Characters Jumping Off the Slippery Slope on Live-Action TV.
- 24 does so respectively with Tony Almeida and Jack Bauer in its final two seasons. In Tony's case, After his wife and unborn son were killed, he sets out to kill the mastermind in any way possible. But tactics he employs in trying to do so include things like murdering the director of the FBI, nearly exposing several innocent people to a lethal pathogen, and attempting to sacrifice Jack in order to get close to his target. As for Jack, after years of being tortured, screwed over, and having friends and loved ones taken from him, he finally loses it when Renee Walker is killed as part of the Russian's cover-up and the President betrays him by refusing to reveal the truth since exposing them would also expose their involvement in the murder of a foreign president, which in turn would ruin the chances of a peace treaty she's trying to have signed. Jack claims that he'll take justice into his own hands and expose the truth, but his doing so involves murdering The Mole solely because had been working with the Russians beforehand long before there was any movement made to kill Renee, slaughtering several members of the Russian government, opening fire on a crowd of innocent people (which although it was mainly to disable random pedestrian cars, it's still made perfectly clear that Jack could have easily killed someone with even the slightest slip-up and really didn't give a damn at all) and attempting to assassinate both Yuri Survarov and Charles Logan even though killing the both of them would be guaranteed to start a war between the USA and Russia that would likely lead to the deaths of millions. The series does its best to make sure that what he's doing isn't in any sort of heroic light.
- The 100: At the start of season two, Finn Collins, who started the series as The Conscience, begins to slip as a result of trauma from the end of the first season and desperation to rescue his friends and love interest, Clarke, from presumed Grounder captivity. At one point, he executes a captured Grounder after his group interrogates him, justifying it by saying that the Grounder would've revealed their location. His companions, however, are shocked by his ruthlessness. Later, he ends up attacking an innocent Grounder village and rounding up its inhabitants for interrogation. After one of the villagers startles him, he shoots them dead, then continues firing into the unarmed, frightened crowd, killing 18. Even known murderer Murphy is shocked by this atrocity, and the show itself doesn't let him get away with it. Finn initially tries to defend himself, but eventually turns himself in to the Grounders. Clarke mercy kills him after she learns the Grounders plan to torture him to death for his crimes.
- Season 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had an interesting ethical dilemma set up between S.H.I.E.L.D., who felt that people with superhuman abilities needed to be indexed and monitored to protect regular people from them in case they ever became dangerous, and the Inhumans, who felt their rights were being taken away and such policies would inevitably lead to wide-scale imprisonment or extermination. Any question of who had the moral high ground went out the window when Jiaying, the Inhumans' leader who had been corrupted by a brutal vivisection at the hands of Dr Whitehall, a member of HYDRA, murdered a S.H.I.E.L.D. representative in cold blood at a peace meeting and framed it to look like S.H.I.E.L.D. was attacking them, then set up a trap to draw as many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as she could to an aircraft carrier she had hijacked and planned to flood with synthesized Terrigen Mist, which would kill any non-Inhumans who were exposed to it. Her power, previously assumed to be longevity through a Healing Factor, was suddenly revealed to require her to literally drain the life out of other people to sustain herself (granted, she originally hated this power until her vivisection), which she attempts on her own daughter (who also happens to be an Inhuman) after she calls her out on the above plan and tries to stop her.
- Angel: During Season 3, Wesley translates a prophecy reading "The Father Will Kill The Son". Not quite sure how to handle the situation, he takes the baby away - for good - and even strikes Lorne unconscious when he finds out what's going on. To make that even worse, Wesley gets his throat cut and the baby taken away from him. And it was a false prophecy, anyway. Now Holtz has the child and takes him with him into a Hell Dimension, raising him to hate Angel.
- Battlestar Galactica: Given that the entire cast has been through hell backwards by the end of the pilot miniseries and it just goes From Bad to Worse after that, this trope is kind of understandable...
- The "Pegasus" arc has been accused of this by some critics, with Admiral Cain taking about twenty minutes to go from merely being a hard-assed martinet to ordering the rape of a pregnant woman as a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique and sentencing the crewmen who interfered to summary execution. In fact, the episode "Pegasus" had had to be radically trimmed to fit network time constraints; some of the footage that was lost (and reinstated on the DVD) implied the passing of more time than seems to go by in the episode as aired. The Razor movie, which came later, also expanded on her backstory; she was already a little unbalanced even before the fall of the Twelve Colonies, at which point something... broke, thus retconning the events of "Pegasus" into more of a Villainous Breakdown.
