'''Warning: Spoilers ahoy! (And major {{squick}})'''

The profilers of ''Series/CriminalMinds'' have to deal with the most deranged and dangerous criminals ever seen in the United States. So, no wonder that the series has managed so far to provide us with a good amount of NightmareFuel.

It should be also noticed that one of the most terrifying parts about the show is that [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Albright they]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickton didn't]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kuklinski make]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Manson this]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes stuff]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger up]]. Most of the cases are RippedFromTheHeadlines.

'''Don't say you weren't warned about the spoilers and the {{squick}}.''' [[SarcasmMode Sweet dreams]].
-----
[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Season 1 ]]

* "The Fox": The team finding the wedding rings in the final scene, implying that there were ''more'' families slaughtered that the team didn't know about. This was the episode who introduced us to Karl Arnold.
-->'''Karl Arnold''': Wives wither, children perish... but me? I'm an excellent father.
* "Natural Born Killer": After torturing his victims, the [=UnSub=] would occasionally leave them to be eaten alive by rats. The crime scene -- ugh, so much blood everywhere. And how the three victims were killed --thank god we never see the act. The aftermath is just scary enough.
* "Poison": A guy (whose been slipped a cocktail of drugs) at the beginning of the episode has a nightmarish hallucination involving dozens of shadowy figures swarming him in the woods near a secluded road, in the middle of the night. One of the hallucinations had a freakish, constantly shifting face that goes from looking like something vaguely demonic to nothing but a giant, glowing red eye. In the throes of his hallucination, he beats his own son nearly to death with a tire iron.
* "The Tribe": most of the victims were ''skinned alive''.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Season 2 ]]

* "The Boogeyman": Had a terrifying [=UnSub=] who beat children to death with a baseball bat. [[spoiler:And is a child as well.]] When Gideon asked the [=UnSub=] why he murdered those children, the response was "Because I wanted to."
* "North Mammon": Three best friends were kidnapped and got locked in a room. The [=UnSub=] not only made all three girls choose who had to die, he made them kill her themselves... ''with hammers''.
* "The Big Game"/"Revelations"
** There was the part where a woman was tied up and then eaten alive by rabid dogs.
** Reid is handcuffed to a chair, drugged and helpless, having just been forced to watch a double murder he feels partially responsible for on a video feed, and Gideon appears on the same screen after the team arrive at the victims' house. He tries to talk to Reid, to reassure him that he's strong and won't break, and Reid just stares catatonically at the screen like he's not even really there.
** The [=UnSub=] in this episode in general. He's got multiple personalities. One is Tobias, a surprisingly sweet guy who tries to help Reid--but "helps" him by drugging him. Another personality Raphael, an angel who is completely without emotion, but just views his murders as God's will, and forces Reid to play Russian Roulette. The last one is Tobias's father, who's absolutely terrifying. He's a religious fanatic who apparently burned a cross into his son's forehead when he was young--and he actually ''kills Reid.'' Yes, he's resuscitated, but seeing one of the protagonists actually die was downright chilling.
* "Open Season": Involved people getting taken into the forest and hunted for sport.
* "No Way Out": Crazy Jane has those wind chimes outside her house. They were made out of the rib bones taken from Frank's victims, because he loves her and and flowers just aren't his style. Then there was the rib bone she used as a whistle. Every single thing that came out of Frank's mouth was pretty creepy.
* "No Way Out Part II": Frank's return is pretty much the most horrifying thing ever. There were victims that came back from previous episdoes only to be killed. The victim from the "Fisher King" two-parter had a rough life. [[hottip:Long and spoilered rotten explantion : First, when she was a little girl, her family died in a fire. When she was about sixteen and just getting adjusted to this whole adoption thing, she got kidnapped by a psychotic, horribly disfigured man with an obsession with Arthurian legends and kept chained to a bed in the basement. Then he commits suicide by bomb, setting the house on fire. Oh, he's her father, who was just driven insane by the fire that killed the rest of the family. Although she rescued by the FBI at the last minute, barely a year later she got kidnapped by ''another'' psychotic freak, only instead of keeping her chained up in the basement, this one injected her with ketamine, which left her conscious, aware, and totally incapable of movement while he eviscerated her. Because he wants to prove a point to an FBI agent she had never met.]]
* "Ashes and Dust": Pretty scary episode overall, but one of the murders is up there as one of the scariest in the whole show. A father and his two kids are leaving their house and get into their car, where the [=UnSub=] appears and begins pouring petrol over the vehicle. We see the father and kids screaming for help as they realise they're locked inside, and the [=UnSub=] sets the car on fire and leaves. Cut to outside, the entire garage explodes in a fireball. A brutal aversion of InfantImmortality.
* "Legacy"
** The M.O. of the [=UnSub=] was taking street people and dumping them in a slaughterhouse/meat plant he converted into a DeathCourse for a few hours, before recapturing and vivisecting while in surgical/butcher garb and with absolutely nasty looking tools.
** It also features a scene where a woman blindly runs through door after identical door, and winds up tripping and falling into a room filled with broken glass, which she has to crawl through... barefoot.
** This episode also had something that's actually pretty frightening on the part of the good guys. The killer's accomplice is sitting in an interrogation room, plotting his defense. Hotch walks in, deconstructs the accomplice's life and motivations, utterly breaks his will to resist, and walks back out with all the information he needs from the man in under five minutes. No raised voices, no threats of jail time, never laid a hand on him. Aaron Hotchner can make someone turn against everything they've done just by talking to them.
** Also, at some point, Hotch criticizes the police's indifference because the people missing are prostitutes, junkies and/or vagrants. Now, I was just wondering [[ParanoiaFuel how many people like them could disappear]] in RealLife before someone even ''noticed'' it.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Season 3 ]]

