Criminal Minds/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adorkable: Reid in general, but especially in flashbacks when he had gigantic glasses as a kid.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Sometimes, especially if the unsub had a Monster Sob Story and/or if the victims were total assholes.
    • It's hard not to feel bad for Tobias Henkel, a clearly decent and scared guy whose father pushed him into creating multiple personalities and becoming a killer, especially as he lays dying after being shot by Reid and says gratefully, "You stopped him!", referring to his father's manifestation as one of his personalities
    • Megan Kane counts too.
    • Ian Doyle. You had to feel kind of bad at his death in the Season Seven premiere.
    • Norman Hill....poor, poor Norman Hill.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: A.J. Cook and Paget Brewster returned for Season Seven.
    • And for some fans, Seaver's departure is this.
  • Anvilicious: For fans who don't like Ashley Seaver, they perceive the emphasis of her background as ham-fisted in her debut episode.
  • Ass Pull: The entire Pentagon thing in "JJ". Simon Mirren has tried justifying it with "We have always known that J.J. had other connections..."
    • The Emo Teen plot in "Doubt" smelt faintly of this.
    • Some parts of the fanbase think that Prentiss's past as an undercover CIA agent was an Ass Pull to give her something substantial and exciting for her final episodes.
  • Base Breaker: Seaver.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Combined with Nightmare Fuel, in "The Longest Night", with Leonard Cohen playing over flashbacks of the unsub (played by Tim Curry) as a child with his mother. His teeth turn into those of Tim Curry's character in the present. It's reprised a few more times with "Dance Me to the End of Love", "Sisters of Mercy" and more flashbacks.
    • Reid's leech dream in "The Instincts".
    • The UnSub's hallucinations in "Sense Memory".
    • Back in Season One, the team (usually Gideon) being transported back to the moment the murder was committed, walking out the murder with the UnSub.
    • Ashley Seaver's membership in the team briefly has become something very close to this; they sent her off with a line of dialogue.
  • Broken Base: Now that "What Happens at Home" has finally aired, the reception of Ashley Seaver is very mixed with fans taking these two positions: a good, distinct, different, and fleshed-out character in her own right (despite the physical similarities to JJ) or a Scrappy Mary Sue copycat replacement with a ham-fisted background.
  • Complete Monster: Enough of them for their own page, even!
  • Creator's Pet: Some sections of fandom have developed Reid fatigue. He's gotten the most focus episodes of the show, most notably the Hankel/drug addiction arc in season 2.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: "We'll Get By" by Gary Louris, used at the end of "Damaged".
    • "Heavy and Hanging" by Patterson Hood at the end of "Hopeless".
    • "When the Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash, in "Elephant's Memory".
    • Kevin and Garcia's first meeting, set to David Bowie's "Heroes".
    • The ending of "...And Back" is a study in how to use Soundtrack Dissonance.
    • "The Longest Night" uses a lot of Leonard Cohen's music, but the playing of "Who By Fire" over the scene in which Morgan (silently) tells Det. Spicer's daughter her aunt has died and embraces her is just beautiful and haunting.
    • "Sympathy for the Devil" at the beginning of "Revelations". And then at the end, "The Funeral," by Band of Horses.
    • "Hallelujah" playing over people on the street giving their opinion of the vigilante in "A Real Rain".
    • Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Pride and Joy" in "Identity".
    • Five For Fighting's "The Riddle" playing as Gideon watches Elle come out of anaesthesia, Reid flies his mother back home to Las Vegas, JJ takes down the evidence board in the Round Table Room, Garcia fixes her computers as Morgan watches, and Hotch washes Elle's blood off her living-room wall in "The Fisher King II".
    • Enya's "Boadicea" playing over the wordless scene of a family dying in a housefire as their murderer looks on ("Ashes and Dust"). It's terrifying and haunting and brilliant all at the same time.
    • The killer from the episode "Legacy" keeps whistling "Johanna" from the musical "Sweeney Todd" as he is about to do horrible things to his victims.
    • Lifehouse's "Broken" over Gideon's departure.
    • The wrenching cello music at the end of "Lauren."
  • Die for Our Ship: Hoo boy. God forbid you like Haley in this fandom - both the het and slash fans can't seem to stand her, if they're not killing her off or turning her into a shrieking harridan.
