Alas Poor Villain / Live-Action TV

Examples of Alas, Poor Villain in live-action TV.

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• On The 100, Anya led the Grounder warriors who tried to massacre the 100. Despite this, Clarke is rather upset to see her unceremoniously gunned down (it helps that, mere minutes before, Anya had agreed to ally with Clarke against their common enemy in Mount Weather).
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Shockingly enough Hive of all characters is given one of these. His plan was to pilot a stolen Quinjet into the upper atmosphere and detonate a bomb that would turn the population of three continents into his brainwashed slaves, but he didn't expect a badly wounded Lincoln to pull a Heroic Sacrifice by sneaking on board and sabotaging the controls, causing the jet to go all the way into space where the detonation can't harm anyone but the two of them. Rather than raging or trying to kill Lincoln, Hive calmly accepts his fate and the two of them watch the amazing view of the Earth, talking about how amazing they both think humanity is. Hive closes it by saying that for all his misdeeds, he really did just want to make the world a better place.
  • Lucy Bauer gets this towards the end of Season 4 - not necessarily in her death scene at the hands of Ghost Rider, but in the flashback that immediately precedes it, showing her being betrayed and forced into a machine by the season's true Big Bad, Eli Morrow, which reduced her to her current ghostly state. Even though she's an unrepentant villain, the sad music that plays during this scene coupled with her desperate pleas for help really paint a sympathetic picture.
• In Alma Gêmea, Guto's death is portrayed in a sympathetic way. He's poisoned by Débora to avoid him from incriminating Cristina, and just as he's about to confess everything about Luna's death, he starts feeling sick and collapses. As he dies, Serena, who Guto killed in her past life as Luna, forgives him and tells him to go in peace.
• With the tendency for The Amazing Race teams to get a touching send-off after being eliminated or losing, even teams people originally rooted against can invoke this response upon realizing just how passionate they were about the race. The biggest example is probably Season 2's Wil, whose final speech has him tearing up and trying to figure out what he could have done better, while his ex-wife Tara celebrated with the winners, one of whom she had been flirting with for the entire season.
• And Then There Were None (2015):
  • While he is still guilty of his crimes, Blore is made sympathetic enough by his banter with Lombard and eventually breaks down and confesses his crime, showing actual remorse.
  • Miss Brent is shown to be much more affected by Beatrice Taylor's death than in the novel and, shortly before she is murdered, she loses her typical stern behavior, showing how frail and scared she actually is.
  • Lombard, who pleads with Vera while being held at gunpoint by her to believe him about the murderer being neither of them and how the murderer will win if she kills him — something he is completely right about. He had also developed what appeared to be a genuine connection of sorts with Vera beforehand.
• Angel:
  • The villains go out this way from time to time, which is natural for a show that swims in the Grey area. Nearly all the major antagonists get taken out this way, and it's up to the viewer to decide whether or not their fates were just. Darla, Lindsey, and Lilah each had ridiculously sad and depressing death scenes, while Holtz and Jasmine began to show signs of this trope, but would then yank it away by either setting into motion their own death or by tossing Angel off a bridge and then kissing him to screw with Connor, respectively.
  • Holland Manners, as well in "Reunion". Sure, he was rather unrepentant in his actions, and his role in manipulating Angel led to a particularly Karmic Death, but Angel's leaving him to plead for his life, about to be torn apart by Darla and Drusilla, was treated by Wesley, Gunn, Cordelia, and the audience as a stepping stone in our main character's Moral Event Horizon.
  • Sam Lawson from "Why We Fight". In his human life, he was a soldier on a u-boat in World War II who just wanted to serve his country. He got killed and had to be turned into a vampire to save everyone else on the submarine. As Angel sired him while he had his soul, Sam is forever trapped between good and evil - unable to get any pleasure from killing. It's heavily implied that he sought Angel out to give him a Mercy Kill.
    "Give me another mission, chief."
• Arrow: In an episode that highlights his past in a sympathetic light, Deadshot sacrifices his life to enable the rest of the Suicide Squad to escape the building that's set to explode. He's shown finding a measure of peace as he looks at a photo of his family just before the explosion.
• Band of Brothers initially portrays Herbert Sobel as a Drill Sergeant Nasty who is despised by all his men. Then his ineptitude in the field is revealed and, despite his attempts to frame Dick Winters for his own mistakes, him getting Kicked Upstairs is shown to be devastating to him. His eventual death in real life - fourteen years after a botched suicide attempt left him blind, and no services held for him - is equally tragic.
• Nick Cutler in Being Human (UK). Especially after the flashbacks. He was just desperate for approval from people who treated him so horribly, including Hal. In the scene where the Old Ones utterly cut him down his down his devastation is heartbreaking. Then he gets cooked.
• Better Call Saul: Chuck of all people is given one. Even after watching him spend almost the entire series manipulating and backstabbing his brother Jimmy, trying to sabotage Kim, firing Ernesto for the crime of being friends with his brother , it's heartbreaking to see him isolate himself, lose his mind, tear his house apart, and eventually burn it down with him in it, especially since he was only just starting to conquer his mental illness. He may have created a lot of his own problems, but seeing him fall so far is devastating.
