Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Raped The Dog; Rape The Dog 
Once he crosses that red line, there's no turning back.
This [Sun article] is a story about Ian Huntley practising witchcraft in his prison cell. And when I read that, I thought, "What is the point of that story", right? 'Cos I, like most of us here, made my mind up about Ian Huntley when he killed those children .
An "event horizon" is the boundary around a black hole which once crossed, there is no escape. The Moral Event Horizon is the metaphorical embodiment of this concept on a good/evil axis. Once a character reaches the event horizon, any lingering hope that the villain can be redeemed from his evil, that he may have some sort of Freudian Excuse are dashed to bits like so many rocks against the shoreline. They. Are. Evil. Period. They felt no remorse for what they did. From this point on the tone of the character has changed, often along with the story itself. To the question "can they possibly be redeemed after having engaged in such a monstrous act?" The answer is a resounding no.
A character may be evil, but if their actions are supported by their past history they can't pass the horizon because they do it every day. An Evil Overlord named "The Conqueror" sends an army off to conquer a city... well duh! An assassin killing a Red Shirt is to be expected, each kill is a guard against Informed Ability. A million people died? That's just a statistic. A guy wants to take over the world? But of course! It's a fantasy movie. The truth is, nearly every story has an antagonist with a chance to Kick The Dog.
What makes this trope different is that it breaks apart that realm of comfortable villainy. Doing so demonstrates that this evil character was not following some sort of personal professional code, that something about them is now lost. A Noble Demon ceases to be noble. The Jerkass becomes a total bastard. The Gentleman Thief loses his gentlemanliness, the Classy Cat Burglar her class, and Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds drops the Woobie part. It establishes that there is no line that this villain will not cross- and before we thought there were lines.
Note that where exactly this point is defined is dependent internally on the values exhibited by a work. A more down to earth work featuring a Well Done Son Guy and a Noble Bigot will have its morality torched by a cruel father withholding what last bit of love he may have had in his heart. By contrast, a more epic work with people dying every other scene requires something quite genocidal and senseless to reach into this territory.
A good litmus test is that if you still think a villain potentially redeemable, they have not yet crossed the horizon. If you feel that the event is merely more evidence they are an Anti Villain, they have not crossed the horizon. That doesn't mean we still don't enjoy them as a villain, because sometimes Evil Is Cool and it makes for the best foes to do battle with the hero. But still, beware of Draco In Leather Pants, who has fans that will try and justify every evil action they do.
Now this is a complicated trope, one that is likely to not be portrayed quite the same way from story to story. Because of this complexity there might still be some examples of characters who have legitimately crossed the line and are eventually redeemed somewhere down the line. But in these rare cases the method of redemption has to be an equally dramatic action, usually being that Redemption Equals Death.
If it is not acknowledged as evil and the audience feels that it should have been, then that is not a moral event horizon but would fall under Moral Dissonance. Likewise, this trope cannot be played for laughs (except in parodies of famous uses of this trope) and the status quo can never truly go back to the way it was before.
The polar opposite is being a Designated Hero, where your actions, no matter how abhorrent, are all treated as entirely right and justified by the plotline.
Not to be confused with Event Horizon, a scary film.
Contrast with Even Evil Has Standards.
Examples
Spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk.
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- 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. Particularly when we learn Gambino's reason for it immediately before Guts kills him in self-defense — he called Guts "disgusting" and felt that he "can't be raised to be loyal like a dog," since Gambino blamed the kid for the death of his lover Sys from the plague.
- 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.
- 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.
- How about by having Griffith fuse the mortal and supernatural worlds together by means of the Skull Knight's dimension warping attack, and thus unleash Hell on Earth?
- 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.
- Shion killing Satoko in the Meakashi-hen arc of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. Even she admits that she's pretty much a Complete Monster at that point. Which is, in an odd way, why she decides to add two more corpses to the pile.
- 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.
- Well, to be fair, it wasn't exactly unprovoked. That class had just tried to kill him by throwing him out of a window
- 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.
- Debatable, since her making a clone of Kurono doesn't explicitly hurt anyone (except maybe the clone), and Old Man died happy.
