"Law & Order": Great Episodes Trivia Quiz

Answer: a kidney

This episode takes its basic plot device from what is known as an "urban legend," a term coined by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand. Urban legend experts David and Barbara Mikkelson, who operate the Snopes urban legends website refer to it as the "Kidney heist hoax." As told, it usually involves a person waking up in a bathtub full of ice, with a note to call a doctor.

Answer: Luring her from Connecticut makes him eligible to be tried there, in a death penalty state.

At the time this episode aired, New York did not have the death penalty. Connecticut did, but only in certain circumstances. One circumstance was felony murder, and luring the victim from Connecticut to New York could be construed as kidnapping, and a predicate crime, making the murder felony murder.

Answer: Italian

While the episode in general is based on the Crown Heights riots in New York, which were sparked by a Chassidic Jew accidentally killing a black child with his car, this aspect of the case is based on an incident that followed the Rodney King police officers' trial, and the riot it sparked.

A white man in Los Angeles named Reginald Denny was pulled from his truck and beaten by a mob. He went into a seizure when a brick hit him in his head, and although he survived the beating, he required several years of therapy, and never entirely recovered.

Answer: It came from the factory with corroded leads, which had nothing to do with its being used.

It may seem shocking that things like pacemakers get reused, but this is the only way some people who need them can afford them. Even pacemakers from cadavers are used, as long as pacemaker failure did not contribute to the patients' deaths.

Answer: that the victim has retained her own lawyer

Claire Kincaid neglects to tell Ben Stone that the victim has hired a lawyer, implying that the victim planned a lawsuit as soon as she had a guilty verdict to back it up.

In the real world, a civil suit does not require a guilty verdict, but it helps-- although, sometimes the civil suit precedes the criminal case, because the time to file the civil suit is shorter than the statute of limitations on the criminal charge. Other times, a civil suit may succeed in spite of a criminal case failing, as in the OJ Simpson case, because the burden of proof is different.

This case is based on the case of Mike Tyson, who was found guilty in 1992 of raping a young woman during the Black expo in Indianapolis.

Answer: The Mack Rangers

The Mack Rangers is the fictional name used in the show. The Spur Posse was the real name of a sex-for-points club discovered at a California high school, which was the basis for this episode.

Also incorporated into this episode was the urban legend of the snuff film. A snuff film is a film that supposedly deliberately captures a real human death as part of the narrative. While rumored to exist almost since the birth of film, no true snuff film has ever come to light. There are serendipitous filmings of human deaths, though, such as the famous Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination, and likewise, the newsreel footage of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby.

Answer: a gun

In one of the most dramatic scenes in the entire series, the mother shoots the suspect while he is testifying. This is based on the case of Ellie Nesler, who shot her son's molester in open court. Only this detail is taken from the Nesler case, though. The rest of the case is fictional.

In the "Law & Order: UK" episode based on this script, the mother uses a knife, due to the ban on handguns in the UK. There is an episode of "Law & Order: SVU" where a victim throws a corrosive liquid on her rapist in open court.

Answer: the father's son from his first marriage

In the version of this script for "Law & Order: UK", the killer is revealed to be the ex-wife of the father, who was never able to have children of her own.

This episode was based loosely on the 1997 Louise Woodward case, a British au pair who was convicted of second-degree murder, and initially sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, though on appeal, this was reduced to involuntary manslaughter, and time served.

In 2011, Patrick Barnes, a pediatric radiologist who had testified for the Woodward prosecution, stated that he would no longer give the same testimony regarding the presence of evidence for shaken baby syndrome, the baby's official cause of death. Vast changes in the scanning technology revolutionized understanding of brain injuries between 1997 and 2011, and "We started realizing there were a number of medical conditions that can affect a baby's brain and look like the findings that we used to attribute to shaken baby syndrome or child abuse," Barnes said in an NPR interview.

Answer: Attempts to have the man civilly committed

Another rape has been committed in the area, and the victim is dead. McCoy is sure the paroled rapist is guilty of the crime, although he has little more than his gut to go on, and cannot get an arrest warrant. New York has a new provision for committing without trial habitual criminals, because being an habitual criminal is now considered a form of mental illness.

"Uncivilized", a "Law & Order: SVU" episode has the ADA try something similar with a child molester she cannot indict.

Answer: Adam's wife

Adam's wife had a stroke earlier in the episode, and he had to sign a release to turn off her respirator. When she failed to breathe on her own, she was allowed to die-- that is, the respirator was not restarted.

Claire Kincaid died in the final episode of the previous season.

The woman who was the target of the shooter survived her wound, but two other people died in the shooting. One died from the same bullet that wounded the woman, and the other fell off the pier in the confusion and drowned.

The suspect does not get the death penalty, in spite of the case having been taken away from Adam Schiff, and the suspect tried for capital murder.