    • Averted, interestingly, with Will. Fanfics that focus on the popular pairing of JJ/Reid usually just pretend Will never existed, rather than turning him into a Jerkass or killing him off. Probably a testament to the writers' and actor's sympathetic portrayal in-Universe.
    • Kevin Lynch gets a lot of flack on account of his dating Garcia yet not being Morgan.
    • Subverted with Seaver. A good number of fans didn't want her shipped with anyone, but especially Reid.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Garcia. It's why, unlike the other girls, her role isn't being decreased in season six.
    • Ask around a fan community who its frequenters' favorite unsubs are and Tobias Hankel's name is bound to come up quite a bit. It doesn't hurt that he's sympathetic and from a Reid-centric episode.
  • Evil Is Cool: Heavily averted. The unsubs generally fall into three categories. Some are genuinely crazy, a few genuinely just enjoy killing, but the vast majority are just immature and kill to make up for their own emotional insecurities.
  • Evil Is Sexy: A number of the unsubs, but special mention goes to Foyet. He was certainly not ugly, and after he revealed himself he became very suave and self-assured.
  • Foe Yay:
    • Hotch and the Reaper, in "Faceless, Nameless" when the Reaper tells Hotch to relax because "it goes in so much easier". If the Reaper hadn't been holding a knife, the whole scene would have read as an extremely violent rape. The Reaper's 'do you still think I'm impotent?' question makes many viewers wonder if he really did rape Hotch.
    • The Keystone Killer towards Max Ryan. Max Ryan isn't so above it all either. Gideon even comments that The Keystone Killer is Max's "the one who got away" though maybe not in that sense.

'We're inseparable, you and I.'

  • Fridge Logic: See the frige page about it.
  • Friendship Moment: Pick a scene on the jet from the end of the episode. Any ending scene on the jet.
    • Special mention to the one from "The Performer", where Reid mothers JJ, Morgan and Prentiss pick on Reid, and Hotch and Rossi argue about music and do their best married couple impersonation.
    • The team - minus Reid (who is with his mother)- having dinner together in "The Instincts".
    • Hotch and Rossi coaching Jack's soccer team at the end of "Out of the Light".
    • Rossi teaching Garcia, as well as the rest of the team, to cook Italian food at the end of "Proof". Bonus points to JJ for just wanting to drink the wine and Hotch being the most knowledgeable besides Rossi.
    • The implications that JJ was Prentiss's lifeline while Prentiss was in hiding and presumed dead by the rest of the team.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Watch the conversation Elle and Hotch have at the end of "Unfinished Business" about family and priorities and not letting the job take over your life, and try not to cry when you know what happens to Hotch in later seasons.
    • Virtually anything with Hotch and Haley in the first two seasons.
    • The great remarks made about JJ in Season 4 after her maternity leave (Jordan: "Don't take her for granted" "You're a family"; Hotch: "We've missed you.") now seem hollow because while the show greatly appreciates JJ, CBS DID take her for granted and cut her out without regard for the "family". Her final episode "JJ" reflects this very strongly.
      • There is a certain amount of satisfaction the fans can gain now they've watched CBS realising what a huge mistake they made and backpedaling as hard as they possibly can to put JJ back in the BAU. It's a nice mixture of happiness that we're getting JJ back, and a feeling of smug superiority watching the executives squirm.
      • Unfortunately, while it's nice that we're getting both Paget Brewster and AJ Cook back, they - as well as poor Rachel Nichols - were still screwed over by the network making it excruciatingly clear that they don't respect their actresses.
    • Detective Shaughnessy telling Hotch in the first scene of "Omnivore", "you're going to have to pay for my sins" in regards to the Reaper. When you've seen the entire arc, especially "100"? Horrifyingly accurate.
  • He Really Can Act: All the time; see Playing Against Type, below. Special mention goes to Dawson, who somehow manages to go between three vastly different personalities - a scared young man, a tyrannical fundamentalist father, and a dispassionate, wrathful angel - with vastly different body languages multiple times in the space of seconds.
    • Jackson Rathbone brilliantly acting as an unsub with split personalities, "Adam" and "Amanda", in "Conflicted".
