Moral Myopia / Live-Action TV

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• 24: In the penultimate season, Jack confronts former agent Tony Almeida with the fact that everything he's done to get revenge on Alan Wilson for the death of his wife has endangered innocent lives. Then in the final season after Renee Walker, whom he'd just started to become intimate with, is killed as part of a Russian coverup and the President betrays him by refusing to expose it since she needs it hidden in order to preserve a peace treaty, Jack snaps and winds up following the same path Tony does. He takes it upon himself to murder the conspirators in revenge and begins endangering innocent lives by drawing them out in the open. Oh, and he nearly starts World War III because of it. Yet during most of this even after admitting that he is just in this for personal revenge, he attempts to justify his actions by stating that in a world this fucked up his way is the closest thing to a right way.
• Practically every character in The 100. The 100 themselves, the Grounders, the Ark survivors and the Mountain Men all consider their people to be important and demand vengeance for any deaths but when one of their people kills another they try and justify it.
• All in the Family: This is how Archie judges himself. In his mind it is totally okay to lie and cheat just to get his way and he'll take great offense at being called on it, to the point where it seems he's forgotten he's lied in the first place.
  • Archie's son-in-law, Mike, is often guilty of this as well. For instance, he'll call out Archie on an outmoded or sexist attitude, but during the course of the episode he demonstrates the very same behaviors he professes to be against, with Gloria often calling him on things.
• Arrow:
  • In Season 4, Laurel takes Oliver to task over his lying to his fiancée about having a son when the boy's mother demanded he not tell anyone about him in exchange for being allowed to visit with him. This in spite of Laurel making some equally objectionable decisions regarding lying to loved ones, including spending the better part of Season 3 hiding her sister's death from her father and going so far as to masquerade as said sister while dragging her fellow vigilantes into helping cover-up the death.
  • Felicity gets in on it when she finds out about the boy as well. Despite keeping her own secrets from her own family (and Oliver), and Oliver being essentially blackmailed into not telling her the truth, him not revealing it is something she considers nigh-unforgivable. Note that in a previous episode, she specifically says that sometimes people have good reasons to keep secrets.
  • In Season 6, NTA hates Oliver because he doesn't trust them implicitly, when they have show clear lack of trust for him in the past.
  • This basically describes Oliver's relationship with almost every ally he has. If Oliver (a man who suffered 5 years of intense Trauma and then continued to live in a high stress environment with no indicators he ever sought therapy) does something slightly wrong he's somewhere between misguided, wrong and an outright villain. If any of his allies (most of whom are far better emotionally adjusted) were to do the same thing they have done nothing wrong. Indeed, Oliver is treated as wrong if he protests this!
• Babylon 5:
  • The Minbari were very bitter at John Sheridan for nuking the Black Star (one of their warships) during the Earth-Mimbari war, calling it cowardly. Granted, using a distress signal to lure the Black Star within nuking range could be considered dishonorable, but it's kind of hard to feel badly about the Minbari's one major defeat of the war for a few reasons.
    1. Sheridan actually was trying to call for help, the minefield was a precaution in case the Black Star got there first. The ambush was just a convenient use of it.
    2. The Minbari had made it standard procedure to hunt down the source of any distress signal and finish them off.
    3. The Minbari had technology way above what Earth could muster allowing them to make turkey shoots out of any space battle.
    4. The Minbari did not take prisoners and the Black Star was only closing in specifically to finish Sheridan off.
    5. The two species were engaged in a one-sided genocidal war caused by a diplomatic incident which highlighted both sides' crummy First Contact protocols. All in all the Minbari don't have much of a case for Sheridan being anything other than a good commander.
  • This is actually invoked near the end of the movie, but it's easy to miss because of the Minbari's tendency for slightly flowery dialect- Delenn openly discusses the ridiculousness of claiming to be undertaking a "holy" war as the Minbari grow very close to Earth. The other council member she's talking to, who has previously been incredibly war-mongering about the entire situation, is visibly tired and dejected with it by this point but can't bring himself to admit it. Later, Delenn tells the Vorlons that everyone is so tired of the killing that even he would stop if there was just some reason to give everyone for doing so, meaning this is, indeed, a hard thing to overcome even when you're aware of it, and having an excuse to do so is far easier than admitting you're suffering from it.
