• In Death Note, Light Yagami is this to his girlfriend Misa; being a psychotic Serial-Killer Killer, he wins her allegiance by killing her parents' murderer and quickly turns her into a cruder, deadlier version of himself. Not that she minds, or that she wasn't more than a little unhinged to begin with.
  • Light does the same thing to Mikami and Takada later, once Misa has outlived her usefulness. He's kind of a jag.
• In Fairy Tail, Erza essentially accuses Kagura of being this for their mutual friend Millianna, saying that since Millianna has finally started to live on her own after many years of being enslaved at the Tower of Heaven, and several more of being manipulated into working for Jellal, Erza doesn't want her caught up in Kagura's plan to get revenge on Jellal for killing Simon (Kagura's brother and Erza and Millianna's friend). Kagura angrily replies that it's something Millianna chose for herself.
• In Fate/Zero, Gilgamesh is this to Kotomine Kirei. He helps Kotomine discover what brings him joy in life, which seems harmless until you realize that Kotomine's joy involves the suffering of others. Although, the reason why Gil took an interest in Kotomine's sense of pleasure is that Kotomine considers it a sin, which would be odd if Kotomine were to feel pleasure like a normal person would.
• Hidoku Shinaide: When meeting Maya for the first time, Nemugasa's mother immediately believes him to be this for her son because of his dyed hair and piercings, prompting her to question whether her son is drinking, partying or using drugs, and to put him in cram school to reduce the amount of free time he had so he wouldn't hang out with Maya. Akira intervenes after hearing of this when he introduces himself to Nemugasa's mother and convinces her that the opposite is true: Nemugasa is a Positive Friend Influence on Maya.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean has a example mixed with The Corrupter: Dio, one of the main perpetuators of events in the plots of Part 1, 3 and 6 (alongside indirect involvement in 2, 4 and 5) has shown that, before the events of Stardust Crusaders, he had a friend he treated as a equal — a priest named Enrico Pucci. Their conversations are one of the most human, casual points we'd ever seen the god-complex possessing vampire as of yet, even going as far as apologizing to Pucci after an impromptu loyalty test that could have very easily ended in his death. While it is unknown if Pucci's darkness was there and Dio only added coals to the fire or if the vampire conditioned him to be as ruthless as he would be, it is clear that at the modern point of Part 6 he has become a fanatical, murderous monster with a savior complex. Regardless of Pucci's own mistakes, Dio was there to secure his dark path (even if it is unknown if the relationship was openly abusive).
• In Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Fujiwara is a bright student who used to have much better exam grades. However, Shinomiya and Shirogane's psychological battle during the weeks prior to exams includes them blatantly lying about their studying habits and giving one another and Fujiwara bad advice, like not studying at all for the exam. Fujiwara, trusting her two smart friends, has fallen well down the rankings as a result.
• A rather tragic and accidental scenario occurs in Kaitou Saint Tail when Seira's well-meaning idea of helping Meimi show off her magic while helping the town as a Phantom Thief ends up slowly driving Meimi towards a mental breakdown, because it ends up exacerbating her lack of self-worth into full-on Samaritan Syndrome and causes her to crack under the pressure of keeping a whole part of her life secret. Seira does show signs of realizing what's happening to Meimi over the course of the series, but she continues to give Meimi "jobs" and enable her into trying to become a symbol for the city, only really realizing how bad things had gotten at a point where Meimi won't even listen to her (very minimal) advice to stop if it gets too harsh. It ends up being Asuka Jr., the Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist-turned-Deuteragonist and Meimi's boyfriend, who stages the necessary intervention to save Meimi and her mental health, and a manga bonus chapter has Sawatari address how Seira's mentality became so warped.
• Maria no Danzai: While Kiritaka's bullies were already pieces of trash since they were younger, being befriended by Okaya drew out their worst facets and made them trashier still, to the point that they would collectively revel in watching their latest victim get outright tortured.
  • Before Okaya, Kowase contented himself with taking Panty Shots of the girls at school and selling them online; after Okaya, Kowase would indulge himself by physically and sexually abusing girls like Yashima.
  • In fact, it would seem the only reason the gang focused so hard on Kiritaka was solely because Okaya wanted to make him suffer: although they spent an indeterminate amount of time bullying Yuda, after Kiritaka became their new target the gang completely forgot Yuda even existed.
  • When they first met in elementary school, Kinugawa was already an ill-tempered, problematic child who was regularly beaten up in secret by one of his teachers. Then Okaya got involved and made it so that Kinugawa could get back at him however he pleased; while Kinugawa contented himself with doodling on Daimon and bruising him a few times, Okaya went so far as to drive Daimon to commit suicide through a Sadistic Choice, which immediately made Kinugawa realize what kind of demon Okaya was and, out of fear for his own safety, encouraged him to accept his "friendship". In the present, Kinugawa is a violent nutcase, incredibly quick to anger and utterly impossible to calm down once he gets started, constantly using his friends as an excuse to pound people into paste.
• My Hero Academia: Tomura Shigaraki explains to Izuku at the climax of the series that, even if he gave up his personal hatred, he would still step up to be the Big Bad because the villains, particularly the League, need a hero of their own to carry out their wish of destroying the world. It's a revelation that's implied to be something he's only just realized himself.
• The primary duo of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans have a reciprocating case of this trope towards each other:
  • For Mikazuki Augus, Because Orga promised him when they were young to take him to a new world, Mikazuki holds him to that promise. Mikazuki for his part, despite being perfectly willing to be used as a tool to fulfill Orga's dreams is also constantly pushing Orga more and more into callous thinking being the one to snap and force him out of grieving Biscuit's death and later disobeying Orga's orders against fighting the Mobile Armor. That being said, in the wake of Shino's Senseless Sacrifice and Orga's resulting frustration and grief from it, he shows awareness of his role in often pushing Orga to go far, even too far, and doesn't sound proud of it.
  • As for Orga Itsuka, it's been brought up off and on that, both he and Mikazuki have a mutually toxic relationship with one another. On Orga's end, he relies on Mikazuki's skills as a pilot even though it's continually coming at the price of the functionality of his body. Despite his guilt over this, Orga also can't find himself willing to actually bench Mika for his own good.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, nearly every bad decision made by Garma Zabi, from launching an insurrection to his fatal obsession with the White Base, was made with Char Aznable pushing his buttons. In particular, Garma had a deep need to prove himself worthy of the Zabi name, to step out from his siblings' shadow and show that his rank is not simply due to nepotism, and Char exploits this every chance he gets.
• In The Rising of the Shield Hero, Ren is the most reasonable of the Three Heroes, to the point that he's the only one of them that Naofumi seems willing to trust. However, this only lasts until he's in a group with Motoyasu and Itsuki, at which point he'll tend to follow along with their idiocy.
• Rei Hino (Sailor Mars) from Sailor Moon occasionally has the tendency to encourage the other Guardians (particularly Ami) to pick on Usagi. This is even more prevalent in the DiC dub.
• The narrator of The Tatami Galaxy sees his best friend Ozu this way. Turned on its head at the end of the story when we find out that Ozu feels the same way about him.

• Inferno, the teenage version of Sun Boy in Legionnaires, was an insufferable lech and a pig, and Live Wire often acted similarly whenever the two were together. Granted, Live Wire was already something of an ass himself, but he'd act even worse when Inferno was around. Their bullying of poor Cera Kesh is what made the girl easy prey for the Emerald Eye of Ekron.
• Sunny's older brother Dale in the Sunny Series starts hanging with two boys his senior year of high school, and get him involved in substance abuse; their mother complains about that Sladek boy being "no good" when he sneaks off to get milk and he blows it off by saying he took Sunny for ice cream. His drinking and pot smoking results in him being shipped off to Military School after he drunkenly hits his sister Sunny, which he resents. When he's supposed to stay at home on New Year's Eve 1976 with Sunny and Deb (and his brother Teddy), he instead runs off with them that night and possibly gets involved in knocking over the block's mailboxes. This is all played out realistically and Sunny has lots of angst about it, even being upset when she sees the two boys driving by while Dale is at military school and remembering how their actions are affecting her.
• Cheshire does this a lot to Roy Harper in Teen Titans, mainly because she's the mother of his child. Roy has had a hard time getting over Cheshire, with the main factor being he doesn't want to make Lian watch her mom spend the rest of her life in jail, even though they both (Roy and Lian) know she deserves it for destroying the country of Qurac For the Evulz. Cheshire got even worse after Lian died in Justice League: Cry for Justice, whereby she eagerly takes advantage of Roy's mental deterioration to gang up on Deathstroke. Why? He shot her and made her look like an idiot.

Crossovers

• In the Worm x Dishonored crossover fanfic A Change of Pace, Glory Girl's violent tendencies when it comes to dealing with crime are starting to rub off on Taylor, only she doesn't have any fighting experience to pull her punches or a healer like Amy. Tattletale points out that this is the sort of thing that Shadow Stalker got drafted into the Wards for.
  Tattletale: Five concussions. Numerous broken bones. Not to mention all the complaints the police department is having to field. There are also a ton of groups that would love to add you to their lists of examples why the government needs to crack down on independent capes.
• In contrast to Optimus' relationship with Lelouch, Megatron's friendship with Suzaku in Code Prime is slowly eroding the latter's morals, in addition to causing other problems. In particular, Suzaku's faith in Britannia and, to a significantly lesser extent, the Decepticons, is starting to border on Blind Obedience and Black-and-White Insanity, while his actions are beginning to verge on Knight Templar. This is exactly what Megatron wants. Fortunately, Suzaku realizes how evil the Decepticons and Britannia are by the end of R1 and joins the Autobots and Black Knights to truly redeem himself.
• Compulsion (Lead Zeppelin): Alex continuously questions Taylor's moral and ethical boundaries, pushing and nudging her to consider going past her limits.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Sara Diktaylis despised Chloe so much that she manipulated practically all of their classmates in 5-E into becoming a Gang of Bullies. This leads to the whole class getting into massive trouble when the truth comes out, negatively impacting all of their future prospects. Sara is eventually forced to confess WHY she did all of this, revealing herself as a False Friend and causing them to realize that it really was All for Nothing.
• A Loud Among Demons: Blitzo actively encourages Lincoln to engage in bad behavior whenever possible:
  Blitzo: If anything seemed like it could make a lot of dough on the black market, don't hesitate to steal it. Make horrible decisions sport!
• Played for Laughs in My Huntsman Academia. Izuku hangs out with Yang so much that her Pungeon Master tendencies rub off on him, resulting in him punning without even meaning to. This gets taken to the extreme in one non-canon sidestory in which all of his friends sit him down for an intervention to get him to stop punning, but he won't even while Katsuki threatens to blast him to pieces.
• Pale-Snake: Taylor compares White Snake to being an Inversion of The Conscience; he encourages her to be much more ruthless and vindictive in how she deals with her opponents, such as figuring out some way to get enough leverage to send Shadow Stalker to jail.
• Raise Your Voice Against Liars: Lila changed the majority of her classmates for the worse. Even after she leaves, the negative impact lingers: Alya remains incredibly stubborn and refuses to admit she did anything wrong, while Adrien remains an Extreme Doormat who continues to insist on prioritizing and protecting the feelings of bullies over their victims.
• Turnabout Communication: With a huge stretch on the "friend" part, Nakanaka goes along with Yamai's plan to give testimony to incriminate Tadano and ensure he gets found guilty during the trial, partly because she considers Yamai her friend and genuinely thinks Tadano assaulted her. It ends up backfiring on her as, despite Yamai's promises that she wouldn't get into trouble, Athena exposes her lies during the cross-examination, and an angry Yamai snaps at her saying that she doesn't actually see her as a friend.

The Amazing Digital Circus

• In The Memory Lane Disaster, Ribbit is shown to have first explained Jax the theory that any player trapped in the Circus would become an archetype and encouraged him to be "the funny one", lashing out and berating him when he displayed hints of Hidden Depths. Pomni is deeply unimpressed by Ribbit's behaviour, deeming them a terrible friend to Jax.

Amphibia

• In An Alchemist Abroad, Sasha convinces Sprig that he needs to "take charge" of his friend group if he doesn't want to risk being left behind by Ivy and Maddie, effectively trying to mold him in her own image. She also schemes to sabotage Ivy and Maddie's friendship with Marcy if she doesn't manage to win their favor.
• Living in a Frog World: Frank Ramirez used to be friends with Anne. He was also willing to stand up to Sasha and her mind games, so she turned Anne and Marcy against him, ruining their relationship to the point that Anne was willing to steal from his family's store.
• A Theory of Butterflies and Other Insects:
  • Thanks to Sasha encouraging Anne to ignore her pesky conscience whenever they're hanging out together, Anne ignores the bad vibes she's sensing from King Andrias and gives him the music box immediately. Andrias goes on to become an example in his own right, manipulating her into becoming his Unwitting Pawn.
  • Sasha initially terrorizes Wartwood with her various pleasure-seeking antics. While scolding her for this, Hop Pop notes that as far as he's concerned, the worst part is how she's roped Sprig and Polly into misbehaving right alongside her.

Arrowverse

• In Never Be Silent, Oliver fears that his cavalier attitude as a superhero, casually ignoring the rights of his adversaries, led Barry to decide to make all the metahumans he fought "disappear" into the Pipeline. This motivates him to start holding himself to a much higher standard.

Assassin's Creed

• AC: Unity Rewrite combines this with Destructive Romance: Elise exploits Arno's feelings for her alongside his desire for redemption, manipulating him into tracking down Germain for her. This only serves to pull him further away from his fellow Assassins.

Batman

• C Listers: Killer Moth boasts about being one for Firefly, revealing that he's been manipulating him from the day they met, encouraging his darkest impulses and dependence upon him so that he'll stick around as his partner.

Buffyverse

• Compelled Series: God-King Illyria becomes one to the Scoobies when she travels back in time in order to help them out. Even Glory is surprised by what she's capable of convincing them to do.

Captive Prince

• (Not) Meant For You: Damen and Auguste's friendship grew over time into mutual codependency, to the point where they could barely function when they weren't together. This didn't do any favors for Auguste's already fragile mental state.

Danganronpa

• I'd Trade My Life for Yours: Angie sees Ryoma as one for the rest of their peers when he defies her efforts to take control of their lives.

