Its Personal / Live-Action TV

Conflicts getting personal in live-action TV.

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• 24: Features this in pretty much every series. Over six hellish days, Jack has had to deal with people he's already killed, his former partner, his former mistress, his mentor and his own family. He seems to have accepted this as standard practice, though — he gets quite upset early on when his wife is murdered, but when his best friends are killed in Season 5 he barely even blinks.
• Angel:
  • Angelus got annoyed with the vampire hunter Holtz, so he decided to go murder his wife and infant son, turn his daughter into a vampire, and leave her there so Holtz would have to kill her. Holtz responded by time traveling two hundred years into the future, stealing Angel's own son, and raising him to hate his father.
  • There's also Lindsey McDonald who really starts to hate Angel after he cut off his hand and goes after Angel with a sledgehammer after he sleeps with Darla.
• Arrested Development:
  Gob: Let me ask you something. Is this a business decision, or is it personal? 'Cause if it's business I'll go away happily. But if it's personal, I'll go away... but I won't be happy.
  Michael: ...It's personal.
• Arrowverse:
  • Arrow:
    • Oliver Queen and Malcolm Merlyn are Arch-Enemies for a reason. For Oliver, Malcolm sabotaged the Queen's Gambit, leading to the death of Robert Queen and Oliver being left stranded on the hellish island of Lian Yu for five years. Since then, Malcolm coerced his mother into the Undertaking by threatening his sister, kidnapped his stepfather, inadvertently killed his best friend, Malcolm's own son, via said Undertaking, manipulated his sister (and Malcolm's daughter) and their love for each other by brainwashing Thea into killing Sara to turn Oliver and Ra's against each other so he can get off the hit list of the League of Assassins, resulting in Ollie temporarily dying, and then told another villain the location of Oliver's son out of spite. For Malcolm, Oliver was a constant thorn in his side throughout the events leading up to the Undertaking, culminating in Malcolm's first defeat in combat in a long time, and later cost Malcolm the leadership of the League of Assassins and cut off his hand after handing him his ass in a humiliatingly one-sided duel. It seems the only reason both of them are alive at this point is that Oliver initially thought he was dead after Season 1 and adopted a Thou Shalt Not Kill policy during that time, while Malcolm just wants Oliver to suffer as much as possible.
    • Slade Wilson desires to destroy Starling City and kill all of Oliver's loved ones in retaliation for Oliver's role in Shado's death, who Slade loved — not helping the situation was the Mirakuru injected into him, which caused him to hallucinate and see images of Shado telling him to do all these terrible things. Oliver, meanwhile, despises him for his attempts to do so, including Slade successfully killing his mother. That being said, Oliver still spared him after Season 2 — he recognizes that Slade turning out the way he did was partially his fault, and let him live out of respect for their past friendship.
    • Damien Darhk made it personal with all of Team Arrow when he killed Laurel. Oliver's despair over the death of his First Love and arguably the love of his life was enough for him to violate his Thou Shalt Not Kill policy and kill Darhk.
    • Prometheus. Like Slade, he hates Oliver for the death of someone he loved (in this case, Prometheus' father, a corrupt Pharmaceutical Executive whose name was on The List) and wants to destroy his life. Unlike Slade, he doesn't have the excuse of Mirakuru-induced insanity — he just hates Oliver that much. The long list of things he's done to screw Ollie over include: terrorizing the city as a serial killer murdering innocent people whose names are anagrams of those on The List, manipulating Oliver into killing Billy Malone, Felicity's boyfriend, breaking out Black Siren and having her impersonate the deceased Earth-1 Laurel, Oliver's First Love, and then arranging things so Oliver's alter-ego is public enemy #1. In the meanwhile, under the guise of False Friend DA Adrian Chase, he butters Oliver up to gain his trust, aiding him in his administration several times and even helping Diggle get out of military prison. Once Oliver learns his identity, he is not happy, and after The Reveal, the two don't even try hiding how much they've come to hate each other.
    • The only Big Bad Oliver didn't come to personally hate was Ra's al Ghul, mainly because it was Malcolm's fault they were at odds at all. In the finale, when an opportunity to make Ra's back off entirely with little bloodshed involved for both sides presented itself, Oliver didn't hesitate to take it, and the only reason he killed Ra's was that he didn't have any other choice. Seasons afterwards, Oliver still regards him with some respect, recognizing that for all his faults he was an honorable man to the end.
  • The Flash (2014)
    • Barry Allen and Eobard Thawne, whose conflict spans several different timelines. While Eobard's reasons for hating Barry are rather petty, Barry's reasons for hating Eobard are much more severe — Eobard murdered his mother, framed his father for it, and then manipulated him for most of his life just to make sure he became the Flash, that way Thawne had a way to get home. He is one of Barry's most personal enemies (though not necessarily his most hated) — their destinies are so intertwined that they literally can't get rid of each other without causing a paradox, which only makes them hate each other more.
