History Fridge / Criminalminds

* The episode "True Night" can be looked at as a {{Deconstruction}} of UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks. The unsub, Jonny, a comic book artist, creates a new character, Night, who appears to be a NinetiesAntiHero given his use of deadly force, and all of Night's kills are subconsciously based on murders the unsub has been committing in real life. Jonny's manager is shocked by the violence of this art compared to Jonny's previous work. Furthermore, examine what caused Jonny's psychotic break: his girlfriend getting murdered in front of him by a street gang. Yes, she was ''StuffedIntoTheFridge''. His response was to essentially become a Nineties anti-hero himself, hunting down the gang members and killing them, like many a Dark Age "hero". However, this isn't portrayed as "EXTREEEEMEEE", but as a horrifying symptom of major mental illness. The scenes where he kills the victims are beautifully stylized in ''ComicBook/SinCity''-esque fashion, but when you see them realistically afterwards ([[GoryDiscretionShot though you don't see much]]), they're stomach-churning. Jonny is what a Nineties anti-hero would be in real life: seriously disturbed and tragic, not badass. It's a meditation on how what is "cool" in comics is not very cool in reality. -- {{Tropers/Idler}}

* Remember that arc concerning Reid and his mom? A thing to remember is that schizophrenia and Alzheimers are hereditary, so, at some point, Reid is likely to develop either of those at some point in his life.

*** Or they kidnap a little boy

** Prentiss and Detective Cooper chase down the unsub, which ends with Cooper getting shot and Prentiss attending to him. Flash forward to Season 6, it's the same scenario, except with Prentiss in Cooper's position and Morgan in Prentiss', right down to Morgan telling Prentiss to stay with him, and like Detective Cooper, we don't find out that Prentiss survived until the first episode of the next season.

** We find out that JJ is pregnant, which obviously foreshadows that she'll be taking a maternity leave later in Season 4. However, this also serves as the end of JJ's character arc of the season, which sees her and Will being more cooperative with each other as opposed to how they were back in the episode "In Heat".

* The episode "True Night" can be looked at as a {{Deconstruction}} of UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks. The unsub, Jonny, a comic book artist, creates a new character, Night, who appears to be a NinetiesAntiHero given his use of deadly force, and all Night's kills are subconsciously based on murders the unsub has been committing in real life. Jonny's manager is shocked by the violence of this art compared to Johnny's previous work. Furthermore, examine what caused Jonny's psychotic break: [[spoiler: his girlfriend getting murdered in front of him by a street gang]]. Yes, she was ''[[spoiler: StuffedIntoTheFridge]]''. His response was to essentially become a Nineties anti-hero himself, hunting down the gang members and killing them, like many a Dark Age "hero". However, this isn't portrayed as "EXTREEEEMEEE", but as a horrifying symptom of major mental illness. The scenes where he kills the victims are beautifully stylized in ''ComicBook/SinCity''-esque fashion, but when you see them realistically afterwards ([[GoryDiscretionShot though you don't see much]]), they're stomach-churning. Jonny is what a Nineties anti-hero would be in real life: seriously disturbed and tragic, not badass. It's a meditation on how what is "cool" in comics is not very cool in reality. -- {{Tropers/Idler}}
** I caught that on first viewing, but I didn't realize the [[spoiler: {{stuffed into the fridge}}]] bit until I read that. Wow. -- {{Tropers.Jonn}}

** Hotch and SSA Kate Joyner are targeted by a car bomb which horribly maims both of them. Hotch ends up surviving his injuries, [[spoiler: Kate doesn't.]] Now, who was Kate compared to again in this episode?
** Prentiss and Detective Cooper chase down the unsub, which ends with [[spoiler: Cooper getting shot and Prentiss attending to him.]] Flash forward to Season 6, [[spoiler: it's the same scenario, except with Prentiss in Cooper's position and Morgan in Prentiss', right down to Morgan telling Prentiss to stay with him, and like Detective Cooper, we don't find out that Prentiss survived until the first episode of the next season.]]
** Morgan gets friction from SSA Kate Joyner because he's first in line for her job if she fails to solve the case. After [[spoiler: Kate dies,]] Morgan declines the job offer,[[spoiler: only to temporarily take Hotch's position as Team Lead after Hotch's actions in the beginning of Season 5 gets him in hot water with the Bureau. This transfer of leadership is also preceded by tensions between Hotch and Morgan.]]

