5 Criminal Minds Unsubs So Absurd It Was Fun

The 'monster of the week' format ensured that over the course of its original 15-season, 300-plus episode run, Criminal Minds seems to have shown all sorts of killer psychological portraits and motivations, from the completely insane and truly outlandish to the utterly baffling.

And then there was this unique kind of Criminal Minds unsub - the completely ridiculous.

Whether they were based on real-life serial killers or created by writers grasping at straws as they wrote a 20-plus-episode season year after year, some episodes still make viewers laugh out loud to this day.

But hey, when you go for a ride, you have to be willing to enjoy a bumpy road, right? Let's remember Criminal Minds' most absurd and offbeat unsubs and be glad we got to see their stories.

Travis James

S7E7 There's No Place Like Home

The story of Travis James is certainly one of the most memorable. He kidnapped teenage boys and took some of their body parts in the hopes of 'rebuilding' his brother, believing that a tornado that killed him could bring him back to life. What's more, James was attracted to stormy weather and used tornadoes to dispose of the bodies of his victims.

John Nelson

S8E4 God Complex

Remember the guy who drugged his victims while pretending to give them vaccines in a medical van and amputated their right legs to graft onto the body of his wife, who was born with one leg? All because he could not settle for being married to a 'defective' woman. Crazy, huh?

Wallace Hines/Jesse Gentry

S9E1&2 The Inspiration & The Inspired

Hines was the serial rapist and killer obsessed with the praying mantis and a woman from his youth whom he killed and decapitated, taking her head with him. After that, he started killing all women who looked like her, fearing that they would come after him like a female mantis.

As if this plot were not messed up enough, it was later revealed that Hines had a twin brother, Jesse, who was also a serial killer. What are the odds of that?

Bryce Jarvis

S12E11 Surface Tension

Jarvis is the delusional rapist-turned-serial-killer who survived a sinkhole that swallowed his whole house and parents and thought it was Satan who saved him. So he started killing good people and dumping their bodies near other sinkholes, hoping they would go straight to hell as a thank you to his dark master.

Jess Carney

S13E10 Submerged

Carney thought he was a pirate. Yep, that happened on Criminal Minds, too. When he was a kid, he played pirates with his best friend. But when the friend drowned in a lake due to a flood, Carney went into a downward spiral and years later started killing people in their pools and stealing their jewelry and money to dump in the lake to create a pirate treasure in honor of his late friend. Now those are friendship goals if ever we saw them.