The line that, once crossed, destroys any last remaining sense of hope. It could be for a cause, a person, a situation, or simple survival. A character has given up on it, and there is no going back. It can lead soldiers to despair — or even suicide. It can turn an Ideal Hero into an Anti-Hero or an outright villain, or even, in some cases, vice versa. It is a vital element of Tragedy.
Coming near this line is quite common in fiction; frequently, at the end of the second act or the 45 minute mark of a drama or the first hour of a film, the protagonist comes dangerously close to the edge before a Rousing Speech or Deus ex Machina or the like comes along. It makes for a Downer Ending if the protagonist does fall over the edge. Frequently, this is when the What You Are in the Dark test hits him. Alternatively, many stories have a hero "Fighting the Good Fight" and meeting someone who'd been at it longer and lost all hope.
This is often a goal of some wars. You break the enemy's morale, and you can win even without military success.
Related to Heroic BSOD and Heroic Safe Mode, except the hero usually comes back from those. A Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds is often a character who crossed this line long ago. It can result in the character entering an Angst Coma, being Dumb Struck, suffering Death By Despair, or becoming a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds (and subsequently crossing the Moral Event Horizon). Often a result of We Used To Be Friends. This is often the final stage of the Break the Cutie process. In a video game, often happens during a Bleak Level.
May be preceded with a Hope Spot, just to really twist the knife.
IMPORTANT: This is about a character losing all hope, not merely getting depressed, upset, or bored.
Contrast Heroic Spirit. Not to be confused with Downer Ending, although it can be thought of as the psychological equivalent of one.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
Very narrowly averted in GaoGaiGar FINAL. At the series' Darkest Hour (the end of episode 4), the supporting heroes have all been shut down or incapacitated and the few heroes who are unaffected have all been soundly defeated by the villains; Guy has suffered a full-blown curbstomp and Heroic BSOD at the hands of the Big Bad, and GaoFighGar has been reduced to scrap metal. For about half an episode, the outcome of the series rests in the hands of Mikoto, Mamoru, and Renais, with not a single giant robot between the three of them. Even after they find and rescue Soldato-J and Guy, the show torments the viewers with a string of Hope Spots all the way up to the very end of episode 6, when Guy kicks hisHeroic BSODto the curb and forms Genesic GaoGaiGar. Cue massive amounts of Hot Blooded asskicking.
Dragon Ball Z: Gohan, in the face of a revived Cell. Goku is dead, one of Gohan's arms was disabled, his strongest ally Vegeta couldn't scratch the monster, and Cell was charging a blast that would destroy the world. Goku tells him from the afterlife to fight back, and Vegeta ultimately proves to be strong enough to give Gohan the needed chance for a win.
Taken to its extreme in the reboot movies — which turn out to be an Alternative Continuity which diverges during the second movie... which results in Shinji hitting the Despair Event Horizon so hard he attempts to bring out The End of the World as We Know It.
Griffith of Berserk, broken in body and mind after a year's worth of torture, loses all hope of becoming captain of the Band of the Hawks again when it's discovered that he will never recover from his injuries. Then, just after he resigns himself to living a peaceful life with Casca, he discovers that she's moved on and is now in a relationship with Guts. Griffith loses it completely. This drives him to activate his Crimson Behelit, summon the Godhand, and cross the Moral Event Horizon.
In fact, crossing the line to despair is the only way to activate a Behelit - they only trigger when their owners hit their lowest emotional point, meaning they'll be most receptive to the Godhand's offer. The Count, the second demon seen in the series, crossed the line when he discovered his beloved wife was not only a pagan - while his life was devoted to destroying pagans - but held ritual orgies in his mansion when he was on Crusade.
This is played for both sympathy and horror. Rosine, an imaginative and clever little girl, is transformed after she goes looking for elves to escape her terrible home situation. She doesn't find them. Her parents, however, manage to find her. Her mother is just relieved that she's safe, but the father... he's pissed, and starts beating her bloody. Her Behelit activates from her own blood from her beating, and the terrified little girl who just wanted the merry elves to be real finds out she could have been an elf herself all along and not just a filthy cruel human, and lets her human parents be dragged off to Hell as sacrifices; after all, she knows that elves are not supposed to care what happens to humans! Now an "elf," she begins to take children away to her "fairy-land" to let them play forever, sort of like a creepy female Peter Pan if she were a bug. As she is an Apostle, however, her powers don't quite work as planned; her transformed little fairy-children play ball...with eyeballs. They rape each other for fun. They play war to the death. Rosine doesn't mind though; this is how humans play, and humans are worse than elves, and there'll always be more children to play with after all. Actions like these should cross the Moral Event Horizon, and make her a Complete Monster. However, she comes off more as an emotionally damaged, misguided little girl who just wanted a little happiness because she couldn't find it at home. In the end, Guts has to kill her to keep her from hurting anyone else. It's... very sad. Especially if you remember that all dead Apostles go to hell. Irrevocably.
All of the above is spot on, except for: "Guts has to kill her to keep her from hurting anyone else." He doesn't kill her because he's trying to protect people, he kills her because she's an Apostle and he's on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Realizing the depth of his hatred and the lengths to which he goes to get revenge is crucial to understanding his character.
It's the only way a mortal can activate a Behelit. Provided the Behelit comes into contact with blood, a member of the Godhand can use it to manifest in the physical world, such as when Slan manifests in front of Guts using a pile of troll intestines.
Guts crosses the Despair Event Horizon after the events of the Eclipse. It changes him from an angry guy who loves fighting and killing but cares about people into a nearly soulless monster who tortures his victims and involves innocent bystanders in his fights.
Nearly being the key word there. It's outright shown that Guts feels guilt when he gets bystanders killed. He just doesn't do a whole lot to keep them out of his fights.
Not always. It could be argued that since this takes place in the first issue, his character hasn't been fully developed in the mind of the author, but he shows absolutely no sympathy or remorse for the slaughter of an entire village that takes place as the direct result of his actions. In fact, he was counting on it.
The Marineford Arc in One Piece is a prime example. Just when you thought Ace's life was saved by Luffy managing to overcome incredible odds through powerful adversaries by pure determination, Admiral Akainu, far too persistent and strong to avoid, shows up and promptly kills Ace in front of Luffy. This act mentally-shattered Luffy and put him in a coma for two weeks, and when he came to and it sunk in that Ace is really gone, he actually renounced that he was worthy of the title of Pirate King.
Even before then, Luffy may have crossed it at the very end of the Shaobody Archipelago. Before his very eyes, every one of his crew vanishes by a mere touch by Kuma, sent to the far corners of the world because not a single person can land a strong enough blow on the guy. This leaves Luffy kicking and screaming on the ground.
Because of all the crap Hody Jones had done to their royal family, as well as what he was going to do to them. The population of Fishman Island crossed it and began shouting in the air and begging Luffy to come and destroy their beloved home. Because even if that would be bad for them, it would be worse for Hody.
Long before that was the Arlong Arc. Nami hits her Despair Event Horizon when Arlong had her ransom money for the town stolen. At that point, the rest of the town marched off to fight Arlong, knowing they didn't stand a chance, telling her to run away because she had fought enough. As they went to their deaths, she sunk to her knees, hearing Arlong's laughter in her head, then grabbed a dagger and started stabbing herself in the tattoo Arlong gave her. The only reason she didn't go any further is because Luffy, whom she'd spent the last several episodes trying to push away, grabbed her wrist and stopped her. She finally begged him for help, launching one of the first of many badass moments for the series.
This happens a lot in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, to a number of different characters. In fact, it's the reason for most of the murderous rampages on the show, if not all.
...at the "end"? You mean where he realized his true power and his true destiny and the promise that he'd made a lifetime earlier and kept it in the best way possible? If Juudai despaired, it was earlier, against Brron, after his friends had been killed. He got over that with help from the survivors, stopped angsting, and figured out how to save everyone, including Yubel. His duel against Darkness in season four epitomized the concept of hope, which is the only weapon that works against Darkness anyway.
"The Record of a Fallen Vampire" - Strauss crossed this when Stella was murdered. Then he goes on to totally redefine the meaning of "no hope" as he has make himself the target of hatred and is forced to fight Stella and his daughter's effective reincarnation, the Black Swan, over and over again, without being allowed to die because if he dies then the Dhampirs and the humans will probably destroy each other, and even if that doesn't happen, the Dhampirs will lose their hope of being able to turn into humans.
Lucy from Elfen Lied crosses this line quite a few times over the course of the story, especially in the manga.
Naruto in the Pain invades Konoha arc veers inches close to this. After the destruction of his beloved village and the apparent death of almost every mentor and father figure he has ever had, he is nailed to the ground with paralyzing metal and is forced to watch as Hinata confesses her undying love to him then promptly gets stabbed. This is the trigger that sends him off on the mother of all rampages, the never-before-seen 6-tailed form. While the Kyuubi, now possessing Naruto's body, beats the shit out of Pain, Naruto loses all hope of finding a solution to his problems. In great despair, he resorts to breaking the seal, believing that the Kyuubi will save him from the pain. Luckily, he is stopped from doing so by the spirit of his father, the Fourth Hokage.
Naruto was nearly driven off the edge forcibly while attempting to claim the Kyuubi's chakra. The Kyuubi poured all of the despair, pain, and loneliness Naruto had stored up over the years back into his host, leaving him on the verge of collapse until his mother Kushina showed up in his mind.
Gaara crossed the horizon as a child after the assassination attempt by Yashimaru and the resulting diatribe (which wasn't even true, either; Yashamaru had been forced to do it by the Kazekage). The last thread of his sanity snaps and he devolves into completely Ax Crazy sociopathy, until Naruto manages to fix him.
Itachi experienced this for sure...and then some. After being ordered to massacre his clan, his aunt/uncle, his parents, his lover, and even his little brother, he carried out the order...except he could not bring himself to kill his younger brother, and instead tried to lead him on a path to revenge, with Itachi being the target. Considering the fact that he had to act like a Complete Monster to everyone from that day forward, he was viewed as such by everyone. He basically stayed alive purely for his brother's sake, and when he died by his brother's hands, he was smiling. Probably the first (and last) time he smiled since the day he massacred his clan as per his orders.
Sasuke has probably crossed this as well. First his clan is killed by the person he looked up to the most which turned him into a cold bastard and he abandoned his village in an attempt to kill that person. Finally, when he kills that person it turns out that Itachi had done everything in an attempt to to make Sasuke's life better so he wouldn't go in the same path. But it didn't, and Itachi's actions only were useful to make it all worse.
In Ranma 1/2, Ryoga has developed a ki attack that grows more powerful as he gets more depressed. In a battle where he's using this technique to solidly pound Ranma into the ground, Akane tries to cut through Ryouga's depression with a cheerful "Don't be sad! I really like you, Ryoga!... You're such a great friend!" Since Ryoga is desperately in love with her and is horrified that she only considers him a friend, this unwittingly pushes him over the Despair Event Horizon and makes his attackseven stronger.
In Monster, Eva Heinemann goes through a years-long version after Tenma dumps her. She's worse off every time we see her, until finally she starts to allow herself some emotion again in a budding relationship with her gardener. When the gardener's estranged wife comes back home, Eva arriving just in time to see their reconciliation, she burns her mansion to the ground and becomes obsessed with making Tenma pay by supporting the police's theory that he's a mass murderer, which we later find out she knows isn't true, but is so out of it that she doesn't care anymore.
This trope is Johan's typical approach to murder, and is in fact what he's trying to put Tenma through, purely to prove a point about humanity.
Paranoia Agent: This is the entire point of the series. Li'l Slugger comes to those who have reached this point.
Edward and Alphonse of Fullmetal Alchemist crossed this after their attempt to resurrect their mother went horribly wrong, traumatizing them both. It was only through the intervention of Roy Mustang, who told the boys that getting back their bodies was possible with the privileges of State Alchemists, that they regained their will to live. Pretty much everyone else who has tried to bring those they love back from the dead with alchemy has reached this point.
Arguably Riza Hawkeye, who broke down and lost her will to fight when she thought Roy was dead.
Perhaps the most effective example in the series takes place during a volume-long War Is Hell flashback that is nothing more than a long drawn out horrific war crime. Scar, who at the time is a Warrior Monk, is shown as having grown deeply embittered from the long genocide campaign; then his entire TOWN is blown up, and in the destruction, his entire extended family is killed. Scar loses his arm and his face is shredded; to save his life, his brother alchemically grafts his own tattooed arm to Scar's bleeding stump, dying in the process. Scar wakes up, in the care of the Amestrian doctors Rockbell and has a truly epic Freak Out where he murders the doctors (who happen to be the parents of Edward Elric's childhood friend) and stumbles outside to find that his beloved country is a bloody ruin. Cue Big "NO!", and a brutal Roaring Rampage of Revenge that he implies he wants to end with suicide by State Alchemist.
