Jack facing the house fire
Season 1
Season 2
- The Pearson housefire depicted in "That'll Be The Day" and continued into "Super Bowl Sunday" is one for the ages, especially for how realistically – yet quickly – it shows the fire spreading. Jack's efforts at getting Randall and Kate out of their rooms also shows how when you're in an emergency situation, a couple minutes can feel like hours.
Season 3
- While playing football as kids, Jack accidentally hits Nicky in the face and breaks his glasses. Nicky is fearful of what their father will do, and Jack insists he will take the blame. Later that night, Nicky is determined to defend his mother as he and Jack lay in bed and listen to their parents fight. He runs downstairs, where Stanley approaches him and is most likely about to hit him. Jack stands inbetween his father and brother. A dumbfounded Stanley scoffs, saying the three “deserve each other”, before walking off. Marilyn and her sons hug, and Marilyn comments on the rapid heart rate Jack has (this condition later contributes to his death after the fire).
- The tension during the 1969 draft lottery is present as Nicky and Jack listen for Nicky’s number to be called. Jack is convinced Nicky is lucky and that he will not be drafted, but his birthday is called fifth in line. From the looks on both brothers’ faces, it’s clear anxiety is running through their veins. Jack immediately suggests that Nicky flees to Canada and dodges the draft, and they initially make the moves to get him over there, but Nicky decides to follow through due to fear.
- The general horrors of Vietnam that Jack and Nicky are exposed to.
- Nicky accidentally gets a child killed when he teaches him how to fish with grenades, and the boy pulls a pin on one of them without permission. The resulting panic causes the activated grenade to fall into the boat. The child does not speak English, so he doesn’t understand it when Nicky screams for him to jump into the water, and Nicky has no time to push him off or grab him as he jumps away himself. The resulting chaos shows a shell-shocked Nicky, who cannot hear properly for several moments due to the explosion, and a livid, terrified Jack pulling him from the water. The boy’s mother screams hysterically as she comes out and sees the scene: a mangled boat on fire, and her son nowhere to be found. Jack assumes his brother purposely killed the boy, and disowns Nicky right there. Nicky cannot speak or think straight, and we later see him being medevacked out of the area for psychiatric treatment.
- After a retelling of these events, we see a likely intoxicated and older Nicky sitting in his trailer with a loaded gun on the table, as Jack’s children return to his home and find him in distress, probably seconds from suicide.
- Sometime after both Jack and Nicky return home from Vietnam, we see Marilyn with bruises on her face, with a disturbed mailman eyeing her injuries as she claims she’s simply “clumsy”. Later, we see Jack removing her from her and Stanley’s house and moving her into a friend’s home. It is clear Stanley was beating her.
Season 4
- During one Thanksgiving in their childhood, Jack and Nicky hide under the basement staircase and listen to the radio, where they place bets against each other for fun. Stanley then screams their names from upstairs, and both brothers seem panicked. Jack assures Nicky everything will be okay, but their demeanors indicate that a beating may occur.
- A miserable Nicky sits on the porch during Thanksgiving of 1969, and we can hear Marilyn and Stanley screaming at each other, signaling tension in the house. When Jack arrives, Nicky describes the chaos and says that their drunk grandfather is also inside. Both adults at this point, the brothers decide to ditch the house and have their own Thanksgiving.
- Season 4 really dives into Randall's psyche and essentially reveals that he's walking, breathing nightmare fuel. His anxieties and nightmares play out like horror movies, and instead of getting treatment for it, he simply learns to live with it. He has an affable, professional demeanour, but occasionally, horrible sides of him come out, like when he snaps at Beth, or when he beats the mugger to the ground – an act seen as heroic, but is actually Randall's anxiety spilling over in an unhealthy way.
- "After The Fire" is a special kind of nightmare fuel. Randall has imagined two very detailed scenarios – one over-the-top in its idealistic, perfect nature, and one over-the-top for how negative everything is. And these are the things that Randall admits he constantly thinks about – he could have saved both his fathers, he could have saved his mother, but he also considers himself responsible for so much in the Pearson family going wrong (one of the most subtle things about the second reality is that Kate is still with Mark – Randall likely views the fact that he, Kevin and Rebecca were united against him as something that drove him out). It's stressful just to watch when you realize how much stress Randall puts on his own shoulders.
