Brooklyn Nine-Nine / Fridge

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Fridge Brilliance

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General

The theme sequence being made to parody typical cop show intros has been pointed out elsewhere, but it can be easy to miss the first time around:
- Hard-ass cop interrogating a perp: Jake, the manchild, interrogates a toy policeman. Played straight later when he actually manages to catch those in the Justice force committing criminal acts.
- Ruthless cop shooting a gun: Amy, a very sweet cop, miming shooting a gun with her fingers.
- Heroic cop getting shot: Charles, who is very meek, banging his head on a counter. This is played straight later, however, in that Charles does actually get shot in the series.
- Crooked cop beating a confession out of a suspect: Rosa, a good cop, beating up her computer monitor
- Rude, insubordinate cop yelling at the higher-ups: Terry, who is very polite and respectful, arguing with his wife over getting an SUV
- Criminal putting their hands up while being arrested: Gina, who works at the precinct, with her hands in the air dancing
- Holt's is the only one played straight — the stern captain giving a stern look to one of his detectives
- Two heroes waking up and getting ready for action: Hitchcock and Scully being caught taking a scheduled nap.
The reason Jake believes so many completely illogical things, especially about women? He grew up with Gina.
Jake: Do you carry a hair dryer in your purse?
Gina: Of course, I'm not an animal.
Every time Holt and Peralta have a competition, Peralta is usually the one to come out on top. Holt always takes his defeat with pride, dignity, and a playful smile on his face. Holt is happy, because each time, Peralta has to get help from the rest of the team, and the exercise ultimately contributes to team building, something Holt has been trying to encourage from the beginning.
- This gives another reason as to why Holt decided to stoop to his squads level: He realized that he too, was a part of the team.
Jake shocks Amy by being a surprisingly good dancer, confessing that he took lessons as a kid. Gina is his childhood friend and also an avid dancer. So maybe they took dance lessons together while their single moms were busy working.
Why is Charles such a "grinder", in Terry's words? Simple: He works with two chubby, clumsy detectives like himself, who have gone nowhere in 30 years, and wants to avoid their fate. To be blunt, he doesn't want to be Scully and Hitchcock.
- He outright says this to Hitchcock in "The Bet" while he's high on painkillers.
Despite his usual demeanor, Holt often manages to become just as embroiled in the wacky shenanigans as the other characters because, as shown in multiple episodes, he was never included in them when he was a detective.
Gina frequently declares that she believes that her spirit animal is a wolf. There's a hidden irony here, since Gina is notoriously a self-obsessed narcissist who thinks mostly of herself and is frequently aloof, contemptuous, unconcerned and dismissive towards others. Wolves however are pack animals who can barely survive on their own and, as many observers of them in the wild have noted, personality wise tend to be rather friendly, protective and affectionate towards other members of their pack (and humans who manage to befriend them). Gina is, in many ways, diametrically opposite in nature to her supposed spirit animal. And, in fact, is a lot closer in personality to the stereotype of a certain other animal typically considered a rival to wolves and dogs in pop culture...
- The best thing is, Terry has once compared Gina to a cockatiel — "fascinated by her own reflection".
In the second episode, Holt comments that he feels sorry for a perp, a cop's teenage son whose father always bails him out, asking, "What kind of father cares so little for his own son that he just lets him get away with everything?" He says this to Jake, and this quote is especially appropriate as the series goes on, and a father-son relationship develops between the two. Holt harps on Jake a lot, but he does it so much because he cares about him.
- Indeed, this is the point of the quote in context specifically — Jake has been presented with a Sadistic Choice by Holt. He finds it incredibly unfair, until he realises that Holt's doing it for his own good. Subtle enough to count as a Fridge moment in itself.
Rosa and Holt are abnormally close in terms despite their surly attitudes and are generally very comfortable around each other despite being very reserved about their personal comings and goings. At first it seems only like the idea of Birds of a Feather until it is shown that they are respectively bisexual and gay. As a result, this can be seen in a new way in that they are also capable of subconsciously bonding because their struggles are also very similar and they carry themselves very differently to avoid the stigma and stereotype that would have been imposed on them by society.
In "Road Trip", Holt reveals to Boyle that he has no interest in food, seemingly at odds with his subscription to Boyle's pizza email blast from "Sal's Pizza" and remarks about mouth-feel. But given Holt's determination to make a success of his first command position, it makes sense that he'd do his research on his detectives. He's subscribed to Boyle's pizza emails not because he's interested in pizza, but because it's a useful insight into the personality and interests of one of his detectives. It's also possible he simply appreciates Boyle's thoroughness — this is the man who was brought to Tears of Joy from the statistical analysis in Moneyball, after all.
Hitchcock's habit of taking off his shirt and belief that many of the women (and some of the men) in the precient are attracted to him makes a hell of lot more sense after 'Hitchcock & Scully', where it's revealed that he was actually very attractive in his youth. Once there was a time where his shirtlessness was appreciated and many did find him attractive, the only problem is that he doesn't realize it isn't the case anymore.
