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• Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • Cassandra, from the episode of the same name, is played by Geraldine McEwan (of Henry V and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves fame).
  • Craig Charles lampshaded this when they were filming the reunion scene with Selby and Chen. He replied to Kryten's question, 'You know these people, sir?', exclaiming, 'Of course I do - they're in Eastenders!'
    • As is Kill Crazy, incidentally.
    • And now, so is Baxter.
  • The US pilots had a ton of these -- Tom from Scary Movie 4 played Lister, Daphne Moon popped up as Holly, Jadzia Dax appeared as the second cat (the first was played by Hinton Battle, who isn't a particularly well-known actor but is pretty legendary in the world of dancing), and Kryten was played by... er, Robert Llewelyn, who was Kryten in the BBC series Red Dwarf.
    • Apparently, Hinton Battle is a hero of Danny John-Jules. Battle apparently put a lot of work into his version of The Cat, making John-Jules something of an Ascended Fanboy.
  • And Mr. Weasley is Peterson, Peter Pettigrew is a game custodian in Back to Reality, and Bubble gets to work on a Holoship.
  • Susan is the queen in the medieval virtual reality game.
  • Lister's confidence is personified by Craig Ferguson. Yep, same one.
  • Professor Mamet, Kryten's creator is played by Jenny Agutter.
  • The abandoned ship's computer in DNA is voiced by Richard Ridings - AKA The Mentor, Sarge, and Daddy Pig.
  • The woman the Polymorph disguises itself as before sucking out the Cat's vanity would go on to play the eyepatch-wearing Madam Kovarian in Doctor Who.
  • "Nicey" Ackerman is Lewis.
  • In Parallel Universe Deb Lister (Lister's female equivalent) is Brigadier Bambera!
• The Pete Best: Kryten first appeared in a one-off appearance in Season 2 where he was played by David Ross. The character proved popular and opened up more storytelling possibilities, so Grant and Naylor decided to bring him back as a regular -- Ross was unable to take the role due to scheduling commitments, however, so he was replaced by Robert Llewellyn (with a Hand Wave about how his appearance and personality was now different). Llewellyn proceeded to make the part his own.
• Shout-Out:
  • The first two series' title music is very reminiscent of Also Sprach Zarathustra, and the sequence is in line with scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey that utilise said music. The name Holly is a Shout-Out to 2001‍'‍s HAL, too, as is the fact that Holly, or "Hol" as Lister sometimes calls him, refers to David Lister as "Dave." (In the radio sketch series Dave Hollins, Space Cadet on which the series is based, the computer was known as 'Hab'.)
  • Speaking of music, Ace "What a guy!" Rimmer's theme in Dimension Jump could very well be a shout out to "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun. A different theme was used in Stoke Me A Clipper.
  • There's a Shout-Out to Die Hard 2: Die Harder in "DNA"; Lister exclaims "How can the same smeg happen to the same guy twice?" after he is attacked yet again by his favorite foods. The Cat responds "Last time it was hors d'oeuvres, this time it's lunch!" referencing the film poster tagline for Aliens.
  • Queeg's name (and most of his episode's plot) is a shout out to The Caine Mutiny.
  • The episode "Backwards" mentions a mysterious bank robber named Michael Ellis.
  • The in-universe TV show "Androids" has a theme song that sounds suspiciously like the long-running Australian soap drama, Neighbours.

"Androids, everybody needs good Androids...."

• Trope Namer:
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: Repeated to Overly Long Gag levels in the first episode.
  • Hard Light: Rimmer.
  • More Teeth Than the Osmond Family: The polymorph.
• What Could Have Been: A deleted scene from Series II has the Cat and the Toaster singing a duet. Sadly, the Toaster's lines were never recorded.
  • The first series would have ended with the episode "Confidence and Paranoia", and would've had a cliffhanger ending with Kochanski being resurrected as a second hologram. But as the planned second episode "Bodysnatcher" just wasn't working, they scrapped it, rewrote the ending for "Confidence and Paranoia" to have a duplicate of Rimmer activated instead, and wrote the episode "Me^2" as a new series finale.
  • Similarly, the planned opener for the third series would've been an episode titled "Dad", which would've resolved the cliffhanger of Lister's pregnancy and re-introduced Kryten on-screen, as well as having Lister give birth to a single baby boy. Again, the episode wasn't working so it was scrapped and replaced by a comically-rapid Opening Scroll (which also resolved the "Where do the twins come from?" dangling plot thread for good measure).
  • A third Red Dwarf novel co-written by Grant and Naylor, titled The Last Human, was being planned before their writing partnership split. (Naylor later re-used the title for his own novel, even though the stories were different.)
  • The eighth series finale "Only the Good..." had four different endings altogether. The original ending (which was filmed but not used) was a happy ending where they saved the ship and took it back for themselves. The second ending (written, but not filmed) was a Downer Ending with Rimmer trapped aboard the disintegrating ship. The third ending involved Ace Rimmer coming to the rescue at the last minute -- this was ready to be filmed, to the extent that Chris Barrie was in his Ace costume, before the broadcast ending was thought up and hastily thrown together.