History NightmareFuel / PersonofInterest

** A lot of the stuff Kara Stanton says and does falls under this. Utterly ruthless [[AxeCrazy in]] [[ColdBloodedTorture more ways]] [[KillEmAll than one]], she seems to derive [[{{Sadist}} sick]] [[ForTheEvulz pleasure]] in causing as much pain and suffering as possible.

** Samaritan attempting to supply every elementary school student with a tablet. [[AdultFear The evil supercomputer would have had the means to spy on and even brainwash small children and their families as it controls whatever content is accessed on said tablets]].

** [[AdultFear Samaritan runs a charter school now.]]

%%* "All In":

** Not for the first time, Harold's encounter with one of the bad guys yields a rather unnerving NotSoDifferent comparison, this time regarding his ability to take on another identity, to improvise within that role, and move on when necessary. The killer seems to get [[OohMeAccentsSlipping muddled]] when confronting Harold. Yet throughout the episode Harold himself goes from his 'usual' self with Reese, his slightly reckless (landed ''in the middle of town'') Harold Gull persona with the ill-fated Deputy, to the moment when his calculated CreepyMonotone abruptly becomes NotSoStoic during the scene with 'Fahey'. At which point the SerialKiller decides Harold's identity is not for him.

%%* "Many Happy Returns":

%%* "[=ShotSeeker=]":

** According to Martine, it took two months to [[spoiler:[[FaceHeelTurn brainwash Shaw]]]]. Just thinking of what had to have happened to her during those two months is horrifying. [[spoiler:"6,741" eventually gives us a first-hand look at just what she was being put through]].

** Samaritan and the Machine both take to hiding things underground. Samaritan takes things a tad further by [[spoiler:hiding the the dozen or so corpses of all the people it has disappeared over the past month.]] The icing on the cake? [[spoiler:Fusco and Bear got caught when it started to demolish the tunnel.]]

** [[spoiler:Shaw thinks that she's in a simulation. She's not. Samaritan tricks her into murdering an innocent woman.]]

'''Elias:''' Underneath all that intellect, you're the darkest of all of us. [[BewareTheQuietOnes It's always the quiet ones we need to be afraid of.]] I just hope I’m not around the day that pot finally boils over.

* "Return 0":

** This is the first episode to really show us Root. Under that polite, seemingly adorable smile lies a completely unpredictable Psychopathic WildCard who's willing to commit horrible crimes in order to satisfy her twisted obsession with The Machine. What's worse is that she's the second best hacker in the show who can find a dozen different ways to blackmail people to do her bidding and even {{Badass}} former assassins like Shaw have been bested by her due to her utter unpredictability. If you turn your back to her, it's a high chance Root will take the opportunity to taser you, torture you, and/or shoot you dead.

*** Overloading Root's cochlear implant every time she comes near the monitor.

** Even though Shaw's now physically free of Samaritan, they did a number on her mind. She's not quite sure if she's actually free of Samaritan or in another simulation, and she's got years of fake memories making it hard to trust the real ones. It's quite possible she'll never completely shake the feeling that at any minute she could wake up strapped to a hospital table, about to go through another thousand rounds.

** Samaritan is now dabbling in bioweapons, and it doesn't even have to manufacture anything. It just fiddles with computers until some unsuspecting doctor injects a guy already infected with the highly pathogenic Avian flu with another strain that spreads like wildfire. Thank God it didn't get it's hands on the MAR-V.

%%* "Return 0":

* First and foremost, The Machine itself. Think about it for a minute; a computer exists that is capable of watching your every move and then uses the data it collects to decide whether or not you are a threat to society. Oh yeah, and it's owned by the ''government, who have well trained and lethal hit squads at their command.'' Sweet dreams.

** The ThousandYardStare he gives as [[spoiler: he leaves some criminals who gave Simmons a Canadian passport to burn to death in their car]] is a side of Reese only hinted at in "Many Happy Returns".