• Blackadder: Villain Protagonist Edmund Blackadder dies in most of the series endings and the second one subverts this trope by making his death sudden and very darkly funny. The first one however is sadder and more emotional, as it shows the Prince (who committed his fair share of crimes like murder and attempted murder) dying alone after finally getting his father's affection and a montage of the main cast most of whom died already in past scenes while an angelic voice sings a mournful song. The fourth ending is even more tragic, having Captain Edmund going to certain death along with most of the main characters, though he could only be considered a villain if one takes into mind the war crimes that he did before the series during the colonisation of Africa. Captain Darling also deserves a special mention for abusing his position in order to get the people he disliked (mainly Edmund) shot (either at battlefield or by a firing squad) but becoming such a nervous mess after realising that it is all over and that he isn't going to make it, that his end became a symbol of the tragedy of war.
• Boardwalk Empire: In the series finale, Villain Protagonist Nucky Thompson goes out like this. Despite committing progressively worse deeds throughout the series to maintain his power as The Don of Atlantic City, one of the worst being his murder of his surrogate son, Jimmy Darmody, Nucky never lost all of his redeeming features. Throughout the final season, flashbacks showed his Start of Darkness, how he Used to Be a Sweet Kid who came from a poor and abusive background, and how he craved both money and power as well as a loving family. The minutes leading up to his death are interspersed with one last flashback, of the moment he metaphorically sold his soul by arranging the rape and resulting impregnation of a teenage Gillian Darmody at the hands of the pedophilic Commodore in order to become Sheriff. The self-loathing, pain and despair on the young Nucky's face is palpable even after he reluctantly goes through with the deed to get ahead. In the present, his greatest sin ends up the cause of his demise. After settling most of his affairs and about to go into retirement, he's confronted by Joel Harper, a young man he had tried to mentor. Joel reveals himself to be Tommy Darmody, the grandson of Gillian and son of Jimmy, who proceeds to fatally shoot Nucky in the same way Nucky killed his father. The last image of the series is a Book End to the final season's opening moments, of a dying Nucky imagining himself as a child trying to catch a gold coin tossed into the ocean, only this time, instead of failing like he did in real-life, he manages to catch one.
• Breaking Bad:
  • The Salamanca twins provide an interesting subversion. They go out in a particularly inhumane fashion and are still treated as the irredeemably evil force they have been up until that point, but that scene served as the climax to an episode that opened with a flashback to their Freudian Excuse.
  • Hector ”Tio” Salamanca and Gus Fring in "Face Off". Sure, they both were very evil people with the latter even threatening to kill the main protagonist’s entire family (including his infant daughter) and the former going so far as having a history of abusing his own nephews. But Gus ultimately became a villain due to the death of his partner at the hands of Tio, and all of Tio’s family members were killed at that point, most of whom were at the hands of Gus, leaving him dying completely alone.
  • Mike. He's getting out of the business and has kept Walt and Jesse in line as the Only Sane Man in their operation, but winds up dead after angering Walt to which even Walt expresses instant remorse.
  • Walt. His attempts at redeeming himself, whether you think he succeeded or not, and his takedown of the Nazis and Lydia make his death even more devastating. His final conversation with Skyler, where he finally tells her and himself the truth, doesn't hurt either.
    Walter: Everything I did... I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was, really... I was alive.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season four's Arc Villain Adam is killed off in the penultimate episode. In the season finale, Buffy has a dream where she meets a fully-human version of him who wasn't turned into the demon-cyborg monster she had to fight. Buffy realises that Adam was ultimately just a pawn in a larger scheme by the military and had no choice in what he became.
  Buffy: What was your name?
  Adam: Before "Adam"? Not a man among us can remember.
• Charmed:
  • Lulu and Frankie, the ghosts who possessed Cole and Phoebe in "Paige from the Past". Despite being villains, you can't help feel sympathetic when it's revealed that their entire Unfinished Business was simply wanting to get married. Considering that they'd have likely moved on afterwards, Piper interrupting the ceremony comes across as kinda a dick move on her part. Of course, sympathies are lessened somewhat by a line of dialogue that reveals that along with being robbers, they were also serial/thrill killers.
  • Cole, who went through the Face–Heel Revolving Door too many times and ultimately just wanted to die. When the sisters find out that he's really dead for good, Paige delivers the line "Happy birthday, Cole" in an almost pitying way.
• Control Z: After being expelled and becoming wanted by the police, Season 2 intends to make us feel sorry for Gerry as his life has now become miserable for murdering Luis and spent most of the time regretting it, wishing that things were different if he hadn't been so mean to him. His having taken a level in kindness is really impressive to the point of making us realize that Gerry deserves a second chance. We are even given a backstory that reveals Gerry's Freudian Excuse, the catalyst of events that led him to become The Bully in the first place.
• Criminal Minds: poor, poor Vincent Rowlings. Made even more heartwrenching by his last dialogue with his Morality Pet:
  Stan: [Crying] C-can we go around one more time?
