History MoralEventHorizon / MarvelUniverse

[[caption-width-right:250:An action so despicable it [[UsefulNotes/TheBronzeAgeOfComicBooks changed comics forever.]]]]

** ''ComicBook/TheDarkPhoenixSaga'' did this to the titular character, to the point that it knocked the story off-course. It was planned that Jean would return to sanity after her cosmic rampage, but during said cosmic rampage, she consumed a star, which resulted in the death of the entire population of an inhabited planet, said to number over five billion. At that point, Marvel editor Jim Shooter put his foot down and declared that Jean couldn't return to the X-Men without ''seriously'' paying for her crimes, which ultimately led to the story's tragic ending. In fact, this was what prompted the reveal that Jean and the Phoenix weren't the same entity, as it was the only way for her to go back to being an X-Men member without making her teammates seem ''seriously'' irresponsible.

** ''ComicBook/TheDarkPhoenixSaga'' did this to the titular character, to the point that it knocked the story off-course. It was planned that Jean would return to sanity after her cosmic rampage, but during said cosmic rampage, she consumed a star, which resulted in the death of the entire population of an inhabited planet, said to number over five billion. At that point, Marvel editor Jim Shooter put his foot down and declared that Jean couldn't return to the X-Men without ''seriously'' paying for her crimes, which ultimately led to the story's tragic ending.

* ''ComicBook/CivilWar2006'' had Tony Stark putting the unregistered superheroes into the Negative Zone which cause Spiderman to have doubts and eventually leave the pro-registration side. And there's also Stark, Reed Richards and Hank Pym using Thor's DNA to make a clone of him which resulted in said clone killing the hero Goliath.
** In the very beginning of Civil War, Nitro crosses it when he uses his powers to make a large explosion so he can escape, resulting in the deaths of 60 children at a nearby school playground and the deaths of 600 other people in the surrounding area of Stamford, Connecticut.
* ComicBook/CarolDanvers has a few thanks to both ''Civil War'' events, which were notorious for their character derailment:
** During one of the side-stories for Marvel's original ''ComicBook/CivilWar2006'' arc, Carol attacks, the second ComicBook/SpiderWoman[=/=]Arachne, a single mother, at Julia home, and gives her in question an NoHoldsBarredBeatdown in front of her daughter, all the while taunting the daughter that she (Carol, that is) is going to throw Mommy in jail and take the little girl away so that the two will never see each other unless Mommy does everything Carol orders her to do. While she immediately had a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment, it was a lot to live down.
** In ''ComicBook/CivilWarII'', Carol crosses this line first when [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony Stark]] reveals that Ulysses' precognitive powers aren't predicting the actual future but a possible future, has this confirmed by the Beast and she ''still'' opts to continue to believing the predictions and pushing her "Change the Future" stance. The thing that kicks off the fight is when she and S.H.I.E.L.D. arrests a woman with the only evidence of something bad she could have done being Ulysses' vision of her with a suitcase and devastation following. This turns out to be a dud. She then goes downhill from there, [[spoiler:when her fight with Tony results in Tony nearly dying]] in the finale This is explained in the ''ComicBook/TheUltimates2015'', in the tie-ins and the follow-up series when Carol had just before this been exposed to a vision of the [[ComicBookTime sliding timeline]] by an irritated Galactus and cracked a little under the revelation, and by the machinations of the First Firmament, the original multiverse that was more or less DarkerAndEdgier incarnate and affecting everyone in it (not coincidentally, it was defeated during the end of ''ComicBook/SecretEmpire'').

** Another baddie who fits this trope is the Scarecrow (not to be confused with the ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' villain). While he was always a criminal who enjoyed scaring and robbing people, when he's captured by Captain America he goes completely over the edge and becomes a sadistic murderer, impaling innocent people with his pitchfork as a means of trying to draw Cap out to stop him. He gets the attention of Comicbook/GhostRider instead, and ends up impaled on his own pitchfork in the ensuing battle. Things went further downhill when the Scarecrow was revived as an undead zombie with the ability to cause fear in his enemies.

