Trivia / Columbo

• Actor-Inspired Element: Columbo's wardrobe was personally provided by Peter Falk; they were his own clothes, including the high-topped shoes and the shabby raincoat.
  • Robert Culp also wore items from his own wardrobe for his appearances, such as the memorable yellow leather biker jacket in "Double Exposure." Also, he wears a green single-breasted blazer in all three of his original series episodes. Even better, he made an appearance on "Match Game" where he was in Brimmer's glasses, had Paul Hanlon's mustache, and was wearing the Bart Keppel yellow biker jacket, virtually blending all three killers' apperances into one real-life appearance on the show.
• Actor-Shared Background: Columbo tells a police officer helping him in one search that "Three eyes are better than one," implying that Columbo has a false eye just like Peter Falk.
• Better Export for You: The entire series was released on Blu-ray as a set, even including the NBC revival...albeit only in Japan in 2011. It wouldn't be until 2024 when the US would finally have the show released in that format with a similar set in some form as well, 13 years later. (And even then it actually still isn't even the complete series per say, as it only included the original NBC run/first seven seasons and not the NBC revival, whereas the Japanese set had both runs. The last three seasons/ABC seasons have yet to be released in the format in the country, so this is still an example of this trope.)
• Billing Displacement: Anne Francis is the first person billed after main guest star Leonard Nimoy in "A Stitch in Time." She plays the first victim, who gets killed in the first 15 minutes.
• California Doubling: Generally subverted as the show took place in Los Angeles. "Dagger of the Mind" did have certain scenes (mainly exterior shots) filmed in London, though much was filmed in Hollywood (in fact, one of the British actors had to remain in the US, as he was wanted for tax evasion in the UK).
• Cast the Expert: Playing the victim in "Publish or Perish", an author, is Mike Hammer creator (and occasional actor) Mickey Spillane.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: Stephen J. Cannell wrote season three's "Double Exposure" with Robert Culp in mind for the role of Mister....Er...Doctor Bart Keppel. Cannell got his wish.
• Dawson Casting:
  • A notable reversal of the usual happens in "An Exercise in Fatality"; Milo Janus is a 53-year-old fitness expert whose healthy lifestyle leaves him looking like he's in his thirties. His actor, Robert Conrad, was 39 at the time of filming. This does get lampshaded, however, as Columbo remarks that Milo looks to be in his 30s due to clean living.
  • From "Dead Weight", Kate Reid (Mrs. Walters) Helen Stewart's mother, was only 6 years older than Suzanne Pleshette (Helen Stewart).
  • Fourteen-year-old Caroline Treynor in "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case", played by 21-year-old Carol Jones.
• Deleted Role: Carlene Watkins is listed in the end credits of "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case" as playing Amy but doesn't appear onscreen. Arlene Martel is credited as Tanya Baker in "Double Exposure," but is also absent from the episode.
• Descended Creator: Series writer Peter S. Feibleman plays Unwitting Pawn Milton Shaeffer in "Old-Fashioned Murder".
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • Peter Falk directed "Blueprint for Murder" (given he was the show's only regular, it could hardly be anyone else). Richard Levinson and William Link, then the show's producers, admitted that they'd given Falk an episode to direct to shut him up, and furthermore, gave him what they felt was the hardest script to film. They were surprised, not only by the fantastic job he did directing the episode, but also by the fact that he brought it in well under budget. However, they ended up getting their wish, as Falk never directed another episode.
  • Frequent guest star Patrick McGoohan directed several episodes as well, including three of the four he appeared in.
  • Dennis Dugan had a small acting part in "Last Salute to the Commodore", and later directed "Butterfly in Shades of Grey".
  • John Cassavetes co-directed "Etude in Black".
• Dolled-Up Installment:
  • "No Time to Die" is an adaptation on the 87th Precinct novel So Long as You Both Shall Live, with Columbo taking the place of multiple 87th Precinct cops (in the novel Bert Kling's new wife Augusta is kidnapped on the day they're married, in this adaptation it's Columbo's nephew's wife who's taken). This one stands out as it is the only episode to feature any member of Columbo's family - namely, Detective Andy Parma.
  • "Undercover" is also an 87th Precinct adaptation, of the novel Jigsaw. Unlike the above, this version includes one of the characters from the 87th (Arthur Brown, who's also one of the cops investigating in the book).
  • "Uneasy Lies The Crown" is an unusual example — the script had been written for Columbo, but Falk passed on it. With a few changes to the plot it was instead filmed as "Affair of the Heart" in the sixth season of McMillan & Wife. In 1990 during season 9, Falk chose to go ahead with the script. A good chunk of the dialog and even character names are the same although certain major plot points differ — though Falk apparently stuck to the script as it had been originally written. Nancy Walker, who had been a regular on McMillan & Wife, appeared as one of the celebrity poker players in the Columbo version. Columbo even points out that she was in "the Rock Hudson mystery show".
