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* ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'': Bakshi goes through a lot of hell throughout the second season, up to and including [[spoiler:getting his ass brainwashed by Ward and Agent 33]], but it's hard to feel sorry for him after he's shown himself to be not just a loyal disciple of Whitehall but also a willing one.
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* ''BostonLegal'': Used sometimes, such as when Catherine Piper kills Bernard, who gloats about his two murders making him feel godlike, or when a man who used his money to get him skilled lawyers who engineered a not guilty plea is killed by his victim's mother.
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* ''BostonLegal'': ''Series/BostonLegal'': Used sometimes, such as when Catherine Piper kills Bernard, who gloats about his two murders making him feel godlike, or when a man who used his money to get him skilled lawyers who engineered a not guilty plea is killed by his victim's mother.
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* ''Series/TheFlash2014'':
** Barry saves Simon Stagg from a meta-human (later called the Multiplex) determined to kill him. However, the Multiplex reveals that Stagg had stolen his cloning research and fired him, preventing him from using his research to save his dying wife. After the Multiplex dies, Stagg sets his sights on exploiting Barry's abilities. Luckily, [[spoiler:Wells has other ideas and]] stabs Stagg in his office]].
** [[Creator/ClancyBrown General Wade Eiling]], who believes that the ends justify the means and is willing to exploit anyone to achieve his goals. He's also not shy about personally shooting anyone he no longer needs. After he finds out Barry's identity and tells Wells that he intends to find out what makes Barry tick, [[spoiler:Wells dons his yellow suit and snatches Eiling from his own compound to deliver him to Gorilla Grodd, who has a score to settle with the general]].
** Barry saves Simon Stagg from a meta-human (later called the Multiplex) determined to kill him. However, the Multiplex reveals that Stagg had stolen his cloning research and fired him, preventing him from using his research to save his dying wife. After the Multiplex dies, Stagg sets his sights on exploiting Barry's abilities. Luckily, [[spoiler:Wells has other ideas and]] stabs Stagg in his office]].
** [[Creator/ClancyBrown General Wade Eiling]], who believes that the ends justify the means and is willing to exploit anyone to achieve his goals. He's also not shy about personally shooting anyone he no longer needs. After he finds out Barry's identity and tells Wells that he intends to find out what makes Barry tick, [[spoiler:Wells dons his yellow suit and snatches Eiling from his own compound to deliver him to Gorilla Grodd, who has a score to settle with the general]].
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** In "Let Sleeping Dogs Fry", electrical appliances start killing the men living in a certain upscale neighborhood. It turns out that the culprit is the ghost of a pool cleaner who was killed by the husbands who found that their wives had slept with him.
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* ''Series/TheMentalist'': In the season 3 finale and season 4 premiere, Jane ended up killing the man believed to be Red John. It's later revealed that he wasn't actually Red John, but it ultimately didn't matter because the guy who was killed, as well as his wife, were a couple of kidnappers.
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* ''Series/TheMentalist'': In the season 3 finale and season 4 premiere, Jane ended up killing the man believed to be Red John. It's later revealed that he wasn't actually Red John, but it ultimately didn't matter because the guy who was killed, as well as his wife, were a couple of kidnappers. Jane, defending himself, even managed to convince the jury to find him not guilty by reason of justifiable homicide.
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* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Being surrounded by an entire gang of Narns and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown being brutally beaten to death]] is a horrible way to go. The person it happens to, Lord Antono Refa, is a vicious Centauri who has committed horrific war crimes against the Narn, including the institution of Narn death camps and the bombing of their homeworld with asteroids, an act that was so despicable that even the ''Vorlons'' condemned it.
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* ''Series/BabylonFive'': ''Series/BabylonFive'':
** In "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS02E12ActsOfSacrifice Acts of Sacrifice]]" the Narns on Babylon 5 lynch a Centauri who earlier started a BarBrawl with them. Everyone's worried that it's going to jeopardize the station's neutrality, but after G'Kar and Na'Toth force the murderer to confess to station security, Londo says that the victim was a dick anyway and requests that the killer's punishment be banishment from Babylon 5 and that his belongings be donated to the Centauri war fund.
** "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS03E20AndTheRockCriedOutNoHidingPlace And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place]]": Being surrounded by an entire gang of Narns and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown being brutally beaten to death]] is a horrible way to go. The person it happens to, Lord Antono Refa, is a vicious Centauri who has committed horrific war crimes against the Narn, including the institution of Narn death camps and the bombing of their homeworld with asteroids, an act that was so despicable that even the ''Vorlons'' condemned it.
** In "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS02E12ActsOfSacrifice Acts of Sacrifice]]" the Narns on Babylon 5 lynch a Centauri who earlier started a BarBrawl with them. Everyone's worried that it's going to jeopardize the station's neutrality, but after G'Kar and Na'Toth force the murderer to confess to station security, Londo says that the victim was a dick anyway and requests that the killer's punishment be banishment from Babylon 5 and that his belongings be donated to the Centauri war fund.
** "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS03E20AndTheRockCriedOutNoHidingPlace And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place]]": Being surrounded by an entire gang of Narns and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown being brutally beaten to death]] is a horrible way to go. The person it happens to, Lord Antono Refa, is a vicious Centauri who has committed horrific war crimes against the Narn, including the institution of Narn death camps and the bombing of their homeworld with asteroids, an act that was so despicable that even the ''Vorlons'' condemned it.
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** The two part episode "The Illustrious Client"/"The One That Got Away" updates the [[Literature/SherlockHolmes canon story]] "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client", but keeps the basic plot: Kitty Winter finds the man who subjected her to sadistic sexual abuse, then takes gruesome revenge by [[FacialHorror burning his face off with acid]].
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** The two part episode "The Illustrious Client"/"The One That Got Away" updates the [[Literature/SherlockHolmes canon story]] "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client", but keeps the basic plot: Kitty Winter finds the man who subjected her and several other women to sadistic sexual abuse, then killed them (she was the only one to escape alive). She then takes gruesome revenge by [[FacialHorror burning his face off with acid]].
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** The two part episode "The Illustrious Client"/"The One That Got Away" updates the [[Literature/SherlockHolmes canon story]] "The Illustrious Client", but keeps the basic plot: Kitty Winter finds the man who subjected her to sadistic sexual abuse, then takes gruesome revenge by [[FacialHorror burning his face off with acid]].
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** The two part episode "The Illustrious Client"/"The One That Got Away" updates the [[Literature/SherlockHolmes canon story]] "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client", but keeps the basic plot: Kitty Winter finds the man who subjected her to sadistic sexual abuse, then takes gruesome revenge by [[FacialHorror burning his face off with acid]].
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** In "You Do It to Yourself", Trent Annunzio is a sadistic [[DomesticAbuse wife beater]], so his wife Jun starts seeing another man. When Trent learns he's terminally ill, he has himself murdered and frames Jun's lover for it so she can be deported as an act of posthumous revenge. Fortunately, [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes Holmes and Watson]] discover the truth before it's too late.
** The two part episode "The Illustrious Client"/"The One That Got Away" updates the [[Literature/SherlockHolmes canon story]] "The Illustrious Client", but keeps the basic plot: Kitty Winter finds the man who subjected her to sadistic sexual abuse, then takes gruesome revenge by [[FacialHorror burning his face off with acid]].
** The two part episode "The Illustrious Client"/"The One That Got Away" updates the [[Literature/SherlockHolmes canon story]] "The Illustrious Client", but keeps the basic plot: Kitty Winter finds the man who subjected her to sadistic sexual abuse, then takes gruesome revenge by [[FacialHorror burning his face off with acid]].
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Added the example for The Wire, alphabetized the two examples that weren\'t in alphabetical order and corrected the link for one
* ''Series/{{Bluestone 42}}'''s pilot episode had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 [[EagleLand Eaglelander]] who insulted the officers around him, bragged about his own service record, screamed insultingly at local civilians and ignored repeated instructions to replace his helmet while in a combat zone. He is promptly shot in the head by a Taliban sniper.
* In the ''Series/MissFishersMurderMysteries'', the blackmailer from The Green Mill Murder.
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* ''Series/{{Bluestone 42}}'''s pilot episode had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 [[EagleLand Eaglelander]] who insulted the officers around him, bragged about his own service record, screamed insultingly at local civilians and ignored repeated instructions to replace his helmet while in a combat zone. He is promptly shot in the head by a Taliban sniper.
* In the MissFishersMurderMysteries, the blackmailer from The Green Mill Murder.
* In the MissFishersMurderMysteries, the blackmailer from The Green Mill Murder.
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* ''Series/{{Bluestone 42}}'''s pilot In the very last episode of ''Series/TheWire'', Cheese, who has been a JerkAss SmugSnake drug dealer and gangster since his debut, mistakenly admits in the middle of a self aggrandizing speech that he sold out his uncle [[ALighterShadeOfBlack Prop Joe]] to [[TheSociopath Marlo Stanfield]], which resulted in his uncle's death. Within a couple of seconds of doing so, Slim Charles, (who had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 [[EagleLand Eaglelander]] who insulted acted as the officers around him, bragged about his own service record, screamed insultingly at local civilians and ignored repeated instructions to replace his helmet while in a combat zone. He is promptly shot uncle's NumberTwo for the past two seasons) shoots Cheese in the head by a Taliban sniper.
* Inright in front of the MissFishersMurderMysteries, various drug lords who were assembled for a meeting. Of the blackmailer from The Green Mill Murder.dozens there, only one protests... because it means they lost the money Cheese was going to kick in to a joint project. All the others stand around muttering things like "Motherfucker had it coming", and "That's what you get" before they leave his body to lie there in the street.
* In
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Edit Reason: Under \'Chuck\', The name of the character Emmett Milbarge was under Emmett Byrne
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* ''{{Chuck}}'': Emmett Byrne is the major JerkAss of the show. Yet, in the episode "Chuck Versus the Pink Slip" he manages to crank his own jerkassness UpToEleven, which makes the scene where he is murdered in cold blood all the more satisfying.
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* ''{{Chuck}}'': Emmett Byrne Milbarge is the major JerkAss of the show. Yet, in the episode "Chuck Versus the Pink Slip" he manages to crank his own jerkassness UpToEleven, which makes the scene where he is murdered in cold blood all the more satisfying.
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** An AlphaBitch of such horrible caliber that she had driven a teenage boy into attempting suicide and had the boy's sister gang-raped to showcase that they were "losers", and none of the other students wanted to stop the bullying in fear of what she could do to ''them''. The PapaWolf and MamaBear collective of every kid she bullied banded together to kidnap her, tie her to a touchdown pole and force her to hear to their children's confessions to the school psychiatrist, and then ''stoned her to death'' when she had the stupid idea of show not only any regret, but tell the parents that ''the kids deserved it''.
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*** The episode ''Take My Life, Please'' had an unusual VictimOfTheWeek in a dumped body that [[MultipleGunshotDeath had been shot so many times and with so many different calibers]] that it was ''literally'' possible to see through him. The investigation eventually revealed that the man had bombed an abortion clinic (doing enormous collateral damage and hurting a lot of people) and then gone off the grid to avoid retaliation, [[TooDumbToLive eventually sneaking into an outdoors firing range to spend the night]]. The murderers were given much grief over trying to cover the murder, but nobody really lamented the man's death.
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** An AlphaBitch of such horrible caliber that she had driven a teenage boy into attempting suicide and had the boy's sister gang-raped to showcase that they were "losers", and none of the other students wanted to stop the bullying in fear of what she could do to ''them''. The PapaWolf and MamaBear collective of every kid she bullied banded together to kidnap her, tie her to a touchdown pole and force her to hear to their children's confessions to the school psychiatrist, and then ''stoned her to death'' when she had the stupid idea of show not only any regret, but tell the parents that ''the kids deserved it''.
*** The episode ''Take My Life, Please'' of The Mothership had an unusual VictimOfTheWeek in a dumped body that [[MultipleGunshotDeath had been shot so many times and with so many different calibers]] that it was ''literally'' possible to see through him. The investigation eventually revealed that the man had bombed an abortion clinic (doing enormous collateral damage and hurting a lot of people) and then gone off the grid to avoid retaliation, [[TooDumbToLive eventually sneaking into an outdoors firing range to spend the night]]. The murderers were given much grief over trying to cover the murder, but nobody really lamented the man's death.
*** The episode ''Take My Life, Please'' of The Mothership had an unusual VictimOfTheWeek in a dumped body that [[MultipleGunshotDeath had been shot so many times and with so many different calibers]] that it was ''literally'' possible to see through him. The investigation eventually revealed that the man had bombed an abortion clinic (doing enormous collateral damage and hurting a lot of people) and then gone off the grid to avoid retaliation, [[TooDumbToLive eventually sneaking into an outdoors firing range to spend the night]]. The murderers were given much grief over trying to cover the murder, but nobody really lamented the man's death.
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*** The episode ''Take My Life, Please'' had an unusual VictimOfTheWeek in a dumped body that [[MultipleGunshotDeath had been shot so many times and with so many different calibers]] that it was ''literally'' possible to see through him. The investigation eventually revealed that the man had bombed an abortion clinic (doing enormous collateral damage and hurting a lot of people) and then gone off the grid to avoid retaliation, [[TooDumbToLive eventually sneaking into an outdoors firing range to spend the night]]. The murderers were given much grief over trying to cover the murder, but nobody really lamented the man's death.
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** Ser Hugh dismissed Jory simply because he wasn't a knight. This was despite him being a squire up until recently. He dies painfully at the hands of Gregor Clegane shortly afterwards.
** The obnoxious singer Marillion gets his tongue cut out after mocking the recently deceased king in the kingdom's capital, which Joffrey found out about.
** The obnoxious singer Marillion gets his tongue cut out after mocking the recently deceased king in the kingdom's capital, which Joffrey found out about.
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* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Being surrounded by an entire gang of Narns and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown being brutally beaten to death]] is a horrible way to go. The person it happens to, Lord Antono Refa, is a vicious Centauri who has committed horrific war crimes against the Narn, including the bombing of their homeworld with asteroids, an act that was so despicable that even the ''Vorlons'' condemned it.