Danny Phantom

• Danny Phantom: Stranded: Hanging out with the A-Listers turned Star into a Beta Bitch. Her friendship with Danny inverts this; as she connects with him, he brings out her Spoiled Sweet side, helping her Character Development along until she completely cuts ties with her former friends.
  • In Danny Phantom: Empowered, Valerie admits to Danny that during their A-Lister days, Star was pretty insecure about her appearance and weight so she desperately tried to keep a perfect figure with constant diets and exercising to remain a size small and be as thin as possible. Paulina only made things worse as she fed Star’s insecurities by always trash-talking others' weight in front of her, along with her REALLY unrealistic expectations on how an A-List girl is supposed to look and act, which includes not being allowed to be over 110 pounds and fitting into really small skinny jeans to meet her standards. Danny is disgusted but not surprised that his most annoying, self-proclaimed number one fan would give such toxic advice to someone who she claims to be a friend.

Detective Conan

• Dominoes: Hakuba and Ran believe that they're serving as good influences for Shinichi, encouraging him to follow the rules rather than rebelling against them. Problem is that said rules are set by his abusive, manipulative father, who's transformed them into tools against his son.

Disney Animated Canon

• The Bolt Chronicles: Bolt's friend Duke, who is both sociopathic and a Manipulative Bastard, reawakens the former's latent prejudice against cats in "The Blood Brother." Bolt eventually realizes it, though, and makes amends to Mittens.
• In Not So Black And White, Scraps is shown to be a terrible influence on Dolly.

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

• One Step Ahead: Bloo managed to rope practically everyone staying at Foster's into helping him play a massive prank on Mac on his birthday under the guise of a surprise party. When Mac subsequently decides that he won't visit anymore, the others swiftly realize what happened and stop hanging out with Bloo, who refuses to admit he did anything wrong.

Glee

• Glee Reprise: The leaders of Vocal Adrenaline have been encouraging Monica to ditch Beth, and have been encouraging some Alpha Bitch traits. But Beth hasn't been the best friend either, often being very controlling of her song choices so Monica wouldn't upstage her.

Gylt

• Intense Gylt: Played for Drama. Sally's desperate need for her classmates' approval allows her so-called friends to bring out the worst in her. After her seven-year-old cousin Emily transfers to Sally's school and becomes the target of relentless bullying, Sally's own friends join in tormenting Emily. Although Sally genuinely loves her cousin and wants to defend her, she is too afraid that standing up for Emily will make her the next social outcast, so she remains publicly silent while continuing to support Emily in private. Her friends' toxic influence ultimately leads Sally to betray the very person she wanted to protect. The decision destroys both her relationship with her friends and her cousin: Emily comes to feel deeply betrayed by Sally's silence and eventually disappears, while those same "friends" later abandon Sally, blame her for Emily's disappearance, and Sally becomes the school's newest social outcast. Sally, while searching for Emily in the dark world of New Bethelwood, eventually realized that her so-called friends never cared about her, and they were a horrible influence on her. Her character growth is realizing that and becoming better, as she's determined to save her cousin and be a better sister figure to her.

Harry Potter

• The Best Revenge: Zacharias encourages Ron to join in on bullying Harry. After Ron gets hit by some Insult Friendly Fire, he quickly realizes that Harry's not the snob Zach had made him out to be.

Infinity Train

• It is VERY easy to pin point the exact moment Nora from The Sun Will Come Up, and the Seasons Will Change went from a nice girl to the terror she became in the main part of the story. Not long after meeting Xander, Mary (and the audience) see a memory of her lashing out at her brother Julius. And that is FAR from the worst thing she did to him...

Katamari Damacy

• Kaleidoscopic Katamari: Ace combines this with Toxic Family Influence; the Jerk Jock encourages Dipp to join in on insulting and making fun of their other cousins.

Kingdom Hearts

• A major focus of The Tie That Binds:
  • Ventus hastens Terra's descent into villainy under Ansem the Wise by making Terra promise to run his experiments on people other than himself first. He didn't expect Terra to unleash the Heartless and destroy Radiant Garden, but he never scolds Terra for it and it's implied he thought it was worth it to find Aqua.
  • Xemnas and Ventus constantly pick at Aqua's self-esteem and place themselves in positions of authority over her, completely disregarding her status as a Keyblade Master. Ventus at least doesn't realize he's doing this, but Xemnas does. It reaches the point where even Aqua doesn't see herself as a Master anymore.
    • They're also very controlling, driving away her other friends and generally making decisions for her.
  • Xemnas indulges Ventus and Aqua's worst traits. He refuses to punish them for hurting other members of the Organization and only tries to reign them in if their actions become inconvenient to him. In fact, it's heavily implied he finds Aqua's violent tendencies endearing.

The Loud House

• In Sugar Drop, three of Ronnie Anne's friends direct her to a shop that gives out drugged candy. She later gets Lincoln hooked on the drugs without realizing what's going on.

Love Hina

• For His Own Sake:
  • Naru, Motoko, and most of the other girls at the Hinata Inn turn out to have been a horrible influence upon Sarah. She watched them constantly abusing and assaulting Keitaro, always blaming him for their Abomination Accusation Attacks. This taught Sarah that anyone who tried to stop her from doing whatever she pleases is an idiot who deserves to be beaten up, a lesson she happily carries out of the Inn that turns her into an utterly vicious Spoiled Brat.
  • Downplayed with Shinobu; while she didn't directly participate in abusing Keitaro, the other Hinata Girls amplified her issues with speaking up for herself or anyone else. After Keitaro quits and leaves the Inn, she realizes her Betrayal by Inaction and starts working to become more assertive... something which Naru and Motoko take umbrage with, revealing themselves as False Friends.

Miraculous Ladybug

• Played With in The Babysitting Fiasco: While Alya insists that Lila was the one who came up with the idea of making Marinette handle all of her and Nino's babysitting duties while they take the extra money they're being paid and run around behind their parents' backs, Marinette isn't convinced that the Consummate Liar made them do any of that. Alya's parents are also frustrated by her blaming Lila for everything rather than taking responsibility for her own actions.
• In Court Summons, Lila becomes a Secret-Keeper for several members of Team Miraculous after Ladybug decides to entrust all the temporary holders with their Miraculouses full-time. She encourages them to take this as proof they can serve as self-appointed Judge, Jury, and Executioner, roping them into holding a Kangaroo Court against Marinette with the intent of cursing her before gathering evidence of their crimes.
• Feralnette AU:
  • Rendered as chains and thorny vines winding around Lila's Speech Bubbles... and attaching themselves to her victims.
  • Markov Discusses this with Max after witnessing Lila telling Nathaniel he's got to choose between being friends with Marinette or with Lila and the rest of the class. Max officially breaks off his friendship with Lila the next day when she threatens Nathaniel at school, declaring that "I don't want someone like you to influence Markov into bad behavior."
• Hero Chat: It's pointed out that Sabrina and Chloé were actually this for each other. Yes, Chloé treated Sabrina like a servant, but Sabrina was like that before she met Chloé—she believes that she only has worth when she's acting with complete, ridiculous selflessness, and actually gets mad if people won't let her do things for them. Combined with Chloé's domineering personality and they fed into each other, making both worse. As part of Chloé's redemption, she distances herself from Sabrina, because it's too easy to just start commanding her again. Sabrina, with distance from Chloé, begins to understand she has worth besides what she can do for other people. She eventually is offered the Dog Miraculous, and takes it for the somewhat selfish reason that she wants to protect what she cares about, rather than the stupidly selfless reason of just wanting to be helpful.
• Juleka vs. the Forces of the Universe: Alya encourages the rest of the 'girl squad' to treat Marinette as though she's completely incompetent and incapable of managing her own love life... or anything else, for that matter, making her out to be hopelessly clumsy, tongue-tied and requiring them to 'push' her into everything.
• The Karma of Lies:
  • Lila Rossi convinces her classmates that she's an even better version of Marinette, with better connections and the willingness to use them for her dear friends... while influencing them to turn on their 'Everyday Ladybug'.
  • Marinette eventually realizes that Adrien, Alya, and most of her classmates were actually bad influences on her, as they exploited her generosity while offering nothing in return, and she was convinced that was just how friendship worked... before finding True Companions who help her understand what real friendship is like.
  • Adrien in particular encourages his classmates to take Marinette's kindness and generosity for granted due to his own entitlement and inability to recognize the value of others' hard work. He also pressured Marinette to "take the high road" and let this behavior go unchallenged, claiming that she was strong enough to handle it... even when she warned him that she was near her breaking point.
  • As she's making amends for her past behavior, Chloé also comes to realize that Adrien is an enabler who chose not to challenge her temper tantrums for fear of 'rocking the boat'/making her even angrier, causing her to grow into even more of a Spoiled Brat.
• Karmic Epilogue:
  • Played With; Caline Bustier sees Kagami and Luka as utterly horrid influences on her former star student Marinette... because they helped her grow a spine and escape the All Take and No Give dynamic she was locked into by Bustier and her Fair-Weather Friends. In other words, Bustier herself was a toxic influence, and hates Marinette's True Companions for helping her escape their grasp.
  • This also factored into Alya's Heel Realization. While contemplating an offer she'd gotten to sell Marinette out in exchange for getting her dream job at a sensationalist news network, Alya realized that she was the one who'd come up with most of the Zany Schemes encouraging Marinette's more questionable behavior.
  • Marinette and the other Miraculous heroes only agreed to sponsor the Miraculous Adventures edutainment series if they got to retain enough creative control to determine how they were portrayed and what kind of lessons it taught. This includes Hard Truth Aesops about how to recognize and break away from False Friends and bad influences.
• Leave for Mendeleiev: Marinette is horrified when she witnesses Adrien encouraging Nino to exploit Mylene's akumatization by turning her into the monster for his movie, claiming that it'll be fine since Ladybug's Miraculous Cure will magically fix everything afterwards.
• Marinette Dupain-Cheng's Spite Playlist:
  • Played for Laughs with Chloé, who really, really wants to rope Adrien and Marinette into 'taking the low road' when it comes to dealing with Lila.
  • Treated much more seriously with Lila herself, as her friendship with Alya gradually influences her to change dramatically over time. How culpable Alya herself is for how she changes depends upon the version; in the original, Alya is made out to be much more of an Unwitting Pawn, while the Remix makes her more selectively oblivious, preferring Lila's version of events because she lets her cling to the notion that she's completely blameless.
• Miracle Queen Aftermath: Chloé's negative impact upon Adrien and Sabrina is felt even after her Karma Houdini Warranty finally runs out. Adrien constantly excuses her behavior and tries to guilt-trip and blame her victims, while Sabrina served as her Beta Bitch and helped enact several of her cruel schemes.
• Miraculous Ladybug Salt-Shots:
  • In Toxic Friends, Alya and the rest of the Girl Posse know that Marinette has OCD and deliberately trigger it. They also encourage her taking her crush on Adrien to stalkery levels just because they find it amusing.
  • Downplayed in My Compensation; while Lila's definitely made things worse, Marinette admits that Alya was already taking advantage of her before Lila entered the picture.
• No One Sees Me, But Please Know I'm Right Here features a chain reaction. Not only did Lila successfully turn Alya against her "bestie" Marinette, getting her to Easily Condemn her former friend and become one of her biggest bullies, she also tainted her relationship with Nino. Eventually, Nino realizes that while they still act like they're Sickeningly Sweethearts, he's been following Alya's lead and turned his back on Marinette because he was terrified of his girlfriend's Hair-Trigger Temper.
• One step backwards and Three forwards: Lila successfully swayed Alya and Nino into supporting her, to the point that she was even able to convince them to betray Ladybug and Chat Noir, claiming that it would put an end to Hawkmoth's supervillainy once and for all if he got what he wanted. The resulting Wishes rewrote the world; in the new reality, Alya and Nino are even more firmly under Lila's thumb, clinging to the idea that they did the right thing.
• The One to Make It Stay:
  • While Alya was always driven and confident, Marinette notices that she seems to have only grown stubborner after Lila came back into the picture, and that she's started using some of Lila's favorite tactics, such as Playing the Victim Card and falsifying evidence. Notably, it's somewhat unclear just how responsible Lila is for the growing tension between the two of them, or if Marinette is just getting a clearer look at Alya's issues as she's getting better at standing up for herself. Lila certainly isn't helping, but she's not necessarily completely at fault, either...
  • Alya's Sympathetic P.O.V. in I Owe You Every Joy of Love illustrates just how poisonous Lila's influence is, as she convinces her that Marinette's request for some space is actually a way of breaking off their friendship in a 'nice', backhanded fashion. She also disables the notifications on Alya's phone, causing her to miss some important messages and getting her into serious trouble with her family as a result.
• Queen of Mean AU:
  • Played With; when Marinette decides to start acting like the Alpha Bitch her classmates have accused her of being, she turns to Chloé for help, and fully credits her with her transformation. However, Chloé's inner monologues reveal that she doesn't think Marinette actually needed her guidance; she was already changing on her own. Chloé just befriended her because she didn't want to wind up as one of her targets, and even dropped some of her nastier behavior since she knew Marinette wouldn't approve.
  • Tikki also encourages Marinette to take revenge upon those who'd wronged her. It's heavily implied that she came up with the idea to destroy Master Fu's memory with a potion and put him into a nursing home, and she hisses at Ladybug to "Take the ring" after Chat Noir pulls an Achilles in His Tent.
• Rate this (Trust is Hard to Come By): The only member of Miss Bustier's class who hasn't turned against Marinette is Chloé; everyone else has been convinced that's she's secretly a jerkass.
• Recommencer: Lila leads Alya to become her own antithesis, going from an Intrepid Reporter to somebody who blindly accepts every lie she's fed, with her Ladyblog developing a reputation for being a Shallow News Site Satire...even though she's still completely serious about everything she posts there.
• Their Lament plays with this in several ways:
  • Alya encourages her classmates to treat Marinette as the source of all their recent drama, Staging an Intervention that involves attempting to physically FORCE Marinette to stay while lecturing her about how she should befriend Lila just like everyone else. Yet Marinette points out that Alya was the first of her 'friends' who stood up for her against Chloé, observing how that hasn't changed — her classmates are as Fair-Weather as they've always been.
  • In Adrien's first scene, the way he joins in blaming Marinette comes off as him just placating Alya and following the crowd. Then it's revealed that he betrayed Ladybug and summoned Gimmi, intending to rewrite reality with his Wish, and is subsquently shown to be a much nastier influence in his own right. Something best illustrated with Nino, as he advises him to completely disregard how hurt Alya is by learning the awkward circumstances that led to their getting together, suggesting her feelings don't matter because everything worked out in his favor.
  • Adrien theorizes that Marinette's friends and classmates in the new reality must be terrible influences who turned her against him. Why else would she have replaced Chat Noir? Sure, officially he was stripped of the Ring for his Skewed Priorities, entitlement issues and refusing to take his heroic responsibilities seriously, all things Ladybug regularly warned him about, but he's never been seriously punished for those before...!
  • This attitude bites him in the backside when he bitterly vents about how Cat Warrior must be a horrible influence upon "[his] lady", given how they helped her subdue Chloé and take her in to be arrested after she nearly caused a train crash as Queen Bee. Not only does this reveal his Lack of Empathy to Alya and Nino, he unintentionally lets on that he was Chat Noir.
• Vitiate has Lila slowly but subtly influencing her classmates with lots of praise and "helpful suggestions" that nudge them towards increasingly worse behavior. Such as encouraging Mylène to get more assertive until she gets into an argument with Ivan, or telling Nino that he should be more upfront about wanting to spend more time with Alya even while encouraging Alya to focus on building her portfolio through the Ladyblog. She also encourages everyone to exploit Marinette's generous nature, knowing this will put her in the painful position of having to choose to break off her friendships herself... or else let them keep taking advantage of her.
• Wolves don't Party with Sheep: Despite Luka warning Juleka to be careful around most of her classmates, she still sides with them over Marinette and joins in their Malicious Slander, gossiping and spreading lies about her former friend behind her back. Luka declares his disappointment in her and that he doesn't recognize who his sister even is anymore.
• The Wolves in the Woods:
  • Played With regarding Lila; while she falsely claimed Marinette was bullying her, this version didn't actually intend for things to go so far, being honestly horrified by how the bulk of the class turns on Marinette and drives her away.
  • Ms. Bustier is a straighter example: she refuses to punish bullies for anything they do, insisting that their victims should 'lead by example' by turning the other cheek. This turns most of the class into a Gang of Bullies who fancy themselves to be Bully Hunters, with Bustier refusing to act even when she witnesses their abuse turning physical, blaming Marinette for not placating her tormentors. Adrien proves especially susceptible to her influence, practically parroting their teacher's thoughts.
  • Alya was one for Marinette; when she tries to paint her as 'obsessed' with Adrien, Marlena and Otis point out that Alya was the one coming up with all those Zany Schemes to get them together and strongarming her into participating. She also convinced most of the class to turn on Marinette, and aimed to tear her 'bestie's' self-esteem to shreds out of envy for her accomplishments.

