Driven to Suicide/Live-Action TV

Live Action TV

• In the 2000s Battlestar Galactica, Boomer begins having suicidal thoughts when she begins to suspect that she's a Cylon, and Baltar — who knows for a fact that she is — pushes her over the edge, causing her to shoot herself. She ends up jerking the gun away and letting the bullet pass through her cheek, leading her to wonder later whether her programming prevented her from killing herself until after her mission was accomplished, or if she was just a lousy shot.
  • In later seasons, this also happens. Dualla does this after returning from the nuked Earth. In the finale Brother Cavil, upon seeing that his plans have been ruined, simply yells "FRAK!", shoves a gun into his mouth and pulls the trigger.
    • That last one is subject to Alternative Character Interpretation: Cavil had gotten so used to resurrection that he instinctively tried to suicide as a Villain Exit Stage Left. In the heat of the moment, he completely forgot that he couldn't resurrect anymore. Oops.
  • D'Anna Biers is Driven to Suicide for a different reason: After her first death, she becomes obsessed with the "place between life and death" and begins to kill herself...over and over in hopes of glimpsing into something she isn't supposed to know.
    • She gets an actual an actual one after the Fleet comes across the nuked remains of Earth. She chooses to stay behind and presumably dies. Since she was the only living Number Three at the time, this action also ends her line.
• A favorite tactic of the First Evil on Buffy the Vampire Slayer is to use its shapeshifting powers to play mind games to trick heroes into destroying themselves. It actually talked potential Slayer Chloe into hanging herself in "Get It Done".
  • Spike also tried to kill himself after he got chipped.
• In Dexter, a psychiatrist causes the deaths of his clients by withdrawing their medication and then encouraging them to kill themselves.
  • Also, Dexter's adoptive father Harry killed himself after witnessing the results of training his son to be a vigilante murder machine.
• Doctor Who:
  • In The Sun Makers, Leela spots the first person they see on Pluto—going to throw himself over the building side.
  • In "Dalek", the titular villain chose to blow itself up rather than become tainted with human DNA. The only time the word "EXTERMINATE" could ever be turned into a Tear Jerker.
  • It's heavily implied in "Turn Left" that the Doctor simply let himself drown with the Racnoss when Donna wasn't there.
  • Adelaide Brooke in "The Waters of Mars" who committed suicide because her death was a fixed point in time necessary to ensure the spacefaring future of the human race.
  • Amy in "Amy's Choice" after Rory dies in the dream world. Although Amy, the Doctor, and Rory are given a choice between two worlds and must figure out which is real, Amy chose Leadworth as the false world while having no way of knowing because either way she’d be with Rory, saying if this was reality, she didn't want it (the only way to leave the false world is to die. Die in the false world, wake up in reality; ask what happens if you die in reality.) She basically smashes her car into a wall at maximum speed to be with Rory.
• Scrubs has Ted, the hospital's lawyer, who is eternally depressed and contemplating suicide. Typically he stays on the roof of the building, looking down, waiting to gain enough courage to take the final step, often while Dr. Kelso watches in sadistic amusement. Something always happens that prevents him from jumping, to Kelso's chagrin... except one time when he's about to turn back, but accidentally falls down (Dr. Kelso came up onto the roof blasting an air horn, the surprise causing him to fall). He survives as he lands on a large pile of garbage bags the Almighty Janitor had put there (the whereabouts of which had been part of another plot). Who then gives Ted advice on a location to 'jump' from that will be successful.
  • Elliot also confesses that she once tried to drown herself, although this wasn't played for laughs. It was actually mostly ignored after that episode, as all the characters became generic sitcom characters.
    • Slightly before the aforementioned was, however, played for laughs. Elliot admitted that she didn't try to stick her head in an oven. When her head gets really hot, she pisses herself and she didn't want to be found in a puddle of her own urine.
  • Dr. Cox unknowingly transplants rabies-infected organs into 3 patients, killing them and driving him to nearly drink himself to death.
