History NiceJobBreakingItHero / LiveActionTV

** Happens in the season four episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E4FearItself Fear Itself]]":

*** [[spoiler:Good thing the fear demon itself is only four inches tall.]]

** And, of course, when Buffy was [[spoiler:brought back from the dead, thereby ripping her out of heaven.]] From Buffy's point of view, at least, nice job breaking me, Scoobies.

** Eleven runs into this again during "[[Recap/DoctorWho2010CSAChristmasCarol A Christmas Carol]]". He resorts to going back in time and rewriting the entire childhood of Kazran, the only man who can save a spaceship from crashing, [[spoiler:only for Kazran to end up exactly as bitter and jaded as he was already, just for different reasons. Then, when Kazran finally ''does'' agree to help, the all-important machine no longer recognises him as the man it's programmed to obey.]] And of course, the Doctor's rewrite involved an act of kindness that kind of backfired: [[spoiler:he let Abigail out of her cryogenic prison every Christmas, not realizing that every day she left was one day closer to her death — up until she had one day of life left. When Kazran realized this, it brought about the bitterness mentioned above.]]

*** [[spoiler: Actually, Clark was probably the least responsible for the events leading to Jimmy's death. His plan to banish Davis to the Phantom Zone would have worked, but Chloe stopped him. Granted, he can be blamed for letting her leave with Davis, but still. Afterwards, he came up with the plan to split Davis and Doomsday apart and send Doomsday to the Phantom Zone, but Tess destroyed the black crystal. Then, after coming up with another plan, Oliver, Bart, and Dinah betray Clark to kill Davis even though Oliver's plan seemed to pretty much be just shooting him with an arrow. Then, Chloe split Davis and Doomsday apart, which led to Clark having to finish plan to stop Doomsday alone and Chloe accidently revealing to Daivs she never loved him which drove him insane and made him kill Jimmy.]]

* In the ''Series/AdamTwelve'' episode "The Dinosaur," a cop who suffered a seemingly CareerEndingInjury eight years ago is finally recovered enough to go back to work, and Reed and Malloy are assigned to retrain him. Unfortunately, he has a hard time adjusting to modern procedure, most notably the MirandaRights, which were introduced while he was out on disability, causing multiple suspects to get OffOnATechnicality. In the end, he botches the arrest of a stalker who goes on to almost kill his ex-wife with a CarBomb, leading the cop to quit the force so no one else gets hurt.

*** In the episode [[Recap/LegendsOfTomorrowS2E5Compromised "Compromised"]], their mission to investigate a time anomaly in the White House during the Cold War goes south when [[Comicbook/BlackCanary Sara]] discovers Damian Darhk, [[spoiler: the man who will one day murder her [[Comicbook/BlackCanary sister]]]], is around and immediatly tries to murder him, leading to a fight between the team and White House secruity. She does again later in the same episode, giving Damian a BreakingSpeech that informs him of his own future, where he ends up [[Recap/ArrowS4E23Schism defeated]] and [[spoiler: killed by the ComicBook/GreenArrow]], causing him to [[spoiler: ally with evil time traveller Eobard Thawne/Reverse Flash, creating a much bigger threat to the timeline]]. This trope is taken UpToEleven in the Season 2 finale, when the Legends crash-land in LA of 2017... filled with dinosaurs and buildings from different time periods.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E8HumanNature "Human Nature"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E9TheFamilyOfBlood "The Family of Blood"]]: The Doctor masquerades as a human in 1913 rural England to evade four aliens who want to steal his longevity. Assuming they don't find him, they die of old age in a few months, right? Wrong! Of course, they ''do'' find him, and go on a rampage, killing many innocents. In the end, the Doctor re-emerges and saves the day. Victory, right? Wrong! Love interest Joan, grief-stricken at the "death" of the Doctor's manufactured human self, points out that all the death and suffering was the result of the Doctor coming in the first place. By trying to be kind to the bad guys, he ended up being cruel to the innocent bystanders. Even the Doctor seems to accept that this is true.

** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E15Consequences Consequences]]", when Faith begins to go bad after staking the Deputy Mayor, Buffy and Giles plan to deal with it ''without'' alerting the Watcher's Council, but Wesley finds out anyway after eavesdropping on them and immediately calls in a special ops team to bring her in. In the process of doing so, he [[WhatAnIdiot completely ruins]] Angel's attempts to get through to her just as he was beginning to succeed, setting off a sequence of events that lead to Faith becoming [[CorruptPolitician Mayor Wilkins]]' [[TheDragon dragon]].

* ''Series/ControlZ'':
** In 2.07, Quintanilla tries to tell Nora about his affair with Susana, but is interrupted by Guero, Susana's husband, who had somehow found out and punched him because of it, resulting in Nora storming out. It is later revealed in 2.08 that it was Susana who had told him, explaining to Quintanilla that she couldn't allow Raúl to keep on blackmailing her, but it doesn't change the fact that Quintanilla is upset at her for ruining his engagement to Nora.
** In 2.07, Javier catches both his father and Natalia making out, becoming enraged to the point of beating him up and breaking up with the devastated Natalia at the beginning of 2.08. As a result, she was left with no more means to collect the money for the drug dealers, let alone on her very last day, eventually leading to her kidnapping.

* ''Series/KamenRiderDecade'': [[spoiler: If we are to make sense of Wataru Kurenai's contradictory babblings]], mentioned that the eponymous Rider has to kill all the Riders to prevent the merging of the Alternative Rider Worlds, mentioning that "creation cannot begin without destruction". Instead, Decade chose to help all the Riders defeat their respective monster enemies as a Rider should. Cue [[LegionOfDoom Dai Shocker]] (the coalition of all the enemy organizations and monster races) through [[Series/KamenRiderX Apollo Geist]] becoming able to [[YouCantFightFate speed up the destruction of the Alternative Rider Worlds]]. [[spoiler: Thankfully, Decade eventually turned into his nasty, somewhat evil Fury Form after being [[MoralDissonance given a major beatdown by the original 9 Riders for all his troubles]], thus being able to kill all Riders, trap them into cards and allowing the worlds - fallen riders included - to be rebooted to their proper states, but ''what the hell,'' Heroes?! What did they really have to do?!]] There was a lot of MindScrew going on, but it seems attacking Decade was simply to goad him into becoming Decade Fury so that he would do what needed to be done.

*** Walter White's storyline is a series of unintended consequences. All of his solutions create bigger problems, particularly when [[spoiler: his plan to exact revenge on Jack and his crew for stealing his money and murdering Hank literally ricochets back at him.]]
*** When Walter indirectly kills [[spoiler:Gus Fring]] in order to protect his family, he ended up ruining the company and prevented him from earning further money. As a result, Mike, Gus's devoted bodyguard, lampshades this during his [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech brutal rant.]]

*** In "[[Recap/BreakingBadS5E14Ozymandias Ozymandias]]", when Skyler [[spoiler:realizes Hank is dead and believes Walt killed him (he didn't, but he was indirectly responsible for it, not to mention everything else), instead of doing the smart thing by picking up the phone and calling the police to try to get Walt arrested, [[RevengeBeforeReason picks up a kitchen knife]], initially under pretense of [[GetOut making him leave the house]]. But Walt didn't fall for it, since she just accused him of killing Hank, he knew she wasn't really going to let him [[KarmaHoudini go scot-free and more easily avoid the Feds since she refused to call them]]. He knew she'd attack him for Hank's death and the other sins she couldn't stop, even if he went out the door, so he tried to talk her out of it. Instead, she slashed him anyway, [[BerserkButton forcing Walt to take extremes by tackling her and trying to forcibly take the knife before she can cut him again.]] [[BrokenPedestal This cements Walt Jr. turning against his father and wanting him dead, despite that he was too good to pick up a knife to attack his evil father.]] He throws Walt off Skyler and calls the police like ''she'' should have. [[OhCrap And Skyler realized too late that Walt didn't believe that the infant Holly could turn against him like Skyler and Junior could and he would take her with him.]]]]

* ''Series/OnceUponATime'': A horrible example for Prince Charming. Trying to get water from a healing lake to heal the beloved of his unwilling fiancée Princess Abigail, he kills the [[EnthrallingSiren siren]] guarding the lake. When his mother is mortally wounded, he goes back to the lake only to find that it's dried up because of the death of its guardian, and his mother dies.

