Thanatos Gambits in live-action TV.
- The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. has Brisco defending an old friend charged with murder, which isn't any easier since the victim was a very nasty man who many of the townspeople hated, and Brisco's friend had been having an affair with his wife. It turns out the man had set up quite a few Thanatos Gambits after learning he was terminally ill, spitefully striking back at the townspeople one last time. The worst was reserved for the man who cuckolded him: he committed suicide with the supposed murder weapon, relying on his secretary who had become a Yandere over Brisco's friend to complete the frame job. Thankfully, Brisco uncovers the whole scheme with the new technology of fingerprint identification.
- Holtz from Angel gave Angel a note to give to Angel's human son Connor, who Holtz stole as a baby and raised in a demon dimension. It explains that Angel and Connor should be together. He also tells Angel the same thing, seemingly having finally made peace with Angel for Connor's sake. Then he has his accomplice stab him twice in the neck so it looks like Angel (a vampire) killed Holtz out of spite. This pretty severely damaged the relationship between Angel and his son for a while.
- In The Avengers (1960s) episode "The House That Jack Built", Emma Peel is lured to an empty house that was willed to her by an uncle she never knew she had. The uncle turns out to be Keller, a deranged technology businessman with too much spare time, too much money, and a colossal grudge against Emma, who had sacked him back when she was Emma Knight, head of Knight Industries. The house she inherits is a giant computerized mousetrap designed to drive her insane (or drive her to suicide in an automated Gas Chamber). By the time Emma entered the house, Keller was already dead. He made a video for her and he is now sitting mummified in a glass box.
- Babylon 5:
- In "The Parliament of Dreams", Du'Rog, an old enemy of G'Kar, sends him a message saying that he will be dead by the time the message arrives...so he's hired an assassin to make sure G'Kar joins him.
- In "The Coming of Shadows", G'Kar plans to assassinate the Centauri Emperor, expecting it to be a suicide mission. He leaves a recorded message declaring that neither the Narn government nor his aide Na'Toth are involved. Except that he's lying about the former...
- And of course, Mollari's death: Mollari's actions are being controlled by the Drakh parasite, so he first temporarily disables the parasite by getting wasted, frees Sheridan and Delenn and then asks G'Kar to kill him before the parasite wakes up and ruins the plan. All so Vir Cotto, the Token Good Teammate of the Centauri, can succeed him as Emperor, free the Centauri from Drakh control and lead them into a brighter future.
- When Captain Sheridan travels to "[[Babylon Five S 03 E 22 Z Ha Dum Z'Ha'dum", he doesn't intend to die, but he certainly is prepared for the possibility, and arranges things so that if he does, he'll take a lot of the Shadows with him. It sums Sheridan up that even his death is a massive "fuck you" to his enemies.
- In the episode "Knives", one of Londo's old friends, Ursa Jaddo, challenges him to a duel and purposely loses so that Londo can protect and provide for his family. This also serves a big "screw you" to the guy who put Jaddo in this position in the first place, Lord Refa, who wanted to see Jaddo dead and his family ruined so that Refa could take their possessions. Instead, now Londo can keep all of them around as part of his family, and also take their possessions with them. We never see Refa's reaction to this, but it's implied that Refa isn't pleased.
- The Starfire Wheel was originally a conspiracy between Delenn and Neroon to end the civil war. Delenn apparently intended to commit suicide herself to allow her caste to win the Minbari civil war. Neroon pushes her out of the circle and takes her place. It's not clear whether she was intentionally goading him into this; Delenn is many things, but "devious" isn't one of them, so it's likely she did intend to die. Her gesture of giving instructions to Lennier indicates that she at least thought there was a good chance of her dying, or indeed that she intended to, as Lennier stated later.
- Breaking Bad: Walt's initial goal is to get enough money to support his family after he's dead of cancer. Breaking the law in this pursuit is a non-issue for him, because he believes that even if he's caught he'll never live through the trial anyway. His descent into unrepentant villainy begins when his cancer treatments work and he finds out he'll live for quite a bit longer than expected.
- A more direct example is when Walter works together with Hector Salamanca to take out their common enemy Gus Fring. Walter rigs an explosive to Hector's chair, allowing him to take Gus to the grave with him.