* ''Comicbook/CivilWar2006'' had Tony Stark putting the unregistered superheroes into the Negative Zone which cause Spiderman to have doubts and eventually leave the pro-registration side. And there's also Stark, Reed Richards and Hank Pym using Thor's DNA to make a clone of him which resulted in said clone killing the hero Goliath.

* The Purple Man started out as a low-grade ''Comicbook/{{Daredevil}}'' villain. Then came ''Comicbook/{{Alias}}'' (not to be confused with the TV show), in which he humiliated, abused, and tortured Jessica Jones in every non-rape way available. But he does rape people as well. Just in case there was any doubt he's a total scum bag. He kidnapped women and raped them ''[[ForcedToWatch in front of her]]'' as a way to mock her for being an ineffective superhero.

** As later revealed in ''Comicbook/YoungAvengers'' things were ''a lot'' more complicated. Technically the Loki who took over the kid's body wasn't past Loki to begin with, that version truly seems to have died in the ''Comicbook/{{Siege}}'', but a personality copy created by him for this purpose as a CloningGambit of sorts. The copy, however, had a conscience (among other differences), and was haunted by guilt over this. By ''Comicbook/LokiAgentOfAsgard'' this new Loki actively tried to pull a BecomingTheMask, against pretty much ''everybody''. [[spoiler:No they (other differences: like not strictly being ''he'') haven't succeeded in that... but they did manage to avert becoming evil again.]] It takes some special kind of talent to screw over ''two'' versions of yourself ''from the grave''.

* Namor the Comicbook/SubMariner was always one of Marvel's darker {{Anti Hero}}es, but he finally crosses this threshold in the "Game of Worlds" storyline in ''Comicbook/NewAvengers'' when he [[spoiler: destroys the home Earth of the Great Society and all its billions of inhabitants]]. It can be argued that his reason for doing so was sympathetic, due to [[spoiler: that Earth being about to collide with the main Earth, which would doom both]], but the narrative clearly paints him as now beyond redemption, for two reasons: first, [[spoiler: the Great Society's Earth was far better off than the main Earth, to the point that several of Namor's comrades seriously considered destroying their own world]], and second, the very next thing he does is to join up with Thanos, Maximus the Mad, Terrax, and several other supervillains to [[spoiler: make ''pre-emptive strikes'' on other alternate Earths]].

* ''Comicbook/SecretInvasion'' has the Skrull Queen Veranke making Wasp into a bio-bomb which would kill everyone around her, forcing Thor to MercyKill her. All the heroes and villains want to get Veranke's head for this with Norman Osborn, of all people, going for the kill shot.

** ComicBook/DoctorOctopus and the rest of the Sinister Six, Franchise/SpiderMan's recurring VillainTeamUp, have all murdered a few times over the decades, but it usually happened to {{Asshole Victim}}s, so most readers could shrug it off and continue to at least partially root for them. Then came the early 90's storyline, ''Revenge Of The Sinister Six'' (not to be confused with the novel of the same name). As part of their plan to take over the world, they invade another dimension and steal the highly-advanced weaponry they find there. And to test it out, they kill ''over 143,000'' of that dimension's natives. Spidey himself is stunned, noting that the Six rarely if ever kill. Their bloody campaign continues when they return to Earth, killing at the bare minimum four dozen people (an explicitly given body count), and Octopus threatens to blow-up the world with orbiting weapon satellites if the assembled heroes don't stop fighting him. By the time it's over, a clearly soul-weary Spidey notes that way too many people are heading to the hospital or morgue.
** An interesting example for another villain, Kraven the Hunter. Kraven claimed to have a code of honor, and didn't (usually) pursue enemies he believed to be beneath his prowess. When he [[spoiler: killed himself]] at the end of "ComicBook/KravensLastHunt", he seemed to validate his claims of being an honorable (if unhinged) man. Years later, when his previously unknown family starts showing up, we get a different image of Kraven, particularly after [[spoiler:they resurrect him]] in ''ComicBook/GrimHunt''. Specifically, he [[spoiler:kills]] his wife, and was implied to have abused her in the past. The worst, though, has to be [[AbusiveParents what he did to his remaining children, Alyosha and Ana]]. He [[spoiler:pits them against each other in a battle to the death, and it's revealed that Ana won.]] Although Ana initially seems fine with this, when she gets into a rematch with the ''ComicBook/ScarletSpider'', she's shown to [[spoiler:have a death wish from the guilt she carries of murdering her older brother.]] Father of the Year, Kraven certainly isn't.

