Columbo/Trivia

Hey, It's That Guy!: Lots, especially for post-70's audiences watching the original series. Notably including Leslie Nielsen pre-pratfall phase and both Spock and Kirk as arrogant murderers.
- Walter Koenig also appeared as a crime scene detective in the first William Shatner episode.
- Pat Morita played a butler in Etude In Black
- Jamie Lee Curtis had a brief cameo in season 5 as a waitress. Just earlier in that same season, Janet Leigh, her mother, played the killer.
- It's also fun to play this with recurring actors throughout the movies. One person who plays either a random police officer or just a bystander in one episode might be the victim or accomplice in another. Sometimes, as with Dabney Coleman, a police officer in one and then the killer in another.
A persistent legend holds that Peter Falk allegedly picked Columbo's beat-up Peugot 403 convertible out himself one day after having been cast. He saw the car in a mechanic's shop where they were apparently using it as a test-bed/oversized paperweight, and thought that given Columbo's otherwise disheveled appearance, the car would be perfect. He bought it from the mechanics and drove it to the lot that day.