Tragic Villain / Live-Action TV

Tragic Villain in Live-Action TV.

---

• 24:
  • The terrorists from season 5 often have grievous reasons to attack the Russian government (and the US for helping it). One of them has a wife who has been in prison for many years and a child in a "government facility" because of his anti-imperialist beliefs.
  • Marcos (played by Rami Malek) from season 8 is a young man who joins a terrorist group to avenge his father.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
  • Ward is revealed to be a Hydra sleeper agent. However, his backstory is tragic on so many levels that (as of the Season 1 finale), much of the fandom is hoping for a redemption arc.
  • Season 2 brought us Skye's parents, Jiaying and Cal. She was orginally a wise, kind-hearted woman and he was an adorkable volunteer for Doctor Without Borders. And then she was captured by Hydra and vivisected by a Mad Doctor to learn the secret to her immortality. After this incident, she became a cold-hearted Manipulative Bitch who considered human inferior and willing to wage war to prove their superiority. And as for him, losing her lead to his descent into villainy as Mr. Hyde, still seeking her out, but hopelessly corrupted in the process.
  • Glenn Talbot in Season 5. After starting off as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold in the early seasons and going through Character Development until he and Team Coulson had a grudging respect for each other, he goes through a Trauma Conga Line that leaves him a mentally broken Well-Intentioned Extremist, obsessed with gaining enough power so he can protect the world from the threat that's coming. He just wanted to be a hero, but ended up almost destroying the world...
• American Horror Story: Freak Show has Twisty the clown. Twisty became mentally retarded after his mother dropped him when he was a baby. Twisty's mother often abused him, yet he still loved her. As a clown, Twisty was loved by children. One day, some jealous carnies accused Twisty of being a pedophile, resulting in him losing his job. When he tried to return to his mother, he found out she had died. After a failed suicide attempt, Twisty began killing adults and kidnapping their parents, intending to raise the kids himself, believing he would be saving them from the cruel adults.
• Are You Afraid of the Dark? has a number of antagonists born of pain and tragedy.
  • Ray Lawson from "The Tale of Train Magic". He was the conductor for the 713 train who was given a message to stop his train and change the tracks at switch 224 because further up ahead there was some work being done on the train tracks. However, Ray forgot to check his watch and fell asleep, so he never got the message. The tracks were not switched and the train derailed and crashed, killing him and everyone on board. His reason for luring Tim onto the train to make him the new conductor is so he can finally be free from the eternal torment of reliving that night over and over. In the end, the heroes end up destroying the ghost train, but Ray must wander the tracks alone for all eternity, never able to find peace.
  • The werewolf from "The Tale of the Full Moon" is actually the neighbour's brother who was infected with lycanthropy at a young age, so he must be confined to the house during the full moon or else he'll cause harm. The kids themselves eventually see that the "monster" is just a frightened and confused creature trying not to hurt anyone but can't control its animal impulses.
  • The antagonist in "The Tale of the Photo Finish" is the ghost of a boy from decades ago who was bullied by the Jerk Jock kids in the fraternities, which one day led to him being killed in a cruel prank gone wrong (with some implication it wasn't an accident) and he seeks retribution against the fraternities of his school as a result.
  • The Phantom of the Opera-esque antagonist in "The Tale of the Last Dance" is a deformed, unstable and reclusive individual with a crush on Tara. However, he's also a gentle and caring soul who means no one any real harm and simply wants to hear her music. He even inspires her to continue playing. It ends very bittersweetly, of course (more emphasis on "sweetly" thankfully).
  • Mr. Tophat from Carnival of Doom. He was once a Wide-Eyed Idealist with big dreams of building the most famous theme park in the world, both to be remembered and to ensure his late father's dream came true. However, his impulsiveness and impatience led to the rides not being safety checked properly and several people were killed on opening day, ruining him financially and socially. Desperate and broken, he made a Deal with the Devil to have what he thought was lost to him, but he soon realized the cruel Irony that no one will ever remember the Carnival of Doom, so he was robbed of the one thing he ever truly desired; to be remembered. It's the reason he becomes fixated on Rachel; she's the only one who remembers the circus, and therefore him and even sees her as his only means of salvation.
  • The Shadow Man from Curse of the Shadows is revealed to be of the Tragic Monster variety. The Shadow Man is actually Charlie Murphy, a lighthouse keeper who lived in the lighthouse raising his daughter June. In 1996, the town decided to closed down the lighthouse, but June took it upon herself to start a petition to try and save the lighthouse and to keep it open. Sadly, the petition didn't get enough signatures and the lighthouse was closed. His daughter risked her life climbing down the cliff to retrieve the key he threw away, but she fell down the cliff and died. Heartbroken at the loss of his only daughter, he turned to dark magic to try to revive her but was corrupted into the demonic entity we see in the series.
