CSINY / Tropes M to Z

CSI: NY | Tropes 0 to L

M-P

• MacGuffin: A Season 5 arc involves a murder victim's flash drive said to contain scandalous info which could ruin the careers of many city leaders. It is, by turn, placed into evidence, begged for by various characters, stolen from the evidence locker, stolen from the first thief, and ultimately revealed only to the audience to have been dropped down a subway grate by the second thief... as he was being murdered for it. The drive's contents are known only by its original owner, two of the investigators, and the thieves, but never made public either in-universe or to the audience.
• MacGyvering:
  • Danny taking fingerprints with pen ink and so forth in the panic room, coached by Stella, in 'Trapped.'
  • Mac making the lazer wall, with Stella's help, during the storming of the lab in 'Snow Day.'
  • Mac & Stella use a candle, the local fountain, a Greek/Turkish coffee pot, and one of her pewter earrings (as a catalyst) to test a soil sample while at an outdoor cafe in Greece during 'Grounds for Deception.'
  • Sheldon using sulfuric acid from a recyclable battery to weaken the prison cell bars in 'Redemptio.'
• Mad Bomber: 'Charge of this Post.' The perp blows up a building to draw attention to his belief that "WE'RE NOT READY!" for a terrorist attack.
• Madness Mantra:
  • 'Three Generations Are Enough' features a document on a hard drive wherein the episode title is repeated over and over.
  • When one of the suspects in 'Jamalot' is given a legal pad to write out his statement, all he fills the page with is "He plagiarized me. He plagiarized me. He plagiarized me..."
• The Main Characters Do Everything: As shown in the photo montage on this trope's main page, even tho Mac is the head of the Lab and should be delegating and supervising, he frequently analyses evidence, pursues criminals and interrogates suspects.
  • Basically the same as Outranking Your Job below. Applies to most of the cast as well.
• Major Injury Underreaction: In 'Recycling,' a bike courier pedaling at top speed is stabbed, resulting in a severed artery and a hairline fracture of the pelvis. He's so high on adrenaline he doesn't even notice he's bleeding out.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
  • Danny & Lindsay on his pool table in 'Snow Day.'
  • The nude bungee jumpers in 'People with Money.'
  • The victim in 'Turbulence' who joins the Mile-High Club (see below) shortly before his demise.
• Malevolent Architecture: The booby-trapped penthouse in 'Death House.'
• Malevolent Masked Men:
  • The bank vault robbers in 'Rain.'
  • The muggers in 'Civilized Lies.'
• Mama Bear: Lindsay. Threaten Danny and/or Lucy at your peril.
• Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal:
  • Played straight by the perp's mother in 'What You See Is What You See.' She does, however, relent and gives Stella and Mac permission to search her property for him...knowing he's in a camper in her back yard.
  • Averted in 'Damned If You Do' in that the mother is right about her son being innocent.
• Man Bites Man:
  • One of the miners in 'A Man a Mile' bites off part of another's ear. Danny says he got "Tysoned."
  • The female victim in 'Sanguine Love' has part of an ear bitten off as well.
  • In 'Uncertainty Rules,' a little person who wrestles for a living is known to bite his opponents on the shin.
• Maneki Neko: Counterfeits are used as a vehicle for smuggling cocaine in 'Unwrapped.'
• Man on Fire: Used in back-to-back episodes in season 3 and again in season 5.
  • In "The Ride In," a man dressed in a cigarette costume dies because he'd been set on fire from another person's lit cigarette being tossed at him and, ironically, his outfit wasn't flame-retardant.
  • In the next episode, "Sleight Out of Hand," there is a magician who sets himself on fire as a magic trick. While the magician is performing his trick, a guy several blocks away burns to death from being set on fire. Later, Mac demonstrates the cooling gel used by stunt performers for "burns", aka setting themselves on fire, slathering it on a sleeve that covered his arm and inviting Danny to ignite it.
    Mac: Come on, what other job lets you set your boss on fire?
    Danny: Sold, but if you go up in flames, I get your office?
  • In the 100th episode, "My Name Is Mac Taylor," a grieving boyfriend turned vigilante murderer tries Self-Immolation in a suicide attempt. He is rushed to the hospital, but his injuries are so severe it is left up in the air whether he will live to stand trial.
• Marked Bullet: The rival gangs in 'Sangre por Sangre' carve their gangs' initials into their bullets as a way of taking credit for their kills.
• Married to the Job:
  • Mac, for most of the series. Many times he doesn't even go home to sleep and often pulls 2 or 3 day shifts with only the occasional nap on the couch in his office. Whenever his phone rings while he's doing anything personal, he drops whatever he's doing and heads straight to the Lab or a crime scene. Re-connecting with and eventually (presumably, given the proposal) marrying Christine pulls him out of it a bit, but he does confess to her that he has a problem with always putting work first.
  • Stella, too, sometimes. In 'Blink' she reveals to Danny that she listens to the police scanner even while showering.
    Danny: Why does that not surprise me?
    Stella: The job never stops, Danny.
• Marrying the Mark: The fiance of the dead perp in 'Identity Crisis' is told he would likely have been her next victim.
• Matrix Raining Code: At least once, in 'The Thing About Heroes,' when the team is trying to analyze data on a broken MP3 player.
• Meaningful Name: The last name of "Laughing Larry," the joke shop owner in 'Child's Play,' is Gelachter, which is German for "laughter."
• Medal of Dishonor: How Lindsay feels about hers at the beginning of season 7.
• The Medic: Sheldon Hawkes was an ER doc before he became a coroner and ultimately a CSI, works in a clinic on his days off and sometimes serves on the team of bicycle medics in Central Park. In one episode, Mac asks him to stay outside while he and the other officers chase a heavily armed gang into a building because he expects casualties needing immediate medical attention. Sheldon replies, "Then this is where I'll be." In another, he tends to Sid before the ambulance arrives when the M.E. is exposed to radiation.
• Medication Tampering:
  • In 'Blood Actually,' the killer swaps a diabetic victim's insulin for sugar syrup, so that when he goes to inject himself with insulin, he is in fact shooting up more sugar.
  • In 'Time's Up,' a college student has her asthma inhaler switched for a drug that enhances sexual arousal, causing her to suffer a fatal asthma attack while orgasming.
• Menacing Mask: "Uncertainty Rules." On an introverted young man's 21st birthday, he is held at gunpoint by his two best friends who are wearing rubber clown masks with spiked red hair, pointed teeth, and evil grins. ^note The gun turns out to be a realistic-looking water pistol filled with vodka, and they're there to force him to go out on the town for once.
• Mercy Kill: Averted by Mac, who tells Sheldon (in 'Here's to You, Mrs. Azreal') he was unable to pull the plug when his father, who was in severe pain from the final stages of cancer, had asked him to.
• Mid-Suicide Regret: One of the teenagers in the Suicide Pact in "Blood, Sweat and Tears" decides not to go thru with it immediately after trying and later tells Mac, "Suddenly I realized everything that was wrong in my life, I could fix."
• Mile-High Club: 'Turbulence' has Mac discovering a dead body on a plane. It turns out this guy was a fugitive who was trying to flee and was told by his flight attendant girlfriend to tie up and rob an air marshal. He murdered him instead. They then had sex in the lavatory before he threatened to hijack the plane, and he was killed for it.
• Miranda Rights. Most, if not every episode, with some variations.
  Mac: You have the right to remain silent; use it.
  Flack [to the girl who shot Mac in 'Near Death']: Shut up! That's short for "You have the right to remain silent."
  Flack [to a suspect in 'Blood Out']: Hey, Moron, one more word outta you and I'ma duct tape your mouth shut!
• Mistaken for Aliens: An urban paintball player is mistaken for an alien by an insane woman in 'Consequences'. He mauled by a Bear Trap she set in the alley to catch aliens and spends most of the episode convalescing in her apartment's bathtub.
• Mistaken for an Imposter: The victim in 'Boo' who escapes from being buried alive is at first mistaken as simply being dressed as a zombie. It is Halloween after all.
• Mistaken for Cheating:
  • Danny. When one of his rookies shoots an unarmed man instead of the armed man who confronted them, she deflects attention from herself by saying Danny was cheating with her and told her to lie. A video from the bar shows her cozying up to Danny and makes Internal Affairs more suspicious, though Danny denies it and insists she came on to him. Lindsay eventually pressures the rookie to admit the truth and clear Danny.
  • The Ugly Guy in the Ugly Guy, Hot Wife couple in 'Blood Actually.' His wife, who is intensely in love with him, thinks he is cheating so she gives her diabetic husband regular chocolates disguised as sugar-free ones and replaces his insulin with sugar water. Turns out the "other woman" is a travel agent he was using to plan their 5th anniversary dream vacation.
  • The victim in 'Rush to Judgement' and two of the suspects in 'The Formula' are suspected of cheating as well. The assumptions all turn out to be incorrect.
• Mistaken for Junkie:
  • Hawkes. His girlfriend is the actual (casual) user; he just inhales marijuana residue from her while they're getting it on. But it shows up in his random NYPD-mandated drug test and Mac is anxious to know what's going on.
  • A victim is found with a syringe stuck in her arm. Everyone assumes she's a heroin addict until Mac recognizes her and insists she's not. Sid finds three things to confirm Mac is right: only a small amount of heroin in her system, not a single other needle mark on her, and calluses on her fingers suggesting her dominant side is the one with the needle.
• Mistaken for Pedophile:
  • The episode 'Rush to Judgment' centers around the Victim of the Week, a high school wrestling coach who supposedly sent an email containing child pornography to his students. It is revealed that one of his students, upset that being moved up a weight class guarantees his defeat and the loss of a college scholarship, hacked the coach's unsecured wifi signal, and used his laptop to send the child porn to several members of the team. The boy's father sees the email, confronts the coach, kills him, hacks him up, and discards the remains all over town.
  • 'Unspoken' has a former teacher shooting up a political rally to get revenge on a former principal who disliked his caring manner towards the kids he worked with. In flashback, we see the shooter hugging a student of his after she scrapes her knee, and getting fired for "inappropriate behavior."
• Mistaken for Pregnant: A light version has Lindsay talking to Danny about being hungry and listing a bunch of foods she wants him to bring her. He gives her a look, wondering if she's pregnant again, and she quickly responds that she isn't, she's just hungry.
• Mistaken for Spies: In 'Brooklyn 'Til I Die,' a rich young man is kidnapped and his companion is found killed. At the beginning, the CSI team believes that they are dealing with spies but shortly after it is revealed that the couple was taking part in a group role-play game and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the actors is questioned and plays it smooth up until he finds out that the cops are real and instantly starts to freak out.
• Molotov Cocktail: How the perp blows up the food truck in 'Food for Thought.'
• Moment Killer: Quite a few throughout the series run. See also Kinda Busy Here above.
  • When Danny follows Lindsay to Montana for moral support, they find themselves alone in the courtroom after the trial and almost have their first kiss...but reporters burst in, snapping pictures and shouting questions.
  • Ellie and a friend walk in on Jo and her boyfriend in various states of undress once.
• Money to Throw Away:
  • In 'Brooklyn 'Til I Die,' a man tosses handfuls of high value gambling chips into the crowd to create a distraction to allow him to escape the casino. This turns out to be part of a role-playing game.
  • In 'Pot of Gold,' a bartender throws the cash from a tip basket into the crowd to hinder the cops from getting to him while he runs out the back door.
• Monochrome Past:
  • 'Charge of This Post,' 'Yahrzeit,' and 'Blacklist (featuring Grave Digger)' all use sepia tones for significant flashbacks (to the 1983 Beruit bombing, the Holocaust, and Mac's memories of his parents just before his father's death, respectively).
  • In 'Flash Pop,' scenes of a case from 1957 are shown in black & white and muted colors.
• Monster Clown: 'To What End?' episode 7.11: A guy dressed as a clown shoots a baker in his own shop. He's just trying to protect himself from a hitman.
• Mood Lighting:
  • The show started out rather dark and gloomy. After taking a lot of flak (although not a lot of Flack) for it, the lights were turned up for the second season onward.
  • Added to this is the harsh blue lighting used for the first season (used to make New York look slightly 'colder'), which was eventually found to be too cold and phased out during the second season.
• Motive Misidentification: Among others, 'The Dove Commission.' For most of the episode, the investigators are convinced the author of the titular Commission's report on dirty cops is killed for revenge by someone he outed. The motive turns out to be *much* more personal.
• Mouth Cam: During the episode "Recycling", when the victim is tasting the liquid in her dog's water-filled baby bottle.
• Mouth To Mouth Force Feeding: The killer at the basketball game in 'Personal Foul' invokes the classic capsule/kiss technique to poison the victim.
• Multi-Part Episode: The second part of each begins with the obligatory "Previously on" montage.
  • Season 4 ends with Mac being taken 'Hostage;' the story concludes in Season 5's premiere, 'Veritas.'
  • 'Pay Up'/'Epilogue': Season 5 ends with the team getting caught in a drive-by shooting while toasting a fallen comrade in a bar. Everyone ends up sprawled on the floor and the audience has no idea if they all survived &/or were injured until the Season 6 premeire.
  • Season 6 ends with Danny, Lindsay and Lucy taking a much-needed 'Vacation Getaway,' but encountering serial killer Shane Casey who breaks into their apartment when they return home and grabs Lucy. The screen goes black before a shot is fired. What happened is revealed in the Season 7 premiere, 'The 34th Floor."
  • Late in Season 7, the story with Mac's first partner, Bill Hunt, begins in 'Something for Nothing' and concludes in 'Life Sentence.' No other cases are investigated in either episode.
• Mud Wrestling: A variation with a flashback of the lube wrestler victim in the B-plot of 'Trapped.'
• Murder by Mistake: 'Here's to You, Mrs. Azreal' features a girl who gets smothered to death by her own mother while recovering from a drunk driving accident that claimed the life of her look-alike friend because her killer believes her daughter was the one who had died in the crash and doesn't think it was fair for the other teen to survive after having caused it.
• Murder by Remote Control Vehicle: 'Blacklist' features a Serial Killer whose gimmick is remotely sabotaging computer systems (e.g. changing the ordering system of a restaurant so a victim with an allergy has their meal loaded with allergens and then blocking the emergency call). His first kill is a variation of this trope; he hacks the GPS of the victim's rental car so it takes him to a bad part of town, locks up the doors and engine and then sounds the car alarm to lure in crooks.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: In 'Criminal Justice,' someone plants evidence at a crime scene to get the team to find fingerprints proving who his wife is having an affair with so he can off his rival.
• My Card: The detectives are constantly giving their cards to potential witnesses in case they remember more details. When Sheldon gives one to a victim's mother on one of his first cases in the field, Don chastises him because if he keeps this up, his phone will be ringing off the hook.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: A woman makes her suicide look like murder in an effort to frame the doctor who negligently caused her daughter's death so that he'll finally get the punishment she feels he deserved.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • The reaction of the girl's killer aka her own mother at the end of 'And Here's To You, Mrs. Azrael.' To explain, her daughter trades licenses with her inebriated look-alike friend in order to drive home after a wild night of partying. They get into a crash, the friend is killed, and the daughter is put into a coma. Due to their facial injuries, all the responders/med personnel have to go by are the switcherooed licenses. The daughter comes out of the coma and her mother, thinking she is the other woman and had caused her daughter's death, smothers her out of revenge, with the daughter briefly crying out to her but the mother thinks this is the other girl calling for her mother, and only realizing her mistake when Mac explains the mix-up while charging her with the murder.
  • Also that of the would-be assassin in 'Unspoken' when he realizes a child was killed with the gun he threw in a dumpster.
