History Series / MurdochMysteries

** [[Music/{{Rush}} Geddy Lee]] appears in the episode "Devil Music" playing a character aptly named Tom Sawyer.

* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:Dr. Luther Bates has an innocent woman strangled to death by one of the men who his experiments had turned BrainwashedAndCrazy, and tries to do the same to Murdoch.]] Murdoch flashing his shiny badge at the man distracts him due to his fascination for shiny things (he had previously appropriated his victim's shiny crucifix) and he lets Murdoch go. All of the other men end up running amuck in the streets of Toronto, but the one Murdoch showed his badge to [[spoiler:tracks down Dr. Bates and subjects him to the same gruesome fate he intended for Murdoch.]] Given all the shit he pulled during the episode and ''A Nightmare on Queen Street'', he [[KickTheSonOfABitch more than deserves his fate]].

** The B plot of "The Cottage In The Woods" has Murdoch and Watts investigating the murder of a man who was bludgeoned to death and the attempted murder of another man who was also bludgeoned but survived. Murdoch and Watts suspect the victims' wives of attacking their husbands, but they both have airtight alibis for the times the men were attacked. Watts breaks the case when he suggests that the wives agreed to murder each other's husbands. When the detectives go to arrest the women, they find them squabbling over the fact that one of the husbands survived.

* StrangersOnATrainPlotMurder: "Unfinished Business" has this as a cold case, reopened when one of the conspirators makes a DeathbedConfession, but leaves Murdoch with the impression he killed his ''own'' wife, which he can't have done. When Murdoch realises what happened, he even suggests they may have met on some form of public transport.

** Dr. Emily Grace, Dr. Ogden's protegee, gladly joins the women's movement. She's one of the most spirited and eager to fight or throw stones.

* MassiveMultiplayerScam: In "[[Recap/MurdochMysteriesS7E13TheMurdochSting The Murdoch Sting]]", Murdoch and company pull one of these to get the culprit Eva Pearce to incriminate herself in a murder, and it really is a case of all hands on deck. Brackenreid solicits the help of one Cassie Chadwick, who claims the culprit has impersonated her to get engaged to the murder victim. Constable Higgins impersonates an attorney, Dr. Grace portrays the murder victim's floozy girlfriend, and she even drags in Leslie Garland at one point when his unexpected entrance threatens to blow the whole set-up.

* [[ArtisticLicenseEngineering Artistic License - Engineering]]: In “Murdoch and the Undetectable Man”, [[spoiler: Tesla claims the Undetectable Man can’t be invisible, because the camera isn’t picking up his ''infra-red radiation''. This is one of the first video cameras made, and infra-red versions won’t be made until 1929, ''13 years'' after the case]].

** In Part 2 of "Do The Right Thing", Margaret notices that a fellow passenger on the boat she and Thomas were returning to Canada in somehow acquired a new suitcase she was sure the woman wasn't traveling with. That triggers a EurekaMoment in Thomas that solves the murder they encountered on the ship.
* SparedByTheAdaptation: The movie ''Film/{{DOA}}'' ends with the protagonist dying, unable to find a cure for the poison that's slowly killing him. ''Murdoch Mysteries'' WholePlotReference features Murdoch being poisoned in the same way as the protagonist, but [[spoiler:Julia saves him JustInTime with the antidote, which she tricked Frank Rhodes into giving up.]]

* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: In "Back And To The Left", Murdoch doesn't have much evidence on the criminal cabal that framed the Irish Catholic community for a prominent alderman's murder. He eventually convinces one member of the cabal to sell the others out in exchange for an immunity deal. [[spoiler:Murdoch correctly realizes that Sean Gallagher, the Irish Catholic businessman who was willing to betray his community to line his pockets as part of the cabal's corruption, would be willing to also betray his fellow conspirators to save his neck.]]

** "Back And To The Left" seemingly involves an Irish Catholic man trying to shoot Toronto's Protestant Mayor on a major Protestant holiday, but killing a prominent city councilman instead. [[spoiler:The man and the larger Irish Catholic community were framed by a cabal of crooked businessmen and politicians who were targeting the councilman to keep him from interfering in their embezzlement schemes.]]

* KarmaHoudini: Subverted in "Back And To The Left" when Murdoch gets [[spoiler:the Irish Catholic member of the criminal conspiracy to betray the rest of his cabal in exchange for an immunity deal. Given that he already betrayed his community to join the conspiracy in the first place, Brackenreid points out that his fellow Irishmen will likely kill him before the other cabal members are hanged. Murdoch says that, at the very least, he's a ruined man.]]

%%* KarmaHoudini: Multiple criminals, and even some of the protagonists, have gotten away with various crimes, some less moral than others. %%Zero-context example.

* MushroomSamba: One alcoholic drink served in a flask at the ''Alice in Wonderland'' costume party is drugged. Unfortunately, Detective Murdoch drinks it and has unsettling visions of the grinning Cheshire Cat, falling down a hole or being too big to enter a door. It turns out it was just a prank, and not directed at Detective Murdoch.

** Brackenreid suffers this in "The Witches Of East York" when he confiscates and eats the sandwich witch Minerva West made for her apprentice, who was in the station house's cells. Minerva angrily curses him, and he later hallucinates that he's being attacked by a witch. Dr. Ogden later finds that Minerva's sandwich was made of rye bread infected with ergot fungus, which caused Brackenreid's hallucinations. Ergot fungus contains many of the chemicals used in LSD [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_explanations_of_bewitchment and has been suggested as a cause for why people think they've been bewitched.]]

