As a Death Trope, ALL Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Killing the Ones You Love in Live-Action TV series.
- On The 100, Clarke has to kill Finn, the boy she had fallen for, so at least his death will be quick, compared to what the Grounders have planned for him.
- In the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, Colonel Tigh has to poison his wife after she betrays the resistance on New Caprica (which she did to save his life).
- Buffy to Angel in the Season 2 finale is the obvious one (although he recovered).
- And, as evidenced in flashbacks on Angel, Holtz had to kill his daughter after Angelus (or possibly Darla) turned her into a vampire.
- Also in Angel, Gunn stakes his sister after she is turned into a vampire.
- In Charmed, Phoebe needs to overcome her emotions and vanquish her husband and Heel–Face Revolving Door Cole. Three times.
- Steven Moffat's not letting off with this trope either, playing it heartbreakingly straight with Rory in Doctor Who, who accidentally shoots Amy in an attempt to hold off Auton control of his mind.
- It's kind of a theme on Farscape, how many times the crew members kill or almost kill each other.
- Part of Zhaan's backstory is that she killed her lover because he tried to seize power on their homeworld with the help of the Peacekeepers. Subverted with D'Argo who was wrongfully imprisoned for killing his wife (she was actually killed by her own brother.)
- Indirect example: Aeryn betrayed her lover to the Peacekeepers; he was arrested for treason. They undoubtedly tortured and killed him, which would not have happened if Aeryn hadn't turned him in.
- As a Television Without Pity recapper put it: "Every time John's confronted with an Aeryn that's not what she seems, that doesn't love him, and his heart breaks, and he kills her, take a shot."
- Game of Thrones:
- Meera puts her brother, Jojen, out of his misery in "The Children."
- Not done for the usual reasons but when Tyrion encounters Shae in his father's bedchambers, she is strangled to death by Tyrion in self-defense after she pulls a knife on him. Afterwards, he apologizes to her corpse and admits to his father that he still loved her.
- Stannis loved his brother Renly once, but that didn't stop him from killing him (thus preventing Renly from getting the chance to kill him as he'd planned). Later, thanks to a Sadistic Choice between love for his daughter Shireen and defeating the monstrous Boltons, Melisandre convinces Stannis that he must sacrifice his daughter in order to gain the magic he needs to overcome the winter storms so he can defeat the Boltons holding the North. Melisandre burns her to gain this magic.
- Jon tries and fails to persuade his love Daenerys to be merciful after she goes off the deep end and massacres a city full of people who surrendered to her. She intends to continue this destruction throughout the world, convinced this is how she brings about utopia, and Jon reluctantly assassinates her to spare Westeros the tyrannical reign of a Mad Queen. She dies in his arms as he grieves.
- This is the philosophy of Big Bad John Wakefield on Harper's Island. He also tries to make Henry, his son and accomplice in the murders, kill the woman he loves. Henry refuses.
- In House, Wilson does this when he turns off Amber's life support. For everybody else, though, it was Alas, Poor Scrappy.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022):
- "...The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding": In a case of Accidental Murder, Claudia drinks all of Charlie's blood during their make-out session. She's extremely distraught about the death of her First Love afterwards.
- "The Thing Lay Still": In the climax, Louis de Pointe du Lac lacerates Lestat de Lioncourt's throat to escape from his lover's Domestic Abuse and to eliminate the threat to Claudia's life (Lestat had conspired to murder their vampire daughter). However, Louis is still in love with his (ex-)boyfriend, so he prevents Claudia from burning Lestat's body, which means the latter is Not Quite Dead.
- Satoru Tojo aka Kamen Rider Tiger from Kamen Rider Ryuki kills several of his companions, to the point its safer to be his enemy than his friend. Among them is his mentor Kagawa, who tried to teach him a true hero should be able to sacrifice those they love to achieve the greater good. Tojo, however, interpreted this as that one needs to kill his loved ones to become a hero. Therefore, he kills several people he cares for in a misguided attempt to become a hero.
- The Man in the High Castle: After Heussman's failed usurpation of the Reich leadership, Josef is forced to personally execute his father to prove his loyalty to the Nazi Party. Afterwards, his godfather and new Fuehrer, Heinrich Himmler, pats him on the cheek and has him Reassigned to Antarctica.
- In the Masters of Horror episode "Imprint", Christopher believes the prostitute Komomo to be the love his life. He ends up accidentally murdering her during his hallucinations.
- In the fourth season finale of The Mentalist, Lorelei suggests that in order to become his disciple, Jane bring Red John a gift — the dead body of Teresa Lisbon, his close friend and partner. Subverted in that he only pretends to kill her.
- In Merlin, Merlin poisons Morgana — who was unaware that she was the vessel of the Knights of Medhir — because he did what he had to do in order to save Camelot, but at the price of killing his friend and someone he cared about. Many fans, while praising the acting of Colin and Katie, did not agree with Merlin's actions. Also a Shoot the Dog moment.
- In NCIS, Ziva kills her brother Ari and is never able to mention him again without visibly stiffening or crying.
