Its All My Fault / Live-Action TV

• Inverted and subverted in the Angel episode "Underneath". In exchange for being given legal knowledge, Gunn allows an item to pass through customs, which eventually leads to the death of Fred. Naturally he feels guilty about it and is even stabbed by Wesley after he finds out. Later, Angel visits him in his hospital bed and tells him:
  Angel: Listen, Gunn. I know you feel bad about your part what happened to Fred. And you should. For the rest of your life, it should wake you up in the middle of the night. And it will. Because you're a good man. You signed a piece of paper. That's all.
• Arrow: Oliver Queen does this so often that John Diggle jokes he should call himself the "Guilt Arrow" instead of the "Green Arrow".
• Murdock blames himself when Face is shot in The A-Team episode "Without Reservations":
  "He's getting weaker. I can't believe I'm responsible for all of this."
• Babylon 5: G'kar has an appropriate quote re: Ivanova:
  "It is as though her heart has been pierced, and her spirit has poured out through the wound. She blames herself. It is foolish. It is destructive. ...It is human."
• Battlestar Galactica (2003): Gaius Baltar gets a taste of this after realizing it was his lover Caprica-Six who frakked up the colonies' defense systems through his gullibility and — let's face it — horniness. He deals with it by blaming the rest of the universe, and ultimately God.
• Blake's 7: Roj Blake has a tendency to do this when things go badly wrong, causing Kerr Avon to immediately snark back, "We know."
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Andrew takes the fact that Simone turned evil while he was her Watcher very hard, and is determined to find and stop her.
  • In "Innocence", Buffy felt this way after she had sex with Angel and he lost his soul, becoming his sadistically evil alter ego. Though as Giles is quick to point out, they didn't do anything wrong, and they had no way of knowing what would happen.
  • In season six's "Two to Go", Xander blames himself for the entire Dark Willow scenario, since he saw the gun in Warren's hand before he even raised it, but was simply frozen with fear and did nothing to stop him from shooting Buffy and Tara.
• Criminal Minds
  • In "Ominvore", Hotch believes it's all his fault for one of his actions. What does Rossi do? Offers his gun.
    Rossi: So you think this is your fault?
    Hotch: (voice tight) It is.
    Rossi: Well, here, use mine. (offers Hotch his gun) No, really, you've convinced me. You hung up on him, practically killed them yourself. Go on, get it over with. Don't worry about us, we'll get this guy without you.
    Hotch: Dave, I had ten years to do something about this!
    Rossi: Shaughnessy made the deal. The killing stopped, he closed the case and sent the BAU away. For ten years you worked on other cases, active cases-
    Hotch: But I kept coming back to this profile.
    Rossi: Hey, I was retired! Should I blame myself for every victim that got killed when I was on my book tour? Look, if you wanna end up like Shaughnessy, like Gideon, blaming yourself for everything, you go ahead. But that voice in your head? It's not your conscience, it's your ego. This isn't about us, Aaron, it's about the bad guys. That's why we profile them, it's their fault. We're just guys doing a job, and when we stop doing it, someone else will. Trust me, I know.
    Hotch: (gesturing to the gun) You can put that away now.
    Rossi: You sure?
    Hotch: Yeah, it was a little dramatic, don't you think?
    Rossi: My wife always said I had a flair for the dramatic.
    Hotch: Which one?
    Rossi: All of 'em.
    Hotch: Thanks.
    Rossi: Anytime.
  • This is the cause of some unsubs' actions, the most obvious example being "Hanley Waters", in which a woman goes on a killing spree exactly one year after her son's death in a car accident because she cannot bear anymore the sense of guilt caused by constantly blaming herself along with her ex-husband.
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: After the Skeksis General kills her mother and Seladon blames her, Brea blames herself for the rest of the season.
• In Dead Set, when Angel is bit by a zombie, the character who is responsible says "it's all my fault."
• Dexter: Dexter Morgan has killed dozens of people and felt no remorse, but when he finds his wife, Rita, dead, his shocked response as police arrive is to blurt out "It was me."
