Criminal Minds / Tropes I to N

Tropes A to D | Tropes E to H | Tropes I to N | Tropes O to S | Tropes T to Z

I-K

• I Ate WHAT?!: "Lucky"- the team's reaction (although they didn't actually do the eating) when Floyd reveals that the episode's missing person they were looking for was the main ingredient of the chili he prepared for lunch and fed to search party volunteers.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Prentiss does this in "Lauren" after being stabbed by Doyle, prompting Morgan to respond, of course, with No One Gets Left Behind.
  • In "Reckoner," the last name on Judge Schuller's hit list is his own.
  • A college student in "Doubt" kills a dorm-mate in a copycat murder so the UnSub would be released. She then dyes and cuts her hair so she'll look more like his preferred victims, seeks him out, and tries to entice him to kill her. She even admits that she can't do it herself.
  • The UnSub in "Coda" asks his captive to shoot him, because his sons won't be able to collect his life insurance if he commits suicide
• I Have Your Wife: "Retaliation"
  • Also, "100", with Foyet and Haley.
  • Happens to the Cop of the Week played by Eric Close in "Our Darkest Hour," though it's more of a case of "I Have Your Sister and Daughter."
• I Love the Dead: "The Last Word", "Cold Comfort", and "Reflection of Desire".
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Standard operating procedure.
  • In "The Fox," the killer, profiled as probably having OCD, has a minor Freak Out during questioning when he notices the pictures of his victims are out of order.
  • From "A Real Rain":
    Gideon: Is that why you stabbed him in the groin?
    Suspect: It's what he deserved. ^note The victim, of course, had been stabbed in the head.
• I Shall Taunt You: Gideon sometimes uses this tactic to get under an UnSub's skin, to either goad them into doing something stupid or to get them to say too much. As a master profiler who can read an UnSub like a book, it usually works.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Part of Gideon's backstory is a bomber taking out six of his agents this way.
  • It nearly happens a separate time in the episode that reveals this. Two agent have cornered the supposed UnSub in a storage room. He throws his gun to them and is about to come out, but then Gideon, in another building, puts all the pieces to the puzzle together, and realizes that the cornered guy is strapped with bombs. He tells the agents to get out, and they do so, right before the bombs strapped to the guy detonate and he becomes paint on the walls.
  • One of the UnSubs from "Identity" also pulls this.
  • The Reaper makes an attempt at this at the climax of "100," but Hotch doesn't buy it (or is too far past the Despair Event Horizon to care) and beats him to death.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine:
  • In "Minimal Loss," the antagonistic Attorney General that Hotch gets into an argument with is Joel Murray, Thomas Gibson's old co-star from Dharma & Greg. Gibson also runs into Mimi Kennedy (another Dharma and Greg co-star) in "Coda".
  • In "JJ", the two UnSubs are played by Michael Welch and Chris Marquette, who played, respectively, Luke Girardi and Adam Rove opposite Joe Mantegna in Joan of Arcadia.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The 100th episode is titled "100", the 200th is titled "200", and the 300th (which is the season premiere of Season 14) is "300", though the latter is a Double-Meaning Title that also refers to the fact that his intended victim of the episode (Reid) will be his 300th.
• Idiot Ball: Averted. It's rare, if ever, that a member of the cast — serial killer or FBI agent — holds the idiot ball. They are all very competent, and usually remain highly competent. In fact, it's rare among police procedurals these days to have such a consistently competent cast. Everyone but Garcia can shoot well and know how to handle themselves in a crisis situation, and rarely if ever miss anything.
  • Example: When an UnSub and a victim he's taken hostage crash into a marsh in a car, and there's no sign of bodies, the team fans out and find him almost immediately, and take him down with a headshot instead of forgetting how to use their guns.
    • That said, there have been a few (graciously rare) instances where agents conveniently forget the basics of clearing a building or crime scene where a dangerous person is hiding. In these cases, the ordinarily competent agent take off alone and blunder into an area without "checking the corners," and conveniently absent peripheral vision for good measure. If you ever screamed "how did he/she not see him?!" this is one of those times. This always ends up with the UnSub getting the drop on the agent and either being subdued or a protracted struggle/fist-fight.
    • On the matter of fist-fights, there have also been rare occasions where agents that have previously demonstrated extremely competent hand-to-hand skills turn into push-overs for dramatic tension. For example, JJ in "Run" wipes the floor with an highly trained UnSub (including a mid-fight gun disassembly), but in "Scream" JJ is easily subdued by a small, dorky Social Services worker, and Kate conveniently arrives to shoot him before he can beat her to death.
  • Worth pointing out that this applies to the victims, too. In the above example, the victim crashes her car on purpose, runs away, and even when the killer has caught up with her and is drowning her, she grabs the next thing that can serve as a weapon, and fights back. Oh, and the noise from the car crash is what told the nearby police and FBI where to go.
  • "Open Season" has arguably two victim examples. The UnSubs are hunters who let their victims loose in the forest and attempt to hunt them for sport. One victim intentionally rips her shirt on a tree bark while the other tosses a rock to lure them out. The latter then proceeds to run in the general direction of the rock! Naturally, she ends up being shot. Then that first victim jumps on the UnSub, stabs him twice, then runs away instead of making sure he's dead. Fortunately, Morgan and Prentiss show up before he kills her.
  • One could argue that the second-part episodes of "Revelations" and "Penelope" are the results of Reid and Garcia (of all people!) making stupid mistakes in the first parts ("The Big Game" and "Lucky" respectively). In the "The Big Game," while in the midst of chasing Tobias Hankel, Reid decides in the heat of the moment to split up from J.J. in order to cover more ground to capture Hankel (which J.J. didn't think was a good idea in the first place) and it backfires on Reid as he ends up being kidnapped instead. For "Lucky," since Garcia is the Techno Goddess, you would think that she would have done a background check on her would-be shooter before going out with him? Then again, for Rule of Drama, if Reid and Garcia didn't make the choices they did, those two episodes would never have happened or impacted their Character Development (they do regret them later).