* "Scared to Death": had the psychologist who killed his patients by using their fears. It makes viewers start thinking about how they could die from their own fears.
* "Lucky"
** The episode opens with the [=UnSub=] locked away safely in a mental institution with the head of the asylum begging the board of directors to keep him in.
** During the raid on the [=UnSub's=] house they find industrial cookware, a freezer full of bodies which have been dismembered and had their throats slit and ''a demonic altar'', the walls of which are covered in blood, disturbing paintings and shelves crammed full of books on the nature of evil and homemade cookbooks about how to properly prepare human limbs for consumption.
** The scene at the end:
--> '''Father Marks:''' "God is in all of us."
--> '''[[ImAHumanitarian Floyd]] [[ReligionOfEvil Feylinn]] [[EvilChef Ferell]] ([[SlasherSmile grinning]]):''' [[IAteWhat ... So is Tracey Lambert]].
*** What's really terrifying about it is the complete change in demeanor. At first, Floyd is quiet, meek, won't make eye contact. Then Father Marks talks, and it's like Floyd is an entirely different person. He makes eye contact, his voice changes, and he ''smiles'' in the creepiest way possible. Any Supernatural fans watching this episode probably went for their holy water.
*** This episode put this troper off of a rather nice curry. It's probably not advised you watch this episode if you're planning on eating any meat products, oh, I don't know, ''ever''.
* "True Night"
** Frankie Muniz's character, Johnny, suffers a catastrophic mental breakdown in response to witnessing the brutal rape and murder of his girlfriend by a gang of serial rapists ("gang-bangers"), and being left for dead [[{{Squick}} with his intestines hanging out]]. As a FrankMiller-style comic-book writer and artist (Miller is in fact quoted by Garcia at the end of the episode), he begins drawing some horrifyingly dark comics about a shadowy warrior that kills evil demon creatures by disemboweling them and slicing them up. The plot twist of course being that members of the gang are turning up [[OhCrap in suspiciously similar poses to those that appear in Johnny's art]]. In the end, it turns out Johnny character has gone out and slaughtered every single one of the bastards that ruined his life - whether this is a CrowningMomentOfAwesome or not is for the viewer to decide - with the agents finding the final body so gored it's not shown onscreen. Prentiss is visibly shaken by the whole thing, which leads to some ParanoiaFuel - any one of us could end up as hopelessly insane as Johnny did. Johnny is now locked up in a padded cell with his girlfriend's mobile phone, [[TearJerker incessantly listening to her voicemail, hoping one day she'll pick up]]. End episode. [[INeedAFreakingDrink Have some Kleenex and/or vodka ready.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Season 4 ]]