Die Hard being Jake's favorite movie makes a whole lot of sense. It's not just a great movie^note, it also has a protagonist who faces a group of terrorists alone and practically unarmed in order to protect his wife (and the other hostages, of course). In other words, everything his father isn't.
During the Halloween episode Gina is dressed up as a police officer. It makes a weird kind of sense as it's the one day of the year when she can wear that uniform in the office, while no one else would wear theirs.
In a case of Innocent Innuendo Boyle describes Peralta and Diaz as his "fantasy threesome". Cos it's okay if it's in a threeway.
Captain Holt seems a lot more eccentric in Season 2 than he was in Season 1, with a lot more of his foibles coming to the fore. This makes sense, since in Season 1 he was the new boss both seeking to assert his authority over a new command and was less certain about whether he could trust and rely on his officers. After spending time working with and getting to know them, however, it makes sense that he would gradually become a lot more comfortable around them and thus would be, by his standards at least, more open around them.
- We actually have a trope for that!
Expanding on the above, why was Holt, a high-achieving but generally dismissed cop because of his sexuality and race, suddenly given his own command? It's because nobody probably wanted to work with the 99! Consider the core staff:
- Jake: Talented but immature lone wolf. Already a management nightmare and probably a lawsuit waiting to happen.
- Amy: Intelligent and motivated, but insufferable. Her desire to succeed and control could be overwhelming.
- Charles: Very non-assertive and quirky. While not necessarily problematic, the fact that he is a follower of Jake is.
- Rosa: Tough and terrifying. Won't respect just anybody, even if they're a superior officer. Considers police brutality a reasonable option.
- Terry: The commanding sergeant. While a good cop, the births of his daughters have made him paranoid and unpredictable.
- This isn't even to mention Hitchcock, Scully, and Gina. The last captain they had couldn't care less about actually managing them, so the rumors about them probably got exaggerated beyond the already strange reality. Holt was probably the only one willing to make the effort for these oddballs because it was probably his only chance of having a command. This also explains the other captains they've had since. The overbearing Captain Dozerman was probably chosen to rein the group in, an "overmined" Captain Stentley couldn't be placed in a "real" precinct, and Captain "Vulture" had a personal vendetta against them. This is probably also why Holt keeps bouncing back in the job. No sane person wants it!
On the surface, Ava's remarkable fourteen-pound birth weight seems a simple gag, but it also helps explain why, newborns being too delicate to be part of filming, she's visibly as large as infants usually are only several months later.
The deciding factors and victories of the Heist's so far have been under one certain theme: underestimating your opponent.
- Season 1: Holt expected Jake to try and do the heist by himself and cause more trouble around the precinct just to get his Medal of Valor. He did not expect Jake to actually come up with a plan that involved bringing the entire squad onto his side.
- Season 2: Jake thought the heist this season would be the same as last years. He did not expect Holt to plan a year in advance for the rematch.
- Season 3: Both Jake and Holt dismiss Amy as being possible moles for either sides as they each have a strong connection with her (dating and mentoring respectively). They did not realize that Amy would go out on her own and work around each of their plans for the win.
- Season 4: The first three winners were facing against each other as the best detective/genius. They did not realize that Gina, a civilian, would pull the wool under all three of them.
- Season 5: This is sort of played with as nobody technically won, but Amy did not expect Jake to propose to her because in her competitive words "he's boring".
- Season 6: The squad planned this heist to calm Terry's stress down as a makeshift heist (they couldn't do it on Halloween). What they did not realize is that Terry manipulated everything to his planning.
- Season 7: The main three winners (minus Gina) kept arguing about who won the most heists. Rosa cleverly manipulate events so she could win the heist this year three times in a row, making her the reigning champ.
- Season 8: Everyone was focused on getting the higher ground and making plans to win. Hitchcock won because he had no plan at all and had the victory fall in his lap at the last minute.
Why is Rosa so harsh on the at-risk teens she's trying to get sign up for the junior police program, and on her "little brother" after he's caught shoplifting? It's later revealed she was a delinquent and even did some time in juvie, and her parents threw her out of the house for it. While she was ultimately able to turn her life around, a lot of people who go through the system so young aren't that lucky, and she still clearly has some issues because of how her parents reacted. She wasn't lying when she said she knows how the at-risk teens feel; she really was one of them, and knows what's waiting for them if they don't get their act together soon.
It makes a certain amount of comedic sense that an uptight dork like Holt managed to find the the one bright red convertible that is unequivocally not a Cool Car.
On several occasions, Holt improves his attitude or tries again after giving up after Amy loses it with him ("Chocolate Milk", "9 Days", "Honeymoon"). Of course he would rethink his behavior after getting a "Reason You Suck" Speech from the subordinate who is normally desperate for his approval!