    • And you'd think that after everything that had happened with Hankel, Reid would have learned his lesson about splitting off from the rest of the team on an impulse, but no. He does it again in "Amplification." And again in "Corazon." It's understandable in-character, because Reid, for all of his smarts, does tend to get caught up in the emotion/excitement of it all more than most of the other team members, but still, come on, Reid!
    • Even if Garcia did a background check on her date, all she would have found (assuming she penetrated the false name he gave her) was that he was a decorated cop. Yes, she might have caught him in the lie of being an attorney (which he didn't bring up until they were already out to dinner) and, of course, the fake name, but she would have already been on the date and in danger. She's not a profiler... his Chronic First Responder Syndrome would not have raised any red flags for her.
  • In "Roadkill," the first victim tried to outrun a truck, when she could moved out of the way or something of the sort.
    • While definitely not the smartest option to take, it seems unlikely that any of her options would have worked out; where could she go that that truck couldn't have followed? The driver was willing to ram it into steel elevator doors when in hot pursuit, and it didn't damage anything but the bumper! It was pretty clearly modded for what he intended to do with it.
    • Not that the victim could know anything about that.
  • "Sense Memory". Prentiss shows a lack of caution when bringing in a mysterious package from Doyle that could have been harmful, though it can be argued that she knew he wouldn't try to kill her with something as impersonal as a bomb.
  • Likewise for the mysterious packages received by several team members in "The Fisher King."
    • Reid actually mentions this in "The Fisher King," once the team has reason to be suspicious. Hotch points out that the plan was too elaborate for the UnSub to just blow them up.
• Ignored Expert: "Lucky" begins with Dr. Jim Lorenz urging his superiors at a psychiatric hospital not to release a young Floyd Feylinn Ferrell. Lorenz says that Floyd is a psychopath even while taking the medication that keeps his delusions under control and convincingly argues that Floyd will stop taking his medication once he's released. Floyd is released anyway and goes on to be involved in the deaths of 15 women.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Though this normally applies to villains, Prentiss takes a wooden stake to the gut in her knock-down, drag-out fight with Doyle.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: With his handgun, Hotch once shot a perp who was on top of a moving train from a speeding car. Also, UnSub Ian Doyle shot his henchman square on the wrist tattoo, conveniently obscuring it for the sake of plot tension.
• Improbable Age: Justified by Reid, as yes, he is that young and that accomplished, because he's a genius. Played straight by Hotch, who manages to have been a prosecutor for a while before joining the FBI, worked with the SWAT team and the Seattle field office, joined the BAU, trained under Rossi and Gideon and worked the Reaper case 10 years ago, but made Unit Chief in only 6 or 7 years. Probably a result of Writers Cannot Do Math.
  • As of "The Last Word", Hotch has been with the Bureau since Emily went off to college, which means at least fourteen years (Emily's been with the Bureau almost ten years).
    • It's recently come to light that Prentiss may have been, and in fact probably was lying about having worked for the Bureau for ten years, since her undercover Interpol operation with Doyle would have been 2 years before Season 1, but she was sworn to secrecy about its existence. Still, it can be assumed that for her to be chosen for such a sensitive mission, her career in the criminal justice field probably was around 10 years.
  • Reid has also been with the Bureau for three years by Season 1 ("L.D.S.K."). So, since he graduated from high school at age twelve, he's earned three PhDs by the time he was 20.
  • And there were two birth dates given for Morgan in "Profiler, Profiled."
  • Since the entire cast suffers from Older Than They Look in Real Life, some of these accomplishments are not as improbable as they seem at first. Thomas Gibson is almost 50... it would have been a quick ascension from law school to prosecutor to BAU, but not entirely impossible for a man that age. Shemar Moore and Paget Brewster are both 40+ as well. But damn they look good, don't they?
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • A Season 1 UnSub drinks the blood and eats the organs of his victims because he believes they're divine, plus the infamous Season 3 UnSub in "Lucky" who not only eats parts of his victims (he has a cookbook!) but also tricks all of the volunteers searching for them into eating them, too.
  • Given what he feeds his pigs, which he then eats, the UnSub in the two-part episode "To Hell...and Back" is this by proxy.
  • And there's the UnSub from "Exit Wounds", especially creepy because he's a 16-year-old kid.
  • Plus, there's Gina King, though she only drinks their blood.
  • Similarly the unsub in "The Good Earth" believes that bone meal from physically fit men will cure herself and her daughter, who aren't sick in the first place; her mother is hallucinating the rash, because when her husband died of natural causes, his ashes "treated" her through the Placebo Effect.
    • She also abducted and performed a C-section on a pregnant woman in order to get the placenta to feed her daughter. In the only non-fatal version on this page, mother and infant both recovered.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Appears to be what Brooke is suffering from in "North Mammon." For one thing, it's implied that the only reason her cough is 'fatal' is because they're locked in a cellar with no way to treat it; not to mention there's a lot of protesting going on due to the situation the UnSub has set up. For another, while the other girls are working each other up to kill her, convincing themselves that she's dead anyway because she's coughing and they have no medicine, she picks up the hammer and kills one of them from behind. So arguably it is a "cough of death"... but the death isn't hers!
• Improbable Infant Survival: Subverted painfully on multiple occasions.
  • Played straight in "Our Darkest Hour": the UnSub played by Tim Curry doesn't harm children. Well, not physically.
  • Frank also mentioned he had absolutely no interest in harming children. Indirectly harming them, however...
• Informed Ability: Seaver supposedly got top marks at the FBI Academy, but never seems to demonstrate any remarkable skills.
• Informed Flaw: The Papa Wolf in "3rd Life" is said to be a Sociopath on grounds of his past as an Irish-mob hitman. But while he's definitely not the nicest guy around, he clearly shows a desire to wipe his slate clean, worry over his daughter's well-being, and disgust at the rapist-murderer UnSub who abducted said daughter and tortured her best friend to death — all of which an actual psychopath would be incapable of.
• Insane Equals Violent: Several UnSubs, but the UnSub in "With Friends Like These..." stands out.
  • Reid does everything but mention this trope by name in this episode, in fact. He gets quite upset at the implication that all schizophrenic people are violent, and goes to great lengths to point out what a varied condition schizophrenia is, and how peaceful most of the people who suffer from it are. Given that his mother is one of those people, and he himself might be one day, that's pretty understandable.
