Series / Mindhunter

"How do we get ahead of crazy if we don't know how crazy thinks?"

— Bill Tench

Mindhunter is a Netflix original series created by Joe Penhall (The Road), inspired by John E. Douglas' True Crime book of the same name. Executive producers include him, Charlize Theron, and the notoriously Serial Killer-obsessed David Fincher, who has served as the series' most frequent director and de facto showrunner, and was largely responsible for getting it off the ground after taking interest in adapting the Douglas book in 2009, which Theron had forwarded to him.

The series fictionalizes the origin and development of criminal profiling by the FBI's then-new Behavioral Science Unit during the late 1970s. It stars Jonathan Groff (Glee, Frozen) as Holden Ford, a young and somewhat naïve hostage negotiator loosely based on Douglas himself. Holt McCallany (Gangster Squad, Lights Out) plays Bill Tench, Ford's partner and immediate superior, based on Douglas's own profiler colleague Robert Ressler. Along the way, they interview several notorious real life serial killers and mass murderers like Edmund Kemper, Jerry Brudos, Richard Speck, David Berkowitz and Charles Manson, and help local law enforcement agencies solve bizarre sexual crimes before their perpetrators can add their names to the former. Anna Torv (Fringe) and Hannah Gross complete the cast as psychologist Dr. Wendy Carr and (in Season 1) Holden's girlfriend Debbie Mitford, respectively.

All ten episodes of the first season were released online at once on October 13, 2017. A second season was greenlit almost immediately, eventually being released on August 16, 2019. In January 2020, Netflix announced that the show had been put on "indefinite hold" due to Fincher being busy with other projects (most prominently his first Netflix-exclusive feature film Mank), but the company also emphasized in the same announcement that the series had not been cancelled. However, in February of 2023, it was confirmed that the show would not be moving forward with a third season, which Fincher attributed to Netflix not believing that enough of an audience had been attracted to justify continuing to invest in the show.

Not related to the Renny Harlin thriller Mindhunters.

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This series provides examples of:

• The '70s: The series begins in 1977, with the obvious implications for fashion and music.
• The '80s: Season two moves the time setting to 1980.
• Abusive Parents: The worst killers invariably have the worst childhoods.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • After Wayne Williams clocks Holden and Bill as they're tailing him and brings over some fast food to their car, the other officers (and Bill) see the funny side.
    Officer: [over radio] I bet you he got the $2.99 special.
  • Bill can't help but break into a chuckle when Kemper says that he buried the heads of his victims in his mother's garden so they would be looking straight up at her room because "Mom always liked people to look up to her."
• Affably Evil: Edmund Kemper is a polite and articulate guy who considers Ford his friend. He nonchalantly gives him sexual advice that is, naturally, only based on his own experience as a horrific rapist, mutilator and murderer. This is all Truth in Television, with the real Kemper even also becoming a prolific narrator of audiobooks for the blind after his imprisonment.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Sets up a perfectly unsettling scene in the Season 1 finale.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Brudos is called "Jerr" by his (ex) wife.
  • Brian, Bill's son, is often affectionaly called "Bri" by his parents.
• Alone with the Psycho: Holden gets cocky and decides to meet Kemper and Brudos without Bill. He eventually learns that this is a really bad idea.
• Ambiguous Situation: Is Principal Wade a pedophile or not? Even Holden is unsure, but he errs on the safe side in the end.
• Artistic License – History: The show presents the BSU interviewing William Henry Hance after he's been incarcerated and as though he were previously unknown to them, but in actuality he was captured based on a profile created at the BSU by Robert Ressler (the character Bill Tench is based on).
• Ascended Fanboy: In-Universe. Holden mentions during Season 1 that he would love to interview Manson, believing him to be both fascinating and a possible gold mine of data. He gets the chance in Season 2, and can barely conceal how excited he is, even bringing a copy of the book about Manson to the interview (which Manson signs). He even gives Charlie his sunglasses simply because he asked.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Serial killers start as serial animal torturers/killers.
• Bathroom Search Excuse: Holden asks to go to the bathroom in Wayne Williams's house aka the Atlanta child killer. He instead uses it as an opportunity to snoop, but gets busted quickly when Wayne's dog (which he claims he didn't have) starts barking. Holden claims to be lost, but Wayne doesn't buy it.
