In "Pilot", Brad Rossi spray paints Shawn's car with "freak" shortly after he returns home and starts harassing him at school as soon as he sees him because he blames Shawn for getting him arrested in 2001. Shawn sold him tickets to a Foo Fighters concert which turned out to be stolen. The police searched him and found five ecstasy tablets on him. Several days later, Shawn and Brad get into a fight outside of school and Shawn accidentally uses his powers to drain Brad's Life Energy. He eventually lets Brad go when he realizes what's happening.
In "Becoming", Philip Lopez is a recently paroled serial rapist who commits suicide after Oliver Knox uses his Compelling Voice on him.
In "The New World", the Nova Group kill the six men who conspired with Dennis Ryland to create the promicin inhibitor which ended up killing 28 members of the 4400. Their two attempts to kill Ryland are less successful.
13 Reasons Why: Of all things, deconstructed with Bryce Walker. Out-of-universe it’s mixed. Despite the fact he’s a serial rapist, still does some villainous things in seasons 3 (crippling Zach Dempsey, vandalizing two different houses, threatening a little boy and selling Alex drugs) and never fully redeems himself, Bryce feels genuine remorse for his actions in season 3 and tries to atone for them. He starts to genuinely bond with his mother and Ani, helps Justin settle his debt with Seth and his drug addiction, goes out of his way to protect Tyler from Monty, makes an apology tape confessing to his crimes, and his death is played for tragedy due to just how horrible it is. That being said, thanks to the horrible things he did do, how much the audience was willing to forgive him is extremely mixed. In-Universe, however, he is almost universally mourned by everyone who all admit he didn’t deserve to die. Even the people who he was on negative terms with when he died (Monty, his father, grandfather, Zach) all show remorse for him, and Casey interrupting the funeral to remind everyone he was a serial rapist is seen as incredibly disrespectful (though her points are completely valid).
Played straight with Montgomery De La Cruz. Unlike Bryce, Monty never shows any remorse for any of his crimes (from letting Bryce rape Hannah with no remorse to trying to tempt Alex into shooting himself out of failure to stop Hannah’s rape and suicide) even after being arrested. The only people shown actually mourning him were the people extremely close to him (Winston, the football team, and his sister, with Ani and Alex being the only other people to show remorse for him). He goes to jail for raping Tyler with a mop pole after Tyler finally confesses and is killed by other prisoners because of his rape of Tyler.
1000 Ways to Die: 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.
In "Laura's Story" Joanna is a conspiracy monger and huge jerkass who's claimed murdered children never even existed, with their grieving families being paid liars. As a result of her incitement, her followers harass and dox Laura's family after she attempts to oppose this. She's murdered by Laura's son for this.
In "Esme's Story" Esme kills Shaggy and Ancel, both Neo-Nazi terrorists who'd previously committed murder.
In "Samir's Story", Alice's boyfriend Josh is secretly married and using Alice as a mistress, until Samir blackmails him into ending it. When Josh comes back anyway and Alice declares her desire to not see either of them anymore, Josh subjects Samir to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, beating him within an inch of his life and forcing him to crawl back to his car. When Alice refuses to let him back in, he tries to goad Samir out of his car as an excuse to continue the beatdown, even taunting him using toxic masculinity. Samir kills him out of rage instead.
Bakshi goes through a lot of hell throughout the second season, up to and including getting brainwashed by Ward and Agent 33 and ultimately being popped off by Simmons when she attempts a sneak attack on Ward, 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.
Ward himself can be one. It's very hard for some fans to feel sorry for him after everything he's done to Coulson's team.
Senator Ellen Nadeer gets killed by one of the watchdogs who turns into an Inhuman.
In the Alien Nation television series, most of the Kleezantsun (Overseers) who survived the Gruza crash-landing on Earth and who meet with unfortunate ends often engender little sympathy from their former slaves, humans, and even other more remorseful Kleezantsun who regret what they did to their fellow Tectonese.
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.note It turned out to be his wife's uncle's rapist, Janet Green. Who was delusional and thought she was going to live happily with Trevor (the uncle, who she'd practiced rape by deception on) and their child, but only if Trevor was happy. Trevor was unhappy with his niece's marriage, so Janet killed Will to end it. SOAP OPERAS EVERYONE.
Later, in 2004, after Michael Cambias raped Bianca, he earned the hatred of everyone in Pine Valley, especially after he gets Off on a Technicality because Bianca destroyed the physical evidence. After he shows up dead shortly after, all of Bianca's loved ones and friends attend his funeral 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's 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.
Chief Inspector Hyne doesn't have a high opinion of one of the cops that Cassian kills in "Kassa", even expressing surprise that he wasn't murdered sooner. This no doubt influences his decision to cover up the incident, which Karn unfortunately takes issue with.
In "Reckoning", the Pre-Mor goon who dies after trying to pilot the sabotaged transport pod happens to be the same trigger-happy corporate cop that killed Timm. He's also the only confirmed fatality, given that Blevin suggests several of the men who went down actually survived the incident.
In "The Eye", Skeen turns out to have been a common thug with no actual loyalty to Vel, and made up his entire story about his brother's orchard. He proposes to Cassian that they split the credits they stole from the heist on Aldhani and go their separate ways - to which he gets shot dead in response.
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?"
"Reunion" shows the lawyers of Wolfram & Hart, who willingly serve evil, and who are at least partially responsible for most of the crimes and murders that Angel gets involved with. Later, the two vampires Darla and Drusilla decide to kill a whole group of them. When Angel sees them, he doesn't help them but leaves them to the two vampires.
"That Old Gang of Mine" has the fanatical demon hunter Gio. He leads a group of demon hunters who kill both good and evil demons. It's even implied that he is responsible for the death of a young girl. Eventually, the demon hunters even attack a bar where magic ensures that demons can't fight there, killing several completely defenseless demons. When the spell is released, one of the demons finally kills Gio.
Annika (2021): Ronnie Kidd, the victim in episode 1.2, was dating a 15-year-old girl who was one of his students at the high school.
Arrested Development: Played with. The narrator gives a Tonight, Someone Dies monologue, and the scene immediately cuts to an old woman 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.
The paranoid survivalists that Ash and company encounter in "Fire in the Hole" aren't treated totally unsympathetically even though they try to kill them out of fear that they're government agents. The protagonists manage to clear up the misunderstanding without directly killing any of them. However, the pair who get the most brutal and protracted deaths of the group were set up to be the least sympathetic, one threatening to rape Kelly and the other being a former convict who turned the group against the heroes when he recognized Amanda.
The teenagers who steal Ash's Delta in "The Morgue" are killed by it after it's possessed by the Necronomicon in the following episode. Also qualifies as a Karmic Death.
In "Judgment Day," Ruby is killed by the Dark Ones. Considering all the shit she's pulled, like trying to turn Brandy against Ash and killing Professor Knowby, she's unlikely to be missed. Ash certainly has No Sympathy to spare for her.
In "Acts of Sacrifice", the Narns on Babylon 5 lynch a Centauri who earlier started a Bar Brawl with them. Everyone's worried that it's going to start race riots and 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 troublemaker anyway and requests that the killer's punishment be banishment from Babylon 5 and that his belongings be donated to the Centauri war fund.
"And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place": Being surrounded by an entire gang of Narns and 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 Vorlonsnote who hardly ever even pretend to care about the affairs of the younger races condemned it.
"Into the Fire": Every Babylon 5 viewer would've waved with Vir Cotto at the site of Morden's head on a pike. This was in fulfilment of Vir's response to Morden's question of "what do you want" way back in "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum".
Applies to the entire Centauri race in "The Fall of Centauri Prime" considering their actions during the Narn-Centauri War, among others. Earlier in the show, this was the attitude of everyone towards the Narn when the Centauri started beating them in their war since they spent a lot of season one provoking the Centauri. But, that apathy quickly faded as we see more and more of the Narn suffering, especially with G'kar in the forefront of that suffering.
Earth Alliance President Morgan Clark worked with the Shadows to have President Santiago murdered while Clark was Santiago's Vice President so Clark could become President. Clark then turned the Alliance into a facist dictatorship and ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. When it becomes clear in the episode "Endgame" that his government was about to fall Clark decides not to hang around to face the consequences of his actions, but not before programming the defense grid to fire on Earth in the hopes of wiping out all life, which is stopped by Sheridan's fleet. Few on Earth are sorry to see Clark go, and soon after his death someone put the sign "Traitor to Earth" on his body.