- Old Man died an horrible death, and despite being old and despite hallucinating about his lost wife before losing consciousness (not that he would have remembered that, if he was revived, anyway), he never ever said he was content to give up living. Unlike Sakata (who clearly asked NOT to be revived, should he die in a mission), Old Man never even thought about wanting to end it: he was a man full of energy and happy to be alive. On a side note, the Kurono "clone" is so traumatized that, when Reika confesses, that he's very close to killing her in retaliation (he doesn't, but he's still very shocked).
- Perhaps Nakago of Fushigi Yuugi had crossed lots of these before and throughout the series, but the most jarring one is when Suboshi kills Tamahome's entire family, most of whom were children barely the age of ten, in what he believes is an act of revenge for his very much alive twin brother Amiboshi. It hurts even more when you realize that Tamahome had arrived just in time for his favorite, youngest sibling Yuiren to die in his arms, and that the second child Chuuei had tried to protect his siblings.
- In One Piece, World Government, in order to try to find Gold Roger's son, decided to kill every child and pregnant women during the time of Roger's death, so they can prevent a threat from happening. Talk about taking In The Blood very seriously.
- We also have the World Nobles, a group of arrogant, snobbish people who believe themselves to be better than anyone else because they came from the line of the people who made the World Government. They could literally get away with murder, slavery, abusing and shooting bystanders (including injured ones) just because of that. The first two World Nobles are seen sneering at a slave who tried to escape and was badly injured and kicking him and shooting him several times. Then one of them commented how his captain collection was now ruined and the other said that they wanted to buy a child slave next. The third one was seen riding a man and kicking him the head for not going fast enough. When a doctor and a nurse were trying to get to the hospital to bring in an injured man when they should be bowing to him, the World Noble simply kicked the injured man to the ground. And when he saw that the nurse was quite pretty, he promptly named her his newest wife and when her fiancee stood up to him, he shot him and dragged the nurse away.
- In Naruto, it's debatable whether Sasuke Uchiha has crossed this. He killed Karin when Danzo took her hostage, claiming that she was an encumbrance. However, give his status as the author favorite, some of the more cynical fans won't believe he'll ever be iredeemable.
Film
- 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.
- 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.
- To expand on the above, Vidal was interrogating a pair of civilians caught near his home, who claim to be simply out hunting rabbits. Vidal does not believe them, and suspects them of being rebels. He then kills them both, as described above. When he opens their bag and discovers that they were innocent rabbit hunters, he simply tells his men to search suspects better.
- John Wayne, in The Searchers ("Stand aside, Martin.") Words fail me...
- 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 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!)
- And again parodied in an episode of Eek The Cat based on the movie, when Eek's girlfriend Annabell raises the lid on a pot of boiling water on the stove. After Annabell screams we discover it is indeed a rabbit, except he's just taking a hot bath and demands privacy.
- For some viewers, Alex sacrifices any claim to sympathy earlier in the film, when she blows off a date with an unmarried guy to pursue the married Dan.
- Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption is cold and corrupt, but not generally unreasonable. 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.
- 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.
- Childkiller and implied child molester — a really good actor.
- I want to escape, to escape from myself! But it's impossible. I can't escape, I have to obey it. I have to run, run... endless streets. I want to escape, to get away! And I'm pursued by ghosts. Ghosts of mothers and of those children... they never leave me. They are always there... always, always, always!
- 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?"
- In There Will Be Blood Daniel is never portrayed as a particularly good guy, coming off even to his financial backers as being cold and brutal, to the point that when his son is deafened by an oil rig explosion, Daniel has him sent away to as not to interfere with business. It's not until the end of the film that he crosses the line, when- as his son tries to make amends so their family isn't irrevocably split, Daniel brutally and cruelly tells him I Have No Son — for no other reason than to spitefully make the split irrevocable.
- 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).
- The scene made it into the novelization of the movie, however. And the Marshall's son grew up with a strong sense of discipline, and made sure it got instilled in all his kids. So Buford just made life hell for all his descendants in general, and Biff in particular.
- 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 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 the character you're playing dead, you know he's passed the Moral Event Horizon.
- Colin Farrell's character in Pride & Glory was initially seen as corrupt and shady but hardly evil and sinister until he threatens to scald an infant with a hot iron to force the infant's family to cooperate. At that point on he is seen as a true villain largely.
- In the Daredevil film, Psycho For Hire Bullseye, who was not particularly likable when introduced, crosses this line when he kills an old woman who was talking to him, because he found her annoying.
