Love Makes You Evil

""I feel like we hear the phrase "love and justice" a lot, but no one seems to ever mention "love and evil". An evil guy whose love is deeper than the ocean. If the object of affection is narrowed down to Celty, then I am one. If it's for the love between Celty and me, I'm pretty sure I can become as bad as bad can be. ""

- Shinra, Durarara!!

The Power of Love ain't always a good thing.

How many times have we heard this? "I did this for you! So we could be happy together!" Love can be a strong motivation for good. But if you're in a Love Triangle, or your loved one is dying of cancer, it can also be a great motivation for murdering the hypotenuse, making a Face Heel Turn, embracing The Dark Side, selling your soul to the devil, raping your love interest, cursing yourself by opening the Tome of Eldritch Lore, up to causing The End of the World as We Know It.

This often happens when a simple love spirals into a dangerous obsession; the love goes out of control, becoming their number-one motivation beyond everything else, including their reason, morals and others' well-being, and they self-destruct in the end. A common yet severe manifestation of this is usually cries of "If I Can't Have You Then No One Will." If both lovers follow the downward spiral, you may end up with Outlaw Couple or Unholy Matrimony.

Sometimes it's not quite "love" but the lack thereof that drives a rejected suitor to serve the Big Bad for revenge. The object of their affections will probably think whatever damage they cause is All My Fault.

Sometimes the person who will go to extreme, evil lengths for love is a villainous Stalker with a Crush who has no grasp of the true concept of love, and emulates it as best he can. With knives.

Sometimes it's a genuinely well-meaning, severely Genre Blind Love Martyr who wants their beloved to be happy or protect them from their enemies, even if it means damning themselves in the process. They will hear endless rants of What Were You Thinking? before breaking out in cries of My God, What Have I Done? and dying nobly, using their last breath to assure their beloved, "I still love you. I always will love you."

Frequently the motivation for the sympathetic Fallen Hero to fall. The belief that, had he been a little less lenient, a little less forgiving, that special someone who was Stuffed in A Fridge might still be alive. Leading into Well-Intentioned Extremist territory.

An especially unpleasant use of Love Makes You Crazy. Might start with, or end in, Destructive Romance. Since this is both a Love Trope and a Betrayal Trope, there will be spoilers. Compare Evil Virtues, where a villain has love as a good trait. Also see Yandere (disambiguation)

Anime and Manga
"Alicia: She was a really kind person. Because she was so kind, she broke ..."
 * Onigumo from Inuyasha was already pretty damn evil before he met Kikyou, but it was his desire for her that prompted him to sacrifice himself to a horde of youkai and become Naraku, the Big Bad of the series, who is much, much worse than Onigumo was as a human, considering the vestigial trait of Onigumo's POTENTIAL to feel guilt and empathy an unacceptable weakness to be purged from himself.
 * Mazinger Z: Dr. Hell fits the trope to the letter. He was psychologically unstable before... but when he fell in love with a cute Japanese student attended his college he became obsessive, jealous (he even fumed if she spent time with someone else) and erratic. When he found she was in love with someone else, his mind finally snapped out completely. He thought everyone was out to get him, and attempted to Murder the Hypotenuse (he stormed into the campus with a shotgun!). That incident (and another more where he tried to help someone and he got the crap beaten out of him for it) were his Start of Darkness. He dedided Humans Are Bastards and he would make everyone pay. People had shunned him out of scorn or indifference before, but from that day they gave him a wide berth out of fear because he already started looking Obviously Evil (and downright creepy).
 * Ranma ½ makes quite a heavy use of this, for a comedy series. Shampoo wants Ranma to return her love, so she tries to use Love Potions on him and has no qualms about contemplating Murder the Hypotenuse, though she only actually attacks her rivals if she's convinced she can do so without hurting her reputation. Ukyo Kuonji can be just as bad as Shampoo in the manga, but still keeps some trace of this in the anime. Mousse is the most common offender of attempted Murder the Hypotenuse due to his unrequited love for Shampoo. Ryoga Hibiki abuses his curse to take advantage of Akane Tendo's naivety due to his obsessive crush on her, at least once tried to use a Love Potion on her, once contemplated living together with her in a haunted cave forever so she would always want to cling to him for protection, and once tried to murder his rival for her hand -- while his direct motivation was to make Ranma Saotome stop hitting on him (having accidentally got him with the aforementioned Love Potion), he openly recognized that killing Ranma would leave him with Akane by default.
 * Gendo Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion takes the phrase 'you're worth the world to me' to its (insanely) logical conclusion. He tries to bring about the apocalypse, in fervent belief that this will reunite his mind and soul with that of his wife, Yui..
 * Chikane Himemiya from Kannazuki no Miko does this to the point of  This is all so that her friend will be willing to   This is because she is guilty over killing that same friend
 * Lelouch vi Britannia in Code Geass, to a certain extent. Lelouch seems to be rather affectionate towards his sister, to which many fans have joked that he has a sister complex. Lelouch often dotes on her and promises that he'll create a better world for her... which essentially means manipulating, blackmailing, sacrificing, and disposing whomever he wishes to ensure that his rebellion in Japan achieves a violent revolution against the Holy Britannian Empire.
 * There's also the Alternate Character Interpretation saying that Lelouch's love for his sister is the only thing keeping him good and if he didn't have her he would take the step from morally ambiguous Anti-Hero to ruthless Villain Protagonist.
 * Another more explicit example happens with
 * In R2.
 * Let's not forget that
 * And not to be outdone,
 * If we go to parental love, then  fit in to a T. They not only were as much in love with each other as persons like them could be, but they
 * Also,
 * Mao's psychotic devotion to C.C may be a more conventional case of Love Makes You Crazy, but if Nina counts as this trope, he would too.
 * In Gankutsuou,
 * This trope spawns Judai's Stalker with a Crush (Yubel) and all the problems in Season 3 of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.
 * Yu-Gi-Oh!: While we're in that neck of the woods, we shouldn't forget Pegasus and his dead wife.
 * And of course  in 5D's. So evil that she claims   Thought technically, not so much evil as
 * Sailor Moon: Uranus and Neptune surrender to Galaxia, willing to be Brainwashed and Crazy as long as they're together. To their credit, they plan on overthrowing her -- it just doesn't work out that way.
 * The most outright example, however, is Queen Beryl and her obsessive love for Mamoru aka Tuxedo Kamen aka Endymion in the first season. Fiore also goes the route of the villain to get at Mamoru in the R movie. Another one would be Katzy/Cooan in R and her own love for Rubeus. Also Zoicite, despite being already evil anyway, does most of his evil to please his boyfriend Kunzite, who then goes a little Ax Crazy to avenge Zoi's death.
 * And in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon loves Tuxedo Mask so much that she's willing to destroy the world for him.
 * And that's not mentioning Prince Dimande's little obsession with Serenity. Of course, he ended up  which may point out that underneath the whole trying-to-destroy-Earth-for-revenge thing, he's not all-together a terrible person... Sort of.
 * That's only in the anime. In the manga he tries to
 * A common theme in the second half of Mai-HiME, which claimed more than its fair share of characters:
 * Shiho (out of her love for Yuuichi )
 * Shizuru (out of her love for Natsuki, ),
 * Mikoto (out of her love for ), and
 * Yukariko (out of her love for ).
 * In the manga, Shiho's desire to be with Yuuichi leads to her . Similarly, Alyssa's loyalty to her mother causes her to go along with her plans.
 * Nina in Mai-Otome She not only loves, but is in love with her adoptive father Sergay, who works for Nagi dai Artai. Seeing that Sergay is Arika's Anonymous Benefactor pushes her over the edge, unlocking the power of Nagi's Ultimate Black Diamond. She attacks Arika in a rage, . She works to further Nagi's plans, first to prevent him from punishing Sergay for withholding information, and is partly motivated by a belief that she can no longer turn back.
 * Also Tomoe, who is obsessively in love with Shizuru. She plots against Arika, trying to get her expelled, killed or otherwise unable to get between her and Shizuru, and later.
 * Shin from Hokuto no Ken kidnapped the protagonist's fiancée, Yuria, and became a wasteland overlord in his attempt to win her love.
 * Later in the same series, Souther is revealed to be enslaving children to build him a giant pyramid all for the sake of his beloved master, who he had been tricked into killing. In the end Ken declares that Souther was the one who loved the most of all.
 * Subaru from Tokyo Babylon and X 1999 starts out as a sweet, kind, overly caring boy. Sometime later after the man he's in love with, Seishirou, destroys everything he cares culminating eventually with, Subaru decides to replace Seishirou as the Sakurazukamori assassin.
 * is an example of a well-meaning one,.
 * We also have, who wants to   If she has to destroy the world to release the person she loves the most from such a cruel burden, she will
 * This and Idiot Plot are the main tropes leading to the ending in School Days.
 * The Twelve Kingdoms is a notable example in that there don't seem to be any romantic interests that actually end well (maybe because sex isn't a requirement for reproduction in that world?). UST throws jealousy fuel on the drama fire for the mains, and all the rulers shown so far that take consorts end up screwing up tremendously (and one queen's unrequited love for her partner ki-rin leads her to drive all women out of her kingdom).
 * Higurashi no Naku Koro ni gives us a case of psychosis and mass murder over a bad case of one-sided Love At First Sight. And psychosis and murder over brotherly love. Twice. Essentially, Love Makes You Evil and crazy. This is played straight with, but subverted with , who is horrified at 's plans.
 * Brain Powerd, one of the more recent Yoshiyuki Tomino anime, pulls this off not with romantic love, but with motherly love.
 * Psycho Electro Precia Testarossa of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, in regards to parental love, is one of the most spectacular cases ever. As the Alicia in Fate's dream put it:

