Ripped From The Headlines / Law & Order

aka: Law And Order Criminal Intent

As the Trope Namer for Ripped from the Headlines, the number of examples comes as no surprise in this franchise.

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General

• They've covered the Jon Benet-Ramsey case on three separate occasions, each with a different outcome.
• The Paul Bernardo/Karla Homolka murders have been covered at least 3 times between the main series and the spinoffs.

Original Series

The Trope Namer via NBC's promos in the early 2000s. Almost all the stories are loosely based on real incidents, with things like the characters and outcomes changed.

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• Season 1, episode 1: "Prescription for Death" is based on the death of Libby Zion.
• Season 1, episode 2: "Subterranean Homeboy Blues." Gender flips the Bernhard Goetz case, (the shooter in the show is a female), but makes few other changes to the real-life case.
• Season 1, episode 9: "Indifference" is so obviously inspired by the Lisa Launders case that it concludes with a long disclaimer both displayed and spoken about how the real case differed from the story just shown. It remains the only episode in any series in the franchise to do anything of that nature. It is easily the creepiest moment of the entire series considering they used the same title sequence narrator to tell the audience that the horrific case and the depraved criminals involved have some basis in real life.
• Season 1, episode 11: "Out of the Half-Light", an episode which fictionalized the then-unresolved Tawana Brawley scandal/hoax.
• Season 1, episode 19: “The Serpent’s Tooth” is based on the Menendez Brothers’ murder of their parents.
• Season 2, episode 1: "Confession" has some similarities to the case of Oreste Fulminante, whose confession to murder was found to be coerced.
• Season 2, episode 2: "Wages of Love" shows similarities to the Betty Broderick case.
• Season 2, episode 5: "God Bless This Child" may have been based on the Alex Dale Morris faith-healing case.
• Season 2, episode 7: "In Memory Of." Based on the case of George Franklin.
• Season 2, episode 8: "Out of Control". Based on a rape case at St. John's University.
• Season 2, episode 9: "Renunciation" was based on the Pamela Smart case.
• Season 2, episode 10: "Heaven" was heavily based on the Happy Land Fire. Both the fictional case and the real one it was based on involved a jealous boyfriend burning his ex-girlfriend's club, and the fictional episode added an organized crime conspiracy element to the story.
• Season 2, episode 11: "His Hour on the Stage" was based on the Roy Radin murder.
• Season 2, episode 15: "Severance" may have been based in part on the case of Donald Nash.
• Season 2, episode 16: "Vengeance" was possibly based on the Boston Strangler.
• Season 2, episode 19: "The Fertile Fields", which may have been inspired in part by the Crown Heights riots.
• Season 2, episode 20: "Intolerance" was based on Wanda Holloway, who hired a hitman to kill her daughter's rival in a school competition.
• Season 3, episode 2: "Conspiracy". Originally based on the assassinations of several civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X. The sequel episode (season 7, episode 9, Entrapment) made it specifically about the Malcolm X shooting.
• Season 3, episode 3: "Forgiveness", which was based on Bonnie Garland's murder.
• Season 3, episode 12: "Extended Family", based on what happened to Faye Yager.
• Season 3, episode 15: "Night and Fog", about the Nazi John Demjanjuk (called 'Ivan the Terrible').
• Season 3, episode 17: "Conduct Unbecoming", which referenced the Tailhook scandal.
• Season 4, episode 1: "Sweeps". Based on an episode of Geraldo that erupted into a brawl.
• Season 4, episode 4: "Profile". Based on racist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin.
• Season 4, episode 5: "Black Tie." Based on the Sunny Von Bulow case.
• Season 4, episode 7: "Apocrypha". Based on the Charles Manson cult.
• Season 4, episode 8: "American Dream". Based on the Billionaire Boys Club scandal.
• Season 4, episode 14: "Censure" was based on the case of Judge Solomon Wachtler.
• Season 4, episode 17: "Mayhem" was inspired in part by Lorena Bobbitt's mutilation of her husband.
• Season 4, episode 18: "Wager" was based on James Jordan's gambling problems (James Jordan was Michael Jordan's father).
• Season 4, episode 19: "Sanctuary" was based on the Crown Heights riots.
• Season 4, episode 21: "Doubles". Based on the attacks on sports stars Nancy Kerrigan and Monica Seles.
• Season 5, episode 1: "Second Opinion." Opens with an incident based on Gloria Ramirez before diving into the peddling of phony cancer medication such as Laetrile.
• Season 6, episode 12: "Trophy". Featuring a serial killer preying on young black boys, this episode was inspired by the Atlanta Child Murderer, Wayne Williams. In the Williams case, the murders were initially suspected to be hate crimes, but were eventually discovered to be committed by Williams, a black sex-murderer. In the episode, a white racist is wrongly convicted for the crimes, but is discovered to have been innocent, while the actual killer is a deranged black religious fanatic.
