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alt title(s): Rape The Dog "Widely recognized as a tyrannical megalomaniac who prided himself on cruelty and ruled through fear, Caligula was nearly undone by an underground smear campaign to depict him as a 'pretty nice guy.' Other sculptures and frescoes of the time libelously show him flying a kite and helping an old lady cross the Appian Way. An incensed Caligula immediately went into 'damage control' by publicly sodomizing a puppy."
The Moral Event Horizon is the point of no return. Once a character crosses it of their own free will, they cease to be cool or admirable. It is a single act which, while not necessarily objectively worse than anything else the villain has previously committed, affects the audience and the story on a far deeper level. Whether the person has truly become irredeemable may be a question that can never be answered (or only by that person, the one they've wronged, or a higher power), but the viewers no longer wish for such a redemption.
A Million Is A Statistic often comes into play because psychologically, it is impossible to feel as deeply about reported villainy as about visual injury to characters we care about. Also, the real shock of the event may not be felt until we see the motive or the attitude toward it; much as we might dislike a general who ordered the artillery to fire on his own troops, it might not qualify as this until we see him laughing about it.
A Noble Demon who crosses the horizon ceases to be noble. Draco will lose his leather pants for most ( but never all) of the fandom. If a Knight Templar, Well Intentioned Extremist, or any other type of Anti Villain crosses it, they stop being sympathetic and become someone the audience wants to see dead and in Hell by the end of the story. If a hero crosses it, they immediately become an evil villain; when this happens, the hero will typically have been on the slippery slope to the Villain Corner for some time. Keep in mind that crossing the Moral Event Horizon is more than a mere Face Heel Turn; the former hero has to do something not merely evil but truly unforgivable.
A character can cross the horizon in a number of ways. Where the horizon lies on the spectrum of acts depends on the nature and style of the story, and where it overall lies on the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism. Maybe a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain committed a murder. Maybe someone got drunk on power and organized the gang-rape of a 12-year-old girl for the lulz. Maybe, rather than kill the man who killed their brother, they killed the man's brother, in order to make the killer suffer. Or maybe they blew up an inhabited planet. Whatever happens, such an act signals a permanent shift of the character and often the work as a whole into Darker And Edgier territory.
The key point here is that once a character crosses the horizon, they cannot be made admirable or sympathetic without again altering the moral tone of the story. A good litmus test is that if you still think a villain is cool or potentially redeemable, they have not yet crossed the horizon. Similarly, if you feel a character being redeemed would make them a Karma Houdini, then odds are they have crossed it (unless they were that depraved at the start of the story).
If a character has a Split Personality, it is possible for one personality to cross the horizon while still feeling sympathy for the other — for example, we can still admire the Jekyll regardless of what the Hyde might get up to. Similarly, if a character is Not Himself or under the influence of mind control, the person can't really be considered to have crossed the horizon because they weren't doing it of their own free will. The Moral Event Horizon may be instead applied to the one responsible for the brainwashing, depending on the severity of the evil act in question and the degree of the brainwasher's control over the subject.
For some particularly villainous characters it is almost impossible to cross the horizon. These evil characters exercise a certain twisted charm, and no matter what they do, they are already so far across the horizon so nothing will make them 'uncool' in the eyes of the audience. The sort of behavior that would put another character across the line is simply expected of these villains. The Joker and Hannibal Lecter fall into this category - so don't list any of their misdeeds here. Also frequently exempt are acts by characters who qualify as The Unfettered - they have abandoned all limitations, moral or otherwise, and as far as morality goes are more like forces of nature than human characters.
When this is a form of Character Derailment, it is apt to be more hated than other forms of Character Derailment. Authors Saving Throw is, obviously, limited to either claiming that the event did not happen, or that someone else did the deed and was the actual one to fall over the Moral Event Horizon. (Possession is a favorite form of this.)
Compare Despair Event Horizon, since the character who experiences Start Of Darkness and Face Heel Turn because of extreme despair may end up crossing the this trope later on.
Compare the Complete Monster, a character who is built specifically to cross this threshold, if they didn't cross it in their first appearance.
Also compare with Even Evil Has Standards, for the point at which even the villains think somebody's gone way too far.
When this character is still loved by fans, Draco In Leather Pants kicks in.
It should be noted that there will be no Real Life section for this trope. While everyone would agree that actions such as these have certainly been committed, listing concrete examples would almost certainly attract Flame Wars.
Not to be confused with the 1997 SF horror film Event Horizon.
Naturally, spoilers abound in these examples.
Contrast What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?.
This trope used to be called Rape The Dog but that name was easily mis-understood so it was changed. Please stop using that name.
Examples
Spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk.
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Anime and Manga
- Evil Matriarch Precia Testarossa of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is established as excessively cruel when she takes the whip form of her Intelligent Device to her poor daughter Fate for not collecting enough Jewel Seeds to please her, marking her as the true Big Bad of the first season. But her true crossing of the Moral Event Horizon was when she gave Fate a speech essentially saying:
You're not a real person, you're just a thing and I hate you. In fact, I've always hated you, so if you could just go ahead and die now so that I wouldn't have to see you ever again, that would be peachy. Also, did I mention that I've always hated you? Because I do.
- On that note, in season three, Jail Scaglietti and Quattro. The former when he kidnapped Vivio, performed surgery on her and hooked her up to an ancient ship to be used as a power source. Did I mention Vivio is six or seven years old? Quattro got hers when she mind-controlled several characters that were starting to listen to the good guys, including tricking Vivio into trying to kill her adoptive mother Nanoha, saying "Now kill each other like a good mother and daughter." If all that doesn't cross the Moral Event Horizon at light speed, nothing does. Quattro got a VERY well-deserved asskicking from Nanoha in a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- While other moments may be too subjective to judge, after Vol.2/Ep.7 most people hated Shou Tucker from Fullmetal Alchemist for combining his dog and daughter into a monstrous chimera that had to be Mercy Killed by Scar. That wasn't the first time he did something horrible, either.
- Also from Fullmetal Alchemist (anime only), Pride/Fuhrer Bradley does a good job of seeming nice and reasonable even after his true identity is revealed(too bad they had to give him the title Fuehrer, making the audience suspect him anyway). He seems to genuinely care about his family, until the series finale, when his son accidentally puts him at a disadvantage in his battle with Mustang. He then proceeds to attempt to strangle poor Selim, revealing that any pretense of being nice or reasonable was just an act.
- In the manga, the son turns out to be even worse. He eats his own allies without hesitation.
- Also in the manga, during the extended Ishval flashback, the highest priest and pretty much the leader of Ishval gives himself up to Bradley, hoping that his death will end all the madness. Bradley scolds him for being so "concieted" as to think that the death of a single man is worth enough to stop them killing every last Ishvarlan out there. They aren't looking for an important person, and he certainly doesn't want to negotiate. He just wants to Kill Em All. So he just orders the guy executed and continues the extermination campaign.
- Without a doubt, the most sickening thing Scar has done (in the manga) is kill Winry's parents, who had done nothing wrong, much less had anything to do with the death of Scar's brother. When called out on it, even Scar admits he's not worthy of redemption after that. Note that manga Scar is very much an Anti Hero: he wasn't exactly in his right mind at the time, but STILL.
- The most sickening things done by Homunculi in the manga? Envy does it all, from turning into Hughes wife just to see despair on his face before shooting him, or when he impersonated an Amestris soldier shooting a child to invoke the Ishbal rebellion, which led to another Moral Event Horizon for the Amestris army by killing civilians in the rebellion's suppression.
- And just look at the latest chapter. Not only does he try to trick Hawkeye by turning into Mustang, he turns into Hughes himself while fighting Roy. Both end up majorly backfiring on him, though.
- And let's not forget that manga-Envy in volume 13 is revealed to be powered by the souls of victims of a genocide. He's basically a furnace that converts the souls of innocent bystanders into a power source to help him arrange other genocides. So he was born on the other side of the moral event horizon.
- You see that horizon over there? You know, the Moral Event one? Yeah, that's it. Now, sit back and watch as Kimbley grabs the nearest innocent civilian man, woman, or child and turns them into a living bomb in order to blow it up. Don't try to stop him, he'll just use one of his soldiers as a human shield, and go on his merry way to kill the doctors currently treating patients on the enemy side (although he arrives "a moment too late"). And after he's done, he'll decide he loves his power boost so much he'll kill all of the higher-ups who gave him that pretty red stone so that nobody knows he has it. And then he'll join the Homunculus, knowing what they want and how they're going to try and get it, just because he wants to see what the world will look like after it's over. Wait, Ed doesn't want to listen to his orders! Kimbley, why don't you call in the unknowing hostage? You can even chat with her about her parents to pass the time, since it turns out that she's the daughter of those doctors you didn't get to kill. He's such a nice person, isn't he?
- Tsukihime has Roa. Roa is a Complete Monster of the highest order, and we're informed of this several times. However, it only truly sinks in when he slices Arcueid in half and watches as she bleeds out in Shiki's arms. The fact that this scene is one of Tsukihime's most powerful scenes makes what should be a mere step over the Moral Event Horizon into a flying leap over it. It also makes Shiki's subsequent World Of Cardboard Speech and Crowning Moment Of Awesome even more incredibly awesome.
- Makihisa Tohno and Nero/Nrvnqsr Chaos are the runners-up for most brutal crossing, in that order. Makihisa Tohno raped the maid Kohaku numerous times, and Nrvnqsr killed the entire population of a hotel where Arc and Shiki were staying using the animals that make up his body.
- Another example is found in Blassreiter. Wolf, the commanding officer in XAT, infects almost everyone in his unit with Demoniac blood after becoming one himself. That's bad enough—but he then tricks Lena into fighting her former boyfriend, Brad, and sets her on fire to try and blackmail Brad into infecting her. He kills Brad and Al (another unit member), and infects Al's corpse, leading him to fight for Wolf until he regains his sanity later on.
- As a dark fantasy series, Berserk has many villains that perform really sickening acts. Most of them are Complete Monsters in general, but in terms of crossing the Horizon, several characters stand out:
- After Griffith crosses the Despair Event Horizon near the end of the Golden Age arc (which is about the point where the anime ends as well) and activates his Crimson Behelit, he, Guts and everyone in the Hawks gets transported to hell. Griffith, distraught over the destruction of his dream and wanting more than anything to have a second chance, does a truly malignant Face Heel Turn, choosing to sacrifice the Band of the Hawk in order to become the fifth member of the Godhand, Femto, basically throwing his men to the wolves as beings straight from the land of High Octane Nightmare Fuel eat them alive. And as if this wasn't bad enough, the very first thing Griffith does as Femto is to brutally rape Casca right in front of Guts. After this, Griffith acting like a hero when he is reincarnated on Earth tends to be just a little bit ironic.
- Particularly because the vessel that Griffith used for his reincarnation on Earth was Guts and Casca's child, which was conceived just before the Eclipse, but which was corrupted by what Griffith did to her as Femto. Yeah.
- Gambino, Guts's gruff mentor/father figure, loses all our sympathy after he sells Guts, who was just eight years old at the time, to a paedophile soldier named Donovan for three silver coins.
- The King of Midland, who after ordering Griffith thrown in the dungeons and put to the torture for having sex with his daughter Charlotte, tries to force himself on her out of madness. Charlotte just barely manages to fight him off, and the experience alienates her from her father, to the point where she won't even acknowledge him on his deathbed.
- At least in the anime, Griffith came pretty close to raping Charlotte (by modern standards) so he was partly justified in Griffith's punishment.
- Inquisitor "Bloody Scripture" Mozgus is just as horrible as you'd expect a fanatical religious nutjob with too much power and not a shred of objectivity can get. While it's pretty obvious from the start that he's Bad News, his vilest act we see makes him a Complete Monster of the first order: when a band of starving refugees attempts to steal some of the ample foodstuffs sent to Mozgus and his retinue, he spots among them a woman with a starving infant. When she begs him to feed her child, he gently takes her along to his residence, lauding her courage and dedication. He sends away the child to be fed and cared for, then escorts her to a room while extolling the fact that while her intentions were good, she still has to expiate her sins... Then he opens the door, where we see the other refugees being horribly tortured, and the poor woman is dragged, stripped, and tied to another torture device over her increasingly frantic pleas... Then the door closes. It's as nightmarish as it sounds, if not more so.
- Then you find out the kid dies anyway and I don't mean when Griffith is being reborn.
- All of the examples above have nothing on Ganishka, the grand emperor of Kushan. Right before he is first introduced, the reader gets to see how he turned the capital of Midland into a city of death riddled with corpses. Soon after his introduction, he goes to the captive Princess Charlotte and almost rapes her. Then, we see him enjoying himself over suspending women over a basin filled with crocodiles. However, all these don't even hold a candle to his vilest act: he dunks pregnant women in a cauldron of stitched-together Apostles to turn the fetuses into demon soldiers whose birth kills the mothers and feed their corpses to those soldiers. Considering he has thousands of these demon soldiers, god knows how many pregnant women met their ends by this method. One has to wonder how Miura is going to top this level of monstrosity.
- When the cruel kids from Lucy's backstory in Elfen Lied forced her to watch as they beat the dog that she had started caring for to death, just to get any kind of reaction from her at all, they crossed the Moral Event Horizon to the point that for a good number of fans, Lucy snapping and murdering them all by making their heads a splode in a Beware The Nice Ones moment was too good for them.
- In the Meakashi arc of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, Shion Sonozaki is angry that her crush Satoshi is spending so much time and effort on his sister Satoko so she decides to Murder The Hypotenuse by desgising herself as her twin sister Mion, delivering a No Holds Barred Beatdown to the little girl, she is only stopped from killing her by Satoshi Big Damn Heros moment. Keep in mind that she was not suffering from the Hate Plague at the time and was relatively sane. Also, since this is in there back story... it happened every arc, you just did not see it.
- If you compare Shion's later treatment of Satoko, where she becomes something of a big sister for her, it seems more likely Shion probably was effected by a very early stage of the Hinamizawa Syndrome but regained control before it went too far, or just heavily repented for it.
- What Shion's family did to her in the same arc - most notably and finally making her tear out three of her fingernails as a "distinction" and for the forgiveness of three - is pretty fucking horrific as well.
- Miyo Takano crosses the Moral Event Horizon in the final episode of Minagoroshi-hen. She personally hunts down all the main characters until only Shion, Satoko and Rika are left, captured and bound at her feet. Shion begs Takano for sparing Satoko's life, whereupon she gets shot in the head (right before Satoko's eyes!). Next Takano offers Satoko a quiz and asks the colorblind(!) girl, which out of broccoli or cauliflower is green. By chance, Satoko answers correctly, whereupon Takano smiles, confirms the answer and shoots the terrified girl anyway. Keep in mind, that her sadistic deeds are completely unnecessary to achieve her crazy goal and she was obviously not suffering from the Hinamizawa Syndrome. Even her Freudian Excuse by no means justifies her actions. Quite the contrary.
- In Bokurano, Mr. Hatagai is the first love of Chizuru "Chizu" Honda as well as her teacher. Although he seems like a nice guy at first glance, he takes advantage of Chizu's feelings for him in a ghastly manner in the manga. He lures the unsuspecting middleschooler on a date, then locks her in a hotel room with several of his friends, who proceed to gang-rape her. Furthermore, she's blackmailed with sex videos featuring her, meaning that if she dares say anything about what happened, those videos will be distributed with all her details attached. And just to drive home the point that Hatagai is a nasty, loathsome piece of work, when Chizu later discovers she's pregnant with his baby and tells him about it, he says it's great news because he can get a childbirth video out of it, and that he knows a doctor who can claim the baby was dead at delivery... very much implying that he'd kill it. No wonder poor Chizu completely snapped. (In the anime, Hatagai's actions are toned down considerably, but he's still quite a dick.)
