Et Tu Brute / Live-Action TV

• In the Ashes to Ashes (2008) episode "Traitor", it is discovered that DC Chris Skelton has been feeding information to corrupt cops for the majority of Season 2. This is the only time Gene Hunt ever becomes teary-eyed and he is sent into a BSOD.
  • This is especially heartbreaking given that the traitor is one of the most timid and innocent cops in the station and has previously turned down any and all temptations of police corruption.
  • When the traitor is Interrogated, Gene (who usually beats the crap out of suspects to get information) remains in a BSOD and barely talks at all while his DI Alex conducts the interrogation. When the Interrogation is over he gives a look of pure disgust and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him.
• Babylon 5: Michael Garibaldi winds up on both ends of this before it's all over.
  • At the end of the first season, Garibaldi gets wind of a conspiracy to kill Earth Alliance president, but before he can do anything he's shot In the Back by his own second, Jack. After he recovers and it's revealed what happened, he goes to Jack's cell, demanding to know why, then promising to be the one to push the button at his sentencing.
  • In Season 4, Garibaldi is under More than Mind Control which eventually leads to him turning Sheridan over to the corrupt Earth Force. After this, Bester comes and releases the mental programming, leaving Garibaldi in his right mind again, and fully aware of what he's done. He first tries to get in contact with his former allies, but they're not exactly sympathetic, and he has to beg Lyta to scan his memories to prove his story.
• The new Battlestar Galactica has some examples. These include: Starbuck's infidelity between Lee and Samuel Anders (Lee also does the same to his wife during this), Gaeta's Start of Darkness and participation in a coup, Ellen Tigh's infidelity, Saul Tigh's murder of his wife, Baltar's desertion of his cult, and Cavil's actions towards anyone who disagrees with him.
• Being Human (UK): Tom, being as sensitive as he is, doesn't take a hurtful betrayal from those closest to him very well, such as when he learns the truth about his parentage or when Kirby manipulates him to believe his flatmates view him as nothing more than a pet, both of which prompt a violent outburst from him. Both Tom and Alex are furious when they think Hal has murdered Tom's crush for her blood just minutes after he came crawling to Alex for help detoxing him.
• Hank's breakdown in Breaking Bad when he finally discovers that his brother-in-law, one of his best and most trusted friends, is Heisenberg simply oozes this.
  Hank: It was you. All along, it was YOU! You son of a bitch! ...Heisenberg. HEISENBERG! You lying, two-faced sack of shit!
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Amy, Angel(us), Spike (occasionally), Faith, Billy Fordham, Willow, Gwendolyn Post, and the list goes on. Even Xander may belong here, depending on how you interpret Xander's Lie.
  • In "Helpless", Giles has Buffy Brought Down to Normal on the orders of the Watcher's Council. Buffy acts like this is a Parental Betrayal and swears to kill him if he ever lays hands on her again. They reconcile only because the Council fires Giles at the end of the Test after he tries to atone by helping Buffy. However in "Lies My Parents Told Me", Giles tries to arrange Spike's death, causing another breach between them that carries over into the comic series.
  • Wesley, on the Angel side, betraying Angel and taking Connor.
  • After the Fall has Gwen betray the team because Gunn (who's a vampire) and the Big Bad, says that he can help her. Her boyfriend, Connor, is especially hurt by this.
• The Cape: Vince's best friend Marty helps to frame him as the supervillain Chess (under orders by the real guy). It's hinted he only did this under coercion, but of course it's a huge betrayal nonetheless to Vince.
• Played for Laughs in an episode of El Chavo del ocho. One night Mr. Barriga dresses as a Bedsheet Ghost to scare Chavo as revenge for always hitting him when he arrives to the neighborhood, and the kids get scared and grab whatever they have at hand to use as weapons. Then, Professor Girafales arrives with a mariachi to give Doña Florinda a serenade, but the kids mistake him for the "ghost" and proceed to hit him. When Quico does, Girafales says "¿También tú, Bruto, hijo mío?" (which would translate as "Et tu, Brute, my son?")
