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alt title(s): Crime Scene Investigation 
Concentrate on what cannot lie — the evidence.
— Gil Grissom
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation(sometimes unofficially referred to as CSI: Las Vegas when comparing or differentiating the shows in the franchise) is a highly successful TV show (2000-present) about a group of graveyard-shift crime scene investigators in Las Vegas led originally by enigmatic scientist Gil Grissom and now, following his departure, by ex-stripper and single mother Catherine Willows. Initially touted as a show where the evidence was the main character and the actual characters were little more than flat stereotypes with "quirks" added almost as an afterthought, the series has progressed over its ten seasons to make the characters a little more rounded and include more of their personal lives and histories in the storylines. It has also moved on from a fairly straightforward forensics approach to more high-tech approaches that aren't necessarily possible in real life, requiring some degree of suspension of disbelief from the viewer.
Influenced a great many subsequent programs; most directly, it inspired its producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, to try and replicate this success with Without a Trace and Cold Case (both in the same verse). It also followed in Law and Order’s 'franchise' footsteps, with CSI Miami and CSI NY. As of the 2008-2009 season, there are over 600 total episodes of CSI, CSI Miami, and CSI NY, not including books, comic books, and video games related to the franchise. Please note, however, that it is not the oldest of the current crop of forensic shows, a title held by British show Silent Witness, while Waking The Dead aired its pilot a few weeks earlier.
Gil Grissom’s frequent one-liners right before the opening credits or an ad break are the namesake of the Grissom One Liner. Pretty much established the Necro Cam, which it uses as a device to re-enact for the viewers every single gruesome detail that can be extracted from a crime scene, and every theory it spawns.
The uncanny effectiveness of the show's Applied Phlebotinum has caused some to suspect that it's not actually set in the present day, but, rather, Twenty Minutes Into The Future (on-screen dates, though, put it in the Present Day).
The show (and its spinoffs) have given rise to what legal professionals call ' The CSI Effect': the necessity of compressing what would normally be months worth of delicate and time-consuming lab work into a 40-minute television episode causes similiarly unrealistic expectations in potential real-world jurors. As a result, the uninformed juror will assume that what they see on the show is happening as it actually occurs, as opposed to being fabricated and accelerated for television.
This series has Nightmare Fuel .
This show provides examples of:
- Acceptable Targets: Pretty much any relatively harmless modern subculture that seems scary or dangerous to the general public or the target audience. See the Internet Backdraft example below.
- Affectionate Parody: (in one episode, to Darker And Edgier reimaginings of classic scifi shows)
- All Psychology Is Freudian:
- Episode "4x4"
Greg Sanders: No matter how hard you work to get big, there's always someone bigger.
Sara Sidle: It could be what keeps them going. Like Freud said, "Anatomy is destiny".
Greg Sanders: What do you think Freud would have to say about one of these being the murder weapon?
- Episode "Fur And Loathing"
Grissom: Well, Freud said that the only unusual sexual behavior was to have none at all.
- Episode "Lab Rats"
Hodges: Freud's theory on the uncanny raises the point that as children we want the doll to come to life. But as adults, we are terrified by the idea. The doll could represent the uncanny that is feared. The Sandman."
- And Starring: Paul Guilfoyle gets an "And", Robert David Hall a "With". Laurence Fishburne - because he is, well, Laurence Fishburne - goes first in the order.
- Applied Phlebotinum
- A Team Montage: As the various forensic specialists build a case.
- Be As Unhelpful As Possible: When a member of CSI intimates that the husband is always the first suspect when a wife is murdered, the husband's response is typically "You think I did this? This interview is over!" - inadvertently doing the pragmatic thing. (But again, Truth In Television. This editor was told by a criminal justice instructor and county sheriff that police expect ordinary people to get angry when accused of crimes they didn't commit.)
- Bitter Almonds: Subverted brutally: a big show is made of only 20% of people being able to smell cyanide, and there is another, more useful, symptom. So many forensic miracles on this show, and yet this trick doesn't work!
