Criminal Minds: Difference between revisions

== A-B ==

* [[Abusive Parents]]: Show up often, and aren't limited only to UnSubs.

** The joke is also a call back to the opening of the episode when Reid was practicing with Hotch for the not yet failed test and aims for the target's head but hits the groin.

* [[Actor Allusion]]: Reid finding Morgan and Rossi watching ''[[The Young and The Restless]]'' in his hotel room is an allusion to Shemar Moore's tenure on the show.

* [[Beneficial Disease]]: One of the abducted women "The Uncanny Valley" is diabetic, which somehow allows her to metabolize the paralytic drugs she was given at a faster than usual rate.

* [[Berserk Button]]: There was an episode where a guy who dealt really badly with a breakup went around getting women to "play along" with him as he raped them at gun or knifepoint, killing the boyfriends and then the women after he'd finished with them. When the team eventually tracks the UnSub to his latest victim, who he is kicking and punching, Prentiss [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|pushes him to the ground, points a gun at his temple, and basically tells him he is going to be raped in prison and there is nothing he can do about it, and then she tells him to "play along" for her when this eventually happens]]. Needless to say, Prentiss and sex abuse cases is like gasoline and fire.

* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: Prentiss speaks several languages and some of her languages scenes aren't dubbed. However, "Catching Out" becomes an unintentionally funny episode when you hear Prentiss speak Spanish. To Spanish speakers it is blatantly obvious that her pronunciation is ''atrocious''.

* [[Blind and The Beast]]: "The Big Wheel" with the little blind boy and the UnSub of the week, but played with in that it's not anything about the man's appearance that's frightening, but the boy would see him as a monster if he could see, because he would recognise him as his mother's murderer.

* [[The Bluebeard]]: The UnSub from "The Fox" could be seen as a variant.

* [[The Book Cipher]]: "The Fisher King" features an Ottendorf cipher brought to the Behavioral Analysis Unit by {{spoiler|1=the UnSub via Hotch's wife}}. The cypher is part of a larger puzzle to find {{spoiler|a girl who's been missing for two years}}. The key text is {{spoiler|''The Collector'' by John Fowles}}.

* [[Bottle Episode]]: All but two scenes of "Seven Seconds" takes place in the same shopping mall.

* [[Break the Cutie]]:

* [[Catch Phrase]]:

** "UnSub", short for "'''un'''known '''sub'''ject," a bit of [[Truth in Television|real-life FBI jargon]].

** Reid: "Actually..."

** Garcia: "Off the grid" and other techie/gamer/Internet slang.

** Averted in at least one episode, with an appropriate depiction of a protestant Christian survivalist enclave.

* [[Chronic Villainy]]: "The Big Wheel"

* [[Click Hello]]:

** Rossi [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|pulls one]] during a [[Mexican Standoff]] in "Exit Wounds".

** Reid would disagree. Despite promising to forgive his father in exchange for help on a case, Reid remains (rightfully) unappeased. In "Public Enemy", in response to a case related statement, "There are lots of ways that sons defeat their fathers," he quips bitterly, "I just kept getting Ph.D.s."

** You could even call [[Team Dad|Gideon's]] departure from the team this.

** "Reflection of Desire" had a victim break the UnSub's nose and immediately flee for a door...only to discover it's locked. Later in a second escape attempt, she finds out she wouldn't have wanted to go in there anyway.

* [[Daylight Horror]]

** "Safe Haven" refers to what the families who are killed are trying to give the unsub not knowing what he's planning for them {{spoiler|as well as being the name of the law that the teenaged unsub was given up by his mother under, precipitating his descent into murder.}} On top of all that, you also have {{spoiler|little Ellie Spicer from "Our Darkest Hour" and "The Longest Night" looking for a safe haven away from her neglectful foster family in California by running away to Virginia to see Morgan.}}

** "Profiling 101" refers to both the undergraduate class the team walks through the case in the episode and {{spoiler|the unsub's whopping 101 victims}}.

