Heroic BSOD/Live Action TV

Because when you're saving the world every week, it's bound to happen sooner or later.

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• An episode of Prison Break sees the usually unflappable Michael Scofield flapped big time. He becomes catatonic and sees himself in a cell with a deceased inmate who helps him snap out of it.
• Ami/Mercury suffers one in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon when she believes she killed Usagi after all while under the control of Kunzite and the Dark Kingdom. She is conscious and responsive, but useless as she refuses to move or do anything and has to be dragged about by Usagi who did not die.
• The Doctor has had several over the course of 32 seasons and 900+ years:
  • The 10th goes into one of these in The Stolen Earth.
    • It is arguably worse for Sarah Jane Smith, who witnessed the creation of the Daleks, and Captain Jack, who was killed by the Daleks. He got better.
  • Also in Bad Wolf, when he freaks out after Rose is apparently vaporized.
  • It's not a traditional BSOD, but the 10th Doctor's whole "Time Lord Victorious" insanity after losing a few friends and companions too many has to count -- and it is frightening to watch.
  • Later, in "The End of Time", he has a similar moment when Wilfred Mott knocks four times, signalling his death.
  • The 4th Doctor had a memorable one in Genesis of the Daleks when, at the very point of being able to destroy the Daleks at the point of their creation, finds that he's unable to bring himself to do so despite being urged by his companions to go through with it.
  • The 5th Doctor also starts to BSOD when Tegan abruptly leaves the TARDIS at the end of Resurrection of the Daleks.
  • As well as at the end of Earthshock after Adric is killed.
  • The 6th Doctor has a moment at the end of Trial of a Time Lord part nine, when he is shown footage of his companion Peri being gunned down and killed (this was later revealed to be a hoax).
  • The 1st Doctor arguably has one at the end of The Daleks' Master Plan. "What a waste... what a terrible waste."
  • The Eleventh Doctor gets a short one of his own in Victory of the Daleks.
  • Another, much worse, hits him in A Good Man Goes to War, when he gets an absolutely scathing What the Hell, Hero? and realises how the rest of the Universe sees him: as an insanely dangerous warrior. We have yet to see the aftermath of this one.
  • We get to see the aftermath in the Let's Kill Hitler prequel, and it's not pretty.
  • The 3rd Doctor goes into a self-induced coma in Inferno after witnessing a parallel world and its people be consumed by lava. Which, incidentally, lead to a fear of fire The Mind of Evil, that according to the books lasted at least until his eighth body - hundreds of years later.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer has several:
  • The season 1 finale, when Buffy hears the prophecy that she's going to die.
  • In the episode "Ted", when Buffy believes she's just killed her mother's new boyfriend.
  • She has a brief BSOD in season 2 when she realizes that it was her having sex with Angel that caused him to lose his soul and become the evil Angelus once more.
  • The events of the Season 2 finale cause her to do the "Walk into the mist" version of this trope.
  • Giles has one in the season 2 episode "Passion" after discovering that Angelus had murdered his girlfriend, laid her corpse in the bedroom, and set up everything to look like she had planned a romantic encounter for the two of them. When he comes out of it, he's...a little different for the rest of the ep.
  • Dawn undergoes one in "Blood Ties" when she finds out that she is the Key and begins to doubt her own existence and humanity.
  • In the season five episode "The Weight of the World", the idea that a moment of doubt had caused her to fail in her mission to protect Dawn caused Buffy to mentally check out for several hours, scaring the heck out of her friends and requiring magic to snap her out of it.
  • Angel has a nasty one at the end of Season 8. After he's freed from Twilight's control, the shock of what he's done which culminated in him killing Giles leaves him a comatose mess by the end of it.
• In the first season of Babylon 5, Commander Sinclair is kidnapped, drugged, and interrogated by a bad guy of the week who wanted to know why Sinclair disappeared at the Battle of the Line, the climactic final battle of the Minbari War, which Sinclair blacked out during and has no memory of. While in this state, he discovers what happened to him (kidnapped, interrogated, and brain-washed by aliens), escapes from his captors, and spends some time in a state of drug-induced confusion, evading and fighting against B5's station security as they try to rescue him. Only Delenn is able to snap him out of it, which is ironic as she was one of the interrogating aliens.
  • Londo gets two of them concerning his lover Adira: one when she is poisoned, and the other when he learns that Morden is responsible. Both instances are accompanied by revenge with style.
  • Garibaldi has a more literal one after Bester's implanted orders trigger, forcing him to report his findings to the Psi Corps; literal in the sense that his brain really is pretty much locked until Bester releases it.