• Batman Gambit: See Wounded Gazelle Gambit below.
• Been There, Shaped History: Holden, Bill and Dr. Carr single-handedly come up with criminal profiling and its usual jargon, such as "Sequential Killer" and the distinction between organized and disorganized killers.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Holden and Debbie's first meeting. Evolves into a Belligerent Sexual Relationship when they become a couple.
• Berserk Button: People not taking any reponsibility for their actions seems to be this for Bill. The most notable example is when he and Holden interview Manson, who refuses to accept any blame for the murders (as did the real Manson), leading to an increasingly-enraged Bill coming within a hair of beating the living shit out of him. He also goes off on Holden on more than one occasion for the latter's Insufferable Genius Cowboy Cop tendencies, especially when it leads to a problem that Holden refuses to admit was his fault.
• Bittersweet Ending: The season two finale. Wayne Williams is caught, and it's a Foregone Conclusion that it's generally accepted that he committed most of the murders.^note Not only did the murders stop when he was imprisoned, later DNA testing strengthened the case against him. However, the grieving mothers are left unsatisfied with the conclusion (and Williams is charged with only two of the murders); both Atlanta authorities and Gunn only care that their respective political goals are met; Ford's idealistic profiling technique is both challenged and exploited; Carr is still left frustrated professionally and broken up with Kay; and Tench loses his family due to his work. And of course, BTK is still out there, and will kill again.
• Black Comedy: Tons. As pitch dark as the show is it never ceases to throw in humor.
• Boom, Headshot!: In the series prologue, a mentally ill hostage taker commits suicide with his own shotgun.
• Brainy Brunette: Dr. Carr.
• Break the Haughty: Happens twice to Holden: first, at the end of Season 1, following his hospital visit to Kemper, which leaves him suffering a massive panic attack; and at the end of Season 2, as he realizes that, while they seemingly caught the perpetrator of the Atlanta Child Murders, he was merely a powerless cog in a system that was more interested in delivering a good PR result than in delivering true justice to the mothers of the victims.
• Bullying a Dragon: Assuming Kemper is always telling the truth, his mother continued to bully him after she knew he was a killer and he had grown into a giant. No guesses what happened to her.
• Cargo Ship: In-universe, Jerry Brudos with women's shoes.
• Casting Gag: In Fringe, Anna Torv played a gun slinging FBI agent uncomfortable with having to work surrounded by academics. In Mindhunter, she's an academic uncomfortable with having to work surrounded by FBI agents.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Almost every line of Richard Speck's contains some kind of expletive. It doesn't even make sense at times—when he's first thrown into a room with Holden and Tench, he calls his guard a cracker (Speck is also white, by the way).
• Comically Missing the Point: Holden often fails to get the suave sarcasm of his girlfriend or colleagues and takes their comments at face value.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: For the first season, the consulting is purely theoretical, working to build ground work for profiling, but in season 2, Ford and Tench ask Edmund Kemper and David Berkowitz for input on the BTK profile.
• Consummate Liar: Jerry Brudos, at least until the agents figure him out. He will deny making a photograph where his own reflection appears.
  • William Pierce sticks to his story that he didn't kill any women and only knew where the bodies were because he's a Clearvoyant. Henley is also in deep denial about many details of his and Corll's relationship.
• Conviction by Contradiction: Holden and Bill deciding that Mrs. Gonzalez's attacker must be "White Trash" because Black and Hispanic people don't treat old ladies like that.
• Country Matters: Holden describing Speck's victims as "eight ripe cunts" during his interview is so blatantly off-script that it leads to a minor coverup by the BSU.
• Cowboy Cop: Holden. Unusually, he is neither Hot-Blooded nor a Rabid Cop.
• Crapsaccharine World: The investigation into the Atlanta child killings makes it abundantly clear that under the promise of a “New South” supposedly moving away from racial issues and a “new Atlanta” with a shiny new airport and an African American mayor is an Atlanta that will never forget that history. The city ignores the slaying of Black children, never even looks around their neighborhood to find some of the most glaring suspects the series has seen, tries to downplay the idea of a predator to keep investment rolling in, and even when the killer is caught, it’s quite possible that there actually were multiple suspects that the city is ignoring so it can close the case and end the predator idea.
• Da Chief: Unit Chief Shepard.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Racism, sexism, homophobia, and gun culture all casually pop up as Holden tries to introduce profiling to the Quantico of 1977.