My Hero Academia

• Always paints most of Class 1-A in this light, to varying degrees:
  • The central premise of the story is that Izuku's former classmates effectively abandon him after graduating from 1-A, due to how he lost One For All and was Brought Down to Normal during the Final Battle. While not all of his peers feel great about this, they encourage each other to "give him space", ostensibly for his own good... but in reality, they're avoiding him more because they don't want to deal with him resenting how they've gotten to become Pro Heroes while he was left behind.
  • After reaching out to Izuku and realizing how much he'd been left floundering, Ochako laments how it took four months for her to realize anything was amiss, because she'd trusted her former classmates' judgment too much.
  • Iida and Yaoyoruzu turn out to be Control Freaks, to the point where the latter believes Ochako should give up her feelings for Izuku because she "didn't know what she was signing up for before". She outright lies to Ashido about this, claiming Ochako is choosing to stop pursuing Izuku entirely on her own will instead of being badgered about backing off.
  • Yaoyorozu and Iida also prove to be incredibly toxic influences upon each other, reinforcing their very worst thoughts and impulses. Late in the story, it's revealed that both believe they should get to decide who's permitted to become heroes, and have latched onto the fact they share that belief as proof that they're right.
  • Chapter 6 reveals that Katsuki lied about his achievements during the Final War, falsely claiming he was the one who took down All For One because he didn't want to admit how he'd nearly died. This inspired most of his peers to do the same and similarly lie about or grossly exaggerate their contributions as well.
• The Best Case Scenario, if you're being "realistic":
  • Kirishima convinces himself that Bakugou is "incredibly manly" for his outspoken, defiant and self-centered attitude, repeatedly defending his cruelty and callousness from their other classmates. Despite Bakugou constantly treating him like shit, Kirishima sticks by his side, even deciding to join him during his "vigilante" rampage. He only comes to regret this when it's far too late, after he's been arrested as an accomplice to all the murders Bakugou committed and he realizes just how one-sided their "friendship" was.
  • Sir Nighteye also serves as one of these to All Might. After two students are killed during the League's assault on the USJ, he brazenly exploits All Might's guilt over not being there to protect them in order to manipulate him into following his lead, and later spearheads a campaign slandering the police as useless and incapable of protecting Japan. While All Might doesn't directly support his efforts, that doesn't stop Sir Nighteye from Quote Mining the Symbol of Peace to make it appear he shares his views. Much like Kirishima, All Might is left deeply regretting letting his former partner dictate so much of his life, realizing he has nothing good to show for it.
• In Bone of My Sword, Monoma is part of Class 1-A while Izuku is in 1-B. Monoma constantly brags about how his class is supposedly superior, and since Aizawa practices Selective Enforcement and lets him get away with blatantly bullying those outside 1-A, he encourages most of his classmates' Acquired Situational Narcissism.
• Defused: Eijirou used to regard Katsuki with rose-tinted lenses, ignoring all of his best friend's flaws like his Hair-Trigger Temper and casual disregard for others. After the two of them accidentally destroyed a hardware store while drunkenly sparring, the pair got arrested, with Mina reading Eijirou the riot act and breaking up with him then and there:
  Mina: You're not the person I fell in love with. You let him drag you down! I'm done! Don't ever talk to me again!
• The Multiverse's veins of Silver: Several stories throughout the collection feature Sir Nighteye convincing All Might to betray and Easily Condemn Izuku because the Control Freak takes offense at how HE wasn't allowed to select All Might's successor.
• Rivalry (Winds Carry Far): Thanks to Monoma's Irrational Hatred of Class 1-A, constantly complaining about all their supposed Glory Hounding and harping on and on about the importance to proving their superiority, most of his classmates in 1-B haven't been able to form any friendships or connections with anyone outside of their own class. While venting to Yaoyorozu about it, Kendou laments how she'd let herself get drawn into that overly competitive mentality during the Sports Festival, and how much it cost her.
• Someone Had to Say It:
  • Katsuki brings out the worst in Eijirou, as Eijirou blinds himself to all of Katsuki's worst traits and serves as his personal hype-man. Izumi is forced to physically gag Eijirou to prevent him from furiously attempting to defend his "Baku-bro" after Izumi dared to defend herself from her long-time bully's latest attempt at assault.
  • In turn, both Katsuki and Eijirou have been poor influences on Mina, who has a Jerkass Realization over how she's been defending a bully because Eijirou admires him so much.
  • Further Played With in that the rest of 1-A has been suffering guilt by association. The rest of the students at U.A. assume that his classmates are all self-centered Jerkasses, leading to 1-A being socially isolated. Tooru laments that she wasn't able to sign up for a fashion design club because nobody wanted somebody like Bakugou there, and Rikido mentions that the head of the baking club fainted when he first walked in.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• Anchor Foal: Fleur believes that one of Fluttershy's Fatal Flaws is that she's simply too nice for her own good; in order to help her become better at asserting herself, she aims to teach her how to be cruel and selfish 'as necessary'. This includes setting her up her first date to be with somebody Fleur knows she won't hit it off with, in order to teach her how to reject somebody.
• In Rainbows Mental Scars, Bitter Taste manipulates Rainbow Dash into trusting him more than she does her other friends, eventually hypnotizing and transforming her into Dark Rainbow.

Mouthwashing

• Last Chance: Even after Curly gets a chance to set things right, Jimmy's influence still shines through. Such as when he calls Anya a 'bitch' for being concerned about him spending so much time talking with Jimmy alone, prompting Swansea to point out "You're talking like Jimmy."

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

• Catarina Claes MUST DIE!: Henrietta exploits her friendship with Francine to make her reject Catarina, making clear that it's a matter of choosing between the two, and that she'll dump Francine in a heartbeat if she doesn't do as she demands.

Naruto

• Androgyninja's A Drop of Poison: Sasuke encourages Naruto to act more like him. When Sakura masters tree-walking first, Naruto's in the middle of asking her for help when Sasuke interrupts, convincing him that he shouldn't ask for a girl's help. This escalates into both resenting her successes, something Kakashi encourages by taunting them whenever she outperforms them.
• A Case Study in the Sturdiness of the Rookie 9 plays with this through Team 7. In many ways, Shino and Sakura are good influences on Chouji, helping him remain motivated in the face of Kakashi's neglect... by misinterpreting it as their teacher giving them secret tests and encouraging their independence. They also help him reconcile his moral concerns about becoming a Guile Hero, to the point that he's the one who suggests they betray Ino's trust in the Forest of Death. Ino then subsequently blames Sakura and Shino for corrupting him, unaware that he was the one who came up with the idea... but Chouji also proves to be the most remorseful about the incident, and the first to recognize their mistakes, while his teammates remain in denial.

The Owl House

• The Angel of The Owl House implies that Skara was only bullying others because of her friendship with Boscha.

Pokémon

• Ancienverse: Over time, Seamus comes to realize that Travis served as one for him, getting him involved in Team Brutal/Nova and encouraging him to be just as big a Jerkass as Travis himself.
• Pokémon: A Marvelous Journey: Kirsten, the Alpha Bitch of Julia's school, befriends Lakeisha and manages to convince her to not only partake in bullying Julia, but to treat her sister Merlin like trash because they're autistic...and Lakeisha goes along with it.

Princess Tutu

• An Uncommon Witness: Mytho acknowledges that Rue is this to him, blaming her for getting him involved in the mafia and causing him to become a Fallen Hero.

RWBY

• Raise: Mercury encourages Jaune to finally start venting the frustrations he's been keeping bottled up about how others have been exploiting his ability to bring people Back from the Dead... something Jaune desperately needs after years of abuse, but Mercury's just trying to manipulate him to his own ends, namely into leaving Beacon and meeting Salem.
• re:Bound: Neo's influence causes Ruby to become one to her teammates in turn. She stops listening to anyone whose opinions differ from hers, shows No Sympathy to the problems of others — including her own sister Yang — starts Blackmailing and abusing Jaune, and is just generally a nasty piece of work.

The Saga of Tanya the Evil

• A Young Girl's Delinquency Record: While Tanya blames Murdoch for Jenny's Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, it's made clear to the reader that most of it is actually the result of Jenny following in Tanya's footsteps. Tanya herself simply doesn't realize that.

Sailor Moon

• Played for Laughs in Beautiful Destroyer Sailor Moon; Usagi believes that Japanese society is full of Covert Perverts, and is very adept at coaxing these traits out of her friends.

A Song of Ice and Fire

• In knight of the dreadfort (the ballad of the red king), Patrek Mallister encourages Robbie to sleep around and goof off, leading Lord Rodrik to view his grandson as an Inadequate Inheritor.

Star Trek

• In Heroes, Surak believes that some of Kirk's warrior tendencies have rubbed off on Spock.
• The Star Trek: Lower Decks fic "Displaced" opens with Mariner being sent five years into the future due to a Negative Space Wedgie. One of the details that make this a Bad Future is that Boimler became obsessed with finding out the truth about what happened to Mariner, but this led to him spending time with the conspiracy-obsessed Crewman Levy because even Rutherford and Tendi felt that Boimler was taking things too far. As a result, by the time Mariner appears in the present Boimler has reached a point where his latest theory was that Mariner was on a secret mission investigating Species 8472’s infiltration of the Gorn on behalf of the remnants of the Obsidian Order, and he’s become so paranoid that he refers to Vulcans as ‘Knife-Ears’ (a xenophobic term Mariner in particular associates with conspiracy nuts who think the Vulcans are working with the Romulans to undermine the Federation).

Star vs. the Forces of Evil

• Queens of Mewni: the Dark Ages could have gone very differently if Swan Redbird hadn't been such a bad influence on her cousin, Venus the Fairest, by showing Venus her first Primal Scene at age 9, taking Venus's virginity at age 12, and teaching her to put her pleasure above the wellbeing of her people.

Star Wars

• Anakin Shrugged: Obi-Wan insinuates that the only way Anakin could stop people calling him Teat-Sucker Skywalker would be to kill every last youngling. But it's implied Obi-Wan wants them dead himself, for laughing at him for losing a planet.

Tales of Arcadia

• Sunshine through the Clouds: When Logan breaks away from Steve and Seamus in Between Daylight and Darkness, he calls them out as "the two biggest douchebags in the state", declaring he's done with being a Peer-Pressured Bully.

Total Drama

• Unbreakable Red Silken Thread: Duncan to Gwen. Also Jessica, along with the majority of Heather's old friends from school, proved to be this for her.

• Gru from Despicable Me was a miserable, friendless, angry child from a neglectful household. Even after he stole the crown of the Queen of England, he might have grown out of it, but meeting Doctor Nefario (who armed and encouraged him) and his idol Wild Knuckles (who seemed to show that it was possible to get away with everything) in Minions: The Rise of Gru played a big part in his decision to pursue a criminal career. Consequently, Gru would spend most of his life trying to be a supervillain rather than chasing his original dream of becoming an astronaut.
• A Goofy Movie has an example of a toxic friend getting a parent in trouble with his kid. Pete gives Goofy parenting advice to help improve his relationship with Max... but since Pete is both overbearing and distant, and has a bad relationship with his own son, PJ, the advice does more harm than good.
• In Luca, Alberto plays this role, convincing Luca to ignore his conscience ("Silenzio Bruno!") while pushing him into increasingly dangerous and irresponsible activities.
• Pinocchio (1940): There is Lampwick, a hooky-pulling troublemaker the puppet meets on the way to Pleasure Island. Though he does seem to genuinely like Pinocchio, his influence leads the wooden boy to do many naughty things, including smoking and drinking. Unfortunately, Lampwick learns too late that his bad behavior makes him a literal jackass.
• In Turning Red, Ming accuses Mei's friends of being bad influences for encouraging Mei to put her panda form to use raising money for concert tickets. Ming's blind adoration of her daughter leads her to brush aside their claim that Mei was behind the whole scheme, even though it's true. If anything, Mei was the toxic influence on Miriam, Priya, and Abby.

