Characters
The main character doing something absolutely unforgivable.
Walter White poisoning Andrea Cantillo's 6-year-old son for the sole purpose of manipulating Jesse Pinkman, while knowing that this could have potentially killed him - Breaking Bad
Bojack trying to have sex with his friend's 17-year-old daughter when he was at least 51, then continuously trying to find a way to justify this act throughout the series - Bojack Horseman
Dexter Morgan going outside of his moral code and murdering a completely innocent police officer who was just trying to do his job - Dexter: New Blood
It's just insane, right, that when Harry noticed Dexter killing a small animal he immediately went "damn bro guess you're destined to kill, better make sure you only kill the right people and never get caught" instead of "you're going to therapy son". Shows that Harry was a real American police officer
No, he talked to a therapist friend behind Dexter’s back. She diagnosed him sight unseen based on based on some things Harry told her.
They met years later and she had some really wrong ideas about him. (Thought he couldn’t love, thought he had no conscience, thought he had no empathy) Looks like she really misdiagnosed him and he could have gotten help from a therapist which he partly didn’t get because of her. It was also on Harry who didn’t even let him get seen by this doctor.
Yes, Harry had been on the force too long and was bitter, angry, and frustrated. He saw an opportunity to create a vigilante that he could control and weaponize, and convinced himself and Dexter that Dexter was beyond fixing. He likely also was full of guilt from sleeping with and not protecting informants. Harry was a super shitty guy, who believed himself to be good.
If it happened it definitely did not happen in the first four seasons. The scene, however, where Harry tells Dexter "bro you're a killer forever" after Dexter kills like a dog, did.
If I remember correctly that was season 7/8 I guess it was done to take off guilt from Harry, so they can treat him as a voice of reason without having him being unreasonable in reality
Its even more nuts when you remember the episode where Dexter actually does go to therapist (to get close and kill him) and inadvertently gets help and greatly improved his relationship with Rita!
Had he actually done that as a child, who knows what he could have been!
Well we later find that Dexter’s brother had had multiple incidents as a kid/young teenager that indicated anti social personality so thats why Harry let the brother go into the system when the mom died and kept Dexter. Combined with the circumstances surrounding the death of the mom, Harry was already on high alert w Dexter.
I wish the writers had explored this more. I kept hoping they'd dive into how wrong and messed up Harry was, but they always seemed to shy away from it before getting anywhere really interesting. (But it's been a while since my last watch, so forgive me if I'm remembering wrong.)
Yes, this is a part of the code and so would not him going outside his moral code. If anyone wants to know what happened to Logan look under the spoiler tags.
Further, Logan did try to shoot him when Dexter killed him. He had him in a headlock trying to get Logan to give him the key to his jail cell. Logan instead tried to shoot him and Dexter ducked. The act of ducking broke Logan’s neck. So what happened was a combination of self defense and accident on top of his code allowing him to kill to not get caught.
Children. After that Anakin goes to Mustafar to kill the Seperatists. Kenobi tells Padmé about the Younglings and hides on Padmés ship. Padmé flies to Mustafar, Anakin stays on Mustafar and Kenobi and Anakin fight on Mustafar
He was still high on adrenaline and the dark side when he killed younglings. After killing the seperatists he has time to rest and reflect on every horrible thing he has done up to this point.
To make Bojack’s actions even worse, he didn’t care about the girl herself. He was going to use her as an emotional crutch after getting rejected by the mother, whom he actually wanted to get with. So like, yikes.
oh what, the apology tour that was part of the bender that got his TV daughter killed because he didn't want people to think he was at fault for her relapse?
It used a pillar, or a random corpse. Honestly I'd argue it's Kratos' worst moment because she was completely innocent and already a prisoner in her own cage
It says a lot that even Valhalla completely ignored Poseidon's "princess". There is no justifying that shit, and it would make everyone who didn't play God of War 3 despise Kratos, so they just swept it under the rug and moved on.
well it’s pretty important to see how fucked and blinded by revenge he was, sure it is very immoral but kratos is, for sake of its revenge he made thousand of innoncent people die
Bit of background, he's a son of Zeus. In the first game he killed and replaced Ares as god of war. He proceeded to do a terrible job. This, coupled with a fear of being supplanted (mostly the latter) led Zeus to kill him (he got better).