- One victim on Bones turned out to be a suicidal girl who had staged her own suicide to implicate the girls who had bullied her in her murder.
- In the Burn Notice episode Acceptable Loss, the client of the week is trying to nail a diplomat who's been smuggling diamonds. After their plan to find evidence fails, the client admits that he's been diagnosed with cancer and only has a few months to live, and suggests instead nailing the guy on a murder charge: he calls the cops, and then forces the diplomat to shoot him dead right as they show up.
- In the Charmed (1998) episode "Charmageddon", after the Avatars succeed in recreating the world without Good and Evil, Leo realizes that it was a mistake (basically emotions are dulled and people can't really be themselves or make choices). He allows the Avatars to kill him so that Piper, Phoebe, and Paige will get angry enough to break through the Avatars' control and reset the world. As an added bonus, the Avatars are able to bring him back to life afterward, but it's unclear whether he knew that or not.
- In Charmed (2018), Marisol, the girls' mother, pulled this off. She had given Macy away as a child because of a magical prohibition that meant one of them would die if they were ever in contact. But thanks to her power of prophecy, she knew that her daughters were the Charmed Ones and that the Charmed Ones would be needed to face the threat of the rise of the Source of all Evil. Whether she foresaw her own death directly or not (there was an existing prophecy stating all the Elders must die, so as an Elder, she would have known her time was limited anyway), she set it up so that Macy would be reunited with her sisters and their powers would be unlocked, allowing Marisol's death to usher in the Power of Three necessary to save the world.
- It's also possible Hunter did this (though it's just as likely his dad set it up without his knowledge). Hunter was infected with the Harbinger virus, which was part of the prophecy about the rise of the Source. Infecting himself first gave him a massive power boost that allowed him to go toe-to-toe with the Charmed Ones. When they vanquished him, they released the Harbinger, which infected the people present and made the sisters feel guilty about the part they played in releasing the Harbinger and endangering their loved ones, emotionally compromising them.
- Chernobyl portrays the suicide of Valery Legasov as an effort to expose the fatal flaws of RBMK reactors (and, more broadly, the dangerous culture of silence and Cutting Corners of the Soviet nuclear industry) after he was sidelined and isolated following his attempt to speak out while alive. The shock of his death and the damning memoirs he left proved too difficult for the government to suppress, forcing them to address the problems that had made Chernobyl possible.note
- Criminal Minds:
- In "Ashes and Dust," the investigation into an arsonist who likes to watch his victims burn to death leads to Abby, a man dying of leukemia who's disgusted and angered that the arsonist is using a group he founded to target victims. Abby ends up luring the arsonist to a building filled with highly flammable material. When the arsonist, trying to find a way out, asks how Abby plans to escape, he admits that "I don't," and lights the building up, killing them both.
- Another episode featured a dying judge who, since he had nothing left to lose, hired a hitman to take revenge on people who he felt had escaped justice. The last person on the hit list was the judge himself. It would stop him from dying a painful death of cancer and spending his last few months alive being tried, and prevent him from providing evidence against the hitman.
- In a downplayed variation, Rossi's first wife commits suicide via overdose to prevent herself from dying via ALS. The manipulation comes in when she gets Rossi to sit with her while she's dying so that she won't be alone and she won't have to die in a hospital, even though he's morally opposed to the mercy kill idea.
- Nicely subverted on CSI as legendary mobster Mickey Dunn (Roger Daltrey) has been long thought dead after a shootout with some underlings. Actually, Mickey survived in hiding with a bullet at his heart that could never be removed as the surgery would be invasive enough that it would kill him anyway. Learning it was coming closer to his heart, Mickey pulls off a genius scheme involving multiple disguises to kill the guys who betrayed him. He even shows up on television and no one knows who he is. When Catherine eventually catches him, Mickey has a heart attack from the bullet and confesses to it all in the hospital, smugly believing the brilliant end to his life will make his legend even greater....
- At which point, Catherine shows the bullet and tells the stunned Mickey "mob doctors are mob doctors because they sucked in the first place." Thanks to a top-notch surgeon, Mickey will live another 30 years, all in jail for the multiple murders he's confessed to.
