Characters / Criminal Minds: UnSubs

Main Character Index | BAU | UnSubs | UnSubs Seasons 1-5 | UnSubs Seasons 6-7 | UnSubs Seasons 8-10 | UnSubs Seasons 11-15 | Evolution UnSubs | Others

UnSubs, short for "Unknown Subjects", are the main antagonists of each episode of Criminal Minds. Unlike usual police procedural shows, this one is all about understanding the mentality of each episodic killer instead of simply finding out who it is and arresting them, since the very purpose of the BAU is to understand their mentality in order to stop their killing sprees. It's in the title, after all.

This page covers the major and recurring UnSubs that appear. For the one-shot UnSubs, see these other pages.

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Arc Villains

Frank Breitkopf

Played by: Keith Carradine

"Beauty can cover a multitude of sins. But underneath, we all look exactly the same."

The show's original recurring villain, Frank was a psychopathic serial killer who traveled from state to state, abducting victims at random and killing them by dissecting them alive. With no specific preference in victim type (and thus no pattern for law enforcement to notice), he was able to stay off the radar and continue killing for decades, becoming the most prolific serial killer ever encountered by the BAU (until their discovery of Billy Flynn, the Prince of Darkness, a few years later). He had an intelligent, eerily calm demeanor as well as a fondness for elaborate Xanatos Gambit schemes, as discovered by Gideon and the BAU when they finally try to confront him.

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• And I Must Scream: Puts his victims in this state via drug that leaves them paralyzed, but fully conscious as he slowly vivisects them... in a room with a mirrored ceiling so that they can see what he is doing to them.
• Archenemy: Fixates on Gideon as one. It quickly becomes mutual.
• Bastard Bastard: Implied. There's no doubt Frank is a demented sexual sadist, but it's only hinted he was born out of wedlock. His father is never brought up, he took his mother's name, and said mother was a prostitute.
• Big Bad: Of Season 2.
• Breaking Speech: Loves giving these to Gideon.
• Calling Card: Taking a right rib bone and making wind chimes out of them.
• Complexity Addiction: While he's undoubtedly a Crazy-Prepared Chessmaster, he can't seem to bring himself to kill anyone without using his overly elaborate And I Must Scream method — which he can't seem to follow through with anyway if he doesn't see their fear.
• Depraved Bisexual: Downplayed. He drives sexual pleasure from the torture he inflicts on his victims and he doesn't care what gender his victims are and seems to have or at least really want to be in love with Jane. He also thinks Morgan's pretty:
  Frank: If I had your looks, do you know how much easier my life would be? Beauty can cover a multitude of sins, but underneath we all look exactly the same.
• Driven to Suicide: In "No Way Out II: The Evolution of Frank", he and Jane jump in front of a train when he is cornered by the FBI.
• Emotion Eater: Like the Reaper after him, Frank requires his victim's fear to feed off of. He spared Jane's life because she wasn't afraid of him when he captured her (due to her believing he was an extraterrestrial who wanted to study her), and claims to have fallen in love with her due to this.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Subverted. While he kept his mother's body in a pristine apartment, and surrounded it with flowers, it's heavily implied that she was his first victim.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted. Frank states that he loves Jane but him being a sexual sadist means he's incapable of giving love.
• Evil Genius: Though he probably never received any formal education, he's very intelligent and sets up an elaborate plan to outsmart the FBI in order to get what he wants. He also has a compulsive need to memorize facts, and recites them when engaging in his Criminal Mind Games.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's polite and soft-spoken, but he's not a nice person at all.
• Final Boss: Of Season 2.
• First-Name Basis: He always calls Gideon by his first name and introduces himself by his.
• Freudian Excuse: His mother was a prostitute, who he witnessed perform and have performed on her every indignity imaginable.
• In Love with Love: He believes that he is in love with Jane based on how he felt when he attempted to kill her. Since he's a sociopathic serial killer, there's no way that what he was feeling was love.
• Invincible Villain: He is never captured in the two episodes he appears. Even if his last episode ends with him dying, it's on his own terms and not in any karmic fashion. When he's confronted, he always has the upper hand. Nobody is ever able to swindle him into doing anything he doesn't want, not even slowing down his murders. He doesn't ever get any Oh, Crap! moment, and even the plan that IS thwarted is only something he did to torture the BAU further for his amusement. His grip on Jane remains unperturbed until their mutual suicide. And the slaughter he leaves behind cuts so deeply into Gideon's psyche that it's the primary reason he quits the BAU.
• It's Personal: Killed Gideon's old flame, then started targeting people he had saved in the past.
• Karma Houdini: Dies how he wants, is Together in Death with Jane, and posthumously sends Gideon over the Despair Event Horizon and out of the BAU forever.
• Lack of Empathy: Comes with the territory of being a classic sociopath.
• Manipulative Bastard: Boy, is he ever. The last part of his first appearance involved him somehow sneaking a bus full of kids into the desert. In order to rescue the kids, Gideon is forced to escort Frank with Jane to the desert without any police following them until he finds the kids.
• Meaningful Name: Points out that his name is derived from a type of spear and Gideon shares his with a Greek Hero and a biblical figure.
• Morality Pet: Jane.
• Nom de Mom: Frank has his mother's last name.
• Not So Stoic:
  • The ever so brief look he gives when Gideon mentions they've learned who his mother is, and what his childhood was really like.
  • Lividly yells at a cop who seemingly subdues Jane too hard.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: The big reason he is able to hurt Gideon so bad in his second episode is because he murders one of Gideon's closest friends and several victims he saved in previous episodes (even stealing Gideon's own journal to use as a hit list) as retribution for Jane running away from him thanks to her being curious about Gideon's attempt to make her see Frank's not a worthy love interest. He even calls Gideon and threatens to keep at it unless Gideon finds her and brings her to him.
• The Plan: Pulled off successfully in "No Way Out", but he's Out-Gambitted in "No Way Out II".
• Pragmatic Villainy: He Wouldn't Hurt a Child because "It does nothing for me."
• Recurring Character: In Season 2.
• Revenge by Proxy: In "No Way Out, Part II: The Evilution of Frank", he hunts down and kills several people Gideon saved in previous episodes to force Gideon to find Jane, who ran away from him.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Real-life torturer David Parker Ray filled his trailer with medical implements and a mirrored ceiling and drugged his victims to cause amnesia.
• Self-Made Orphan: In "No Way Out II: The Evilution of Frank", the team discovers his mother's corpse in his apartment and it's implied that he killed her.
• Serial Killer: That goes without saying but Frank took it to a whole new level. He's killed at least 176 people all over the United States for at least thirty years, though it should be noted he's nothing compared to Billy Flynn and a few Real Life serial killers.
• Smug Smiler: The poster boy. He manages to make sitting in a diner drinking a strawberry milkshake look arrogant.
• Smug Snake: Sees himself as better than everyone else.
• The Sociopath: He feels no remorse for the people he kills and is incapable of empathy and loving.
• Son of a Whore: His mother was a prostitute.
• A Sinister Clue: He's a southpaw and one of the most sinister men who has ever walked the Earth.
• Start of Darkness: Explored in "No Way Out II: The Evilution of Frank". See the entry for Self-Made Orphan.
• Stalker with a Crush: He developed an unhealthy obsession with Jane when he was about to torture her. "Fortunately" for him, she developed a form of A Match Made in Stockholm and returned his obsessive feelings.
• That One Case: For Gideon, apparently even before "No Way Out".
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Espouses a belief akin to this before killing himself and Jane.
• Torture Technician: Tortures his victims with knives.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Can't feel it, but wants to.
• Wicked Cultured: Enjoys classical music, ornithology, literature, names and has an interest in mythology. He'd be interesting to spend time with if you could get past the whole "cuts people open" aspect of his personality.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Well, not directly...
• Worthy Opponent: Sees Gideon as one of the few people who deserves to catch him.
• Yandere: He won't stop until he has Jane back. He'll kill anyone to get her.

George Foyet (The Boston Reaper)

Played by: C. Thomas Howell

"Are you scared? You should be."

The first major Arc Villain of the show. An infamous serial killer driven by power, control, and manipulation who terrorized the Boston area 10 years ago, and who was the subject of Hotchner's first case as team leader of the BAU. Similar to the Zodiac Killer (who he was based off of), the case was never solved. The BAU finally uncover his identity in "Omnivore", only for him to pull off a daring escape at the end of the episode. He personally assaults Hotchner in his home at the end of Season 4, and continues to stalk Hotchner and his family for the duration of Season 5 until a final confrontation in the show's 100th episode.

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• Abusive Parents: His father was abusive and his mother wasn’t strong enough to protect him. It's implied, or at least believed by Hotch, that he sabotaged their car, leading to the accident that killed them.
• Arch-Enemy: To Hotch, whom he fixates on as his "nemesis."
• Arc Villain: First appears in Season 4, personally attacks Hotchner in the final episode, then menaces him and his family for most of Season 5 until Hotchner finally confronts him in "100".
• Asshole Victim: In "100", after finally pushing Hotch too far, Hotch finally puts an end to his reign of terror by violently beating him to death.
• Ax-Crazy: Monstrously sadistic with an obsession with controlling others, Foyet proves himself to be one of the most deranged characters on the show.
• Badass Longcoat: Wears a black trench coat while dressed up as the Reaper.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: Done in a subtle way. When he's questioned as "innocent victim" George Foyet, he can't resist making his Reaper persona look like an invincible, unstoppable villain.
  Hotchner: He's just a man. Nothing more.
  Foyet: Then why can't you catch him?
• Calling Card: The Eye of Providence and/or the word FATE; also had a habit of taking something from his victims and leaving the object at the scene of the next murder.
• The Chessmaster: Manipulated people for years as part of his sadistic "deal" to stop killing. He gets one of the detectives on the case to stop hunting him, with the rule that as long as the detective lives the killings would stop. Meanwhile, he pretended to be one of his own victims the entire time, allowing him to still be a part of the story of the Reaper while being utterly beneath suspicion.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Hotch and Marshal Kassmeyer.
• Combat Pragmatist: He waits till Derek Morgan has his guard down before tackling him out of the window.
  • He uses improvised weapons to get the upper hand over Hotch in their last fight.
• Control Freak: Gets off on controlling and domineering others.
• Crazy-Prepared: He spent the decade he was on hiatus obsessively prepping for the possibility he would be caught. He created fake identities, stockpiled weapons, and memorized the blueprints and schematics of every police station, jail, and courthouse in Massachusetts in preparation for an escape.
• Crimefighting with Cash: An inverted, evil version. His activities as the Reaper were helped considerably by the inheritance he received from his wealthy adoptive parents. While his actual killings didn't require that much in the way of money, his wealth helped him establish a large number of safe houses, alternate identities, and weapon stockpiles in preparation for the day when he would need to disappear from the grid after his identity is revealed, giving him the resources to stalk Hotch from the shadows throughout Season 5.
• Criminal Mind Games: He likes to send taunting messages to the press and the cops. It eventually blows up in his face when his narcissistic obsession with using pseudonyms related to the case allows Reid to track him.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: He received a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Hotch in their final fight but George temporarily gained the upper hand through glassing him only to indulge in Evil Gloating.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: When Foyet finally pushes Hotch too far, Hotch pays Foyet back by brutally beating Foyet until the once-smug serial killer begins begging for mercy...and then keeps beating him, and keeps beating him, and keeps beating him until Foyet's face is literally nothing more than a smear on the carpet and Hotch's fellow cops physically have to tear him away. After everything he's done, Foyet deserves it and then some.
• Dark Is Evil: Always dresses all in black when he's in his Reaper persona.
• Deal with the Devil: A huge part of his introduction is the "deal" he made as the Reaper with a detective on the case: the detective stops hunting him and closes the case, and then in exchange for that detective's agreeing he stops killing. The detective lives tormented by agreeing to the Reaper's terms, and Foyet gets his freedom and the chance to be a legend. The deal breaks down when the detective dies, and the entire episode "Omnivore" is essentially him trying to set up a similar deal with Hotch. When he returns to assault Hotch after his escape, his first words are that Hotch should have taken the deal.
• Dirty Coward: Downplayed. He's one of the bolder UnSubs unafraid to take on a grown man in a fight, but during his last fight with Hotch, he tries running away after Hotch tries to shoot him dead and when Hotch gains the upper hand, he tries to surrender. Hotch is having none of it.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Despite being a major recurring villain, he is not the Final Boss of either season he is in.
  • Despite breaking out of prison at the end of his debut episode, he never shows up until after the BAU deals with Season 4 finale villain Mason Turner.
  • In Season 5, he is killed midway through and the final villain is Billy Flynn.
• The Dreaded: Everyone in Boston is scared shitless of his Reaper persona even more than a decade later. The news of his return sends the entire city into a panic.
• Emotion Eater: The BAU profiles him as feeding off his victims' fear. He doesn't kill Morgan after knocking him out due to being unable to intimidate him while he's unconscious, and Hotch makes a point of never showing him fear when confronting him later.
• Ephebophile: Rossi profiles him as one, due to the disproportionate amount of time he spends with his younger female victims (knifed anywhere from ten to sixty-seven times), as opposed to his male and older female victims (all simply shot, except for Hotch).
• Evil Cripple: To a degree. The damage he inflicted on himself requires a massive cocktail of drugs to be administered daily if he doesn't want his organs to start shutting down.
• Evil Gloating: When he has Hotch against the ropes after a long bout of extremely physical fighting from one end of the house to the other, Foyet doesn't immediately kill Hotch. He instead takes time to describe to Hotch how he plans to find, torture, and murder Hotch's five year old son, giving Hotch the motivation he needs to keep fighting.
• Evil Is Petty: Considering that he had already killed plenty of people and achieved the fame that he desired, and he even could've gotten away if he wanted, it was entirely unnecessary for him to actually kill Hotch's wife; even more so with his plan to murder Jack.
• Evil Orphan: Adopted by a wealthy family after his parents died. It didn't improve him.
• Evil Sounds Deep: His voice gets deeper anytime he wears his iconic mask.
• False Reassurance:
  The Reaper: Shhh. I'm not going to shoot you. Shhh.
  Nina Hale: Thank you.
  The Reaper: You're welcome. (Takes out a knife and stabs her.)
• Faux Affably Evil: He often gains people's trust by pretending to be polite and friendly and even tells Hotch how he's going to kill his family in the same tone.
• Fingore: Takes delight in cutting off a man's fingers.
• The Glasses Come Off: He ditches his Nerd Glasses at the end of "Omnivore" after he's revealed as The Reaper. He also shaves his head in his later appearances.
• Handicapped Badass: In spite of having severe damage to his organs and requires numerous medication to stay alive, he was one of the biggest threats that the BAU has faced. He's not only a full on Manipulative Bastard, but a credible combat threat to both Derek Morgan and Aaron Hotchner.
• The Heavy: For much of Seasons 4 and 5.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • In "Omnivore", he just can't resist making things as dramatic as possible. During his original string of murders he killed a girl he was with before faking an attack on himself, making his civilian identity George Foyet look like the only one who survived the Reaper. When the Reaper returns ten years later he leaves things at his murders which indicate that he's targeting "the one who got away". Meanwhile, Foyet in his "civilian" persona tells the BAU he was going to propose to the girl he was with before she was murdered. The Reaper's apparent fixation on Foyet leads the BAU to suspect there might be a connection beyond Foyet being the only survivor of the Reaper. They look into the dead girl and find she only knew Foyet for four weeks, making his claims of wanting to propose to her seem farfetched. In addition she was much younger than Foyet, which causes the BAU to realize Foyet fits the Reaper's profile.
  • In "100", Hotch was originally going to stab him to death with his own knife, but they decided to change the cause of death to Extreme Mêlée Revenge. In a sense, it still counts. He could have easily gotten away from the BAU if he hadn't stayed to see Hotch suffer or threaten his family.
• In the Hood: Combos a mask and hood in his Reaper costume.
• It's All About Me: Believes that Hotch has no right to hunt him down (despite his being a Serial Killer) and goes out of his way to blame Hotch for his problems.
• It's Personal: With Hotch.
• Karmic Death: Literally at the hands of Hotch by way of Extreme Mêlée Revenge.
• Killed Mid-Sentence:
  Reaper: Okay okay, you got me... I surrender. I surre— (Hotch brutally punches his face repeatedly and bashes his head into the floor until he kills him, then continues the beatdown)
• Lack of Empathy: Has none for anyone.
• Large Ham: Even by UnSub standards. He's over-the-top to the point where he's like a comic book super-villain. Due to his desire for twisted fame, he wants to make everything as dramatic as possible. He overacts his role even when pretending to be his own victim.
• Little "No": In 100, he utters this after Hotch ignores his surrender plea by repeatedly punching his face in until he breaks his head open.
• Manipulative Bastard: He preys on people's emotions and fear as a means of controlling them. One only need look at his actions with the detective investigating the original case.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: He's loosely based on the Zodiac Killer.
• No Kill like Overkill: His young female victims were stabbed an excessive number of times (one had somewhere in the range of sixty stab wounds). The entire bus massacre scene in "Omnivore". Then he himself is subjected to it by Hotch, who breaks the bastard's head open.
• Recurring Character: Shows up in "Omnivore", "...And Back", "Nameless/Faceless", "Outfoxed", and "100".
• Revolvers Are Just Better: His .44 Magnum.
• Ripped from the Headlines: In "Omnivore," he's blatantly based on the Zodiac Killer: a serial killer who gives himself an eye-catching alias and a distinctive logo, wears a Coat, Hat, Mask costume, wields both a gun and a knife, targets couples in their cars, sends taunting letters to the cops and the press, uses ciphers, targets a busload of people (although the Zodiac only threatened to do that and never actually followed through), and simply disappeared after killing for years with impunity.
• Sadist: He kills people for no other reason than that he enjoys it, both the act and the fear he inspires in the city.
• Self-Harm: Cut himself up in order to make himself look innocent.
• Self-Made Orphan: Hotch accuses him of having murdered his parents in a fake car accident (at the age of nine, no less). He denies it, albeit rather flippantly.
• Serial Killer: A serial spree killer to be exact.
• The Sociopath: Blatantly.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He's very calm and relaxed when torturing people.
• Sole Survivor: He set himself up as the only survivor of his own murder rampage, inserting himself into the investigation.
• Spirit Advisor:
  • For an appearance in Season 9, when Hotch collapses and hallucinates a trip to the movies with Foyet and his wife.
  • He comes back again in the Series Finale when Reid collapses after a brain injury and hallucinates several important deceased people in his life.
    Foyet: I was the beginning of your end. This good vs evil game is all you know. And I'm the best your rattled brain could conjure.
• That One Case:
  • His original killing spree is one for Hotch, as he was never caught.
  • He is generally considered to be the absolute most iconic and dangerous UnSub the team ever faced, and his appearances as a hallucinatory Spirit Advisor show how his actions continue to haunt them long after his death.
• The Unfettered: All Foyet wants is fame. Nothing stops him, regardless of how vile his actions are.
• Villains Want Mercy: In "100", after Hotch breaks Foyet's leg and pins him down with a fist to his face, he had the gall to get him to stop by saying he surrenders. Considering he just murdered Haley and seconds before started gloating about how he plans to hunt down Jack to psychologically torture him and kill him, Hotch brutally breaks his head open in the most painful way possible then breaks it open more to ensure he stays Deader than Dead. A brutal way to tell him that he can take his surrender and shove it up his ass.
• Wham Line: "You should have made the deal..."
• Would Hurt a Child: If Hotch hadn't stopped him, he would have probably tortured and then killed Jack.