  • Frank Waters has the same reaction in 'Means To an End' when he realizes his latest attempt to bring John Curtis to justice resulted in someone else's death.
• My Little Panzer: The cardboard submarine that is behind a motive in 'Child's Play.'
• Naked in Mink: Sheldon's girlfriend, Camille, once arrives at his apartment wearing a fur coat and when he says he's had a really tiring day, she lets it slide to the floor, revealing that it was all she had on. He hastily ushers her in.
• Nasty Party: In 'Party Down,' a killer locks 20 party goers in the back of a tractor-trailer truck and deliberately drives it into the Hudson River.
• Native American Casino: Figures into the plot of 'Communication Breakdown.'
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Many of Stella's outfits highlight her cleavage, but in episode 4.03, 'You Only Die Once,' she wears a scintillating black dress with a neckline that drops all the way to the top of her stomach.
• Nazi Grandpa: One is discovered in 'Yahrzeit.'
• Near-Death Experience: Mac has two.
  • In the Cold Open of 'Exit Strategy,' a perp grabs Mac's gun and tries to shoot him between the eyes. Fortunately, the gun jams, but Mac walks around in a daze for a while, then finally has a heart-to-heart with Jo about his feelings of having done enough good and the possibility of moving on.
  • In 'Near Death,' he gets shot in the back and is left in a coma for a while (see Adventures in Comaland above).
• Neck Snap: COD of victims in 'Super Men,' 'The Cost of Living,' and 'Forbidden Fruit.'
• Needle in a Stack of Needles:
  • The clown killer tries to hide in a flash mob of similarly dressed clowns in 'To What End?'
  • Sheldon refers to this trope in 'Unfriendly Chat:'
    With a constantly changing IP address, we're looking for a needle in a stack of needles.
• Nephewism: The Victim of the Week in 'White Gold' was raised by his uncle after his parents were killed in a car crash when he was nine. The uncle refers to him as "my boy" and "my Paulie."
• Never Found the Body (or even DNA): Mac's wife Claire along with hundreds of real-life 9/11 victims although the fall 2011 premiere reveals she escaped her tower before it fell... It IS implied that she returned to help others.
• Never Going Back to Prison: Clay Dobson's motivation for suicide.
• Never Say Goodbye: Jo makes Sid promise this at the end of 'Command+P.'
• Never Suicide:
  • Stella is very (bordering on insanely to the rest of the cast) certain that a young woman who had been searching for her missing twin brother for over a decade didn't kill herself — the fact that her GSW is in the stomach instead of her head or heart is a telling clue.
  • Inverted in 'Holding Cell' where the deceased, who is suffering from severe depression, asks his girlfriend to dispose of the weapon he uses thereby making his suicide look like a murder.
• Newhart Phonecall: Jo is talking to her son about his sister, who is 5 years younger than him.
  Jo: Tyler, you're 17 years old, you're perfectly capable of putting Ellie to bed... Well then, use duct tape. (Hangs up.)
• New Media Are Evil: Zigzagged in two episodes.
  • In 'Unfriendly Chat,' Adam witnesses a murder on a Chatroulette-like site. Jo and Mac both try out the site and find it interesting rather than dangerous. Jo even uses it to show the NYC skyline to a soldier in Afghanistan.
  • In 'Who's There?', a woman makes a fake "profile page" to entice her husband into an online affair so she can use it against him in their divorce. Lindsay and Jo take cues and set up a page for Mac, who ends up reuniting with Christine when she sends him a friend request.
• Newscaster Cameo: Sportscaster Dick Enberg appears as himself, interviewing a football player in 'Super Men.'
• New York Is Only Manhattan:
  • Averted by the series as a whole. Crimes happen in all five boroughs throughout the 9 year run. Season 1's 'Tri-Borough' has cases spread across the city. Also, Aiden is from Brooklyn, Danny is from Staten Island and Don is from Queens.
  • Invoked by the owner of the Manhattan Minx roller derby team in "Jamalot:"
    New York isn't Queens or the Bronx; it's Manhattan!
• Night Swim Equals Death: Too many episodes to list. It's usually signaled by finding the body floating in the swimming pool.
• Noah's Story Arc: A scammer/crazy guy uses this and builds an ark. He offers rides to four couples for $100,000 each, fills the ark with animals, claims the world is going to end that Sunday, but is found dead in his house on a huge pile of cash before the date arrives. The detectives find the eight people holed up in the vessel in the man's backyard.
• No Badge? No Problem!: Usually averted since, unlike the original, the CSIs are also NYPD detectives.
  • However in 'The Thing about Heroes,' Mac follows his stalker to Chicago, and tries to throw his badge to get into the Tribune building. Chicago PD has to remind him that badges only work in their jurisdictions and he has no power in Chicago.
  • Averted in San Francisco in '2,918 Miles' since Mac and Jo are helping FBI agent Cade.
  • In the season 9 crossover, Mac asks Jimmy Boyd "Do you know who I am?" Jimmy says he does but that he also knows Mac's NYPD badge is no good in Vegas. DB steps in at that point and lays down the law.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • In 'Sleight Out of Hand,' illusionist Criss Angel plays an evil version of himself named Luke Blade.
  • In 'Comes Around,' John McEnroe plays himself and his own doppelganger who are both murder suspects at first, but both turn out to be innocent.
• No-Dialogue Episode: 'Unspoken.' The first half of the episode is backed by Green Day music and has no speech.
• No Full Name Given: Mac, whose full first name has never been said, at least onscreen. (Mac can be a name in itself, though Gary Sinise and an early script said otherwise [see Actor Allusion].)
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Danny's brother, Louie, gets one from The Tanglewood Boys while trying to clear Danny's name in 'Run Silent, Run Deep.'
  • Flack is the recipient of one while on the subway during his A.W.O.L. period in 'Cuckoo's Nest.' Terrence Davis, his former C.I., comes to his rescue.
• Nonfatal Explosions:
  • Mac, Flack and an office worker survive the bomb in 'Charge of This Post.'
  • Mac survives the lab explosion in 'Snow Day,' (although two of the gang members do not).
  • Adam survives a van exploding near him while playing street hockey in 'Green Piece.'
  • Mac survives the restaurant explosion that propels him in 'Sangre Por Sangre.' When he gets up, he's clearly having trouble hearing for a moment.
  • Sheldon and Camille survive the food truck explosion in 'Food for Thought.' They come to and start helping other victims.
  • Flack survives a car bomb exploding barely a block in front of him in 'Sláinte.' He's pretty stunned by it.
• Noodle Incident: Christine asks Mac if he recalls a time during a vacation when they all got drunk. Mac doesn't want to talk about it.
• No One Could Survive That!: Used in the 'Vacation Getaway' / 'The 34th Floor' cliffhanger when Shane Casey falls off a lighthouse.
• No Periods, Period:
  • Averted in 'Crime and Misdemeanor.' At the scene of a woman's murder in a hotel room, blood is found in the mattress coils. The man to whom the room is registered, who is obviously the first suspect, tells investigators, "Menstrual blood never bothered me," and that the woman left after they had sex.
  • Mildly averted in 'Nine Thirteen,' when Lindsay is seen counting on her fingers upon leaving the ladies' room and later tells Danny that she's pregnant again.
• No OSHA Compliance:
  • 'Point of View' has Mac pursue a suspect in a stairway. They pause on one of the landings when the suspect protests his innocence. He then gives Mac a big push, which causes him to fall backwards off the landing, the railing of which isn't high enough to guard against falls. Mac's knocked unconscious and ends up off work for a month with some broken ribs, his arm in a brace and a sprained ankle.
  • In 'Nine Thirteen,' the Victim of the Week is attacked on the 10th-story balcony of a highrise. After the villain leaves him for dead, he gets to his feet, stumbles around and easily falls over the way-too-short ledge, landing on a parked taxicab.
• Not Good with Rejection:
  • The original wife of the threesome in 'Stealing Home' kills her husband for disregarding her feelings when he continually favors the "new" woman.
  • Stella's boyfriend Frankie stalks her and tries to kill her after she breaks up with him.
  • Ella McBride in 'Forbidden Fruit' resorts to attempting suicide to try and gain Mac's attention after all her other effors to get close to him fail.
  • The first wife in 'Dead Reckoning' immediately kills her husband when she discovers there's another woman in his life.
• "Not Illegal" Justification:
  • Discussed in "Prey". Hawkes laments the fact that a stalker's escalating activity, which resulted in one of his victims killing him, had not been considered illegal because "there's nothing wrong with taking pictures and making phone calls."
  • In "Forbidden Fruit," Stella takes it upon herself to have a criminal moved from an upstate prison to a closer one in order to get the man's brother, an ex-con himself, to aid a case of hers by making forgeries of some ancient Greek coins. The Chief of Police calls Mac about why the prisoner is being moved, blindsiding him. Mac confronts Stella, telling her that her actions could potentially harm the investigation. She emphatically tells him that nothing she's doing is illegal, but he responds that she IS in violation of Lab policy and tells her to stop immediately. She says, "Fine!" then storms out and continues with her investigation anyway.
• Not Listening to Me, Are You?: Mac is preoccupied with being railroaded over Clay Dobson’s death in 'Comes Around' and stops listening to Peyton as she talks about autopsy results on a current case. She gets irritated and says she made a patê with the dead person’s liver then served it to her co-workers, and Mac finally starts listening again.
• Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: Variant in 'Fare Game.' It is a blank gun, and the killer just wants to scare the victim with it, but he didn't realize that at point blank range, it's still a deadly weapon.
• Not My Driver: The MO of the "Cabbie Killer."
• Not Quite Dead:
  • The body stolen from the coroner's van in 'What Schemes May Come' turns out to be a man in a hibernation experiment. He is revived, but dies shortly thereafter anyway.
  • At the end of 'Vacation Getaway' it is revealed that Shane Casey survived his fall from the lighthouse.
• No True Scotsman: When they find a victim wearing an "It's the big APPLE" sweatshirt, they immediately assume it's a tourist. They're right.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Averted with Hawkes, who was an MD/surgeon before changing careers.
• Not the First Victim:
  • 'Blink', the first episode after the backdoor pilot has a downplayed example. The team discovers a woman whose body was dumped after her neck was snapped, and subsequently finds another victim with much more brutal injuries. At first, hey assume their killer is escalating, but then realize that the least injured victim and another who's been left brain dead are the most recent. The killer's a Control Freak who's been refining his technique to put his victims in a state of "locked-in syndrome".
  • The episode 'Right Next Door' has Stella's apartment building burned down in an arson attack. Stella discovers that the perpetrator is a little girl who was kidnapped by one of Stella's neighbors. As the CSI team race to find her, they also learn that the neighbor's son isn't actually her son either and was kidnapped four years earlier.
  • In 'Admissions,' Inspector Gerrard's daughter is a victim of date-rape. Turns out the perps (one of whom looked much younger than his real age) had been posing as a high-school student and his father to prey on young girls for a number of years.
• Not With the Safety On, You Won't: 'All Access.' Frankie doesn't know enough about guns to take the safety off when he tries to shoot Stella, giving her the chance to grab it, take off the safety, and shoot him as he continues to try attacking.
• Number of the Beast: Discussed during Mac's 333 Stalker arc. He and Stella visit a voodoo shop to question the proprietor about a doll found buried with a victim. The shop woman blinks slowly, showing Mac the number 666 painted on one eyelid and 333 on the other. He demands to know why. She tells him that while 666 is the Devil's number, some believe 333 to be the number of his son.
• "Number of Objects" Title: The episodes 'Three Generations Are Enough,' 'One Wedding and a Funeral,' and '2,918 Miles.'
• Off Bridge, onto Vehicle: In 'Taxi,' Mac & Flack have apparently cornered the Cabbie Killer near the top of a grain bin at a brewery, but the guy jumps before they reach him and lands on the canvas top of a passing semi truck, eluding capture for a bit longer.
• Officer O'Hara: Averted with Flack. A great example in 'Pot of Gold' is him calmly contrasting himself with the off-duty officers who are particularly angry with the perp for having to come in to work instead of enjoying the St. Patrick's Day parade/festivities.
• Office Romance:
  • Danny & Lindsay (both work in the Lab, often on the same case)
  • Mac & Peyton (Lab Chief and Medical Examiner, work a number of cases together)
  • Flack & Angell (partners in Homicide, so work side-by-side on a daily basis)
  • Flack & Levato (also partners in Homicide)
• Official Couple:
  • Danny and Lindsay, who end up getting married.
  • Mac has been one half of three official couples: first with Claire (though it's all shown in flashback and referred to in past tense because she died before the series' start), then with Peyton, then finally in earnest again with Christine.
• Official Kiss: Mac & Christine, when he finally admits he loves her.
• Offing the Offspring: Late in season 6: What really happened to the Never Suicide girl and her twin brother: stepdad killed bro and years later kills sis when she finds out.
• Off with His Head!: 'Corporate Warriors,' has a beheaded victim, and the trope is actually voiced by Sid during an autopsy in 'Hung Out to Dry.'
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The look on the face of the rapist whose case ruined Jo's FBI career in 'Means to an End' when he realizes he left a bullet in the chamber of Jo's gun before tossing it back to her as a taunt.
  • Danny also does this in 'Food For Thought' when Lindsay's wanting a ton of food and Danny thinks she's pregnant again.
• Older Than They Look: The 32 yr old perp posing as a high school student so he and his older partner (posing as his father) can prey on teenage girls.
• Once for Yes, Twice for No: Inverted by Mac, who asks the victim in 'Blink' to indicate twice for yes and once for no.
• Once More, with Clarity: Done a number of times throughout the series. One example is season 7's 'Sangre por Sangre.' In the opening, it appears that a gang leader is shooting at Mac and barely misses him. At the end of the episode the event is shown from a slightly different angle, revealing that the leader is aiming at - and kills - another gang member, who actually *is* aiming at Mac.
• Once per Episode:
  • Danny will say "Boom!" and/or Adam will say "What up!"
  • Det. Flack and/or Danny will chase a suspect on foot.
  • Mac will make a military reference, and/or (particularly from season 2 on) a US flag will be prominently displayed somewhere in addition to his office.
• One-Hit Kill: One of the victims in 'Super Men' is killed by a single martial arts blow to the back of the neck.
• One of Our Own:
  • 'All Access': Mac and Flack spend most of the episode proving Stella shot Frankie in self-defense.
  • 'Near Death': A mild example with Sid preparing to do Mac's autopsy (in one of the limbo sequences) after he gets shot.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Played more realistically than a lot of examples in "Sangre por Sangre." Righthanded Mac is shot in the left arm while trying to apprehend a gang leader. While clutching it and wincing in pain a few times, he continues hunting the guy down and shoots another gang member in the process.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: A classic from LV lab rat Hodges in the first part of the season 9 crossover when he encounters Mac for the first time and then D.B. surprises him:
  Hodges: [to Mac] This is a crime lab. You can’t just wander around without an escort.
  D.B.: [from behind Hodges] I think the head of the New York Crime Lab knows what a crime lab looks like.
• Opening the Flood Gates:
  • A high tech public toilet is rigged to fill up with water when its automatic cleaning feature kicks in. When a woman opens it from the outside, she and a bystander are knocked clean off their feet...and met with a drowning victim.
  • 'Death House': Another victim is confined in a hidden room slowly filling with cold water in a booby-trapped penthouse. When the team busts a hole in the wall, all the water crashes thru, almost sweeping them off their feet. Thankfully, this victim survived.
• The Ophelia: At least two.
  • A season one episode has a female suspect who refuses to speak for a while & when she does, she rambles about law procedures. Turns out she is a law clerk who suffers from sleepwalking which led to sleep depravation.