* "Normal": Seeing [[TheXFiles A.D. Skinner]] go from guilt ridden househusband to...that. Not because of the way he kills, but because of what the reveal said he did after his first strike.
** There's also some NauseaFuel in that the agents enter the house and can smell the decomposing bodies of Norman's family.
** Let's not forget the fact that Norman then hallucinates the fact his whole family is in his SUV with him as he tries to make a getaway, telling him that the death of his youngest daughter is his fault. The most gutting part is when he staggers from the empty vehicle realising what he's done and starts uncontrollably sobbing "What did I do?!"
* "Bloodline". While a less creepy example, the ending of this episode with the revelation that there are ''more'' families out there kidnapping young girls and killing their parents is creepy. The entire episode becomes creepy, too, when you stop to wonder what happened to ''daughters'' born in that family...
* "Demonology": It's not outright terrifying, but it is probably one of the eeriest episodes of the show. There's just something so horrible about the atmosphere, and the brutal exorcisms, and the uncertainty over who's evil and who's not.
* "A Shade of Gray"
** TheReveal was the worst part. When you realize that the [=UnSub=] was the six-year-old victim's ten-year-old brother.
*** The autospy report revealed that the [=UnSub=] shoved plane parts down his younger brother's throat just because [[DisproportionateRetribution he accidentally broke something]].
* "To Hell..."/"...And Back"
** The [=UnSub=] killed people and then [[FedToPigs given to pigs]]. Anyone with pigs will tell you that pigs ''will'' eat anything.
--->'''[[TheWoobie Reid]]''': Pigs are omnivores, they'll eat anything. Anything.
** Made even worse by the fact that the murders were based on real-life serial killers in Canada.
** At the very end of "...And Back" has the death montage of both the Turner brothers. The black ex-soldier who got the BAU team to come in and investigate because the Turners got his sister, only to find out by the time they get to the farm she's already dead, calmly picks up a rifle and comes into the house to shoot Mason. And Mason...''smiles at him''.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Season 5 ]]

