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| 2 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16667998310.21626300 |
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| 5 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2jcd8vab3fircou8cm2hjcxfv4i_1.jpg]] |
| 6 | [[caption-width-right:350:''"And, uh... [[AndAnotherThing just one more thing]]..."'']] |
| 7 | |
| 8 | ->'''Leslie Williams:''' You know, Columbo, you're almost likable in a shabby sort of way. Maybe it's the way you come slouching in here with your shopworn bag of tricks.\ |
| 9 | '''Lt. Columbo:''' Me? Tricks?\ |
| 10 | '''Leslie Williams:''' The humility, the seeming absent-mindedness, the homey anecdotes about the family, the wife, you know?\ |
| 11 | '''Lt. Columbo:''' Really?\ |
| 12 | '''Leslie Williams:''' Yeah, Lieutenant Columbo, fumbling and stumbling along. But it's always the jugular that he's after. And I imagine that, more often than not, he's successful. |
| 13 | -->-- "Ransom for a Dead Man" (1971) |
| 14 | |
| 15 | ''Columbo'' is a [[LongRunners long-running]] American MysteryOfTheWeek crime drama starring Creator/PeterFalk as Lieutenant Columbo, a beat-down, blue-collar UsefulNotes/LosAngeles homicide detective whose [[ShabbyHeroesWellDressedVillains unkempt appearance]], [[CigarChomper cheap cigars]], and [[ObfuscatingStupidity clownish antics]] [[BunnyEarsLawyer hide an exceptionally sharp mind]]. The series comprises sixty-nine [[MadeForTVMovie made-for-TV movies]], including two {{pilot movie}}s made in 1968 and 1971, every third episode of the 1971–78 ''Series/TheNBCMysteryMovie'', and a series of occasional {{revival}} movies from 1989–2003. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | According to WordOfGod -- ''a.k.a.'' prolific TV production partnership Creator/LevinsonAndLink -- the film ''Film/LesDiaboliques'' (1955) and its shabby inspector, Alfred Fichet, was the major initial inspiration for the character. Other influences include Porfiry Petrovich, the similarly klutzy Russian inspector from Dostoyevsky's ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'', and Creator/GKChesterton's humble ''Literature/FatherBrown''. Lieutenant Columbo (then conceived as Lt. Fisher) first appeared in the short story "May I Come In": the story ends with the detective confronting the killer and uttering [[TitleDrop the titular words]] as the story ends. "May I Come In" was then adapted as an episode of the TV anthology series ''The Chevy Mystery Show'' entitled "Enough Rope" (with Bert Freed playing Columbo) which in turn became the play ''Prescription: Murder'', with the detective character evolving into a more significant supporting character each time. Eventually the play would be adapted into the ''Columbo'' pilot. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | ''Columbo'' is the TropeCodifier and most famous example of the ReverseWhodunnit (also known as the "open mystery"). For as much as the first quarter of each episode, the audience sees the motive set up and then actually watches as each guest villain tries to execute the perfect murder via an intricate -- and often high-tech -- endgame. Columbo himself then appears in the second act, as the first police presence on the scene; with very rare exceptions, the audience is then left wondering not "whodunnit" but "howzhegonnagetim" (or, as the show's creators dubbed it, "howcatchum"). |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Viewers who missed the first fifteen minutes could [[NarrowedItDownToTheGuyIRecognize pick out the murderer pretty quickly anyway]]; guest villains included Creator/RichardKiley, Creator/RobertConrad, Creator/RobertVaughn, Creator/DonaldPleasence, Music/JohnnyCash, Creator/RoddyMcDowall, Creator/MartinLandau ([[ActingForTwo as twins]]), Creator/RuthGordon, Creator/HonorBlackman, Creator/VeraMiles, Creator/JanetLeigh, and Creator/LeonardNimoy, while Creator/RobertCulp, Jack Cassidy, Creator/PatrickMcGoohan (a close friend of Falk's, who also directed 5 episodes) all appeared multiple times. Then again, plenty of guest stars showed up and ''weren't'' the killer, including Creator/VincentPrice, Creator/LeslieNielsen, Creator/KimHunter, Creator/DonAmeche, Creator/DeanStockwell, Creator/IdaLupino, Creator/JulieNewmar, and Creator/MartinSheen (the latter four were, in fact, victims[[note]]Ida Lupino was on the show twice, and survived her first episode but was murdered by Johnny Cash the second time, while Dean Stockwell was murdered by Robert Culp's character in his first appearance and was framed as a patsy for Robert Vaughn's killer in ''Vaughn's'' first appearance[[/note]]). Oh, and the first ''Mystery Movie'' episode ("Murder by the Book") was penned by then-fledgling screenwriter Creator/StevenBochco and directed by some random ''wunderkind'' named Creator/StevenSpielberg. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | Albeit deliberately structured more like the formal "drawing-room mystery" (think Creator/AgathaChristie) than anything like a realistic police procedural, the show was generally an exception to ConvictionByContradiction. While an ''Literature/EncyclopediaBrown''-style clue may first trigger Columbo's suspicions, the ''real'' chase is his attempts to get enough evidence for an arrest, often by exasperating/panicking the perp themselves into saying or doing something incriminating. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | Columbo was the master of PerpSweating (i.e. shredding the Constitution, albeit totally under the RuleOfCool at all times). Though he generally settles on his horse from the outset, he never lets on, instead worming his way into their confidence via fawning adulation, begging their assistance as he "solves" the case. Usually he forces them to weave a huge web of lies until he can finally PullTheThread -- justified because he's always right.[[note]]Interestingly, while the Lieutenant is clearly over-the-top, he's arguably using a more true-to-life interview technique than the angry, confrontational interviews common in straight police dramas; flattery and interest in the other person's concerns are a more effective way of obtaining information -- which is also why they have been ruled unconstitutional in Supreme Court case-law due to their also being unreliable.[[/note]] A ThrowItIn accident during the filming of ''Prescription: Murder'' led to the show's most signature mannerism: after each interview with the suspect, Columbo begins to leave, the perp begins to relax -- and ''then'' the Lieutenant returns to ask a significant and leading question, prefaced by a sheepish [[AndAnotherThing "Just one more thing, sir..."]] |
| 26 | |
| 27 | Columbo's other trademarks are his weatherbeaten raincoat, a cheap cigar, his broken-down car, his refusal to carry a gun (because ''of course'' perps always surrender quietly when the jig is up, though it is implied that it's not so much an [[DoesntLikeGuns aversion to firearms]] on his part but more an awareness that his ''absolutely horrifying'' marksmanship with one is more likely to put bystanders in danger than the perp), and constant references to [[TheGhost his never-seen wife, Mrs. Columbo]]. Later, in an interesting subversion of ExecutiveMeddling, the network tried to force a permanent sidekick on him. He got one: a shiftless, droopy basset hound that is most often seen being instructed to stay in the car. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | Another mild {{running gag}} was Columbo's first name, never revealed (everyone calls him "Lieutenant" instead). An early episode has him showing an ID badge with the name "Frank", a fact only visible with video technology not available when the episode first aired. WordOfGod confirmed that this was never intended to be the character's canon name. (In the 1970s, famously, a trivia book author invented the first name "Philip" as a copyright trap. When the answer appeared in the game ''TabletopGame/TrivialPursuit'', he sued for plagiarism. He lost the case, as the defense argued successfully that they had merely been doing research.) |
| 30 | |
| 31 | Given all this, ''Columbo'' can be easily read as an expression of class struggle within the justice system. The perps are almost always powerful, privileged, and well-educated, while Columbo is, to put it mildly, not. Then again, the series creators have said that they weren't trying to send any message, just felt that Columbo would be more interesting as a [[TheExoticDetective fish out of water]]. |
| 32 | |
| 33 | Columbo's prop-laden buffoonishness is usually considered an act, but if so, it is an act he never admits to. Villains routinely accuse Columbo of putting up a false front, which he promptly disavows even more humbly. In ''Prescription: Murder'', a [[PsychoPsychologist murderous psychologist]] provides a (seemingly) perfect analysis of the Lieutenant: He believes he can't get by on his looks or charm, so he has turned his disadvantages into advantages. In "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case", Columbo remarks that he knows he isn't the smartest guy around and attributes his success to merely working harder, thinking longer, and looking closer than anyone else would. In interactions with characters he doesn't suspect -- such as other police officers, his dog's veterinarian, or simply people he is convinced are innocent -- he does show some of the same personality quirks, though not to the same extent and with a lot less of his [[AndAnotherThing trademark absentmindedness]], hinting that it's not ''wholly'' an act, but something that he does deliberately play up. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | Columbo has solved every case put before him onscreen (he sometimes claims that he only solves about a third total, but this could well be part of the humility act) and hasn't gotten his man only twice. In the first case the perp was dying anyway. In the second case, the murder victim was sleeping with a mother AND her daughter, and being abusive to the daughter to the point of cutting her. Columbo let the mothey take the fall for the crime alone, letting the abused daughter walk free. In true classic mystery fashion, each episode wraps up with the Lieutenant confronting his prey with his train of deduction, culminating in the vital clue; the perp may not confess, but they know, and the viewer knows, they have been beaten. To show the subsequent arrest and trial might be interesting in a lot of cases, but would be entirely superfluous in all of them. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | Columbo's last appearance was in the 2003 TV movie ''Columbo Loves the Nightlife''.[[note]]The character's final filmed appearance was a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu4Q2D4Y-Q0 short in-character skit]] for the ABC 50th Anniversary special, involving ''Series/{{Alias}}'', in which he visits their facilities (apparently created at the behest of Michael Eisner), although ''Columbo Loves the Nightlife'' was the final proper episode.[[/note]] A "finale" TV movie was planned and written, but [[Creator/AmericanBroadcastingCompany ABC]] refused to insure it due to Falk's age and subsequent declining mental health, and Falk died in 2011 with the last script still in limbo. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | In England, Creator/DirkBenedict had done ''Prescription: Murder'' in a small run of theater, as the title detective. Also, when the play was first produced, it starred Creator/JosephCotten as killer Dr. Fleming, and Creator/AgnesMoorehead as Fleming's murdered wife Carol. At that time, Columbo was being played by Creator/ThomasMitchell. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | ''Columbo'' was also the primary inspiration for the British LockedRoomMystery series ''Series/JonathanCreek'', as well as Creator/RianJohnson's series ''Series/PokerFace''. |
| 42 | |
| 43 | The entire series has been out on DVD for many years. A large Blu-ray box set in a deluxe wooden cigar box-type package was released in 2011 -- [[NoExportForYou only in Japan]], but it's region-free and has full audio and subtitles in both Japanese and English. Kino Lorber eventually picked up the license for an international Blu-ray release in 2023, being split into two box sets (pre- and post-revival). The series is also available on the streaming service Creator/{{Peacock}}. |
| 44 | |
| 45 | ---- |
| 46 | !!"Just one more trope, sir...": |
| 47 | |
| 48 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 49 | |
| 50 | [[folder:Tropes A to E]] |
| 51 | * AbsenceOfEvidence: In "The Most Crucial Game", Paul Hanlon gets caught when [[spoiler:Columbo found that the phone call the killer claimed to have made at 2:29 pm in his stadium box (and recorded by a bug on the line) '''lacked''' the sound of the half-hour chime of the anniversary clock in the box]]. |
| 52 | * AccidentalMurder: |
| 53 | ** Brimmer in "Death Lends a Hand" punched his victim in the face in a rage, not intending to kill her, but the punch caused her to fall over and hit her head on a table, dying from head trauma. |
| 54 | ** Vanessa Farrow is physically accosted by ex-husband Tony Galper when he finds out that she's having a relationship with his loanee Justin Prince. Vanessa pushes him away in defense, but he falls onto a glass coffee table hard and dies from the broken glass. |
| 55 | ** In "Dagger of the Mind", Lillian Stanhope accidentally kills Sir Roger Haversham when she throws a cold cream jar too strongly at his noggin. |
| 56 | ** In "A Friend in Deed", Hugh Caldwell accidentally strangles his wife in a fit of rage. |
| 57 | ** In "A Deadly State of Mind", Dr. Mark Collier accidentally kills Nadia Donner's husband Carl while he's trying to stop Carl from attacking Nadia. |
| 58 | ** Gardener Fernando in "A Bird in the Hand" is accidentally killed by a car bomb meant for Big Fred. |
| 59 | * AccidentalPervert: Columbo has to collect a porn tape for evidence, and [[ObligatoryJoke sure enough]] is mistaken for a fellow customer by another middle-aged man in a shabby raincoat. |
| 60 | * ActionGirl: A few of the murderers qualify. |
| 61 | ** Leslie Williams in "Ransom for a Dead Man", in addition to shooting her husband in cold blood, is shown to be a skilled pilot. |
| 62 | ** Downplayed with Grace Wheeler, who is quite athletic despite her old age and shown to be in terrific physical shape as a dancer. [[spoiler: Her mental health, however, is another story...]] |
| 63 | * ActorAllusion: |
| 64 | ** Robert Costanzo (best known as Harvey Bullock from ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'') has a cameo in "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine", playing a bar owner who happens to be a retired police sergeant. Costanzo was a police officer before he became an actor. |
| 65 | ** Despite being best known for her role as the victim in ''Film/{{Psycho}}'', Creator/JanetLeigh was in a large number of musicals and dance films. Her character in "Forgotten Lady" had nearly the same acting history (seemingly excluding a horror movie role). |
| 66 | ** From "Murder with Too Many Notes", Creator/BillyConnolly plays film conductor Finlay Crawford, both names taken from one of his comedy routines about names he finds annoying. |
| 67 | ** In "Identity Crisis", Nelson Brenner (Creator/PatrickMcGoohan) says "be seeing you", a reference to the ArcWords of ''Series/ThePrisoner1967''. |
| 68 | * AdamWesting: |
| 69 | ** Actually rather rare for the celebrity killers, but Music/JohnnyCash, Creator/JanetLeigh and Creator/WilliamShatner all did this with their characters. |
| 70 | ** Peter Falk was also quite prone to doing this himself; despite being typecast in the role, he was never unable to get other work, but he loved playing the character so much that he would do appearances in-character frequently, the most famous being [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_UN2S8SasY Dean Martin's roast of]] Creator/FrankSinatra and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSyeQH15evw the promo for the TV series]] ''Alias''. |
| 71 | * AdaptationalVillainy: In the original stage version of ''Prescription: Murder'', Dr. Fleming, while still a murderer, was considerably more sympathetic, being genuinely in love with his mistress and offering a confession to Columbo due to guilt over his role in her [[spoiler:fake suicide]]. In the TV movie, he is a stone-cold sociopath who was simply using his mistress as a means to an end, and implies he would have been more than willing to kill her too if she got in his way if she hadn't [[spoiler:(seemingly) killed herself first]], thereby [[spoiler:exposing his true nature to her, and compelling her to turn him in]]. |
| 72 | * AdaptationDistillation: Both "87th Precinct" adaptations suffer from this -- both feature the same basic plot as the books but that's more or less it. Aside from the normal time compression of adapting a book to screen, practically all of the social and racial commentary is stripped out. Many detectives are dropped with Columbo filling their roles. Arthur Brown is an "in name only" version of the original detective, as all the 70s era racial content concerning the character was done away with, in part because of the decade difference (the novels being set in the 70s, the Columbo episodes in the 90s) and because Columbo wasn't a series that focused on such things. Rudy Strasse is more or less the same, although a good chunk of his dialogue and personality had to be cut for time. |
| 73 | * AdaptationExpansion: The franchise initially began as a short story by Levinson & Link titled ''May I Come In?'', about Dr. Flemming killing his wife and ends as the detective (then conceived as Lt. Fisher) [[TitleDrop asks if he can come in]]. Shortly after, the Chevy Mystery Show contracted them to expand the script into "Enough Rope", starring Bert Freed as Lt. Columbo. After that, the duo expanded the story into the stage play ''Prescription: Murder'', which was followed by the television adaptation that led to the entire 69-episode TV series starring Peter Falk. |
| 74 | * AffablyEvil: A few of these killers were. |
| 75 | ** The standout is Adrian Carsini in "Any Old Port in a Storm". Carsini actually delights in having Columbo around, especially since Columbo seems earnest about learning about the wine trade, which is Carsini's strong suit. [[spoiler:It's telling that, unlike some other murderers, Carsini never suspects Columbo's gambit which ends up proving him guilty. It's also telling that as Columbo is taking Carsini in, he stops to share a drink with Carsini at the Carsini Winery. Carsini is even wowed by Columbo's selection of a dessert port and happily chugs away on his way to the police station.]] |
| 76 | ** Carl Brimmer in "Death Lends a Hand" has a friendly relationship with Columbo until he starts getting too close to him. He also offers Columbo a position within his private investigation firm, mostly to get Columbo off the case, but also because he knows Columbo is smart. |
| 77 | ** Mr., er, Dr. Bart Keppel is quite charming. Even when he knows that Columbo knows he committed the crime, Keppel still lets Columbo come around him pretty frequently, clearly relishing the battle of wits. |
| 78 | ** Paul Gerard from "Murder Under Glass" is quite a charming person to be around. Too bad he was extorting from restaurants and killed Vittorio Rossi to keep this quiet, and was more than willing to kill Columbo. |
| 79 | ** Joe Devlin from "The Conspirators" is a poet who is quite social and pleasant in nature. Too bad he's also an [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles IRA terrorist]] using all this as a cover to raise money to buy weapons. Columbo even goes out drinking with him two separate times. |
| 80 | ** Rudy Strasse, from "No Time to Die" is close. Unfortunately, he's already quite unhinged and beyond that point, but does show signs. |
| 81 | ** Eric Prince from "Ashes to Ashes", in spite of murdering to cover up his grave-robbing in his funeral home. When Columbo figures out he cremated the victim in lieu of a retired war veteran, Eric asks politely if he should ride in the police cruiser, or with Columbo. They both casually walk to Columbo's car; Eric is at ease with his fate. |
| 82 | * TheAllegedCar: |
| 83 | ** An ancient silver Peugeot. Asked about it, Columbo affects great pride in owning "a classic car. Yeah, my car's a French car." |
| 84 | --->'''Columbo:''' My wife's got a car, too, but that's nothing special. Just transportation. |
| 85 | ** His wife's car finally makes an appearance in "Columbo Goes to College", when he sets it up for bait for the killers to plant evidence. |
| 86 | ** In "Negative Reaction", Columbo arrives at the crime scene, a local scrapyard. The man at the gate believes he's a civilian taking the car in for scrapping. In the same episode, he gives a ride to a driving instructor who is horrified to learn the car has no seatbelts and a regulator several years out of date. |
| 87 | * AllForNothing: In "Mind over Mayhem", Dr. Marshall Cahill murders his associate Dr. Harold Nicholson to prevent the leaked knowledge that Cahill's son Neil had plagiarized his theorem that made the Cahills a huge amount of reputation and profit. [[spoiler:Neil ends up giving into the guilt of the plagiarism at Columbo's machinations and admits it to the public, ruining Marshall's plans, followed by a fake arrest of his son that baits Marshall into confession and Columbo's hands.]] |
| 88 | * AlwaysGetsHisMan: In the final Patrick [=McGoohan=] episode, Columbo tells him that yes, he ''does'' always get his man. |
| 89 | ** Well, almost always. In "Forgotten Lady", he let Grace Wheeler go (she was dying of a brain disease and had actually forgotten she had committed the murder), and in "It's All in the Game", he accepted Lauren Staton's confession on the condition that her accomplice (her daughter) would not be arrested. |
| 90 | ** Rudy Strasse in "No Time to Die" wasn't technically caught either, as he was shot dead by police officers. (Making this a case of DeathByAdaptation, since in the novel it's based on, Klaus[[note]]his name in the novel[[/note]] is shot, but survives.) |
| 91 | ** In "A Deadly State of Mind", Dr. Mark Collier (Creator/GeorgeHamilton in his first ''Columbo'' appearance) actually gets away with Nadia Donner's murder, having used hypnosis to trick her into diving off a balcony to her death, and in the denouement Columbo, ''for the only time'', admits defeat. Sort of... |
