Everyone Has Standards / Live-Action TV

Characters with standards in Live-Action TV.

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• The 100:
  • Even the strictly controlled dystopia of the Ark is reluctant to execute children, despite Population Control being a basic necessity. It'll lock them up until eighteen and then execute them if their trial doesn't go well, and it'll use them as lab rats to determine if Earth is habitable again, but they are at least given something of a chance.
  • Councilman Kane, who wanted to kill 300 people to save life support on the Ark, wouldn't just kill them for no reason. Instead, he would attempt to do it through the law by becoming Chancellor or getting the council to approve of his plan and he wanted to do it by making it look like an accident.
  • Bellamy was willing to risk innocent lives to save himself from being punished for his attempted murder on the chancellor, but objected to his Dragon Murphy taking on Wells unless the fight was fair and also took issue with Murphy trying to execute a child, despite knowing that the child in question had murdered Wells. He also was not just protecting himself, he was also as he saw it protecting his sister, Octavia who was in prison and sent to the ground for being illegally born. And after three seasons doing all manner of truly stupid and hostile things for the sake of trying to keep his sister Octavia safe, he cuts ties with her and flat-out tells her that he hopes she dies when her Going Native character arc culminates in her turning into a warlord every bit as bad (if not a hell of a lot worse) than all other Grounder tribal chiefs that have tried to kill them so far.
• Accused (2023): In "Morgan's Story" Flaco, Eric's seedy informant who's a criminal, comments how it's "cold" that Jason is framing Morgan on drug dealing charges with their help.
• All in the Family gives us Archie Bunker who, while notorious for his casually racist, sexist, and homophobic views, ends up being a Noble Bigot rather than a bad man for just how many virtues and standards he actually has. To wit:
  • He is mortified to realize that a white supremacist Brotherhood of Funny Hats he has joined, thinking it's a social club, is in fact The Klan. He tells them off, denounces all of their behavior, and withdraws his membership on the grounds that, since he once had a blood transfusion from a black woman, he qualifies as black.
  • In another episode, Archie and one of his friends think they are under surveillance from the FBI, and the friend goes into a rant about being a communist. Archie takes offense to calling Mike a communist.
  • When he goes out for a drink with a man who is cheating on his wife, Archie is disgusted by the notion of the man's adulterous behavior. He tells the man to act his age, reminds him he has a beautiful wife at home waiting for him, and when the man asks if Archie's ever considered "looking for greener pastures" he counters with "Edith is green enough for me!" The episode ends with him holding Edith's hand.
• America Unearthed: Scott Wolter espouses such theories as The Knights Templar coming to America in the 12th century with the Holy Grail and the existence of giants among other theories, but he scoffs at anything to do with aliens.
• Andor: Despite being a mercenary con-man not actively invested in the Rebellion's cause yet, Cassian is utterly disgusted when he learns that Skeen intends to backstab Vel Sartha and the rest of the Aldhani infiltration team by cutting and running with the entire payload they just robbed from the Empire. When Skeen offers to split the payload with Cassian if he helps him betray the rebels and steal it, the latter immediately guns him down in contempt.
• Angel: Lorne is a Nice Guy and Wide-Eyed Idealist who kept his bar Caritas open to everyone, good, evil, or morally ambiguous, believing that anyone could turn their lives around if given sufficient guidance, but he did have his limits. He mentions in one episode that he banned a group of demons because they were selling the mystical drug Orpheus, the only time he ever felt obligated to ban anyone from Caritas.
• Avenue 5:
  • Harrison Acmes is possibly the biggest Jerkass on the titular ship (and that is saying something, since almost everyone onboard is an Entitled Bastard), but even he is visibly disgusted when a couple of other passengers casually reveal they abandoned their comatose son on Earth just because they didn't want to change their travel plans.
  • Lucas Sato treats Avenue 5's entire situation with contempt when he takes over Mission Control on behalf of the government, but he's horrified to learn that The Office of the Other President decides to destroy the ship and everyone in it with a missile once they decide the ship is a lost cause.
• In Babylon 5, the Mars Provisional Government exists only to enforce Earth's will on the population of Mars and rules under martial law. But when President Clarke is revealed to have assassinated his predecessor and turns the Earth Alliance into a military dictatorship with fascist overtones, governor Xavier Montoya declares he won’t enforce his much more restrictive martial law decree and even declares independence, when Clarke orders a bombing strike on civilians.
• Bar Rescue: Taffer invites Tracy and Juciano from Piratz Tavern, who were known among other things for overpouring drinks, for his recon in "Getting Freaki at the Tiki". Even they were put off by the alcohol content of Freaky Tiki's drinks.
• Better Call Saul: Jimmy, despite openly resenting Howard and treating him poorly, is shocked when his wife Kim decides to destroy Howard's entire career, and clearly thinks that she's taking it too far.
• Blark and Son: Blark admittedly gets his son into more than a few dangerous and insane situations with his 'lessons' but they're (usually. Mostly.) done with good intentions. When he sees that Stacey was trying to get Son (a 12-year old) to drink with him however, he immediately raises his fists, ready to beat the snot out of Stacey.
  Blark: What the f*ck is going on here?
• In Breaking Bad Badger and Skinny Pete, two delinquents, junkies and small-time pushers, refuse to sell meth at an "Addicts Anonymous" meeting, because it's not right to prey on people who're trying to kick the habit. Jesse chides them for their soft morality, and decides to show them how it's done by seducing a woman at the meeting to sell meth to her, but then he ends up getting cold feet when he finds that she's a single mother raising a little kid.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • A Subverted Trope instance regarding Howard Wolowitz: Howard was feeling depressed that he couldn't find a girl, so Raj and Leonard go to Las Vegas and hire a prostitute to act as a Jewish woman for him to sleep with in order to make him feel better. When talking with her, Howard excuses himself, and tells Leonard and Raj that he knows they hired a prostitute and that she wasn't actually Jewish in a tone that implied that he was angered that they did that, which likewise implied that he wouldn't have stooped that low. However, he then thanks them quietly but enthusiastically after he learns from them that they paid in full, revealing that he actually would stoop as low as to sleep with a prostitute faking her ethnicity/religion that was hired by his friends as long as she was already paid beforehand.
