Warning: While not always a Death Trope, can often involve that, so be wary of spoilers.
Heel-Face Door-Slams in Live-Action TV series.
- In 24, if you're a bad guy and you decide to switch sides for whatever reason, your odds of dying go way up.
- Farhad Hassan is shot in the back in the episode after he decides to help CTU.
- Dina Araz is given orders to execute Jack but refuses, which results in her getting executed.
- Josef Bazhaev is shot SECONDS after agreeing to turn himself in.
- Terrorist mastermind Hamri al-Assad. He decides to forsake terrorism and work with the US government to capture his former lieutenant. Six hours later, he's killed in an assassination attempt on the president. Made by disgruntled members of the US government no less, and then he gets blamed for it. Made worse by the fact that Jack was forced to kill Curtis Manning to bring al-Assadin, which means that that happened for nothing.
- In Babylon 5, Londo temporarily walks away from his dealings with Morden, until his lover is murdered and he asks Morden for help in getting revenge. In fact, Morden was behind the murder, in order to manipulate Londo into doing just that. When Londo learns the truth, he becomes The Atoner, but gets the door slammed on his face again and again. Eventually, he plans a Thanatos Gambit with the only people who still believe in him: Vir Cotto and G'Kar.
- Previously, the Centauri people as a whole had one when the aging Emperor visited the station with the intention of publicly apologizing to the Narn for the years of subjugation. He died before he was able to do so, and while his message gave G'kar a brief moment of hope, it was squashed when Londo has his Shadow allies attack a Narn base in order to get their candidate for Emperor on the throne.
- Barry: In the final episode, Barry finally realizes and accepts that the only way he can redeem himself is to go to prison and be punished for his crimes. Just as he's about to call the police on himself, Gene comes in and shoots Barry in the head, killing him.
- Boomer of Battlestar Galactica, who switched sides more time than this entry will try to document, finally got the door slammed on her as the series approached the end. After faking a Heel–Face Turn and returning Ellen to the fleet, she steals Hera and returns to the Cylons. However, Boomer and Hera bond and she feels immense regret for what she's done, so she takes Hera and returns her to Athena, her real mother. Athena, sick of Boomer's bullshit, shoots her. At least Boomer was savvy enough to realize returning Hera was going to be the last thing she does.
- In Boy Meets World, Shawn's absentee con-artist father, Chet, constantly bounces in and out of his life, staying long enough to get his son's hopes up about having his father back, before leaving him with a rotating collection of father figures like Mr. Feeny, Mr. Turner, and Alan. In his last return, Shawn finally stands up for himself in the face of Chet's shabby treatment. Chet suffers a heart attack shortly after, and he and Shawn begin to reconnect while he's in the hospital and Chet appears to resolve to stay and be a real father to Shawn... shortly before suffering a second heart attack and dying.
- Buffyverse:
- Jonathan was the least evil of the Nerd Trio, and was not only willing to go to jail to pay for his crimes, but drag Andrew along with him. He only decided to flee to Mexico when Dark Willow attacked. He returned in Season 7 with vaguely benevolent intentions, but was killed by Andrew (who was under the influence of the First Evil) before he could make contact with Buffy.
- A literal Heel Face Door Slam happened to Spike. Originally a villain, he became a reluctant ally of the good guys in Season 4, and in Season 5, having fallen in love with Buffy, he tried acting more heroic in order to impress her. However, when Spike expresses his love by kidnapping Buffy and chaining her up in his crypt, she has Willow cast a spell that makes it impossible for Spike to enter Buffy's home. He's initially surprised, then emotionally devastated, when he runs into the invisible barrier surrounding her house and Buffy slams the door in his face. This is slowly subverted, but it takes a lot more heroic actions on his part — a refusal to tell Glory that Buffy's sister was the Living MacGuffin she was looking for, under torture and at risk of death, earns him a measure of Buffy's forgiveness, but he's not able to truly throw off being a Heel until he's done a lot more good as well.
- Also, Faith. An ally of Buffy, she defected to the other side. Later, she interrupted a captive Willow, expecting Willow to start begging her and trying to convince her that it's not too late. Instead, Willow tells her that yes, it is too late, and that Faith won't have any more chances for redemption. Don't worry, she eventually got her Redemption in the Rain, thanks to Angel. Willow even takes back her sentiments and helps Faith along in being good later.