- 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- even the brutal opening attack on the town doesn't keep him from being allowed to come back in later movies as a good guy. By contrast, the 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.
- The destruction of the planet Vulcan and most of its 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.
- What really drags this past the horizon is that they destroy Vulcan in response to something that technically hadn't happened yet—they travel back in time in pursuit of Spock, whom they blame for the destruction of their planet because he wasn't fast enough to stop the supernova that consumed it. So Yeah.
- What makes it even worse is that this happens in an alternate universe, so this Vulcan and these Vulcans and everyone in it are essentially completely different people entirely. Imagine your family being murdered before your eyes as punishment for something someone in a completely different universe did as you. Fifty years ahead of your time.
- Note that he came out of a black hole, so he had already crossed a literal event horizon
- 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.
- Cypher steps over the line in The Matrix. In exchange for permanent re-insertion into the matrix, he tips off agents to the group's location and, after the beating and capture of Morpheus, fries Dozer and Tank. Following that, he forcibly removes Apoc and Switch's matrix links, causing them to drop dead in front of Trinity and Neo.
- In The Spirit, The Octopus crosses the line with what he does to that kitten.
- Affably Evil gangster Sam in the Infernal Affairs films has his MEH moment towards the end of the second (first in internal chronology) film, when he lets his Thai buddies massacre the non-active-gangster members of the Ngai family, including an old woman and a small child.
- If he hadn't crossed it already, Paul Giamatti's character in Shoot Em Up cements his status as a Complete Monster when he runs over what he believes to be the baby that Smith (Clive Owen) is protecting.
- Carlo in The Godfather crosses the Moral Event Horizon when he cheats on Connie Corleone, only to physically and verbally abuse her when she calls him up on it. The Godfather, pt. 2, meanwhile, was built around Michael Corleone's descent past the Horizon. He bottoms out when he has Fredo killed. Interestingly, Tom Hagen averts this - he pretty much tells Frankie Pentageli to kill himself, but ensures him that his family will be protected.
Literature
- 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.
- 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.
- It happens earlier than this. One could say she attempts to cross it when she's about to use the Cruciatus curse to inflict the most horrible pain humanly possible on Harry in order to stop what she thinks is a mere prank.
- 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).
- In Catch-22, the character Aarfy 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 Aarfy raping and murdering a woman, and getting off unpunished.
- One could also point to Milo Minderbender. He's a sleazeball war profiteer from the get go, but he really crosses the horizon when he arranged for his own base to be strafed. He is rather smug and amused by the incident, too.
- The strafing thing started after he finished blowing up the base, which would allow him to once again sell his overstock cotton at a profit. He also gets the dead man in Yossarian's tent killed and tries to get rid of all that cotton by making the other officers eat it, while fully aware that you can't eat cotton. And he revealed this plan to Yossarian during a funeral.
- 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.
- The title character of The Sheik pole-vaults over this almost as soon as he's introduced—he kidnaps the female protagonist and rapes her as soon as he gets her back to his camp. He keeps doing so until it (technically) ceases to be rape because she starts to enjoy it, and eventually fall in love with him. And yet we are expected to like this guy in the end, because he has a change of heart and comes to love her in return—even though that love makes him decide to send her away so that he won't hurt her anymore, and only allows her to stay because she threatens to shoot herself in the head if he makes her leave. How romantic.
- Darth Caedus, the villainous Jacen Solo, was apparently intended, to be morally grey at first, sliding down into worse and worse acts of Necessary Evil until the Evil overwhelmed the Necessary. It didn't really turn out like that, considering what he did, 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. Fans lost all sympathy for him long before this was intended to happen.
- 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 in the entire system 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 who made him do it, all was forgiven. Later books called him on it and called it hard. He'd been influenced, not possessed, or he would have actually killed Luke Skywalker instead of knocking him out. 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. Some characters are never able to forgive him.
- 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 (as leverage on their mother, the Supreme Chancellor) and then trying to vape them.