Ian Doyle

Played by: Timothy V. Murphy

"Hello, Lauren."

An Arc Villain whose presence is felt throughout Season 6 of the show. A breakaway IRA terrorist and international criminal mastermind with a connection to Emily Prentiss' past. Escaping from prison early in Season 6, he begins hunting down Emily and all of her former team members from Interpol.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Spends his last moments by apologizing to his son.
• Anti-Villain: Becomes this in "It Takes A Village," helping the BAU stop a rival terrorist to save his son.
• Archenemy: Doyle is to Prentiss as The Reaper is to Hotch.
• Arc Villain: Of Season 6.
• Boom, Headshot!: How most of his victims are disposed of, though he's not adverse to knives and poison.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: He's an international terrorist and criminal mastermind rather than a typical pathological serial killer.
• The Dragon: A mook named Liam appears to fill this role.
• Driven to Villainy: Doyle was led to believe that his painfully adorable son had been executed, as a ploy to help the North Koreans break him.
• Has a Type: Brunettes, possibly with a ruthless streak considering Emily in her Lauren Reynold's persona and Chloe Donaghy.
• It's Personal: Has quite the grudge against Emily, more so than anyone else he's after. And with good reason, too. She went undercover as a fellow arms dealer, Doyle fell in love with her, proposed what amounted to marriage to her, and expressed a desire for children with her. After his arrest, he found out that she'd been a spy, and believed she was responsible for the death of his son, Declan... and she was, though his death was actually faked. While trying to tell him this she accidentally makes it seem like she actually murdered the boy, which takes this trope up a notch for about 5 seconds, when she explains he's still alive and she had him in hiding.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: A wealthy international terrorist/criminal mastermind, Prentiss notes that Interpol can track him by his money trail, as he will be unable to resist living extravagantly even when on the run from every major government on Earth.
• Never Found the Body: A big question fans are all asking — what happened to Doyle and where did he disappear to? Is he dead, or did he escape? As of "It Takes A Village," he's gone. Permanently.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: It's never really elaborated how a breakaway IRA terrorist can afford a huge mansion and enough firepower and equipment to run a small army, though given how much heat he was getting from Interpol he was probably involved in some very lucrative international criminal activity.
• Really Gets Around: The list of his exes is pretty long.
• Recurring Character: Appeared in several episodes
• Revenge Before Reason: Doyle keeps threatening to kill Emily but takes so long to do it, he is thwarted — despite all outward appearances...
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Killing everyone responsible for putting him away, Emily included.
• Serial Killer: Technically he is one, as one by one he tracks down and murders all the Interpol agents who were responsible for his capture (and who he holds responsible for the supposed death of his son). Though his motives are straightforward revenge rather than the more pathological motivations typically attributed to serial killers.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Liam does this several times.
• Tattooed Crook: A four-leaf clover on the wrists of him and his followers.
• That One Case: For Prentiss.
• Western Terrorists: Headed an offshoot of the IRA.
• White Mask of Doom: Worn by him and his Mooks.

John Curtis (The Replicator/The BAU Stalker)

Played by: Mark Hamill

"You never appreciated me, none of you. I gave you my life, and you rejected me."

The Arc Villain of Season 8, the Replicator stalks the BAU team throughout the entire season, killing victims using M.O.s copied from the various UnSubs encountered by the BAU during the season.

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• Arch-Enemy: Sees himself as one for the entire BAU. He isn't wrong.
• Arc Villain: Of Season 8. More prominently than the Reaper or Ian Doyle, as he's introduced in the first episode of the season and lasts right up until the final episode.
• Ax-Crazy: His end game involved blowing the entire team up in a rigged explosion.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: While Hidden in Plain Sight he wears the traditional FBI suit and tie.
• Bad Boss: Whatever he said to his dragon Donnie Bidwell over the phone, it made him kill himself.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Blake described him as socially isolated, little did she know that one small push could cause him to become a full blown sociopath, and the greatest enemy the BAU has ever faced.
• Big Bad: Of Season 8.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Adam Worth/Diane Turner.
• Breaking Speech: Gave one to Strauss while painfully killing her.
• Calling Card: He leaves pictures of the team at his crime scenes.
• Character Catchphrase: "Zugzwang."
• The Chessmaster: Has a chess theme going on with his love of the word "Zugzwang"; manipulated the Unsub of Carbon Copy to kill and implicate himself as the Replicator to throw the BAU off his trail.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: To Strauss.
• Cold Ham: His stoic personality does nothing to mask his arrogance.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His parents died in a car accident when he was 18.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Is essentially throwing one hell of a tantrum over being demoted.
• The Dragon: Had one in the form of a broken man named Donnie Bidwell. Unfortunately for Bidwell, when he was caught by the BAU, he called Curtis to try get advise on what to do, only to get manipulated into suicide.
• The Dreaded: By the end of the season, the team is horrified when they learn his endgame is coming.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He appears throughout the season, stalking and taking pictures of the team.
• Evil Genius: He's described as a genius in multiple fields, including computer hacking and biochemistry. His FBI employment dossier lists him as having an I.Q. of 178, compared to Reid's stated I.Q. of 187.
• Evil Is Petty: See Disproportionate Retribution above.
• Evil Plan: To kill the entire team in a rigged explosion after killing Strauss, he tragically succeeds in the latter.
• Fallen Hero: Was an extremely skilled and successful FBI agent (Garcia describes him as a rockstar), but then Strauss mishandled the Amerithrax case. Strauss managed to pin the blame on him (and Alex Blake), saving herself. Strauss was fine, Blake recovered, but Curtis was transferred to Kansas. His career never fully recovered, and now he wants revenge.
• Faux Affably Evil: He always speaks calmly and politely, even while taunting Hotch about his ex-Arch-Enemy George Foyet, and torturing Strauss to death.
• Final Boss: Of Season 8.
• Freudian Excuse: For all his sadism, Strauss DID unfairly let him take the rap for her screw up, which ruined him.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: In the Season 8 finale, he hides from a massive FBI task force sent to capture him by standing around pretending to be an anonymous member of the task force. This occurs after the FBI already know his identity and appearance. It works because it's night, he knows how to blend in, and the FBI expect him to be barricaded in his compound and not standing around right in their midst.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He tries to kill the BAU team by trapping them with him after playing with them for a year, but in the end, Rossi manages to trick him and leaves him trapped in his own trap.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Blake describes him as having been brilliant but socially isolated during the time the two of them served together in the same FBI unit.
• Jack the Ripoff: His MO is to kill his victims in the exact same way as UnSubs the BAU dealt with earlier, copying specifically the victims in Season 8 as well as an unnamed serial killer in Seattle that was active before the events of "The Silencer".
• Jerkass: Despite his Affably Evil nature, he is still an egotistical ass.
• Kick the Dog: His Cold-Blooded Torture of Strauss who dies painfully because of this torture.
• Killer Cop: Is still very much a member of the F.B.I when he begins his rampage.
• Knight of Cerebus: While seemingly a minor player compared to many of the much more potentially dangerous and destructive villains, Curtis is truly one of the darkest villains ever featured on this show. He is one of the few antagonist to be dreaded by the entire team, and tortured and killed a major character in probably one of the cruelest ways possible. To make it short, the series was always dark, but his arrival in Season 8 is when everything went to hell.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In his final episode, rather than being arrested he attempts a Taking You with Me on Rossi via a bomb inside a panic room... but Rossi is able to escape by prying open the door with the sober medallion from the late Strauss, and Curtis is left trapped inside of the room about to explode.
  Rossi: Zugzwang.
• Lack of Empathy: Displayed no empathy for anyone.
• The Man Behind the Man: The BAU originally thought Donnie Bidwell was the Replicator, at least until Bidwell was Driven to Suicide.
• Manipulative Bastard: Manipulates both the BAU and Bidwell extremely well.
• No Social Skills: Blake described him as this, before he became something worse.
• The Resenter: To Strauss, who cost him his job.
• Revenge: Mostly on Strauss.
• Sadist: It is clear he enjoyed torturing Strauss to death.
• Serial Killer: Is one, he also manipulated a man named Donnie Bidwell to become one as well.
• Shout-Out: He likes using Adam Worth as his alias, who as Reid points out, was the inspiration for Moriarty.
• Smug Snake: Views himself as the greatest enemy of the BAU.
• The Sociopath: Curtis manipulates others, treated his dragon like an object, and cares for no one but himself.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Comes with being a Cold Ham.
• Taking You with Me: At the end he triggers his deathtrap himself to try and take Rossi with him ("We'll go out as heroes"), but Rossi outwits him and leaves him to die to his own trap.
• That One Case: For the entire team.
• Uncertain Doom: He attempts to blow himself and Rossi up when his plan to blow up the entire BAU fails. Rossi manages to out gambit him by prying open the door with the sober medallion from the late Strauss, and leaves Curtis to die alone. While his house explodes, his body is never found, so while it's possible he managed to escape somehow, odds are high that he indeed perished in the explosion, which the BAU themselves operate on the belief of.
• Villain Has a Point: He may be a sociopath, but he wasn't wrong when he said what Strauss did to him and Blake was screwed up.
• Western Terrorists: Became one in his final appearance.
• Who's Laughing Now?: But only for Strauss and Blake.
• Wicked Cultured: He is apparently a fan of Tony Bennett.
• Worthy Opponent: Sees the entire BAU as this.

The Human Trafficking Ring

A trio of human traffickers whose activities include providing victims to serial killers who don't want to bother hunting them down themselves. They stalk Kate Callahan's daughter throughout Season 10, due to the BAU taking down one of their clients, causing them to be concerned the FBI might discover their existence.

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• Arc Villain: Of Season 10, providing victims to several of the UnSubs faced by the BAU, as well as stalking Kate Callahan's adopted daughter Meg. However, they don't interact directly with the BAU in any way until the season finale, when they finally kidnap Meg.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Their greatest strength was their secrecy. Once the BAU becomes aware of their existence, they fold remarkably quickly.
• Bullying a Dragon: After stalking her for the entire season, they finally kidnap Meg in the season finale, under the rather stupid assumption that such a brazen attack against an FBI agent will discourage the FBI from investigating them. Up until that point, the BAU weren't even aware of their existence. Within a few hours of getting the BAU's attention, the entire ring is completely wiped out by them.
• The Family That Slays Together: Alex Zorgen kidnaps and brainwashed Donna Mangold, and had a son with her. The three of them run a Human Trafficking ring.
• Foil: For Lucy's trafficking ring back Season 6's "Supply and Demand". Lucy's ring has many members, a large and isolated location, and the members only communicate with payphones. This ring has only three members, and they sell their victims over the internet.
• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: Donna Mangold who was kidnapped and brainwashed. The BAU exonerates her when she testifies.
• The Man Behind the Man: Steven Parkett the UnSub of the Season 10 premiere was one of their clients.
• Offing the Offspring: Alex and Kyle Zorgen get into an argument, resulting in Alex killing Kyle. The BAU uses this to get Donna to turn on the ring.
• Serial Killer: They don't kill people themselves, but sell people to their clients so they wont have to hunt victims.

Darknet Hitmen

A group of 5 hitmen who offer their services online on the "Dark Net". When the BAU takes down one of their members, the remaining 4 hitmen target the BAU's computer specialist Penelope Garcia, forcing her to lock down at FBI headquarters until the remaining hitmen can be found and dealt with. They consist of Giuseppe Montolo, the Sniper, the Chemist, the Bomber, and their deadliest member, Ms. 45.