* [[Downer Ending]]:

** "100" most notably, since it's where {{spoiler|Hotch crosses the [[Despair Event Horizon]]}}.

* [[Evil Laugh]]: "Lucky" and "Outfoxed".

* [[Evil Gloating]]: {{spoiler|Foyet to Hotch in "Nameless, Faceless": "Like my scars? Yours are going to look just like them." He does it again in "100": "I'm going to find that little bastard son of yours and show him your dead bodies and tell him it's all your fault."}}

* [[Evil Versus Evil]]: Okay, maybe not ''evil'', but the Guantanamo guards detaining the [[Big Bad]] in "Lessons Learned" are portrayed as little more than [[Smash Mook|brainless, brutish thugs]] themselves. This was likely partly due to [[Hellhole Prison|the perception of the facility in the public eye]] and partly to contrast them with the protagonists.

* [[Executive Meddling]]: JJ was written out and Prentiss' screen time was reduced for season six, due to budget cuts, leaving Garcia as the only regular female cast member. Naturally, the fans were not pleased. Especially the female fans. And neither is the entire cast and crew, as expressed with, among other things, pointed double-meaning lines in "JJ". It was made worse by bringing in [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute|a new female lead]] to replace JJ (though she doesn't have the same job). Thanks to the fans, they were brought back as regulars for season seven and the [[Replacement Scrappy]] went bye-bye.

** In light of the producer's comments about always intending to bring JJ and Prentiss back, an alternative explanation from industry workers has appeared on several sites. That explanation being that the producers wanted to more heavily focus on Prentiss for at least part of the season and explore her mysterious past. As part of this they needed someone to have the access that JJ's new job gave her for story reasons. However, experts in union contracts say that AJ Cook was cut as a regular because keeping her at that rank would mean paying her for all episodes of the season even if she was not in them, at a huge expense. Same with cutting back Paget Brewster's contracted number of episodes given that they knew she would be missing from several. But they had always left open a way to bring back Emily at any time both in story and contract.

* [[Expanded Universe]]: A trilogy of books (all of which take place mid-Season Three) and an upcoming computer game.

* [[Eye Scream]]: "The Eyes Have It"

** Particularly [[Squick|squicktastic]] is a part where Reid mentions that sometimes "enucleators" (eye gougers) eat the eye balls they take. Hard cut to a scene of the unsub eating something small and round and white--and it takes the viewers a couple seconds to realize he's just eating eggs.

** [[The Chick]]: Prentiss, Seaver, and JJ. Though this should not be taken as a bad thing, since all play other roles at times (Prentiss is the other BAU member [[Action Girl|who seems to come face-to-face with the Unsub a lot]]). But in the sense of the [[Five-Man Band]], this is the role they play most often.

*** Reid has some Chickish qualities, too, especially with his tendency to get in trouble (aka getting kidnapped).

* [[Foot Focus]]: A lot of kidnapped females end up barefoot. Apparently a lot of criminals on this show have a foot fetish.

* [[Forced to Watch]]: If the unsub is particularly sadistic. Though a couple go further and force them to ''participate''.

* [[For the Evulz]]: "3rd Life". The three thrill killers from "Hopeless" and the (unrelated) rioters in the same episode.

** Syd and her husband in "The Thirteenth Step", though they have a reason {{spoiler|it's leading up to killing their sexually abusive fathers. Syd's especially, since she's the leader of the two and all but one of the attacks happen in places that remind her of her dad}}.

** Really, any time one of the UnSubs devolves.

* [[Funny Background Event]]: In "Compulsion", a student is telling to Hotch about his physics project and, rhetorically, asks 'Do you know how to solve the Three-Body Problem?' Behind them, Reid nods with a serious look on his face.

* [[The Glasses Gotta Go]]: Fabulous subversion: After JJ's departure, Garcia (normally a [[Meganekko]]) tries dropping her usual distinctive style of dress for boring dark dresses, and (in a complete flip of [[Purely Aesthetic Glasses]]) gets contacts so that she can look serious when dealing with victims' families and such. When she's starting to lose it, Morgan actually gets her to put the glasses (and her old wardrobe) back on.