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor blames himself in many of his incarnations due to all the crap that tends to happen around him, the Sadistic Choices he's forced to make, the fact that everyone who meets him feels compelled to perform a Heroic Sacrifice... he blames himself for all of it. The Tenth Doctor is particularly prone to this, but the Twelfth Doctor takes it to tragic levels in the final episodes of Series 9, when his guilt, anguish, and rage over the death of his beloved companion Clara, compounded by torture that's resulted in him being Driven to Madness, turn him into The Unfettered, an Anti-Villain risking the safety of the entire universe on a Tragic Dream to bring her back from the dead, even as he's assured that he was not truly responsible for what happened; rather, that it was Clara, for making foolish-if-noble choices in trying to be like him.
    • A particularly keen example of this is in the Time War; many sources have the Doctor — in his Eighth and War incarnations — feel personally responsible for the conflict between the Time Lords and the Daleks in this war, as he could have prevented the conflict if his fourth incarnation had just destroyed the Daleks in "Genesis of the Daleks" rather than delaying their evolution.
    • The Ninth Doctor hardly gets through an episode without blaming himself and/or apologising to someone for getting them killed, failing to save somebody else, or just snapping at someone he likes. And since he expects the same kind of owning up to mistakes from his Companions and will give them the Death Glare until they do...
  • "42": Captain McDonnell eventually admits to her possessed husband that the decision to mine the living sun for fuel, resulting in its attack, was her fault. However, she points out that she had no way of knowing the sun was alive to begin with.
• On The Flight Attendant, Cassandra "Cassie" Bowden blames herself for the crash that killed her father because she was his "drinking buddy," even though it was his drunk driving that caused the crash.
• Full House:
  • A twist but still played straight in " The Miracle of Thanksgiving". While Danny says this verbatim when he accidentally burns the turkey after putting it back in the oven to defrost it more and lying about it being fine, it's DJ who invokes the trope by saying she was in charge of making the turkey and had she defrosted it properly in the first place Danny wouldn't have needed to put it back in the oven.
  • In "Cutting it Close", Steph blames herself for causing Jessie's accident, all because she accidentally cut his hair in her pretend haircut game.
    Steph: I only scalped him, crashed his bike, and broke his arm. No wonder he's mad at me.
  • In "Comet's Excellent Adventure", Jesse is about to confess to Danny about his role in Comet going missing.
    Jesse: Uh, before I say anything, I just want you to know upfront this whole thing was my fault.
    Danny: I hate stories that start like that.
• Game of Thrones: Catelyn Stark feels that the various tragedies her family has endured are her own fault. When Jon Snow was a child, he came down with the Pox, and it looked like he would not survive. Catelyn, seeing Jon practically dying and finally feeling some remorse for her treatment of him, made a promise to the Seven to love the child like he was her own if he managed to live. Jon managed to survive the night and regain his health, but Catelyn refused to honor her promise, and now she believes she's responsible for the downfalls the Stark family has faced.
• Rose in The Golden Girls becomes devastated when her boyfriend at the time dies of a heart attack while they were having sex. She feels that it's her fault he died since she had sex with him and also blames herself for her late husband's death, who had also died the same way. It takes said boyfriend's former wife to remind Rose that it wasn't her fault.
• H₂O: Just Add Water: Bella takes the blame for Will discovering her secret of being a mermaid, feeling that her crush on him led to him seeing her in mermaid form. Interestingly, she also frames it to Cleo and Rikki as though it was an accident on her part, leaving out the fact where he got frustrated by her caginess, cornered her, and poured water on her after noticing that she'd run away if she got even slightly wet.
• House's response to this? Yes, it is. And now you won't do it again.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Alain of Kamen Rider Ghost considered himself The Load, which is justified and partially true following his Heel–Face Turn. He thought it was his fault even if the events that moved him to this position had been completely outside his reach the same as most option that would change his position for better.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid presents a twisted version of this. Breaking down in tears, Hiiro Kagami reveals that he thinks this about Saki's death. He spent most of the story up until then pinning the blame on Taiga Hanaya, her doctor. The twist is that both would want this to be the case, but in reality, neither of them is at fault.
    • The titular Ex-Aid can also be an example of this at times, putting blame on himself as a medical intern for any deaths caused by game disease, despite the fact that he really isn’t at fault for his patients being murdered by bioterrorists.
• In one episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, SVU newcomer Mike Dodds initially doesn't think a missing teenager's case is anything to worry about, figuring she was just out partying with friends or something. When the girl turns up dead, he blames himself for not taking the case seriously enough and wasting time. Benson tells him it's not his fault, and the details of the suspect's confession confirm that there was no way they could have saved her no matter how fast they acted on the report, but he still seems uneasy about it at the end of the episode.