    • Earth-2 Hunter Zolomon made it personal for all of Team Flash. On top of presenting himself as False Friend "Jay Garrick" (an identity he stole from the real Jay Garrick, the Earth-3 counterpart to Henry Allen, who he kept as a trophy in his lair) and ingratiating himself to them much like Eobard Thawne as Dr. Wells last season, he beats the crap out of Barry several times, the first time breaking his back and humiliating him in front of Central City. He kidnaps Jesse Wells to force Earth-2 Harrison Wells to do his bidding, kidnaps Wally West to force Barry to give up his speed, and kidnaps Caitlin Snow to invoke Stockholm Syndrome on her, traumatizing her. For the final finishing touch, he murders Henry Allen in the very same spot where Eobard Thawne murdered Nora Allen, right in front of Barry's eyes. After that, Barry wants him deader than he does Eobard Thawne. Ironically, it's subverted on Zolomon's end. Other than some resentment for Barry's relatively happy childhood after his mother's death, Zolomon largely screwed with them either to further his plan or For the Evulz (usually both) than in the name of any real personal hatred.
    • Savitar. In a possible future, he kills Iris West (the love of Barry's life), cripples Wally, and more-or-less breaks Team Flash. If that wasn't personal enough, his identity makes everything worse: he's a time remnant of Future Barry Allen, one created to stop himself from killing Iris. After he failed, he was rejected by Team Flash for not being the "true" Barry. Already grieving over Iris' death, he completely fell apart after that, subsequently went insane, and decided to become a god so he could no longer feel emotional pain, traveling back in time to become the Savitar of legend. His desire to kill Iris stems from his wish to maintain the Stable Time Loop that ensures his existence, and his hatred for his progenitor for rejecting him as an "expendable" aberration. He is Barry's most personal enemy by far, even more so than Eobard Thawne and Hunter Zolomon. After all, one can't have an enemy more personal than themself.
    • Downplayed with the Thinker. While his ultimate plan is on a more worldwide scale, he still spies on Barry and either tries to keep him from interfering with his plans or uses him as an Unwitting Pawn to further them. For example, at the end of the previous season, Barry had to go into the Speed Force. In the next episode, the others found a way to bring him back after a villain wanted to fight the Flash, resulting in a release of energy similar to that of the particle accelerator, which was later revealed to have turned a group of people into metahumans. While it all seemed completely coincidental, it was what the Thinker had planned to happen so he could Body Surf through them to escape his dying body. Also, the villain who wanted to fight the Flash was actually a robot created by him to get Barry's friends to bring him back and create the new metahumans. The whole episode was a Batman Gambit. It becomes personal for Barry once he realises he's being played with, and when he is framed for murdering the Thinker when he takes over someone else's body and leaves his previous body in Barry's apartment, stabbed with the knife he was gifted earlier that episode and therefore had his fingerprints. Then it becomes even more personal after the Thinker takes over the body of Ralph Dibny, one of the new metahumans who Barry had previously disliked, but soon became friends with after he decided to become a superhero.
• Babylon 5:
  • A major catalyst of why Londo Mollari really becomes so belligerent against the Narns is their invasion of Ragesh 3 in "Midnight on the Firing Line". In that episode, Londo's nephew, who had been assigned there to keep him safe, was among the captured and he was tortured and forced to cooperate in their propaganda, and the Centauri Republic was too weak to respond. So, Londo blames G'Kar in particular for these events, even after Commander Sheridan manages to undo the Narn's aggression, and later sees Mr. Morden's offers to assist him partially as a chance to prevent further such incidents against his loved ones.
  • Morden then goes and exploits this trait of Londo's. Londo had been trying to distance himself from Morden, fearing his "associates", the Shadows, would turn on the Centauri one day, so Morden hatches a plan: murder Londo's mistress, Adira, then pin the blame onto his rival, Lord Refa The plan works to perfection, and Londo seethes with Tranquil Fury as he invokes the trope as his reason for requesting Morden's services again. Later still, he discovers the truth. He does not take it well.
  • Of course, G'Kar's hatred of the Centauri is equally personal: he was raised in slavery under the first Centauri occupation, and his father was strung up from a tree for the crime of spilling a drink on the mistress of the house. His hatred of the Centauri is extreme, but his horror of ever being under their power again is genuine.
  • Alfred Bester is normally completely unflappable and professional. He keeps everything at a "strictly business" level. But when he realizes that the Shadows not only kidnapped a bunch of telepaths but that one of them was his lover and the future mother of his child, he shows a Tranquil Fury side that has never been seen on him before.
    Bester: If you can save her, I'll do anything you want to help. Your war is now my war.
• Bar Rescue:
  • In the second plug for the eighth season, these are Jon Taffer's Exact Words to describe his challenges in Las Vegas (his home base, which was extremely affected by the 2020 pandemic). In other words, not business as usual.
  • Taffer's first marriage ended in divorce when it crumbled under the stress of going into business together. As such, he is especially invested in any business with married owners suffering the same issues. He drops the trope name point-blank for The Brixton's owners Sarah and Tim, whose marriage was at the end of its rope.
  • Taffer's daughter was served nachos with cross-contamination in J.A. Murphy's and his wife was flirted with by the owner of Sand Dollar. In both cases, Taffer threatened to walk out on the rescue.
  • Taffer nearly got into a fight with Ami, owner of ZanZBar, when he called expert chef Brian Duffy "fat boy".
  • The most extreme case of this came in The Undisputed Bar where Taffer discovered the owner was substituting premium liquor with cheap replacements. When the customers (many of them thugs invited by the owner) found out about this, the situation escalated into a full-scale brawl which got the police involved. Taffer actually called in a staff meeting to determine if the rescue was really worth it. Later that day, Taffer ripped the owner a new one for allowing his crew to be assaulted.
