Dr. Temperance Brennan and her colleagues at the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Lab assist Special Agent Seeley Booth with murder investigations when the remains are so badly decomposed, burned or destroyed that the standard identification methods are useless.
This tv show contains 63 potentially triggering events.
Season 4 Episode 3 The Finger in the Nest The dog is part of an illegal dog fighting ring and his master commanded him to kill someone. Because of this, the dog is put down.
Booth, Brennan, and Sweets (all main characters) were abused by their parents. Many instances of child abuse as a backstory or cause of death for the victim of the episode.
Sweets mentions that before he was adopted, he suffered emotional (and possibly physical) abuse with the foster families he was placed with. Bones also suffered emotional abuse in her foster placements as a child and was once even locked in the boot of a car for ‘misbehaving’, which allows her to empathise with others who went through the same thing.
In Season 9 Episode 3 “El Carnicero en el Conche” the victim’s murderer, a teenage boy named Javier Alvarado is slapped quite hard by his mother Maria, the victim’s girlfriend after she learns the truth. Maria is arrested for child abuse and gang related activities.
The whole episode is about illegal dog fights to death so some details are pretty graphic Most of the dogs are really nice and wouldn’t be violent if their owners didn’t force them
All kinds of bugs actually. A major point of many episodes is when they identify how long someone has been dead for by seeing what stage of life the bugs on it are in.
While Hodgins is scuba diving, the killer holds a knife against the oxygen line to threaten Brennan and Booth. He is unaware of the situation but very much stuck there and threatened with drowning
At the very last few minutes, Booth seemingly makes light of male genital mutilation.
"Ugh, you're not talking about circumcision are you." When Bones says something about a man's choice if I remember correctly.
Mentioned multiple shoulder and other body parts dislocated. Sometimes they show a 3d recriation of the wound in the Angelanator to investigate the murder. Usually no blood is shown, but exaggerated sounds and imagery of inside bones cracking are common
There is a long running arc with a killer who burries people alive. There is an entire episode set inside a car that has been buried with it's occupants still alive. The show continues to talk about the trauma caused by the events even after they occur.
A finger is cut off offscreen - when Booth receives an envelope that says "BACK OFF," the finger is shown in a box and is analyzed in the lab in the next scene
It depends on your definition of gore. There are always bodies shown, that could be considered gore. However normally you only see the aftermath, not the actions that result in the bloody mess.
In Season 2 Episode 9, Bones and Hodgins are kidnapped by the Gravedigger and buried alive in a car. They manage to escape by using the car’s airbags to create an explosion to loosen the sediment above them
Dr. Brennan’s mother died prior to the show beginning, but her murder investigation is the season 1 finale and season 2 prologue. Later in Season 12 Brennan’s father Max dies in surgery after being mortally wounded defending his grandchildren from Assassins sent to kill them for revenge against Booth.
Booth’s father also dies during the show’s runtime, though this is off screen
On a few occasions one of the main characters, Booth, sees ghosts, however it is unclear if the ghosts are real or due to a brain injury that is revealed later in the series.
One of the cases, Bones makes someone vomit because they swallowed evidence but you can see it coming because fingers go down his throat.
Also a science guy for children comes in and he vomits quite early in the episode
Victim of the week is revealed as a 9/11 victim who rescued other victims from the pentagon building and later died as a result of injuries.
Major characters talk about their experiences on 9/11. Some talk about having lost family in the attacks and some talk about identifying bodies in the aftermath
*spoiler* In season 9, Wendell Bray (a squintern) is diagnosed with Ewings-Sarcoma after Dr. Brennan looks at his x-rays after he broke his arm. He, after some debate, decides to go through chemo. He ultimately survives.
Brennan describes an extremely traumatic event she went through that she says is shaping how she conducts the investigation, then insists she doesn't need therapy
I'm not sure if this technically fits, but in 'the ghost in the machine' the entire episode is from the perspective of a young murder victim whose soul is trapped in his body, with the characters talking about him in front of him, and even directly to him.