  • While many liberals today are at least slightly suspicious of the various three-letter agencies, the way the counterculture-dominated academic community refuses to even give the time of day to FBI agents may look strange to modern eyes.
  • Mrs. Gonzalez, an old Catholic woman, is so dismayed by her daughter's divorce that she actually crosses herself when she mentions it.
  • Bill and Holden almost die in a car crash in Episode 4. They don't wear safety belts, their car doesn't seem to actually have any, and they don't discuss the concept at all. Also, several characters, including law enforcement officers, drive drunk.
  • Dr. Carr is stuck between a rock and a hard place. She must hide her identity as a lesbian due to the conservative lean of the FBI, but she must also hide her project with the FBI from her academic colleagues due to their disdain for that same conservatism.
  • The team interviews an agent who's highly qualified and capable, but ultimately decides against bringing him onto their project because he's Black. Not out of their own racism, but because they are mainly interviewing white serial killers. Carr argues that many of them will likely be racist along with their general antisocial tendencies; the presence of a Black man may change the killers' behavior in some way and corrupt the team's data. However, the fact that they interviewed a Black agent at all and nearly hired him is a huge departure from the FBI of previous decades—it's Tench, outwardly the most traditional of the team, who expresses concern that this makes them look prejudiced.
  • Principal Wade's tickling of his young students and paying them in nickels is seen as at least peculiar by most, but also not inherently inappropriate. Wade also refuses to heed complaints from parents to stop touching their children, which earns the rather weak line "I guess [the parents] should have a say" from Smith. In fact, most of the parents seemed to be more upset about the nickels, since the children could secretly buy candy with them. Even today, what Wade did may not be illegal (for instance, corporal punishment in school is still legal in many states), but the idea of a school official unnecessarily making physical contact with a child is severely frowned upon, and simply ignoring a parent's complaints would likely cause an uproar.
• Deep South: Georgia and its different attitude to the death penalty have a prominent role in the Season 1 finale.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In Episode 4, Dr. Carr claims that Richard Nixon is a sociopath. When Holden asks how a sociopath could become President of the United States, she sarcastically asks back how a non-sociopath could.
  • Jonathan Groff described Kemper and Ford's last scene together in Episode 10 as if Kemper is Holden's scorned lover. Shored up by the layers of menace in Cameron Britton's voice when Kemper asks if the two of them are friends.
• Double Entendre: At one point Tench quips "Wendy likes patterns" when the trio discusses possible similarities in behavior of different offenders. Coincidentally, Wendy's signature style is wearing a boldly patterned blouse or a shirt.
• The Dreaded: Manson, Kemper, and Speck.
• Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help: Holden crosses the line when he goes after Principal Wade.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Wayne Williams is seen in the crowd with the reporters two episodes before he shows up as a character.
• Everybody Did It: The Beverly Jean murder case. Frank and Benji raped and murdered her, and Rose helped destroy the evidence.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Averted when Holden and Tench get into a car accident with an actual Pinto. However this is a front-impact collision, not a rear-impact collision which risked damaging the fuel tank.
• Evil Is Bigger:
  • Edmund Kemper is 6 foot 9 (2 meters tall) and weighs between 250 and 300 pounds (120 to 130 kilos). He targeted petite women.
  • Jerry Brudos may not be so big, but he is still a big guy.
• Evil Orphan: Bill's adopted son Brian shows signs of being this.
• Evil Redhead: Jerry Brudos.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: A downplayed example in the last episode of season 1, when Debbie challenges Holden to explain her behavior after he gets back from another late night at work. He reads the scene, analyzes her actions, and as he describes the situation he realizes that she's breaking up with him.
• Fan Disservice:
  • There is nothing sexy about graphic sex crime scenes, that's for sure.
  • Holden's first case is a mentally ill hostage taker who believes himself invisible. So he strips naked in his attempt to fool law enforcement. Unfortunately, he is not.
    "I can see you're naked. And I can see you're cold."
  • Holden and Debbie's own sex scenes are far from a joy to watch, because of their overly belligerent attitude.
• Fat Bastard: Jerry Brudos.
• The Film of the Book: The series of the book, that is. The book is Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas, which is completely non-fiction.