""When a man learns to love, he must bear the risk of hatred.""
 * The sorceress Alcyone from Magic Knight Rayearth went nuts after because she loved him, only to learn that he was in love with . This leads her to join forces with season two's Big Bad to help her accelerate the destruction of Cephiro. Note that
 * Also,  fell into this trope.
 * One of Patrick Zala's main motivations in Gundam Seed was.
 * Subverted(ish?) in Ask Dr. Rin. Tokiwa appears to be obsessed with becoming Meirin's boyfriend, but . However, he seems to have feelings for her even afterward, and the series never made clear exactly how in the first place, so it's at least possible, if not likely, that the two are connected.
 * The Yandere (disambiguation) Yuno from Mirai Nikki tries to justify her evil deeds and homicidal tendencies by saying it's all for Yukiteru's sake
 * In the GSC Arc of the Pokémon Special manga, the Mask of Ice, . His motivation behind resurrecting Team Rocket was
 * This is  Freudian Excuse in Fruits Basket.
 * Misa Amane from Death Note. She loves Light Yagami because he is Kira, and then she loves Kira because she feels she's in debt to him for killing the burglar who murdered her parents when Misa was young. And because she loves Light... Misa becomes the Second Kira.
 * Stefan Levin from Captain Tsubasa was a normal and talented Swedish soccer player until his beloved fiancée, Karen, died in a car accident. Before she perished in his arms, Karen begged him to do his best and become the top player in the world... Little did Karen know that the emotionally devastated Levin would become an emotionless boy in pursuit of technical perfection, injuring his rivals if it was needed to fulfill his vow. Poor Müller and Akai, indeed.
 * Fei Wong Reed from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle is all but outright stated to be this. He's enacting a centuries long unimaginably complex Gambit Roulette that involves the death of millions (if not billions- at least one UNIVERSE has ended by Ass-chin's deeds), all for the sake of bringing someone he loves back to life. Or keeping her from dying. Un-dying? Un-unkilling her? Terminology gets really confused at this point, as does the reader. She died years ago, but a Reality Warper told the universe to not notice it; Fei Wong wants to either keep this state of affairs or make her 100% alive rather than zombie-ish.
 * Naturally,.
 * Wendy from the Read or Die the TV, who sheds her clumsy demeanor to becomes a cold advisor all out of admiration for Joker.
 * A recurring theme in the current arc of Naruto, is that love (not exclusively romantic love) can lead to hatred and war. This is seen in and  Start of Darkness.
 * is revealed to have been this in the Shinobi War. He loved  and wanted to protect it. He pulled HORRIBLE shit on everyone to do so.
 * as quoted by Tobi or :

"I feel like we hear the phrase "love and justice" a lot, but no one seems to ever mention "love and evil". Evil guys whose love is deeper than the ocean. I think there are many such guys out there in the world, don't you? If the object of affection is narrowed down to Celty, then I am one. If it's for the love between Celty and me, I'm pretty sure I can become as bad as bad can be."
 * In Seton Dobutsuki Risu no Banner, most of the villainous, bowtie-wearing Spitzohr's dirty doings revolve around attempting to steal away Sue, whom he loves. (This includes getting the hero doped out of his mind on shrooms in one episode.)
 * In Spiral, Kanone wants to kill all of the Blade Children... because they're basically cursed abominations not meant to exist blablabla, yes, but also because "all of the Blade Children" includes his best friends (and himself) and he really thinks it's for their own good, just so they don't suffer more than necessary, don't fall into despair like he has, don't lose their selves (a very real Threat), etc. This leads to many breakdowns of the "Why don't you understand me ?!" kind.
 * In Prétear, a Magical Girl named Takako falls in love with Hayate, but he rejects her. In her despair, she calls the forces of darkness to her and becomes the Princess of Disaster. And in the anime, when the Knight Sasame realizes that nothing he can say or do will convince Takako to become good again, he reveals that he's always loved her, and betrays the Knights so he can stay by her side (even though he's fully aware she doesn't love him).
 * Many of the clients' stories in Nightmare Inspector involve love in some way. Said stories almost always involve murder, or occasionally suicide. Although sometimes things are a bit cheerier, and love just causes much emotional suffering.
 * From Bleach, we have, whose close friend was killed by her shinigami husband, after she had scolded him for killing his comrade in battle. So what he does is join up with  . Talk about Disproportionate Retribution.
 * Jesus, . In chapter 415 we finally learn that  . Talk about going to great lengths.
 * Vincent from Pandora Hearts will do anything, anything for his brother Gilbert, whether Gilbert likes it or not (almost always "not"). Gilbert himself is at least sometimes in the Love Makes You Crazy category for Oz. It hasn't been revealed how far he'll actually go for Oz.
 * Glen is shown in flashbacks to have these tendencies.
 * Rozen Maiden has both Suigintou and Kirakishou subject to this, although Suigintou's case is not as severe as Kirakishou's. Still, Suigintou loves her father so much that she is willing to discard almost all signs of friendship just to meet father and become Alice, . Kirakishou, however, takes it a few steps further and imprisons past and present mediums of the other dolls in crystal, having some kind of love-crazy obsession over both the mediums and the dolls. . Interestingly enough, Suiseiseki, who is also motivated by love, manages to avoid this trope completely, and can arguably be classified as the most caring doll in the series, despite her habits.
 * With its various murders and other crimes over the year, it's only natural that Detective Conan should visit this trope from time to time. This includes cases where the victim's obsessions with the person they loved led to blackmail, and eventually their murder. And in one case . It's not only related to romance, either. There's also:
 * Sibling love (
 * Parental love ;
 * A son/daughter's love for their families ;
 * Friendship ;
 * A mentor/teacher's love for their pupils
 * The yaoi manga Under Grand Hotel has a few examples. In the first few scenes we see Lain Brody in he gives Sen a blowjob, strips him, drugs him and outright molests him as he's drugged (including telling him "No way in hell am I letting Sword Fish kill you. Because he doesn't love you. I'm the only one that can kill you."), rapes him with a mop handle, ties him up and hides him in a dryer. And when Swordfish finds Sen he gives him CPR. Lain responds to this by stabbing Fish in the arm with a fork and screams at him, "Get off of Sen! He belongs to me!" Immediately after that Lain is shot and killed by security guards.
 * Also, Swordfish acts in such a manner whenever Sen is involved. He threatens anyone who expresses an interest in Sen with death, kills the guys who raped Sen saying that he did it for Sen's sake even after Sen told him not to kill them, moves out of Sen's room and lets a rapist move in when angry with Sen, and slices the throat of another one of Sen's rapists right in front of him while saying "I love you, Sen." This being after he tried to get Sen to kill the guy himself but Sen refused. He also nearly raped Sen to almost death in one scene.
 * And Norman's in love with Swordfish but pretended to be in love with Sen so he could get closer to Swordfish. He tried to persuade Swordfish to kill Sen but that didn't work. So, on one occasion when there was a scuffle going on he tried to get Sen out of the way by stabbing him with a pencil but accidentally ends up stabbing his inmate Walter instead.
 * In the Trigun manga, Hoppered the Gauntlet joins the Gung-Ho Guns so that he may  Also, Leonof the Puppet Master may have run away from home to become a Gun after being rejected by a woman he loved.
 * Near the end of Mirumo de Pon, it's revealed this is the Big Bad 's Freudian Excuse for turning to The Dark Side and wanting to destroy Mirumo and the Fairies' royal line: in his younger days, he got cruelly rejected by the girl he loved. Mirumo is not pleased when hearing this and chews Dark out a new one, calling him an idiot and a pain for such a ridiculous motive.
 * Alois of Black Butler II once stabbed out Hannah's right eye apparently to get Claude's attention.
 * Cardcaptor Sakura: The villain of the first movie is an ancient sorceress who fell in love with Clow Reed...and after a battle with him, he sealed her away in another dimension inside a book. As she captures Sakura's friends and family, and nearly drowns Sakura in the climax, most of her dialogue is simply "Where is Clow Reed?!"
 * Marco, Manipulative Bastard par excellence and quarterback/quarterback spy for the Hakushuu Dinosaurs in Eyeshield 21 is motivated entirely by his desire to impress his crush--and upperclasswoman--Maria, manager of the team. To do so, he institutes a regime of brutal plays, using Gaou and Kisiragi to cripple the quarterbacks and recievers of other teams. In the process, of course, he only drives Maria further away. Interestingly, she may have confessed her feelings to him after his final defeat.
 * Shinra of Durarara!!, despite being an otherwise nice guy, has explicitly identified himself as this.