  • He then has a more traditional one after Bester releases him from this state and he is faced with the realization that he just betrayed everyone and everything he cares about and none of his friends are going to believe him or ever trust him again.
  • Delenn BSODs when Anna Sheridan arrives and remains in a semi-BSOD state during Sheridan's first death. So does Ivanova.
• This actually occurs to Dr. Cox on Scrubs, after three of his patients (one of whom he was actually friends with) died due to what he thinks is an error on his part^[1].
  • He really has two, although the first is very short. After the first two die, he starts to go into one, but JD snaps him out of it by pointing out they would have been dead much earlier if he hadn't done anything. Only when the third patient (who happens to be both the friend and the one that could have survived for at least a few months without the organ transplant) dies does this take effect fully.
  • Cox has another Heroic BSOD in season 3, when his best friend unexpectedly dies, causing him to have a breakdown complete with hallucinations. Complete with the Armor-Piercing Question / Reveal: Where do you think we are?
  • Really, Ben just tends to inspire hallucinatory BSOD in people. Remember the episode where JD diagnosed him?
  • Their ability to do so is remarkably potent, considering some folks BSOD just seeing those two episodes.
  • In the first season, JD has a rival named Nick who appears to be better than him at everything and is poised to become the leader of the group of interns. Unfortunately Nick is a major Stepford Smiler repressing all of his fears and doubts. When Nick fails to save the life of a 7 year old boy, he completely breaks down and afterward quits working at Sacred Heart.
• During the final battle with the Reavers in Serenity, River temporarily goes helpless and catatonic as the Reavers' madness presses in on her mind. It takes her brother getting shot in the stomach to break her out of it. Then she takes them on alone and kills them all.
  • In fact, for most of the series, River is stuck in near-permanent BSOD mode as a result of the trauma she received, alternating between schizophrenic emotionlessness, abortive attempts at rebooting, hallucinations, nightmares, post-traumatic stress events, and uncontrolled crying in the corners, all of which tend to render her effectively non-functional.
  • Moreover, much of Mal Reynolds' character and development revolves around his attempts to gradually put himself back together after suffering the massive BSOD (caused by the crushing Independent defeat at the Battle of Serenity Valley) shown during the pilot episode's cold open.
  • Hired gun and Accidental Hero Jayne does this when he doesn't understand why one of his fans takes a bullet for him and the town continues to idolize him.
• In the season 5 episode "Latent Image" of Star Trek: Voyager, the Doctor is revealed to have done an almost literal (as he's a computer program) version of this (using the Out, Damned Spot! version) following an incident in which two patients were equally at risk and equally treatable; he chose the one he was better friends with, which was contrary to his programming. The memory was erased from his program, and when it was restored he suffered the same condition, but eventually recovered.
  • Janeway had one of these in "Equinox" when she became obsessed with hunting down Ransom after she found out he was responsible for murdering hundreds of sentient lifeforms. She also went a little crazy in "Year of Hell" and "Scientific Method". See Berserk Button and Mama Bear.
  • Kirk has occasional BSODs, usually triggered by the death of a Red Shirt, which result in him angsting for about fifteen seconds and then getting over it very quickly after a pep talk from McCoy. Spock has a much bigger one in "Amok Time" after apparently killing Kirk, and almost quits Starfleet. He presumably has another one offscreen some time between the end of the series and the first movie, and does quit Starfleet!
    • Kirk has a very short but intense one after David Marcus is murdered by Klingons.

Kirk: You Klingon bastards, you killed my son. (Kirk trys to sit, missing the command chair entirely) "You Klingon bastards, you killed my son!

• • In the episode "The Doomsday Machine", Kirk and company find the mostly-destroyed starship Constellation with one crew member aboard, the commander, Commodore Matt Decker (brilliantly played by William Windom). The ship had been wrecked by a wandering robot Death Star shaped like an evil cannoli; the crew died after abandoning ship, beaming down to a planet that was then eaten by the berzerker, leaving only the Captain still aboard the ship. The entire episode concerns Decker undergoing a three-part Heroic BSOD, first babbling over the loss of his crew and the monster ship ("They say there's no Devil, Jim, but there is... RIGHT OUT OF HELL I SAW IT!"). The second part is his commandeering the Enterprise to try to destroy this overwhelming monstrosity, and the third is when he steals a shuttlecraft and dies in a kamikaze attempt. Considered by some Trek fans to be the most awesome performance in the history of the series.