In Axis Powers Hetalia, Ivan/Russia crosses this in the "Bloody Sunday" incident. Before he shows his Cute and Psycho ID by shooting at civilians in tears, he's seen crying like a little child and having a Freak Out because he genuinely wants his people to be all right, but even after all of his efforts, he can't make anybody happy.
Russia: Everyone says it's my fault... I've endured it for centuries! Why can't everyone just get along nicely with each other? (...)
Liechtenstein was very close to it in her backstory, with the ravishing of her lands and the death of her people in World War One. At some point we see her just laying against a wall and under the rain, ready to let herself succumb to Death By Despair... Fortunately, Switzerland rescues her in the nick of time.
Suzaku Kururugi in Code Geass crosses this horizon when he nukes Tokyo under the influence of Geass. For all his loathing of the wrong means, he realizes that it's impossible for him to live according to his ideals.
There's some (but not conclusive) evidence in Darker than Black that Contractors are those who reached this point during the time the Gate opened. One Contractor, Bertha describes her backstory in which her infant daughter choked to death on cigarettes she had left lying around. She describes crying until the tear stopped (i.e. when she was drained of emotion) and saw that the sky had changed. In the current interquel manga, one character is a schoolgirl who reaches this point and wants to become a Contractor to kill the pain. At this point, she is approached by the Big Bad of the series, Harvest, who has the power to make people Contractors. Potentially, Hei himself could count for this: he started out as a Badass Normal who killed to protect his Contractor sister. When she caused the Heaven's Gate explosion, she did a Fusion Dance which gave him her powers in order to help him survive, but let him keep his emotion.
Darcia from Wolf's Rain hits this he discovers that his lover Harmona, who has been on life support for two centuries while he was out attempting to find a cure, has been murdered while he was away from home. (And just before he could bring Cheza to help Harmona). Although we don't see the full effect of it until later, this sets off a full fledged Start of Darkness that transforms Darcia into a Nietzsche Wannabe, Evil Counterpart, and the Big Bad.
In Kuroshitsuji Ciel eventually reached this point after he was captured following his parent's murders. In his desperation he accidentally called upon a demon, Sebastian, with whom he made a contract with.
Rock from Black Lagoon hits a few of these, and for good reason.
With the conclusion of El Baile de la Muerte, it looks like he's heading straight into another one, considering how Fabiola Iglesias completely shut him down and disproved his supposed 'magic bullet' status (i.e. he's nothing more than a manipulative bastard who gambles with people's lives because it gives him a thrill).
In the Negima! (first) anime, Negi himself crosses the horizon after Asuna's death on her 14th birthday, when the Deal with the Devil she made as a kid takes effect. He splinters so badly that watching it almost becomes the DEH for a few of his students.
In the manga, Negi's mother Arika found herself on the edge of it when she was about to be executed under false charges of murder and treason, as well for taking the blame for Asuna's Anti-Magic powers going haywire and plummeting a Floating Continent to the ground.
Sasame reaches this point in Prétear when he realizes that no matter how much he tries to reason with Takako, she can't come back from the dark side. So he joins her instead. It doesn't help that she nearly killed him during a battle.
Himeno's stepsister Mawata also reached the point after the face heel turned Sasame rejected her feelings in front of her family, which tops on her loneliness and hidden emotional turmoil coming from her father's death. After that, she fell into such a despair that Takako easily turned Mawata into the Barrier Maiden for the Fenrir tree, and Himeno had to work VERY hard to bring her back.
Sheryl Formossa crosses this horizon in Ideon, after the deaths of her sister Lin and her boyfriend Gije.
Suzu Ooki comes this close to it after she's a slave to her Jerk Ass mistress for 100 years straight. Luckily, she manages to (barely) escape.
Louise Halevy from Gundam 00 is seen sitting on the fence of this horizon in the second season. Even more after she fights the girl who actually pushed her towards it, Nena, and brutally kills her in battle. However, her boyfriend Saji gets to her and she gets better.
The backstories of many named members of Celestial Being involve approaching, if not crossing, this horizon. Setsuna's came during the battle that opened the series, Alle's came during his escape attempt from the Super Soldier Institute, Lockon's from the bombing that claimed his family, Sumeragi's during the friendly fire incident that cost her Emilio, among others. CB's promise of a chance to end what caused them their suffering is a major motivating factor for joining the organization.
Flit Asuno from Gundam Age wants to finish the fight against the UE so he could return to the Minsry Colony to live a peaceful life with Yurin L'Ciel. And then Desil brutally kills her near Ambat and Flit loses it completely. This drives him to become a savior not for mankind, but for the corrupt Earth Federal Forces.
In the SHUFFLE! anime, Kaede Fuyou is dangerously close to the horizon twice, First, when her mother and Rin's parents die, which makes her lose the will to live until Rin lies to her and blames himself for their deaths; later, when Rin drifts away from her and gets closer to Asa, as she believes her atonement for having abused Rin will go without reward.. Both times, she TREMENDOUSLY snaps, then gets more or less better.
Saint Hakushin from InuYasha was driven towards the DEH as he was waiting for his death. He volunteered to be buried alive so he would become a living Buddha and help his people, but as he waited to die he realized that he really didn't want to die, and horrifyingly despaired. Naraku used this to recruit him as his Barrier Warrior.
The Baby's manipulation of an emotionally exhausted Kagome's feelings for Inuyasha (and jealousy of Kikyou) was a part of his attempt to bring her close to the horizon and make her pull a Face Heel Turn out of despair. But he fails at the last moment.
Yomi from Ga-Rei -Zero-. Yomi's adoptive father his killed by her Seishouseki-mind-controlled adoptive cousin, the cousin takes what was supposed to be her place as the family head and her inheritance, then lures her to a fight. When the cousin admits killing Yomi's father, she goes berserk and kills her. Then Mitogawa attacks Yomi, rendering her quadriplegic and mute, and she is accused of murdering her cousin. Her fiancee Noriyuki is too busy trying to prove her innocence to visit her in the hospital, his father breaks off their Perfectly Arranged Marriage because of her physical condition, and her best friend Kagura abandons her after she admits to killing her cousin. Then Mitogawa gives her the same Seishouseki, which heals her but its mind-control powers provide the extra push to send her Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and killing her former friends. Her Despair Event Horizon is such a Tearjerker that even after crossing the Moral Event Horizon she is still a sympathetic Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
Crossed a few times in the sequel manga too.
Horo crosses this line early in season 2, after learning that her hometown is likely gone, and has been for centuries. Cue breakdown.
Happens to Flute in Violinist of Hameln when Hamel, himself nearly in Heroic BSOD, courtesy of local Manipulative Bastard, sends her away. She just drops in the middle of the road and nearly dies, before Trom Bone accidentally finds and shakes her out of it, just in time for her to save everyone. Also, most humans, enslaved by the mazoku, exist beyond Despair Event Horizon, believing that they are but toys of all-powerful absolute evil and that any resistance or even hope is futile although Trom helps a group of them to overcome their despair too.
Laocorn Gaudeamus hits the DEH twice. First, when his and Sulia's parents are killed by their Smug Snake associate and then again after Sulia commits suicide to release him from the Demonic Possession that followed the first incident.
In Spiral, Kanone Hilbert crosses this upon realizing that the Blade Children can never be saved. His reaction is trying to kill as many of them as he can - including all of his friends ( and half-siblings) and himself. After he is stopped, he doesn't cross back to the other side of the line: in the anime, he just leaves the country, still sulking; in the manga, the way he finally finds to "save" himself is to have a meaningful death, which will give hope to the other Bla Chil and Ayumu.
Souji Mikage from Revolutionary Girl Utena uses tactics that arguably predate those of Celestial Being, approaching young people who are in their lowest with promise of a chance to change their worlds and end what's making them suffer by defeating Utena. Specially obvious in the cases of people like Wakaba, Keiko Sonoda, or Mitsuru Tsuwabuki; in fact, he rejected Tatsuya the Onion Prince because he wasn't despaired enough. Mikage himself also went past the DEH in his backstory, and is pushed even further in the last episode of the Black Rose arc.
Prince Dios and his younger sister also crossed this in their backstories, which is what shaped them into Akio Ohtori the Magnificent Bastard and Anthy Himemiya the Rose Bride.
Once upon a time, there was a German boy named Faust (who was a descendant ofthatFaust, by the way). He had a Victorious Childhood Friend named Elisa, a sweet and cute Ill Girl. Faust became a doctor and worked hard to develop a cure; after many years of research, he finally created the perfect medicine for her, and when she recovered they got Happily Married... and then she was shot to death by a thug. The despaired Faust began researching about necromancy to find a way to properly revive Eliza, but only managed to become a Shaman and have her as his spirit partner. Needless to say, It Got Worse... and specially for Faust's rivals..
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Fate Testarossa had a rather nasty case of this upon learning that she was a clone, with all the memories of the original, and her mother hated her guts. Being cast aside, told she was never really loved, that her life was a lie, that she was truly despised, and told never to show her face again by the, admittedly abusive, mother she was completely devoted to will do that to you. Mind you, thanks to Arf's and Nanoha's companionship and combat therapy, respectively, she eventually snapped out of it in order to help and have one last word with her mother. Still counts, though.
On that note, so did Yagami Hayate in A's, when she was transported to the hopital roof to see Zafira and Vita beaten and subdued, and Signum and Shamal already gone. Then she see's what looks like her two new freinds erase the first two knights and taunted about it. All after being told that she would most certainly die in a short while due to the incurable condition of her body. Mind you, the people doing all this were purposely trying to set this off, in complete Break the Cutie fashion.
In Hunter × Hunter 305, Gon loses himself in rage and despair after being told that Kite has been Killed Off for Real and can't be revived. When he realizes that the person who strung him along with the promise of a resurrection lied to him, he decides to sacrifice his future potential to give himself enough power in the present to crush his enemy.
Gon: This is it. I don't care if it's over. So I'll use everything. I'll kill you!
Jyu-Oh-Sei brings us Third/ Heiser, who, after learning that Earth, which he had dreamed of visiting for his entire life, was destroyed. He collapses in despair, spends a good few minutes staring blankly at nothing, and eventually shoots himself in the head. Admittedly, his suicide was more to save Thor than a result of his Despair Event Horizon, but it still counts.
Subverted in Bleach when YumichikaAyasegawa and CharlotteCuulhorne fight. Cuulhorne's final technique takes the form of a single white rose inside a pitch-black rosebush, the idea being that someone who revels in being the most beautiful person in a crowd will be terrified of dying alone, unnoticed and unmissed. It fails because it allows Yumichika to reveal what he's really capable of when no-one is watching.
Played straighter in the backstory of Kaname Tousen, who decided to have his Face Heel Turn when the best friend he was in love with died at the hands of her own abusive husband, who wasn't punished.
The backstory of Maki Ichinose, who had a Face Heel Turn out of despair when his beloved Captain was killed by Kenpachi in his Klingon Promotion stage.
Both Rukia and Orihime were incredibly close to the DEH. Rukia, when Gin taunted her with the idea of a possible indult that would save her life and then said it was just a bad joke, getting her hopes high for nothing; Orihime, when Ulquiorra murdered Ichigo in front of her and Ishida and then taunted her about it. Both girls are reduced to screaming, crying wrecks at these points, and it takes them quite a bit to get better.
As of the X-Cution arc, Tsukishima seems to actively want to make Ichigo cross it. What's his method? Modifying his family and friends' memories, which renders Ichigo desperate since they're his reason to fight... and yet they're defending Tsuki and believe that their dear Ichigo somehow has gone mad. it takes a MASSIVE gambit from Urahara, Isshin, and several Shinigamis to fix him.
It's all but stated that Jackie Tristan crossed the DEH in her backstory, as her dying flashback shows a child Jackie in tears and her Famous Last Words are a wish to have been rescued by a good person.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is about young girls that approach this as they become Magical Girls, fight Witches and see how their lives are torn as a consequence, thus being very likely to become Witches themselves. The most straight up example is Sayaka Miki, who as of episode 8 crossed this due to both her romantic woes and the side-effects of Witch fighting, and becomes a witch.
Another good example is Mami Tomoe in the third timeline. Learning the Awful Truth did not mix up well with her issues on loneliness and abandonment and, after seeing Sayaka turn into a witch and having to be killed by the group, she freaked out majorly: she then killed Kyouko by destroying her Soul Gem and was about to do the same to Homura (And presumably to Madoka, before eventually killing herself), so Madoka had to mercy kill her and put her out of her misery (almost crossing it herself in the process, but she manages to come back. And then she dies).
Kyoko's Jerkassery in her first few episodes is revealed in episode 7 to be a case of despair event horizon crossed. The Pater Familicide she alone survived pushed her over in nothing flat... or did it? All hope she had before that incident gets promptly restored after Kyubey lets slip the Awful Truth, thus inverting Mami's situation in the third timeline on its head.
Animal X: Yuuji crosses the Despair Event Horizon when he finds out what happened to his first child: she was subjected to vivisection, died, and then her remains were kept on ice in a research facility. After that, Yuuji is quietly broken and makes remarks that show that he's reached a point where he doesn't much care if he lives or dies.
