What The Hell, Hero? - Television Tropes & Idioms

In the autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, to avoid being confronted by guards over lipstick she is wearing, she accuses a nearby man of "humiliating" her (the man had earlier leered at her, which actually is an offence in Iran), causing the guards to arrest him instead of her, never to be seen again. Marjane's grandmother then scolds her for her callous actions. Marjane's actions were truly disturbing, taking into consideration that the accused man, being arrested in Iran, may have been tortured or executed despite having comitted a trifling "crime".
- Which is the point of the anecdote. Satrapi's point is that living in a police state can potentially make a monster out of anyone. It's a less melodramatic but more realistic version of Winston Smith's "Do it to Julia!"
Watchmen: The Comedian and Rorschach both live across the line, and the other heroes feel appropriately uneasy about them. And no one's exactly thrilled with what Ozymandias does either.
- Interestingly (and to some degree, ironically) enough, the Comedian actually gives one to Dr. Manhattan after he protests his murdering a Vietnamese woman; he notes that Manhattan could have stopped him, but chose not to.
Recently in his self titled comic book, Sonic the Hedgehog has defeated Dr. Robotnik. Suddenly, Robotnik flipped out, tearing off most of his mustache-Sonic winced in pain seeing that-and collapsed, babbling incoherently. When Sally showed up and asked what happened, Sonic didn't know, saying he beat him like normal. Snively then walks up to them and says that Sonic didn't just beat Robotnik, he broke him. Snivley gives a speech where he acknowledges, "eccentrics aside", Robotnik is a genius and master planner, having conquered the planet in a few years. He says that Robotnik was losing his mind as a result of Sonic being the one thing he couldn't figure during his decade long reign, and Sonic winning again just now finally pushed Robotnik over the edge. Snively then asked to be left alone to take care of his uncle. As a result, Snively denied Sonic the thrill of victory, and instead made him feel bad about what he did.
- Of course, this IS Snively we're talking about... He's been waiting for 200 Issues for Robotnik to finally snap so he could put him out of the way and take over his empire.
  - And Robotnik may not be so crazy as we thought.
Waaaay back in issue 44, Knuckes pulled an inversion of this trope ("What the Hell, Villain") when his anti-Mobius counterpart suddenly backed out of their fight.
Spider-Man ends up being so disturbed by Iron Man's morally dubious actions (such as imprisoning non-registered superhumans indefinitely without trial) during Marvel's Civil War crossover that he defects from the pro-Registration side to the anti-Registration side.
- Currently, it seems Marvel has just lined up characters so everybody can have a shot at this, including Iron Man's old teammates Thor (who both needed an ass-kicking scene early in his new series to establish that he's as powerful and had a very legitimate beef with Stark) and the real Hank Pym.
- Hulk also gave one to Tony and the other members of the Illuminati during World War Hulk.
  - To elaborate, Hulk wanted revenge on the Illuminati for trying to exile him to a supposedly peaceful world, though in reality he ended up on a very hostile world which he eventually brought peace to and found happiness on, only to have the very ship that brought him there explode, ruining the planet and killing his new wife. This was subject to a very blatant Authors Saving Throw when it was revealed that the ship couldn't have possibly ravaged a planet itself by exploding, rather one of Hulk's allies had tampered with the ship's core, resulting in the aforementioned catastrophy. While this is seemingly meant to absolve the Illuminati of their crimes, the fact remains that their original plan failed horribly, resulting in them more-or-less making the Hulk someone else's problem while at the same time handing the means to creating an Earth Shattering Kaboom to those same persons in the same package. It's almost akin to tossing an unloaded gun away and not taking responsibility when someone finds it and gets bullets to load it with.
  - If we think about it, most of Illuminati has their moments of that. Not so long ago Black Bolt gets one about his plan to end a cosmic war from all his family, advisors, and even Vulcan himself.
Lately a lot of X-Men issues have been dedicated to calling out Professor Xavier for his regular abuse of his powers on the people he cares about. Guess he forgot his Mind Over Manners.
- To be fair, his "regular abuses of power" are largely RetCons, Alternate Character Interpretation, and other such things.
Jean Grey as Dark Phoenix consumes a star for energy. Yeah, it was an inhabited solar system and billions died. Subverted as apparently this was a big thing in the editor bullpen and Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter said she had to be punished severely for this as it could not be hand-waved away. So Chris Claremont had to kill her.
- Wait, so something bad happened to her as a result of her doing an atrocity. How is that a subversion?
  - The Death wasn't originally scripted, but the Editors realized that the death of billions couldn't, or rather shouldn't be handwaved away. So it's more an inversion.
The Legion of Super Heroes: Saturn Girl, for the same reasons, except she usually calls herself on it.
Parodied in Knights of the Dinner Table. While Gamemaster BA usually lets the Designated Hero Villain Protagonist PCs run roughshod over the NPCs, occasionally when they go too far he'll break character to deliver an in-universe Author Filibuster about what bastards his players are being. The players just ignore him and continue being bastards.
At the tail end of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures story "Dreamland", Future Raphael (the story is set in the year 2094, a hundred years after the series' present) and antagonist Verminator X are in the middle of a Mexican Standoff. Verminator taunts Raph, saying that the turtles is too heroic to pull the trigger (this is one of the continuities where the turtles don't kill). Raph shoots him. Mikey and Leo try to call him on it, but he refuses to feel guilty about it, saying that Splinter's teachings about not killing don't apply in the now harsher world, and that Verminator would have probably killed them all in the future if he hadn't shot him.
Happens regularly to Batman, either because his distrust of his teammates gets to levels the others don't consider proper anymore, with mixed results; either because one of the Batfamily Calls The Old Man Out after he's been pushing them away too much, with much drama involved.
- Also sometimes happens to Batman's protégés Nightwing and Robin when their teammates judge they're starting to behave too much like their mentor.
A recent issue of Brave and the Bold gave JSA member Magog this treatment when he ripped a terrorist's arm off to stop him from blowing up a bunch of kids, prompting an incredulous "Are you some kind of a maniac?!" from Booster Gold.
- Yes. Yes, he is.
Speaking of the JSA, the entire damn team (except Alan Scott, and he's not exactly happy about what's going on either) gives Atom Smasher this when he helps Black Adam wipe out the army of a dictatorial regime. Then they give Hawkman one because his methods of dealing with Black Adam's allies was too brutal. Basically, if you kill anyone ever, whether they were good, bad, or neutral, you can expect to get this from the JSA, especially Jay Garrick.
A nonverbal one occurs in the recent mini Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter. Bill has decided to take fatal revenge on Galactus for destroying the reminants of his people by destroying planets marked for his comsumption with weapons confiscated from an intergalactic arms dealer. One race insists that they will fight Galactus rather than evacuate, but Bill (rather than let them go through a suicidal last stand) is convinced by said arms dealer to infect them with a bio-war agent and use the cure to blackmail them into leaving. They do so, but when next he tries to pick up his enchanted hammer Stormbreaker... he cannot.
The Life And Times Of Scrooge Mc Duck, Chapter 11: The Empire Builder From Calisota: Hortense and Matilda McDuck leave their brother Scrooge a note chastizing him for attacking the Congo village just to get their land. This plus several Floating Advice Reminders finally make Mr Vice Guy realize he's crossed a line and exclaim, "What have I done?!"
War Of Kings: Many, many characters has this reaction towards Black Bolt's Assimilation Plot. Then it got worse - he get one What The Hell Hero from VULCAN!
Carol Danvers a.k.a. Ms. Marvel eventually gives the Avengers an epic verbal beating regarding the events of the infamous Avengers #200.^*
^{The story in question involved Carol being unknowingly impregnated in order for Immortus's son to escape from Limbo. As a result of this, reality starts coming undone and Carol ends up returning to Limbo with the guy who brainwashed and raped her. The other Avengers see absolutely nothing wrong with this.}
Witness it here in all it's glory.
In the 2003 series, Trinity, which details the first meeting between Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Supes calls Wonder Woman out for attacking him with intent to kill after mistaking him for Bizarro. Seriously, how could anybody not be able to tell them apart?
Kingdom Come Superman gets stuff sprayed in his eyes by criminals, blinding him. He takes a wild swing, hitting our Superman. He apologizes, saying he was aiming for the crooks, but Supes points out that if that punch had hit anyone else, they would be dead.

Hayate attempts to pull this on Takashi in Academy Blues for killing all the Lords of the Circles, but rescinds it once she realises what the "victims" were planning on doing to her and hers.
- Natalia's grandmother gives her one for her betrayal.
Littlefoot of Twilight Valley gets called out by Pterano for assaulting Ms. Maia who is the leader of a a guard division. Ms. Maia later turns traitor.
Sarutobi receives one of these from Kushina concerning his actions concerning Naruto's heritage and her marriage to Minato in A Mother's Love: Fire and Blood.
- However, Kushina deserves this trope in the story too. For all we know, this is what Minato would have wanted if she died or never woke up again. As a way of protection. She even refused to open a letter from Sarutobi, not knowing of the contents. Of course, someone who is critical of The Lord of the Land of Fire's stories, you wouldn't expect people to call him out on that.
  - However, she indeed woke up again, and finds out that Sarutobi decided to not only make Naruto an orphan, but declares that she and Minato were never married, and her son is a bastard. Imagine if you were to wake up and find that not only had your husband died, but the government itself declares you were never married to your husband and that your son is a bastard, and will do everything in his power to keep the truth a secret. You can justify it all you want, but still: dick move for an idealist like Sarutobi.
Transformers Victory: Leozack, of all characters, complains to Victory Leo when he's willing to leave Holi and Jean for dead.
In Light And Dark The Adventures Of Dark Yagami, Soichiro is outraged when L tests the Death Note on his wife, having her to tell Dark to meet him at the warehouse while claiming to know that he is Kira, but L uses a Life Note on her after she dies, reviving her.
In An Entry With A Bang!, public opinion turns against the anti-mercenary protestors after they injure one of the child dependents of the Buron Cavalry.

In Ever After, after Prince Henry denounces Danielle in front of the entire court for being a commoner - in spite of being hopelessly in love with her - he gets an incredible What The Hell Hero speech from none less than Leonardo da Vinci.
Dirty Harry got called out on the tactics that he used to bring Scorpio in, including his full-on Jack Bauer style interrogation on the football field. Granted, Harry was absolutely furious after Scorpio revealed himself as a Complete Monster (who didn't feel like revealing the location of his hostage after all), but it still qualified as What The Hell Hero in the eyes of Harry's superiors.
The Joker, of all people, pulls this on Batman in The Dark Knight, as part of his Hannibal Lecture.
Joker: I wanted to see what you'd do, and you didn't disappoint. You let five people die. Then you let Dent take your place. Even to a guy like me, that's cold.
- In the same way, during the Joker's "social experiment", the Scary Black Man calls the leader of the police officers on not throwing away the detonator immediately.
  ""Give it to me, and I'll do what you should have done ten minutes ago."
- Prior to this, Batman pulls this on Harvey Dent after Dent hijacked an ambulance where the gunman who apparently killed Gordon was awaiting transport, tied him up in a chair, and threatened to shoot him if a coin landed on tails the longer he didn't talk. The coin turns out to have two heads, but he still abducted and threatened at gunpoint a mentally ill man—and no matter whether or not you intend to shoot someone with it, no gun is 100% safe unless it's not loaded (Even then, are you sure it's not loaded?). Batman calls him out on this breach of ethics, saying that Gotham deserves better from its "White Knight", and asks him what would happen if it got out.
James Bond in the reboot often catches a lot of flak from M and MI6 for using his License to Kill a little too liberally. In Casino Royale, he is nearly suspended for the unnecessary killing of a terrorist in a foreign embassy (or more accurately, being caught on tape doing it). In Quantum of Solace, M nearly arrests Bond when his reckless actions results in the death of Mathis and another MI6 agent.
Zoe calls Mal out near the beginning of Serenity after he kicks the colonist off the mule during the Reaver attack. She agrees that he had good reason, but that there were alternatives and it wasn't something they would have done back when they were in the war... to which he replies, "Maybe that's why we lost."
In Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Hellboy is called out by Prince Nuada when the giant Elemental is dying. Nuada tells Hellboy that the Elemental is the last of its kind; should Hellboy kill it, the world will never see its like again (then again, there is the Moral Dissonance of it, since the whole reason the Elemental was in danger was because Nuada used it as a weapon in a crowded city). Since Hellboy is himself unique, this is particularly affecting for him. Of course, at the end, he subverts this when he has Nuada at his mercy after he wins his challenge for the right to command the Golden Army: after Nuada tells Hellboy to kill him because he is unable to stop himself, Hellboy replies with "I win. You live."
- Actually it turns out that Nuada and his sister Nuala share an empathic bond so if he did kill Nuada it would've killed Nuala. Abe Sapien, his close friend, was in love with her; he couldn't do that to Abe.
Though not exactly a Hero, in The Godfather Part II Don Corleone is called out when he plans to assassinate Hyman Roth - despite the fact that he's run out of places to run to and killing him is an unnecessary risk to business.
- In a way, Part III is just one, long What The Hell Hero. For some things, there just is no atonement...
Kirk gets a big one in Star Trek: The Motion Picture when McCoy calls him out - forcefully - for forgetting the fact that it's been two-some years since he commanded a starship, and that his unfamiliarity with the Enterprise's refitted systems is putting the whole ship in jeopardy. Surprisingly, Kirk actually listens. Apparently, even the greatest captain in Starfleet history isn't immune to hubris.
