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  • Accidentally-Correct Writing: Although the novels aren't true canon and some bits got invalidated by later episodes, one of them gets a tidbit right, having Mac recall that Claire liked opera. "Indelible" reveals they were planning to go to one on 9/11 and Mac kept the tickets until the 10th anniversary.
  • Actor-Shared Background:
    • Stella Bonasera, like Melina Kanakaredes, is of Greek descent.
    • Mac Taylor, like Gary Sinise, is a native of Chicago.
    • Danny Messer, like Carmine Giovinazzo, is from Staten Island.
    • Jo Danville, like Sela Ward, was a cheerleader in college. Actually, Ward was in high school as well.
  • …But I Play One on TV: Sinise related an incident where he was in a minor traffic accident and the other driver kept mixing him up with Mac Taylor.
  • California Doubling: Like her sister shows, the series was primarily shot in Los Angeles but unlike Miami, it was also shot in New York from time to time for scenes set in the state's landmark locations.
  • The Cast Showoff: Several actors have had the chance to show off skills on-screen:
    • Sinise performs with a couple of members of his Lt. Dan Band at the end of season 2's "Stuck on You," and plays bass again at the end of season 4's "Time's Up." The guitars he uses are his own.
    • In "Tri-Borough," there's a scene at an art gallery. Det. Kaile Maka makes a remark about the artwork not selling well, and Danny says, "Yeah, I can see why," while nodding his head toward one of the paintings. The one he's indicating was actually made by the actor who plays Danny, Carmine Giovinazzo. Several of the other paintings in that scene are his as well.
    • Giovinazzo also has a band, Cesau; they never appeared on the show, but some of their songs are used in "Sanguine Love," which Carmine happened to write.
    • Danny's aborted baseball career is based on Carmine's own injury-aborted baseball dreams, and there's one ep where he shows off his pitching ability.
    • Danny's tattoo is also the actor's real one.
    • Several episodes have Melina Kanakaredes showing off her knowledge of fluent Greek. (Her parents are Greek immigrants and she and her family often visit the country.)
  • Contractual Immortality:
    • Fans were not worried when Mac was taken hostage at the end of season 4, because Sinise had another year left in his contract.
    • Nor were they worried about Danny or Lindsay having been killed by the gunshot at the end of season 6, since Giovinazzo and Belknap's contracts had been renewed.
  • Defictionalization: Lookinatchu, the chat roulette site in "Unfriendly Chat" was made real for a while.
  • Disabled Character, Disabled Actor:
    • Grant Albrecht, who plays wheelchair-bound Dr. Leonard Giles in five season 1 episodes, has a spinal cord condition that leaves him reliant on crutches or a wheelchair himself.
    • In "Silent Night," Marlee Matlin plays a deaf woman, Gina Mitchum. The actress as well as the other actors portraying deaf characters are actually deaf, so all the sign language is real. Incidentally, Matlin also guest starred on the original CSI once.
    • "DOA for a Day." Upon locating their suspect, Mac & Flack discover that he's a triple amputee. The character is played by Brian Anderson, a veteran of the Iraqi war who lost his left hand and both legs to an IED. Anderson and Sinise became good friends during Anderson's hospitalization and recovery.
  • Executive Meddling:
    • Killing off Angell due to budget cuts. Also probably the reason season 6 dropped the Two Lines, No Waiting format in favor of one case per episode.
    • Not quite executive meddling but Melina Kanakaredes' departure in season 7 was due to a salary freeze that CBS had to offer.
  • Fake American: Jessica Angell's actress Emmanuelle Vaugier is actually Canadian.
  • Friday Night Death Slot: Starting in season seven, CSI: NY aired Friday at 9pm Eastern. Season 9 was airing an hour earlier, at 8pm Eastern, then went back to its old 9pm Eastern slot after Made in Jersey got the ax. It lasted three seasons in the Friday slots.
  • Growling Gut: The last disc in the season 9 DVD box set contains a Gag Reel. There's an outtake of a scene between Mac and Flack in the precinct in which Sinise's stomach growls so loudly that Cahill cracks up. Sinise defends himself by saying it's dinnertime, and asks if they can take a break.
  • Hide Your Pregnancy: When actress Anna Belknap, who plays Lindsay, became pregnant the first time, they used the close-up method with varying success. The second time around, they wrote it into the storyline.
  • Jews Playing Nazis: Ed Asner, who was Jewish, playing a Nazi hiding out as a Holocaust survivor.
  • Memorial Character: While in talks with franchise creator Anthony E. Zuiker about taking on the role of the lead character, Gary Sinise asked that the man's name be changed from Rick Carlucci to Mac Taylor in memory of his brother-in-law, McCanna ("Mac") Harris, a decorated Vietnam vet who had died of cancer in the '80s. (The "Taylor" is a nod to his most iconic character, Lt. Dan.)
