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{{trope}}{{Needs Image}}
{{quote|''"Saw it in a movie once. There was this serial killer running around, and the police detective, he puts this big map on the wall and puts pushpins in each of the murders and reckons the killer's writing out a sign of the zodiac. Capricorn or Cancer or sumthin'. Once he figures that out, he's able to track down the killer and stop him from killing the next victim, who just happens to be the cop's girlfriend. Cop shoots the killer just in time, but 'course he [[Not Quite Dead|ain't dead the first time]]. He gets up when nobody's looking, even though [[Implacable Man|he's got six bullets in him]], and the girlfriend ends up having to shoot him a coupl'a more times."''
''"[[Cliché Storm|I think I saw that one.]]"''|'''''Gil's All Fright Diner''''' by A. Lee Martinez}}
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* In ''[[Count Cain]]'', the evil organisation Delilah were buying up properties which, when plotted on a map, formed a pentagram in order to use the entire city of London in a resurrection spell.
* In the second episode of ''[[Re Cutey Honey]]'', one of the villains goes on a rampage in the city, trashing buildings in a pattern which forms a kanji message insulting the heroine when viewed from above.
* Played with in an episode of ''Dirty Pair'' - the serial murders are happening in an eight-story building with eight apartments on each floor, and each murder is accompanied by a note bearing a single letter - one of B, K, N, P, Q, or R. Headquarters realized right off that {{spoiler|there were two murderers, and they were playing chess with innocent lives}}, but the Lovely Angels needed the entire episode to figure it out.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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** Also used in the ''[[2000 AD|Indigo Prime]]'' story "Killing Time", although with added [[Noodle Implements|killer rabbits, multidimensional trains and death-by-harp]].
* A ''[[Justice Society of America]]'' arc had the Rival (an evil speedster and arch-enemy of Jay Garrick) run through the United States, killing people in a certain pattern. It spelled out "Edward Clariss," the Rival's real name...and Jay immediately figured out that the last target was Keystone City, and his wife.
* One of the best (though it's not on a map) is in Grant Morrison's ''Marvel Boy'', in which the title character - the hero, mind you - rampages through NYC to spell out a message to humanity. The message? "FUCK YOU."
== [[Film]] ==
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* ''[[Arachnophobia]]'' uses this when Dr. Jennings is figuring out where the spiders' nest is. {{spoiler|Naturally, given his crippling fear of spiders, it's his own house.}}
* Happens in the 2009 ''[[Sherlock Holmes (film)|Sherlock Holmes]]'' movie, due to the villain trying to make it ''look'' like he is an [[Evil Sorcerer]] and therefore marking out a pentagram with the murders.
* In the 2016 reboot of ''[[Ghostbusters (2016 film)|Ghostbusters]]'', the ghosts that the team encounters all manifest along {{spoiler|a pair of [[Ley Line]]s that intersect at a hotel on Times Square}}.
== [[Literature]] ==
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* [[Jorge Luis Borges]]'s short story ''Death and the Compass'' is an early subversion. The [[Amateur Sleuth]] carefully deduces that a series of three murders (that seem kabbalistically-related) committed at regular intervals in the North, East and West areas of the city, imply that a fourth murder will take place in the South, completing a perfect rhombus that symbolizes the four-letter name of God. He goes to the expected place at the expected time hoping to prevent the murder, only to find out that {{spoiler|it was all a [[Xanatos Gambit]] by a personal enemy of him to lure him to this deserted spot, and kill him.}}
** Which ironically winds up playing this straight anyway: the pattern itself holds up and ironically even for the exact same reasons as the [[Amateur Sleuth]] thinks they do; {{spoiler|it's just that the pattern is not the main motivation for the killer.}}
* In ''[[The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray]]'', the location of a series of murders forms the shape of the Chackh'
* Averted in [[Ellery Queen]]'s ''Cat of Many Tails''; while the deaths are plotted on the map, the pattern is irrelevant.
* In ''[[Tortall Universe|Terrier]]'', Beka Cooper maps out the Shadow Snake kidnappings, since she knew her lord did something similar with his big cases, looking for patterns.
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* Done in the ''[[Angel]]'' episode "Apocalypse, Nowish" using a map of recent mystical disturbances to find out where the Beast was heading.
* Practically every episode of ''[[Numb3rs]]''
** In one of the early episodes, the main character develops an algorithm which, based on the inherent human inability to produce random numbers/circumstances, uses a map with pushpins to find where the next murder will/would have occurred.
