* DieForOurShip: [[spoiler:J.D. Pollack, Lu Simmons]].
* EsotericHappyEnding: At the end of "Justice Delayed", the widow of the victim of the week doesn't want a trial (even though Jordan had discovered enough to charge the long-held suspect). [[spoiler: She was content with knowing what happened (his killer meant to use birdshot rounds to scare him, but drunkenly loaded far-more lethal buckshot instead) and would be satisfied with an apology from the killer (which she gets, with some "encouragement" from Jordan). The family is satisfied, but a killer goes free for good. Though a good lawyer probably argues it was actually manslaughter, the statute of limitations for such had long run out.]]
* RetroactiveRecognition: A young Creator/ShaileneWoodley plays Jordan as a child.
* TearJerker: It's a show that takes place in the city morgue, dealing with loss and death. Many tears will be jerked.
** "One-Twelve," a second season episode, had a few moments. From Lily breaking down after hearing hundreds of family testimonials about their lost loved ones, all killed in a terrorist bombing, and running to the crypt to cry, to Jordan holding the hand of the bomber, who had lost his daughters to a corporation's apathy and his wife to suicide, as he slowly dies, buried in rubble, to Garrett finally finding the one and only survivor to the bombing, who is dazed and concussed from the explosion and doesn't even know that hundreds of his coworkers are dead.
*** Especially worth mentioning is the husband of one of the teacher-chaperones who died in the blast. She was over 8 months along and he had tried to dissuade her from even going in to work or at least from attending the field trip. Lilly feels that he should be allowed to hold his deceased infant after Macy removes it from the mother's womb, to which Macy objects (more on this below). In the end, Lilly goes over Macy's head to allow the father a chance to properly say goodbye to his child, even taking an angry rebuke from Macy for her troubles.
*** Imagine being snapped at by your boss/former lover, for pretty much doing your job, all while having to counsel relatives of multiple child victims and trying to [[BreakTheCutie hold back your own emotions]] on top of that.
*** And then we learn the reason Macy was so against this was because his own son--Abby's twin brother whom he never told her about--was stillborn and he never properly grieved over it.
** A fugitive from England comes searching for his estranged son; Nigel and Lily learn the boy came to America, lived on the streets, and died, his body being given to a medical school as a practice cadaver and then accidentally cremated. Due to a misunderstanding, the father believes his son had gotten into medical school and was becoming a doctor, or from his perspective, making something of himself where the father himself had failed. Nigel and Lily let him believe his son was a medical student, and the father happily turns himself into the police for his crimes.