- The Diva, the Evil Twin of Saya in Blood+, crossed the line in a big way when she raped and murdered Saya's eleven year old adopted brother Riku, which among other things killed off the vampire Twincest fandom that had sprung up before this.
- While he was introduced to Gundam 00 as a Lovable Rogue of sorts with impressive piloting skills, Ali Al-Saachez's Complete Monster status just built up over the first season. The first indicator was when it was revealed he made Child Soldiers that he recruited kill their parents to prove their faith in God and the cause — a cause he didn't even believe in himself. But he crossed the line for sure when he killed Saji Crossroad's Hot Scoop older sister, Kinue, for no particular reason, after revealing his nature as a Blood Knight to her just for kicks, while explaining to her what a bad, bad man he is. Despite all this, his fanbase either doesn't care or just loves him all the more.
- Reccoa Londe from Zeta Gundam completes her somewhat bizarre Face Heel Turn when she conducts a nerve gas attack on a space colony, massacring all 8 million inhabitants. Laying the blame on the AEUG for the tragedy by failing to stop her, and giving half-assed excuses for her actions didn't help her case much, either.
- Nena Trinity (also from G00) had arguably crossed the Moral Event Horizon when she fired upon a wedding because their happiness makes her upset, apparently, killing the entire family of Louise Halevy (who just happened to have been Saji's girlfriend - the guy gets no luck, apparently). For many subbies, Nena ceased being cute or desirable - but when the dubs were shown on Sci-Fi Network, people still defend her blatantly undefendable actions.
- In Part 5 of Jojos Bizarre Adventure, the mysterious capo of Passione tasks Bucciarati's group with recovering his daughter from a renegade group of assassins who are trying to get his identity out of her (they want revenge for what he did to two of their superiors). With the task complete (and all the assassins but one dead), Bucciarati has no qualms about reuniting them. Until, that is, he finds out that what the boss REALLY wanted was to kill his own daughter just to make it forever impossible for anyone to learn his identity.
- One Bleach character's Face Heel Turn crossed the moral event horizon so far you can't even see the act from the line. Stabbing their loyal and gentle second-in-command through the stomach? Definitely evil, but Bleach villains have done worse. Using the excuse of comforting poor Hinamori through the shock of seeing them Back From The Dead, to get said second within reach? Very, very vile, and somehow more disgusting than Mayuri's experiments on the Quincies and constant abuse of Nemu (we should remind the reader that Mayuri's already pretty nasty himself).
- Nagi's moment comes close to the end of Mai-Otome when he shoots Sergey in the head for trying to subvert his plan behind his back, and then hooking him up to the Harmonium Organ in such a way that he can only continue living if Sergey's adoptive daughter Nina uses it. She does.
- The Organization from Claymore starts out a band of dog-kicking knights templar at best between their transformation of orphaned girls into demi-human monster hunters and the fact that they charge towns a lot for the removal of the 'Yoma' (far more than upkeep of the hunters and overhead would require). The subtle attempts to eliminate those "claymores" that may be succumbing to their Superpowered Evil Side or seem otherwise troublesome would also disturb observers (especially the mass suicide mission in vol. 10), but it can be excused as a useful force losing sight of its true goals. Then we find out that the Organization is apparently using the whole continent as a Super Soldier testing ground. They created the Yoma and charge villages to mop up a problem that didn't exist before they arrived. Oh, and plenty of children orphaned by Yoma attacks means more fodder for creating Claymores / Awakened Beings.
- Walter in Hellsing. he reveals that he's been betraying the Hellsing organization to the Nazis since the end of WWII, to the point that even Alucard's guns have been rigged to explode at Millenium's command. Upon realizing this, fan cries for redemption quickly became cries for Alucard to tear his head off and dance in the blood spray.
- Pain from Naruto crossed the Moral Event Horizon, when he singlehandedly blew up Konoha with gravity because he has realized that Naruto, the very reason why he didn't completely obliterate the village in the first place, isn't there. To make it even worse, it looked like he was going to just leave. However, when he tries to lecture Tsunade about how the main villages constantly wage war (which his goal is to stop) without any concern for the people that suffer for it, she responds by saying that even the greater villages have suffered from it. He then decides to destroy their village and kill most of them (which will even drain several years of HIS life) simply to teach them a lesson about "true pain").
- The real point in which he crosses the line to most of the fanbase (as seen in the recent mass freak out) was in chapter 437 when he apparently killed Hinata after she told Naruto she loved him just to make Naruto suffer. She survived though.
- His major moment of MEH can be found in his background, long before he decided to destroy Konoha in his killing of anyone remotely connected to Hanzou, including his entire family.
- Subverted, all of them got better. ALL OF THEM.
- Except Jiraya who cared for him as a child and taught him...so still MEH
- Or the people he killed in his background.
- In Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the Zentradi fleet crosses the horizon early in the series, when it's implied that they've wiped out all the life on an inhabited planet just to show three humans how badass they are.. One fleet leader, Britai, escapes from the Event Horizon when, after joining in on the annihilation of Earth, decides to join up with the remaining humans on board Macross to put an end to the main Zentradi fleet.
- Yu Yu Hakusho has a couple, this editor's favorite being when Sakyo locks everyone in the stadium so Toguro can swallow their souls to power himself up.
- Elder Toguro crossed the Moral Event Horizon when he took over Makihara's body from the inside and enjoyed feeling his terror as he slowly lost control of himself. He had quite a few Kick The Dog moments before, but none as disgustingly sadistic as this.
- The Defence Ministry goons in Simoun slamming the young priestess Yun against a wall and verbally abusing her to the tune of Belief Making Her Stupid because she tried to stop them from desecrating another priestess's corpse. Yun later becomes their country's Head of State. When it comes to tension between religion and laïcité, Simoun knows what side its bread is buttered on.
- In Fushigi Yuugi, Suboshi crosses the moral event horizon when he brutally murders Tamahome's four younger siblings, who range in age from five to eleven years old, along with Tamahome's Ill Boy father.
- Let's not forget that Suboshi's MEH crossing came after his boss and the Big Bad, Manipulative Bastard Nakago crossed it himself (again) by using Suboshi's grief at the loss of his twin brother and only family, Amiboshi, and fueling it gleefully to ensure he will go batshit and fight the Suzaku Seishi. Yeah, it doesn't justify Suboshi's Disproportionate Retribution in any way. but still. And this is actually not the worst of Nakago's actions, either; his treatment of his own Miko, Yui, that made her believe she had been raped by thugs upon her arrival to Kutou and abandoned by her best friend Miaka, is.
- Pretty much everyone hates Villain Protagonist Mayo Sasaki in Eikoden. Stealing Miaka's unborn baby? That's probably the worst of the things she did, but by no means the only. Still, that alone was pretty much enough to turn the whole fandom against her. The most annoying thing about it is how, in the end, she gave karma the middle finger and happily walked home.
- Though this is on a smaller scale than many of the examples listed, Kaname gets this in the Full Metal Panic novels. Many fans that read them felt disgusted and thought she ceased to deserve being the Official Couple with Sousuke after she believed Leonard's jealous words that Sousuke was a monster that is worse than a serial killer, scorning Sousuke and flinching away from him when he most needed assurance and comfort. She then uncharacteristically went crazy on him, calling him stupid and below her intelligence, insinuating that only Leonard truly understands the technical Whispered stuff she was saying. All this after Sousuke risked his life and everything to save and protect her, even when he himself was scared. Oh, and she eventually betrays their mutual trust and goes off with Leonard to Amalgam. Of course, some people believe it never happened.
- What about Leonard himself? After he has Kaname Brainwashed and Mind Raped into thinking she has killed Sousuke and Tessa with her own hands (by forcing her to resonate with a powerful Whispered)... well, it's hard to call him a Noble Demon.
- The Oda forces in Sengoku Basara seems to love crossing this trope. Akechi Mitsuhide crossed it many times to exemplify his Complete Monster status when he personally set up Nagamasa's death and have Oichi see it in front of her eyes after giving false information about trying to warn him from impending doom. Then in the very next episode, Nouhime crossed it, by taking advantage of the damage done by Sanada Yukimura towards Honda Tadakatsu and uses it to utterly destroy him into pieces, much to Tokugawa Ieyasu's despair. It also becomes the breaking point that Ieyasu finally screws his 'never breaking promise' and defects to the Anti-Oda alliance.
- And Oda Nobunaga himself, who some might have considered a cool Evil Overlord before, crosses the line for good in episode 12 when he dismisses his late faithful wife Noihime as worthless, kills his own sister in cold blood, and finishes off Honda Tadakatsu by aiming for his weakpoints.
- Code Geass starts off with Prince Clovis and later Princess Cornelia attempting to annihilate the populations of two different Japanese ghettos. Later, Lelouch appears to cross the Moral Event Horizon by undergoing Mode Lock at the worst possible time making him responsible for the mass murder of the very people he was supposed to protect. He then crosses it for real in the next season, when after Shirley's death, he orders the Black Knights to massacre the Geass Cult. In the next season, Prince Schneizel, who seemed to be a nice guy in the first season, shows his true colors by threatening humanity with nuclear weapons and proclaiming himself a god.
- In Fafner In The Azure Dead Aggressor, it can be said that the general populace of the Hidden Elf Village gets to cross the line in Episode 7. "Okay, that stupid Ill Girl just performed an Heroic Sacrifice and saved all our lives, but she's still an idiot for wasting one of our precious robots, so let's go desecrate her grave and spit on her memory." Sure, guys, I can so sympathize with you right now...
- In Tegami Bachi, rebel organization Reverse crosses the horizon when it sacrifices the "heart" of a kind young girl named Sunny to a Gaichuu in order to send it to Akatsuki and destroy the artificial sun to put the entire world into darkness, as a twisted form of "equality." This angers Lag to the point where he rather than wanting to save his amnesiac former friend Gauche, wants to completely and utterly destroy his "Noir" persona, which is saying quite a bit.
- Quite a lot of One Piece villains cross the horizon early and keep on going, but the World Government deserves special mention for the Buster Call as seen in flashback: they move in to kill a small group of scholars who have learned about the nation that opposed the World Government's forming, leaving a separate boat to evacuate everyone who wasn't a scholar. Then they blow up the evacuation boat just in case someone stowed away. Oh, and then there's the slavery...
- Blackbeard, despite the background knowledge that he murdered a Nakama in the past, was introduced humorously in having a fight with Luffy over the food, then encouraging him after a humiliating beating to pursue his dreams. Even after he planned to go after Luffy for his bounty, he didn't seem too bad a guy. Then he beats up Luffy's older brother Ace and turns him in to become a Shichibukai. Good feelings gone...
- Gantz has its share of these folks:
- Nishi, already established as a major-league Jerk Ass, eventually murders his entire class except for one girl, who had given him a love note.
- Izumi disguises himself as a black man and goes on a shooting spree in a crowded train station, killing hundreds simply to provide players for Gantz and to set himself up to get back into the game.
- Reika arguably crosses the line when unbeknownst to everyone else, she passes up the chance to revive a dead player and has Gantz create a duplicate of Kurono, simply because she couldn't get over him.
Comic Books
- The title character of the Lucifer comics punted dogs as a hobby (naturally), establishing him quite firmly as an epic Deadpan Snarker and Heroic Sociopath that was as amusing and Badass as those tropes suggest. This continued all the way until the Basanos arc, where in a rather impressive twist the Basanos actually mortally injured him... only for Lucifer to reveal that he had manipulated Token Loli Elaine from the start and trick her into dying in his place. He might have redeemed himself later on (bringing Elaine Back From The Dead helped). The writer mentioned that he considered Lucifer's destruction of The Mansions of The Silence Lucifer's point of no return, destroying billions of souls because he was impatient.
- While the man who would eventually become the Saint of Killers from Preacher had already a staggering kill record to his name (among other heinous actions), he was nonetheless a decent human being (at least compared to most of his murderous peers), and for a time lived a life devoid of killing people. However, he finally crossed over when, in the course of brutally avenging the peaceful life that he lost, he cold-bloodedly killed an innocent for the first time in his life, damning himself to Hell in the process. What came afterwards (including the Ratwater genocide) was merely a formality, as it's arguable that he was too far gone by then.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen's Griffen was implausibly popular with fans in the first volume, never mind he was introduced raping teenage girls and shown casually murdering an innocent policeman. To make sure we realise he's a very bad man in Vol 2, he sells Earth to the Martians in Vol 2 — and assaults Mina. It's the latter rather than anything else that results in his Karmic Death — by which point a reader can't feel any sympathy for him at all.
- Likely because this is a common sexual fantasy, of a pedestal-residing woman being available to someone who sees their social standing as lower than dirt. Some scenes in Hollow Man also play off of this, though they end in killing instead as the serum has driven to recipients batshit crazy by then. Essentially the male equivalent of a bodice-ripper, as far as the reasonings behind this go. (for execution purposes, see guys who got off to the movie Disclosure)
- A Star Wars Expanded Universe example. Dezono Qua from Dark Times would buy a child slave every ten days from offworld. Why? To eat them.
- No wonder Bomo Greenbark doesn't take it well when Dass Jennir beat him to the kill, even though Bomo killing Dezono Qua wouldn't bring back Bomo's daughter.
- In Infinite Crisis, Superboy-Prime was presented as a confused teenager with powers he couldn't control lashing out at people who didn't understand him... until he lost it and killed some C List Fodder, whereupon he turned into a near-demonic Card Carrying Villain, excusing his actions by claiming to be "better than those losers".
- In one of the Infinite Crisis lead-ups, Villains United, Alexander Luthor (under the guise of the regular Lex) orders part of his Secret Society of Villains to retrieve a number of people for unknown reasons, chief amongst them the heroes Lady Quark and Pariah (who fought along side him during the original Crisis). Alex mocks and kills Pariah and later uses Lady Quark to power his dimensional tuning fork. Again, they were 'all heroes who tried to save the Multiverse together.
- Everyone's favorite Magnificent Bastard, Dr. Doom, also gets to cross the Horizon in the prologue to the "Unthinkable" story arc in Fantastic Four. He approaches his Unlucky Childhood Friend, Valeria, and promises to abandon Mad Science and be with her forever if she'll love him. Eventually, she accepts — and Doom immediately casts a spell that skins her alive and makes the skin into a new suit of leather armor. This was all a Xanatos Gambit by Doom, who made a Deal With The Devil for unstoppable magical power in exchange for abandoning science — and winning the love of a pure soul and damning said soul to Hell. Please note: Doom didn't even have to break his code of honor by lying; everything he told Valeria was technically true. Writer Mark Waid stated that the purpose of the story and the rest of the arc was to deconstruct Dr. Doom's "nobility". This arc became Dis Continuity very quickly in the eyes of many fans. Even Marvel Comics doesn't mention it any more.
- Later in the same arc, Doom possessed Reed and Sue Richards' daughter Valerie and kidnapped their son Franklin, imprisoning him in a Hell dimension. Again, in a deconstruction of Doom's supposed 'nobility' and 'honour', Doom, holding Val and showing Franklin in Hell, promised to 'set your child free' if the Four surrendered to him. They did so - and Doom put down Val, leaving Franklin in Hell.
- In the Planet X storyline, Grant Morrison tried to do this with Magneto, whom he considered a "mad old terrorist twat." Not surprisingly, it didn't take, and was quickly retconned away.
- Lex Luthor giving a few thousand people superpowers in 52, then taking them away again. While they were in mid-flight. Because he was pissed the power-giving treatment wouldn't work for him. Luthor's a sociopath, sure, but he's not usually that petty.