• Executive Meddling: In the show's early years, NBC insisted that Columbo be given a partner to serve as The Watson, a suggestion that Peter Falk and the other showrunners balked at since they felt it would ruin the formula that made the show work. It eventually led to the introduction of Sgt. Wilson in "The Greenhouse Jungle", but the character was dropped immediately after that episode and would only make one other appearance years later.
• Fake American:
  • Nicol Williamson is an American doctor in "How to Dial a Murder".
  • "The Most Dangerous Match" has Lithuanian-English Laurence Harvey as an American chess Grandmaster.
  • Subverted with Donald Pleasence in "Any Old Port in a Storm." While he runs a California-based winery, he uses his natural accent.
  • London-born Ida Lupino playing Southern American Edna Basket Brown in "Swan Song", though she had been a U.S. citizen since 1948.
• Fake Brit: Richard Basehart is a British actor in "Dagger of the Mind".
• Fake Nationality:
  • Lt. Columbo is Italian-American, as was made a point of numerous times. Peter Falk is of Russian and Polish descent. Likewise, whereas Falk was Jewish, it was often hinted that Columbo is Catholic (at the very least, his own nephew's wedding is a traditional church-type wedding).
  • Héctor Elizondo playing an Arabic national in "A Case of Immunity". Although Elizondo does arguably have the appropriate profile to fit such a person. Same for Sal Mineo, who was a Sicilian (coincidentally, he is a murder victim in this episode and was actually murdered less than a year after the episode aired).
• Fake Russian: "The Deadliest Match" has Canadians Jack Kruschen and Lloyd Bochner as Russians (possibly- their home country is never actually specified and none of their native language is ever used).
• I Am Not Spock:
  • Leonard Nimoy is the first direct example, since it's Spock himself playing the murderer of the week in "A Stitch in Crime"
  • Janet Leigh's appearance in "Forgotten Lady" never once makes reference to Psycho, instead focusing on her career in musical films.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: If you want to see Bert Freed in the role, prepare to scavenge for a recorded copy of Enough Rope or take a trip to the television museum in Beverly Hills to watch it. The Chevy Mystery Show has never been released, nor are there even any online copies. (Some of the series is on Youtube, just not this episode.)
• Life Imitates Art: The deliberate use of Obfuscating Stupidity by police and legal interrogators has been — unsurprisingly — dubbed the "Columbo Method". It works, too.
• Non-Singing Voice: In "Murder of a Rock Star" actress Cheryl Paris plays the role of Marcy Edwards, the murder victim and former rock singer. "Closer", the song played in the episode was actually sung by Shera Danese, a frequent guest star of the series and Peter Falk's wife. Partly subverted as there was no actual dubbing involved, since we only hear the song played on stereos with no live performance. Which is even weirder, because Shera Danese also appears in that episode as Hugh Creighton's assistant/law partner Trish Fairbanks.
• The Other Darrin: Peter Falk is most famous for playing the character, but he wasn't even the first to do so! Bert Freed played the role in the TV short "Enough Rope" and various actors played the role on stage before Falk won the role for the primary TV film series. After his death, former The A-Team actor Dirk Benedict took the role for a stage revival.
• Playing Against Type: Most of the guest stars played murderers, and many of them carried their typical screen personas into the role. Others did no such thing:
  • "A Stitch in Crime": Leonard Nimoy, known for The Stoic Spock from Star Trek: The Original Series. He plays a sociopathic heart surgery expert, who premeditates the murder of his aging mentor Dr. Hidemann, by rigging his heart valve surgery with dissolving suture. He uses emotional manipulation to his advantage in many ways, such as by mocking Nurse Sharon Martin's sanity when she correctly discovers that he dyed dissolving suture to smuggle it into the operating room.
  • Dick Van Dyke, who usually plays the comic relief in musicals like Mary Poppins or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, as well as a comedy writer on the The Dick Van Dyke Show, played a particularly ruthless Paul Galesko in "Negative Reaction" — a henpecked photographer who shoots his wife and a recently released prisoner that he'd hired to run small errands, in an attempt to make it look as if the other man was the kidnapper.
  • Similarly, George Wendt played a humorless, bitter killer, in stark contrast to the silly, self-deprecating shlemazel he played in Cheers.
