Trivia / NCIS

• Actor-Shared Background:
  • DiNozzo's dad cut Tony off the inheritance. In real life, this same situation actually happened to Michael Weatherly when his father also cut him off after Weatherly decided to study acting.
  • When Drew Carey guest-starred in the episode "Handle With Care," his character, John Ross, is a Marine. Drew had served in the Marine Corps before starting his comedy career.
  • Subverted; while Ralph Waite and his character, Jackson Gibbs, were both in the military, Waite was a Marine while Jackson was Air Force.
  • Like his onscreen character Ernest Yost, Charles Durning is a WWII veteran in real life.
• Adored by the Network:
  • The series adoration on USA Network is the stuff of legend, as they will run marathons of the show 2-3 days a week, which they still do to this very day. Now Oxygen does the same thing with marathons too.
  • Both WE TV and I.O.N heavily hyped up getting the rights to reruns of the show.
  • Even so far as it ended up included on Netflix streaming service, which they go up to Season 15 as CBS made the later seasons available exclusively to CBS All Access.
• Backed by the Pentagon: The Navy and USMC support the show because malfeasance (regardless of whether it is done by service members or otherwise) is always brought to justice. In "Child's Play" season 7 episode 9, NCIS Agent Ray, who lost in checkers to the child prodigy, was played by Ray Mabus, the then current Secretary of the Navy.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Abby is repeatedly misquoted as having screamed "Stop looking up my skirt!" in "Bloodbath". What she actually says is "And don't look up my skirt!"
• California Doubling:
  • The show mostly filmed in California but sometimes they occasionally film some locations outside of California.
    • Out of all the NCIS shows, this is the only series in the NCIS franchise that never filmed in the same setting the series took place in.
  • A few episodes make reference to Shenandoh National Park, but the terrain and scenery don't match the real thing.
  • One episode has them in a trailer park in Arlington, Virginia, an area with no trailer parks.
  • The season six finale features scenes at an airfield in Israel clearly shot at Sacramento. Look for the USCG Hercules behind Ziva at the end.
  • In another episode, where Tony pretends to be a convict to trace artifacts smuggled out of Iraq, they end up in a storage facility across the street from the WalMart in Lynchburg, VA; such a facility doesn't exist.
  • Averted in S19 E4, half of the episode was actually filmed in Alaska whenever we see Gibbs and McGee investigating there.
  • Another episode has members of the team follow a lead in Arizona. In clear view behind them when talking to a local cop, Kirk's Rock.
  • An episode from season 9 ends with the team racing to a football stadium to stop an attack on some high ranking military members in attendance. The overhead shot of the stadium is of EverBank Field, which is in Jacksonville, Florida.
  • In one episode they mention that you have to supply a fingerprint to get a drivers' license. NCIS is supposedly located in the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard. California requires a fingerprint to be issued a drivers' license. The District of Columbia, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia do not require or ask for a fingerprint, and they are the only drivers' licensing issuing jurisdictions within 50 miles of NCIS headquarters.
  • One episode features Gibbs and Ziva driving down a wide boulevard with steep-sided hills covered in dried grass and rock outcroppings in the near background. Such hills are common in the Los Angeles basin, but would be much further away and covered in trees in Virginia where the episode is supposed to take place.
  • The team is often seen canvasing the scene of a crime somewhere in DC or the surrounding area. Anyone who knows DC will know that there are absolutely NO bridges with art deco style decorations. Los Angeles, however, is littered with them.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • When some kids overthrow their football near a crime scene, Gibbs, before returning it, tells one of the kids to go long, and then he throws a perfect spiral. Keep in mind, Mark Harmon was a starting quarterback for two years with the UCLA Bruins and his father was actor and quarterback Tom Harmon, who was the first Michigan Wolverine to win the Heisman Trophy. Another bit that can be related to this is why Gibbs makes boats: Mark Harmon was a carpenter once before he started acting.
