"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 in the mind of the viewers they no longer wish for such a redemption.
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 antivillain 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 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. 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 particularily villainous characters it is almost impossible to cross the horizon. These characters exercise a certain dark charm, and no matter what they do, nothing will be bad enough to make them uncool in the eyes of the audience. The sort of behavior that would punt another character far across the line is simply expected of these guys. Heath Ledger's Joker and Hannibal Lecter fall into this category - so don't list any of their misdeeds here.
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.)
Not to be confused with Morale Event Horizon, although the character who experiences Start Of Darkness and Face Heel Turn because of MoraleEvent Horizon may end up crossing the MoralEvent Horizon.
And despite all this, they still will have fans falling heads over heels for them because they're fucking hot.
Major spoilers ahead, as many crossings of the Moral Event Horizon are big dramatic plot points. Proceed at your own risk.
Evil Matriarch Precia Testarossa of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is established early on 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.".
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 is 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 Fuhrer, 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. Pride then proceeds to attempt to strangle his son, revealing that any pretense of being nice or reasonable was just an act.
He may have crossed the line much earlier... when he stabbed the sympathetic chimera girl to death while she's inside Al. Al just kind of collapses, as blood pours out of all the chinks in his armor. The entire time, the culprit has a calm smile on his face. Even while his sword is down Al's neck.
Speaking of Shou and Barry, the State Military's crossing of the Moral Event Horizon for many viewers came when they were shown to be using them. And, of course, the flashback to the Ishvalan massacre in the manga shows you how awful the Amestrian Goverment really is. The Generals care more about getting all the credit than about ending the war, and the events are so horrifying that Gentle Giant Alex Louis Armstrong has a mental breakdown right on the field. The worst part is that its made clear that the soldiers (except for Kimblee) hate this and just want to get out of there.
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 Morale 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, accepting the Deal With The Devil offered by the Godhand and having every one of the Hawks being marked with the Brand of Sacrifice, and in a scene that defines Nightmare Fuel Unleaded, the demons come out of the woodwork to eat everyone alive until only Guts and Casca are left. And then Griffith, in his new form of Femto, the fifth member of the Godhand, takes Casca, Guts's primary love interest, and proceeds to brutally rape her right in front of him. After this, Griffith acting like a hero when he is reincarnated on Earth tends to be just a little bit ironic.
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.
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.
But she also killed the girl who was her only friend and who loved the dog like she did, making her cross the horizon in the very same scene herself. Alternatively, she crossed the line when she killed all the bystanders at the fair, or killed Kouta's family in the train later that evening.
The girl in question was forced to reveal the location of Lucy's dog to the cruel kids, and to be frank, that first lash-out with Lucy's diclonius powers was very much an indiscriminate one. She was past the point of caring about any innocents caught in the crossfire, as the incident was the final straw that clinched the idea in Lucy's mind that humans were bastards.
What do you mean "forced"? It seems pretty thoroughly implied that she willingly sold Lucy out.
The line was crossed in the first ten MINUTES of the first episode. Especially with the nice secretary's body *Shudder*
In the Meakashi arc of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, Shion has about three different scenes where she might be perceived to have crossed over, although the most commonly cited one is when she does her own perverted crucifixion of Satoko (the series' designated woobie). No matter how long people wait to say she's hopeless, though, just about everyone says it before the end of the arc.
What Shion's family did to her earlier 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 cruel as well, and certainly contributes to her madness. It still doesn't excuse her brutally murdering her lost love's little sister, though.
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 completelysnapped. (In the anime, Hatagai's actions are toned down considerably, but he's still quite a dick.)
Name a One Piece villain. Any One Piece villain. Especially if they are Big Bads or are associated with the World Government.
Aside from Crocodile and Arlong though, most non-World Government villains do eventually find redemption.
Even Arlong has a bit of leeway now, given what we've learned about how fishmen are generally treated, particularly on Shabondy Island. Most fans, however, aren't buying it.
And they shouldn't. He let Nami grow up gathering the money he promised that she could buy her town's freedom for, and then, on the day she would have finished, he sent a corrupt squad of marines to beat her up and steal all of the money before she would pay him off. That's not revenge; that's evil, pure and simple.
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'sIntrepid Reporter 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.