- Black Blood / Alien Blood: In Season Eight's The Theory of Everything, a number of dead people wound up with avocado-green blood.
- Blood On These Hands
- Brother Chuck: Detective Sofia Curtis was a recurring character during seasons 5 and 6, and actress Louise Lombard was a main cast member in season 7. But come season 8, Lombard left the series and, two seasons later, Sofia's disappearance has yet to be explained.
- Bullet Time: Commendably, they waited until Morpheus had thoroughly settled in before showing a bullet-time extravaganza (complete with Men In Black!).
- Bunny Ears Lawyer: At least half the cast is messed up in some way or another despite being generally competent at their job, but the title has to go to Hodges, who started out so mentally unbalanced that not only would he never be allowed to work with law enforcement in any capacity in the real world, he probably wouldn't even be allowed outdoors without some kind of supervision. He has settled down somewhat as time has gone on, but he still has his moments.
- California Doubling
- Cant Get In Trouble For Nuthin: In one episode, the Victim Of The Week in the B plot turn out to have been a homeless man. He tried to get sent to jail (for free food and shelter) by punching a police officer. Said officer realised what he was doing and left him handcuffed, apparently failing to realize this would lead to his death.
- Celebrity Star: Many episodes feature at least one.
- City Of Adventure: It IS Las Vegas after all.
- Comatose Canary: Used straight on the original show; subverted on CSI: New York
- Comedic Sociopathy: Hodges, who would make a fine Magnificent Bastard if he weren't so grotesquely inept at everything that didn't involve forensic science.
- Coolest Club Ever: The setting of many of the episodes.
- Cowboy Bebop At His Computer: Despite Laurence Fishburne's top billing, Ray Langston did not become team leader after Grissom left. That promotion went to Catherine, while Ray is very much at the bottom of the pile.
- Cowboy Cop
- Crazy Prepared: Langston. This ends up working to his detriment.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: When Greg Sanders is interrogated at an inquest to determine his culpability in running over a proven murderer, he was accused by a judge of drinking prior to the event. After a second of panic, Greg proceeded to, calmly and systematically, prove exactly why the very little alcohol he consumed many hours earlier had no effect on him, performing a multitude of calculations in his head as he explained them to the jury. The judge was thoroughly humiliated.
- Also, the event that led to Greg's inquest in the first place: After a bit of Car Fu to stop a gang member from beating a tourist, Greg took a severe beating from the rest of the gang, fighting, scratching and getting spat on the whole time. He stayed conscious long enough to give the team a detailed description of the gang, and to tell them he had DNA evidence under his fingernails.
- The CSI Effect: Lampshaded in an episode where they become the subject of a Show Within A Show and mention that everything is edited together to make it look faster.
- Also lampshaded in a later episode when Hodges mentions that he's convinced everyone that most of the advanced equipment he operates takes twice as long to work as it actually does in order to get more free time.
- This doesn't, however, stop them from regularly stating that only a couple of days have passed since they got the case, or even that everything happens on the same day.
- Dead Mans Chest: In one episode, a spurned lover stuffs his ex-boyfriend's body in a trunk, which is kept in private storage. Problem is, the body won't fit, so he cuts off the head and leaves it in a car which is then stolen.
- Death In The Clouds: Unfriendly Skies
- Did Not Do The Research: Many times over
- Double Aesop: Frequently done with a guest character, to apply the moral of their story to a longer-running established storyline and/or to one of the main cast.
- Downer Ending: Frequently, and not just when the CS Is don't get their guy.
- Dying Dream: Working Stiffs: "I knew it would work..."
- Education Through Pyrotechnics: Complete with Adam and Jamie looking on in one episode.
- Enhance Button: This show likes to rely on the NTSC overscan to find hidden details in an image. In one episode, they are able to reconstruct a recognisable image from the reflection in someone's eye. At night. In the dark. From a grainy CCTV image. Another similar example involved getting a recognisable image of a person behind the camera from the reflection of someone's sunglasses in the window of a car.