| 92 | --->'''Columbo:''' I can't prove you killed Mrs. Donner. [[note]]The reason why is because Dr. Collier was across town when Nadia died, and Nadia was alone when she died.[[/note]] But I ''can'' prove you killed ''Mr.'' Donner. [[note]]The proof that Collier killed Nadia's husband Carl was a blind man walking his dog past the house that Collier nearly ran over when driving away from the scene.[[/note]] |
| 93 | ** The episode "A Bird in the Hand" technically has ''two'' murders go unpunished. The first murder he had strong evidence for but nothing clinching, while the culprit in the second murder [[note]]even though it killed an unintended target, it still counts as murder[[/note]] was the victim of the third murder. |
| 94 | ** In "It's All in the Game", Columbo lets Lauren Staton confess to the murder in return for letting Lauren's daughter, Lisa, go free, despite the fact that she was involved in the plot to kill him. It's largely due to the fact that the man they killed was sleeping with Lauren AND Lisa, made threats of violence and caused Lisa physical harm to prevent her from speaking to anyone about his abuse. |
| 95 | %%* AmbiguouslyBi: Blake in "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine". |
| 96 | * AndAnotherThing: The entire show lives off this trope; it's Columbo's specialty, but many other characters end up doing it once or twice in their episode as well. |
| 97 | * AndStarring: Many guest starts received special billing. One standout is three time killer Creator/RobertCulp, credited as And Robert Culp as Jordan Rowe in "Columbo Goes to College". |
| 98 | * AndTheAdventureContinues: Subverted with the final words in the last Creator/{{NBC}} episode which in universe was a phrase used by the big bad to control his whiskey intake, and out of universe described the series as a whole. (At least as far as anyone knew in 1978.) |
| 99 | -->'''Columbo:''' We'll go this far... And no farther. |
| 100 | * AnimalAssassin: In "How to Dial a Murder", the killer uses a pair of {{Right Hand Attack Dog}}s (and a TriggerPhrase) to kill the VictimOfTheWeek while being on the other side of the city. |
| 101 | * TheAnticipator: This is practically the M.O. of Columbo. Frequently he will depend on a crook returning to where they hid a key piece of evidence, wait for them, and then arrest them there. He catches Elliot Markham in "Blueprint For Murder" with a slight variation of this trope. |
| 102 | * ArmorPiercingQuestion: A variation: Practically every scene Columbo has with the murderer in a given episode involves him patiently and politely nodding along with whatever story the murderer is confidently trying to feed him, only to suddenly stop and ask a very pertinent question about something they hadn't considered and which they don't have a very good answer for, usually leaving them with [[OhCrap a very worried expression on their face]]. Usually prefaced by Columbo making as if to leave, suddenly stopping and turning around, and saying "[[CatchPhrase Oh, just one more thing...]]" |
| 103 | * ArmsDealer: The VictimOfTheWeek in "The Conspirators" is an arms dealer who planned to take his client's money and skip the country; something the client did not take kindly to. |
| 104 | * ArtisticLicenseBiology: Perhaps the oddest, most out-of-place moment in the entire series is in "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine", where Columbo gets close to a plant, and the plant begins ''screaming and shaking in fear'' because his lit cigar is too close. Despite the institute centering its tests around mental abilities and ESP, and a tour guide stating they were running tests on plants, come on... This was just a bit cartoonish. |
| 105 | * ArtisticLicenseGunSafety: |
| 106 | ** "Fade in to Murder" involves an actor who steals various goods from the studio prop department to commit his crime -- jacket, stocking mask, and a gun with bullets. Rather odd that a studio -- which films TV shows, mostly -- would have real guns and live ammunition on hand, instead of prop guns designed to chamber blanks which wouldn't likely even take actual ammunition, let alone fire it. |
| 107 | ** "Columbo Goes to College" has Columbo demonstrating the murder using a pistol loaded with live ammo in the college parking garage. Is he nuts? |
| 108 | * ArtisticLicenseGeography: Barely averted in "Dagger of the Mind" thanks to the Madame Tussaud's stand-in being called [[BlandNameProduct The London Wax Museum]]. Which is situated just across the road from the Royal Albert Hall, as seen in the finale. The real Madame Tussaud's is 4 miles/6.43km from the Royal Albert Hall. |
| 109 | * ArtisticLicenseLaw: |
| 110 | ** Considering Columbo's methods and the fact that many of his cases lack much in the way of physical evidence, several of those Columbo has arrested would likely have been found not guilty if they had a good lawyer. One suspect that comes to mind is Paul Hanlon in "The Most Crucial Game", who clams up after being caught out and has several reasonable defenses against the "Gotcha." A fan joke states that this is the precise reason why Columbo hasn't received a promotion in decades. That said, many suspects have a habit of confessing when they are arrested and several others would have their reputations ruined even if they are, in the legal sense of the term, innocent. |
| 111 | ** There's also the fact he is the rank of Lieutenant yet is out doing the same grunt work that a basic detective might be doing, without even a partner for backup. One has to wonder why he isn't commanding the Homicide squad instead? Perhaps he is successfully avoiding ThePeterPrinciple, because he actually ''likes'' working cases better than administration. (Seriously, could you imagine a guy like Columbo trying to command a squad of detectives?) On the other hand, he must be doing something right if he hasn't been given a desk job as punishment for blowing so many investigations. |
| 112 | ** Works well as FridgeLogic as to why Columbo often tries to bring the murderer to admit to his or her own guilt. Several times, it appears that the murderer will be convicted only because he or she has given up on trying to deny it after the final confrontation with Columbo. |
| 113 | ** On many occasions throughout the series, Columbo is called in to investigate a missing person case, before it's even been established that a murder has occurred. |
| 114 | ** The ending setup of "Strange Bedfellows" would likely cause all sorts of issues if what happened ever got out -- between the courts, Internal Affairs & the news media, Columbo would not only be ruined but likely charged with entrapment. The setup involved threatening the killer's life to get him to confess. |
| 115 | ** Sean Brantley and Diane Hunter would likely have faced multiple charges of fraud for their public relations setup in "Columbo Cries Wolf", as they deliberately manipulated the police department for extra magazine publicity. This is partially subverted in that the pair was counting on the stink raised over the whole scheme to make the city too worried about the bad press and just wanting to let the subject die. |
| 116 | ** The writers, when confronted with these kinds of points, often freely admitted that they tended to approach Columbo more as an old-school "drawing room mystery"-style detective rather than as the star of a police procedural. |
| 117 | * ArtisticLicenseMedicine: |
| 118 | ** "Murder Under Glass" features blowfish poison used as the murder weapon, which kills the victim in about a minute. In reality, it'd have taken the man hours, possibly even a full day to die, and that's IF he died considering that proper medical treatment would probably have saved his life. He wouldn't have collapsed and died that fast. |
| 119 | ** Subverted in "Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health". The fatal dose of nicotine sulfate, administered by Wade Anders to Budd Clarke by inserting a few drops into one of his Victory King cigarettes, probably would kill a man as fast as was shown in the episode. Obviously, Wade may have added a little more poison than necessary in order to guarantee that it would work. |
| 120 | * ArtisticLicensePhysics: Beth Chadwick's murder of Bryce Chadwick in "Lady in Waiting" is actually very flawed if BloodlessCarnage is removed. When Bryce surprises Beth by entering by the front door to her bedroom, Beth shoots him and moves the body to the window-door, which would leave an obvious mess of blood on the floor. This would very quickly cause Beth's "burglar" story to fall apart. |
| 121 | * AsianSpeekeeEngrish: The series as a whole generally avoided negative racial stereotypes, but this one did happen with Pat Morita's brief appearance as a butler in "Étude in Black". He seems to almost ham up the idea of being poor at English in a span of about a minute. |
| 122 | * AssholeVictim: About half the time or so, the episode'll feature one. Funnily, the show didn't ''always'' have it used to establish a sympathetic killer; plenty of times the murderer is just as bad (if not worse) than their victim. |
| 123 | * AwesomeButImpractical: The ways in which Columbo can "prove" his targets' guilt are usually very subtle and, for the most part, wouldn't carry much weight in court -- the way someone tied their shoelaces, a clean light bulb, a bottle of cider, a lighter stone, a match... A skilled lawyer would probably got all of Columbo's targets off, but that doesn't matter -- what matters is the awesomeness of his reasoning, the way he puts the puzzle together with all the neatness and order his clothes lack. On the flip side, while prosecutors greatly prefer physical evidence, there is no legal requirement for it in order to bring a conviction. A skilled prosecutor could convince a jury that circumstantial evidence like those examples cited prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. Columbo himself frequently acknowledges that a lot of the evidence he finds is not conclusive by itself -- but throughout any given episode, he's constantly picking up on similarly "inconclusive" pieces of evidence that nevertheless work to puncture holes in the murderer's alibi or link him/her to the murder. It doesn't matter how small the pieces are, if you put enough of them together you'll get a good sense of what the puzzle overall looks like. It helps that murderers in his [[TheVerse verse]] feel obliged to [[GracefulLoser confess]] or [[TakingYouWithMe pull out a gun]] when they've been figured out. |
| 124 | * BadgesAndDogTags: In "Swan Song", it's mentioned that Columbo served in the Korean War, implicitly in the [=MPs=]. |
| 125 | * BaitAndSwitch: |
| 126 | ** The start of Columbo's perspective in "Mind over Mayhem" has him talking with a dean over having to withdraw a potential student due to "this thing never happening before", immediately after the murder of the episode previously, making it seem related to the mystery and like the detective was perhaps in a personal situation. Turns out the pair are talking about his pet dog for an obedience school, though he does immediately get a phone call that sets him onto the case from there. |
| 127 | ** In "The Most Dangerous Match", Columbo, during a talk with the VillainOfTheWeek, gets a pager that he says is from the hospital, which upon answering via phone, he replies with relief that someone will make a full recovery, with the scene set up like it's talking about [[spoiler:the would-be murder victim]], leading to a [[OhCrap horrified response from the killer]]. Columbo not long after clarifies it was from the ''animal'' hospital where his dog's being held, and he has to leave. The killer is still noticeably frazzled afterwards. |
| 128 | * BatmanGambit: If he couldn't find that one piece of evidence that proves the murderer's guilt, Columbo would pull one of these to get the murderer to incriminate himself. "Death Lends a Hand" is the first time this method is used to great effect. |
| 129 | ** Some of these were extremely daring, especially in "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine", in which Columbo hatches a BatmanGambit that ''requires'' Elliott Blake to try to kill him by use of a trick guillotine (Columbo switches the labels of the safe end and the dangerous end). |
| 130 | ** Worse than that, in "A Matter of Honor" his plan to reveal Luis Montoya as a coward involved trapping him in a ring with a very angry bull, risking either Montoya, a ranch hand, or a bystander getting killed if the bull ran wild. |
| 131 | ** "Blueprint for Murder" sees Columbo dig up a large chunk of a construction site, at the urging of the killer, knowing he's not likely to find anything and at massive expense on the part of the city. Elliot Markham's goal was to make Columbo dig up the site, find nothing, and then bury the body there after the fact, so this was his own gambit. [[spoiler:But Columbo figured this was the case and had actually gone along, knowing that Elliot would show up to dump the body and was waiting for him with several officers.]] |
| 132 | ** Brimmer in "Death Lends a Hand" tries this by offering Columbo a six-figure salary working for his private security firm in exchange for quitting the police department. [[spoiler:It backfires and probably makes Columbo even ''more'' suspicious, especially since he'd suspected this guy from the start!]] |
| 133 | ** "Forgotten Lady" features a b-plot of the LAPD computer records revealing that Columbo hadn't been to the pistol range in 10 years. After repeatedly putting it off despite his superiors getting on him, an Internal Affairs officer finally tells him to be at the range or else he will be fired. Columbo contacts Sgt. Burke, who looks nothing like him, and hands him his badge and $20 to take the test for him. This plan relied on the IA officer or some other superior not being present at the pistol range. |
| 134 | ** In "Negative Reaction", Columbo deliberately makes a mistake involving a camera that was used in the murder, prompting the murderer to angrily grab the camera to show Columbo what he had done wrong. Unfortunately, the camera is on the shelf in the police evidence room along with several other cameras, so the murderer incriminates himself by identifying the correct camera. He even points out the fact that the killer, Galesko, moved aside several cameras in front of the right camera to directly get to it, in front of multiple witnesses. |
| 135 | ** In "A Friend in Deed", Columbo suspects his boss, a deputy commissioner, of murdering the boss's wife and trying to blame it on a burglar who has been robbing houses in his neighborhood. Columbo gives his boss the file of a man he suspects in the burglaries, knowing his boss will attempt to plant evidence in the burglar's apartment to frame the burglar. When the police search the apartment and find the planted evidence, Columbo reveals that he had changed the address in the file to an apartment that Columbo had just rented himself so the evidence must be planted. |
| 136 | ** "The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case" features a complicated device able to remotely simulate the sounds of the victim's death by shooting and give the killer an alibi. Knowing that Oliver Brandt is the most egotistical of the already-arrogant Sigma Club members, Columbo sets up a faulty version that won't entirely work, and, to add insult to injury, attributes it to Brandt's rival Jason Danziger; furious, Brandt fixes the machine to work as intended. The moment when his triumph fades and it dawns on him that he's been outplayed is ''delicious''. |
| 137 | * BattleDiscretionShot: "Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star": Hugh Creighton is implied to use strangulation by hand, but as he prepares to attack, the film cuts to Hugh washing the evidence of drugs out of a champagne bottle and the glasses, minutes after the murder. |
| 138 | * BeAsUnhelpfulAsPossible: Often, the killers try to act like they're helping Columbo when he inquires to them about details, but try to misdirect him with phony clues to throw Columbo off their trail. However, the killers are usually clever enough to add some truth in with the fiction which can end up backfiring when they accidentally divulge a detail that [[INeverSaidItWasPoison places them at the scene of the crime.]] |
| 139 | * BerserkButton: |
| 140 | ** Showing any callous disregard for human life -- especially if it was the murderer acting pompous and indifferent -- would set off the usually friendly Columbo into a rage that often led to him telling off the suspect (such as in "A Stitch in Crime" and to a lesser extent in "An Exercise in Fatality" when the victim's wife tries to kill herself). Messing with Columbo's family is also a terrible idea, as "Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo" and "No Time to Die" showed us. |
| 141 | ** On the flip side, Columbo had a habit of pressing the berserk button of others around him. Sometimes, he'd do this on purpose to the suspect, other times, his mere, persistent presence would do this to innocent people. He also had a habit of doing this to his superiors. |
| 142 | * BilingualBonus: None of the Spanish dialog in "A Matter of Honor" is subtitled even though some of it does seem to be relevant plot dialog. |
| 143 | * BilledAboveTheTitle: At the beginning of the actual credits, 'Peter Falk as...Columbo'. Before the actual episode begins, at the end of the Mystery Movie title sequence, we hear the great Hank Simms intone, "Tonight, Peter Falk as Columbo!" |
| 144 | * BlackmailBackfire: It is very common (as in, once or twice a season) for the murderer to leave a clue or be noticed not by Columbo, but by somebody who tries to profit by extorting the killer(s) either for money or, occasionally, because [[MadLove they are in love with the murderer]]; it is just as common for this to [[GoneHorriblyWrong go horribly wrong]] for the blackmailer themselves, and more than once the blackmailer is either the murderer or the initial victim. About the '''only''' time the killer agrees to the terms is in the second pilot, and that was a trap where the "blackmailer" was actually working with Columbo the whole time. In almost every other case, the blackmailer is simply murdered themselves, and in "Any Old Port in a Storm", the killer is actually relieved to be caught ''because'' they are being blackmailed. |
| 145 | * BlandNameProduct: ''Song And Dance'' in "Forgotten Lady" is basically Creator/{{Universal}}'s version of Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer's ''That's Entertainment'' which was released the year before this episode premiered. |
| 146 | * BloodlessCarnage: Probably due in part to censorship limitations of the time but many of the '70s Columbo films either feature gunshot wounds that either only have a small red spot or no blood or bullet wound at all. "Lady in Waiting" is probably the worst example of this: The victim is shot in the chest and dragged -- face down -- across about 20 feet of carpet but leaves no blood whatsoever, which if it had would've blown Beth Chadwick's story open in 2 seconds. This was eventually subverted in the much later films where more blood was allowed, perhaps best seen in "Columbo Goes to College" where not only does blood spray as the victim is shot, but when Columbo and the students find the body in the parking garage, blood has pooled quite heavily. |
| 147 | * BluffingTheMurderer: How Columbo proves the murderer guilty in "Negative Reaction". [[spoiler:Columbo enlarges the photograph of the victim that was taken supposedly taken by Alvin Deschler (which was all a lie) and flips it, so the clock in the background says it's ten o'clock when it's really two o'clock and claims it proves Paul Galesko was the culprit. Galesko, himself a photographer, points out that this is completely false and the original photograph would prove this, but Columbo says it was accidentally destroyed. Galesko then says they should use the original negative and picks out the camera that took the photograph -- but he shouldn't know which camera it was or that the negative was still inside]]. |
| 148 | * BookcasePassage: In "Dead Weight", the killer has a revolving bookcase in his house that he uses to conceal the BodyOfTheWeek until he has a chance to dispose of it. |
| 149 | * BriefcaseFullOfMoney: In "Murder by the Book", the murderer brings the woman who is blackmailing him $15,000 in a briefcase and she comments that it is more cash than she has ever seen in her life. After he murders her, he pays the money back into his account. Columbo later remarks that withdrawing $15,000 one day and returning it the day after was one of the strange activities that aroused his suspicion. |
| 150 | * BritishBrevity: There were never more than eight episodes in a season, due to ''Columbo'' actually being part of a WheelProgram. The fact that there were so few episodes allowed the episodes to be longer; ''Columbo'' episodes were 75-90 minutes long as opposed to about 45 minutes for a regular drama program. |
| 151 | * BullyingADragon: Trying to shake down or blackmail someone that you know for a fact is a cold-blooded murderer seems to be one of the leading causes of death in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. This happens in, among other episodes, "Murder by the Book", "Dagger of the Mind", and "Lovely but Lethal". "Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star" subverts this with Trish Fairbanks, the associate Hugh Creighton uses to supply his alibi while he's out to murder Marcy Edwards. She's smart enough to form a contingency plan in case of her sudden death, and tells Creighton as much, so that he'll not be able to back out of her blackmailing him. She survives the episode. |
| 152 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: |
| 153 | ** Columbo applies his quirkiness, politeness, absentmindedness, humility and curiosity to off-balance the suspect. This seems at first glance to be [[ObfuscatingStupidity an act]] but if you observe how he interacts with people he knows well, it turns out he's actually like that all the time. Columbo's abilities as a detective are never questioned by his superiors, only by the suspects, and that's usually because he's getting too close to catching them. |