  • Cote de Pablo did theater and musicals before joining NCIS, and gets to show off her singing chops in "Last Man Standing", when Ziva performs a rendition of Tom Waits' "Temptation" while undercover as a singer in a Moroccan nightclub. The song is included on the 2-disk NCIS soundtrack album.
  • Jack Sloane is shown boxing with a punching bag at the end of her first episode, and has multiple hand-to-hand combat scenes. Maria Bello, her actress, is a longtime active practitioner of Muay Thai kickboxing.
  • Katrina Law was formerly Nyssa al Ghul on Arrow, and she gets to put her learned fighting skills on display during a Season 19 episode, apprehending an armed suspect similar to how Nyssa would.
• Cast the Expert:
  • Pauley Perrette studied sociology and criminal science before becoming an actress and playing forensic specialist Abby Sciuto.
  • An interesting inversion with David McCallum, who knew nothing of pathology when he was cast as Ducky, but developed such an expertise over the years in his studies for the role to make Ducky as spot on to real coroners that the showrunners were considering paying him a consulting fee.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Lauren Holly auditioned for—and apparently really wanted—the role of Caitlin Todd. It isn't clear if TPTB thought she'd be better for the role of Jenny Shepherd or offered it to her as conciliation.
• The Character Died with Him:
  • With Ralph Waite dying in 2014, Jackson Gibbs died as well. It happened in "Honor Thy Father."
• Character Outlives Actor:
  • Nina Foch died in 2008; her character, Victoria Mallard, was kept alive offscreen for a few seasons before passing away.
  • Michael Gilden, who played Marty Pearson, Abby's fourth season boyfriend, took his own life in 2006. In one episode that was filmed after Gilden's death, Marty broke up with Abby via voicemail.
• Colbert Bump: Prior to the series airing, real NCIS agents referred to themselves as the Rodney Dangerfields of law enforcement because the agency was so obscure they couldn't get any respect. Once the show became a hit, people knew what the agency did and news reports stopped saying "Naval investigators" and actually referring to the agency as "NCIS" or "Naval Criminal Investigative Service".
• Creator Backlash: Pauley Perrette is very vocal about how much she hates the fake spider web tattoo she has to wear on her neck, saying that it gets sticky very quickly and needs constant touch-ups. She says that if she knew in advance about all the trouble it would have caused her, she would never have agreed to the suggestion in the first place. After departing, she also began distancing herself from the show, to the point where she refers to it as "that military show about murder" rather than by its title. She also said that she's not to take up any potential offers to show up, even as a cameo, because of bad experiences on set, though she suggested that in some parts was due to her experience with Harmon.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Despite Abby's age being mentioned as mid-late 20s throughout the series, Pauley Perrette was born in 1969 making her about 10 years older than the character.
  • Gibbs is three years younger than Mark Harmon.
  • Ralph Waite is probably 5-10 years younger than his TV character Jackson Gibbs (Agent Gibbs's dad), since Ralph was born in 1928, making him ineligible to serve in WWII.
  • In one episode, it is mentioned that Alden Parker (played by Gary Cole) is 14 in 1975, placing his birth year in either 1960 or 1961. In real life, Gary Cole is around five years older than Parker as he was born in 1956.
  • Francis Xavier McCarthy (who played Roman Parker, Alden's father) is only 14 years older than Gary Cole.
  • The Wiki Rule and his ID shown in season 14 premiere Rogue mentions that Torres was born in 1984, four years after Wilmer Valderrama was born.
  • Fornell's date of birth is revealed to be July 15, 1956 as shown on his driver's license in Keep Your Enemies Closer (Season 15, Episode 15). In real life, Joe Spano's date of birth is July 7, 1946, making Fornell ten years younger than Joe Spano. Worth noting Spano's birthday is eight days before Fornell's.
• Defictionalization:
  • Theakston's Christmas Ale. Theakston was already a real brewery, but they didn't make a specific Christmas beer - until NCIS fans started inquiring about it.
