Line #23 Series/Tatort


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bf8d315d2b2c3313831306d77c6b7278.jpg]]
2
3	->''"Ta-daaa... Ta-daaa.... Ta-daaa...!"''
4	-->-- [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0pV2faxne4 Intro sequence]]
5
6	''Tatort'' ("Crime Scene") is a [[GermanMedia German]] PoliceProcedural series. Even after more than [[LongRunner 1000 episodes, having started in 1970]] (making it the longest German series ever and the oldest still going crime show in the world), it's still one of the most popular German TV series and regularly wins the battle for the highest UsefulNotes/{{Ratings}}.
7
8	An especially noteworthy feature of the series is the fact that there isn't just one single core cast of protagonists. Instead, it features many different teams of police investigators who take turns from episode to episode. Imagine ''Series/{{CSI}}'', ''Series/CSIMiami'' and ''Series/{{CSINY}}'', but with a lot more teams, different locations and less HollywoodScience.
9
10	Each team is based in a different city, representing many different [[CityOfAdventure settings]] all across Germany, UsefulNotes/{{Austria}} (since 1971), and [[{{UsefulNotes/Switzerland}} German-speaking Switzerland]] (since 1990). Of the current teams, these five have been active the longest time:
11	* Ludwigshafen (Lena Odenthal and Mario Kopper) since 1989
12	* UsefulNotes/{{Munich}} (Ivo Batic and Franz Leitmayr) since 1991
13	* Cologne (Max Ballauf and Freddy Schenk) since 1997
14	* Bremen (Inga Lürsen and Nils Stedefreund) since 1997
15	* UsefulNotes/{{Vienna}} (Moritz Eisner and Bibi Fellner) since 1999
16
17	The series is usually broadcast on Sundays during UsefulNotes/PrimeTime on the German channel ''[[UsefulNotes/GermanTVStations Das Erste]]'', the Austrian channel ''ORF 2'', and ''SRF 1'' in German-speaking Switzerland. You can expect to see reruns of older episodes on some of the regional tv stations about every other day. The TitleThemeTune was composed by Music/KlausDoldinger.
18
19	The series is described as "the last great campfire of television"[[note]] meaning a series where most viewers still gather regularly and where the newest episode will then be a big topic for conversations at work etc. the next day[[/note]] and has a cult following in German-speaking countries. In many cities, groups of people will gather in a bar every Sunday at 8:15 p.m. to watch the screening of the latest episode together. One particularly bizarre aspect of Tatort fandom is that despite the self contained nature of the individual episodes (you can really watch any given Tatort on its own), there are almost no casual viewers. People usually watch (and love) every single one of them or don't watch any at all. Some people have switched from the former to the latter within mere weeks. To fans missing "even one episode" is SeriousBusiness.
20
21	A great many modern high profile German actors have appeared in the series, usually as one of their early acting credits or as TheCameo.
22	----
23	!! ''Tatort'' provides examples of:
24	* ActorAllusion:
25	** In one episode of the Ludwigshafen ''Tatort'', Kommissarin Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) was shadowing a suspect sitting in a car with a female colleague. In order to allay suspicion, [[FakeOutMakeOut the two women kissed]], an allusion to Ulrike Folkerts' real-life sexual orientation and gay activism (Lena Odenthal is written as a heterosexual).
26	** In another Lena Odenthal episode, ''Tod im All'' ("Death in Space", 1996) the murder victim was an author writing on [=UFOs=] and space aliens; he was played by [[CastingGag Dietmar Schönherr]], whose best-remembered role was that of Commander [=McLane=] from the 1960s science-fiction series ''Series/{{Raumpatrouille}}''.
27	** Lena Odenthal's car has the registration number "[=LU-FO=] 1405" - the letters stand for '''Lu'''dwigshafen '''F'''olkerts and '''O'''denthal, and Ulrike Folkerts' birthday is 14th May.
28	** Prof. Dr. Karl-Friedrich Boerne is capable of speaking accent-free, fluent Russian, but the series never gives any explanation why he can. Jan Josef Liefers, the actor playing him however is a former GDR citizen from Dresden, thus learning the language in school instead of English first.
29	* AffectionateParody: Many cases of the Weimar duo, especially the Western parody "Der höllische Heinz", which borders on JustForFun/TropeOverdosed with ShoutOut flying around your ears left and right.
30	* AIIsACrapshoot: ''HAL''. (Duh. Contains loads of ShoutOut to ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''.) Set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture (a novum for Tatort), "Bluesky", a self-learning surveillance program, revolts against his creator by [[spoiler: hanging a murder on him and even is responsible that he is shot by the police.]]
31	** ''KI'' (the German abbreviation for AI): Less so, but the AI Maria, set free by a hacker, doesn't know much of morals and thus, without malice, sets off a maelstrom of suicide, murder and revenge, ruining six lives.
32	** ''Mord Ex Machina'': Less AI, more technically possible - a self-driving car gets hacked and used as murder weapon.
33	** ''Maleficius'': Honorable Mention. A medicine professor, fan of transhumanism, is implanting brainchips to enable quadripleges to walk again (with an exoskeleton). He even claims that merging brain and AI is the only way for mankind to survive the AI age. AndThatsTerrible, we are in future-critical Germany after all. [[spoiler: His guinea pig turns into The Zombienator and kills two people. [[KarmaHoudini Mr. Frankenstein evidently goes scot-free in the end.]]]]