* [[A God Am I]]: The {{spoiler|original bomber}} from "Painless".

* [[Gollum Made Me Do It]]: "The Big Game"/"Revelations"

** Again with Morgan (Bad Cop) and Gideon (Good Cop) in "The Boogeyman", although it should be noted that Morgan had every reason to believe the guy was the Unsub, while Gideon was aware that he was innocent (but covering for the real Unsub) just before he took over the interrogation from Morgan.

** Rossi (Bad Cop) and Reid (<s>Snarky</s> Good Cop) in "Lauren", against a weaselly mook that Rossi keeps calling a "hood rat".

** The Reaper is pretty prone to them as well.

* [[Harmful to Minors]]: ''A lot.'' Besides things that happen during the cases themselves, some [[Harmful to Minors]] events form various unsubs' backgrounds and [[Freudian Excuse|Freudian Excuses]].

* [[Hell Hotel]]: "Paradise"

* [[Hero Insurance]]: We find out that Prentiss's {{spoiler|fake funeral and actual hospital expenses}} cost the government more than $650,000. Imagine what sort of tab the BAU has run up altogether over the years with their not-quite-by-the-book antics (see [[Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right]], below).

** Plus, there's Gina King, though she only drinks their blood. That still counts, right?

* [[Incurable Cough of Death]]: Appears to be what Brooke is suffering from in ''North Mammon''.

* [[I Never Said It Was Poison]]: Standard operating procedure.

** From "A Real Rain":

{{quote| '''Gideon:''' Is that why you stabbed him in the groin?<br />

* [[Insane Equals Violent]]: Several unsubs, but the unsub in "With Friends Like These..." stands out.

** Reid does everything but mention this trope by name in this episode, in fact. He gets quite upset at the implication that all schizophrenic people are violent, and goes to great lengths to point out what a varied condition schizophrenia is, and how peaceful most of the people who suffer from it are. Given that his mother is one of those people, and he himself might be one day, that's pretty understandable.

* [[Intelligence Equals Isolation]]:

** Reid's school experience - "Being the smartest kid in class is like being the only kid in class."

* [[It Got Worse]]: "The Fox", "Open Season", "Lucky", "Omnivore", "Bloodline", "To Hell..."/"...And Back", "Outfoxed," "Our Darkest Hour," "Lauren."

* [[It Never Gets Any Easier]]

* [[It's Personal]]: In addition to having hot-button issues, each agent has gotten a case which leads to this. Hotch has the Reaper arc; Gideon had Frank; Rossi in "Damaged", "Zoe's Reprise", and "Remembrance of Things Past"; Morgan in "Profiler, Profiled" and "Our Darkest Hour"; Prentiss in "Demonology" and in her Doyle arc; Reid in "Instincts" and "Memoriam"; Elle in "Aftermath"; JJ in "North Mammon" and "Risky Business"; and the entire team in "Penelope", "The Fisher King", "100", "Lauren", and "It Takes a Village".

* [[I Want You to Meet An Old Friend of Mine]]:

* [[Kneecapping]]: In the season 6 episode "Today, I do", a self-ascribed motivational speaker turned serial killer shatters the kneecap of her most recent victim with a hammer after the victim refuses to eat the popcorn she made for her. She later turns this into a self-help lesson, by teaching the victim to "walk in the face of adversity".

* [[Knife Nut]]: A number of unsubs, including the ones from "The Big Wheel" and "Public Enemy", as well as the Reaper.

 

 

*** Averted in "The Angel Maker" were everything is eventually explained and it was delibrately made to look like the supernatural going on. However it did take the orginal Unsub a long time to die and his death freaked the Doctor out so much he quit excutions.

** Does {{spoiler|the Devil really come for poor Lara}} at the end of "Heathfield Manor", or is she just as crazy as her brother and mother?

* [[Memetic Badass]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iVcMs9NZxs This conversation] between Reid and Garcia seems to imply that Hotch is an in-universe example.

* [[Men Are the Expendable Gender]]: If an episode features an unsub who kills both genders indiscriminately, the "main victim" will almost always be female.