  • The Vorlons and Shadows also have a pretty dim view of anyone who isn't like them. It's extremely bad in their case, because they don't even remember why they're doing what they're doing anymore, they just want to prove they're right and the other side is wrong.
  • Bester definitely qualifies. In Season 5, he seems to take "The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father" seriously, and (at least seems) to show fellow teeps genuine fatherly tenderness. When mundanes are involved, however... He even gleefully justifies his attitude by pointing out that normals are far more numerous than telepaths ("Mundanes breed like rabbits" are his exact words), so the death of a normal is no big deal.
  • Interestingly the Centauri seem to be less guilty of this than some. Mainly as they don't claim they're virtuous in the first place.
    • They do when the subject of the first Narn occupation comes up. As far as they are concerned, they were helping the savage primitives. G'Kar, whose father was hanged for accidentally spilling a drink on his Centauri owner, is quick to call bullshit on this.
    • In "Midnight on the Firing Line", the first regular episode, Londo asks G'Kar how the Narn can justify attacking a peaceful Centauri farming colony. G'Kar responds "Curious, we asked ourselves the same thing when you invaded us. The wheel turns, does it not?"
    • Not that G'Kar is immune to this either, especially in the first season. Sinclair and Sheridan are just as quick to call him out on his "they started it" attitude. Getting over this is in fact a major part of his Character Development.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003):
  • In the episode "Resurrection Ship Part II", Chip-Six is enraged that the Colonials will "murder" thousands of inert spare Cylon bodies when they destroy the eponymous Resurrection Ship. "God will never forgive this sin." She of course doesn't seem to care that the Cylons had murdered billions of living, breathing humans when they nuked the Colonies.
  • Caprica-Six's Baltar hallucination actually calls her out on this: that Cylons are awfully fast at glossing over the genocide they committed and accuse humans of horrible crimes while preaching their god's love.
  • Later, in the beginning of Season 3, Cavil whines like a bitch that, after being left to die slowly by the people he had rounded up en masse to be shot to death in cold blood, he had to crawl over to a piece of shrapnel and sever an artery so he could resurrect, which caused him to suffer a migraine. Never mind the fact that, as a Cylon, he's directly responsible for the deaths of several billion people, none of whom have the luxury of resurrection, migraines or no.
  • Despite some improvement in this area, the Cylons display this trope a lot. Cavil saying they were even and 'No harm done' after granting the fleet a temporary reprieve (Adama's replying being You completely annihilated our race and destroyed our civilization), D'Anna saying how humans don't 'respect life the way we do', Cylons complaining about torture by humans despite horrific medical experiments among mundane torture they have committed, and on and on and on.
  • Cavil (again) takes the cake when his motivations are all laid out late in Season 4. Cavil believes he can convince the Final Five of the righteousness of his desire for revenge, painting it as a human versus Cylon conflict, despite: 1) The Five created Cavil and the other humanoid Cylons because they wanted peace with the humans. 2) The Thirteenth Tribe is many centuries and generations removed from Kobol, and the Five don't have the emotional baggage that Cavil does. 3) The humanoid Cylons of the Thirteenth Tribe enslaved their Centurions, and thus are guilty of the same crimes Cavil won't forgive the humans for. Cavil is incapable of noticing any of this, and is only 20% successful in his attempts at conversion. To top it all off, he enslaves the Centurions as well.
  • Aaron Doral exemplifies this trope. He regards humans with nothing but venomous disdain and reacts with disgust when suicide bombers kill Cylons and Cylon supporters (despite having committed suicide bombings against humans in the past). He views Them as savages who "Lack nobility". He then holds a gun to Baltar's head and forces him to sign a document that will allow Cylons to conduct mass executions of innocent civilians in retaliation.