 * Quite a few cases in Muhyo and Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation
 * Enchu worked hard to become an executor so that he could support his sick mother. His Start of Darkness was his mother dying of illness around the same time that he lost the position to Muhyo. Several characters notice that he's a potential victim for this trope, as Page tells him that one of the reasons he was passed over was his preoccupation, and.
 * joined Enchu after her mother's death, especially after two Executors refused to help her.
 * The Cortlaw siblings- Kid, Ivy and Mick- want to bring their parents back from the dead.
 * Panza became attracted to Roji after he showed her kindness by giving her a spare application form, and was thus desperate to be noticed by him, enabling Teeki to manipulate her into joining Ark.
 * The haunt that Muhyo and Goryo are competing to exorcise is that of a single mother who went insane after her daughter was killed in a traffic accident, obsessively creating the dolls that her daughter wanted as a gift (which her haunt form uses against the heroes). Eventually, the spirit of the daughter intercedes, and while the daughter would have gone to Heaven while the mother went to Hell, both end up in the Styx (essentially Purgatory) by way of a compromise
 * SD Gundam Force has this trope by way of Deathscythe's Start of Darkness. His obsessive love for Lacroa's Princess Rele is what led him to join the Dark Axis, hoping to hijack the kingdom's magic and use it to become human like her.
 * An oddly literal example from Princess Tutu: Also, in a more traditional example,
 * Rune of Karakuridouji Ultimo nearly rapes Yamato when his feelings for him go unreturned. As well as the other evil things he does out of love for Yamato.

Comic Books

 * Inverted with Thanos of the Marvel Universe, who was evil from the very beginning (or best case, a Noble Demon), but through it found love in (the Lady Death) itself. However, their tumultuous relationship has been known to drive him crazy at times.
 * Black Adam in The DCU first turned to totalitarianism when his wife was killed while he was away. Eventually (as in thousands of years later) he started to reform, especially when he fell in love again with Isis as seen during 52.
 * Later he combined this trope and With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
 * Harley Quinn in the DCU. She was a psychiatrist at Arkham asylum until she was assigned to the Joker. Falling in love with him, she broke him out and joined him as his girl sidekick. To what degree the Joker returns her feelings is questionable, ranging from 1% to zero. However, almost all her evil acts are an attempt to secure his affection.
 * Also, in some versions, this is why Mr Freeze is a villain, for the love of his Ill Girl wife Nora.
 * And according to The Killing Joke, The Joker himself would not be who he is if he did not (once upon a time) have good intentions to give his late, pregnant wife a better life.
 * Ramona Flowers of Scott Pilgrim has seven evil exes that the titular character must defeat, and in a few cases the ex-boyfriends have been hinted at as being not exactly evil to begin with, but turning evil after the inevitable breakup.
 * Depending on the writer, Marvel Comics villain Whirlwind is this. At one point, he accuses the Wasp of "owing" him, because his attacks on The Avengers were attempts to get her attention.
 * Skurge the Executioner fought on the side of evil because he was in love with Amora the Enchantress. She merely strung him along, using him as valuable muscle, since he was strong enough to fight Thor.
 * In the Squadron Supreme limited series, Golden Archer  after she rejects his marriage proposal.
 * Hyperion's extradimensional duplicate after falling for her. Admittedly, this is more accurately an example of "Love Makes You More Evil Than You Were Already".
 * At some point in time during The Ballad of Halo Jones, Toby the robot guard dog brutally murders his owners in secret. When Halo listens to his old memory tapes and hears her friends dying, she asks herself why he did it. Whereupon he promptly appears in the room and says "Love, Halo. I did it all for love." Toby's owners had left him to Halo in her will and the apparently the robot dog's love for Halo was powerful enough to override any programming he might have along the lines of "Hey, robot dog, don't kill your owners." Cos Halo is just that sexy, obviously. Anyway, Halo pretends to be pleased that he loves her that much, but Toby can tell from her heartbeat that she's hell terrified, so he attempts to kill her. And fails, of course.
 * 's ultimate motivation in Identity Crisis. The "so we can be together" quote in the trope description is even repeated, almost verbatim, at The Reveal.
 * In the Sonic the Hedgehog comics, Fiona Fox pulled a Face Heel Turn because she fell in love with Sonic's Evil Twin Scourge. At least, that's her story; considering who we're talking about...

Fan Fiction

 * Koga from The Sun Soul qualifies for this trope. He might have
 * MALIK from the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command/Lilo & Stitch/Invader Zim crossover series Both Syllables is a dedicated, if misguided and aggressive, space ranger... until she meets Zim, and goes over to the side of the planet-conquering Irken Empire.
 * "When Voldemint was in Hogwarts before he became powerful he gut his hearth borken. Now do you fink he would still become Volxemort if he was in love?"
 * In Til the Sun Grows Cold and the Stars Grow Old, a fanfic of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, this is the reason behind Zant's conquest of both the Light and Twilight realms -.
 * In The Official Fanfiction University of Middle-Earth, all of the Legolas fangirls are willing to stab each other.