  • Another case happened with Rhythm N' Brews where one of the bikers who had taken over the joint lit firecrackers and threw them across the bar. Not only did they explode where several bartenders happened to be standing, he did this right across the seat where an expert's wife was sitting for recon. After rushing inside, Taffer and the expert tore into the owners for allowing it to happen.
• The Big Leap: Gabby could put up with Brittney's petty attitude, but as soon as she spilled the secret of Sam's dad on live television, Gabby goes on the warpath and decides to get revenge by scheming with Nick to have her removed from the show.
• Bones:
  • Does this somewhat frequently. When someone threatens either Booth, Bones, or their kids, it becomes quite personal for the other.
  • Brennan wanting justice for her murdered mother in Season 1.
  • The Gravedigger and Harold Epps are the most guilty of invoking this. The Gravedigger kidnapped Bones and Hodgins in one episode and Booth in another. Epps poisoned Cam, tried to blow up Zack, and used Booth's son as a clue, all in the same episode. Making it personal was pretty much his M.O.
  • And then there was Pelant, who snuck a dead body above Angela and Hodgins' bed while they were knocked out from carbon monoxide poisoning, among other things. After a while, his M.O. was literally making things personal.
  • Season 10’s Beginning, when Booth is railroaded and framed and winds up in prison. Then no sooner is he freed than Sweets is fatally injured and dies in his arms. Booth and Brennan definitely want these guys stopped.
  • Later there’s Kovac, whose storyline has a double dose. He attacks Booth and Brennan because Booth killed Kovac’s war criminal father during his sniper days. It then turns personal for Brennan and Booth when Kovac’s attack kills Brennan’s father and later blows up the entire lab.
• Breaking Bad: Gustavo Fring, a drug trafficker with a restaurant chain as a front, is the textbook example of a calm, collected businessman (despite a few frightening acts here and there). However, there's a moment in his past 20+ years ago that sticks with him: The cold-blooded murder of his associate by the cartel members he sought to go into business with. Though he retains a business relationship with the cartel, he plots his revenge against them for 20+ years.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel:
  • This is the entire character description for the villain Angelus.
  • Also, Oz references the line as a suggestion after some failed quipping during sans-Buffy patrolling at the beginning of Season 3.
    Oz: If I may suggest: "This time it's personal." I mean, there's a reason why it's a classic.
  • Much of the criticism of Buffy's handling of Faith boils down to this. It's not enough for her to become The Dragon and get off on killing, she has to shoot Angel with a crossbow that poisons and slowly kills him to make Buffy seriously risk falling to The Dark Side and breaking her Thou Shalt Not Kill rule.
• Castle:
  • Anything which touches on the murder of Kate Beckett's mother is this trope. It's also a Deconstructed Trope as well, as where she's normally a rational, level-headed, and effective investigator, her mother's case sends her completely off-the-rails, leading her to make big mistakes as a result.
  • It's also notable that most of Richard Castle's badass moments tend to result from situations where Kate Beckett's life is in immediate peril.
• Woe to anyone who messes with the loved ones of the cops of Chicago P.D..
  • The second episode has Antonio going wild when his son is kidnapped.
  • Voight may have been willing to let slide a pack of crooks breaking into his home to rob him. But trying to suffocate his son's girlfriend who's carrying Hank's grandchild? The punks are lucky to make it to prison alive.
  • When his son is shot, Hank is on the warpath terrorizing half of Chicago. When he finds the brother of the shooter, Hank puts a bullet into his leg to make him talk. As for the actual shooter? They literally never find his body.
  • Trudy is attacked by a perp who then steals her gun to shoot her father. Platt drags herself out of her hospital bed to hunt the scumbag down and has to be talked down from finishing off a brutal torture session.
  • When his daughter is killed in a fire, Olinsky is so extreme, Hank has to talk him down from just killing the perp responsible.
  • Lindsay is rocked when protege Nadia is murdered and takes hunting down the serial killer responsible personally.
  • Kim Burgess is the most upbeat and friendly of the unit. But when her sister Nicole is raped, Kim personally helps bust the man responsible and gives him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that leaves him a bloody mess.
  • The entire unit is this when Al is killed in the fifth season finale. Even the usually by-the-book Antonio is willing to look the other way catching the killer.
• Chuck:
  • Several villains decide to target the family or friends of Chuck, Sarah, and Casey, making missions suddenly very personal:
  • Volkoff directly threatened Ellie and Devon, though was forced to back down when Mary reminded him that she will protect her children. Volkoff is a particularly interesting case because It's Personal on both sides. Stephen and Mary had been trying to stop him for twenty years because Alexei Volkoff is actually their close friend Hartley Winterbottom, victim of an Intersect experiment Gone Horribly Right that they are now trying to fix.
  • And of course, Shaw shot and killed Chuck and Ellie's father, making the beat-downs he receives from both in Seasons 3 and 4, respectively, very personal. And satisfying.
  • Quinn made his vendetta against Chuck personal, blaming him for not receiving the Intersect. It's revealed that FULCRUM, the Ring, and even Volkoff were aided by Quinn as part of his quest for revenge. He even more personally attacks Chuck by turning Sarah Brainwashed and Crazy, to the point she even threatens Ellie.
