Trivia / Psych

• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Gus is a trained tap dancer, just as Dulé Hill really is.
    • In "Any Given Friday Night at 10PM, 9PM Central" Gus is asked, as a joke, to speak in a Jamaican accent; Dulé Hill's parents are Jamaican.
  • A minor one for James Roday Rodriguez; in "No Country for Two Old Men," Shawn announces at the housewarming party for him and Juliet that an authentic Mexican buffet has been provided by his father. James Roday Rodriguez's father in real life is the regional catering manager for Taco Cabana, a chain of Mexican fast casual restaurants in Texas. In fact, after the show ended, Rodriguez would later stop just using his stage name of "James Roday" after being more exposed to the racism faced by Latin Americans in the United States and would instead go by his full name of "James Roday Rodriguez".
  • An unusual example: Lassiter's daughter, Lilly Nora Lassiter, is named after Timothy Omundson's real-life daughters, Lilly and Nora.
• Blooper: In "Gus Walks Into A Bank", the phone in the bank manager's office is clearly meant to be a prop for a hotel room set, complete with buttons for "Room Service", "Reception" and "Concierge".
• California Doubling:
  • Strangely enough, the Vancouver Doubling variant for a California town. Overall, they do a good job of making rainy, heavily-forested British Columbia pass for dry Southern California. They take advantage of the low def filming of the time to hide the fact that outdoor scenes are filmed in the rain.
  • The episode "Dual Spires" was a parody of Twin Peaks, and it took place in a town that strongly resembled that series' Pacific Northwest setting. Given that the episode still took place in Southern California, this made little sense, but it worked for the parody.
  • Anytime you see railroad tracks on the beach, it's filmed in White Rock, BC. The tracks in Santa Barbara are further back and far too heavily used to provide such a nice vista.
    • An early establishing shot of a sports arena was of the Rose Garden in Portland, or from a show filmed in Vancouver but set in California. Oh, my.
• Casting Gag:
  • Keisha Knight Pulliam, also known as Rudy from The Cosby Show, plays Gus's wife in a dream of Shawn's. See Celebrity Resemblance.
  • Deon Richmond (Bud from The Cosby Show, who Gus is repeatedly compared to throughout the whole show) is cast as Gus's new boss in the finale.
  • John Cena is reunited with his The Marine co-star Robert Patrick in "You Can't Handle This Episode."
  • Psych is not the first time Kurt Fuller played a coroner.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Gus seems to have a lot of episodes where he is singing or, most frequently, tap-dancing.
  • "Psych: The Musical" in Season 7 gives most of the main cast the opportunity to show off their singing and dancing skills.
• Channel Hop: The second Psych movie was released on the Peacock streaming service rather than on USA Network, with the third being released on Peacock as well.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Overlapping with Old Shame; the cast and crew strongly dislike the Season 1 episode "Cloudy... With a Chance of Murder", with Rodriguez specifically citing it as the weakest episode of the series. In fact, the entire reason for the Season 8 episode "Remake, AKA Cloudy… With a Chance of Improvement" was because the cast and crew wanted to see if they could take the original episode's premise and remake it into something they found enjoyable.
  • The crew also seems to have a distaste for the episode "Game, Set... Muuurder?". In the Season 4 episode "The Head, the Tail, the Whole Damn Episode", when Shawn tells stories about a bunch of previous cases, when he begins talking about the tennis case, he quickly drops the story, even saying "Screw that case".
• Creator's Favorite: The cast and crew absolutely loved working together on this series along with strongly appreciating the continued devotion of their fanbase. They've even said they will continue to make reunion movies for as long as the fans want them to.
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • James Roday Rodriguez, Dulé Hill, and the crew members doing the episode's audio commentary on the DVD agree that "Shawn Takes A Shot in the Dark" is easily among the series’ top three best episodes.
  • On a related note, Rodriguez has said in an interview that “Dual Spires” is easily his favorite episode out of the whole show. Most of the cast and crew also seem to agree that it's easily the best episode of the entire show.
  • Dulé Hill has said that "High Top Fade Out" is his favorite episode of the show.
  • Corbin Bernsen claimed that "Mr. Yin Presents..." is his favorite episode out of the whole series.
  • Maggie Lawson stated that "Scary Sherry" is her favorite episode in the series.
  • Timothy Omundson claimed that "Last Night Gus" was his favorite episode of the show.
  • Kirsten Nelson said that "There Might Be Blood" is her favorite episode of the series.
• Defictionalization: The bad news is, Fritos Quatro Queso Dos Fritos most likely don't exist. The good news is, fans have created recipes to replicate them!