  • Ghost Island has the Lady in the Mirror. Her real name is Lucia, a Hispanic woman native to the island who lived in 1692. She dreamt of leaving the island and seeing the world and fell for the dashing British captain Jonas Cutter, who drowned at sea. Desperate to be reunited with him, she used a dark ritual to summon his spirit in a mirror. Tragically, Cutter wasn't the man she thought he was and betrayed her, trapping her in the miserable limbo behind the mirror. Spending the next three hundred years in agony and sorrow, she never meant to hurt anyone, she simply wanted to escape her nightmarish fate. In the end, she is freed by the Midnight Society and allows the other trapped souls to move on.
• Babylon 5:
  • The Shadow War shapes up to be a powerful drama with the uber-patriotic Londo at the heart of it. He has a motive for behaving the way he does, which has nothing to do with wanting money or power for its own sake (such is the way with a lot of B5 villains). He’s one of the old school, unwilling to admit that the golden days are over and wants one last stab at power for the Centauri Republic. If he doesn’t find some way of keeping hold of Narn and proving that they are incapable of independence, he (and all ex-colonial officials) will be carted off to menial positions, his career effectively over on an Earth Alliance space station. For somebody as egocentric as Londo, this is simply not an option. It is hugely entertaining to watch his own hubris consume him in the latter half of the story and ultimately bring him down. He eventually expresses some regret for his genocidal actions, before finally sacrificing himself to liberate his world from the Drakh, a servant race of the Shadows.
  • Barely an Averted Trope by Zack Allan. He joins Nightwatch because he thinks it's an extra 50 credits per week for the work he's already doing, but over time finds that he's joined an organization with darker goals. He's in over his head, and struggling with the ethics of his previous decision—but he can't leave Nightwatch without causing himself more trouble. It's not until Captain Sheridan and the rest of the senior crew offer him a way out that he's finally able to escape his dilemma—thankfully, before he's forced to perform any actual evil.
• The Blacklist:
  • Dr. Frederick Barnes has a son who contracted a deadly disease. It is so rare that the medical establishment have no reason to find a cure. Barnes weaponizes the disease and uses it to kill dozens of people to find the one person who is immune to it in hopes of finding the cure. He succeeds in finding the cure but he is killed in the process. The cure might take years to be approved and by then his son will also be dead.
  • Dr. James Covington was a surgeon until he lost his license for trying to transplant adult lungs into a child. To fund his research, he made business of leasing internal organs for cash which he uses to help the disadvantaged.
  • Dr. Julian Powell had a fiancee who suffered brain damage and is in a coma after a car accident. Powell joined the Longevity Initiative which is supposed to find the secret of immortality. He knows its useless and he just uses its vast resources to heal his fiancee. There he kills terminally ill patients and experiments on their brains. After hearing that she has died, he kills himself too.
  • Berlin was a die hard official of the Soviet Union. He was framed for a terrorist attack and he thought it was committed by Red. He was imprisoned and while there hears that his daughter died. He escapes and becomes the villain in the first half of season 2. It is revealed that he was framed by the Cabal and his daughter never loved him and she faked her death to defect to the United States. Berlin is so despondent by the revelations that he spends his last moments getting drunk and reminiscing about the Soviet Union before Red puts him out of his misery.
• The Boys (2019)
  • Zig-Zagged by Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain The Deep. He's a (reformed) rapist, sycophant, and an-all around asshole, but the huge number of ordeals and tortures he endures from so many people around him eventually becomes so disproportionate and out of hand that it will actually end up making you feel bad for him. Of course, it doesn't take long before he starts acting like a jerk again and reminds the audience why they hate him.
  • Played straight with Homelander. He is a complete homicidal psychopath, however his backstory is genuinely tragic: Homelander was Raised in a Lab, completely isolated from the real world, by abusive scientists who treated him openly lovelessly and subjected him to painful experiments and mental conditioning. This all left Homelander a genuinely, severely maladjusted individual, and that plays a big role in his actions. The tie-in animation miniseries The Boys: Diabolical reveals Homelander really did try to be a true hero during the start of his career, but his first mission ending in tragedy by little fault of his own, combined with the Vought higher-ups manipulations of him, caused Homelander to adopt the monstrous personality he has today.
• Breaking Bad:
  • The entire run is essentially a long tale of this, as Walter White starts out forced into his life of crime as his only way to care for his family, but eventually starts choosing evil and caring only about himself. He slides back into it in the final episodes.
  • His "accomplice" Jesse may not have started out out innocent, but without Walt he would, at worst, have stayed a clueless bottom-of-the-ladder meth cook. "Thanks" to Walt, he's helped build an incredibly lucrative drug empire - at the cost of his sense of self-worth and almost everything he cares about. The worst part is that at least two of the big things he blames himself for are squarely Walt's fault, he just doesn't know it. By the time he finds out, he is subjected to Fate Worse than Death by Uncle Jack and his gang.