• The Mentalist has Jane blaming himself for the deaths of his wife and daughter. He did technically cause it to happen, but really all he did was get overconfident and piss off the wrong person; he had no way of knowing what Red John was going to do.
• In Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Phryne Fisher blames herself for the disappearance and possible (later confirmed) death of her younger sister, because they were alone together at the time and she was distracted. At the end of season 1, she gets her answers and revenge on the killer.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Bill Randa blames himself in "Axis Mundi" for the catastrophic failure of Operation Hourglass and the seeming death of Lee, three years after they lost his wife Keiko. He insists he could've stopped it, and General Puckett can only solemnly say, "Older men declare war, but it is youth that must fight and die."
• Monk: In "Mr. Monk and the Three Pies", Adrian reunites with his estranged brother Ambrose to solve a case. The bad blood comes from Ambrose ghosting him for years after Adrian's wife Trudy was murdered. It turns out Trudy was running errands for Ambrose when she was killed; he felt too much guilt to talk to his brother.
• The Murders:
  • Kate, after her partner Mike's killed by a suspect, blames herself as he was aiding her. This occurred because she'd left her gun in her car unlocked, which was stolen and used in a murder, with Mike covering that up after, leading them into the situation. She tearfully confesses the fact to her psychiatrist much later after she's finally opened up about it.
  • In "Never Kissed A Girl" the father of a murder victim has blamed himself ever since her death. He'd locked her out when she missed curfew, leading her to the killer. After hearing this, Kate expresses her sympathy and she empathizes due to her own past.
  • "In My Feelings" has Kate's mother (rather than use the sympathy votes she garnered) decide to drop out of the race after being held hostage, as her campaign manager David died at the hostage-taker's hands, feeling that she doesn't deserve it since this was revenge against her. Kate convinces her to stay in the race however, saying David would want that.
• In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode Red Zone Cuba, Frank finds himself owing a large amount of money to the mob, then he tricks the mob enforcer into thinking that Dr. Forrester is him. As Forrester is getting beaten senseless, Frank says to Mike and the bots, "You know, I can't help but feel somewhat responsible."
• My World… and Welcome to It: When Lydia falls and breaks her arm in "The Mea Culpa Bit," John, John's boss Hamilton Greeley, and John's critic colleague Arthur Charles all take the blame for it, the last two doing so for far-fetched reasons (in addition, they both show up with dolls as a gift for the girl).
• NUMB3RS: Don Eppes has a habit of falling into the mentality that he's responsible for things that happen around him, even if they're out of his control.
  • In "Trust Metric", he tells Megan that he feels responsible for Colby Granger (who is at that point thought to be a traitor). He doesn't specify his reason, but it's almost certainly to do with how long Colby was under his command.
  • In the series finale, Don loses his gun during an arrest. Even though he couldn't have prevented the loss, he still feels that he would be responsible for any action committed with the lost gun.
• Odd Squad:
  • In "Rookie Night", Olympia and Otis attempt to find and take part in the eponymous event, but by the time they get there by way of going through all the rooms in Precinct 13579's Headquarters, they're too late and Rookie Night has ended. Otis begins to apologize to Olympia and claims that missing the event was his fault, and Olympia seems to agree before pulling a Berate and Switch and telling him that it's his fault for making the day the best Rookie Night ever.
  • At the end of "Oscar Strikes Back", when President Obbs ends up getting fired and has to turn in his badge, Oscar says that the entire ordeal with Obbs brainwashing almost all of the Scientists was his fault because had he come to Lab-Con sooner (having not done so in the past due to being too nervous to leave his lab), he would have seen what Obbs was doing and stopped his plan before it even had a chance to be put into motion. O'Terry, Odelia, and Odie are quick to tell him that it wasn't his fault at all.
  • In "New Jacket Required", Mr. Lightning ends up destroying the guidebook to Otis's new jacket as a result of Olympia holding up the book to taunt the villain with and him zapping it. As Olympia and Otis duck behind a plant to protect themselves, Olympia apologizes to Otis and places the blame on her for pressuring him to use his new jacket too much, but Otis tells her that she had a point with her doing so and deduces that if he pushes more buttons on his jacket, he'll defeat Mr. Lightning — and that he does.
