History DeathSeeker / LiveActionTV

* A subplot in the latter half of Series/TheKingLoves has flavors of this. When Won is manipulated into thinking Rin is after his throne, instead of explaining the misunderstanding, Rin allows Won to believe the lie, and even confides in San that he hopes Won will not find out the truth. After Rin is nearly killed when he throws a sword fight against Won, the latter reads a letter Rin had left for him, in which Rin confesses his guilt over his love for San (whom Won is also in love with) and his inadvertent role as a pawn to seize Won's throne, and expresses his belief that he deserves to die.

* A subplot in the latter half of Series/TheKingLoves has flavors of this. When Won is manipulated into thinking Rin is after his throne, instead of explaining the misunderstanding, Rin allows Won to believe the lie, and even confides in San that he hopes Won will not find out the truth. After Rin is nearly killed when he throws a sword fight with Won, the latter reads a letter Rin had left for him, in which Rin confesses his guilt over his love for San (whom Won is also in love with) and his inadvertent role as a pawn to seize Won's throne, and expresses his belief that he deserves to die.

* ''Series/{{CSI}}'' has one episode where the [[AntiVillain "baddie"]] of the week is simply a deeply disturbed and depressed man in a RedShirt who loses his girlfriend (in a way that genuinely isn't his fault) and goes around starting trouble so someone would kill him and let him be "reunited" with her. Thing is, even in a gunfight with multiple people all shooting at him, [[EpicFail they all fail to hit him]]. In the end, he gets cornered on a rooftop and simply tries to commit suicide by jumping off, but there's a safety net underneath him.

* On ''Series/NineOneOne'', Bobby was a firefighter who failed to see the safety issues of his own apartment building before it ignited a fire that killed 148 people, including his wife and children. In the first season, it comes out that Bobby made himself a deal that he would do whatever it took to save 148 lives to "balance the scales" and then kill himself. He even keeps a journal to mark down the names of the saved. Eventually, Bobby's friends help him realize this is a self-serving and foolish idea and he realizes it's better to live his life.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "Rendezvous in a Dark Place", Barbara [=LeMay=] became obsessed with death after her husband and all of her old friends died. She explains to [[TheGrimReaper Death]] that she was jealous because he had taken almost everyone that she cared about. As a result, Barbara decided that she would do everything that she could to be close to death, even attending the funerals of people whom she didn't know. She wants Death to take her as [[DontFearTheReaper she doesn't fear him]] but sees the beauty, freedom and tranquility that he represents. Death initially refuses because her obsession with him means that there is no life in her but he reconsiders and takes her the following night. Barbara then [[BecomingTheGenie becomes an agent of death herself]].

** Ishamael confesses to Mat that his desire is a final, [[CessationOfExistence permanent]] death (as {{reincarnation}} usually occurs), given how tired he's become of being reborn again in a world so [[CrapsackWorld saturated with suffering]].

* ''Series/TheWheelOfTime2021'': After they're [[DePower gentled]], male channelers only want to die as losing the One Power makes them extremely depressed. Moiraine gets Logain to help Rand with the promise that she'll give him a dagger to kill himself.

** Worf himself in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E16Ethics Ethics]]" after being paralyzed following an accident in an ''Enterprise''-D cargo bay. Had not the surgery to replace his spinal cord been available he almost certainly would have committed suicide down the line.

** Spike has a theory that ''all'' Slayers develop suicidal tendencies, as they isolate themselves from family and friends until they have nothing to live for, and then die in battle. He explains it as how he killed two Slayers (though his timing and being much tougher than the standard vampire helped), and why Buffy lived so much longer than the average Slayer: she still had friends and family.