• Criminal Minds:
  • Has had quite a few where the case directly related to one of the team, and some where it didn't but one of the team identified with one or more of the people involved.
  • Hotch is probably the best example out of the whole team. When George Foyet returns to get his revenge on him, he infiltrates the Hotchner residence, threatens Hotch's son, and shoots Hayley while on the line with Hotch. When he's finally captured, Hotch goes into a fit of Unstoppable Rage and literally beats Foyet to death. It's not until Morgan pries him off that he calms down.
  • In one specific episode, Morgan is accused of murder. It's immediately personal for the rest of the team, who are still allowed to investigate it despite their connection to him.
• Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa:
  • The murder of an idol in "Waiting for Jack the Ripper" is personal for both Nabeshima and Yasoda, who were big fans of the group and are heartbroken to learn of the girl's death.
  • Being specifically called out by the killer isn't what makes the ABC case personal for Himura, but rather when he finds out that the victims are related to the Shangri-La Crusade, led by his arch-nemesis Moroboshi.
• CSI:
  • Usually starts or ends a season with an "It's Personal" episode.
  • When the investigators fly off the handle, they sometimes violate some of the suspects' rights with their outbursts (Catherine Willows and Sara Sidle are especially guilty of this) or some of the ways they try to obtain evidence. As just one example, getting a suspect to give a urine sample by saying it's required by law when it actually isn't sounds like grounds to have the evidence thrown out of court, given that it was obtained under false pretenses, or was coerced.
  • In early seasons, even if there weren't a direct relationship between the investigators and the criminals, the nature of the crime would often make the investigator take it personally themselves. For instance: domestic abuse, or overall violence towards women? Sara would sympathize. Broken marriages, or mothers (especially the working kind)? Catherine. Damaged childhoods? Nicky. Grissom himself explicitly stated that drug dealers and people who harm children make him furious.
    Grissom: You prey on innocent children, and you think we came all the way out here to bust you for possession, you dumb punk?!
• CSI: Miami: By contrast, features such episodes all the time. And when it's not threatening the characters, it's arresting the characters. It's so frequent, you'd think the whole place would get shut down by Internal Affairs just on...(cue dramatic sunglasses removal) general principles.
• CSI NY: Same thing. Many seasons start or end with personal eps, though they can come at any time. It's in between CSI and CSI Miami, basically. The end of the Shane Casey case is a good example, it got seriously personal for both Danny and Lindsay. And then it got personal for the entire team in 'Near Death' when Mac got shot. It also got personal really fast when Mac's girlfriend was kidnapped. In that case, Mac will kick your ass so badly, you'll be lucky to survive to trial.
• Detective in a Wheelbarrow: Referenced by a Reeves and Mortimer-written advert for TV Licencing, featuring this spoof show — "I'm in a wheelbarrow — and this time, it's personal!"
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: Rian's reason for wanting to rebel against the Skeksis is because they used his girlfriend Mira in their first experiment and extracted her life essence, effectively killing her.
• Dark Winds: After learning in Season 2 that the blond hitman killed his son, Leaphorn stops at nothing to bring him down, including being seriously injured while doing this.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor tends to get this way over: Companions, Daleks, and the Master.
  • In "The Gunfighters", the Clantons kill Wyatt Earp's brother. Oops. Of course, it would appear that one effect of the Time War was to alter details at the OK Corral...
  • It's possible that "The Idiot's Lantern" went this way after the Wire fed on Rose, since the Doctor says upon finding out:
    The Doctor: Because now, Detective Inspector Bishop, there is no power on this Earth that can stop me!
  • Summed up best in "Forest of the Dead":
    The Doctor: You just killed someone I like, that is not a safe place to stand!
  • "A Good Man Goes to War": Having Amy and Melody their daughter kidnapped, the Last Centurion takes it very personally. The Doctor, too; he does not like it when he's attacked "through the people [he] loves!"
  • "Resolution" has another sum-up, regarding the Doctor and the Dalek.
    The Doctor: Me and the Dalek, it's personal.
• ER: Happens with some frequency. From the very first episode, Carol Hathaway was treated for a suicide attempt and by the time the final episode aired, nearly two-thirds of the characters had been in the ER for one reason or another, and not all surviving.
• Firefly:
  • In a pivotal scene, Mal and his tormentor are struggling near the edge of a Malevolent Architecture pit when Mal's allies arrive. It is played straight at first: Jayne raises his gun to shoot the tormentor but is stopped by Zoe. "Jayne. This is something the Captain has to do for himself." Then they turn it into an Inverted Trope. Mal: "No! No it's not!" Zoe: "Oh." The ensemble promptly riddle the tormentor with bullets.
  • Played straight when Mal discovers Jayne betrayed Simon and River to the Alliance.
    Mal: To turn on any of my crew, you turn on me!
• Forever:
  • In "6 A.M.", Lieutenant Reece has a bit of a grudge against the head of a jazz recording studio, since he screwed her nephew out of his songs.
    Lt. Reece: We can detain him for 72 hours. And, I am going to enjoy every one of those hours.
