Heel Realization / Western Animation

Heel Realizations in Western Animation.

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A-K

• Adventure Time: In the episode "Another Way", Finn understood that all his actions throughout the episode have caused a lot of pain to others. He sings about it.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: Darwin has one of these in "The Safety" when he becomes a dictator to keep Elmore safe after watching an unsettling safety PSA at school. He has the whole town under surveillance, has altered everything in the town to be safe, and is even messing with the show itself (censoring Gumball's already censored swears, altering the editing to prevent violence from being shown, etc.). Gumball finally gets through to him by pointing out that good guys don't wear capes and jackboots while carrying riding crops (which Darwin is doing), and convinces him to stop his safety measures.
• Amphibia:
  • Sasha Waybright in several instances:
    • In "Reunion", upon realizing that Anne is risking her own life to save her from falling off the tower, and seeing that the frog family she dismissed are doing the same, Sasha admits that Anne would be better off without her and lets go of Anne's hand, willing to fall to her death rather than endanger Anne.
    • In "True Colors", she has another one after Anne calls her a "horrible person". She actually starts to consider that Anne could be right about her. By the time she really needs Anne by her side, Anne isn't having it, and with the example of a tyrant worse than her in King Andrias, she's probably starting to see what she might become if she continues like the way she has been.
    • In "Turning Point", she fully realizes her faults and decides to try and become a better person.
  • A downplayed example, as Marcy Wu was never evil nor came close to it before being possessed by the Core, but after Andrias reveals the truth to her friends, Marcy does come to realize how selfish and dumb her actions were, namely her decision to trap Anne and Sasha in Amphibia against their will.
• Arcane: Killing a young boy in the heat of the Shimmer factory raid is a big wake-up call for Jayce. He understands that he's fallen far from the idealistic scientist he used to be and moves for finding a peaceful solution with Zaun.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Not an easy process for Zuko, but he eventually gets there: "I'm good now. I mean, I thought I was good before, but now I realize I was bad..."
  • Jeong Jeong and Iroh both had one before the series, leading to them working with the Order of the White Lotus to stop the Fire Nation.
  • Fire Lord Sozin who began the war, left his best friend Avatar Roku to die and wiped out the Air Nation realized this at the end of his life, but it was far too late to turn back, and his descendants turned out to be largely worse than he was.
• Big Hero 6: The Series: Following the events of the film, Callaghan's time in prison has caused him to reflect on his actions and look at them with regret, including causing Tadashi's death. Despite knowing it's not enough, he tells Hiro he's sorry. Hiro tells him that Tadashi would want him to forgive Callaghan, but that's something he's definitely not ready to do yet.
• In the 2006 finale of Biker Mice from Mars, in the final episode "Turf Wars", Vinnie's old flame Harley goes through this. Having been disfigured and believing that the Biker Mice abandoned her, she sides with the Nomad Rats and attempts to use the Regenerator to make Olympus Mons erupt in order to kill the other Martian mice. She eventually sees the error of her ways and realizes that this course of action is not the way to save Mars.
• Castlevania (2017): Though Dracula firmly commits to Then Let Me Be Evil when he decides to Kill All Humans in revenge for his wife being burned at the stake, he nonetheless has one in the climax of season 2. He's completely willing to kill his son until their fight takes them to Alucard's childhood bedroom — and he's confronted with the reality that he's about to destroy the only living link to his wife with his own two hands. It shakes him so badly that he barely resists when Alucard drives a stake through his heart.
  Dracula: Lisa...I-I'm killing our boy... your greatest gift to me, and I'm killing him... I must already be dead.
• Classic Disney Shorts: The cartoon "The Sleepwalker" involves Pluto delivering his beloved bone to a female dog in his sleep. When he wakes up he is convinced the dog stole it and tears apart her kennel in a rage. From the wreckage come her litter of puppies, now cold and homeless. A tearful Pluto turns into a literal heel, and offers his bone and his own doghouse.
• Vlad from Danny Phantom goes through this twice, albeit the first happened in a Bad Future where being without his powers for ten years made him realize his mistakes. The second occurred in the Grand Finale when his ultimate plan backfires and he loses everything, even Jack's respect. This trope is made clear when he shows a look of guilt before sadly flying away from earth in exile.