  • Penny might find Sheldon irritating much of the time, but in "The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation" she doesn't approve of Leonard, Howard and Raj humiliating him by faking data and tricking him into believing that he's made a scientific discovery.
  • Leonard may be appalled by Sheldon and making fun of him behind his back, but even he's appalled by Howard attempting to run him over in "The Parking Spot Escalation".
• Prince Edmund from the first season of Blackadder may be too spineless and incompetent to be considered truly evil, but he is a slimy little creep capable of being cruel. However, that does not extend to the princess he was put in an Arranged Marriage with, who's name is Leia. Since she is around 10 years old at most, he doesn't do anything to her and treats her like a little sister, being much nicer to her than anyone else in the cast. His treatment of Leia is probably the only good thing he does in the season.
  • His series 4 descendant, Captain Blackadder, refuses to frame his Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Captain Darling for espionage when given the chance to do so (in contrast to his ancestors, who frequently had people assassinated out of spite), though he isn't above putting him through the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique for his own amusement. While he holds the men under his command in utter contempt, he is even more contemptuous of his superiors and their We Have Reserves-mentality.
• Blue Bloods: Frank is a devout Catholic. However, in "Burning Bridges", he expresses his disagreement with the Church's stance on homosexuality.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Cordelia is the Alpha Bitch, and damn proud of it. However in "When She was Bad", when Buffy sexily dances with Xander (manipulating his feelings for her), in front of both Willow (who's crushing on Xander) and Angel (in love with Buffy), effectively kicking three dogs for the price of one, even she's appalled.
  Cordelia: Buffy, you're really campaigning for bitch of the year aren't you?
• Cheers: Recurring character Harry "The Hat" is a con man who does things like try to stiff Sam on his bar tab or hustle the patrons, but only ever for small amounts ($10 at most). When he finds out another con man has scammed Coach out of thousands of dollars, he agrees to help get Coach's money back (although he does it with a multilayered scam that puts Sam's nerves through the wringer).
  Harry: I don't like the idea of someone else plucking my pigeons.
• Cobra Kai:
  • While Johnny is initially completely unrepentant over his past schoolyard bullying, he finds cyberbullying utterly spineless.
  "Back in my day, if you wanted to tease someone, you did it to their face! There was honor, respect! These geeks hide behind their computers, what a bunch of spineless losers."
  • Johnny also draws the line at bullying women into having sex, telling Miguel that it's wrong.
  • Despite his "strike first" philosophy, Johnny wants his students to fight honorably and punishes them when they cheat in the All Valley.
• Community:
  • Invoked Trope. The last security guard at Greendale, who is willing to tolerate the campus's safety hazards and getting paid in vouchers, quits when Dean Pelton enables Chang's insanity to avoid legal troubles, saying that it isn't funny.
  • In another episode, even Abed, himself a socially awkward dork with a unspecified mental issues, finds Annie's brother an insufferably socially awkward dork with unspecified mental issues.
• The Company You Keep:
  • The Nicolettis have a code of honor of only targeting the corrupt and criminal rather than conning innocent people.
  • In "Against All Odds," the family's old con man buddy Jonah talks them into helping him fleece a rich woman who he's even "engaged" to. When they realize the woman is truly trying to help others with her money and work, they tell her what's happening and enlist her to con Jonah.
• Control Z:
  • Lampshaded by Isabela in 1.02 when she confronted Natalia for being an accomplice to the hacker in the leaking of her secret by stealing her cellphone, which led to the video of her as a boy being uploaded. Despite Isabela being an Alpha Bitch to everyone at school and being just as self-absorbed as her friends, she would've never done such things to save her own skin. Even if Natalia didn't give in to the hacker's orders, it wouldn't have mattered, as everyone's secrets were leaked after their identity was exposed.
  Natalia: Isabela, what would you have done if it were your secret?
  Isabela: I would never do that to my best friend.
  • Sofia does whatever it takes to unmask the hacker. However, in 1.06, she becomes disgusted at Gerry after he swore to kill the hacker himself, rethorically asking him if he hadn't owned up to his previous actions.
  • Even though she is angered and devastated over Luis's death, Marta can't help but feel sorry for the students who are being attacked by the Avenger, knowing that her son would've never wanted these incidents to happen.
• Crossing Lines: Tommy's family are all professional criminals, but they refuse to deal drugs, and are horrified that they not only unwittingly helped other Irish people do this but that the drugs were also poisoned.
• Dear White People: With racial tensions at an all-time high in the second season and now people acting openly racist on campus, Kurt actually sees himself mellowing out since he doesn't find any humor in Sam getting doxed and threatened. He also starts to somewhat understand racism and what the black students have gone through because of this.
• Defiance: A key part of the backstory. The alien vs human "Pale Wars" were the worst wars the world had ever seen, and they kept getting worse. Eventually, soldiers were ordered to continue a battle despite an entire city of civilians being caught in the crossfire. Soldiers on both sides refused to follow orders and instead focused on getting the civilians to safety. The actions of the "Defiant Few" spread across the globe, and leaders had to sue for peace because no one would fight for them any more. One of the main characters of the series is one of the Defiant Few, but he is rather dismissive of the event, saying "it was what it was." He implies a few times that he and his men did absolutely terrible things in the war (he's known as The Butcher of Yosemite), and he's not sure how to process being treated as some selfless hero for one good act.
• Designated Survivor:
  • Kimble Hookstraten may be antagonistic at times with President Kirkman but she acts largely in the best interest of the country and is no traitor unlike MacLeish and does everything in her power to sabotage MacLeish's questionable actions when he is Acting President after Kirkman was shot.
    • Senator Bowman's antics over the gun-control bill frustrate Hookstraten as much as it does to Kirkman so she pledges a more bipartisan amendment approach to Kirkman if the Bill manages to get passed to the White House.
