Moral Event Horizon / Anime & Manga

Moral Event Horizon in Anime & Manga.

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The following have their own pages

• Digimon
• Dragon Ball
• Fairy Tail
• Fullmetal Alchemist
• Gundam
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
• Nasuverse
• One Piece
• Pokémon
• Pretty Cure
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica
• Sailor Moon
• School Days
• Shin Megami Tensei
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Sword Art Online
• Transformers
• Yu-Gi-Oh!
• YuYu Hakusho

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#-C

• 7 Seeds:
  • Takashi Sugurono. Some consider that he was one of the sadistic teachers for the Team Summer A candidates to already push him really close to the MEH, but especially counted it when the Final Test rolled around. So when he was on-screen again during the Ryugu Shelter arc, he was already considered past the MEH so that his decision to kill part of the inhabitants, without their prior knowledge, in order to temporarily secure the continued survival for the rest of the inhabitants seemed like an unnecessary cherry on top. Other readers considered the Ryugu Shelter spoiler to be his actual MEH. Though Takashi does eventually redeem himself in some readers' eyes.
  • Ukai from the Team Summer A candidates crossed it when he decided that, in order to kill Ango, he would take advantage of Shigeru's naive, good-natured heart and made him lure Ango into a trap. And then decided to shoot Shigeru, because he wanted to help Ango. Fortunately, Ukai dies shortly after.
• Sora Takeuchi from Air Gear proved himself to be a complete asshole when he threatened to physically harm his ex-girlfriend Rika Noyamano—who is also pregnant with his own child.
• Akame ga Kill! wakes up with one of these each week more or less.
  • Aria, the noble girl who took in Tatsumi, has her Moral Event Horizon displayed in full detail: she killed Tatsumi's childhood friend Sayo, and assisted her parents in torturing his other friend, Ieyasu. In fact, Aria and her parents had been doing this for a while: taking people off the streets, showering them with kindness, then eventually locking them up and testing deadly diseases on them. When confronted about this, Aria reveals her true colors in a Villainous Breakdown and says she personally involved herself with killing Sayo because she had such naturally smooth hair, which pissed Aria off because she constantly had to mess around with her hair for hours. She pays for it not long after when Tatsumi proceeds to cut her down in a vengeful rage.
  • If Seryu Ubiquitous didn't cross the line when she shot Sheele In the Back and has her monster pet/Imperial Arm Koro rip her in half and eat her alive right in front of poor Mine, she probably crossed it for good when she killed an innocent civilian who was forced to help petty thieves in a robbery, citing Insane Troll Logic as justification for it. And she killed the person with her Taizan's Sword, making the punishment for their crime very disproportionate.
  • Nyau of the Three Beasts leaped over it in his introductory scene, where he kills Spear, the former Prime Minister's daughter, by carving off her face while she was alive and conscious. While we are thankfully not shown what he does, it's implied he held her down while doing this, and Nyau notes that she died of shock midway while cheerfully presenting the skin of Spear's face. And it's implied that he does this regularly, as he notes he has a collection of faces. Even Nyau's comrade Daidara, who is a bloodthirsty fighter himself, is visibly disgusted by this act.
  • Borick, the Imperial spy who infiltrated the Path of Peace, has been straddling the M.E.H. for some time by the time Night Raid starts targeting him, as he's been drugging female members of the Path into sleeping with him. Lubbock is personally disgusted by this due to the sheer volume of all the women he's taken advantage of. Susanoo, on the other hand, is more concerned with how he tainted good food in order to drug the ladies. Both of them, however, agree that his actions are unforgivable.
  • For many, Kurome leaped over this either when she had her People Puppets cut Chelsea to pieces, or when she stabbed Run to death to make him an undead slave to her Yatsufusa. Depending on whether you watch the anime or manga, she either escapes retribution via redemption or eventually meets her end at Akame's hands.
  • Wild Hunt, particularly the pedophilic Champ, rape and/or murder people on a bi-daily basis with the authority that comes with having Syura, the Prime Minister's son, for a leader. But special mention goes to Syura, Champ, and fellow Wild Hunt member Enshin when they take a flying leap over it upon learning about the widow and daughter of Bols, a recently deceased member of the Jaegers who was killed by Night Raid. Cornering the defenseless mother and child at a cemetery, Syura and Enshin proceed to rape and murder Bols' widow on top of her husband's grave while Champ does the same to Bols' prepubescent daughter. And that's not even to mention the brutal condition the bodies were left in, as the aftermath was never shown (the best we got was seeing the victims' feet underneath a blanket, but given certain dialogue, it's probably best we don't know what Syura and his goons did).
    • It's later revealed that Champ barreled over the point of no redemption when he killed Run's students before the beginning of the story. Champ himself even states that the only reason he didn't rape all of them was because they were all crying for their teacher. To him, it was a "turn-off", so he just chose to kill them all instead. And even worse? When Run asked him about the incident earlier, Champ struggled to remember the event, with the implication that he had raped and killed so many children that by this point he could hardly recall any of his victims.
  • After spending a majority of the series being portrayed as an Affably Evil Mother To Her Men, General Esdeath proves how truly evil she is in the final battle when she blankets the Empire in a blizzard and kills many troops on both sides in doing so, completely subverting any care for her own soldiers in favor of demonstrating her Social Darwinist stance on life.
  • Prime Minister Honest is revealed to have crossed it long before the series began, when he poisoned the previous Emperor to death, and took advantage of said Emperor's child being promoted to Emperor to twist the naive Makoto into making life miserable for the Empire. All so Honest could maintain his hedonistic lifestyle. From that point on, he just gleefully takes any opportunity he can to be as much a horrible old bastard as possible.
• Tetsuo of AKIRA crossed one of these himself. Tired of having to be rescued by Kaneda and wanting independence, he felt ecstatic when he developed superpowers while in custody of the military. When Kaneda does arrive to rescue him, and military soldiers show up, he blows them away, hurting Kaneda in the process. Instead of showing any sympathy for him or sorrow for what happened to him whatsoever, he just laughed and said "Oh, that's right. I forgot you were there!" And boasted on how he won't need to be rescued anymore, even proceeding to attack Kaneda again... this time on purpose! Attacking your own friend with NO remorse!? That's just wrong. And that's even before what he does to Yamagata.
  • In the manga, Tetsuo's lieutenant crosses it by shooting Tetsuo's Morality Chain Kaori In the Back, without any real reason. She ends up bleeding to death in Tetsuo's arms.
• A good example of a crossing of one of these that pushes you over the Despair Event Horizon is when thugs break into your house and murder your entire family, which is exactly what happens to Yurippe in a flashback in episode 2 of Angel Beats!.
  • Yuri herself almost crosses the line in the manga by killing all the students, starting with the first graders. The scary thing is, she would've done so then and there had Hinata not intervened before the first murder was supposed to take place.
    • Once again, she comes close to crossing the line in Stairway to Heaven, and we mean DANGEROUSLY close, by starving the entire SSS for a week because of a miscalculation she herself had made. In fact, that may be the closest she's EVER come to the MEH. That doesn't stop her from being redeemed by the end of the main series, though.
• The human race crosses this in The Animatrix film The Second Renaissance when they blotted out the sun and in doing so doomed all life on the planet to extinction just to try and deprieve the machines of their power source.
• Mykage, the Big Bad of Aquarion Evol, crossed the line big time when he murdered the very sympathetic Anti-Villain Jin for having had an Heel–Face Turn in Episode 13. Or, alternatively, he crossed it for manipulating Zessica and pulling a Grand Theft Me on her.
• Akachi from Arata: The Legend brutally murders three women (one was pregnant). This is after he promised the pregnant women's husband, if he submitted his Sho to Akachi, he wouldn't harm them.
• In Assassination Classroom, Takaoka crosses it when he knocks the wind out of one of the students. From there every action just keeps getting worse.
• Attack on Titan:
  • It begins with one, as the Colossal Titan and the Armored Titan destroy Wall Maria. The massacre that follows is horrifying enough, but even a year later the situation for humanity is so grim that the government is forced to cull 150,000 refugees in a mission to reclaim lost territory to avoid mass starvation and civil war. In total, humanity lost 20% of their total population and 30% of their territory, much of it vital farm land needed to support the population. There is absolutely no doubt that the creatures responsible are pure evil. But then it is Subverted, when it is learned that Team Dad Reiner and Extreme Doormat Bertolt as well as Broken Bird Annie are the ones responsible for the entire thing and did it when they were kids. All three are fully aware of just how horrible their crimes are, absolutely crushed by guilt and deeply traumatized over having to do it. It instead serves to make them Tragic Villains, having already committed an unforgivable act before they were old enough to fully grasp their actions and learn to care about those they were sent to slaughter.
  • The Beast Titan crosses it in his first appearance when he interrogates a Survey Corps Member and has him devoured by a bunch of Titans as an afterthought. Unlike the above examples Zeke cracks a joke at his victim's expense. It's no wonder he has a 'Cruelty' ranking in the guidebook.
  • Rod Reiss crossed it when he kidnapped Eren and tried to turn his own daughter into a Titan so that she'd eat him and retake the Coordinate/Founding Titan.
  • The Survey Corps cross it hard during their invasion of Marley, as they kill many innocent Eldians and Marleyans including those totally unrelated to the conflict, including young children.
  • If Karl Fritz I didn't cross it when he tried to hunt and kill Ymir for escaping from him, he did when he forced their daughters to eat her corpse after she sacrificed herself to save him.
  • Karl Fritz II, the First King of the Walls did it when he imposed his Will into the Coordinate/Founding Titan, forcing all of his Titan Shifter descendants who bore its power to become isolationist Suicidal Pacifists, so that Marley could exterminate the Eldians once and for all. He's the reason for every Eldian in Paradis losing their memories of the outside world and subsequently believing they are the last survivors of humanity at the beginning of Attack on Titan, and the Wall Titans meant as a last-resort deterrent weapon to stop the Marleyans from attacking Paradis would ultimately get put to use by the last guy on this list.
  • Eren himself crossed the line by unleashing every one of the Wall Titans to kill every human outside of Paradis Island, an event known as the Rumbling. By the time he was stopped, 80% of the planet's surface, including almost all of Marley, was destroyed. Before this, he also brainwashed his own father, Grisha Yeager, via the Paths and the Attack Titan's power, into killing the Reiss family so that he (and subsequently Eren) could take the Founding Titan and carry out this plan, an act which drove poor Grisha into a breakdown when it was done, especially when he learned via the Attack Titan's memories just what his son was planning to do. It's implied that he may also have had a hand in his own mother's death at the hands of the Smiling Titan via use of the Paths and the Coordinate, in order to traumatize his younger self into starting down the road to become what he is now.