- The destruction of Alderaan is an in-universe Moral Event Horizon for a number of characters. It caused a lot of Imperials to defect to the Rebellion, which even before then was largely composed of people who had been Imperial citizens or soldiers at some point. They accepted this new influx, even knowing that some of these ex-Imperials had fought against and killed them. After that, though, ex-Imperial recruits were regarded with more suspicion, many Rebels wondering why they hadn't left the Empire earlier, like right after the news about Alderaan got out. Staying in the Empire's service became a subjective Moral Event Horizon; the longer someone had been with the Empire after Alderaan, the less moral they were seen to be.
- This is a plot point for how other characters treat Baron Soontir Fel in the X Wing Series, who left almost a year after the Emperor died, and who had been the Empire's most dangerous pilot in that year. Wedge Antilles trusted him instantly, and a pilot who had survived being shot down by him similarly welcomed him, but almost everyone else either was slow to warm up to him or outright refused to trust him. He killed too many Rebel pilots and didn't see what kind of monster he served until far too late.
- In Allegiance, we see that while the viewpoint stormtroopers were just as shocked by the reports as anyone else, official Imperial policies were confused, some saying that the Death Star had been hijacked by Rebels, some saying that the entire planet had been populated by Imperial sympathizers, some saying that Tarkin had gone power-mad. Sure, the Rebellion had its own claim, but the Rebellion was a terrorist organization, and while they were starting to think that the Empire had some deep flaw, they didn't see any better alternative. Until their unit was sent to slaughter an entire village, and later one of them was threatened by an officer because he aimed to miss unarmed civilians.
- Alderaan's destruction is a Moral Event Horizon for the man who pulled the trigger, too. 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 serving with him 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 he will do it - and, when they are in range of Yavin and his hand is at the final button, he desperately stalls while telling everyone to "Stand By", hoping that something would happen to stop him. And it did. Poor bastard.
- In Michael Crichton's newest novel Pirate Latitudes, the Governor's new secretary, Robert Hacklett, first takes over the island and throws Captain Hunter in prison after his return, but crosses the Horizon when he allows his wife to be raped, right in front of him. At least he gets his due when said wife shoots him in the groin with a flintlock pistol.
Live Action TV
- In the miniseries Holocaust, Erik Dorf crosses the moral event Horizon when he orders Karl Weiss tortured. He knows that Karl Weiss is the son of the man he once trusted as a friend, yet he still does it. Karl ultimately dies of the torture. Before Dorf was sort of sympathetic, but after this, it became extremely hard to sympathise with him.
- In the Korean drama Shining Inheritance, Eun Sung's Stepmother is first seen as a somewhat strict, money worried woman, but not so bad. Then, in several episodes she has thrown both of her step-children out onto the streets, without giving them a penny of their newly-deceased father's life insurance, and using lack of money as an excuse while she had enough money to buy both her and her daughter a large apartment and left her mentally disabled step-son, who she had found when lost, at an orphanage halfway outside town because she didn't want trouble AND basically arranged things to her advantage, lying to Eun Sung and manipulating her and saying they should act like strangers for the sake of her reputation because if the boy her daughter liked found out she kicked Eun Sung out of the house, he might get a bad impression of her. Oh, did I mention this all happened in 6 or so episodes? And the woman is still proud to live?
- Also, until episode 15, Seung Mi, though not liked by a number fans, didn't have a mob after her. Then, she lied about Eun Sung's circumstances, making him think Eun Sung was a liar and con artist, even though Eun Sung had done so much for her- and her reason was simply to not let Hwan think badly of her- this started several hundred conspiracies for her quick and painful death.
- 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 its final two seasons.
- 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."
- 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 fate of Sejanus' daughter is Truth In Television.
- And a Real Life Truth In Television for the entire Roman Empire. Children were always raped before execution - even infants (and yes, entire families were executed regularly). Of course, this was a society where slave children were considered fair sexual game for their owners.
- Lampshaded when Claudius hears the news and suffers a Heroic BSOD, lamenting that Rome was "finished".
- In Supernatural, the angels (minus Castiel) used to be Jerkass-personified, even if they were well intentioned. And there could be some (flimsy) rationale behind their motives as presented in the Season 4 finale. But they showed that light is NOT good in the season 5 premiere, when they threatened to cripple Bobby for life, removed Sam's lungs, and gave Dean Stage 4 stomach cancer, all to give him incentive to work with them. For what it's worth, Dean tells them to fuck off, each and every time.