  • Averted with Gibbs' Motorola flip phone. Gibbs’s flip phone is a Motorola i850◊, which is a real type of phone. You can get one of those on any yard/garage sale, or on online shopping websites such as eBay, etc, though it's hard to find the i850 nowadays, especially if it's on a online shopping website. Since it's a Nextel iDEN^note Sprint owns Nextel and iDEN cell phone, and Nextel iDEN got shut down in 2013, there's legitimately no way to get this phone activated in real life. Check out its specs here.
• Died During Production:
  • Ralph Waite, who portrayed Jackson Gibbs for eight episodes, passed away in February 2014.
  • Gary Glasberg, who served as an executive producer, died in his sleep in 2016.
  • Terrence O'Hara, who directed a large batch of NCIS episodes, died of cancer in December 2022.
  • Salvador Vives, Gibbs' Spanish voice actor, died of COVID in March 2020.
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • Michael Weatherly directed Season eight episode "One Last Score" and Season 10 episode "Seek".
  • Rocky Carroll, who played NCIS Director Leon Vance, also directed several episodes as well.
• Dye Hard: Pauley Perrette is a natural blonde but dyed her hair black to play Abby (occasionally using black powder to hide her roots for when she's too tired to dye them). The cumulative effects of dyeing her hair for so long caused her to have a severe allergic reaction that made her face swell up like a balloon. The left side of her face is noticeably puffy in the early episodes of Season 12.
• Edited for Syndication: At least in daytime UK screenings, for gore and violence rather than for timing.
• Executive Meddling: Invoked by Mark Harmon. Donald P. Bellisario was practically untouchable due to his track record of successful TV series but his controlling nature made production a nightmare for the cast and crew (see Troubled Production below). Mark Harmon told CBS executives that he'd walk if they didn't do anything about it and the execs decided to force out Bellisario and bring in Shane Brennan as the new showrunner. Considering that NCIS hit number one soon afterwards, this is a case of executive meddling working out for the better.
• Fake Nationality:
  • The David family. The Israeli Mossad agent Ziva is played by Chilean actress Cote de Pablo, her Israeli/Palestinian double agent brother Ari is played by German actor Rudolf Martin, and their father, Mossad Director Eli David, is played by American actor Michael Nouri (although Nouri had a father who was born in Iraq, so it's safe to say that Nouri has a Iraq ancestry).
    • Most of the Israeli characters on the show, Mossad or otherwise, are not played by Israeli actors. However, notable exceptions include Sarai Givaty (Mossad Officer Liat Tuvia in "Enemies Foreign/Enemies Domestic"), Eli Danker (Mossad Officer Michael Bashan in "Shalom"), and Oded Fehr (Ilan Bodner).
  • Director Thomas Morrow is portrayed by Alan Dale, who is from New Zealand.
  • Subverted with British actor Jamie Bamber as Jake Malloy. While he's sporting a Fake American accent as he usually does on US television, Bamber has American ancestry and citizenship despite being born in London, as his father is an American.
• Fandom Nod: In the Season 9 episode "Life Before His Eyes," Gibbs has a near-death experience and during it he imagines what his life would be like if several things had gone differently. In his alternate timeline where Kate didn't get killed by Ari, Ziva never came to join NCIS and instead gets arrested for terrorism. Tony is the one to interrogate her, and "guesses" her name wrong several times. One of the names he calls her is "Tiva", which is the online Portmanteau Couple Name given to the Tony/Ziva ship.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Gibbs simply glaring as other characters have one-sided conversations wasn't something the writers came up with. It was Mark Harmon choosing not to say his lines at all and simply use facial expressions to react to information being given to Gibbs. It quickly became a hallmark of the show and certainly made watching Info Dump scenes a lot more enjoyable.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Pauley Perrette decided to leave the show after a falling-out with Mark Harmon. Things degenerated to the point that she refused to be on the set at the same time he was, resulting in Abby and Gibbs having very few scenes together in Season 15, not even in her final episode... at least that's what the network says. Perrette has posted on Twitter that her reason for leaving may be due to sexual assault by someone she has yet to name, and accused the network of lying about the reason to cover it up.