• The Dragon Prince
  • Lord Viren
    • After King Harrow gives him an Armor-Piercing Question, he realizes that he hasn't been the same man that King Harrow had trusted all those years ago, so he sets out to prove himself by going through with the spirit-switching anyway, with the Heroic Sacrifice being himself.
    • In Season 4, Viren is reluctant to proceed with Aaravos' plan, noting that his ambitions were what got him killed and that now he just wants to enjoy what little time he has left with his daughter. Claudia is briefly touched before trying to slap some sense into him, snapping that she's come too far for him to wuss out on her, but it isn't until he reclaims the Relic Staff that he relapses to his old villainous ways... Only for Season 5 to have him realize his mistakes even further in a Vision Quest much like Callum had due to using Dark Magic for the first time since he was resurrected.
• Dragons: The Nine Realms: Following his dragon Old Jack being poisoned and injured protecting him from the new Big Bad Jörmungandr, Ex-Big Bad Buzzsaw asks D'Angelo for help to which he agrees. D'Angelo's unconditional help as well as his advice for Buzzsaw to do some introsprecting lead Buzzsaw to start regretting his previous actions and he eventually changes his ways.
• Esteban from Elena of Avalor finally goes through one in the Grand Finale; His first betrayal from the 4 decades prior happened because he wanted to be seen and heard. Once that was discovered, his whole family disownes him and Esteban joins the bad guys, leading him to fall back to his deepest desire to be king of Avalor, believing that he will finally be seen and heard. In the finale, the result of Esteban's decision to betray his family a second time was his grandparents and other people he's known to get turned to murals. After this, his parts in the song "Never Too Late" beautifully illustrate his realization, his regret for hurting people, and how he believes it is too late to redeem himself.
• Family Guy:
  • In an episode where Stewie has learned he is actually a masochist as he tries to goad Lois to hit him he says, "Dear Lord, I really do have problems don't I?" And in the same episode, the reason Lois can't be goaded into hitting Stewie again is that she's appalled at herself for losing her temper the first time and making him cry.
  • In another episode, Peter and friends are in jail and being targeted by Steve Bellows, a vengeful prisoner. He turns up at their cell with a knife only to find that they have already been released, giving him some time to think:
    Steve: I wonder what this feels like. [pokes himself in the chest with his knife] OW! That hurts! ...My God, is that what I've been doing to people? I belong here.
  • Subverted with "Brian The Closer." Brian seems to have realized that he was in the wrong for selling Quagmire the rundown condo and that he's a bad person in general, but he was only stalling for the condo's refund deadline.
• The Flintstones:
  • Fred gets replaced in a company baseball game by a kid who is a natural player, while a couple of big-league scouts are at the game. They mistake the kid for Fred because of the uniform and make him a pay-or-play offer. When everyone else is telling him to come clean, he scoffs that he deserves the break. It's only when Pebbles says 'Dada bad! Dada bad!' that he realizes how wrong he was. Most heart-breaking scene in the series!
  • Two-way case as Wilma and Barney admit to feeling bad for admonishing Fred after seeing him slink away ashamed to confess the truth, convinced they broke him due to not witnessing the previous incident.
  • More comedic cases occur throughout the series, a Running Gag involves a character morphing into a literal heel whenever they are guilt-tripped. Which is unusual when you consider no-one in the show wears shoes!
  • Another good example is in the episode "Little Bam Bam" where Fred angrily lashes out at Barney and Betty for constantly coming over just to play with Pebbles. After sending them out, Wilma was furious with Fred even taking Pebbles from him and chews him out for this. After hearing this, Fred felt extremely bad for what he's done and personally goes over to Barney and Betty's house apologizing to them and even calls himself a "heel" for what he has done.
• Bloo went through one in the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode, "Cuckoo for Coco Cards". Coco had been making trading cards featuring each of the friends in the house but refused to make any for Bloo unless he apologized for being rude to her earlier in the episode. He ended up gaining them by other means, but it wasn't until the very end when he read the stats on his own card; "Big, insensitive jerkface" that he realized what a Jerkass he had been and apologized to Coco.
• Gargoyles: Demona comes tantalizingly close to hitting this multiple times, but always turns it into an Ignored Epiphany at the last second. John Canmore winds up doing the same.
