History WhatYouAreInTheDark / Film

** Bilbo has the chance to kill Gollum and no-one would know about it. [[ForWantOfANail He doesn't.]]

** After the aforementioned firefight, they capture a German soldier and could easily execute him on the spot, but decide to take mercy and let him go; in an evil example of this, [[spoiler:that German soldier who before pitifully grovelled to the Americans for his life, turns up at the FinalBattle and shoots Captain Miller without hesitation and then tries to surrender to Upham when TheCavalry turns up. [[KickTheSonOfABitch Upham shoots him dead.]]]]

* In ''Film/BatmanForever'', Robin has Two-Face at his knees whilst on a cliff and after kicking the gun out of his hand, he gives him several [[KickTheSonOfABitch well-deserved punches in the face]] [[YouKilledMyFather for killing his family.]] At one point, Two-Face is completely at his mercy and begs Robin to kill only for to spare him due to wishing him imprisoned than dead. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, [[JerkWithAHeartOfJerk Two-Face lives up to his name]] and thanks him for saving him then pulls his ''other'' personality's gun on him and calls him honest but stupid.]]

** Done one more time, when [[spoiler: Diane, desperate the vindicate the Bad Guys, begins to confess her involvement, and thus her identity as the Crimson Paw (which would expose her as a wanted criminal and ruined her new life). The Bad Guys interupt her before she can and have themselves arrested, choosing to act as her {{Secret Keepers}} as thanks for sticking up for them.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheBadGuys'': Learning to be a good person just for the sake of it, not for anyone else's eyes, is part of the movie's theme.

* Defied to some extent in ''WesternAnimation/{{The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Disney}}''; the Archdeacon is trying to convince [[BigBad Judge Frollo]] that he should spare Quasimodo after killing the child's mother. Frollo is initially dismissive, but changes his tune after the Deacon says that while no mortal would know, killing a child before the steps of Notre Dame would certainly draw God's Wrath (in essence, there is never a moment where he or anyone else is truly alone in the dark).

--> '''Quasimodo''': Me? What am I supposed to do? Go out there and rescue the girl from the jaws of death and the whole town cheers like I'm some kind of a hero?! She already has her knight in shining armor and it's not me! (''sighs'') Frollo was right. Frollo was right about everything. And I'm tired of trying to be something that I'm not.

* [[{{WesternAnimation/Tarzan}} Disney's Tarzan]] has [[BigBad Clayton]] give Tarzan the choice of shooting him with his own double-barreled shotgun with no one else around: "Go ahead, shoot me, [[IronicEcho be a man]]". Tarzan's reply? ''Mimicking'' the sound of the gun being shot to put some fear into Clayton before smashing said shotgun in front of him. "Not a man like ''you''."

* Villainous version: Sebastian Caine in ''Film/HollowMan'' has quite a bit of unspoken InnerMonologue about this trope and concludes that "It's amazing what you can do... when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror any more." He finally crosses the line when he sees his lax-about-closing-her-shades-while-changing neighbor while he's invisible. He pulls off one of his latex gloves and asks himself "who'll know?" It's shown that he messed with her and got at least a good look at her naked, and a deleted scene shows he raped her.

* In the Andrei Tarkovsky film ''Film/{{Stalker}}'', the Room is a special place that grants the innermost desire of whoever walks into it, regardless of whether that person is conscious of it or not. Do you ''really'' want to know what your deepest desire is, and do you dare find out? Porcupine, a man who allegedly found the Room [[spoiler:as eventually DrivenToSuicide because he went into the Room to wish for the resurrection of his dead brother, but the Room instead granted him a vast sum of money; he killed himself because he couldn't live with the realisation that he wasn't as noble as he thought he was, that he wanted to be rich more than he wanted his brother to be back.]]

** [[spoiler: Despite not knowing Snake was a FakeDefector all along during the climax, the other Bad Guys find it in their hearts to ask their old friend to join their side once more. Additionally, while seemingly falling to their deaths, Wolf and Snake make up, with the latter declaring his [[PlatonicDeclarationOfLove love for his friends]]. And this is before Wolf reveals he has just the gadget to save their lives.]]