• As a Dark Fantasy series, Berserk has many villains that perform really sickening acts. In terms of crossing the Horizon, several characters stand out.
  • The choice to Sacrifice in general is a crossing of one's personal Moral Event Horizon. It entails taking the person or people you most love and killing them in the most nightmarish fashion imaginable, consigning them to a Cruel and Unusual Death at the hands of some of the most horrifying monsters ever to grace the pages of manga. This acts to cut you off from humanity and open yourself up to evil, facilitating your transformation into a demonic monster yourself. And as if this wasn't bad enough, it's also mentioned that those who get sacrificed in the creation of a demon not only die horribly, but their souls are condemned to an eternity in Hell. (Then again, considering the lack of mention of a heaven, it would appear that hell is the regular destination of everyone.)
    • The most notable example of this occurs during the Eclipse after Griffith crosses the Despair Event Horizon near the end of the Golden Age arc (which is about the point where the anime ends as well) and activates his Crimson Behelit. Griffith, Guts and everyone in the Band of the Hawk gets transported to the Nexus, a place that to mortal eyes looks downright Hellish, where the Godhand and every demon in the Berserk universe has gathered (with the sole exception of Zodd, who is outside battling the Skull Knight). Griffith, distraught over the destruction of his dream and wanting more than anything to have a second chance, does a truly malignant Face–Heel Turn, choosing to sacrifice the entire Band of the Hawk and betraying everyone he has ever led in order to become the fifth member of the Godhand, Femto. And as if all this wasn't bad enough, Griffith then goes the extra mile across the Horizon with his very first act upon being incarnated as Femto, which is to brutally rape Casca to insanity right in front of Guts, who is being pinned down mere feet away from the act after he had just made the dire decision to chisel off his left arm in a last attempt to save her. And it's made even MORE heinous in that Femto is raping her in a way that is mirroring Guts' childhood rape experience. This is the epitome of Moral Event Horizons in all of fiction. After this, Griffith acting like a hero when he is reincarnated on Earth tends to be just a little bit ironic.
    • Particularly because the vessel that Griffith used for his reincarnation on Earth was Guts and Casca's child, which was conceived just before the Eclipse, but which was corrupted by what Griffith did to Casca as Femto. A kid that, had all of this not happened, would possibly have been Griffith's godson. Yeah.
  • Gambino, Guts's gruff mentor/father figure, loses all our sympathy after he sells Guts, who was just eight years old at the time, to a pedophile soldier named Donovan for three silver coins, resulting in a traumatic rape that still affects Guts even after he is all grown up. Particularly when we learn Gambino's reason for it immediately before Guts kills him in self-defense — he called Guts "disgusting" and felt that he "can't be raised to be loyal like a dog," since Gambino blamed the kid for the death of his lover Shisu from the plague.
  • The King of Midland, who after ordering Griffith thrown in the dungeons and put to the torture for having sex with his daughter Princess Charlotte, tries to force himself on her out of madness. Charlotte just barely manages to fight him off, and the experience alienates her from her father, to the point where she won't even acknowledge him on his deathbed.
  • Inquisitor "Bloody Scripture" Mozgus is just as horrible as you'd expect a fanatical religious nutjob with too much power and not a shred of objectivity can get. While it's pretty obvious from the start that he's Bad News, when a band of starving refugees attempts to steal some of the ample foodstuffs sent to Mozgus and his retinue, he spots among them a woman with a starving infant. When she begs him to feed her child, he gently takes her along to his residence, lauding her courage and dedication. He sends away the child to be fed and cared for, then escorts her to a room while extolling the fact that while her intentions were good, she still has to expiate her sins. Then he opens the door, where we see the other refugees being horribly tortured, and the poor woman is dragged, stripped, and tied to another torture device over her increasingly frantic pleas... then the door closes. It's as nightmarish as it sounds, if not more so.
  • As bad as those are the worst has to be Emperor Ganishka. If you name it he has done it: ethnic cleansing, putting POWs on the front lines, widespread torture, attempted rape (of Charlotte, again) to more horrifying examples like turning the Midland capital into a city of death, using black magic to conjure evil spirits to fight for him, forcing pregnant women into pits of chained apostles to produce demon soldiers who tear their way out of their still living mothers, and using artificial methods to becoming an even more powerful demon that would destroy everything. All the while bragging about making the world into hell. This guy was so evil that when Griffith/Femto faced off with him following his reincarnation, the fans rooted for Griffith/Femto.
• Bleach:
  • Aizen crosses this when he's revealed to be a villain by stabbing his own lieutenant Hinamori while pretending to comfort her. The other characters react in rage and horror when they find out what happened and when Renji accuses Aizen of not being the captain he knew, Aizen merely responds by stating that he didn't truly know his captain. Not to mention his kidnapping of Actual Pacifist Orihime Inoue and traumatising the poor girl to past breaking point for no reason. He didn't kidnap her for her powers at all.
  • Some readers consider Mayuri Kurotsuchi to have crossed the horizon when he experimented/tortured Uryū's grandfather Souken to death along with over 2000 other Quincies, and then showed Uryū a photo of his grandfather's corpse. There's also the time where he turned three subordinates of his into bombs without their knowledge.
  • Mayuri Kurotsuchi's eviler Evil Counterpart, Szayelaporro Granz. Not only does he take delight in torturing Renji and Uryu slowly and painfully, but when Mayuri and his lieutenant/daughter Nemu arrive to face him, just as he's about to defeat him he grabs a captured Nemu, rapes her with tentacles to forcibly impregnate her and seemingly kills the poor girl (one of the biggest Woobies on the whole Bleach, natch) after emerging from her body, leaving an empty husk. This is so squicky and cruel that a good part of the fandom saw the Fate Worse than Death that Mayuri dealt to him, as he'd planned for exactly that eventuality and pumped Nemu full of a time perception-altering drug thaf utterly fucked Szayel up as something to cheer for. Fortunately, Nemu has an immensely powerful Healing Factor due to her being an Artificial Shinigami and survived.
  • Yammy was always a lunatic, but he really crossed the line when he killed the nurse that reattached his arm.
  • Nnoitra does this when he hints he intends to rape Orihime at some point (he stuck his fingers deep in her mouth in the manga for crying out loud — for those who don't know, sticking one's fingers in someone's mouth during sex is a very standard kink in Japanese porn, and it had to be bowdlerized in the anime), and in the backstory, his hatred towards Nel led him to collaborate with Szayel so he could take away her powers because he was jealous of her for being stronger than him and then he kicks her out of Hueco Mundo. He immobilized Orihime in the very creepy manner described above and forced her to watch as he has his subordinate Tesla beat Ichigo to death. Thanks to a Big Damn Heroes moment by Kenpachi, however, Ichigo is safe and Orihime heals him.
  • We also have Tsukishima and Ginjo conspiring to cross the MEH with each other's help. The first brainwashes almost everyone Ichigo cares for to turn them against him and break him in body, mind and soul, and the other sets up a Memory Gambit that involves erasing his own memories of being an enemy, to get close to Ichigo and train him up until it's the moment to break him. Horrible and brilliant at the same time.
  • The Big Bad of the final arc, Yhwach, crossed it in his backstory. In order to augment his own power, Yhwach's Auswählen power-drained and thus killed off the "Gemischt" Quincies (those who had partial human ancestry) and the "Echt" Quincies (full Quincy ancestry) regarded as "impure". Let us be clear on how far past the event horizon Yhwach has gone, ALL of those killed were his descendants. And that included Ichigo and Uryuu's respective mothers, and should have included Uryuu (he only survived due to a mysterious special power)...who was 8 years old at the time. So that's genocide, familicide, and attempted infanticide, all in one act. Oh, and did we mention that Kanae lingered in a coma for three months before finally succumbing?
  • Pernida Parnkgjas of the Wandenreich, the sentient left arm of Yhwach's father, the Soul King, crossed it at the end of his fight with Mayuri, by killing and eating Nemu in front of him to absorb her healing factor. His Karmic Death by uncontrolled regeneration shortly afterwards was rightfully deserved.
  • Also Loly and Menoly, the two jealous Arrancar girls, crossed it when they literally brutalized poor Orihime for no reason other than petty jealousy. Orihime has already had enough trauma as it is, and she's so nice that she even went out of her way to heal Loly and Menoly after they attacked her.
  • The Starscream Ulquiorra crosses it when he forces Orihime to come to Hueco Mundo against her will or he would kill all her friends. He chose to demonstrate his point by killing her two escorts right in front of Orihime, which obviously traumatised her due to how gentle-natured she is. Due to being a Nice Girl, she goes with him to save her friends. While she's there, Ulquiorra constantly psychologically tortures and abuses Orihime. The poor girl can't catch a break. He forces her to watch as he brutally murders Ichigo, the man she actually loved, right in front of her with a point-blank Cero while mocking Orihime's love for Ichigo, bringing the poor girl on the verge of the Despair Event Horizon, and causing her to blame herself for what Ulquiorra had done. He was psychologically abusive and manipulative to her the whole time, and even after all that, Orihime still cried for Ulquiorra when Ichigo finally ended him after awakening his Vasto Lorde form, which happened due to Orihime's literal mental breakdown. It's okay, Orihime. They can't hurt you any more.
• Blood-C: Fumito Nanahara showed his true colors when he let the main cast (except Yuka) and the entire town to die in the hands of the Elder Bairns. But what really hits the marks is shooting Saya in the eye and taunting her to catch him as he leaves. And even before that, he's the one who brainwashed Saya in the first place.
• Blood+: Diva crosses it when she rapes Saya's younger brother Riku so that she can bear his child, and then kills him.
• Liang Qi from Canaan crosses this when she throws Hyakko through the Despair Event Horizon via tricking her into killing her savior and love Santana, and then mocking Hyakko's grief gleefully.
• Hard to imagine a shojo anime like Candy♡Candy to be on the list but there's two in the series that are added on the list,
  • Neil's Scarpia Ultimatum to Candy; and just as we were led to think there might be some hope for him. And specially considering that after said ultimatum, he insists that he loves Candy more than anything. Uhm, Neil, things don't work that way.
  • Eliza has several moments of dog kicking, but her worst actions are framing Candy and Terry to get Candy expelled from St. Paul School and scheming with Ruth to get Candy's reputation smeared because she took the amnesiac Albert into her household.