  • Sisko had a few moments of depression during the Dominion War. Plus a minor breakdown after Jadzia's death. He was like this for years after Jennifer's death, only coming out of it when the Prophets told him to stop living in the past in "Emissary".
  • Trip went into shutdown mode for at least a season after his little sister was killed in the Xindi attack.
  • Picard had one after being captured by the Borg, and had to go home to France for a little while to recover.
    • He has another one after Ro Laren defected to the Maquis.
    • And another during Star Trek Generations.
  • Miles O'Brien has a major BSOD in the Deep Space Nine episode "Hard Time" after a brutal Mind Rape by the Argrathi.
• Supernatural loves these and it also loves never really making them better, either:
  • John had his after his wife died, causing him to drink and treat his sons like soldiers.
  • Sam had his after his girlfriend died, causing him to be just as obsessive as John was about hunting this demon.
  • And Dean? Someone dies to save him in a Season One episode, John dies to save his life in the Season Two premiere, Season Two completely breaks him down in as many ways as possible and all of it prompts a suicidally guilty breakdown in which, after Sam dies, Dean ends up selling his soul in an incredibly poor and desperate bargain to bring him back.
  • Sam has this briefly after realizing that killing Lilith actually set Lucifer free. He can do nothing but sit on the floor and stare in horror as Ruby monologues until Dean bursts in and they kill Ruby together.
  • Castiel after finding out that God really doesn't care. He loses his faith in everything, even in Dean, and disappears, only to show up completely drunk next episode. Which led to a Crowning Moment of Funny, "I found a liquor store. And I drank it!"
• Admiral Adama in Battlestar Galactica Reimagined has a huge one after his best friend reveals himself as a Cylon and tells Adama to use him as a bargaining chip during a Mexican Standoff with Cylons. Although Adama has displayed intense emotion over key events before, this time he destroys his office, drinks an entire bottle of liquor and is reduced to weeping nearly incoherently in his son's arms.
  • Adama had several in the final season. He got into a fist-fight with Colonel Tigh when [[spoiler: he found out Tigh had knocked up a certain Cylon prisoner. Tigh retorted that Adama was endangering the fleet by pining for the missing Laura Roslin. He actually gave up his command to sit alone in a Raptor and wait for her. Also, when forced to confront the fact that Galactica was on the verge of structural failure, and that Roslin was dying, he collapses while defiantly trying to fix the cracked wall in his quarters. It was a bad year.
  • His son doesn't lack for them, either - he has one in the second season, when he decided he found out that his father had ordered his best friend to kill a senior officer: he promised to be her backup, couldn't do it because he got blown out of his ship first, and decided to die at that point. And then comes Kara's death in Season 3.....
  • Hell, after Revelations there is practically a fleet-wide BSOD. Roslyn says frak this to both politics and prophecy, declaring the whole search for Earth and her role in it a "farce", Dee shoots herself, Adama tries to commit suicide-by-Cylon by trying to goad Tigh into shooting him etc.
  • Colonel Tigh has one of these very briefly in the third season while still on New Caprica, immediately after he discovers that his wife has been feeding information to the Cylons. Following all of this, he totally Took a Level in Badass.
  • Athena has one when Boomer takes revenge against her for stealing her life. She gets brutalized, tied up, and stuffed in a closet where she is forced to watch helplessly as Boomer has sex with her husband, who can't tell the two apart. Boomer then kidnaps their daughter and successfully escapes the ship. When Athena realizes the full extent of Boomer's actions, she breaks down in Helo's arms only pulling herself together for the rescue mission.
• In Act III of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Dr. Horrible gets a simultaneous dream come true and Villain BSOD, and expresses both in song to carry out the denoument. This inverted Heroic BSOD is appropriate for a show that inverts the very superhero genre by adroitly representing self-proclaimed villain as protagonist, and self-proclaimed hero as antagonist.
• Although he isn't strictly a hero, this trope is the best way to describe what happens to Avon at the end of the last episode of Blakes Seven when he kills Blake.
  • Earlier than that, the entire episode "Trial" is about Blake having an heroic BSOD after his actions resulted in Gan's death.
• Mack, the Red Ranger from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive has one of these upon learning that he is an Android. Shortly thereafter, he turns into the Death Seeker.
• In The Sarah Connor Chronicles episode "Allison from Palmdale", Cameron goes through several of these when her processor malfunctions, and she begins confusing herself with Allison Young, a girl whose personality and appearance she mimicked, and then later killed.
  • Sarah Connor suffers a BSOD when the fact that Derek Reese is dead hits home. It lasts all of six seconds -- Sarah's got used to this sort of thing.