Tomoya from CLANNAD slips into this after Nagisa dies in after story, and remains in this state for five years and in her arc, Kyou falls into this state after Ryou starts going out with Tomoya and Kyou tries to force herself to stay away from Tomoya to avoid hurting her sister; hurting herself in the process
Ken Hidaka and Youji Kudou from Weiss Kreuz end up crossing this horizon at different times. The first does it when he realizes that he's become a textbook Ax CrazyBlood Knight, actually asking to be locked up in jail to try calming himself down; the second hits it in Gluhen, when his Honey Trap work takes way too much of a toll on his mind.
Also, Omi/Mamoru's mother Kikuno reached it in the backstory. Her husband Reiji, aware that little Mamoru was an Heroic Bastard fathered by his younger brother Shuichi, refuses to pay the ransom for a kidnapped Mamoru and the little kid was soon believed to be dead. Kikuno, already unstable for being trapped in a loveless Arranged Marriage that separated her from her beloved Shuichi, commited suicide soon afterwards.
For major irony, Reiji himself may have hit it too, after his illegitimate daughter and favorite child Ouka was shot to death. Come on, if he was sane after that, he would've not had her lifeless body transformed into a mannequin.
Jose in Gunslinger Girl crosses it when he loses an eye in a botched attempt to kill the terrorist who killed Enrica, and cyborg girl Henrietta is reset to factory settings, destroying her personality so she'll never be able to take Enrica's place. By the nuclear power plant strike, Jose was so far beyond the Despair Event Horizon that after getting fragged, he has Henrietta finish the job and, as she does so, shoots her in the eye, killing her.
Most of the main plot of Trigun that made it into the anime (the manga had all this backstory stuff and Knives going One-Winged Angel and staying that way for over a year while he slowly killed off the human race) was a Break the Cutie-slash-Break The Stoic plot aimed at pushing Vash over this, probably in hopes of inducing Face Heel Turn, but possibly just to punish him for being a disloyal brother. It works insofar as he is pushed past his (admittedly impressive) limits on a couple of occasions, which variously result in a two year retirement and brief catatonia.
Meanwhile, the greatest one in a series full of them is when Vash and Knives were one year old, and foundoutaboutTesla. Two boys—physiologically around eight—read the documentation and looked at the corpse, and then shut themselves up in the lab where it had happened and didn't move for over a week. Rem didn't manage to break in to save them until after they'd passed out half-dead from thirst.
And then, Vash tried to kill himself with a fruit knife at the first opportunity, and laughed somewhere between hysteria and mania upon thinking he'd accidentally killed Rem when she interfered. They both got better. Knives, on the other hand, pretended to have Easy Amnesia and then proceeded to methodically enact a plan to Kill All Humans. The kicker is that Knives was always the nicer, more trusting one, before.
Legato Bluesummers appears to have spent enough of his childhood in this that when he started developing his mind-control powers he prioritized 'killing everybody connected to my life' over getting the fuck away, and was consequently in the process of being raped to death when Knives happened to come along and slice up the building and...save the day. And not kill Legato, and even ask him his name. Nicest thing that ever happened to the kid.
Several of the Gung Ho Guns have this in their backstories. One in the manga notably is in this omnicide gig because he was a deformed beggar in July when Vash inadvertently blew it up, and the one good thing in his life (a lovely waitress who was kind to him) was killed, and his whole life since has been Training from Hell to get revenge on Vash.
In chapter 115 of Medaka Box, Zenkichi collapses on his hands and knees in despair after he realizes he isn't special to Medaka anymore. Chapter 116 reveals that Ajimu masterminded this Despair Event Horizon to make Zenkichi receptive to joining her Flask Plan as its first test subject.
In Heartcatch Precure, the entire world suffers this when Big Bad Dune destroys the Great Heart Tree, allowing him to turn Earth into a desert. Tsubomi, Erika, Itsuki and Yuri join in after realizing they blew it big time and they were the last people on Earth. Subverted, though, when the people the four had restored to normal after being turned into various Monster of the Week appeared as well, stating that the girls (as Precure) allowed their hearts to grow stronger and resist the effect. Tsubomi promptly kicks herself after realizing they shouldn't of gone down that far and they can still win.
In Chobits, We see that Freya has crossed the horizon when she begins to physically malfunction from the incredible emotional strain of being in (and being unable to tell anyone about) an unrequited love situation. In the anime, we are even shown the exact moment this happens. Depending on whether one is reading the manga or watching the anime, she is either Driven to Suicide or dies from despair, respectively.
Comics
A Villain Protagonist equivalent (though more an Anti-Hero by this point) with Jackie Estacado of the Darkness, he can handle the mob life, the killing and the people trying to kill him but after he realises what a scumbag Uncle Frankie is and offers to testify against him Uncle Frankie responds by killing Jenny, of course the Character Development between the two at this point takes hold and the only 'rational' way for Jackie to get revenge is by blowing himself, Frankie and Frankie's mob straight to hell in a flaming Inferno. Of course, YMMV.
A curious Anti-Hero version occurs in Kingdom Come; throughout the story, Superman is wary of encountering Magog, the Nineties Anti-Hero who in many ways replaced him in the public's regard, until he and the rest of the Justice League encounter him in the ruins of Kansas... only to discover a broken man torn apart by guilt and anguish over his actions and the disastrous consequences they resulted in.
Proud?Proud?!Proudof being the Man of Tomorrow?!?
Walter Kovacs in Watchmen starts out a rather messed up, right-wing, but functional man, with a fairly normal life outside being a masked vigilante. Then he investigates the kidnapping of a little girl, and ends up finding her dismembered and mostly-eaten corpse, suffering a complete psychotic break and burning her killer alive. From that point on, he's insane, murderous and barely capable of (or interested in) taking care of himself, having completely abandoned all identity outside of Rorschach.
The Comedian is a straighter example: When he discovers that reality is actually much worse than his dark parody of it, he breaks into Moloch's apartment to tell him about it, but the Comedian's already so far beyond the point of no return that he only manages to confess to his sins before he realizes how ridiculous it is that his nemesis is the closest thing to a friend that he has.
In the "Emerald Twilight" tie-in to The Death of Superman storyline, the destruction of Coast City by Mongul serves as the DEH for then-Green-Lantern Hal Jordan. He then goes on to cross the Moral Event Horizon pretty quickly. Even after the city is eventually rebuilt, it's more or less a Ghost City as nobody wants to move there because of what happened.
Then in Sinestro Corps War, Sinestro declares his intention to invoke this in Earth's population by razing Coast City again. But this time it's defied, as those who did live there, when warned of the coming danger, refused to evacuate and instead shined green lights out their windows in support of the Green Lanterns. This show of courage ended up having the exact opposite effect from what Sinestro wanted.
In Peter Parker: Spider-Man #25, poor Pete goes through this after the Green Goblin had been attempting to invoke Being Tortured Makes You Evil on him for about a week straight. It's only a vision of Aunt May that saves him.
The Joker manages to force one upon Batman of all people, during the Emperor Joker storyline. Given he's turned into a Reality Warper and that he routinely kills Batmat For the Evulz, For the Lulz and whenever he damn feels like it, and that the reality Batman's always cherished has turned to bubblegum under Joker's thrall, this is not really surprising.
After being savagely beaten to death by The Joker, Jason Todd is resurrected, only to find that not only did Batman not avenge him by killing The Joker, he has also been replaced by Tim Drake as Robin. At this point he completely snaps, and becomes the Anti-Villain Red Hood.
In Secret Warriors #24, badass super-agent Nick Fury finally breaks after he has let two teams of young agents die on his watch. Even worse, the second team was led by his own son Mikel Fury. While standing at the graves of the second team, the agents of the Russian spy organization Leviathan come for him. He doesn't even try to resist.
Fanfiction
In Aeon Natum Engel many people cross the horizon when the Migou sends their ACTUAL Warships (those Swarm ships that is nearly equal to standard NEG Ship? A mere gunboat by Migou Standards), and then the Migou themselves cross this line when Moloch shows up.
In the Oneiroi Series, Redcloak rockets past it when his insane daughter rapes and kills him.
In The Second Try, Shinji and Asuka are forced to this line a second time, the latter when going against Arael again, the former when he thinks Asuka is dead. Thankfully, this gets averted both times.
Vampire mate bonds and werewolf imprinting are said to be strong enough to cause this in Luminosity. The actual trope is commonly avoided, as the vampire either commits suicide offscreen or becomes The Unfettered, but when Edward thinks that he's lost Bella, all he does is ask to die.
The Villain Protagonist of the Mass Effect fanfic The Council Era endured this when he witnessed his wife's death on a news network. As part of his grief, he destroyed his entire clutch, except one, who soon after hatched. When the same soldiers who killed his wife, and were searching for him (he'd gone AWOL) surrounded his home, Tyrin threatened to kill his one hatched child and then himself. There's also a potential Alternate Character Interpretation that his criminal actions in the story are because he's caught in a state of perpetual despair following his wife's death, and is taking it out on the world.
In Revenge Road, Hikaru returns to Japan for an audition as a last effort to get Kyosuke to notice her, and then seemingly meets Kyosuke, who appears to have grown distant from Madoka, there. She fails the audition and learns that the Kyosuke she was with was a fake, then snaps and kills Kyosukeand Madoka.
In Touhou Tonari this is what happens to Yuyuko when she realises that her power has grown so powerful that it may kill Yukari and it eventually lead to her suicide.
Perhaps the most heartwrenching example of this trope is the focus of It's a Wonderful Life, in which Jimmy Stewart's entire life is a spiral of quiet desperation which is slowly winding him up...until he finally SNAPS. And it is terrifying.
The soldiers in 28 Days Later, had apparently crashed over this line before the events of the movie had even taken place.
In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors is driven to the depths of suicidal despair by the endless repetition of the Groundhog Day Loop he's trapped in. Unfortunately, suicide doesn't even work, which only drives him to even further depths of suicidal despair. He eventually manages to pull himself out of it, largely as a result of his string of 'failed' suicides.
In Lawrence of Arabia, the turning point of the movie is the capture, torture (and implied rape) of the protagonist by the Turks. The cocky, bemused Warrior Poet who believed to be invincible turns into a bitter, grim Anti-Hero after that.
In the Monty Python film Now For Something Completely Different: Parodied in the "Marriage Guidance Counsellor" sketch. At the end Mr Peuty, in despair because his wife is making out with the counselor, walks out of the office, whereupon a 16-ton weight drops on him and the caption reads "So much for pathos."
In Trainspotting, Sick Boy, while morally ambiguous, still has his good points. That changes when Baby Dawn, now revealed to be his daughter, dies.
In the Wizards of Waverly Place movie, Alex has one of these near the end. She has seen her parents split up due to her misuse of magic, seen her brothers get erased from history, and has just been told that even though she has the power to fix it, it's now too late. Good thing there was a Deus ex Machina nearby.
Red Dawn. Things are going well for the American guerrillas until several of their group get killed trying to get a downed pilot across the front lines (the pilot also dies). Then one of their group turns out to be a traitor and has to be executed by his friends. A change in Soviet tactics leads to more of them getting killed in an ambush, so they're down to only four people. The leaders of the group, the Eckert brothers, decide to head into their Soviet-occupied hometown and go out in a Bolivian Army Ending, drawing troops into the town so the last remaining two can escape to the US lines.
In Cloverfield, right after the main character's brother dies on the bridge, you can see the exact moment that his mind breaks and self preservation stops mattering.
Gettysburg showed General George Pickett cross this after the failure of his charge.
Oh Dae-su of Oldboy crossed his DEH after learning that his lover was actually his long lost daughter, and his mortal enemy had the means to reveal the truth to her with a simple phone call.
His reaction to his DEH is hard to watch.
The President of the United States in Mars Attacks! has apparently crossed this line by the time he finally gives in to his General's request to fight back against the Martians using nuclear weapons.
In Full Metal Jacket, Private Gomer Pyle is driven into a psychotic breakdown both by the original Drill Sergeant Nasty, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and by the rest of his platoon, which ultimately leads to Hartman's murder and his own suicide. The moment when Pyle hit the Despair Event Horizon was probably when Hartman found a jelly doughnut in his foot locker just when things were starting to go well for him and proceeded to punish the entire platoon for it, which was then followed by the platoon taking it out on Pyle in the harrowing "blanket party" scene.
In the spirit of one upmanship and outdoing the rest of this list, A Serbian Film has Milos have one after learning that he was drugged and made to rape and kill people, including his own son, he was raped himself, and all of it was filmed for a snuff director's entertainment after which we get a Shower of Angst shot with him in the fetal position in the shower. Eventually this leads to him killing himself.
In 1408Mike Enslin's child daughter is brought back to life just to die in his arms and THEN THE BODY CRUMBLES INTO ASH! You can tell he is losing it as he tries to put Katy's "pieces" back together then his face afterwards is just a total emptiness inside, and the room keeps going.