• Buffyverse:
  • Angel: Daniel Holtz was once a good man, a warrior for the cause of righteousness. Then Angelus and Darla paid a visit to his family. After that, he was a hollow, vengeance-driven shell of a man willing to do anything to avenge his loss. In the end, vengeance and hate are all Holtz has left, with even the love he feels for his adoptive son being overshadowed by his desire to hurt Angel.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Harmony spent most of high school as the Alpha Bitch but she was actually getting nicer in the days leading to graduation. But on that day she was made a vampire and the nice person she really was vanished forever.
  • At the end of the day, Drusilla despite her evil is just one more of Angelus's victims. He took everything from her in the most horrific manner possible; her family, her faith, her sanity.
  • In fact, this applies to vampires in general, since most of them were good, ordinary people before being turned into vampires. Only a handful like the Gorch brothers or Zachary Kralik were already criminals and/or psychos when they were sired.
• Charmed (1998):
  • Cole is a half-demon sent to kill the Charmed Ones but he falls in love with Phoebe. He wants to stay good for her but fate keeps causing him to turn to evil until they finally kill him. It's only as a disembodied spirit does he get a little bit of redemption.
  • Christie in the final season was kidnapped and trained from childhood by the Triad for the sole purpose of killing the Charmed Ones. They vanquish the Triad but she tries to kill them anyway because she doesn't want her life to have been a waste. Her own sister Billie has no choice but to put her down.
• Cobra Kai: Hoo boy...where do we begin with these?
  • While he's no longer a villain by the opening episode, the series goes very in-depth to humanizing the bully from The Karate Kid that was Johnny Lawrence. Just why did he join Cobra Kai exactly? He needed a platform to boost his morale in wake of his bullying from his stepfather, Sid. And he manages to find a father-figure in deranged sensei, John Kreese. But even Kreese becomes an enemy to Lawrence after the former nearly chokes him to death because the latter lost the All-Valley. Which puts Lawrence into a downward spiral that took 34 years to find his groove again in re-opening Cobra Kai.
  • A much more straight example is Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz. A former nerd who is relentlessly bullied because of a scar from a surgery to fix his cleft lip, Eli undergoes a radical transformation to become "Hawk" after Johnny tells him to "flip the script." While it does wonders in boosting Hawk's confidence, this in turn leads him into becoming a Jerkass, which thankfully culminates in his Heel–Face Turn during the LaRusso House Fight.
  • Tory Nichols. She may be a mentally-ill psycho, but you can't help but feel sorry for her because of her poor living situation, her nasty streak with her landlord, and the fact that she's literally the breadwinner of her family since her mother is in dialysis and her father abandoned them. When she finally gets a taste of victory in Season 4 (albeit as an anti-hero), it's all for naught because a certain, sleazy businessman bribed the ref to give her an unfair advantage.
  • Robby Keene as well. The poor guy was neglected by his parents for the majority of his life, and it's only made much worse when poor timing (as well as poor communication kills) gives him the perception that the father who abandoned him throughout his childhood loves Miguel more. As if life couldn't be harder for him, he winds up in juvie (with the perception that he felt betrayed by the LaRussos), and willingly joins a Kreese & Silver-led Cobra Kai, only for it to backfire on him when a fellow student taken under his wing becomes a psychopathic bully.
  • The Payne brothers deserve so much better.
    • Shawn Payne is put to prison because he beat an old friend up pretty badly. But why exactly was he doing it? Said friend was breaking into the household and attacking his brother, Kenny.
    • Speaking of Kenny, he's the latest example of a former victim-turned bully by joining Cobra Kai after being relentlessly picked on by his peers. The fact that all of this happened while he was still in middle school makes it all the more heartbreaking.
  • While still villainous, the show does plenty to humanize the two Cobra Kai co-founders.
    • John Kreese. Yes, the deranged-sensei became a deranged-sensei, because he was actually another bullying victim with a rough childhood, having been ostracized after his mother committed suicide, who joins the army only to be PTSD-ridden when he finds out his girlfriend was killed in a car crash and his commanding officer betrays him. Him having his infamous "Strike First, Strike Hard, No-Mercy" was because his experience as a POW during the Vietnam War warped his "cruel world" beliefs that he wanted to instill in his students. And when he does have a sense of hope for humanity due to his care for Johnny Lawrence and Tory Nichols, all of this is for naught when his best friend and war buddy, Terry Silver, betrays him.
    • Speaking of Silver, yes, the sleazy businessman who hired Mike Barnes and tortured Daniel LaRusso is also a villain warped by tragedy. It all makes sense with his cartoonish behavior in The Karate Kid Part III being a result of him using cocaine to distract him from PTSD. And when he spends many years becoming a better person after his champion loses to LaRusso in the 1985 All-Valley, all of this is broken when Kreese pushes his buttons to recruit him into re-joining Cobra Kai. It gets much worse when Silver becomes more psychopathic when Kreese continues to push more of his PTSD buttons, to the point where Silver becomes the series' Big Bad by betraying Kreese and turning Cobra Kai into a franchise of thug dojos.
