Castle (TV series)/Shout-Out

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• A great many (some mentioned above) to several of the actors' previous works. See the Actor Allusions entry under Trivia for more details.
• A couple to Alfred Hitchcock. The plot of "Double Down" is based on Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, with both the film and the novel getting a mention. In "Tick, Tick, Tick," taxidermy is referred to as Norman Bates' favorite pastime.
• "Little Girl Lost". Castle is asked why, with twenty-six bestsellers, he feels the need to shadow a cop. He points out that the ones on TV seem oddly fixated on their sunglasses.
• When asked what they call perps, some of the names that the officers answer with are Skeksis and Sleestak.
• In "Ghosts", they mention an old oil tanker bombing that crippled the captain. Who was the captain? Why, one Captain Pike.
• In "Deep In Death", Beckett discusses how she sometimes visits Little Odessa (Brighton Beach, Brooklyn). When she was Hana Gitelman on Heroes, she tended to be in Odessa, Texas.
• From the same episode, Castle grants Alexis permission to see Fame with her boyfriend "but I have dibs on A Christmas Carol." Alexis' actor, Molly Quinn, did voicework for the film.
• In the season 2 premiere, Castle asks the coroner if she wants some music, because she's taking a fingerprint from the inside of a glove and he says that in CSI they do it to music.
• Anyone who follows Nathan Fillion on Twitter probably squealed with pleasure when in "The Double Down", he slipped in his catch phrase "Bam, said the lady", and again when he made the puntacular offshoot "Blam, said the lady" in "Last Call".
• "Vampire Weekend" is full of Actor Allusions. Check that page for a list.
  • Castle references Underworld when talking about the body.
  • The episode itself is named after a popular indie rock band.
• In "A Rose For Everafter," the name of Castle's New Old Flame is a Shout-Out to Casablanca (Kyra Blaine), as are the resolution of the Love Quadrangle and this quote:

Kyra: Out of all the murders at all the weddings in all the cities in the world, you walk into mine.

• Quite a few to Casablanca, actually. In one episode, Castle is considering starting up his own bar, and trying to think up a name. His mother suggests "Rick's Cafe Americain". Castle says "That's much better than my idea: 'Castle-blanca'"
• In "Den of Thieves", upon walking on Castle's poker lesson for Alexis, Castle's mom references Casablanca with a similar joke:

Martha: "I am shocked, shocked, to find gambling going on in this establishment! [Pause] Deal me in."

• In "The Third Man" Esposito asks Castle and Beckett "why are you so obsessed with some motherfreaking snakes on a motherfreaking plane." Sound familiar?
• Though probably not a shout-out per se, the baseball-themed episode "Suicide Squeeze" was written by Jose Molina...which happens to also be the name of a baseball player who most recently played for the New York Yankees.
• In "Wrapped Up in Death", Castle finds a familiar looking brown fedora and whip, donning the fedora as he examines a sarcophagus. The episode title itself sounds like yet another murder mystery/bestseller reference, this time to the "In Death" series by J.D. Robb.
• Three Scooby Doo references: Castle compared Beckett to Daphne and tells the villain "This is the part where you say 'And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for You Meddling Kids!" and Beckett said the infamous "Ruh roh" towards the end of the episode after they find the killer.
• You might notice a certain red hair talkshow host's Dwight Eisenhower mug in "The Late Shaft".
• When Castle mentions a gun that shoots ice bullets, he's likely referring to a Dan Brown novel that involves this (at least in the first act).
• Breaking Bad gets a shout-out in "A Deadly Affair," mentioned as "that cable show" about a high school chemistry teacher cooking meth, thought to be mirrored by the current case. The same episode gets a shoutout to The Man with the Golden Gun with Castle in the hall of mirrors in a pistol fight.
• Castle gets to slip in a Double Rainbow reference while grilling Beckett over her lack of belief in psychics in "He's Dead, She's Dead".
• It also makes references to the following famous time-travel works: The Time Machine, Back to The Future, and Time and Again.
• Castle has a custom ringtone for calls from Beckett - an Ominous Pipe Organ; he likes to say "I Hear Dead People" whenever it sounds.
• "Anatomy of a Murder" has plenty of pretty blatant Shout Outs to Grey's Anatomy. It's also the title of a court drama movie starring Jimmy Stewart, considered one of the finest examples of the genre ever!
• In "Famous Last Words," the murder victim led a band called Blue Pill.
• "Almost Famous" features a completely made-up businessman named Mandelay, a reference to Seinfeld's fictional "Art Vandelay".
• The same episode also contains a Jersey Shore reference where the names Sammy, Ronnie and Pauly are mentioned by a rather fake-tanned woman with a poof...
• "Strange Encounters of the Murderous Kind" was just one long The X-Files reference, complete with Castle as an Agent Mulder referring to Beckett as Agent Scully.
• He mentions his Twitter account with subscriber number which, while the official Richard Castle Twitter account isn't even close to matching, is actually lower than the one on Nathan Fillion's own Twitter account.
• In "Nikki Heat" it is revealed that the Heat Wave screenplay was written by one Spike Rosenberg.
• And an earlier episode had a suspect named Xander Doyle.
• 3XK features a killer that has returned to his original hunting ground and has a name involving three. A similar killer has been seen previously on Dexter.
• Two suspects in "Countdown" are named Evan Bauer and Jack Cochran. In addition to the obvious reference, Robert Cochran and Evan Katz helped write, create, and produce the series.
• "A Deadly Game" guest stars Mitch Pileggi as a spy involved in a secret conspiracy except he's actually just LARP-ing, and pulls out the old Skinner classic of throwing someone (i.e. Castle) against a wall to menace them into doing what he says.
• "One Life to Lose": One of Castle's theories is of a guy named Mikkos creating a Weather Control Machine and hitting the city with a blizzard. Sound familiar, General Hospital fans?
• In To Love and Die in LA, Castle and Beckett manage to recreate the "hesitating by the door" scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Which could be a coincidence, but the very next scene namecheck the Ark of the Covenant.
• To Love and Die in LA also had an Open Sesame lock opened by taping the CEO's voice during a date, as seen in the movie Sneakers.
• In Pretty Dead, Beckett recalls that her beauty-pageant-contestant roommate made their apartment into their "own personal Vietnam." Castle responds with "I love the smell of hairspray in the morning. It smells like... victory."
• "Heroes and Villains" is full of Shout Outs to comic-books including Spider-Man, Iron Man, Daredevil, and Deadpool. And Shakespeare.
  • 'A Song of Ice and Fire gets one when Castle mentioned that the victim being cut in half was "so Game Of Thrones".
• In "Kick the Ballistics" the scene where Esposito distracts the bodyguard in the library is based on this scene from Beverly Hills Cop I.

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