Times where manipulators ask "Why Did You Make Me Hit You?" in Live-Action TV series.
- In All My Children, when Maggie confronts Jonathan after the latter hides the fact that Bianca is in a coma, Jonathan smacks her across the face. He then acts shocked by his actions, making it seem like Maggie had somehow forced him to do it against his will. Subsequent scenes with Maggie reveal her constantly having bruises, but when Bianca confronts her about it, she blames herself for "making Jonathan angry".
- El Chavo del ocho: An episode has la Chilindrina coming to Don Ramón because Quico broke her lollipop. She then explains that Quico broke the lollipop with his head when she hit him with it (not to mention the lollipop actually belonged to Quico and she'd stolen it).
- Cold Case. A man breaks into a couple's apartment and demands, at gunpoint, that the wife service him sexually. Her enraged husband tries to intervene and is shot in the struggle. The jerk promptly screams at the woman, "Look what you made me do! Now I have to kill you too!"
- Ray pulls this on Daisy in the second season of Dead Like Me.
- Somewhat subverted in Desperate Housewives: in season four, Katherine slaps her daughter Dylan for asking about her father, but this not played as Katherine is made out, at least in the first few episodes, to be an unsympathetic character.
- Occurs again near the end of season 4, with Lynnet slapping her adopted daughter Kayla after she makes an indirect threat to her own daughter, although this was somewhat justified.
- Irish soap opera Fair City featured a Domestic Abuse storyline between Suzanne and Damien Halpin. In one scene, Damien is quiet and tearful after Suzanne has violently attacked him; leading her to start beating him again while screaming "Stop making me do this!"
- Parodied in Friends, where a scene from a Soap Opera has a character slap her daughter and tearfully hug her immediately after, giving the daughter no time to react.
- In Grey's Anatomy, Jo's husband liked to do this to her (she was known as Brooke Stadler then). As Jo finds out, he's doing the same thing to his new girlfriend. Just like Jo, the girl is made to believe it's all her own fault, as the guy is that good at convincing her, even though any outsider clearly sees that it's Domestic Abuse.
- In the season 2 finale of Heroes, Sylar "accidentally" shoots Maya in a struggle and quips, "Now look what you made me do!" half-sarcastically.
- When Peter absorbs Sylar's primordial ability, he beats the latter up and blames it on him.
- Later, Sylar traps HRG, Claire, Angela, and Meredith in Primatech and forces them into a Saw-like deadly game. All the while he angsts about how they made him evil.
- Both might actually qualify as subversions. In both cases, it is to a very great extent the "fault" of the victim. In the former, Peter is only beating the crap out of Sylar because of the ability he (Peter) unwittingly took from him (Sylar). In the latter, Primatech DEFINITELY had a hand in making Sylar the bastard he was.
- On Justified Delroy does this to Ellen May after he beats her up to punish her for failing to buy drugs for him. Both times she is stopped by a gun battle erupting and multiple people getting killed yet Delroy acts like she purposely disrespected him.
- Almost Played for Laughs, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Ted Baxter spanks his son who has been blatantly disrespectful and disobedient. Being a show from The '70s, when spanking was still routine, it's not portrayed it as abuse. The spanking itself is mild, followed by Ted, but not his son, then bursting into tears and begging, "Don't ever make me do that again." The scene ends with son comforting father and promising to behave.
- Happens numerous times in the TV movie No One Would Tell. In one scene, Bobby throws his girlfriend Stacy against a wall when she says something that annoys him and stares at her indifferently saying, "Great. You happy now?"
- The Outer Limits (1995): This comes up in "The Balance of Nature" when Greg Matheson abuses his wife Barbara.
- Occurs between Beecher and Keller in Oz on a few separate occasions. In one scene Keller knocks Beecher out when he tries to go against his wishes. In another scene, Beecher annoys Keller when he continually asks what he did to make him angry with him, and he shoves Beecher so hard he falls and slides a few feet across the floor.
- A bit of context for both incidents: the first was a case of Percussive Prevention since Keller was about to confess to arranging the murder of the son of Vern Schillinger when said murder was actually arranged by Beecher. (Since Schillinger previously had his son kidnap both of Beecher's kids and kill one of them, it's difficult to blame him.) Beecher wanted to take responsibility for what he'd done rather than having Keller turn himself into a target to save him, and Keller decided to knock him out before he could confess to the crime himself. Then Keller ran off and took the rap for it. The second case mentioned here happened earlier in the series, before Keller's Heel–Face Turn. (Or perhaps, considering all that Keller would go on to do later, while he was still on the Heel side of the Heel–Face Revolving Door.) At that time, Keller was working for Schillinger and was under orders to gain Beecher's trust, get Beecher to fall in love with him, and then torment him emotionally as part of Schillinger's revenge scheme. Suddenly switching gears—going from acting like he loved Beecher more than anything to acting like he hated Beecher more than anything—was part of the plan.
- Rescue Me: Sheila's lesbian lover pulls this on her in Season 2. After beating the shit out of her in a fit of jealousy, she is seen tenderly dabbing at Sheila's wounds, saying, "I'm sorry I was so rough with you, but sometimes you just make me so angry."
- Often happened on Robin Hood between Guy and Marian. Marian would infuriate Guy. Guy would lash out. Marian would get blamed. Eventually, he stabs her to death. Naturally it was the most popular ship on the show.
- Lucifer spent a season of Supernatural tooling around waiting for the big finale, and pulled this a couple of times, because he likes to claim he's the good guy. Most notably, right before he killed Gabriel:Lucifer: Brother, don't make me do this...
Gabriel: No one makes us do anything.
Lucifer: I know you think you're doing the right thing, Gabriel, but I know where your heart truly lies... (Stab.) Here. - In Teen Wolf, Isaac's father throws a glass at him, almost blinding him, and then says blandly, "Well, that was your fault."
- In The Thorn Birds midquel The Missing Years, Luke hits Meggie so hard during an argument that she falls down and miscarries. Afterwards, he apologizes, but almost immediately undercuts it with "You made me angry."
- The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Acts of Terror", Jack Simonson punches his wife Louise in the face after she burns his eggs. He tells her that it was her own fault and calls her a crybaby for making a big deal out of it.
- Invoked in the Whitest Kids U Know "Pizza Bagels" sketch, in which an abusive husband brutally whips his wife with a belt while claiming that she made him do it to her. The wife's crime? Making him pizza bagels for breakfast, as "pizza's not for breakfast!"
- In Word of Honor, to drive Zhou Zishu out of hiding, Prince Jin follows his own quote, saying in order to make a man leave his sword, break it, and in order to make a man leave his home, burn it down. In essence, Prince Jin does that by emotionally manipulating Zhou Zishu into returning him to him by indirectly exhausting Wen Kexing into a critical condition and burning down Zhou Zishu's home, the Four Seasons Manor in front of him. When Zhou Zishu calls him out on this, Prince Jin dismisses his anger.
