WMG / Columbo

Lt. Columbo deliberately obscures his first name as protection from Death Notes

This ties in with the Death Note theory that Columbo is L's grandfather. The family has known about the Notes for some time, and Columbo hides his first name from everyone in case one comes up.

• Columbo also suggested L's name after the initialism of their esteemed ancestor Linnaeus.

Lt. Columbo is the mentor to Robert Goren

At some point, Goren studied Columbo's full case history and his methodology, learning as much as he could from them and then adapting them to his own use.

Lt. Columbo isn't human.

He's one of the Erinyes, also known as Furies, ancient Greek female demigods of vengeance that, as often as not, punished those who showed hubris against the gods (which is about all they cared about) in their otherwise non-Fury notable crimes. Most of Columbo's perps are generally smug and arrogant, and go to great lengths to hide their crimes. No one believes in furies anymore, and just to have something to do in retirement, Columbo pretends to be a shabby homicide lieutenant in a otherwise random city full of murders by people who have to time to plan these things. He might even be Nemesis herself, and her gender flip is just a nod to the times. The wife, the brothers-in-law, the nieces and nephews, none of them exist. A little divine magic keeps the cops confused but generally accepting of the Lt. coming in on another case. The dog is a retired hound of Artemis, because all dogs dream of being as lazy as the average Bassett hound.

Notice, Columbo rarely chases dead ends or red herrings, and more often than not, the killers are rich and powerful people who see themselves above the law. Usually, the person he spends the entire episode irritating is the person that committed the murder, no matter how well they hid the evidence and covered their tracks. Even if everything points to another person, Columbo is still off getting up the nose of the person the audience knows from the beginning did the deed, even if he has no proof. Columbo just knows. He doesn't arrest them, of course, because part of their punishment for the arrogance of both hiding their murder and committing it in the first place is to be utterly humiliated by this little shabby, squinting cop with with broke-down car and cheap cigars.

Lt. Columbo is a sociopath.

He lies without hesitation in order to catch the culprit. He even fakes feelings. He once faked being in love.

His greatest thrill is using the legal system to kill his victims. Yes, some of his victims do get killed — the death penalty was legal in California during most of the original run.

• Would this make Columbo a proto-Dexter?

Like many sociopathic killers, he sees himself as smart. He's very meticulous despite appearances. He gets an extra thrill out of catching the most cunning killers with the most unusual evidence.

He does not carry the real evidence around with him

Come on, this is not a stupid man. It's rather likely that Columbo obtains copies of the evidence to haul around with him. While he has displayed the actual evidence on occasion he's probably not going to put murder bullets in his pocket or into paper bags where they could be lost or tainted. If he really was doing this, almost all of his cases would be thrown out.

Columbo and Quincy are set in the same universe

Gary Walberg, the actor who played Lt. Monahan in Quincy showed up as an unnamed police sergeant in an early Columbo film Lady In Waiting. Maybe he later got promoted and moved to another precinct?

Coloumbo's wife is smoking hot

She's enough of a looker for Columbo not to chase women who look like Faye Dunnaway.

• Peter Falk was married to Shera Danese- in a way, this one is true

Columbo's "wife" is actually his husband.

You never see his "wife" because he doesn't have one. He doesn't chase hot women because he's not into women. He's gay, and lives with a male partner. His fellow cops might know the truth, and just turn a blind eye. Being gay in the '70s may not have been as bad as it was in other decades, but the stigma was bad enough to warrant secrecy on the part of Columbo and his partner.

Grace Wheeler was suffering from ill-effects of her condition when she shot her husband

It seems her plan to kill him was cooked up on the spot, not premeditated, after he refused to fund her return to the stage. Then not a few minutes after the killing, she promptly forgot about it. Upon discovering the body and through the rest of the episode, she genuinely did not know she had killed the man. Besides memory loss, her condition caused brief psychosis- enough to kill a man out of greed. She certainly didn't seem to be the homicidal type otherwise...

• This was literally the reveal at the end of the episode. Is this WMG just a troll?
  • No, the reveal was that her memory was affected as well as her pending death. It said nothing about causing behavioral changes. You done trolling?

Lt. Columbo is suffering from nightmares

That's the reason he always appears tired and distracted, especially in later seasons. All the deaths and sometimes grisly murder scenes he sees keep him restless at night. Also the reason why he keeps himself distracted with trivial things around him, it suppresses the memories.

"Columbo" takes place in the same universe as Star Trek.

Assuming the spin-off series Mrs. Columbo is canon, the lieutenant has some relative who bears a remarkable resemblance to Captain Janeway (but she is NOT Lt. Columbo's wife, just a cousin or something). Columbo also once dealt with a murderous surgeon who looked and sounded remarkably like Spock (who we know is half human). Columbo also dealt with a family named Paris. In the Star Trek universe, it's commonplace for Starfleet officer's ancestors to look and sound astoundingly like them. Conclusion: a lot of Starfleet officers had ancestors who lived in L.A. in the 20th century, and crossed paths with Lt. Columbo.

Lt. Columbo is the grandfather from The Princess Bride.

And, as this fanfiction suggests, he tells his grandson fairy stories based on the crimes he investigates.

Inspired by this fanfiction. Essentially, the grandfather from ''The Princess Bride

Nicotine sulfate on such short notice.

In "Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health", Wade Anders kills Budd Clarke by lacing cigarettes with nicotine sulfate, which is highly toxic. So how did Wade get this bottle on such short notice? Most killers seemed to have either set up their plans over time or used a gun, but Wade's crime seemed quickly planned, and you're not likely to go to a store and just buy this stuff, let alone Wade Anders is a major celebrity and it'd probably raise eyebrows for him to be trying to buy the stuff. Perhaps, given the nature of the show he hosts as well as what he did before Crime Alert!, he knew a criminal supplier. Or maybe he already had it on hand and had been considering killing Budd Clarke for a long time, maybe as early as when he and Budd were in a race to compete for the Crime Alert! desk.

