History NightmareFuel / TheMentalist

* Patrick Jane may be the protagonist of the show, but he also a very clear-cut definition of GoodIsNotNice. Whenever his darker side comes out, he is scary:

* Any crime scene involving Red John. ''Other serial killers'' are terrified of him.

* The ending of "Red John's Friends." [[spoiler: After the CBI tracks Jared Renfrew to Tijuana, they find the bodies of both Jared and a local prostitute in the bathtub. The classic Red John smiley is there, and the words "He Is Mar" are written in blood on the bathroom wall. To make this worse, in the last minute of the episode, Jane gets a call and Red John can be heard cackling on the other end, letting Jane know he lost this round.]]

** There's also the associates who are revealed to work for Red John over the course of the series: These people seem ordinary and friendly on the surface, but they soon drop the facade to reveal themselves as either depraved psychopaths or BrainwashedAndCrazy. The scary part is how [[UndyingLoyalty utterly devoted]] these associates are to Red John, and see him as a Messiah figure. Not only will they not disclose who he is (even when they're being interrogated by law enforcement), but they are perfectly okay committing heinous crimes on his order like abductions, rape, murder, terrorism, and so on. ''Some of them are even willing to commit suicide if it means protecting Red John's identity.'' It's creepy how Red John is able to get into their heads like that, or what methods he uses to groom his followers into devoting themselves to him.

** There are also several instances where he subjected his victims to a FateWorseThanDeath: The first example is what he did to [[spoiler: Kirstina Frye]]: After being missing for months, the CBI [[spoiler: eventually tracks her down to an abandoned house where she's alive and completely catatonic. Jane briefly gets Kristina to talk by performing a seance, and during that, she tells Jane she's dead at this point and doesn't remember anything about Red John. The scary thing is we have no clue what Red John did to her that drove her to become like that.]] The second example is what Red John did to [[spoiler: Miranda Martins (Lorelei's sister): With the help of one of his accomplices, Red John manages to kidnap Miranda, takes her out to an abandoned warehouse, proceeded to rape her, and left her chained up to slowly die from heatstroke.]]

** There's the ParanoiaFuel that he's a serial killer who spends the majority of the show [[HiddenVillain with his identity unknown.]]
** There's his ''modus operandi'': After killing his victims by cutting them open in gruesome fashion (when they're awake no less), Red John takes the time to draw a smiley face with the victim's blood (as seen in the picture above). Jane explains the significance of this:

** Then there's how ruthless Red John is: If he targets someone, he will find a way to get to that person no matter how well protected they are. In one episode, Red John had his eyes set on a girl he was stalking, and warned the guy who was hooking up with her over the phone to stay away from her or else. When the guy refused to listen, he woke up one morning ''with a pig's head lying next to him.'' What's scarier is the guy claimed he had all of his doors locked and bolted before he went to sleep that night, which begs the question of how Red John got inside. The same thing happens in the season 2 finale: Despite being under police protection at Jane's insistence, [[spoiler: Red John still found a way to kidnap Kristina Frye from her own house.]] Nowhere is safe from him!
*** Even police officers and CBI agents are shown to not be safe if Red John decides to go after them. Yes, you read that right: ''Red John has no issue killing members of law enforcement, and has even succeeded in doing so.''
** There's also the associates who are revealed to work for Red John over the course of the series: Many of these people seem ordinary and friendly on the surface, but they soon drop the facade to reveal themselves as either depraved psychopaths or BrainwashedAndCrazy. What makes it creepy is how these associates have UndyingLoyalty to Red John, and see him as a Messiah figure. Not only will they not disclose who he is (even when they're being interrogated by law enforcement), but they are perfectly okay committing heinous crimes on his order like abductions, rape, murder, terrorism, and so on. ''Some of them are even willing to commit suicide if it means protecting Red John's identity.'' It makes you wonder how Red John is able to get into their heads like that, or what methods he uses to groom his followers into devoting themselves to him.

** During one of the cases he works in season 1, a girl he is with has repressed memories after her friend was murdered in the woods. Jane convinces the girl to leave the hospital with him, and takes her to the area where her friend was killed in an attempt to trigger those memories. Yes, he is doing this to try and find the killer, but the fact he's forcing this girl to relieve an extremely traumatic moment in her life demonstrates how ruthless Jane can be at times when solving cases.
** During an episode in season 4, Jane figures out the identity of another serial killer (known as SJK), but is unable to get any concrete evidence to convict him because of how careful they are in covering their tracks. How does Jane proceed to stop them? [[spoiler: He goads SJK into belittling Red John on live TV with the knowledge that Red John will take it as a personal slight and murder them. Sure enough, by the end of the episode, SJK is dead and Red John's signature smiley face is next to his corpse.]]

** In season 6, [[spoiler: Jane ends up creating a fake list of Red John suspects in an attempt to weed out whomever has been spying on him. The person who gets his hands on the list begins systematically killing each of the men owho have been named. Again, all of these men were AssholeVictims in one way or another, but the fact that Jane was perfectly okay risking the lives of other people for one of his schemes is disturbing.]]

* The ending of "Red John's Friends." [[spoiler: After the CBI tracks Jared Renfrew to Tijuana, they find the bodies of both Jared and a local prostitute he was with in the bathtub. The classic Red John smiley is there, and the words "He Is Mar" is written in blood on the bathroom wall. To make this worse, in the last minute of the episode, Jane gets a call and Red John can be heard cackling on the other end, letting Jane know he lost this round.]]