One example was Sanchez's manager, who dismissed the women Sanchez raped as "skanks" who only cared about getting paid off. When he refused to give Proctor back his money, Clay Burton did something to him that (judging by the screams) was horrendous.
Wicks, Lucas' old jail "buddy," fits this trope. While he did help Lucas in jail, he blatantly admitted that he was doing it as "investing" in Lucas for his own protection. Once he found out that he was sheriff, he began exploiting his kindness. After blowing Lucas' money on drugs and gambling, he threatened to expose his secrets unless he was given a job. Lucas chose instead to kill him.
Hondo - the neo-Nazi who shot Emmett and his wife. Gets some extrajudicial justice in the opening scene of the first episode in Season 3.
All the US Marines on the Stowe's base are replaced by the mask-wearingmercenaries in the Season 3 finale and therefore it's fair game to shoot them for the heroes.
Antonio Mérida, the man Julia kills in the first episode, brought a minor into a brothel with the intent to rape her, drugged her, and responded to Julia trying to peacefully leave with her by attempting to strangle her. This makes it very hard to feel sorry for the man.
Emilia's two kills over the course of the series, a government informer and the President aren't the most sympathetic people, either.
Alejo has enough moments of being a jerk to some of the protagonists to keep his death from being a too much of a tragedy.
Battlestar Galactica (1978): In "Murder on the Rising Star," the victim's wingman is asked if there was anyone who might want to kill him. The answer is "Anyone who ever met him."
Better Call Saul: "Five-O" has Sergeant Fenske and Officer Hoffman, the two Dirty Cops who murdered Mike Ehrmantraut's son Matt for taking too long to decide whether or not to take a bribe. Mike tricks them into trying to kill him and kills them both before heading to Alberquerque.
Black Mirror: This is a show fond of deconstructing this, particularly its episodes "Shut Up and Dance" and "White Bear", which became known for it, in which after gruesome actions being taken, the protagonists that have gone through hell are revealed to be a pedophile and a child murderer, respectively raises the question: are the people causing this any better than the ones they punish? Aren't they just as bad or even worse? Do the victim's awful actions really justify letting other people do whatever they want to them?
Averted by Cooper in Black Mirror: Playtest. Unlike most Black Mirror protagonists, Cooper is not this trope at all; he's a harmless, goofy American flâneur traveling the world to get away from a troubled home life. He's subjected to truly horrific psychological torture he doesn't deserve in the least, and he dies in the end, crying out for his mother while literally living out his worst personal nightmare.
Rolo Haynes is very similar in that he regularly trick people into becoming his guinea pigs for dangerous experimentations and some of which he trapped their minds in a permanent And I Must Scream state. He even went so far as to make sentient copies of an innocent convict's conscience and set them in a literal endless state of electrocution. Then the protagonist tricks him into the very same fate.
Bluestone 42's pilot episode had Colonel Randall Carter, a Type 2 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.
Serial killer Heather Taffet, the Gravedigger. Between killing two boys and at least one other person, kidnapping Brennan and Hodgins, and later Booth, no one was sad when she was shot by sniper Jacob Broadsky.
The guy who was found in pieces in a bowling alley pinsetter. Everyone in the league hated him.
Boston Legal: 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.
Breaking Bad: 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 (who was earlier seen verbally harassing a bank teller). Most of his victims tend to be people involved in the criminal underworld, at first.
During Season Six, Warren Mears crosses a Moral Event Horizon 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 insane with grief, tracks Warren down, tortures him, and finally skins him alive. After everything Warren's done, even the Scoobies agree that he got what was coming to him; Buffy's the only one preaching Thou Shalt Not Kill, and only because she didn't want Willow to become a murderer.
After three seasons of being a dick to Buffy and actively trying to have her expelled, not one crap was given by any of the characters when Principal Snyder was eaten by the newly-Ascended Mayor Wilkins.
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.
This seems to be how Vengeance Demons justify their own actions since they grant the wishes of people who have already been wronged by others. However, they are also Jackass Genies who aren't terribly concerned about how they might harm the wisher (or innocent bystanders), and they aren't all that picky about how deserving their victims are either.
Very much averted in "Selfless" when demon Anya slaughters a house-full of frat guys. The guys had one of their number dump his girlfriend in front of them so they could laugh at her, so they definitely qualified as Asshole Victims and in the audio commentary, the episode's writer admitted he didn't feel even slightly bad about their deaths. In-universe, however, the girl who made the wish was traumatized and both Buffy and Anya herself regarded it as Anya's Moral Event Horizon.
The Burning Bed : No one will miss Mickey, except maybe his mom. Even his own kids hate him.
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.
"Target" has Castle asking for a minute alone with one of the men who helped kidnap his daughter. *cue Scream Discretion Shot*
The victim of "Heros and Villains" was not only an attempted rapist, but such a general scumbag that after seeing his bisected corpse, his own mother reacts with mild indifference.
Clannote Known as The Out-Laws in the United Kingdom and Australia, a Belgian Black Comedy series, is based around four sisters who conspire to murder their fifth sister's Domestic Abuser of a husband, Jean-Claude, also known as "De Kloot" (The Cunt). The show opens with his funeral, showing that he has been killed for his crimes. The sisters fail, but because he was such a massive cunt there's no shortage of suspects.
Charité at War: Nurse Christel gets on one occasion nearly strangled by her colleague Martin, and at the end of the series, she's shot by a Soviet soldier when Berlin falls. She's a hardcore Nazi and a spy for the regime who sold out a resistance fighter to the authorities and ratted on Martin at the department for the persecution of homosexuals, and one of the last things she did before her death was lead a group of indoctrinated Hitler Youths (aged 13-15 years) into a suicidal battle.
Charmed has the half-demon Cole Turner. One evening he sits comfortably in a bar to drink. But then two robbers storm the bar and shoot wildly. The shots hit Cole and probably would have killed him if he had been a human. Also, the other people there could have been injured or killed. When Cole kills the two robbers, Phoebe is the only one who is angry. Even her sisters can't understand her anger.
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.
Chuck: Emmett Milbarge is the major Jerkass of the show. Yet, in the episode "Chuck Versus the Pink Slip" he manages to crank his own jerkassness up a notch, 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.
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.
Cold Case 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 Cold Case. 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, it's both or neither.
In "The Plan", an investigation into a murdered military academy swim coach reveals that he was a pedophile who had been molesting his students, and uses his position to get away with it.
It's especially true in the episode "Blackout", in which everyone in the Closed Circle scene hated the victim.
And in "Greed", in which the victim was running a Ponzi scheme, ripped off a fellow stockbroker's mother and then dumped him after he found out, to top off the trifecta of dickery.
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.
The primary victim in "A Perfect Day" is about as anti-Asshole Victim as they come, but it's eventually revealed that her killer was murdered shortly thereafter by his battered wife's lover. Not a single tear is shed over that death, and the detectives make it very clear they won't be pursuing the matter.
"Maternal Instincts" plays with this: the victim, who browbeat her Henpecked Husband into stealing a baby for her, is deserving of this status, but when the now-teenaged boy's parents learn of who killed her, they express that they want her killer to go free. Unfortunately, said killer is just as nasty as she is, being a manipulative and arrogant doctor who killed her in front of the boy as a child after she refused to continue hooking up with him, knew his circumstances and still left him with his "mother's" corpse instead of returning him to his family, and sat on the information for fifteen years.
"Bombers" doesn't include this until the very end. Whereas the primary victim of the episode, a teenage boy who's a brilliant street artist murdered by a rival street artist/gang member, is as innocent as they come, the other murder "victim", Arc Villain Moe Kitchener, who had covered up the murder of a teenage cadet as his junior academy for four years, expressed no remorse for her or her family, and continued to taunt Lilly after nearly killing her, is executed by the cadet's grief-stricken fatherat the very end of the episode. Whereas he confesses to the detective and is arrested, absolutely no shits were given about his death.
Columbo: Many of the murders Columbo investigates involve this sort of victim, from philanderers and homewreckers to thieves to blackmailers to abusive spouses or family members. A murder needs to have a motive, after all. If there's a second victim, a downplayed version of this trope may take effect, as the second victim is sometimes an originally innocent bystander who has caught on to what happened and attempted to blackmail the murderer.
The Company You Keep: The Nicoletti family run a long con to rob a very wealthy, corrupt pastor who launders money for powerful people in the pilot.
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 "Reason You Suck" Speech.) 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.
The Confessions of Frannie Langton: George Benham, a slave owner along with an overall cruel, venal man, at last was killed by Frannie in a rage.