- Some would argue that acknowledging his flaws like this is what makes him the greatest...
  - In Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country, Kirk blazes with Ahabesque fury, "Let them die!" when told by Spock the Klingons will be extinct in 50 years; Spock's reaction is one of grave incredulity, that even forces Kirk to collect himself and change the subject. William Shatner was disturbed by Kirk's Face Heel Turn, and had Meyer shoot the scene again with Kirk being more reasonable. Meyer went to the original take in the final cut. Spock gets his own "What the hell" when he mind rapes Valeris.
In the 1940s serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel, there's a scene where our hero picks up a machine gun and uses it to shoot people who are running away from him. This is a combination of Values Dissonance, Character Evolution, and Adaptation Decay (though it's a fine serial, Cap is very different from the lighthearted comic book Cap of that period).

The Bartimaeus Trilogy: Deadpan Snarker Bartimaeus does this constantly to Nathaniel; it is practically the basis of their relationship. Sadly, Nathaniel rarely seems to get the point. This is especially ironic because Bartimaeus is a borderline Noble Demon and Nathaniel is ostensibly the Kid With The Leash. It is open to interpretation whether Bartimaeus actually cares, or just gets his kicks seeing Nathaniel squirm.
In Bernard Cornwell's Saxon chronicles, the hero, Uhtred, spends the first couple of books as a violent, arrogant, murderous thug whose only real virtues are loyalty to his oaths and being one of the best fighters around. Half-way through the second book, a prostitute tells him exactly what she thinks of him, and he's forced into something of a personal re-evaluation. He doesn't stop being arrogant, murderous and unfaithful to his wife, but he does start to feel a little guilty about it.
- At the very least, he has every right to be arrogant, especially considering he is a walking Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
Gaunt, in Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts Warhammer 40000 novels, manages to avoid shooting his own men despite it being his job... most of the time. When he does attempt to fulfill his role as a commissar, it results in a confrontation with Doc Dorden.
- Oddly enough, whenever Gaunt does go into a WTH,H moment (drinking, giving up, etc.), it is normally Rawne, one of the most morally grey characters of the series that sets him back on the straght and narrow. Normally by being an utterly Magnificent Bastard.
- Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! gets one of these near the end of For the Emperor, when he shoots a pair of troopers with no warning or provocation. The surrounding soldiers initially freak out, and then he explains his reasons.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we learn that back before Dumbledore was a hero, he was about to abandon his mentally ill sister to go off with Gellert Grindelwald on a mad chase for power and glory when his brother called him on it. The ensuing fight, and its tragic consequences, led Dumbledore to rethink his path and ultimately become the nearly universally admired man he was.
- Harry mentally applies this trope to his dad in Order of the Phoenix. After entering one of Snape's memories, Harry is appalled to see his teenage father casually fight and humiliate Snape in front of a crowd of people (something Harry had experienced himself several times). This leads him to wonder if his father was really to wonderful brave person everyone always said he was.
- When Lupin decides to abandon his pregnant wife and unborn child and Harry, in a fit of anger, calls him a coward, says he's ashamed, and informs him that it's very much not what James would have wanted. Lupin, usually quite reasonable, comes to realize the error of his ways after a brief fit.
In When Twilight Burns, Victoria runs away and doesn't save people who are getting attacked by vampires because those people had put her in jail and were trying to get her killed. Max chews her out for this, though it might not be so bad because at least one of those people was probably in league with the vampires.
Pretty much every main character in Animorphs has had several of these. The one calling them out on it — mostly in a sober, thoughtful fashion — is usually one of their own, commonly Cassie.
- Jake defeats the Yeerks with a truly magnificent What The Hell Hero sequence. Erek the android calls him on it before he even starts, but he does it anyway. One of the major steps in the sequence is when he flushes the Yeerk pool in the orbital spaceship into space, killing tens of thousands of yeerks in one shot. After the war is over, he literally gets accused of war crimes during a trial. In addition, recruiting the auxiliary Animorphs in the first place, all of whom are handicapped children because the Animorphs knew the Yeerks wouldn't bother to infest them, got a What The Hell Hero out of Cassie's dad.
  - Much earlier in the series, War Prince Alloran receives the same treatment for his use of biological weaponry on the Hork-Bajir homeworld, as well as pulling the exact same Yeerk-killing gambit on a stolen Yeerk ship. Elfangor refuses to do it and eventually knocks Alloran out, leading to his infestation by the future Visser Three in what was almost certainly Elfangor's Dethroning Moment of Suck.
Older Than Feudalism example: King David, slayer of Goliath, the measure of righteousness by which all other kings of Israel are measured — and adulterer guilty of Murdering The Hypotenuse. God sends Nathan to call him out, and while David repents immediately upon hearing the rebuke the damage has been done.
- Oh, it's much better than that. God- via Nathan- tells David a story about a rich man who killed a neighbor's pet sheep for his dinner, despite the rich man having a large flock of his own. (David had several wives at the time.) David gets enraged and decrees that the rich man should die, and four sheep of his flock should be given to the wronged neighbor. Essentially, God gets David to call himself out.
In Brisingr, Sloan finally calls out ostensibly heroic sociopath Eragon on his actions in a Crowning Moment Of Awesome. Of course, Eragon subsequently does to Sloan the same thing the Big Bad likes to do to minions who have failed him, and the author expects us to be cheering Eragon on.
In 1984, Winston Smith joins what he thinks is the resistance movement against "Big Brother". He is being interviewed by supposed leader of the resistance "O'Brien" who asks him what he is willing to do for the movement. Smith replies anything including killing innocents. Later on when it is revealed that O'Brien is a double agent working for Big Brother he plays a tape of Smith confessing to this in order to destroy Smith's claims of moral superiority.
In The Malloreon, Garion gets a tongue-lashing from Belgarath after the thunderstorm he creates to stop the Mimbrate civil war ends up disrupting weather patterns across the continent, and is told that magic shouldn't be used so recklessly.
Lampshaded in the Discworld novel Hogfather by Susan: "... and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions."
The Star Wars Expanded Universe work Before the Storm had Luke being called out on, of all things, the destruction of the Death Star and the deaths of the million people onboard. Of course, Luke points out that the Death Star was a planet-killing superweapon.
- To be fair, just prior to being chewed out Luke had essentially been bragging about being the one who fired the proton torpedo that blew up the Death Star. The "calling out" moment was as much a commentary about his slightly cavalier attitude toward killing.
- In a later novel, Luke comments that "he has the blood of millions on his hands" despite the circumstances in which they died.
- In Wraith Squadron, the Wraiths pull a prank that gets a cantina full of people to think that one of their female pilots is married to their Gammorrean pilot. Falynn is highly offended and doesn't find this funny, but then Piggy stops her, asks if she'd react like this if the prank had involved, say, Kell instead of him, and she immediately realizes that she's being speciesist, realizes that it is funny and apologizes, and they play along with what the cantina thinks, Holding Hands like young marrieds.
- Karen Traviss's Republic Commando novels provide a chance for various characters to call this on the Jedi, the ostensible good guys of the Star Wars universe, for taking a conveniently provided army of living slaves who have been torturously abused since birth and using them as cannon fodder for a war in which the soldiers have no stake. For at least some viewers, this unaddressed issue had been a huge, glaring Moral Dissonance in the prequels, and it was a relief to see it finally addressed.
  - Meanwhile, for the other viewers, the fact that Traviss also made these same Jedi useless, immoral, and ineffective while trumpeting her highly mercenary Proud Warrior Race, which will fight for anyone who has the credits, as morally superior was a major Wall Banger. And she never did address what the Jedi should have done instead. Leave the army on Kamino and let the Republic be overrun, no doubt.
Lucas Trask in Space Viking by H. Beam Piper has an internal one when he's talking with an eight-year-old princess and wonders how many of the people killed in his raids earlier in the book had been children.
The Army Suicide Prevention Interactive DVD has a moment like this - video clips show two soldiers and their families talking and the viewer chooses from options on what one soldier should do to help the other. Near the end, a choice comes up - "Physically restrain your friend and take him to a psychatrist." Selecting this causes the Omniscient Narrator to say "Whoa! Really? Think about that for a second..." Followed by the main character placing his friend in a headlock and dragging him out of a mess hall while other soldiers look on, stunned.
In the third book of The Wheel Of Time Mat infiltrates the best-defended fortress in the world by himself to save the three female action girls. They basically kick dirt in his face as thanks. Several books later, a few other female characters call two of them on it and force them to apologize.
At the end of The Ethos Effect by L.E. Modesitt, Jr., the hero is forced to decide whether it is permissible to kill many people now so that more can live peacefully in the future. He decides that it is, and decides to commit genocide on the new would-be Evil Empire, before it can become a threat to the rest of the galaxy. Some extremely pacifistic Sufficiently Advanced Aliens call him out on this, accusing him of misusing their technology. He argues with them, saying that no, he's not a god, just a tool-using creature who used the biggest hammer he could find because nothing else could possibly do the job, complaining that they're too afraid of corrupting themselves to take sides when humans fight each other.
In Emma by Jane Austen, Emma gets rebuked by Mr. Knightley because of her cruel behaviour to Miss Bates.
Patroclos, in the The Iliad, calls Achilles for moping over Briseis instead of fighting for Greece.
One of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe short-story collections had a tale with an AI that could recharge itself off emotions, attempting to get enough power to send a message and prevent the destruction of the planet it was on. In the end, it decided that the best solution was to call the Doctor out on some of his less pleasant actions - such as abandoning his daughter on a relatively barbaric world and inciting a race to war to find his lost pen.

One episode of Stargate SG-1 has the team betray Fifth, a Ridiculously Human Robot and lone Replicator capable of human emotion, to trap his more voracious kin and destroy them all. He returns later with an understandably large grudge on Sam.
- This is a recurring element in Stargate, where most of the cast are military, and when people are counting on your for their safety, sometimes the smart choice trumps the right one. On one occasion, Daniel straight up calls Jack a "stupid son of a bitch," and Jack doesn't apologize or make excuses. He just says "it had to go down this way," and leaves it at that.
In Stargate Atlantis, Michael calls out the team for what they did to him every chance he gets.
- John Shephard talked a man into committing suicide by pointing out how pointless his life was now that his daughter had died, even though Shephard's team was indirectly responsible for her death in the first place. Rodney expresses shock for about 30 seconds and then the matter is never brought up again.
  - The father illegally takes the blueprints of the nanites and alters them, before kindnaping Rodney's sister, and later Rodney himself, in order to get the design to actually work. He forces them to rush by injecting Jeannie with nanites that would kill her if they didn't figure it out. The reason Sheppard talks him into sacrificing himself (not by pointing out how worthless his life is, but by pointing out that Jeannie had a husband and daughter) to the wraith is to prevent Rodney from doing it himself to save his sister. John also explicitly states that he refuses to talk about the incident, which would be a good reason not to bring it up.
- Stargate Atlantis has an example in a clip show. The Atlantis team has awoken the Wraith prematurely, unleashed the replicators, created Michael, etc. They get put on trial for this, and manage to win by bribery of one of the judges (who admittedly was already being bribed by someone else). One is swayed by their arguments, and the third was going to vote against them no matter what they said or did.
The classic Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "In the Pale Moonlight" has Garak call out Sisko when the latter tries to express righteous outrage at the assassination Garak arranged, pointing out that Sisko had known at the start it would have come down to something like that when he had asked Garak to trick the Romulans into the war.
- Not to mention the sheer Moral Dissonance of Sisko having no problem with tricking the Romulans into a war where thousands of them will die, but being outraged by the use of a single Romulan's death to do it.
  - If nothing else, sacrificing average soldiers on the front lines (soldiers you aren't even commanding) feels VERY different from being personally and directly responsible.
- Sisko has another of these moments in "For the Uniform", where he manages to capture the rogue officer Eddington by poisoning a planet (the people on it have time to evacuate). It's Eddington who calls him out here.
  - Subverted in the same case in that Sisko's plan is to force Eddington to feel morally superior and surrender to prevent any more such attacks.
Even Jean-Luc Picard is not safe from getting called out. In Star Trek First Contact, after the Borg have begun assimilating the Enterprise, he goes into (as Lily Sloane mentions) a full Captain Ahab mode. When he orders his crew to stand and fight, hand-to-hand if necessary, Sloane finally lets him have it.
Sloane: I am such an idiot. It's so simple. The Borg hurt you, and now you're going to hurt them back!
Picard: In my century, we don't succumb to revenge. We have a more evolved sensibility...
Sloane: Bullshit! I saw the look your face when you shot those Borg on the Holodeck. You were almost enjoying it.
- In the episode "Pen Pals", Data discovers a planet with technology on par with 20th century Earth is facing an apocalypse, but Prime Directive prohibitions prevent meddling as they are not Warp Capable. Most of the command staff seem willing to leave them to face their imminent demise. However, Geordi and Pulaski are actually willing to call the rest of the crew out on this (remember that Data doesn't have emotions). Eventually Picard agrees to help the aliens, but only after they directly request help, thereby removing the Prime Directive obstacle.
- In the episode "Homeward", a primitive culture is also facing an imminent apocalypse, and the crew refused to help because of Prime Directive concerns. The entire crew is willing to let the population die, with one exception who transports the population up from the planet and into the Holodeck, and he feels pretty damn justified in doing so, even if he'll be a criminal in the Federation from that point on.
