NCIS: Kate's Death Has A Detail You Can't Unsee Thanks To Michael Weatherly

Television TV Dramas

When Kate Todd (Sasha Alexander) was killed back in Season 2 of "NCIS," viewers were nothing if not stunned. Her passing in "Twilight" occurs just after she survives taking a slug to the chest from a rooftop shooter. Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) and Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) pick her up and dust her off. She's then shot through the forehead by another sniper, while joking that she never thought she'd live to see Gibbs praise her talents.

This ironic death contains a tiny visual Easter egg you might not have noticed at first. Weatherly explained during Alexander's guest appearance on "Off-Duty: An NCIS Rewatch" — a podcast he shares with Cote de Pablo — that a small reaction from him presaged the end of Todd's life. "When you got that shot to the head, I was standing behind you," he said. "And if you watch the scene in slow motion ... just before the dot appears that was digitally put there, there's a blood pack on the back of your head ... and blood goes all over my face."

Weatherly explained that because the show's special effects coordinator was in front of him, he could tell when the blast was coming. "I flinch right before the blood hits," he said. "So I'm flinching right before you get killed." Indeed, you can definitely see Weatherly flinch just a second before Todd is shot, if you're looking for it. And he isn't the only "NCIS" actor who isn't quite comfortable working around the show's prop ballistics.

Weatherly isn't alone in having some weaponry issues

Apparently, shooting prop guns on the set proved slightly problematic for all three actors. During Sasha Alexander's episode of "Off Duty," Michael Weatherly admitted that he still flinches when he has to shoot a weapon for the show, let alone when he has to be near a squib that's gone off near his face. And though Alexander received proper ballistics and tactical training at a boot camp, both Alexander and Cote de Pablo admitted they didn't like handling guns for the series.

"I really don't like the guns, it really freaked me out, like how powerful they were and how scary they were," Alexander said. De Pablo, who had previously expressed her real-life fear of guns, agreed and added that she also can't stop herself from blinking whenever she has to shoot one.

Interestingly, all three actors continue to work with prop guns to this day. Alexander's post-"NCIS" career has definitely seen her participating in gunplay — she was Maura Isles in the long-running TNT procedural "Rizzoli and Isles." Meanwhile, de Pablo and Weatherly will get in a few more hours at the range soon enough when "NCIS: Tony and Ziva" hits Paramount+ sometime in the near future.