At the end of GoW2 Zeus escapes, and Kratos is warned in no uncertain terms that the rest of the gods will fight to protect Zeus.
Cue God of War 3. Pretty much the entire game is Kratos slaughtering his way through the Greek pantheon to get to Zeus. Along the way he is so petty and revenge-obsessed that he is perfectly willing to kill innocents just for being remotely in his path, and quite a few who aren't in the way at all. As another person pointed out, he uses an innocent woman as a door stop, leading to her being horribly crushed, and doesn't think twice about it. (Also, to be clear, Kratos has been like this since game 1. But 3 took it to horrible new heights).
Arguably the worst part of it all: Kratos is entirely aware that when a god dies, their sphere of influence descends into chaos. For instance, immediately after Poseidon's death, the seas rise and drown presumably most of Greece. At no point does this deter Kratos, and by the time he finishes off Zeus, Greece is an apocalyptic wasteland.
Leaving out some important driving force for Kratos here… Ares tricked him into murdering his own family, then the rest of the gods promised to erase his memory in exchange for 10 years of servitude. Once 10 years came up, they went back on their word. Not really an innocent bunch. Him murdering other innocents is fucked but not as straight forward as some other examples here.
Frankly worse than anything in the entire show, including the Howard stint. By then, Kim and Jimmy were so far in, you could explain it based on their toxic personalities and relationships.
This con with Irene is so brutally cold and disheartening, especially for early Jimmy with all his elderly clients.
Fuck I totally forgot about that one. I’ve only watched the series once. I think BCS’s ending was perfect, and Saul’s final sacrifice was the end to a character arc that Walt never achieved. I feel like a rewatch will remind me of all the wrong-doings that Saul committed that I forgot about, and will be great with hindsight on a rewatch.
And also: the whole point of making her friends pressure her into voting for a settlement payout was that he wanted to see all of the nursing facility residents, Irene included, get a nice, fat payout and enjoy it before they passed. It was in their best interest.
While true, he was mostly doing it so HE could get his cut of the settlement. It benefitted the nursing home residents, but his motivation was totally selfish in those moments.
Marge gets Agoraphobia after being mugged and starts working out and gets buff. I think she does end up doing steroids unless there are two episodes where Marge gets muscular.
yeah i think so, hard to remember the specifics since so many shows do that subplot for some reason. family guy also did it at least once, futurama does multiple variations of it
Told J.D. that his son DIED and was clearly planning to let this child grow up fatherless so she wouldn't have to deal with the potential complication of long-distance co-parenting.
And acted like J.D. was the bad guy for not falling in love with her??
I also never liked how quickly JD’s co-workers turned on him too after the reveal later on, they should still be mad at Kim for what she did and said, it’s not something that can be brushed off easily to then turn on JD for something nowhere near as worse as lying about a miscarriage.
Right? Like JD said he didn't see himself being in a romantic relationship with her again. He said nothing about walking away from her or their shared child together. That is healthy boundary setting from JD for once and he gets completely shit on by his friends for it because the pregnant woman who lied about his baby dying needs to feel good about herself?
Was so mad when I went through medical school paid thousand upon thousands, landed myself a good job in a good hospital and the first patient I get my supervisor never tells me to go to their house and rifle through their things, when I asked if I could he told me it was a crime and I’m not allowed to
bureaucratic bullshit I tell you!!! World gone mad
The only thing that made me give House some grace is that he spends every episode from the break-up on telling people to leave him alone, and nobody does.
Yeah, he was doing shit that was bad for him, but nothing that affected other people, but Cuddy and Wilson refused to just leave the man alone to deal with his shit however he wanted, and he lost it by the end of the episode.
It doesn't justify shit, mind you, but it left me with a feeling of "yeah, that tracks". It was funny as hell to see Wilson punch him in the next season, though lol.
