Shinichi was born to Yusaku and Yukiko Kudo, mystery writer and former movie star respectively. He was born on the 4th of May, but he repeatedly forgets his birthday every year. He is a genius savant, and even from a young age, was very intuitive and observant. In addition, his father often made him puzzles and games to help sharpen his mind even more as he grew up.

Due to the influence of his father, and the generally laissez-faire environment at home, he has long been an incessant and persistent reader, especially of mystery novels-- he finished the entire collection of mystery novels in his elementary school library during his elementary school years. Also, Yusaku started to bring young Shinichi to crime scenes until Shinichi was in sixth grade. This has caused Shinichi to have a love of crime investigation, and for that reason, peers like Ran Mouri and Serena Sebastian called him a mystery geek (推理オタク suiri-otaku?) in passing.

His life between ages 6 to 16 is not well-documented. During junior high school he was made a starting midfielder in the school's soccer team as a freshman. The head of the soccer club even fell in love with him, but he rejected her nicely due to the fact that he was secretly in love with Ran.

His parents moved to the United States when he was 14 to pursue their own careers, while he was left in Tokyo. As Conan, he claimed to have learned many skills while on vacation with his parents in Hawaii, including sharp shooting, piloting an airliner, and driving a Ford Mustang, which has become a running gag among fans of the series.

At the beginning of the series, Shinichi is a 17-year old student at Titan High School (Teitan High School in the original Japanese versions). He is already a well-known detective who closed many difficult cases, and known as the savior of the police force. That same year, he left the soccer club, but even Ran considered his soccer skills at national level. He told her that he liked to play because he considered soccer as a way to train his reflexes-- akin to his idol, Sherlock Holmes's practice of fencing-- for his detective skills; he aspires to be the Sherlock Holmes of the Heisei era.

Shinichi is also known for his inability to sing; but since he can still distinguish different musical notes, by definition he cannot be referred to as tone deaf.

He apparently can speak English, as evident in Volume 21 of the manga, where he conversed with and translated for an American diplomat (in a flashback Ran had of a case that Shinichi solved before he was shrunk).

As Conan Edogawa

At the beginning of the series, Shinichi brings his best friend Ran to a local theme park called "Tropical Land," to celebrate her victory in the Metropolitan Karate Championships. He later ends up solving a murder case involving a decapitation that occurred on the train car of the "Mystery Coaster" that they had been riding on. As they are leaving, Shinichi witnesses a suspicious exchange between an unknown man and a person dressed in black in a secluded area just outside the park. He leaves Ran, who heads home reluctantly, and goes off to find out what is going on. As he tries to listen in to the quiet conversation-- a blackmail over an arms deal that was apparently worth 100 million yen-- he does not notice an accomplice sneak up behind him. This accomplice, another man in black, attacks him by clubbing him on the head with a metal pipe, and then forces him to swallow a new experimental poison. They then leave him to die. This poison, known as APTX 4869, is extremely potent and designed to kill a person while leaving no traces of its existence in the victim after death. However, instead of killing Shinichi, a rare side-effect occurred. It slowly and painfully shrinks his body, reverting his appearance back to that of his six or seven year-old self. In desperation and confusion, Shinichi heads back to his house and runs into his next door neighbor and close family friend, Dr. Hiroshi Agasa. Dr. Agasa is a kind, but somewhat eccentric scientist, and although he is retired, he still likes to invent many odd things that later help Shinichi adjust to life as a little kid again while solving cases. Shinichi tries to tell him what happened and eventually manages to convince him that he was shrunk by some men in black who attempted to kill him. Dr. Agasa tells Shinichi that he absolutely must keep his identity a secret, because if the wrong person/people were to find out about his predicament, these people, who he later finds out call themselves the Black Organization, would definitely come back and kill him, along with anybody associated with him-- including all his friends and family. They also both worry because there was no dead body recovered, so the strange men may come back looking for him due to that as well. Conan reluctantly agrees that until he learns more about them, it is best to keep anyone from finding out that he is really someone who is supposed to be dead. He especially does not want Ran involved.

