History NightmareFuel / TheMentalist

** 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 prayer while Jane is trying to keep her calme as they carry out the madman's orders.]]

** 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 (later revealed to be Robert Kirkland) systematically begins killing each of the men on there. Again, all of these men were AssholeVictims in one way or another, but the fact that Jane was perfectly okay naming people on a list that put all of them in danger is disturbing.]]

** Out of all the episodes in the series, this is one that arguably has the highest body count: [[spoiler: ''9 people dead.'']]

* The season finale "Red John's Rules." During the episode: 1) we are told that Jane has a list of Red Johns suspects down to seven people and 2) we find that the victim of the week was someone Jane had known as a child, and this woman represented a happy childhood memory for Jane, a small one he had never spoken to anyone about. During last five minutes we are presented with a disk given by someone who knew Red John. In it, [[spoiler: One of Red John's victims reads a message from Red John to Jane. Red John says that he knows that Jane has narrowed down the list to seven people. Red Jon lists all of the names. They are exactly who Jane had picked as suspects, and as Red John reads the names, Lisbon puts down their photographs across the laptop. Then Red John says that he killed the victim BECAUSE [[MindRape she was a happy memory from his childhood]], and the murder would lead directly to this disk. Moreover, the victim on the tape, Lorelei, was murdered six months prior to Jane actually making his final list of suspects - in other words, Red John was somehow able to figure out the names on Jane's list, months before Jane even made the list. Lisbon ejects the disk, and Jane snaps it to pieces. Neither of them speak through the whole thing.]] Absolutely chilling.

** For starters, 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 M.O: After killing his victims in gruesome fashion, Red John takes the time to draw a smiley face in the victim's blood (as seen in the picture above). Jane explains the significance of this:

*** Even police officers and CBI 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 begs the question of 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.

* Patrick Jane may be the protagonist of the show, but whenever his darker side comes out, it is scary:
** During one of the cases he works in season 1, a girl he is with has repressed memories after her friend was killed 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 a case.
** During an episode in season 4, Jane figures out the identity of another serial killer, but is unable to get any concrete evidence to convict him because of how careful they are to cover their tracks. How does Jane proceed to stop them? [[spoiler: He goads the SJK killer 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, the man 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 (later revealed to be Robert Kirkland) systematically begins killing each of the men on the list. Again, all of these men were AssholeVictims in one way or another, but the fact that Jane was perfectly okay naming people on a list that put all of them in danger is a pretty harsh example of GoodIsNotNice.]]

** The opening scene: A man in a trenchcoat 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 him, 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 the man 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 the man 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.

* The season finale "Red John's Rules." During the episode: 1) we are told that Jane has list of Red Johns suspects down to seven people and 2) we find that the victim of the week was someone Jane had known as a child, and this woman represented a happy childhood memory for Jane, a small one he had never spoken to anyone about. During last five minutes we are presented with a disk given by someone who knew Red John. In it, [[spoiler: One of Red John's victims reads a message from Red John to Jane. Red John says that he knows that Jane has narrowed down the list to seven people. Red Jon lists all of the names. They are exactly who Jane had picked as suspects, and as Red John reads the names, Lisbon puts down their photographs across the laptop. Then Red John says that he killed the victim BECAUSE [[MindRape she was a happy memory from his childhood]], and the murder would lead directly to this disk. Moreover, the victim on the tape, Lorelei, was murdered six months prior to Jane actually making his final list of suspects - in other words, Red John was somehow able to figure out the names on Jane's list, months before Jane even made the list. Lisbon ejects the disk, and Jane snaps it to pieces. Neither of them speak through the whole thing.]] Absolutely chilling.

** During an episode in season 4, Jane figures out the identity of another serial killer, but is unable to get any concrete evidence to convict him because of how careful they are to cover their tracks. How does Jane proceed to stop them? [[spoiler: He goads the SJK killer into belittling Red John on live TV with the knowledge that Red John will take it as a personal slight and murder him. Sure enough, by the end of the episode, the man is dead and Red John's signature smiley face is next to his corpse.]]
** 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 it's still horrifying.