• Food Interrogation: Since parole is out of question, the best the team can come up with the subjects is food. Kemper gets a pizza, Rissel gets his Trademark Favorite Food Big Red soda, and Pierce all the candy he can eat.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • Despite his various appearances in the opening and closing credits, BTK won't be caught in the timeline of at least the first two seasons of the show.
  • Despite the pushback pressing him to investigate white leads from the KKK, Ford's then-controversial profile of the Atlanta Child Killer unsub as a local young Black man ends up being more or less correct.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Episode 1, Bill Tench is standing beside the light switch in the lecture Holden overhears by Professor Rathman on David Berkowitz/Son of Sam
  • Kemper touching Holden's neck the first time they meet alone. By the last episode, Holden comes much closer to an up-close-and-personal demonstration of what Kemper does to his victims' necks.
  • When Holden first picks Bill up in the morning, the latter is sitting on his front stoop drinking his morning coffee, rather than being inside with his family. Note that he was in no way expecting Holden to be picking him up. It anticipates later revelations that all is not 100% well in the Tench household.
  • While trying to expand the unit, Bill and Wendy interview a Black Atlanta candidate that looks almost like Wayne Williams and the conversation immediately jumps to race.
  • Debbie drives a light-colored beetle very similar to Ted Bundy's.
  • Holden's shuddering collapse at the end of the first season, as medical professionals rush to help him, suggests the real John Douglas' near-death brush with viral encephalitis.
  • Charles Manson is mentioned a couple of times in Season 1, with Holden especially mentioning how much of a get he would be to interview. In Season 2, Holden finally gets his chance.
  • In his interview, Paul Bateson mentions that the idea of a gay man killing other homosexuals was deeply unsatisfying to and uncomfortable for the LGBTQ+ community, who would feel much better if it had been a homophobe, even though, as Bateson points out in an In-Universe case of Fridge Logic, any gay man at a bar at that time would have been on the look out for a homophobe trying to get them alone, and they would have likely sensed that something was off if a homophobe tried to pretend to be gay in order to lure them away. During the Atlanta investigation, the Black community has a similar reaction to the idea of Black man Wayne Williams being the one preying on Black children, and many try to claim that the KKK or other racists are the true culprits, regardless of how damning the evidence against Williams is. The team comes to the same conclusion as Bateson about how it would be easier for a predator to lull someone that they have at least some commonality with; a Black child in a southern state would naturally be more wary and cautious if a strange white man tried to, say, lead them away somewhere or offered them a car ride (and it would have caught the attention of more bystanders), whereas a Black man doing the same thing would have an easier time with it and wouldn't stand out to potential witnesses.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • The police's refusal to admit that there is such a thing, lest they come across as sympathizing with criminals, is a big early obstacle on Holden's project.
  • Charles Manson was born to a teenager who didn't want to become a mother and was abused by his stepfather.
  • Edmund Kemper was abused by his mother, who blamed him for everything wrong in her life and believed that he was a rapist before he even hit puberty.
  • Montie Rissell was neglected by his mother and abused by his stepfather.
• Free-Range Children: A common sight in Atlanta, where many boys spends most of the time outside, doing odd jobs for a few dollars. One episode opens with what appears to be the killer picking up a boy from the side of a road, but is revealed to be an Atlanta PD undercover sent by Holden to test his theory. Gregg in turn is sent to try this at a housing project in Baltimore, where the kids tell him to fuck off or take out his dick to prove he's not a cop. Serial killer Monte Rissel that the team interviews also grew up with very little supervision and access to alcohol, drugs and weapons.
• Freudian Trio: Bill is the Id, Holden is the Ego, and Wendy is the Superego.
• Gilligan Cut: In the second episode, Bill tells Holden there's no way he's going with him to interview Ed Kemper. Cut to the two of them sitting opposite Kemper.
• Granola Girl: Downplayed by Debbie.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Richard Speck.
• Hated by All: The agents receive little outright abuse over it, but this series is set during the nadir of the FBI's public image—as Debbie puts it, "They'll never forgive you for putting a tail on John and Yoko." This presents some obstacles near the beginning of the series as Holden tries to pull liberal academics to help the Behavioral Science Unit.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The project takes its toll on Bill and Holden in different ways. Bill becomes exhausted, irritable, and jaded, while Holden's success causes him to become disturbingly self-assured.
