"Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
- Red John:
- For starters, he's a serial killer who spends the majority of the show with his identity unknown.
- 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:
Patrick Jane: Red John thinks of himself as a showman, an artist. He has a strong sense of theater. In all of the previous killings, he made sure that the first thing that anyone sees is the face on the wall. You see the face first and you know. You know what's happened and you feel dread. Then, and only then, do you see the body of the victim. Always in that order.- Any crime scene involving Red John. Other serial killers are terrified of him.
- Then there's how ruthless Red John can be: 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 warns the girl's boyfriend 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 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, Red John still finds a way to kidnap Kristina Frye from her own house. If Red John decides to come after you, 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: These people seem ordinary and friendly on the surface, but they soon drop the facade to reveal themselves as either depraved psychopaths or Brainwashed and Crazy. The scary part is how utterly devoted they are to Red John: Not only do they see him as a Messiah figure, but they are perfectly okay committing heinous crimes like rape, murder, kidnapping, and terrorism on his orders. 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.
- As if being a Serial Killer isn't bad enough, Red John loves demonstrating how much of a Sadist he is. Jane sums it up best:
Patrick Jane: He wakes them first, because he likes to see the fear in their eyes. He likes to hear them beg for mercy as he cuts them open.- There are several instances where Red John subjected his victims to a Fate Worse than Death: The first example is what he did to Kirstina Frye: After kidnapping her, the CBI eventually tracks her down several months later to an abandoned house where she's alive but completely catatonic. Jane briefly gets Kristina to talk by performing a seance, but she reveals to him that she believes herself to be dead and doesn't remember anything about Red John or her abduction. The scary thing is we have no clue what Red John did to her that drove her into this state. The second example is what Red John does to Miranda Martins (Lorelei's sister): With the help of one of his accomplices, Red John kidnaps Miranda, takes her to an abandoned warehouse, proceeds to rape her, and chains her up in the warehouse to slowly die from heatstroke.
- Patrick Jane may be the protagonist of the show, but he's also an example of Good Is Not Nice. Whenever his darker side comes out, he is scary:
- 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. While he's doing this to try and find the killer, the fact he's forcing this girl to relieve an extremely traumatic moment in her life demonstrates how ruthless Jane can be at times.
- 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? He goads SJK into belittling Red John on live TV with the knowledge that Red John will 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 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: 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 Asshole Victim, and they inflicted a similar fate on the victim-of-the-week, but what Jane does is still horrifying.
- In season 6, 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 their hands on the list begins systematically killing each of the men who have been named. Again, all of these men were Asshole Victims, but the fact that Jane was perfectly okay risking the lives of other people for one of his schemes is pretty brutal on his part.
- In a season one episode, it's all but said aloud that one of Jane's former clients killed herself because Jane made an error in his cold-read and touched on a lifetime of trauma with the wrong phrase.
- The ending of "Red John's Friends." 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 matters worse, in the last minute of the episode, Jane gets a phone call from Red John, and he can be heard cackling on the other end of the line. Cue Credits.
- Multiple moments during the season 3 finale "Strawberries and Cream"
- Out of all the episodes in the series, this is one that arguably has the highest body count: 9 people dead by the end of it.
- 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 Alan, and the person who orchestrated everything is forced to set off the bomb to cover their tracks. Not only is this a terrifying situation for Alan who's being used against his will (and still gets killed off for his troubles), but it's also horrifying for everyone else at the gas station who were all at risk of being killed.
- 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, he finds Lisbon unconscious with a bomb strapped to her. When Lisbon wakes up, she gets a call from the killer who tells her where to go under threat of detonating her bomb just like he did with Alan. During this, Lisbon is extremely shaken and mutters a religious prayer while Jane is trying to keep her calm as they carry out the madman's orders.
- 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.
- The Reveal at the end of Part 1: 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. Initially, the accomplice tried torturing Max for the information, but he died from a heart attack before he could reveal anything. This forced the accomplice to kidnap Alan (after killing his roommate), strap a bomb on him, and use him to get the client list to see where the money was going so that Red John could finally locate Hightower and kill her. Cue an Oh, Crap! reaction from Jane and Lisbon as they realize what this means.
- Hightower shows up in Jane's hotel room holding a gun on him. She's just there to talk with him, but it's still creepy how she appears behind Jane without making a sound.
- In order to lure out Red John's mole in the CBI, Jane sets a trap by informing each of the suspects where Hightower is located. Later that night, an assassin shows up at one of the rooms. When Rigsby and Cho burst in to arrest them, the assassin choose to commit suicide by jumping off the roof.
- The Reveal about who the mole is in the CBI: It's Craig O'Laughlin. The worst part: By the time everyone figures it out, he's already killed two cops, shoots Lisbon, and attempts to kill Hightower on Red John's orders.
- The last few minutes of the episode: 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 that he's really 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.
- 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 the last five minutes, we are presented with a disk given by someone who knew Red John. In it, 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 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.
- The ending of "The Desert Rose". Lisbon gets a distress call from an abandoned building and back up is running late. She goes in. She finds Partridge (one of Jane's suspects) right before he dies and gets pulled back by the hair by an unknown assailant. Red John then calls Jane and tells him that Lisbon can't get the phone. While drawing a smily face on Lisbon's face. With Partridge's blood. Sweet Baby Jesus...Partridge: Tyger. Tyger.