• Psych: Happens to several characters at various points:
  • Shawn, most notably when he's gone up against Yin and/or Yang
  • Juliet, after they faced Yin - her trauma due to the incident carried over into the following season
  • Gus, in the episode "This Episode Sucks" when he was accidentally spattered with blood. He came out of it by slugging Shawn in the chest.
  • Lassiter, in the episode "Shawn Gets the Yips" after his car has a run in with a very solid concrete barrier.
• Happens to Stevie in Malcolm in the Middle when he learns his mother had abandoned him. He also regresses back into speechlessness and refuses to move anything other than his fingers (to operate a text-to-speech machine).
  • Lois also experiences something similar shortly after Jamie almost kills her by knocking a shelf on her, feeling she is severely underqualified to become a mother. The BSOD was so bad that it actually resulted in Francis, the one child who hates Lois the most, having to convince her that she is definitely qualified to be a mother, while in emotional pain about having to admit it.
• Boukenger does this with Masumi a few times whenever Yami no Aiba appears to fight him. However none were as bad until the last stretch of the series where after supposedly beating him, the guy still lives and forces Masumi to use the Artifact of Doom to beat him. This leaves him out of action in Heroic BSOD as Satoru disappears in the worse time as well. However they came back just in time to save the world.
• In Kamen Rider 555, Takumi had one when he thought that he was the one who attacked the Ryuseiji on their reunion night and when his friends found out he was an Orphnoch, going as far as almost joining Lucky Clover however he got over it just as Yuji suffered from a permenet one when Yuka was gunned down by police after being tortured and experimented on.
  • Then again Takumi didn't want to be Faiz anyway....
• In Kamen Rider Kiva, Wataru has two of these: once when Nago Keisuke brutally attacks him with his own "Garulu Saber" and again when Bishop awakens his Fangire blood, causing him to attack his friends. He got better.
• In a flashback in the Season 1 episode of Heroes, "Company Man," Claude has one right after his partner, Noah Bennett ("HRG") shoots him. He puts his hand to the wound, stares at it for a moment, and then looks back at HRG, who shoots him two or three more times. Suddenly, Claude's present misanthropy and lack of faith in humanity makes a lot more sense.
• In Carnivale, Apollonia is in an Angst Coma after giving birth to Sofie who was conceived via rape at the hands of Justin Crowe, thus bequeathing Sofie an avataric nature, which means her birth is traumatic to her mother, as per the show's mythology. Whew!, and Sofie herself experiences an Heroic BSOD after her mother dies.
• In Generation Kill, Sgt. Colbert goes into a BSOD after he grants Lance Corporal Trombley the authority to shoot what Trombley identifies as enemy combatants. The "combatants" turn out to be kids with camels, who eventually end up at the Marine camp after getting zipped with Trombley's SAW. Also a total Tear Jerker.
  • Happens again later. Walt Hasser, also a good shot with a SAW, jumps the gun on firing at an incoming car at the Marines' blockade, aiming for, and hitting, the civilian driver before anyone attempts a warning shot. Colbert wigs out, made worse by the fact that Colbert's "Iceman" reputation would mean something that bothers him at all is really terrible, certainly doing nothing to help Walt's ensuing BSOD over the incident.
  • Both of these instances turn into "Oh, shit" moments when you read the book, and realize these events actually happened.
• Happens to Dr. Shepherd in Grey's Anatomy when he loses a pregnant patient, is sued by her husband, and learns that he's saved fewer patients than he's killed.
• Happens to another "Dr. Shepard" in Lost: Jack goes into a really serious one in the season three finale's flashforward. ("We have to go back, Kate! We have to go BACK!") We only learn that it was Locke's death that caused it in season five.
  • While we're on the subject of Lost, let's mention Michael who might be the show's punching bag as he goes through the entire series stuck this way because of his son Walt.....after all, he spends half an episode calling "Walt!" in several different screams and shouts. Walt getting kidnapped turned him slightly normal....although it ended up him going slightly Dragon. Let's face it, Michael's death was the best thing that happened, because, well, his character wasn't all that useful, other than being an in-universe joke on why some people really shouldn't be parents.}
  • Ben too, suffers from this....although his is more of a ABSOD. As he's a liar, evil, delusional, manipulative...need I go on? He does get better though....kinda.
  • Locke does as well....but that isn't so much a BSOD, since he's not exactly a hero.
  • Hurley {in flashforwards when he see's dead people....where's Bruce willis when you need him?}
• In Being Human (UK) Mitchell has one when he has to turn a small boy whom he had befriended into a vampire to save the boy's life. This results in him breifly going back to the vampire community.