- the real reason is actually far worse. He thought Supernova was Superman in disguise and so created the situation just to test him, reasoning that Superman would use his powers to save the people. So in other words he killed thousands to test a HUNCH.
- In the DC miniseries Identity Crisis the previously bumbling and mediocre villain Dr. Light is revealed to have raped the Elongated Man's wife, Sue Dibny on the JLA Satellite. What he was doing there in the first place isn't revealed, nor was it the first time he'd done it. Unfortunately, that wasn't the worst thing that happened to Sue in the book.
- Now here's the weird thing...Dr. Light is now, like, Rape Man or Rapist Lad or something. All he does is talk about how awesome rape is, equate things to rape, threaten to rape people, et cetera. I mean they even lampshade it, with one character saying "It's like raping is his power now", paraphrased. The idea of having Light rape Sue was that this would make him a credible villain again, but it seems he's almost become a parody of supervillains, like something you'd see on Frisky Dingo.
- So would that make Dr. Light the Frisky Dingo-verse villain, Rape Ape? Please say yes.
- Yes. Yes it does.
- Essentially he's Dr Murder from the checkerboard nightmare strip, but with the word "Rape" in the place of murder.
- The Purple Man started out as a low-grade Daredevil villain. Then came Alias (not to be confused with the TV show), in which he humiliated, abused, and tortured Jessica Jones in pretty much every non-rape way available.
- But he does rape people as well. Just in case there was any doubt he's a total scumb bag.
- Green Goblin crossed it when he killed Gwen Stacy....and he continues to cross the line multiple times after.
Film
- In a surprising example from a Disney-Pixar film, the villain of Up ties one of the protagonists to a chair and drops him out of a blimp. He gets rescued, of course, but still.
- The same villain tried to burn down Carl's house, shoot him and the kid, killed people who were in the forest (off screen in the past) because he thought they were trying to steal "his bird". And this was the guy who Carl wanted to be when he grew up. Broken Pedestal, much?
- There was actually another Pixar example, but he passed it a long time ago: Syndrome, AKA Buddy, Mr. Incredible's childhood fanboy, who aspired to become Mr. Incredible's sidekick, but when Mr. Incredible tried to save Buddy from a bomb, he ended up making Buddy think of Mr. Incredible as a Broken Pedestal, and you know what Buddy did during these years? Unlike other fanboys who complain on the forums (I'm looking at you, Fan Dumb), he decides to take it out on every Super Hero on the planet, killing them all with his Omnidroids, but after he fails his plan to look like an incredibly awesome hero, what does he do? He goes over to The Incredibles house and kidnaps the YOUNGEST IN THE FAMILY, that's just as bad, or even worse, than killing every other hero, what's even worse, he was going to raise this child to be HIS sidekick, this guy is just evil, that's all I can say, a Complete Monster even.
- One of the most famous crossings of the Horizon: the destruction of Alderaan by the Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope. Palpatine and Vader are still considered darkly awesome, but no one feels that way about Grand Moff Tarkin, the one who ordered the whole thing, who is despicably efficient and dispassionate when it happens. Leia's reaction lets you know that there were millions of people on that planet.
- The Expanded Universe tries to humanise Tarkin occasionally. It generally fails - even when he's having an affair with his Evil Redhead protege (who is, incidentally, the only person who can make him laugh...yes, Tarkin has a sense of humour), he still comes across as a Lawful Evil Complete Monster with no redeeming qualities.
- This was a chilling example of the "Banality of Evil". Vader and Palpatine are just insane but Tarkin is an ordinary guy, no different from you or me, who is just doing his job. His job happens to be killing billions of innocent people.
- Tarkin had crossed the Horizon long ago. As Governor of the Deep Core, he enslaved the warlike Yevetha species. Female Yevetha were turned into sex slaves for Tarkin and his staff, while he gave the males to the Stormtroopers as live target practice.
- He ordered ten bright Omwati children to be kidnapped and gave them a hellish crash course in science and mathematics, and whenever one broke down under the strain he would unleash a turbolaser bombardment on the child's home city.
- Another crossing of the Horizon is in the third prequel, when Anakin / Darth Vader massacres the innocent Jedi children hiding in the temple. Who actually believed he would rescue them. Darth Vader later embarks on a winding path toward redemption, requiring his life as payment.
- Mirrored in KoTOR. You might start off the game thinking "Malak is a Sith and thus evil. Yeah, sure, whatever." But when he orders the destruction of Taris' whole population by sustained orbital bombardment, all to kill one single woman, you know he's not screwing around.
- It's obvious from his first appearance that Captain Vidal of Pans Labyrinth is a very unpleasant man. At first, it almost seems a little too obvious. But there might have been a softer side lurking there somewhere. But after he crushed the skull of an innocent boy with a bottle and shot both him and his father with a mixture of boredom and vague pleasure, it was made clear how evil he was. Note, this is just when he crossed the horizon. He kept right on going. He's a moral Magellan, really.
- Sam from Kidulthood. He bullies the lonely Katie and even instigates the "tough" girls into brutally beating her in front of the class (in the sequel Adulthood, it's stated that the bullying has gone on for years). After Sam harasses the broken Katie and promises to kill her the next day, Katie goes home and commits suicide. In the end of the film, he takes a baseball bat to a party and kills the protagonist Trife in front of his pregnant girlfriend.
- Alex Forrest of Fatal Attraction loses all of our sympathy when she takes Dan's daughter's pet rabbit and boils it alive in the family's pressure cooker in a scene of pure Nightmare Fuel that coined the term "bunny boiler" for Yandere types in the west.
- And has since become a staple usage of bunnies in horror lit, for example, R.L. Stine's books.
- This is parodied in the film Fatal Instinct when Ned comes home to find his pet skunk missing and a stock pot of boiling water on the stove. After the obligatory "NOOOO!", Lola Caine (the Alex Forrest character) informs him that YES!, it IS linguine pomodoro (with basil!)
- Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption starts off as stern, but ultimately reasonable and fair. He even becomes somewhat chummy with hero Andy Dufresne after he begins doing financial work for the prison. But when he orders the death of Tommy to ensure that Andy will never have his name cleared, he crosses the point of no return. Then, just to be extra nasty, he throws Andy in the solitary confinement cell for nearly a month just to break his spirit, which just makes it supremely awesome when Andy proves that his spirit is unbreakable.
- He gives Andy a month in the hole, comes to tell him Tommy is dead, and gives him another month to think about it, after threatening to ensure he suffers the very worst prison can offer and tearing down everything Andy worked so hard to build while in prison.
- "Is that clear enough for you? Or am I being too obstuse?"
- The scene in There Will Be Blood where Daniel puts his son on a train in the most Parental Abandonment-tacular way possible. We later learn that H.W. was sent to a school for the deaf, which is fine, but did Daniel really need to be so heartless about it?
- Nicely subverted in M, where the protagonist is a childkiller, and yet, he retains our sympathy. Peter Lorre was a really good actor.
- In The Proposition, it's bad enough that Arthur murdered the Hopkins family (although deleted scenes show that Patrick survived), but when we learn that he raped a pregnant woman to death, we accept that yes, he's got to die, Affably Evil or not:
Cpt. Morris Stanley: "Arthur Burns is a monster. An abomination. You were right to break company with him; what happened at the Hopkins' place was unforgivable. Did you know that that poor woman had a child in her belly?"
- Similarly, Complete Monster Eden Fletcher decides to flog young Mikey to death. For the record, Mikey is a retarded 14-year old who is barely aware of his crime.
- "Where's the money hid?"
- This trope caused a scene to be removed from Back to the Future Part III. Originally, the movie was to have contained a scene where Buford Tannen, ancestor of Biff, shoots and kills Marshall Strickland in front of the lawman's son. According to screenwriter Bob Gale, the scene was removed because it was felt that after Buford is seen committing such a deed, it doesn't seem right that he not die (and of course, he can't die, seeing as he will need to live long enough to extend the family line).
- Biff was just a bully and a jerk. Then he went and tried to rape the future Mrs. MacFly. He got a punch in the jaw for that.
- Many people find that Biff crossed the line when he tried to rape Lorraine in the first movie. The "humorous" ending of the first movie when George employs the man who attempted to rape his future wife was not funny.
- The ending arguably wasn't meant to be humorous but an Aesop on reformation and forgiveness. Keep in mind that the audience doesn't see what happens in the 30 years after The Punch, but it clearly results in Biff ultimately becoming a changed man - changed to the point where even George and Lorraine can forgive him for what he tried to do. (BTW, George isn't technically Biff's full-time employer in the end but a client of Biff's self-owned business.)
- Frank in the extremely dark Western Once Upon a Time in the West shows he's beyond this horizon twice. His very first act onscreen is the cold-blooded murder of an entire family, which culminates in the slow and methodical shooting of the family's youngest son. A later flashback, which plays during the final showdown, reveals he did something even worse to Harmonica and his brother, which fueled most of the plot.
- Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd were always Villain Protagonists at best, but when Toby, who in the movie is only a little boy, discovers the Awful Truth about Sweeney's murderous tendencies, Mrs. Lovett locks him in the evil basement and plans to have Sweeney murder him, even though Toby has just told her (via the song "Not While I'm Around") that he loves her and won't let anything bad happen to her. After that, Mrs. Lovett is no longer a sympathetic character, even before the reveal that she knew that Lucy Barker, Sweeney's thought-to-be-dead wife, was still alive.
- Not to mention the way she chooses to try and excuse herself to Sweeney, the words she chose show just how lacking in empathy she is, the song pretty much amounts to "Why did you need her anyway? You got me now, just throw out that trash! Here, let me sing to you how much better a catch I am!" Sweeney comes back from the horizon twice by disagreeing with her, then subsequently letting Toby kill him with his own blade in a move of poetic justice. Mrs. Lovett is the true monster of the musical, Turpin finishing a very close second, having embarked on this spree with Sweeney just for kicks and to bag a man, with saving her cruddy pie business as a tertiary cover reason. Since she's so camp most seem to overlook this however, and take her at face value.
- The Double Standard is palpable. Benjamin Barker is the one who murdered his wife, dozens of innocent people, and nearly killed his daughter, and he's "redeemed" for killing his accomplice, who was only body disposal, for entirely selfish reasons? He was quite willing to kill Toby, too, and doesn't seem opposed to Mrs. Lovett's suggestion that he kill Anthony, who saved his life. This Trope would put both characters over the Moral Event Horizon at that point.
- Absolutely; Todd crosses the line when he sings "Epiphany" and decides that everyone in the world deserves to die. Todd's redemption comes not for turning on Mrs. Lovett, but on realising what he has done to his own wife, the woman he loved. Killing Mrs. Lovett only serves to remind Todd - and us - that he is too far gone, and that there is only one option left.
- But Todd is very clearly mentally unstable. Lovett however is just a spiteful, greedy individual, perfectly in possesion of her mental faculties but still willing to cover up murders and feed the dead to the living. Sweeney could have been helped. Lovett on the other hand is just evil.
- Serial killers are unstable. That doesn't make what they do any less evil, or any more forgivable.
- Judge Turpin, who is established as a dog-kicking machine after he has Benjamin Barker, who would become Sweeney Todd, sent away to Australia on a false charge so that he could have Lucy for himself, crosses the Moral Event Horizon himself during the "Poor Thing" sequence where he has the Beadle take Lucy to the Judge's place, where he has a masked ball in progress, and then proceeds to rape her once she's cornered and at his mercy. Then, as if that wasn't enough to make us hate him, we get a scene later on in the movie that has Turpin sentencing a little boy to death — which was actually a stand-in for a much squickier scene that involves him getting...rather worked up over his sixteen-year-old ward Johanna, who he eventually decides to marry.
- Johnny Wong of Hard Boiled tops John Woo's other villains in terms of sheer nastiness with his conduct in the hospital sequence in the second half of the movie, with his willingness to gun down innocent patients that try to escape the hospital. His most despicable act was the massacre of a group of patients standing between him and Alan, which is only stopped when Mad Dog, his Dragon, blasts the Mini-Uzi right out of his hands and calls him on this psychotic move, which ultimately gets Mad Dog killed.
- Burke in Aliens, when he tries to impregnate Ripley and Newt with alien embryos, so he can smuggle them through quarantine, and ultimately use them for bioweapons research. Even before that, he did the same thing with the colonists themselves.
- When being interviewed on The Tonight Show, Paul Reiser (who played Burke) revealed that he took his parents to see the film - and when the scene came where his character was killed... his parents simply nodded their silent approval. Damn - if your parents want you dead, you haven't just passed the Moral Event Horizon, you've ensured that the character you play Crosses The Line Twice.
- In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Judge Doom drops an innocent, adorable cartoon shoe into The Dip to demonstrate its effects, which turns out to be melting it alive.
- Drops nothing— he slowly lowers it in, the son of a bitch.
- Made even worse by the fact that the poor thing was trying to show affection towards him. Considering how cold Doom was, it's easy to understand why no one would even bother to try, but the little shoe apparently felt that even cold, imposing figures should be loved. There's a very silly Broadway musical moment buried in that scene somewhere...
- Its not showing affection for Doom, its showing affection for his nicely shined shoes...
- In Godzilla VS Destoroyah, Destoroyah gets one of these when he brutally murders Godzilla Junior which, naturally, pushes Godzilla into a grief-stricken fury.
- As outmatched as he was though, Junior put up a decent fight against an immensely superior opponent. Everyone should try Godzilla: Save the Earth just to see, in the hands of an experienced fighter and not some mindless beast, how overpowered his abilities really were. Unfortunately, one move is missing from his repertoire, dragging the opponent around the field using only his tail. He has more than enough to make up for it. The odd thing is he's a normal playable character despite being on an SNK Boss level of pain. Orga would be mid-tier were it not for a couple nasty throws. Space Godzilla comes close, but due to the strange nature of his strongest attacks doesn't quite measure up to Destroyah.
- It sort of helps that Junior got better
- In Serenity, the crew of the title ship manage to successfully evade the Operative, so rather than track them down he destroys all of their possible hiding places and kills anyone they'd ever had significant dealings with, including the people of Haven as well as Shepherd Book, who sacrificed himself in an attempt to stop him.
Operative: I'm sorry. If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. You should have taken my offer. Or did you think none of this was your fault?
Operative: I do. If I have to.
- Mal's later gambit of leading the Reavers towards the Alliance is seen by some to be a case of a hero crossing the moral event horizon. Others don't, as the Alliance fleet was probably the only group with enough firepower to put the Reavers out of commission for good, not to mention being responsible for their existence in the first place.
- The Alliance really and truly had it coming to them anyway.
- The Alliance as a political entity might, but the ones having the Reavers chucked at them were pilots, grunt soldiers etc who are not all going to be nasty buggers. As the Operative himself says, good men were being killed up in the sky.
- The Patriot's Colonel Tavington isn't exactly a nice guy to start with—the first time he shows up, he takes the protagonist's son prisoner, threatens to shoot the rest of the protagonist's family, shoots one of the kids anyway, burns their house down, and then orders the wounded to be shot, all within the span of about ten minutes. Still, he's not that much better than Mel Gibson's character until he locks a while town's population in their church and torches it. All without losing his Draco In Leather Pants status, too.
- In The Professional, villain Stansfield kills a whole family, save the second protagonist Mathilda, with a shotgun, including her mother, who was just taking a bath, and then her little brother who was hiding under the bed in hopes that he wouldn't be seen and shot. What makes him the irredeemable bastard he is, is the fact that he takes drugs beforehand to make the killing more fun. Interestingly, it's her little brother who Mathilda is really mad at Stansfield about, since her parents were shown to be abusive Jerkasses in an earlier scene.