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* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Being surrounded by an entire gang of Narns and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown being brutally beaten to death]] is a horrible way to go. The person it happens to, Lord Antono Refa, is a vicious Centauri who has committed horrific war crimes against the Narn, including the institution of Narn death camps and the bombing of their homeworld with asteroids, an act that was so despicable that even the ''Vorlons'' condemned it.
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* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Being surrounded by an entire gang of Narns and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown being brutally beaten to death]] is a horrible way to go. The person it happens to though is a vicious Centauri who has committed horrific war crimes against the Narn, including the bombing of their homeworld with asteroids, an act that was so despicable that even the ''Vorlons'' condemned it.
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* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Being surrounded by an entire gang of Narns and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown being brutally beaten to death]] is a horrible way to go. The person it happens to though to, Lord Antono Refa, is a vicious Centauri who has committed horrific war crimes against the Narn, including the bombing of their homeworld with asteroids, an act that was so despicable that even the ''Vorlons'' condemned it.
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* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Being surrounded by an entire gang of Narns and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown being brutally beaten to death]] is a horrible way to go. The person it happens to though is a vicious Centauri who has committed horrific war crimes against the Narn, including the bombing of their homeworld with asteroids, an act that was so despicable that even the ''Vorlons'' condemned it.
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added a link to Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries
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* ''Series/{{Bluestone 42}}'''s pilot episode had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 [[EagleLand Eaglelander]] who insulted the officers around him, bragged about his own service record, screamed insultingly at local civilians and ignored repeated instructions to replace his helmet while in a combat zone. He is promptly shot in the head by a Taliban sniper.
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* ''Series/{{Bluestone 42}}'''s pilot episode had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 [[EagleLand Eaglelander]] who insulted the officers around him, bragged about his own service record, screamed insultingly at local civilians and ignored repeated instructions to replace his helmet while in a combat zone. He is promptly shot in the head by a Taliban sniper.sniper.
* In the MissFishersMurderMysteries, the blackmailer from The Green Mill Murder.
* In the MissFishersMurderMysteries, the blackmailer from The Green Mill Murder.
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** SubvertedTrope in "Voyage Of the Damned" with Rickston Slade. During the whole disaster, he's constantly complaining, making fun of the good-natured couple, lower-class couple who won their tickets [[spoiler: (and who both end up dying)]], and always trying to save himself at the expense of the group. Not only does he end up surviving, [[spoiler: he declares at the end that prior to the disaster, he sold all his stock of the ship's company, and bought the stock of rival companies, gloating that he's now extremely rich due to the disaster]]. The Doctor can't do anything but look disgusted.
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** SubvertedTrope in "Voyage Of the Damned" with Rickston Slade. During the whole disaster, he's constantly complaining, making fun of the good-natured couple, lower-class couple who won their tickets [[spoiler: (and who both end up dying)]], and always trying to save himself at the expense of the group. Not only does he end up surviving, [[spoiler: he declares at the end that prior to the disaster, he sold all his stock of the ship's company, and bought the stock of rival companies, gloating that he's now extremely rich due to the disaster]]. The Doctor [[YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame can't do anything but look disgusted.]]
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* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': In the episode "Business As Usual", Quark briefly started working for Gaila, a freelance arms dealer. The money was good but Quark found himself perilously close to the MoralEventHorizon. Finally, when Gaila made a deal with the Regent, a tyrant who planned [[AMillionIsAStatistic to kill 28 million of his own people to quell a rebellion,]] Quark decided to intervene, setting the Regent and Gaila against each other. The Regent had Gaila killed, and was later killed by his own police force. Neither Quark nor Sisko shed any tears:
-->'''Quark''': The Regent's dead?!
-->'''Sisko''': The Purification Squad caught up with him this morning.
-->'''Quark''': I can live with that too. And I can think of 28 million other people who won't mind either.
-->'''Sisko''': 28 million and one.
-->'''Quark''': The Regent's dead?!
-->'''Sisko''': The Purification Squad caught up with him this morning.
-->'''Quark''': I can live with that too. And I can think of 28 million other people who won't mind either.
-->'''Sisko''': 28 million and one.
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* ''Series/BreakingBad'': When Walt starts out on his journey downwards, his first murders are two drug dealers who attempted to kill him, (and one was a DEA informant). He physically assaults a high schooler in public, but only because he was picking on his son, and one episode has him destroying the fancy car of an asshole known only as "Ken Wins" by his narcissist license plate. Most of his victims tend to be people involved in the criminal underworld, [[ProtagonistJourneyToVillain at first.]]
* ''Series/BreakingBad'': When Walt starts out on his journey downwards, his first murders are two drug dealers who attempted to kill him, (and one was a DEA informant). He physically assaults a high schooler in public, but only because he was picking on his son, and one episode has him destroying the fancy car of an asshole known only as "Ken Wins" by his narcissist license plate. Most of his victims tend to be people involved in the criminal underworld, [[ProtagonistJourneyToVillain at first.]]
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** During Season Six, Warren Mears crosses a MoralEventHorizon when he accidentally kills his own girlfriend and attempts to frame Buffy for it, to no avail. Eventually, he shoots Buffy and nearly kills her, but also kills fellow Scooby Tara Maclay with a stray bullet. Willow is driven [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge insane with grief]], tracks Warren down, tortures him, and finally skins him alive. Both Xander and Dawn fully support the murder of Warren, Xander fully remarking that he "got what was coming to him."
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** During Season Six, Warren Mears crosses a MoralEventHorizon when he accidentally kills his own girlfriend and attempts to frame Buffy for it, to no avail. Eventually, he shoots Buffy and nearly kills her, but also kills fellow Scooby Tara Maclay with a stray bullet. Willow is driven [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge insane with grief]], tracks Warren down, tortures him, and finally skins him alive. Both Xander and Dawn fully support the murder of Warren, Xander fully remarking that he "got what was coming to him."
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** It isn't yet known who the killer was who murdered King Joffrey Baratheon but that's the whole point; ''several'' members of the cast hated him, as did most of the fans; he was a RoyalBrat, a SmugSnake, a DirtyCoward, and the [[{{Jerkass}} most rotten character on the show.]]
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** It isn't yet known who the killer was who murdered Becomes a plot point later on when King Joffrey Baratheon but that's is poisoned. Anyone who knows anything about the whole point; ''several'' members of show knows that Joffrey is easily the cast hated him, as did most of cruel and rotten person there, and due to his penchant for ordering people to be killed, tortured and publically humiliated simply because he could do that with no repercussions, the fans; suspect list is pretty much everyone in King's Landing: Jaime gives absolutely zero shits about Joffrey's death to the extent where he has sex with Cersei right next to his dead body, Tywin doesn't even pretend to feel bad for him and sums up his legacy with "he was not a good king or a wise king, if he was a RoyalBrat, a SmugSnake, a DirtyCoward, then perhaps he would still be alive", Tyrion is accused of killing him and while he pleads his innocence he also maintains that frankly the [[{{Jerkass}} most rotten character on world is better off without him anyway, Margaery is more shaken up by ''[[CruelAndUnusualDeath how he died]]'' rather than the show.]]fact that he did, and even Cersei, the only person to mourn his death, is not above tossing around the idea that her son may have deserved what happened to him. His killers, [[spoiler:Ollena Tyrell and Littlefinger admit to their confidants that they had Joffrey killed specifically because he was an asshole]].
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* ''Series/TheStrainTVSeries'': While they haven't died yet, the [[spoiler: slowly mutating]] [[AmoralAttorney female attorney]] and the (fake) goth rock star -- both of whom are rude, ungrateful, and are trying to sue the CDC team for doing its job -- are asking for what eventually happens to them.
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* ''Series/OrangeIsTheNewBlack'': The man [[spoiler: Claudette killed]] was abusing her workers.
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* The South Korean whodunnit game show ''Series/CrimeScene'' frequently uses this trope, likely because the format requires there to be 6 suspects, and therefore 6 motives because the game would be too easy unless EveryoneIsASuspect.
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* ''City Homicide'': The episode "Cut and Dried" has a convicted child molester murdered in prison, and few of the detectives are motivated to investigate too thoroughly. It's then subverted when it turns out he was genuinely repentant, was intending to give evidence against the pedophile ring he belonged to, and was in fact silenced by two of the prison ''guards''.
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* ''City Homicide'': ''Series/CityHomicide'': The episode "Cut and Dried" has a convicted child molester murdered in prison, and few of the detectives are motivated to investigate too thoroughly. It's then subverted when it turns out he was genuinely repentant, was intending to give evidence against the pedophile ring he belonged to, and was in fact silenced by two of the prison ''guards''.
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* ''Series/{{Bluestone 42}}'''s pilot episode had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 [[EagleLand Eaglelander]] who insulted the officers around him, bragged about his own service record, screamed insultingly at local civilians and ignored repeated instructions to replace his helmet while in a combat zone. He is promptly shot in the head by a Taliban sniper.
to:
* ''Series/{{Bluestone 42}}'''s pilot episode had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 [[EagleLand Eaglelander]] who insulted the officers around him, bragged about his own service record, screamed insultingly at local civilians and ignored repeated instructions to replace his helmet while in a combat zone. He is promptly shot in the head by a Taliban sniper.
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* ''Whodunnit!'': Most victims. In the most extreme case, every suspect tried to claim credit for killing the victim (a South American dictator) and the mystery was to work out who was telling the truth rather than who was lying.
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* ''Whodunnit!'': Most victims. In the most extreme case, every suspect tried to claim credit for killing the victim (a South American dictator) and the mystery was to work out who was telling the truth rather than who was lying.lying.
* ''Series/{{Bluestone 42}}'''s pilot episode had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 [[EagleLand Eaglelander]] who insulted the officers around him, bragged about his own service record, screamed insultingly at local civilians and ignored repeated instructions to replace his helmet while in a combat zone. He is promptly shot in the head by a Taliban sniper.
* ''Series/{{Bluestone 42}}'''s pilot episode had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 [[EagleLand Eaglelander]] who insulted the officers around him, bragged about his own service record, screamed insultingly at local civilians and ignored repeated instructions to replace his helmet while in a combat zone. He is promptly shot in the head by a Taliban sniper.
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Split from the main page due to length.
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* ''Series/BreakingBad'': When Walt starts out on his journey downwards, his first murders are two drug dealers who attempted to kill him, (and one was a DEA informant). He physically assaults a high schooler in public, but only because he was picking on his son, and one episode has him destroying the fancy car of an asshole known only as "Ken Wins" by his narcissist license plate. Most of his victims tend to be people involved in the criminal underworld, [[ProtagonistJourneyToVillain at first.]]
* ''Series/TwentyFour'': Has quite a few over the course of the series. The best examples are probably Nina Meyers in the third season and Pavel Tokarev in the eighth one.
* ''OneThousandWaysToDie'': Features this quite frequently. In some cases, the real-life demise of someone who wasn't an asshole at all will be dressed up in a pseudonym and this trope, to make tragic misfortune seem like poetic justice.
* ''Series/AllMyChildren'':
** In 1992, Will Cortlandt was bludgeoned to death with a crowbar and had become such a pariah that there were no less than 15 suspects, including his own SISTER.
** Later, in 2004, after Michael Cambias [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil raped Bianca]], he earned the hatred of everyone in Pine Valley, especially after he gets OffOnATechnicality because Bianca destroyed the physical evidence. After he shows up dead shortly after, all of Bianca's loved ones and friends attend his funeral [[SpeakIllOfTheDead just to give eulogies on how much they hate him]], with Tad Martin himself stealing his body from the morgue and burying it in the city dump. When it is revealed that Bianca herself confronted Michael and shot him dead in self-defense when he tried to rape her again, the judge, who was sympathetic to Bianca and believed her from the start, leaned hard on the prosecution ''not'' to press any charges on Bianca.
* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': In the episode "Double or Nothing", Angel had to invoke this trope to enlist bystanders' help in taking down a hard-to-kill-for-good mob boss. "How many of you owe this guy money?"
* ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'': Played with. The narrator gives a TonightSomeoneDies monologue, and the scene immediately cuts to an old woman [[DeathByRacism making a racist remark]]. He comments: "Okay, I'll just tell you right now. She's the one who dies." Later turns out to not be a straight example, as it's not a murder, but an accident.
* ''Series/{{Bones}}'':
** Probably happens with about the same 50/50 frequency as other crime shows. An example is a {{parody}} of ''Series/{{The Office|US}}'', where a hateful manager is dumped down an elevator. It turns out she had an aneurysm burst when one of the couple she busted for a forbidden affair -- one of whom she was already blackmailing to sleep with her -- threw a stapler at her head in frustration, and the two dumped her body in a panic.
** In another episode, involving a rich jerkass killed at a rock-and-roll fantasy camp, Sweets lampshades this by actually admitting he likes the killer better than the victim.
** Perhaps the biggest example of the show is The Gravedigger [[spoiler:a.k.a. Heather Taffet]], a serial killer who buried her victims alive then demanded a ransom. After finally getting caught and convicted, she gets her head blown off while on the way to try and appeal her conviction. The killer turns out to be [[spoiler:Booth's former mentor, who was in turn hired by the father of two of the Gravedigger's victims.]]
* ''BostonLegal'': Used sometimes, such as when Catherine Piper kills Bernard, who gloats about his two murders making him feel godlike, or when a man who used his money to get him skilled lawyers who engineered a not guilty plea is killed by his victim's mother.
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'':
** During Season Six, Warren Mears crosses a MoralEventHorizon when he accidentally kills his own girlfriend and attempts to frame Buffy for it, to no avail. Eventually, he shoots Buffy and nearly kills her, but also kills fellow Scooby Tara Maclay with a stray bullet. Willow is driven [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge insane with grief]], tracks Warren down, tortures him, and finally skins him alive. Both Xander and Dawn fully support the murder of Warren, Xander fully remarking that he "got what was coming to him."
** Buffy doesn't, but that's more because she didn't want Willow to commit murder (and Willow does feel like shit for ''months'' afterwards, following her killings of both Warren and Rack, a dealer in Dark-Magic drugs). Willow nearly subverted this by going after Jonathan and Andrew - Warren's lackies/partners, who didn't deserve it - but was thankfully stopped.