• Castle in the Sky:
  • Muska causing the General and his men to fall to their deaths, followed by his straight up Evil Laugh as he tells them to "enjoy the ride." That is if threatening and attempting to kill Pazu didn't do it for you.
  • General Muoro and his lackeys showed their complete willingness to torture Sheeta to squeeze the secrets out of her and also tried to kill Pazu. Which also makes Muska's massacre of them cathartic.
• Code Geass is known for many morally ambigious characters (particularly with Lelouch) but there are those who stand out:
  • Clovis la Britannia crosses it over gladly when he orders the massacre in the Shinjuku Ghetto, willing to kill hundreds of innocent Japanese people to cover up a classified military experiment.
  • While Mao is most certainly a Jerkass Woobie, he goes too far when he shoots C.C., then tries to cut her to pieces with a chainsaw so he can take her away from society and live in peace with just her. While C.C. is immortal and is able to regenerate, Mao only cares about having C.C. all to himself, and cares nothing for the horrible pain he'll put her through to achieve that end. The fact that C.C. once cared for him when he was a child emphasizes how fucked up Mao has become.
    • But arguably even worse a deed was when Mao kidnapped Nunnally, Lelouch's little sister, and challenged Lelouch to a game of chess that — if Lelouch lost — would result in Nunnally being blown up by a bomb.
  • Alicia Lohmeyer cements herself as an irredeemable piece of work during the "One Million Zeros" incident. Out of a xenophobic fit of rage, her plan to keep the "Zeros" from seceding from Britannia is to order them all killed; she even grabs a gun and tries to fire the first shot. When Suzaku stops her, all she does is insult his Japanese heritage and state that all the Japanese can go to hell for all she cares.
  • The Chinese High Eunuchs are a bunch of degenerate jerkasses, and it shows when they not only sell out China to Britannia for their own personal gain, but also attempt to kill their own monarch, Empress Tianzi, with the intent to replace her. They even betray their best warrior, Xingke, for petty reasons.
  • Luciano Bradley of the Knights of the Round is way past it when we first meet him, as he states his love for killing people merely because he likes to kill people, and threatens to rape Kallen Kozuki, who is a prisoner of war. Oh, and he'll kill the men under his command if they get in his way while he pilots his Knightmare Frame, Percival. In-universe, his earliest crossing of the M.E.H. is when he murdered his own father.
  • V.V. crossed it years ago when he killed Marianne, his brother Charles' wife, out of pure jealousy. Nothing other than envy of how close Charles had become to his wife motivated V.V. into gunning her down, and then he framed the scene to look like assassins had shot her and her guards through the window. For extra heinousness, V.V. placed Marianne's daughter Nunnally in the middle of the crossfire to make it look like Marianne died protecting Nunnally. And Nunnally was crippled for life as a result of getting shot in the legs. And then V.V. lied about it to his brother. While Charles is no doubt a piece of work himself, he would later deduce what happened and plot to kill him. Even more, Marianne's death would ultimately be what began Lelouch's motivation to destroy the Britannian Empire.
  • Diethard Ried, while already a morally ambigious member of the Black Knights, ultimately veers into pure evil territory after the Black Knights betray Zero; he leaves the group and joins up with Schneizel, then expresses a rather bloodthirsty excitement when Schneizel reveals his plan to scare the world into a state of peace with his superweapon, the Damocles. Diethard outright tells Schneizel that he was right to defect to his side.
  • While Schneizel el Britannia is a seeming Well-Intentioned Extremist, he takes a flying leap over this with the F.L.E.I.J.A. bombing of Pendragon. This results in the death of millions, some being Schneizel's royal half-siblings. Then he reveals his intent to nuke all the major cities in the world to enact a rule through fear. Even Cornelia, Schneizel's sister who is quite bad herself, is disgusted by his actions and tries to stop him, only for Schneizel to turn a hidden turret on her and gun her down.
    • Even worse, Schneizel entrusts Lelouch's little sister — Schneizel's own half-sister — Nunnally, with the Damocles Key, ordering her to fire the Damocles' F.L.E.I.J.A.s on Lelouch's army, not caring that she doesn't want to use the Weapon of Mass Destruction he has handed her control of.

D-G

• With Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School being Darker and Edgier compared to the other entries, a lot of them went on to break it. Some notable examples include Munakuta killing his best friend (who was in love with him), Andou drugging Sakakura and attempting to kill Kyoko, Mukuro's Cold-Blooded Torture on Chisa, and especially Junko initiating the first Mutual Killing game, personally breaking down Ryota by tinkering with his brainwashing technique and saying it's all his fault, and eventually arranging the truly horrific death of Chiaki and forcing Class 77 to watch for the purpose of driving them to despair.
• In Date A Live, both Ellen Mira Mathers and Sir Isaac Ray Peram Westcott crossed this by murdering Shido in front of Tohka that leads her to cross the Despair Event Horizon and transform into the Inverse Form they try to harness.
• Death Note: In a franchise where most people are morally grey at best, the Moral Event Horizon is not unusual.
  • Light Yagami commits quite a few murders in the course of the series, but the moment that he truly becomes the Villain Protagonist of the series is when he murders Ray Penbar and Naomi Misora, two FBI agents whose only "crime" was investigating him and getting in his way. Of particular note is the utter cruelty of how he deals with Naomi Misora — not only does Light force her to commit suicide, but he waits until just before the Death Note takes effect before revealing to her that he is Kira, just to see the look of horror on Naomi's face as she realizes what is about to happen. And as if that wasn't enough, once the Death Note actually takes effect, he taunts her with offers to get her in touch with the Kira Task Force, knowing that she can't do anything about it.
  • Kyosuke Higuchi crosses it when he kills Hatori for trying to back out (and coldly informing the poor guy beforehand that he's going to be killed).
  • Hitoshi Demegawa at first seems to be a Slimeball TV executive cashing in on Kira. But then he leads a riot on SPK headquarters, with the intent of lynching every member of the group. When Light's new subordinate, Teru Mikami, kills him, even the Kira Task Force side with Kira in doing so, agreeing that if anyone deserved to die, it was him.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba:
  • Muzan Kibutsuji has two acts almost back-to-back in his first appearance that cement him as an irredeemable monster: first turning an innocent random passer-by into a demon, who then proceeds to try and devour his wife due to uncontrollable demonic hunger, just to dodge Tanjiro and keep up his facade of a considerate family man; then, now alone in a back alley, he gets accosted by a rowdy drunk and his two companions; after the drunk insults him by comparing Muzan's pallor to that of a dying man, he One Hit Kills first the drunk and then his vengeful male companion, before going to the terrified female companion, and injecting her with so much of his blood that instead of turning into a demon, her body swells, breaks down and melts horrifically, with her staying conscious throughout until there's nothing left of her but an empty outfit. To make it worse, unlike her male companions, she hadn't personally done anything to arouse Muzan's ire.
  • Kaigaku selling out Himejima and his wards to Muzan, which resulted in many of his fellow orphans getting murdered, and Himejima himself nearly getting executed, all just to save his own sorry hide. If that supreme act of cowardace somehow didn't qualify him for this, then willingly becoming a demon when faced with death, driving his master, Kuwajima, to commit seppuku, and mocking his death to Zenitsu's face shows how truly vile and irredeemable he is.
  • Rui is a Tragic Villain with a hard-hitting Freudian Excuse, but even then, his crimes were too grotesque to earn him even a relatively merciful death. In an attempt to reconstruct his lost family, he acted as a Bad Samaritan to other demons, transforming them into warped parodies of 'parents' and 'siblings' regardless of their suitability (his current 'mother', for instance, is implied to be a preteen girl), and keeping them in line through horrific abuse until even the most moral of them would commit atrocities rather than risk his wrath.
  • In the anime, Rui's "older sister" sells out her "sister" demon when the latter tries to help them escape together. Rui then strings the other demon to the roof of their home and allows her to burn to death in the sunlight, and his "sister" doesn't bat an eye.
  • Hantengu was never sympathetic, but he crosses it with the revelation (admittedly All There in the Manual) that before becoming a demon, he not only was a con artist and a murderer, but he was responsible for murdering his wives and children in a fit of rage on multiple occasions.
• A Dog of Flanders (1975):
  • Ensor, the hardware store owner that used to own Pastrache, repeatedly abused the dog, but his vilest act was depriving it of water when it worked, causing it to faint. In Japan, Ensor was so hated, that it started a wave of contempt towards hardware dealers that became a national phenomenon.
  • Hans was always a cruel bastard to Nello and his grandfather, but when he frames Nello for burning down the building, he cements. Because he's responsible for Nello and Patrasche having nowhere to live and starving to death in the snow, many consider him the Greater-Scope Villain of the series.
• Elfen Lied: When the cruel kids from Lucy's childhood forced her to watch as they beat the puppy that she had started caring for to death, just to get any kind of reaction from her at all, they crossed the Moral Event Horizon to the point that Lucy snaps and murders them all by making their heads a splode in a Beware the Nice Ones moment was considered by fans to be too good for them.
  • Lucy herself, with the brutal and unprovoked murder of Kouta's sister Kanae and his father in what was essentially a hissy-fit of jealousy. For that, Lucy spent the rest of the series trying to be The Atoner to Kouta. Plenty of people thought that there could be no atonement for it, and when they reached the end of the manga, Kouta's reaction to learning that she was responsible left them feeling vindicated, although some interpretations feel that, while Kouta could never forgive Lucy, he could, and did, accept Nyuu by giving her a Mercy Kill.
• Freezing has Louis L. Bridgette, the leading female's half brother. Sure, it was sick that as a kid, he had a creepy fondness for touching Satella that led her to having severe issues, and everybody in the forums were clamoring for his castration. But now? His obsession with her has exploded to the point he rapes another woman just because she looks like Satella. Seriously, WTF.
  • Mark Spencer, the head of the Chevalier and overseer of the E-Pandora project. He deems the E-Pandoras as something that can be easily replaced and tortures Elizabeth simply because she tried to fight against this injustice.
  • Charles Bonaparte crosses the Moral Event Horizon when she nearly kills Atia after fighting her, then cuts off both of Atia's breasts to teach her her 'place'. Yeah, Atia was an asshole, but getting that done to her was seriously over the top.
  • Much earlier, Miyabi crosses it when she has her limiters nearly rape Satella.
• Fruits Basket has some of it:
  • The Big Bad, Akito Soma, has several options, but the closest to this is how she treated the kindly nurse Kana, by blaming her for Hatori's eye injury that she caused because she was angry that Hatori wanted to marry Kana and asked for permission to do so. The Mind Rape was so bad that Kana ultimately agreed with Akito's blame of her and fell into permanent grief/madness and had to have her memory wiped by Hatori.