  • 'The Untouchable' has a lovely young murder victim, shown in flashback to have searched out Mac to personally report a crime to him because she trusted him due to reading about him in the paper. She always speaks in confusing non-sequiturs, refers to the perps as various members of the infamous Chicago Black Sox scandal, and abruptly leaves without ever giving Mac all the details. Jo notes that, with her other symptoms, she probably suffered from a severe case of OCD. Danny later finds her daily pill sorter...full and covered with a thick layer of dust.
• Opposites Attract: City boy Danny and country girl Lindsay.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: During the crossover episodes with CSI: Miami the Miami scenes use their regular orange and yellow hues, while the ones in NY use bluish tones.
• Organ Theft: 'Live or Let Die' (a liver), 'Point of No Return' (various organs of drug addicts), and 'Hammer Down' (kidneys).
• Orgy of Evidence: In 'Prey,' the CSI team investigates a murder with a large amount of strange evidence, all of it designed to simulate evidence encountered at early crime scenes and throw them off the perp's trail.
• ...Or So I Heard:
  • In 'It Happened to Me,' Adam gives a detailed explanation of what a "sploshing" party is before playing this trope hilariously straight. Adam does this a lot.
  • Flack does it as well in 'Vigilante:'
    Flack: Pole dancing is good cardio.
    Lindsay: [gives him a look]
    Flack: So I've heard.
• Our Vampires Are Different: One case involves members of a vampire cult/religious group. They exchange blood with consensual donors, sometimes file their teeth to points, and have a mark carved on the arm when they join the group.
• Outranking Your Job: Although Mac is the head of the lab, he's frequently seen analyzing evidence alongside his subordinates or chasing down and interrogating suspects as opposed to delegating everything except his own paperwork to others.
  • Subverted in one episode when Lindsay asks him to help her out with the mountain of evidence she needs to process.
    Mac: [grinning for once] Sorry, I get to be the boss this week. [walks away]
• Out Sick: In 'Point of View,' Mac is stuck at home after cracking his ribs falling over a railing. It turns into a "Rear Window" Witness plot when he spends time watching the apartment building across the street.
• Out with a Bang: In 'Enough,' one Victim of the Week is shot in the head while having sex with a prostitute in the back of his car. The prostitute then pushes his body out and steals his car.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: The amount of blood shed by both the first victim in 'Cool Hunter' and the second victim in 'It Happened to Me' is obviously more than a single human body would contain.
• Overturned Outhouse: In 'Tri-Borough,' the victim is inside a port-a-potty when it is tipped over by a construction worker as revenge for replacing him. This isn't actually what kills the guy: It's a falling block of airplane toilet water, aka "blue ice".
• Painful Body Waxing: 'Point of No Return' opens with a scream coming from a cheap motel room. As the shot zooms, the viewer discovers that this is not a horrible crime but a group of women holding a bikini wax party. The actual murder takes place in the room two doors down.
• Paintball Episode: 'Consequences.' Two men are playing in the streets. Both get shot. One dies and the other is abducted by a schizophrenic woman who mistakes him for an alien.
• Panicky Expectant Father: Downplayed by Danny. He's fine until the day of Lucy's birth when he starts getting nervous and says to Adam:
  What if it's twins? I mean, you've seen Lindsay, she's huge!
• The Paralyzer: The perp in 'Blink' who attempts to force his victims into Locked-In Syndrome, finally succeeding on his third try.
• Paranoia Fuel: In-universe (and probably real life) example in the form of the Cabbie Killer. The city's mass transit system is stretched to its limits due to everyone being afraid to take a taxi.
• Paranormal Episode: Mac going into the Afterlife Antechamber in 'Near Death' and seeing his late wife, Claire.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Evident with Ellie after she and a boy sneak into the apartment and Jo thinks there's a burglar and confronts them, with an FBI agent/old friend (whose shirt is open) right behind her and herself not fully dressed.
• Passed-Over Promotion: The killer's motive in one of the cases in 'The Lying Game' because he thinks a newer employee is getting the position he believes he deserves.
• Password Slot Machine: A pair of car thieves use a custom-made device to crack the security code on Ferraris in 'Cavallino Rampante.'
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The core of both Luke Blade in season 3 and Leonard Brooks in season 9, both due to feeling betrayed by their respective "families," whether blood-related or not.
• Percussive Pickpocket:
  • The guy who lifts Mac's wallet in 'Nothing for Something.'
  • Also how Shane Casey sneaks a cell phone *into* Mac's pocket in 'Raising Shane.'
  • 'Shop Till You Drop' has Mac catching a pickpocket (who manages to hide his stash before they grab him) just before running into the Victim of the Week. They later find a security camera video of said pickpocket bumping into their suspect and realize that he stole her camera with vital evidence on it.
• Perma-Stubble: Danny seems to have settled into this after losing the Beard of Sorrow.
• Phoney Call: Angell calls Flack talking all sexy while he's dealing with a confidential informant. He pretends to be talking to his grandmother so she'll get the hint that he can't return the favor.
• Photo Op with the Dog:
  • In one episode, a politician just implicated in an unsolved sexual assault case immediately turns from the accusing officers and heads for a woman with a baby. While photographers snap photos, he kisses the child's rattle, which Det. Flack talks the mother into giving him so the team can obtain the man's DNA.
  • Mentioned in another where Flack has just learned why Mac is working a specific case.
    Flack: The mayor asked for you personally?
    Mac: Uh huh.
    Flack: Ya know, I've never even had a little old lady ask me to help her across the street.
• Phrase Catcher: By the fifth season, every other character has picked up Danny's "Boom!" Catchphrase. Once Jo arrives in season 7, it doesn't take her long to pick it up as well.
• Physical Therapy Plot: A few episodes after Danny is temporarily paralyzed in a drive-by shooting, he is shown taking physical therapy. At first, he says it's too hard, it hurts too much, etc. But after Sheldon, being a former E.R. doctor, calls him out on it, saying he's seen people hurt far worse bounce back much faster because they put in the work, Danny bucks up and tries harder.
• Picture-Perfect Presentation: In 'The Ripple Effect,' orange zip ties are a vital clue. At one point, Sheldon shows Mac a picture on his phone that Flack had sent him of a large piece of artwork made from the ties. The camera zooms very close in on the picture, then immediately out again, revealing Flack standing beside the actual sculpture telling Mac all about how one of his subordinates found it.
• Pillow Pregnancy: The professional shoplifter in 'Some Buried Bones.' When Danny causes two stolen items fall out of her shirt by knocking on her stomach, Stella congratulates her on twins.
• Pillow Silencer:
  • In season 5's 'Turbulence,' a teddy bear is used as a silencer for a Desert Eagle 50.
  • The titular victim in 'Rest in Peace, Marina Garito' (6.18) is killed in this manner. The perp is caught after he over-thinks things and returns to the scene to steal the matching throw pillow from the couch.
• Pinned to the Wall: A couple making out outside a party in 'Stuck on You' are impaled and pinned to a wall by a crossbow arrow.
• Player Elimination: In-universe. "Fare Game" features a competition called Water Gun Wars (based on the real life StreetWars assassin game) in which players eliminate each other with Water Guns and Balloons. Sneakiness and creativity in "kills" are encouraged; for example, one young woman bribes a cab owner to let her pose as the driver in order to turn around squirt an unsuspecting opponent with her water pistol. The prize for being the last man standing is $50K. Too bad someone actually kills another player in the process.
• Playing Sick:
  • Danny gets the "blue flu" during the Robert Dunbrook arc.
  • Sheldon calls in sick in order to spend time with Camille in 'Food for Thought.'
• Plot Allergy:
  • Flack is allergic to cats; it comes up twice.
  • Sid goes into anaphylaxis in 'The Ride In' from an unrevealed ingredient on his meatball sub.
  • There's one victim who's allergic to shellfish, one to flowers, and another to peanuts.
  • Mac's severe allergy to blueberries is (harmlessly) revealed in 'Clean Sweep' thru a prank of Flack's.
• Plot-Powered Stamina:
  • On more than one occasion, Mac works 48+ hours straight. Whenever one of their own is murdered, he expects everyone around him to do the same for the sake of the officer's family (Aiden in season 2 and the off-duty officer in season 9).
  • In 'Risk,' Danny spots a body on the subway tracks on his way home after a double shift and goes back to work to help with the case.
• Police Brutality:
  • Stella gets called out for it in season 1's 'Supply & Demand,' for what is revealed to be her fourth time, after she shows a sheltered college girl pictures of a victim who was brutally beaten to death.
  • Danny get suspended for beating up the Neo-Nazi suspect in 'Yarhzeit' who spits on Sheldon.
• Police Brutality Gambit:
  • Subverted, a suspect slams his head into the table and says he'll sue. Mac cheerfully explains how easily his injuries could be proved to be self-inflicted and says he injured himself for nothing.
  • The serial killer who kills himself to frame Mac for murder is a much more extreme example.
• Potty Emergency: One of these leads to the discovery of a victim in a public toilet in 'Playing with Matches.'
• Powerful Pick: One of the victims in 'What Schemes May Come' is killed by an ice pick to the neck.
• Precrime Arrest: Played with. In "Time's Up," a dying naked man claiming to be from the future rushes into the precinct and turns himself in for a murder he says will happen the following morning. Turns out, he's a genius who is so good at predictions (based on complicated math he does) that he knows an invention of his will malfunction and kill a certain person at a certain time and it's too late for him to prevent it. He dies right there. The next day, the event happens just as he said it would.
• Pregnant Hostage: One of the bank tellers in 'Hostage' is three months pregnant.
• Prison Episode: 'Redemptio.' Sheldon is there to witness an execution.
• Prison Riot: 'Redemptio.' again. Shane Casey uses it as part of his escape plan.
• Private Profit Prison: The juvenile detention center in 'Crossroads' where a judge was getting kickback to send those he found guilty.
• Professional Maiden Name:
  • While Lindsay does change her name to Messer, she is sometimes still referred to as "Officer Lindsay Monroe Messer," such as when being presented with her medal in 'The 34th Floor.'
  • Conversely, Jo Danville had stuck with her maiden name while she was married to Russ. Otherwise, she bemoaned, her name would've been "Jo Josephson...please."
• Product Placement:
  • Dasani water is on prominent display in several episodes.
  • The team's vehicles are constantly referred to by model. An example from 'My Name Is Mac Taylor':
    Mac: Who has a set of keys to the Avalanche?
  • Hasbro gave the show the rights to use the titular game quite prominently in 'Clue: SI.'
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Sid and Adam in season 5.
• Proud Papa Passes Out the Cigars: Exploited in 'Child's Play.' Someone out to get a joke shop owner poses as a new father and gives the man a cigar loaded with a powerful explosive. The shop owner unwittingly passes it on to another man, who lights it up in a crowded bar and dies when his bottom jaw is blown off.
• Pulled from Your Day Off: Quite often.
  • Mac is called away from the opera with Peyton; they're both interrupted while in bed together; and he tags along another time when she's called to a scene during a dinner date...then Flack calls him to yet another scene.
  • Happens to Stella once when she's in bed with Frankie.
  • Lindsay comes in on her day off to help determine the poison Sid is exposed to in 'Page Turner.'
  • Mac's called in while on a date in Central Park with Christine in 'The Real McCoy'.
• Pun-Based Title: Quite a number of episodes over the 9-year run, including 'Outside Man,' 'Zoo York,' 'Fare Game,' 'Oedipus Hex, 'Raising Shane,' 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches,' 'What Schemes May Come,' 'Happily Never After,' 'Unfriendly Chat,' and 'Clue: SI.'
• Put Off Their Food: On Lindsay's first day on the job, she assists Mac with an experiment that involves stabbing a pig carcass to determine the murder weapon. When they're through she says she's done eating bacon for life.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Peyton Driscoll and Reed Garrett in season 4, although they each came back for one episode during season 6 ('Point of View' and 'Pot of Gold,' respectively).
  • Haylen Becall in season 6. Granted, she had only been promised a year of employment, but she still left without saying goodbye.
  • Aubrey Hunter also disappeared without a goodbye in season 6.
  • Stella in the season 7 opener.
• Pyromaniac: The season 9 premiere and second ep are centered on one of these.

Q-S

• Quip to Black: Usually Mac or Stella (succeeded by Jo) but everyone has their turn.
• RPG Episode: 'Down the Rabbit Hole;' and to a lesser extent, 'DOA for a Day,' the beginning of 'The Box,' and 'Brooklyn 'Til I Die.'
• Rage Against the Legal System: The young man who kills the Hanging Judge above.
• Rage Against the Reflection: The woman with the brain condition that prevents her from recognizing her own reflection. She accidentally kills someone after seeing her reflection once, and in the interrogation room she attacks the one-way mirror, yelling that it's the killer.
• Rags to Riches: Sid. He wasn't exactly poor before, but he wasn't wealthy either. Now he's made a bundle on his pillow invention. And then he gives most of it away after being diagnosed with cancer.
• Rain of Blood: The "Where did that drop come from?" version is used in the opening of 'Hung Out to Dry.' Blood drips on college students about to have sex during a frat party. This leads to the discovery of the first victim, a beheaded young woman who's been hung upside down from the ceiling fan.
• Rank Up: Danny, briefly. He takes the sergeant's exam and passes, then is assigned to train a group of rookies. Unfortunately, when he meets them out for a drink after hours, they are attacked by three men, one of whom is armed. Danny is knocked out, and later finds that one of the rookies had shot one of the unarmed men, rather than the one with the gun. She gets scared and tries to cover by implying Danny is having an affair with her and says he told her to lie. Lindsay eventually pressures her to tell the truth, and Danny is cleared of any wrongdoing, but decides not to keep the job. He didn't like the long hours away from his family and never felt really at home with the rookies like he does with the team at the lab.
• Ransacked Room:
  • 'Supply and Demand.' The college student's apartment is trashed by the guys looking for their stolen drugs.
  • The entire house is trashed in 'Crushed,' from the living room to the upstairs landing, to the entire deck crashing down in the front yard.
  • The trashed hotel room of Christine's impersonator in Las Vegas.
• Rape and Revenge / Sisterhood Eliminates Creep: The woman who kills an attacker and then starts attacking other rapists because she felt they weren't getting enough jail time.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil / Serial Rapist:
  • There is one specific rapist in the second season named D.J. Pratt who goes out of his way to rape the same woman twice, the second time after he was acquitted of the first rape. This turns him into Aiden's Arch-Enemy when the rape victim comes to her, and turns him into a Smug Snake Arc Villain for the season; her pursuit of Pratt leads her to consider tampering with evidence, gets her fired, and eventually gets her killed by Pratt. That murder is how they bring him down after he and his lawyer show arrogance towards the CSIs and after he rapes a promiscuous woman in another episode (said woman, in an attempt to get away from him, tripped and fell onto a spike. Pratt is one of the most stuck-up enemies on the show.
  • Two seasons later, during the Cabbie Killer saga, the team discovers that a student at an Ivy League prep school and his father are in fact two-fully grown men who are using the school and parties to prey on female students. One of the rape victims is the daughter of one of Mac's antagonistic comrades from the previous season. Bonus points for them having records. They are arrested for both the rapes and for the "son" having killed a counselor who confronted him about the issue when the daughter informed him of the rape and a new attempt. Upon learning of his daughter's attack, Mac's comrade shoots him dead offscreen; all we hear is the gun shot. Mac, Flack, Stella and other officers go running to the interrogation room and find the perp dead on the floor.
  • The murder victim in 'Vigilante.'
  • John Curtis in 'Crossroads' and 'Means to an End.'