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• All There in the Manual: Though the real names of only two of the hitman group's five members are mentioned in the series, the others' real names could be seen a couple of times in a spreadsheet the BAU made of them, if one has a good enough eye.
• Arc Villain: Of Season 11, although the hitmen themselves are all dealt with about 1/3rd of the way through the season.
• Boom, Headshot!: How the Sniper dispatched the Assistant DEA Director.
• Contract on the Hitman: One of Giuseppe's former clients puts out a hit on him because he found out Giuseppe was keeping tabs on all his former clients. When the hit fails, Giuseppe doesn't know which of his former clients was responsible, so he sets out to murder all of them.
• Dark and Troubled Past: If you look closely at the aforementioned spreadsheet (see All There in the Manual above), a horrible and even traumatic event has happened in the past of every member of the hitman group.
• Decomposite Character: Cat Adams and the Bomber both borrow elements from Izzy Rogers, the Final Boss of Season 7. Cat inherited Izzy's psychopathic, manipulative traits and the fact that she is a female serial killer with a high body count, while the Bomber inherited Izzy's affinity for explosives. Notably, both also carried out a standoff that closely mirrored the Face Cards' hostage situation in the Season 7 two-part finale.
• Disappeared Dad: Giuseppe's father abandoned him early on in his life to start a criminal empire.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The hitmen themselves are all dealt with about a third of the way through the season, while Chazz Montolo confronts Derek (and is eventually captured by him) a few episodes before the end of the season, leaving Eric Rawdon's Anarchist Militia to serve as the Final Boss of the season.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The hitmen whose names were never verbally revealed only went by their monikers.
• Evil Counterpart: Arguably is this to the whole BAU team.
  • Giuseppe is this to Morgan, since both have had complicated relationships with their missing fathers, and eventually followed their footsteps as adults.
  • The Sniper is this to Hotch, since both are extremely masculine and have mad sniping skills.
  • The Chemist is this to Rossi, since both are the oldest members of the group who lost their sons at a young age.
  • The Bomber is this to JJ, since both lost a relative to suicide and had some sort of military experience overseas.
  • Ms. .45 (Cat Adams) is this to Reid. See her individual entry below.
• Foil: Barry Winslow, the group's computer expert, is this to Garcia, since both are hackers who give the rest of their respective teams "jobs" to do. Unlike Garcia, though, Winslow works for a criminal enterprise and his efforts contribute to the deaths of people, rather than their rescues. However, because he's actually a hostage and not a bona fide member of the group, Winslow is not an Evil Counterpart to Garcia in the same vein as the above entry.
• He Knows Too Much: The Chemist poisons Giuseppe in prison so he can't compromise the rest of the hitmen to the FBI.
• Karmic Death: The Chemist commits suicide by injecting himself with his own poison.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted, as both the Chemist and the captive webmaster are named Barry.
• Perfect Poison: The Chemist uses poisons/toxins that can kill a target by its very touch and doesn't leave a trace.
• Quirky Mini Boss Squad: Each of the hitmen has a particular specialty, which they use as their Darknet moniker; Giuseppe Montolo specialized in making hits look like accidents, the Sniper was an expert sniper, the Chemist was a poisoner, the Bomber was a bomber, and Ms. .45 was a black widow who would get close to her targets under false pretenses, eventually either killing them or driving them to suicide.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Giuseppe began seeking out his former clients and killing them, searching for one who ordered a hit on him that ultimately failed.
• Rugged Scar: Giuseppe's fresh, gory wound as the result of a recently failed hit on him in "The Job" heals enough to resemble a full-fledged scar by his next and final appearance in "Target Rich".
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Giuseppe kept tabs on his former clients just in case one of them tries to betray him. One of his former clients finds out about this, gets worried, and puts out a hit on him.
• The Smurfette Principle: Cat Adams appears to be the only female member. Subverted when the Bomber turns out to be female too.
• The Speechless: In his debut appearance, Giuseppe doesn't speak due to having a broken jaw from the failed counter-hit on him. By the time the BAU interrogate him in prison later in the season, his jaw's been fixed and he can talk again.
• Stalker without a Crush: Giuseppe kept tabs on his former clients, which one of them found out about and got worried over, resulting in a failed hit on Giuseppe.

Catherine "Cat" Adams (Miss .45)

Played by: Aubrey Plaza

"They all deserve it."

The deadliest member of the Darknet hitmen and the last one to be confronted. She would develop a rivalry with Dr. Reid and return multiple times in later seasons to menace him specifically.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: You can't help but feel sympathy for her when she thinks she's about to get some closure regarding her Disappeared Dad, only to find the back of an empty police truck.
• Arch-Enemy: For Reid.
• Arc Villain:
  • Part of a group of them in the first half of Season 11.
  • The mastermind behind all of Reid's trouble in the last half of Season 12.
• Ax-Crazy: She was quite vicious in her first appearance, but her time in solitary confinement rendered her a total psychopath.
• The Baby Trap: She played this card on Reid rather deviously. She became pregnant with the baby of Lionel Wilkins after having sex with him just to make Spencer think it was their baby. Lindsey shot Lionel after he was no longer needed for their overarching revenge plot, and it was implied that Cat strung him along from the beginning with the promise of rewarding him with sexual favors. And since she was only three months pregnant at the time, it was impossible to tell that she was going to have a mixed-race baby.
• Batman Gambit: She used the fact that Reid lied about her dad and their complicated relationships with their fathers as a shared platform to exact revenge on him, since he brought her down in a similar manner. Likewise, she does this to use Reid's best weapons of psychological warfare against him by matching them with her own.
• Beneath the Mask: Reid manages to break her down over the course of "Entropy", to the point where she seems to empathize with him over the revelation of his mother's Alzheimer's.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: She and Lindsey Vaughan are the reason why Reid is in prison during the second half of Season 12.
• The Big Bad Shuffle: Interrupts the pursuit of Peter Lewis when Reid realizes Lindsey's role in his drugging, and then the BAU realizes they're chasing after the wrong enemy.
• Bored with Insanity: Reid notes that she's in this camp. Her final appearance has her accept the death penalty because she's bored of living in prison.
  Reid: Psychopaths get bored very easily.
• Black Widow: Her favorite targets are married men who hire her to kill their wives, only to turn the tables and kill them instead.
• The Chessmaster: Used Lindsey as a proxy to exact revenge on Reid.
• Daddy Issues: The motivation for her killings — her unfaithful and abusive father was responsible for the death of her mother, went to prison, and was then released scot-free, now she kills any man who reminds her of him.
  Reid: You'd be surprised how many criminals do what they do because of their parents.
• Death Glare: Stares daggers into Reid several times, most notably after being duped into boarding a police armored car.
• Demoted to Dragon: Subverted. One of the most prolific criminals the team has ever encountered and Reid's Arch-Enemy in Season 11, returns in Season 12 as nothing more than an accomplice to another female contract killer who appears to be The Chessmaster of the duo, but little did she know that it is the other way around.
• Depraved Bisexual: Has a creepy attraction to Reid and was in a relationship with Lindsey Vaughn.
• Disappeared Dad: Tried to track down her father for a long time. Reid lied to her about finding him to get lure her into her arrest, triggering her vicious descent into outright villainy.
• Exhausted Eye Bags: She has some really big and unhealthy looking bags her eyes from many sleepless nights in imprisonment.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the cases where one of their clients turned out to be a husband with children who wanted his wife killed, Cat would take the contract but then kill the client rather than the wife, due to her childhood trauma stemming from her father's murder of her mother.
• Evil Counterpart: To Reid. She has had a troubled relationship with one of her parents, and a file on her says she is a genius and a master at problem-solving. Unlike Reid, however, she is a psychopathic Serial Killer who uses her intellect in Criminal Mind Games.
• Evil Is Petty: In 'Date Night', one of the most dangerous unsubs in the show organizes an elaborate kidnapping plot from prison and sets up a hostage situation for the sole purpose of ruining Reid's new relationship.
• Faux Affably Evil: She develops a banter with Reid but is still a ruthless, psychopathic Serial Killer.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: BIG TIME. Solitary confinement turned her a total lunatic.
• Hannibal Lecture: She accuses Reid of taking pleasure out of poisoning the contraband narcotics several prisoners were taking. It backfires.
  Cat: You enjoyed hurting those people, didn't you...? Once you cross that line, you can never come back.
  Reid: Watch me.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Once her identity is uncovered, Spencer has to meticulously probe her damaged psyche to uncover the real reason why she went to all the trouble to torment him and his mother.
• Hidden Villain: During the second half of Season 12.
• Honor Before Reason: She follows her own set of rules and does not resort to dirty tricks even when they would give her an advantage.
• Humanizing Tears: Actually cries a little bit when Spencer brings up what he did to get her imprisoned. This seems to show she's hurt deep down by what he did.
• Imagine Spot: This was how she survived prison life, by daydreaming, or as she put it so eloquently, making her mind go to other places. She has Reid enter one with her in the Season 12 finale, by having him imagine she's the first woman he's met after getting out of prison where she looks a lot more dolled up and groomed than her disheveled post-solitary confinement look.
• It's All About Me: She is admittedly a completely selfish villain in it for her own gain, not caring who she hurts or uses along the way.
• Jumped Off The Slippery Slope: Her imprisonment turned her into a monstrous sadist who wants to make Reid see they aren't so different in return for the dirty trick he pulled on her to defeat her the first time around.
• Kick the Dog: Every thing she does over the course of Season 12 is designed to break Reid. When they meet face-to-face, she reveals her inside knowledge of Reid's past and taunts him over the deaths of his former mentor, as well as his girlfriend, even claiming his girlfriend's death helped result in her rise as a criminal. When Cat starts mimicking her, Reid lunges at Cat and nearly strangles her to death, even after learning she was pregnant, forcing JJ to put him in the cooler.
• Lack of Empathy: Reid even mentions this as the reason she is not cut out for motherhood. It's simply not in her nature to care for another human being. Briefly subverted in "Entropy", when Reid tells her about his mother's Alzheimer's, though it doesn't last.
• The Man Behind the Man: Well, they're both women, but it still counts: She's Lindsey Vaughn's villainy coordinator.
• Manipulative Bitch: Specializes in inflicting psychological torture to kill her victims. According to her, if she does it right, sometimes her targets will even pull the trigger themselves. This is especially applicable to Lindsey. When Lindsey realized her place in Cat's grand scheme, she immediately called her out on it and really called her a bitch.
• More Deadly Than the Male: The member of the Hitman Network with the highest body count.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Her end goal is to reduce Reid to doing this by chipping away at his morality and molding him into an Anti-Hero, and he does. However, Reid then resolves to bounce back to being in the clean once more.
• Put on a Bus: She is arrested at the end of "Entropy", with the strong implication she'll be returning in the future.
  • The Bus Came Back: In Season 12's "Green Light".
  • And again in Season 15's "Date Night".
• Serial Killer: Described as the member of the Hitman Network with the highest body count. As fellow hitwoman Sharon Mayford was said to be responsible for 173 deaths in one event, Cat's death toll may be well over 200.
• The Sociopath: She's manipulative, charming, and perfectly willing to blow up an entire street of innocent people to spite Reid.
• Tranquil Fury: She almost never loses her composure. She simply radiates a quiet and looming malice.
• The Vamp: Specializes in seduction and learns everything — physical, psychological, and emotional — about the men she kills.
• Villainous Breakdown: A subtle one, but after Reid delivers his final Shut Up, Hannibal! to her when he finds out his mother is safe and her accomplice has ditched her, you can see her openly weeping as Reid leaves the room.
• Worthy Opponent: Sees Reid as her equal.
• Yandere: What she's become by Season 12. She even openly hits on Reid with the highly creepy pet nickname "Spencie".
• Xanatos Gambit: Set in motion a plan to utterly crush Reid by making sure Diana would die no matter what. Too bad Lindsey objected to being the second banana instead of her object of affection.

Chazz Montolo and the Ragtag Operatives

Played by: Lance Henriksen (Montollo), Charles Mesure (Edgar Solomon), Jonathan Cake (John Bradley), Charles S Frank (Griffin), Khalid Ghajji (Haji), uncredited (Bobbe and Inigo)

"Do you ever count how many choices you make in a day? The first is whether or not to get out of bed in the morning. When Giuseppe died, I really struggled with that one."

A crime lord and the father of Darknet hitman Giuseppe Montolo. He hires a group of mercenaries known as the Ragtag Operatives to torture Morgan in revenge for the death of his son. When Morgan outwits and kills them, he goes after Morgan himself.

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• Arc Villain: Chazz Montolo acts against Derek Morgan for the remainder of Season 11 to get revenge for his son.
• Avenging the Villain: After Giuseppe Montolo and the other hitmen are all dealt with, Giuseppe's father Chazz Montolo shows up to avenge his son and serve as the Final Boss of the Darknet story arc as well as Derek Morgan's story arc and tenure on the show.
• Cleanup Crew: John Bradley's role in the squad. Even when Morgan kills everyone in the cabin, he has to contact the BAU and hope they arrive before Bradley does.
• Disappeared Dad: Chazz abandoned Giuseppe early on in his life to start a criminal empire.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: All of the Ragtag Operatives were once involved in various military special forces.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In spite of being a psychopath who had devoted himself to running his criminal empire, Chazz certainly had it in him to fake his own death and go out of his way to avenge his son Giuseppe (who he initially abandoned).
• Evil Brit: John Bradley and Bobbe were Royal Marines, and Edgar Solomon was from the SAS.
• Revenge by Proxy: After realizing how tough Morgan was and wanting him to suffer the loss of a family member, Chazz shoots Morgan's pregnant fiance Savannah. But it ends up subverted when he reveals he deliberately shot her while she was near a hospital so she could recover, and Morgan would go and confront him personally.
• Torture Technician: Edgar Solomon tortures Morgan with baton beatings, and lighting white phosphorous on his chest.

Peter Lewis (Mr. Scratch)

Played by: Bodhi Elfman

"The world needs to know what kind of man Aaron Hotchner really is."

A Crazy-Prepared Evil Genius specializing in psychological manipulation. Originally a UnSub of the week (albeit one who managed to leave a lasting impression after incapacitating and psychologically torturing Hotchner), he would later escape from prison and wage a year-long campaign of terror against the BAU, forcing Hotchner into witness protection and becoming a major threat to the remaining members of the BAU.

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• Affably Evil: He talks in an eerily calm tone, willingly surrenders rather than fight, and barely loses his cool.
• Arc Villain: Of Season 12.
• Arch-Enemy: Subverted. From Season 10 to the start of Season 12, he seemed to be gearing up as Foyet 2.0 for Hotch. His actions ultimately cause Hotch to leave the BAU and go into witness protection, leaving him to play Criminal Mind Games with the rest of the team. It's then double-subverted when he tries to figure out where Hotch is by torturing the information out of Prentiss in "Wheels Up". Prentiss invokes that Lewis wants to finish what he started with Hotch in "Mr. Scratch".
• Ascended Extra: In a way. While Lewis was the UnSub of the week of "Mr. Scratch", he was never seen in person for most of the episode, and his identity and motives weren't deduced until near the end. Then, he's caught surprisingly easy. For the rest of Season 10 and throughout most of Season 11, Lewis was mentioned only once (offhandedly during a conversation), the series focused on more serial killers and story arcs, and it seemed the events of "Mr. Scratch" (which seemed major for Hotch in particular) were never going to be addressed again. Then comes "The Storm", in which Lewis returns in a cameo and has escaped by the end of the episode. The entirety of Season 12 and the beginning of Season 13 is focused on recapturing him and his continuing effect on Hotch.
• Big "NO!": His last word.
• Combat Pragmatist: When he ambushed the BAU with a car crash, he capitalized on the team's expectation that there would be traps at the address they tracked him down at, not on the way there.
• Composite Character: See his Expy entry below.
• The Corrupter: Planned to be this to Jack Hotchner, but he died before he could enact that plan.
• Criminal Mind Games: He's a master of psychological warfare, and manages to wage a year-long campaign of terror against the BAU.
• Disney Villain Death: At the end of "Wheels Up", he falls from a building.
• Dissonant Serenity: He's so calm and passive despite the torture he inflicts upon his victims.
• Expy: Of several past UnSubs.
  • Edward Hill of Season 1. Both created sophisticated drug cocktails that triggered psychotic breaks in otherwise mentally healthy people (in one case, a victim attacked his son while in the midst of a psychotic break, nearly killing him).
  • Frank Breitkopf of Season 2, since both are Dissonant Serene Torture Technicians who ultimately cause their respective Rivals (Gideon for Frank; Hotch for Lewis) to retire permanently.
  • George Foyet of Seasons 4 and 5, since both served as That One Case towards Hotch because he ambushed him in a residence and tortured him, and because both also escaped from prison and forced the Hotchner family to go into witness protection.
  • Blake Wells of Season 6. Both used drugs to control their victims' minds and were motivated in some way by their fathers.
  • John Curtis of Season 8, since both were motivated by Revenge against multiple people, operated in multiple cities, and successfully hacked into Garcia's system. Most notably, both also set up traps for the BAU, in which they restrained a hostage to a chair rigged with a booby-trap that would be set off with any movement that said hostage made. This was taken even further in "Wheels Up" — both have now killed members of the BAU, caused two vehicles carrying the BAU to crash, and abducted team members from the crash sites, only for those team members to be rescued, resulting in their deaths.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride. Despite his usual Crazy-Prepared pathology, he never set up any traps for the BAU at the building he was keeping Prentiss at in "Wheels Up", which would seem like a given considering the trap he set for the BAU in "Mirror Image", not to mention it would have been an effective backup plan in case Prentiss fought back and escaped. However, given his Smug Snake tendencies and his mission of playing Criminal Mind Games with the team, he likely thought the others would be incapacitated and/or dead from the car crash, and simply did not account for Reid not being in the SUVs, as well as Alvez only suffering minor injuries and Matthew Simmons joining the BAU fold. Nor did he anticipate Prentiss breaking through her drug-induced hallucinations like Hotch did.
• Freudian Excuse: Was hypnotized into remembering his father as a child-molester and helping convict him, then snapped when the therapist responsible was discredited (meaning that he may or may not have helped invoke Miscarriage of Justice based on fake memories). So he sought a Roaring Rampage of Revenge on the therapist and the other witnesses for ruining his family for possibly nothing.
• The Heavy: Of Season 12 and the first few episodes of Season 13.
• Hero Killer: Was responsible for killing team member Stephen Walker.
• Jack the Ripoff: Though not directly, and only in "The Crimson King". He hypnotizes a man into believing he is a serial killer named Daniel Cullen, then has him commit crimes using Cullen's M.O.
• Limited Wardrobe: Always seems to be wearing black clothing with a red sweater underneath.
• Mad Scientist: A realistic example. Using drugs, he performs unethical experiments on people with dissociative identity disorder so he could create completely new alternate personalities for them.
• The Man Behind the Man: Usually operates behind the scenes, getting others to commit murders and other crimes for him.
• Manipulative Bastard: His M.O. involves drugging his victims and convincing them to either kill their loved ones or themselves. He was also able to convince the U.S. government that Hotch might be a terrorist plotting an attack against the BAU.
• Mind Rape: Part of his M.O.
• Monster of the Week: Of "Mr. Scratch". It is later subverted, when he unexpectedly becomes a more prominent recurring villain from the end of Season 11 to the beginning of Season 13.
• Moral Event Horizon: When he successfully Mind Rapes Hotch.
• One-Steve Limit: Happens to share the same last name as Agent Tara Lewis of the BAU team, though the two aren't related in any way. To avoid confusion, the team generally referred to him by his Serial Killer name, "Mr. Scratch", something they normally don't do for reasons of professionalism.
• Psycho Serum: What he uses to "create" his proxies.
• Recurring Character: Has appeared in one episode each for Seasons 10, 11, and 13, and three episodes for Season 12. Though not a remarkable number compared to someone like the Replicator, he did appear in more seasons than any other UnSub featured on the show.
• Red Herring: Halfway through Season 12, Reid appears to be Scratch's latest hypnosuggestion victim. It's actually Lindsey Vaughn impersonating Scratch's methods of psychosomatic drugging.
• Slasher Smile: Flashes a rather disconcerting one at Hotch as he is taken into custody. This is carried over to Season 12.
• Smug Snake: While he's being taken away, he looks at Hotch and taps his forehead, mockingly telling him that he was able to get inside his head.
• The Sociopath: Though the BAU didn't profile him as one, it's hard to deny it considering all the pain and terror he put so many people, including the BAU themselves, through, with no empathy from him whatsoever.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Always talks in an eerily calm tone.
• The Strategist: As a mathematical genius, it's one of his major characteristics. Subverted, however, in "Wheels Up", when he didn't set up traps for the BAU at the building he was keeping Prentiss in for good measure, which is odd considering he had always been so Crazy-Prepared before. This was likely a case of Pride on his part, however. See Fatal Flaw.
• That One Case: For the entire team, arguably on par with the Replicator [[spoiler because he forced Hotch to leave the BAU and go into witness protection, and also because he killed Stephen Walker]].
• The Cameo: Has a small physical reappearance in "The Storm", though it turns out to be significant given his Sixth Ranger role in the episode's events and the fact that he has ultimately escaped.
• Torture Technician: It's his specialty.
• Villainous Breakdown: Nearly has one in "Mr. Scratch" when Hotch reminds him that he was manipulated into putting his innocent father away in jail, and another one when Prentisss shrugs off her drug-induced hallucination and attacks him before completely losing it right before his death.
• Villains Want Mercy: After all that he's done to the BAU in the past couple of years, he begs Alvez to help him when he's hanging off a ledge. Not unexpectedly, that doesn't go well for him.

