History YMMV / TheMentalist

** [[ArchEnemy Red John]]--[[DirtyCop Sheriff Thomas McAllister]]--is Patrick Jane's nemesis and a sociopathic SerialKiller responsible for torturing and killing dozens of women. When Jane, then a phony psychic, insulted Red John while offering to help the police catch him, Red John murdered Jane's wife and young daughter. Years later, Red John, although retired, commits a number of murders to silence loose ends or torment Jane. Some of his worst crimes include kidnapping and brainwashing Kristina Frye into believing that she's dead; trying to force Jane to kill his best friend and LoveInterest, Teresa Lisbon; killing a woman because Jane had a happy memory of her; and beheading the therapist who helped Jane recover after his family's death. The mastermind of the Blake Association, a criminal conspiracy and protection racket for corrupt law enforcement officials, and leader of his own group of psychotics and serial killers, Red John regularly [[BadBoss kills his minions]] or drives them to suicide when he has no further need of them. A raging narcissist driven by an [[FameThroughInfamy intense need for attention]], Red John revels in the power he feels by holding thousands of lives in his hands.

* AlasPoorScrappy: [[spoiler:Bosco. Because he was a jerk to Jane, mainly because he suspected that Jane was putting Lisbon and her career in danger, and/or flirting with her (and in Bosco's book, these were pretty equal crimes), he was not a fan favourite. Add forty-five minutes of Lisbon looking beautiful and distraught after his shooting - hey presto, everybody cries when he snuffs it after admitting that he loves her.]]

* AngstWhatAngst: Everyone that has worked for Red John seems to treat his gruesome actions as well as the actions they do for him with the same amount of emotion as if he simply asked them to pick up something from the grocery store.

** [[spoiler:[=LaRoche=]]] is last seen bleeding out from a gunshot, as Rigsby tries to save him but seems to get more upset. The next episode mentions him as dead, but the main characters [[AngstWhatAngst limited reaction to this]] and the fact that they might have seen an advantage in letting his attacker think he'd died do cast a little doubt on it.

** Bob Kirkland has a somewhat unpleasant manner and is capable of great ruthlessness and ColdBloodedTorture, but he grew up in a very abusive, home with only his brother (who later disappeared and was probably murdered by [[spoiler:Red John]]) to care about and has dedicated a large part of his life to a goal which he ultimately fails to achieve, or even come close to, something he is made aware of, and which [[spoiler:gets him killed]].

** ''Creator/BradleyWhitford'' as [[spoiler:The fake Red John]].

* DesignatedHero: Jane. Almost every episode has him break the law in various ways, antagonize a lot of people just because he personally doesn't like them (or just because [[{{Troll}} he thinks it's funny]]), use his working together with the [=CBI=] as a shield to get away with pretty much everything and generally acting as pleasant as an elephant in a porcelain shop, even towards his allies and friends, all while showing zero shame or remorse about any of the aforementioned things. Nevertheless, at the end of the day it's all totally justified because Jane cracked the case.

** [[spoiler:[=LaRoche=]]] is last seen bleeding out form a gunshot, as Rigsby tries to save him but seems to get more upset. The next episode mentions him as dead, but the main characters [[AngstWhatAngst limited reaction to this]] and the fact that they might have seen an advantage in letting his attacker think he'd died do cast a little doubt on it.

** After [[spoiler:Stiles and Haffner]] were apparently [[spoiler:blown up when McAlister [[FakingTheDead faked his own death]] , but the fact that one death was faked in that incident doesn't necessarily mean that the others weren't, as while if Stiles and/or Haffner survived then they might have had reasons off their own to run -- as members of Visualize, and with Red John running around -- or been sent as potentially valuable prisoners for the Blake Association, with both organizations potentially having had the recourses to plant more bodies and DNA]].

* MagnificentBastard ("[[Recap/TheMentalistS3E21LikeARedheadedStepchild Like a Redheaded Stepchild]]" and "[[Recap/TheMentalistS5E4BloodFeud Blood Feud]]"): [[NobleDemon Steve Rigsby]] is the [[ArchnemesisDad father]] of CBI agent, Wayne Rigsby, and a cunning career criminal who was released from prison where Steve had his son give him an alibi to avoid suspicion from the parole board. In his first appearance, Steve ostensibly assists Wayne and the CBI to solve the murder of a prison guard, only to use them to shut down a rival cigarette smuggling business before giving Wayne an honest fistfight when Wayne learns of Steve's manipulations. Steve later gets shot trying to protect his friend in his second appearance before [[FaceDeathWithDignity accepting his death]], spending his last moments bonding with his son and giving Wayne a vital clue that would allow Wayne to find Steve's killer and kill him.

