Agatha Christie's Poirot: David Suchet revealed in an interview that he requested the series finale Curtain be filmed before the other four episodes of the final series because he didn't want Poirot's death at the same moment he was finishing the role to be too depressing or to be "a negative thing for [him] to go through". But even as Suchet chose to film Curtain first, it felt agonizing for him to play the role of a dying Belgian detective who didn't just pass away, but did so after ending his final case with a bang. Suchet called filming the climactic scene the hardest day of his life; it felt that "a part of me died with [Poirot]".
On The Beast, star Patrick Swayze was undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer. Many reviewers said it brought out the best in him. But it also meant that Swayze couldn't promote the show himself; it was cancelled three months before Swayze ultimately died from his cancer.
Chappelle's Show ended from a combination of Creator Breakdown and Executive Meddling. Dave Chappelle couldn't really handle the show becoming a breakout hit, in part because now the executives took away his Auteur License in an effort to maintain their cash cow, and in part because the show's edgy racial humor picked up a particularly disturbing Misaimed Fandom among racists who didn't get who the butt of the joke was. It culminated in Chappelle disappearing early in the filming of the show's third season (he wound up in South Africa) and turning down a $50 million contract by the network.
The First Doctor's increasing powerlessness and incompetence partly reflects the failing physical and mental health of his actor William Hartnell. His inability to remember his lines and irritability toward his crewmates gave his character a persistent bad mood and a genuine frailty, and the writers responded by going for a Darker and Edgier tone and giving the Doctor fewer lines to say.
Tom Baker was by his own admission a "very depressed man" when he got the role of the Doctor, and used his role in part to work through his own mental issues, referring to the rehearsal rooms as "his own little asylum". He would later admit that he was struggling to manage undiagnosed bipolar disorder. This led him to being quite allergic to criticism and often attempting to Wag the Director, but his unhinged and obviously personal performance is one reason he's one of the show's most memorable Doctors. Among his most notable instances:
Baker was displeased with "Horror of Fang Rock", a story in which the Doctor and a gaggle of civilians are trapped in a lighthouse with an enigmatic monster. He particularly didn't like sharing the spotlight with any of his co-stars, nor was he pleased with the show's creative direction (partly because Executive Meddling led to the established creative team getting sacked). Baker thus gives a severe, brooding, and temperamental performance, giving the impression that the Doctor is losing his mind between fear and claustrophobia, and forcing all the other actors to regard him with visible wariness.
Most of Season 18 saw the Doctor become particularly moody, vulnerable, and serious, reflecting Baker becoming Lost in Character and burning out in his seventh year of playing the character (the longest tenure of any actor to play the Doctor). It served as a harsh contrast to his usual manic exuberance, and once his departure was known, the writers turned it into an Arc where the stories focused on mortality and decay, foreshadowing the Doctor's upcoming regeneration.
On Friends, the episode in which Phoebe thinks her mother has been reincarnated as a cat she found was penned by co-creator Marta Kauffman, who lost her own mother around that time. Other staff writers have said that the script would not normally have been greenlit, but under the circumstances, nobody felt comfortable saying no. The episode was not well received, particularly Ross's portrayal as a horrible friend for telling Phoebe she should return the cat to its nine-year-old owner.
Magnificent Century creator Mehyem Uzerli (a.k.a. Roxelana/Hürrem) suffered a Creator Breakdown and suddenly left the series during production of the third season. It's not even known exactly why; speculation has touched on everything from monetary issues to bad health to creative burnout.
Steven Moffat's attempts to deal with his divorce led to some incredibly bitter dark comedy appearing in his works Press Gang and Joking Apart.
Dennis Potter's Karaoke and Cold Lazarus were written in tandem (for different networks!) in the full and present awareness of his own impending death from pancreatic cancer. The former of these is a reasonably traditional drama (with standard Potteresque touches). The latter, however, picks up the same central (Potter-analogue) character, four hundred years later, after he's had his head cryogenically frozen. Things get significantly weirder from there — which makes it a matter of debate whether is actually represents a great shift from his pre-illness output.
On Smash, the first season's recurring storyline of a major character adopting a child mirrored a similar process in the life of showrunner Theresa Rebeck. Although it was clearly detrimental to the show as a whole, the network executives did not intervene because they knew how personal this was for her.
Aaron Sorkin has been known to work with this, in part by having his characters parallel his own breakdown In-Universe:
Matt and Harriet's relationship was largely thought to have been inspired by Sorkin's tumultuous real-life relationship with Kristin Chenoweth.