• In Adam & Paul, the titular heroin addicts learn that their old friend Matthew has been dead for a month. It's implied that Adam and Paul turned him onto drugs and that he overdosed.
• 11-year-old Audrey to young Tommy in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. She takes him shoplifting, tries to get him to huff paint, and eventually gets him drunk.
• In Avengers: Endgame, it's revealed that during the time skip Thor has been eating and drowning his sorrows. He's spent the last few years living with Korg and Miek, who enable his self-destruction because they're content to just play games and binge eat with their good friend Thor instead of trying to talk him out of it.
• The Beatniks has Mooney, who absolutely refuses to let Eddy break away from the gang to start a singing career.
• In Besties, when she's part of her gang at the beginning, Nedjma is driven to play a very nasty prank on Zina (filming her in a position that mimics a blowjob and uploading the video on social media) but she soon comes to regret it.
• In Better Watch Out, Luke’s mother believes Garrett is this for her son. The reverse is actually true.
• Every single thing bad thing that happens in Body is Cali's fault, and she insists on dragging Mel and Holly with her: overriding their objections and badgering them until they agree with her.
• In Brokedown Palace Alice Marano is this to Darlene Davis. Some fans also believe that Alice was the one responsible for the drugs, and that she was a drug smuggler all along.
• Marcus from Cabin Fever Patient Zero has not one, but TWO toxic friends (one being a past fling who is now dating his younger brother) in addition to a toxic young brother. All three were a very jealous and bitter case of this trope. Mostly due to the fact they felt he was upgrading from them since he was getting ready to marry into money.
• Randal from both Clerks films. As much as his friend Dante is responsible for his own malaise, Randal's actions do quite a bit of damage on their own (and certainly never help things).
• Countdown (2019): In the prologue, Courtney downloaded the titular app out of peer pressure (she was reluctant at first, but was forced to do so because her frend called her a killjoy, or specifically a "biach"). Even though she's still "destined" to die in just a few hours, Courtney's awareness of the Countdown app made her Properly Paranoid enough to break the its User Agreement, which forces the supernatural entity to personally stalk and kill her.
• Novella's friend Candice in Eat (2014) gives off shades of this in her efforts to "help", ranging from urging Novella to follow her dreams even though she's struggling to pay for rent and groceries, to hunting down and killing the man that a third party said had cheated on Novella and bringing his corpse back for her to eat. (It Makes Sense in Context)
• Flipped: Despite being best friends, Garrett is obviously toxic toward Bryce, but Bryce seems to be oblivious at first; he reveals to Sherry Bryce's true intention of courting her ^note to keep Juli at bay that Bryce earns a slap from her. And he also constantly influences Bryce to keep hating Juli. Bryce eventually realizes that Garrett is the one responsible for shaping his thoughts about Juli (other than his own father, that is) and he finally cuts Garrett off.
• In the obscure 1990 romance thriller called A Girl To Kill For. Sue is this to sweet-natured yet gullible Chuck. More or less seducing him into situations that kept going From Bad to Worse. Can't help but feel sympathy for the poor guy.
• Kumar from Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay goes out of its way to point this out, and Harold has ditched Kumar by A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas because of this.
• Harsh Times: Jim, a Shell-Shocked Veteran with gangster ties and a self-destructive streak, is a terrible influence on his best buddy Mike, who went straight long ago and settled down with his lawyer girlfriend. Mike now finds himself jobless and susceptible to Jim's cavalier lifestyle. A great deal of the plot is dedicated to Jim convincing Mike to do reckless things against his better judgment.
• In The Last Duel, the friendship of Count Pierre d'Alençon with Jacques Le Gris involves copious amounts of debauchery and orgies. It also gives Jacques a distorted view of romantic relationships and, crucially, teaches him to see women saying no to sexual advances as a flirty game of seduction, rather than an actual refusal, which leads him to rape Marguerite de Carrouges and genuinely think it's not rape.
• Paige from The Last House on the Left lured her friend into a bad situation trying to get marijuana.
• In Masterminds, after Kelly loses her job, she falls under the influence of childhood friend Steve, who recruits her to help him rob a bank. She then turns around and recruits former co-worker David to be the fall guy.
• Megan Stewart is this to sweet wholesome Amy Herman in Megan is Missing. Amy really wants to prove to Megan that she's not a sheltered little girl. Unfortunately, this leads to disturbing and disastrous consequences for both girls when they encounter an internet predator.
• In Nerve, Sydney is a toxic friend to Vee. Ultimately it is Sydney's fault that Vee signs up for Nerve, and goes through all of the hell that follows.
• Party Monster features the focal character falling victim to this from his boyfriend, and eventually becoming an example of this himself.
• The entire plot of Risky Business is set up by the suggestions/insistences of Miles, Joel's stupid friend.
• In Rounders, Mike is trying to avoid gambling, and later at least be an honest poker player, but his friend Lester "Worm" Murphy keeps trying to drag him back into playing crooked games.
• Male example from Save the Last Dance: Malakai to Derek. Derek is one of the few young men in his school who is headed for (and actively seeking) a brighter future, while fresh-from-juvie Malakai seems bound and determined to drag him into the gang scene. Derek, for being a bright guy, gets really stupid where Kai is concerned.
• Played with in Shaun of the Dead. Ed has been holding Shaun back for years due to being an overweight slacker who has mooched off Shaun's hospitality (and Shaun's own usage of him as a crutch to convince himself he's not nearly as much of a loser as he really is), but Ed really does love Shaun as a friend and it's not intentional. To the point he's willing to make a Heroic Sacrifice for Shaun and Liz.
• Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl: Beth inspires Adele to buy cheap versions of things her aunt Dora needs so she can pocket the difference, and eventually it extends to Dora's medication, which causes her death.
• Amanda from Taken. Enticing her friend to lie to her father, and sleep with French men because she heard that they are good in bed.
• Evie Zamora from Thirteen (2003) to the highest disturbing degree. Evie introduces Tracy to shoplifting, underage sex, hard drugs, and seducing older men. And the worst part is that she's such a Manipulative Bitch, she makes her mother believe it was Tracy who brought her into this, not the opposite.
• In The World's End, Gary's fixation on the pub crawl certainly gets the 'Five Musketeers' into a lot of trouble, and it's made clear that even in their younger days he wasn't a particularly good friend to them in many ways.

• The Adventures of Pinocchio: Lampwick (or Candlewick depending on the translation), despite the Fairy's warnings to Pinocchio about friends like that. He's the one who motivates Pinocchio to go to the Land of Toys, where the kids goof off and skip school instead of learning responsibility... with the consequence, unbeknownst to Lampwick, that they turn into donkeys if they stay too long.
• Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg: Played for Laughs. The Jaegers are immortal monsters who rode with the old Heterodynes, gleefully pillaging the countryside on their masters' whims. When Baron Wulfenbach gained control of the Jaegers, he forbid them from returning to Mechanicsburg under the assumption that they were a bad influence and the cause of most of the town's problems. Instead, the Jaegers proved to be perfectly capable and loyal soldiers with a few quirks, while the townsfolk undermined the Baron at every opportunity. He began to wonder who had been an influence on who.
• Mary Anne's story in The Babysitters Remember paints Kristy as this: convincing little Mary Anne to play around with the laundry washing machine soap and other shenanigans that would earn them a grounding, time-out, or a scolding from their parents or a sitter.
• The Berenstain Bears Big Chapter Books: In The Berenstain Bears Accept No Substitutes, Too-Tall and his gang try to be this for Brother and Cousin Fred, convincing them to join the four bullies in teasing the substitute teacher Ms. Barr (though the two at least try to keep it down to a manageable level, suggesting ultimately harmless tricks like putting a frog on her desk and making frog calls in its presence). They're a little more successful with Barry Bruin, who comes up with the idea of throwing spitballs at her. Fortunately, Brother and Fred come to their senses and decide things have gone too far when they hear Too-Tall's plan for her second day, which involves dumping a bucket of water on her head, and try to warn her before it can go off.
• The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford: "Bad Characters" centers around Emily, a little girl who makes friends with a miscreant named Lottie. Lottie introduces Emily to the joys of shoplifting and eventually gets her into trouble.
• The Confessions:
  • St. Augustine records a time when he was a Manichaean and managed to win over one of his friends to Manichaeanism. The friend only comes to his senses when he is baptized on his deathbed, at which point he rejects St. Augustine and refuses to see him before his early death.
  • He also examines when he recalls the incident in which he and a group of delinquents stole some pears, admitting that were it not for them, he would not have stolen the pears.
• The unnamed student in Decision of Fate has a 'friend' who uses peer pressure to get him to try drugs.
• Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid, a Diary of a Wimpy Kid Spin-Off that focuses on Greg's "best friend", Rowley Jefferson. Throughout the book, Rowley is repeatedly tormented by Greg, who makes up lies that get him in trouble, cheats off his test (which makes Rowley cry because a teacher he likes says she's disappointed in him), and tricks him into doing his chores for a month. One of the last scenes of the book is Rowley's dad telling him he should find new friends.
• Earth's Children:
  • Downplayed with Vorn and Broud in The Clan of the Cave Bear. Although Vorn idolizes Broud and sometimes copies his arrogant behavior as a child, he manages to avoid becoming as aggressive and unstable as him and never shared his Irrational Hatred for Ayla. As an adult, Vorn also treats his mate in a far more loving and respectful way than Broud treats his own and has no problem taking in the supposedly deformed Durc (whom Broud wants nothing to do with despite having the means to care for him), indicating that Vorn has grown out of the negative traits Broud retains.
  • While Doraldo is presented as responsible for his own actions, he and his friends tended to egg each other on in their stupidly dangerous and cruel actions; the whole reason Doraldo got himself into the situation that killed him was in an attempt to impress his friends. They're well aware of this and didn't reveal the truth about Doraldo's death for many years out of shame.
• An interesting complicated example occurs in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix where Cho forces her close friend Marietta to come to the meeting at the Hog's Head and then forces her to join the D.A. While the D.A. is a good thing, and necessary as there's a war going on however quietly, it is a form of rebellion against the ministry and it is very obvious Marietta is uncomfortable with the whole thing even before it is against the rules. When Marietta goes to Umbridge to tell her of the meetings and is hit by a curse Hermione put on the sign-up sheet to identify any traitors since she's taking the fact that they're at war very seriously Cho gets mad at Harry and Hermione without ever admitting or taking into account the fact that she forced her friend into an uncomfortable position, and while downplaying just what Marietta did. ^note  Marietta went to Umbridge willingly and without being cornered or asked about it beforehand and gave her information that could result in the expulsion of everyone in the D.A., including Cho, and have caused issues for all of their parents with the Ministry going on a witch hunt
• John Dies at the End has John Cheese, an irresponsible, carefree, hard-partying rocker and drug enthusiast. Although he technically serves as an example of this trope for his friend Dave, since he's constantly getting the duo into trouble, we later learn that Dave is an Unreliable Narrator and codependent borderline sociopath, and John is Dave's only friend, as well as the Plucky Comic Relief and, arguably, the real hero of the story.
• In Orange Clouds, Blue Sky, Mom's group of four "friends" isolate her by spreading false rumors about Dad and feed her addiction by selling prescription drugs.
• The Origin of Laughing Jack: Played With. When Laughing Jack introduces himself to Isaac as his new friend for life, he says that he adapts to Isaac's changing personality. After Isaac is whisked off to boarding school and returns as a bitter adult, Jack's joy has faded too. However, it's when Isaac becomes a Serial Killer that Jack develops a similar interest in his sadistic activities as they all occurred in his view, although Isaac had no idea he was there.
• This is basically Lord Henry's hobby in The Picture of Dorian Gray. He applies these talents to Dorian and succeeds rather wildly.
• In Rick, the title character is the best friend of Jeff, the resident bully, and supposedly his right-hand man, but Rick is reluctant to go along with Jeff's plans because of his queerphobic bullying, especially because Rick himself is a closeted asexual. He only pretends to laugh with Jeff and agree with his opinions so he won't get into an argument with him (Rick has always been a Nice Guy with or without Jeff around). Rick eventually realizes how miserable he's being staying friends with Jeff stands up to him when he's about to burn a poster advertising the Rainbow Spectrum's Talent Contest, ultimately ending their friendship.
• From A Song of Ice and Fire we get a fine example in the form of Cersei Lannister. Although she does tend to mix both Poison and Falseness into it, she's still very good at dragging other people's moral compasses and common sense down by example or cunning, too. Jaime, Joffrey, Tyrion, childhood friends, and acquaintances of all kinds can attest to it. It's notable that once Jaime spends a considerable amount of time away from her, he begins to rediscover his long-lost morals.
• Star Wars: Kenobi: The Gault children are a bad influence on Annileen Calwell's son Jabe. Jabe has recently joined Orrin Gault's work crews and spends evenings carousing with Orrin's children Mullen and Veeka (he has a crush on the latter), eventually participating in Orrin's Monster Protection Racket and nearly getting killed by actual Tusken Raiders before Ben Kenobi rescues him. The experience puts Jabe back on the right path.
• In The State of Grace, Grace's thirteen-year-old sister Leah falls in with a group of more popular girls who introduce her to underage drinking, resulting in her being hospitalized due to alcohol poisoning.
• That Was Then... This Is Now has two friends, Mark and Bryon. Mark is a sociopathic but charming thug, and Bryon goes along with him until the end.
• In Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell, Gilda's friendship with Trixie seems to have reversed the latter's Heel–Face Turn.
• The "Use Your Decision Process" examples in most American high school Health textbooks are filled with this. A typical example is "Alice has a friend named Bob who she has known since she was a kid. But Bob has been acting erratic and paranoid lately. Alice thinks he is doing drugs but is not sure. What should she do?" or "Bob's girlfriend Alice has been pressuring him to have sex with her. She claims she will break up with him if he doesn't. What should Bob do?"
• In Wicked Good, Archer tries to discourage Rory from spending time with Trish, who encourages him to break the law.
• In Wintergirls, Cassie goes to a theater-themed summer camp where all the other girls are binging and purging (i.e. eating large amounts of food and then throwing up). She becomes bulimic herself, causing her best friend Lia to develop a similar eating disorder as the two girls compete to become the thinnest. This leads to years of medical complications for both of them.
• In the Victorian novel The Wizard's Son, Captain Underwood befriends Walter in order to mooch off him. He tries to gain his favour by encouraging him to gamble, drink, and consort with women of low virtue. These activities weaken Walter's willpower before his confrontation with the warlock-lord and make him feel unworthy of Oona Forrester, the woman he loves.
• Enid Nightshade from The Worst Witch books. In chanting she deliberately sings out a tune, getting Mildred in trouble for laughing at her. She turns her cat into a monkey which escapes and is blamed on Mildred again. On the sports day, she bewitches a pole to shoot up into the air with Mildred on it (she ends up crash landing in Miss Cackle's office). Mildred is threatened with expulsion for this but Enid keeps on going, locking herself and Mildred inside a closet when the other girls are in assembly.

