Whodunnit? was a British television game show that ran from 1972 to 1978. It was hosted by Shaw Taylor in the pilot episode, then by Edward Woodward in the first season, and Jon Pertwee from 1973 to 1978.
Each week it featured a short murder-mystery drama enacted in front of a panel of celebrity guests who then had to establish who the murderer was. Anouska Hempel and Patrick Mower became permanent panellists from series 3 onwards, with two guest celebrities each episode.note In series 5, Liza Goddard replaced Anouska Hempel as a permanent panellist. The panel members could interview the remaining characters, with the only clue being that only the murderer could lie. Each panellist could also request to see a short replay of one section of the initial drama, which would often include events as they occurred and flashbacks as seen and narrated by individual suspects. (The video technology used at the time meant that it usually took a few minutes to set up each replay.)
It was created and written by comic actor Lance Percival and writer Jeremy Lloyd (co-creator of Are You Being Served?, 'Allo 'Allo! and so on) so there was a fair amount of comedy leavening the murders.
An American adaptation briefly ran on NBC in 1979, hosted by Ed McMahon.
Tropes used in Whodunnit? include:
- Absence of Evidence: In "Final Trumpet", the clinching piece of evidence for the sergeant investigating is the lack of muddy footprints on the pristine white carpet inside the caravan. Only one of the suspects could have entered without using the door, and thus avoid tracking mud in from outside.
- Accidental Murder:
- In "Teddy Bears Picnic", the Victim of the Week suffers Death by Falling Over when she hits her head on a dresser while fighting with a thief in a gorilla suit.
- In "Time to Dye", the Victim of the Week is chloroformed with a towel. However, the chemical used to drug her interacts with the alcohol she has already consumed and she asphyxiates.
- In "Final Drive", the killer cuts the brake lines on the Victim of the Week's car, intending to cause an accident and prevent the victim from racing. However, they underestimated the speed he would be driving at when he tried to brake.
- The Alcoholic: Chat show presenter John Harley in "Beware Wet Paint!" has been drinking heavily for years, and when the episode begins, the station's patience with the time and money lost waiting for him to sober up every week has run out, leading to the decision not to renew his contract. In the final scene of the film, studio head of security James Bridges accuses Harley of murdering the station's managing director for this very reason. He didn't, and the scene ends with Harley saying he knows whodunnit.
- Animal Assassin: In "Happy New Year", the Victim of the Week is bitten by a venomous snake the killer placed in his safe.
- Arab Oil Sheikh: The Victim of the Week in "Instant Coffee" is the ruler of a tiny, oil-rich Arab kingdom on the Persian Gulf who is in London to negotiate an oil contract with a British firm. He, his son, and his brother are all dressed in Arabian robes and keffiyeh.
- Bad "Bad Acting": "Village Fate" takes place during a dress rehearsal for a drawing room drama by a village amateur dramatics group. The village is implied to be small enough that the available talent pool is seriously limited; every single cast member, particularly those who have been cast as members of the upper class, is either stiff and wooden or absurdly over the top, unable to say a single line believably (if they can even get through it without stumbling).
- Bait-and-Switch: There were several episodes in which The Reveal of whodunnit involved one or more characters moving as if to stand up, or even actually standing up, only to either be told to sit down again by the true culprit or gesture to the true culprit to stand up. Just to give a few examples:
- In "A Piece of Cake", when Jon Pertwee tells the real whodunnit to make themselves known, James begins to stand up, but is told to sit down again by Eric, who is revealed to be the real murderer.
- In "Too Many Cooks", when Jon Pertwee asks the murderer (or murderers) to reveal themselves, Clarence Brooks and Bergio Benito both stand up... and gesture to Helen Brent, who is sitting between them and is the real murderer, to stand up.
- In "Village Fate", one of the clues that the panel latch onto is the behaviour of a black handkerchief with white spots, as two suspects are seen wearing one. When Jon Pertwee cues the reveal, Mr Robinson, owner of one of the handkerchiefs, stands up... and says "I believe this is yours!" as he hands his handkerchief to the real murderer, Mr Fielding.
- In "Beware Wet Paint!", everyone including the investigator stands up, to the audible surprise of regular Anouska Hempel, only for the innocent parties to sit down a few moments later.