In the first episode, showrunner Wes Mandel walks out on his show after being forced to cut a sketch making fun of the religious right — but not before he delivers a 57-second on-camera diatribe on how his show used to be cutting-edge satire before Executive Meddling and audience's obsession with trashy reality TV ruined it. His opinions and experience on the matter seem to mirror Sorkin's.
In one episode, Danny Tripp fails an insurance physical drug test, which prevents him from directing movies for the time being. Sorkin had similar drug-related issues in the past.
The Newsroom kicks off with Sorkin's Author Avatar, news anchor Will McAvoy, responding to a question at a political town hall meeting with a rant about the fallacy of American exceptionalism, which goes viral on YouTube and causes a ripple effect through his staff and the network. As the series progresses, Will discovers that his boss and his ex-fiancée set it up to steer him back to being a serious journalist.
Averted in the first-season Original Series episode "The Devil in the Dark". Early in the filming process, William Shatner received word that his father had suddenly died. Shatner continued to film for most of the day before flying off to Florida. He managed not to significantly affect the episode despite his very understandable distress, and he credited the cast and crew for helping him manage it.
Michael Piller's script for the Next Generation episode "The Best of Both Worlds" is the result of a Creator Breakdown. Riker's career crisis, loss of faith in himself, and antagonistic relationship with his possible replacement Shelby, were all inspired by Piller's angst over his own career path as a writer.
In one episode, Stephen Franklin quits his job, goes wandering around the seedier parts of the station, and is eventually stabbed and nearly dies. Some time after the episode aired, Straczynski was asked if he had ever done anything similar, and he described how he used to wander around the seedier parts of San Diego late at night, until he was mugged and nearly beaten to death. Until then, he hadn't made the connection. That might also be why in the show's universe, San Diego is a nuclear wasteland.
Straczynski wrote two episodes of the show while sick the flu, in both cases not remembering the writing process and only coming across the finished product sitting on his desk when he recovered. One of those episodes is "The Quality of Mercy", which is surprisingly lucid given the circumstances. The other is "Grey 17 is Missing", widely regarded as one of the worst episodes in the series.
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future owes its Darker and Edgier tone to this, including at least two instances of profanity and a season finale in which an important good guy was killed on-screen. In an interview, Straczynski mentions someone he knew who took their own life, despite his best efforts to save them. The show wound up cancelled after said season finale, and had it continued it would likely have been even darker.
On The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon's YouTube series "Fun with Flags" suffers after Amy breaks up with him. He makes a bizarre episode entitled "Countries That Fell Apart and the Women I Suspect Were Responsible", using historical instances of balkanization as thinly-veiled metaphors for their failed relationship.
Sheldon: And then The Czech Republic says to Slovakia, "I don't think you understand how being broken up works." Can you believe that? You'd think the Czech Republic would try to hold on to what it had, given that it's not as young as it used to be, and I don't see any other countries lining up to invade its southern borders!
Eric dates aspiring singer-songwriter Corinna (played by real-life singer Leisha Hailey), whose songs are saccharine and completely unappealing. But when he dumps her, she immediately starts writing dark and angsty songs clearly directed at him — and they turn her into a huge success. After a while, she comes back to Eric to try and patch things up, but Eric soon realizes that she's just run out of material. Not wanting to give her any, he acts nice and sweet (including triggering a conversation incorporating the lyrics of "Tomorrow" from Annie) and reverts her back to mindless shlock mode. Her music bombs again, and Eric can't help but give an evil snicker at the end. The episode even references Alanis Morissette, who had a similar transformation which you can see on the Music page.
One episode depicts the True Companions having a nasty falling-out before a Flash Forward to the group's ten-year reunion. Eric has taken the split the hardest, depicted as a crazy Mountain Man dressed like Gandalf. He presents a book he wrote about the meaning of life; at first glance it's a Doorstopper, but it turns out to have only one page worth of text: "Lose one friend. Lose all friends. Lose yourself." When asked why he didn't write anything else, he says, "Nothing else seemed important." The whole thing turns out to be a Daydream Surprise anyway.
Castle provides a parody of the whole phenomenon, given that Castle is basing his detective novels on Detective Beckett, shadowing her for material, and slowly falls in love with her over the course of the series. Their interactions make it into his works in curious ways. Nowhere is this more evident than the appearance of Detective Tom Demming, a rival for Beckett's affection, which leads to the books introducing a "Detective Schlemming" whom the narrative seems not to like.