** Mysterio was an egotistical, second tier villain with LargeHam tendencies. Then came Creator/KevinSmith's Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} arc "ComicBook/GuardianDevil", where Mysterio [[spoiler:tries to drive Daredevil to madness in a scheme that involved the murders of an innocent teenage girl, her parents, a prostitute, framing Foggy for the murder (and falsified rape) of said hooker and (indirectly), DD's girlfriend Karen Page. To top it all off, Mysterio planned to push Daredevil over the MEH himself by getting him to kill a baby Mysterio had set up as TheAntiChrist. At the end of the arc, Mysterio commits suicide, so we don't know if this new status would have stuck.]] To implicate [[spoiler:the baby as the Anti-Christ, he [[MedicalRapeAndImpregnate impregnated the aforementioned virgin teenage girl while she was doped up to see angels]]. Fortunately, the [[{{Squick}} exact method]] was not specified.]] And his motive for all of this? He was [[spoiler:dying of cancer at the time, and wanted to die fighting a superhero. At the time, he came up with the scheme his real nemesis Spider-Man was AWOL and he didn't think fighting a clone was satisfactory. So he picked Daredevil instead because Daredevil had stopped one of his insurance fraud schemes in the past. His real goal in the end was to get Daredevil to kill him and give him the death he wanted.]]

* Miek of the Warbound crossed it during ''Comicbook/WorldWarHulk'' when he stabbed Rick Jones. Also, [[spoiler:he is the one responsible for the destruction of Sakaar (he didn't cause the explosion, but he knew it would happen and said nothing) so that the Hulk would go back to being the Worldbreaker.]]

* What Roderick Kingsley did to Betty Brant and Ned Leeds was completely unjustified.
* Mephisto destroying Peter and MJ's marriage in ''One More Day''. Though considering he's one of Marvel's [[SatanicArchetype premier Devils]], he's no doubt crossed with so, ''so'' many times in the past.

** Mysterio was an egotistical, second tier villain with LargeHam tendencies. Then came Creator/KevinSmith's Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} arc "ComicBook/GuardianDevil", where Mysterio [[spoiler:tries to drive Daredevil to madness in a scheme that involved the murders of an innocent teenage girl, her parents, a prostitute, and (indirectly), DD's girlfriend Karen Page. To top it all off, Mysterio planned to push Daredevil over the MEH himself by getting him to kill a baby Mysterio had set up as TheAntiChrist. At the end of the arc, Mysterio commits suicide, so we don't know if this new status would have stuck.]] To implicate [[spoiler: the baby as the Anti-Christ, he [[MedicalRapeAndImpregnate impregnated the aforementioned virgin teenage girl while she was doped up to see angels]]. Fortunately, the [[{{Squick}} exact method]] was not specified.]] And his motive for all of this? He was [[spoiler:dying of cancer at the time, and wanted to die fighting a superhero. At the time, he came up with the scheme his real nemesis Spider-Man was AWOL and he didn't think fighting a clone was satisfactory. So he picked Daredevil instead because Daredevil had stopped one of his insurance fraud schemes in the past. His real goal in the end was to get Daredevil to kill him and give him the death he wanted.]]

** The ''ComicBook/AvengersVsXMen'' event did this for ComicBook/{{Cyclops}} (Well, what they intended to be one, at least, considering there's a reason "Cyclops Was Right" became a [[MemeticMutation memetic phrase in the community]] after this.) by having him follow in his longtime lover's footsteps, going [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity mad with the power of the Phoenix Force]] and then surpassing Jean by causing cataclysmic destruction around the world, and, oh yeah, ''murdering the X-Men's founder in cold blood''. Unlike with Jean, the Marvel editorial didn't initially realize what a problem this would create for them down the line and tried to keep Scott around, but there was no coming back from an MEH like that and he was eventually KilledOffForReal and replaced with a younger counterpart. And to complete the circle, just like Jean, Cyclops was eventually revived in a strange inversion of RedemptionEarnsLife.

