History Series / CSINY

Because there are so many trope examples, these have been split in two pages:

* [[{{Tropes0ToL/CSINY}} Tropes 0 to L]]
* [[{{TropesMToZ/CSINY}} Tropes M to Z]]

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%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.
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!!This show contains examples of:

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[[folder:A-D]]

* AHandfulForAnEye: In 'Point of View,' Det. Flack approaches a perp on a rooftop and the guy attempts to get away by scooping up a handful of sand and grit from the surface and flinging it in Flack's face. Fortunately Danny is sneaking up behind the guy and nabs him.
* ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine: 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 [[spoiler: someone avenging the survivors]].
* ATeamMontage: Fittingly, the first 22 minutes of 'Unspoken' contains no spoken dialogue. Shorter versions in all the other episodes as the team members process evidence.
* AThreesomeIsHot: 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.
* ATruceWhileWeGawk: 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.
* AbandonedArea:
** The Cabbie Killer lives in an abandoned firehouse and "works" in an abandoned brewery.
** The Compass Killer is ultimately revealed to live in the mostly forgotten "Underground Home" exhibit from the 1964 World's Fair.
** Another perp lives in the back of the now-closed funeral parlor where his mother was the mortician. When the team show up to question him, they enter through the front door and find everything covered in dust.
** "Death House" centers around a booby-trap-filled penthouse that has been unoccupied for 80+ years.
* AbandonedCatchphrase: In at least three episodes of Season 1, Mac says while interrogating suspects, "Let me start this story for you." Danny also does it once in an obvious attempt to emulate his boss. As time went on, it was reduced to the subtle use of the word "story" by various characters during the interrogations.
* AbandonedHospital: 'Where There's Smoke...": Leonard Brooks takes one of his victims to the now-abandoned hospital where his mother, who worked in the burn unit, used to take him with her when she couldn't find a sitter.
* AbortedArc: Peyton's single episode return in the end of the sixth season was hyped as the beginning of a love triangle. The season would have ended with Mac trying to choose between the feelings he still had for Peyton and the early-stage relationship he was beginning with Aubrey. Who he picked would have been revealed in the beginning of season seven. However, Claire Forlani got a part on ''{{Series/Camelot}}'' and couldn't return for more episodes, plus Melina Kanakaredes decided to leave the series, pushing the writers to put aside that plot to focus on the newly-arrived Jo.
* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: The team trek thru a very large sewer hunting their suspect's living quarters in 'Manhattanhenge.'
* AbuseMistake: The motivation of the would-be killer in "Unspoken." His boss had accused him of being inappropriate with children.
* AbusiveParents:
** Adam's father. Full revelation doesn't come until season 9's 'The Real [=McCoy=], but as early as season 3's 'Some Buried Bones,' he describes him as "a bully."
** Shows up with the VictimOfTheWeek a time or two. One example is the step-father in 'Sweet 16.' Mac, having just met his own step-son, doesn't take kindly to the man's attitude or conduct.
* AccentRelapse: 'Yahrzeit'- A man pretending to be Jewish is revealed to be a German former Hitler Youth soldier. Even after 64 years of pretending to be a non-practicing Polish Jew, marrying a Jewish woman, and raising an Orthodox Jewish son, he reverts to his German accent when his crime is revealed.
* AccidentalMurder: 'Child's Play' and 'Fare Game,' to name a couple. In the former, a boy is shot because he's in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time; in the latter, a man doesn't realize blanks can kill at close range.
* AccidentalPervert: In 'Right Next Door,' Stella finds a hole in her bedroom wall and mistakenly assumes one of her neighbors is a [[ThePeepingTom peeping Tom.]]
* AccidentalSuicide:
** "The Fall": The investigators look into the death of Melvin Heckman, a FatBastard movie producer, who was apparently pushed from his apartment's balcony. After the investigation goes through a series of people [[WhoMurderedTheAsshole who all had an axe to grind with him for ruining their lives]], the team finally discovers that Heckman had been on the balcony eating chocolates and [[AccidentNotMurder simply lost his balance]], falling to his death.
** "Cold Reveal": The team investigates the death of Toby Finch, who was found dead in a church with angel wings strapped to his back after seemingly [[CameFromTheSky falling from the sky]]. Initially, Toby's friend and girlfriend are seen as suspects but further investigation reveals what really happened. Toby, [[AmbitionIsEvil obsessed with becoming internet famous]], drunkenly attempted to catapult himself off a roof, expecting his artificial angel wings to help him soar across the sky like a hang glider. To ensure this, he pre-cut the bungee cords on his safety harness, thinking that the force of the catapult would fully disconnect them. Unfortunately, they held faster than he expected, giving him such severe whiplash that his [[NeckSnap neck snapped in two places]], killing him before he even fell through the window. Mac surmises that the only crime committed was the [[IcarusAllusion victim's misdirected ambition]].
* AccidentNotMurder: In 'The Fall,' after spending the whole episode researching the dozens of people who would have wanted to kill [[AssholeVictim a truly big asshole of a studio executive]], the investigators figure out that his death (from a fall off his balcony) was not a murder, but an accident that happened when he was eating from a stash of chocolates that was hidden there ([[FatBastard his wife had forced him on a diet]]) and lost his footing.
* ActorAllusion:
** In 'Fare Game,' the perp is an aspiring actor, and to catch him off-guard Mac pretends to be trying out for ''Literature/OfMiceAndMen''; Creator/GarySinise directed and played George in the 1992 remake.
** Detective Mac Taylor shares last names with Gary Sinise's most famous role, Lieutenant Dan Taylor of ''Film/ForrestGump''. Sinise says he gave the character his last name in tribute to that character. The character's first name, by the way, is after Gary's son, [=McCanna=], whose nickname is Mac and who, in turn, is named after one of his own uncles. The same brother-in-law of Gary's whom Mac's father, [=McCanna=] Boyd Taylor, is named for.
** Also, in "Playing with Matches" the QuipToBlack is "Houston, we have a problem." Referencing another movie Gary Sinise was in, ''Film/{{Apollo 13}}''. Although his character in that movie was not the one to say that line.
** Mac playing bass in the jazz band is a direct reference to Gary Sinise's role in his own rock band, the Lt. Dan Band. Several Lt. Dan Band members played members of the jazz band, and Gary brought along his own guitars.
** Carmine Giovinazzo's backstory of having to give up an aspiring baseball career was incorporated into the backstory of his character, Danny Messer.
** Mac helping with the Brooklyn Wall of Remembrance in "Indelible" was based on Gary Sinise's real life help with the project.
** In season 7, Jo tells the team she was a cheerleader in high school. Creator/SelaWard had been one both in HS and at the University of Alabama.
* AddictionDisplacement: In season 8, Mac reveals to Christine that her brother, Stan, who was his partner back in the day and who had been killed in the line of duty pre-series, had been trying to quit smoking at the time and had taken up the habit of chewing on ink pens instead.
* AdoptedToTheHouse: Sheldon, when Mac lets him crash at his place for a while beginning in 'It Happened to Me.'
* AdoptionAngst: There's a bit of it with Ellie Danville, Jo’s daughter. She knew she was adopted, but got upset at Jo for not telling her that her birth mom was in prison.
* AdultsDressedAsChildren: A dark version of this occurs in 'Admissions,' when a guy in his 30's and his accomplice pose as a teenager in high school and his father, respectively, in order to prey on innocent young girls.
* AdvancingWallOfDoom: 'Death House' has a penthouse filled with booby traps including one particular room whose walls would close in or, depending on the trigger, cook you to death. Sheldon accidentally triggers them to close in on himself; Mac rescues him by shoving his forensics kit in the gap long enough for Sheldon to squeeze out.
* AdventurerArchaeologist: The first victim in 'The Cost of Living' who, as Stella says, appeared to have "fancied himself a real-life Indiana Jones."
* AdventuresInComaland: In 'Near Death,' Mac is shot in the back and left, well, near death. While he is being operated on, he journeys through a limbo that looks like the crime lab where he meets and has conversations with his friends (and his dead wife).
* AffectionateNickname: Danny calling Lindsay "Montana." Sid tells her Danny does that because he has a crush on her.
* AfterActionHealingDrama:
** In the season 2 finale, 'Charge of this Post,' Mac, Flack and an office worker are trapped when a bomb goes off. Flack has a very serious injury to his abdomen and Mac uses the other man's ''shoestring'' to tie off a profusely bleeding artery before tearing strips from his own shirt to staunch additional bleeding.
** In "Page Turner,' the gang have to race to find out exactly what type of radioactive substance had caused two people to die and the coroner, Sid, to collapse, so they can tell the doctors what to do to treat him.
* AfterlifeAntechamber: 'Near Death.' It looks a lot like the lab. Mac wanders around the offices saying unofficial goodbyes to his colleagues and prepares to leave with Claire, but she tells him he can't go with her.
* AgelessBirthdayEpisode: Mac celebrates his birthday with Peyton in 'Murder Sings the Blues,' but his age is not mentioned.
* AGodAmI: The Cabbie Killer believes himself to be the Greek god Charon, aka The Ferryman, thus it is his duty to transport the deceased across the River Styx.
-->'''Cabbie Killer:''' The newly dead who have coins to pay for the ride must be taken across the river, or they'll wander the banks for a hundred years.
* AgonizingStomachWound: The Native American victim in 'Communication Breakdown' is killed with a tribal technique used to injure wolves' intestines. It causes abdominal pain and death from sepsis, which can take a couple of days.
* AgonyOfTheFeet: In 'The Closer,' a barefoot woman clad only in lingerie darts into traffic and is hit by a truck. At autopsy, Dr. Hawkes discovers several puncture wounds on the soles of her feet. Turns out she escaped an assailant by climbing through her window and had stepped on spikes put there to deter pigeons from roosting.
* AirVentPassageway: In 'Not What It Looks Like,' a trio of jewel thieves dressed as Holly Golightly escape via a ventilation shaft. Since Lindsay is approximately their size, it's her task to examine it for evidence.
* AliceAllusion: "Down the Rabbit Hole" features a white rabbit who does indeed disappear down a hole. ItMakesSenseInContext.
* AlienAbduction: Inverted with a twist in "Consequences." A schizophrenic woman "captures" a badly injured paintball player, thinking he's an alien and that the green paint oozing all over his gear is his blood.
* AlliterativeName:
** A villain from Danny's past named Sonny Sassone who shows up in the first two seasons.
** Mac's late wife's maiden name had been Claire Conrad. Mentioned when his step-son Reed shows up in season 3.
** Subverted by Jo Danville, who had refused to take her ex-husband's last name of Josephson due to the cheesy way it would've sounded.
* AllPartOfTheShow: In the opening of "Grounds for Deception," an audience is watching a production of a Greek tragedy in Central Park. During a pivotal scene, the shadows of two people appear behind the curtain at the back. As one stabs the other, the audience is enthralled...until a large pool of blood appears beneath the curtain.
* AllThereInTheScript: Mac's full first name, [=McCanna=], was in an early script, but was never said onscreen.
* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs:
** The lab gets stormed by an Irish gang intent on reclaiming their seized drugs in "Snow Day."
** The precinct gets invaded in 'Today Is Life' by a mob of rioters angry over the shooting of a young black man by a white police officer.
* AlmostHoldingHands: The episode in which Lindsay tells Danny she's pregnant ends with the camera focusing on their hands, the backs of which are barely touching each other as they stand side by side watching a pair of grandparents meeting their infant grandson for the first time.
* AloneWithThePsycho: Both Stella and Jo had to confront men out to kill them alone, and both lead to [[spoiler: KillingInSelfDefense]].
* AlphaBitch: "Crushed": She pretends to be homely girls' friends, dolls them up, [[spoiler:has her boyfriend have sex with them, rates their experiences online, and gives each of the girls a big necklace so everyone will know what happened. The sister of her victims strangles her and then part of her house falls on her]].
* AlternativeForeignThemeSong: The ending theme for the Japanese version is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V9rl2mtKA0&feature=related "The First Day Without You"]] by Dreams Come True (the band behind the music for ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1'' and ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2'').
* AlwaysMurder: Occasionally averted with accidents (ex; 'The Fall,' 'Tri-Borough') and suicides (ex: 'Blood, Sweat and Tears,' 'What Schemes May Come').
* AmalgamatedIndividual: ([[Recap/CSINYS06E04 "Dead Recononing"]]): The twist is based on "The Phantom of Heilbronn", where a spate of crimes involving the same person turns out to be due to a woman in one of the factories where their swabs are produced not wearing gloves.
--> "I am I in trouble?" [cue Mac rolling his eyes]
* AmbiguousSyntax: 'City of the Dolls:' A recording describes two people "kissing again" and "a bad touch." One realizes that her daughter witnessed her relationship with a younger male student and told him to try to get the recording deleted, leading to the victim's AccidentalMurder. It turns she could've ignored it due to how vague the description is without any context; the daughter could've just been talking about two students at her school.
* AmericanSeries: NYC is [[BigApplesauce The Big Apple]] after all.
* AmicableExes: Jo and Russ. Although he didn't like Jo being a career woman when they were married, they're still friendly and even have some UST in his first episode.
* AmoralAttorney: These guys show up every so often as villains. Two examples are serial rapist D.J. Pratt's lawyer and a guy who [[spoiler:irradiates a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead with thallium in an attempt to defraud the city; this leads to two radiation deaths and nearly gets Sid killed as well.]]
* AnchoredShip: At first, Lindsay pushes Danny away because of her emotional problems with having survived an incident that took the lives of her friends. Then, he pushes her away while he grieves for Ruben.
* AndAnotherThing: Detective Flack does this once. When he makes to leave, the door gives him a EurekaMoment; he realizes that the victim's door had been locked from the outside, so whoever killed him must have had a key.
* AndIMustScream: The victim with Locked-In Syndrome in "Blink." Mac is so desperate to help her that at first he is convinced she's trying to communicate with him through her eyes.
* AndStarring:
** Eddie Cahill gets an "And," Hill Harper the "With."
** For the final two episodes, Megan Dodds and Natalie Martinez, respectively, got the "With" and "And," but without their images being shown.
* AndThereWasMuchRejoicing: A crowd gathered around the first crime scene in 'Happily Never After' breaks into applause upon learning the identity of the victim, a much-hated woman.
* AnimalAssassin:
** Subverted twice in 'Zoo York.' The first victim is eaten by a tiger, but turns out he was already dead before being thrown into the enclosure. The victim in the second case is killed not by the actual Brazilian Wandering Spider kept by one suspect, but by [[ThisBearWasFramed another using venom from the same type of spider.]]
** Double subverted in 'Sweet 16.' The cobra is only meant to scare the birthday girl, but appears to have killed her father. Then it bites Lindsay, who has to be helicoptered to the hospital.
* AnimalReactionShot: Subverted by the dog show beagle in 'Recycling.' His owner is insistent that Mac has almost driven him to tears. Cut to the dog...with a perfectly bland expression.
* AnimalWrongsGroup: Not a group, but the guy who kills someone for trying to kill a cockroach in 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches.'
* ArcNumber / HarassingPhoneCall: [[RuleOfThree 333]]. For a while, Mac keeps getting strange calls at 3:33 am. Eventually it leads to someone angry about an event from Mac’s teen years.
* ArcVillain / StoryArc:
** For season 4, there are two: The 333 Stalker ([[spoiler:Drew Bedford]]) for the first half, and the Cabbie Killer for the second half.
** In season 6, a shorter arc concerns the Compass Killer.
** From season 3's 'Hung Out to Dry' up to the season 6 ending cliffhanger is the Shane Casey arc, which concludes in the 1st episode of season 7, 'The 34th Floor.'
** A few episodes in season 8 deal with the serial rapist case that had prompted Jo's transfer from the FBI to the New York Crime Lab.
* Area51: In "The Lady in the Lake," Adam finds what he thinks is a piece of an alien space ship, figures he'll be famous for making first contact, and immediately makes plans to open his own theme park called [=ARea=] 52. [[note]]That's not a typo; he deliberately capitalized his initials.[[/note]]
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: To the culprit in "Veritas":
-->'''Mac''': You're under arrest for [[LongList the murder of Derek James, Lauren Salinas, kidnapping and attempted murder of a crime scene investigator, armed robbery, grand theft auto, assault and battery.]] But most of all, for pissing me off.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology:
** "What You See Is What You See": The femur being the strongest bone in the human body, there's no way Sheldon could twist it to make the lodged bullet fall out.
** :What Schemes May Come": The heart monitor hooked up to the (actual) lab rat is set for human heart rates, not those of rats which would have been many times faster.
* ArtisticLicenseLaw: "Grand Master" deals with fugu being openly sold in a sushi bar. This is extremely illegal in the US. Even in Japan there are very specific laws strictly regulating the selling and serving of fugu.
* ArtisticLicenseHistory: The Native American tribe in "Communication Breakdown" never existed.
* AsHimself:
** Creator/JohnMcEnroe, appears as himself, and portrays his own doppelganger, in "Comes Around.'
** Music/{{Train}}'s Will Dailey performs at a jazz club during the conclusion of "Time's Up."
** Music/Maroon5 put on a free concert in Central Park during the opening of "Page Turner."
** Music/KidRock performs in the opening of "All Access," then portrays himself as a murder suspect throughout the rest of the episode.
** Music/JoshGroban performs in the venue where Mac & Christine eventually have their Valentine's date at the end of "Blood Actually."
* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign:
** There are some odd choices for character names from time to time, like one girl named Risa Calaveras ("Laugh Skulls" in Spanish).
** The Egyptian suspects in "Seth and Apep." An Egyptian viewer posted on another site that their names aren't Egyptian at all, but from another Arabic-speaking area.
* AssholeVictim:
** "Grand Master": A dead fashion designer is revealed to have [[spoiler:been poisoned by her former personal assistant, whom she'd fired for refusing her sexual advances, blacklisted from the industry, and further humiliated by sexually harassing her at her new workplace]].
** Who's There?": [[spoiler:The victim was purposefully destroying his family's company, liquidating every cent they had, destroying the future of his own daughter,]] just to spite his estranged wife.
** "All Access": [[spoiler:Frankie, Stella's deceased ex-boyfriend, is revealed to have shot a sex tape between the two behind her back (and posted it online). When Stella breaks up with him,]] he stalks her by entering her apartment and after she refuses to accept him, he attempts to kill her, with it ultimately ending with her killing him in self-defense.
* AsTheGoodBookSays: Mac quotes relevant passages from memory in "The Ride-In" and "Taxi." To specify the exact verses would require spoiler formatting.
* AtTheOperaTonight:
** Downplayed when Lindsay shows up to a scene in a formal dress, having been called in while seeing an opera with friends.
** "Murder Sings the Blues": Peyton takes Mac to the opera for his birthday. He gets called to a crime scene during the standing ovation, interrupting the rest of her plans.
** Subverted for drama in the 9/11 10th anniversary tribute, "Indelible." Mac & Claire are shown in a flashback to that fateful morning. He had surprised her with opera tickets for that evening and held onto them after she died in the attacks, but finally releases them in the tide at the end of this episode.
* AttackOnOneIsAnAttackOnAll: Mac, in 'Heroes': "You attack one, you attack us all." It initially refers to the dead Marine in Central Park; Mac is a Marine himself. But it takes on a double meaning when [[spoiler:Aiden is found as the episode's second victim.]]
* AttackTheInjury: Twice.
** In 'What You See Is What You See,' Mac jumps in the ambulance with a suspect who has been shot. The EMT tells him he can question the guy as long as he doesn't get in the way. Suspect gets uncooperative. Mac gets angry and slams the guy in his shoulder where the GSW is. EMT yells at Mac.
** In 'Seth & Apep,' Mac tries to get one of Christine's kidnappers to reveal her whereabouts by squeezing the man's arm where he had just been shot right before being apprehended.
* {{Auction}}: 'Yahrzeit' opens with a murder during an auction. As the case unfolds, one of the pieces being offered is discovered to have been stolen from a Jewish family during the Holocaust.
* AuditThreat: Flack does this a fair bit. Mac does & and follows through in "Pot of Gold." He and Stella walk away grinning while a Treasury Agency officer laundry-lists the perp's charges.
* AuthorTract: Creator/GarySinise, a noted veterans' advocate in real life, seems to have influenced Mac's dialogue about veteran-related issues now and then. His and Jo's discussion of the plight of homeless veterans in "Clean Sweep" is a noticeable example.
* AutopsySnackTime: Sheldon admits to Sid that the rule against eating in the morgue "never stopped me from sneaking in the odd bag of microwave popcorn."
* AwkwardKiss: Downplayed with Mac & Christine at her parents' anniversary party in 'Flash Pop.'
-->'''Christine:''' [''referring to her family''] Look at them. They're watching every move we make.\\
'''Mac:''' Well then, why don't we give them something to talk about? [''leans in and kisses her on the cheek'']\\
'''Christine:''' [''slowly moves to kiss him on the lips, then realizes what she's done''] Did I do that? I mean, I didn't mind doing that...lemme just get our coats.
* BabyBeMine: In 'The Box,' a baby is stolen by the desperate couple he'd been promised to after his mother changes her mind about giving him up.
* BabysFirstWords: Discussed twice.
** Stella expects Danny to utter his catchphrase "Boom" when they find a piece of evidence. He doesn't, and she asks why. He tells her Lindsay doesn't want him to use it anymore because she's afraid it'll be Lucy's first word. A few seconds later, Danny finds more evidence and can't help himself, "Boom!"
** "Do Not Pass Go": The mother of a young man who'd gone missing tells Flack what her son's first word was. He replies that his own first words were "cookie and cake."
* BackForTheDead: [[spoiler:Aiden]] in "Heroes."
* BackToFront: The entire opening of "Nothing for Something" is shown in reverse.
* BadassCrew: Yep, the whole team.
* BadassInANiceSuit:
** Mac and Lindsay are called to a crime scene that Danny is already working. Mac shows up in a tux, having been at a benefit for the mayor. Lindsay arrives wearing a formal dress since she was at the opera. Danny makes a comment about being underdressed.
** "The Party's Over": Mac chases down and arrests a purse snatcher while dressed in a tux because he's about to attend a formal event.
* BallCannon: In "Buzzkill," a man attacks a group of models doing a live billboard display with a tennis ball launcher. The balls injure several of the models, and one of them smashes a neon sign and drops a live wire into the oversize glass a model is frolicking in. This would have electrocuted her, except [[spoiler:she had already been poisoned]].
* BallisticDiscount: In "Command+P," a young inventor demonstrates his new process for 3D printing a gun to someone he thinks is an investor. He hands the gun to the guy, along with a bullet so he can see that the gun takes standard rounds. The "investor" loads the bullet into the gun, shoots the inventor, and steals the computer, printer and software.
* BallroomBlitz:
** In "The Dove Commission," the author of the titular report and the woman he's dancing with at a party are taken out by a sniper using an armed drone-like device belonging to the TARU (Technical Assistance Response Unit).
** The sniper in "Hide Sight" takes out a woman at an office celebration, complete with cake and party hats, in a high rise.
* BankRobbery:
** "Rain," about valuables being stolen from safe-deposit boxes.
** "Hostage," wherein a guy intending to rob a bank was beaten to it...and the manager was shot to death in the process, so he demanded a CSI prove his innocence. Mac volunteers and is eventually taken hostage as well.
** "Unusual Suspects," where two brothers rob a bank on their way home from school, and get robbed themselves.
* BaseballEpisode: "The Closer," where the killer is a player, and Danny gets to use the pitching skills from his aborted baseball career.
* BastardBastard: The perpetrator in [[spoiler: "Manhattan Manhunt"]] is the illegitimate son of a multi-millionaire. He commits murders out of resentment towards his father and half-sisters.
* BathroomBreakOut: In "She's Not There," the team search a building where a sex trafficking ring held their victims and find a young woman hiding under a cot. She asks to use the restroom. Initially thinking her to be a victim, they let her. While she's taking her time, they deduce that she's in on it, break the door down, and discover that she has escaped through the window.
* BathroomStallOfOverheardInsults: A girl hiding in a bathroom stall who overhears two cheerleaders insulting her becomes a vital plot point in "Do or Die."
* BatterUp:
** In "Boo," a guy who tries to fake his death to collect on the insurance by using blowfish poison to make him appear dead is betrayed by his spouse and buried alive. He manages to break out, so the spouse's lover kills him with a cricket bat (but not before the husband manages to inject both of them with the poison).
** In "Tanglewood," the Tanglewood Boys kill a wannabe with an autographed baseball bat taken from a sports bar. The fragment of signature on the splinter left in the body provides the CSI investigators with a vital clue.
* BattleInTheRain: A variation in "Snow Day." Half the fight is done soaking wet because the perps set the Lab's sprinklers off in at attempt to blend in with first responders and get away.
* BearTrap: A schizophrenic woman captures a man she claims to be an alien by leaving a bear trap in an alley. He triggers it while running during a paintball battle.
* BeastInTheBuilding:
** In "[[Recap/CSINYS01E15 Till Death Do We Part]]," two doves are found in a basket that was meant to be opened during a wedding held in a hotel ballroom. They had been alive when placed there but died before the ceremony... along with the bride. The investigators question the unusual practice of releasing them indoors.
** In "[[Recap/CSINYS03E10 Sweet 16]]," the birthday girl's brother tries to scare her by putting a poisonous snake in the expensive car their father surprises her with at her party. While that doesn't happen, the dad is found dead in the vehicle and when the team investigates, the snake bites Det. Monroe who has to be raced to the hospital for anti-venom.
** In "[[Recap/CSINYS05E03 Turbulence]]," a nightclub owner keeps his pet jaguar on the premises, and his scantily clad female employees walk her around on a leash. He tells the detectives that she's a bigger draw to the club than he is.
* BeggarWithASignboard: While investigating the death of a homeless man in "Crime and Misdemeanor," Danny and Aiden spot a man with a cardboard sign which reads, "Why lie? I have a huge cell phone bill." (Signs of the times, it originally aired in 2005.)
* BellyDancer: The birthday party in "Sweet 16" has a Middle Eastern theme, complete with belly dancers. One of the girl's friends shows up dressed as one as well, complete with coins dangling from a gold chain belt.
* BeneathTheEarth: The Compass Killer lives beneath a park.
* TheBet:
** Danny and Lindsay in "Snow Day":
---> '''Danny:''' There's no way you're gonna make this shot, too, Montana.\\
'''Lindsay:''' A Benjamin says I do. ''(shoots the billiard in the hole)'' Now you owe me $100.
** Part of the second episode of season 8 is a betting pool about when Mac would return to the lab.
** In "Nine Thirteen," the entire subplot is the group trying to figure out whether or not Lindsay is pregnant and when she's going to tell Danny. After she tells Danny in the last scene, the others are shown paying up their bets to Sid. Mac & Christine have a SideBet going as well. Early on, he tells her she owes him ten bucks before he relents and agrees to get more evidence.
* BewareTheNiceOnes:
** After Danny jokingly asks Lindsay how she'd get away with killing him and suggests that she would use her forensic know-how to clean up the scene, she responds that she ''wouldn't'' clean up but would claim that Danny was a DomesticAbuser.
** The Messers discuss what to do if the other dies: Danny wants a two-week wake (first week for mourning, second week for partying) and Lindsay "jokingly" declares that she'll haunt him and any future girlfriends forever ''while eating all of his cannolis.''
* BigApplesauce: The CSI franchise finally makes its way to NYC with this show. Mac, who is from Chicago, tells Danny at one point that they are blessed to be working for the finest institution in the greatest city in America.
* BigBad: Several, including Shane Casey, the 333 Stalker, the Cabbie Killer, and the Compass Killer, all of whom have arcs of four episodes or more.
* BigGuyRodeo: The victim in "The Party's Over" is strangled by someone much smaller than him jumping on his back and strangling him from behind.
* BigHeroicRun: Sheldon runs down the middle of the street with his game face on and carrying a rifle when he heads to the warehouse to help rescue Danny and Adam in "Snow Day."
* BigHonkingTrafficJam: In "Summer in the City," Mac is one of those honking his horn in the middle of stopped traffic blocking the way to a crime scene. He gives up and says, "Grab your kit, Hawkes. We're walking."
* TheBigRottenApple: The series zig-zags this. Overall, New York is presented as an amazing place to visit and live in... but it's a show that takes place in the CSI-verse, so [[CityOfAdventure you may want to watch out]] [[VictimOfTheWeek for all of the]] ([[AlwaysMurder mostly murdered]]) dead bodies.
* BigStupidDoodooHead: Dets. Angell and Flack have nabbed a mouthy suspect:
-->'''Angell''': Shut up, you stupid idiot! [''turns to Flack''] Is that redundant?\\
'''Flack''': Not with this guy, no.
