I've always noticed that Fade In To Murder has one little thing in common with Peter Falk's movie THE CHEAP DETECTIVE - each one has a character with a lot of aliases. The Madeline Kahn character in that film has a different name in every scene, and Ward Fowler has three or four names. He's Ward Fowler, Charles Kipling, John Schnelling, and even off the show he's Detective Lucerne (when he and Columbo pretend that he is).