  Vincent: I don't think so.
  Stan: I-I wish you were my dad.
  Vincent: [Last words] Forgive me.
• Cassidy from Veronica Mars was very pitiable when he killed himself. Freudian Excuse came into play massively.
  Logan: Beaver, don't!
  Cassidy: My name is CASSIDY!
  Logan: Cassidy, don't.
  Cassidy: Why not?
  [Logan can't say anything]
  Cassidy: That's what I thought.
  [He jumps]
• Dexter: Even Dexter is genuinely distraught when he has to finally ice the Ice Truck Killer in the Season 1 finale.
• From Doctor Who:
  • The Dalek, from the episode of the same name. The Doctor was afraid it could wipe out the nearest city by itself, and it spends half an episode getting a kill count in the triple digits. But it also starts questioning its own nature because its Dalek genes have been contaminated by Rose's ^note Because it used energy from a time traveller, in this case Rose, to re-energize itself In the end it can't even kill itself, because that'd go against its programming, and it pleads with Rose to tell it to self-exterminate. Never has the word "Exterminate" been uttered with such pathos.
  • Cassandra in "New Earth" goes from a Large Ham Body Surf villain in the course of the episode, but when she ends up in her assistant Chip, she discovers she is Out of Continues. The Doctor gives her her final wish, to see what she looked like before all that plastic surgery that kept her lifespan so unnaturally long and she in Chip's body tells her past self she looks beautiful. ^note Which was also the last time someone told her she was beautiful.
  • "Doomsday": Yvonne Hartman, upon her final scene as one of the Cybermen, fighting off all the other ones.
    "I did my duty for Queen and Country. I did my duty for Queen and Country. I did my duty for Queen and Country."
  • That poor Krafayis from "Vincent and the Doctor", an invisible alien that kills a child in its first "appearance". Who gets the blame? Vincent. And yet, later, after Vincent manages to fatally stab it with his easel, we find out that this particular Krafayis was actually blind, and its supposed "attacks" were just fearful acts of self-defence, having been abandoned and left all alone on Earth by its pack (according to Eleven, it even gasps out "I'm afraid" repeatedly in its last moments). The Doctor realizes this as it's dying and tries to soothe it, even though he can't even see it.
  • The Minotaur in "The God Complex". Spent the whole episode "feeding" on the faith of those trapped in the hotel, but at the end, was revealed to be just another Death Seeker.
    The Doctor: [translating the Minotaur's grunts] An ancient creature drenched in bloodshed […] for such a creature, death would be a gift. Although we find out, in the very next sentence, that it was referring to the Doctor, but still... it makes sense in the context.
  • This cannot stop happening to the Master:
    • "The Last of the Time Lords": Although the Master goes out on an act of spite of cosmic proportions ( letting himself die so the Doctor will once again be Last of His Kind), the Doctor's boundless sorrow at his death and the fearful, childlike last words "The drumming… will it stop?" still make his death scene one hell of a tearjerker.
    • "The End of Time": It's revealed that the drumming in the Master's head, which has driven him completely mad after being there almost his whole life, was actually deliberately planted by the true Big Bad, Rassilon, for his own purposes. Then the Master goes out in a blaze of glory to get his revenge on the man and save the Doctor.
    • "The Doctor Falls" gives us Missy's death. She ends up being shot in the back, unceremoniously, alone, staring into the sky, tears in eyes, after what seemed to be a Heel–Face Turn.
    • "Doctor Who: The Movie": Even in this charity-produced non-canonical romp where he is boiled down to a dead-serious threat, the decaying Master walking away to die, with the Doctor knowing not to try to help him because he would refuse anyway, is quite a somber, melancholy scene.
• Dollhouse has a prime example of this in one of its final episodes, when Boyd is wiped, strapped up with explosives, and sent in doll state to destroy Rossum HQ. The doll stock line "I try to be my best" clinches it.
• The Eternal Love: Yi Huai kills Tan Er and tries to usurp the throne, but he's still sympathetic enough for his death to be sad. In-universe after his death Xiao Tan hopes Yi Huai and Tan Er will meet in their next life.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Doreah, who screams for forgiveness rather pathetically. Interestingly, the character's villainous actions were left on the cutting room floor, making it rather ambiguous as to whether she was a willing participant in the villainy. This, along with it being Adaptational Villainy from the books (where she was good to the end), makes it all the worse.
  • Ygritte's death in Jon's arms during the Battle of Castle Black is crushingly sad, despite the character becoming very, very dark very, very quickly.
  • Theon is a lech, an oathbreaker, and a child-murderer, but damned if Cold-Blooded Torture in a medieval Room 101 doesn't make you pity the guy. Fortunately, he redeems himself, fights against the White Walkers and dies while protecting Bran from the Night King.
  • Then we have Ellaria in Season 7: Chained up in Cersei's dungeon and forced to watch her daughter die and rot, poisoned by the same "Long Goodbye" she killed Myrcella with.
