History Series / FoylesWar

* {{Needle in a Stack of Needles}}: Unless the detective force is on the ball, hiding your crimes amidst the confusion and general mayhem of war is a no-brainer; motive, method and opportunity all have RedHerrings in ample supply:

** Sam doesn't hide her curiosity about the crimes Foyle investigates and often makes suggestions or conjectures of her own--though sometimes she does offer useful insights when some aspect of the crime involves something she knows about (like machinery or, in one case, gardening). She gets her wish in "Among the Few" when Foyle places her undercover in a fuel depot because he doesn't have any actual officers available for the job and lifts some key evidence in spite of getting locked in a room with a (faulty) bomb. When she's with MI-5 and goes undercover as a companion and reader for an invalid, she names Creator/AgathaChristie as her favorite author in the interview.

* GallowsHumor: Bridges, a recovering burn victim in "Enemy Fire", warns Andrew not to stay in the hospital long or they'll have the skin off his arse for grafts, and jokes with Sam that his post-war career isn't likely to include acting or modeling.

* NeverMyFault: Judge Gascgoine blames his wife Emily [[spoiler:for his murder of a child because the house was too expensive to keep up. She responds by taking the revolver from his desk and shooting him. When confessing, she calmly tells Foyle that she didn't do it because she hated him, but because it was the right thing to do.]]

* BittersweetEnding: "Sunflower." [[spoiler: Foyle successfully hands Strasser over to the Americans, Adam exposes his boss' machinations, and Sam is pregnant. But in the process, Foyle and Valentine destroy their careers in intelligence, Adam loses his party's confidence, and if Foyle is out of a job, then so is Sam. Averted, in that if Sam is pregnant, she would be expected to leave her job in any case, and Foyle is thoroughly unhappy in his post and has already retired more than once. Valentine is the main loser, and could have prevented the handover of Strasser.]]
** The series finale, "Elise." [[spoiler: Sam finally tells Foyle about the pregnancy and asks him to be godfather. However, Hilda Pierce commits suicide, taking Ian Woodhead with her, and Foyle's trust in Elizabeth Addis has been destroyed.]]

* BlackMarketProduce: In "Bleak Midwinter", set in rationing-bound UsefulNotes/WorldWarII England, Foyle busts an operation that's been smuggling restricted food, leading to a subplot for the rest of the episode about who's going to end up with the food once it's done being held as evidence.

* DirtyCop: [[spoiler:Chief Superintendent Usborne in the final season]].

** Inverted again in "Sunflower," where the Americans are very much in the right about Karl Strasser.

* NeverMyFault: Judge Gascgoine blames his wife Emily [[spoiler:for his murder of a child because the house was too expensive to keep up. She responds by taking the revolver from his desk and shooting him. When confessing, she calmly tells Foyle that she didn't do it because she hated im, but because it was the right thing to do.]]

* BlackShirt: In "Trespass", a former member of Mosley's black shirts was attempting to start up a similar organisation in post-war Britain. Although he claims to be in favour of a single European government, in his first speech he reveals it will be a Europe free of Jews, Slavs and other 'undesirables'. He whips a mob into a frenzy where they murder a pair of harmless Polish refugees in the mistaken belief they are Jewish.

** Sam doesn't hide her curiosity about the crimes Foyle investigates and often makes suggestions or conjectures of her own--though sometimes she does offer useful insights when some aspect of the crime involves something she knows about (like machinery or, in one case, gardening). She gets her wish in "Among the Few" when Foyle places her undercover in a fuel depot because he doesn't have any actual officers available for the job and lifts some key evidence in spite of getting locked in a room with a (faulty) bomb.

* SimilarNameOverlap:

* JustFollowingOrders: In "High Castle," Frank asks a Nuremburg prosecutor if it's really necessary for them to go on trying industrialists and other civilians who were subordinate to the Nazi high command. To show him why it is, the prosecutor takes him to the industrialist's old factory--Monowitz, a "sub-camp" of Auschwitz that was built because so many prisoners were dying on the forced marches from there to the work sites. He spares no detail in describing the hellish conditions that the enslaved prisoners were forced into for the sake of civilian industrialists, who knew exactly what was being done to their "workforce".

* MistakenForCheating: Sam in "Invasion." As soon as she gets a letter from Andrew saying he's breaking up to date someone at the base, she accepts the invitation of an American soldier who's been flirting with her. Foyle is quietly but visibly irritated with her until she explains that Andrew gave her the push, and he apologizes for making judgments.

* YourDaysAreNumbered: The bomb-clearing Engineers in "A War of Nerves." When Hammond started, the average survival rate was seven weeks, and he notes that they found out how German bombs work mostly by being blown up. [[spoiler:Which is why he's so fatalistic about stealing from, and then being killed by the Talbots--it was liable to occur through the normal course of his duties anyway.]]

* CrypticConversation: Stafford, one of the staff at the spy school in "The French Drop", talks with Foyle about some of the dirty tricks they're teaching students to use, and pointedly mentions carborundum powder for locking up car brakes. After [[spoiler:Maccoby]] is arrested for attempting revenge by using it in Foyle's car, Foyle thanks Stafford for the warning but notes that it would have been more useful if it was less covert.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Dr. Wrenn [[spoiler:is absolutely distraught when he finally confesses to murdering Gordon Drake because, as he'd protested before, he's a doctor and therefore dedicated to ''saving'' lives. Fortunately, it turns out that he didn't kill Drake by hitting him with a rock--it just left Drake incapacitated enough for someone else to drown him in a horse trough.]]