• Season 6, episode 13: "Charm City" (also a Homicide crossover). Based on the Aum Shinrikyo subway attack.
• Season 7, episode 10: “Legacy,” based on the murder of Martin Dillon.
• Season 7, episode 13:"Matrimony", which featured yet another blond bombshell being investigated for the murder of her octogenarian millionaire husband.
• Season 7, episodes 15-17: "D-Girl", "Turnaround", and "Showtime" — based on the infamous O. J. Simpson trial, which was such a circus that naturally it needed to be a three-part epic. Notably, the OJ stand-in and his dead wife were white, eliminating the racial angle. Every other beat of the real trial was mirrored... until the jury found the guy guilty, that is.
• Season 8, episode 1: "Thrill" — an episode where two teenagers order take out, just so they can get the thrill of killing the delivery guys — was based on a real event, just replace the fried chicken with pizza.
• Season 8, episode 2: "Denial" — about a college-age couple that denies killing their newborn baby. Based on the Melissa Drexler and Amy Grossberg cases, in which young parents dump their babies in dumpsters.
• Season 8, episode 13: "Castoff" — featuring a bisexual serial killer preying on the S&M community, this episode was inspired by Andrew Cunanan, a gay serial killer who preyed on the fashion community.
• Season 8, episode 15: "Faccia a Faccia" - about a murdered former hitman who'd turned states evidence and published a book about his life in the mob. Heavily inspired by Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
• Season 8, episode 22: "Damaged" - about a group of boys who rape an intellectually disabled girl on the pretense on being her friends and playing a game. Based on the 1989 Glen Ridge rape case.
• Season 9, episode 5: "Agony" - has a serial killer suspected of numerous murders in several states, reminiscent of Ted Bundy.
• Season 10, episode 1: "Gunshow" - was mostly based on the Ecole Polytechnique shooting in Canada, as the victims were female students and the shooter was inspired by hatred of women and attempted to kill himself as well. It also involves then-current topics in the gun control debate, like sales loopholes. (Of course, where the incident actually happened, there isn't as much of a gun culture to begin with and there was an almost immediate crackdown after the shooting. But that's not as interesting as hauling a gun company CEO in on manslaughter charges.)
• Season 10, episode 2: "Killerz" - disturbingly based on the murder of James Bulger, but with the perps as girls. Law & Order: UK adapted the episode around the time Bulger's killers were up for parole, renewing national interest in the case.
  • Can also be seen as having been inspired by the case of Mary Bell.
• Season 10, episode 24: "Vaya Con Dios" - heavily inspired by the arrest and trial of Augusto Pinochet for human rights violations.
• Season 11, Episode 11: "Sunday in the Park with Jorge," based in part on the 2000 Puerto Rican Day Parade attacks. Also a Missing Episode as community leaders weren't happy with the general portrayal of Puerto Ricans on the show and pushed back against NBC hard.
• Season 11, Episode 14: "A Losing Season" - was based largely on the Rae Carruth case with the major difference being, the Carruth stand in is a professional basketball player, not a professional football player like the man was in real life.
• Season 11, episode 22: "School Daze" - based on the Columbine High School Massacre.
• Season 11, episode 24: "Deep Vote" - takes the 2000 election recounts, applies them to a senatorial election, and gets the mob involved.
• Season 12, episode 1: "Who Let the Dogs Out?" - based on the death of Diane Whipple.
• Season 12, episode 6: "Formerly Famous" - based on the Robert Blake case.
• Season 13, episode 4: "Tragedy on Rye" was based on the murder of Jennifer Stahl and two others above the Carnegie Deli.
• Season 13, episode 3: "True Crime" combined Courtney Love's coked-up exploits, Kurt Cobain's suicide, and the Dave Mustaine/Metallica split (with a layer of The Beatles/Yoko Ono thrown in for good measure). The Cobain Expy didn't actually kill himself. The dispute between the Courtney Love Expy and the surviving band mates was based on the dispute which was happening in Real Life at the time.
• Season 13, episode 15: "Bitch" - based on Martha Stewart's insider trading scandal.
• Season 13, episode 24: "Smoke" took the infamous 2002 "Michael Jackson dangles his baby out of a hotel window" incident to its (il)logical extreme; a famous eccentric celebrity dangles his young son out a window... AND DROPS HIM! Cue Sting. From there, the story reaches further back to the 1993 child molestation allegations brought against Jackson by Jordan Chandler and the out-of-court settlement he reached with the boy and his family.
• Season 14, episode 5: "Blaze" was based on the Station nightclub fire.
• Season 14, episode 21: "Vendetta" was based on Steve Bartman, who caught a ball at a baseball game that an outfielder could have caught and thus supposedly cost the Chicago Cubs their trip to the World Series.
• Season 15, episode 2 "The Dead Wives Club" features a ferry crash that bears resemblance to the 2003 Staten Island Ferry Crash.
• Season 15, episode 11: "Fixed" was based on Joel Steinberg's release from prison and thus serves as a sequel to "Indifference".
