShootTheHostage, with the hostage being his wife; he quit the police and separated from his wife soon after this. The movie then circles around the suspect supposedly taking revenge for this incident.
** Sato has ''two'' That One Cases, both of them "inherited": in one, her father perished chasing the suspect from a bank robbery, and in another, she lost her former partner to a serial MadBomber (who himself had an earlier That One Case that lost ''his'' prior partner).
** Subverted with Megure's That One Case, where a serial hit-and-run driver critically injured both himself and the girl who offered herself up as bait--turns out that was how he met his wife and he's embarrassed to tell the tale.
** Conan himself considers the death of [[spoiler: Ai's sister]] and his inability to stop the murderer of the Moonlight Sonata from committing suicide his [[MyGreatestFailure greatest failures]].
** Matsumoto has one where not only [[spoiler: his partner Morimura was murdered]], but [[spoiler: he was given his iconic scar over his eye.]]
* ThemeNaming: Listing all examples of this trope in this series is an exercise of futility. The main characters are all named after fictional detectives. The Black Organization uses alcoholic drinks as codenames. All of the characters in Magic Kaito that appear have a color in the kanji for their name. And then the characters in many cases have their own theme namings, and those are often clues to solving the case...
** Suspects often come conveniently grouped into theme names which the victim can point to in a dying message. In one case, each suspect had an airport in his or her name, and the victim dialed a three-letter international airport code on her cell phone to indicate which one did her in. In "The Red Wall," each former resident of the mansion had a color in his or her name. In the NonSerialMovie ''The Fourteenth Target'', each person targeted for murder had a number as part of his or her name. One can only suppose there is some kind of psychic force at work in Conan's world that causes otherwise-unrelated strangers to be drawn together into groups of people named along a particular theme.
** One such ThemeNaming is even [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by the FBI: Rena Mizunashi, [[spoiler: Kir's]] cover name, could be an allusion to [[Franchise/JamesBond 007]][[note]]First, arrange in Japanese order of Mizunashi Rena. Then the explanation: "nashi" means "nil," referring to zero. "Ren" is a reading of the kanji for "zero." As for "na," see SevenIsNana.[[/note]].
* ThemeParks: Tropical Land. Also, Paradise Land from the NonSerialMovie ''The Detective's Requiem''. Also, ''The Darkest Nightmare'' adds ''yet'' another one, Tohto Aquarium.
* ThereAreNoTherapists: One of the many FridgeLogic elements that goes along with the ridiculous number of murders Conan witnesses; shouldn't anyone worry it might be a little disturbing? Conan himself seems to have little trouble with seeing brutally murdered people on a daily basis likely because of his upbringing, and the same could be said for Heiji. Ai's past seems to suggest she'd be used to it as well, but the only three genuine little kids in the series (Ayumi, Genta, Mitsuhiko) have probably seen more than a couple hundred warm corpses over the course of the series with no apparent repercussions. In general, the teenagers Ran and Kazuha tend to have stronger immediate reactions, but don't develop any psychological problems either.
** In ''Captured In Her Eyes'', there's only one psychiatrist available to help Ran when she gets [[EasyAmnesia amnesia]], and [[spoiler:he's the killer. There are, literally, no therapists]].
** In another case, there is actually a therapist, but he's the murderer and manipulated one of his patients into believing he was committing the crimes while sleepwalking and therefore taking the blame for the therapist's deeds.
* ThereIsOnlyOneBed: Actually, there's two but Ran chooses to sleep with Conan one night anyway because she's damn scared after a murder. [[spoiler: That actually ''saves'' her from being killed as well; the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Killer Of The Week]] attacks her in her sleep since Ran supposedly [[HeKnowsTooMuch knows something she shouldn't about the aforementioned murder]], but Conan manages to wake Ran up in time and they jump away from danger.]]
* TheyFightCrime: He's an age-regressed Sherlockian super-sleuth, she's his unwitting girlfriend/baby-sitter and karate expert. They Fight Crime!
* ThrillerOnTheExpress: More than one case takes place on a train. Also an important arc called "Mystery Train".