  • Randyll Tarly, who's burned alive alongside his son, Dickon, by Daenerys, just to set an example. For all of his cruelties, Randyll loved Dickon, and when he couldn't convince his son not to throw his life away, his last action was to reassuringly clutch Dickon's arm before Drogon burned them both.
  • Stannis finds Selyse hanged to a tree in a eerie, gloomy scene. Even if their married life was unhappy and Selyse was an unstable fundamentalist, he's clearly saddened by it.
  • Cersei Lannister finally experiences defeat after seeing the entire King's Landing burned to the ground and her armies destroyed. She weeps into Jaime's arms, wanting their baby to live and they both die together when the Red Keeps collapses on them.
  • In the end, Daenerys Targaryen succumbed into madness after losing two of her dragons and her two best friends. After destroying King's Landing, Jon is forced to kill her and she dies in his arms before her body is being carried away by her last remaining dragon, Drogon.
• The villain of Harper's Island, Henry Dunn, is Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by the protagonist Abby Mills, the girl he's in love with. OK, that love is creepy and unwanted, but he goes out professing his love for her.
• Hemlock Grove: Olivia has murdered scores of people and ultimately only cares about herself, but her final death manages to make her rather pathetic, being reduced to an insane, deathly ill vampire biting chunks off her own body while cradling her daughter's charred corpse and babbling nonsensically to figments of her own imagination.
• Homicide: Life on the Street: Tom Marans has a pitiful Villainous Breakdown at the end of "Hate Crime" after confessing to killing his girlfriend, vainly trying to insist that he's still a good person in spite of it. Even the detectives feel somewhat bad for him over it.
• Captain Sawyer of Horatio Hornblower. Cruel towards his lieutenants and especially Midshipman Wellard, unstable, and antagonistic, but you can't help but pity the man who used to be a hero of the Nile. His death comes as both a relief and a tear jerker, especially as, directly beforehand, he had momentarily regained a shred of sanity, and he and Wellard had faced the escaped Spanish prisoners together with dignity.
• I, Claudius:
  • Livia, the Evil Matriarch, was so pitiable on her deathbed that even Claudius, who knew her murderous nature well, was touched. Caligula on the other hand...
    Caligula: And what makes you think that a filthy smelly old woman like you could become a goddess?

• All the villains qualify: Tiberius dies asking for lamb cutlets before being smothered by a Guard while his even more horrible great-nephew Caligula watches, Messalina frantically begs the soldiers sent to kill her not to take her head, and Sejanus (possibly the most despicable villain in the whole series) asks what has become of his children (both dead, and his daughter raped first because it was against Roman law to execute a virgin).
  • Even before their deaths, most of the fates of the villains invoke this trope. Thanks to his mother forcing him into a fate he never wanted Tiberius goes from being a stern but good general and loving, loyal brother to being a depraved, paranoid loner manipulated by Sejanus and filled with hatred for Rome and his own family. Livia becomes a lonely woman deprived of most of the political power she once enjoyed (and actually used well), having to live isolated with the memory that she murdered a man she genuinely loved, with the fact that her faith in her son, whose rise to the imperial office she dedicated herself completely toward, was tragically misplaced, and finally with her own terror of being punished eternally in the afterlife. Caligula devolves from an eccentric libertine to a madman who is cursed with the occasional moment of lucidity and in his delusions of godhood tortures and kills his sister Drusilla, the one woman he loved (while she's pregnant by him, no less). Sejanus is reluctantly pushed into abandoning his lover Livilla by his political ambitions, which despite his ruthlessness clearly hurts him and pushes Livilla even further over the edge. Messalina may be an exception, and even she obviously becomes increasingly unstable and unable to comprehend the risks she takes.

• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Although he's a ruthless murderer and an abusive partner, Lestat de Lioncourt not fighting back as his boyfriend Louis de Pointe du Lac slits his throat in "The Thing Lay Still", only saying that he is happy that it was Louis with him at the end, is heartbreaking.
• Justified:
  • The episode "Long in the Tooth" features Joe, a Professional Killer for the Miami Cartel who is gunned down by Raylan while trying to make a deal with him. He manages to have a fairly lengthy conversation with Raylan before bleeding out, and it serves to humanise him.
  • Mags Bennet, the Big Bad of season two lives long enough to watch everything she worked her life for crumble. Her hometown despising her, her criminal empire going up in smoke, her two favored sons dead, her remaining living son in police custody, and the surrogate daughter she truly loved only barely being talked down from killing Mags herself, Mags opts to kill herself by drinking her poisoned moonshine. Her last words, a sincere echo of what she said to the man she killed with that very same moonshine, show just how far she's fallen into despair.
    "Put an end to my troubles. Get to see my boys again. Get to know the mystery."
  • Colton Rhodes, Boyd's Dragon in season four. A former soldier in the U.S. Army, he had started out decently enough for a criminal, but steadily got worse and worse as his drug addiction took a bigger toll on him. Eventually, while in a revivalist church, he's caught by his nemesis, Tim Gutterson, the friend of a man he earlier killed. Knowing the end is nigh, he decides to Face Death with Dignity. He lights up One Last Smoke and apologizes to Tim for his friend's death, saying he believes the better part of Tim's friend died during the war, obviously using his victim as a stand-in for himself. Finally, knowing he'll die in the confrontation, he draws on Tim, smiles briefly after the bullets perforate him, then collapses dead atop one of the church pews.