- In "Which Eye Jack", Patrick Mower's guess is that Captain Ginger and Daisy the barmaid were in collusion with each other. When Jon Pertwee cues the reveal, Captain Ginger stands up... and gestures to Daisy the barmaid to stand up before sitting down again.
- Beneath Suspicion: In several cases the killer is this; in "Crime After a Fashion" the criminal is the doorman, and in "Which Eye Jack" it's the barmaid.
- Bitter Almonds:
- In "It's Quicker by Train", the detective smells the cup of tea the Victim of the Week was drinking and detects an odour of bitter almonds, concluding that the victim was poisoned with potassium cyanide.
- In "Dead Ball", the detective detects the smell of bitter almonds on the lips of the Victim of the Week and declares him a victim of cyanide poisoning.
- Blackmail: Sometimes, the Victim of the Week was forcing one or more of the suspects to buy their silence regarding usually illicit activities in which they were engaged. For example, in "Before Your Very Eyes", two of the suspects are embezzling money from their employer, and the victim told them they had to give her 50% of the takings or she would go to the police.
- Bluff the Impostor: The panellists sometimes bait suspects by asking them questions that a real member of [Profession X] could answer immediately, forgetting that they're just actors playing members of [Profession X]. For example, in "The Art of Theft", Kingsley Amis asks art experts Pierre Legrand and Royce Turner if Francesco Guardi
is considered a member of the Tuscan or Umbrian school. As Conrad Phillips and Sydney Bromley, the actors playing Legrand and Turner, visibly have no idea who Guardi was, they claim that he absorbed elements of both; Amis then says the correct answer is neither (he was from the Venetian school) and lists this among his reasons for suspecting Legrand of being the thief. Which he is, but not for the reasons Amis claims. - Cacophony Cover Up: In "A Bad Habit", the thief uses a chisel to break the sacred sceptre free from its brackets on the wall; timing his blows to coincide with the striking of the abbey clock.
- The Cameo: "A Piece of Cake" features two special guest appearances: This Is Your Life presenter Eamonn Andrews as a drunk, inept waiter, and Opportunity Knocks emcee Hughie Green as his short-tempered customer.note Jon Pertwee says at the end of the film that neither of them had anything to do with the murder.
- The Casino: "Adieu Monsieur Chips" is about the murder of a casino manager and the theft of a large amount of high value chips from his office.
- Caught on Tape: In "The Q43 Experiment", the murder of the Victim of the Week is caught on the tape recorder the victim was using to rerecord his lab notes. The killer, in fact, is planning on this and uses the tape to plant a Red Herring.
- China Takes Over the World: "Future Imperfect" was set in the year 2076 and had China ruling the UK (and, by implication, the rest of the world).
- Christmas Episode: "A Piece of Cake" is a Christmas-themed episode that was originally screened between seasons 2 and 3. It involves a murder at a family gathering on Christmas Eve, 1928.
- Circus Episode: "Final Trumpet". When a circus owner suddenly dies, his half-brother inherits it. But, rather than follow his dead brother's instructions to divide the circus equally among its cast of performers, he instead wants to cash in and rob them of their inheritance. Which of them is it then who performs the fatal act of doing away with their unscrupulous new ring master?
- Clothing Combat: In "A Safe Way to Die", a scarf is wrapped around the neck of the Victim of the Week to make it look like she was strangled. However, she was actually poisoned with strychnine.
- Clueless Detective:
- In "The Rajah's Ruby", the primary investigator is PC Ferrit (John Savident), who stumbles and stammers his way through the investigation, to the point that the suspects end up getting more information out of each other than he gets out of them. That said, he claims to have solved the mystery by the end of the film, so he may be affecting Obfuscating Stupidity to get the suspects to let their guards down.
- In "Adieu Monsieur Chips", the primary investigator is the bungling head of security for the Monte Carlo casino who has more than a touch of Inspector Clouseau about him. Host Jon Pertwee notes that he is still clueless about the killer's identity even after it has been revealed. As he is played by Lance Percival, co-creator of the series and co-writer of the episode, this is also a Creator Cameo.
- Curtain Camouflage: The thief in "A Bad Habit" hides behind a curtain in the abbey.