• Descended Creator: Producer Carlos Jacott plays roles in two episodes and in the movie.
• Directed by Cast Member: James Roday Rodriguez has directed and written several few episodes, as well as collaborated with Steve Franks on the general storyline. Additionally, Season 8's "1967: A Psych Odyssey" was directed by Kirsten Nelson (Chief Karen Vick).
• Filming Location Cameo: The Season 4 Vacation Episode "Extradition: British Columbia" shows off a lot of Vancouver and surrounding areas, including the ski slopes of Whistler and the bridge at Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. They followed it up in Season 5 with "Extradition II: The Actual Extradition Part".
• Friendship on the Set: An noted above, the dynamic between Shawn and Gus is greatly aided by how James Roday Rodriguez and Dulé Hill are actually really good friends in Real Life.
• Genius Bonus: Some of Shawn and Gus's references can be quite obscure. Just as an example concerning the cult featured in "The Tao of Gus" and Gus's infatuation with it, Shawn remarks at one point that he hopes that he can get Gus out of there before he robs a bank with a machine gun while wearing a beret.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: The Shawn-Gus dynamic came about thanks to James Roday Rodriguez and Dulé Hill riffing off the script and letting their real-life bromance shine through.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: Jazmin Simon was very close to her due date when shooting Psych 2: Lassie Come Home, so she was shot in tight close ups and angled away from the camera in wide framing. The script also had a number of escape hatches written in so Selene, her character could exit the plot without too much disruption. Although, Steve Franks noted, in hindsight, that everyone forgot that if Jazmin went into labor, Dulé Hill, her husband, would also have needed to take time off.
• Irony as She Is Cast: A downplayed variant - In “Lights, Camera...Homicido”, Shawn frequently struggles with his lack of Spanish skills while on the telenovela. In reality, James Roday Rodriguez is half-Mexican and is actually semi-fluent in Spanish.
• Milestone Celebration: Season 7 Episode 5, "100 Clues," which is an Affectionate Parody and Whole-Plot Reference to Clue, complete with Multiple Endings.
• Missing Episode: Season 7 Episode 13, "Nip and Suck It," was removed from syndication in Hallmark Movies and Masteries in 2019. This is because of Lori Loughlin having made a guest appearance and Hallmark removing anything involving her after the college admission scandal.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Keith David replaces Ernie Hudson as Gus's dad.
  • Not to mention how often the actors who play Shawn as a kid get switched (4 people now).
    • Lampshaded in "The Polarizing Express": Young Shawn tells Shawn he's the younger him, and Shawn replies, "You don't look like me." Young Shawn then comments that "we change all the time, sometimes from week to week."
  • "Remakes AKA Cloudy... With A Chance Of Improvement", which is obviously a remake of Season 1's "Cloudy... With a Chance of Murder", has basically every one-shot character introduced that episode recast, mostly by actors who previously guest-starred in other episodes.
• Out of Order: "Psych: The Musical" aired less than one month before Season 8. Chronologically however, it has to take place less than halfway through Season 7, as Vick is still chief of the police department despite being suspended in the end of "No Trout About It", and Jules is still unaware that Shawn isn't really psychic, when she found out at the end of "Deez Nups".
• Permanent Placeholder: An In-Universe example; Da Chief for the beginning of the show is Interim Chief Vick. As the title suggests, she's only there as a temporary chief, though she later becomes the full-on chief of the department.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Prior to this, Dulé Hill came to fame playing the mature and straitlaced Charlie Young. Gus, on the other hand, is immature and comical (while making a poor attempt at being straitlaced).
  • Kurt Fuller as Woody, as he usually plays characters who are either Smug Jerkasses or corrupt authority figures. Here, he's a genuinely friendly Cloudcuckoolander and No-Respect Guy.
• Promoted to Opening Titles: Kirsten Nelson joined the opening titles starting from Season 2. Jazmyn Simon, meanwhile, was added to the titles in This Is Gus.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Guest stars Sendhil Ramamurthy and Jay Chandrasekhar are cousins.
  • In the Season 1 episode, "From the Earth to the Starbucks", Gus' would-be Love Interests is played by Dulé Hill's then wife, actress Nicole Lyn.
  • In the season 2 episode "Black and Tan: A Crime of Fashion", Henry's date Susan B. is played by Corbin Bernsen's wife Amanda Pays.