Played straight with Nena Trinity, who attacked a wedding and crippled Louise Halevy because she was bored. Notable in that this is the worst she's done yet fans regard her with all the hate one would expect to be directed at Ali, showing Double Standard at play.
In the final season of the anime of Sailor Moon, Galaxia is presented as the boss of minions who go off searching for Star Seeds hidden in living beings. Apparently, she has to find Star Seeds with eternal shines, so she can take over the planet. But after killing off her minions and descending to Earth once the Princess of a planet she destroyed showed herself, Galaxia took that Princess' Star Seed and apparently had nearly enough power to accomplish her goal. She then spent the next four episodes killing almost everyone on Earth by taking their Star Seeds, showing that the efforts of her minions were little more than pointless busywork. Sailor Moon redeems her though, because that's who she is.
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.
Dio Brando gets one of these in his introduction in Part 1. Jonathan's dog Danny runs up to Dio, just to be friendly... and Dio kicks him as hard as he can! Dio then explains that he hates dogs because "they're stupid animals who don't know their place". That isn't even the worst thing Dio does in the entire series - in fact, that's not even the worst thing he does to Danny - but it certainly shows what kind of person he is.
Lord Darcia of Wolfs Rain goes from being woobiliciously wicked to unforgivable in an instant when he kills off Toboe and Quent. It only worsens after his wolfish transformation, which makes him unattractive as well as evil, and kills off all the other characters.
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 second-in-command through the stomach? Definitely evil, but Bleach villains have done worse. Using the excuse of comforting Hinamori through the shock of seeing them Back From The Dead to get said second within reach? Vile, and somehow more disgusting than Mayuri's experiments on the Quincys and constant abuse of Nemu (we should remind the reader that Mayuri's already pretty far over the Moral Event Horizon himself).
Tomoe is considered having crossed the line at one of two points: when she "greets" Shizuru immediately after switching sides, or later when she confronts Arika and gloats about being responsible for crippling her and her friends throughout the series (while also saying something to the effect of "they were all useless, anyway" with a big smile on her face).
The Organization from Claymore starts out a band of dog-kickingknight templars at best between thier transformation of orphaned girls into demi-humanmonster hunters and the fact that they charge towns quite much for the removal of the 'Yoma' (far moreso than upkeep of the hunters and overhead would require). The subtle attempts to eliminate those "claymores" that may be succumbing to thier Superpowered Evil Side or seem otherwise troublesome would also disturb observers (especially the mass suicide mission in vol. 10), but it too can be excused as a useful force losing sight of it's true goals. Then we find out that the Organization is actually creating the Yoma, and is apparently using the whole continent as a Super Soldier testing ground.
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) but this Troper never again found Lucifer very funny, or hoped that he would find himself a happy ending.
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.
His field team called him for help. Of course, he could have helped in a less intrusive manner, but he just doesn't care.
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 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.
Although said teenage girls didn't seem to mind too much. For this troper that was where the author and artist crossed the horizon.
The specific girl who remained optimistic after being raped and impregnated was Pollyanna, i.e., you missed the joke.
A Star Wars example. Dezono Qua 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.
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.
One of the most famous crossings of the Horizon: the destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars: A New Hope. This troper still finds that while Palpatine and Vader are still considered darkly awesome, very few feel that way about Grand Moff Tarkin, who is almost despicably efficient and dispassionate.
Actually, while this may not be the case as this is measured by the effect on the viewer as much as anything and the viewer can only see the planet blowing up not the people that are killed.
Another crossing is in the third prequel, when Anakin / Darth Vader proceeds to kill the Jedi children. Who actually trusted him to help them. Darth Vader 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 all Taris by orbital bombardment, all to kill one single woman, you know he's not screwing around.
Also keep in mind Malak's own soldiers were on the planet and he didn't even give a fuck he was blowing them up.
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 tooobvious. But there might have been a softer side lurking there somewhere. But after he beat in the face of an innocent young man with a bottle and shot his father with a mixture of boredom and vague pleasure no one would have cared if there was. Note, this is just when he crossed the horizon. He kept right on going.
He's a moral Magellan, really.
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.
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 insure 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.
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.
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).
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.
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...ahem...expressing (via the song "Johanna (Mea Culpa)") his rather creepy lust for his ward Johanna, who he raised as his daughter.
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.
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.
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?
Mal: I don't murder children.