* ''Series/{{Jericho}}'': Jennings & Rall and Ravenwood are getting their hooks into the US government, even going so far as to suborn [[spoiler:a plan to safeguard Russian nukes. John Smith decides the best way to fix things is to ''set the bombs off'' in cities containing J&R's branch offices and central HQ.]]

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'': Michonne killing the Governor's zombified daughter. Whether you think his and Milton's attempts to try and heal her were futile or not or whether you think he deserved it or not for kidnapping Glen and Maggie; the fact remains that beforehand the Governor was far closer to a Shane-style villain. Killing others to secure their stuff, interrogating people using violence etc. ''Afterwards'' however he became a full on psychotic Bond-villain that [[spoiler: eventually leads to the deaths of Merle, Andrea and about a dozen {{Redshirt}}s]]
* In ''Series/{{Wheeler Dealers}}'', due to Edd China repainting the 1967 Mustang in S09E14 and outfitting it with aftermarket parts, the car had lost its desirable "A-Code" (vehicle with mostly original parts) status.

* ''Series/DearWhitePeople'': Corresponding with the above NWordPrivileges, [[spoiler: Gabe]] was the one to call on Campus Security in order to break up the ensuing fight. [[spoiler: Gabe didn't predict that one of the security guards would pull a gun on Reggie.]]

** Speaking further in the above, there's also the time where Sam and Dean, by killing the witch Don, only ended up providing his sister with the final blood sacrifice needed to break another one of the seals, specifically a seal the breaking of which briefly unleashes Samhain on an unsuspecting town; in "
[[Recap/SupernaturalS04E07ItsTheGreatPumpkinSamWinchester It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester]]".

** Speaking further in the above, there's also the time where Sam and Dean, by killing the witch Don, only ended up providing his sister with the final blood sacrifice needed to break another one of the seals, specifically a seal the breaking of which briefly unleashes Samhain on an unsuspecting town; in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS04E07ItsTheGreatPumpkinSamWinchester It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester]]".

* ''Series/PrisonBreak'': Michael does this several times, but special mention can go to when he starts the riot at Fox River, leading to several deaths [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone (for him to feel guilty about)]] and T-Bag finding out about the escape.

** To an extent, Dean as well, not only for [[spoiler:breaking the first seal]] between seasons three and four but also for [[spoiler:revealing to Azazel that his plans were going to work before he'd even put them in place. Okay, so Azazel was possessing his grandfather at the time and Dean thought he was going to save his mother, but it [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast caused]] the death of his grandparents and father and Mary's resulting deal: Mary gives Azazel permission to enter her house in 10 years in exchange for resurrecting John. This deal]] is what kick-starts the plot of the whole series.

** Jaime Lannister:
*** In his youth, Jaime engineered a RescueSex scenario in the benefit of Tyrion. His younger brother, unaccustomed to kindness, fell in love and married the girl, who was actually a sex worker. Tywin put an end to it; he pimped her out to his whole guard and forced Tyrion to watch, leaving him mentally scarred for life.
*** Jaime lies about Brienne's family wealth to prevent Locke from raping her, but later, on his way back to King's Landing, he hears that Locke refuses her father's ransom offer because he expects more and finds a mere 300 gold dragons an insult coming from an island full of sapphires. (In fairness, Jaime then turns right around and rescues her.)
*** He retroactively does this by outfitting Brienne with a fine suit of armor, a Valyrian steel sword bearing the mark of the lion, and having Podrick Payne act as her squire. Despite Jaime's intentions, these lead to Arya and Sandor distrusting Brienne when she finds Arya and a fight breaking out because from all appearances, she looks like she's in league with the Lannisters.

** Sansa decides to entrust Theon (despite hating him, and knowing that he betrayed Robb and believing strongly to have killed her baby brothers) to trigger her only means to escape Winterfell. Thanks to that, her entirely loyal well-wisher gets brutally tortured and killed and her own situation is made even worse than ever now that Ramsay knows that she tried to escape.