Mindhunter Trivia | 30 facts about the series

«Mindhunter» is a Netflix series based on true events of the FBI agents who are tasked to solve open cases of serial killers.

Let’s find out more about the series!

1. Mindhunter is an American psychological crime thriller.
2. Mindhunter was created by Joe Penhall.
3. It debuted in 2017.
4. It was based on the 1995 true-crime book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker.
5. The executive producers include Penhall, Charlize Theron, and David Fincher, the latter of whom has served as the series’ most frequent director and de facto showrunner, overseeing many of the scriptwriting and production processes.
6. The series stars Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, and Anna Torv, and it follows the founding of the Behavioral Science Unit in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the late 1970s and the beginning of criminal profiling.
7. The first season of 10 episodes debuted worldwide on Netflix on October 13, 2017.
8. The second season was released by Netflix on August 16, 2019.
9. In January 2020, Netflix announced that the potential for a third season was on indefinite hold as Fincher wanted to pursue other projects, but may “revisit [the series] in the future”.
10. In February 2023, Fincher confirmed that the series was officially over.
11. The interview scenes are based upon the actual interviews with said serial killers, sometimes almost word for word.
12. The characters Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) are based on real life FBI profilers John Douglas and Robert K. Ressler, who pioneered the field of criminal profiling in the 1970s.
13. The show is based on the real-life experiences of John Douglas, a special agent who pioneered the practice of psychological profiling during his 25 years with the FBI.
14. Kazu Hiro and his prosthetics makeup team spent six hours working on actors Oliver Cooper and Damon Herriman for their respective roles as David Berkowitz and Charles Manson, so that when they walked onto the set they were the very embodiment of their real-life characters.
15. Anna Torv’s Dr. Wendy Carr is based on Ann Burgess, a certified psychiatric clinical nurse and specialist in assessing and treating trauma in rape victims. Latterly associated with FBI agents John Douglas and Robert K. Ressler in the Behavioral Science Unit devoted to the development of psychological profiling for serial killers.
16. While listing off infamous killers they could interview, one of the detectives mentions the killer Herbert Mullin, who was murdering people at the time in Santa Cruz, as was Ed Kemper, one of the main characters in this series.
17. The two of them reigned terror on Santa Cruz for years, police believed at the time that it was only one person committing all the murders. When police arrested Mullin, after he shot an old man in the middle of the street in front of multiple witnesses, the police thought they had caught the one and only killer. 3 months later Edmund Kemper came forward and confessed his murders.
18. In January 2020, Netflix announced that a potential third season was being put on indefinite hold and cast members Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany and Anna Torv were being released from their contracts. Fincher’s busy schedule precipitated the move, but the company made clear that the show was not being canceled, at that it is possible to be revisited in the future.
19. Charlize Theron and David Fincher had introduced the project to HBO in 2009.
20. The prison scenes at Vacaville, CA, where Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton) is interviewed were filmed at the former Pennsylvania State Prison at Greensburg, including the exterior. The scenes with Jerome Brudos (Happy Anderson) were filmed in the same facility, in a cage specially built in the gymnasium. At the time of the series release, Kemper (68), was still serving 8 life sentences at Vacaville’s California Medical Facility where Charles Manson had also served time.
21. Shot using a customized, one-of-a-kind version of the RED Epic Dragon built specifically for David Fincher, called the RED Xenomorph. Fincher directed Alien³ (1992), from which the camera’s title gets its name.
22. In October 2017, Slate reported that Twitter is full of people who mistakenly believe that the actress playing Wendy Carr is Carrie Coon, when in fact Carr is played by Anna Torv.
23. This happened so often that Coon started directly replying to and correcting followers on Twitter who complimented her on her Mindhunter performance, and she also changed her official Twitter bio to read, “That’s not me on Mindhunter.”
24. At the end of Season 1 Episode 6, Episode #1.6 (2017), the show closes with The Boomtown Rats’ song, “I Don’t Like Mondays” which was written by Bob Geldof after the 1979 mass shooting by 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer at Grover Cleveland Elementary in San Diego, CA. The song’s title is attributed to Spencer’s quoted reason for the shooting: “I don’t like Mondays.”
25. This will be the second Netflix series with David Fincher as a producer. Fincher is a producer for House of Cards (2013).
26. The character Debbie Mitford, played by Hannah Gross, drives a beige VW Beetle, the same type of car the famous serial killer, Ted Bundy, drove to commit the majority of his murders.
27. In a few scenes taking place outdoors at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA automatic weapons fire can be heard in the distance. Although this could be FBI agents training, Quantico is also an active USMC training facility.
28. The reel to reel tape recorder featured in the opening credits (and later in the series) is based on the Sony TC-510-2. It is not a real recorder, but rather a prop, custom-built to an extremely high standard of finish. The portable cassette recorder later used in season 1 is a Sony TC-D5. The cassette machine used in the Quantico basement office is a Nakamichi 550 portable cassette deck.
29. In Australia, the two historic and most competitive motor company makes are Holden (a General Motors brand) and Ford. The lead character’s name is Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff). In S2/E3 when Holden checks in at the Omni International Hotel in Atlanta, he has to clarify to the receptionist that his last name is Ford, adding, “It’s a bad joke in Australia. Like here.”
30. Several scenes filmed in Coraopolis, PA, in particular on the 900 block of 7th Avenue.