* Hotch and Foyet's very intimate little torture scene, shot and scripted like a rape scene performed through Foyet's knife instead of through his body. So terrible that Hotch pretends not to remember it because he can't handle talking to his teammates about it.
* "Cradle to Grave": Think of it like the most gore and foul horror hentai being filmed. Young women are kidnapped, locked in a prison, impregnated, left alone when she's about to labor and the only possible help is from the other prisoner. Either she will be killed if she doesn't give birth to a baby boy or the unsub will impregnate her again until they can find a substitute. Even though the viewers know this by description of one of the victim, the mental image of it is devastating.
* "The Performer": Imagine you're a goth rock star who really doesn't even like his persona anymore, and people (including some of your fans) start dying in ways that point right to you. You're innocent and have no clue what's happening...and then the [=UnSub=] is your close friend and manager, who's manipulating a mentally ill fan of yours that's obsessed with your persona, killing people to get you publicity that you ''don't even want'' since you're sick of making events instead of music anyway. Poor guy...
* [[EyeScream "The Eyes Have It"]]
** The melon baller used to gouge out the victims' eyes, and the [=UnSub=]'s taxidermy shop.
** There was the irony shot of Reid talking about how some ennucleators eat the eyes of their victims and the [=UnSub=] eating hard-boiled eggs.
** Also, what the Buddist family of one of the victims believed had happend to her soul because of the removal of her eyes. The Grandmother of the victim claimed to have seen her blind, tormented ghost. And if the victims eyes could never be recovered, she would remain that way ''forever''.
* "Uncanny Valley"
** The childlike [=UnSub=] drugs her victims, and she dressed them up as dolls. The victims are still aware of the world but can't move at all.
** The woman who had a wig ''stitched into her scalp'' while she was fully aware of everything.
** The dream sequence where the most recent victim breaks from her chemical paralysis and tries to escape, only to have her limbs turn to mannequin parts and fall off.
** The [=UnSub's=] father raped her after her mother died, then subjected her to electroshock therapy at the age of TEN!!
* "Mosley Lane": This one isn't as gory as other episodes, but has a high creep-out factor. The [[EvilMatriarch female [=UnSub=]]] (creepingly portrayed by Beth Grant) is enough to give you goosebumps. If that's not enough, there are child abduction, heavy abuse, a nightmare-like setting and the young victims being '''burned alive!!!''' And the cherry on the cake is the suicide-by-hanging. The song "Illabye" is used once again after "The Fox". And it's terrifying once again.
* TimCurry as the [=UnSub=] in "Our Darkest Hour/The Longest Night" falls squarely into this. It's a far cry from his [[DracoInLeatherPants more]] [[EvilIsSexy popular]] [[RockyHorrorPictureShow roles]], and it ''works''.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keKMuKfSVI8 Here you go.]] [[BlatantLies it's not THAT bad...]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Season 6 ]]

* "With Friends Like These...": The [=UnSub=] had schizophrenia, and was constantly tormented by three hallucinations who said they would leave him alone if he killed people. At the end, he's in a mental hospital and for a second you think he's better and can't see them anymore. But nope, they're still there, mocking him. They also imply that they've been with him his ''entire life'', which adds a whole new level of scary.
** Then there was the part where he lays down to try and sleep and sees the dead, bleeding bodies of his hallucinations sticking to the ceiling.
** The part where the [=UnSub=] is hallucinating that Reid is telling him to stab him in the neck and that will solve all his problems while smiling cheerfully was either NightmareFuel or [[CrowningMomentOfFunny hilarious]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Season 7 ]]

* "Proof": The [=UnSub=] is a mentally-ill serial killer fixated on his sister-in-law, with the mentality of a child. He narrates all his thoughts into a camera, talking cheerily about scarring, raping, and killing women. He then kidnaps his niece, who has recently dyed her hair to look like her mother, and threatens to rape her. He gleefully confesses to burning her hands and wanting to blind and burn his brother so he could hear his daughter scream. The disconnect between the cheerful side of him and the fact that he gouges out eyes, rips out tongues, and pours acid in the mouths of women is just chilling.
* "Hope": The entire episode was creepy in general.
* "Painless" - The idea that someone could break into your home and plant a bomb into your alarm clock, And what really drove it home for this troper is that I own the same type of clock.
* "Closing Time": Aside from the fact that the serial killer [[GroinAttack cut off some of his victims' genitals]], there was also the part where he accidentally knocks a man into a car compactor...''and then intentionally starts it while he's still alive''. Thank God they didn't show the body... but the screams were certainly audible, though.
* "Foundation": Finding out that the [=UnSub=] ''bit'' his victims, who by the way were all children. He'd hold them in captivity for years. The worst part was that he was also able to kidnap a very low risk eleven-year-old boy. The [=UnSub=] also would give stuff from the victim to his daughter, who had no idea that the gifts she got actually belonged to other children.
* "Heathridge Manor"
-->"I've been waiting for you for so long, Lara. You have to come with me now."
* "The Company." A ring of men kidnap, attain through human trafficking, or otherwise break women down into being slaves. They convince the women that any attempt to escape will result in their families being killed. Then if the women have children, they can only see their children once a year.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Season 8 ]]