| 154 | ** This was lampshaded in ''Prescription: Murder'', when Columbo says that his superiors are well aware that a suspect is sweating when they call to complain about him. Any attempt to get him off the case, even by calling in favors, never seems to work well. |
| 155 | ** The biggest example was "Columbo Cries Wolf". The case had already drawn massive media attention, and Columbo wants to dig up a significant portion of a large estate to look for a body that may or may not have been buried there, and likely is not as Sean Brantley has dared him to dig up the land. Columbo's reasonings for this are also rather thin (sound, maybe, but thin). Plus the massive expense of digging up that much land (which he apparently forgot about from such an endeavor in the first season's "Blueprint for Murder"). The mayor of Los Angeles decides to approve of this anyway, even based on thin evidence, just because it's Columbo who wants it done. |
| 156 | * BuryYourGays: |
| 157 | ** Played with in "Butterfly in Shades of Gray" (the second William Shatner episode), where the victim was murdered because [[spoiler:he was going to help Fielding Chase's adopted daughter become a published author and move out from under Chase's domineering wing.]] Although the attempted frame job at least tried to play this straight -- [[spoiler:Chase attempts to frame a gay actor that the victim had recently broken up with]] -- it is quickly found to be a ruse. |
| 158 | ** Played straight with Max Dyson in "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine". A little uncomfortable because Dyson is blatantly based on James Randi, who was still publicly in the closet at the time the episode was filmed. |
| 159 | ** Played straight in episode "Lovely but Lethal", where Shirley Blaine swoons for Vivica Scott, only to get drugged via cigarette and die in a car accident. |
| 160 | * BusmansHoliday: In common with many detective series of the period once their creators got bored with the standard milieu. Wherever Columbo goes to relax, somebody else will die. "Troubled Waters" and "A Matter of Honor" are examples. In "Dagger of the Mind," Columbo is visiting Scotland Yard and ends up involving himself in the case. |
| 161 | * CallBack: |
| 162 | ** "Double Exposure" overlaps with the events of the prior episode, "Candidate for Crime". As Columbo arrives at the crime scene he mentions working on the Nelson Hayward case. |
| 163 | ** "Candidate for Crime" is referenced again at the end of "Publish or Perish". |
| 164 | ** The events of "Troubled Waters" made the newspapers in UsefulNotes/{{Mexico}}, which is why the Mexican police knew who he was in "A Matter of Honor" about a year later. |
| 165 | ** Columbo's cruise from "Troubled Water" is referenced again in "Try and Catch Me". |
| 166 | ** In "Columbo Goes to College", Columbo's lecture includes mentioning events about incriminating Oscar Finch in "Agenda for Murder". |
| 167 | ** "Sex and the Married Detective" features a Sgt. Burke, a young man on the force who seem to be Columbo's assigned underling. Could he have been the son of the Sgt. Burke who showed up throughout seasons 4 through 7? |
| 168 | ** Chief Superintendent Durk of New UsefulNotes/ScotlandYard, Columbo's liaison in "Dagger of the Mind", was mentioned by name many seasons (and one ChannelHop[[invoked]]) later in "Columbo Cries Wolf". |
| 169 | * CallingTheCopsOnTheFBI: In "Murder, Smoke and Shadows", when eating in movie shooting area cafeteria, Columbo witnesses a pair of actresses discussing what seems to be vital evidence to push forward his investigation of murder. The discussion is later revealed to have been staged by the murderer in order to actually derail the investigation. ''Later'', because a security guard stops Columbo on accusation of stalking actresses, effectively preventing him from following the pair and verifying things immediately. |
| 170 | * TheCameo: JustForFun/RobbyTheRobot makes a cameo in "Mind over Mayhem". Robby's ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'' co-star Creator/LeslieNielsen had previously appeared in "Lady in Waiting", and Anne Francis was on ''Columbo'' twice. |
| 171 | * CanonDiscontinuity: Let us all just be very clear on this: ''Series/MrsColumbo'' was ''not'' the Mrs. Columbo that ''Lt.'' Columbo talks about all the time. |
| 172 | * CatchPhrase: "Just one more thing..." before he asks the question that gives the offender away. |
| 173 | ** "That would explain it..." usually to humor obviously fake stories or explanations the suspect gives to cover an inconsistency. |
| 174 | ** Also: "You know, my wife says..." |
| 175 | ** "There's something that bothers me..." |
| 176 | * CharacterTics: Columbo's habit of squinting his left eye, which was actually because Peter Falk's right eye was in fact a GlassEye. |
| 177 | * ClockKing: The murderer in "Try and Catch Me" plans the murder down to the last second, even carrying a stopwatch while they commit the crime. |
| 178 | * ClockTampering: In "Fade in to Murder", the murderer uses this (combined with a video recorder) to establish an alibi. He slips up when he resets the watch of the friend he is using as an alibi: he sets it to right time, not realizing his friend kept his watch five minutes fast. |
| 179 | * {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Columbo can easily become one of these when he's not around a suspect (and possibly even when he is, since it can be difficult to tell when he is merely ObfuscatingStupidity), especially when he's on his own and offered a chance to play around with some new gadget or look at books. |
| 180 | * CluelessDetective: Averted. By his own admission, Columbo can sometimes be wrong and make mistakes. However, these usually concern the details regarding ''how'' the murder was committed: once he sniffs out ''who'' the killer is, he's always right, and it's just a matter of putting the full picture together. Of course, his use of ObfuscatingStupidity often leads others to think he is a legitimate example of this trope. In "Columbo Cries Wolf," Columbo poses an elaborate theory of how missing magazine publisher Dian Hunter was actually murdered by her business partner/lover Sean Brantley, seemingly supported by evidence... [[spoiler:only for Dian to show up alive and well, turning Columbo and the LAPD into laughingstocks. However, Brantley really ''does'' kill Dian after this fiasco hits the press, assuming that the police won't allow Columbo to search if she goes missing again due to all the bad publicity. Of course, the lieutenant realizes what's happened and nabs Brantley for the actual murder. Though Columbo only catches him because, while Sean's plan was brilliant, he forgot about Dian's pager, which give his hiding place away.]] |
| 181 | * ComplexityAddiction: In "How to Dial a Murder", behavioral psychologist Dr. Mason murders his colleague Charlie for fooling around with his wife (whom he is implied to also have murdered) by training his dogs to come to run to a specific phone in the house and maul to death anyone who says the word "[[Film/CitizenKane Rosebud]]", which Mason arranges by inviting Charlie round to his house on the day he is getting a physical with his doctor, unplugging the other phone in the house (so Charlie doesn't accidentally pick that one up) and phoning Charlie from his bed (while hooked up to heart monitors) and tricking him into saying "rosebud". Aside from the fact that he fails to properly cover his tracks after the fact (e.g. he doesn't re-hook the first phone, he leaves evidence in his house and at the studio lot where he trained the dogs, and since his heart rate was being recorded at the time it was noted as shooting up at the ''exact time'' the murders took place), and that he is caught out lying to Colombo, the fact that the dogs were otherwise friendly and that Charlie left the phone dangling after being attacked (meaning whoever he was talking to must have heard what was happening and never reported it) makes it highly likely that the dogs were trained to kill -- and if that was true, then Mason was the obvious and only suspect, because only he had the means, knowledge and opportunity to pull it off, and a simpler scheme would have been much more successful. Columbo even gives him a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech for making so many stupid mistakes and says he was ''disappointed'' that he made it so easy. |
| 182 | * ConsummateLiar: Columbo, big time. He has a myriad of personal anecdotes to tell to the perp of the week, but across the series some turn out to be contradictory, so he may very likely make them up as he goes [[PerpSweating to help him further the investigation.]] Could be a case of DependingOnTheWriter, though. |
| 183 | * ContinuityNod: A few: |
| 184 | ** In "Publish or Perish", Columbo tells Riley Greenleaf about one his cases involving a candidate for senate as a possible subject for a book, clearly based on the events of "Candidate for Crime" from just two episodes earlier. |
| 185 | ** Season 2's "The Greenhouse Jungle" introduces us to Sergeant Wilson, who returns just once in Season 5's "Now You See Him". |
| 186 | ** Detective Chief Superintendent Durk of Scotland Yard, who works with Columbo in "Dagger of the Mind", gets a mention in the much later episode "Columbo Cries Wolf". |
| 187 | * ConvictionByContradiction: Some episodes play this straight, others toy with it a bit. Often the contradiction isn't quite the smoking gun that ends an episode, but a clue to Columbo that there's more to the murder than there appears, and he'll use the contradiction as a thread to pull on until the murderer incriminates himself. |
| 188 | * CoolOldGuy: Columbo in the ABC run. Particularly in the final episodes where he's completely silver-haired. |
| 189 | * CoolUncle: Columbo is this to Andy, his nephew from "No Time to Die". |
| 190 | * CorrectionBait: InUniverse example: in "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case", this is how Columbo tricks the killer into revealing themselves. |
| 191 | * CorruptCorporateExecutive: |
| 192 | ** "The Conspirators"... oh, dear... first we have famous poet Joe Devlin, who is working with the heads of O'Connell Industries -- the president, her son and a few others. They are all IRA terrorists raising money to buy weapons, under the guise of a peaceful group trying to fight IRA violence in Ireland. For all we know the entire company was in on it -- at the very least, the captain of the freight liner and the O'Connell employees on the tug boat were involved. Even Devlin's own son was a willing participant, and all of this is just what was operating in Los Angeles, it's safe to say more members of the company and even Devlin's wife were in on it, too. The top was corrupt and it trickled downward. |
| 193 | ** Milo Janus was willingly overcharging his franchise owners for equipment that cost him nothing to produce so he could filter the money into offshore bank accounts. He commits murder when one owner threatens to expose him to the IRS. |
| 194 | * CutAndPasteNote: In "Candidate for Crime", the murderer sends a death threat to himself made up of words cut from the newspaper as part of his plan to convince the police that his life is under threat and that the murder he committed was actually a case of MurderByMistake aimed at him. |
| 195 | * CutleryEscapeAid: In "No Time to Die", the bride of Columbo's nephew is kidnapped and trapped in a room. She uses vinegar left with her dinner to help remove the rust from the door hinges, while lubricating the pins. She scrapes away the rust with a fork and is able to push the pins out, freeing herself from the room. Sadly not from the rest of the house. |
| 196 | * DartboardOfHate: In "Lovely, but Lethal", the VictimOfTheWeek has a dartboard with a photo of his boss (and eventual murderer) stuck on it hanging in his kitchen. |
| 197 | * DeadlyBath: The victims in "A Friend in Deed" and "Death Hits the Jackpot" are held underwater in their bathtubs to drown. |
| 198 | * DeadpanSnarker: Columbo could be one from time to time. |
| 199 | ** For example, in "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case", when asking witnesses about the killer's build, one said he was heavy, another claimed he seemed average, and a third claimed he was light and possibly even a woman. Columbo's reaction to this was a deadpan, "Well that clears that up." |
| 200 | ** Another example, from "Old Fashioned Murder": |
| 201 | --->'''Murderer's sister:''' I'll have you disbarred for this -- whatever that word is.\ |
| 202 | '''Columbo:''' Yes, ma'am. "Fired", I think, is the word you want. |
| 203 | ** As for the killers, repeat offenders Creator/RobertCulp and Creator/JackCassidy are arguably the snarkiest of the snarky killers. |
| 204 | * DeathByFallingOver: Some deaths happen by the victim accidentally falling over, or the killer wants the police to believe this. |
| 205 | ** Lenore Kennicut in "Death Lends a Hand" dies from head trauma at the beginning, after being punched in a rage by Brimmer and hitting a table on her way down. Brimmer panics because he doesn't want to be a killer; he dumps her lifeless body at an industrial lot to disguise the death as a robbery. |
| 206 | ** Alex Benedict in "Étude in Black" hopes that it appears his victim fell out of a bar stool and hit her head on a kitchen range, but the real murder happened from blunt-force trauma to her head from behind. |
| 207 | ** Vanessa in "Columbo Likes the Nightlife" pushes Tony Galper away in self-defense when he becomes jealous of her relationship with Justin Prince, only for him to fall onto a glass coffee table, shattering it into broken glass shards, hitting the floor dead. Justin Prince comes over to hide the body remotely, because Tony is the son of a Mafia don who is providing essential funding for Justin's new nightclub. |
| 208 | * DeceasedFallGuyGambit: |
| 209 | ** Dr. Barry Mayfield in "A Stitch in Crime" does a poorly-planned gambit on a recovered drug addict. Mayfield drugs him in a desperate attempt to move suspicion away from Mayfield but this makes Mayfield even more suspect, after the needle mark was noted on the left arm of a left-handed man. |
| 210 | ** This is the trope that Paul Galesko (Creator/DickVanDyke) pulls this off brilliantly in "Negative Reaction" to murder his dominating wife Frances. [[spoiler:First, he takes Frances out to a country ranch house rented by Alvin Deschler, an ex-con and former extortionist whom Galesko has roped into helping him. Once in the house, Galesko ties his wife to a chair, then he puts a clock up on the fireplace mantle, sets the time to 2:00 PM so that he will have an alibi for himself. He then takes photos of her with the clock in the picture, then he shoots her with a P38 pistol. The next day, Galesko breaks into Deschler's motel room to plant evidence that frames him for the murder/kidnapping, then meets with Deschler at a junkyard. There, Galesko shoots and kills the unwitting Deschler with a revolver, places the pistol he used to shoot Frances in Deschler's hand, then [[WoundedGazelleGambit shoots himself in the leg]] with that gun to make it look like self-defense.]] |
| 211 | ** In "Strange Bedfellows": Graham [=McVeigh=], a thoroughbred horse raiser, is tired of the fact that his brother Teddy is a gambler who is in serious debt with local bookie Bruno Romano, who owns a local restaurant. [[spoiler:First, Graham makes Teddy lose a lot of money at the race track by drugging his own horse so that it loses. Then, disguised, Graham goes to Romano's restaurant, where he sets mice in the bathroom. While Romano is distracted getting rid of the mice, Graham calls Teddy from his back office phone so that it will look like Teddy was setting up a meeting with Romano. Graham and Teddy then drive out to a spot on a secluded back road, with Teddy driving. Under the pretense of getting fresh air, Graham gets out, walks around the car, steps up to Teddy's window and shoots him at point-blank range, then rides away on a folding bike stashed in the trunk. The next day, he calls Romano to come out to the ranch, ostensibly to pay Teddy's debt. When Romano looks at the briefcase containing the money, Graham shoots him, switches Romano's pistol for the identical murder weapon, and makes it look like self-defense.]] |
| 212 | * DefeatingTheUndefeatable: |
| 213 | ** Luis Montoya (Creator/RicardoMontalban) from "A Matter of Honor" most certainly counts. He was one of the top celebrities and most influential people in Mexico, so the local police were practically afraid to investigate the crime once it became suspected, and Columbo was in a foreign country. While Columbo has challenged a few big time people over his career, his job could have ended and he'd have been in severe trouble if not for showing everyone that Montoya [[spoiler:was not a great man, was in fact a coward and had killed Hector Rangel to try and hide that fact, causing Montoya to surrender.]] |
| 214 | ** This came very close in "A Case of Immunity" where Hassan Salah was a foreign national with diplomatic immunity, and could have had Columbo fired. [[spoiler:Columbo didn't have to take any big risks to catch the guy... after all, Columbo was on good terms with the king of that particular foreign nation and merely got the guy to spill a confession while the king listened. In this case, the suspect wasn't undefeatable, just hard to touch.]] |
| 215 | ** Borders between this and DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu in "A Friend in Deed" when Columbo busts Deputy Police Commissioner Mark Halperin for murdering his wife and assisted Hugh Caldwell in helping cover up the murder of Caldwell's wife. He took down his own corrupt boss, of all people! |
| 216 | * DenserAndWackier: Columbo slowly went from a rather serious detective to an iconically unkempt eccentric as seasons passed. In this case however, the trope seldom came at the cost of his actual competence, and was merely to [[BewareTheSillyOnes compliment his ability]] to take his [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] suspects by surpise. |
| 217 | * DetectiveDrama: Although typically the drama is on the ''perp's'' side. |
| 218 | * DetectiveMole: Columbo will often set this up, in order to ensnare the murderer. Typically, he will pretend to come into the culprit's confidence, inviting them to consult, give input and play "Watson", making them believe that he is incapable of solving the case without their "help" -- and putting them into a false sense of security as they make faulty attempts to mislead him, which he will then mine for clues. Some murderers catch on before he closes in, but occasionally a culprit will go the whole episode without realizing they don't actually have Columbo's trust. |
| 219 | * DickDastardlyStopsToCheat: In many cases the murderers would have gotten away with their crimes because there was not enough evidence against them, but they just ''must'' go out of their way to create a fake alibi or frame the murder on someone else, making enough mistakes in the process to be caught. |
| 220 | * DirtyCop: Deputy Police Commissioner Mark Halperin in "A Friend in Deed". He first helps cover up the murder of his neighbor Hugh Caldwell's wife, then personally murders his own wife to access her money and uses Caldwell to set up an alibi for himself. |
| 221 | * DismantledMacGuffin: "Undercover" has Columbo on the trail of somebody seeking pieces of a photograph that, when pieced together, shows where the proceeds from a bank robbery is stashed. The story is a reworking of the 87th Precinct novel ''Jigsaw''. |
| 222 | * DistractedByTheSexy: He may be faithfully devoted to Mrs. Columbo, but the Lieutenant is hardly above this kind of behavior. The most notable examples are being greeted by a bikini-clad woman in "An Exercise in Fatality", the belly dancing class in "Try and Catch Me", and his awkward encounters with several models in "Columbo Cries Wolf". |
| 223 | * ADogNamedDog: Columbo's Dog. |
| 224 | * DoesntLikeGuns: And is (and possibly due to being) a notoriously bad shot. Columbo appears to get other cops to take his shooting qualifications ("Forgotten Lady"). He'll carry a gun when the situation absolutely calls for it, but even then... he probably doesn't have great depth-perception anyway.[[note]]Of course, someone with only one eye would never be allowed to serve in the LAPD...[[/note]] He seems to have no problem brandishing one on Mo Weinberg in "Undercover" though, but Weinberg does try to shoot him. In "Butterfly in Shades of Grey", the killer sees Columbo without his famous trench coat and notes that he doesn't carry a gun, so tries to shoot him after being exposed. Columbo calmly points out that he might not be armed, but he's not alone. He honks the horn on his car and two police officers turn up to arrest the killer. |
| 225 | * DownerEnding: "Forgotten Lady" is one of the very few episodes in which the killer isn't caught, because [[spoiler:it turns out that Grace Wheeler has a weakened artery in her brain which not only causes her severe issues with recent memory but will kill her shortly. She has two months to live at most, and could very well die at any time. She doesn't even remember shooting her husband, and to make matters worse, when her former dancer partner, Ned Diamond confesses to the killing in her place, she now has to watch an old friend taken away for what she had firmly believed to be a suicide the entire time. Her only solitude left is to watch an old movie that means a lot to her.]] It doesn't help much that the episode is full of small downer moments leading up to this but the major plot twist was very subtly foreshadowed, and many people didn't see it coming. |
| 226 | * DoubleMeaning: Columbo himself is quite fond of saying things with double meanings. Especially to mess with a suspect. |
| 227 | * DyingClue: In "Try and Catch Me", Edmund came up with a really good one. He was left trapped in Abigail's safe, doomed to suffocate, having nothing to write with. Even if he had something to write with, he had no way of knowing if Abigail, the murderer, would be the first person to open the safe. But what he ''does'' have is a belt buckle to scrape with, and a copy of the manuscript to Abigail's latest novel, ''The Night I Was Murdered'', stored in the safe. So what does he do? He rips out the middle of the title page. He uses one of the six matches he had in his pocket to scratch out the words "THE NIGHT" in the title, leaving the scrap of paper saying "I WAS MURDERED by Abigail Mitchell." Then he balls up the scrap of paper and hides it in the ceiling light, then draws an arrow on the safe deposit boxes to point to the ceiling. Columbo figures out what the scratches on the safe deposit boxes are, finds the scrap of paper, and nails Abigail. |
