History Characters / Mindhunter

!! Off the radar

* SerialKiller: His eventual destiny, although he's yet to kill anyone on the show.

->'''Portrayed By:''' N/A

->'''Portrayed By:''' Creator/MichaelCerveris

* TheCassandra: Despite being more experienced, his (often valuable) advice is rarely heeded by Holden.

* HappilyMarried: He is married, has known his wife his whole life and has probably not known other partner.
* LawOfInverseFertility: Bill and his wife cannot have children naturally,so they adopted one, Brian.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: It takes a lot to convince him to "get in the mud with the pigs", as Holden puts it.

* StandardFiftiesFather: Bill's appearance (including a shockingly square haircut) and gruff demeanor suggest a slightly more grizzled version of this, in contrast with younger and hipper Holden. However his relationships with his family are more flawed and also more affectionate than this trope typically evokes, and in action Bill actually has fairly liberal views. He also shows a great deal of respect for Wendy.

* ManicPixieDreamGirl: An unusually abrasive example.

!!Unit Chief Shepard

* LastNameBasis: His first name is unknown.
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: On his bad days.

* TheNapoleon: Kemper warns the agents not to stare at how short he is, and he perches on the chair back to look down at them.[[note]]The real Manson was variously measured from 5 foot 2 to 5 foot 6.[[/note]]

* KilledOffScreen: Dies [[SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome between]]Season One and Two.

* ObfuscatingInsanity: After a bit of prodding by Holden, he admits the entire story about demons was made up.

* TheDreaded: His arrest is the big news story at the time of the series debut.

* ObfuscatingInsanity: Some think he only pretends to be crazy.

* TookALevelInJerkass: The culmination of his CharacterDevelopment in Season 1. He was always a bit of a jerk, but it was inadvertent due to his AmbiguousDisorder, but his growing success and victories turn him into an utterly repulsive egomanic in the last two episodes of Season 1. He becomes a swaggering asshole who talks down to Bill and Wendy when he isn't ignoring their very valuable advice, brushes off all the damage he's doing as inconsequential and becomes so arrogant that he endangers the entire study just because he doesn't feel adequately respected and he can't own up to his own mistakes. It takes nothing less than a terrifying encounter with Ed Kemper to knock him off his high horse, and for Kemper, it's almost a KickTheSonOfABitch moment.

* StandardFiftiesFather: Bill's appearance (including a shockingly square haircut) and gruff demeanor suggest a slightly more grizzled version of this, in contrast with younger and hipper Holden. However his relationships with his family are more flawed and also more affectionate than this trope typically evokes, and in action Bill actually has fairly liberal views. He shows a great deal of respect for Wendy

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: What he truly is. Shepard is a straight arrow who might not believe in the work Holden, Wendy and Bill are doing, but he doesn't actively hinder it. He makes no allowances for CowboyCops and prides himself on running a tight ship; he is understandably furious that Holden's careless indiscretions mean he has to withhold information from the FBI.

* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: Throughout his conversation with Holden and Bill, Speck displays he's a homphobe, racist, and sexist.

* SerialRapist: Kemper and Rissell.

* {{Jerkass}}: He's the least personable of all the killers interviewed. Kemper was polite and accomodating, Brudos was chummy in an AffablyEvil way and Rissell wasn't anywhere near as volatile as Speck.

* RetroactiveRecognition: In a historical figure-specific, not actor-specific variation. Several reviewers have compared ''Mindhunter'' (as a historical workplace drama exploring misogyny) to ''Series/MadMen'', which features Speck's crimes prominently (but not Speck himself) in its season 5 episode "Mystery Date".

* WhatTheHellHero: She critiques Holden for going out of his way to investigate Principal Wade, saying that the attention he drew to himself reflected poorly on the project, as well as her and Tench. She laters critiques him for his increasing arrogance, his refusal to even try to use the questionaire the entire team put together and his lack of sincere respect for her as a colleague.

* IJustWantToBeSpecial: Yet some others believe that he did it for the wealth and notoriety, leading to the passing of a law that bans criminals from profiting off their crimes.

* 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.

* MyBelovedSmother: See DarkAndTroubledPast.

* YourCheatingHeart: He sees what his girlfriend did as cheating, but the truth is that she had already broken up with him.

* ALoveToDismember: He kept the foot of his first victim and bronze molds of other victims breasts.