• Season 15, episode 16: "The Sixth Man" was based on the infamous Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons brawl that started when Ron Artest entered the stands. In this ep, the Artest stand-in is accused of the murder of the guy he went into the stands to fight after said fan sued him.
• Season 15, episode 24: "Locomotion" was based on the Glendale train crash caused by a man attempting suicide by parking his car on the tracks
• Season 16, episode 4: "Age of Innocence" was clearly based on the Terri Schiavo case. Guess which side got to be the murderers? If you guessed those wacky, fanatical Christians - you're right.
• Season 16, episode 6: "Political Animal" was based on the Larry Craig scandal where an anti-LGBT rights politician was arrested for soliciting indecent behavior in the men's restroom of an airport.
• Season 16, episode 20: "Kingmaker" involved a variation of the Valerie Plame outing, although with the politics reversed: the target of the outing of his daughter as a covert undercover agent was a Republican politician, and the political operative responsible for the outing was a ruthless, vicious, scary Democrat.
• Season 17, episode 5: "Public Service Homicide", Is loosely based on the Jenny Jones scandal, where she lied to a guest on her show, claiming a woman he knew had a crush on him, but it was really a gay man. And the guest snapped from the embarrassment and killed the gay man after the show. In this episode, however, the Jenny Jones expy intentionally sets up a meeting between a known pedophile and one of his past victims, knowing the woman would snap and kill him, which she does. She even gives the woman a knife to do so. The other major difference is that Jenny Jones would ultimately not face criminal charges for what she did, but the public backlash would eventually end her show. However, the expy does face criminal charges and is convicted of second degree murder.
• Season 17, episode 7: "In Vino Veritas", which, like the Michael Jackson example above, was about taking a celebrity scandal and cranking it up to eleven, with Mel Gibson's DUI arrest and following anti-Semitic rant (reenacted by Chevy Chase, of all people) giving way to a murder confession.
• Season 17, episode 11: "Remains of the Day", about the death of Anna Nicole Smith's son.
• Season 17, episode 16: "Murder Book" is about an Italian baseball star O. J. Simpson expy, who like Simpson, writes a "If I done it" tell all book after getting acquitted of murdering his wife and how it ends up being his downfall.
• Season 17, episode 22: "The Family Hour", about Judge Larry Seldin's antics at Anna Nicole Smith's custody trial. It also became meta and referenced the Andrea Yates trial. A forensic psychologist testified that Yates' testimony was cribbed from a Law and Order episode; there was no such episode. In "The Family Hour," Rodgers makes a similar mistake on the stand.
• Season 18, episode 4: "Bottomless" used this trope three times (Wal-Mart ethics enforcement, Chinese quality control scandals, and Roy Pearson's multi-million dollar lawsuit over being given the wrong pair of pants by his dry cleaners) in one vaguely-coherent 44-minute episode.
• Season 18, episode 15: "Bogeyman" referenced the Scientology paranoia fueled suicides of a prominent New York artist couple (you've seen the husband's artwork if you saw the trailer for Adam Sandler's Punch-Drunk Love or Beck's Sea Change album). Notable in the fact that Assist. DA Cutter pretends to be an expy-Scientologist as part of a Batman Gambit; sadly, the expy-Scilons have yet to return. ^note The Scientologists' harassment tactic isn't meant to drive their victim(s) to suicide, just away from investigating Scientology. Going crazy and being committed (the ultimate hell for the psychiatry-loathing Scientologists) or broke from filing libel suits is just a bonus.
• Season 20, episode 4: "Reality Bites" combines conspicuous references to the Octomom, Kate and Jon Gosselin, and the Dugger family in a mess of reality-TV motivated familial drama.
• Season 20, episode 5: "Dignity" was based on the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller.
• Season 20, episode 6: "Human Flesh Search Engine" managed the bizarre feat of being based both on the death of David Carradine and 4chan.
• Season 20, episode 11: "FED". A somewhat bizarre application of this trope; this episode combined the murder of a census worker who had the word 'FED' scrawled on his body with the ACORN videos showing ACORN members advising people how to commit voter fraud. In real life, both stories were hoaxes — the census worker's death was actually a suicide, and the ACORN videos were found to be heavily doctored.
• A few episodes pull a RFTH trifecta: The 5/2/10 episode featured guy who (along with his sister) crashed a party at an executive mansion and jumped the security line at an airport. The third part implies that a senator is having an affair with the sister and his assistant takes the blame but it's actually his wife who's having the affair with the aforementioned party-crasher/gate-jumper guy.
• The "Melting Pot" episode in season 17, based on the murder of actress/director Adrienne Shelly. Adrienne Shelly guest starred in the Season 10 episode "High & Low".
• Subverted in the first season episode "The Serpent's Tooth." The case of the week strongly resembles that of the Menendez brothers. The detectives are aware of that case and focus on the kids to the exclusion of other suspects. As it turns out, the real killer is the father's business partner, who's in The Mafiya.