** Rossi tracks down Morgan in a bar after being forced to go for a walk after getting into a shouting match with Hotch over previously mentioned SSA Joyner. Rossi and Morgan then proceed to chat about how the Bureau wears people down, mentioning Gideon in the process, ending with Rossi correctly pointing out Morgan's emotional attachment getting in the way of the case, and giving Morgan a RousingSpeech to get him back on the case. [[spoiler: Rossi would give Hotch a similar speech during the Reaper case in order to coax him off the DespairEventHorizon. It worked.]]
** Reid doesn't get a moment of foreshadowing, because Reid [[spoiler: had already got his fair share of torment back in Season 2 and isn't due for another go through the emotional meat grinder until Season 8.]]
** The unsub's plan is foiled in part thanks to Garcia's intervention. Garcia as the mere support role died in "Penelope", the new more active Garcia was born in this episode, and would continue to take a more active role in stopping the bad guys, particularly in [[spoiler: "Exit Wounds" and "The Internet is Forever".]]
* In the episode "Lauren", Prentiss' [[spoiler: headstone reads "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity" ]] Put those together and what do you get? F.B.I.

** Also, in the same episode, upon receiving news of [[spoiler: Prentiss' death, Reid attempts to leave the room, stopped by JJ, to whom he says "I didn't get to say goodbye."]] Now think back to episode "Scared to Death", when Reid finds the letter [[spoiler: Gideon left for him.]] He complains about abandonment and how his father (and father-figure) left without forewarning. And to who? Emily. Now, doesn't that feel familiar? I thought so.

** In "52 Pickup," Prentiss says that she's dated guys worse than Viper. Well, [[spoiler: that's probably the most innocuous way anybody could describe Ian Doyle...]]

* In "Hit," the last thing Izzy does before getting out of the van to rob the bank is send a text message. [[spoiler: When the group enters the bank, one of the customers is on his cell phone. Turns out he's more than just a customer, but you only find that out in "Run."]]
* In "Zugzwang" Reid says that he's had 100.5 days with Maeve. [[spoiler: Then she dies. In Season 5, episode 100 of the series, Hotch lost Haley.]]
** Anyone who knows their chess terminology will immediately recognize that the episode title refers to [[spoiler:a position in which the player cannot make a move without losing something]].

* The car in [[spoiler: Hotchner's near death experience]] in "Route 66" has a license plate number 509 905. [[spoiler: In the near death experience Hotchner not only gets to see Haley but the man who killed Haley and who's the reason that Hotch is on an operating table four years later. Now, the episode where Haley dies is Season 5, episode 9. "Route 66" is Season 9 episode 5.]]
* In "P911," the team apprehends a school principal who is a closet pedophile. Everyone's pretty disgusted, naturally, but Morgan has to be told twice by Gideon to calm down or go somewhere else. It's rather subtle, and no one really pays that much attention to it, but only a few episodes later it's revealed that [[spoiler: Morgan was sexually abused in his youth by a man who had a job working with children. His abuser even fits the profile given to the unsub (different from the principal) in "P911": A preferential pedophile, specifically targeting children of a certain age/appearance, and seeking out a job that would give him access to them.]]

* When The Reaper goes after Hotch's family, [[spoiler: he shoots Haley and stabs Hotch countless times.]] This is the opposite of how he acts in every other attack -- because in every other attack The Reaper's main objective was the woman, but in this case it is Hotch.
* In "Blood Relations", Cissy Howard is saying her nightly prayers after many members of her family have been picked off by the unsub. She says she needs the "God of vengeance", to avenge the murders, and not a second later, she hears someone break in and goes after them with her shotgun. Turns out [[spoiler:the vengeful God wasn't there to help Cissy, but to visit his wrath upon her. Specifically, for her incestuous relationship with her brother Malachai that started the whole problem in the first place, as the unsub is their illegitimate child, given away and badly deformed. By the end of the night, Cissy has been dragged through hell, and her and her brother's relationship has been exposed. The ending credits show their families, now joined together, demanding answers for the bloodbath they inadvertently caused. Vengeful God, indeed.]]
* In "The Perfect Storm", [[spoiler: why does Amber talk to Tony, even though it led to one way she was exposed as the killer? When everyone thought Tony was the dominant partner, Hotch went in with a strategy to feed his ego, say what he wanted to hear about his skill and strength. Now remember how Gideon talked Amber into the interview. "You're the only one who can get through to him." "You're our only hope." He was unwittingly following Hotch's strategy to a T against the REAL dominant partner... And it worked!]]
* [[spoiler:When Hotch is ambushed by Mr. Scratch in Season 10 and subjected to his drug cocktail, which makes victims hallucinate their worst fears, he hallucinates the rest of the BAU being shot by Mr. Scratch. However, everyone who is shown being shot is always being shot somewhere in the neck, rather than the head (them being shot in the chest would've immediately tipped off viewers that what they are seeing is Hotch's hallucination, since the characters should be wearing their bulletproof vests). This may be a strange thing to emphasize at first, but then it makes a lot more sense when one remembers the Season 9 finale, where Reid is shot and nearly killed by a suspect during a shootout. Where exactly was he shot? The neck. At that point, Reid's injury was the most recent time any member of the BAU was dangerously close to dying under Hotch's watch, and so Mr. Scratch's drugs brought up that specific trauma because it was still fresh in his mind.]]

