Both a gift and a curse, Graham has the extraordinary ability to think like his prey—he sees what they see, feels what they feel. But while Graham is pursuing an especially troubling, cannibalistic murderer, Special Agent Jack Crawford teams him with a highly respected psychiatrist – a man with a taste for the criminal minded – Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
This tv show contains 126 potentially triggering events.
Throughout season 1 Will Grahm believes he hears a dog yelping in pain, but these are hallucinations. In Season 2 Episode 9 a dog is injured but survives.
Season 3, Episode 11 - Will's dogs are poisoned by The Red Dragon. They are taken to the vet and survive. They are not seen ill on screen.
Not exactly, but there is a case in season one where young boys who are the "black sheep" of their families are manipulated into running away, and the parents don't seem to care. One family even erases the missing son from the family photos, if I remember correctly. More abandonment-adjacent than anything
more than one instance of violence between family members- a husband attacks his wife and daughter with a knife in season, an abusive older brother and his younger sister get into/have been in physical fights with each other
The first/one of the first murders of the whole series, we see the body of a dead young woman arranged naked and impaled on dear antlers like a display. This first death is not gorey, but her being young and having been stripped felt weirdly sexual/emphasised that it was violence to a woman.
There are also many very graphic (and much more gorey) murders of both men and women throughout the series that are high in shock value and spectacle.
S01E04 Abigail gets tea with shrooms
various people are drugged through the series (Will's flashbacks in S02, also Will in S03E06, people kept in coma in S01E02...)
There is one offhand comment made by character Jimmy Price (somewhere in the first two episodes I think?) alluding to his alcoholism. Also, somewhere in the beginning of season 2, a victim is found to be a recovering heroin addict.
There are pigs in seasons 2 and 3 that are experimented on to make them eat humans alive, and one pig has a uterus implanted to be surrogate to a human child.
I honestly have the biggest phobia of spiders (to the point where seeing a photo gives me a panic attack) and I was fine watching Hannibal. I don't actually ever remember seeing a spider on screen.
The show never focuses on it (and has actually been praised for not making it a big deal) but it is heavily implied that a character assaulted/abused his sister and sexual assault is mentioned a few times throughout the show in the context of serial killers and their actions.
Freddie Lounds takes a picture of Will’s colostomy bag (and his genitals). She posts it online, but censors his genitals using a black box. When confronted, she jokes that she did him a favor by using a large black box instead of a smaller one.
season 1 episode 1: a character attempts to slit his daughters throat and successfully slits his wife's.
season 1 episode 8: a persons vocal cords are turned into cello strings for the person to be played as a cello
season 2 episode 13: a characters throat is successfully slit by the main character
the major ones are:
season two episode 1: a character has a flashback to getting force-fed via feeding tube
season two episode 5: a character is briefly hung before being rescued
season two episode 9: a character is seen tied up to a tree with a rope around his neck
there are other times were a character with lung cancer struggles to breathe, but it is brief.
In the last few episodes of season one, the killer starts giving their victims “joker like” smiles by cutting their mouths from the corners to their ears and often times further. It’s not often shown in great detail and is sometimes hard to see. One of them is cut so far he is considered decapitated from the jaw down.
The main character is a cannibal. Others willingy or unwillingly take part in the act. However, no one ever eats raw meat — all plates are carefully constructed under the pretence of "real" food.
spoilers for the whole series!!
some i remember are:
- mason grabs a child's neck very forcefully
- will has a tube shoved down his throat, which causes him to choke loudly
- hannibal is hung, and is audibly struggling to breathe
Several episodes feature grotesque abuses of the human body. Many of them are on corpses but not all. A woman's body is cut into segments. Someone is impaled on antlers. Human bodies are turned into beehives. A cannibal makes fancy food out of people.
1) amputation of the legs of a man who is being kept alive to slowly eat. pretty gruesome scenes with this one. 2) amputation of a girls arm. the actual act of amputation is not shown on screen but the severed arm is shown as well as the healed spot where her arm used to be. she is given a prosthetic arm and uses this for the rest of the show.
