Is Criminal Minds Based on a True Story? Facts About The Crime Drama Tv Show

Introduction

As we await the release of the final season of the crime drama TV series Criminal Minds, we would use this opportunity to dissect some interesting facts about the highly-rated American TV show. Among the bothering questions that will be answered in this article is whether or not the television series Criminal Minds is based on a true story?

The Making of the Series

Criminal Minds was created by Jeff Davis. The TV show is of police procedural, crime drama, thriller, mystery and science fiction genres. It starred actors and actresses like Mandy Patinkin, Lola Glaudini, Thomas Gibson, Shemar Moore, A.J. Cook, Matthew Gray Gubler, Kirsten Vangsness, Joe Mantega, Paget Brewster and many others. The show’s executive producers are Mark Gordon, Jeff Davis, Deborah Spera, Edward Allen Bernero, Simon Mirren, Chris Mundy, Erica Messer, Breen Frazier, Janine Sherman Barrios, Glenn Kershaw and Harry Bring. So far, 14 seasons of the show has aired, with a total of 314 episodes.

The Mark Gordon Company, Entertainment One and Touchstone Television were the production companies of Criminal Minds for its first two seasons. ABC Studios joined in production of the show in its third season and have continued to be involved in the show till date. Paramount Network Television, CBS Television Studios and CBS Paramount Network Television have stock with the TV show from when it started till present.

The show’s distributors are CBS Television and Disney – ABC Domestic TV Worldwide. The former distributes the show in the United States while the Latter distributes the show worldwide. The TV show centres around a team of FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit Operating in Quantico, Virginia. What differentiates this show from other procedural crime drama is that it focuses on profiling its criminals rather than the crimes committed.

Is Criminal Minds Based On A True Story?

There have been reasons to believe that the crime drama TV show might just be based on a true-life story. Anyway, producers of the show have come out to state that the show is not based on a true-life story but rather, it gets some of its inspiration from real-life criminals and criminal cases. The main characters on the show are all fictional and not linked to anyone in real life. Even though some episodes of the show might have been adopted from similar criminal cases in real life, characters names were changed to protect their real identities.

The first known episode which was inspired by a real-life criminal is “Natural Born Killers”, the 8th episode of the show's first season. The Criminal on this episode carried out crimes which were similar to the crimes carried out by Richard Kuklinski (The Iceman) the infamous American hitman convicted of several murder cases.

The show’s 11th episode titled “Blood Hungry” is also similar to the crimes committed by  Richard Trenton Chase, aka 'The Vampire of Sacramento'. Like in the show, the criminal suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and he is known for serial killing around  Sacramento, California.

On the 14th episode of the show titled “Riding the Lightning”, similar crimes committed by Fred and Rosemary West, the killer couple, were revealed. The couple would kill their victims and bury them around their home.

Other cases on the show where real-life event and criminals were portrayed and revealed are in the episodes “Unfinished Business” ( season 1 episode 15), “The Tribe” (season 1 episode 16), “Damaged” (season 3 episode 14), “Omnivore” (season 4 episode 18), “The Big Wheel” (season 4 episode 22), “To Hell…“ (season 4 episode 25), “Our Darkest Hour” (season 5 episode 23) and (The Thirteenth Hour” (season 6 episode 13).

There are only a few movies with storylines that are taken from real-life events and ​turned into cinematic. Much of these films are inspired by true personal stories of either tragedy or success. The Primetime drama series, Criminal Minds is largely presumed to fall in this category following its creation of over 300 episodes centering on kidnappings, serial murderers and various other crimes worthy of FBI's investigations.