34	* AlmostDeadGuy: ''Mord Ex Machina''. The victim just ran over a cliff in his hacked self-driving car, and crashes on the pavement ten meters below. (Even if the airbags were hacked too, any German will instinctively assume [[NooneCouldSurviveThat "Hey, it's a German car, he might have survived that!"]]) [[spoiler: The German is right, he survived at least as long to have a talk with his murderer, which gets filmed by another hacker, which does the murderer in at the climax of the film.]]
35	* AlternateCompanyEquivalent: ''Polizeiruf 110'' was launched by the television of the [=GDR=] to provide a socialist alternative to the West German blockbuster ''Tatort''. The format is similar, with different investigators in different places. ''Polizeiruf'' continues to be produced after German reunification, now produced by a number of the regional stations of the [=ARD=] both East and West of the former Iron Curtain. The two series share a time slot in UsefulNotes/TheBerlinRepublic, and produced a crossover episode in October 1990, "Unter Brüdern", to celebrate the reunification.
36	* AlwaysMurder: Nearly every case involves a murder, often also more than one. Suicide is less common. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], because the cops are practically always from the homicide division[[note]] A notable exception in the early days of the series was ''Zollfahnder'' Kressin, an investigator for the federal customs service. In its GDR days Polizeiruf 110 also had crimes other than murder, especially in the early days as admitting murder happened in the GDR was something of a political no-go at first[[/note]].
37	** Subverted in the case "Mordgedanken" ("Murder Thoughts"). If the title wasn't spoilering enough - although everyone and his uncle had motivs enough for a murder, what happened actually was merely the desecration of a corpse by people who wanted to cover its murder...that they supposed but never happened in the first place.
38	* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: ''Hauptkommissar'' Frank Thiel's father Herbert (Claus Dieter Clausnitzer), an [[NewAgeRetroHippie old "68er" who grows his own weed]] and occasionally gets involved in slightly illegal activities, although most of the time he works as a taxi driver - which often comes in handy because Thiel does not have a driver's license, being from Hamburg and a transplant to famously bike-friendly Münster.
39	* AmicablyDivorced: One of the early ''Tatort'' investigators, Essen ''Kommissar'' Heinz Haferkamp (Hansjörg Felmy), would often discuss cases he was working on with his ex-wife Ingrid (Karin Eickelbaum), and it was implied that the two occasionally still slept with each other. The Leipzig team of ''Hauptkommissare'' Eva Saalfeld (Simone Thomalla) and Andreas Keppler (Martin Wuttke) used to be married to each other, but got divorced a few years before their first episode.
40	* AppliedPhlebotinum: [[Film/AFistfulOfDollars "A Fistful of Pantazium"]]...wait, no, this western parody was called "Der höllische Heinz". Selfsame Pantazium [[note]]WordOfGod confirms it is neither a VideoGame/{{Minecraft}} ShoutOut nor a slightly veiled [[MeaningfulName Fantasyum]] but is named in-universe from the professor who found it - Odissefs (=Ulyxes) Pantazis - who stems from a real person.[[/note]] is supposed to be a more-worth-than-gold-in-internet-times rare earth. [[ArtisticLicenseChemistry Sorry, folks, there are no holes in the periodic system.]]
41	* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: Indirectly. In "Der höllische Heinz", a poor mutt drops down an unprotected borehole...and keeps on living there. Played for BlackHumor in the whole episode.
42	* BedmateReveal: In "Der höllische Heinz", selfsame Heinz wakes up beneath the [[Film/TheGodfather head of his beloved longhorn Eddie.]] To add insult to injury, Kommissar Lessing is completely unfazed, and in some in-universe version of ViewerGenderConfusion calls Eddie a cow. [[note]] For JustForFun/TropeOverdosed completeness, add a stealth ShoutOut to Philip K. Dick - "Do you know that Longhorns dream? [[Literature/DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep Or of what?]]" [[/note]]
43	* BelligerentSexualTension: Subverted with forensic medical scientist (''not'' pathologist, which is taught with anatomy) Professor Dr. Karl-Friedrich Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers) and his assistant Silke "Alberich" Haller ([=ChrisTine=] Urspruch), who are actually not romantically interested in one another. Although they did once meet anonymously on an internet dating forum and became interested. Then they fixed a date in a restaurant, discovered who they were dealing with, and that was the end of that.
44	* BigFancyHouse: The murders often take place in the milieu of the middle to upper class, resulting in the witnesses/culprits/victims inhabiting accordingly spacious places.
45	* TheCameo: Numerous celebrities already have had small parts in ''Tatort''.
46	** In the Kommissar Stoever episode ''Habgier'' (Greed) 1999, [[UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball football]] legend Berti Vogts holds a rabbit and saves a family from being killed in a gas explosion.
47	** Creator/RogerMoore was seen starting a six-days cycle race in the Bremen episode ''Schatten'' (2002).
48	** More football people, including DFB president Theo Zwanziger, men's and women's national team coaches Jogi Löw and Silvia Neid, women's world cup organizer Steffi Jones and international player Célia Okoyino da Mbabi appeared in ''Im Abseits'' ("Offside"), a soccer-themed Lena Odenthal episode produced to coincide with the Women's World Cup in 2011.
49	** Music/KlausDoldinger (the series' main theme's composer) appeared in the Köln-set spinoff ''Ballauf und Schenk'' as a StreetMusician, [[DiegeticSoundtrackUsage playing said theme]] with his sax.