  • MacLeish was a treasonous mass murderer but they still cares deeply for the men on his old team and was angry when his wife indicates they should get rid of a panicking teammate who could have exposed them to the FBI.
• The Deuce:
  • Frankie is a degenerate who will do many unsavory things for money but he is horrified and disgusted when he discovers that the porn he peddles has hidden scenes with child pornography.
  • Haddix has no problem getting an arsonist to set a fire in a building but he will not endanger lives so he waits with a fire extinguisher in case the fire spreads to an inhabited area.
• Dexter:
  • Dexter is a Serial-Killer Killer who not only has a blood fetish but works in homicide forensics as a career. However, the crime scene in the episode "Seeing Red", with literal buckets of blood splashed around a hotel room, is enough to make him violently queasy and pass out. (It turns out, though, this is partly because it triggers a traumatic childhood memory.)
  • Complete Jerkass Quinn shows up at a party thrown by his ex-girlfriend, Debra Morgan, and he has some anonymous slutty girl with him. He acts drunk and stupid enough to annoy everyone at the party, but the slutty girl doesn't mind, until she finds out that she's only there to make Deborah jealous. "You brought me to your ex-girlfriend's house? Have a nice life."
• In the opening of the Elementary episode "The Best Way Out Is Through", a couple of muggers working a subway station find that their latest would-be target has already been fatally stabbed. One of them wants to run, but the other calls 911 and waits for the police (presumably in part so that they don't get suspected of the murder).
  • Played literally in the episode Sober Companions, when Sherlock asks the hacker collective who call themselves Everyone for help tracing a serial killer. Everyone waive their usual fee of making him humiliate himself, because they have standards.
• Everybody Hates Chris:
  • While Rochelle's parenting style is borderline abusive, she doesn't follow through on any of her more outlandish threats, nor does she strike her children on Christmas. Also, the one crime that she can't forgive of her children is selling drugs.
  • Apparently, the one thing Risky won't sell to kids is Playboy magazine.
• In Family Matters, Urkel is a friendly, albeit obnoxious and clumsy, person, there are limits to his friendliness.
  • He does not like to be lied to or taken advantage of; he blows his stack at Laura, who he has an enormous crush on after she puts him through hell while trying to get her to a school trip. He also yells at Carl for using him to win a Christmas decoration party.
  • He's aggravated by Waldo and the mishaps he causes, even becoming an angry Deadpan Snarker himself.
  • He tries to block his delinquent cousin from showing up, doing to Cornelius what the Winslow family does to him.
• In Farscape, while Rygel likes to introduce himself as 'Dominar' and mention that he once had sixteen million subjects, even though it's been some time since he was deposed, he was nevertheless genuinely uncomfortable when Moya discovered a primitive world that his ancestor set up to create people who would slavishly worship his lineage as gods, Rygel preferring loyal subjects over deceived worshippers (even before he figures out that his lack of actual godly power makes this personally dangerous for him).
• Father Ted: Possibly the most unexpected moment in the DVD Commentary is witnessing Linehan and Mathews get hot under the collar about the scene in "Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse" in which Ted blatantly lies about not having kicked the Bishop with his hand on his heart, swearing "on God, on my religion", and while standing right next to a crucifix. Not only they say that the crucifix wasn't part of the scene as they had written it, but also feel that even by Ted's standards that's incredibly barefaced.
• Foundation (2021): In Season 2, Brother Dusk (Cleon XVI) is throughly disgusted by Brother Day (Cleon XVII)'s sexual relationship with Demerzel, viewing it as not just borderline incestuous (because Demerzel is a Parental Substitute for all the Cleons) but also as an abuse of the authority Day has over her.
• Frasier: Niles vents some anger by throwing a brick through the window of a gallery that scammed Frasier with a counterfeit painting. Before the brothers flee the scene Niles throws a handful of cash through the broken window to cover the repair expenses.
  Niles: We may be barbarians, but we pay for our pillaging!
• On Friends, most of the gang avoid Janice like the plague for her Annoying Laugh and general annoyingness. Ross, though, dates her for an episode because he's in a down period in his life and feels he can vent to her. He takes it too far even for her, though.
  Ross: You're saying that I've become so whiny that I annoy you. Janice.
  Janice: Well, yeah.
  Ross: Oh. My. God!
• Game of Thrones:
  • Stannis is pressured to sacrifice his daughter by Melisandre, a Red Priestess whose God demands human sacrifices in the form of fire. With his army stuck in the snow miles from his enemy and the situation getting desperate, he eventually agrees, allowing his own daughter to be burned alive in front of the entire army. The snow does thaw, but half his men desert with all the horses, leading him to be defeated in the ensuing battle. Even for the jaded people of Westeros, watching their general murder his young, terrified daughter is far beyond their ability to tolerate.
  • After finding out that he declined to make off with some gold when he had the chance but rode down a peasant boy early in the series, Arya darkly observes to the Hound, "You're fine with murdering little boys, but thieving is beneath you." The Hound retorts, "Man's got to have a code." Then, at the first opportunity, he robs a kindly farmer and just shrugs off the renewed accusations of hypocrisy.
    • A straighter example for the Hound would be his clear hatred towards violence against women, especially rape. He's stops being civil with Polliver and his men when he brags about raping with impunity, and is ready to kill them all when he offers the Hound a chicken in exchange for Arya. He is also horrified at the sight of Robb Stark's headless corpse being paraded around by the Freys.
  • A city watchman refuses an order to kill an infant girl, leaving Janos Slynt to do it himself.
  • Tyrion is so disgusted by Janos Slynt's actions that he revokes his title and banishes him to the Wall, though he also has the personal motivation of getting rid of a lackey of Cersei who back-stabbed the previous Hand of the King. Tyrion, while a member of the closest thing to a "villainous" faction in this series (at least before he joins Team Daenerys), fits this trope rather than Even Evil Has Standards due to being a good person at heart.