• This actually had very, very serious legal ramifications once. Andrea Yates was a woman who drowned her five children in 2001, and was found guilty and sentenced to 40-to-life in prison. However, during her first murder trial, one expert testified on the stand that a Law & Order episode had aired that was very similar to the Andrea Yates case, and that this may have inspired Yates to commit this crime. This, in fact, never happened.^note A 1994 episode, "Precious", was a similar case where a woman smothered four of her children and cited "crib death", but this relationship wasn't conclusive. For this reason, the expert was forced to recant his testimony, and the jury decided that it was swayed enough by that fact to retry the case. Andrea Yates was then found Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity. In a hilarious Take That! move, however, Law & Order: Criminal Intent aired an episode based on the Yates case, "Magnificat", in November 2004, a year after the verdict was overturned.
• Season 20, episode 21 "Immortal" was based on the case of Henrietta Lacks. Before she died of cervical cancer a surgeon took samples of her cells for his research and put them in a Petri dish. They ended up becoming the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory. Her story was made public in The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks.
• With the show's comeback in 2022, the 21st season has had three ripped from the headlines episodes in a row.
  • The season premiere, "The Right Thing", is about a popular black entertainer imprisoned for rape and released on a technicality, similar to Bill Cosby. In fact, majority of the season had these type of episodes.
  • The second episode, "Impossible Dream", centers on a female CEO who murdered her fiancé/business partner when he discovered that the medical tests her company provided were fraudulent. This was based on the case of Elizabeth Holmes.
  • "Filtered Life" focuses on the disappearance of a social media celebrity who may have been killed by her boyfriend. The case is based on the murder of Gabby Petito.
  • "Wicked Game" is about a rich, gay, white man with powerful political connections, who preyed upon young black gay men with drug issues and caused one of them to overdose and die. This was based on the Ed Buck case.
  • "Legacy" is about a young, unstable teenager who commits a school shooting and the D.A office charging the father for knowingly giving his son a loaded gun prior to the shooting. This is based on recent cases of school shootings and the parents getting charged along with the teen who committed the horrible act, like the Oxford Shooting.
  • "The Great Pretender" combines two ripped from the headline stories. The expy of the con-artist Anna Delvey, and ultimately the opioid epidemic.

Special Victims Unit

• Season 2, Episode 18: “Manhunt” takes inspiration from Charles Ng's rape and murder spree and extradition proceedings from Canada.
• Season 4, Episode 12: "Risk" is based on the case of an international drug ring that smuggled drugs in cans of baby formula, and also had couriers posing as parents who would use their own babies (or in some cases, "renting" babies) so they could avoid suspicions at Customs.
• Season 4, Episode 13: “Rotten” takes inspiration from the Abner Louima assault
• Season 4, Episode 25: "Soulless" takes loose inspiration from the murder of James Bulger for the killer's backstory. In the episode, the killer-of-the-week is revealed to have been a former child killer who had his records expunged and was given a new identity. At age 10, he lured a toddler-aged boy from his mother's care, torturing and then murdering him in the nearby woods. In a case of Harsher in Hindsight, a couple years after the episode released, one of Bulger's killers was rearrested for possessing child pornography, bringing forth renewed public criticism towards the decision to release the killers back into the public and grant them new identities.
• Season 5, Episode 9: "Control" is based on the story of John Jamelske, who spent five years kidnapping women of varying ages and ethnicities and holding them prisoner in his home for varying intervals (several years for some, several months for others) before eventually releasing them. Unlike the real-life case, where Jamelske was eventually caught and arrested, the twist came when the perp in question was murdered by one of his victims when she encountered him on the subway sometime after her release.
• Season 5, Episode 17: "Mean" is based on murder of Shanda Sharer. The episode depicts a group of teenage girls who, led by their charismatic yet sociopathic leader, brutally torture and murder their friend after the leader suspects the victim of being involved with her crush. The episode even includes the detail where the group drives around with the victim, still alive, in their car trunk, getting drinks, meeting with friends, and grabbing food before ultimately dumping the body.
• Season 5, Episode 19: “Sick” takes inspiration from the renewed child molestation allegations against Michael Jackson.
• Season 5, Episode 20: "Lowdown" discusses the phenomenon of "being on the down low" in the African-American community, in which supposedly masculine black men secretly have sex with other men but claim that they're still straight. In the episode, a Bronx D.A. (who is Benson's ex-boyfriend) is found dead in his car, and clues lead to his male coworker, who he was in a secret sexual relationship with. Fin actually details what the term "down-low" means to the rest of the squad. It also addresses the theory that black men on the down low is the reason for the high rate of HIV in black women, by having said coworker also give his wife HIV.
• Season 5, Episode 25: “Head” is based on the case of a British teacher who claimed a brain tumor drove him to pedophilia.