• Instant Marksman: Just Squeeze Trigger!: In "L.D.S.K.," Reid is trying to pass his firearms qualification test, and Hotch gives him lessons, telling him "front sight, trigger press, follow through". Hotch also mentions the "squeeze, don't pull" advice.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation:
  • Reid's school experience — "Being the smartest kid in class is like being the only kid in class."
  • Prentiss, too—she laments in "Fear and Loathing" that she is a nerd and the guys she dates always find out.
• Internal Affairs: Erin Strauss, though she's sympathetic to Hotch after Haley dies.
  • Though Straus isn't actually Internal Affairs. She's just the big boss.
• In the Blood: "In the Blood" is the name of an episode; the killer believes that witch hunting is in his blood, and he tracks and kills several people for looking at a witchcraft book in the library or otherwise "showing" him that they're witches. He is legitimately a descendant of someone involved in the Salem witch trials, but he's also suffering from delusions.
• Involuntary Battle to the Death: "The Fight".
• Ironic Nursery Tune: A young boy hums "Pop Goes the Weasel" in "At Childhood's Hour", intercut with footage of his mother being stabbed to death.
• It Amused Me: This is the only justification that Baker, one of the construction workers turned spree killers in "Hopeless," gives when pressed by Morgan. At the end of his rope this episode, Morgan has been searching for an answer, any answer, to why the UnSubs decided to start killing people and with Baker in custody he angrily demands an explanation. All he gets is an indifferent, "It was fun, boss."
• It Never Gets Any Easier
• It's Always Sunny at Funerals: "Fear and Loathing", "100" (although the coffin looks as if it's been rained on), "The Slave of Duty", and "Lauren".
• It's for a Book: Stated by a school principal when child porn is found on his computer in "P911".
• It's Personal: In addition to having hot-button issues, each agent has gotten a case which leads to this. Hotch has the Reaper arc; Gideon had Frank; Rossi in "Damaged", "Zoe's Reprise", and "Remembrance of Things Past"; Morgan in "Profiler, Profiled" and "Our Darkest Hour"; Prentiss in "Demonology" and in her Doyle arc; Reid in "Instincts" and "Memoriam"; Elle in "Aftermath"; J.J. in "North Mammon" and "Risky Business"; and the entire team in "Penelope", "The Fisher King", "100", "Lauren", and "It Takes a Village".
• Jack the Ripoff:
  • There's a serial killer who is specifically stated to be copying Jack the Ripper's modus operandi. Although, this one is a woman killing men.
    • This is actually one of the more out-there theories about the real Ripper's identity. Since he was never caught, we can never know.
  • Occurs in "Doubt": after the primary suspect is arrested, there is a second killing which seems at first blush to be the work of the UnSub. It's the work of a copycat who wants to see the UnSub released; the team realizes this because the copycat's modus operandi varies from certain signature details which were withheld by the police.
  • The killers in "Zoe's Reprise" and "Tribute" each (mostly) recreate famous serial killers' MOs. A villain from the spin-off book series also copied infamous serial killers, and near the end he even tried copying spree killers and mass murderers.
• Joggers Find Death
• Just in Time: The team almost always capture the UnSub just as they're about to claim their next victim, since arresting them while they're at home watching TV or something would be boring.
  • Subverted in "Cradle to Grave" when they catch the UnSub coming out of the bathroom.
  • And "Zoe's Reprise", where it first looks like the UnSub is strangling another victim in a park, only for it to turn out "the victim" is the UnSub's girlfriend, and they were just starting a bout of rough sex.
  • "Lauren" plays with this. Morgan is just in time to save Prentiss before she can bleed out, but thanks to Hotch and JJ's plan to fake Emily's death, he's led to believe he wasn't. He later tortures himself with the idea that being sixty seconds earlier could have changed everything.
• Karmic Death: At the end of "Paradise", the serial killer who murders couples and stages car accidents for cover is run over by a truck.
  • The hitman in "Reckoner" eludes the BAU (and didn't really leave behind any conclusive evidence of his guilt even if they had caught him), but ends up being killed by the protege of a mobster he murdered.
  • At the end of "100", the Reaper, a God complex as he is, finally met his 100% deserved, ultimate defeat in the hands of an angry Hotch, ending his reign of terror over the innocent lives for good.
• Karma Houdini: Consistently averted, even when it initially seems Villain: Exit, Stage Left has occurred (i.e. "Reckoner"), and it is the BAU's job to defy it. Up until Season 6, the only UnSubs to successfully pull this off were Frank and the Reaper, the series' worst of the worst (and even they were eventually brought down in later episodes).
  • Played straight in "Into the Woods", though, where the child killer manages to get away.
  • Also, in "Blood Relations", the almost superhuman boogeyman known as the Mountain Man is shown to have survived a hail of gunfire from the entire team, who Never Found the Body. Somewhat fitting, as the character was written more as a slasher movie villain rather than a regular serial killer.
  • Darlene in "The Pact", but it is downplayed for three reasons. First, she is an extremely Sympathetic Murderer. Second, she targeted Asshole Victims, ranging from mild- to serial-child-molester-and-killer- level. Third, her partner and leader of the duo was caught, making it hard to feel bad about the ending.
  • The fate of the guy from "Secrets and Lies" is also left somewhat ambiguous.
  • Nothing happens to either of the two Papa Wolves from "3rd Life" (though they were, if not exactly sympathetic, certainly understandable), nor do we ever learn the fate of the second killer family from "Bloodlines." None of these were the primary UnSub, though.
  • "Dorado Falls" has another one, although it's not the UnSub. It's the person who made the UnSub the way he is.
  • The first suspect in "Out of the Light" could qualify. While he isn't guilty of the murders, or (probably) any murder, he's still, at worst, an accessory who knew who had kidnapped the girls and kept silent, and at best a pedophile who decided to conceal evidence and get off on the victim's suffering after the fact. Either way, he gets off Scot-free, and the BAU believes he's an innocent man who was framed.