• On The 100, whether Lexa is this depends on your point of view. The way she convinces Clarke to close herself off from her feelings, behave ruthlessly, and allow hundreds of her allies to die certainly makes her seem like this. However, since The 100 runs on Grey-and-Gray Morality, it's left up to the viewer to decide whether making Clarke act this way is truly a bad thing, or if it's actually turning Clarke into a better leader.
• On American Dreams Roxanne sometimes borders on this in her friendship with Meg. Occasionally subverted — although she was normally the "good girl", Meg was quite capable of doing dumb and/or rebellious things all on her own.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003): Saul Tigh is a man who is already prone to drinking, among other vices, but his behavior is made all the more worse by his horribly enabling wife, Ellen. If he tries to throw away the bottle, she pushes him Off the Wagon. When he deliberates on sensitive issues, she twists his reasoning so that he ends up taking the least reasonable option. And what's worse is that, because they're both immortal Cylons from the "orignal" Earth, they've been repeating this cycle of co-dependency for aeons!
  • The inverse also seems to be true. Ellen tends to be much more of a Team Mom when she is on her own. As soon as Saul enters the picture, she becomes a Manipulative Bitch prone to dabbling Fleet politics.
• Deconstructed in Better Call Saul, where Jimmy McGill isn't actively trying to make his friends complicit in his con games and is a genuine friend to many other characters in the series. However, his insistence on helping them out (whether they want him to or not) and their Undying Loyalty to him means that they end up putting themselves at risk to help him out of jams or preserve the gains they've made through his unsolicited help.
• Subverted in Brassic. On the surface, Dylan's relationship with Vinnie is this. Dylan is smart, talented, and had a chance to make something of himself, while Vinnie is a bipolar screwup and petty criminal who regularly drags Dylan into his schemes, and Dylan claims he can't leave their hometown because Vinnie couldn't survive without him. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Dylan prefers to live his life as a perpetual teenager and never work hard or commit to anything, and uses Vinnie as an excuse to not have to try. As several people point out, Dylan is a grown man with a will of his own, and he could just say no any time Vinnie asks him to do something stupid but chooses not to. Vinnie also turns out to be a lot more resilient and self-sufficient than he seems and even tells Dylan that it's not his job to look after him.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Implied to be the case for Hitchcock in relation to Scully; on his own Scully is more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold but he acts more like a straightforward Jerk when hanging around with Hitchcock.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith to Buffy in season 3, especially in the episode "Bad Girls". She convinces her to skip school (which is something she already did when she needed to fight monsters, but she didn't need to at the time) and steal.
• Cobra Kai: Kreese provides this to Terry in spades. Terry had, by the time the series rolled around, got himself out of the toxic waste business, broken his cocaine addiction, gone through therapy to get his PTSD under control, and was generally living out his golden days in peace and harmony. It took one chat with Kreese to break decades of progress and bring the unhinged Manipulative Bastard back out. As the season goes on, Kreese realizes that Terry isn't going to be unquestioningly obedient, and hammers his Trauma Button to keep him in line, while Terry, at the same time, realizes Kreese will never consider his life debt repaid. This causes even more Sanity Slippage, and by the end, Terry is more than willing to beat a man nearly to death and frame his old friend for the crime just to be rid of him.
• Community:
  • Leonard and his 'Hipsters' gang have an extremely negative influence on Pierce. Eventually getting him caught by campus security and requiring Jeff to bail him out.
  • Jeff himself can have a tendency to be this for his friends. They tend to look to him as The Leader, but it's gradually been implied that, while he can talk a good talk, his solutions to the various problems they face can do more harm than good and that he's not someone who should be followed or emulated that closely.
  • Jeff's former law firm colleague Alan is this to Jeff.
  • In a mutual version, Jeff and Shirley discover that despite being quite different on the surface they have a similar judgmental streak toward everyone around them, which makes them enjoy sharing gossip with each other. Unfortunately, this means that their combined talents can let them really hone in on someone's insecurities and destroy their life if they aren't careful, which almost happens several times. They end up agreeing that too much time one-on-one is bad for them.
• Jay to Spinner in season 4 of Degrassi. Rather specifically due to the fact Jay and Alex roped Spinner into dumping paint and feathers on Rick, which caused him to finally snap after an entire season of bullying (due to him admittedly assaulting Terri and sending her to the hospital) and bring a gun to school. When Jay realized Rick was hiding in the bathroom, he made sure Rick "knew" that Jimmy was the one behind the prank and Spinner joined along in passing the blame. This results in Jimmy getting shot through his spine and crippled, and Rick himself being killed by accident when Sean tried to take the gun. Much, much later when Spinner's guilt becomes too much, he confesses to that him and Jay were responsible for the paint prank and it gets them both expelled.
• The Conners: Carrying over from Roseanne, when Becky is in therapy for her alcoholism, Dan confesses during a family session that he's always hated Mark for Becky's situation and only regrets Mark didn't die sooner before he ruined Becky's life While everyone's initially shocked, the therapist has Dan explain what he means. Dan talks about how Mark completely derailed Becky's life because of their relationship, from how she dropped out of high school, moved to Minnesota, all the way to Mark taking the money Dan and Roseanne gave Becky for college and using it for mechanic's school. Which he quit. Even when Becky says she gave Mark the money and she wanted to be with him, Dan argues Mark should've never accepted the money and that Becky was a kid in love whom Mark took advantage of. Becky eventually admits she does hate Mark, but didn't think it was right to because he died and because all her bad choices were ones she made so it's not entirely his fault. She breaks down sobbing at what a mess her life became all because she didn't want to lose someone who was bad for her, and then she lost him anyway and has nothing to show for her sacrifices.
• The Cosby Show season 6: Vanessa's white friend Susan Hennings, who appeared in three episodes. Excluding the first one, Susan is a bad influence on Vanessa and her friends. In "I'm in with the "In" Crowd", she comes up with the idea of playing the "Alphabet Game" at a pizza party at her house, where she takes bourbon out of her parents' liquor cabinet and leads the game where the girls sit in a circle and take turns calling out names of cities to a "clap/snap" beat. When it's a player's turn and she fails to name one, she has to drink a shot glass of bourbon. After a while, almost all the girls at the party are either drunk or sick, but Susan isn't and desperately tries to get all the girls to leave before her parents come home. Her final appearance is in "Off to See the Wretched". She and Vanessa, Janet, and Kara sneak off to Baltimore to see a concert of a punk heavy metal band, but along the way, Kara's brother's car is stolen. Instead of acting responsibly once the car is stolen, Susan influences the girls to continue to Baltimore. However, once they get there, the girls' concert tickets and money get stolen. Soon, all the parents, including Cliff and Clair, eventually find out their ruse and Vanessa is dealt with severely. Nothing is mentioned about Susan or the other girls, but it's assumed they had severe punishments, and they and Vanessa were forbidden from seeing each other again.
• Doctor Who: This trope is behind the "Hybrid" prophecy, the Myth Arc of series 9 of New Who: The Hybrid is the Doctor and Clara traveling together. Word of God confirmed that despite both being unambiguously heroic, they brought out each other's worst traits and each would bring ruin to the universe to save the other. Which is exactly what almost happened in the season finale.
• Elementary: In season three, Sherlock is forced to seek out a dealer he knew during the height of his addiction as the man is connected to his current case. Oscar, the dealer in question, is still using and quickly sets about dragging Sherlock back down with him. In the season finale, he manipulates Sherlock into looking for Oscar's sister (who Oscar knows has already overdosed). The search ends with Sherlock relapsing once he discovers the deception.
• In the case of Family Matters, it's more like "Toxic Relative Influence" in the episode "Jail House Blues" when Clarene, AKA Easy C, convinces Eddie to join him in a joyride in a stolen car with 2 girls, especially with Steve Urkel warning him it's wrong, which results in Easy C, Eddie, and against his will, Steve, being arrested for car theft.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Robert to Ned. Catelyn even lampshades in the first episode that he has a tendency to lead Ned into trouble. If only she knew.
  • Jaime suffers from this, or more so Toxic Incestual Twin Sister Influence. Cersei tends to bring out the worst in him. Cersei's wildfire plot seems to slowly wake him up to this, but he's more afraid of her than hateful of her.
  • Varys tries to buy Shae off because he believes that she's a dangerous liability to Tyrion, one of the few men who could make the country a better place.
• General Hospital: Emily Quartermaine befriends a classmate named Matt, who promptly introduces her to drugs. When they both overdose, she survives while he doesn't. As it turns out, he was such a lying and manipulative little brat that his mother is convinced it was Emily who was this to him. Not until hearing from the other kids whom Matt was selling drugs to is she forced to admit the truth to herself.
• Ghostwriter: Calvin Ferguson to Jeffrey Baxter. More than once, Calvin ropes Jeffrey into his schemes to cause trouble for the Ghostwriter Team. However, "What's Up With Alex?" implies that Calvin is also the Cloudcuckoolander's Minder. When we finally see Jeffrey without Calvin around to tell him what to do, he causes problems for Jamal in other ways.
• In How I Met Your Mother, Barney plays this role to the rest of the main cast, but mostly to Ted, whose corruption he views as a pet project. Ironically, as the show has progressed, even as Barney rubs off a bit on Ted (mainly by encouraging him to live in the moment and helping him to enjoy life to the fullest), he has really been more influenced by Ted in terms of growing emotionally and romantically (even taking a class taught by Ted on how to be a good boyfriend).
• Sam Puckett in iCarly. She tends to egg on Carly into doing more reckless things. Heavily downplayed since Carly is such a Positive Friend Influence that Sam is the way she is. In a world where Carly never befriended Sam, Sam would've ended up in Juvie.
• In It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Dennis is this to the rest of the group. When he leaves at the end of season 12, the gang gets noticeably nicer, Paddy's Pub becomes successful, and the boys start complimenting Dee's appearance. Naturally things go straight back to the way they were once he returns.
• Lucy to Ethel in I Love Lucy, one of the earliest TV examples. Ethel realizes Lucy's influence on her, but still can't resist Lucy's wheedling to join in on her latest Zany Scheme.
• The Malcolm in the Middle episode "Hal's Friend" was essentially "Toxic Friend Influence: The Episode": In Lois's absence, Hal is reunited with Larry, his best friend from high school, an irresponsible Manchild who drags Hal along on a series of idiotic escapades, including ripping up a room in his own house. Their final escapade is a "revenge" visit to their hated ex-boss, who ran the pizza parlor they were fired from in high school. When they track him down, they find a sweet old man who invites them in for tea and explains that the past incident that Larry has been brooding over for years was a misunderstanding that the man just feels terrible about. Hal returns to the car and tells Larry how good he feels about growing up and putting one of his old demons to rest. Larry, meanwhile, still wants revenge and smashes his car into the old man's trailer - whose first response is to ask Hal and Larry if they're hurt. Hal realizes his friend has crossed the line from Manchild to Psychopathic Manchild, returns home and grabs the phone from Dewey, telling Lois that he is so much happier being a Henpecked Husband blindly following orders from his wife than hanging out with any of his so-called friends.
• On The Mentalist, Patrick Jane is an absolutely horrible influence on the CBI team he works with. Over the course of the series so far, he's talked them into planting evidence, coercing confessions, entrapping suspects, and profiling. This corrosive influence on their respect for the law they're supposed to enforce (and its potential to endanger their careers) is lampshaded by a By-the-Book Cop in the episode "Black Gold and Red Blood," but as Jane is a Showy Invincible Hero who looks out for his friends, any negative consequences they suffer for going along with him rarely last more than one episode.
• The New Adventures of Flipper. In the first season, Mike Blondell was this for Maya Graham. He was always talking her into performing harebrained stunts (that she went along with against her better judgement) that got them in trouble with his mother and Dr. Ricks.
• Next (2020): Iliza tries to indoctrinate Ethan and turn him against his mother. Thankfully, he sees through its lies.
• Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn: In "New Kid on the Block", Syd, their new next-door neighbor couldn't hang out with the quads because her parents thought they would be a bad influence on her.
• The Season 4 opener of NUMB3RS features a scene of Don watching Colby's videotaped confession (most of which was not shown in the previous episode), in which Colby tells Don how Dwayne Carter started asking him to do "favors" for him against FBI protocol and slowly worked him up to his Face–Heel Turn. Subverted later in the episode when it's revealed that Colby was never actually influenced by Dwayne at all; he reported Carter's requests and was directed to play along in an attempt to figure out who Carter was reporting to, and his confession was a part of that ploy.
• Del to Denzil on Only Fools and Horses. When Corrine listed a number of times that Del had screwed him over and conned him into joining one of his failed get-rich-quick schemes, Denzil's simple reply?
  Denzil: Yeah I know, but he's a mate!
  • In some ways, Del Boy is this to his brother Rodney. At one point, Rodney is trying to defend his brother to his wife by saying, "Look, I agree that Del can get a bit out of hand, but I think it's unfair to say that everything he touches goes wrong." At this point, the bus behind him promptly explodes due to a faulty radio Del installed over the main fuel line. Some of his more notable exploits have been things like convincing Rodney that he is the 'man of the house,' causing him to break his wife's boss's nose, and convincing Rodney to stay on a trip with him despite the fact that Rodney, 26, will have to pretend he's 14 the entire time he's there.
• The Other Kingdom: Brendoni tends to occasionally play this role towards Devon and Astral. As back in Athenia, Brendoni would occasionally tempt Astral into sneaking off to the "other" world and causing mischief to the others — which he took great pleasure — and even in the "other" world, some of his tendencies tend to rub off on Devon, such as a time when he intentionally made a small mess and got Devon to overlook and not obsess over it, threw a house party without latter's consent and encouraged him to embrace the party and host it. And that's not even getting into having him create a fake identity of him as a legendary party king.
• In the backstory of Person of Interest Det. Stiles was this to Det Fusco. Stiles helped out Fusco when Fusco was going through a messy divorce and when Fusco wanted to repay the favour, Stiles got him involved in corruption, drug dealing, and murder. Fusco is revealed to be a very decent guy but his unwillingness to turn his friends in caused him to become a Dirty Cop.
• Raising Dion: In Season 2, Brayden intentionally tries this with Dion; he befriends him, with the boys bonding over the fact that they're both superpowered, but then Brayden tries to make Dion use his powers for selfish reasons or even downright become a villain. Fortunately, Dion has none of it and breaks off the friendship.
• Deconstructed on Scrubs. J.D. and Turk's college friend comes to town and gets the guys to go drinking with him while on call. They got in trouble for showing up to work drunk. When they got mad at their friend, he pointed out that they knew they were on call and could have easily said no to drinking with him. He also pointed out that they had been complaining about their jobs since he arrived, then called them out on the fact that it was easier to blame him than face up to the fact that they were starting to fall out of love with the practice of medicine.
• Kramer to everyone he encounters in Seinfeld. It's nearly impossible to follow Kramer's advice and not get into trouble, yet people keep listening to him. Kramer, of course, never gets into trouble himself. Elaine has this over her friend Noreen, even though ironically, it's her well meaning advice and opinions that keep getting her into trouble.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The First Duty", Nick Locarno, the leader of the stunt-flying Nova Squadron at Starfleet Academy acts this way toward the rest of the team, which includes former main character Wesley Crusher. First Locarno convinces them to attempt a dangerous (and forbidden) stunt that gets one of the team killed, then pushes them to cover up the truth during the resulting inquiry, all in the name of friendship and solidarity. Locarno somewhat redeems himself at the end by claiming sole responsibility and accepting expulsion to protect the others, but Star Trek: Lower Decks shows him having fallen even further trying to regain his former "glory".
• On Suits Mike was on his way to becoming a lawyer when his best friend, Trevor, convinced him to sell cheat sheets for an exam. The two end up expelled from college and blacklisted, crushing Mike's dreams of becoming a lawyer. The series kicks off with Trevor convincing Mike to act as a one-time drug courier, with the drop-off being a police sting, which he barely dodged. Both Harvey and Mike's grandmother have warned him to drop Trevor because he's the anchor dragging Mike down. Despite everything, he still was willing to give Trevor more chances... right up until he exposed Mike as having never attended Harvard.
  • As the series progresses Harvey is becoming this to Mike. He forces Mike to take sides in his dispute with Jessica even though he should realize how dangerous it would be for Mike to oppose the firm's managing partner. When Mike caves in to Jessica's extortion, Harvey treats it as the worst form of betrayal since he seemingly expected Mike to commit a Stupid Sacrifice over a fairly petty matter.
  • In the later seasons, Mike inadvertently becomes this to his friends as it becomes increasingly harder to hide the fact that he never attended law school. As they try to protect Mike, they end up committing increasingly riskier and more illegal acts. When a reformed Trevor shows up, he lampshades the situation and refuses to help Mike because doing so would result in Trevor sliding back into the bad behavior he worked very hard to get away from. Mike realizes that the only way to stop his friends from destroying their lives is to confess to everything in exchange for them getting immunity.
• A familial type is shown in the The Thundermans episode "Cookie Mistake". Max and Nora realize they don't hang out much because they bring out the mischief in each other.
• Velvet: Cristina may have wanted revenge after realizing Alberto always loved Ana, but she never would have gone as far as she did without Barbara's influence.
• True to her book counterpart, Enid is this in The Worst Witch TV series but this time Ethel Hallow becomes this for Drucilla. Ethel is the Alpha Bitch but Drucilla seems more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and a genuinely nice person when away from Ethel's influence. She makes a Heel–Face Turn at the end of the series.
• Young Sheldon: In "A Stolen Truck and Going on the Lam", Paige is treated as such, being a veteran runaway, but the parents agree that this time it was on Missy.