• Cold Case:
  • James Hogan from "Sherry Darlin" was manipulated by his girlfriend Sherry to murder his grandmother for insurance money. Sherry did the deed but James did nothing.
  • Jonesey from "The Letter" was a member of a white supremacist group who fell in love with a black woman named Sadie. His friends gang-raped her in front of him until he was forced to put her out of her misery.
  • Paul from "Disco Inferno" was seduced by a rival dancer to cripple Benny, only to kill him and then set the disco club on fire to cover up his crime. He had been living with the guilt of killing 23 people and burning down the club that his father built, causing the man to remain under suspicion and die heartbroken.
  • Nelson Miller from "Factory Girls" advised his wife Alice to get a factory job while he fought in World War II. When he returned, she had become more independent and refused to quit. They got into an argument and he accidentally pushed her to her death. While he bribed the factory owner to keep quiet about Alice's death, it's clear he regretted it ever since and still loved her.
  • Jed Huxley from "The Key" watched as his parents' marriage imploded so he sought affection elsewhere. He grew infatuated with his neighbor and father's lover, Libby Bradley, especially after she drunkenly danced with him. When he later made advances on her, she refused him so he killed her in a fit of rage. When he was finally caught, it is unknown if his parents even cared.
  • Martha Puck from "Lonely Hearts" found out that her new boyfriend Ramon was a conman, but was so desperate to keep him that she convinced him join forces and they went from conmen to Blue Beards, with her doing most of the killing. Martha decided to kill Ramon when she felt guilty and feared he was going to kill her but is instead killed by one of his victims who still loved him.
  • Katya from "Cargo" was a Sex Slave caught up in an Eastern European human trafficking ring. She killed Mike while he was trying to save another girl from the ring, stole his money, and escaped to build a new life, but she is still arrested for his murder.
  • Hopper from "A Dollar, A Dream" is a mentally unstable vagrant who helps the Bradford women try to adjust to being homeless. He murdered the mother Marlene in an irrational rage while she was trying to pay him back for his kindness.
  • Jose from "Dead Heat" just wanted his father's approval but a bunch of misunderstandings caused him to kill his father.
  • Juan from "Stealing Home" seems at first to be Gonzalo's unassuming cousin. It's revealed that Juan also used to be a baseball player. He was more pro-active than Gonzalo and it was his idea to defect to the United States. Gonzalo made it but Juan didn't. He was sent back to Cuba where his pitching arm was broken. He defected later but it was too late and he has lost his talent. He becomes a shell of his former self and accidentally kills Gonzalo when he revealed all of this.
• Creepshow:
  • All Hallows Eve: The Golden Dragons do act pretty wickedly towards the adults of Smithville, and they have burned several people to death over the years, but it's mainly because the adults they torment are the parents of the teenagers who ended up burning them to death, who they themselves burned alive as revenge. When they aren't in the presence of adults (or busy ribbing on each other), they're a group of sad and tired children who only want to move on to their eternal rest. It gets even worse for Pete, since he and Jill were in a developing romance that was tragically cut short, and he and his younger brother only got to know each other for a few years.
  • The Right Snuff: Alex spent his entire life being unappreciated and dismissed by his emotionally abusive father, and desperately wants the respect his old man never gave him, including a reputation as one of history's greatest figures. To this end, his mind utterly clouded with envy and jealousy, murders his more recognized copilot and only companion so he alone can make first contact with aliens. As a result, he kills who was revealed to be an ambassador to said aliens, and has thrown the moon out of orbit, causing it to crash into Earth. His last moments, staring where Earth once was in silent grief, is enough to make you give the guy a hug.
• Since childhood, Dexter has always had an instinctive urge to kill, and has been raised from childhood to believe that there is nothing he can do to stop it and that he can only satiate it by only killing other serial killers. He is a rare villainous example of I Just Want to Be Normal as he often wishes he weren't a serial killer, but it's never strong enough to get him to actually stop killing people.
• Doctor Who:
  • Omega was a founder of Gallifreyan society who was revered by the Time Lords as a great hero. However, after being sent into a black hole, he ended up in an antimatter universe where he was stuck for millions of years. It drove him insane, eventually making him fall into villainy. This is further reinforced when he temporarily hijacked the Doctor's body... and all he did was smile at people and enjoy having a body again. In moments where he's more lucid, it's shown he does regret his actions, but his insanity kicks back in and sets him back on the path to being a villain.
  • "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks": After becoming a Half-Human Hybrid, Dalek Sec comes to see the horror of what the Daleks have done, and tries to revive his species and lead them away from their self-destructive wars. For this, he is betrayed and killed.
  • "The End of Time" puts the Master, who usually doesn't qualify, in this role by revealing that the drumbeat in his head that drove him (more) insane was planted there when he was a child by Rassilon in an attempt to escape the Time War and destroy reality so he and the other Time Lords could Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
  • The Minotaur in "The God Complex". He doesn't want to kill, but does so in order to survive and feels at peace when it finally dies.