  • There's a subtext of this in "Skinny Dipper", when the precinct find out that someone is trying to frame Henry. When Reece hands out pictures of the suspect, she tells everyone that other cops and the FBI are looking for him too, "But I want him!"
  • In "Punk is Dead", Reece, as a beat cop, felt that Eddie Warsaw's murder conviction had been based on a sloppy investigation because the department and prosecutors had simply decided it was one druggie killing another. Now that she has authority, she leaps at the chance to have it investigated properly.
• In From Dusk Till Dawn the manhunt for the Geckos becomes very personal for Ranger Gonzalez after they kill his partner.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Robb takes Theon's betrayal very personally, and demands that Theon be brought to him so Robb can kill him himself.
  • Robb invokes this from his siblings after his death — both Sansa and Jon have a special hatred for the Boltons because Roose was the one who finished Robb off. Jon also has an even more intense personal hatred for Ramsay Bolton when he learns that Ramsay Bolton has taken his brother Rickon hostage and also raped his sister Sansa, and despite vowing to never fight again, becomes willing to take up arms. Ramsay threatening to rape Sansa again just makes Jon even angrier and determined to kill him.
  • After learning about Shireen's death, Davos demands that Jon allow him to personally execute Melisandre for the princess' death. When Jon decides to exile her instead, Davos warns her that if he ever sees her again, he will kill her himself.
  • Lord Rickard towards the Lannisters after Jaime killed his two sons. Later, House Karstark to House Stark after Robb executed Lord Rickard for killing two Lannister squires, to the point that they sided with House Bolton when Sansa and Jon start reclaiming the Northern seat.
  • Daenerys vows to destroy the Night King and stop him by any means necessary after he murdered her dragon Viserion.
• Heroes: Matt plans to kill Danko's lover Elena as revenge for Danko's murder of Matt's girlfriend Daphne Millbrook but can't bring himself to go through with it.
• iCarly: Trying to take down iCarly.com is one thing... hurting Carly herself will get your ass kicked by Sam.
• On The Inside Man, Ed, the manager the company Kromocom, explains in the season 1 finale, "Checkmate," that crimes against an organisation often come from a very personal issue and a very human place.
• This was why Dr. Yukio Hattori was Iron Chef Nakamura's final challenger: his grandfather was snubbed for a prestigious position in favor of the head chef of Nadaman and Hattori wished to avenge his ancestor's honor on the current head chef of Nadaman-Nakamura. Nakamura would win the battle.
• Law & Order: For a series that is mostly plot-driven, not character-driven, the franchise and its various versions did this relatively often.
  • Law & Order:
    • It's Personal episodes give us rare glimpses into the characters' home lives/personal histories (Logan confronts the priest who abused him in childhood, Logan tracks down his partner's killer, Briscoe tracks down his daughter's killer).
    • And Jack literally breaking all the rules to make sure Alexandra Borgia's killers are punished.
  • Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Did it too, with Goren and Eames finally solving the murder of Eames' late husband and also with the illness and death of Goren's mother.
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The series could be said to be made up almost entirely of It's Personal episodes, with each investigator having buttons that make him or her consider the case personal. (Why let someone work on a case they are clearly biased towards? No one ever plants evidence in this world, I guess...)
    • Olivia Benson is searching continuously for her mother's rapist/her own biological father. Although only one SVU episode deals with investigating Ma Benson's rape, this Back Story is touched on in any episode involving pregnancy from a rape as well as at other times.
    • Benson has also been stalked by perpetrators at least three times in six seasons.
    • Benson takes it to the extreme when someone who was convicted because of her testimony and was later cleared by DNA evidence eight years later starts actually killing people. Other people she brought in and testified against. She takes it so personally that she says she would accept responsibility for the man's crimes. He commits Suicide by Cop before the situation is resolved.
    • On the other hand, her partner, Elliot Stabler, has his buttons pushed by any crime involving children (which is roughly every episode that doesn't involve a rape — and, for that matter, not a few which do).
    • In "Persona", Judge Elizabeth Donnelly takes a leave of absence and dusts off her ADA credentials to prosecute a murderer who escaped out a bathroom window after setting up a meeting for a plea deal when Donnelly was a junior prosecutor over three decades before.
    • Deconstructed in "Gambler's Fallacy", when Detective Rollins' personal connection to the case makes her an unwitting accessory to the rape SVU is investigating, ultimately blows up their investigation, earns her a blistering What the Hell, Hero? from Benson, and nearly gets her fired. On the other hand, Rollins has also been the subject of two It's Personal episodes that are actually pretty great about the detectives following protocol while still being supportive and protective of her.
    • Averted by Amaro in "Russian Brides": near the beginning of the episode, he and Olivia have a conversation about their respective fathers, in which Amaro reveals his father was physically abusive toward his mother. Later in the episode, the victim of the week is alleged to have had an abusive ex-boyfriend. Rather than leaping to irrationally believe her due to his own hot-button issues, Amaro is immediately (and, as it turns out, correctly) skeptical that the victim might have been engaging in a Wounded Gazelle Gambit.
    • Played with in "Class": Stabler thinks they should go easy on a college student who murdered his girlfriend, since the boy had a tough time in school due to his working-class background, much like Stabler’s. He tries to appeal to Casey Novak, who also grew up working class and then went to Harvard — Casey responds that her experiences were hard, but they never pushed her to murder anyone.
