History Main / TheProfiler

** Hannibal Lecter offers his services as a profiler in exchange for a LuxuryPrisonSuite in ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs''. However, Lecter subverts the trope: He is able to offer an extremely accurate profile of Buffalo Bill because he'd met him and knew his personal history, not because of his own insight.

** In one episode, he found himself up against his own former boss, who ''had'' gone off the deep end and started imitating the criminal he was after.

* Vincent D'Onofrio's character in ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' would fit here. From the main ''Series/LawAndOrder'' series, one of the early seasons had the NYPD work up a profile of a suspect who was randomly targeting and shooting African-Americans. The profile seems to net them their killer, but the suspect's attorney uses all the ways his client ''doesn't'' match it, along with the lack of non-circumstantial evidence, to get a Judge to release him. Turns out, the police were right, he ''was'' the killer, and he manages to strike again after his release. Fortunately, his would-be victim guns ''him'' down instead.

* ''Series/ProdigalSon'': Malcolm Bright (née Whitly) is a gifted criminal psychologist, using his twisted genius to help the NYPD solve crimes and stop killers. Dr. Martin Whitly, also known as the Surgeon, was a serial killer who invited Malcolm to find out why.

* Snow, preternaturally so, in ''Manga/{{Tista}}.

* Snow, preternaturally so, in Tista.

* ''Bedlam'' features Fillmore Press, alias Madder Red, a former mass-murdering supervillain who reformed after a stay in a psychiatric institution. He knows ''exactly'' how the criminally insane mind operates, and offers his services to the local police when they're stumped by a string of serial murders. The police, especially detective Ramira Acevedo, have no idea what to make of him -- since Madder Red is believed dead and Press has no actual criminal record, he comes across as a weird guy with bizarrely in-depth knowledge of how crazy killers think. Eventually he's hired on as a paid consultant.

-->''"The suspect is likely a white male in his late twenties to late thirties, he likely is not a college graduate but feels superior to those with advanced education, and he is likely employed in a bureacratic entity, possibly civil service or quasi-public service from which he feels alienated. He has a problem with authority, and a deep-seated resentment of those he feels have impeded his progress professionally. The minimized sexual activity suggests this is not a primary motive for the killings, in fact the lack of DNA or saliva in the bite-marks of the last-found victim indicate to us possible post-mortem staging. The suspect has trouble with lasting relationships, and is possibly a high-functioning alcoholic, with alcohol being used as a trigger in his crimes. His resentment of the homeless may stem from a personal relationship with someone who was in that cohort, or his victimization of them may simply provide an opportunity for him to assert his superiority and/or intellectual prowess."''

** In the first season, Agent Booth asks Dr. Goodman, an anthropologist, to look over a series of crime scene photographs and photos of their suspect's home to help the FBI figure out where to focus their search for evidence on a short timeline. Goodman is notably hesitant to do this, since his speciality is studying the ''remains'' of people to learn about how they lived, rather than the still-living. That said, rather than trying to identify the suspect based on forensic evidence and hunches, he used the suspect as a starting point to help the FBI figure out how he would have done something, working in reverse of the typical trope.

* There is a new area of Psychology called Investigative Psychology lead by David Canter (A famed profiler himself) that intents to find a way to use Offender Profiling outside the more horrific types of crimes and even in non-forensic fields. It's far from being as exact as other fields in Psychology, and that's saying something, but it has had some success using Geographical Profiling (normally only used with serial offenders) in nonrelated areas such as Marketing. So it was recently upgraded from "[[ItWillNeverCatchOn Most likely to end up being nothing but a footnote in some textbook]]." to "Ambitious new field."

Not to be confused with the alternate meaning of {{Profiling}}, drawing prejudiced conclusions about someone based on their ethnicity or race.

* The entire main cast of ''Series/CriminalMinds'', except for JJ, who is the media liaison, and Garcia, who is the technical analyst (read: computer person), though JJ becomes one in the 7th season and Garcia in the 6th inherited some of her media work. Some of their leaps of logic are still quite far-fetched though, especially in later seasons and ''especially'' when they accurately profile unique or bizarre psychoses. They also go on arrests and conduct interrogations, which real life profilers ''do not do''. Profiles is more or less used to rule out suspects as well as find them, although they can advise detectives and prosecutors how to conduct interrogations. They ''can'', however, testify in court, although they were originally barred from doing so.

