I think this is quite intriguing and has not been mentioned before. The hallway in which Sherlock meets Redbeard is the same as in ASiP.

http://cptjhwatson.tumblr.com/post/73435421828/a-study-in-pink-his-last-vow-its-not-just

So much for John saving him in every possible way. 

I love the whole sequence and it is so full of symbolism and meanings you can just go on and on analysing it. It was very clever to introduce Redbeard and young Sherlock there, for example, as it prepares us for the after killing scene with Sherlock who merges into a frightened child. Andrew Scott was awesome and scary and indeed it is scary to think that he is hiding in the deepest recess of Sherlock's mind. The moment he decides to come back for John's sake is so impressive, it almost made me cry.

I don't know if it has been mentioned before. But all the places of Sherlock's mind palace were real places where he's been before, which means that he must have been to that creepy lock-down cell where Moriarty is, which made wonder, if he's not only been to the place but that he actually was a prisoner/patient there.

Wow Hera! Great insight. It'd be absolutely heartbreaking though.

I missed that about the locations, funny, that's exactly how Derren Brown advises how to make one, use locations that you know. Fridge logic. Maybe the padded room wasn't a place he'd actually been in, his mind was breaking down at that point. 

I didn't think he went there to stop the pain, he went there when he could no longer stop the pain. 

It seems to have become a tradition for Sherlock to pretend or nearly die in the last episode of each series.

That sequence was great heading through different levels of the subconscious. Funny how when he's almost dying, Mycroft can having a go at him but when he actually flatlined, he needed Moriarty.

Good deduction, Tobe, as always.

SusiGo wrote:

Great connection, tobe. 

And another thing: 
Sherlock returns to the Mind Palace when he is in hospital. He sees Mary in the same hallway from Roland Kerr College in which he met Redbeard before. It is the place where John once saved his life. Is it here that Sherlock gets the idea that Mary in turn saved his life by not putting the bullet right into his head?

She is dressed as in their first meeting but her behaviour is totally different: cold and distant, showing no emotion. And this is the way Sherlock sees her in his mind. I think in this very moment he plans the confrontation between her and John. And it makes me wonder about his real motive for telling John soon after that they are made for each other and urging him to stay with her. Because at 221B and later at the airport where he kisses her goodbye we only see him from the outside whereas here we are right in his head. 

 

Yes; I think you have put your finger on a point which is going to be picked up on in the next season.

I suspect that part of the reason that John is so very, very angry with Sherlock is guilt; he really tore into Sherlock before rushing off to see Mrs Hudson, and then he comes back and sees Sherlock committing suicide. I know that John is not exactly the world's most introspective person but he must have wondered whether the things he said to Sherlock contributed to Sherlock's apparent suicide.

Sherlock, on the other hand, didn't feel guilt for those two years but does come to feel guilt about not letting John know he was still alive, even though he knows John couldn't keep a secret for five minutes if someone pressed his buttons. The problem is that John still can't keep a secret and Sherlock, knowing that, will carry on trying to protect him and his unborn child.  If that means that Sherlock has to pretend that he's fine with Mary then that's what Sherlock will do, particularly since he believes that John doesn't want to know who and what Mary is....
 

miriel68 wrote:

There is also this very interesting bit with a Mary in her wedding dress, shooting Sherlock, I am not sure we have already discussed it... surely a symbolic one: Mary - wedding - pain. It opens to quite a number of implications.

 
Some people Interpret this as a sign of Sherlock being jealous because he's in love with John. Well, that's a possibility, if you like the subtext. However, Sherlock was nice to Mary at the wedding in TSO3, and I rather think the meaning of the mind palace scene is that it shows how "love is a dangerous disadvantage". Sherlock is not the cold, withdrawn person anymore that he used to be before Reichenbach. He has let other people into his heart, and now one of those people nearly killed him. He would have deduced earlier that Mary was an assassin if it hadn't been for his "sentiment" to come through. This woman, whom he liked, whose wedding he attended, his best friend's wife, shot him.