  • Janet Leigh, perhaps most famous for playing the murder victim in Psycho as well as a number of musicals, getting to play the killer in "Forgotten Lady". However, this one partly subverts this as Leigh's character, Grace Wheeler, shares a similar acting background of dance musical films with Leigh, and this episode features a heavy twist causing Grace to forget having committed the crime.
  • Gene Barry, best known as the easygoing lawman in Bat Masterson and Burke's Law, plays a Psycho Psychologist in Prescription: Murder.
  • Perhaps the strangest case is "Lovely But Lethal" which features horror icon Vincent Price as... the president of a women's cosmetics company, and he's merely a superficial character in the plot instead of the killer.
  • A strange retroactive case is Leslie Nielsen in "Lady In Waiting." Nielsen later hit it big being in comedies due to his deadpan serious delivery, so it's a touch strange for viewers who didn't know he was originally a dramatic actor.
  • Similar to Nielsen, Sorrell Booke, best known nowadays as Boss Hogg in The Dukes of Hazzard, plays a member of a MENSA-type organization in "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case". Most of Booke's roles prior to Dukes were closer to this one (notable, however, is that he plays the role of a southerner with a strong accent in season 3's "Swan Song" as Tommy Brown's manager).
  • Bernard Fox usually played oddball characters on sitcoms that leaned towards the "know-it-all" type despite being fairly incompetent. Both of his appearances ("Dagger of the Mind" and "Troubled Waters") lack his usual buffoonery.
  • Robert Culp was known more as a leading man before he demonstrated how good he was at playing snarky villains, playing the killer three different times, and a killer's father in the revival series, and was just as snarky as ever.
  • While later in his career, especially in the 80s, 90s, and beyond, Robert Vaughn was best known as Napoleon Solo before showing he had an affinity for playing villains in "Troubled Waters."
  • Most of Robert Conrad's movie and television career had him playing a heroic role. His rare, but hissably memorable villain turn in "An Exercise in Fatality" was definitely a switch.
• Playing Their Own Twin: Martin Landau as the twins Dexter and Norman Paris in "Double Shock", one of the very few episodes where the real killer is unknown until the end. Dexter is the murderer, but Norman is also in on it.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Bruce Kirby Jr. and Sr. in "By the Dawn's Early Light".
  • Catherine McGoohan, Patrick McGoohan's daughter, plays the funeral home assistant opposite her father in "Ashes to Ashes".
  • Katey Sagal appeared in a small role in "Candidate for Crime," which was directed by her father, Boris.
• Real Song Theme Tune:
  • "This Old Man" was initially an ad lib by Peter Falk but quickly became the theme for the character, even more so in the ABC years when it would be used as the closing theme in many episodes.
  • "Columbo Cries Wolf" opens with "She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals as the theme song.
• Recycled Script: 1990's "Uneasy Lies the Crown" was originally written for Columbo by Steven Bochco in 1973. Falk rejected the script due to the villain not being interesting enough. The script was used in 1977 for McMillan & Wife. In 1990, Falk had changed his mind and the script was used for Columbo with villain changed from a news anchor to an actor. A slight nod to the trope is present in Dick Sargent guest starring. Bewitched used a lot of recycled scripts by the end of its run. And Nancy Walker also guests, referring to "The Rock Hudson Show". She, of course, was on McMillan & Wife.
• Referenced by...: The Nifty version of Can You Spare a Quarter? says that the detective series that Jamie watches at Graham's house is, the ASSTR version drops the explicit reference to the name but still refers to a detective with a raincoat.
• Romance on the Set: Peter Falk and Shera Danese. They were married shortly after her first appearance in the series and remained so until Falk's death.
• Science Marches On: Most of the schemes the killers use to establish their alibis, disguise the cause of death or change the apparent time of the murder would today be handily disproved by modern forensic science, without any need for Columbo's unique investigatory techniques.
  • In "Blueprint for Murder", the victim's Amicable Ex believes the police aren't taking his disappearance seriously enough, so she puts her own blood on one of his hats and plants it as "evidence", as she has the same blood type as him. At the time, that was pretty much the best you could do to identify who blood came from; she's only caught because the blood is too fresh for the timeline she's trying to set up. Nowadays, of course, we have DNA testing.
  • In "Double Exposure," both the killer's method of luring the victim to his doom and Columbo's plan to catch him depend on the use of Subliminal Advertising, which has since been totally debunked.
  • In "Agenda for Murder," Columbo proves the killer's guilt because he took a bite from the victim's sandwich and no two bitemarks are supposedly alike. This theory was debunked in Real Life in a notorious case where an innocent man was convicted of murder for precisely the same reason only to be later cleared when the real killer was caught. It turns out two people can have identical bitemarks, although the episode implies that the difference was more distinct than average because the killer's tooth was capped.