50	* CanonImmigrant: Stuttgart-based investigator Ernst Bienzle (Dietz-Werner Steck) was created as the protagonist of a series of crime novels by Felix Huby before being put on the small screen in ''Tatort''.
51	* CantHoldHisLiquor: Lupo in "Der höllische Heinz". He tries to play undercover cowboy in an urge to protect undercover Kira. [[TheDitz Not his first idiotic idea]] - he drinks one glass of whisky and keels over on the spot.
52	* CaughtWithYourPantsDown: In "Treibjagd", Kommissar Falke crashes into the room of his son Torben, who frantically clicks away [[{{Hentai}} teh Internets]]. Leading to this memorable dialog (translated freely):
53	--> '''Falke''': [[AskAStupidQuestion Whatchadoing?]]\
54	'''Torben''': [[BlatantLies Writing my application papers.]]\
55	'''Falke''': One-handed?\
56	'''Torben''': Left-handed.[[note]] Untranslatable; "mit links" in German also means "most easily".[[/note]]
57	* CentralTheme: Many episodes embed sociopolitical issues into the plot, e.g. the waste export to Africa or wage dumping at discount stores. The two investigators occasionally have opposing opinions regarding said issue, and discuss them.
58	* ChekhovsSkill: As the regular cast of the Münster ''Tatort'' contains not one, but two ace forensic medical scientists -- Professor Dr. Karl-Friedrich Boerne and his assistant Silke Haller -- and one of them is one of the two main protagonists, it is not surprising that episodes set in Münster involve murders by poisoning, questions of paternity, missing bodies or old cases where only the bones of a victim are left more frequently than others. Boerne's skills in riding and fencing have also proved useful in at least one episode each. There are also surprisingly many instances where Boerne is either helped or hampered by his upper class connections and his past in a ''[[UsefulNotes/TheStudentenverbindung Studentenverbindung]]'' (the German version of fraternities, only much more elitist and right leaning - at least in public perception).
59	** ChekhovsClassroom: It's a university lecture hall, but right in the second Münster episode, Thiel pulls Boerne out of his lecture to discuss the current case, much to the professor's annoyance (Thiel had been so far not very forthcoming in the case). Later, his team finds a gun that may or may not have been used for one of the murders in the episode; first thing Thiel does is checking if there was blood sucked ''into the barrel'' because that is what Boerne had lectured would happen when you put the gun right to the head.
60	* ClearMyName: The plot of some episodes.
61	* ClusterFBomb: Schimmi's most frequently used word seems to be ''Scheisse'' ("shit"). It is also the ''last'' word he says in a ''Tatort''.
62	* CharacterizationMarchesOn: In the first Münster Tatort, ''Der Dunkle Fleck'', Professor Boerne implies to be rather averse to hunting for sport. A more recent one(No. 21), ''Fangschuss'', however, has him studying for a hunting license because his favourite golf course is being swamped by the plebs.
63	* CoolCar: Several investigators at different locations, but most notably Freddy Schenk, who is a lover of US muscle cars and is not above using impounded vehicles as his new service car, and Professor Boerne, who happens to be a car maniac in a city full of cyclists.
64	** Boerne seems to collect those, most of them in dark blue, black or silver. A (not complete) list:
65	*** Jaguar S-type (Der Dunkle Fleck[[note]]The Dark Spot aka The Blemish[[/note]] and Fakten, Fakten… [[note]]"Facts, Facts…" The title is a reference to the Focus Magazine[[/note]])
66	*** Audi A4 Cabriolet (Dreimal Schwarzer Kater[[note]]Tree times a black tomcat[[/note]] and Sag nichts[[note]]Do not say anything[[/note]])
67	*** Mercedes SLS
68	*** Mercedes SLK (Höllenfahrt[[note]]Hell Ride[[/note]])
69	*** Porsche 911 Cabriolet (Der doppelte Lott[[note]]The Two Lotts[[/note]], and others)
70	*** Wiesmann MF-3[[note]]of which only 30 exist[[/note]]
71	*** Jaguar XK 5.0 V8 Cabriolet
72	*** Maserati Ghibli (Herrenabend[[note]]Gentlemen's Night[[/note]])
73	* TheCoroner: Prof. Dr. Karl-Friedrich Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers) from Münster is one half of the investigator duo, even though Kommissar Thiel doesn't like this very much; Dr. Joseph Roth (played by Joe Bausch, who is a physician in a German prison in real life) can often be seen in the Cologne ''Tatort''.
74	* CrossOver:
75	** As part of the celebration of Germany's re-unification in 1990, ''Tatort'' crossed over with its East German counterpart series, ''Polizeiruf 110'', for the episode "Unter Brüdern" ("Among Brothers"). In this episode, a dead man is fished out of the river in Duisburg and is found to have a tattoo marking him as a former Stasi officer, leading to a joint investigation between the Duisburg team, led by ''Kriminalhauptkommissare'' Horst Schimanski (Götz George) and Christian Thanner (Eberhard Feik), and their East Berlin opposite numbers, led by ''Kriminalhauptkommissar'' Peter Fuchs (Peter Borgelt) and ''Kriminaloberkommissar'' Thomas Grawe (Andreas Schmidt-Schaller).
76	** To celebrate ''Tatort's'' 30th anniversary, the special episode ''Quartett in Leipzig'' was produced where a case took the Cologne team of ''Kriminalhauptkommissare'' Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and Alfred "Freddy" Schenk (Dietmar Bär) to Leipzig, where they got to solve it in conjunction with the local team of ''Hauptkommissare'' Bruno Ehrlicher (Peter Sodann) and Kain (Bernd Michael Lade), who had become involved in the same case from another incident. Two years later in the episode ''Rückspiel'' ("Return Game"), Kain and Ehrlicher traveled to Cologne for another joint investigation.