- There's also the episode where the woman put in charge of a tribunal takes about 24 hours to go completely nuts with power, and attempt to accuse the commanding officer who appointed her of the crime she's investigating.
- Similarly, in "Black Market", the leader of the organisation running it does a pretty good job of defending the need for a Black Market in the fleet. Then he talks about having child prostitutes, so Lee can shoot him without feeling guilty. Lee did acknowledge the argument about the need for a black market, though, given that he allows it to stay in business afterwards. He just wanted them to clearly understand where the Moral Event Horizon was.
- The Beauty Queen Of Jerusalem has two examples by Ephraim:
- The first shown is when he sets off a bomb at the club, killing several people.
- The first chronologically is when he murders a British soldier. Before this he'd only killed to protect his family.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- In Season 6, Willow goes from killing Warren as revenge for Tara to trying to kill the uninvolved other guys from the Trio. Then to hurting Buffy, Anya (who initially sympathized with her), and Giles and finally to trying to end the world. All within a couple of episodes which together take place within less than one day.
- The Initiative in season four was clearly using questionable methods in their study of demons, vampires, and other paranormal activities, but they were getting the job done and had effectively defanged Spike, one of history's most dangerous vampires. Then they decided that Buffy was a liability and tried to kill her. When it seemed like they were getting back on the slope, they took to torturing Oz (a good werewolf rather than an evil demon) and tried to kill the Slayer again.
- Faith. When she first showed up, she had a lot of problems, not the least of which was that she enjoyed slaying a little too much, but she was definitely a good guy. Then she accidentally killed a man and the guilt (combined with all the speeches made to her about why she should be feeling guilty) made her snap and go NUTS. Later on this happens even more when she gets yelled at for her actions (such as when she tried to kill Angel or saves Buffy and an evil slayer).
- Warren originally created a robot that would obey his every whim, but he eventually abandoned the android because he wanted a girlfriend that would be a partner in the relationship and he fell in love with a woman with her own ideas and personality. His creation of a Sex Bot and then abandoning it to "die" raises plenty of questions about his character, but he ultimately decides that he wants a woman that he can respect and interact with. In his later appearances in Season 6, he is a misogynistic bastard who tries to brainwash, and eventually kills, his ex-girlfriend because she would not submit to his desires.
- Charmed has a twist on this in Season 2's "Morality Bites"; after the sisters use their powers to pull a vengeful yet relatively harmless prank on a man who continually lets his dog defecate on their driveway, Phoebe has a premonition of being burned at the stake for killing someone with her powers a decade in the future. One adventure later, they are sent back to that point in time to prevent falling prey to this trope, worded well by Phoebe:Phoebe: Once you break the small rules, it's just a matter of time before the big ones are next.
- Cobra Kai: If you're a bullying victim and should enroll on the eponymous dojo that lives with the creed, "Strike First, Strike Hard, No Mercy", the chances are you're just going to be as bad as your bullies. Just ask Miguel, Hawk, and then Kenny.
- Miguel is the first student of Johnny to enroll to Cobra Kai to learn how to fight. Over time, Miguel starts adopting a vicious side of himself that somehow alienates him from Sam. Eventually, he starts to snap out of his sense quickly when he seems concerned of Kreese's presence.
- Hawk has it worse. While training with Cobra Kai under Johnny, and later Kreese, this causes him to come to blows with his best friend Demetri, to the point he breaks Demetri's arm. Ultimately, all it does is to alienate people around him, and eventually realizes how far he had fallen. Since then, Hawk rejoins Johnny and Eagle Fang, later Miyagi-do and made amends with Demetri.
- Kenny started out as a lonely child with most of his family are absent in his life (Shawn is in juvie, his father is at the military, and his mother is busy at work). And being bullied by Anthony LaRusso's posse is what compelled him to enroll to Cobra Kai through Shawn's suggestion. Over time, Kenny becomes increasingly vicious thanks to Kreese and Silver's indoctrination while Anthony is on the path of making things right with him. Unfortunately, Kenny is caught up with his anger and beats Anthony senseless until Robby intervenes. He doesn't stop there in season 5, he kicks him at a pool while trapped in inner tubes and giving him a swirly on an uncleaned toilet.
