Brooklyn Nine-Nine is usually one of the silliest, most lighthearted shows around. Which just makes the moments of fear stand out all the more...
All spoilers are unmarked!
- In a more general case, Holt's deadpan delivery of just about everything he says can make it hard to discern a joking but enraged threat from an actual statement of intent, especially with how out of nowhere graphic he can be.Santiago: It's fun to see you so passionate.
Holt: I will slit you both open from mouth to anus and wear you like jackets. - Journalist Jimmy Brogen talking about his work with the NYPD in the 1970's with nostalgic fondness in his voice... with lovely anecdotes such as one of the officers choking a hippie to death with his own ponytail. He also only had respect for one officer who did "hair bag" work (desk job), because the officer didn't have any other choice. He couldn't walk anymore because a mobster pried off his kneecaps with a crowbar! Things were . . . not good in New York in the 70s. There's a reason it inspired movies like The Warriors and Escape from New York; Wretched Hive barely scratches the surface. Holt's blunt shutdown of Jake's hero-fantasies about the time is also a stark reminder of how bad things were in the 70s — he'd have never been allowed to be a captain, while Amy and Rosa would have never been allowed to be detectives.
- Rosa's "happy place" monologue when asked what she imagined to relax during a trial where she needed to stay level-headed is played for black comedy, but her violent imagination in such a casual situation is unsettling to say the least.Rosa: I'm in a cabin, in the middle of nowhere. Inside it's just me and that stupid, slimy defense attorney...and I'm beating the hell out of him. I break a dining room table over his head. Then I rip off his arm and shove it where the sun don't shine. Then I reach down his throat...and shake his hand.
Boyle: (look of abject horror)
Scully: (look of abject horror)
Terry: Yeah...okay, I'm gonna go ahead and schedule you for a psych eval. - Everything about Detective Adrian Pimento. He's a deep-cover police operative who spent twelve years working with ruthless Mafia contacts, including the infamous Jimmy The Butcher. At one point he describes shoving a croquet wicket into a man's eye so hard his brains started coming out through his eye-sockets — in Pimento's words, the victim was "crying his mind".
- Season 3 takes a rather dark turn once Adrian Pimento finds out the guy who was following him around is really an assassin… and the person who employed him actually works in FBI. Pimento is forced to go into hiding as he realises, Jimmy "The Butcher" Figgis wants him dead.
- While Jake manages to identify The Mole in FBI and manages to capture him, turns out he is not the only one. Annderson, Holt’s trusted associate from FBI also works for Figgis and he has the other guy killed and has managed to take Holt hostage. After a series of events, they finally manage to rescue Holt from Annderson and smuggle him to Rosa’s apartment, a place no one will be able to find out about… until Figgis' men arrive and start shooting everyone, in an attempt to kill Annderson forcing him to confess everything. Subverted, when it is revealed that it was Charles, Amy and Rosa faking the whole thing to scare Annderson and force a confession out of him, but the fact that Figgis is dangerous enough that Annderson is unnerved still makes it count as one hell of a Nightmare Fuel moment.
- Then there is the ending of the season. Figgis' entire gang is caught, except for a few members, including Figgis himself. Not bad, right? They’ll catch him eventually? Nope. Jake receives a phone call right when he and Amy are planning to move in together from Figgis himself. He promises to find and make Jake pay. Smash Cut to Jake and Holt under witness protection program in Florida. End of season.
- It looks like season 4 will go back to the lighthearted tone of the series, but the fact that Figgis is still looming over Jake and Holt and is very much after their blood makes matters very uncomfortable, to the point that the possibility of an embarrassing video of Jake and Holt going viral on the Internet is a threat to their lives.
- Once Jake and Holt’s embarrassing video does go viral, Figgis decides to make his move. Jake and Holt decide to buy some guns and arm themselves… unfortunately because they do not have licence, they are arrested and are forced to reveal everything to the sheriff who has arrested them. He calls the marshall, but to Jake and Holt’s horror, the person on the other side says they’re lying. Jake tries to talk to the Marshall, turns out she’s been kidnapped by Figgis and the one impersonating the Marshall is Figgis himself.
- Once Jake and Holt manage to escape the jail, they are declared as fugitives. And to make matters worse, Holt ends up badly injuring himself. Neither of them can go anywhere for help anymore, while Figgis is coming.