  • Annie has one when she realises Owen killed her. Then again shortly thereafter when her attempt to get revenge backfires and he ends up "reminding" his "new" girlfriend about their affair while Annie was alive. The fiance's delivery is creepy enough that Annie's reaction ended up being an accidental case of Enforced Method Acting.
  • George after seeing Annie sucked through the door in the second season finale. He snaps out of it pretty promptly when he realises Mitchell's still inside.
• A very understandable one in NCIS, when Gibbs is suffering amnesia all the way back to his Gulf War days, and his Mentor tells him what happened on 9/11/2001.
  • Tony in the season 7 premiere when he believes that Ziva is dead.
• Happens several times in House MD to the titular character. In season 2, he admits he loves his ex-girlfriend and asks her to stay, but she refuses and he's upset for a WHOLE EPISODE. Most notably, though, at the end of season 5 when one of his fellows commits suicide and he starts hallucinating a previous fellow applicant/best friend's dead girlfriend, hallucinates sleeping with his boss and then ends up in a mental institution. Also happens in the season 6 finale "Help Me" when Hanna dies, despite everything House has done to try and save her life.
• Farscape had one at the end of the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries after John stops the wormhole weapon and Einstein takes the wormhole knowledge out of his head. John collapses and Aeryn gets as upset as we ever see her, sobbing over his body. It takes him a while to snap out of it. John's comatose state could also be seen as a form of BSOD.
  • Chiana also spends most of the last act of Peacekeeper Wars in BSOD mode after D'Argo dies.
  • D'Argo spends the second half of "Suns And Lovers" drunk and despondent after finding out that Chiana- the woman he hoped to marry - has been having sex with his son.
  • Stark gets a really terrible case of this at the end of "Self-Inflicted Wounds," when Zhaan dies. Not only does his misery carry on into the next episode, but the events of said next episode make it even worse, and it all starts when Crichton tries to cheer him up.
  • After one of the two Crichtons die Aeryn spends the entire next episode in a state of profound depression, drinking heavily, experiencing flashbacks and hallucinations of the dead Crichton, and swinging between utter stoicism, genuine sorrow, and explosive rage. By the end of this particular episode, she's recovered, but she's now returned to stoicism as a means of coping.
• In the Numb3rs Season Five finale Charlie's usual plot-saving mathetmatical genuis (and indeed his basic coherent function) completely shuts off for a while after Amita is kidnapped.
  • Charlie has proven prone to Heroic BSODs since the first season when he successfully predicts a bank robbery and his brother is shot at. It is then revealed that he suffers BSODs whenever someone near him is close to death, such as when his mother had cancer.
• In Torchwood: Children of Earth, Captain Jack Harkness shuts down twice. The first time is after his defiance of the Big Bad, the 456, results in the release of a virus that kills everyone in the building, including Jack's lover Ianto Jones. Later, he goes AWOL from Wales, and ultimately Earth, after he kills his grandson in order to save the millions of children who would otherwise have been taken by the 456.
• Played for laughs in Jeeves and Wooster. Jeeves had built up a reputation for being the Ultimate Fashion Police (albeit some Truth in Television, as valets were primarily in charge of their master's wardrobes) which usually just amounts to a gentle disapproval of one of Bertie's jackets or hats. However, at least two occasions with Bertie's friends upgraded to Heroic BSOD levels. Bingo's horseshoe-patterned tie sends him unresponsively into the kitchen complete with a Hitchcockian score, and Rocky's remarks about never changing out of his pyjamas almost makes him cry.
• The entire premise of Monk is Monk's struggle to reboot from a huge BSOD occurring four years before the series begins, when his wife is killed by a car bomb. Along the way, he suffers from a few minor ones that set him back, but in the series finale he seems to have finally recovered to his personal peak.
• King Henry VIII suffers one of these in The Tudors, when his third wife Lady Jane Seymour dies of childbed fever after giving birth to a healthy son. He spends several days (possibly weeks) sequestered with his Fool, drinking, drawing up impossible plans for palaces, and writing the tenets for the Church of England.
• In Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Hercules lays on the ground for three days in shock after Iolaus is killed by Dahak. When his efforts to get him back fail, he goes into a more violent outburst.