  • Zigzagged with the hired killer Bronn, who recognizes Joffrey as a vicious sadist, is horrified by what Tywin did to Tyrion's first wife, and openly shares Tyrion's disgust for Meryn Trant's mistreatment of Sansa and calls him out for brutalizing those who are weaker than him, yet also declares that his only quibble with murdering an infant girl would be his payment for doing so.
  • Maester Wolkan is visibly horrified when Ramsay drives a dagger into his father's heart, and then when he asks to send for Lady Walda and her son. Wolkan knows full well what's about to happen.
  • Jaime Lannister has several:
    • He knocks down a soldier who unceremoniously stabs Ned in the leg during his duel with the latter. When talking with his father in "You Win or You Die", he comments that this act made him spare Ned's life as killing him in this situation wouldn't be "clean."
    • He feels contempt for rapists, though in "Breaker of Chains" he forces himself on his lover Cersei.
    • The reason he killed Aerys — he wanted to burn down King's Landing with wildfire.
    • Unlike his father, sister, and his son, he has no problem with homosexuality and even sympathises with them, given his own affection.
    • He defies Cersei's wishes by having Brienne find Sansa and take her to safety so that Cersei can't harm her, and gives up his sword Oathkeeper to her for that purpose.
    • The Season 6 finale implies he's horrified to see the mass murder and destruction Cersei has wreaked upon King's Landing and their own family.
  • Varys:
    • The Black Magic practiced by the Lord of Light religion disturbs him, and the thought of a follower of that religion sitting on the Iron Throne terrifies him.
    • He's visibly disturbed when Joffrey decides that he will behead Eddard Stark there and then. After all, he did do his best to help Ned when he could.
    • His opposition to Littlefinger is due in no small part to his awareness of how Littlefinger will happily watch the realm burn so long as it allows him to advance, and he is visibly disgusted by just how low Baelish will go.
    • He is visibly appalled when Joffrey announces that he plans to serve Robb Stark's severed head to Sansa at his wedding feast. Heck, not just visibly; he outright breaks his normal effete facade and insistently reminds Joffrey that Sansa is now his aunt by marriage. It isn't clear if he's appalled by how hurtful this would be to Sansa herself, or shocked that Joffrey's so bat-shit insane that he would do this in front of the entire court and not consider how bizarre this would appear to the lords of the realm (though probably both).
  • Despite his love for violence, even Robert is speechless when he learns the Mad King had been saying "Burn them all" for hours before his death.
  • Say what you will about Selyse's treatment of Shireen, but she breaks down when her daughter is burned alive and screams for her help and unsuccessfully tries to prevent it.
  • Matthos is visibly disgusted when Salladhor expresses his intent to claim Cersei as his concubine.
• House of the Dragon: Despite being told any number of reasons why marrying Laena Velaryon would be an excellent idea politically (up to and including its ability to stop a potential civil war from breaking out), Viserys can't bring himself to overlook the fact that Laena Velaryon is currently twelve years old. Considering the time period the show is set in, however, he's pretty much the only character with this concern. It does however eventually pave the way for a major Succession Crisis and Civil War.
• The Golden Girls
  • Blanche's niece Lucy comes to visit, only to run off with a different man every night. This causes Blanche to express concern at how she is behaving. When Lucy mocks the idea that Blanche could criticize her for this, Blanche points out that while she dates a lot of men, she wants to be there and everyone is happy, whereas Lucy is letting herself be used because she doesn't think anyone will like her otherwise.
  • Blanche also makes it a point to never (knowingly) chase after married men (largely because her own marriage to her husband George was so special to her); if she's flirting with someone and finds out that he is married, she immediately either calls him out or walks away.
  • Rose is "the nice one" of the four women — a perpetually sunny individual and Friend to All Living Things who goes out of her way to do volunteer work and help charitable causes. She's also The Ditz, so she can be easily tricked and is very naive. However, if someone tries to hurt her friends or mess with her children or the memory of her deceased husband, she will get angry, and becomes extremely dangerous — as demonstrated when someone suggests that her boyfriend might be seeing another woman, and Rose, without even trying, shatters an entire coffee cup in her grip.
• Despite starting out as a Dirty Cop, Harvey Bullock in Gotham a lot of these, including despising lawyers, being horrified by the Goat's murder spree. However, two stand out are in near the end of Season 1 and in Season 5:
  • At towards the end of Season 1, Bullock goes undercover at a sex club near the end of Season 1 — only to get creeped out by some of the fetishes being fulfilled — and then break cover and whip out his badge the minute a sex act involving a pig and a chainsaw appears on the main stage.
  • In Season 5, he sees Gordon is at the Despair Event Horizon and gives him a What the Hell, Hero? after Gordon nearly incites a shootout with Zsasz.
• Discussed on an episode of Have I Got News for You hosted by Tom Baker, in which they mentioned that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand's sexist and lewd prank phone calls to Andrew Sachs about his granddaughter on Brand's show had offended pretty much all of Britain, regardless of political affiliation, class, race, age, religion, etc.
• How I Met Your Mother: Barney, despite being obsessed with sex and advocating it on almost any occasion, considers it valid when one of Robin's boyfriends breaks up with her due to a bedroom thing she tried. Robin being Barney's own ex, he knows exactly what thing it is, and it's implied it even made him uncomfortable...
  • Though it's never stated outright, it is clear he is also above sleeping with underage girls.
  • While very much the "love 'em and leave 'em" type, Barney becomes visibly upset when he confronts a jilted ex-lover and can't seem to remember her, declaring he was never thought himself so base as to sleep with a woman and forget her. Somewhat subverted as the woman he was talking to was not actually the jilted ex, which is why be couldn't place her face.
  • Outside of the above, it's practically a running gag for him to claim some kind of standards, only to break them.
• Impractical Jokers: The guys will say a lot of rude and insulting stuff, but every last one of them has a hard time talking that way to women. Especially pretty women. They also often refuse to insult someone's race or weight.
• In Justice (2006): The judge in the fourth episode is kind of a jerk who only cares about finality (he only reverses his verdict after Swain gets himself placed in prison, causing a public outcry that forces the judge to reverse his decision and allow DNA testing). However, after the DA tries to continue pressing Conti even after he's clearly miserable for reciting a rather painful story, he tells the DA to back off.
