History WhamEpisode / LiveACtionTV

** Season 8, Episode 16. "The uh...statement was pre-recorded."

* ''{{Merlin}}'' episode 2x12, ''The Fires of Idirsholas'' - In order to break the spell on Camelot, Merlin has to kill Morgana (the 'source of the magic'). So he attempts to poison her. Morgause saves her, but then teleports them both out of Camelot to an uncertain fate. Merlin then frees the Dragon, who, in the trailer, is seen wreaking fiery havoc on Camelot. Holy shi-

* On ''{{Glee}}', the storyline of Kurt being bullied by Karofsky reached a turning point in "Never Been Kissed," where [[spoiler: Karofsky forcibly kisses Kurt, revealing his antagonism as {{gayngst}} with a heavy side of unwanted sexual attraction. Not only was a DracoInLeatherPants created overnight, but the kiss completely destroyed Kurt's resolve, since Karofsky's threat of killing him if he told anyone sounded scarily literal. Kurt ends up transferring schools as a result.]]

** The finale, "Epitaph Two", makes a complete 180 from the ending of the penultimate episode. After seeing Echo take down Rossum, destroy their facility, and kill off it's chief executive, we learn that [[spoiler: her removal of Rossum's infrastructure caused their tech to leak into the black market, where China got ahold of it and created a mass-remote-imprint-bomb that turned the entire world into "Epitaph One".]] It then proceeds to [[spolier: un-WHAM itself right back when Topher fixes everything for good.]]

* ''[[BabylonFive Babylon 5]]'' is the TropeNamer. Some of the more memorable examples (far from a complete list):

** So. Spike's tried an actual relationship with Buffy after they just used each other for sex. She says no, and he tries to rape her, only to suffer a humiliating beatdown as he flees into the night. In any other series, this would be the Wham episode, as Spike's been an ally for several seasons by now. No, the true Wham comes later, when a dejected and angry spike enters a ChessWithDeath scenario to give Buffy "what she deserves". Unsurprisingly, he wins, and bitterly demands what he came for. He gets it: [[spoiler: his soul.]] While this would be a pretty big moment for the series, the Wham arguably comes later, in Angel. That series' whole premise, after all, was that [[spoiler: the vampire with a soul would have his humanity restored, and suddenly, not only is Angel not the only one who might qualify, there's a subtle distinction in that Angel's soul is a curse, while Spike sought his out so he could be a better person. Which character sounds more heroic now?]]

** The appearance of "Tasha Yar" at the end of the "Redemption" episode is a [[strike:subversion]] [[strike:aversion]] major failure to perform this trope, in that it is clearly intended to be a Wham Event, except that the HalfHumanHybrid, TimeTravel angle never affects any story at all, and Sela is just another scheming Romulan commander scheming her schemes until she's replaced by the next scheming Romulan commander. her actual death in a much earlier episode however ''was'' something of a shock for many.

** In "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II", Baltar [[spoiler: becomes the new President]]; Cylon sleeper agent Gina blows up the Cloud Nine (among other ships); the narrative [[spoiler: skips forward a year - everyone is living on New Caprica, Starbuck, Chief Tyrol and Lee Adama are married, and just about everyone is captured by the Cylons]].

*** ...and then the next episode takes place a year later, and we find out what's in those killbots.
** The otherwise rather average episode ''Cold Blood'' in season five/thirty one/fnarg turned into a Whammer in the last five minutes when [[spoiler: yet another companion, Rory, was shot and killed, and then promptly erased by the crack eating up everything in the universe]].
*** What happens five episodes later in ''The Pandorica Opens'' when [[spoiler: we think he's come back but he turns out to be an Auton whose programming forces him to kill Amy while the Doctor is being sealed away in the Pandorica]] just makes it worse.