77	** In the Münster episode ''Der doppelte Lott'' Professor Boerne does some investigative work in Cologne and interacts with Ballauf and Schenk, as well as with his Cologne counterpart Josef Roth. It emerges they know each other from university.
78	** A two-part story, ''Kinderland'' and ''Ihr Kinderlein kommet'' (2012), was another Cologne[=/=]Leipzig crossover, teaming up Ballauf and Schenk with the new Leipzig team of ''Hauptkommissare'' Eva Saalfeld (Simone Thomalla) and Andreas Keppler (Martin Wuttke).
79	** Another two-parter, ''In der Familie 1 + 2'', is a Crossover between the Dortmund and the Munich teams, made on the occasion of the 50 years anniversary of ''Tatort''.
80	** Not quite a crossover, but a strong allusion: The pathologist of the Stuttgart team, Dr. Vogt, goes to Münster for a few days to participate in a conference. When he returns, he complains about his "Münster colleague" who wouldn't stop going on and on about their science in self-praise -- his description of said colleague strongly implies he's talking about Boerne.
81	* DeadpanSnarker: Most protagonists in the Münster ''Tatort'' are this to some extent, but nobody does it with more [[GentlemanSnarker flair]] than Professor Boerne.
82	* TheDeterminator: Kommissar Murot, while mortally wounded, still tries to get the information from a cellular of a suspect. Which is kinda pointless, since he could have easily waited for the next iteration of the GroundhogDayLoop...
83	* DirtyKid: It's told that Heinz from "Der höllische Heinz" took (in either sense of the word - it's not stated) photos of his nudist aunt and sold them at school.
84	* DisproportionateRetribution: ''Angriff auf Wache 8''. A botched police raid starts it all. A special commando, armed to the teeth, storms an illegal poker round (obviously of organized crime, they also have a few handguns laying on the table, but it's hardly a deadly offense). A few seconds of fascinated staring, then the stupid pet dog of the crooks barks angrily. The police immediately shit their pants and pump everybody (''except'' the dog, who ends up unscathed) with about 1000 rounds of lead. (Afterwards the police speaker[[note]] on the radio, voiced by the local celeb Jimmy Hartwig, once a famous soccer player[[/note]] says [[BlatantLies they had been lured into a trap.)]]
85	* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: Thiel always proved to be compassionate to rape victims and also tried to comfort a young woman who had been sexually extorted [[ParentalIncest by her father]]. Cut to ''Das ewig Böse'' where a young man fathered his stepmother's child back when he was ''thirteen''. Thiel doesn't seem to care that she can't be punished for that crime anymore since it's statute-barred by now, he never once uses the word "abuse" for what happened; hell, he ''laughs'' initially when he finds out.
86	* DrivesLikeCrazy[=/=]BadassDriver: Well, it kind of depends on the point of view which trope applies more, but ''Professor Boerne'' of all people is actually both; he is a chronic speeder in the bicycle city Münster who takes a warning that a traffic light is about to go red as ''invitation'' to hit the gas, and would drive a Porsche 911 cabriolet across a ''golf course'' ([[spoiler:Justified though, to stop a murder from happening]]). This trait is so well-known with the Münster team most members tend to warn him of his "points in Flensburg" [[note]]Flensburg is home to the Federal Traffic Office, which holds the nationwide database of traffic violators and driving licenses; violations of traffic laws are given points, and getting enough in a certain amount of time revokes your license[[/note]] from time to time. Amazingly, the only thing he's ever run over is a [[spoiler:wild boar (at over 150km/h though)]], and he managed to perform an accident-free CarChase through a ''no-car-zone'' right in the first Münster episode. He does [[spoiler: temporarily]] die in a car accident once but then [[spoiler: that was due to being given an insulin overdose by the perpetrator of the week]].
87	* EiffelTowerEffect: No matter where a Münster episode is set, even if it is in the suburbs or a village in the environs, there will always be a sequence involving the ''Prinzipalmarkt'' and the church St. Lamberti, and often Thiel or Boerne will also pass the cathedral. Episodes set in Cologne will usually show Cologne cathedral; here it helps that Ballauf and Schenk are regular customers at a fast-food trailer directly across the river from the cathedral.
88	** This may in part be due to the fact that many of the Tatort episodes are only partially shot in the city they are set in (Munich being the one big exception) and thus local landmarks have to be shown to throw less attentive watchers of the scent of the CaliforniaDoubling.
89	* FishOutOfWater: ''Hauptkommissar'' Frank Thiel (Axel Prahl) -- who, while having been born in Münster, grew up in UsefulNotes/{{Hamburg}} -- in the much smaller and deeply Catholic Münster.[[note]] Hamburg, being a port city, is pretty liberal and cosmopolitan and has historically been majority Lutheran altho migration and secularization has weakened that tendency. In general Lutheran areas of Germany tend to be less conservative than Catholic ones[[/note]] Other Tatorts also have such characters, for instance in the new Nuremberg-based one the two leading investigators are Paula Ringelhahn (Dagmar Manzel) from Guben in East Germany and North German Felix Voss (Fabian Hinrichs).
