Shout Out / Criminal Minds

• An episode involving a serial bomber takes place in Florida and is titled "Won't Get Fooled Again".
• The episode "In Heat," also set in Miami, starts with a Cold Opening that closely mimics a CSI: Miami Cold Opening in its cinematography and editing. At various crime scenes in the episode, several extras in the background are seen wearing "CSI" windbreakers.
• The hyper-egotistical surgeon in "L.D.S.K." (Gideon calls him "The worst narcissistic personality disorder I've ever seen.") looks and sounds just like Hugh Laurie's character in House. Also could be considered a Take That!. Or Truth in Television.
• The title of "A Real Rain" refers to Taxi Driver, while the ending is a Shout Out to The Boondock Saints.
• The UnSub's methods in "North Mammon" and "Legacy" are similar to the traps set up by the Jigsaw Killer from the Saw saga.
• The episode "Legacy" opens with the UnSub whistling 'Johanna'. Mandy Patinkin is a notable performer/interpreter of Stephen Sondheim, though he was never in Sweeney Todd.
• The ending of "Damaged" has a sort of a Cold Case feel to it.
• In "True Night", the scenes where Night kills the victims is shot in dramatic, Sin City-style black-and white. This is appropriate, as the prime suspect is a comic-book artist. Garcia even quotes Frank Miller towards the end.
  • Night also looks very similar to an Organization XIII member (particularly Roxas), with his Badass Longcoat, a hood covering his face, black gloves, black boots and Dual Wielding swords. Some of the poses can be seen in the Deep Dive video too (although from slightly different angles).
  • Aside from that, the whole storyline is a wee bit familiar: A psychotic and creative young man whose fiancee is raped and killed by gang bangers adopts a dark and intimidating superhero-esque persona in order to get revenge on those who wronged him.
• The kidnapping we saw in "The Uncanny Valley" was strangely similar to the one done by another famous fictional serial killer who also predated young girls. Also, the entire plot is suspiciously similar to that of Dollhouse episode "Belle Chose", though the UnSub is portrayed far more sympathetically than Terry Karrens is.
  • They are actually both based on Ted Bundy. He used that ruse.
• The season 4 two-parter "To Hell... And Back" is one to The Silence of the Lambs series. Even in context of Shout-Outs, an evil quadriplegic heir to a pig farm named "Mason" was pushing it.
• The family in the beginning of "Children of the Dark" have an awkward conversation in their house's entryway with two strangers, who admire their lifestyle and golf clubs before torturing and killing them. Sounds familiar, in a funny sort of way.
• A White Collar conman who's juggling too many aliases is described as a functioning alcoholic.
  • It's probably nothing, but one of his aliases is Alex Ross.
• Character David Rossi is based on real-life FBI profiler John E. Douglas. However, a certain Forensic Psychology textbook cites not only John E. Douglas, but another FBI profiler named D. Rossi.
• Garcia swears by using "Frak."
• The season 5 finale has Tim Curry play a character, Billy Flynn, who is dubbed by the press as "The Prince of Darkness," a title eerily similar to that of his character in the movie Legend (1985).
  • Could also be a Chicago shout-out.
  • It's a reference (or also a reference) to the Night Stalker Richard Ramirez, the killer he's based on.
• Possible shout out in "Penelope": Garcia has this piece of dialogue.
  Garcia: When I was in the ambulance I could hear the song "Heroes" playing in my head. I kept flashing in and out of consciousness, everything was really bright and I remember thinking, "Wait, is David Bowie really God?"
• A brief scene in the Season 4 episode Demonology, shows two priests preparing for an exorcism. Obviously, one of them is old and the other one is young.
• In "Devil's Night", Garcia calls Kaman, the UnSub, "the Big Bad".
  • The episode also features Ernie Hudson as Detroit police officer dealing with a series of revenge murders on Devil's Night
• "Reflections of Desire" is basically Psycho and Sunset Boulevard thrown in a blender.
• In "What Happens At Home", we first meet FBI cadet Ashley Seaver when Rossi goes to see her on the FBI academy training course.
• At the end of "Amplification", the shot of the virus being sealed in a gigantic virus vault refers back to ''Raiders of the Lost Ark".
• One of two murdered convenience store clerks on Garcia's computer is Apu N..
• SF author and blogger Elizabeth Bear is a huge and vocal fan of the series, and someone on the writing staff obviously loves her back; not only was the opening quote in "Lauren" from one of her books, it was from a thematically appropriate one. Doubly appropriate because Bear was one of the first to vocally support Prentiss' addition to the show.
• In "With Friends Like These," there is a shout out to Supernatural when Ben sees his hallucinatory friends pinned to the ceiling, dripping blood on his face.
• Perhaps unintentional, but the plot of "Sense Memory" concerns itself with an antisocial man who harvests beautiful young women for their scent.
• In "Mosley Lane," Bud Cort hangs himself. Does that sound familiar?
• In "Zugzwang," which is already filled with Conan Doyle references, Diane Turner brings Maeve onto the roof for a final confrontation, wherein she wants Maeve to jump to her death to prove her theory. The situation is a mirror of the final scene between Moriarty and Sherlock in Sherlock's The Reichenbach Fall.
• Robert Davi appeared twice; as it happens, Hotch has pretty much the same job in the BAU as Davi's Bailey Malone did in the fictional Violent Crimes Task Force.
• "The Edge of Winter" could be a subtle one to Harley Quinn: A young med student is tortured until she "falls in love" with her captor and becomes a willing participant in his crimes. When she reveals she'd still kill for him if he asked, she is deemed criminally insane, not to mention a very unreliable witness in his trial.
• The UnSub in "Reckoner" is extremely similar to the murderer in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. They're both judges who, having contracted a deadly illness, start executing people who got away with their crimes.
• The names of the victims, suspects, and affiliates in "Hashtag" all have names related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: Tara Harris, Riley Summers, Alexander Chase, Jonathan, Andrew Wells, Dawn Rosenberg, Joyce Giles, Charles Lorne, Daniel Osbourne, and Connor Holt. The teen characters all go to Sunnydale High School. And the name of the culprit, who killed his victims with a nail gun? William Pratt.
• The lead kidnapper in "Rock Creek Park" is directly referred to being like a character in The Manchurian Candidate specifically the ambitious, manipulative, murderous mother, but their reasoning is more like The Smiler murder loved ones for voter sympathy, in this case her son's wife and for special coincident points they look rather like Mallory Archer. There's probably some House of Cards in there too.
• One UnSub uses the name "Niko Bellic" as an alias. The characters are shocked that Rossi knows who he is.
  Rossi: What? I know things.
• Garcia has a Goku figure on her desk.
• A victim who murdered his own mother in the throes of a drug-induced hallucination is from Derry, Maine.
• In "Last Gasp" Lewis mediates a dispute between two FBI partners; a red-headed female agent and her dark-haired male partner who believes in the paranormal.

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