- No, no: her brother was killed by one of the other members of Stansfield's crew during a shootout with Mathilda's father. And what's more, it was accidental. Stansfield's real Moral Event Horizon is arguably the moment when he and Mathilda meet for the first time: after popping another pill, he makes it clear that the massacre was too routine to be memorable ("What filthy piece of shit did I do now?"), then toys with her for a bit before putting a gun to her head.
- I don't recall it was an accident, and I can't imagine any redemption from killing the innocents in her family, but clearly his moment of Moral Event Horizon, if not when he killed her family, is:
Stansfield: It's always the same thing. It's when you start to become really afraid of death that you learn to appreciate life. Do you like life, sweetheart?
Mathilda: Yes.
Stansfield: That's good, because I take no pleasure in taking life if it's from a person who doesn't care about it.
- If the knowledge that Mr. Blonde randomly massacred the hostages of the failed jewel heist (though it occured offscreen) because one of them set off the alarm didn't push him over the Moral Event Horizon, seeing him torture, mutilate and threaten to burn alive a young police officer while contemptuously ignoring his pleas for his life (including his statement that he has a young child) certainly did.
- The statement about the child was an ad-lib. When the actor said it, the character got so far off the horizon that Michael Madsen (who had just become a father at that point) couldn't finish the scene.
- Light Yagami from the Live Action Adaptation of Death Note is already closer to being a Card Carrying Villain even when compared to his Knight Templar anime/manga counterpart, but he finally crossed over when not only does he kill Misora Naomi in an even more twisted fashion than in the original version, but also his own girlfriend (and even doubting that he ever cared about her) just to garner access into the Anti-Kira task force. Such is his monstrosity than even Ryuk could only refer to him as "a demon that is more shinigami than shinigami themselves". If that did not convince you, then surely the moment when he writes his father's name in the Death Note after L's (apparent) death must count.
- In Enemy at the Gates, the German sniper played by Ed Harris is more an antagonist than a villain; throughout most of the movie he is portrayed as cold, but vaguely sympathetic - until he crosses the Moral Event Horizon by murdering a child. Obviously the scriptwriters wanted to make sure that the viewers would not be rooting for him during the climactic fight.
- Much of the movie is based on a historical-fiction novel with real people and real events, with the blanks filled in with prose, even the romance was real! This is sometimes missed because the book carries a different name, War of the Rats. Considering the standard punishment, as well, the German sniper (who by the way is under debate as to he really was, since there isn't any record of a Kõnig) let the kid off light, as execution by firing squad frequently results in needing a coup de grace. When pressed for time and presented with a large load of prisoners, executioners simply let them bleed to death, shoving them out of the way for the next group.
- Frequently used in politically minded historical dramas to make sure you know who the bad guys are.
- Irish War of Independance/Civil War: a fully justified trope because the films usually have to convince you to root for the IRA.
- Michael Collins: loads of it. At one point the Brits find a traitor and hang him on site, without the slightest hesitation, while he's thrashing for his life. At another point the Black-and-Tans drive an armoured car into an in-use football field. After the few seconds of shocked silence one of the players takes the opportunity to score a goal, causing the crowd to cheer. The Tans then shoot him dead, and open fire on the crowd.
- Truth In Television: that's the popular version of the Croke Park massacre during Bloody Sunday
. In the actual incident, everyone who died was shot by the Black and Tans, without an armoured car as it wouldn't fit through the gate. They killed fourteen people and injured dozens in retaliation for the IRA killings of an equal number of British intelligence officers that morning. The Black and Tans were notoriously brutal, killing rebels even if they surrendered and burning their houses-including that of Michael Collins' family. Interestingly, King George V strongly criticized them, as did some of their officers.
- Not surprising, given their unprofessional nature. The reason they were called "Black and Tans" is because the British government, broke after WWI, couldn't afford uniforms for them, so they wore whatever they had that was black and tan, for basic identifiability. When the police you send to rule a rebellious people you hate don't even have uniforms, you have no hope of controlling them.
- Curiously the a-historical use of the armoured car makes the Tans seem marginally less hateful than in reality, as we only see the anonymous machine rather than the faces of the men opening fire on civilians.
- The Wind That Shakes The Barley: The English raid a house of IRA supporters, they hold down one of the residents then violently, bloodily cut her hair off, then set fire to the house.
- Not to mention torturing IRA prisoners, as really happened. All the atrocities portrayed were based on fact, but the IRA committed their share as well, naturally. They call them "dirty wars" for a reason.
- Funny that only the UK atrocities are ever shown, while the IRA is shown as heroes. In every instance.
- No one seems to bring up that hey, after this came the Irish Civil War, where the Republicans fought each other and were very nasty about it. That includes executions without trial at the infamous Kilmainham Gaol, the very same prison that the British used to do executions at.
- In the Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas film, after "abusing the help" and "breaking every rule Vegas lives by", Dr. Gonzo is portrayed as having finally crossed the line when he assaults a waitress with a knife. Although Dr. Gonzo is depicted as more of a force of nature than anything else, his monstrous nature was previously played for laughs until this scene.
- In Repo! The Genetic Opera, Nathan crosses this line an hour into the movie. Nathan is the Repo Man, a heartless monster who takes organs from patrons who cannot pay for them any longer. The viewer is sympathetic for his character, even watching him butcher and kill several people, until he hits Shilo, his daughter, in a moment of rage.
- Was this AFTER the song where she sang about how useless and pathetic his attempts to protect her were? That was the entirety of the song "Seventeen." It's an entire freaking chapter of the movie. I'd be PISSED if I was her father.
- Given that he kept her locked away without a single shred of human contact I'd say she was right to be pissed with him.
- The real Moral Event Horizon belongs to Rotti Largo. First we find out that he murdered Marni in anger at her betrayal. It's possible to feel a shred of sympathy then, but the events at the Genetic Opera pretty much kill that dead.
- In the latest Rambo movie there are several instances where the bad guys cross the Moral Event Horizon. Scenes of genocide, killing for sport, kidnapping and child abuse are present, but quite possibly the definitive crossing would be the leader of the enemy faction taking a young boy into his quarters and raping him. Which makes it all the more satisfying when Rambo guts him.
- In The Dark Knight, we get a crossing from Harvey Dent, now Two-Face when he threatens to kill Gordon's son. Up to then his victims were responsible to the first or second degree for Rachel's death, but when he made that particular threat...
- In the second X Men film, William Stryker's Moral Event Horizon crossing, probably comes during his Motive Rant to Xavier, between showing off his lobotomised son, whom he harvests for a mind control serum, and noticing Deathstrike shake off the mind control and look around confused (clearly unaware of where she is) and casually walks over to her, jerks her head forward, and applies the aforementioned serum to a hole at the base of her neck.
- While Captain Barbossa of the first Pirates Of The Caribbean was still a bad guy, he was Affably Evil and he and his crew had enough interesting personality quirks to be likeable. New Big Bad Cutler Beckett of the next two films, however, was an outright bastard and crossed the moral event horizon around the time that he had a ten year old boy hung for piracy.
- Ordering the murder of Elizabeth's father simply because he was no longer needed didn't do much for his image either.
- Lampshaded in the first movie: "Waste not!"
- The pirate attack in the first film is quite brutal, with civilians clearly being killed for the fun of it. We're apparently meant to forget this scene when several of those pirates join the goodies in the sequels.
- In Mutiny On The Bounty (1935), Captain Bligh already has a reputation as a strict disciplinarian, but we don't really see how wrong he is until he orders that a man who struck a superior officer be whipped hundreds of times at every ship in the harbor — even after he's dead.
- The 1962 remake left out this scene, but his order for a crewman to stay at the top of a mast overnight for laughing at his walk may qualify as a substitute Moral Event Horizon.
- Fallen Angel Bartleby in Dogma was actually quite sympathetic and his reasons rather understandable for wanting to commit war on God (much better than Smug Snake Azrael's). Then he brutally taunted and humilated heroine Bethany and shiv'd his only friend when he was trying to make him understand what a mistake they'd made thus crossing the event horizon.
- Tombstone provides a good example of this, drawing a clear line between Card Carrying Villains (Cowboys) and a Complete Monster (Johnny Ringo). The film starts with the gang coming to a wedding to avenge their killed brother. They shoot the groom, rape the bride and then sit around the table.
- Colonel Sato from Ip Man makes it clear very early in his appearance that he is a Smug Snake, but crosses the horizon after he coldly guns down Master Liu for losing an extra round he volunteered for. It is made especially stark because up to then the combat had all been hand-to-hand martial arts fare.
- Hard Candy provides an interesting version of this, where as the film goes on it seems both primary characters pass this line either through past actions revealed or actions taken during the film.
- For some, Tun of the 2004 Thai horror film Shutter crosses this. It is eventually revealed that, while she was alive, Natre was raped by one of Tun's friends, while his other two friends held her down. Tun then walked in on them, and, instead of rushing to his girlfriend's aid (he was still, presumably, keeping their relationship a secret from his friends), he not only decided to keep the rape a secret, thus protecting his friends, he also took pictures of the restrained and traumatised Natre, so that his friends would be able to use the images as a form of blackmail. Afterwards, when Natre becomes suicidal, he dumps her. Although he clearly regrets the whole incident, some viewers lose all sympathy with Tun at that point. Years later, when Jane (Tun's current girlfriend) finds out the truth, his only defence is that he was "young and stupid". No wonder Natre's pissed.
- The destruction of the planet Vulcan and most of it's 6 Billion inhabitants at the hands of the Romulan villain Nero and his crew avenging the death of their own planet in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. The death of Spock's mother Amanda as he helplessy reaches out for her just heightens the tragedy.
- The Villain Protagonist from Woody Allen's Match Point, who has an affair with his friend's (soon-to-be-ex) lover while being engaged to the friend's sister and continues the affair well into the marriage. After he gets his mistress pregnant and she confronts him about it, he murders her and her unborn child in cold blood and in an elaborate scheme that makes it seem like a robbery gone wrong.
- Several of Clint Eastwood's films played with this trope, notably Unforgiven and Dirty Harry, although the only one to fully embrace it was High Plains Drifter. The film begins with Eastwood's nameless stranger gunning down three townsfolk at only the slightest provocation, and then raping the love interest. Although the character then seems to help the locals, it is eventually that he may or may not be Satan himself, come to exact revenge.
- No. The nameless character is an avenging spirit, in the style of a revenant, wraith, or "The Crow". He is actually the lawman killed by the villians, upon whom he exacts revenge. He rewards the little guy who wanted to help him. He punishes the other townspeople for standing by and doing nothing as he was murdered. He is not Satan. At the end of the film, the little guy mentions, as he is placing a marker on the nameless characters grave, that he never knew the nameless character's name. The nameless character responds, "Yes you do." The little guy is carving the nameless character's name onto the grave marker. The "nameless character" then rides off and vanishes into the heat waves rising from the hot earth as eerie music plays, suggesting the supernatural nature of the character.
- Drag Me To Hell has Stu Rubin, Christine's rival who is also up for promotion at the bank they work at. At first he's just shown to be a kiss-ass and a Jerk Ass. Christine gets ahead when their boss gives her a big account to work on. Then, after Christine gets cursed and has an explosive nosebleed, Rubin decides to steal all the files relating to the account while everybody's distracted. He takes the files to a different bank and tries to freelance the account for them. Christine figures it out and tries to blackmail him into taking the token of her curse (i.e., send him to hell in her place). Rubin starts blubbering about it, so Christine decides to be the bigger person and lets him off the hook. The day after, Rubin tries to pin the whole freelancing fiasco on Christine. Then she ends up going to hell, because she accidentally screws up her third option.
- The titular villain of the movie Don is pretty nasty to start off with, but by the end of the movie it's revealed that he essentially skipped across the Moral Event Horizon, smiling from ear to ear.
- No mention of Schindlers List's very own Amon Goeth yet? The guy is the patron saint of this trope. Both in the movie and in real life
Literature
- Thomas Covenant, the Anti Hero of Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant series, is something of an unusual case. Near the beginning of the first book, the main character rapes a village girl and completely destroys any sympathy he may have accumulated up to that point and sets up much of the misery yet to come. He spends the rest of the first trilogy trying to drag himself back across the Moral Event Horizon; whether or not he succeeds depends on the individual reader.
- What made this worse is that right up until the act the girl had been positioned as his LOVE INTEREST. What The Hell, Hero?
- Don't forget that his daughter born from the rape becomes his love interest in the second book. Well, she wants to - knowing he's her father. Um, ick.
- That's not the only Moral Event Horizon crossing in Stephen R. Donaldson's books. In The Real Story, the first book of the Gap Cycle, the female protagonist gets kidnapped and has an illegal emotion-controlling chip implanted in her brain by her kidnapper, who then uses it to repeatedly rape and abuse her and make her "like" it. Then It Gets Worse for her when she is rescued, as her "rescuer" then proceeds to do pretty much the same thing.
- In the Well of Darkness, Dagnarus arguably goes from admirably slick to absolute monster in a typical rape the dog moment when he bashes Gareth's head in on a wall for his 'betrayal'.
- The famous Swedish Millennium trilogy has a both gruesome and realistic crossing of the Moral Event Horizon. From his first appearance, the lawyer Nils Bjurman is smug and arrogant. He is the legal guardian of the protagonist Lisbeth Salander - she is borderline-insane and thus declared unfit to be independent. Bjurman gradually abuses his position more and more: first interrogating Lisbeth about her sex life, then blackmailing her into giving him a blow job. However, on their next meeting he crosses the Moral Event Horizon in a spectacularly disgusting way: he binds and handcuffs her to a bed, then anally rapes her all night.
- WARNNG: Reading the following example will severely ruin the impact of The Culture novel Use of Weapons: in a flashback, Elethiomel drives Cheradenine to suicide by sending him a chair made from the bones and skin of his sister, previously Elethiome's love interest. He then assumes Cheradenine's identity and embarks on a career of repeated and potentially nigh-immortal failure in a probably-unaware attempt at penance — it is his amazing capacity for failure that makes him a good weapon for the Culture. One theme of the novel is how trying to be The Atoner has a real Karma Houdini aspect to it.
- In the Gaunts Ghosts novel Honor Guard, Lijah Cuu is initially presented as a nasty but capable Guardsman who is extremely skilled at gunplay. Then, in the next book, he rapes and murders a civilian woman. Though this is quite usual in war its shock value is increased exponentially as it only becomes apparent while he is murdering Bragg. Needless to say, his inevitable comeuppence two books later is most deserved.
- Except that he still manages a very literal parting shot that kills Colm Corbec.
- Nicodemus in The Dresden Files not only kills Shiro but in a later book he kidnaps Ivy, a little girl, strips her naked & tortures her.
- It's arguable that Nicodemus was always on the far side of that moral line - although he seems Affably Evil, we know from before his first appearance that he's effectively sold his soul and is possessed by a Fallen Angel. (More subtly, it turns out that the Fallen Anduriel doesn't control Nicodemus - the two are equal partners in their evil.)
- A Song Of Ice And Fire: Joffrey Baratheon ordering the execution of Eddard Stark after said character had accepted a reduced punishment in exchange for a false confession. Before that he was just something of an obnoxious, spoiled brat but afterward he was by far the most hated character in the series, equaled only by his mother.
- Theon Greyjoy. He kills two major characters. It gets worse: Those two characters were less than ten years old. Wait, it gets worse than that: He didn't really kill those characters; they got away, and he killed two innocent children and burned their bodies so he could pretend he killed those characters. Then it goes further still when you consider that the only reason he knew about those children is because he's had sex with their mother. Who has to be killed as part of this act because she's a witness.