** Both in-universe and in real life, nobody mourned [[AdultsAreUseless Principal Snyder]]'s death:
-->'''Xander:''' (to Snyder in a dream sequence) You know, I never got the chance to tell you how glad I was you were eaten by a snake.
* ''Series/{{Castle}}'': Happens a great deal in this show. One particularly notable example was in the first season episode "Ghosts". The victim, found drowned in a bathtub full of motor oil, turned out to have been involved in a terrorist bombing twenty years earlier which ended in the deaths of one of her co-conspirators and a man who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. While initially Castle and Beckett thought that the victim had repented at the last second and tried to stop the bombing, she turned out to be the one who pushed on to make the explosion happen. Her killer was the woman who was said to have died twenty years earlier in the bombing, and the ''victim'' had actually set up the bathtub with motor oil in the hopes of killing the woman she'd thought dead for two decades, all because of a book deal.
* ''Series/TheChronicle'': More than one victim of the [[HeadlessHorseman headless biker]] in the episode "Bring Me the Head of Tucker Burns" is [[JerkAss given characterization]]. Even ''before'' TheReveal, it looks like the biker is [[PayEvilUntoEvil paying evil unto evil]] (albeit {{disproportionate|Retribution}}ly).
* ''{{Chuck}}'': Emmett Byrne is the major JerkAss of the show. Yet, in the episode "Chuck Versus the Pink Slip" he manages to crank his own jerkassness UpToEleven, which makes the scene where he is murdered in cold blood all the more satisfying.
* ''City Homicide'': The episode "Cut and Dried" has a convicted child molester murdered in prison, and few of the detectives are motivated to investigate too thoroughly. It's then subverted when it turns out he was genuinely repentant, was intending to give evidence against the pedophile ring he belonged to, and was in fact silenced by two of the prison ''guards''.
* ''Series/TheCloser'':
** Happens quite a bit. One really notable example happened in an episode aptly named "Problem Child", where the victim was... well, let's just say that you felt pretty sorry for the actual killer, and half wonder if they didn't actually do the world a favor.
** Used in-character ''twice'' in "Tapped Out", where upon seeing the victim's TV show about teaching men to exploit women emotionally for sex (complete with eight real, not-acting women), Brenda wonders that there's only one bullet in the guy's head; later, she mentions that after the DA saw the show, he decided the case wasn't worth taking to trial and offered a plea bargain, explicitly because the victim was so reprehensible.
** And again in "Heart Attack", where one all the victims avoided conviction for the gang-rape of a child. The killer even says that by killing them, harvesting their organs, and giving the organs to patients in desperate need of a transplant, the young men are finally contributing to society.
* ''Cluedo'':
** Most of the victims on this GameShow were straight-up ass-lacquers. Definitely helps for a show with a small, recurring cast of potential murderers.
** Similarly, the cast of the movie ''Film/{{Clue}}'' was either the {{blackmail}}er, his accomplices, or the blackmailed suspects (who all survive the movie), except FBI agent Mr. Green.
* ''Series/ColdCase'':
** Usually attempts to make the audience empathize with the victim. Which means it can sometimes throw the audience when the emotional flashbacks detail the death of a child molester, or baby thief, or....
** It's really about 50/50 with ''Series/ColdCase''. Since the emotional flashbacks show exactly ''why'' the victim was killed, it's often a toss-up as to whether the victim or the murderer is treated more sympathetically. On occasion, both are.
** It's especially true in the episode "Blackout", in which everyone in the ClosedCircle scene hated the victim.
** In the episode "Offender", a father who lost his son 20 years ago goes on a killing spree against child molesters.
** And in the episode "Justice", where the victim was a college BMOC: handsome, charming... and a serial date rapist. When the cops investigating your murder ''coach the person who killed you'' into claiming it was self-defense (when it really, really wasn't), you know you're an asshole.
* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'': Most of the victims in the first two seasons, allowing Columbo to have a cozy time with the murderer.
* ''{{Community}}'' had Cornelius Hawthorne who the show felt necessary to kill ''twice''. He shows up in "Advanced Gay" and promptly starts antagonizing his son, Pierce, criticizing him for attempting to appeal to the gay community and associating with people of different races and religions. Near the end, Jeff launches into a speech about how Cornelius was a bad father which induces a fatal heart attack. (You know the guy is an asshole when his son's eulogy is a ReasonYouSuckSpeech.) In "Digital Estate Planning", his antagonism of Pierce reaches beyond the grave when it's revealed that he's commissioned a video game which Pierce must play against his friends for his inheritance. Needless to say, the study group teams up to defeat virtual Cornelius.
* ''Series/CriminalMinds'':
** The vicious street gang that the [=UnSub=] starts killing his way through in the episode "True Night", although the unsub's methods are so brutal that one of the police actually says that it's the first time he's felt sorry for the gang.
** A recurring plot point when the team is profiling someone is for the first victim in a string to be responsible for the event that triggered a serial killer, leading to many of them being Asshole Victims.
** Likewise, the [=Unsub=] in "A Real Rain" targets victims who were acquitted for crimes. Various members of the cops, reporters, courthouse workers and general public all express ambivalence or even support for his actions due to their own disillusionment with the system. The [=UnSub=] from "Reckoner" is a similar vigilante.
** When the team mention to a witness that Tobias Hankel murdered his own father, the witness responds "good for him". That says it all about the victim, really.
** In almost every instance of female [=UnSubs=], the victims are specifically ''male'' assholes. This, however, is subverted in "The Thirteenth Step" and averted in "I Love You, Tommy Brown".
** With the exception of the deputy sheriff and Mr. Stratman (who were killed out of necessity), every person targeted by Owen Savage in "Elephant's Memory".
** Torture-happy cocaine baron Omar Morales in "Rite of Passage." Rare use of this without a SympatheticMurderer, though, as his killer was a serial hate-murderer who only killed Morales to cover up his own crimes.
* ''CrossingJordan'': One episode featured an asshole who had eaten fugu, leaving him paralyzed but still alive hearing all the reasons he was hated and promising to change in his mind. When it's found out and recovers, he promises to sue the main characters for malpractice, then walks out of the hospital and gets hit & killed by an ambulance.
* ''{{Crownies}}'': Has Ray Stone, an abusive husband who terrorized his wife Joanne and sister-in-law Heather-Marie, until he was beaten to death with a boltcutter. Erin's sympathies lie with Joanne Mervich, though she tries to avoid letting it get in the way of her job, even contributing to Rhys's closing arguments.
* ''{{Series/CSI}}'':
** Subversion in one episode. The victim is an asshole to his four co-workers, all of whom were the only ones to have access to the room he died in. The audience is led to believe that a combination of two or more of the four are the ones who offed the {{jerkass}} (all of whom are pretty jerkassy themselves). Turns out it was the janitor cleaning the vents, who killed the man when his hammer fell out of the pocket and through the grate. He didn't know the guy and removed the hammer because he didn't want to go back to jail.
** It happens many, many times in the ''{{Series/CSI}}'' franchise, usually coupled with a SympatheticMurderer. Examples include:
*** A clingy ex-wife who insisted on making life hell for her ex-husband and children. She tried to ''put a hit on herself'' to frame her ex-husband and when she couldn't do it, she ''tricked her own son'' into killing her for the same reason.
*** An egomaniac Paris Hilton-esque reality show star.
*** A convicted pedophile on parole. He was staying at his brother's house, and the stress of having him around plus the associated harassment by the neighbors caused said brother's pregnant wife to miscarry. The brother then catches the pedophile spying on a playground which turns out to be the last straw and kills him.
*** A millionaire [[FrivolousLawsuit serial litigator]]. Murdered by a chef whose life she had completely destroyed and was getting ready to do ''the same'' on his new workplace.
*** A horribly corrupt Deputy Mayor of NYC responsible for embezzling several million dollars out of various charities and refusing to raise policemen's salaries leading to a city-wide strike. Murdered by his 10 year old OCD son after he planned on sending him to a boarding school out of frustration for his condition.
*** A young man who was poisoned by a cheerleader who he had mocked when she was overweight. After suffering a completely undeserved HumiliationConga, the girl managed to lose weight and carry out a GambitRoulette to get her revenge.
*** A woman who trained dogs for underground dog fighting rings.
*** Three men, guilty of various crimes, who brutally beat the girl who had got them arrested -- and wasn't even supposed to have to testify. [[spoiler: They were killed by their attorneys, [[AmoralAttorney who didn't much care if their sleazy clients killed, intimidated, or beat up their (usually) equally sleazy accusers]], but [[EvenEvilHasStandards couldn't stand what the men had done to that girl]].]] When one of the killers points out to Mac that they're likely to get away with it and asks, "Can you really say we shouldn't?", Mac doesn't look too happy -- but doesn't say "no" either.
*** A particularly vicious [[TheBully high school bully]] who had give at least one of his victims permanent physical damage. Murdered by the school guidance counselor, who had previously worked at a school where a copycat murder of UsefulNotes/{{Columbine}} took place and figured it was only a matter of time before someone shot up the school to deal with the bully. She's not particularly treated as a SympatheticMurderer by the narrative, given that she's still a grown woman who shot a teenager essentially on a hunch.
* ''Series/{{Dallas}}'': While he survived, J.R. Ewing.
* ''DesperateHousewives'': Irina, Preston's Russian fiancee. A heartless gold digger she makes the mistake of sneering at the wrong nerdy guy, who it turns out is the local murderer.
* ''Series/{{Dexter}}'':
** The title character retains the audience's sympathy by adhering to a strict code of ethics that includes only killing other killers. Sometimes, there are aversions or complications.
** Dexter takes pity on Jeremy Downs because he was driven to kill to get revenge on a boy who raped him. It was ultimately a mistake.
** In season 3, Dexter does kill two people who are not known to be killers themselves: Oscar Prado, who was not yet a killer, but was trying to kill Freebo, a drug dealer. Also, "Cheerios Guy," a child molester, who made the mistake of triggering Dexter's PapaWolf mode by stalking Astor.
** Season 4 has him mistakenly kill Farrow. Dexter feels guilty about killing someone who wasn't a killer, but the guy was such a scumbag misogynist that he quickly gets over it.
** In Season 5, Dexter kills Stan Liddy for no other reason than to avoid getting caught. However, Liddy was a corrupt former cop and conducting an illegal investigation, so it's easier for the audience to forgive. Also, Liddy had just tasered and abducted him. That was probably a factor.
*** At the beginning of that season there was also the random guy in the boathouse whose only crime shown was being generally an asshole and insulting Rita to Dexter's face while he was still trying to process her death.
* ''Series/DiagnosisMurder'': Subverted in one episode where the victim was a blackmailing, mean-spirited nurse with several personal enemies. Why is it a subversion? The only reason she was actually killed was because she walked in on another murder; the killer was one of the few people who ''didn't'' seem to hate her.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** Jeremy Baines in the episode "Human Nature" is a JerkAss, and the first to be [[GrandTheftMe killed and his body used]] by the Family of Blood.
** Davros' assistant, Nyder. It's hard to feel sorry for him when the Daleks kill him carrying out an order of Davros against their will.
** Zimmerman, the first victim of the [[TimePolice Tesselecta]] in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler Let's Kill Hitler]]", is a [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi]] confirmed to be guilty of what the Tesselecta's crew describe as 'Level 3 Hate Crimes'.
*** Anyone the Tesselecta go after would fall under this trope. Their entire work is centered around catching horrible people who [[KarmaHoudini escaped punishment officially]], capturing them after they fell out of being remembered by history, and torturing them to death to suitably punish them for it.
** Lord Palmerdale in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E1HorrorOfFangRock Horror of Fang Rock]]".
** Solomon in "[[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/DoctorWhoS33E02DinosaursOnASpaceship Dinosaurs on a Spaceship]]". Killing thousands of defenseless aliens just so he could steal their property made the Doctor very upset. Hurting his friends, killing a friendly triceratops, and enslaving one of his friends (and referring to her as "a precious ''thing''") only sent him further across the line.
** SubvertedTrope in "Voyage Of the Damned" with Rickston Slade. During the whole disaster, he's constantly complaining, making fun of the good-natured couple, lower-class couple who won their tickets [[spoiler: (and who both end up dying)]], and always trying to save himself at the expense of the group. Not only does he end up surviving, [[spoiler: he declares at the end that prior to the disaster, he sold all his stock of the ship's company, and bought the stock of rival companies, gloating that he's now extremely rich due to the disaster]]. The Doctor can't do anything but look disgusted.
* ''DowntonAbbey'': There are Pamuk and Vera.
* ''Series/{{Elementary}}'': Happens occasionally. One "suspect-maximizing" example is in the episode "Poison Pen", where the victim's wife's alibi is that at the time of his poisoning she was buying the same poison that the actual murderer, their son, used. Both had the same idea of framing their nanny, since she had killed her own father that way twenty years before.
* ''Series/ElleryQueen'': Every VictimOfTheWeek. This was to maximise the number of suspects by giving everyone a motive to want the victim dead.
* ''Series/{{Emmerdale}}'': When Cain Dingle was beaten up and stabbed, there were no shortage of suspects, seeing how he'd antagonised nearly have the village by that point with his general {{Jerkass}} scumbaggery.
* ''Series/{{ER}}'': Dr. Robert Romano, the brash, insensitive Chief of Staff at County General Hospital, who was killed off in the Season 10 episode "Freefall" after being crushed to death in a helicopter crash on the hospital's landing pad. One person mourned his death afterward.
** Narrowly averted in Season 4, when Dr. Carter has to treat a serial rapist shot in a standoff with police. He deliberately chooses the riskiest treatment possible, secretly hoping [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident he'd die without it looking too suspicious]], but the guy lives anyway.
** Similarly, in the Season 7 finale, Dr. Greene allows a SerialKiller to die on the table.
** And in the Season 13 premiere, Sam [[VigilanteExecution summarily executes]] her abusive ex-boyfriend; given that he'd kidnapped her and their son and raped her before she got free, it's ruled self-defense.
* ''TheFades'': Two of the earliest victims are a pair of young bullies who abused the protagonists. Having 12-year-olds eaten alive by vengeful spirits of the dead is horrible but being jerks did soften it somewhat.
* ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'':
** If the killer/hostage taker is at all sympathetic, it's because the victim was a gigantic asshole.
** One episode deals with a basketball coach who verbally abused his players, even bullying other players to physically attack weaker players.
** Another had an SmugSnake of an abusive husband who was getting away with it thanks to naive friends in the police force. When his wife's sister tried to stop the abuse he tried to kill her and walk away with self defense as an excuse.
** And in other episode was a group of {{jerk jock}}s tormented a classmate, especially since he had a crush on the leader's much nicer girlfriend. They humiliated him in front of her and then recorded the event and posted it up on the Internet. He comes to school with a gun to get them. But not to kill them, just to humiliate them the way they humiliated him.
** In the episode "Acceptable Risk", it toyed with this trope when a widow went after the people who dropped charges on a pharmaceutical company after they were bribed by the company into keeping quiet about the drug's potential dangers, which led to the widow's husband's death. She never really gets to SympatheticMurderer status, as she's shown being extremely calculating and cruel to the people she kills, understanding that she has a limited amount of time before the police stop her, and she crosses the MoralEventHorizon when she tries to kill one of her target's innocent wife who [[GoThroughMe was standing between her and her target.]] She comes across as much more terrifying than sympathetic.
* ''FoylesWar'': In one early episode, the victim was a Nazi sympathizer.
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'':
** In the season 3 finale, [[spoiler: Ary and The Hound]] happen on a group of soldiers in the woods around a campfire who are happily joking about [[spoiler:The Red Wedding. Arya then decides to carve one soldier's throat out, while the Hound finished off the rest]].
** It isn't yet known who the killer was who murdered King Joffrey Baratheon but that's the whole point; ''several'' members of the cast hated him, as did most of the fans; he was a RoyalBrat, a SmugSnake, a DirtyCoward, and the [[{{Jerkass}} most rotten character on the show.]]
* ''Series/GilligansIsland'': This was played with in one episode, where a newspaper article found in a crate that washed ashore suggested that one member of the crew may have been a murderer. The victim could have qualified as an Asshole Victim; he had cheated or conned each one of the castaways except Gilligan and the Skipper, and each one had a plausible motive to kill him. [[spoiler: As it turned out however, his death had actually been an accident.]]
* ''{{Grimm}}'': Has a Spinnetod kill another Wesen who tried to rape her. An earlier episode has a drug dealer who tries to murder an innocent couple get killed by a Blutbad. Another episode has the first victim as an abusive boyfriend who tries to stop his girlfriend from leaving him; justified in this case since the murderer was going after {{jerkass}}es that reminded of his father, after already killing his father.
* ''Series/{{Heroes}}'': It's hard to feel sorry for a girl who pretended to save someone to get attention, a gangster, and the company's leader when they get their heads split open by Sylar.
* ''HomeAndAway'':
** Usually the case with long-running murder mysteries in this show:
** Josh West: an obvious JR Ewing-expy, the town's corrupt mayor, intent on destroying the town by building a freeway right through it. Had also taken bribes from an insane cult leader and was prepared to blackmail Barry over the circumstances of his wife's death.
** Angie Russell: framed a teenager for sexual assault, lied to Rhys that he was the father of her son, destroying his marriage, locked Sally in a room without her OCD medication, and burned down Scott's boat shed.
** Grant Bledcoe: at 14, had raped Charlie and fathered her daughter (who was raised by her parents as her sister). Still a sociopath 16 years later, when he was killed by Charlie's father.
** Sam Tolhurst: Killed a man in his hospital bed to keep him from blackmailing her, then killed herself to frame her husband and his ex-wife for her murder.
*** Johnny Cooper: leader of a gang of violent surfers, who had tried to keep his brother Rocco from going straight, eventually having him murdered after he helped the police catch him. He allowed Rocco's foster brother to be convicted of his murder and terrorised him in prison. After escaping from prison a year later, he tried to kill Sally, who had taken in Rocco and supposedly turned him against his brother. And finally, not only did he blackmail Sam into hiding him, it was implied that he raped her offscreen.
** Mark Edwards: One of the victims of the Summer Bay Stalker, an ex-boyfriend of Josie who she had a one-night stand with behind her boyfriend's back. After she broke it off and got engaged to Jesse, he blackmailed her, first over the affair, then over a self-defense killing she had committed sixteen years earlier. It was also revealed that he had slept with a fifteen-year-old, information that Josie unsuccessfully used to get him to back off.
** Penn [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Tiberius]] Graham: Started by psychologically torturing Alf with a [[DemonicDummy ventriloquist dummy]] then crossed the MoralEventHorizon when he planted a hypodermic needle to make his much younger girlfriend believe she had contracted HIV. Ultimately a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds though, as Alf was indirectly responsible for the deaths of his parents.
** Stu Henderson, Sasha's [[DomesticAbuser abusive boyfriend]], though as we learn more about his home life he becomes something of a JerkassWoobie.
* ''HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'': This show once had them investigate two suicides caused by a particular nasty piece of work, who was going to reveal their extramarital affairs. This wasn't blackmail, as he was going to reveal regardless, and only giving them a few days warning, as his Moral Judgment. The SOB was killed by the photographer who he blackmailed into being his accomplice.
* ''Series/{{House}}'': Gets in on this in season 6 when Chase murders a patient, due to him being a ruthless African dictator, who let slip that the first thing he was going to do when he got back to his country was order a full-out genocide of some ethnic minorities he thought were a threat to his regime. But it's played with: Chase is racked by guilt for quite some time and probably only did what he did in the end because he felt '''directly''' responsible for having saved his life earlier (having shouted a warning when an assassin was spotted). The scene where the assassin explains exactly what happened back home makes you realize that this dictator is waaaaaaaay past Asshole Victim.
* ''Series/JonathanCreek'': A common occurrence in this show.
* ''Franchise/KamenRider'':
** This trope is also used in multiple incarnations of the franchise.
** The enemies in ''Series/KamenRiderFaiz'' are called Orphenochs. They proclaim to be the next step in human evolution and most find it perfectly OK to kill regular humans. Yuka Osada, one of the protagonists, also kills normal humans, but only criminals. She also killed her bitch sister, and her asshole friends.
** In ''Series/KamenRiderKabuto'' a [[MonsterOfTheWeek Worm]] shows up that targets criminals as its prey. So the good guys lure it to them by pretending to be thieves.
** In ''Series/KamenRiderOOO'', the Monsters of the week are called Yummies. They are creatures born from and act out human desire. One of them is born from the desire of a man who wishes to punish criminals. So the monster starts brutally beating them up.
** In ''Series/KamenRiderDouble'', the Virus Dopant [[DemonicPossession possesses]] an SUV and runs down several people. Eventually the heroes learn that it's a young woman who wants revenge on her fiancé for cheating on her, and he temporarily saved his own skin by diverting her wrath to the gang that put her in a coma with a hit-and-run. And then when Double defeats the Dopant, the fiancé cheers "Yeah, that's what you get, you bitch!" The very first thing Shotaro does after de-transforming is slug the smug SOB right across the face after delivering his CatchPhrase[[note]]"Now, let's count up your crimes."[[/note]] in a particularly cold and angry tone of voice.
* ''Series/LawAndOrder'':
** Many episodes. In one episode in particular, in which the killer was acquitted by the jury. Jack [=McCoy's=] philosophical reaction is that this sometimes happens "when your victim is sleazier than your perp." In this case, the victim was a DragonLady who let the killer's underage son run up $50K in sex line charges, and whom it also turns out was running a sex slave ring.
** Another was set up to look like a type 3, since the victim was a neo-Nazi child molester. Turned out that the murderer was a brilliant but unbalanced writer who killed a stranger on impulse. The rest of the episode was about whether he should be executed, turning this into a type 2 (since it would be hard to sympathize if he'd killed a pregnant mother of three).
** Still another had a sleazy paparazzo (who had just {{Karma Houdini}}ed his way out of a Manslaughter charge) was shot to death outside of his favorite eatery. When the patrons realized who'd been shot... [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing they burst into applause.]]
** And another episode had a child molester who was murdered by a neighbor after the child molester was profiled on a show that profiled sex offenders.
** When a notorious drug lord is murdered, Detective Briscoe is less than enthusiastic about finding out who killed the guy. Especially when the prime suspect becomes the father of a boy the victim had led into a life of drugs, and later into death by overdose. But later, a priest comes forward and confesses to killing the drug lord... because God told him to.
* ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'': Played with in one episode: the victim was a registered sex offender (he'd committed statutory rape, but the DA's office had railroaded him and convicted him of flat-out rape), and as the episode continues, Logan gets increasingly angry over the fact that a man has been decapitated and mutilated, but because he was a sex offender, no-one seems to care.
** Played much straighter in another episode. The final victim of the episode [[spoiler: [[BatmanGambit deliberately provoked his daughter]] into [[SelfMadeOrphan killing her mother]], which was achieved in part by getting her to fall in love with and get engaged to his secret boyfriend, all with the intention of getting her money.]] Eames outright says he deserved it. While Goren is distraught by his death, it's only because he's upset by [[SympatheticMurderer what it means for the one who killed him.]]
* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'':
** A recurring feature in this show:
** One episode featured a psychiatrist who took advantage of a newborn boy's apparently extremely botched circumcision to manipulate his parents into having sex changed into a girl so he could run a long term experiment to prove the idiotic idea that "nurture, not nature, determines sexual identity," and is later revealed by the girl/boy's identical twin brother to have had the twins effectively dry hump each other to supposedly "reinforce their gender roles." And when the female psychologist on the detectives' team finally reveals the truth about her/his birth to Lindsay/Lucas, the bastard ''still'' refuses to accept his "theory" is wrong even as she/he is standing there screaming, "I NEVER ONCE FELT RIGHT!" even threatening have the other psychologist's career ended. The twin boys put together a plan where they go to a double feature, and one slips out during the second film and smashes his head in!
*** This was based on a true story ("Brenda" was the "girl" in question), though the therapist wasn't killed in real life.
** In another, a doctor who had been written about in a magazine kills his pregnant lover in her third trimester and fills a syringe with someone else's blood to spoof the detectives' paternity test, but the blood turns out to belong to a child rapist with at least two victims. Before he can find a way out of that, the rapist himself finds and [[AcquittedTooLate kills him]]. Then they have to find ''him''.
** An episode in Season Two entitled "Victims" was made entirely of this trope. Victims include a man who raped an young girl and slashed her face, leaving her for dead. Stabler is outraged at having to work their murders, feeling they had it coming.
** The very first episode had a Serbian war criminal responsible for at least sixty-seven rapes being beaten, stabbed and having his penis severed by two vengeful women.
** In the episode "Signature", they find the latest victim of a serial killer, as well as a dead man right next to her. The episode changes gears quickly when they find out that their male victim is the serial killer.
** In "Angels", the victim is a child molester who had kidnapped two boys from Guatamala and beat them as well as molested them. Elliot even says killing the guy was a public service, but they still go after his killer.
** In the episode "Chameleon", the first act of the episode is devoted to chasing down a serial rapist and killer - who is then slain by a ''different'' serial killer, who ''[[PayEvilUntoEvil specifically targets these types of characters]]'' in order to elicit sympathy from the general public. She almost gets away with it, as it seems the jury is sympathetic, but the fact that she kills to get what she wants [[HoistByHisOwnPetard turns out to be her downfall]]...
** A tween rapist is forcing his victim into getting an abortion (and may have been been close to taking matters into his own hands) when he's killed by a meek boy with a crush on her.
** In the episode "Hate", a young man goes on a killing spree targeting Middle-Easterners who simply want to promote inter-faith unity between Muslims, Jews, and Christians because his father left his mother for an Arab woman. He then later kills a Muslim inmate when in central booking before his trial to make his insanity plea and the theory he is supposedly genetically-wired to hate looks convincing. Finally and thankfully, the bastard is stabbed to death by the Muslim inmate's friends. You just ''know'' not a single damn was given and no tears were shed.
** In another episode, the victim of the week was an AlphaBitch and her friends who are all hated in their school, and pick on a fat girl. The alpha was so nasty that her own friends turned on her. Later, another girl who decided to be the next AlphaBitch placed a skewered pig on the fat girl's locker; unfortunately for her, the fat girl caught and killed her. It's not hard to [[SympatheticMurderer sympathize]] with the fat girl.
** There was one case where the detectives were tracking down a leader of a gang, the guy was crushed to death when he fell into a garbage truck. It was later revealed that he savagely beaten the victim of the week so no sympathy was ever made at all.
** An infuriatingly GenreSavvy AmoralAttorney and child pornographer who had just used his knowledge of the legal system to KarmaHoudini his way out in court a second time. [[VigilanteExecution Murdered by his first victim all grown up]]; when it's discovered he was in progress of raping another girl when he was shot and the woman would thus likely get off on defense of a third party, the detectives are okay with this.
* ''Series/{{Lost}}'':
** Had Anthony Cooper, who ruined the lives of at least two main characters before he was killed by Sawyer.
** Also, rather humorously, the obnoxious and bitchy red shirt Neil 'Frogurt' has a particularly satisfying death after 2 or so episodes of generally being an unhelpful dick.
** You only see him for about ten seconds, but Kate's stepdad Wayne is clearly established as creepy, disgusting, and abusive. Richard's murder of the doctor also qualifies, although it may be more manslaughter.
** Martin Keamy ''definitely'' qualifies. ''Both'' times he's killed.
* ''Series/TheLWord'': Jenny Schecter in the final season. Each [[TheTeaser teaser]] seems to end with yet another person having a reason to hate her.
* ''Series/TheMentalist'': In the season 3 finale and season 4 premiere, Jane ended up killing the man believed to be Red John. It's later revealed that he wasn't actually Red John, but it ultimately didn't matter because the guy who was killed, as well as his wife, were a couple of kidnappers.
* ''Series/{{Merlin}}'': In addition to being a RedShirtArmy, it's really difficult to feel sorry for the Knights when they are in the middle of attacking sorcerers and get killed doing so. Sometimes they're attacking sorcerers that attacked them first, but other times they're attacking [[WouldHurtAChild children]] or [[ActualPacifist Druids]] that have never harmed anyone.
* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'':
** About 75% of the time.
** Including one character, played by [[RetroactiveRecognition Orlando Bloom]], who was sleeping with at least three different women (one of whom was paying him for it) until he got pitchforked through the chest in the first five minutes. He was also a petty thief and a vandal with a serious [[{{Jerkass}} attitude problem]].
* ''Series/{{Monk}}'':
** One episode has the title character investigate the deaths of a bunch of violent mobsters. It turns out that they died because they pulled guns on another criminal, making it difficult to determine to what extent their deaths count as acts of self-defense. The killer tries to excuse himself by pointing out that his victims were assholes.
** Also, in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Red Headed Stranger", Sonny Cross, the murder victim, was a person who embezzled a lot of money (embezzling $400,000 from Willie Nelson, and it is implied that this is not the first time he has done so later on in the episode), and he also did time for drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter. In regards to the latter incident, he [[KarmaHoudini also received a very lenient punishment]], spending only 18 months in prison. Also, the murderer was a blind woman (well, half-blind, she regained the sight of one of her eyes from slipping on the floor at a Supermarket) who was the sole survivor of her family, the family who was killed by Cross's drunk driving, and it was because of his manslaughter that she was even blind in the first place.
*** The majority of the bad guys in Monk, when finally exposed, turn out to be this, and you're generally cheering when they're carted off to jail.
* Generally avoided in ''Series/{{Motive}}'' which tends more to the revelation that the victim is nicer person than their first impression. But in the Motive web series, where the victim was a rookie cop partnered with the boss ten years ago when he was still a street cop, the revelation is how horrible the likable young man was and how hard he'd worked to drive the killer to kill him, ruining the lives of anyone she dated if she didn't break it off.
* ''Series/MurderSheWrote'': Almost to the level of OnceAnEpisode. However, there are actually some exceptions scattered throughout the show's long run of some perfectly nice people getting killed, but one in particular stands out as a very deliberate subversion of this trope. It centers around this SmugSnake CorruptCorporateExecutive where everything about him just seems to ''scream'' Asshole Victim... until you get to the halfway point and the murder victim is the exec's much nicer brother.
* ''Series/{{NCIS}}'':
** Many episodes of this show contain these certainly, however the episode "Smoked" has an interesting twist. Because of evidence found during the autopsy, the entire team, and the viewer, believes their victim is a serial killer who murdered dozens of women who look like his wife. Gibbs and Fornell believe the wife to have found out and killed the husband, and they are sympathetic during the interview. Then, in the last five minutes, due to some more forensic magic, it is determined that the husband was completely innocent and SHE is the serial killer.
** Not entirely innocent - The victims all had a toe removed because the killer was missing it. [[{{Squick}} The husband had a toe in his stomach at the time of death]].
** I think the inference may have been that the wife - the real serial killer - fed the toe to her husband.
** ''NCIS'' also did this in the backstory with Gibbs' murder of Pedro Hernandez (in cold blood and premeditated), who had murdered Gibbs' wife and daughter earlier. At first this is only sporadically brought up in flashbacks (particularly during the ''Hiatus'' arc while Gibbs recovers from trauma and memory loss). It later comes back to haunt him in the "Rule 51" arc concluding season 7, where the idea of vengeance is also heavily deconstructed.
** Another example is the episode "Caged", where a guard in a women's prison gets stabbed to death, and the team must find out who killed the guard. The guard is blackmailing an inmate's high school daughter for sex. It's implied that said inmate (who had less than one year left on her sentence, and wants to be a mother to her kids) stabbed the guard, but another inmate (on a 175 year sentence), who [=McGee=] was sent to get a confession from, confesses to the murder. The team agrees that they won't lose any sleep over that.
** Two men are killed in very gruesome ways, by Ducky's girlfriend to attract his attention. She points out that they were unpleasant adulterers and deserved to die. Then this is Subverted as Ducky proceeds to point out that they didn't deserve to die any more than she deserves to be their judge jury and executioner
** Even the birth of NCIS came about with one of these. The two-parter ''Series/{{JAG}}'' episode "Ice Queen"/"Meltdown" that served as the NCIS pilot introduced Gibbs and [=DiNozzo=] investigating the death of Lt. Singer and her five month fetus, the token 'Evil Witch' on ''JAG''.
* ''Series/TheOnedinLine'': Has a storyline in series one with a discussion of a disputed death of a shipmate, covered up by the original captain but which probably was murder, four years prior to the events of the series. When Annie calls it a brutal murder, James claims he was a brutal man - so that's all right then.... However, James was looking at it from a sailor's point of view. He knew how much power a tyrannical captain had, and that having one could be a FateWorseThanDeath.
* ''Series/{{Oz}}'': Everyone qualifies for this, since they're in a maximum security prison. Especially nasty pieces of work were William Cudney, who killed the son of the doctor that gave His wife an abortion, and Malcoln Coyle, who killed a family including an infant for fun. Even inmates who committed murder were appalled by Their crimes.
* ''Franchise/PerryMason'': Most, but not all, of this show's episodes.
* By virtue of the premise of ''Series/PersonOfInterest'', some of the people the machine identifies as potential victims are less than sympathetic, meaning Finch and Reese are tasked with averting this trope. Played straight in the case of [[spoiler:Wayne Kruger]], who they failed to save.
** The show's serial villains have a habit of killing each other.
* ''Series/{{Primeval}}'':
** Several victims qualify as this.
** The journalists from season three who get a bunch of people (and themselves) eaten by a Giganotosaurus just to get a story.
** Christine Johnson, the person who took over the ARC, tried to arrest the entire main cast, and had [[BenevolentBoss Lester]] forced out of the ARC, who is pushed into a Future Predator-full anomaly by Helen Cutter.
** Henry Merchant from 5x03, who tries to get Emily institutionalized just for the sake of his reputation, and then shoots her, and then threatens to shoot Matt if she doesn't come back with him to the 1860s where she'd probably hang for murders that she didn't commit.
* ''Series/PrisonBreak'': When Agent Blondie and Wyatt are both killed by Mahone. Blondie hit Mahone's son with a car (along with killing Veronica Donovan and Frank Tancredi, and attempting to kill Sara Tancredi), and Wyatt killed Mahone's son (along with James Whistler, Bruce Bennett, and Roland Glenn).
* ''Series/{{Raines}}'': A very real concern for the title character; as he hallucinates the victims, cases tend to be more strenuous for him if he doesn't like the person who died.
* ''Series/{{Reaper}}'': Sam has to save his old SadistTeacher from an escaped soul wanting to kill him in revenge, and it would have been better had they just let him get killed first. Fortunately he got his comeuppance in the end.
* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': Drexel in "[[Recap/RevolutionS1E6SexAndDrugs Sex and Drugs]]". He is a sociopathic, politically incorrect, Ax Crazy drug lord. He put Charlie Matheson up to the task of killing his neighbour and Irish Cop Bill O'Halloran in exchange for Nora Clayton's life being saved. Once Charlie leaves, Drexel reveals that he lied and that Charlie would be killed once she killed off Bill. He did this to get back at Miles Matheson for having the bad manners to betray Sebastian Monroe and cause Drexel to be labelled with guilt by association. When Miles ran off to save Charlie from making a big mistake, Drexel retaliates by trying to force Aaron Pittman and Nora to shoot each other in a duel. Aaron responds by apparently shooting himself in the chest, but he is playing possum and successfully shoots and kills Drexel dead. Drexel's henchmen didn't really care about their boss's death at all, and nobody shed any tears over Drexel's death either.
* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'': Lionel Luthor. When he ''did'' die, this became an AvertedTrope.
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': There are plenty of these, and when someone has to die to show the MonsterOfTheWeek means business, it's often an Asshole Victim. In fact, in "Tall Tales", the MonsterOfTheWeek is less feral and more sophisticated than the usual fare, and makes it a point to target these sort of people.
* ''TalesFromTheCrypt'': Like its namesake comics, this show featured tons of these. Plenty of undeserving victims too, to be sure, but the vast majority of characters who meet their gory end have it coming -- ''especially'' if they're [[VillainProtagonist the protagonist]].
* ''Series/{{Teen Wolf}}'' had this with the victims of the kanima. The first victim was Isaac's father, shown to be physically and emotionally abusive to the point where he would lock his son in a freezer and nearly blinded him. The mechanic was shown being a jerk and ripping Stiles off for car repairs shortly before his own death. The later victims aren't necessarily shown to be jerks on-screen, but it's clear that they've been serious jerks in the past.
* ''To Catch The Uncatchable'':
** In this Hong Kong comedy detective show, a majority of the victims are often JerkAss and should [[PayEvilUntoEvil had it coming to them]]. The female protagonist's previous boss had several affairs and tried to rape the protagonist as well. Turns out his jilted lover was the one to kill him. Another man was a cult leader who put drugs into his believers' drinks so they would follow his orders and would later force the drugs down a believer's throat for disobeying him and also going out with his son. His wife tried to stop him from killing the girl and accidentally pushed him too hard, causing him to fall off the building. There was a woman who was a model who chased after men, then dumped them after she had exploited them for all they are worth. She was pushed off the stairs by a fan of hers, after she insulted him for being worthless.
** There's the episode with the little girl who HasTwoMommies and went to catholic school, who had a bully who relentlessly harassed her, who was practically encouraged by his parents and the school itself. The girl stabbed him in the spine with scissors and paralyzed him after he assaulted her and cut off a lock of her hair... remind me why the kid wasn't dealt with in court.
* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'': Mark Goodson from the episode "Small Worlds". We don't particularly mind that he's stalked and murdered, because the first time we see him he's trying to kidnap and rape a little girl.
* ''TwinPeaks'': This show is full of these but a special mention goes to MIKE and BOB. The two were a pair of serial killers but MIKE had a change of heart, repented and shot BOB dead. It didn't take.
* ''TwoAndAHalfMen'': At the beginning of season nine, it is implied that Charlie may have been shoved in front of a train by a girlfriend who caught him cheating. His funeral is full of women talking about the [=STD=]s they got from him and a man who wants to collect $30,000 in what are implied to be drug-related debts.
* ''TheUnusuals'': In the pilot, the late Detective Kowalski is revealed to have been a CorruptCop, an adulterer, a blackmailer and an all-around JerkAss for the purpose of making [[EveryoneIsASuspect everyone a suspect]]. However, his widow is shown to love him and genuinely mourn him.
* ''TheVampireDiaries'':
** Mr. Tanner. Despite being universally disliked when Damon killed him it actually did make Stefan call him irredeemable, mostly because he still murdered the first guy he saw just to prove a point.
** Definitely [[AbusiveParents Giuseppe Salvatore]]. While he seemed to genuinely love Steffan and Damon, he showed a chilling willingness to shoot his own sons the moment he saw that they were trying to help Katherine escape. Even worse, when he catches the newly turned Steffan sneaking into the house, he reveals in a completely unrepentant manner that he is the one who fired the shots that killed them, because they disgraced the family. Steffan killing him and drinking his blood to complete the transformation into a vampire is an excellent example of PoeticJustice.
** Stefan deliberately creates one in Season 4. He turns a confessed murderer so Jeremy can kill him to grow his hunter's mark.
* ''VeronicaMars'': The first season is spent by the titular character trying to find out who killed her best friend, Lilly Kane. Lilly isn't exactly an example of this trope, though over the course of the season it is discovered that she wasn't the nicest person either. She was, in fact, proven to have been cheating on her boyfriend with her boyfriend's ''father''. The real embodiment of this trope is her killer, said boyfriend's father with whom she had a lengthy affair, Aaron Echolls. He is caught and imprisoned at the end of season one, and his trial takes place at the end of season two. He has false evidence planted to muddy up the investigation, throwing suspicion on Lilly's brother, and ending with him being acquitted. Consequently, no one sheds a tear or opens up much of an investigation when Duncan Kane has Aaron Echolls murdered in his hotel room following the trial.
** A non-fatal variation: in season 2, Veronica is hired by Chip Diller, a Neptune College student, to prove he is not a serial rapist. It turns out that while he is a misogynist, he is not a rapist. The rapes continue into the following year (Veronica's freshman year at the same college), and Chip is anally violated with an Easter egg in retaliation for a rape that turns out to have been a fabrication.
* ''Whodunnit!'': Most victims. In the most extreme case, every suspect tried to claim credit for killing the victim (a South American dictator) and the mystery was to work out who was telling the truth rather than who was lying.
* ''Series/TwentyFour'': Has quite a few over the course of the series. The best examples are probably Nina Meyers in the third season and Pavel Tokarev in the eighth one.
* ''OneThousandWaysToDie'': Features this quite frequently. In some cases, the real-life demise of someone who wasn't an asshole at all will be dressed up in a pseudonym and this trope, to make tragic misfortune seem like poetic justice.
* ''Series/AllMyChildren'':
** In 1992, Will Cortlandt was bludgeoned to death with a crowbar and had become such a pariah that there were no less than 15 suspects, including his own SISTER.
** Later, in 2004, after Michael Cambias [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil raped Bianca]], he earned the hatred of everyone in Pine Valley, especially after he gets OffOnATechnicality because Bianca destroyed the physical evidence. After he shows up dead shortly after, all of Bianca's loved ones and friends attend his funeral [[SpeakIllOfTheDead just to give eulogies on how much they hate him]], with Tad Martin himself stealing his body from the morgue and burying it in the city dump. When it is revealed that Bianca herself confronted Michael and shot him dead in self-defense when he tried to rape her again, the judge, who was sympathetic to Bianca and believed her from the start, leaned hard on the prosecution ''not'' to press any charges on Bianca.
* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': In the episode "Double or Nothing", Angel had to invoke this trope to enlist bystanders' help in taking down a hard-to-kill-for-good mob boss. "How many of you owe this guy money?"
* ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'': Played with. The narrator gives a TonightSomeoneDies monologue, and the scene immediately cuts to an old woman [[DeathByRacism making a racist remark]]. He comments: "Okay, I'll just tell you right now. She's the one who dies." Later turns out to not be a straight example, as it's not a murder, but an accident.