• While Supernatural's Dean selling his soul so his brother can live again in "All Hell Breaks Loose" might look like a Heroic Sacrifice at first glance, it's really, really not. He still thinks he should have died at the beginning of the season, he has a massive guilty conscience about failing to protect his brother, you only have to watch the rest of the season to know that he hasn't been in the best of places for a good, long time and Azazel even says he has a pathetic, self-loathing desire to sacrifice himself for his family. In "Dream a Little Dream of Me", he finally seems to get over his suicidal nature and realises he doesn't want to go to hell. Too bad he's doomed anyway.
  • That's not the only time he's been driven to try (it just succeeded that time). There's "Faith" where he accepts his impending death and lets the reaper try and take him. There's "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" where he takes his rage out on what looks like himself and shoots the doppelganger dead. There's "Croatoan" where Sam might turn violent due to infection and instead of running away, he locks himself in there with him, and then there's "What Is And What Should Never Be" where his perfect girlfriend definitely looks like the Reaper in "My Time Of Dying", his greatest wish is to get some rest (it's unclear whether he just wants a bit of peace or, um, forever rest) and he needs to kill himself to get out of his dreamworld but is perfectly fine with the other option which is dying for real. Oh, Dean!
  • In the season five finale, Dean would rather die with his brother than not be there for him when Lucifer has taken over Sam's body and all hope of stopping him seems gone. He was lost enough throughout the season that he nearly said "yes" to let Michael possess him so Michael could kill Lucifer even though that would raze the world.
    • Sam was suicidal throughout season five as well, first preferring death to possession, then playing out a Self-Sacrifice Scheme to lock Lucifer back up by saying "yes" to let Lucifer possess him and walking into the Cage. If Sam succeeded, he'd be trapped with a vengeful Lucifer to be tortured for eternity by him. Of course, the whole demon blood thing the season before only came about because Dean died and Sam thought he had to use enough blood-fueled power to kill himself killing Lilith to prevent the Apocalypse. This is well after he tried to get Dean to kill him so he wouldn't become a monster.
  • Another episode featured a monster that drove people to suicide by mimicking their dead loved ones and telling them to kill themselves so they can be together again.
  • The episode "Wishing Well" played this for laughs with a teddy brought to life by a little girl's wish that attempts to blow his own head off with a shotgun. He fails.
• In the Charmed episode "Murphy's Luck", a darklighter tries to drive a future whitelighter to suicide, since the only way to keep a person from becoming a whitelighter is to have them take their own life. Then he turns his powers on one of the main characters...
  • Later on, Cole wanted to kill himself and had tried many times but can't because he's too powerful.
  • Leading to a great line, Cole (conjuring a guillotine): I can't wait to see how I survive this.
• On The Colbert Report, Stephen illustrated the 'mixed messages' within a Presidential speech by playing a series of clips, then cutting back to the desk in between. Good news — "Yaaay!" Bad news — "Boooo." Good news — sucks on cigar. Bad news — sucks on gun barrel. (Luckily, the next clip was good enough to dissuade him from going through with it.) This upset a few fans...
• Lost is a fairly suicide-heavy show. In addition to Sawyer's father's murder-suicide (in flashbacks), we've seen Locke, Jack, and Michael on the verge of suicide. In Jack and Locke's cases, they were interrupted before actually making the attempt. Michael tried at least three times unsuccessfully. Richard has also tried, but his immortality also extends to a inability to kill himself.
• An episode of The Golden Girls has a friend of Sophia's decide to take her own life with a cocktail of prescription drugs and ask Sophia to be with her at the end for moral support. Fortunately Sophia manages to talk her out of it.
• Happens to more or less half the cast of Rome, in some cases because a character is based on a historical figure who took their own life. Some of the more notable ones include: The death of Niobe, who throws herself off a balcony so that Vorenus won't have to take her life in season one, the fate of both Antony and Cleopatra in the series finale, Brutus walking in among the enemy soldiers in a suicide-by-making-them-kill-me fashion in mid-season two, followed by Servilia and her slave in the next episode.
• While House is a self-destructive bastard with a death wish, the only time he's ever properly tried this is in "Merry Little Christmas", when the Tritter deal got too much for him to handle and he ended up overdosing on a dead patient's meds.
  • He also once electrocuted himself specifically in order to undergo a near-death experience.
  • Then, in "Simple Explanation," Dr. Kutner kills himself. And nobody has any idea why. In Real Life, however, everybody knows why. Kal Penn got a job with the Obama Administration, and you can't be a TV regular and work for the White House at the same time.