- The third book in the series, A Storm of Swords, is infamous for one event: The Red Wedding. This singular event proved to be a MEH for two entire noble families, House Frey and House Bolton. Interestingly, it's viewed as a MEH-crossing event in the story, as it broke one of the customary rules of chivalry to kill those who had broken bread with their hosts, making many noble families not want to associate with the perpetrators.
- There's an interesting parallel from English history here — ever wondered why, if your last name is Campbell, you tend to raise eyebrows from Scotsmen when you're introduced to them? That would be because of the massacre at Glencoe in 1690. Basically, the McDonald clan — the Campbells' sworn enemies — had failed to swear allegiance on time to the English king, and said king had obtained the Campbells' services to exact retribution. However, as the Campbells headed for the McDonalds' village at Glencoe, a storm blew in and the Campbells sought shelter from the McDonalds. The Highland Rule of Hospitality was that you could not refuse a person shelter from a storm, and the Campbells actually stayed two weeks in the McDonalds' homes. Eventually, though, word came from the English king demanding an update, so early one morning the Campbells rose from their beds, lit fires at both ends of the valley and started shooting every man under the age of 60 in their beds. Those who ran towards the fires were gunned down, but the biggest death toll came from the McDonald clansmen who ran up the sides of Glencoe and died of exposure. The Highland Rule of Hospitality was forever broken. To this day, "No Campbells" signs are still up at taverns across that region of Scotland, and it's a bit of a black joke when people say "The Campbells are coming."
- Dolores Umbridge spent most of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix finding new and more creative ways to Kick The Dog (usually Harry), so it was well known before Deathly Hallows that she was a very nasty piece of work. And yet, the ease with which she took to the Death Eaters' new Ministry's policies, including presiding over trials for Muggle-borns accused of stealing magic and casually threatening one such wizard with the soul-destroying Dementor's Kiss, pushed her from "nasty piece of work" to "die, Umbridge, die."
- Not to mention Mad-Eye's, well, eye on her door.
- And in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it could be argued that Snape killing Dumbledore pushed his character from "Sadist Teacher who everyone wanted to see put in his place" to "bastard who needed to die" (at that point, fans didn't know that Snape was in fact The Atoner and had killed Dumbledore on his own orders.
- The Lestranges and young Crouch used the Cruciatus Curse on Neville's parents until their [the Longbottoms'] minds shattered irreparably.
- In The Silmarillion, noble antagonist Melkor becomes Big Bad Morgoth by bringing about the Darkening of Valinor (with Ungoliant's help) and, while he's passing through, robbing the Noldor of the Silmarils.
- Then there's the Narn I Hin Hurin, published in 2k8 by Christopher Tolkien from notes left by his father. (All that follows is a massive spoiler. You're warned.) Wherein Morgoth, following his not-quite-complete victory on the Elves (and the three Houses of Men that didn't betray them), tries to extract the location of the kingdom where lives the High King of the Elves from his prisoner of war Hùrin, the mightiest human warrior of Middle-Earth, first by torture, then by treasure. He refuses, then Morgoth takes him to the highest mountain in his realm, binds there, and proceeds to show us how a Curse is done right in fantasy : Hùrin will see and hear exactly what will be happening to his family, cursed by Melkor, the most powerful Vala (god). With Hùrin not coming back, his wife Morwen sends their son Tùrin to Doriath, the Elvish kingdom protected by the magic of Queen Melian, herself a Maia (semi-god). Years later, after killing an Elf in self-defense, Tùrin exiles himself (while the king pardons him) and ends up with a band of outlaws. Joined by Beleg, his elven brother-in-arms, he begins to carve a fief for himself, and wages war on Morgoth. Betrayed by the Dwarf in whose house they were hiding, (and whose son they had killed,) the band ends up defeated and Beleg wounded. He chases the Angband army, rescues Tùrin with the help of Gwindor, hurts Tùrin while cutting his bonds; Tùrin grabs Beleg's sword and slits his throat. Heroic BSOD ensues; then Tùrin is led by Gwindor to a lake where he regains his sanity. Then Gwindor and Tùrin go to Nargothrond, an Gwindor's native elvish Kingdom, where Tùrin gets the love of Finduilas, Gwindor's previously betrothed. Then Morgoth has an army, including a dragon, Glaurung the Golden, assail and sack Nargothrond, enspell Tùrin and enslave Finduilas. Then Tùrin goes to his homeland to find back his mother and the sister she was pregnant with when he departed. He finds they are gone to Doriath, and goes back to find Finduilas; woodmen tell her she's dead. Not wanting to bring more darkness to his loved ones, he settles in that forest. Meanwhile, his mother and sister have departed Doriath, with Mablung the best soldier of Doriath and some redshirts, for Nargothrond to find him; once they arrive, Glaurung covers the plain with stinking fog, which disperses the Elves and loses Morwen, then enspells Nienor (Tùrin's sister) so that she forgets everything. She ends up in a forest, collapses on a mound, and Tùrin finds her - right where Finduilas died of an arrow through the throat. He rescues her and brings her back to his village, naming her Niniel, Tear-Maiden. The village chief, Brandir the lame, falls in love with her immediately, but she loves Tùrin. When he returns her love, they marry. She conceives. Later, Glaurung seems to come attacking the village. Tùrin goes defend his home, is unwittingly followed by the whole village, kills the dragon and faints. Niniel tends to his wounds, then Glaurung, in his death throes, lifts the spell of amnesia from her and she jumps off a cliff. Tùrin wakes up, asks where she is, Brandir tells him, and that she was his sister too, and Tùrin responds by transfixing him. Then wandering in the woods, he meets Mablung's party, that tell him they lost Nienor at Nargothrond and Morwen, too. Tùrin throws himself on his sword and dies. Then Morgoth releases Hùrin, who proceeds to innocently sow the seeds of the destruction of both remaining Elven kingdoms. That one caused the author to state that this very cursed family would get their revenge on Morgoth at Ragnarök. (Before he decided not to end the world on that, anyway.) For the one God of Evil in Middle-Earth, that says a lot.
- In The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey, Doctor Wetherall successfully treated a girl's intelligence-destroying thyroid condition and married her. A few years later he suspected (with no rational cause) that she was being unfaithful. To punish her, he carried her off to the backwater Pyranees and starved her of her thyroid treatments. She became a gibbering, grunting idiot again and the villagers thought she was under a curse.
- It gets worse. He doesn't do that only once. Oh, no. He occasionally puts her back on a thyroid regimen sufficient for her to recover her wits and her beauty, then takes her off of it again, and lets her experience the deterioration back into, well, here's a description:
"The face was white and puffy, the eyes vacant, the mouth drooled open, with little trickles of saliva running from the loose corners. A dry fringe of rusty hair clung to the half-bald scalp, like the dead wisps on the head of a mummy."
Lord Peter: "My religious beliefs are a little ill-defined, but I hope something really beastly happens to Wetherall in the next world."
- Faelamor of Ian Irvine's View from the Mirror series undoubtedly crosses the line at least once, either when we find out she kidnapped a child and forced her son to rape said child over a period of years to crossbreed them, resulting in both of their suicides, helped mind-control an entire sentient species into walking into a horrific nightmare realm with the explicit goal of wiping them out and then wiped out every single fertile survivor of said species when they managed to escape, or possibly later when she starts, knowingly, a series of events that leads to the destruction of another planet and the near-total genocide of the people on it and almost causing a third world to be overrun by monsters from the aforementioned horrific nightmare realm just so she can go home.
- Not to be outdone, in the most recent novel in the world, the result of said crossbreeding and, up to then, one of the few characters that was better than an Anti Hero went ''very'' bad when we find out she turned what should have been a minor skirmish into a 150-year-long global war, gained total power over the human race and handed it over to a bunch of power-mad psychopaths to save effort and time, turned the planet into a World Half Empty, conducted her own forced crossbreeding program on subjects numbering in the thousands over more than a century all of whom she eventually abandoned to freeze to death when things went south, and to seal the deal, hunted down her only friend (and The Hero of the first series) to kidnap her children for that crossbreeding program until the friend went over the Despair Event Horizon and threw her husband and children off a cliff before committing suicide.
- Darth Caedus, the villainous Jacen Solo, can't seem to help himself from doing this, including fridging his own aunt, bombarding throwaway planet Fondor after they had already surrendered, lighting decidedly NON-throwaway planet Kashyyyk on fire from orbit, processing a recurring character's DNA into a virus to wipe out his species, snapping said character's neck after finishing up with him, and turning loose said virus knowing full well that his own wife and daughter were of the species he intended to wipe out. Further fueling the hate for Caedus is that him turning evil was accomplished by a rather lazy Ret Con that seemed to serve no purpose other than making it so there are no morally gray characters in the Galaxy.
- Also from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, we have an in-universe example with Kyp Durron, a young Jedi who in the Jedi Academy Trilogy gets influenced by an ancient Sith spirit to steal a superweapon out of the heart of the local gas giant and go on a spree with it, causing supernovas which kill the populations of various planets. He then flies to a training camp planet supporting about twenty-five million people where his brother had gone to train, was told by an Obstructive Bureaucrat that his brother had been killed during this training, and fired a nova-causing missile at the sun. Then it turned out that the bureaucrat had simply lied, and the brother was flown over to try and stop him, but it was too late; the only survivor was Kyp, safe in his superweapon. Later the main characters found him and convinced him to stick the superweapon into a black hole, which almost resulted in his death; instead he lived, recovered, and went back to training at the Jedi Academy. Because the worlds he'd killed had been Imperial worlds, and he felt bad about killing his brother, and he'd supposedly been possessed by a four-thousand-year old Dark Lord. Later books called him on it and called it hard. He'd been influenced, not possessed. These had still been people who, as the Fix Fic type novel I, Jedi says, had had nothing in any reality to do with him. It became something he could never live down, sometimes making him The Atoner, sometimes making him tired of being reminded of something he did as a teenager when he was in his forties, trying to be a respectable member of the Jedi Council.
- And another. In Death Star, we have Tenn Graneet, head gunner on the titular superweapon, who for most of the novel has his character built up. He always thought the Death Star would never really be used on a living planet, just on really big ships and bases and the like. When it comes to it, he follows orders. He realizes that as word gets around, even people on the Death Star treat him strangely, and knows that someday everyone will know, and everyone will loathe him as both the biggest mass murderer of his or possibly any time, and as someone who always, always followed orders. Unusually, and unlike Tarkin, who gave the order, he sees his action as a Moral Event Horizon, thinking that they would be right to hate him and one day kill him. The guilt doesn't let him sleep, and he knows he will be commanded to do worse - if he doesn't he'll just be killed for disobedience and they will get another gunner - and, when they are in range of Yavin and his hand is at the final button, desperately stalls while telling everyone to "Stand By", hoping that something would happen to stop him. And it did. Poor bastard.
- Thrackan Sal-Solo crossed the horizon in the eyes of the peoples of the Corellian system, especially the Selonians, by holding his first cousins once removed hostage and then trying to vape them.
- The Possessed by Dostoyevsky features an interesting version of this trope; Villain Protagonist Stavrogin crosses the Moral Event Horizon with a monstrous act committed before the events narrated in the book, but actually revealed only during a flashback in the epilogue.
- The conmen selling Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn transfroms them from loveable rogues into something far nastier. This makes this trope Older Than Radio.
- Hekate, from the Whateley Universe, spends all her spare time alternating between Kick The Dog and Rape The Dog moments. Last year, she tricked two of Don Sebastiano's opponents (the chivalrous Cavalier and Cavalier's girlfriend Skybolt) into a Wicker Man type spell and turned them into his helpless mindslaves who knew what they were being forced to do all the time.
- Played with in Good Omens. Crowley crosses the horizon in the eyes of fellow demon Hastur when he kills Ligur using holy water.
- In Catch-22, the character Arfy is portrayed as a bumbling fool, more of a constant nuisance to the protagonist Yossarian than anything else. Throughout the book the reader is given very small glimpses and hints that he may be more than a little odd in the head. This finally culminates in Arfy raping and murdering a woman, and getting off unpunished.
- Eth Clifford's book, The Year of the Three-Legged Deer tells the story of a Native American boy named Takawsu and his family. The story gradually gets darker as it goes along, as the family faces much hardship. Eventually, they get caught in the crossfile after a brutal massacre of Native Americans is discovered. The perpetrator is the main villain of the book, Noble Loomis, who further crosses the Moral Event Horizon by murdering Takawsu's sister Chilili. After that, many readers are just rooting for Noble Loomis to be killed. And indeed, he is sentenced to hang.
- Tigerstar. Full stop. If it's possible to cross the Moral Event Horizon repeatedly, he does it.
- James Taggart, of Atlas Shrugged, probably crossed the line when he beat his wife, cheated on her, and then drove her to suicide. Doctor Ferris certainly does when you realize that his plan — to kill one third of all children under 10 and all adults over the age of 60 — is not a bluff, nor that far from what happened in certain places.
- In One Minds Eye, Gamal Casimir seems a Magnificent Bastard — until you learn that he wiped his own daughter's memory to use her in an experiment, one that claimed the lives of the other nine test subjects.
- In Ben Counter's Warhammer 40000 Horus Heresy novel Galaxy In Flames, Horus's treachery comes out in the massacre of the remembrancers and the virus-bombing of the loyalist Space Marines.
- In an attack on the betrayed loyalist Space Marines, Eidolon and his troops start their attack with the Apothecary and the wounded. He takes particular glee in killing those who had belonged to his Legion.
- They were able to make the attack because Lucius, out of envy, had betrayed them. In Graham McNeill's Fulgrim, we learn that he had lured Captain Demeter into helping him kill the loyalists on guard with him, taunted him with it, and then killed him. And he recounts it to Eidolon afterward, and they laugh over it.
- Jefferson Pinkard remains a sympathetic character for amazingly long in Harry Turtledove's Timeline 191 series, despite being a member of the Nazi-equivalent Freedom Party, as we've known him since long before he joined and understand exactly why he's bitter enough to do it. At most, the reader is probably hoping for a while after he joins that he'll realize the path he's on before it's too late. However, when he comes up with a way to mass murder black people using truck fumes, the line is finally crossed definitively.
- Also from Timeline 191, Jake Featherston. He starts out as a relatively nice person. He's a Confederate artillery sergeant in the Great War, and is competent and actually fairly tolerant for a Confederate. Then he finds out that his high-born aristocratic captain's black servant is a Communist rebel. He tells intelligence about it, but the captain tells them not to believe him. When the Communists enter open revolt, and the captain's servant joins them, the captain's reputation is destroyed and he commits suicide by charging the enemy on foot and being gunned down. The captain's father, a high-ranking general, is furious with Featherston, and makes sure that he will never advance in rank. Bitter and angry, Featherston develops an intense hatred for both blacks and aristocrats, and after the Confederates lose the war, becomes leader of the racist Freedom Party. His party eventually gains power, and he sends the world back into a catastrophic war, while attempting to exterminate every black in the CSA.
- In the Well World books, there is a parasite which eventually destroys higher brain functions. Its effects are delayable only with a rare and expensive antidote. In one book, Nathan Brazil's traveling party includes a man whose job is to go around the universe on behalf of a shadowy secret cabal, infecting planetary leaders so they can be controlled by the cabal. The man has a servant, who is in the end stages and who he forces into various degrading sex acts (in one scene, he forces her to beg to perform said acts so she can beg to get the antidote). This gets so bad that after the ship they're on finds and goes through a portal that they didn't know existed, it's revealed that only someone with an overpowering urge to die can make it appear. He gets his karmic death when he's transformed into a (very attractive) breeding female of a species that gives birth by having the (100+) young eat their way out of the mother's body while she's still alive. And that's still not quite proportionate retribution.