  • The lying kids in "Painless." Granted, they are not the UnSub, but their ungratefulness is so heartbreaking that it makes the UnSub, who has saved their lives and could have grown to be a decent man, become a murderer. At the end of the episode, nobody mentions what liars they've been.
  • The serial killer who killed Tatiana in "Awake" manages to get away with his crimes, as the BAU aren't even aware of his existence. The ending of the episode implies he's found another victim.
  • If you do the maths, two of the Serial Killers broken out of jail by Mr. Scratch are still unaccounted for.
• Keeping the Handicap: "The Silencer" features a serial killer who was born deaf and given experimental cochlear implants as a teenager at his abusive mother's insistence (she was paid for participating in the trial). The implants themselves are faulty, causing him constant pain, which is probably his primary motivation for wanting them gone. Throughout the episode, he attempts performing surgery on himself to remove them. While he never explains his reasoning beyond that, the episode clearly demonstrates that he's able to hear, but he never speaks. Since he's not mute, that's a conscious decision on his part, which implies there's also a mental factor at play in why he wants to be deaf again.
• Kick the Dog: Sympathetic Murderers are sometimes given an instance of this, especially if the victims so far have been fairly faceless or assholish. Examples include Owen killing the elderly ranch owner in "Elephant's Memory" and Megan killing an executive who was a childless widower in "Pleasure is my Business".
  • Morgan snapping at Garcia in "The Longest Night" because she doesn't have the answers he wants.
  • "The executive branch" does this to the BAU team when it puts forward the decision to transfer JJ out of the BAU, completely disregarding their family.
  • "Reflection of Desire":
    UnSub: No, I think you're an ugly little girl who has nothing to offer the world.

However, if you consider what the episode's UnSub did to women he found beautiful...

• Kill It with Fire: The UnSubs in "Ashes and Dust" and "Devil's Night".
• Kill the Poor: The rich and completely insane killer in the episode "Legacy" believed he was doing the world a favor by exterminating street people, who he viewed as completely subhuman garbage, tainting everything they touch. When the detective who watches over the part of the city the killer gets his victims from is actually awarded due to the lower crime rate, the killer is insulted, and sends him a letter saying he should be ashamed for stealing the credit for other people's work. In the end, when the killer is surrounded by the police just as he is about to murder someone else, he actually screams "Let me do my job!" before being shot.
• Killed Midsentence: A few UnSubs are shot down mid-sentence, among them Anita Roycewood from "Mosely Lane" and Todd Franks from "Pariahville".
  • In "100", the Reaper gets savagely beaten to death by Hotch when the bastard had the gall to beg for mercy after everything he's done.
• Killer Cop: Jason Clark Battle in "Penelope", Ronald Boyd in "A Rite of Passage", Owen McGregor in "Angels"/"Demons".
• Knee-capping: In the Season 6 episode "Today, I do", a self-ascribed motivational speaker turned serial killer shatters the kneecap of her most recent victim with a hammer after the victim refuses to eat the popcorn she made for her. She later turns this into a self-help lesson, by teaching the victim to "walk in the face of adversity".
• Knight Templar Big Sister: The Unsub in "What Happens in Mecklinberg" is the older sister of a rape victim targeting not only her sister's rapists but those who helped them evade justice. Mixed with Knight Templar Parent (The Unsub was also her sister's legal guardian after their mother died of cancer).
• Knocking on Heathens' Door: Morgan and Prentiss are briefly mistaken for Jehovah's Witnesses in "Compromising Positions".

L-N

• Lampshade Hanging: In Exit Wounds, the victim in the opening scene, upon hearing rustling chains on the "deserted" pier, calls out "Who's there?" and immediately after says "Right, because the homicidal maniac hiding in the shadows is really going to answer you."
• Laser-Guided Karma: The BAU is an embodiment of this trope against serial killers.
• Last-Name Basis: Everyone but J.J., who is referred to by her nickname.
• Little Miss Badass: Ellie Spicer in "The Longest Night", who stands up to a serial killer who's just murdered her father in front of her, left her aunt to die, and has been killing in every single state for twenty-six years.
  • Deconstructed in "Remembrance of Things Past," where we find out that the poor thing has developed PTSD and can't sleep without talking to Morgan first.
  • And played straight again in "Safe Haven" when she hijacks her foster mom's credit card, flies cross-country, lies her way past airport security, and talks her way into the BAU to see Morgan (and because her foster brother is perving on her in the shower and no one's taking her seriously). Impressive, for a nine-year-old.
• Living Doll Collector: "The Uncanny Valley"
• Local Angle: The obligatory reporters who appear, occasionally real-life ones.
• Loony Fan: "Somebody's Watching" and "The Performer".
• Lost in the Maize: "Middle Man", and the end of "The Big Game".
• Lying to the Perp:
  • Rossi is slick like an oil spill. There's a reason why he teaches interrogation at Quantico.
    • Particularly impressive in "Reckoner" when he has not only the UnSub believing he'd slept with the UnSub's wife multiple times, but the entire team believing it, too.
  • General Whitworth in "Amplification"
  • And before Rossi came Gideon, especially memorably in "Lessons Learned".
  • The team tries to trip up the title UnSubs of "Soul Mates" by convincing them they're betraying each other while one is incarcerated. The one who's loose doesn't act on it but seems to fall for it, while the captive one isn't fully convinced but eventually does just as the team wants after his partner kidnaps his daughter.
• Mad Artist: Played straight in "Magnum Opus". Subverted in "The Night Watch"; the murderous "art pieces" (a corrupt community activist placed in a giant rat-trap, a rival artist's body hung from a giant baby mobile) were not the creations of the Banksy-esque artist/activist "Morpheus", but instead her ex-husband trying to ruin her reputation. For his final piece, he flung himself and Morpheus off a roof onto a coffin placed at street-level, with black roses and a sign reading "RIP MORPHEUS".
• Mad Bomber: "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Empty Planet"
• Mad Doctor: John Nelson in "God Complex", Bobby Boles in "Future Perfect".
• Mad Mathematician: Ted Bryar in "Derailed."
• The Mafiya: "Honor Among Thieves".
• Magical Defibrillator: Used on the little girl in "Seven Seconds". Obviously, it doesn't work, and resort to using CPR again.
