Kibana's scripted fields allow users to dynamically create and manipulate data fields in Elasticsearch for enhanced data visualization and analysis, even if those fields were not originally defined in the schema. Initially limited by Lucene Expressions to numeric data, the introduction of the Painless scripting language in Elasticsearch 5.0 expanded the capability to handle a wider variety of data types, enabling more complex operations such as combining fields, performing calculations, and implementing conditional logic. Scripted fields are defined once in Kibana's Management section and can be reused across multiple visualizations, although they operate on single documents and are not suitable for cross-document calculations like time-series math. While powerful, scripted fields require careful management to avoid performance issues, and best practices suggest developing and testing them in non-production environments before deployment. Despite some limitations, such as the inability to use certain aggregations, scripted fields can significantly enhance data insights when used responsibly, with Painless providing robust support for string manipulation, regex matching, and date functions.