* TimeMarchesOn: Because ''Conan'''s first few years of airing span the ramp-up of Japanese adoption of the cellphone (''keitai''), it is interesting to watch the evolution of its use in the series. (All the more so since the series is "supposed" to take place over the course of a few months thanks to ComicBookTime. At one point nine or ten years into the series' run, Kogoro reflected on how payphones had all but disappeared over the past five years in favor of cell phones--even though they were all over the place in early episodes!)
** Early episodes:
*** Doctor Agasa gives Conan a miniaturized cellphone "disguised" as an oversized earring with a hands-free cable. (Why a male primary-school student should ''need'' an oversized earring is never adequately explained, though it does come in handy for lending to Ran.) Since Conan can broadcast from his voice-changing necktie directly to that phone, at one point he uses it to relay deductions in a case via Ran.
*** Another of Agasa's "inventions," only seen once, is a cellular fax machine and phone concealed in a bento box. The food in it is also real. (This nearly gets Conan into trouble with Ran when he uses it to make a Shinichi-call in a client's apartment and Ran hears her shouting echoed from the phone in another room.)
*** Relatively few characters have cell phones, and they are the cordless-phone-handset-sized models from the mid-90s with few features and no email capability. When victims have cell phones, last-number-redial is often used as an important clue. [[spoiler:In one case, a murder victim dials a 3-letter code that turns out to be the abbreviation for an airport whose name was shared by her murderer.]] Characters mostly use payphones (and Conan often gets odd looks from bystanders as he talks through his bow tie in Shinichi's voice in payphone calls to Ran).
*** One episode involves the Detective Boys using a shortwave radio to pick up cell/cordless phone calls between a kidnapper and a worried father, and using clues from the conversation to track down the kidnapper and rescue the victim.
** Later episodes:
*** Conan gets an ordinary flip/camera phone in the late 300s to early 400s, and the earring-phone is by and large not seen again. Also, phones get smaller and add digital displays. Emails through cell phones start to show up as more important clues. In one case, a phonecam picture of Ran in a bikini Sonoko sends to "Shinichi" also contains an important clue. In another, the internal clock on Kogoro's cell phone is used to provide and then disprove an alibi (it was reset by the bartender). In another, a mailed phone-camera shot of a murder victim is used to falsify the time of death.
*** Ran gets suspicious when she sends a phone-mail to Shinichi [[spoiler:and it immediately buzzes on Conan's phone. Conan tricks her by borrowing Agasa's identical phone and swapping it with his own.]]
*** The same episode has Conan realize that a famous romance author [[spoiler:is still writing the old "two lovers separated by a column, each thinking he was StoodUp by the other" type of PoorCommunicationKills story, which in the modern age isn't possible unless one or both wasn't carrying a cell phone. This turns out to be because the stories are actually ghost-written by the "writer's" brother, a murder suspect who has been hiding in the house's attic for twelve years and hence has not had experience with cell phones.]]
*** In one episode, Conan startles Ran and Sonoko by pulling up TV listings via his phone's web browser.
*** One episode has a murder victim leave a "dying message" via cell phone [[spoiler:by pressing the "Memo" button to record the incoming call from his murderer gloating over him as he dangled from the window outside his apartment. (Most American cell phones do not have this feature.)]]
*** In one confrontation with the Black Organization, Conan overhears the touch tones as Vermouth emails her boss. [[spoiler:They correspond to notes from a Japanese folk song.]] For a while afterward, whenever he sees someone using a cell phone [[spoiler:particularly when calling numbers in Tottori, whose area code has the same notes]] he gets a {{flashback}} of Vermouth.
*** In manga volume #770, [[http://dctp.ws/V73-Reader/V73-8Read/V73-8/File770_010.png Conan is shown to carry two identical cell phones]], and has Shinichi "call him" on one for a deduction while doing the voice through the other. (Of course, the main reason he carries two is to be able to ''answer'' the phone as either Shinichi or Conan, depending on who gets called.)
*** Cell phones are also frequently used as remote detonators for bombs. ("Trembling Metropolitan Police Headquarters: 12 Million Hostages"; the non-serial movies ''Captured in Her Eyes'' and ''Countdown to Heaven'')
*** As of the 700s/800s' manga cases, most new phones shown are smartphones. (Vermouth, Ai, Mitsuhiko...)
*** A recent case (Everyone Saw, episodes 710-711) has used digital tablets as part of the murderer's trick.
*** This become especially hilarious in the Aquarium Murder Case (882-884), where smartphones are central to both the case and the Shinichi-Ran interactions. The kicker? This case is supposed to be a ''prequel'' to the whole series, taking place ''before'' all those chapters featuring landlines and payphones.