Film
""Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled, but passion is not the same thing as love. Controlling your passions while being in love, that's what they should teach you to beware, but love itself will save you, not condemn you.""
 * Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars.
 * The Legacy of the Force novels also have Jacen going dark for similar reasons. In one novel he flat-out admits he's doing exactly what his grandfather did, but he's confident he can do it right.
 * The irony being, he unites the galaxy in the end, so he wins after all.
 * Whats interesting about Anakin is that his love for his son made him good again.
 * Jolee Bindo from Knights of the Old Republic puts it best:


 * When Sarah finally confronts Jareth at the end of Labyrinth, he claims that he's put her through all this because he loves her. Whether he is sincere, taking a desperate gambit to delay her until time runs out, or trying to tempt her to The Dark Side is an open debate. Most of the Fanfic community (naturally) falls into the first camp or a combination of the three.
 * The hidden setup of So I Married an Axe Murderer as we find out in The Reveal. It is questionable, however, on whether, who is the culprit is actually insane the whole time.
 * The version of Dracula in Bram Stoker's Dracula declares war on God because of love (specifically, because his fiancee killed herself upon hearing lying reports of his death, and the church taught that her act irredeemably damned her soul to Hell).
 * The 1956 horror film The Black Sleep stars Basil Rathbone as a 19th century neurosurgeon named Cadman who uses experimental brain operations to turn his colleague into a mindless brute with an incestuous longing for his daughter and keeps him around to force his daughter to work for him, has his assistant abduct homeless people with promises of shelter and pay, destroys a test subject's ocular faculties so he cannot see and escape, frames his star pupil for murder, fakes his pupil's death, and then blackmails him into helping him or risk exposure. Why is Cadman doing this? So he can learn enough about how the brain functions to save his wife from a paralyzing brain tumor.
 * Imhotep in The Mummy Trilogy. He spends most of the two movies he's in trying to bring Anck-Su-Namun back. And, you know, raining down the ten plagues of Egypt and sucking the life out of anyone who stands in his way. He's a combination of Love Makes You Evil and Cursed with Awesome, with some Bad Powers, Bad People thrown in for good measure (that is, even if you weren't so evil to begin with, becoming able to rain down the ten plagues of Egypt is a sure sign of villainy). In a rather brutal twist, it turns out that all of Imhotep's actions were in vain. He finds out in the last moments of his life that Anck-Su-Namun doesn't love him as much as she loves her own life, and she certainly doesn't love him as much as Eve loves Rick.
 * Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels.
 * Auntie in the Japanese campy slapstick horror-comedy movie House (Hausu)
 * The Three Musketeers (1993 version). Arthos has a bit of a story about love. It doesn't end well.
 * In The Brain That Wouldn't Die (seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000), Mad Doctor Bill Cortner only went Jumping Off the Slippery Slope when his fiancee Jan was decapitated in a car crash and he had to use Mad Science to turn her into a Head In A Pan; going from just "borrowing" spare limbs for medical research to cruising strip clubs and seducing Broken Birds to get a replacement body for his loved one, even as she only asks "Let me die".
 * The Hole combines this with Love Makes You Crazy in not just one, but two examples, owing to its use of The Rashomon. In the first version of the story, Liz explains that  In the second, true version, it is revealed that
 * The loss of his wife is what primarily pushes Khan over the edge in Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan. Not that Khan was ever a nice guy, of course, but beforehand he was an apparently sane Social Darwinist, as seen in "Space Seed". Nero has similar issues in the new film due to his own dead wife.
 * This can be said of  in The Dark Knight after.
 * In every incarnation of Little Shop of Horrors, Seymour slowly becomes a murderer because he believes success is the only way to win Audrey's heart.
 * Doctor fuckin' Phibes!
 * In Hot Fuzz
 * Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear from Toy Story 3. After believing he was spurned by his owner (who loved him more than anything in the world), he becomes a twisted tyrant of the daycare center and a G-rated nihilist.
 * If you assume that this trope could come up in a film called Love is the Devil, you are most certainly right in doing so.
 * It appears that this is Horvath's true reason for betraying Merlin and siding with Morgana in her quest to destroy the world in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. He just couldn't handle.
 * In The Last Circus it is Javier's love for Natalia that leads into his downfall and eventual descent into insanity.