• Control Z: Isabela gets this after learning that her best friend María is the Honey Bunny who has been sleeping with Pablo, sarcastically telling both of them that they deserve each other.
  Pablo: (to María) Did you tell her you're the Honey Bunny?!
  (Isabela turns to María with a shocked face)
  Pablo: We've been fucking a lot and you didn't even know!
  Isabela: Keep going, then. You two deserve each other, "friend".
• Dark Desire: Íñigo is heavily hit hard with the reveal that Darío, his would-be son-in-law with whom he had formed a fatherly relationship, was responsible for the murder of his daughter Julieta.
• Firefly: The episode "Ariel" has Mal angry at Jayne because he feels personally betrayed by Jayne who called the Feds on Simon and River while they were doing a job. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise to viewers, who have seen Jayne betray/defect in the past. Especially in light of the pilot episode, where Jayne says it'll "be an interesting day" when the money is good enough for him to sell Mal out.
  Mal: Next time you stab me in the back, have the guts to do it to my face.
• Game of Thrones: The show is very fond of this kind of classical, Shakespearean flavoured betrayal:
  • Jon Snow struggles against the mutineers at Castle Black quite a bit, until a boy he had taken on as his steward and personally mentored steps up, and all he can do is say "Olly?" When he's later brought Back from the Dead, he seems more traumatized by Olly's part in his assassination than the assassination itself.
  • Robb Stark is betrayed by Theon Greyjoy in Season 2 when Theon seized Winterfell and this is his reaction upon learning this. He is also betrayed by Rickard Karstark and later to his death by his bannerman Roose Bolton and Walder Frey in the Season 3 episode "The Rains of Castamere", although he's too numb to register it. Furthermore, he feels deeply betrayed by his mother Catelyn when she releases the Kingslayer (Jaime Lannister) behind his back.
  • Shae is this to Tyrion in Season 4, which is implied to be revenge for sending her away. She returns as Cersei's star witness at Tyrion's trial and is notably the only person at his trial who tells an outright lie against him as well as twisting the knife further and citing their most heartwarming moments together and twisting them to humiliate Tyrion in the most gutwrenching possible way. This is the testimony that utterly breaks Tyrion and launches him far past the Despair Event Horizon, causing the poor man to just fucking lose it and explode with several decades worth of bitterness and rage at his ungrateful family and the ungrateful nobles of King's Landing.
  • Missing the bigger picture, Tywin can hardly fathom that his children would be capable of rebelling against him. His miffed line, "You shot me," ("why, this is violence") carries far more indignation and disbelief than it does fear or pain, like that of which Julius Caesar expressed during his own assassination.
  • Alton Lannister is killed by Jaime, his own older cousin, after telling him that he's his number one fan and that he would do anything to help him.
  • In Season 3, Gendry enthusiastically joins the Brotherhood without Banners, claiming that they'll be the closest thing to a family he'll ever have... only to be sold by them to Melisandre the next episode.
• Jeremiah: In "Thieves Honor", Theo is caught off-guard and rattled when Sam and Keith, the head of her enforcers and technicians respectively, side with the coup against her after being her trusted companions and confidants in most of her previous scenes.
• Kamen Rider Gaim: Hase's Sengoku Driver is broken, leaving him unable to defend his team's stage from Team Baron. When he demands to know why his closest ally, Jounouchi, didn't step in to help him, Jounouchi reveals that he had been plotting to steal the stage himself, and that Baron simply beat him to it. The shock at the betrayal is written all over Hase's face.
• Legends of Tomorrow: In the Season 3 premiere 'Aruba-Con', "Et tu, Sara?" is directed at Sara/White Canary by Nate/Citizen Steel when she agrees they should return the ship to Rip. Of course, given that the episode features Caesar himself, the line is far from a surprise.
• Lifetime has an entire series entitled "I Killed My BFF."
• Merlin:
  • Morgana leads Uther on to believe she's close to him, although they argue at times, and then she betrays him and seizes the throne. Ditto could be said for her and Arthur.