Season 1

Captain Holt's assessment of Santiago's toast in "Thanksgiving" can essentially be read as his veiled assessment of her as a detective and a person, delivered in a typically subtle and understated fashion:
- "It's very well-written. There are several compelling anecdotes." = she's a good detective who has accomplished great things and will continue to do so.
- "The font suits the tone." = Unlike Peralta, whom Santiago was jealously comparing herself to in regard to the attention Holt pays them earlier in the episode, Santiago approaches her job in a suitable, appropriate and professional manner.
- "I did feel, however, that the word choice could have been improved in spots. I marked them 'awk' for 'awkward'." = Santiago is often over-eager to curry favour with Holt and to get him to act as her mentor, often leading her to babble nonsensically to him, act awkwardly around him, or basically humiliate herself needlessly.
- In summary, he's basically telling her that she's a good cop, she does her job well, but she just needs to relax, have more confidence in herself and to not fixate on seeking his approval all the time.
- In Season 4, Holt admits to having been secretly mentoring Amy the whole time. This critique retroactively ends up serving as proof of that reveal.
The first lines of the series is Jake jokingly reciting a speech from Donnie Brasco, about an FBI agent who goes undercover to infiltrate a mob family. The first season ends with Jake going undercover to infiltrate a mob family.
In the pilot, Holt's pride flag can be seen poking out of a box right after Gina observes that she got a gay vibe from the new Captain.
In the Halloween episode, Jake claims that he convinced his colleagues to help him with the heist by offering to do all their paper work. Amy agrees, even though it is established in many episodes that she loves paperwork. Why would she decide to help Jake? Because she liked him.

Season 2

In Halloween II, Holt mentions that Kevin would not like to know about the bet. He explains it's because of the history of the watch; but this takes a brand new light in Bad Beat when he panics as Jake and Terry threaten to tell Kevin about his relapse in his gambling addiction.
Also from Halloween II, one of the things that Jake (and later Boyle) mentions that the lesson for Holt to learn from Halloween of last year is not to underestimate people. Now, Jake naturally doesn't underestimate Captain Holt. But, when Holt gains assistance from the rest of the squad, who does he use that Jake doesn't the previous year, that end up playing a pivotal role in the plan? Hitchcock and Scully, the two detectives regarded as idiots for, at that point, the entire show! Holt found out Hitchcock and Scully's hidden strengths even before Amy did the following year.
- Building on this, who exactly are Hitchcock and Scully used to separate? Jake and Charles, the latter of whom, last year, tried to tell Holt that Jake "wasn't the only one [he] underestimated". Looks like Charles ended up handing Holt the instrument of his own destruction!
The Episode 'Beach House' was originally broadcast in the US during a passive aggressive 'Strike' (where arrests were to be kept to a bare minimum) by the New York Police Department. What better time for a Bottle Episode combined with a Beach Episode, that is also justified in universe by an annual tradition of the 99th Precinct?
It seems weird that Jenny Gildenhorn (the girl that dumped Jake at his bar mitzvah) would be at the Boyle-Linetti wedding... until you remember that Gina (the daughter of the bride) was Jake's childhood friend. It's likely that Gina knew Jenny, or at least knew of her, and it's not too much of a stretch that Gina's mom and Jenny's mom might have been familiar with each other by extension, since Gina and Jake are implied to have had more or less the same social circle growing up. Suddenly it's not that odd that Gina or Gina's mom may have invited her.
Holt's insult to Wuntch is a bit of Fridge Brilliance and Genius Bonus. "But if you're here... who's guarding Hades?" Cerberus is the guardian of Hades ^note in Classical Mythology. Cerberus is a three-headed dog. Holt called Wuntch a bitch.
At the end of Beach House, Jake quoted Holt's words: "Any smile that lasts longer than a second and a half is a con-man's ruse." This explains his stoic tendencies.
While Terry gave good reasons for being mad at Jake in AC/DC there way have been another reason. Back in Unsolvable in Season 1, Terry saw Jake throw himself into a case to avoid dwelling on a personal problem, namely Amy and Teddy dating. It is entirely probable that Terry thought Jake was doing the same thing again, to far more self destructive lengths, and was angry that Jake was risking his own health and safety to avoid a personal problem.