*** Connors appeared to cross the line himself in an earlier story, when he revealed that he'd always been in charge of the Lizard's actions (which included killing a lot of people). However this story also had him act like he knew that Peter Parker was Spider-man, something he'd ''never'' known, and was so poorly received that it's been ignored by every subsequent author.

** Mysterio was an egotistical, second tier villain with LargeHam tendencies. Then came Creator/KevinSmith's Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} arc "Guardian Devil", where Mysterio [[spoiler:tries to drive Daredevil to madness in a scheme that involved the murders of an innocent teenage girl, her parents, a prostitute, and (indirectly), DD's girlfriend Karen Page. To top it all off, Mysterio planned to push Daredevil over the MEH himself by getting him to kill a baby Mysterio had set up as TheAntiChrist. At the end of the arc, Mysterio commits suicide, so we don't know if this new status would have stuck.]] To implicate [[spoiler: the baby as the Anti-Christ, he impregnated the aforementioned virgin teenage girl while she was doped up to see angels. Fortunately the [[{{Squick}} exact method]] was not specified.]] And his motive for all of this? He was [[spoiler: dying of cancer at the time, and wanted to die fighting a superhero. At the time he came up with the scheme his real nemesis Spiderman was AWOL and he didn't think fighting a clone was satisfactory. So he picked Daredevil instead because Daredevil had stopped one of his insurance fraud schemes in the past. His real goal in the end was to get Daredevil to kill him and give him the death he wanted.]]

** An interesting example for another villain, Kraven the Hunter. Kraven claimed to have a code of honor, and didn't (usually) pursue enemies he believed to be beneath his prowess. When he [[spoiler: killed himself]] at the end of "ComicBook/KravensLastHunt", he seemed to validate his claims of being an honorable (if unhinged) man. Years later, when his previously unknown family starts showing up, we get a different image of Kraven, particularly after [[spoiler:they resurrect him]] in "Grim Hunt". Specifically, he [[spoiler:kills]] his wife, and was implied to have abused her in the past. The worst, though, has to be [[AbusiveParents what he did to his remaining children, Alyosha and Ana]]. He [[spoiler:pits them against each other in a battle to the death, and it's revealed that Ana won.]] Although Ana initially seems fine with this, when she gets into a rematch with the ''ComicBook/ScarletSpider'', she's shown to [[spoiler:have a death wish from the guilt she carries of murdering her older brother.]] Father of the Year, Kraven certainly isn't.

* ''Comicbook/CivilWar'' had Tony Stark putting the unregistered superheroes into the Negative Zone which cause Spiderman to have doubts and eventually leave the pro-registration side. And there's also Stark, Reed Richards and Hank Pym using Thor's DNA to make a clone of him which resulted in said clone killing the hero Goliath.

** During one of the side-stories for Marvel's original ''ComicBook/CivilWar'' arc, Carol attacks, the second ComicBook/SpiderWoman[=/=]Arachne, a single mother, at Julia home, and gives her in question an NoHoldsBarredBeatdown in front of her daughter, all the while taunting the daughter that she (Carol, that is) is going to throw Mommy in jail and take the little girl away so that the two will never see each other unless Mommy does everything Carol orders her to do. While she immediately had a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment, it was a lot to live down.