** Season 6: [[FauxAffablyEvil Michael Ridley]] is the mastermind behind a massive [[HumanTraffickers human trafficking]] ring, kidnapping hundreds of innocent women to either be sold as {{sex slave}}s or killed for their [[OrganTheft organs]], with 15 butchered corpses shown on display. Ridley also shows the same callous cruelty to his [[BadBoss own employees]], with one getting his throat slit and two more getting stabbed to death while intimidating his right-hand man, Anthony Tremel, to try blowing up his doctor Alexander Lark before Ridley decides to coerce Lark into killing himself by threatening his daughter's life.

* AlasPoorScrappy: [[spoiler: Bosco. Because he was a jerk to Jane, mainly because he suspected that Jane was putting Lisbon and her career in danger, and/or flirting with her (and in Bosco's book, these were pretty equal crimes), he was not a fan favourite. Add forty-five minutes of Lisbon looking beautiful and distraught after his shooting - hey presto, everybody cries when he snuffs it after admitting that he loves her.]]

** Todd Johnson: Did he [[spoiler: murder cops just ForTheEvulz]]? Or did [[spoiler: Red John order him to kill those cops for specific reasons]]? While his appearance in season 3 initially leans towards the former interpretation, the revelation in season 6 about [[spoiler: the Blake Association]] casts his actions in a different light. If [[spoiler: Johnson's killing of cops was tied with the Blake Association]] was it because [[spoiler: said cops were former association members who turned traitor and needed to be silenced]]? Or was it because [[spoiler: they were cops outside of the association who found out about the organization and were investigating it]]?
** Red John/[[spoiler: Sherriff [=McCallister=]]]. Just what are his backstory and motivations? What led him to become a serial killer? Why is it that he seems to have absolutely no remorse for his actions, but instead views them as NecessarilyEvil despite most of them being petty murders of unimportant people? It's revealed throughout the course of the show that he does not view himself as weak, unhappy, evil or in need of redemption, and that he does not feel himself deserving of punishment for his deeds, so what does that make him? Is he some sort of KnightTemplar or WellIntentionedExtremist with a goal we don't know about? Does he suffer from BlueAndOrangeMorality, BlackAndWhiteInsanity, or a little bit of both? Or is he just plain bonkers with delusions of grandeur? And did he start killing people before or after he [[spoiler: became a sheriff]]?
*** One thing that's established about Red John is that he doesn't tolerate cheap imitations of his work, and specifically tracks down and murders two copycat killers because of that. However, when it comes to the killer in the Pilot episode, [[spoiler: Dr. Linus Wagner]], he never goes after them despite also copying Red John's M.O. Was this because Red John didn't have time to track down the killer before the CBI got to them? Or did he not care because the killer in that episode only used it to evade the police and he didn't see it as a mockery of his work compared to the delusional copycat killers who wanted people to believe they were really Red John?
*** In season 6, was Red John [[spoiler: telling Jane the truth about being a psychic]]? Or was he lying to [[spoiler: save his own skin]]? There's never a definitive answer for how Red John [[spoiler: got the list of 7 suspects months before Jane did]], so it could go either way.

* ArcFatigue: It takes ''five'' seasons for Jane to compile a concrete list of 7 suspects. [[spoiler: It's all paid off now.]]

** [[spoiler: Shettrick is Volker's mole.]] Unlike other [[TheMole Moles]] in the series, this time the writers just pull [[spoiler: her]] out their asses.
** For many, TheReveal that Red John was [[spoiler: Sherriff [=McCallister=]]] falls into this. Mostly because so little evidence over the course of the series pointed to him (except for evidence in season 6, the season he was revealed, which should mark it as Ass Pull), and because it doesn't easily jive with what we ''did'' know about Red John (like his height and hair, which are pretty different to what they had been described as). Not to mention, any motive or backstory Red John had was dismissed by Jane as irrelevant, so we learn little about him beyond the fact that this man was Red John. Many of his impressive and nigh impossible psychic feats are given no explanation, and there are also logistical questions that push the trouble of his identity into FridgeLogic territory, such as how he could keep showing up and killing in Sacramento, where the team is based, especially in his last season, when he's supposed to be [[spoiler:a small-town sheriff from Santa Monica]], hundreds of miles away.