• Technology Marches On: A number of episodes center around a killer making inventive use of the latest technological marvels, and relying on the police failing to know how they work. A contemporary viewer will get a few chuckles out of:
  • "Ransom for a Dead Man" — Leslie Williams shoots her husband and dumps his body, then uses a dictaphone recording to fake his kidnapping.
  • "Fade in to Murder" — Ward Fowler (William Shatner) using a VCR to fake an alibi by time-delaying a baseball game so that his guest will vouch for his location at the time the game was broadcast.
  • "Columbo Cries Wolf" — The victim's body is revealed when Columbo calls her wrist pager.
  • "An Exercise in Fatality" — Milo Janus hides his location by making a call from a multi-line phone system (recycling the idea from "Ransom for a Dead Man"). Columbo visits the workplace of a potential witness and must put up with a slow '70s-era computer with tape reels that takes 5 minutes to print out a single sheet of paper with the individual's name and information.
  • "Playback"... oh wow... Harold Van Wick's got an in-house security system complete with cameras, microphones and a live feed to the guard house, plus a film room to record everything. A digital watch that displays the time in bright LED numbers. Doors that can open and close by clapping or other loud noises (Van Wick's wife is in a wheelchair). A wheelchair elevator for the staircase. All of it could be considered mundane by today's standards but for the time the episode was made, certainly high tech.
  • Columbo uses a handheld microcassette recorder with a voice-activated attachment in "How to Dial a Murder" — probably not as common back in the '70s as they would be even by the '80s.
  • "Make Me a Perfect Murder": Kay Freestone relies on a cassette player to keep time when committing the murder, and never has to worry about surveillance cameras, an increased number of guards, and other security measures that would catch her red-handed today.
  • As in the above example, it's also the case in "Troubled Waters" as modern cruise ships have the same security as any office building or luxury hotel along with dedicated data centers and satellite-connected cellular service and Internet access. Modern ships also don't necessarily use mechanical key locks but RFID tags which control magnetic locks that are logged by computer. So Danzinger making a master key might have required a different methodology; purchasing a device that emulates an RFID tag. To copy a master key, all he'd have to do is get close to a crew member with a master key. In fact, there's a hacking device that does exactly that whose name has a similar ring to the "Curtis Clipper" Danzinger used called the "Flipper Zero". Of course, that access is logged by computer brings up another complication since if Danzinger used such a key, the ship's security officers could review video footage to see who used that particular key. So Danzinger either would have to make more elaborate preparations or perform the murder away from the ship.
  • A subtle one in "The Conspirators"; at the bookstore, Columbo spots a book of "erotic art" and briefly considers paying $55 for it. The modern-day internet would easily provide private access to that and much more in terms of erotica without the need to spend such funds ($55 in 1975 money) or the public embarrassment of buying such a book.
  • "Butterfly in Shades of Gray" — Fielding Chase (also Shatner) who has killed Gerry Winters and made it look like Winters was killed while talking to Chase on the phone. Chase makes a 911 call on his car phone once he leaves the scene, and makes it seem like he called 911 shortly after leaving his own house. His story falls apart when Columbo reveals that Chase could not have called 911 from where he claimed he was, because said location happens to be in a mountainous area where there is a dead zone and it is impossible to get a phone signal. Although anyone with even a modern cell phone knows that there are still areas where getting a signal can be a problem.
  • Verity Chandler of "Ashes to Ashes" carries a cell phone which alerts her whenever a new email is received — this being the '90s it only alerts her to the fact a new message has come in. Likewise, her news and rumors show has a public email address given for viewers to contact her. When Eric Prince breaks into her home to establish a phony kidnapping scenario, he resets the time on her computer to falsify the timestamp on a bogus news article — though Columbo himself is quick to point out that anyone could simply change the time on the computer with ease, making the timestamp meaningless. The police also don't try to do any data recovery on any storage media, to find clues.
  • The final episode, "Columbo Likes the Nightlife," has the Justin Price character write out a fake suicide note on the victim's computer. It is easily discovered to be fake when Columbo gets immediately suspicious, has the forensics person check the keyboard and finds several keys have no prints on them. Justin also tries to claim that his pager had dead batteries to cover up that he was away committing murder. Justin also doesn't have to worry about being caught on any apartment security cameras, which would easily wreck his alibi. Additionally, the increase in the number of traffic surveillance cameras around cities may complicate the plot by showing that Justin and Vanessa were driving to somewhere else at a particular time.