• Reading Tea Leaves: In 'Grounds for Deception,' Stella realizes that the overturned cup in Professor P's apartment means that he was reading someone else's coffee grounds. The fact that he wasn't alone adds to their suspect list. Later she reads grounds for Mac in his office, in spite of him being skeptical.
• Real Award, Fictional Character: A few.
  • Mac, a former Marine, keeps all of his commendation awards, including a Silver Star, on display in his office. He also wears a Detective Bureau lapel pin just like those given to highly decorated long-term NYPD detectives.
  • In 'The 34th Floor,' Lindsay is awarded the NYPD's Combat Cross for bravery in facing down and taking out a serial killer.
  • Toward the end of 'Keep It Real,' Mac is shown setting up a plaque he received as a "thank you" for his participation with the Brooklyn Wall of Remembrance project and ceremony. Aside from the two men's names, it is an exact replica of the one Gary Sinise received for his real-life assistance.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: When Anna Belknap was pregnant with her second child, she asked that Lindsay become pregnant also, rather than having to play "Hide Your Pregnancy" like they did with her first child. The producers agreed, resulting in the birth of Lucy Messer.
• Real Men Hate Affection: Danny, observing a "cuddle party" in season 2's 'Grand Murder at Central Station,' (although Lindsay eventually changes his mind).
  Danny: I don't cuddle.
• "Rear Window" Witness:
  • 'Point of View' pays homage to the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window. Mac has been severely injured during the pursuit of a suspect and is confined to his apartment, where he wiles away the time observing his neighbors. Mac witnesses a shady deal similar to L.B. Jeffries and becomes suspicious of his murderous neighbor.
  • In 'Unfriendly Chat,' Adam is on a video chat with a woman he has never met before when she is strangled.
• Rearrange the Song: Unlike the other shows in the franchise, this one adopted a remixed version of the song (from the fourth season onward).
• Recruited from the Gutter: The Victim of the Week in "Second Chances", is an up-and-coming musician who had been a homeless drug addict until his girlfriend and her band took him in. It turns out that they'd been invoking this trope; rescuing a drug addict to join their band and arranging a relapse/overdose death when their victim's life insurance had "matured" enough to give them a big payout.
• Red Herring: In both episodes where an in-universe Neo-Nazi named Michael Elgers appears ('Green Piece' and 'Yahrzeit'), he is not the killer. In 'Green Piece' he is framed, while in 'Yahrzeit' his alibi is confirmed.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: The Rat Fisherman from season 5 claims he might eat his catch if he were hungry enough, although he may be yanking the investigators' chain.
• Rejected Marriage Proposal: Lindsay turns Danny down, reasoning that he's only asking out of a sense of duty because she's pregnant.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns:
  • In 'All in the Family,' an old shotgun is thrown off a roof by the villains, hits a gargoyle on the way down and bump-fires into a passerby, killing her and leading the team to the villains' original crime.
  • Averted in 'Point of View,' in that Mac's revolver does not go off despite falling 30 or so feet with him and bouncing on the metal grate he lands on.
• Remember the New Guy?: The character of Detective Flack does not appear in the 'MIA-NYC Nonstop' "pilot" because the character was not conceived until after the episode aired. In 'Blink,' the series premiere, however, Flack seems to have been part of the team for some time. It's possible that Mac had just been working without Flack in the pilot, but that never happens on any other case. Alternatively, it could've been his day off; he actually had one in 'Misconceptions.'
• Remember That You Trust Me: Mac is horrible about letting people in, even Stella, his closest friend. This has come back to bite him in the ass more than once, including being a huge factor in the failure of his relationship with Peyton, and the huge disaster that resulted after he was implicated in a murder (see Taking You with Me). Stella calls him on it in the season 6 premiere, when he's obsessing over figuring who opened fire on the team at the end of season 5 and acting as if he's the only one on the case. He does seem to be improving a bit by the time Christine starts romancing him, but then he slips into it again with his aphasia condition in Season 9. Jo calls him on it once, but he rebufs her and has to apologize later. It takes Christine several episodes and very nearly walking away from him for him to finally get the message and open up to her. How much he opens up to the rest of the team, with the cancellation of the series at the end of Season 9, will remain a mystery.
• Required Spinoff Crossover: Chronologically, "Manhattan Manhunt" (with Miami), "Hammer Down" (as the second part of the "Trilogy,") and "Seth & Apep" (with Las Vegas).
• Rescue Romance: One episode has a woman who, it initially appears, gets back together with her ex after he saves her from being kidnapped and assaulted. It turns out that the "abduction" is a fetish game she and her current partner had knowingly staged, and her ex kills her lover in a fit of jealousy - she just finds it hot that he would go that far for her.
• Resignations Not Accepted: Averted with The Tanglewood Boys. Their official gang tattoo includes room for two dates: the date when someone joins the gang and the date when he leaves it. And while Danny says that leaving the gang alive "hardly ever happens," his own brother, Louie, had managed to do so.
• Reverse Polarity:
  • Justified when Mac actually does this to show Stella the color-changing ink used by the counterfeiters in 'What You See Is What You See.'
  • Adam also does this when he shows Lindsay how the magnetic apparatus used to hijack the armored car in 'The Triangle' works.
• Rhyming Title: The episodes 'DOA for a Day' and 'Shop Till You Drop.'
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • 'And Here's to You, Mrs. Azrael' is based on the mistaken identity case of Whitney Cerak and Laura VanRyn.
  • 'Hide Sight' draws from the cases of Steven Stayner ("I Know My First Name Is Steven") and his brother, Cary.
  • 'Misconceptions' is based on the disappearance of Etan Patz.
• Rise from Your Grave: The opening of 'Boo' plays this one as straight as a show based on science can. A man buried alive in a coffin made from hemp breaks free and digs his way out, startling two grave diggers.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue / Unstoppable Rage: Mac goes dangerously close to the edge when Christine is taken. At least two guys get shot, and Mac appears to play Russian Roulette with one of them; though it's later revealed that he only pretended to put the bullet in the revolver.
• Rooftop Confrontation:
  • Mac & Clay Dobson go at each other on a rooftop in season 3.
  • Mac & Flack have verbal confrontation followed by a brief shootout with the perp at the end of 'The 34th Floor.'
  • Mac & the unnamed perp's tussle on a rooftop in the rain in the opening of the season 7 finale leads to his BSOD moment.
• Roofhopping:
  • In 'All in the Family,' Mac, Don & Sheldon travel from one crime scene to another two buildings away via the rooftops. Downplayed in that the first gap is covered by a large board and the second is easily jumped by all three of them.
  • A female perp attempts, unsuccessfully, to scale the distance between two rooftops in 'Blood Out.'
• Room Full of Crazy:
  • 'Jamalot:' The second Victim of the Week is murdered by someone with a compulsion to write on any surface including the walls of the room in which he kills the guy.
  • 'The Ride In:' The man calling himself "Noah" has written quotes from various religious texts, from the Bible to the Koran to Nostradamus, all over his walls.
  • Mac turns his office into one by writing all over his glass walls while trying to figure out who's behind the shooting that happened at the end of Season 5.
• * Rule of Three: Mac's "333 Stalker" gets the nickname because he repeatedly calls him at 3:33 a.m.
• Run for the Border:
  • In 'Turbulence,' the hijacker and his accopmlice are planning to take the plane to Canada before their plan goes awry.
  • The season 5 premiere has the perp try to escape to Canada before Mac catches up with him. Needless to say, he fails.
• Rustproof Blood: The most blatant example is the 30 yr old blood-stained T-shirt that the 333 Stalker sends Mac. While not bright red, it's certainly not rusty enough for its age.
• Saw a Woman in Half: The first victim in 'Sleight Out of Hand,' is severed in two - with your garden-variety hand saw, no less - while still alive.
• Scaramanga Special: One perp makes a gun out of a steering wheel lock; another assembles one from various items including a souvenir ink pen.
• Scars Are Forever:
  • Mac still has a scar from being burned by hot shrapnel after a bomb blast in Beirut. Granted, we can't spot it when he's swimming in 'My Name Is Mac Taylor,' but makeup is really hard to manage during a water scene, so it's justified. It is visible in the scene where he's shirtless in bed with Peyton, though.
  • Mac's wife's son, Reed, still bears scars on his neck from his ordeal with the Cabbie Killer; he hides them with a scarf.
  • The witness in "Enough" has a half-dozen or so lines carved on her face from a perp who sliced her with a knife while threatening her not to rat him out.
  • Chief Carver's adult nephew still has scars from his mother's abuse of him as a child. The make-up department did a flawless job of matching the scars on the two actors portraying him at both ages.
  • When Mac gets out of the shower in the season 9 opener, the camera focuses on the bullet wound scar on his back from the season 8 finale.
• Scary Surprise Party: In 'Uncertainty Rules,' a college student is abducted by two men in scary clown masks who force a gun into his mouth. It turns out to be a squirt gun filled with tequila, and the two clowns are his friends who are dragging him out to celebrate his 21st birthday. However, the party goes horribly wrong.
• Scenery Censor:
  • 'Time's Up' opens with a naked man running through the streets of New York. While there are a lot of close-ups showing him from the waist up, there are several long shots where strategic areas are blocked by traffic, bystanders, etc.
  • Also used with quite a number of bodies in autopsy, as is the case franchise-wide.
• Screaming Birth: Classic example when Lindsay gives birth to Lucy. Don even asks Danny over the phone if that's her screaming in the background.
• Sdrawkcab Alias: Frankie does this to Stella by calling his sculpture (and website) "Aresanob." She's intrigued for a moment upon realizing it's her last name spelled backwards, but is shocked when she clicks the link.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Used as an inside joke in 'The Triangle.' A minor character-of-the-week who provides a clue is named Yert Yawallac. Trey Callaway wrote the episode and served as supervising producer.
• Second Episode Introduction: Flack. His character wasn't conceived until after the pilot on CSI: Miami and made his first appearance in 'Blink,' the first actual NY episode.
• Secretly Dying: Sid, most likely. Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma isn't *always* fatal, but he did tell Jo that his was pretty advanced. Jo knows, but he asked her not to tell anyone else.
• Secretly Wealthy: Sid, after selling his pillow patent for $27 Million. He told Jo but asked her to keep it to herself. See also Wealthy Philanthropist below.
• Secret Relationship: Lab Chief Mac and M.E. Peyton have a relationship behind the team's backs for a few months until she (in spite of agreeing earlier to keep their personal and professional lives separate) tells him she's tired of being "an office secret."
• Secret Snack Stash: A victim literally falls prey to his own supply of chocolate, hidden in the mouth of a gargoyle above his balcony in 'The Fall.'
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: Danny after marrying Lindsay. In 'Out of the Sky,' his old partner ribs him about the pretty nurse in the hospital when Danny visits him, and Danny replies that he's married with a kid.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes: In a pretty literal version, one killer places a small camera into a victim's eye socket to remotely view the detective's progress in tracking them down.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Mac and Stella have a short conversation about the winner of a hotdog eating contest while digging up the wooden crate with the corpse in 'Blood, Sweat and Tears.' It's kind of a "What's that got to do with the price of eggs?" moment.
• Self-Defenseless:
  • In season one, Aiden has to tase a suspect in lockup who threatens her. All he does is slump over, holding his mid-section, and moan, "I can't feel my ribs." Aiden replies, "Oh, you will. And it's gonna hurt like a bastard!"
  • In 'Vigilante,' the titular avenger uses pepper spray on a known rapist to try and subdue him. Due to a rare immunity, it doesn't even faze the guy, so an accomplice resorts to shooting him in the head.
• Self-Immolation: A distraught perpetrator in 'My Name Is Mac Taylor' attempts suicide by setting himself on fire. He is rushed to the hospital, but his fate isn't revealed.
• Self-Made Orphan: Attempted by the villain in 'Damned If You Do,' but subverted by a case of mistaken identity. Turns out he broke into the wrong house and thus attacked the wrong couple.
• Semper Fi: Mac often mentions his time in the Marines. And the episode 'Heroes' incorporates the annual Fleet Week celebration in NYC.
• Sequel Episodes:
  • The various arcs: Cabbie Killer, Compass Killer, 333 Stalker, Shane Casey.
  • 'Run Silent, Run Deep' ends with Stella discovering what Frankie put online; it isn't revealed to the audience until the next episode, 'All Access.'
  • "Suspect X" alludes capture in season 5's fifth episode, 'Down the Rabbit Hole' and doesn't show up again until the fifteenth, 'DOA for a Day.'
  • The original suspect in the arson case in the season 9 premiere shows up again in the next episode.
• Serial Killer: Several. Mac seems to attract them somehow. The show even starts off with the killer in the first episode being refered to as "a serial," although his third victim survives.
• Serial Killings, Specific Target: In 'Page Turner,' the killer poisons his wife with thallium and then coats a book in the library where she works with it, knowing that others will be exposed. After two more people die, he launches a lawsuit against the city and the library.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Mid-run, Danny mentions being from a family of cops, but early episodes like 'Tanglewood' and 'Run Silent, Run Deep' cast doubt on that. The producers tried to retcon by saying it was extended family, but many still don't buy it.
  • Mac tells the victim in 'Blink' that he used to sit with his wife in the hospital just as he was sitting with her. This indicates a probable intent to have Claire found near death after the towers fell and then to have died of her injuries later. In season 4, though, he tells Reed her body was never found.
  • The novel with Mac visiting Claire's grave and the one where he recalls not being able to contact Claire on 9/11 were published before the respective revelations (of the body never being found and the fact that they did have a cell phone conversation, albeit one that was cut off in the middle) and novels aren't usually canon anyway, so it's easily excused.
  • Stella tells a suspect in 'Til Death Do We Part' that she lived at Saint Basil's Orphanage until age 18, but in season 3's 'Cold Reveal,' there is a big plot about her and a girl she shared a foster home with. She could have gone in and out of foster homes when she was a child, always going back to the same orphanage. In that case, it'd be easier just to say, "I grew up in an orphanage."
    • In season 5's 'Grounds for Deception,' she tells Flack & Danny that Professor P had "rescued me from foster care" & that's when she went to St. Basil's. Must've been so bad she didn't want to think about it.
  • In 'Supply and Demand,' Mac mentions having hired Danny 5 years earlier, while in both 'Outside Man' and 'A Man a Mile' they had discussed the fact that Danny is "3 years in" and thus up for promotion to CSI Level 2. (Three years also jives with the revelation in 'Exit Strategy' that Mac had become head of the Lab sometime in 2002.)
  • Christine's brother, Stan, is referred to as Stephen in the captioning of a flashback in one episode. (And there is a character called Corporal Stan Whitney in a season 2 episode, but he is rather minor, and the writers may just have missed it, even with the early intention of the military storyline for Stan.)
  • In a season 1 episode, Danny swears to Mac "on my mother's grave." In season 2, he tells Louie that both of their parents are coming to visit him in the hospital. In a later season, Mrs. Messer is referred to as babysitting Lucy.
    • However unlikey, it could've been just an expression to him.
  • Flack mentions a brother in an early season, who is literally never spoken of again, but his sister shows up quite a bit in later episodes.
  • Minor one: One episode has Danny appearing to be a Yankees fan, but another indicates him as a Mets fan. That's rare in two team towns for those not into baseball or in the US; people who follow the game usually stand by one team or the other, but not both.
• Series Fauxnale: The format of the finales of seasons 7, 8, and 9 are this, because of the uncertainty over renewals. Of course, 9 turned out to be the actual finale.