- Faith's initial turn to the dark side came when she performed an (unwitting) Heel Face Door Slam on a minor character -0 the Deputy Mayor, more a 'snivelling lackey' than an actual Heel, tried to bring information on the Mayor's masterplan to her and Buffy, but he surprised them mid-fight and Faith staked him on instinct. The downward spiral this sends her on ends with her becoming the Mayor's Dragon.
- Harmony seemed to have gotten nicer during the days leading up to high school graduation. Then, she got turned into a vamp. Seemed to be getting better in LA, particularly after getting hired on to Wolfram & Hart and Spike returned. Then, she betrayed Angel.
- Lindsey from Angel’s spin-off series gets one of these when he tries to leave Wolfram & Hart. Angel first doesn't trust him, then doesn't care, and when he finally does agree to help Lindsey bring down the company, he winds up leaving him behind to get caught. While somewhat understandable, this still probably contributed to Lindsey's decision to stay. Later, when Lindsey tried to join the team in the series finale, Angel had Lorne kill him. Interestingly, Lindsey knew this was coming and was only upset that he was killed by "a lackey".
Lorne: You're not part of the solution, Lindsey. You never will be.- Lilah, second-most recurring antagonist to Angel after Lindsey, has the first glimpse of possible good in her shown during Season 3, when she shoots Billy Blim to save Cordelia’s life. (Though the episode leaves it ambiguous whether the act was truly motivated by selflessness or just revenge for Billy brutalizing her earlier in the episode). The possibility picks up steam in Season 4, when The Beast destroys Wolfram & Hart and leaves Lilah as the sole survivor, forcing her to form an Enemy Mine with Team Angel for survival. At this time she also had a Dating Catwoman situation with Wesley and a reveal that she was working for Wolfram & Hart to provide for her sick mother. All of this together was beginning to make her a much more sympathetic character than she ever was before. Unfortunately, Jasmine shows up to kill Lilah before she could consider a true Heel–Face Turn, despite the show suggesting that she may have been beginning to head in that direction.
- Charmed (1998):
- This happens to Cole in the fourth season. He finds a wizard willing to take the Source's powers, thus freeing him from being possessed but Phoebe appears on the scene and kills the wizard before he can take the powers. Cole is killed in the next episode. Then when he returns in Season 5, having broken out of the Demonic Wasteland, he's promptly declared evil by the sisters for his actions whilst being the Source, despite being possessed at the time. This rejection, coupled by Phoebe's repeated threats to kill him for even the slightest infractions, causes him eventually to lose his mind and turn evil again. He's then killed... again.
- Kira the Seer was a particularly tragic case as she was a demon who wanted to become human. Unfortunately, just before the ritual could be performed, she was destroyed by Zankou. Phoebe, the one she was closest to, took it the hardest.
- The final arc villain Christy Jenkins was a witch who was kidnapped as a child and brainwashed by The Triad to one day destroy the Charmed Ones with help from her sister Billie. The latter grew up normally and is initially friends with the sisters, but Christy tries to turn her against them. When their parents show up to reconnect with their long-lost daughter, The Triad can outright sense that the parents are swaying her back to the side of good. He has them murdered, thus facilitating Christy as evil permanently. She's offered one last chance at redemption in the finale, rejects it by trying to kill Billie and gets incinerated with her own fireball.
- Condor: Reuel Abbott starts feeling increasingly bad about what he's done in the CIA over the years, trying to blow the lid in Season 2. He's killed by Joubert before he can tell Congress.
- In an episode of Desperate Housewives, Orson's ex-wife Alma, who, up until then had been colluding with Orson's Mother to kill Bree, ends up falling off a roof and killing herself while trying to warn Danielle.
- Doctor Who: Missy, aka The Master has this happen in "The Doctor Falls", at hand of, ironically, his/her own past incarnation "Saxon", when she decided to stand with the Twelfth Doctor in his hopeless battle with an army of Cybermen, and complete a Heel–Face Turn she'd been working toward all season. Apparently the old Master considered making a Heel–Face Turn a Fate Worse than Death.
- "The Lumiat", an installment of the Missy audio series by Big Finish, double subverts this. As it turns out, Missy cheated death thanks to a secret gadget, regenerating into a new incarnation who calls herself the Lumiat. Inheriting Missy's turn, the Lumiat strives to become a force for good like the Doctor only to run afoul of a younger Missy, who mortally wounds the Lumiat, believing that the change in morality will not stick. Sure enough, the Lumiat regenerates into who Word of God confirms is the "O"/"Spy" Master, the Thirteenth Doctor's Arch-Enemy and one of the most unhinged and murderous Masters yet, taking the renegade Time Lord firmly back to square one.
