Richard Belzer plays Detective John Munch in four crossover episodes of Law & Order (1990). He is the only actor to play the same character in crossovers from two different series. For his first three appearances on Law & Order (1990), Munch was crossing over from Homicide: Life on the Street (1993). During his fourth and final Law & Order (1990) appearance, Munch was crossing over from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999).
This episode appears to be based on three separate/incidents cases:
- The 1993 Colin Ferguson and the Long Island Rail Road shooting case. On December 7, 1993, a Long Island Railroad train pulled into the Merillon Avenue station in Garden City, New York, United States, when passenger Colin Ferguson pulled out a 9 mm pistol and started firing at other passengers. He murdered six people and wounded nineteen others before being wrestled to the floor of the train by three men, as he reloaded his Ruger P-89 9mm pistol for the third time, and held until the arrival of the Police. Ferguson's trial was notable for a number of unusual developments, including his firing his defense counsel and insisting on representing himself and questioning his own victims on the stand. On February 17, 1995, Ferguson was convicted of the six murders. He was also convicted of attempted murder for wounding nineteen passengers. As of 2019, he is serving his sentence of 315 years and eight months to life at the Upstate Correctional Facility in Franklin County, New York.
- The 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack. The attack was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated on 20 March 1995, in Tokyo, Japan, by members of the cult movement Aum Shinrikyo. In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on three lines of the Tokyo Metro (then part of the Tokyo subway) during rush hour, killing 12 people, severely injuring 50, and causing temporary vision problems for nearly 1,000 others. The attack was directed against trains passing through Kasumigaseki and Nagatacho, where the Diet (Japanese parliament) is headquartered in Tokyo. The group, led by Shoko Asahara, had already carried out several assassinations and terrorist attacks using sarin, including the Matsumoto sarin attack nine months earlier. They had also produced several other nerve agents, including VX, and attempted to produce botulinum toxin and had perpetrated several failed acts of bio terrorism. Asahara had been made aware of a police raid scheduled for March 22 and had planned the Tokyo subway attack in order to hinder police investigations into the cult and perhaps spark the apocalypse they believed in. The leader also wanted to start a Third World War. In the raid following the attack, police arrested many senior members of the cult. Police activity continued throughout the summer, and over 200 members were arrested, including Asahara. Thirteen of the senior Aum management were sentenced to death and later executed; many others were given prison sentences up to life. The attack remains the deadliest terrorist incident in Japan as defined by modern standards.
- The 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. This was a white supremacist terrorist attack which occurred at the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963. The bombing was committed by Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry, but no prosecutions were conducted until 1977, when Robert Chambliss was tried and convicted of the first-degree murder of one of the 4 victims, 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair.
This is the first crossover storyline for Law & Order (1990) and Homicide: Life on the Street (1993). This crossover was unusual: while both series appeared on NBC, they did not share a common production company, producer, or writing staff, and the styles of the series differed significantly. Nonetheless, the experiment was successful enough that two more crossover stories were done in later seasons. Richard Belzer (Detective John Munch), Andre Braugher (Detective Frank Pembleton), and Kyle Secor (Detective Tim Bayliss) all play their "Homicide" characters in this episode.
Since 1974, Charm City was the nickname or slogan for Baltimore. At one point Charm City was the official nickname: no longer so, but unofficially and sporadically used, sometimes ironically depending on Baltimore current events. Depending on the neighborhood or event, still applicable.
The storyline of this episode continues on "For God and Country (1996)." Jerry Orbach (Detective Lennie Briscoe), Benjamin Bratt (Detective Rey Curtis), and Jill Hennessy (A.D.A. Claire Kincaid) all play their Law & Order (1990) characters in that episode.