• Serious Work, Comedic Scene: The more-serious-than-usual episode, "Indelible," is a tribute to those lost in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As the main characters experience memories of that fateful day, they deal with the case of a shooting in a bar. A much-needed light moment arises when Flack and Jo choose between questioning two witnesses, friends named Mike White, who is Black and goes by the nickname "Black Mike," and Mike Black, who is White and goes by "White Mike," except they just call each other "Mike."
  Jo: [thinks a moment] I'll take Black Mike.
  Flack: And I'll take Mike Black. [Jo gives him a questioning look and he grins.] It's right. Trust me.
• Sex Equals Death: It is blissful, unwed and not in the missionary position. Of course Angell was going to die.
• Sex for Solace:
  • After a 10-yr old in his care is killed in a case of wrong place/wrong time, Danny and the boy's mother begin sleeping together as a way of comforting each other.
  • After the death of a colleague, Stella and Adam have a one-night stand. Later at work as things are a bit awkward, they hastily agree that it must never, ever happen again.
• Sexual Extortion: The department store manager/victim in 'Shop Till You Drop' propositions an employee he catches stealing from the registers. She thinks it'll just be a one-time thing, but when he keeps on coming after her it doesn't end well.
• Sexy Coat Flashing: Hawkes' girlfriend Camille knocks on his appartment door at the end of 'Food for Thought' and drops her coat. She isn't wearing anything else. He hastily ushers her inside when he hears the elevator bell.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Peyton is introduced by showing her in bed with Mac. The two have obviously just had sex, but the audience is not privy to the actual encounter.
• Sexy Shirt Switch:
  • Not Stella or Lindsay, but the mother of Ruben Sandoval, with Danny.
  • Also Angell with Flack's.
• Shady Real Estate Agent: The burned victim in 'Death House' is guilty of cheating his clients.
• Shaped Like Itself: When Mac questions a suspect in the B plot of 'Trapped,' he suggests that things got out of hand between the guy and the victim. The guy tells Mac to "define your definition of 'got out of hand.'"
• Sherlock Can Read: Inverted during one of Adam's early forays into the field. On the way to the scene, he asks Danny how many floors they'll have to search. Danny tells him the man fell from somewhere between the 6th and 10th, but that if Adam had read the autopsy report he'd already know that.
  Adam: You did *not* read Sid's autopsy report.
  Danny: No, Mac told me. That's how I do it.
• Shirtless Scene:
  • Danny on several occasions; including making omelettes the morning after he & Rikki Sandoval sleep together, and changing in the locker room while talking to Sheldon in 'The Party's Over.'
  • Mac, three times: being checked by paramedics in 'Charge of this Post,' in bed with Peyton in 'People with Money' and swimming in 'My Name Is Mac Taylor.'
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: A street vendor tries to sell Stella a knockoff Rolex, only it's spelled with two L's and a Z. Bonus points for him trying this right outside the Lab.
• Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet!:
  • One of the kidnappers in the season 7 finale, 'Exit Strategy' is shot while reaching for his car keys. The SWAT team thinks he's going for a gun.
  • The innocent victim in the series finale. He is reaching for a jewelry box in his pocket and has the added misfortune of being dressed in the same type of coat as the perp.
• Shopping Cart Antics: In 'Obsession,' one of the murders centers around a race run using shopping carts and where it is customary to sabotage the other teams.
• Shopping Cart of Homelessness: 'Obsession' again. One of the teams steals a cart from a homeless man...and damages it. This upsets the man so badly he kills one of the team members with a mannequin leg he has in his possession.
• Shotgun Wedding: Zigzagged. Danny wants to marry Lindsay after the pregnancy reveal, but she initially says no, only saying yes several episodes later when he does a surprise proposal.
• Shout-Out:
  • An episode involving a "time machine" has the TARDIS materialization sound effect and a Doctor Who reference.
    • The first victim in that episode is named Dr. Martin Browning. A combination of the names Martin (Marty) McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown from Back to the Future. The giant clock on the building that houses the time machine is prominently featured in a few scenes as well.
  • The third episode of Season 4 is a giant love letter to the James Bond franchise, which actually is in the episode's plot with a pair (actually a trio) of high-tech thieves who break into apartments in tuxedos. They're even called "James Bond wannabes" by a radio DJ, and Mac refers to one of them as "a Q-wannabe."
  • The fourth season Halloween episode involves a "zombie" whose cause of death is a cricket bat to the head.
  • Several to The Matrix and Oz in an episode that features Harold Perrineau as an inmate who's spared from execution when a guard dies. He had also killed Sheldon's sister a decade ago, although he isn't on death row for her murder since it's officially unsolved who helps Sheldon escape when Edward Furlong's character sets off a prison riot. (He even gets to say a variation of "Come with me if you want to live!") while the rest of the Five Man Band uses computerized blueprints on a touchscreen table to aid Sheldon.
  • Possibly the overly-serious head of, essentially, the guild of New York clowns.
    • That episode, which kicks off with a murder at a bakery, includes a variation of the line "Take the guns, leave the cannoli."
  • 'Civilized Lies': This is either a shout-out or a funny coincidence: A hood nicknamed "Mookie" winds up dying under the Deegan expressway. The Punny Name title a la "Fated Fatal" or "A Nimmel House" and the main characters manipulating Mookie's accomplice with faked videos (Deegan is a manipulative seer; the detectives manipulated the suspect's sight) could also count.
  • 'Blood Actually,' a set of three short stories, to Love Actually and Valentine's Day, but unlike the films there's no connection between the characters (unless Sid autopsying the three victims counts).
  • Stella is apparently named for Stella Kowalski.
  • 'Super Men' has a guy in a superhero costume, and as many Superman references they could possibly cram in including glass with traces of krypton, and the guy's street clothes and glasses left in a phone booth.
  • 'Unspoken' shouts out Green Day by using tracks from their 2012 album trilogy for the backing music and building the plot partially around the songs, especially when the first half doesn't contain any spoken dialogue.
  • 'Snow Day' is an obvious homage to Die Hard. Among other things, Mac writes "Find the Bullet" on a dead perp's forehead before sending him down the elevator to Sheldon in the morgue.
  • In 'Trapped,' Danny not only calls Stella "Miss Macgyver," but also tells her he thinks he saw one of the old-school techniques she guides him through on an episode of The Flintstones.
  • 'Blood, Sweat and Tears' includes a "Romeo and Juliet" story and uses quotes from the play.
  • Episode 4.12, 'Happily Never After,' features two different cases referencing classic children's literature.
    • The first is the death of a woman who is found crushed under an ice castle (or house), who is the owner of a hotel called 'The Dorothea' known as "The Wicked Witch of the Upper East Side". She is also wearing red heels and owns a dog named Otto, talks about a melting ice sculpture ("It's melting. It's mel-ting."), and her real surname is revealed to be "Gale" (like Dorothy's). And she's from Kansas.
    • The other is a young woman in a nightgown with the name "Wendy" written on her chest, and she gets killed with a hook prop. Sid actually reads the book in the morgue.
• Shower of Angst: Stella, in 'Creatures of the Night' due to her rape case being full of dead ends, including semen with no sperm and thus no DNA.
• Shown Their Work:
  • As with the other shows in the franchise, all the lab equipment is fully functional and the actors were taught how to use it.
  • Real life NYPD Det. John Dove served as a writer and producer. He also appears as Det. John Scagnetti in three episodes of season 2. Since he was on duty on 09/11/01, the set designers consulted him — and episode co-writer Zachary Reiter, who was living in NY at that time — for the flashback scenes in 'Indelible.' Dove said the finished product looked "too good."
• Sibling Yin-Yang: The Carver siblings: The brother became Chief of Detectives, while the sister became an abusive, drug-addicted prostitute who was eventually murdered by her own son who got away with it since he was trying to save his younger siblings.
• Sickbed Slaying:
  • Invoked for revenge in 'Here's to You, Mrs. Azrael.' The victim is smothered in her hospital bed with a plastic bag from the gift shop.
  • The killer in 'Unspoken' intends to do this to a hospitalized Lindsay, but ultimately doesn't go through with it.
• Side Bet:
  • Danny and Mac in 'Fare Game.' Danny bets Mac $5 that Lindsay won't eat the bug cuisine he brings back after a case involving it. Lindsay eats it and Danny has to pony up to Mac.
    Lindsay: You bet I wouldn't do it?
    Danny: Dunno what I was thinking, betting against a country girl.
  • In season 1, Mac & Stella bet on the outcome of the dog show in 'Recycling.' Stella takes that one.
  • Danny & Flack bet $50 on whether or not the basketball fan in 'Personal Foul' will make the million-dollar shot. Flack pays up, but tells Danny, "I owe you ten."
  • In 'Greater Good,' there's an office pool on how long Lindsay will be in labor.
  • Mac and his fireman buddy, Curtis, have a standing bet on the outcome of the ice hockey matches between NYPD and FDNY; loser buys the winner dinner.
  • Near the end of Lovato's first episode, Flack tells her the guys in the precinct have a pool going about which will last longer, her or the fern on her desk.
• Significant Name Overlap:
  • Central to the plot of "My Name Is Mac Taylor." When two men who share the same name as detective Mac Taylor are killed, detective Taylor rounds up all the other Mac Taylors in New York and tries to figure out who will be the next victim. Adam discovers 23 people with the titular moniker.
  • In 'Command+P,' a case of Mistaken Identity leads to two murders all because the first victim runs into the wrong guy named Andy.
• Significant Name Shift: When Lindsay joins the team in early season 2, Danny starts out picking on her by consistently calling her "Montana" after her home state, which annoys her to no end. Then they begin dating and by the middle of season 3, she's come to accept it as an Insult of Endearment, and even signs a note to him with the nickname. By the time they're expecting a child in season 5, he has dropped it and only calls her "Lindsay," "Linds" or "Babe." He does call her "Montana" one final time, though, but it's lovingly then, to get her attention while she's hospitalized and groggy from a concussion early in season 9.
• Silent Treatment: Christine does this to Mac for at least an episode and a half when he refuses to tell her about his speech aphasia. When he tires of her not answering or returning his calls, he finally goes to see her at her restaurant.
• Single-Episode Handicap: A few.
  • Sheldon is injured while scuba diving in 'The Deep,' gets his ribs taped, and spends most of the episode out of work...except for showing up at the very end just to check on the team and to thank Danny for saving his life. No mention of his injury is ever made again.
  • Similarly, in 'Point of View,' Mac is injured in the opener and out of work (see Out Sick above), then is back the next ep with no further reference to the incident. (But to the writers' credit, there is a month-long time-skip within this ep itself.)
  • At the end of 'Sangre por Sangre,' Mac gets shot in the left arm. He's fine the next episode.
• Sinister Shiv: In 'Nine Thirteen,' the Body of the Week has his throat slashed with a shiv made from a melted coffee cup lid and sharpened to an edge by grinding it against a prison cell wall.
• Sinister Subway:
  • 'Tri-Borough': has a body dumped on the tracks.
  • 'The Cost of Living' has a guy being chased down at night in an area with abandoned subway cars.
  • 'Risk': A young man is beaten and thrown from a train. Danny is on the one behind it and barely manages to get it to stop before running him over.
  • 'Murder Sings the Blues': A young woman dies from being poisoned during a rave party held on a subway car.
  • 'The Thing about Heroes': Mac's stalker kills an engineer, then hijacks the car remotely while Stella, Flack, Sheldon and Lindsay are processing the scene. Later, he holds Mac captive in a little-known area off of one of the tracks.
• Sleepwalking: 'Night, Mother,' where a sleepwalking woman is suspected of stabbing another woman with a wooden stake. It is found that the real killer stabbed the victim, then the sleepwalker goes through the actions she'd seen used to try and save her young son, who died in a car crash years earlier. She does CPR, then tries to reach in and massage the dead woman's heart.
• Slipping a Mickey:
  • Two girls slip LSD into the drinks of the guys they're with, intending to rob them, in 'Uncertainty Rules.'
  • The serial rapist in season 8 is accused of this, but he has been framed.
• Smart People Know Latin: Mac, Sheldon and Stella all translate the Latin phrases serial killer Shane Casey leaves as clues without hesitation. Mac is a college graduate, Sheldon is a prodigy who graduated med school in his early 20's, and Stella is also fluent in Greek.
• Smelly Feet Gag: Sid once mentions to Adam that he has a pair of shoes made of a particular recycled material and adds, "Although, I must tell you that for whatever reason, foot odor is a problem..." Adam cuts him off and leaves the morgue before Sid can elaborate.
• Snow Means Love: In 'Happily Never After,' a couple arrive in a "winter wonderland" and start kissing. Then an ice castle collapses and they find a corpse.
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Mild case with Lucy Messer. There is a 6 month skip in the last ep of season 8, but Word of God stated she was being aged up another few months to a year. She is referenced as being 3 at the end of season 8. When she appears in season 9, she should be about 4 or maybe four and a half but Danny says she is 5 early in season 9, and the actress who played her in 'Unspoken' was 6 years old at the time.
• The Sociopath: The manipulative 16 year old girl in 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches.'
• Soft Water: The only way Shane Casey could've survived his fall from the lighthouse at the end of 'Vacation Getaway.'
• Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass: The arsonist directs a sunbeam into a paperback with his glasses as he's reading in his cell at the end of 'Where There's Smoke.' The screen goes black just after the page starts smoking.
• Sommelier Speak: Happens in an episode involving counterfeit wine — mostly played for laughs, although the actual experts get some respect.
• Spanner in the Works: Many a killer has seen their plan for the "perfect" crime undone by anything from bad weather to an unexpected wrinkle to a tiny detail they thought would never be noticed.
  • A therapist kills her husband and makes it look like he is murdered by a crazed patient who she then shoots in "self-defense" before setting up the crime scene. Stella lampshades that the woman never counted on the possibility the CSI team would be literally right around the corner at another murder scene, hear the shots and arrive before the doctor could clear up all the evidence.
  • An inside-job bank heist goes awry because it's raining at closing time and another employee wants to wait until it lets up before leaving.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: The point at which Mac interrupts the second wedding in 'Til Death Do We Part.'
• Spiked Wheels: The team run into such a car (using lasers to evade the police), and James Bond is explicitly referenced, in 'You Only Die Once.'
• Spikes of Villainy: Subverted in 'No Good Deed.' A tall, muscular, tattooed, head-shaved suspect has a row of flesh-colored spikes implanted in his head, ala a mohawk. He has means and opportunity due to being caught on camera in the victim's apartment. Turns out he's the landlord there to finally address a complaint. He also moonlights as the announcer for women's wrestling and has good rapport with them. His body modification is just him asserting his individuality.
• Spiteful Spit: Hawkes gets it from a notorious racist in 'Yarzheit.' Danny tries to talk him out of tagging along when he goes to question the guy, since Hawkes is black, but Hawkes won't be intimidated. The guy spits on him, then makes a remark about there not being a law against spitting on an animal. Hawkes stays calm, but Danny, who always did have a quick temper, punches the guy and gets suspended for it.
• Spree Killer:
  • Henry Darius in the two-part crossover with CSI: Miami (as Mac says, "12 people in two states over the last 72 hours").
  • Deranged magician Luke Blade in 'Sleight Out of Hand' (two murders and a third attempt in as many nights).
  • Shane Casey in his several-season arc, in a futile attempt to clear his dead brother from a murder charge.
  • The sniper in 'Hide Sight' whose motivation was to make a name for himself.
• Squirting Flower Gag: Flack does not like this trope and averts its use twice.
  • In 'Child's Play,' a murder investigation leads to a joke shop run by a guy called "Laughing Larry" who is wearing a fake flower. While questioning him, Flack says that if he squirts him with it, he'll be arrested for assaulting an officer. The guy gets a dejected look on his face and refrains.