    • From "The Book of Esther" season 19, episode 20:
      Tutuola: "You're taking this kind of personal, Amanda."
      Rollins: "If I don't, what am I doing here?" ^note Rollins winds up causing the death of the titular victim, Esther
  • Law & Order: UK: The team basically goes all-out to bring Alesha's rapist to justice and later does the same regarding Matt's killer.
• In Season 2 of Legends of Tomorrow, Sara has a deep hatred of Damian Darhk, as he murdered her sister. Whenever the team encounter him in history, she is willing to risk all of time itself to kill him for a crime that he hasn't technically committed yet (although he's committed plenty of others). Notably, this is a one-sided grudge at first, since Darhk has yet to meet Sara from his point of view, he originally has no idea who she is or why she hates him. This changes in "Compromised", where Sara tells Darhk his future — the loss of his loved ones and his eventual defeat and death — making Darhk hate her as much as she hates him.
  • In the episode "Outlaw Country", Jonah Hex has a personal hatred of Quentin Turnbull, because the villain once locked him and the entire town of Calvert in a church and set on fire. Jonah was the only survivor, and only then with horrific burn scars on his face.
• Leverage:
  • Used twice in the pilot. Dubenich gets Nate to take on the job because the company they're targeting is ensured by Nate's old company, who refused to pay for the procedure that could have saved his son. When Dubenich turns on Nate and the team, Nate strikes back because he used his son's death as emotional blackmail.
  • For the rest of the team, it's personal in e pilot mainly because they didn't get paid. In later episodes, though, Eliot's old girlfriend's barn is burned down, which pisses him off about both the girlfriend and the horses, and Parker gets obsessed with a job dealing with mistreated orphans because she was one, herself.
  • At the end of the first season, Nate targets the man who is the head of his old insurance company. In Season 2, there are also several versions of this: they target a hacker who tried to kill Sophie and a psychic who brought back bad memories for Parker, among several others.
• Life: Crews has pretty much taken the Roman situation to an It's Personal level after finding out that his partner's been abducted, probably by Roman, who has shown an increasing interest in her.
• Little Mosque on the Prairie: Played with when Reverend Magee beats Baber in a Koran quiz and the two of them have a fight over it: on accepting a rematch, Magee declares that this time it's personal, but Baber points out it was personal for him the first time, too. "Seriously, my feelings were hurt."
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
  • At first, Miriel involved Numenor into the conflict between the Men from the Southlands and Orcs only at the urge of Galadriel. But she loses her sight and many soldiers despite the initial victory once Orodruin erupts, which was part of the Orcs' plan as a last resort. As a result, Miriel swears to return to Middle-earth to take revenge on the Orcs for the loses and humiliation Numenor suffered in the Southlands.
  • Galadriel didn't always wanted to fight and kill Sauron. She stayed away from wars and conflicts until her husband went missing in the War of Wrath, and her brother, Finrod died at the hands of Sauron. After that, she decided to take her brother's quest to kill Sauron.
  • Sauron himself has a personal beef with Adar, his former Orc chieftain who betrayed him.
• Lost:
  • The Others tend to see the survivors of the plane crash as interlopers on their island, and take a somewhat detached attitude to them, but their decisions, particularly abducting Walt, end up being personal for the survivors, especially when Sawyer executes Tom after he surrenders "for taking the kid off the raft".
  • Ben's feud with Widmore suddenly becomes personal when Alex is killed by Widmore's Psycho for Hire.
  • In the final season, the battle between the few remaining Candidates and the Big Bad becomes this after he causes the deaths of Sayid, Jin and Sun in one fell swoop.
• Luna Nera: The Bishop persecutes witches because Janara refused to teach him magic.
• The Mandalorian: Cara Dune hates The Empire and everything to do with it as she's originally from Alderaan which the Empire completely destroyed. When Mando approaches her for help in taking out the Client who placed a bounty on him and the Child she only accepts after Mando tells her the Client is an Imperial remnant.
• Mayfair Witches: One of the witch-hunters who kidnaps Tessa was a former employee at Mayfair Auto, Tessa's parents' company. She and her husband lost their jobs to Tessa's parents' personnel cuts... while their daughter was undergoing chemotherapy at the Mayfair hospital. Needless to say, her interest in seeing Tessa burn goes well beyond mere witch-hunting.
• The Mentalist: Fundamental to the show, where the titular mentalist, Patrick Jane, is only helping the California Bureau of Investigation because they're his best shot at catching Red John, the Serial Killer who murdered Jane's wife and daughter. Also the reason why, at the start of the second season, the CBI has taken the Red John case away from the team Jane works with because the team head was also losing her detachment from the case and indulging Jane's recklessness too much.
• Merlin:
  • A variation of sorts. Due to his father's anti-magical stance, Prince Arthur has witnessed dozens, possibly hundreds of people being put to death for the crime of witchcraft. Throughout it all he has remained stoic, and when arguing for clemency for various people (Mordred, Gaius, Merlin) he does so in a calm and reasonable manner. But when Uther accuses Guinevere of being a witch and ordering her to be burnt at the stake? Arthur almost tears down the throne room, three armed guards, and his own father to get to her...
  • Merlin is a fairly calm person, generally speaking, but if you dare to threaten someone he cares about, he will hurt you.