Control Z: When the hacker exposes Natalia as a thief, as she had previously stolen the money collected for the NONA party to buy expensive bags for herself, all of her classmates turn on and vilify her for her controversial actions, demanding that she give the money back. Quintanilla, the principal, even removes her as president of the student committee and is replaced with her nemesis Rosita, who takes pleasure in mocking her. As everyone starts ignoring Natalia at Raúl's party, she goes into a melodramatic fury after realizing that she posted on her profile a dare in which anyone seen speaking to Natalia will be banned from attending NONA, just before her sister María delivers a blunt "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her, reminding Natalia that she as well is having a hard time through her situation. Raúl, post-hacker reveal, lampshaded this to Sofía, remarking that Natalia "isn't the nice person she seemed to be".
Conviction (2016): Rodney Landon is an Islamophobic terrorist so extreme he thinks all Muslims should be wiped out. He was framed for bombing a mosque while having planned to kill far more.
Coronation Street: Given that he inflicted Domestic Abuse towards his girlfriend Rita Fairclough to the point of attempting to kill her after she exposed him as a fraud who'd obtained his money by borrowing against her house without her knowledge and attempted to rape Dawn Prescott, Alan Bradley has it coming when he gets fatally hit by a tram when he chases Rita after finding her at Blackpool, where she fled to her friend Bet's hotel to get away from him.
Creepshow: In "Public Television Of The Dead" Bookberry is a racist jerkass who blackmails Claudia into getting a better time slot at the cost of Norm's show. Later she's mauled by a Deadite, becomes one, and Claudia ultimately beheads her. No one misses her after she's gone, easily chalking it all up to a publicity stunt (while presumably nobody cares that she then vanishes).
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 the 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 mentions 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 Sympathetic Murderer, though, as his killer was a serial hate-murderer who only killed Morales to cover up his own crimes.
The victim in "Ransom of Associate Professor" is revealed to have been a colossal jerk to his wife before his death, saying that he wasted his entire life by marrying her. It's not too much of a surprise that she struck him over the head for it, accidentally killing him.
It turns out that Akemi's uncle, who went up in flames alongside the family home, was a huge asshole towards her and her other uncle for needing to stay with the main family (even though Akemi was a teen staying with them because her parents died). Akemi is disturbed by herself because she doesn't feel sympathy for his death, and even feels like she should thank the killer.
Crossing Jordan: 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 and killed by an ambulance.
Crossing Lines: In the series finale, leaders of an anti-immigrant, antisemitic, anti-EU, antizigan and racist far-right Romanian group are killed. The team makes no secret about their disgust for what they advocate even while trying to find the killer.
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.
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.
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.
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 woman who trained dogs for underground dog fighting rings, and who had become a Villain with Good Publicity by having built a reputation as a big-time animal philanthropist (who focused on saving animals trained for underground fighting rings). The man who killed her? An FBI informant who was fed up with the Bureau having its hands tied even after he had given them truckloads of evidence.
A particularly vicious high school bully who had given 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 Columbine took place and figured it was only a matter of time before someone shot up the school to deal with the bully.
On one episode a contestant on a cooking show is found killed and cooked, and then later another one is found poisoned. Turns out the female producer of the show offed them both because she discovered that they were the ones who raped and murdered her sister years before, and had lied about the truth to her face while pretending to comfort her.
One notable case was the second victim from the episode "Take My Life, Please!", who turns out to have been a fugitive who bombed an abortion clinic and went off the grid to avoid being caught. One suspect, who lost his entire family in the bombing, actually jumps up and celebrates in the interrogation room when he's told about the guy's death. As it turns out, the bomber snuck onto a gun range at night to sleep in a seemingly abandoned car which was used as a target, with him being riddled by more than a hundred bullets.
A millionaire serial litigator was murdered by a chef whose life she had completely destroyed as she 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 was nurdered by his 10-year-old OCD son after he planned on sending him to a boarding school out of frustration for the boy's condition.
A young man who was poisoned by a cheerleader who he had mocked when she was overweight. After suffering through some completely undeserved humiliation, the girl managed to lose weight and carry out a Gambit Roulette to get her revenge.
Daredevil (2015): One of the first things Matt Murdock did when he decided to take fighting crime in Hell's Kitchen into his own hands was to eavesdrop on a longshoreman who had a habit of getting drunk and sexually assaulting his young daughter. He proceeded to beat the guy's face to a bloody pulp.
Matt Murdock: (to Foggy) He spent the next six months in the hospital...eating through a straw. And I never slept better.
Jayden Hoyles from Daybreak (2019) is a typical Barbaric Bully. He is so nasty that even the other jocks don't like him. He is so stupid that he repeats the class for the third time (which makes him about twenty years old, among students aged fifteen to eighteen). He brutally beat other classmates, including the protagonist, for no reasons. He is very pompous and blackmailes the school principal with his parents' bribe. To do this, he repeatedly urges a young girl to have sex (it is only one step below a rape). Finally, he even kills Eli, who has just returned to the good side (admittedly, he confused him with the Big Bad). Eventually Jayden is mauled and raped to death by a giant mutant pug.
Desperate Housewives: Irina, Preston's Russian fiancee. A heartless gold digger, she makes the mistake of insulting the wrong nerdy guy, who it turns out is the local murderer.
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 frames Paul Bennett, Rita's ex-husband, for illegal drug use while on parole. Paul was a domestic abuser that raped and beat Rita and was trying to wedge his way back into her life, so he didn't gain much sympathy from anyone when he protested his innocence in prison.
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 aren't known to be killers themselves: Oscar Prado, who wasn't 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 Papa Wolf 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.
The Dinosaurs episode "Getting to Know You" has foreign exchange student Francois Poupon. He was so irritatingly rude and condescending to the Sinclairs that he was really asking for it when Baby ate him alive.
"Genesis of the Daleks": 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.
"The Caves of Androzani": Morgus is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who long ago betrayed his business partner Sharez Jek, hoping to kill him in a boiling mud explosion so he could take control of the valuable Spectrox trade. Morgus secretly supplies Jek with guns to keep a war going so he can keep the price of Spectrox high. He also blows up one of his factories with massive loss of life to keep copper scarce and ships workers he left unemployed to his factories on the other side of the planet to work basically as his slaves. After all this having Jek finally kill him leaves no-one sorry.
"Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways": Rodrick is a Jerkass who attempts to get Rose disintegrated on a killer game show so he can win, which he was extremely unpleasant about despite it being an act of Pragmatic Villainy (as all losers are disintegrated). When he and everyone else stranded on Floor 0 is told there's an alien attack imminent, his reaction is to not take it seriously and demand to know where his prize money is. He is killed when the Daleks invade the Game Station, all the while screaming that he should be a "winner".
"The Runaway Bride": Lance Bennett spent months manipulating Donna and planned to hand her over to a carnivorous alien. He ends up suffering the very fate he had planned for Donna, after delivering a very cruel speech about how he thinks Donna is stupid and irritating, which even the alien he's working with thinks is too much. After everything's over Donna says "he deserved it", then immediately retracts it.
"The Shakespeare Code": Lynley, the Master of the Revels, is a self-important, condescending, bullying jerk who tells Shakespeare that he will make sure that Love's Labour's Won will never be performed if it's the last thing he does, just because Shakespeare won't have the script ready until the following day, and plans to sexually exploit Lilith. He is murdered by the Carrionites by drowning his voodoo doll in order for the play to go ahead.
"The Family of Blood" subverts the trope: Headmaster Rocastle is certainly a jerkass, but he spends his last moments trying to escort what he thinks is a lost little girl off of a battlefield.
"The Sound of Drums": President Winters starts off by berating the Master (and the UK) for not following UN protocols for First Contact, only to hypocritically order his aides to make sure the whole thing is branded with his Presidential seal. The Master orders his disintegration by the Toclafane before he activates the Paradox Machine, so when the Reset Button is pushed in "Last of the Time Lords", Winters' death sticks.
Subverted in "Voyage of the Damned" with Rickston Slade. During the whole disaster, he's constantly complaining, making fun of the good-natured couple, a lower-class couple who won their tickets (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, but he also 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.
"Planet of the Ood": The episode is about the Ood rising up against and murdering the humans running the company that breeds them to be sold as slaves across the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire.
"Let's Kill Hitler": Zimmerman, the first victim of the Tesselecta, is a 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 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.
"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship": Solomon. 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", along with implying he would sexually assault her) only sent him further across the line.
