Dexter/Trivia

Actor Allusion: Michael C. Hall previously played a funeral home director on Six Feet Under. So when Dexter goes to a funeral home in the Season 5 premiere, and the roles are reversed, the show makes the most of it, from a set that looks like the Fisher funeral home to the director offering tissues.
Author Existence Failure: Narrowly averted in 2010, when Michael C. Hall recently won a nasty fight with cancer.
Cast Incest: Michael C. Hall (Dexter Morgan) and Jennifer Carpenter (Debra Morgan) were married for a couple of years while playing adopted siblings. (They filed for divorce in December 2010. The divorce was finalized on December 2, 2011.)
Fake American: Jonny Lee Miller, who plays Jordan Chase in Season 5, is British.
Fake Nationality/Fake Ethnicity:
- Puerto Rican Lauren Velez as Afro-Cuban-American Maria LaGuerta.
- Puerto Rican David Zayas as Cuban Angel Batista.
- Korean-American CS Lee as Japanese-American Vince Masuka (just as in Star Trek: Enterprise with Hoshi Sato).
Fake Russian: Irishman Ray Stevenson as Ukrainian Isaak Sirko.
Hey, It's That Guy!:
- Ajax became a cop after he got busted. Whoda thunk it?
- Look, Dexter's new nanny (on Season 5) is Queen Catherine of Aragon
- Not to mention Tasha Yar as Harry's nurse.
- Sci-Fi nerds will recognize Senator Bail Organa as Dexter's new best friend.
- And Crashdown as creepy taxidermist Neil Perry.
- Miguel Prado really should consider running for president. He played Matthew Santos in The West Wing.
- Wait a second... Is that David Fisher? And he's dealing with dead people and having conversations with his dead father!
- Dexter's dating (and later marries) Darla.
- Also in Season 1, one of Dexter's targets is Sam Merlotte from True Blood.
- Look, Rita's wife-beating coke-addled ex-husband is Lucifer!. Huh, who knew. He really turned nasty once he left that island.
- Bra'tac killed Dexter's mother.
  - No it was Enrique!
- and Dick Solomon killed his wife.
- The FBI-Agent Lundy is Frank and in the German dub is voiced by the same voice-actor as Gideon. Quite confusing when watched side by side.
- Dexter is related to John Wilkes Booth.
  - And Emily Rose.
- RoboCop plays a Dirty Cop who is investigating Dexter.
  - And Dick Jones is a serial killer.
- Malarkey is one of Lumen's rapists.
- A lawyer with an aneurysm is a big bad of Season 5.
- Colin Hart causes a lot of trouble as a drug dealer in Season 3.
- May is the first victim of the ring of rapists organized by Jordan Chase, and is still in some sort of really messed-up relationship with him.
- Poor Mary Cherry; she married a rapist who was murdered by Dexter as shown in the penultimate episode of Season 5.
- The Trinity Killer murders Dar la.
- Hey, it's the bad guy from Buckaroo Banzai! And that's Buckaroo Banzai!
- Nicky seems to have stopped hanging out with Jason Bourne and changed her name to Lumen.
- Vince's intern is Daphne Millbrook.
- Evil Uncle Jack is a dirty cop who loves Deb! Well that explains how he can afford the Cadillac...
The Other Darrin:
- Cody was played by Daniel Goldman in Season 1, and by Preston Bailey from Season 2 onward.
- Taken Up to Eleven with Harrison: he was portrayed by Brandon Michael Bass in Season 3 (during an Imagine Spot), by several uncredited babies in Season 4, by twins Luke and Evan Kruntchev from Seasons 5 to 7, and by Jadon Wells in Season 8.
Stunt Casting: From Season 3 onward, moderately big names are brought in to play the major recurring characters for each season.
- Jimmy Smits in Season 3.
- John Lithgow in Season 4.
- Julia Stiles, Johnny Lee Miller and Peter Weller in Season 5.
- Collin Hanks and Edward James Olmos in Season 6.
Trolling Creator: The show seems to go out of its way to make things as uncomfortable as possible for Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter by ramping up the levels of Cast Incest after their Real Life divorce. Probably the only case of the creator trolling the cast instead of the audience.