History Series / LawAndOrderCriminalIntent

* TurnInYourBadge: Goren gets hit with this several times, most notably when he goes undercover in a prison without permission.

* TakeThat: The "Blasters" episode does this towards ''Series/SavedByTheBell'' with the show that the victim starred in as an {{Expy}} called ''Goofin' Around'' and he being based on Screech/Dustin Diamond and his costar/friend being a composite of Zack/Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Slater/Mario Lopez.

* ThanatosGambit: The wife in "A Murderer Among Us". She was dead by her own hand, but the way she died was able to allow the detectives to discover that her husband was a serial killer of Jewish men, which she was also and who died like she did and to protect their daughter from him.

* SpottingTheThread: Obviously, all the detectives are good seeing the tiny flaw in a case that leads to the truth.
** In "Faith," Goren is already suspicious of the stories of Erica, a sick girl whose blog and best-selling book have made her a star and numerous donations to her family...despite there being no photos of the girl. On the phone with Erica, Goren asks questions on her condition such as how the ALS has affected her menstrual cycle. Her mother cuts in on how this is an "attack" and hangs up. Rather than be upset, Eames and Deakins are able to tell with Goren that "Erica" should have answered such questions on her health with ease and that she couldn't means she doesn't even exist.

* StarvingArtist: Nichols discusses this in "Rock Star" with a suspect in the episode's two different murders, an aspiring rapper. He states about how in spite of hundreds of thousands of musicians come to New York every year in pursuit of fame, on average only about ''10'' people actually make it, regardless of any distinguishing talent they may have.

* ShowWithinAShow: "Tomorrow" has two nanny sisters and suspects be fans of a soap opera named ''In The Shadow of Tomorrow''. [[spoiler: Several plotlines are reenacted by the girls, including poisoning one of their young clients and manipulating a another's employer in a father-daughter bond.]]
* ShutUpHannibal: Logan gets a great one in after the suspect in "The Healer", an alleged Voodoo priestess who is nothing more than a master manipulator and a poisoner who even poisoned him and [[DiggingYourselfDeeper continued to make thinly-veiled threats against him upon being arrested]]:

* SmallNameBigEgo: The killer from ''Unrequited'', who had starred in a play as a young girl and still had delusions of grandeur over fifty years later and manipulated her toady into killing her husband.

* SorrowfulStutter: Subverted in "The Unblinking Eye"; at a vigil for his slain girlfriend, a man engaged in this trope when trying to recite a Robert Frost poem and eventually gets overwhelmed as his best friend consoles him, but his "grieving" was just an audition to show off his acting chops and it comes out that he killed his girlfriend because she was a more talented actor than he was and had more potential for success.

* PrivateMilitaryContractors: In "Boots on the Ground", the VictimOfTheWeek is an activist who been infiltrating two rival private contractors. This leaves plenty of suspects with military training.

* PsychopathicWomanchild: The killer from "Poison" had shades of this: she [[LackOfEmpathy lacked the sense of empathy]] that most adults possessed and [[ItsAllAboutMe looked at the world by only her terms]], threw tantrums when she didn't get her way (and even had one upon being arrested by clinging onto a countertop, forcing the detectives to pry her hands off of it) and [[ItMakesSenseInContext smacked around a baby doll]] after being told her mother's arrest for the poisonings ended her deal with a clothing store she hoped to own and even admitted to her mother that she only married her recently-deceased husband so that she wouldn't pass judgment on her for sleeping around with him beforehand.

** Also in "Death Roe". The killer is arrested in the end, but at the same time [[spoiler:his daughter]] now has a tainted name and most likely will have the restaurant shut down by the Department of Health and can't find work elsewhere, is left an emotionally damaged [[spoiler:widow and he bursts out that no one will ever want her once the truth comes out.]]

** The bodies of the husband and his mistress from "Betrayed" are never located in part to [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Captain Ross' personal feelings and interference with the investigation.]]

** In "In Treatment", a psychiatrist gives one of his patients an antidepressant that he knows is contraindicated with the antidepressant he is currently taken. The combination causes a variety of side-effects, including delirium, which causes the patient to commit suicide.
** The killer from "Semi-Detached" had tampered with the victim's anti-depressants while working as a nurse at the rehab center he was staying at by switching them with placebos.
** A truly despicable example was in "Malignant" where a pharmacist was watering down chemotherapy drugs and the like (because he was struggling to make ends meet and could get more profit for his expenses that way), to the point that a woman who was given a strong chance of surviving her cancer died because she wasn't getting the treatment she needed. Eames pointed out that they may as well been treating the patients with water instead.
* MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: Doubled. Murder is hardly a minor crime, but the reasons behind it always end up being ''far'' more complicated than was hinted at in the opening sequence.