Ran soon goes over to Shinichi's house (where Shinichi and Dr. Agasa were) looking for him because she is worried, and sees the little boy. She thinks that he is adorable and asks him what his name is. Shinichi quickly comes up with an alias, Conan Edogawa (江戸川 コナン Edogawa Conan) , after Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Rampo. Dr. Agasa tells her that he is a distant relative whose parents were in an accident overseas and that it may be better if he stays with her, since he doesn't know much about taking care of kids. "Conan" then goes to live with Ran and her father, Kogoro Mouri, a private detective, and hopes that by living with a detective, he can stay on top of current cases and be able to gather clues about the "Black Organization". Unfortunately, Detective Mouri is so incompetent that Shinichi usually has to solve the mysteries for him. Shinichi frequently knocks out Kogoro with a watch that shoots mini tranquilizer darts and uses his voice-changing bow tie to imitate Kogoro's voice. (These gadgets were made by Dr. Agasa for him, and he later amasses many more gadgets that help him out.) Because of this, Kogoro gets all the credit and quickly becomes famous for his incredible deductions. Cases also begin to pile up, which occasionally gives Shinichi a chance to gather hints on the Black Organization.

In order to keep Conan's secret safe, Dr. Agasa enlists Conan at Titan Elementary School (帝丹小学 Teitan Shōgaku?), where Conan befriends three of his classmates, Amy Yeager (吉田　歩美 Yoshida Ayumi?)), George Kaminski (小嶋　元太 Kojima Genta?), and Mitch Tennison (円谷　光彦 Tsuburaya Mitsuhiko?)). Together, they form the Junior Detective League (少年探偵団 Shōnen Tantei-dan?). Conan realizes that even though these kids are really kids, they are very astute and often help him solve difficult cases.

As the story progresses, Conan also befriends Anita Hailey (灰原哀 Ai Haibara?), who grew up within the Black Organization and is a former member of it along with her sister. Her real name is Shiho Miyano, and she is a gifted biochemist and creator of the APTX 4869 poison. She took the drug in an attempted suicide after her sister was murdered by the same men who attacked Shinichi and shrunk him while she was trying to arrange for herself and Shiho to leave the organization. The drug backfires on her too, and she becomes a little kid again as well. Through her child-like guise, she escapes the organization, and then Dr. Agasa finds her and takes her in to live with him. She proves to be a valuable ally to Conan and the gang as she continues her search for an antidote in addition to helping him gather information on the Black Organization in order to bring them down.

Shinichi/Conan has returned to his normal form several times throughout the series. First was during episodes 48-49 where he temporary returns to normal after drinking alcohol while infected with a cold. He quickly turns back into Conan after solving the case. The next time was during episodes 191- 193 (Files 3-7 volume 26), where he returns for about two days after taking the prototype antidote for APTX 2896. He solves two cases, and had an unfinished date with Ran in the restaurant where his father purposed to his mother. During files 647 to 654, Conan returns to his Shinichi self while helping solve a murder case. He accidentally took a prototype antidote for APTX 4896, mistaking it for a cold pill and became Shinichi again. After the case is solved, his time is up and he manages to hide in a bathroom stall from his friends. Though he returns to being Conan, Ai gives him a second antidote, giving Shinichi another 24 hours as himself. She warns him however that if he continues to take the antidote on a regular basis, it will be less effective each time and eventually he will develop immunity to it. However, it is implied that Shinichi has already developed some immunity, when he returns to being Conan after about 4 hours.

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Ran was born on October. Ran is a childhood friend and the main romantic interest of Shinichi Kudo and the daughter of private detective Kogoro Mouri and Eri Kisaki, a lawyer. Her parents separated when she was six, and one of her biggest goals is to get them back together.

Ran is the captain of the karate team of Teitan High School and therefore is very powerful as demonstrated when she wins her Regional Championship. Besides that, she is also very talented and very lucky in gambling. She is so lucky that she amazingly wins in all of the gambling games she ever played.

After Shinichi disappears, a boy named Conan Edogawa comes to stay with Ran, acting as her surrogate little brother. Little does Ran know that "Conan" is actually Shinichi shrunken down to size. Shortly after meeting him, she reveals her true feelings about Shinichi to him.

In time Ran suspects that he is actually Shinichi, but Shinichi always manages to "prove" to her otherwise. This happens many times, and in one she was actually so sure until Shinichi (temporarily restored to his true age) appears at the same time as Conan (actually Anita Hailey). Every time Ran learns that Conan is Shinichi, she tries to make him confess the truth. She also fantasies that Shinichi is with a brown/blond-haired woman (one of them had happened without her knowing, which was Episode 129 of the series) all the time.