  • Again in "To What End?" While questioning a guy in a flash mob of mostly identical clowns, Flack notices him touching a fake flower on his chest and exclaims, "If you squirt me with that thing, I will shoot you; I'm not kidding!" This guy refrains as well.
• Stab the Scorpion: 'Sangre por Sangre' opens with Mac chasing a gang member with whom he has a respectful rivalry through an abandoned building. The other man raises a gun in Mac's general direction and fires, then the scene cuts back to some days earlier. The scene is revisited near the end, revealing that he had been aiming at another gang member, whom he'd been trying to kill earlier and who was sneaking up on Mac.
• Stage Magician: One is played by Criss Angel in 'Sleight Out of Hand.'
• Stalker with a Crush: Ella McBride, to Mac. She engineers a "chance" meeting with him in a grocery store, manufactures evidence to bring to him at the Lab - which he angrily calls her out on - then slits her wrists and calls him instead of 911 to regain his attention. She even makes one of her confession cards to add to her wall, which says, "I will make him love me."
• Stalker without a Crush:
  • Stella takes Reed to be a stalker when he's following her around trying to get up the nerve to talk to her, thinking she's his birth mother.
  • Mac's 333 caller. The guy carries a grudge for 30 years, definitely no love lost there.
• Starting a New Life: The chef in 'Fare Game' and the cage fighter in 'Clean Sweep' had both done this, and the cage fighter is trying to do so yet again.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Jo's ex-husband, while he loves her and the kids very much, would rather she be a stay-at-home-mom, and they're both too stubborn to give in.
• Stealing from the Till: One of the employees at the department store in 'Shop Till You Drop' swipes small amount of cash from every register she can.
• Stepford Smiler: Detective Flack after Angell's death.
• Stock Animal Diet: Averted in two episodes, both involving rats that are fed poisoned scrambled eggs (one is part of the plot, the other a small throw-away scene).
• Stock Footage:
  • The aerial establishing shots over NYC.
  • A shot of a bullet being test-fired into a water tank is re-used throughout the run, flipped at least once.
  • The footage of Flack & company arriving at the wearhouse in "Snow Day" is re-used in at least two later episodes.
• The Stoic: Mac is the embodiment of this trope. Even Gary Sinise once said of his character, "He smiles once a season."
  • During the episode where Lindsay gets pranked and is trying to figure out who's to blame, Danny is doing process-of-elimination and says it couldn't have been Mac because the word joke "doesn't seem to be part of his vocabulary."
  • He did start to loosen up toward the series' end, tho, with the introduction of his new girlfriend, Christine. Even the producers noticed, "Mac is smiling!"
• Stood Up: Lindsay does this to Danny early on, while she's privately dealing with the trauma from her past.
• Storefront Television Display: In the opening sequence of "Right Next Door," the first Victim of the Week stops in front of an appliance store to freshen her lipstick via her reflection in the window. As she does so, an Amber Alert for a missing little girl is playing at volume on one of the tv sets. The woman continues on her way and is killed off-screen. The little girl's case becomes entangled in a more elaborate one later in the episode.
• Story Arc: Shane Casey's story ran from early in season 3 thru the season 7 premiere, probably the longest arc in the entire franchise.
• Strange Cop in a Strange Land: Mac in Chicago. The CPD does not like him waving his badge to get into a vacant floor of the Tribune building.
• Straying Baby: Lucy wanders off from Lindsay in a crowd during 'Unspoken.'
• Stuff Blowing Up: Several times: the bombs in the season 2 & 3 finales and the booby-trap in the season 9 premiere all blow up buildings, car bombs go off near Adam and Don, a restaurant blows up near Mac, and a food truck that Sheldon & Camille visit also explodes.
• Stuffed in the Fridge: Aiden The team are all stunned when they realize who the victim is.
• Subculture of the Week: Vampirism, Gaming, Life-Size Dolls, Circus Life, Cuddle Parties, Food Sploshing...the list goes on.
• Sudden Name Change: Jessica Angell was called Jennifer in one episode.
• Suicide Pact: The teenage couple in 'Blood, Sweat and Tears' and a group of friends in 'What Schemes May Come.'
• Sultry Belly Dancer: The birthday party in "Sweet 16" has a Middle Eastern theme, including belly dancers. One of the girl's friends shows up dressed as one as well, complete with coins dangling from a gold chain belt. The girl's father proceeds to make out with her.
• Sundial Waypoint: 'Manhattanhenge.' Sheldon figures out where the sunlight will hit at a certain time, which leads the team to the killer's location.
• Super-Intelligence: In 'Time's Up,' the autopsy of a brilliant physicist reveals a sewing needle embedded deep in his brain, that'd been there since an unnoticed accident in his early infancy. It's speculated that its presence caused his neural wiring to develop differently from most people's, which may have made his groundbreaking insights possible.
• Suspect Is Hatless: In the B case of 'Buzzkill,' Angell presents Mac with an incomplete composite sketch of the perp, which looks like it's from a very cheap coloring book. His snarky reply:
  Mac: So all we have to do is find everybody with two eyes, a nose and a mouth.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Times two. Jessica Angell is this for Aiden Burn, after the former was Put on a Bus. After Angell is Killed Off for Real, Jamie Lovato is brought in, and now is the Suspiciously Similar Substitute for the original Suspiciously Similar Substitute. She's even becoming Flack's love interest.
• Sword Sparks: The LARPers' makeshift swords throw off sparks during their battle in the junkyard in the opening of 'The Box.'
• Swordfish Sabre: In 'Dancing with the Fishes,' one of the cases is that of a fish merchant who gets stabbed with one of the swordfish he was selling.

T-Z

• Take Me Out at the Ball Game: A number of deaths occur during sporting events:
  • A fan in the parking lot of a MLB game.
  • A runner in the Big Apple Marathon.
  • Another fan during a million-dollar shot at halftime of a basketball game.
  • A Roller Derby team member during a match.
  • A Formula One driver during an exhibition race.
• Taken Off the Case:
  • Mac took Danny off a case because it turned out the dead guy wasn't murdered. Danny didn't buy it easily and kept at it, only for Mac to chew him out later.
  • Mac pulls Sheldon off one case where the former doctor's ex-girlfriend's rapist resurfaces, and another where Sheldon knew the victim but neglected to tell the team about it.
  • Due to Stella's personal connections, Mac tells her she's off the Greek antiquities theft case and that another department is handling it, but she keeps investigating anyway, to the point that it reaches Turn in Your Badge status.
  • Mac tells Adam not to hack into a company's system in "Unfriendly Chat." He does so anyway, the FBI gets wind of it, and Mac puts Adam on three days' unpaid suspension.
• Taking the Bullet:
  • Stella's mentor and father figure shields her with his body from a gunfight between his brother and Mac in Greece. He's fatally shot, while Stella's uninjured.
  • Danny, for Lindsay in 'Pay Up' / 'Epilogue.' Danny is closest to the bar's window anyway, but it's clear as the shooting starts and chaos erupts that he throws himself on top of Lindsay to protect her.
• Taking the Heat:
  • The episode 'Greater Good' revolves around a woman who hires a hitman to kill the man who ran over her daughter a year before, believing that his sentence was too lenient. Mac also wants to know why the man insists on taking the blame when the evidence points to him being a passenger, and not the driver. It's finally revealed that the man and his daughter had celebrated her becoming an M.D., and after drinking several glasses of wine, she got behind the wheel of her car and ran over the victim. Knowing that her career, and her life, would be ruined, her father told her that he was willing to take the blame for everything.
  • In another episode, a guy walks into the police station holding a gun and claims to have shot a doctor. He turns out to have been taking the heat for his wife: the guy had a terminal illness and the doctor had conned the couple out of their savings with a quack treatment involving leeches leading the wife to shoot her. He wants to be sent to jail in her place seeing as he doesn't have long to live.
• Taking You with Me: When Mac corners a serial killer on a rooftop, the guy jumps off rather than go back to prison. But he does it in such a way that it looks like Mac pushed him, and since Mac didn't wait for backup, there's no one who can say that he didn't.
• Tampering with Food and Drink:
  • In 'Blood Actually,' a woman murders her diabetic husband by giving him a 2-lb box of chocolates with a sugar-free label on it. Actually, they are normal chocolates. She also replaces his insulin with a sugar syrup, so when he injects himself, he just shoots up more sugar.
  • In an earlier episode, a guy dies when two others sneak lobster broth into his soup even though they know he is allergic to shellfish.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: In season 7's "Vigilante," a serial rapist is found bound, gagged and injured in the same manner as he had done to his victims, complete with the gag being a purple cloth. Only difference? He's dead. The "vigilante" turns out to be someone avenging the survivors.
• Tastes Like Chicken: Alluded to, but subverted by Danny while he eats a centipede in 'Fare Game.'
  The Chef: Tastes like chicken, right?
  Danny: [shaking his head] No.
• Tattoo as Character Type:
  • Subverted by the villain in 'Yarhzeit' who's only pretending to be a concentration camp survivor. He had faked a prisoner number on his left arm and tells Mac he had been in Auschwitz.
  • Played straight with the in-universe neo-Nazi ex-con from that episode and 'Green Piece.' He looks pretty much just how you'd picture him.
• Tattooed Crook: The "mobbed-up" Tanglewood Boys don't take it very well when a poser gets one of their membership tats.
• Team Kids: Team Dad Mac thinks of his team as his Family of Choice, even telling his girlfriend, Christine, so in season 8. Stella is Team Mom for the first 6 seasons, followed by Jo for the last 3. During Lindsay's settling-in period in season 2, Stella has to call her out for ditching a crime scene, but later takes her under her wing when Lindsay opens up about it reminding her of a high-school tragedy. Mac has several instances of finding some of the Kids (Danny, Lindsay, Adam and to a lesser extent, Sheldon) bickering; his stern go-to phrase to stop them is "Are you two/three done?" But when any of them, especially The Baby of the Bunch Adam (whom he once catches throwing multiple paper airplanes in the Lab), are troubled, Mac will sit down and have a fatherly heart to heart with them. Notable examples are Danny struggling with feelings of inadequacy over becoming a husband/new dad, and Adam reliving past abuse from his own father.
• Techno Babble:
  • Flack calls various members of the team out for using big words. From 'Indelible' for instance:
    Jo: That ring around the blood spot is called skeletonization.
    Flack: Why don't they just call it a ring?
    Jo: Okay, that's it. Forget it. I give up.
    Flack: Sorry, it would be much more interesting if you guys used smaller words.
  • Adam tries this in 'Damned If You Do' when Jo has him impersonate a polygraph examiner:
    Adam: I understand there's a question to the veracity of certain statements that you may or may not have made and/or heard during your confinement in the fine institution known as Rikers Island. Is that correct?
    Perp: I have no idea what the hell you just said, man.
    • But it morphs into Buffy Speak when he refers to the needle as "the pen thingy."
• The Taxi: The backseat of a taxi is converted into a mobile gas chamber by its driver in the Cabbie Killer's four-episode arc at the end of season 4.
• Team Dad: Mostly Mac to Hawkes, including letting Hawkes stay at his place when Hawkes lost all his money to an insurance scam. Mac to Danny at times too (in 'Green Piece' to name one), and to Adam in 'The Real McCoy;' he has heart-to-heart talks with both of them over personal issues, much like a father would to a son.
• Tell Me About My Father: Gender flipped twice.
  • Reed comes looking for Claire and asks Mac about her.
  • Ellie goes looking for her birth mother and asks Jo about her as well.
• 10-Minute Retirement:
  • Mac's retirement at the beginning of season 8. He's only away from the crime lab for the first episode (although it's stated that he was away for four months...so he must have left right after the season 7 finale and was gone throughout the summer hiatus).
  • Danny's promotion to police sergeant (and thus away from the crime lab) only lasts four episodes before he voluntarily demotes himself and goes back to being a detective.
• Terminally-Ill Criminal:
  • "Blacklist": The villain is a terminally ill cancer patient who kills the head of his insurance company, lands his oncologist in the ICU, and goes after the home-health nurse who had cared for him. It all started when the insurance company dropped him. He blames all three of them for not continuing to provide his treatments, even though the doctor and nurse's hands were pretty much tied at that point. Under police guard at the hospital after being arrested, he tells Mac they should've let him die since he's terminal. Mac replies that's probably true since the state will now have to foot the bill for his care, but that he's entitled to his day in court. The man then says he'll be dead before his trial date.
  • "Shop Till You Drop": The Body of the Week is a department store owner who turns out to have been killed in self-defense after he blackmailed the store manager into having sex with him. The blackmail material? He caught her on tape stealing from the tills in order to pay unauthorized Christmas bonuses to employees who were scheduled to be laid off, because she'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wanted to go out with a bang. Jo lets her walk.
• Thanatos Gambit: Aiden manages to make her murder into one of these by leaving a clue she knows Mac will recognize as the same type from a case they worked together years before.
• That Came Out Wrong: In 'No Good Deed,' Adam finds grainy footage of a possible suspect with flesh-colored spikes embedded in his skull. Mac asks him to try to identify the guy. Adam says, "I'll call Flack to see if he's had any reports of a horny prep in the area." Mac and Stella give each other a look and stand there grinning as Adam immediately realizes what he said.
• That One Case:
  • DJ Pratt, who is finally caught due to his having killed Aiden.
  • The bodega robbery from two years before the series began is solved in 'Exit Strategy' (7.22). It was the last of the open case files Mac kept on the corner of his desk.
  • The case of the kidnapped boy in 'Misconceptions.' Mac had been a rookie detective when it occurred and he's kept it in the back of his mind for decades, finally solving it in episode 9.05.
• That's an Order!: Mac plays into the bomber's delusion that he's a Marine in 'Charge of This Post,' taking on the role of a superior officer to get him to secure the BFG he's holding.
• Theme Serial Killer: The t-shirt killer uses Greek mythology and numerology in his clues.
• Theme Tuneless Episode: Subverted with 'Indelible.' The song is played, but *after* the first break instead of right before it when simple title card is shown instead as a subtle moment of respect for the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
• There Will Be Toilet Paper: At the beginning of 'Indelible,' Mac has a flashback of Claire's last morning, during which he had nicked himself while shaving and had asked her to hand him a cotton swab. It is brought on by him nicking himself again on the current morning.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: The perp in 'Party Down' is described as a male with "dark hair, light skin and a bit of a stutter."
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: A number of times, including:
  • When Mac has his first get-to-know-you meeting with his stepson, Reed has a soda in front of him. Halfway through their conversation, he pulls the paper off the straw and takes one sip. As he thanks Mac for it upon leaving, the full glass is in plain view.
  • Justified in season 6. Mac has introduced Dr. Aubrey Hunter to his idea of the perfect slice of pizza. As they're walking down the street discussing it's merits (she doesn't exactly agree with him), a young boy across the street is shot. They take off running to help and she tosses the slice, with only one bite missing, into the nearest trash can.
  • After Ellie skips school to find her birth mother in season 7, Jo takes her for a walk to talk about it and buys her a milkshake. Ellie takes one sip, declares it to be terrible and hands it back to Jo who throws it away.
• This Bear Was Framed: The tiger in 'Zoo York' didn't kill the victim; he was already dead before being eaten.
• This Is the Part Where...: (See also Cut Himself Shaving above.)
  • Flack and Stella are questioning someone on the street in 'Second Chances':
    Lisa Williams: Is this the part where I look at the bloody crime scene photo, break down in tears and confess to murder?
    Don Flack: Only if you did it.
• Thoroughly Mistaken Identity: The mother who kills her own daughter in the hospital because she thinks the bandaged girl is her daughter's friend whom she believes to be responsible for her daughter's death.