• Hellhole Prison: None of the prisons Holden and Bill visit are especially nice, but the Joliet Correctional Center where Richard Speck is held really stands out. The whole place seems like it's on the verge of a riot, with inmates screaming, trash being thrown everywhere, and the guards doing little to stop the mayhem.
• Heroic BSoD: Holden when he realizes that he is Alone with the Psycho in the Season 1 finale.
• Historical Domain Character: Real serial killers Edmund Kemper, Dennis Rader, Montie Rissell and Jerry Brudos appear as characters in the first season, as does spree killer Richard Speck and obscure child rapist and killer Darrell Gene Devier. Season 2 ups the ante with appearances from David Berkowitz, Elmer Wayne Henley Jr, William "Junior" Pierce, William Henry Hance, and Charles Manson himself (Manson Family member Tex Watson also appears).
• Hollywood History: In-universe, Speck gets annoyed by the claim that he raped eight women before murdering them. He only raped one.
• Idiot Ball: Despite Hance outright stating on the tape that he didn't see his standout victim as being white because she was an army grunt like himself, only Agent Smith states the obvious when the other agents fail to figure out the same conclusion (though it can be handwaved that Ford and Barney were already bored and frustrated by Hance).
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Kemper to Holden in the hospital.
• Incompatible Orientation: Holden has a mild infatuation with Dr. Carr, who, unbeknownst to him, is a lesbian.
  • Kay the bartender explains politely to the Marine who's trying to pick her up that she "play[s] for the other team." Happily for the lonely Dr. Carr, she says this within her earshot.
• Innocently Insensitive. Both Bill and Gregg make some heavily homophobic remarks in the presence of Wendy, and Holden keeps putting his foot in his mouth when talking about Black people.
• Insufferable Genius: Holden often comes across this way. It gets worse as the series progresses and the BSU's work starts to advance faster, although he is ultimately humbled by the Atlanta case.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Shepard. He's an unabashed old-school type who doesn't hide his dislike for the young and forward-thinking Holden, letting it be known through sarcastic, abrasive comments, and doesn't even acknowledge the good things he's done alongside Bill and Dr. Carr. But you can't deny he has the best interests of the FBI and its new Behavioral Sciences Unit in mind, even bordering on Only Sane Man territory when Holden oversteps his bounds in the Roger Wade case and goes overboard in his interview with Richard Speck.
• Kick the Dog: Richard Speck killing his pet bird in a sudden rage.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Dr. Carr feeds a street cat after she moves to a new apartment.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Both Dr. Carr and her girlfriend.
• Lying to the Perp: Holden takes this way off limits and is reprimanded by his superiors for it.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Debbie. She's an unusually abrasive specimen, but she's still the sexually liberated, pot-smoking free spirit to Holden's strait-laced overachiever.
  • Deconstructed with Kay in Season 2. At first she comes across as a cool and free-spirited foil to Wendy, but when Wendy hears how Kay lies about her life to her ex-husband and son, she realises Kay is just in denial.
• Meaningful Echo: S1:E2: Kemper: “What do you want from me?” Holden: “I have no idea.” S1:E10: Kemper “Why are you here, Holden?” Holden: “I don't know.”
• The Millstone: Gregg Smith, the new guy in the unit.
• The Mole: Gregg Smith is introduced to the team as a hiring candidate with strong personal connections to Chief Shepard, causing Holden to immediately suspect him as Shepard's spy. Tench and Carr don't dismiss the idea, but decide they have nothing to hide anyway and he ends up hired. He's decidedly not Shepard's spy, just dangerously honest. He ends up going around Shepard to send the Speck tape to an internal investigation after everyone, including Shepard, agrees to cover up Holden's misconduct during Speck's interview.
• Mommy Issues: Very common among serial, often lust-motivated killers.
• Monster Fangirl: Speck has multiple female fans, many of whom mail him pornographic photos of themselves. Principal Wade is worshipped by the youngest female teachers in his school.
• Monster of the Week: The fictionalized cases like Mrs. Gonzalez's, Beverly Jean's and Principal Wade, although these are stretched over two or more episodes.
• Morality Pet:
  • Debbie for Holden.
  • Bill's family.
  • The cat for Dr. Carr.
  • Played straight, then subverted with Speck's pet bird. As he puts it, he found it in the yard with a broken wing and nursed it back to health with meatloaf and an eyedropper. However, he angrily ends his interview by throwing it into a fan.