• In The Big Bang Theory, after making fun of Penny's less-than-intellectual friend Zack for being so despite his attempts to open up to them, Penny notes that for a bunch of guys who claim they were bullied, they can be real jerks.
  • Almost anything involving Sheldon. He too often doesn't understand why.
• Blackadder:
  • In the fourth series, General Melchett is utterly enraged when Blackadder cooks and eats his pet pigeon, and sentences Blackadder to death in a comically ridiculous Kangaroo Court. However, in another episode, it's revealed that he ran over Lt. George's pet rabbit when George was a child and is completely callous about it- both when it happened, and when he talks about it in the present.
  • And, of course, there's the obvious example regarding Melchett being driven to self-righteous fury over the death of a pigeon while callously sending thousands of men to their deaths in the mud and trenches every day driven home in the last episode when Blackadder at last goes over the top with his men to die.
  • Melchett again, this time on the topic of spies. British spies are loyal, heroic men serving their country and all deserve medals. German spies are cowards who use underhand tactics and deserve to be hanged.
• In Breaking Bad, Walt personifies this trope. He is very protective of his family but is willing to lie, cheat, manipulate and even commit murder when he or his family is threatened. This is embodied in Season 3 when he forces Jesse to murder Gale (who, though working as a meth cook, was otherwise innocent and harmless) so Walt became too important for Gus to kill. Season 4 ends with him poisoning and nearly killing a child to carry out an elaborate murder of Gus, which was Walt's crossing of the Moral Event Horizon.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel:
  • The Mayor, normally too upbeat to be overly concerned about deaths he has caused, goes into a rage when Buffy critically wounds Faith.
  • Buffy herself repeatedly insists that the Scoobies have no right to take a human life, but she herself has killed humans, actively killing Caleb and the Knights of Byzantium and trying to kill Faith to save Angel.
  • Season 5 has a very sympathetic portrayal when Joyce has a brain tumor and when Tara gets her sanity drained by Glory, despite it being glossed over when Ben summons a demon to kill the people who were brain-sucked by Glory. Ben also firmly refuses to kill Dawn to save the world, despite having intentionally caused the deaths of at least six people whom he was supposed to be helping.
  • In Angel Season 4, Wesley is bitter and angry after being booted from Angel Investigations in Season 3; when asked what happened to him by Gunn, Wesley replies, matter-of-factly, "I had my throat cut and all my friends abandoned me". The reason his friends abandoned him is because when he was reading a prophecy of how Angel might end up killing Connor, he kept it from them and didn't discuss it with any of them — mainly because he was jealous of Fred and Gunn's relationship (having had a thing for Fred that she was oblivious to). Rather than getting help from his friends, Wesley made the poor decision to consult with Holtz, their enemy... who was the one that ended up kidnapping Connor to Quor'toth. In fact, when Lorne discovered Wesley's plan to steal the baby, Wesley merely knocked him unconscious rather than explain things.
• In the Burn Notice episode "End Run", the Arms Dealer Brennen, whose entire M.O. consists of I Have Your Wife, is shocked and appalled that Michael would send an assassin to kill his daughter if he doesn't leave Michael alone. (Michael hadn't really done that, being The Hero and all, but he bluffed well.)
• Jeff accuses Duncan of this in the pilot of Community. See quote page. Since Jeff himself is also a near-perfect example at this point, he's also being more than a little hypocritical.
• In Crisis Francis Gibson is betrayed by his CIA superiors, who threaten his daughter. So he has others' children kidnapped as part of an Evil Plan to expose the government's corruption.
• Daredevil:
  • Wilson Fisk is perfectly willing to kill anyone who crosses him along with everyone they care about. However, whenever someone close to him, be it his mother or Vanessa, is hurt or threatened, he treats it as though it is completely unforgivable.
