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.
- 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.