  • In Akito's and some of the fans' opinions, Shigure crossed it when he slept with Akito's Evil Matriarch of a mother Ren, as a revenge for Akito sleeping with Kureno. His betrayal is somehow worse, considerin Akito's extremely troubled relationship with her abusive mother, which was the indirect reason why she even cheated on Shigure in the first place; she slept with Kureno to reassure herself that he wouldn't leave her, coming from Ren always telling her that everyone would leave her.
  • And all those abusive parents:
    • Ren Sohma crossed the MEH long before the story even took place by threatening to have an abortion if she wasn't allowed to raise her baby as a male. That baby? She'd become the above mentioned Akito, and being forcibly raised as a male would be her Start of Darkness. The worst about it? Ren's reasons: She was jealous of her unborn girl because her husband Akira was so happy about becoming a father. The ongoing rivalry (which only gets worse when Akira dies) is the main motivation behind Akito's aforementioned and constant puppy punting, eventually driving her to become the Manipulative Bitch that the fandom Love to Hate. Summed up, Ren's horribly selfish and cruel actions lead to almost all the crap that happens to the Sohmas in story.
    • Kyo's Father crossed the line when he told Kyo it was his fault his mother had committed suicide, especially because of his motivation: he felt guilty himself, since he verbally abused his already-unstable wife (who may not have shown her love of Kyo in the healthiest manner, but did love him as much as she could in her terrible mental state.
    • Rin's parents cross it when they physically and psychologically abuse her... and then abandoning Rin when she collapses out of stress and is delivered to a hospital, basically telling her (a nine-year-old!) to never come back.
    • Yuki's mother: When she practically sold Yuki to the already unstable Akito as a "playmate", fully knowing that Akito had completely snapped over Ren's abuse and become abusive herself. It's no wonder that her oldest son Ayame magnificently called her out later.
    • Momiji's mother crossed this when she told her son that giving birth to him was the most horrible thing that ever happened to her and that he made her sick. She even lets Hattori delete her memories of Momiji as a consequence. One could argue that she was already mentally ill to start with, but even when it might explain a little, it's still NOT an excuse.
    • It's hard to decide when Kyoko's parents did, but probably when they kicked her out when she returned home after a long stay in the hospital (due to the fact that she tried to end her own career as a gang member and got beaten up as a result), solely because it tarnished their reputation. It's so bad that her love interest and future husband Katsuya gives them one HELL of a "The Reason You Suck" Speech before he takes Kyoko in.
• Full Metal Panic!:
  • Gauron almost shooting Kaname's teacher in the face for calling him a coward.
  • Seina getting Kugayama to pilot the Behemoth by telling the kid, who thinks she's his sister, that she'll be nothing to her if he doesn't.
• Fushigi Yuugi's Nakago crosses this when he manipulates Suboshi into crossing the MEV with him by killing Tamahome's entire family, most of whom were children barely the age of ten, in what Suboshi (himself NOT a saint) believes is an act of revenge for his very much alive twin brother Amiboshi. It hurts even more when you realize that Tamahome had arrived just in time for his favorite, youngest sibling Yuiren to die in his arms, and that the second child Chuuei had tried to protect his siblings.
• Gankutsuou: Arguably, when the Count kills Franz by mistake while trying to kill Albert in a brutal and gory way in front of his mom. The fact that Albert and Franz are barely more than children doesn't help. Interestingly, this marks a significant difference with the novel, where Mercedes not only knows about his plan to fight Albert in a duel, but begs him and eventually convinces him to spare her son
  • Andrea trying to rape his own half-sister Eugenie, then seducing and bedding his own mother and finally poisoning his father. And then getting away with everything like a Karma Houdini should.
  • And Heloïse Villefort. She seems perfectly normal in her first few appearances, with a warm motherly appearance and pleasant smile. She is the stepmother of Valentine and is the second wife of the crown prosecutor Villefort. She is the biological mother of her young son Edward, from her first marriage; however, Valentine is to inherit all of the fortune, leaving her stepmother jealous because Edward doesn’t get a single penny. So when the Count seduces her and innocently introduces her to toxicology and gives her a deadly ring which releases a deadly poison Heloïse becomes murderous and tries to poison Valentine and her husband, as well as inadvertently almost poisoning Albert and poisoning one of the servants of the Villefort household. And she does all this while maintaining her angelic motherly facade up till near the end of the series when her husband finds out what she's been doing and points out that she's nothing more than a murderous insane woman. She tries to deny his accusations before she breaks down and collapses to the ground, finally giving in to her insanity. Her husband then puts her in an insane asylum for the rest of her life. Plus the scene where she masturbated while thinking of the Count and the poison ring he gave her; in essence, she was also getting off to the thought of killing her stepdaughter and husband.
• Gantz has its share of these folks:
  • Izumi disguises himself as a black man and goes on a shooting spree in a crowded train station, killing hundreds simply to provide players for Gantz and to set himself up to get back into the game.
  • Reika crosses the line when unbeknownst to everyone else, she passes up the chance to revive a dead player and has Gantz create a duplicate of Kurono, simply because she couldn't get over him.
• Guilty Crown:
  • Keido may have crossed it at one of two points—either when he tried to prevent the Adam and Eve of the new world from being an incestuous couple by sacrificing hundreds of children in horrific experiments, or when he murdered his old friend Kurosu in cold blood for no other reason than seething jealousy.
  • Kurosu Ouma crossed it when he agreed to go ahead with the pregnancy that would kill his wife, so that his daughter could trigger the apocalypse by sexing her new brother up. About the best that can be said is that he wasn't too happy about it afterwards.
• Gunslinger Girl:
  • Ski Mask Guy in chapter 83 crosses it for being the only one present besides Jose when Henrietta's bad memories of her family's death return because of him and Jose's the only one left alive present. This leads to both Henrietta and Jose dying within minutes of the resulting Freak Out, if not seconds.
  • Dante himself is well beyond the MEH by the time he offed Enrica, her parents, and Jean's girlfriend with a single car bomb, and it's also implied due to Ski Mask Guy's presence at the Battle of Turin that Dante was also behind the murder of Henrietta's family, with everything that murder entailed. Oh, and as a final "fuck you" to the Agency? Only Rico shooting her own fratello could finally put an end to Dante once and for all.
• Gushing Over Magical Girls: Venalita crosses it when he tries to harvest a berserk Baiser for her magical power and kill her, only to be interrupted by the Shio-chans. Unlike some of the horrible things he has done, which are usually played for Black Comedy, this is taken completely seriously by the narrative.

H-M

• Happy Sugar Life:
  • The nameless manager of the Princess Imperial restaurant kidnaps Mitsuboshi and raped him repeatedly for a week. Her actions deeply traumatized him to the point that he lusted after Shio, believing only she could make him pure again.
  • Shio and Asahi's father was revealed to have crossed it earlier in his life when he raped Yuuna when she was sixteen-years-old, merely because she accidentally pushed him .
• Haruhi Suzumiya: Fujiwara, of the Anti-SOS Brigade, definitely crosses it in the eleventh light novel with four words: "Go kill Haruhi Suzumiya!" Before that, a lot of fans actually liked him. After that? He became the most hated character in the series.
• Hellsing:
  • Zorin Blitz crosses it when she lays siege to the Hellsing Mansion with her forces, mind rapes Seras by delving deep into Seras' memories, forcing her to relive her painful childhood, where she had to watch her parents be murdered by gangsters and her mother's corpse being raped. While Seras is trapped in the illusion, Zorin hacks off her arm, stabs her through the back, and slashes out her eyes. Bernadotte and his two remaining squad members arrive and manage to temporarily disable Zorin by shooting her multiple times and Bernadotte tries to escape with the badly wounded Seras, but Zorin kills him by stabbing him through the back with her scythe. To top it all off as Seras cradles Pip's dead body and cries for him Zorin mocks Pip calling him an "insect" and prepares to kill Seras and her fellow team members. This was enough to provoke Seras into drinking Pip's blood and becoming a full vampire before absolutely curb stomping Zorin and her forces to death and killing Zorin by cheese-grating her face against a nearby wall until it was nothing more than a red smear.
  • The burglars from Seras's past definitely crossed the MEH. Seras, who seems a cheerful and upbeat girl for most of the manga, has a rather dark and disturbing backstory, which seems to have happened when she was very young. It consists of her father being murdered by burglars, her mother hiding her in a cupboard to protect her, and her mother's subsequent murder by the same burglars. Seras tries to exact revenge by stabbing one of the guys in the eye with a fork. She gets shot for doing so and one of the perpetrators proceed to rape her mother's corpse, due to it being "still warm". In full view of Seras who lies on the ground bleeding profusely watching it happen and unable to do anything to stop it.
  • Enrico Maxwell crosses it with his orders upon arriving with his forces in London. Not content with merely fighting Millennium, Maxwell, already slipping quite badly sanity-wise as a result of the power at his command, sentences everyone in London to "DEATH! DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!" and orders his men to slaughter every Protestant and other civilian in London (who were already having to deal with the ravening vampire Nazis eating them and worse and thought that the Church was coming to save them) as well as the vampires. This horrific move is enough to turn his former mentor and most loyal agent, Alexander Anderson, against him, to the point that when Alucard unleashes his full power as Dracula, Anderson takes it upon himself to shatter the glass cage protecting Maxwell from Alucard's ravening familiars, leading to a well-deserved Karmic Death.
• In Hi-Speed Jecy, Cross Bismarck crosses at the end of the third episode when he murders President Markham, much to the surprise of Jecy and Anita, who were trying to use the dictator as leverage against him. Jecy is quick to denounce this act of backstabbing.
• Highschool of the Dead has quite a few, but some of the worst offenders are secondary and tertiary characters. One incident sees two Red Shirts, Misuzu Ichijo and Toshimi Niki, running through the halls of their zombie-infested school, Holding Hands together and saying they'll survive together because they are BFFs. Not even five seconds later, Toshimi runs into a horde of zombies and begs Misuzu to pull her away from them, only to have her hand remorselessly pried off. As Misuzu watches Toshimi get devoured, she stumbles back into ''another'' group of zombies behind her, and her head is crushed just as quickly. Although in the anime, she may have regretted her action just before her own death.
  • Sure, that guy from the gas station did lose his mind (and explicitly admitted to being a psycho) after being forced to kill his family when they got bitten, but that doesn't excuse the fact that afterward, he tried to kill both Takashi and Rei (and rape the latter) when the two parties crossed paths. Satisfying doesn't even begin to describe how Takashi deals with the bastard.