- Dollhouse has this happen to Bennett. She's made the choice to help the team at the LA Dollhouse, if only because Echo has promised to help her get all the revenge she wants on Caroline and she's in love with Topher. Then Saunders shoots Bennett in the head.
- Farscape has a weird inversion towards the end of Season 3 where this happens to The Hero. Crichton agrees to help Scorpius create wormhole technology to secretly sabotage his wormhole project from the inside, but Scorpius manages to convince him that, as evil as Scorpius himself is, the Scarrans are even worse. Crichton is about to help Scorpius right up until Scorpius reveals he will attack Earth if Crichton tries to cross him, causing Crichton to decide to destroy the project after all.
- Game of Thrones:
- Believing he has caught a break from the universe deservedly shitting on him, Theon confesses and laments the wrongs he committed during the previous season, setting him up for possible redemption, only for the entire escape to be revealed as a sham and the torture to be intensified. It's eventually subverted in season 6 when he helps Sansa escape from Ramsay and is finally able to get a chance at redemption.
- In the fourth season finale, Sandor does truly act to selflessly protect Arya, taking on a strong foe, believing she's tied to the Lannisters. This gets him badly wounded and abandoned by Arya.
- Gen V: Just when Edison is about to leak everything going on within The Woods, Victoria ends up making his head explode.
- Get Smart: Two episodes ( "Hoo Done It" and "Bronzefinger") have multiple kooky but affable murdered guest characters be KAOS agents who were trying to defect.
- Mindy St. Claire from The Good Place was, by her own admission, a horrible person while alive. A stereotypical '80s Amoral Attorney who would screw over anyone, only looked out for herself and did as much cocaine as she possibly could. One night she did a lot of coke and had an epiphany about how she could fix all of the world's problems. The next day, after sobering up, she withdrew all of the money from her bank accounts and was about to go out and put her plan into action...which is when she fell onto subway tracks and was immediately electrocuted. After her death Mindy's sister found out what she was planning and used the money to follow through and set up the world's largest relief organisation.
- Towards the middle of Season 3 of Halt and Catch Fire, Cameron seems to have an epiphany about how self-destructive she's been, after her bratty behavior leaves her stranded in the middle of Texas for a week, and she starts making attempts to change, marrying Tom, returning to Los Angeles and trying to explain her behavior to Donna, and calling Diane to inform her that she will try to work with the two guys that she thinks Diane is forcing her to hire as a condition for her firm's investment. Unfortunately, during the conversation with Diane, Cameron learns that Diane was actually going to give her full discretion on hiring. Cameron realizes that Donna manipulated her, and takes this as a justification to turn back into a Control Freak.
- Maury Parkman in Season 3 of Heroes gets his neck snapped by Arthur Petrelli when he realizes Arthur's evilness and rebels to try to protect his son, Matt.
- In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Sally has trouble deciding whether to return to Basco after what he put her through. Basco shows no remorse when arguing with the Gokaigers, and Sally ultimately chooses the Gokaigers. Basco's reaction? Without thinking twice, no remorse, and actually laughing while at it, he activates a bomb he planted earlier on Sally in case this were to happen. Cue his line "To get something, you have to give something up."
- Kamen Rider:
- Kamen Rider Double:
- Wakana Sonozaki from had planned on getting away from her megalomaniac father's plans and move out of the city with her friend/ brother Philip. Her dad had other ideas. After her father died and she was subsequently used as an Apocalypse Maiden by her father's ex-financers, her mind was so shattered that she was put under observation in a mental hospital. She finally gets her redemption by sacrificing herself so that Philip/Raito can be brought Back from the Dead.
- Earlier in the series, Kirihiko Sonozaki's turn started when he met The Hero Shotaro and discovered they both loved Fuuto, and continued when realizing how his selling Gaia Memories was hurting the city when he saw a bunch of kids sharing the Bird Memory around and suffering drug-like effects. After helping Shotaro (as Double) defeat the Bird Dopant, he tried to convince his wife Saeko to leave the city with him. Too bad for him, she wasn't too interested.
- Kamen Rider OOO: Ankh manages to go through a version of this trope spanning the entire series. He starts out as the Token Evil Teammate, dies via being absorbed by his Evil Counterpart just as he comes to achieve a genuine friendship with Eiji and Hina, revives from that, switches sides to the villains, switches back to being a good guy when he finally realizes that Being Evil Sucks, and then gets mortally wounded, surviving just long enough to help finish off the final boss.