  • Marijuana kingpin Rodney "Hot-Rod" Dunham in Season 5. Betrayed by Johnny Crowder, and held hostage by Jay & Roscoe, Hot-Rod breaks loose and kills one of their men, only to take a bullet in the process. He's found moments later by Raylan and his own Friendly Enemy Alex Miller, and chats with the two of them for a few moments as he bleeds out, reminiscing about the old days.
  • Danny Crowe of all people gets a send-off like this. While his death itself is meant to be Black Comedy, tripping and stabbing himself through the throat while trying to kill Raylan, the minutes before that, where he's mourning over the body of his dead dog, Chelsea, and tearfully recounting how he rescued him from a puppy mill, does a lot to humanize a man who had otherwise been a stupid, Ax-Crazy asshole.
  • Dewey Crowe, Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain extraordinaire and a mostly non-malicious Manchild, gets killed in the sixth season premiere. Returning to his old gang leader and former friend, Boyd Crowder, for work after he believes he received a sign from God, Dewey's outraged when Boyd uses him as a dupe in his latest plan. When he returns to Boyd, he laments the constant abuses and humiliations he's suffered throughout the series, and tearfully professes a wish that things could go back to the way they used to be, back when they were Crowder's Commandos and he felt like he belonged with friends. Boyd tells him that things can never go back to the way they were, but shows Dewey a picture of his grandfather and a bunch of other men working as coalminers. He tells Dewey, no matter how much hardship they suffered, they still dreamed of a better future. Boyd fills Dewey's head with hope that things could get better, just before shooting him the head while he's distracted.
• Kamen Rider:
  • He's a certainly a lot less antagonistic than the other villains in the series, but Sano/Imperer's death in Kamen Rider Ryuki is no less heartbreaking. In summary, Sano had finally attained a semblance of the happiness he'd always wanted, only to be betrayed by a man he thought was his friend and left to dissolve in the Mirror World with no hope of returning home. "I only wanted to be happy", indeed.
  • In Kamen Rider Kabuto, we get Tsurugi, who has thoroughly become a lovable comic relief character... until it's discovered he's really the Scorpio Worm. The real Tsurugi's over-the-top personality had over-riden the Worm's, essentially Becoming the Mask. While it seems like Tsurugi has betrayed humanity, even his potential love interest, it's actually all a part of a gambit to lead the Worms to ruin by following his orders. And it succeeds. Every Worm is defeated. Every . Worm.
    Jiiya: Master!
    Tsurugi: Hey, Jiiya?
    Jiiya: What is it?
    Tsurugi: Is it okay for me to dream?
    Jiiya: Yes! Don't worry about anything. Jiiya will always be by your side.
    Tsurugi: Thank you, Jiiya.
  • Kamen Rider Wizard: Wiseman is a cruel bastard who subjected dozens of people to mental torture, who remains unsympathetic even after it's revealed he only wanted to bring back his daughter, but his final moments are still pretty sad. He gets killed by Gremlin and spends his last moments looking at the daughter he worked so hard to save, right before Gremlin kills said daughter and renders all of Wiseman's efforts null.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim: Mitsuzane does a lot of terrible things, including betraying his friends and leaving them to die, kidnapping Mai and attempting to kill his brother, yet it's hard not to feel bad for him after seeing him learn that Ryoma had tricked him and killed Mai, who he gave up everything to try and save, which leaves him an emotional wreck. It's to the point where his other friends don't even feel like punishing him once they reunite with him since he already hates himself way more.
  • Heart, and basically all of the Roidmudes in Kamen Rider Drive. They were abused and corrupted by their creator as a way of spiting his former partner. Towards the end of the series they wind up being forced to serve under that very same creator to help him achieve his mad narcissist ambitions, all while their numbers dwindle as they have no means to make more of their kind. Even though destroying all of the Roidmudes was Shinnosuke's goal for most of the series, at the end when the last of the Roidmudes (Heart, who spent the entire series trying to create a peaceful world for his kind) dies, he can't take any satisfaction in it at all.
  • Most villains in Kamen Rider Build get this. The Hokuto Three Crows (who weren't evil to begin with) all die as tragic consequences of the War Arc, their boss Kazumi has to watch each of them die one by one, Gentoku gets captured and put through constant abuse in order to make him into a Kamen Rider, Fu has to watch his brother die and dies himself right after deciding to do a good deed, and Utsumi goes insane after watching his father figure be killed before sacrificing himself to help the heroes. The only villains who don't get a sympathetic moment are Juzaburo Namba and Evolt, since both were wholly evil bastards to begin with.
    • The post-series NEW WORLD movie actually manages to give one to Evolt. Yes you read that right. Sure, he doesn't reform at all or regret anything he did, and he only helps Ryuga out of self-preservation, but you can't deny its sad seeing Evolt let out one last weary "ciao" right after being thrashed around and fatally wounded by his Big Brother Bully, especially since the last thing he does before dying is help Ryuga.