- A particularly egregious example happened when they showed off a 3D crime scene scanner. Such a device does actually exist, using a laser to create a 3D image of an area, but they then used the computer to lift the body off the bed to look at the stains on the sheets underneath it. It's the equivalent of taking an ordinary photographic image and being able to "strip away" the skin and muscles to get an image of not just the structure of the person's bones, but what color they are.
- Everybody Is Single: Or at least, almost everyone. Gil and Sara are now married. Warrick was married but the marriage fell apart.
- Eyes Are Unbreakable
- Fatal Flaw: Warrick's gambling problem. Grissom's hearing impairment also counts, though that was corrected with surgery at the end of Season three.
- Felony Murder
- Five Man Band
The Hero: Nick Stokes
The Lancer: Sara Sidle
The Big Guy: Warrick Brown
The Smart Guy: Greg Sanders
The Chick: Catherine Willows
Mentor: Gil Grissom
- Follow The Leader: The show precipitated a host of forensic science shows, even to the point that shows not inherently about forensics now spend more time on the subject (e.g. the medical examiner on Law And Order: Special Victims Unit).
- Forensic Drama
- Game Of Nerds: Grissom is a baseball fan
- Gorn: The TMI-cam
- GPS Evidence: Often. As an example: in the season five finale, Grave Danger, Grissom, Entomologist Extraordinaire, determines Nick's location from the ants in his box, since fire ants can only be found in nurseries in Nevada, which means that the soil...you can figure out the rest.
- Grissom One Liner: Trope Namer
- Hard Work Montage: This show does this to show the characters doing the hard work of forensic investigation at the lab. In the episode "I Like to Watch", they do some Lampshade Hanging: Hodges looks forward to a certain test, as he thinks it will be good material for the documentary crew currently in the lab. Nick points out that the test takes six hours, to which Hodges remarks that "When they cut it together, it'll only take thirty seconds." It takes thirty seconds. Also known as "Microscope montage".
- Hazardous Water: Murder in a cloudy swimming pool.
- High School Rejects: The standard stoners and malcontents that are always the first suspects.
- Hollywood Nerd: EVERYONE. One of them is even supposed to be an ex-stripper!
- Hooker With A Heart Of Gold: The first season has Nick falling for a hooker, who is indeed killed by her pimp. However, there's a slight subversion, in that her pimp claims she did not have a heart of gold, and was going back to school to recruit for him.
- Something similar happens to Warrick in the eighth season, where he was framed for her murder.
- Catherine Willows could be considered this, as she is a former stripper. She hasn't been killed, but constantly faces people and places from her dubious past.
- Likewise, Grissom's one-time potential love interest Lady Heather could be considered this as she was an intelligent but intense woman who ran an S&M club. She, however, was not the delicate flower in need of nurturing but more of a velvet glove and iron fist in one.
- Hot Scientist: Practically all of the CS Is and the lab techs.
- Humiliation Conga: Langston's first day is a non-villain example.
- Impersonating An Officer: In some episodes.
- In The Blood: Langston fears he may have a genetically inherited violent streak from his father, which is the toned-down version of his original backstory where he fears he may become a serial killer. In an interesting subversion, the person he tells the story of his father (minus the In The Blood part) is the adopted son of the infamous serial killer Judge Mason/Paul Milander to show that being a serial killer isn't passed down to people who are neither related nor shown that kind of behavior, despite what his weary mother fears.
- Internet Backdraft - Never mention the episode "Fur and Loathing" to furries.
- Your Mileage May Vary, some furries actually found it funny because it was so inaccurate.
- Others simply pragmatically acknowledged it as, despite being inaccurate, still the closest thing to accurate and fair a show had done on them so far, as opposed to, say, ER.
- The Intern: Greg, when he decides to leave behind life in the lab to become a CSI.