** The political leader in "Assassin". She is being frequently targeted for death due to her many causes and outspoken nature only for her loved ones to be killed instead, but [[spoiler: she was the one who had the "botched" assassinations play out to look like a martyr and to enhance her international power and influence.]]

** The suspect from "Blink" is a professional gambler and thrill-seeker who constantly risks his own life to the point that it shocks his heartbroken wife into thinking that he could be killed any day ultimately decides that it would be best to get police protection from the dangerous people he has been involved with, not for his wife and their son, but for himself.

* JadedWashout: The record producer in "Rock Star" was a man still living on his past glories of being a hit in TheSixties and having the third-longest set at Woodstock. When he tries to bring up the impact he had and his musical talent, Nichols shuts him down by telling him that his band was terrible, he was on the stage at Woodstock so long because they wouldn't get off the stage in spite of the crowd's negative reaction and even declared his Grammy to be a joke, stating how even Music/MilliVanilli [[TakeThat has one.]]

* InterchangeableAsianCultures: Invoked in "Great Barrier" as the [[spoiler: Chinese-American]] jewelry thief disguised [[spoiler:herself as a Japanese woman and a Singaporean woman to avoid detection.]] Goren picked up on the atypical mannerisms in the surveillance system an was able to discover the suspect's true identity.

** Bernard Fremont from "Slither" has a thing for beautiful and fit younger blondes and if they weren't already blonde, he would arrange for her hair to be dyed as such.
* HeManWomanHater: PlayedForDrama in "Baggage" where the victim was a female supervisor at an airline who was undermined and bullied by her jealous male subordinates in a way that even a grade schooler wouldn't stoop to, including explicitly discussing rape fantasies, sending her lewd drawings and pouring ''urine'' in her locker.

* HollywoodAtheist: A suspect in "Brother's Keeper" was seen as this. He had long since given up his faith in God and turned virulently against religion because [[CynicismCatalyst his son was born mentally disabled.]] [[spoiler: Turns out, he had killed the victim because she had told her televangelist husband about this and he used this as a platform to explain God's "ultimate plan".]]

* GoodAdulteryBadAdultery: The suspect and victim from "The Good Doctor" both had affairs in their marriage, but since he was portrayed as a {{Jerkass}} and abusive ([[InformedWrongness apparently]]), his cheating was much worse than hers was, in spite of her being an addict with mental health issues and she could have easily ran off on her husband.

* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Averted in "The Third Horseman". The killer's former girlfriend became pregnant by him but she ended the pregnancy although he wanted to be a father.

* FreudianExcuse: The killer from "The Posthumous Collection" kills women and poses them in elaborate, grotesque poses as a revenge fantasy towards his abusive mother, grandmother and three older sisters.

* FlawExploitation: In "The Saint," this is the criminal's motivation. [[spoiler: He believes the church is taking advantage of his mentally ill mother, who insists on donating everything she can to their cause - to the point of completely cleaning out their bank account because she thinks the church needs the money more.]]

* FalseConfession: In "Stress Position", the VictimOfTheWeek was a prison guard who was murdered by his shift supervisor who was worried that he might be about to spill the beans regarding the the mistreatment of the [[TheJailer 'off-the-books' prisoners]] in the secure wing. He then gave enough information about the killing to make a believable confession to an ex-con he knew to be a serial confessor, and pointed Goren and Ames at the ex-con as someone who had beef with the guard. The ex-con immediately confesses when Goren and Ames confront him, but Goren gets suspicious because the man was packed up and ready to go back to prison before they arrived at his apartment.

* DefectiveDetective: Goren, although Logan has his issues as well, which the former is more noticeable since creator Rene Balcer left.

* SerialKillingsSpecificTarget: In "Poison," Trudy Pomeranski uses poisoned [=OTC=] painkillers to murder her husband, and slips the extras onto store shelves to allay suspicion and set up a lucrative class action lawsuit.

* TheLostLenore: Literally and seemingly invoked with Lenore Abrigaille in "Palimpsest", although she's actually a subversion. She's not dead, but Nichols had to leave her after her schizophrenia developed to a point where she couldn't function much outside her antiquated home. Inside it, she relives the same day every day, over and over again.f