- An episode of The Commish features a Vigilante Man who initially only humiliates bad guys who deserve it. But when an accused rapist/murderer is found not guilty (for good reason), the vigilante (who believes he got Off on a Technicality) clubs him to death, setting the team on his case.
- Seems to happen about once a season in Doctor Who. A few notable examples;
- In "The Mind of Evil", a scientist invents a machine that removes criminal impulses from the human mind, and offers it to the government as a means of dealing with dangerous criminals without resorting to the death penalty. Turns out its inventor is actually the Master and the device brainwashes people to serve him.
- In "Genesis of the Daleks", Davros invents the Dalek (or "Mark III Travel Machine", as he initially calls it) ostensibly for the purpose of making life easier for mutated Kaleds. When his superiors start getting cold feet about the research, he has the entire Kaled race wiped out.
- The audio drama Davros, released much later, showed that Davros was already lying in a heap at the bottom of the slope by this point. Not hard, when you're the leading scientist of a race of ersatz Nazis...
- The original Daleks in "The Daleks" do this too. They're paranoid and threatening, but as the result of a nuclear war with another race that devastated their country and turned them into mutants incapable of surviving outside of travel machines in a specially-built environment with metal floors. While they trick the humans into it, all they really want is anti-radiation drugs which would allow them to leave their suits. It then turns out that their bodies have adapted to need radiation and the withdrawal sends them mad before killing them, so they decide to shoot out a load of radioactive waste onto the planet again when they realise they can't survive without radiation.
- In "The Unquiet Dead", gaseous beings called the Gelth need to animate human corpses to house themselves and hence survive — creepy, if not evil. They ask to come to Victorian Cardiff, and the Doctor, dismissing the Squick of his companions, agrees. After the Gelth come through, however, it turns out they lied about their numbers and intentions. They want to take over all of Earth's living bodies — but even before we learn this, we can tell that they're malevolent, because shortly after getting the Doctor's go-ahead, they switch from pale blue to bright red and Satanic. Apparently, they were "demonic" all along, see?
- In "Rise of the Cybermen", when the British government refuses to fund John Lumic's Cyberman research, he kills the leadership and begins forcibly cyber-converting the British population.
- "Partners in Crime" begins with an alien conspiracy that... helps people lose weight effortlessly by giving them pills that cause one pound of fat to turn into an adorable little creature called an Adipose every night. While this comes off as slightly sinister, it's hard to see how they could ever be an enemy- until, of course, the "breeders" of the Adipose decide that their current method is too slow and try to make Adipose out of the entire body of their victims, killing them in the process. Jumping? More like a great, flying leap.
- It's implied in "The Runaway Bride" and more-or-less stated in "Journey's End" that the reason the Doctor travels around with a companion is so that he has someone to remind him not to do this, since he has so much power and gets into such intense and painful situations it would be hard for him not to slip, and hard for anyone to stop him once he starts sliding. The Doctor officially jumps in two stories in which he is without a companion, though he does manage to return to the side of right in both:
- The Tenth Doctor does this in the last 10 or so minutes of "The Waters of Mars". After having spent the whole episode with a group of people destined to die, the Doctor snaps and decides to save them after most of them have already been killed. Just moments after saving the remaining people (in the most epic way possible), the Doctor decides that he can mess with the timeline in any way he sees fit, completely ignoring his species' laws. At this point, the Doctor is almost antagonistic. Thankfully the Doctor is only in this state for one scene and is brought down a couple of pegs before he can really do anything.
- The Twelfth Doctor does this in the Series 9 finale "Hell Bent". All season he'd been struggling with how much he could or couldn't do to save those around him — letting O'Donnell die and being willing to die himself but still trying to save his beloved companion Clara Oswald from a preordained death in "Before the Flood", and immortalizing Ashildr/Me in "The Girl Who Died" because it was the only way he could save her from the grave. In "Face the Raven", he considered going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge that would have slaughtered innocents over Clara's actual death but Clara talked him down. But he spent the next episode, "Heaven Sent", not only imprisoned and completely alone but subjected to Cold-Blooded Torture. So in "Hell Bent", which takes place after he escapes, he is effectively insane and once again tries to alter a fixed point in time by undoing Clara's death altogether, which took place billions of years ago in-universe by the time he manages to get the means to do so; he has no plan to avert the destruction of the universe this would cause and basically hopes he'll get lucky, and justifies his actions by invoking his "duty of care" and Dude, Where's My Reward? For bonus points, he also intends to Mind Rape Clara of her memories of him. But Clara herself manages to talk him down, and he returns to his best self by not only giving up his Tragic Dream but losing his memories of her, which means he no longer is consumed by the horrors that drove him to extremes.