- Its Personal: Seasons often start and/or end with an "It's Personal" episode.
- In the episode Random Acts of Violence, Warrick is processing the scene of a suburban drive-by shooting, at which a young child has been shot and killed. Upon discovering that the child's father is a close friend (known to be an admirable and honorable person generally), Warrick does his best to comfort the grieving father. Aware of this connection, Grissom arrives and checks on his colleague:
Grissom: You going to be able to handle this?
Warrick: ...I want this case.
- In early seasons, even if there weren't a direct relationship between the investigators and the criminals the nature of the crime would often make the investigator take it personally themselves. For instance: domestic abuse, or overall violence towards women? Sara would sympathize. Broken marriages, or mothers (especially the working kind)? Catherine. Damaged childhoods? Nicky. Grissom himself explicitly stated that drug dealers and people who harm children make him furious.
"You prey on innocent children, and you think we came all the way out here to bust you for posession, you dumb punk?!"
- Jack The Ripoff: "The Execution of Catherine Willows"
- Jonas Quinn: Dr. Raymond Langston (played by Laurence Fishburne) replaces Grissom in Season 9, though not in terms of position. Riley takes Sara's place.
- Killed Off For Real: Warrick, complete with Personal Effects Reveal and Meaningful Funeral
- Killer Rabbit: Can we ever look at cornmeal the same way?
- The Killer Was Left Handed: Repeatedly, both with literal left-handedness and with problems with DNA in saliva
- The Lab Rat: Greg Sanders, whose nickname at Television Without Pity inspired this entry's title. He has, however, now become a CSI in his own right.
- Later seasons have made more use of the other lab rats - David Hodges (Trace), Archie Johnson (Audiovisual) Mandy (Fingerprints) and Wendy Simms (DNA). The show has given them two Lower Deck Episodes with the appropriately-entitled Lab Rats and the hilarious "You Kill Me".
- Lampshade Hanging: After ten long years, they finally poke fun at their periodic explanations of how a test or piece of equipment works for the benefit of the audience, even though there's no good reason for, say, Sara to be telling this to Nick in the course of everyday work.
- Left Hanging: Bad to the Bone. Six or seven subthreads, none of which were even close to being resolved.
- Limited Advancement Opportunities: Avoided. Though the cast has remained more or less constant, their relative rank and internal structure have been adjusted, including Brass's handing over the department to Grissom (and going back to being a detective), the race between Warrick and Nick to achieve CSI 3, and Ecklie's breakup of the team into two different shifts, which prompted the promotion of Catherine Willows to supervisor, and made room in the ranks for Greg to go from lab tech to field agent. More recently, Nick gets promoted to Catherine's right-hand man and Ray has progressed rather rapidly from starting out at entry level.
- A particularly nice touch in Greg's case was Grissom making sure he really did want to make the lateral (and downward!) jump from Senior Lab Tech to extremely junior Field Investigator, reminding him that he'll be taking a substantial pay cut and that it will take quite a while to get back to his present level.
- Locked Room Mystery: A more diluted form sometimes appears in a Police Procedural where the puzzle is eventually unravelled by an eccentric protagonist using more obvious clues and Applied Phlebotinum.
- Long Runners: Now onto its tenth season.
- Lower Deck Episode: You Kill Me and Lab Rats, both featuring the lab techs.
- Luke I Am Your Father: Catherine's dad was a recurring casino owner who regretted not taking responsibility sooner, although the two were very close. This soured when Catherine found out that he had someone (probably a bunch of someones considering it was old Vegas) murdered; they managed to patch things up a little before he died and she now refers to him as "my dad".
- Magical Database: Revolutionised this trope. They have demonstrated databases on blood, hair, rope, wire, shoe prints, tire treads, tire rubber compositions, and even clown makeup patterns. There was a Lampshade Hanging in a sixth season episode, in which a character sarcastically suggested searching a database to discover the brand of a hot dog.