Literature

 * The Silmarillion: Maeglin of Gondolin lusts after his cousin, Idril. Since he can't have her, Maeglin ends up willingly betraying Gondolin's position to Morgoth. Notable in that Maeglin was the only elf to ever be sexually perverted. Ever.
 * In the lay of Leithian, Gorlim betrays Barahir & co to be reunited with his wife Eilinel. (Also because he'd been tortured quite a lot by that point.)
 * One of the main themes of A Song of Ice and Fire is that love isn't much of a motivation for good. Jaime Lannister, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish, Lysa Arryn all did some pretty awful things which they claim was motivated by love. It's also at the root of the original civil war against the Targaryens.
 * It's interesting to note that in the case of Jaime, as soon as his near-worship of Cersei begins to wane, his  begins.
 * It's difficult to get a solid reading on the motives of Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish because of all the effort to which he goes to conceal his motives from rival players of the Game of Thrones, but the going interpretation from what little he's let slip is that he . Or, in short, Murder the Hypotenuse turned Up to Eleven.
 * Amazingly, bar one or two rather glaring setbacks, he actually succeeded with a lot of that, though one suspects he couldn't have foreseen just how bad things have gotten.
 * When it comes to glaring setbacks, the worst is probably . Possibly worse is that Littlefinger has been spending a fair amount of time with his childhood sweetheart's daughter, in a creepy dance that seems equal parts treating her like a daughter and treating her like a replacement love-interest for her mother.
 * Skulduggery Pleasant: Caelan justifies  as this, claiming that   seduced him, broke his heart and drove him to , it was even his Motive Rant while he was  , but it's very likely that his "reasons" mostly exist in his head, and he's truly just a severely screwed up individual.
 * Sailor Nothing:.
 * Eponine of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables provided a relatively mild example of this: in love with Marius, the quite literal boy next door, and aware that he was besotted with Cosette, Eponine disguised herself as a boy and lured Marius to the barricade, intending for them to die together. She eventually took a bullet intended for him and died giving him Cosette's letter, though to this day her motives are debated. Considering that Hugo's own daughter Adele became utterly obsessed with a soldier, running away, printing fake marriage announcements, and even trying to drag him to a hypnotist so that he'd marry her, she may have inspired some Truth in Literature on the part of her father.
 * In Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, it is only once Claude Frollo falls in lust/love with Esmeralda that the nastier sides of his personality come out. Pretty much every instance of death and disaster in the book occurs as a direct result of his obsession.
 * Used straight in Harry Potter...sort of. J. K. Rowling has said that she thinks of Dumbledore's youthful flirtation with world conquest and Muggle subjugation as the result of his blinding, infatuated love for Dark-Wizard-in-the-making . Of course, this doesn't acknowledge that the Dumbledore we saw in Deathly Hallows was exactly the kind of Machiavellian bastard with a thing for controlling people who would be drawn to that kind of ideology himself. (And if that weren't enough, he's got a tragic backstory involving Muggles attacking his sister for being a witch, an act which effectively destroyed his family and left him understandably bitter.) Dumbledore himself acknowledges his character flaws, which is why he's never sought Ministry offices (the reason for which is something that Harry never quite understands).
 * Inverted with the Big Bad of the series, Lord Voldemort. A running theme in the books is that his evil stems in part from the fact that he can't understand love.
 * It's possible that Dumbledore had a crush on  that caused them to spend time together, and that he influenced Dumbledore into becoming the Muggle-hating bastard he was until his Dead Little Sister prompted his Heel Face Turn.
 * "Kissin' Kate Barlow" from Holes, driven by grief over the loss of the man she loved, becomes an infamous outlaw. Previously, she was innocent Katherine Barlow who made delicious peach preserves and taught schoolchildren.
 * CS Lewis believed that, without divine grace, human love is ultimately selfish and eventually destroys the object of its affection. In other words, Divine Love Redeems, but Human Love Makes You Evil. This plays out in a few of his novels:
 * In Till We Have Faces, Orual's love for her sister Istra leads her to unintentionally cause Istra to be exiled. At the end of the novel, Istra and the gods forgive her.
 * In The Great Divorce, it's not uncommon to hear damned souls demanding that those they love in Heaven accompany them back to Hell. What makes it worse is that, in this story, there is nothing -- besides their own Pride -- preventing the damned from being redeemed and entering Heaven themselves.
 * This, however, is not love, as Lewis makes anviliciously clear via his Author Avatar: Excess of love did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty. I do not know how her affair will end. But it may well be that at this moment she's demanding to have him down with her in Hell. That kind is sometimes perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say the love in endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it.
 * Agatha Christie loved this trope. Many of her characters' motivations for murder came out of love for their significant other. Notable examples include,  , and  . In Nemesis, the girl whose murder instigates the plot is said to have died because of "love, [...] one of the most frightening words there is in the world."
 * Scrooge's greed in A Christmas Carol ultimately stems from his desire to marry and provide for his impoverished childhood sweetheart, who has no dowry. Unfortunately, the turn his personality takes in scrabbling to be wealthy kills Belle's love for him.
 * One of the major themes in KJ Parker's Engineer Trilogy. After being condemned to death by the Mezentine Empire, Ziani Vaatzes  because, in his own words, "I'm in love with my wife, you see. If I die, I'll never see her again. So I had to live. It's that simple." It's made all the worse by the fact that Vaatzes knows exactly what the consequences of his actions are going to be and plans them meticulously in advance...but never thinks of himself as having a choice in the matter, because love is making him do it.
 * Ashfur in the Warriors Series He nearly murders his former Love Interest Squirrelflight and her  children by blocking their escape from a raging fire, all so that she could feel the pain he had when she rejected him. He also attempted to murder her father previously, for the same reason.
 * Show Within a Show example: In The Mirador, Mehitabel stars in a play where the villain commits multiple murders to win the heroine's love and tries to justify it by telling her it was "all for you".
 * Hester Shaw in Mortal Engines Predator's Gold.
 * In The War of the Flowers, 's Face Heel Turn begins with his love for a fairy.
 * In Juliet Marillier's Son of the Shadows, the heroine's rejection of a suitor makes him more and more evil, culminating in several attempts to kill her lover, among other things.
 * Kirsten in Deltora Quest 3: Shadowgate..
 * K.J Parker's Scavenger Trilogy: Several characters cause great harm under the influence.
 * This could be a subtitle of Wuthering Heights, although it would tie with Love Makes You Crazy. This obsessive, unhealthy love and infatuation between Catherine Earnshaw-Linton and Heathcliff contrasts with the later romance between Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw.
 * Great Expectations: When Miss Havisham falls in love with Compeyson, who takes her money and then leaves her (he was a swindler and a thief), she decides to use her beautiful adopted daughter Estella to wreak vengeance on men. She eventually sees the error of her ways, which leads to an My God, What Have I Done? moment before.
 * Definitely the case for Vlad Dracula and Elizabeth Bathory in Count and Countess. To get to Elizabeth's time period, Vlad has to find a way to outlive his natural lifespan. For that cause, he will do anything. Even if it turns his entire nation against him.
 * The Tortall Universe's Provost's Dog (Beka Cooper) series has, who joined the dark side in a misguided attempt to secure a future for the woman he loved,.

Live Action TV
"Londo: "All I want now is revenge and safety for my people. The rest of the galaxy can BURN for all I care.""
 * Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 6 goes Psycho Lesbian and tries to invoke The End of the World as We Know It.
 * There's even more to it than that. Willow goes Psycho Lesbian, sure, but it's a personal vengeance thing,, at which point she feels all the pain and suffering in the world and decides to put everyone out of their misery.
 * And how can we forget Buffy's first boyfriend, Angel, for whom it was quite literally true? After experiencing "perfect love and happiness" in Buffy's arms, her beau reverted to his evil, soulless counterpart Angelus.
 * Even Spike could fit this trope somewhat. While he was first evil, he slowly fell in love with Buffy and more or less turned good by fighting at her side. When Buffy and him began a purely-sexual relationship, Spike did not stop bothering Buffy to make her to upgrade their relationship. She constantly refused and, when she finally put a stop to it, he turned back into his evil and Her cutting remark ("Ask me again why I could never love you!") prompts him to switch backt back to the good side after, but it took defeating demons in Africa to get his soul back and earn a chance at a real Heel Face Turn based on something other than getting in Buffy's pants.
 * In one episode bewitched girls consider killing buffy so they can get together with Xander... yeah magic.
 * in Lost murdered  and sold out his friends to the Others to save.
 * Ianto Jones in Torchwood tricked his boss into giving him a job so he could hook up his potentially murderous girlfriend in the basement and hopefully revert her to human form, and even after she tried killing him, he tried to defend her. She could have killed the planet - he saw what happened with the other Cybermen.
 * Kassia in the Doctor Who serial "The Keeper of Traken". She desperately wants to stop her husband becoming the next Keeper, because then she would lose him. As it turns out, she succeeds in this. But by then she's not around to see, he still doesn't make it to the end of the serial, and the rest of the Traken Union doesn't outlive her by very much either.
 * Also The Master to The Doctor, according to certain fans.
 * When the power to destroy worlds falls into the hands of a small child who wants his mother. As the Doctor puts it, "There isn't a little boy born who wouldn't tear the world apart to save his mummy. And this little boy can."
 * River loves the Doctor so much that Normally, this would only be a matter of Love Makes You Crazy, but when she finds out what she's done, she not only continues, but claims she'll suffer more than anyone else in the universe if she has to
 * In Babylon 5,
 * John Sheridan narrowly avoids this trope... TWICE. When he first sees Mr. Morden come on the station, knowing he had been on the same ship as his wife Anna when it exploded, he has him arrested and held without cause or proof. The act is so much against Garibaldi's principles (who has been known to bend the rules a few times) that he quits. It is only when he is told that there is a greater danger that he snaps back out of his obsession and frees him. The second time, he witnesses Delenn's stabbing and runs down the sociopathic would-be assassin and very nearly kills him... with his bare fists.
 * Given that the latter assassin is a guerrilla under the command of a government Sheridan is at war with, killing him would be perfectly justified.
 * Dangerously Genre Savvy Morden uses this against Londo by murdering his true love Lady Adira and implying that it was done by Lord Refa, Londo's rival:


 * Depending on how one interprets Delenn's connection with Dukhat, this trope might apply here as well.
 * Subverted in the miniseries adaptation of Gormenghast. Steerpike claims everything he has done was for love of Fuchsia, but while he may or may not have felt something for her, this declaration is clearly a lie by which he hopes to further manipulate her.
 * In Noah's Arc,.
 * This was after his composite event in Dollhouse. He just wanted Echo to be the best, after all.
 * Really, this is a large part of Alpha's schtick--his break-in near the end of season one was to get Echo out. When he reappears in season two, it's killing all her clients who loved her--or as he put it, loved part of her.
 * In Jekyll, a modern retelling of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, it's revealed that the psychopathic Hyde is not a manifestation of all the dark impulses of human nature as commonly believed, but represents the ruthlessness of pure love, prepared to sacrifice anything and anyone for the object of his affection. The Split Personality was created in the first place when the original Dr Jekyll fell in love with his servant who due to the class difference he couldn't marry.
 * Over a century later, Tom Jackman earns his Split Personality after he and his wife are menaced by a gang of thugs; Tom's frustration over not being brave enough to protect his wife leads the newborn Hyde directly to the gang's leader. Cue Extreme Melee Revenge.
 * This happened in Charmed a few times. Leo willingly became an Avatar to save his wife and before that, he killed an elder to save his son.
 * Phoebe willingly became the Queen of the Underworld to stay with Cole.
 * And Cole had absorbed all sorts of demonic powers to be reunited with Phoebe.
 * EVERY Soap Opera that has turned a beautiful, intelligent woman with numerous other appealing qualities into a psycho bitch hell-bent on doing everything she can, up to and including murder to hang on to a man who doesn't love her, despite the fact that she could easily get another.
 * Samuel Sullivan on Heroes is a mix of this and Ambition Is Evil.
 * Part of the reason Boomer had a Face Heel Turn on Battlestar Galactica was that Cavil was the only sympathetic shoulder for her to lean on.
 * Chris Keller in Oz kills every guy that Beecher sleeps with, including the guy who murdered Beecher's father, has Beecher murder Schillinger unknowingly, acts overly aggressive with him at times, on two occasions has knocked him out with a blow to the head when Beecher goes against his wishes and later handcuffs him to a chair away from other people where he forces a kiss on him, and finally murders the Aryans so that they don't pose a threat to him or Beecher anymore.
 * As well as Ryan over Dr. Nathan. After she helped him through cancer, he immediately divorces his wife. Later, he forced a kiss on her, paid a fellow inmate to steal her stethoscope, and when she started ignoring him, had his brother Cyril kill her husband. After she was raped, he very quickly murdered the man that did it. It was even said outright that his love for her was more of an unhealthy obsession. However, Dr. Nathan actually falls for him in the end.
 * The Replicator Fifth's obsession with Samantha Carter heightens his reaction to her betrayal, turning him from a nice guy who wants to help Stargate SG-1 to a dangerous foe who kidnaps and tortures Sam, tries to trick her into staying with him, and finally creates a Replicator version of Carter to rule the galaxy with him. It doesn't go quite as planned.
 * Damon Salvatore became the Fully-Embraced Fiend he is today out of a combination of Katherine's Ax Crazy influence as well as his bitterness and jealousy over her refusing to choose between him and his brother.
 * In CSI many cases were caused because of this trope.
 * Crime shows in general love this. You will never find a crime show that doesn't feature this a few times a season at least.
 * In Once Upon a Time, this has been the motive for virtually every villain so far:
 * Rumpelstiltskin took on his evil powers for the purposes of saving his son from the Oger Wars.
 * The Mirror Spirit was a good guy until he fell in love with Regina, the Evil Queen.
 * Regina herself became evil after the death of her lover, something for which she blamed Snow White.

Music
"Love love is gonna lead you by the hand/Into a white and soundless place/Now we see things as in a mirror dimly/Then we shall see each other face to face"
 * Sound Horizon's Elysion Paradise Illusion Story Suite album is full of seemingly nice girls doing really terrible things due to love (like the girl who loves her brother so much that she stabs him to death so they can go to Paradise together, or the one who kills the girl she loves for rejecting her...)
 * The Mountain Goats song 'Love Love Love' is sorta about this. It's off an album about the songwriter's stepfather abusing him as a child; his point was that his stepfather may have done terrible things to his kids, but he still loved them, and love can make you do terrible things.

Opera

 * Giuseppe Verdi loved the trope, as proved by:
 * Count di Luna in Il trovatore.
 * Amneris in Aida.
 * Eboli in Don Carlo.
 * Abigail in Nabucco.
 * Gérard in Giordano's Andrea Chénier.
 * Scarpia from Puccini's Tosca is a subversion - it's not love, it's lust, and he was pretty evil to begin with.
 * Claggart in Britten's Billy Budd, if you interpret it as Foe Yay.
 * Alberich from Wagner's Tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelungs". Rejected by the Rhein Nymph Sisters for being a Gonk, he curses love and steals their gold, creating the infamous ring.
 * Monostatos in Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Professional Wrestling

 * During the late 80s, Randy Savage becomes the Rival Turned Evil because of Hulk Hogan's alleged advances towards Miss Elizabeth.

Tabletop Games

 * In the Fellowship of the White Star event "London Fires,"
 * Which seems to be based off an old Japanese Folklore, so it's Older Than You Think.
 * This is yet another trope that the Ravenloft setting was (literally!) built out of. From Strahd von Zarovich's obsession with stealing his brother's fiancee, to Victor Mordenheim's determination to restore his wife's shattered body at any cost, love -- or, at least, what villains claim is love -- is a far better candidate for the Root Of All Evil than money, in the Land of Mists.
 * In a sourcebook for the D20 Star Wars role playing game this is used as a justification for Jedi not being allowed to love. More often than not it leads to anger, jealousy and the dark side.
 * Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40000: the Chaos god of decay and disease Nurgle is the embodiment of the emotion born out of man's reaction to death, usually interpreted as the emotion of love. And indeed, of all the Chaos gods, he's the nicest to his cultists (who refer to him as Papa Nurgle or Grandfather Nurgle), showering his faithful with gifts. Followers of Nurgle then seek only to bring the joy of pestilence and death to the universe.

Theatre
"Medea: Oh, what an evil power love has in people's lives!"
 * Nessarose, Elphaba's beautiful but unstable sister from Wicked. Her obsessive love for Boq leads her to enslave the Munchkins so he can't leave her. When she discovers he doesn't return her feelings and has really loved Glinda all along, she.
 * Later, in the song "No Good Deed," Elphaba's transformation into the Wicked Witch of the original Wizard of Oz is significantly assisted
 * One of the oldest deconstructions of this trope occurs in William Shakespeare's Richard III. Richard, claiming that because he is "deformed" no woman has ever loved him; as he sees it, there are but two courses in life for men to take - that of the lover, or that of the villain - and because no woman would ever allow him to be their lover, he must therefore become a villain. This, therefore, turns the trope on its ear, into Lovelessness Makes You Evil, leading to a very Cry for the Devil idealism. (Shakespeare then subverts Richard's excuse by showing him, in the very next scene, successfully wooing the widow of a man he killed.)
 * in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sweeney too, but it's just as much about Revenge.
 * Judge Turpin could also qualify, though much like Frollo above, there's more than a bit of lust involved as well.
 * Medea murdered her brother and betrayed her people for her love of Jason. Then in the play he leaves her, and she goes a bit murderous then as well, though that's more about revenge.


 * All the murders in Little Shop of Horrors are influenced primarily by Seymour's love for Audrey.