- In the final season of Elementary, Odin Reichenbach is initially presented as a Well-Intentioned Extremist — he kills people, but only "bad people" and he sincerely believes he's saving innocent lives by doing so. Then, when Sherlock tries to show him another way, by rehabilitating one of the potential killers he's identified, he murders innocent people and frames the guy rather than admit he's wrong.
- Fringe: Walternate originally just wanted to save his universe, even if it meant destroying a parallel universe and its inhabitants. Then he attempted to kill his son and the mother of his grandchild.
- Game of Thrones:
- Theon condones the murder of two innocent boys to make it appear as though he has executed the Stark boys Bran and Rickon.
- Tyrion has clearly snapped by the end of his trial, but his murders of Tywin and Shae cement how far he's gone from the noble anti-hero he once was. Oddly he sort of climbs back up the slope in later seasons, trying to protect his brother and sister from Daenerys's wrath (unlike his book counterpart who is openly in favor of killing everyone in King's Landing and even demands to Daenerys that he be allowed to rape his sister Cersei).
- The most extreme case is Daenerys just flat-out snapping in the final season and burning most of King's Landing to the ground, soldiers and civilians and even children alike, an act that flies completely in the face of all the principles she ever held or espoused. The most common theory is that this was a poorly-executed case of Character Rerailment after the showrunners had received the ending outline from George R. R. Martin and realized that their depiction of Daenerys as a flawless heroine had completely glossed over every hint that she would end up as the villain of her storyline.
- There are few series with more examples than Gotham.
- The prime example that the whole series explores in his descent to murder and monstrosity is Edward Nygma. He was in love with Kringle and demanded her abusive boyfriend's face to leave her alone. He responded by assaulting him, and in the ensuing conflict he ended up stabbing him to death in an extreme move of self-defense. Things went really downhill when Kringle found out and during a psychotic outburst of panic he strangled her to death without even realizing it. When he saw what he did, he lost any resemblance of a conscience and murdered a possible witness and then he did two atrocities in one strike by murdering an innocent cop in order to frame Jim for the latter's murder.
- The Balloonman is one of the only examples who can make anyone question what is right and what is wrong through his extreme actions. The whole point of his character was that he was tired of seeing big criminals getting away with ruining lives because they were part of the system and started targeting corrupt officials. Even James looks uncertain and confused about the moral questions that arise during their showdown. Too bad he chose to close the debate he was winning by saying forget it and trying to shoot him despite himself previously admitting that Jim was a good cop.
- Even the much darker Jerome Valeska whose deeds would need a page of their own, says that his mother (and his first kill) horribly abused and mistreated him and evidence shows that he is likely telling for once the truth.
- By season 3 we get once more an almost textbook example with infected Captain Barnes who starts with killing serial murderers who get pardoned despite the overwhelming evidence to what they did (once again) and ends up being a walking, talking Black-and-White Insanity trope by himself once he tells Gordon that if he isn't with him, he is guilty too and tries to shoot him. And all this while rightfully pointing out that James did the same thing to Theo. Its an almost example, because he was infected and wasn't just being himself. It seems by now that James Gordon is one of the only who didn't go all the way over the edge.
- Hannibal: Will goes from doing some morally ambiguous, but still understandable things, (such as trying to have Hannibal killed) to something unambiguously evil in "Naka-Choko". It turns out to be a con to convince Hannibal that he'd gone slope-jumping, which might not have been a con after all. It's complicated at best, mostly because Will's feelings towards Hannibal are also very complicated.
- Justified: Dickie Crowe is a slimy Jerkass from the beginning, but he has quite a few Pet the Dog moments to show he's not all bad and his plans were prone to blowing up in his face, making him come across as one of the lesser evils for Raylan to face. "Full Commitment" has him murder two of his men in cold blood for trying to abandon him, and he goes on to kill Helen just to spite Raylan and Arlo, cementing him as one of the series' evilest characters.
- An episode of MacGyver involved a business owner attempting to have the Challengers Club shut down because one of its members stole a truck from his printing business. What could have been a two-sided conflict between a racist business owner - albeit one who had a legitimate axe to grind - and a teenager conditioned by poverty and racism to view white people as the enemy shifts step by step into a case of the boy being a clear-cut victim of The Man. First it turns out the business owner framed the kid for stealing the truck as a pretext to have the Challengers Club shut down. Then he escalates to murdering the club owner. Then it turns out he prints white supremacist propaganda and thinks "niggers should be drowned at birth".