- Phoena in the Firebird Trilogy may be a Smug Snake, but that doesn't make it any less heinous when the Shuhr lure her to Three Zed and Dru Polar holds her, with a false sense of security, as bait for her brother-in-law Brennan Caldwell. When he [Brennan] arrives, Polar tortures her to death with a nasty weapon called a dendric striker. The plan is to Mind Rape Brennan and make him turn the weapon on his wife when she arrives.
- Just about every major villain in the Sword Of Truth series has one of these as a matter of course, some more than one. It's hypothesized Goodkind needs to make the bad guys this bad to make his hero look better.
- Darken Rahl, the first Big Bad, is seen in Wizard's First Rule kidnapping, starving, and brainwashing a kid, before finally sacrificing him to the underworld to gain...a magical Hell-horse? It's not really clear.
- In Stone of Tears, we learn about the Sisters of the Dark, a secret Religion Of Evil inside the local nunnery...who routinely skin men and boys alive to steal their magic.
- Hekat killing one thousand and then ten thousand slaves as sacrifices in order for her army to go on and conquer the world. What's even worse is the fact that the "demons" were actually the spells of good magi, who died themselves when the slaves die due to their screams in the wind.
Live Action TV
- In the NUMB3RS episode "Waste Not", after a sinkhole on a playground swallows up half a dozen kids and their teacher, it is revealed that the company Desert Shale has paved dozens of playgrounds with what is essentially reprocessed toxic waste. When this is brought to the attention of the CEO, he agrees to repave every site with asphalt. A rare case of a fictitious corporation taking responsibility for their actions, right? Of course not! Their real motivation is to cover up the fact that they buried barrels of acidic sludge underneath the playgrounds, which caused the sinkhole in the first place.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer has Angel's dark side, Angelus, in Season 2. At first, he just seems like a Jerkass of epic proportions, but after the murder of Jenny Calendar and then an attempt to unleash a demon that will suck all life on Earth into a hell-dimension, something even the show's second-most-magnificent bastard won't do, Angelus (not Angel) lost anything resembling 'cool'.
- "Seeing Red." Some lost any possibly of ever having sympathy for Spike afterward, soul or no soul.
- A more universally agreeable example from "Seeing Red" is Warren Mears. That is, if you didn't already thinkthat he was a Complete Monster from "Dead Things".
- I was going to say "Dead Things" was Warren crossing the Event Horizon. Up until then, the trio were just comic relief villains. But after killing Katrina, Warren was irredeemably evil. Jonathan and Andrew, on the other hand, were still sympathetic.
- Glory was never a sympathetic villain, but after she drove Tara insane, the fans simply wanted her dead.
- D'Hoffryn, previously quite Affably Evil, does this horribly in season 7, manipulating Anya's willingness to make a Heroic Sacrifice and undo the vengeance she did on ten frat boys, and instead murders her best friend to prove a point.
- Ben's willingness to let Glory kill Dawn and end the world as long as he lived lost him all sympathy with fans.
- Heroes: Sylar has far too much Draco In Leather Pants appeal and has yet to cross a Moral Event Horizon strong enough to make fans turn against him. Which, considering that he's killed some of the most sympathetic characters around - painfully, without a chance of fighting back thanks to being telekinetically restrained - says a lot. Ma Petrelli, on the other hand, spent much of the latter half of the first season and the entire second season flirting dangerously close to it, manipulating everyone to meet her own ends and even considering killing her own sons. In the third season, she seems to have finally crossed it by "feeding" one of her loyal and innocent agents to Sylar with absolutely no remorse. This is not a woman to be liked.
- Probably because Zachary Quinto's portrayal of the killer is one of the very few things that kept the show going during one of its many crap eps.
- That said, Heroes tends to gleefully dance directly down the middle of the Event Horizon with most of its major characters. In that sense, it can be taken as a deconstruction of the superhero genre in the same vein as Watchmen.
- Alternatively, one could say that the ineptitude of the writers to construct a coherent over-arc after the first season means that no character could ever cross the event horizon; they'd just step back over it if the plot required them to be good.
- Interestingly, Angela Petrelli seems to have finally backed away from the line, showing that much of her cynicism is because of protecting her sons after their father turned out to be a freaking psycho willing to kill them, and in general she has spent much of the show trying to rectify the mistakes she made up to (and in) Season 1.
- Sylar seems dangerously close to finally crossing it, as, after spending an entire season on a redemption arc for him as he learned to control the hunger and try to be a hero, he decided to kill the woman he was falling for, and has now seemingly become a Card Carrying Villain, no longer making claims about it being natural selection or whatever. Rather than coldly dispatching his victims, he's now killing them almost gleefully, making snarky jokes as he cuts their heads open. Only time will tell how the fans ultimately take it.
- Some will never forgive him for killing Elle. Funny how it works; Sylar kills off cuddly characters who only want to live their life. Then he kills a cold hearted bitch and now people hate him. Of course, it could be that the fact he killed her with little motivation, right after they had sex could make the hatred be a Wall Banger instead of this trope.
- Little motivation? She knew that the Petrellis were not his parents AND, like them, she was trying to manipulate him. Remember his line on the beach, "(Noah) seemed to think you knew something about it" (the parent-identity thing). In fact, Elle flinches when Sylar goes to brush the hair from her eyes, thinking that he's going to "Sylar" her. She knows he has sufficient "motivation".
- An easily overlooked example would be Noah. After years of questionable actions he finally crosses the line when in a flashback he "feeds" an innocent man to a budding Sylar, an act that even Elle finds appalling and resulting in all of Sylar’s later murders.
- Bob, in the episode Cautionary Tales when Noah tells us what he did to Elle, his own daughter. He was a good company man and decided to do their bidding and test the limits of her power - by subjecting her to so much Electric Torture her mind broke and she became the Axe Crazy Psycho Electro we all know. And he did this when she was seven years old. Yeah.
- Emil Danko, a.k.a. The Hunter, has definitely crossed the line as far as I'm concerned. After he and his goons shoot and abduct Daphne, he has Daphne removed from the medical facility, *then* refuses to provide her with further treatment. As a result she develops sepsis, which ultimately kills her. Oh, and he strapped a bomb to Matt Parkman and left him on Capitol Hill - and would have detonated the bomb remotely if Nathan Petrelli hadn't disarmed it in time. And it also looks like he'll be teaming up with Sylar.
- "Teaming up with" by possibly feeding his own men to Sylar as cover.
- Arthur Petrelli crossed the line in the Volume 3 flashback episode Villains, when he ordered the death of his own son, Nathan.
- Power Rangers has a lot of nasty villains, though most are understandably rather cartoonish. If you want utterly depraved, however, look no further than Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue's Queen Bansheera. When her own son, Olympius screws up once too often and ends up trapped in the local equivalent of Hell, she opts to leave him there, and makes this decision while laughing. Later, to complete her One Winged Angel transformation, she casually drains the life from Vypra (whose expression in this scene is positively heartbreaking) and to top it all off, gives Loki the honor of leading a battle, then subsequently mind controls Diabolico into shooting him.
- A season before in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, there was Trakeena. She'd always wanted revenge on the Rangers for destroying her father, but near the end she went completely batshit insane and assaulted the city they defended by using all of her Mooks as suicide bombers.
- The Master of Doctor Who received so much Villain Decay, Badass Decay and Flanderization with repeated subsequent Kick The Dog moments in the original series that he wavered continuously between Magnificent Bastard, Affably Evil, Card Carrying Villain and even Complete Monster on occasion, sometimes in the same episode. Therefore, his reappearance in the new series made it crystal clear exactly which version this was when he casually murders his faithful and loyal assistant Chantho. Then he keeps going past that horizon and never, ever stops, even until his (supposed) death.
- In The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Captain Cook exploits Whizz Kid's obsession with the Psychic Circus and volunteers him to go into the ring, where he gets blasted within a minute. Then, later, when he, his companion Mags, and the Doctor are in the ring together, he orders a special lighting effect to turn her into a slavering, ravenous beast.
- Wyatt from Prison Break establishes his irredeemable bastardry from the get-go when he brutally kills Mahone's son to lure his father out in the open.
- The Shield had always played fast and loose with the moral event horizon concept with Vic Mackey, what with him shooting a fellow cop in the pilot and all. But his decision in the second to last episode to betray his only remaining friend, Ronnie, by turning state's evidence against him and his cold proclamation that he would have no problem whatsoever LYING to Ronnie about his impending arrest, ultimately pushed Vic towards the point of no return for many fans.
- Also of note, Shane Vendrell from The Shield had his own Moral Event Horizon moment when he murdered his best friend Detective Curtis "Lem" Lemansky, to ensure he did not turn against the Strike Team after being busted by IAD. Though the writers later tried to backpeddle on this point of no return, by way of having Shane defend his actions by having Shane successfully own Vic's ass by way of lampshading Vic's own murder of a fellow police officer, for many fans it cemented Shane as the show's main villain for it's final two seasons.
- The trope was carried out in bloodless fashion, in the series finale of The Shield as far as the final fate of resident Draco In Leather Pants, Ronnie Gardocki. Right before his arrest as part of Claudette's Humiliation Conga on Vic Mackey, Ronnie pulls Vic aside and informs him of the final fate of Shane Vendrell. As Ronnie, visibly shocked and crying, expresses his horror and sadness of the news that Shane had murdered his pregnant wife Mara and their son before taking his own life. Then, without any warning, Ronnie turns around and tells Vic that on the bright side, with Shane and Mara (who Ronnie had wanted to spare, whileas Vic wanted to kill her to silence her) dead, they no longer could blackmail them. And when the character is ultimately arrested and hauled off by his former fellow officers several minutes later, Ronnie's screaming declaration that he would have fled town had he known that Vic would screw him over like he did, effectively losing any chance he might have at being given bail, dooming him to the irrevocable damnation that is prison.
- Of course, some fans see Ronnie's ending less as a Moral Event Horizon and more of a Despair Event Horizon, citing the overall loathesomeness of Shane and Mara and the one-two punch of Ronnie being arrested/finding out that Vic betrayed him canceling out his low-key proclamation that the Vendrell family was out of their hair once and for all. Curse you, power of The Woobie!
- In Arrested Development, the mom Lucille Bluth was never a compassionate woman, though occasionally had moments when she genuinely wanted her kids to like her. But the last episode of the series had Michael at a company party and he learned that his son was missing. He turned to bolt out the door and go looking for him, but Lucille stopped him saying that it would be rude to the guests. Michael looked at her disbelievingly, then said, "I've made a huge mistake." and left anyway.
- In Farscape, the Scarran Imperium faced two moral event horizons, both intended to demonstrate that it was truly bad news, and for the most part they worked well: the first was in the third season, when Scorpius explained his backstory — namely the Scarrans' murder of an entire civilian convoy, the rape of Scorpius' mother, and the abusive treatment of Scorpius as a child. The second was in the fourth season, when Aeryn had been abducted by Scarran soldiers and was being held aboard a Scarran research vessel en route to a secret base: during a less-than-routine inspection of the pregnant test subjects, the captain gives kicking the dog a miss and instead uses his heat projection ability to barbecue an unborn child inside the womb because it shows no sign of unique development.
- In Angel, Knox crosses the Moral Event Horizon in a single act, causing Fred to inhale mummy dust that slowly kills her over the course of the episode, turning her into the dark god Illyria.
- Earlier that season, we encounter a restaurant that plans to serve newly turned werewolf Nina as dinner... alive.
- Logically, Lilah trying to make Angel EAT HIS OWN SON should've been a Moral Event Horizon. Except then the show hinted at pulling her back the other way in S4...
- The last episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine has the Female Changeling deal with Cardassian saboteurs by nuking Lakarian City; the resulting death toll is two million. When the Cardassian fleet learns of this, they perform a Heel Face Turn, and begin firing on the Dominion and Breen ships. How does the Female Changeling react to this?
Female Changeling-"I want the Cardassians exterminated."
Weyoun-"Which ones?"
Female Changeling-"All of them. The entire population."
Weyoun-"That may... take some time."
Female Changeling-"Then I suggest you begin at once."
- The organ-stealing Vidiians on Star Trek Voyager are magnificently Squicktastic as a matter of course, but in one episode
, the Vidiians are holding B'Elanna and a Red Shirt captive. Vidiian comes in room. Vidiian takes Red Shirt out of room. Vidiian comes back in room wearing the RedShirt's FACE. Why the hell, you may ask? Because he thought it would make B'Elanna like him more.
- Captain Janeway when she murdered Tuvix.
- The only character to have crossed the line on Battlestar Galactica would have to be Tom Zarek, for ordering the entire Quorum killed for refusing to accept him as the new President of the Colonies. Unless, of course, you believe he crossed the line one episode earlier, for killing Chief Laird with a wrench.
- Recently Boomer after apparently rescueing Ellen from Cavil, then when on Galactica manipulates Tyrol to save her from execution, allowing her escape, she then beats up Athena, has sex with Helo, steals their child Hera and then escapes in raptor (child in airhole-less case) and then while espacing her FTL jump causes a chain reaction which crushes a huge section of the Galactica, effectively cripple the Ship.
- But Boomer has been consistently portrayed as being emotionally crippled from her experience as a sleeper agent to the point that it's hard to hold her entirely culpable for her actions.
- The point is that once she did the above, the audience knew there was no going back for her.
- Admiral Cain crosses the line, and harks back to this trope's previous name when she orders the rape of Galactica's pregnant Sharon copy.
- On the other hand, Caprica Six is a character the show seems bent on portraying sympathetically — she genuinely loved Baltar, saved him from the colony nuke, found his dad a nice new home, pushed for the reform that made the Cylons do their weird shift from trying to exterminate the humans to becoming some kind of weird caretakers of the human race, helped Athena rescue Hera after the escape from New Caprica, fell genuinely in love with Colonel Tigh, and tragically miscarried. It's easy enough to forgive her for engineering the crippling of colonial defenses — the Cylon's motives behind the war weren't entirely unjustified, and we now know that they were being manipulated by Cavil. But there are some viewers who just can't get over the fact that, way back in the miniseries, she reaches down and kills a baby in its stroller, with her bare hands, randomly as she walks by it, without a second thought.
- However, it's also possible that Caprica killed the baby for a reason-she knew the entire planet was about to get nuked to hell, and it's shown in that brief moment of meeting the baby that Caprica seems to feel genuine affection for it, thus rendering the baby's death at her hands a Mercy Kill.
- There's also Tory Foster, who gently talked Cally down from committing suicide/infanticide... only to smack her to the ground, steal her baby, and send her out the airlock to die. Her downfall was almost tame by Battlestar standards, but it's pretty clear the writers saw her as irredeemable from that point on.
- The remaining survivors fought over what to do with Patrick in Dead Set. He was determined to escape by destroying the defenses that kept the zombies out, and some of the housemates wanted to just kill him and be done with it, while others want to just cripple him, and one suggests just letting him go to see what happens.
- Also, when Patrick and Joplin plan to escape, knowing their plan will kill everyone else and will do nothing to help.
- Ari crosses the MEH in NCIS when instead of just shooting Gibbs with a sniper rifle, he shoots Kate dead to make Gibbs very unhappy before he plans to kill him. His half-sister stops him from killing any others in the NCIS team. Yes, his half-sister is Ziva David.
- I Claudius is a series populated by devious conniving bastards who get away with some pretty horrible acts, but one of the worst dog-raping examples is provided by Praetorian Guard captain Macro when his predecessor Sejanus falls out of favor with the Emperor. Macro kicks off a bloody purge of everyone even remotely connected with Sejanus. Rome's streets run red, but the icing on the cake is when he orders the death of Sejanus' (very) young daughter. An officer reminds him that it's unlawful to execute a virgin. His response? "Well, make sure she's not a virgin when you execute her, now GET ON WITH IT!"
