People who are Not Good with Rejection in Live-Action TV.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: The android AIDA, having recently become a real woman named Ophelia, goes positively ballistic upon Fitz quietly revealing he has abandoned the feelings for her he had inside the Lotus-Eater Machine of the Framework, in favor of his actual love for Simmons. It's quite the sight to behold — having never felt human emotions before now, she screams bloody murder and begins demolishing everything with her custom-engineered Inhuman powers. Afterward, she abandons all of her previously logical behavior in favor of wreaking as much havoc on the cast as possible.
- Are You Afraid of the Dark?:
- Marjorie and Joshua were in love and planned to run off and get married. However, Marjorie's parents somehow found out and stopped her from going. Joshua was upset and believed she chose not to come, so he wanted everyone to know how much he loved her. So he climbed up to the ledge they would go to at the top of the cliff. Then he began to draw the symbol of their love for everyone to see. The cliff was too steep and dangerous and before he could finish drawing the symbol, he fell down. He died thinking she chose not to come and rejected him.
- In "The Tale of the Dream Girl", Johnny is freaked out when Donna keeps approaching him after he finds out she's a ghost and forgets about their history together. (He's a ghost too). When he rejects her in confusion she sounds and acts really upset.
- In "The Tale Of The Captured Souls" Peter is really an 83-year-old man who steals people's souls through his mirrors in order to stay young. To this end, it nearly kills her parents. He also develops something for Danielle (it's not clear whether it's romantic or platonic but it's definitely twisted) and when she definitely refuses his We Can Rule Together offer he threatens to take her youth as well.
- Bates Motel: After Norma and Sheriff Romero breakup, she returns home panting heavily before finally breaking down crying hysterically about it.
- Sheriff Romero reacts to the breakup by trashing his office.
- Norman does not approve of anyone trying to get between him and his mother whom he admits he has sexual feelings for. Sheriff Romero marries her so she can have insurance to help pay for Norman's medical bills. He maintains that he's not happy with the arrangement and tries to get Romero to leave. He looks for a moment like he meant to attack Romero with an axe at one point and ended up trying to commit a Murder-Suicide with his mother so he could be Together in Death with her. When she wound up dying and he lived he ended up digging up her body and talking to it while hallucinating that she was alive.
- Leonard, Raj, and Amy have this trait to a degree in The Big Bang Theory. Leonard gets upset and tries to hide his sadness whenever Penny goes out with another guy, Raj tells a girl "If you say we're not boyfriend and girlfriend I will never be happy again", and Amy gets quite depressed whenever Sheldon pulls away from her or doesn't give her the affection she wants.
- The Blacklist: In the episode "Lady Ambrosia" Tom’s ex-girlfriend kisses him and asks him to come with her– Tom politely turns her down, because he already has someone (Liz) and he wants to get back to her. She looks upset at this and later gives him one more chance to come with her. Again, he refuses. Without missing a beat, his ex jumps out of the van and gets her men to shoot everybody in the van. Basically, she shoots Tom who survives and has her entire team murdered as well. She then tells someone to set fire to the van with the bodies inside. When Tom escapes and visits her she attacks him telling him she's doing it because she's still angry he refused her. When Tom begs her to stop she says "I'll try" but later it seems like she was lying and is still holding a grudge.
- Spike of Buffy the Vampire Slayer took his repeated rejections from Buffy quite badly, and it leads to Attempted Rape.
- Then there's Tucker Wells, who trains hell-beasts to kill everyone at the Senior Prom because he asked one girl to go with him and she turned him down.
- Anya was cheated on by her boyfriend (possibly husband) Olaf. So she turned him into a troll and became a vengeance demon, dedicating the next thousand years to punishing men who wrong their female love interests. Eventually, she is forcefully turned human again, but three years later she is left at the altar and becomes a demon again for a few months.
- Cheers episode "A Ditch in Time". Sam Malone gets involved with Amanda Boyer (Carol Kane), who becomes obsessed with and possessive of men she goes out with. When he tries to break up with her she implies that she'll commit suicide if he does.