  • It's been strongly hinted throughout the series that Taub tried to kill himself in medical school because of the pressure
  • In the season five episode 'Painless', the patient of the week attempted to kill himself due to a severe pain problem.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • The episode "Tin Man" had a lonely spacefaring creature trying to kill itself by sticking around a star about to go nova.
    • In "Half a Life", the planet of the week's hat is committing ritual suicide at age 60 to not be a burden on society.
    • In "Ethics", Worf, seemingly paralyzed for life, intends to follow Klingon culture to engage in ritual suicide now that he's a burden on his loved ones families. Here Worf requested that Riker aid him in his own ritual death — Riker pointedly refused.
    • In "Eye of the Beholder", Data mentioned that during his early formative phases, he found the process of becoming sentient so difficult that he considered deactivating himself, an act other crew members equated to suicide.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • In "Sons of Mogh", Worf's brother Kurn asked him to perform this duty after his family had been stripped of their titles and honor by Chancellor Gowron. When Worf doesn't go through it, and various efforts by Kurn to die in the line of duty fail, Worf comes across his brother drunk with a disrupter in his hand, trying to work up the courage to shoot himself in the head, which would mean eternity in Klingon hell, "but at least I would be with other Klingons."
    • In "Hard Time", O'Brien gets implanted memories of spending a 20 year prison sentence as part of punishment for a crime. In these fake memories he killed his cell mate over some food (that the cell mate was going to share with O'Brien anyway). O'Brien has such a hard time dealing with his actions, even though they weren't real, that he nearly commits suicide and Bashir has to talk him out of it.

Dr. Julian Bashir: The Argrathi did everything they could to strip you of your humanity. And in the end, for one brief moment, they succeeded. But you can't let that brief moment define your entire life. If you do, if you pull that trigger, then the Argrathi will have won — they will have destroyed a good man. You cannot let that happen, my friend.

• • • Weyoun 6 is Driven to Suicide when he realizes the immorality of the Dominion War. See also Tear Jerker.
• On Gossip Girl, Serena van der Woodsen returns home from a year at boarding school because of her brother's attempt at suicide.
  • More recently than this, Chuck Bass had to literally be talked down from the edge by Blair, following the sudden death of his father.
• The made-for-TV film Cyberbully, in which a teenage girl attempts suicide after harassment by a Mean Girl clique and unknowingly being "catfished" by her best friend. It was inspired by the story of Megan Meier, whose suicide attempt under similar circumstances was sadly successful.
• The Stargate Verse has a few examples:
  • The SG-1 episode "The Light" deals with a Goa'uld discovery that's described as being similar to an opium den. Upon discovering it, the people who witnessed the titular light go into "withdrawal" when they return home, and attempt suicide. (A one-off character kills himself with the kawoosh and Daniel unsuccessfully tries to jump off his balcony.) The situation was resolved, though.
  • An episode of Stargate Atlantis had a society where people were required to commit suicide at the age of twenty-four; this turned out to be a form of population control designed by the Ancients to keep the population contained within the field of the protective shield that hid them from the Wraith.
    • A later episode actually had Sheppard drive another man to suicide, specifically "suicide by being fed on by starving Wraith", since he was responsible for McKay's sister being infected with deadly nanites. The Wraith was the only one competent enough to deactivate them in time, but was too malnourished to do the job.
  • In Stargate Universe, Spencer is driven to suicide through the combination of withdrawal from sleeping pills and the stress of being stranded on Destiny.
• On Fringe, a man that Walter describes as a "reverse-empath" can project his self-loathing and suicidal thoughts onto other people, making them commit suicide. It may be a Take That to The Happening.
• In a Christmas episode of The Jack Benny Show, Jack drives a department store clerk (Mel Blanc!) to shoot himself offscreen through endless pestering demands to repackage a gift. Jack's reaction to this is quite the Crosses the Line Twice moment for '50s television.
• Many people throughout the Law & Order franchise (especially Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), but notably in the Law and Order episode that introduces Det. Lupo: His brother is one of a number of people who were helped to commit suicide, and he's looking for their "helper". That person's father, a Dr. Kavorkian expy, takes responsibility before dying of his own poison.