  • Shido crosses it in his very first scene (if you don't count a brief non-speaking appearance in the first chapter/episode) when he kills one of his own students just before boarding the Orgybus, and he doesn't ever look back.
• Shion Sonozaki torturing and murdering Satoko in the Meakashi-hen arc of Higurashi: When They Cry and forcing her sister Mion to watch. Even she admits that she's irredeemable at that point. Which is, in an odd way, why she decides to add two more corpses to the pile.
  • Shion herself was on the receiving end of one of these, being tortured by her own Yakuza family by being forced to rip out her own fingernails. It's what served as her Start of Darkness, actually. It also serves as a crossing point for Oryou to the point where Mion considers killing her out of disgust for both the distinguishment and her cruel treatment of the Hojo siblings. She instead chooses to distinguish herself in protest.
  • We all knew Teppei was a child abuser, but when he kicks and throws around his niece Satoko onscreen while she is crying and begging him to stop, that's when it really hits home.
  • Rina Mamiya not only gleefully contributes to Teppei's schemes, but tries to strangle Rena to death with her bare hands when she blows Rina's cover and tries to protect her father.
  • Miyo Takano at the end of Minagoroshi-hen. Not only killing a 12-year-old girl in cold blood, but psychologically torturing her into believing she might have had a chance to live? She might have needed Rika to die, but killing Satoko was pure evil. The anime then goes on to try and whip up some sympathy for Takano by showing her childhood sob story, which, to be honest, is quite terrible. But it still doesn't make her any less evil when that unlucky little girl grows up to become such a monster.
• Yagi, a medium-level henchman of the final Big Bad in Holyland, crosses this by kidnapping Yuu's girlfriend Mai, drugging her, and leaving her with three of his henchmen in a situation where she could get raped easily (said drug also being an aphrodisiac) and broadcasting the whole thing live via his cellular phone to coerce Yuu into not fighting back while Yagi's thugs beat him to a pulp. Fortunately, poor Mai is rescued before anything serious can happen to her, and Yagi gets his due punishment from Yuu later.
• In Honoo no Alpen Rose, Count Germont is a complete Jerkass and Stalker with a Crush to Jeudi. He truly clinches it when he murders her and Lundi's friend Hans via shooting him In the Back in the Swiss/Austrian border.
• Inuyasha:
  • The main villain, Naraku:
    • His very first act was to use his shape shifting abilities to attack and nearly kill Kikyo while posing as Inuyasha, then pose as Kikyo and make Inuyasha think Kikyo was trying to kill him, all leading to Inuyasha getting pinned to a tree and Kikyo dying hating Inuyasha, which would bring massive trouble when she was revived.
    • When he finally steps out of his figurative and literal mask, when he reveals he revived the Demon Slayer Sango's brother, Kohaku to be his puppet and later revealed he's essentially blackmailing him into service in order to not Go Mad from the Revelation of being forced to kill his own clan and be Driven to Suicide.
    • Mortally wounding the revived priestess Kikyo, after becoming stronger and discarding his heart. This is the first time that he actually got his hands dirty and proving he's utterly abandoned his humanity.
    • Killing Kagura and forcing Kanna to commit suicide, his followers from the beginning merely out of sadism and to dispose of the heroes. Proving that not even his own followers are immune to his dog kicking.
    • The anime has one notable incident 15 years prior the plot, when he tries to murder a potentially powerful priestess as a child, on the small possibility she'd be a threat. This is extremely heinous even by his standards as listed above.
  • He ain't the only villain to have crossed it either, either. Shiori's grandfather crosses it to a horrifying degree when he killed his own son aka Shiori's dad for daring to bear a Half-Human Hybrid child and try defending humans.
• Kaede Sakura in Kämpfer is implied in episodes 10 and 11 to have a Split Personality. Her Superpowered Evil Side had already made herself known as callous by siding with the Moderators, but when she brainwashes Mikoto and pits her against her own friends, the Purple Betrayers, in episode 13 (episode 1 of the OVA), you realize Kaede ain't coming back from the MEH.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: While none of the YAMI masters are good guys to begin with (Affably Evil, at best), resident Pencak Silat master Silcardo Jenazad is a very special case. In order to get a replacement for his slain disciple (who he'd killed himself via avalanche several arcs earlier for disrespecting their martial art), he tricks Akira Hongo, YAMI's "God Fist," into almost killing Kenichi while the other man is locked in a duel with Sakaki AND while both men are fighting even while unconscious. He pulls this off by radiating enough killing intent from behind Hongo so that the latter will instinctively lash out in self-defense and inadvertently murder Kenichi, who's right behind him at that point, in the process. And then after that happens he takes advantage of Miu's chaotic state of mind, caused by her thinking Kenichi's dead (when in fact he's survived, but just barely), kidnaps her and systematically brainwashes her into becoming a killing machine with no memories or emotion.
  • And just in case you don't think the above moment is despicable enough for him to have crossed the horizon, what he does in subsequent chapters should be concrete enough evidence that he's beyond any chance of forgiveness: he aggressively pits the Brainwashed and Crazy Miu against Kenichi in a fight to the death, with the expectation that Jenazad's brainwashing of Miu will be fully and finally completed when Miu kills Kenichi, or as he terms it "destroying the last piece of her heart" so that his control over her will be absolute. And for every attempt Kenichi makes to snap Miu out of the brainwashing (and any moment Miu appears to remember who Kenichi is), Jenazad urges her more and more to press on and kill the boy. It takes Kenichi taking a third option via smashing the helmet that Miu is wearing to have Jenazad's mind control of her snap..
• Kill la Kill:
  • It's hard to say when Ragyo Kiryuin crosses this - there's her molestation of her own daughter Satsuki, the brutal beatdown she gives her in Episode 18, trying to bring about the end of the world with Life Fibers, or trying to infuse her second child with Life Fibers in-utero, and then throwing out said child like garbage when the experiment seemed to fail and kill the baby (Ragyo had no way of knowing that the baby would be given a second chance at life by her own husband). As Satsuki herself notes, she didn't even bother giving her second child a name! This was bad enough that it made both her husband and her oldest daughter turn on her (independently of each other) and secretly plot revenge.
  • There's also Nui Harime, who crosses the M.E.H. at least three times.
    • The first time she is shown doing this is when she killed Isshin Matoi, the father of main character Ryuko Matoi (and formerly Soichiro Kiryuin as later revealed). Her sadistic glee as she slowly impales Isshin/Soichiro on his Rending Scissors is completely unjustified, and despite having been ordered to do so by Ragyo, she is shown immensely enjoying ending the life of an old man as slowly and painfully as possible. This bites her in the ass, however, as the moment she is distracted by an outside source, Isshin/Soichiro takes the opportunity to slice out her eye. She swiftly takes him out afterwards, however, and flees.
    • The second time is when she cheerfully admits to Ryuko that she's the one who killed Ryuko's father, all to get a rise out of her. As she hoped, this revelation causes Ryuko to go totally berserk, and this results in Ryuko and Senketsu merging into a horrible monstrosity that is constantly bleeding everywhere. While Ryuko is snapped out of this state by Mako, she still nearly dies from blood loss. Satsuki deduces that Nui's reasoning for this horrendous act was mostly due to Nui still carrying pent-up anger at Ryuko's father, since he was the first person to permanently injure her.
    • If that wasn't enough, Nui crosses it a third time when she disguises herself as an injured student and convinces Ryuko and the Mankanshoku family to let her stay with them. This results in Barazo Mankanshoku getting beat up, Senketsu being shredded to pieces, and Ryuko at death's door. There was literally no other reason for Nui to do this other than to be a bitch, and she would've killed Ryuko were it not for Satsuki intervening.
• Deconstructed in Is This A Zombie? by Yoruno, who makes it his goal to cross the MEH enough to provoke Eu into killing him. He succeeds at the end of episode 11; before Eu subsequently kills him, he reveals that his last wish is to be reincarnated as a penguin, because he likes penguins. He himself considers the death of another of Eu's paladins at his hands to be his own personal MEH.
• Lady!!:
  • Thomas and Mary crossed it when they replaced Sarah's painting with a blank canvas, which she ended up submitting to the art contest, and gleefully rubbing it in her face later. Sarah, who has an unknown illness where she'll faint if she suffers too much tension, is so stressed she starts shedding tears and almost passes out. It's one of those moments where you want to reach into your television screen and smack both kids for being so cruel to the show's resident Ill Girl. Thankfully Arthur saves the day by riding Alexandra to the train stop and racing against time to submit the correct entry, and Sarah ends up winning.
  • For other viewers, all three of the Waverlys crossed it when they bluntly told Lynn her mother died, or when they faulted Lynn for her death in a car accident.
  • Some viewers did not want to forgive Vivian for her history of animal abuse towards Andrews the horse, even when she eventually became Lynn's friend and supported her winning the Lady's Crest.
• In the Liar Game, manga, Yokoya kills his two pet mice. Until then he could have just been someone with a traumatic childhood or someone really evil, but then he just becomes a monster.
• Lyrical Nanoha: Nanoha Takamachi always does her best to understand and help her enemies, and after StrikerS, the cast is comprised almost entirely of ex-foes. That being said, when there's a character that can't be befriended, they really can't be befriended.
  • Precia Testarossa from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha crosses the line by mercilessly whipping her 9-year-old daughter Fate into a state of near-unconsciousness for not bringing her enough Jewel Seeds, and then later crushes her only reason for living.
  • In StrikerS, Jail Scaglietti was completely fine with anything, so long as it justified his research into cyborg bioweapons. Although he never explicitly crossed the line, his tendency to laugh maniacally while watching people suffer put him past redemption, even by Nanoha standards. His Dragon Quattro, however, did cross the line when she strapped the innocent Vivio to the throne powering the Big Bad's Cool Starship and tortured her into almost insanity to power it, and then forced her to try and kill her adoptive mother with her bare hands, while taunting them both. Quattro was punished accordingly.
  • In Force, Cypha crosses the Moral Event Horizon by admitting to killing dozens of civilians without any hint of remorse — just before almost killing fan-favorite Signum.
• Grace O'Connor in Macross Frontier has a number of candidates, with conducting painful, potentially instantly fatal, and certainly eventually fatal experiments on a seven year old girl probably close to the top of the list. Made worse when they call the little girl Subject Fairy-Nine and Fridge Logic sets in with "Wait, what happened to Fairies One through Eight?" Even then one of the drama CDs suggests an opening for redemption with Grace when she realizes that in the ten years she spent practically raising that girl (whose name is Sheryl Nome) she's developed strong feelings for her, no longer just "Fairy-Nine" but "her little fairy." She decides that the feelings will get in the way of their plan, so she deletes them with cybernetics in one of the most subtle crossings of the Moral Event Horizon ever.