  • At one point, the relationship between David McCallum and Cote de Pablo became tense because he didn't appreciate how her protracted contract dispute with CBS played out between Seasons 10 and 11. They appear to have patched things up since.
  • Cote de Pablo also had some tension with Michael Weatherly when she first joined the show, but they soon became close friends.
• In Memoriam:
  • The Season 11 finale, "Honor Thy Father", in which Jackson Gibbs dies off-camera, is dedicated to his actor, Ralph Waite, who died three months before the episode aired.
  • The German dub paid tribute to Ducky's previous German voice actor in early February 2014.
  • "Privileged Information", the third episode of season 14, is dedicated to showrunner Gary Glasberg, who died days prior in his sleep.
  • Occasionally, the show pays In Memoriam tribute to NCIS crew members who passed away.
    • Harriet Margulies, who works as the audience liasion for NCIS, passed away in November 2021.
    • Shannon Soucie, hair stylist for the show, died in April 2021.
    • Terrence O'Hara, who directed 56 episodes of the show, succumbed to cancer in December 2022.
• Long Runner: Still going strong since 2003 AND it just been renewed for season 21.
• Long-Runner Cast Turnover: While the show held a steady permanent roster between Seasons 5 and 10, the years before and after that have had a lot of people enter and leave the show. The only people who were in the opening credits of Season 1 who are still there in the opening credits of Season 18 are Ducky (who had since transitioned from permanent cast member to recurring guest star) and Gibbs (McGee was a recurring guest star in Season 1, but didn't get promoted to the permanent cast until Season 2). And then Gibbs left early in Season 19. Recurring guest stars have also had a high turnover rate.
  • Out of all the entire cast, Sean Murray and David McCallum is the longest-serving cast members, having appearing in every season, although Murray appears in more episodes than Mark Harmon and McCallum. Murray currently have a total count of 442 episodes so far as of the season 20 finale (which aired on May 22, 2023).
    • Mark Harmon appeared from the first season to the nineteenth season in a total of 418 episodes before leaving the show in early season 19, while McCallum currently have a total of 372 episodes.
    • Brian Dietzen is the third longest serving cast member, also having appearing in every season. He currently appears in 355 episodes so far as of May 22, 2023.
    • Rocky Carroll is the fourth longest serving cast member, having first appeared in season 5. He currently appears in 349 episodes so far as of May 2023.
  • Joe Spano, who plays Tobias Fornell, is the only recurring actor from the inception still making appearances. And he appears in every season, with season 17 being the only season he didn't appear. As of this writing (May 9, 2023), he appears in 57 episodes.
• Milestone Celebration: Every 100 episodes has the main plot of Gibbs dealing with his past in some way.
  • Episode 100 was supposed to be "Requiem," which was about Gibbs meeting up with an old friend of his daughter Kelly, which leads to him falling unconscious and seeing the spirits of his wife and daughter. However, the episode happened to fall during the week of Halloween, and it was decided that the episode after it, "Chimera," worked better for the holiday, so the two were switched.
  • Episode 200 once again has Gibbs fall unconscious due to an injury, this time imagining an alternate timeline where Kate wasn't killed in Season 2. The episode includes a treasure trove of Fandom Nods.
  • Episode 300 downplays it, as it focuses on Gibbs reconnecting with a fellow Marine sniper from his past.
  • Episode 400 flashes back to how Ducky and Gibbs first met.
• Missing Episode: Due to how the show is packaged, syndication can lead to this. For example, WE TV currently only has access to Season 1-10 while Ion Television has Seasons 11-19. Netflix only has seasons 1 to 15.
• The Pete Best: Robyn Lively played Special Agent Vivian Blackadder in the two-part JAG Poorly-Disguised Pilot. Donald Bellisario reportedly said she was "too soft" for the new show, and she was replaced by Sasha Alexander's Caitlin Todd for the series proper.
• Playing Against Type: Believe it or not, Mark Harmon was primarily known for playing quippy smartasses before playing the functionally mute Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
• Produced By Castmember: Mark Harmon is one of this, as he is being promoted as “producer” and, in later seasons, as “executive producer”. He's still credited as executive producer after he left during season 19.
