Trivia / NUMB3RS

• Cast the Expert: Bill Nye, a mechanical engineer who worked at Boeing, as a scientist.
• The Cast Showoff: Rob Morrow really was playing the piano at the end of "Running Man".
• Creator Couple: Series creators Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton are married.
• The Danza: Bill Nye as Bill Waldie.
• Directed by Cast Member: Rob Morrow (Don) took the helm on a few episodes: the season two episode "All's Fair", the season five episode "Cover Me", and the season six episode "Growin' Up".
• Fake American: In the fifth Season finale, James Callis, a Brit, plays cult leader Mason Duryea with a believable Southern Drawl.
• Friday Night Death Slot: Averted Trope, as the show managed to last six seasons before CBS ended it in 2010.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: During the early months of Diane Farr's pregnancy, Megan Reeves was mostly limited to desk jobs. Reeves was eventually recruited for a "special assignment" so that Farr could take the second half of season three off.
• Inspiration for the Work: The show came about due to Cheryl Heuton attending a lecture by Bill Nye, which was about getting children excited for math.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • David Krumholtz plays math genius, while in real life he failed algebra twice.
  • Dylan Bruno plays an FBI Agent clueless about math, while Bruno attended MIT for engineering.
• Midseason Replacement: Replaced Dr Vegas.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Dylan Bruno's brother, Chris Bruno, guest starred in episodes of "Chinese Box" and "Jacked".
  • Rob Morrow's wife, Debbon Ayer, guest starred in "The Fifth Man" as a woman whose home was being invaded.
  • David Krumholtz's then-partner (now wife), Vanessa Britting, guest starred in the episode "Tabu".
• Real Song Theme Tune: The show used a sample from Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" in the first season.
• Recast as a Regular: Sophina Brown, who began playing Agent Nikki Bentancourt in Season 5, had a one-scene appearance as an environmental activist in a Season 2 episode.
• Throw It In!:
  • David Krumholtz inadvertently misspelled "anomaly" as "anomoly" on a map in one scene in the pilot episode, which the writers and producers kept as a quirk for Charlie. They even reference it in the final episode in the first season:
  Charlie: I know how to spell the word "anomaly", okay?
  Don: No, you don't.
  Charlie: Get a dictionary. [...]
  Don: (shows him the dictionary) See? One O.
  Charlie: Is this a reliable dictionary?
  • Also referenced by other characters throughout the show. For example, Alan confides in Larry that he hates playing chess with Charlie because he seems so bored, so Larry tells Alan:
    "Try Scrabble. He's a terrible speller".
• What Could Have Been: Speaking after cancellation, producer Tony Scott said that his dream story for the show was an episode where "everything fell into the margin of error that Charlie always supplied." Scott explained that in giving his mathematical solution, Charlie would always leave a margin of error, no matter how small, saying things like "there is a 99.8 percent probability." The proposed episode would have the ultimate solution fall into the 0.2% probability, thus leaving it to actual police work to solve. It never went anywhere, however.
• Written by Cast Member: Peter MacNicol co-wrote two episodes: the season two episode Mind Games and the season five episode Trouble In Chinatown.
• You Look Familiar: Sophina Brown played two characters, a protestor in Scorched and became main character Nikki Betancourt in the fifth season.

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