Fallen Hero / Live-Action TV

• Jack Bauer in 24. First seven seasons? Someone who pushed himself ten times beyond the brink both physically and mentally to repeatedly ensure the safety of the country and world. Final season? After his latest mission winds up going horribly wrong and ends on a tragic note, he winds up embarking on a personal crusade of revenge that ultimately causes an international crisis and nearly instigates a war that would lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people, just barely stopped himself after realizing how bad those repercussions would be. Rivaling him would be Tony Almeida who went from protecting people to threatening them all to avenge the murder of his wife... and unlike Jack he never had a Heel Realization, at least before he went through with the last stage of his plan.
  • President Allison Taylor in Season 8, coinciding with and being the final straw for Jack's above turn, gets hit hard with the Sunk Cost Fallacy after seeing what was supposed to the grand achievement of her presidency utterly fall apart after losing her entire family in the process. Combined with the ill-advised move of turning to Charles Logan for advice, she insists on pushing forward with the sham of a peace treaty at all costs. It's only an eleventh-hour Heel Realization from her that prevents the masterminds of the season from achieving a full Karma Houdini victory.
• In The 100 Season 1, Finn was probably the most moral and idealistic of the teen characters; he was the one actually trying to make peace with the Grounders rather than assuming violence was inevitable. By Season 2, though, the traumatic experiences he's been through and a belief that his Love Interest is in danger drive him to increasingly violent ends to get her back, ultimately slaughtering a Grounder village, killing 18 innocent, unarmed people; he's executed for his crimes shortly afterward.
• Angel plays it straight with Daniel Holtz, Season 3's Big Bad. He was once a force for good, but Angelus and Darla destroyed his life, slaughtered his family, and reduced him to a revenge-driven monster. At his best, he is a Noble Demon, at his worst he's a petty old man willing to sacrifice the lives, happiness, and even sanity of people who love him in order to have his revenge.
• Arrow:
  • Slade Wilson was originally Oliver Queen's mentor, friend, and (eventually) sworn brother, but losing Shado, the love of his life, and the insanity brought upon by the Mirakuru caused him to turn evil. Blaming Oliver for Shado's death, he is set to return the favor by conquering Starling City, which Oliver holds dear.
  • Oliver himself seems to undergo this fate in season 3, when he agrees to succeed Ra's al Ghul in exchange for saving his sister's life. Then subverted since he ultimately wants to topple Ra's from within, but he comes dangerously close to the territory.
• Jon Mitchell from Being Human. He tries hard to fight his vampire urges and tries to be an example of reform, but he falls off the wagon in Season 2 and slaughters a train of 20 people. He never really gets back to normal after that and commits suicide.
• Willow Rosenberg of Buffy the Vampire Slayer became the Card-Carrying Villain version of this trope after witnessing the death of her girlfriend. Magic high also leads to her becoming this. Luckily, the transition was temporary in the TV series. There was also an Alternate Universe book trilogy ("Wicked Willow") that explored what would have happened if she had stayed that way.
  • The canonical Season 8 comic books state she is still this; specifically the "Time of Your Life" arc, which crosses over with Fray, a Bad Future where Willow becomes an Evil Sorceror and the Big Bad (though she tries to prevent it by avoiding Black Magic).
  • In the Season 9 comics, we learn that while she is holding it together around Buffy, Willow is hell bent on bringing magic back, believing the world is going to end and she has to save it. Faith also took the Card-Carrying Villain route after accidentally killing a human, also temporary-ish (though it's acknowledged in-universe that her actions, while she was a villain, went too far to just be forgiven and forgotten).
• In Chinese Paladin, Jiang Ming was The Paragon of Mt. Shu, on track to become the Big Good before it's revealed he's having an affair. He snaps when ordered to kill his lover, massacres the entire population of the mountain, and becomes a vengeful ghost who, a hundred years later, is so powerful none of the monks dare enter the Demon Pagoda.