• In Veronica Mars, "Clash of the Tritons", Logan's mother having taken all she can from her cheating husband, abandons her car on a bridge and jumps to her death — apparently. Logan refuses to believe it, and they Never Found the Body.
  • A season and a half later, the Big Bad Cassidy Casablancas leaps to his death after having his crimes and Freudian Excuse (sexual abuse which he was trying desperately to keep secret) made public.
  • Also Logan in the season 1 finale, but unlike the previous 2 examples, he wasn't able to go through with it.
• Frank tries to hang himself more than once in the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "The Great Recession."
• In The Tudors, the series version of Cardinal Wolsey perfectly illustrates that trope. Historically, he's said to have died of illness and exhaustion while being detained (and that is already quite ugly), but since he was a) stripped of all titles, offices and incomes, b) kicked out of the royal council, c) sent to jail, d) separated from his beloved Joan and their two children (Yeah, children. So what ? Priests must not marry. That's all), and e) waiting to be trialed for treason, the issue of said trial quite painfully obvious, the suicide option seems sadly logical. Maybe this is a case of Truth in Television, we'll never know.
• On Dead Like Me, the main characters take and guide the souls of people dying from "external influences", including suicides. One notable subversion, however, comes when Daisy's target seems to be on the verge of suicide: Unfunny, unattractive and leaving a speed-dating session with no names, he is standing on a roofs' ledge and looking down. As Daisy approaches him for the Reap, the camera pans down to reveal that he is already dead, with his body lying on the distant pavement. His soul comments that he slipped.
• On Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode 819, Invasion of the Neptune Men, a giant nude statue of Bobo is more than Pearl and Observer can take, so much so that they tussle over who gets the noose—until they realize that they have to fix the time-stream to save Chicken in a Biskit.
• In Caprica this was the apparent fate of Amanda Greystone at the first mid-season Cliff Hanger. That same episode, Zoey Greystone/U-87 also embraced this trope, rather more literally given that it involved a fiery car crash. Also that same episode, Tamara Adama shot herself, though she knew she wouldn't die from it.
• On Wiseguy, crime boss Sonny Steelgrave chooses this over the imminent humiliation of arrest, prosecution, and lethal injection. His nervy exit-scene actually rates as an Expiring Moment of Awesome.
• In The 4400 Isabelle tries to kill herself by jumping off the 4400 Center (a very, very tall building) because her rapid aging is killing her mother. Unfortunately, she discovers that she's practically immortal, so this doesn't work. Lily then talks her out of trying again.
  • In a subversion, a few episodes later, a man discovers Isabelle floating face-down in a lake. After he saves her, she tells Shawn that she wasn't trying to kill herself. She just wanted to learn to swim!
• In Degrassi High Claude Tanner commits suicide because Caitlin doesn't love him. This lead to either episodes 25 and 26 (Showtime part 1 and 2) or just episode 26 being cut.
• The Red Dwarf episode "Back to Reality" featured the Despair Squid, a genetically-engineered predator which used hallucinogenic ink to induce suicidal depression in its victims, including fish. Even the entirely electronic Rimmer and Kryten were affected.
• In the Terriers episode "Change Partners" a masochistic banker who forces his wife to indulge his cuckolding fantasies by having affairs is Driven to Suicide when he realizes that his actions are hurting her. His suicide note reads "I only meant to hurt myself."
• In Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles John, Derrek, Riley, and even Cameron all appear to contemplate or attempt suicide.
• On ER, Gant's death is seen as this, though it's never established for certain whether he accidentally fell or deliberately jumped onto the tracks, but Carter seems to feel that the latter is the case, as Gant was depressed and being subjected to relentless criticism from his superior.
• Oliver Queen of Smallville. He gets better, sort of....
• Horatio Hornblower has Archie Kennedy, who after a couple of years in a Spanish prison, five failed escape attempts, and a month in an oubliette, is pretty much pushed over the brink by Horatio's arrival (likely because it brought back memories of his old tormentor Simpson, who he didn't know was dead—after all, immediately after Horatio's arrival Archie started having seizures again, which had only happened around Simpson before). He tries to starve himself to death and Horatio notices just in time to save him.
