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Murdoch Mysteries: Difference between revisions
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** Averted with Murdoch's younger sister Susannah.
* [[Area 51]]: After Murdoch and Company stumbled into a US/UK secret airship research facility in the middle of Ontario, the G-men noted that it's probably smarter to relocate the research station to the deserts of New Mexico.
* [[Asshole Victim]]: A few, but especially the victim in Me, Myself, and Murdoch. {{spoiler|The prime suspect for his murder is his daughter, who has multiple personalities that resulted from her seeing her father hack up her mother with an ax, when she was a child. The man got another woman to marry him and pose as his original wife, and throughout the years he's been abusing his daughter and locking her up in the basement where he dismembered her mom. The murderer is his stepson from his first wife, who ran away as a kid and came back years later disguised as a farmhand, who was suspicious of why another woman was posing as his mother, and axed his stepfather to death}}.
** {{spoiler|Inspector Brackenreid even said he would do his best to avert the death penalty for the stepson, saying about his stepfather, "Bastard bloody deserved it"}}.
* [[The Bad Guy Wins]]: Most notably in {{spoiler|''Belly Speaker'', in which the [[Creepy Doll|puppet-wielding]] suspect [[Obfuscating Insanity|deceives]] ''everyone'' (including Murdoch) and ultimately escapes justice. There is no indication that he was ever caught afterwards. However, given his reasons for doing so and the truth later coming out about his twin brother, it's hard to not feel even a bit [[Sympathetic Murderer|sympathetic]].}}
* [[Beta Couple]]: Constable Crabtree and Dr. Grace seem to be heading in this direction in Season 5.
* [[Big Bad]]: {{spoiler|Sally Pendrick}} in Season 3.
* [[California Doubling]]: Set in Toronto, filmed in Cambridge, Ontario as none of the streets of modern Toronto looks like 1890s Toronto.
* [[Canadian Accents]]: In the original TV movies, only Murdoch speaks with a (slightly anachronistic) neutral Canadian accent, while everyone else talks with varying shades of Irish, Scottish, English, French, and other European accents--historically accurate considering Canada's history of immigration. The TV series tone this down, but not by much.
* [[The Cameo]]: By [[Big Name Fan]] Stephen Harper, the ''Prime Minister of Canada''.
* [[Cannot Spit It Out]]: It's pretty clear to anyone that Murdoch likes Dr. Ogden, but he cannot get himself to say it.
* [[Chekhov's Gunman]]: A few times, since in at least two episodes there have been brief mentions of escaped convicts that usually don't have anything to do with the case, only for the criminals to show up near the end.
* [[Conspicuous CGI]]: This has been introduced in more recent seasons for some reason.
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* [[The Exile]]: Series 5 begins with {{spoiler|Murdoch prospecting for gold in the Yukon}}, having left Toronto and the police force after his actions in the season 4 finale.
* [[Fake Nationality]]: Canadian Dr. Ogden is played by Australian actress Helene Joy.
* [[Five-Man Band]]:
** [[The Hero]] /TheSmartGuy: Murdoch
** [[The Lancer]]: George
** [[The Big Guy]]: Inspector Brackenreid
** [[The Chick]]: Julia
* [[Four-Temperament Ensemble]]:
** Sanguine: George
** Choleric: Brackenreid
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* [[Gorgeous Period Dress]]: Lots of this, particularly in any scene where the characters dress up formally. The basic style of dress and hair seems to be early 1890's, with excursions into the 1900's (see the [[Anachronism Stew]] entry above).
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: [[Alias (TV series)|Jack Bristow]] turns up in the series four premiere as Murdoch's retired predecessor.
** [[Supernatural|Death]] believes adamantly in a Mummy's curse.
* [[Historical Domain Character]] / [[In the Past Everyone Will Be Famous]]: Several well-known figures make appearances, including Jack London, Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley, Harry Houdini, [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], [[H. G. Wells]], [[Nikola Tesla]] and Prince Albert Victor.
* [[Historical In-Joke]]: Murdoch mentions the phrase "[[Call of the Wild]]" to Jack London.
* [[Hot Scoop]]: Ruby Ogden. Her first appearance on the show involves her playing magician's assistant to Harry Houdini.
* [[Hospital Hottie]]: Subverted with Doctor Ogden, who works in a morgue. Also played straight in the sense that the show is set well before doctors were wearing scrubs; she performs her duties in [[Gorgeous Period Dress]].
* [[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming]]: The writers are quite fond of using anachronistically modern expressions for episode names
** The episode about a serial killer who seduced women on line--telegraph lines, that is--is titled "Murdoch.com".
** The one about a man who was murdered on an elevator is called aptly [[Spinal Tap|"This one goes up to eleven".]]
** The episode where Murdoch wakes up to find himself in the wrong country, with no memory of how he got there and everyone trying to kill him is of course, named "[[The Bourne Identity|The Murdoch Identity]]" (the episode even included a character called Treadstone).
* [[I Need a Freaking Drink]]: Often invoked by Inspector Brackenreid.