  • Zig-zagged in "Poison," where a defibrillator is correctly used on a patient who goes into V-fib who was poisoned with botulism toxin. However, we still hear the sound effect of a Flat Line because the audience still associates it with defibrillators.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Local law enforcement seems to stop investigating at all when the BAU arrives. More glaringly, the BAU will also go to arrest the most dangerous crooks themselves, despite how devastating the loss of one profiler would be, compared to the average cop.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: "Paradise"
  • Hunting "Accident": How the father of the UnSub from "Natural Born Killer" died.
• Mama Bear: JJ's truly vicious fight to defend Henry from Izzy in "Run".
• Mantis Mating Meal: The UnSub of the two-parter "The Inspiration" and "The Inspired" is partially driven to kill women because he thinks that human women are an extension of this.
• Married to the Job:
  • Pretty much everybody. Led to Hotch's divorce, possibly Gideon's, and also led to Rossi's three divorces.
  • Tara's fiance left after she had to work overtime interviewing an imprisoned serial killer, annoyed that his fiance would rather talk to murderers than him. A previous episode hinted that their engagement was in trouble and the next morning:
    Tara: Do I look good? I just lost 200 pounds.
  • Played with after "The Fight" when Prentiss gives her job as an excuse not to call Mick Rawson, a member of the San Francisco BAU team
  • Avoided with J.J. & Will, Morgan & Savannah, and Alex & James Blake, three couples in which both partners have stressful jobs with demanding schedules. J.J. and Will are both in law enforcement, and Morgan and Alex both have doctors for spouses, but they make it work.
• Marionette Motion: "The Lesson" had an UnSub who turned his victims into living marionettes, and disposed of them when they inevitably died.
• Mauve Shirt: SSA Kate Joyner from "Lo-fi"/"Mayhem", Sheriff Ruiz in "Rite of Passage", Detective Spicer in "Our Darkest Hour", and Tsia Mosely in "Valhalla".
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Pondered by Morgan at the end of "Lucky". Rossi tells him not worry about it. Also used in "Cold Comfort", where it's left ambiguous whether or not Stanley Usher was genuinely psychic, in "Demonology", where one line of dialogue suggests that maybe John Cooley actually is possessed and it's only ever a theory that the holy water was poisoned, and in another episode when the possessed Voodoo priest told Reid (who had been experiencing migraines and visions) that he had "ghosts" in his brain (there's no physical problem with his brain and now he's terrified he might be going crazy like his mom). Also "With Friends Like These..." ("Our spirits have always been with you.")
  • Done more subtly in "Revelations": Tobias Hankel calls his Russian Roulette game "God's will". He tries to shoot Reid at least five times and fails, but when Reid steals his revolver he kills Tobias on the first try.
  • A similar example in "Minimal Loss" where just after Cyrus says "God could have stopped me", Morgan bursts in and shoots him dead.
  • Averted in "The Angel Maker" were everything is eventually explained and it was deliberately made to look like the supernatural going on. However it did take the original UnSub a long time to die and his death freaked the Doctor out so much he quit executions.
  • Does the Devil really come for poor Lara at the end of "Heathridge Manor", or is she just as crazy as her brother and mother? (The last shot of the episode shows Lara is looking at thin air when she opens the door to the Devil, but even that's a little ambiguous.)
    • For that matter, is the Manor itself somehow sentient and causing the madness of its inhabitants?
  • Was Hotch just hallucinating in "Route 66," or did he actually talk to his dead ex-wife and her killer?
  • Much like in the aforementioned "Route 66," is Morgan just "dissociating" to survive his torture and escape his abductors in "Derek," or is he actually being guided by the spirit of his dead father (played by Danny Glover, no less)?
• Meaningful Background Event: Subverted in "Damaged", when a sign partially-obscured by J.J.'s head reads "Gacy". As the UnSub they're looking for is a carnival clown, this coy use of Real Life serial child-killer John Wayne Gacy's name makes things far creepier, implying that the culprit may be far worse than they expect; in the end, however, Joe turns out to be as mentally-challenged as they'd hypothesized, and surrenders without resistance on his father's say-so.
• Meaningful Name:
  • William LaMontagne is Jennifer's "rock".
  • Aaron also means "mountain".
  • Spencer Reid is a bookworm.
  • Subverted as both "Dereck" and "Morgan" mean "leader". He lead the BAU for a short time, was happy to step up whenever Hotch or Rossi were incapacitated, but generally was an ordinary team member.
  • "Jennifer" means "beautiful woman".
  • Penelope was the character in the Illiad who stayed home waiting for Odysseus to return, much like Penelope Garcia is the team member who stays behind at Quantico.
  • Owen Savage blows people up and shoots teenagers with an assault rifle.
  • The name of the General Ripper in "Dorado Falls" who caused the episode's Sympathetic Murderer's Start of Darkness by forcing him to assassinate two innocent children to keep a covert Navy SEALS operation quiet? Milgram.
  • A number of UnSubs have been surnamed Turner, often ones who used to be good before they turned to murder.
  • Characters named Lyla or Lila tend to be the oblivious victim of a stalker who is a friend or even family member. The name means "night" in Hebrew; that is, "in the dark".
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: If an episode features an UnSub who kills both genders indiscriminately, the "main victim" will almost always be female.
  • Actually subverted in "Big Sea" where a man and his teenage son are the UnSub's main victims. The father is killed, but the son is the last surviving victim, as well as in "A Real Rain" and "Roadkill".
  • For bonus Unfortunate Implications, she's almost always white, too.
    • She's almost always white because the *killers* are almost always white, and, as the team frequently mentions, serial killers tend to kill within their own race almost always. When they have a black killer, the victims will usually also be black.
  • Possible example in "Into the Woods": the UnSub, who is a boy-preferential killer (and heavily implied to be raping his victims as well), has uncharacteristically ended up with his intended victim's sister as well. During the search, they almost never talk about the risk to the boy, with nearly all the dialogue focusing on the danger his sister is in. Granted, she may be in more immediate danger due to the idea that the UnSub will simply kill her, while he at least keeps his boy victims for months, but still somewhat striking.