• Throw It In!:
  • "Just one more thing..." This was not thrown in during filming, but during writing. The screenwriters had just finished typing out a scene where Columbo questions a suspect, when they realized they had forgotten to have him ask a crucial question. Rather than go through the trouble of typing out the entire scene over again, they decided to just add to the end Columbo returning for one more question.
  • In addition, many of Peter Falk's absent-minded moments were ad-libbed. He figured that if they were all scripted, it would be harder for his fellow cast members to react genuinely. So, in the middle of scenes with the suspect, Falk would unexpectedly start fumbling around for his shopping list or pretend to forget what he was talking about. The standard perp expression that seems to say "What is with this guy?" is thus usually very real.
  • Falk was a fan of the tune "This Old Man" and whistled it while filming "Any Old Port in a Storm" as an ad-lib. It eventually became a major piece of music for the entire series.
  • The hill fall from "The Greenhouse Jungle" was scripted to be a minor stumble, only Falk slipped and took a large tumble down the hill instead. Falk remained in character after landing so the full take was kept as-is.
• Unfinished Episode: A few years prior to his death, Peter Falk had expressed interest in returning to the role. In 2007, he claimed he had chosen a script for one last episode, "Columbo: Hear No Evil". The script was renamed "Columbo's Last Case". ABC declined the project. In response, producers for the series announced that they were attempting to shop the project to foreign production companies. However, Falk was diagnosed with dementia in late 2007.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Reportedly, Bing Crosby was scheduled to play Columbo in the first TV movie, but backed out because shooting was scheduled opposite a golf tournament.
  • The studio initially did not want Peter Falk in the role, forcing Levinson and Link to have to fight for him to get the part. The studio felt he was far too young to be playing a police lieutenant (which is actually not true; Falk was 39 at the time, more than old enough for an actual police officer to have achieved the rank in real life).
  • Falk wanted Patrick McGoohan to play the role of Findlay Crawford in "Murder with Too Many Notes", but McGoohan had acted in the previous Columbo film, "Ashes to Ashes", so McGoohan declined and the role went to Billy Connolly instead, with McGoohan directing (he also co-wrote the script).
  • McGoohan was also briefly considered to actually replace Falk as Columbo at one point. He flat-out refused, saying that only Falk should play the character.
  • Steven Bochco wrote the script to "Uneasy Lies the Crown" in 1973, which if it'd been made would've been a part of season 2 or 3. Peter Falk turned it down at the time with the script being adapted for an episode of McMillan & Wife, only to make it later in 1990. One has to wonder who would've been the killer if it'd been made in 1973. Larry Hagman was the killer in the Macmillan episode.
  • After "Columbo Loves the Nightlife," Falk wanted to do one final episode serving as a huge Grand Finale for the character entitled "Columbo's Last Case," but his declining physical and mental health ultimately kept it from ever happening.
• Word of Saint Paul:
  • Columbo's wife was never officially named (excluding the non-canon disavowed spinoff), but at the roast of Dean Martin, Falk, in character as Columbo, asked Dean for an autograph and gave his wife's name as Rose.
  • Falk has said in his opinion during the NBC run Columbo was not actually married. The stories of his wife were all part of his ruse to make suspects underestimate him. In the ABC episodes this theory could no longer hold water, as they included mentions of other characters interacting with the wife, one episode ("Troubled Waters") where the character is present aboard the cruise liner where the episode takes place but is never directly seen, as well as an entire episode in which the wife of a former arrest tried to murder her, which ends with him speaking to her on the phone.
• You Look Familiar:
  • In addition to the stars who appeared as killers more than once, Character Actor Vitto Scotti appeared in a number of supporting roles, Bruce Kirby appeared nine times (usually as Sergeant Kramer), Mike Lally appeared more than anyone else (often in "blink or you'll miss it" roles), William Shatner and George Hamilton appeared as murderers on both NBC and ABC episodes (Shatner was Ward Fowler and Fielding Chase, Hamilton was both Dr. Mark Collier and Wade Anders), and Leslie Nielsen appeared twice — once as a murder victim and once as the boyfriend of the episode's murderess. This is also especially true of Shera Danese, Falk's real-life wife, who was in several of the films and had major roles in some of them. She appears in six episodes. In fact, Shera Danese and Peter Falk first met while filming "Fade into Murder". She only has one small scene in that episode but quickly got bigger roles in later episodes of the series. Often, if someone was a victim, they also did a minor role in another episode, such as Anne Francis, who was in "Short Fuse" and then was the murder victim in "A Stitch in Crime".
  • In the original '70s MAD parody "Clodumbo", the Big Bad is drawn to resemble frequent Columbo villain Robert Culp. Culp also later returned in the revival series as a murderer's father.

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