  • Milestone Celebration: Downplayed with the 100th episode. Counting backwards, the numbers 100-92 are shown in various places such as floor numbers in a building, taxi cab numbers, etc. The title, "My Name Is Mac Taylor," is spoken by several characters with that moniker, since the episode involves a killer looking for someone who goes by the name. Curiously enough, Det. Taylor does NOT utter the line, although he introduces himself that way quite often over the series' 9-year run.
  • On-Set Injury:
    • While filming episode 1.21, "On the Job," Gary Sinise tore a leg muscle running down some subway entrance stairs. He was taken to the hospital, given morphine and driven home. The incident occurred on his 50th birthday & he spent the evening on the couch feeling a bit loopy.
    • Mr. Sinise suffered the exact same injury to his other leg filming a fight scene in a cemetery for episode 8.06, "Get Me Out of Here!" His character, Mac Taylor, spent the rest of that episode and most of the next one either seated or leaning on things due to Sinise's recovery.
    • Melina Kanakaredes has a scar on her left leg from tripping while running up a fire escape during the filming of episode 5.01, "Veritas."
  • Only Barely Renewed: Getting season 9 came down to it being cheaper to make than CSI: Miami and wanting it for a New York themed night of programming.
  • The Other Darrin: A variation of sorts. Mac's wife Claire was played by the same actress during both of her onscreen appearances (the flashbacks of "Indelible" and Mac's Near-Death Experience in "Near Death"), but the pictures of Claire that Mac showed Reed in season 4 were of a different woman. Probably justified, as the show makers couldn't know then that they'd need someone to actually play her onscreen down the road. Still, there's no excuse for her being brunette in the pics and reddish-blonde onscreen. The writers either forgot the pics, hoped the viewers forgot, or were just lazy... or Claire dyed her hair.
  • Produced By Castmember: Gary Sinise served as producer from episode 1.11, "Tri-Borough," until the series' end, but was uncredited onscreen until the beginning of season 2.
  • Quietly Performing Sister Show: It was never as critically popular as the original CSI or as commercially popular as CSI: Miami, but it was still well-liked enough to chug along for nine seasons. It wasn't even the first in the franchise to be cancelled.
  • Reality Subtext:
    • Lindsay going home to Montana to testify against Daniel Katums and later getting pregnant are due to Anna Belknap's own pregnancies.
    • Mac reveals in season 9 that he can't recall the events leading up to his being shot, a type of amnesia that isn't uncommon in trauma patients. A few months after filming the season 8 finale, Gary Sinise suffered a similar memory loss to Mac's, minus the lingering speech aphasia, after being involved in a car accident that fortunately didn't severely injure him, but left him with a rather nasty concussion, along with a lot of bumps and bruises.
  • Real-Life Relative: Gary Sinise's daughter Sophie plays the eyewitness character in "Criminal Justice."
  • Real Song Theme Tune: Like all the CSIs, it uses a song by The Who, in this case "Baba O'Riley."
  • Referenced by...: In Experimental Film, Clark yells, "Cee Ess Eyyyye New Yorrrrk!"
  • Throw It In!:
    • "Recycling:" At the end, when Stella remarks to Mac that she can't remember ever seeing him without a tie, Gary Sinise, mouth full of hot dog, ad-libbed the line "I never wear a tie to a dog show." Melina Kanakaredes also stayed in character, shrugged, and said, "Okay." The writers enjoyed it so much they left it in.
    • "'Til Death Do We Part:" When Stella says "Best part of the job," and kisses Mac on the cheek. According to Melina Kanakaredes, while filming that scene, she just spontaneously kissed Gary Sinise and they decided to keep it in.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • After the show ended, one of the producers revealed there had been talk of hooking Mac up with Jo at the end. They thought about having him propose to her instead of Christine, and though they definitely wanted a wedding if they made 200 episodes, they weren't sure if Mac would marry Christine or if they'd do a fake out and reveal him to be marrying Jo instead. One does reason, though, that some events of season 9 might have been written differently if they'd gone with one of these. Alternately, they might've somehow written out Christine and had Mac and Jo pair up later on, if they'd had more seasons. Mild backlash has been generated by at least these things (particularly the idea of attempts to pair him up with Jo by ep 200, which would have only been three eps after the finale, if season 9 had stayed as it was written).
    • Christine was originally conceived as someone Mac knew from his military days, but the writers probably realized it would have created a continuity problem with Mac's timeline since they still would have used the same character age for her that they did in the final scenario.