* BillyNeedsAnOrgan: "Live or Let Die" has a variation: it's the doctor's wife who needs the liver. He orchestrates a medical helicopter hijacking and kills several people in the process. Mac tells the man he will likely be in prison when his wife dies.
* BirdPoopGag: In "Risk," Stella and Flack are questioning a suspect who is feeding pigeons while standing up through the sunroof of his limo. They need his handkerchief for evidence and ask him to explain a large stain on it. He says the birds gave something back to him. A reference is made to that being considered good luck.
** This scene has a mild CallBack "Food for Thought." Adam finds traces of bird saliva on a victim and asks Mac if he thinks someone getting bird spit on them is good luck "just like bird sh..." [[CurseCutShort Mac testily interrupts him before he can finish his question.]]
* BirthdayEpisode:
** Downplayed in "Murder Sings the Blues." Mac has his birthday off and goes to the opera with Peyton, who wants to celebrate afterward. He gets called in to work and the case keeps getting more complicated, keeping him there. They end up sharing a cupcake from a vending machine on another floor of the Crime Lab building. In the next episode, it is revealed that Stella had stopped by his place to drop off his gift, but no other mention of his birthday is ever made.
** One of the cases in "Sweet 16" involves a murder at a teenage girl's birthday party.
** The case in "Unwrapped" is that of a man murdered on the way to his niece's birthday party and a missing gift holds a vital clue. Meanwhile the team are all making plans to attend 3-year-old Lucy's birthday party. Mac uses the opportunity to invite Christine so she can meet everyone. Adam, seeing all the gifts she brought, mentions that his birthday is the next month and that she and Mac "are definitely invited."
* BizarreAndImprobableBallistics: "Hostage" features a gun that fires two successive rounds so quickly and accurately that they pierce the victim through the exact same entrance wound. Played as a real thing in-universe.
* BlackComedy: Mac is not amused when another cop makes a joke after a suspect dies trying to jump from one rooftop to another in "Blood Out."
-->'''Robert Hicks:''' [''grinning slightly''] Heard you had a falling out with Carmen Vega earlier today.
-->'''Mac Taylor:''' [''frowning''] Young lady made a bad decision. Paid for it with her life.
-->'''Robert Hicks:''' [''apologetically''] Gallows humor. Occupational hazard, I suppose.
* BlandNameProduct:
** "World Send" delivery service is used throughout the series.
** "Kiddie Clay" stands in for "Play Doh" in "Happily Never After."
** Danny uses "Mighty Glue" to lift some prints during his "Trapped" predicament. He also finds some "Clog Away" drain cleaner in the victim's bathroom.
** There's some "Handi-Foam" insulation in the episode with the urban golfers.
** Facebook accounts are referred to simply as "profile pages" in season 8.
* BlondeBrunetteRedhead:
** In "Cavallino Rampante," the carjacker's three daughters (blonde and brunette went into the family business, redhead went to law school).
** Franchise-wide, we have [[GenderInvertedTrope the male version.]] In color order: Gil/D.B., Mac, and Horatio.
** Mac's love interests: Claire is shown with red/auburn hair in two flashbacks. Peyton is brunette and Christine is blonde.
* BloodyHandprint:
** "Rain": After a robbery, one of the robbers is found in a pool of blood with baby-sized prints leading away from it.
** "The Past, Present and Murder": A body goes missing from a crime scene. Then, a bloody handprint is found on a "trash bag animal" that appears when airflow from passing subway trains comes up thru the grates. [[ItMakesSenseinContext It really does make sense in context.]]
* BodilyFluidBlacklightReveal: As is true for the entire franchise, investigators use blacklights quite frequently. One of the cases in "Tanglewood" has Danny and Aiden searching for clues in a seedy massage parlor. He aims his light in a waste basket and declares, "This is Chernobyl."
* BodyInABreadbox: Probably the most prone to this of all the [=CSIs=], because bodies found in generic NY alleys would get pretty dull after a few weeks. A prime example is the body in a 2x2x2 foot wooden box found on a beach.
* BodyOfTheWeek / VictimOfTheWeek: Goes with the territory, this being a CopShow / PoliceProcedural.
* BodyPaint: A can of green body paint laced with ecstasy leads to [[spoiler:a model's death]] in "Wasted."
* TheBodyPartsThatMustNotBeNamed:
** In "Uncertainty Rules," Danny says two female victims may have been hired "to blow out the birthday boy's candle."
** In one episode, Danny whistles instead of using the word "penis" when telling Mac where some evidence was found on a victim.
* BodySushi: A season 1 VictimOfTheWeek is poisoned by her former personal assistant now employed as a human table at a sushi restaurant. The PA had only meant to sicken her former boss, [[PsychoLesbian who had fired her for refusing to sleep with her and blacklisted her from the industry]], but the tiny amount of blowfish venom that the girl had used was potent enough to kill.
* BolivianArmyCliffhanger:
** In the season 5 finale, the entire team gathers in a bar which gets sprayed with bullets in a drive-by. The episode ends with everyone having hit the deck.
** The season 6 finale ends with the Messer family facing off with Shane Casey. The screen goes black before a gunshot is heard. Who shot who?
* BoobyTrap / DeathTrap: An inventor's house, designed to gruesomely off his enemies. Stella narrowly avoids getting skewered by one of the traps, and Sheldon is in danger of being crushed by another.
* BookcasePassage: A closet Neo-Nazi in "Yahrzeit" keeps his horde of Holocaust memorabilia behind a bookcase that slides in front of the entrance. The investigators find it after Mac notices scratch marks on the floor.
* BornFromADeadWoman: In "The Box," an unwed pregnant woman promises her baby to a couple, then changes her mind in her last month. She gets pushed down the stairs during a fight in their home. The husband realizes she's dead, but cuts the baby out of her and hides her body.
* BoundAndGagged: Chronlogically, Camille in "Smooth Criminal," the wife in 'Who's There?", a victim in "Where There's Smoke," and Christine in "Seth and Apep."
* TheBoxingEpisode: "Tales From The Undercard." Mac is revealed to be a fan of the victim, a retired boxer who got back into an underground version of the sport.
* BratsWithSlingshots: Mentioned in "Commuted Sentences" when country-girl Lindsay uses one to simulate how a bullet would ricochet off a column.
* BreakTheCutie:
** Danny is involved in several fights with Mac, has been held hostage and had the ''shit'' kicked out of him by a gang of drug dealers, has been implicated in the shooting of another officer, his neighbor's 10-year-old son was murdered during a robbery-in-progress while under his care and he blamed himself for it, and his brother was put into a coma while trying to save him from (another) murder rap.
** Flack has gotten blown up, gets beaten to a pulp on the subway, had to participate in the investigation and arrest of his mentor, had problems with his sister, and [[spoiler: his girlfriend was killed in the line of duty]].
** Adam came pre-broken [[SadClown but hides it well most of the time]], but has also been held hostage and roughed up by drug dealers (with Danny, from above), among other things.
* BreakUpDemand: The fathers in "Blood, Sweat and Tears" forbid their kids to see each other.
* BringingRunningShoesToACarChase: As Don removes a handcuffed man from a squad car when perps drive by and dump a body in front of the precinct. He takes off after them on foot, but doesn't get very far.
* BrokeEpisode: "It Happened to Me." Sheldon loses his life savings in bad investments. He is shown sleeping on a friend's couch after having to give up his apartment and sell his furniture. He tries to hide this from his colleagues, but reveals it to Mac and a perp when said perp is about to jump from a building due to similar circumstances. Mac lets Sheldon crash in his spare room for several episodes till he can get back on his feet.
* BrokenGlassPenalty: A group of boys are playing football in the street when their ball goes thru a ground-floor apartment window. They look in, see a dead body, freak out and run away, thinking they killed the man. Later, one convinces another to turn themselves in. Det. Flack locks them up just for fun.
* BrokenPedestal:
** Mac, Danny, and Flack have ''all'' had former partners &/or training officers turn up again and turn out to be bad.
** Stella's mentor and pseudo-father figure turns out to be an art thief and smuggler of Grecian antiquities.
* BrokenRecord: Music/BillWithers' "Ain't No Sunshine" is used in "Manhattanhenge." The "I know, I know, I know..." part plays at least twice.
* BrokenTears: Danny weeps along with his neighbor, Rikki who is distraught, after he tells her that her 10-yr-old son was accidentally shot to death.
* BrooklynRage: Danny in the earlier part of the series.
** He wants to go Jack Bauer on the guy he thinks killed Aiden.
** He slugs the guy who disses Rikki Sandoval after her son is killed.
** He gives a beat-down to a neo-Nazi who spits on Sheldon.
* BuffySpeak: Mild example. In "Rain," Stella finds "something gooey" on the first victim's face. Mac snarks, "Gooey. That's a good forensics word; we should use it more often."
* BulletholeDoor: "Snow Day" features a group of robbers breaking into the lab vault by shooting a circle of holes in its door. Done slightly more realistically than most of the examples of this trope, involving a .50BMG sniper rifle (i.e. a {{BFG}}) and taking most of the episode.
* BulletHolesAndRevelations: Having to wait until season 7 to find out who shot who in the finale of season 6.
* BulletproofVest: The team wear them when they know a suspect is particularly violent and armed.
** Danny forgets his in one episode, forcing Mac to tell him to stay with the SUV. Unfortunately for Danny, the perp runs out of the building and he chases him anyway.
** The 333 Stalker's brother is given one to wear before confronting him.
** Mac, Ray Langston, and all the other officers involved wear them while trying to apprehend Casey Steele, one of the human traffickers in the NY portion of the "CSI Trilogy."
** At the beginning of season 7's "Exit Strategy," Mac and Danny are shown getting ready to apprehend a suspect. Danny kisses a picture of Lucy before sticking it in his vest pocket while Mac, also wearing a vest, kisses his crucifix before dropping it down his shirt. Half-way thru, the episode has a CallBack scene.
* BuriedAlive: The first victim in "Boo" escapes from a "green coffin" made of hemp, digs his way out of his grave, and is mistaken for a zombie by bystanders due to his appearance and the fact that it is Halloween.
* {{Burlesque}}: The titular bar in "The Real [=McCoy=]" has a burlesque dancer. Jo mentions to Mac that she worked for a burlesque club during college and lets him think for a good while that she danced, before confessing that she kept their books.
* BurnScarsBurningPowers: During the first two episodes of season 9, the team deals with an arsonist who has a nasty burn scar on his right hand, courtesy of his abusive mother who, ironically, was a nurse in a burn unit. She had also repeatedly punished him by making him sit in the basement, where he would stare at the fire in a wood-burning stove for hours at a time. These things had contributed to him becoming a fire bug.
* BuryMeNotOnTheLonePrairie:
** In "Get Me Out of Here!", Danny tells Lindsay he wants his ashes scattered over the Mets' field. She says she'll flush them out of the lavatory of her new husband's private jet on their way to Paris.
** In "Misconceptions," Flack discovers a letter from his father expressing his wishes to have his ashes scattered on the diamond at Yankee Stadium. He spends the rest of the episode persuading his sister to help him do this.
* TheBusCameBack: [[spoiler: Peyton in "Point of View" and Reed in "Pot of Gold"]], but just for one episode each.
* BusCrash: [[spoiler:Aiden's]] death. Everyone expected a case of TheBusCameBack when the episode and Vanessa Ferlito's guest appearance were announced, but the character only appeared alive in flashback. She is found in a burned out car, dead and charred.
* BusmansHoliday: Mac in "Greater Good." He uses his day off to reinvestigate a closed case that has been bothering him.
* TheButlerDidIt: Discussed by Stella and Flack in "Trapped." He lists the wealthy victim's hired help, leading her to ask:
-->'''Stella:''' That's it? No butler?\\
'''Flack:''' No.\\
'''Stella:''' Too bad. I though we could wrap up this one up quick.\\
'''Flack:''' What?\\
'''Stella:''' In a mansion like this, it's always the butler.
%%* ByTheBookCop: Mac, most of the time.
* CakeToppers: The head of the bride from a wedding cake topper is found lodged in the throat of a victim in 'Murder Sings the Blues.'
* CaliforniaUniversity: Fictional Chelsea University is mentioned quite a few times. Mac's stepson, Reed, is a student there beginning in Season 3.
* CallBack:
** In "Necrophilia Americana," Mac and Danny each use the presence of beetles on the body to tease Lindsay about having eaten the bugs at the end of "Fare Game" two episodes earlier.
** In "Can You Hear Me Now?", Mac and Danny find a victim who has had his tongue cut out, and Mac is visibly shaken when telling Stella that the man died at the hospital. He gets the same look on his face when Christine's kidnappers send him a [[FingerInTheMail tongue in the mail]] in "Seth and Apep."
* CallingCard: Left by both the Compass Killer (compasses, obviously) and Shane Casey (t-shirts with screen-printed clues).
* CallingTheOldManOut: Adam, except his dad no longer remembers abusing him.
* CampingACrapper: The woman who gets locked in a high-tech public toilet and drowns when its self-cleaning feature kicks in.
* CandlelitBath: In "Heart of Glass," the first victim breaks into the apartment of a guy she wants to get back together with, sets up the classic scenario with a bottle of wine, rose petals leading to the bathtub, candles, etc., expecting him to come home soon.
* TheCanKickedHim:
** The woman who drowned in a newly installed but faulty public toilet.
** The guy who is accidentally killed when "blue ice" from a passing airplane conks him on the head.
---> '''Flack:''' So our guy was killed by a crapsicle?
** The high-school girl who is killed by a classmate bashing her head on a bathroom sink.
* CantTieHisTie: Lindsay has to help Adam with his before they go to the 9/11 10th anniversary memorial program in "Indelible."
-->'''Lindsay:''' By the time you're done, it'll be the 20th anniversary.
* CanOnlyMoveTheEyes: The victim of Locked-In Syndrome in the pilot.
* CarCushion:
** In "Dancing with the Fishes," a couple are driving underneath a tramway when the body of a young lady falls onto their windshield.
** In "Past Imperfect," Clay Dobson falls (or did he jump...hmmm?) from a rooftop and lands on a squad car.
** Downplayed in "Happily Never After" when a dead woman slides of the top of a bus that came to a sudden stop in traffic, although it is later revealed that [[spoiler: her body was dropped from an above window by her assailant]].
** In "Nine Thirteen," the victim lands on a parked cab after falling off a 10th floor balcony.
* CarFu: Lindsay takes out a suspect with her Avalanche when he runs off. She doesn't kill him, though.
* CarpetRolledCorpse: One of the victims in "Jamalot" is found rolled up in an expensive rug inside a dumpster.
* CarryingTheAntidote: Played with in "Personal Foul." The perp fills one capsule with deadly poison and a second with its antidote. *She* swallows the antidote first, then crushes the poison capsule with her teeth... immediately before kissing her victim, thus transferring the poison to him.
* CarvedMark:
** The Cabbie Killer from season 4 carves "L2729" on the back of his victims' necks with a piece of gravestone. The last episode of his arc reveals that it stands for [[spoiler: Leviticus 27:29, which refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them. He fancied himself the Greek god Charon, a.k.a. The Ferryman of Hades, whose duty it was to transport the newly dead down the River Styx.]]
** The leader of the vampire coven in 'Sanguine Love' uses a sharpened ankh to carve the same symbol into the inside of all the members' left wrists.
* CastingGag: In 'Comes Around,' John [=McEnroe=] plays himself and his own doppelganger, [[CelebrityImpersonator who has taken to impersonating him.]] [=McEnroe=] can't believe anyone would mistake the two of them.
* CatchPhrase: Lampshaded by both Danny, who knows he says "Boom" a lot, and Adam, who admits he says "What up!" too much.
* {{Catfishing}}: In 'Who's There?', a woman makes a fake Facebook profile to lure her husband into an online affair so she can use it against him in their divorce.
* CatScare: In one episode, Danny & Lindsay enter a suspect's apartment in the dark, guns drawn. A cat startles them, causing Lindsay to say, "Whew, almost neutered you, Kitty."
* CaughtInTheBadPartOfTown: In 'Blacklist,' the killer [[MurderByRemoteControlVehicle hacks the GPS of a CEO's car]] and sends him into the worst part of New York. He then activates the car alarm to attract the attention of the bad element.
* CaughtOnTheJumbotron: One victim is killed because he kisses the man next to him at a baseball game and it gets shown on the big screen.
* CellPhonesAreUseless: While the lab is being stormed in 'Snow Day.' Peyton is outside, knowing Mac is still in the building & tries to reach him, but the service has been tampered with.
* ChairmanOfTheBrawl:
** In 'White Gold,' Flack and Lovato attempt to arrest a suspect in a bar. The suspect knocks Flack down and then uses a bar stool to knock Lovato's gun out of her hand and knock her down. Flack puts a gun to his head before he can finish her off.
** Previously downplayed in Lovato's first episode, "Where There's Smoke." As she arrives unannounced at the precinct, still dressed in her undercover get-up, the cops are trying to restrain a very large, very aggressive perp who breaks away from them and barrels in her direction. Without even looking at him, she calmly slides a metal chair into his path with her foot, tripping him so they can recapture him, then plants her foot on his chest:
--->'''Det. Lovato:''' Where do you think you're going?
* ChainLinkFence: In 'Unspoken,' the perp outruns Flack at one point, ducking down an alley with a fence at the end. He scales it, but injures his hand on a spoke at the top and his ball cap falls off, giving the team two pieces of evidence to analyze.
* ChalkOutline: In a season 4 arc, a perp out for revenge for the death of his brother when they were kids invokes this by leaving a child-size outline as one of a series of clues to his motivation and identity.
* CharacterNarrator: Two instances.
** In season 5's 'The Box,' Danny tells the story of the case to someone off screen for most of the episode.
** In season 9's 'The Lady in the Lake,' while waiting to file a report in the precinct, Adam tells two little girls about his case.
* CheatedDeathDiedAnyway: Mac's wife (who died on 9/11) made it out of the first tower, only to (apparently) be crushed by falling rubble from the second.
* ChildhoodBrainDamage: One of the victims in 'Super Men' suffered from this after trying to fly out a window as a child. At the time of his death, he is living in a group home and still thinks of himself as a superhero.
* ChristianityIsCatholic:
** The opening scene of the series proper finds Mac trying to have a quiet moment in a Catholic church.
** A few episodes later in 'Three Generations Are Enough,' Stella makes the sign of the Cross before beginning her search for evidence in a church. Later she asks Mac if he still goes; he replies, "Sometimes."
** Danny takes his young neighbor, Ruben, to the "Blessing of the Bikes" at the boy's church in 'Child's Play.'
** One of the firemen en route to a fire in the opening of 'Playing with Matches' kisses his crucifix before dropping it down the front of his shirt.
** The street basketball player in 'Oedipus Hex' visits his church to make confession, light a candle, and obtain a prayer card (which he places in his sock) before an important match.
** The gang leader in 'Sangre por Sangre' prays and makes the sign of the Cross before beginning his breakfast.
** The perp in 'Life Sentence' kept his girlfriend's rosary after she died.
** Mac is seen wearing and kissing a crucifix twice in 'Exit Strategy.'
** After Mac prays over a deceased first responder in 'Indelible,' he makes the sign of the Cross...although he's so exhausted, his hand drops and he can't quite finish it properly.
** Christine prays over Mac with a rosary in 'Near Death.'
* ChristmasEpisode: 'Second Chances' from season 6: The team collect toys for children of fallen officers, Mac & Stella deliver a very large Christmas tree to the venue where they'll be handed out, a fellow officer of Flack's is recruited to play Santa, and several of the team dress up as elves and pass out the toys.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome:
** Danny's brother Louie is left in a coma in season 2. He's only mentioned once again, in season 6's 'Redemptio,' and is referred to in the past tense then.
** After TheBusCameBack for one episode in season 6, Peyton disappears again.
** Dr. Aubrey Hunter, who briefly appeared to be a new love interest for Mac, vanished without a word after the episode following Peyton's second disappearance.
** At the end of 'Pot of Gold,' Mac takes a rain check on Reed's offer to go "grab a green beer or something." They agree to get together later, but Reed is never seen or mentioned again.
* CirclingVultures: All three branches of the ''Series/{{CSI}}'' franchise have used the spot-the-vultures technique of finding human remains. Even New York, for a body on a rooftop in 'No Good Deed.'
* CircusEpisode: In 'Blood, Sweat and Tears,' a very small box is found on the beach with the body of a man curled nicely in it. What is amazing is that this box is only 2x2x2 feet. This leads the detectives to a circus where the man was working as a contortionist.
* CityOfAdventure: Cultural festivals, abundant nightlife, magic acts in the street, Fleet Week, parades...there's no reason to be bored in NYC.
* CleanCut / DiagonalCut: The second victim in 'Corporate Warriors' has been decapitated by a katana so cleanly that his head is still sitting atop his neck when his body is found.
* ClearMyName / ClearTheirName:
** Danny, twice. He's implicated in the shooting death of a fellow officer in season 1, and one of his trainees tells higher-ups that he told her to lie about the particulars of another shooting in season 8.
** Hawkes is framed for a robbery/murder in 'Raising Shane.'
** Flack is benched when a suspect dies in his custody...with no one but the two of them in the interrogation room.
** Mac spends three episodes under suspicion of murder when a serial killer invokes TakingYouWithMe.
* {{Claustrophobia}}: One of the perp's intended victims in 'Blacklist' is a nurse who is severely claustrophobic. He uses remote technology to trap her in a hospital elevator and send her to a floor that's temporarily empty. Mac and Sheldon barely get to her before she passes out from hyperventilating.
* CloseToHome: A case with a young female victim in 'Silent Night' upsets relative newcomer Lindsay so badly she deserts the crime scene.
* ClothingConcealedInjury:
** In episode 2.05, 'Dancing with the Fishes,' Lindsay encounters a woman who exploits this. She uses makeup to fake a black eye, then wears sunglasses to cover it up.
** Justified and downplayed by Mac, whose battle scar from the 1983 Beruit Marine Barracks bombing is naturally covered by his shirt. When Stella sees it while he's being checked out by the paramedics after the explosion in episode 2.24, 'Charge of This Post,' he merely comments, "Old injury."
** Reed wears a scarf to hide his neck injury inflicted by the Cabbie Killer (season 4) when he returns (in season 6) to ask for Mac's help in 'Pot of Gold.'
* TheCoatsAreOff: Justified on a couple of occasions:
** Lab coats are normally worn while processing evidence and/or doing reconstructions, but in 'Corporate Warriors,' Mac is seen brandishing bladed weapons, including a katana, without one because it would impede his range of motion.
** Also downplayed in 'Snow Day.' After the sprinklers kick on, Mac removes his jacket, quietly balls it up and sets it aside while discussing tactics with Sheldon & Stella. Ostensibly, it would be uncomfortable if soaked, but he'll need that range of motion again before it's over.
* CobwebOfDisuse: In 'Death House.' While the team investigate a suspected murder in a penthouse that's been closed up for 80+ years, Flack sticks his head up through the attic door. The area is full of cobwebs and they're hanging from the door as he opens it.
* CocaPepsiInc: Subtle example. Apparently Goodyear and Firestone have merged, because one episode features [=GoodFire=] tires.
* CockroachesWillRuleTheEarth: The killer of the week in "A Daze of Wine and Roaches", a FriendToBugs who murdered a man to prevent him from killing a cockroach, delivers this tidbit of trivia as part of his MotiveRant. [[DisappointedByTheMotive It only makes Danny think the guy is completely deranged]].
* ColorMotif / ColorWash: See MoodLighting below.
* ComatoseCanary: Subverted - it only ''looked'' like a Comatose Canary...twice: [[spoiler:in 'Blink' and 'Damned If You Do.']]
* CombatCueStick: In 'Corporate Warriors,' two executives are kung-fu fighting in a bar. One grabs a broken pool cue & stabs the other in the heart, killing him.
* ComfortingTheWidow: Danny has sex with the mother of Ruben Sandoval, a kid who was accidentally shot during a robbery and died. Not exactly a widow, but a single mom - pretty much the same idea, though.
* CondensationClue: In 'Unspoken,' Danny learns that [[spoiler: a would-be killer has been in Lindsay's hospital room]] when steam from his coffee allows Jo to spot smudges on the room's window which contain fingerprints.
* ConfessToALesserCrime: Invoked with Aiden's case in 'Officer Blue.' She makes the perp believe they think he's guilty of stabbing the victim, as well as what he actually did. The guy balks, admits to what he did, but is adamant that he didn't stab anyone. What he doesn't realize is that what he did was actually lethal, so he's arrested anyway.
* ConnectTheDeaths:
** Inverted when a killer is identified because he'd turned on the lights in his downtown office suite, breaking the pattern of lights in which the victim had spelled out "Marry Me," as a grand romantic gesture.
** Played straight in 'Sláinte' when Mac plots the three locations where a victim's body parts have been found, but whose head is still missing, and realizes that the sites are corners of the neighborhood formerly known as Hell's Kitchen. When they search the fourth corner, they find the missing head.
* ConstructiveBodyDisposal: In 'Tales from the Undercard,' the body of a retired boxer is found in freshly laid concrete on a construction site.
* ContentWarnings: The original airing of "Yahrzeit" opened with a notice that the episode dealt with the horrors of the Holocaust and was thus possibly disturbing to some viewers.
* ContinuityNod:
** Mac keeps folders of unsolved cases on the corner of his desk. In Season 1, he tells Stella there are currently nine but that there used to be 12. In Season 2, he tells an employee he has to fire that he'll add the case at hand to the pile. Throughout the series run, the folders are seen there but not mentioned again until the season 7 finale, when he solves the last one and moves its folder to a cabinet.
** 'Zoo York': On Lindsay's first day, she has to paw her way through a tiger's waste looking for evidence. Five episodes later, Mac has her [[DumpsterDive dumpster diving.]] She tells him the rookie stuff has to stop. He responds with, "Beats sifting through tiger dung."
** The death of [[spoiler: Jessica Angell]] is referred to several times, including her father inviting Flack over for dinner on what would've been her birthday, and Mac's in-limbo conversation with Flack in 'Near Death.'
* {{Contortionist}}: The young man who dies after the box he is folded up in is buried on a beach.
* ConvenientCharacterReplacement: In the season 7 premiere, Jo is brought in to fill the position Stella vacated to head up the New Orleans Crime Lab.
* ConvenientlyPlacedSharpThing:
** When Frankie ties her up, Stella uses the blade from a straight razor to cut herself loose. Justifiable in that [[IdiotBall he dumped her in her *own* bathtub]].
** The rebar Mac uses to saw thru the zip-tie the preps bound his wrists with in 'The Untouchable.' Also justifiable in that [[IdiotBall they left him in an alley full of this sort of stuff.]]
* CoolCodeOfSource: 'Kill Screen' involves someone using a hack to cheat in a ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar3'' tournament. At one point we see the hack's source code. Apparently, it's coded in...HTML. [[http://pccode.pl/hakowanie-gry-gears-of-war-3-wedlug-csi-ny/ The author of this article]] (in Polish) even tracked down the original website from which the HTML code was taken for the show.
* CoolShades: As seen in 'Zoo York' for example, Mac does have some; he just doesn't flaunt them the way Horatio does. Justified on a number of occasions when the team is out in bright sunlight. See 'Tales from the Undercard' where Stella and Mac have on shades but Lindsay doesn't. She's squinting and holding her hand up to block the sun as she's talking to them.
* CoolestClubEver: A number of popular clubs are mentioned throughout the series.
** Adam is familiar with a lot of them, and is quite surprised in 'Risk' that Mac knows all about one called "Wild, Wild, Wet" which features fighting Beta fish on its tables. Mac tells him he was there working on a case, but then smugly adds:
--->'''Mac:''' The shrimp cocktail was *fantastic*.
** In season 5, Terrence Davis keeps his pet panther at his nightclub. He tells the detectives that she's the draw that keeps people coming there.
** 'The Real [=McCoy=]' in season 9 is a speakeasy. Flack can't believe people would pay $20 for a cocktail. Lindsay tells him it's for the nostalgia.
* CopCriminalFamily:
** Detective/CSI Danny Messer and his older brother Louie, who, in his younger days, was a member of a gang whose leader had shot and killed a rival. Louie and another member were present at the time, making them accomplices at best. They were all also guilty of shakedown activity.
** Detective Don Flack and his younger sister Samantha, who was an alcoholic and had been in prison and part of one of the later seasons revisited the friction between them a few times.
* CopKiller, which of course leads to CopKillerManhunt:
** One example is [[spoiler: Flack's LoveInterest, Angell]], who's shot in the season 5 finale while protecting a Creator/DonaldTrump[=/=]UsefulNotes/RupertMurdoch {{expy}}'s son (who was due to testify against him. [[spoiler: The killers turn out to be kidnappers, who knew this would put [[RedHerring immediate suspicion on their target's father]]]]). The episode also ends with [[spoiler: the bar they're holding a wake for her in being shot up in a drive-by]]. Nobody's killed (although Danny ends up in a wheelchair for a while), but it fits the trope in spirit.
** Aiden also counts, despite no longer being on the team. They are dead set on finding the perp and Danny is willing to beat up the guy he thinks did it. Mac's speech in the beginning has a double meaning. He's talking about the dead Marine, being one himself, but it clearly shows with Aiden too. "You attack one, you attack us all."
** Mac himself is a variant in the season 8 finale, having been shot InTheBack after stumbling into a drug store robbery. He only ''nearly'' dies, but [[CopKillerManhunt the NYPD's reaction is largely the same as in a straight example.]]
* TheCorpseStopsHere: The woman caught with her hands in a dead woman's chest, making stabbing motions, turns out not to be the killer. [[spoiler: She is a chronic sleepwalker trying to massage the woman's heart in an attempt to revive her.]]