- Lincoln Potter was the Hero Antagonist of Season 4 of Sons of Anarchy, depicted as a largely well-intentioned but morally ambiguous Crusading Lawyer, with a manipulative streak that occasionally shone through. When he reappears as the de-facto Big Bad of Mayans M.C., he has become a cold, ruthless, Faux Affably Evil authoritarian who will use any means, legal or illegal, to achieve his goals. He explains that coming within a hairs breadth of bringing down SAMCRO and the Gallindo Cartel, only to be forced to walk away at the last second due to interference from the CIA, who want to keep Gallindo's gun and drug trade open for inscrutable foreign espionage purposes, made him decide that there was no point trying to bring justice to the world or make things better, and instead he should just maintain the status quo in favour of the powerful.
- In the Merlin BBC series, Morgana was understandably angry and bitter, but nevertheless sympathetic. However, between seasons two and three, she transformed into a smirking villain.
- In one episode of Monk, when Captain's Stottlemeyer's wife is gravely injured in the fallout of a union assassination, Stottlemeyer proceeds to teeter dangerously close to the edge in his hunt for the sniper. Near the end, he very nearly launches a raid on the suspected union until Monk manages to crack the case.
- Season two of Murder One featured a storyline about Clifford Banks, a serial killer who tracked down and executed criminals who escaped justice, or had an unsuitably short prison sentence. He started out on this path through the murder of his retarded brother, he never kills innocent people, and throughout the arc, a few people comment that "sometimes the streets need sweeping." Any moral ambiguity is then done away with by the lawyers finding out that Clifford actually killed his brother himself over his frustration about giving up his whole life to care for him, causing a mental breakdown that directed his guilt outwards onto other criminals.
- Robyn Hood (2023): Prince spends the majority of the first season being a mild Jerkass who's scummy at worst but is notably opposing a gang of criminals who repeatedly target him and almost constantly tries to find a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict. Then the Season Finale reveals his Kill the Poor plan that he's apparently been cooking up for decades.
- In the pilot episode of The Shield, Vic Mackey partakes in numerous dubious acts including the use of excessive force during arrests, working with a drug dealer and beating a suspect with a phone book in order to make him talknote , but other cops justify his actions by stating that he gets tangible results. Then, at the end of the episode, he shoots another police officer in the face to prevent him from gathering evidence against Vic's team, firmly establishing him as a Villain Protagonist for the rest of the series.
- Holly in Slings & Arrows wants to streamline the Festival's business end and replace most of its William Shakespeare with musicals. This only marks her as a villain in the context of a show where Shakespeare is Serious Business, until she starts abusing her boyfriend and deliberately aggravating the heart problem of a board member who disagrees with her.
- Smallville:
- The season 8 finale took an incredible amount of heat for various reasons, and one of them was this trope.
- Season 9 had multiple concurrent threads of Well-Intentioned Extremism colliding into one big Self-Fulfilling prediction of doom:
- Tess Mercer established an alliance with the Kandorians to save Earth from mankind's destructive ways but in the Bad Future, she collaborated fully with Zod's despotic rule over a dying human populace.
- Amanda Waller as the head of Checkmate employed threats, murders, and kidnappings to prepare for a coming war against the aforementioned Kandorians. Then she casually ordered the execution of a group of non-powered Kandorians, cementing her status as a Fantastic Racist.
- General Zod's interest in restoring his and his fellow Kandorians' powers (against Clark's objections) made sense in light of the repeated violent threats they faced from Amanda Waller and other humans Properly Paranoid about aliens among them. After Zod and the Kandorians get their powers restored, he destroys Checkmate, kills Faora (and their unborn child) for going against him, and plans to take over Earth with the Kandorians loyal to him and make it into a New Krypton.
- Stargate SG-1:
- Gerak in season 9. At least he got a redemptive death, though.
- The Ori could stray into this. At first, it seems that, while their practices are primitive, their ultimate goals are noble enough, helping others to achieve ascension. Then it's revealed that this is all a lie, and the Ori are manipulating people's belief to gain more power.
