In the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, follow the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity.
This tv show contains 52 potentially triggering events.
It's not onscreen, but in Objects in Space, River talks to Early about a dog his neighbors had growing up and mentions "things he did" to it. Details aren't given but with the nature of the discussion it's pretty obvious what happened.
Our Mrs Reynolds 42min ish Mal punches and knocks out a woman he’s technically married to Heart of Gold: plot line deals with custody of an unplanned pregnancy. A man chases down a pregnant sex worker and threatens her and the baby he believes he fathered
In the pilot episode. After a shoot out, Patience is hiding behind her horse and knows she lost.
The Main Character, Mal loses his patients and like a jerk, unnecessarily shoots and kills her horse then leaves her pinned under the innocent, poor creatures corpse.
Rape is mentioned throughout the show, and in the last episode a character asks a female character, "have you ever been raped?" and implies he will assault her
No one seems to remember this, but in one episode (War Stories I believe?) an unnamed fighter catches fire and falls out of the shot. He's visible for a solid three seconds at least. It isn't implied that he survives.
If you are uncomfortable with torture, skip War Stories. Scenes of Mal and Wash being tortured in various ways pop up through the whole episode, with hardly any warning.
Someone comes close in "Our Mrs. Reynolds", but fails to fall to temptation.
There is cheating energy in "Heart of Gold", but it involves characters who have not codified and officially agreed to a relationship.
There a scene where Inara gives herself a sponge bath, there is however no nudity. I doubt this is what is being asked but thought there is no harm in mentioning it.
In the episode Ariel, a character is briefly seen retching after being in a false death.
In the episode the Message, a character wakes up abruptly and then is sick.
Both are brief scenes with mostly audio
Technically yes, but even a lot of hardcore fans don't know this, as the evidence for it is limited to subtle clues and implications - it would have been addressed in a later season (doesn't come up in the movie but is in one of the books).
In Bushwhacked, the survivor of an attacked ship is turning into a zombie like creature called a Reaver and is seen mutilating himself as the Reavers are known for doing
Difficult to untangle what’s from PTSD and brain damage but some flashbacks indicate that River was extremely blunt and didn’t pick up on social queues even before the experiments. Regardless, River exhibits behaviors that are similar to autism and she is verbally and physically abused multiple times throughout the series.
There's a lot of gunshots throughout the show. It often comes out of nowhere with no warning. The first episode starts with quite a loud explosion with not a seconds warning. Definitely be prepared for things like this.
It doesn't come up much but the word used for "gay" in this world is "sly", it's only used once that I recall and it didn't feel disrespectful.
Jayne's a bit creepy about witnessing an encounter between two women, but not abusive.
Yes, and it's pretty typical too. Mal disguises himself with old timey women's clothing. He's annoyed because dress. His friends make fun of him because bwahahaha man in a dress. Mal delivers the popular line: "I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will END you!"
There's a lot of very misogynistic speech. Heart of Gold is probably the worst, but it's unfortunately common in this world it seems.
There's also language used about both the Alliance and the Browncoats that would be considered hate speech if they were real groups in our world.
One of the main characters is a prostitue and in one episode she is payed to sleep with the clients son to loose his virginity. It is only a small side story in one episode.