Operative: I do. If I have to.
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.
Well, he is Draco's father after all.
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 abusiveJerkasses in an earlier scene.
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.
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 than is more shinigami than shinigami themselves".
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 and he pointlessly murders a child. Obviously the scriptwriters wanted to make sure that the viewers would not be rooting for him during the climactic fight.
Despicable yes, pointless no. For starters the child had spied against him, and then the murder was almost certain to draw out the girl, whose planned murder would have then drawn out the main protagonist, making the whole plan much easier. Didn't exactly work out though...
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. WTF.
Don't forget that his daughter borne from the rape becomes his love interest in the third book. Well, she wants to - knowing he's her father. Um, ick.
In 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. 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.
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 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.
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. That detail made this troper close his book and count to ten.
In The Silmarillion, noble antagonist Melkor becomes Big Bad Morgoth by bringing about the Darkening of Valinor. Good times.
For the Elves, It was the creation of the Orcs. Don't forget cursing the family of Hurin(though Glaurung also had a part in what happened).
This troper found Melkor very sympathetic in the start, and considered the logic behind his fall a Wall Banger. His initial crime is being different from his brothers, and the second is wanting to create something that reflects himself instead of Eru. So, individualism and ambition equal Always Chaotic Evil...
It's just a poetic account of Melkor/Lucifer's rebellion.
In The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey, Doctor Wetherall successfully treated a girl's sanity-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 went mad again and the villagers thought she had a demon.
Lord Peter: "My religious beliefs are a little ill-defined, but I hope something really beastly happens to Wetherall in the next world."
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.
It wasn't just Jenny Calendar's murder that did it, but also the extreme lengths that Angelus went towards setting up Giles' discovery of her corpse.
This troper found Miss Calendar's murder and the unbelievable cruelty of her discovery to be one of the most compelling moments in the series and in actuality had him like Angelus even more then he already had.
What about Buffy beating Spike up in Dead Things? This troper found herself unable to look at Buffy the same way again... even to the point of reevaluating previous actions in light of it.
Firefly: Let's talk about Jubal Early of the episode "Objects In Space" for a bit. He might seem cool at first, what with his Boba Fett looking ship and effortless takedown of Mal, but he falls into the "truly despicable villain" category when he confronts Kaylee, ties her up in the engine room and forces compliance from her...by threatening to rape her. He then repeats this threat to assure Simon's assistance in a truly Sadistic Choice between protecting Kaylee or his sister River, who Early wants to bring in. Not a good man at all, but according to Word Of God a masterfully Manipulative Bastard—he can size people up in a second and know how to deal with them: intimidation with Kaylee, intellectual debate with Simon, and taking down enemies who won't be reasoned with or frightened.
Maybe this troper is just cold, but he didn't find Early's threatening Kaylee with rape to be a Moral Event Horizon. If he'd followed up on his threat, then yes, it definitely would have been, but all he did was intimidate her. Now, when River makes the reveal as to what he did to his neighbor's dog, that was the Moral Event Horizon as far as I'm concerned....
What, so rape is worse than murdering people (for money) now? Seems a bit of Moral Dissonance there.
Simply put, yes. The trope definition says, "It is a single act which, while not necessarily objectively worse than anything else the villain has previously committed, affects the audience... on a far deeper level." The Moral Event Horizon is measured by impact, not by comparing various acts' values on a meter.
Plus, Kaylee's status as the sweetest, cutest thing in the 'verse has to count for serious Kick The Dog points when threatened.
Also the pilot episode, when the Alliance agent knocks Book unconscious and then proceeds to beat on him with a pipe for several seconds.
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 Patrelli, 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.
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.
Power Rangers has a lot of nasty villains, though most are understandably rather cartoonish. If you want utterly depraved, however, look no further than 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.
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.
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.
And his treatment of Roland just makes him scarier. This Troper had to watch the scene 2 times to comprehend it because he was totally flabbergasted.
Shane Vendrell from The Shield. He was always been a bastard, but killing his friend Lem saw him cross this horizon. He killed Lem by offering him a bag which he said there was a sandwich in. Dropping it in his lap, Lem opened it up and screamed "Shane!?". There was a grenade in the bag, and Lem died. Shane doesn't stop there! Now he's tried to kill Vic and Ronnie, and having failed and been exposed, skipped town.