* TheChrisCarterEffect: The Red John MythArc has become far more elaborate and convoluted than originally intended. While Bruno Heller supposedly knew who Red John was going to be from the start (although even that notion is contested by many), the character went from a particularly devious SerialKiller who knew how to cover his tracks, to a SerialKiller connected to a few other killers, to a SerialKiller with a shadow army of fanatically devoted, loyal-unto-death brainwashed followers. In season 6 they took his catchphrase ("Tiger, Tiger") and decided to turn what initially looked like a cult into a sophisticated, national wide criminal organization that nobody had heard of, and made Red John a possible member, then a possible ''senior'' member, and finally into the apparent mastermind of the whole thing. Oh, and he's repeatedly performing "psychic" feats that make Jane look like an amateur that are never explained or referenced again. Beyond a certain point, he's basically a comic book supervillain, and you have to start wondering why he ever resorted to anything as trivial as serial murder in the first place. TheReveal that he is [[spoiler: Sherriff [=McCallister=]]] only raised further issues, as many clues that were dropped about Red John through the series turned out to be irrelevant (his height, for instance, as the actor in question is taller than Red John was stated to be) or never mentioned again, while practically all of the clues that pointed to him were only dropped in the very season he was revealed in.

** Not everyone really pays attention to the episodes that take place after [[spoiler: the ''real'' final showdown with Red John in Season 6,]] given the cast shake-ups and how much it suspends disbelief that [[spoiler: Jane is still allowed to work with law enforcement by that point.]]

** One of the biggest criticisms in general were the number of associates that were revealed to be working for Red John over the course of the series, with some of these reveals being seen as [[AssPull Ass Pulls]] by fans. This was something that existed in the first two seasons where the reveal that [[spoiler: Dumar Tanner, the local sheriff in the area that the CBI Team is investigating]] in season 1 and [[spoiler: Rebecca Anderson, Sam Bosco's secretary at the CBI]] in season 2 were helping Red John carry out the worst of his crimes. This was excused in the early seasons because there was at least an in-universe explanation given for why these people worked for Red John: [[spoiler: Dumar Tanner]] from season 1 was revealed to be [[spoiler: the son of Orville Tanner, who had aided Red John in committing his first murder in 1998.]] Furthermore, it's implied that Red John acted as a ParentalSubstitute to [[spoiler: Dumar]] when [[spoiler: his father was taken to prison,]] which explains why he's devoted to Red John. Likewise in season 2, when [[spoiler: Rebecca]] is revealed to be a Red John associate, Jane deduces that [[spoiler: she]] [[FreudianExcuse came from an abusive upbringing]] which caused a history of self-hatred on [[spoiler: her]] part until Red John "rescued" her. Plus, at the time, these were just 2-3 associates of Red John. This started to become a problem from season 3 onward when that number increased to over a dozen and there was little to no explanation given for why these people were so loyal to Red John, or why they'd be willing to commit horrific acts (rape, kidnapping, torture, murder, etc) on his behalf. The show tried to hand-wave this by revealing in season 5 that [[spoiler: Red John had been a member of the cult Visualize back in the 80s and picked up tips from there on how to manipulate people]] and in season 6 that [[spoiler: Red John was the leader of the Blake Association, which was a group of corrupt law enforcement officials dedicated to covering up heinous crimes]], but for many people, these revelations broke WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief as we never really get to see how Red John [[spoiler: formed the Blake Association]] or his techniques for [[spoiler: brainwashing people to commit morally reprehensible acts.]]
** Red John's ability to pull off impossible feats have always been a source of controversy with fans because of how close they come to straining credibility. Some of the earlier examples include Red John being able to hack into the Department of Justice Network just to tell Jane to "Keep up the good work" [[note]] This took place back in season 1 when a convicted murderer named Jared Renfrew claimed to have information about Red John that he would share if Jane helped Jared proved his innocence for a crime he didn't commit. At the time, Red John wanted Jane to succeed in getting Jared out of prison so he could kill him in the open before he talked. [[/note]] and being able to [[spoiler: infiltrate the CBI in season 2 to kill an associate who had become a liability.]] At the time, fans rolled with this because they believed the show would eventually explain how Red John was able to pull his accomplishments off. However, as the seasons continued, there were fewer and fewer satisfying explanations, and meanwhile Red John's ability to run circles around law enforcement started to get more outlandish. This comes to a head around seasons 5-6 when [[spoiler: it's revealed that Red John was able to figure out the names of the 7 suspects on Jane's list ''2 months before Jane was able to.'' Aside from briefly hinting at the idea of Red John being psychic (which many fans saw as an AssPull), there is never a logical explanation given for how Red John was able to do this.]]