The flashback scene in TRON: Legacy. Clu takes over, the Sea of Simulation is poisoned so no more life can come from it, Tron is thought dead, but it's muchworse, the Iso Cities are destroyed, and the portal back to the human world flickers out. The brash and cheerful protagonist for the first film clearly died at that point, leaving behind a hollowed-out Zen Survivor.
In the film version of The Mist, the carload of survivors run out of gas after discovering that the entire world has been overtaken by the mist. Stranded with certain death waiting if they step out of the car, they all give up hope and decide to kill themselves to avoid the more horrifying fate of being killed by the monsters outside. David reluctantly shoots everyone in the car, including his son...moments before the mist clears and the Army shows up to save everybody. Turns out they were just a few hundred meters away from the edge of the mist cloud. The film ends with David falling to his knees, screaming in ultimate despair.
In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, upon seeing what has become of Chicago, the ex-NEST soldiers refuse to go in, and Epps declares that the fight is over. They've lost. It goes even further when a Decepticon fighter swoops down for some "fun" (re: killing defenseless humans). And then Optimus Prime shows up, shoots down the fighter, and more or less pulls everyone out of the DEH.
In Black Death, Osmund certainly suffers one of these as a result of his journey.
Literature
High Lord Kevin falls into despair in the Back Story of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and renders most of the continent unlivable for centuries with the Ritual of Desecration. Think of it as the fantasy equivalent of a huge nuclear bomb. This solved the problem of the Complete MonsterDark Lord that was winning the war but at the cost of everything Kevin was supposed to preserve. And the Dark Lord turned out to be only temporarily inconvenienced, being immortal and all...
Later on the Giants of Seareach meekly let themselves be murdered out of horror over what had happened to some of them.
Still later Trell despairs also and commits his own Desecration luckily on a much smaller scale than the original, so the damage is limited. His sanity doesn't survive it.
This is a central theme in the Chronicles; it's the chief weapon of the villain, Lord Foul, whose whole objective seems to be pushing every single person in the world over their personal Despair Event Horizon. Indeed, every inhabitant of the Land swears an Oath of Peace which amounts to saying, "No matter what, I will not cross the Despair Event Horizon."
Covenant himself comes very close to the Despair Event Horizon at the end of The Illearth War, when High Lord Elena, his daughter, dies in the struggle with High Lord Kevin's specter under Melenkurion Skyweir. Fortunately, Foamfollower is there to pull him back from the edge.
In The Great Gatsby, George Wilson goes over this line after Myrtle dies
Denethor in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Return of the King has been sinking into despair for a long time, and finally snaps when Faramir is critically injured during the Siege of Gondor. In his madness, he proceeds to try to immolate both himself and his son on a funeral pyre, but Gandalf and Pippin stop him before he can put Faramir to the torch and Denethor is subsequently burned alive. The book is more explicit than the movie in mentioning one important factor in Denethor's despair: he had long used his own Palantir (seeing-stone) for gathering information, but the Palantir also provided a direct channel for Sauron to break Denethor's originally-formidable determination by showing him the military power of Mordor and (something that's rarely noted) making Denethor believe that Sauron had obtained the Ring.
In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, Fulgrim's is when, having murdered Ferrus Manus, his sword lets him realize what he has done. His despair is so great that his sword persuades him that suicide is too noble for him — and tricks him into accepting possession.
In Deus Sanguinius, isolated among Blood Angels who believe his brother Arkio, psychically attacked by Inquisitor Stele to convince him that he should free his brother from his shadow by killing himself, Rafen flees until he stumbles (by chance or not) on a mediation chamber he had made for himself. There, he starts to stab himself in the throat, and starts to fight it as well. A vision of Sanguinius touches the knife and removes the compulsion. He also looks at the knife, making Rafen realize what he must do.
For another Warhammer 40,000 example, this is a significant chunk of the Soul Drinkers' fighting style - you break the enemy's will to fight, and then you can just kill them with ease.
Ditto the Sons of Malice, an entire traitor army that fights in complete andutter silence. Said to be extremely unnerving.
A Song of Ice and Fire: In A Storm of Swords, Catelyn Stark goes into the Red Wedding, having lost her husband, her two daughters hostage, and believing two of her three sons are dead. So, when eldest son Robb is cut down before her, she completely fucking loses it, clawing at her face and laughing hysterically even as her treacherous bannermen round on her. When she's later brought Back from the Dead, well... she hates. Constantly.
1984 is an entire world that has fallen below the horizon, even if the protagonist doesn't realize it until he is pushed over his own personal rat-related line.
Room 101 in general is designed to make someone cross the Despair Event Horizon, by using whatever the person fears most to make them betray whatever is most important to them after first wearing them down with a long period of torture.
In The Princess 99, Axel, who was pretty much the only average, plucky schoolgirl in the series reaches this after she finds out that all her memories are fake and she's a serial killer nearly destroys Edgewood Academy from the shock, but luckily she gets better.
In Ben Counter's Warhammer 40,000Soul Drinkers novel Chapter War, when Lygris confronts Pallas, he realizes that Pallas would be just as happy, or happier, to die himself instead of killing Lygris.
The ghosts of all his murder victims attempt to do this to Shakespeare's Richard III before the Battle of Bosworth, conveniently Lampshading it with the phrase "Despair and die." It doesn't really work because Richard is such a Magnificent Bastard as to be beyond all shame.
The Warhammer 40,000Grey Knights novel Hammer of Daemons has an Imperial Guardsman say that many of his comrades "finally lost the will when they" saw Alaric fighting as if a Chaos warrior.
The titular hero in Devdas loses all hope after Childhood Sweetheart Paro marries someone else. Made worse by the fact that it wouldn't have happened if he'd been able to stand up to his father. And It Gets Worse.
In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the Battle of Endor is this for the Empire, as the death of Palpatine and the destruction of the Death Star II, along with the elite of the Navy leads to the breakup of the Empire into feuding Warlords.
Well. It was supposed to be that for the Empire. In five years' time, Leia pauses to think back to Endor and the naive belief that everything after that would be a "mopping-up" action. Certainly it changed after that, went on the defensive and lost more than it won, and it did fracture at various points - some warlords leaving after Endor, some waiting until the throneworld, Coruscant, fell - but it didn't just dissolve. In fact, some of its new leaders were very effective. The Empire did slip over that horizon eventually, perhaps when it officially started to call itself the ImperialRemnant, but there wasn't a single battle that tipped it over from still defiant to the point where its leader was willing to set up a Peace Conference to save it.
Happened off-page to Ton Phanan in the X-Wing Series. He was a doctor at Endor, and fairly idealistic, but when the medical frigate he was on was fired upon, he was badly wounded. An allergy to bacta meant that he woke up with two prosthetic limbsand half a face; he became a cynical and very sarcastic pilot after that. Once, drinking, he said that he felt part of him had died then, and he no longer had a future. Cybernetics couldn't replace it. Aaron Allston, in his FAQ, wrote that while Phanan feared death and struggled against it, deep down he didn't want to live.
Most of the 12th Book ofThe Wheel of Time is about RandAl'Thor reaching this point. When he does reach it, he comes within seconds of just wiping out all existence (or as much of it as he can manage, which is a lot as he was enhancing his power at the time) as it is all pointless, in a lovely Nietzsche Wannabe rant. He gets better, and the wise, calm and near saintly Rand that emerges at last seems like The Chosen One to hope for, rather than the only option.
From Oleg Divov's Night Watcher, with a strong helping of Tear Jerker: Igor Dolinsky's lover was turned into a vampire. He didn't know it, and so, vampirism being basically a STD, he became a vampire himself. This led to a series of strange uncontrollable outbursts on his part, during one of which he raped his wife and tried to start a chainsaw massacre in the town (he was stopped in the nick of time). Realizing that something strange had happened to him, he resolved to combat it by tying himself up in the basement during full moons - and his amazingly dedicated wife helped, causing him to appreciate her more than ever. Only, as his condition got worse, he became alternatingly lethargic or dangerous - and thus tied up - for months at a time, and so wasn't there for her when his wife inevitably became a vampire from the rape too. Eventually, he successfully overcame his vampirism, only to discover that his wife had irrevocably embraced the vampire lifestyle and the only way to save her was to make her a Master, which meant that they would never see each other again, not that she could bring herself to care about him in her present state anyway. "Luckily", he had just enough connections to pull it off, but at that moment he hit the Despair Event Horizon hard and spent days contemplating suicide methods before coming to the horrible realization that he is simply too sane to kill himself, which made things even worse. So in the end he dedicated himselfto saving his town from the vampires.
In James Swallow's Blood Angels novel Black Tide, the captive Space Marines are all on the verge of this. Some are convinced that they have fallen over, as when Tarikus pleads with Rafen to shoot him, he longs only for the peace of death. When Rafen brings hope, they all realize they aren't.
In "The Returned", Thryn tells Tarikus that he had hidden that he had, at moments, really been tempted by his isolation to succumb to this and to Chaos.
In Harry Potter, Snape arrives here after finding out that Dumbledore failed to protect Lily. He gets a bit better, but it's a large part of what makes him a Jerkass Woobie.
Sirius Black was pretty broken up over the deaths of Lilly and James Potter.
Xenophilius Lovegood, the odd but kind father of Luna, nearly turned Harry into the Death Eaters because they were holding Luna hostage and they were going to kill her if he didn't. Did we mention he's a widower?
Dumbledore seemed to have it the worst of all while he was growing up. His sister was implied to be raped and driven mad, his father was sent to prison because he took revenge against the muggles who hurt his little girl, and his mother was accidently killed by his sister's burst of wild magic, leaving him to take care of his younger siblings. In order to get away from that responsibility he co-conspired with Grendelwald to subjugate the muggles fooling himself in believing that he is doing it for his family. When his brother called him and Grendlewald out on it, they had a three way duel that ended up causing the death of his sister. Dumbledore never got over that and spent the rest of his life trying to atone for his mistakes.
In Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, this is embodied in the character of Cadrach, who is introduced as a Dirty Coward and thief, but later turns out to have played a critical role in delivering the Tome of Eldritch Lore to the Evil Sorcerer who kicked off the entire "summon the evil Storm King back into the world" plot. He knows this, knows he did the whole thing out of cowardice, and admits that he'd do it again, thanks to his will having been broken by the knowledge contained in that evil book.
In Otherland, the suffering endured by the Other, the quasi-AI operating system of the titular network, comes to a peak after Psycho for Hire Dread takes over the system, torturing it to the point where it gives up all hope of preserving itself or its secret, and instead hatches a plot to destroy itselfalong with all of its tormentors.
Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games unicycles backwards downhill over a few horizons. It's a hard knock life.
In Use of Weapons, happens in a rather nasty way to the original Cheradenine in one of the flashback chapters when he discovers what Elethiomel did to his sister, complete with Title Drop for emphasis. It's strongly hinted that the same happened to Elethiomel as well which led to him becoming The Atoner and thus the events of the rest of the book.
Before the events of the novel, Ista has already been driven over the DEH by an Accidental Murder, the death of her husband the king, and the weight of the family curse. In Paladin of Souls, We are catching her on the way back, as her madness was (literally) miraculously cured at the end of the previous book.
Dr. Seward approaches the Despair Event Horizon in Anno Dracula when he meets Arthur Holmwood again after something like three years of separation. It's difficult to definitively deduce which side he's on at any given point since the novel makes it clear he's been, or is going, insane, but his reaction to seeing Arthur as a vampire calls out this trope's name in the middle of the night like a bad nightmare.
In the Discworld book Night Watch, Captain Tilden suffers from this after hearing his former regiment trampled protesters, becoming completely despondent and leaving the Watch the next day. Vimes himself lingers at the cusp right up until the cigar holder is dropped in front of him.
Kiritsugu Emiya from Fate/zero suffered from this in his backstory. Similar to Archer, he was driven to despair by his ideals because he kept getting betrayed by them.
Darkness Visible has two notable examples. Most importantly, this is the reason why the leader of the Dark Tide is trying to end the world. He crossed the event horizon when his wife died. Badly. Lewis crosses his own despair event horizon in Hyde Park, when he realises that he will never survive the mental strain of closing all the rogue Thresholds. Being British, he gets on with it regardless, but quite without hope for his own survival. It is only thanks to Marsh getting him to a doctor immediately after his collapse that he lives.
"The disordered ranks of dark portals went on and on before me, stretching into the grey distance like an unending army. I kept my eyes on the sky, and knew with a crushing certainty that I faced my own destruction."
In the book Flag In Exile, Honor Harrington is pushed across it by the destruction of a dome that her company was building, killing eighty-two, including 30 children. The fact that her collapse drags her bond creatureNimitz along for the ride only pushes her deeper. Only learning that it was sabotage pulls her out the literally killing depression (she's genetically a Big Eater and was starving to death), and sets her on the path to destroy those responsible.
In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero Regained, Miranda is convinced that Astreus, having lost hope, will now fall prey to Hell.