- In another episode, the killer killed his sister, who had been conceived solely to be a source of biologically compatible donations for his leukaemia (he'd struck a deal with his family to stop treatment after a lot of painful sessions for her of blood donation and marrow removal, but he drew a line when they went back on it and expected a 13-year-old girl to give up both her footballing dreams and a kidney for him). Without a suitable replacement kidney he'll be dead in six months, which is short enough to ensure he never faces trial, never mind prison.
- An episode of CSI: NY featured a building's door woman found dead inside the building's water tower. Initially, all the evidence pointed towards a doctor living in the building who was having an affair with the woman. However it turns out he was framed by the victim: the doctor had been unable to save the woman's daughter by giving her CPR, as he'd been under the influence of drugs, so she decided to get revenge by getting the door woman job, initiating the affair and finally killing herself in the hope that the doctor would suffer.
- In a less-elaborate example, a repeat offender whom Mac had cornered on a rooftop opted not to return to prison, so handcuffed himself behind his own back and then deliberately fell backwards off the roof to his death, knowing Mac would be suspected of having pushed him.
- Then there's Aiden's death. She realized she wouldn't get away from her killer, so she did everything she could to leave the team the evidence to convict him.
- Dallas: Following J.R.'s final death (due to his actor's death), in the TNT relaunch, we learn along with Christopher and John Ross that he was in fact Secretly Dying—and had, upon learning this, arranged for an assassination... arranging things so that his long-time nemesis Cliff Barnes would take the fall. And he does.
- Doctor Who:
- TV Movie: The Master lets himself be put on trial and executed by the Daleks, having arranged for his essence to survive the death of his current body, and makes his last will to have the Doctor carry his remains back to Gallifrey. Hence letting the Master onto his TARDIS, where he means to hijack its power source to rob the Doctor of his regenerations and give himself a whole new cycle of lives.
- "Smith and Jones": The Doctor very nearly dies by tricking the plasmavore into drinking his blood so she'll register as an alien on the Judoon's species scanners.
- "The Sound of Drums": Reporter Vivien Rook, investigating Harold Saxon, leaves a Dead Man's Switch to send all of her information to Torchwood, just in case the Master found her out and killed her. Which he does.
- "Last of the Time Lords": The Master refuses to regenerate just to get back at the Doctor and make him alone again.
- "The End of Time":
- We find out that the Master had made preparations for his death just in case, so he ends up coming back. Again.
- He wasn't the only one. His abused wife, in prison for shooting him, turns out to have been planning for his possible return and ends up performing a Heroic Sacrifice to foil his regeneration. She partially succeeds.
- It is quite possible (though not certain) that Vera Bates in Downton Abbey chose the timing and method of her suicide in order to frame her husband for murder, thereby sending him to jail and preventing him from living with his sweetheart. It worked for a while.
- An episode of Due South features a broke father's plan to provide for his son. This plan involves double-crossing some very dangerous people, then killing them and himself and leaving the money where his son can find it. Fraser talks him out of it.
- Elementary:
- In the episode "You Do It to Yourself", Sherlock Holmes figures out that a college professor arranged his own murder when he learned he was dying from a particularly nasty form of cancer. Not only that, the professor attempted to frame his wife (whom he'd subjected to sadistic Domestic Abuse) and his teaching assistant for the crime; they were having an affair, so he decided to get some posthumous revenge on his way out. It failed because the man he hired didn't follow instructions. Instead of ambushing him in an isolated area to make it look like a mugging gone wrong, the guy followed him to a gambling den and cleaned out the place after shooting him. Unfortunately, the owners of the place had a hidden camera that caught the whole incident.
- "On The Line" opens with Samantha Wabash killing herself and making it look like a man named Lucas Bundsch killed her. Bundsch had previously been accused of murdering Samantha's sister but the charges didn't stick. Sherlock immediately works out that the "murder" was faked and tells the police who release Bundsch from questioning. After speaking to Bundsch at the station Sherlock realizes that Samantha was absolutely right and that her sister was not Bundsch's only victim. He spends the rest of the episode trying to prove the man is a Serial Killer.
