The excessive use or abuse of pesticides leads to residues in food, which can threaten human health. Therefore, there is an extremely urgent need for multi-analyte analysis techniques for the detection of pesticide residues, which can be applied as screening techniques for food safety monitoring and detection. Recent developments related to rapid multi-residue detection methods for pesticide residues are reviewed herein. Methods based on the inherent characteristics of pesticides are described in detail. Enzymatic inhibition-based sensors, near-infrared spectroscopy, and SERS spectroscopy based on the inherent characteristics are discussed.