* MonsterFangirl: He has lots of female fans that mail him pornographic photos of themselves. Holden also appears way too enthusiastic about meeting him, [[DeadpanSnarker as Bill points out.]]

* HappilyMarried: Untill he went cuckoo, that's it. His wife is visibly worried about him.

* 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.

* ALoveToDismember: Benji cut out Beverly Jean's breasts sometime after disposing of the body.

* EverybodyDidIt / TheFamilyThatSlaysTogether: Frank raped her, Benji mutilated her, and Rose helped clean the evidence. Benji, Frank, or most likely both murdered her.

* YourCheatingHeart: Beverly Jean and Frank were/are far less committed to their respective couples than they were/are to them, with Beverly Jean possibly not considering Benji her couple at all.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: In the real 1979 case, the victim was murdered during a camping trip (so not in a bathtub) and "Frank" was a brother to both "Benji" and "Rose".
** RippedFromTheHeadlines: The bits that don't match the 1979 case may have been lifted from the 1970 unsolved murder of Texan housewife ''Beverly Jean'' Hope, which was reopened in 2016 with her brother-in-law as the main suspect.

* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: If he had simply stopped the tickling when he was told.

* CompletelyMissingThePoint: He tends to take sarcasm and the like at face value.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters / NotSoAboveItAll: The investigation of the serial killers starts to rub into himself after a while.

* PlayingAgainstType: Actor better known for secondary characters in young audience-oriented musicals plays a main character profiler in a bleak crime show.

* [[RedOniBlueOni Red Oni]]: To Bill's Blue.

* [[OldCopYoungCop Young Cop]]: To Bill's Old Cop.

* [[RedOniBlueOni Blue Oni]]: To Holden's Red.

* [[OldCopYoungCop Old Cop]]: To Holden's Young Cop.

* LikeParentLikeSpouse: She implies she's attracted to Holden because he looks like a Mormon... and her dad. Who is not a Mormon, but also looks like one.

* WomenAreWiser: She may not work for the FBI but she's clearly the more grounded of the two.

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

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mindhunter_manson.jpg]]

* VictimBlaming: He believes that his victims got what was coming to them, because "that's what you get" when you want "to be seen".

* AffectionateNickname: His (ex)wife calls him "Jerr."

* BadLiar: Unlike Kemper, he refuses to take personal responsibility for any of his crimes, professing to be the victim of police coercion and the vindictiveness of his ex-wife. But he can't resist the chance to relive his crimes by recounting them, so every word out of his mouth about the women he killed makes it perfectly clear both to the agents and the audience that he's responsible.

* CommonalityConnection: Holden tries to get him to talk by telling him that his mother caught him masturbating in his room.
* ConsummateLiar: He will even lie about making a photograph where his own reflection appears.
* CreepyCrossdresser: This trope is played with where Brudos is concerned -- he cheerfully admits to being a fetishist of women's high heels and more grudgingly admits to wearing some of the garments he plundered from local women. Tench and Ford [[TransEqualsGay needle him about this to no conceivable benefit]] until Carr calls them out.
* ADateWithRosiePalms: When Holden gifts him a pair of the largest high heels in the shop, he immediately begins to masturbate at the scene.

* IHaveThisFriend: Holden gets him to open up about his crimes by asking him to describe the actions of a hypothetical killer doing the same thing.

* WhyCouldntYouBeDifferent: His mother wanted a girl before he was born.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter

* SerialKiller

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* TheCassandra: Despite being more experienced, his advice is rarely heeded by Holden.
* DeadpanSnarker: He just loves dishing out these.

* LawOfInverseFertility: They can't have children. But he has adopted one, Brian...
* {{Mangst}}: ...whom he cannot get to emote and open to him, and who is likely autistic.
* NotSoAboveItAll: Despite his veneer as a tough, old-fashioned agent, his personal life is a nightmare (between his troubled child and a wife who seems on the verge of leaving him) and his job weighs heavily on him.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Probably the only older guy at the FBI that could work with Holden.

* StandardFiftiesFather: Bill's appearance (including a shockingly square haircut) and gruff demeanor suggest a slightly more grizzled version of this, in contrast with younger and hipper Holden. But his relationships with his family are more flawed and also more affectionate than this trope typically evokes.
* TeamDad: At least to Holden.