* Paul Britton, one of Britain's leading forensic psychologist who (according to his books anyway) effectively kickstarted and setup the forensic psychology field in Britain and worked on several high profile cases such as Fred and Rosemary West and the Jamie Bulger murder. That said, he got it badly wrong with the investigation into the murder of Rachel Nickell, abetting the police in their attempt to incriminate and entrap a likely suspect who was convicted but later turned out to be innocent (and, to make it worse, the actual killer turned out to have ''also been the perpetrator'' of a series of rapes that Britton helped investigate).

* Paul Britton, one of Britain's leading forensic psychologist who (according to his books anyway) effectively kickstarted and setup the forensic psychology field in Britain and worked on several high profile cases such as Fred and Rosemary West and the Jamie Bulger murder. That said, he got it badly wrong with the investigation into the murder of Rachel Nickell, abetting the police in their attempt to incriminate and entrap a likely suspect who was convicted but later turned out to be innocent (and, to make it worse, the actual killer turned out to have also been the perpetrator of ''another'' murder that Britton helped investigate).

* [[PropheticName John Edward Douglas]], founder of the FBI's Criminal Profiling Program and inspiration for several of the trope examples listed above, has written several professional and true-crime books about profiling and his personal experiences with its use (one of which, ''Series/Mindhunter'', was itself adapted for TV). His near-fatal bout of viral encephalitis, while pursuing the Green River Killer case, surely contributed to this trope's assumption that a profiler's work is both emotionally and physically exhausting. If there is a profiler in fiction, chances are he is one of the inspirations for it.

* [[PropheticName John Edward Douglas]], founder of the FBI's Criminal Profiling Program and inspiration for several of the trope examples listed above, has written several professional and true-crime books about profiling and his personal experiences with its use. His near-fatal bout of viral encephalitis, while pursuing the Green River Killer case, surely contributed to this trope's assumption that a profiler's work is both emotionally and physically exhausting. If there is a profiler in fiction, chances are he is one of the inspirations for it.

* Paul Britton, one of Britain's leading forensic psychologist who (according to his books anyway) effectively kickstarted and setup the forensic psychology field in Britain and worked on several high profile cases such as Fred and Rosemary West and the Jamie Bulger Case.

* ''Series/{{Millennium}}'': Lance Henriksen stars as ex-FBI agent turned FBI consultant Frank Black, who would frequently share his thoughts on elusive killers with his old colleagues. The first season was ambiguous whether Frank's insights [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane were just a keen sense of intuition or were actually supernatural in origin]]. Later seasons make these visions unambiguously psychic, however.

* ''Series/ProdigalSon'':
** Malcolm Bright (née Whitly) is a gifted criminal psychologist, using his twisted genius to help the NYPD solve crimes and stop killers. Dr. Martin Whitly, also known as the Surgeon, was a serial killer who invited Malcolm to find out why.

* ''{{Series/Frasier}}'''s mother [[PosthumousCharacter Hester]], whom he followed into psychiatry, occasionally did forensic psychology consultations for the Seattle Police Department, which is where she met Martin.
* In the ''Elementary'' episode "The Deductionist", a profiler being brought in to revisit a serial killer leads to Sherlock spending much of the episode articulating a distaste for a "snake oil" science, "super geniuses" relative to screwed-up people he claims they'll have you believe are themselves geniuses... but this turns out to be motivated by a personal history where she got into his head and, following an actual romantic relationship, wrote an extremely unflattering article about an anonymous "deductionist" on a fast track to substance abuse and other dooms he worries she'll be proven right about. In the case at hand, her skill is portrayed as legitimate, but [[spoiler:the book she wrote about him ruined his family with what he insists were false allegations concerning ''his father'']].

* In the Pacific Bay arc of ''VideoGame/CriminalCase'', psychological evidences are handled by criminal psychologist Dr. Russell Crane, who would sometimes assist the coroner, Roxie, and the forensics expert, Yann, in some of their analysis if psychological aspects of the killer is involved. He is also responsible of giving reports on certain killers' mental health to the Judge to help him assign sentences.

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* A rather ridiculously accurate profiling is done on ''Series/{{Angel}}'', which not only describes the killer, but Angel himself.