"The Husbands of River Song" has the space cruise ship Harmony and Redemption, which is explicitly mentioned to cater exclusively to mass murderers — even the staff have to be killers. When the ship runs into a meteor storm, it crashes on the planet Darillium, killing everybody on board. The Doctor mentions the deaths won't be mourned.
The two part Elementary episode "The Illustrious Client"/"The One That Got Away" updates the 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 burning his face off with acid.
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.
Similarly, in the Season 7 finale, Dr. Greene allows a Spree Killer who had just directly threatened his family to die on the table.
And in the Season 13 premiere, Sam 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.
The Fades: 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.
The Fall of the House of Usher (2023): The first few minutes of the first episode tell the audience that all six of Roderick Usher's children are dead; the rest of the series reveals in flashbacks that none of them were good or nice people, which makes you feel slightly less bad that their father and their aunt made a literal Deal with the Devil in which they would get disgustingly rich by creating the opioid crisis, and in exchange, they and all their descendants would all die at the same time.
Fargo: Every season starts off with a Plot-Triggering Death, sometimes multiple deaths, but there's always a deliberately unsympathetic character set up to die.
In season 1, Sam Hess is a bully who has picked on Lester since they were young, has rolled him out onto the highway once in a barrel, bragged about having gotten a handjob from Lester's wife, called Lester Nygaard "Lester Niggered", cheats on his own wife, deals in organized crime and causes Lester to break his nose. He's killed by Lorne Malvo after Lester tells Malvo about him.
Also in season 1, arguably, you could make a case for Lester's first wife, Pearl Nygaard. She spends every single second of her screentime berating, insulting, condescending and emasculating her husband. Even when he threatens her with a hammer, she laughs it off, and is Killed Mid-Sentence with one strike to her skull. Though a case of Disproportionate Retribution, it's still something of a relief.
Season 2 starts with Rye Gerhardt shooting a judge who refuses to unfreeze his business partner's accounts, then a waitress and cook in the Waffle Hut at the time. He then wanders out into the road where he's struck by Peggy Blumquist, left smashed through the windshield bleeding out for hours, and then killed when he gets out in the Blumquists' garage and attacks Ed. Also a case can be made for Dodd.
Season 3 starts with Maurice's death via having an air-conditioning unit dropped on his head. Ray Stussy has hired ex-con Maurice Le Fay to steal a vintage stamp from Ray's brother Emmitt. Maurice manages to lose the directions on the way, and instead ends up going to the wrong town and murdering Gloria Burgle's stepfather who shares a last name with Emmit. When he returns he tries to blackmail Ray, and ultimately ends up with Ray and Nikki dropping an air conditioner on his head.
In "The Hammer of God", Norman Bohun is an obnoxious boor who practices Sexual Extortion on a married woman and is callous towards his male lover. Said lover insists that he has redeeming qualities, but they go unseen.
Lucia Morell, the Victim of the Week in "The Hand of Lucia", is a sociopath who gains pleasure out of destroying people's lives.
Finding Your Roots: A show primarily about celebrities tracing their ancestry and what fate befell them. Such as the case with Anderson Cooper:
Professor Gates: Your ancestor was murdered by a rebellious slave. Anderson: Wow. Professor Gates: Your ancestor was beaten to death by a farm hoe. Anderson: Whoa... that's amazing. I'm blown away! Professor Gates: Do you think he deserved it? Anderson: Yeah!
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, Wells has other ideas and stabs Stagg in his office.
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, 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.
An early episode has a teenage girl take a shot at the four girls who had just attacked her. In this case, it's pretty clear-cut self-defense, so the girl doesn't get in any trouble.
One episode deals with a basketball coach who verbally abused his players, even bullying players to physically attack their teammates.
Another had a Smug Snake 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 another episode, the primary targets of a school shooter were the boys who had tormented him, up to and including humiliating him in front of his only friend. Though it's eventually revealed that he never planned to and didn't kill anyone; he just wanted to scare and humiliate them as they did to 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 Sympathetic Murderer status, and she crosses the Moral Event Horizon when she tries to kill one target's innocent wife who was standing between her and her target. She comes across as much more terrifying than sympathetic.
It's also very questionable how many of the victims were actually responsible for the problem that caused the husband's death, and how many were targeted just for some tangential connection. She might have strayed a bit into Sympathetic Murderer territory, but most of the victims couldn't really be defined as assholes.
Foyle's War: In one early episode, the victim was a Nazi sympathizer.
A French Village: Louis, an openly antisemitic Vichy official who tries to blackmail Raymond into getting part of a Jewish-owned company when it's "Aryanized" (i.e. transferred into gentile hands) is shot by him instead.
Frontier (2016): The English soldier who killed Michael's friend in the first episode is randomly stabbed to death by someone he bumps into several minutes after arriving in the new world.
Gilligan's Island: 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. As it turned out, however, his death had actually been an accident.
The Golden Girls had a local curmudgeon insist on a tree in the neighborhood being cut down for no readily apparent reason other than to antagonize everyone else. She repeatedly insults the others and attempts to get her way by blackmailing the city council. Finally, Rose lashes out at her with a very angry "Reason You Suck" Speech and tells her to "drop dead". The shock of this rant causes the curmudgeon to have a fatal heart attack. Subverted when someone shows up at the funeral and starts talking to the casket about how the woman was actually a decent human being and did her good deeds in secret. Then double subverted when it turns out the other person was at the wrong funeral. (When she finds out who the funeral was for, she kicks the casket.)
Gotham plays with this trope on a routine basis to certain characters.
A major problem Gordon has with his investigations is that many of the victims are lowlifes that that could have pissed off any number of dangerous people and the public doesn't care if the crimes are ever solved. Bullock tends to refer to these crimes as a "social service" and feels that the victims had it coming and the world is a better place without them.
Inverted with the Waynes' murders. The Waynes were beloved and the police must find a culprit quickly or heads will roll. This being Gotham, the police brass take the easy way out and collude with the mob to frame Mario Pepper for the crime.
Mario Pepper is an example himself, as he is just the type of abusive lowlife who would be capable of committing such a crime. Outside his family and Gordon, no one cares that he might be innocent. And even he is more concerned about the fact that some much bigger and more sinister assholes can get away with it rather than caring much about Pepper himself.
The Balloon Man in, er, "TheBalloonman" sees himself as a crusader and could be called a Well-Intentioned Extremist, targeting the operator of a Ponzi scheme, a Dirty Cop, and a Pedophile Priest. Hundreds of people wanted them dead and the other cops only start taking the crimes seriously when the dirty cop is killed.
In "Under the Knife", it's revealed that Kris Kringle's boyfriend, Officer Dougherty, physically abuses her, claiming that women need a "firm hand" to keep them in check. This is what prompts Edward to confront and (eventually) murder him.
The egotistical boss Sal Maroni gets his head blown off by Fish Mooney for constantly calling her "babe" against her wishes. Absolutely no one will mourn him.
In "Scarification" and "By Fire", the Pike brothers repeatedly abuse and belittle their sister Bridgit, and later force her to do the heavy work in their criminal activities (all the while continuing to mess with her just for laughs). It's extremely difficult to feel bad when Bridgit snaps and burns them alive.
In "Mr. Freeze", the obnoxious pharmacist refuses to refill Nora Fries' medication without a prescription (which he's completely in the right to do — he's just a total jerk about it), and later chews out an old lady in the same dickish manner. He's quick to get his comeuppance from the titular villain. Downplayed in that he returns to life at the episode's end and also because technically he didn't anything comparable to the other examples.
Penguin's stepmother and her children harass poor Oswald who has been reformed through shock therapy into a harmless, friendly person and (albeit accidentally) kill his dad to keep his house and fortune, planning to kill him next while they keep him as a hapless servant. The moment he finds out, he snaps back into his old self, kills her children, feeds them to her as a roast, and then stabs her repeatedly. Brutal? Yes. Tragic? Maybe. Still, so satisfying!
Theo Galavan/Azrael. Using his family roots and money to manipulate the city into supporting him as mayor and also nearly having Bruce Wayne executed for being the descendant of the family he had a blood feud with after trying to make him give up his corporate empire to him, bad. But using the Penguin's mother to force the Penguin into his servitude, and then killing her anyway? No wonder the Penguin was satisfied when he was murdered twice, the first time getting shot by Gordon and then being put down for good the second time through Butch's rocket launcher.
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 jerkasses that reminded of his father, after already killing his father. A recent episode had a tree creature who killed people who harmed wildlife and the environment such as a person dumping toxic waste various members of the cast felt conflicted about fighting it.