  • Morgana herself reacts like this when Merlin poisons her to save Camelot. To be fair, at the time he probably didn't have any other choice and he was sure she had already betrayed them.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Disappeared Dad Hiroshi Randa is on the "tu" end of this trope from (one of his wives) Emiko and both his children, after his secret double life with two families is exposed on both ends. In his daughter Cate's case, it goes back further because he was away on "work", and he neglected her to go away on such again when she was traumatized immediately after G-Day.
• Queen Anne has moments of this in the The Musketeers, especially in the second season. While she's furious about Marguerite's (her son's governess) betraying her and her friends to Rocheforte, it's Rocheforte (who she saw as a big brother/ mentor figure from her pre-France life) and his attacks against her that really horrifies her.
  Queen Anne: I trusted him.
• Comedically referenced in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode Riding With Death, when a rift occurs between the protagonist and his obnoxious redneck buddy. Crow mournfully supplies: "Et tu, Billy Bob?"
• NUMB3RS:
  • The team is visibly crushed when Colby is revealed to be a double agent for the Chinese, especially David. After things are cleared up, their relationship is rocky for several episodes before they finally get it together again.
  • Lt. Walker is furious when he learns that one of his fellow cops, a narcotics officer, was so intent on clearing the streets of drug dealers that he secretly collaborated with a gang member to clear rival stash houses, organized the gang member to go down in a raid when he wanted to come forward, and even killed the officer that pulled the trigger when he got suspicious and decided to go to Internal Affairs. Especially since he helped raise his murdered colleague's son afterward.
  • Don takes it hard when he finds out that his FBI mentor turned out to be a Dirty Cop, especially when he had to shoot him.
• Odd Squad:
  • Horrifically deconstructed in "Training Day". During Olive's flashbacks, it's shown that Todd, her former partner, began to turn to the side of odd, which culminated in him intentionally leading everyone off the trail of Tiny Dancer so he could allow her to create more oddness. This led to him getting fired, and while Olive tried to stop Oprah's decision, Todd took it in stride and willingly gave his badge to the Director before ominously wishing the two girls the best of luck and making his departure, much to the dismay of Olive, who is left in a state of shock and confusion. Weeks later, Todd returned under the new name "Odd Todd", opened up the vault containing the pienado (a tornado made of pie), and made an attempt to assassinate every one of his former co-workers, including Olive herself, who begged him to stop to no avail. Although Olive ended up being the Sole Survivor of the attack (despite the fact that Oscar, Dr. O, and Oprah all eventually made it out alive) and managed to save her Headquarters, the betrayal turned her into a Shell-Shocked Veteran with a fear of pies and trauma from the incident. To make matters worse, in the present day, Odd Todd is still out there and actively tries to cause strife for Olive and her new partner Otto, for Precinct 13579, and for Odd Squad as a whole.
  • Deconstructed again in "Who is Agent Otis?". Otis gives his Backstory in an (odd) court of law and explains that he was the White Sheep of a villainous duck family. As a kid, he went along with the ducks and engaged in driving people away from parks with them, but when Brother Quack, the leader of the ducks and Otis's father (and brother) figure, devised an Evil Plan to make a machine to bring the Earth closer to the sun to end winter permanently, Otis, realizing that this would kill him, his family, and everyone on the planet, betrayed his family and ratted them out to Odd Squad, who stopped them before the machine could be activated and "arrested" them by putting them in dog crates and sending them to a Minnesota zoo. Although Otis got a second chance working for Odd Squad as Oprah's personal apprentice, his actions haunted him for a long time afterwards and he developed a fear of ducks due to being afraid that his family would find him and hurt him for his betrayal.
  • One non-deconstructed example is in "End of the Road", with The Shadow, also known as Olizabeth, betraying her older sister Opal by becoming a villain instead of an agent due to Opal's tendency to be overprotective and stopping her from doing mundane things that cause little harm, like playing a tuba during band class. Throughout Season 3, Opal doesn't realize that The Shadow is someone she knows personally, instead treating her like any run-of-the-mill villainess in Odd Squad's expansive Rogues Gallery, but when she eventually finds out her true identity via a Dramatic Unmask, it manages to leave her in a near-wordless shock.