| 228 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: |
| 229 | ** ''Prescription: Murder'', being the first film, hadn't yet set the formula. It opens with a trippy [[AnimatedCreditsOpening animated ink blot title sequence]], features music not heard elsewhere in the series, and Peter Falk has a much shorter haircut than we were familiar with. Columbo himself isn't even seen until 33 minutes into the episode. Seeing him harangue the murderer's mistress to the extent of actually ''shouting'' is also pretty startling. Falk also appears in several scenes without the familiar raincoat, which coupled with his haircut makes him look a good deal like [[Series/{{Dragnet}} Jack Webb]]. |
| 230 | ** "Death Lends a Hand" features a still shot of Robert Culp's face with his cleanup of the crime scene reflected in his glasses. [[spoiler: It's also the only episode in the entire series that features one death, committed accidentally by culprit Culp. While other episodes included an accidental first death, the killer or killers invariably cemented their guilt by trying to cover up the crime either by killing someone who knew too much, or someone attempting to blackmail them. The episode also ups the weirdness ante in the sense that many of the murderers attempt to clearly frame an innocent party for their own crime. While Brimmer (Culp) certainly tries to impede the investigation, he never plants evidence or tries to frame anyone for the crime, not even the man that his accidental victim was having an affair with. He seems content to just muddy the waters and leave it as an unsolved crime. Possibly justified in the sense that Brimmer is a private investigator and very intelligent, and thus may be acutely aware that trying to frame an innocent party will backfire spectacularly. It has in every other instance it's been used in the series, possibly making Brimmer one of the most GenreSavvy characters in the series.]] |
| 231 | ** The same episode also features Columbo setting up an elaborate sting operation to catch the culprit. Lying to his suspect about a piece of evidence, and setting up surveillance to see if the guy goes to look and destroy the aforementioned evidence. This is far more proactive than Columbo would generally do, instead coming to rely on unravelling the suspect's web of lies. "Blueprint for Murder" features a similar sting, though in this case it's more Columbo anticipating the criminal's actions than provoking him to act. |
| 232 | ** "Étude in Black" features a zoom-in view of the flower on the floor in the killer's sunglasses. |
| 233 | * EstablishingCharacterMoment: In the first real episode of the series, after Columbo has put the perp away he's left sitting in an airport diner with a BriefcaseFullOfMoney and a waitress coming to him with his bill. When he finds out he doesn't have enough money to pay for it, instead of taking money from the briefcase he has her put it on his tab, showcasing just how upright and incorruptible he is.[[note]]Although he does almost pocket several fine cigars he used to trick Creator/RoddyMcDowall's character into revealing his guilt at the end of "Short Fuse", before being reminded that they are evidence. He tosses them back with the others.[[/note]] |
| 234 | * EurekaMoment: |
| 235 | ** Sometimes. Due to the formatting of the show, Columbo's investigations usually aren't shown, thus we're spared seeing exactly where, when, and how he puts the pieces together. Occasionally Columbo will realize things on-camera, but most of his Eureka Moments take place offscreen. Often, even if the audience doesn't see them personally, Columbo will explain how he had his Eureka Moment to the killer though, usually arising from a discussion with his perpetually-offscreen wife. |
| 236 | ** An example of an onscreen Eureka Moment is in "Requiem for a Falling Star"; while watching one of the killer's old movies, Columbo pieces together what actually happened and his eyes widen as he brings his hand to his forehead. |
| 237 | * EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: For as manipulative, deceitful and plain evil as [[Creator/WilliamShatner Fielding Chase]] in "Butterfly With Shades of Gray" was, especially to anyone who didn't share his political views, he did genuinely love his adoptive daughter and he did seem to genuinely believe that all of his political and business rivals would make life for her miserable should she try to go off on her own. |
| 238 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: |
| 239 | ** In "A Friend in Deed", the real cat burglar is appalled at the idea of being framed up for double murder. |
| 240 | ** In "Publish or Perish", Riley Greenleaf has no qualms about killing two people, but is visibly disconcerted at [[TheSociopath the second victim's]] description of a limb-tearing mine as "beautiful" and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking the fact he drinks champagne from lab equipment.]] |
| 241 | ** Joe Devlin, secret IRA fundraiser and gun runner in "The Conspirators", does a lot of bad deeds like supply guns to the IRA, but he believes in honor and murders his gun supplier when the supplier tries to cheat him. |
| 242 | * EvilLaugh: Dr. Barry Mayfield in "A Stitch in Crime" does one of these to Columbo to dismiss the theories that someone intentionally rigged Dr. Hidemann for heart failure, much to the Lieutenant's disgust. Columbo then slams a beverage pitcher, and tells Mayfield that he believes that he murdered Nurse Sharon, and makes a promise of police intervention to Mayfield that wipes the smile off his face. |
| 243 | * EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: Everyone calls him Lieutenant. He once joked in "Undercover" to Geraldine Ferguson that his first name was "Lieutenant". |
| 244 | * EvilCannotComprehendGood: This is what brings down Leslie Williams in "Ransom for a Dead Man". Being TheSociopath herself, it doesn't occur to her to question whether [[spoiler:a man's daughter would actually be willing to forget about his murder in exchange for a payoff]]. |
| 245 | * ExasperatedPerp: One of the great pleasures of the format is watching a smug perp kindly encouraging Columbo. |
| 246 | * ExecutiveMeddling: |
| 247 | ** Done InUniverse in "Make Me a Perfect Murder". Kay Freestone, a network assistant executive with high goals, dictates and practically directs a film that the network wants and guarantees it will be a success. When she is told she can't have her boyfriend Mark [=McAndrews=]'s job after his promotion to New York (as he doesn't feel she's qualified), she shoots and kills [=McAndrews=] in his office to get the job. Afterwards, her plans to bring Valerie Kirk, an old friend and former star who also happens to be a pill junkie, out of retirement for a TV special falls apart, and the film the network ordered is a massive bomb when it finally airs (both because she desperately put the film up to replace the cancelled special, thus running it suddenly with no advertising beforehand and because not only was it implied to be controversial in content because of a suicide scene, but replacing a cheerful musical performance with a gritty violent drama with no prior warning is a huge MoodWhiplash to say at very least). As Mark [=McAndrews=] told her, she "doesn't make decisions", she "makes guesses". Getting arrested by Columbo for murder doesn't really help either, but her career is really over well before that. |
| 248 | ** The executives wanted Columbo to have a partner, a point that Levinson & Link fought against. The first attempt was Det. Wilson, a character that returned only one episode after the initial appearance many years later. They finally settled on Dog as the closest thing the character would have to a recurring partner. |
| 249 | ** This is believed to be the reason "Murder with Too Many Notes" had such a rushed, nonsensical ending -- production was running too long as was the episode's length, causing certain key plot elements to be cut out for time. A key piece of evidence was that Gabe's "love notes" were also part of one of the movie scores that Crawford had claimed credit for, hence their importance in the ending scene that was never explained in the finished episode. |
| 250 | %%* TheExoticDetective |
| 251 | * {{Expy}}: |
| 252 | ** Abigail Mitchell, the murder mystery writer, to Creator/AgathaChristie -- who was mentioned by name in the episode in question. |
| 253 | ** From "Columbo Cries Wolf", Sir Harry Matthews, the wealthy British businessman, to real-life British media mogul Rupert Murdoch; Sean Brantley, the owner of an adult magazine publication, seems to mix a younger Hugh Hefner with some of Larry Flynt's scummier qualities. |
| 254 | ** Alex Bradey is heavily based on Steven Spielberg. He even looks like a young Spielberg. |
| 255 | ** Max Dyson, psychic debunker is based heavily on The Amazing Randi. |
| 256 | ** Both Gen. Hollister("Dead Weight") and Gen. Paget("Grand Deceptions") seem at least somewhat inspired by Gen. George S. Patton. Gen. Hollister is even compared to Patton directly in dialog. |
| 257 | ** Dr. Joan Allenby from "Sex and the Married Detective" may be inspired by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Westheimer Ruth Westheimer]]. Both are similar in that they are more or less sex therapists, media personalities, authors, and encourage open discussion about sex lives. |
| 258 | [[/folder]] |
| 259 | |
| 260 | [[folder:Tropes F to L]] |
| 261 | * FakeGunshot: The murderer in "Candidate for Crime" fires a shot to put a hole in the window and the wall. He later uses a firecracker to fake a gunshot to make it look like someone had just tried to shoot him. Too bad for him [[spoiler:Columbo had inspected the room in the interim, found the bullet and removed it from the wall]]. |
| 262 | * FalseReassurance: Done in a non-fatal manner in "Murder, Smoke and Shadows" when genius director Alex Bradey is called into the limo of his boss. The boss had earlier asked Alex, as a personal favour, to get his masterpiece ready for a summer release only for Alex to decline and humiliatingly drape a paper clip chain over his shoulders. Alex, perhaps sensing he went too far, tries to tell his boss the movie can be ready, but the boss assures him not to worry, as he already made other arrangements. And that's when he informs Alex that as a reward for being such an UngratefulBastard his budget is being cut to the bone, meaning [[BestServedCold he'll never be able to finish his masterpiece]]. |
| 263 | * {{Fanservice}}: Not a constant by any means but there are some notable examples. |
| 264 | ** In "Double Shock" Columbo visits Julia Chambers (the VictimOfTheWeek's younger widow) who just just happens to showing what good shape's on her apartment's balcony. Given she's played by Creator/JulieNewmar, this was probably to be expected. |
| 265 | ** In the "An Exercise in Fatality" Columbo visits Milo Janus and Milo's secretary/lover Jessica Conroy lets him in, there's no real reason why she's wearing a bikini. And the episode balances it out with Milo's ShirtlessScene after a beach workout. |
| 266 | ** Della Santini spends most of "Now You See Him" in the LovelyAssistant costume she wears for her father's magic act, an outfit emphasizes her figure quite well. |
| 267 | * FatalFlaw: For Leslie Williams in "Ransom for a Dead Man", it's her amorality. Brilliantly summed up by Columbo in a ReasonYouSuckSpeech at the episode's climax: |
| 268 | -->'''Columbo:''' Mrs. Williams, you have no conscience, and that's your weakness. Did it ever occur to you that there are very few people that would [[spoiler:take money to forget about a murder]]? It didn't, did it? I knew it wouldn't. No conscience. Limits your imagination. You can't conceive of anybody being any different than what you are. And you're greedy. And that's why, as bright as you are -- and you're bright -- you believed that [[spoiler:Margaret could be bought.]] |
| 269 | * FauxAffablyEvil: |
| 270 | ** Most of the murderers who aren't actually AffablyEvil (or the occasional SympatheticMurderer) are this. These ones tend to start off quite smarmy and condescendingly pleasant to Columbo, only to gradually get more frazzled as he keeps poking holes in their perfect crimes until, by the end, their true and rather nasty colors are exposed. |
| 271 | ** In "Butterfly in Shades of Gray", Fielding Chase doesn't take Columbo very seriously, and cracks jokes at his expense. He is not above fighting dirty on his radio show either, rigging the calls to defame a senator with a sex scandal. The worst part about him is when his adopted daughter "spreads her wings" and plans to fly to New York with her friend, Gerry Winters, and get her book published; Fielding senselessly murders Gerry out of an obsessive desire to keep possession of his adopted daughter. At the end of the episode, it all [[LaserGuidedKarma backfires miserably]]; his daughter leaves him, and it is implied that he is going to prison for murder. |
| 272 | * FictionalCountry: Suari, the Middle Eastern nation from "A Case of Immunity". |
| 273 | * FishEyes: The magnificent stare of Columbo, where one of his eyes constantly looks into the opposite direction, has yet to be forgotten. (Due, of course, to Peter Falk having a glass eye.) |
| 274 | * {{Flanderization}}: Pretty much happened to Lieutenant Columbo gradually as the series progressed. In the first few seasons, Columbo is portrayed as a bumbly detective with some strange habits, however, he is still mostly taken seriously by Peter Falk, the writers and the other characters alike. However, Falk and the writers gradually started to rely more and more on the character's "quirks" and trade-mark antics, which eventually engulfed Columbo. The situation especially got worse in the renewed series from the late-1980s onwards. In those latter episodes, the Lieutenant is often portrayed as a walking caricature of himself, and his "quirks" are heavily over-exaggerated. |
| 275 | * FoodPorn: The awards banquet near the end of "Murder Under Glass" features numerous classy meals, although the entire episode has its moments. |
| 276 | * FoodSlap: In "Publish or Perish", Riley Greenleaf throws his drink over a bartender as part of his attention attracting antics as he carefully establishes an alibi. |
| 277 | * FreshClue: {{Invoked}} in both "Suitable for Framing" and "It's All in the Game", where the culprit puts an electric blanket over the body in an alibi trick, so that the body would still be warm when the police arrived. |
| 278 | * FreudianExcuse: Rudy Strasse of "No Time to Die" had this in a bad way -- noteworthy as he was the only killer of all 69 episodes to have this. |
| 279 | * FriendlyEnemy: Unless the murderer is particularly obnoxious or [[BerserkButton callous to human life]], Columbo will always treat them with the utmost respect, and if they have a hobby or occupation which interests him he may even try to strike up some at least partially genuine camaraderie despite acting against them. Depending on the personality of the culprit, that respect might be returned -- or even that camaraderie. As noted in GoKartingWithBowser, for example, Columbo and Joe Devlin from "The Conspirators" legitimately seem to enjoy each other's company despite Columbo trying to nail him and Joe ''knowing'' Columbo is trying to nail him the whole time. When Joe's number finally comes up, despite being on duty at the time Columbo even decides to share one final drink with him before the arrest. Many other killers [[GracefulLoser also surrender without issue when caught out.]] |
| 280 | * GeniusSlob: Columbo has had his appearance likened to an "unmade bed" and has been confused for being homeless at least once, carries among other things hard boiled eggs in his pocket, smokes cheap green cigars, happily munches his way through any free food and wears the same raincoat everyday (despite working in L.A.) but still solves crimes committed by certified geniuses. |
| 281 | * GenreSavvy: |
| 282 | ** Ward Fowler, the killer from "Fade in to Murder", plays a detective in a mystery show on TV. During the episode he offers "help" to Columbo in cracking the case, often commenting on mystery show conventions while working out details of the case. In the end, when confronted with damning evidence against him, he grudgingly accepts his fate, commenting on the fact that in a mystery story the killer's mistake is always exposed "by the end of the third act". |
| 283 | ** Columbo is highly suspicious of Ms. Demitri in "Rest in Peace, Mrs Columbo" almost from the start, thanks to a dentist calling him at work when he didn't have an appointment just before the murder took place, along with other tiny things. His first task after being handed a jar of marmalade by her is to send it to the lab for testing (it has been poisoned). |
| 284 | * TheGhost: Mrs. Columbo. We know she ''exists'' not just because Columbo often mentions her -- which is not just a ruse, since he speaks about her in situations where he has no reason to be lying. But even more conclusively, there are a few episodes where ''other'' characters indicate they've interacted with her, most notably the episode in which the Columbos take a cruise. However, she never actually appears on the show, and her husband's descriptions of her vary immensely. He's always describing her to the perp though, so it's unlikely he'd give them an actual description. |
| 285 | * GoKartingWithBowser: Even when Columbo knows who committed the murder, or at least is highly suspicious of them, he still makes small talk with them about things like their job and interests. Often this is to pay attention to subtle things they say or noticeable tells that can unintentionally incriminate them. In some episodes, however, Columbo seems to genuinely like some of his suspects, and regrets having some of them arrested before he reminds himself that it was the right thing to do. The best example? Perhaps in "The Conspirators", where he goes drinking, not once, but twice, with Joe Devlin, a secret IRA terrorist. He only stumbled on key evidence by pure accident [[spoiler:when he noted that Devlin's favorite whiskey was the same brand as seen at the crime scene, and that Devlin also notched the bottles the same as the one found at the scene.]] |
| 286 | * GoryDiscretionShot: Some examples: |
| 287 | ** Dr. Mayfield in "A Stitch in Crime" is seen raising a tire-wrench to cause head trauma. Next, a shot of the victim's purse hitting the ground is shown, followed by a shot of Mayfield stealing contents from her purse next to her lifeless body. |
| 288 | ** {{Subverted}} in "Troubled Waters". Despite the censors at the time the episode was aired, it was one of those moments where blood ''had'' to be shown, as the murder VictimOfTheWeek was shot in the back while she was wearing a backless dress. All that was done here was downplay the amount of blood that would normally pour out. |
| 289 | ** Professor Rusk dies from a [[BoomHeadshot bullet in the head]] in "Columbo Goes to College". KensingtonGore is shown hitting the side of the Professor's car. Some broadcasters (Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, for one) skip the gore and simply show Rusk falling over with BloodlessCarnage. |
| 290 | * GoshDangItToHeck: Throughout the majority of Columbo films, "hell" and "damn" are the extent of the swearing. Later films of the '80s and '90s eventually saw occasional use of the word "bitch" here and there. But the only ''real'' subversions are likely "Undercover" and "A Trace of Murder" where characters say the word "bullshit". "Undercover" is uncensored on the DVD release, though "A Trace of Murder" has the censoring in place. Though cleverly, the censorship in "A Trace of Murder" occurs when Clifford Calvert slams shut a cigar box as he says "shit", the clasp of the lid acting as the censor. |
| 291 | * GPSEvidence: There are quite a number of cases of this. |
| 292 | ** The earliest is "Lovely but Lethal" -- both the killer and Columbo contracted poison ivy from the crime scene. That strain of poison ivy didn't grow in Los Angeles, but was present at the crime scene because the victim was doing scientific research on plants. A sample had been on the microscope slide when it was shattered. This, coupled with the eyebrow pencil scribbles was enough solid proof that the killer had been at the scene at the time of the murder. |
| 293 | ** In "Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health", Columbo's car is scratched by Budd Clarke's dog when he arrives at the scene for the first time. He proves Wade Anders is lying when he says he has never been to the house upon discovering identical claw marks on Anders' car. |
| 294 | ** In "Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star", the clue comes in the form of berries from a tree that only grows in a certain area. |
| 295 | * GracefulLoser: Usually. Columbo has the good sense to plan ahead for when this doesn't seem likely. In "Étude in Black", after his wife contradicts the murderer's alibi, the killer takes a quick moment to apologize to his wife before confessing to Columbo so he isn't too humiliated by being caught. |
| 296 | * GreedyTelevangelist: One episode features a gospel singer who, while frugal, only insists her and her colleagues save money to later build an excessively lavish temple. |
| 297 | * GrievousBottleyHarm: In "Murder by the Book", the murderer uses a champagne bottle to bludgeon the second VictimOfTheWeek unconscious before dumping her in a lake to drown. |
| 298 | * HairTriggerTemper: Creator/RobertCulp had two characters that suffered from this. For Brimmer in "Death Lends a Hand", that temper resulted in him striking a woman, leading to her accidental death and him trying to avoid being arrested. Paul Hanlon also got angry at the drop of a hat frequently during the episode, but was level-headed for the actual murder. Another shining example is Creator/DonaldPleasence who gets several moments in "Any Old Port in a Storm". His "LIQUID FILTH!" tirade at the restaurant has made the episode, and his killer, a fan favorite of the single appearance killers in the series. |