  • From Psych: The Movie and onwards, Gus' fiancé and later wife Selene is played by Dulé Hill's actual wife Jazmin Simon.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Psych: The Movie was originally supposed to have the characters reunite in Santa Barbara. Unfortunately, Timothy Omundson suffered a stroke before production could begin and the script had to be heavily rewritten. The setting was changed to San Francisco to provide a plausible reason as to why Lassiter wasn't involved, some lines were reassigned to other characters^note Chief Vick complaining about being chained to a desk and eagerly running off to shoot bad guys was clearly meant for Lassiter, while Woody the Coroner joins the gang for the climax. Omundson's role was reduced to a brief cameo shot on a phone and in dim lighting to try and hide the effects of the stroke as much as possible although the one side of his face is clearly paralyzed.
  • Psych: Lassie Come Home was written with Timothy Omundson's condition in mind. In the film, Lassiter is injured, kicking off the plot and giving him a major role to play while minimizing the amount of physical exertion needed so that Omundson wouldn't be placed under too much strain.
  • Lassie Come Home had a smaller budget than The Movie, so the writers decided to avoid turning it into an "event" and make it more like an extra-long episode.
• Reality Subtext: Lassiter has a beard in This Is Gus because Timothy Omundson is self-conscious about the way his face looks after his stroke.
• Refitted for Sequel: The cast and crew wanted to do an episode-long Homage to Clue in Season 6, but the main actor they wanted wasn't available. However, this concept was later picked back up and used for Season 7's "100 Clues" as the series' Milestone Celebration.
• Romance on the Set: James Roday Rodriguez (Shawn) and Maggie Lawson (Jules) dated for the duration of the show's original run.
• Schedule Slip: Psych 2: Lassie Come Home was supposed to debut in December, 2019, but was pushed back to July, 2020.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Liam James, who plays Young Shawn (Seasons 1-5), is a dead ringer for James Roday Rodriguez. He also absolutely nails his performance as the Shawn we all know and love in perfect miniature.
  • Also John Cena (as Juliet's brother) has a surprising resemblance to Maggie Lawson.
• Spared by the Cut: A deleted scene from "Santabarbaratown 2" says that Knight of Cerebus villain Jerry Carp was wounded and captured. Without that scene, the final episode implies his gunshot wound is fatal.
• Throw It In!: When shooting the pilot, James Roday Rodriguez grabbed a pineapple that happened to a part of the set dressing and ad-libbed "Should I slice this up for the road?" and this off-the-cuff action resulted in Shawn's obsession with pineapples and a series-long gag where pineapples were hidden throughout the show for fans to find on their screens.
• Throw It In!: Val Kilmer's cameo in the finale was a shot in the dark. The producers asked and Kilmer said yes so the scene was quickly thrown together.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There was some discussion about having Eliot Spencer from Leverage be Shawn's cousin. This was rendered moot when Leverage was explicitly mentioned as being a fictional show in the Psych universe. Eventually, both Psych and Leverage instead became Mutually Fictional for each other.
  • During production of Season 6, Dulé Hill said they might do a second Dual Spires episode, but it didn't pan out.
    • Relatedly, "Heeeeere's Lassie!" originally started out as an Homage to Clue before the lead actor the cast wanted for the episode had to drop out, with James Roday Rodriguez then deciding to rework the entire episode as a Whole-Plot Reference to The Shining. Additionally, Shawn was originally going to be the chased by an Ax-Crazy Lassiter instead of Gus, but due to both Rodriguez being the episode's director and it being determined that Dulé Hill could do a much funnier impersonation of Shelley Duvall than Rodriguez could, it was changed to being Gus. The early drafts of the script also had Gus and Shawn showing legitimate psychic ability by having Gus "shine" to Shawn instead of just texting him, but they wanted to keep the episode grounded and so it was scrapped.
  • Season 8 originally had eight episodes filmed and was in the process of writing five more scripts. Unfortunately, their budget was only enough to film two of those episodes to which they set up a poll to let fans decide which ones they would like to see the most.
• Word of Saint Paul: In response to a question on Twitter about why Shassie (Lassie/Shawn) wasn't canon, Timothy Omundson said "Who says it wasn't?!"
• Writers Cannot Do Math: In This Is Gus, taking place in 2021, Lassiter says that his daughter Lily is 11. Lily was born in 2014. Meaning Lily couldn't be more than 7 years old.
• Written-In Infirmity: While filming an episode in season 4, James Roday Rodriguez apparently sustained a cut on his upper lip that left a scar. In "A Very Juliet Episode," while tussling with the bad guy, Shawn is injured in the same place, giving an in-universe explanation for the scar.
  • An in-universe explanation has not been given, though, for James's chest scar (first visible in "Shawn Gets the Yips"), allegedly from a heart surgery in his teens.
  • Lassiter is still recovering from nearly being shot to death in Lassie Come Home due to Timothy Omundson being left with permanent physical disabilities from a stroke a couple years earlier.

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