• Liquidation: Chekan is a high-ranked bandit, Ida is a smugglers' associate, and they don't hesitate to casually kill off anyone who stands in their way. However, they are deeply and genuinely in love and willing to do anything for each other. When the gang is defeated and its remaining members flee, one of them cold-bloodedly shoots the wounded Chekan when he tries to follow them in a boat and Ida implores them to help him. Ida lunges at the shooter in a desperate Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and the bandits kill her as well and throw her body over Chekan's. And on top of it all, she has had a prophetic dream about it the night before and told Chekan it doesn't matter where they are and why, as long as they are together. Despite all of their horrible crimes, it's hard not to be moved by their death.
• Lost: The Man In Black. Once you learn his tragic backstory and motive, you can't help but feel sorry for the guy.
• Larry in the Masters of Horror episode "Sounds Like" arguably crosses the line when he murders his sleeping wife, to silence the sounds her body creates and his Super-Hearing enhances. But by the end, everything he's been through leaves him completely broken. So much that he graphically deafens himself, and then wanders absentmindedly to the beach with his deceased son's boat, where he'll presumably be caught and arrested by the police.
• Mr. Robot:
  • In season 2, there is Ray Heyworth, a corrupt prison warden who owns a huge black market ring and sex slave business, but it is later revealed that the only reason he has it is because his wife, who died, founded and used to rule the business, and upon being discovered by Elliot and getting arrested, Ray accepts defeat and even lets Elliot go away before the police come and raid the office.
  • In season 3, this becomes even more recurring. The first one to get this is Tyrell Wellick, but not a lethal example - even worse. While he was a falsely affable, elitistic, cold sociopath, when he's forced to start working for the FBI and Dark Army after The Mole Santiago coldly threatens to make it so that he will never see his son again unless he cooperates with them - which would make him even more wanted by the government than he already was - and Santiago, while Tyrell is already sad, reveals that his wife, Joanna, is dead as well, just as coldly, causing Tyrell to burst out in tears and finally drop his stoic facade. Starting the first season as a likeable magnificent bastard, and ending the third season as a wanted man who has lost everything and is being manipulated by everyone... poor guy.
  • Santiago himself of all people. Yes, the same guy who coldly threatened to take Tyrell's son away from him. During the season 3 finale, he undergoes a sort of Sanity Slippage due to his position as FBI's The Mole starting to go away, and it is revealed that he's merely working for the Dark Army because they are threatening to kill his mother if he doesn't comply with them. When Dom, his more heroic colleague and former friend is taken hostage by the brutal Dark Army hitman Irving, Santiago tries desperately protecting her from Irving, and begging him not to kill her. The execution was actually targetted at Santiago himself it is revealed, and Irving gleefully gloats to both Dom and Santiago over it, while even Dom looks nothing but sad at Santiago's death.
  • Also in the season 3 finale, there is Grant, Whiterose's right-hand, who, after preparing to kill Elliot for Whiterose, is actually ordered by her to commit suicide for "not being worthy to see the final results of the project", and it is clear Grant is nothing but shocked over her betrayal, as he obviously trusted her alot, and it is impossible not to sympathize with him after that.
• NCIS: in-universe example: Ari. Ziva is clearly affected by killing him, she sings a song over his body and is haunted by it. Justified, they are half-siblings. The fans probably didn't feel the same way.
• Nirvana in Fire: Prince Yu manages to be a pretty sympathetic villain throughout the series, but even if you never liked him, his pathetic breakdown due to the discovery of his father's betrayal of his mother and his subsequent suicide in a desperate attempt to save his wife and unborn child will have you shedding a tear.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Tamara's death in the Season 3 premiere. While she had been a nasty piece of work and crossed the Moral Event Horizon, she discovers that she had been duped and at least tries to make sure that Henry gets to safety (after she was the one who kidnapped him).
  • Cora gets killed in a very dark way - as Snow White tricks Regina into murdering her. Cora's dying words are to tell Regina that "you would have been enough", realising that she wasted her whole life chasing power.
  • Ingrid the Snow Queen gets read a posthumous letter from the sister Gerda who locked her in an urn after she mistakenly killed their other sister Helga - and acted as a Heel–Face Door-Slam for her. In the letter, Gerda begs her daughters to release Ingrid and welcome her back into the family. Ingrid then sacrifices herself to stop the spell she had been casting, and is then shown reunited with her sisters in the afterlife.
  • Despite Hades being a double-crossing villain who left everyone to die, he did genuinely love Zelena. Her having to kill him with the Olympus Crystal is played very tragically.
• Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Despite being an unsympathetic monster for most of her screentime, the Jabberwocky's final scene where she's imprisoned again by Jafar actually earns some viewer pity for her.
• The Outer Limits (1995): Valerie 23 from the episode of the same name. She's a Robot Girl designed for love, then goes on a jealous rampage when she thinks that another human is taking the object of her affection away from her. When she's destroyed, she acknowledges that she fears death, which the protagonist had earlier deemed is what makes something truly alive.