  • Karen Page takes being lied to and being manipulated very seriously to the point of having a big problem with Matt's constant lying and keeping secrets from her. At the same time, Karen constantly both manipulates people, lies and keeps secrets from Matt and Foggy, and played a minor role in the events that got Ben Urich killed by taking him to see Fisk's mother under false pretenses. While Karen does feel bad about her actions, she doesn't hold herself anywhere near the same standards that she holds others.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Voyage of the Damned": Captain Hardaker, who has a terminal disease, has been bribed to crash the starship Titanic into a meteor storm with a large amount of money for his family. While he's upset that the ship's crew includes a young man, he still seems to think that the money for his family is worth the deaths of all the passengers and crew, as well as everyone on Earth.
  • River Song enters a brief state of this in "The Wedding of River Song". She states that being forced to kill the Doctor would cause her to suffer more than the rest of the entire universe when reality and time itself collapsed. The Doctor snaps her out of it.
  • What goes around comes around. "Hell Bent" has the Doctor himself develop a similar attitude in the wake of Clara Oswald's death and the Trauma Conga Line that followed it for him, and also almost destroys space and time to undo the first event solely to assuage his own pain. It's Clara herself who brings him around.
• Megan Parker from Drake & Josh often plays cruel pranks on her brothers, but when they end up returning the favor by doing the same to her, she'll play the victim and swear to get revenge on them. In one episode, she gets mad when the two have her blamed for their neighbor's treehouse blowing up, ignoring that she often gets the two blamed for her mishaps.
• Captain Crais of Farscape swore a blood oath to kill John Crichton for "intentionally" killing his younger brother. The circumstances were such that his younger brother accidentally collided his ship into Crichton's shuttle as the latter was expelled from a wormhole; the collision itself was harmless, but caused Crais' brother to hit a nearby asteroid while spinning out of control. Interestingly, despite Crichton, Aeryn, his XO, and numerous other people telling him Crichton is at worst guilty of involuntarily causing his brother's death, Crais has said he doesn't care. In the first Season Finale, he admits he was mostly concerned for his rapidly waning career.
• The Flash (2014): This appens repeatedly, and is almost a universal flaw among the villains.
  • Eobard Thawne repeatedly calls Barry out on traveling through time and changing history, even though he's a time traveler himself and Barry tried to fix the changes he caused.
  • On the heroes' side, Iris West kept her relationship with Eddie Thawne a secret from her father for months, but gets angry at Barry for hiding the fact that he's the Flash from her. When she confesses in Season 2 that she hid the existence of her brother from her father, too, she finally admits she shouldn't try to have a high moral ground over Barry anymore.
  • The Earth-2 version of Hunter Zolomon is traumatized by witnessing his father kill his mother, but gleefully tortures and kills people in front of their loved ones as a grown man.
  • Cult leader, mind rapist and murderer Savitar unironically says that The Hero Barry is "cruel" and "selfish." Then again, considering he IS Barry (or at least a Speed Force duplicate of him), he may have been talking about himself.
  • Clifford DeVoe was an anti-technology advocate, saying that it caused human suffering and disaster, but ends up relying on advanced technology to kill other people for his own gain. It's implied that this contradiction just comes from his rationalizing, and that he never genuinely cared about other people at all.
  • Dr. Ramsay Rosso's ultimate goal is to save humanity from death, but doesn't mind sacrificing others to preserve his own life. When Barry calls him out on this and tells him that a doctor's job is to save lives, Rosso plainly says he is trying to save his own.
  • Eva McCulloch was driven half-insane from being trapped in the Mirror Dimension, but doesn't care about dragging Iris into it for her own gain.
• Game of Thrones:
  • In one conversation, Davos advocates hiring sellswords like the Golden Company to bolster Stannis's numbers. Stannis, who is dealing with Blood Magic in his attempt to become King of the Seven Kingdoms, for some reason finds this objectionable even though it's the only way that he can bolster his ranks.
  • Cersei has a tendency to view things as heinous when being done to her or her children, and as okay when done to other people.
