Richard Belzer plays Detective John Munch on Law & Order: SVU.

Except … he doesn’t. See, Munch has been found in the following TV shows, as John Munch:

• Homicide: Life on the Streets — all episodes (main character)
• Law & Order: SVU — main/recurring character
• Law & Order — four episodes: “Charm City”, “Baby, It’s You” (part 1), “Sideshow (Part 1)”, and “Entitled (Part 2)”
• Arrested Development — two episodes: “S.O.B.s” and “Exit Strategy”
• The X-Files — one episode: “Unusual Suspects”
• The Beat — one episode: “They Say It’s Your Birthday”
• Law & Order: Trial by Jury — one episode: “Skeleton (Part 2)”
• The Wire — one episode: “Took”
• Luther — one episode (mentioned as a US contact)
• Paris Section Criminelle — one episode on the French spin off of Law & Order

So … if you work under the theory that once a show has a crossover, or shares a character, the shows are in the same ‘universe,’ we have to add the following shows to the Munch-i-verse:

• St. Elsewhere — Dr. Roxanne Turner and Dr. Victor Ehrlich appeared on Homicide: Life on the Street
• Chicago Hope — crossover with Homicide (surgeon Jeffrey Geiger drops off an organ transplant)
• New York Undercover — crossover characters (psychologists and psychiatrists) with Homicide and Law & Order
• Deadline — crossover characters (reporters) with Law & Order
• Conviction — spin off of Law & Order: SVU, with ADA Alex Cabot
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent — spin off with many of the same characters
• In Plain Sight — crossover with Law & Order: Criminal Intent (Mary Shannon, one episode)
• Law & Order: LA — spin off of Law & Order, with a couple of the same characters

Think about that.

Oh and the St. Elsewhere connection is the one that should really piss you off. See, that show ended with the autistic son of one of the doctors, Tommy Westphall, looking into a snow globe. The implication that the whole show was his imagination. Which means so are all those other shows. Oh, and St. Elsewhere crossedover with … someone did the math, and about 90% of all TV shows in existance (as of 2003). The attached PDF is from Tommy Westphall’s Mind: A MULTIVERSE EXPLORED, and determines over 200 shows are intertwined.

For example the St. Elsewhere doctors went to the Cheers bar, Fraiser was a spin-off of Cheers, a character from the John Larroquette Show called in to Fraiser, so the John Larroquette Show is related to St. Elsewhere and thus, Homicide and Law & Order.

It gets even crazier the deeper you get down the rabbit hole and find out Buffy exists in this universe, as does BSG and Doctor Who. And M*A*S*H.

While everyone says Tommy’s dream is the center, I prefer to think it’s John Munch. He’s awesome. And it makes it one inch closer to everyone having a Lenny Brisco in their life.