** "Belly Speaker": The belly speaker's puppet was very disturbing. The fact that it was manufactured to look like its owner, complete with different colored eyes, added to the creepiness factor.
** In "Me, Myself and Murdoch", the constables found a rag doll without an eye found in a CreepyBasement. It was buried there with a chopped up skeleton.
** "Murdoch in Toyland": Detective Murdoch was taunted by a series of dolls with recorded messages as a part of CriminalMindGames scheme. Lampshaded by Inspector Brackenried: "I know it's supposed to be adorable, but to me it just looks bloody creepy."

* CreepySouvenir: Subverted. A suspect was seen talking with a victim on a train and he admitted he liked her a lot. They found he has home-made jewellery made of human hair of multiple people, and the victim's hair is among them. However, she gave it to him voluntarily while she was alive. Jewellery from human hair was still seen as very weird, but he was not her murderer.

* KnightTemplarParent: Darkly subverted in "Brother's Keeper." Gang leader Nigel Baker murders a man named Daniel Marks, and gets his thugs to destroy the evidence against him. Daniel's brothers [[spoiler:Detective Watts]] and Hubert resort to FramingTheGuiltyParty to get Nigel convicted. Nigel's father Thomas uses this to petition to the court to have the evidence thrown out and Nigel exonerated. Later, when Nigel murders Hubert, [[spoiler:Thomas realizes just how evil his son is. Thomas is so plagued by guilt at letting Nigel kill again that he [[OffingTheOffspring murders Nigel himself]] to try and make things right.]]

For five seasons, the series was broadcast by Creator/{{Citytv}}. The fifth season was supposed to be the last, however, rival broadcaster Creator/{{CBC}} [[{{Uncancelled}} picked up the series]] in 2011 and has been broadcasting new seasons since; beginning with the sixth in 2012. Between seasons seven and ten, the character of Dr. Emily Grace was included in the main cast. (The two subsequent coroners are RecurringCharacters, even though they recur in most episodes.) A seventeenth season is in the works. Outside of Canada, the series has aired on Ovation TV in the United States, under the title ''[[MarketBasedTitle The Artful Detective]]''.

For five seasons, the series was broadcast by Creator/{{Citytv}}. The fifth season was supposed to be the last, however, rival broadcaster Creator/{{CBC}} [[{{Uncancelled}} picked up the series]] in 2011 and has been broadcasting new seasons since; beginning with the sixth in 2012. In the seventh season, The character of Dr. Emily Grace was added to the main cast. A fifteenth season is in the works. Outside of Canada, the series has aired on Ovation TV in the United States, under the title ''[[MarketBasedTitle The Artful Detective]]''.

** In "From Buffalo With Love", the killer shoots his victim in a busy burlesque club. He avoids alerting anyone by muffling the gun with a cloth. Murdoch wonders how a man could carry a cloth around in a burlesque club without attracting attention. When a hotel maid comes to take away his and Julia's supper dishes, Murdoch has a EurekaMoment. [[spoiler:The killer is one of the club's waiters, who would naturally be expected to carry serving cloths as part of their job.]]

** In "From Buffalo With Love", the murder victim turns out to have been relocated to Toronto by the Buffalo police after testifying against Falcone. The Toronto constabulary are rather put out they weren't informed, especially since they have experience with the Black Hand.

* HiddenInPlainSight: The MonsterClown in "I Know What You Did Last Autumn" is able to run around in public dressed in a disturbing-looking clown suit because it's nearly Halloween and the streets are filled with people wearing costumes.

* In Season 3's "Future Imperfect", Murdoch investigates the murder of a man whose body parts are found floating in a pond while Crabtree investigates a series of dog abductions. Crabtree unwittingly provides Murdoch with a major break in the case when he catches the dog-napper.

* MassiveMultiplayerScam: In [[Recap/MurdochMysteriesS7E13TheMurdochSting "The Murdoch Sting"]], Murdoch and company pull one of these to get the culprit Eva Pearce to incriminate herself in a murder, and it really is a case of all hands on deck. Brackenreid solicits the help of one Cassie Chadwick, who claims the culprit has impersonated her to get engaged to the murder victim. Constable Higgins impersonates an attorney, Dr. Grace portrays the murder victim's floozy girlfriend, and she even drags in Leslie Garland at one point when his unexpected entrance threatens to blow the whole set-up.

* ObfuscatingDisability: In one episode [[spoiler:"Bad Medicine"]], the killer turns out to be someone who pretended to be a stroke victim so he would avoid suspicion.

** The true explanation for the serial deaths in [[spoiler:"Twisted Sisters"]]. A man is being blackmailed by a woman who works for him, and during their argument she hits her head. The man knows she was involved in another death some years earlier (along with several other women), so he disposes of his blackmailer and the other women to divert suspicion from himself. While he's at it, his actions point to a Persian university professor who had been romantically involved with the young white woman who had died years ago, and [[spoiler:his own secret involves his interracial marriage]].

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: While Detective Murdoch and Dr. Ogden are quite ahead of their time, and so are other sympathetic characters like Inspector Brackenreid or George Crabtree, the setting is definitely ''not''; classism, racism, sexism and homophobia are rampant, and Murdoch & Co. even run into the odd anarchist, eugenicist, and virulent anti-papist (RealLife turn-of-the-century Toronto was under the complete control of the Orange Order, every mayor up to 1955 was a card-carrying member). Inspector Brackenreid isn't above [[JackBauerInterrogationTechnique beating up a suspect during interrogation]] to try and get answers. Going in the other direction, abortionists were treated as complete pariahs, even by Murdoch until Ogden shook him out of it. The attitude that birth control interferes with a man's right to control his wife is accurate to the time, too.

* PoliticalOvercorrectness:
** "We don't call people 'retarded' anymore, it's insensitive. [[SubvertedTrope The polite term is 'moronic'.]]"
** Julia tells William not to use the word "sodomite", because the correct term is "homosexual".