- Cut-and-Paste Note: In "The Rajah's Ruby", Captain Nickerson receives a note made up of words cut out of the Times newspaper warning that the eponymous ruby is going to be stolen. The note turns out to be one of the more important clues in unravelling the mystery.
- Cutlass Between the Teeth: In "Final Trumpet", the fortuneteller Madame Fey describes seeing the aerialist Aerolita climbing the ladder to the trapeze with a knife between her teeth.
- Cut Phone Lines: The killer does this in "Final Verdict" to isolate his victims in the house.
- Dead Man Writing: In "No Happy Returns", the Victim of the Week makes a film stating that if dies, he will have been murdered by one of the members of his board. The film is not found until 25 years after his murder.
- Death by Falling Over: In "Teddy Bears Picnic", the Victim of the Week interrupts a thief stealing her jewellery. They struggle and she is pushed over, hitting her head on the dresser and dying.
- Disability Alibi: In "Which Eye Jack", the killer's attempt to frame another suspect falls apart because the man she tried to frame, Short Fuse, was missing an arm and could not have been holding a candle and trying to open a door at the same time as she claimed.
- Double In-Law Marriage: In "A Piece of Cake", Betty Anderson is married to James. Her sister Marjorie Tempest is engaged to James' older brother, Captain Alexander Anderson, who becomes the Body of the Week.
- Downer Ending: In "Final Verdict", everyone except the killer and their accomplice end up dead. The only thing that stops this also becoming The Bad Guy Wins is that the killer is caught and will presumably be convicted.
- Dressed to Plunder: In "Which Eye Jack", a murder occurs among a gathering of pirates. All of the suspects fit this trope to some degree, with Blackbeard being the most complete example, dressed in a tricorner hat, frock coat, Eyepatch of Power, Hook Hand, and Seadog Peg Leg. Captain 'Treasure Chest' Magee, the sole Pirate Girl at the gathering, rocks a tight Waistcoat of Style, flouncy shirt, Painted-On Pants, and thigh high boots.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Sergeant Morris, the Victim of the Week in "Goodbye Sarge". The higher-up who ends up investigating his death even calls him "The most hated Sergeant in the British Army."
- Dying Clue:
- In "Evidence of Death", the Victim of the Week is poisoned with a nerve agent. With his voice paralysed and 20 seconds to live, he removes his signet ring and stuffs it into a matchbox as a cryptic clue to his killer's identity.
- In "Too Many Cooks", the Victim of the Week attempts to scratch the killer's name into a block of ice after he has been Locked in a Freezer. Unfortunately, he only gets as far as the first letter—'B'—which is not helpful as every suspect's name starts with B (Braunsky, Brets, Brooks, Brent, Bargaux, Benito - and Blade, the investigating MI5 agent). Though not entirely - the head chef has a 'B' initialled surname, where the dead chef would have used his first name as they worked together and knew each other well. In fact, the killer was someone who the chef knew only by their surname.
- Episode on a Plane:
- "Nothing to Declare". While all of the questioning takes place in the airport, all of the flashbacks are set on the airliner.
- Conversely, in "Fly Me, I'm Dead", all of the scenes, excepting one flashback in the terminal lounge, occurred on board a plane. This wasn't shot on a Hollywood budget, after all.
- Everyone Is a Suspect: In every episode, every character in the episode apart from the Victim of the Week is a viable suspect. And we do mean everyone; in both "Fly Me, I'm Dead" and "A Bad Sign", the investigator is the murderer.
- Exact Words: In "Fly Me, I'm Dead", the last words of the Show Within a Show are the police detective saying outright "I know who did it!" For very good reason - it was him! He was actually a criminal who'd killed his police escort in order to switch identities long enough to escape.
- Fairplay Whodunnit: All of the clues necessary to solve the murder were presented to the viewers.
- Fake Static: In "A Bad Sign", the murderer uses tape recorded traffic noise to fake calling from his car phone to establish an alibi when they are really calling from another room in the same building.
- Fauxreigner: In "Too Many Cooks", head chef Count Igor Braunsky is revealed to really be Stanley Brown of Bethnal Green, London. As he puts it, no one is going to respect a chef named Stanley Brown.
- Finger-Licking Poison: In "Death at the Top", the Victim of the Week, who has an Oral Fixation, is murdered when the killer poisons the tip of his pen, which he compulsively chews on during a board meeting.