* CorpseTemperatureTampering:
** In "Not What It Looks Like," a man kills his wife and places her corpse in front of an air conditioner in an apartment in a building scheduled for collapse in hopes that it will never be found, but that if it is, her time of death will be off, allowing him to formulate an alibi. The team eventually figure out what he did and he's arrested.
** The killer in "Prey" attends a lecture Stella gives during a college course on forensics where she uses examples from previous cases, including the woman from "Not What It Looks Like." This killer picks up on the change-the-time-of-death thing but uses dry ice instead of air conditioning to make it look like her victim (who'd been stalking her) had died earlier than he had. She does a very good job and almost gets away with it. She's arrested, but it's left up in the air if she goes to jail because she never confesses.
* CouldntFindAPen: There's a variant where the victim doesn't do it; the killer uses the victim's finger to write someone else's name in order to frame them. [[spoiler: 'Air Apparent']]
* CounterfeitCash: Central to the first season finale, 'What You See Is What You See,' as well as 'The Ride In' and 'Keep It Real.'
* CourtroomEpisode: Mac trying to clear his name in the Dobson fiasco in 'Comes Around.'
* CoveredInKisses: When Mac finally finds Christine in 'Seth and Apep,' he can't seem to stop kissing her face and the top of her head. It's hard to blame him.
* CreepyCockroach: 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches' has a live, bejeweled Madagascar Hissing Cockroach worn as a broach ''to a restaurant.'' It hisses loudly while Lindsay examines it in the Lab.
* CreepyDoll: The one in 'City of the Dolls' that sounds demon-like when they first turn her on and her first sentence drags out, making her sound like a spooky man, "Myyy naaame is So--phie."
* CrimeAfterCrime: In the two-parter with Mac's old partner, it is revealed that 17 years prior [[spoiler: Bill Hunt]] had stolen a large amount of cash, then killed a witness to cover it up.
* CrimeAndPunishmentSeries: A number of episodes end with a PerpWalk. Some of the guilty, including Shane Casey, Leonard Brooks and the guy from Lindsay's past, are shown in jail after being caught.
* CrimeReconstruction: Pretty much every episode. Techniques include stabbing a pig to determine a type of weapon, digital simulations, acting out fights, and setting things (Mac's arm among them) on fire.
* {{Crossover}}:
** With the other ''[=CSIs=]'', first with ''Series/CSIMiami'' pursuing a suspect wanted in both states, when a kidnapped girl is taken cross country; and more recently with the original when Mac's girlfriend is kidnapped [[spoiler:by her shady employee's loan shark, and the girl who impersonates her in Las Vegas is killed trying to rob a jewelry store]].
** With Miami and Vegas in the "CSI Trilogy" which occurs in episode 7 of all three shows (originally airing during Nov of 2009).
** Also with ''Series/ColdCase''. Stella's foster sister killed someone in PA, and due to their BloodBrothers thing, the necklace she still had with some of Stella's blood causes one of the Cold Case guys to come investigate it in NY. Ends up with LetOffByTheDetective, when Stella finds that her friend had killed a man who had molested her as a child.
* CrossPlayer: Adam changes Mac's ''Second Life'' avatar in 'Down the Rabbit Hole' to female so Mac, who is clueless about such things, can go after the bad guy. Stella has to take over his dialogue because he's got no game, either... at least as a female.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Leonard Brooks' post-arsonist M.O. He roasts one victim to death inside an elevator, and burns another one from the inside out using a chemical that mixes with stomach acid. Drinking water only makes it worse.
* CryIntoChest:
** Lindsay, with Danny at the end of 'Not What It Looks Like.' She's relieved the undercover ordeal she'd volunteered for is over.
** Christine, when Mac rescues her from kidnappers in 'Seth and Apep.'
* CutApart: In 'Smooth Criminal,' Flack & Co appear to have found the apartment where Camille is being held by a hitman. But, they break down the door of a RedHerring, and the hitman has Camille open his... to find his building's superintendent.
* CutHimselfShaving:
** Played straight by Henry Darius' psychiatrist who claims this is what happened after Mac spots a wide scrape on his cheek, but then admits Darius had just assaulted him and snuck out the back door of his office.
** Lampshaded by a suspect in 'Turbulence' when Mac finds blood on his cuff:
--->"[[ThisIsThePartWhere Is this the point where I say I cut myself shaving?]]"
** Played straight when Sheldon gets beat up by thugs sent by a so-called friend of his who wants him to destroy evidence. At first he tells Mac he walked into a wall, then fesses up to him.
* {{Cyberspace}}: 'Down the Rabbit Hole' takes place half in ''VideoGame/SecondLife''.
* DaddysLittleVillain: Two of the daughters in 'Cavallino Rampante' follow their father into the car theft business, and the one in 'Identity Crisis' becomes a con-artist just like her old man.
* DanceOfRomance:
** A variation. In the opening of 'Down the Rabbit Hole,' a janitor does a tango with a mannequin in honor of his and his late wife's wedding anniversary.
** Mac & Christine slow dance to Music/JoshGroban performing "Happy in My Heartache" as the Valentine's Day episode, 'Blood Actually,' ends.
* DarkSecret: Often the motive for many of the crimes. Then there's the one suspect who postpones reporting his car stolen because he doesn't want his wife to find out he's having an affair... with another man.
* DarkerAndEdgier / ShinyVsGritty: Initially, and especially compared to bright, sunny ''Series/CSIMiami''.
* DeadAnimalWarning: In 'Dead Inside,' Stella receives a dead rat in the mail: a warning to her that the murder of the "rat fisherman" should remain an unsolved case.
* DeadMansChest:
** In 'Hammer Down,' the 2nd part of the "CSI Trilogy," the team discovers a woman's body stuffed in a barrel that fell off a semi during a traffic accident.
** In another episode, a dead woman is stuffed into her own suitcase before being thrown into a lake.
* DeadPersonConversation:
** Mac talks to Claire twice in 'Near Death.'
** The Compass Killer talks to [[spoiler: his dead wife]] in 'Manhattanhenge.' Mac realizes this and uses it to his advantage in apprehending him.
* DeadlyBath:
** 'Heart of Glass' has a woman who fills a bathtub with rose petals and water ending up [[ElectrifiedBathtub electrocuting herself.]]
** In 'Flag on the Play,' the body of a lingerie football player is found in the whirlpool tub in the team's changing room.
* DeadlyPrank: The victim of the exploding cigar meant for Laughing Larry in 'Child's Play' dies from having his entire lower jaw blown off.
* DeadlyRoadTrip: 'She's Not There' has the death of a tourist, who comes to NYC in search of his missing daughter.
* DearJohnLetter: Peyton breaks up with Mac via an Air Mail letter sent from London to his office, though she apologizes for it later during her [[TheBusCameBack one episode return visit]].
* DeathByFallingOver: The episode "Recycling" features an unusual variant on this trope. [[spoiler: The lady who is stabbed in the heart: Someone who is jealous of her accidentally poisons her with Ipecac, which doesn't really kill you, but can make you deathly sick if given too much. She is walking across the floor when she starts to feel sick and tumbles forward, landing on an open bag of knitting needles, one of which fatally pierces her heart.]]
%%** It appeared that a character kills another just by pushing them over, onto a rug. It even goes so far as to have them arrested for the murder and even having them admit it. [[spoiler: Later, it's revealed that the victim was just fine and got up after the other character left, only to be killed by someone else immediately after.]] WHAT EPISODE IS THIS?
* DeathByOriginStory: Claire Taylor, who died in the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01, three years before the show began.
* DeathFromAbove: The construction worker victim in 'Tri-borough.' [[spoiler: A frozen chunk of waste from an airplane toilet dislodges and hits him on the head.]]
* DeathInTheClouds: 'Turbulence.' A man is found stabbed to death in an airplane lavatory during a flight from NYC to Washington D.C.
* DeathOfAChild:
** 'Corporate Warriors': A 10 yr old boy dies from smoke inhalation.
** 'Child's Play': Danny's young neighbor is hit by a bullet during a bodega robbery.
** 'Unspoken': A little girl is accidentally shot by her best friend who had removed the magazine from the gun they were playing with so he thought it was empty.
** 'Misconceptions': The body of a little boy who'd been missing for 20 years is found [[spoiler: to have been sealed up in a wall by his killer.]]
* DeceasedFallGuyGambit: In 'Party Down,' a semi-truck with 20 people locked in the trailer hurtles headlong into the Hudson and four victims drown. The killer tries to frame one of them for the crime.
* DefectiveDetective[=/=]DysfunctionJunction[=/=]StandardCopBackstory: Let's take it from the top, shall we?
** Mac: 9/11 widower, has been framed for murder, blown up three times, taken hostage three times as well (once by a StalkerWithoutACrush), seems to attract serial killers like flies to honey, shot nearly to death, his previous girlfriend left him with only a letter (though TheBusCameBack). He had to deal with having a StalkerWithACrush for quite a while. Spent several months struggling to overcome speech aphasia related to his gunshot injury and nearly lost his new girlfriend because he was too darn stubborn to let her in on what was happening. Then, said girlfriend was abducted and nearly killed before Mac found her.
** Danny: Has been suspected of murder ''twice''. The second time, his brother ended up in a coma while trying to clear Danny's name. He's gotten in trouble more than once for losing his temper with suspects. For a while he was suspected of shooting an undercover cop and it caused problems between him and Mac for almost a season. His neighbor's son got shot while Danny was looking after him. Was in a wheelchair from a motive-less shooting. Had his wallet (with ID, credit cards, and *badge*) stolen by Shane Casey. And then Shane Casey tried to kill him, fell to his death (not!), broke into his and Lindsay's apartment and threatened to kill their daughter, only stopped by Lindsay's shot. Later, he became a sergeant, only to have one of his rookies shoot the wrong man when two guys threatened the group, which had gone out for a drink.(One guy had a gun, but the rookie cop shot the other one.) On top of that, he was accused of having an affair because the same rookie was seen cozying up to him on a surveillance camera tape. She then lied and said Danny told her to lie, nearly costing him his job, though he was cleared when Lindsay pressured the rookie to tell the truth.
** Stella: Orphan, with lingering if mostly well-hidden issues as a result. Had to shoot a stalker ex-boyfriend and had her apartment burnt out by a next-door neighbor. Discovers that the professor whom she regarded as a father figure is an art thief and kept the fact that he knew her mother a secret for years (and judging from his confession that he loved her mother gives the implication that he may have been her father). Then when she confronts him, the professor [[TakingTheBullet takes a bullet for her]] from his brother and [[DiedInYourArmsTonight dies in her arms]].
** Lindsay: Witnessed her friends' murder and has been dealing with the lingering trauma ever since. Married Danny who kept secrets from her and was in a wheelchair. Later became traumatized after killing Shane Casey in her own home. Had to listen to accusations Danny was cheating on her after the incident with Danny and his group of rookie cops, though it was untrue.
** Flack: Alcoholic sister. Had to arrest his mentor for tampering with a crime scene, which caused problems between him and Mac and between him and the rest of the PD. Got blown up. [[spoiler: Girlfriend was shot and killed, leaving him mentally screwed up for at least the first part of season 6.]]
** Adam: Has hinted at past abuse (psychological, eventually revealed to be physical as well). Was held hostage and tortured so the criminals could get access to the lab. In the episode 'The Party's Over,' it's hinted that he may have OCD. His job also seems to be perennially in danger, first from budget cuts and then from one of the other lab techs. He also happened to be playing street hockey when a car bomb went off right next to him. His very secret shame is [[spoiler: he slept through 9/11. He made up for it by going to "The Pile" the next day, although depending on how long he was there he could now be susceptible to cancer]]. Additionally [[spoiler: his dad was/is an abusive jerkass who, thanks to Alzheimer's disease, doesn't remember the abuse or Adam (most of the time - he recognized Adam long enough to tell him what a disappointment he is and looked awfully shifty when Adam asked him about the abuse directly); he does, however, remember how much of an abusive jerkass ''his'' father was]]. Fortunately he has a very understanding girlfriend.
** Sid: Changed careers for unknown reasons. Divorced at least twice. Inhabits a "creepy place" with dead body trivia. The woman he treated like a daughter was murdered after her husband, a former colleague, had to be fired, then murdered drug addicts, and turned out to have been stealing organs from corpses while he worked at the lab. And let's not forget having to go to the hospital: once for an allergic reaction, another time for getting radiation poisoning while examining a body, and finally the exploding bullet to the face that would have blinded him if it weren't for his glasses. And having survived all that, he was then [[spoiler: diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that may well kill him, as it's well advanced.]]
** Sheldon: Lost a series of patients on the table, accused of robbery and murder, friend tried to bribe him to destroy evidence. Lost most of his savings in an insurance scam, resulting in him losing his home and having to sell a lot of his stuff until Mac offered him his spare room to give him time to get back on his feet. His sister was murdered, and his girlfriend left him some years back because she was raped and he ended up not being there like she needed. Got called out for having marijuana in his system after his new girlfriend was using it and spent time with him, causing him to breathe it in off her.
** Jo: Forced out of the FBI after turning in a [[DirtyCop dirty agent]] that got a rape case she was working thrown out, attacked by the rapist after the victim's father tried to get him caught by framing him, and was forced to shoot said rapist in self-defense. Lost her sister to a drunk driver several years ago.
* DefenestrateAndBerate / FakeKillScare: 'The Lying Game' opens with a jilted boyfriend throwing his ex-girlfriend's belongings out of the window at her and her new boyfriend. The last item is her pet dog. When the new boyfriend's legs are covered in blood, the viewer is led to believe that the dog has just splattered on the sidewalk. The camera then pulls back to show the girl has safely caught the dog and the blood has come from a passing truck that was spreading salt on the icy street.
* DerailedFairyTale: In 'The Lady in the Lake,' Adam begins telling two little girls in the precinct about the case, describing it as a "princess story." It derails when he overlaps it with telling them about the "piece of a spaceship" that he found at the scene.
* DestroyTheEvidence: In one example of many, Flack's mentor removes evidence that would incriminate his son in 'The Fall.'
* DeusAxMachina: Played with in 'Uncertainty Rules.' [[spoiler: It's not the suspect with the ax who's guilty. He would most likely have been another victim had he not been strung out on LSD in the bathroom at the time.]]
* DiamondsInTheBuff: In 'Summer in the City,' Stella and Danny must solve the mysterious death of a famous designer found dead, wearing his latest creation which is a bra made of diamonds. In the course of the investigation, they interview the model who wore the bra for a photoshoot, and there are plenty of flashbacks to the shoot where she is wearing the diamond bra and nothing else.
* TheDiaperChange:
** Joked about after Mac is asked to be Lucy's godfather.
--->'''Flack:''' Godfather, you know that's code for "diaper changer."
** Later, Danny jokes about it to Lindsay, too.
--->'''Danny:''' You got your "I don't like what I see face." The one you get when I'm changing Lucy's diaper.
* DidIMentionItsChristmas:
** The show's only mention of Thanksgiving is in season 3 when Sid asks Mac over if he doesn't have plans. Mac says he does, but won't tell Sid with whom...then walks away smiling.
** That same year, in "Silent Night," the outside of the first victim's house is shown decorated for Christmas. The ep bookends with a grandmother giving her infant granddaughter a snow globe. It's implied, but never stated, that it's her Christmas gift.
** In mid-December of season 7, Jo goads Mac into going window shopping with her so they can see a particular store unveil it's "holiday" window display. He spots a pickpocket in the crowd, and when the window is revealed, there's a dead body in it. Mac grumbles, "Now you know why I hate shopping." The word "Christmas" is never uttered.
** The victim of season 9's "The Real [=McCoy=]" is found impaled by a stand at a Christmas tree lot. After the team leaves the scene, no further mention of the holiday is made.
* DieHardOnAnX: The third season finale, 'Snow Day,' is a straight-up homage to the film. The lab is stormed by a gang of mobsters intent on stealing back their confiscated cocaine horde. Mac, Stella and Sheldon have to outsmart them using only what's available to them in the Lab and Morgue while their phone lines have been cut and cell service has been tampered with. Slowly they take the perps out, one by one.
* DiedInYourArmsTonight: After getting caught in the crossfire during a shootout, [[spoiler: Professor P]] dies while Stella cradles him.
* DiegeticSoundtrackUsage: An alternate arrangement of an instrumental portion of ''Baba O'Riley'' is played by a violinist during a nighttime street party in 'Boo.'
* DigitalDeaging: During season 5's 'Blacklist,' CGI, lighting and sepia tones were used to make Sinise look 15-20 years younger in flashbacks to Mac visiting his parents right before leaving the Marines to join the NYPD.
* DirtyCop: Repeatedly. Danny, Mac and Flack have all had former partners or mentors revealed as this.
* DisabilityAlibi:
** In 'Cavallino Rampante,' a perp known for his electronic inventions is considered a suspect for a string of Ferrari thefts, until the cops arrive at his apartment and discover that he's aged, quite weak, and dependent upon a wheelchair.
** Averted in 'DOA for a Day' when the Navy Seal son of a judge has motive for his father's murder. When the detectives arrive to question him, they discover he's a triple amputee, but he tells them he still could've done it...20 different ways.
* DisappointedByTheMotive: Danny's reaction to the murderer in 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches:'
--> You killed a guy ''over a cockroach?!''
* DisappointingPromotion: At the end of season 7, Danny Messer secures a promotion to sergeant, which takes him out of the crime lab and down to the ground floor commanding beat cops. He's initially okay with it, until one of his subordinates screws up and tries to pin it on him, leading him to request a "demotion" back to the crime lab.
* DiscoveringYourOwnDeadBody: A variation during Mac's "limbo" period in 'Near Death.' When he visits Sid, he finds the man about to remove a sheet from a body. He asks Sid to wait and wants to know if that's himself on the table. Sid says, "Only if you've given up." They continue talking, but the body is never shown.
* DisguisedHostageGambit: 'Snow Day.' Two police officers are taken hostage and dressed up like the bad guys. Adam stops Flack and his team from shooting them.
* DisgustingPublicToilet: 'Tri-Borough' finds Flack and Aiden with a victim who was subjected to OverturnedOuthouse in a Porta-Potty before dying at a construction site. Flack makes her examine it since there might be evidence. She opens the door and is completely grossed out.
-->'''Aiden:''' Ewww, what do you guys *do* in here?!\\
'''Flack:''' I don't go in public.
* TheDissenterIsAlwaysRight: In one episode, Stella is adamant that the deceased is a murder victim; while everyone else, including ME Sid Hammerback, is convinced the woman committed suicide. The detective spends a good bit of time miffed at everyone (especially Sid) and trying to prove her point. Then, the ER doctor who had examined the victim makes an off-hand comment to Mac which leads to proof that Stella was right all along.
* DisobeyedOrdersNotPunished: During her "Greek antiquities theft" arc, Stella goes against Mac's direct order to stand down because of a conflict of interest, saying he'll handle it himself. Later, he turns it over to a more appropriate department, but she keeps investigating behind his back anyway and goes so far as to involve another officer. The two of them discover a dead body and Stella reports it anonymously via a 911 call from a pay phone, completely against NYPD/Crime Lab policy. Mac is furious and tells her that her actions are grounds for a desk assignment, if not a full-on suspension. She angrily slams her badge down on his desk and heads to Greece. He and the team find more evidence, he follows her there, helps her instead of chewing her out again, and gives her badge back when they return to NYC. Far-fetched to how a real-life situation would go, but then again this episode was written by Creator/MelinaKanakaredes, who plays Stella, so there you have it.
* DisposableSexWorker: A call girl is murdered in 'Means to an End,' and Adam makes a joke about a possibly dissatisfied customer. Lindsay calls him out on it.
* DisproportionateRetribution / RevengeBeforeReason: Various victims were killed for comparatively minor offences such as:
** trying to kill a cockroach in 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches.'
** [[RevengeOfTheNerd mocking an overweight basketball fan]] in 'Personal Foul.'
** kissing someone of the same sex and having it shown on the Jumbotron at a baseball game in 'The Closer.'
* DistressedDude:
** Adam and Danny are taken hostage in 'Snow Day.'
** Sheldon is caught up in a prison riot in 'Redemptio.'
** Mac is knocked out and placed in a LaserHallway by the perp in 'The Thing About Heroes.'
** Downplayed in 'The Untouchable' as Mac frees himself from zip ties after being tasered from behind.
* DivorceAssetsConflict: In 'Who's There?' a divorcing couple are at such serious odds over who was to get what that their daughter [[spoiler: stages a home invasion to get what she could because she]] wants to get out of their lives. Naturally, things go awry.
* DizzyCam / OrbitalShot: Several times, but 'Hung Out to Dry' has a nice example of the symbols whirling around Mac when he's noodling over the cryptic messages on the various victims' t-shirts.
* DominanceThroughFurniture: In 'Hush,' Danny & Aiden go undercover as a couple looking to learn about BDSM techniques. The seminar they attend features a woman hanging upside down as a chandelier and a man posed as an end table. The detectives ask the leaders how long they have to stay like that and one replies, "until I tell them they can stop."
* DontCallMeSir: Mac.
** Danny plays a joke on his future wife, Lindsay, on her first day on the job, telling her to call Mac "Sir." Mac tells her to stop after a few times, and she realizes Danny tricked her.
** Averted with Adam, who calls Mac "Sir" quite often. Mac never says a word.
* DontYouDarePityMe:
** Invoked by a triple-amputee former Navy Seal who's a suspect in 'DOA for a Day,' when he sees Flack looking him up and down:
---> '''Russ:''' Don't you *dare* pity me!
---> '''Flack:''' It's not pity, Russ. I'm just wondering if you could've done it.
---> '''Russ:''' [gesturing toward his prosthetic limbs and scoffing] With these? At least 20 different ways, Detective.
** In season 9, Mac essentially reacts this way to the aftermath of being shot. He thinks it's his problem to get through, despite people starting to notice and his friend Kevin saying he should at least tell Christine. Fortunately, he finally does, though only when she's near to leaving him.
* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnFemale: The victim in the B-plot of 'Grand Master' is killed for sexually harassing a former female employee who'd refused to have sex with her.
* DownTheRabbitHole: 'Down the Rabbit Hole,' obviously. There's a white rabbit in the game who helps Mac/his avatar, and who disappears down a hole at one point.
* DramaticGunCock: Mac is on the receiving end in 'The Untouchable.' A rich guy tazes him, kidnaps him, blindfolds him and drives him to a bad part of town before doing it. He then drives off and leaves Mac bound and still blindfolded. Fortunately, Mac is not easily intimidated.
* DramaticSitDown: 'White Gold.' Mac & Danny go to a pizzeria to notify the victim's family of his death. Upon hearing the news, the uncle who had raised him since his parents were killed in an accident when he was nine is visibly shaken and his knees start to give way. Danny tells him to have a seat and he does so on the nearest stool.
* DreamIntro: 'Rest in Peace, Marina Garito' opens with Stella dreaming that she gets in a traffic accident and is helped out of her vehicle by a young woman. She awakes with a start, and that day gets presented with a new case - the murder of the very woman she was dreaming about, whose missing twin brother Stella has been searching for for quite some time.
* DrowningPit:
** One of the illusionist's tricks in 'Sleight Out of Hand' is a vertical, water-filled chamber in which the participant (or in this case, his victim) is slowly lowered upside down while in a straight-jacket.
** Another victim is sealed in a room which slowly fills with cold water and almost dies from a combination of drowning and hypothermia.
* DueToTheDead: Quite a number of examples:
** 'Officer Blue:' Stella and Mac are seen wearing their dress uniforms, having just returned from the memorial service for the mounted officer who was shot in Central Park.
** 'Heroes:' Mac tells Stella that Aiden's father will let them know when the arrangements for her service are finalized.
** 'Yarhzeit:' The broach owner's aunt leads Mac through the titular service in honor of her niece and his father. Also downplayed when Adam quietly fills in for Sheldon who goes out of town for his uncle's funeral.
** 'Pay Up:' The team hold their own private wake of sorts for Angell.
** 'Indelible:' Mac participates in and the other team members attend the dedication of the Brooklyn Wall of Remembrance for first responders who lost their lives on 9/11.
** 'Clean Sweep:' Mac uses his military connections to see that a deceased homeless Marine is laid to rest with full honors.
** 'Flash Pop:' The lab techs, who are usually just background characters, hold a vigil at work for one of their own who gets murdered. Jo is particularly moved by this.
** 'Reignighted:' Christine accompanies Mac to the funeral of Cap. Curtis Smith, a firefighter friend of his who is killed in the line of duty.
** 'Civilized Lies:' Danny and Lindsay visit the family of an off-duty police officer who gets shot and killed. They give the man's son, who is going through the Police Academy, his father's badge to wear when he graduates. The young man proudly shows it to his mother and sister.
* DumpsterDive:
** In 'Bad Beat,' while Lindsay is still a rookie, Mac has her dig through one looking for a missing weapon:
--->'''Lindsay:''' Ah, now, see? That's a shame.\\
'''Mac:''' What's a shame?\\
''[She pulls something up out of the dumpster]''\\
'''Lindsay:''' Somebody went and threw away a perfectly good shotgun.
** In 'White Gold,' Sheldon examines a corpse in a dumpster. Luckily for him, it had been emptied before the body was placed there.
* DurableDeathtrap: The traps in 'Death House' are still working after almost 100 years.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:E-H]]
* EagleEyeDetection: When Danny spots something odd on a surveillance tape in 'Officer Blue,' he tells Mac, "They don't call me 'Eagle Eyes' for nothin'."
* EarAche:
** The younger brother of the victim in 'Trapped' had had his ear cut off as a child. It was sent to the family & the brother still keeps it in a jar.
** The victim in 'Rush to Judgement' has cauliflower ear due to having been a wrestler.
** The victim in 'Sanguine Love' and one from 'A Man a Mile' each have a part of an ear bitten off.
* EarPiercingPlot: A variation of the trope: Lindsay has a flashback to her young teenage years when she and three of her friends hid in her bathroom for her to pierce one of the other's ears. Girl #3 holds a potato behind the piercee's ear while Lindsay prepares the needle and they hear a thud. Girl #4, who was supposed to be keeping an eye out for Lindsay's parents, passed out from the ''thought'' of seeing their friend get stuck.
* EasilyOverheardConversation: One perp overhears two women through his thin apartment walls and intercepts their delivery of a package used to pay someone back. One's unwitting husband is there and refuses to hand the package over; the perp panics and shoots him.
* EasyAmnesia: Averted. It takes Mac eight and a half months of therapy to recover from his speech aphasia.
* EatTheCamera: Done a few times with variations due to the nature of each episode.
** "A Man A Mile": The camera zooms into the victim's mouth to watch something be retrieved from her throat.
** In both "A Daze of Wine and Roaches" and "Forbidden Fruit" explaining how poisons affected the victims who unknowingly ingested them.
** "Page Turner: A camera is used to inspect the throat of a woman who died at a concert.
** Used in "Fare Game" to show how a woman swallowed a live baby octopus.
* EiffelTowerEffect: Much like the mothership, this series treats its aerial shots like a love letter to the titular city's landmarks. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Art/StatueOfLiberty are all shown practically every episode, and not just in the opening credits. Sometimes they're featured more prominently:
** A famous building climber falls to his death while scaling the Empire State Building in the season 2 premiere.
** A murder is committed on Lady Liberty in the season 4 premiere and the Statue is vandalized as well.
** Another episode has a clue left in a box atop a high-rise with a perfect view of the Chrysler Building and Mac tells Adam it's the spot where he & Claire got engaged.
** Mac, Danny & Sheldon search for evidence while harnessed to the top of Empire during "The Triangle."
* ElectricTorture: In 'Blood Out,' the team investigates a particularly brutal murder. Before being cut in half with a chainsaw, the VictimOfTheWeek is tortured by having car battery jumper leads attached to his pecs.
* EmbarrassingBrowserHistory: When former FBI agent Jo first joins the team in season 7, she freaks Adam out by telling him, "we know about those websites you visit."
* EmbarrassingMiddleName: In 'Near Death,' Christine reveals to Jo that her brother Stan, who was an early partner of Mac's, had picked on him unmercifully about his middle name of "Llewellyn."
* EmbarrassingNickname: At first Lindsay hates Danny constantly calling her "Montana," but over time it becomes a term of endearment.
* EncyclopaedicKnowledge:
** Mac knows a lot about a lot of things, even stuff like the rules of Roller Derby, which shocks Stella:
--->'''Stella:''' You can NOT know this.
** See also his character page.
** Averted in a late season 8 episode when Lindsay asks him about a certain type of rare wood. He's completely unfamiliar with it.
** Sheldon impresses Mac with his knowledge of mosquitoes during his first outing in the field:
--->'''Mac:''' Did you know that Hawkes is a walking encyclopedia of tidbit information?\\
'''Stella:''' Good. We can go to him instead of Google.