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Jesse crosses the Moral Event Horizon when she reveals that she has been deliberately trying to bait Cameron into killing Riley.
- Ben Linus of Lost is already well established as a total bastard, but he may have crossed over to the point of no return having talked Locke out of his imminent suicide, simply in order to get some valuable information, then suddenly strangling him to death and setting it up to look like he had commited suicide after all. What a prick.
- To show how subjective this is, this troper thinks that Jack, the hero crossed it in the finale of season five. His stalkerish obession with Kate finally convinces him to use a bomb in a plan that will very likely kill everyone on the Island in an attempt to undo the crash...which would make nearly everyone in the series completely miserable, but Jack thinks it's justified because it means he just might have a chance with her again. Possibly combined with a Face Heel Turn, though this troper can't really decide exactly when Jack made the turn.
- The staff of the Dollhouse in the titular series crossed the Moral Event Horizon en masse with the revelation of Sierra's backstory, according to many.
- Not surprisingly for a series about criminals with redemption (or inability to obtain it) as a key theme, most of the final season of The Sopranos is one big Moral Event Horizon crossing for most of the main characters, particularly its protagonist Tony. While much of the first half of the season deals with peripheral characters trying to find redemption due to the life they've led, hope is offered for Tony when he is rendered comatose and enters a dream some have suggested is Purgatory (see also: Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory ), and he apparently begins to contemplate the fate of his soul after he dies. This is all rendered moot, however, in "Season 6.5," as characters one by one cross their MEH. Most notably: in the first episode of the half-season, "Soprano Home Movies," Bobby Baccalieri, the closest the series comes to an Innocent while still a mobster, has his first kill. In the episode "Walk Like a Man," Christopher Moltisanti falls off the wagon and kills his AA sponsor, J.T. Dolan, for trying to help him. It is Tony, however, who should be a Complete Monster for all of his other sins, but who has always clung to a semblance of scruples. But he is the one who orders Bobby to kill the brother-in-law, knowing it will be Bobby's first kill, because Bobby gave him a well deserved beating for making off-color remarks about Bobby's wife, Tony's sister Janice. Tony also belittles his father's friend Hesh for gingerly trying to collect on gambling debts Tony actually owes him, curb-stomps a rival's associate and orders his rival Phil Leotardo murdered in front of his infant grandchildren. Even his "scruples," as described to Dr. Melfi, are revealed, in the episode "The Second Coming," to be symptoms of his complete sociopathy. Perhaps worst of all, however, is how Tony kills his symbolic son Christopher - moments into the episode "Kennedy and Heidi," which immediately follows "Walk Like a Man" - in cold blood and is later seen not just remorseless about his act, but actually gleeful about it. This sole act, as justified as it may have been in context, may very well have been the main reason why the fans were so outraged at Tony, a character they had otherwise followed and loved for eight years, as to shock creator David Chase, not with their anger at his apparent end (the final moments of the final episode imply - but do not state outright - Tony is murdered in front of his wife and son), but at their "blood lust ... that they wanted his blood all over the wall."
- In 24, Nina Myers crossed the Moral Event Horizon by murdering Teri Bauer at the end of the first season.
- And Tony Almieda crossed it when he killed Larry Moss and stole a canister of the bioweapon.
- The Hands of Blue Men on Firefly seem to be just another pair of agents wanting their Waif Prophet back. Then in the episode "Ariel," they pull out the Instruments, and kill everyone within an Alliance detention center in a matter of seconds by making them shed Tears Of Blood in pure Nightmare Fuel fashion...just for merely talking to her.
- In an odd example, in the American version of The Office Michael Scott betrays Dwight when an idea blows up in his face and later asks for all of the credit and none of the blame when it turns out that the idea was in fact a good one. After that scene, he blatantly sells out his 'friend' to the higher ups. Unfortunately enough, this is probably Truth In Television as many bosses do indeed more or less force subordinates to fall on their own swords to avoid censure.
- Kanan, a one-episode villain on Merlin, crosses this in his first scene the first scene of the episode, in which he steals all of a village's food supplies, hits Merlin's mother when she tries to stop him, then ''shoots' a man who tries to help her.
- And in an earlier episode, Edwin, when he threatens to turn Merlin in (noting that he'd most likely be burned at the stake), just to make Gaius keep quiet. And this is despite the fact that he seemed to have befriended Merlin.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons And Dragons provides a few examples of this trope:
- Dragonlance has Lord Soth. Soooo Lord Soth. Killed his first wife and their newborn son, because he thought the freakish appearance of the son was proof that the wife had slept around with Things That Should Not Be. He escapes from the near-certain execution that was supposed to follow. Then, after marrying his own mistress (did we forget to mention that Soth is supposed to be a Paladin?) he was told the way to redemption was to stop a mass cataclysm that would blow up much of the continent, killing millions. He gets the Mac Guffin, and is ready to set out to use it. Then, he hears rumors that his second wife is sleeping around. He returns home to his keep, just as the disaster begins. A fallen chandelier starts a fire, and Soth just watches as his wife and newborn son are burned to death in the flames. Ain't no coming back from that crossing of the Moral Event Horizon.
- Heck, it's bad enough to have you eventually condemned to the demiplane of dread...
- Soth's wife having a mutant baby was a retcon- in the original version, the marriage was political, cold and childless. When Soth fell in love with the elf maiden who became his second wife, he sent messages back to his seneschal to have him slit his first wife's throat and dump her in the moat. His final act was actually prompted by the machinations of his wife's fellow priestesses, who had their own twisted slant on Soth's mission of salvation. He got sentenced to Ravenloft after a complex series of events that culminated in his betrayal of an evil human female warrior, in hopes of raising her as a Death Knight like himself to try and put an end to his loneliness.
- This is somewhat mitigated in the War of Souls, where he refuses to lead the Dark Queen's armies. It's debatable whether he really can be said to have atoned, but it still puts him back into a sympathetic light.
- Happened to both Karrnath (who were using ghouls and zombies as their main troops throughout the entire war) and the hard-line faction of the Church of the Silver Flame, in Eberron. Both of them extended Kill It With Fire to civilians; Karrnath burned down the city of Shadukar so that the troops of the Silver Flame couldn't pursue because they were too busy rescuing the victims, and then Thrane just had to go and do the exact same thing without the retreat. He Who Fights Monsters indeed. Of course, most everyone felt the same way the reader does, and Thrane was informed that if any of their forces used fire in that way again, no matter how divinely sanctioned they thought it was, the entire war would be put on hold so that everyone and their auntie could torch Thrane to its foundations.
- Name any Dark Lord in the Ravenloft setting. From Strahd who murdered his brother for the love of a woman, Azalin Rex who killed his son for being 'weak', Vlad Darkov who is based off Vlad Tepes (Strahd is based off another aspect of Tepes), to a doctor who gleefully fuses people and animals together. They are known as 'Dark Lords' for a damn good reason.
- In Dreams of the First Age for Exalted, finding out that Desus is nowhere near the hero he claims to be is par for the course of such a decadent time period. Finding out that his legendary victory over the behemoth Oliphem actually involved sucker-punching an innocent being while under a truce flag? Meh. Finding out that he beat his wife so hard she miscarried? Now we're starting to get appalled. Finding out that he brainwashed her into believing it was all her fault? So hard that she's literally forced to kill people, Manchurian Candidate style, if they try to tell her what really happened? And that he's done this repeatedly? OK, now we're hoping he's a ghost so we can kill him all over again.
- Of course, this may well be possible. The Silver Prince / Bodhisattva Anointed By Dark Water, one of the Deathlords ( about what the name implies ), bears a lot of similarities to Desus. So, it could be that after being killed, Desus sold out to beings that want to destroy all existence.
- The Moral Event Horizon is subverted in Warhammer 40000. The Imperium, Tau, and Eldar commit unbelievable atrocities on an hourly basis (such as destroying planets inhabited by billions of innocent people to stop the three people on the planet who aren't innocent), yet... they're still, if not sympathetic, then at least grudgingly supportable.
- However, your average Space Marine (depending on the Chapter) or Imperial Guardsman is not a Complete Monster, and can often be genuinely heroic and admirable. Taking the example of the Imperium, it's the Administratum, the Ecclesiarchy, the Inquisition etc. etc. that regularly cross the Moral Event Horizon. For example, one famous Callidius assassin (a mostly female organization that uses chemicals to shapeshift) was sent to ensure a potentially rebellious lord stayed loyal by "dispatching" the lord's infant child. Simply killing the baby in its crib wasn't deemed enough of a lesson; acting on her official orders, she swallowed the baby whole and then escaped to complete the process of digesting it alive.
- Not subverted, however, by the Dark Eldar. They literally live on Squick and are fully capable of hanging you on about half a dozen hooks, in separate pieces, and keep you alive in the process. For giggles. Until they get bored, eat your soul, and raid another planet for more playthings.
- Well, when you're opposed by forces that employ people who literally call themselves the Violators and fight forces that would consider burning an entire world to the ground to snort the ashes a pleasurable past time it becomes a little difficult to compete for the title of most villainous.
- Several major characters in the Horus Heresy novel series cross this line without even realising there was a line. Others do such while whistling a jaunty tune.
- Despite all of the atrocities committed by Horus during the Horus Heresy, the Emperor never lost hope in his redemption even while Horus was tearing him to shreds. Then a lone Adeptus Custodian charged Horus in a futile attempt to protect the Emperor, and Horus telekinetically flayed him alive without a second thought. In the Emperor's eyes, Horus had finally crossed the Horizon with this act of cold-blooded murder. Horus didn't last long after that.
- That was a guardsman, show some respect for Ollanius Pius
Fan Fiction
- Ms. Maia the guard of the Great Valley in the The Land Before Time fan fiction Twilight Valley is not very nice to begin with, but she starts crossing when beats Strut into unconsciousness even after he's cleared of his crime. She's fully crossed over when she turns traitor to the Great Valley and severely beats Ducky and Chomper.
- In Christian Humber Reloaded, the protagonist kills 6,000,000 people at a Super Bowl. And that's not his worst act.
- Thousand Shinji has Gendo do this as part of making Neon Genesis Evangelion Get Worse. If he did not cross it when he made Hikari die piloting the possessed Unit 03 and Toji a quadriplegic, he certainly did after we learn that all of the mothers of the children at Shinji's school are kept in preparation for Eva usage.
- Following the example set in Thousand Shinji, the whole of New Chaos in The Open Door takes several flying leaps over this line throughout the story despite being billed as the protagonists. This, coupled with the God Mode Sue status of pretty much every POV character and the overuse of I Did What I Had to Do to excuse New Chaos's actions is one of the main reasons many people despise this fic despite its popularity in other circles.
- Keep in mind, this is frickin' Chaos we're talking about, Moral Event Horizon personified. Even now, New Chaos is still a step up from their original counterparts...
- Orochimaru's a pretty nasty piece of work in canon, but in the Peggy Sue fic Here and Now
he tries to extract the nonexistant time-travel jutsu from Naruto by murdering a farmer's family one at a time while the farmer begs for Naruto to give him the information.
- Of course his actions in The Melt
are equally deplorable. During the Sand/Sound invasion of Konoha, he has The Hokage's family and servents, who had adopted Naruto when he was a baby, murdered and cruxified on the outside wall of their own house. This includes a 12 year old Konohamaru, the Otogakure symbol drawn in blood above him.
- His subordinate and Right Hand Man Kabuto recently crossed the moral event horizon in [1]
when he rapes On Ji, a 13 year old girl, when he came over to visit her and her parents. Her parents crossed it even more since they allowed it to happen, like it was some sort of a tradition for a young woman to be deflowered by her fiancee before their wedding.
Video Games
Web Comics
- In Order Of The Stick, Xykon and the concluding events of Start of Darkness. In the webcomic Xykon was thoroughly evil and malicious but always had enough style and charm to come off as more of a Magnificent Bastard. In ''Start of Darkness' he's not even slightly sympathetic. He proves countless times that he's a sadistic sociopath, so far beyond the Moral Event Horizon you can't see him with a telescope.
- According to Rich in the foreword, it was to stop readers from turning his main villain into a sympathetic villain for reasons like "He had a rough childhood!" or "Look! He petted that puppy and didn't even set it on fire!" As a result, he made a conscious effort to not show Xykon as remotely symathetic.
- Daimyo Kubota arguably did this by killing Therkla.
- Vaarsuvius may have done so by killing a dragon threatening his/her/its family, then resurrecting its head, then killing any dragons related to it, in the process killing a quarter of al the black dragons in the world. Genocide tends to push people way over the horizion.
- Many Goblins fans agree that the dwarven paladin Kore crossed the line when, just a few strips after his introduction, he killed an innocent child whose only fault was having spent time with a band of ogres and orcs and as the adoptive son of an orc merchant, just because there was a chance he would become evil as a result. He didn't lose his Paladin status though, probably because his god crossed the line long ago. The strip is a Deconstruction of many D&D tropes, including Always Chaotic Evil.
- We the readers have never been given any reason to believe that Kore is now or ever was a paladin. All we have to go on are the claims of other characters that he somehow has a paladin's status, when they call him "Kore the paladin"; but we've never seen him use any paladin powers. Even when he uses Speak with Dead to interrogate the dead goblin shaman, he doesn't pray to cast a spell but uses a magical powder on her corpse. Compare with Big Ears, the goblin paladin, who is clearly Lawful Good and honorable.
- Various editions of D&D have introduced concepts and classes like the anti-paladin or the Blackguard, for fallen former paladins. So it's not impossible that Kore used to be a paladin, but veered off into Knight Templar territory and is now simply insane.
- Word Of God tells us that he is definitely and uncategorically a Paladin. One of the biggest Epileptic Trees in the comic's WMG is working out how his paladin status and apparently Evil deeds can coexist.
- It's debated on the forums, but Syphile from Drowtales started as a Jerkass with slight hints of Jerk With A Heart Of Gold but then she casually killed Fuzzy, a small kitten who was the only friend her 10-years old sister Ariel had known in her entire life, just to punish Ariel for some lost book. Though later chapters fleshed her out as having been horribly abused herself and gave her an attempt at redemption, she seems to have fallen back across the horizon after she agrees to try to kill Quain'tana for the Sharen.
- Better examples from within the comic are Snadhya'runes, Sarv'swati and Zala'ess Vel'Sharen who set up a Xanatos Gambit that plunged the entire city (including civilians, which is against the clan warfare rules) into a horrible war with the goal of committing matricide and set up Sillice as the fall guy for it.
- Rikshakar also crossed the horizon the second time he kidnapped Ariel and tried to rape her, and Ariel herself realized that he was sick in the head from being used as a weapon his whole life. He didn't survive too long after that.
- Lord Horribus from Sluggy Freelance crossed this line for many readers when he killed Alt-Zoe, even though, unlike the many other people he's killed, this was an accident.
- Dr. Schlock has slowly descended down from anti-hero to anti-villain to villain, before finally entering the horizon with his murder of Feng.
- In Scary Go Round, former Designated Protagonist Rachel Dukakis-Monteforte's psychopathic jealousy of universally popular heroine Shelley Winters finally drives her to arrange Shelley's death via biker gang. The author confirms her crossing of the M.O.E. by having her sell her soul to the devil and skip town. When she returns a few years later, it's only to have a bridge dropped on her.