    • She is greatly angered when Tyrion arranges for a marriage between Myrcella and House Martell, but has no problem mocking Sansa about beheading more of her family members before her wedding to Joffrey.
    • In Season 3, she smugly smiles when Tywin orders Tyrion to marry Sansa, and nearly breaks into tears when he orders her to marry Loras Tyrell in turn.
    • When Joffrey dies and Tyrion is accused of the crime, Cersei reminds her father Tywin that he has always advocated death for anyone who threatens the Lannister's position, and insists that Tyrion deserves the same (despite her knowing Tyrion is innocent). Later, she happily admits to Tywin that her children are all incestuous bastards and doesn't even flinch, or expect any punishment for endangering the Lannister's position far more than Tyrion ever could.
  • Walder Frey is notorious for breaking oaths when it suits him. However, he justifies killing Robb and Catelyn Stark, and the Red Wedding on the basis that Robb Stark "betrayed" an oath to marry Frey's daughter.
  • Balon Greyjoy rebelled against Robert Baratheon because of his 'oppressive' rule. Which, in Balon's case, meant denying his 'right' to Rape, Pillage, and Burn the mainland with impunity. His declaration of independence and his attack on the Starks during the War of the Five Kings is rooted in the same vicious idiocy, and equally doomed to miserable failure.
  • Yara Greyjoy complains about how Jon killed Daenerys, the same Daenerys that made literally zero efforts in rescuing her after she was captured by Euron.
  • Daenerys, the so-called "Breaker of Chains", calls Cersei a tyrant and attacks her for her brutality as queen. Daenerys then proceeds to burn King's Landing to the ground after it had officially surrendered. Grey Worm argues that Westerosi soldiers who fought for Cersei deserve to be executed because they remained loyal to a bad ruler, even though they were defending their home against invaders who, it turned out, did not exactly wish them well.
• On Glee many characters fall under this trope at one time or another but none more so than Finn. He cheats on Quinn with Rachel, he's just confused. Quinn cheats on him with Puck, unforgivable. Rachel cheats on him with Puck, it's the worst thing anyone could do. He facilitates Quinn cheating on Sam with him, he just has unresolved feelings for her. Someone outs Karofsky, horrible nightmare scenario. Finn outs Santana, it was for her own good.
• In one episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, Pembleton and Bayliss mock a murderer for demanding a blanket and complaining about how the cops are mistreating him while his victim dies agonizingly a few feet away from him.
• Kamen Rider
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: The Genm vs. Lazer portion of the post-series Another Ending film deals with the confrontation between father and son, Masamune and Kuroto Dan when the latter unleashes a Zombie Apocalypse version of Kamen Rider Chronicle. Masamune thinks that Kuroto has gone overboard, yet this doesn't excuse him for his actions of controlling people's lives using the aforementioned game. As much as morally reprehensible Kuroto's endgame was, this turns out to be a blessing in disguise as he kept good with his promise on bringing the people who perished during the series' conflict, in contrast to Masamune's own self-preservation.
  • Kamen Rider Outsiders:
    • Being a crossover anthology that centering around on previous villains in the franchise and the imminent threat of AI autocracy, the Ark apparently hates the idea of another artificial intelligence planning to Kill All Humans to impose its idea of order when the Ark originally planned to do the same in its home series.
    • Zein's supporters as a whole abhors malice, but their methods in doing so, mostly in their war against Foundation X and Project Outsiders shows that they have no compunctions in doing things that a villain would normally do; more specifically Nico Saiba threatening Desast to stay away from Ren if he values his rival's life, Tachibana and Yuto relaunching Kamen Rider Chronicle to the public despite the danger it poses to the point of holding Nico at gunpoint when she protested the earlier idea, and finally Yuto's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Banno and the Ark are anything but heroic; to the point he mangles Banno's Humagear body in the most brutal and graphic fashion, and Yuto is almost an inch away from Jumping Off the Slippery Slope by killing Horobi had not for Brain's intervention.