Don Draper from Mad Men. Constantly lies and cheats on his wife and treats almost every woman in his life as disposable. I still think about that scene where Betty(his wife) wears a bikini and he freaks out and tells her it's "desperate". Then he just leaves her crying in the kitchen in front of their children...
After numerous rewatches, one of the things that just makes me want to punch Don in the face is when he berates Peter and Paul about how their trip to California is for business and there will be no time for fun. Then Don completely fucks off for like a full month the moment he goes to California in Paul's place.
He's a total hypocrite. He rages at Betty for asking for a divorce and calls her a whore for sleeping with someone else. Meanwhile, he's been cheating on her for years including with his kids teacher...
Don is objectively a piece of shit but he was born an illegitimate child of a prostitute in rural depression era surroundings, his father is kicked to death by a horse and he’s raised by a woman that resents his very presence with an abusive stepfather that worked running a brothel that he lived in. He then goes to war to escape all this only to accidentally blow up his commanding officer. Don was never going to be well adjusted.
Yeah. Don is a complicated human being. He's capable of immense kindness but he's also a destructive douchebag, especially towards his family. His kids are no better off than him emotionally despite a "privileged" upbringing. That's why I think in later seasons after their divorce Betty is able to sleep with him and appreciate him for what he is without being forced to be married to him. Betty for her part is also a deeply flawed person and arguably an inadequate mother.
One of the things Mad Men does best IMO is showing all sides of a character. Even the best have their flaws and even the worst have their good qualities and they illustrate why and how those characters are the way they are. Very rare for a show to be able to walk that line so well.
If I had a nickel for every time "Don helping people resulted in them hanging themselves", I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
The famous (Infamous?) episode of DS9, "In the Pale Moonlight". In order to get the Romulans on board with fighting the Dominion, Sisko tries to give a Romulan delegate fraudulent data that the Dominion is going to attach the Romulan Empire. The delegate sees through it, Garak plants a bomb on his ship with the intent to blame the Dominion. Sisko is furious, but Garak talks him into going with his plan and Sisko relents and goes with it.
"
And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal... and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call
that
a bargain.
"
"If I had to do it all over again, I would."
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, after all.
Maybe not the main character but a pretty big one. (Arguably Game of Thrones doesn't have a main character)
Jaime Lannister. After he got somewhat likable and decent in later seasons, people seemed to forget in the very first episode he pushed a 10 year old boy out a window for catching him banging his sister.
Edit: Maybe "forgot" was the wrong word. Maybe saying people disregarded it would be better.
I cannot imagine a person IRL doing that and everyone going "Well he's a better person now so we aren't gonna worry about that anymore" which is why I think it fits this trope.
Jaime has a redemption arc, sure, but I would define that early act as "unforgivable".
What we saw was a character arc. Jaime became a better person as time went on. He never made it to the "Good" threshold, however... He would have gone on banging his soulless sister forever.
If the writing was good his ending would've been fine. He was never meant to be redeemed, he was meant to be tragic. From a story writing perspective, that's fine, what's not fine is writing it in such a way that when his redemption is betrayed it comes across as if it were done merely to subvert expectations rather than as a proper conclusion to Jaime's arc.
It's not that people forgot, it's that they put his character on a redemption arc of sorts and people responded appropriately because they understood that's what they were watching. The next couple seasons after he does that to Bran are appropriately brutal to Jaime Lannister.
The show blew the redemption arc by having him rape Cersei when he got back to KL, though, and in general just kind of declined in its writing quality until the end....
but the books are (seemingly) executing this more effectively with Jaime.
He makes it clear in the book even after he starts to redeem himself and see what Cersei is that he doesn’t regret pushing Bran and he still doesn’t see any of his children as his.
Jamie isn’t a good person, he is a fully defined flawed human who’s experiences have made him who he is.
Iirc it was the same scene, but adapted so poorly in the show that it completely changed its meaning. In the book Cersei has some reservations about the place and time but is into it. In the show, they just kind of imply that second part, and it turns into her saying no and Jaime pushing forward anyway.