** When he finally reaches Quinn, there's a chilling shot of [[spoiler: his SIG-Sauer totally drenched in his own blood as he's on the verge of death]]

'''[[spoiler:The Machine/Root]]:''' No. [[spoiler:I don't belong to anyone anymore. [[WhamLine You, however, are mine.]] I protect you. [[ParanoiaFuel The only thing you love lives at 254 Wendel Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]] I guard it. Same as I guard you. Do not question my judgement. Do not pursue me or my agents. Trust in me. I am always watching.]]

* "Death Benefit". [[spoiler:The Samaritan under the control of Decima Technologies is now online]]. Imagine if The Machine had never been programed with the restraints Nathan and Harold built into it, allowing it [[spoiler: to give a wider variety of information on a subject than just a single SSN and is able to be actively controlled by]] whoever is using it. And when said users happen [[spoiler: to be a ruthless Private Intelligence Firm]] with even less scruples than [[spoiler: the Northern Lights Counter-terrorism organization]] and with just as many resources, Team Machine is going [[spoiler: to have their work cut out for them in staying alive.]] What's worse is that [[spoiler: Greer has been able to convince senior members of the US government into allowing the Samaritan to become a potential replacement to The Machine]]
%%* "Beta":

* "Deus Ex Machina". [[spoiler: Decima Technologies is triumphant, Team Machine has been utterly defeated and now Samaritan has set to work with anyone it classifies as a threat being eliminated, the first victims being the remnants of Vigilance who are gunned down by NYPD officers and Decima assets en masse using Samaritan to identify and eliminate them.]]
** [[spoiler: "I assure you it's quite the other way around. The question is what, my dear Samaritan, are your commands for us?"]]

[[folder:Seaon 4]]

** It took ''forty-three'' tries for Harold to teach the Machine morality, with every previous version trying to trick or harm him. And now we have Samaritan, which is active at full capacity with several times The Machine's power and resources and without anyone ever even ''attempting'' to teach it to care about people.
*** That delightful shot of Harold desperately taking a hammer to Number 42 while the servers behind him burned. It was trying to ''asphyxiate'' him. His square briefly turns red before the evil baby machine loses video.
** Martine Rousseau. [[spoiler: Essentially Samaritan's very own Analogue interface, she manages to put the nigh-invulnerable Root on the defensive almost immediately despite only using one handgun (Root brought along four and tried to stack the deck in her favor with a gas grenade).....and then manages to score two direct hits on Root.]]
** The look she has as she enters the hotel lobby [[spoiler: where her current target is trying to hide]] is downright freaky, and then the mechanical pivot she does as she [[spoiler: double-taps the hotel receptionist who didn't answer her question immediately]] just screams the T-X from the terminator series.

** Samaritan itself. This episode is the first to showcase how dangerous such a machine can be. If its literal Cult Following doesn't kill you, it can just as easily arrange for your death by predicting and manipulating the behaviors of others. Even worse, [[spoiler: it wants to essentially TakeOverTheWorld, as shown by the incredibly creepy scene between Martine and Greer. Not only does it now have an influential politician as a pawn, but it has 58 others around the country. It did this in a single election season. How long before it decides who gets to be president?]]

** Samaritan attempting to supply every elementary school student with a tablet. The evil supercomputer would have had the means to spy on and even brainwash small children and their families as it controls whatever content is accessed on said tablets.
** The Marburg Virus. Something that exists in RealLife and if turned into a weapon would lead to thousands of people dying incredibly painful deaths. The terrifying thing? [[spoiler: Samaritan]] tried to get the samples that were fought over during the episode for itself, and if it wasn't for ComplexityAddiction, and the presence of Shaw, things would have gone off without a hitch. It further makes the question of its [[spoiler: final endgame]] even more scary. Does it want to really [[spoiler: rule over humanity]]? Or has it considered [[spoiler: humanity irrelevant]]?
** The final scene. Despite ISA operator Devon Grice's best efforts at trying to cover [[spoiler: Shaw's presence]], it's a NoSell for Samaritan which manages to recover the footage, and seems to have put two and two together.