* EnergyWeapon: The laser beam-equipped car in 'You Only Die Once.' The beam actually scalps a victim.
* EnhanceButton: Used frequently, including getting an image off a reflection in someone's eyeball, and getting fingerprints when someone waves their hand in front of a security camera.
* EpisodeOnAPlane: 'Turbulence.' Mac has to get his flight to DC turned around when a murder victim is discovered on his plane.
* EurekaMoment:
** Hawkes watches a Jennifer Lopez video during his lunch break in 'Grand Murder at Central Station.' While admiring her, um, assets, he remembers they are insured, helping him figure out the case - it's an insurance scam.
** In another episode, Flack closes a door then realizes that the room im which the victim was discovered had been locked from the outside, meaning someone else had been there.
* EvenEvilHasStandards:
** A hitman turns himself in and spills the beans on his client in 'Greater Good' when said client switches targets from a man to a woman. This hitman doesn't do women.
** The would-be killer in 'Unspoken.' Lindsay sees him shooting at his intended target and is injured in the chaos. He comes into her hospital room intending to dispose of her before she can identify him. But then he sees the drawing her daughter, Lucy, had made and backs off, realizing she is a mother. It ties into what he later tells the detectives about never wanting to hurt a child. Lindsay dying would have hurt Lucy.
* EverybodyWasKungFuFighting: The 'Corporate Warriors' in season 2. They are all trained in martial arts. One uses their skills to kill another, only to be killed in turn by a third.
* EveryoneIsSingle: Although Mac is a widower before the series begins, the only team members to be married during the 9-year run are Danny & Lindsay (who tie the knot late in season 5) and Sid (who arrives mid-season 2), and even he's twice divorced by early season 7.
* EverythingSoundsSexierInFrench:
** When Stella speaks to Mac in Greek while he's brooding over a case in 'The Closer,' the following exchange ensues:
-->'''Mac:''' I give, what was that?
-->'''Stella:''' What the hell's wrong with you, Mac?
-->'''Mac:''' Ugh, it sounds so much better in Greek.
-->'''Stella:''' [smiling] Everything always does.
** In 'Communication Breakdown,' Flack overhears Angell questioning a witness in the man's native French and whispers as he passes behind her, "Sexiest thing I've ever heard."
* EvilLawyerJoke: In 'Enough,' Mac visits a lawyer whose office has just been sprayed for bugs. The man kills a cockroach while complaining that his fumigators didn't do a good job, and says he and the bugs are from the same species. When Mac stares at him blankly, he asks: "What, you don't like lawyer jokes?" Mac replies, "I don't like lawyers." At the end of their conversation, Mac turns it on him with "What do they call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start." Pause. "What, YOU don't like lawyer jokes?"
* EvilStoleMyFaith: Alluded to in 'Yahrzeit.' A Holocaust survivor says that the soldier (Mac Taylor's father) who rescued him by carrying him out of the camp from which he was liberated and who gave him a Hershey bar to eat "put back some of the faith I had lost. My grandchildren put back the rest."
* ExactWords:
** '...Comes Around.' During the hearing about Mac's encounter with Clay Dobson, Danny is asked if he can read a portion of the autopsy report. He says, "Sure" and proceeds to do so...silently.
** In 'The Ride In,' a man convicted of counterfeiting explains his motivation to Flack: since his father told him "Jimmy, everything I have is mine; you ain't got nothin' coming, so you got to go out and make your own money," he did just that.
** In 'Hide Sight,' Mac is told "not to utter the word 'sniper'" during a press conference. He doesn't, but when a reporter says, "Sounds like a sniper to me," Mac, concerned that the public needs to know the truth, replies, "Me, too." Chief of D's Carver asks what he's supposed to tell their superiors. Mac says, "Tell them I never uttered the word 'sniper'."
** In 'Seth and Apep,' Flack & DB buy time for Mac to find Christine by heading off Federal Marshalls at the pass, telling them the Egyptian murderer they're after is at another precinct due to a mix-up. As they lead the officers away to get coffee while they wait, DB says, "Why, I'll bet our guy's walking him out the precinct right now." Cue Mac *leaving* the building with the handcuffed man in tow.
* ExpensiveGlassOfCrap:
** In 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches,' cheap wine was being passed off as expensive, though that wasn't ultimately why the vic was killed. [[spoiler:It involved the killer trying to squash the guy's jeweled cockroach.]]
** In 'The Real [=McCoy=],' one of the speakeasy employees cuts corners with counterfeit vodka.
* ExplodingCigar: A victim is killed by one meant for "Laughing Larry" in 'Child's Play.'
* ExplodingFishTanks: The male victim in 'Heart of Glass' falls into his aquarium, shattering it to pieces.
* EyeContactAsProof: During Mac's speech aphasia arc when he's not telling anyone about his memory problems, Christine becomes suspicious and asks him to look her in the eye and tell her nothing's wrong. He can't, and doesn't, so she gives him the silent treatment for a couple of weeks until he fesses up.
* EyepiecePrank: In 'Clue: SI,' Lindsay gets blue circles around her eyes from her husband, in a prank meant for Adam, the lab tech. She wears sunglasses the rest of the episode to hide them and spends most of the ep trying to determine the prankster. She tells Danny she'll find a way to get him back for it.
* EyeScream:
** The eyeball that falls from the sky into Stella's coffee cup in 'No Good Deed' had been plucked from a dead man on a rooftop. The audience is treated to at least two close ups of it; first, floating in her coffee, then being examined in the lab.
** The man who's nailed to a tree with railroad ties thru his eye sockets, and whose eyeballs Mac finds in his pocket in 'Hung Out to Dry.'
** Clay Dobson's victims, whose eyelids he cut off so they'd have to stare at him as they died.
* FaceDoodling: In 'Get Me Out of Here!', Danny and Adam arrive at a frat house to investigate a murder. They wake up a pledge who has had a pair glasses drawn on his face and the word "TOOL" written on his forehead.
* FacePalm:
** At the end of 'Oedipus Rex,' when the Suicide Girls [[MsFanservice strut away]] and Danny realizes what he's lost out on by turning down one's offer for a date, you can clearly see him doing this in the background.
** Mac does the face-wipe version a number of times. A notable example is while chewing Flack out for going A.W.O.L. in 'Cuckoo's Nest.'
* FailureToSaveMurder:
** Mac's 333 Stalker is out to get him because [[spoiler:Mac had failed to save the guy's brother back in Chicago when he was 14 years old.]]
** Also the killer's motivation in 'Where There's Smoke.' [[spoiler: He blamed his foster brother and sister for not saving him from his mother's abuse when they were children.]]
* FakeDangerGambit: The victim in 'Battle Scars' gets a friend to pose as an armed robber so he can be a hero to his girlfriend. It backfires.
* FakeIdentityBaggage: In "And Here's to You, Mrs. Azrael", a [[MamaBear pissed-off mother]] [[SickbedSlaying kills a comatose teen]] whom she blames for the drunken car crash that killed her daughter. However, Hawkes reveals to the mother that the girl she killed was her own daughter, who had exploited the fact that she looked almost exactly like the girl who died in the crash by carrying the other girl's ID when she drove that girl's car home from the bar where they'd been drinking because the other girl had also done drugs and was more wasted than her. The mother is left sitting distraught in the interegation room [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone as she has a nervous breakdown over having killed her own daughter.]]
* FalseConfession:
** One episode has a man confess to murdering the quack doctor who milked him & his wife of all their savings while "treating" his terminal illness. [[spoiler: It was his wife who killed her, but he wants to take the rap since he knows he doesn't have long to live anyway.]]
** "Greater Good" sees Mac struggling over an old case on his day off. A man had confessed to fatally hitting a girl on her bicycle and had served his time. After his release, Mac realizes that the man's bruises from his seatbelt prove that he'd been on the passenger side. [[spoiler: His daughter, who was studying to be a doctor at the time, was driving; he confessed so she could finish med school.]]
* FalseRapeAccusation: The alleged victim of the DC Rapist in the three-part season 7 arc. The senator father of his earlier victim hired the woman to allege that the guy raped her, but Lindsay's forensic tests showed that given the rate at which GHB leaves the system, she would be dead if she really ingested the indicated levels at the time of the attack. The senator then kills the woman, hoping to frame the guy for murder, but that backfires as well.
* FalseRoulette: Mac does this to one of Christine's kidnappers as he tries to force the guy to talk in 'Seth and Apep.' He fires point-blank at the guy's forehead three times before the man relents & tells Mac he'll take him to her.
* FalseStart: Danny & Lindsay's romance, until she dealt with her past.
* FamilyOfChoice: Mac regards his team as his family, and tells Christine so in 'Unwrapped.'
-->'''Mac:''' For the longest time, this place, those guys, were my whole world. They got me through some really tough times. Now I have you.
* FanBoy: Mac apparently idolizes UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan judging by the framed picture in his office and "eight-hour documentary [he's] always watching."
* FanDisservice: The one time we see Flack without a shirt, he's got a whopping great hole in his chest where he was seriously injured in an explosion. Another time, he lifts his shirt to reveal severe bruising from a beatdown he took on the subway.
* FanService:
** Certain features of Stella are on display a bit.
** Danny ends up [[ShirtlessScene shirtless or in a vest/wifebeater]] a lot.
** Lindsay once took a walk in the rain and ended up in a SexySoakedShirt.
** Mac kicking ass while [[SexySoakedShirt soaking wet]] in the season three finale.
** Shirtless Mac in bed with Peyton in the s3 opener, whether you liked the ship or not.
** Angell in Flack's button down shirt with a pair of handcuffs.
** Mac swimming in the 100th ep.
** Mac testing the weapons in 'Corporate Warriors.' Especially the katana...in a tight black t-shirt.
** The episode about the lingerie football league. Must have been ''designed'' for the MaleGaze.
** The Suicide Girls episode as well.
** And the female roller derby team in 'Jamalot.'
** The female lube wrestler in 'Trapped.'
** The housekeepers wearing French Maid outfits in 'Murder Sings the Blues.'
* FashionShow:
** In 'Wasted,' models are wearing *literally* painted-on swimwear. One dies on the runway and another is bludgeoned to death backstage.
** In 'Like Water for Chocolate,' a fashion designer uses expensive chocolate and damiana flowers in his designs, which are presented by models on a runway. Det. Flack comments to Stella how cold it is in the venue. She tells him it's necessary because chocolate melts at body temperature.
* FantasyForbiddingFather: 'Blood, Sweat and Tears.' Due to FeudingFamilies, a circus girl's father forbids her to see her boyfriend who's also in the circus.
* AFatherToHisMen: Mac, particularly to Lindsay and Adam. See Character Page for more details.
* FatalAttractor: Stella Bonasera. Her boyfriend tried to kill her after she broke up with him and another guy she was seeing turned out to be [[spoiler: Mac's 333 Stalker, who was out for blood as well]].
* FatalMethodActing: Two in-universe examples:
** The girl portraying Marie Antoinette in 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches' is discovered dead in the guillotine prop right after the group's picture is taken.
** In 'The Formula,' a Formula One racer dies when his car explodes during an exhibition race.
* FBIAgent:
** FBI Agents offer their assistance and phone tracing equipment when a millionaire's son is kidnapped in 'Brooklyn Til I Die.'
** Jo Danville is a former FBI agent, and her ex-husband, Russ Josephson who is also an agent, appears in two season 7 episodes. He provides intel that helps with cases in both. Two other FBI colleagues of hers appear in additional episodes.
* FeelingTheBabyKick: Before Danny and Lindsay get married, she tells him at work that she felt their baby kick. He ushers her to a secluded area and tries to feel it, too, but there's no movement. He tells her to find him as soon as possible the next time it happens.
* FictionalCounterpart: In "Some Buried Bones," a Students' Secret Society at Chelsea University called "Kings and Shadows," in which membership is passed down from powerful alumni to their sons, stands in for Yale's real-life counterpart "Skull and Bones."
* FictionalPainting: One of the three cases in "Tri-Borough" centers around a fictional early-American painting called, ''Immortality,'' by fictional artist Jacques de Suis.
* FieryCoverUp:
** 'Right Next Door': Subverted by the "victim" of Stella's apartment building fire who, as it turns out, had died two or three days earlier.
** 'Do Not Pass Go': Played straight with the perp tricking the mother of a missing college student into setting a fire to destroy evidence in return for information on the whereabouts of her child.
* FifteenPuzzle: A large scale floor version is one of the booby traps in 'Death House.' It is already solved when the team arrives, but still helps them figure out what's going on.
* FingerInTheMail:
** 'Trapped' deals with the heir of a wealthy family whose little brother had been abducted at a young age. When the family was slow with the ransom money, his brother's ear was cut off and sent to the family; later, the brother was killed. The surviving man kept the ear, which Stella finds in a jar of preservative.
** In 'Brooklyn Til I Die,' the estranged father of a victim receives a finger with a family ring on it from kidnappers, proving that the vic is indeed his son.
** Mac gets a tongue in the mail from Christine's kidnappers in 'Seth and Apep.' It isn't hers, but it does freak him out for a while (see Call Back above).
* FingerLickingPoison: In 'Page Turner,' the killer coats the pages of a book in thallium to poison his victims.
* {{Fingore}}: Danny getting his fingers stomped on and broken in the season three finale.
* FirefighterArsonist: Inverted. "Reignited" features a firebug who is also a wannabe firefighter, having applied and been turned down no less than 11 times in at least 3 boroughs before the events of this episode. He had also set an abandoned car on fire in an alley two weeks prior, just to watch it burn. He arrives at a genuine apartment building fire dressed in stolen turn-out gear and quickly becomes the prime suspect when the authorities realize the number on his stolen helmet is from a firehouse in a different borough. However, he's quickly ruled out by Mac on the grounds that he's too stupid and deluded to have pulled out such a complex plot.
* FiveFiveFive:
** In 'All in the Family,' Flack tries to find Danny, who didn't show up to work. He resorts to calling dispatch to trace Danny's cell phone and gives them the number 212-555-0121.
** In 'Blacklist,' a tech-savvy perp hacks into the lab's system and orders a surveillance camera to be installed in their hallway. Mac uses it to his advantage by holding up a hand-written sign that says, "Call Me, 555-0131" to get the man to call his office land line.
* FlagDrop: Mac keeps full-sized US and NY state flags in his office. In practically every scene shot there, one, if not both, of them can be seen.
* {{Flashback}}: Aside from the ones used every episode to show how the crime(s) of the week actually went down, there are three major examples, chronologically as follows:
** Near the end of season 3, Mac and Clay Dobson's rooftop confrontation is shown three times, once during each episode of Dobson's arc.
** Beginning with the season 4 premiere, Mac spends several episodes explaining individually to various colleagues how his stalker situation began. Each time the audience is treated to repeats of him being woken up by 3:33 a.m. phone calls at two different hotels in London.
** In episode 5.20, 'Prey,' Stella recounts a college forensics lecture she gave using some of the team's past cases as examples. Scenes from the three she chose are repeated, including the mummified body found in a building being demolished in season 3.
* FlashbackEcho: Flack's injuries in 'Charge of This Post' take Mac back to the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing:
-->'''Smith:''' How'd you know what to do?\\
'''Mac:''' I've lived through this moment before.
* FlashedBadgeHijack: Flack does it to a taxi driver in the beginning of 'You Only Die Once,' running up a $60 cab fare in the process. Between that and his unauthorized high speed chase, Chief Sinclair is not pleased.
* FlashMobCoverup: The killer in 'To What End?' puts out an ad for people to show up at the scene dressed as clowns, offering a bonus if they wear his same costume.
* {{Flatline}}: Mac, after being shot in 'Near Death.' One of the operating room nurses shouts, "He's flatlining!"
* FollowingInRelativesFootsteps: Detective Don Flack, Jr. follows his namesake into law enforcement because he looks up to him. His sister, Samantha, once states about police work, "You Flack men; it's in your blood."
* FoundFamilyViaWork: Lab Chief Mac Taylor is an only child and both his parents are deceased. No mention is ever made of aunts, uncles or cousins. He and Stella sometimes fight like a stereotypical "old married couple;" he has some heart-to-heart chats with the younger members of the team when they're struggling with personal issues; and takes Sheldon in when he loses his apartment. Referring to his co-workers, he tells his new girlfriend in season 8, "For a long time this place, those guys, were my whole world. They got me through some really tough times."
* FleurDeLis: In 'The Untouchable,' a disturbed, homeless young lady seeks out Mac to report the death of "the woman with the purple flowers." The flowers turn out to be the tattoo of a fleur-de-lis on the dead woman's wrist.
* FoodPorn:
** Quite literally, during the "food sploshing" in 'It Happened to Me.'
** Also literally with the practically nude women serving as tables in the sushi restaurant in 'Grand Master':
-->'''Stella''': Oh, that can't be sanitary.\\
'''Danny:''' Who cares if it's sanitary? I wanna see the menu.
* FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling:
** Don Flack and his party-girl sister, Sam.
** Danny Messer and his gangster-ish brother, Louie.
** Doctor Sheldon Hawkes and his sister, who had been a drug addict (before getting clean, unbeknownst to him).
** Chief Carver and his sister (see spoiler under SiblingYinYang below).
* ForcedOrgasm: A variation is used in 'Time's Up,' where an investigation reveals that a college student died in the middle of a restaurant after she [[OutWithABang climaxed to death]]. The autopsy reveals that she had used an experimental aphrodisiac that was being tested in a local university. At the end it was revealed that the girl told her sorority sister that she was still a virgin, so the leader of the chapter set up a romantic night between her and a fraternity member, and to ensure she enjoyed the night, [[SlippingAMickey swapped out her asthma medication]] with the aphrodisiac, which the girl kept using because her asthma got worse instead of better. When she got nervous and ran out of the room, the frat boy followed her to the restaurant and tried to talk to her, which is when the aphrodisiac kicked in and she had an orgasm that eventually led to heart failure.
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** A few episodes after Lindsay's introduction and after impressing him with sports trivia, Danny jokingly remarks that he'll have to ask her to marry him if she keeps that up. Three seasons later...
** In the same vein, in a season one episode, Mac says something about how Danny could fall in love one day. Danny laughs it off, but then Lindsay shows up in the next season and...
** In 'Dead Reckoning,' a mystery woman is tied to several crimes and homicides which baffles the authorities. Anything familiar that shows up when she is mentioned? [[spoiler:A Q-tip swab. It’s later discovered that the mystery woman is in fact an innocent worker at a Q-tip production facility which earned a contract to supply the city’s forensics department. She didn’t like how her gloves felt, so she took them off. This ends up contaminating the entire stock onwards which creates a fictional serial killer who commits crimes at a sporadic rate.]]
* ForeignCussWord:
** Stella occasionally curses in Greek, but the only translation ever given is the quote under "...Sexier in French" on this page.
** After she is attacked by one of the Greek antiquities thieves, she tells Mac the man cussed at her in Greek.
* ForeignLanguageTirade: An antiquities smuggler yells at and curses at Stella in Greek while attacking her in a subway stairwell in 'The Cost of Living.' No translation is given there either.
%%* ForeignQueasine / MasochistsMeal: The exotic dishes in 'Fare Game.'
* ForensicDrama: Obviously. Evidence is shown being processed in the lab more than once an episode.
* ForgedMessage: Chronologically...
** In season 7, Raymond Harris somehow sends Bill Hunt a text from Mac, luring him to Mac's office so he can shoot at them both from the building across the street. Jo says the guy must've cloned Mac's phone.
** In 'The Lady in the Lake', the killer uses the victim's cell phone to text the girl's boyfriend that she's going out of town.
** In the season 9 crossover with ''Series/{{CSI}}'', 'In Vino Veritas,' Christine's kidnappers put fake texts on her phone as part of a robbery scheme. Before they realize the sham, the Vegas investigators strongly hint to Mac that she's cheating on him.
* ForgetsToEat: Seems to go with the territory.
** In season 1's 'Till Death Do We Part,' Flack doesn't want Stella to drive because "when you drive, we don't eat."
** In 'Love Run Cold,' Danny and Lindsay are working a case together and she doesn't want to break for lunch because "Mac wants us to solve the case." Danny replies that Mac wouldn't want them to starve to death in the process. She walks away oblivious; he follows reluctantly, while looking around for a pizza joint.
** In 'Nothing for Something,' Jo has Flack take Mac to a diner after this exchange:
--->'''Mac: '''I know what you're going to say. It's not the way it looks. I'm fine.\\
'''Jo:''' It's exactly the way it looks. That's the same suit you had on yesterday, if not the day before. You haven't even been home in two days.\\
'''Mac:''' This isn't the first time one case has rolled over into another. I'll be fine.\\
'''Jo:''' When's the last time you had something to eat? I don't want to hear about that trail mix from the vending machine last night.\\
'''Mac:''' ''(a tad defensively)'' It was a granola bar.
* FormerlyFat:
** One of the cheerleaders in 'Personal Foul' has too big clothes still in her closet and keeps an old picture from her heavy-set days on her fridge.
** In 'Blood Actually,' Sheldon confides to Danny that he used to be very overweight & even shows Danny a picture of himself he carries around as a reminder. Naturally, Danny wants to keep it; Sheldon wisely refuses.
* FosterKid: Stella. She tells a suspect about it in one ep, it comes up as a plot point in "Cold Reveal," and is mentioned in her conversations with Prof. Papakota.
* FramedClue: A variation in "Grounds for Deception." Stella discovers that her mentor is involved in the theft of Greek antiquities. In anger, she goes to her office, yanks down a framed painting he'd given her when she graduated from the police academy, and discovers that it, too, was stolen...from a museum...in Greece. She goes AWOL to return it.
* FrameUp:
** Evidence for robbery & murder is planted on Hawkes in 'Raising Shane.'
** In season 3, Clay Dobson uses [[spoiler:his suicide as a TakingYouWithMe gambit]] to make it look like Mac has pushed him off the roof.
* FramingTheGuiltyParty:
** Aiden considers planting evidence from serial rapist DJ Pratt's first case onto an item from his second one.
** After he gets away the first time, the serial rapist from Jo's FBI case has people attempt to frame him for another rape and then for murder.
* FreakierThanFiction: See RippedFromTheHeadlines below. One of the [=IMDb=] reviewers of the look-alike girls' episode goes on a rant about how it could never have happened in real life (despite the actual situation being the basis of episodes of some other shows as well).
* FrenchMaidOutfit: The victim in 'Murder Sings the Blues' requires his maids to dress in this type of lingerie... and to be blue-eyed blondes.
* FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse: See the "Awesome" page for Mac's retort to the serial killer in 'Manhattan Manhunt' whose motivation was his angst over not having been raised by his wealthy father and jealousy over his half-sisters who were.
* FriendToBugs: One victim is murdered by a roach aficionado for trying to crush one.
* FrivolousLawsuit: The victim in 'Fare Game' made her living with these and gets murdered by her latest potential victim who recognizes her from an earlier suit against him. Creator/WayneKnight plays her lawyer.
* FromDressToDressing: Various characters tear off parts of their shirts/use their own clothing to bandage victims from time to time. Including:
** In 'What You See Is What You See,' Mac uses his jacket to stem the flow of blood from the waitress' gunshot wound.
** In 'Charge of This Post,' he borrows a shoestring from a fellow victim of the explosion to bind a profusely bleeding artery in Flack's gut until the paramedics can arrive. Then he tears strips from his own shirt to stuff in the gaping wound to staunch additional bleeding.
** 'Epilogue' has a variation. [[spoiler: A perp stabs a security guard, hitting his femoral artery, then tears off one of the man's sleeves to use as a tourniquet on ''his own arm'' where the guard had injured him earlier.]]
* FruitCart: Too many to list them all, but for example... There's a foot chase variant in "Unspoken." The suspect of the week shoots at a politician during a stumping speech. He then runs like heck, pushing a concession cart out of the way, slamming it into Lindsay, who ends up with a nasty concussion.
* GaiasVengeance: The eco-terrorist bombers in 'Green Piece' are attempting to stop someone from sending electronic waste to Chinese landfills where toxins seep into the soil and cause illnesses and birth defects.
* GamesOfTheElderly:
** In 'Uncertainty Rules,' two friends take their introvert buddy out on the town for his 21st birthday. One of the places they visit is a retirement home where they join in on Bingo Night...and win the $25,000 pot.
** In 'The Real [=McCoy=],' Adam visits his father, who has Alzheimer's, at his senior care facility and plays dominoes with him.
* GangBangers: One of several gangs depicted in the series, The Tanglewood Boys are secong-generation Italian thugs who fancy themselves as Mafia. Danny, being familiar with them because his brother was part of the group for a while, says they're "more made than the made guys."
* GasChamber: The Cabbie Killer turns his taxi into a mobile gas chamber and traps his victims in the back seat, poisoning them.
* GasLeakCoverup: In 'Snow Day,' the Irish gang infiltrates the lab by introducing a fake gas smell, setting the alarm off, and dressing like gas company workers.
* GenderConcealingVoice: A voice-distorting device is found at the second crime scene in "[[Recap/CSINYS07E15 Vigilante]]", clueing the detectives into the fact that the caller who reported both crimes is most likely not who ''he'' appears to be. When they reverse engineer the voice on the 911 tapes, they discover it was a woman who'd been calling all along.
* GenericEthnicCrimeGang:
** The Greek antiquities smugglers Stella goes after in season 5.
** Also the Trinitarios, a Dominican gang, in season 9's 'Blood Out.'
--->'''Flack:''' Nobody loves a good dismemberment like the Latin street crews.
* GeniusCripple: Dr. Leonard Giles, the wheelchair-bound forensics/DNA expert from season 1.
* GenocideSurvivor: In 'Yahrzeit,' Mac is shown a video of a woman recounting her days in a concentration camp, during which her niece's entire family had been executed. Later, he is sent a video of a man telling the story of his rescue by Mac's father from the camp in which he had been imprisoned. The episode ends with Mac visiting the woman to return a broach of her niece's that had been evidence in the team's current case.
* GenuineHumanHide: Some of the evidence in 'Yahrzeit' is made from human skin.
* GirlsWithMustaches: A piece of evidence found in one case is a single strand of hair from a beard, but the DNA is determined to be female. Danny has an idea and takes Sheldon with him to question some Coney Island performers, one of whom is a bearded lady. Sure enough, the folks there put them on the right trail.
* GiveMeBackMyWallet: Averted in 'Nothing for Something.' Mac's pickpocket brings his wallet back to the Lab, but the case turns out to be much more complicated.
* GivenNameReveal: Christine telling Jo that Mac's middle name is Llewellyn in 'Near Death.'
* GlassShatteringSound: 'Not What It Looks Like.' It's used when glass counters in a jewelry shop are shattered during a robbery.
* GoingByTheMatchbook: In 'White Gold,' Hawkes and Flack find a matchbook stuck to the victim's back with blood, having fallen out of the killer's pocket when he dumped the body into a dumpster. This leads them to the bar where he hangs out.
* GoingForTheBigScoop: News-blogger Reed Garrett pursues the Cabbie Killer so doggedly he ends up [[spoiler: getting kidnapped by the guy and barely survives getting his throat slashed.]]
* GoodCopBadCop: In 'Civilized Lies,' Mac is extremely irritated and aggressive while interrogating a suspect when an off-duty officer is shot, and Flack tries a good-cop approach after Mac storms out. The suspect even asks if it's this trope.
-->'''Suspect:''' [[LampshadeHanging Oh, are you gonna play good cop now?]]\\
'''Flack:''' To tell you the truth, I don't quite know what to do. [gestures towards one-way glass] *He's* usually the good cop.
* GoneHorriblyRight: In 'Clean Sweep,' a cage fighter is so afraid of a stalker harming his family that [[spoiler:when his friend, a homeless veteran, dies after an accident he decides to set the body on fire and fake his own death. The fighter is eventually found, but he burned the body so thoroughly that there's no proof the homeless vet ''wasn't'' murdered and the cops will be forced to charge him, although Mac does try to put in a good word (he also gets the vet a military funeral).]]
* GoryDiscretionShot: 'Blood Out.' Kinda a requirement when the victim is being dismembered with a chainsaw. All the audience sees is the man's blood spraying up on his killer.
* GPSEvidence: Many times played straight, once subverted because an enemy of one of the investigators figures out that the team chases this sort of evidence.
* GratuitousItalian: For the Greek name of [[StellarName Stella Bonasera]], which means Star Goodnight.
* GreatEscape: Sheldon goes to PA to witness an inmate's execution in 'Redemptio' and gets trapped when the prisoners start a riot.
-->'''Mac:''' We're gonna have to break Hawkes out of prison.
* GreensPrecedeSweets: Mac won't let the little boy in 'Necrophilia Americana' have a candy bar until after he gets him "some real stuff."
* GriefInducedSplit: "[Child's Play" features an indirect case with the culprit behind one of the episode's two victims of the week. Having watched his friend drown as a child due to a prank gone horribly wrong, the man's lingering trauma and grief manifested in adulthood as being so overprotective of his own son that he would keep the boy indoors 24/7. His wife, understandably and rightly, left him and took their child away for the boy's own good.