- In All In The Family, David Dukes guest stars as a neighbor and family friend that visits during Edith's 50th birthday episode. He makes a semi-romantic pass at her in the kitchen, which is laughed off. He then grabs her and seriously attacks her as she panics. You can hear the live audience groan as he crosses the MEH.
- In a later interview, Dukes said it was hard to get the tone right for a comedy show. He wanted people to understand how things can turn very quickly and it wasn't going to be a funny experience.
- In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, while Spike had previously killed hundreds of innocent people and tried to kill the main characters on several different occasions, it was his Attempted Rape of Buffy in "Seeing Red" that made a lot of people go, "Okay, ''now'' he's irredeemable." Even getting his soul back might have made things different in Buffy's eyes, if only a little bit, but it was hard for some viewers to accept.
- Similarly, Faith's Moral Event Horizon, depending on who you ask, would be when she tried to rape/kill Xander in "Consequences." Well, that and becoming the Mayor's Dragon at the end of the episode.
- Warren crossed the Moral Event Horizon after trying to rape, and then accidentally killing his ex-girlfriend Katrina. Up until then he had been an annoying trouble-maker; at that point he was upgraded to true villain.
- On The Jerry Springer Show, Springer once had Neo-Nazis as guests, who were actually so offensive, the audience went full circle from boo-ing to absolute silence, and Springer, often composed during the oddball antics of some of his guests, himself told them to shut up.
- On Arrested Development the matriarch Lucille has gone back and forth on how much she really cares for her family. It was Michael's job to try and keep the family together and the company afloat, and a lot of it was done for his parents approval. In the final episode, when Michael learned his son George Michael was missing he was prepared to leave an elitist party to go looking for him, and Lucille scolds him for considering it, saying it would be rude to the guests. Michael, realizing what kind of person she really is, said "I've made a huge mistake." and left the party anyway.
Tabletop Games
- 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 Callidus 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. The old Assassins mini-codex gives her the title "Mother Python".
- In the World Of Darkness, every person is subject to a zero-to-ten Karma Meter, with an average person falling in somewhere around seven. For normal humans, falling to Morality 0 only gives a penalty in that getting to that level requires committing acts that would get you tried under the Geneva Conventions. For supernaturals, however, falling down on their respective morality scales often imposes supernatural penalties, and with few exceptions falling to 0 is irreparable. Vampires become ravening beasts, werewolves become obsessive-compulsive cannibals, and changelings with Clarity 0 have a bad habit of disappearing into the Hedge and never coming back.
Theatre
- Medea. She convinces two kids to cut up their father and put the pieces in boiling water, making them think it'll make him younger.
- In Bat Boy: The Musical, Dr. Parker is a pretty sympathetic character until he murders a kid in order to frame the title character. After that, he's more of a monster than Bat Boy ever was.
- Regina in The Little Foxes is greedy and morally bankrupt as it is, but she crosses the event horizon when she lets her husband Horace die of a heart attack because he won't go along with her scheme.
Video Games
Web Comics
- 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 left Ariel in a room with her pet cat for a week with no provisions for the calls of nature, resulting in Fuzzy becoming very sick with Ariel unable to do anything about it. When Syphile came back and saw what had happened she blamed Ariel and took that cat away, and then when the cat bit her she slammed his head against the wall and killed him. To top it off, when Ariel was understandably upset about this Syphile beat her to make her stop crying. Earlier versions of the story had portrayed Syphile somewhat sympathetically (possibly unintentionally) but this act cemented her as a total bitch in many people's minds.
- In Scary Go Round, former Designated Hero 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.
- 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.
- Admiral Blake in Terinu. Supervising Terinu's arrest and detention in a biological research lab? Decidedly unpleasant. Arranging for his daughter Leeza to be fired from her job and forcing her into being the boy's guardian after she rescues him from said facility? Definitely not good. Having Leeza arrested and order Terinu's assassination to cover up a centuries old act of genocide? The readers were howling for his blood.
- Subverted, after a fashion, in Sluggy Freelance when Aylee has a Face Heel Turn, and attacks the Main Characters' Halloween party. She doesn't actually kill anyone, but she makes it perfectly clear that she could, taunts Riff at how helpless he was at protecting anyone, and threatens to do it for real if he meddles in her affairs again. The subversion comes when we find out that this wasn't actually Aylee, but an evil clone instead, which couldn't cross the Moral Event Horizon since it was a Complete Monster right from the beginning.