Quinn, the mysterious body fished out of the Brisbane River in season one of Harrow, was not a pleasant man: a Dirty Cop with a gambling addiction who was sexually abusing his stepdaughter.
Heroes: It's hard to feel sorry for an Alpha Bitch who slut-shamed a rape victim then pretended to save someone to get attention, a gangster, and the company's leader when they get their heads split open by Sylar.
Hatfields & McCoys: Jim Vance is the violent and psychotic Uncle of Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield who is at the forefront of any violence against the McCoys or their supporters. He is so out of control that even some in his own family are afraid of him. When Vance is killed in a shootout, practically no one in either family mourns his death. Informed that Vance was killed, Devil Anse is not particulary surprised, given that he felt sooner or later he'd have to kill Vance himself.
Hit & Miss: Riley murders John, an abusive jerkass, when she's had enough of him, and she clearly doesn't want to have their baby under his thumb too.
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 Tiberius Graham: Started by psychologically torturing Alf with a ventriloquist dummy then crossed the Moral Event Horizon when he planted a hypodermic needle to make his much younger girlfriend believe she had contracted HIV. Ultimately a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds though, as Alf was indirectly responsible for the deaths of his parents.
Stu Henderson, Sasha's abusive boyfriend, though as we learn more about his home life he becomes something of a Jerkass Woobie.
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.
Deconstructed beautifully in "Subway". John Lange is shoved into the path of an oncoming train, leaving him pinned between the train and the station platform, condemning him to a slow, painful death. Lange quickly proves to be a rude, misanthropic Jerkass who lashes out at the people around him, but he and Pembleton slowly bond anyway, and it gradually becomes clear that though Lange may be an asshole, he's still a human being with his own hopes and dreams who doesn't deserve to die.
The Victim of the Week in "I've Got a Secret" is a burglar who abused his girlfriend and was shot after trying to betray his partner. The investigation reveals the burglar's bullet wound was non-fatal; he was actually killed by a Knight Templar doctor.
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 way past Asshole Victim.
House of Cards (US): The Democratic and Republican leadership regard Frank Underwood as one after he gets shot by Lucas Goodwin and is hospitalized. Bob Birch brings up the need to allocate money for a potential state funeral with the same tone of voice you'd use to say "We need to put toilet paper on the shopping list."
"Is My Very Nature That of a Devil": Louis slaughters and consumes the blood of the bigoted Fenwick mostly for approving laws that destroy colored businesses in Storyville, but also for his racially prejudiced opinions on Louis.
"The Thing Lay Still": Tom Anderson is homophobic because he refers to Louis and his boyfriend Lestat de Lioncourt as "you and your fag pederast," plus he mockingly guffaws at them when they kiss at the Mardi Gras ball. Lestat gleefully murders Tom during the after-party feast.
In the Season 2 First Look Scene, Armand decides to put the de la Croix family and their guests on the menu for his hungry vampire coven because they were war profiteers during World War II, becoming prosperous dealing in the black market while the rest of their countrymen were barely surviving on ration cards. What ensues is a massacre on the de la Croix estate, and presumably no humans are left alive.
In "Wag the Tongue Slowly", Liv eats the brain of a vicious gossip who had no compunction about ruining people's lives. Her assholery includes outing one co-worker as gay and outing another as a former porn star. The list of suspects was pretty long on this one. It turned out three of them were in on it together, though it was accidental.
Kamen Rider: This trope is also used in multiple incarnations of the franchise.
The enemies in Kamen Rider 555 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 Kamen Rider Kabuto a Worm shows up that targets criminals as its prey. So the good guys lure it to them by pretending to be thieves.
In Kamen Rider OOO, 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 Kamen Rider Double, the Virus Dopant 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 catchphrasenote "Hey, You! Count up your crimes." in a particularly cold and angry tone of voice.
In Kataomoi, the man killed by Kanzaki is show to be a womanizer that had been stalking a hostess from the bar Kanzaki works in.
The Lakes:
Simone Parr/Fisher is killed by her husband John, a down-to-Earth teacher who is driven mad by her adultery and condescending attitude towards him.
Chef, Simone's lover and all-around asshole gets his penis cut off by his wife.
Many episodes. In one episode in particular, in which the killer was given a light sentence 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 Dragon Lady 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 Houdinied his way out of a Manslaughter charge) was shot to death outside of his favorite eatery. When the patrons realized who'd been shot... they burst into applause.
Another episode had a child molester who was murdered by one of his victims after the child molester was profiled on a show that profiled sex offenders.
Yet another episode had the prosecutors desperately trying to keep the case from going to trial because the victim, Michael Webber, was a deadbeat dad who never visited his son with leukemia and owed his ex-wife $100k in alimony and child support. The killer was Webber’s former father-in-law who was trying to collect the money owed to his daughter and grandson. The DA’s office knows full well they’d be facing an acquittal if this case got inside a courtroom. Ultimately subverted when it's revealed that the child was never his.
When a man who spent fifteen years in prison for beating his wife until she could barely move, killing his young daughter, and chaining his infant son to the radiator to let him starve to death is found run over in the road with his leg lying next to him, nobody feels any sort of pity and both the detectives and the police chief hope he dies painfully. His prison social worker is arrested for the crime, but not before the chief earnestly pleads with her to tell her what happened so the DA can get her the best possible deal, even telling her that she wishes she could throw her a parade instead of charging her with anything. At trial, it's discovered that she had found out that the man had a new fiancee with children and intended to move in with them; this violated his parole, so she tried to tell his parole officer, but he never "got around to" calling her back. In court they play a recorded therapy session where he says that he'll be able to spend time with his fiancee's children once he gets out, smugly adding that he's always been a good dad, to which the social worker can barely hide her revulsion. Finally, when she found out that his fiancee's young daughter sustained a broken wrist, she snapped. Even Jack, who's known for being extremely hard-lined and having little sympathy for anyone he's prosecuting, says that he would be happy to make a deal with her if she would just admit that she was the one who ran him down. The jury comes back with a "not guilty" verdict for her in what Serena says is record time.
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.
Played with in one episode: the victim was a registered sex offender, 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.
It doesn't hurt that the victim's "asshole" status is less than clear...the crime was statutory rape, of the kind that was right on the edge between "sketchy" and "two kids messing around" (he was 19, the victim was 15), and he got the book thrown at him by an overly ambitious DA. It's not clear whether Logan's opinion would have been different if the guy was actually as bad as he's portrayed.
Outright subverted just a few episodes later in the season 7 finale. The victims are both people who've hurt Goren personally, but Goren is still horrified by their murders, especially when he's told they were done in his name.
Played much straighter in another episode. The final victim of the episode deliberately provoked his daughter into 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 what it means for the one who killed him.
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 child'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 it to Lindsay/Lucas, the bastard still refuses to accept his "theory" is wrong even as 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; due to the surveillance never showing their faces and identical twins having identical DNA, it's impossible to know which one did it, and neither of them will ever tell. (This was based on a true story (David Reimer was the child 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 kills him. Unfortunately, despite the fact that they don't feel much sympathy for the dead guy, this is bad news for the SVU detectives, because he was the only person who knew who the real rapist was. They figure it out just barely in time.
An episode in season two entitled "Victims" was made entirely of this trope. Victims include a man who raped a 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 penectomized 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. It turns out that the FBI agent working the case had killed him because she blamed him for her mentor's suicide. They arrest and charge her anyway, but as she's about to be arraigned, a senior ADA interrupts and dismisses the charges. When Casey protests, she replies, "I presume you live on planet Earth. Where are you going to find a jury pool that doesn't think the guy deserved to die?" The only real complicating factor is the fact that the serial killer had also been holding a still-living victim at the time he was murdered, and after his death, she was left alone in his torture chamber, terrified, severely injured, and restrained, for three days until SVU found her, ultimately succumbing to dehydration and infection. Even then, Olivia is skeptical that there was any possible course of action that could have produced a better outcome.
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 this case, despite the victim's Asshole Victim status, there's no Sympathetic Murderer undertones; the murderer turns out to be every bit as much a monster as the victim.
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 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 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.
"Confession" has a rare version with a non-sympathetic murderer. The victim had just molested a child, but after his murderer put photos of Elliot's daughter on a pedophile website, he's not getting any sympathy from SVU. Not to mention that the murder pretty much eliminates any chance of identifying the molestation victim.