Ran and Shinichi Kudo

Ran and Shinichi are childhood friends. It is likely that they have known each other since the were born due to Eri Kisaki and Yukiko Kudo's friendship. Ran likes Shinichi romantically but isn't adverse to knocking him down a peg when he gets a little too arrogant.

Ran and Shuichi Akai

Ran and Shuichi Akai meet briefly in New York City during the 'Golden Apple' case(episodes 286-288 in the anime and manga chapters 350-354) while Akai is looking for a serial killer. Ran, knowing the description of said murderer (long hair and of Japanese descent), first mistook Akai for the serial killer. She is soon proved wrong. Later she runs into Akai back in Japan but doesn't recognize him. Akai notes at that time that she was very similar to Akemi Miyano(his deceased girlfriend and Ai's sister).

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Kogoro is a private investigator, but he prefers to laze around all day. Kogoro can easily become infatuated with beautiful women and he would always boast of his career achievements so as to make them admire him. His dream woman is pop idol Yoko Okino, and he never misses her television show. Because of his behavior around attractive woman, he often embarrasses his daughter Ran Mouri and while it is not the reason why Kogoro's wife left him, it is why she hasn't come back.

While he is never outright called an alcoholic, Kogoro has a tendency to get intoxicated at social events, and Conan makes sarcastic remarks about him spending money on alcohol. In the anime, his office is littered with empty beer cans, and he keeps a well-stocked liquor shelf.

Throughout most of the series, he is seen as a pretty incompetent detective, often missing obvious clues and jumping to conclusions, though it should be noted that several of these conclusions were shared by other people on the scene, as well as the fact that Kogoro also follows many police procedures (asking questions, following leads) quite well. Despite his ineptness, he had been a prominent police officer under Inspector Megure ten years prior to the start of the series He is shown to have left the police force after events addressed in the second movie, Case Closed: The Fourteenth Target.

Thanks to Conan's undercover help in solving numerous cases, Kogoro's reputation as a detective grows quickly. He hardly remembers the solutions of any cases because of Conan knocking him out with tranquillizer darts so that he can announce the solution to the case using an imitation of Kogoro's voice as a proxy. However, Kogoro never seems to wonder about that and often boasts about his merits.

In later stories, there are times when Kogoro is actually able to solve crime cases without the help of Conan, especially when people he knows or cares about are involved. (It appears that, while he can connect the dots just fine, he can't actually find them as quickly as Conan does.) The most notable of these events takes place during a trip to a hot spring, where one of his old college friends is murdered. Kogoro is actually so disturbed and determined to find the killer on his own that Conan cannot bring himself to drug him, limiting himself to surreptitiously drawing attention to the necessary clues. Despite his frequent moronic analysis, Kogoro is actually smarter than most average men, as he is able to decipher certain clues and figure out things which most average men probably wouldn't figure out. He is even able to completely solve a crime himself in the ninth movie, Detective Conan: Strategy Above the Depths, and Conan applauds him mentally for it.

In college, Kogoro was the ace of the Judo team. However, he was highly vulnerable to stage fright. He is also an excellent marksman.

Kogoro's daughter, Ran Mouri, is also the daughter of Eri Kisaki, who is now living separately after an argument ten years prior. Despite constantly feigning disinterest in her, Kogoro still has feelings for his wife--he has even asked her to move back in with him, but she pretends not to hear him because she is not "ready" yet, though she still has feelings for him as well. These are expressed through jealousy when he comments on other girls' looks.

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Yusaku Kudo is a famous mystery novelist married to Yukiko Kudo. The two have one son, Shinichi Kudo.

He is known around the world as being the writer of a popular mystery novel series starring the Night Baron (called Knight Baron in Case Closed). Twenty years prior to the start of the series, he helped Inspector Megure solve difficult cases, much as his son does in the beginning of the series. However, Yusaku never sees himself as anything but a writer. Because of his fame, he and Yukiko move to Los Angeles one year before the story begins, leaving their then-fourteen-year-old son behind to complete his schooling. Before leaving, and when Shinichi was still a 10 year old kid, he and the previous KID, used to be rivals. It was hinted in episode 472-473 that he may know the original KID's secret identity. Oddly enough, he was the one who named the previous KID, reading 1412, as KID, making him technically a parent of KID, and Shinichi's brother, figuratively through episode 471-473.