- CSI: NY has the rejected characters go the "possessive" route:
- Ella McBride was portrayed as one of these for Mac Taylor. She followed him to the grocery store, gave him fake evidence so she could "help" with the case. She even slit her wrists in an attempt for him to pay attention to her. She also wrote on a card on her wall that was decorated with a picture of a crime scene "I will make him love me." Nothing has come of it so far, except that Mac visited her in a group home and she said something about an eyeball dropping into coffee which happened to Stella earlier in the episode while she was with Mac.
- Another episode centered around a man with two wives who was murdered. And the end of the episode it's revealed that his first wife killed him because she was jealous of the attention that he was giving to the second wife during sex. When asked why she didn't just get a divorce, the woman says that it was because she loved her husband too much.
- Stella's ex-boyfriend holds her hostage and tries to kill her after she breaks it off with him.
- Dancing on the Edge: It is implied that Jessie's refusal of Julian's sexual advances is what causes him to attack her.
- Desperate Housewives: George, a pharmacist, lusted after Bree once she ended their affair together and became jealous of her husband Rex. So he tampered with Rex's prescription drugs by replacing his heart medication with placebos which led to Rex's death. He also beats up and attempts to kill other people who look like they are trying to come in between him and Bree. He also drugged Bree at one point and was seriously considering taking advantage of her. He eventually proposed to Bree and pressured her into marrying him. After the engagement, he became increasingly possessive of her and increasingly violent.
- Carlos towards Gabrielle in the first season. She was cheating on him, but he ended up physically assaulting the wrong man twice (both of them turning out to be gay) and getting a prison sentence for it.
- Lila from Dexter. She had Dexter ambushed in a parking lot by a man who wanted to kill him because she thought it would bring them closer. When Dexter dumped her, she obsessively tried to win him back with methods including arson and framing one of his friends for sexual assault. She also burned down her ex-boyfriend's house with him still inside. Not to mention that said arson methods weren't just used on Dexter - she put Rita's kids, essentially her competition, in serious danger as well.
- Dollhouse: Sierra's rejection of Nolan causes her to get institutionalized, drugged, and involuntarily conscripted into the Dollhouse. Where she's booked on regular engagements with Nolan.
- Faith: Dear Lord, Ki Chul has some serious issues with this. At first, he'll play "nice" to gain the heart (loyalty) of those he's interested in but, the moment he perceives even a hint of rejection, he'll put them through hell on Earth.
- Flashpoint: The very first episode had a Croatian man murder his estranged wife, apparently because she rejected him. There are indications that he may have been mentally ill. The 50th episode had this one employee who was carefully fired because he was more interested in his boss than was proper. Unfortunately, he ends up coming back with a gun and shoots at least one person he comes across. He tries to propose marriage to his former boss, ring and all. She ends up rejecting him, which results in him getting violent and Ed having to shoot him dead. The interesting part was that the team had warned her that he is mentally ill and dangerous and yet she went and put herself in danger (at least to save an employee) anyway.
- When Blair dumps Chuck on Gossip Girl he puts a dating fatwa on her.
- Gotham:
- Barbara cheats on Jim Gordon with other men and women but flips out if she thinks he's cheating on her. When Barbara calls Gordon's penthouse, Ivy Pepper answers and lies that she is Gordon's friend. Barbara takes this as Ivy being Gordon's new lover and tells her to "Go to Hell." She also attacks Leslie with a knife presumably because she had gotten together with Gordon in her place. She later restrains Leslie and tries to stab her when informing her that she and Jim will get back together as well as making a Harassing Phone Call to both Jim and Leslie. To Jim, she tries to accuse Leslie of having attacked her and being insane when it's the other way around, and to Leslie, she calls her a bitch and says she hopes she dies screaming. And later when having Leslie and Jim drugged and tied up in a church. She's wearing her wedding dress in an attempt to force Jim to marry her and goes as far as to threaten to cut Leslie's face off to prove to Jim that she loves him more than Leslie does. It's implied that she holds a massive grudge against Jim dating Leslie over her and later tries to attack him with a knife too.