• Season 6, Episode 2: "Debt" takes inspiration from the Rie Fujii case. The episode features a young Asian woman, illegally staying in North America, who abandons her two infant children by locking them inside her apartment. The episode diverges from the Fujii case, however, when the police are able to rescue the children, and SVU discovers that the woman only 'abandoned' her children because she was killed by her debt collectors.
• Season 6, Episode 4: "Scavenger" is based on the BTK (Bind-Torture-Kill) killings. The episode features a killer who goes by the moniker RDK (Rape-Dismember-Kill) who targeted young women during the 70s. Decades later, someone claiming to be the killer sends a letter using a pseudonym (Rupert Daniel Kilmore) based off the moniker, just as the BTK killer sent a letter under the name Bill Thomas Killman. In the episode, the letter sender turns out to be a copycat killer, but in real life, it was the real BTK killer, Dennis Rader, who was eventually caught based off a floppy disk he sent.
• Season 6, Episode 12: "Identity" uses the story of David Reimer, a twin boy forced to live as a girl after a botched circumcision. In the episode, the non-altered twin was charged with a crime based on the evidence that indicated there had been a young boy at the scene. The altered twin eventually fessed up after being hit with the news that 'she' used to be male.
  • The episode also parodies Dr. John Money, Reimer's sexologist, through the character Dr. Preston Blair. Just as Money did in real life, Blair forced the twins to "simulate copulation" to enforce the new gender assignment, causing them horrible trauma.
• Season 6, Episode 23: “Goliath” covers the side effects of using Mefloquine to treat malaria in soldiers deployed in Iraq.
• Season 7, Episode 22: “Influence” deals with a famous person advocating against psychiatric drugs, and the disastrous effects when someone with a mental disorder listens to him (this character wasn't a Happyologist, it was just his personal opinion - and due to having received electroshock therapy when he was a teenager).
• Season 8, Episode 11: "Burned" is based on the attempted murder of Yvette Cade, although it's really only the end of the episode that draws from the real-life incident; in the episode, the true story is appended onto a fully fictional plot arc involving a False Rape Accusation, which never happened in the Cade case.
• Season 8, Episode 15: "Haystack" is based on the Melinda Duckett case, except that in the episode the little boy was found by firefighters. As of this writing, Trenton Duckett has yet to be found.
• Season 9, Episode 17: "Authority" was loosely based on the same series of crimes that inspired the movie Compliance, mentioned below under Film.
• Season 10, Episode 4: "Lunacy" is loosely inspired by Buzz Aldrin punching Moon Landing conspiracy theorist Bart Sibrel, of all things (the incident is directly referenced in the episode by the fictional version of Aldrin). Lisa Nowak's arrest is indirectly alluded to in another scene, as a precedent of astronaut-on-astronaut violence.
• Season 10, Episode 6: "Babes" has a trifecta. In it, a group of high school students making a pregnancy pact in order to emulate a movie they had seen, a mother apparently bullying her daughter's classmate into committing suicide via an online networking site AND a group of kids filming homeless people being beaten and then uploading the footage onto the internet, all of which closely resemble real-life news stories.
• Season 10, Episode 20: “Crush” pulled another trifecta when they combined Rhianna's physical abuse, "sexting" (teens sending nude pics over their cellphones), and a scandal about two judges who'd send kids with very minor offenses to private juvenile facilities for cash (basically Holes if Stanley's judge was getting paid for each kid he sent to Camp Green Lake) Sunlight Home from Stephen King's The Talisman.
  • Or, a more literally ripped-from-the-headlines example from Pennsylvania.
• Season 11, Episode 19: "Conned" features Fran Stanton, who is based in part on former elementary school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, who molested (and later married after being released from prison) her 12 year old student, bearing his daughter.
• Season 11, Episode 21: "Torch"' covers the case of Texas man Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004, though evidence supports his potential innocence, for burning his house down with his daughters in it. Both cases featured issues raised with investigating arson, a smug, WRONG arson investigator, a former nuclear weapons expert turned arson investigator, the concept of flashover, and an unlikeable prosecutor. The SVU version notably features the innocent man being acquitted before he died, the prosecutor correctly pursuing justice, no interference from Texas governor Rick Perry, and no New Yorker coverage. This case is currently major in the debate about the death penalty, as it was the first known incident of an innocent Texan being executed.
• Season 13, Episode 1: “Scorched Earth” is based on the case of French minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was arrested in New York for the alleged sexual abuse of a hotel maid. The episode also bases its politician character, who is portrayed as an Italian diplomat, on Silvio Berlusconi. Hours after Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, it was announced that the show had already an outline for an upcoming episode based on the case, and it later went through several rewrites as the court case unfolded.
• Season 13, Episode 3: "Blood Brothers", features another trifecta, managing to combine the Arnold Schwarzenegger love child scandal (though in the episode, it was just a politician, not an actor as well, but it kept most of the details, including his wife and his housekeeper both giving birth to his sons in the same month), unfair placement on the sex offender registry (in this case, two teenagers having sex and the slightly older boy is put on the registry), and the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton, of all things. If you include teen pregnancy, given the popularity of shows like 16 & Pregnant, this episode might count as a quadruple use of this trope.