90	* {{Foreshadowing}}: In ''Mord Ex Machina'', the later victim threatens "Ich werde den Karren gegen die Wand fahren!" (literally: drive the car against the wall, metaphorically in this context: let your business crash). The self-driving car he drives away with gets hacked and he ends, OK, not against a wall, but ten meters below.
91	* ForWantOfANail: ''"Der höllische Heinz"''. It's complicated. [[spoiler: The bad guy has a show duel in a Western theme town. One of his victims has [[NotSoFakePropWeapon swapped the opponents gun.]] But luckily that guy aimed like a stormtrooper, giving him only a flesh wound. Unluckily, the further plot avalanche gets now two persons killed, including the baddie, and two police investigators only escape with a close shave.]]
92	* GreyAndGrayMorality: The episode ''"Weil sie böse sind"''. ("Because They're Evil")
93	* GroinAttack: Done by Kira to her husband and co-worker Lessing in "Der höllische Heinz" to establish her undercover persona (a downplayed preemptive version of IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten). Has the effect that Lessing walks cowboy-like through the rest of the episode (and later snarks "One child is enough anyway").
94	* GermanHumour: Given that the teams are from nearly every region of the German cultural range, expect GermanHumour in any regional variant.
95	* TheGhost: Boerne is the ''Vice-Chair'' of his institute, as established in the first Münster episode, but beyond the occasional mention of that, we never see his actual boss.
96	* GroundhogDayLoop: ''"Murot und das Murmeltier"'' (already the title references it, the German title of ''Film/GroundhogDay'' is "Und täglich grüßt das Murmeltier")
97	* HatesTheirParent: Adam from Tatort Saarbrücken hates his abusive father to the point of having him saved under the name "Drecksack" ("Scumback") in his phone contacts.
98	* TheHeroDies:
99	** ''"Wo ist nur mein Schatz geblieben?"'' [[spoiler: Stedefreund does a HeroicSacrifice for his colleague.]]
100	** ''"Der feine Geist"'': [[spoiler: Lessing is shot and killed hunting a suspect, and although he appears to Kira and Lupo as a ghost through the rest of the episode, he is definitely dead.]]
101	** ''"Liebe mich!"'':[[spoiler: Martina Bönisch is shot during the final confrontation and [[DyingInYourArmsTonight dies in Faber's arms.]]]]
102	** ''"Das Mädchen, das allein nach Haus' geht"'':[[spoiler: After helping Julia Bolschakow to escape through Berlin airport and boarding the plane to leave the country,Nina Rubin is fatally shot by one of the [[TheMafiya Russian mafia members]] who pursued them. She [[DyingInYourArmsTonight dies in Karow's arms]].]]
103	* HeroicSacrifice: ''"Angriff auf Wache 8"''. [[spoiler: Brenner, claiming he won't make it anyway, covers the retreat of the heroes and then blows the baddies and the whole scenery to kingdom come.]]
104	* HiddenInPlainSight / ItWasWithYouAllAlong: ''Mord Ex Machina''. A hacker highly suspicious of the murder gets arrested. Being the JerkAss with a dash of ForTheEvulz type, he had already filmed the real killer, uploaded the material to an USB stick, and smuggled it under the seat of the Kommissar's bike. Now he boasts: "You sat with your ass on the clue all the time!"
105	* HowUnscientific: The Ludwigshafen ''Tatort'' episodes usually focus on realism, sociopolitical issues and psychology, which makes the 1997 episode ''"Tod im All"'' (''"Death in Space"'') stand out all the more. Here Odenthal and Kopper had to investigate the murder of a ufologist, and were fed information from a mysterious source, apparently the aliens with which the ufologist had communicated. The episode ended with a special-effects scene where a [[GainaxEnding watertower transformed into a spaceship and took off]]!
106	* IconicOutfit: Schimmi's beige-grey M-1965 field jacket.
107	* IdentificationByDentalRecords: In the Münster episode ''"Herrenabend"''[[note]]Gentlemen's Night[[/note]] [[spoiler: a man faked his death in a house fire in South Africa by having his dentist tamper with his dental records. Since Professor Boerne was the one thus fooled into signing a false death certificate, and thus threatened with suspension/removal from his post as Coroner for Münster by Klemm, he took this personally and went to the extra trouble and expense of reconstructing the face from the skull found in the burned-down house to identify the victim's real identity, much to the dismay of Thiel, who had thoroughly enjoyed seeing Boerne so flustered.]]
108	* IDidntMeanToKillHim - happens quite often
109	* AnImmigrantsTale: A number of ''Tatort'' investigators have ''Migrationshintergrund'' ("migration background"), for instance Munich-based ''Kriminalhauptkommissar'' Ivo Batic (Miroslav Nemec) was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and for him xenophobia can become a BerserkButton. Mario Kopper (Andreas Hoppe) in Ludwigshafen is the son of a German father and an Italian mother. Nadeshda Krusenstern (Friederike Kempter) is an ethnic German born in Russia who came to Münster with her parents (who find it much harder to assimilate to West German society than her). Hamburg-based Cenk Batu (Mehmet Kurtuluş) is the first leading ''Tatort'' investigator with Turkish roots. A real life example comes in the form of Vladimir Burlakov, who plays lead investigator Leo Hölzer in Tatort Saarbücken, who was born in Russia and came to Germany aged 9.