  Demona (and later John): What have I... what have they done?!
• The Ghost and Molly McGee: In "The Don't Gooder", Molly gets tired of Andrea Davenport constantly stealing the credit for Molly's charity work. After Andrea wins the top spot in a charity candy bar drive, an incensed Molly goes so far as to break into Andrea's house to find proof that Andrea cheated somehow (which Scratch, who'd normally be into that sort of mischief, notes is highly unusual for Molly). Molly discovers that Andrea (whose parents are rich) bought all the nougat bars herself, and is all set to reveal this fact to the public. But when she sees Andrea getting brushed off for a hug from her parents, Molly realizes Andrea is desperate for their approval and Molly herself is a "don't-gooder" because she was more preoccupied with "getting even" with Andrea than getting her proper credit.
• God Rocks!: "Put on Love" ends with Carb putting on Chip's fruits of the Spirit coat and, realizing how impatient he was while going to the movie, tells Chip to forgive him.
• Gravity Falls:
  • In "Fight Fighters" Dipper is forced to admit he took his rivalry with Robbie too far by lying to living video game character Rumble McSkirmish in order to get him to act as Dipper's bodyguard.
    Dipper: Robbie... Robbie didn't kill my father.
    Rumble: Huh?! Then who did?!
    Dipper: What? No one. I—I lied to you.
    Rumble: Hwuuhh?! Well, then you're actually a...BAD GUY?!
    Dipper: I guess I kinda am...
  • In the third part of Weirdmagedon, Dipper runs into Rumble again due to Bill's power bringing near all supernatural entites that were hidden out into the forefront. However his time with the Gravity Falls survivors shown him how overzealous he was being previously to the point he redubs himself "Humble McSkirmish" and helps them fight against Bill and his cronies.
  • In the episode "Sock Opera", Mabel realizes she's been too self-absorbed when Bill Cipher mocks her about how much Dipper has had to sacrifice for her. After defeating him, she apologizes to Dipper for her behavior.
  • In "Northwest Mansion Mystery", a large part of the plot revolves around Pacifica realizing that her family are jerks, and even seeing she herself has been one too, and deciding that she doesn't want to follow in their footsteps.
  • "Weirdmageddon":
    • Dipper makes Gideon realize that Mabel will never love him as long as continues his behavior, trying to force her to be with him and acting like a bully and a tyrant. Gideon ends up turning against Bill Cipher and helping Dipper, Wendy, and Soos free Mabel from her Lotus-Eater Machine.
    • Both Stan and Ford realize that they've taken their anger at each other way too far when they're unable to complete the Zodiac in time to stop Bill, and as a result Dipper and Mabel are in danger of being killed.
• Green Lantern: The Animated Series: In "Steam Lantern", Nigel Thortonberry wants credit for saving his world from the Anti-Monitor, which everyone credits the titular Steam Lantern for. Even after the truth is revealed, they still see Steam Lantern as the hero and Hal Jordan has to spell it out for Thortonberry. Thortonberry insists he's not the villain as he built his robot army to provide news. He takes one look at his robot, holding Steam Lantern's girlfriend hostage, and the monitors, where his robots are causing panic in the streets, and realizes his obsession with proving he's not a villain made him a villain.
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures: The Living Laser realizes he was trying to hurt the one man who was trying to help him just because he wanted to be special, and pulls a Redemption Equals Death to save Iron Man's life.
• Justice League:
  • Wonder Woman has a minor one in the episode Fury when Hawkgirl points out that for all of the Amazon's beliefs that they're not as hateful or violent as "Man's World" their society is every bit as hate-filled, just against men instead of each other. Wonder Woman, who would normally leap down someone's throat over such an accusation, angrily has absolutely nothing to say.
    Wonder Woman: Even when she (a rogue Amazon) was a child, I sensed a bitterness in her. She was never really one of us.
    Hawkgirl: I think she fits in pretty well.
    Wonder Woman: How can you say that?!
    Hawkgirl: Aresia's just taking your precious Amazon code to its logical extension.
    Wonder Woman: We don't teach hatred.
    Hawkgirl: Except when it comes to men.