• Gorillaz bassist Murdoc was this to singer 2D, who remained oblivious to their Type 1 Vitriolic Best Buds relationship throughout Phase 1, attempted and failed to fight back in Phase 2, and now appears to be realising exactly how toxic Murdoc is to him.
• "Wooden Squatter Huts" (木屋區) by Sam Hui is about a boy who grew up on the Wrong Side of the Tracks. When the protagonist grows up, despite his Struggling Single Mother's best attempts to teach him to be a good person who conducts himself with integrity, he befriends a group of sleazy gamblers and later dies in a police shootout because one of his friends brought him along to rob a bank.
• Kendrick Lamar reflects on this a lot in Good Kid, Maad City, especially in "The Art Of Peer Preassure"
  Look at me, I got the blunt in my mouth
  Usually I'm drug-free, but, shit, I'm with the homies
  [...]
  I never was a gangbanger, I mean
  I never was stranger to the fonk neither, I really doubt it
  Rush a nigga quick and then we laugh about it
  That's ironic, 'cause I've never been violent
  Until I'm with the homies
  [...]
  My mama called: "Hello? What you doin'?" — "Kickin' it."
  I shoulda told her I'm probably 'bout to catch my first offense
  With the homies
  (Police sirens)
• "El Mamut Chiquitito" ("The Little, Little Mammoth"), from Argentine-Venezuelan rock group Unos Panas Ahí is a piece of subverted kids' music about this. A little mammoth wants to fly, smoke, drunk, get laid and get high. For every dream of his, he gets "help" from a friend: a pigeon tells him to jump from a sixth floor, a cat makes him smoke 500 cigarettes, a bear gives him 100 liters of whisky, a donkey has him get laid with 500 hookers, and a cat makes him try 10 lines of cocaine. The result is understandable:
  HE'S DEAD!!! THE MAMMOTH'S DEAD!!!

• In Garfield, a January 1996 strip has Odie and Garfield eating junk food in a messy way and leaving the wrappers all over the table. Jon complains to Garfield he's a bad influence on Odie. Garfield denies it, but then Odie utters "Meow".
  • It's also been proven that because of how lazy and sedentary Garfield is, the mice around him have gotten lazy too. And they're using a sleeping Garfield as a bed.
• In Luann, T.J. fulfills this role with Luann's brother Brad. He has gotten Brad into trouble with his borderline illegal schemes and other inappropriate behavior. However, he has done other things that were nice, and it's been implied he has Parental Abandonment issues...doesn't justify the borderline illegal schemes, though.
  • It should be noted that sometimes those schemes crossed over from "borderline illegal" intofull-on criminal behavior (as seen in the 1994-12-13 strip).

• In the Sick Sad World episode "Writers Who Kill"; one case focuses on a pair of girls who re-enforced each other's bad qualities until the two ended up committing murder.

• AJ Styles fell prey to this twice at WWE. Both of his Face Heel Turns were caused by his former Bullet Club allies Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson. The second one especially stands out, as they poisoned him against his Friendly Enemy Ricochet and talked him into forming a heel Power Stable with them.
• Aja Perera, who usually desires the friendship of everyone she wrestles, puts on a much more intimidating face when tagging with the Blood Knight Dementia D'Rose, becomes a lot more obnoxious when with the brazen Nina Monet and more mean-spirited alongside the royal snob Sahara Se7en.
• After a stable run as a face for many years, Bayley ended up being lured to the dark side by her best friend Sasha Banks.
• CM Punk to Colt Cabana, who was normally nice and non-confrontational but had promised Punk as a member of The Second City Saints that he would do anything needed to help them win.
• Already being an experienced fighter, Ta'Darius recognized this was happening between himself and Truth Martini, who he went to in hopes of learning the art of professional wrestling and distanced himself from The House Of Truth once it was agreed he had trained enough with them. Unfortunately, Ta'Darius Thomas still fell prey to the manipulations of Jimmy Jacobs and joined Decade.
• Se7en herself fell into this at Marvelous Pro Wrestling, with Tomoko Watanabe and Yuu Yamagata, who convinced her to abandon Mio Momono and join their Level 5 faction, where they did their best to turn the regal queen into a vicious savage.

• In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Kev's mother believes that Daigo is a disturbed boy who's having a negative influence on her son. As much as Kev wants to believe otherwise, she's completely right.

• Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet): After Constance foils Iago's attempts to manipulate Othello, Iago turns around and starts working on Desdemona instead, convincing her that Constance is a witch who's after her husband.
• Heathers: The Musical:
  • Heather Chandler encourages Heather McNamara to join her in bullying their "friend" Heather Duke over her bulimia. Once Chandler's out of the picture, Duke strikes back, nearly driving McNamara to suicide before Veronica intervenes.
  • J.D. and Veronica both negatively influence each other. In particular, Veronica bemoaning during "Dead Girl Walking" that the Heathers will ruin her helps kickstart J.D.'s murder spree. It's only when he turns his sights towards McNamara that Veronica's had enough.
• La Légende du Roi Arthur: Meéleagant wasn't exactly the best person to start out, but he'd been considering a Heel–Face Turn before Morganne came into the picture and encouraged him to embrace all his worst aspects.
• The Lightning Thief: Luke does his best to serve as this to the other demigods, encouraging them to embrace their resentment of their divine parents. Especially Percy.
• Nerdy Prudes Must Die: Max absolutely rules Hatchetfield High, terrorizing the nerdier students, and even most of the popular kids are scared of him, meaning that they'll follow his lead and join in on the bullying so he won't turn on them, too. Once Max disappears, the bullying at Hatchetfield High drops significantly, and Max's two lackeys Jason and Kyle even befriend Richie, previously one of their main targets.
• The Robbers: Spiegelberg is responsible for Karl and the rest of his friends for becoming outlaws.

• Adventures with Anxiety: Hunter invites Hong to hang out at the wild parties she throws, and actually sympathizes with Hong's struggles with anxiety... but also encourages her to drink heavily and take dangerous risks.
• Dragon Age II also gives the player character the opportunity to become this with regards to Sebastian Vael. Becoming a Rival to Sebastian involves encouraging him to leave the Chantry and retake his throne in Starkhaven (as well as committing anti-chantry and ignoble acts in his presence), effectively undoing the character development that he'd gained through being a brother of the faith. Grand Cleric Elthina does call Hawke out on this, however.
• Fallout: New Vegas gives you the opportunity to BE this to your companions if you so choose. Specifically, you can convince 2 of your companions to become vengeful killers, and another to stop taking her medications so that she becomes a savage beast randomly attacking anything in sight.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • CJ, the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, isn't exactly a paragon of morality, but he tends towards Pragmatic Villainy. His friends are all dumb thugs to a greater or a lesser extent. A typical mission will begin with them explaining their latest scheme, him pointing out how risky it is, them calling him a buster (mainly Ryder, for whom this is almost a catchphrase), and him agreeing to go along with what turns out to be an absolute clusterfuck with at least seven people shooting at him at once. Of course, if he didn't go along, we wouldn't have a plot...up until the mission The Green Sabre, where CJ is forcibly removed from them and eventually gets some less toxic friends.
  • Another toxic influence shows up late in the game in the form of Sweet, CJ's brother, who he spent a significant chunk of the game trying to get out of jail. Despite breaking free of the gangbang lifestyle that was clearly going nowhere but an early grave, he constantly hounds CJ into going back to the hood for no reason other than because that's where they came from. He's like a proto-Lamar in a sense.
  • Grand Theft Auto V has this in the form of two different people, one of whom is a main character. The first example of this is Franklin's "best friend" Lamar, who constantly gets Franklin into potentially lethal trouble because he's too much of an idiot to realize when he's being played, then guilts Franklin into going along with his stupid schemes so that he won't get killed. He also repeatedly insults Franklin for wanting to get out of the crappy, dangerous, toxic gangster lifestyle. Trevor, the second example of this trope, constantly gets his other..."friends" into trouble due to being a drug trafficker and general psychopath that also consistently screws over plans because he's unable to control himself.
• Life is Strange has Chloe as this for the protagonist Max, with Chloe encouraging Max to break the rules, skip school, steal from the school's offices, and even take the blame for some pot that Chloe gets caught with.
• June's Journey has the friends Virginia makes in the labor movement, especially Jessie who convinces Virginia to participate in an illegal action that gets them arrested. There could be a case made for Virginia being a bad influence herself, as she drags her friend Callum along against his objections, and Callum, not rich kid Virginia, is the one who gets stuck with dire consequences.
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker: Surprisingly, it turns out Master Miller played this role for Big Boss, who when they met wasn't quite sure whether he wanted to take on his old friend Zero and the CIA directly and make himself an enemy of the world or create Metal Gears with nukes mounted on top of them. Miller was eventually the one that turned back to the US and supported Solid Snake against Big Boss but it was fair to say he certainly wasn't the influence Big Boss needed when they started working together.
• In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Celebrimbor being this trope is one of the main themes of the whole narrative. He spends nearly the entirety of both games slowly but surely convincing Talion that the only way to achieve results, protect Middle-Earth, and defeat Sauron is to become so cruel and vicious that no one dares cross him... and sure enough, Talion becomes more and more comfortable with the Wraith's brutal methods as time goes on.
• In Night in the Woods, this shows up if you choose to spend the most time with Gregg. Mae and Gregg's friendship as teenagers was primarily built on various petty crimes, but with Mae off at college, Gregg was straightening up and getting his life back together...and then Mae shows up back in town at the beginning of the game. Gregg's boyfriend Angus takes notice of this, and he eventually blows up at Gregg and Mae over it, though the three are able to work things out.
  • It's inverted if you choose to spend the most time with Bea, who constantly calls Mae out on her immature attitude and behavior and helps Mae to grow more as a person.
• OMORI: Kel believes that the Hooligans that Aubrey began spending time with following Mari's death has had a negative impact on her behavior, but in reality they are a bunch of goobers who don't actively seek harm onto others outside shoplifting. Aubrey later clarifies that truthfully, it was her that made them more violent, as they joined in on her bullying of Basil due to her being their friend and leader.
• Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners: If poor Yoko survives their judgment, she explains to the others that she was tempted to shoplift the pendant she's been wearing from a store back in Japan, primarily because she knew two of her other friends had successfully stolen things they'd wanted like that before and was tempted to try it out for herself. She'd already been deeply regretting it before the Pyramid started judging people, causing her to panic at the prospect of getting killed herself...
• Invoked in Pokémon X and Y. If a Pancham (a wannabe tough-kid panda) is in a party with a Dark-type Pokémon (a group of Pokémon known for fighting dirty) when it levels up, then it'll take on their teammates' bad behavior and evolve into Pangoro, becoming a Dark-type itself.
• Randal's Monday: Randal and Matt are not good for each other, as they tend to encourage each other's worst tendencies. Randal realizes this by the end of the game.
• Red Dead Redemption II: Micah Bell III, to anyone who listens to him, as anyone who gets close to him seems to be infected by his unscrupulousness and love of pointless violence. Unfortunately, this includes Dutch van der Linde, whom Micah is able to turn from A Father to His Men to a paranoid wreck who drives away everyone actually loyal to him and terrorizes civilians just because. Dutch himself is also one to his crew, as while he does care about them and saved most of them from bad situations, he also keeps them in his gang and prevents them from seeking honest work, which strains their non-gang relationships (i.e. Arthur and Mary Linton) and puts them in unnecessary danger because he himself has no real desire to go straight. By the end of the game, most of them have realized this and fled the gang to start new lives away from Dutch's manipulations and delusions.
• SaGa Scarlet Grace: Played for Laughs in Leonard's Story, which is essentially a MST3K-esque riff on the main scenario. It seems that Leonard being an unrepentant troublemaker and serial prankster eventually rubbed off on the other main characters and changed them for the worse: Urpina became a Royal Brat that caused endless grief for the members of her house, Taria developed a new aesthetic sense described as "somewhere between 'astonishing' and 'appalling'" and Balmaint's new appearance is such a departure from his previous look that barely anyone recognized him without a lengthy introduction first.
• Trails Series: Throughout the Calvard arc, it's often noted that the prim and proper upper class schoolgirl Agnès has gotten increasingly proficient at lying and subterfuge as a result of hanging out with Van and working for his underground problem-solving agency, though this is generally Played for Laughs. It ends up being Played for Drama in The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon when it turns out that she's gotten so good at it that for months she was able to conceal from Van her plan to sacrifice herself to save the world until it was too late for him to stop it. She also manipulates Van into rejecting her own Love Confession just so that she would gain the resolve to go through with the sacrifice.
• Yandere Simulator: Osoro Shidesu is a sympathetic example to the other delinquents. The video detailing their backstory reveals that she's the one who taught them how to fight and that they started showing up late to class on purpose, threatening other students, and disrespecting the teachers because they were following her example. But that same video reveals that, prior to becoming delinquents, those kids were being bullied so badly that they were seriously contemplating committing suicide together, and the faculty utterly failed to help them due to lack of evidence (in spite of one of them literally having a broken arm). Osoro, however, took them under her wing, and they started copying her bad behavior so they'd Never Be Hurt Again. It's not a case of a bad kid coercing other, more innocent students into doing bad things; it's a case of a bunch of victims latching onto the one person who showed them sympathy and provided a solution to their problem when nobody else did, even if the solution isn't a great one. The guidance counselor even admits she can't really pin all the blame on Osoro, since if the faculty had stepped in sooner, the bullying might not have gotten this bad.

