History Headscratchers / CSI

** Similar quibble: At the beginning of "Suckers," Grissom pulls the dummy from the pool, and remarks with surprise that "This is not a crime scene." But the initial report of the incident was that an electrical cable had fallen and killed someone, meaning it'd never been considered a crime scene in the first place, merely an ''accident'' scene.

** A little reality check here: the alternative to forensic experts doing most of the things on the show is LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters. Do we want that? The authors of the format likely said ''no''.

*** This Troper's view on it, and also on how the characters and episode-writers probably viewed it, the boyfriend was a stupid and impulsive teen who just plain had no idea how to handle being a father, which he wouldn't, and they cut him some slack in a judgmental sense because he ultimately did change his mind (and for all we or anyone knows he might've regretted walking out on her the moment after he did it) and him having an inadvertent part makes punishing or condemning him rather pointless considering there are more active agents in this (the cheerleaders). It's pretty subjective on who is or isn't fair to judge with situations like the boyfriend's, and he didn't do anything legally wrong, so the episode spending time condemning him more than just pointing out his bad action wouldn't seem worth it to the writers or characters on a crime show. He made a terrible mistake and a selfish decision at the worst possible time, but he had no way of knowing it would turn out the way it did, and if he genuinely wants to do better and try to atone for it, punishing him would sort of be a waste to some. It is kinda hard to answer this though, since we see so little of that part of it, which is what leads to my interpretation/judgment of the situation.

*** Mac from Series/{{CSINY}} and Horatio from Series/{{CSIMiami}} can arrest someone because they were/are sworn police officers who later transferred to their respective labs. But as for the Vegas division, they have to leave it all to Brass pretty much.

*** Reasonable course of action to take first, yes. ''Only'' course of action to even consider ''speculating'' about, until they've completely run out of adult suspects? Not so much; these people are supposed to be examining ''every'' hypothesis that's consistent with evidence, not just the ones that'll make for (yet another) ShockingSwerve of it turning out to be the kid.

** THe boy shot himself in the foot. He lived.

** They wouldn't be the first series to pull this sort of trick deliberately, and kill off a supposed main character [[Series/Spooks early in the]] [[Series/GameOfThrones first season]]. It establishes from the beginning that the stakes are much higher than most TV shows, where main characters have PlotArmor; instead AnyoneCanDie.

* The dead bail bondsman in "Homebodies" turned out to have staged his suicide to look like a murder, by tying some big toy balloons to his gun so it would be carried away after he shot himself outdoors. The gun wound up falling into a suburban yard, where a little boy found it and accidentally died by handling it. But if he'd intended to kill himself with a single shot, and he wanted the weapon to be lightweight and easy for the balloons to carry, why didn't the suicidal guy load only one bullet into the handgun? He knew it could wind up in anyone's hands, even a kid's, so it's reckless to have left any extra rounds in the weapon, especially when every extra gram of weight was likely to reduce the distance it traveled, and he wanted it to drift as far as possible to conceal his manner of death.

* The dead bail bondsman in "Homebodies" turned out to have staged his suicide to look like a murder, by tying some big toy balloons to his gun so it would be carried away after he shot himself. The gun wound up falling into a suburban yard, where a little boy found it and accidentally died by handling it. But if he'd intended to kill himself with a single shot, and he wanted the weapon to be lightweight and easy for the balloons to carry, why didn't the suicidal guy load only one bullet into the handgun? He knew it could wind up in anyone's hands, even a kid's, so it's reckless to have left any extra rounds in the weapon, especially when every extra gram of weight was likely to reduce the distance it traveled, and he wanted it to drift as far as possible to conceal his manner of death.

* Surprised no one asked this yet: in the "Living Doll/Dead Doll", how does Natalie lower the car onto Sara with no heavy equipment or anything? Unless she has some kind of PsychicPowers or SuperStrength that she only ever uses that one time for some reason, it seems like a huge PlotHole.

* In the episode Wild Life, an elderly couple is found dead. Eventually it's revealed that the man fell in the tub, and the woman fell on her knife. However, it never occurs to anyone until over halfway through the episode that anyone even suggests that even one of the deaths is an accident (... an old man is found dead in a tub and "slipped and fell" doesn't even cross anyone's mind?). Admittedly, falling on the knife is... unlikely, but no one came up with that idea until the very end.