  • In Justice League Unlimited, it's revealed Amanda Waller had always intended for Terry McGinnis to become the new Batman after stealing Bruce Wayne's DNA to create him, and wanted to recreate Bruce Wayne's Dark and Troubled Past by hiring the Phantasm to kill Terry's parents in front of him. Phantasm, being an Anti-Villain, called out Waller for plotting to traumatize a child and she realized she had crossed a line, quietly cancelling the whole thing. Luckily for her and Gotham, Terry's father Cheated Death, Died Anyway and the rest was history.
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts:
  • "Mulholland": Tad Mulholland genuinely though that he was doing a service by providing people with visions of their greatest fantasies come true even if it was without their consent and eventually ended in him eating them mind and body. When the group all rejects him he realizes that people might not actually want what he gives and it may not be the best way for him to gain nutrients.
  • Implied. While the Timbercats take him away, Scarlemagne looks so shocked and sad after realizing that Kipo, instead of running away and save herself, was willing to give up her own humanity for the Mute’s sake, included himself, the one who endangered her loved ones and her people.

L-Z

• The Legend of Korra:
  • Tarrlok goes through one of these after Amon takes his bending away, realizing that he's become the horrible man that his father wanted him to be. To atone, he commits Murder-Suicide, killing both himself and Amon and ending Yakone's evil legacy. It's also possible that Amon went through one at the end but, like most things about his character, it's left ambiguous.
  • Zaheer has a minor one. While he remains steadfast in his beliefs, he admits that killing the Earth Queen was a bad idea that just made things worse, and gives Korra the advice she needs to fix things.
  • Kuvira gets one after her defeat, acknowledging that she went way too far and saying that she would accept the punishment she deserved.
  • After spending years in prison after the Equalists' defeat, Hiroshi Sato finally realizes that he let his obsession with revenge for his wife ruin everything he still had left in life, knowing that Asami will not forgive him but asks for it anyway. After some consideration, Asami decided to give him a chance, finally getting to forgive him before his Heroic Sacrifice.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Most famously in "What's Opera, Doc?" when Elmer Fudd as Siegfried realizes that he killed his longtime nemesis, Bugs Bunny, crying "What have I done? I killed the wabbit! Poor little bunny ... ." (Or did he?)
  • Repeatedly when Bugs plays possum, Fudd goes through one of these and begins crying, only to go right back to shooting at Bugs when it's revealed to be a trick. They don't call these guys the "Sane Tunes" for a reason, after all.
  • In "Dog Collared", Porky Pig calls off an over-affectionate dog and yells at him to get lost. When the dog starts howling sadly, he literally turns into a "First Class Heel" and slinks back to make amends. History repeats.
  • A similar gag like the one listed above occurs in "Mutt in a Rut", where Elmer Fudd's dog, Rover, watches a tv program about shadier dog owners who take their dog's "hunting" (two go out, but only one comes back), and starts becoming paranoid of Elmer. Elmer, not realizing what's wrong, decides to take him hunting. Fearing the worst, Rover tries to do Elmer in before he can get him, but each attempt backfires, and makes it look like Rover saved Elmer from some terrible fate while getting injured in the process. In the end, Elmer praises Rover for being such a brave dog.
• In Megas XLR, Coop tries to protect the Earth, though it's usually his fault, and he does far more damage than anyone else. The S-Force and their evil nemesis, Ender, spend an episode pointing this out to him (aptly titled The Bad Guy), and nearly everyone else does at some point. In the series finale, an AU version of him actually was the bad guy. It was intended to be revealed at some point that he created the Glorft on accident, too.
• Metalocalypse:
  • Rock Opera special "Metalocalypse: The Doomstar Requiem", Magnus Hammersmith, The Pete Best of the band Dethklok, sees firsthand the unnecessary and evil actions of his partner, as well as the righteous vengeance of his old band, and realizes that the revenge he was seeking wasn't justified. Though he spends the whole special assuring Toki, who replaced him, he was really attempting to assure himself he was good. When that facade is broken, he states "I am not the hero, I am the villain, and I too must go down..."
  • The band themselves go through this in the special, trying hard to claim that Toki is not their "brother", just a bandmate and nothing more and refusing to heed the call of their destiny to resuce him when Toki's captors specifically request that only they alone are allowed to come rescue him. When their hand is eventually forced and they set out on their journey, do they realize how selfish and uncaring they've been to the people they never even gave credit for their sucess. And, after the head of the Black Klock sacrfices himself to save them, do the group realize the strenght of their bonds and finally refer to themselves as "brothers".