* Jason from "The Pact". The part where he digs up the skull of one of his victims, than informs the victim's mother (who wants to know where the rest of her daughter is) that they have "some more holes to dig."
* "God Complex." A man is kidnapping people, taking their legs, and attempting to transplant them onto others. Any time the victims are kept alive is acutely creepy, let alone when one "walks into the emergency room on a leg that wasn't his." If that's not creepy enough, he's played by [[TwinPeaks Ray Wise]].
** It gets even worse when we discover that the man ''isn't'' a psychopath - he has a fully functional social life and a family to whom he is genuinely devoted; he has just distanced himself so much from his work that (like the Nazi "doctors" to whom he is explicitly compared,) he sees no contradiction between being a loving husband and chopping up strangers. [[spoiler: He is so convinced he's not doing anything wrong that when a victim actually survives he proudly takes his wife (who thought he'd been experimenting on mice,) in to see it, and was actually surprised that she was horrified.]]
* "The Good Earth." It involves an hypochondriac woman that believes that her (non-existent) skin disease can only be cured by eating crops fertilized with human remains, so she kidnaps fit young men, strips them, holds them captive in her barn, forcefeeds them a strange soup made of soil additives and animal feed via tube, and chops them one-by-one into little pieces that she later fertilizes her tomatoes with. At one point she also kidnaps a pregnant woman, slices her belly open with a knife ''while she is still conscious'', takes the placenta, and ''attempts to feed it to her daughter''. NauseaFuel doesn't even begin to describe it.
** This gets worse if you're a reader of STFUParents and have seen what some people actually DO with their placentas.
* "Perennials," in which the victim-to-be-saved (a tweenage boy) has to look over his shoulder for a very long time after the serial killer tells him that he'll come back for the boy '''in twenty years'''.
* "The Lesson". HUMAN. MARIONETTE. PUPPETS!
** Particularly the [[UncannyValley masks]] and their voices feebly pleading for help.
*** This troper also found the scene with the audience of toys at the end to be just...unsettling. Hell, the [[PsychopathicManchild sheer, childish insanity]] of this particular unsub is incredibly creepy.
**** The scene where he dislocates their limbs, [[{{Squick}} and the way they flop around afterwards.]]
* Reid's nightmare in Zugzwang where he maries his girlfriend and discovers she has no face.
** Maeve's stalker is motivated because [[spoiler: Maeve rejected her thesis due to poor sample-structure (she'd included her own parents' suicide in it)]]. That's it. Maeve even said it wasn't that bad, she just needed to do more work on it.
* "All That Remains." Imagine that your wife mysteriously disappeared during a blackout [[spoiler:when a separate identity from yours takes over]] and your two daughters vanish immediately a year after. Later you learn that [[spoiler:your oldest daughter killed both your younger daughter and wife and had planned everything out, including framing you for your wife's disappearance.]]
** Something small, but given the identity of the Unsub, it becomes terrifying: After the Unsub's arrest, JJ [[spoiler:looks through her mother's real estate book and finds a pearl necklace and wedding ring]]. Reid walks up behind her and says something that makes the Unsub even creepier.
-->'''Reid:''' [[spoiler:Trophies.]]
* Broken: when we learn what [[spoiler: the camp did to turn gay teens straight: they take their belongings, erase everything they don't deem "masculine" enough, put them in jump-suits like they were in Guantanamo, force them to follow a time-table that leaves no room for individual time, '''take away their mean of communication with the outside''', force them to watch straight porn while God knows what substance is being put in their bloodstream, pay a female child molesting prostitute to rape them, all of this with [[MoralEventHorizon the aknowledgement of the kid's parents]] ]]. The episode unsub manages to [[spoiler: kill and mutilate six people, try to force his best friend to rape his father before murdering them both]] and he ends up looking more sympathetic and less creepy that [[spoiler: the camp]]
** And when this story is finished, we're shown that [[spoiler: The killer who's been taunting the BAU by imitating the MO of people they had arrested was watching Alex Blake's lesson]]
* The hallucination scenes in "Alchemy".