  • In the spin-off audio adventure The Foe from the Future, while Lord Jalnik is planning to basically destroy the human race to benefit his 'adopted' species, he only fell so far because he was betrayed and manipulated by the woman he loved, although he clearly fell too far for anyone to feel truly sorry for him in the end.
  • The Doctor himself in the three-part Series 9 finale. First he watches as Clara Oswald dies while powerless to stop it only to immediately get trapped in a torture chamber for several billion years and Driven to Madness by his grief. It really is not a surprise that by "Hell Bent", he is trying to achieve the impossible and needs a memory wipe to recover.
• The Flash (2014) : Savitar is a vicious speedster who fancies himself a God, but he's also a time remnant of Future Barry who (according to himself) was shunned by Team Flash for not being the "real" Barry. Suffice it to say that he went crazy, decided becoming a god was the only way to deal with his miserable existence, and went back in time to terrorize his past self.
• Game of Thrones:
  • The deaths of Rickard Karstark's sons and the subsequent lack of retribution (including Catelyn freeing Torrhen's killer) drive him mad. Thanks to John Dahl's intense performance and his entirely understandable motives, it's hard not to feel pity for Rickard. The man lost both his sons and the killer went free.
  • Jaime Lannister knows that he's detested by society, all for a single act that he considered heroic and which saved countless lives.
  • Despite his rather unpleasant personality, Theon Greyjoy becomes one of these due to the degree to which his jerkassery and later villainy is fueled by never being accepted by anyone, as well as his upbringing. His nightmarish fate in Season 3 makes this all the more pronounced.
  • As he tells Arya, Sandor has no one who loves him, with his only living family being his Ax-Crazy psychopath of a brother who burned half of Sandor's face off when they were children, and whom Sandor despises. The Hound is by no standard a nice person, but he's led a horrible life.
  • Lord Tywin Lannister, while not wholly sympathetic and is pretty damn ruthless towards his enemies... or those who piss him off like Tyrion, his life hasn't been an easy one. Born to Tytos Lannister (a good but weak and over-eager man), he was forced to watch as his father squandered the good name his family had built up in the generations since Lann the Clever, to the point his mistresses stole his late mother's jewellery and keepsakes from them in plain sight. The young Tywin soon realised that if he didn't step up, House Lannister would be in ruin and he grew into a ruthless and strong young man who came to despise cowardice. After he became the lord of his house, serving in several wars, he became a highly effective Hand to the Mad King, who despite being the one to actually keep the kingdom running, frequently belittled, humiliated and insulted him. Finally, the death of his beloved wife Joanna by childbirth (with Tyrion being born a dwarf) killed what little essence of joy remained in him, to the point that even his own children can't recall the last time he ever smiled. One could interpret his cruel demeanour as one of a man who was born into a harsh, unforgiving world and forced to grow up far too early just to ensure his family would survive.
• The Good Guys:
  • Walker is a terrible getaway driver who just got out of jail but he can't keep his promise to his daughter to stay on the straight because he craves the excitement of crime. He goes back to prison knowing staying out of his daughter's life is for the best.
  • Senator Buddy Haverton is a greedy politician but it's implied his appetite for money and women led him astray from doing public service. Thanks to his Villainous Breakdown, the investigation into a company dumping toxic waste (which he was being paid to bury and he was secretly responsible for) will get trashed and the company will get away with it.
• In The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses, Richard of Gloucester/Richard III: he started of as an earnest young man who wanted to fight for his family's honor and claim to the throne, but the murders of his father and younger brother,the brutality of war, the foolish bickering of his older brothers and the setbacks he suffers lead him to lose faith in anything worth while and becomes a cold-hearted, power-hungry swordsman who kills his way to the throne and cares for no one. This results in Richard dying alone in the battle of Bosworth (he got his crown but couldn't keep it). His hunched back and withered arm, and the subsequent taunting he gets because of it, only ensured his dark and sad end.
• House of the Dragon has a few, considering it's a prequel series to Game of Thrones. Unlike the source material, many of the more outwardly villainous characters are portrayed more sympathetically.
  • Princess Rhaenyra was thrust into the spotlight when she is appointed as the first female direct heir to the Iron Throne, and keeper of the knowledge about The Long Night. Her arrogance and devious personality does not gel with her new status as The Chosen One. She undermines her position by giving birth to illegitimate sons whose rights she protects by lying or outright using violence. She alienates potential allies and they flock to the side of her stepmother Queen Alicent. As anyone who has read Fire & Blood knows, she loses most of her family in the civil war that ensues and, while the royal line continues through her descendants, she herself never recovers her reputation and she is still remembered as one of Westeros' greatest traitors.