- Kamen Rider Fourze: The Musca, Perseus, Aquarius, and Taurus Zodiarts each manage to turn good despite still using the Psycho Serum that gives them their superpowers, but not without consequences that proceed to keep them each from using it to help the heroes. Musca willingly gives up his powers since they're out of control, Perseus is brainwashed into continuing to fight Fourze and loses his powers in the ensuing battle, Aquarius gets Laser-Guided Amnesia, and Taurus is sent to the Dark Nebula for trying to defy Virgo.
- Kamen Rider Drive: The Heart, Brain, and Medic Roidmudes all become significantly better people shortly before meeting their demise. The door's not entirely shut, however, as they've appeared in several pieces of Drive post-series material being resurrected by various means.
- Kamen Rider Geats: Win Hareruya/Kamen Rider PunkJack once worked under Girori to eliminate Ace by any means. After Girori displays his Bad Boss traits, Win declares his opposition to Girori by #14, but unfortunately Girori put him under mind control in response. He's still not himself two episodes later as he explodes when trying to kill Ace. Subverted with his return in #35, and him fully intending to continue helping Ace in #36.
- Kamen Rider Double:
- In Legend of the Seeker, just as it seems that Zedd has talked Denna into changing her ways and setting him free, she is shot in the back with an arrow by Cara and falls off a cliff.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Sauron wants to redeem himself with Galadriel's help and asks her to become his Queen Consort, but Galadriel makes it clear for him that nothing from what he does will ever redeem him and refuses his offer. Of course, Sauron's idea of redemption is to rule the world.
- On Lost, we have Charles Widmore. When he shows up claiming to have redeemed himself in Season 6, we aren't quite sure if he's legit or not. When we finally realize that he is, he is promptly shot and killed by Ben, though that's more because he didn't want Widmore to have a chance to save his daughter when Ben didn't get a chance to save his.
- Morgana in Merlin (2008) has two. At the end of the second season, she is unknowingly the source of an enchantment that has put everyone in Camelot to sleep. The only way to break the enchantment is to kill the source — so Merlin poisons her. Throughout that season, she had been teetering between good and evil but this act of betrayal acts as a catalyst. So when she returns a year later, her half sister Morgause has corrupted her completely. Then in a Season 3 episode she discovers that she is Uther's daughter. When he refuses to acknowledge her, it's a pretty definitive door slam.
- In Once Upon a Time, every time Regina gets even close to redeeming herself the good guys shoot her down brutally, target her for a crime she hasn't committed, decide she's irredeemable, or threaten to take Henry away from her permanently. There's generally a good reason why, or what seems like a good reason at the time, but at this point it's almost understandable that Regina seems to have given up her attempts to reform.
- The finale of Season 2 begins to subvert this trope when, rather than having Regina perform a Redemption Equals Death (which she even cites, wanting to die as Regina rather than being the Evil Queen) in order to save Storybrooke, Emma decides to Take a Third Option, saving the town without having Regina die (despite that this would get her out of their hair for good). This turns out to be the right choice, and she's finally on the — very, very slow and gradual — path of redemption.
- Power Rangers:
- An interesting case in Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue. Diabolico, after discovering how little his mistress Queen Bansheera cared for her minions, even destroying one of them in an attempt to get the Rangers, vowed to never serve her again. However, he was brainwashed and forced to fight the Rangers. Despite knowing that he wanted to change, the Rangers had no choice but to destroy him. However, in the finale, he gets another chance at Heel–Face Turn by returning as a spirit and helping the Rangers imprison Bansheera in the demon dimension forever. (It should be noted, however, that at no point did Diabolico indicate that he was actually turning good, he was just turning against the Queen. He himself put it that he'd come to hate the queen more than them.)
- Frax's fate in Power Rangers Time Force was even worse. He realizes the error of his Face–Heel Turn ways... just as he's being dragged off to have his humanity and memories wiped by Ransik. That's two for Ransik, given that he's the one that made Frax what he had turned into in the first place.