Everett Lynch (The Chameleon)

Played by: Michael Mosley

A serial-killing con artist nicknamed "The Chameleon" by the police. He becomes Rossi's latest obsession after he overpowers the agent in a confrontation.

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• Arc Villain: Of the final season.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Unlike previous Arc Villains, Lynch has absolutely no interest in waging a war with the BAU, and is solely focused on not being captured. He only really becomes That One Case and the final Arc Villain faced by the BAU because Rossi had him in his hands but screwed up and let him get away. The only reason he actually goes after Rossi and his family is because he wants to flee the country, and he knows only Rossi can guarantee it.
• Cop Killer: In spades. He first kills several U.S. Marshals while in the process of breaking out his daughter, then he blows up seven cops and maims more as they attempt to execute a raid in his house. Finally, he kills the agent guarding Rossi's wife.
• Final Boss: The very last UnSub confronted by the BAU in the series.
• Master of Disguise: He earns his moniker of 'Chameleon', altering his mannerisms as well as his appearance.
• Monster Misogyny: Notable even among other UnSubs. One of the first things the BAU profiles is that for all his pretenses of being a con-man, he'll disregard money and potential assets because he utterly despises the women he cons, including his own daughter.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Has zero interest in playing mind-games with Rossi, focusing entirely on evading capture once he knows the police are onto him. It's entirely possible that he doesn't actually care about Rossi as anything other than another cop. This changes on the episode "Face Off" where he gets personally invested in Rossi, but even then, it's all part of his escape plan, not out of any animus he holds towards him. He even seems to regard Rossi with a degree of respect.
• Offing the Offspring: He murders his daughter Grace in his second appearance.
• Self-Made Orphan: In the second-to-last episode, he blows up his own mother in the process of faking his own death.
• Southern-Fried Genius: Raised in Missisippi by a low-income family, but grew up to be a disturbingly-tactical psychopath.
• That One Case: Rossi's latest, due to Everett overpowering him during the chase by being younger and stronger.
• Villain Respect: He treats Rossi politely and amicably during a makeshift shooting trip in "Face Off". This changes in "And in the End", where he goes after Rossi's wife.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Was traumatized by the (fake) death of his very young daughter, and never seemed to want to harm a child. Even when he kills their mothers, he will offer to drive them to their grandma's rather than get rid of a potential witness.

Elias Voit/Lee Duval ("Sicarius")

Played by: Zach Gilford, Romyn Smith (as a child)

The primary Unsub of Criminal Minds Evolution first season, an incredibly sophisticated planner who's acting as a tutor to multiple murderers across the USA.

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• Big Bad: The central villain of Evolution. He's the overarching mastermind behind the serial killer network that the BAU is trying to topple.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Pulls one off when he realizes his network is irreparably compromised. The BAU isn't fooled, but the brass is.
• Diabolical Mastermind: The BAU peg him as the biggest threat they've faced, and they might not be wrong.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: He ends up straining his relationship with his family when he unthinkingly speaks his lines of a murderous Imagine Spot out loud. Luckily it's just "I'm sick of this f-ing family" rather than anything incriminating, but it does enough damage.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Has a wife and two daughters. In the end, it's his wife appealing to what's left of his humanity that convinces him to give up the location where he's holding Rossi captive.
• Evil Uncle: Had one of these after his parents died, who abusively taught him how to be a killer. No tears are shed when Elias kills him.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: On some level, he wants nothing more than to have the normal life his uncle deprived him of.
• Misplaced Retribution: Deliberately. In order to avoid being caught he only kills people who are a proxy for the object of his anger and teaches his followers to do the same.
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: Brought up in Evolution when David Rossi confronts him in his own home. Rossi takes precautions against Voit pulling a gun on him or slipping him something in a glass of wine, only for Voit to point out that Rossi is in his mid-sixties while Voit is just past 40. Voit proceeds to easily overpower him in a fair fight.
• Psycho for Hire: Has a network of these, supplementing his income by having serial killers he tutors send him money.
• Spiders Are Scary: How he got his name. While he allegedly never used the same method to kill his victims twice, one method in particular was so disturbingly creative that it earned him the epithet 'Sicarius,' named after a species of spider related to the infamous brown recluse. Specifically, said method involved forcing these spiders into an Orifice Invasion where they proceeded to bite the victim repeatedly from the inside. Their bites cause necrosis and Body Horror of the worst kind ensues.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Frequently bemoans how his followers aren't as smart as he is about avoiding detection.
• You Have Failed Me: The devil's bargain for any killer he tutors is that if they get cornered, they kill themselves before they can compromise the network. This is enforced under threat of him or another member of the network killing them anyway if they do not.

Multi-Part Episode UnSubs

The Footpath Killer

Played by: Lukas Haas

"Thirteen .... Are you impressed?"

A serial killer from Virginia who kills people on backwood trails and leaves photos of them near the bodies. Gideon investigated the case soon after re-joining the BAU.

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• Calling Card: Taking photos of his victims and leaving the polaroids near the bodies.
• Creepy Gas-Station Attendant: Gideon profiled the Footpath Killer as being a male working a menial job, having no social skills and using violence to compensate for what he perceives as a deficiency, like a stutter. Not only does he immediately figure out the gas station clerk he's talking to is the Killer when he sees he matches all other descriptions, he actually lines the wall behind his counter with the pre-mortem photos of his victims.
• Flashback B-Plot: In "Compulsion", since he's already been aprehended and Gideon is telling Elle about how he did it.
• Monster of the Week: Of the first two episodes of the show, "Extreme Agressor" and "Compulsion". While Gideon meets him at the tail-end of the former, he reveals how he was caught in the latter via flashback.
• No Social Skills: He's a meek-looking gas station attendant working in the middle of nowhere, and the customers he does get end up as his victims. His own self-loathing both stems from and results in this as well, since he doesn't know how to talk to other people and relies on being overly-violent when killing, since he lacks any confidence to talk his victims into following him.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His real name and background are never revealed.
• Smug Snake: He's a braggart who makes himself look dangerous due to his body count, despite the fact he suffers from extremely low self-esteem and a lack of confidence. Gideon profiles this and uses this against him in order to knock him out and arrest him.
• Speech Impediment: Has a severe stutter, which is part of his self-esteem issues and why he relies on violence rather than words to get his victims alone.

Randall Garner (The Fisher King)

Played by: Charles Haid ("The Fisher King, Part 1"), Charley Rossman (Part 2)

"Ask the question, Sir Percival."

The villain of the Season 1 finale. A wealthy, deformed budding serial killer and stalker with a flare for the dramatic, Garner learned of and became inspired by the BAU's exploits and, styling himself as "the Fisher King", set up a high-stakes life-or-death quest for them based on Arthurian legend.

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• Affably Evil: Pretty polite for a Knight Templar serial killer, treating the BAU like actual knights of myth.
• Berserk Button: Don't break the rules of The Quest.
• Criminal Mind Games: The two-parter is essentially an extended version of this, as this is the first UnSub who deliberately targets the main team as part of his plans.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: Writes the clues of his quest at the crime scenes using the victims' blood.
• Driven to Suicide: His "quest" finished and his daughter in danger, unable to forgive himself for his family's death, he blows himself up with a bomb against Reid's demands.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He made sure his victims were unrepentant criminals and, while he shot Elle, he stated he derived no pleasure from it, claiming it was out of necessity, "barbaric" and "dishonorable".
• Evil Cripple: Has third-degree burns over ninety-percent of his body.
• Fairytale Motifs: He's the Fisher King, his surviving daughter is the grail, and the BAU are the Knights of the Round Table.
• Fiction 500: The show never explicitly states how wealthy he is, but it's quite apparent that money is no object to him.
• Final Boss: Of Season 1.
• Finger in the Mail: A head in a package.
• Happy Ending Override: After all the trouble the BAU go through to rescue his daughter, she's killed a year later by Frank Breitkopf.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: With a replica of Excalibur, no less.
• Knight Templar: Feels justified in killing his Asshole Victims (see Even Evil Has Standards above).
• Monster of the Week: Of the two-parter "The Fisher King".
• Off with His Head!: Hired a guy to kill a man this way; later, he himself did this to said man.
• Significant Anagram: Sir Kneighf.
• Sympathetic Murderer: A mentally unstable man who lost his family and was disfigured in a house fire.
• That One Case:
  • The trauma he caused Elle Greenaway after invading her home and shooting her was the primary reason for her increasing temper and refusal to cooperate, which would eventually lead to her leaving the show.
  • While Frank would be the final straw for Gideon, it's arguably Randall Garner that started Gideon's plot arc of his becoming worn out of his work at the BAU when he interrupted Gideon's vacation and time with his love interest - denying Gideon the one island of peace away from work he had left. Gideon has a small breakdown with Hotch, discussing how he feels tired and out of gas now that that's been taken from him.
• Theme Serial Killer: While not exactly a serial killer in the traditional sense, he models his crimes after medieval legends, especially the Arthurian tales of the Fisher King and the Knights of the Round Table.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: His life was full of tragedy, which only served to warp his mind and cause him to become a theatrical psychopath.

Tobias Hankel

Played by: James Van Der Beek

"Shoot him! I don't want to! I said shoot him, you weakling. He's a Satan! He didn't do anything. I won't tell you another time, boy. ...Shoot him!"

The villain of the two-part episode "The Big Game" and "Revelations" early in Season 2. A tech support worker suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, involved in the murder of several people perceived as engaging in the 7 deadly sins. Most notable for his kidnapping and torture of Spencer Reid.

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• Abusive Dad: His father is a contender for worst parent in the entire series. The Charles personality is modeled after him, and compulsively abuses anyone who comes into his power. So bad in fact, that when the BAU informs Tobias' sponsor they believe Tobias killed his father, he replies "Good for him."
• Archangel Raphael: The Raphael personality believes himself to be the angel in question.
• Archenemy: Fans tend to see him as Reid's and not without reason. While he doesn't have the arc that Frank, The Boston Reaper, or Ian Doyle recieve, no other UnSub has ever had this sort of impact on Reid. Between traumatizing him, getting him addicted to dilaudid, and making DID his personal Berserk Button, Tobias is still with Reid seasons later. That being said, Reid clearly empathizes with Tobias. The Charles and Raphael personalities, not so much.
• Beard of Evil: Has a beard and is quite evil in his Raphael and Father personas.
• Black-and-White Insanity: His alternate personalities have adopted an incredibly strict religious code which drives them to kill those they feel have committed cardinal sins.
• Buried Alive: Charles' plan for Reid, whom he forces to dig his own grave.
• Carry a Big Stick: Charles beats Reid's soles with a club.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Of Reid.
• Creepy Monotone: Raphael.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Raphael feeds an adulterous woman to a pack of ravenous dogs, while under the impression that she is Jezebel.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Charles is modeled on Tobias' dead father.
• Dissonant Serenity: Raphael, who sounds eerily calm as he sentences people to death.
• Drugs Are Bad: Tobias suffers from a bad case of dilaudid addiction, which he then inflicts on Reid.
• Dying as Yourself: When he gets shot, both the Charles and Raphael sides of him "die" instantly, leaving Tobias able to speak freely to Reid in his last moments.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's flat-out disgusted and horrified to discover that many people on the Internet believed his videos showing his kills (done to Scare 'Em Straight) were some kind of publicity stunt for a horror film.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Charles. He also has the strongest accent of the three.
• Extreme Doormat: Tobias who is an unwilling, but spineless accomplice to Charles and Raphael
• Foil: To Reid. A bright, tortured young man, he's allowed life to break him, instead of overcoming it the way Reid has.
• Friendly Enemy: Tobias to Reid.
• The Fundamentalist: Tobias and his father, Charles both, though Charles is an Old Testament/Revelations type, while Tobias prefers the Gospels.
• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: Tobias to Charles and Raphael.
• Holier Than Thou: Charles and Raphael.
• It's Personal: Tobias wants to befriend Reid, Charles wants him to confess, and Raphael wants him to join their crusade.
• Knight Templar: Raphael, who honestly believes he's an avenging archangel, and murders people he classifies as "sinners".
• The Mentally Ill: Tobias is a very, very sick young man.
• Mercy Kill: Tobias' father forced him to kill him after he became ill. It broke Tobias.
• Misaimed Fandom: In-universe; the viewers who watched the murder videos Tobias uploaded were excited by them, thinking that they were promotional videos for a horror film, but Tobias is horrified by the positive reactions it gets.
• Missing Mom: His mother ran off with another man. This caused Charles to spiral into fundamentalism.
• Monster of the Week: Of "The Big Game" and "Revelations".
• Patricide: Tobias shot his father, at his father's request. It messed him up pretty badly.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: What he believes he is doing.
• Russian Roulette: Raphael plays it with Reid.
• Sadistic Choice: Raphael repeatedly tries to make Reid choose which of his victims should die.
• Split Personality: More accurately Dissociative Identity Disorder.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Tobias himself, against his wishes.
• That One Case: The first of many of these for Reid, being the first that breaks him so thoroughly and leads to his dilaluid addiction.
• Tragic Villain: He was raised by a very abusive father and he has very little control over the crimes he commits and sincerely wants to stop killing. When he is finally shot, he actually seems relieved to die.