- Forever: In "The Last Death of Henry Morgan" both immortals engage in this. The Older Immortal Adam has a theory that the weapon which originally killed an immortal is the only thing that can kill them permanently, in his case a Roman pugio dagger. Henry knows that Adam has tortured people to death in the quest to recover his pugio, so when Jo takes possession of it, Henry is justified fearing what Adam will do to her to get it. Henry steals the dagger and arranges to meet Adam in an abandoned subway tunnel. It quickly becomes clear that Adam expects Henry to try to kill him with the pugio, possibly Adam's intention all along, both to die and to turn Henry into a killer. Instead, Henry tosses the dagger to Adam's feet and walks away. Adam, furious, goads Henry, then when that fails, pulls out the flintlock which was used in Henry's first death and shoots Henry with it. Henry, dying, beckons Adam closer to hear his last words — at which point he uses a syringe to inject air into Adam's brainstem, causing him to rapidly develop Locked-In Syndrome, leaving Adam no longer a threat to anyone. Henry didn't know if the gun would kill him permanently, but the fact that Abe was waiting for Henry to resurrect in the river but was acutely anxious about whether he would indicates Henry knew Adam would shoot him with his flintlock and was at least worried it would stick. Henry found it worth the risk to be able to neutralize Adam.
- Game of Thrones: By allowing Oberyn to champion him, Tyrion ensures that if he loses (and is therefore condemned) it will ruin Lord Tywin's alliance with House Martell.
- General and I: He Xia's father kills himself, knowing his death will motivate He Xia to take revenge on Chu Bei Jie.
- The Good Detective: Yoo Jung-seok knows that Oh Jong-tae got away with murder, and that there's nothing that can be done about it as Lee Dae-cheol has already been executed for that crime. Yoo himself has committed two murders and is riddled with guilt. So he frames Jong-tae for his own death, attacking Jong-tae and then throwing himself off a bridge, after calling the police to the scene in advance. It works, as Jong-tae is arrested for and convicted off Jung-seok's murder.
- Grimm: At the end of the episode "The Good Soldier", Colonel Adam Desai, who is dying of a terminal illness, allows himself to be killed in a Duel to the Death so his killer is arrested for murder, ensuring he can get justice for an ex-soldier raped by the killer years before.
- Guiding Light. Driven mad by her husband Josh's lingering feelings for ex-wife Reva and completely pushed over the edge when he not only finally leaves her to return to Reva, but also when she miscarries, Annie kept the dead baby in her womb, lured Reva to the top of a staircase, provoked her into an argument, then threw herself down the stairs and made it look as though Reva had pushed her, thus framing Reva for manslaughter for the death of the already dead baby (and possibly for murder, as Annie was so depressed that she possibly didn't care if she died as well).
- Hawaii Five-0: An old career criminal, being faced with evidence that would put him back away for the rest of his life, throws a trump card: that he knows the location of a recently-kidnapped girl, including a photo of her stuffed in a car trunk, but will only reveal it in person. He gets a ride to a parking lot next to a major surface road, directs the officers to a nearby car — then backs into the path of a speeding semi.
- Matt Parkman pulls one of these in season 5 of Heroes. With Sylar controlling Matt's body, Matt, having been able to get moments of control in without Sylar's knowledge, makes a Heroic Sacrifice, getting Sylar to innately make a death threat towards everyone in the diner, which brings the cops in. Matt then controls the body one last time by making it look like he's pulling out a gun, forcing the cops to shoot at him. He gets better, but it was still pretty damn heroic.
- Dr. Gregory House pulls this off in the series finale of House. Sort of, anyway; it's not clear how much of it he actually planned and how much was a lucky break (though he certainly took advantage of the situation once it arose). House is seen in a burning building seconds before it collapses. A body is recovered, which is identified from dental records as House's. At House's funeral, while Wilson (House's best friend who is dying of cancer) is giving a "bastardogy", House calls his own cell phone, which he knows is in Wilson's pocket. Turns out House went out the back way, swapped his dental records with those of a heroin addict in there with him who was already dead, and is now pretending to be dead to avoid having to go back to jail during the last few months of Wilson's life. The ending scene has the two of them driving down a country road on motorcycles.
- Ice Fantasy: Shi uses his death to give his powers to Ka Suo.
- In Inspector Morse, Morse tells Lewis that he had thought about doing this as a teenager, at least in part to spite his family. He not only contemplated suicide, but evaluated various methods on the basis of the effect they could potentially have on different family members. He didn't go through with it because it occurred to him what a shame it would be to waste the kind of mind that could come up with such a scheme.