* In "Seven Seconds" [[spoiler: turns out the little girl was being molested by her uncle. The episode doesn't point this out, but he and the father are identical twins. So, what's worse than being molested? Being molested by a man wearing your daddy's face.]]
* The unsub from "Normal" [[spoiler: killed his wife and daughters while they slept, blocked out the memory of doing so, and continually hallucinated his family was still alive. He never moved the bodies, so its safe to assume he had been unknowingly sleeping next to his wife's corpse for days.]]
* At the end of "The Fox" the team find a box that contains [[spoiler: 8 wedding rings collected by the unsub after he killed the families he lived with for five days. Counting the 3 families the team knew about, and possibly allowing another for the unsub's own failed marriage, that still means he did that to 4 other families at least before the team knew about it.]]

** Actually, [[spoiler: she isn't normal. As she became a Cartel Hitwoman, and worked with Cat Adams to [[FrameUp set Reid up for murder]]]].

* Every woman who had slept with the unsub of Parasite really needs to get tested for STD's and that goes double for his wife. Part of his MO as a ConMan was to sleep with his victims to manipulate them. Considering the fact he got one woman other than his wife pregnant he probably didn't use condoms and could have caught anything asymtomatic over the years and passed it around a ''lot''.
** Also part of fridge brilliance, the Uunub devolved into killing all of his con victims in order to cover his tracks. And in the last moment he entered the house of one of his cons that he got pregnant talking to his wife. His wife may have unknowingly saved two lives just by being there.

* In "The Big Game" and a few episodes prior, Reid displays some amount of technical skill -- enough to translate for Garcia when she's explaining something over the phone. Yet some seasons later she refers to him having an "anti-technology quirk." Is this [[CharacterizationMarchesOn characterization marching on]] or [[spoiler: the lingering effects of being kidnapped by the episode's technologically-capable unsub?]]

* In "Red Light," Reid finally snaps and -- temporarily ignoring Cat Adams's pregnancy -- comes close to choking her to death. At first, it looks like he's simply that pissed and worried about his mother's safety... until you remember that this episode's premise is eerily similar to that of "Zugzwang" (where Reid's girlfriend, Maeve, was threatened by a similar {{Yandere}}). Is he subconsciously reliving that experience and, afraid of this one ending in a similar [[spoiler:ShootTheShaggyDog story [[note]]He failed to save Maeve and, because it was a MurderSuicide, couldn't even get "Hotch vs. Foyet"-style payback on her killer.[[/note]]]], becoming more gung-ho and willing to PayEvilUntoEvil (especially since he was already desperate enough to [[spoiler:poison his inmate tormentors, who'd also killed his new inmate friend,]] in "Hell's Kitchen")? Looks like [[spoiler:Lindsey Vaughn]] may not be the only one warped by [[spoiler:her]] history with others' violence.

* Y'all remember that arc concerning Reid and his mom? A thing to remember is that schizophrenia and Alzheimers are hereditary, so, at some point, Reid is likely to develop either of those at some point in his life.

* If the unsub from "The Fisher King" episodes truly, whole-heartedly believed that the BAU were Knights of the Round Table who could cure his wounds with a magical question, why did he cast Reid -- who got the most focus in the fantasy, probably due to [[spoiler: the unsub getting info from his mother's journals]] -- as Sir Percival? He had to know that Percival fails his Grail quest. He reaches the King but fails to ask the correct question.

* One of the most interesting character interactions (to this troper, anyway) is between Hotch and Strauss. One is a major badass IronWoobie that does everything in his power to keep his team safe and get the unsub. The other is an ObstructiveBureaucrat that does everything in her power to control the political/bureaucratic ramifications of the BAU's actions. At times the two become a rivalry, with Hotch proving time and again that he is capable and happy where he is and Strauss doing everything she can to keep her job (since Hotch has proven that he could easily do it himself). Their relationship (though favoring Hotch from the audience's perspective) is played up as a rivalry. What's one way to reinforce a rivalry? With NamesTheSame: both are named Aaron/Erin.