| 299 | * HeadTiltinglyKinky: In "The Conspirators", Columbo is in a bookstore waiting for one of the sales clerks to get back to him. He picks up a book titled ''A New History of Erotic Art" and starts leafing through it. After a few seconds, he stops and peers intently at a page, then turns the book round. Getting a disapproving look from a customer, he puts the book back, but then returns to it a few moments later. |
| 300 | * HerosClassicCar: Columbo drove around in a pretty banged-up 1959 Peugeot 403 convertible. In one episode, he claimed that there were only three cars like his in the US. |
| 301 | * HeroesLoveDogs: Columbo eventually gets a pet Basset Hound, which he sometimes takes on investigations. |
| 302 | * HeWhoMustNotBeSeen: |
| 303 | ** Columbo's wife. (Remember, ''Series/MrsColumbo'' is not, repeat not, canonical.) Just like [[Series/MurderSheWrote Jessica with Frank]], Columbo talks on and on about his wife. He even gives a physical description about her, but not once does she show up on camera. They don't even give her a name since she's an off-camera character. This probably is most prominent in "Troubled Waters" where Mrs. Columbo is on the cruise ship with her husband, and in one scene he calls to her from across a lobby, and we ''still'' don't see her. |
| 304 | ** Aside from his wife, Columbo also has several siblings and cousins who are often mentioned (he has at least one sister named Mary who is deceased as of "No Time to Die"). His wife also has several brothers and sisters, and he has a few children -- the exact number of each are never specified. In fact, despite many clues that he has a large family on both sides, the only relatives we ever see are his nephew, Det. Andrew Parma from "No Time to Die", as well as a photo of a sister-in-law from "Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo". Of course, it's not given that Columbo is always telling the ''truth'' about his family -- in fact, one episode has Columbo all but admit that at least some of his homey anecdotes and stories of relatives are exaggerated or even made up, and delivered only in order to get a suspect to talk about a particular subject. And it's implied that even some of the relatives themselves may be fictional creations of Columbo.... |
| 305 | * HiddenDepths: |
| 306 | ** In "The Conspirators" Columbo shows an amazing ability to come up with clever poetry at the top of his head, enough to rival (and impress) Joe Devlin. He does it one last time at the end of this episode shortly before he arrest Devlin. |
| 307 | ** "The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case" suggests he is extraordinarily intelligent and may have a genius-level IQ, despite his claims to the contrary. |
| 308 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: Quite a lot of murderers are exposed when they try to outwit Columbo, usually concocting some clever plan to "clinch" the case and exonerate themselves. Most of the time, if they'd sat tight, they would go free. Some murderers are defeated in an especially ironic way, including: |
| 309 | ** Dr. Bart Keppel, expert in the field of SubliminalAdvertising, is tricked into revealing the location of the device he used to change the caliber of his gun when Columbo plants subliminal pictures of himself finding it in "Double Exposure". |
| 310 | ** Ken Franklin in "Murder by the Book" stages the murder of his writing partner using the only good idea for a murder he ever had as a mystery novelist, which is not enough to fool Columbo. |
| 311 | ** Stage Magician the "Great Santini" exposes himself when, as a stage trick, he demonstrates his ability to pick complicated locks. His method of making it look like he was interacting with someone else right when the murder was supposed to have taken place via a wireless microphone and speaker was also turned against him by Columbo when they suspected he might try to make a break for it. (Both these characters were played by Jack Cassidy.) |
| 312 | ** "Candidate for Crime": Nelson Hayward stages a fake gunshot as both an attempt to mislead Columbo and to gain sympathy during an Election. Columbo, however, finds the staged gunshot happened three hours before the Senator claims he's been shot. |
| 313 | ** Col. Rumford in "By Dawn's Early Light" gets undone by his own obsession with discipline. His relentless search for the cadets making hard cider ends up destroying his alibi and proving him guilty. |
| 314 | ** Sometimes a murderer ends up being blackmailed by the person who provides him with an alibi, which means he now finds himself in a situation just as bad or even worse (from his point of view) than the one he tried to resolve by committing the murder in the first place. Thus confirmed bachelor Adrian Carsini in "Any Old Port in a Storm" is blackmailed by his secretary, who wants to marry him, and is almost relieved that Columbo arrests him before that can happen. A rather similar thing happens to Hugh Creighton in "Columbo an the Murderer of a Rock Star". |
| 315 | ** In the last scene of "Murder Under Glass", the killer is fully committed to murdering Columbo in the very same way he killed the first victim, even though Columbo didn't gave him the slightest hint of having evidence sufficient to secure his arrest (in fact, Columbo just invited him for lunch). This ends up being what Columbo is expecting, and by the time he tells the murderer that he can't prove a case against him, he knows one of the glasses has already been poisoned and all he has to do is recover it as proof. Why exactly the murderer decided that trying to kill the police officer that was investigating him was a smart idea (when doing so would have placed him at the scene of a murder by poison for the ''second'' time, no less), and how Columbo was so sure that is what the murderer was going to try, is anyone's guess. |
| 316 | * HollywoodLaw: |
| 317 | ** Columbo basically disguises his surveillance of a suspect by pretending to simply question the person as a witness — nonstop throughout the episode. In this manner he thus badgers, harasses and tricks the suspect into revealing evidence that eventually convicts them. This is also breaching many various civil and ethical protections against police abuse and harassment; however, even when suspects complain about Columbo's nonstop harassment in order to end it, this proves no avail, as Columbo will simply claim that it "proves" that the person is guilty, and that "he's touching a nerve." This makes Columbo into more of a VigilanteMan than an officer of the law, since he is always right, and never incorrectly harasses an innocent person. In reality, the law is not made to presume that the police are always right, but to protect the citizen's presumption of innocence. For evidence of why this is necessary, you need to just look at people wrongly convicted of crimes, often due at least in part to overzealous police and prosecutors who are completely sure of their guilt. |
| 318 | ** Columbo has a bad habit of tampering with forensic evidence. The way he handles evidence, there's no chain of custody and most of what he might try to admit wouldn't be permissible in a real court because he would just walk around, pick something up, put it in his pocket, and keep it there until he was ready to share it with the murderer. |
| 319 | ** In "Agenda for Murder", Columbo visits attorney Oscar Finch in his office. While waiting in the office for Finch to come in, Columbo takes a piece of gum out of the wastebasket. Later he shows it to Finch, as well as the piece of bitten cheese from the crime scene.[[note]]Finch has a very uniquely shaped canine. The impression shows up on both[[/note]] Problem: the wastebasket is in the office, and does not come under the "garbage is public property" ruling; the trash would have to be out at the curb, in a dumpster, etc. Also, any real forensic detective would have fits at Columbo hauling around a vital piece of evidence like that cheese like that, in a plastic bag, without even an evidence label. Evidence seized without a warrant + broken custody chain of evidence = darn near impossible to use in court. |
| 320 | * HollywoodSilencer: If a gun is the murder weapon, there's about a 50% chance it'll have a silencer attached which will make no noise... and if a silencer is attached, it's probably a revolver. Played with in "The Conspirators": the murder weapon Joe Devlin uses to shoot Vincent Pauley is a special pistol with a built-in silencer. |
| 321 | * HowWeGotHere: "Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo" starts with Mrs. Columbo's funeral. Vivian Dmitri's murder of her boss's partner Charlie Chambers, and the investigation scenes leading up to this funeral, are then told as lengthy flashbacks. |
| 322 | * HyperAwareness: Has a knack for noticing small inconsistencies in a case. |
| 323 | * {{Hypocrite}}: |
| 324 | ** "Any Old Port in a Storm" has Adrian Carsini, a wine connoisseur, murdering his younger brother Rick (a millionaire playboy) over their shared inheritance. In the argument leading up to it Adrian accuses Rick of wasting their money on fast cars and foolish women, but Rick points out that Adrian spends large sums of money on bottles of wine so old and expensive he'd rather have them sit in a cellar instead of drinking them ("At least I know how to have fun with our money!"). Proving Rick right, after committing the deed, Adrian flies to New York City to set up his alibi, and buys a high-priced bottle at auction in spite of his secretary advising him against it and he himself stating he couldn't bring himself to drink it. |
| 325 | ** Hassan Salah, the killer from "A Case of Immunity", has bashed a man's skull in, clubbed another and ran his car off the road, stolen $600,000, tried to frame protesters for a terrorist attack and may have been involved in a plot to overthrow his king. His response when realizing he's about to be extradited to his home country for execution? |
| 326 | --->'''Hassan Salah:''' This isn't justice, this is BARBARISM! |
| 327 | * IconicOutfit: The lieutenant's rumpled beige raincoat, usually worn over a cheap grey suit, has become iconic of mystery fiction. |
| 328 | * IdenticalTwinMistake: This trope was used to trick a murderer into incriminating himself. The murderer had almost run over a blind man while fleeing from the scene of the crime. Later, Columbo brings in what appears to be the same blind man to identify the murderer. The killer protests that the man is blind. Then Columbo asks why the killer would think that, since the man he has bought in wasn't wearing dark glasses or carrying a white cane. The killer claims that as a trained physician he can spot subtle clues. Then Columbo has the "witness" read from a newspaper. The "witness" is the blind man's identical twin bother, and by claiming the witness was blind the killer showed that he has mistaken the man for the blind man who was almost run over. |
| 329 | * IdiotBall: |
| 330 | ** The opening sequence of "Make Me a Perfect Murder" has Columbo driving while singing, ignoring his police radio, and remaining completely oblivious to the police sirens around him while he fiddles with his rear view mirror. [[spoiler:The mirror piece comes off, and he attempts to reattach it while driving, without once pulling over and swerving all over the road. This entire time, his police radio is reporting the chatter of the car following him]]. This ends with him slamming on his brakes to avoid hitting one police car, while the one behind his car hits ''him'', giving Columbo whiplash. Even for a character known for ObfuscatingStupidity the scene plays out to the point of making the character look incompetent. |
| 331 | ** He seems to be holding the idiot ball in both "Try and Catch Me" and "Undercover". In both cases, he reaches his finger into a light bulb socket to remove a piece of evidence. This might be fine if he'd either unplugged the lamp (in the latter case) or had the circuit breaker shut off (in the former -- it was a ceiling fixture). Instead, he simply reaches in with his finger without so much as making sure their power sources were off. |
| 332 | ** That's ignoring his repeated annoyance of the housekeeper in "Double Shock"... much of which could be written off as Columbo being Columbo, though while he normally annoyed the suspect, he seemed to be more annoying to her with his mannerisms. But that's nothing compared to how he tested his theory of the electrocution -- which he does so by dropping an electric device into a bathtub, then running to change the fuse. This not only burns out all the electricity in the house, but also ruins the housekeeper's TV set. Then he does it ''again''! Even someone like Columbo could have thought to test his theory out without blowing out the fuse since all he really needs to verify is how long it would take to run from the upstairs bathroom to the basement fuse box. |
| 333 | ** Columbo holds the ball in "Étude in Black" where he leaves his new Basset Hound dog in his car (at night) with the windows up. A girl with her own dog [[WhatTheHellHero chews him out for his ignorance]], but Columbo is at least thankful for the advice for his first dog. |
| 334 | * InadvertentEntranceCue: In "The Most Crucial Game" Columbo is talking to the murderer and muses that he can't think of a motive for the crime... at which point the murdered man's (very attractive) wife shows up and begins crying into the murderer's arms. |
| 335 | * InconsistentEpisodeLengths: Episodes can be anywhere from 70 to 98 minutes depending on the complexity of the plot. |
| 336 | * INeverSaidItWasPoison: |
| 337 | ** In "Publish or Perish", Riley Greenleaf stages a minor car accident while pretending to be drunk in order to establish an alibi. He gives the couple he hit the card of his insurance agent and tells them to call him the next day. The next day, he pretends to have blacked out and cannot remember anything of the night. His lawyer comes out while he is talking to Columbo and reports the accident. Greenleaf pretends to be relieved, saying that if it weren't for "''those'' people", he might have been suspected of murder. Columbo chews this over for a moment, then asks the lawyer how many people were in the car. The lawyer says two, and Columbo asks Greenleaf if his amnesia is wearing off, because he just said "those people", despite not knowing who was in the car. |
| 338 | ** In "A Deadly State of Mind", Columbo finds a witness to a crime -- a blind man. So they bring in their suspect, Dr. Collier, and [[spoiler:have a guy in shades walk in, sit down, and [[BluffingTheMurderer identify Dr. Collier as the man who nearly ran into him while driving away from the Donner house on the day of the murder]]. Dr. Collier says his medical training tells him the man is blind, and hands him a newspaper... which he reads perfectly. Columbo reveals it's actually the blind man's similar-looking brother, and there was no way Dr. Collier should've thought he was blind. Unless, of course, he saw the ''real'' blind man [[ChekhovsGunman while fleeing the scene of the crime]].]] |
| 339 | ** In "Negative Reaction", Paul Galesko incriminates himself by grabbing the incriminating camera used to take pictures of his wife. The mistake is that he grabs the correct one right away, instead of mistakenly grabbing a different one from a shelf full of cameras. |
| 340 | ** In "Butterfly with Shades of Gray", there is a subversion, since Fielding Chase mentions that the victim was shot in the back. Most viewers assume that Chase only knows this because he is the shooter, but Chase does give a reasonable explanation to make it seem like he didn't commit the crime (since he made it seem like he was on the phone with the victim when he was killed), by stating that the victim would have told him over the phone that someone was aiming a gun at him, but since he didn't, he obviously was turned away from the shooter. |
| 341 | * InspectorLestrade: Subverted; Columbo is very much a competent officer, but plays up this trope ''masterfully'' for all it's worth. |
| 342 | * InstantSedation: |
| 343 | ** PlayedStraight in "A Stitch in Crime" on a minor character. Dr. Barry Mayfield wants to frame him for murder. Dr. Mayfield forces the man to breathe in a knock-out drug with a rag, before drugging him with his hospital supply of morphine, causing him to wake up under the morphine and die falling down stairs. |
| 344 | ** Also PlayedStraight in "Murder, a Self Portrait". Max Barsini murders his ex-wife at a beach, using paint-cleaner on a rag. He forces her to breath it in. She is later found on the beach, appearing to have drowned after Mr. Barsini threw her unconscious body into the water. |
| 345 | ** Subverted in "A Matter of Honor"; Luis Montoya shoots his victim with a TranquillizerDart but only uses a small dosage of the drug to make his victim woozy enough to keep him awake, because a sleeping victim wouldn't anger a vicious bull. |
| 346 | * {{Irony}}: In "Murder by the Book", Columbo catches out Ken Franklin because his writing partner was the creative talent behind their partnership and had written down the plot idea that Franklin based his plan from. Except, as Franklin ruefully notes, the idea that Franklin used actually ''was'' his own idea ("The only good idea I ever had..."); he just hadn't realized that his partner had written it down. |
| 347 | * IrregularSeries: It started as a MadeForTVMovie, then became a series which aired as every third episode of ''The NBC Mystery Movie''. Later, it became a series of TV Movies which aired with decreasing frequency. |
| 348 | * ItaliansTalkWithHands: A variation: Columbo often seems to ''think'' with his hands. |
| 349 | * JerkAssHasAPoint: In "Make Me a Perfect Murder", Kay Freestone's boss and lover Mark gets promoted to the east coast offices and flat out tells her he's not promoting her to his former position when he leaves, nor inviting her with him, stating she doesn't make decisions, she guesses. She proves him right by trying to push her newly sober friend into a live performance special, which fails disasterously when the friend can't handle it and takes a bunch of alcohol and pills. Kay instead runs a violent film she's been working on, without fanfare, to take the place of the unaired special. The head of the network tracks her down and chews her out for not only risking the live special with Kay's untested and marginally sober friend, but for costing lots of money in advertising and marketing and wasting the film she was working on without any fanfare, stating it was a good film but is now useless. The network head gives her a month to clear out, and her day only gets worse from there when Columbo shows up. |
| 350 | * JustForTheHeliOfIt: In "A Friend in Deed", deputy police commissioner Mark Halperin covers for his friend Hugh Caldwell's accidental killing of his wife and then demands Caldwell's help to cover up his own wife's murder. Halperin then tries to make it seem as if an unknown burglar-cum-killer is besetting his posh neighborhood. So at one point, he rides along in a helicopter in hopes of catching this person. This helicopter ride is part of the construction of his alibi so that Caldwell can be "seen" disposing of Halperin's wife in their swimming pool, plus it made it seem like the police are putting a high priority on catching this non-existent crook, and Halperin used it in part because he had the power to do so. Before the flight, Columbo actually asks him if the helicopter was really necessary. |
| 351 | * JusticeByOtherLegalMeans: |
| 352 | ** In "A Deadly State of Mind", Dr. Mark Collier uses hypnosis to program Nadia Donner into jumping off of the balcony of her secondary home-apartment, and it appears (in Mark's mind) this will eliminate any leads to his accidental homicide of Mr. Carl Donner. However, Columbo brings a witness that places him at the Donner household at the time of the first accidental homicide, ending the episode. |
| 353 | ** Columbo strongly suspects than the perp in "A Bird in the Hand" killed her husband, but never proves it. He does, however, prove that she committed a second murder, which is good enough for him. |
| 354 | * KarmaHoudini: The unnamed weapons dealer (played by L.Q. Jones) from "The Conspirators". He seems like a normal man who runs an RV dealership but runs guns. He sells the guns to Joe Devlin, takes the cash... and while Joe and his IRA cell are caught, the gun dealer is never busted. It is never mentioned if Devlin ratted him out after the fact hoping for some leniency. |
| 355 | * KensingtonGore: |
| 356 | ** Played straight in "Columbo Goes to College" with the massive pool of blood. |
| 357 | ** Subverted in the earlier episodes where blood was usually just bright red paint, if it was shown at all. |
| 358 | ** Subverted in "A Stitch in Crime" where an IV bottle of blood during the surgery is clearly just water with red food coloring. |
| 359 | * LaserGuidedKarma: Generally, the killers will suffer at the end of the episode during the denouement. However, a few suffer blows ''before'' Columbo comes in with the rope to hang them, generally thanks to things dug up during the course of the investigation. |
| 360 | ** Alex Bradey in "Murder, Smoke and Shadows" is a brilliant but arrogant ManChild who at one point is approached by the studio head (who'd discovered him and indulged in his eccentricities) and asked to speed up the creation of his movie for a summer release. Even as his boss is talking, Alex is clearly only half-listening while fashioning a chain of paper clips, and after his boss makes his appeal Alex declines and tells him to just tell the executives that he's being difficult before draping the paper clip chain over the studio head's shoulders. Later on the studio head calls upon Alex to ride in his limo for a quick chat, where he informs Alex that he's essentially crippling Alex's production for being such an UngratefulBastard. Note that this happens ''independently'' of Columbo. In fact, Alex barely has time to process the ruin of his life's work when Columbo brings him down. |
| 361 | * LaterInstallmentWeirdness: In "Columbo Cries Wolf", in contradiction with the series' usual ''modus operandi'', the viewer never watches the actual moment of the murder, but the identity of the murderer is still well established. [[spoiler:Justified since the murder didn't happen in the beginning of the movie, but at the end. The beginning scene was a set up meant to trick Columbo into believing a murder took place in order for the culprit to use the investigation as publicity for his magazine.]] |