- Don't forget the software/database that allows one to find where a picture in New York was taken by measuring the skyline in comparison to a reference height (while the technique is sound, there is no such software).
- An early Season Ten episode features a database on gangs, including cases related to each gang, their territory and their known members.
- In fact, it's when CSI avoids the trope that it can be jarring. A reoccurring scene is the local trace evidence guy naming a compound, and the CSI identifying the compound's common name, and it's uses, including the more arcane (say, Jeweller grinder lubricant) on the top of their head. Said arcane use are always the key to cracking the case. This gets jarring because there ARE databases to identify the most common uses of chemicals.
- Midlife Crisis Car: Lampshaded.
- Mood Lighting
- Ms Fanservice: Catherine and, briefly, Riley. Wendy might also count.
- Mulder Moment: "Fur And Loathing". The normally sexually-open Catherine is weirded out by the Furries while Grissom is typically intrigued.
- The Murder After: Warrick and a stripper who is found dead in his car.
- Murder Dot Com: Grave Danger
- My Card: The investigators will often give a witness their card and say "call me if you remember anything."
- Myth Arc: The "Miniature Killer".
- Necro Cam: Done multiple times in every episode.
- The show is also notable for its gory body-dives, in which the camera flies around inside somebody's body (often tracing the path of a murder weapon), accompanied by all sorts of icky Foley noises. This is commonly referred to as TMI Cam.
- Need A Hand Or A Handjob: Inverted when Catherine, while being evaluated by Grissom, complains about her lack of social life (and sex). "How can I help?" Grissom asks, and has to clarify that it's not THAT kind of help when Catherine raises her eyebrow at him.
- Never Suicide: Subverted in one episode where an investor shoots himself at a party. It originally looks like a staged suicide since he's still holding the gun, which usually doesn't happen as the muscles relax after death.
- Another variation: The villain of an early story-arc staged identical suicides of men who were born on his father's birthday, the same date as and manner in which his father was murdered - up to and including a faked recorded suicide note. He did all this to prove his father's murder wasn't a suicide. This was eventually subverted as Millander, who it turns out was born on the same day as his father (and Grissom, incidentally) killed himself in the same way he had killed the other men.
- Inverted in another episode: a man is found in the woods with all the evidence initially pointing towards murder. It actually turns out to be an extremely elaborate suicide designed to look like a murder so his wife would receive his life insurance money.
- Subverted yet again in another episode, when one man throws himself in front of a car. The entire episode runs like an ordinary investigation, the suicide letter being the final twist revealed only seconds before the episode ends.
- One more double inversion, when a Sherlock Holmes impersonator is found shot to death. Like the above example, the episode runs as a murder investigation, until the team discovers the gun tied to an elastic in the chimney, revealing that when the victim shot himself and let go of the gun, the elastic snapped it back into the chimney. Then we find out that the real murderer, in a reference to one of Holmes' later cases, had set the whole thing up to look like a suicide that had been set up to look like a murder, as an appropriately Holmesian mystery. Yes, a murder, made to look like a suicide, made to look like a murder.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Hillariously averted in volume 6 of IDW's tie-in comics. The story ends with them carting off Greg Rucka for the attempted murder of Joe Quesada. Strangely, nobody mentions One More Day as a possible motive, but that may be a concession they had to make in order to get the rights to use his image.
- The Only One: The Crime Scene Investigators (and Brass) are the only law enforcement personnel who care about getting the criminals. The D As only care about getting convictions, even if it is a wrongful one. Judges are at best unhelpful or helpless, at worst are corrupt and seek to hinder the CS Is in anyway possible. Other cops just don't care. Parole Boards are more focused on bureaucracy than on doing their job of making sure bad people stay in jail.
- Orifice Invasion / Orifice Evacuation / Chest Burster: Rats seem to like getting inside corpses in this show.
- Papa Wolf: The occasional suspect, especially in the case of an Asshole Victim.