Anyone following The Dresden Files can tell you after Harry's "death" in Changes, Molly, Murphy and the rest of the gang are very close to crossing the edge. Molly and Murphy especially.
At the end of the New Jedi Order, the death of Supreme Overlord Shimrra sends the Yuuzhan Vong species (and particularly the warrior caste) over the Despair Event Horizon en masse, with thousands of warriors committing ritual suicide or kamikaze attacks and the others surrendering to the Galactic Alliance. Oddly enough, this is a positive example of the trope, since it convinced the otherwise-implacable Vong that the war was not worth continuing.
[1] Is just one colossal DEH, The entire album is about a rock star who is constantly hurt within his life, and the mental "Wall" he builds between himself and society.
Rammstein's song "Wo Bist Du" has the narrator crossing the Despair Event Horizon after the death of loved one.
Jethro Tull's song "Locomotive Breath" is about a man who has just crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
Supertramp enjoys these. Lord, is it mine?, Rudy (arguably), and If everyone was listening are about someone who's on the edge of that horizon, and in danger of going over.
Many country and western song, especially Johnny Cash songs Folsom Prison Blues, which is about a man sentenced to life imprisonment and 25 Minutes to Go, of a man who is about to be hanged.
Metallica's "One" is the pitiful plea of a mutilated veteran to end his life. It was inspired by Johnny Got His Gun, a book (and a film) with the same major premise.
"Scarsick" by Pain of Salvation follows a man who grows increasingly frustrated by the various facets of modern society shown to him through television. Eventually, he decides he's had enough and jumps off the roof of a building in an attempt to shock the people around him back to their senses... whether or not this works is left up to the listener.
Also, in the same vein, the extra track off "Entropia," Never Learn to Fly, a song where one of the characters decides that dreaming and striving for anything great will only lead to unbearable pain... hell, at least Plains of Dawn had a hopeful point, however brief.
Roger Miller's "One Dying And A Burying": One man contemplates suicide to forget the pain of lost love.
Well, I finally found a sure-fire way to forget.
It's so simple, I'm surprised I hadn't thought of it just yet.
It's foolproof; foolhardy, maybe, but who knows?
Anyway, here I am, walking to where the cold dark water flows, 'cause all it takes is
One dying and a burying (x2)
Some crying, six carrying me,
I wanna be free.
Free from all this heartache and regret,
And free from pining for the love I can't forget.
A love that was warm, but somehow turned to hate
It's made my life a prison, from which there's only one escape, and thats.....
Many of David Gray's songs are either written from the other side of the horizon or are about trying to keep from crossing it, in particular "Holding On":
Baby, now don't look back
Don't let those feelings start
Don't let the line go slack
When you're pulling it all apart
How to describe the sky
Or dismantle a beating heart
Guess we're just holding on
Baby, we are holding on
Honey, we're holding on
To the world
"Message in a Bottle" by The Police is about trying to keep from crossing it.
Just a castaway, an island lost at sea, oh
Another lonely day, with no one here but me, oh
More loneliness than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair, oh
The entire album Mercury Falling by Sting seems to be about dealing with the Despair Event Horizon, and the opening track "The Hounds of Winter" depicts a man trying to avoid the titular hounds, which most people seem to agree represent depression in the wake of losing his lover.
"Dance with the Devil", by Immortal Technique. The protagonist rape a random woman in a dark street to be deemed "worthy" to integrate a gang, then is asked to shoot her as witness. It's his own mother... And they suddenly recognize each other.
Inside the Fire by Disturbed is about the suicide of the lead singer's girlfriend, who said that the grief was so strong he could feel Satan looking down at him.
Van Der Graaf Generator's "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" seems to be the self-narration of a man who cross the horizon, and then commits suicide.
Radiohead seem to have built their whole career on this.
Nick Drake crossed the horizon between Bryter Layter and Pink Moon. The 5 songs he recorded after Pink Moon are all pretty bleak. One of these songs, Black Eyed Dog, is often considered to be Nick saying that it was his time to go, as a black eyed dog is a manifestation of Death. If [[|this photo]] is anything to go by the meaning is far more innocent.
Live-Action TV
Xena: Warrior Princess crosses one of these when Gabrielle's Fetus Terrible daughter, Hope, murders Xena's son, Solan, thus causing a rift between the two friends that would take a full blown Musical Episode to fix.
And when Gabrielle throws herself and Hope into a fiery Lava Pit, so as to prevent Hope's father from entering the world, and to save Xena from dying as a result of killing Hope.
When Livia kills Joxer, just to prove to Xena, her mother, that she means business.
Malcolm Reynolds lost all idealism, along with any faith in God, at the battle of Serenity Valley.
The Operative in Serenity lost all hope for the Alliance after he learned the truth about Miranda.
Though not as overt, River's dialogue indicates that she has no hope of ever being "normal" again. At one point, she even rails against the drugs Simon is giving her, saying that she hates being able to think clearly because she knows she'll just slip back into madness sooner or later. You can actually see the very moment River breaks in the R. Tam Sessions, in the third video where the "counselor" tells River that her brother "is very busy." She stops, silently nods, then whispers "Yes...." and starts crying. (crack)
In a Season 2 episode of Angel, our hero seizes an opportunity to travel to Wolfram & Hart's "home office" and take the fight directly to the Senior Partners. When Angel finally arrives, he discovers to his horror that what he thought would be Hell, was in fact right back where he started in LA! He is then told by Smug Snake Holland Manners that Wolfram & Hart exists because of mankind's depravity, and not vice versa. Angel becomes so overcome with despair that he even tries to lose his soul and turn back into Angelus. He gets better and develops a karma-phrase: "If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do."
Illyria crosses it when she finds her armies have crumbled to dust in the millenia she's been dead. When she returned she intended to restore her empire to its glory and conquer the world. After seeing the remains of her temple she spends most of the show moping around and giving what Angel describes as "when (humans) were muck" speeches. This is very lucky for everyone else, seeing as even without an army she was more powerful than most anything that had appeared on the show.
The end of Season 4 brought on one of these for Connor when he loses literally everything he has, including his mind.
In flashbacks, Ziva in NCIS shows she reaches this after Tony kills her boyfriend, she's moved back to Mossad, and sent on a highly dangerous mission which involved watching a new Love Interest be killed by her team leader and executing a ship full of people. She takes off - alone - into Somalia on a suicide mission. Of course, Team Gibbs saves her.
Halfway through season four of Battlestar Galactica, the fleet discovers that Earth has been destroyed, causing borderline cases of this for many characters, and a full-blown case for both Dualla and Number Three.
Hey don't forget this is BSG, if you think things are bad... well Where do I begin, Galactica suffers a mutiny, at least dozens are killed, much of the crew is imprisoned afterwards, Gaeta and Zarek are killed for leading said mutiny. Then they discover that the Galactica itself is on the verge of breaking apart internally. To cut a long short, the Cavil-aligned Boomer manages to steal Hera and as an added bonus cause a chain reaction which seems to be pushing the Galactica into its death agony.
It's just a good thing they didn't mention the knife.
A similar scene occurs in Cheers when Frasier takes Diane to a Italian restaurant. Unfortunately, Frasier booked the reservation just after the world-famous chef had passed away, so the restaurant is empty save the deeply depressed, weeping staff and them.
Frasier: Do I know how to show a girl a good time or what?
While Dean Winchester has had a lot of moments where you think he couldn't get any more broken, the point where he got completely destroyed was "On the Head of a Pin", where he found out that his Dad spent a hundred years in hell and supposedly never got off the rack, that he was the first seal and that he was to blame for the upcoming apocalypse. Can you really blame the poor boy for feeling shitty? He really does give up in this episode, and it takes angelic intervention in the next one to fix it.
Actually, it could be argued the worst point was in "Dark Side of the Moon", when he discovers Sam - who is basically the reason he does anything and everything - had his happiest moments (being relived in heaven) escaping from him (and dad). Not to mention God doesn't care. Proof is seen when he drops his necklace into the trash can at the end of the episode.
Doubles as the episode where Cas hits his Despair Event Horizon.
Dean hits it AGAIN in the Season Seven premiere: Cas has the souls of purgatory inside him and is on a rampage with nothing that can stop him except Death himself offering them a long shot chance and Sam's wall of memories from hell being broken and Sam hallucinating. Dean sits back with a beer and pretty much plans to wait for the world to end while he watches porn, because that's all he CAN do.
After the death of Jimmy Olsen and the disappearance of Lois Lane as a result of his betrayal by several trusted friends (and, metaphorically, by humanity itself - in general and specifically his own humanity) in the season eight finale of Smallville, Clark seems to be veering dangerously close to one of these - declaring himself 'dead', and apparently setting up to become Smallville's version of the darker version of Superman explored in several alternate universe stories (including the Superman: TAS cite further down the page).
After everything that Chloe has been through it's amazing that she hasn't entered one herself. Throughout the last season she has been bordering on Butt Monkey status and generally she still manages to be if not amazingly uplifting or giddy still rather coolheaded and gives a "well that's the way the cookie crumbles" feel. Though with mentioned finale of Clark walking out it might just push her over the edge.
Series 3 of Torchwood has multiple Despair Event Horizons - as you would expect from a plot that involves the governments of the world caving into an alien race's demands for 10% of the Earth's children. Obstructive BureaucratAnti-Villain Frobisher is told by the Prime Minister that, for PR purposes, his daughters will be among the 10% given to the aliens - so Frobisher takes a gun home and kills his wife and children, before turning it on himself. Then Jack, who has just had to watch his boyfriend die pointlessly, realises that there's a way to defeat the aliens after all... but it will mean killing a child. And the only child close to hand is his own grandson, who he is forced to murder in front of his screaming daughter. Safe to say, Jack doesn't hang around on Earth for very long after that.
In The fast show the Character Johnny Nice painter goes into despair and starts ranting about things like death and how is mother locked him in the cupboard and made him eat pins whenever anyone mentions the colour black
Dead Set. Space agrees to unlock the Diary Room ? so Kelly can make a futile attempt to fight her way out ? only after seeing a zombie Pippa (his former girlfriend) hammering on the glass outside.
For Eastenders' Ronnie Mitchell, this came with the death of her daughter Danielle, who she gave away as a baby. When Danielle came looking for her, she was too intimidated to tell Ronnie who she was. Ronnie treated her quite badly, and only found out the truth after months of thinking that Danielle was a weird stalker. Moments after she found out, Danielle was hit by a car.
Then onward after that, she tries desperately to get pregnant again, if not by her boyfriend but by a reformed criminal and THIS baby is also lost when she is pushed against a bar and has a miscarriage. She finally delivers a living baby but her exhaustion being without her husband or ANYONE to help her at home causes her to fall asleep and the baby dies in cot death.
The cast of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 claimed to have lost any hope of joy again at the end of Red Zone Cuba. They then cure it by singing a bouncy upbeat song about... ironing boards and drywall. Well, whatever floats your boat.
Doctor Who, yes, even the show that Craig Ferguson cheerfully declared was about "the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism", has depicted this trope. In "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances", Nancy, having witnessed The Blitz first hand and seen her son Jamie being turned into a gas-mask zombie, was clearly at that point when she met the Doctor and Rose, even though she Kept Calm and Carried On for the sake of the orphaned children who became her surrogate family. She was finally brought out of her despair when she admitted out loud that she was Jamie's mother, which brought about a cure for the zombies. Her despair was evident in an exchange she had with Rose: Rose told Nancy that she was from the future, and Nancy's reaction was "What future?" The first true sign of Nancy fighting her way out of the Despair Event Horizon came when Rose assured her that the Nazis would not win WWII.
Lucy Saxon crossed the Despair Event Horizon when she was taken to the end of the universe and realized that nothing matters in the end. Her hopelessness makes her easily manipulated until she shoots The Master. Despite growing a backbone, she never seems to cross back.
The Ninth Doctor is clearly on the far side of the despair event horizon as the 2005 series began, given the events of the Time War. Thias is illustrated gruesomely in the "Everything dies" sequence in "The End of the World". A major aspect of the Rose/Doctor relationship, as indicated in "Journey's End" is in her unwittingly helping the Doctor cross back over the line.
Rose Tyler is headed over the event horizon after witnessing the (future) final destruction of the earth in "The End of The World", but the Doctor, and the promise of chips in 21st century London, brings her back.
The First Doctor briefly passes over this at the end of The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve. The combined weight of Steven's angry departure, the loss of so many of his friends including his own graddaughter, the deaths of Katarina and Sara in the previous story and his own attempts to reconcile his guilt over the Huguenot massacre break the Doctor so much he feels he can't carry on travelling anymore, though he's just held back by Steven's change of heart and Dodo's arrival.
Criminal Minds: a woman goes on a shooting rampage on the day of her son's birth/death because not only was he not saved but the cop who also died on the scene eclipsed the boy's memory. Also contributing to her depression and rage was that the boy's paramedic father never took time off for his own son's birthday, divorced her, and seemed to forget about his son after his death (he didn't, his style of grieving just went in the opposite direction of her's); on her end, the last thing she said to her son was a scolding.