• In Legends of Tomorrow, the Legends travel throughout time fixing aberrations in the timeline, yet generally cause almost as much damage as they fix. During the 'Invasion!' event, when the team learns that Barry went back in time to prevent his mother's death (which was an aberration as well), thus creating the Flashpoint timeline, then went back again to undo the changes, Ray and Sara chew him out. Sara is especially egregious, as she mentions how she doesn't try to go back and prevent her sister's death, even though she would've done just that had the others not stopped her from doing so. In fact, the season showed she almost did so before she finally accepted she couldn't mess with time to bring her sister back.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Galadriel suffers deeply from this.
  • Adar notes that Galadriel's drive for vengeance makes her just as bad as Sauron, as both are willing to slaughter the entire orc race to fulfill their ambitions.
  • Galadriel wants revenge on Sauron for killing her brother long ago. She also tells Halbrand not to let his Dark and Troubled Past define his worth as a person. He points out her inconsistency once she figures out he's Sauron in human form.
• In The Mandalorian, a former Imperial officer condemns the Rebels for the millions of troopers they killed when the Death Star was blown up. As for the billions of innocent civilians who were on Alderaan when it was destroyed by said Death Star? "A small price to rid the galaxy of terrorism." The Alderaanian survivor he says this to doesn't find his argument particularly convincing.
  • This is a recurring hypocrisy of ex-Imperials in the series — in just the previous episode, a different officer says that all the atrocities that the Empire commits are perfectly justified for basically the same reasons as the above example, and the client whose contract is the Inciting Incident for the series is eager to bring back the Empire because of the chaos that came to the galaxy after its fall, and might have a point if the Empire's bread and butter wasn't tyrannical oppression and genocide even before the Death Star was built.
  • Another recurring hypocrisy is the continuing squabbles amongst the Mandalorians of what defines a "true" Mandalorian. Best exemplified is The Clone Wars character Bo-Katan, who mocks Din Djarin for his strict adherence to the beliefs of "The Way", yet when he tries handing over the Darksaber to her after he beats Moff Gideon, she refuses to take it, citing that she has to beat him to win it (despite the fact that her appearance in Rebels shows she willingly took it last time without a fuss for tradition). In another example, she criticizes her ally Koska Reeves for duking it out with Boba Fett, claiming that this constant infighting caused Mandalore to fall to the Empire in the first place. It seems she forgot that she played a big role in that infighting, and got Boba riled up by calling his father Jango his "donor". Din was no better himself in this regard, though at least through his Character Development, he learns to keep a more open mind.
• Married... with Children plays this for laughs, especially in regards to Al and Marcy's relationship. One example is the episode "Every Bundy Has His Birthday" when she is upset about Jefferson constantly being hit on by other women. In response, Al makes a quip about her small breasts to which she then not only counters about his small manhood but also manages to call him a pig, which leads to him scaling back and bemoaning to Peg how he doesn't go over to their house to insult her.
• NCIS
  • Mossad Director Eli David is a prime example. Send agents on illegal missions to spy on his allies, murder their civilians and government agents, and try to kill their law enforcement officers when caught? He's just doing what he has to do. Kill one of his agents in self-defense when they resist lawful arrest? It's an outrage that must be paid for in blood!
  • Also Paloma Reynosa. Years before the show, Gibbs killed her father. Naturally, she wants revenge, same as her brother in the Mexican justice department. That said, her father was a drug dealer who killed Gibbs' first wife and daughter, she's aware and doesn't care, and her revenge would involve killing everyone associated with Gibbs before killing Gibbs himself.
• One that stands out in Noah's Arc is based on Ricky's protectiveness of Noah. Ricky makes it clear that if Wade so much as looks at another guy, he'll have Ricky to answer for. Yet when Noah cheats on Wade, not only does Ricky not call Noah out on it, he actually is upset with Wade over leaving Noah for that.
• David Brent of The Office (UK) loves making fun of people, but can't stand when anyone does the same to him. He tries to make up reasons why what he's doing is okay, but what other people are doing is hateful and mean.