One episode of Star Trek Voyager had a Transporter Accident fuse Tuvok and Neelix into a new character, Tuvix. The entire episode is spent building him up as being more of a person than an accident, culminating his being forcibly dragged to Sickbay by security to be split back into Tuvok and Neelix. Most of the cast seems to be in favor of this, standing by silently during the initial struggle in the bridge. It's the Doctor who calls Janeway out on it, noting that his programming prevents him from acting against the wishes of his patient. Janeway accepts this, then turns him off before performing the procedure herself.
- Actually, she left him running while she did it. Which might even have been worse, if you think about it.
- Of course, not seperating him would mean, essentially, accepting the death of Neelix and Tuvok both.
Star Trek Enterprise had the crew in a desperate need of a warp core because of a Xindi attack. They met a friendly alien ship also in need of supplies, but they refused to trade them a warp coil. Captain Archer had his crew forcibly raid the ship, trying to justify it by the extreme needs they had and by giving them supplies in return. The alien captain refused Archer's justification by saying it was still a brutal mugging.
- Of course, there was a planet, and by extension, the future at stake. And they did a good job of showing his progression towards that point.
- Then there was the time when Trip was mortally wounded, and Phlox created an accelerated-growth clone of him in order to harvest neural tissue and save Trip's life (the clone would then die). Of course, the clone rapidly became a fully-sentient human with all of his progenitor's memories, and learned that his purpose was to die in order to save another. He was... less than thrilled at the prospect, to say the least. Especially when a guilt-ridden Phlox then thought up an experimental treatment that might save the clone and give him a normal lifespan, which would obviously then mean Trip would die. Archer is unwilling to take the risk and eventually has to order the clone to die, after which both the victim and Phlox immediately call him out on it. The clone eventually accepts.
In Doctor Who, Donna turned down an invitation to take a spin around space-time with the Doctor after he wiped out the Racnoss. She continues to call him on his various "Time Lord-y" decisions throughout Series Four, particularly when he states the destruction of Pompeii is a "fixed point in time," and so he decides not to interfere; and how he neglected to help the enslaved Ood when he last met them.
- Joan Redfern calls the Doctor on the consequences of his dalliance as a human in "The Family of Blood": "If the Doctor had never chosen this place, on a whim... would anyone here have died?" And this after a couple of speeches in which various characters gush about how "wonderful" the Doctor is.
- From the classic series, "Resurrection of the Daleks" has the Doctor's companion Tegan leaving as a result of her disgust over the bloodshed she had just witnessed and the Doctor saying he must mend his ways. (He doesn't.) Both these happened in Season 21.
- In Series Four, "The Unicorn And The Wasp", Agatha Christie gets in on it. "How like a man to have fun while there's disaster all around him! ...I'll work with you, gladly, but for the sake of justice, not your own amusement."
  - Queen Victoria also calls him and Rose out for giggling and acting silly immediately after a terrifying adventure. And then she creates the Torchwood Institute.
- The Series Four finale, Journey's End, gives us an example of the hero calling himself out: The Doctor banishes his clone self to a parallel universe after his act of genocide upon the Daleks. Whether this is a Wall Banger is something Your Mileage May Vary on.
  - Although the clone self also gets to be free to be with Rose Tyler through that banishment, so how bad of a punishment it was would be debatable...
- Jackie Tyler, Rose's mother, used to chew the Ninth Doctor out for showing up out of nowhere, taking her daughter away with him with no explanation, and not even always getting the return date right.
- Martha gives the Doctor a bit of a chewing out after his self-righteous attitude towards a group of UNIT officials, pointing out that they were doing their best to save the planet and frequently had to do so in his absence.
- At the end of The Waters of Mars, the Doctor has told himself that as the last of the Time Lords, he can change the laws of time as he sees fit and after violating the rules and changing a fixed point in time, has gone slightly mad with power. Adelaide, one of the people he saved, is rightly horrified, and gives the Doctor a good verbal battering. She then brings him back down to earth...by killing herself to make sure the timeline goes as it's supposed to.
In related-to-Doctor Who news, Jack Harkness gets called hard for his actions towards the end of the "Children of Earth" serial of Torchwood. The look on Jack's daughter's face when she confronts him after he killed his grandchild to save the rest of Earth's kids is painful enough without words. Add to that Gwen's angry and tearful denunciation of Jack's running away from what he has wrought on Earth, and it ends up a brutal assault on Jack's modus operandi.
- Also Torchwood, in an odd bit of foreshadowing, Ianto calls Jack on playing the hero while being "the biggest monster of all". Slightly averted, since Jack's actions at the time were almost completely justified by the time Ianto got around to calling him on them.
- Gwen's video recording in "Children of Earth" also has a bit of "What the Hell, Doctor ?" - not because he'd done something wrong, but because there were a number of times when he didn't show up. Then she decided that humans deserved it anyway.
In the Law and Order SVU episode "Cold", Eliot thinks Fin has tipped off a suspect (who happens to be their colleague, Chester) to run, and dumps his phone records to check. A correct move for a cop, but an absolute dick move to do to a friend and co-worker (even Olivia thinks he should've just asked Fin). Elliot tries (half-heartedly) to apologize, but Fin's having none of it:
Fin: The same things that make you a good cop make you a bad person.
Elliot: Fin, I...
Fin: I ain't finished! You know what the real problem is? When you go home tonight, you'll still be the same rat bastard tomorrow. (walks out of the station, handing his transfer request to Munch on his way out)
- Would it had been better had he just called Internal Affairs to investigate? (Probably not.)
- From the same episode, Casey gets called out by her superior for blatantly forging the evidence used against the rogue cop she was prosecuting. Yes, the guy was a Complete Monster, but come on...
Speaking of Law and Order, when Jack McCoy goes off into one of his many Writer On Board crusades, expect him to be called on it by at least his colleagues.
- And in a recent episode where they need to get a suspect out of the Iranian embassy, the characters have two women trick two of the embassy employees into taking their pictures, only to have detectives Lupo and Bernard conveniently show up, examine the camera and find pictures of famous landmarks. They then blackmail the employees into helping them under threatening to arrest them as terrorists. Fortunately for the two employees, they were smart enough to call someone higher up in the US government, who proceeded to chew the main characters a new one for the stunt they pulled.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles does this with Sarah giving up John to foster parents, Derek Reese murdering Andy, and for extra awesome Sarah does it to Cameron. Yes, you heard right, the terminator gets called out on what she does.
Happens all the time in the Darker And Edgier reboot of Battlestar Galactica. Often between William Adama and Laura Roslin, or William and Lee Adama.
- And don't forget Helo, calling Adama and Roslin on attempting biological warfare and kidnapping his daughter.
House is made of this trope, particularly the new season. The climax of the Season 5 opener is Wilson deciding "enough is enough" and telling House he's cutting ties with him. Completely. Since House actually stole prescription sheets from Wilson, this should have happened a season or two earlier. Back then, Wilson just settled for turning House in to Tritter (with eventual explanation), which caused its own problems.
- And then promptly subverted when Wilson comes back because he realizes that being around House is fun and makes his life interesting.
Heroes: In the third season, Daphne pulls a true "What the hell, Hiro?" after watching him stab Ando right in the chest. The kicker? He didn't actually do it.
- Also, we see Nathan Petrelli getting this twice, first from Hiro in Season 1 and then from Peter in Season 3.
In Xena Warrior Princess, Gabrielle betrays Xena, calls her out for her vengeful murder plot against the Green Dragon, and follows with a healthy dose of Why Did You Make Me Hit You in The Debt. Of course, that was likely a reaction to Xena trying to murder Gabrielle's Enfant Terrible.
Crusade, Babylon 5's Screwed By The Network spinoff series, had two completed but unproduced scripts that were filled to the brim with this trope. In these separate episodes (one being midseason, the other being the season finale), Captain Gideon risks his current ship and crew to chase down and get revenge on the Mysterious Evil Spaceship that destroyed his previous ship and crew, and between the space battles there are a lot of "What the hell?" speeches from the rest of the main cast. It's only overshadowed by the finale's revelation that Gideon's bosses in Earth Force created the Evil Ship, and his best friend, Galen the Technomage, knew the whole time, at which point Gideon gets to do some "What the hell?"-ing of his own.
In Babylon 5 itself, Sheridan gets called out by Garibaldi over his interrogation of Morden in "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum".
- The ending of that episode isn't exactly as satisfying as it is made out to be. Sherdian, despite his usual working moral compass, doesn't release Morden based on Garibaldi's What The Hell Hero or his own conscience but Delenn and Kosh telling him to do otherwise would pretty much screw the pooch on the galaxy.
- Sheridan calls out Kosh for his Omniscient Morality Licence bullcrap and for doing nothing while the Shadows rampaged when he could have given Sheridan a much needed victory to get the alliance Kosh wants him to build off the ground. At first, Kosh refused, even smacks Sheridan around, then realizes Sheridan is right and caves in. Poor Kosh.
- Delenn and Sheridan called out the Vorlons and the Shadows for failing in their self-imposed role as shepherds of the Younger Races. While they're not really heroes, they do claim some benevolent intentions (if strange and extreme methods of execution) which have been thoroughly perverted through the eons, and being called out by the Younger Races and the remaining Old Ones makes them realize this.
The Shield featured a ton of this as Vic Mackey being called out on his sins as the series came to an end. Between Shane calling Vic out on his murder of Detective Terry Crowley after Vic confronted Shane for his murder of Curtis "Lem" Lemansky and Ronnie Gardocki's final scene as he curses Vic out for betraying Ronnie in order to get full immunity for his laundry list of crimes, creator Shawn Ryan made a huge point of slamming Vic via this trope as the series ended.
- Of course, Ronnie's calling out of Vic occurs seconds after Ronnie's co-worker (and honest cop) Detective Dutch Wagenbach calls Ronnie out on his own laundry list of sins, most notably his (tacit) willingness to turn a blind eye to the fact that Vic Mackey murdered Detective Crowley. Not to mention the fact that Ronnie is arrested within seconds of Claudette performing her own calling out of Vic Mackey, over how he drove his partner/nemesis Detective Shane Vendrell to murder his entire family and himself.
In the Lost episode "Namaste", Sawyer calls Jack out on his leadership in the early seasons (made all the more awesome given that Jack is used to leading Sawyer around, and that the entire interchange arises from Jack's questioning Sawyer for sitting around and reading instead of taking action):
Sawyer: It's how I like to run things. I think. I'm sure that doesn't mean that much to you, 'cause back when you were calling the shots, you pretty much just reacted. See, you didn't think, Jack, and as I recall, a lot of people ended up dead.
Jack: I got us off the island.
Sawyer: But here you are... right back where you started.
- Unfortunately Sawyer's point is somewhat undermined by his being an ass about it directly afterward and showing signs of exactly the same trends of leadership Jack showed. For his part Jack shows relief and acceptance of Sawyer's general point about his leadership, though in his defense, unlike him, Sawyer has the luxury of a comfortable and powerful position to plan instead of react.
- In the last episode of Season 5, it is revealed that Jack wants to nuke the island so he can get Kate back. He gets called out on it by Sawyer of all people. What The Hell Hero indeed. Again sort of undermined when Sawyer changes tack and aids Jack, as does everyone else. Given how things ended up he will rightfully be pissed, but by changing his mind with everyone else and aiding him he has not much ground to stand on.
In Pushing Daisies episode Kerspslash Emerson Codd gets his Crowning Moment Of Awesome when he calls out Ned and Chuck for attempting to ruin Lily and Vivian's comeback performance so they wouldn't tour in Europe.
The M*A*S*H episode "Fallen Idol" has Radar call Hawkeye out after the latter reports to surgery after getting drunk (due to his guilt over having urged Radar to visit a Seoul brothel on his R&R leave, leading to Radar getting wounded by mortar fire en route). This leads to a bitter, though temporary, falling-out between the two men.
- In the season 8 episode "Prevantative Medicine", Hawkeye performs an unnecessary appendectomy on a battle-happy colonel to put him out of commission in advance of a planned (and potentially high-casualty) offensive. B.J. furiously protests this, calling it "mutilation" and a violation of every tenet they're supposed to live by as doctors.
  - This is an interesting parallel/contrast to previous wingman Trapper, who was only too happy to help Hawkeye do the same thing in the season 3 episode "White Gold".
One of the biggest plot points on 24. Jack Bauer is the one who gets the majority of these, but it happens to other characters as well. Part of what makes the show so superior is that when it comes to consequences for actions there's rarely a Reset Button, and saying I Did What I Had To Do rarely gets you off the hook.
In The Wire, Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin gets it from the drug dealers, his underlings, his friends, the media and eventually his entire chain of command for his Hamsterdam plan.
- In a similar fashion, McNulty's Wall Banger of a scheme to manufacture a super-sexy fake serial killer, preying on the homeless in Baltimore in order to force the asshole Mayor to pump more funds into the Baltimore Police Department's budget after cutting said budget to the bone, led to much "What the Hell" yelling at McNulty.
In Supernatural, Dean questions Sam's motivations and humanity when Sam resorts to drinking demon blood to enhance his demon-given powers. Talking leads quickly to beating each other up.
- In an earlier episode, the prophet Chuck calls him on his behavior more gently. "Come on, Sam — sucking blood? You gotta know that's wrong."
- The whole point of the addiction makes the title all the more fitting...
In season 2 of Angel, during the "beige Angel" plot arc, the title character becomes increasingly "dark," to the point that he lets Dru and Darla kill a bunch of Wolfram & Hart lawyers. After this, Cordy, Wes, and Gunn confront him, telling him he has to change the way he's been doing things. He fires them.
