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120 free The Mentalist trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This is the big The Mentalist trivia quiz: 120 questions covering all seven seasons of the CBS drama, from the pilot in 2008 to the wedding in "White Orchids" in 2015. The easy questions are the ones any casual viewer will get: what Patrick Jane used to do for a living, which agency Teresa Lisbon works for, what Jane drinks in nearly every episode, and the one colour that runs through almost every episode title. From there it digs into the Red John saga in detail: the smiley face, the William Blake poem, Timothy Carter at the mall, Lorelei Martins, the seven suspects, the Blake Association and the sheriff who turned out to be the killer. There are questions on the whole CBI team and the FBI years, on recurring characters like Bret Stiles, Kristina Frye, Madeleine Hightower and Erica Flynn, and on the actors, the ratings, the awards and Bruno Heller's inspirations for the character. The hardest questions are for people who noticed the Citroen, the re-soled shoes and the anagram in the title of "18-5-4". Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the series, its characters and its seasons before publishing, and the sentence that supports it is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Castle, Psych and Criminal Minds quizzes next.
30 of 120 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Patrick Jane's lucrative profession on The Mentalist before he became a police consultant?
A psychic medium
A psychic medium, and a fake one: Jane now insists there is no such thing as psychics, but still uses the cold-reading and hypnosis tricks from his old act.
Q 02Which agency employs Patrick Jane as a consultant for the first five and a half seasons?
The California Bureau of Investigation
The California Bureau of Investigation is based in Sacramento; the building used as its headquarters is actually the back of a historic hotel, the Pico House.
Q 03Who created The Mentalist?
Bruno Heller
He had just come off an expensive HBO epic and wanted to prove he could build a hit inside the constraints of network television.
Q 04How many episodes of The Mentalist aired in total?
151
The run stretched from September 2008 to February 2015 across seven seasons.
Q 05What were the names of Jane's murdered wife and daughter?
Angela and Charlotte
Charlotte was named after two films written by the creator's father, Lukas Heller: Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
Q 06How long before the pilot did Jane's television boast about the killer take place?
Five years
By the season-four episode "Red Rover, Red Rover", the killer is sending Jane a "Happy Anniversary" note for the ninth anniversary.
Q 07The season-two episode title "18-5-4" is a numeric code for which word?
RED
Each number stands for a letter's position in the alphabet, so even the one title without a colour word still hides the show's signature colour.
Q 08What show did CBS want The Mentalist to work as a companion to?
NCIS
Heller adapted his concept to fit that primetime slot after developing a very different, very expensive HBO epic.
Q 09Which USA Network comedy was The Mentalist frequently compared to?
Psych
The earlier show, about a fake psychic consultant in Santa Barbara, made repeated jokes about the similarities.
Q 10Where was The Mentalist mostly filmed?
Los Angeles
A few scenes were occasionally shot on location in Sacramento, and invented towns stood in for real ones.
Q 11Which two Californian fictional locales did the show often use for its cases?
Salinger Mill and Rancho Rosa
Using invented towns let the writers set murders anywhere in the state without upsetting real chambers of commerce.
Q 12Which star did the show's creator imagine when he wanted the lead to have physical and spiritual grace?
Cary Grant
He described the character as half Sherlock Holmes, half street psychic: part detective, part con artist selling people lies.
Q 13Which network began syndicating The Mentalist in the fall of 2011?
TNT
CBS itself later ran the show weeknights in the summer of 2015 to fill the gap between Letterman's and Colbert's Late Shows.
Q 21What did Jane suffer before he joined the CBI, a fact kept out of his records?
A nervous breakdown
He later fakes a second collapse in season four purely to lure Red John into making contact.
Q 22Which CBI head first hired Jane as a consultant, as shown in the season-five flashback episode?
Virgil Minelli
Jane had only come to the CBI to read the Red John files, and was let in after a then-agent assaulted him.
Q 23In "Fugue in Red", what causes Jane to partially lose his memory?
A near drowning
The episode shows how selfish the pre-CBI Jane was, prompting a memorably blunt one-liner from Cho.
Q 14How does Jane get around for most of the series?
A Citroen DS
A Citroen DS 21 Pallas, kept in pristine condition; after Red John's death he swaps the French classic for a battered trailer.
Q 15What does Jane drink in nearly every episode?
Tea
Tea, in nearly every episode, while he openly disdains coffee; he once also asked Van Pelt to 'bigify' something on her computer.
Q 16What is missing from Jane's trademark three-piece suit?
A tie
Heller said the vests are also a magician thing: they wear them because they need somewhere to hide things.
Q 17In which season-five episode does Jane finally have his scuffed brown shoes re-soled?
Not One Red Cent
He wears the same battered pair in every episode of the series.
Q 18What mental technique does Patrick Jane rely on to store huge amounts of information?
The memory palace
The memory palace is his main trick; he is also skilled at hypnosis, sleight of hand, pickpocketing and lock picking, though those rarely solve a case.
Q 19How was the young Jane billed in his swindler father's carnival psychic act?
The Boy Wonder
The flashback episode "Throwing Fire" shows the teenage Jane being tutored by his unscrupulous father.
Q 20Which episode reveals that Jane never went to school?
Rose-Colored Glasses
Growing up in travelling carnivals with a con-man father left him with plenty of skills but no formal education.
Q 24Whom does Jane shoot with a shotgun in "Red John's Footsteps" to save Lisbon's life?
Dumar Hardy
He throws the weapon down immediately afterwards, visibly shocked; it is the first of four men he kills in the series.
Q 25Which William Blake poem frames the symbolic relationship between Jane and Red John?
The Tyger
They are cast as the Tyger and the Lamb, a "fearful symmetry" that also runs through a secret code hidden in the series.
Q 26Where does Jane live during the two years after killing Red John?
A Spanish-speaking island
The telephone country code shown is 58, which points to Venezuela.
Q 27What condition does Jane set before returning to the U.S. to work for the FBI?
That Lisbon works with him
He holds out for three months in his detention suite until the FBI agrees, and Lisbon then decides to join the Bureau.
Q 28What vehicle does Jane switch to after the death of Red John?
A 1985 Airstream trailer
He also drops the vest from his suit until the fourth episode of season seven.
Q 29Which manga and anime character was partly inspired by the show's Patrick Jane?
Osamu Dazai in Bungo Stray Dogs
TV Guide also put Patrick Jane on its list of TV's sexiest crime fighters.
Q 30What signature does Red John leave at his crime scenes?
A smiley face drawn in blood
A smiley face drawn in blood, always clockwise with three fingers of a gloved right hand; the one exception was skywritten in 'Red John's Footsteps'.