** Also, keep in mind - that the show has to kinda keep some semblance of drama about it - and every case can't be incredibly complex. So sometimes that key piece of evidence that would often be among the first they get, doesn't get found until the last moment - even though there's no real reason. And sometimes they avoid asking the obvious questions, until the evidence reaches out and slaps them over the head. A particularly egregious example of the latter was in "Living Legend" the entire CSI department was on an episode-long idiot ball, just so they could set up the final scenes

* Exactly what kind of legal consequences did Ray Langston get for killing Nate Haskell? I can't imagine that he would be prosecuted for murder, since any DA who tried to press charges against Langston would probably end up in very hot water with his constituents. Even if Langston was charged, I could just as easily see the families of Haskell's victims pooling their resources to hire the CSI universe's equivalent of F. Lee Bailey to defend him, or being acquitted by the jury simply as a matter of principle through [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_Nullification#United_States jury nullification.]] I wouldn't be surprised if there were even people phoning the Las Vegas Mayor's office demanding that he give Langston the key to the city or something like that. What exactly happened to Langston after he killed Haskell?

** Those fingerprints left at Paul's crimescenes where from a ceramic hand that used Paul Millander sr's(Paul/Pauline's father)hand as the mold so that's likely where the unknown male dna came from. As for the Csi's not realizing that Paul had a double life,when Grissom first tries to get judge Mason arrested Mason mentions that police had come to his door before in reguards to the Paul Millander case and he convinced them that he was NOT Millander but a look a like.

* I can't believe no one noticed this before, I mean, don't autopsy rooms in all three shows look a little innappropiate for examining corpses? Medical examination involves high biological risks, and those morgues don't look too safe for that.

* As of season 4 Grissom won't let Catherine work on a case involving Sam Braun or his casinos. Fair enough considering they now know she's Sam's daughter and it would be a conflict of interest. However why was Catherine allowed to work on cases involving Sam or his Casinos before this? They may have been unaware that Sam was Catherine's father but it was common knowledge that Catherine was friends with the Braun family yet she was still allowed to work cases like the one where one of Sam's sons killed the other. Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't that still be a conflict of interest and therefore keep Catherine off the case?

* So did we ever find out why the miniture killer was scared of bleach? Or why she killed her sister and those other people?

*** Uh,yes she was. When Grissom goes to see Natalie at the prison/detention center (for her hearing) he finds her doing laundry (including working with Bleach) and she specifically states that this is a therapy to help her with her fear. I'm pretty sure she didn't fear laundry so it must have been the bleach. Additionally why would the presence of Bleach set her off if she didn't have a negative association with it? Unfortunately the show never seemed to explain exactly WHY the Bleach set her off in the first place.

* Did Kelly from Grave Danger really commit the crime she was in jail for or was she innocent like she said? For some reason have always wondered this.
* In "Kitty", they say that they've went through all of the databases and couldn't find anyone who looked like Kitty. But we later find out that Kitty is actually a virtual version of a real person, so why did the computer not recognize her then?

* In season 1 episode "Blood Drops", there seems to be an unexplained MoodWhiplash at the end - the case is easily the most gruesome one so far (a quadruple murder fueled by a father raping his daughter and ''then'' raping the ChildByRape?) yet there seems to be even less emotional reaction than the cases before, which is especially strange given that a few episodes ago Grissom established sexual abuse of children is one of the few things that [[BerserkButton really sets him off]].

* Do we ever find out what happened to Leo Finley from A Thousand Days on Earth? Or if Catherine Willows ever faced any consequences from her ruining his life?

** In Las Vegas, firearms ''do'' have to be registered with [=LVMPD=] (which takes about 5 minutes) and you get issued a "blue card" which is your proof of registration. To carry concealed you need to pass a separate concealed carry license (that involved an actual range test) and covers either semi-autos or revolvers (whichever you used in your range test or you can take both at once).

** The low man on the totem pole is always the one who answers the phone - the bigwigs are too busy doing important stuff to answer phones. This is the main source of back channel gossip in real life (the boss' assistant always knows what's going on!).

* In the episode 4x4, they show a day in the lives of the cast... everyone gets a case, basically. And Greg and Sara end up investigating a dead body builder's house, only for Doc Robins to have them pulled out for hazmat scares. Sara and Greg go back into the house later, wearing only respirators, to track the source of the mold... but, the guys who came in to pull them out and hose them down were in full body suits! What?
** The best part is that mold doesn't have to be breathed to be hazardous. It could've gotten on their hair or clothes and then spread out from the house just as easily.

*** Really? Because to me NY seemed like the most realistic one. No one's particularly well skilled at multiple fields and the tech is at least reasonably possible.

* In one episode, they claim that, when a man says "I loved my wife" instead of "I love my wife," it implicates him as the killer because he didn't use her name in the present tense. He was later found to be the killer, but still: Excuse me, what? Am I going to be blamed for a crime because I don't use a word in the present tense? That seemed to be grabbing at straws to find the killer, regardless of whether or not he was the killer.