** ''Every'' time ''{{Supernatural}}'' ups the [[HolyShitQuotient HSQ]] we get a WhamEpisode. Notables from season 5 ''alone'' include: "The Song Remains the Same" (notable for revealing not only the origin of Azazel's plan but Mary and John's own shocking pasts), "Point of No Return" (for the jaw-dropping developments with Dean... and for the ridiculous amounts of really obvious HoYay between Dean and Castiel (talk about catering to your audience...)), "Hammer of the Gods" (where the HSQ hit the roof and just kept on going), "The Devil You Know" (thank you, Crowley), "2 Minutes To Midnight" (Introducing the CosmicEntity Death (which threw the show into GoMadFromTheRevelation proportions)), and "Swan Song" (if you don't know why it's on this list, then you haven't seen it).

** You want a wham episode, I present "Won't be fooled again." Complete with {{Gaslighting}}, MindRape, DrivenToMadness, and plunging the entire show into DarkerAndEdgier with the speed of a freight train, changing the whole dynamic between our John and Scorpius, introducing our lovely ChaoticEvil Scarrans, and setting the stage for many a JourneyToTheCentreOfTheMind to come.
** Every finale ever. Every time the show turns up the HolyShitQuotient, you get either a wham episode or a wham-episode-arc. How much "wham" in the episode is usually proportional to the size of whatever explosion John has set off. And you get extra wham points if a main character dies. Example: [[spoiler: Talyn and Crais.]]
** The "Unrealized Reality" arc. It pretty much pulled the ground out from beneath the universe. [[SpoofAesop The moral of our story?]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero DO NOT get the space-time coordinates of a wormhole exit wrong]]. [[{{Understatement}} Bad things happen...]]

*** And that's just the beginning of the carnage. Even the unborn aren't safe; Meredith miscarries, having just revealed said pregnancy to one person (and the audience).

** "Day of the Dead", for [[WhamLine "I did it for you."]] The resident BitchInSheepsClothing evolves into a [[MagnificentBastard Magnificent Bitch]].

** That's got nothing on the season 6 finale. The crew's evil future selves show up, one thing leads to another and the two Starbugs end up fighting...then Lister dies. Then the Cat dies. Kryten says he thinks he might have a solution...then he dies. ''Arnold J. Rimmer'' gets a CrowningMomentOfAwesome, running through the ship holding a laser (while dramatic music blares, natch) to destroy the time machine and cause a paradox that'll fix everything. He gets to it, takes aim...and the camera switches to an exterior shot of Starbug being blown up by the future ship. In an eight-season run, this is may be the only stretch of pure drama to be found, but ''Christ'' does it work.

** Season 10's half Season Finale, All Falls Down, was hyped to be on the same level as Time Stands Still and Rock This Town as mentioned above, but [[YourMileageMayVary it didn't really work out that way and was pretty disappointing]].
* The ''KnightRider'' episode "Junkyard Dog" dumped its sentient AI vehicle Kitt into a pit of acid. We'd seen him destroyed and bashed up before, but never systematically ''disintegrated'' back to a bare skeleton. He's notably shaken by this and so is the audience.
* ''ThirdWatch'' has a lot of these, but the most memorable is the season five finale "Monsters" where the hospital that the entire Third Watch is at gets gunned down by William Mann's people.

** Not to mention in "The Price of Nobility," when a major character dies...[[NotSoFastBucko and there's still thirty minutes left to the episode]].

* ''TheXFiles'' has more than a few, but one of the standouts is "Leonard Betts." It starts off as an investigation into a man with a HealingFactor who fuels it by consuming cancerous tissue, usually killing the person he's extracting it from. Standard for a monster of the week episode. Then, at the climax, he turns to ''Scully'', of all people, and says, "I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry... but you have something I need."

** "The Candidate". The survivors reach the plane, and decide to hijack the submarine instead due to the plane being rigged with explosives. They board and betray Un-Locke at the last minute, leaving him stranded. As soon as they think they're safe, they find the armed bomb that Un-Locke snuck into one of their backpacks. It blows up, taking Sayid, Lapidus, Jin, and Sun with them (Lapidus survived, though), while Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer escape. Un-Locke takes notice, and heads off to [[KillEmAll "finish what he started"]].

** And then, three seasons later, JT gets stabbed, resulting in the first major character ever getting killed off on that show.