• The Men in Black: They are sometimes perceived as this, which can be detrimental to the case. In "Identity," it causes conflict because they're trying to solve a case in an area with a heavy militia presence, and the FBI aren't very welcome after the events of Waco and Ruby Ridge. It can also work against them if they're trying not to feed the UnSub's fantasies, and attracting the attention of the FBI would do that.
  • Lampshaded by Gideon in "Compulsion":
    Gideon: No badges. I don’t want to satisfy the UnSub’s need for attention by letting him know the FBI is here. Try not to look official. (looks at the team) Try to look less official.
  • Though they made use of it in the episode "Derailed." The unsub is demanding to speak to "the higher authority," so Gideon has them sit in their car for a few minutes after arriving and delay communication when the unsub calls, in order to increase their mystique, because he wouldn't expect a "higher authority" to bend to anyone's will.
• Men of Sherwood: The district cops.
• The Mentor: Gideon, who acted as Reid's father and mentor-figure for a couple of seasons before leaving under mysterious circumstances to a place where Reid can never contact him again.
• Mercy Kill: Some UnSubs believe they're performing these on their victims. They assume that the people they target want to die and unable to do so without "assistance" or are dying inside and need to be set free.
  • In "From Childhood's Hour", the UnSub targets depressed and suicidal mothers, kidnapping their children and killing the mothers with their child's "permission". When he was younger, he was in the same situation, living with a depressed and suicidal mother. He followed her one day where she was sitting on the bridge, possibly considering jumping off. To "help" her, he pushed her off into the water. It's unknown if she wanted to die or if she just wanted to be alone on those days.
• Mind Screw: For a show about crazy serial killers, Criminal Minds is fairly light on the Mind Screw.
  • A minor bit is tossed at you in "Normal" but it's foreshadowed, appears internally consistent, and may not even register as such.
  • The opening of "Reflection of Desire", however, is a masterpiece of television mindscrew. And even when you think it's over, it isn't. In fact, they've been mindscrewing you the entire episode. The UnSub's mom is dead, despite the fact she seems to appear in public. Of course, if you know what homage the episode is making, you'll have spotted it.
  • The entire second half of "Mr. Scratch." We're shown two versions of events mostly from Hotch's perspective. The first is a nightmare where his entire team dies, then snaps out of it into a second, much more believable scenario where his team come to the rescue, but the UnSub inexplicably surrenders. This is potentially also a drug-induced fantasy, and he prepares to tell Rossi what actually happened — but then the episode ends.
• Missing Mom: Just about every UnSub on the show has one.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: Lampshaded in "The Last Word" and in "Legacy". Also in "Fear and Loathing"; several black girls are killed and the murders look like hate crimes and, when the BAU gets involved with the investigation, a local preacher claims it's only because the latest victim's ex-boyfriend, who was white, was killed alongside her.
  • Interestingly the white blonde haired and blue eyed Rebecca Bryant, Victim of the Week in the "Fisher King" two-parter was not treated this way due to her behavior. She was a serial runaway and troublemaker so the detective on her case talked about her in a way more common with Disposable Sex Worker/Disposable Vagrant cases.
  • Straight examples include the good chunk of Ripped from the Headlines episodes that have white, middle class young women or nuclear families from Everytown, America as the victims, when the real cases often did not.
  • Real serial rapist John Jamelske abducted five women of different races and aged 14 to 53. He is briefly portrayed in "North Mammon" with a twenty-something white victim.
  • Strange aversion in "The Fight," the Poorly Disguised Pilot for Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. Hotch's team is called in to investigate a pattern of beaten and killed homeless men in San Francisco, while only Sam Cooper has ever realized that a white, middle-class father and daughter also go missing the same time every year. Thus we're introduced to the Red Cell (who cuts through red tape and flaunts the rules) via them daring to say that pretty white girls deserve our attention too! There's not even a hint of awareness to the episode. Not a single lampshade about the irony of nameless poor men warranting top FBI resources while a string of missing white teenagers goes uninvestigated by even local law enforcement.
• Mission Control: Penelope Garcia.
• Model Scam: This was the tactic of the killer in "Fear and Loathing." Although he doesn't rape his victims. He records their voices as trophies and kills them by drugging and strangling them.
• Mole in Charge: The villain of "Internal Affairs".
• Monster Fangirl: Several examples, most prominently in "Riding the Lightning" and "The Angel Maker".
• Monster of the Week: When the perp is more than this, you know that the UnSub in question is really, really deranged. See: Frank, the Boston Reaper, Tobias Hankel, Billy Flynn, Mason and Lucas Turner.
• Mood Whiplash: The ending of "Proof". We see a father watch a tape of his Psychopathic Manchild brother torturing his own daughter, covering his ears in fear as she screams. The scene then cuts to Rossi cheerfully teaching the team how to cook. Though to be fair, Hotch and Rossi were deliberately invoking this in-universe.
• More Dakka: "Rite of Passage", where the team breaks out the MP-5s since they're headed into cartel territory and might need heavier firepower if someone objects too strenuously. It comes in handy since the UnSub's backup plan included an AR-15 modified for full auto.
  • In "Lauren", Prentiss leaves her badge and Glock in her desk drawer and goes after Doyle's men armed with an MP-5 and flash-bang grenades.
• Morning Sickness: Hinted at in "The Hunt." Reid realizes that J.J. is pregnant again after he sees her eating soda crackers (a popular home remedy for nausea) at her desk.
• Motherhood Is Superior: A sort of inversion happened in an episode ("Hanley Waters"): the mother throws all the standard accusations at the father claiming that since he stopped doing things like celebrating their dead child's birthday, he didn't care about him. However, said woman is also going on a psychotic rampage caused by her grief while the father's subdued reaction is portrayed as more appropriate.
• Motive Rant: Averted more often than not, as the team's cracking the mystery of the UnSub's motive is usually how they catch the culprit in the first place. Hence, there's no need for this trope to provide exposition at the end of the manhunt.
• Motor Mouth: Reid veers into this territory sometimes, going off on tangents when he's nervous or thinking hard.