* ''Series/{{Bones}}'':
** Probably happens with about the same 50/50 frequency as other crime shows. An example is a {{parody}} of ''Series/{{The Office|US}}'', where a hateful manager is dumped down an elevator. It turns out she had an aneurysm burst when one of the couple she busted for a forbidden affair -- one of whom she was already blackmailing to sleep with her -- threw a stapler at her head in frustration, and the two dumped her body in a panic.
** In another episode, involving a rich jerkass killed at a rock-and-roll fantasy camp, Sweets lampshades this by actually admitting he likes the killer better than the victim.
** Perhaps the biggest example of the show is The Gravedigger [[spoiler:a.k.a. Heather Taffet]], a serial killer who buried her victims alive then demanded a ransom. After finally getting caught and convicted, she gets her head blown off while on the way to try and appeal her conviction. The killer turns out to be [[spoiler:Booth's former mentor, who was in turn hired by the father of two of the Gravedigger's victims.]]
* ''BostonLegal'': Used sometimes, such as when Catherine Piper kills Bernard, who gloats about his two murders making him feel godlike, or when a man who used his money to get him skilled lawyers who engineered a not guilty plea is killed by his victim's mother.
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'':
** During Season Six, Warren Mears crosses a MoralEventHorizon when he accidentally kills his own girlfriend and attempts to frame Buffy for it, to no avail. Eventually, he shoots Buffy and nearly kills her, but also kills fellow Scooby Tara Maclay with a stray bullet. Willow is driven [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge insane with grief]], tracks Warren down, tortures him, and finally skins him alive. Both Xander and Dawn fully support the murder of Warren, Xander fully remarking that he "got what was coming to him."
** Buffy doesn't, but that's more because she didn't want Willow to commit murder (and Willow does feel like shit for ''months'' afterwards, following her killings of both Warren and Rack, a dealer in Dark-Magic drugs). Willow nearly subverted this by going after Jonathan and Andrew - Warren's lackies/partners, who didn't deserve it - but was thankfully stopped.
** Both in-universe and in real life, nobody mourned [[AdultsAreUseless Principal Snyder]]'s death:
-->'''Xander:''' (to Snyder in a dream sequence) You know, I never got the chance to tell you how glad I was you were eaten by a snake.
* ''Series/{{Castle}}'': Happens a great deal in this show. One particularly notable example was in the first season episode "Ghosts". The victim, found drowned in a bathtub full of motor oil, turned out to have been involved in a terrorist bombing twenty years earlier which ended in the deaths of one of her co-conspirators and a man who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. While initially Castle and Beckett thought that the victim had repented at the last second and tried to stop the bombing, she turned out to be the one who pushed on to make the explosion happen. Her killer was the woman who was said to have died twenty years earlier in the bombing, and the ''victim'' had actually set up the bathtub with motor oil in the hopes of killing the woman she'd thought dead for two decades, all because of a book deal.
* ''Series/TheChronicle'': More than one victim of the [[HeadlessHorseman headless biker]] in the episode "Bring Me the Head of Tucker Burns" is [[JerkAss given characterization]]. Even ''before'' TheReveal, it looks like the biker is [[PayEvilUntoEvil paying evil unto evil]] (albeit {{disproportionate|Retribution}}ly).
* ''{{Chuck}}'': Emmett Byrne is the major JerkAss of the show. Yet, in the episode "Chuck Versus the Pink Slip" he manages to crank his own jerkassness UpToEleven, which makes the scene where he is murdered in cold blood all the more satisfying.
* ''City Homicide'': The episode "Cut and Dried" has a convicted child molester murdered in prison, and few of the detectives are motivated to investigate too thoroughly. It's then subverted when it turns out he was genuinely repentant, was intending to give evidence against the pedophile ring he belonged to, and was in fact silenced by two of the prison ''guards''.
* ''Series/TheCloser'':
** Happens quite a bit. One really notable example happened in an episode aptly named "Problem Child", where the victim was... well, let's just say that you felt pretty sorry for the actual killer, and half wonder if they didn't actually do the world a favor.
** Used in-character ''twice'' in "Tapped Out", where upon seeing the victim's TV show about teaching men to exploit women emotionally for sex (complete with eight real, not-acting women), Brenda wonders that there's only one bullet in the guy's head; later, she mentions that after the DA saw the show, he decided the case wasn't worth taking to trial and offered a plea bargain, explicitly because the victim was so reprehensible.
** And again in "Heart Attack", where one all the victims avoided conviction for the gang-rape of a child. The killer even says that by killing them, harvesting their organs, and giving the organs to patients in desperate need of a transplant, the young men are finally contributing to society.
* ''Cluedo'':
** Most of the victims on this GameShow were straight-up ass-lacquers. Definitely helps for a show with a small, recurring cast of potential murderers.
** Similarly, the cast of the movie ''Film/{{Clue}}'' was either the {{blackmail}}er, his accomplices, or the blackmailed suspects (who all survive the movie), except FBI agent Mr. Green.
* ''Series/ColdCase'':
** Usually attempts to make the audience empathize with the victim. Which means it can sometimes throw the audience when the emotional flashbacks detail the death of a child molester, or baby thief, or....
** It's really about 50/50 with ''Series/ColdCase''. Since the emotional flashbacks show exactly ''why'' the victim was killed, it's often a toss-up as to whether the victim or the murderer is treated more sympathetically. On occasion, both are.
** It's especially true in the episode "Blackout", in which everyone in the ClosedCircle scene hated the victim.
** In the episode "Offender", a father who lost his son 20 years ago goes on a killing spree against child molesters.
** And in the episode "Justice", where the victim was a college BMOC: handsome, charming... and a serial date rapist. When the cops investigating your murder ''coach the person who killed you'' into claiming it was self-defense (when it really, really wasn't), you know you're an asshole.
* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'': Most of the victims in the first two seasons, allowing Columbo to have a cozy time with the murderer.
* ''{{Community}}'' had Cornelius Hawthorne who the show felt necessary to kill ''twice''. He shows up in "Advanced Gay" and promptly starts antagonizing his son, Pierce, criticizing him for attempting to appeal to the gay community and associating with people of different races and religions. Near the end, Jeff launches into a speech about how Cornelius was a bad father which induces a fatal heart attack. (You know the guy is an asshole when his son's eulogy is a ReasonYouSuckSpeech.) In "Digital Estate Planning", his antagonism of Pierce reaches beyond the grave when it's revealed that he's commissioned a video game which Pierce must play against his friends for his inheritance. Needless to say, the study group teams up to defeat virtual Cornelius.
* ''Series/CriminalMinds'':
** The vicious street gang that the [=UnSub=] starts killing his way through in the episode "True Night", although the unsub's methods are so brutal that one of the police actually says that it's the first time he's felt sorry for the gang.
** A recurring plot point when the team is profiling someone is for the first victim in a string to be responsible for the event that triggered a serial killer, leading to many of them being Asshole Victims.
** Likewise, the [=Unsub=] in "A Real Rain" targets victims who were acquitted for crimes. Various members of the cops, reporters, courthouse workers and general public all express ambivalence or even support for his actions due to their own disillusionment with the system. The [=UnSub=] from "Reckoner" is a similar vigilante.
** When the team mention to a witness that Tobias Hankel murdered his own father, the witness responds "good for him". That says it all about the victim, really.
** In almost every instance of female [=UnSubs=], the victims are specifically ''male'' assholes. This, however, is subverted in "The Thirteenth Step" and averted in "I Love You, Tommy Brown".
** With the exception of the deputy sheriff and Mr. Stratman (who were killed out of necessity), every person targeted by Owen Savage in "Elephant's Memory".
** Torture-happy cocaine baron Omar Morales in "Rite of Passage." Rare use of this without a SympatheticMurderer, though, as his killer was a serial hate-murderer who only killed Morales to cover up his own crimes.
* ''CrossingJordan'': One episode featured an asshole who had eaten fugu, leaving him paralyzed but still alive hearing all the reasons he was hated and promising to change in his mind. When it's found out and recovers, he promises to sue the main characters for malpractice, then walks out of the hospital and gets hit & killed by an ambulance.
* ''{{Crownies}}'': Has Ray Stone, an abusive husband who terrorized his wife Joanne and sister-in-law Heather-Marie, until he was beaten to death with a boltcutter. Erin's sympathies lie with Joanne Mervich, though she tries to avoid letting it get in the way of her job, even contributing to Rhys's closing arguments.
* ''{{Series/CSI}}'':
** Subversion in one episode. The victim is an asshole to his four co-workers, all of whom were the only ones to have access to the room he died in. The audience is led to believe that a combination of two or more of the four are the ones who offed the {{jerkass}} (all of whom are pretty jerkassy themselves). Turns out it was the janitor cleaning the vents, who killed the man when his hammer fell out of the pocket and through the grate. He didn't know the guy and removed the hammer because he didn't want to go back to jail.
** It happens many, many times in the ''{{Series/CSI}}'' franchise, usually coupled with a SympatheticMurderer. Examples include:
*** A clingy ex-wife who insisted on making life hell for her ex-husband and children. She tried to ''put a hit on herself'' to frame her ex-husband and when she couldn't do it, she ''tricked her own son'' into killing her for the same reason.
*** An egomaniac Paris Hilton-esque reality show star.
*** A convicted pedophile on parole. He was staying at his brother's house, and the stress of having him around plus the associated harassment by the neighbors caused said brother's pregnant wife to miscarry. The brother then catches the pedophile spying on a playground which turns out to be the last straw and kills him.
*** A millionaire [[FrivolousLawsuit serial litigator]]. Murdered by a chef whose life she had completely destroyed and was getting ready to do ''the same'' on his new workplace.
*** A horribly corrupt Deputy Mayor of NYC responsible for embezzling several million dollars out of various charities and refusing to raise policemen's salaries leading to a city-wide strike. Murdered by his 10 year old OCD son after he planned on sending him to a boarding school out of frustration for his condition.
*** A young man who was poisoned by a cheerleader who he had mocked when she was overweight. After suffering a completely undeserved HumiliationConga, the girl managed to lose weight and carry out a GambitRoulette to get her revenge.
*** A woman who trained dogs for underground dog fighting rings.
*** Three men, guilty of various crimes, who brutally beat the girl who had got them arrested -- and wasn't even supposed to have to testify. [[spoiler: They were killed by their attorneys, [[AmoralAttorney who didn't much care if their sleazy clients killed, intimidated, or beat up their (usually) equally sleazy accusers]], but [[EvenEvilHasStandards couldn't stand what the men had done to that girl]].]] When one of the killers points out to Mac that they're likely to get away with it and asks, "Can you really say we shouldn't?", Mac doesn't look too happy -- but doesn't say "no" either.
*** A particularly vicious [[TheBully high school bully]] who had give at least one of his victims permanent physical damage. Murdered by the school guidance counselor, who had previously worked at a school where a copycat murder of UsefulNotes/{{Columbine}} took place and figured it was only a matter of time before someone shot up the school to deal with the bully. She's not particularly treated as a SympatheticMurderer by the narrative, given that she's still a grown woman who shot a teenager essentially on a hunch.
* ''Series/{{Dallas}}'': While he survived, J.R. Ewing.
* ''DesperateHousewives'': Irina, Preston's Russian fiancee. A heartless gold digger she makes the mistake of sneering at the wrong nerdy guy, who it turns out is the local murderer.
* ''Series/{{Dexter}}'':
** The title character retains the audience's sympathy by adhering to a strict code of ethics that includes only killing other killers. Sometimes, there are aversions or complications.
** Dexter takes pity on Jeremy Downs because he was driven to kill to get revenge on a boy who raped him. It was ultimately a mistake.
** In season 3, Dexter does kill two people who are not known to be killers themselves: Oscar Prado, who was not yet a killer, but was trying to kill Freebo, a drug dealer. Also, "Cheerios Guy," a child molester, who made the mistake of triggering Dexter's PapaWolf mode by stalking Astor.
** Season 4 has him mistakenly kill Farrow. Dexter feels guilty about killing someone who wasn't a killer, but the guy was such a scumbag misogynist that he quickly gets over it.
** In Season 5, Dexter kills Stan Liddy for no other reason than to avoid getting caught. However, Liddy was a corrupt former cop and conducting an illegal investigation, so it's easier for the audience to forgive. Also, Liddy had just tasered and abducted him. That was probably a factor.
*** At the beginning of that season there was also the random guy in the boathouse whose only crime shown was being generally an asshole and insulting Rita to Dexter's face while he was still trying to process her death.
* ''Series/DiagnosisMurder'': Subverted in one episode where the victim was a blackmailing, mean-spirited nurse with several personal enemies. Why is it a subversion? The only reason she was actually killed was because she walked in on another murder; the killer was one of the few people who ''didn't'' seem to hate her.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** Jeremy Baines in the episode "Human Nature" is a JerkAss, and the first to be [[GrandTheftMe killed and his body used]] by the Family of Blood.
** Davros' assistant, Nyder. It's hard to feel sorry for him when the Daleks kill him carrying out an order of Davros against their will.
** Zimmerman, the first victim of the [[TimePolice Tesselecta]] in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler Let's Kill Hitler]]", is a [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi]] confirmed to be guilty of what the Tesselecta's crew describe as 'Level 3 Hate Crimes'.
*** Anyone the Tesselecta go after would fall under this trope. Their entire work is centered around catching horrible people who [[KarmaHoudini escaped punishment officially]], capturing them after they fell out of being remembered by history, and torturing them to death to suitably punish them for it.
** Lord Palmerdale in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E1HorrorOfFangRock Horror of Fang Rock]]".
** Solomon in "[[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/DoctorWhoS33E02DinosaursOnASpaceship Dinosaurs on a Spaceship]]". Killing thousands of defenseless aliens just so he could steal their property made the Doctor very upset. Hurting his friends, killing a friendly triceratops, and enslaving one of his friends (and referring to her as "a precious ''thing''") only sent him further across the line.
** SubvertedTrope in "Voyage Of the Damned" with Rickston Slade. During the whole disaster, he's constantly complaining, making fun of the good-natured couple, lower-class couple who won their tickets [[spoiler: (and who both end up dying)]], and always trying to save himself at the expense of the group. Not only does he end up surviving, [[spoiler: he declares at the end that prior to the disaster, he sold all his stock of the ship's company, and bought the stock of rival companies, gloating that he's now extremely rich due to the disaster]]. The Doctor can't do anything but look disgusted.