• In the Person of Interest episode "RAM", Finch tries to save Dillinger even though the man betrayed him, and is saddened by his failure to do so.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: Scorpius was a creepy looking Galactic Conqueror, but he genuinely loved his daughter, and his formal deathbed, with her in attendance, is quite sad. The deaths of Noble Demons Loyax and Villimax also tugged at some heartstrings.
  • In Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, Loki is killed by Queen Bansheera, who forced Diabolico to fire upon the Rangers while he was fighting them. As he lay dying, Loki lamented that all his years of faithful loyalty to the treacherous monarch seemed to be nothing but a waste.
    • It was even worse in the sentai, where each of the major villains were the children of the Big Bad (only Olympius was a child of Bansheera in PRLR).
  • Power Rangers Samurai: Deker is freed of his curse after his final duel with Jayden, and is finally allowed to ascend to the afterlife after being forced to live with a hunger for battle for centuries. Even after all that he did in his battles against the Samurai Rangers; seeing him go was genuinely saddening. Even more so Dayu, Deker's wife who was cursed alongside him and had to live with a beloved husband who no longer remembered her. At Deker's death, she fell into despair at her lost love and the years she spent pining for him. She then lost it, denying her human side and swearing utter loyalty to Master Xandred, who killed her and absorbed her body. At least Deker died happy.
• Queen Beryl in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. The real motivation behind her attempt at awakening Metaria and ruling over the world? She wanted to get back at Princess Serenity who always had everything she dreamed of: fame, beauty, power, and, most of all, Prince Endymion's love. "Why do you... take everything away from me?"
• Phillip from Primeval. Unlike Helen, who went crazy and tried to kill humanity, Philip really believed he was saving the future and only wanted to do good. After he realizes the mistake he made, he goes through a Villainous BSoD just moments before he sacrifices his life in an attempt to undo all the wrong he's caused.
• In the Primeval: New World episode "Undone", after the female Lycaenops is accidentally killed, the male Lycaenops has a Villainous BSoD and growls quietly as he nudges her body with his muzzle. And then Mac coldly guns him down like he were just a rabid dog.
• No matter what you thought of Shane Vendrell after he murdered Lem in Season 5 of The Shield, you can't help but feel sorry for him when he killed himself (and his family) in the series finale.
• Smallville:
  • Lex in the appropriately named "Requiem". Clark arrives and scatters his ashes in the wind after he is blown up by Toyman's bomb planted by Oliver.
  • Davis Bloome/Doomsday in "Eternal", with Chloe crying next to him outside his cage. It would have been a bigger tear jerker if you don't know he is going to be back. By the time of his second death, he is a lot less sympathetic.
• Stargate Atlantis: Subverted in "The Prodigal" with Michael. His fight with John Sheppard on top of the Atlantis main tower concludes with Teyla (who's most personally connected to Michael) and John throwing him off it. Michael holds on to the ledge and screams at Teyla for mercy. By this point Michael had already committed galactic genocide, kidnapped and experimented on Teyla's people, mutated her husband into a monster, tried to harvest her baby at least twice, and tried to kill her and everyone in Atlantis out of petty spite. She kicks his hands and watches him fall to his death.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • Weyoun. Yes, he dies several times. But a few of his deaths are very poignant, and very much ARE this trope. Particularly the one who became a defector, but was forced to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to save Odo. After his final death, the Female Changeling breaks her usual Fantastic Racism to mournfully acknowledge him as "the only solid I ever trusted."
  • Zig-zagged with Gul Dukat. When the Federation retake the station and his daughter ends up shot dead in the chaos, Dukat completely falls apart, and it's hard not to pity him. This looks like his last appearance in the series, not actually dead yet but clearly a broken man and no longer a threat to anyone. But he comes back, and ends up playing a major role in the final episode before dying... by which time he's lost any audience sympathy he might have had left multiple times over.
• Star Trek: The Original Series had a few of these (in keeping with its avoidance of actually evil villains).
  • The Romulan Commander from "Balance of Terror" is something of an Anti-Villain who doesn't want war with The Federation (despite the wishes of his Praetor) and a Worthy Opponent to Kirk. When the Enterprise disables his ship and Kirk offers to rescue him and his crew, he declines. Instead, he does his last duty to the Empire — he self-destructs his ship and goes down with the rest of his crew. This carries over to the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds alternate timeline version, "A Quality of Mercy", where he and his ship are instead destroyed by his own fleet at the orders of the Praetor, with Pike and Ortegas visibly saddened at his fate.
  • Apollo (yes, that Apollo), who spends "Who Mourns for Adonais?" trying to coerce and cajole the landing party into worshipping him so he could survive, all to no avail because Kirk and co. have Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions and so, he fades away in a moment of Woobie-ness...
    McCoy: I wish we hadn't had to do this.
    Kirk: So do I. They gave us so much. The Greek civilization, much of our culture and philosophy came from a worship of those beings. In a way, they began the Golden Age. Would it have hurt us, I wonder... just to have gathered a few laurel leaves?