This episode focus on kids beauty contests and mention in details horrible procedures little girls take to reach adult beauty standards. If those topics disturb you, I recommend you skip this one.
Many of the main characters are socially uncomfortable enough to react with panic to occasional extreme social/professional situations, and footage of crime victims and perpetrators often features panic and anxiety reactions.
A serial killer called the Grave Digger buries people alive, you might want to avoid any episodes related to that. s2e9, s4e14, s4e26, s5e21, s6e11, s6e11.
A little girl has a very restricted diet and later on the episode her mother says the girl was the one who wanted to do that in order to win beauty contests.
autistic-coded characters sometimes get playfully picked on for their “quirks” (which are actually traits of autism), but it’s typically out of a place of love and i wouldn’t consider it abuse
S08e09 is shown almost entirely from the POV of the victim's skull that the team takes to carrying around because some of them believe that the boy's soul is still there. The picture is sometime shakey due to this
S8 Episode 5: the entire cast speaks to a skull of a victim as if he were still alive. The audience sees from the perspective of the skull so it seems the characters are talking to the viewer. Could potentially be triggering
Several characters give birth during the series, three of those happen more-or-less onscreen. SPOILERS:: the most explicit one is when Bones gives birth in s07e07. Her upperbody is shown throughout as well as her legs and the freshly born baby. Angela gives birth in s06e23 in a hospital, she is shown several time during labor and her upper body is shown during delivery but it is clean. The freshly born baby is shown. Daisy gives birth in s10e08. She is shown several times during labor and her cries can be heard during delivery
In s04e07 the victim is a transgender woman who is at first identified as male based on her skeleton. Her wife (who she was married to before she came out or transitioned) refuses to acknowledge her identity. Booth purposefully misgenders her several times while interrogating suspects to manipulate them (either to placate them, or to get a rise out of them). The majority of the main cast as well as the people in the victim's life re supportive.
In s04e23 one of the people assisting on the case "identifies with a subset of an urban Japanese aesthetic known as kei [...] It glorifies androgyny", but the squints spend the episode trying to guess their "real gender". At the end of the episode Angela hugs them and later tells the squints that they are a guy.
In s09e23 the victim is a drag queen and there are several drag queens interviewed during the investigation. There are a few instances that might qualify as misgendering and also where Booth deliberately does t to get a rise out of someone
Booth says f****t. Can't find the episode number but it's at the end of the episode where the victim was a gay guy. The murderer called the victim this.
The episode features transphobic jokes from several of the main characters, and doesn't take much care about the language they use, but overall the episode's tone is very positive - the transphobes in the episode are depicted as criminals and villains. Booth makes one transphobic comment, to which someone responds, "Don't say she 'used to be' a man, that makes you sound ignorant." Thereafter, when the rest of the team is having trouble with the victim's pronouns, Booth asserts firmly, "From now on, 'he' is always 'she'. She was a she when she died, so she deserves the respect due to him or her... okay, person!" While this is not the most "optimal" way to be an ally, Booth unmistakably is one, and the overall tone of the episode attempts to be respectful.
There is a man who has dwarfism and Dr. Brennan is very ableist with him through out the entire episode. It is played as a joke more than a prejudice she needs to get over.
Booth is a Christian man, and a frequent topic of discussion he has with Bones involves her dismissing and/or criticizing religion while Booth argues for his ideals. Bones is often subtly portrayed as being unreasonable and/or strange for being an atheist. Many other religions are discussed as well with varying degrees of delicacy.
A couple is known for doing BDSM. They use the BDSM equipment to constrain someone without their consent. No sex imagery is shown, only the equipment and the person tied up. The entire episode portrays BDSM as a morally negative thing and the people who enjoy it as unstable.
I could be wrong but I’m fairly sure Yanks in the UK ends up with the victim and her boyfriend actually having been related (with the same father), though neither finds out.
A girl has terminal cancer. The episode is very emotional and bittersweet, as the entire crew tries to help her and make her dreams come true. She doesn't die in the episode, but it is implied she did later.
The dog is part of an illegal dog fighting ring and his master commanded him to kill someone. Because of this, the dog is put down.