* ''{{Robin of Sherwood}}'' in the finale of the 2nd season, kills off Robin Hood -- then has a 3rd season.

** "Nixon vs. Kennedy", when we first learn how [[spoiler: Dick Whitman became Don Draper]].

** Jadzia's death. While it was pretty much well known among fans that the actress was leaving the show and they were killing the character off, the brutality of an outright on-screen murder of a main character was jarring.

* An incredibly startling example is from ''{{Alias}}'' -- in one episode Sydney was suddenly able to bring SD-6 crashing down, take down The Alliance, and hook up with Vaughn, essentially changing the entire ''premise'' of the show. This falls under the category of {{Retool}}ing as well as a Wham Episode.
** Don't forget that Francine gets KilledOffForReal by her {{Doppelganger}}.
** Especially notable as this wasn't a premiere or {{Cliffhanger}} finale. This happens in the middle of Season two with almost no warning.
*** Neither of which would have gotten more viewers than what they got for this episode. It aired ''immediately'' after the SuperBowl.
** Not to mention the episode when she wakes up in an alley, with a new scar, and goes on to discover that she's missing 2 years of her life, everyone thinks she's dead, Vaughn has married, etc., etc.

*** Honestly, the pilot mini-series, with a strongly POV'd view of a believable apocalypse wham'd a lot of fans of the original or Space Opera in general.
** In "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II", Commander Adama stages a military coup, Gaius Baltar finds out the "shape of things to come" (it's a child), Sharon learns that she's a Cylon, and then she shoots Commander Adama twice in the chest.
** In "Resurrection Ship, Part II", the Resurrection Ship is destroyed, robbing Cylons of their capacity to resurrect, Admiral Cain and Commander Adama nearly assassinate each other but hold off, Cain is killed anyway by Gina, the escaped Cylon on Pegasus, Roslin promotes Adama to Admiral in the wake of Cain's death and the Pegasus has truly joined the fleet.
** In "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II", Baltar becomes the new President, Cylon sleeper agent Gina blows up the Cloud Nine (among other ships), the narrative skips forward a year, everyone is living on New Caprica, Starbuck, Chief Tyrol and Lee Adama are married, and just about everyone is captured by the Cylons.
** In "Exodus, Part II" (beginning to notice a pattern with the part two's, anyone?), Colonel Tigh euthanizes his wife, the Pegasus is destroyed, everyone escapes New Caprica, Baltar goes to join the Cylons, and the crew compliment of the Pegasus are merged with Galactica.
** In "Crossroads, Part II", Baltar is surprisingly acquitted, Roslin's cancer comes back, four characters are revealed as Cylons (including one who was all but ruled out before then), and Starbuck comes back from the dead (after being gone for three episodes) before telling Apollo that she's been to ''Earth''.

** In "Revelations," they finally find Earth! Except it's been devastated by some nuclear apocalypse.
** In "Sometimes a Great Notion", Dualla goes on a lovely date with Apollo, kisses him goodnight, and, once she's alone in her quarters, promptly shoots herself in the head. The 13th tribe of humanity were in fact Cylons. And the fifth is Ellen Tigh, who's dead. Maybe.
** In "The Oath", Gaeta of all people, having suffered the cumulative effects of one too many WhamEpisodes and a case of BreakTheCutie and {{Freakout}}, leads a godsdamned mutiny against Adama, leading to the Galactica going through an extended period of bloodletting as comrades turn on each other in large numbers.

** The otherwise rather average episode ''Cold Blood'' in season five/thirty one/fnarg turned into a Whammer in the last five minutes when yet another companion, Rory, was shot and killed, and then promptly erased by the crack eating up everything in the universe.
*** What happens five episodes later in ''The Pandorica Opens'' when we think he's come back but he turns out to be an Auton whose programming forces him to kill Amy while the Doctor is being sealed away in the Pandorica just makes it worse.

** ''Children of Earth'' is pretty much one great big wham miniseries, between the destruction of the Hub, Ianto's death, and the United Nations collaborating with the militaries of the major world powers to abduct 10% of the Earth's children and surrender them to an alien race. Probably the biggest individual wham is the revelation that the reason the Four-Five-Six are essentially interstellar druglords who deal in ''prepubescent children'' because their hormones are a euphoric among their species.