• Made in Abyss has plenty in a Crapsaccharine World:
  • Many horrible things happen throughout the show but Bondrewd Lord of Dawn and his horrible experiments are the worst. His first action is the Elevator scene which is where Bondrewd is forcing Mitty to take the 6th level curse (Which is Body Horror incarnate) and make her suffer A Fate Worse Than Death while having Nanachi being Forced to Watch, Bondrewd later decides to torture Mitty later on. Nanachi is later forced to make Reg kill Mitty with the Incinerator so Mitty can't suffer anymore.
  • In the Narehate Arc, some mutated Narehates do one of the most disturbing things in the manga which is to attempt rape on Riko who is only 12!
• Mai-chan's Daily Life: The President of the United States crosses it many times since his debut, but he practically pole-vaults over the line when he puts Mai's baby in a blender.
• Maria no Danzai To be blunt, Okaya and his demonic friends have already skipped rope with the line both by the time the manga starts and before the events of the story as we see their crimes in the present and in flashbacks, which show them to be irredeemable monsters whose torture and deaths are cause for celebration. Below is a list of their most unforgivable acts.
  • The point of no return for Okaya and his friends is when they threaten Kiritaka with a porn video that has Mari's face edited on top of the actress, then use it to blackmail him into jumping to his death. For their sick amusement. It is made clear that they don't care that he broke his legs to the point where you can see his bones sticking out, and when he dies, they are afraid of getting in trouble and eventually frame Kiri's parents as being Abusive Parents and Kiri himself as having committed suicide so they could avoid paying for their actions. It was made clear in the story that Okaya and his friends have zero remorse for causing Kiritaka's death and move on with their lives, destroying other lives along the way.
  • Even before THAT, Okaya and his friends thought it would be a fun game to strangle a classmate over the toilet with a rope while betting how long he'll beg before the poor kid can handle all the torture he's put through. And because Kiritaka swooped in and saved said classmate, this event led to him becoming their new target.
  • Tsubasa Kowase would take pictures of his female classmates' underwear and sell them on the black market; he would also use blackmail to abuse shy girls knowing they would not fight back as they were too docile to stand up to him. He eventually tried to drown his latest victim, Yashima, and it was revealed that he once forced Yashima to have sex with him, with the implication being that she may not have been the first.
  • Kumiru Shikimi would isolate people by framing them for crimes; she isolated Kiritaka from their classmates by framing him for stealing her gym clothes, ensuring that he would endure the bullying and abuse she and her gang inflicted upon him alone. She would also scam lonely men by pretending to be older and acting like a caring girlfriend before revealing her age and having her thug beat them, something that she cruelly calls "fishing".
• If Redda of Mon Colle Knights didn't cross this line when he manipulated Zaha into doing his bidding, he crossed the line big time when he took Rokuna hostage, demanded the Monster Items from Mondo while holding a fake Rokuna at swordpoint, put her inside the Terror Dragon's neck, and ordered the dragon to suck most of Mondo's monster friends into a black hole. Mondo, being a usually cheerful 11 year old, ends up suicidal from his feelings of loss and failure. And as for Rokuna, it would've been bad enough if he just slaughtered her outright, but the way she would have died if Mondo and Zaha failed to save her would have been the most horrific way to die anyone could imagine.
• The freaks from Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show cross the line with their continuous sexual assault of Midori.
• In Muhyo and Roji, the final revelation that puts Teeki over the Moral Event Horizon is the revelation that he was responsible for Enchu's mother's death, causing his Start of Darkness and thus most of the conflict in the story. To a lesser extent, his responsibility for Rio's mother dying also applies.
• My Hero Academia:
  • All For One has many MEH crossings, to the point that it's hard to decide when he officially crossed the line: trying to cannibalise his mother's corpse shortly after being born; murdering the Luminescent Baby out of jealousy and stealing their quirk; murdering his own brother when he went against him; spitefully exterminating Kudo’s bloodline for taking Yoichi away from him; killing six of One For All's users in a brutal fashion; transforming Tenko Shimura/Tomura Shigaraki into a hatred-filled villain to possess, all so he could possess him later on; crippling All Might and nearly killing him in front of the world, and the list goes on…
  • Dabi, real name Toya Todoroki, crosses the line when he disrespects the dead Twice by revealing his anger is only about losing access to his powerful quirk. However, it turns out he crossed the line before the events of the series by attempting to kill his infant brother out of jealousy. Keep in mind Toya was 7 years old at that time.
  • If Muscular didn't cross the line by torturing and killing the Water Hose duo for fun, then he crosses it when he attempts to kill their young son Kota.
  • Overhaul crosses the line with his treatment of Eri by repeatedly destroying her body, harvesting her blood and then restoring her, only to repeat the process many times, while at same time guilt-tripping her into believing she only exists to bring suffering. It's no wonder the poor girl was physically unable to smile for some time after being rescued.
  • Skeptic of the Meta Liberation Army crosses the line with his attempt to "recruit" Twice... by dispatching unmasked Twice-lookalikes he created with his quirk to physiologically torture him with his Dark and Troubled Past and nearly having them kill Toga in front of Twice.
  • The very first scene of Flect Turn and Humarise, where they destroy a populated city by causing a widespread Superpower Meltdown, is enough to tell the audience they're deserve no sympathy. Not only they plan to repeat it on the global level, but Flect goes further into this when it's revealed he murdered Eddie Soul after blackmailing him into making the Trigger bombs by threatening to kill his children, including the two quirkless younger siblings, showing himself as an utter hypocrite who doesn't give a damn about killing quirkless people to achieve his goals.

N-Z

• Naruto:
  • The Fourth Kazekage crosses the MEH with his treatment of his son, Gaara. He has a demon sealed into the boy at birth, completely isolates him from his family save for his uncle Yashamaru, who he then orders to attempt to kill Gaara and tell him that both his mother and he, Yashamaru, the only person to ever love Gaara or show him kindness, hated him to the death. Just to see what happens. Yashamaru did so against his will, and promptly killed himself to clinch it. And when the emotionally fragile, socially isolated child reacts badly to the fact that no one's ever loved him, he decides to have the kid murdered. No wonder Gaara turned out like he did, at least until Naruto intervened in his life. It's so bad that the Kazekage actually comes to admit that he was a total bastard after he's revived via Edo Tensei and Gaara dealt him a massive and magnificent call-out.
  • Danzo did this in the backstory, when he set up Kabuto and his mother to kill each other. Good intentions or not, that is horrifically cruel.
  • Though he was outclassed by Orochimaru in the following arc, Gato crosses the line when he brutally murdered Kaiza in front of the Land Of Waves. He also is responsible for driving said land into poverty.
  • Hidan crosses the line when he kills Asuma Sarutobi, and later mocking his student Shikamaru over the act. The subsequent savage beatdown and Fate Worse than Death he suffers at Shikamaru's hands is very well-deserved.
  • Black Zetsu, with his manipulating of Indra and other Uchihas, being at least partially responsible for their Curse of Hatred, instigating wars and conflicts all to free Kaguya Otsutsuki, also deserves mention.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Gendo Ikari, leader of NERV and Shinji's Jerkass father. Many of the things he's done through the series were questionable, but he would cross the line when, following Shinji's refusal to destroy an Angel-possessed Evangelion Unit-03, he activates the dummy-plug system to carry out its destruction, nearly killing its pilot Toji Suzuhara, Shinji's classmate and friend in the process. In the manga the pilot actually dies, and becomes all the worse still in Evangelion 2.0, where Shinji's hands are practically bolted to the controls while the dummy-plug destroys Unit-03 and almost kills its new pilot, Asuka.
  • SEELE deliberately engineered the Second Impact by tricking the Katsuragi Expedition into awakening Adam in order to fulfil their plans. Or to put it differently: SEELE wilfully orchestrated a massive disaster that inflicted horror, chaos, and misery on a global scale for years and ended up causing a death-toll of in the ballpark of 3 billion people, while gambling the rest of Earth's population in a war against the Angels, who by the by had an Instant-Win Condition on their side, just so they could have a shot at achieving godhood. The fact they, after being backstabbed by Gendo, order the entire staff of NERV (including Shinji, Rei and Asuka) terminated in End of Evangelion only worsens their nature.
  • During his review of End of Evangelion, Bennett the Sage discusses this trope, positing that Shinji crosses it during the infamous hospital scene, which he finds repulsive and believes pushes Shinji out of "unlikely hero" territory and into "complete douchebag" — something Shinji even admits In-Universe ("I'm the lowest..."). Whether you agree with this position or not, it's certainly a morally repugnant act that Shinji has never lived down.
• Peach Girl: Kairi has a trio of obsessive clingy jealous girls who once attacked Momo and threatened to set her on fire if she continued taking up Kairi's attention.
• A demon lord and her minions attack a village in Problem Children are Coming from Another World, aren't they?: destroying things, trying to kill people, using mass hypnosis, the usual. Then Kurousagi stops the battle for supposed misconduct... which turns out to play into their Batman Gambit. The demon lord is apparently Pestilence, and she has infected most of the village with the plague, intending to delay the match for an entire month so that most of her opponents will die slowly and painfully before the battle technically begins. Just in case you were underwhelmed by the actions of the bad guys so far...
• In Penguindrum, Sanetoshi had done plenty of shit, but he seriously crossed the MEH in episode 23. He didn't just do it by revealing that he was the one who "killed" Momoka via transforming her in the two Penguin Hats when she tried to stop him from destroying the world (thus causing a good part of the events of the series to take place), but by first strengthening Kanba's Face–Heel Turn via forcing him to see Masako die and then reviving her while promising to do the same to Himari if he destroys the world for him and then by setting up Ringo to be seriously injured and mocking her as she was burning to almost death, in his quest to destroy the Destiny Diary.
• Psycho-Pass has latent criminals crossing the line which makes them easy targets for lethal elimination by the bureau. But there are those who stand out:
  • Shogo Makishima, the Big Bad of Season 1, is known to be The Corrupter, The Sociopath and one of those responsible for Mitsuru Sasayama's death which resulted to Kougami's demotion to Enforcer. But his first onscreen MEH is killing Akane's friend in front of her after she failed to shoot him. Though that earned him some leather pants and many believed that his MEH is planning to sabotage the food supply and killing Masaoka.