Season 3

In "New Captain", Amy and Jake get four kamikaze shots each while on an awkward date. Cut to the two of them in bed together. Three words: Four-drink Amy.
Also in "New Captain," Gina insists, "That pigeon [mascot] is clearly a Ray-Jay." Capt. Raymond Jacob Holt winds up as the man inside the bird costume.
Capt. Dozerman's apparent prostitute habit revealed in "The Funeral" sheds some new light on why he ran everything on a 55-minute timer. You don't want to get charged for the extra hour.
In "House Mouses", Amy irritates both Gina and Rosa with her slightly Granola Girl "female empowerment" preaching about how facing their fears will make them stronger women in the long haul. Thing is, Amy actually manages to deal with her fear (slightly) better than the other two; she manages to withstand almost 45 minutes in the trunk of a car (albeit clearly being the worse-for-wear and a teeny bit unstable afterwards), whereas Gina can only stand 17 minutes in the company of business-people, and Rosa doesn't even manage to give blood without having to "psyche herself up" (i.e. engage in a loud screaming / ranting fit). It appears that Amy's lecturing wasn't entirely off-mark...
During the episode, "Ava", why does Holt consistently shut Charles up when he tries to start a conversation about Sharon with him? Well, we all know how. Um. Awkward, Charles can be when talking about families and babies and the like.
Charles's obsession with getting Jake and Amy to have a baby together in Season 3 — despite the fact that they've only been dating for less than a year and neither has ever seriously mentioned wanting a family — seems at first like an attempt to get in a few Lampshade Hanging jokes on the subject of Melissa Fumero's pregnancy, and feels like a typically weird Shipper on Deck thing for Charles to do. But it's also mentioned a few times (and even becomes a sub-plot in one episode) that Charles and his new girlfriend are trying to get pregnant via IVF right away. When Amy goes undercover as a pregnant woman in "Maximum Security", Charles takes his "hints" that she and Jake should start a family up to eleven, making them both quite uncomfortable — but later in the episode, Charles offhandedly mentions that he and his partner are still undergoing IVF and that "it's all they talk about" now. Later in the episode he actually admits he's transferring, though he claims it's because he wants to be Jake and Amy's kid; but at this point it's not hard to read the real subtext on this one.
In "Cheddar", Jake convinces tells Amy that if they were separated for months like Holt and Kevin, he would be "very sad". In the first episode of Season 4, Jake is in witness protection due to a death threat and hasn't seen Amy for six months — and he's utterly miserable.
In "Karen Peralta", the titular character believes that her son became a cop because he spent most of his childhood trying to protect her from her ex-husband's indifference to their family and, as a result, developed a desire to protect people. Jake disagrees; he became a cop because of Die Hard. Both are true, though: Die Hard is about a cop who faces a group of terrorists alone and practically unarmed in order to protect not just the hostages, but his wife. To Jake, John McClane must have seemed like the ultimate hero and role model.
Why does Rosa rush head first in her relationship with Adrian? By her own admission, breaking up with Marcus made her fear she would never be ready to settle down and start a family. She was probably trying to prove to herself that she could make a serious relationship work.
Terry's rapid weight loss following his nib addiction in "Oolong Slayer" is (relatively) more plausible than just a standard example Status Quo Is God. Terry claims that he needs 10k calories a day to maintain muscle mass - given that, all he'd need to do to shed the weight is continue his normal workout routine and eat light lunches for a few days.