• Moral Orel:
  • Roger Papermouth has one of these after he shoots up his daughter's teddy bear (which was a gift from his ex-wife).
  • Arthur has a Jerkass Realization after he realizes how he manipulated his son Clay which caused him to become what he is.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends:
    • In "The Glass Princess", Porcina has been turning Ponyland and the ponies there into glass at the encouragement of her Raptorian minions. But when confronted by some of the ponies face-to-face, she can't do it. She had only been able to do it to the others because they didn't seem real through her scrying glass and ends up seeing the error of her ways.
    • In "Baby, It's Cold Outside", an evil penguin king tries to freeze the entire world so that only "worthy" creatures like himself will survive in such "perfection". In the finale, when our heroes try to stop him, he tries to freeze our heroes... but accidentally freezes his own son instead. In an interesting take on his trope, he actively tries to resist the realization at first, telling himself that it was his own son's fault for getting in his way (even his own guards don't swallow this). Megan and the ponies sing a song to him about how he could be so cold, which finally causes the heel realization because the song made him remember all the happy times he used to have playing with his son, and he cries over his son's frozen form...which thaws him out.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Secret of My Excess": Spike's draconic hoarding instinct is triggered on his birthday, and he starts going through dragon puberty which means growing to prodigious size and snatching everything he likes the look of. This culminates in an adult-sized Spike rampaging through Ponyville and kidnapping Rarity. When she snaps at him when he tries to steal the wrong necklace (one made with a stone he gave her earlier) and he realizes that not only does his beloved Rarity literally not recognize him anymore, but actively hates what he's become, the Heel Realization is so powerful it reverses the draconic growth and he immediately shrinks back down to his familiar size.
    • Fluttershy in "Putting Your Hoof Down". After becoming more and more violent and then proceeding to brutally tell off her own friends until they're driven to tears, she becomes horrified at the monster she's turned into after looking into a puddle and seeing her own rage face. She's subsequently so remorseful that she endeavors to tie herself up inside her own barricaded house so that she can't hurt anyone else.
    • "One Bad Apple" has Apple Bloom's cousin Babs Seed go from Shrinking Violet to bully. The Cutie Mark Crusaders plan a payback prank for all the turmoil Babs has caused. Both sides get the realization: the Cutie Mark Crusaders upon learning Babs's Freudian Excuse, and Babs when the Crusaders immediately abort their plans and save her from their prank.
    • Amazingly, Discord gets one in "Keep Calm and Flutter On" when he realizes that what he does could cause him to lose his friendship with Fluttershy. It is also during this moment that he first realizes Fluttershy's friendship actually means something to him. He gets a bigger one in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2" after his Face–Heel Turn to ally with Lord Tirek only lead to Tirek draining him of his magic and getting him captured as well. He was already having second thoughts, but its this backstab that really drives it home. He had friendship... and he threw it away for nothing. Afterwards, he finally grows up and while still a bit of a troll is far more compassionate.
    • The Wonderbolts have a few of these thanks to Rainbow Dash — when their star cadet puts her friends in danger in "Wonderbolts Academy", and when they choose her over their teammate Soarin' in "Rainbow Falls".
    • Starlight Glimmer starts hers in "The Cutie Re-Mark, Part 2" when she discovers her Revenge against Twilight and her friends could potentially destroy Equestria. Twilight then learns of Starlight's Start of Darkness: She lost her sole childhood friend Sunburst because of his cutie mark, leaving her afraid to make another friend for fear of the same thing happening again, and believing cutie marks only caused conflict between ponies. Twilight is then able to convince Starlight to finally let go of her past and move on, completing the realization.
    • Many villains across the franchise have experienced similar story arcs at this point: Sunset Shimmer from Equestria Girls realized that the power she sought was not the solution to her problems, Diamond Tiara, long-time nemesis to the Cutie Mark Crusaders, realized that being a bully wasn't going to make her happy, and Tempest, from My Little Pony: The Movie, discovers that friendship can be magic after the Storm King admits he wasn't actually going to fix her horn.
