Mr. Scratch
Hotch: "Your memory is a monster; it summons with will of its own. You think you have a memory, but it has you." John Irving.
An UnSub who uses psychoactive drugs to make his victims compliant, frames three people in three different states for murdering their loved ones — by making them think they're demonic monsters.
Tropes in this episode:
- Alone with the Psycho: At the climax of the episode, Hotch is knocked out and drugged by Peter Lewis/Mr. Scratch, who attempts to Mind Rape him into killing his team when they arrive to save him.
- Bittersweet Ending: Peter Lewis is arrested, but he succeeds in getting inside Hotch’s head and psychologically torturing him.
- False Rape Accusation / Frame-Up / Pædo Hunt: In the backstory, Suzannah Regan did this in her capacity as a member of the "Believe the Children" movement by interrogating kids under the care of an adult she believed (or wanted to believe) was a pedophile, aggressively pressuring them repeatedly until the children would make a false "confession" just to get her to stop. One such accused party was the father of Peter Lewis, this episode's UnSub, who was killed in jail before his trial for (supposedly) being a child molester, which was Lewis's Start of Darkness.
- Heroic Suicide: The team theorizes that Bill Kinderman was ordered to kill his son after getting drugged. Rather than follow through with the order, he chose to kill himself instead.
- Heroic Willpower: Peter Lewis tries to manipulate Hotch into killing one of his teammates after drugging him. Just when it looks like he’s going to do it, he turns around and fires his gun at Lewis.
- Mind Rape: Peter Lewis does a very disturbing one to Hotch after capturing and drugging him with the same suggestive drugs and hallucinogens that he used on his other victims. First, he tricks him into hallucinating his worst fear to find out how to break him; this causes Hotch to see Lewis killing his team when they arrive to back him up. (Specifically, Lewis shoots and instantly kills Reid, then fatally injures Rossi, and then wounds Morgan before finishing him off in front of Hotch while gloating "Now I know what scares you.") Once Lewis learns this, he then tries to trick Hotch into shooting the members of his team when they actually do arrive, though Hotch manages to stay lucid enough to shoot at him instead. At the end, Lewis doesn't even care that he's been caught since he considers it a win that he was able to screw up Hotch's mind that badly, and Hotch is shown to be traumatized and very shaken by the whole experience.
- Paranoia Fuel: In-universe, Lewis attempts to invoke this with the team after he's cornered by and surrenders to Morgan and JJ, gloating that he wins because they have no idea what he did to Hotch's mind.
- Primal Fear: Discussed by the team. They note how different people have different primal fears as a child (using JJ's, Rossi's, and Callahan's as examples), but somehow, the seemingly unrelated killers who are being drugged (with the same substance each time) into murdering their loved ones are all seeing the same hallucination of "Mr. Scratch", a shadowy monster with talons for hands. They're eventually able to use this to figure out how the victims are connected.
- Psychotic Smirk: Lewis gives one of these to Hotch after he's captured, and taps the side of his head to indicate that he's messed with Hotch's head.
- Self-Harm: Christine, the only survivor who hasn’t given her statement to the police, frantically scratches her face when she remembers Mr. Scratch.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: When Hotch is alone with Peter Lewis, the man speaks in a quiet voice. Even when Hotch gives an accurate analysis of what happened to him and his latest victim, he demands Hotch to shut up while still whispering.
- Start of Darkness: When he was a young child, Peter Lewis's biological parents ran a foster home for orphaned kids, who together imagined/invented a monster called "Mr. Scratch" and made up increasingly horrifying details about it to one-up each other. Suzannah Regan, a member of the "Believe the Children" movement, got wind of this and falsely accused Lewis's father of being a pedophile whom the kids were re-imagining as this monster; she questioned all of the children staying at the home, including Peter himself, practically twisting their arms until they gave her the false confessions she wanted. This got Peter's father put in prison, where he was murdered by his fellow inmates for pedophilia before he could even reach his trial.
- Revenge: In the present, Lewis is getting back at everyone who ruined his life with these accusations. He first hunts down the now-grown-up children who once lived in the home, drugging them with powerful hallucinogens and suggestive drugs to make them kill their own family members while hallucinating that "Mr. Scratch" is the one doing it. For his endgame, he hacks into the witness protection files to hunt down Regan, the person most responsible for what happened, and drugs her as well, getting her to slit her own throat in front of Hotch when he arrives to save her.
- Witness Protection: By the time the BAU and others debunked Regan's work with the "Believe the Children" movement, which ruined her career, she had already done a ton of damage and ruined numerous lives with her false accusations, and received quite a few death threats in response. She was placed into the Witness Protection Program to keep her safe, but during the events of the episode, Peter Lewis hacks into the database to track her down and get vengeance against her for destroying his family's lives.