  • Garcia, too, when she's upset or excited about something. Or drinking too much coffee:
    Garcia: The kid's tech savvy, sir. But fret not. I am tech savvier. Is that a word? That sounds like a word. If it is a word, I'm it.
    Prentiss (wearily): D.C. time, Garcia.
    Garcia (checks her watch): 11:17 a.m.
    Prentiss: D.C. Decaf.
• Mr. Fanservice:
  • Morgan. Hoo boy, yes, Morgan. Most especially: coming out of the shower wearing only a Modesty Towel in seventh season episode "Snake Eyes", with every inch of him showing a sheen of water droplets. A moment that caused many a remote control to wear out and smoke as it was constantly brought back up to the screen... In-Universe, Garcia constantly flirts with Morgan and teases him over his sexiness, although their relationship remains platonic. Morgan flirts with and teases her right back.
  • Hotch has his moments, particularly if you like your men in a nice suit, though when seen without it — as in Season 1 episode after a fade-to-black with his wife — he proves nearly as impressive as Morgan. And Reid gets a fair share of attention as well, for those who like their men pretty, nerdy, and in distress.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • We have Garcia's spectacular cleavage and Elle's double gun holsters criss-crossing over very tight t-shirts. Not to mention the time she wore a bikini.
  • Prentiss also gets a chance to flaunt her considerable assets in "JJ" and at the beginning of "Open Season". And let's not forget her and Jordan Todd in "52 Pick-up" at the club. She is also used as an In-Universe example, in several instances using her looks and flirting to gain the trust of the UnSub ("Outfoxed").
  • Garcia and Prentiss' dresses in "Run" at JJ's wedding seem specifically designed to show off their healthy chests.
  • Lampshaded in "Legacy":
    [after canvasing the area for potential witnesses]
    Prentiss: How'd you guys do?
    Hotch: Well, Reid got propositioned by every prostitute we talked to, but we didn't find anybody who thinks they'd seen the UnSub.
  • Also in that episode, Morgan flirts with a homeless lady, much like he does with Garcia, to get her to go to a shelter. He uses his attractiveness for good.
  • In an unusual departure from the norm, it is the heaviest woman on the team who provides most of the female fanservice. Garcia often wears clothes that emphasize her impressive bustline, and while this may have been unintentional on the part of the costuming department at first, it definitely seems to be deliberate as of Season 7; to wit, "Snake Eyes" opens with the camera staring directly down her nightshirt.
  • Several of the female UnSubs have a rather alluring quality to them, as well; Megan Kane, Sydney Manning, Izzy Rogers...
  • Laura Allen in the episode where humans were hunted for sport.
  • Bre Blair as the prostitute Maggie in the Season 2 episode with the murderer taking homeless people off the streets. She got a lot of positive comments on showbiz forums for this role.
  • Several scenes in "Compromising Positions" feature a call girl in lingerie or costumes for the viewing pleasure of her clients and the audience.
  • Also, Jennifer Aspen who appeared in "A Higher Power".
    • From that same episode, Brynn Horrocks,
    • And Lila Archer the actress Reid had a Ship Tease with in "Somebody's Watching" managed to wear a bikini twice in one episode. Once at her job on a TV show and the other time while hitting on Reid.
• Mugging the Monster: "The Big Wheel" (although the UnSub doesn't get away uninjured).
• Multi-Part Episode: "The Fisher King", "Lo-Fi"/"Mayhem", "To Hell..."/"...And Back", "Our Darkest Hour"/"The Longest Night", "Hit"/"Run", "The Inspiration"/"The Inspired", "Angels"/"Demons".
• Murder by Cremation: "Mosley Lane" (well, almost)
  • "In the Blood" (see Burn the Witch!)
• Murder by Remote Control Vehicle:
  • One episode has an unsub who's able to hack into airplanes via the in-flight entertainment systems. He doesn't so much fly the planes remotely as lock them into autopilot and cut off ground communication, then deploy the landing gear and slats, causing the planes to crash (though he does take manual control when confronted by the team).
  • Another episode has an unsub hacking cars and causing them to hit random pedestrians. He eventually has a breakdown and abducts the woman who'd turned him down, remote controlling her car while he's in the passenger seat.
• murder.com: "Revelations" and "The Internet is Forever".
• Murder-Suicide: A number of killers do this rather than be caught.
• My Card: Hotchner in "Poison", giving his ABA card to the UnSub of the Week. Also by other BAU members, when persons of interest in the Case o' the Week are being squirrely.
  • Used in hilarious fashion by J.J., Garcia and Prentiss to some guy in a bar claiming to be a Bond-esque FBI agent.
  • Used by Reid in "Sex, Birth, Death" when he gives his card to Nathan Harris. At the end of the episode, Harris attempts suicide and leaves the card on the table as a "suicide note". The prostitute he's with uses it to call Reid, saving Harris's life.
  • Played for laughs in "52 Pickup" when Reid uses magic to put his card behind the ear of a cute bartender.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The UnSub in "Normal," word for word.
• My Greatest Failure: Prentiss' assumed death was this for Morgan, and he's been slow to get over it.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Morgan trying to keep the drowning kidnapping victim alive at the end of "Out of the Light" is very similar to his tending to Prentiss in "Lauren." Of course, it's somewhat ironic in that he actually managed to save Prentiss — he just doesn't know it.
• Nail 'Em
  • The "Hopeless" episode has the killers nail a man's hands to a bartop before beating him to death.
  • The UnSub from the "Hashtag" episode used a nail gun to kill all his victims except the first one because he was emulating a Creepypasta called The Mirror Man that kills people with his long (finger)nails. Also, during the second murder, he fired his nail-gun repeatedly at the back of the driver's seat of the victim's car, forming a hashtag with the holes as a Calling Card.
• Neck Snap: "Secrets and Lies" and "Distress".
• Necro Cam: It's occasionally done when the FBI experts try to explain the unsub's behavior in terms the local police (and also the audience) can understand. Usually done via greenscreen, with the agent speaking either physically watching the unsub, or taking his/her place in the crime. The show is also notable for its gory body dives, in which the camera flies around inside somebody's body (often tracing the path of a murder weapon), accompanied by all sorts of icky Foley noises.