Deputy Jason Clark Battle

Played by: Bailey Chase

"The best minds in the FBI, and you can't even stop me."

A charming stranger at the coffee shop who asks Garcia out on a date after she helps him fix his broken laptop in the episode "Lucky". The date goes well up until he suddenly pulls out a revolver and shoots Garcia in the chest at the end of the episode. In "Penelope", he's revealed to be a local sheriff's deputy who would secretly shoot random bystanders then step in as the first responder in order to be a hero. He stalked Garcia with the intention of killing her due to the (mistaken) belief that she was about to discover his criminal activities due to her coincidentally examining several of the cases he was involved in.

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• Beauty Is Bad: A charming, classically good-looking hunk who's also a malignant narcissist with a hero homicide complex.
• Boom, Headshot!: How he dies, courtesy of J.J.
• Cop Killer: Kills a police officer guarding Garcia's apartment while trying to kill her again.
• Create Your Own Villain: As it turns out, Garcia had been overstepping her authority by flagging the unsolved murders of loved ones in her bereavement support group. Three of those murders happened to be Battle, who assumed the FBI was onto him and went after Garcia. He was a killer before, but he probably would have stayed hidden and left Garcia alone if she hadn't drawn attention to herself.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Attempts to give this impression. Backfires on him — his monogrammed shirts are a major clue that leads the BAU to him.
  Rossi: Check any shirt orders with [Battle's] initials. I know it from personal experience, those things aren't cheap.
• Monster of the Week: Of "Penelope". He also had an appearance in the prior episode "Lucky", but he never acted in a villainous role until the end.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Uses a large-caliber revolver. When Morgan notes the unusual nature of it, Reid muses that it's because it ensures he won't leave bullet casings at a crime scene. A gun shop owner comments that revolvers don't hold many bullets, but he counters that's irrelevant if you don't miss.
• Taking You with Me: Once he realizes his number's up, the only thing he wants to do is take as many FBI agents down with him as possible. The only casualty is him, as he didn't count on JJ gunning him down from behind.
• That One Case: For Garcia, leading to paranoia that the team had to help her with for some time afterwards.
• Villain with Good Publicity: On paper, he's a hero cop with a number of citations for outstanding bravery in the line of duty. However, his career is still stuck at a relatively low position because, in private, his superiors can sense there's something off about him.

New York Terrorist Cell

An unnamed terrorist group operating in New York City, responsible for a string of random murders in public locations. The BAU is called in when the NYPD thinks this is the work of a single UnSub, when in reality they're preparing for a much deadlier strike. Their case ends Season 3 and starts Season 4.

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• Ambiguous Situation: What is their belief? Who was their target in the hospital? Are they homegrown terrorists? The show never gives any explanation for their origins or ideology, not even the government official they're targeting. Even their fate after their plan fails is left unknown.
• Cop Killer: Attempted with Detective Cooper, who gets shot at by one of the terrorists, but ends up surviving after treatment. Their bombing of one of the FBI cars, however, fatally wounds SSA Kate Joyner and nearly kills Hotch, with Joyner ending up dead in the hospital from her injuries.
• Five-Token Band: The members shown are of different races, and a detective mentions witnesses seeing Black, Puerto Rican, and Asian members in the group.
• Monster of the Week: Of the "Lo-Fi"/"Mayhem" two-parter.
• Not Afraid to Die: None of the members seen, at least, with their unknown objective being something they're very willing to die for.
• Smug Snake: Part of their profile. A playing card left behind on one of their shooting victims is even asserted to be a direct taunt towards law enforcement.
  • "Sam" displays this as well, cruelly taunting Morgan before letting himself get electrocuted on subway tracks.
• Suicide Attack: The final stage of their plan, using a rigged ambulance to bomb a hospital where a high-profile government official is at.
• Suicide by Cop: One of the members does this when cornered by Prentiss and Detective Cooper. Prentiss and Morgan deduce this is the case when she remarks how absolutely calm he was while preparing for it.
• Western Terrorists: Implied; while the majority of them are dark-skinned, that's hardly unusual for New York City. The two members we see on-screen with dialogue look and sound like American citizens, but that's all there is to qualify for this trope. While their names are also not exceptionally foreign, it's debatable if those were even their real names.

The Turner Brothers

The villains of the Season 4 finale. A pair of Canadian brothers who own a farm just across the border from Detroit. Lucas, a mentally handicapped giant of a man, captures and kills homeless people from Detroit under the orders of his quadriplegic brother, Mason, to provide raw material for Mason's stem cell experiments in search of a cure for his condition.

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• All for Nothing: Reid points out that Mason's personally purchased lab equipment isn't sophisticated enough for his stem cell experiments to have any hope of actual success, and all he's actually doing is just taking his misanthropic frustrations out on random innocent people. Reid suspects that Mason knows this already and just doesn't care.
• Brains and Brawn: Mason is the brains, Lucas the brawn.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Lucas is entirely dedicated to Mason, and while Rossi assumes that Mason must hate Lucas because of what he did to him, and because he had earlier urged the team to kill Lucas, Mason asserts that he cannot hate his brother, especially since Lucas has dedicated himself to caring for him ever since the accident, while explaining that, in his eyes, Lucas being shot would be a Mercy Kill because Lucas would probably not be able to survive without Mason.
• Expy: The Turner Brothers as a unit have some similarities with Season 2 UnSub Charles Holcombe, and his right-hand man Steven. Both are serial killer teams who prey on the poor, perform surgical experiments on their victims, and believe that the homeless have no value to society. In each case one partner is also manipulating the other.
• Final Boss: Of Season 4.
• Kill the Poor: They prey on homeless people, prostitutes and junkies on the premise that they're useless, and no one will miss them.
• Mercy Kill: Mason's take on Lucas' death.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: Along with the "useless to society" thing, Mason presumably had Lucas target the homeless because he believed no one would really care or notice.
• Monster of the Week: Of the "To Hell and Back" two-parter.
• Serial Killer: They've murdered 89 people in just a few years, with Kelly, whom the FBI save, as number 90.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Lucas is a six and a half foot tall, three hundred pound Dumb Muscle Brute and Psychopathic Manchild with severe retardation and autistic tendencies, who dresses in overalls, loves the farm, and doesn't seem to understand that he's killing actual people. Mason is a short, cold-blooded Evil Cripple and Evil Genius who attended med school, wanted to move away from home, and is fully aware of what they're doing, but just doesn't care.
• Siblings in Crime: Mason as the brain, and Lucas as the brawn.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Loosely based on Robert Pickton, Canadian pig farmer and serial killer.

Mason

Played by: Garret Dillahunt

"They [Lucas's victims] were transients and drug users and prostitutes. They were useless to society. I gave them the chance to be part of a cure. To be of use. That's science."

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• Evil Cripple: A quadriplegic barely kept alive by a ton a of machinery, he's also a murderer who is motivated entirely by rage over his condition.
• Evil Genius: Is very, very bright.
• Expy: Based heavily on Mason Verger from Hannibal. Both are sexual sadists (though the latter is a pedophile) who were crippled by a Serial Killer (albeit in very, very different circumstances, and unlike the Evil Genius Lecter, the Manchild Lucas wasn't a killer at the time) and seek humiliating revenge on them (of very different sorts though). Both have farms with man-eating pigs, and are verbally and emotionally abusive to their carers — in the novel, Verger's carer is his sister, which only adds to the similarities. Most obviously, both are named Mason.
• Fate Worse than Death: How he views his condition.
• For Science!: How he tries rationalizing manipulating his mentally handicapped brother into killing the homeless for his experiments, saying that he is searching for a cure for his condition. Earns him a Shut Up, Hannibal! from Rossi, who calls him out as just another sadistic bastard since his farm and equipment are nowhere near adequate for such a task, and he's arranged mirrors around the house in a way that lets him see his victims suffer from his bed.
• Genius Cripple: A quadriplegic who also was a promising doctor before his accident. His scheme to abduct victims for his experiments was also quite elaborate and well thought out, though he had no back-up in the event he was discovered and is essentially helpless once the BAU show up at his doorstep. Reid also points out his equipment is far too crude for his experiments to have had any chance of success.
• It's All About Me: Doesn't give a good goddamn about anyone but himself, even willing to let the FBI kill Lucas, whom he sees as expendable.
• Karma Houdini: Lampshaded by Rossi, who says that selling the idea that a bed-ridden former doctor is really a manipulative homicidal maniac to a jury is going to be an uphill struggle, especially since Lucas actually did all the killings. One victim's brother solves the problem with a Vigilante Execution.
• Lack of Empathy: Has no empathy for those they've killed, saying that they should be grateful that they can become a part of something greater than themselves.
• Mad Doctor: With Lucas acting as his hands. He's conducting extremely primitive stem cell experiments.
• Manipulative Bastard: Mason, who convinces Lucas to do the murders, and later tries to manipulate the FBI into killing Lucas and letting him go.
• Motive Rant: Once his scheme has been fully revealed and there's no point in him trying to play innocent, Mason declares that he was disposing of "useless" people to create a medical breakthrough.
• Refuge in Audacity: Gloats that he'll never be convicted, even with all the circumstantial evidence against him, because no one would believe that a quadriplegic was able to mastermind the torture and murder of almost 90 people from his adjustable bed.
• Shout-Out: An Evil Cripple named Mason who lives in a pig farm. Subtle.
• Smug Snake: His low opinion of his victims is matched by his high opinion of himself.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Thanks to damage to his neck, can't raise his voice.
• Vigilante Execution: Mason's death, at the hands of one of his victims' brother.

Lucas

Played by: Paul Rae

"Mas... Mason always says I get mad too hard."

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• Animal Motifs: Pigs.
• Anti-Villain: He's a Serial Killer but only because he's manipulated by his evil brother. He doesn't show sadism towards his victims and he probably doesn't fully understand what he's doing.
• Bludgeoned to Death: He draws an "X" on the back of his victims' necks with a marker, than smacks it with a claw hammer until they die.
• Book Dumb: He's developmentally disabled but is able to carry out Lucas' instructions and regularly drive from Detroit to Canada, abduct victims and steal medical equipment without being noticed.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Tends to forget just how big he is. This is how Mason got crippled.
• The Dragon: To Mason.
• Dumb Muscle: The severely handicapped Lucas.
• Extreme Doormat: His low IQ, poor social skills, and the guilt he feels over his brother's injuries makes him one wherever Mason is concerned.
• Fat Bastard: Subverted. He's hefty, but he's far from a bastard.
• Gentle Giant: Would be this if not for his bastard brother and his own inability to handle anger well.
• Lack of Empathy: Subverted, as he starts empathizing with the last victim after the police show up to the farm and he's forced to spend time with her in his old childhood hideaway.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Doesn't really seem to mind eating pigs that he's fed a ton of people to.
• Manchild: Reid profiles him as either being autistic or mentally handicapped.
• Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency: Lucas' mental handicap leaves him highly vulnerable to manipulation by his brother, who uses him to do his killings.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Is only doing what his brother tells him out of guilt for destroying his spine. Reid speculates he might not even be capable of understanding that he's killing people.
• No Social Skills: Twitches, easily gets confused, and can barely carry on a conversation.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Implied to be extremely volatile even before Mason manipulated him into killing.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Manchild Lucas, very much so.
• Tragic Villain: Given the fact that he has been used by Mason to carry out his horrible experiments and never had social skills outside his brother he's still considered one of the saddest UnSubs the team met.

Billy Flynn (The Prince of Darkness)

Played by: Tim Curry

"You think they'll remember me now?"

The villain of the Season 5 finale. Sloven and uneducated but incredibly cunning and ruthless, Flynn is a transient serial killer who travels across the country in his RV, breaking into homes at night during city-wide blackouts and robbing and killing the families inside. His M.O. earns him the nickname "The Prince of Darkness" from the media once his killings finally become public knowledge. Having attacked over 200 families in the course of 26 years across all 48 continental States, with a body count likely over 400, he's by far the most prolific serial killer ever faced by the BAU.

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• All There in the Manual: His name was revealed prior to "The Longest Night", on the "Our Darkest Hour" cast pages of sites like IMDB or TV.com.
• Archenemy: The fandom tends to see him as one of Morgan's. Between his prominence in the show, his humiliation of Morgan in their first encounter, and the way that his murder of Detective Spicer and kidnapping of Ellie turn the entire thing personal for him, there really isn't a better candidate for the title. Morgan himself describes him this way — towards the end of "The Longest Night", when arguing with Hotch about going into the house Flynn had just broken into, Morgan reasons with Hotch by telling him, "You had Foyet, this one's mine!"
• Beauty Inversion: The usually dashing and handsome Tim Curry looks like absolute hell to reflect Blly's lifetime of poverty and drug abuse.
• Book Dumb: Billy's uneducated and can't spell, but he's smart enough to leave no evidence at his crime scenes, and has been getting away with home invasion, serial rape and murder since 1984.
• Boom, Headshot!: How most of his victims are killed.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: In contrast to Frank and the Reaper, who were Evil Genius villains in love with their own cleverness (though not without reason) and who had a taste for the theatrical, Flynn is an uneducated slob who's in it mostly to enjoy the violence, with no particular interest in playing Criminal Mind Games with the police. This is a similar contrast as that between the highly theatrical Zodiac Killer and the more straightforwardly brutal Richard "the Nightstalker" Ramirez, the real-life killers on which the Reaper and Billy Flynn were based off of.
• The Corrupter: Wants to raise Ellie to follow in his footsteps.
• Cruel Mercy: Often leaves behind a survivor of his attacks, so there will be someone to remember him. He gets off on having this power to decide who lives and who dies.
• Dark Is Evil: Works during a planned blackout.
• Darkness Equals Death: Kills at night.
• Depraved Bisexual: Rapes (and murders) men and women alike. Given that he himself was repeatedly raped by his mother's clients, it's likely his ideas of what constitute proper sexuality are entirely shattered.
• The Dreaded: As the nickname indicates, he's this to the places he attacks due to his sadism and ability to escape without leaving evidence.
• Drugs Are Bad: Meth to be exact. It's what lets him stay up all night.
• Enfant Terrible: Killed his mother and one of her clients when he was thirteen, apparently forcing the latter to beg for his life before shooting him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He seems to draw the line at hurting children as he is mentioned as only targeting parents and leaving their kids alone, Ellie being the first exception due to his association with her dad.
• Evil Brit: Curry can't quite suppress his British accent.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He fails to understand why Ellie would turn on him. You know, after he killed her grandparents, beat and raped her aunt and shot her father in front of her.
• Evil Is Hammy: He is played by Tim Curry after all.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Between the drug abuse, the late nights, the high-risk lifestyle, a life of poverty, the bad food, and constantly being on the run from the cops, Billy's a wreck, with bad posture, terrible teeth and breath, a distinctly unhealthy looking body, and baggy, bloodshot eyes.
• Evil Mentor: To Ellie Spicer, teaching her how to lie, steal, and kill with the best of them.
• Evil Old Folks: Chronologically he's only in his mid-fifties, but looks a lot older thanks to two decades of smoking meth and not sleeping (He's also played by Tim Curry who was sixty-four at the time).
• Evil Sounds Deep: Due to being played by Tim Curry.
• Expy: Also a Foil of Frank Breitkopf. Both are prolific serial killers, who travel from location to location, have been active for decades, have killed more victims than anyone else appearing in the show, serve as That One Case for one of the agents (and the Final Boss of a season), have one person they can empathise with, and got their start because of their prostitute mothers. Since their modus operandi, appearance, and presentation are radically different, with Frank being a smarter-than-thou Smug Snake with a professorial air, and Billy an uneducated, meth-addicted thug, this is harder to notice than you'd think.
• The Family That Slays Together: Since Detective Spicer only had a kid because he allowed him to live years earlier, Flynn developed a kind of "grandfather delusion" towards Spicer's daughter, who he tries to make his sidekick.
• Faux Affably Evil: He has Tim Curry's legendary charisma and wit but it's just a mask for his sadism.
• Final Boss: Of Season 5.
• Forced to Watch: If he's in the mood for some rape, he'll force someone (usually the victim's children) to watch. His own mother would force him to watch her have sex.
• Freudian Excuse: His early life was truly horrible: his mother was a hooker; she made him watch, and later pimped him out to paedophilic clients. This is however defied by JJ. She refuses to empathize with him, and says that as horrible as his upbringing was it doesn't justify what he's doing. In fact it makes it worse, since he of all people knows how bad it is.
• Functional Addict: He has a serious addiction to meth but it does very little to impede him, physically or mentally, and he is still able carry out his crimes and evade the police.
• A God Am I: "I decide who dies, but mostly, I decide who lives. I'm like... God."
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: He chain smokes cigarettes when he's not smoking meth. Both contribute to his bad teeth and are signs of his ultimately self-destructive nature.
• Heel Realisation: Which prompts his breakdown.
• Large Ham: He's very theatrical and grandiose. Of course, being played by Tim Curry means he wouldn't be any other way.
• Mercy Kill: Over the years he eventually came to rationalize his mother's murder as this. However, he's fully aware that this version is a post-rationalization, and actually questions whether he made it up to make himself feel better, showing a level of self-reflectiveness which is really unusual for the murderers on the show.
• Monster of the Week: Of "Our Darkest Hour" and "The Longest Night".
• Narcissist: His final crime spree is motivated by a desire to take credit for Detective Spicer's career and he is obsessed with listening to news reports about himself (to the extent that he stops in mid-rape to listen to a news flash on the radio).
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: He owes a lot to Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, who was mentioned repeatedly in both episodes.
• Parental Substitute: Wants to be a grandparental substitute for Ellie. She's not interested.
• Pet the Dog: His release of Ellie. Even before that, his treatment of her is surprisingly gentle, given who and what he is. As Billy himself notes, "I was nice to you."
• Red Right Hand: His teeth. It's noted in the episode that Billy has a physical flaw that he's very ashamed of and this drives his violence. The teeth, scarred by meth, terrible hygiene and malnutrition, are it, and highlight his villainy for the audience and his difference to himself.
• Scary Teeth: Courtesy of smoking lots of meth.
• Self-Made Orphan: Killed his mother.
• Serial Killer: In all likelihood he has in the neighborhood of four hundred victims. For the curious, this likely makes him (within the context of the show, of course) either the most- or second-most prolific murderer in human history.
• Serial Rapist: He rapes men and women alike as part of his M.O.
• Slasher Smile: It's Tim Curry. Were you expecting any other kind?
• Smug Snake: Despite being an uneducated slob, he still has a grandiose, scenery-chewing smugness befitting a Time Curry character.
• Son of a Whore: Part of what caused his issues.
• Suicide by Cop: Forces Morgan to kill him.
• Talking the Monster to Death: J.J. contacts him through the national emergency broadcasting system and convinces him to release Ellie with a moving speech from a mother to a broken son. He then confronts Morgan with the express purpose of dying by Suicide by Cop.
• That One Case: For Morgan.
• Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: The word "slovenly" comes to mind.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Has some elements of Richard Ramirez, better known as the Night Stalker.
• Villainous Breakdown: After hearing JJ's radio address.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Doesn't initially act like it, being a Sadist who's ended and/or ruined over 400 lives... but when his Freudian Excuse finally gets out, he gets more sympathetic and self-reflective — even invoking Suicide by Cop to let Morgan avenge said lives and end Flynn's own mental pain.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Played with. If his victims have children, he'll leave them alive, but witnessing their parents' murders will inevitably traumatize them.

