What is Law and Order?

An NBC police-procedural franchise created by Dick Wolf that ran 20 seasons and spawned spin-offs including SVU.

Where did Law and Order come from?

The pilot aired September 13, 1990 on NBC after Wolf pitched the concept to all three major U.S. networks in 1988.

What does Law and Order mean?

The title splits the show in two: police investigating crimes ('law') and district attorneys prosecuting suspects ('order'), read out in the opening monologue every episode.

How do you use Law and Order?

Common meme use overlays the 'DUN DUN' sound cue on unrelated clips or parodies the opening voiceover, and fans have built database and archive projects around the show.

Is Law and Order still popular?

The original series ended in 2010 with 456 episodes, though SVU keeps airing and archive projects keep the show circulating online.

Law and Order

1990tv show / catchphraseclassic

Published September 5, 2026

Law and Order is Dick Wolf's NBC police-procedural franchise that premiered September 13, 1990, and ran 20 seasons before its finale in May 2010. The show's rigid two-act format and the two-tone 'DUN DUN' sound cue became meme staples, spawning fan databases, parody Tumblrs, and long-running jokes about its endless spin-offs.

tv show memes crime memes courtroom memes sound effect memes catchphrase memes

Overview

The show follows a formula every episode: detectives investigate a NYC crime in the first half, then prosecutors take over in the second3. That predictable structure, paired with the two-tone 'DUN DUN' cue used to punctuate scene changes, made Law and Order easy to parody and remix. Fans built entire projects around the show's tics, from spreadsheets tracking every verdict2 to arts commissions cataloging on-screen computers1.

The meme energy around the franchise runs on repetition and volume: 456 original-series episodes1, plus five spin-offs including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, gave the internet a bottomless well of clips, screenshots, and quotable moments. The opening voiceover ('In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups...') is quoted so often it works as copypasta on its own4.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

NBC (TV broadcast) / Tumblr (meme spread)

Creator

Dick Wolf

Date

1990

Dick Wolf pitched Law and Order to all three major U.S. broadcast networks in 1988 before NBC picked it up for a full season3. The pilot aired September 13, 1990, and the show ran for 20 seasons and 456 episodes before its finale on May 24, 20101. At the time it wrapped, the franchise was labeled the longest-running crime drama on American primetime television3.

How It Spread

By early 2011, writer Josh Kyu Saiewitz was crowdsourcing verdicts for every original-series episode for the site Overthinking It, and by November 2012 the site published a full database of all 456 outcomes with charts on how often the good guys actually won2. In 2012, Rhizome commissioned artist Jeff Thompson to screenshot every computer that appeared in every episode, a project he stretched across roughly 18 months of viewing1. The Atlantic covered the archive in February 2014, noting the full DVD set Thompson ordered from NBC weighed about 20 pounds and cost around $7001.

The franchise also fed a run of PC games between 2002 and 2011, including Law and Order: Dead on the Money and Law and Order: Legacies, that mirrored the investigate-then-prosecute structure3. Meme use kept spreading through official channels too, with the NBC SVU Tumblr posting in-universe quips like 'Don't mess with the 16th precinct'6. Fan-written Urban Dictionary entries describe it as an 'extremely awesome show' and single out detective Lennie Briscoe as a character people are still quoting decades later4.

How to Use This Meme

The most common Law and Order riff drops the 'DUN DUN' scene-change sound onto an ordinary moment for mock-dramatic effect, often as a TikTok or short-video punchline. Text-based versions typically parody the opening monologue, swapping 'the police who investigate crime' for whatever subject the poster wants to mock. Verdict spreadsheets and computer-archive screenshots also circulate as image posts among fans.