Top 20 Most Surprising Criminal Minds Reveals

#20: Rossi’s Daughter

“Fate”

The love life of David Rossi has been somewhat of a running joke on “Criminal Minds.” He earned a reputation as a womanizer with multiple marriages and divorces. He married the second Mrs. Rossi, Hayden Montgomery, in the 1980s and the couple lived in Paris for a time. However, things didn’t work out between the two, and the courtship ended soon after. Hayden gave birth to their daughter Joy and didn’t tell her ex-husband knowing he was too busy with the FBI to raise a child. Decades later, Rossi catches a young woman stalking him who drops the bombshell that she’s his daughter and that he has a grandson. Joy appeared a few more times in the show as their father-daughter bond grew.

#19: Elias Voit Has a Family

“Sicarius”

With infamous serial killers like Dennis Rader and Ted Bundy who used their normalcy to get away with murder, an unsub having a family may not seem too surprising. But when it comes to Season 16’s main unsub Elias Voit, aka the “Sicarius Killer” whose lair is an underground shipping container, we don’t expect him to be a loving husband and father. By the time he’s on the BAU’s radar, he’s already buried “kill kits” around the country, established a network of serial killers, and wracked up his own high body count along the way. Voit can’t escape his traumatic upbringing by his murderous uncle, and though he may appear like a regular family man to some, he struggles to contain his urge to kill.

#18: Maeve’s Stalker

“Zugzwang”

In Season 8, Spencer Reid started talking to a new love interest, Dr. Maeve Donovan, but only over the phone. She’s had a stalker threatening her for nearly a year, making her reclusive and very cautious with their interactions. When she goes missing, Reid and the team look at her ex-fiancé, Bobby Putnam. He’s innocent, but the same can’t be said for his girlfriend, Diane Turner. The BAU digs into her past and learns that she was one of Maeve’s research assistants. When Maeve rejected her thesis, she couldn’t earn a Ph.D. Diane then set out to take over her life because, in her eyes, she ruined hers. Sadly, Diane takes her own life along with Maeve’s.

#17: Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy

“Risky Business”

When the BAU travels to Wyoming to investigate four recent deaths, evidence points to the deceased taking their own lives. Once Garcia starts digging into their internet lives, she finds that they were actually playing a game. Their deaths were completely accidental, but someone encouraged them to play. At first, the team looks at the victims’ classmate Christopher Summers, who initially seems like the obvious suspect. After talking to him, they determine that his father, Will, is the real unsub. Will works as an EMT, and because of his presumably undiagnosed Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy, he convinced over 30 players to fatally endanger themselves, just so he could attempt to revive them.

#16: Gideon Is Murdered by an Unsub

“Nelson’s Sparrow”

After Jason Gideon’s abrupt departure from the BAU in Season 3, there was still some hope he’d come back. His former colleagues still mention him, and he appears in flashbacks, but his career as a profiler was over. In Season 10, Gideon is murdered off-screen by Donnie Mallick, an unsub from his and Rossi’s past. After a woman’s body was found matching the unsub’s MO, he started looking into the case again, and Mallick killed him before he could be identified. Considering actor Mandy Patinkin wanted off the show, we knew the likelihood of Gideon returning was very slim. However, we also didn’t expect the series creators to officially kill him off, especially seven seasons later.

#15: A Young Unsub

“A Shade of Gray”

The tragic death of Kyle Murphy might be one of the BAU’s most disturbing cases due to the ages of the victim and the unsub. The team hits the ground running when they arrive in New Jersey searching for a missing boy. His parents are distraught and the media attention is overwhelming. And after his body is found in the woods, the BAU tracks down the likely culprit, registered sex offender Hugh Rollins. But the evidence doesn’t quite add up. Prentiss sits down with Kyle’s older brother Danny and witnesses the boy’s serious anger issues and lack of remorse. The parents and local investigator reveal the truth in a shocking conclusion – Danny killed his brother for breaking one of his toys.

#14: Voit’s Serial Killer Network Has a New Leader

Various

The overarching antagonist of “Criminal Minds: Evolution” is Elias Voit, aka the Sicarius Killer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he created a network for serial killers, providing them with resources and a place to share videos of their crimes. After he’s arrested in the Season 16 finale, the BAU thinks it’s shut down. However, the network resurfaces in Season 18 with a new leader called the Disciple, real name Constance Teresa “Tessa” Merrick. Like Voit, she was a prisoner of his uncle, Cyrus Lebrun, and after Voit killed him, she went off on her own and eventually found the network. She succeeded in her mission to free Voit, like he unknowingly freed her, and taunted the FBI along the way.

