11 things Hollywood gets wrong about being an FBI agent - and one thing it gets right

It's a scenario that plays out in "Die Hard," "Law and Order," and "Dexter," just to name a few — stony-faced or smug federal agents swooping in to seize control of a case and shut out local law enforcement. "TV Tropes," an online wiki of fictional works, refers to this trope as "Jurisdiction Friction."

All three of the former agents that spoke with Business Insider listed this portrayal as a major pet peeve.

"That is just such a cliché," Williams says. "A local detective or sheriff is working on something and the FBI comes in and takes over and just treats everybody terribly. That is the worst. When I see that I just think, 'Doesn't whoever wrote this have any original ideas?'"

Williams isn't just irked because the trope depicts the agency in a negative light — she says the stereotype can be self-perpetuating, causing local law enforcement agencies and other institutions to regard the FBI with suspicion.

"We might have to break down some resistance before we can even do our job, because people expect us to be like that," Williams says.

Navarro says the trope is fundamentally untrue. When a case falls under FBI jurisdiction, the Bureau typically establishes a task force with local law enforcement agencies. Additionally, the FBI may become involved to provide investigative resources that some smaller police forces simply don't have. Navarro recalled working on a kidnapping in Arizona, where the FBI provided over a hundred agents to assist the local sheriff's department.

"We don't just walk in and say, okay boys and girls, we're taking over," he says.

Voss notes that there are some situations where he can understand why local law enforcement agencies might get a negative impression of the Bureau. He recalled arresting the wife of a fugitive on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list outside a convenience store in a small town in Pennsylvania. Voss and his partner were driving an unmarked car when they seized the woman, which alarmed two local cops who just happened to be parked outside.

However, Voss says he believes that fiction exaggerates the issue, citing the movie "The Negotiator," which features antagonistic FBI agents who wrangle with local authorities over a case.

"They were sort of this threatening, looming presence," Voss says. "The FBI just doesn't operate like that."

Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator and CEO of the Black Swan Group, explains how fiction can have a negative impact on how FBI agents interact with the public and other law enforcement agencies.

"Fictional television does in fact have an effect on peoples' opinions," he says. "And so many people just expect FBI agents to be jerks."

Williams says that, in her experience, practical jokes in the office were fairly common.

"We'd take our jobs seriously but not necessarily ourselves," she says.

Navarro says that this cliché can cause people to view the agency as a monolith of stiff, sinister bureaucrats and sunglasses-wearing, suited men.

"Obviously most FBI agents are concerned about crime and national security, but they also, for the most part, have families," he says. "They have kids, they have sick days off, they worry about their wives or their husbands, and they attend birthday parties — just regular stuff."

In fiction, FBI agents frequently do battle with a frightening enemy — serial killers.

The novel and subsequent movie adaptation of "Silence of the Lambs" seemingly kicked off this trend, pitting FBI Academy student Clarice Starling against the sadistic Buffalo Bill. In the same vein, the characters on "Criminal Minds" continue to track down serial murderers around the country.

Williams, who served as a special agent for 26 years and mainly investigated economic crimes, noted that, while the FBI does investigate serial killers, only a small percentage of agents handle such cases.

The prevalence of the federal agent vs. the serial murderer trope points more to our culture's fascination with serial killers, as as Dr. Scott Bonn previously wrote in "Psychology Today," than how the Bureau actually operates.

In "Silence of the Lambs," the protagonist is pulled directly out of training at the FBI Academy in order to help hunt down a serial killer.

Williams says this just doesn't happen in real life.

"That's kind of funny," Williams says. "Clarice has to be pulled right out of Quantico, they can't find anybody else?"

She also notes that the television series "Quantico" plays into the same trope.

"While these characters were still in the Academy, they're given these assignments to work on — real cases," Williams says. "It's like, I don't think so."

Shows that depict FBI agents at work, including "The X-Files," "Twin Peaks," and "24," for the most part leave out one pretty important aspect of the job: the paperwork.

"People have no idea the incredible amount of paperwork the FBI has to do to get anything done," Navarro says. "It's a mind-boggling amount of paperwork."

Williams says that as a writer, she understands why films and television programs would want to omit scenes of characters quietly filling out forms at their desk, citing Elmore Leonard's advice to "leave out the parts that readers tend to skip," as The Atlantic reported.

"I am willing to give writers the benefit of the doubt because it's got to be entertaining," Williams says.

Voss spoke on fiction's tendency to portray law enforcement officers in general as damaged, jaded individuals. He attributes this to society's interest in flawed anti-heroes.

"You can make Tony Soprano, who's a serial killer, this warm and fuzzy family guy," Voss says. "And you take some law enforcement guy and make him secretly despicable."

However, he notes that most people working for the FBI have families and lives outside of their jobs.

Procedural shows tend to speed certain processes up in order to deal with the time constraints of a television episode or a feature film.