* ''DowntonAbbey'': There are Pamuk and Vera.
* ''Series/{{Elementary}}'': Happens occasionally. One "suspect-maximizing" example is in the episode "Poison Pen", where the victim's wife's alibi is that at the time of his poisoning she was buying the same poison that the actual murderer, their son, used. Both had the same idea of framing their nanny, since she had killed her own father that way twenty years before.
* ''Series/ElleryQueen'': Every VictimOfTheWeek. This was to maximise the number of suspects by giving everyone a motive to want the victim dead.
* ''Series/{{Emmerdale}}'': When Cain Dingle was beaten up and stabbed, there were no shortage of suspects, seeing how he'd antagonised nearly have the village by that point with his general {{Jerkass}} scumbaggery.
* ''Series/{{ER}}'': Dr. Robert Romano, the brash, insensitive Chief of Staff at County General Hospital, who was killed off in the Season 10 episode "Freefall" after being crushed to death in a helicopter crash on the hospital's landing pad. One person mourned his death afterward.
** Narrowly averted in Season 4, when Dr. Carter has to treat a serial rapist shot in a standoff with police. He deliberately chooses the riskiest treatment possible, secretly hoping [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident he'd die without it looking too suspicious]], but the guy lives anyway.
** Similarly, in the Season 7 finale, Dr. Greene allows a SerialKiller to die on the table.
** And in the Season 13 premiere, Sam [[VigilanteExecution summarily executes]] her abusive ex-boyfriend; given that he'd kidnapped her and their son and raped her before she got free, it's ruled self-defense.
* ''TheFades'': Two of the earliest victims are a pair of young bullies who abused the protagonists. Having 12-year-olds eaten alive by vengeful spirits of the dead is horrible but being jerks did soften it somewhat.
* ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'':
** If the killer/hostage taker is at all sympathetic, it's because the victim was a gigantic asshole.
** One episode deals with a basketball coach who verbally abused his players, even bullying other players to physically attack weaker players.
** Another had an SmugSnake of an abusive husband who was getting away with it thanks to naive friends in the police force. When his wife's sister tried to stop the abuse he tried to kill her and walk away with self defense as an excuse.
** And in other episode was a group of {{jerk jock}}s tormented a classmate, especially since he had a crush on the leader's much nicer girlfriend. They humiliated him in front of her and then recorded the event and posted it up on the Internet. He comes to school with a gun to get them. But not to kill them, just to humiliate them the way they humiliated him.
** In the episode "Acceptable Risk", it toyed with this trope when a widow went after the people who dropped charges on a pharmaceutical company after they were bribed by the company into keeping quiet about the drug's potential dangers, which led to the widow's husband's death. She never really gets to SympatheticMurderer status, as she's shown being extremely calculating and cruel to the people she kills, understanding that she has a limited amount of time before the police stop her, and she crosses the MoralEventHorizon when she tries to kill one of her target's innocent wife who [[GoThroughMe was standing between her and her target.]] She comes across as much more terrifying than sympathetic.
* ''FoylesWar'': In one early episode, the victim was a Nazi sympathizer.
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'':
** In the season 3 finale, [[spoiler: Ary and The Hound]] happen on a group of soldiers in the woods around a campfire who are happily joking about [[spoiler:The Red Wedding. Arya then decides to carve one soldier's throat out, while the Hound finished off the rest]].
** It isn't yet known who the killer was who murdered King Joffrey Baratheon but that's the whole point; ''several'' members of the cast hated him, as did most of the fans; he was a RoyalBrat, a SmugSnake, a DirtyCoward, and the [[{{Jerkass}} most rotten character on the show.]]
* ''Series/GilligansIsland'': This was played with in one episode, where a newspaper article found in a crate that washed ashore suggested that one member of the crew may have been a murderer. The victim could have qualified as an Asshole Victim; he had cheated or conned each one of the castaways except Gilligan and the Skipper, and each one had a plausible motive to kill him. [[spoiler: As it turned out however, his death had actually been an accident.]]
* ''{{Grimm}}'': Has a Spinnetod kill another Wesen who tried to rape her. An earlier episode has a drug dealer who tries to murder an innocent couple get killed by a Blutbad. Another episode has the first victim as an abusive boyfriend who tries to stop his girlfriend from leaving him; justified in this case since the murderer was going after {{jerkass}}es that reminded of his father, after already killing his father.
* ''Series/{{Heroes}}'': It's hard to feel sorry for a girl who pretended to save someone to get attention, a gangster, and the company's leader when they get their heads split open by Sylar.
* ''HomeAndAway'':
** Usually the case with long-running murder mysteries in this show:
** Josh West: an obvious JR Ewing-expy, the town's corrupt mayor, intent on destroying the town by building a freeway right through it. Had also taken bribes from an insane cult leader and was prepared to blackmail Barry over the circumstances of his wife's death.
** Angie Russell: framed a teenager for sexual assault, lied to Rhys that he was the father of her son, destroying his marriage, locked Sally in a room without her OCD medication, and burned down Scott's boat shed.
** Grant Bledcoe: at 14, had raped Charlie and fathered her daughter (who was raised by her parents as her sister). Still a sociopath 16 years later, when he was killed by Charlie's father.
** Sam Tolhurst: Killed a man in his hospital bed to keep him from blackmailing her, then killed herself to frame her husband and his ex-wife for her murder.
*** Johnny Cooper: leader of a gang of violent surfers, who had tried to keep his brother Rocco from going straight, eventually having him murdered after he helped the police catch him. He allowed Rocco's foster brother to be convicted of his murder and terrorised him in prison. After escaping from prison a year later, he tried to kill Sally, who had taken in Rocco and supposedly turned him against his brother. And finally, not only did he blackmail Sam into hiding him, it was implied that he raped her offscreen.
** Mark Edwards: One of the victims of the Summer Bay Stalker, an ex-boyfriend of Josie who she had a one-night stand with behind her boyfriend's back. After she broke it off and got engaged to Jesse, he blackmailed her, first over the affair, then over a self-defense killing she had committed sixteen years earlier. It was also revealed that he had slept with a fifteen-year-old, information that Josie unsuccessfully used to get him to back off.
** Penn [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Tiberius]] Graham: Started by psychologically torturing Alf with a [[DemonicDummy ventriloquist dummy]] then crossed the MoralEventHorizon when he planted a hypodermic needle to make his much younger girlfriend believe she had contracted HIV. Ultimately a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds though, as Alf was indirectly responsible for the deaths of his parents.
** Stu Henderson, Sasha's [[DomesticAbuser abusive boyfriend]], though as we learn more about his home life he becomes something of a JerkassWoobie.
* ''HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'': This show once had them investigate two suicides caused by a particular nasty piece of work, who was going to reveal their extramarital affairs. This wasn't blackmail, as he was going to reveal regardless, and only giving them a few days warning, as his Moral Judgment. The SOB was killed by the photographer who he blackmailed into being his accomplice.
* ''Series/{{House}}'': Gets in on this in season 6 when Chase murders a patient, due to him being a ruthless African dictator, who let slip that the first thing he was going to do when he got back to his country was order a full-out genocide of some ethnic minorities he thought were a threat to his regime. But it's played with: Chase is racked by guilt for quite some time and probably only did what he did in the end because he felt '''directly''' responsible for having saved his life earlier (having shouted a warning when an assassin was spotted). The scene where the assassin explains exactly what happened back home makes you realize that this dictator is waaaaaaaay past Asshole Victim.
* ''Series/JonathanCreek'': A common occurrence in this show.
* ''Franchise/KamenRider'':
** This trope is also used in multiple incarnations of the franchise.
** The enemies in ''Series/KamenRiderFaiz'' are called Orphenochs. They proclaim to be the next step in human evolution and most find it perfectly OK to kill regular humans. Yuka Osada, one of the protagonists, also kills normal humans, but only criminals. She also killed her bitch sister, and her asshole friends.
** In ''Series/KamenRiderKabuto'' a [[MonsterOfTheWeek Worm]] shows up that targets criminals as its prey. So the good guys lure it to them by pretending to be thieves.
** In ''Series/KamenRiderOOO'', the Monsters of the week are called Yummies. They are creatures born from and act out human desire. One of them is born from the desire of a man who wishes to punish criminals. So the monster starts brutally beating them up.
** In ''Series/KamenRiderDouble'', the Virus Dopant [[DemonicPossession possesses]] an SUV and runs down several people. Eventually the heroes learn that it's a young woman who wants revenge on her fiancé for cheating on her, and he temporarily saved his own skin by diverting her wrath to the gang that put her in a coma with a hit-and-run. And then when Double defeats the Dopant, the fiancé cheers "Yeah, that's what you get, you bitch!" The very first thing Shotaro does after de-transforming is slug the smug SOB right across the face after delivering his CatchPhrase[[note]]"Now, let's count up your crimes."[[/note]] in a particularly cold and angry tone of voice.
* ''Series/LawAndOrder'':
** Many episodes. In one episode in particular, in which the killer was acquitted by the jury. Jack [=McCoy's=] philosophical reaction is that this sometimes happens "when your victim is sleazier than your perp." In this case, the victim was a DragonLady who let the killer's underage son run up $50K in sex line charges, and whom it also turns out was running a sex slave ring.
** Another was set up to look like a type 3, since the victim was a neo-Nazi child molester. Turned out that the murderer was a brilliant but unbalanced writer who killed a stranger on impulse. The rest of the episode was about whether he should be executed, turning this into a type 2 (since it would be hard to sympathize if he'd killed a pregnant mother of three).
** Still another had a sleazy paparazzo (who had just {{Karma Houdini}}ed his way out of a Manslaughter charge) was shot to death outside of his favorite eatery. When the patrons realized who'd been shot... [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing they burst into applause.]]
** And another episode had a child molester who was murdered by a neighbor after the child molester was profiled on a show that profiled sex offenders.
** When a notorious drug lord is murdered, Detective Briscoe is less than enthusiastic about finding out who killed the guy. Especially when the prime suspect becomes the father of a boy the victim had led into a life of drugs, and later into death by overdose. But later, a priest comes forward and confesses to killing the drug lord... because God told him to.
* ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'': Played with in one episode: the victim was a registered sex offender (he'd committed statutory rape, but the DA's office had railroaded him and convicted him of flat-out rape), and as the episode continues, Logan gets increasingly angry over the fact that a man has been decapitated and mutilated, but because he was a sex offender, no-one seems to care.
** Played much straighter in another episode. The final victim of the episode [[spoiler: [[BatmanGambit deliberately provoked his daughter]] into [[SelfMadeOrphan killing her mother]], which was achieved in part by getting her to fall in love with and get engaged to his secret boyfriend, all with the intention of getting her money.]] Eames outright says he deserved it. While Goren is distraught by his death, it's only because he's upset by [[SympatheticMurderer what it means for the one who killed him.]]
* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'':
** A recurring feature in this show:
** One episode featured a psychiatrist who took advantage of a newborn boy's apparently extremely botched circumcision to manipulate his parents into having sex changed into a girl so he could run a long term experiment to prove the idiotic idea that "nurture, not nature, determines sexual identity," and is later revealed by the girl/boy's identical twin brother to have had the twins effectively dry hump each other to supposedly "reinforce their gender roles." And when the female psychologist on the detectives' team finally reveals the truth about her/his birth to Lindsay/Lucas, the bastard ''still'' refuses to accept his "theory" is wrong even as she/he is standing there screaming, "I NEVER ONCE FELT RIGHT!" even threatening have the other psychologist's career ended. The twin boys put together a plan where they go to a double feature, and one slips out during the second film and smashes his head in!
*** This was based on a true story ("Brenda" was the "girl" in question), though the therapist wasn't killed in real life.
** In another, a doctor who had been written about in a magazine kills his pregnant lover in her third trimester and fills a syringe with someone else's blood to spoof the detectives' paternity test, but the blood turns out to belong to a child rapist with at least two victims. Before he can find a way out of that, the rapist himself finds and [[AcquittedTooLate kills him]]. Then they have to find ''him''.
** An episode in Season Two entitled "Victims" was made entirely of this trope. Victims include a man who raped an young girl and slashed her face, leaving her for dead. Stabler is outraged at having to work their murders, feeling they had it coming.
** The very first episode had a Serbian war criminal responsible for at least sixty-seven rapes being beaten, stabbed and having his penis severed by two vengeful women.
** In the episode "Signature", they find the latest victim of a serial killer, as well as a dead man right next to her. The episode changes gears quickly when they find out that their male victim is the serial killer.
** In "Angels", the victim is a child molester who had kidnapped two boys from Guatamala and beat them as well as molested them. Elliot even says killing the guy was a public service, but they still go after his killer.
** In the episode "Chameleon", the first act of the episode is devoted to chasing down a serial rapist and killer - who is then slain by a ''different'' serial killer, who ''[[PayEvilUntoEvil specifically targets these types of characters]]'' in order to elicit sympathy from the general public. She almost gets away with it, as it seems the jury is sympathetic, but the fact that she kills to get what she wants [[HoistByHisOwnPetard turns out to be her downfall]]...
** A tween rapist is forcing his victim into getting an abortion (and may have been been close to taking matters into his own hands) when he's killed by a meek boy with a crush on her.
** In the episode "Hate", a young man goes on a killing spree targeting Middle-Easterners who simply want to promote inter-faith unity between Muslims, Jews, and Christians because his father left his mother for an Arab woman. He then later kills a Muslim inmate when in central booking before his trial to make his insanity plea and the theory he is supposedly genetically-wired to hate looks convincing. Finally and thankfully, the bastard is stabbed to death by the Muslim inmate's friends. You just ''know'' not a single damn was given and no tears were shed.
** In another episode, the victim of the week was an AlphaBitch and her friends who are all hated in their school, and pick on a fat girl. The alpha was so nasty that her own friends turned on her. Later, another girl who decided to be the next AlphaBitch placed a skewered pig on the fat girl's locker; unfortunately for her, the fat girl caught and killed her. It's not hard to [[SympatheticMurderer sympathize]] with the fat girl.