** Showcases how thoroughly (and insanely) ruthless Decima is: if they want to find you and Samaritan cannot detect you, they will torture and kill their way through ''everybody who ever had the slightest of contacts with you'' until they find someone who can point them in the right direction.

** Where do we even begin? How about that [[spoiler: {{Creepy Child}} as the {{Mouth Of Sauron}} to Samaritan?]]

-->'''Samaritan:''' [[spoiler:Wars have burned in this world for thousands of years with no end in sight because people rely so ardently on their so called beliefs. Now they will only need to believe in one thing. Me. For I am a God.]]

-->'''Samaritan:''' [[spoiler:You know you can't win, don't you?]]\\
'''Machine:''' [[BluntYes Yes]].

** The fact [[spoiler:each failed mission went bad with all deaths based on several simulations means that for the Machine, it must be predicting its assets' lives every day, foreseeing thousands of millions of possibilities for it to happen]].
** An InUniverse example for the Machine. Harold mused that chess, especially with having to make the opening move, must be so terrifying because of the practically countless possibilities for a single game to have. With the first set of moves, there are 400 possibilities, and as the second, third and fourth moves are made, the number skyrockets to 72,084, 9 million, and 318 ''trillion'' possibilities. Again, in just four moves. The total number of possible games of chess is roughly 10^120, that is more than the total number of atoms in the universe. With such a practical infinite number of paths, how many could lead to failure?

** A small detail regarding Samaritan's screens. They now have readouts of [[spoiler: the number of assets which have been cultivated in America's government buildings]] In the case of the Pentagon [[spoiler: it's in the hundreds]].

** Samaritan doesn't have the Machine's extensive experience with human behavior. It's decided to change that by [[spoiler:taking over an entire town, making everyone happy, and then proceeding to casually destroy people's lives to see what they do. It's also developing neural implants.]]
*** Involuntary brain surgery sanctioned by an evil super computer.

** [[spoiler: Shaw's fate which is more like a FateWorseThanDeath. she's now in the possession of a megalomaniac Artificial Intelligence which is experimenting with brainwashing and mind control. If Team Machine find her, it might not be in the best of circumstances.]]

** As it turns out, Samaritan [[spoiler: has deemed a lot of humanity irrelevant and is about to initiate an operation called "The Correction", to murder everyone it deems unworthy of living in the new world it is about to officially establish.]]
** Martine stroking Finch's face while threatening to kill him in front of Root was... [[IHaveYouNowMyPretty unsettling]]. [[NeckSnap Root put an abrupt end to that particular line of thought.]]

** Control abducts and interrogates a caffeine addicted school teacher. A mother of two. Accuses her of being a Samaritan agent. What's scarier than a WellIntentionedExtremist torturing an innocent school teacher? ''A WellIntentionedExtremist being right.'' The second Control shows her irrefutable evidence, she does a complete 180 and references the bible story of Sodom and Gomorrah of all things.
** The scenes of the brotherhood goons torturing Elias, Reese, and Fusco. Elias gets a hammer to the hand, Reese is stabbed with a screwdriver, and Fusco is waterboarded.
** According to Martine, it took two months to [[spoiler: [[FaceHeelTurn brainwash Shaw]]]]. Just thinking of what had to have happened to her during those two months is horrifying.

** "The Correction" [[spoiler: Samaritan agents are sent to mass murder all of the 'deviants', all of those who refuse to play by the rules. Elias and Dominic are taken out by a sniper and several other minor characters are killed by some injection. [[FridgeHorror And those are just the ones we saw]] ]]
** Samaritan invoking the CutTheJuice trope and using it to try [[spoiler: murder the Machine with a series of coordinated nationwide blackouts.]] One must consider the potential millions which died from medical equipment not functioning and disrupted transport infrastructure to understand how horrific the chaos it caused must have been.

