Sela Ward was offered the role of Megan Donner but turned it down.
The Miami-Dade Police Department's crime scene processing unit is called the "Crime Scene Investigations Bureau (CSIB)", but unlike the TV show, MDPD's CSI technicians do not conduct laboratory testing. Miami-Dade Police Department has a separate Bureau that operates the Miami-Dade Crime Lab.
While all the fly-over shots, skylines and cityscapes really are of Miami, Florida, any beach scenes during the series were filmed at Manhattan Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles.
"CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (2000) star William Petersen was offered the chance to produce this show, but declined.
Believing that CSI copycat shows were inevitable, CSI producers and CBS agreed to create this spin-off series in the hope of being the first to copy the original CSI series.
The design of the autopsy theatre was based on a misremembering of a set from Andromeda Strain, The (1971).
Horatio was named after the Victorian era "rags to riches" novelist Horatio Alger.
During the opening credits, the actors' names morph out of equations: - 4y - 1 = 3b(Nh) becomes David Caruso (I) - 3a1 - X = (A9Xy) becomes Emily Procter - 3b + N = 7bn1(6A) becomes Adam Rodriguez (I) - 2b + 4a = (7h)3XyNh becomes Khandi Alexander - A1b + B2c = R4 becomes 'Kim Delaney' - (7b) = 6m + (3h) becomes Jonathan Togo - (3h) + (7b) = 6 becomes Rory Cochrane.
Although some beach scenes may have been shot outside of Southeast Florida, several have been shot in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.
Food items are frequently used to simulate injuries to corpses (i.e., roast chicken skin is used to simulate burns.)
Don Johnson (I) was considered for Horatio Caine.
Although the City of Miami counts 35% of its population as Cuban, Adam Rodriguez (I) is the only cast member to be of Cuban descent (he is 1/4 Cuban).