  • Queen Alicent is portrayed with far more sympathy and relatability than she ever was in the novel. She Used to Be a Sweet Kid and was a fair-minded and kind young girl, but her Arranged Marriage to the much older Viserys, her deteriorating friendship with Rhaenyra and her father corrupting her mindset over the years made her grow into a cold, calculating Wicked Stepmother. However, she does still retain some of her original purity and ethics, which makes her far easier to empathize with.
  • Aemond One-Eye was bullied in his youth by his brother and nephews for lacking a dragon and was passed over constantly by his family because he was the second son, despite it being plain to the eye he was a better candidate than Aegon II for the crown. His taming of Vhagar led to a fight which left him permanently maimed and drove his grudge against his nephews further, but it's clear his antagonism is born of years of resentment for being bullied, pushed aside and ignored, with even his taming of Vhagar hinted at being his way of proving his value to others. When he accidentally gets his nephew Lucerys killed by Vhagar, it's clear he never wanted things to come to this and is aware his actions have all but assured the doom of his House. Ultimately, he was a troubled young man who simply wanted to have some agency over his own life.
  • Ser Criston Cole believes in the virtues of knighthood. He befriends Princess Rhaenyra but she forces him to sleep with her. He tries to propose marriage to make an honest woman out of her and restore his honor but she refuses. He has broken his vows for nothing. No girl, no honor and no chance of redemption. He becomes bitter for breaking his vows for a master who did not deserve his loyalty. He turns into one of Rhaenyra's chief opponents and will do anything to stop her from inheriting the Iron Throne. In time, he will become known as The Kingmaker because he backed someone he thought was the rightful king and causing a rift in the Kingsguard. All because he thought he was doing the right thing. Jaime Lannister was correct in referring to Cole as "the best and the worst of the Kingsguard".
  • Prince Daemon Targaryen is stuck being a Spare to the Throne. He is quite bitter that his brother King Viserys keeps giving him different jobs to keep him busy and way from court. He becomes the driving force behind Rhaenyra to compensate for his lack of accomplishments.
• Kamen Rider OOO:
  • Gamel, one of the Greeed, is by far the most sympathetic of the Greeed, being a childish simpleton who doesn't care about doing evil things, and only wants to make Mezool happy. He's still The Brute, and has absolutely zero regard for anyone's life but Mezool's, but his puppy-like devotion makes his eventual death (both of them) feel very sad.
  • Mezool counts as well: her driving desire is to experience parental love. She is quite satisfied with treating Gamel as her child until she receives a Hannibal Lecture that pushes her over the edge, all the while lamenting the impossibility of her dream (Greeed cannot reproduce) and the unquenchable nature of her desire.
• Lab Rats:
  • Douglas Davenport. Though now a good guy, he was strongly sympathetic as a villain. His backstory consists of constantly being overshadowed by his big brother, who had mocked him for his whole life about it. Their parents also constantly gave attention to him, and did not at give Douglas any at all. Because of this, Douglas became obsessed with getting the upper hand, until Leo convinced him that some things are more important than Revenge.
  • Terry Perry. She's a real bitch, and a Sadist Teacher who bullies her students, and acts mean to her employees and basically everyone who's not apart of her family, and even if she does help people, it's only for money. However, her mother was always mean to her, and called her a guy's name, which had other people mocking her as well. She also cares about the Davenport family, yet only shows that when she's alone with them in a room, despite how she treats them like dirt when they're all together.
  • Sebastian. He starts out as a bionic student, a generally good guy, and a friend of the Davenports. However, when he finds out that they had destroyed his father, Victor Krane, he begins seeking vengeance on all of them for it. Thing is, Sebastian had no idea just how evil Krane was, and was too hard headed to listen to reason.
• The League of Gentlemen: Practically everyone (well, maybe except Mr. Chinnery who is a Tragic Hero and Hiliary Briss and Papa Lazarou who are just downright evil...) is one of these.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Adar has a Mysterious Past, but there are a few clues about his story. He was once a an Elf from Beleriand, but under unknown circumstances, he was enslaved and turned into an orc by Morgoth, though he still kept most of his Elvish features intact. And then, he possibly served under Sauron, whom he betrayed to save the Orcs from his odious experiments. He spend the next centuries trying to create a home for the Orcs, destroying instead other people's lives in the process.
• Lost: Michael Dawson, who murdered Ana Lucia and Libby and delivered Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley into the hands of the Others because it was the only way to free his 10-year-old son and get him off the Island.
• In the Peruvian series Mi amor el wachimán (My Love, the Security Guard): El Duque. The guy is really messed up thanks to his poor environment and his Abandonment Issues towards his mother. So he becomes a thief and his friend, who happens to be a security guard, calls the cops on him. He is resentful for the rest of the show and he lets that consume him. There's no doubt that he's a prick, but it's easy to see how he got there, and even feel sorry for him when he dies.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Regina was tailor-made to be the villain and even when she tries to get better she's afraid she won't get her happy ending because "villains don't get happy endings".
  • Rumpelstiltskin keeps losing everyone he loves because of his need for power.