• Negative Continuity: Either as a way to keep the show grounded in some sense of reality, or to make it more appealing to occasional viewers, most past UnSubs will never be mentioned again after the episode they appear in. Profiles, books and conferences will continue to mention real serial killers from decades past like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, even though the exploits of more recent fictional UnSubs like George Foyet, Frank Breitkopf and Billy Flynn put theirs to shame.
• Nerd Glasses: Dr Reid, sometimes.
• Never Found the Body: Morgan's cousin Cindi. They found a body that Morgan claimed was her body so his family could move on, and later found Cindi alive.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Reid actually says this in "Lauren".
• Never My Fault: In "Derailed," we have a passenger that is a known drunk, wrecked his father's car, and got kicked out of school. He constantly spouts blame on everything else, mostly on the government, which seriously does not help the guy who just suffered a mental break with delusions of the government coming after him.
• Never Suicide: In "A Higher Power" a town has a disturbingly large number of suicides, which turn out to be the work of an Angel of Death serial killer who believes he is putting the townspeople who lost their children in a fire out of their misery. A subversion occurs in the end when it's discovered the guy whose death sparked the BAU's involvement in the case wasn't a victim of the killer and did just commit suicide.
  • Also seen in "Risky Business," when J.J. refuses to believe that several teens from the same school, with no apparent risk factors, would kill themselves. They didn't, intentionally. All of them were trying to play "The Choking Game," getting high through auto-asphyxiation, with an apparent contest going on between their school and another. They took webcam videos of their deaths, which were then were downloaded and backed up on DVD by the UnSub who used the game to lure them into killing themselves.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • "Snake Eyes'" B-story says that Garcia and her boyfriend have a fight over her flirty friendship with Morgan. Actually Garcia's afraid that she slept with Morgan while drunk. Not only did that not happen, but Garcia's boyfriend completely trusts Morgan (though the next episode has him state he "went through a lot of therapy to figure out their relationship").
  • In "Pariahville", Rossi's line about "who knows where the bodies are buried" has nothing to do with the case of the week, but is a Call-Back to the killer from "Profiling 101", whom he's conversing about with Lewis.
• New Media Are Evil: "P911", "The Big Game", "Revelations, "Risky Business", and "The Internet Is Forever." You'd think a show featuring tech goddess Penelope Garcia would be better about averting this.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The BAU team themselves frequently point out that their own involvement has clearly acted as a stressor that causes the unsub to escalate, sometimes from merely assaulting people to killing them. Obviously there's not much they can do about it since the other option is "let serial criminals do whatever they want", but they often seem remarkably blase about being almost directly responsible for various deaths.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: In "The Popular Kids," Morgan and Reid speak as though the killer is one simply because he was carrying a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra the first time Reid met him. The killer himself, however, never says anything to indicate that he is one.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: How Hotch kills Foyet. Barehanded.
  • Prentiss is practically famous for being the subject of these.
• No Kill like Overkill: See above. In Hotch's defense, though, Foyet did fake his own near-death once by stabbing himself so many times that the police thought he was one of the victims. Hotch was probably right to make sure he was down for the count.
• Noodle Incident: There's a few of these, mainly involving J.J., which are often lampshaded.
  • Also some pretty ominous ones implying past outrages by the UnSubs, that are mentioned in veiled terms that make them sound worse than any amount of detail (e.g. "that thing with the puppies", "I said I was sorry!").
• No Party Given: When politicians show up, they're not usually given a party, although in some cases it's easy to guess.
  • In "25 to Life", James Stanworth's speech at a fundraiser is so vague and packed with Meaningless Meaningful Words that it's impossible to tell what he stands for.
  • By contrast, Clark Preston's virulently xenophobic rhetoric in "A Thin Line" puts him in line with the extreme fringes of the Republican Party.
  • When Benjamin Troy of "Rock Creek Park" is asked if he has any enemies, he lists the oil lobbies and the National Rifle Association, which are both typically conservative groups; this would suggest that he's a Democrat (although he also lists PETA as an enemy, regarded as a very liberal organization).
• No-Sell: Hotch's completely badass response to Foyet/the Reaper shooting at him? To not even move as the bullet goes right by his shoulder into the wall behind him.
  • Move? He doesn't even blink.
    The Reaper: Is this part of your profile? You can't show me fear?
    Hotch: If you don't see fear maybe it's because I'm not afraid of you.
• No Social Skills: Dr. Reid has obviously spent a lot of his life in academia, and before that had a rather isolated childhood; as a result he's socially awkward. Lampshaded by Rossi, when he jokes that Reid was found as a baby on the steps of the FBI.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: In-Universe. The UnSub in "The Performer" turns out to be the manager of a rock star who hoped to cash in on this trope by manipulating a mentally ill fan into killing people in ways that referenced the singer's music. The singer himself was completely oblivious.
• Not Me This Time: In "Pariahville", an entire community of non-violent sex offenders is suspected (or framed) when a former Teacher/Student Romance resident is murdered. It's actually a young offender with no connection to the residents.
• Not Proven: Two particularly personal (and eerily similar) cases early in the show.
  • In the season two episode "Aftermath," Elle (who's still dealing with her attempted fridging by the Fisher King) moves too quickly and arrests a suspect before he makes a move, spoiling their sting and preventing them from legally obtaining his DNA. When she confronts him afterward, he thanks her for letting him get away, but still doesn't actually confess to anything (which was probably her goal). Instead, she winds up shooting him as he walks away and planting a gun to make it look like a good shoot. This is the last straw for her after the aforementioned Fisher King incident, and she leaves the team.
  • Then in the Season 3 episode "Doubt," the team arrests a man who fits the profile perfectly, and who has no alibis for any of the murders, but as there isn't any definitive evidence to say he did it, the team aren't sure what to do with him. After he is released, the team enact a plan to get him to confess, but it goes horribly wrong and results in his death and the death of someone else, and they still don't have any proof that he did it. This is the final straw for Gideon after what happened with Frank in the previous season and causes him to leave the team.
• Number of the Beast: In that satanic cannibalism episode "Lucky", the UnSub's name is "Floyd Feylinn Ferell".
  • The first three digits in the Reaper's mugshot.