* On ''Series/LockwoodAndCo2023'', Lockwood seems all too eager to heroically put himself in harm’s way, which Lucy notices about halfway through the season. He all but admits to her that he has been having suicidal thoughts for a long time.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' has the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Klingons]], whose religion holds that to get into Sto-Vo-Kor (their equivalent of Heaven...or more accurately, Valhalla) one has to die in honorable combat. "Today is a good day to die" is basically the motto of the entire species. A Klingon warrior who lives to old age will tend to get more extreme about this. A specific example of this is shown late in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', with [[OldMaster Dahar Master]] Kor. During the Dominion War arc he desperately wants to be sent into combat so that he can have a chance to die honorably, but he's made so many enemies over the years that nobody is willing to let him join the war. Furthermore not helped by the fact that by the time of his last appearance, Kor was now something of a senile loon.
** Like the Vikings below, there ''are'' loopholes. For example, when Jadzia dies, her Klingon husband, Worf, collects friends and goes into battle in her honor, which in Klingon religion can earn the deceased passage to Sto-Vo-Kor. [[note]](Paralleling the medieval Christian doctrine of substitution, wherein if you had committed more sin than you could do penance for in a lifetime, you could work it off by various more active things, like crusading or helping to build a church, which devolved into the outright-purchase papal indulgences Luther found so offensive. Or someone else could transfer ''their'' merit to you, which is why rich people endowed monasteries and where that 'pray for the souls of the dead' thing originates. AndNowYouKnow.)[[/note]]
** Also, Worf's brother Kurn. After Worf loses his family honor for the second time, Kurn loses his high council seat and finds his way to [=DS9=], where he asks Worf to kill him in the ''Mauk-to'Vor'' ritual. When both Dax and Odo stop Worf from killing Kurn and Sisko firmly takes any further attempts off the table, Worf at first arranges for Kurk to join Odo's security forces, but when Kurn allows a criminal suspect to shoot him Odo realizes he's just looking to die. Odo tells Worf that a man with a death wish was not only a danger to himself but his colleagues before dismissing Kurn from his forces. In the end, Worf is forced to wipe Kurn's memory in order to keep his brother from dying. Just a tremendously sad story all around.
** Worf himself in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E16Ethics Ethics]]'' after being paralyzed following an accident in an ''Enterprise''-D cargo bay. Had not the surgery to replace his spinal cord been available he almost certainly would have committed suicide down the line.
** Even not-very-Klingon Klingons get in on this. In ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'''s "Extreme Risk", to punish herself for [[SurvivorGuilt not being around]] when the Maquis were wiped out, B'Elanna starts engaging in higher and higher risk activities on the holodeck with the safeties off. It's pretty clear that if Chakotay hadn't stepped in, she would have kept going until she got herself killed.
** Garak in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' slips into this a couple of times. First, there's his habit of not putting a filter on his mouth before blurting out something inadvisable, to the point where he'll mouth off to people ''who have just stabbed him''. Second, in "The Wire", he keeps trying to get Bashir to stop trying to save him, coming up with new spins on the same basic story in the hope of finding any portrayal of himself, any at all, that would make the uber-idealistic doctor abandon him.
** A character's plan in the ''Deep Space Nine'' episode "Duet" is to be put to death. [[spoiler:A Cardassian filing clerk named Marritza got plastic surgery to resemble the late Gul Darhe'el, who ran the concentration camp Marritza worked at. Driven almost mad by guilt at his inaction in the face of the camp's atrocities, Marritza planned to force Cardassia to admit its wrongdoing, then be executed, sparing him any more time living with his guilt. Upon realising this, Kira frees him, although he's murdered not five minutes later by a Bajoran.]]
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'''s Dean is this in a nutshell. Notice how whenever he gets the choice to die or keep living the choice is always ambiguous. After his Dad dies for him, he's tired of life and, as the crossroads demon says in "Crossroad Blues", his first thought in the morning is "I can't do this anymore." It finally comes to a head in the Season Two finale when Sam dies and Dean sells his soul to get him back for a whole bunch of messed-up reasons. For the first half of Season Three, he doesn't seem to mind if he goes downstairs ahead of schedule but finally, ''finally'' in "Dream a Little Dream of Me", he realizes the obvious fact that he doesn't ''deserve'' eternity in Hell. Except his martyrdom comes back full force in "No Rest For The Wicked", and he still thinks he doesn't deserve to live in "Lazarus Rising", so you can't help but still think his sole goal for himself is death.
** Dean's earliest brush with this was way back in the season one episode "Faith" when he learned that, by seeking the help of a faith healer, he inadvertently caused the death of a young man. The boys find out that the faith healer’s wife was behind his ability to heal people’s illnesses and had managed to do it using a dark altar and by binding an actual Reaper, who can give and take life, to her will which killed victims she thought were sinners and deserved to die and took the healed folks place in death to balance out while her husband had no idea.

** While Dean is the most extreme version of this, nearly every character in the show has desperately wanted death at some point: Bobby wanted it in "Dream a Little Dream Of Me" [[spoiler:and while crippled]], John probably wanted it most of Sam's life.

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'':

** Also, Worf's brother Kurn. After Worf loses his family honor for the second time, Kurn loses his high council seat and finds his way to [=DS9=]. He joins Odo's security forces, but Worf quickly realizes he's just looking to die. In the end, Worf is forced to wipe Kurn's memory in order to keep his brother from dying. Just a tremendously sad story all around.

* ''Series/{{Forever}}'': Henry Morgan, 200-year-old Doctor blessed (or cursed) with ResurrectiveImmortality, is a mild case, as he spends a great deal of his time researching his condition and hoping to "cure" it. It's not so much that he ''wants'' to die, per se; he wants to be able experience the natural cycle of life.

* ''Series/MotherlandFortSalem'': When she first enlists, Raelle has no goal beyond going off and dying in a war somewhere. After learning about how her mother died because of the supposed incompetence of Petra Bellweather, Raelle finds a new purpose - to ruin Petra's daughter Abigail, but she quickly abandons this plan after realizing that it would also hurt Tally. Additionally she grows to be friends with Abigail as well, and likely doesn't want to do this any more later.

** It is implied that this was the reason for River Song's sacrifice in the Library in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E9ForestOfTheDead "Forest of the Dead"]]. If the Doctor does not know her at all, she may as well not live.

* In the re-imagined ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' episode 1.03 "[[Recap/BattlestarGalactica2003S1E3BastilleDay Bastille Day]]", Lee Adama suggests that [[spoiler: Tom Zarek]] is one of these.

** In "Discovered in a Graveyard", Doyle is shot by an assassin and his AdventuresInComaland imply that he's had enough of the violence and just wants an end to it. After recovering however ,[[StepfordSmiler Doyle just acts like his normal self.]]

* When Mack "[[FanNickname iMack]]" Hartford of ''Series/PowerRangersOperationOverdrive'' [[TomatoInTheMirror realizes he's an android,]] he at first has a classic HeroicBSOD, but comes out of it rather quickly...only to put himself in the line of fire more and more in an attempt to engineer a HeroicSacrifice. It ''starts'' with pushing a HumongousMecha toward [[ExplosiveOverclocking overload]] and goes from there.