Video Games
""Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled, but passion is not the same thing as love. Controlling your passions while being in love, that's what they should teach you to beware, but love itself will save, not condemn you.""
 * Sophia Lamb from BioShock (series) 2 - Not only does she say multiple times that she's trying to kill you and destroy free will because she loves all sentient life, she is willing to turn her own daughter into a soulless, brainwashed monster. Because she believes free will is evil, and by removing her daughter's free will she is "saving" her....rrrrrrrrriiiiggggghhhhtttt...
 * The main villain of Tales of Symphonia:
 * Then in Dawn Of The New World, there's Decus who joins an Evil Organization to chase after Alice, who doesn't like him one bit, until
 * Aribeth, the initial quest-dispensing NPC of Neverwinter Nights, does a heel-face turn and leads the villain's army against the city of Neverwinter in vengeance for the unjustified execution of her fiancee at the end of the first chapter
 * The main villain of Tales of Hearts
 * In Super Paper Mario,
 * Dracula in the Castlevania series suffers from this trope as many as three times.
 * First, according to Lament of Innocence, he first became a vampire to become immortal and curse God's name forever in response to his wife's death.
 * Leon calls out Mathias on this in Lament Of Innocence, telling him that Mathias went against what his lover would've wanted him to do (he basically said "did you lover ask you to do this? The Mathias I know would never have loved such a woman!") Leon was understandably pissed off since Mathias' schemes led to Leon's girlfriend being killed by Walter, but was satisfied by simply fulfilling Sara's last wishes.
 * Centuries later, the death of his second true love in a witch hunt convinced him to seek humanity's extinction.
 * This would prove Leon's point again. Lisa explicitly asked for him not to hate humans. Granted, he didn't know her last words till it was too late (but, considering she's a healer who tried to help her village...), but her death is when he starts hating and killing humans. So, basically, Leon's speech could also be a call-forward to Symphony of the Night, and also a glorious note of how History Repeats itself.
 * In the Sorrow games, Soma Cruz can either resist or succumb to Dracula's influence, depending on whether or not he believes that Mina is killed. It's a trick purposefully meant to turn him into Dracula by Ceila, but if it works, it backfires on her.
 * There's also Brauner from Portrait of Ruin, who became a vampire who sought to destroy humanity because his daughters were killed during the war.
 * Add to this the number of protagonists who inadvertently contribute to Dracula's return due to the death or capture of their romantic interests, and one gets the distinct impression that the entire series could have been avoided if everyone could just get over these things.
 * It's implied in Clock Tower 3 that his incestuous obsession for his daughter (and later his granddaughter) was what originally turned Lord Burroughs into the Big Bad of the game.
 * Both played straight and mocked in Metal Gear Acid 2, where the token Evilutionary Biologist turns out to be attempting to reproduce his dead wife's brain in a little girl, bringing her 'back to life' - and is convinced that doing so would turn her into an all-three-faces-of-Eve-at-once God figure (and, just for kicks, start a nuclear war to clear out room for his kingdom). It's mocked when Third-Person Seductress Venus says it's so romantic that someone would do all that for love, after which Snake points out that it's probably the opposite of romance, and quietly marks her down as a Yandere (disambiguation).
 * In the Playstation game Valkyrie Profile, Lezard Valeth kidnaps his old teacher's husband, turns him into a hideous monster, gets the monster to kill said teacher, murders multiple elves to make a homunculus that appears to be around ten years old, and tricks one of his old classmates into killing themselves by becoming a Human Popsicle, so that he can force the main character to incarnate into flesh and marry him. When that doesn't work, should you earn the best ending, . To top it all off, he gets away with it all, even though he doesn't succeed. His lack of success is the only thing keeping this editor from copying this entry and placing it right in the entry for Magnificent Bastard.
 * And that's just in the first game. In the sequel, he
 * You could make a compelling argument that this happens to, despite it being portrayed positively and causing the best ending.
 * If doesn't pursue her love of, then everything goes incredibly well and you win Ragnarok with no casualties.
 * If she does pursue her love . It Got Better though, which is the only redeemable factor. Even so, despite being less spectacular the end result from the B-Ending is better than the love story A-Ending.
 * In The World Ends With You, Beat
 * His evil is limited to attacking Neku a few times, as he never erases any other players..
 * Used by Raphael Sorel in the later Soul Calibur games, where he essentially tries to infect the world (with his plague that causes suspiciously vampiric traits) for a little girl, his adoptive daughter Amy. How far this love goes is up to you.
 * In the second episode of Trauma Center,
 * Partially played straight in Final Fantasy IV, as no-one's entirely sure how much of  betrayal is due to his unrequited love for Rosa and how much is due to Golbez's mind control. He later admits that he's not entirely sure either.
 * Shadow of the Colossus plays it fairly straight, depending on where in the Alternate Character Interpretation you fall. Wander's whole motivation for coming to the Forbidden Land, making a deal with a dubious sealed entity, and slaughtering peaceful giant creatures is to revive his dead love.
 * Fire Emblem is pretty fond of this one:
 * Mystery of the Emblem's Hardain.
 * Genealogy of the Holy War's Alvis loved Deirdre so much he.
 * Fire Emblem's Nergal  Averted with Dorcas; he joins a gang of bandits to earn money for medicine for his Ill Girl wife, but you can have Lyn talk some sense into him, tell him that the wife is her protegé now and convince him to join her side
 * Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones has,   and
 * Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance has
 * Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn has
 * Jolee Bindo of Knights of the Old Republic, four thousand years before the events of Star Wars, knows that the Jedi of his time are shifting to the view that Love Makes You Evil, and having lived alone in the forest for twenty years thinking back, makes the case to the player that this isn't so.

""You mages refuse to provide me that which hastens the inevitable fate of two people in love, when only one is too naive to see it. I wish you all ruin.""
 * Bindo's observation comes from some hard experience.
 * Also, part of the reason turned to the dark side (at least if the player is male) was that she was terrified of falling in love with him.
 * A quest chain in World of Warcraft has you track down old journals and records and undelivered letters to piece together how one Stalvan Mistmantle fell for a girl he'd been hired to tutor and murdered her, along with her whole family, when she didn't requite him. In the new expansion, one of the wishing coins you can fish out of the Dalaran fountain seems to indicate he first looked for a Love Potion:

"For the first time since he was born. Probably, no definitely, the only time in his life. -Michael Roa Valdamjong fell in love with that white woman- "" This is the first time. Not an impulse, but truly Roa's heart. The only remaining emotion. Roa's personality had long died, but it continues to exist without disappearing, that eternal memory. "?? I, see." That's why---he hated Arcueid so much. The woman who stole his purity. Just an instant. He only saw her for an instant, but his heart was stolen. That hated True Ancestor that caused his purity to fall. That existence. He hated everything about that white vampire princess. "?? What a mistake." What a mistake it was. Roa hated her so much that he reincarnated so many times and always waited for Arcueid to come pursue him each time. For that, he did anything. He deceived Arcuied, fooling her when she didn't even know she was a vampire, and let her suck his blood. Becoming a dead apostle of Arcuied, he used her power to destroy the remaining True Ancestors, and waited for her. Why did he not understand? The hate that caused him to reincarnate and wait for Arcueid. That isn't hatred. The man called Roa was so pure, he didn't even understand his own emotions. To think about someone else so much it makes you go almost crazy. That feeling is very similar to hatred. But, merely a single word. If this man called Roa could have been told his feeling was love, he wouldn't have made this mistake---"
 * The root of Fandral Staghelm's descent into evil is the death of his son in the War of the Shifting Sands. Xavius thus manipulated him into grafting a corrupted twig onto Teldrassil by using an image of his son.
 * Tragically repeated in the latest patch. One of the more prominent flame druids, Leyara' backstory reveals that
 * Alma from F.E.A.R. is pretty much like this. Then again, if you don't wish to be loved by her, she'll just.
 * Roa of Tsukihime was apparently a very pure and probably decent person before apparently falling in love with Arcuied at first sight. He decided it was hate for some reason, so he tricked her into drinking his blood, making him a Dead Apostle and making her kill off all the other True Ancestors. Apparently all he wanted was for him to like her...
 * To expand on that, Roa was a completely pure priest and member of the Church's Burial Squad. He was doing some research on immortality until the point where he first saw Arcuied. The moment he saw her, he fell in love, but because until then he had never felt either love or hatred, he was confused. Thus, he decided that the pain in his heart must be hate; It's actually quite a tragic chain of events.