- Whether Bloody Mary has crossed into the horizon is a popular discussion for Flipside forumites. On the one hand, she has eaten people alive, going out of her way to prolong their suffering, and was seen chewing on a (dead) child's leg at one point. On the other hand, she was a naive 16 year girl whose body was reconstructed into a nigh indestructible machine that runs on cannibalism, which she did to her parents before even becoming conscious, was attacked by her love interest shortly thereafter, who she accidentally killed, before finally being given a Hannibal Lecture by the person responsible for her fate.
- The Thin Man, on the other hand, for the creation of Bloody Mary as one of many, deep within the horizon already.
- Dominic Deegan's creator was so incensed by fans' adulation of Sigfried Damaske von Callan that he retconned him as being a worse and worse fellow. Already a bully, "Siggy" was given Fantastic Racism in the worst way against his Magical Native American orcs, with the explanation being that it's In The Blood (his father is called "The Butcher" by said Orcs). When sleeping with his best friend's girl didn't get the fandom to hate him enough, he decided to have him hang a half-dozen Orcs...men, women, and children...as a birthday gift for his Complete Monster father. It didn't work quite the way he planned it, though...
- Well, see, Mookie (the creator) had been running a very long-running slow redemption
for Sigfried. One of those "one step forward one step back " deals. So the whole thing came across, well, like Mookie tried an Authors Saving Throw and rolled a 1.
- A better example of this trope in the comic is the Infernomancer attacking a group of students. Although this was not the first time the Infernomancer had done horrible things, even the author says in a commentary from Volume 2 of the comic "The Infernomancer stopped being a 'cool villain' for me when I revealed that he's the kind of jerk who would attack a school."
- In Mr Death's now finished Something!, largely a retelling of Mega Man X 4 and Mega Man X 5, Double, who had been mainly the butt of jokes for being fat, ended up crossing the line in the eyes of the comic's readership when it was revealed he was the one who sent Iris to her Plotline Death.
- 8-Bit Theater has these actions played constantly for laughs, usually by Black Mage's hands. Thief and Sarda occasionally have their moments.
- In episode 1126
, Black Mage finally crossed the line in Fighter's eyes.
- And 1127
might have done it for everyone reading the comic.
Web Original
- Many readers of Tales Of MU treated "Pitchy", the Clingy Mac Guffin pitchfork, as a non-living Draco In Leather Pants until it possessed the narrator and ordered up some demon chow.
- When Cody Jenson of Version One of Survival Of The Fittest raped and then murdered Madelaine Shirohara by ripping out her jugular with his teeth, and then accidentally murder Amanda Jones while trying to kill Sidney Crosby, the entire board rallied behind Adam Dodd, Amanda's boyfriend and the only survivor of the Intrepid Six, just because they wanted to see Cody die horribly.
- In the original forum game Cicatriz
, Monte T'Ai took Tsoko's girlfriend hostage, just so he could kill her in front of him, then turned their old friend Lacerante into a killing machine that was fully sentient but unable to stop her machinery.
- The Fallout series at large for the player as opposed to a character. The most prominent example: Megaton.
- The Order, the main antagonistic force of lonelygirl15, lost any hope of sympathy the moment they gunned down Drew Avery in cold blood.
- In Decades Of Darkness, some of the methods the *US use to suppress rebels in Mexico, British Columbia and Venezuela (and other places too), like the fire squads which destroy crops to starve the rebels into submission, making it obvious that this "USA" has turned into an Evil Empire.
- In the Deus Ex Machina series every big bad has one of these. Plague has several. It starts when Plague buries John alive for several days and tortures Michael into making him a supersuit. It continues when Plague then shoots John in the head and making him fall off of a waterfall. Then he tortures Michael into making him a supersuit again to the point that he can't speak or even walk by himself. Then Patrick comes along. He kills Michael and forces John to watch, then he deliberately weakens earth's defenses, leaving them open to covenant attack, making every sacrifice that John has ever made to save the city entirely meaningless.
Western Animation
- Avatar The Last Airbender's Big Bad Fire Lord Ozai was always an unsympathetic character, and every revelation only made him worse. Some would argue that he crossed the Moral Event Horizon in the episode The Storm, which showed how Zuko got his scars (Not an accident). Others might pick later moments, such as when he actively starts trying to kill his son, but if not before then, fans point to the Evil Plan in the Grand Finale: literally burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground with fire.
- The Evil Plan example is every bit as much Azula's crossing as it was her idea to begin with.
- Arguably, Fire Lord Azulon crosses this in his one and only appearance in the series - in a flashback no less - when he orders that Ozai kill Zuko so that Ozai can learn the pain of losing a firstborn son. While it's a twisted display of loyalty to Iroh, it's also horrifying that someone would order the death of his ten-year-old grandson just to teach his son a lesson.
- In Invader Zim, the episode Hobo-13 is seemingly an episode dedicated to Zim crossing the line by putting him as the leader of a squad for an obstacle course. He then proceeds to progress through the course by sacrificing his squadmates needlessly, either by accident or purposely using them as bait or literal stepping stones. When he reaches the gates at the end with his last team member, Zim uses his last man as a battering ram to open the gate. The drill sergeant in charge in response chooses to fail Zim for his Neidermeyer-like tendencies.
- Danny Phantom played it oddly straight with Danny's alternate future. The whole "Dark Danny creation" scene was horrific and it horrified even Vlad, which really says something. Also see Dark Danny's first appearance where he apparently kills multiple people on screen. Psycho For Hire, indeed.
- South Park's Eric Cartman crossed the line in the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die" after getting the title kid's parents killed, making them into chili and feeding it to him. Given the nature of South Park, most viewers consider this either a case of Crosses The Line Twice or a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for Cartman. Notable in being the only time that Cartman doesn't get his comeuppance.
- On average, after season 5, Cartman seems to commit one Moral Event Horizon per season. Recent examples include trying to exterminate the Jews using The Passion of the Christ to manipulate people, trying to cause the deaths of all non-gingers (in a rather nasty way) in season 9, trying to kill his mother because she ins't bossed around anymore in season 10, infecting Kyle with HIV in season 12, and tricking Professor Chaos into attempting the destruction of a hospital in order to unmask a rival hero so he could PRETEND to be a hero.
- In Transformers:Beast Machines, Silverbolt feels he's crossed the Moral Event Horizon after Megatron reformats him into a gleefully sadistic killer and he likes it.
- Return of the Joker gives the Clown Prince of Crime a rather infamous line-crossing moment: basically, he kidnapped Robin, tortured and mindraped him for six weeks, mutilated him, "fixed" him up as Joker Jr., and invited Batman over to see his work in detail (which included home video of the boy's torture labeled as "Our Family Memories"). He then reveals that he's learned Batman's secret identity, mocks him for it (and for not having the balls to kill him after all this), and knifes him before he tosses "J.J." a spear gun to finish him off with.
- In early The Simpsons episode, "Crepes of Wrath," Bart is treated like a slave by two mean winemakers in France. At first, this is amusing as we see Bart get what's coming to him for his brattiness. However, it fades when you see Bart sleeping with nothing so much as a blanket after reading a letter from his mother as the abuse he is suffering begins to sink in. However, when the winemakers finally force Bart to drink wine doctored with antifreeze, putting him in real danger of being killed or blinded, the louts sail over the moral line and all your sympathy goes to the boy, which makes his eventual escape and revenge all so sweet.
- In Kung Fu Panda, when Tai Lung fights his de facto foster father while wailing about how all he wanted was to have Shifu be proud of him and finally extracts an apology from him. When Tai Lung rejects that apology and still demands the Dragon Scroll and is about to murder his father for it, many fans believe he crosses a moral point of no return and deserves the beat down Po is about to give him.
- And even more fans believe that he didn't deserve what he got. Training for his entire life, enduring all kinds of hardships, given the illusion of becoming the Dragon Warrior only to be denied his dream, being imprisoned for 20 YEARS for daring to try to grab it, put in a pit in FULL BODY RESTRAINT, having to endure the taunts of cruel prison guards, and expecting to forgive all of that with a simple apology!? And then to be defeated in such a humiliating fashion by a fat panda... It's no wonder a lot of people feel Sympathy for the Snow Leopard.
- In Gargoyles, David Xanatos has the charisma to remain somewhat sympathetic for a long while. However, in the second season's second episode he systematically manipulates Darek Maza's transformation into a mutant and makes it look as if the Gargoyles were responsible for the destruction of the only cure. Simultaneously, he makes himself look like a punching bag whom the heroes hate just because they're prejudiced against him. The events turn Darek into a revenge-driven living weapon whose only reason of existence is to hunt down the Gargoyles.
- Norman "Green Goblin" Osborn in Spectacular Spiderman. Not only does he attempt a horrific murder to Doctor Octavious (Which turns him into Doc Ock) and transform Mark Allan into Molten Man against his will, ruining his life, but he truly crosses the line when he reveals that he tried to frame HIS OWN SON, and BROKE HIS LEG to do so.
- Arguably, Rusty Venture of The Venture Brothers specializes in this while his bodyguard/Dragon Brock Sampson handles the Crowning Moments Of Awesome of the series. Still, seeing that Rusty is a figure whose patheticness is played for laughs, most of his actions are meant as humorous than anything.
- Pathetic or not, Doc crossed the moral horizon as early as episode four, when it's revealed that he built a machine that is powered by parts harvested from an orphan. He crosses it again in season two when he tries to disconnect the Hank and Dean clones from life support so he can make them into
FrankenVenturesteins and sell them to the army (luckily Brock stops him.) He arguably makes an attempt at going back the other way in season 3, when he's given a device of near-infinte power, but does the right thing and chooses not to use it.
- The fact that it's all played for laughs prevents it from really falling into this trope.
- Note, however, that there are some pretty straight examples of the trope in this series. Phantom Limb appears at first to be an annoying but not-too-evil Punch Clock Villain before he has the Monarch's prison buddies released just so he can hunt them down like animals; he only gets worse from there. Many fans felt that the Monarch himself (despite being a posterboy Villain Protagonist) crossed it when he spent a full episode torturing a hooker he'd hired; Word Of God notes that said fans seem to be ignoring the fact that the Monarch regularly kills his own henchmen for incredibly frivolous reasons.
- In Happy Feet, the Emporer Penguin Elder crosses the line when he starts senselessly
accusing Mumble for causing their food difficulties with his dancing. Specifically, when Ramon, an Adelie Penguin who half his size tries to give his opinion, the Elder hits him to shut him up.
- To be fair, they were two different characters. The accusing Elder actually seemed to be trying to quell that from happening, again - stepping in between the two, as he did.
- Shockwave in Transformers Animated was generally though of as being really cool by much of the fandom-until he crossed the moral event horizon. How? Trapping Blurr, who had run literally across the galaxy to warn the Autobots about the spy in their ranks, and crushing him into a small cube, which he then had chucked into a garbage disposal chute. Yes, this means he is now seen as more evil than Megatron.
- Oddly enough, he seems to have regained both a lot of his fans by this point and also a tendency to be paired with Blurr in Slash Fic.
- Sentinel Prime, already a Jerk Ass, did this when he told his long-lost friend Blackarachnia that she was better off dead than technoorganic and then tried to kill her himself. Did we mention he's now the de facto leader of the Autobots?
- For the record, Blackarachnia is a Fallen Hero Evilutionary Biologist, so she's obviously not the bot Sentinel once knew. What truly makes Sentinel cross the line is that he made this accusation before he learned any of this.
- Kevin from Ed Edd N Eddy crossed the Moral Event Horizon in the episode "Your Edd Here". How? He blackmails Eddy with revealing his middle name (Skipper), and robs him, and savagely humiliates him. So what does he do? He reveals Eddy's name to all the cul-del-sac kids, who all mock Eddy for it, as Kevin just laughs at him and goes off. Kevin gets no comeuppance for this action, just in case the viewer did not already hate his guts.
- It's a commonality for everyone else save for The Eds to have Karma Houdini moments merely because Eddy represents the classic Ambition Is Evil stereotype.
- An example from The Incredibles: main villain Syndrome is given a sympathetic history as Mr. Incredible's former number one fan, cruelly (in his eyes) rejected by his hero. However, he is given at least two solid moments of crossing the Moral Event Horizon: 1) When Mr. Incredible accesses the files of Operation Kronos and reveals that Syndrome has been exterminating supers with his machines for years, just so he could finally capture Mr. Incredible; 2) He fires upon and destroys the plane approaching Nomanisan Island, fully aware that Mr. Incredible's wife and children are on board. And this is before his final, last-ditch plan, which involves kidnapping baby Jack-Jack and raising him to hate his own family. All this so that Syndrome thoroughly deserves being sucked into a jet engine at the end of the movie.
- Clay Puppington crosses the line in part two of "Nature". Late at night and thoroughly drunk on a hunting trip, he accidentally shoots his son Orel in the leg. He rips Orel's lucky shirt (which he's wearing) for a makeshift bandage and chugs the rubbing alcohol rather than sterilizing the wound. Late the next morning, he wakes up and asks for Orel's sleeping bag to cover his head. Around sunset that day, he finally wakes up, denies responsibility for Orel's injury and, upon seeing a dead bear right next to the remains of their campfire, his biggest concern is whether Orel was the one who killed it so Clay could be proud of him (since getting Orel to kill something was the point of the hunting trip). Only after he receives his answer did Clay agree to take Orel to see a doctor— specifically one who would "do his job and keep his mouth shut".
- Bender from Futurama crosses the Moral Event Horizon from Jerk With A Heart Of Gold to Complete Monster in the episode "A Pharaoh to Remember" when he encourages the guards to whip his friends. Then he orders them and other slaves to build a statue to himself regardless of how many people die doing so. In fact, when they have to destroy the statue to survive, Bender is distraught, but Leela consoles him with the knowledge that his reign of terror will be remembered longer than any statue. And that makes him happy.
- Donovan Bell from Road Rovers crossed it in his only episode appearance where he stole dogs from people to sell to General Parvo so Parvo could mutate the dogs. Later on, he kidnaps one owner when she finds out about Sport.
- Most Disney villains are goofy, somewhat quirky people. Not Claude Frollo. If you didn't wish him to die when he almost dropped a baby in a well, you certainly did when he ordered those gypsies' houses burned. With them inside.
- They weren't gypsies. He just thought they might have been sheltering gypsies because they offered hospitality to travelers. Then he orders Phoebus to be killed for helping them escape.
- Pixar's vilest villain to date is without a doubt Charles Muntz of Up. He attempts to brutally murder and enslave old people, children, endangered animals, and dogs on numerous occasions, but his evilest action by far is when he burns down Carl's house. And he had no practical reason to do so, either, except that he just enjoys being that much of a dick.
- Pretty much all of Series 3 of ReBoot is Megabyte's horizon. He tortures his own sister into being a weapon (and is quite proud that he did it), wages psychological war against a young boy, orders his two comic relief minions to "take point" in the next battle (i.e. get shot to death)... and deliberately causes the nullification of sectors, then forces the survivors to be infected, and kills anyone who speaks out. And that's in just four episodes.
Other
- It's Older Than Dirt. According to Buddhism text, one can archive enlightment as long as he doesn't commit one of the worst sins (kill own parent, kill Arahanta, cause harm to buddha). Crossing the Moral Event Horizon dooms the soul for millenia in hell even if one truly has Heel Face Turn, he will alway haubted by the guilt and prevent him from enlightment. The text has remark on King Ajatashatru
whose Buddha said that he would have attained a degree of enlightenment, if only he hadn't commit patricide.
- When people found out that PETA killed animals sent to their pound this seemed like hypocrisy (at best). When it was revealed that members of PETA accepted the animals from owners who could no longer take care of said pets, promised them that they would find their pets a good home, and then BLUDGEONED THEM TO DEATH ONE BLOCK LATER they lost any kind of sympathy.
There are a hell of a lot more, too...
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