- Night Visions: The episode "Afterlife" revolves around a man who revives at his own funeral, and finds it impossible to readjust to life again because he can't forget the idyllic afterlife he has vague memories of. He ends up trying to convince his family to kill themselves with him so they can move to the afterlife together, and nearly forces his daughter to jump off a building with him. She's saved at the last second by her mother, and he just shrugs and jumps by himself. To twist the knife further, the ending reveals that the "afterlife" he remembered was just the stained glass window in the roof of the funeral parlor, which was the first thing he saw when he woke up in his coffin
- In Nikita, Alex shoots Thom, whom she had feelings for and even kisses him before he dies.
- In Once Upon a Time Regina has done this three times. The first time was when she killed her father (who is also one of the only people who love her) to get her revenge. The second was when her one true love was brought Back from the Dead (by someone else) and Came Back Wrong, necessitating a Mercy Kill. She really didn't take that well. Finally, Snow White tricks her into unintentionally killing her mother, who is pretty much the last person left that she does love. The end result has left her very broken, very bitter, and very dangerous.
- Played with in Robin Hood. In the finale of Season 2, Guy of Gisborne stabs Marian to death after she reveals her love for Robin Hood. The crime of passion ends with him being guilt-ridden for the rest of the show's duration, and even in his dying moments, he doesn't hold out any hope that he'll ever see her again in the afterlife. He also gives his little sister a vial of poison so that she can kill herself, even after she tells him: "you loved me once."
- Russell T Davies seems to like this trope. In The Second Coming, Steven Baxter, who also happens to be the son of God, is poisoned by his girlfriend Judith. She does tell him that the food is poisoned, but he finds that she is right, he must die.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Worf is paralyzed from the waist down and asks Commander Riker, as his friend, to do this for him in a sort of Klingon ritual assisted suicide. Riker refuses on the grounds that under the ritual, it's properly the duty of the eldest son. Unwilling to ask this of Alexander, Worf opts for a dangerous experimental surgery instead.
- Star Trek: Picard:
- In "Stardust City Rag", at Icheb's urging, Seven of Nine performs a Mercy Kill on her surrogate son, who's dying in agony after being mutilated by a black market surgeon for his Borg components.
- Later in the same episode, as a Zhat Vash mole, Jurati deactivates the hematic micro-repair unit that was stabilizing Maddox's cardiovascular function, which causes him to die. He was her boyfriend before the Federation's synth ban.
- In "The Impossible Box", Narek follows his orders to terminate Soji despite developing romantic feelings for her.
- Examples abound in Supernatural, both with the main cast and side characters.
- Bobby kills his wife when she's possessed by a demon. Then he kills her again when Death brings her back to life but learns that she's turning into a flesh-eating zombie. Naturally, it pains him a great deal.
Bobby: She was the love of my life. How many times do I have to kill her?- This is the background of recurring antagonist Blood Knight Gordon Walker, whose sister was turned into a vampire.
- In the Season 1 finale John Winchester ordered Sam to shoot him with the Colt to take the demon out as well. (He didn't.) And a few episodes later John's final direction to Dean was that he 'had to save Sam,' or he 'might have to kill him.'
- Sam's mid-Season 2 insistence that Dean promises to do just that if Sam goes darkside. Dean promised. He was lying.
- Sam's first girlfriend after his episode-one bereavement turns out to be a werewolf who asks him to kill her. Or there's that time Sam nearly strangled Dean to death, or that time Sam shot Dean, or that time Sam was possessed and shot Dean and possessed and killed him in the Bad Future.
- Downplayed in Season 6, with soulless Sam determined to prevent Dean from restoring his soul. Rogue angel Balthazar informs him that to get his soul to reject reunion with his body he needs to pollute it with a crime such as patricide. Robo-Sam can't feel love, but apparently, Sam's regard for Bobby as a surrogate father is enough for murdering him to be 'good enough.'
- The Archangel Michael spends Season 5 attempting to kill his beloved brother Lucifer in accordance with God's will.
- "Hammer of the Gods" has a fight to the death between Lucifer and his other beloved brother Gabriel. Lucifer wins.
- Once you've got Dean messing around with an Artifact of Doom called the Mark of Cain, of course, the characters have every reason to fear that Sam may have to kill Dean to prevent the evil-inducing effects of the Mark, or that this induced evil itself might make Dean kill Sam.
- Turns out that if Dean dies with the Mark he simply comes back as a demon who is only too happy to give into the Mark's influence. Even Death himself can't kill Dean permanently but does offer to transport him to a Prison Dimension where he can't hurt anyone else. The only condition is that Dean has to kill Sam because Death knows that as long as Sam is still alive he will tirelessly search for a way to bring Dean back. Dean ends up killing Death instead.
- Plenty of lesser instances, particularly where family members or Love Interests of both recurring and incidental cast turn out to be or turn into monsters.
- That Mitchell and Webb Look: Played for very dark laughs in one sketch, where a man strangles his pregnant wife after she declares that not only does she not mind the avocado-coloured bathroom, she actually likes it.
- In Torchwood: Children of Earth, Jack has to sacrifice his grandson.