• Those Wacky Nazis: 'Yahrzeit' has three flavors of Nazis - an original, a skinhead street punk, and a businessman who keeps his affiliation secret.
• Three Shorts: The season 9 Valentine's Day episode, 'Blood Actually,' tells the stories of three victims in sequence, complete with title cards (although the team's personal situations are interspersed throughout).
• A Threesome Is Hot: Played with. The committed threesome in 'Stealing Home' eventually get bored and add a fourth member. The original wife gets jealous of the new woman, sleeps with the new guy to get access to his gun, and shoots her husband for brushing her off. Also, Sid tells Sheldon from experience that it's not all it's cracked up to be. Sheldon leaves before Sid can squick him out with details.
• Through His Stomach:
  • Downplayed when Mac calls Christine to cancel a date because of the car bomb in 'Slainte.'
    Mac: I really hope I haven't put you out.
    Christine: Oh don't be silly, I was just going to whip something up when you got here.
    The camera pulls back to reveal that she has indeed prepared an elaborate meal which is spread all over the counter where she's standing.
  • Flack's grandmother invokes the maternal version with him and Sam in 'Misconceptions.' She lures them to her place with pleas for help with a (non-existent) leak under her sink, then plies them with homemade Italian food until they can't eat any more...yet continues to offer them more servings.
• Throw-Away Guns: Done by a perp in 'Civilized Lies.' He fires two shots at Jo and Lindsay, finds his gun empty and then discards it before trying to flee...and runs straight into Danny.
• Time-Delayed Death: A few, including the young man from the pizzeria in 'Officer Blue' who doesn't collapse until after he leaves the establishment, and the Native American Chief in 'Communication Breakdown' who dies on the subway after swallowing a deadly object that was slipped into his food.
• Time-Shifted Actor:
  • In flashbacks during 'The Thing about Heroes,' Walter Curry plays Mac Taylor as a 14-yr old in Chicago.
  • In flashbacks during 'Cold Reveal,' Stella is portrayed at age 8 by Brenda Radding, and at age 14 by Cait Fairbanks.
• Time Skip: The time between seasons is generally four months, coinciding with air dates, but there are a few exceptions.
  • Season 5 picks up on the same day as the Season 4 cliff-hanger finale.
  • Per Mac & Stella's conversation in his office in the Season 6 premiere, it's only been a month since the drive-by shooting that brought the Season 5 finale to an end.
  • Six months pass between the final two scenes at the end of the season 8 finale, giving Mac time to heal from being shot. (Flashbacks to the skipped time are shown in the season 9 premiere.)
• Tin Foil Hat: A variation. When Stella and Flack encounter a schizophrenic woman in 'Consequences,' she offers metal colanders to them so their thoughts won't be captured. They decline.
• 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: The female victim with a severe headache in 'Heart of Glass' turns out to have been shot while sleeping.
• Title Drop: Episode titles. Fairly often, usually justified. To name a few...
  • Episode 1.05: "You know how a Sandhog measures progress? A man a mile. 'Cause that's the death rate down there. Electrocutions, cave-ins, decapitations. Every mile of rock we move, we lose one of our own."
  • Episode 1.09: Officer Blue is the name of the horse which has a bullet needed for evidence lodged in his neck.
  • Episode 1.13: Tanglewood is the name of the gang involved.
  • Episode 2.04: "Guess that's what they mean when they say corporate warriors."
  • Episode 2.14: Necrophilia Americana is the scientific name of the flesh-eating beetles found at the crime scene.
  • Episode 3.24: Danny takes Lindsay's shift and leaves her a note saying, "Enjoy your snow day."
  • Episode 4.01: Exaggerated by the killer who screams at Stella, "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?!"
  • Episode 7.07: While the team is searching for a sniper, Mac asks, "Have you found his hide sight yet?"
  • Episode 9.13: "Nine Thirteen" is the name and street number of the building in front of which the Victim of the Week is found.
  • Episode 9.17: Heartwarming in the series finale during Mac's voice-over monologue which includes the words of the victim:
    Mac:...Sometimes, the good comes when we most need it and least expect it. If we are lucky enough to notice it, set our eyes upon it and appreciate it, it can almost make us forget all of the bad. "Today is life. The only life you're sure of. Make the most of today." Words of wisdom. A slice of goodness passed on by an innocent soul whose life was cut short by an errant bullet. These are words that will always stay with me, words that are about to change the course of my life forever.
• To Absent Friends: The team toast Aiden near the end of season 2, and Angell in the season 5 finale.
• Took a Level in Badass: Adam, three times.
  • Redeeming himself by coming to the rescue of the disguised hostages in 'Snow Day.'
  • Taking out his assailant with a fluorescent bulb in 'Unfriendly Chat.'
  • Taking it upon himself to search for more evidence at the crime scene, then braving the angry rioters to deliver it to Mac at the precinct in 'Today Is Life.'
• Tongue Trauma:
  • In the season 3 premiere, 'Can You Hear Me Now?', the perp cuts out the tongue of one of his victims for not reporting a crime he'd witnessed.
  • In 'Seth and Apep,' before Christine can be rescued, Mac receives a tongue in a box at the precinct and naturally gets freaked out thinking it's hers.
• Toplessness from the Back:
  • Camille, at the end of her Sexy Coat Flashing scene.
  • Gender-flipped with Mac exiting the shower at the beginning of 'Reignited,' clearly showing his bullet wound from 'Near Death.'
• Torso with a View: Played realistically with Flack's gruesome abdominal injuries in 'Charge of This Post.'
• Tragic Keepsake: Mac's beach ball, which he couldn't let go of because Claire's breath is still in it. He held onto their 9/11 opera tickets for 10 years as well, but lets them go in the season 8 premiere.
• Trans Tribulations: The mid-transition victim in 'The Lying Game' had faced this and gets killed for coming on to a homophobic man.
• Trap Master: In Death House,' the CSIs find a nearly 100 year old corpse when responding to a 911 call. When Stella is almost killed by the same trap that killed the victim, the CSIs realize they are in the abode of a long dead trap master, and must then figure out the riddles of the penthouse to locate the 911 caller and the caller's girlfriend.
• Trapped in a Sinking Car:
  • An unconsious Mac is dumped in the Hudson River in the SUV he was driving after being kidnapped in the season 4 finale/season 5 pilot two-parter.
  • Twenty party goers are locked in the back of a tractor trailer truck which is then deliberately driven into the Hudson in "Party Down".
• Trash the Set: "Snow Day." The place gets shot up, soaked by sprinklers and finally blown up by a pipe bomb. According to series creator Anthony Zuiker, Sinise jumped in between takes to help the crew squeegee the floor because three inches of water rained down every time, and he was having so much fun filming that he couldn't wait to get back at it. And this was around two or three in the morning.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: With Mac after being shot, a really selective Laser-Guided Amnesia thing. His Truth in Television condition is called speech aphasia and causes him to forget the names of everyday objects.
• Trial Run Crime:
  • The perp in 'Love Run Cold' poisons a cat before the "real" victim.
  • The perp in 'Point of View' does the same with a canary...but he has plans for many more victims.
• Trophy Room: Two, both containing Holocost memorablia and both belonging to Neo-Nazis in 'Yarhzeit.'
• A Truce While We Gawk: In 'Tales from the Undercard,' a fistfight atop freshly poured concrete screeches to a halt when one construction worker threatens another with a jackhammer and blood shoots up, spraying all over them.
• Tuckerization: Throughout the series, names of people close to Gary Sinise and names of previous characters he's played are used in episodes:
  • His wife, Moira's, maiden name of Harris shows up in several episodes as character last names ("Unusual Suspects" for one) as well as in names of businesses.
  • His oldest daughter's name, Sophie, is the name of the doll in episode 2.09, 'City of the Dolls.'
  • As noted elsewhere, "Mac" is his son's name as well as that of his brother-in-law whom his son was named after. Mac Taylor's father is named "McCanna Boyd" after the same gentleman. And "Taylor" came, also at Sinise's own suggestion, from Lt. Dan.
  • His youngest daughter's name, Ella, is used several times during the run, including as that of his Stalker with a Crush in season 5.
  • His mother's nickname, Millie, is used as Mac's mother's name in 'Blacklist.'
  • "McQuinn," the last name of his character in the Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas movie, Fallen Angel, is used in episode 3.07, 'Murder Sings the Blues,' as well as a few others. A shortened version, "Quinn," shows up fairly frequently as well. The phrase "fallen angel" is used in 'Death House' when Mac & Stella are discussing the floor puzzle.
  • "Austin," his character's name in True West, is used in episodes 3.18 and 4.16, "Sleight Out of Hand' and 'Right Next Door' (which is also a Danza as it's the first name of the young actor who plays the character in question, Stella's neighbor who accidentally sets her apartment on fire.)
  • "Redman," the last name of his character in of Stephen King's The Stand (1994), is the name of the family in episode 5.17, 'Green Piece.'
  • "Milton," the last name of his character in Of Mice and Men, is used in at least one episode.
  • Possibly a coincidence, but the pawn shop owner in episode 1.03, 'American Dreamers,' is named Bruno. Sinise played the police officer father of the titular character of the little known 2000 film, Bruno, (a.k.a. The Dress Code).
• Turn in Your Badge:
  • Danny, when he's suspected of murder in 'Run Silent, Run Deep.'
  • Don, when a suspect dies in his custody in 'Rush to Judgement.'
  • Stella angrily turns hers in to Mac when he orders her to stand down from her investigation during the Greek antiquities theft arc.
  • Narrowly averted with Danny in 'On the Job' and 'Officer Involved.'
• Two-Faced: Twice.
  • The opener of 'Cold Reveal' is narrated by a pretty young blonde woman. Only the left side of her face is shown until the end of her statement, when she turns to reveal that the right side is horribly disfigured, and she begs for the madness to stop. The cause is never explained.
  • The Compass Killer in Season 6 had one side of his face disfigured by a shotgun blast.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife:
  • The overweight movie producer in 'The Fall' has a beautiful, tall, thin, and blonde trophy wife.
  • The second of the three Valentine's Day stories in 'Blood Actually' features this kind of couple, although from the hot wife's perspective she is the lucky one to find such a great guy which makes her husband's "betrayal" that much worse; unfortunately the only thing he is guilty of is acting suspicious in front of his apparently insecure wife while planning their surprise dream vacation.
  • Also the couple in the 'Compass Killer' arc, due to his injuries from a guy who'd gone postal in his office.
• Unbroken Vigil: Twice.
  • Mac watches over Don while he's in a coma after being severely injured by a bomb blast in 'Charge of This Post.'
  • Christine keeps vigil with her rosary at Mac's bedside after his surgery to remove a bullet that fragmented when he was shot in the back during 'Near Death,' then stays with him at the hospital for 16 hrs a day for the entire 6 months he's in recovery/rehab.
• Uncatty Resemblance: A witness in 'Not What It Seems Like' recalls a dog whining at the crime scene which involves glass breaking due to high frequency sound waves. Danny brings a shaggy little dog into the lab to see if he can recreate the "noise," which he knows he himself will not be able to hear. Sheldon and Stella each comment on how much his dog looks like him. He grumpily tells her the dog's "a loaner."
• Unintentionally Notorious Crime: The drive-by shooters at the end of season 5 don't have any idea that there are cops in the bar, or that they have seriously injured one of the team; they're just shooting at random businesses.
• Unnaturally Blue Lighting: First season, even worse than usual.
• Unprocessed Resignation: When Mac returns to the Lab in 'Keep It Real,' he tells the team that Sinclair pulled his retirement papers upon his request.
• The Unreveal: In "Clean Sweep," Mac receives a lovely flower arrangement at his office. Just as he begins to open the accompanying card, a wily female reporter who has been harassing him for an interview arrives, interrupting his progress. He tells her he can't accept the flowers; she denies sending them, saying it's not her style. Later, Lindsay point-blank asks Mac if the woman sent them. He doesn't give her a straight answer but since he kept them (knowing Mac's integrity), it probably wasn't her. The true sender is never revealed.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: The first victim in 'The Lying Game' is revealed to be a mid-transition transgender woman who is killed due to a violent reaction by someone she was hitting on.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In 'Rush to Judgement,' a wrestling coach moves a boy up a weight class. This effectively ends the boy's chances for a scholarship, so he tries to get the man fired by hacking into his wi-fi and sending child pornography to himself and some of his teammates. His dad sees it, kills & dismembers the coach. Also, a teammate is implicated, takes a bunch of pills, then dies while Flack is interrogating him, causing the detective to be suspended for a while.
• Urban Legends: The following legends turn up in various cases:
  • A bride is killed by her dress on her wedding day.
  • A construction worker is killed by "blue ice" falling from an airplane.
  • A corpse is found buried in the end zone at Giants Stadium.
  • The show creates one of its own when an eyeball falls out of the sky into Stella's coffee cup.
  • A college student kills his roommate in order to get an automatic 4.0 for the semester.
• Useless Without Cell Phones: When a high-school girl is asked to turn in her phone as evidence, she's not worried because...
  Girl: Here, take it. I have another one at home.
  Stella: Of course you do.
• Vacation Episode: In 'Vacation Getaway,' Danny and Lindsay take Lucy on a trip to Long Island. They are drive there in a convertible, build a sandcastle on the beach, and visit a lighthouse.
• Valentine's Day Episodes: There's one, 'Blood Actually,' broken down into three successive cases, each with a couple and/or love story aspect. The three canon couples all have their own romantic moments as well. Adam and Ellie are also revealed to have dates for the evening.
• Vapor Trail: In 'Second Chances,' the Victim of the Week is doused with gasoline when he is run over by a car and the fuel tank punctures in the collision. The trail of gas is then ignited by a cigarette discarded by a passerby (who is on his way to commit another crime) and it burns back to set fire to the victim.
• Varying Competency Alibi:
  • In "DOA for a Day", a judge is murdered, then the main suspect is killed with a Navy Seal's knife which is found at that scene. The judge's son, who is a former Seal, calls the detectives out for suspecting him because, while admitting that he is capable and would've done it if he'd known who killed his father:
    Russ: C'mon, leaving my knife behind? That's just sloppy. And if you know anything about Navy Seals, we're not sloppy.
  • In "Reignited" a wannabe firefighter is suspected of murder by arson, but it is discovered that he has some mental challenges that wouldn't have enabled him to come up with the elaborate trap that was laid. Mac tells Flack to let the man go because "he's just a buff, not smart enough to have pulled this off."
• Vehicle-Roof Body Disposal:
  • In 'American Dreamers,' a skeleton is placed on the open upper deck of a double-decker tour bus.
  • In 'Hush,' Mac and Stella investigate when half of a crushed body is found underneath a shipping container on a truck. The other half is eventually located in a shipping yard. It turns out that after the murder, the person who helped the murderer clean up placed the body on top of a shipping container, hoping it *would* be crushed and look like an accident.
  • In 'Happily Never After,' a killer drops one of the Bodies of the Week out of a window onto the top of a school bus. The body isn't found till the driver slams on the brakes in traffic and the body slides off the roof.
• Vehicle Vanish: In 'Vacation Getaway,' Shane Casey holds a hostage at gunpoint and drags her across the street. A bus drives between the two of them and Mac and Stella. After it passes, the hostage is there but Casey has vanished.
• Vehicular Sabotage: A race car is tampered with in 'The Formula.' Unfortunately for the sabotuer, this causes the driver's death instead of just injuries as inteneded.
• Verbal Tic:
  • Danny Messer's "Boom."
  • Mac identified a perp who repeated a sentence in front of him that the guy had just used (with voice distortion) over the phone to him. The bomber in 'Charge of This Post' said, "They're gonna need all the help they can get."