Lt. Columbo hates guns because he doesn't want to kill anyone.

Throughout the series we learn he never carries a gun, hates guns, and has to pay Sgt. Burke to take his overdue pistol range test because he's a lousy shot. When he's finally required to carry a gun- in both 87th Precinct adaptations- he's prepared to use them if necessary. While the captain forces him to carry one while undercover, it becomes necessary to point the weapon at Mo Weinberg, and we get the feeling he'd have used it if he had to. The second time is when family is in danger. Columbo CAN use a gun, he's just afraid of having to murder someone so he usually chooses not to carry one. It's only when things go way too far that he would even consider it. The ending to "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine" doesn't count as he was using a novelty bang flag gun.

And yes, we do know that Columbo has a glass eye, much as Falk did, but this is questionable if that would affect aim much as many professional shooters do use only one eye when aiming. His troubled aim could be due more to inexperience with handling guns over the glass eye.

Columbo is God (or some other omnipotent deity).

Columbo always seems to know exactly who the killer is, and he always comes up with the solution. He's actually a god that got bored and decided to be a homicide detective. That's how he always finds out who the murderer is. He pretends to be struggling as part of the fun. Mrs Columbo is also a deity but doesn't bother with a physical form. Dog is a deity that just likes being a lazy-ass dog. That would explain why he's lived 30+ years.

Mrs. Columbo isn't real.

She never appears in the show, and it's been stated that Mrs. Columbo is not canon in this show. Mrs. Columbo in Columbo isn't real; Columbo just made her up as a way to throw off the perps. Alternately, she's dead, but Columbo still acts as if she's still alive.

• Largely Jossed- he speaks to her several times on the phone.
  • What makes you think he's calling Mrs. Columbo?
    • JOSSED - other people either speak to her, have seen her in person (on the cruise ship, for example), or pass messages onto him from her.

The widow mentioned in The Godfather Part II is related to Columbo.

That would be in the Vito Corleone flashbacks, set in the 20's New York. The Godfather helps a widow named Columbo, whose son got in trouble with their landlord. That young man could be Columbo's father, who later moved away to Los Angeles, thus making the widow Columbo's grandmother on his father's side. This would also make him an in-law of the Corleones via his sister, Sonny's wife.

Between The Conspirators and Guillotine, Columbo sold his original car and bought another just like it.

This is an attempt to bridge the following plot holes:

1. The existence of Mrs. Columbo and why Columbo's car appears to be parked outside her house during the intro sequence
2. Columbo's license plate changing between the original and revival runs of the show
3. Columbo claiming to have never had his car's roof down in 1991's Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star, even though he did

In one of the final episodes of the original run of Columbo, the wily Lieutenant is involved in an impromptu police chase, which ends up with his trusty Peugeot taking a huge impact to the rear, leaving a large dent in the rear quarter panel that is visible for the remainder of the show.

The car had been falling into a state of disrepair for a while. By the end of the show's initial run in 1978, most of the front grill was missing and every square inch of the bodywork was covered in dents. Rust was eating away at the undercarriage. The roof was rotten. Even on a "normal", domestically available car, the repair bill would have been in the thousands. Thousands that Columbo surely wouldn't have spent knowing the level of his frugality.

And yet, when Columbo returned in 1989, his car was noticeably cleaner, not to mention it had a new license plate.

In Columbo And The Murder of a Rock Star, Columbo states he's never had the roof down in all his years of owning the car. However, he did have the roof down in 1972 episode The Most Dangerous Match. Why would Columbo have forgotten this, considering he had a murderer in the passenger seat at the time?

The only explanation, sans writer error, is that the car that Columbo owned from 1989 onwards is not the same car he owned from 1971 - 1978.And who did he sell the original car to? Why, none other than "Mrs. Columbo" herself, Kate Callahan, who displays his car prominently outside her front yard in the show's title sequence. Mrs. Columbo, as bad as a show it was, can be kept in the same universe if it's accepted that Kate "Columbo" was merely an unhealthily obsessed fan of the mac-wearing detective, and bought the car off of him in the name of completing her personal collection.

So, to sum up:

• Columbo owned the original "044 APD" Peugeot through to shortly after The Conspirators before selling it off due to becoming too expensive to repair
• Crazed Columbo stalker Kate Callahan purchased the car around 1979 in an unroadworthy state as part of her Columbo obsession
• Around the same time, Columbo tries driving a new car and decides it's not working for him, so spends likely years tracking down another 403 Cabriolet like his and buys it, this one is registered as "448 DBZ".

Columbo was a military interrogator.

At one point, he waves off the suggestion that he did anything interesting during the Korean War, but that's just more obfuscation on his part. He was actually an interrogator, which is where he honed his skills at manipulating people.

Nelson Hayward and Harry Stone killed a senator.

In "Candidate for Crime", the election is only happening because the previous senator unexpectedly died. Harry also tells Hayward he can't be fired because he "knows where the bodies are buried", which isn't just an idiom in this case—they did actually kill the senator and got away with it, in order to advance Hayward's career.

Colonel Rumford from "By Dawn's Early Light" is an Armored Closet Gay.

Col. Rumford at one point mentions that in his ideal version of the army, there would be "no Section 8's", referring to a form of discharge used to dismiss gay people (among many others) from the military. There's also his quasi-homoerotic obsession with punishing his "Boodle Boy" and his admission that he would grow roses if he wasn't enlisted (flowers often being associated with homosexuality). It would add greater context to his resistance to change and desire to keep the academy from progressing.

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