In Arrested Development, the mom Lucille Bluth was never a compassionate woman, though occassionally 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.
First up: The Malta Group. Espionage agency who wants to pretty much enslave all supers due to believing (wrongly) that they needed to maintain pace with the communists. Favored methods: Brainwashing, setups, bribery, coercion, threats, you name it. Crossing the horizon: Attempting to start a world war with China, believing that the governments would turn to them and give them the leash of all metahumans.
Don't forget that their Titan mechs turn out to be controlled by the brainwashed, disembodied brains of prisoners, at least one of which was wrongly executed.
Next up: Nemesis. A Prussian prince with incredibly advanced steampowered tech, a massive ego, and a massive amount of bigotry to go with it. Crossed the horizon on multiple occasions, depending on when the player encounters them. First, engineering a war between the players' dimension and another, peaceful dimension. The Rikti. Yes, the terror of the earth was dragged here by Nemesis, and was completely peaceful before he had the idea of "I'll save the world so I can get respect". Second, an alternate Earth ruled by an alternate Nemesis is desolate - because he killed everyone who did not meet his ideal of racial purity (white, German..). Third crossing: Killing the nicest person (Lt. Sefu Tendaji) in the Rikti War Zone story arcs just because he's black. Fourth: In the same arc, he wipes out 70% of an alternate Earth's population, simply to establish a base there - and justifies it because they were all African, so they weren't people anyway.
Westin Phipps, a late-game City of Villains contact, allows the player to go from being a Card Carrying Villain and/or Affably Evil with some Contractual Genre Blindness (or even an Anti Hero or Anti Villain) to a Complete Monster. It is a very, very striking break in tone from the rest of the game; many, many players have objected to this, and ignore his story arcs completely. Suffice to say, his motivation is to keep the people miserable and uneducated so that Arachnos looks like a good option.
Last, we have the Countess Crey. Corrupt corporation, with all the trappings. First crossing: Brainwashing an employee and attempting to Unperson his wife because he wanted to quit. Second: The Revenant Hero Project, using the DNA of murdered heroes to create mindless drones blindly loyal to the Corporation. Third: Her entire Origin Story - including stealing another woman's identity, seducing Count Crey and then putting him into a coma to take over his company. For a little bit extra irony, keep in mind that she did this because she could not become a hero due to her checkered past - which turned out to be trumped up charges by a corrupt politician she was threatening to expose.
In Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, right after you decide to follow the Dark Side path, the game makes it plain there's no going back by allowing you to Force Persuade Zaalbar to kill Mission, his best friend, because she refuses to either join you or run away to save herself. And Bastila compliments you for it.
Sakaki from .hack//G.U. starts off as apparently a Knight Templar who is a little too zealous about anti-P King - or just that person that rubs Haseo the wrong way, then starts revealing his true colors as a scheming Smug Snake wanting to take over the guild. His true moment of Moral Event Horizon is the reveal of his manipulation of Atoli's real-life insecurities and self-loathing to convince her that he was the only person who actually likes her in order to use her powers to usurp the system. The fact he met her on a Suicide site only twists the knife further. Note, he doesn't stop there.
Irving Onegin in Time Hollow. To summarise his actions, he murdered a girl who refused his advances while in high school, leading to another boy, Derek's, suicide. Later, he tortures Derek's nephew, Ethan, using time travel, beginning by killing several of Ethan's friends. While Ethan undoes that, he kills two more of them. When Ethan works to undo that, he makes it seem like Ethan was the serial killer, and goes on killing. He even shows up at the very end of the game after falling off a cliff to stab Timothy and try to prevent Ethan from adjusting his first murder so the rest of the incidents wouldn't happen.
Lord Galcian of Skies of Arcadia, whilst madly tripping on the power of the Moons and his Ancient Superweapon, bombards the surface of the Yellow Continent, smashing Valua into flaming rubble as his warning shot to the rest of the world that they'd better submit to his power. There are survivors, and no figure is even ballparked about how many lived or died because of it, but that was the moment the player really had to face what he was up against. Then again, he'd been an obvious Card Carrying Villain since his very first appearance, so it wasn't so much about a dramatic crossing as it was about the extent to which he crossed. Attempted genocide of an entire empire, which he had been serving until about 3/4ths into the game
