Gibbs is one of the most fleshed-out and deeply realized characters in the NCIS world. But
when you're talking about police procedurals, a deep backstory is rarely a good thing. Gibbs'
life has been a blend of professional success and extreme personal tragedy. We're here to
break it all down.
Gibbs was born and raised in the small town of Stillwater, Pennsylvania. His father owned
the local general store and was a pillar of the community, but Gibbs rebelled against
the upstanding nature of his family.
Though he would go on to be in the military police, young Gibbs was known around his hometown
as a juvenile delinquent. He would frequently get into fights and other scrapes around town,
resenting his father for regularly coming to the rescue. The animosity between the pair
led to a 30-year split, one that only healed when Gibbs was forced to return to Stillwater
on a case.
Gibbs ultimately found a way out of his small town. His father's business partner and best
friend, LJ, convinced him to join the Marines.
Gibbs' mother took her own life via an intentional drug overdose when he was 14 years old. Though
his mother made the choice with her family in mind, she took her own life so they wouldn't
have to watch her die from terminal cancer.
Gibbs and his father were already on less-than-ideal terms. Eventually, they realized that LJ had
known of Gibbs' mother's plan to kill herself. The grieving men pushed him out, and he fled
town and disappeared.
The decision to join the Marines stuck, however, and Gibbs enlisted shortly after graduating
high school. He lost his first close friend in the service less than a year after enlisting
in a helicopter crash near an American base in Okinawa.
Things weren't all bad, though. Gibbs rose through the ranks as a military police officer
and started a relationship with a woman back home named Shannon. He met her while waiting
for the train out of town and their relationship grew during his early years in the Marines.
They were married after his sixth year in the service, and had a child two years later.
During his time in the Marines, Gibbs became an expert marksman. This came into play when
he was deployed to Panama in the late '80s and the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert
Storm.
Gibbs is a man of few words, so his past comes out in dribbles. In flashbacks, longtime watchers
can piece together his service record. He was wounded during his tour, during an engagement
with Iraqi forces.
"Semper Fi."
After awakening from a 19-day-long coma and returning home, he was awarded the Purple
Heart. Though Gibbs has proven to be a talented soldier and leader, that rebellious kid was
still inside he declined to appear for any of his medal ceremonies.
While Gibbs was deployed in the Persian Gulf, his wife and 8-year-old daughter were killed.
Making matters worse, Gibbs' wife was killed for doing what can only be seen as the right
thing. Shannon witnessed the death of one of Gibbs' fellow Marines, a killing carried
out in person by cartel leader Pedro Hernandez.
Though it carried some extreme dangers for her, Shannon agreed to testify. She was put
into protective custody during the trial, but it proved to be too little. Shannon and
her daughter were being transported to a safe house by an NCIS agent named Kurt Mitchell
when their car was attacked.
Mitchell was shot through the head and killed. The out-of-control car crashed, killing Gibbs'
wife and daughter.
While Gibbs' first wife passed on, a part of her lived on in a core piece of Gibbs'
personality. The NCIS leader has an incredibly long list of unbreakable rules that he dispenses
to his subordinates at appropriate times. There are said to be 69 of them.
They include a bunch of tips for good investigative police work, rules for life, and tricks that
his degenerate younger self would appreciate, like, quote, "Always be specific when you
lie."
The idea for these unshakable laws came from his late wife. She mentioned the fact that
she was putting together a list of rules to live by when they first met. He took this
idea and ran with it, thus memorizing his own code of conduct.
Carrying on her list of rules to live by isn't the only way Gibbs has honored the memory
of his late wife. He's shown throughout the series to be a man of action and that goes
double when the pieces involved in a plot are his friends and family.
Gibbs was able to track down cartel leader Pedro Hernandez after he returned to the United
States and shot Hernandez in the head. The incident was investigated by NCIS Agent Lara
Macy, who was able to put together that Gibbs was the man who pulled the trigger. However,
she opted not to pass on this information once she realized his motivations for the
killing.
Macy was later killed over her connection to this incident, when she was stabbed to
death by a disgraced Army Ranger working for the cartel. Her death was left as a message
for Gibbs. It's far from the only time that Gibbs' dark past would pop up in unfortunate
ways.
Gibbs retired from the Marines in 1992 with a rank of gunnery sergeant and began looking
for something to do with the rest of his life. Because of his fondness for the NCIS officer
who investigated the deaths of his wife and daughter, he began training to become a member
of the military investigative unit.
Gibbs was a probationary agent, also referred to as a probie, under the very man who inspired
his career choice. Agent Michael Franks personally oversaw his training and knew that Gibbs killed
Hernandez, having stood aside to allow it to happen.
Franks retired after a 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia, believing that terrorist leader Osama
bin Laden was behind it. The real-life attack was ultimately pinned on Hezbollah Al-Hejaz,
though Bin Laden's involvement remained a point of contention.
Still, he saw the denial of his tips as playing politics and retired in exhaustion. Franks
handed his badge to Gibbs on the way out the door, as he was his successor as commander
of the unit. This is where we find Gibbs at the start of NCIS.
"I didn't quit. I retired."
Gibbs' run of bad luck is evident outside of his career. His lifelong closeness to tragedy
extends to his love life, with Gibbs frequently picking partners who are less than faithful.
His first wife died in a tragic way, but he wasn't the type to swear off marriage forever.
Gibbs has been married four times in his life, with each one ending in sad situations. His
second wife divorced him, drained his bank account on the way out the door, and eventually
remarried to one of Gibbs' close associates. She was later killed by an extremist.
Gibbs' third marriage ended in a more ordinary way. He caught her in the midst of an affair,
so she left him for the other man. He lost his fourth wife to his job, as Gibbs had become
obsessed with bringing a serial killer to justice.
The fact that Gibbs killed a man in cold blood before joining NCIS hangs over him throughout
his career. Audiences learned about the slaying all the way back in the third season, and
the situation occasionally brought it out of him when he was around people he truly
trusted.
But his team had no idea that the man they were following was a killer until a vigilante
network targeted Gibbs for death. After being confronted by a judge, Gibbs revealed that
he killed Hernandez.
While the team is quick to move on from it, indicating that his secret is safe with them,
it's clear that Gibbs is uncomfortable with so many people knowing what he's done. It
flies in the face of his fourth rule for life:
"Best way to keep a secret: Keep it to yourself. Second-best, tell one other person if you
must. There is no third best."
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite
shows are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss
a single one.