** The discovery that Mary knew YED in All Hell Breaks Loose.

** Lazarus Rising. Dean crawls out of his grave, fresh from Hell, which is pretty standard stuff for these guys. They spend the episode searching for the baddie that brought him back, and when Dean and Bobby finally manage to summon it for questioning at the end of the episode, it turns out his resurrection was performed by something we didn't believe existed in this verse- an Angel of the Lord (and a BadassLongcoat Angel of the Lord at that). Because God commanded it. (!) Because we have work for you. (!!!) Guess we're not just chasing around the freak of the week anymore...
** ''Every'' time ''{{Supernatural}}'' ups the [[HolyShitQuotient HSQ]] we get a WhamEpisode. Notables from season 5 ''alone'' include: "The Song Remains the Same" (notable for revealing not only the origin of Azazel's plan but Mary and John's own shocking pasts), "Point of No Return" (for the jaw-dropping developments with Dean... and for the ridiculous amounts of really obvious HoYay between Dean and Castiel (talk about catering to your audience...)), "Hammer of the Gods" (where the HSQ hit the roof and just kept on going), "The Devil You Know" (thankyou, Crowley), "2 Minutes To Midnight" (Introducing the CosmicEntity Death (which threw the show into GoMadFromTheRevelation proportions)), and "Swan Song" (if you don't know why it's on this list, then you haven't seen it).

** Also, the season 1 finale. Full of Holy Craps.

** "Briar Rose": Alpha returns, and Echo is his lover.

** The second episode of season 6 began with the immediate aftermath of Leo's heart-attack and ended with the big surprise of Bartlett asking C.J. to be the new Chief-of-Staff, both of which led to significant changes in the relationships among the senior staff, and indirectly to Josh Lyman's resignation at the midseason break. If he'd been the one promoted he wouldn't have left to work for a new presidential hopeful, which might have been part of Leo's plan all along when he recommended C.J. instead of Josh.

** The season one episode "Three Stories" has House holding a lecture on diagnostic medicine. About two-thirds into the episode, the ducklings (and the audience) figure out that one of the patients he talks about is himself. The rest of the episode then tells us what happened with House's leg and essentially what screwed up his relationship with Stacy.
** Season four's "House's Head" focuses on House having been in a bus crash and being unable to remember anything from just before the crash happened, except that someone on the bus is sick and needs help. He realizes that he saw a symptom in the driver and goes through a variety of methods to try and trigger his memory and save the driver. It turns out that the driver wasn't the sick person at all -- Wilson's girlfriend Amber was.
** Season Five has a whole chain of Wham Episodes, starting with Kutner's sudden and unexplained suicide and then having House suffer increasingly upsetting hallucinations. In the second to last episode of the season, we get House and Cuddy finally sleeping together, only to find out in the season finale that most of that episode was a hallucination; House was alone the entire night, and he just started hallucinating that Cuddy was there instead of Amber. The "lipstick" he toys with throughout the episode is actually a bottle of Vicodin, after he hallucinated beating his addiction. The end of the episode has House check into a psychiatric ward, no longer able to tell what is real and what is not. Can I get an order of "OMGWTF" to go?

* ''VeronicaMars'', "Not Pictured." Veronica ''was'' [[RapeAsDrama raped]] at Shelley Pomroy's party. Aaron is dead on Duncan's orders. Weevil is in jail for murder. And, oh yeah, Beaver's a raging psychopath who blew up the bus, raped Veronica, and threw himself off the roof of the Neptune Grand. ''Damn.''

** Season 1 finale: Music box mystery closed (sorta), Kate found, Neal heads toward a plane that will carry off Kate and him to their ''government approved'' happily ever after ... and then the plane blows up in Neal's face while Kate was on it.

** At the end of "Lucky", Garcia's date says "I've been thinking about doing this all night", and shoots her point-blank in the chest.