Season 4

That gorgeous young hunk that Marshal Haas took up with the same episode she was captured by Figgis? Yeah... he was working for Figgis. He already knew where Jake and Holt were, he just needed to get the Marshal out of the way.
When Jake, Gina and Pimento go to find Pimento's grandma's earrings, Gina and Pimento constantly talk about signs from the universe — something that drives Jake insane, until he eventually snaps and yells "I'm so sick of signs" and shouts "suck it, universe!" While it could just be he was tired of hearing about the same thing over and over (a very understandable reason), what did Amy say when she was splitting up with Jake in "New Captain"? "Seems like the universe is telling us to hit the breaks."
One of the Season 4 mid season promos used "Sound of Da Police" which is a rap song about police brutality and how they treat African-Americans. This seems like a bit of unintentional irony, except the promo was for the run of episodes including the episode where Terry gets racially profiled.
All the more senior officers wear multiple decorations on their uniforms, including almost all of the precinct's various captains: Holt, Dozerman and even Pembroke, the Vulture. This makes sense, because even for Dozerman's and the Vulture's terrible flaws as people, they're still brave cops who have put themselves in harm's way and given some kind of service to the NYPD. Captain Stentley is the only one who doesn't wear decorations, because he doesn't have any.
It's almost borderline ridiculous how both of the 99's Audit Officers are ones with a potential bias against the them, with Teddy being Amy's ex who partially blames Jake for their break-up, while his replacement is Terry's Ex who has a vehement hatred of him that she's not exactly subtle about, to the point it might seem rather contrived. Then you remember that the show doesn't shy away from how the NYPD is filled with Dirty Cops who are willing to abuse their authority for varying reasons, and that the 99 has pissed off at least three of them^note Deputy Commissioner Podolski, Deputy Chief Madeline Wuntch, and Captain Keith "The Vulture" Pembroke, presenting the possibility that they rigged it so that Teddy and Veronica be in charge of auditing the 99 in the hopes of shutting them down.
- In "Captain Kim" Jake outright say's the string of terrible captains that have replaced Holt whenever he was unable to fulfil his duties were all chosen by Wunch so this is probably a pretty open secret.
It seemed like Milton Boyle being the Black Sheep of the Boyle family was due to him being tall, handsome, successful and socially adjusted. But it's possible he's all those things because he's the Black Sheep of the Boyle family. In "Game of Boyles" Jake says the way Boyles look isn't genetic, they hug their children so hard it warps their skeletons. Had his relatives decided early on he was a loser they wouldn't have hugged him as hard, and being ostracized from the family all his life would have forced him to make tons of friends at school (to make them jealous) which would allow him to learn normal social behavior and not take his families weird traditions as seriously.