• In the CSI episode Unleashed, a pregnant teenage high school student named Maria Diorio (played by Brooke Anne Smith) committed suicide by hanging herself with her lover's belt after various traumatic factors, such as her father's death, her pregnancy, her lover's refusal to help her at her time of need, and especially the fact that an Alpha Bitch and her friends, out of resentment that her lover, the homecoming king, dumped her for Maria, decided to get back at her by making obscene posts enmasse, create a website where they planted Maria's face onto a Donkey with a caption stating "I'm a stupid bitch!", as well as a viral video that allegedly had her saying in cheerleading cheers that she was a whore, getting over 1,000,000 hits.
• Played for Laughs during the Pirate episode of Married... with Children, where several ship crew members do this for having to endure the (supposedly long) singing from the dreadful pirate, Ruvio the Cruel. Apparently ship wayfarers consider musical-version performances to be torture...
• Even Sesame Street had this in an animated short called "King Minus". If he touches anything at all, it is immediately annihilated. This includes the Damsel in Distress he meant to save. He can't live with himself after that.
• On Kamen Rider Blade, Hajime is forced to become his Joker self and begin The End of the World as We Know It. After trying several times to resist it, he ultimately finds that it's impossible, so he tries to kill himself with his own weapon to stop it. It fails, because as an Undead, he's immortal. Later, he attempts to force Kenzaki to seal him, an act which could be considered simular to suicide, but Kenzaki finds another way. Both of these also count as attempting Heroic Sacrifice, as he was trying to save the world in the process.
• Black Mirror has an odd one. After kidnapping a member of the royal family, getting the UK in an uproar and blackmailing the Prime Minister to have sex with a pig on live TV he decides to kill himself. Seems it was all just a big stunt and presumably he killed himself to avoid capture although he might have got away with it...his suicide and motive is never properly explained.
• In Sherlock, this was Moriarty's plan for Sherlock.
• In Glee, Karofsky tries to kill himself after being outed at his new school, then viciously bullied there and on Facebook.
• In Justified, Mags Bennett poisons herself at the end of Season 2 because two of her three sons are dead, and she hates her only remaining son.
• On an episode of Emergency! Gage and De Soto are are called by a woman whose roommate has taken a bottle of barbiturates. When they arrives, the woman is conscious, and refuses treatment. The roommates begs them to do something, but they tell her as long as the woman is conscious and refusing treatment, they can't intervene. Once she passes out, they can try to revive her, but by then, it may be too late. While the woman is still conscious, she explains to them why she's been driven to suicide by all the horrible things in her life, none of which are very bad, just to make the point to the audience that suicide is a bad choice. Gage and De Soto had their equipment ready, in the woman's room, watching her become less and less alert until she passes out on her bed. Then they give her oxygen and drugs to counter-act the barbiturates, and rush her to the hospital, but she dies anyway. There's a not-so-subtle PSA regarding the right of a conscious person to refuse treatment. It was a concern a lot of people had with the new profession of paramedic. There was also a sub-textual PSA that went something like "Don't say 'No' to a paramedic!"
• In the Spanish series El Internado, Fernando tries to kill himself, since to get the medicine keeping him alive, his sister Amelia must work with a group of Nazis; his death would let her stop working for them.
  • Elsa overdoses on pills after she miscarries and Hector divorces her.
• In the first season of Riverdale, Cheryl attempts to commit suicide after her brother dies and she realizes her father was responsible. Luckily, Archie saves her.
• Played for Laughs in The Good Place. Matt from Accounting has to spend all of existence recording every weird sex act humanity has ever come up with. Unsurprisingly, he's haunted and very much wants to kill himself. Head accountant Neil cheerfully denies his requests for immediate suicide.
• Tragically, some real life suicides have been televised.
  • Christine Chubbuck, a TV journalist from Sarasota, Florida, shot herself in the head during a live newscast in 1974. She had been battling depression for years and had previously attempted suicide with a pill overdose. What is believed to be authentic audio of her final broadcast has surfaced online, although the video has not and is unlikely to ever surface.
  • In 1987, R. Budd Dwyer, a Pennsylvania politician, blew his head off during a televised press conference the day before he was to be sentenced for bribery. The act was televised live across the state and was controversially (even more so because many children were home from school due to inclement weather and might potentially have been watching) shown uncensored by some stations. Unlike Chubbuck's suicide, the video survives.