• Dexter: Dexter Morgan has near fully surrendered to his compulsive need to kill by the conclusion of Dexter: New Blood; he kills Logan solely to effect his escape, and in a previous encounter, was reaching for a knife to kill his girlfriend Angela.
• Doctor Who has had the Doctor come to or near this point twice, but also reconstructed the trope in both cases.
  • When the Eighth Doctor, barely saved from death, is convinced to fight in the Last Great Time War rather than just try and help those caught up in it, he decides to give up his principles and title to do so and regenerates into what comes to be known as the War Doctor. He does the opposite of a healer's work as a warrior and finally decides to destroy both the Dalek forces massing around Gallifrey and Gallifrey and his people (including billions of innocent children) to end the war. His later lives deliberately try to forget this incarnation for committing such a wicked act. However, in the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", Ten and Eleven come to an understanding of his side of the story and how he did what he had to do... and then in the climax, at companion Clara's behest, they and all of the other incarnations of the Doctor figure out a way to SAVE Gallifrey yet end the Time War at the same time, thus reconstructing the trope spectacularly!
  • The Twelfth Doctor undergoes a Trauma Conga Line in the climactic stretch of Series 9. In "Face the Raven", he is lured into a trap and betrayed by Ashildr/Me, but even worse, because his beloved companion Clara takes a daring risk to save someone, she accidentally condemns herself to death. In "Heaven Sent" he is trapped by, as it turns out, the Time Lords (his people!) in a giant torture chamber. By the time he escapes it, he has been Driven to Madness by rage, anguish, grief, and torture, and become The Unfettered. In the finale "Hell Bent" he uses his legendary cleverness to pull Clara out of time at the moment of her death, an act that threatens to destroy the entire universe, all because he can't take the pain anymore. In the end, Clara herself triggers a Heel Realization and he realizes he must give up his Tragic Dream and "be a Doctor" once again.
  • As for Rassilon, the founder of the Time Lords, he was always revered despite being a bit of a genocidal maniac, but the War pushed him off the crumbling remains of his pedestal.
• Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from The Dukes of Hazzard used to be a man of justice. Until his pension was vetoed, leaving him to either retire without a penny to his name or join in Boss Hogg's scheming.
• The Flash: Savitar is actually Barry Allen from a timeline in which he was shunned by his friends and family for failing to save Iris from himself.
• Forever: What Adam claims to be. He says he was once "a good and decent man" just like Henry, whose first death came trying to save someone's life. After over two thousand years of living, he's become jaded and uncaring, a casual killer who torments Henry just for the novelty (and possibly to try to prove that he's right that his own fall was inevitable).
• Game of Thrones:
  • Stannis Baratheon was once the honorable commander who held Storm's End for days without food. However, repeated snubs and disrespect forces him to rely on the blood magic of Melisandre, which has slowly caused him to compromise all of his ideals.
  • Daenerys Targaryen starts out waging war against slavers in Essos, freeing slaves and upon coming to Westeros helps fight the White Walkers and Army Of The Dead, playing an important role in saving the world. After a number of close, personal losses, she ends up losing her mind and burning many thousands of innocent civilians in King's Landing.
• House of the Dragon:
  • Alicent Hightower was a kind and loyal friend to Princess Rhaenyra. She always stood up for Rhaenyra against her own father Ser Otto. Sadly, all her father's warnings come true. Rhaenyra really is lying about her extramarital affairs and she is willing to hurt Alicent's children to protect her own claim to the Iron Throne. Alicent and her side of the family closes ranks and rallies around the claim of her son Aegon to the throne. They usurp the throne due to a misunderstanding she had with the king before he died. Despite all Alicent's efforts, she becomes her father's daughter.
  • Ser Criston Cole believed in the sanctity of knighthood. He is coerced into an affair by Rhaenyra. To restore both their honors, he asks her to marry him but she refuses thus preventing him from redeeming himself. His guilt and the lack of compassion of those around him almost made him lose his mind if not for Alicent saving him from himself. He is remembered by history as "The Kingmaker" for choosing a rival claimant to the throne instead of the Princess that he used to serve.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys features Gilgamesh in Season 5's "Faith" and reveals him to be this during the climax. Like Hercules, he couldn't depend on the gods to protect his family and lost them in a senseless act of violence. However, whereas Hercules treated his tragedy as a motivation to never stop fighting for others, Gilgamesh became The Dragon to the Big Bad.