** The opening scene: A man in a trenchcoat named Alan drives up to the gas station as if he's waiting to meet someone. Right off the bat, you can tell something is off by how terrified the guy looks, and he has good reason to be: '''He's strapped to a bomb.''' Later on, it's revealed that someone abducted Alan, planted the bomb on him against his will, used him to rob a bank, and then had them drive to the gas station to make a delivery. The reason Alan dies is because two cops overhear a police report about the bank robbery, identify him, and the person who orchestrated this is forced to set off the bomb to cover their tracks. Not only is this a horrifying situation for Alan who's being used against his will, but it's also horrifying for everyone else at the gas station because that bomb could have killed so many people in the blast radius.
** In an attempt to find out where the killer was sending Alan, Lisbon ends up at an abandoned high school during the middle of the night. When Jane shows up to that same location later, [[spoiler: ''he finds Lisbon unconscious with a bomb strapped to her.'' When Lisbon wakes up, she gets a call from the killer that tells her where to go under threat of detonating the bomb on her just like he did with Alan. During this entire time, Lisbon is extremely shaken, and is muttering a religious prayer while Jane is trying to keep her calm as they carry out the madman's orders.]]
** [[spoiler: After the killer is identified and arrested, they later try to escape by picking the lock on their handcuffs, which forces J.J. LaRouche to shoot him.]]
** TheReveal at the end of Part 1: [[spoiler: Red John was behind everything. The man who strapped the bombs on Alan and Lisbon was one of his accomplices. The reason he wanted the list from the Cash In Motion business was because he was trying to find Hightower (who's been on the run as a fugitive since she was framed for Todd Johnson's murder in "Red Queen") since one of her cousins (Max James) was using the business to give her money to support herself and her children. The accomplice initially tortured Max for the information, but he ends up dying of a heart attack before he can reveal anything. This forced the accomplice to kidnap Alan (after killing his roommate), strap a bomb on him, and used him to get the client list to see where the money was going so that Red John could finally locate Hightower and kill her so she wouldn't be a loose end anymore.]] Cue an OhCrap reaction from Jane and Lisbon as they realize what this means.
** [[spoiler: Hightower shows up at the end of the first part, holding a gun on Jane. She's just there to talk with him though, but it's still creepy how she appears behind Jane like that without making a sound.]]
** In order to [[spoiler: lure out Red John's mole in the CBI]], Jane sets a trap by informing each of the suspected people where [[spoiler: Hightower]] is located. Later that night, an assassin shows up at one of the rooms. When Rigsby and Cho burst in to arrest them, they choose to commit suicide by jumping off the roof.

** The last few minutes of the episode: [[spoiler: After O'Laughlin is killed by Van Pelt and Hightower, Jane tells Lisbon over the phone to dial the last number O'Laughlin called. When she does this, Jane notices someone across from him in the mall answer their phone and tells Lisbon "Never mind, you win some, you lose some I guess." Jane hangs up on Lisbon and goes over to talk to the man. At first, the man acts defensive when Jane asks him about who he called, but he drops the act quickly and identifies himself as Red John. He congratulates Jane on beating him, and announces his plans to retire from killing, much to the disgust and incredulity of Jane. As the man attempts to leave, Jane asks him to prove he really is Red John. The man gives details about what Jane's wife and daughter smelled like before he killed them, and this prompts Jane to shoot him in the middle of the mall, killing him and sending the bystanders into a panic. The episode ends with Jane calmly sitting down and finishing his tea as two security guards show up to arrest him.]]

** There are also several instances where he subjected his victims to a FateWorseThanDeath: The first example is what he did to [[spoiler: Kirstina Frye]] in season 3: After being missing for months, the CBI [[spoiler: eventually tracks her down to an abandoned house where she's alive and completely catatonic. Jane briefly gets Kristina to talk by performing a seance, and during that, she tells Jane she's dead at this point and doesn't remember anything about Red John. The scary thing is we have no clue what Red John did to her that drove her to become like that.]] The second example is what Red John did to [[spoiler: Miranda Martins (Lorelei's sister)]] in season 5: [[spoiler: With the help of one of his accomplices, Red John manages to kidnap Miranda, takes her out to an abandoned warehouse, proceeded to rape her, and left her chained up to slowly die from heatstroke.]]
* Patrick Jane may be the protagonist of the show, but he also a very clear-cut defintion of GoodIsNotNice. Whenever his darker side comes out, he is scary:

** In the episode "Red Rover, Red Rover," Jane begins to suffer a breakdown due to his failure to catch Red John. Not only does this affect his behavior when working on a case, but it also leads to one of the most disturbing moments in the entire series: [[spoiler: Jane lures the murderer to a graveyard where he knocks the guy into a coffin, proceeds to bury him alive, and tells the murderer he will only release him if they confess on camera to what they did. Otherwise, he'll leave them to die.]] Granted, the murderer was an AssholeVictim, and they inflicted a similar fate on the victim-of-the-week, but what Jane does is still horrifying.

** TheReveal at the end of Part 1: [[spoiler: Red John was behind everything. The man who strapping the bombs on Alan and Lisbon was one of his accomplices. The reason he wanted the list from the Cash In Motion business was because he was trying to find Hightower (who's been on the run as a fugitive since she was framed for Todd Johnson's murder in "Red Queen") since one of her cousins was using the business give her money to support herself and her children.]] Cue an OhCrap reaction from Jane and Lisbon.