* TitleDrop: Oddly enough, the English title, "Case Closed", is said by Masumi Sera in the Japanese version of the manga, in Chapter 770.
* TokyoTower: Particularly in the "Trembling Metropolitan Police Headquarters: 12 Million Hostages" special [[spoiler:which involved a time bomb rigged in an elevator]], and the scene of the climax of the 13th NonSerialMovie ''Raven Chaser'' [[spoiler:in which Conan bungee jumps off the top with his suspenders]].
* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Genta's eel and rice. (An argument could also be made for Kogoro's beer, sake, and other alcoholic beverages…)
* TrainEscape: ''The Scarlet Bullet'' opens with a hostage attempting a Type 2. Fleeing with his hands bound behind him, he makes it to an el station and and jumps on to a train just as it is about to leave. However, just before the door closes, his pursuer shoots him InTheBack, killing him.
* TranquillizerDart: Conan's wrist-watch tranquilizer needle gun. The victim barely has time to mumble a few words before keeling over. So far, very few characters have proven resistant to it. Gin shoots himself in the arm to overcome the sedation with a rush of pain and adrenaline and Inspector Zenigata (from ''Anime/LupinIIIVsDetectiveConan'') goes down quickly, but is so tough that the effect wears off in no time. Both times, this catches Conan completely off-guard.
* {{Translation Train Wreck}}: Literally. In the German dub of ''The Time-Bombed Skyscraper'' (Movie 1) Conan says the bombs on the [[spoiler:train tracks]] do not explode if a train goes 200 km/h or more. This is in fact a translation error, because in all other occasions it is said that the subway trains had to go 60 km/h. It has to be further noted that the Tokyo Metro 6000 series seen in this movie has a maximum speed of 100 km/h.
* {{Tsundere}}: Ran is a Type B Tsundere, meaning she's normally in deredere ("hot" or "sweet") mode but can rapidly change to tsuntsun ("cold" or "bitter"). Kazuha gravitates more towards the Type A (tsuntsun, "cranky") type around Heiji.
** In "The Steam Murder" (issue 722 of the manga, episode 597 of the anime), when an actress who played a kind female lead in the original ''Kamen Yaiba'' series brushes the Detective Boys off coldly, Genta wonders aloud, [[http://www.dctp.ws/V69-Reader/V69-4Read/A5.html "Is she tsundere?"]].
** Agasa wonders if Ai is one. Conan snarkily asks him if she's ever dere.
* TwinSwitch: Used as a trick in one case to create the [[spoiler: alibi for one of twin brothers, as the other was thought to be long dead to the point that when both showed up to the household head, he died of a heart attack.]]
* UndeadTaxExemption: Conan Edogawa and Ai Haibara not only have assumed names, but they can even use those identities to attend public schools and, given the show's nature, haven't even have their legal identities suspected by the police officers they meet oh-so-frequently...
** But subverted in that Conan's lack of a true identity and, thus, a passport is brought up as a plot device whenever the story requires him to travel to another country (as in the ''Lupin III'' crossover special and a manga story involving a trip to London).
* UnderwaterKiss: The way the 2nd movie gets Ran to kiss Conan. Also Heiji and Kazuha in Volume 20 of Detective Conan Special manga. Both are to give the character a breath of air.
* UndressingTheUnconscious: In chapter 830, Kaitou Kid knocks Sera Masumi unconscious and strips her for [[MuggedForDisguise a disguise]]. She is actually such a {{Bifauxnen}} that even ''after'' he stripped her down to her boyish underwear he ''still'' mistook her for a boy and is baffled when Conan says she was a girl.
* UniquePilotTitleSequence: The anime's proper title sequence wasn't used until the second episode (since it's that episode that establishes the general setup of the show and "introduces" Conan). The first episode has the theme song and credits being played while the audience witnesses the first criminal in the series commit murder; it even has Shinichi, instead of Conan, read the episode title aloud.