• Intimate:
  • Bruno becomes interested in a woman he meets by chance and follows her into a sauna, where he meets a guy who is secretly filming everyone. Bruno has no problem with helping him and using his intel to identify the woman, but when the guy offers him videos of children, he calls the police on him.
  • Oskar is pulling a Twin Switch with his brother Emil and runs into Emil's ex-girlfriend, who promptly tries to come onto him. Oskar decides to betray his brother and give in, but at least he does make sure she's aware that he is actually Oskar (turns out that she is).
• JAG: When Admiral Chegwidden was President of the Captains Promotion Board, Commander Lindsey's name came up. When asked about his views on the man, Chegwidden stated he would not willingly have the man on his staff as he breaks too many rules. The person who asked this just stares for a moment as he personally has dealt with Harm and his unorthodox methods.
• Justified:
  Raylan: Just 'cause I've shot the occasional person doesn't make me a thief.
• In the Key & Peele sketch "Office Homophobe", this is the twist: the homophobe turns out to be a Straight Gay, and his objections to the Camp Gay colleague's behaviour are not out of homophobia but because he was taking it too far.
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver will often call out immoral behavior by pointing out how even other people guilty of similar behavior are disgusted by it:
  • From his bit on Roger Goodell and the NFL domestic violence scandal, when Roger gets owned by an indignant reporter for TMZ:
  John: You know that things are not going well when you lose the moral high ground to a TMZ reporter.
  • He then offers a bit of redemption for Goodell (or twists the knife) in a spot on the NFL player protests, and Donald Trump's reaction to them.
  John: When you've lost the moral high ground to Roger fucking Goodell, something has gone seriously wrong.
  • When discussing how badly the WWE cares for its former wrestlers, John compares the company to the NFL, saying how the NFL at least has some forms of financial compensation for older players facing healthcare costs. He then goes on to say that if you've lost the moral high-ground to the NFL, you are "morally subterranean".
  • In his segment on POM Wonderful and misleading food labels, John had this to say regarding POM Wonderful's ludicrous health claims about pomegranates:
  John: The U.S. government will let you say just about anything about your products, but promising immortality was too much even for them.
  • The Russian army found Major General Michael Carey too drunk for them. And what was Carey in charge of? Nuclear missiles.
  • In his segment on North Dakota's oil business, he states that even Texas bans indemnification clauses (clauses in employee contracts that completely absolves the company of any legal fault or obligation to pay settlements in the event of said employee's injury or death) in the oil industry, and to emphasize the point, he jokingly states that Texas is so loosely regulated that "their speed limit is 'let 'er rip', and their age of consent is just a drawing of a wink!" And then later when their announcer guy does a speech to North Dakota, they say "in some ways, you're less regulated than Texas! Fucking Texas!! You're less regulated than... (shows a black and white film clip of a guy in an old west town forced to dance while his feet are being shot at) whatever this is!" This isn't the only time Texas made progressive legislature either, they show up again in the Forensic Science episode as the source of a bill where convicts can request a re-trial if they feel the science doesn't add up.
  • In yet another instance, he pointed out the very telling irony that now-former British prime minister David Cameron's tax credit reform legislation — which many financial experts said would unfairly hurt the working class and especially single-parent households — was struck down by the House of Lords, the most hilariously, ridiculously "privileged rich British" organization imaginable, because even they felt it was too hard on low-income individuals.
  • When discussing the sexual misconduct allegations hitting Congressman Matt Gaetz, John plays a clip of an interview Gaetz did with Tucker Carlson where he tries to defend himself by citing a dinner he and a female acquaintance had with Carlson and his wife, only for Carlson to refuse to back him up by saying that he had no recollection of said dinner. This leads to John describing Gaetz as "the one white man Tucker Carlson won't defend."
• Law & Order:
  • Jack McCoy in general shows respect for the defense attorneys he goes up against, recognizing that they're just doing their jobs, and he's only rude to the ones that actually earn it. In one episode, one of his ADA's is forcibly assigned to represent a defendant at trial due to a legal aid strike; when said ADA starts getting teased about it, McCoy immediately calls them all out for it and threatens to demote them all if they keep it up.
  • In the episode "Compassion," the Asshole Victim was a con artist who preyed upon grieving people by claiming to be able to communicate with the dead and squeeze them for all they were worth so they could "talk" to whoever they were missing so dearly. The culprit is a saintly Sympathetic Murderer — a soft-spoken, selfless, assiduous pediatric oncologist who found solace in his charade to cope with having to see young children die constantly; she snapped and killed him when she found out he was stringing her along and all his comfort was a lie. District Attorney Jack McCoy, who's known for being a total hardass with little to no sympathy for whoever he's prosecuting, watches her try to hold in her tears on the stand as she describes the agony of watching little kids discuss their own impending deaths and how, despite her unrelenting dedication to her work, she's forced to watch them die over and over, day in and day out. Jack is rendered completely speechless and just silently walks back to his side of the courtroom — he looks like he's holding back tears himself. During the recess he offers a deal to the doctor's lawyer, and he accepts, before reassuring Jack that he doesn't need to be ashamed of feeling sympathetic towards a criminal.
• Malcolm in the Middle:
  • Reese is a bully to his brothers and the other kids at his school but he does have some standards. He uses his position as "alpha bully" to ensure that nobody else goes too far in picking on other kids and declared Stevie, who's asthmatic and in a wheelchair, "off limits" for bullying.
  • After Dewey decides to stop helping his classmates in the emotionally disturbed class, their efforts to fend for themselves snowball into them somehow taking their teacher, the principal, and two janitors hostage. When Dewey finally intercedes, they discover the kids have secretly been making lanyards in class that are being sold in gas stations and truck stops. Dewey defuses the situation by stating no one needs to know the school has been exploiting mentally ill children for slave labor so long as his friends aren't punished for what happened. The teacher and principal agree, but the janitors, who were innocent in this mess and completely disgusted by what they've learned, agree so long as they get "five minutes alone" with the other two.