• Season 13, Episode 9: "Lost Traveler", about a Romani boy who disappeared on his way home from school, combines the murders of Leiby Klezky and James Bulger with the News International phone hacking scandal. There are also some similarities to the Etan Patz case, although this one was actually reopened one year after the episode aired.
• Season 13, Episode 15: "Hunting Ground", about a man who hunts and kills prostitutes and buries their bodies on a local beach: Robert Hansen and the still-unidentified Long Island Serial Killer.
• Season 14, Episode 3: "25 Acts", is inspired by the Fifty Shades of Grey media craze. In it, the author gets brutally raped by a TV host who interviewed her.
• Season 14, Episode 7: "Vanity's Bonfire" is based on the John Edwards sex scandal, in which 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards cheated on his cancer-stricken wife and got his mistress pregnant, then convinced one of his aides to claim the baby as his.
• Season 14, Episode 8: "Lessons Learned" is based on the Penn State University sex scandal, in which former coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted of molesting several boys and the school was criticized for covering it up.
• Season 14, episode 14: "Secrets Exhumed" is based on the case of Stephanie Lazarus, a cop who'd murdered her romantic rival and used her position to avoid being caught for over two decades.
• Season 14, Episode 16: "Funny Valentine" is based on the Chris Brown and Rihanna domestic violence incident, and even had lookalike actors playing the singers. A scene at the end threw in a News report with a line about she 'fell off of a boat' and died, no doubt to reference the renewed coverage of Natalie Wood's death and rumors that she may have been murdered.
• Season 15, Episode 2: "Imprisoned Lives" very clearly ripped the Ariel Castro affair, with the (visibly disgusted) detectives commenting near the end that the suspect they caught would likely kill himself in prison (as Castro did only months before the episode aired). The episode also brought in elements of the Tanya Kach kidnapping case as the backstory of one of the victims.
• Season 15, Episode 3: "American Tragedy" managed to pull off another trifecta, combining the New York Police Department Stop-and-Frisk debacle, Paula Deen's racist comments scandal, and the Trayvon Martin case, by having a rich, white, Southern celebrity chef shoot an unarmed black teenager simply because of his race.
• Season 15, Episode 6: "October Surprise" combines the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal with a little bit of the John Edwards out of wedlock baby scandal (in which he had a baby with his mistress, made one of his aides claim the baby, and used presidential campaign funds to cover it up). In this episode, ADA Barba's childhood friend and mayoral candidate Alex Munoz is found to have various mistresses which he met online. The SVU finds this out when one of the mistresses threatens to talk and Munoz's aide (and childhood friend) Eddie is sent to keep her quiet, during which she accuses him of rape. When he is questioned, Eddie claims that she's his girlfriend and they had a disagreement. Later on, it's revealed that Munoz bribes his mistresses to keep quiet, in extreme cases fraudulently getting them high paying government jobs.
• Season 16, Episode 2: "American Disgrace" scores a trifecta: The Solange Knowles elevator rampage (sudden attack on a famous African-American) combined with the Ray Rice elevator attack (very serious footage of abuse by an African-American sports star) with a Sterling racism rant on top (rich, older white man slagging off on the very African-Americans who earn him money while being secretly recorded).
• Season 16, Episode 4: "Holden's Manifesto" is based on the 2014 Isla Vista killings perpetrated by Elliot Rogers. Both feature young misogynists who took their love life-related frustrations by targeting random women.
• Season 16, Episode 5: "Pornstar's Requiem" revolves around a character based on Belle Knox, the Duke pornstar.
• Season 16, Episode 6: "Glasgowman's Wrath," is about two girls who stabbed their friend in order to lure out the mythical Glasgowman. It was very blatantly ripped from the story of two girls who tried to murder their friend in the hopes of summoning Slenderman.
• Season 16, Episode 14: "Intimidation Game", which conflates the GamerGate controversies of late 2014 with, of all things, ISIS terrorist activity and kidnappings. This episode is infamous for drawing the ire of both sides of the debate. Not least of which was because the episode treated the terrorist gamers as being unable to separate the games from reality (including the POV of the would-be killer having a HUD), when previous episodes that dealt with gaming and violence went out of their way to say no, video games don't make you a deluded killer.
• Season 16, Episode 18: "Devastating Story" is based on the discredited Rolling Stone story alleging a culture of fraternity-driven rape at the University of Virginia.
• Season 18, Episode 4: "Heightened Emotions" features pole vaulter Jenna Miller, who was based on Olympic long-distance runner Suzy Favor Hamilton.
• Season 18, Episode 17: "Real Fake News" is based on the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, as well as Edgar Maddison Welch, a North Carolina man that traveled to the accused pizza place and fired a gun into it hoping to "rescue children".