Season 5

Many of Jake's lines or actions in "HalloVeen" — bragging that planning for the Halloween heist got him through his prison stay, telling Charles "This year's heist is way too important" while handcuffing Boyle — take on a different, more serious meaning with The Reveal that Jake was using the heist to set up his marriage proposal for Amy.
- If you watch closely, when he and Amy are in the evidence lockup room at the end and Amy figures out which box has the belt, Jake looks upset but is actually struggling to hide a smile.
- At first, Jake's army of Handmaids listening to Amy when she commands them to stop seems to just be her being intimidating, but it actually makes a lot more sense when it turns out this is all an attempt at a marriage proposal, with the intention of Amy becoming Jake's future wife. And, seeing as in the book itself, Handmaids are taught to be subservient to Wives. Furthermore, Jake himself takes a role as one of the Handmaids; he's essentially pledging devotion to Amy.
  - Amy is both a Wife and a Commander, since she outranks Jake at this point (something Jake is lovingly supportive of). Given Jake's feminist and Casual Kink tendencies, he's probably not too bothered by having Amy as his superior in contexts outside of work.
  - Jake actually notes that the Handmaidens obey Amy when she orders them to leave.
- Also, Amy does a lot of bragging about how she's always one step ahead of Jake and can read him like a book. Unlike every other heist, where staying one step ahead of the others is the whole goal, Jake's entire plan for the evening depends on Amy being one step ahead of him, and snatching away the prize at the last moment. His plan to be one step ahead of her depends on her being one step ahead of him.
- Jake is relatively unfazed by the trash talk of his competitors, except when Amy calls him "boring", which visibly hurts him. He may have been remembering why Amy and Teddy had broken up, him being boring.
- Finally, there's him being flustered when he enters the evidence room and sees Amy there. It seems like an obvious "this wasn't part of the plan" reaction, but Jake, at this point, is at the event horizon of his plan — there's no turning back now, and there's only one variable in play: whether or not Amy will notice the dust pattern on the box that hides the Cummerbund.
Jake's voicemail to Mr Santiago in "HalloVeen" is a clever callback to season 4's "Mr Santiago": in the latter episode Amy calls out both Jake and her father for assuming the latter's permission is needed to continue Jake and Amy's relationship, therefore Jake framing the call as a statement of intent not a request demonstrates him having learned from his prior mistake.
Why choose Rosa to have a coming out story, when she didn't show any sign of liking women before and that all of her fellow cops, save Terry and Holt, have shown Ambiguously Bi tendencies? The most apparent trait of Rosa is that she's a tough, secretive cop, but the reason she appears as such is because she controls every aspect of her life to always end up in a position of power. She doesn't give any information about her, because it could be used against her, and she never shows emotions, and therefore vulnerability, apart from anger, a sign of power. So, from a story perspective, it makes perfect sense to give her a coming-out story, where she has to expose herself and can't control anything about people's reactions, as seen with her parents' insensitive and negative reaction.
- It's also very in-character for Rosa to never show any sign of her bisexuality, since her secretive nature is one of her most consistent character traits.
  - Possibly her secretiveness actually started with wanting to hide her sexuality. With her parents being who they were, she would have been scared of giving any sign that she might be attracted to women as well as men, leading her to completely shut down any discussion regarding her romantic life at all. This would have given her a taste of the power and control being secretive grants her, leading her to be secretive about more and more aspects of her personal life, until she became the Rosa we love but don't know.
In "White Whale" Rosa mentions having been to business school and medical school for three years as well as having gotten a pilot's license while also seemingly being younger than Jake and having went to the Police Academy at the same time as him. This all has a far simpler explanation. Given Rosa's tendency to lie about her past and personal life, it's likely that almost none of this is true. While she does show medical knowledge when she resets Amy's knee, this is also a skill consistent with her known past, as she was a former gymnast who likely had familiarity with leg injuries from there.
In "The Box", Jake compares Davidson to Great Tiger, with the latter noting he could "beat him every time — You just punch him when he gets dizzy". More specifically, you have to block his special punch five times to get him dizzy. Jake pushes Davidson to blurt out what actually happened and by extension confess to the murder by purposely getting at least five details about murder wrong — the murder weapon, the choice behind the location, scheduling to be in sync with his colleague's timetable and whether he chose not to bring his phone, knowing about the cabin's location — and behind all this of course that he was 'lucky' and not having deliberately planned it at all.
- In the same episode, Holt launches into an angry tirade about Doctorates vs medical practitioners. What set him off? A comment about college professors not being real doctors. College professors like Kevin Cozner. He was standing up for his husband.
- Jake guesses that the opera Holt is seeing is "the one Bugs Bunny did" (Ride of the Valkyries) because Holt used it when announcing the Halloween Heist the year before.
- On rewatch, it becomes easier to point out the moment Davidson snaps before he confesses. When exactly does he start refuting the claims? Right after Jake points out the murder weapon and refers to it as being "lucky" — Davidson's Berserk Button was already pressed which led to a possibly uncontrollable tell, and repeatedly pressing that button led to his own self-inflicted downfall.
- If you pay attention, you notice several moments where Jake and Holt inadvertently (or in the doctor rant, intentionally) poke at Davidson's pride, but he catches himself or turns it on them. Early on, Jake even says it was lucky nobody was at the office, and Davidson snaps "it wasn't lucky", before catching himself and adding "because there was nothing to witness". This foreshadows Davidson's ultimate downfall when Jake asserts everything about his meticulously planned murder was pure luck and chance, which pushed Davidson's Berserk Button to the point he confessed by defending it as a masterfully-designed plan.
  - I's also been pointed out that, beside being a show of empathy for Drug addicts, Jake bringing up that Addiction is a disease with a major genetic component also acts towards taking away Davidson's agency in his motive, further reinforcing the line of thought that he was not in control and acting on opportunity and luck, not planning things out.

Season 6

Why does Charles' honeymoon package to Jake and Amy contain nothing but things used to tie someone up? Amy loves binders.
Amy's desire to win Captain Holt's approval as a mentor gets cast in a different light due to the revelation that her former Captain in the 66th Precinct may have given her a leg up to reach the rank of detective in the expectation of sexual favors. Not only is Holt supremely formal and professional, the kind of cop Amy strives to be, but also as a gay man, he is a safe mentor who would never demand such things from her. In addition, Amy feels like she might not deserve the rank of detective but Holt is reputed to be quite impartial; if he values her as a detective then Amy would be validated as one.
- This goes into The Reveal that Holt has been mentoring Amy the whole time and is a gruff Reasonable Authority Figure who says she doesn't have to be a Professional Buttkisser around him. Holt is said to be a great detective; he would have noted how sudden Amy's transfer was on her paperwork history, and how nervous she is around him and eager to please, as well as any rumors about her former superior. Unlike with Terry getting profiled, leading to him telling the 99 what happened, Amy never told anyone about what her previous captain did. Holt thus couldn't figure out who hurt Amy and how to advise her and respected her decision to wait until she was ready to tell someone, that is Jake. It does explain, however, how he goes out of his way to comfort her when she thinks she's screwed up in her attempts to help out.
In "Hitchcock & Scully", Hitchcock and Scully's first stop after locking Jake and Charles in the Beaver Trap and hijacking their car is to hightail it immediately to Wing Slutz. They're checking in on Marissa Costa to make sure that she's still fine, given that the ongoing investigation in the case that ended with them stealing a bag of Gio Costa's drug money to fund her new life after she was denied witness protection is closing in on them.