110	* ImprobableInfantSurvival: Guardian Angels were flying deep in ''Angriff auf Wache 08''. The asshole gang running amuck has already offed an icecream seller (for no reason - except being assholes). A father and his daughter want to buy an ice when they see the dead seller on floor of the car. The assholes come back just then, such rotten timing. They shoot the father immediately, but why not the daughter? Not because of WouldntHurtAChild, because the killer slowly follows the girl who ran into the ice wagon. Too bad for him she finds a gun besides the dead vendor, is a much smaller target to hit and has faster reactions...And still his buddy assholes do not immediately riddle the ice wagon with their automatic weapons after that, but let her escape to a police museum.
111	* InconsistentEpisodeLengths: In the first twenty years, the length of episodes varied, up to two hours; more recently things settled on about one and a half hours.
112	* TheInfiltration: The mission of undercover investigator Cenk Batu (Mehmet Kurtuluş) from Hamburg; this was the first ''Tatort'' franchise not to use a Whodunit format.
113	* InsufferableGenius: Professor Dr. Karl-Friedrich Boerne, hands down.
114	* IronicEcho: ''Mord Ex Machina''. "Nothing ever disappears on the Internet!" [[spoiler: Said by the murderer to mock the non-tech-savvy Kommissar. At the end, a video of the murder resurfaces.]]
115	* IrregularSeries: 1971 saw 11 episodes, 2008 saw 31, and not evenly distributed to boot.
116	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Also Boerne. Sure, the guy tramples on most people's sensitivities with his arrogant, elitist behaviour whenever he speaks, but at the same time, he actually ''apologises'' for the presence of a TV filming team to a young woman who has come to his morgue for identification in the very first Muenster episode. In the same episode, he does not hesitate to comfort the same young woman after she was told that [[ParentalIncest her lover is in fact her father]], much to the surprise of Thiel. Boerne seems to be well aware of this contradictory streak of his, and comments that "come morning, [he'll] be back to [his] usual nasty self".
117	* JurisdictionFriction: The Stuttgart episode ''Stau'' has a hit-and-run driver caught in a traffic jam. The Kripo knows this to a degree (it's the only way out of Stuttgart) but absolutely nothing about his identity, and desperately tries to check out on all 200+ drivers and cars before everyone gets away (they can narrow it down to 20 or so, but it's still a needle in the haystack, as they can only rely on circumstantial evidence - there was no reliable eyewitness of the crime), even suggesting the traffic workers to slow down a bit on the water pipe break that completely blocks the road. This gets them at loggerheads with the local traffic cops (not to mention the drivers, who are one SUV short of starting an upheaval).
118	* LadyLooksLikeADude: Or sounds like one. When Kommissar Thiel first spoke on the telephone to ''Oberstaatsanwältin'' Wilhelmine Klemm (Mechtild Großmann), her gravelly voice made him think he was dealing with a man. In some episodes the heavily-smoking chief district attorney approaches BrawnHilda status.
119	* {{Leitmotif}}: The 1920s song ''Auf der Reeperbahn nachts um halb eins'' functions as one for ''Hauptkommissar'' Thiel as he uses it as his ringtone and, as a Hamburg tune, it sticks out like a sore thumb in Münster.
120	* LGBTFanbase: Tatort Saarbrücken, due to the the many HoYay Moments between Schürck and Hölzer.
121	* LineOfSightName: Not exactly name, but to the same effect. In "Der höllische Heinz", undercover Kira is asked with riding jobs she did. She reads one off a poster and tops it with the assertion that she did a Finnish Horses-on-Ice show named [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign "Hyvää Paivää"]] [[note]]Meaning "Good Morning"[[/note]].
122	* MadLibThrillerTitle: The Weimar (Dorn and Lessing) series, which is called "The [adjective] [surname]" (with slight variations allowed).
123	* MeaningfulName: The Berlin duo of Till Ritter ("knight", played by Dominic Raacke) and Felix Stark ("strong", played by Boris Aljinovic) as well as the Saxon one of Ehrlicher ("honest one") and Kain (the German spelling of Adam and Eve's son Cain). A bit more veiled, Felix Murot (played by Ulrich Tukur), the family name being an anagram of "tumor". (He had a very plot-relevant brain tumor.)
124	* MetaFiction: 2015 episode "Wer bin ich?", Creator/UlrichTukur plays Ulrich Tukur playing his role just to run into his role going RageAgainstTheAuthor...or something like that...If you feel a brick falling on your head, that was the FourthWall collapsing over you.
125	* MindScrew: 2018 episode "Meta" technically is ''no'' MetaFiction. OK, in this film we have a [[ShowWithinAShow film inside a film]], also called "Meta". Which tells the story of ''this'' film. But not exactly, and the Kommissar is slowly getting bonkers about it. (Which happens to the Kommissar at the end in the film in the film, whoops, very minor spoiler.) If your head didn't asplode yet, it also mixes meta-level with [[Film/TaxiDriver Taxi Driver]]. [[DrosteImage Oh, and of course "Meta" in "Meta" has to show another version of "Meta".]] And the usual opening credits happen in a cinema. And the credits of "Meta" in "Meta" lists some of the same actors as "Meta" (wait, but who plays the Kommissar in "Meta" in "Meta" in "Meta"?). Oh, they just saw Douglas Hofstadter running screaming out of the cinema. (You are strongly advised to take the stance of the colleague of the Kommissar who is the Scully to his Muldering - none of the events in the film(s) ''need'' a meta- or supernatural explanation.)
126	* TheMovie: Kommissar Schimanski appeared in two cinema films, ''Zahn um Zahn'' ("A Tooth for a Tooth", 1985) and ''Zabou'' (1987).