• Married... with Children:
  • After perusing a copy of TV Guide, Peggy declares to Al, "Honey, Cop Rock's on tonight, so we're (she and the kids) going to the movies." Note that Peg is well known for her love of awful television, but something as notoriously bad as "Cop Rock" is too terrible even for her.
  • In "Her Cups Runneth Over", Steve ogles a mannequin dressed in a leather mini-skirt and match pasties, which he then begins to poke at. Al wanders over, and comments to him "Steve, aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
• M*A*S*H
  • In "Abyssinia, Henry", even Frank Burns, the undisputed biggest Jerkass of the main cast is saddened by Col. Blake's untimely death, despite repeatedly butting heads with him in the series.
  • Captain Hawkeye Pierce is a well know Casanova, who has no problem sleeping around with every nurse stationed at The Old 4077th, despite being blatantly unprofessional and dangerous even, given the circumstances. ^note  To be fair, half the cast are doing the same thing, he's just one of the few that's open about it. But, when one of few girls he actually considers getting into a long term relationship with, seems to have a wedding ring on her finger, he is quick to distance himself from her, until he gets an explanation for that. Turns out the ring was a gift from her mother and she is not even interested in marriage. But, other complications arise that lead to them having to break up anyway.
  • Also, while Hawkeye normally relishes in giving Frank a hard time, he does cut him some slack after Margaret Houlihan breaks up with him.
  • Klinger may have pulled every con he could think of to get out of the army, and would swear to every god he knew (and some he made up!) that he was insane. But when the helicopters come with wounded that need care, he always drops the act and did his job with as much professionalism as any of the other members of the team. He also refuses to get out of the army by shooting himself in the foot: forget the potential legal consequences, he'd ruin a good pair of nylons!
  • In the ninth season episode "Tell it to the Marines", when Col. Potter goes to a medical conference, Winchester is put in charge of the camp, and he immediately pays Klinger a lot of money to fulfill personal whims once the business of the camp is taken care of. Klinger is perfectly willing to do this because he's getting paid (even if he chafes at how insistent Winchester can be, and assures B.J. and Hawkeye he'd sell his services to them if they paid enough), but draws the line at tasting Winchester's food for him; "There are some things even money can't buy."
• Midsomer Murders: In "Painted in Blood", the two NIS officers, Noland and Backney, may be Dirty Cops and in on DI Gudgeon's scheme to swipe the missing £5 million from the bank robbery, but they're furious when they learn he's the murderer, especially as the victim was one of their own.
• Milf Manor: The "wall of secrets" challenge mostly range from kind-of embarassing (kissing another guy while drunk) to being a bit of a jerk (having sex with a few girls and then ignoring them). However, everyone thinks that Soyoung's secret (having sex with one of her son's friends) crosses a line and they feel very bad for Jimmy.
• Mohawk Girls: Watio supports the band law that bars non-members from living on the reserve, believing those living there in violation should be evicted. He still finds a mob gathering outside where a non-citizen (white woman) is living deplorable, especially with her child in the house, saying police should handle the matter legally, no one else.
• The 1998 Monty Python reunion show Monty Python Live at Aspen has a segment where Terry Gilliam accidentally spills Graham Chapman's ashes. John Cleese tries to snort some of the ashes, only for another Python to exclaim in disgust, "You disgusting...!" The Pythons may be pros at Last Disrespects, but treating the ashes of one of their own like Bolivian marching powder was going a bit too far.
• This is used in The Munsters Sequel Series The Munsters Today in the episode "Just Another Pretty Face", which was a remake of an episode from the original series of the same name. Both the original episode and the Munsters Today remake had Herman and Lily go to a doctor to see if he can restore the human Herman to his original Frankenstein's Monster appearance. While the original episode had the doctor refuse due to not understanding the Munsters' standards of beauty, the remake had the doctor be willing to go through with the operation, but Herman and Lily back out because they are freaked out by how eager the doctor is to go through with the procedure.
• MythBusters:
  • They do a fake-out that smacks of this trope. In a first season episode, they trot out the "poodle in the microwave" myth as if they're going to test it, and they even show the poodle they're (supposedly) going to run the test on. Just before they're "slated" to run the test, they reveal that "there are some myths even we, on MythBusters, can't do", establishing a long-standing rule against certain animal tests (insects are fair game when it comes to experiments just as long they were bred for scientific research, like radiation).
  • During the "Baghdad Batteries" myth, the producer thought it would make for good television if Adam touched the conductors. He got electrocuted (non-lethally, though it was a very violent shock), and no one even bothered to film his reaction. This is why they enforce the Don't Try This at Home rule: people who can do this sort of stuff tend to lean towards pranking. Access to these kinds of resources can lead to fatal jokes.
  • Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage don't like each other, and they made (and still make) this pretty clear on interviews even long before the show ended. But they also believe in being professionals, and absolutely refused Discovery's proposal of taping the times when they argued with each other on set for the sake of making the show "more real" (a la American Chopper and similar entries on their lineup).
• In an episode of Nip/Tuck, the show's Casanova Christian Troy hooks up with an attractive mother and daughter pair in a night club. When they go at it again the next morning, the daughter reveals that they started doing this when her mother caught her making out with her stepdad, disturbing even Christian. He eventually concludes "This is too screwed up, even for me", and throws them out of his apartment.
• No Ordinary Family: While Dr. Chiles resents and mocks Stephanie, he confines himself to insults and seems to draw the line at actively working against his colleague.
  • When Chiles finds Stephanie's research regarding super powers, he warns her (albeit smarmily) that a previous employee already pursued that angle and got fired, rather than trying to sabotage or discredit her.
  • He refuses King's orders to spy on Stephanie (which costs him his job) and also gives her a veiled warning about what King's up to while cleaning out his desk.