Season 7

In "Dillman", we can see that Dillman really isn't as good a detective as he (or up until then, Holt) would believe. Dillman can tell Holt is lying, but only by the contraction of his iris. He doesn't deduce Holt's "tell", contractions, as revealed in "Bad Beat", though Holt uses it twice in the two preceding sentences. Holt wasn't just lying about Dillman being the best detective he's ever worked with, he was also lying about looking for job opportunities for him.

Season 8

In "The Good Ones", the report that the dirty cops turn in on their arrest consists of two sentences, the second sentence consisting only of the word "Scary!". That sounds less like a police report and more like a Tweet, the structure being very reminiscent of another famous user of Twitter. Given the social and political commentary in the episode, this is almost certainly intentional.
Frank O'Sullivan, chief of the Patrolmen's Union and champion of bad cops, lists Billy Joel as one of the three things he loves the most. Back in the first episode of Season 2, Jake notes that "in the Mafia, once you Joel together, you're bonded for life." The shared musical tastes of O'Sullivan and the mob bosses hint at how the former actually acts much like the latter, using dirty tricks like blackmail to protect "his guys" from punishment.
It's noted a few places on this wiki that Lynn Boyle "ranks Charles lower in his affections and priorities than is perhaps appropriate for a father to do with his son." "Game of Boyles" reveals Charles is not Lynn's biological son, and Lynn knew the whole time. Lynn certainly stepped up to be a father for Charles, but he might have had some lingering resentment or felt some distance between himself and his 'son' because of Charles' true paternity.
In "The Last Day", how does Hitchcock manage to pull off faking his own retirement to win the heist but still remain employed without having resigned? Simple: nobody bothered to check that he no longer worked there. He and Scully barely did anything anyway (nor were they ever asked to; keeping them out of the way seemed to be a higher priority since they made things worse more often than not), so the lack of productivity or arrests from him wouldn't have alerted anyone. They all would have simply assumed nothing had changed.