    • Frankie Muniz in "True Night". Best known for his starring role in Malcolm in the Middle and various B-movies, here he plays a disturbed comic book artist in a script that lets him run the gamut of human emotion. Delight, humor, horror, despair, hatred, menace; he hits them all and as a result is remembered as one of the most sympathetic UnSubs in the show's history.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight
    • Keith Carradine played serial killer Frank Breitkopf. He pops up later on Dexter as Frank Lundy, superstar profiler.
      • The Unsub of "Exit Wounds" was played by the same actor who played a budding serial killer on Dexter, who unusually for that show was surprisingly sympathetic. The character on Criminal Minds was actually more of a Complete Monster.
    • Near the end of the series premiere it's briefly mentioned that Hotch has had trouble settling on a name, as the ones Haley suggested to him kept reminding him of infamous criminals (mentioned ones were Jeffrey Dahmer, Henry Lee Lucas and Charles Manson). Kind of odd how he settled on Jack.
      • One presumes his full given name is either John or Jonathan. Still funny, though.
      • And then JJ names her son Henry...
  • Ho Yay: See the entire page about it.
  • Iron Woobie:
    • Hotch is possibly the best example of an Iron Woobie on TV today. Hotch is trying to raise his son after his ex-wife - his high school sweetheart - was murdered by the Reaper, who made him listen over the phone while she died. Hotch was so grief-stricken that he beat the Reaper to death with his bare hands. Oh, and this was after he got stabbed and possibly raped by the Reaper, and had his son taken into protective custody. And after that time he nearly got blown up by a suicide bomber, lost an old flame in the same attack, and had painful hearing problems for some time afterwards as a result of it shattering his eardrums.
    • Reid remains calm and relatively positive regardless of:
      • Being plagued by horrible nightmares since early childhood
      • Being walked out on by his father (and, later, his father figure); raised by a mother who suffered from schizophrenia and who he rarely now sees due to his work. He's also well aware that Schizophrenia is hereditary.
      • In high school, he was tricked into meeting a girl after school, only to be ambushed by the entire football team, stripped naked and tied to a pole, after which his schizophrenic mother didn't even notice he had come home
      • Being exposed to a never-ending stream of Nightmare Fuel at work, during which he doesn't bat an eye (his only Squick appears to be necrophilia)
      • Kidnapped (twice), tied up, and beaten (escaping the bad guys both times due to a clever ruse, once while high)
      • Developing a drug addiction due to having been forcibly drugged by a kidnapper
      • Shot in the leg and abusing his doctoral status to rate himself cleared for field duty early.
      • Once was infected with anthrax, heroically protecting Derek Morgan from similarly suffering (during which time he refused pain medication due to having beaten his drug addiction). Phew.
  • Informed Ability: At the start of season 7, Prentiss made a passing comment about Hotch telling her that JJ was the best rookie profiler he had ever seen, which is understandable given she's worked with them some 6 odd years. However, we haven't exactly seen these amazing profiling skills. Yes, she's contributed to the profile, but she's always done that. She hasn't really done anything different from what she did back in season 5 or 6 before being written off of the show.
    • Actually, she didn't do that; her job was always more media-orientated. She sat at the table and took part in the conversations, but usually the actual profiling was done by the profilers- its another bit of Fridge Brilliance. Her contributions were always geared towards introducing the case and anything pertaining to more regular police style work, like interviewing suspects and witnessess etc., though the rest of the team did that too.
  • Karma Houdini: Jack from '3rd Life' gets away scot-free despite having executed an unarmed man, who admittedly was the Un Sub, but was no threat at the time. He also kneecapped the second Un Sub earlier in the episode.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Fandom ships Reid with everyone. Even half the UnSubs.
  • Like You Would Really Do It: Like they'd really shoot Will LaMontage in the Hit/Run season ender. They do, but he survives. Then they don't even really warn you when they blow up the building he's in. He survives that too.
  • Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Actually averted to a large degree; the show frequently has both special guest appearances and many Hey, It's That Guy! character actors, and while they may occasionally be a suspect, they often are just there in a supporting, non-central role. When a well-known actor appears as the killer, they're usually introduced as such right from the beginning of the episode.
  • Never Live It Down: No matter what she will do, the label of "JJ's (Inferior) Replacement" will haunt Seaver for the rest of her run.