• Downplayed in Daughter for Dessert. The protagonist smokes marijuana and gets very drunk with Kathy, but there aren’t too many negative consequences from doing this, especially long-lasting ones.
• Scarlet Hollow: Becka spends the majority of Episode 2 insulting the adults who are trying to prevent her and her friends from hanging out in an abandoned mine, and readily belittles her friends as well. She can even nearly get them all killed by triggering a shaft collapse.

• In Dominic Deegan, Bumper and Stunt are introduced as a pair of thieves, but Bumper quickly proves to be the sweeter and more rational of the pair. This increases until in the "Two Thief or Not Two Thief" storyline Stunt is pretty much exactly this, going for bigger and more problematic illegalities all the time and dragging his best friend along. Until Bumper can't countenance the stuff they're involved in anymore.
  • For bonus points, Bumper turns out to be from a good family fallen on hard times.
  • The Bumper-doing-a-sleight-of-hand-show-to-raise-Stunt's-bail-again scene that opens TToNTT is pretty emblematic.
  • At the end of the Two Thief storyline after nearly getting him and Bumper killed, the mayor of Barthis decides the best punishment for their latest crimes is to exile Stunt but not Bumper. When Bumper tries to leave with Stunt anyway, Stunt admits that he's realized what a bad influence he's been, and convinces Bumper to stay in Barthis where he's made a decent life for himself.
• In El Goonish Shive, Nioi believes that General Shade Tail is this to Lord Tedd, corrupting him with his Blood Knight tendencies.
• The Guide to a Healthy Relationship: It's probably not his friends' fault that Apollo is in his early twenties and a severe alcoholic, but they still enable him, constantly take him out for parties, give him pills and buy him drinks, encourage him to drink on the job — none of them seem to think there's anything wrong with that. (Granted, Apollo's also a little slow on the draw so he may not realize how toxic his "friends" are.)
• Hello from Halo Head: Mars is this for Chloe. Clair delibrately introduced her to be compatible with Chloe's personality, so she only has herself to blame, really.
• Vriska from Homestuck. Dealt with realistically, as most of the other characters can't stand her as a result of her acting like this - by the time her story starts, most of her best friends have already dumped her over an incident where she caused one of them to get seriously injured, with even Karkat calling her a backstabbing sociopath.
• Lackadaisy:
  • Rocky to his cousin 'Freckle'.
  • Atlas was this to a significant portion of the cast, particularly Mitzy, Mordecai, and Viktor, all of whom he manipulated into being part of his blossoming criminal empire by ensuring that they would in some way feel indebted or otherwise emotionally attached to him and therefore willing to do awful things to keep his business going. It helps that he was charismatic enough to make this work without them really realizing what was happening before it was too late.
  • Viktor is deliberately trying to defy this trope in regard to Ivy, as he realizes part of the reason she stays in St. Louis is because of their friendship. He tries to drive her away so she won't want to stay and thus won't remain involved with the speakeasy.
• In Modern Day Treasure Seekers, Cade's parents felt this way about Sam but came to accept her. However, the flashback shows her hopping a fence with a sign reading "No Trespassing", with Cade going along with her, implying that she influenced him to get into trouble.

• Momo from Cream Heroes is this to some of the younger cats. Before Lulu grew up, he was the top troublemaker among the cats and it's clear Lulu picked up a lot of his troublemaking habits from him. More recently he's become a bit of a bad influence on Nana and her kittens by showing them how to open cupboards and sneak inside.
  • Lulu is a downplayed example for Dodo. While he's clearly taught Dodo some of his tricks (like using the hole in the counter to quickly sneak food), some of Dodo's antics make him look mature and patient by comparison.
• The McCallister Family: Nora, Barb's friend (and technically, her aunt,^note Barb's maternal grandfather left her grandmother, married his much younger secretary, and had Nora the same year Barb was born. so this doubles as Toxic Family Influence) is not a great influence on Barb, even while she admits her shitty behavior and calls Barb out for her own. She calls Greg's mother Katie a "tart," took the salt from Barb and salted Katie's sweet potato casserole to be mean, and while she did apologize she still thought it was funny. During "The Wedding" video, Nora spots Barb eating at the local Mexican restaurant and after mocking her sulking and saying her reaction to her family's actions should be to say "fuck em," invites her to play pickleball with her. Barb not only goes, but shows up to the rehearsal dinner in her tennis whites and says she'll be spending the next day—the day of Jen and Greg's wedding—at a random pickleball tournament with Nora. Barb goes to said tournament, brings Nora to the wedding when she wasn't invited, and when Jen is distressed at Barb refusing to go shower and get dressed at home snaps that Jen ruined her joy at winning, she can't wait for the day to be over, Jen ruins everything, and Greg should leave Jen. Barb ends up spending the wedding sulking because no one is catering to her emotional outbursts except Nora, who tells her that she ought to stop pouting and suggests that they engage in shenanigans later. Barb is already self-centered and troublesome, but Nora intensifies things by being around.
• The Most Popular Girls in School: Mrs. Zales to Veronica Matthews. The former convinces the latter to say curse words in order to deal with stress. Guess what Veronica does next?
• The My Little Pony: Totally Legit Recap version of Rainbow Dash is this to Scootaloo, even if she means well:
  Rainbow: Sweet! Scoot's, we're going out for margaritas.
  Scootaloo: I'm twelve.
  Rainbow: Don't worry, they have the little ones.
  (Later)
  Scootaloo: I woke up in a urinal three days ago and I'm almost certain it's your fault.
  • This is even Lampshaded in "Parental Glidence", where Rainbow Dash tries to use the whole "I'm the one that should be teaching you line.", only for Scoots to immediately call bull-crap on that, saying that line may work for the other members of the CMC and their sisters, but it does not for their relationship.
• Coyote is written as one of these to Rabbit in this retelling of a Native American myth from Myths Retold.
• In Red vs. Blue Season 13, Locus realizes he has this kind of relationship with Felix, the latter manipulating him and playing to Locus' desire to be a great soldier to get him to carry out monumental acts of evil for Felix's personal gain. Breaking their partnership is Locus' first step towards a full Heel–Face Turn and his becoming a true warrior.
• In Ultra Fast Pony, Twist is initially presented as a toxic friend to Apple Bloom, always pushing Apple Bloom to deal with her problems by killing them or burning them down. However, it's eventually revealed that Twist is an Imaginary Friend. Apple Bloom was being egged towards violence by her own dark side all along.
• A recurring theme in The Veronica Exclusive is how easily Veronica falls victim to this. Back when she was a loner with only Martha for a friend, she was snarky but pretty nice. When she joins the Heathers, on the other hand, she becomes a Lovable Alpha Bitch at best, and an outright Jerkass at worst. Then when she begins to date J.D., she becomes an accomplice to murder. The series ends when Veronica finally overcomes this and chooses her own path.
• sn4tchbucl3r in You Suck At Photoshop is this for Donnie, at first, ruining Donnie's videos, getting angry at him for refusing to play MMORPGs with him, and even talking him into shitting his pants in public at one point. Then sn4tch actually begins to care for Donnie and look for a life outside of his gaming addiction. It all falls in at the end, though, inevitably.