• Our Miss Brooks: In "Mr. Conklin Plays Detective", Principal Osgood Conklin is shocked to discover that Mr. Boynton seems to be the one who stole his typewriter and made a long-distance call to Rockaway, Minnesota on his office phone. It turns out to be a misunderstanding. Mr. Boynton oiled the typewriter and put it in the office closet. Boynton left the money for the long-distance call in an envelope on Mr. Conklin's desk.
  Mr. Conklin: Et-tu, Boynton?
• Brutus' betrayal and assassination of Caesar is recreated in Rome without the actual sentence being pronounced. Ciaran Hinds' facial expression, especially his eyes, carries the question "Et tu, Brute?" silently. Very effective.
  • Though it's used as a Historical In-Joke when Brutus uses the line with his own mother when she sides against him during an argument.
• Scorpion season finale Swiss Family Scorpion has "et tu, Happy?"
• One Star Trek: The Next Generation had an abandoned Romulan prison camp full of Klingons, in which the two cultures merged and interbred. When Worf arrives and tries to teach the half-breed children about Klingon honor, the former Romulan prison commander sets up to execute him, and is standing there with his disruptor trained on Worf and all of the children go over and interpose themselves. He looks like he is about to pull the trigger anyway, but then his half-Klingon daughter (who has a crush on Worf) walks over to join them and utterly crushes his resolve.
• A better Star Trek example comes from Deep Space Nine when a recurring character reveals himself to have been a mole for the terrorist/freedom-fighters the Maquis. Although the Maquis in general are depicted as a moral grey zone for the show (their cause is sympathetic but their methods illegal), Cpt. Sisko takes it VERY personally, to the point of destroying a planet's biosphere to keep the Maquis from using it. The former Mole even lampshades this trope in a later episode after the Maquis have been all but eliminated, pointing out to Sisko that it wasn't their agenda or even their methods that pissed off Sisko so much, it was the BETRAYAL by those Masquis who had once been Star Fleet officers, turning their backs on the Federation.
  • Also crosses the line into Irony territory when you consider that Eddington's entire reason for being there was because Starfleet was worried about the existing head of security not playing by their rules.
    Odo: Sir, have you ever reminded Starfleet Command that they stationed Eddington here because they didn't trust me?
    Sisko: No.
    Odo: Please do.
  • Ironically, that same mole had previously betrayed Sisko by sabotaging the Defiant to stop Sisko from pursuing a ship...on orders from Starfleet.
  • There's an even clearer example earlier on, where Sisko discovers an old friend and colleague to have switched sides. He's known the man for decades and has always seen him as someone who shares his values. The only difference between the two is that his colleague has experienced the problems that led to the foundation of the Maquis firsthand.
  • Quark and Kira both react this way when, during the station's occupation by the Dominion, Odo no-shows at a critical moment during a sabotage operation, causing the operation to fail and Rom to be arrested, because he's more concerned with the Link. Though Odo eventually has a Heel Realization and comes back to help.
  • In the episode "Inquisition," Dr. Bashir is hurt when even Sisko suspects him of suppressing memories of betraying the Federation. It is later revealed that everything that happened after a certain point in that episode was fake, including Sisko's reaction.
• Supergirl (2015): Nia is shocked and hurt when her sister Maeve says she's "not a real woman" in a moment of anger since she relates that while some people in town rejected her being transgender Maeve was her strongest supporter.
• In the White Collar episode 'The Dentist of Detroit' Mozzie is in danger from the Detroit Mob, and when Peter and Neal try to help him, Neal is forced to 'betray' him by giving him up to Peter as the Dentist of Detroit, to which Mozzie responds 'Et tu, Neal?' in a facsimile of this trope.
• Inverted on Xena: Warrior Princess with Caesar's assassination. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Caesar wilts upon seeing his close friend Brutus among his killers. But in Xena, Caesar had been cast as a much younger man(instead of middle-aged like the real Caesar was), and his response to realizing what was about to happen was an angry "And you, Brutus!"

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