• Season 19, Episode 10: "Pathological" is based on the Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard case, where a mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy convinced everyone that her daughter was seriously ill for several years, and was eventually murdered by her daughter.
• Season 19, Episode 20: "The Book of Esther" is based on the Turpin case, where a couple spent several years abusing their 13 children. The family's visit to a bowling alley wearing numbered jumpers and subsequent photoshoot replicates a photo of the Turpin family wearing numbered shirts based on Thing One and Thing Two from The Cat in the Hat.
• Season 20, Episode 3: "Zero Tolerance" is based on the 2018 immigration crisis where hundreds of families were torn apart and kids were locked up in detention centers, separated from their families.
• Season 21, Episode 3: "Down Low in Hell's Kitchen" largely tackles the Jussie Smollett hate crime allegations with a little bit of the arrest of Ed Buck for allegedly killing multiple gay black men via drug overdose. Unlike the real Smollett case, there is hard proof of someone targeting gay men, but the pop singer Mathis pretends to have been victimized in order to come out as gay before TMZ outs him.

Criminal Intent

• In late 2006 episode "Weeping Willow", Criminal Intent fictionalized the already-fictional character of the YouTube "celebrity" lonelygirl15 as "WeepingWillow17" and made her the victim of a kidnapping, and by the end it's as hard for the detectives to tell what's real and what isn't as it is for the viewers. Subverted; Willow, unlike Bree, turns out to be an actual girl. Double Subverted when it turns out the kidnapping was a fake that had simply spiraled out of control.
• The Season 2 "Cold Comfort" was inspired by the controversy regarding Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams' death and the fight amongst his children over whether or not to have his body cryogenically frozen. Additionally, the late Senator at the heart of the fight had a moment where he pubically cried during his ill-fated attempt to run for the Presidency in the 70's, a reference to a similar incident in 1972 involving Maine Senator Ed Muskie.
• Yet another Criminal Intent episode dramatized the John Mark Karr confession to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, for the first half hour at least. And come on, you knew the creepy neighbor had to have something to do with it. Bonus: The character of Faith Yancy makes another appearance.
• "Bombshell" was about Anna Nicole Smith's death. Her character was named Lorelei, after Marilyn Monroe's famous part.
• "Revolution" had a very Affably Evil Bernie Madoff expy, who confessed to his incredible scheme to get protection from the Colombian(?) gangsters he swindled.
  • The original did this one too ("Anchors Away", season 19)
  • The first episode of the final season featured Jay Mohr as a Charlie Sheen stand-in (who was a fashion mogul instead of an actor because they knew they had to change something to avoid getting sued). He turned out to be only tangentially related to the murder plot even though the advertisements focused entirely on his character.
• The Season 3 episode "The Saint" was based on the case of Mark Hofmann, who sold forgeries to the Mormon church. The episode centers on a forger who targets a religion institution and uses a bomb to get rid of the person that could help to unravel his scheme. Said forger is played by Stephen Colbert.
• The second last episode, "Icarus", had an upcoming Broadway musical based on the legend of Icarus plagued by injuries on the set, culminating in the death of its lead actor when his rigging snapped and he fell during a stunt. This was based on the many problems surrounding the infamous Spider-Man musical. Goren even compares the two shows at one point.
• The first season episode "Poison" is strongly inspired by the Stella Nickell case. She had initially killed her husband with cyanide-tainted Excedrin capsules on June 5, 1986, though his death was ruled to be by natural causes. Nickell, however, would get a higher payout on his life insurance if he died from accidental causes, so she planted 4 more bottles of tainted capsules in local stores. When a woman, Sue Snow, was reported as having died from cyanide poisoning, Stella told police she thought her husband might also have used Excedrin. Further examination showed he did have cyanide in his body. Her story fell apart, however, and she was sentenced to 90 years in prison. ^note Nickell's crime itself was essentially a copycat of the "Tylenol Murders" in Chicago from 1982 — seven people died in that case and it remains unsolved. Some minor differences were that in real life only one person (other than the killer's husband) died, there was no 'Angel of Death' to complicate matters, the real case involved a life insurance payout rather than a lawsuit, and Stella wanted to open up a fish store, instead of a baby clothing shop. Interestingly enough, the evidence of algaecide becoming mixed with the cyanide when Stella used the same container to crush both substances was utilized in a different episode from the first season, "Art". In that one, algaecide had instead been accidentally mixed into the murderer's green paint.
• "Smothered" is based on the murder of Pati Margello. The step-father of her boyfriend, Dean MacGuigan hired hit men to kill her. This was with full knowledge and consent of Dean's mother, Lisa Moseley, heir to the DuPont fortune.
• "Family Values" is based on the crimes of John List, right down to the detail of the killer's daughter wanting to be an actress and the killer fearing it would lead her into sin. However, the episode does (presumably for reasons of storytelling expedience) omit one of the most memorable details about List's case, namely that he assumed a false identity and wasn't caught for decades; the fictional killer is tracked down and arrested in the middle of his crime spree.