* {{Ventriloquism}}: Conan uses a bow tie created by his professor friend to imitate people's voices when solving cases. For some reason, nobody ever seems to notice those voices are actually coming from behind the person's chair (or from a micro-speaker on his clothing or occasionally ''his forehead'').
* VictimOfTheWeek: Even when it's not a murder (which is rare), there's always a kidnapping or robbery (usually leading to murder).
* VictoriasSecretCompartment: Once again, Conan gets to ride in his mom's shirt.
* VillainousLineage: The NonSerialMovie ''The Phantom of Baker Street'' started out with sensible social commentary on Japan's hereditary culture but hits this trope around the revelation that the bad guy [[spoiler:is a descendant of Jack the Ripper and thus couldn't stop the murderous nature in his gene-- or, at least, killed people because he was found he was the descendent thereof.]]
** Of course it's not so much this as the bad reputation such a revelation would cause if it went public that scared him, because the hereditary culture would turn him into that character in the eyes of the people. And then at some point his panic caused his common sense to run a few red lights and then hit a lamppost, a little understandably. Basically, it could be about how concentrating on erasing the mistakes of one's ancestors can make you repeat them.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:W-Z]]
* WardrobeMalfunction: Ran enters a murder scene wearing only a ModestyTowel and Conan turns towards her right as the towel slides down. He {{nosebleed}}s so much that he gets a ''GoryDiscretionShot''. The anime has a BetweenMyLegs shot that also shows with a [[LuminescentBlush full-body blush]].
* TheWatson: Countless characters take turns playing Watson, Conan even pretends to be Kogoro's Watson constantly.
* WeaponizedBall: Conan uses his TrickedOutShoes's acceleration feature to give him the speed and strength to kick his ordinary soccer ball at high speeds as an EmergencyWeapon.
* WeddingDeadline: A storyline in revolved around an arranged date between the policewoman Satou and the good-hearted-yet-snobbish superintendent Shiratori. (These dates are called ''omiai'', almost always end up in marriage, and while one ''can'' technically refuse the marriage part, doing so is extremely embarrassing for both parts.) Another policewoman, Yumi, tried to get Satou out of it by sending her "help", who Satou correctly guesses to be the shy Takagi, who also loves her and the one she seems to actually favor. The brash Satou makes a deal with Shiratori that if Takagi doesn't show up before sunset, she will marry him. Unfortunately, Takagi is involved in a robbery case, with three witnesses all giving contradicting details on the culprit. Luckily, the main character gives Takagi some tips that helps him solve the case... but the culprit escapes, forcing him to give chase... a few minutes before sundown. [[spoiler:In the end, he never actually makes it to the restaurant that Satou and Shiratori are at; the main character uses a decoy to trick both of them into thinking that Takagi actually showed up, then lures Satou to where Takagi actually is.]]
* WeirdnessCensor: In order for TheMasquerade to be sustained, there are [[ElephantInTheLivingRoom a number of details that the cast is forcibly required to ignore]], otherwise the whole charade would fall apart rather quickly. With time, most of these have been either [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] to death or even seriously acknowledged by the cast.
** Kogoro's (and occasionally Sonoko's) "habit" of collapsing to the ground and delivering brilliant deductions while appearing soundly asleep, especially after spending most of the investigation making inaccurate and counter-productive guesses, was at best only treated as "quirky" for a long while. Eventually, he earned the nickname of "Sleeping Kogoro" for this, to the point where most of the people assisting the investigation eagerly await the moment of sudden inspiration, and find it strange when he solves cases without falling asleep.
*** The first time this happens in front of Officer Satou, she is unable to resist playing with Kogoro's mouth, and afterward Conan is extremely reluctant to put Kogoro to sleep in front of her again because he is afraid she will notice Kogoro isn't really talking.
** Following the previous point, Kogoro and Sonoko never had much of an issue taking credit for deductions they have no recollection of. Both cases are somewhat {{handwaved}} as ego-stroking and, in Kogoro's case, a simple [[SureLetsGoWithThat "Meh, whatever"]] attitude where he doesn't care so long as the job is done. He eventually becomes vaguely aware of his unexplained bouts of somnolence, believing that he has an subconscious alter-ego solving his cases for him.