"On television, it's like 20 minutes later, we have a DNA composite," Navarro says. "It just doesn't work like that. I think people feel like the FBI does everything in an instant. Like we have all this aircraft available to us and we can just hop on a plane and go help out Jodie Foster in 'Silence of the Lambs' at a moment's notice. No. We've got to go stand in line at national airports and we've got to buy a ticket and we've got to hope that there's a seat, just like everyone else."

Navarro, who specializes in nonverbal communication and served in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Program, explained that he noticed a strange trend at his lectures when "Silence of the Lambs" came out.

"Everybody wanted to be a criminal profiler," he told Business Insider. "It's like, first of all, you've got to be a FBI agent first."

He says that the same thing happened when the crime drama "Lie to Me" first started airing (the show followed crime-solving body language experts).

"Everyone wanted to be a body language expert or a micro expression expert," Navarro says. "It's like, you've got to be kidding, right? Who's going to hire you? There's the power of television and how it drives what people want to see and want to do."

He explains that fiction tends to oversimplify what agents do and portray jobs that simply don't exist — he notes that any good investigator should have a knowledge of criminology, profiling, and body language.

Navarro, who served as a FBI agent and supervisor for 25 years, discussed the "CSI effect." This idea holds that popular fictional depictions of forensic science impacts the public perception

Although researchers at the National Institute of Justice have argued that shows like "CSI" are not necessarily to blame, they agree that "a broader 'tech effect' exists that influences juror expectations and demands" in criminal trials.

"Jurors are asking judges, why didn't the attorneys bring up the DNA, why didn't they go into the pipes in the bathroom and look for blood and hair, why didn't they use Luminol to find blood?" Navarro says. "It becomes a double-edged sword. People are more educated but they're also more demanding."

He says that sometimes, there simply isn't usable DNA evidence.

"Everybody thinks that there's always a fingerprint or there's always DNA at the crime scene," Navarro says. "The fact of the matter is more often than not what we find is of little use. People don't roll a perfect fingerprint on the counter for us to find when we get there."

He also notes that when DNA evidence or fingerprints are found, there isn't always anything to compare them with. Navarro recalled speaking to a group of Silicon Valley programmers and asking them if any of them had been fingerprinted. Out of an audience of over 150 individuals, only about five people raised their hands.

Navarro attributes the FBI's status as a pop culture to the agency's early history.

"In the beginning, it was the bank robber era of the 1930s, with Baby-Face Nelson and Al Capone," he told Business Insider. "So the FBI's involvement in that drew everyone's attention. And it became a mythic organization. Plus there was a lot of perception management on the part of J. Edgar Hoover. He wanted it out there that this was a highly specialized group of men — back then it was only men. So that contributed to the mystique."

Williams says the Bureau's prominence in fiction also has to do with a combination of high profile cases and a general lack of understanding of what agents do on a daily basis.

"For some reason people think it's secret—that it's all covert," she says. "I'll be at a cocktail party and someone will say, 'Oh, I wish I could ask you questions about your cases.' And I let them know, well, if they'd been adjudicated, if they've been in court, I can talk about them. And they don't realize that. They kind of think of we're the CIA."

Navarro believes that action-packed crime thrillers or procedurals can sometimes lose sight of the emotional impact that investigations can have on FBI agents.

He recalled his own experience investigating the Oklahoma City bombing. A local elementary school decided to thank the FBI personnel who had participated in rescue efforts and the ensuing investigation.

"The children had made homemade thank you cards," Navarro says. "They'd traced their hands on the little cards. And they'd posted it on the wall as we'd walked in. I had never seen so many men cry. Men and women just crying because of that. That's just something that you don't see.

Williams runs a podcast in which she interviews her former colleagues about their time with the Bureau. She says listeners often reach out to express surprise over one thing in particular.

"One of the things that they say is that they're surprised, and they're fascinated by how much the agents are emotionally tied into their cases, how much it means to them, listening to hear about the thoughts and their perceptions that things that are going on in the case, and they never thought about that before," Williams says.

Voss, who worked at the FBI for 24 years, says that "Silence of the Lambs" did a pretty good job of capturing the FBI.

"They tried really hard. They tried to be fair," Voss says. "They took some artistic licenses to tell the story but they made a real effort to make agents look like hard-working people that were really trying to do the right thing."

Williams says that some aspects of "Quantico" are quite accurate. She adds that FX's Cold War drama "The Americans" also gets a lot right about working for the FBI.

"The way that the office is portrayed, they way that things happen at that FBI office, the integrity and the ethics of the agents trying to get information and being very serious about finding government moles — that's very well done," Williams says.

As a writer, Williams says she understands why fiction gets certain things wrong about the FBI. She admits that some of her characters in her upcoming novel do things that would get real FBI agents reprimanded.

However, she also believes that a more true-to-life fictional story about FBI agents would resonate with audiences. After all, Williams often found her job to be just as crazy and interesting as any Hollywood crime thriller.

"There were times — many times — where I was doing something, whether it was a raid or a search or an arrest, where I thought to myself, 'God, it's just like on TV. Just like the movies! I can't believe I did that,'" she says.