• The Orville: Klyden is vehemently against Topa's decision to become female again and when he is unable to prevent the gender reassignment procedure he tells Topa he wishes she was never born before leaving her and Bortus. However, once he discovers the Moclan military abducted, tortured, and nearly murdered Topa, Klyden is so disgusted and horrified by his people's actions that he renounces his Moclan citizenship and returns to the Orville, tearfully apologizing to Topa.
• The Outpost: Marshal Withers would love nothing more than to have Talon executed for killing Toru Magmoor (even if he admits that Magmoor was an Asshole Victim, the law is the law) but he refuses to hand her over to the Prime Order. He even suggests that him executing her would be the more merciful option.
• Parks and Recreation: Ron and Leslie were locked in their old office so they'd solve the differences that made them drift apart. But Ron is so unflapabbly stoic he refuses to talk to her. Leslie tries some methods to break him - insulting his woodcarving hobby, blowing a fan on him, dipping water on his mustache, covering Ron entirely with Post-It notes and then pushing and spinning him around in his swivel chair all over the office... but when she decides to sing along to "We Didn't Start The Fire" without knowing the lyrics, this makes Ron crack and accept to start the conversation.
• Poirot: In "Hercule Poirot's Christmas", Pilar, really Conchita, is more than happy to pass herself off as her dead friend to ingratiate herself with the family — who never met her — and maybe get an inheritance, but when they start being nice to her and promising her a share of money even Pilar wasn't legally entitled to under the terms of the unchanged will, she can't go through with it.
• In Red Dwarf, Arnold Judas Rimmer is a self-centered cowardly smeghead who is so awful that a society formed of his own clones (long story) outlawed honor, charm, and bravery, and arrests his crewmates when they fail to betray each other. But when the boys face a hopeless battle with their loathsome, corrupt, morally repugnant future selves in "Out of Time", Rimmer astonishes everyone by voting to fight.
  "Better dead than smeg."
• Revolution: In episode 11, Jason Neville decides that slaughtering groups of people with air strikes is completely unacceptable. His father does not react well to his son taking a stand.
• Throughout the first season of The Resident, Dr. Bell is shown as an incredibly arrogant man who's hiding his hand tremors so as not to lose his prize position of chief surgeon. He's willing to blame others for his mistakes and take the credit of another's work, smug and self-centered to the extreme. However, Bell is rocked when he discovers that lover Hunter Lane is subjecting perfectly healthy patients to chemotherapy at her clinic to defraud the insurance companies while making herself look like a miracle worker. While turning her in to the FBI is mostly to save himself and the hospital, it's clear even Bell is disgusted by Lane putting hundreds of healthy patients through this trauma just to get rich.
  • Likewise, in Season 2, Bell pushes the hospital to join with Quo Vadis, a company who boast of creating medical devices in Atlanta. Bell brushes aside concerns until a child nearly dies because of a faulty device. This leads him to discover Quo Vadis is just selling second-hand devices from China and the entire company is a fraud. Bell admits to the board that he's driven by the guilt of a child nearly dying because he backed Quo Vadis and can't let it happen again.
  • In Season 3, Barrett Cain, whose attitude makes Bell look humble and selfless, joins the staff. Bell is already annoyed by his arrogance but hits the roof when he finds out Cain is ensuring his record stays clean by having a patient who fell into a coma during a surgery transferred to a special center where they do little more than just lie around until their death. This way, the deaths won't be attributed to anything Cain did. This is combined by how the hospital's new corporate owners are perfectly happy with such moves (and even worse stuff) as Cain brings in money. When Bell tries to have Cain fired, he ends up being demoted by someone even more ruthless to keep his spot than Bell is.
• RoboCop: The Series sees its version of OCP's head, the Chairman, as more moral than the other heads of OCP in the franchise. He's not really an evil man, but more often than not, he does let his greed get the better of him, rushing out products and initiatives without proper testing and willing to engage in insider trading. That said, he can be horrified when he learns about these ideas and initiatives hurting or impairing people, and is willing to call off things or pull products — even if he isn't honest as to why they're being pulled.^note The official story for why No Gain was recalled in-universe in "Trouble in Delta City" was due to possible product tampering rather than the truth, which was a chemical in it was a deinhibitor that was linked to an upsurge in crime.
• Played for Laughs in an episode of Roseanne. Jackie has done something horrible and won't tell what it is, so Roseanne and Bonnie share their own dark secrets, which are either unethical (Roseanne calling up a Jerry Lewis telethon and promising a large sum of money that she never intended to give, just so she could hear Lewis say her name on TV) or downright illegal (Bonnie once robbed a liquor store). Jackie screams that what she did is far, far worse...she slept with Arnie, an annoying friend of Dan's. True to form, Roseanne, Bonnie, and their friends react in absolute horror, as this is apparently unforgivable (to the point where Roseanne, Jackie, and their friends made a pact in high school to never have sex with him because they didn't want him to "breed").
• Chad, the male lead in Scream Queens, is misogynistic, extremely lustful and perverse. He has cheated on his girlfriend Chanel with every one of her Girl Posse, Denise and Dean Munsch, although that last one, while he enjoyed it, was due to Blackmail. However, when his brother dedicates his Thanksgiving speech on what he is thankful for to extreme Eastern European pornography and how it's affected local girls, Chad is left speechless and clearly embarrassed.
• Subverted in the episode "The Scofflaw" of Seinfeld. Jerry finds out an acquaintance has been lying about having cancer for two months (doctors thought he had it, but surgery revealed he didn't).
  Jerry: What kind of person is this? There's only one other person who might be able to do something like this, and that's you.
  George: Well...
  Jerry: I don't even think you could do it.
  George: Oh, I could do it.
  Jerry: Yeah, I guess you could.
  George: [snorts] C'mon.
  • Also played straight behind the scenes: there was a script written for one episode which would be about guns (known as "The Bet" or "The Gun"). Several members of the cast and crew thought the subject would be too controversial (even if the show had previously joked about many other things that could be considered as questionable), so the episode was replaced by another one.