• Vern Schillinger from Oz is a Neo-Nazi who uses other inmates as sex slaves, abuses his children, and murdered his own son for renouncing his bigoted beliefs. He frequently argues that his actions are entirely justified even if he has to jump through countless mental hoops to prove it, while acting as if any slight against him is the most heinous thing ever.
• Sense8: Kala is horrified to learn that the Rasals' company sells expired drugs, but Rajan "reassures" her that it's only going to non-Indians. This does nothing to make her feel better, asking where they go exactly. He says maybe China or Africa, and this horrifies her even more since she now knows an African whose mother needs HIV medication.
• Vic Mackey from The Shield has this as one of his defining traits. Murder, assault, manipulation, and betrayal is all fine as long as he's doing it, but the second it's directed at him, the Strike Team, or his family he goes on the warpath. He's repeatedly called out for acting self-righteous over things he's done to countless people the second they're directed at him.
• Smallville: Lex Luthor. If it happens to him, it's unforgivable. If he does it to someone else, it's business as usual. And not just him either, in fact this can be considered pretty much the underlining basis of the series. The heroes' actions can usually be broken down into one of two categories. Either the hero does something horrible "because they had to", but will react with revulsion when the villain does the same thing (Oliver Queen). Or the villain will do something sending the hero into a Knight Templar-like revenge only to turn around and do the same thing (Lana Lang, Tess Mercer).
• The gangsters in The Sopranos could rival the Cylons for this trope. Most are willing to commit multiple murders to protect their own, even when they have committed terrible crimes, such as Tony protecting his cousin from the New York families and putting his friends in danger even though his cousin murdered one of their men (though that was only because Tony wanted him not to suffer, which he almost certainly would have at their hands). It reaches its peak in Season 3 when the bosses admonish Tony for beating up Ralph after Ralph had just brutally murdered a 20-year-old stripper who was pregnant with Ralph's child. The sole reason is because she was not related to him and thus not important in their eyes. Ralph then acts personally offended and demands an apology and compensation, completely ignoring the fact that he just killed a completely innocent girl in cold blood.
  • One episode deals with a Native American protest against Columbus Day celebrations. The gangsters maintain that Columbus Day is an important celebration of Italian-American heritage which they are entitled to since Italian immigrants were discriminated against when they first arrived in America, yet they don't remotely care about the atrocities committed against Native Americans. That same episode also features a TV news debate between one of the protestors and an Italian-American which is moderated by an African-American, who is clearly biased towards the Italian (or rather, the European/settler position) position. However, when the Italian describes his grandparents' migration to the US as the "middle passage", basically implying that Italians had it as bad as slaves, the black moderator immediately turns on him. The basic theme of the episode is that every community is only focused on the historical wrongs done to them and considers them more important than anyone else's.
• In the final season of Stargate SG-1, new team member Vala Mal Doran has to face the threat of Adria, the "child" of the Ori, the ascended beings trying to convert humanity in the Milky Way to worship them. With Vala Adria's human mother, Adria is determined to win her mother's allegiance, often trying to argue that the Ancients- the other Ascended race- haven't done anything to merit Vala siding with them given their own vow of non-interference. However, Adria fails to acknowledge that the issue is less that the Ancients haven't done anything to earn Vala's loyalty and more that the Ori have done everything possible to drive Vala away, ranging from destroying entire planets if they won't immediately swear loyalty to the Ori to twisting their own religious parables to justify their violent actions against those who do not follow Origin.