* Also in Bloodline, the family we see is at one point referred to as 'gypsies', an ethnic slur against the Romani...but are elsewhere described as Romanian. They speak Romanian, the customs they follow are explicitly described as Eastern European, and so on and so forth. Did the writers not know that the Romani are an entirely separate culture, and even those living in Romania follow a very different set of cultural practices to the Romanian people? The goddamn Wiki/ThatOtherWiki page on the Romani people opens with 'not to be confused with Romanians, an unrelated ethnic group and nation', and that's just what a ten-second Google search can produce on the matter. And even if we do accept that this particular family happens to be Romani hailing from Romania, how on earth would the BAU know that when all the customs they practice are described as purely Romanian, as Prentiss knows from her time abroad in Eastern Europe.

* In a two-part episode in Season Two, Reid is kidnapped by a religious fanatic with three separate personalities: his own personality, his father's personality, and a personality that believes himself to be an infallible archangel. It took me a second or two to realize the significance of having this deeply religious killer be three people in one- the father, the son, and a holy spirit.

* The episode "True Night" can be looked at as a {{Deconstruction}} of UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks. The unsub, Jonny, a comic book artist, creates a new character, Night, who appears to be a NinetiesAntiHero given his use of deadly force, and all Night's kills are subconsciously based on murders the unsub has been committing in real life. Jonny's manager is shocked by the violence of this art compared to Johnny's previous work. Furthermore, examine what caused Jonny's psychotic break: [[spoiler: his girlfriend getting murdered in front of him by a street gang]]. Yes, she was ''[[spoiler: StuffedIntoTheFridge]]''. His response was to essentially become a Nineties anti-hero himself, hunting down the gang members and killing them, like many a Dark Age "hero". However, this isn't portrayed as "EXTREEEEMEEE", but as a horrifying symptom of major mental illness. The scenes where he kills the victims are beautifully stylized in ''ComicBook/SinCity''-esque fashion, but when you see them realistically afterwards ([[GoryDiscretionShot though you don't see much]]), they're stomach-churning. Jonny is what a Nineties anti-hero would be in real life: seriously disturbed and tragic, not badass. It's a meditation on how what is "cool" in comics is not very cool in reality. - {{Tropers/Idler}}

* Prentiss' origin as an Interpol agent seems to be an AssPull... but go back to the episodes in which she first appears. She really does seem to come out of nowhere, claiming to have worked in the FBI for ten years without Hotch ever seeing her. His initial mistrust of her is a natural reaction. Being in the FBI is a sort of witness protection for her--since she won't be leaving the country for assignments, she has less of a chance of running into anyone who knew her as Lauren.-- {{Astrakhan}}

* In "Supply and Demand", Morgan displays some unexpected math skills when deducing how far a car has travelled based solely on how much gas was left in the tank. Rossi, upon hearing it, acknowledges it with an "okay Reid", joking that Morgan sounded a lot like Reid with his calculations. However, when you think about it, the comment is a bit of a nod to Morgan's relationship with Reid- although not getting the credit for it, Morgan is often the only one who really can keep up with Reid in conversations and does feel like the only person who understands Reid and thus is the only one Reid truly trusts.

* In "Zugzwang" Reid says that he's had 100.5 days with Maeve. [[spoiler: Then she dies. In season 5, episode 100 of the series, Hotch lost Haley.]]

* When The Reaper goes after Hotch's family, [[spoiler: he shoots Haley and stabs Hotch countless times.]] This is the opposite of how he acts in every other attack - because in every other attack The Reaper's main objective was the woman, but in this case it is Hotch.

** Just because Reid hates technology doesn't mean he doesn't know about it- he can still read about it, and apply knowledge from what he's read. He just doesn't use it.

** Or, in the case that the unsub considered the first version to be true, he could be expecting for Percival to have learnt from his mistakes - if he got it wrong the first time, there's no reason he should get it wrong a second. In fact, it's more likely that he would get it right.

* We are told Katherine Cole is a former BAU member. When? She's not around or mentioned during the Rossi/Gideon flashbacks of season 10. She's not seen during Rossi's own series of flashbacks in the BAU through the years, and she's not with the BAU in the 2004 flashbacks. When was she ever on the BAU?
** Given the immense amount of referrals the FBI must get from the staggering number of serial murders, it's likely there is more than one team in the BAU. She could have been a BAU member, just not on Hotch's team?

* Kind of a meta-example: various behind the scenes features have mentioned that the writer's room likes to picture the BAU's adventures as modern-day arthurian lore, similar to the unsub of the "Fisher King" two-parter. Assuming they kept this up with later seasons, it's not hard to imagine that Seaver was an attempt to add a Galahad. She didn't take because Galahad's brand of purity and Messiah-dom comes across as MarySue-ish to a modern audience.