• One episode of Sex and the City combines this with Broken Pedestal and has Samantha meeting a popular sex columnist whom she looks up to. While the two women are out to lunch together and sit next to some handsome younger men, the woman decides that the one she's attracted to is so desirable that she's going to have him then and there and begins to perform oral sex on him right underneath their (thankfully tableclothed) booth. This causes a disgusted Samantha to storm off.
• Squid Game:
  • While he did join the Squid Games for a chance to win big, Gi-hun can't vote for the games to continue, after so many people died in the first round alone. He tries this again at the very end when he's on the verge of winning against Sang-woo, not wanting his old friend to die for his victory.
  • Sang-woo wants the games to continue. He also knows, however, that the guards are threatening to shoot everyone who wants out. When it seems another massacre will occur, he stands and reminds the guards that per their own contract, the third clause states that the players can vote to stay or leave. At the least he wants to give people a fair chance to vote, even if he doesn't agree with the majority.
  • In comparison to the rest of his team, Byeong-gi reacts to 278 mocking the team they just killed in Tug-Of-War with a small, forced smile, whereas the others all properly laugh about it.
  • Han Mi-nyeo is absolutely disgusted by Deok-su cowardly trying to make someone else go ahead of him in the stepping stone game, and calls him out on damning everyone else to die because he's too much of a selfish wimp to man up before eventually killing him and herself.
• In Star Trek: The Next Generation "Reunion", even when Worf has been officially subject to Discommendation among the Klingon Empire, to the extent that other Klingons could call him "it" to his face, once he reveals that he has come seeking vengeance for the death of his mate, none of the other Klingons present stop him engaging her killer in a duel.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Ferengi are driven entirely by greed and often shown to be willing to do nearly anything for money, yet are repeatedly disturbed by humanity's past, such as irradiating their own planet via nuclear weapons.
  Quark: Humans used to be a lot worse than the Ferengi: slavery, concentration camps, interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We're nothing like you... we're better.
• In Star Trek: Voyager, it's revealed that the Borg, Hive Minded Scary Dogmatic Aliens who want to assimilate all other sentient life, refused to assimilate the Kazon because they considered them to have no desirable characteristics whatsoever.
• Taken: In "Acid Tests", Jesse Keys attempts to sell his father Russell's World War II medals to his dealer Willie in order to get more heroin. When Willie is disgusted by his actions, Jesse realizes that he has hit rock bottom.
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • In "The Shadow Man", Eric enjoys bullying Danny Hayes and has every intention of beating him to a pulp after Danny challenges him to a fight in MacGyver Park. However, when he sees the Shadow Man, who has already put several people in hospital, he tells Danny to run before he runs away himself.
  • In "Cold Reading", Nelson Westbrook is more focused on how the sound effects coming to life will boost ratings rather than how it's inconveniencing the actors. When he discovers that the events later in the story, such as a gun firing in the studio, could actually endanger the actors, he rushes to change the script.
• Two and a Half Men:
  • Charlie is The Casanova, but on one occasion, he almost slept with a woman who may be his half-sister. They didn't know then, and their mothers told them barely in time. Charlie's reaction was to say he draws the line at incest, but his possible half-sister's reaction... she was willing to continue.
  • In another episode, one of Alan's patients is paying him extra because she gets sexual pleasure from his chiropractic skills. When arguing with Charlie about it, Charlie retorts that he may have done some things he wasn't proud of for the sake of sex, but he has never taken money for it (that's not to say he hasn't paid someone else money for it).
• Unbelievable: In return for them dropping the kidnapping charges, the rapist enters a guilty plea to the others. Duvall and Rasmussen are baffled as to why he objects at those specifically, but the DA rolls with it.
• The Wheel of Time: Whitecloaks might be cruel zealots, but still aren't bad enough to just slaughter unarmed Tua'than (while they're not above a beating).
• The Wilds:
  • Abrasive as she may be and as much as she seems to hate Shelby, Toni would never out the latter after she kissed her and is shocked at the very thought that she would.
  • After she drinks to every sex question asked of her while playing "Never Have I Ever", Fatin stops when it's "had a threesome on your period", dead-panning "I mean... I'm not a freak". It's Played for Laughs.
  • Kirin is easily the angriest of the group when he learns that Seth sexually assaulted Josh, threatening to kill him several times and is extremely protective and caring towards Josh afterwards. Additionally, Kirin doesn’t seem to have a personal problem with Ivan being gay—he’s just annoyed at the latter’s It's All About Me tendencies.
• Will & Grace: Lionel thinks Karen is a hooker when he first meets her:
  Lionel: You don't have sex for money?
  Karen: No, I do not! For jewels, for furs, for mixed securities, like a lady! But for money? How dare you!
• The Wire sees Bunk casually asks Omar why he's decided to step up as a witness against Bird in the Gant killing. Omar says that it's because Bird went after someone who wasn't in "the game", or the drug trade of Baltimore, and Omar finds that unacceptable. Omar has done some terrible things, and will do more terrible things once this is all over, but hurting people outside of the game is out of the question.
  Omar: Bird triflin' basically, kill an everyday workin' man and all. I mean don't get it twisted, I do some dirt too. But I ain't never put my gun on nobody who wasn't in the game.
  Bunk: A man must have a code.
  Omar: Oh, no doubt.
• Wolf Hall ends with the execution of Anne Boleyn. Although Thomas Cromwell is the one who organized the whole thing and took satisfaction from executing the men who ridiculed the death of his master Cardinal Wolsey, he treats Anne herself with more dignity than the other characters, puts his hand supportively on his son's arm when they witness the execution, and gives Francis Bryan (who happens to be Anne's cousin) a look of disgust when he makes a crude joke at her expense.
• In "Doomcoming" from Yellowjackets, Natalie goes to the vending machine outside the motel where she lives to get a snack. It snags and fails to dispense. She returns with a fire extinguisher, shatters the glass, then takes only the single bag of Peanut M&Ms she paid for and walks away.
• Zero (2021): Mr. Ricci is greedy enough to have criminals mess up the Barrio so prices on the properties there will be driven down. However, he never told them to burn stores and kill people, berating gang leader Rico about this (but it may be pragmatic concern as this draws more attention too).

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