- Flock of Wolves: At the start of "Too Many Cooks", Commander Blade from MI5, who is investigating the murder of a hotel chef believed to be linked to a planned assassination attempt on a visiting foreign dignitary, arrests the head waiter, Lazlo Brets. Brets reveals himself to be a CIA agent, chides Blade for blowing his cover, and attempts to arrest the assistant chef, Jacques Bargaux... who then reveals himself as an agent of SDECE (French intelligence) and chides Brets for blowing his cover.
- Food Pills: Used in "Future Imperfect", which was set in the year 2076. The options included duck l'orange and haddock Monte Carlo, although one of the characters passed on the new potato pills because they were slimming.
- Food Slap: After one lewd comment too many, Miss Hampshire throws her drink over Gay Fortescue in "The Rajah's Ruby".
- Fresh Clue: In "All Part of the Service", Inspector Godfrey notes that the amount of undisturbed ash on the Victim of the Week's cigar means that it sat burning in the ashtray for at least 10 minutes.
- Fright Deathtrap: In "Future Imperfect", the Victim of the Week is murdered when the travel tape he was supposed to experiencing is swapped for a tape of a tiger attacking, triggering a heart attack.
- Get into Jail Free: In "Diamonds Are Almost Forever", one of thieves arranges to be caught red-handed stealing the diamonds so he will spend the night in jail. This is part of the plan to destroy the remaining evidence when the diamonds disappear from the police safe overnight.
- Hand of Death: Used frequently when showing the murders.
- Head-Tiltingly Kinky:
- In "The Art of Theft", the inspector is handed a portrait of a nude woman and promptly rotates it, possibly as a clue to the viewers that the painting's orientation was key - the genuine painting was inserted into a bag one way, but was removed differently, indicating that it was switched with another bag containing a forgery.
- In "A Bad Sign", a photographer hands the inspector a bundle of photos being used to blackmail one of the suspects. The inspector looks at the first photo and turns it almost completely around before the photographer reaches out and turns it back the way he originally had it.
- High-Class Glass:
- The Baron, a German flying ace, wears one (along with a waxed moustache) in "The Rajah's Ruby" (set in 1925).
- In "Which Eye Jack", the foppish pirate Captain Ginger uses a quizzing glass.
- High-Voltage Death:
- In "A Deadly Tan", a dictator is murdered when the killer electrifies the towel rail in his solarium.
- In "Pop Goes the Weasel", the killer rewires the microphone and the electric guitar of a pop singer so that when he holds the guitar in one hand and grabs the mic with the other, he completes a circuit and electrocutes himself.
- Hook Hand: "Which Eye Jack" features Blackbeard; a pirate who is forced into the role of detective after the eponymous Jack is murdered. Blackbeard embodies most of the pirate stereotypes, including a hook for a hand, as part of his Dressed to Plunder look.
- Impeded Communication: In "Too Many Cooks", the hotel's phone system loses access to outside lines and only works for internal calls. This proves to be critical in contradicting the murderer's alibi.
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: This proves critical to identifying the murderer and his accomplice, who are posing as two members of the jury that convicted Arthur Blake in "The Final Verdict". Although, in-universe, twenty intervening years have caused the surviving jurors to forget the relevant details, when the panellists see a flashback to the trial, Richard O'Sullivan notices that Mr Goodwin needed glasses to read in the past but can now read without them, while Honor Blackman notices that Miss Rhodes was left-handed in the past but is now right-handed.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: One of the ways a murderer can give themselves away.
- In "Portrait in Black", the killer knew the subject of the photo the Victim of the Week had been developing in his darkroom when he was murdered, despite the photo being completely overexposed when the body was found.
- In "Beware Wet Paint!", one of the two cameramen says "only one man hated [the victim] enough to put a dagger in him", but the head of security interrogating them had never mentioned the murder weapon was a dagger. Only he and the floor manager saw the body in full - thus indicating said cameraman was involved in the murder.
- In-Series Nickname: Jon Pertwee occasionally calls Patrick Mower 'the old bloodhound' or 'the bloodhound', due to his high success rate in solving the Mystery of the Week (approximately 70% in season 3 alone; that's good enough to stay employed in some police units!).