• Must State If You're a Cop: The kids in Baltimore that Gregg tries to approach demand he show them his dick to prove he's not a cop.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Dr. Carr after she realizes that a perp who confessed to Bill and Holden is now facing the death penalty. Defied by Holden, who refuses repeatedly to feel guilty about what his intervention meant for Principal Wade or Devier.
• Never My Fault: A common theme with the interviewed killers. Ranging from Brudos' and Pierce's outright and implausible denial to Kemper's rationalization. In turn, Holden himself doesn't seem to grasp how often his actions cause problems for other people.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The Lawrence Bittaker and Ray Norris tape.
• Only Sane Man: Downplayed. Holden and Carr are both competent and intelligent in their own ways, but Bill tends to be the most frank and practical of the three.
• Pædo Hunt: The Principal Wade arc. The show doesn't confirm or deny that Wade is a pedophile, but the stereotypical glasses, refusal to stop tickling children even when directly requested by their parents and the superintendent, and his strategy to deflect criticism—accusing the complainers of having the indecent thoughts, not him—sure don't help.
• Perp Sweating: Almost Once per Episode. Called mindfucking by Speck.
• The Profiler: The origin of the trope.
• Psychological Projection: Ironically despite being decently versed in psychology themselves, both Bill and Holden frequently use this, particularly in the Beverly Jean case.
  • Immediately after revealing his strained marriage due to the ambiguous disorder of his son, Bill rather disturbingly starts talking about how married men experience a life full of pressures that may build up until they snap. Not only does Holden realize this, Officer Ocasek, who has barely met Bill, realizes it too and shoots him a concerned glance.
  • Holden also does this after speaking to Beverly Jean’s mother in law: he notes how a Manic Pixie Dream Girl like Beverly wants to settle down with someone who is sensitive with a stable income, and given how he attempted to discuss marriage with his own girlfriend Debbie, it’s clear he’s having similar anxieties.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Bill is red to Holden's blue.
• Scary Black Man: One of Holden's (white) students in hostage negotiation in the pilot pretends to be an angry Black man.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: When Ford visits Kemper at the hospital, there is a shot of Kemper staring at the ceiling while Ford monologues, where the glare of the light gives a very sinister effect. Camille Bell on the other hand is a non-villanous example.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The long-time babysitter for the Tenches resigns as soon as she finds a murder photo hidden in Brian's bed. Bill has to convince her to take the day's pay.
• Self-Made Orphan: Kemper killed his mother and grandparents.
• Sequel Hook: Dennis Rader, still yet to make his debut in the story proper, appears one last time in the season 1 finale as he destroys all his "keepsakes".
• Serial Killer: The main draw of the show, obviously, though in a case of Shown Their Work they are still known as "sequential" or mass killers at first. "Serial killer" is introduced in Episode 9.
• Serious Business: Kemper reading in the press that Holden considers him his friend.
• Sherlock Scan: Unsure of her own emotions in the moment, Debbie asks Holden to try one on her in the first season finale. He realizes she wants to break up with him.
• Shout-Out:
  • Bill Tench's line to Holden Ford about his son, Brian, "I wish I knew what went on inside that head of his", is an almost verbatim quote of "Doctor" Westphall's line in the last episode of St. Elsewhere about his autistic son, Tommy Westphall.
  • During the scenes at Harvard, Holden and Bill sit on a couch together as they wait outside an office. The exact same location and shot is used when the Winkelvosses wait outside the Dean of Harvard's office in The Social Network, another David Fincher work.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Richard Speck, shown to great effect in his first scene. Not that other characters are notably gentle in speech.
• Small Reference Pools: Averted. Famous real-life offenders (Kemper, Brudos, Speck) and very obscure ones (Rissell, Devier) are featured in Season 1. Season 2 features Berkowitz, Henley, Hance, Pierce, and Manson himself.
• Society Is to Blame: Discussed. Debbie studies sociology and talks often about Emile Durkheim's theories. During the Atlanta Child Murders investigation, the GBI agent that monitors the local Klan chapter doesn't think all the murders are connected, and are more a result of the high risk lifestyles many of the kids lead, saying “If you're looking for a monster, it's poverty”
• Start of Darkness: The unit comes with the moniker "stressor" to label these.
• Storefront Television Display: Several sequences are shown of the FBI's progress on a group of '70s-style wood-paneled TV sets in a storefront.