* In a double episode of ''[[Diagnosis: Murder]]'', serial bomber wrote the name of her dead father on the city map. The absurdity of this is [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Detective Steve Sloan, who draws a pig in the same pattern, though of course Dr. Sloan is right.
* One ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'' episode had a killer lining up the arms on his victims to resemble a line of paper dolls when the crime scene photos were placed side by side.
* ''[[Law and Order: Criminal Intent]]'' once featured a murderer who tried to randomize his crimes, but plotting them on a map showed repetition of a certain irregular shape. He was found out because he had autistic tendencies, and constantly arranged things into that shape without realizing it. The cops spotted him because they noticed things all over his house placed in the same
* In the teen newspaper drama ''[[Press Gang]]'', Linda was locked in an airtight vault with a half-broken phone. When she didn't turn up at work and four co-workers all reported the same weird phone calls in the middle of the night, they drew a cross to find that X marked the spot.
* Averted on ''[[CSI]]'', when confession-notes left on bathroom stall doors provided a clue to track a truck-driving serial killer. Although the graphic showing how all the restrooms' locations lined up resembled a Connect-The-Deaths diagram, the killer's girlfriend/accomplice is the one who left the clues, and the line merely plotted out the trucker's delivery route rather than a symbol.
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* Averted/Played With in an episode of ''[[NCIS: Los Angeles]]'', when crossover guest [[NCIS|Abby]] was the only person to discerned that a serial killer's victims were unusually random mixes of ages, races, and sexes (and possibly killing techniques). When he captures her, he notes that he'll be able to cross "Caucasian Female" off his list.
* Parodied brilliantly in obscure BBC buddy cop show spoof ''[[Lazarus And Dingwall]]''; What appears to be a serial killer with strange variations in his MO turns out to be ''two'' serial killers, using corpses whose names end with 'o' or 'x' to play a giant game of Noughts and Crosses on the map. To prevent the next murder, they must find the correct person with a name ending in 'o'... [[Needle in a Stack of Needles|In the middle of the city's Italian district.]]
* Subverted/criticised in ''[[Jonathan Creek]]'', where a TV crime show decides that a serial killer is killing women if their names are the names of flowers, dubbing them the Daisy Chain Killer, purely because it makes a good story. In the end it turns out the killer was just generally disturbed and killing randomly, and only one of their victims had a flower
* In ''[[Young Blades]]'', Siroc connects several kidnapping sites on a map and adds another point to form an obelisk, predicting that this point is the site where the victims are being held.
* In ''[[Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye|Sue Thomas FB Eye]]'', Sue realizes that the sites of a serial killer's murders form a constellation. One point doesn't fit the pattern, which leads them to a [[Jack the Ripoff|copycat killer]].
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{{quote|'''Lewis Black''': God only knows what devastation would have been brought if he succeeded in applying the adorable curly hair.}}
* [[wikipedia:Alphabet murders|The alphabet murders]]
* Possibly [https://web.archive.org/web/20150428005735/http://www.skcentral.com/articles.php?article_id=528 the Astrological murders].
== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Police Quest]] III'' goes for the old standard pentagram killings. In defiance of the top quote, the player doesn't figure it out until ''after'' his wife stabbed into a coma.
* ''[[Discworld Noir]]'' plays this trope straight.
* In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', this can be done by players. Unlike [[Everything Fades|most other things in the game]], player corpses do not despawn; they sit there on the ground for up to a week until reclaimed by their owners. This has, naturally, been abused for everything from rude jokes to [[Real Money Trade|gold advertising]], by leaving elaborate patterns of corpses lying around a major city.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* In ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'', Nale arranges a series of murders so that [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0347.html a map of their locations points to the city park], {{spoiler|where he's setting a trap for Elan}}.
* In ''[[8-Bit Theater
* Parodied in [https://web.archive.org/web/20140513044440/http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=060615 this] ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' strip, where Torg puts together a map with push pins during his search for Oasis, but the pins don't actually represent anything.
{{quote|'''Torg:''' "It's just a collage I threw together, but it sure makes me feel on top of things!"}}
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'''Chief Wiggum''': Let's get out of here!
''[All the cops flee in terror]'' }}
* ''[[The Magician (French TV series)|The Magician]]'': one villain sets fires in the city, Ace goes to the police station and shows that the locations form the letter '''M''' - as in Multifire (the name of the villain in question), then the officer arrests Ace, for being "the Magician" (his sign was also a M).
* In one episode of ''[[Inspector Gadget]]'', a series of very minor crimes committed by MAD agents, when plotted out on a map of Metro city, spell out MAD. The intent of this plan was for Gadget to figure this out and be waiting for them at the final crime scene, where they had laid a trap for him.
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