Due to a political conspiracy, an innocent man is sent to death row and his only hope is his brother, who makes it his mission to deliberately get himself sent to the same prison in order to break the both of them out, from the inside out.
At the beginning of s2e12, Scofield tells a story from his childhood and we see flashbacks of abuse.
Skip times: The first 3 minutes are full of this trigger. The scene at 3min involves drowning so skip further if that's also a trigger. Then once we're back with the guys, there's a bit more flashback but I think it's just the rescue.
Details: Michael Scofield was locked in a dark room as a child, he tried to escape, the (foster father?) was on the other side of the door and beat young (10-year-old?) Scofield. Then next flashback we get is the dad rescuing him (dad already unalived the abusive foster dad.)
Depends if it's considered technically "stalking in these scenarios, but a crooked FBI agent is on the hunt for some of the main characters, as well as a crooked prison guard, other villains stalk and follow others. The promise on the show involves almost all the characters on run all the time, so they are constantly being searched for by both regular law enforcement, but as well as many villains.
It is a somewhat frequent theme, one of the main characters (TBag) is a convicted serial rapist. He is a main character and antagonist throughout all the seasons, although there are no graphic sexual violence scenes, the theme is present very often.
I would strongly suggest that you don't watch this show if that's your trigger <3
SPOILERS In the first season TBag is seen to be sexually abusing a fellow inmate, who asks Micheal to help him, and later kills himself. Later a new inamte comes in and TBag attempts to Coerce him into sex.This same character survives an attempted rape by another inmate using a knife. Later through flashbacks we see that TBag was sexually abused by his father as a child. In the finale TBag had captured and is seen to attempt to rape a main female character. Another female antagonist shows a character her scars on her thigh, from surviving rape.
Hand mutilation yes, pretty bad. Someone get his hand cut off, carries it along in ice for a while, attempts to sew it back on, doesn't work very well and it gets necrotic. Eventually he's cuffed to a radiator and to break free he pulls until the hand fells off again.
About 32 minutes into episode 22 ("Flight"), skip ahead once you see a character grab an axe. (Technically, the hand is fine, but no longer attached....) Skip to 33 minutes into the episode.
One of the (antagonistic) main characters is a sex offender who (also) pursues predatory relationships with minors. His gaze is represented in the narrative, although the framing is always clear on that it is wrong.
Season 1 ep 4 - 5:10 - 5:19 audio Season 1 ep 11 - 23:45-24:35 visual Season 1 ep 13 - 30:40 - 32:00 audio Season 1 ep 18 - in the recap, 7:12 - 7:26 audio and visual, 12:52- 13:05 audio and visual Season 1 ep 21 - 6:40 - 6:52 audio and visual Season 1 ep 22 36:07 - 36: 16 visual Season 3 ep 9 9:10-9:20 9:36-9:44 audio and visual Season 4 ep 22 - 10:34-10:39 audio Season 5 ep 7 - 7:45- 7:51 audio and visual
In season 1 main character cuts open the skin on his arm to retrieve something he has hidden there. Not sure if this would be considered self harm, but was extremely triggering and upsetting.
Yes, one of the main characters in season one is an inmate from the psych ward in the prison. He's been diagnosed with " schizoaffective disorder with bipolar tendencies" He's obviously in prison in the first place - because he killed his parents. Later in the series he shows aggression.
It’s discussed that one of characters is the product of incest. The man took advantage of his sister (who was described with a slur) and she became pregnant with this character.
Unsure if this is counted, but people in the prison psych ward are often made fun of and called things like "nutjob" and the psych ward itself is referred to as the "whack shack".
at the start of season 1, one of the main plots is a building race war within the prison, there is a lot of racist/homophobic hate speech during this time, it lessens towards the end of season 1 and isn't as prevalent through out the rest of the show.
examples of this are t-bag (one of the main characters) being in a white supremacist gang, he often refers to black characters as "rugheads", goes on more than one rant about latin people being lazy and refers to another character as "tweener" since he is white but "wants to be black"
there are more examples but if you are sensitive to language like this, i would suggest skipping this show
A main character believes he sees Jesus in a stain on a wall and begins to follow Christianity. In the same season, the inmates use a projected image of the devil to drill into the wall.
one main character is harassed by another. given the nickname "pretty", character also makes references to sexually assaulting him many times over the course of the show