| 362 | * LaughingMad: Roger Stanford in "Short Fuse" and Nicholas Frame in "Dagger of the Mind" during their respective {{Villainous Breakdown}}s. |
| 363 | * LimitedWardrobe: Columbo wore the exact same coat in every episode, with the same hopeless suit below it. |
| 364 | ** Lampshaded in "Now You See Him", when he appears in a new coat that he can't avoid, since the Mrs. bought it for his birthday. He (intentionally) keeps forgetting it, and by the end has traded it in for his old one, albeit a newly-bought copy. |
| 365 | ** In another episode he appears without his trademark raincoat for the first time... naturally it was pouring with rain. |
| 366 | * LetsGetDangerous: |
| 367 | ** A minor example, since the Lieutenant rarely gets physical. However, watch most of Columbo's interactions with the murderer throughout the episode carefully. In the early scenes, he's his usual amiable, bumbling, harmless-seeming self. In the last scene however, where he confronts the murderer with how they committed the crime, while he's usually still polite there's often an edge of determination, confidence and steel that wasn't there previously. |
| 368 | ** Played straight in "Undercover" when he's forced to kick open a door and pull a gun on Mo Weinberg. |
| 369 | * LifesWorkRuined: In "Any Old Port in a Storm", the murderer does this to himself. He murders his half-brother by leaving him bound in his wine vault and turning off the air conditioner so he suffocates. However, while he is away, there is an unexpectedly hot day that raises the temperature in the uncooled vault to the point where the wine oxidizes; destroying his priceless collection. |
| 370 | ** While still young, Alex Bradey, the murderer in "Murder, Smoke and Shadows" is hit with this when his boss, annoyed when Alex flippantly declined his request to speed up creation of his magnum opus for a summer release, informs him that his funding will be crippled. The boss even promises to make sure the movie Alex has been working on for years will never be finished and never see the light of day. And then when Alex arrives at his studio still reeling from this blow, Columbo is waiting for him... |
| 371 | [[/folder]] |
| 372 | |
| 373 | [[folder:Tropes M to S]] |
| 374 | * MagicCountdown: Pops up in "Make Me a Perfect Murder", as Kay's recorded time warnings she listens to over her cassette player seem to go much slower than actual time. Her supposed two-minute window to commit the murder and get back takes a fair bit longer than that as a result. Let alone the fact she supposedly needed a player and earpiece to give herself time warnings, rather than simply wearing a watch. |
| 375 | * MagicalSecurityCam: ''Playback'' ends with Columbo determining that [[spoiler:the security footage of the shooting was filmed long before the guard even saw it]] due to [[spoiler:the party invitation being present in the shooting footage, yet gone when the guard arrives.]] This would be fine except that the camera zooms in on a very clear shot of [[spoiler:the invitation, showing legible writing.]] Given the distance of the camera, at best the zoomed image would be a giant, blurry white square. |
| 376 | ** "A Bird in the Hand" features Columbo playing back the TV camera footage of the explosion, which cuts to various angles & zooms in on command as he needs it to. |
| 377 | * MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: In "Any Old Port in a Storm", the murderer goes to great lengths to make it look like his half-brother died in a scuba diving accident. However, he hadn't reckoned on Columbo's ability to spot little details that don't quite fit, such as the fact the victim had not eaten for two days prior to his death. |
| 378 | * {{Malaproper}}: Columbo has a habit of transposing words -- for instance, he claims the secret to a great omelette is "no eggs, just milk". |
| 379 | * MassiveNumberedSiblings: In "Make Me a Perfect Murder", he off-handedly mentions to the BigBad about his many, many siblings. The only one he mentions by name on-screen is his sister, Mary (Andy Parma's mother), who is deceased as of "No Time to Die". |
| 380 | * MilitaryMoonshiner: In "By Dawn's Early Light", Colonel Lyle Rumford incriminates himself in William Haynes's murder by going on a crusade to track down the boys who are making alcoholic apple cider (hanging the bottle outside in the wee hours of the morning to help it ferment). Columbo is able to show that the only way he could have been aware of it was if he was standing by the academy cannon while rigging it to explode. |
| 381 | * MistakenForDestitute: One episode sees the titular character visit a soup kitchen in order to talk to someone. One of the nuns running the soup kitchen sees his shabby coat, assumes that he's a homeless man, and has him sit down for a bowl of soup. |
| 382 | * MurderByCremation: In "Ashes to Ashes", mortician Eric Prince gets rid of gossip reporter Verity Chandler in this way. He bludgeons her, then puts her corpse in a coffin, switching it with a different man's body scheduled for cremation, then Chandler is cremated and her ashes are scattered by helicopter over the hills. |
| 383 | * MurderIsTheBestSolution: Apparently many of the upper-class residents in Los Angeles think this way, seeing how their problems could have been solved with [[MurderTheHypotenuse a divorce]], [[PoorCommunicationKills some talking]] or [[BlackmailBackfire coming clean to the police about a lesser crime]]... But they invariably choose to perform very elaborate murders. |
| 384 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Some of the antagonists feel bad about their murder. |
| 385 | ** Brimmer in "Death Lends a Hand". He is shown to be unethical in how he uses third parties to spy on people, and he has bad temper that is a liability, but he never intended to be a killer. Brimmer becomes enraged and punches Lenore Kennicutt in the face when she confronts Brimmer to rebuff the blackmail scheme he had in mind for her. Lenore falls over and dies of head trauma, and Mr. Brimmer has a look of fright on his face after he finds no vital signs on her body. Brimmer seems relieved when Columbo catches him trying to dispose of evidence, and he proceeds to confess and apologize to Mr. Kennicutt. |
| 386 | ** Tommy Brown in "Swan Song" initially feels a sense of relief, after murdering his blackmailing passengers by crashing his personal-aircraft. He tricks them into drinking coffee and barbiturates then parachutes off the plane. Tommy eventually feels that he took things too far, and gains a sense of relief when caught by Columbo. Columbo correctly speculates that Tommy would have eventually turned himself in to confess. |
| 387 | ** Lydia Corman says this almost verbatim in "Uneasy Lies the Crown" when she thinks she's accidentally killed her lover with her heart medicine. [[spoiler: Thankfully, it wasn't her. It was her sleazy ex-husband who tried to frame her for the murder.]] |
| 388 | * MysteryOfTheWeek: How is Columbo going to catch the [[SpecialGuest special guest star]] for committing their unnecessarily complex murder ''this'' time? |
| 389 | * {{Nephewism}}: In "No Time to Die", Columbo's nephew has his wife kidnapped on their wedding night. The fact that Columbo's nephew seems closer to Columbo than his own father, barely mentions his parents, and is quirky enough to sing "I'm a Jolly Good Fellow" at the hotel before going to bed with his new wife makes him seem more like Columbo's son instead. |
| 390 | * NeverSuicide: Justified, since Columbo usually rules suicide out for good psychological reasons. |
| 391 | ** An especially good take on the trope is made in "Étude in Black", where Columbo is prepared to believe Jennifer Welles did commit suicide (there was evidence of an unhappy love life), until he discovers that her death also killed her beloved pet cockatoo, and that didn't fit in. |
| 392 | ** In "Forgotten Lady", the victim was an old man with health problems -- but then it is discovered that not only did he borrow several humorous books from a library, he also carefully marked his place in the one he'd been reading before he died. |
| 393 | ** In "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine", [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_MpQkIf4SQ when suggested by a "psychic" that the victim committed suicide]], Columbo quickly rules it out due to the massive (comparatively speaking) amounts of food the victim had purchased yet weren't consumed before he died. |
| 394 | * NiceToTheWaiter: Many killers and AssholeVictims establish themselves as such by being cruel to people below them. Columbo uses this to often troll people; since he usually doesn't immediately introduce himself as a police officer (or in any way look like one), he'll allow people to assume he's much less important than he really is... Then flash his badge after they've made idiots of themselves. |
| 395 | * NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The killer is sometimes a thinly veiled version of a real-life celebrity. |
| 396 | ** Milo Janus, exercise guru in "An Exercise in Fatality", for example, is clearly Jack [=LaLanne=]. |
| 397 | ** Music/JohnnyCash is AdamWesting as an evil version of himself known as Tommy Brown in "Swan Song". |
| 398 | ** Robert Foxworth's Colonel Frank Braillie in "Grand Deceptions" is plainly a stand-in for Oliver North. |
| 399 | ** Likewise, Creator/JanetLeigh did the same -- one of her character Grace Wheeler's favorite starring roles was an old Janet Leigh picture. |
| 400 | ** Wade Anders from "Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health" may be played by George Hamilton, but his personality is like [[Film/{{Airplane}} Rex Kramer]]. |
| 401 | ** Alex Bradey in "Murder, Smoke and Shadows" is a rather mean-spirited caricature of Creator/StevenSpielberg. |
| 402 | ** Findlay Crawford in "Murder with Too Many Notes" is very Music/HansZimmer-esque, being as he is an Oscar-winning film composer who's the mentor to a younger tunesmith, Gabriel [=McEnery=], who's worked on some of his scores (the title also harks back to "Too Many Notes, Not Enough Rests", from Zimmer's ''Drop Zone'') and played by Music/MichaelKamen-lookalike Billy Connolly to boot (Kamen was also inclined to support young talent). |
| 403 | ** The most self-referential example is that Ward Fowler in "Fade in to Murder" is based on... Peter Falk. Ward Fowler stars in a popular TV detective series as Detective Lucerne, and who is causing trouble with the network because he is asking for so much money. This was the first episode of season 3 of ''Columbo'', and renewal of the series had been in doubt because Peter Falk was making such high salary demands. |
| 404 | ** Talk radio host Fielding Chase from "Butterfly in Shades of Gray" is clearly Creator/RushLimbaugh. |
| 405 | ** Sex therapist Dr. Joan Allenby from "Sex and the Married Detective" is a MUCH younger take on Dr. Ruth. |
| 406 | ** Dr. Bart Keppel is based somewhat on real-life market researcher and subliminal advertising "expert" James Vicary. |
| 407 | ** Max Dyson, the murder victim from "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine", is a very thinly disguised James Randi. |
| 408 | ** Emmett Clayton in "The Most Dangerous Match" bears a strong resemblance to American chess master Bobby Fischer, and the match with his Russian rival strongly echoes Fischer's head-to-head with Boris Spassky at the World Chess Championship in 1972 (a year before the episode aired). |
| 409 | * NoFullNameGiven: |
| 410 | ** Columbo himself -- when asked directly, he jokingly claims his first name is Lieutenant. An early episode has him showing an ID badge with the name "Frank", a fact only visible with video technology not available when the episode first aired; WordOfGod confirmed that this was never intended to be the character's canon name. |
| 411 | ** Chief Superintendent Durk of New Scotland Yard is never given a first name, either. |
| 412 | * NonActionGuy: The Lieutenant himself. Columbo does not carry a gun, openly admits to being a terrible shot with one anyway, and never gets into any violent scrapes; it's just understood the guy's not made for fighting. He at times arrives at the climax of the story with back-up, just in case the villain of the weak isn't a GracefulLoser. |
| 413 | * NoSeatBelts: Columbo's '53 Peugeot doesn't have them, being made before they were a standard addition to cars. He gets chewed out by a very jittery driving instructor for this in "Negative Reaction". By the time of "Undercover" he's apparently had them installed as one can be seen caught in the door in the ending scene. |
| 414 | * NotAMorningPerson: Columbo becomes, ah, even more so before he's had his coffee. |
| 415 | * NotSoBadassLongcoat: Columbo's famous shabby trenchcoat is actually a subversion; while he may come off as a bumbler, he's a very intelligent detective who nearly always gets the culprit. |
| 416 | * NotSoStoic: |
| 417 | ** Every suspect that meets Columbo at first keeps their calm, but whenever he hints the slightest that he is on to him/her, they freak out as soon as he leaves. One example, in "Lady in Waiting", Beth Chadwick tosses a light bulb (the same one she uses when she shoots and kills her brother) across the board room when she realizes that Columbo is getting closer to finding out. |
| 418 | ** Columbo himself rarely lost his cool, but [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpZE1uhHnLk five times]] he had an OOCIsSeriousBusiness moment. |
| 419 | * NoWarrantNoProblem: Columbo is a perfect example of this: He continuously pesters the suspects by appearing anywhere they are (work, home, middle of the street, wherever) and claiming he is just going to "ask some questions" -- that start as random nit-picking and become PerpSweating by annoyance as the episode continues. He has also grabbed evidence and kept it to himself ([[HollywoodLaw disregarding chain of custody procedure completely]]) to confront a suspect with it later on. At least in one episode he ''explicitly'' said that the suspect's hostile response to this modus operandi was leading him on the right path, because he "struck a nerve". |
| 420 | * ObfuscatingStupidity: |
| 421 | ** Columbo, and how! Just see the page quote for a start. |
| 422 | ** This was also true of Susie Endicott, the material witness in the episode "Undercover", Irving Krutch's ditsy, giggling girlfriend who was his alibi for the shootings of Mo Weinberg and Geraldine Ferguson. When Columbo reveals that he has evidence that proves she's lying (thus making her liable as an accomplice to murder), Susie's previously dopey eyes turn ice cold and she turns Krutch in without remorse. |
| 423 | ** Roger Stanford in "Short Fuse" was stated by his girlfriend to "Play the fool" to his uncle, but was very intelligent, otherwise, having earned his Ph.D in chemistry by the time he was 20 and earned several other degrees. |
| 424 | * OddballInTheSeries: |
| 425 | ** Two episodes -- "Last Salute to the Commodore" during the original 1970s run, and "A Bird in the Hand" during the 1990s revival -- were not [[ReverseWhodunnit Reverse Whodunnits]] but were structured as more classic mystery stories in which the viewer doesn't find out who the killer is until the end. |
| 426 | ** Season Two's "Double Shock" tweaks this by showing the murder in typical ''Columbo'' style, but then later revealing that the murderer is one of a pair of identical twins. So while we know one of them did it, we don't know which. |
| 427 | ** "Rest In Peace, Mrs. Columbo", is the only episode to feature voice-over narrated flashbacks, from multiple characters, no less. |
| 428 | ** "No Time to Die", one of the ABC episodes, doesn't have a murder. It's a kidnapping story. (It's one of the two episodes based on "Literature/EightySeventhPrecinct" novels.) |
| 429 | * OhCrap: Happens roughly OncePerEpisode either during TheReveal, or earlier in the episode, the first time Columbo produces a fact or an ArmorPiercingQuestion that requires the suspect to alter their story. In the later case this coincides often with a realization from the suspect that they've severely misjudged Columbo, and that he is not as big a buffoon as he seems. Depending on the actor, these reactions can range from sheer rage to looking as if they've hang-glided over the walls of Hell. |
| 430 | ** A good example occurs in "Any Old Port in a Storm" when Columbo makes Adrian Carsini realize that his chosen method of murder made him inadvertently irreparably spoil his collection of extremely expensive vintage wines. |
| 431 | ** Best example would be Hassan Salah in the ending of "A Case of Immunity" when, after spilling the entire story to Columbo -- whom he believed couldn't do a damn thing because of diplomatic immunity anyway --, the king of Suari walks out from behind the curtains. His plane trip home had been staged, the king having returned to the legation immediately after merely to fool Salah. Salah realizes that he's just confessed to the king of his country and will be executed if he's returned home, and promptly waives his immunity and signs a confession so that Columbo may arrest him. |
| 432 | * OlderThanTheyLook: Milo Janus of "An Exercise in Fatality" looks to be in his 30s (Robert Conrad was in his 30s at time time) thanks to lots of exercise and proper meals, but is actually 53. |
| 433 | * OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Columbo is typically very quiet and modest even when arresting criminals, and doesn't indulge in loud showy arrests. In "Mind Over Mayhem" he finally makes a very angry, accusatory arrest of the prime suspect, shouting at him and harshly ordering officers to arrest and book him. [[spoiler: It's an act. The man being arrested is innocent; Columbo's theatrics are being performed to bait the man's father, the actual killer, into a confession. When the father breaks down and cops to everything, Columbo snaps back to normal and gently reassures him his son will be released within the hour.]] |
| 434 | * OohMeAccentsSlipping: Peter Falk is of Polish descent and Jewish faith, while Columbo is Italian of possibly Roman Catholic faith. In a lot of the later seasons, Falk's voice was noticeably different and a Yiddish accent tended to slip through on occasion. |
| 435 | * OrgyOfEvidence: |
| 436 | ** This is a common bit for various killers as they go too far planting evidence and Columbo finds it odd that a killer could be so careless. |
| 437 | ** In "Publish or Perish", Riley Greenleaf arranges for his hitman to plant an orgy of evidence against himself while he carefully stages an alibi, to try to convince the police that someone is trying to frame him. Unfortunately, he plants too much evidence and some of it doesn't fit (literally). |
| 438 | * OutGambitted: Eventually all of the culprits' plots turn out to be this. |
| 439 | * OutOfGenreExperience: |
| 440 | ** While the previous example was a minor one, "No Time to Die" completely went against grain of the series. It abandoned the usual murder plot and told a story of a kidnapping that played like a psychological thriller. [[spoiler:Columbo's nephew, Andy, is married to a model. Immediately after the ceremony, Andy's new wife is kidnapped. Columbo has to work with much of the LAPD police force to find Andy's wife before an insane medical student can rape and kill her. The story takes place over the course of a single night.]] |
| 441 | ** "Undercover" plays with this a bit by mixing in the usual Columbo murder mystery with a hunt for pieces of a photograph leading to the location of money stolen from a bank heist years before. Both this and "No Time to Die" were based on ''Literature/EightySeventhPrecinct'' novels. |
| 442 | ** "Mind over Mayhem" takes a brief detour into ScienceFiction, with a TeenGenius who has invented a robot (played by Robby the Robot of ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'' fame) so sophisticated that it seems to have artificial intelligence (not only does it play chess, but it gets angry when it loses). |
| 443 | * PaintedOnPants: Roger Stanford in "Short Fuse". No wonder he went mad. |
| 444 | * ThePerfectCrime: The murderers believe they've managed this. One of the joys of the series is watching Columbo PullTheThread and prove them wrong. |
| 445 | * PerpSweating: This was usually done in a psychological manner by Columbo. While it was rare to see a normal interrogation, they did occasionally show them, the most notable example being "Murder of a Rock Star". |
| 446 | * PersonaNonGrata: Columbo himself is labeled as such from the Suarian legation in "A Case of Immunity" due to his murder investigation, which nearly cost him his job thanks to a tense political situation. |
| 447 | * PersonalArcade: The episode "The Conspirators" has Columbo and a suspect talking over games of pinball in the suspect's home. |
| 448 | * ThePeterPrinciple: An example in "Make Me a Perfect Murder". Kay Freestone, a network assistant executive with high goals, dictates and practically directs a film that the network wants and guarantees it will be a success. When she is told she can't have her boyfriend Mark [=McAndrews=]'s job after his promotion to New York (as he doesn't feel she's qualified [[note]] [=McAndrews=] tells her, she "doesn't make decisions", she "makes guesses". [[/note]]), she shoots and kills [=McAndrews=] in his office to get the job. Afterwards, her plans to bring Valerie Kirk, an old friend and former star who also happens to be a pill junkie, out of retirement for a TV special fall apart (Kirk herself thinks she's been out of the game too long, and she's right), and the film the network ordered is a massive bomb when it airs (mostly because she desperately put the film up to replace the cancelled special, thus running it suddenly with no advertising beforehand). |
| 449 | ** When her boss meets her, he points out [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech several of her flaws]]: in addition to airing the aforementioned film suddenly (he specifically states she "threw away" said film), he's aware that the director of the cancelled special repeatedly warned her of issues with Kirk that Kay ignored, and he's displeased that Kay planned to move to the deceased [=McAndrews=]' office, [[DueToTheDead not long after his murder]]. When she tries to protest that she [[NeverMyFault did well considering the circumstances]], he cuts her off by pointing out '''''she''''' was [[ArmorPiercingResponse responsible for said circumstances]]. |