- Also the entire point of season 5's You're Welcome. Cordelia returns from her comatose state after Descending in order to set Angel and the rest of the gang straight after they began to lose sight of their original goals due in part to taking over Wolfram and Hart, as well as Lindsey's manipulation.
- Angel wasn't alone on this. How about Fred trying to kill her old professor, Wesley kidnapping Connor, Connor holding a store full of people and Cordelia hostage, Lorne removing his sleep which caused a Hulk-esque Lorne to be born.. The onle person that is immune to this would be Cordelia. However, they all eventually get called out on it.
This trope is the main overriding theme of The Practice. At the beginning of the series, the lawyers are idealistic and guided by a clear sense of ethics. As seasons progress, however, the What The Hell Hero moments increase to an alarming rate. It first becomes serious as the last resort "Plan B" increasingly becomes a first resort and hurts their reputation among other lawyers. It finally reaches an apex in the final season with Alan Shore. Alan Shore has a notorious reputation for being just barely above-board ethics-wise, but he manages to actually take the moral high ground on the firm when, after firing him, Eugene speaks to Shore's longtime clients separately and tries to convince them to stay with the firm instead of Shore, even though Shore has only been a member of the firm for a few months. Something which Shore only even finds out about because one of his clients, for unrelated reasons, tapes all conversations he has with his attorneys.
As a Chaotic Good consultant working for a Lawful Good (or at least Lawful Neutral) organization, Patrick Jane frequently gets called out on his more... unorthodox methods. Considering his revelations also tend to crack cases wide open, he usually gets by with little more than a slap on the wrist, except when things go really over the top and/or his antics insult someone with connections. More severe consequences are occasionally in the offing, though, to the point that after a couple incidents he's lucky to still have his job.
In the "We're So Screwed" trilogy at the end of Farscape's run, John Crichton leave Scorpius, his nemesis he'd struck a deal with, to die at the hands of the Scarrens. It's only through a pre-planned Xanatos Gambit that John is forced to go back and rescue him. Scorpius, of all people, is the one to call him out on it during a quiet little sit down - sure, he's spent the past few years hunting John and making his life miserable, but he's always been honest about it, and kept any deals he made in full, including genuinely risking his own skin to protect John and his friends.
In the finale of Power Rangers Mystic Force, Nick gets called out by his teammates when he decides to give up, after being Curb Stomped by the Master. It didn't help that they had to pry it out of him since, when asked, he didn't even bother to give them a clear answer.

Warhammer 40000: after Angron was beaten back from Armageddon, the Inquisition wiped out the local population to prevent them from being influenced by Chaos. Logan Grimnar of the Space Wolves...didn't like that very much, and has even vowed not to let this kind of thing happen again. Since it's someone in 40K making a principled and compassionate decision, doubles as a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming.
- Compassion?! HERETIC!!
Exalted: In the beginning of their guidebook to Hell, a comic shows a tour guide showing the decadent First Age Solar Exalted about the Demon City, only to realize that they don't care at all:
Oh, what's the use? Nobody cares anymore. Nobody comes here for the right reasons. You're all either hiding from your responsibilities, or lost in your own little worlds. Why do we bother?
- Of the two Solars actually paying attention, one just seems to enjoy watching her break down crying.
  - The Usurpation was the Sidereal and Terrestrial Exalted's rather violent response to the increasingly erratic and monstrous behavior of the Solars. In turn, many spirits think of the Terrestrial Exalted as jackasses undeserving of their position and many of whom didn't listen to the new Mandate until the Terrestrials developed Monks capable of PUNCHING THEM IN THEIR FUCKING SOULS! Solars may have been more classical Heroes of Greek Myth (read: badasses who kick ass and take names with no concern for morality), but they were supposed to do that to Creation's enemies.

Used in a roundabout way in Stage 12 of Code Geass, where Kallen and Lelouch's pleasure at the good press their resistance group has been receiving is subverted when they learn that Shirley's father was Buried Alive in the landslide they recently caused to win a battle.
- The "Kallen Combo"◊ would count as a pretty good example of calling (a guy who claims he is) the hero out on his actions. Suzaku tries to apologize to Kallen for trying to forcefully drug her to get a confession out of her. And her entire speech (in between punches) can be summed up with this trope.
- Episode 19 of R2 has the entirety of Black Knights (except for Kallen) doing this to Lelouch when they learn the truth. Lelouch has constantly lied to them, hid the fact that he was a Britannian prince, killed their allies, was responsible the SAZ massacre, and supposedly used Geass on them (although to be fair, they were wrong about that last one). The result is that he loses his entire army.
  - Just one episode later, Kaguya and Xing-ke give one to the Black Knights when they are caught lying about Zero being dead, and quite possibly the circumstances of the betrayal. Too bad we never get to see it.
- In the Grand Finale, Nunnally gets to deliver the best What The Hell Hero comeback of the series. When Lelouch tries to tell her that everything he's done has been for her sake, she flatly snaps at him, saying that she never wanted a perfect world (specially not one built on lies, war and bloodshed), as she had already been happy living with her brother.
  - This can fall a little flat to people that have been paying attention to Lelouch's character development or the situation they were in, given that Lelouch and Nunnally lived in perpetual fear of discovery prior to the events of the series and the plan had long since ceased to be all about Nunnally to Lelouch. Her intention to create a perfect world on her own by helping Schneizel nuke every capital city in the world from orbit can cross over into the same Moral Dissonance as Lelouch, actually.
  - This recognition that Nunnally has chosen the same path as Lelouch is what finally gives him the courage he needs to carry his plan through to the very end, and end that deliberately involves his own assassination.
Shizuru Fujino from Mai-HiME gets an earful from Haruka Suzushiro and Yukino Kikukawa when she essentially abandons her Student Council President post to protect Natsuki from Nao (not to mention kissing her sleeping body when no one else was around). She takes this as a slight against both her and Natsuki, and attacks Yukino, defeating her (and killing Haruka, who was Yukino's most important person) without so much as messing up her hair; and then sets off to finish her fight against Nao.
Uryuu Ishida from Bleach gets called out by Ichigo for using Hollow bait, attracting lots of monsters, in the middle of a town filled with innocent people, all in order to have a hollow-hunt-off with Ichigo.
- Conversely, Ishida himself calls out Mayuri Kurotsuchi in the Soul Society arc, even if he was technically a villain at the time. Which is ironic, really, given what Ishida himself had once done.
- When Momo Hinamori attacks Gin Ichimaru in a rage, believing him to have murdered her captain, Izuru Kira, Gin's lieutenant, gives one to her while fighting her to protect his captain, calling her out on confusing public and private matters. Later on in the anime, when Rangiku visits her in her cell, she gives her another one, saying that she should have given more thought to her position as lieutenant of the fifth division, and considered how best to lead after Aizen's death. (Aizen isn't really dead, but that's another matter.)
- In the battle for Karakura Town, Ikkaku fights against one of Barragan's fraccion, and while he has bankai, he chooses not to use it to prevent himself from being forced to become a captain and leave Kenpachi's service. As a result, the strategically important pillar he is protecting is destroyed, and Iba calls him out on disobeying orders for his own desires.
In The Prince Of Tennis anime, the Senbatsu and the American arcs have three people in the receiving end of What The Hell Hero speeches.
- Akaya Kirihara, a child-like and cheerful guy who turns into a Tyke Bomb when in the courts, is the first one to get called out. One of the managers, An Tachibana, is the younger sister of a player he seriously injured with his violent tennis style; at some point she corners him to talk about that, but a verbal fight ensues, since Kirihara himself resorted to insulting her and her brother's team.
- The second one is An herself. After her fight with Kirihara and with him injured after falling down a flight of stairs, which could've ended in Death By Falling Over, An understandably panics and pretends to not know anything, so someone else is blamed by the others - Akira Kamio, An's Unlucky Childhood Friend. Ryoma unmasks her, and Kamio reprehends An for her conduct because, as angry as Kamio himself is, he wouldn't deliberately resort to violence.
- And the third is Ryoma Echizen. He had been acting uninterested and bratty all the while, ignoring the challenge posed by a certain boy named Kevin Smith... until he sees Kevin play. Ryoma then practically demands to be in the Senbatsu team, which is seen by sub-coach (and Seigaku captain) Tezuka as a very rude request because Ryoma is putting his personal desire over the team's needs... and Tezuka is so upset that he slaps Ryoma in public and forces him to go into Pose Of Supplication as a punishment.
Haruhi Suzumiya: Kyon often calls the series titular character on her more sociopathic antics. Normally she just ignores him and even when she does back down she never concedes that she was over the line. But when she got Mikuru drunk and attempted to make Koizumi take her first kiss while she was out of it just for the sake of her stupid student movie and followed it up by insisting she could do that because Mikuru is her toy, Kyon was so furious that he actually tried to hit her. Fortunately Koizumi stopped him or the world would probably have exploded.
- In the books, he also calls out adult Mikuru on her mistreatment of her past self.
In the first story arc of Berserk, Guts lets himself get captured by some soldiers after killing a couple of bandits, knowing full well that the bandit leader will destroy the town he's in to kill him. When Puck calls him out on this, Guts laughs it off and replies that if the townspeople can't defend themselves, then they deserve to die. And then Guts savagely beats a disfigured victim of the next villain who gets too close to him (because of his childhood trauma, Guts is implied to suffer from serious aversion to physical contact, but we learn about this only much later in the manga). And then he uses the little daugher of this villain as a human shield. Never mind killing Complete Monsters he opposes in the most painful ways available and general Jerk Ass behavior. Of course, Puck's repeated attempts to scald him for such behavior have no effect - except for revealing Guts' first genuine Pet The Dog moment at the end of the first arc (just in time to help him avoid the status of a full-fledged Villain Protagonist).
- Also, he not only beats up the disfigured man (who does nothing but help him throughout his very brief appearance in the manga) for touching him, but even before that Guts kicks his walking stick from underneath him after being asked a question, replying that "I'm the one asking questions around here", much to the dismay of his faerie 'companion'. All of this is done just after the disfigured old man helps save him from a literal army of guardsmen. After recieving assistance from the man in spite of his contentious attitude, Guts abandons him and continues on his own with Puck. When Puck tells Guts that he should have at least taken the man to a safe place in return for his hospitality, Guts remarks he could have done everything by himself, that he would have simply beaten up the man for the Behlit that he gave him, and that the man was a 'low life insect' for being unable to enact his own revenge. Later when the man is captured by the villain, Guts shows up to the execution just to watch. He makes no effort to assist Puck when he attempts to intervene and save the man, and calls him an idiot for even trying.
- After using the afforementioned girl as a human shield he proceeds to mutaliate and evicerate the villain, who is also the girl's father, with sadistic glee while she watches. When Puck begs him not to do something like that in front of a child, Guts holds a knife up to Puck and tells him to shut up and stay out of the way or be killed. After defeating the villain, his daughter spends the next several pages curled up on the ground crying to herself and muttering hysterically about how she doesn't want things to be like this and doesn't want to live. Guts nonchalantly suggests to her that maybe she should just follow through with her desire and kill herself. This upsets Puck so much that he actually slaps Guts in anger. This doesn't dissuade Guts though, who proceeds to tell her how easy it would be to simply slice her wrists with the knife lying in front of her. At this point Puck is so appauled by Guts' consistently nihilistic behavior that he doesn't even bother to reprimating him, and instead simply laments the fact that Guts is being completely serious about his advice. Just as the girl is about to kill herself the floor she is on gives way nearly sending her to her death. In a rare act of benevolence Guts willingly attempts to save her; but he doesn't do it with his hands - instead he extends his sword to her, forcing her to cling her hands to the blade and cut herself (his sword is fairly dull, so she was not in danger of losing her fingers) before throwing her aside on solid ground. In Guts' defense, he does appear to be seriously saddened as he is walking away from the encounter so his goading might have been a crude attempt to make the girl confront and overcome her despair there and then - when she is shouting promises to kill him one day, he even vocally encourages that, telling her that she's free to try it at any time.
- After finding out that his maddened girlfriend Casca Guts gets angry at the kids who where supposed to be with her until Godo, the dying blacksmith who he left her, says that Guts himself abandoned her in his own rage. This causes a change in Guts, and then he starts to revert back to who he was before the Eclipse ruined his life.
In Mirai Nikki, Yukiteru calls Yuno on her claim that she locked and chained him up in her room and tried to kill his friends because she loved him. To put it in his words: "What the hell?!"
In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, several of Roy Mustang's colleagues, particularly Ed and Armstrong, have this reaction when Roy kills Maria Ross by burning her alive because she's suspected of killing his friend Hughes. Turns out Roy actually faked Ross's death and smuggled her to Xing to protect her.
- More recently, Ed, Riza and Scar give him one when he's prepared to finish off Envy in revenge for killing Hughes, and Riza even threatens to fulfill his request to shoot him if he strays from his ideals.
- Also in Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed has one of these moments with Ling after the prince willingly lets himself become a homunculus.
  - While the second Greed wasn't exactly a hero, he still got one from Ling when he killed one of the chimera who had worked with the first Greed and who was only looking for his old master.
Mamoru Takamura from Hajime No Ippo pulls a big one on Ippo when he almost loses against the Weak But Skilled Kenta Kobashi, falling easily into the other's mind game-based strategies.
- He actually gave Ippo another much earlier, when he believed Ippo wasn't serious enough about taking up boxing.
- A Running Gag in the series is to have Coach Kamogawa loudly calling Takamura out on his jerkassery, even beating him up with his walking stick.