** As if being a {{SerialKiller}} isn't bad enough, Red John loves demonstrating how much of a {{Sadist}} he is. Jane sums it up best:

*** 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.]]

*** Even police officers and CBI 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.''

** 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 particular 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.'' The creepy part is the guy claimed he had all of his doors locked and bolted before he went to sleep, 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 finds a way to kidnap Kristina Frye from her own house.]] Nowhere is safe from him!

* The ending of "Red John's Friends" certainly counts: [[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 with the classic Red John smiley painted over the scene and the words "He Is Mar" 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.]]

-->'''[[spoiler:Partridge:]]''' Tyger. Tyger.
* ''Dinner's in the oven!''

* The season finale "Red John's Rules." During the episode: 1) we are told that Jane has list of Red Johns suspects down to seven people and 2) we find that the victim of the week was someone Jane had known as a child, and this woman represented a happy childhood memory for Jane, a small one he had never spoken to anyone about. During last five minutes we are presented with a disk given by someone who knew Red John. In it, [[spoiler: One of Red John's victims reads a message from Red John to Jane. Red John says that he knows that Jane has narrowed down the list to seven people. Red Jon lists all of the names. They are exactly who Jane had picked as suspects, and as Red John reads the names, Lisbon puts down their photographs across the laptop. Then Red John says that he killed the victim BECAUSE [[MindRape she was a happy memory from his childhood]], and the murder would lead directly to this disk. Moreover, the victim on the tape, Lorelei, was murdered six months prior to Jane actually making his final list of suspects - in other words, Red John was somehow able to figure out the names on Jane's list, six months before he even made the list. Lisbon ejects the disk, and Jane snaps it to pieces. Neither of them speak through the whole thing.]] Absolutely chilling.

* The season finale "Red John's Rules." During the episode: 1) we are told that Jane has list of Red Johns suspects down to seven people and 2) we find that the victim of the week was someone Jane had known as a child, and this woman represented a happy childhood memory for Jane, a small one he had never spoken to anyone about. During last five minutes we are presented with a disk given by someone who knew Red John. In it, [[spoiler: One of Red John's victims reads a message from Red John to Jane. Red John says that he knows that Jane has narrowed down the list to seven people. Red Jon lists all of the names. They are exactly who Jane had picked as suspects, and as Red John reads the names, Lisbon puts down their photographs across the laptop. Then Red John says that he killed the victim BECAUSE [[MindRape she was a happy memory from his childhood]], and the murder would lead directly to this disk. Lisbon ejects the disk, and Jane snaps it to pieces. Neither of them speak through the whole thing.]] Absolutely chilling.

[[caption-width-right:350:''"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright.In the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye. Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"'']]

[[caption-width-right:350:''"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"'']]

[[caption-width-right:350:''"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright. In the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye. Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"'']]

-->'''[[spoiler:Partridge:]]''' Tiger. Tiger.

-->'''[[spoiler:Partridge:]]''' Tiger. Tiger.

* The season finale "Red John's Rules." During the episode: 1) we are told that Jane has list of Red Johns suspects down to seven people and 2) we find that the victim of the week was someone Jane had known as a child, and this woman represented a happy childhood memory for Jane, a small one he had never spoken to anyone about. During last five minutes we are presented with a disk given by someone who knew Red John. In it, [[spoiler: One of Red John's victims reads a message from Red John to Jane. Red John says that he knows that Jane has narrowed down the list to seven people. Red Jon lists all of the names. They are exactly who Jane had picked as suspects, and as Red John reads the names, Lisbon puts down their photographs across the laptop. Then Red John says that he killed the victim BECAUSE [[MindRape she was a happy memory from his childhood]], and the murder would lead directly to this disk. Lisbon ejects the disk, and Jane snaps it to pieces. Neither of them speak through the whole thing.]] Absolutely chilling.

* In a season one episode, it's all but said aloud that one of Jane's former clients [[DrivenToSuicide killed herself]] because Jane made an error in his cold-read and touched on a lifetime of trauma with the wrong phrase.

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