- Once Figgis appears, he is played as a Faux Affably Evil mob boss, who is basically a quick thinker Evil Counterpart to Jake, and Eric Roberts plays him in a chilling manner. He is capable of coming up with cool and believable aliases and backstories for himself, that allows him to walk away from situations very easily. Once Jake and Figgis are cornered by the sheriff, Figgis manages to talk his way out of the situation, forcing Jake to ask the sheriff to arrest and interrogate them both. This makes Figgis shoot the sheriff and take Jake as hostage. On screen! Thankfully, it is revealed in the end he has survived his wound.
- The fact that Gina and Holt nearly run over Figgis with a truck in the climax is unnerving, despite being played as a Big Damn Heroes moment, given that Holt is seriously injured and he and Gina were driving like that because he was in pain, they probably weren’t intentionally doing that. Figgis only survives because he was in a car while Amy, who was on foot could've ended with some critical injury.
- Scully describing his basement. Joel McKinnon Miller's delivery is too creepy for words."I got this one red door I've never been able to open, and I hear screams behind it sometimes... but it's probably just the wind."
- It might even be a reference to The Amityville Horror (1979) and the alleged true story it was based on.
- The Season 4 finale introduced the fear of being convicted for a crime you didn't commit.
- In Season 5 when Jake is in prison and discovers his cellmate is a child-murdering cannibal. Actor Tim Meadows gives a hilarious and terrifying performance of the character. To be more specific, his name is Caleb, and he acts like a perfectly normal, nice enough guy... who just happens to have murdered several children and devoured their bodies! They Look Just Like Everyone Else! after all... There's also the ending of the two-parter where Jake is saying goodbye to him in the prison hospital after Caleb got shanked protecting him... and Caleb tries to take a bite out of his hand. This happens again when Jake and Charles go to see him for advice on a case in Season 6. Really, the only reason that Caleb isn't literally, yes LITERALLY, the worst criminal who's ever been on the show is the sheer audacity of his crimes and the contrast to his normal personality. Black Comedy at it's finest.
- Season 5 does not shy away from how broken the prison system is. At least one guard regularly beats inmates to a pulp for the tiniest offence, and all the prisoners are resigned to the fact that he will always get away with it, because the cameras are always conveniently "not working" whenever this happens. (Hell, the warden admits to this.) The rampant anti-Semitism and transphobia in prisons is touched upon, as is the prison's staff general disregard for the inmates' well-being . It's played for dark comedy as much as possible, but it's scary.
- NutriBoom, a pyramid scheme Jake & Charles invest in, is actually a cult. And they have eyes everywhere and are now possibly stalking Jake. Also doubles as Truth in Television, because in real life, many multi-level marketing schemes such as NutriBoom often develop cult-like structures and figureheads, and will often resort to extremely sketchy practices such as hiring stalkers to keep tabs on potential threats, among many other things.
- The cold open of Season 5 Episode 17 revolves around a woman who hid helplessly in a bathroom stall as she listened to an extremely fucked up man kill her brother while singing along to the music playing in the bar. While this results in an absolutely hilarious moment where Jake basically leads the suspects of a police lineup in singing "I Want It That Way" in order to find out who the killer is, once the witness reveals what crime the line-up is for, any viewer who thinks about it for more than a few seconds is treated to a horrifying mental image of what the woman went through, something that wouldn't have been out of place in a slasher movie. It's easy to miss the first dozen times you watch it, but the look on the poor woman's face when she hears the fifth suspect's voice and realizes he's the killer, is one of abject horror. Made worse by Jake's usual man-child idiocy treating it like a fun thing. In front of her.
- The episode "Moo-Moo". Terry, a completely legit, by-the-books police officer went out one evening to look for a toy one of his daughters lost, but is stopped by a racist cop with the only justification being that Terry's a Black man in a nice neighborhood. While it's mostly a tearjerker, to anyone that's experienced something similar or is familiar with the NYPD's track record, there was a very real possibility that Terry could have been killed by a fellow officer for the "crime" of being Black.
- How close Jake and Amy (and all their guests) came to dying in the Season 5 finale. There was an honest-to-God bomb at their wedding!
- "Balancing"
- Jake and Amy almost let the Villain of the Week babysit their child. Not a Harmless Villain or a Friendly Enemy either — a freaking Serial Killer named Franzia with a penchant for Criminal Mind Games. Fortunately or unfortunately, he was too creepy with his "obsession for cuddling" meaning that Amy and Jake got Scully for a few hours instead.
- Franzia, to make matters worse, gave Jake and Amy a toy for Mac. They assume it was to butter them up about giving him the job. Nope; it was to plant a bug in the precinct since he knew they didn't have a babysitter. Jake's reaction when he and Boyle find it is of abject horror.