• NCIS: Contains quite a few examples of members of the team being either targeted for or accused of murder, in addition to the fact that Gibbs especially takes his ties to both the Navy and the Marine Corps seriously.
• NUMB3RS has quite a few, especially considering the relative length of the series.
  • There is no bigger It's Personal case for the team than "The Janus List"/"Trust Metric". Megan even comments on it.
    Megan: Why are we doing this? We're acting like this is any other case, and it isn't.
  • A close runner-up is "Two Daughters", which was a normal case until Megan is taken hostage, then it becomes very, very personal. Though Megan herself doesn't seem to feel that way, despite everything that happens.
  • "Breaking Point" has two separate versions of this around the same case. Colby has this from the beginning, identifying with the victim to the point of obsession, while Don starts off professional, but takes it very personally when their antagonist goes after Charlie.
  • Charlie gets the Season 4 finale and no less than four separate cases in Season 5 (including that season finale as well).
    • That's not even counting "Frienemies", which is mostly played for laughs.
      David: In a World… where mathematicians go mano a mano with a killer—
      Colby: This time, it's personal.
  • A variation occurs with Colby in "Greatest Hits". He clearly sympathizes with Bloom, but he eventually reveals that it's not so much Bloom himself as the fact that Bloom's situation reminds him of what happened to his father (who he suspects killed himself because of it).
  • Invoked by the main antagonists in "Backscatter" to throw the FBI off their game when they get too close to the truth.
  • Many guest character cops get involved because of this: Willons in "Nine Wives", Malloy in "Burn Rate", Bloom in "Jack of All Trades". Even recurring guest character Gary Walker gets one in "End of Watch", though, unlike the others, it's not his first appearance.
  • A humorous example in "Contenders": Charlie is taking Larry's seat at the CalSci poker tournament. At first it's just for Larry's sake, but when his main opponent tries to force him to drop out, Charlie begins to take it personally.
• Odd Squad:
  • In "Moustache Confidential", Otto takes the mantle in finding Orchid, the presumed culprit who stole Obfusco's mustache, since he and her have an implied bad history with each other. She turns out to not be the culprit at all.
  • In "Happily Ever Odd", Coach O reacts this way when Donnie (as a donkey) drinks all his Shmummberade bottles.
  Coach O: Also, he drank a bunch of my Shmumberade bottles, so now it's personal.
  • In "Mid-Day in the Garden of Good and Odd", Todd initially refuses to help Olympia and Otis with stopping Jamie Jam, but when the villainess attacks his garden and covers his entire produce with jam, he's more than ready to fight alongside his former enemies.
  • The driving force of the Story Arc in the first half of Season 3 is The Shadow's strained relationship with Opal, who is revealed to be her older sister that became too overprotective of her and drove her to pull a Face–Heel Turn. Although she antagonizes the Mobile Unit as a group, a lot of her actions also target Opal specifically.
• In Person of Interest, before Simmons and Yogorov's attempt to kill Carl Elias, Elias accepts that he has it coming as far as Yogorov is concerned, but doesn't extend the same to Simmons.
  Carl Elias: You don't get to talk to me. I'm true to what I am. Like my friend Mr. Yogorov here. I killed his father, he kills me, fair is fair. But you, you're an oath-breaker. You're a worm.
• Power Rangers: If any one Power Ranger is targeted specifically, they will usually lead the others in retaliation, and may even give the order for the finishing blow; if one Ranger is captured, the others will all get mad.
• Proven Innocent:
  • Madeline makes no secret of the fact that her quest to bring down Bellows is driven by the damage that he did to her and Levi's lives.
  • While he claims his quest to prove Madeline is guilty is guided by justice, it's clear Bellows can't get over Madeline ruining his record by her innocence and this is really about his wounded pride, although he does show regret when meeting with Madeline in private after they have learned the truth.
• Revolution:
  • In episode 3, Private Richards made things personal with Danny over the death of Richards's best friend Templeton. Danny handled that one in short order.
  • In episode 10, things got personal between Miles Matheson and Tom Neville when Miles used Neville's wife Julia as a hostage. Neville swore revenge on Miles for that.
  • Danny Matheson's death in episode 11 made things very personal for Rachel and Charlie. It basically had them committed to fighting Sebastian Monroe however they can.
  • Things became personal between Jason Neville and Tom Neville the minute the latter realized that the former had not only turned against him but was now working for the rebels in episode 13.
  • Rachel is now fully dedicated to return power to the world. Not because it would be better for everyone. It's only to allow Monroe's enemies to have occasions to kill him, as well as get revenge for her son's death. Never get a mom angry. She said as much in episode 17.
  • Monroe has it in for Miles, but he really cranks up the personal part in episode 15 by going back to their hometown in Jasper and threatening to kill everyone there, starting with Miles's high school fiance Emma. Emma ends up dead, and Miles more or less states this trope.
  • Episode 18 reveals that Jim Hudson has been out for Miles's blood, because Miles ruined his life back in episode 12.
  • The first season finale reveals the reason things got so personal between Miles and Monroe in the first place. A rebel bombed a restaurant the two men were in and injured Miles. Monroe, acting on his borderline erotic fixation for Miles, responded to this by executing the rebel and his entire family. You get to see five coffins being loaded. Miles responded by trying to assassinate Monroe while the guy was sleeping...but he couldn't do it. Miles just walked without an explanation and Monroe was never the same since.