Fridge Horror

In "Sabotage", Geoffrey Hoytsman mentions that he's borrowing the ice-cream truck that he currently lives in from a former client who he managed to get acquitted of a 'strangle-and-mangle'. The fact that it's an ice-cream truck — a pretty good lure for kids — raises many awkward questions about exactly who was the victim (or victims) of Geoffrey's client in that case...
Again from "Sabotage", Hoytsman was revealed that he was the one who was sabotaging Jake. Among those things he did were: cut Jake's power, turn off his hot water, use up the gas in his car, and steal his laundry. Basically, the episode implied that Hoytsman has stalked Jake and knows where he lives if he was able to do those in a span of one week. In the episode, Hoytsman kidnapped Jake and threatened to kill him. If Jake had gone home instead of annoying Amy and Rosa...
A more light-hearted (for a given value) example; in "The Night Shift" it is revealed that, since being reassigned to the day shift, the life and confidence of precinct sad-sack Butt-Monkey Detective Lohank has immeasurably improved. At the end of the episode, the squad and Captain Holt are unanimous in ensuring that they once again get reassigned to the day shift as soon as possible. They are eventually reassigned to the day shift at the end of "The Overmining". This does not bode well for Detective Lohank's future...
Captain Holt's over-the-top competitiveness regarding the Halloween heists and the minor competitions he can get embroiled in at the precinct take on a slightly darker tone after "Bad Beat", wherein we see just how quickly he can sink back into his gambling addiction.
- Relating to this, in the episode "Mr Santiago," Pimento bet the five thousand dollars captain Holt gave him to apply for a PI licence on a dog show. Initially, Holt wasn't so much angry at the lost money as he was angry that Pimento squandered it the way he did. But as soon as he realizes there's a chance that the dog Pimento bet on could win, Holt got very invested, very fast. To the point where he wordlessly followed Pimentos lead by smashing a beer bottle and using the jagged remains to threaten a bartender into putting the show on the TV.
Holt mentions writing the line "I feel trepidation at the prospect of a parentless existence" in his childhood diary. While a joke about how formal he's always been, remembering that his father passed when he was young and his mother was a criminal court judge makes you wonder just how possible this worry seemed to Holt
Rosa and Terry's moments of rage (which go unpunished) can be this when you think about how the police can abuse their powers and authority to justify their violence towards suspects.
- Thankfully, most of this is Played for Laughs, but it still makes you wonder if the writers are trying to tell you something...
Hitchcock and Scully's reaction to the free wings their friend offered them in 1986 was funny, until you remember that in "Old School" Scully said 1986 was the year he had to quit cocaine because he overdosed and went into a coma. Junk food was their Addiction Displacement, and ended up being just as unhealthy (Scully has been mistakenly declared dead multiple times and is never not having a medical emergency).
"Coral Palms, Part 3" opens with Power News, where cohost Slade Austin confirms that in this whimsical, office prank-filled fictional world, Donald Trump still ran for president. Nuff said.
"He Said, She Said" shines a light on Amy's personality and some of her neuroses. To recap, Amy took mentorship under her old captain and was promoted to detective. That night, her captain tried to make a move on her because he felt like he deserved to have her. She transferred to the 99 the next day.
- Amy always tries to work hard to prove that she's the best. While this was explained as her being raised in a family of boys and fighting for scraps, it's because she felt that she didn't deserve her promotion in the first place and wanted to prove to herself that she did.
  - "The Golden Child" gave a different perspective. It turns out Amy's parents arrange pictures of their children in order of who makes them proudest. This explains Amy's lifelong need to win the approval of authority figures ("Teachers need a break too, Amy"). A predatory authority figure would recognize this need and attempt to exploit it.
- Amy isn't as friendly towards Boyle because he sees her as walking womb for Jake. When she transferred to the 99, literally one of the first things she hears from her fellow detectives (Boyle) is "I'm hearing wedding bells" and it took her years to forget that memory. She transferred the 99 to escape the objectification and sexual harassment, only to immediately be measured up as someone's wife potential.
- She searched for a good mentor and found one in Captain Holt who, aside from being just a good person in general, is also gay which means he wouldn't be a danger to her.
At first, Amy's ultra-competitiveness and desire to prove herself is explained by the fact that she's the youngest of eight, and the only girl. Then "The Golden Child" reveals her parents very openly play favorites, to the point of arranging their children's photos in the order of who makes them proudest. And as amazing and competent as Amy is, she's never been in the top spot. Yeah... anyone would have a serious complex.
While it was awesome to see Commissioner Kelly get defeated, he does mention at the end of "Sicko" that the exposure of Hot Clues as a fraud means the release of around 18 criminals, including the mafia guy at the end of "Sicko" who was butchering people's hearts out. Who knows what other criminals and psychopaths are out on the streets because of that?
- Presumably the NYPD will have had them under observation, looking for legitimate proof of their crimes after their release, so that if they find some, or the criminals commit another crime, and then they can be arrested again.
Dr. Yee is a fraud, with his so-called "forensics" being a load of crap. So... how many innocent people have been locked up because of convictions made based on his findings and testimony? On the flipside, how many convictions of people who actually were guilty will have to be thrown out because of that?
- I don't believe that Yee was a total fraud, he was passing off his fly experiments, which had failed, as successful, because of the time and money he'd put into it, but his previous forensic techniques were still valid and functional.
The concept of the universe giving signs to people was joked around in "Paranoia" where in that episode, it was thought that the universe was giving signs that Adrian and Rosa should break up or postpone their wedding. In "Return of The King", Gina nearly gets crushed by her own logo. The universe is either actively trying to kill Gina, or is giving her a sign saying that she should quit her job. Or maybe she is upsetting the balance of the universe simply by being "too much" of herself. There is, of course the simpler explanation which is that that was a trap laid by someone who meant to kill her. Or both!
While Jake's poor dental hygiene is a Running Gag, this becomes pretty scary once it's hinted at throughout the seasons, then made very clear and outright stated that Jake is in crippling debt (Jake paid off all of his debt to his squad)... How much is he able to afford for his healthcare? His friends will probably back him up if he's ever in serious trouble, but still...
In "99" Holt sabotages the RV and when they're standing outside of it trying to figure out what's going on, it then explodes, which completely incinerates the whole thing. While it's Played for Laughs, just imagine what would've happened if they were all INSIDE the RV when it blew up instead of standing outside of it.
In "The Bimbo", Gary's overreaction to Amy shooting him with a paintball is Played for Laughs. However, considering the fact that he's a cop, his overreaction sort of makes sense if you consider the possibility that he might have some shooting-related PTSD.
In "The Oolong Slayer", Jake tells Gina to "Mark the day, Gina. May 18th, 4pm" only for Gina to tell him they are in fact "well into October". How many criminals whom Jake has arrested are going to be set free because he has filled flagrantly incorrect dates on the paperwork?

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