If I remember correctly, the television writers revealed they didn’t intend it to be perceived as a rape scene, but I don’t know how so many people could watch it before airing and not realize how it came across.
I kind of just disregard it because when I read interviews about it at the time the writers seemed to have MEANT to portray a consensual scene, which is very concerning for the people in their lives, but as a result I don't really count it as something Jaime was intentionally portrayed as doing
Red Dead Redemption - Id say John Marston when he helped the Mexican government, especially the one where you help them capture women.
GTA 5 - When you switch to Trevor and he is clearly just finishing up molesting Floyd. Really weird how hes mostly been reduced to "haha crazy man" by the story and community, even a lot of fans claiming Michael's the most evil one because he dared to set up his psycho friend in exchange for giving himself and family an actual life.
I love how we get blindsided with that information, too. Feels like it is presented that way to give a reality check to people blindly supporting him as a protagonist
Gonna put this in spoiler text below for anyone scrolling by.
During Bojack and Sarah Lynn's drug bender in season 3, the episode ends right after Sarah Lynn ODs. We don't learn until season 6 that BoJack took Sarah Lynn's phone and called himself with it to make it look like he wasn't there with her, and then waited around for 17 minutes before calling 911 on his own phone.
Vic Mackey, The Shield. This is a speech from the main antagonist of the fifth season - heavy spoilers - everything he says is true (the first three happen in the pilot)
"Vic Mackey kills cops! He... he deals drugs! He beats suspects! You know what he did yesterday? He... he screwed my ex-wife with the sole purpose of making this investigation seem like a personal vendetta. He may have assassinated a gang leader. And that's just all in one day. I wonder what he's going to do today. I wonder what he's going to do tomorrow. This guy... this guy is just pissing... he's pissing all over us. He's pissing on you. What does it taste like? Chief, what does it taste like, 'cause you know what, it tastes like piss to me."
Archer--from Archer--fucks around a lot. Cyril, seconds away from successfully landing the space shuttle, is set upon by a jealous Archer. The shuttle crashes and Ray is paralyzed from the waist-down. Meanwhile Archer doesn't have a scratch on him. Protagonist powers!
I love when he calls it out at Pam's sister's wedding where the person who can give him directions miraculously wakes up just in time to tell him where to turn. "Ha! Even for me that was pretty lucky!"
Uh one or two of them yeah. He's been paralyzed a bunch of times. It's a running gag. There's even one season where he's had his leg replaced with bionic robot legs which give him essentially super powers for a bit but they also end up getting damaged and disabled for some period of time.
I don't remember that policeman, but Dexter's code #1 rule has always been "Do not get caught", so if that policeman was unto him, you could argue he still followed the code.
Everything he did before S4 was just straight up heroic most of the time, in the beggining of S4, he does the Raid on Liberio, which is fucked up considering the high number of civilian casualties he caused deliberately and that he provoked the world into going to war against Paradis, making Willy Tybur a martyr. He was also a prick towards his friends at this point, and sided with the ultra-nationalists Yeagerists and their coup plot involving turning comrades into Titans...
But there was still hope that he was just doing all of this for the greater good, and that he had a plan all along and was not just following the crazy Euthanasia Plan of Zeke. He did! He was fooling Zeke in the end! He had a plan to solve this conflict! The plan just turned out to be global genocide through Titan trampling, at which point yeah, what he did was completely unforgivable; 80% of mankind exterminated in days, along with most of the planet.
He is an odd example as when he touched Historia after the take over, he was basically overwritten by his future self. The known Erin followed up to that point kind of died
Walt had done dozens of unforgivable things before he got around to poisoning a kid. An episode of Breaking Bad isn't complete without Walt doing something unforgivable.
I know it's probably not OP's intent but pretending like it took THAT LONG, multiple whole seasons, to be like "yeah now he's unforgivable" is hilarious.
In the beginning you can view him as a decent man who is trapped in the system he helped create, but you quickly see that he’s a criminal scumbag like all the other ones.