- The rogue NID. At first, they're stealing alien technology with the purpose of using it to defend Earth, making them into Knight Templars. Then it turns out they're just in it for the money.
- Star Trek:
- In Star Trek: Voyager, it's revealed that after giving the Hirogen holographic technology from Voyager, the Hirogen quickly got bored with the standard holograms and started creating more intelligent holograms to make their hunts better. These holograms eventually became self-aware and rebelled, before freeing others hologram in the area. Even Voyager's EMH joins their cause, agreeing that this is technically a form of slavery. Unfortunately, they quickly move onto anyone who uses humanoid holograms at all, regardless as to whether those holograms are actually sentient. The Doctor is horrified when their leader brutally murders a man to free the holographic equivalent of Clippy.
- Deliberately invoked by the writers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the case of Gul Dukat. Due to the charisma with which Marc Alaimo played the character, and his sometime-alliances with the main characters, a significant number of fans developed a Draco in Leather Pants effect, forgetting that Dukat had been a genocidal military dictator. To combat this in later seasons the writers had Dukat go mad, declare that he should have exterminated the entire Bajoran race, and finally become the series' equivalent of a Satan-worshipper.
- Invoked in-universe in the episode "For The Uniform", Sisko realises that Michael Eddington is essentially living out a heroic fantasy as leader of the Maquis, and has come to view Sisko as an Inspector Javert-esque Anti-Villain consumed by his obsession with catching Eddington (which isn't completely inaccurate). Sisko starts acting like he's completely lost it and decided to indiscriminately bomb Maquis colonies, manipulating Eddington into surrendering by framing it as a Heroic Sacrifice to stop his mad rampage.
- Supernatural:
- Season 2, "Bloodlust". The Winchester brothers met rogue vampire hunter Gordon Walker while looking for a nest of vampires. Gordon seems like a decent enough chap and a worthy ally, and Dean likes his "kill all the monsters and enjoy the hunt" philosophy. Dean and Sam end up fighting when Sam reveals that other hunters say Gordon is bad news. Before this can go any further, Gordon takes a swan dive off the slope when the local vampires turn out to actually be peaceful, having sworn off killing humans, yet he still attempts to slaughter them. Then he tries to feed Sam to the head vampire to prove she's still a monster, and attacks Dean when they try to protect her. Bad move.
- This is Castiel's entire character arc during Season 6. Desperate to defeat Raphael in the civil war in Heaven, Castiel begins performing many morally questionable acts, not the least of which is allying with Crowley, and rapidly skipping several shades of grey. This ultimately culminates in the season finale, where he jumps right into Villain Protagonist territory when he absorbs all the souls of Purgatory and declares himself the new God.
- Whilst on a smaller scale, Castiel's ascension to God and later 'death' causes Dean to take a much harsher stance on supernatural beings throughout Season 7, most apparent in 'The Girl Next Door'.
- Season 9 and Season 10 had this happen to Dean after he took on the Mark of Cain, with him becoming more violent and prone to murderous rages in Season 9. He allows himself to be killed at the end of the S9 finale in fear of what he's becoming, but the Mark wouldn't let him die, thus reviving him as a Demon, but he's cured and turned back into a human in the beginning of S10. The Mark, however, still remains, and he eventually relapses mid-Season 10, with Charlie's death being the catalyst for him giving himself up fully to the Mark's influence. The Season 10 finale has him summon Death the Horsemen in an attempt to have the Mark removed permanently, only for Death to refuse, because removing the Mark without passing it on to someone else will unleash the Darkness, an entity that was locked inside the Mark of Cain since before creation, and is the reason the Mark corrupts anyone who bears it, thus making it the ultimate Big Bad of the series, by proxy of being the original source of evil in Supernatural.
- Teen Wolf: Lydia references this trope, warning Allison over the phone that Scott might fall off of it, starting with being thirty minutes late for dates and eventually ending up at domestic violence.
- Xena: Warrior Princess:
- Najara, a character who either converted or killed criminals. Rather quickly, Najara is revealed to be insane, and can't tell the difference between obvious criminals and lesser offenders.
- Calisto has a legitimate beef with Xena (Xena killed her family and wiped out her village), but every time she shows up she racks up more collateral damage and Disproportionate Retribution, becoming increasingly less sympathetic in the process. A later episode reveals that Calisto, who has time traveled to the day her parents died, is the one who killed her parents and left her younger self to die. Note that none of this reduces her hate for Xena, showing that she doesn't even care at this point.