* [[Murder By Cremation]]: "Mosley Lane" {{spoiler|(well, almost)}}

* [[Murder.Com]]: "Revelations" and "The Internet is Forever".

* [[My Card]]: Hotchner in "Poison", giving his ABA card to the Unsub of the Week. Also by other BAU members, when persons of interest in the Case o' the Week are being squirrely.

** Used in hilarious fashion by JJ, Garcia and Prentiss to some guy in a bar claiming to be a Bond-esque FBI agent.

* [[New Media Are Evil]]: "P911", "The Big Game", "Revelations, "Risky Business", and "The Internet Is Forever." You'd think a show featuring tech goddess Penelope Garcia would be better about averting this.

* [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]: In "The Popular Kids," Morgan and Reid speak as though the killer is one simply because he was carrying a copy of ''Thus Spake Zarathustra'' the first time Reid met him. The killer himself, however, never says anything to indicate that he is one.

* [[No Kill Like Overkill]]: See above. In Hotch's defense, though, {{spoiler|Foyet}} did fake his own near-death once by stabbing himself so many times that the police thought he was one of the victims. Hotch was probably right to make sure he was down for the count.

* [[Noodle Incident]]: There's a few of these, mainly involving JJ, which are often [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]].

* [[Revenge By Proxy]]: Attempted in "Masterpiece" - {{spoiler|Rothchild attempts to kill the entire BAU team except Rossi, who is the object of his rage}}.

* [[Ripped from the Headlines]]: Almost all of their cases are based at least in part on a real-life case, some examples being:

** Key parts of "What Fresh Hell" were taken from a case that the show's real-life BAU consultant, Jim Clemente, had worked on.

*** In his debut appearance, the Reaper was also compared to those two.

** "The Tribe" - The Manson Family murders.

** ([[Unfunny Aneurysm Moment|or just an eerie coincidence?]]) "The [[Uncanny Valley]]" - [http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hospital-director25-2010feb25,0,5761517.story Claude E. Foulk], a sanitarium chief accused of molesting his son and least four others.

*** More like the second trope, as the episode was made before this news story.

*** Possibly also Gordon Fredrick Cummins, an obscure serial killer who struck exclusively during blackouts.

* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: "Elephant's Memory", "House on Fire", the appropriately-named "Retaliation", and what Hotch does to {{spoiler|Foyet after he targets Hotch's family in "100"}}. Also evident in many other episodes where particular victims are chosen because they have somehow hurt or offended the unsub (or are somehow like someone who has).

** Also Doyle's killing spree of the people who put him in prison, leaving Emily for last.

* [[Scarily Competent Tracker]]: John Blackwolf in "The Tribe" was able to (among other things) determine that Hotch carried a second gun by noticing that the right instep of his footprints was slightly deeper than the left "and since you don't appear to have a club-foot..."

* [[The Schizophrenia Conspiracy]]: Ted Bryar in "Derailed."

** In "The Angel Maker", the unsub tries to make it look like a dead serial killer has come back to life/didn't actually die.

* [[Scream Discretion Shot]]

* [[Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right]]: Happens a lot, usually culminating in the involvement of Strauss. Lampshaded in "It Takes a Village".

* [[Second Episode Introduction]]: J.J. is neither present nor even mentioned in the first episode.

* [[Serial Killer]]: Well, natch.

* [[Series Continuity Error]]: The inconsistencies between Rossi's story in "Birthright" (twenty years ago, three kids witnessed their parents get beaten to death on Christmas Eve) and what's shown in "Damaged" (nineteen years ago, three kids woke up one day in March to find their parents had been hacked up with an axe).

** Prentiss does it in "Lo-Fi".

* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story]]: "No Way Out II" turns {{spoiler|"The Fisher King"}} into one of these, because {{spoiler|Frank kills the girl they saved in those episodes}}.

** An episode involving a serial bomber takes place in [[CSI: Miami|Florida and is titled "Won't Get Fooled Again"]]

** The episode "In Heat," also set in Miami, starts with a [[Cold Opening]] that closely mimics a [[CSI: Miami]] [[Cold Opening]] in its cinematography and editing. At various crime scenes in the episode, several extras in the background are seen wearing "CSI" windbreakers.

