History YMMV / ColdCase

** Truitt in "Spiders" also qualifies. He's a neo-Nazi, an [[DomesticAbuse abusive boyfriend]], a murderer, and an all-around SmugSnake who wholeheartedly believes he's the good guy through all of it. And [[EvilMatriarch his mother]] may be even worse.

** The sheer ease with which many of the killers have readjusted to their normal lives after ending someone else's can be quite disturbing, especially if they've actually moved up in the world after committing the crime. An example is the woman in "[[spoiler:Scadenfreude]];" a lowly hairstylist in the past, she owns the entire salon in the present and displays no regrets about having murdered her best friend to get there.

** In that context, it makes him sound like a womanizer. However, once you realize that he's gay, you realize that he never went on a second date, not because he couldn't be satisfied by only one woman but because he couldn't be satisfied by ''any'' woman. To make matters worse, he was also secretly in love with his partner who he saw all the time. He probably thought that if he kept going out with women, he could surpress his feelings.

** Also occurs in [[spoiler:"Debut" and "Hubris"]], in which the person everyone thought was the killer... turned out to be the killer.

* BittersweetEnding: The flashbacks spend a lot of time developing the victim's character, allowing the audience to get to know him or her, often making them so nice that it's easy to forget that he/she is going to end up dead. Even their killer finally being arrested can't take away the sting of this person being gone forever--especially since the killer themselves is often depicted as genuinely horrified by their actions. And in the case of the occasional AssholeVictim, it bites that someone's being arrested for killing someone who probably got what he or she deserved.

* PlotHole: The ''entire plot'' of "Torn" essentially hinges on one of these, which hampers the enjoyability of the episode.

* TitleConfusion: Contrary to what many fans believe, the main characters are ''not'' a specialized team that works in cold cases only. They are average Homicide detectives that from time to time reopen old cases, and they often talk about recent cases they closed before they went cold (and are rarely shown through the series). If the cold case is recent enough, there is a chance you'll see one of the main characters themselves putting the box on the shelf in the prologue. Lilly, though, seems to have built an informal fame as "cold case investigator" over the years.
** A lot of that confusion comes from the episode ''Love Conquers Al'' in which Det. Valens is introduced. He complains to Lilly about working in cold cases when he would rather be out solving live ones. Lilly then tells him that she chose it because everyone deserves justice, no matter how long it takes.

* RetroactiveRecognition: A pre-fame Summer Glau and Mae Whitman among others have showed up as oneshot victims.

* NaziGrandpa: ''The Hen House''.

** A lot of that confusion comes from the episode ''Love Conquers All'' in which Det. Valens is introduced. He complains to Lilly about working in cold cases when he would rather be out solving live ones. Lilly then tells him that she chose it because everyone deserves justice, no matter how long it takes.

** Another is the [[spoiler:Congressman]] in "Late Returns," if you can even call him a "destroyer" at all. As a teenager, he was [[spoiler:taken advantage of by his controlling older sister, and ultimately kills his girlfriend essentially on a reflex when her touch caused him to have flashbacks to his sister abusing him]].

* Another is the [[spoiler:Congressman]] in "Late Returns," if you can even call him a "destroyer" at all. As a teenager, he was [[spoiler:taken advantage of by his controlling older sister, and ultimately kills his girlfriend essentially on a reflex when her touch caused him to have flashbacks to his sister abusing him]].

* MagnificentBitch: [[spoiler:Caroline Hargreave from "The Runaway Bunny," to the point of being one of only two non-sympathetic villains in the show to [[TheBadGuyWins win]]]].

* CompleteMonster: The handful of perps who aren't [[SympatheticMurderer Sympathetic Murderers]]. And quite a few victims as well. George Marks and John Smith being the most prominent examples of the former (though at least George has a FreudianExcuse mentioned in spoilers).

* Also occurs in [[spoiler:"Debut" and "Hubris"]], in which the person everyone thought was the killer... turned out to be the killer.

*** "Isn't is about time he got married?"
*** "You gotta go on a second date for that."
** In that context, it makes him sound like a womanizer. However, once you realize that he's gay, you realize that he never went on a second date, not because he couldn't be satisfied by only one woman but because he couldn't be satisfied by "any" woman. To make matters worse, he was also secretly in love with his partner who he saw all the time. He probably thought that if he kept going out with women, he could surpress his feelings.

*** In the opening sequence of ''Forever Blue'', this is said about the CowboyCop victim:

** "You gotta go on a second date for that."

** Truitt in "Spiders" also qualifies. He's a neo-Nazi, an [[DomesticAbuse abusive boyfriend]], a murderer, and an all-around SmugSnake who wholeheartedly believes he's the good guy through all of it. And [[EvilMatriarch his mother]] may be even worse.

* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: The serial killer from ''It Takes a Village'' and the one from ''Sabotage''.