• Very Special Episode:
  • Stella's HIV-scare arc was done in cooperation with KnowHIVAIDS.org, and a PSA aired after each episode.
  • 'Indelible,' done in tribute to 9/11 and featuring the Brooklyn Wall of Remembrance, also had a PSA at its conclusion.
• Vigilante Execution: Several, including:
  • In season 4's 'Admissions, Gerrard bursts into an interrogation room and fatally shoots his daughter's rapist.
  • In 'Taxi,' disgruntled cab drivers kill the man they believe to be the Cabbie Killer and dump his body in front of the precinct.
  • It is heavily implied that Flack shot Angell's killer in cold blood in the season 5 finale. This is later verified during Mac's limbo period in the season 8 finale.
  • It's the motivation for the murders in season 7's 'Vigilante.'
• Vigilante Injustice: In "Taxi", three taxi drivers kill another taxi driver, believing him to be the elusive cabbie killer. Not only is he revealed to be innocent, but he turns out to be a police officer who was moonlighting as a cab driver.
• Villain-by-Proxy Fallacy: The entire motivation for the Compass Killer.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The serial rapist in one episode is a respected owner of nightclubs not only in NYC but also in Brazil.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Okay, wife, but still. Lindsay, given her shooting of Shane Casey and her altercation with the rookie cop who caused Danny's job to be threatened.
• Violin Scam: The M.O. of the perp/victim in 'Identity Crisis.'
• Voiceover Letter: Several, including:
  • Classic version in 'Time's Up.' When Mac reads the Dear John letter from Peyton silently, only her voice is heard.
  • A variation when Lindsay gets a congratulatory note from Stella in 'The 34th Floor.' The audience hears only Lindsay's own voice as she reads it.
  • The fade-in/fade-out version is used with Mac reading Reed's real-time blog aloud in 'Taxi' to analyze the clues he knows Reed is leaving for him.
  • Fade-in/fade-out is used again in 'Misconceptions,' when Lindsay reads the last entry in the original suspect's journal (which explains his intentions for his actions).
• Vomit Discretion Shot:
  • Just before Lindsay reveals her first pregnancy to Danny in the locker area, she throws up off-screen in the ladies' room.
  • Don throws up off-screen in Terrence's bathroom after being beaten to a pulp in 'Cuckoo's Nest.'
• Vorpal Pillow: In 'Risk,' a victim is smothered with a pillow before the death is staged as a suicide-by-hanging.
• Wacky Cravings: In 'Forbidden Fruit,' Lindsay (who is pregnant) has a whole bunch of weird food laid out on the lab table as part of an investigation into a poisoning. Mac walks in and comments that he hopes this isn't one of her cravings.
• Wait Here: Mac tells Danny to stay with the vehicle in 'Point of No Return,' after Danny reveals he forgot his bulletproof vest. Danny obeys at first, then ends up chasing the suspect anyway when the guy runs outside and into another area. The result is Danny trying to survive a shootout until the others can catch up.
• Walk and Talk: In practically every episode, the investigators discuss case evidence while walking around the Lab. The set included an L-shaped hallway that the characters would be filmed walking in one direction, then after a Jump Cut, flashback to something they're discussing, or an insert shot of some evidence, they'd be filmed walking in the other direction but in such a way as to make it look like it's an extension of where they were, or an entirely different walkway.
• The Walls Are Closing In: In 'Death House,' the team are investigating a penthouse that has been converted into a series of elaborate deathtraps. Hawkes gets trapped in a small metal room where the walls start closing in on him.
• Wannabe Secret Agent: The couple code-named "Boris" and "Natasha" in 'Brooklyn 'Til I Die' are portraying spies in a Role Playing Game.
• Was Just Leaving: During Mac's speech aphasia arc, Christine confronts him about his issues while he's at work. Sheldon knocks on the open office door and steps inside, talking about the case. Realizing he has interrupted a personal conversation, he apologizes and offers to come back later. Mac tells him to say and, glaring at his girlfriend, adds firmly, "Christine was just leaving." She does so, frowning, but without another word.
• Water Guns and Balloons: 'Fare Game,' which uses the real life Streetwars game as "Water Gun Wars." It's a tournament where people try to "assassinate" each other with water guns or balloons to become the last person standing and win a cash prize. The victim is killed when the guy he knocks out of the game tries to scare him with a blank gun, and doesn't realize that even blanks are lethal at close range.
• Wealthy Philanthropist: Coroner Sid Hammerback turns into a philanthropist after getting rich off his pillow invention. He's been diagnosed with lymphoma and is possibly going to die, and decides that since it can't buy a cure and he can't take it with him, he'll help the families of some of the victims that came through the morgue. Jo finds out it's him, but he askes her not to tell anyone else. (It's ambiguous as to whether Mac finds out as he's revealed to know during his 'Near Death' experience, but that could be a case of paranormal omniscience.)
• Weaponized Ball:
  • The murder weapon in "The Closer" is revealed to be a baseball thrown by a free agent pitcher.
  • "Buzzkill": A guy uses an automatic pitching machine to pelt the performance on a live billboard in Times Square with tennis balls when it keeps him up at night. He is taken into custody after a dead woman is found at the scene.
• Weapon Twirling: In 'Corporate Warriors,' Mac twirls the katana he's testing while Lindsay observes.
• Wedding Ring Removal: In the season 1 finale, Mac finally takes off his wedding ring. He had been unable to bring himself to remove it before then, as he was still struggling with the loss of his wife on 9/11. He continues to struggle for a while, but taking off the ring is symbolic of him being ready to start dating again.
• We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: Averted in a variation. In 'Officer Blue,' Mac needs the bullet lodged in the horse to help make his case, but he knows the animal isn't likely to survive. Fortunately, he manages to stall the surgery long enough that the horse makes it.
• Weird Trade Union: In the second case in 'The Ride In,' a man is trying to form a union for costumed mascots. He accidentally kills a man when he flings a cigarette at him to prove that people in costumes get bullied and the union is meant to provide protection, not knowing that the man (who was part of a publicity stunt for a new brand of cigarette) had made his costume with flammable materials.
• Welcome Episode:
  • Lindsay, in episode 2.03,'Zoo York.' (see quote under next trope)
  • Jo in the season 7 opener, 'The 34th Floor.'
    Jo: [referring to the victim she discovered upon her arrival] My first thought was it's a practical joke. You know, "Welcome to the New York Crime Lab."
    Mac: We usually sabotage a pair of latex gloves or have a tech pose as a dead body in Autopsy, then suddenly pop to life. But murder? Not our style.
    Jo: Good to know.
  • Just a reference, but in 'Epilogue,' Sid reveals to the team that he'd had someone pull the dead body prank on Angell when she'd attended her first autopsy.
• Welcome to the Big City: Lindsay, essentially. Her first case upon arriving from Bozeman, Montana involves a man devoured by a tiger. Her job?...
  M.E. Evan Zau: [walking into the lab] Whoa. What is that smell?
  Lindsay: [searching for human remains that the tiger swallowed] Tiger dung. The zoo just made a fresh delivery. Everyone else just happens to be conveniently busy.
  Zau: You know what they say: It's a dirty job, but...
  Lindsay: The rookie's gotta do it.
• West Coast Team: Inverted, along with CSI: Miami, spinning off of the Las Vegas-based original.
• We Will Not Use Photoshop in the Future: Double subverted. On discovering a plaster cast of a dagger supposedly buried with Alexander the Great, Mac initially assumes that it must have held a forgery. When carbon dating of a fragment of ivory from the dagger reveals that it's old enough to be the real thing, the trope is played straight and everyone acts as if it must be for real; the possibility that a forger might re-use ivory from some less-valuable or damaged antique from the same period never rates a mention.
• Wham Line: "Aiden." Mac, in the episode 'Heroes,' when he realizes the identity of a body found earlier is a former CSI.
• Wham Shot: In the episode 'Flag on the Play,' Danny finds his grandfather's dog tags that were stolen in the previous episode in a pawn shop. He brings them back to the lab and checks them for prints to see who stole them. The perp: Shane Casey, whom Danny locked up three seasons earlier and who had been serving a life sentence in prison.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: The 21-year-old whose beer gets spiked with LSD in 'Uncertainty Rules' has a very hard time remembering details from the night in question.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Louie Messer is left in a coma at the end of 'Run Silent, Run Deep.'
  • Reed Garrett, who pursued info on Mac's cases for his blog with a vengeance, is last seen in season 6's 'Pot of Gold,' and is never even mentioned again.
  • Peyton Driscoll, after The Bus Came Back for one episode, disappears into thin air.
  • Aubrey Hunter. Even after she tells Mac he's the reason she's staying in Manhattan, she disappears without a trace as well.
• White Gangbangers: The Tanglewood Boys. Most, if not all, of them are Italian.
• White Male Lead: White male Gary Sinise portrays lead investigator Mac Taylor, a Catholic former Marine, during the entire run.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: While searching Central Park at night in 'Scared Stiff,' Flack reveals to Danny that he's afraid of deadly black widow spiders. Danny explains that while they will make you quite sick, they won't kill you, and ribs his friend about it.
• Widowed at the Wedding: 'Til Death Do We Part.' The first bride dies from a formaldehyde-laced dress that she didn't know was taken off a corpse. Later, Mac has to stop a groom from suffering the same fate from his tux.
• Wipe the Floor with You:
  • Frankie drags Stella by her ankles all over her apartment in 'All Access.'
  • Mac does a table variation of this to one of the Neo-Nazis in 'Yahrzeit,' wiping a counter in the guy's automotive shop clean of car parts with him.
  • The wife in 'Who's There?' is drug from her living room to her bedroom by a home-invader.
• Witness Protection: An old case of Flack's pops up again in 'To What End?' when someone he helped get into the Witness Protection program returns.
• Woken Up at an Ungodly Hour: Played for laughs when Stella and Don are canvassing an apartment building in the middle of the night. One lady answers her door with an eye mask pushed up on her forehead and before Don can finish introducing himself, she interrupts him.
  Lady: Do you know what time it is?!
  Det. Flack: (starts to ask if she heard anything)
  Lady: I said, "Do you know what time it is?!"
  Det. Flack: Uh, yes ma'am, it's 3 a.m.
  Lady: (slams the door in his face)
• Workout Fanservice:
  • Mac's swim in ep 100, 'My Name Is Mac Taylor.'
  • The pole dancer class in season 7's 'Vigilante.'
• Working with the Ex: Jo and Russ, twice, in 'To What End?' and 'Identity Crisis' which involve Witness Protection and a con artist, respectively.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: In 'White Gold,' two crooks kill a young pizza chef because they think he is transporting a fortune in drugs. However, what they assumed to be bricks of cocaine are actually blocks of mozzarella cheese.
• Would Hurt a Child: The guy who killed three of Lindsay's then high-school classmates back in Montana.
• Would Not Hurt A Child:
  • The shooter in 'Unspoken' changes his mind about killing Lindsay when he discovers that she has a small daughter because he knows that losing a mother would be devastating to a child.
  • The robber/kidnapper in 'Exit Strategy' who takes off with the girl rather than shoot her as his accomplice demands.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
  • The guy who slams his head on the table in the interrogation room with Mac & Flack. Mac is delighted to inform him that they can easily prove his injury to be self-inflicted.
  • In 'The Untouchable,' a young woman darts out in front of Mac's Avalanche at night, then falls to the pavement. When he gets out to assess her injuries, she jumps up and her accomplice tazes him in the neck from behind.
  • The woman that Lindsay discovers had faked being abused by her husband in order to get her brother to kill him.
• Writing Around Trademarks:
  • In 'Sanguine Love,' a tube of ChapStick is found at the crime scene and the name is shown in plain view on screen, but the detectives consistently refer to it as "dry lip balm."
  • The reference to Facebook pages as "profile pages" in 'Who's There?' and 'Brooklyn Til I Die,' without saying the name of the site.
• Writing Indentation Clue:
  • 'All in the Family': When Danny fails to show up for work, Don goes to his apartment and finds indentaions on Ruben's funeral bulletin. He uses the classic pencil-rubbing technique to determine where Danny is.
  • 'Late Admissions': The victim's notebook is discovered with a page torn from it. The team analyze the next page and figure out that he was writing an expose on illegal activity at his school.
• Written-In Absence:
  • Lindsay was written out for a few episodes during season 3 so Anna Belknap could go on maternity leave.
  • Done again in season 5, where Lindsay ends up pregnant with Danny's baby.
• X Called; They Want Their Y Back: When Jo is going over some videotapes of a suspect's therapy sessions.
  Danny: Jane Fonda called, she wants her workout videos back.
  Jo: They're not Jane's, they are Cher's.
• The X of Y: At least nine episode titles follow this pattern.
  • "Creatures of the Night"
  • "City of the Dolls"
  • "Charge of This Post"
  • "Heart of Glass"
  • "A Daze of Wine and Roaches"
  • "The Cost of Living"
  • "Point of No Return"
  • "Pot of Gold"
  • "Point of View"
• Yandere:
  • Stella's boyfriend Frankie Mala, who stalks her, breaks into her appartment and tries to kill her after she breaks up with him.
  • Ella McBride, who stalks Mac in a grocery store, fakes evidence to get close to him, then slits her wrists to regain his attention after he berates her for compromising his case.
• You Know What They Say:
  • "Zoo York": Lindsay is sifting through tiger dung for human body parts.
    Dr. Evan Zao: You know what they say: It's a dirty job but...
    Det. Lindsay Monroe: The rookie's gotta do it.
  • "The Box": Mac is interrogating an uncooperative suspect.
    Reggie Dunham: You know what they say, right? Mind's a terrible thing to waste.
    Det. Mac Taylor: So's my time.
  • "The Party's Over" Mac answers Lindsay's question as to why the suspect and the victim would've had contact.
    Det. Mac Taylor: You know what they say: keep your friends close and your enemies closer - and if that doesn't work, kill 'em.
  • "Command+P": Used in two unrelated scenes.
    Det. Jo Danville: [about a gun created with a 3-D printer] You know what they say: every act of creation is an act of destruction.
    ME Sid Hammerback: [on giving away a fortune] Well, you know they always say you can't take it with you.
• You Remind Me Of Her: Mac tells Reed that he reminds Mac of Claire, Reed's mother and Mac's late wife. He mentions that Reed has the same stubbornness Claire did, and that he looks like her.
• You See, I'm Dying: Sid, to Jo. The phrase isn't said verbatim, and his condition isn't always fatal (though his is advanced), but you can tell it's what he's telling her all the same.
• You're Not My Type: Aiden, to Danny.
  I'm way outta your league, Messer.
• Your Favorite:
  • Flack picks on Mac by telling a reporter she could sweet-talk him into an interview by bringing Mac his "favorite" breakfast foods...except he is severely allergic to one (blueberries) and abstaining from the other (coffee).
  • Adam brings his Alzheimer-suffering father a chocolate malt. Mr. Ross takes a big sip and, not recognizing his son at this point, exclaims, "My favorite! How'd you know?" Adam replies, "Lucky guess."
• Your Head A-Splode: In 'Hide Sight,' a sniper uses explosive bullets. One explodes as Sid tries to remove it from the victim's head, tearing a big hole in it and dazing Sid, whose eyes only survive intact due to his glasses.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: 'Hung Out To Dry.' The plot seems resolved, until Lindsay comes in and announces that Shane Casey has escaped.
• Zero-G Spot: Not quite genuine Zero-G, but a couple in one episode get busted for public indecency because they're having sex while bungee-jumping off bridges in the city. It's strongly implied that this is the female jumper's personal favorite kink.

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