- Insurance Fraud: The crime in "Diamonds Are Almost Forever" turns out to be insurance fraud with the thieves stealing their own diamonds in order to keep the stones and claim the insurance.
- Interchangeable Asian Cultures: Patrick Mower falls into this while interrogating Dr. Ling in "Evidence of Death", as he asks why he rides a Matchless motorbike instead of "something more patriotic" like a Suzuki; the unamused Ling points out that Suzuki is a Japanese company, and he is Chinese (although he then tells Anouska Hempel that he was born in Warrington in Lancashire).note
- Jurisdiction Friction: The international nature of the murder in "Too Many Cooks" (believed to be because the Victim of the Week refused to assist his killer in the assassination of a visiting foreign dignitary) has led the British, American, and French national intelligence agencies to investigate the crime. The respective agents spend the early part of the episode arguing over who has the real authority to conduct the investigation; Blade of MI5 points out that the murder occurred on British soil, Brets of the CIA claims that his authority came from the American government directly, and Bargaux of the SDECE reveals that the visiting foreign dignitary personally asked him to investigate the planned assassination. Each of them conducts different interrogations until Blade is able to establish that the murder taking place on British soil gives him priority to investigate.
- Kill and Replace: In "Final Verdict", the surviving jurors who convicted Arthur Blake of manslaughter twenty years earlier are gathered in a room and told via recording that they have just been poisoned and will be dead in half an hour unless they can unmask Blake, who is in the room with them. As the recording Blake has made says that four jurors are already dead but there are ten in the room, the implication is that two have been killed and replaced, one by Blake and one by his sister.
- The Killer Was Left-Handed:
- The killer being left-handed is an important clue in "Pop Goes the Weasel". In an ironic twist, several of the panellists picked up the fact that the killer must be left-handed, but then completely failed to identify which characters were left-handed, resulting in three of them naming a completely innocent right-handed suspect as the murderer, because they all thought he was left-handed, except one who chose them despite knowing they were right-handed, to the bafflement of host Jon Pertwee.
- In "Final Verdict", Miss Rhodes is seen writing left-handed in a Flashback to the jury room twenty years earlier, but is holding a cigarette right-handed in the "present day" scenes. This is an important clue to the Kill and Replace ploy used by the murderer and his sister and accomplice, who is posing as Miss Rhodes, though when asked about this apparent change by panellist Honor Blackman, "Miss Rhodes" claims that she suffered a serious fracture of her left arm and had to learn to write with her other hand.
- Knife-Throwing Act: The Circus Episode "Final Trumpet" opens with Mad Wolfgang and his Lovely Assistant Nola rehearsing their knife-throwing act. Later, during the questioning, Wolfgang gets so infuriated at Patrick Mower that he hurls a knife at him, which hits the target board behind him.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In series one episode three, "A Knife in the Back", Jon Pertwee (appearing on the show for the first time as a panellist) asks one suspect about the letters she posted.Mrs Mitchell: Two were bills, and... the third was to the Doctor Who fanclub. (studio audience laughs) I wanted to ask for your autograph.note
- Locked in a Freezer: The Victim of the Week in "Too Many Cooks" is murdered when the killer locks him the in walk-in freezer and then disables the alarm.
- Lovely Assistant:
- The Victim of the Week in "Before Your Very Eyes" is a Stage Magician's lovely assistant who is murdered when the killer sabotages the sword cabinet, causing her to be fatally stabbed on stage.
- One of the suspects in "Final Trumpet" is Nola, the target girl for the knife-thrower Mad Wolfgang. Part of the act involves Wolfgang throwing a knife to cut off her skirt and expose the spangly bikini she is wearing underneath.
- Midnight Snack: In "Which Eye Jack", several characters use getting a snack from the larder (a piece of cheese, an apple, a mug of ale) as an excuse to visit the inn's common room and attempt to persuade Jack to join their crew.
- Mystery of the Week
- Nasty Party: In "Final Verdict", the ten surviving members of a jury who sentenced a man to life imprisonment are invited to a dinner party on the 20th anniversary of the day they delivered the verdict. However, one of them is the killer in disguise (and another is his accomplice, also in disguise), who announces (via tape recording) that all of them will die unless they can identify the imposter.