127	* NakedPeopleAreFunny: In one episode, Schimanski is knocked out (again); when he awkens, he finds himself naked lying in the middle of the playing field of Duisburg's football stadium.
128	* NamedAfterSomebodyFamous[=/=]FamousNamedForeigner: Thiel's assistant Nadeshda Krusenstern (Friederike Kempter) is an ethnic German who immigrated from Russia with her parents. Her surname is that of the Baltic-German admiral who commanded the first Russian circumnavigation of the Earth, Nadezhda ("Hope") was the name of one of his two ships.
129	* NoNameGiven: ''Hauptkommissar'' Kain's first name was never mentioned. Neither do we ever learn Lessing's first name.
130	* NotUsingTheZWord: "Böser Boden". A fracking poisoning (WordOfGod admitted it sounds preposterous) turns the village people definitely ''not'' into zombies. But WordOfGod also admitted the film purposely leans on the rules and conventions of the Z genre.
131	* NWordPrivileges: Professor Boerne's assistant Silke Haller is a little person ([=ChrisTine=] Urspruch, who plays her, is 132 cm tall) and Boerne not only gave her the nickname [[Music/RichardWagner Alberich]], but continually makes short jokes about her. "Alberich" returns the favour and sees his jokes as a sign that he respects her for her competence and does not pity her. But woe to anybody who actually laughs at Boerne's jokes - then Boerne will make him or her feel deeply embarrassed.
132	* OnlyTheLeadsGetAHappyEnding: "Der höllische Heinz". Here is a complete list to prove it: [[spoiler: Baddies, TotalPartyKill: [[AssholeVictim Wolfgang]], starting corpse. [[DumbassTeenageSon Nick]] and [[SerialKiller Heinz]] [[note]]This is Germany, two murders ''are'' a series[[/note]], [[GasLeakCoverup kaboom.]] [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Ellen]], DestinationDefenestration (possibly murdered before). [[NotSoFakePropWeapon Judith]], IncurableCoughOfDeath. Minor characters: Since Wolfgang has [[TragicBackstory no family]] [[{{Bookends}} (another gas leak)]], the gold...no, rare earth...no, Pantazium mine will fall to the state and all the Western fans surely be evicted.]] [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And Lupos bike got turned into a puzzle and Lessing's mom won't make her visit due to a fake measle epidemy.]]
133	* OurVampiresAreDifferent: "Blut". Of course, there is no ''actual'' vampire, only a poor girl with a sun allergy, but she bites the investigator and a nasty infection due to contaminated blood conserves plus superstition and too much imagination turns him into a nervous hallucinating wreck who believes he turns into a vampire too. Exhibit A for the thesis that PsychologicalHorror is the most scary one.
134	* OverlyLongName: Gotthilf Bigamiluschvatokovtschvili, called "Der wüste Gobi" (which is also the title of that episode and a lousy {{Pun}}).
135	* PlatonicLifePartners: On the Ludwigshafen ''Tatort'', Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) and her colleague Mario Kopper (Andreas Hoppe) share an apartment.
136	* PrecisionFStrike: Schimanski was the first Kommissar in the history of the show to use swear words--to the point when "Scheiße!" became sort of his CatchPhrase. The backlash caused by the first Schimi episodes shouldn't surprise anyone, considering this happened in TheSeventies.
137	* PrisonerPerformance: The episode "Borowski und der gute Mensch" starts with some inmates performing a scene from ''Theatre/TheRobbers'' by Friedrich Schiller. Unfortunately, this gets out of hand, and one of the imprisoned inmates--Kai Korthals, a SerialKiller--is able to start a fire and use the ensuing chaos to escape the facility.
138	* PropheticName: In the earliest Münster episodes, ''Hauptkommissar'' Thiel had a second assistant called Bulle. The word means "bull", but it is also slang for "policeman", equivalent to "cop", while being a bit more derogatory.
139	* RunningGag: Several which are location-and-team-specific.
140	** Münster:
141	*** Despite Boerne's obvious medical background, it happens all too often that Thiel or other policemen will call for a doctor ''in the '''Professor's''' presence'' when warranted, much to his annoyance or confusion.
142	*** Oberstaatsanwältin Wilhelmine Klemm is [[CigaretteOfAnxiety a heavy chain smoker]] that continuously ignores the smoking ban in public buildings, and will leave her cigarette butts behind just about anywhere, leaving the police colleagues with the clean up. Her smoking habit is so well-known that inquiries concerning her whereabouts at a crime scene are answered with "just follow the smoke signals", and that people usually bet ''against'' her when she makes the resolution to quit smoking (which she manages for a whole year and afterwards keeps faking it). The only place she ''doesn't'' smoke at is Boerne's morgue, likely because it is attached to the university hospital and after all, it's '''Boerne's''' morgue.
143	*** The one time she did[[note]]Episode 551: Sag nichts…[[/note]], she ended up owing Thiel one because it caused a fire hazard alert (with her being drenched), and Boerne (and the other doctors) would have been furious at her if the policeman had opted to tell them, as the alert causes the institute personnel to evacuate, leaving their (often time-sensitive) work unattended.
144	* ScreenToStageAdaptation: Stuttgart-based ''Kommissar'' Ernst Bienzle (Dietz-Werner Steck) appeared in the play ''Bienzle und der Mord am Neckar'' (2006). Berlin-based Franz Markowitz (Günter Lamprecht) even appeared in two small-stage plays.