- Grissom also gave Catherine's abuse ex-husband an Oh Crap moment when said ex tried to bully Catherine.
- In fact, Grissom tends to go Papa Wolf whenever his team are at risk of harm, for all he usually comes across as emotionally distant.
- Paper Thin Disguise: By the Diabolical Mastermind in Living Legend. It's not so much that they don't see through his disguises (after all, he's been missing for 30 years), it's that no one notices that the disguises all look like one another.
- The Patsy
- The Perfect Crime: In "Working Stiffs" a lowly office drone makes a seemingly perfect get rich quick scheme. He manages to get the unbreachable safe open, but is crushed against the wall by a piece of it that comes flying at him. Upon seeing he actually succeeded in doing the impossible, his last words are "I knew it would work..."
- Pet The Dog: a posthumous one for Milander, as his son has only happy memories of his father, especially of his father's (though he didn't know it at the time) special effects shop.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Greg Sanders is an excellent example of this trope.
- Not so much anymore, now that he's had several serious character arcs (not to mention becoming one of the most experienced CSIs on the team). The role has been taken over by Hodges and the supporting Lab Rats.
- Poorly Disguised Pilot: CSI did this to launch CSI Miami, which in turn launched CSI NY.
- And the episode "Hollywood Brass" certainly feels like a PDP. Were they thinking about a Jim Brass spin-off set in LA?
- Put On A Bus: Sara and Grissom, presumed retired for good.
- Well, until Sara returns for a few episodes in Season 10.
- Rasputinian Death: the episode Ending Happy
- Redemption Equals Death: Keppler killed an innocent man on the word of a corrupt cop. Guess what happens in the episode that outs the secret?
- Run For The Border
- Sacrificial Lamb: The series began with a Naive Newcomer character who basically served to introduce the various members of the show's cast. With that out of the way, she caught two in the back of the head, turning into the second victim and confirming her status as the New Meat.
- Sarcasm Failure: When Grissom doesn't do the Grissom One Liner.
- Science Hero: Grissom and, later, Ray.
- Seeker Archetype: Grissom again.
- Sex Is Evil: One of the more frequent knocks on CSI is that this is pretty much how it treats any sex practices (regardless of consent) outside of hetero and committed. And it treats THAT with a layer of shame when it comes to the regulars (Gil/Sara, anyone?)
- This is a common problem with any Crime And Punishment show, really, as the only time the characters usually encounter alternative lifestyles is when there's a grisly murder involved.
- CSI tends to be a bit schizophrenic about this, really. While they tend to portray "perverts" of various types as being twisted in various way aside from their sexual appetites, those that weren't involved in the crime of the week, and even some who were, are ultimately portrayed sympathetically for the most part. The best example is Recurrer Lady Heather, a dominatrix who is a tragic and sympathetic character. Admittedly, most of the tragic part is in some way due to her lifestyle, but it is ultimately left up to the viewer to decide whether this is due to her own "sins," or other people's (including her own daughter) reaction to them.
- Humorously, ex-stripper Catherine seems to be the most squicked out by alternative sexual practices. Grissom, of course, finds it all very fascinating.
- Shipping
- Ship Tease: Grissom and Catherine playfully flirt with each other and it never goes anywhere. To wit:
Catherine to Grissom: (while helping the latter put on a tie) "You need a woman."
- Grissom, when Catherine returns from Miami in which she helped
launch CSI Miami investigate a case there, "I missed your tush".
- The "How can I help?" scene (see above for details).
- There have also been hints towards possible Nick and Sara - Word Of God states that Sara's phonecall at the end of You've Got Male was originally intended to be to Nick, and they have had moments of reciprocated flirting. Likewise Catherine and Warrick, to the point where Catherine is upset to learn of Warrick's marriage and even outright comments on losing the dream.
- Grissom and Heather could also fall under this as it is never outright confirmed that anything happened between them. Heavily implied, yes, but always in a way that, taking Grissom as being Grissom, could have a perfectly innocent explanation.