After Heero Yuy kills Admiral Noventa, he's plagued by guilt. He then meets up with his victim's granddaughter, a girl around his age named Sylvia, and asks her to shoot him to death. Sylvia's reply? She points the gun at him, then angrily calls Heero a coward and refuses to Shoot The Dog. Suck it up and make up for it, Heero.
- Cool Big Sis Catherine Bloom also gives two speeches like this. One is to her "brother" Trowa, when he tries to kill himself (with Megaton Punch included!), and the other is to Quatre after he attempts twice to speak to an amnesiac Trowa.
- Before she became a pacifist, Rebellious Princess Relena tried doing this on Lady Une by sneaking into a high-class ball her rival was attending and shooting off a rose she had on her lapel, while publically denouncing Une as her adoptive father's murderer. Unfortunately, this is flanderized to death by Relena's Hatedom, even when at the end of the series Une gives Relena a gun and tells her to shoot her, but she refuses..
In Yu Yu Hakusho, when Genkai tells Toguro to kill one of Yusuke's friends in order to make him fight at his full potential, despite Yusuke being able to defeat Toguro and Toguro being able to fight him at full strength, and Toguro only pretending to kill Kuwabara, Yusuke is outraged over this idea, and Koenma is disturbed. Kuwabara also gives one to Yusuke, Hiei and Kurama when they go off to the Demon Plane in the Three Kings arc.
Dragon Ball Z: The final battle with Cell. As Gohan's busy getting beaten to death by Cell (with Goku and the others just standing there watching), Goku wonders out loud what Gohan is waiting for, expecting the fight to bring out Gohan's full power. Team Dad Piccolo (who, frankly, was more of a father to Gohan than Goku was to that point), disgustedly calls out Goku for healing Cell and then just standing there watching him pound the life out of his son. Piccolo points out (correctly) that Gohan wasn't like him or Goku or Vegeta: he didn't revel in the fight; he was just wondering why his own father was just watching him get beat to death, wondering if his father values a fair, manly fight more than his own son's life, and that, even though it would probably cost him his life, he was going to jump in and help. The anime is a bit easier on Goku than the manga — mostly due to Goku's expression being changed from "Dull Surprise" in the manga to more "Oh Crap! My God What Have I Done?"
- To be fair, Goku IS the very definition of Idiot Hero and it probably genuinely didn't occur to him that Gohan wasn't wired like that. He has been fighting pretty much for all of his life, so.
- Kuririn also calls Goku out for letting Vegeta escape after he's facilitated the deaths of their friends and beaten the living hell out of them. Goku just smiles and says he wants to fight Vegeta again. Granted, Vegeta turns into a valuable ally and Kuririn pulls a similar trick two arcs later on his future wife, Android 18.
- Bulma also delivers one to essentially the whole Z-Gang for being so fight-obsessed that despite Trunks coming all the way from The Future to tell them about how much of a Crap Sack World things'll be due to two renegade androids and giving them three years of prep time, Goku and co. essentially say "That's too easy, we'll just train until they arrive, cause enough damage to get noticed and when it's all over, we'll just use the Dragonballs to revive everyone!" No wonder Old Kai called them on their reliance on using the dragonballs so often when the audience initially thinks he's just a cranky old geezer for blaming Bulma for making the Dragon Radar.
  - I think the main argument the de-facto leader Goku presented was [Gero] hadn't done anything anything yet against the world, so they'd be judging on something he was going to do opposed to something he did (Although this logic is technically false, since Gero was involved in the Red Ribbon Army. Then again, Goku's not the sort of guy who hunts down people from what happened decades ago). There's also the point that Goku is a total fighting-junkie (Which is a polar oppsite from Bulma's approach with problems, particularly in Dragon Ball), so he would have wanted to fight to them. It's In The Blood after all. Goku only thought of using Trnks' message to his advantage by anticipating their attack when it occurs, and thus saving lots of lives in the process (Which wasn't completely successful either, since they wasted the town they were in, more androids came out the woodwork, Cell appeared, and even Goku's like was cost to save the world. But it "worked out" in the end). In the end, Bulma relented and offered to help them in whatever way they can, The Z-Fighters' approach didn't lead to a Crapsack World like Future Trunks', as the Z-Fighters gained enough strength to deal with the problem, although Bulma's approach, morality notwithstanding would have been more rational (and wouldn't cost Goku his life).
One of the few call-outs for all the killing in the manga BLAME! is when Killy shoots the Observer in Chapter 58, in spite of the Observer being non-hostile and actually helpful. His companion Mori objects to his actions, but Killy just blows him off stating that it was a Silicon Life.
In One Piece Hannyabal points out that Impel Down is one of the things keeping the world safe, and Luffy causing a mass breakout would cause mass panic. Luffy simply doesn't give a crap about things like that.
- He doesn't give a crap because Luffy has a tendency not to think about whatever doesn't directly affect himself and his friends because of his care-free personality.
  - Also, Luffy happens to be a PIRATE. Even if people watching sometimes forget, or the people involved lose sight cause he's actually really good natured, Luffy never forgets. He just wants to do what he wants and not think of the consequences, and he chose the right profession. He doesn't intend to be a hero, or to save the world. That just happens to be the by product of his helping his friends and having adventures he thinks are fun. One of my favorite scenes is an example of this: When Crocodile tries to make Luffy falter by calling him a hypocrite for trying to save everyone, despite being a pirate himself. And Luffy's like "duh. I agree, it's pointless. I'm only doing this cause otherwise Vivi would break her back trying to do what she can't do alone. Talk to her about it. I'm just here to kick your ass."
- During Luffy's argument with Usopp, Luffy is about to suggest that if Usopp is so dissatisfied with his decision, he should leave the crew. Sanji kicks Luffy into a wall, angrily telling him to think before he speaks. Luffy apologizes, but the damage has been done, and Usopp, convinced that Luffy throws away useless crew members, announces his intention to leave.
  - While it is arguably this for Luffy, there's also the point that Usopp openly challenged Luffy's decision, who is the captain of their crew, and even criticised his captaincy, before leaving. So, Usopp gets this as well. On this note, Zoro pulled this everyone who was still in the crew who was delighted Usopp planned to come back. He suggested that Usopp should join at their terms not his, and beg for their forgiveness for violating the captain's order over a solvable issue, and then leaving. He himself threatened to leave if they didn't comply. Eventually they got the message, as did Usopp take a hint when he saw them sailing off leading to an emotional heartwarming apology to the crew, and begging to once again be a Straw Hat. Which Luffy streching out his hand to him to come back (though, a tad over the top).
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, after Yami's use of the seal of Orichalcos results in Yugi losing his soul, Yugi's self-proclaimed girlfriend Rebecca chews him out for this, saying that if he really were noble he would never have done something that horrible. Yami doesn't even try to defend his actions there.
- Also, during Yugi's duel with Mai, he refuses to let Yami take over. When Yami asks why, Yugi tells him it's because he fears he'll try to hurt Mai if needed to win, since he was ready to *kill* Kaiba before when he pulled a cruel Xanatos Gambit to beat him at the gates of Pegasus's castle. It takes Yami pretty much pleading with him and Mai chewing Yugi out herself to have him change his mind.
- And before that, Anzu loudly bitches Kaiba out for pulling said Xanatos Gambit in the first place.
In Naruto, Yamato informs Naruto about his injuring Sakura while in four-tails mode, and tells him that if he wishes to bring Sasuke back, he should rely on his own power to do so and avoid becoming agitated enough to go into fox mode. Yamato and Kakashi lecture him after one of his Leeroy Jenkins moments in the Three Tails arc, saying that it put himself and his comrades in danger, but both concede that Sakura's dropping down on Naruto and punching him into the ground was much more effective.
- Manga chapter 458: In a Crowning Moment Of Awesome, Sai spells out to Sakura that Naruto truly loves her, and then he calls her out for all the suffering Naruto has gone through on her behalf, stating that the unfulfilled promise Naruto made to her of bringing Sasuke back for her is burdening him terribly and because of this Sakura has been hurting Naruto a lot.
  - YMMV alternately, this is a dethroning moment of suck for Sai, as he fails utterly to understand that Naruto would be struggling to save Sasuke on his own even without the promise.
- Danzou of all people gives one to Sasuke during their fight where he informs Sasuke that he's wasting Itachi's sacrifice by just blindly attacking everyone and everything connected to the Uchiha massacre. I never thought I'd say this but Straw Man Has A Point!
Subverted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, wherein Jotaro was part of a high-stakes poker with the devious gambler D'arby, the betting collateral his soul and the souls of Polnareff and Jotaro's grandfather Joseph on the line. Avdol was perfectly fine with Jotaro adding his own soul, believing in him sa you would. Cue the hrorrified calling out when Jotaro decides to add both the souls of the then hospitalized Noriaki Kakyoin and HIS OWN MOTHER to the pot. Of course, this was all a clever Batman Gambit on Jotaro's part designed to wear D'arby down mentally, to the point where D'arby would subconsciously admit defeat, freeing the souls of those he had baten (Via cheating but still). Earlier still, Avdol called Jotaro out for using Star Platinum to break D'arby's finger...until Jotaro himself called out D'arby's attempted slight of hand trick.
In Kuroshitsuji, Ciel Phantomhive, our Troubled But Cute hero, has gotten one of these from, of all people, Sebastian, his demonic butler. In Chapter 34, his Stalker With A Crush takes him down to the basement to show off a room that is an exact replica of the room where Ciel had nearly died as a sacrifice for a bunch of cultists to summon Sebastian in the first place. This is apparently not as romantic as he seemed to hope, what with the fact that Ciel has what is his first shown full-out episode, and he kills the stalker upon his request. After this, Ciel proceeds to tell the orphan who has worked with the stalker to help his brothers and sisters that he did not do anything wrong by killing those children because he was protecting those he cared about, and needed to start giving a damn about himself. Then comes the Doctor, who reveals that he was making sure the children's corpses aren't reaching the cemetery by using their bones to create prosthetic limbs. Ciel reacts violently, insisting that Sebastian kill both aforementioned orphan and the mad doctor. Afterwards, Ciel demands they burn down the mansion, with the kids still inside. Sebastian then reminds Ciel that their job was to save the kids in the first place. Unfortunately, Sebastian is bound to Ciel's will, so has to obey him.
Sailor Moon S has Haruka and Michiru calling out Usagi for being too soft on Hotaru, the local Apocalypse Maiden.
- In the manga Sailor Moon feels much the same way towards them for immediately jumping to kill Hotaru rather than find a less...murderous way to settle things. They appear a good bit more sympathetic later, when it's revealed that they just don't want the world to end like it did before and they didn't know that after Saturn destroyed everything in the world then Sailor Moon would use the Silver Crystal to revive all the good things.
Wow, Ruby... just wow... we know you love your contests like nothing else in the world, but prioritizing them over saving Hoenn?
- To explain the above, Nana (Ruby's Mightyena) effectively shut down twelve frenzied Grumpig in a single transaction. Unlike all his previous efforts where he was away from an audience or fighting Marge, his audience was Sapphire, who clearly sees through the Non Action Guy routine and insists that he lend his aid. When he refused, she exploded - she took off the clothes he made for her, put her leaf outfit back on, shoved the letter he wrote her in his own face, and screamed at him like a banshee.
- Later, he participated in a Pokemon contest despite the crisis, only to lose to a mystery contestant (read: Wallace, whom he admired) and blamed his Feebas for the loss. This caused Mimi to run away, and while Ruby got better after the initial tragedy of breaking a teammate's heart, Wallace has to spell it out to him first.
In Weiss Kreuz, Persia, Weiss' boss, confronts his older brother, Reiji, and accuses him of using his older sons as pawns in his political schemes, abandoning his youngest son to kidnappers, and driving his wife to suicide. Reiji responds by pointing out that the way he used his sons is no different from how Persia uses Weiss—and oh, by the way, that son I abandoned? The one you rescued and raised to be an assassin? Well, you remember that affair you were having with my wife...?
Legend Of Galactic Heroes: Kircheis issues Reinhard a What The Hell Hero for not stopping an enemy attack that wiped out an entire planet of innocent civilians (note in the anime version, Reinhard only agreed to consider not intervening, believing he had more time to think about it than he actually did). Years later, after Reinhard becomes Emperor, a man whose family was killed in the attack calls him out in public, accusing him of building his empire on the corpses of innocent women and children.
In the manga adaptation of Battle Royale, Yutaka gives Shinji a hell of a one of these after he accidentally-on-purpose shoots Keita in the face.
The task force call L on several of his actions in Death Note — both the genuinely extreme ones (torturing Misa to the point of almost insanity) and the ones that are probably just pragmatic (trying to let Higuchi continue to kill so that L can determine his method of killing).
- The task force calls Near out for having Misa and Mogi abducted as a precaution, saying that doing so is illegal. However, Mogi reveals that they consented to this.
The Blue Men in Project ARMS. They're an undercover organization dedicated to bringing down the Egrigori. When the ARMS teens show up, they're greeted with a party. Better group, right? Until you realize that they were the ones who performed the ARMS experiments which meant that they were responsible for the vast number of deformed people found in the lab in Abumisawa village, not to mention the fact that they treated Kei horribly when she was raised there which caused her quite a lot of psychological damage. Ryo and the others quickly call them out on that and refuse to allign themselves with them.
In one episode of Speed Racer, an opponent needs to win to get medicine to save a loved one, yet the title character won't loose on purpose because that is "cheating", despite protests from Trixie (fortunately she sabotaged him, putting people ahead of the integrity of the race).
In the Dark Tournament arc of Yu Yu Hakusho, Kuwabara calls out Yusuke for not telling anyone about Genkai's death.

In Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, the title character kills his youngest son, Mutius, in the first scene for very little reason and with amazingly little fanfare — no dying speech, no nothing. He is called out by his remaining sons.
Similarly, in Hamlet, when Hamlet switches a letter ordering his own execution with one ordering the deaths of its bearers (who happen to be his erstwhile schoolmates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), his friend Horatio calls him on it. Hamlet, however, brushes it off with a glib, "They are not near my conscience," which Horatio seems to accept.
At the climax of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero is actually talked out of his revenge plot when his servant Ariel describes the distress of his captured enemies. Prospero realizes that if Ariel, a spirit of the air, can feel pity for these men, then he as their fellow human being should be compassionate as well.
Wagner's Parsifal actually introduces its eponymous hero this way, with him being reprimanded for senselessly killing a swan. Of course, he's The Fool and has a lot to learn — he doesn't even know his name at this point.

The 2008 Prince Of Persia has the Prince undoing all the work he and Elika had undergone to save the world from Ahriman because he couldn't stand the price: Elika's life. So, he destroys the Trees of Life, and Elika is understandably a bit upset ("WHY?"). The expansion lamely tries to explain Prince's actions by making it a Xanatos Gambit on his part.
This trope is a standard in Roleplaying Games with recruitable party members. People who don't akgree with you will voice their disagreement and possibly even leave the party if they have a problem with the behavior of the Player Character.
- In Fallout 2 some NPC party members will abandon you in disgust if you get the Child Killer or Slaver karmic title (Child Killer is avoidable by planting armed explosives in the desired child's inventory). Similarly in Fallout 3, some NPC followers will abandon you depending on your current Karma.
- In the Baldur's Gate series good party members will leave the party if you reach a low enough reputation from your evil deeds and vice-versa, but there are also other ways of pissing people off, such as wagering on dog fighting when you have a Nature Hero in the party.
- In Jade Empire, your party has one big "What the hell?" if you decide to bind Death's Hand's spirit into servitude. And then you can bind them as well.
- In Ultima 7 pt 1, your party members will complain about stealing and other unavatarlike actions, and sometimes even leave the party. This can be prevented by a Good Bad Bug, though.
- The bulk of your plot-relevant interactions with the Nakama in Knights of the Old Republic will be instances of this if you choose The Dark Side of the Karma Meter.
  Jolee Bindo: (in his absolutely best sarcastic old man tone of voice) Nice... nice... nice... nice... Should we next find some insects to pull the legs off? Sounds fun, doesn't it?
  - Similarly, the Dark Side members sometimes complain about you for being soft if you are charitable or merciful. In Knights of the Old Republic II, Kreia complains about overly compassionate or brutal acts, suggesting instead that you subtly twist situations to your advantage.
River City Ransom: EX has various unethical attacks, such as kicking the opponent while they're down or curb-stomping them. Enough surprise punches to the head while a boss is talking, and your team will leave or turn on you. So much for Shut Up Hannibal, eh?
In Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, some party members will complain if you perform acts strongly counter to their alignment (especially good-aligned characters complaining about killing neutral NP Cs unprovoked), dropping their opinion of you until they eventually leave or even attack you. Though if you're well-enough versed in healing magic and know the Resurrection spell, you can let your allies "accidentally" die in a fight and then bring them back to life to restore their high opinion of you. Though for some reason, Mages will gladly follow technologists.
Marche of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is frequently questioned on whether his actions (attempting to bring his friends home from an idealized dream world) are right, though just about always by people who were on the good side of the transfer. Whether or not he actually is remains contested on this Wiki.
Transfer enough of your crew to serve in torment and death with the Druuge in Star Control II and the Starbase Commander will call you out. It will also get much, much harder to recruit.
You'll get this a lot of if you play the Renegade side of the Karma Meter in Mass Effect. "Commander Shepard, I called you in so that we could avoid civilian casualties."
- You get called out on both sides of the Paragon/Renegade spectrum (it's important to bear in mind that this scale doesn't neccessarily represent good or evil in black and white terms. After Noveria, the Council will call you out if you exterminate the rachni or you spare them, in which case the Council accuse you of putting the entire galaxy at risk.
- In the sequel, many, many people (including some of his/her former squadmates) chew out Shepard for accepting the aid of Cerebus. To be fair, Cerebus is one of the biggest (and infamous) criminal organizations in the setting...
Jin Kazama after his Face Heel Turn in Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection
- Why? First off, it's not much of a turn at all; he's never been motivated by anything other than personal reasons and has a pretty nasty vicious streak (and that's not even considering the Devil Gene). Secondly, wouldn't it make perfect sense for him to take command of the Zaibatsu after knocking off Heihachi, either because he honestly thinks he's a better leader, or he wants to take control of his destiny, or...well, that's just what the Tekken top guy is supposed to do? Didn't expect it to turn into a full-scale war, of course, but hey, anything that keeps Bryan Fury off the streets...
Many games that keep track of your character's morality will punish you with a Downer Ending for being too evil, but Ogre Battle 64 really takes it up a notch. If you recruited too many chaotic characters and captured, rather than liberated many towns before killing the Big Bad, you get a "bonus" mission in which the protagonists of the original Ogre Battle call you out and try to kill you for being a Jerk Ass, and you're forced to kill them. Then you get the very worst possible ending. Alternatively, you can lose the battle, and rather than kill you, the heroes of the original game allow you to join them on a new mission to atone for your sins.
- Tactics Ogre also has several, especially if Denim takes the Lawful route, where nearly every battle in Chapter 2 consisted of enemy leaders calling Denim out on his participation in the Baramus Massacre. In the chaotic route, taking the more morally sound route, Denim still gets chastised for trying to keep his hands clean of the atrocities the WLA commit for the betterment of their country — but continuing to kill people through warfare for the sake of romantic idealism. And of course, in the Neutral Route, a character defects because Denim has proven to be wishy-washy. Lovely.
In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Micaiah is called on her very first My Country Right Or Wrong act by her Like Brother And Sister Bodyguard Crush. It Got Worse, but Sothe gets more supportive once he realizes she doesn't have a choice. The trope is also invoked by Micaiah's antagonists and some other members of the party, especially since they can defect. They are the minority, though.
Final Fantasy Tactics is filled with call-outs between characters, including the main hero, Ramza. Early on in the game he gets called out on that, being born and raised a noble, he's blindingly naive about class differences and shares the blame in being part of the system that ended up killing Delita's—his common-born best friend's—sister. As a result Ramza abandons his name and spends some time running away from the guilt before coming to agree that, while he may not have directly killed Delita's sister, he WAS part of the aristocracy that did her in and more or less stood by and let it happen. This was a development that gave him the strength to be willing to fall into obscurity (something which he himself looked at to be the worst kind of death) to do the thankless job in fighting against the wrongs of corrupt politics.
- And being Ramza's foil, Delita definitely counts, and with worse deeds to his name. In reaction to losing his sister, he determines the only way to change a world that manipulates everyone is to be the manipulator at the top so he can use people the right way. Which he does and becomes king. He uses everyone, including those closest to him, and many characters consider this VERY bad taste. There are several times in the story where he's called out on it; most notable of which is when a trusted companion expressed surprise that he would go so far as to use his best friend (to which Delita furiously reacted by telling her to shut up) and Ramza himself asks Delita if he's not as bad as the rest by using the woman he loves—the Princess, who is treated as nothing more than a political pawn (which Delita couldn't give an answer to). In fact, Delita got the ultimate call-out when the Princess ends up stabbing Delita, accusing him of never caring for her and only ever being a cold, manipulative bastard.
  - To which he responds by killing her. WITH THE SAME DAGGER SHE STABBED HIM WITH!
Final Fantasy VII begins with your committing eco-terrorism for pay. Checking the news soon after reports that hundreds died and untold numbers of people are left without power. And, just to make sure you can't miss it, Cait Sith calls you out on it again late in the game.
At the end of Shadow of the Colossus, Lord Emon calls Wander on allowing the colossi to combine and become much more powerful, and letting them possess his (Wander's) body. Lord Emon goes on to state that he hopes that, if Wander survived, he will atone for his sins.
- Give that the wanderer didn't really know what was happening and was trying to save someone, this may be more a case of Nice Job Breaking It Hero.
  - It could go either way. The severe lack in dialogue and backstory makes it hard to draw the line.
At the end of the GDI campaign in Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars, if the Commander (you) opts to deploy the Liquid Tiberium Bomb against the Scrin, you end up killing twenty million people, including your entire assault force. Immediately afterward, General Granger outright accuses you of being a war criminal and says he would court martial you if he could.
Caim from Drakengard can be described as a cold-blooded killing machine driven by revenge. Often, while killing enemies in the game, several characters will object to his ruthless killing; for example, Leonard tells him "your heart is black".
The Witcher involves making choices which will severely alienate at least half of your hero's acquaintances, resulting in a "What the Hell" speech from at least somebody — most significantly, you can join the paramilitary bigots who slay monsters, but who also subjugate the "lesser races" (alienating your "lower-class" friends) or join the resistance to these oppressors, themselves so embittered at human rule that they have no problem with human collateral damage (alienating your "upper-class" friends. You can take a neutral path, largely pacifying your friends, but alienating most everyone else on your journey.
Luke of Tales of the Abyss gets an epic calling out by his entire party after his Nice Job Breaking It Hero moment, which leads to his Heroic BSOD and subsequent Character Development.
- To some though, it's more of a What The Hell, Everyone? moment, considering that everyone is blatantly hypocritical in damning Luke for not trusting them, yet actively withholding information from him. And you can't blame Luke for implictedly trusting his beloved childhood mentor and the only person besides Mieu to treat him with respect and understanding.
- Yuri Lowell. As a Vigilante Man, he kills two people who were using either their position or nobility to escape the law. When Flynn calls him out on this, Yuri freely admits that he's a criminal, but that he did what he had to do.
Metal Gear Solid 2 as part of its Mind Screw ending, asks the main character if he enjoys all of the killing he's been doing. This is made far, far creepier by not so subtly suggesting that they're ignoring the fourth wall, and saying "Dude, do you seriously find killing people FUN?" to the player.
- Something similar happens in the previous installment, too.
- As well as in the third installment, where you literally have to walk down a river being harassed by the ghosts of all those you've killed during your current play through. Detailed to the point of the game remembering the method of death. The appropriate body parts will be injured.
  - This can be more hilarious than horrifying, if you played through the game getting mostly crotch shots, as I did.
  - In addition to the above, let's not forget that in order to get vulture meat, you need to kill somebody in the canyon area, and wait for a vulture to come eat the poor fellow, so you can then shoot that down and eat it later. So, when you walk down the dead people river (provided you've eaten the vulture meat), one of the people you encounter could be somebody with a vulture chewing on his neck, crying 'YOU ATE ME!'
- Can also occur in both 2 and 3, should you begin to beat up on the female protagonist following you at certain points. Your support team in 3 has some choice words for you when you go this route. And in 2, try kicking around the hostages you're supposed to rescueing. The protagonist's girlfriend calls him on it.
- Let's not forget Naomi blaming Snake for Grey Fox's, erm, condition.
In Neverwinter Nights, the resurrection clerics will regularly give you a chewing-out if you give in to the Videogame Cruelty Potential.
In Ultima VII, your buddies will scold you to no end if you pickup anything that doesnt belong to you but they dont mind if you give it to them instead. Enough infractions will make them leave the party (sometimes resulting in Game Breaking Bugs). Even the Big Bad will sometimes pop up (literally), and scold you "you'd best not do that Avatar". Hypocritical Humor anyone?
Firing on allied ships in the FreeSpace series results in them turning against you and trying to kill you. If you jump out you end up arrested with a debriefing telling you about your upcoming court martial and execution.
In Star Lancer, similar to FreeSpace, firing on Alliance ships will result in you being executed by firing squad THE MOMENT YOU DOCK AND STEP OFF YOUR SHIP.
- This one is particularly annoying because they do ask you to shoot down torpedos fired on allied ships. If you are firing on a torpedo, but it still hits and destroys a ship, chances are a few of your dinky laser shots aimed at the torpedo hit the ship too. And that's apparently enough for your everyone to assume you destroyed that ship.
While Fable II tends to take a Card Carrying Villain viewpoint if you choose the evil path to completing quests, it will call you out if you kill Farmer Giles or break Alex's heart, as well as probably some others.
Malygos gets called out in the latest World of Warcraft expansion for a plan that at least involves genocide and may in fact cause the planet to explode. Said people calling him out, besides players, are every single other dragonflight. Even the Black Drag on flight gives a reaction of, "... sigh, you had to do the one thing that would piss even us off and make us side with these losers to defend this place, didn't you?"
Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice: Mao and company wind up fighting the Overlord's hand in Mao's Heart World (they're trying to get Almaz' hand-made Hero title out AGAIN), and after it regenerates, almost everyone starts pondering how to keep it from coming back. Almaz finds that it's plugged in at an outlet and pulls the plug. It shuts down the hand as expected — but it also reduces Mao's mind to a larval state and takes his language skills with it. Almaz hears no end of it from Geoffrey and takes a Groin Attack from Sapphire before she ditches him to fix the problem herself ("If there's a God, please kill me now."). Champloo talks some sense into Almaz, which causes him to go inside and help the rest of the team put Mao's mind back in proper order. He then puts his Hero title back in Mao's heart, figuring he has no right to it until he can open Mao's heart the natural way.