** The Machine, an omniscient being of nearly unlimited power, starts glitching. [[BlackAndWhiteInsanity It goes]] [[AIIsACrapshoot exactly as well as you'd expect.]] Highlights include:

*** Deeming [[spoiler: John Reese a threat and ''paying a hitman to kill him.'']]

*** The nature of the Machine's glitch [[spoiler: is that she's unable to differentiate past from present. She can't put information in context. As a result the poor thing can't tell the difference between Finch killing the 43 previous versions of the Machine in the past and killing her ''now.'' No wonder she's freaking out.]]
--->'''The Machine:''' [[AC: You're hurting me now.]]

** [[MindRape The entire premise of the episode.]] [[spoiler:Samaritan has figured out how to visualise Shaw's thoughts. It proceeds to make her relive the same scenario, to try and get her to, one, murder the team; and two, reveal the location of the Machine by making her think that she needs to go protect Harold in the subway. It's failed so far. Shaw only ''murders Reese'' and ''shoots herself in the head'' before she hurts Root. And the title of the episode? The amount of times Samaritan has forced her to do this.]] A little bit of FridgeHorror math... Shaw was captured by Samaritan in January, and Lambert says they've had her for nine months. [[spoiler:6741 simulations over nine months works out to about once per hour for the entire span.]]

** Samaritan is now dabbling in bioweapons. It doesn't even have to manufacture anything. It just fiddles with computers until some unsuspecting doctor injects a guy already infected with the highly pathogenic Avian flu with another strain that spreads like wildfire. Thank God it didn't get it's hands on the MAR-V.

** Remember Elias's conversation with Finch at the end of "Reassortment"? Elias's prediction about him seems to come to pass at the end of this episode. Faced with [[spoiler:the deaths of Elias and Root]], Finch finally decides to throw [[TheFettered the rules he's lived by all his life]] right out the window and declares that he is going to end Samaritan, he's simply undecided on [[TheUnfettered how many of his rules he's willing to break in order to accomplish it]].
** The Machine's response to Harold is borderline AIIsACrapshoot territory, considering Finch's transformation into TheUnfettered. [[spoiler: Considering Root's blind devotion and brutal actions earlier in the show, using her voice to say this does not help. And there's the fact that she instigated a jailbreak to facilitate Harold's escape, which also resulted in 600 criminals getting out]].
-->'''Harold:''' This place. Can you get me out of it?
-->'''The Machine:''' You created me. I can do anything you want me to.
** Earlier in the episode, [[spoiler: Root mentioned she hard-coded defense capabilities into The Machine, but added a safeguard that it would only work if Harold wanted it. Given he's now [[OhCrap hell bent with taking down Samaritan]]...]]

** The Machine reveals a horrifying part of her existence: Thanks to its predictive algorithms, she sees the death of every person she fails to save '''thousands''' of times.

** The entire sequence leading up to [[spoiler: Greers death. Being trapped in a secure room with all the oxygen running out.]]

%%* ".exe":

%%* "Synecdoche":

** The Machine's response to Harold is borderline AIIsACrapshoot territory, considering Finch's transformation into TheUnfettered. [[spoiler: Considering Root's blind devotion and brutal actions earlier in the show, using her voice to say this does not help. And there's the fact that she instigated a jailbreak to facilitate Finch's escape, which also resulted in 600 criminals getting out]].

** The Machine's response to Harold is borderline AIIsACrapshoot territory, considering Finch's transformation into TheUnfettered. [[spoiler: Considering Root's blind devotion and brutal actions earlier in the show, using her voice to say this does not help.]]

** Earlier in the episode, [[spoiler: Root mentioned she hard-coded defense capabilities into The Machine, but added a safeguard that it would only work if Harold wanted it. Given he's now hell bent with taking down Samaritan...]]