  Gilgamesh: When I lost my family, I did lose my faith. And in my deepest despair, I heard the voice of Dahak— a voice so pure, so true, I knew I had found salvation.
• Heroes
  • Linderman. His low-key, evil approach is made all the more monstrous when viewers realize that, having the ability to heal most injuries, he chooses to have people killed, kidnapped, and crippled instead.
  • Adam Monroe. He is introduced as Takezo Kensei, the literal hero of legend. Despite trouncing all the fantastic tales attributed to him in one fell swoop, Kensei proves himself a true hero many times over during his time with Hiro — only to do a Face–Heel Turn when Hiro steals away the woman he loves right out from under his nose. Four hundred years later, his heartbreak has driven him to seek a 'second chance' by wiping out 93% of the world's population.
• In the French fantasy dramedy Kameloth, the Knight Lancelot start out as the noble and charismatic hero we expect him to be, but he has always been ideologically opposed to the libertarian policy of Arthur (who he considers a proof of weakness) and considers himself more worthy of the holy mission given to his king. After the spoofed-legend-opposed-got-away-with-Guinevere-part, he openly rebels against Kameloth's order and became the tool of a dark sorcerer named Melangeant, who presents himself as The Chessmastering answer of the gods to Arthur's failure in his mission
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider 555: Yuji Kiba spends most of the series as an Orphnoch who wants to protect humans, albeit Kusaka sabotages his friendship with Takumi. After Yuka's death however, he becomes the head of Smart Brain to only ensure Orphnoch's future at the expensde of humanity's.
  • Kamen Rider Double: Katsumi Daido and his allies in NEVER are presented as straight villains in their first appearance as the antagonists of the Forever A to Z movie, aside from some dialogue indicating that they were driven mad by their Revenant Zombie status. The W Returns: Kamen Rider Eternal side-story movie details how they used to be a group of antiheroes, and the events that led Katsumi to descend into villainy.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim sees Mitsuzane Kureshima go down this route. He starts off already something of a Manipulative Bastard, but employing those tendencies in service of helping protect his friends. Learning the truth of the Helheim Forest leads him to become irrationally focused on keeping his friends out of the loop, before losing sight of even that and becoming a full on villain concerned only with keeping Mai to himself. It's not until the show is essentially over that Mitsuzane realizes the error of his ways, but the epilogue gives him one last chance to redeem himself.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Taiga Hanaya/Kamen Rider Snipe was once a kind and optimistic doctor, but being selected as the first user of the Gamer Driver six years before the start of the series eventually cost him his medical license, his health, and his spirit. By the time of the main series, he's become a bitter mercenary who fights the other Riders just as often as he treats the patients, in an effort to drive them away from the dangerous profession so they won't share his fate.
  • Kamen Rider Zero-One: The final arc deals with Aruto falling into despair after his closest friend is murdered by a villain he'd tried to reason with and redeem, which leads him to accepting an offer to use the Ark Driver and going from All-Loving Hero to vengeful Anti-Hero.
  • Kamen Rider Saber: Every wielder of the Sword of Darkness has become one of these in recent years, and it takes the third hero to pick up the sword and fall to explain why: among the Sword's many powers are that it shows the wielder not just one but every possible future, and all of them show the world ending in just a few weeks.
  • Kamen Rider Revice: Daiji Igarashi/Kamen Rider Live purging his inner demon from his body has the side effect of throwing his personality off balance and leading him to become an increasingly unstable Knight Templar. In this state it requires barely any pushing from the Big Bad to get Daiji on his side, and he turns against his former allies with zeal.