Mediocre game Lair had a moment like this for Rohn on the final mission for the Asylians, on it Rohn merciless bombards the Mokai capital on his dragon, then he receives the order to flame a building with screaming people running towards it, he is told that the fleeing people were Mokai soldiers and the building was an armory, so he does it, reducing it to flaming mess, later he swoops down to survey the destruction, he finds a single shrouded figure standing in the middle of what is left of the building, on Rohn's touch, this figure dissolves into ash revealing a normal skull and an infant one inside the shroud, Rohn realizes that the building was a temple and the people he incinerated were innocent civilians seeking refuge from the destruction, and the figure that dissolved was of a woman who tried to protect her baby from the fireblaze.
Team Fortress 2 seems to have a dark parody of this with the Heavy's line "what sick man sends babies to fight me?"
Arthas from War Craft III, or specifically Uther calling him out on his decision to raze the city of Stratholme.
- And again in World of Warcraft in the Caverns of Time when this is repeated.
In Wing Commander III, if Blair decides to disobey orders to go after Hobbes, which results in Vaquero's death, Eisen will call him out on putting his own desire to avenge Cobra above the needs of the ship.
A major reversal occurs in Star Ocean: The Last Hope: after Edge commits quite possibly the dumbest decision anyone could ever make (attempting to change the future by giving their futuristic technology to a clearly untrustworthy Cold War scientist), which results in the simutaneous deaths of billions of people, the only one who calls him out on it is himself. Everyone else sympathises with him and tries to make him see that it wasn't his fault, even though it clearly was.
Devil Survivor has a few such moments, but the biggest is probably the Escape ending, which goes out of its way to make sure you feel like a total loser for breaking through the blockade, killing the angels and SDF, thus letting demons out of the barricade while leaving the Earth completely undefended against them. Way to go, 'hero'.
Digital Devil Saga has one instance where Heat actually says nice job hero when you just found out that your attack on Mick's territory was for nothing and the entire Maribel tribe was wiped out because you didn't let Heat eat Bat.
Dr. Breen tries to shame Dr. Gordon Freeman this way in Half-Life 2, calling him out as a scientist who has a great deal of destruction to his credit, but has never created, discovered, or improved on anything. Considering that Gordon's first day at his shiny new research job had him battling invading aliens for survival, then being put in stasis for twenty years before being drafted as a freedom fighter, it's not like it was really his decision...
- Of course, considering Dr. Breen was working for the Combine, aiding them in enslaving humanity, it's kind of hard to take his accusations seriously.
Touhou has at least one fun example of this, in Phantasmagoria of Flower View. Your character meets with Sikeiki Yamaxanadu, judge of the dead, who points out that you're going to hell... (or worse!)
There was also that time when Reimu looted the village in Perfect Cherry Blossom.
- The response, of course, is to "befriend" her, Nanoha style!
Sagi does this to Marno in Baten Kaitos Origins, in what is almost certainly that game's most poignant scene.
- Guillo does this to Milly several times, most notably when she reveals that she has been spying on Sagi for her father Baelheit. Though this one probably has a little more to do with them being a hilarious case of Vitriolic Best Buds rather than any actual harm caused by her actions.
In Infamous, if the player character chooses to detonate the Ray Sphere to enhance his power, his karmic rating will instantly go to the level of infamous, regardless of how high it was before, and it will stay there for the rest of the game. Other, slightly-less-evil things can earn this, too, if you over-do them.
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow has Dario accusing Soma of going too far for (supposedly) killing Dimitri, and when Soma apologizes for it, it's actually subverted by Dario basically saying, "Ah, what are you talking about? I just wanted to beat that stuck up jerk to death with my own hands!" Considering Dario is one of the bad guys, I guess you could also consider it a subversion of Even Evil Has Standards.
Shirou calls Archer out on letting Caster escape under the hopes that maybe she can kill Berserker for him or something. Knowing perfectly well that she's incredibly dangerous and does not really mind causing collateral damage to civilians. Archer tells him to shut up and go away.
In the evolution-based RPG E.V.O.: Search for Eden for the SNES, there is a point in the second chapter where you are actually able to kill and devour a pair of helpful amphibians (one of whom is a child whose father sacrificed himself to save his species). Doing so causes a horrified Gaia to ask what you're doing. If you eat the meat the two provide, you're instantly killed. (That's karma for you.)
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War has the enemies call Cipher "mercenary scum" or something similar after you destroy noncombatants or neutralised enemy vehicles and the FMV interviewees are generally more derogatory. The game also has Videogame Cruelty Punishment by sending tougher ace squadrons after you. Inverted also in that Pixy sometimes rationalises away your deeds as being positive, though it's open for interpretation as to whether he believes his own words.
Several characters in Deus Ex will call JC out if you decide to kill the NSF troops in Castle Clinton. It's hard to tell which is worse - Cool Old Soldier General Carter's dissapointment, or the cold, Trigger Happy Anna Navarre's approval.
In Dead Space Extraction, Nathan calls the other two protagonists, Gabe and Warren, out when they just stood there while Lexine (and later the Engineer, who went over to save her) got grabbed by a tentacle. Because Nathan ends up being the only one doing the shooting, it results in the Engineer getting taken and killed by the tentacle. To put it in Nathan's words: "Jesus, thanks for the help, guys. Where were you?!" Undoubtedly, this moment of calling out is made all the more satisfying, considering that the fact that up until then, Nathan had pretty much been doing everything with the rest of them doing nothing but whining.
In Kingdom Hearts, Sora and Riku take turns calling each other out throughout several parts of the game; Riku admonishes Sora for seemingly abandoning Kairi by teaming up to help Goofy and Donald, and Sora lectures Riku for siding with the Heartless to achieve his goals.
- This happens to Sora in Chain of Memories... And he's called out by Vexen of all people, who tries to convince him that his memories are being changed to turn him into a puppet, and failing that tells Sora he has no right to be called a hero or a Keyblade Master if he's so easily manipulated. Likewise, Larxene calls out Naminé for suddenly appearing to be ready of sacrificing herself to save Sora despite being threatened into doing the memory manipulation only a short while before (is it becoming clear why Nobodies make such great villains yet?).
Episode 3 of Phantasy Star Universe: In a refugee camp on Parum, Pipi Vol berates the GUARDIANS about their ineffectiveness and willingness to abandon their friends. Although she accuses the GUARDIANS of something they didn't do ( dropping G Colony on Parum), the rest of her accusations ring true given events that took place in Episodes 1 and 1.5 (Phantasy Star Portable).
In Mega Man Zero, for the human citizens of Neo Arcadia, the La Resistance and Zero waging war against the Neo Arcadian military is an act of terrorism, even though they're only fighting to protect themselves. Come Zero 4, Neige, the leader of the human Caravan, berates Zero and Craft (the new Neo Arcadian general) for bringing the war to the peaceful haven of Area Zero, amongst the other "atrocities" that Zero's committed.
- Later turned around when Zero berates the Caravan for abandoning Neige when she was kidnapped.
In Suikoden II, during the Tinto arc, Nanami asks the Riou (your character) to run away. If you choose to, you're eventually forced to confront the other commanders of the army. Shu will slap Riou in the face, and tells him that his (and in turn, Your) cowardice cost one of the generals his life. If you keep refusing, the game ends - stating that the hero has lost the respect of everyone and the movement collapsed. Nice Job Breaking It Hero
Dynasty Warriors provides a few instances. At Chang Ban, when Cao Cao decides to attack the peasants to get to Liu Bei, his own general Zhang He calls this out (albeit halfheartedly), while Liu Bei goes into full-on enraged hyper mode if you actually kill any peasants. Liu Bei himself gets the What the Hell treatment from Ma Chao and Yan Yan, among others, when he invades Liu Zhang's territory on a pretext even he knows to be incredibly flimsy (justifying it with I Did What I Had To Do).
- That's pretty much how things were in the Three Kingdoms period. Life was cheap, emotions ran high, and the mightiest of lords seemingly couldn't screw up fast enough (hello, Yuan Shao!). Believe me, you're barely scratching the surface; this isn't even the worst decision Liu Bei made (that would be Yi Ling).

The titular character of Dominic Deegan has been called out repeatedly due to his habit of using his ability to see the past and future as an excuse for an Omniscient Morality License. Celesto Morgan also (somewhat unfairly, considering everything that was going on) call out Dominic for not trying to save his lover Amelia as hard as he tried to save Beleaguered Childhood Friend Szark Sturtz in this strip.
Inverted in Looking for group; Richard (a card-carrying 'joyfully and creatively chaotic evil' character' with centuries of continuous evil) get a 'what the hell antihero' reaction from hell because by killing/burning an entire village he ACCIDENTALLY did some potential good to the future of the region. This is the only part where we see Richard having a conscience (only he's guilty of doing GOOD)
- Played straight with Cale calling out Pella for forcing the Gnomes to join Kethenecia by destroying their last line of defense. To be fair, after talking about the incident with Benny, he seems to be more dissapointed with her then angry.
In The Adventures of Doctor McNinja, the Doctor gets chewed out for his Technical Pacifism by the mother of one of the mooks he killed. Although she does do it while he's burying the mentor whom said mook helped murder to get at him....
- Doc also beats himself up emotionally in private, particularly when the ninjas he killed rise from the dead with no medical explanation and no obvious purpose except to get revenge on him.
- Gordito delivers a particularly thorough one here.
A Sluggy Freelance Story Arc has Riff out to kill Aylee because he believes she's a threat to the world. Torg points out that, as a Mad Scientist whose inventions tend to backfire in catastrophic ways, Riff is actually more likely to wipe out the human race than any alien.
- Torg often gives these to Aylee when she eats clients or other people, although they're more often treated as a bad habit than murder. When she, while still in a "Cannibals Anonymous" program, serves up a man for Thanksgiving Dinner and Zoe gets upset, he fires Aylee (but hires her back some time later after she reforms as a result of the program).
- And now the Fate Spiders are getting one from Father Time, as their attempt to undo the Great Tangle actually made it worse.
In Jack, the titular character leads a genocidal campaign against the human race. He NEVER stops getting chewed out for it, even though he's really a nice guy who, thanks to the power of Hell, can't even remember what he did. It's played straight once Farrago reveals that Fnar's stay and eventual molestation in Hell was her fault and Jack gets angry and attacks her, although he becomes intensely regretful and begs for forgiveness a second later. They haven't forgiven him yet.
In The Order of the Stick, Vaarsuvius the mage has crisped the evil noble who had been plaguing the party, just because it was more convenient than enduring another trial. To make things worse, V had no idea who the person killed was or what, if anything, he'd done to merit execution. Disintegrating Kubota was based solely on the time-consuming nature of a trial and the fact that Elan had tied him up. Elan, normally a Spoony Bard, calls V on it in a manner that shows his growth as a character.
- And recently Vaarsuvius has been on the receiving end of an another lecture about making a Deal With The Devil. Whilst V's stated intentions are that the Deal allowed access to further ability both to save loved ones in danger and to continue the quest to help save the world, both laudable goals, Vaarsuvius' mate challenged that it was more about V's ego, the need to solve the problem alone and V's ultimate desire to taste ultimate power — a not entirely unreasonable charge, in light of the fact that V agreed to make the deal after being presented with an alternative that might have worked. Although it had an extremely unlikely chance of success, Vaarsuvius was far too addled to figure this out, and simply focused on how it would have required the personal humiliation of requesting the help of others.
  - Actually, that alternate plan wouldn't have worked anyway. As it would involve Vaarsuvius killing himself, Qarr teleporting his head to Durkon, and then Durkon Resurrecting Vaarsuvius and Sending a message to V's tutor, that's 20 minutes of wasted time. Resurrection and Sending both have a ten minute casting time (At least, in Rich's world). When V made the deal, talked to himself for a few seconds, and teleported to his/her family, the dragon had already broken the children's legs and was about to go all I Am A Humanitarian (Okay, elf-tarian or somthing) on them. So in twenty minutes, the dragon could have eaten the kids, bound their souls, and called it a day.
  - Subverted when V expects another lecture from Durkon on the same subject, but Durkon goes on to admit that he was wrong and that V's Deal With The Devil actually helped quite a lot. Of course, he doesn't actually know that it was a Deal With The Devil, or that he's gone and killed a few thousand black dragons, getting Tiamat really pissed off.
- Earlier, during Roy's initiation into the Lawful Good afterlife, he gets chewed out for abandoning Elan to bandits (he came around) and tolerating the obscenely evil antics of Belkar. Roy does defend himself, however, freely acknowledging that he was wrong to do the former and to his credit realized it, and that in doing the latter he has managed to prevent Belkar from doing even worse things than he currently does under Roy's guidance.
- In another part of the story, Redcloak believes he is giving one to O-Chul for choosing to sacrifice several innocent lives just to keep a secret. Specifically, Redcloak is threatening to push them off a tower and into the reality tear if O-Chul won't reveal the secret of the gates (which he actually don't know, but Redcloak won't believe that). Redcloak gets so indignant over how callous the paladin is about innocent lives that he seems to forget he's the one threatening them. In the end, he lets the prisoners live, certain that seeing how little O-Chul cares about them will ruin their morale, but it only strengthens them to see his resolve.
- A recent strip subverts it beautifully, with Lawful Good Roy deciding to use Chaotic Evil Heroic Sociopath Belkar as live bait to "guide" the giant sandworm they used as an impromptu transportation method. Belkar starts off Calling The Hero Out, then breaks into laughter, claims he almost managed to go through that with a straight face, and tells them to "dangle (him) away".