In another episode, the victim of the week was an Alpha Bitch who picked on a fat girl. The girl is briefly a suspect, but she drops away when the real suspects (the victim's friends) were identified. However, in the final scene, we find out that another girl who decided to be the next Alpha Bitch placed a skewered pig on the fat girl's locker, and the fat girl finally snapped and killed her. She tells Olivia that she thought with the one girl dead and the others in jail, it might finally be over, only for someone else to immediately pick up the torch of bullying her. It's not hard to 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 infuriating Amoral Attorney and child pornographer who had just used his knowledge of the legal system to Karma Houdini his way out in court a second time. 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.
"Pop" has an abusive husband/father found dead with the gun in his son's hands. Stabler goes out of his way to try and protect the son, believing that the shooting was justifiable even though the shooter wasn't in immediate danger at that moment. In the end, it ends up not mattering, because the mother also confesses, and since either scenario is plausible (each giving the other reasonable doubt), the DA is unable to prosecute.
"Anchor" doesn't have this trope enforced until the end. A young man is acquitted after convincing the jury that a far right radio show host is responsible for the defendant killing "anchor babies" (a derogatory term for children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants, thus making the children American citizens). After the verdict is read, the defendant whispers something to his attorney and a smug look is on the defendant's face as the attorney looks concerned. Later, the attorney calls Fin to his office and tells him the defendant told him (the attorney), "Thanks. Now I can go kill more of those kids." Fin mentions they have to stop the defendant, but the attorney points behind his reception desk to the defendant, dead on the floor in a pool of blood, before the attorney hands his gun to Fin. You can assume nobody wept over the child killer.
In the episode “Conscience”, a doctor’s son in murdered by a slightly older boy. Initially charged as a juvenile, the detectives learn he’s actually a sociopath after interviewing the camp councilors and children at the camp he went to. However, they can’t charge him as an adult without dropping all current charges and letting him go free. The boy makes the mistake of taunting the father and he steals a cop’s gun and shoots him dead. The doctor is acquitted as the jury believes he acted in grief, but everyone else knows he was in his right mind and that only one losing sleep is the boy’s mother, who had deluded herself into thinking nothing was wrong with him.
Let the Right One In: When donating to Ellie using his and his wife's own blood was too taxing, instead Mark decided to target sex offenders in the area to drain theirs. However, this didn't work out in residential areas, as he almost got caught when leaving hastily after murdering one, which made him back into a car.
Leverage: The crew are a gang of criminals who discovered Good Feels Good and use their skills to help people who are victims of slimy CEOs and other people the law can't touch.
Liar (2017): Andrew, after he's been revealed to be a serial rapist who raped nineteen women and goes on the lam, is found murdered. The police naturally have many suspects among not only his victims but also their loved ones, and openly say he had it coming.
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.
Sheriff Hunt and his deputies are all a bunch of racist jackasses who assault and try to execute Atticus, Leti, and George, so it’s hard to feel bad when most of them get torn apart by shoggoths, and when Sheriff Hunt turns into a shoggoth himself.
The racist young white guys who tried to drive black people out of their house in episode three by blaring horns at all hours, burning a cross and then going with bats. All are killed by the ghost in the house.
The L Word: Jenny Schecter in the final season. Each teaser seems to end with yet another person having a reason to hate her.
The Mentalist: In the season 3 finale and season 4 premiere, Jane ended up killing the man believed to be Red John. Jane has no real proof that the man was Red John (because, as it's ultimately revealed, he actually wasn't), but Jane and Lisbon discover that the man and his wife had kidnapped a teenager and were holding her prisoner. After hearing this, the jury wasn't especially inclined to be too concerned about giving the victim the benefit of the doubt about whether he was Red John, and Jane was found not guilty by reason of justification.
Merlin: In addition to being a Red Shirt Army, 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 children or Druids that have never harmed anyone.
Midsomer Murders: In "[[ Destroying Angel]]", the members of the conspiracy murdered an elderly man, murdered the only servant who wasn't in on the scheme, and then planned to frame a pregnant woman to cover their own rears. Frankly, you're rooting for Evelyn to kill them all.
Generally avoided in 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.
Monk had a lot of its victims be rather decent people, but there were a few assholes in the mix.
Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger had Jason "Sonny" Cross, the current tour manager of Willie Nelson. The killer was the daughter of a couple in Florida he killed in a drunk driving accident (which also blinded the woman) and only served 18 months for. Now, YMMV as we don't know all the circumstances of the trial and the woman did try to set Nelson up as the killer, but given that Cross was also a career embezzler, it's easy to draw the conclusion he didn't feel a speck of remorse for the crime.
Mr. Monk Falls in Love has cab driver Drazen Mirko. In reality, he is Karsten Emerik, a brutal war criminal better known as "The Butcher of Zemenia" known for slaughtering hundreds of Zemenian citizens, including a majority of the family of the woman falls in love with in the episode. It soon turns out that when the woman's mother (and only living relative) discovers he is her cabbie, she stabs him in the neck. Unsurprisingly, the SFPD is more than willing to try and mitigate her sentence when she confesses.
Mouse (2021): After he develops amnesia Ba-reum chooses victims who are horrible people. Deuk-soo is a rapist and child molester, Jae-shik is a rapist, and Byung-tae murdered a child.
Murdoch Mysteries has this happen from time to time, including one example where it's revealed that a girl with Multiple Personality Disorder accused of killing her father had seen him murder her mother when younger.
Inspector Brackenreid: Bastard bloody deserved it.
NCIS: In the episode "Caged", the Victim of the Week is a guard at a women's prison that was blackmailing the daughter of one of the inmates, threatening to hurt her mother if she didn't sleep with him. When that comes to light, a serial killer who's already facing a life sentence confesses. Nobody believes she really did it, but nobody minds letting the Mama Bear get away with saving her daughter from a rapist.
The Onedin Line: 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 Fate Worse than Death.
Tim Kono was universally loathed by all his neighbors. At the condo meeting where they were supposed to pay their respects to him, no one spoke fondly of him and everyone was more upset that a neighbor's cat had died than him.
Deconstructed with Zoe, one of the Hardy Boys members who died prior to the start of the series. From what little we see of her, she is a conceited and elitist person who could treat her boyfriend and Theo Dimas nastily if the mood struck her, both whom did not deserve it. However, her death only made things worse for everyone involved and the fallout led to destroying the friendship of the remaining Hardy Boys.
The sadistic guard, Humphrey, died when oxygen bubbles were added to his IV while he was in the ward after getting shot, causing him to stroke out. He wasn't missed in the least.
The men killed by the time traveler Dr. Theresa Givens in "A Stitch in Time" are the epitome of this trope. All 20 of them were future rapists and serial killers whom she killed before they had an opportunity to commit their crimes. She saved the lives of 83 women in the process. Dr. Givens considered their deaths to be just and legal executions.
In "Stranded", the Jerk Jock Nelson Tyler bullies Kevin Buchanan and his best friend Brad on a daily basis. After Kevin receives a neuromuscular enchancer from Tyr'Nar, a fight with Kevin lands Nelson in hospital with a concussion.
In "Lion's Den", the Lewisborough High School track and field star Brent Kearns, a Jerk Jock if ever there was one, taunts the members of the school's wrestling team on a regular basis because of their poor track record. When the team start taking Neuroflex 500 which turns them into Cat Folk, they have their revenge on Brent by attacking him in the school after hours. He is left with deep scratches on his neck and a broken right arm.
The Outpost: Toru Magmoor, the Prime Order officer whom Talon tracks to Gallwood Outpost as part of her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, was such an evil piece of work that most people in the outpost who knew him are happy when she kills him.
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.
The Pact: Jack, the murder victim, sexually harassed many women, took advantage of a teenage girl, and attempted to rape another woman, plus he was an all around jerkass.
By virtue of the premise of Person of Interest, 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 Wayne Kruger, who they failed to save.
The show's serial villains have a habit of killing each other.
At various times the protagonists wonder if they should save a POI who's seems particularly evil. Sometimes it's a case of protecting innocent bystanders who may get killed if the situation is ignored (such as mob wars). Sometimes the situation is more complicated than on first appearance. After the first couple of seasons though, Team Machine simply accepts that It's What I Do.
Played for Laughs with a married couple who both hire hitmen against each other, neither knowing about the other. The team seriously considers letting the idiots kill each other, and only decide to save them because they have nothing better to do with their time. In the end, they kidnap them both and give them a romantic dinner, which Reese calls "marriage counseling." They spend most of the time yelling at each other over their choice in assassins. They eventually work through their differences, and it's noted that they'll get off with minimal jail time because not only can they afford high-priced lawyers, but they're invoking Spousal Privilege and refusing to testify against each other.