- Never Suicide:
- "All Part of the Service" starts with the police arriving to investigate an apparent suicide. Immediately lampshaded by host Jon Pertwee in his introduction when he says that if it really was a suicide, they wouldn't have a show.
- Subverted in "Worth Dying for", when it actually was a suicide. In this case, the 'will the real Whodunnit please stand up?' question was answered by the victim opening the closed door of his office and coming out to join the suspects.
- No Honour Among Thieves: In "Dead Grass", the Victim of the Week is a thief done in by a fellow member of his gang while they were divvying up the loot from a bank job.
- Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: In "Before Your Very Eyes", a Stage Magician's Lovely Assistant is murdered when the killer sabotages the sword cabinet, resulting in her being stabbed when the magician thrusts a sword through the cabinet.
- Obfuscating Disability: Used in the reveal in one episode. When the host called on the real murderer to please stand up, one of the policemen dropped his notebook. The man in a wheelchair next to him stood up and handed it back to him.
- Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: In "A Safe Way to Die", a scarf is wrapped around the neck of the Victim of the Week to make it look like she was strangled. However, she was actually poisoned with strychnine.
- Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List: Done (apparently as a spur-of-the-moment gag) on "Too Many Cooks". When Jon Pertwee is collecting the cards from the panellists, he takes Anouska Hempel's and starts to read "Take a half a spoonful of sugar, a tablespoon of...? This is a recipe!" and playfully baffs her on the back of the head with it. A giggling Anouska then hands him the card with her real guess on it.
- One-Steve Limit: Used as a Red Herring in "All Part of the Service" where the suspects include a woman named Leslie and and another named Lesley.
- The Pen Is Mightier: In "Instant Coffee", the murderer uses a fountain pen to inject poison into the orange juice of the Victim of the Week.
- Pirate Girl: Captain Dorothea 'Treasure Chest' Magee (played by the incomparable Kate O'Mara) in "Which Eye Jack". She is the only woman present at a meeting of pirate captains when a murder occurs. She earned her nickname because of her impressive fo'c'sles.
- Poison Ring: Used by the murderer in "A Piece of Cake". A spike on the ring injects a lethal dose of snake venom into the Victim of the Week when the murderer grasps his his wrist.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: "Nothing to Declare" features both a black panellist and black cast member, who are made the subject of puns about their ethnicity by Love Thy Neighbour actor Jack Smethurst, to their obvious discomfort.
- Portrait Painting Peephole: In "Which Eye Jack", the killer uses uses a peephole concealed behind the eyepatch on a painting of a pirate to spy on Jack as he hides the pearl and the Treasure Map.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: In "Final Trumpet", hypnotist The Great Mesmer claims to have killed the Repulsive Ringmaster Brandon by putting him into a trance and compelling him to stab himself. It was actually a False Confession because he thought his beloved Nola had committed the murder and he wanted to protect her.
- Psychic Link: Played for laughs in the episode "Fly Me, I'm Dead". Patrick pretended to have one of these to Anouska (who was out sick), and received messages from her.note He did pick the correct murderer and most of the clues...
- Questioning Title?
- Qurac: In "Instant Coffee", the Arab ruler of an oil-rich country located between Oman and the UAE on the Persian gulf, appears to die from poisoning after drinking coffee. The king is very conservative and is trying to keep outside influence out his country, while his son is far more progressive, engaged to a westerner, and looking to get foreign oil money into the country to improve life for the common people.
- Reckless Gun Usage: In "Diamonds Are Almost Forever", a pair of diamond merchants who obviously have no experience with firearms are putting a gun in the safe. One pulls it from his pocket and hands it to his boss barrel first before realising his mistake and turning it handle first. His boss first sensibly holds the gun sideways, before forgetting and pointing it at his subordinate while gesturing to make a point.
- Recorded Audio Alibi: A variant is used in "The Q43 Experiment". The murderer kills the Victim of the Week while he is is recording his lab notes on a tape recorder: ensuring that the murder is Caught on Tape. The killer—who is confined to wheelchair—plays a recording of high heeled shoes walking away, giving the impression that the killer is able-bodied and female. They slip up however, and there are more footsteps than it would take to reach the door.