• Promoted Fanboy: Jon Cryer has said that he was a fan since the beginning^note Both shows started in September 2003. After the end of Two and a Half Men, Cryer now has a recurring role as Dr. Cyril Taft, though he was only in 3 episodes total.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Sean Murray, who plays McGee, is the real-life stepson of the show's creator Donald Bellisario.
    • McGee's sister is played by his real-life stepsister.
    • Murray's daughter, Cay Ryan Murray, makes an appearance in the Season 19 episode Brat Pack and spends a significant amount of screentime interacting with McGee and the NCIS team.
  • In one Season 9 episode, Abby shows the others a locket containing a picture of her mother. The picture is of Pauley Perrette's real-life (deceased) mother, Donna. The lock of Abby's mother's hair inside the locket was also that of Pauley's mother.
  • The young Gibbs is played by Mark Harmon's son Sean.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • As the show became increasingly popular, the Gibbs Slap was dropped because people were running up to Michael Weatherly in the street and smacking him upside the head.
  • Starting 18x7 "The First Day", the show incorporated the COVID-19 Pandemic into their storylines.
  • The US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Taliban taking over Afghanistan in 2021 is not only finally mentioned but also dealt with in 20x17 "Stranger in a Strange Land".
    • Worth noting the NCIS franchise mentioned real life events such as 9/11, Katrina, Desert Storm, COVID-19 Pandemic, etc.
• Reality Subtext:
  • Mark Harmon's father was a World War 2 fighter pilot. So was Gibbs'.
  • Gibbs and Jack Sloane quickly develop a close and mutually trusting — if sometimes argumentative — relationship. Actors Mark Harmon and Maria Bello, who portray them, clicked immediately upon meeting and have repeatedly raved about how much they enjoy working with each other. They're also genuinely friends offscreen, and in most behind-the-scenes photos, they're standing right next to each other.
• Screwed by the Network: Starting with Season 19, the show moved from its 8pm Tuesday timeslot, where's been airing since the show started, to Mondays at 9pm, while Tuesdays were taken up by FBI and its spinoffs. This put the show right up against Monday Night Football, although even with that, the show is still gets among the highest ratings for broadcast networks.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Compare David McCallum in his Illya Kuryakin days◊ (the mid-1960s) with Adam Campbell as a younger version of McCallum's character in a season 12 episode (mid-2010s).
• Series Hiatus: NCIS, along with its two spinoffs, had shut down their filming in March 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic. Remaining filmed episodes are aired on schedule and after airing their season finales, NCIS went on a hiatus for a while until in September 2020, three NCIS series resumed production with extreme COVID precautions, with their respective seasons got shortened. All three NCIS shows ^note NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles and ''NCIS: New Orleans" returned after a break during the pandemic on November 2020.
• Sleeper Hit: NCIS is one of the rare examples of a show that's steadily increased its viewing audience as it's gone on, and to continuously do it over a decade is virtually unheard of; nearly every successive season has had an episode that set a new benchmark for the show's viewership^note with only seasons 4 and 5 unable to turn the trick, with Season 10's "Shiva" the current record holder at over 22 million viewers.
• The Other Darrin: Because Kelly's a Posthumous Character and her appearances are few and far between, multiple actresses have had to portray her.
• Those Two Actors: Five, rather. Rocky Carroll (Leon Vance), Lauren Holly (Jenny Shepherd), Mark Harmon (Leroy Jethro Gibbs), Stacy Edwards (Dr. Janice Byers of S2E8 "Heartbreak") and Jayne Brook (Lyndi Crenshaw of S4E20 "Cover Story") all had starring roles on Chicago Hope. To top it off, Harmon and Holly's characters had a romantic relationship on this show as well.
• Throw It In: Gibbs' famous Dope Slap resulted from Harmon genuinely giving one to Weatherly, who he felt was goofing off too much while filming a scene (ironically, the very reason Gibbs usually gives them to people). TPTB thought it was hilarious and encouraged Harmon to make it a character tic. In true Harmon style, he gives the credit to Weatherly for not breaking character or stopping the scene.