** [[spoiler: [=LaRoche=]]] is last seen bleeding out form a gunshot, as Rigsby tries to save him but seems to get more upset. The next episode mentions him as dead, but the main characters [[AngstWhatAngst limited reaction to this]] and the fact that they might have seen an advantage in letting his attacker think he'd died do cast a little doubt on it.
** After [[spoiler: Stiles and Haffner]] were apparently [[spoiler: blown up when McAlister [[FakingTheDead faked his own death]] , but the fact that one death was faked in that incident doesn't necessarily mean that the others weren't, as while if Stiles and/or Haffner survived then they might have had reasons off their own to run -as members of Visualize, and with Red John running around- or been sen as potentially valuable prisoners for the Blake Association, with both organizations potentially having had the recourses to plant more bodies and DNA]].
** Some fans who ''don't'' think Red John is psychic wonder if [[spoiler: Lorelai]] was really dead in order to explain how she appeared on a Dvd, where Red John named Jane's seven final suspects, supposedly before Jane even started making his list.

** Subverted in an interesting way in both "Blood In, Blood Out" with Jon "Why squirrel hate me?" Sklaroff and "Red Letter" in Rick Hoffman. [[spoiler: Sklaroff's character is guilty of some drug charges and Cho pretends to kill him to get the real killer to confess. Hoffman's character isn't the killer, but is running a human trafficking ring through his anti-human trafficking organization.]]
** Seemingly lampshaded in "Blinking Red Light." Jane tells Lisbon to go with her gut and pick the suspect who looks like he did it. She immediately chooses William Mapother. [[spoiler: Subverted in that he was innocent; double subverted when the killer turns out to be played by David Paymer.]]

** ''Creator/BradleyWhitford'' as [[spoiler: The fake Red John]].

** Many believe that Brett Partridge was funny enough and had sufficiently interesting interactions with Jane to add him to the core characters in the CBI. Instead, [[spoiler: he was a sporadic character who was only used as an incredibly unsubtle Red John RedHerring.]]

** In season 6, a huge bombshell is dropped when it's revealed that [[spoiler: there's an organization called The Blake Association which consists of corrupt cops, law enforcement officials, FBI and CBI agents who commit atrocities and cover up crimes for each other while silencing anyone who threatens to expose them.]] This arc alone could have taken up an entire season, especially when [[spoiler: Reede Smith]] claims there are thousands of [[spoiler: Blake Association members]] out there. Instead, the arc only exists for a few episodes and then fizzles out after [[spoiler: Red John dies.]]
** We never find out what happened to Visualize after [[spoiler: Bret Stiles is killed]] in season 6.

* VillainBall: The only reason Jane ever gets in a position to defeat Red John is due to the latter possessing one of these. Despite knowing all too well that Jane wants him dead for what he did to Jane's family, a combination of WorthyOpponent, TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou, and WeCanRuleTogether leads Red John to keep Jane alive--and in a position to one day kill him--instead of killing Jane first out of self-preservation.

** We never find out what happened to Visualize after [[spoiler: Bret Stiles is killed]] in season 6.
* WhatAnIdiot: The killer in ''Red-Handed'' is completely aware that whoever has the victim's lucky poker chip would immediately become a major suspect as well as the fact that Patrick is investigating the case yet he ''bets'' said poker chip on a game against Patrick. He's arrested less than two minutes after.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: That damned [[ResetButton reset buttony]] season four premiere. [[spoiler:It basically negates all the epic GambitPileup in the season three finale.]]