145	* ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: "Do you know who I am?" and "I regularly play golf with the Chief of Police" do crop up from time to time.
146	* TheSeventies: The [[UnintentionalPeriodPiece opening sequence and theme tune]] has never been changed.
147	* ShoutOut: In one Münster episode, Frank Thiel, in order to get a criminal's goat, goes through a lovingly done "[[Series/{{Columbo}} Oh, uh, one more thing...]]" routine (complete with characteristic hand movements) before flourishing the damning piece of evidence.
148	* SnarkToSnarkCombat: A returning occurence because each team has at least one DeadpanSnarker, often more. Honorary mentions go to the Münster team, [[GentlemanSnarker Boerne]] and [[FlatJoy Thiel]], and the Munich Team, Batic and Leitmayr who've been snarking at each other [[LikeAnOldMarriedCouple for a good thirty years]].
149	* {{Spinoff}}: After leaving the police force, Horst Schimanski became a private investigator in the series ''Schimanski'' (1997-2013).
150	** Starting in 2008, a monthly series of radio plays, ''Radio-Tatort'' is broadcast on ARD radio stations. Episodes last 55 minutes each.
151	* StealthPun: In "Der höllische Heinz", the last words of [[spoiler: Nick, who first turns on the gas stove to kill selfsame Heinz...[[TooDumbToLive and then the light]] after Chekhovs door latch trapped him in the junk room.]] Of course any German should know [[Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe "Mehr Licht!"]] ''and'' that Weimar (where the Kommissare work) was his hometown...but [[spoiler: the house exploding the next second]] is somewhat of a distraction.
152	* SuicideByCop:
153	** The fanatic killer in "Gefallene Engel" tries this, being too Catholic to kill himself. Batic refuses, shooting him in the leg and arm instead and thus rendering him unable to pose a further threat.
154	** The Munich team again in "Der traurige König", in which the suspect forces Leitmayr to fatally shoot him [[spoiler:in order to cover up his mother's part in an accidental death.]] Leitmayr has one hell of of an [[HeroicBSOD emotional fallout]] [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone from that]].
155	* SuicideNotMurder: [[spoiler: In ''Das Herz der Schlange'', Adam's father deliberately sets up his death this way to make it look like Adam killed him.]]
156	* TarAndFeathers: In the Western parody "Der höllische Heinz", Kommissar Lessing is eavesdropping on the subjects. A directional microphone would have been a better idea than [[NoOSHACompliance climbing on a convenient shaky scaffold.]] He promptly crash-lands in a convenient tar barrel. (Admittedly no feathers, because a surplus chicken stampede or whatnot would have [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief stretched]] it. [[note]]WordOfGod confirmed they had an idea but edited out for too much hassle.[[/note]]
157	* TeacherStudentRomance: The central plot element of "Reifezeugnis", one of the most controversial episodes to date.
158	* TemporaryLoveInterest: As a rule, ''Tatort'' investigators are single or divorced, definitely unlucky in love because practically the only kind of romantic subplots they tend to get is with a suspect, which usually does not end well. One of the rare aversions is the Weimar-based team of ''Kriminaloberkommissare'' Lessing (Christian Ulmen) and Kira Dorn (Nora Tschirner), who have a child together.
159	* ThatRemindsMeOfASong: Starting in 1996, the Hamburg team of Paul Stoever (Manfred Krug) and Peter Brockmöller (Charly Brauer) would sing a jazz standard in the course of each episode, which was loved by the audience as they did it well enough (Krug had been a popular jazz singer in East Germany before leaving for the West). A compilation of the 17 songs was successfully produced as a CD.
160	* ThemeMobile: Some teams had quite remarkable vehicles.
161	** Schimanski is famous for driving a Citroën CX, especially the GTI Turbo 2. A German cop having a foreign car is rather unusual all by itself. Thanner preferred Ruhrpott-made cars (Ford Taunus, Ford Granada, Ford Scorpio).
162	* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: "Im Schmerz geboren", where 50 people bite the dust. (More a case of AudienceReactions - in Germany ''and'' Tatort such a bodycount is seen as extremely unusual.)
163	* TrademarkFavoriteFood: For Heinz Haferkamp (Essen) it was ''Frikadellen'' (frikadeller in English), for Horst Schimanski (Duisburg) ''Currywurst''.
164	* TheUnintelligible: Actor Creator/TilSchweiger has always been known to deliver his lines in a very mumbling fashion. As Hamburg's Hauptkommissar Nick Tschiller this has become memetic.
165	* VitriolicBestBuds: In Münster both the relationship between Professor Karl-Friedrich Boerne and Hauptkommissar Frank Thiel, and that between Boerne and Alberich qualify.
166	* WakingUpAtTheMorgue: Subverted. Boerne was once knocked out by a bad guy with a sword (ItMakesSenseInContext) and then woke up in his familiar morgue. His assistant Silke Haller had brought him there and put him on a table to stitch his wound and wait until he regained consciousness.
167	* WeaponizedAllergy: The victim in "Babbeldasch" dies from an allergic reaction to poppy seeds. It turns out poppy was injected into her food and her emergency kit was stolen.
168	* WholePlotReference: ''Angriff auf Wache 8'', already [[Film/AssaultOnPrecinct131976 title-wise]] you know. ReferenceOverdosed, natch.
169	* WorkingWithTheEx: The permanent setup for the Leipzig team of Eva Saalfeld and Andreas Keppler.
170	* YouDidntAsk

Context Series / Tatort