History YMMV / ColdCase

* {{Wangst}}: When one of the doers confesses in ''8:03 A.M.'', he tearfully blurts that he wanted to be famous and that the victim was trying to take that away from him.

** The FemmeFatale turned EvilMatriarch from ''The Runaway Bunny''.

** The FemmeFatale turned EvilMatriarch from ''The RunawayBunny''.

** ''Static'' and ''November 22nd'' also involve [[spoiler: money-broke victims getting shot by a sentimentally-involved woman because they wanted to spend more time with their estranged daughters.]]

** ''Static' and ''November 22nd'' also involve [[spoiler: money-broke victims getting shot by a sentimentally-involved woman because they wanted to spend more time with their estranged daughters.]]

** The victims in both the ''The Plan'' and ''Blackout'' are both killed in the same manner and for mostly the same reason, [[spoiler: both get drowned in a swimming pool for being a pedophile.]]
* RetroactiveRecognition: A pre-fame Summer Glau and Mae Whitman among others have showed up as oneshot victims; Jennifer Lawrence appears as the present-day version of a teenage girl in another episode. Shailene Woodley makes an appearance as a sister of a Amish murder victim.

* Wangst: When one of the doers confesses in ''8:03 A.M.'', he tearfully blurts that he wanted to be famous and that the victim was trying to take that away from him.

* FanPreferredCouple: Lilly and Scotty, who had a clear UnresolvedSexualTension in the early seasons (even lampshaded by John Smith, who bluntly asks Scotty, "You get a piece of that? Bet you think about it from time to time.") [[MayDecemberRomance Lilly and Stillman]] also have their fans.

* RetroactiveRecognition: A pre-fame Summer Glau, Shailene Woodley, and Mae Whitman among others have showed up as oneshot victims; Jennifer Lawrence appears as the present-day version of a teenage girl in another episode.

* RecycledPremise: Though the majority of the premises are different, many viewers online noted that the episodes ''Family'' and ''Almost Paradise'' have strikingly similar endings because [[spoiler: both involve a faculty member or teacher asking a favor from a student during a late 1980's high school senior party, both have the student refuse to comply, and both have student killed by faculty member running him or her over with a automobile]].

* RetroactiveRecognition: A pre-fame Summer Glau, Shailene Woodleym, and Mae Whitman among others have showed up as oneshot victims; Jennifer Lawrence appears as the present-day version of a teenage girl in another episode.

* RecycledPremise: Though the majority of the premises are different, many viewers online noted that the episodes ''Family'' and ''Almost Paradise'' have strikingly similar premises towards the end because [[spoiler: both involve a faculty member or teacher asking a favor from a student during a late 1980's high school senior party, both have the student say "No", and both have student killed by faculty member running him or her over with a automobile]].
** "Glory Days" and "Forensics" also end rather similarly, with [[spoiler: a student being murdered by a teacher after confronting them with both their own wrongdoing and the fact that their [[TitleDrop glory days]] at school were in reality anything but]].
* RetroactiveRecognition: A pre-fame Summer Glau and Mae Whitman among others have showed up as oneshot victims; Jennifer Lawrence appears as the present-day version of a teenage girl in another episode.

* AwesomeMusic: [[TearJerker/{{ColdCase}} See here]].

* MomentOfAwesome: See Awesome.ColdCase.

* AwesomeMusic: AwesomeMusic.ColdCase

* NightmareFuel: Has a sub-page NightmareFuel.ColdCase.

* TearJerker: See its sub-page TearJerker.ColdCase.

* RecycledPremise: Though the majority of the premises are different, many viewers online noted that the episodes "Family" and "Almost Paradise" have strikingly similar premises towards the end because [[spoiler: both involve a faculty member or teacher asking a favor from a student, both have the student say "No", and both have student killed by faculty member running him or her over with a automobile]].

* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: The serial killer from ''It Takes a Village'' and the one from ''Sabotage''. The second one from Offender also qualifies, given that he had been wrongfully incarcerated for murdering his own child for 20 years, was freed largely on a technicality (prime evidence was contaminated) and his own wife abandoned him. By the time he finally confronts the bastard who murdered his child and framed him for the deed he's completely lost it.
** Phil, one of the robbers from ''Dog Day Afternoons'', also qualified as such. Despite his cold, almost murderous exterior, he actually had somewhat of a heart, and actually wanted to get out of the robbery business for good, unlike his boss Julius Carver, and even attempted to warn Roween Ryan about Julius' lying nature as well as his having another accomplice that he seduced to helping him rob the bank. When she decided to have Julius be turned in, Phil also attempted to stand up to Julius when he ordered for her to be executed, but unfortunately, he was verbally and emotionally broken by Julius' words, and thus ended up having to kill her anyways. At the end, despite his being the murderer, you actually have to pity 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 [[AccidentalMurder kills his girlfriend essentially on a reflex]] when her touch caused him to have flashbacks to his sister abusing him]].

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

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

* CrowningMomentofAwesome: The victim of the week often gets one of these in the trailer, or at some point in the episode, just before they turn up dead. Sadly, this is sometimes the very reason they end up dead. (ex: the victim in "Blood On The Tracks" who wanted to confess to a crime committed years ago, but was murdered to ensure his silence, the reporter in "Breaking News" who was about to blow the lid off a scandal, etc.)

