History Series / TheFBI

* NoHonorAmongThieves: In the two-part episode "The Mastermind", Curtis Breer assembles a gang to pull off a major payroll robbery at an amusement park, then takes the entire $1,800,000 from the other crooks at gunpoint.

* IHaveThisFriend: In "The Divided Man", Roger Mason has been committing crimes and then [[WhatDidIDoLastNight waking up not remembering what he has done]]. He goes to see a psychiatrist and claims to want advice about to help for a friend who is doing 'bad things' and not remembering them. Although the psychiatrist obviously knows Mason is discussing himself, he plays along to keep Mason talking. What Mason does not tell him is that these 'bad things' include blowing up a chemical plant and starting a fire that kills three firefighters.

* DeathByFallingOver: In "Sky On Fire", George Bellamy (Bradford Dillman) punches out his blackmailer Carl Platt (Creator/CharlesGrodin), causing him to fall and fatally strike his head on a fireplace hearth.

* TheRez:
** "A Mouthful of Dust" is set an Apache reservation in UsefulNotes/NewMexico. When the suspect goes on the run, Erskine and the local enforcement have to chase him across the ThirstyDesert.
** "The Young Warriors" is an episode set entirely on an Indian reservation, from the arson and murder at the beginning of the episode to the pursuit of the killer (Scott Marlowe) at the end of the episode.

* SympatheticMurderer: In "A Mouthful of Dust", Joe Cloud -- an old army buddy of Erskine's -- returns home to find a man attacking his wife. In a fit of rage, he strangles him. Because the crime happened on TheRez, that makes it 'Crime on an Indian Reservation' and brings it under the jurisdiction of the FBI.

* AnimalAssassin: The titular animal in the episode "The Watch-Dog", a Rottweiler owned by Luther Shawn, could probably maul a human being. Instead, it attacks one of Shawn's partners in espionage, Ralph Kurland, causing him to take a serious fall off a beach cliff, and also attacks Keith McKay, who's out to expose Damian Howards, another of Shawn's co-conspirators, allowing Shawn to easily shoot McKay.

* YouWatchTooMuchX: When Erskine arrests Ernie Cahn (Creator/HarveyKeitel) at the end of "Deadly Ambition", he tells Cahn, "You've seen too many old gangster movies".

* PhonyPsychic: Charles Ridgeway in "The Deadly Gift", who's out to fleece a rich widow by convincing her that he can contact her dead husband. He's played by Creator/FritzWeaver, who would play a similar character two years later on another Quinn Martin series, ''Series/BarnabyJones''.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse?: In "The Engineer", Walter Swenson clobbers a security guard with a tire iron after he corners Swenson's partner in crime, Miles Currier. As we've seen in dozens of shows, getting bonked on the head with a tire iron can kill you, yet after this happens, we never know whether the guard survived or not. Even Erskine and Colby are unaware of the attack on the guard.

* LoanShark: In "The Scourge", Erskine and Rhodes are investigating Johnny Albin, a "juicer" who makes loans to desperate businessmen and then uses his leverage to take control of their companies for Cosa Nostra boss Mark Vincent.

* ClumsyCopyrightCensorship: Of a sort. As noted in EverybodyOwnsAFord, during the first five seasons the TitleSequence featured an announcement that "The Ford Motor Company presents ''The F.B.I.''!" This was accompanied with an animation of the entrance to FBI headquarters segueing into the Ford logo, and then the series logo. Of course, this was edited once the show went into reruns, but it's easy to tell that's something's missing.

* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Barbara Erskine goes off to college halfway through season 1 and then is never seen or heard from again: despite her being Lewis Erskine's daughter and Jim Rhodes' fiancee.

* HeatWave: "Forest of the Night" is set in a small town in UsefulNotes/{{Oregon}} where it hasn't rained for more than 90 days. Everyone is on edge, tempers are fraying, the forest is tinder dry...and then a small religious community receives an extortion note threatening to torch their farm if they don't pay $5,000.
* HealthcareMotivation: In "The Plague Merchant", Edward Lennan steals what he thinks is a vial containing a revolutionary new hand lotion in order to pay for an operation that will keep his daughter's leg from being amputated. What he has really stolen is a vial of plague germs that could wipe out most of the planet unless Erskine and Rhodes can stop him from selling the vial to a foreign power.