*** It's probably nothing, but one of his aliases is [[Comic Books|Alex Ross]].

** Character David Rossi is based on real-life FBI profiler John E. Douglas. However, a certain Forensic Psychology textbook cites not only John E. Douglas, but another FBI profiler named D. Rossi.

** Billy Flynn (played by [[Tim Curry]]) from "Our Darkest Hour" is dubbed "The Prince of Darkness", the moniker of several characters that he's previously played.

*** Could also be a [[Chicago]] shout-out.

** In "With Friends Like These", there is a shout out to ''[[Supernatural (TV)|Supernatural]]'' when {{spoiler|Ben sees his hallucinatory friends pinned to the ceiling, dripping blood on his face.}}

** Perhaps unintentional, but the plot of "Sense Memory" concerns itself with [[Perfume (Literature)|an antisocial man who harvests beautiful young women for their scent.]]

* [[Siblings in Crime]]: The unsubs of "Open Season" (formerly [[The Family That Slays Together]]) and, in a gut-wrenching variation, {{spoiler|"To Hell..."/"...And Back".}}

* [[Sinister Minister]]: "Demonology"

*** Many of these can also be considered examples of [[Character Development]].

* [[Strictly Formula]]: Most of the episodes have a highly predictable structure - the team talks about the UNSUB of the week, the team investigates the last murder scene, the team rings up Garcia to get her to hack into a database, the team describe the UNSUB's personality to the police, the team chases the UNSUB, end of episode. [[Tropes Are Tools|However]], this actually works for the show - the formula establishes the fact that the team are professionals who know what they're doing, and the UNSUB's stories are always different and unpredictable.

* [[Storyboard Body]]: The {{spoiler|first}} UnSub in "A Thousand Words".

* [[Subject 101]]: The season seven episode where the BAU speaks to a college class about profiling is called "Profiling 101".

 

== T-Z ==

* [[Take Our Word for It]]: The more grusome activities the unsubs partake in and their effects on the victims are often only shown through the horrified or disgusted looks on the team's faces.

* [[Take That]]:

** Unintentionally done in "Normal" after Norman shoots the first victim her car crashes and flips over in an over dramatic way. {{spoiler|She still survives albeit in critical condition and paralyzed from the waist down.}}

* [[This Is Gonna Suck]]: Prentiss, word for word, in "52 Pickup."

* [[Title Drop]]: Happens a lot with episode titles.

* [[To Know Him I Must Become Him]]: Count the times Morgan says "I'm the unsub ... "

* [[Western Terrorists]]: "Lo-Fi"/"Mayhem", "Amplification", and "Valhalla"/"Lauren".

* [["Well Done, Son" Guy]]: {{spoiler|The son of [[The Butcher]], to the point where, at age ten, he ''knocked out his own mother'' to help his dad kill her, then repressed it, then started helping his dad go hunting. It didn't help that, even if The Butcher showed approval, he'd just forget it due to his Alzheimer's.}}

** "[[This Is Sparta|There. Were. Rules!]]" {{spoiler|Randall Garner, right before shooting Elle in her home}} at the end of "The Fisher King: Part 1".

** "Hey, Garcia? I've been thinking about doing this all night." ( {{spoiler|Jason Battle to Garcia, before shooting her}} in "Lucky")

* [[X Meets Y]]: "Reflection of Desire" is ''[[Sunset Boulevard]]'' meets ''[[Psycho]]'' {{spoiler|right down to the posessive dead mommy, although Norman never cut off another woman's lips to replace his mom's}}.

** "The Thirteen Step": ''[[Natural Born Killers]]'' meets ''[[Bonnie and Clyde (Film)|Bonnie and Clyde]]''.

** The lead killer in "Children of the Dark" also tries pulling one, and it's just barely averted (the gambit, not the trope).

* [[Xanatos Speed Chess]]: "Secrets and Lies" consists of almost nothing but this.