- Red Herring: The presenters always reminded viewers that some "clues" were planted in the episode specifically to mislead. Just to give a few examples:
- In "Evidence of Death", Simon Victor leaves the room in which he is practising fencing with Prof. Striker to swap fencing jackets. When he returns, his face hidden behind a mask, he conspicuously has no dialogue for the rest of the scene and seems to have become a much better fencer, creating the impression that it's someone pretending to be Simon while the real Simon is committing the murder. However, the apparent change is perfectly innocent and has nothing to do with the murder.
- In "Death at the Top", the Victim of the Week is poisoned, and as the panel are about to interrogate the suspects, Jon Pertwee tells the audience that the possible methods of delivery include cigarettes, the victim's heart medication, the wristband of the victim's watch, a hypodermic needle in a briefcase, and a pen. One suspect smoked one of the cigarettes, another both tasted the heart medication and was wearing the watch until seconds before the victim put it on, and the briefcase is too solid for the hypodermic needle to protrude through it, leaving the pen as the source of the poison.
- In "The Rajah's Ruby", Stage Magician the Great Maestro appears to accidentally-on-purpose drop the ruby and then, with a bit of sleight of hand, replace it with a fake while he slips the real ruby into his jacket pocket; meanwhile, his fellow music hall performer Jillian Hampshire appears to use her compact to watch the Maharajah select the new combination for the safe in which he is storing the ruby. They are among the moments the panel ask to see again, but they only look suspicious; neither one has anything to do with the solution.
- Repulsive Ringmaster: Jack Brandon, the asshole Victim of the Week in "Final Trumpet". On inheriting sole control of the circus when his half-brother dies, he immediately the gathers the performers and gloats of his intention to sell the circus rather than divide it equally among the performers as his brother had wanted. When being interviewed the performers say that Brandon was a compulsive gambler who was up to his ears in debt, and Aerolita and Nola indicate that he was constantly leching after the female performers.
- Robot Maid: In "Future Imperfect" (set in the year 2076), the family possesses a robot servant called Mister Seven who is reprogrammed to murder the head of the family.
- Running Gag: Patrick Mower, who during his years on the show starred in two different police procedural TV shows (Special Branch and Target), calling out actors playing the police in the Show Within a Show about obvious errors in police procedure or evidence handling. This became a plot point in "Fly Me, I'm Dead", when his knowledge of prisoner transport helped him work out that the police detective was actually a criminal who'd killed his police escort in order to temporarily steal his identity and escape.
- Ruritania: "A Deadly Tan" featured the murder of a dictator in a Ruritania called Barania, which one of the characters indicated was located between Moldova and Albania. The security forces seemed to have stepped out of a Banana Republic, however.
- Seadog Peg Leg: Blackbeard, the pirate who acts as detective in "Which Eye Jack", sports a wooden leg as part of his Dressed to Plunder look.
- Sexy Coat Flashing: In "Final Trumpet", Aerolita claims to have seen, accompanied by a flashback, Nola seducing the Repulsive Ringmaster by knocking on his caravan door wearing a plastic mac and then throwing it open to reveal her Lovely Assistant costume—a spangly bikini—underneath.
- Shout-Out:
- When Love Thy Neighbour castmates Nina Baden-Semper and Jack Smethurst were on the panel for "Nothing to Declare", Jack, having already said that he was sure he'd seen porter Sam Austin (Edward Sinclair) in Dad's Army (as Mr Yeatman, the Verger) for the past seven years, then followed the revelation that young Sally Gray was possibly the product of an extramarital affair involving fellow suspect Mr Campbell by quipping, "The moral of that incident appears to be: Love thy neighbour, but don't get caught." Later in the same episode, in response to Patrick Mower's request for one final question, Jon Pertwee asks Frank Thornton, here playing inspector Gerald Harvey, "are you free, Mr Harvey?", in reference to his catchphrase as Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served?.
- In "Portrait in Black", Police Constable Piper is asked the name of his superior officer, and he gives the name Inspector Hound. (Pertwee then makes a joke about him being 'of the Baskervilles'.)
- Side Bet:
- At the start of "All Part of the Service", Inspector Godfrey and Sergeant Coop have a bet about how long they'll be at the crime scene. Godfrey wagers they'll be in and out in ten minutes, but admits he'll have to pay up when it becomes apparent they're dealing with a murder.
