(At 00:10) As Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) is questioning the lingerie model she tells him she "made $10,000 just for getting out of bed" which is a sly reference to the quote from Linda Evangelista printed in an October 1990 issue of Vogue magazine: "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day." Even though Evangelista did say this, she was actually commenting on how crazy the fashion business had become towards super models like herself.
Evan Zao (Ron Yuan), who replaced coroner Sheldon Hawkes (Hill Harper), and who Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) always goes to for answers, appeared in Shanghai Hotel (2011) with Harper.
No obvious in story-universe reason, in Summer in the City (#2.1), is given for the radical change of location for the new look CSI:NY offices, or where most of the featured Season 1 core CSI staff went after Season 1, or how much time has passed within the story universe.