  • After Oprah and Otis get fired and exiled from Odd Squad in "Odds and Ends", Olympia is quick to blame herself for them being gone. This is despite the fact that while she is partially to blame due to lack of belief in Heel-Face Turns, the X's also forced her to tell the truth by way of a truth helmet that they place on her as she takes her place at the witnesses' stand, so they both share the blame (not that the X's care).
  • In the second half of the Season 3 premiere, "Odd Beginnings: Part 2", as Orla's Headquarters begins to crumble, Opal kicks herself for dragging Oswald, Orla, and Omar into her adventure to find and save the 44-leaf clover and apologizes to them for doing so. Omar, being The Pollyanna, tells her not to shoulder the blame because they're surrounded by each other as good friends and are also trapped in cinnamon buns which is good food.
  • The climax of "It's Not Easy Being Chill" has the creature that the Mobile Unit is transporting break free from its cage and escape from the van due to Omar's negligence in babysitting Orpita and his Mellow Fellow personality trait becoming a Fatal Flaw. He explains to his teammates that he was too laid-back when he shouldn't have been, and because of it, they failed to take care of the creature adequately. Opal is the only one that's seen chastising him for his actions while Orla gives a shake of her head in disapproval, and Oswald realizes that Omar can make up for his mistake by feeding the creature two whole cookies. However, Orpita's the one that helps Omar out by showing the group that a whole cookie can be made by combining a half-size cookie and two quarter-size cookies, and Opal and Orla feed the cookies to the creature.
• Ordinary Joe: Joe blames himself for his father's death on 9/11 because he decided to stay in New York to practice with his school band instead of going to a football game in Denver like his father wanted, meaning his father was in the city and died with other first responders when the towers collapsed.
• In an episode of The Parent 'Hood, Nicky's friend Drew is kidnapped after wandering away from the group. He expresses this sentiment, saying "I should have gone with him!"
• Party of Five: In the first season episode "Thanksgiving", the Salingers find out, to their anger, that Walter Alcott, the drunk driver who killed their parents in a car accident, is out on parole for good behavior. Bailey, Claudia, and Julia all end up visiting him, despite saying they wouldn't, and confronting him. Finally, Charlie, who had long resisted, visits, and reveals why he had resisted - the night his parents were killed, he was supposed to babysit his siblings, but he didn't want to and was late getting there, so he feels if he hadn't gotten there late, his parents wouldn't have been in a rush to leave, and they wouldn't have been killed, so it's really his fault. Walter has to tell him otherwise ("You're the hero in this story").
• Person of Interest: Harold Finch has a lot of guilt for inventing the Machine, and later ignoring a prediction from the Artificial Intelligence that his Only Friend Nathan Ingram was about to become the next Victim of the Week. The trope is lampshaded during a flashback scene where Finch is seeing a therapist.
  Finch: Survivor's guilt. I'm familiar.
  Therapist: Well, then you're also familiar with what I'm about to say next: that you think your friend's death was your fault. Otherwise, you'd have to face a very painful truth. That you are not God. You don't control who lives or dies. That powerlessness also means that your friend's death is not your fault. I assure you, in time, the guilt you feel will pass.
  Finch: Let me ask you a question then. Does survivor's guilt pass when everything that has happened actually is, in fact, your fault?
• From Power Rangers RPM: It is revealed that the Rangers' mentor figure, Dr. K, was actually behind the creation and (accidental) release of the Venjix computer virus which has devastated the entire world. The bad guys have placed that same virus inside of Dillon, the Half-Human Hybrid of the team, and is taking over his body. Before he falls fully under Venjix's control, Dr. K is forced to upload the base code for the virus to slow its growth. What she says next shocks her team:
  Dr. K: [Flatly] What just happened was that I entered the base code for the Venjix virus. I know it because I wrote it. I'm the one who released it. Everything that's happened, everything you've all been through—it's all my fault.
• The Rising: Alex is wracked with guilt over accidentally having killed her friend Danny while speeding, causing them to crash. It turns out that Joe was partly at fault, as he covered her eyes while messing around, but Alex took the blame.
• Clark Kent in Smallville is like this almost to a neurotic degree, to the point that it has been Lampshaded by Chloe in Season 8. Witness the misery (a compilation of the times Clark implies, says or worries about this in dream sequences).
  • Chloe does this a lot too in later seasons.
• Averted in Stargate SG-1. Daniel's grandfather tries to comfort him over the loss of his parents years ago, telling him it wasn't his fault. Daniel's reply? "Of course it wasn't my fault!"