 * Caster from Fate/stay night. At one point in UBW her arrogant, calculating masks slips and she's absolutely scared to death about her prospects. She's started doing horrible things, much worse than she did as in pursuit of a goal she doesn't believe is actually possible. It's not helped along by Kuzuki's incredibly emotionless behavior.
 * Odin Sphere has probably the most pure expression of this ever seen (at least in the top five).
 * Another love-related emotional scar happens to the Black Knight, Oswald. Oswald is a human raised by a Fairy noble, Melvin, and loves and respects Melvin as his own father.
 * Magus of Chrono Trigger - he in fact  as is implied in the early game, and is instead , with no regard for the well-being of anyone else in the world.
 * Shadow the Hedgehog in Sonic Adventure 2. After he loses Maria, he promises revenge, and mistakes Maria's last wish for happiness, as the other way around. He tries to destroy the world, and it's only after a talk with Amy, he relises his mistake, and corrects his mistake.
 * Shadow in his own game can go either way. If gone down the dark side, Black Doom revisits Shadow's memories of the attack on the colony, and can than change his ways, or go insane with power and destroy the world!
 * Viking: Battle for Asgard: Rakan fell in love with Freya and was subsequently rejected by her. In her defense, the narrator explains that mortals are rather fragile creatures and a relationship with a God would probably kill them.
 * Riku. Good lord, Riku.
 * Obsessive need to "play hero" with an unconscious Kairi + an equally obsessive rivalry with Sora = basic premise of the first Kingdom Hearts.
 * In Half-Life 2, Dr. Judith Mossman works with the evil Dr. Breen, and betrays the resistance, so that her mentor Eli Vance could survive capture and be promoted to a position of power among Breen. Ironically, it's likely she was responsible for his capture to begin with. When it's clear Breen had no intention of setting Eli Vance free (or letting him live), she switches sides again.
 * Actually, its implied that this is in fact a plan to get close enough to Breen to stop him.
 * In Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, it's revealed that the reason Don Paolo hates Layton so much is over a woman at their college, though Layton was rather oblivious to the his feelings about the subject at the time. One of that game's antagonists was also driven by his feelings for the same woman, though his hatred is not so much at Layton as
 * One of the main themes of Rule of Rose could be said to be "love screws you up, and makes you treat others horribly".
 * from Arc Rise Fantasia takes this to extremes, becoming a Yandere (disambiguation) vampy high priestess of a Religion of Evil upon learning that she was the hero's Unlucky Childhood Friend.
 * In Blaz Blue,

Visual Novels

 * Denny and Capek, the first two antagonists of Shikkoku no Sharnoth. The latter is necromantic, and the former has some twisted motivation about becoming king in order to win love.
 * Hatoful Boyfriend has a route called "Bad Boys Love". Why is it called that? Most likely because it's about all because of 's unrequited love for  that caused him to do his best to fulfill his promise to said love to  in the best way he knew how. Of course,.

Web Comics
""Zimmy is straight up lying. She knows the best way to keep a friend is to make them think everyone else hates them.""
 * In Sluggy Freelance, Oasis's love of Torg has taken her into serious Yandere (disambiguation) territory, complete with trying to kill anyone she sees as a rival for Torg's affection(including chocolate ice cream), chaining Torg up so she can force him to marry her, and at one point planning to sow herself to Torg with industrial strength cable so they can never be apart. As seen in the "Phoenix Rising" arc, when she's not actively pursuing Torg she's ... well, not exactly good, but definitely more of an Anti-Hero than a Villain.
 * However, in Oasis' case, her insanity is due to her strange and large unrevealed abilities, which allows her to be resurrected from death, but radically alters her personality Solomon Grundy style; she could be completely Ax Crazy one incarnation, and rational and contemplative the next. On the other hand, before meeting the heroes she was mind controlled by a villain, whose brief order to love Torg has been thought to have conflicted with later orders, which is thought to be the root of her insanity in the first place...
 * Even though Oasis herself came up with the idea, it's not at all clear she actually changes personalities between incarnations, as opposed to just as a reaction to different events and circumstances as part of her instability.
 * There was also the "Love Potion" arc, where the titular Love Potion brings out the most violent and destructive side of love in everyone it's used on.
 * Except Bun-bun: "These lightweights just can't handle their evil."
 * It should also be noted that
 * Gunnerkrigg Court: Even in a world where there aren't any outright evil characters, love can make you do evil things. Zimmy loves Gamma more than anyone or anything else in the world; so to make sure Gamma never leaves her side, Zimmy intentionally mistranslates what her peers say, to convince Gamma that all the other students think she's stupid and ugly. Yes, Word of God (specifically The Rant below this page) confirms that this is intentional:

"Growp: You're like a work of art, Emily. Battling you fills me with emotion. I've never met someone who could match my ferocity, my brutality. Emily: If you adore me so much, stop trying to kill me. Growp: You don't understand, do you? To kill you would complete this piece of art, would be an expression of life, of being. And your death can only be art if the kill is made by the master skill of a hand as poetic as mine.....Grrr! What I'm saying isn't coming out right, what I'm trying to tell you is... Is that... I... I love you."
 * Now, granted, given what Zimmy's like, if I were in Zimmy's position, I'd be pretty petrified of having to rely on my winning personality too.
 *  Diego. Dear God man you made the robot cry. And
 * And Reynardine's backstory, when he fell in love. . . involved killing someone.
 * Smiling Man from The Crossoverlord was a hero, who travelled through Alternate Universes with his beloved wife, until something went wrong, and she started to merge together with all her alternate counterparts, including evil, sick and dead ones. This forced guardian of The Multiverse to kill her, which drive her husband crazy and turned him into a sick mix of Slasher Smile, The Chessmaster, Emperor Scientist and Multiversal Conqueror.
 * The Order of the Stick gives us  soul-splice arc. Although lust for power and control had a big influence on the eventual decision to take the fiend's deal, the initial motivation for contacting them truly was out of fear for
 * In Collar 6 this seems to have happened to.
 * Spacetrawler:


 * In Haru-Sari, we have

Web Original
""And I won't feel...a thing...""
 * Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog is about a comically ineffectual supervillain who is constantly humiliated by his Arch Enemy, Jerk Jock Captain Hammer. Dr. Horrible doesn't truly start to turn evil until Hammer steals his would-be girlfriend, Penny, making it personal and driving him to attempt to Murder the Hypotenuse. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
 * And then the Bittersweet Ending reveals that, Doctor Horrible has become even more evil.


 * "What these comics are trying to tell us is that love ultimately leads to death, destruction, and the devil. In other words, love no one. Ever."
 * Theatrica

Western Animation

 * Berry from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends entered the house sweet and innocent, but fell in love with Bloo and became a psycho, a condition which appears to only get worse the longer she's in love with him. The second time we see her she is genuinely homicidal. This may have been her true personality all along, however.
 * Danny Phantom has Vlad Masters/Plasmius who tries to murder his once best friend to obtain the woman he loves, not to mention try and constantly Mind Rape Danny into being his surrogate son, later going as far as making a perfect clone of him.
 * The ultimate irony is that in an alternate timeline, Vlad ends up marrying Maddie, but it's not a happy one due to the fact that he's a total control freak. What's more, Maddie still prefers Jack.
 * Harley Quinn, although listed above, did originate in the DCAU. She is shown to be a generally good (If crazy) person when on her own. Being in love with The Joker though, brings her to all the depths one would expect.
 * Other characters in BTAS that represent this trope are Mr. Freeze and The Mad Hatter.
 * Nox, the Big Bad from Wakfu. His love for his family  drives him to do terrible things. Up to and including genocide.
 * A bit subverted with Total Drama World Tour. After her entire team thinks she's evil, and even sing about her!
 * Darkwing Duck has Knight Templar DarkWarrior Duck becoming bad all because of losing Gosalyn.
 * On Word Girl, Tobey's villainy seems to be at least somewhat motivated just by his desire to interact with Word Girl.
 * On Young Justice, turned evil at some point during the Time Skip between season one and season two because of the double whammy of  He snapped and promptly
 * In The Legend of Korra,  reason for joining the Equalists was

Real Life

 * Truth in Television
 * And can be subverted.
 * John Hinckley, Jr., who shot Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. It didn't work.