The Mentalist/Trivia

• Actor Allusion:
  • When Sean Maher shows up as an antagonist to Jayne - ahem, Jane - he says the speech that the Victim of the Week was going to give was about River rafting...
  • Also, since Lisbon (Robin Tunney) is best known for being Sarah in The Craft, the whole episode "Red Rum" had a bit of this. And Lisbon's crazy looked remarkably Tourette's-ish, Tunney's other major role being the lead in Niagara, Niagara.
  • Jane commenting "You should have seen me ten years ago" might be a Shout-Out to Simon Baker's 2001 drama series, The Guardian.
• Directed by Cast Member: When Simon Baker directs episodes, prepare for your darkest episodes ever, both in lighting and storyline.
  • "Red Moon" in Season 3, an extremely well-done Red John Myth Arc episode.
  • "Blinking Red Light" in Season 4, where Jane plays off its coldest Batman Gambit in the series to prevail over the killer. It also reopens Red John Myth Arc.
• Fake American: Jane is played by Simon Baker, an Australian, while Rigsby is played by Owain Yeoman from Wales.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: The appearances of the following people:
  • Stacie Leah Rippy, from True Blood (where she was a vampire), a one-time bit-part actor, now getting major roles.
  • Also, Jessica from True Blood has a small role in the episode "Red Brick and Ivy".
  • Jaime Murray, from Hustle.
  • Tina Hobley, although apparently she went uncredited in one episode. Or so Popcultural Osmosis would have you believe...
  • For that matter, Tim Kang was previously best known as "that Asian guy" in the commercials for Cingular, Dairy Queen and Home Depot.
  • HRG is the husband of a murder victim.
  • Bobby Singer shows up as the owner of a stables.
  • Christina Cox, of Nikki & Nora cult fame, turns up as a girlfriend in the same episode.
  • John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox) and Connor Trineer (Charles "Trip" Tucker) guest-starred together in the 11/18 episode "Red Moon".
    • And Hoshi consulted with the CBI (Season 3 Episode 12).
  • The show is loaded with former 24 cast members. Just a couple examples are Gregory Itzen (Charles Logan) as Virgil Minelli and Leslie Hope (Teri Bauer) as Kristina Frye.
  • Morena Baccarin (a.k.a. Anna, Inara, Adria) is a matchmaker, recently widowed, in the episode "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".
  • Josh Lyman is Red John.
    • Or not.
  • Christopher Judge (Teal'c) plays a casino's security chief. Jay Avocone (Maj. Charles Kawalsky) is his boss.
  • Simon Tam is a mayor's aide moonlighting as an environmental terrorist.
• Real Life Relative: Simon Baker's, Tim Kang's and Owain Yeoman's wives have appeared on the show.
• Recycled Script: A plot from 2014 where Theresa goes undercover in prison in order to become friends with a female carjacker so they can catch her Bigger Bad boyfriend was used in an episode of Dark Justice in 1993.
• Screwed by the Network: Fans have been accusing CBS of this since Season 5. First they put the series in a graveyard shift (10 PM Sunday), then every so often they force it to compete with football and other highly-rated shows. At the same time, the series itself has seen its share of critics increasing since Season 4, who accuse the writers of pulling The Chris Carter Effect with its Red John Myth Arc. In the middle of the final season, they moved it to a new time slot on Wednesday nights with little advance notice. They also started it in the middle of the television season with a limited episode order and the announcement that this was the final season.

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