- In an episode of Jonathan Creek a wealthy businessman named Andre Masson is about to be exposed for fraud and decides to commit suicide. But in order to die with a smile on his face, he arranges his suicide to look like he's been murdered by one of his associates, Craig Downey (who is also screwing Masson's wife). Masson rigs up his computer to record the sounds of a break-in, a struggle, himself pleading for his life and a gun-shot, which he then burns onto a CD. He breaks into Downey's flat, plants this CD in his CD rack, and takes one of Downey's contacts with him. He also leaves several diary entries on his computer, claiming that Downey has threatened to kill him. Still with me? Okay, Masson arranges for a meeting, and whilst all his associates (including Downey) are locked outside his office, Masson goes through with the suicide, staging it with the exact same sounds that are already on the pre-recorded CD. After hearing the commotion, concluding in a gun-shot, his colleagues run around the side of the office to find Masson dead. Masson's plan is that the police will not only find Downey's death threats on Masson's computer, but also his contact lens near the body. They will therefore search Downey's flat and find the CD, leading them to the conclusion that Downey killed Masson earlier in the day, recorded it, and then set the computer to play back the sounds of the murder whilst he's outside the office with the others, giving himself the perfect alibi. Does this sound too far-fetched? It's supposed to be. As Jonathan points out: "No jury alive will believe it's a set-up!". It all would have worked perfectly, if it weren't for Downey being burgled and the CD being stolen. Said CD ends up in in a market stall, where it is purchased by an elderly woman; that evening, it plays just as she begins to fall asleep, leading to her believing that she had dreamed of Masson's 'murder' before it had even happened.
- Kamen Rider Geats: Ace lets himself die at Tsumuri's hands in order to enact the final phase of his plan to ascend to godhood, enabling him not only to gain the power to destroy the Desire Grand Prix for good but also to help bring about a world where everyone can achieve their happiness without sacrificing that of others'.
- Kingdom (2019): Lord Ahn Hyeon is seemingly killed in a futile attempt to reach the Crown Prince after entering a trap set by Cho Hak-ju during Season 2. However, the public circumstances of his death was a plan organised to prove the existence of the resurrection herb and thereby implicating Cho in a cover-up of the King's death. When Cho Hak-ju orders the transfer of the captured Crown Prince and his allies to Hanyang, Seo-bi resurrects Ahn Hyeon as a zombie during their attempted jailbreak.
- Happens several times in the various Law & Order series:
- In the original Law & Order episode "Hitman", a man hired a hit man to kill him and then pin the crime on his wife and her lover. However, when his friend (who had unwittingly helped him put his plan into effect) comes under investigation, it's revealed the man had a contingency plan in place in order to clear his friend's name: He made a tape before his death and admitted that he had put the hit out on himself. Despite this, he still gets his revenge in the end: his death is ruled a suicide, so his wife won't get his life insurance.
- In Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a woman kills herself, but makes it resemble a series of murders that her husband has committed, thus causing an investigation into his acts.
- The SVU episode "Hell" focuses on two Ugandan refugees—one of them a former child soldier named Elijah—culminates in Elijah taking a church full of parishioners hostage because he doesn't want to be deported back to Uganda for what he did as a child soldier. He eventually agrees to surrender peacefully, but as he leaves the church sees a large group of reporters with cameras, and makes a mad dash towards them, causing an armed officer to shoot him. With his last moments, he tells that he wanted to be shot dead here, so that everyone would see the suffering of the other child soldiers in Uganda.
- Another SVU example: the episode "Bully" features the death of a woman who, as it turned out, was the subject of some very serious bullying at the hands of her boss (said boss was a megabitch to all of her workers, but she was particularly abusive towards the victim). When videos leak out of this abuse, the CEO arranges a press conference, supposedly to explain her actions, but instead to tell off everyone before shooting herself in the head on live television. As a final "screw you" to everyone, she left all of her worldly possessions to her dog.