    • A benevolent example: Despite it being mentioned in only one episode (and in the PILOT to boot) fans always remember the Reid Effect.
  • Paranoia Fuel: In addition to the "anyone can be a killer" (even a school-age child or a quadruplegic with "unwitting" help) concept, there's also the humongous virus vault from "Amplification".
    • Hey, remember Frank and all of his kills along highway routes? Yeah, there've been about 500 murders along major US highways. The majority of them are unsolved, and there's about 200 suspects currently. This just over the past 30 years. Who's up for a roadtrip?
    • "Public Enemy". You're in a crowded public place - a laundromat, a street corner, a church, a market - when all of a sudden, someone comes up behind you and slits your throat. You never even know he was there. And the scary thing? You didn't do anything to him - he killed you for no reason.
    • Tobias from "The Big Game"/"Revelations" spying on people through their webcams.
    • "The Internet is Forever" is made of this trope.
    • The unsub who was a valet and used the GPS devices in women's cars to find their homes.
    • This show will make you want to never have any routines, ever. Because if you do, someone can learn them, they can follow you, and they can kill you (or kidnap, or rape, or any number of horrible things).
    • Invoked, and perhaps lampshaded, in the show during the ending of "Paradise".

Emily: "Well, roadside motels definitely go on my list."
Reid looks uncomprehending.
Emily: "Of things. To never do again."
Reid: "You have a list?"
Rossi: "You don't?"

  • Recycled Script: Billy Flynn's origin is nearly identical to Frank's, and he has a lot of similarities to Karl Arnold/The Fox.
  • Replacement Scrappy: FBI cadet Ashley Seaver. And that is all we will say about it.
    • Rossi started out as one for Gideon.
  • Ruined FOREVER: Most people's reaction to Season Six, specifically regarding the news about JJ's departure, Prentiss's reduced role, and new character Ashley Seaver.
    • Season 7 is scheduled to reverse all of this.
  • Scapegoat Creator: Though fans still blame the CBS executives for screwing with their show, recently Edward Allen Bernero has been given an earful from the fans for not doing anything (or not enough) to combat the seasonal rot.
  • The Scrappy: Ashley Seaver. Dear god, Ashley Seaver. It cannot be emphasized how much she is hated by the fanbase.
    • Elle Greenaway was not exactly a fan favorite either, although the hatred toward her character is nowhere near as intense as Seaver's.
  • Seasonal Rot: A large portion of the fanbase thinks that Criminal Minds' sixth season went through this, considering the uneven quality control.
    • The same has been said for Season Five, although mainly reserved for the second half ("100" "The Uncanny Valley" and "Mosley Lane" being peak episodes).
  • Squick: A lot of scenes, usually one per episode.
    • The unsub's MO in "Hope" ran entirely on pure, undiluted Squick. He kidnaps a young girl, raises her until she becomes a teenager, then rapes and impregnates her. When she kills herself because of this, the guy kidnaps the girl's grieving mother and tries to rape and impregnate her with another girl for him, who, had he been successful, he presumably would've raped and impregnated too. The episode seems to paint him as a Man Child desperate to have a family, but that still doesn't save him from a Vigilante Execution at the hands of the mother.
  • Stoic Woobie: Hotch has been almost blown up, suffered prolonged hearing loss and ear trauma from it, shot at, and stabbed nine times by the Reaper, and the most he ever does is wince and/or collapse. He barely even raises his voice.
    • Emily, too: It isn't until about halfway through season seven that there is any mention about her dealing with being almost killed by Doyle and faking her own death, and Hotch practically has to (gently) force her to talk to him about it..
  • Straw Man Has a Point: While she's something of a bitch for the last third of "25 to Life", Chief Strauss does make some valid points. Accusing a rich and powerful businessman running for Congress (and who presumably has lots of friends) of being a serial killer with no concrete evidence is bad enough. Accusing him just after the barely-quelled shitstorm caused by Don Sanderson (who was paroled due to the judgment of a member of the same team that is accusing the Congressional candidate) is even worse. Granted, her concerns did seem to be more out of fear of political backlash against her than actual concern for the BAU.
    • Jeremy the teenage budding psychopath from "Safe Haven" was a Complete Monster but he may have a point that his mother deciding he was a Fetus Terrible was possibly a bit harsh. There's probably some very nice people in the world who consumed their twins in the womb.