* GrievousBottleyHarm:
** Danny gets beaned with a beer bottle upon leaving a bar with his band of rookies after work one evening in 'Officer Involved.'
** In 'Blood Actually,' one of the three victims is bludgeoned to death with a champagne bottle.
* HairFlip: While undercover trying to infiltrate a Latino drug gang that regularly hangs out in a pool hall, Det. Jamie Lavato wears a [[FanService short, form-fitting, low-cut, silky red dress]] and flips her hair from one side to the other as she leans over to line up her cue for her next shot. The ploy works.
* HalfTheManHeUsedToBe: In 'Blood Out,' the Victim of the Week is cut in half with a chainsaw, after being subjected to ElectricTorture.
* HalloweenEpisode: Two.
** Episode 4.06, 'Boo,' which originally aired on Oct 31, 2007, has a possible murder-suicide at the Amityville Horror house and what appears to be a zombie.
--->'''Sid:''' He was dead before he was killed. Medically, that makes him a zombie. Happy Halloween.
** Episode 8.06, 'Get Me Out of Here!' concerns a fraternity prank gone awry on Halloween...a pledge is missing and the pledge master, who is the only person who knows where the young man is, is found dead in an open grave himself.
--->'''Jo:''' Not often you find a body where it actually belongs.
* {{Hammerspace}}: Unintentional. During Episode 4.15, a Killer of the Week enters a building dressed only in heels, shirt and tight jeans. In the next scene, she brandishes large pistol with a supressor. After she is killed, the team finds a cell phone on her body as well.
* HandyCuffs: In 'Vacation Getaway,' Shane Casey uses the shackles around his wrists and ankles to strangle a guard and escape.
* HangingJudge: The Victim of the Week in 'Crossroads.' He is discovered to be a corrupt judge who got kickbacks from sending juvenile delinquents to a specific [[HellholePrison hellhole juvenile prison center]]. The Killer of the Week had had his whole life destroyed [[DisproportionateRetribution because he was sentenced to do time for stealing a pack of gum]].
* HappilyAdopted: Jo's daughter Ellie (not to be confused with Ellie Brass from ''Series/{{CSI}}''), who knows she's adopted and only goes thru a brief period of angst over not knowing her birth mother.
* HappilyMarried:
** Danny and Lindsay, beginning in season 5.
** Mac and Christine will be joining them now. Had the show continued to season 10, it would have had the most married team members in the franchise, with 3.
* HarmfulToMinors:
** As a teenager, Lindsay witnessed the murder of several friends. In season three, she is called to testify at the trial of their murderer.
** The little girl in 'City of the Dolls' who witnesses her mother, who is a teacher, having sex with a high-school student.
* HazmatSuit: The team has to wear them due to the thallium radiation Sid is exposed to in the morgue during 'Page Turner.'
* HeadTiltinglyKinky: 'Bad Beat.' Danny, Sheldon & Adam are viewing a home-made sex tape recorded over a wildlife documentary. Lindsay approches and tilts her head to match theirs while saying, "[[ItMakesSenseInContext Who's the other walrus?]]"
* HedgeMaze: In 'Some Buried Bones,' the victim, a friend of Reed's, is found in a hedge maze on their college campus. He belonged to a secret society which held rituals there.
* HeroOfAnotherStory: At least two.
** Quinn Sullivan, head of the New Jersey Crime Lab, is featured in two episodes of the Cabbie Killer arc.
** After Creator/MelinaKanakaredes left the show at the end of season 6, her character, Stella Bonasera, is revealed in the series 7 premiere to have left NYC to head up the New Orleans Crime Lab.
* HeroicBSOD:
** After seven episodes of teetering on the brink, Flack finally has one in episode 6.08, 'Cuckoo's Nest.'
** Mac has one as well in episode 7.22, 'Exit Strategy,' after [[spoiler:having his own gun misfire as a perp attempts to shoot him with it point-blank between the eyes.]]
** Christine has a mild one in her walk-in closet while deciding what to wear for her Valentine date with Mac in 'Blood Actually,' along with flashbacks of her kidnapping.
* HeroicVow:
-->'''Mac:''' There are three things that I'll protect at any cost: the honor of this country, the safety of this city, and the integrity of this lab.
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: The perps in 'Charge of This Post' and 'Point of View' both turned into villains while trying to prove the same point, namely that NYC isn't prepared for another terroist attack.
* HeyThatsMyLine: When Jo says "Boom" upon finding some evidence in the field, Danny turns to Sheldon and asks, "Did she just use my word?"
* HiddenWire: Several cases, including these:
** Louie Messer wears a homemade one while trying to clear Danny's name in 'Run Silent, Run Deep' and gets beaten to a pulp when the Tanglewood Boys find it.
** A suspect in 'Slante' agrees to wear one in order to get the real culprit to incriminate himself.
** In 'Seth & Apep," Jimmy, the manager of Christine's restaurant, wears one (along with a button camera) to try and get the guys who kidnapped his brother along with Christine to reveal where they're being held.
* HidingBehindTheLanguageBarrier: While in Greece during 'Grounds for Deception,' Stella and Mac don't let on to the local officials that she knows Greek until their investigation is complete.
* HidingTheHandicap: Mac not letting on to anyone about his speech aphasia.
* HisAndHers: Played with. 'Stealing Home' has a "committed threesome" in whose bathroom Sheldon finds towels embroidered with "Hers," "His," and "Hers."
-->'''Sheldon:''' Hey, Mac, there's three of *everything* in here...except the tub.
* HitboxDissonance: Comes up as a plot point relevant to the motive in 'Kill Screen.' [[spoiler:An Xbox used in a ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar3'' tournament had been hacked to give one player a hitbox half the size it should have been, and everyone else a hitbox twice the normal size.]]
* HockeyFight: There's one between the NYPD and FDNY teams in 'Reignited.' Danny, Don and Adam are on the NYPD's team.
* HollywoodBlanks: Averted. A VictimOfTheWeek is accidentally killed by a blank-firing gun going off point-blank in his chest. The murderer — a down-on-his-luck actor that was humiliated by the victim — makes clear as he confesses that he didn't think a blank could do that.
* HollywoodHacking: In one episode, Lindsay says, "I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic. See if I can track an IP address," leaving many tech-savvy folks groaning and shaking their heads in disbelief.
* HollywoodHealing / ThrowingOffTheDisability:
** Although it takes Danny several episodes to learn to walk again in season 6, he still goes from wheelchair to cane and then to walking unaided and even running a little too fast (like, two episodes), with only one instance of complaining that his back hurt.
** A milder form with Mac...it is possible to recover from aphasia over a couple of months, but it still moved somewhat quickly. Not so fast as to make it impossible to believe (especially with the six-month time skip), but a little bit. And, in real life, it can still re-surface when the person is angry or afraid...and Mac seems fine the whole time he's worried about Christine in the crossover.
* HollywoodSilencer: A perp in 'Turbulence' uses a teddy bear as a silencer for a Desert Eagle pistol.
* {{Hologram}}: Adam finds one as a clue that leads them to the real killer in 'Air Apparent.'
* {{Homage}}: The season three finale is clearly a ''Film/DieHard'' [[DieHardOnAnX homage]].
* HonorableMarriageProposal: Danny's first to Lindsay, after she tells him she's pregnant.
* HonorThyAbuser: In 'The Real [=McCoy=],' it is revealed that Adam's father, Charles, had been verbally and physically abusive to Adam, his brother and their mother; that Adam's brother had left home because of it; and that later Adam had threatened to kill Charles if he ever hurt his mother again. Adam has moved Charles, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, to a nearby facility so he can keep an eye on him. When Mac asks Adam why he visits the man, Adam answers, "Because I'm his son," and explains that he feels no emotion towards his father and is concerned by that. Choked up and on the verge of tears he says, "You're supposed to honor your parents. What does that say about me as a person?" Mac tenderly replies, "Looks like you're feeling something now."
* HonorThyParent: "Yarhzeit": After Mac returns a family heirloom to a Holocaust survivor, the woman says she plans to light a candle in honor of her relatives who were killed in the camps. She invites Mac to join her, asking if there is anyone he would like to honor as well. There is...
---> '''Mac:''' [''softly''] My father.
* HoodHopping:
** A suspect in 'Dead Inside' wakes up in a house that's being transported via highway, freaks out and hood hops his way thru traffic.
** In 'Hammer Down,' Mac jumps from car to car while he and Langston chase a perp thru a junkyard.
* HooksAndCrooks: In 'Happily Never After,' the killer uses a longshoreman's hook (that someone else had been using as part of a Captain Hook costume) as a murder weapon.
* HostageSituation: Several, including:
** 'Snow Day.' Adam and Danny are held by the Irish gang that want their drug horde back.
** Reed is taken hostage by the Cabbie Killer and forced to use his blog to get the killer's message out.
** 'Hostage' / 'Veritas.' Mac is taken hostage in the bank by "Joe."
** Sheldon's girlfriend, Camille, is taken hostage by a hitman in 'Smooth Criminal.'
** Christine is kidnapped during the 'In Vino Veritas' / 'Seth and Apep' crossover.
* HouseFire:
** There's an apartment fire in the B-plot of 'Corporate Warriors.'
** Stella's apartment suffers this when [[spoiler:two kidnapped kids start a fire to try to get the police to rescue them, only for the flames to follow an air vent and an open window into an apartment that is a bonafide fire hazard (polyurethane foam furniture and an ignitable floor varnish caused a flashover to happen in there)]].
* HowWeGotHere:
** A minor example with the B-plot characters in 'Oedipus Hex.'
** Several major ones, including what led to Mac getting shot in 'Near Death.'
* HumanNotepad: The second victim in 'Jamalot.' His killer suffers from a compulsion to write on any and all surfaces, including the young man's body.
* HumanResources: In 'Point of No Return,' Dr. Marty Pino is discovered to have been harvesting organs in order to extract unmetabolized drugs to sell.
* HumanShield: Several perps use other people as shields throughout the series, including Suspect X and Shane Casey.
* HummerDinger:
** The Chevy Avalanches used throughout the series.
** Averted by Mac and DB in 'Seth and Apep' when they take unmarked sedans to go look for Christine. Of course, Mac has [[spoiler: Zane stashed in the trunk, so...]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:I-L]]
* IAmVeryBritish: Jane Parsons, Peyton Driscoll and the psychiatrist in 'Clue: SI' all have very strong British accents.
* ICanSeeYou: "Joe" the bank robber and Mac trade these off in 'Veritas.'
* ICantFeelMyLegs: Danny says this after he is shot in the back.
* IcarusAllusion: A victim in 'Cold Reveal' is obsessed with internet fame and makes an angel costume to wear while he launches himself from a rooftop. He dies because his wing harness doesn't work the way he intended.
* [[IconicItem Iconic Items]]: Mac's Detective Bureau lapel pin and the picture of Ronald Reagan he keeps in his office, Sid's [[SpecsOfAwesome glasses]], and Danny's dog tags that were his grandfather's from the Korean War.
* IDidntMeanToKillHim: Several victims are killed due to accident or mistaken identity.
* IdiotBall: The criminals from time to time. [[spoiler: Susan]] from "Turbulence" is a prime example. [[spoiler: She very easily could have gotten away with murder, if only she had stuck with the lie that Greenway was a hijacker and her actions saved the plane.]]
* IDontKnowMortalKombat: Averted by Mac in 'Kill Screen.' The others, particularly Adam, don't think he'll be too good at the video game they're playing ("Asteroids has got to translate."), but Mac and Jo both kick Adam's butt from the get-go ("Hey, who's shooting at me?").
* IdTellYouButThenIdHaveToKillYou: How Sass Dumonde responds to Adam's request for her name when they meet on [="LookinAtChu"=] in 'Unfriendly Chat.'
* IfOnlyYouKnew: 'No Good Deed' opens with Mac & Stella having coffee on the street, when a vulture drops an eyeball from the VictimOfTheWeek into hers. [[BookEnds It ends with]], Mac having a conversation with Ella [=McBride=] from 'Dead Inside':
-->'''Ella:''' Hey, have you heard the latest urban legend? A woman goes to take a sip of her coffee and an eyeball falls right in the cup.\\
'''Mac:''' ''[smiles]'' [[{{Irony}} That's impossible]].
* IfYouDieICallYourStuff: Danny, to Mac, in 'Sleight Out of Hand,' jokingly. Mac is testing coolant gel used by stunt performers during burn scenes:
-->'''Mac''': What other job allows you to set your boss on fire? Going once, going twice...
-->'''Danny''': Sold, but if you go up in flames, I get your office?
* IgnoreTheFanservice: Mac does a good job of this when roller-derby player Polly rips off her blouse after he asks for the team members' uniforms in 'Jamalot,' much to her dismay...she's got a crush on him. He tells them all that Lindsay will collect their items, and just walks away.
* IHaveNoSon: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] near the end of 'Yahrzeit,' where the killer's Orthodox Jewish son disowns his father after it is revealed the father was a Hitler Youth member and only pretended to be a Holocaust survivor in order to not be caught for his crimes.
* IHaveThisFriend: After Lindsay gets pregnant; she uses this in a spectacularly transparent attempt to ask Stella if she needs to worry about any of the chemicals in the lab affecting the baby.
* IHaveYourWife: Well, serious girlfriend anyway. Christine's kidnappers make her call Mac and talk to him before they do in 'Seth and Apep.'
* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: The guy who kills someone with a gun loaded with blanks and the boy who accidentally shoots his friend after thinking he'd removed all the bullets but forgot the one in the chamber.
* ILied: In 'Point of No Return,' Stella promises George Kolovos that she won't send him to Cyprus (where he's a wanted criminal) in a shipping container if he gives up his partner. He does...and she locks him in the container anyway.
-->'''Kolovos''': Wait, we had a deal!
-->'''Stella''': I lied.
* ILikeThoseOdds: In the opening of 'Crime and Misdemeanor,' a sheet-wrapped victim is delivered to a laundry facility that handles hotel linens. Flack snarkily comments that there are only about 70,000 hotel rooms in NYC. Mac's response? "I'll take those odds." Ten minutes later, the team has it narrowed down to the right hotel. Cut to them entering the correct room.
* ImaginedInnuendo: In 'Rush to Judgment,' Flack discovers that a murder victim had been secretly taking dance lessons to surprise his wife for their anniversary. When Flack tells Mac what he was doing but before he can explain, Mac asks:
-->"Private salsa lessons? Is *that* what they call it these days?"
* TheImmodestOrgasm: In the B-plot of 'Time's Up,' the VictimOfTheWeek suffers a fatal immodest orgasm while seated in a deli.
* ImmoralJournalist: Two.
** Robert Murdock appears in a few season 5 episodes. He runs a sleazy newspaper and revels in printing stories that make the NYPD look bad, particularly when the "blue flu" hits. Although, he subverts it himself later when he prints a tribute to a fallen officer.
** In season 8's 'Clean Sweep,' Mac is approached by a reporter named Jennifer Walsh who openly flirts with him, trying to get him to corroborate/comment on things she's speculating about...even going so far as to ask if he would compromise ''his own values'' in order to close a case.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Every so often the [=CSIs=] will be faced with someone who was killed by something pointed.
** A woman is stabbed to death with an icicle ('Love Run Cold').
** A man is stabbed to death with a swordfish ('Dancing with the Fishes').
** Another victim falls off a balcony and lands on a spike in an awning ('Sangre por Sangre').
** Yet another is pushed over a railing and lands on a spiked piece of artwork in a hotel lobby ('Open and Shut').
** Another time, Mac & Flack work a case with a dead murder suspect who had scaled a high fence, only to land on a long piece of rebar sticking out of some concrete on the other side ('Forbidden Fruit').
** In season 9's 'The Real [=McCoy=]', the victim is impaled by a Christmas tree stand at a tree lot.
* ImpersonatingAnOfficer: Shane Casey steals an NYPD uniform and uses it for several episodes.
* ImplausibleSynchrony: The 333 stalker will time certain events to happen exactly at 3:33 a.m., and he can rest assured that Mac ''will'' be freaked out when he looks at his watch.
* ImpossiblePickleJar: Exploited by Flack's grandmother. One of the ploys she uses to get him and his sister to come over for dinner is claiming she can't open her jar of pickles.
* ImprovisedWeapon / ImprovisedWeaponUser:
** Adam defends himself with a fluorescent bulb he grabs from a pile of trash in the parking garage in 'Unfriendly Chat.' Cue ribbing from Danny and Sheldon, who call him [[Franchise/StarWars Obi-Wannabe-Kanobi]] for starters.
** Murderers throughout the series intentionally use such things as a cricket bat, a Statue of Liberty key chain, a baseball, etc., on their victims.
** Other victims are unintentionally killed with a knitting needle, a pool cue, a swordfish, and a guitar...to name a few.
* ImprovisedUmbrella: In 'Rain,' while the team are staking out a newspaper box where kidnappers have instructed their ransom to be placed, a woman hurries up to the box, buys a paper and uses it to shield her head from the rain.
* IncrediblyObviousTail: Subverted in that there isn't anything obvious from the viewer's perspective, but in 'Commuted Sentences,' Flack and Angell are tailing a suspect, and not only does she catch on, she gets into their car and gives them her itinerary for the day (and her cell phone number in case they lose her).
* InformedSelfDiagnosis: Sheldon, diagnosing his own fracture after his and Danny's scuba diving mishap in 'The Deep.'
* InitialismTitle: Two initialisms for the price of one!
* InSeriesNickname:
** Danny starts out calling Lindsay "Montana" as an InsultOfEndearment, but drops it after they're married. He picks it up again briefly while she's hospitalized in season 9's 'Unspoken.'
** Once Sheldon joins the team in the field, Danny calls him "Doc" all the time; some of the others occasionally do too.
** Danny, Adam and Sheldon all call Mac "Boss" quite a bit.
* TheInspectorIsComing: The episode with Quinn. The lab stays accredited, but Lindsay is warned not to let Danny distract her into leaving evidence unattended again. And Quinn flirts with Mac a bit, reminding him about the time before Claire died that they kissed at a party. Mac can't deny liking it, but is firm about loving Claire and that he wouldn't have done anything further. Quinn seemed to hope she might strike up something with him again, but [[StrictlyProfessionalRelationship he isn't interested.]]
* InstrumentOfMurder: In 'Stuck on You,' a [[spoiler: guitar handle]] is used to crush a victim's larynx so badly that he can't breathe.
* InsuranceFraud: The motive of the main storylines in 'Grand Murder at Central Station,' 'Boo,' and 'Second Chances.'
* IntercontinuityCrossover: The season 3 episode, 'Cold Reveal,' crosses over with ''Series/ColdCase.''
* InternalAffairs: Mac, Stella, Flack, Danny and Sheldon all have run-ins with IA at various points.
* InternalHomage: The title of the 100th episode, "My Name Is Mac Taylor," is spoken by several characters with that moniker, since it involves a killer looking for someone who goes by that name. Curiously enough, Det. Taylor does NOT utter the line, although [[{{Catchphrase}}he introduces himself that way quite often]] over the series' 9-year run.
* InterserviceRivalry:
** NYPD vs FDNY in 'Reignited.' It involves the two sides playing each other in a hockey game. A fight naturally breaks out.
--->'''Mac''' [snarking to his FDNY buddy, Curtis]: I guess there's no truth to the rumor that the departments hate each other.
** Regular detectives vs the lab team. Flack and Danny both admit at times that the pure detectives see the lab guys as nerds.
* InTheBack: The mounted policeman in season 1's 'Officer Blue,' Danny in the season 5 finale, and Mac in the season 8 finale.
* IronicName: During 'Indelible,' Flack and Jo interview two street thugs nicknamed "Black Mike" and "White Mike". Black Mike, who is black, is really named Mike White; and White Mike, who is white, is really named Mike Black.
* IsItAlwaysLikeThis: Jo's reaction at the end of her first day on the job after finding a dead pregnant woman in the Lab and dealing with a premeditated murder, a crime of passion, and a high-end thief...all of which are connected.
--> '''Jo:''' Are all your cases like this?
--> '''Mac:''' [''nodding''] Pretty much.
* IsNothingSacred: In "Can You Hear Me Now?", the team learn that a couple were having sex on the Statue of Liberty's torch.
-->'''Mac:''' [''disgusted''] Is nothing sacred anymore?
* ISOStandardUrbanGroceries:
** Played straight in 'Nothing for Something.' Mac's old partner, William Hunt, goes after a perp they put away who's out of jail and up to his old tricks. He carries your standard-issue brown bag of groceries complete with baguette into an alley he knows the guy will be walking through. When the guy gets there, the bread, an orange, some paper towels, etc are scattered around and Hunt is nowhere to be seen. Hunt jumps out, beats the guy to a pulp, calmly gathers his groceries and walks away.
** Downplayed in 'Slainte.' After having cancelled ''another'' dinner date, Mac tries to make things up to Christine by showing up at her restaurant with what appears to be a plain, medium-sized gift bag. It has handles and nothing is seen sticking out of it. She offers to fix him something to eat; he says he thought they'd fix something together. A minute later, they're in the kitchen and he's slicing up a small baguette which he uses to make bruschetta for her.
** Slightly more downplayed in 'Today Is Life.' Mac is waiting for Christine on her steps and sees her coming up the sidewalk with a brown bag of groceries. The only identifiable object peeking out is a roll of paper towels. He takes the bag from her and sets it on the steps. It is neither dropped, spilled nor emptied on screen; it's just used to show where she's been.
* ItIsNotYourTime:
** Mac, with Claire telling him so during his "limbo" period in 'Near Death.' Near the end he's packing up his office, apparently ready to head to the afterlife with her, but she tells him he can't come because he's "not invited."
** Stella tells Danny this after he recovers from his paralysis. He's wondering why he survived being shot and she says, "It wasn't your time." He replies, "Yeah, let's go with that."
* ItsAlwaysSunnyInMiami: Played straight for the most part, but there actually are a few non-plot driven rainy scenes. Lindsay goes for a rain-walk during the Danny/Ricki arc, and it's raining as Mac and Flack arrest a suspect in the Valentine's Day episode, "Blood Actually." Also averted in season 1's "Rain" where evidence gets washed away, and being set farther north than it's sister shows, snow plays a factor in three or four episodes as well.
* ItsPersonal:
** Mac was in the Marine Corps; once a Marine, always a Marine, and he takes that very seriously. He refers to himself as a Marine (in the present tense) in several episodes, including 'Officer Blue' and 'Tanglewood.'
** Also the reason why [[spoiler: Flack kills Angell's murderer in the Season 5 finale]].
** The reason why every member of the team is out for justice first after Aiden is killed...
** ...and then in the season 8 finale. A perp shoots Mac, and when you do that, they all come after you. Luckily, they don't kill her over it.
** If you kidnap Mac's girlfriend, it gets personal real fast ('Seth and Apep').
* IWantYouToMeetAnOldFriendOfMine: Creator/MykeltiWilliamson, who plays Chief Sinclair, famously portrayed Bubba Blue in ''Film/ForrestGump'' alongside Creator/GarySinise.
* JackBauerInterrogationTechnique:
** Averted in 'Heroes.' Danny wants to do this to a suspect, but Mac tells him they have to do things right for Aiden's sake.
** In 'Life Sentence,' Mac's first partner, William "Wild Bill" Hunt, returns and beats the snot out of a recently released perp the two of them had put away 17 years earlier, who's out to get both of them.
* JanitorImpersonationInfiltration: In 'DOA for a Day,' Flack dresses as a Parks Department employee sweeping up trash as part of the group's attempt to nab Suspect X.
* JaywalkingWillRuinYourLife: The boy who had been sentenced by a HangingJudge to years in a juvenile detention center for stealing a pack of gum in 'Crossroads.'
* JoggersFindDeath: While approaching a victim in Central Park, Mac asks Flack who found her. Flack gestures over his shoulder and says, "Richard Simmons over here." The camera pans to show a middle-aged man in a track suit holding a poodle on a leash and giving his statement to a uniformed officer.
* JurisdictionFriction:
** Several times, including with the NJ police (in 'Tanglewood'), the FBI on occasion, UN officials (in 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches'), and Barcelona law enforcement (in 'Holding Cell').
** Downplayed with the Department of Homeland Security in 'Charge of This Post.' The officer in charge agrees to let Mac lead while insisting that her team be involved.
** Mac has a bit of personal friction with Quinn from the NJ Crime Lab when she wants to subpoena Reed for his blog info's source during the Cabbie Killer arc in season 4.
** Averted with Russ, Jo's FBI agent ex-husband, who helps them out in season 7.
** And with Cade, her FBI boyfriend, with whom they cooperate, in '2,918 Miles.'
** Also averted by the FBI agents in 'Brooklyn 'Til I Die' who show up to help with the kidnapping even though the case hasn't crossed state lines. Mac welcomes the assistance.
* JusticeByOtherLegalMeans: In 'Pot of Gold,' when the episode's main perp denies having any connection to the murders, Mac calls in a Treasury Agent who informs said perp of the laundry list of charges against him.
* JustifiedCriminal:
** Two middle school aged boys trying to pay the rent, who are themselves robbed by a much more conventional robber.
** [[spoiler: Carver's nephew, who, as a young boy, had killed his abusive mother when she started beating his younger siblings.]]
** [[spoiler: The guy who steals a clown's costume to kill the drug producer who sent a hitman after him. He even gives the clown his day's pay.]]
* JustOneLittleMistake: The only mistake the second killer in 'Criminal Justice' makes is [[spoiler: planting the evidence after Hawkes had sprayed for footprints at the scene. The distribution of chemicals on the evidence alerts the team to the fact the evidence was planted afterwards]]. Otherwise he nearly commits ThePerfectCrime. Which makes sense, because [[spoiler: he's a DA, and has fifteen years of experience with criminals and the crime lab to know how they work]]. Also a case of MurderTheHypotenuse because the [[spoiler:planted evidence was a lighter that belonged to a guy whom his wife was banging; he kills that guy and grinds down his body to invoke NeverFoundTheBody]].
* KatanasAreJustBetter: 'Corporate Warriors' features one of these iconic swords. Mac is shown brandishing it as he tests it to see if it is indeed the murder weapon he's looking for.
* KeepingTheEnemyClose: Mac alludes to this trope once when speaking to Lindsay:
-->'''Mac''': You know what they say: keep your friends close and your enemies closer - and if that doesn't work, kill 'em.
* KickingAssInAllHerFinery:
** In 'Risk,' Mac and Lindsay are called to a crime scene that Danny is already working. Mac shows up in a tux, having been at a benefit for the mayor. Lindsay arrives wearing a formal dress since she was at the opera. Danny comments about being underdressed.
** In 'The Party's Over,' Stella is in a revealing Little Black Dress when the deputy mayor is found dead at the fundraiser she's attending with a date. She starts processing the scene immediately & doesn't change until Mac brings her something else to wear from the Lab.
* KillAndReplace: To fake her own death in 'DOA for a Day,' Suspect X is revealed to have kidnapped a young woman, forced her to have multiple plastic surgeries to look exactly like herself, then held her hostage so long she got bed sores. When the time is right, she kills the young woman and leaves her body where it can be found, figuring law enforcement will believe it's her and drop their pursuit.
* KillerOutfit: This trope and an urban legend based on it are used in 'Til Death Do We Part.' The first victim is a bride on her wedding day. It turns out that she had bought her wedding gown used, and it was severely contaminated with formaldehyde. (The gown's original owner had been dressed in it for her funeral, but the gown was stolen so it could be resold.)
* KillItWithIce:
** One victim is stabbed to death with an icicle.
** Another has her heart frozen when she is impaled by the valve on a tank of liquid nitrogen.
* KindaBusyHere: It's bound to happen with cops. In fact, the series opens with Mac's phone ringing in church. Sometimes blends with InterruptedIntimacy.
** Mac's phone goes off once in the middle of watching an opera with Peyton, and once during sex.
** In 'Snow Day,' she finally gets reception again and calls him [[spoiler:[[CompromisingCall while he's trying to sneak up on the BigBad.]]]]
** Happens with Stella and Frankie in bed as well.
** Also with Flack and Angell.
** Happens in the final season with Mac & Christine enjoying a quiet moment on "their" bench in Central Park.
* KinkyRolePlaying:
** A woman who left her "boring" husband gets her new lover to fake-kidnap & fake-rape her for the excitement. Unbeknownst to them, her ex spies on them sees the "rape" happening, rushes in & kills the guy. The woman gets so turned on by his heroism, that she immediately has sex with him, too, then helps cover up the crime.
** One of the dog owners at the dog show in "Recycling" has a dog fetish. She likes for her and her partners to pretend to be dogs when they have sex, even to the point of having one of them bite her on the thigh during the act. She lets her real dog watch, too.
* KissOfDeath: The killer's M.O. in 'Personal Foul.'
* KnightInSourArmor: Just about everyone.
* KnowsAGuyWhoKnowsAGuy: In 'Sangre por Sangre,' Adam and Sheldon are discussing an illegal type of fish they keep finding in a bottles of booze, much like a worm in tequila. Adam says he can find out who's been buying them. Sheldon wants to know how he knows who to call seeing as the fish are illegal.
-->'''Adam:''' Well...I know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, [''Sheldon starts walking away''] who knows another guy...
* KungShui: After [[TrashTheSet the martial arts showdown]] in the bar in 'Corporate Warriors,' the owner bemoans the fact that she'd just refurbished the place and now it has to be done all over again.
* LabcoatOfScienceAndMedicine: Whenever the characters are analyzing evidence, they're wearing labcoats.
* LamePunReaction: Sheldon to Danny's after they discover that what a victim was actually transporting in his van was mozzarella, not cocaine as originally suspected:
-->'''Danny:''' If you'da told me this morning that we'd be investigating a cheese case, you know what I'da said?\\
'''Sheldon:''' Please don't.\\
'''Danny:''' No whey!\\
'''Sheldon:''' [groans] I thought I said "don't.
* LampshadedDoubleEntendre:
** Det. Maka states in 'Til Death Do We Part' when a bride falls dead at the altar:
--->Gives a whole new meaning to the term "cold feet."
** Flack repeats her comment word-for-word when referring to the dead groom in 'One Wedding and a Funeral.'
* LampshadeHanging:
** Sid knows he has a tendency to find weird things while doing autopsies. For example, in 'Nine Thirteen,' the "Curse of Building 913" is referred to when the team is called to the scene of yet another suspicious death; 37 people have died in various ways there since the original owner committed suicide by jumping from the building decades before. Then Don realizes something:
--->'''Flack:''' Hey, Sid, how come they only ever call you out for the really strange ones?
--->'''Sid:''' They...didn't call me. But, uh, this was one I was not going to miss.
** Late in season 9, some of the team lampshade the QuipToBlack puns so prevalent in the franchise. Sheldon has placed some evidence in the super glue chamber:
--->'''Jo:''' I think your cake is done.
--->'''Sheldon:''' Then let's hope it'll be the icing on the case.
---> Danny and Lindsay moan, make faces, say "Ew," and such.
--->'''Jo:''' [off camera, as Sheldon grins] I dunno, I kinda liked that one.
* {{LARP}}: The murder victim and her kidnapped boyfriend in 'Brooklyn 'Til I Die' are participating in a live-action role playing game involving spies. Their code names are Boris and Natasha.
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: Really laser-guided with Mac...he can't remember a lot of random words for things after being shot. [[TruthInTelevision It's a real condition called speech aphasia.]]
* LaserHallway:
** Mac creates a laser barrier in front of the perp he captures in 'Snow Day.'
** The 333 Stalker creates one around him in 'The Thing about Heroes.'
* LastMinuteBabyNaming: After Lucy is born, Danny and Lindsay don't agree on one right way, leaving fans until the next season to find out whether it was Lydia or Lucy.
* LatexPerfection: In 'Civilized Lies,' three perps use identical masks...of the face of an ex-con one of them had previously shared a cell with, sending the investigators after the wrong guy for a while.
* LawmanGoneBad: Mac discovers that [[spoiler: his first partner, Bill Hunt]] became one of these. Having stolen a large amount of money from a crime scene (he was nearing retirement and didn't think he was being paid enough) and [[spoiler: having murdered the girlfriend of the guy who has a vendetta against him and Mac. (The guy doesn't know, then doesn't care that Mac wasn't responsible.)]]
* LawOfInverseRecoil:
** Played straight in 'Stealing Home.' The shooter isn't used to firing a gun and suffers from "limp wrist."
** Averted in 'Stuck on You,' where Mac has Lindsay fire a crossbow to see what kind of effect it has on her since she's the same size as their suspect. She handles it very well and wants to keep firing it.
* LeftForDead: Mac, twice. "Joe the bank robber" thinks he's dead when he pushes an SUV with an unconcious Mac in the driver's seat into the Hudson, and the accomplice in 'Near Death' obviously thinks he's dead after being shot in the back during the pharmacy robbery, too.
* LegoGenetics: The goats that produce spider silk and the rat with a human ear on its back in 'What Schemes May Come'.
* LeParkour: Featured in 'Tri-Borough.' One of the three victims is discovered to be an avid participant of this sport. He also uses his skills to evade his girlfriend's father while sneaking in and out of her second-story bedroom.
* LetMeAtHim: Danny, when he sees Mac with the guy initially suspected of killing Aiden (although it was really a recurring serial rapist/killer and not even him). Mac warns Danny off, telling him they have to do it right.
* LetMeTellYouAStory:
** In several early episodes, Mac begins interrogations with the phrase, "Let me start this story for you." He then runs down all of the suspect's actions that the team has discovered. Danny does this at least once as well.
** In "The Lady in the Lake," Adam recounts the details of the case of a poor young woman who was taken to a party at Belvedere Castle in Central Park by her new boyfriend as "a princess story" to two little girls waiting for their mother at the precinct. He refers to the couple as a prince and princess.
* LetOffByTheDetective:
** Stella with her foster sister in the ''Series/ColdCase'' crossover. She goes to the woman's house and says she was there as a friend, but will be back as a detective the next day, knowing her friend will likely be gone.
** Several of the team in another ep involving a stalking victim who kills said stalker out of desperation.
** Mac with Chief Carver and Carver's nephew in 'Justified.' The nephew, who had killed his abusive mother as a young boy, feeling he had no choice, will have to stand trial for manslaughter but likely won't get prison time, and Carver won't be tried, just forced into early retirement and stripped of his pension. Not a complete let off, but still showing leniency.
* LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain: After the death of a colleague, [[spoiler: Stella and Adam]] have a one-night stand. Things being awkward at work later, they hastily agree that it should never, ever happen again.
* LetXBeTheUnknown / NamesToRunAwayFrom/NounX: The team refers to the suspect in the 'Down the Rabbit Hole' / 'DOA for a Day' arc as "Suspect X." The don't learn her real name until 10 episodes after she's introduced.
* LifeOrLimbDecision: A kidnap victim in 'Til Death Do We Part' resorts to severing his own hand in an effort to escape.
* LifeWillKillYou: Proof that it's not AlwaysMurder. For instance, the overweight guy who falls off a balcony when he loses his balance trying to reach for his hidden stash of candy while intoxicated.
* LighthousePoint: During "Vacation Getaway," the Messer family visits a lighthouse at the north end of Long Island and are confronted by serial killer Shane Casey when they reach the top.
* LinkedClueMethodology: Mac's 333 Stalker leaves a series of puzzles with clues that lead to more of the same until finally confronting Mac about a tragedy from 30 years earlier.
* LipstickAndLoadMontage: 'Cavallino Rampante' opens with a montage of a beautiful young woman getting ready for what appears to be a night at a club. She is actually a car thief getting ready to boost a Ferrari.
* ListOfTransgressions:
** See ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and JusticeByOtherLegalMeans above.
** Adam says of one suspect, "The penal code is his personal to-do list. Pick a section, he's violated it."
** Don says of Hector "Toasty" Mendez in 'Blood Out,' "This guy should get a gold medal in the felony Olympics. He's got 17 arrests so far this year, and two open drug charges to boot."
* LittleBlackDress:
** Stella, on several occasions. Fixing to go on a date at the end of 'What You See Is What You See' and attending the mayor's event in 'The Party's Over,' to name just two.
** The trio of thieves dressed as Holly Golightly in 'Not What It Looks Like.'
** Christine has at least four. She wears different ones to her parents' anniversary party in 'Flash Pop' and when she fixes dinner for Mac for the first time in 'Sláinte'; then chooses between two others for their Valentine's date in 'Blood Actually.'
* LivingStatue: 'Crime and Misdemeanor.' The guy in the misdemeanor case earns a living as one.
* LockedAwayInAMonastery: A variation where a kidnap victim is handcuffed to a wall in an abandoned monastery. Unfortunately, he gets desperate and gnaws off his hand in an attempt to escape, but dies of blood loss before making it out.
* LockedInAFreezer:
** A variation in 'Trapped' has Danny sealed in the victim's time-locked panic room with the corpse. Unlike most examples of this trope, his life isn't seriously in jeopardy; rather, it's the evidence he has to salvage in haste, using improvised materials, before decomposition sets in and ruins the clues.
** They do, however, find a dead body that had been stored in a freezer in "Zoo York" which, coincidentally, was earlier in the same season as 'Trapped.'
** Sheldon confines one of the perps who infiltrates the lab in 'Snow Day' to a drawer in the morgue.
* LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard:
** 'Trapped' has Danny and Stella investigating the death of a millionaire inside his mansion's panic room. Danny accidentally trips the room, locking himself inside without a forensics kit. While he's waiting to be rescued, he uses the items found in the room to finish processing the crime scene.
*** {{Lampshaded}} by Danny addressing Stella as "Miss [=MacGyver=]" as she's walking him through said processing.
** 'Snow Day' has Mac and Stella stuck fighting robbers who are trying to steal the Lab's confiscated drugs. Thank God Mac can build a bomb and ''laser trip wires'' from the stuff found in the lab.
* LodgedBladeRecycling: Played realistically in 'Epilogue.' A security guard is stabbed, pulls the knife out and uses it to stab his attacker. He then bleeds to death from the wound he had suffered which he might have survived if he had left the knife in.
* LoggingOntoTheFourthWall: The series has three examples, but all are now defunct.
** "aresanob.com" had a link to "see what Stella saw" that Frankie had posted.
** At the time, there was a site based off of the Edoc Laundry t-shirt line used in 'Hung Out to Dry.'
** "Lookingatchu" from 'Unfriendly Chat' was made real for a while.
* LookBothWays:
** Thought to have happened in the b-case of season 1's "The Dove Commission" where the body of a young boy is found under the front of a taxi, but it's later discovered that the boy died before the taxi hit him. Unfortunately, this isn't determined until after an angry mob beats the taxi driver to death.
** Played straight later that season in "The Closer" when a young woman running from her angry boyfriend while clad only in lingerie darts out from an alley and is hit by a delivery truck.
** Played with again in season 5's "Page Turner" after a young lady runs away from a riot that breaks out during a free Music/Maroon5 concert in Central Park. Looking back over her shoulder, she runs in front of a bus that was just pulling away from the curb. Turns out not to be what killed her...the bus wasn't moving fast enough yet.
** Played straight again late in season 6 during "Unusual Suspects." Flack is chasing a guy who's wanted for questioning in the shooting of a 14-yr old kid. The guy runs straight into the street without looking either way and is mowed down by an oncoming truck. Flack drags him out from underneath it, but he's already dead.
* LooseFloorboardHidingSpot: In 'Admissions,' the victim is a high school guidance counsellor. When Mac and Lindsay search his office, they find a loose floorboard in the closet. Mac removes it and discovers a box filled with money and a few laundromat tokens. Curious, Mac and Flack go to the laundromat and discover a heavily taped off machine. They insert the tokens, revealing the door to a hidden gambling den.
* LoudSleeperGag: Played for laughs. A group of thugs kidnap a hedge fund billionaire's son for ransom and take him back to one's apartment, which he shares with his mother. Right before the cops arrive, the mother is asleep in a recliner in front of a TV playing at high volume. She's snoring so loudly the gang in the next room can hear her over the TV and her son shouts, "Ma! Shut up!" She keeps on snoring, but instantly wakes up fully alert when the cops bust through the door.
* LoveConfession:
** Lindsay is the first; she tells Danny in season 4 out of frustration, after he sleeps with Rikki Sandoval. He eventually reciprocates and they later marry.
** Mac is the second; his telling Christine is a big step for the guy who grieved for so long. She responds by kissing him passionately.
* LovedByAll: One VictimOfTheWeek in the eighth season is a wealthy businessman who came from a poor background, and while many would expect the people of his old neighborhood to resent him, everyone (including [[spoiler:the man who turns out to be his killer]]) respects him for it. Of note is one young punk who picks up the victim's wallet after the killer discards it, and takes out some cash. After being informed whose money it was, he voluntarily offers it back to the cops, saying it doesn't feel right to take money belonging to someone he respected so much.
* LoveInformant: Mid-season 2, relative newcomer Lindsay asks Sid if he thinks Danny calls her "Montana" because she's a 49er's fan. He replies, "He calls you that because he has a crush on you."
* LukeYouAreMyFather / LongLostRelative: Slightly sideways example: Reed Garrett, the biological son of Mac's dead wife, whom she gave up for adoption, [[GeneHunting comes looking for her.]] [[SeekingTheMissingFindingTheDead She died on 9/11,]] but he and Mac establish a sort of tenuous (Mac's not a people person) father-son relationship when Mac opens up and shares some memories of her.
* LyingToThePerp: Detectives occasionally employ what Mac refers to as "The Rule" during interrogations, i.e. police are allowed to lie to suspects in order to obtain a confession.
** In 'Officer Blue,' Aiden resorts to this in a pizza shop that's a front for money laundering.
** There's also Stella's "ILied" moment with the Greek smuggler referred to above.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:M-P]]
* 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.'
* MadBomber: 'Charge of this Post.' The perp blows up a building to draw attention to his belief that [[spoiler: "WE'RE NOT READY!" for a terrorist attack.]]
* MadnessMantra:
** '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..."
* TheMainCharactersDoEverything: 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 OutrankingYourJob below. Applies to most of the cast as well.
* MajorInjuryUnderreaction: 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.
* MakingLoveInAllTheWrongPlaces:
** Danny & Lindsay on his pool table in 'Snow Day.'
** The nude bungee jumpers in 'People with Money.'
** The victim in 'Turbulence' who joins the MileHighClub (see below) shortly before his demise.
* MalevolentArchitecture: The booby-trapped penthouse in 'Death House.'
* MalevolentMaskedMen:
** The bank vault robbers in 'Rain.'
** The muggers in 'Civilized Lies.'
* MamaBear: Lindsay. Threaten Danny and/or Lucy at your peril.
* MamaDidntRaiseNoCriminal:
** 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.
* ManBitesMan:
** 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.
* ManekiNeko: Counterfeits are used as a vehicle for smuggling cocaine in 'Unwrapped.'
* ManOnFire:
** Luke Blade, during his magic trick, and the guy he kills replicating the trick. Followed by Mac & Danny recreating it in the lab, although it's just Mac's left arm, not his entire body.
** The victim in the cigarette costume in 'The Ride In.' The perp doesn't realize until it's too late that the costume is flammable.
* MarkedBullet: The rival gangs in 'Sangre por Sangre' carve their gangs' initials into their bullets as a way of taking credit for their kills.
* MarriedToTheJob:
** Mac, for most of the series. Re-connecting with [[spoiler: and eventually (presumably, given the proposal) marrying]] Christine pulls him out of it a bit.
** 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?
* MarryingTheMark: The fiance of the dead perp in 'Identity Crisis' is told he would likely have been her next victim.
* MatrixRainingCode: At least once, in 'The Thing About Heroes,' when the team is trying to analyze data on a broken [=MP3=] player.
* MeaningfulName: The last name of "Laughing Larry," the joke shop owner in 'Child's Play,' is Gelachter, which is German for "laughter."
* MedalOfDishonor: How Lindsay feels about hers at the beginning of season 7.
* MedicationTampering:
** 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.
* MenacingMask: "[[Recap/CSINYS06E16 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.[[/note]]
* MercyKill: 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.
* MidSuicideRegret: One of the teenagers in the SuicidePact 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."
* MileHighClub: 'Turbulence' has Mac discovering a dead body on a plane. [[spoiler: 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.]]
* MirandaRights. 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!
* MistakenForAliens: An urban paintball player is mistaken for an alien by an insane woman in 'Consequences'. He mauled by a BearTrap she set in the alley to catch aliens and spends most of the episode convalescing in her apartment's bathtub.
* MistakenForAnImposter: 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.
* MistakenForCheating:
** 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 UglyGuyHotWife couple in 'Blood Actually.' His wife, [[LoveMakesYouCrazy who is intensely in love with him]], thinks he is cheating so she [[spoiler: 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.
* MistakenForJunkie:
** 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.
* MistakenForPedophile:
** The episode 'Rush to Judgment' centers around the VictimOfTheWeek, a high school wrestling coach who supposedly sent an email containing child pornography to his students. It is revealed [[spoiler: that one of his students, upset that being moved up a weight class guarantees his defeat and the loss of a college scholarship, [[HollywoodHacking 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."
* MistakenForPregnant: 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.
* MistakenForSpies: 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.
* MolotovCocktail: How the perp blows up the food truck in 'Food for Thought.'
* MomentKiller: Quite a few throughout the series run. See also KindaBusyHere 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.
* MoneyToThrowAway:
** 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. [[spoiler: 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.
* MonochromePast:
** '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.
* MonsterClown: 'To What End?' episode 7.11: A guy dressed as a clown [[spoiler: shoots a baker in his own shop. He's just trying to protect himself from a hitman.]]
* MoodLighting:
** 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.
* MotiveMisidentification: 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.
* MouthCam: During the episode "Recycling", when the victim is tasting the liquid in her dog's water-filled baby bottle.
* MouthToMouthForceFeeding: The killer at the basketball game in 'Personal Foul' invokes the classic capsule/kiss technique to poison the victim.
* MultiPartEpisode: 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.
* MudWrestling: A variation with a flashback of the lube wrestler victim in the B-plot of 'Trapped.'
%%* MurderDotCom: Subverted.
* MurderByMistake: 'Here's to You, Mrs. Azreal' features a girl who gets smothered to death by [[spoiler: 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. Maybe they shouldn't have swapped driver's licenses before she got behind the wheel.
* MurderByRemoteControlVehicle: 'Blacklist' features a SerialKiller 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 [[GiveChaseWithAngryNatives sounds the car alarm to lure in crooks]].
* MurderTheHypotenuse: 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.
* MyCard: 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.
* MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning: 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.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
** The reaction of [[MurderByMistake the girl's killer]] aka [[spoiler: 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.
* MyLittlePanzer: The cardboard submarine that is behind a motive in 'Child's Play.'
* NakedInMink: 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.
* NastyParty: 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.
* NativeAmericanCasino: Figures into the plot of 'Communication Breakdown.'
* NavelDeepNeckline: 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.
* NaziGrandpa: One is discovered in 'Yahrzeit.'
* NearDeathExperience: 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).
* NeckSnap: COD of victims in 'Super Men,' 'The Cost of Living,' and 'Forbidden Fruit.'
* NeedleInAStackOfNeedles:
** 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."
* NeverFoundTheBody (or even DNA): Mac's wife Claire along with hundreds of real-life 9/11 victims [[spoiler: although the fall 2011 premiere reveals she escaped her tower before it fell...]] [[spoiler: It IS implied that she returned to help others.]]
* NeverGoingBackToPrison: [[spoiler: Clay Dobson]]'s motivation for suicide.
* NeverSayGoodbye: Jo makes Sid promise this at the end of 'Command+P.'
* NeverSuicide:
** 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 [[spoiler: -- 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.
* NewhartPhonecall: 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.)
* NewMediaAreEvil: 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.
* NewscasterCameo: Sportscaster Sports/DickEnberg appears as himself, interviewing a football player in 'Super Men.'
* NewYorkIsOnlyManhattan:
** 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!''
* NightSwimEqualsDeath: Too many episodes to list. It's usually signaled by finding the body floating in the swimming pool.
* NoahsStoryArc: 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.
* NoBadgeNoProblem: 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.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed:
** In 'Sleight Out of Hand,' illusionist Criss Angel plays a[[spoiler:n 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.
* NoDialogueEpisode: 'Unspoken.' The first half of the episode is backed by Green Day music and has no speech.
* NoFullNameGiven: Mac, whose full first name has never been said, at least onscreen. (Mac can be a name in itself, though Creator/GarySinise and an early script said otherwise [see ActorAllusion].)
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown:
** 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.
* NonfatalExplosions:
** 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.
* NoodleIncident: Christine asks Mac if he recalls a time during a vacation when they all got drunk. Mac doesn't want to talk about it.
* NoOneCouldSurviveThat: Used in the 'Vacation Getaway' / 'The 34th Floor' cliffhanger when Shane Casey falls off a lighthouse.
* NoPeriodsPeriod:
** 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.
* NoOSHACompliance:
** '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 [[LeftForDead leaves him for dead,]] he gets to his feet, stumbles around and easily falls over the way-too-short ledge, landing on a [[CarCushion parked taxicab.]]
* NotGoodWithRejection:
** The original wife of the threesome in 'Stealing Home' [[spoiler: 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.
* NotListeningToMeAreYou: 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.
* NotSoFakePropWeapon: 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.
* NotMyDriver: The MO of the "Cabbie Killer."
* NotQuiteDead:
** The body stolen from the coroner's van in 'What Schemes May Come' turns out to be a man in a hibernation experiment. [[spoiler: He is revived, but dies shortly thereafter anyway.]]
** At the end of 'Vacation Getaway' it is revealed that [[spoiler: Shane Casey survived his fall from the lighthouse.]]
* NoTrueScotsman: When they find a victim wearing an "It's the big APPLE" sweatshirt, they immediately assume it's a tourist. They're right.
* NotThatKindOfDoctor: Averted with Hawkes, who was an MD/surgeon before changing careers.
* NotTheFirstVictim:
** '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 ControlFreak 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.
* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: '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.
* NumberOfTheBeast: 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.
* NumberOfObjectsTitle: The episodes 'Three Generations Are Enough,' 'One Wedding and a Funeral,' and '2,918 Miles.'
* OffBridgeOntoVehicle: 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.
* OfficerOHara: 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.
* OfficeRomance:
** 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)
* OfficialCouple:
** Danny and Lindsay.
** 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.
* OfficialCoupleOrdealSyndrome:
** Danny & Lindsay
** Mac & Christine, to a lesser extent, but probably only because the show ended.
* OfficialKiss: Mac & Christine, when he finally admits he loves her.
* OffingTheOffspring: Late in season 6: [[spoiler: What really happened to the Never Suicide girl and her twin brother: stepdad killed bro and years later kills sis when she finds out.]]
* OffWithHisHead: 'Corporate Warriors,' has a beheaded victim, and the trope is actually voiced by Sid during an autopsy in 'Hung Out to Dry.'
* OhCrap:
** The look on the face of [[spoiler: the rapist whose case ruined Jo's FBI career]] in 'Means to an End' when he realizes [[spoiler: 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.
* OlderThanTheyLook: 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.
* OnceForYesTwiceForNo: Inverted by Mac, who asks the victim in 'Blink' to indicate twice for yes and once for no.
* OnceMoreWithClarity: 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 [[spoiler: the leader is aiming at - and kills - another gang member, who actually *is* aiming at Mac.]]
* OncePerEpisode:
** 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.
* OneHitKill: One of the victims in 'Super Men' is killed by a single martial arts blow to the back of the neck.
* OneOfOurOwn:
** 'All Access': Mac and Flack spend most of the episode proving [[spoiler: Stella shot Frankie in self-defense.]]
** 'Near Death': A mild example with Sid preparing to do [[spoiler:Mac's autopsy (in one of the limbo sequences) after he gets shot.]]
* OnlyAFleshWound: 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.
* OpenMouthInsertFoot: 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.
* OpeningTheFloodGates:
** 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 [[BoobyTrap booby-trapped]] [[MalevolentArchitecture 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.
* TheOphelia: 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 [[spoiler: 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.
* OppositesAttract: City boy Danny and country girl Lindsay.
* OrangeBlueContrast: During the crossover episodes with ''Series/CSIMiami'' the Miami scenes use their regular orange and yellow hues, while the ones in NY use bluish tones.
* OrganTheft: 'Live or Let Die' (a liver), 'Point of No Return' (various organs of drug addicts), and 'Hammer Down' (kidneys).
* OrgyOfEvidence: 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.
* OrSoIHeard:
** In 'It Happened to Me,' Adam gives a detailed explanation of what a "sploshing" party is before playing this trope hilariously straight. Adam [[RunningGag 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.
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: 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.
* OutrankingYourJob: 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'']
* OutSick: In 'Point of View,' Mac is stuck at home after cracking his ribs falling over a railing. It turns into a RearWindowWitness plot when he spends time watching the apartment building across the street.
* OutWithABang: In 'Enough,' one VictimOfTheWeek 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.
* OverdrawnAtTheBloodBank: 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.
* OverprotectiveDad: Danny says Lucy will never have a computer and won't date until she's 30. He won't even let one of the male lab rats talk to her the first day he and Lindsay bring her to work...Lindsay's first day back from maternity leave.
* OverturnedOuthouse: 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: [[spoiler:It's a falling block of airplane toilet water, aka "blue ice"]].
* PainfulBodyWaxing: '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.
* PaintballEpisode: '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.
* PanickyExpectantFather: 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!
* TheParalyzer: The perp in 'Blink' who attempts to force his victims into Locked-In Syndrome, finally succeeding on his third try.
* ParanoiaFuel: In-universe (and probably real life) example in the form of the [[StoryArc Cabbie Killer]]. The city's mass transit system is stretched to its limits due to everyone being afraid to take a taxi.
* ParanormalEpisode: Mac going into the AfterlifeAntechamber in 'Near Death' and seeing his late wife, Claire.
* ParentalSexualitySquick: 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.
* PassedOverPromotion: 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.
* PasswordSlotMachine: A pair of car thieves use a custom-made device to crack the security code on Ferraris in 'Cavallino Rampante.'
* PayEvilUntoEvil: 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.
* PercussivePickpocket:
** 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. [[spoiler: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.]]
* PermaStubble: Danny seems to have settled into this after losing the BeardOfSorrow.
* PhoneyCall: 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.
* PhotoOpWithTheDog:
** 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.
* PhraseCatcher: By the fifth season, every other character has picked up Danny's "Boom!" Catchphrase. Once Jo arrives in season 7, [[HeyThatsMyLine it doesn't take her long to pick it up as well.]]
* PhysicalTherapyPlot: [[spoiler: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, [[spoiler:Danny]] bucks up and tries harder.
* PicturePerfectPresentation: 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.
* PillowPregnancy: 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.
* PillowSilencer:
** 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. [[spoiler: The perp is caught after he over-thinks things and returns to the scene to steal the matching throw pillow from the couch.]]
* PinnedToTheWall: A couple making out outside a party in 'Stuck on You' are impaled and pinned to a wall by a crossbow arrow.
* PlayerElimination: 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 WaterGunsAndBalloons. 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.
* PlayingSick:
** 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.'
* PlotAllergy:
** 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.
* PlotPoweredStamina:
** 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.
* PoliceBrutality:
** 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.
* PoliceBrutalityGambit:
** 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 [[spoiler: kills himself to frame Mac for murder]] is a much more extreme example.
* PottyEmergency: One of these leads to the discovery of a victim in a public toilet in 'Playing with Matches.'
* PowerfulPick: One of the victims in 'What Schemes May Come' is killed by an ice pick to the neck.
* PrecrimeArrest: 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. [[spoiler: 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.
* PregnantHostage: One of the bank tellers in 'Hostage' is three months pregnant.
* PrisonEpisode: 'Redemptio.' Sheldon is there to witness an execution.
* PrisonRiot: 'Redemptio.' again. Shane Casey uses it as part of his escape plan.
* PrivateProfitPrison: The juvenile detention center in 'Crossroads' where a judge was getting kickback to send those he found guilty.
* ProfessionalMaidenName:
** 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 "[[AlliterativeName Jo Josephson]]...please."
* ProductPlacement:
** 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.'
* PromotionToOpeningTitles: Sid and Adam in season 5.
* ProudPapaPassesOutTheCigars: 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.
* PulledFromYourDayOff: 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=]'.
* PunBasedTitle: 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.'
* PutOffTheirFood: 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.
* PutOnABus:
** 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.
** [[spoiler: Stella]] in the season 7 opener.
* {{Pyromaniac}}: The season 9 premiere and second ep are centered on one of these.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Q-T]]
* QuipToBlack: Usually Mac or Stella (succeeded by Jo) but everyone has their turn.