As far as I have watched, S1E8 (Fromage), someone's neck is snapped and a few moments later, another person's arm is broken after being forced against a ladder.
Season 2, Episode 4, roughly 23 minutes in. Once the scene containing acupuncture begins, I recommend a skip if you can't handle eye trauma. It ends in a lobotomy, for the sake of understanding the following scene.
Hannibal stabs another major character in the gut. It is shown with a large amount of blood. At the same time, another character gets their throat cut.
No, but during a home invasion a mother is shown helping her son out of a small window and tells him to run away without her if she can't get outside within a couple minutes. The mother is shot by the invader, but both mother and son survive.
^ 'Asperger's' is not a slur it is a diagnosis for someone on an autistic spectrum. It is in no way related to the 'R' word, nor is it said with any malice, only as a term to describe someone's place on the spectrum by qualified therapists as well as the person in question.
There are no proper ghosts, but Will Grahm has many hallucinations that might appear to the viewer as, and serve a similar thematic purpose to, ghosts.
2 scenes in particular stood out as triggering to me. S1E09: a character's dead body is discovered with trypophobic patterns in his skin (only shown briefly); S2E04: a character is killed and turned into a "human beehive" of sorts, and this is a very trypophobic scene. both scenes are skippable and avoiding them won't affect your actual watching experience.
Not that I can remember, but there is a symbolic "demon" form of Hannibal that pops up in Will's imagination/hallucinations that is very uncanny-looking.
A lot of the main characters are FBI agents, but are all shown to be imperfect and in some cases corrupt/dishonest, so I don't believe there's anything that could be construed as propaganda.
In the second season there is a young woman who has Cotard syndrome and believes she is dead. Eventually gets treated and they mention electro-therapy a few times, that she will get it and that it's thought to be useful for this condition. Never seen done on scene in this episode.
Lots of scenes where characters are recovering in hospital beds, as well as a scene where a character undergoes an on-screen emergency surgery after having his stomach sliced open. There are also lots of morgue/autopsy scenes.
Jacks Wife Bella has stage 4 cancer and you see elements of her treatment. There's also a very rough line about her having stage 4 in Season 1 episode 5. It’s near the end and you can just skip over the conversation between Bella and Hannibal if you wish.
In S2 E5 someone's forearms are slashed (off screen by someone else) but the open wounds are shown. And then they are repeatedly shown over that season as stitched and then scarred.
The character in question says they are 'on the spectrum' also that they are 'closer to Asperger's' and that they have some 'UNDIAGNOSED PERSONALITY DISORDERS' ***Small spoilers**** the mixture of disorders and where he is on the spectrum allows him to profile killers for the FBI.
--The best term to describe the character in question is when someone says: "There isn't a word yet for what SO AND SO is."---
-- If autism is misrepresented then so to are 'various undiagnosed personality disorders' ---- Even then, if they are misrepresented they are only done that way to enhance a character to make them a better 'cooler' more interesting detective. ---- What they end up doing or not doing as that character is not chalked up to their autism or personality disorders ****MORE SPOILERS****** it is chalked up to something beyond the character's control - something that is done to them.
In the first season, a character suffers from Cotard syndrome and she's been thinking she's already dead since childhood. Now she's an adult and she becomes violent. She kills a woman (her old friend) in a very crude way, trying to understand if she's real or not.
this is a running theme throughout the show. it starts happening early in season 1 and gets worse / more frequent / more intense as the show progresses
Jack is incredibly rude in the first episode re: Will and his autism--forcing eye contact, etc. Freddy calls Will crazy and the like through season one. People consistently treat Will as a child. A lot of it isn't autism *specific* but treads the line
One character attempts to overdose on painkillers during her cancer treatments but is unsuccessful. Later, a major character attempts to commit a murder-suicide by jumping off a cliff, and it’s left ambiguous whether they were successful.
There are multiple times where it is unclear if Will is having hallucinations, events are actually happening, or a combination of the two occurs. Will, as well as other characters, doubts his sanity throughout the show.