  • Surprisingly Similar Stories: Sort of. Would you believe there was an episode of Charlie's Angels wherein Sabrina, played by Kate Jackson--Prentiss's mom--had to fake her own death, which included a funeral? Her colleagues were in on it, though, so not quite so much angst involved.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot
    • Reid's drug addiction subplot during Season 2. It had potential for Reid's Character Development and writers shut the tap off.
      • Actually, the addiction is something of a subplot in the Season 3 episode "Elephant's Memory", which opens with Reid attending a meeting of "Beltway Clean Cops". He reveals that he has been drug-free for ten months but still struggles with it, especially after the shooting of the teenage unsub in "3rd Life". At the end of the episode, Hotch discreetly encourages him to keep going to his support group.
    • The aftermath of the Reaper case. Hotch is left with a son to raise on his own (or, supposedly, with help from his sister-in-law), a raging case of PTSD, and a set of higher-ups who think he should retire. None of this has been explored since "The Slave of Duty" in season five.
  • Uncanny Valley: "The Uncanny Valley", which has an unsub who is keeping her victims paralyzed with drugs, and treating them like dolls.
  • The Untwist: When combined with the opening quote, the title of "Birthright" makes it pretty clear who the killer is.
  • The Woobie: Reid.
    • Some unsubs too, like Vincent Rowlings, Lucas Turner, Samantha Malcolm and so on.
    • This gets lampshaded in the commentary for "The Fisher King: Part 2" where the term R.I.P. (Reid In Peril) Episode is coined.
    • Hotch, during the Reaper arc ("Omnivore" to "100"). Also an example of an Iron Woobie.
    • Garcia has been getting the Woobie treatment a fair bit recently, too.
    • Gideon during and post- "Evilution of Frank".
    • Brooke, the Ill Girl from "North Mammon."
    • Prentiss as she's forced to go it alone in "Valhalla"/"Lauren". Garcia sort of lampshades it in the former when she sees Emily isn't herself lately ("I'm just so worried about you. The flu's going around..."). Has become a Stoic Woobie in the aftermath of that story arc.
    • Samantha Malcolm, the unsub from The Uncanny Valley. Yes, she has kidnapped six women. Yes, she has killed three of them accidentally. Yes, she paralyzes them. Yes, she needs a really big hug. You will cry during her episode.
  • Unfortunate Implications: In story: One case involved black girls being murdered. The team find out the killer is a black guy, and the authorities are reluctant to announce it. Then while investigating, the black lead detective gets shot by a homeowner who thought he was the killer.
    • Then there's the episode about gypsies stealing children while surviving on petty theft...
      • To be fair, in that one the BAU did explicitly state that the unsubs had were practicing corrupted versions of gypsy rituals, rather than proper ones.
        • While that fits the child-abudcting part, Hotch specifically says that Gypsy families usually survive by pickpocketing and shoplifting, which is one hell of a generalisation.
    • 'North Mammon': Polly is the good girl, as JJ said. Polly is the only one of the three that doesn't have a father.
    • Don't know if it counts, but it was annoying that the rescued victims in two back-to-back episodes where the Unsubs targeted both genders in season 2, 'Open Season' and 'Legacy' were female (and the one in Open Season was pretty unlikeable - this is pretty YMMV, this troper liked her fine).
    • Since Prentiss' final for now episode has been aired, the BAU has now become truly a boys' club, with the only females left on the team of Garcia, the bright comic relief technical analyst, and Ashley Seaver, now the sole female field agent—the latter not exactly the best successor to fill in the shoes of JJ and Prentiss and feels more like a token female. For future episodes, it may bring an uncomfortable feeling of an Reactionary Fantasy, where all the profiling and rescuing of (mostly female) victims is done by the males, and the main women are just subservient helpers or standing and looking pretty. With two strong female characters out (for now), and considering that the majority of agents who've left the BAU are female (with only one male departure), it makes you wonder how much the women are really valued on the show.
      • Exhibit A of this: "Out of the Light".
      • Since they're bringing AJ Cook and Paget Brewster back, it may avert some of those implications. On the other hand, they dropped the replacement female with a one-line sendoff: apparently women are interchangeable.
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