#13: Norman’s Family Was Already Dead

“Normal”

The team heads to California, where someone dubbed the Road Warrior has shot three people while driving on the freeway. They discover the unsub is Norman Hill, a man so traumatized by the death of his youngest daughter that he had a psychotic break and went on a spree. From his point of view, his wife and two other daughters don’t respect him at all. The BAU worries that he’ll harm his family, but once they visit his home, they find out that he killed them days ago. There’s a similar case in Season 17. Roger Song killed men he believed had assaulted his wife when they were actually sperm donors. Like Norman, we see him interacting with her and the baby, but they were just hallucinations.

#12: Emily Prentiss Is Alive

“Lauren” & “It Takes a Village”

Years before SSA Emily Prentiss joined the Behavioral Analysis Unit, she worked as a spy for Interpol. While under the alias of Lauren Reynolds, she cozied up to international arms dealer Ian Doyle, pretending to be his girlfriend. After he escapes from a prison camp, Doyle tracks down Emily and her former colleagues, and not everyone makes it out alive. During a face-to-face showdown, he stabs her and flees. At the hospital, Hotch and JJ break the news to the team that she didn’t survive her injuries. But in the final scene, JJ’s in Paris delivering an envelope to Emily in disguise. We’re relieved but the team doesn’t find out until the next season.

#11: A Woman Abducted Her Niece

“Seven Seconds”

The clock is ticking when the BAU arrives at a Virginia mall where a young girl named Katie Jacobs has gone missing while shopping with her family. As the team starts questioning her aunt, uncle, and cousin, they realize they’re harboring a dark secret. At first, her uncle Richard seems like her kidnapper, but after he’s interrogated by Hotch and Prentiss, they turn their attention to Katie’s aunt, Susan. She was more than understandably angry about what her sick husband had done, but irrationally directed that anger toward her innocent niece and abducted her. Luckily, Katie is found and resuscitated. But the family is destroyed. “Seven Seconds” is one of the saddest episodes in the series, and has a truly shocking, heartbreaking unsub reveal.

#10: The Truth About Gold Star

“Message in a Bottle”

The first season of “Criminal Minds: Evolution” introduced Gold Star, a secret group of killers. With help from Voit, Rossi realizes someone created it using an old white paper he co-authored with Gideon. It essentially gave a step-by-step guide on how to mold and control budding psychopaths with a predisposition for murder. Rossi, Gideon, and Gideon’s ex-wife Jill had good intentions with their research. But it ended up in the wrong hands, namely cult leader Frank Church, who trained killers at the Stuart House, a facility claiming it was for troubled youth. We also learn that one of them is the brother of late FBI Deputy Director Doug Bailey. The program itself is shockingly awful. Knowing the BAU unintentionally provided the blueprint is surprising, to say the least.

#9: Adam & Amanda Are One Person

“Conflicted”

When two spring breakers are found deceased, the BAU heads to South Padre Island to investigate. The kill and clean up methods suggest a partnership; a woman who lures the men into a hotel room and a man who assaults and murders them. After his interactions with the hotel’s maintenance man, Adam Jackson, Reid figures out that, like Tobias Hankel, he has Dissociative Identity Disorder. His alternate personality, Amanda, surfaces when she feels Adam’s safety is threatened. She targeted alpha males whose personalities and behavior resembled that of his abusive stepfather, whom she almost killed before she was arrested. Reid tries to save Adam and Amanda, but in the end, the latter completely takes over.

#8: Lindsey Vaughn & Cat Adams Framed Reid

“Green Light”

In Season 12, Dr. Spencer Reid is wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. When he sees that Lindsey Vaughn, a victim from an old case, is posing as his mother’s nurse, it triggers his distorted memories of the Nadie Ramos murder. Lindsey is now a contract killer and is framing Reid at the behest of her girlfriend, Cat Adams, a former hitwoman who has had a vendetta against him. Cat also says that she’s pregnant with his baby, but we soon find out that the real father is Lionel Wilkins, one of the prison guards who made sure Reid’s time in prison was as awful as possible. Lindsey kills Lionel and gets arrested. Cat remains in prison, but briefly returns in Season 15.

#7: Garcia’s Date Is a Serial Killer

“Lucky” & “Penelope”

When tech analyst Penelope Garcia sees an attractive guy having computer trouble in a coffee shop, she kindly lends him her expertise. He introduces himself as James Colby Baylor, they exchange numbers, and later, he asks her out to dinner. Garcia is taken aback but agrees to the date, unaware of his true motives. When the night ends, James shoots her and leaves assuming he killed her. His real name is Jason Clark Battle, a sheriff’s deputy who shot innocent people just so he’d be seen as a hero for attempting to save them even if he was unsuccessful. Since Garcia tagged some of the unsolved cases he was responsible for, he believed the FBI was on to him.