  • Owen spent his whole life trying to get back to Storybrooke and rescue his father, only to find he's already dead. Owen also turned out to be Peter Pan's Unwitting Pawn.
  • Ingrid aka the Snow Queen started off as a good and kind person who was adored by her two sisters, Helga and Gerda, despite her ice powers, until she accidentally killed Helga, which made Gerda fear her sister and trap her in the urn given by Rumplestiltskin. This made her go insane and feel that the only people who could love her are those with magic.
• It is not surprising that Orange Is the New Black has loads of them since it is set in prison.
  • Red was always the competent one in her family then in prison. Her delicatessen goes out of business and she eventually becomes demented.
  • All Morello and Pennsatucky wanted was for people to love them. Morello goes mad after losing her baby and Penn accidentally overdosed after she thought that she had failed getting her GED.
  • Daya is dominated by her mother and taken advantage of by men. She becomes a gang leader by the end.
  • Miss Claudette had given up ever getting paroled, until the man she loved reciprocated her feelings. She had something to look forward to for the first time in a long time. When her parole was denied again, she had a breakdown.
  • Leanne was an ex-Amish girl who was banned after she ratted out others in a drug ring. Prison is the only community she has left.
• Person of Interest
  • Season 1 had Ulrich Kohl, a former East German government assassin. He found out his team sold him out to the Americans when Communism fell so he took his wife Anja and tried to escape but she was killed and he was imprisoned for 30 years before escaping to track down and kill his traitorous former allies. It turned out the Americans helped Anja fake her death after she found out what Kohl did for a living. Kohl also found out too late that he has a daughter. Kohl also planned to kill himself after he was done.
    Kohl: I never had a tomorrow.
  • Season 3 had Peter Collier whose brother was wrongfully arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist until he killed himself. The government refused to take responsibility for his death and Collier joins Vigilance to get revenge but turns it from a bunch of glorified vandals into a domestic terror group. Decima created Vigilance as its Unwitting Pawn and they were all killed once they've served their purpose.
  • Mrs. Thompson from "M.I.A" was forced to become the mayor of a small town which was being used by Samaritan as an experimental sandbox to understand human behavior. She is abused verbally and physically by Reese and Root respectively, and gets no sympathy for her plight. At the end, she stays behind to "quit her job" but it's unknown if she is even going to survive.
• Power Rangers usually has some tragic villains looming around the many series.
• Power Rangers in Space: In a unique turn for the franchise, the lead villain Astronema is this. Originally the red ranger's younger sister, she was kidnapped by Darkonda and raised to be evil. After finding out her true origins, she does do her part to try and redeem herself, but ends up recaptured and given implants so she'll stay evil.
  • Power Rangers Time Force: Frax. He used to be a human, Dr. Fericks, whom Ransik came to for help with his mutated condition. After Fericks found a way to alleviate the worst of Ransik's issues, Ransik repaid him by destroying his laboratory and leaving him for dead. Fericks only survived by giving himself an Emergency Transformation into a cyborg using what mechanisms were still intact in his lab. He spends the majority of the series with an undying hatred for mutants... until Ransik's daughter Nadira apologizes to him for what her father did. And just as he sees that ray of hope, Ransik has his mind wiped and turns him into a lifeless robot, sending him to be killed.
  • Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: Elsa/Principal Randall wasn't all that sympathetic for most of the series, though she did suffer under the thumb of a Bad Boss that is Mesagog. However, at the end of the series we find out she was enthralled through Mind Control the entire time, thus making her Trapped in Villainy the whole time.
  • Power Rangers Dino Charge: Heckyl wasn't always a notorious criminal. He once was an ordinary citizen of Sentai 6, who tried to protect their Artifact of Doom from the Galactic Conqueror Archenon. Unfortunately, he came in contact with it, and it created a Superpowered Evil Side Snide and The Dark Side Will Make You Forget, causing him to forget his original goodness and became a feared force who had several destroyed GALAXIES as part of his rap sheet.
• Prison Break: FBI Agent Alexander Mahone, the main villain in the second season, is only trying to murder the protagonists because the Nebulous Evil Organisation is blackmailing him (they know he murdered a Serial Killer), on top of threatening to kill his wife and child.
• Revolution: General Sebastian Monroe. It's not obvious at first, but as the first season goes on, it turns out that he is this. He was once a good man and a soldier for the USA, but a number of events occurred. First, he lost his entire family in a car accident and he would have killed himself had Miles Matheson not intervened. So he attaches himself to Miles to the point of borderline erotic fixation ("Nobody's Fault But Mine"). The blackout also happens, leaving a lot of people, including Miles and him without a job ("Pilot"). Miles and Monroe form the Monroe Republic, with Monroe as the general in charge ("No Quarter"). Their relationship fell apart when in response to a Rebel bombing the restaurant they were in and injuring Miles, Monroe had the Rebel and his entire family executed to make an example out of them. Miles tried to assassinate Monroe in response but he couldn't do it. A number of times, Monroe points out that he never really cared about controlling anything, and that he thought he was just doing what Miles would have wanted ("The Dark Tower"). A number of times, it is also shown that Monroe doesn't enjoy being a villain, but he apparently feels that there's no going back for him ("Home").