• The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh has an instance of this in "Groundpiglet Day". After unfairly harping on Piglet for lying about the weather forecast, Rabbit learns from a calendar that Groundhog Day wasn't for another three months and starts to really feel guilty about his actions. Upon realizing his mistake, Rabbit goes to Piglet's to apologize to him, only to find a note that says Piglet had set off to look for a real groundhog.
• Played for laughs by a Serpentine in Ninjago caught by the heroes near the end of the first season. As they interrogate him he tries to talk tough by claiming the Great Devourer will consume all, but they point out that it will consume him as well. The Serpentine promptly spills his secrets, claiming their leader is crazy.
• The Owl House: After hypocritically calling Luz a bully for accidentally reading her diary, Amity Blight gets one in "Lost in Language" about how she's treated Luz when she risks her life to save Amity from a Deadly Prank that Amity's twin siblings have unwittingly yet carelessly instigated. It sinks in especially more when Luz once again apologizes for the grief she caused her and insists on lending her book five of Azura, again showing no ill will, causing Amity to concede that she doesn't really know Luz at all, as she hasn't really been nice at all to her and barely puts in the effort to understand her as a person, making Amity willing to try to improve herself.
• The Patrick Star Show: In "Olly Olly Organ Free", Patrick's organs get mad at how Patrick treats his body and decide to leave and live on their own. In the process, they see how scary and dangerous the outside world is, realize that they were wrong to get mad at him, and track down Patrick so they can apologize.
• Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars: Candace, Buford, and Baljeet (stormtroopers here) realize that their view of the situation was mistaken after Phineas saves Candace's life. Plus...
  Candace: Didn't we just blow up a planet?!
  Baljeet: Yes, that is sort of hard to justify, morally.
• Rick and Morty:
  • Snuffles/Snowball, the Smith family dog, has this dawn on him in "Lawnmower Dog" in a dream where his pet human Morty has fallen gravely ill after he and his fellow hyperintelligent canines conquered the world. A distraught Snuffles/Snowball is willing to expend every resource he has to save Morty and his accountant questions whether the humans would ever go to such lengths to save the life of a dog:
    Snuffles/Snowball: "We are not THEM! We are not... them."
  • Rick himself also has one in "Auto Erotic Assimilation" after Unity breaks up with him due to his toxic influence on everyone close to him. This actually leads him to attempt to disintegrate himself with one of his machines, though he ultimately fails to do so successfully.
  • Beth in "The ABC's of Beth", in which she realizes that, contrary to her view of her father as a great guy that she wants to emulate, he's really not a great person, and she's just like him. Rick offers her the chance to leave and go on her own adventures across the universe while he is replaced by a clone, though it's left ambiguous if she took him up on the offer or not; either way, Beth/her clone becomes much kinder to her family, and ultimately gets back together with Jerry in the following episode.
• Ashi from Samurai Jack is an assassin associated with the Cult of Aku who has been raised from birth to believe that Jack is the bad guy, and in fact, was trained specifically to kill him. Her Heel Realization starts when she sees him letting a ladybug fly away whereas her mother would've squashed it, and she then witnesses firsthand the legacy of his good deeds from the past four seasons while she travels the world searching for him. By the time she's found him and helped him regain both his will to live and his honor, she's both thoroughly committed to his cause and is in love with him.
• The Simpsons: In the episode "Make Room For Lisa", Lisa enters a sensory deprivation tank, imagines herself as being Homer being chastised by her, and comes to the realization that for all of Homer's faults and for all of his callous dismissal of her interests, he at least takes part in it just so he can be with her, unlike herself, who callously dismisses his interests, can't be bothered to even feign interest in them, and insults him when he doesn't show any enthusiasm in her events. In the end, she realizes that she should lighten up, thanks him for taking her to a new age store and ends their day together by agreeing to go to a demolition derby for Homer's sake.
  Lisa as Homer: Geez, why is Lisa so mad at me? I only came to this dump so I could be with her.
  Lisa: Boy, I can really be a pain in the butt. Gee, I should cut Dad some slack. After all, he did take me to the ballet and the Smithsonian exhibit. In fact, he takes me lots of places he hates.
• The Smurfs (1981): In the episode "Smurfette Unmade", Smurfette after she has reverted to her old evil "un-Smurfy self" has this realization when she successfully brings Gargamel into the Smurf Village through a teleportation spell. This leads to an eventual Heel–Face Turn when Smurfette sees Gargamel about to use Baby Smurf as a test subject for his gold-making formula.