  • Kirito Kamui, the Big Bad of Season 2, made this his Establishing Character Moment by kidnapping an Inspector and forcing her to kill her Enforcer. If that's not his MEH, then taking one of her eyes out and manipulating her to call her partner which got several hostages including the partner brutally killed just to get the Dominator is this.
  • Sakuya Togane already crossed the line in the past where, as a child, he killed a puppy for his mother's experiment. Then, he kills Akane's grandma with the Dominator just to darker her hue.
  • Kobuo Oguro may elicit some sympathy at first, as a Salaryman who gets treated like a criminal from one bad Psycho-Pass, but he loses it when he rapes his hostage.
• In Reborn! (2004), Future Byakuran, a tyrant who had the Vongola Family in the future be massacred and made the world a despot Crapsack World and casually sacrifices loyal minions, crosses not with actions, but with his reaction to his prisoner, Yuni's sacrifice and treats it like he had lost a major piece to a game he was playing and then goes on how he thought of her as an object leading to his Karmic Death by Tsuna's hands.
• Allegedly crossed by the high school basketball team captain by propositioning a minor, which sets the plot of Ro-Kyu-Bu! in motion as the entire team gets punished for his alleged crime (which hasn't been proven as of the current episode), forcing the main character to coach a girls' basketball team consisting of grade-schoolers in an example of misplaced Laser-Guided Karma at work.
• Rosario + Vampire:
  • Hitomi Ishigami virtually blowing up the whole school with a magic mirror toward the end of the first serialization. She gets her comeuppance yet again when she's arrested for the crime. Her motive for doing this was a revenge scheme against the Newspaper Club for exposing her plot to turn the most beautiful female students into stone and use of modeling sessions as a pretense and getting her fired for it. So in other words, she wrecked Yokai Academy out of spite toward just a few of the students. It's also arguable that she may have crossed it earlier when she schemed with the Security Committee and Kuyou to murder Tsukune for the same reason.
    • Kuyou himself crosses it with his interpretation of the school rule "No humans allowed" as "Death to all filthy human spies!". Not only is he willing to commit murder based on his own twisted interpretation of a school rule, he's also completely willing to risk the lives of the existing members of the Security Committee by having Tsukune murdered. To make his mindset much worse, if Tsukune died and the Security Committee was eventually caught, Fairy Tail would've won.
  • Kanade Kamiya has a lot of potential crossing points, but it's most likely that he crossed it by killing Marin Kawamoto's husband in front of her. To make masters worse, he had no reason to kill said husband or any other humans he did at the time; he went on a mass-murdering rampage, in his own words, simply to pass the time and clear his head.
  • Gyokuro Shuzen is a nasty one, and her sadistic treatment of Moka just a chapter before was bad, but when she, without a single ounce of hesitation or regret, orders Kahlua to kill her own beloved little sister Kokoa? And remember that Gyokuro is Kokoa's birth mother as well, and Kahlua was so horrified by the order that she literally begged Gyokuro to change her mind.
  • It's possible that Hokuto and Kiria may have crossed it during the festival arc. Hokuto chains up all of the harem (with the exception of Moka who had been kidnapped) inside a barrier created by Mikogami's rosary so that they don't stop him. Tsukune tries to fight him but he keeps getting knocked down and beaten to a bloody pulp right in front of his friends. Kiria's was when he had Moka. He told her that he would let her go free if she removed her rosary by herself (back then only Tsukune could do that). To motivate her, he gave her a live camera feed on Hokuto beating up on Tsukune. Basically it boils down to, "Do the impossible bitch, or your boyfriend is gonna be paste."
  • If, after all he had done and what was revealed about him, you still had a small shred of hope for Miyabi Fujisaki, that went out the window the moment he murdered Outer Moka in cold blood by destroying Moka's rosary.
  • Nagare Kano is already well past the MEH by the time he appears, but blackmailing a girl into bailing on the Newspaper Club for him when they're in a deadline? Putting the Newspaper Club's hard work at risk over your lust!? Calling this Kodak fiend a pervert at this point would be an insult to perverts everywhere.
  • Tadashi Wanibuchi, a Monster of the Week from volume 2, crossed the line when he tried to devour Yukari alive for being an obnoxious prankster. Keep in mind, Yukari was eleven at the time.
• Alberich from the Asgard arc of Saint Seiya. While all the other God Warriors were following Hilda out of loyalty and love for their country, Alberich is happy to reveal he knew all along that Hilda was being controlled by Poseidon, and that he let the war go along so he'd claim all his colleagues' Saphires of Odin after they were killed, and then get Balmung's Sword and take over the world.
• Dr. Katsuragi of Sakura Gari is pretty fond of doing horrible things. In the backstory he persuaded Souma (who was angry with his abusive stepmother, Sakurako) into wanting to kill her: he drugged Sakurako when she was taking a bath, took Souma there and told him to kill her as revenge for his abuse, and when Souma couldn't go through with it he grabbed Souma's hand, put the knife forcefully in it and forcibly made him cut Sakurako's wrists, effectively killing her. Then, he rapes Souma almost in the spot. When Souma confronts Katsuragi on his rape and torture of Masataka, Katsuragi denies the accusation and tries to seduce Souma. He acts uninterested and mentions Masataka's name, so Katsuragi actually grabs Souma by the throat and tries to strangle him. And then karma meets up with him Spectacularly.
• To a lot of people, Hatori from Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi crosses the line when he brutally raped Chiaki in the novel. The anime was nice enough to tone it down but said fans aren't going to let what happened in the novel slide and it implies it in the anime as well. Being a Karma Houdini and beating up on Yanase when the guy broke down crying after Chiaki rejected him a third time and refusing to believe that his friend has feelings for him does not help his case in trying to redeem himself.
• The Seven Deadly Sins has plenty of villains who cross the line:
  • Sir Twigo, the Starter Villain of the series, is the first shown crossing the M.E.H., where he states his intent to kill Elizabeth even after she was willing to return to Liones peacefully. This is small fry, however, compared to the horrible acts committed later in the series.
  • Ruin of the Weird Fangs was already part of a sect of particularly jerkass Holy Knights, but his act of disguising himself as a child in peril to get close to Elizabeth — and then beating the hell out of her — was when he cemented himself as truly vile.
  • Eating the soul of another living being, which is usually done by the Ten Commandments and other Demons, is considered a vile act, as those whose souls are consumed are forever left empty husks.
  • Galand of Truth wastes no time demonstrating how awful of a Demon he is by leveling the entire city of Camelot. All so he could have breathing room for his fight against the Sins. He goes downhill from there when he devours the soul of Ban's mentor and adoptive father, Zhivago. Though Galand believed it was Ban's soul, it's still a horrendous act.
  • Melascula of Faith is responsible for bringing the souls of the dead back to life, but also placing grudges in them that make them attack the ones they love most. Among her victims is Elaine, who attacks both Ban and Jericho under the delusion that Ban moved on from her while she was dead.
  • Grayroad of Pacifism proves how vile she is when she traps numerous civilians, including Jericho and Zeal, in eggs full of a fluid that will turn those trapped in them into Demons. She even goes further beyond the line when Dogget of the Pleiades Knights is killed by her Commandment, as attacking in her presence causes him to age to a withered corpse.
  • Chandler the Pacifier Fiend is notable for greatly caring for his apprentice, Meliodas, and seems to only want the best for him. But he arguably proved he was no better than any of the worst Demons when he killed Gloxinia and Drole, who were attempting to Hold the Line for the Sins to escape him.
  • Cusack the Napping Reaper jumped over the M.E.H. when he forced Arthur Pendragon to fatally stab himself with Excalibur. Arthur was brought back, but still...
    • If that wasn't enough, he truly barrelled over the point of no redemption when he slaughtered Chandler, his other half, just to make Zeldris the Demon King. No one was upset when the Demon King preceded to dispose of him the moment he was revived.
  • The Demon King has done multiple horrible things, such as possessing both his sons, killing subordinates, trying to keep a Forever War going all for amusement, and attempting to destroy all of Britannia. But the moment he truly proved he was pure evil was when he teamed up with the Supreme Deity to kill Meliodas and Elizabeth, and then cursing the latter with the spell that would forever result in her repeatedly dying in front of the now-immortal Meliodas over and over again.
  • Cath at first seems like Arthur Pendragon's cute ball-shaped cat friend, but it turns out when he is revealed as Cath Palug — and rips Arthur's arm off and eats it — that it becomes clear that he was only after his "owner" for his own gain. Continuing to go after Arthur with the intent of eating him, all the while stating his own desire to reduce the world to chaos, keeps digging his hole.
  • The Supreme Deity is an Evil Matriarch of the Goddess Clan and Elizabeth's own mother, and is notable for her hatred for the Demon Race and her desire to keep the Holy War from ever ending. But the time she proved that Light Is Not Good certainly pertained to her was cursing Meliodas with immortality after she and the Demon King had killed him and Elizabeth, ensuring that he would constantly outlive Elizabeth, who was already cursed to die in front of him over and over again.
    • The Supreme Deity is also seen crossing it before then, when she ordered Ludociel to trap non-combatant Demons in a gigantic Ark bubble, which would proceed to vaporize all the Demons inside, including Derieri's sister.
    • Cursed by Light ups the Supreme Deity's monstrous acts further. She blasts the whole of the Kingdom of Liones with her God Thunder, not caring when she also strikes down her brainwashed Goddess thralls in the process. And if that wasn't enough, trying to kill Elizabeth herself — her own daughter — for trying to tell her to abandon the attempt to restart the Holy War was most likely the last straw.
• The Defence Minister of Simulacrum in Simoun desecrating the corpse of an enemy priestess, having his goons rough up Yun and mock her religious devotion when she objects, overruling the heads of the Simulacran church to deny Mamiina a proper funeral, and trying to prevent the sibyllae from giving their fallen friend the most basic memorial service possible, all within the space of two and a half episodes. When it comes to tension between religion and laïcité, Simoun knows what side its bread is buttered on.
• Soul Eater: While she had committed some other terrible acts before this point, Medusa's Moral Event Horizon is generally cited as when she claimed that Crona, who she had been abusing and experimenting on for her plan to resurrect an Eldritch Abomination, is really her child; she doesn't get any better from there.
  • Also, Giriko jumped over the line when he tried to rape Maka in the book of Eibon, when she's at her lowest point; previously, he was just another of the ineffectual minor villains.