** Yeah, the show itself explained this. Brass says that, in all his years in the force, he has never heard anyone refer to their dead loved ones in the past tense unless they had something to do with their death. It's not that he "blamed" the husband for the crime, but that his attitude made Brass suspicious... which led to the investigation. Where they used ''evidence'' to prove he was the killer.

** Because statistics tend to play out far more frequently than TV seems to show - often because that's more entertaining and less predictable. However, it's not just the fact that someone was murdered that the guy is the first suspect, it's also the sex of the victim and the means in which they died. For instance, if the victim is female, and cause of death was BFT, large caliber weapon, or stabbing with a hunting knife then the suspect is most likely male. However, if the victim is male, and the cause of death was poison or a kitchen knife, then the suspect would most likely be female
*** But they're just implying that a woman can't kill a man with a big heavy peice of death-delivering equipment! Isn't that a wee bit sexist? (I'm not implying she can overpower her hubby if she charged him head on with a hunting knife. I'm saying that why can't they do an episode where they show a woman carefully planning how to kill her husband with said hunting knife?)

*** Never confuse "unlikely" with "impossible". Just because this could hold true for the majority doesn't mean it holds true for everyone.

* On one of the episodes during the first season, the team finds a strange fingerprint that have some sort of plastic in it. They later find out that the killer was using a plastic model of a real hand to leave these fingerprints. Unfortunately, fingerprints are only left behind due to oils on a human finger being rubbed off onto a surface, so unless this plastic was dipped in baby oil before use, it shouldn't have left any prints...
** Right. They showed the killer spraying it with a cooking oil to leave prints. The show was a multi-parter so that was easily missed.

* Honestly, I'm a bit surprised nobody's mentioned this yet. Fur And Loathing is the only episode of any of the shows I've seen. I kind of liked it, but [[UsefulNotes/FurryFandom I'm sure some of you can guess why I'm writing this.]] I can't really even think how to start. Firstly, no, those suits trap enough heat already without being made of latex, let alone in NEVADA! Secondly, yes, a good majority of us demonstrate *some* interest in the sexual aspects, but 95/100 times costumes aren't involved, 99/100 times that's not the full extent of it, and it's definitely NOT the focal point of conventions. Third, I'm by no means a prude, and I'm kind of in that previously mentioned 5/100, but my god, why is this so squick-filled? If you're abusing a fetish to the point it disgusts people WITH THAT FETISH, there's a problem.
** Chillax brah. You're not alone. They made a foot fetishist one of the creepiest murderers on the whole show. And i was not bothered.
** Chill, that is one of the most hated episodes to begin with, even by people who do not care or like that fetish. It was just a bad presentation of a fetish.

* I'm not sure if this I'm the only one bothered by this, or if I even should be, but out of all the casinos and hotels is Las Vegas quite a few crime scenes are at that Tangiers place. I know there are episodes involving other places, but the show seems to like having crimes take place at the Tangiers, or having something happen to its employees. Maybe there are offscreen cases that are in other places, but the writers seem to enjoy episodes involving the Tangiers, either the place itself or its employees and patrons. It's gotten to the point where when I'm watching reruns of the older seasons when a body turns up, I could guess that they were either recently there or work there, and chances were pretty good I'd be right.

* It's a minor IdiotBall moment but still bugged me in its sheer pointlessness: in a season 1 episode, the team finds a head that's apparently been clumsily hacked off with an axe. Catherine says it looks like a crime of passion. "You really think a woman did this?" Grissom asks skeptically - because, uh, no crime of passion's ever been committed by a jealous husband? And gay people don't exist? (As it turns out the victim ''was'' gay, and was killed by his ex, so Catherine was right and they would have been on the right track much earlier if they'd made the blindingly obvious connection between "crime of passion" and "probably not a female killer" rather than acting like those two are mutually exclusive.)
** Here's a thought: Grissom made an error in judgement because he's human and.... surprise! Humans tend to do that sort of thing. YES, even PROFESSIONALS. I KNOW! Isn't it MINDBLOWING?!

** People who just don't like cheerleaders, believe they're all the stereotypical high school cheerleaders, and they find a video where one of them supposedly calls herself a "whore"? Yeah, they may get all over that.

** Because Hodges used to be a hell of a SmallNameBigEgo back in the day. He sucked up to Grissom- to the point where at times it seemed like he had deluded himself into believing Grissom regarded him as an equal- yet was pretty condescending to everyone else, especially Greg. He acted like the evidence he processed was more important than all the other labs, and not to mention he didn't think highly of field work, which was one half of the CSI's job. All in all he wasn't put down so much as he insulted the CSI's so they insulted back. And besides, Grissom was [[AmbiguousDisorder Grissom]] - he'd be the last guy to understand Hodges' way of thinking.