- Edward Nygma (The Riddler) develops Sanity Slippage and a split personality disorder partially because Ms. Kringle initially didn't return his affections and he killed her boyfriend when he found out how he treated her. He ends up accidentally killing her while telling her that he killed her boyfriend "for" her.
- In regards to the boyfriend (Tom), Ms. Kringle reveals to Edward that Tom threatened to kill her if she ever left him.
- And last but not least Theo Galavan who genuinely planned to have Jim at his side when he took over Gotham but due to Jim's refusal to bend to him finally orders him killed.
- Lost Girl. The protagonist is an incredibly hot succubus, so she's never been rejected in her life and has trouble dealing with it when Dyson does so.
- Seinfeld:
- Russell became obsessed with Elaine and when she rebuffed him he acted increasingly unhinged and resorted to desperate measures to be with her which resulted in his death.
- In the Cadillac episode Marissa Tomei is interested in George. He likes her as well but informs her he's engaged offhandedly and in response, she punches him in the face and storms off.
- Joe Davola had a Stalker Shrine made of pictures he had taken of Elaine without her noticing. Naturally, this creeps Elaine out. He later becomes suspicious and thinks she cheated on him. This causes him to run around searching for her and Jerry dressed as a clown.
- Hannibal
- It's implied Dr. Bloom's rejection of Will Graham (because she thinks he's unstable) didn't do any favors for his mental health.
- Hannibal's love for Will only deepens in season 3, which worsens his more spiteful, possessive tendencies. He leaves a "valentine from a broken man" for Will in the form of a corpse wrapped into a heart, takes Will captive in Italy and attempts to cut open his skull to eat his brain, and saves him from Mason's wrath (carrying him in almost the exact way another Hannibal Lecter did his love interest). Hannibal then proceeds to give himself up to the FBI, potentially being put away for life, just so that he can get back at Will for rejecting him. He also attempts having Will's wife and step-son killed by another killer, just to get Will's attention.
- "Creepy Connie" takes Luke's lack of interest very poorly on Jessie.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: How does Sauron respond to Galadriel's rejection of him? He roars in fury and then traps her in an illusion of her drowning. He also seems to have actually pushed her into the river because that's where Elrond finds her.
- In Lost, resident Magnificent Bastard Ben Linus had a crush-turned-obsession on Juliet. She, on the other hand, was with Goodwin. You don't need a degree to figure out what happens to the poor fool.
- Misfits: Greg the probation worker. He's creepy in general but starts attempting to seduce Finn after he sees Alex having sex with him (long story). At one point he also mentions having beaten up a young man who rejected his advances.
- The Musketeers: Rochefort does not take Queen Anne's rejection of him well if the attempts to make her love him, false imprisonment, accusations of treason, near-strangulation and deliberately endangering and wanting to see everyone she loves dead are any indication.
- The Nanny: C.C. shows shades of this towards Maxwell (as early as Season One, her therapist has diagnosed C.C. with being clinically obsessed with him). It gets much more severe after Fran and Maxwell announce their engagement. Upon hearing the news, C.C. immediately starts twitching, attacks the messengers who brought her the news (she's holding one of their hats, torn to shreds, in the next scene), and actually ends up spending a few episodes in a mental asylum (in Real Life actress Lauren Lane was taking time off because she was about to give birth). She gets better by the end of the series though.
- Fran gets her own stalker in the form of Jeffrey Needleman, an old classmate from middle and high school. He threatens to fling himself out a window if Fran doesn't start a relationship with him. At one point before this, he gives her an old makeup kit, explaining that it's the same one their fifth-grade teacher confiscated from Fran. Cue Fran's response: "And you saved it...all these years. How sweet...and yet disturbing!"
- Nashville: Avery is together with Juliette though he repeatedly gets so fed up with her antics and behavior that he rejects her a couple of times. She resents this and is adamant to win him back, flaunts her pregnancy to get him to pay attention to her, drinks heavily, takes drugs, and when he makes it clear he wants nothing to do with her anymore she wanders over to the edge of a building to jump off it. Her manager saves her though and dies in her place by accident.