** "...And Back" has a TraumaCongaLine for the team with the Turner murders, and they arrive back in Virginia exhausted. Hotch goes home, fixes himself a drink, and turns around to find Foyet in his apartment, who proceeds to shoot at him.

** The season six episode "''Bad News''" ends with Marshall's dad dying.

* ''AshesToAshes'' has these ''every other episode'', but 1x08's revelation that Gene was the one who took young!Alex's hand after the explosion that killed her parents and 2x08, where Alex is shot by Gene in 1982, wakes up in 2008 to her daughter, only to find Gene speaking to her through her television in "the real world" are both off the charts.
** Season Three kicks off in a big way: Gene has gone on the run for shooting Alex; Ray has made DI and is in charge of Fenchurch East; Chris and Shaz have broken up; Alex gets back to 1983 and discovers a file on [[LifeOnMars Sam Tyler]] hidden in Gene's cabinet; and DCI Jim Keats, who claims to want to help Alex and has been nothing but genial to everyone suddenly turns around and tells Gene he hates him and he's going to bring him down. Oh, and Gene did something terrible three years ago (coincidentally, around the time Sam "died" in this universe) that Keats will expose. Welcome to series 3, everybody!
*** Both seasons 2 and 3 have a clear WhamEpisode around Episode 6/7. In the second season it's Martin Summers spectacularly averting NeverTheSelvesShallMeet by arranging a meeting between himself, Alex Drake and his younger self. He then ''shoots his younger self in the face'' and leaves a hysterical Alex to hide the body. Season three has the death of Viv and Jim Keats crossing the MoralEventHorizon from 'creepy DesignatedVillain' to 'literally [[{{Satan}} Satanic]]'.

** While a complete tragedy of an episode, the sheer ''obviousness'' of the LesYay made it a glorious one at the same time, [[{{OTP}} if you ship them]].

* The season 3 finale of MadMen "Shut the Door, Have a Seat" definitely qualifies since [[spoiler: Upon hearing that Sterling Cooper is going to be bought out, Don leaves and makes his own company. Along for the ride are Roger, Bert, Lane, Peggy, Pete, Joan, and Harry.]]

* ''[[TwentyFour 24]]'' hasn't been mentioned yet? Basically every single episode has at least one dose of wham in it, the whole series is practically built on it, and some episodes take it to almost absurd, shocking levels.

** Can you say ''A Hole in the World''?
*** This troper wishes he couldn't. Leaving aside the fact that this episode turned two "obvious" {{BrickJoke}}s into frighteningly effective {{ChekhovsGun}}s [[spoiler: the Caveman vs. Astronauts argument would be played off as an IronicEcho for laughs elsewhere, but here is actually used to foreshadow the plot: a primordial evil devours the scientific Fred whole; and the cute stuffed animal Higgenbotham introduced at the start as Fred's security blanket, when at the end she tearfully begs that she needs Higgenbotham, but Illyria has devoured so much of Fred's soul that Fred realizes that she no longer remembers who Higgenbotham is]], and throws a third ChekhovsGun onto the heap with Lorne, whose behavior the rest of the ep seems out of character: he violently decks someone when before he was a pacifist, and is almost hesitant about seeking his contacts for help. [[spoiler: FridgeHorror sets in on subsequent viewings. Remember Lorne's horrified reaction to Fred's singing when he sees her future? Remember how he heard Lindsay sing once early in the show, and in the finale implies that Lorne knew all along that he was going to shoot Lindsay? Put those two together: Lorne spends the entire series knowing how horribly Fred would die, and the entire episode knowing that nothing they would do could save her. The only surprise for him is when it happened.]] There's an IronicEcho with [[spoiler: Fred]] repeating their first words on the series: [[spoiler: "Handsome man. Saves me."]] made worse when the irony hits home [[spoiler: he doesn't, not because he can't, but because saving Fred would sacrifice millions of lives.]] What makes it really bad is looking back, and realizing that [[spoiler: Whedon designed Fred for this moment. She was the cute, smart, funny girl on the show, so all the geeks in the audience would have a crush on her just so Joss could break our hearts.]] People who thought The Body on Buffy was melodramatic end up in tears after this episode.