• Tattooed Crook. Speck's "Born to raise Hell" tattoo is discussed as a part of his descent into his criminal personality. Pierce and Manson sport a large amount of prison tattoos as well.
• Tears of Fear: Holden in the last episode of Season One in anticipation of getting violated and murdered, not necessarily in that order, by Edmund Kemper. Culminating in a debilitating panic attack once he's fled the room.
• Teaser-Only Character: An unusual example is Dennis Rader (BTK), who appears solely in the cold opens of each episode of the first season beginning in the second one.
• Technology Marches On: In-universe example when Brudos, who has been in jail since 1969, is surprised to find that the FBI's tape recorder has a built-in microphone resembling a tiny silver panel. Bill tells him that there are also photo cameras outside that fit in a pocket.
• Teens Are Monsters: Psychopathy takes up a notch with puberty, and so did most interviewed killers.
• Third-Person Person: Brudos is a pathological liar who won't accept his guilt, but he is also a psychopath dying to talk about his crimes to relive them, so he ends becoming this. All while insisting that "the killer" is not himself.
• Thoughtcrime: Holden becomes excited about the potential to look for early markers of psychopathy. However, when he applies these ideas to Principle Wade, who is unquestionably creepy but doesn't seem to have actually broken any laws, Shepard outright accuses him of being the Thought Police.
• Too Dumb to Live: Audiences will be forgiven for screaming at their televisions due to the complete lack of common sense Holden exercises in his interviews with Edmund Kemper, including having Kemper's handcuffs removed, eating food that he's made, and even letting Kemper put his hands on his throat. Holden only survives when Kemper has him at his complete and total mercy because Kemper seemingly likes him enough not to kill him (and also probably realizes that injuring or murdering a federal agent will get him in a lot of trouble, including potentially the death penalty).
• Too Smart for Strangers: Holden has the hardest time trying to talk an elementary school class about the Macdonald triad, because of the strict censorship of "bad words" by the school principal.
• Tour Guide Detective: A major theme of the show is the changing nature of the FBI in the post-Hoover era.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior:
  • The Macdonald triad is showcased on Episode 8.
  • Kemper decapitated his sister's dolls.
  • Brudos brought a pair of high heels from a landfill when he was 5 and wore them until his mother burned them. He later stole his teacher's shoes.
  • Bill's son is emotionally detached, has a morbid curiosity about his father's job, and bites other kids at school. One of the plot threads in season 2 revolves around Brian leading a group of older boys into an house where they strangle a toddler while he watches and later suggesting that they should tie him to a cross Jesus-style.
  • Tanya's kid at the hotel is oddly blase about the prospect of Holden being a pedophile trying to solicit him for services, and the kids in Baltimore Greggs tries to get come with him prove he's not a cop by showing them his his penis.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story:
  • Bill and Holden are fictional, but based on Robert Ressler and John E. Douglas, the real developers of modern criminal profiling. Douglas's book serves as the basis for the show and he is credited as an advisor.
  • Principal Wade is inspired by a school principal Douglas was asked about, although the principal had already been fired.
  • Kemper's scene with Holden in the season 1 finale is inspired by an incident that happened between Kemper and Ressler in prison, not a hospital. It also wasn't intended as a lesson: Kemper picked up that Ressler was somewhat agitated at not being let out immediately once their interview was over, and so decided to troll Ressler by joking with him about how helpless the latter was in the situation. Kemper really did attempt suicide with a pen case, but he did it years earlier in 1974 and it wasn't an attempt to lure someone to him.
  • Speck killed his pet bird as shown, but he didn't do it during his FBI interview.
  • The Beverly Jean case is based on a real murder, but instead of involving the victim's fiance and future siblings-in-law, it was her fiance and his (blood) brother and sister.
  • The child killing Brian is involved with is based on a real crime.
• Wham Shot: The final shot of season 1, in which Dennis burns his sketches... our first look at his crimes.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: In-story. Many FBI agents and police officers have this opinion, to Holden's exasperation.
• Women Are Wiser: Debbie is more grounded than Holden, and Dr. Carr is the most intelligent of the three main characters. The show has only pitched the team against male offenders.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Crossing over with Batman Gambit, Kemper attempts to kill himself with a pen to make Holden meet with him again... in a hospital room with very little security compared to the prison kitchen.

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