* RPGEpisode: 'Down the Rabbit Hole;' and to a lesser extent, 'DOA for a Day,' the beginning of 'The Box,' and 'Brooklyn 'Til I Die.'
* RageAgainstTheLegalSystem: The young man who kills the HangingJudge above.
* RageAgainstTheReflection: 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.
* RagsToRiches: 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.
* RainOfBlood: 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.
* RankUp: 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.
* RansackedRoom:
** '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.
* RapeAndRevenge / SisterhoodEliminatesCreep: The woman who kills an attacker and then starts attacking other rapists because she felt they weren't getting enough jail time.
* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil / SerialRapist:
** 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 ArchEnemy when the rape victim comes to her, and turns him into a SmugSnake ArcVillain for the season; her pursuit of Pratt leads her to consider tampering with evidence, [[spoiler: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 [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice 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 [[spoiler: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 [[KilledOffscreen 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.'
* ReadingTeaLeaves: 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.
* RealAwardFictionalCharacter: 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 Creator/GarySinise received for his real-life assistance.
* RealLifeWritesThePlot: When Creator/AnnaBelknap 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.
* RealMenHateAffection: 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.
* RearWindowWitness:
** [[RearWindowHomage 'Point of View' pays homage]] to the classic Creator/AlfredHitchcock film ''Film/RearWindow''. 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.
* RearrangeTheSong: Unlike the other shows in the franchise, this one adopted a remixed version of the song (from the fourth season onward).
* RecruitedFromTheGutter: The VictimOfTheWeek 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. [[spoiler: It turns out that they'd been invoking this trope; rescuing a drug addict to join their band and [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident arranging a relapse/overdose death]] when their victim's life insurance had "matured" enough to give them a big payout.]]
* RedHerring: 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.
* ReducedToRatburgers: 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.
* RejectedMarriageProposal: Lindsay turns Danny down, reasoning that he's only asking out of a sense of duty because she's pregnant.
* ReliablyUnreliableGuns:
** 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.
* RememberTheNewGuy: 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.'
* RememberThatYouTrustMe: 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 TakingYouWithMe). Stella calls him on it in the season 6 premiere, when he's obsessing over [[spoiler: 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.
* RequiredSpinoffCrossover: Chronologically, "Manhattan Manhunt" (with Miami), "Hammer Down" (as the second part of the "Trilogy,") and "Seth & Apep" (with Las Vegas).
* RescueRomance: One episode has a woman who, it initially appears, gets back together with her ex after he saves her from being kidnapped and assaulted. [[spoiler: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.]]
* ResignationsNotAccepted: 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.
* ReversePolarity:
** 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.
* RhymingTitle: The episodes '[=DOA=] for a Day' and 'Shop Till You Drop.'
* RippedFromTheHeadlines:
** '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.
* RiseFromYourGrave: 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.
* RoaringRampageOfRescue / UnstoppableRage: Mac goes dangerously close to the edge when Christine is taken. At least two guys get shot, and Mac [[FalseRoulette appears to play Russian Roulette]] with one of them; though it's later revealed [[spoiler:that he only pretended to put the bullet in the revolver.]]
* RooftopConfrontation:
** 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.'
* RoomFullOfCrazy:
** 'Jamalot:' The second VictimOfTheWeek is murdered by someone with a compulsion to write on any surface [[spoiler: 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.
* * RuleOfThree: Mac's "333 Stalker" gets the nickname because he repeatedly calls him at 3:33 a.m.
* RunForTheBorder:
** 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.
* RustproofBlood: 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.
* SawAWomanInHalf: The first victim in 'Sleight Out of Hand,' is severed in two - with your garden-variety hand saw, no less - while still alive.
* ScaramangaSpecial: One perp makes a gun out of a steering wheel lock; another assembles one from various items including a souvenir ink pen.
* ScarsAreForever:
** 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, [[spoiler: 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.
* ScarySurpriseParty: 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.
* SceneryCensor:
** '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.
* ScreamingBirth: Classic example when Lindsay gives birth to Lucy. Don even asks Danny over the phone if that's her screaming in the background.
* SdrawkcabAlias: 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.
* SdrawkcabName: Used as an inside joke in 'The Triangle.' A minor character-of-the-week who provides a clue is named Yert Yawallac. Creator/TreyCallaway wrote the episode and served as supervising producer.
* SecondEpisodeIntroduction: Flack. His character wasn't conceived until after the pilot on ''Series/CSIMiami'' and made his first appearance in 'Blink,' the first actual NY episode.
* SecretlyDying: 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.
* SecretlyWealthy: Sid, after selling his pillow patent for $27 Million. He told Jo but asked her to keep it to herself. See also WealthyPhilanthropist below.
* SecretRelationship: 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."
* SecretSnackStash: A victim literally falls prey to his own supply of chocolate, [[spoiler: hidden in the mouth of a gargoyle above his balcony]] in 'The Fall.'
* SeductionProofMarriage: 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.
* SeeingThroughAnothersEyes: 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.
* SeinfeldianConversation: 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.
* SelfDefenseless:
** 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.
* SelfImmolation: 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.
* SelfMadeOrphan: Attempted by the villain in 'Damned If You Do,' but subverted by [[spoiler: a case of mistaken identity. Turns out he broke into the wrong house and thus attacked the wrong couple.]]
* SemperFi: Mac often mentions his time in the Marines. And the episode 'Heroes' incorporates the annual Fleet Week celebration in NYC.
* [[SequelEpisode 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.
* SerialKiller: 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.
* SerialKillingsSpecificTarget: 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.
* SeriesContinuityError:
** 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.
** [[ConverseWithTheUnconscious 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 [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome 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.
* SeriesFauxnale: 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.
* SeriousWorkComedicScene: 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.
* SexEqualsDeath: It is blissful, unwed and not in the missionary position. Of course [[spoiler: Angell was going to die]].
* SexForSolace:
** 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.
* SexualExtortion: 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.
* SexyCoatFlashing: 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.
* SexyDiscretionShot: 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.
* SexyShirtSwitch:
** Not Stella or Lindsay, but the mother of Ruben Sandoval, with Danny.
** Also Angell with Flack's.
* ShadyRealEstateAgent: The burned victim in 'Death House' is guilty of cheating his clients.
* ShapedLikeItself: 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.'"
* SherlockCanRead: 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.
* ShirtlessScene:
** 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.'
* ShoddyKnockoffProduct: 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.
* ShootHimHeHasAWallet:
** One of the kidnappers in the season 7 finale, 'Exit Strategy' is shot while reaching for [[spoiler:his car keys]]. The SWAT team thinks he's going for a gun.
** The innocent victim in the series finale. He is [[spoiler: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.
* ShoppingCartAntics: In 'Obsession,' one of the murders centers around a race run using shopping carts and where it is customary to sabotage the other teams.
* ShoppingCartOfHomelessness: '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.
* ShotgunWedding: 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.
* ShoutOut:
** An episode involving a "time machine" has the TARDIS materialization sound effect and a ''Series/DoctorWho'' 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 ''Film/BackToTheFuture''. 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 ''Film/JamesBond'' franchise, which actually is in the episode's plot with a pair [[spoiler:(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 [[Film/ShaunOfTheDead cricket bat to the head.]]
** Several to ''Film/TheMatrix'' and ''Series/{{Oz}}'' in an episode that features Harold Perrineau as an inmate [[spoiler: 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 [[TheAtoner helps Sheldon escape]] when Edward Furlong's character sets off a prison riot. (He even gets to say a variation of [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} "Come with me if you want to live!"]]) while the rest of the Five Man Band uses computerized blueprints on a [[TechnologyPorn touchscreen table]] to aid Sheldon.
** ''Possibly'' the overly-serious head of, essentially, [[Literature/{{Discworld}} the guild of New York clowns.]]
*** That episode, which kicks off with a murder at a bakery, includes a variation of the line [[Film/TheGodfather "Take the guns, leave the cannoli."]]
** 'Civilized Lies': This is either a shout-out or a funny coincidence: [[spoiler: A hood nicknamed "Mookie" winds up dying under the [[Webcomic/DominicDeegan Deegan]] expressway]]. The PunnyName title [[spoiler: a la "Fated Fatal" or "A Nimmel House"]] and [[spoiler: 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 ''Film/LoveActually'' and ''Film/ValentinesDay,'' but unlike the films there's no connection between the characters (unless Sid autopsying the three victims counts).
** Stella is apparently named for [[Film/AStreetcarNamedDesire Stella Kowalski]].
** 'Super Men' has a guy in a superhero costume, and as many ''{{Franchise/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 Music/GreenDay 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 ''Film/DieHard.'' 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 ''[[Series/Macgyver1985 [=Macgyver=]]]''," but also tells her he thinks he saw one of the old-school techniques she guides him through on an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones''.
** '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 [[Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz (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 [[Film/TheWizardOfOz ("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 [[Literature/PeterPan "Wendy"]] written on her chest, and she gets killed with a hook prop. Sid actually reads the book in the morgue.
* ShowerOfAngst: 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.
* ShownTheirWork:
** 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."
* SiblingYinYang: The Carver siblings: The brother became Chief of Detectives, while the sister [[spoiler: 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.]]
* SickbedSlaying:
** 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.
* SideBet:
** 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.
* SignificantNameOverlap:
** 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 MistakenIdentity leads to two murders all because the first victim runs into the wrong guy named Andy.
* SignificantNameShift: 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 InsultOfEndearment, 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.
* SilentTreatment: 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.
* SingleEpisodeHandicap: 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.
* SinisterShiv: In 'Nine Thirteen,' the BodyOfTheWeek 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.
* SinisterSubway:
** '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. [[spoiler: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.]]
* SlippingAMickey:
** 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, [[spoiler: but he has been framed]].
* SmartPeopleKnowLatin: 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.
* SmellyFeetGag: 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.
* SnowMeansLove: In 'Happily Never After,' a couple arrive in a "winter wonderland" and start kissing. Then an ice castle collapses and they find a corpse.
* SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome: Mild case with Lucy Messer. There is a 6 month skip in the last ep of season 8, but WordOfGod 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.
* TheSociopath: The manipulative 16 year old girl in 'A Daze of Wine and Roaches.'
* SoftWater: The only way [[spoiler: Shane Casey could've survived [[DisneyVillianDeath his fall from the lighthouse]]]] at the end of 'Vacation Getaway.'
* SolarPoweredMagnifyingGlass: 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.
* SommelierSpeak: Happens in an episode involving counterfeit wine -- mostly played for laughs, although the actual experts get some respect.
* SpannerInTheWorks: 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. [[ContrivedCoincidence 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.
* SpeakNowOrForeverHoldYourPeace: The point at which Mac interrupts the second wedding in 'Til Death Do We Part.'
* SpikedWheels: The team run into such a car (using lasers to evade the police), and Film/JamesBond is explicitly referenced, in 'You Only Die Once.'
* SpikesOfVillainy: 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.
* SpitefulSpit: 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.
* SpreeKiller:
** Henry Darius in the two-part crossover with ''Series/CSIMiami'' (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.
* SquirtingFlowerGag: 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.
* StabTheScorpion: '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.
* StageMagician: One is played by Criss Angel in 'Sleight Out of Hand.'
* StalkerWithACrush: 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."
* StalkerWithoutACrush:
** 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.
* StartingANewLife: 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.
* StayInTheKitchen: 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.
* StealingFromTheTill: One of the employees at the department store in 'Shop Till You Drop' swipes small amount of cash from every register she can.
* StepfordSmiler: Detective Flack after [[spoiler: Angell's death]].
* StockAnimalDiet: 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).
* StockFootage:
** 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 "[[Recap/CSINYS03E24 Snow Day]]" is re-used in at least two later episodes.
* TheStoic: 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!"
* StoodUp: Lindsay does this to Danny early on, while she's privately dealing with the trauma from her past.
* StorefrontTelevisionDisplay: 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.
* StoryArc: Shane Casey's story ran from early in season 3 thru the season 7 premiere, probably the longest arc in the entire franchise.
* StrangeCopInAStrangeLand: Mac in Chicago. The CPD does not like him waving his badge to get into a vacant floor of the Tribune building.
* StrayingBaby: Lucy wanders off from Lindsay in a crowd during 'Unspoken.'
* StuffBlowingUp: 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.
* StuffedInTheFridge: [[spoiler: Aiden]] The team are all stunned when they realize who the victim is.
* SubcultureOfTheWeek: Vampirism, Gaming, Life-Size Dolls, Circus Life, Cuddle Parties, Food Sploshing...the list goes on.
* SuddenNameChange: Jessica Angell was called Jennifer in one episode.
* SuicidePact: The teenage couple in 'Blood, Sweat and Tears' and a group of friends in 'What Schemes May Come.'
* SundialWaypoint: 'Manhattanhenge.' Sheldon figures out where the sunlight will hit at a certain time, which leads the team to the killer's location.
* SuperIntelligence: 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.
* SuspectIsHatless: 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.
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Times two. Jessica Angell is this for Aiden Burn, after the former was PutOnABus. After Angell is KilledOffForReal, 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.
* SwordSparks: The [=LARPers=]' makeshift swords throw off sparks during their battle in the junkyard in the opening of 'The Box.'
* SwordfishSabre: 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.
* TakeMeOutAtTheBallGame: 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.
* TakenOffTheCase:
** 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 TurnInYourBadge 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.
* TakingTheBullet:
** 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.
* TakingTheHeat:
** 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. [[spoiler: 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.
* TakingYouWithMe: 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.
* TamperingWithFoodAndDrink:
** 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.
* TastesLikeChicken: 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.
* TattooAsCharacterType:
** 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.
* [[TattooedCrook Tattooed Crooks]]: The "mobbed-up" Tanglewood Boys don't take it very well when a poser gets one of their membership tats.
* TechnoBabble:
** 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 BuffySpeak when he refers to the needle as "the pen thingy."
* TheTaxi: 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.
* TeamDad: 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.
* TellMeAboutMyFather: Gender flipped twice.
** [[SeekingTheMissingFindingTheDead Reed comes looking for Claire]] and asks Mac about her.
** Ellie goes looking for her birth mother and asks Jo about her as well.
* TenMinuteRetirement:
** 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.
* ThanatosGambit: [[spoiler: Aiden]] manages to make [[spoiler: her]] murder into one of these by leaving a clue [[spoiler: she]] knows Mac will recognize as the same type from a case they worked together years before.
* ThatCameOutWrong: 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.
* ThatOneCase:
** DJ Pratt, who is finally caught due to his having killed [[spoiler: 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.
* ThatsAnOrder: 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.
* ThemeSerialKiller: The t-shirt killer uses Greek mythology and numerology in his clues.
* ThemeTunelessEpisode: 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.
* ThereWillBeToiletPaper: 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.
* TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse: The perp in 'Party Down' is described as a male with "dark hair, light skin and a bit of a stutter."
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodSandwich: 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.
* ThisBearWasFramed: The tiger in 'Zoo York' didn't kill the victim; he was already dead before being eaten.
* ThisIsThePartWhere: (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.
* ThoroughlyMistakenIdentity: 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.
* ThoseWackyNazis: 'Yahrzeit' has three flavors of Nazis - an original, a skinhead street punk, and a businessman who keeps his affiliation secret.
* ThreeShorts: 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).
* ThroughHisStomach:
** 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.
* ThrowAwayGuns: 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.
* TimeDelayedDeath: 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 [[spoiler: swallowing a deadly object that was slipped into his food.]]
* TimeShiftedActor:
** 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.
* TimeSkip: 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.)
* TinFoilHat: 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.
* TisOnlyABulletInTheBrain: The female victim with a severe headache in 'Heart of Glass' turns out to have been shot while sleeping.
* TitleDrop: 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 VictimOfTheWeek 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.
* ToAbsentFriends: The team toast Aiden near the end of season 2, and Angell in the season 5 finale.
* TookALevelInBadass: 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.'
* TongueTrauma:
** 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.
* ToplessnessFromTheBack:
** Camille, at the end of her SexyCoatFlashing scene.
** Gender-flipped with Mac exiting the shower at the beginning of 'Reignited,' clearly showing [[InTheBack his bullet wound]] from 'Near Death.'
* TorsoWithAView: Played realistically with Flack's gruesome abdominal injuries in 'Charge of This Post.'
* TragicKeepsake: 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.
* TransTribulations: The mid-transition victim in 'The Lying Game' had faced this and gets killed for coming on to a homophobic man.
* TrapMaster: 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.
* TrappedInASinkingCar:
** 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".
* TrashTheSet: "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.
* TraumaInducedAmnesia: With Mac after being shot, a really selective LaserGuidedAmnesia thing. His TruthInTelevision condition is called speech aphasia and causes him to forget the names of everyday objects.
* TrialRunCrime:
** 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.
* TrophyRoom: Two, both containing Holocost memorablia and both belonging to Neo-Nazis in 'Yarhzeit.'
* {{Tuckerization}}: Throughout the series, names of people close to Creator/GarySinise 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 [[Film/ForrestGump Lt. Dan.]]
** His youngest daughter's name, Ella, is used several times during the run, including as that of his StalkerWithACrush 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 Theatre/TrueWest, is used in episodes 3.18 and 4.16, "Sleight Out of Hand' and 'Right Next Door' (which is also a [[TheDanza Danza]] as it's the first name of the young actor who plays the character in question, Stella's neighbor [[spoiler: who accidentally sets her apartment on fire.]])
** "Redman," the last name of his character in the 1994 mini-series of Stephen King's Series/TheStand, is the name of the family in episode 5.17, 'Green Piece.'
** "Milton," the last name of his character in Literature/OfMiceAndMen, 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'').
* TurnInYourBadge:
** 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.'
* TwoFaced: 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 six had one side of his face disfigured by a shotgun blast.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:U-Z]]
* UglyGuyHotWife:
** 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 [[spoiler: 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.
* UnbrokenVigil: 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.
* UncattyResemblance: 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."
* UnintentionallyNotoriousCrime: 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.
* UnnaturallyBlueLighting: First season, even worse than usual.
* UnprocessedResignation: When Mac returns to the Lab in 'Keep It Real,' he tells the team that Sinclair pulled his retirement papers upon his request.
* TheUnreveal: 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.
* UnsettlingGenderReveal: The first victim in 'The Lying Game' is revealed to be a mid-transition transgender woman who is killed due to [[spoiler: a violent reaction by someone she was hitting on.]]
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: 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 [[spoiler: 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.]]
* UrbanLegends: 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.
* VacationEpisode: 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.
* ValentinesDayEpisodes: 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.
* VaporTrail: 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.
* VaryingCompetencyAlibi:
** In "[[Recap/CSINYS04E15 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 "[[Recap/CSINYS09E01 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."
* VehicleRoofBodyDisposal:
** 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.
* VehicleVanish: 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.
* VehicularSabotage: 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.
* VerbalTic:
** 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. [[spoiler: The bomber in 'Charge of This Post' said, "They're gonna need all the help they can get."]]
* VerySpecialEpisode:
** 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.
* VigilanteExecution: Several, including:
** In season 4's 'Admissions, [[spoiler: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 [[spoiler:Flack shot Angell's killer in cold blood]] in the season 5 finale. This is later verified during [[spoiler: Mac's limbo period in the season 8 finale.]]
** It's the motivation for the murders in season 7's 'Vigilante.'
* VigilanteInjustice: In "Taxi", three taxi drivers kill another taxi driver, believing him to be the elusive [[DerangedTaxiDriver 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.
* VillainByProxyFallacy: The entire motivation for the Compass Killer.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: The serial rapist in one episode is a respected owner of nightclubs not only in NYC but also in Brazil.
* ViolentlyProtectiveGirlfriend: Okay, wife, but still. Lindsay, given her shooting of [[spoiler: Shane Casey]] and her altercation with [[spoiler: the rookie cop who caused Danny's job to be threatened.]]
* ViolinScam: The M.O. of the perp/victim in 'Identity Crisis.'
* VoiceoverLetter: 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).
* VomitDiscretionShot:
** 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.'
* VorpalPillow: In 'Risk,' a victim is smothered with a pillow before the death is staged as a suicide-by-hanging.
* WackyCravings: 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.
* WaitHere: 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.
* WalkAndTalk: 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 JumpCut, 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.
* TheWallsAreClosingIn: 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.
* WannabeSecretAgent: The couple code-named "Boris" and "Natasha" in 'Brooklyn 'Til I Die' are portraying spies in a Role Playing Game.
* WaterGunsAndBalloons: 'Fare Game,' which uses the real life [[http://www.streetwars.net 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.
* WeAllLiveInAmerica: In 'Unfriendly Chat,' Adam slacks at work by chatting with a French girl who is promptly murdered on camera. The only clue as to where the murder took place is a TV in the background noting the temperature outside, so the team checks climate reports from all over the world to find what place had that temperature at that time. At no point do they notice that the temperature is in Fahrenheit, which is only used in the United States and four small island countries. (The murder turns out to have happened in Manhattan).
* WealthyPhilanthropist: 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.)
* WeaponizedBall: In 'The Closer,' the murder weapon is revealed to be a baseball thrown by a free agent pitcher.
* WeaponTwirling: In 'Corporate Warriors,' Mac twirls the katana he's testing while Lindsay observes.
* WeddingRingRemoval: 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.
* WeHaveToGetTheBulletOut: 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.
* WeirdTradeUnion: In the second case in 'The Ride In,' a man is trying to form a union for costumed mascots. [[IDidntMeanToKillHim He]] [[AccidentalMurder 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) [[ManOnFire had made his costume with flammable materials]].
* WelcomeEpisode:
** 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.
* WelcomeToTheBigCity: 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.
* WestCoastTeam: Inverted, along with ''Series/{{CSI Miami}}'', spinning off of the Las Vegas-based original.
* WeWillNotUsePhotoshopInTheFuture: 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.
* WhamLine: "Aiden." [[spoiler: Mac, in the episode 'Heroes,' when he realizes the identity of a body found earlier is a former CSI.]]
* WhamShot: 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: [[spoiler: [[TheBusCameBack Shane Casey]], whom Danny locked up three seasons earlier and who had been serving a life sentence in prison]].
* WhatDidIDoLastNight: 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.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
** 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 TheBusCameBack 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.
* WhiteGangBangers: The Tanglewood Boys. Most, if not all, of them are Italian.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: 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.
* WidowedAtTheWedding: '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.
* WipeTheFloorWithYou:
** 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.
* WitnessProtection: An old case of Flack's pops up again in 'To What End?' when someone he helped get into the Witness Protection program returns.
* WorkoutFanservice:
** Mac's swim in ep 100, 'My Name Is Mac Taylor.'
** The pole dancer class in season 7's 'Vigilante.'
* WorkingWithTheEx: Jo and Russ, twice, in 'To What End?' and 'Identity Crisis' which involve Witness Protection and a con artist, respectively.
* WorthlessTreasureTwist: 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.
* WouldHurtAChild: The guy who killed three of Lindsay's then high-school classmates back in Montana.
* WouldNotHurtAChild:
** 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.
* WoundedGazelleGambit:
** 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.
* WritingAroundTrademarks:
** 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.
* WritingIndentationClue:
** '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.
* WrittenInAbsence:
** 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.
* XCalledTheyWantTheirYBack: 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.
* TheXOfY: 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.
* YouRemindMeOfHer: 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.
* YouSeeImDying: [[spoiler: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.
* YoureNotMyType: Aiden, to Danny.
--> I'm way outta your league, Messer.
* YourFavorite:
** 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."
* YourHeadASplode: 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 [[SpecsOfAwesome glasses.]]
* YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: 'Hung Out To Dry.' The plot seems resolved, until Lindsay comes in and announces that Shane Casey has escaped.
* ZeroGSpot: 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.
[[/folder]]