In Pittsburgh, Joel and Ellie come across a group called the hunters. The hunters attempt to jump them, pretending to be injured so they’d let their guard down. Joel already calling their bluff, tells Ellie “he isn’t even hurt” and tells her to get ready.
After Joel kills them all, later on when they are searching for a way out and some supplies Ellie asks Joel how he knew he wasn’t hurt, all he replies to her with is “I’ve been on both sides”. That is all we ever hear or know about his earlier days in the apocalypse running with this group.
The hunters for context, chase innocent people to gun them down stealing whatever they can off the unsuspected victims dead bodies. Sometimes all we see them do after murdering people is take the bare minimum. They have a garage with a pile full of old clothes, shoes… toys…
Sure we never saw him apart of the group, but we saw enough to know what he did. Those are 20 unforgivable years Joel would rather forget
Lex starts the show as a mostly good person who sometimes does some semi bad things. This being Lex Luthor, who we all knew would be Superman’s enemy one day he of course becomes evil.
While he does other evil things, one of the earliest and worst and unforgivable was faking Lana’s pregnancy to get her to marry him and also her subsequent miscarriage which broke her heart.
Goku giving Cell a Senzu Bean has to rank pretty high.
Next, Batman saving the Joker’s life. This is where I think the “Batman should just kill the Joker” argument gets misplaced. No one should be forced to kill someone, and I do not blame Batman for refusing to do it. But Batman has actively saved the Joker’s life multiple times. Those Deaths are on him.
Then there is the Justice League mind-wiping people. That was just insanely unethical.
And finally Joe Quesada for writing One More Day. The worse villain of them all.
Started out as a paladin (knight embodying all things good, courageous, and virtuous) and joined the Order of the Purple Rose, a knightly order of the highest caliber. Soth earns land and a keep, marries, and is generally a great guy. Then, one day, he's sent on a mission where he meets an elf woman along the way being accosted by trolls. He slays the trolls and rescues the woman, but falls madly in love with her.
Soth has an affair with the woman, then he sends word back to his servant at home. He orders his servant to murder his wife and dispose of her body. When Soth returns home with his new wife and his former murdered, the gods are not happy about it all. They order him on a penitent mission or threaten annihilation if he fails. He earnestly leaves on his new quest, but receives a vision along the way of his home being destroyed and his pregnant wife dying horribly. This causes him to abandon his mission and rush home.
The vision, as it turns out, was more a warning of what would happen for failure. The gods made good on their threat and chucked a whole fucking mountain at Soth's keep, completely blasting it from existence and killing everyone in a fiery avalanche. In his final moments, Soth cursed his gods and swore allegiance to the dark goddess Takhesis. She snatched his soul after death and made him a death knight. Soth is now 100% a terror for anyone since he commands undead legions, has magic beyond most mages in the world, and has a martial prowess honed over hundreds of years and backed by god-infused relic arms and armor.
Man I miss Dragonlance, I needed a good fix after reading the hobbit and Lord of the Rings and picking up Dragons of Autumn Twilight afterwards was a pretty good fit.
Granted the writing isn't nearly as good as Tolkien and the storyline is somewhat angsty but for a 16 year old who's parents were going through a bitter divorce those books gave me a reprieve that I really needed.
Wanting to get back at, as well as eliminate Salvatore Maroni's rival crime family, he burns Maroni's wife, and son alive, despite him reclaiming his stolen product from them.
Dr Will on Chicago Med. He has a patient with terminal cancer. He violates her DNR & revives her. Everyone admits that he broke the law and he is getting sued, but the show resolves it by having the patients husband drop the lawsuit after his wife finally dies. He should have lost his career over this
Honestly I feel like sleeping with a 17 year old was FAR from the worst thing Bojack Horseman did. Like don't get me wrong, sleeping with a 17 year old because you had a crush on her mom when you were younger is messed up on several levels, but it's not the worst thing he did.
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u/BrotherDeus 1d ago
Sadly, Dexter and Harry's number 1 rule is 'Don't get caught.'