This happens to a number of unsubs on Criminal Minds, by means of a "stressor". Usually it just causes the unsub to snap, but sometimes a killer will have crossed the Despair Event Horizon to get there. Another particularly dramatic example occurs in True Night. Having to watch his pregnant fiance who he'd just proposed to be raped to death and himself eviscerated pushed Johnny Hale so far over the Despair Event Horizon that he completely blocked the memory and had blackouts during which he went on Roaring Rampages of Revenge. At the end of the episode, Prentiss is struck by how far he'd fallen from a successful, happy writer to...what he became.
Joseph Bede crosses it in the final episode of The Shadow Line. His wife, whose Alzheimer's treatment he intends to pay for with the proceeds from his drug deal, tries to kill herself and is hospitalised. This prompts him to leave his gun behind when meeting Jay, who he already know intends to betray him, which leads to his death.
Assistant Director Skinner relates a story to Mulder about his own DEH, just in time to pull Mulder out of one:
Skinner: When I was eighteen, I, uh... I went to Vietnam. I wasn't drafted, Mulder, I- I enlisted in the Marine Corps the day of my eighteenth birthday. I did it on a blind faith. I did it because I believed it was the right thing to do. I don't know, maybe I still do. Three weeks into my tour, a ten-year-old North Vietnamese boy walked into camp covered with grenades and I, uh... I blew his head off from a distance of ten yards. I lost my faith. Not in my country or in myself, but in everything. There was just no point to anything anymore. One night on patrol, we were, uh... caught... and everyone- everyone fell. I mean, everyone. I looked down at my body from outside of it. I didn't recognize it at first. I watched the V.C. strip my uniform, take my weapon and I remained in this thick jungle... peaceful... unafraid... watching my- my dead friends. Watching myself. In the morning, the corpsmen arrived and put me in a body bag until... I guess they found a pulse. I woke in a Saigon hospital two weeks later. I'm afraid to look any further beyond that experience. You? You are not. Your resignation is unacceptable.
Mulder: (realizing) You. (exhales heavily) You gave me Cancer Man's location. You put your life in danger.
Skinner: Agent Mulder, every life, every day, is in danger. That’s just life.
Mulder himself has one in season 4 after being told that everything he knows is a lie, that he's been played since the beginning, and that the Syndicate gave Scully her incurable cancer to make him believe. It leads him to attempt suicide, though it gets interrupted and he fakes his own death, instead.
In Merlin Uther is shattered by the reveal that his daughter Morgana is a sorceress who despises him. He spends a lot of time in a near catatonic state and Arthur rules the kingdom in his stead.
New Media
Played for Laughs in the RiffTrax of Twilight. Two girls are having a discussion in the high school's cafeteria, when one mentions, "We're talking Olympic sized." Mike Nelson is right on top of it, chiming in, "High school girls discussing wang sizes. We have officially hit rock bottom, gentlemen."
And in the 'Trax for the Star Wars Holiday Special, while watching Harvey Korman debase himself in a miserably unfunny sketch, Mike sighs and says, "Well, Nietzsche was right; dead as a doornail."
Professional Wrestling
Bret Hart's heel turn and reformation of the Hart Foundation was largely based on his growing disapproval of America's failing familyvalues in the wake of Steve Austin's new wave of popularity. It got worse when Shawn Michaels and HHH formed D-Generation X.
Everyone in WCW, save for Sting, crossed this line when Hulk Hogan was revealed as the Third Man.
Austin Aries and Jimmy Jacobs took each other down all because of Lacey. Aries persuaded Lacey to leave her boyfriend and the Age of the Fall, only to have Jacobs lose even more of his mind and take Lacey out of ROH for good.
The real damage to Aries was done after he won the feud with Jimmy Jacobs and moved on to Age of the Fall Lieutenant Tyler Black. The fans began to get behind Black after a series of matches against Nigel McGuinness and Bryan Danielson to the point where some of them began to boo A-Double.
Theater
Cyrano de Bergerac: The difference between Cyrano and Christian is that Christian is capable of maintaining hope no matter how dire the circumstances:
Cyrano will have two: The first at Act II Scene VI, when Roxane describes his love as fair (and so Cyrano knows it’s not him). The second at Act IV Scene X, when he realizes he will never tell the truth to Roxane about Christian and him Playing Cyrano because Christian has been mortally wounded:
Cyrano(letting go Roxane's hand and exclaiming): Ah, God!
Roxane: What is it?
Cyrano(to himself—stunned): All is over now.
Christian will have only one: At Act II Scene VI, when he hears that Roxane is waiting for a Love Letter Lunacy, he realizes he cannot win her love. Notably averted at Act IV Scene IX, when he still hopes he can win Roxane’s love after Cyrano tells her all the truth.
Christian: I will be loved myself—or not at all!
— I'll go see what they do—there, at the end
Of the post: speak to her, and then let her choose
One of us two!
Cyrano: It will be you.
Christian: Pray God!
Le Bret will have one at the end of the play because he cannot accept Cyrano's death, completely unaware that he is in a Tragedy:
See the Literature folder? Noticed that quite a few of the entries are supplementary material to a certain tabletop game?
This is the Chaos God Nurgle's modus operandi: prey upon those who have succumbed to despair and cynicism, especially if this anguish comes from a hideously-disfiguring disease. His victims wallow in self-pity until they fully embrace decay and entropy, find themselves perversely enjoying the experience, and begin worshiping him. In other words, through Father Nurgle you can fall past the Despair Event Horizon and end up Affably Evil.
Hell, put simply, Nurgle is seen as a kindly, jovial figure for a reason: he basically rescues his new worshipers from utter despair.
Call of Cthulhu: Investigators (a.k.a. the PCs) wage a never ending war against the Elder Gods, slowly learning more and more of the Mythos. At one point or another, they get a view of what they're fighting, a clear unobstructed view. Those who don't Go Mad from the Revelation typically loose all motivation to fight out of finally understanding how small they really are in this fight.
It's implied in some articles about the Dirigible Engine Daystar in Exalted that the Unconquered Sun has crossed it at some point after his Chosen crossed the Moral Event Horizon and the whole world went to the dogs. This is a sign of how bad things have gotten in Creation; the cosmic embodiment of virtue is caught in a spiral of despair and denial.
Being a setting about personal horror, crossing the horizon is horribly frequent in The World Of Darkness — so much that many games have mechanics for it.
Mages use their beliefs and sheer willpower to shape the reality around them. Pushing them over the edge and sending them into utter despair, naturally, has some terrible consequences... If lucky*
for everyone else, that is
, their mind (and magic) breaks and the mage becomes a Marauder, who enforces their shattered vision of reality upon the world by existing. If unlucky, they might decide that it is better for reality not to exist at all and join the Nephandi. Mind that this process involves ripping their soul inside out.
In a world full of unwilling monsters, Prometheans probably have it the worst. The universe does not want them to exist. The very earth rejects them and the people are supernaturally urged to hate them. Learning to become human is a very difficult and bitter task, but many see it as a worthy goal to fight for... But many still fall to despair and pursue a very different goal: to become monsters. A Centimanus revels in their inhuman nature and uses their alchemical powers to dissolve and disintegrate.
In Changeling The Lost, crossing the despair event horizon is the reproductive cycle of the True Fae.
Video Games
The protagonist of Marathongoes through a process similar to rampancy in Marathon Infinity: Blood tides of L'howon, un which, again, similar to rampancy, he starts to make choices of his own after he's used as a chess piece by the Jjaro, Durandal, and Tycho, in which, unbeknownst to Durandal and Tycho, the universe is at stake. After Tycho forces the player to kill Durandal and repays him by trying to enslave him (at which point his fellow humans have tried to kill him for listening to Tycho), he kind of... Loses it, and just starts trying to kill everything he sees. This doesn't last long, as the Jjaro rescue him. Yeah, it's that kind of game.
The entire point of Silent Hill 2, in which the protagonist and two secondary characters fall closer and closer to the horizon over the course of the game, leading at least one of them to suicide. Whether the protagonist crosses the horizon or retreats from it depends on which of the Multiple Endings is achieved.
Oersted in Live A Live. After being tricked, he finds that everyone has now abandoned him and considers him a demon, his only remaining ally is dragged away to be tortured, and is blamed for the death of said ally who expends the last of his power to set Oersted free. Oh, then he finds out that his best friend betrayed him to this fate because he was jealous. Oh, and the 'Aesop' which has been so far in the game? "Don't lose hope as long as somebody believes in you". That went well. The last person who he hoped believed in him, the princess? After Oersted duels his traitorous friend and kills him, she asks why he didn't come to rescue her (ouch. He did. Straybow only got there first by faking his death and ruining Oersted's life), declares that she loves said traitor, and kills herself. That was the absolute last straw, the severing of his last tenuous tie to sanity.
After spending a year in coma and seeing the destruction of the world firsthand, Cid's death in Final Fantasy VI proves to be Celes' final straw, driving her to toss herself off a cliff. She survives by a miracle, and seeing Locke's bandanna tied around a pigeon's wing gives her a new reason to live.This event can be prevented by successfully playing a minigame, but the path of failure is much better written*
The developers seem to think so too, because the 'right thing' to do is willfully obscure, and the remainder of the plot tacitly assumes the character is dead.
.
In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud goes over the horizon in a big way when he imagines he's really just a botched Sephiroth clone and not really Cloud, going so far as to hand the Artifact of Doom to the Big Bad just because he feels nothing matters to him anymore. He pulls himself together eventually, but in the movie (Advent Children) he starts edging over the horizon again.
While Cloud definitely crosses this point (then doubles back, just to make sure), it should be noted that Sephiroth plays some mind tricks and manipulates the Jenova cells inside of him, so some of those examples don't actually hold up.
Also, Vincent from that same game and its resulting compilation. It wasn't the death of his father or the fact that the woman he loved beyond all belief had chosen his worst enemy over him that did it. It was being shot by that worst enemy and then turned into a lab experiment / monster that could not age or die, no matter what was done to him. Add along a side dish of Lucrecia actually helping Hojo to do these things to Vincent, and there you have it. Oh, and did we mention the four demons now sharing his mind, one of which was literally made to help bring about the end of the world? His despair was enough that he locked himself in a coffin and slept for thirty years until being woken up by Cloud and the rest of AVALANCHE.
This is Seymour's motive in Final Fantasy X. After a fairly crappy childhood he hits when his mother (the only person who ever loved him) sacrifices her own life to give him the power to defeat Sin. His despair drives him to plot the destruction of all life in Spira because he sees it as the only way to bring an end to all suffering.
It also turns out to be the motive for why Yu Yevon originally created Sin a thousand years ago. Seeing that his beloved city of Zanarkand would be destroyed, he killed every living being in it and used their souls to create an eternal Dream Zanarkand, as well as an all-powerful destructive force (Sin) to provide the power needed to keep Dream Zanarkand alive.
And in the sequel Final Fantasy X-2, a Despair Event Horizon is the main motive for its Big Bad, Shuyin, who wants to destroy the world which let him and his beloved die a thousand years ago. To put it in perspective, Shuyin's concentrated despair literally festered in a hole for a millenia after his death until it reached a point where the only way he could think to end his pain would be to end the world itself.
Oh and the whole being forced to watch his beloved die on repeat for a thousand years might have also had something to do with it.
Subverted in XIII in that in order to get an Eidolan, it's necessary for a L'Cie to cross one of these. However, most of them after their Eidolan Battlesget better - some more quickly than others though. It's probably the Catharsis Factor of beating them up in order to tame them that does it.
It isn't clearly shown onscreen, but the backstory of Tales of Symphonia makes it apparent that Mithos, Kratos and Yuan all suffered this upon the death of Martel, Mithos' sister and Yuan's fiancee, leading the heroes of the ancient world to become villains instead.
Kratos arguably claws his way back out of the Despair Event Horizon when he becomes disillusioned and meets his lover, Lloyd's mother, falls back in when he thinks they're both dead, and then claws back out again when he encounters Lloyd later.
The sequel has Alice fall into this when Decus is killed protecting her.
Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology has Kanonno, after her home world, Pasca, was consumed by war and mana abuse despite her efforts as its Descender. She even committed genocide, which led to Pasca's rapid decline.
Devil Survivor's Yasuyuki Honda crosses this in the Escape ending. He spends the whole week trying to escape the lockdown so he can see his hospitalized son, only to discover he's too late, and because they broke through the blockade, the whole world's gone to hell. This sends him completely over the edge, and he calls out the 'heroes' responsible in a nightmarishly backwards way, complete with Slasher Smile.
Kratos from God of War, when Athena tells him that though they implied they would do so, they never actually said they'd let him forget killing his family. They only promised to forgive him.
In the Dark Side ending to Knights of the Old Republic, Master Vandar gets this when he realizes that, not only is the Republic fleet outnumbered and surrounded, but Bastila is using her Battle Meditation against them. In either ending, Malak doesn't cross the horizon until you've killed him.