• Troubled Production:
  • When Donald Bellisario was showrunner, he exercised tight control over the show and continuously rewrote scripts, resulting in pages being delivered just before cameras were supposed to roll and the cast and crew working longer and longer hours because of the resulting delays^note According to Mark Harmon, the cast and crew of NCIS operated without ever having received a complete script for the first four seasons. This also led to Sasha Alexander leaving the show^note she couldn't handle the thought of having to work 16 hours a day to shoot an entire network TV season. While this isn't unusual in TV production, Mark Harmon finally decided to put his foot down and threatened to quit unless someone else was brought in as showrunner, leading to Bellisario being forced out and Shane Brennan taking over. While this smoothed out the production process (with whole scripts now being delivered 10 days in advance of shooting), Bellisario is in a messy and ugly legal battle with CBS over royalties that continues as of this writing.
  • When Cote de Pablo's contract ran out after Season 10, she entered into protracted negotiations. While the powers that be said they kept on increasing their offers, de Pablo was hesitant to accept and dragged talks out through the hiatus before deciding to leave a week before production on Season 11 was supposed to start. This left the writers with little time to put together a workable departure for Ziva, including resolving eight seasons worth of Unresolved Sexual Tension with Tony, resulting in a rushed two-episode story. Some cast members publicly expressed displeasure at how the actress left (Mark Harmon being particularly backhanded during an appearance on Arsenio Hall).
  • Pauley Perrette announced in 2018 she was leaving the show, citing on-set sexual harassment from an as-yet-unnamed member of either cast or crew.
  • NCIS and its two spinoffs is among of many, many filmed media that got shut down production in March 2020 due to the worsening of the COVID pandemic. Granted all three NCIS shows resume filming in September 2020 with extreme COVID precautions & guidelines and their season premieres will air in November 2020.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Production notes from the show say that the plan was to develop a romantic relationship between Kate and Tony—the events of the Season 3 episodes "Under Covers" and "Boxed In" would have forced them to realize that they had feelings for each other. Sasha Alexander's decision to leave the show after two seasons prevented that potential arc from happening. It's touched upon in the show's 200th episode where, in an alternate reality, Tony and Kate marry and start a family while Kate continues to be exasperated at Tony.
  • Vivian Blackadder as a member of the NCIS team in the pilot, before she was replaced by Kate. Donald Bellisario thought that the Robyn Lively was too "soft" for the show.
  • Scott Bakula (of NCIS: New Orleans), Don Johnson, and Harrison Ford were among those considered for the role of Gibbs.
  • Another possible contender for the role of Kate? Jennifer Aniston. Apparently, she wanted the part so much that she asked TPTB to hold off on the show until she was finished with Friends (which was beginning its final season when NCIS began).
  • The season 11 finale was to be a big cliffhanger of Gibbs and McGee lost in Russia. But the passing of Ralph Waite led the writers to make the finale a tribute to the actor as Gibbs deals with his father's death. The Russia plot was thus saved for the season 12 premiere.
• The Wiki Rule: The NCIS Database.
• Written by Cast Member: The episode "Turkey Trot" was written by Diona Reasonover, who plays forensic specialist Kasie Hines on the show.
  • Brian Dietzen wrote a few episodes, especially The Helpers (Season 19, Episode 13).
• You Look Familiar: One of the paradoxes of a Shared Universe.
  • Marco Sanchez is not just Pedro Hernandez's son, he once played a one-off drug addict in JAG.
  • Abby's diminutive yet very kind friend played by Meredith Eaton is also Phoenix Foundation Director Matilda Webber on MacGyver (2016)- who has the exact opposite personality. And since MacGyver has had a crossover episode with Hawaii-50, which has had a crossover episode with NCIS:Los Angeles...
  • Katrina Law, who plays Jessica Knight, was previously Quinn Liu in Hawaii Five-0, which takes place in the same universe.

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