#6: Reid’s Parents Helped Cover Up a Murder

“Memoriam”

While on a missing child’s case in Spencer Reid’s hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada, he experiences a recurring nightmare, of a deceased boy in a basement. When he finds out that it’s Riley Jenkins, a kid from his past, he’s determined to figure out who murdered him, and what his connection is to the case. Reid has flashbacks of his mother Diana, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and his estranged father William burning bloody clothes in their backyard. In pursuing his dad as a suspect, he uncovers his parents’ involvement in covering up the murder of Riley’s killer, Gary Brendan Michaels, at the hands of Riley’s father Lou. It was Diana’s clothes they destroyed after she stumbled upon the bloody crime scene.

#5: A Woman Unknowingly Attends Therapy with Her Daughter’s Kidnapper

“Hope”

Almost seven years following the disappearance of her daughter, Monica Kingston goes missing after attending a victim support group meeting led by Penelope Garcia. She left with fellow group member Bill Rogers who confessed to taking Hope years before. With promises of reuniting them, Monica goes along. But the longer she’s with him the more she learns about her daughter’s life under her captor’s control. Bill finally tells her that he joined the support group after Hope took her own life when she was pregnant. Knowing that Monica regularly saw the man who abducted, severely mistreated, and killed her daughter is beyond devastating.

#4: One Unsub, Three Personalities

“The Big Game” & “Revelations”

The BAU gets called to Atlanta, Georgia after a married couple is found violently murdered in their home. What’s unusual about the case is that the unsub called 911 before the victims were killed, naming the perpetrator as Raphael. The team is confused by the conflicting evidence which shows both an organized and disorganized killer. After Reid and JJ go to question Tobias Hankel, a potential witness who turns out to be the unsub… or rather unsubs. While we hear multiple voices speaking throughout the episode, we only see one person. They determine Hankel has a dissociative identity disorder and alternates between three personalities – himself, his father, and the archangel Raphael.

#3: Morgan’s Past Trauma

“Profiler, Profiled”

While visiting his hometown of Chicago, Derek Morgan is arrested as a suspect in the murder of Damien Walters. Of course, he’s innocent of the crime but a local detective believes he’s the culprit. When the team arrives to help Morgan, they dig into his past even though he adamantly tells them not to. But he later reveals his long-hidden secret that his former football coach and youth center operator Carl Buford physically mistreated him for years. Buford did the same unspeakable things to other boys including Damien Walters, whom he killed and framed Morgan for the crime.

#2: George Foyet Is the Reaper

“Omnivore”

In the 1990s, a prolific serial killer dubbed the Reaper terrorized the city of Boston. This was Hotch’s first BAU case which abruptly ended when the murders stopped. After years of being dormant, the Reaper returns to kill again, prompting Hotch and the team to assist in the investigation. They speak to George Foyet, the only victim to survive the unsub, who now lives off the grid under different aliases. But as the body count rises, the BAU discovers that Foyet is the Reaper and purposefully wounded himself posing as a victim. This mastermind went on to become one of the most formidable unsubs in the series.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.

JJ’s Feelings for Spencer, “Truth or Dare”

A Hostage Situation Leads JJ to Make a Confession

Under the Bed, “Saturday”

The Unsettling Discovery of a Stalker’s Hiding Place

JJ’s Miscarriage, “The Forever People”

A Mission That Led to a Devastating Loss

The Wife Did It, “The Perfect Storm”

Amber Canardo Is the Real Unsub, Not Her Husband

Garcia Is the Dirty Dozen, “Target Rich”

Penelope Discovers She’s Being Targeted by a Network of Hitmen

#1: Floyd’s Secret Ingredients

“Lucky”

When it comes to Floyd Feylinn Ferell, there are quite a few shocking things about him, starting with what he did to his victims. The BAU travels to Bridgewater, Florida, where multiple women have been killed in what appears to be ritualistic murders. They were also found with some, er, special ingredients in their stomachs. The second surprise is that he’s a Satan-worshipping cannibal with a human recipe book and his own barbecue shop. Our third and most horrifying shock is that he served homemade chili to the Tracey Lambert search volunteers, and they unknowingly consumed the very victim they’re looking for.

What reveal shocked you the most? Let us know in the comments.