- A uniquely ambiguous example from The Sopranos regarding Ralph Cifaretto. Almost as soon as he is introduced in Season 3, he proves himself to be one of the most obnoxiously immoral mobsters in a show full of them, with him beating his 20-year-old pregnant goomah, Tracee, to death being by and large his most repulsive act, and one that enrages Tony Soprano himself. He happily stays that way until the tail end of the following season, in which his son, Justin, is left with brain damage and hospitalized following an accident. The incident motivates him to reevaluate his behavior, express remorse for his prior callousness, and generally display an unforeseen degree of humanity suggestive of a Face–Heel Turn... only for Ralph to end up beaten to death by Tony when an argument between them turns into a violent altercation, brought on by the latter suspecting he had a hand in the death of Pie-O-My—a race horse Ralph owned and Tony grew attached to—in order to collect on its life insurance. Whether or not Ralph's Heel Realization was sincere and that he really didn't cause the stable fire that killed the horse, thus playing the trope straight, is ultimately left a Riddle for the Ages for the audience to decide on.
- The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Repentance" does this with a murderer on death row. After he's beaten by his prison guards, The Doctor injects him with some of Seven of Nine's nanoprobes to save his life — and in doing so, inadvertently repairs a brain defect that turned him into a sociopath. After proving himself reformed by saving the life of one of the guards who had beaten him, he (at the urging of the Voyager crew) appeals his death sentence to the family of his victim, since the law gives them the right to choose his sentence. The appeal fails, and he is sent to his death.
- Supernatural:
- In Season 7, Castiel realizes what he's become under the influence of the Purgatory souls (and that they will tear him apart) and willingly gives them up and apologizes for what he's done. The others seem to accept this, but before Castiel can do anything else to redeem himself, he's killed by the Leviathan. This being Supernatural, he shows up again later in the season, amnesiac but completely fine. He does then have to do a bit of work to be fully forgiven by his friends, though.
- In Season 12, the British Men of Letters come to America to " clean up" after the American hunters who have a policy of not killing monsters who aren't harming anyone. After being shown repeated situations in which the moral choice is to let the monster live, Mick Davies is won over to the side of the American hunters, so when the order is given to exterminate all American hunters for failure to meet the British Men of Letters standard, Mick defies the order and gives a "The Reason You Suck" Speech making the audience think he's about to break off and join Team Free Will. However, his defiant speech is met with a Boom, Headshot!.
- Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga: Darrgon attempts to defect from his group after seeing them slowly fall apart and get divided. But before he can do so, Carmeara brainwashes him into a mindless berserker. While he temporarily fights it off so as to not harm Yuna he eventually realizes he'll fully succumb to the darkness and requests to be killed by GUTS Select, with Akito (who had just grown to see Darrgon as a friend) doing the deed.
- The Walking Dead (2010): During Rick and Shane's confrontation in the field, Rick tries to convince Shane into putting down their guns and going back to being friends again. Rick uses this opportunity to get close enough to kill Shane with his knife.
- In The Wire, while the heel/face lines are often very blurry to begin with, basically any time a character involved in organized crime decides to become an informant, they inevitably die. The most prominent example is probably Bodie Broadus, who spends the first three seasons of the show steadily rising the ranks of the Barksdale drug empire, only for that empire to crumble for good at the end of the third season, leaving him on his own as Marlo Stanfield's far more brutal and violent regime takes over. Bodie chafes at this change and by the end of the fourth season he's convinced to inform on Marlo and company. He's killed before he can ever actually go through with it, although he goes out fighting until the end.
- Xena: Warrior Princess:
- There was an early episode where Xena, after encountering some of her former warriors back from her days as a Blood Knight, convinces one of them that her commitment to reform is genuine. Later on in the episode, that guy sacrifices his life to save her. Fast forward to a different episode, where Xena is asked by Hades himself to go to the underworld, because evil has achieved a Karma Inversion: all the blessed people who used to play in the Elysium Fields have been sent to Tartarus, and all the evil folks condemned to Tartarus are partying in Elysium. When she gets there, she finds her dead friend, and realizes that if he's in Elysium now, he must have been in Tartarus before. He confirms it, saying something like "One sacrifice wasn't enough to make up for a lifetime of evil." In the end however, he's allowed to stay in Elysium for good after helping save Hades.
- In a flashback to Xena's Blood Knight days, she and her lover Barius plan to wipe out the Centaur race. Barius has a crisis of conscience and sabotages their plans, for which he is forever hailed as a savior by the Centaurs, but is murdered by one of Xena's lieutenants.
- Happens to the Smoking Man, of all people, at the end of the The X-Files episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man". He's so thrilled that a story he's written is finally going to be published after years of failure as an author that he's prepared to completely give up his position with the Consortium, even writing a resignation letter. He also seems to seriously consider quitting smoking. However, when the publication doesn't work out, he gives up on changing anything.