• A blunt statement of the "command responsibility" version from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Metamorphosis":
  McCoy: It isn't your fault.
  Kirk: I'm in command, Bones. That makes it my fault.
• In Star Trek: Voyager
  • Chakotay started blaming himself after he learned that his former lover Seska had betrayed the titular ship to an enemy species; she turned out to be a Cardassian spy dolled up to be a Bajoran to infiltrate the Maquis, and Chakotay felt responsible for not catching on to her as the leader of the cell she infiltrated, especially after he learned later that he had missed other spies among his ranks (including science officer Tuvok). It was only when Tuvok admitted that Seska had deceived him while they were in the cell, as well, that Chakotay got over it.
  • Neelix has the same response in "Basics" when his actions get a Red Shirt killed. The irony is that it's actually true!
  • Future Harry Kim blames himself for the destruction of the ship in "Timeless". "They trusted me, and I killed them!" Arguable, considering that he was just an ensign and not even an engineer.
• Star Trek: Discovery: Michael Burnham has this mentality. She often blames herself for things she had little to no involvement in (i.e., her parents' deaths) to the point that Spock (whose family adopted her after her parents were killed) refuses to reconcile with her because of her selfish actions.
• Invoked rather cruelly, and quite often, for Dean Winchester in Supernatural:
  • In "Faith", Dean gets electrocuted and is about to die from heart damage. He seems to be accepting it, but Sam takes him to a faith healer and Dean makes a full recovery. But then they find out that it's a life for a life and he feels guilty (and almost suicidal) for the entire episode.
  • While Dean lays in a coma during "In My Time Of Dying", his father makes a deal with the Yellow-Eyed Demon to save Dean's life. Over the course of the season, he is slowly broken down because of this, until Sam dies and he makes a deal of his own, still thinking that he should have stayed dead and if he does this then at least something good will come out of his life.
  • In the fourth season episode "On the Head of a Pin", Dean is told he is completely to blame for the upcoming apocalypse because he was driven to torture souls in Hell. His father was meant to be the first seal, but he never broke, proving that John Winchester has the unique talent of making Dean feel worthless long after he's dead. Of course, as it turns out Sam is also to blame, because, while Dean broke the first seal by drawing blood in Hell, Sam broke the last when he killed Lilith.
• Taken: In the final episode "Taken", John admits to his great-granddaughter Allie Keys that, as a result of his newly discovered sense of morality, he deeply regrets the pain and suffering that he has caused people in the pursuit of the aliens' Super Breeding Program. He says that he would never do it again.
• Uchu Sentai Kyuranger: Kotaro tells other Kyurangers that he thinks this is the case with Stinger after the events of Space 16.
• The Undeclared War: Saara is wracked with guilt over not having had much contact with her dad when she was busy with her life, as she had helped him handle his depression. As she believes he'd killed himself, Saara blames herself, thinking her abandonment of him caused it. Her mother blaming Saara also helps of course. However, it turns out he died accidentally, rather than from suicide like she'd thought.
• Brilliantly parodied in the Swedish comedy series Varan TV. While hunting a man wearing a deer cap, one of the hunters accidentally shoots a REAL deer (no, seriously!) who of course dies. While he is overcome with guilt, his buddies try to cheer him up, which leads to the following dialogue:
  "You can't blame yourself for this, it's not your fault."
  "It's all my fault! I shot him! [being un-sarcastic and fully serious] Well... Yeah, you're right! It is actually all your fault!"
• In season 3 of Veronica Mars, Dick, of all people, falls into this trope while dealing with his brother killing a dozen people, then committing suicide. When his father shows up, Dick has something of a breakdown and admits he thinks it's their fault.
• In an episode of What I Like About You, it's used as a followup/admission by a character who has previously denied responsibility.
• The Wheel of Time (2021): Lan tries to help Stepin recover after losing his Aes Sedai, but Stepin commits suicide anyway. He's devastated afterward and blames himself because he didn't see it coming.
• Wild Bill: In "You're Stupid Enough to Say That to a Copper?" poor Charlene blames herself when Russian gangsters whom she laundered money for murdered her father after he found out and tried to stop it.
• Willow:
  • Jade is wrestling with her guilt over mercy-killing Ballantine, her adopted father, in the next episode.
  • Dove similarly blames herself for the two wood cutters getting killed by Ballantine, saying she caused it.

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