• Hawkeye has a pretty famous one in the Grand Finale of M*A*S*H ("Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen"), where he has a mental breakdown (complete with a paranoid claim that one of the anesthesiologists was attempting to suffocate his patient with the oxygen mask, and a joyride in a jeep through the mess tent), in response to a traumatic experience on the ride home from a day at the beach a few weeks prior. So determined is his mind to deny what it had witnessed, Hawkeye seems to regress into an even more rambling and manic state than usual. He is only shaken back into reality when he is pressed by his psychiatrist Sidney Friedman to recall the pivotal incident on the bus, at which point he breaks down, remembering now in horror a peasant woman having smothered her own infant son out of the fear of being discovered.
  • The episode "Some 38th Parallels" has Radar (who had earlier helped save the life of a wounded soldier, and then bonded with him, only to learn later that he'd died anyway) experiencing one of these. What makes it especially powerful is that it comes at the end of the episode's stinger scene, subverting what initially appears to be a more lighthearted Oh, Cisco moment with the other characters.
  • Radar has another one at the end of the Season 3 Finale "Abyssinia, Henry" when the commanding officer Henry Blake who was a sort of a father figure to Radar recieved his discharge, only to have the plane he was on to be shot down and crash in the Sea of Japan, killing everyone on board. Radar had to deliver the news to the rest of the staff in surgery and suffered such a heavy BSOD that he did not put on a mask while delivering it despite being yelled at to do so.
• At least two characters in Band of Brothers.
  • Private Blythe spends the first night after parachuting into France on D-Day lying in a ditch. Later on, during the attack of Carentan, he becomes psychosomatically blind. Finally, he goes into a serious panic during the battle outside the city, until "woken" back to life by Captain Winters. His story doesn't end too well, apparently the man died of shell shock.
    • No he didn't. Blythe survived the war and died 20 years later in the 60's. He cut off all contact from the rest of Easy Company and they just assumed he died after Carentan.
  • Buck Compton shows some signs of going into BSOD when we hear that his girlfriend dumped him while he's lying in a trench in the Ardennes winter. Then it really sinks in when he witnesses two of his friends hit by an artillery shell later in the battle of the bulge. He's never the same again.
  • "Crossroads" deals with Winters' mini-BSOD, as well as being the first episode where we see signs of Buck's. Winters gets better.
• Tom Quinn from Spooks undergoes a BSOD about halfway through Series 2 after a series of missions that put magnets to his moral compass make him grow deeply cynical. Unlike some BSODs, he doesn't recover. It comes to a head when he is forced by his boss to effectively ruin an old university professor's life and put his family in extreme jeopardy by having him pretend to sell explosive materials to terrorists. The end of the episode is something of a heroic reformat as he is fired from the team..
• Angel suffered from one of these when he encountered a powerful demon that seeks out true heroes and terminates them. The demon looked him over and walked away. He is later told the demon eats the hearts for their actual meat, and didn't take Angel's because his was "a dried up little walnut."
  • Let's not forget what happened after learning he couldn't cure Darla of her terminal disease, and then was forced to watch her become a vampire again. And then of course there was his reaction when he learned that Wolfram and Hart could never truly be destroyed, leading him to actually give up on everything and sleep with Darla just to try and get rid of his soul because he'd lost all hope. And then there's the time his own son was stolen from him and sealed away in a hell dimension...
  • Speaking of Connor, there was his huge breakdown at the end of season 4 after feeling that Jasmine was just using him, which combined with all the stress he'd suffered in the past year, lead to him taking several people hostage and trying to kill them as well as himself.
  • And most notably, pretty much everyone went through this after Fred died. Some worse than others, like Gunn and especially Wesley.
• On Merlin - Arthur, after finding out the truth about his birth, and getting the idea that his father is to blame for his mother's death. He tries to kill Uther. It takes Merlin telling him that it's all lies (which it isn't) to snap him out of it.
  • Arthur gets another one upon catching Lancelot and Guinevere kissing...on the eve of her and Arthur's wedding.
• Exaggerated for comic effect in one episode of Roseanne. Roseanne tells Dan she's pregnant, and Dan proceeds to sit in one spot staring into space for about eighteen years.
• Topher in Dollhouse, after Saunders shoots Bennett.
  • Really, Topher's entire arc is just a slow sequence of BSODs, varying in degrees of intensity, as he begins to understand his own actions. That is, until his poor genius brain can't take it anymore.
• Hotch in Criminal Minds has a pretty major one in "100", after the Reaper kills Haley. After he's finished beating Foyet brutally to death with his bare hands, Hotch blanks out, cradles her body in his arms and cries. That's not to say that it's not completely and one hundred percent warranted, cause damn.
  • Reid got one of these at the end of "3rd Life" when he witnesses the assassin father murder his daughter's abductor in cold blood despite Reid's pleas not to do it. That BSOD look on Reid's face will haunt you for a while. It's especially bad since Reid has an eidetic memory, which means he can never forget.