  • Despite his pre-Face-Heel-Turn-reveal murder of BJ and moment of sadistic enjoyment at Kid's pain, Justin could have been seen as redeemable, especially since it was strongly hinted that Clown had something to do with his betrayal. However after he killed Tezca who deceived DWMA and put his life on line to offer a chance to return on top of friendship, it was pretty clear that Justin was not coming back to the good side. He even got a permanently burning flame on his face from the fight, in a chapter named "Hellfire".
• Spy X Family: Keith, the leader of a gang of isolationist terrorists, crosses it by ordering his accomplices to kill Anya after she eavesdrops on their plan to kill the foreign minister, something even they're initially hesitant to do. Keep in mind, he's a college student acting on racist ideologies rather than a hardened soldier or government agent.
• Strider: Matic never hid the fact he was not nice, while secretly in line with the Enterprise and their Mind Control weapon. Then, he reveals to Hiryu that he set him up to kill all the figureheads of Enterprise so he'd have free way to claim their weapon, AND that he'd have the Striders' senile director killed and Hiryu and his friend Kain framed and executed for it. And even then, there's is the fact that he has known of the Zain Project for 3 years, implying that he staged the brainwashing of Hiryu's sister by Enterprise 2 years ago, which lead to her murdering 10 Strider trainees and Hiryu being forced to kill her, prompting his retirement.
• Talentless Nana:
  • Yuka is revealed to have crossed the line long ago: she was never in a relationship with Shinji and was the one who started the fire at the movie theater believing that she could have Shinji even if he was dead.
  • Tsuruoka has different candidates for this: he was the one who arranged for the death of Nana's parents and created the child soldier program making him directly responsible for Nana's actions on the island; he held Moe's grandmother hostage to keep Moe under line; he shot Michiru twice in the head to prevent her from healing herself all to ensure that Nana continued to kill for him; and he brainwashed a vengeful Nanao into becoming a pawn.
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's second movie, Lagann-Hen, the Anti-Spiral analyzes and dissolves Nia... By mounting her naked body and grasping her with tentacles. At that point, he stopped being a Well-Intentioned Extremist and started looking like a reject from Legend of the Overfiend.
• Tokyo Babylon reveals that Seishirou is the Sakurazukamori assassin who had no qualms of killing people and is the one who put the pentacle marks on Subaru's hands in the first place. But killing Hokuto proved that he's no longer the Nice Guy that Subaru loved anymore which is so tragic.
• Tokyo Ghoul gives us the following vile moments that crossed the line:
  • Yamori was pretty much tiptoeing the line to begin with, being a Torture Technician that straps Kaneki to a chair and begins torturing him for several days. But when he realizes that physical torture isn't breaking his latest toy fast enough, Yamori brings out his trump card. He'd captured Kaneki by promising to let his friends go, but kept the other imprisoned elsewhere. He brings up two of the prisoners, a mother and her young son, and orders Kaneki to decide which of them will die. Even Yamori's Living Emotional Crutch, Nico, protests that this is taking things too far and attempts to talk him down. This, combined with Kaneki refusing to "play along", causes Yamori to throw a temper tantrum and strangle the child to death before killing the mother.
  • Kureo Mado is established as a sadistic Investigator that takes pleasure in tormenting Ghouls, expressing disgust when they "imitate humans" through selfless actions or compassion. He starts things off by killing a gentle Ghoul, Ryouko Fueguchi, having made certain she realizes the weapon he's using was made from her late husband's corpse. But he really crosses the line when he lures her 14-year old daughter Hinami into a trap by taking advantage of her superior sense of smell — he leaves a bag for her, which contains Ryouko's forearm. Once he's trapped her and her violently protective Cool Big Sis Touka, he taunts her further by showing off his new matching set of weapons, made from the bodies of her parents. Even after all the vile things he does, Hinami still refuses to take revenge and is prepared to spare him — he takes the chance to attempt to kill her, and dies for his effort.
• Tomie: Tomie crossed it in the fourth chapter when she grafted pieces of her on girl, which grew into more Tomies on her. This is that her screams sound like thunder.
• The Twelve Kingdoms has more than one person, specially the sen-nin or immortals, cross a few of these:
  • King Chuutatsu: Being cynical and upholding the rules didn't make him evil. There WAS lots of corruption in Hou, after all, and as a former government officer he knew that well. Slaughtering around 10% of the population over minor offenses, and then more after his kirin fell sick in an attempt to make things even? THAT is what made him an asshole.
  • Queen Kekai: Her and Chuutatsu's daughter had a nice little friend, so sweet and elegant! And wait, was she better at everything than the Princess? How dared she! So Kekai got her out of the way.... by falsely accusing her mother of accepting bribes, thus tricking her husband the King into having both mother and daughter executed. THAT would teach them!
  • Governor Atsuyu: He had a subordinate named Kouya, who also was the master of a certain demon. But when said kid had some people killed and eaten and was then horrified at what he had done... what did Atsuyu do? He told Kouya it's okay and had him "groomed" into a bastard who'd kill his enemies for him while he made himself look all saintly! Eeeeh...
  • Riyo: At some point, she took a girl from Hourai who couldn't speak the language and was completely lost... Why, Riyo immediately started humiliating Suzu by re-naming her "Mokurin" ("Fool" in the local language) and abused her psychologically and physically for 100 years straight! "Punishing her for her sins", indeed.
  • Shokou: He admitted he was in For the Evulz, and as such he oppressed the place he was in charge of as Governor. And not only he manipulated a kid from Hourai (who happened to be both a friend of Youko and Yuka's boyfriend) and kidnapped Old Retainer Enho (with his guards murdering his maid Rangyaku too, and the maddened Hourai kid shooting her brother Keikei almost to death), but he also intentionally ran a blinded kid named Seishuu over with his carriage, killing him, and laughed about it. What the....
  • The King of Kou: Okay, this one was insecure about the taika-led kingdoms like En, and then two taika girls with potential to become the Queen of Kei arrived. What did he do? He manipulated Yuka to pit her against Youko, playing on her feelings of insecurity for his benefit. And once Yuka lost against Youko, he immediately tried to kill Youko himself. No, just no.
• In Umineko: When They Cry Rosa Ushiromiya either seriously kicks the puppy or downright crosses this when she rips Sakutaro in half. Though it seemed minor at first, you would recall that she gave Maria the stuffed lion in the first place, and that Maria considered (or made) him real, and that he was probably her only friend. She also "kills" one of the Siesta sisters, though inadvertently when she threw her on the ground. And often at times where she slaps Maria. Yes, you should show your child discipline, but when you take it too far, it is just abuse. And she often claims to have to go to work, but in reality, she goes to spend the night with one of her boyfriends — meaning she would often leave Maria home alone, often to the point where she would have to go out and get her own food. She even left one boyfriend when he told her to spend her time with her daughter. But what ultimately made her cross the horizon would have to be when she told Maria that she never loved her and wished for her to have died, so that she would have a happy life. She even tells her to go to Hell. Though, given her status as a Tragic Villain, a victim of abuse and bullying from her own siblings and her father (which Rudolf actually aknowledges), the local Chew Toy, or most likely just stressed at work, she might subvert this trope. Though, Beatrice was disgusted by her behavior.
  • She actually does, because Rosa is the very strange case of an abusive mother doubling as Mama Bear. In EP-2, she faces the goat servants on her own to protect herself and Maria, taking them with pens to the eyes and shotguns; in Episode 8 of the game, she shoves a rifle down Erika's throat when she mocks Maria and tells her that her mom will abandon her. Several of the episodes described here happen in different timelines (and the one described at the end happens only in EP-4), thus how abusive or nurturing she is can seriously vary depending on which EP we're talking of.
  • Kinzo also crossed it when it was revealed that Yasu, aka the real persona of Beatrice, Shannon and Kanon is actually his child fathered on his own daughter Beatrice, who he kept isolated and eventually raped because she resembled her mother, Kinzo's deceased mistress. Can you say "Just like Noah Cross"? Good.
• Swordfish does this a few times in Under Grand Hotel especially him raping his lover Sen to almost death when Sen said something that annoyed him.
• In chapter 334 of Urusei Yatsura, adapted into OAV #3: Inaba the Dream-Maker, Ataru Moroboshi gets a chance to create a future where he finally achieves his dream. When he enters that future, however, he finds the one girl not a part of his harem is his Unwanted Spouse, Lum, who in fact he learns has just quit the harem and left. The reason why? To acquire his harem, this future version of Ataru sold all of Lum's belongings and forced her to work like a slave for the money to get the other women interested, refused to feed her to lighten expenses, and made her sleep on the roof to have more space to fit the women into his house. To cap it all off, this future-Ataru blames Lum for being "selfish" and leaving. Watching his older self, the present-day Ataru furiously beats him senseless with a Megaton Hammer, then leaves that future, rips off the doorknob that corresponds to it and throws the doorknob away in a rage, declaring that a harem is pointless if Lum isn't part of it.
• In Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest Haguro Dou manipulates the younger Kuroda into going Columbine on half the student body out of vengeance against Inugami for his brother's death. Using weapons from his family gun cellar. The kicker? His brother died because HAGURO pulled his life-support.
  • Also, Haguro beat his subordinate Chiba within an inch of his life, biting off his tongue, and then raping him for good measure to the point that Chiba ends up dying from a combination of ruptured organs, blood loss, and broken ribs. Thankfully, Inugami gave Chiba some of his blood which ended up bringing Chiba back to life. Why did Haguro do such a thing? Because Chiba ended up encountering Inugami out on the streets and talked to him for maybe 15 minutes when Haguro wasn't around. Haguro is Yandere for Inugami's werewolf form, you see.
  • While minor compared to her "boyfriend" Haguro, Ryuuko Kounuma also crossed the MEH via selling out Aoshika to Haguro in her wish to not be used as a bait for Inugami, in what can be easily interpreted as making sure Aoshika will be either super-broken or dead as retaliation for Inugami liking her more than Ryuuko.
• Wolf's Rain: Darcia crosses it when he kills Toboe. Said character is the most innocent in the story, and is still just a child at the time.
• X1999. By the time Kamui decided to join the Dragons of Heaven, Fuuma joins the other side and kills his own sister, Kotori, while Kamui is Forced to Watch. The manga is more brutal that he beheads her!
  • Satsuki crossed it by killing Yuzuriha's dog spirit, Inuki, after the girl failed to answer one simple question.
  • In the movie, several Dragons of Earth crossed more lines here where Yuto and Kusanagi killing Yuzuriha and Fuuma killing his own members (including Kanoe), fatally stabbing Arashi as she watched Sorata die and pulling out the Shinken from Kotori which resulted to her death.

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