* WhatAnIdiot: The revelation of who the doer was in "Time to Crime" was [[TearJerker heartbreaking]], to say the least, that doesn't really change the fact that he was a ''complete and utter moron''. Dude buys a gun that he intends to use to kill someone ''from the same person he intends to kill'', then instead of, say, [[JustShootHim shooting him right there]], he waits until the guy is in the middle of a crowded park, then fires randomly into said crowded park, and not only misses his target, but [[spoiler:hits his own sister by accident]].

* NightmareFuel:

* TearJerker: A good number of the ending scenes, mostly because of the combination of music and context.
** ''Family 8108'': Ray's story was just so tragic.
** ''Saving Patrick Bubley''. '''All of it!'''
** ''Andy in C Minor''.
** ''Wishing''. Just... ''Wishing''.
** ''Forever Blue''": "I miss him" "I know"
** ''One Night''": ''I'm sorry about the car, Dad...'' and ''We can ride the horses in the field...''
** ''The River''": made this troper cry ManlyTears because the main victim reminded him of a friend of his and one of the main characters beating up an innocent man because he done nothing wrong, really made me cry.
** Oh gods ''The Good-bye Room''. This [[TheStoic troper]] broke down crying in the second half.
** ''Best Friends''. "I used to wonder if it was wrong, the feelings I had for her." "No. It was just... the wrong time."

* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: For starters, there's ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0eAHtpELsg Creatures of the Night]]'', which is just one long tribute to ''TheRockyHorrorPictureShow''.
** Also, the opening theme.
*** [[ESPosthumus E.S. Posthumus]] - Nara (Unearthed album). Except for the opening cry, that is.
** That episode which only played BobDylan songs.

* NightmareFuel: Many of the death scenes, especially Mitchell Bayes' in ''Churchgoing People'' and the young girl in ''Mindhunters'', with her scream of "I want my Daddy!".
** John Smith's entire MO. Some of his victims had even managed to somehow carve messages into the wall of the cell, messages which appeared to grow increasingly desperate and illegible. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf5FruRHbNg The beginning]] of ''Rampage'' was also pretty horrific, considering how out of nowhere it was.
** ''Offender'', in which the killer lured his unsuspecting victim into his garage with the promise of helping him (the boy had fallen and cut his knee). As the killer walked towards him, the boy turned to face him, and in the split second before the garage door closed, his eyes widened in knowing terror.
** ''The Letter'', in which the victim is held down and gang-raped, then accidentally smothered when her would-be lover puts his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams.
*** Though that scene in ''The Letter'' could be interpreted as him suffocating her to spare her the more painful death the group would have planned.
*** When he takes his hands away, the body is still moving. [[BrainBleach Think about it.]]
** The brutal lynching of the victim in ''Strange Fruit'', with Dr. King's legendary "I Have A Dream" speech playing in the background tops everything.
** 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, or one of the killers in [[spoiler: Blood On The Tracks]], who enticed her ex-lover to murder her husband, then killed her friend as well, then spent the next 26 years living the life of Riley using her friend's identity (they looked very much alike), again, showing little remorse for her actions--when she feebly protests to Lily that she loved her husband, a disbelieving Lily snaps, "You've got a funny way of showing it."

** The season 1 finale, "Lovers' Lane," brings us Jim Larkin, a [[VillainousGlutton slovenly glutton]] and serial rapist. Too lazy to even abduct victims himself, he instead badgers his abused and weak-willed son to do so for him, usually unattractive teenage girls he pretends to befriend. His assaults are absolutely brutal, reaching the point at which he murders one of his victims simply for calling him "disgusting."

** Rayanne Leland from season 5's "Spiders" is a sugary-sweet stay-at-home mom who also happens to run a Neo-Nazi coven out of her basement. When her son Truitt murders a Hispanic woman, Truitt's girlfriend, Tamyra, turns to Rayanne for help, only to find to her horror that Rayanne wholeheartedly supports her son's actions, and calmly tells Tamyra that all Hispanics should be exterminated, [[DissonantSerenity her warm, loving smile never leaving her face]]. When Tamyra threatens to go to the police, Rayanne browbeats the most insecure and sympathetic member of the coven, Elliot, into murdering her.

** Daniel Patterson from season 5's "Slipping" is the ultimate [[{{Gaslighting}} gaslighter]]. [[GreenEyedMonster Insanely jealous of his wife's skill at poetry]], he hatched a plan to both steal her work for his own and get rid of her. With the aid of his slavishly-devoted housekeeper, he did everything in his power to drive his wife insane and ultimately to suicide, maintaining a facade of a caring husband all the while. When he failed to break her, he murdered her himself. To prevent his stepdaughter from knowing the truth he sent her to a notoriously harsh boarding school, believing his story that her mother committed suicide for 45 years.

* CompleteMonster: George Marks and John Smith (though at least George has a FreudianExcuse mentioned in spoilers).
** Though there are other killers who qualify, some of them aren't even the primary murderer (ex: Rayanne Lealand, who raised her son to be a racist sociopath, and emotionally railroaded an insecure, desperate attention seeking individual into beating the episodes victim to death with a hammer in order to keep her from sending her son to prison)

** 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 [[EvilMatri. ch his mother]] may be even worse.
*** While Truitt is scum, it is implied that he did genuinely love Tamyra; he's an asshole, but he just narrowly avoids complete monster. His mom has no such redeeming quaities