- Teen!Kate's relationship with Mark. He's verbally and emotionally abusive, gaslighting and prone to outbursts. And yet, it's the kind of abuse that no one notices the red flags of until they're no longer just flags. Half of the things that Mark does to Kate which raise an eyebrow are done in front of others – and while Rebecca, Randall and Kevin clearly aren't fans of Mark, they also don't realize until it's almost too late that it's an emergency she needs to get out of.
- As Cassidy is introduced for the first time, we see her enduring PTSD symptoms, and in one instance, she hits her son in the face by accident during an episode. Her husband reacts with understandable anger and fear.
- Nicky becomes heavily intoxicated after his therapist claims she is being transferred. He feels hopeless and betrayed, so he relapses. He ends up breaking a window at the VA center by throwing a chair in a fit of drunken rage, and is seen still out of his mind as police arrest him and shove him into a car in handcuffs.
- After Nicky is bailed out of jail and Kevin comes to his rescue, Kevin drags him to a ceremony at the VA center where Cassidy will receive accolades for her military service. Nicky does not want to go, but does so anyway. While there, the loud noises terrify him and make him jump, and he has an upsetting flashback to his time in Vietnam before hastily leaving.
- Rebecca's condition after her (thankfully very minor) car accident is full of Squick and is enough to frighten all three kids. Imagine what could have happen if it were head-on, or if the other car were going quickly?
- Future!Rebecca being so far gone with her memory issues that she struggles to make sense of her son being before her. The "lost" look in her eyes is so powerful, without saying a word, and is very identifiable for anyone whose parent or grandparent lives with dementia. While much of the focus is on how sad it is, there's also the very real matter of how scared Rebecca must be, and what reality looks like through her eyes.
- Not to mention Rebecca's present-day decline, especially as seen on her "Thanksgiving" (really the triplets' 40th birthday) journey does make her impairment out to be an extremely stressful, chaotic experience from her perspective alone – let alone that of Randall, who is wondering where she is.
- Baby Jack is born extremely premature and the props department conveys this through an extremely realistic baby prop that many have described as frighteningly accurate. What's worse is when he stops breathing in the NICU immediately after Kate puts him down – a true nightmare for any parent.
- Jack also chokes on his eggs in Toby's care, and Toby's panic makes a few seconds seem endless for tiny Jack. In season 4, during Randall's therapy session discussing what could have been if Jack lived, his voice trails off and his eyes widen with fear. Like he's seeing something that isn't actually there which only he can see or hallucinate. Even the audience cannot glimpse what Randall sees. Just what was Randall looking at that he was momentarily so scared of in the therapist room?
Season 5
- In one episode, as Kevin rushes to the hospital to see the birth of his twins, he narrowly swerved to avoid a collision with another car. The other car, unfortunately, crashed and wrecked and the driver was injured but managed to survive thanks to Kevin's help.
- The trailers for the episode alone were terrifying, showing only the crashed car and a voiceover of Madison's phone call to Kevin before cutting to a closeup of Kevin's license laying on the ground outside the car. This was also the only promo released for that bank of episodes after the hiatus, making it appear that the show was headed towards a much Darker and Edgier tone.
- An 11 year old Jack is forced to drive a drunk Stanley home after a game of Little League.
- Nicky was so protective of his mother, that he stood up his first love and stayed home to try and keep his father relaxed, as he felt Stanley was less violent with at least one son around
- While Nicky is preparing to travel to meet his great niece and nephew for the first time, the snow-globes he made for them are accidentally broken as he tries to empty the liquid before boarding his flight, and he is visibly distressed and overstimulated during this sequence. The scene is particularly tense and unnerving to watch, though Nicky eventually makes it onto the plane and recovers.
Season 6
- We see the Big Three as children, and are shown how traumatizing the Challenger explosion was for them and many children of the time.
- As a small child, Jack breaks his sled and Marilyn has to insist she will hide it from Stanley to avoid any confrontation. This suggests Stanley’s abuse began very shortly after Nicky’s birth, early in both of their childhoods.
- Rebecca, normally gentle and calm with her children, slaps a young adult Kate across the face after Kate calls her a derogatory name for dating after Jack’s death
- Cassidy nearly dies in a car wreck, and we see her in the hospital covered in bruises and cuts with a broken arm. She is incredibly distressed and sobs while Kevin and Nicky are in the room with her, and throughout the episode, it is clear she was attempting suicide.