A different married couple ended up on a darker note. Their story started with the two planning to defraud their charity, and then he faked his death and framed her for his murder so he could run off with her best friend. Once she figures it out, she goes after him to kill him. Reese tracks them down, decides the two deserve each other, makes sure they're evenly armed, and leaves them to shoot it out.
Reese: I'm in the business of stopping bad things from happening. I'm not so sure what's about to happen is a bad thing.
The Power (2023): Allie finishes off her foster father after electrocuting him first to stop his attempted rape. It's also implied that he's a serial rapist who raped many prior foster daughters of his, so few will probably care.
Franchise/Power Rangers:
"Power Rangers in Space": Dark Spectre and Darkonda pull this off on each other near the end, with the latter blasting Dark Spectre in the back with his ship and the former living long enough to devour Darkonda before he could go after Astronema or bask in his victory. However Dark Spectre is the Greater-Scope Villain who rules over even the other villains in the Zordon era, brainwashed orders Karone and Ecliptor brainwashed for turning on him, and tried to crash a giant meteor onto the Earth even after Karone willingly surrendered to him in an attempt to get him to reconsider. while Darkonda is a backstabbing sociopath who infected an entire planet and considers kidnapping a young girl to be "one of his finest accomplishments", leaving little sympathy towards either of their deaths
''Power Rangers Lost Galaxy": Captain Mutiny, a slaver pirate who is indicated to have literally worked his slavers to death and tried to subject the Terra Venture to the exact same fate, is killed alongside his crew and ship by Trakeena as soon as he steps foot on the main galaxy. Unceremonious as it was, he definitely had it coming.
"Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue": Queen Bansheera. Being sealed away forever in your own tomb where the spirit of her former minion Diabolico ensures she suffers as her own horde of demons attack her for eternity is a [[Fate Worse than Death harsh way to be defeated compared to being destroyed. But since she also planned to unleash said horde to the world in addition to other crimes, and his more-than-the-usual-villain cruelty towards not just her subordinates, but also her own loyal son, nobody (not even Vypra who returns to be the main antagonist of their teamup with Time Force) is set to lose sleep over her fate.
Viktor Adler, who freely turned into the next Master Org out of petty jealousy so he can murder Cole's parents and then try to do the same to Cole himself when he was a baby, gets thrown off a cliff by Mandilok who was resurrected by Toxica and Jindrax whom he frequently abused. While he does return to life as a vessel for the original Master Org to use, when Master Org is finally destroyed for real and Adler with it, Cole is the only one who mourns the late doctor in the end.
Mandilok himself was no better than Master Org when mistreating Jindrax and Toxica and ended up using the latter as a Human Shield, only to end up being killed himself by the revived Master Org. Unlike Adler, there's no special grave for him.
Power Rangers RPM: The Greateer Scope Villain organisation Alphabet Soup is basically no more after Venjix's successful attack on the world with it's members either dead or imprisoned. Yet given that they kidnapped and lied to innocent children for being smart and pretty much caused Venjix's threat level by refusing to let Dr. K stop it, nobody's going to miss these guys or care what happened to them either way. Venjix himself become this first when he is crushed in his final form by the falling Corinth control tower and later as Evox in Power Rangers Beast Morphers when he is destroyed by the rangers corrupting him entirely with human DNA.
Power Rangers Dino Charge: As the most evil of the main villains, surpassing even Sledge, there's not much sympathy to be had for Lord Arcanon when Sledge and Snide betray and kill him, considering he's responsible for the destruction of Heckyl's homeworld Sentai 6 and twisting two good guys into monsters who they are forced to share a body with. His lackeys who also get killed at the same time also count as this.:
Singe who, in addition to assisting Arcanon with his goals, manipulates Heckyl as a double agent, callously endangers innocents in his first attempt to kill the rangers, had Tyler corrupted with a computer virus, tried draining the rangers powers with the Zotak Rings, and having a petty rivalry with Fury.
MOT Ws Conductro and Screech who under Arcanon's orders, create a music box made to zombify all of Amber Beach and use the whole population as human shields.
Power Rangers Ninja Steel: Madame Odious became the big bad of the second season after backstabbing and causing the death of her boss Galvanax, a complete jerk who (seemingly) killed a young Brody's father and then enslaved him on his ship just for the Nexus Prism and was very cruel to his subordinates, even Ripcon and Odious herself. Due to this, not even the surviving Galaxy Warriors were particularly heartbroken about his death and even Cosmo Royale never once questions Odious taking over his show and attacks.
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 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.
Some soldiers wander through an anomaly into the prehistoric time. There they see a young girl sitting on a rock. They decide to leave the girl behind, even if it means that she is most likely killed by prehistoric animals. But shortly thereafter the soldiers are attacked by said prehistoric animals.
With a girl in school it's rather bordering. When three students had detention, a boy wanted to meet her for a date, but she humiliated and insulted him. Shortly after, she also offended his friend and went to the gym because she didn't want to spend her time with two "losers and boredomers". In the gym, she then met a primal animal.
Primeval: New World has a few, but Blake the drug dealer from "Angry Birds," who held Evan and Dylan hostage and cared very little for his partner-in-crime, clearly stands out.
Yuwen Xi is a serial rapist and murderer, so no one is sorry when Chu Qiao kills him.
Zhao Xi Feng murders Yan Xun's pregnant sister, forces Yan Xun to cut off his own finger, and is generally a monster. He richly deserves his painful death at the hands of Yan Xun and Chu Qiao.
Prison Break: 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).
Prodigal Son: Nicholas Endicott gets his throat slashed and then is stabbed to death by Ainsley. He was a corrupt businessman who had gotten away with murder more than once, and openly boasted that he'd do so again this time.
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.
Reaper: Sam has to save his old Sadist Teacher 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.
Revolution: Drexel in "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.
In one episode of Rizzoli & Isles the Victim of the Week is a high school teacher who it turns out was blackmailing students for sex by threatening to fail them if they didn't. The police know that one of three girls killed him (during a botched sting attempt) but not which one and since all three of them confess to the crime (with identical stories) they can't actually charge any of them.
A non-fatal example in the Season 2 finale of Scrubs. Dr Cox punches Dr Kelso full in the face when the latter is berating Elliot to try and make her cry. It’s revealed in the next series that Dr Cox got away with it because nobody will admit to seeing the punch happen even though he did it in front of a room full of witnesses.
Seinfeld: In "The Bubble Boy", the titular bubble boy gets his bubble accidentally popped by Susan after trying to break up a fight with him and George over Trivial Pursuit ("Moors", "Moops"). We would feel bad for him if he wasn't such a Jerkass who constantly berates his own mother and inappropriately tried to hit on Susan.
"The Executioner" plays this straight. The Serial Killer specifically targets people who have committed sins in his eyes, which include raping and keeping a girl hostage, shaming a man publicly so hard he kills himself, making a group of people live in the street because they wanted their house, etc.
While some people of "Guilty Party" has this actually happening, the Plot-Triggering Death, deconstructs this. The Alpha Bitch Talvinder was a mean girl who manipulated, lied, shamed and mistreated all of the people who would be her killers, but at the end of the day, they are even worse than her, considering that they killed her in a very painful gruesome way due to not knowing how to kill someone, one of them tried to rape her and then framed someone else for it.
The Sopranos' fifth episode, "College", has a rather famous invoked example. It was the first episode in the series' run that actually showed Tony Soprano committing a murder on-screen; before it, he had always left the dirty work to his underlings. Being an early episode, though, network executives at HBO still had their doubts about whether or not The Sopranos could sustain an audience in the long-term, and they argued that viewers would drop out in droves if they had to see the show's protagonist remorselessly killing an FBI informant without consequences. First, they tried to convince David Chase to write an alternate version with Tony letting the informant live, or just having Christopher kill him instead. When that didn't work, Chase compromised by agreeing to make the guy as unsympathetic as possible, writing in additional scenes where he's seen peddling drugs to local teenagers.
The Klingon Duras meets his maker in the episode "Reunion" after killing Worf's mate K'Ehleyr. This is after he and his allies on the council frame Worf's father Mogh as a traitor, attempt to have Worf's brother killed, and force Worf to become an outcast from Klingon society. Picard is not happy that Worf took matters into his own hands and formally reprimands him, but he doesn't have too many tears to spare. Most Klingons are happy that Worf killed Duras, and even Duras's sisters Lursa and B'etor are not sorry to see him go.