- Miko Miyazaki gets so many of these that one might suspect that Rich Burlew has a serious bone to pick with characters (in RP Gs or in real life) who twist the rules of law and good so far to meet their own desired ends that they appear evil to anyone else.
In Gunnerkrigg Court, Reynardine's reply is more surprise than accusation when he sees the photo of Antimony's parents and realizes that Annie stole it. But the effect is the same.
- Similarly, when Annie explodes at Mort — over a misunderstanding of his intention in giving her a Blinker Stone — Kat actually says, "What the hell, Annie?"
In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, when Molly is first introduced, Bob and Jean initially send her to live with Jean's Uncle on a farm, for her own safety. This maintains the series Status Quo for a couple of story arcs. Bob eventually realizes that she's very unhappy there and invites her back home, and she has lived with Jean since then. However, Molly can still Guilt Trip her parents very effectively about the time they "sent her away."
In Angels 2200, when Whiskey reveals the final stage of her Break The Haughty plan to humiliate the newly promoted Quetz by poisoning her with laxatives, Loser responds by saying that she's gone too far. This proves to be true, as Quetz eventually finds out and has Whiskey arrested with the intention of having her court-martialed, even saying that she might have gotten off much more easily if not for the last prank.
- In the last battle of the first part, Whiskey is called out in no uncertain terms for accidentally killing Loser.
The Light Warriors. White Mage describes them as "insatiable flying deathmongers". The rest of the cast is inclined to agree.
- Taken to new heights recently with the culmination of Sarda's plot against the light warriors. He has waited the entire lifetime of the universe and more just to exact revenge. Though given his methods and neglect to actually stop the groups murderous actions, Sarda is probably due for one soon.
  - Then again, to call the Light Warriors "heroes" according to the modern definition is to miss the point.
A recent Erfworld issue has Parson subtlely calling out Maggie for indirectly causing the death of Misty. He then acknowledges, that, since he just defeated the enemy in a particulary horrific manner, he's not one to talk.
What's the best way to start Divide And Conquer strategy? The Crossoverlord says: Tell The Cape about The Smart Girl's Shoot The Dog moment and watch him giving her What The Hell Hero speech.
Third panel: "Pretty cold, after the girl saved you." Of all the people to be called out by ... Bangladesh Dupree?!
- Notice the smirk. She probably approves.
In General Protection Fault, the cast is not very pleased with Fred's using his newfound control ability to possess Trent and force him to sexually harass Sharon, strip naked and run around calling himself Wiley Wombat, which caused him to get arrested.
Ethan in Shortpacked is known for his constant arguing with annoying or ignorant fanboys both online and in the store. Finally another guy, later know as That Guy, calls him out on it. Robin immediately begins to slash.
- It's even more notable in that Ethan's 'fanboy mode' is often a mouthpiece for the author's own opinions on whatever idiocy the fandom is up to that week. So he's actually calling himself out.
Edward the Bard from Captain SNES wrote a poem about it here. He was calling out King Cecil, but it was mainly the fault of Alex, who was the one playing the game.

Adam Dodd of Survival of the Fittest receives a horrified reaction from his friends after he shoots a comatose member of his group in the head. Needless to say, just about everybody there called him out on it.
- Not to mention that during the final two, the other finalist Jack O'Connor brutally called him out on all of his murders throughout the game.
Book VII of The Lonely Winds subverts the trope when Crow berates Jake for what seems to be a decidedly uncharacteristic amount of sadism on his part after he sets a vampire on fire and then shoots it several times. Jake points out that in that setting, vampires are soulless undead abominations with no redeeming qualities or right to exist and more prominently, that vampire might have been responsible for the body of a young boy the team had found earlier. Crow responds by shooting the vampire once herself.
Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog. The -villain- is the one to call the hero out on his idiocy. The hero had almost flattened the love interest by grandstanding. He did save her, technically, but from danger he had put her in.
- Wrong about Captain Hammer saving Penny. As the title character put it "I stopped the van, the remote control was in my hand!" And the van stopped about a foot and a half in front of Captain Hammer, and would've been about two feet in front of where Penny was standing.
  - Not to mention that the van could've been stopped instantly if Captain Hammer hadn't smashed the van-controlling device on the roof...
Redvs.Blue:After Agent Washington shot Agent South in the Head he and the A.I. Delta are called out by Church to be "some cold motherfuckers".It takes half an episode to stop Church and Caboose trying to calm him down with very annoying "just calm down...we are all your friends...lower your weapon" way of speaking.
Wash:Stop talking to me like that, I´m not insane. Now if you´ll excuse me, I have blow up this dead body.

Happens a bit in Justice League Unlimited, in particular the episode "Clash". Lex Luthor has attempt at earnest charity built a self-sustaining city for the homeless. Superman sees a device underground with a timer and sets out to destroy it, despite Lex's attempts to convince him that he's mistaken. Captain Marvel, the more naive of the pair, wisely disagrees and thinks they should call an expert in to see what the device really is. Chaos ensues. In the end the fight destroy's Lex Luthor's gift city, and the device is revealed to be a kryptonite-powered generator. It's later revealed it was a Batman Gambit by Lex Luthor to discredit Superman, counting on Superman's distrust of Luthor. The whole fiasco made Captain Marvel verbally tear the Original Seven a new one before resigning:
Captain Marvel: Back home, I've come up against my share of pretty nasty bad guys, but I never had to act the way they did to win a fight. I always found another way. I guess I'm saying I like being a hero. A symbol. And that's why... I'm quitting the Justice League. You don't act like heroes anymore.
- Also of note was the episode "Dark Heart". In a desperate attempt to stop some deadly nanomachines, the League reveals that their satelite base doubles as a Kill Sat... and are actually surprised that the US government is unhappy about the League having a deadly orbital weapon pointed at the Earth constantly.
  - The League pointed out that the weapon was intended for asteroids or invading alien spaceships. And they were right that it would have been useful during previous crises. The League did, however, feel entitled to build and use the weapon in any way they wanted.
  - Then it gets jacked by Luthor and fired at an empty Cadmus base. People are understandably pissed when the impact force of a nuclear weapon creates tremors with utterly destroy the entire town the base was in. The League wasn't responsible, but they have a hell of a time convincing everyone else of that.
- Let's not forget the episode "The Doomsday Sanction" where Batman gives one to Superman:
  Batman: Sent [Doomsday] off to the Phantom Zone, didn't you?
  Superman: He left us no choice.
  Batman: Spoken like a true Justice Lord.
  - Well, to be fair to Superman, its not like you can just put Doomsday into Arkum Asylum, it'd be a literal Cardboard Prison, with the time it takes him to break out being literally counted in seconds. It was either Phantom Zone or death.
- The League gets called out by a lot of people for easily forgiving Hawkgirl after her actions in the previous season finale. Fortunately, this died down eventually. It also helped that it was clear that not everyone completely forgave her, not even among the Big Six, particularly Wonder Woman.
  - Eventually Wonder Woman did forgive Shayera after teaming up to save Hades from Felix Faust. As Shayera said after Wonder Woman asked if things were OK between them:
    Shayera: Like oil and vinegar. We go together, but we don't mix.
In the first season finale of Teen Titans, Robin accosts a random dockworker for information on Slade's whereabouts, and has to be physically restrained by Raven. The rest of the team accuses him of emulating Slade's tactics in his zeal.
- What makes this worse is that Slade is pretty civil to his informants, which is why he can use them again and again. So, Robin was worse than the villain.
- Or how about the MASSIVE shaming he received once the crew realized that Robin was pulling a Batman Gambit via being Red X and playing them off to get close to Slade.
  Starfire: Whoever Slade is, you are...similar. Slade did not trust you, and you did not trust us.
- And in the Teen Titans movie, "Trouble In Tokyo", Robin's unnecessarily brutal take down of a villain causes realistic legal trouble for the team. Of course, we later learn that that the whole thing was a Xanatos Gambit by the movie's Big Bad, but it still counts.
In Beast Wars, after Dinobot's recent trip through the Heel Face Revolving Door and giving the Golden Disk to Megatron, Rattrap gives this to him:
Rattrap: You know, I thought I had you pegged. "Oh sure, he's a slag-sucking saurian, but at least you know where he stands." I guess you live and learn.
- Dinobot goes on to make an absolutely awesome Tear Jerker of a Heroic Sacrifice to redeem himself.
Prowl of Transformers Animated can't seem to convince Optimus Prime that the Dinobots are alive, and thus melting them down would be wrong. Prowl says he can sense a spark, but Prime says the destructive, lumbering, fire-breathing former animatronics are too big a risk when all Prowl has to go on is his feelings. So Prowl convinces Bulkhead to sneak out with him in the middle of the night and save the Dinobots. Prime is not happy about this once he finds out, so depending on how you feel about the Dinobots, it could be a What The Hell Hero moment for either Prowl or Optimus; the Dinobots are living things, but they're also incredibly destructive. When they finally get around to telling Prime of this, he is not happpy that they stole the Dinobots. Prowl points out that they rescued the Dinobots.
- Of course, the Dinobots seem fairly happy to stay on their island, away from places they could do serious damage.
  - Yeah, they seem content to spend their time living in the forest and picking fights with the island's bird polulation. The only times they leave are either when forced through torture (Meltdown) or because their "beloved" asks them to (Black Arachnia).
- Ratchet calls out Prowl for his destructive romp when apprehending Starscream (or rather, unbeknown to them, his clone) by pointing out the bird's nest he ruined. Given that Prowl is a Friend To All Living Things, this hit him particularly hard. Even Starscream gets in the act, with a Not So Different line.
- TFA seems to like this trope. In a flashback, Ratchet does this to Ultra Magnus and the rest of the autobots who created Omega Supreme, for making what is essentially a Tykebomb Person Of Mass Destruction to win the war with the Decepticons. While none of them deny that what they're doing is wrong, it's quite possible the Autobots would have lost the war without doing it.
- Most recently in "This Is Why I Hate Machines," Alpha Trion berates Sentinel Prime for his decision to fire at Omega Supreme, knowing the risks of possibly destroying Cybertron. He makes it very clear that if the decision was up to him, Sentinel wouldn't be Magnus any longer.
This trope was the essential plotline for a Liberty's Kids episode where Sarah goes to Thomas Jefferson's farm and discovers to her shock that the writer of "All men are created equal..." is a slaveholder and confronts him about that.
A more realistic example is displayed in 6Teen, when in one episode, the six characters tell each other their most embarrassing secrets. Caitlin blabs to her boyfriend all their secrets with the exception of hers, explaining that she couldn't ruin their relationship. When said boyfriend becomes hypnotized and blabs to the entire mall about it, her friends, as expected, were not too happy with her.
In The Fairly Oddparents "Wishology" trilogy, Timmy calls out Jorgen and Turbo Thunder for automatically assuming the Darkness was evil because it "looked scary".
In an episode of The Powerpuff Girls, the Professor gets a new job and moves the family from the City of Townsville to the Town of Cityville. After spotting a bank robbery, the girls ply their usual trade, doing craptons of collateral damage while catching the bank robbers (a normal day in Townsville). When they report to the mayor for congratulations, he yells at how stupid they are and that the money they recovered was a tiny fraction of the cost of the damage done.
In Iron Man Armored Adventures, Rhodey calls Tony out in one episode for being willing to use lethal force on people and justifying it with a 'whatever it takes' mindset. Rhodey points out to Tony how that attitude makes him exactly like the people he's fighting and that it's beginning to look like Tony's out for revenge instead of saving lives, which was his original motivation. Tony doesn't respond, but instead the two have a non-verbal glare-down as the episode ends, indicating that Rhodey's words probably struck a little too close to home.
- In the following episode, Tony aknowledges Rhodey was right.
In A Bugs Life, Flik the ant, desperate to make up for his blundering, decides to ally the colony with stronger insects to drive off the villainous grasshoppers. It's only after he's brought them back and introduced them as the colony's saviours that he realizes that it was a misunderstanding, and they're actually circus performers. Rather than be exposed as a blunderer yet again, Flik wheedles the circus bugs into keeping up the charade and works behind-the-scenes, formulating their battle plan. When the circus bugs' original boss shows up and Flik's dishonesty is revealed, the Queen angrily orders them to leave, and pulls no punches when she banishes Flik:
Queen: I never thought I'd see the day. An ant placing himself above his entire colony!
- Props to the storymen at Pixar: as a kid you bristle at how "mean" the Queen was to Flik, but when you get older you realize that she was absolutely right. Flik wanted his great big idea to pay off, and he was willing to risk the possibility of the death of his entire colony if anything went wrong. Of course, the movie has a happy ending and Flik saves the day, but he definitely has a hard road to travel, owning up to his dishonesty and not hiding behind others.

When Sen. Joesph McCarthy was riding high on his popularity as the Anti-Communist in early Cold War America, leading a veritable witch hunt, the unassuming attorney Joseph N. Welch confronted him on national television after McCarthy accused a young lawyer in his firm of being a Communist.
Welch: Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us... Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr [Welch's law firm]. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me... Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
The infamous Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but finished up after six days after one of Dr. Zimbardo's grad students took one look at the project and what it had resulted in and chewed him out over it. Zimbardo later noted that, of all the participants (on the 'guard' side at least) and other observers who had been brought in, she was the first to raise any kind of moral objection about it.
- Did we mention they later got married?
Lane Kiffin brought hope to the Tennessee Volunteer football program, only to leave them after one year. The riot on campus was... inspiring...
- It was a pretty crap season, though. I say this as a native Knoxvillian and die-hard Big Orange fan.
In 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor, which basically called out the U.S. government on their abysmal Native American policy.

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Examples