** Conan's involvement in the investigations, particularly him wandering around the crime scenes finding or noticing things, was for a long time treated as simply annoying behavior from a nosy kid. Unlike the previous two points, this became an actually recognized point when several characters became aware that the stuff he comes up with tends to be important and ends up leading everyone else with the investigations. Satou was the first adult to consider him useful, and eventually Ran, Megure, Takagi and others accepted it as well. Nevertheless, Heiji is still the only one who actually drew the right conclusion from it instead of simply treating it as quirky.
* WeirdnessCoupon: Conan can get away with almost everything by claiming he is running errands for Kogoro. Obviously this only works when the ''great detective'' isn't present.
* WhamEpisode: Chapter 1008 finally reveals the name of the leader of the Black Organization, and it's [[spoiler:somebody that pretty much nobody expected it to be.]]
* WhatDoesSheSeeInHim:
** This is pretty much how Sonoko sees Ran's relationship with Shinichi; for Sonoko, Shinichi is just a mystery {{otaku}}.
** In one case, [[spoiler: a man tries to kill his bride at a wedding. She notices his intentions, but three years later, she marries him anyway..]] Granted [[spoiler:the marriage ends up happening after many revelations, a MyGodWhatHaveIDone from the groom, the man serving time in jail for the attempted murder, and presumably a reconciliation in which the man and the woman come clean to each other about everything.]]
* WhoMurderedTheAsshole: The frequent use of AssholeVictim in a murder mystery means this trope is commonly applied.
* WholeEpisodeFlashback: Multiple times.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes:
** A plot point in one case: Rich Bitch Hiromi Yamazaki is completely terrified of bees due to being allergic to their sting (and she almost died when stung by one as a little girl)... [[spoiler: and the person who killed her is smart enough to actually use bees as one of their "killer weapons". More exactly, they caused her to panic at the sight of some bees released in the highest floor of her Big Fancy House, then covered the door handle in honey so there would be more bees there, and when Hiromi leaned on a wooden rail... the rail was "broken", causing her to fall to her death.]]
** In the movies and filler cases, Kogoro suffers from mild acrophobia (fear of heights) and is quite uncomfortable in high settings where he has the chance to see how high up he is. He does not have this fear in the manga.
** Ghosts for Ran. She fears them not because of the supernatural stuff, but because if she ever was under attack from them, her physical strength would be useless against them.
*** Inspectors Sango Yokomizo and Misao Yamamura are also notable for their fear of ghosts. The ocean is also this for the former, hence his inability to swim.
** In one case, all four household staff of the Kunitomo residence in Episodes 415-417 had some sort of fear - the chauffeur was TerrifiedOfGerms, the chef was acrophobic, the housekeeper averse to sharp objects, and the butler had SuperOCD. [[spoiler: Their phobias would turn out to be mostly a RedHerring, since the trick used to commit the murders relied on the presence of the chauffeur's [[TwinSwitch twin]] who was thought to have died along with some of the staff's relatives from a cruising accident 13 years prior.]]
* WineIsClassy: A number of episodes, movies, and [=OAVs=] have significant plot points concerning the tasting of fine wines.
** One of the characters in the second NonSerialMovie, ''The Fourteenth Target'', is an expert sommelier who is able to identify the exact vintage of wine by its sight, smell, and taste. [[spoiler:It turns out the sommelier is the culprit, and is in part taking revenge for an accident that robbed him of his sense of taste.]]
** At least two of the television episodes involve crimes that take place in or around wine cellars. [[spoiler:In one, the murder uses a clothesline to deposit the body of the victim in the middle of the cellar without actually entering himself. In another, an assault victim at a wine-tasting ruins a bottle of fine wine by heating and shaking it up as a message that his attempted murderer has imprisoned him in the cellar.]]
** Averted with Kogoro Mori, a heavy drinker who professes to enjoy fine wine but is completely unskilled in the handling and drinking of it--and (as is revealed when Ran switches bottles on him) is incapable of distinguishing fine wine from cheap wine. He frequently gets drunk on wine, sake, or beer, and ends up [[LampshadeWearing with his necktie around his head]].
* WinToExit: See HolodeckMalfunction, above.