• Smallville: Lex Luthor wasn't always the supervillain we expected. He was once a young man with the potential to use all his wealth and power for good. He was still a bit cold, but his friendship with Clark Kent allowed him to see the better side of himself through understanding and mutual mentorship. However, his dysfunctional past, desire to live up to the horrid expectations of his father, and repeated disappointments in love and secrets slowly destroyed that which was good in Lex. He slid into villainy though a desire for control, love and fighting his own self-loathing.
• Sons of Anarchy:
  • The protagonist, Jax Teller. He was raised into SAMCRO, and to believe that they're doing the right thing. However, he slowly starts to see that it's wrong, and tries to get SAMCRO into a more peaceful motorcycle club, after getting a kid. Unfortunately, he slowly becomes colder after every season, and after becoming President, he seems to have forgotten himself, and everything he stands for. He becomes a full-blown villain after the death of his wife Tara, and in the final episode organizes his own road accident suicide.
  • Opie Winston. He just wanted to move out of SAMCRO, to get a better life, with his wife and children, and to take Jax with him. Unfortunately, nothing went well for him, and after his wife's death, he changes his goal into committing suicide.
• The Sopranos:
  • Tony Soprano. He's a New Jersey mobster who suffers from panic attacks, loves animals, wants his kids to have a good future and a good life outside the mafia, and cares deeply for his family.
  • Christopher Moltisanti is Tony Soprano's chosen successor, but had drug and addiction problems that harm him and the people around him.
  • Tony Blundetto in Season 5 is a newly-released convict who wants to go legit, but ends up going back to a life of crime when it doesn't work out, but his actions ultimately lead to him getting killed.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has a entire race of Tragic Villains - the Jem'Hadar. They are a reptilian species literally bred for the sole purpose of fighting for the Dominion. A need to fight is instilled in them from birth, and they can never truly go against their programming - quite literally, they fight until they die. They're dependent on a drug called "the white" that kills them painfully if the supply runs out (and that's after it drives them crazy first). They're built to be as xenophobic as possible, and can't bring themselves to have any long-term cooperation with another species. And to top it off, they're built to love and serve the Dominion's Founders unconditionally, despite their very existence being under such brutal conditions. In fact, one episode has a group of Jem'Hadar learn that the Vorta who had lead their troops had sold them out, and they knowingly go to their deaths in the ensuing battle regardless, for it is "the order of things."
• Supernatural:
  • The Archangel Michael in season 5 frees Lucifer to bring about the Apocalypse, which will destroy at least half of the planet. Yet he is ultimately trying to make the best of a bad situation with holding everything together after God's abandonment and looking after humanity. Bringing about the Apocalypse is supposed to please God, destroy the source of evil in Lucifer and Hell, and bring about paradise both for humanity and angel. Ultimately, he is trying to fulfill his duty and please his Father even if that means killing the brother he loves.
  • The angel Castiel of all people becomes this in season six. His world is crumbling around him, he's constantly fighting just to keep the Earth spinning, and it's clear he feels that the people he cares most about can't really help him, so he decides to simply leave them out of his problems to keep them safe. Plus, God is still MIA. This drives him to make increasingly desperate and dark decisions, including opening Purgatory to harness the soul power within, even though it's risky and the actions required to do it harm innocents. He recognizes that his choices have terrible consequences, but simply doesn't seem to see any other viable option to save humanity. What's especially tragic is that even when his friends find out what he's doing and move to stop him (which crushes him), no one is able to actually suggest another course of action, so he ends up sticking to his current path while the people he loves seriously consider killing him.
• The Wire:
  • D'Angelo Barksdale at first loves the gangster lifestyle but he becomes disillusioned after someone is killed over him. He is in prison by season 2 and just wants to be left alone but String has him killed because he does not trust him.
  • Ziggy Zobotka is a small time criminal who fails at everything because he is inept and puny. He finally finds a racket by stealing cars but he is ripped off because he is seen as weak. He finally loses his temper and kills the man who ripped him off. His father Frank's attempt to keep him out of jail gets himself killed and ruins the stevedores union.
  • Stringer Bell becomes less and less likeable in season three, but he still counts; His dreams of becoming a legitimate businessman are all for naught due to him being unprepared for how life outside of the Game works.
  • Avon found out that String killed D'Angelo but he could not get himself to kill his best friend to avenge his nephew. He instead let Omar and Brother Mouzone do the deed. When Avon went to prison, his sister Brianna found that he had been covering for the murderer of her son and abandons him.
  • Randy is the poster child for the inability of police to defend citizens, and how society's lack of care for its citizens winds up creating criminals.

---