- In "The Rajah's Ruby", compulsive gambler Gay Fortescue gives the seemingly incompetent PC Ferrit 20 to 1 odds on a five shilling bet that he can't identify the thief of the title object, and double or nothing if he can also reveal where the jewel ended up. At the end of the film, PC Ferrit declares that he's ready to collect, but isn't quite sure of the result of multiplying five shillings by 40.note
- Significant Anagram: In "Beware Wet Paint!", the murder victim is the managing director of Shemat TV, an anagram of Thames TV, the ITV affiliate behind Whodunnit?.
- Staged Shooting: In "All Part of the Service", the killer murders the Victim of the Week with a silenced pistol, then later fires a shot out of the window to make it appear the death occurred later than it actually did.
- Stage Magician: In "Before Your Very Eyes", a murder takes place at the climax of a magician's act when sabotage turns the sword cabinet into a Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon.
- Stylistic Suck: "Portrait in Black" opens with a photo shoot commissioned by a sci-fi magazine. The model, Sheila, affects various over-the-top poses as prompted by off-camera narration, but when the Monster of the Week enters the spaceship set in front of which she is posing, she splits her sides laughing at the pathetically cheap costume, which looks like a sentient lime green shagpile rug.
- Tainted Tobacco: In "Death at the Top", the Victim of the Week is poisoned, and one of the mysteries the investigators have to solve is how the victim ingested the poison. The victim did smoke a cigar before dying, and one theory is that the suspect who opened the box stabbed the cigar with poisoned blade of the penknife he used to open the box. Being a Fair-Play Whodunnit, eagle-eyed viewers would have noticed he stabbed the box at the opposite end to the one the victim took the cigar from, so even if the blade was poisoned, the cigar he smoked wasn't.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Poisoning was one of the more common methods of murder used in the show, probably because it allows for the broadest possible suspect pool.
- Ten Little Murder Victims: In "Final Verdict", the ten surviving members of a jury who sentenced a killer to life imprisonment 20 years ago are invited to a dinner. Via tape recording, the killer reveals that he is one of the people attending the dinner in disguise, and that they have to find him before they all die. By the end of the episode, it is revealed that two of the ten diners are impostors; one is the killer, the other is his sister.
- Thriller on the Express: In "It's Quicker By Train", the Victim of the Week is poisoned in the dining car of an intercity train.
- Treasure Map: In "Which Eye Jack", Jack is murdered so the killer can steal a valuable pearl and a map showing the location where the rest of the treasure is hidden.
- Unfriendly Fire: In "Goodbye Sarge", the Victim of the Week is a Drill Sergeant Nasty shot by one of his men who tried to make it look like the work of an enemy sniper.
- Vehicular Sabotage: In "Final Drive", the Victim of the Week is murdered when the killer cuts the brake lines on his car.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: In "Before Your Very Eyes", a Stage Magician's Lovely Assistant keeps the remote control that is part of the trick concealed in the left cup of her bra.
- Video Wills: In "No Happy Returns", the Victim of the Week makes a film stating that if dies, he will have been murdered by one of the members of his board. The film is not found until 25 years after his murder.
- White-Dwarf Starlet: The eponymous presenter of The John Harley Show in "Beware Wet Paint!" has been in television for fifteen years and still believes himself to be a big star, but as the investigation of the station managing director's murder gets under way, we learn that his contract was not being renewed due to mounting problems caused by his heavy drinking.
- Whodunnit to Me?:
- In "Happy New Year", the Victim of the Week is bitten by a venomous snake. Knowing he has 30 minutes to live, he uses the time to question the suspects.
- In "Future Imperfect", the Victim of the Week is brought back from the dead by having a robot redirect its 'life force' through him. He solves his own murder but is then killed again by a second attempt before he can announce who done it.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: Most victims. In the most extreme case in "A Deadly Tan", every suspect tried to claim credit for killing the victim (a South American dictator) and the mystery was to work out who was telling the truth rather than who was lying.
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You Might Remember Me from...: Jon Pertwee opens his first episode as host with "Welcome to a new series of Whodunnit? Or, if you prefer it, Doctor Whodunnit?", alluding to his role as the Third Doctor in Doctor Who.