In "Final Mission", Dirgo is dismissive of both Crusher and Picard, is abrasive and rude, doesn't pack proper emergency supplies, drinks alcohol that could be better used for medicinal purposes, and ultimately gets himself killed, endangering the others in the process. Nobody, including the audience, is sad to see the back of him.
Arctus Baran was the brutal Captain of a mercenary raider who implanted neuro devices that could inflict pain or cause death in the two part episode "Gambit". Infiltrating the ship as an archelogist named Galen, Picard is implanted with one of these devices. He hacks into the system and switches the codes around for himself and Baran, knowing that when the last piece of the ancient Vulcan artificat was found Baran would have him killed. Baran sets his control box to kill and tries to kill "Galen" only to have his own implant take him out. Baran former crew members don't mourn his death, with the Vulcan Tallera ordering the crew to "dispose of that."
In the episode "Business As Usual", Quark briefly started working for his cousin Gaila, a freelance arms dealer. The money was good but Quark found himself perilously close to the Moral Event Horizon. Finally, when Gaila made a deal with the Regent, a tyrant who planned to kill 28 million of his own people to quell a rebellion, Quark decided to intervene, setting up an "accidental" meeting between the Regent and the rebel leader. The Regent ended up killed, and Gaila was forced to go on the run. 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.
While O'Brien's sympathies in Prodigal Daughter may have lain with Morica, due to his past history with her family, when it comes down to it, she was a mob widow who got a sinecure position thanks to her contacts, and then proceeded to make increasingly unreasonable demands of the people she was essentially shaking down for money until one of them finally snapped and killed her.
There are several notable asshole victims in the series finale "What You Leave Behind''.
While he isn't killed, Dukat is trapped for all eternity with the Pah-wraiths, which is fitting considering the sheer number of rapes, murders, kidnappings, and torture the man carried out over the years.
Even though she returns to the faith in the final minutes of her life, not too many Bajorans are grief stricken over the death of Winn Adami.
Except for the Female Changeling, practically no one in the Alpha Quadrant is sorry to see Garak kill the Vorta Weyoun.
Star Trek: Voyager: In "Caretaker", Cavit, Voyager's original first officer, and the unnamed chief medical officer are quite dickish and frankly unprofessional to Paris, which doesn't make anyone too sorry when they die. Possibly this trope was intended to be in effect with Stadi, the original conn officer, but Paris was hitting on her, and as a Betazoid, she probably wasn't too pleased with his thoughts either. In the novelization Janeway makes a mental note to speak to Cavit later about his unprofessional behavior.
Bjayzl is a greedy, callous psychopath who runs a criminal operation that kidnaps and butchers former Borg drones (including Icheb), and sells the technology on the black market. No audience member shed a tear when she's vaporized by phaser fire.
Because Narissa had murdered Hugh and numerous other xBs in cold blood, no one was upset when she meets a Disney Villain Death.
The Strain: Amoral Attorney Joan Luss and the (fake) goth rock star Gabriel Bolivar, both of whom are rude, ungrateful, and are trying to sue the CDC team for doing its job, were asking for what eventually happened to them. Luss' transformation into a vampire left her basically mindless and feral and she was easily put down by a professional vampire hunter. Bolivar was taken as the new host body of The Master. By all accounts, he no longer exists.
Strangers From Hell: All of the residents are serial-killing cannibals, so no one is upset when they're killed off one by one.
Stranger Things shows Martin Brenner. He subjects the young girl Eleven to torture and imprisonment and draconian punishment. It is his experiments that attract the Demogorgon in the first place, which is why he is indirectly responsible for his victims. He sacrifices his subordinates recklessly for his goals. He sends Hopper and Joyce on a mission that they believe they will not survive. And he's ready to shoot four twelve-year-old boys just because they're defending Eleven from him. In a series with Eldritch Abominations, he's pretty much one of the cruelest humans you can see. And no one is really sad when the Demogorgon kills him (but official sources say he survived). When he finally buys it to a sniper's bullet in season four, the circumstances are morally ambiguous enough that Eleven/Jane decides to say goodbye to him, but does not gives him what he actually wanted (an affirmation that she still loves him as a daughter after everything he's done and keeps saying was done for her sake with his last breath) and walks away.
Connie Frazier is a secret agent, but a vicious and very incompetent. In search of Eleven, she murders a shopkeeper completely groundless and cold-blooded. But this man was nice to Eleven, so she decides to avenge him, and to kill Connie later in the season in a cruel way.
Tom Holloway and Bruce Lowe have misogynistic tendencies, and abuser, bully and humiliate Nancy, who is a young intern. Especially Bruce seems to get a real kick out of being a common asshole. Eventually, they are killed by the Mind Flayer, and taken into his body.
Supernatural: There are plenty of these, and when someone has to die to show the Monster of the Week means business, it's often an Asshole Victim. In fact, in "Tall Tales", the Monster of the Week is less feral and more sophisticated than the usual fare, and makes it a point to target these sort of people.
When Mi-nyeo falls through the bridge during the fifth game, she takes Deok-su with her. No tears were shed on his behalf.
Players 278, 040 and 303 are a bunch of sadistic and perverted bullies who are just as bad as Deok-su and murder their fellow contestants in order to get ahead, so it's not surprising that not one person mourns any of them when all of them eventually die.
Not as big as the other examples, but Player 244 a sexist hypocrite and a murderer who’s death is completely his own doing.
It's hard to feel sorry for Ali's boss when his fingers are accidentally crushed and gets robbed by Ali, who runs away with the money he refused to pay him.
Tales from the Crypt: 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 the protagonist.
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.
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.
"What You Need": Sure, being given a pair of shoes that get you killed by car accident would be a Cruel Twist Ending in most cases, but Renard's cruel behavior and attempt to kill Pedott put him here.
Twin Peaks: 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.
Two and a Half Men: At the beginning of season nine, it's 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 STDs they got from him and a man who wants to collect $30,000 in what are implied to be drug-related debts.
No one shed a tear for the Handler when she was shot in the head by Hazel. Or when she was killed by the Swede (except Lila, who was clearly upset). She was manipulative, especially to Five and Lila, she was rude to her underlings, she was downright creepy towards Five (constantly touching him, watching him, and in general behaving in a very creepy way towards the physically underage and clearly uncomfortable Five), and she was not well-liked. The only thing anyone might mourn is her very dramatic sense of style.
Leonard Peabody/Harold Jenkins. He killed his father, he manipulated Vanya, and he very much wanted to use Vanya to kill the Hargreeves in a deeply misguided revenge attempt (with the person he hated being their adoptive father who hated them and who they hated in return).
The Unusuals: In the pilot, the late Detective Kowalski is revealed to have been a Corrupt Cop, an adulterer, a blackmailer and an all-around Jerkass for the purpose of making everyone a suspect. However, his widow is shown to love him and genuinely mourn him.
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 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 Laser-Guided Karma.
Stefan deliberately creates one in Season 4. He turns a confessed murderer so Jeremy can kill him to grow his hunter's mark.
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's 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's not a serial rapist. It turns out that while he is a misogynist, he isn't 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.
Walker, Texas Ranger: Victor La Rue. He's the only person in the entire series that Walker intentionally kills, and he does anything and everything to show that he deserves it.
Why Women Kill: No one is too sorry when Mrs. Yost dies, least of all Alma after learning how Mrs. Yost looked down on her beloved flower garden. Carlos Castillo gets this too from his wife Rita, who justifies planning to murder him on the basis that he's a huge jerk.
In the very last episode of The Wire, Cheese, who has been a JerkassSmug Snake drug dealer and gangster since his debut, mistakenly admits in the middle of a self aggrandizing speech that he sold out his uncle Prop Joe to Marlo Stanfield, which resulted in his uncle's death. Within a couple of seconds of doing so, Slim Charles, (who had acted as the uncle's Number Two for the past two seasons) shoots Cheese in the head right in front of the various drug lords who were assembled for a meeting. Of the 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.
Women's Murder Club: One episode has Lindsay investigating the murder of a college student, but the episode wipes away sympathy he might get when it's revealed that he and his friend raped a girl and attempted to gaslight her to the point that very few people believed her. In fact, the episode shows far more sympathy towards his murderer and rape victim.
Armand decides to put the de la Croix family and their guests on the menu for his hungry vampire coven because they were war profiteers during World War II, becoming prosperous dealing in the black market while the rest of their countrymen were barely surviving on ration cards. What ensues is a massacre on the de la Croix estate, and presumably no humans are left alive.