  • Another was Dr. Richard Daystrom from "The Ultimate Computer", whose Motive Rant about being laughed at behind his back and underestimated is legitimately heartbreaking. The fact that Daystrom is portrayed by William Marshall — an amazingly talented black actor who was undoubtedly kept out of roles by racism — adds an excruciating Reality Subtext.
  • Flint from "Requiem for Methuselah" is not totally a villain, but he has become somewhat misanthropic after 6000 years of life. To his credit, he was once Solomon, Alexander, Lazarus, Leonardo, Merlin, and Brahms. He has met Moses, Socrates, Jesus, and Shakespeare. He uses Kirk's obvious attraction for Rayna in the hope that Rayna (an android he created) will transfer the resulting feelings she experiences to him. This fails miserably, and she is torn between her love for the young, handsome captain, and her love for the kind old man Flint, whom she considers like a father. This leads to her eventual death by short-circuit. Throughout the encounter, Flint interferes with the Enterprise's mission to acquire a much-needed cure for a plague, threatens the Enterprise crew, and tries to take them hostage. In retrospect, Kirk emphasizes with Flint who, while having shunned humankind, only wants the company of someone who is his intellectual equal, even if he has to build her. Kirk, on the other hand, is far too easily attracted to Rayna and thus manipulated by Flint, which does say something about him as well. Kirk sums it up: "An old and lonely man... and a young and lonely man."
• Logan Roy from Succession is a narcissistic, tyrannical Corrupt Corporate Executive and an abusive father responsible for a lot of grief. However, his Undignified Death is treated somberly if only because of his children's genuinely heart-wrenching grief over it.
• Super Sentai:
  • Even if she is the Big Bad of Denshi Sentai Denziman, Queen Hedrian is such a Likeable Villain that its hard not to feel sorry for her when she's usurped from power and has to watch each of her minions (who she genuinely cared for) die one by one.
  • Despite how vicious and brutal she was, Ahames in Dengeki Sentai Changeman has a rather pitiable. She's forced into going on Suicide Mission by Bazeu to destroy the Changeman's base and gradually goes more insane as she makes her way through it, culminating in her coming to the realization that Bazeu likely destroyed her homeworld long ago and deludedly screaming at him to restore her planet as the base goes up in flames.
  • Just about every member of the Armed Brain Army Volt in Choujuu Sentai Liveman has a sad end, as all of them were pawns that Great Professor Bias used in one long gambit to become immortal and he disposes of each of them when they're longer of use. Even Bias himself has a rather pitiable fate, he goes senile as a resulting of rapidly aging and spends his final moments being fed a delusion by his robot bodyguard that he succeeded in conquering Earth. The Livemen can only lament that he and the rest of Volt were too focused on their evil to appreciate the world and the people around them.
  • Doldora's final moments in Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman are hard to watch, even if she was an unrepentent Evil Genius. She has a complete mental breakdown after learning the truth about Meadow and how everything she fought for was a lie, right before being fused with her loyal bodyguard to create a mindless Galactic Warrior.
  • Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger had a truly heartbreaking one for Aigaron. After months of being one of the Three Chevaliers, he finds himself suddenly replaced with New Chevalier of Sorrow Icerondo. Then, overhearing a plot to kill Candelila, he takes her and Luckyuro and flees the Frozen Castle. While fleeing Icerondo, he encounters the Kyoryugers and begs them to save Candelila and Luckyuro, only to learn a harsh truth: He'd been dead ever since the middle of the series, when his emotions burst forth. It was only his armor being so thick that kept him going all that time. Then, Icerondo decides to twist the knife by killing Candelila, only for Aigaron to end up Taking the Bullet. At this point, he is so pitiable that even Ian, who had sworn to kill him, gives him a Mercy Kill before using his own ax to finish off Icerondo.
• Walking with Dinosaurs:
  • The Liopleurodon getting beached in "Cruel Sea". Though it's not exactly a villain, just a predator.
  • The Postosuchus's death in "New Blood" is also quite depressing. Getting gored in one of her hind legs by the tusk of a Placerias, getting driven out of her territory by a male of her own species, suffering an infection from the leg wound that costs her the use of her good back leg as well as her original wounded leg, and finally dying in agony as a massive swarm of Coelophysis prepares to eat her corpse is a hellish way to go, even for a creature who had been an antagonist throughout the episode.
• Stringer Bell's downward spiral and death is seen as this by many fans of The Wire. Despite him being a murderous drug dealer who setup D'Angelo Barksdale's death and then had an affair with his woman afterwards, Stringer Bell was also shown as a thoughtful man who wanted to leave the life of crime and become a legal business man. He ends up getting screwed over by Senator Clay Davis when he tries to go legit, and his scheming finally catches up with him, to the point he can no longer talk is way out it. Finally, he decides to Face Death with Dignity.
• Women's Murder Club: When the Kiss Me Not Killer's identity and backstory are finally revealed, even Lindsay, who was obsessed with catching him, feels sorry for the fact that Billy has basically been reliving watching his father murdering his sister for years.

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