Although I consider this show good about it, untensiles Can be heard clicking against plates but chewing is normally inaudible. Since Hannibal, a main character, is an avid cook, misophonia triggers are in most episodes.
I'm part-way into season 2 and Will has had an anxiety attack of some kind in the overwhelming majority of episodes. (*I've* also had a few anxiety attacks over this show, but that's not relevant.)
Not directly but if you have trauma from applied behavioural analysis or cognitive behavioural therapy, the show gets increasingly more triggering as you continue watching.
Not literally, but it's heavily implied and their intentions are quite certain. The same character later tries to commit suicide, but is "saved" against their will by one of the main characters
In season 1, Georgia Madchen is in an isolation chamber in a hospital. While she's in it, a spark caused by her combing her hair starts a fire, and she is unable to escape the chamber.
I don't have epilepsy so I might miss subtler triggers, but I started keeping a log when I noticed blatant strobing in s2e4, will update as I continue watching.
Season 2 episode 4: Strong strobing lights starting around 14:00 (after a character is given an injection) and ending at around 15:50 (should be safe to look when you hear a character say "photosensitive epilepsy").
Season 2 episode 7: flashing lights starting a bit after 4:10 (dialogue: "I could hear his voice, but I couldn't see his face") and continues for a few seconds (should be safe to look when you hear "Why didn't he kill you"). And again a bit after 6:25 (no dialogue, Hannibal looks directly into the camera) for a few seconds (until you hear “It’s not him”). And again at about 22:20 (“And his voice, low and even, would pull me to him”) until about 22:43 (“You and I...are part of his design”). Again after 27:30 (“Would you like to try?”) until about 28:40 (“We found a fingerprint on a flower petal"). Again around 39:10 (“Until my lawyer arrives”) until about 39:35 (furious stammering/sobbing). And lastly, some mild flickering from a fireplace at the very end, around 42:20 (“...my therapy) until the credits roll (all sound cuts out, then is replaced by irregular percussion-dominated music).
Yes and no. There is a scene in season 3 where an ultrasound of a dead baby is shown. Spoiler alert: really awful and kinda horrific because the baby was supposedly implanted in a pig as a 'surrogate', using a woman's reproductive organs.
The show reflects the time of setting and of creation and uses terms like psychopath, sociopath, and psychotic. It is unclear if it is meant in an ableist way or not, but it is something to be aware of in that the demonization of mental illness and personality disorders is unfortunately a big part of the show
Alana (bisexual) and Margot (a lesbian) survive; Will and Hannibal (confirmed by Fuller to be bisexual and omnisexual/pansexual respectively) appear to die in the final episode of Season Three, but their survival is implied in the post-credits scene and has since been confirmed by Bryan Fuller and the cast. However, Anthony Dimmond, who is shown to proposition Hannibal, and Francis Dolarhyde, who writes about Hannibal in a romantic/sexual context in his journal, are both killed.
For the most part the show is surprisingly good when it comes to portraying characters with disabilities and severe mental illness in an empathetic light, like Will Graham, Georgia Madchen, and Peter Bernadone (at least in comparison to most of the horror genre). However, Francis Dolarhyde has a cleft lip and thinks of himself as hideous. While the cause of his self-hatred is likely the severe abuse he experienced as a child, its still a notable correlation.
I personally would not count the age gaps as “large,” but some people might be uncomfortable with it regardless.
Alana Bloom is in her early-mid 30s when she has a tryst with Hannibal, who is in his late 40s. Similarly, Will Graham is in his early 30s and Hannibal in his late 40s.
Technically there are no demons but in S01E05 the 'Angel Maker' sees evil people with flame heads and, you guessed it, skins their backs to make wings so they can pray over him while he sleeps, so there's that.
One of the first murders (season 1, episode 1), the victim is a dead young woman whose body is arranged and displayed naked and impaled on dear antlers.
Season 3, Episode 11 - Will's dogs are poisoned by The Red Dragon. They are taken to the vet and survive. They are not seen ill on screen.