• One of the main themes of Amphibia is the genuine but unhealthy friendship between Anne Boonchuy, Sasha Waybright, and Marcy Wu.
  • It becomes increasingly apparent that Anne's "best friend" Sasha was this. Not only does Sasha openly admit to manipulating others to get what she wants, but the season one finale shows that Sasha pressured Anne into skipping school on the latter's birthday, and was also the reason an uncomfortable Anne stole the music box that transported them and their other friend, Marcy, to Amphibia. It is to the point Anne realizes how controlling Sasha was after Sprig calls her out, to the point of having to fight her. However, Sasha truly considers Anne and Marcy her friends and deeply cares about them, and ends up trying to pull a Heroic Sacrifice for Anne once she realizes how horribly she's treated her. And then, in the second season, she backslides hard, manipulating Anne's willingness to forgive her to stage a coup in Newtopia and offering her and Marcy a We Can Rule Together deal which Anne objects out of hand, ending their friendship. In the third season, Sasha finds Anne's diary and upon reading it, she finally realizes how much of a horrible person she was and wants to make up for everything she's done.
  • Interestingly Zigzagged with Marcy, who was very absent-minded but very intelligent before coming to Amphibia, making her somewhat high-maintenance. However, once she is sucked into Amphibia with Sasha and Anne, she learns to be more reliant on her own skills instead of hoping that others will help her. She still peer-pressured Anne into stealing the Calamity Box, but her inherent toxicity stems primarily from Sasha. However, the finale of the second season reveals that she knew what the Calamity Box was and what it did, and got the three stranded in Amphibia on purpose, not thinking about the potential danger or the fact that her two friends might not want to up and abandon their lives and families, not to mention the possibility of them getting separated once there, which indeed happens. She desperately tries to justify herself when she's discovered, but it's implied Anne and Sasha's horrified reactions gave her a much-needed wakeup call, and she does what she can to rectify the damage.
  • Anne herself is not immune, mostly thanks to Sasha warping her idea of what a friend should be. Anne was an Extreme Doormat to Sasha back home and can be a bit selfish at times, meaning she's capable of both following along with her friends, even when she doesn't agree with them, and of being the one encouraging others to do something ill-advised. In earlier episodes, she constantly drags Sprig into trouble, overriding him when he expresses reservations, often in the name of showing him a good time or achieving some goal. After all, Sasha did the same to her back home, and she only meant well for Anne—real friends push you out of your comfort zone and encourage you to do exciting things, even when you really don't want to... right? When one of her exploits almost gets Sprig killed, however, she's instantly remorseful and rescues him, and then apologizes to him for not listening to his concerns earlier. She makes a concentrated effort to be less selfish and listen to others more often, and spends much of the first season unlearning her unhealthy ideas about how friends treat each other. By the end of the first season, she's matured greatly and is Sprig's closest and most trusted friend—and she's finally realized that the way Sasha treated her was not okay, and tells her off.
• Arcane: Mel encourages the idealistic Jayce to abandon his anti-corruption crusade and embrace his inner Sleazy Politician so he will stay in the Council's good graces.
• Season 11 of Archer puts an interesting spin on this. After spending the last three years in a coma, Sterling Archer wakes up and sees that his coworkers have changed quite a bit. They've all tamed their vices and overcome their various neuroses, becoming quite the stark contrast to the Dysfunction Junction that they were in the past seasons. Over the course of the season, Archer's presence causes everyone to backslide and regress to their old selves. When Lana calls him out on this in the finale, Archer fires back at her and asserts that they all keep him around specifically because of this and that they all use him as an excuse to be their worst selves. Lana's reaction and lack of rebuttal implies that he hit the nail on the head.
• While Muffy Crosswire from Arthur is usually well meaning when helping her friends out, she can often act as a negative influence when telling them to do unethical things to get what they want. The episode "Arthur Sells Out" shows this as she tells him to do whatever he can to make money on this new game he wants regardless of how the customers feel. Through this advice, he ends up selling DW's friend James a cool looking, broken toy, and initially refuses to give him his money back.
• As Told by Ginger:
  • Dodie Bishop. All her plans revolve around making herself popular and she shows little to no regard for Ginger and Macie unless they are helping her. One memorable example has Dodie convincing Ginger to ask her teacher out on a date.
  • Likewise Miranda to Courtney, the latter of whom is pretty decent but Miranda does everything she can to keep her from interacting with Ginger. At one point even getting a friend's cousin to help in a scam.
• In Batman Beyond, the reason Terry has a reputation as a juvenile delinquent is because of his friend Charlie "Big Time" Bigelow, who tricked him into participating in a robbery that got them both caught by the police. Terry, a minor at the time, got 90 days in juvie, while Charlie got 3 years in prison. When Charlie gets out, he tries to rekindle their friendship but ignores all Terry's attempts to help him make an honest life for himself in favor of trying to corrupt Terry back into criminality. Unfortunately for him, Terry's character development holds firm and he's eventually able to realize that Charlie has no desire to go straight and only wants an accomplice.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: In the Christmas Episode "It's a Miserable Life", Butt-Head is taken to an alternate world where he doesn't exist. One of the changes is that Beavis turned out to be a much better person without him. He's still an idiot, just nicer and actually pleasant. Similarly, Stewart is shown to have much more self-esteem. Butt-Head is shown to be such a bad influence that only one meeting was enough to corrupt Beavis: after their encounter, he begins musing over the term "bunghole", how much he likes it, and even saying it in his Cornholio persona's voice.
• Throughout Bob's Burgers, it gradually becomes clear that Linda's parents and sister have this effect on her whenever they're in episodes. While they aren't necessarily bad people, they're still rather demanding, obnoxious, insensitive, and ungrateful people most of the time and it shows in how they treat Linda. Gayle especially is the worst of the three due to being a high-strung Nervous Wreck who relies on Linda for a lot while living under the delusion she is the prettiest and the favorite of their parents. Linda puts up with their demands and their behavior simply because they're her family and she loves them, but they tend to annoy and quietly infuriate Bob who has said on at least several occasions he hates his in-laws (which upsets Linda more than whatever hell they'll put Bob through).
  • Tina seems to have inherited Linda's habit of falling for this when looking at the kids she hangs out. While Jimmy Jr., Zeke, and Jocelyne are harmless on a good day but utterly obnoxious on a bad day, when you put the three together with Tammy they're outright horrible. Tina often struggles with going along with what they want to do because she's desperate to have a close group of friends. Unlike Linda, Tina's more willing to recognize when the things they do are boring and when they're being especially terrible.
• BoJack Horseman's miserable and self-destructive lifestyle (for lack of a better term) had caused many of his friends, lovers, colleagues, and the like to be let down, screwed over, heartbroken, pushed away, or even dead (just to name a few). BoJack is well aware of his toxic attitude, and those close to him call him out on this on more than one occasion, but almost never attempts to make up for it until it's too late. In the last episode of the third season, he even considers himself "a poison that destroys everything he touches" after one of his colleagues from his old sitcom days dies because of him. And now that everyone else has moved on to pursue their own life, he almost has no one left. In the fourth season, he is very worried that history will repeat itself with Hollyhock whom he believes is his daughter. In the sixth episode, the voice in his head that represents his self-doubt tells him he's already ruining her, that there's nothing he can do about it, and that all he does is destroy the people around him. In the tenth episode when Hollyhock passes out due to amphetamines he assumes she got into his stash of pills and blames himself. He is furious when he realizes it was actually due to Beatrice secretly slipping weight loss pills into Hollyhock's coffee.
• The Boondocks:
  • Grandad had a hot young blaxploitation ninja girlfriend who was also extremely clingy and kind of crazy. Not helping her was her best friend (she's only heard on the phone and might even be a hallucination), who kept feeding her paranoia that Gramps was cheating on her. The friend pushes her to such extremes she ends up killing herself due to said friend's suggestion to do so.
  • Lamilton Taeshawn in the episode "Smokin With Cigarettes" tries to get Riley to commit all kinds of crimes (as if Riley really needed any more help). But in the end, Lamilton proved to be too much of a hellion for Riley to handle.
  • This is the theme of "Stinkmeaner 3: The Hateocracy": the dead Stinkmeaner explains that ignorant black people can form bonds around ignorant and stupid things, called "nigga synthesis" and when this combines with a "nigga moment" you get complete disaster. His old crew, the Hateocracy, were a bunch of evil old people who got off on making others miserable. And sure enough, them starting a "nigga moment" with Robert ends with Bushido Brown being decapitated.
• Castlevania (2017): Played for Laughs with Trevor Belmont. Compared to his (relatively) more civilized companions, Trevor is a huge a Sir Swears-a-Lot, but by the time of Season 4, both Sypha and Alucard (who also spent a good amount of time in his castle alone without joining them) notice separately that they have become as coarse as Trevor, and neither is happy about it.
  Sypha: It's all your fault! You did this to me! ... You turn me into someone who says "shit"!
  Alucard: And God shits in my dinner once again... Oh no... I really am turning into Belmont. Is life even worth living anymore?
• Chozen has Jamal, Phil's ex from prison. After Jamal gets out, he tries to reconnect with Chozen and immediately starts screwing up every aspect of his life, to the point where he tries to convince Chozen to become a petty criminal like him.
• Disenchantment: Luci is a small demon sent to corrupt Bean to the ways of darkness, with his methods generally taking this form, encouraging Bean to drink, get high, and murder, most of which she was willing to do anyway. Bean points this out in their first meeting.
  Luci: You know the voice in your head telling you not to do things? I'm the guy yelling over it.
  Bean: So you're like a terrible friend?
  Luci: I never said I was your friend.
• The Dragon Prince: The flashback that reveals how Viren finished the spell that managed to kill the dragon king showed he enabled Harrow's hatred of him for killing the queen, enforcing that he enabled some of Harrow's more negative tendencies with enthusiasm. Even after getting revenge, he quickly finds a reason to justify killing the child as well.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Eddy is probably the most prominent example of them all. Since he is the leader of the titular trio, the other two often tag along with his scams, with Ed being an idiot and Edd being The Cassandra since Eddy never heeds his warnings. Even when Edd refuses to participate in whatever scheme Eddy devises, Eddy tries in every way to blackmail him into reconsidering his decision.
  Edd: The old guilt route, huh Eddy? Works every time.
• When Family Guy's Brian goes to rehab for his coke problem, his therapist points out that Peter Griffin is a horrible influence on Brian. Really, he is to pretty much anyone to whom he offers aid due to being an idiot. Bill Clinton ended up being this to Peter.
• In one episode of Fillmore!, the title character runs into an old friend from his delinquent days. They reminisce about old times and it becomes clear, especially to Ingrid, that he is trying to influence Fillmore into becoming his old bad-boy self again. Turns out the whole thing was a setup to get Fillmore in trouble for a series of school offenses he didn't commit, because he was angry Fillmore went straight and wanted to ruin him. Good thing Fillmore already suspected this from the start and played along just enough to turn the tables on his old friend.
• Subverted by Cherri Bomb in Hazbin Hotel. While she encourages Angel to join her in drugs and booze (in sharp contrast with Husk trying to talk him out of the same), she is ultimately accepting of the fact that he is trying to reform himself, politely declining his offer to join them at the hotel because she's satisfied with her life. The Season 1 finale has her join in with the Hotel's fight against the Exorcists, at which point she becomes the hotel's third patron.
• Hey Arnold!: In an odd form of this trope, Harold, Sid, and Stinky are all a lot nicer when they aren't hanging around with the other two.
• House of Mouse: At the beginning of the episode "Jiminy Cricket", Jiminy isn't to pleasured of the fact that his protegee Pinocchio is taken in by Hades' henchmen Panic and Pain. In the end, Pinocchio himself isn't too thrilled by their meanness and chooses back his friendship with Jiminy.
• Jonny Quest. In the original series, Jonny was sometimes this to Hadji. Jonny would come up with crazy ideas that got them into danger (often against the wishes of his father and Race Bannon) and Hadji would reluctantly go along with him.
  • In the '90s version, Jonny and Jessie were this to not just Hadji (who at one point complained that no one ever listens to him) but sometimes each other.
• Kaeloo: Mr. Cat is a horrible influence on Stumpy and often teaches him that doing wrong things is a good idea, like annoying a teacher to get kicked out of class or robbing a supermarket. Kaeloo tries her best to stop Stumpy from listening to Mr. Cat, but it usually doesn't work.
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: This was how Badgerclops became part of the Thicket Thieves in the first place.
• The Mickey Mouse Works shorts depict Daisy Duck as this to Minnie Mouse, such as when she invited herself along on a day trip that was planned to be only for Mickey and Minnie, and causes them no end of delays.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "Woe Is Me, Part 1", Woebegone reveals that he was goaded into bullying a witch by some friends of his, which resulted in his current curse. He didn't really want to, since she'd never done anything to them, but was peer pressured into doing it anyway. Much good it did to him.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Trixie's been shown to be a bad influence on her best friend Starlight Glimmer. When the two originally meet, Trixie is intentionally this, due to only originally befriending her as a way to indirectly get back at Twilight and finally "beat" her at something, only to end up bonding with Starlight and becoming real friends with her in the process. Later episodes show Trixie's selfishness and bad attitude get on Starlight's nerves very often to the point where she loses her temper and lashes out, despite Trixie not meaning to hurt her feelings and sometimes having genuinely no idea how much trouble she is causing Starlight. The two remain good friends despite the trouble and it is clear Starlight brings out the best in Trixie, but Trixie has the unfortunate effect of bringing out the worst in those around her, including Starlight.
• The Owl House: Boscha acts like this to her friends. As shown in "Understanding Willow", Amity was forced to be friends with Boscha and gained many of her Jerkass tendencies from Boscha. As the series progresses, it becomes increasingly clear how miserable Amity is without real friends and leaves her as she gets character development. It is implied that Boscha mistreated her as well, thus giving her another good reason to leave Boscha's posse.
• The Proud Family: One has to wonder why Penny Proud even bothers to hang around with Dijonay or Lacienaga, given how often they either screw her over, abandon her, or get each other into bad situations.
• The Raccoons: In "Join the Club!", Donna acts as one to Lisa by pressuring her into smoking cigarettes and rejecting her as a friend when she refuses to do so. Near the end of the episode, Cyril helps Lisa realize that she's better off without her.
• Rigby in Regular Show tends to be this towards Mordecai. While both characters are The Slacker, Rigby is usually the one who talks Mordecai into ignoring work and being generally irresponsible, and is usually the cause of their misadventures. Notably, while Benson has threatened to fire the two of them (or Rigby alone) countless times, he's only ever threatened to fire Mordecai alone once (in "Dumptown USA").
• Otto Rocket from Rocket Power is definitely this especially to Twister and Sam. Otto is always urging them to do bad things including crossing over off-limits areas which leads to danger (he got his leg broken in one episode because of it) and even playing hooky. He always procrastinates his homework, cheats in events if he isn't winning, and lies his way to get what he wants.
• Rocko's Modern Life has Heffer be this to both his two best friends, Rocko and Filburt:
  • Heffer talks Rocko into things like a credit card (which causes most of his stuff to be repossessed, though Heffer does save face by buying Spunky the food bowl Rocko bought him) or roping him into buying an extremely expensive TV set.
  • As for Filburt, whether it's arguing with him or videotaping Rocko nude with him, he's this to him as well. When Heffer isn't around, Filburt doesn't act like this.
• In the Rotten Ralph animated series, Ralph's alley cat friends Fleabag, Bones, and Lulu would invariably encourage him to do things that would get him in trouble.
• Sidekick: Trevor and Vana are this to Eric and Kitty respectively. To elaborate, Trevor is very happy to drag Eric into his troublemaking shenanigans and pin the blame on him for them, as well as generally encouraging Eric's misbehavior (given that Trevor's father is Splitsboro's top supervillain, it's easy to see where he gets his attitude from). Meanwhile, Vana basically treats Kitty as her slave and often peer pressures her into doing things she wouldn't normally do, like hurting Eric.
• The Simpsons:
  • Bart Simpson is often this to Milhouse, to the point that one episode focused on Luann forbidding Milhouse from seeing Bart because he's such a bad influence.
    Bart: What's she got against me?
    Milhouse: She says you're a bad influence.
    Bart: Bad influence my butt! How many times have I told you never listen to your mother?!
    • Bart towards Ralph Wiggum, as well, nearly ending in the Mayor's accidental death.
  • On the other hand, Bart falls victim to this in "Bart's Girlfriend," when he falls in love with Jessica Lovejoy. She persuades him into a dangerous skateboard stunt and forces him into pulling the fire alarm at school. Bart finally comes to his senses when Jessica steals from the church collection plate and blames it on him.
• South Park: While "friend" is an overstatement, Eric Cartman proved to be a fairly bad influence on Stan, Kenny, and even Kyle. Cartman is usually the one who drags them into a Zany Scheme, often to find a way to get rich quick.
• Entrée of Spliced is one to Peri. Many of Peri's less moral actions in the show are often the result of Entrée manipulating him or outright telling him to do something bad (including convincing him some good actions are bad), with Peri's naivety leaving him oblivious to this.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Patrick Star's terrible advice often leads SpongeBob to trouble.
• El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera has Frida Suarez, who acts like a mischievous conscience to Manny and convinces him to do the "funny"/bad thing as opposed to the right thing.
• Wander Over Yonder: "The Rider" features Ryder, Sylvia's old Jerkass traveling partner. Sylvia starts to act meaner in response to his behavior, and it's only near the end when she realizes how his influence is negatively affecting her.
• This is what the relationship between Rachel and Sarah boils down to in YOLO, as while they're both Hard Drinking Party Girls, Rachel is more or less a force of chaos that only wants to keep partying in contrast to Sarah wanting to find purpose in life.
  • The first season (YOLO: Crystal Fantasy) shows Rachel lost in a different dimension where time moves differently. Sarah believes Rachel's vanished and died, but is forced to admit she doesn't have any meaningful memories of their friendship, eventually going on to live a fulfilling life without her. Years and years later, when Sarah's an old woman and dying, she mentions she had a best friend who "was kind of a toxic bitch" but they had a lot of fun together. Rachel hearing this and admitting to herself that she is indeed kind of a toxic bitch is enough for a goddess to deem her worth sending back in time to the night she vanished, where she manages to begrudgingly tell Sarah "I love you."
  • The second season (YOLO: Silver Destiny) highlights this even more, revealing that multiple people don't understand why Sarah is still friends with her. Their old teacher Sister Morrison outright calls Rachel a demon, and during an impromptu class reunion, Sarah's former friends reveal they stopped associating with her because Rachel was always so nasty and unpleasant. Rachel's also shown to be totally dependent on Sarah and gets incredibly pissed off whenever anyone implies that she's a bad influence on Sarah.

• This is what the saying "A few bad apples spoil the barrel" or "spoil the bunch" means, as bad or bruised apples release ethylene gas, which makes other apples around it begin to rot, too. To prevent the rot from spreading any further, you have to remove the bad apple(s).