• South Park:
  • In the episode "Crack Baby Athletic Association", Cartman talks Kyle into joining his business of getting crack babies to play basketball which, after some karaoke and bacon pancakes from Denny's, he accepts. He then tells Stan about it and Stan doesn't reply, making Kyle give a monologue how he and satire target NCAA do good by using players like slaves. Then towards the end of the episode, Stan says he's starting to sound like Cartman and Kyle replies "No I'm not goddammit!" then cups his mouth in shock.
  • In The Movie, most of the Mothers Against Canada drop what they're doing when they realize that the war is putting their children in danger. Sheila's realization doesn't come until it's almost too late.
  • Happens with Heidi in the episode "Splatty Tomato" after Kyle declares he can never love her current self in season 21's finale. Heidi then begins to look back on how she went from a Nice Girl to a female Cartman, realizing that her relationship with Cartman has slowly destroyed her mentally and physically. Heidi has enough and breaks up with Cartman for good, no longer wishing to be awful.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: There's a beautiful scene in "Mewnipendence Day" where Princess Star Butterfly has a look of shock and hesitation as she refrains from shooting a fleeing monster, Buff-Frog because he looks back and they briefly lock eyes. She had been increasingly uncomfortable with the way her friends got hurt during the "Monster Massacre" reenactment, as well as the harsh implied brutality her ancestors inflicted on the monsters. She mistook Buff-Frog for one of her friends in a costume, and accidentally feels sympathy for a monster for the first time in her life. When he runs, she no longer can just view him as an evil being to be blasted with her wand.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "The Honourable Ones", Agent Kallus winds up stranded on an icy moon with Zeb. Zeb than proceeds to treat Kallus kindly, including splinting his broken leg, instead of just killing him out of hand. Kallus, in turn, winds up saving Zeb's life. At the end of the episode, he's seen sitting in his quarters on board the ISD Relentless in a decidedly contemplative mood, the seed of doubt in the Empire's cause apparently having been planted. This ultimately leads to a Heel–Face Turn.
• Steven Universe: The episode "Change Your Mind" has Yellow and Blue Diamond undergo these. When Steven asks Blue Diamond how many times she locked Pink Diamond in the prison tower and made her cry, the fact that she doesn't know the answer to that question horrifies her and makes her realize why Pink abandoned her. Later, Yellow Diamond realizes that enforcing the Gem Empire's tyrannical regime for the sake of creating a "perfect" society drove away everyone she loved and even drove her attack her last loved one who's still by her side. Both these realizations prompt both characters to undergo Heel Face Turns.
• Megatron in the finale movie of Transformers: Prime, Predacon Rising. After spending the whole movie as Unicron's unwilling slave, he realizes the oppressive evil he has inflicted on Cybertron, and disbands the Decepticons.
• The Venture Bros.: Dr. Killinger, a villain adviser who previously made massive changes/improvements to both The Monarch's villain career and personal life, shows up to advise Dr. Venture. Killinger saves Venture Industries and helps Venture face his numerous childhood issues, especially about his father, but at the end produces two papers, one of which would officially make Venture a supervillain, the other would dismiss Killinger and the "Venchemen" that Killinger had assembled to be Venture's army of mooks. The semi-sociopathic Venture eventually chooses not to become a villain but is left deeply shaken by the whole encounter.
  Dr. Venture: What? My brother?
  Dr. Killinger: Bingo! Isn't it perfect? It's a classic Cain und Abel story.
  Dr. Venture: But... But... But he can't arch me, he's not even a superv- [Beat] oh my god...
  
  Brock: Are you okay, doc?
  Dr. Venture: I... I don't know. He thinks I'm a... Brock, am I a... bad person?
  Brock: The hell just happened?
  Dr. Venture: Am I, Brock!?
  Brock: [pauses, then rocks his hand in a "kind of" gesture] Ehhhh...
• Played with for Germaine of Xiaolin Showdown. In his season 2 reappearance, he's studying under Chase Young, in hopes of becoming a warrior like the monks. Though it takes the entire episode to convince him, he eventually bows out, realizing that studying under Chase technically makes him a part of the Heylin.

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