The Game ModBrotherhood of Shadow shows this off. The whole point of the Brotherhood is to push your character past it so that they can overpower your mind to act as their new host. Solomon invokes this Trope on Channa Mae, by showing her the extent to which she sacrificed for Revan, and telling her it was all for nothing. Kobayshi then pulls her back with The Power of Love, and reveals that they're Not so Different - he was a failed Padawan who lost his Force connection and reason to live when his master was killed.
This is the entire premise behind Knights of the Old Republic II, as Revan is revealed to have deliberately subjected his Jedi Knights to brutal, dehumanizing battles until their spirit breaks and they turn to the dark side. Your character is the only person who managed to undergo this treatment and not succumb (you can still be as light or dark as you wish).
Before Digital Devil Saga starts, Angel crossed this when her boyfriend died in her arms from injuries sustained in a terrorist attack on his hospital, all due to fear of the new, possibly not even infectious disease she'd been working on finding a cure for.
In the Total War series of games, the goal of battles is to drive the enemy army past the Despair Event Horizon, causing them to break and rout. As soon as all enemy units are either fleeing, dead, or have fled already, the battle is won (though you may still choose to hunt down any enemy units still on the map to ensure they won't live to fight another day, let your units gain some experience, or just because you enjoy doing so).
Increasing you General's dread rating will also speed up how fast you can break enemy morale, to the point that a single charge by your General's Bodyguard can break entire armies. There's also a number of other options to break morale, such as flanking your enemy, attacking with morale-draining units (e.g. Scottish Highlanders or Danish Vikings), charging cavalry, lighting arrows on fire, or flinging rotting cow carcasses into the enemy.
Majora's Mask's third day. Most citizens of Clock Town pack up and leave, while the ones that remain can do nothing but stare up at the sky and wait for the moon to fall.
The original TV advertisement implies that the citizens are trying to invoke Clap Your Hands If You Believe to help Link.
Ryu's Despair Event Horizon occurs when the summoners of Chek (who all appear to be children) are massacred in front of him by Complete Monster Rasso. Ryu ends up having a Heroic BSOD which releases the Kaiser Dragon—a kaiju-esque dragon that is a Physical God—and results in him going into an Unstoppable Rage until receiving a Cool Down Hug from Nina.
We should also note here that this is also after no less than two previous attempts by The Empire to kill Fou-lu. Who is a literalGod Emperor. Whom the Vestigial Empire predecessors of The Empireexplicitly summoned there 600 years previously (botching the summoning and leaving the Physical God they were trying to pull across in two separate bodies separated by 600 years on opposite sides of the world) to unite their people and bring peace. And the main person trying to kill him, Yohm, is also explicitly a priest who knows damn well who and what Fou-lu is but is trying to kill him anyways.
Hunter, in Darkness, an interactive fiction, plays this one and plays it hard. An early segment has you crawling, cut and bleeding, through a tight space with hundreds of feet of rock above and miles and miles of rock below. The game assures you repeatedly, even as you struggle ever closer to freedom, that this is it—your final resting place. This is where you die. Your light has flickered out and the invisible narrator insists that you will never leave this place, until finally you tear yourself away from the stone gullet and stumble blindly to freedom. Also qualifies for High Octane Nightmare Fuel, I'm sure of it.
In Cave Story, when the story hits the Darkest Hour, one of your allies tells you that it's hopeless to continue to fight or to even try to rescue his sister, then he offers you a chance to flee the island. You can take him up on the offer, or you can resolve to keep fighting, in which case you give him just enough encouragement to stick around and save your bacon in the normal ending.
Wild ARMs 2 has what could almost be an Incredibly Lame Pun. A certain Eldritch Abomination was sealed away "beyond the Event Horizon" in the backstory, and happens to be the source of the protagonist's Super Mode. Said protagonist is pushed to the edge of the Despair Event Horizon midway through, and teeters there for the entire game. After defeating the supposed final boss which involved his Magnificent Bastard commander sacrificing himself to give an Eldritch Location a physical body to kill, he suffers a Heroic BSOD that almost releases the demon. In other words, his despair literally formed a bridge across the Event Horizon.
Sam crosses over this in the finale of Season Three after Max's death. It takes Max (sort of) coming back from the dead for more adventuring to break him out of it.
Dwarf Fortress has this as a fundamental aspect of managing your dwarves. They can become unhappy through a variety of reasons from simply not having any alcohol to drink through to the deaths of close friends or family. Getting a dwarf depressed enough will push them over the edge and cause them to lose their sanity. Depending on several factors this can be anything from a minor nuisance to extremely dangerous. If you're lucky, events can contrive to make this game-ending depending on your fortress design and how close other dwarves are to being over the edge themselves. Indeed, events can (or more usually, do) spiral out of control until your entire fortress is over the Despair Event Horizon.
Hiroki in Canvas 2 in regards to painting. Many of the routes actually deal more with helping him get over his problems than helping the heroine.
Mega Man X hit it sometime between his series and Mega Man Zero. It causes him to lose his compassion for his enemies and reluctance to kill. The original concept was that he would lose all hope for human and reploid coexistence and begin the oppression and genocide of his descendant species, since they were incapable of living peacefully with humanity. Thankfully, he was Genre Savvy enough to use himself as the seal on a Sealed Evil in a Can, sealing them both away. Even when his friend awakens, he refuses to start killing again since he can't trust himself with that choice (although he does assist in other ways) and doesn't see his murder or the fact there's nothing left of him but a fading ghost as anything to be upset about. While most of his dialogue is fairly normal, there are a couple times when the AxCrazy/BloodKnight he's holding back shows, which is extremely jarring coming from a former Reluctant Warrior and poster android for Incorruptible Pure Pureness. The fact it could break The Messiah (a trope he fits, only without the Marty Stu aspects) shows how bad things really are.
Similarly, in Mega Man X, when Lumine was giving his Hannibal Lecture about how X can't stop the evolution of reploids into mavericks, X is visibly shown falling into this trope, or at the very least undergoing a Heroic BSOD. Axl manages to get him out of it by shooting Lumine mid-speech.
The Legend of Spyro: Dawn Of the Dragon has both heroes suffer this at the hands of Malefor. Malefor's Hannibal Lecture depresses Cynder so much that she doesn't know what to believe, allowing Malefor to take over her mind again and use her to attack Spyro. Spyro's comes as a result of Cynder being turned on him, leaving him nothing left to fight for.The Power of Love fixes things, but the fact Malefor effectively used a Hannibal Lecture to do it to both of them in under five minutes shows how effective a Chess Master he really is.
In Odin Sphere, Oswald is so crushed by the thought that Gwendolyn doesn't love him and has been trapped into marriage with him - a conclusion he reaches when he finds out she's given away the ring he gave her as a wedding gift - that he simply gives up on living and waits for a servant of the Queen of the Underworld to drag him off to hell. Fortunately, Gwendolyn does love him, and when she realizes what happened she promptly dons her battle tutu and stages a direct assault on the underworld to get him back.
In Dragon Age II, the player can push Fenris over the Despair Event Horizon by agreeing to give him back to the blood mage who had previously enslaved him. He's so gutted by the betrayal that he doesn't even get angry, just bows his head and leaves with the slaver without a fight.
implied with Orsino at the end of the game, who seeing his fellow mages cut down one by one with no hope of surrender, finally gives in and uses blood magic in a 'taking you with me' type deal, this can seem to come out of the blue if you side with the mages and this happens right after you mop the floor with any templar that comes in.
Happens many, MANY times in the Fire Emblem franchise:
Seisen no Keifu: Lord Sigurd can hold himself up as well as possible when his wife Diadora is kidnapped, his father Byron is falsely accused of threason and dies, he himself is accused of treason, and bth his sister Ethlin and her husband/Sigurd's Lancer Cuan are murdered. However, the moment he sees that his kidnapped wife was actually mindwiped into marrying Alvis, who once was his sort-of ally, he can only scream in utter horror and betrayal right before Alvis himself burns him to death, and Sigurd's army is decimated shortly afterwards.
Sigurd's old friend and companion Tiltyu doesn't fare much better. In the second part of the game we learn that she crossed the DEH after not only being separated of her son Arthur as she and her daughter Teeny are kidnapped back into Freege, but also after being subjected to endless abuse from her sister-in-law Hilda, which finally drove her to sickness and death.
Thracia 776: Evayle once was close to this horizon. So much that whatever happened to her ( the Basttle of Barhera), robbed her not only of her husband and children, but of her memories of having ever been Bridget, the lost princess of Jungby and a member of Sigurd's troops. Much to our relief, at the end of the game we learn that some years after the second war of Grandbell, she recovered her memories and reunited with Patty and Faval.
Olwen and Misha also were pretty close to it, once they learned about the horrifying child hunts conducted by the Grandbellian empire. They both pulled through it via Heel Face Turns.
Fuuin no Tsurugi: The biggest example is King Mordred of Etruria, who completely lost the will to reign and left the government to his advisors (many of them treacherous) after his son and heir, Prince Mildain, died in an accident. And then this is subverted in the end: Mildain actually reappears, having survived the ambush that almost killed him, and is reunited with his father, so we know that Mordred ultimately got better.
Rekka no Ken: Eliwood and Nils were both pretty close to cross this, once Eliwood was tricked by Nergal into killing Nils's beloved sister Ninian with Durandal when she was forced into her Dragon form by Nergal himself.
Renaultdid cross it several years ago, when his partner and best friend was killed in battle. He was so utterly shattered that he threw himself into battle blindly (and killed Lucius's dad in the process) and collaborated with Nergal in hopes to have his friend revived, among other things. He recovered a part of his sanity, however, and became The Atoner in the end.
Don't forget Harken, an Ace who was throughlybroken after being the Sole Survivor of Lord Elbert's decimated crew. We meet him as a powerful enemy whom the Pherae charas must recruit as soon as possible lest he fights them to death, and his supports reveal how the horrors he witnessed and the helplessness he felt drove him into becoming an Empty Shell of the man he once was. For worse, some other supports (pecifically, with marcus heavily imply that he had severe self-esteem and abuse/abandonment issues before the whole Break the Cutie deal.
When we meet Lord Hausen, the old man has crossed the DEH since he has learned that his long-lost daughter (Lyn's mother) is dead, his health is failing more and more (and he's being poisoned), and his Complete Monster brother Lundgren is taunting him endlessly about all of it. He's just about to succumb to Death By Despair by that point. But when Lyn reaches for him, he manages to come back.
Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones: Prince Lyon never was the most self-assured person, despite his Badass Bookworm status and being the Imperial Prince of Grado. (His weak health didn't help either.) But then his beloved father and idol Emperor Vigarde died of illness, so the poor guy's mental health took a BIG nosedive. And soon, It Got Worse.
Lyon's advisor, Knoll actually managed to return from the DEH, having witnessed Lyon's fall into despair and then having been slated for execution. Ephraim and Duessel reach for him in the nick of time, and Knoll decides to join them and do what he can to help save Grado.
In Dantes Inferno, Dante's will is steadily broken as he goes deeper in Hell and he is forced to face the many sins he committed in life. When a corrupted Beatrice calls him out on his misdeeds and betrayal of her trust, he falls to his knees and gives up on trying to redeem himself, deciding that he deserves to be trapped in Hell.
In the final battle of Nier, The Shadowlord crosses this when his Yonah commits suicide in order to give Nier's Yonah a chance to be reunited with her father. It's even reflected in the battle music, which grows weaker and weaker as The Shadowlord begs for death.
In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Gabriel crosses it right after a moment of utter triumph when he kicks Satan's ass when he sees that Marie is about to leave for the afterlife forever and that he cannot go with her. Realizing that the hope he believed in was hollow, Gabriel collapses and cries silently. Even centuries later, he has not recovered. As the immortal Dracula, all he does is hide in shadows while longing for a death that may never come.
In Warcraft III, Arthas, Paladin and Crown Prince of Lordaeron has at least two of these, first when he decides that the entire population of a city need to be culled before they succumb to cursed grain and secondly when he knowingly takes up a cursed sword and offers to "give anything or pay any price" to achieve his goal.
This is rumoured to the reason why Archbishop Benedictus becomes the malevolent Twilight Prophet in Cataclysm. When adventurers kill him in the Hour of Twilight dungeon, his dying words are, "I looked into the eyes of the dragon, and despaired." The dragon is none other than Deathwing, the Cataclysm expansion's Big Bad, who flew over Stormwind City - where Benedictus was based - and torched the Park district as a warning shot.
In Metal Gear Solid 2, Olga Gurlukovich ends up being forced by the Patriots to wipe out the Gurlukovich Mercenaries, the unit she's a leader of and viewed as her friends and family, to help Raiden proceed with his mission because they are holding her child hostage, and they intend to kill her child should she fail. Naturally, she is not too happy about the circumstance she is currently in, even stating before dying that she's most likely going to Hell for what she did.