Izzy Rogers and the Face Cards

Played by: Tricia Helfer (Izzy), Josh Randall (Matthew Downs), Evan Jones (Chris Stratton) & Seth Laird (Oliver Stratton)

Top Left: Izzy Rogers, Top Right: Matthew Downs, Bottom Left: Chris Stratton, Bottom Right: Oliver "Ollie" Stratton

The villains of the Season 7 finale, a gang of ultra-violent bank robbers who are unaware that their two leaders are secretly domestic terrorists planning a major strike against the United States.

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• Abusive Parents: Implied for Izzy. His name was Henry and he had blond hair, so Izzy takes her rage at him out on JJ's son.
• Bald of Evil: Oliver, and Chris has a buzz-cut, as well.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Chris, who pretty much acts as The Face of the group during robberies. Izzy terminates him not long after he finally starts asking too many questions.
• Designated Girl Fight: JJ vs. Izzy, probably surpassed only by Hotch vs. Foyet as the most epic fight the series has had so far. Also justified in that It's Personal: Izzy abducted Will and went after JJ's son.
• The Dragon: Izzy to Matthew. As The Queen she also plays Dragon-in-Chief to Chris.
• Faux Affably Evil: Izzy, when she's talking to Will and Henry.
• Femme Fatale: Izzy is an archetypical one. She even wears black leather.
• Final Boss: Of Season 7.
• For the Evulz: The only reason Matthew and Izzy do all the terrible things they do is that it gets them high, essentially.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: The Queen is easily the most evil member of the group.
• Harmful to Minors: Izzy does not seem to like children; she shot one at one of her previous robberies, shot a father in front of his daughter in the robbery the episode focuses on, and psychologically screws with poor little Henry LaMontagne.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Matthew was present at the scene from the very beginning, pulling a Wounded Gazelle Gambit by hiding amidst the hostages and regularly trying to speak up in their defense despite Izzy threatening him. When Rossi manages to convince Chris The Queen is taking orders from someone else, a "Wild Card" as he calls them, The Queen is the only one aware that said Wild Card is the very same man trying to stop Will from bleeding out.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: All things considered, the Strattons are kind of pathetic, and their caring for each other makes it difficult to properly hate them.
• It's All About Me: Matthew, whose entire motivation is that he was kicked out of the Marines for being a jackass and feels like the world owes him somehow.
• Lack of Empathy: Izzy; it's implied all the empathy was beaten, or possibly even molested, out of her by her grandfather. Matthew too, with no known Freudian Excuse.
• Malevolent Masked Men: And, as Izzy would probably be quick to remind you, one woman.
• Mauve Shirt: Oliver, who dies less than halfway into the first episode of the two-parter.
• Morality Pet: The Stratton brothers to each other.
• More Deadly Than the Male: While Chris Stratton could still be considered a serious threat, Izzy is by far portrayed as the most dangerous member of the team. Somewhat downplayed when Matthew arrives.
• Outlaw Couple: Matthew and Izzy.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Matthew
• The Sociopath: Matthew, who does and orders others to do terrible things while smugly grinning all the while. Izzy has shades of this, too; her favorite method of killing people is shooting them in the stomach, as that's the slowest and most painful place to bleed out from. In-show, Izzy is one of the few characters to actually be profiled as a straight-up psychopath, possessing no empathy, extreme rage, and poor impulse control, beneath a facade of intelligence and charm.
• Sociopathic Soldier: Izzy and Matthew are both disgraced ex-military.
• Theme Naming: They're the Face Cards: Chris the King of Hearts, Izzy the Queen of Diamonds, and Oliver the Jack of Clubs. The mastermind plays with this. Instead of being the Ace of Spades, Matthew doesn't go by a specific name, but is instead referred to by Rossi as the Wild Card.
• Uncertain Doom: Chris is last seen being shot several times in the stomach and left to bleed out in an alleyway by Izzy. While it's unclear if they actually did bleed out, considering the fact they were coughing up blood when last seen, and were left behind in a filthy alleyway with no hope of medical attention or the idea anyone even knew they were there, their odds don't look good.
• Would Hurt a Child: It's mentioned that Izzy already killed one in the past. And then she comes after JJ's son.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Matthew pretends to be a hostage.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Izzy does this to Chris. It's not entirely clear whether this killed him, but she shot him three times in the stomach and then abandoned him, while he was still alive, in a place where he'd have no medical care, so it seems likely.

The Hines Family

Played by: Frederick Koehler (Wallace & Jesse), Camryn Manheim (Carla)

Wallace Hines is a serial-turned-spree killer and rapist responsible for the murder of several women in Arizona. When the BAU is called in to find him after he starts de-evolving, they arrest a man matching his description, only to find out it's Wallace's twin brother, Jesse. As it turns out, there is more to the UnSub's past than it seems.

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• Abusive Parents: Their father is a schizophrenic with psychopathic tendencies (although he never killed anyone) while their mother is a narcissist who only favors the son that panders to her the most, and openly goads them to kill each other when they disappoint her.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Bill Hines has untreated schizophrenia, Wallace suffers from schizophrenia like his father and is a murderous rapist who forced his victims to eat flesh from his dead high school crush, Jesse is a budding criminal who wants to be like his brother, and their mother is a narcissist who tries to manipulate her sons into killing each other because of her own selfish interests.
• Cain and Abel: Both brothers are psychotic, with their mother constantly trying to get one to kill the other, with Jesse goaded the most to kill Wallace for being more openly delusional like his father. Ultimately, though, it's Wallace who ends up killing Jesse after a misunderstanding, out of blind loyalty to his mother.
• Calling the Old Woman Out: Jesse, whose first kill with Wallace helped him reconnect with his brother and realize he's had enough of his mother's manipulations. Not that it keeps him alive.
• Character Tics: Wallace twitches his fingers when stressed or suffering from hallucinations. It's a trick he learned from his father that helps him concentrate.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Wallace, who despite being discarded by her for adoption, blindly loves his mother and wants her approval.
• Evil Twin: Wallace is introduced as the evil one with Jesse completely confused about what's going on. Except they're both equally psychotic and only needed some prodding from their mother to murder some more.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Not Wallace himself, but part of his M.O. is to force-feed pieces of his first victim, his former high school crush, to the other women he kidnaps.
• It's All About Me: Carla. When Hotch interrogates her following the accidental arrest of Jesse, she goes into a rant about how she deserved to be the perfect mother with the perfect son, and shows no remorse over putting a nearly three-year-old Jesse up for adoption. She later admits she preferred Jesse over Wallace after seeing the latter develop the same delusions as his father, and for the former having a more successful life which directly benefited her. She plays mind games with her own sons to make sure they remain loyal to her, and will try to drive them to kill each other the second they do something that "disappoints" her.
• Monster of the Week: Of the two-parter "The Inspiration"/"The Inspired".
• Non-Action Big Bad: Carla is the one truly behind her twin son's twisted actions, but she never actually lifts a finger to do anything herself, preferring to manipulate her sons into doing what she wants.
• The Resenter: As a contrast to Wallace, Jesse harbors intense resentment for Carla after she put him up for adoption. While Carla initially is able to prey on his abandonment issues to get him to do what she wants, Jesse's resentment for her abandoning him combined with his growing attachment to Wallace wins out, making him to try to convince Wallace they didn't need her.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: While all indications suggest Wallace was always messed up in the head, it's heavily implied Jesse actually was somewhat stable for most of his life, largely thanks to being in a better environment following his adoption, the only issue being that he was implied to harbor resentment toward his birth family for abandoning him. Once Carla reinserts herself into his life though, she knows just what to say to make Jesse do as she wants, and she promises him that they could kill Wallace and Jesse would become her one true son.

Owen McGregor and the Rogue Silverton Deputies

Played by: Michael Trucco (Owen), Brett Cullen (Justin Mills), Brady Smith (Marty Bennett), Romi Dias (Vicky Lorenzana), Potsch Boyd (Greg Baylor), David Atkinson (Everett)

Owen: "In Heaven or in Hell. Which one are you gonna go to, huh? You got anything you wanna get off your chest, 'cause the hour of reckoning is upon you, Preacher-man!"

A group of corrupt sherrif's deputies operating off Silverton, Texas. Led by psychopath Owen McGregor, they desperately seek to hide their criminal activities and the orchestrated murder of the former Sheriff until the BAU arrives, escalating the conflict into a full city-wide gunfight and conspiracy ploy.

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• Do Not Go Gentle: Justin Mills, who tries to take the BAU with him when they chase him, despite the fact they know he's not in on the larger crimes caused by the corruption ring.
• Final Boss: Of Season 9.
• Monster of the Week: Of the "Angels" and "Demons" two-parter, which concludes Season 9.
• Sickbed Slaying: Greg Baylor's role in the conspiracy when Reid ends up shot and needing to be hospitalized, which Baylor uses to try and poison him, with Garcia stopping it by shooting him. As it turns out, this is also how they killed the former Sheriff.
• The Scapegoat: Justin Mills, a local drug trafficker and pimp who made a deal with Owen so his prostitutes would be spared after they witnessed one of the ring's crimes. Owen later tries to pin Mills as the leader, but the BAU see right through it and only want to arrest him. Justin doesn't know that, however.
• You Have Failed Me: Owen seems to love doing this, shooting and killing anyone who fails to meet his demands, including his own second-in-command Marty and Vicky.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: And he also likes to kill people the second they stop being useful to him, or even because killing them makes them useful to him, as is the case with his informant Travis Henson.

Eric Rawdon and the Virginia Anarchists

Played by: Jonathan Camp (Eric)

A militia of anarchists led by Eric Rawdon, himself a homegrown terrorist previously profiled by Agent Hotchner during his trial, which made Hotch a target of Eric's revenge. Despite leading a group of people fighting for a "cause", Eric himself doesn't believe in it, simply wanting to spread destruction for his own sadistic pleasure.

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• Ax-Crazy: Eric Rawdon is a violent, sociopathic Mad Bomber who gets off on destroying lives and property.
• Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: They attempt a terrorist attack, but they are stopped by the BAU in the nick of time.
• The Charmer: Rawdon has his followers convinced that he's one of them. He's not.
• Combat Pragmatist: During the prison break, Rawdon's followers killed all of the security guards and used their outfits as disguises. Then, once the inmate population took over the prison, they allowed themselves to become hostages in the confined control room. Once a SWAT team gunned down their captors and had their guard lowered, believing they had just saved hostages, that was when the followers surprised them and killed all of the officers. Then, Rawdon and his followers took the SWAT officers' clothing and intended to leave the prison disguised as them.
• Cop Killer: Multiple law enforcement officers were killed by them during the attempted prison break.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Rawdon or the anarchist group were not mentioned in any way before "The Storm", nor was his backstory elaborated on. The moment their scheme begins to unravel, all hell breaks loose.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Rawdon had his followers devise a complex scheme to frame Hotch for conspiracy, all because he wrote a profile on him that exposed his sociopathic nature.
• Evil Gloating: Even when he's pinned to the ground by Hotch, Rawdon has this to say in regards to his bomb:
  "You'll never stop it in time. Boom."
• Final Boss: Of Season 11.
• For the Evulz: Rawdon's followers may have political motivations for their crimes, but to Rawdon, it's never been about the politics. It was always about destruction for the sake of destruction.
• Impersonating an Officer: Part of Rawdon's escape plan is to dress his members as prison guards and then SWAT team members.
• Lost in a Crowd: Apparently how Rawdon and his followers intended to leave the prison.
• Mad Bomber: Rawdon.
• Mugged for Disguise: Rawdon and his followers kill prison guards and then an entire SWAT team for their uniforms.
• Near-Villain Victory: Had the BAU arrived at the headquarters a minute late, the group would have already been transporting a bomb to their target.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: The group broke off from the larger anarchist community and rallied under Rawdon's violent extremist rhetoric.
• Sadist: Rawdon, who has no interest in anarchy or any kind of "revolutionary" cause. He just wants to see a city burn.
• The Sociopath: Rawdon, without a doubt.
• The Stinger: The group was alluded to in a cryptic warning by serial killer Antonia Slade, to Hotch.
• The Stoic: For most of the prison break, Rawdon remains calm and composed as he coordinates his escape with his followers. This breaks the moment Hotch figures out his group's headquarters.
• Terrorist Without A Cause: Rawdon, though he pretends his beliefs are aligned with those of his followers.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Rawdon realizes the BAU knows where the group's headquarters is at, he loses his cool.
• Western Terrorists: Rawdon primarily, but he leads the militia in this fashion.

Benjamin David Merva (The Strangler)

Played by: Michael Hogan

The leader of a cult known as The Believers, who is also the true identity of a prolific serial killer known as "The Strangler".

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• Arc Villain: Of the Season 13 finale, "Believers", as well as the Season 14 opening episode, "300", which was also the 300th episode of the show.
• Body Horror: Pulls his victims' hyoid bone out from their throats before strangling them.
• Dark Messiah: He's the leader of a cult.
• Human Sacrifice: His killings as The Strangler were actually ritual murders performed by the cult. Attempts to do this to Reid at the end of "300".
• Remember the New Guy?: Supposedly an ex-member of the Separatarian Sect from the Season 4 episode "Minimal Loss", but his first actual appearance was in the Season 13 finale "Believer".
• Serial Killer: Though it turns out they were actually human sacrifices performed in his role as the leader of a cult. With 299 victims (Reid was going to be the 300th, similar to how 300 angels guarded the Garden of Eden) he's right up there with Billy Flynn, Frank Breitkopf, and Ms. 45 in terms of body count.