* WireDilemma: ''The Time-Bombed Skyscraper''
** The 2-hour special "Trembling Metropolitan Police Headquarters: 12 Million Hostages" has several of these. [[spoiler:Three years earlier, Sato's boyfriend on the bomb squad sacrificed his life by ''not'' disarming a bomb in order to text Sato a clue to the location of a bomb in a populated area that was given 3 seconds before the bomb went off. This is then subverted by Conan choosing to disarm the same culprit's current bomb in a similar situation before it can go off--he is able to figure out the location of the larger-population bomb from only half the clue.]]
** Subverted in the first ''Detective Conan'' live-action special, in which [[spoiler:the culprit made the bomb with all wires the same color so that it could not be disarmed. Shinichi ends up soccer-kicking it through a skylight in one of the most blatant CGI special-effects ever]].
* WiseBeyondTheirYears: Most of the adults who don't know the truth, especially those in law enforcement, think this of Conan and Ai.
* WomanScorned: The motive of many a murder; Ran also got very ''tsun'' when a young girl showed up claiming to be Shinichi's girlfriend (the little boy she was babysitting had been kidnapped and she was looking for Shinichi to help, using the "girlfriend" claim as her cover).
* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: [[spoiler:Hiroki]] of the sixth NonSerialMovie, his circumstances is extremely woobie-- the problem is, did he intentionally cause the [[spoiler:HolodeckMalfunction]]?
* TheWorstSeatInTheHouse: In one story, Conan and company end up in the nosebleed section (called "Alps seats" in Japan) and Kogorou makes an IncrediblyLamePun in regards to this. Of course, this ends up helping them solve the Mystery Of The Day.
* WorthlessTreasureTwist: Played with several times. One case had a mansion where the treasure was the view from a hidden window. On Conan revealing this, the villain had a complete breakdown over all they had done to find it - including mass murder and disfiguring their own face. Another episode had the treasure be the experience of the journey to find it...except there was also a real treasure as some robbers had been hiding their gains in the same spot.
** In the 11th NonSerialMovie, ''Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure'', the "pirate treasure" of Anne Bonny and Mary Read turns out to be [[spoiler:a hidden but empty pirate ship, built by Anne while waiting for Mary to get out of prison, which crumbles to bits upon being exposed to outside air.]]
* WouldHitAGirl: There are many cases that deal with a male criminal killing their female victim(s).
* WouldHurtAChild: More than one case had children being hurt or even killed. Conan himself isn't immune. Shortly after he was de-aged, Conan was beaten up by the suspect, prompting him to later find ways to compensate for his smaller size. In the 13th movie ''The Raven Chaser'', [[spoiler: Irish]] not only beats up Conan badly but also [[WouldHitAGirl hurts Ran]] when she protects Conan.
* WoundedGazelleGambit: Sometimes used by the killers to deflect suspicion from themselves.
** In at least two other cases the killers planted evidence against themselves in such a way as to make it look like they were being {{fram|ingTheGuiltyParty}}ed. And the case of a robber who lured his former partners onto a ship on the pretext of splitting the loot from a robbery past the statue of limitations, kills them, then shoots himself, making it look like one of his dead partners did it before they killed themselves.
** Averted in a case where [[spoiler:Ran thought that the karate champion she fangirled was the murderer, but he was planting evidence ''against himself'' to divert attention from the true murderer, his BrokenBird girlfriend. He ''was'' arrested too, but for TakingTheHeat]].
** Averted also with [[spoiler:Asami Uchida's almost death in a fire. One of Conan's theories at the beginning was that she caused the fire to drive attention to herself... but it was her HopelessSuitor, who tries to stage a RescueRomance to gain her attention]].
** And another case has [[spoiler:Ran and Sonoko's old schoolteacher murdering her colleagues for killing one of their students, and to make believe one of the "victims" was the killer, she knocked Sonoko out with chloroform and then lay a corpse with her (the teacher's) wig next to her, to make it look like both of them were attacked]].
** Played very, VERY straight in a {{filler}} case where [[spoiler: a girl who was subjected to a cruel PrankDate decides [[TheDogBitesBack to turn the tables on the guy who did it to her]] by attacking other girls ''and'' faking attacks towards herself, making it look like she and the other gals are being subjected to StockShoujoBullyingTactics. She intends to conclude her revenge by [[DrivenToSuicide killing herself]] [[ThanatosGambit and]] [[FrameUp making it look like the guy killed her]]; however Conan uses Sonoko to reveal this plan to everyone.]]