The Kudo couple make their first appearance in episode 43. They are shown to have become worried because sense Shinichi turned into Conan, he has not called them (which is a few months). They ask Dr. Agasa about the problem. Agasa tells them about Shinichi's poisoning and his double life as Conan. In an attempt to convince Conan that he should join his parents in Los Angeles, Yusaku disguises himself the Night Baron and Yukiko disguises herself as Fanny Edogawa. With Dr. Agasa's help, they stage a mock kidnapping in an attempt to prove to Shinichi that he can't pull it off on his own, and to convince him to go live with them in America.

In episode 96, Yusaku appears once again, this time in an attempt to sharpen Conan's skills, although the fact that Yusaku is the mysterious man is not revealed until the end. It turns out that he had also come to win Yukiko's forgiveness for some offense and to take her back home with him.

He also helps to design a Sherlock Holmes virtual video game in the 6th movie, that Conan and his friends get trapped inside of.

As his son can be compared to Sherlock Holmes he would be compared to Sherlock's older brother Mycroft. As he is a better detective but chooses not to be one.

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Yukiko Kudo is married to Yusaku Kudo, and is the mother of Shinichi Kudo. She had become a famous actress and idol at a very young age, but abandoned her promising career in order to marry her husband. This caused an uproar within her family at the time, since she had been only 20 years old. After having Jimmy, she and her husband traveled to America to pursue their own careers after he had grown old enough to care for himself.

Yukiko is also an old friend of Ran Mouri mother Eri Kisaki from high school, and both had competed in a pageant which had taken place in their school. Despite still being friends, they keep up a friendly competition in those regards, since the contest had ended in a tie. (Kogoro had failed to turn in his vote.)

In episode 43, Yukiko makes her first appearance in the series. In the episode, the couple had returned from America to discover that their son had gone missing. Dr. Hiroshi Agasa feels inclined to tell them about what had happened to Shinichi, and the danger that he is in. They are extremely worried about him and want him to go live with them in America. They do this by staging a mock "kidnapping" of one Conan Edogawa and create a case for him to solve, while scaring him half to death at the same time.

Yukiko disguises herself as Conan's supposed mother, "Fanny Edogawa" and shows up at the Moore Detective Agency to pick him up. Conan immediately knows something is wrong since Conan was an alias that he made up, and fears her to be part of the Black Organization. In the end, she and her husband reveal themselves to him, and plead with him to stay with them in America. Conan rejects the idea, because he feels that he needs to bring down the Black Organization and keep the Professor, Ran, and her family safe at the same time. Thus, Yukiko takes him back to Ran Mouri place while disguised as Fanny. She and her husband then return to America, but check in on him from time to time.

Later, in episode 96, Yukiko returns to Japan to find that Ran is highly suspicious of Conan being Shinichi. Yukiko pretends that she didn't know that Conan is Shinichi to lure Ran away, and convinces her that Conan is a very distant relative of both herself and the professor. Later in the episode, Yukiko takes Conan to her friend's house, where yet another mystery has to be solved.

Yukiko had also studied for an acting role with her friend, Sharon Vineyard (who unbeknowest to her, was Vermouth) under the world-famous stage magician, Toichi Kuroba. One of the things he taught them was disguise, and they both become masters of the art. They did not know that Toichi Kuroba was secretly the original Kaitou Kid, who was later murdered by the Black Organization, and whose identity was later discovered and taken up by his own son. Yukiko had also met the successor of Kid, yet she also does not know. However, what she did know was that she had met Toichi's son before, Kuroba Kaito when he was 10.

Yukiko's personality is more that of a wild, over-confident teenager than of a mature woman; she is impulsive, a reckless driver (caught back in New York because of it), and likes to stand in the limelight (literally) whenever she has the chance. Because of her marriage to a famous mystery author and her knack for becoming involved in criminal cases from time to time, she has been publicly dubbed the "Night Baroness", after one of her husband's more notorious characters, the Night Baron.

A running gag in the series is that whenever Yukiko meets her son and they have to pretend not to know each other, in the original Japanese versions Shinichi (or rather, Conan) calls her "oba-san". This term, which means "old lady" or "grandmother", is often used by small children for women in their thirties and forties, sometimes even younger ones - a rather discomforting thought for those Japanese women who consider themselves in the prime of their lives. Yukiko also reacts rather unfavorably to it - she is "only" 37 years old - so Conan has to correct himself by calling her "onēe-san" ("older sister").

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