Cyrus LeBrun

Played by: Silas Weir Mitchell

The uncle and adoptive parent of Lee Duval, aka Sicarius. Taught his nephew everything he knew about serial killing.

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• Abusive Parents:
  • Subverted. He is his ward's uncle, and while it is implied that he killed the boy's parents to get custody of him, it is later shown to be more likely that the boy killed them himself.
  • Exploited. He deliberately mistreats the kid to make him pliable, and tells the kid as much.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: What did he expect when he taught his nephew to kill efficiently and cover up the evidence?
• Serial Killer: Was very efficient at getting rid of bodies and framing other people, and escaped notice until after his death.
• So Proud of You: He dies proud of his serial killing nephew.

Recurring UnSubs

Karl Arnold (The Fox)

Played by: Neal Jones

"Wives wither... children perish... but me? I'm an excellent father."

A family psychiatrist and UnSub of the week serial killer who would use his small size to sneak into the homes of his patients, forcing them to treat him as their father before killing the entire family, due to issues he had with his own family (his wife had divorced him and got full custody of the children). The BAU consult him in prison regarding another family annihilator UnSub with a similar M.O. as his, only to discover it's a ploy by the Reaper to taunt Hotchner and announce his endgame.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: In "Outfoxed", he keeps coming onto Prentiss. Even if she doesn't react in front of him, she admits to Hotch that she's disgusted by him.
• Abusive Parents: His father was a violent man who molested him. Karl himself turned out to be a controlling, obsessive husband and father.
• Beard of Evil: Grows one while in prison.
• Berserk Button: Lack of order.
• Boom, Headshot!: How fathers were disposed of.
• Collector of the Strange: He collects the wedding rings of the fathers he has killed as a trophy.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: In "Outfoxed".
• Control Freak: Arnold has to control everyone around him; losing control makes him undergo a Freak Out.
• Cunning Like a Fox: Implied by the name.
• Dark and Troubled Past: See Abusive Parents above.
• Evil Gloating: In "Outfoxed".
  Karl Arnold: It's great to see you squirm, Agent Hotchner!
• Evil Redhead: A redheaded serial killer and rapist.
• Forced to Watch: He showed each father his dead family before shooting him.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: When cornered, he threw a baby at Gideon.
• Hypocrite: Hates abusive husbands despite keeping his own family terrified of him.
• In-Series Nickname: A curious example. He's known as The Fox, but the BAU didn't use that nickname before "Outfoxed". Until that episode, it was All There in the Manual.
• Knight Templar: He thought that not only he had to punish families he saw as dysfunctional, but also that he had to show the father what happens when "the head of household isn't strong".
• Manipulative Bastard: He exploited his position as family therapist for his criminal schemes.
• Monster of the Week: Of "The Fox" and "Outfoxed".
• Neat Freak: He's obsessive about cleanliness and order. Gideon exploits this flaw to trick him into confessing.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Would force captive children to make these.
• Pater Familicide: At least two (probably four) of his family killings were disguised as this.
• Psycho Psychologist: A psychiatrist and family annihilator.
• Serial Killer: Of families.
• Serial Rapist: Revealed to have raped the girls.
• Smug Snake: Especially in "Outfoxed".
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In "Outfoxed". Not that he was very pleasant to begin with.
• Villain Team-Up: A less direct one than the norm, but the last few minutes of "Outfoxed" confirm that he was in contact with Foyet and he's darkly, twistedly and sadistically amused by the fact the Foyet has managed to thoroughly have Out-Gambitted the BAU, especially Hotch.
• Would Hurt a Child: Kills whole families, including the children.

Carl Buford/Mohammed Alam

Played by: Julius Tennon

"You were always special, Derek."

A football coach and pillar of the community who was secretly a child molester. Most notable for having molested BAU team member Derek Morgan as a child. Like Karl Arnold, he is interviewed in prison in a later episode to gain insight into a new series of crimes seemingly connected to his own original crimes.

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• Arch-Enemy: To Derek, who he molested as a child, being the main reason why Derek became a cop.
• Asshole Victim: An unrepentant child-molester and child-killer. Therefore, nobody misses him when a bunch of displeased inmates decide to shank him after learning the truth about him from Morgan's televised press conference.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He's a friendly and approachable pillar of his community. Which served as the perfect front for his crimes.
• Character Catchphrase: "Look up to the sky." In "Restoration" Morgan revealed that this was what he used to say to him as he molested him and possibly many of his other victims too.
• The Dreaded: Derek admits that he was terrified of him as a kid, and even as an adult he is deeply uncomfortable to even be in the same room as him. Merely shaking his hand is enough to make Derek feel sick.
• Heel–Faith Turn: Subverted. In his second appearance he is in prison for his crimes and has converted to Islam, changing his name to Mohammed Alam, but this is mainly because he has joined an Islamic prison gang and not because he is in any way repentant. He told them that he was locked up for a different crime, knowing that Even Evil Has Standards and they wouldn't take kindly to knowing what he was really guilty of. He's right to fear this, as his fellow Muslim cons murder him when they find out.
• It's Personal: With Derek, who is afraid of and disgusted by his even as an adult, to the point that he feels violated just by Buford shaking his hand.
• Karmic Death: After the other inmates discover what he really did, they murder him.
• Monster of the Week: Of "Profiler, Profiled".
• Never My Fault: He never takes blame for his crimes or even shows a bit of remorse. He even tells Derek that he "could have just said no."
• Pædo Hunt: One of the most profilic Serial Rapists in the series who raped 55 boys (one of the highest number of rape victims in the series), including one of the protagonists and is very, very evil.
• Serial Killer: Killed three children to protect his reputation.
• Serial Rapist: Molested 54 children, including Morgan and Rodney Harris.
• Smug Snake: Highly smug in his second appearance, "Restoration" to the point it backfires in his face.
• Token Motivational Nemesis: To Derek Morgan.
• Turn to Religion: In Season 2, he is introduced as the director of the local community center director who secretly preyed on the vulnerable boys he was supposed to be mentoring, including now FBI profiler Derek Morgan. In Season 8, the BAU is forced to interview Buford, who is in prison for murdering one of the boys, after they realize that one of his unnamed victims is killing men the victim suspects of being child molesters. When Morgan and Hotch arrive at the prison, they find that Buford has converted to Islam and now goes by Mohammed Alam. Despite his claims of devout piousness, he still shows hints of his predatory nature. At the conclusion of the episode, his following inmates discover Buford's history as a child predator and he is found murdered in his cell.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Known for coaching a football team of troubled youths.
• Villainous Legacy: In "Restoration." Remember his list of victims? One of them eventually snapped from the trauma and grew up to become the UnSub.
• Would Hurt a Child: He raped 54 children and killed 3 of them.

Rodney Harris

Played by: Keith Tisdell

"Look up to the sky!"

A former drug dealer and gang member who lived and attacked people in the same neighborhood Derek Morgan grew up in, growing up under Carl Buford's "protection", and therefore put under continous molestation at his hands. He's introduced in Season 2, acting antagonistically towards Morgan when they meet, but it isn't until Season 8 when he completely snaps and becomes a deteriorating spree killer targeting middle-aged men.

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• Asshole Victim: His son's swimming coach, who Rodney killed as his first murder after learning he raped the boy like Carl Buford did to him. In his mind, this is also what he perceived his other victims to be, thinking he was executing child molesters when in reality they were only interacting with children normally.
• Calling Card: He targeted middle-aged men he perceived as child molesters and, after beating them to death, left their bodies with their pants and boxers pulled down to their ankles. For his second and third murders, he wrote the phrase "Look up to the sky" in the crime scenes using white paint, a phrase that Carl said to his victims as he molested them. He also left behind a bottle of Helgenson Vineyards wine at every crime scene, likely by accident as he drank heavily from this brand.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His son Tyler, who he still loves deeply. The whole reason he snapped was because his son was also molested by a supposedly-trustworthy adult figure, and he only finally gives himself up to be arrested when Tyler tells him he still loves his dad.
• Hostage Situation: His mind deteriorates to the point he holds his ex-wife Sheila, his own son Tyler and Sheila's current husband Paul at gunpoint in her house, threatening to kill her and her husband for failing to protect his son and "taking him away". Derek has to go in and talk him out of it.
• Improperly Paranoid: Aside from Michael Crawford, none of the men Rodney killed were sexual predators.
• Ironic Echo: He paints the line "Look up to the sky" in his crime scenes, a preferred phrase Carl Buford used as he raped his victims, and even screams it at his first victim as he kills him due to him being a child rapist like Buford was.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Derek manages to talk him out of killing his ex-wife by reminding him that he shouldn't traumatize his son like Buford traumatized him. Hearing from Tyler that he still loves him, he finally puts his gun down and lets himself be arrested.
• Monster of the Week: Introduced and seen briefly in Season 2's "Profiler, Profiled", but only becomes an UnSub in Season 8's "Restoration".
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: His M.O., due to his own unrestrained rage and trauma caused by his rape as a child. He then escalates to bashing men's heads open with a wine bottle.
• Papa Wolf: Despite Michael Crowley also being the trigger that caused Rodney to become a spree killer, he became Rodney's first victim after he heard from his ex-wife Sheila that Michael molested his son.
• Rape as Backstory: Just like Derek, he was a victim of Carl Buford's molestation, with fellow sufferer Keron Bendor even claiming Rodney was Carl's "favorite", meaning he endured a LOT of abuse at his hands.
• Sanity Slippage: The sexual abuse he endured was the first awful thing that happened, then followed by the head trauma he sustained during his first fight with Morgan, which led to their first arrest. In the modern day, these events plus him learning that his son's swimming coach molested him finally caused him to snap and start killing.
• Shadow Archetype: To Morgan, as one of Carl Buford's preferred victims who grew up in the same neighborhood, but while Derek used the experience to strengthen himself and become a policeman and later FBI agent in order to prevent others from suffering like he did, Rodney grew up a criminal and let the trauma destroy him thoroughly, becoming increasingly unstable as he grew up to the point he finally snapped one day.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Rodney was molested as a child by Carl Buford, which left him traumatized and lead him to turn to alcohol to self medicate. Later, he would go on to have a son who would also get molested, which reopened Rodney's old wounds, leading him to go on a violent rampage and attacking anyone he suspected of being a child molester.

Floyd Feylinn Ferell ("Lucky")

Played by: Jamie Kennedy

"I'm not smart. But I have a smart friend who tells me things..."

A cannibalistic serial killer introduced in Season 3. A self-proclaimed "satanist", he delights in kidnapping young ladies and prostitutes to kill and eat the bodies of, while also enraging and taunting law enforcement under a veil of insanity. He returns in Season 13, orchestrating a series of copycat killings through a proxy named Marcus Manning in order to be cleared of murder charges via insanity plea.

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• Ax-Crazy: Downplayed. Though he was clearly deranged due to his obsession with cannibalism and Satanism (not to mention feeding one of his victims to her own search party), he was sane enough to fool mental health officials into believing he was completely insane for ten years.
• Book Ends: A surprisingly positive example for this case. Floyd's role in "Lucky" ended with Father Marks having to be held back while yelling "You son of a bitch!" to him after Floyd's Wham Line, while Floyd himself just sat there laughing. Ten years later, in "Lucky Strikes", it is Floyd himself who's being held back and yelling the same line, this time at Rossi, who was the only BAU agent to see through his Obfuscating Stupidity ruse in "Lucky" but couldn't present any proof of that...until now. Laser-Guided Karma at its finest.
  • Not only that, but while giving Floyd his sentance, Rossi is grinning rather toothly and mockingly...echoing Floyd's deranged Slasher Smile when he gave them his infamous Wham Line ten years ago. Double karmic justice.
• Born Lucky: He is the beneficiary of lucky breaks so implausibly often that even Reid wonders if he might have someone downstairs looking out for him.
• Calling Card: He carved inverted Satanic pentagrams into his victims' chests. He also force-fed the fingers of previous victims to another victim before killing her, cutting off her own fingers, and dumping her body in a public location.
• Cute and Psycho: Part of his background. He was institutionalized when he was only 7-years-old, after taking a bite out of his 9-month-old sister.
• Demonic Possession: Part of his delusion is that he believes he is possessed by a flesh-eating demon. Subverted in "Lucky Strikes", when it's revealed that it's all just a ruse.
• The Dragon: Had one in the form of a man named Marcus Manning, who too was obsessed with cannibalism but was also easy to manipulate. Manning served as Floyd's patsy for the murders he himself committed, and it nearly worked.
• Eat the Rich: Started out by targeting prostitutes and junkies, but moved up to more well-off women because his first targets "tasted funny".
• Eats Babies: His first victim was his infant sister. Fortunately, she survived her attack.
• Evil Chef: He cooks people and even served one victim to unknowing customers.
• Failed a Spot Check: As mentioned several times, he nearly got away with killing more women by making Marcus Manning his protege and patsy. However, he unfortunately chose to possibly share consumption of one of the women with Marcus (that is, Floyd had one set of fingers, Marcus had the other), which was noticed by Rossi at the church circle and elaborated upon by the other BAU members. This is ultimately what puts him down; since the mental hospital had declared him mentally sane, this meant that he was also privy to a trial for every last one of his ten-year murders, the first test being if Floyd did have the other set of fingers in his stomach. Given his breakdown as he's taken away, he probably did, and he had it coming to him big time.
• Fat Bastard: As a teenager at the mental hospital, due to the harsh side-effects of the anti-psychotics he was on.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Lucky Strikes", the BAU were able to prove his sanity and culpability after realizing that he had eaten the fingers of a victim killed by his accomplice, who personally delivered these fingers to him at his own instruction. Even worse, since the mental facility that was treating him had just declared him mentally fit, this means he can stand trial not only for the recent murders but the ones from ten years ago that he falsely claimed were committed by someone else.
• I'm a Humanitarian: His homemade cookbook includes recipes with such charming names as "Kobe Girl Steak" and "Skewered She".
• Karma Houdini: In major spades. It was even lampshaded by a mental hospital guard, who cynically joked he should be nicknamed Lucky.
  • He killed and butchered eleven women without attracting the attention of the authorities, and he definitely would've continued killing undetected if he hadn't announced his presence in a grand fashion in the form of another victim.
  • Also, in one scene in "Lucky", he was pulled over by a police officer, which could've been his undoing because he had a kidnapped woman in the trunk of his car. However, the cop was called away before he could even approach the car, all because the police needed all officers on the search for the very same kidnapped woman. Floyd just got off with a warning.
  • It was taken even further in "Lucky Strikes": despite finally being arrested, he was judged incompetent to stand trial and put in the same mental hospital he was in as a child. Naturally, he was able to get hospital administrators to believe he was no longer a danger to himself or others, to the point where he was allowed to go out in public under supervised watch. Even more shocking, history was almost about to repeat itself when the hospital administrators were starting to believe he was fit for release again, especially after it was initially assumed two copycat murders were the work of the original killer (Floyd actually arranged for the new murders to happen for his own benefit). Fortunately, the BAU managed to prevent this after turning his own cannibalism against him.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Floyd really had it coming to him. See Book Ends above.
• Laughing Mad: After Father Marks tries to attack him in a fit of rage.
• Manipulative Bastard: He had mental health experts, the very sister he nearly killed, and the BAU fooled on the degree of his insanity for ten years. In "Lucky Strikes", he was also able to manipulate a man into committing more murders for him and taking the fall as the original killer when the time came. This ruse nearly worked too.
• The Man Behind the Man: He convinced a man named Marcus Manning to commit copycat murders for him so it would look like the original killer was still on the loose, while Floyd was wrongly locked up and therefore should be released. This fails gloriously, however.
• Meaningful Name: Each of his three names starts with 'F', the sixth letter of the alphabet. Additionally, his names have an average of six letters each. Gee, doesn't all of that sound familiar?
• Monster of the Week: Of "Lucky". Returns ten seasons later with "Lucky Strikes".
• Obfuscating Insanity: It is revealed that while he is definitely deranged, he wasn't full-on insane as previously thought, and it was just a ruse by Floyd.
• Religion of Evil: His belief system is based on Satanism, but it's all part of his delusion. The BAU classify Ferell as an "Adaptive Satanist", a serial killer who rationalizes his murderous urges by blaming them on outside forces. To quote Rossi, "He doesn't kill because he believes in Satan, he believes in Satan because he kills."
• Ripped from the Headlines: His case is eerily similar, detail by detail, to that of Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, a suspected serial killer and cannibal. His ploy to get released from a mental hospital also seems to be inspired by Peter Sutcliffe.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: His day job is running a BBQ restaurant, and considering the "secret ingredient" in the chili he served to the search party, it's a good bet that some of his customers got a lot more than they paid for...
• Serial Killer: Of women.
• Slasher Smile: Gives one to Father Marks when he reveals what kind of meat was in the chili he served to the search party.
• The Sociopath: Revealed to be this in "Lucky Strikes", rather than a pure psycho as previously believed in "Lucky".
• Soundtrack Dissonance: His favorite song is "Sittin' in the Dark" by Louie Armstrong.
• Tastes Like Chicken: Except the "Chick" part of his "Chick 'n' Chili" has nothing to do with chicken...
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: "The skinny ones take drugs. They taste funny."
• Villainous Breakdown: He has one after realizing that his ploy to get released with a clean bill of health has not only failed, but backfired on him.
• Wham Line: When Father Marks tells him, "God is in all of us," Floyd responds, "So is Tracey Lambert."