** In ''ComicBook/CivilWarII'', Carol crosses this line first when [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony Stark]] reveals that Ulysses' precognitive powers aren't predicting the actual future but a possible future, has this confirmed by the Beast and she ''still'' opts to continue to believing the predictions and pushing her "Change the Future" stance. The thing that kicks off the fight is when she and S.H.I.E.L.D. arrests a woman with the only evidence of something bad she could have done being Ulysses' vision of her with a suitcase and devastation following. This turns out to be a dud. She then crosses it again in the finale [[spoiler:when her fight with Tony results in Tony nearly dying.]] This is explained in the ''ComicBook/TheUltimates2015'', in the tie-ins and the follow-up series when Carol had just before this been exposed to a vision of the [[ComicBookTime sliding timeline]] by an irritated Galactus and cracked a little under the revelation, and by the machinations of the First Firmament, the original multiverse that was more or less DarkerAndEdgier incarnate and affecting everyone in it (not coincidentally, it was defeated during the end of ''ComicBook/SecretEmpire'').

* ComicBook/CarolDanvers has a few thanks to both ''Civil War'' events:
** During one of the side-stories for Marvel's original ''ComicBook/CivilWar'' arc, Carol attacks, the second ComicBook/SpiderWoman[=/=]Arachne, a single mother, at Julia home, and gives her in question an NoHoldsBarredBeatdown in front of her daughter, all the while taunting the daughter that she (Carol, that is) is going to throw Mommy in jail and take the little girl away so that the two will never see each other unless Mommy does everything Carol orders her to do. For a lot of fans, this pretty much destroyed any possibility of Danvers being seen as a hero.
** In ''ComicBook/CivilWarII'', Carol crosses this line first when [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony Stark]] reveals that Ulysses' precognitive powers aren't predicting the actual future but a possible future, has this confirmed by the Beast and she ''still'' opts to continue to believing the predictions and pushing her "Change the Future" stance. The thing that kicks off the fight is when she and S.H.I.E.L.D. arrests a woman with the only evidence of something bad she could have done being Ulysses' vision of her and an empty suitcase. Many fans who were apparently unaware of her earlier portrayal as a pragmatic hard-ass willing to hurt innocent people to accomplish the mission consider this portrayal "character assassination." She then crosses it again in the finale [[spoiler:when her fight with Tony results in Tony nearly dying.]]

* Mephisto destroying Peter and MJ's marriage in ''One More Day''.

* In ''[[ComicBook/XForce Uncanny X-Force]]'', Archangel, corrupted by the "Death Seed" Apocalypse placed in him ''way'' back in the original run of ''ComicBook/XFactor'', crosses when he [[spoiler:kills Autumn Rolfson, a frail, likely sexually-abused anorexic woman, and one of his own followers, for objecting to him raising her son, a [[ILoveNuclearPower radiation-powered mutant]], to be a mass-murderer]]. This ''somehow'' ends up having more ''gravitas'' than when he depopulated a town 2 issues earlier.

** Some time during the X-Men Messiah Complex crossover for ComicBook/{{Bishop}}. The major incidents are recounted here allowing you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions. It could be that the whole crossover event is one giant Moral Event Horizon for Bishop.

** In the ''Planet X'' storyline, Grant Morrison tried to do this with ComicBook/{{Magneto}}, whom he considered a "mad old terrorist twat." [[DracoInLeatherPants Not surprisingly]], it didn't take, and was quickly [[RetCon retconned]] away. Morrison at least had the decency, however, to explain Magneto's OutOfCharacter behavior: [[spoiler:possession by [[TheVirus John Sublime]]]]. Discounting this, however, he still has his interplanetary EMP strike in the ''ComicBook/FatalAttractions'' story, which shut down electronics around the world and killed thousands if not millions of people (planes crashes, life-saving devices failing, etc).

** The ''ComicBook/AvengersVsXMen'' event did this for ComicBook/{{Cyclops}} by having him follow in his longtime lover's footsteps, going [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity mad with the power of the Phoenix Force]] and then surpassing Jean by causing cataclysmic destruction around the world, and, oh yeah, ''murdering the X-Men's founder in cold blood''. Unlike with Jean, the Marvel editorial didn't initially realize what a problem this would create for them down the line and tried to keep Scott around, but there was no coming back from an MEH like that and he was eventually KilledOffForReal and replaced with a younger counterpart. And to complete the circle, just like Jean, Cyclops was eventually revived in a strange inversion of RedemptionEarnsLife.

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