    • Also see Aborted Arc on the main page for info on the scrapped Mac/Aubrey/Peyton love triangle in seasons 6-7.
    • Everyone was to have had a day off episode, but Mac, Danny (who was to have his own along with the one of Lindsay's own despite their marriage), Hawkes and Sid never got one, perhaps due to the compressed season or a desire to do a crossover in hopes of boosting ratings at the last minute. Spoilers said Mac's would involve him taking a day off at Christine's urging, then getting stuck on a broken subway. It was announced as episode 15, but this episode later became the second half of the crossover with CSI.
    • Andy García and Ray Liotta were offered the Mac role, but turned it down. The character was named Rick Carlucci at that time; Gary Sinise convinced them to change it after taking the part.
    • Anthony Zuiker wanted "Behind Blue Eyes" as the show's theme.
    • Had the show been renewed for season 10, then Sheldon would've likely either been Put on a Bus or had a recurring role as his actor, Hill Harper, announced that he would depart to become a series regular in Covert Affairs.
    • Anthony E. Zuiker had three cities in mind when deciding where to set the third CSI series. The other two options? Chicago and New Orleans. The former is Mac's (and coincidentally Gary Sinise's) hometown, while the latter is where Stella goes after leaving New York during the gap between season 6 and 7.
  • Written by Cast Member:
    • Gary Sinise worked on the story for "Live or Let Die" and wrote the script for "Turbulence".
    • Melina Kanakaredes wrote "Grounds for Deception".
    • Carmine Giovinazzo wrote "Sanguine Love".
  • Written-In Infirmity: Season 8's "Crushed" has Mac seated or leaning against something most of the time. That's because during the filming of the previous episode, "Get Me Out of Here," Gary Sinise injured his leg when Mac had to chase a perp and slam him against the side of a truck in the graveyard. The same thing had happened earlier in the series (on Gary's 50th birthday, no less), but it was the other leg.
  • You Look Familiar:
    • Carmine Giovinazzo (Danny) and A.J. Buckley (Adam) appeared on CSI before becoming CSI NY regulars. Carmine's was a brief guest appearance, as a minor character called Thumpy G, and A.J. was the killer in his ep. Also, Alex Carter, Detective Vartaan on the original series, was in one ep of this show.
    • Anna Belknap (Linsday Monroe-Messer) appeared on an episode of Without a Trace, which also takes place in the CSI universe.
    • Tim Guinee plays two different characters, one in "Fare Game" and the other in "Cavallino Rampante".

General

  • The episode "All Access" had a website tie-in. Stella's psycho boyfriend used the website aresanob.com, and an ad at the end of the ep told viewers to visit the site to see what Stella saw. This was also the opening page of the site "Click here to see what Stella saw." The content after the click was the sex tape Frankie posted online and then an extended promo for the ep. (If you're hoping to check it out now, it's long gone; you'll get redirected to the CBS website.)
  • Stella's HIV scare was a project in collaboration with the website knowhivaids.org.
  • An actual dead body was found in one of the buildings used for filming, but it wasn't a murder case; rather, it was a long-dead tenant who got overlooked somehow. It bore similarities to the episode "Not What It Looks Like," but without the homicide aspect.
  • The season 9 finale "Today Is Life" was based on a real life incident in The '70s when a cop shot an unarmed man and a mob really did try to storm the precinct.
  • Mac's prowess at Asteroids is mentioned in episode 8.15, "Kill Screen." Sinise was quite the aficionado back in the day.
  • Lindsay Monroe/Messer's birthplace is possibly a left-over portion of the backstory of Catherine Willows from the original CSI. For a time, the official character bios on CBS's website listed Catherine as being from Bozeman, Montana, but that was scrapped sometime before the finalized version of her backstory was revealed onscreen.
  • The name "Lindsay" itself could be a nod to CSI as it's also Catherine Willows' daughter's name. "Ellie," Jo's daughter's name, could also be, as it's Jim Brass' daughter's name, too.
  • Although Christine's brother was Stan Whitney, that was also the name of a minor character in "Charge of This Post" in season 2. Despite the military backstory originally planned, there's no evidence he (the soldier who dies in Mac's arms in flashback) was going to be her brother.
  • All four male leads (Mac, Danny, Hawkes and Flack) appeared in every episode, while Stella appeared in every episode of the first six seasons, and Jo appeared in every episode of the remaining three.
  • According to Gary Sinise, he agreed to the series on the condition that he be given monologues from time to time. Three notable examples are his talk with/to the comatose victim in the pilot, "Blink," his speech at the Brooklyn Wall of Remembrance in "Indelible," and his voice-over right before the last scene of the finale, "Today Is Life."

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