- A third one from SVU: Serial rapist William Lewis escapes from prison, kills another cop, murders his nurse and kidnaps her youngest daughter. Using the girl as a hostage, he forces Olivia to admit publicly that, contrary to her testimony at his trial, she attacked him while he was handcuffed. He then takes her prisoner again, but becomes turned off when she refuses to resist him, so he decides to force her into a game of Russian Roulette. He ends up fatally shooting himself as one last way of tormenting Benson, figuring she’ll be accused of his murder. However, at Benson's grand jury hearing, Lt. Declan Murphy claims (falsely) that there was no truth in her admission, that he ordered Benson to tell Lewis what he wanted to hear in order to lure him out of hiding, and then he tacks on a few words to remind the grand jury just what kind of a man William Lewis was and what kind of courage it took for Benson to confront him. This affects the grand jury and they refuse to indict Benson, causing Lewis' actions to be in vain.
- Murder, She Wrote. Jessica's friend is accused of murdering his long-time nemesis—he flat-out threatened to kill the guy when his daughter revealed that he'd been harassing her. When a video the man made naming the friend as his killer is found, his guilt seems certain—until Jessica notices that the man stutters several times. A little digging finds that the man was suffering from a lethal and inoperable brain tumor and knowing that he was dying anyway, committed suicide and left evidence to implicate his nemesis.
- It is implied in the NCIS season five finale that Director Jenny Shepard's choice to ditch her protective escort and wait in the middle of nowhere for the group of hired killers who are after her was a way for her die on her own terms instead of facing a slow death by degenerative illness. In the process, she gunned down quite a few of her assailants, who were also planning on going after Gibbs as well.
- In an earlier episode, an eco-terrorist posing as a submariner kills himself, knowing that his corpse would be stored in the sub's freezer—which would trigger the heat-sensitive capsule in his stomach to open and leak sarin gas, killing everyone on board. Fortunately, Gibbs figures it out and has his corpse shot out a torpedo tube.
- Attempted in another episode in which a serial rapist/murderer tries to manipulate Gibbs (who first arrested him) into murdering him, as a means of destroying Gibbs' career. He fails when Gibbs refuses to take the bait.
- A former spy pulls off the master of all Thanatos Gambits in the NUMB3RS episode "The Janus List". He finds out he's been poisoned, so he wires a bridge with bombs and creates an incredibly intricate and complicated puzzle to get Charlie's interest and to lead him to the eponymous Janus List (a list of double-agents), ending with him blowing himself up. When he finds that his death hasn't been as immediate as he expected, he slips Charlie a few more clues while he's lying in the ICU waiting to die. It takes almost the entire episode, but Charlie (with Don's help) finally pieces it together and manages to gain access to the list.
- NYPD Blue makes occasional reference to the "cleaning his gun" method of cop suicide. Cops who killed themselves would set things up so it looked like their gun went off accidentally while they were cleaning it, trusting their fellow officers not to dispute this, mainly for the purpose of ensuring benefits for their family.
- In Occupied, the chief of the Norwegian Security Service finds out that she is suffering from an untreatable brain tumor that is slowly killing her. When the cancer starts becoming unbearable and her cooperation with La Résistance, "Free Norway", is about to be revealed, she makes a video confession where she claims to be the head of Free Norway. Afterwards, before killing herself, she arranges for the secret destruction of her remains, all to divert attention from the real leaders and set herself up as an uncatchable bogeyman to the Russians.
- In Once Upon a Time, Zoso, the Dark One before Rumplestiltskin, convinced Rumplestiltskin to steal the dagger, ensuring that even if Rumple chose to kill him (he did) the power of the Dark One wouldn't be under the Duke's control and freeing Zoso from the burden of being the Dark One.
- Near the end of Oz, Chris Keller committed suicide and tried to make it look as if Beecher killed him. The result of the gambit was undetermined when the show ended.
- A subversion occurred on Passions when a then-paralyzed Ivy tried this on Theresa, whom with she was in a heated argument at the top of a flight of stairs, screaming out "Oh, Theresa! Don't do it!" only moments before hurtling herself down them. It becomes a subversion since it was done in an attempt to kill herself and make it look like Theresa did it so she and Ethan will split up for good, yet she ultimately survived her ordeal (albeit she spent several weeks unconscious). And it then becomes a double subversion since they ended up together anyway.
- In one episode of Psych Shawn and Gus investigate the cause of a series of near-fatal accidents during an aging stuntman's stunts. They discover the stuntman himself to be the cause of the incidents, he was terminally ill and his life insurance had a heftier payout if he died during one of his stunts, but his reflexes were just too good.