Shadow the Hedgehog can fall into this during certain endings of his titular videogame (i.e. discovering he is an android, believing he is an experiment gone wrong). However, other endings he'll completely avert it. Ironically, no matter what happens, he will always end the story by saying "This is who I am."
Besides the Last Story, which he says "Goodbye, Shadow the Hedgehog."
King's Quest III explains that King Graham passed this when Rosella (his remaining child) was picked for the annual Human Sacrifice to the dragon plaguing Daventry. This is why it falls to "Gwydion" (aka the lost Prince Alexander) to rescue her and the kingdom.
In the backstory, Kotomine crossed the Despair Event Horizon after the death of his wife, abandoning his attempt at living a 'good' life and fully embracing the fact that he can only feel happy through hurting others.
Archer crossed the Despair Event Horizon after being betrayed by everyone he ever knew and finally, his own ideals. This leads him to try to kill Shirou, his past self and living embodiment of his misguided ideals, at any cost. In the end, he is beaten by Shirou despite being the superior opponent, his acknowledgment that those beliefs were not so mistaken after all.
Finally, Shirou goes through this in the Heaven's Feel route. He gives up on his ideals to save Sakura, who happens to be eating people and is about to turn into a world destroying monster. He's not one to sit around, though, so he just takes up another cause with gusto.
In Umineko no Naku Koro ni, this is hinted to have occurred to Yasu / Beatrice after realizing that Battler will not come back to the island. S/he instigates the murders that occur on the island and throws away everything for a chance of a miracle and make Battler realize his sin.
Kohaku of Tsukihime also crosses the Despair Event Horizon after being raped several times by SHIKI and his father in order to stop their inversion impulses and becomes utterly broken, as revealed in the Far Side routes.
Keisuke's death in Togainu no Chi is this for Akira on Shiki's route. Even though he still puts up a bit of a fight against Shiki, it's nowhere near the same defiance he had before. He also doesn't care whether he lives or dies and decides that whatever happens to him is punishment for killing Keisuke.
Thee Bad Endings of Katawa Shoujo imply that, if the player takes the wrong choices, the girls might reach this extreme. Some examples are: Rin's bad (where she and Hisao have a terrible fight and she ends up alone in her atelier) and neutral (in which she accepts a scholarship in Tokyo but at the cost of breaking all bonds with Hisao and everyone else) endings, Shizune's bad ending (with Misha reaching it first via asking Hisao to sex her updue to her hidden loneliness, and then Shizune following when she breaks up with Hisao thinking that she is ruining his and Misha's lives — and the last view of her that he has is Shizune sitting all alone in the stairs), and Hanako's bad ending (with her blowing up at Hisao as she realizes that he and Lilly only view her as a child whom they have to protect, thus breaking her already smashed self-estreem and making her totally splinter)
Webcomics
In Keychain of Creation, an Exalted webcomic, this is canonically how Abyssal Exalted get created, as shown in Renegade Deathknight Secret's backstory flashback. Her entire village is killed by a demonic plague, she's deathly ill, and just as she's given up all hope of living, the Neverborn show up and offers her Exaltation in exchange for servitude.
In the darkest story arc of Yu + Me: Dream Part 1, Fiona's mother crosses the DEH when she finds out that her husband, the only thing keeping her from snapping under the stress of caring for a child, is cheating on her (and with a total bitch). Once the Event Horizon is crossed, she drinks a bottle of whiskey to dull the pain and then (intentionally) gets behind the wheel.
Bittersweet Candy Bowl, Lucy when she thought Mike died and shortly after, when she finally confessed her love for him and he rejected her. The first one came with Dissonant Laughter.
Chapter 63 is getting sadder and Lucy looks about at the horizon here.She was okay, then Mike ignored her existence. Now...
In Homestuck, Eridan crosses both this and the Moral Event Horizon in the same scene. He gives up any hope of beating Jack and defects to his side, killing off his unrequited love interest AND his species' only hope for revival in the process. This is ironic because his title from Sgrub is the Prince of Hope.
Trudy crosses this in General Protection Fault after seeing Nick, (whom she had loved) propose to Ki, which Ki accepts. She had been starting to regret her actions, but this pushes her even further, and she attempts suicide in the next arc in which she appears.
The Platypus Comix story "True Believers" has Spider-Man lose his wife, his home, and his job at the Daily Bugle all in the first 11 pages. As a result, he asks Dr. Octopus to kill him. Unfortunately for him, Death Is Cheap in the Marvel Universe, so not even murder can end his suffering.
Surprisingly enough, Ganondorf went over this in There Will Be Brawl upon finding the pure evil that is Ness and Lucas. He questions how heroes can even exist when such evil does.
As the end of Pokecapn's legendary Sonic the Hedgehog 2006Let's Play approaches, the players themselves slowly slip towards and eventually cross the Despair Event Horizon; this is signified by Kung-Fu Jesus chanting song lyrics in monotone.
"Because it's Thriller. Thriller night. And no one's gonna save you from..."
Himei, also known as Sailor Nothing starts the story like this, and much of the plot is about whether she will cross it or not. She does after Seiki's Yamiko rapes her, but eventually gets better.
Happens to Neilli of Juathuur when Lifolei begins training her as a torturer. She then commits suicide.
In Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Dr. Horrible crosses the Despair Event Horizon after his death ray backfires in Captain Hammer's hands and the shrapnel kills Penny.
Happens a lot in Survival of the Fittest, more often than not later in the game, but given the premise, is it really that surprising?
For example, Jacob Charles quickly shoots into this zone after his girlfriend is killed right in front of him, leading to him attempting suicide.Read it here.
Happens to cup in Channel 101's "2 girls, 1 cup the show". Unlike most of the cases in this page, the result is hilarious.
The victims in Shell fell into this trope. The men especially have the tendancy to commit murder suicide.
The Nostalgia Critic come this close to giving up his job, after calling a director of a film he reviewed, and realizing his own job sounds pathetic to other people.
The above was affectionately parodied by The Nostalgia Chick, when the stupidity of Roland Emmerich movies drive her to madness and make her realize she's wasting her life in this job. One episode later? This revelation is completely forgotten and never comes up again.
"But yeah, I was expecting to look down there and see this giant eyeball looking up at me, angry at me because I blew off its eyelashes or something, then the whole building starts shaking and I guess I'd… ball up and cry, because what do you do when something that big wants to kill you?"
Upon reading a particular Iwata Asks about Super Mario 3D Land, Sean Malstromwrote a particularly despairing blog piece about the future of 2D Mario games in relation to 3D Mario games.
Malstrom:We will burn this “bridge” [between 2D and 3D Mario]. Do you know why? Look at where the bridge leads: to the destruction of 2d Mario forever. Fuck you, Nintendo. And fuck you, Miyamoto. Remember when Miyamoto said Nintendo would treat 2d Mario and 3d Mario equally and make games for both? Isn’t happening. 3d Mario gets these gorgeous orchestras while 2d Mario gets ‘wah wah’ for its sound track. 3d Mario gets all the cool power-ups while 2d Mario gets stupid stuff like propeller suits. And then there is the Miis. Notice how they don’t have any Miis in 3d Mario. Why not? Yet, it is the identy of the next 2d Mario game....Miyamoto was not built up by slick Nintendo PR but by fans of 2d Mario. Therefore, the 2d Mario fans possess the power to destroy Miyamoto’s reputation as a game designer. With Nintendo’s sick 3d obsession and Miyamoto’s insane push for MORE 3d Mario, does Nintendo realize the gravity of what is happening?
Similarly, in Justice League, Flash's execution by President Luthor led to another alternate universe's Justice League becoming the Justice Lords.
In 'Batman Beyond', after getting a second chance at living a normal life, Mr. Freeze is betrayed by Derek Powers when his body begins to deteriorate back to requiring sub zero temperatures. It's around this point that he's crossed the line and eventually chooses to stay behind when the building is collapsing on top of him. His last words in the episode? "Believe me, Batman, you're the only one who cares..."
Also, in the "Return of the Joker" movie, we learn that Tim Drake aka Robin was kidnapped, disfigured, and tortured into utter madness by The Joker and Harley Quinn, only revealing something similar of his original Robin personality after shooting the Joker dead (in the uncensored version, that is). After the Joker and Batman's last battle, the broken and insane Tim had to go through intense therapy for years, and when we find him in person he's an embittered, sad man in his 50's who has grown sick of his past. And then, It Gets Worse...
Moral Orel. Nature. Clay shoots Orel in the leg and leaves him bleeding in the woods for a day. It's when the show officially shifts from comedy to a massive character study.
Parodied in a semi-convincing way on South Park, when Kyle felt that Cartman getting his dream despite being such a Jerkass, meant that there is no God. Kyle then nearly suffered Death By Despair, because he didn't have the will to fight off a hemorrhoid. Only at the end, when it turned out Cartman's dream came back tobite him in the ass, did Kyle get better.
One can only wonder how Samurai Jack keeps going, considering the number of times he's nearly achieved his goal and failed.
Danny Phantom saw his friends and family die right in front of his eyes. What comes as a result? A completelypsychoticghost who goes on a literally roaring rampage (not of revenge). He's the only villain in the show to have been seen to commit murder.
My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: In the episode "Return of Harmony Pt.2" Twilight Sparkle crosses it when all of her friends get mindraped thanks to Discord and fails to use the Elements of Harnmony, thus breaking up the friendship between the group. However, the help of Celestia showing her the letters Twilight has given to her over the course of the first season about the power of friendship helps Twilight regain hope.
A common mistake. The Old Guard didn't retreat, they were killed almost (ALMOST) to the last man. Prior to the battle, distinction between Old, Medium and Yound guard were removed, and the members from the later two did flee. Those who had comprised the original Old Guard didn't (a few were taken alive, such as Cambrone though). The forces of the Coalition mistook the Young and Medium guard for the Old one, however, which bolstered their morale considerably. It's also worth noting that Napoleon ordered two regiments of the Old Guard to withdraw, so they might be used should another battle arise.
The Russian army fell into the horizon during World War I, one link in a chain of events leading to the overthrow of the Czar.
So did the German army, that's why they surrendered instead of fighting to the very end. Everybody else came within varying but fairly close distances of it.
This trope allowed Algeria to win independence from France, and Mozambique and Angola to win independence from Portugal, in their founding wars. Despite several tactical and occasionally strategic French and Portuguese military successes, ruinously escalating costs and increasing soldier deaths turned many citizens in both countries against the wars, who then forced their governments to withdraw.
The United States and its allies entered this. After originally thinking the Vietnam war would be quickly won, the failure to fully win over the south Vietnamese, the difficulty fighting against a guerilla campaign and the failure to create and maintain citizen and soldier morale on the US side all contributed to DEH.
The Imperial Japanese military became increasingly desperate as the Allies began to draw the noose around the Home Islands. They recommended a Last Stand on a national scale, and began training schoolchildren to fight with sticks, but when the Emperor supported the decision to surrender, many military officers chose seppuku as an alternative, inclusive of those officers who tried to stop the Emperor's broadcast and continue fighting without his Majesty's approval only to be arrested.
Many Nazi officials committed suicide as Berlin was overrun by Allied forces in World War II, including Hitler himself.
Part of this has to do with the fact that their worldview said that the strong should kill off the weak and inherit the Earth. So naturally, when it was revealed that Aryans were not the strongest warriors, their homicidal mania turned into suicidal mania, believing it right that Germany should be exterminated so that the Anglosphere (and perhaps the Russians) could inherit the Earth. So, at least for some, it was less a matter of hopelessness and more a matter of finding it easier to part with their lives than their worldview.
Edmund Ruffin, one of the Southern 'fire eaters' prior to the U.S. Civil War, committed suicide when he realized that the North was going to crush the dream of Southern independence.
Some of the Roman legions which Hannibal encircled and destroyed at the Battle of Cannae were said to have dug a hole in the ground, stuck their head in and suffocated themselves when it was clear that the numerically inferior Carthaginians had managed to outmaneuver them into a virtual standstill and were mercilessly slaughtering them.
Vlad III (i.e. Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler)'s first wife, whose name is now lost to history, is said to have killed herself upon false news of loss to the Turks because in her own words she "would rather have her body rot and be eaten by the fish of the Arge? than be led into captivity by the Turks."
This was used as the reason for Dracula's (loosely based on Vlad) own DEH that caused him to renounce God and become a vampire in Francis Ford Coppola's film.
School shootings. Killing a lot of people and then shooting yourself is a sign of sanity and despair event horizons crossed...
Anyone considering suicide has probably crossed the Despair Event Horizon. (For those in confusion or in need, feel free to check out our Useful Notes page on what we would say to you if you were contemplating it.)
The recent spate of riots in Britain could be construed as a mass example of this, exemplified by this MSNBC article:
...here's a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?
"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"
The TV reporter from Britain's ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. "Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."
Many of "the Projects" in the US from the 1960s fell into this. Now many of the people living in them have no hope of ever improving their lives. The sad part is there are now up to 3 generations who have lived this way.
|this photo]] is anything to go by the meaning is far more innocent.