Alexis: This robbery detective character... he seems to come out of nowhere. Castle: I can't argue with that... Alexis: He seems like kind of a doofus. Castle:(eagerly) Yeah? You think?
When Vaughn breaks up with Britta, he co-writes a song very unsubtly called "Getting Rid of Britta". It includes multiple instances of the refrain, "She's a GDB."
In "Documentary Filmmaking Redux", Dean Pelton completely breaks down while trying to film a commercial for Greendale and ends up cancelling all classes. Abed, having predicted this would happen, decides to document the whole thing. It's all a sendup of Hearts of Darkness.
Abed: The Dean is going insane and taking all of you with him.
In the Criminal Minds episode "True Night", the killer is a comic book artist who creates an extremely violent comic starring a violent '90s Anti-Hero. Both are driven to kill by watching their pregnant girlfriend die at the hands of street thugs, and the art is based on the real-life murders.
On Degrassi: The Next Generation, Eli breaks up with Clare and subsequently writes a play in which the protagonist gets his heart broken by a girl named Clara, and the guy who steals her is named Jack after Clare's new boyfriend Jake.
Played for Laughs on Garth Marenghis Darkplace, in which the Show Within a Show presents more of an insight into the eponymous author's mindset — especially his feelings about women — than he perhaps realizes or wishes. Of particular note is an episode which is essentially an extended racist tirade at the Scottish, played for laughs in that the English Marenghi loudly insists that it's not racist despite the overwhelmingly obvious evidence that it is — even another character freely admits it (but it doesn't bother him because he's also prejudiced against the Scottish).
On How I Met Your Mother, the husband of Ted's former love interest writes a romantic comedy directly based upon the events leading up to him winning the woman away from Ted, drastically distorted to show himself as a hero and Ted as an obnoxious heel (played by real-life obnoxious heel Chris Kattan). The movie then goes on to be a huge hit.
On The Larry Sanders Show, Warren Zevon turns up and begs not to be asked to play his famous song "Werewolves of London", claiming to be utterly sick of it. Unfortunately, this request never actually makes it to Larry, who asks Zevon for an encore and specifically requests "Werewolves of London". Zevon responds by angrily bashing out a perfunctory run-through of the song, during which you can feel the resentment burning through the screen.
On Mad About You, Jamie discovers that her ex-boyfriend has created his own comic, in which the Big Bad looks exactly like Jamie. Reading through his work, she discovers that several plot events are exaggerated sci-fi depictions of incidents from their relationship.
Early episodes used a minor variety of the trope as a plot device; Jerry would see the crazy things happening to himself and his friends and then incorporate it into his standup material. This device would eventually diminish as the show leaned more into its "show about nothing" mentality.
In one episode, Jerry tells an annoying would-be standup comic (played by real-life comedian Kathy Griffin) that she's not funny. She turns this into an act that centers entirely around insulting Jerry — not even telling jokes about him, just nakedly insulting him. And she inexplicably becomes a hit. It's a bit of a play on Griffin's real-life act, which consists of making fun of celebrities.
For Brian Topp, his art's default setting is angsty, bizarre, and directly based on his misery, fear, anger, and self-loathing. Except when he's happy; then he starts producing happy pictures of flowers and his girlfriend. Turns out his negative thoughts are his muses; he can't produce any art worth anything unless he's miserable.
Tim gets in on the act, too. One night, Daisy is flipping through Tim's sketchbook and is alarmed and disturbed by the sheer volume of graphic, angry, and bitter revenge pictures of Tim's ex-girlfriend (who cheated on him with her boss and kicked him out of their flat). She's a bit relieved to come across a warm, happy sketch of Tim with herself and her dog Colin, drawn after they moved in together.
On The Tracy Ullman Show, singer-songwriter Ariel writes extremely angsty songs (her biggest hit is "Slit My Wrists" and she did Exactly What It Says on the Tin) and is extremely popular — until she has a relationship with Duane, a decent guy who treats her well, her songs become happy and cheerful, and they flop very badly.
that he requested the series finale Curtain be filmed before the other four episodes of the final series because he didn't want Poirot's death at the same moment he was finishing the role to be too depressing or to be "a negative thing for [him] to go through". But even as Suchet chose to film Curtain first, it felt agonizing for him to play the role of a dying Belgian detective who didn't just pass away, but did so after ending his final case with a bang. Suchet called filming the climactic scene the hardest day of his life; it felt that "a part of me died with [Poirot]".