• In an episode of Stargate Atlantis, the Genii have taken over Atlantis during a powerful storm, during which the city was almost completely evacuated. Commander Acastus Kolya personally shoots two Atlantis guards upon arriving, even though the original plan called for capturing them. When Sheppard kills two of Kolya's men sent to kill him, Kolya is outraged, even though Sheppard says they're even now. Kolya replies that he doesn't see it that way and pretends to shoot Weir. Basically, this is the Genii's hat. They believe they are above anyone else and that the ends justify the means. During their first encounter with Sheppard and his team, Teyla ends up leaving one of the Genii to die aboard a Hive-ship after he kills several trapped people to accomplish the mission. Naturally, the Genii don't give a shit about what he did, only what Teyla did. However, later on, the new Genii leader does get on friendlier terms with Atlantis after they save a number of his people (including his sister) who are dying of radiation poisoning.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • This is how the Cardassians viewed the Bajorans (and likely everyone else). Gul Dukat in particular claims that it was obvious that the Bajorans were inferior technologically, culturally and socially, and that their biggest problem is that they would not just accept their role. He also seemed to be very shocked and angry when Cardassians were killed by Bajoran terrorists, but was significantly less concerned with the lives of the Bajoran slaves on Terok Nor. Admittedly he claims (and it's likely he is telling the truth, given his Pet the Dog moments) to have improved conditions for the slaves, but he seemed pretty clear on the whole "Bajorans need to learn their place, they only bring suffering on themselves by not acquiescing" mentality.
  • His one-time subordinate Damar gets called on this near the end of the series. After learning the Dominion has killed his wife and son, neither of whom were part of his rebellion, to punish him, he is outraged that they could be so cruel, bemoaning "What kind of people would murder innocent women and children?" Kira simply parrots back "Yeah, Damar. What kind of people WOULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?". The look of guilt and shame on Damar's face as he recognizes the parallels to the occupation of Bajor is enough to almost make her apologize for reminding him of the truth.
  • Kira is not entirely innocent of this either. During her time in the resistance Kira killed Cardassian civilians and Bajoran collaborators and she made it clear that she's not sorry. Still, she holds a grudge against Damar because "When he killed Ziyal, he killed an innocent woman". At the time, Ziyal had just helped a group of enemy combatants escape from holding so that they could sabotage the station. From Damar's point of view she was far from innocent.
• Supernatural:
  • Dean's attitude towards the possibility of Sam turning into a monster or otherwise being abnormal: he's perfectly willing to kill strangers who might go darkside, but simply refuses to do so with his brother even when presented with clear indications of this happening, because he (pretty literally) couldn't bear to live without him.
  • In Season 7, a Kitsune who saved Sam in the past had managed for years to get by without killing humans by working at the morgue. When her son gets sick, she is kills people to feed him their brains and nurse him back to health, but when he's healthy again she stops instantly. Dean still kills her under the logic 'You killed once, you'll do it again'. Unsurprisingly, Sam, barely holding on with Lucifer (or at least a convincing hallucination) messing with his head, eventually tries to make Dean feel better by agreeing he did what he had to.
• Supergirl (2015): Despite genuinely trying to be a good person, Lena Luthor takes a lot after her brother on this. She hates that people lie and keep things hidden from her, but many times she's done the same "because she had good intentions". This especially comes into play during the show's fifth season, where she allows her friendship with Kara to fall apart because's she angry at how Kara kept her secret identity from her, yet was more than happy to keep a great deal of secrets from everyone else so long as it benefited her, especially since she was going to brainwash the entire planet. By Season 6, she realizes she was acting no better than her brother, and works to make up for it.
• A big part of We Own This City is the attitude of this among the Baltimore Police Department, detailing a real-life corruption scandal when it was discovered that the entirety of an eight-man task force were stealing money from innocent people under the barely-concealed pretense of confiscating evidence. Essentially, the department has an attitude of "criminals are scum, and therefore whatever we do to get them off the streets is justified", but whenever a police officer seems to be committing blatantly criminal activity, they suddenly switch to being incredibly lax and forgiving, if not outright closing ranks in defense of them.
• The Wire: Discussed Trope in Season 1. D'Angelo, a mid-level soldier in the Barksdale Organization (and nephew of the boss), in his attempt to school his underlings on a less violent means to run the drug trade, points out to one of them the absurdity of a drug dealer despising drug addicts. After all, they're directly profiting off the average fiend's misery and actively encourage it.

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