Thomas Yates (The Womb Raider)

Played by: Adam Nelson

"Agent Rossi... Nice to meet you after all these years..."

A misogynistic serial killer previously apprehended by Rossi in 2009 after a string of murders. Called the "Womb Raider" by the media over his signature of removing his victims' internal reproductive organs, he made a deal with Rossi to reveal one victim's burial spot at a time in Rossi's birthday every year since then. He reappears in Season 12 as one of the UnSubs who escaped captivity due to the actions of the Virginia Anarchists.

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• Abusive Parents: His grandmother abused him.
• And I Must Scream: Removed the reproductive systems of some of his later victims while they were alive and after starving them for days.
• Cute and Psycho: When he was 15 years old. He snapped after a bully tormented him and stabbed him to death.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Ever since the day he was born, it was all downhill from there.
• Disappeared Dad: Naturally, since he was the product of his mother's rape by a stranger.
• Evil Laugh: In a flashback sequence, after he's done cutting up one of his victims and turns the TV on to see a news broadcast of Rossi being interviewed about him at one of his dump sites.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Justified, considering the abuse he got from his grandmother. "Profiling 202" also explains that it partially comes from the abandonment he felt because his mother died giving birth to him.
• Incurable Cough of Death: In "Profiling 202", because of his terminal cancer.
• Monster of the Week: Of "Profiling 101". Returns five seasons later in "Profiling 202", when he escapes from prison.
• Never Going Back to Prison: One reason why he commits Suicide by Cop.
• Obfuscating Disability: While he is dying of lung cancer, he specifically fakes a coughing fit to put a victim off guard.
• Pyromaniac: Started a few fires when he was a teenager.
• Punny Name: Or nickname, in this case. Yates is nicknamed "The Womb Raider" by the media, and while this is in reference to his tendency of removing the reproductive systems of his later victims, it also seems to be a reference to the Tomb Raider series.
• Sadistic Choice: While holding a hostage, he gives Rossi a choice: if he shoots him, he will not get to know where his undiscovered victims are buried; and if he doesn't shoot him, he will kill his hostage.
• Serial Killer: With a whopping 101 victims (and he remembers all of them).
• Smug Snake: His demeanor is actually pretty similar to Frank Breitkopf.
• Suicide by Cop: How he dies in "Profiling 202", at the hands of none other than Rossi.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Sure, he's a monster with a body count of over 100 victims. But with his backstory? It's not hard to see why he's a monster.
• That One Case: For Rossi.
• Tragic Villain: Though he doesn't act like in a way that will make you feel sorry for him it still counts.
• Your Days Are Numbered: "Profiling 202" reveals Yates is dying of cancer and he's determined to have killed as many as he can before he dies.

Antonia Slade (The Runaway Killer)

Played by: Frances Fisher

"There's a storm coming, Agent Hotchner."

A serial killer previously arrested by the BAU during Gideon's time in the team. She appears in Season 11 as the mastermind of a kidnapping scheme, as well as being aware of the Virginia Anarchists' incoming operation.

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• Abusive Parents: Had a harsh, authoritative minister as a father.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: The BAU interrogate her about evidence related to two missing boys that was sent to her.
• Criminal Mind Games: Enjoys playing these with the BAU.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She was raised by a harsh, authoritative minister. When she was impregnated by her boyfriend, her father abused her as discipline, then killed her boyfriend. Then, she was forced to give birth to her child and give it away.
• Evil Redhead: During her serial killing days, she had red hair. In "Devil's Backbone", it had grayed considerably.
• Expy: Of Karl Arnold in "Outfoxed". Both were abused by their fathers, worked as therapists, had a sense of self-loathing, abused their underage victims before killing them, and shot victims in the head. Both were also interrogated by the BAU to see what they knew about another UnSub's crimes, and had messages for Hotch regarding the future crimes of yet another UnSub.
• Lady Macbeth: She is the dominant one over her old partner Phil Garmon, and her newer partner Claude Barlow.
• Monster of the Week: Of "Devil's Backbone". Has a small cameo in the following episode "The Storm".
• Morality Pet: Her autistic son.
• "Not So Different" Remark: She invokes this with Lewis, since nobody really knows them.
• Oh, Crap!: It's a subtle one, but in "The Storm", she's visibly rattled when an extremely pissed-off JJ tells Antonia her adult son will be killed if he resists arrest, and JJ's disinclined to try and stop it after his actions put her own children in danger.
• Psycho Psychologist: A therapist who manipulates a former patient into kidnapping and killing for her.
• Serial Killer: Of runaway teens.
• Smug Snake
• The Sociopath: Averted. Though she is certainly manipulative and enjoys playing Criminal Mind Games with the BAU, Hotch eventually reveals that her "sociopathy" a cover to earn respect from the other inmates, and as self-empowerment.
• Would Hurt a Child: Her victims were runaway teens who she abused and then killed.

Lindsey Vaughn

Played by: Gia Mantegna

Introduced in Season 3 as a kidnapping victim, Lindsey's father Jack was once a notorious hitman the kidnappers wanted to extort in exchange for his daughter, only for the BAU to intervene. Despite their efforts, Jack shoots the kidnapper dead on his daughter's cold demand for it, and yet both end up exonerated due to being considered important witnesses on a high-profile case. Lindsey would then return in Season 12, now a hitwoman herself and partnered with Cat Adams, seeking to destroy Spencer Reid's life and career.

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• Ascended Extra: Went from one of two abduction victims in the third season to a manipulative hitwoman in the twelfth season.
• Attempted Rape: While she's being held captive in Third Life. Luckily her dad shows up just in time.
  Lindsey: What you do to me will be nothing compared to what my dad will do to you.
• Bitch Understudy: To Cat Adams.
• Chessmaster Sidekick: She loved Cat dearly and was her very cunning partner-in-crime, but the moment she realized the love was not truly reciprocated, she pulled the plug on her whole plan.
• Daddy's Girl: She was very supportive of her father.
• Damsel in Distress: Her role in "3rd Life".
• Dark and Troubled Past: Downplayed. She was raised by a hitman, and though her father never abused her in any way, his job kept putting her in danger and it eventually resulted in the loss of her mother.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Reid tried to talk her father down by killing the last boy that was holding her hostage and attempting to rape her, saying that this would drive Lindsey down the same cycle of violence that they were both trying to escape. He failed and Jack pulled the trigger. Lindsey took this as a sign that she needed revenge on Reid for not wanting her father to avenge Katie, even though Reid decided to stay quiet about Jack killing the teen when he was already down so as not to destabilize Lindsey's life further.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Her father turned against the mob because he wanted to spare her from the violent life he led. It didn't work.
• Expy: Of Lachlan McDermott, an accomplice of Chloe Donaghy in the Season 7 premiere, in several key ways.
  • Both were members of three-person groups that were motivated by vendettas against an individual (Ian Doyle for McDermott, Reid for Lindsey), with the abduction of a family member playing a key role in the plan (in McDermott's case, it was the abduction of Declan, Doyle's son; while in Lindsey's case, it was the abduction of Diana, Reid's mother).
  • Both of their vendettas began when the individual in question interacted with a close family member of theirs (Doyle killed McDermott's brother, while Reid tried to talk Lindsey's father Jack out of one last contract killing).
  • Both turned against their leaders during standoffs with the BAU, due to an action taken by Reid. In McDermott's case, it was Reid's idea to exchange Doyle for Declan, which led to McDermott double-crossing Chloe. In Cat's case, Reid got her to confess the truth about who truly fathered her baby, which led to Lindsey's surrender and subsequent arrest.
• Foil: Ultimately, she ends up being a worse person than her father. Jack had some lines that he wouldn't cross and promised the cycle of violence would end after he shot the teen that kidnapped his daughter and killed her best friend. From what we see, he kept his word and seemed grateful that Reid didn't tell law enforcement the truth of what happened that day so that Katie wouldn't lose her father to the justice system. Lindsey grew up as an Ungrateful Bitch that the BAU worked to save her life and keep her father from going to jail, deciding to "avenge" herself on Reid for advocating for mercy.
• If You Kill Him She Will Be Just Like You: Reid pleaded with her father not to kill one of her abductors in front of her in part because it might corrupt her and lead her to violence later down the line. As it happens, Reid was far more right than he could have imagined.
• Like Father Like Daughter: Lindsey's father was a ruthless mob hitman who went on a rampage to save her after she was kidnapped by some random lowlifes who had no idea whose kid they were messing with. She proves plenty tough while captive and even tells her captors to their face that they're going to die. Nine years after her ordeal, she's turned into a ruthless killer just like her dad, even using his weapon to perform her kills.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Revealed to have a relationship with Cat Adams in the Season 12 finale.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Downplayed. She is of average stature but is perfectly capable of wielding an IMI Desert Eagle, one of the larger and stronger handguns currently in the market. Lewis actually invokes this.
• Recurring Character: Has appeared in six episodes, two of them through flashbacks.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Initially, and by proxy. After she was Forced to Watch "3rd Life"'s Big Bad and his cronies torture her best friend to death, then attempt to do the same to her — you really can't blame her for wanting Revenge and begging her father to turn the guy's head into cherry pie. Even if it does affect her exactly how Reid feared — in which case, she subverts this in her later appearances.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Given that the BAU helped to save her life from dangerous kidnappers in Season 3, her actions against the team in general and Reid in particular can come across as this given that Reid was one of the agents who rescued her, though to be "fair" to her, she may have resented him for pleading for the lives of one of those kidnappers before her dad shot him.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Well, sweeter. While she was egging on her father to kill her kidnapper, the team saw that she was an ordinary teen that recorded videos of herself singing and reading her favorite book. She also truly loved her best friend Katie and took her name. By the time she reappears later, wanting revenge on Reid no less for advocating mercy rather than vengeance on her kidnapper, the team can't believe it's her.
• Villainous Breakdown: Discovering that Cat really wanted Reid left her pissed, and she immediately cut herself loose from Cat's plan to kill Diana.
• Walking Spoiler: Many of her tropes are marked as spoilers.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: As soon as Lionel Wilkins, Cat's other accomplice, finishes helping her imprison Diane Reid, she shoots him dead.

David Smith

Played by: Judah Simard, Chandler Canterbury (young)

"This is exactly who I am..."

The son of Season 3 UnSub of the week Joe Smith, used by his father in order to lure in and kill women after making them act like a mother/wife figure for the two of them. With his father arrested and later dead, David was sent to foster care and later underwent therapy with Dr. Elizabeth Rhodes... which led to her brainwashing David into becoming an emotionally unstable serial killer and copycat of his father in order to act out Dr. Rhodes' revenge fantasies.

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• Abusive Parents: Can't be any more abusive than having a misogynistic serial killer for a father, who repeatedly used his son as bait and leverage to take more hostages.
• And Show It to You: Copies his father's M.O. by ripping his victims' hearts out with a hammer and chisel.
• Batter Up!: Breaks every bone in his victims' body with a baseball bat to incapacitate them.
• The Dog Bites Back: His increasingly deteriorating emotional state leads him to kidnap Dr. Rhodes herself and threaten to kill her as his final victim, after learning from Emily that she lied to him. The BAU manages to intervene before he carries it out.
• The Dragon: To Dr. Rhodes, killing the people she holds accountable for her daughter's death.
• Jack the Ripoff: When Dr. Rhodes makes him start killing, David executes his victims using his father's M.O., ripping their hearts out crudely and dumping their bodies in alleyways.
• Missing Mom: She left both David and his father when she learned of Joe's brain tumor.
• Monster of the Week: Unwillingly shares this role with his father in his debut during Season 3's "In Name and Blood", then escalates to being an actual UnSub years later in Season 14's "Flesh and Blood".
• Morality Pet:
  • Subverted. Even when David was young, Joe would constantly act authoritarian towards him and even threaten the boy with physical harm to make his victims comply with their abduction, not to mention reiterate his psychopathic view of women to him hoping he would follow in his father's footsteps, so David ended up subverting this trope as a child.
  • Dr. Rhodes would later seem to play this role for David himself, except she also subverts it by using his trauma in order to make him kill people she deemed responsible for the death of her own daughter.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When he's cornered holding the doctor hostage and after Prentiss convinces him that there's still hope for him to be rehabilitated. He lets Rhodes go and clings to Emily, crying Tears of Remorse.
• Parental Substitute: His mother never wanted him, so he has some serious arrested development issues and feels the need for a maternal figure in his life. Besides the Addison family, which took him in, Dr. Rhodes supposedly stepped up to be this for him, except she manipulated him. Emily ends up being the true maternal figure in the end by convincing him to stop and promising him he'll get help and that it's not too late.
• Rule of Symbolism: The first thing he does when he learns Dr. Rhodes was using him — after kidnapping her — is break the containers with the hearts of his victims. After a whole episode of being tricked into believing he was just like his father, he symbolically destroys his father's signature, right before Emily barges in and convinces him he's a better person.
• Villainous Breakdown: Learning from Emily that Dr. Rhodes was only using him to get revenge on people she had no evidence against, he turns her into his final target by kidnapping her and choosing to flat-out kill her instead of torturing her instead, being haunted by the flashbacks of his father's abuse after he slaps her not unlike Joe did to him. In his rage, he even breaks the containers with the hearts of his victims.
• Villainous Lineage: How Dr. Rhodes gets David to start killing, by essentially brainwashing him into believing he's fated to be a killer just like his father and directing him towards the people she deemed responsible for the death of her own daughter years before.
• What You Are in the Dark: He's on the verge of a breakdown when the BAU corners him, and his unstable nature makes him point a gun at Emily, the only person truly offering to help him. She flat-out tells him to shoot her "if that's who he really is", but he does surrender.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Emily convinces him to not kill Dr. Rhodes by telling him he's nothing like his father, and even though he'll have to be held accontable for his killings, he can be helped and there is hope for him still.

Grace Lynch

Played by: Alex Jennings

The daughter of serial conman and murderer Everett Lynch. Raised by his mother Roberta, who hoped to raise her better.

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• Daddy's Little Villain: The first time she sees her father smash a woman's head in, she freaks out, but not long after she tries to kill SSA Simmons to give him a chance to escape, after which she only gets worse.
• Faking the Dead: her paternal grandmother faked Grace's death when she was little so she could raise her without Everett's influence.
• Freudian Excuse: Played with. Her father is a serial killer, but Grace herself seems to have been a decent enough person before reconnecting with him after she was grown.
• Offing the Offspring: Killed by her own father.

Roberta "Bobbie" Lynch

Played by: Sharon Lawrence

The mother of Everett Lynch, arc villain of Season 15. A conwoman who tricked a lot of men out of their money before she was caught and imprisoned.

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• The Beard: One of the men she conned by pretending to be in love with him was a gay man with a very serious inferiority complex.
• Femme Fatale: Conned a lot of men, went to prison for it, then convinced her lawyer they were soulmates so he's work harder to get her an early probation.
• Gender-Blender Name: Nickname. She wants the men she flirts with to call her Bobbie.
• Large Ham: When she kills her ex-husband. She shrieks with laughter the entire time.
• No Kill like Overkill: Shoots her ex-husband several times, then stabs him several times.
• Offing The Off Spring: She tries, but finds herself unable to pull the trigger.

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