- In Gunnerkrigg Court, we got an example that was more subtle than most, but still important, in the flashback to the Court's early history. Dogged Nice Guy / Stalker With A Crush Diego reacts to his vehement rejection by Jeanne by nominating her as the sacrifice for a plan to "protect" the Court from the magical influences of Gillitie Wood. Even after that, he still had groups of people who insisted it was just a misguided plan to play hero, that he really didn't mean it, or even that Jeanne deserved it, until the next page went up, wherein Diego smiles at an unknowing Jeanne's fear of being sent down into the ravine. After that, even the people who'd previously defended him wanted him dead.
- Even after he'd pulled a heinous stunt like utterly humiliating Ally in front of the cancer patients she was a nurse for, Keith in Fans still had some Draco In Leather Pants status from the people who believed he was still just on his revenge kick for the mental torture Ally had put him through years ago. Then he murdered Rob, who was both in love with him and was his most fervent supporter, in cold blood for power. Any and all sympathy vanished, and the forum unanimously cheered for an asskicking at the least.
- Xykon from the Order of the Stick is an interesting case: a Complete Monster who doesn't really have a Moral Event Horizon. In Start of Darkness (the prequel that named the trope), it is seen that he is on the wrong side of it from day one.
- Redcloak could have crossed one when he killed his brother in cold blood, but Xykon turns that into more of a kick the dog moment anyway.
Western Animation
- Spongebob Square Pants has Mr.Krabs in "Jellyfish Hunter". After finding out how popular Krabby patties are with jellyfish jelly, he sends Spongebob, naive and obedient like always, to catch all the jellyfish. It turns out he was processing all of them in his factory, painfully draining them completely of their jelly and holding them in horrible cramped conditions. Usually, his antics and schemes to get money aren't that cruel.
- And even though he gets a Karma Houdini, when he actually POISONED HIS CUSTOMERS after feeding them yellow patties (Calling them Spongebob Patties), he again crosses the Moral Event Horizon. And when he decided to feed nothing but grease to people. Remember when Mr. Krabs was like Scrooge McDuck from Ducktales? The penny pincher but otherwise good guy, who cared about his employees and gave them a decent wage and also cared about his family? Those days are over. Krabs is now an outright Corrupt Corporate Executive now, and borderline Complete Monster. Someone else said that it's only a matter of time before Krabs sells his daughter to Sexual Slavery. That's what is true here.
- On the other hand, he paid for what he did almost immediately when Spongebob released them and they collectively electrocuted Krabs.
- 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.
- 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.
- The Batman has their version of the Joker cross the line when he tries to fling his newly acquired sidekick into a vat of acid in an attempt to turn him into Joker's mini-me, and admitting that it'll probably just kill him.
- 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. 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.
- Brilliantly the real moral event horizon, as far as the gendarme Bart finds is concerned, is putting antifreeze in the wine "That's serious!"
- In Season 4 of Winx Club, Ogron, the leader of the Sorcerers of the Black Circle, recently got to this dreaded point of no return. After the Sorcerers pull their I Surrender Suckers plan on the Earth fairies, Ogron tears open a portal to a nightmarish dimension to imprison all the fairies there. Layla's boyfriend Nabu does an Heroic Sacrifice to close the dimensional gap, but loses his life in the process... and when the Winx try to use the Gift of Life to bring Nabu back, Ogron snatches it and casually casts it away, laughing all the way. This single act caused the distraught Layla to join the Fairies of Revenge and separate herself from the Winx Club, and marked the point where the Sorcerors of the Black Circle sunk to a low no other Winx Club villain ever reached.
- While the Shredder has always been the closest thing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) has to a complete monster, his personal moral event horizon comes in the episode "Mission of Gravity", when he orders his lieutenants to steal the Triceraton engine holding the city of Beijing aloft miles above the earth, despite the fact that doing so would naturally doom the millions trapped within it. While he's done similarly evil things, this one stands out because a) the Chinese are innocent bystanders, and their deaths would have done absolutely nothing to further his plans b) as it turns out, it was possible to actually remove the engine without killing anyone. At hearing his plan, Karai, who was usually more than happy to turn a blind eye when it came to her father's more unsavory deeds, decided to temporarily join with the turtles in order to stop his plan.