* XanatosGambit: How the first victim of the Red Wall case created his DyingClue. [[spoiler: His original dying message named the culprit in hiragana (as writing kanji in spray paint would be borderline unreadable), and by throwing all of his equipment save for the red spray paint he used, he was basically [[BatmanGambit goading his killer to paint the wall red]], which, using [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage#On_empty_shape how colors work in afterimages]], would still point to the culprit's name.]]
* XanatosSpeedChess: The various high school detectives are very good at this, though it usually only shows up in special, plot-relevant episodes. One good example is the Halloween party murder two hour special (ep 345). For that matter, Kaitou Kid excels here as well, and it shows up anytime one of the tantei is pitted against him.
** Clash of Red and Black was a long BattleOfWits between the FBI and Black Organization, each side constantly making brilliant moves to counter the other.
* YamatoNadeshiko: When Ran and Sonoko get fortunes at a rooster festival telling them what their boyfriends' "ideal type" is, Ran's tells her to be this. The words "yamato nadeshiko" can be heard in the dialogue. [[spoiler:(It turns out this was actually Sonoko's fortune; she read her fortune instead of Ran's fortune that just said "be yourself" because she didn't like it.)]]
* YouJustToldMe: An incident with Ran and Conan early on in the story.
* YouKilledMyFather: One of the main reasons for the culprit committing the murder(s) is because the victims(s) were directly or indirectly involved in the death(s) of their loved one(s).
* YouKnowTheOne: Near the end of each case where the culprit is not yet known to the audience, Conan says words to the effect of, "It's THAT person!" when he has figured out whodunnit. This sounds much more awkward in English translation since the pronouns normally used in English are gender-specific but the Japanese expression does not express gender (to avoid giving any hints as to the villain's identity).
** This is also used by characters when the writers want to avoid giving away the identity of someone who is not an episode culprit: "Ano Kata," the name by which people refer to the Black Organization's Big Boss, literally just means "that person". Sometimes this can get a bit silly, however: when Ran is slipping out to see her mother in the episode that introduces her, Ran has an internal monologue in which she calls ''her own mother'' "that person".
[[/folder]]
----

* ThemeTuneCameo: The Detective Boys keep singing openings/endings of the series when they go camping. The theme songs also frequently appear when characters sing karaoke.

* PiggyBank: How the titular client of "A Small Client" pays his fee to Kogoro. [[spoiler:Turns out it doesn't hold much more than chump change, despite the client being a nationally famous child actor; most likely [[RealityEnsues the studio or an agent handles most of his paycheck]].]]

As with most prominent manga, it has a number of spin-offs, including ''Detective Conan Special'' (mainly produced by Aoyama's assistant artists, and aimed at a slightly younger audience), ''Zero's Tea-Time'' ([[spoiler:focusing on AntiHero Furuya "Bourbon" Rei's day-job at the Poirot Cafe]]), ''Wild Police Story'' (a story about a group of police students, takes place before the main series), and ''Hanzawa-san the Criminal''. (A comedy starring "Hanzawa-san" aka the shadow figure appear in place of the criminals before their identity were revealed.)

As with most prominent manga, it has a number of spin-offs, including ''Detective Conan Special'' (mainly produced by Aoyama's assistant artists, and aimed at a slightly younger audience), ''Zero's Tea-Time'', ([[spoiler:focusing on AntiHero Furuya "Bourbon" Rei's day-job at the Poirot Cafe]]), ''Wild Police Story'' (a story about a group of police students, takes place before the main series), and ''Hanzawa-san the Criminal''. (A comedy starring "Hanzawa-san" aka the shadow figure appear in place of the criminals before their identity were revealed.)

As with most prominent manga, it has a number of spin-offs, including ''Detective Conan Special'', (mainly produced by Aoyama's assistant artists, and aimed at a slightly younger audience) ''Zero's Tea-Time'', ([[spoiler:focusing on AntiHero Furuya "Bourbon" Rei's day-job at the Poirot Cafe]].) ''Wild Police Story'', (A story about a group of police students, takes place before the main series.) and ''Hanzawa-san the Criminal''. (A comedy starring "Hanzawa-san" aka the shadow figure appear in place of the criminals before their identity were revealed.)