** This reaches its apex in ''WesternAnimation/CinderellaIIIATwistInTime''. When Anastasia (who's been rewritten as [[NotEvilJustMisunderstood misguided]] young woman who wants love more than anything) gets her hands on the Fairy Godmother's wand, she gives it to Lady Tremaine, who realizes its RealityWarper potential and rewrites history so that Anastasia, and not Cinderella, fits the glass slipper on the day of the Prince's test. At first, Anastasia is thrilled -- she finally has her Prince Charming -- but as the movie progresses, she starts feeling guilty. Lady Tremaine tries to avert this sudden conscience by brainwashing the Prince, turning Anastasia into an exact copy of Cinderella, and making sure the real Cinderella is put in a DeathTrap during the royal wedding. But Cinderella manages to escape and return to the wedding, when it comes time for the vows, Anastasia -- who, for all intents and purposes to the entire world, ''is'' Cinderella at this point -- can't bring herself to say "I do." To Cinderella's amazement, Anastasia says "I *DON'T*". She explains that she wants to be loved for herself, even if that means losing everything she thought she'd ever wanted. After her mother has been dealt with, and Anastasia returns to her normal self, Cinderella, seeing her remorse, forgives Anastasia and finally repairs their strained relationship, and the two can finally enjoy each other's company again without Lady Tremaine on their backs.

* In the final scene of ''Film/ThreeTenToYuma2007'', after an entire movie of everyone trying at great cost to bring [[VillainProtagonist Ben Wade]] in to justice aboard the titular train, [[spoiler: [[KillEmAll every single character of significance]] is dead or dying, [[TheHeroDies including Dan Evans]], except for Ben himself and Dan's son William. After a brief moment holding Ben at gunpoint, William turns his back on Ben to instead be with his father in his dying moments. Since Ben's late gang wiped out basically the entire police force of the town in their efforts to break him out, there's pretty much nobody left who's still hunting him and absolutely nothing stopping Ben from stealing a horse and riding out of the town to eternal freedom. He willingly climbs aboard the train and locks himself in a cell anyway.]]

* The whole point of ''{{Film/Logan}}''. The title character wants nothing more to do with being the superhero {{Wolverine}} and wants to live a normal life. Then, he meets a girl who went through the same experiment performed on him and looks after her with the promise of a large sum of cash for doing so. Once he is paid, no one would blame him for just leaving; [[spoiler:however, after a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech from the girl, who is for all intents and purposes his daughter, he decides to risk his life to keep her and her "siblings" from being recaptured and used as deadly assassins, proving that he still is a hero.]]

--> '''Clint:''' "Nobody would know...nobody. 'Yeah last I saw him an Ultron was sitting on him. Yeah he'll be missed, that quick little bastard. I miss him already.'"

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Moana}}'' gives us something sweet at the start. Baby Moana is down at the beach and sees a pretty seashell and really wants it, but she sees a little baby turtle scared of the birds trying to eat it as it's trying to get to the water. No one would blame her if she were to just get the shell at that age, but Moana grabs a leaf and protects it from the birds, losing the shell in the process. This is what makes the ocean choose her.

* In ''Film/{{Hannibal}}'', Lecter is at the {{Big Bad}}'s mercy, about to be fed to a pit of wild boar, when Lecter raises an interesting question to his personal physician:

* Defied to some extent in ''WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame''; the Archdeacon is trying to convince [[BigBad Judge Frollo]] that he should spare Quasimodo after killing the child's mother. Frollo is initially dismissive, but changes his tune after the Deacon says that while no mortal would know, killing a child before the steps of Notre Dame would certainly draw God's Wrath (in essence, there is never a moment where he or anyone else is truly alone in the dark).

* In the 1965 comedy ''How to Murder Your Wife'', Jack Lemmon is on trial for murdering his wife. When the trial appears to be headed for a conviction, he takes up his own defense and pleads justifiable homicide, appealing to the all-male jury's frustrations regarding their own wives. He offers a witness (and thus the jury) the idea that if they could press [[BigRedButton a magic button]] and their wives would disappear and no one would know, would they do it?

* In ''Film/TheAdventuresOfBuckarooBanzaiAcrossThe8thDimension'', Lord John Whorfin says, "History is made at night. Character is what you are in the dark!"
* In ''Film/Aliens'' the commissioned officer Gorman spends most of the movie as a weak, ineffectual ditherer. At the end, when faced with the decision between relative safety and going back for Vasquez by himself despite the obvious consequences, he decisively chooses the latter.