- Among Teen Titans Fandom, while Terra has a lot of "she's just misunderstood, and she redeemed herself anyway" fans, about an equal number believe she cross the event horizon when she betrayed the Titans, either when she gave Slade the codes to Titans Tower in "Betrayal," or when she tried to kill the Titans herself and helped Slade take over the city in "Aftershock."
- A bit of a meta example: Timmy's parents on The Fairly Oddparents have neglected Timmy since the series began, but in the early days this was a combination of a Cats In The Cradle situation and their general cluelessness. Now, between spending Timmy's college fund on frivolous things, wanting to send him to military school for the sole purpose of renting his room out, and casually remarking that they must have forgotten to make him dinner again when they see him digging through the garbage, they have gone from adult children to monstrous Abusive Parents in the eyes of many fans.
- Judge Frollo of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame first act of the film is to brutally murder a defenseless woman entirely onscreen. He just gets worse and worse from there.
- In the first season finale of Avatar The Last Airbender, Admiral Zhao crosses this when he kills the moon spirit. It hadn't even done anything to him: he wanted to make a name for himself so that he would be remembered by history forever, but as Iroh told him, "History isn't always kind to its subjects."
- Azula crosses this in the second season finale, when she murders Aang in cold blood by shooting lightning at him in the middle of his Transformation Sequence. It's at that point when we realize that, unlike her brother Zuko, she is willing to do absolutely anything to make sure the Avatar stays down.
- Fire Lord Ozai started at this and just kept running. After his son disrespected one of his generals in the war room, he burned his face and sent him on a Snipe Hunt. When Zuko mouthed off to him years later, he tried killing him with lightning. Still, villains have been redeemed from worse. What truly defines him as a Complete Monster is his utter excitement at carrying out his plan in the finale, which is to quell rebellion in the Earth Kingdom by burning the entire continent to the ground.
Other
- It's Older Than Dirt. According to Buddhist texts, one can achieve enlightenment as long as he doesn't commit one of the worst sins (intentionally murdering either of one's parent, killing an Arhat, cause harm to a buddha, or creating a schism within the Sangha, the community of Buddhist monks and nuns). Crossing the Moral Event Horizon dooms the soul to be reborn in the hell of Avici, the very lowest of all the hells, to suffer, die and be reborn in the same place for many, many, many kalpas (eons) on end until the person has exhausted all of his or her bad karma, which often takes many millennia. The text has a remark on King Ajatashatru of whom Buddha said that he would have attained a degree of enlightenment, if only he hadn't committed patricide.
- Blasphemy against the holy spirit is said to be the only unpardonable sin.
- That is being read out of context. It is not unforgivable, it means people who directly refused God (blaspheming the Spirit) were in danger of damnation; people who refused God out of ignorance (blaspheming the Father [Gentiles] or the Son [Jews]) were not neccessarily in danger of damnation.
- Also, in Catholicism, any mortal sin that one has not repented of damns one's soul to hell. A mortal sin, for the record, is something that one (a) knows is wrong, (b) is a serious matter, and (c) one has to willingly do it.
- Baseball has betting on and fixing games. Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver remain banned from the game and out of the Hall of Fame despite Rose finally admitting to his gambling (which many writers claimed was all they'd need to forgive him) and many arguing to this day that Jackson and Weaver never actively contributed to the Black Sox Scandal.
- Using steroids may be added to this. Currently, the baseball writers are denying players like Mark McGwire entry into the Hall of Fame even though they've only been accused of using such drugs. It remains to be seen if the next generation of writers will be more forgiving.
- Mark has since admitted taking steroids.
- McGwire's Hall of Fame status is questionable even without the steroid scandal. He broke a record; that's pretty much it.
- For many Formula One fans, that Nelson Piquet Jr. intentionally risked his and others' lives by crashing just so his teammate could win a grand prix put him over the MEH. Possibly unfairly, depending on who you believe came up with the idea in the first place.
- For boxing fans, disgraced trainer Panama Lewis crossed this line by knowingly wrapping his fighter's hands with wraps soaked in Plaster of Paris, as well as removing some of the horsehair from his fighter's gloves. It led to the end of the other fighter, Billy Collins' career, and the beating he took led to his death shortly after. Lewis was banned from the sport for life.
|
|