• The season one episode "Maledictus" was based in part on the Robert Durst case.
• One noteworthy episode ("Want") is based on Jeffrey Dahmer, and includes things like the killer being employed in a candy-related job, his longing for a permanent companion, cannibalism of body parts, boiling water being poured into holes drilled in the victim's head, and the killer being murdered in prison while on work detail — really the only substantial deviation from the true story (other than compressing the timeline) is that whereas Dahmer famously targeted young men, the fictional killer's victims are women. Neil Patrick Harris even looks frighteningly similar to Dahmer in the episode.
• The killer from "Gone" is a murderous version of Bobby Fischer.
• In the episode "D.A.W.," the killer is an American version of Harold Shipman.
• The first character played by Jay O. Sanders was obviously based on famous mob hitman Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski. The episode also took inspiration from the real-life Tri-State Crematory scandal, in which a crematory owner stopped cremating corpses and simply dumped them around the property.
• “Phantom” is based on the case of Frenchman Jean-Claude Romand, who for 18 years pretended to be a medical doctor and researcher for the World Health Organization (WHO) and conned relatives out of their money. In 1993, as his scam was about to collapse, he murdered his wife, two children, and his parents so they would never know about his deceit.
• The last episode is based on the Zuckerberg-Winkelvoss controversy.
• The murderous group from "Slither" are based on the Manson Family. The episode even lampshades this. The leader of the group, Bernard Fremont (a.k.a. Thierry Gervais), is based on Charles Sobhraj, as is Goren's Arch-Enemy (and Fremont's lover/protégé) Nicole Wallace.
• "The Good Doctor" is based on Dr. Robert Birenbaum.
• "Happy Family" is based on the murder of Ted Ammon.
• “Faith” is a genderflipped version of the Anthony Godby Johnson hoax.
• “Tuxedo Hill” was obviously inspired by the Enron scandal.
• “Malignant” is based on the case of Robert Ray Courtney, a pharmacist who intentionally diluted 98,000 prescriptions to increase profit.
• “Pravda” is based on the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal.
• “Sound Bodies” was partially inspired by the New Sweden, Maine, church poisoning case.
• “Mis-Labeled” is based on the case of Bayer’s Cutter Laboratories decision to continue to sell blood products contaminated with HIV because the financial investment in the product was considered too high to destroy the inventory.
• “Pas de Deux” was inspired by the Brian Wells bombing case.
• "Baggage" is based on the still-unsolved 1992 murder of Susan "Su" Taraskiewicz.
• "Monster" is based on both the so-called "Preppie Murder" case of Robert Chambers which coincided with his release for manslaughter in 2003 ^note only to be sent back to prison for twenty more years on drug charges and the Central Park Jogger rape case.
• "Acts of Contrition" is based upon the racially-motivated Howard Beach, Queens beatings of the 1980s.
• "Magnificat" was inspired by the Andrea Yates case.
• "Shibboleth" was based on the BTK Killer case.
• "Bedfellows" was based on the murders of Robert and Andrew Kissel.
• "Masquerade" was inspired by the JonBenet Ramsey case.
• "Neighborhood Watch" was based on the November 2007 brutal murder of Daniel Sorensen by Jean Pierre Orlewicz and Alexander Letkemann.
• "Rocket Man" was inspired by the Lisa Nowak case, complete with "astronaut diapers."

Other Shows in the Franchise

• Law & Order: UK:
  • The third season opened with an episode with a plot reminiscent of the murder of James Bulger, which had been rendered topical again by one of the murderers being arrested for child pornography offenses in early 2010 when the episode would've been written and filmed.
  • The show occasionally tweaks episodes of the original Law & Order to deal with this. The adaptation of "Promises to Keep" (focused on a psychiatrist whose relationship with a client crosses the line and results in the death of the client's pregnant fiance) moved the focus onto the patient, who reveals he was involved in a James Bulger-style murder as a child and is out on a life license under a new identity, like Bulger's killers would have been at the time.
• Law & Order: LA, in its 8-episode trial run, managed to rip from the headlines in at least 6 of them, including the Manson Family, Tiger Woods' marital issues, John Edwards' out-of-wedlock baby, etc.
  • "Silver Lake" was basically a straight dramatization about the detainment and prosecution of an extremely disturbed Air Force officer.
  • The history of the murder victim in Echo Park is an obvious Expy of the Manson Family.
  • Episodes 1, 4, 5 and 6 are based in headlines.
  • Rubirosa's first episode was based on one seriously twisted Canadian Air Force commander (the real-life interrogation really was that calm and polite, it just took about eight hours).
  • "Hayden Tract" is a trifecta of headlines: a Tuscon shooting massacre-parallel occurs and the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case are mentioned, as are prison therapy cages, er, "modules".
• GEM's advertisements for Law & Order reruns mention this trope almost by name, billing it as having "cases torn straight from the headlines" as a selling point.

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