• Sherlock: In The Great Game, Moriarty straps random people to bombs, and while Sherlock puts real effort into solving the mysteries to rescue the hostages, he remains largely unmoved, because caring about the people won't help save them. When Moriarty straps John to a bomb, though, Sherlock freaks the fuck out.
  • It also happens in Series 3. After Sherlock gets John out of a bonfire, he said that he'll find the person responsible for throwing him in it since he hates not knowing. Cue episode 3, and cue it being Charles Augustus Magnussen. Uh-oh. We can expect a certain detective BEING PISSED when he finds that out. It doesn't help that it proceeds to screw things up since Sherlock had no idea that Magnussen knew his pressure point was John and Sherlock shoots Magnussen right in front of everyone, including Mycroft. WHOOPS.
  • John's prone to this as well. Okay, unlike Sherlock, he MAY care about lives at stake, but if you manage to piss him off by messing with his friends-and good luck to you if you manage to get him pissed if you make an attempt on Sherlock's life, since, well... he'll end you.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • Although the team seems to take it personal every time one of the main characters is hurt/threatened/kidnapped/killed/whatever, the conflict with the Goa'uld was personal for both Daniel (because of what happened to his wife) and Teal'c (because of his history as Apophis' First Prime). The team actually gets called on taking things too personally a few times, but they generally shrug it off.
  • Jack also tends to take it somewhat personally when Skaara is involved, a holdover from The Movie, where Skaara is the Abydonian Jack interacts with the most and becomes rather protective of, possibly reminding him of his recently-dead son whom he was still mourning heavily. And Sam, of course, when her father/Selmac is involved.
• Star Trek:
  • The Original Series: Subject of a joke in "The Trouble With Tribbles" when Kirk discovers that some of the Tribbles have eaten his chicken sandwich and coffee.
    "I want these things off the ship! I don't care if it takes every last man we've got, I want them off the ship!"
  • The Next Generation: Naturally, the Klingons have a tradition called the "Rite of Vengeance." Worf invokes it on Duras when Duras kills K'Heyler.
  • In "Loud as a Whisper," Riva tells the Enterprise crew not to even bother investigating the reasons for the war provided in the background they've been given. It'll say that it's about some piece of land, or wealth, or something, but it doesn't matter. After fifteen centuries of fighting, nobody really cares about the original reason anymore. It's just personal.
  • In "Qpid," Picard decides to go rescue Vash ("Maid Marian") himself and leave the rest of the Enterprise crew out of it, telling Riker that it's not a mission, it's personal between himself and Q and he doesn't want the rest of the crew involved.
  • Deep Space Nine: Sisko's pursuit of Michael Eddington. He's absolutely livid that Eddington betrayed him to the point where Starfleet brass takes him off the case — until Eddington beats them and Sisko's the only one available to capture him. Which he does by bio-bombing the Maquis planet Eddington is on to make it uninhabitable to humans (with ample time to evacuate, mind, but it still makes Worf balk).^note He took the idea from the Maquis themselves, who bio-bombed a Cardassian planet so the Maquis could take it.
  • Enterprise: Trip wants to personally pay back the Xindi for killing his sister Elizabeth. When the Xindi official Degra (who leads the attack on Earth) starts working with the crew, Trip wastes no time letting him know, verbally, how much Trip hates him. Archer also has this attitude to a lesser degree.
• The Wire: Season 1: Omar and his crew have ripped off one too many Barksdale stash-houses, so Avon places a bounty on the three of them. One of them, John Bailey, is found dead, having been shot 39 times with three different guns. The other, Omar's boyfriend Brandon, suffered two broken arms and several broken fingers, several knife wounds, cigarette burns, and one of his eyes was gouged out. It's unsurprising that Omar takes this personally and goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Barksdale gang. Later, Omar and Stringer discuss the issue quite plainly:
  Stringer Bell: But y'all was fucking with my stash. Anything after that — part of the game.
  Omar: Maybe, but you see, y'all went past that with Brandon.
  [later]
  Stringer Bell: What happened to your boy was business. But how that shit happened — you got a right to take that to heart.
• Without a Trace: After distinguishing itself in the beginning by not having episodes of this type, this show has since had at least three.
• The X-Files:
  • If there is an episode that involves anything relating to Samantha Mulder, it's probably this trope.
  • A more subtle example is in Season 3's "Revelations", where Scully, investigating a case of a young boy with stigmata, is forced to confront the gulf between her Catholic faith and the scientific procedures she must follow as a federal agent.
  • There are quite a few episodes in which Scully deals with her faith, and the slow losing of it. Others include "Redux II", "All Souls", "Biogenesis" and its sequels, and all of the things surrounding William's conception and birth.
  • Also, involving either Mulder or William in a conspiracy is a good way to bump the episode up to an "it's personal" for Scully.
  • Eventually, the "it's personal" thinking shifts from something involving Samantha to events involving Scully. In "Redux", he tells Scully he can't let his crusade rest because they gave her cancer:
    Mulder: There are those who can be trusted. What I need to know is who among them is not. I will not allow this treason to prosper, not if they've done this to you.

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