History Characters / Mindhunter

* MomentKiller: After watching Brudos masturbate to a couple of high heels, he can't bring himself to have sex withing sight of a pair.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Holden is very, ''very'' off. He seems to be on the spectrum considering his difficulty with social interactions. This often leads to him coming across as a callous, unfeeling jerk.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: He wants to understand outcasts, ends being an outcast himself because others can't understand how he thinks.

* CompleteMonster: How most cops see him.

* ConsultingAConvictedKiller: Exactly.

* IHaveYourWife: The detectives speculate that he threatene the boy to silence the woman, and viceversa.

* KnifeNut: Despite having Access to other weapons, the killer used a knife to kill the victims, and in the mother's case, he also savaged her with it.

* StartOfDarkness: Hard to name it this given that he was already a serial rapist, but he only started murdering when his one-year-older girlfriend left for college, told him he wanted to see other people in a letter, and he drove there and saw her making out with another guy.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: He let go a would-be victim who claimed to have to take care for her father with cancer, because he had a brother who died from the disease.

* RippedFromTheHeadlines: In-universe. Wendy selects him for an interview because he's just been convicted.

* AbhorrentAdmirer: To any girl he might be interested to when he was out. He also looks like one when he keeps writing letters to Holden after he makes a name for himself... but his intentions are [[ControlFreak a lot darker than that.]]

* ChromosomeCasting: So far, all the criminals interviewed are men, primarily men who murdered women and girls. Truth in television, more or less, as the real-life FBI unit focused almost exclusively on male offenders, with female ones being little more than a footnote.

* RiddleForTheAges: Common fan speculation is that the murderer is BTK, but neither the location nor the details of the murder match.

* {{Mangst}}: ...whom he cannot get to emote and open to him, and is likely authistic.

* HollywoodHistory: In-universe. He is said to have systematically tortured and raped eight women ForTheEvulz. The reality is that he got inside to rob the place, and then the victims just kept coming. He still didn't intent to do anything with them, but then he raped one. Her crying made him lose it and kill her, so he felt he had to kill all the others too.

* ControlFreak: To the point of ordering a salad sandwich for Holden and making him eat it without ever asking if he wants to. The constant putting of hands on Holden probably have more to do with this than with being friendly. And when he learns that Holden has been mentioning their "relationship" outside, he doesn't like it at all and concocts an elaborate plan to punish him.

* NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine: No, Mr. Ford I expect you to eat a salad sandwich. No, Mr. Ford, now I expect you to get a hug.

* VillainWithGoodPublicity: If he is indeed a pedophile. The pólice and at least half of his teachers consider him beneath suspicion.

[[caption-width-right:350:''"He's gonna take the fucking'' [gun] ''away, kill you with it, and then have sex with your face".'']]

[[caption-width-right:300:''"The Bureau does not do that. We do not get involved until a crime is committed and has risen to the level of our radar."''.]]

[[caption-width-right:300:''"Our family joke was that we'd never run out of guilt or oats."''.]]

!!Shepard

* HollywoodHistory: In-universe. He is said to have systematically tortured and raped eight women ForTheLulz. The reality is that he got inside to rob the place, and then the victims just kept coming. He still didn't intent to do anything with them, but then he raped one. Her crying made him lose it and kill her, so he felt he had to kill all the others too.

* BerserkButton / ItsPersonal: For Frank McGraw, an old Fairfield detective who worked in Los Angeles for over twenty years and knows the detectives who worked the case. He doesn't take kindly when he thinks Holden is trying to paint him as a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds.

* ThatOneCase: For one of the older cops Bill and Holden meet in 'Road School.'

[[folder:Dwight]]
!!Dwight Taylor
->'''Portrayed By:''' Tobias Segal
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mindhunter_dwight_taylor.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"I bump into things, I guess."'']]

A Sacramento budding serial killer with a vendetta against elderly women and dogs.

* TheAlcoholic: Why he bumps into things.
* BackAlleyDoctor: When he was twenty, his girlfriend got pregnant and his mother (implicitely) made her visit one.
* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: He hates his mother's dog even more than his mother. He slashes pet dog throats from ear to ear as his signature.
* BasementDweller: Thirty years old, lives in a couch at his mother's house.
* KnifeNut: The first woman was only beaten up, the dogs and the second woman were all knifed.
* MommasBoy / MyBelovedSmother: She commands every aspect of his life, which is the reason of his resentment. His crimes are a way to symbolically respond to her without actually hurting her.

[[folder:The Altoona Three]]
!!Benjamin "Benji" Barnwright, Frank Janderman, and Rose Barnwright-Janderman
->'''Portrayed By:''' Joseph Cross, Jesse C. Boyd and Jackie Renee Robinson
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mindhunter_barnwright_janderman.jpg]]

The fiancé, his brother-in-law, and the fiancé's sister of Beverly Jean Shaw, a babysitter murdered and sexually mutilated in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

* TheGhost: An ominous and often referenced presence through the first season, but he never makes it in the flesh. [[spoiler:A casting call for Season 2 indicates that a "______s _____n" will be a recurring character.]]

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: The principal that inspired him was already fired before the school board asked Holden's RealLife inspiration for his opinion.

An unidentified, highly-organized serial killer active during the first season, whom the main characters are not yet aware of.

* MundaneHorror: All are average people you could run into at any time.

* ChekhovsGunman: Appears constantly throughout the show's teasers before his importance becomes clear.

* PerpSweating