* Call me a pedant, but in the season 1 episode "Friends and Lovers", the friend of a victim says he has a spider bite, and when it's looked at Grissom remarks "That's no insect bite". Surely any forensic scientist (or 10 year old) knows a spider isn't an insect.

** Similar quibble: At the beginning of "Suckers", Grissom pulls the dummy from the pool, and remarks with surprise that "This is not a crime scene". But the initial report of the incident was that an electrical cable had fallen and killed someone, meaning it'd never been considered a crime scene in the first place, merely an ''accident'' scene.
** On a similar note, in a season 2 episode Grissom confidently states that "the terminal velocity" for a falling human is 9.8 metres per second squared. Leaving aside the fact that he doesn't seem to know what "terminal velocity" means (it's "maximum possible velocity" not "velocity that would definitely be fatal")... that's not even a velocity, it's the rate of acceleration due to gravity.

** She's seen in Dead Doll using some sort of crane.

** Well, there ''was'' that one ep with ghosts, even if they were only there as part of the framing sequence. Methinks the supernatural exists, but the cast basically never have a reason to enounter it.

*** Nah, the psychic from "The Stalker" was the mousy guy who had premonitions about Nick's very own stalker, the cable guy that set up shop in his victims' attic/crawlspace. The psychic had far too accurate visions of the original victim as well as Nick's house.
*** But he's also shown being wrong. When Nick lets him into his house, he starts babbling about Nick's stalker (which seems accurate,) but then turns and says "Green tea! Does that mean anything to you?" which causes Nick to appear even more skeptical. The show provided examples that could lean either way; maybe he's psychic, or maybe he's just a nutjob...

*** Having rewatched the episode, the "green tea" is completely related to the the rug which has the large letter T in green (lord knows why besides the fact that it shares the same pronunciation as the drink). Thus, this fully supports the psyhic being legitimate. Everything he called out was information that the public didn't know and he would have had no way of knowing without being a member of the investigation (which he wasn't); furthermore he fully predicts *future* events, not just ones that already happened. The episode never explains this or even his fate but we are left to assume he's dead.

* Are we supposed to believe that the crime scene investigators are responsible for research, interrogation, capture arrest and conviction? that's stupid!

*** Law and Order doesn't do it, but it is actually interesting.
*** ''Law & Order'' doesn't do this, but it ''does'' often have high-ranking members of the District Attorney's office doing police-style investigations, which is nearly as unrealistic.

** Also, that's a bit snarky and basically untrue. On the original series, the CSI team members ''never'' arrest anyone -- they're not even police officers. Even the other series, where they are, the team only actually performs the arrest on the rare occasion that they end up in a showdown with the suspect. As for "conviction", the closest I think we've ever come to that is that we occasionally see a CSI testifying in court. Yes, they're involved in interviews. It would be a bit strange for the people whose job it is to gather evidence not to be involved with the gathering of evidence. I'm inclined to think that the troper who found this stupid is either confusing the crime scene techs with the homicide detectives (Every show features a group of criminologists and two or three homicide detectives who work closely with them), or jumped to their conclusion a bit prematurely.
*** In real life, [=CSIs=] are scientists, not police officers, and would not be involved in interviews or anything more in-depth than analysing crime scenes, bodies and related objects, and passing that information over to the homicide detectives before moving on to the next crime scene. They would be called into court to testify as to the relevance and usefulness of the evidence, though.

*** Mac from CSI:NY and Horatio from CSI:Miami can arrest someone. It looks like both the Miami and New York divisions have cop powers along with their CSI powers. But as for the Vegas division, they have to leave it all to Brass pretty much.

*** There is a scene from an early season, maybe 1 0r 2, where Grissom tells an officer not to turn on the lights because he "wants to see everything the way the murderer saw it".

*** Because when they use a flashlight the viewer are aware of exactly what they're looking at and therefore if the light pauses it's on something important

Do we ever find out what happened to Leo Finley from A Thousand Days on Earth? Or if Catherine Willows ever faced any consequences from her ruining his life?

*** Uh,yes she was. When Grissom goes to see Natalie at the prison/detention center(for her hearing) he finds her doing laundry(including working with Bleach) and she specifically states that this is a therapy to help her with her fear. I'm pretty sure she didn't fear laundry so it must have been the bleach. Additionally why would the presence of Bleach set her off if she didn't have a negative asociation with it? Unfortunately the show never seemed to explain exactly WHY the Bleach set her off in the first place.

** The CSIs didn't find out the horrible truth until the very end of the episode. The last scene shows Grissom trying to solve a crossword puzzle, which might be his way of coping with the horror of what he'd just learned.