  • Reid has another one of these in "Revelations" after he is forced to watch Tobias Hankle kill a couple that Reid didn't "choose" to save. That BSOD was one of the most haunting moments of the episode for this troper.
• In the final episode of Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to Life On Mars, Gene Hunt gets a world shattering BSOD when he remembers who and where he really is. Gene died as a young police constable in 1953 and has been in limbo in a fantasy afterlife of his own creation where he is the hero he always wanted to be, unable to accept his own death and pass on to the real afterlife. In fact his entire team are also dead coppers who Gene has also kept from passing on until Alex Drake helps them all. Fortunetely he gets better and accepts a new role as a guardian for coppers who die tragically before their time, helping them to pass on with dignity.
  • Arguably all the characters had a BSOD in this episode. The above is also one for Alex as is discovering she is dead, the videotapes of them being hung, shot and stabbed respectively are BSODs for Ray, Chris and Shaz. Reconciliation follows.
• Duncan Macleod in Highlander the Series has a year-long BSOD after the season five finale, during which he accidentally beheads Richie Ryan...because for a second there he thought he was a Zoroastrian demon.
• In Castle, Detective Kate Beckett is normally the picture of unflappable professionalism. Until "Sucker Punch" where she learns that the Murder Of The Week was committed by the same person who killed her mother ten years ago. She's visibly shocked to her core upon hearing the news and the revelation is enough for her to flee the station and trigger a (near-literal) Ten-Minute Retirement.
  • A minor example occurs in "A Deadly Game" when Castle informs Beckett that he's leaving the precinct and that the case of the week will be his last. Beckett is obviously shaken to her core by the news, and is unusually distracted and uninterested when Esposito and Ryan try to tell her information they've discovered about the case as a result.
  • Beckett, Castle, Ryan and Esposito all have their own seperate ones when they find out that Captain Mongomery was part of the gang who kidnapped people and played a significant role in the death of Beckett's mother. This is especially so for Beckett and Castle who had to listen to Montgomery die, Castle having been charged with keeping Beckett out of there had to physically carry her out of the hangar and pin her to a car to stop her.
  • Beckett pretty much has a slow-burning one throughout "Rise", which culminates in her freezing when a suspect pulls a gun on her. Following this, she begins to act increasingly erratic and out-of-control, ranting irrationally at a potential suspect connected to her mother's case and nearly suffering a complete plunge over the Despair Event Horizon when the possibility that she has no leads in her mother's case arises. It takes Castle intervening to persuade her to take a step back from the case until she has a better grip on everything to bring her back to something close to an even keel.
  • Castle appears to be in the middle of one after he finds out Beckett heard him say 'I love you' when she was dying and she hasn't said anything to him compounded by the fact he found out accidentally by overhearing her talk to a suspect who claimed to have amnesia leading him to the conclusion that not only does she not love him back but she doesn't even care enough about him to tell him she doesn't love him. What makes it worse is that he's pretty much the only thing standing between Beckett and being assassinated (possibly successfully) since he's persuaded her to stop investigating her mother's case for the time being after being told by a mysterious man that if she doesn't, she'll die.
• Merlin and Arthur in the 1998 Merlin series. Arthur acts this way for a short while, with longer-lasting consequences, after he finds out that he accidentally slept with his half-sister. Merlin goes into this after he loses Nimue and Arthur.
• In the Smallville Season Two finale, "Exodus", Clark Kent has one when his attempt to destroy the ship that brought him to Earth causes Martha Kent to lose her unborn child. He puts on Red Kryptonite, freeing himself of all inhibitions, and runs off to Metropolis, only for Jor-El to give Jonathan Kent temporary Kryptonian powers, allowing him to smack some sense into Clark. However, this act permanently damages Jonathan's heart, leading to his heart attack two years later in "Reckoning". This sends Clark into another BSOD which is only really cured when he has a near-death experience in the episode "Void" and talks to Jonathan's ghost.
• In Flashpoint, this happens to the whole team after teammate Lewis Young dies from stepping on a land mine.
  • And Sam when he bonded with a lonely, crazy ex-soldier and the soldier basically commited suicide in the end while holding Spike at gunpoint, forcing Ed Lane to shoot.
• Almost every main character on Charmed has one at some point.
• No mention of the last 30 seconds of the season 4 finale of Dexter ? As if he's coming back from that.
• How did we miss Ellis Carver's BSOD at the end of the 4th season of The Wire, one of the series' biggest tear jerkers and that's saying a lot. When he's unable to keep the 13-year old Randy out of a group home after he's been outed as a snitch, he completes loses it as he knows the kid's life is ruined.