| 450 | * PetsHomageName: The victim in "Etude in Black" was a talented musician who had named her bird Chopin. |
| 451 | * PetTheDog: Columbo does this a few times, usually when he has some sympathy for the murderer (AssholeVictim comes into play). He once let an aging starlet go because she was descending into dementia and didn't even remember killing the victim (who nobody missed). In another case, a woman who committed murder was very calm and accepting when Columbo confronted her with her guilt. She acknowledged what she did and complimented Columbo on figuring it out. When the uniformed police moved in to arrest her, Columbo told them not to bother handcuffing her as she would go quietly. She thanked him for that courtesy as well. |
| 452 | * PhotographicMemory: Emmett Clayton has one in "The Most Dangerous Match". |
| 453 | * PhoneyCall: In "A Friend in Deed", the murderer publicly phones his home from his club and pretends to be talking to his wife. He is actually talking to his accomplice who is cleaning up the crime scene. |
| 454 | * PillowSilencer: The villain of "Troubled Waters" was being blackmailed by an old flame while on a sea cruise with his heiress wife. When the chanteuse declared that she was going to be a ShippingTorpedo during her performance, the villain shot her using a pistol and one of her dressing room's throw pillows. Of course, nobody heard this gunshot; only the bullethole and some stray feathers made any indication that the pillow served this purpose. |
| 455 | * PilotMovie: ''Prescription: Murder'' (1968) and ''Ransom for a Dead Man'' (1971) both preceded the series proper. |
| 456 | * PoisonChaliceSwitcheroo: Done in "Murder Under Glass", although the actual switch involved a bottle opener that was used to inject poison into a bottle of wine. The killer watches Columbo sip his wine, and then smugly picks his own glass, only for Columbo to politely inform him that he wouldn't drink that if he was him. Columbo then explains about the switch, and how that glass full of poisoned wine will be enough to convict him. |
| 457 | * PoliceProcedural |
| 458 | * PoolScene: In "Swan Song", Columbo visits Tommy Brown to question him regarding the death of his wife. He finds him holding a party in his backyard with several bikini-clad young ladies lounging round the pool as he plays his guitar and sings. |
| 459 | * PreciousPuppies: Dog is a sly subversion, being an old, listless Basset Hound who rarely does anything but lie on the ground and who's stated to be unwelcome to stay in an obedience school any longer than strictly necessary since "he demoralizes other students". He was originally added to the show because [[ExecutiveMeddling the network wanted Columbo to have some kind of a sidekick]]. |
| 460 | * ProductPlacement: A subtle one -- [[http://barneysbeanery.com/ Barney's Beanery, seen in the early seasons, is a real restaurant.]] |
| 461 | * PsychopathicManchild: Alex Bradey is a man child running around Hollywood making brilliant movies, but when confronted with evidence that he'd been responsible for the death of a woman many years ago, he gleefully sets up a way to murder the man who can expose him, seems to enjoy the act of murder and likes to playfully manipulate those around him into doing whatever he wants. Ultimately backfires when his boss gets fed up with him and Columbo manages to manipulate his own scenario to catch the guy. |
| 462 | * PublicExposure: The episode "Suitable for Framing" has the lieutenant visiting a painter working with a nude model (despite painting a different subject), to Columbo's embarrassment. (Of course we don't see anything, she's hidden by the painting's frame.) |
| 463 | * PullTheThread: Columbo's ability to see through cover stories forces the killers to usually come up with an even more complicated web of lies in an attempt to cover their involvement. |
| 464 | * PunBasedTitle: Most episode names are a pun related to the murder committed. For example, in "An Exercise in Fatality" (an exercise in futility) Milo Janus strangles Gene Stafford and makes it look like an exercise mishap. In "Caution: Murder (Cigarette smoking) Can Be Hazardous to Your Health", Wade Anders kills Budd Clarke with poisoned cigarettes. |
| 465 | * {{Qurac}}: Semi-zigzagged with Suari, from "A Case of Immunity". The United States is trying to improve relations with the country, which complicates the case. The new king of the nation is considered progressive and more liberal than his father. The Suarian legation guards do carry rifles but are treated as basic security guards and nothing more. However, the protesters seem to imply that things are not all that great back home, and the ending does suggest that execution is a common criminal punishment for murder and/or treason. They were a straight example but are moving a bit away from that, it seems. |
| 466 | * RealMenCook: In addition to being a BadassBookworm, Columbo is a very talented cook who genuinely seems to enjoy making meals. Several episodes hint that he cooks a lot or even most of the meals at home, and when asked about his service in the Korean war he mentions he was mostly kitchen patrol. |
| 467 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Some particularly smug villains like to give this to Columbo when they've reached their limit. |
| 468 | * RewindReplayRepeat: Done several times in order to prove that the tape being used for an alibi was faked somehow. |
| 469 | ** In "Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health", the inconsistency Columbo points out is the hedges behind the door in the tape Wade Anders has set up for his alibi. |
| 470 | ** In "A Bird in the Hand", Columbo replays the news footage of Harold [=McCain=]'s gardener blowing up to show Dolores (Tyne Daly) that Harold flinched in anticipation of the pipe bomb exploding. |
| 471 | ** "Playback" features Harold Van Wick using a very expensive, very elaborate in-home security system (which for the 1970s, was NOT all that common) to record him shooting his mother-in-law (from out of frame) and play it back while at a party so that the security guard at the gatehouse will see it. Columbo discovers the ruse when [[spoiler:spotting the party invitation on the desk in the footage of the shooting, which vanishes seconds later and was presented at the party itself.]] |
| 472 | * RevealingCoverup: On more than one occasion, Columbo is tipped off to the crime or murderer when the crime scene is ''too'' clean, such as when there are no fingerprints on something the victim would have been reasonably expected to have touched. |
| 473 | * RevealingInjury: In "Lovely, but Lethal", the murderer kills the VictimOfTheWeek by hitting him over the head with a microscope. Unknown to her, the microscope slide had poison ivy on it, which she gets on her hand during the attack. Columbo also gets poison ivy on his hand when he touches broken glass at the crime scene, and develops a rash. He then notices the same rash on one of the suspects. And poison ivy isn't found in Southern California. |
| 474 | * ReverseWhodunnit: TropeCodifier and still the most famous example. In every episode (with two exceptions, see OddballInTheSeries above), the murder is shown in the beginning and the audience knows who the killer is. The fun is in watching how Lt. Columbo will bring the killer to justice. |
| 475 | * RightHandAttackDog: Dr. Mason, the murderer in "How to Dial a Murder", travels with a pair of dobermans named Laurel and Hardy. He uses them as {{Animal Assassin}}s to murder the VictimOfTheWeek. |
| 476 | * RoommateCom: The episode "Death Hits the Jackpot" has the murder victim living in an apartment where he has an endless supply of wacky neighbors who keep dropping in after his murder and a pet monkey. |
| 477 | * RunningGag: When Columbo enters the crime scene or meets someone for the first time, he is mistaken as a sightseer or a hobo. A nun in "Negative Reaction" first thinks he's a hobo and then when he says he's a cop, she's convinced that he is an undercover cop in disguise. |
| 478 | * ScarySurpriseParty: In "Candidate for Crime", having just murdered his campaign manager, Nelson Hayward sneaks into his own home and flicks off several lights, plunging his wife into the dark. He then sneaks up behind her and [[HandGagging claps his hand over her mouth]]. Then the lights turn on and guests yell surprise. The whole thing was a surprise party he organised as part of his alibi. |
| 479 | * SelfDeprecation: Columbo loves to tell these kinds of jokes about himself. Whether he's being genuine or if it's just another part of his façade is up in the air. |
| 480 | -->'''Suspect:''' The commissioner said he was sending over his best man.\ |
| 481 | '''Columbo:''' Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm only his second best man. There's about forty fellas tied for first. |
| 482 | * SeriesContinuityError: |
| 483 | ** Happens in "Murder with Too Many Notes", as Columbo asks one of the musicians to teach him how to play "This Old Man" on the piano at the end of the episode. Except he played the song perfectly on piano in "Try and Catch Me". Both examples could be hand-waved as Columbo lying as part of his ObfuscatingStupidity act. |
| 484 | ** This happens within the episode "Forgotten Lady". Dr. Willis' bedroom was supposed to be on the other end of the house from the film room. However, when Columbo tries climbing down the tree outside the bedroom window, it's suddenly directly above the film room as Grace Wheeler sees him through the film-room window. |
| 485 | ** So what is Sgt. Wilson's first name, anyway? Is it John J. or Fredrick? Both appearances gave him different names. |
| 486 | ** Bruce Kirby played the recurring role of Sergeant George Kramer throughout several of the NBC and ABC episodes... until "Strange Bedfellows" when his character is suddenly named Phil Brindle. Even assuming the character was named prior to casting, it still should've been trivial to change it for shooting to maintain continuity. |
| 487 | * ShoutOut: |
| 488 | ** More than one fan of [[Series/ThePrisoner1967 Patrick McGoohan's '60s spy show]] chuckled when [=McGoohan=] slipped a "Be seeing you." into his "Identity Crisis" appearance. And right after he says "Be seeing you" to his assistant, we cut to him walking in an amusement park while wearing a dark colored light jacket with white piping which seems to echo Number 6's Village "uniform". |
| 489 | ** A brief clip of [[Series/TheTonightShow Johnny Carson]] giving a monologue (and interviewing Pearl Bailey) can be seen in "Forgotten Lady" as well as references to the show being 90 minutes long, as it was at the time. |
| 490 | ** "Forgotten Lady" also features Creator/JanetLeigh's character, Grace Wheeler, watching the old film ''Walking My Baby Back Home'', in which Leigh starred. For the episode, Leigh's character in the film undergoes a name change from Chris Hall to Rosie. |
| 491 | ** Prior to Janet Leigh's appearance, Creator/VeraMiles, who played Lila Crane alongside her in ''Film/{{Psycho}}'', played the killer in "Lovely but Lethal". At one point she indicates she couldn't be the killer because she "wouldn't hurt a fly" -- which was the same thing that Norman's "mother" said about herself at the end of ''Psycho''. |
| 492 | ** ''Psycho'' again gets a mention in "Murder with Too Many Notes" along with ''Jaws'' when samples of their scores are played by Findlay Crawford's orchestra. ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' was also mentioned in "Fade in to Murder" when Columbo sees a prop shark at the TV studio lot and asks if it was the shark from the film. |
| 493 | ** The news reel that Luis Montoya is watching in "A Matter of Honor" is an older film that Creator/RicardoMontalban starred in, playing a bullfighter. |
| 494 | ** "How to Dial a Murder" is built on this as the murderer is a film buff collector. He owns both the large gate and the sled from ''Film/CitizenKane'' (even making "Rosebud" be the attack command for his dogs) as well as the famous pool table and curved pool cue once used by by Creator/WCFields. |
| 495 | ** A child genius in "Mind over Mayhem" is called "Stevie Spelberg". Interestingly, while Creator/StevenSpielberg would have been familiar to the writers due to having directed a first-season episode, he was at the time quite unknown to the world at large. |
| 496 | * ShowyInvincibleHero: Does the bad guy have a chance? No way. The fun is seeing Columbo make them squirm. |
| 497 | * SignificantReferenceDate: In 1990's "Uneasy Lies the Crown", Columbo says he's been on the police force for 22 years. And indeed it was 22 years since the first Columbo TV movie, 1968's ''Prescription: Murder''. |
| 498 | * SkeletonKeyCard: In "Double Exposure", the murderer (played by Robert Culp) uses a credit card to jimmy the lock when he breaks into the home of his first victim to steal a weapon to murder his second (ItMakesSenseInContext). |
| 499 | * SlippingAMickey: In "Swan Song", Tommy Brown (Music/JohnnyCash) hands his two victims a thermos of drugged coffee while they are flying. This puts them to sleep, and he bails out, leaving the plane to crash. |
| 500 | * SlobsVsSnobs: A key element to the series. Columbo never investigated ordinary working stiffs or drug dealers or mobsters or whatnot. No, he was always investigating a millionaire businessman or a famous athlete or a famous actor or an heiress -- someone rich, that is. Part of the appeal was watching the rumpled, distinctively working-class detective in the ancient raincoat nailing some rich weasel for murder. |
| 501 | * SmartPeoplePlayChess: The subject of "The Most Dangerous Match", where [[SmugSnake Emmitt Clayton]] murders his rival before a long-awaited match upon realizing he can't possibly win. But subverted by Columbo himself; the Lieutenant prefers checkers. |
| 502 | * SmokingIsCool: Averted, for the most part. Columbo might smoke cheap cigars like crazy, but he's not an action hero and more often than not the smoke irritates those around him. Played straight on any occasion where a more well-off character offers him a Cuban cigar. |
| 503 | * SmugSnake: Many of the killers. Roddy [=McDowell=] was a good example. Another, played by Leonard Nimoy, was so smug that Columbo has one of his few moments of anger with him. |
| 504 | * SnobbyHobbies: |
| 505 | ** The episode "Any Old Port in a Storm" has the detective investigate the death of the partner of a wine connoisseur. The victim owed a large sum to bookies, and he was poised to sell his stake in the winery to cover his debts. The wine connoisseur slew his partner to preclude the sale. During the investigation, Columbo discovers the suspect owns many bottles of rare, vintage wines worth thousands per bottle. |
| 506 | ** In "Ransom for a Dead Man", the murderer flies a private plane as a hobby. Columbo convinces her to let him ride along on a flight to interview her and she takes great delight in making him airsick. |
| 507 | * TheSociopath: Quite a few of the killers over the years. |
| 508 | ** Dr. Fleming in ''Prescription: Murder'' and Leslie Williams in "Ransom for a Dead Man" particularly stand out because their utter lack of conscience or capacity for normal human empathy becomes crucial to Columbo's {{Batman Gambit}}s against them. |
| 509 | ** Dr. Barry Mayfield in "A Stitch in Crime" is filled with egomania, successfully rigging Dr. Hidemann's heart valve with dissolving suture to attempt to murder him. Nurse Sharon Martin confronts Dr. Mayfield after noticing the suture left on a tray. Mayfield mocks Sharon for her accusation and coldly dares her to notify authorities. When Sharon makes good on her threat and schedules an appointment with a suture supplier (Mayfield eavesdrops), she is murdered with a tire wrench at her car. |
| 510 | * SoreLoser: Some villains are not exactly happy to be caught: |
| 511 | ** In "Lady in Waiting", the killer, Beth Chadwick, attempts to shoot Columbo after being found out... only for him to casually inform her there was a police car waiting outside and such a thing would do her more harm than good. Columbo almost jokingly declares that Beth has more class than that. |
| 512 | ** Fielding Chase (William Shatner) also doesn't lose with much grace. At the end, a device is planted that intentionally disables his Mercedes-Benz in a seemingly empty stretch of road. After Columbo tells him how he committed the murder, Fielding pretends to open his trunk (or boot) and reach for roadside tools, but is hesitantly pulling out a shotgun. Fielding than asks Columbo to consider that he is acting foolishly because Fielding knows he's not armed. Columbo then agrees, but says he didn't come alone and holds down the car horn to summon the cops hiding further ahead. |
| 513 | * SpannerInTheWorks: In a number of cases, Columbo's put on the right trail by picking up on a minor detail in the crime that the killer didn't (and often couldn't) have predicted or accounted for. |
| 514 | * SpecialGuest: The show featured many guest stars as murderers, among them Creator/AnneBaxter, Creator/JohnCassavetes, Creator/BillyConnolly, Creator/RobertCulp, Music/JohnnyCash, Creator/FayeDunaway, Creator/RuthGordon, Creator/LouisJourdan, Creator/WalterKoenig, Creator/MartinLandau, Creator/JanetLeigh, Creator/RoddyMcDowall, Creator/PatrickMcGoohan, Creator/VeraMiles, Creator/RayMilland, Creator/LeonardNimoy, Creator/DonaldPleasence, Creator/WilliamShatner, Creator/RipTorn, Creator/DickVanDyke and Creator/RobertVaughn. |
| 515 | * SplitPersonality: |
| 516 | ** Ward Fowler from "Fade in to Murder" [[spoiler:keeps slipping into the persona of Detective Lucerne, his TV role, to help Columbo, and practically hands Columbo evidence to hang himself.]] |
| 517 | ** "Sex and the Married Detective" starts with Dr. Joan Allenby putting on a disguise to murder her cheating lover and business partner. This second "Lisa" personality she put on to murder David does eventually manifest itself, however, leading to an eerie scene where Dr. Allenby is arguing with herself in a mirror with "Lisa", followed by "Lisa" visiting various nightclubs and having bartenders call Columbo with various messages. By the end, Dr. Allenby is so scared of this that she's practically relieved when she's arrested. |
| 518 | * SpottingTheThread: The key to the entire show is Columbo seeing those little tiny errors the killer accidentally left behind. So often, it looks like Columbo has missed something but in his summation, he reveals he saw it right off and was the first clue to figuring things out. |
| 519 | * {{Squick}}: In-universe, Columbo finds the sight of an operation and most autopsies to be unbearable to watch... though his mood will fluctuate on this depending on the situation. Most attempts to show him such things freak him out quite bad at even the suggestion he witness, though at the end of "A Stitch in Crime", his nerves harden up and he watches the surgery intensely. |
| 520 | * StatusQuoIsGod: During an interview with [[http://wabcradio.com/ WABC's]] [[http://www.marksimone.com/ Mark Simone]], Falk was asked after all those years of solving all those high profile cases, why was Columbo ''still'' a Lieutenant? Falk chuckled and said "I guess he probably turned down a promotion here and there so he could keep on doing the work he loved." |
| 521 | * StoppedClock: |
| 522 | ** "Candidate for Crime" involves Nelson Hayward killing Harry Stone and then the time of death being established by a broken watch. Columbo figures the watch must have been planted on the victim's body with the time pre-set, because he was a tough sportsman who wouldn't have wanted to be seen dead wearing such a wimpy, fragile timepiece. |
| 523 | ** This happens again in "Death Hits the Jackpot", when Leon Lamarr sets his nephew Fredy Brower's watch and breaks it to try to establish the time of death so that it will look like he was at his Halloween party when Fredy drowned. However, this fails to work when Columbo notices that this supposedly expensive watch is a counterfeit knockoff of a name brand watch... which Lamaar didn't know, as he'd bought Fredy the real deal as a gift some time before, and didn't know that Fredy had sold it and bought a knockoff. And this knockoff was not waterproof, unlike the real watch -- so, if Fredy had really been bathing, he would have taken his watch off. |
| 524 | * SubliminalAdvertising: Dr. Bart Keppel is an expert in this technique in "Double Exposure". He uses it to lure Vic Norris to the spot he's picked out for the murder. Later, Columbo uses it against him to push him into revealing the location of the key evidence against him. |
| 525 | * SuddenlyShouting: Paul Hanlon is prone to this in "The Most Crucial Game". "It TOOK me a minute... to PLACE the word CHICK!" |
| 526 | * SurpriseCheckmate: "The Most Dangerous Match" pushes this to the absolute limit when a grandmaster falls victim to the Fool's Mate, the quickest and absolute dumbest way to lose a game of chess. |
| 527 | * SuspectExistenceFailure: The episode "Last Salute to the Commodore" starts out as a normal episode, with us seeing Robert Vaughn disposing of the victim's body and setting up his alibi, Lt Columbo comes in and starts his usual harassing of the suspect, and then half way through Robert Vaughn turns up dead, and the episode suddenly turns into a [[FairPlayWhodunnit Whodunnit]]. |
| 528 | * SuspiciouslyPrescientPlanning: In "Candidate for a Crime", senatorial candidate Nelson Hayward murders his campaign manager Harry Stone. His plan involved contriving a scenario where Harry would disguise himself as Hayward using his clothes, all so he could make it look like a case of mistaken identity. One of the many things that tips off Columbo throughout the episode is that Hayward receives a new jacket shortly after the murder, identical to the one that is now riddled with bullet holes and soaked in blood, seemingly intended as a replacement. Except it's a designer jacket, made to order, and it takes weeks to make. So how did Hayward know to order a new one ahead of time? |
| 529 | * SympatheticMurderer: Some of the best episodes have the audience actively hoping the Lieutenant ''won't'' catch the perp. |
