Written by: Carlton Hollander
Directed by: Lee Smith
Jessica happens on a computerized clue to a murder while writing a mystery story for a friend's interactive video game company.
Tropes:
- Bloodless Carnage: The murder turns out to be one. Despite being shot at close range inside a small VR booth, the murder scene is spotless.
- Chekhov's Gun: A literal gun, a Locked Door in a VR game, and the PA system at the software company.
- Easter Egg: Lindstrom leaves one in all his programs; a short video of him expounding his own philosophy, accessable only by hacking the system.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The VR game launches in 2 days and yet the developers only decide to conduct beta testing (with Jessica Fletcher, the author of the game's plot as the tester) within that span.
- Incredibly Obvious Tail: The private investigator (Dan Porter) following James Lindstrom and David Salt going to John Crowley's office could not have made his surveillance of them any more obvious.
- Knockback: A strange one. When it was shown how the murder was committed, it was shown that the victim was shot from behind. But, rather than falling down facing forward, he is thrown back TOWARDS the killer, doing a sort of Slow-Motion Fall before settling on a Wall Slump.
- Locked Door: Encountered by Jessica on her second attempt at playing the game, it serves as a Chekhov's Gun that provides a clue to the murder later on.
- Scoring Points: There's a points tally in the lower right corner of the VR. At least at the start of the game, it seems you score 500 points every time you talk to someone; you later get larger scores for presumably more plot-relevant encounters. When the maid glitches and Jessica is advised to look away and look back, she apparently loses the points and then regains them, presumably because she didn't let the maid finish (or because they just reran the same scene).
- Sinister Scimitar: The 2nd time Jessica is playing the game she sees two battle axes hanging on a wall and asks that they be changed to sabers. Even though a tech says the axes are now changed to sabers, what actually appears are scimitars.
- Technologically Blind Elders: Dr. Seth Hazlitt, while not a 100% technophobe, has very low opinion on the emergence of computers, virtual reality, or the (then) approaching 21st century.
- Teen Genius: Alex was presented as one, being a very young game developer, and when he was 11 he tried to "hack" the NY Stock Exchange.
- Zeerust: The VR technology (complete with computer bleeps), the computers (and the preponderance of floppy disks), and some elements of the set design were all fairly futuristic concepts/stuff when the episode aired but look dated by present-day standards. Especially with the "virtual reality graphics" which are essentially live action footage made to resemble Commodore graphics.