  • Michael has one when he sees a small child run out of Junebug's house, while Chris and Snoop kill him and his whole family.
• Heroic BSODs are frequent with Jack Bauer, but the two most noticeable ones are when Terry and Renee are offed. The latter gives us a superb example of what happens when Heroic BSOD combines with Berserk Button and Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • He also has a major one when he is forced to kill Curtis Manning, in which be breaks down crying, vomits, and tells Bill that he can't do this anymore. It takes a small nuke, literally, to snap him out of it
  • Chloe O'Brian suffers one when she witnesses Edgar Stiles collapse and die from exposure to nerve gas during the fifth season, so much so that she curls up in the corner of the room and refuses to do anything until a conveniently-present clinical psychologist snaps her out of it.
• Played for laughs in one episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Ray sees Robert's girlfriend eat a housefly and gets frozen in place until the end of the scene, which is several minutes. Since an episode is only 24 minutes long, his BSOD lasts probably a good 10-15% of the episode.
• Chance has somewhat of a delayed one at the end of the first season of Human Target: after failing and letting his partner get kidnapped, he goes all out rescuing him, and then drops off the face of the earth and joins a remote ashram in Nepal. 6 months later, a client finally finds him, quietly meditating, and drags him back out into his former life.
• Marshall of How I Met Your Mother goes into one when he learns his father has died. It causes him to go into a several-month spell where he moves into his mother's house and starts acting like a kid before Lily finally manages to snap him out of it.
• Britta has one in Community episode Interpretive Dance when she realizes Jeff is in a committed relationship.
  • It also happens to Abed when he finds out his favorite show has been cancelled and when he finds out his mother wouldn't be visiting him for Christmas.
• Mary has one in Soap when Burt, her husband, eventually tells her that he killed her first husband (which isn't a surprise to the audience because he said it aside in the very first episode).
• On Home Improvement, Jill gets one after learning her father died. It's made much worse for her over the fact that the last thing she told him was a lie. She gets better after she and her mother are able to comfort each other.
• Frank Black gets one in the end of season two of Millennium.
• Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy retreats entirely into his own mind (helped along by alcohol) after the abduction of his son his literal catatonic BSOD starts in the last 30 seconds of season 2 and continues throughout the premiere of season 3, with remnants cropping up episodes later as well.
• This happens a lot on The X-Files. Mostly because it's a high-stress, high danger job and Mulder and Scully tend to go berserk when they're involuntarily separated as a result. Of course, since they're both highly protective with quick tempers, the sequences usually goes: Bad Event - Heroic BSOD - Roaring Rampage of Revenge. In other words, don't expect either of them to be incapacitated by a Heroic BSOD for long. Run. Run as fast as you can. Whichever one you didn't hurt is going to kill you.
• Quincy had a fine moment when Dr. Quincy, in one episode dealing with child abuse, practically lost it and nearly strangled and assaulted a man who had been ritually beating his own son.
• On Red Dwarf Kochanski is sent into this state by the squeelookle-ing sewer pipes in "Duct Soup".
  • Also, Kryten in "Beyond A Joke" after an incident involving lobster and ketchup.
• Various storm chasing shows have shown not just the victims, but occasionally the chasers themselves reaching these when a storm turns deadly. On Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers, Reed Timmer has one as he watches a tornado during the April Dixie Alley outbreak.
• In I Love Lucy, Fred has one when he realizes he is on the hook for a lot of money. (I think it's the episode where they're buying a car to go to California). He doesn't snap out of it until he's told he isn't on the hook anymore.
• The Mentalist - Patrick Jane suffers one when his actions cause a serial killer to torture his wife and child to death. Ends up in the loony bin for a while before a therapist sticks his mind back together.
• Sherlock - the titular character gets one of these in series 2 episode 3, "The Reichenbach Fall", upon realizing that Moriarty's next move is to kill John, which would be a Fate Worse Than Death which drives Sherlock to (fake) suicide.
  • John also gets one in "The Reichenbach Fall" after said Fall.
• Warehouse 13's Claudia Donovan is showing signs of this in the third season finale after Steve Jinks's death. The blank look on her face throughout the episode is quite unlike her, and her And This Is For moment was bone-chilling.

1. ↑ They transplanted organs from a recently deceased patient of J.D.'s. It turns out she died of rabies. It didn't really help when Dr. Cox notes how J.D.'s initial failure was a godsend for Cox's patients in the form of said transplants.