| 530 | ** An interesting case in "Lady in Waiting" that plays with this trope. Beth Chadwick kills her controlling brother because he's trying to end the relationship between her and [[Creator/LeslieNielsen Peter]], who works for him, by threatening to fire him. After his death she starts becoming as controlling and inconsiderate of other viewpoints as her brother -- she even almost decides to shoot Columbo when he catches her! She only stops because he says she's [[HypocriticalHumour "too classy" to do such a thing.]] There were also several officers with him just outside the room... although she was already being arrested for murder so it probably wouldn't have made much difference. |
| 531 | ** In "Try and Catch Me", he gives a tale to an audience of crime-writing fans and says that his favorite part of his job is meeting nice people, even killers, because although what they have done is horrible, that doesn't mean they aren't genuinely nice people and he often understands their motives and sympathizes with them. This was a bit manipulative since the killer of that story is Abigail Mitchell, who was ''in'' said audience and it was doubtless for her ears too (she was more or less sympathetic, for the record), but based on the evidence, there is little reason to believe that he wasn't being truthful. Also, her motivation for murdering her nephew-in-law in the first place was that he had murdered her beloved niece a few months earlier. |
| 532 | ** In "Swan Song", the episode featuring Music/JohnnyCash, we know that we are supposed to be sympathetic to Tommy Brown (Cash) once we realize that he is tired of being controlled by his religiously fanatic, blackmailing wife. Tommy even [[spoiler:expresses relief that he's been caught, and admits that he would eventually have given himself up]]. In a rather touching moment, Columbo [[spoiler:reassures Tommy that there is still some good in him]]. |
| 533 | ** The widow of a Columbo killer (never given an episode) who tries to hurt Columbo's wife due to her desire for {{Revenge}}. |
| 534 | ** Adrian Carsini in "Any Old Port in a Storm": despite being rather arrogant, he has a genuine passion for fine wines and in an offhand comment it is mentioned that he pays the highest wages of any vineyard in that part of California. He also enjoys helping Columbo cultivate a taste for fine wine in the same episode. Columbo likes him so much that, after arresting him, he pulls over to the side of the road so they can share one last bottle of wine before he hauls him off to be booked. |
| 535 | [[/folder]] |
| 536 | |
| 537 | [[folder:Tropes T to Z]] |
| 538 | * TakeThat: Alex Bradey, the film director from "Murder, Smoke and Shadows" is a rather less-than-kind expy of Steven Spielberg. Bradey is an up-and-coming film director with a lot of ideas, but by the end of the episode he's shown to be little more than a ManChild who thinks he's above everything else. In fact, just before Columbo confronts him at the climax, the studio head, annoyed at Alex's disrespectful and ungrateful attitude towards him, [[TranquilFury informs]] Alex his funding is going to be practically crippled, making it all but impossible for Alex to finish his grand movie before his contract runs out. Perhaps even harsher considering that Spielberg directed one of the first-season ''Columbo'' films. |
| 539 | * TakenOffTheCase: Invoked on several occasions when a suspect with political connections tries to have Columbo removed from a case. In the very first movie "Prescription: Murder", Columbo bluntly informs the murderer's accomplice (who believed Columbo had been taken off the case) that the fact that someone tried to apply pressure to take him off the case convinced Columbo's superior that he was on the right track. |
| 540 | * TheyCallMeMisterTibbs: In "Double Exposure", Columbo keeps referring to Dr. Keppler (the murderer) as 'Mr. Keppler', and being angrily corrected by Keppler. Knowing Columbo, this almost certainly one of his tactics to keep the suspect off-balance. |
| 541 | * ThirdActStupidity: Plays around with it. |
| 542 | * ThisBearWasFramed: "How to Dial a Murder" involves a psychologist who trains his pet dogs to kill a man upon command and uses a phone call as an excuse to say the command to make it look as if the dogs merely became vicious for no reason. |
| 543 | * TitleDrop: |
| 544 | ** This happens a few times, notably "Make Me a Perfect Murder". |
| 545 | ** Sort of with "Undercover" -- it would be hard not to use the word "undercover" in dialog as Columbo going undercover is a major plot point, though "jigsaw" is slipped in as well as a reference to the original book title that the episode was based on. |
| 546 | * TooCleverByHalf: This is actually pretty common. A lot of these killers would have gotten away free if they'd just kept things simple, but many had to take it an extra step further by trying to set up a scene or frame someone, which caused them to make mistakes. |
| 547 | ** Played with in "Murder by the Book". Ken Franklin's main murder of his writing partner Jim Ferris is intricate, well-thought out and almost flawless, but his second (to eliminate Lilly La Sanka as a witness) is sloppy and rushed. This gives Columbo the idea that the murderer, the less-talented half of a murder-mystery writing team, actually stole the idea for the first murder from one of the ideas that Ferris came up for their books, but the second was all his own. [[spoiler:Ironically, the first murder ''was'' Franklin's idea, the only one that he ever came up with for them, but it was never used.]] |
| 548 | ** If Alex Benedict in "Étude in Black" didn't come back for his flower pin, or just not wear it at all after retrieving it from the crime scene, he probably would never have been caught. |
| 549 | ** "A Stitch in Crime" is a perfect example: if Dr. Mayfield had simply killed Sharon Martin in the parking lot, no doubt he'd have been free. However, he raises minor suspicion from Columbo by casually adjusting his deck clock while feigning surprise on the phone over Sharon's death. Also, the plot to make it look like a killing over drugs complicated the situation, caused far too many problems and led to his capture. |
| 550 | ** "A Deadly State of Mind" has a great example: Dr. Collier knows Columbo's game at the end is a ruse and that the man couldn't have seen him for an identification because he's blind. However, aside from the glasses, there was no indication at all the man Columbo had in the room was blind. Dr. Collier practically gave away too much information for his own good. |
| 551 | ** In "An Exercise in Fatality", Milo Janus successfully [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident makes the murder look like an accident]] without leaving any evidence conclusively proving that it wasn't. But then he goes and tries to construct a perfect alibi (which he didn't really need, since the murder looked like an accident), which leads to ConvictionByContradiction when Columbo finishes ripping it apart. If he'd just not bothered with an alibi at all, he might have looked suspicious, but there would have been no evidence of any sort against him. |
| 552 | ** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Columbo in "How to Dial a Murder". Eric Mason makes so many mistakes, that Columbo expresses disappointment in how simple the case was. For one, Dr. Mason was having his heart-rate recorded when he tricked Dr. Hunter to saying "Rosebud" twice, and the heart-rate increased when Dr. Mason heard his trained Dobermans killing Dr. Hunter. Second, Columbo noted that a 911 call was not placed by the person who heard Dr. Hunter dying. Third, Dr. Mason unplugged another phone to force Dr. Hunter to use the "murder phone" and failed to plug it back in.\ |
| 553 | There was also an obvious motive due to the fact that Dr. Hunter was having an affair with Mrs. Mason and Mrs. Mason died under suspicious circumstances. [[spoiler:In a final act of desperation, Dr. Mason attempts to command his dogs to attack Columbo, but this fails miserably because Columbo had the training disarmed. This helps prove that he trained the dogs to attack with a secret word.]] |
| 554 | ** Justin Price [[DownplayedTrope downplays]] this and may have even gotten away with the fake suicide due to Linwood's history of debt & drinking. However, Columbo notices that the computer where the suicide note was typed has missing fingerprints on the keyboard, which helps him consider someone wants him to believe that this was a "suicide". |
| 555 | ** Hayden Danziger in "Troubled Waters" really goes the distance in this trope. He not only decides to frame Lloyd Harrington for the murder of Rosanna Wells, but sets up a "perfect alibi" for himself as well by staging a fake heart attack and getting sent to the ship's infirmary. But Columbo realizes that the frame is on as soon as he sees the murder scene, and on the way to the infirmary with the corpse, he spots a lucky clue that focuses his attention on Danziger like a laser beam. Columbo just dismantles the case against Lloyd, breaks Danziger's alibi, and tricks Danziger into [[spoiler:manufacturing even ''more'' evidence against Lloyd, a set of gloves with ''Danziger's complete handprints on the inside!'']] If Danziger had not tried to set up an alibi he would just have been one of hundreds of random cruise ship passengers, and would have been almost impossible to identify as even a real suspect. [[spoiler:Even worse, his alibi left behind physical evidence that the heart attack was staged, and his medical chart showed an elevated pulse rate around the time of the murder.]] Finally, his frame up of Lloyd was completely unnecessary in the first place, as Lloyd was known to have had a bad relationship with Rosanna and would have been the prime suspect anyway. The false evidence against Lloyd just makes Lloyd look innocent to Columbo, and Danziger's continued efforts to keep the frame going dooms him. |
| 556 | * TooDumbToLive: Whenever the victim isn't an AssholeVictim, they're usually this. Though occasionally the two are combined. Blackmailing without some sort of "if-I-die-the-truth-will-come-out" mechanism is common in the stories -- even when the blackmailer knows the blackmailee has murdered before. |
| 557 | ** Roger White in "Double Exposure" stands out in this regard. Instead of doing the sane thing and informing Columbo about his tip on Bart Keppel, Roger gets greedy and tells Bart straight up that he'll be quiet about the murder if he gets $50,000. [[SarcasmMode Shockingly]], Bart shows up at Roger's secondary job and greases him. |
| 558 | ** Jesse Jerome in "Now You See Him" deserves a special mention for trying to blackmail a former SS officer of all things. That he knows Santini is also a talented lockpicker and illusionist just adds another layer to his idiocy. In fairness, Santini ''had'' been paying him for years without incident. The biggest mistake Jerome made was telling Santini flat out that he was going to reveal Santini's true identity, giving the magician ample time to carry out his plan. |
| 559 | ** Mark [=McAndrews=] combines this with ''seriously'' TemptingFate in "Make Me a Perfect Murder". Upon announcing his upcoming move and dumping Kay (and denying her the promotion she sorely sought), he ''takes out a gun from his chest of drawers and jokingly dares her to shoot him.'' She doesn't kill him right then and there, though. |
| 560 | ** Trisha Fairbanks, secretary of killer Hugh Creighton from "Murder of a Rock Star" is the only subversion, as she actually set up the "if-I-die-the-truth-will-come-out" fail-safe to blackmail Hugh into giving her what she wanted. |
| 561 | * TrademarkFavoriteFood: A bowl of chili with crushed saltines on top, especially if it's from Barney's Beanery. |
| 562 | * TriggerPhrase: In "How to Dial a Murder", the murderer phones the VictimOfTheWeek and tricks him into saying "Rosebud" loudly, which is the trigger phrase to cause the {{Right Hand Attack Dog}}s to maul him to death. |
| 563 | * TropeCodifier: Of the ReverseWhodunnit, TropeMaker being R. Austin Freeman's ''Literature/DrThorndyke''. |
| 564 | * TruthInTelevision: |
| 565 | ** A lot of people would usually argue that Columbo often ends up using trickery or even outright coercion to get his final piece of evidence, like intentionally using falsified evidence or arresting the culprit on false pretenses, on the gamble that in reacting to the shoddy arrest they will do something that allows him to make a real one. Thus, because these tactics seem blatantly legal-adjacent, it would make the evidence fall apart fairly quickly in court. However, terrifyingly enough, [[https://tinyurl.com/229t4kt9 while somewhat controversial, all of that is totally legal during interrogations,]] which any good DA would spun into the argument that's all Columbo is doing: an ''interrogation''. |
| 566 | ** Studies have shown as well that, in real life, the sort of Type A "amateur murderer" pursued by Columbo willingly confesses and surrenders once he or she feels genuinely outwitted, enabling Columbo to bring them in on a confession even when he lacks the evidence to otherwise arrest them. (This sort of murderer is fairly rare in real life, but they seem to be Columbo's specialty.) |
| 567 | * UncomfortableElevatorMoment: One happens in "Sex and the Married Detective", when Dr. Joan Allenby arrives at her clinic the morning after she kills David Kincaid there. She gets in the elevator to go up, and then Columbo jumps on. The entire scene is done in awkward silence, with Columbo looking down and noticing the tag on Joan's new coat and him then noticing the no-smoking sign when he is reaching for his cigar. |
| 568 | * UndisclosedFunds: In "Lovely, but Lethal", a cosmetics executive writes an offer to industrial spy on the back of a magazine and hands it to him. He laughs at it, so she writes a second offer on the magazine. The magazine later becomes an important clue (it arrived that day, so the figures must have been written not long before he died). |
| 569 | * UnwittingPawn: Murderers on the show usually don't have accomplices, but when they do, the accomplice may be killed as part of a larger plan. |
| 570 | ** For example, in "Old-Fashioned Murder", Ruth Lytton hires a just fired ex-con security guard, Milton Shaeffer, to break in and steal artifacts, claiming it's so [[InsuranceFraud she can get the insurance money]]. Her actual plan is to shoot him when he breaks in as part of a DeceasedFallGuyGambit so she can shoot her brother and frame him. |
| 571 | ** In "Negative Reaction", Paul Galesko sets up Alvin Deschler to cover up the shooting of his wife. |
| 572 | ** In "A Case of Immunity", Rachman Habib is Hassan Salah's accomplice in killing the head of security at the Suari Legation headquarters. He goes into hiding, though Hassan kills him after the fact and plants money and papers on him to frame him as the sole culprit. |
| 573 | * VacationEpisode: At least twice: "A Matter of Honor" and "Troubled Waters". |
| 574 | * VehicleBasedCharacterization: Columbo's [[TheAllegedCar ancient silver Peugeot]] is perfectly fit to his ObfuscatingStupidity persona. His car also highlights his position as an ordinary man investigating the crimes of very rich scoundrels. |
| 575 | * TheVietnamVet: In "Publish or Perish", Riley Greenleaf hires a MadBomber Vietnam vet to commit murder for by promising to publish his book ''How To Blow Up Anything in Ten Easy Lessons''. |
| 576 | * VillainOpeningScene: Almost every episode (but not all) used this in tandem with the ReverseWhodunit format. The episode would begin with the bad guy, showing the murder and sometimes showing the events that led to the murder. Only after the deed was done would Lt. Columbo show up. |
| 577 | * VillainousBreakdown: Some of the killers suffer these when the noose finally tightens: |
| 578 | ** In "Suitable for Framing", Dale Kingston starts shrieking at the top of his lungs that Columbo planted his own fingerprints on the stolen paintings, only to be struck completely dumb when Columbo reveals that he's wearing gloves. |
| 579 | ** In "Short Fuse", Roger Stanford goes LaughingMad when he realizes that there is no bomb and he's just exposed his M.O. in front of witnesses. |
| 580 | ** In "Dagger of the Mind", Nicholas Frame starts giggling to himself and babbling a monologue from ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'' when he realizes (or, to be perfectly accurate, is tricked into believing) that Columbo has found a key piece of evidence against him. |
| 581 | ** In "Make Me a Perfect Murder", Kay Freestone hides in a trailer and desperately fiddles with the buttons on its desk, trying to shut off the monitors outside and shouting at Columbo to go away while he's doing his summation. She barely manages to get herself together when Columbo catches up to her. |
| 582 | * VillainousBSOD: |
| 583 | ** Harold Van Wick in "Playback" goes insane when he realizes [[spoiler:that his wife just saw the evidence tape showing the art gallery invitation on the desk during the murder.]] |
| 584 | ** Alex Bradey of "Murder, Smoke & Shadows" briefly sees Columbo dressed as a ringmaster at the end -- while potentially staged by the show for comedic effect, it's rather likely that the sudden stress of being arrested caused him to hallucinate. |
| 585 | * WhamLine: So often, just when it looks like the killer has gotten away with it, one sentence makes them realize they just fell into Columbo's trap. |
| 586 | ** From "A Deadly State of Mind": "Always pack a bulky sweater and some heavy underwear..." For context, this is the [[spoiler:supposedly ''blind'' witness reading from a magazine the killer gave him. As Columbo points out, why would the suspect believe the guy was blind unless he'd seen him before?]] |
| 587 | ** From "A Friend in Deed": "He doesn't live here. ''I'' live here." |
| 588 | ** From "Suitable for Framing": "No, we're not looking for ''your'' prints." |
| 589 | ** From "The Most Dangerous Match": "I'm sorry, Mr Clayton, but along with all the other trivial evidence that we've talked about, the murderer in this case just had to be a deaf man." |
| 590 | ** From "Columbo Goes to College": "But it is not Dominick Doyle's car. It's my wife's." |
| 591 | * WhamShot: In "Suitable for Framing", Dale, [[VillainousBreakdown really losing it now]], starts yelling about how Columbo is trying to set him up and has planted his prints on the paintings just now when everyone's attention was distracted. Columbo, by now clearly fed up with this guy, just silently removes his hands from his pockets where he's had them all throughout the scene... only to reveal he's been wearing gloves the whole time. |
| 592 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Early in "Publish or Perish", Riley Greenleaf has an attorney that not only bails him out on the drunk charge, but aids him on the sudden murder investigation. Once the insurance company provides Riley with an alibi for the time of the murder, the attorney has a brief discussion with Columbo, and is never seen again despite the ongoing investigation. |
| 593 | * WhatTheHellHero: Columbo gets one in "Étude in Black" where he leaves his new Basset Hound dog in his car with the windows up (it's night in this scene). A girl with her own dog chews him out for his ignorance, but Columbo is thankful for the advice on his first dog. |
| 594 | * WhiteDwarfStarlet: The killer of "Forgotten Lady" is an aged Hollywood actress who eventually kills her wealthy husband because he refuses to bankroll a theatrical play that would mean her comeback. It's eventually revealed at the end that the reason he wouldn't bankroll her is because she's terminally ill and suffering from symptoms similar to dementia. By the end of the episode, Columbo points out it's unlikely she even remembers committing the murder. |
| 595 | * WhoMurderedTheAsshole: A trademark. Subverted with a notable few, though. |
| 596 | * WhoWouldWantToWatchUs: In "Murder, Smoke and Shadows", Columbo brings up multiple times how "real" detective work isn't as entertaining as detective movies. |
| 597 | * WineIsClassy: Adrian Carsini has a zeal for producing and buying expensive wines in ''"Any Old Port in a Storm"''. He murders his half-brother who wants to sell off the Carsini Vinyard. |
| 598 | * WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: It's hard to feel total hatred for Rudy Strasse, the villain of "No Time to Die". When he was a child [[spoiler:his father, a famous surgeon, was an abusive monster at home. One night he took the abuse too far and sliced Rudy's mother's neck open, killing her while Rudy watched. Realizing what he's done, the man kills himself in grief, again while Rudy watches.]] Yes, Rudy may be insane, yes he may have kidnapped a woman, yes he may even be planning to rape and kill her and himself... but he's got some serious and perfectly valid reasons to be as messed up as he is. |
| 599 | * WorthyOpponent: In many ways, this is Columbo's unique stock-in-trade |
| 600 | ** Ken Franklin in "Murder By the Book" seems to have this attitude upon being caught. |
| 601 | --->'''Franklin:''' You gotta admit I had you going for a while, now, didn't I? |
| 602 | ** "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case" is set at a UsefulNotes/{{Mensa}}-style club, with the killer, Oliver Brandt, being an InsufferableGenius who considers the victim, Bertie Hastings, and the other members of the club, to be inferior to his own intellect. When dealing with Columbo, he occasionally gets glimpses through Columbo's façade, and by the time of his arrest, is relieved to have been caught by someone now considered a peer, intellectually -- since Columbo solved the intellectual puzzle Brandt suggested to him with a very logical solution. |
| 603 | ** Abigail Mitchell invokes this when he catches her. She states that if Columbo had been on the case when her niece had been murdered, she wouldn't have needed to kill her nephew-in-law, who killed her niece. |
| 604 | * YouWouldntShootMe: In "Fade into Murder", Claire Daley tries to call Ward Fowler's bluff. It is, of course, not a bluff. |
| 605 | [[/folder]] |
| 606 | ---- |
| 607 | ->''Oh, and, ah, by the way... How did you know that the tropes were poisoned when {{I never said it was poison}} that killed the victim?''\ |
| 608 | ''[xylophone sting]'' |
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