  • Kamen Rider Geats: Keiwa Sakurai starts out as one of the most heroic and selfless Riders in the cast, yet due to the death of his sister Sara, who has him suppress his cynical bitterness to create a peaceful world for her and keeps him falling into despair, forces said cynicism to the surface, making him care less and pursue vengeance and extremism to get what he wants.
• Numerous times on Law & Order and its various spin-offs as a revered sports star or actor will be revealed as a killer, pedophile, rapist or worse.
  • When she and a rookie cop bust a boxing champ as a pedophile, Rollins tells the rookie "Stay on this job long enough, you watch all your heroes die."
• Eli David in NCIS seems to be this. In a way, he's reminiscent of Denethor.
• Some of the best episodes of Scrubs deal with this happening to Dr. Cox. While the fall is temporary, the sight of the normally caustic and extremely confident physician in tears is very heartrending, to say the least.
• Lex Luthor from Smallville is a great example. He started off as nothing more than a good Samaritan friend to Clark Kent. As time went on, he became nastier and more cynical at the world, and possibly became Clark's worst enemy.
• Supernatural:
  • Sam and Dean Winchester often qualify as anti-heroes. They may hunt monsters, save a lot of people, and a few times save the world, but they support themselves with credit card fraud and pool hustling. On top of that, they have a demon-killing knife which, while useful, also kills the person being possessed by the demon. Plus they have a habit of making deals with and dealing with demons. They try to be good, but they often fail.
  • At the end of Season 5, Sam completely qualifies as an anti-hero. He's addicted to demon blood, has a demon lover, and is willing to kill and drink the blood of an innocent nurse if it will help him stop the apocalypse. It's too bad for him that his demon lover is manipulating him and he actually causes the apocalypse to start.
  • John Winchester is a full-blown anti-hero, so obsessed with avenging his wife that he raises his sons (see above) to be monster-hunting child soldiers. He dies in a Heroic Sacrifice to save Dean, but that only makes Dean more screwed up.
  • The higher-up angels fall squarely into anti-villain territory. They want to bring about paradise on earth, but they don't care how many humans die in the process. Lower-tier angels, like Castiel, are kept in the dark about their plans so they won't rebel. When Castiel discovers the truth, he does rebel and joins the human side.
  • In Season 6, Castiel has a Face–Heel Turn into an anti-villain. His motives are sincere in that he wants to stop Raphael from restarting the apocalypse, but he winds up working with Crowley, getting Drunk on the Dark Side, and declaring himself God. He eventually repents and becomes The Atoner.
  • In Season 10, Dean becomes a demon. Rather than going on some sort of rampage, he quits hunting and engages in hedonistic pursuits with Crowley, landing himself in the heroic neutral zone.
• Buredoran/Brajira from Tensou Sentai Goseiger. It's revealed that he used to be a Gosei angel who turned on the rest of his team and stole their powers killing them. He uses an experimental power to travel 10,000 years into the future to enact his grand plan to remake the world and become its messiah and savior.
• Ultra Series: Ultraman Belial qualifies this trope, for being corroded by the power of the Plasma Spark, which would subsequently cause his exile, in Planet Golgotha, he becomes even more corrupted after merging with the blood of a murderous alien race, the Reiblood by this point, Belial can't go any deeper down the rabbit hole, right? Well, you'd be WRONG! because by the second movie, Belial decides to absorb the energy of a powerful crystal, transforming himself into Arc Belial, by this point he barely even resembles an Ultraman anymore, and he has turned into what he swore to destroy: a Kaiju himself
• In Westworld, William first arrived at the park as a milquetoast and moral guest looking for meaning in his life. He seems to find meaning in Dolores, a Host who he falls in love with. Unfortunately, over the course of the first season, William is pushed toward brutality by his business partner and brother-in-law Logan, destroying his moral code piece by piece. William snapped after a Breaking Speech from Logan, and he began to mercilessly slaughter Hosts who stood in his way. His turn to evil is cemented once he finds out that Dolores had her memory wiped. 30 years later, William becomes the Man in Black, a violent, raping sociopath who's obsessed with finding the true meaning of the park.