- The Rise of Phoenixes: Zhangsun Hong makes sure he provokes Ning Cheng to kill him when Zhi Wei is there to see it, so he can use his death to convince her Ning Yi plans to kill everyone from Dacheng.
- In the final episode of series two of Sherlock, Sherlock figures out that as long as Moriarty's alive Sherlock has a chance at forcing him to call off the snipers. Moriarty shoots himself in the head to cut off Sherlock's third option and force him to commit suicide to save his friends. Sherlock foils the Thanatos Gambit by managing to fake his suicide (it's left ambiguous exactly how he does so) convincingly enough to call off the assassins.
- Played with in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Who Mourns for Morn?" When Morn dies, he leaves all his stuff to Quark. Various past associates of Morn try to convince Quark that Morn was rich and that they could get Quark a piece of the action. Eventually it turns out that Morn and the others were involved in a massive heist that got them a large sum of money (gold-pressed latinum) and the Statute of Limitations was coming to an end, so they could finally spend it without getting arrested. However, being the greedy bastards they all are, this degenerates into a firefight and the survivors are arrested. Meanwhile, Quark only barely survives, and is horrified that the money he had coming to him happens to be worthless hollowed-out bars of gold. As it turns out, Morn faked his death in order to get rid of his former associates and keep the money for himself. By the way, as thanks to Quark for all his troubles, Morn gives him 10% of his ill-gotten gains.
- The loot in question - latinum - is actually a liquid, and Morn has been storing all of it in his second stomach. Quark notes that this is why Morn is bald.
- Subverted in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "First Contact" (unrelated to Star Trek: First Contact), in which an alien shoots himself with Riker's phaser in an attempt to frame Riker for his murder. It's not a great plan; besides the fact that Riker is near death and Crusher can tell the shot was self-inflicted, he doesn't know how the phaser works and ends up merely stunning himself.
- Supernatural Season 4 is centered around Lilith trying to break the seals to Lucifer's cage, and Sam and Dean trying to stop her. She needs to break 66, and successfully breaks 65 by the season finale. Sam faces off against her in the finale and slowly kills her, Lilith dies laughing not even trying to fight back. Immediately after he does so, he's informed her death was the 66 seal. Oops. The season ends with the devil being released.
- Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms: Li Yuan gets Xuan Nu to kill him because his death will give Qing Cang more power.
- The Terror: After being kidnapped, Dr. Goodsir commits suicide by taking a massive dose of poison, knowing that the cannibalistic mutineers will foolishly eat his corpse. It works even better than he expected; the mutineers do indeed eat him, but get killed and eaten by the Tuunbaq, thus fatally poisoning it as well.
- True Blood: Terry Belfleur takes out a big life insurance policy and then puts a hit out on himself so that his family can collect; the policy would have been voided if he'd killed himself so soon after taking it out.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In the Bad Future setting of "The Obsolete Man", where the state has eliminated books and literature and proven - by their standards of proof - that God does not exist, a librarian is sentenced to death for the crime of being obsolete, because he was promoting literature and believing in God. However, via his Last Request, he arranges for his execution to be publically televised in a way that shows the public that, as the closing narration claims, he was not obsolete. What truly was obsolete was the government, and indeed, any government that fails to recognize the dignity and rights of its people.
- The Umbrella Academy reveals Sir Reginald killed himself and made it look like murder in the hopes this would get the long-estranged adopted children together to solve his crime and also discover and stop the coming apocalypse. This might have worked except for one tiny detail: Reginald was such a horrible excuse for a father figure that Luther is the only one of the kids who cared enough to try to "solve" his "murder"...and even he gave up when he found out how bad Reginald's actions were. In fact, all Reginald ended up doing was helping cause the very disaster he wanted the kids to stop.
- In Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, the Red Ranger's father Dantetsu to kills his friend, team mentor and Silver Ranger Torin during an apparent Face–Heel Turn. However, eventually the team learns that the two planned the whole thing: Since Torin was created by Deboss, he ends up in the Darkness of the Land (AKA Deboss Hell) after dying...which gives Torin the opportunity to destroy Deboss Hell from the inside, preventing the Legion members from ever coming Back from the Dead and ensuring that the Kyoryugers actually can defeat Deboss once and for all instead of simply sealing him away again.