** {{spoiler|And in the final episode of series four, Murdoch.}}
* [[In Vino Veritas]] / [[Kissing Under the Influence]]: {{spoiler|After an evening of consuming absinthe, Murdoch and Julia end up making out on a blanket. Subverted in the case of the latter trope; neither regret their actions on the morning after and consequently pursue a relationship}}
* [[Intrepid Reporter]]: Paddy Glynn frequently pops up at the Toronto Constabulary during the fourth season looking for a [[Going for the Big Scoop|Big Scoop]] and usually irritating Inspector Brackenreid in the process. {{spoiler|In the penultimate episode of the season, he's unmasked as the Kissing Bandit, a thief who has been [[Just Like Robin Hood|robbing banks and giving the money to an orphanage]] and [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|kissing women during the robberies]]. He tells Murdoch and Brackenreid that he did it to ''make'' the news instead of just reporting on it.}}
* [[It's Personal]]: For Inspector Brackenreid, when his son is kidnapped and held for ransom.
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* [[Moral Dissonance]]: While Murdoch and Dr. Ogden are quite ahead of their times, the setting is definitely ''not''; racism and sexism are rampant, and Murdoch & Co. even run into eugenicists and anti-papists.
* [[Myth Arc]]: For the first two seasons the episodes were mostly self-contained. Season 3 has one dealing with {{spoiler|The Pendricks}}
* [[Never Found the Body]]: In the season three finale after a chase and explosion the accomplice's body is found, but not {{spoiler|Sally Pendrick}}. As of yet this has had no effect on the story, as season four went back to having self-contained episodes.
* [[Officer O'Hara]]: The stationhouse is pretty evenly divided between the Irish and Scots.
* [[Only So Many Canadian Actors]]: ''Every'' time a teenage character is presented, the actor is part of that same ''[[Degrassi]]''/Family Channel Canada group.
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* [[Playing Against The Type]]: Mary Walsh and Gavin Crawford, playing a grieving mother of a murdered daughter and a possibly insane puppeteer, respectively. Both are best known as anchors on the comedy news show ''[[This Hour Has 22 Minutes]]''.
* [[Political Correctness Gone Mad]]: "We don't call people "retarded" anymore, it's insensitive. [[Subverted Trope|The polite term is "moronic".]]
* [[Promotion to Parent]]: Only hinted at in one episode, but a conversation between Murdoch and Brackenreid suggests that the latter lost his parents at a young age, and had to take care of his four younger siblings.
* [[Quest for Identity]]: {{spoiler|The series three opener finds Murdoch in England with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He spends the episode recovering his memory while on the run from criminals out to kill him.}}
* [[Race For Your Love]]: At the end of series three, Murdoch rushes to the train station to {{spoiler|propose to Julia before she leaves Toronto}}; [[You Are Too Late|he arrives in time to see her train pulling away.]]
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* [[Reed Richards Is Useless]]: Not to the extent of superheroic achievements but Murdoch is actually an author of several extremely useful inventions (e.g. sonar) he could have patented or manufactured.
* [[Romancing the Widow]]: In series two Murdoch pursues a relationship with Enid Jones, a widowed single mother he meets while investigating a case.
* [[Science Marches On]]: Intentionally invoked in the episode set at University of Toronto, where currently outdated scientific concepts (luminiferous aether) and laughably basic ideas (single/double molecular bonds) are presented as revolutionary and cutting-edge...because they were at the time.
* [[Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right]]: {{spoiler|When William decides to unlock Ava Moon's cell and let her escape}} in the series four finale.
* [[Shipper on Deck]]: Ruby Ogden, for William and Julia. {{spoiler|When she returns in series four, she is clearly disappointed that Julia has chosen to marry Darcy over William.}}
* [[Ship Tease]]: Ruby Ogden frequently flirts with George Crabtree and some scenes have alluded to their chemistry.
* [[Short Run in Peru]]: Despite being a Canadian-produced series, new episodes air much earlier in the UK.
* [[Slow-Loading Internet Image]]: Played with, for one case, Murdoch needed a photograph of a kidnapped woman, but the closest photo is in Paris, France. So Murdoch had the Paris police overlay a grid on the photo, assign a number to the colour in each grid square, then telegraph the number to Toronto (i.e. a jury-rigged fax). The final "paint-by-number" job took 2 days to do, slowing yielding more clues until the case was solved, when the entire painting was done.
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* [[Star-Crossed Lovers]]: Murdoch and Dr Ogden, with a brace of [[The Paolo|Paolos]] each, and various other impediments. At the end of Season 3 Dr Ogden {{spoiler|leaves Toronto because she can't give William children}}; as of Season 4 {{spoiler|she's returned, but become engaged to another man while in Buffalo}}.
* [[Steampunk]]: A couple of episodes toy with this, before the Season 3 finale goes full-tilt into it with {{spoiler|Tesla's microwave death ray}}.
* [[Sweet Polly Oliver]]: A woman basketball team's worth. And back then, cross dressing was considered quite scandalous.
* [[Temporary Love Interest]]: Anna Fulford. Murdoch first meets her in 'The Murdoch Identity' while suffering amnesia in Bristol, but remembers Julia before their relationship can go anywhere. She returns briefly in season four, but [[Put on a Bus|has to go into witness protection]] when her dead fiance's criminal gang target her. {{spoiler|[[The Bus Came Back]] again briefly in series 5, but Murdoch was forced to [[Faking the Dead|fake Anna's death]] to help her escape this time.}}
* [[The Gay Nineties]]
* [[Those Two Guys]]: Crabtree and Higgins often fall into this when they're paired up
* [[Written
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