- Shout Out: Hodges and Langston do a very-thinly-disguised Mythbusters-style experiment, complete with Plexiglas shield. All they needed was the "3, 2, 1!" part.
- Shown Their Work: More often than you think; it's the editing that turns it into Hollywood Science. There's also the episode involving a not!Star Trek convention, which is filled with references, including the Picard Maneuver. The shirt-tugging one.
- Sick Episode: Grissom's Divine Comedy
- Side Bet: In one episode, Greg Sanders's replacement eventually cracks from the pressure to be just like Greg and quits. Nick forks over a bill to Warrick. (Who really shouldn't have been participating...)
- There's also been a whole episode with a Running Gag about Nick and Warrick having a bet on what happened to the Vic of the Week. Either Warrick can engage in "fun" bets with a buddy without a problem, or, considering this was one of the earlier seasons, the writers were letting their sometimes schizophrenic approach to characterisation show.
- Another episode sees Catherine and Grissom make a bet over whether two murder victims' deaths were related or not (they were long lost twins). In the end it turns out they were both right, and Cathrine rips a bill apart, handing half of it to Gil. This comes after a very heavy conversation, lending to a tension breaker when Grissom reminds her that doing so is a federal offense.
- Snuff Film: Snuff
- The Spock: Grissom
- Sympathetic Murderer: Played absolutely straight in one episode with a guy who is responsible, by complete and total accident, for the death of his grandmother, wife, and next door neighbor, and winds up buried up to his waist in cement for it. The whole thing reads like an extended version The Far Side, complete with the wife wearing cats-eye glasses.
- Take Five
- Television Geography: The frequent presence of lush greenery and vegetation, and moderately frequent rain, in desert Las Vegas on CSI (filming in LA, also a desert but heavily watered) is often a source of amused derision by show fans. Also, Geoff Duncan has written two articles on the geographical inaccuracy of two outside jobs, one in "Jackpot" and another in the 2004 season premiere.
- The Collector Of The Strange: All the creepy crawlies in Grissom's office. There's also an irradiated fetal pig.
- The Wesley: Ray Langston is close to meeting the requirements, if he isn't there already. He's essentially been given Grissom's role in the script without holding Grissom's role in the series, and during the summer break became an Instant Expert in everything, with none of the other characters letting us forget how awesome he now is. To be fair, the camaraderie with Al Robbins and the Hero Worship from Miami's coroner at least fit with the character as introduced.
- Time Delayed Death: Several examples:
- A man who was punched in the back of the head in a bar fight, who later died of a brain hemorrhage in the bath.
- A boy who was stabbed trying to prevent his little brother from murdering their mother's boyfriend tries to walk home, but collapses and dies... right under the tires of a cab. The cabbie then gets beaten to death by a mob who thinks he ran the boy down.
- A football coach is savagely beaten about the head while he sleeps; the next morning he wakes up, brushes his teeth, has breakfast and gets the paper while bleeding profusely from his head and mouth. The ME concludes that parts of his brain was just intact enough to "zombie-walk" him through his morning rituals.
- Token Minority: Warrick Brown until 2008. This role is now played by
Morpheus Dr Raymond Langston.
- Two Lines No Waiting: Nearly every single episode. Occasionally the characters will find out halfway through the episode that the crimes they are investigating are tied together. Some episodes pull this off better than others.
- Villain Episode: Killer and Working Stiffs
- Viva Las Vegas: Duh.
- We Are Everywhere
- Welcome Episode: Subverted in a major way by having a Welcome Episode premiere which ended with Naive Newcomer Holly Gribbs getting shot dead.
- Then played straight when Sara Sidle is brought in to replace her/act as an independent investigator.
- Well Intentioned Extremist: The "neighborhood watch" guy, who can't move due to the economy and has to see an internet porn business and a crackhouse open up on his street.
- Working The Same Case: Frequently
- Youth Is Wasted On The Dumb
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