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking / EverybodyWasKungFuFighting: The 'Corporate Warriors' in season 2. They are all trained in martial arts. One uses their skills to kill another, only to be killed in turn by a third.

* EvenEvilHasStandards / SelectiveSlaughter:

* EiffelTowerEffect: Much like the mothership, this series treats its aerial shots like a love letter to the titular city's landmarks. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Statue of Liberty are all shown practically every episode, and not just in the opening credits. Sometimes they're featured more prominently:

** Also, the shot of a bullet being test-fired into a water tank is re-used throughout the run, flipped at least once.

* SolarPoweredMagnifyingGlass: The arsonist does this in his cell with his glasses and a book he's reading at the end of 'Where There's Smoke.' The screen goes black just after the page starts smoking.

** Detective/CSI Danny Messer and his brother Louie, who, in his younger days, was a member of a gang whose leader had shot and killed a rival. Louie and another member were present at the time, making them accomplices at best. They were all also guilty of shakedown activity.
** Detective Don Flack and his sister Samantha, who was an alcoholic and had been in prison and part of one of the later seasons revisited the friction between them a few times.

* FiveManBand:
** TheHero: Mac Taylor
** TheLancer: Danny Messer
** TheBigGuy: Don Flack
** TheSmartGuy and TheChick: Stella Bonasera and Lindsay Monroe/Messer trade these off frequently. (Once Stella's gone, it's Jo and Lindsay.)
** SixthRanger: Sheldon Hawkes, who transfers from the morgue to the investigative team at the beginning of season 2.

* CoolestClubEver: A number of clubs are mentioned throughout the series.

* EarPiercingPlot: A variation of the trope; Lindsey has a flashback to her young teenage years when she and three of her friends hid in her bathroom for her to pierce one of the other's ears. Girl #3 holds a potato behind the piercee's ear while Lindsay prepares the needle and they hear a thud. Girl #4, who was supposed to be keeping an eye out for Lindsey's mother, passed out from the ''thought'' of seeing their friend get stuck.

* LegoGenetics: The goats that produce spider silk and the rat with a human ear on its back in 'What Schemes May Come,' although as it turns out, they actually fall under AluminumChristmasTrees.

* ImAHumanitarian: An odd variation with Dr. Marty Pino in 'Point of No Return.' Instead of being cannibalistic, he's harvesting organs to extract unmetabolized drugs to sell.

* DumpsterDive: Several, including 'Bad Beat,' while Lindsay is still a rookie:
-->'''Lindsay:''' Ah, now, see? That's a shame.\\