*** This troper wishes he couldn't. Leaving aside the fact that this episode turned two "obvious" {{BrickJoke}}s into frighteningly effective {{ChekovsGun}}s [[spoiler: the Caveman vs. Astronauts argument would be played off as an IronicEcho for laughs elsewhere, but here is actually used to foreshadow the plot: a primordial evil devours the scientific Fred whole; and the cute stuffed animal Higgenbotham introduced at the start as Fred's security blanket, when at the end she tearfully begs that she needs Higgenbotham, but Illyria has devoured so much of Fred's soul that Fred realizes that she no longer remembers who Higgenbotham is]], and throws a third ChekovsGun onto the heap with Lorne, whose behavior the rest of the ep seems out of character: he violently decks someone when before he was a pacifist, and is almost hesitant about seeking his contacts for help. [[spoiler: FridgeHorror sets in on subsequent viewings. Remember Lorne's horrified reaction to Fred's singing when he sees her future? Remember how he heard Lindsay sing once early in the show, and in the finale implies that Lorne knew all along that he was going to shoot Lindsay? Put those two together: Lorne spends the entire series knowing how horribly Fred would die, and the entire episode knowing that nothing they would do could save her. The only surprise for him is when it happened.]] There's an IronicEcho with [[spoiler: Fred]] repeating their first words on the series: [[spoiler: "Handsome man. Saves me."]] made worse when the irony hits home [[spoiler: he doesn't, not because he can't, but because saving Fred would sacrifice millions of lives.]] What makes it really bad is looking back, and realizing that [[spoiler: Whedon designed Fred for this moment. She was the cute, smart, funny girl on the show, so all the geeks in the audience would have a crush on her just so Joss could break our hearts.]] People who thought The Body on Buffy was melodramatic end up in tears after this episode.

*** This troper wishes he couldn't. Leaving aside the fact that this episode turned two "obvious" BrickJokes into frighteningly effective ChekovsGuns [[spoiler: the Caveman vs. Astronauts argument would be played off as an IronicEcho for laughs elsewhere, but here is actually used to foreshadow the plot: a primordial evil devours the scientific Fred whole; and the cute stuffed animal Higgenbotham introduced at the start as Fred's security blanket, when at the end she tearfully begs that she needs Higgenbotham, but Illyria has devoured so much of Fred's soul that Fred realizes that she no longer remembers who Higgenbotham is]], and throws a third ChekovsGun onto the heap with Lorne, whose behavior the rest of the ep seems out of character: he violently decks someone when before he was a pacifist, and is almost hesitant about seeking his contacts for help. [[spoiler: FridgeHorror sets in on subsequent viewings. Remember Lorne's horrified reaction to Fred's singing when he sees her future? Remember how he heard Lindsay sing once early in the show, and in the finale implies that Lorne knew all along that he was going to shoot Lindsay? Put those two together: Lorne spends the entire series knowing how horribly Fred would die, and the entire episode knowing that nothing they would do could save her. The only surprise for him is when it happened.]] There's an IronicEcho with [[spoiler: Fred]] repeating their first words on the series: [[spoiler: "Handsome man. Saves me."]] made worse when the irony hits home [[spoiler: he doesn't, not because he can't, but because saving Fred would sacrifice millions of lives.]] What makes it really bad is looking back, and realizing that [[spoiler: Whedon designed Fred for this moment. She was the cute, smart, funny girl on the show, so all the geeks in the audience would have a crush on her just so Joss could break our hearts.]] People who thought The Body on Buffy was melodramatic end up in tears after this episode.

** [[spoiler: ''Still Angel''. Spike is an enormous jackass, soul or not, while Angel spends every day of his life protecting innocent people in an attempt to make up for what he did when he didn't have a soul, and even though he knows and has accepted that he'll never ever be able to really redeem himself, he still tries. Spike, by comparison, never acts like he feels guilt for anything he did as a soulless vampire except maybe the attempted rape. All those people he murdered, tortured, and maimed? Eh. Which character sounds more heroic now?]]