- In the TV movie No One Would Tell we have Bobby (played by Fred Savage) towards his girlfriend Stacy.
- Orange Is the New Black:
- Suzanne can get pretty nasty in season 1 when she believes Piper spurned her. She gets over it.
- Alex admits she turned to heroin after Piper left her.
- Piper doesn't take her lovers rejecting her well but if she cheats then it's okay with her. In particular, after several occasions when a (sometimes well-meaning) Alex screwed Piper over, Piper finally gets pretty twisted revenge: she gets a freed Alex thrown back into prison with her. She says part of her motivation for this is because she doesn't want to be without Alex.
- Chang ordered her gang-mates to cut out the gall bladder of the man who rejected her.
- Chris Keller in Oz in regards to Beecher who spurned his affections which makes him act violent and ultimately kills himself and frames it on Beecher. Also, Ryan in regards to Dr. Nathan as he develops a crush on her and he kills her husband when he finds out she's married.
- Adebisi goes into a depression, vomits, and smokes weed after Shirley rejects him.
- Unit Manager Tim McManus forms a brief liaison with prison guard Claire Howell. When he tries to break off the relationship she assaults him in his office (to the delight of watching inmates), then charges him with sexual harassment when he tries to fire her. Howell's later actions definitely cast her in the role of a villain — she assaults (and in one case murders) inmates, as well as using them for her own sexual gratification whether they want it or not. Also, when Ryan said they should stop their sexual relationship she threatened him telling him "It's not over till I say it's over!" Also, when Chris rejected her sexual advances she beat him up.
- Beecher got quite pissed off when he learned that Keller, the man he fell in love with, was working for Schillinger his enemy and told him he never loved him to begin with. It got worse for him following that, meaning Schillinger and Keller break his arms and legs.
- Queer as Folk (US): A mild version in the case of Brian and Brandon. Brian is used to getting whomever he wants, whenever he wants. When Brandon rejects him in the backroom of Babylon, Brian has issues letting it go.
- Rectify: Ted Jr. is a Crazy Jealous Guy over Daniel's obvious interest in his wife Tawney, informs Daniel that Tawney is "off-limits", gets very upset and becomes violent. He also threatens to press charges if Daniel comes near Tawney again. One reason being that Tawney, in turn, has feelings for Daniel as well. After Tawney leaves him, Ted Jr. is shown stalking her without her knowledge, drinks heavily, and beats up another guy partly out of frustration and anger as a result of the tension between him and his wife.
- On Soap, Billy Tate is in a relationship with his teacher Leslie Walker. When he ultimately breaks it off, Leslie makes numerous attempts at committing suicide in front of him, which generally fail spectacularly (often due to intentional or incidental interference by other members of the Tate or Campbell families). Billy eventually tries to convince her that it's not worth killing herself over. It works, and she then decides to kill him instead.
- Star Trek: The Original Series: There was one episode called "Charlie X" where a boy with god-like powers ends up in the hands of Captain Kirk and Spock. The boy takes an interest in one of the crew members, and she is old enough to be his mother. He rejects a female crew member his age rather bluntly and rudely. He slaps the crew member he is interested in her rear. She is appropriately turned off by his advances. Kirk tries to explain to the boy that what he is doing is inappropriate, but it doesn't work. It culminates in him making moves, she in turn bluntly rejecting him, and he angrily uses his powers to teleport her somewhere and he refuses to say where he put her. Fortunately, she gets teleported back safely by the end and the boy is taken by entities that will be able to handle him properly!
- Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation has on occasion not handled Captain Picard's rejection very well. Word of God has stated that Q's obsession with Picard was intended to be romantic, so when read that way Q's reactions to Picard's rejections come off as that of a scorned lover. However even if not read that way Q is clearly not good with taking no for an answer and is very insistent on getting Picard to be interested in playing his games.