** There was one case where the detectives were tracking down a leader of a gang, the guy was crushed to death when he fell into a garbage truck. It was later revealed that he savagely beaten the victim of the week so no sympathy was ever made at all.
** An infuriatingly GenreSavvy AmoralAttorney and child pornographer who had just used his knowledge of the legal system to KarmaHoudini his way out in court a second time. [[VigilanteExecution Murdered by his first victim all grown up]]; when it's discovered he was in progress of raping another girl when he was shot and the woman would thus likely get off on defense of a third party, the detectives are okay with this.
* ''Series/{{Lost}}'':
** Had Anthony Cooper, who ruined the lives of at least two main characters before he was killed by Sawyer.
** Also, rather humorously, the obnoxious and bitchy red shirt Neil 'Frogurt' has a particularly satisfying death after 2 or so episodes of generally being an unhelpful dick.
** You only see him for about ten seconds, but Kate's stepdad Wayne is clearly established as creepy, disgusting, and abusive. Richard's murder of the doctor also qualifies, although it may be more manslaughter.
** Martin Keamy ''definitely'' qualifies. ''Both'' times he's killed.
* ''Series/TheLWord'': Jenny Schecter in the final season. Each [[TheTeaser teaser]] seems to end with yet another person having a reason to hate her.
* ''Series/TheMentalist'': In the season 3 finale and season 4 premiere, Jane ended up killing the man believed to be Red John. It's later revealed that he wasn't actually Red John, but it ultimately didn't matter because the guy who was killed, as well as his wife, were a couple of kidnappers.
* ''Series/{{Merlin}}'': In addition to being a RedShirtArmy, it's really difficult to feel sorry for the Knights when they are in the middle of attacking sorcerers and get killed doing so. Sometimes they're attacking sorcerers that attacked them first, but other times they're attacking [[WouldHurtAChild children]] or [[ActualPacifist Druids]] that have never harmed anyone.
* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'':
** About 75% of the time.
** Including one character, played by [[RetroactiveRecognition Orlando Bloom]], who was sleeping with at least three different women (one of whom was paying him for it) until he got pitchforked through the chest in the first five minutes. He was also a petty thief and a vandal with a serious [[{{Jerkass}} attitude problem]].
* ''Series/{{Monk}}'':
** One episode has the title character investigate the deaths of a bunch of violent mobsters. It turns out that they died because they pulled guns on another criminal, making it difficult to determine to what extent their deaths count as acts of self-defense. The killer tries to excuse himself by pointing out that his victims were assholes.
** Also, in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Red Headed Stranger", Sonny Cross, the murder victim, was a person who embezzled a lot of money (embezzling $400,000 from Willie Nelson, and it is implied that this is not the first time he has done so later on in the episode), and he also did time for drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter. In regards to the latter incident, he [[KarmaHoudini also received a very lenient punishment]], spending only 18 months in prison. Also, the murderer was a blind woman (well, half-blind, she regained the sight of one of her eyes from slipping on the floor at a Supermarket) who was the sole survivor of her family, the family who was killed by Cross's drunk driving, and it was because of his manslaughter that she was even blind in the first place.
*** The majority of the bad guys in Monk, when finally exposed, turn out to be this, and you're generally cheering when they're carted off to jail.
* Generally avoided in ''Series/{{Motive}}'' which tends more to the revelation that the victim is nicer person than their first impression. But in the Motive web series, where the victim was a rookie cop partnered with the boss ten years ago when he was still a street cop, the revelation is how horrible the likable young man was and how hard he'd worked to drive the killer to kill him, ruining the lives of anyone she dated if she didn't break it off.
* ''Series/MurderSheWrote'': Almost to the level of OnceAnEpisode. However, there are actually some exceptions scattered throughout the show's long run of some perfectly nice people getting killed, but one in particular stands out as a very deliberate subversion of this trope. It centers around this SmugSnake CorruptCorporateExecutive where everything about him just seems to ''scream'' Asshole Victim... until you get to the halfway point and the murder victim is the exec's much nicer brother.
* ''Series/{{NCIS}}'':
** Many episodes of this show contain these certainly, however the episode "Smoked" has an interesting twist. Because of evidence found during the autopsy, the entire team, and the viewer, believes their victim is a serial killer who murdered dozens of women who look like his wife. Gibbs and Fornell believe the wife to have found out and killed the husband, and they are sympathetic during the interview. Then, in the last five minutes, due to some more forensic magic, it is determined that the husband was completely innocent and SHE is the serial killer.
** Not entirely innocent - The victims all had a toe removed because the killer was missing it. [[{{Squick}} The husband had a toe in his stomach at the time of death]].
** I think the inference may have been that the wife - the real serial killer - fed the toe to her husband.
** ''NCIS'' also did this in the backstory with Gibbs' murder of Pedro Hernandez (in cold blood and premeditated), who had murdered Gibbs' wife and daughter earlier. At first this is only sporadically brought up in flashbacks (particularly during the ''Hiatus'' arc while Gibbs recovers from trauma and memory loss). It later comes back to haunt him in the "Rule 51" arc concluding season 7, where the idea of vengeance is also heavily deconstructed.
** Another example is the episode "Caged", where a guard in a women's prison gets stabbed to death, and the team must find out who killed the guard. The guard is blackmailing an inmate's high school daughter for sex. It's implied that said inmate (who had less than one year left on her sentence, and wants to be a mother to her kids) stabbed the guard, but another inmate (on a 175 year sentence), who [=McGee=] was sent to get a confession from, confesses to the murder. The team agrees that they won't lose any sleep over that.
** Two men are killed in very gruesome ways, by Ducky's girlfriend to attract his attention. She points out that they were unpleasant adulterers and deserved to die. Then this is Subverted as Ducky proceeds to point out that they didn't deserve to die any more than she deserves to be their judge jury and executioner
** Even the birth of NCIS came about with one of these. The two-parter ''Series/{{JAG}}'' episode "Ice Queen"/"Meltdown" that served as the NCIS pilot introduced Gibbs and [=DiNozzo=] investigating the death of Lt. Singer and her five month fetus, the token 'Evil Witch' on ''JAG''.
* ''Series/TheOnedinLine'': Has a storyline in series one with a discussion of a disputed death of a shipmate, covered up by the original captain but which probably was murder, four years prior to the events of the series. When Annie calls it a brutal murder, James claims he was a brutal man - so that's all right then.... However, James was looking at it from a sailor's point of view. He knew how much power a tyrannical captain had, and that having one could be a FateWorseThanDeath.
* ''Series/{{Oz}}'': Everyone qualifies for this, since they're in a maximum security prison. Especially nasty pieces of work were William Cudney, who killed the son of the doctor that gave His wife an abortion, and Malcoln Coyle, who killed a family including an infant for fun. Even inmates who committed murder were appalled by Their crimes.
* ''Franchise/PerryMason'': Most, but not all, of this show's episodes.
* By virtue of the premise of ''Series/PersonOfInterest'', some of the people the machine identifies as potential victims are less than sympathetic, meaning Finch and Reese are tasked with averting this trope. Played straight in the case of [[spoiler:Wayne Kruger]], who they failed to save.
** The show's serial villains have a habit of killing each other.
* ''Series/{{Primeval}}'':
** Several victims qualify as this.
** The journalists from season three who get a bunch of people (and themselves) eaten by a Giganotosaurus just to get a story.
** Christine Johnson, the person who took over the ARC, tried to arrest the entire main cast, and had [[BenevolentBoss Lester]] forced out of the ARC, who is pushed into a Future Predator-full anomaly by Helen Cutter.
** Henry Merchant from 5x03, who tries to get Emily institutionalized just for the sake of his reputation, and then shoots her, and then threatens to shoot Matt if she doesn't come back with him to the 1860s where she'd probably hang for murders that she didn't commit.
* ''Series/PrisonBreak'': When Agent Blondie and Wyatt are both killed by Mahone. Blondie hit Mahone's son with a car (along with killing Veronica Donovan and Frank Tancredi, and attempting to kill Sara Tancredi), and Wyatt killed Mahone's son (along with James Whistler, Bruce Bennett, and Roland Glenn).
* ''Series/{{Raines}}'': A very real concern for the title character; as he hallucinates the victims, cases tend to be more strenuous for him if he doesn't like the person who died.
* ''Series/{{Reaper}}'': Sam has to save his old SadistTeacher from an escaped soul wanting to kill him in revenge, and it would have been better had they just let him get killed first. Fortunately he got his comeuppance in the end.
* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': Drexel in "[[Recap/RevolutionS1E6SexAndDrugs Sex and Drugs]]". He is a sociopathic, politically incorrect, Ax Crazy drug lord. He put Charlie Matheson up to the task of killing his neighbour and Irish Cop Bill O'Halloran in exchange for Nora Clayton's life being saved. Once Charlie leaves, Drexel reveals that he lied and that Charlie would be killed once she killed off Bill. He did this to get back at Miles Matheson for having the bad manners to betray Sebastian Monroe and cause Drexel to be labelled with guilt by association. When Miles ran off to save Charlie from making a big mistake, Drexel retaliates by trying to force Aaron Pittman and Nora to shoot each other in a duel. Aaron responds by apparently shooting himself in the chest, but he is playing possum and successfully shoots and kills Drexel dead. Drexel's henchmen didn't really care about their boss's death at all, and nobody shed any tears over Drexel's death either.
* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'': Lionel Luthor. When he ''did'' die, this became an AvertedTrope.
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': There are plenty of these, and when someone has to die to show the MonsterOfTheWeek means business, it's often an Asshole Victim. In fact, in "Tall Tales", the MonsterOfTheWeek is less feral and more sophisticated than the usual fare, and makes it a point to target these sort of people.
* ''TalesFromTheCrypt'': Like its namesake comics, this show featured tons of these. Plenty of undeserving victims too, to be sure, but the vast majority of characters who meet their gory end have it coming -- ''especially'' if they're [[VillainProtagonist the protagonist]].
* ''Series/{{Teen Wolf}}'' had this with the victims of the kanima. The first victim was Isaac's father, shown to be physically and emotionally abusive to the point where he would lock his son in a freezer and nearly blinded him. The mechanic was shown being a jerk and ripping Stiles off for car repairs shortly before his own death. The later victims aren't necessarily shown to be jerks on-screen, but it's clear that they've been serious jerks in the past.
* ''To Catch The Uncatchable'':
** In this Hong Kong comedy detective show, a majority of the victims are often JerkAss and should [[PayEvilUntoEvil had it coming to them]]. The female protagonist's previous boss had several affairs and tried to rape the protagonist as well. Turns out his jilted lover was the one to kill him. Another man was a cult leader who put drugs into his believers' drinks so they would follow his orders and would later force the drugs down a believer's throat for disobeying him and also going out with his son. His wife tried to stop him from killing the girl and accidentally pushed him too hard, causing him to fall off the building. There was a woman who was a model who chased after men, then dumped them after she had exploited them for all they are worth. She was pushed off the stairs by a fan of hers, after she insulted him for being worthless.
** There's the episode with the little girl who HasTwoMommies and went to catholic school, who had a bully who relentlessly harassed her, who was practically encouraged by his parents and the school itself. The girl stabbed him in the spine with scissors and paralyzed him after he assaulted her and cut off a lock of her hair... remind me why the kid wasn't dealt with in court.
* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'': Mark Goodson from the episode "Small Worlds". We don't particularly mind that he's stalked and murdered, because the first time we see him he's trying to kidnap and rape a little girl.
* ''TwinPeaks'': This show is full of these but a special mention goes to MIKE and BOB. The two were a pair of serial killers but MIKE had a change of heart, repented and shot BOB dead. It didn't take.
* ''TwoAndAHalfMen'': At the beginning of season nine, it is implied that Charlie may have been shoved in front of a train by a girlfriend who caught him cheating. His funeral is full of women talking about the [=STD=]s they got from him and a man who wants to collect $30,000 in what are implied to be drug-related debts.
* ''TheUnusuals'': In the pilot, the late Detective Kowalski is revealed to have been a CorruptCop, an adulterer, a blackmailer and an all-around JerkAss for the purpose of making [[EveryoneIsASuspect everyone a suspect]]. However, his widow is shown to love him and genuinely mourn him.
* ''TheVampireDiaries'':
** Mr. Tanner. Despite being universally disliked when Damon killed him it actually did make Stefan call him irredeemable, mostly because he still murdered the first guy he saw just to prove a point.
** Definitely [[AbusiveParents Giuseppe Salvatore]]. While he seemed to genuinely love Steffan and Damon, he showed a chilling willingness to shoot his own sons the moment he saw that they were trying to help Katherine escape. Even worse, when he catches the newly turned Steffan sneaking into the house, he reveals in a completely unrepentant manner that he is the one who fired the shots that killed them, because they disgraced the family. Steffan killing him and drinking his blood to complete the transformation into a vampire is an excellent example of PoeticJustice.
** Stefan deliberately creates one in Season 4. He turns a confessed murderer so Jeremy can kill him to grow his hunter's mark.
* ''VeronicaMars'': The first season is spent by the titular character trying to find out who killed her best friend, Lilly Kane. Lilly isn't exactly an example of this trope, though over the course of the season it is discovered that she wasn't the nicest person either. She was, in fact, proven to have been cheating on her boyfriend with her boyfriend's ''father''. The real embodiment of this trope is her killer, said boyfriend's father with whom she had a lengthy affair, Aaron Echolls. He is caught and imprisoned at the end of season one, and his trial takes place at the end of season two. He has false evidence planted to muddy up the investigation, throwing suspicion on Lilly's brother, and ending with him being acquitted. Consequently, no one sheds a tear or opens up much of an investigation when Duncan Kane has Aaron Echolls murdered in his hotel room following the trial.
** A non-fatal variation: in season 2, Veronica is hired by Chip Diller, a Neptune College student, to prove he is not a serial rapist. It turns out that while he is a misogynist, he is not a rapist. The rapes continue into the following year (Veronica's freshman year at the same college), and Chip is anally violated with an Easter egg in retaliation for a rape that turns out to have been a fabrication.
* ''Whodunnit!'': Most victims. In the most extreme case, every suspect tried to claim credit for killing the victim (a South American dictator) and the mystery was to work out who was telling the truth rather than who was lying.