- In Q Who Q requests that he become part of Picard's crew and serve aboard the Enterprise, to prove to Picard that Q's powers are useful in helping humanity explore the universe and that he's an indispensable asset to the Captain. When Q is rejected he throws Picard and his crew to the Borg, to show them how truly weak they are without him. As this was their first encounter with the Borg Picard's crew was unable to fight them off, and Picard is forced to ask Q to rescue them, reluctantly admitting to the entity "I need you!", and having gleefully proven his point Q rescues their ship.
- In Q Pid Q tries to grant any wish that Picard wants as a reward for saving his life when he lost his powers. When Picard rejects Q's offer Q disappears in a huff, "You are simply the most impossible person to buy a gift for!" That same day Picard's old girlfriend Vash shows up who Picard is much more responsive to when it comes to accepting favors, but is blinded by her feminine charms into making a few embarrassing mistakes. Q comes back later to commentate on how Vash made Picard look like a romantic fool, citing that love has made him weak and offers to get rid of her. This leads up to Picard being thrown into a fantasy world by Q where he must rescue Vash in a classic damsel in distress scenario to prove his love is truly genuine.
- Averted in season 2 of Stranger Things. While drunk at a Halloween party, Nancy ends up dumping Steve after calling their relationship "bullshit". After angsting for a few days, Steve finally responds...and Took a Level in Kindness and becomes an amazing babysitter for Lucas, Dustin, and Max as they hunt down a demodog that Dustin tried adopting as a pet. Later, he talks to Nancy and tells her he's at peace with their break-up. A month after the events of the season, Steve is seen dropping Dustin off at the school dance and giving him advice, implying that they still have a close relationship.
- In an episode of Supernatural, Sam and Dean have to protect a girl from a spirit who kills people who have been involved in other's deaths. The girl's past includes a boyfriend who threatened to commit suicide when she tried to break up with him. When she left anyway, he did go through with it and she's felt guilty ever since.
- In "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" Zombie Angela kills Neil via snapping his neck when he tries to leave her.
- Rose of Two and a Half Men. It's implied that she even kills Charlie when she spotted him cheating on her on their honeymoon. Berta lampshades this saying "Never cross a psycho woman." She also stalked Walden and had her ferrets attack Walden when he dumped her.
- Also Bridget, Walden's ex-wife. She screams at Walden when he rejects her for another woman and drives her car through his wall deliberately with an angry look on her face.
- When his wife left him, Walden tried to drown himself in the ocean. Apparently, he didn't realize that the water would be really cold.
- Whenever Charlie develops real feelings for any woman he sleeps with and is later dumped by them he's reacted in various ways: hallucinating he's talking to them due to lack of sleep, drinking the pain away, doing drugs, not eating, losing sleep, and trying to bury the pain by sleeping around even more than usual to the point of getting physically hurt by the women's Crazy Jealous Guy lovers. He's also showed up at Mia's wedding and tried to propose to her and win her back but got punched out by her father. Later, he mourns losing a woman like her while in bed crying.
- Several of Charlie's lovers became this way to him. One lady, who was Jake's teacher, had a breakdown after Charlie dumped her, lost her job and her house, and had to resort to living in a trashy hotel and becoming a pole dancer in a club. She blames all of her misfortune, including her parents disowning her, on Charlie because he dumped her which ruined her life after she gave herself to him. Charlie dumps her again later after trying to make things right when seeing how crazy and religious she has become and she returns to her old ways after having another breakdown.
- Victorious: Trina in an open letter to Kevin Richards
. If Trina doesn't get what she wants, hide. - You: Joe, to an extreme degree. He attempts to murder his girlfriend Candace for breaking up with him, murders his crush Beck's friend with benefits Benji when she puts him in the friendzone, and when he and Beck are finally an Official Couple, he murders her when she tries to leave him after finding out about his previous murders. Later in the series, when his love interest Marienne skips town and leaves no forwarding address after hearing about Joe's stalking and murdering habits, Joe refuses to take the hint and moves to Europe just to stalk and eventually kidnap her.
- Love is just as bad with rejection. She paralyzed her first husband to keep him from leaving her (accidentally killing him in the process). She murders any woman Joe obsesses over and ultimately tries to murder Joe after learning that he was planning to leave her for Marienne.
