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Moral Event Horizon / Marvel Cinematic Universe

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Peter Quill/Star Lord: But my mother... You said you loved my mother.
Ego: And that I did... My river lily who knew all the words to every song that came over the radio. I returned to Earth to see her three times, but I knew if I returned a fourth... I'd never leave... The Expansion... The reason for my very existence would be over, so, I did what I had to do... but... it broke my heart to put that tumour in her head.
—Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Moral Event Horizon in Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Film

  • In Iron Man, Stane pushing the board to file the injunction against Tony. Weirdly, this is completely innocuous in the world of business (not exactly nice, but sometimes it's a very necessary move). However, the reason it is the Moral Event Horizon is because we learn that he did such a thing right after Tony confronts him about dealing on the black market.
  • In Captain America: The First Avenger, Hydra Megacorp system, led by Red Skull crossed it for nearly killing and presumably kidnapping Bucky Barnes
  • In the last act of Thor: The Dark World, Malekith tries destroying reality, something that he had attempted millenia before.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier:
    • Arnim Zola is revealed to have crossed the line years ago by torturing several members of Bucky's division, including Bucky himself. If that particular line crossing isn't bad enough, he helped rebuild HYDRA as S.H.I.E.L.D. and created an algorithm to target any and all potential enemies, which would have killed at least twenty million people, according to his calculations.
    • Alexander Pierce crosses it by casually murdering his cleaner when she stumbles across the Winter Soldier sitting in his house. Considering what he's been up to and who he's been working with, he probably crossed it a long time ago, in-universe.
  • In Iron Man 3, Aldrich Killian plays this straight by not only injecting his patients with explosives, but remorselessly shooting down Dr. Maya Hansen in order to make Tony suffer.
  • In Guardians of the Galaxy, Ronan the Accuser crossed it big time when he executed an innocent man as he first appears throughout the film. This is if he didn't cross it for lying to Nova Corps that the Guardians were involved with the theft and murder.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: Ultron crosses it when he uses the country of Sokovia to try to cause an extinction-level event and rebuild it in his own image; further cementing this when he kills Quicksilver while trying to evacuate the civilians.
  • Captain America: Civil War: Zemo crosses the line when he bombs the UN convention, killing T'Chaka and numerous others, just so he could draw out Bucky to continue his plan. It's somewhat softened by the fact that he did try to get what he wanted from Bucky's old handler first specifically noting that if he doesn't then he'll have to resort to "bloodier methods" that he doesn't truly want to, and when he sincerely apologizes to T'Challa for what he did, but it still shows his blatant Revenge Myopia — inflicting upon others the same pain he uses as an excuse for his actions in the first place, and when he does apologize he's also hoping T'Challa kills him. Then he tries to weasel out of being punished for his actions by committing suicide, but fortunately T'Challa stops him from doing so to make him face justice for his crimes.
  • Doctor Strange:
    • Kaecilius crossed it for sacrificing an unnamed librarian in order to acquire the ritual pages so he could plunge Hong Kong to misery For the Evulz.
    • Mordo stops being able to claim the moral high ground in the second stinger, as soon as he takes Pangborn's magic away. Bear in mind, Pangborn was an innocent person who wasn't doing any harm, simply using his magic and the teachings of the Ancient One to live a normal life despite crippling injuries. And Mordo took all of that away because he feels there are "too many sorcerers." He took a man's life because of his personal views on magic.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:
    • The backstory of the villain Ego the Living Planet is that he genuinely fell in love with Meredith Quill, so he killed her in order to remove the distraction from his Evil Plan. And then he went on to murder thousands of his own children because lacked his Celestial power and thus weren't useful to his plan.
    • The Ravagers crew cross it when they betray their leader and kill almost everyone loyal to Yondu while making him watch. It makes it easier when Yondu ends up massacring everyone on the ship, except for his loyal crewmate Kraglin.
  • Thor: Ragnarok:
    • The Grandmaster crossed it when he casually melted one of his prisoners into a puddle of goo for an unspecified reason.
    • Hela crossed this when she brutally murdered the Warriors Three and the entire army of Asgard simply for refusing to follow her.
  • Black Panther:
  • Thanos crosses it in Avengers: Infinity War when he throws Gamora to her death despite genuinely loving her as a daughter and continuing on despite having been torn up doing so, showing he truly will stop at nothing to enact his mad plan to kill half of all life in the universe.
  • Captain Marvel (2019):
    • Yon-Rogg crossed it long ago when he murdered Mar-Vell, and had her protege Carol turned into a soldier to serve him.
    • Ronan crossed this long before his appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). He decides to carpet bomb the Earth's surface with numerous Kree missiles just to wipe out a dozen or so Skrulls, not caring that his fellow Kree could be on the planet or the numerous human casualties that could occur.
  • In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos's 2014 counterpart crosses the line after learning that the Avengers are planning to undo his murder of half the universe. Realizing that the universe will always be “ungrateful” knowing what they lost, Thanos plans to destroy the entire universe with the Infinity Gauntlet and repopulate it with life that will appreciate the countless lives he's taken. At this point, it's clear that, for all his talk about wanting what's best for the universe, he's motivated by fueling his own ego as opposed to true altruism.
  • Mysterio/Quentin Beck from Spider-Man: Far From Home is already beyond the line by staging mass murders upon innocent citizens for the sake of publicity, then trying to murder all of Peter's friends for knowing his secret. Oh, and then he also ruined a 16-year-old's life for stopping him by revealing his secret identity to the public through an edited recording meant to frame him for everything.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home, Green Goblin flies past it at the speed of light by murdering May, something that has never happened in any of the Spider-Man movies, albeit May has been killed off before in other incarnations of the franchise.
  • Werewolf by Night (2022): Verussa crosses this when she traps Jack and her stepdaughter in a cage and then forces Jack to turn into his werewolf form early (even as Jack begs her not to) both for the thrill of killing a werewolf and in the hopes of said werewolf killing Elsa. And when that fails, she tries to kill Elsa.
  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: While he's established as a protective monarch and has his best interest in his people, some claim Namor crosses it when his attack on Wakanda lead to many deaths, including Shuri's mom Ramonda, in revenge for the casualties resulted from the Shuri's rescue, which he caused in the first place.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: While some people claim the High Evolutionary crossed it by casually blowing up Counter-Earth just because its inhabitants didn't live up to his inordinate standards of perfection, many felt that his most heinous act was when, in a very severe case of Disproportionate Retribution, he led Rocket and his friends into a false sense of hope that they would escape his clutches before shooting Lylla dead In the Back in front of Rocket. Adding insult to injury, he subsequently cruelly mocks his crying over her after being annoyed by him, sarcastically claiming that he "won the crying contest". Unsurprisingly, this leads to Rocket not only to escape, but also violently mauling him in an act of unapologetic revenge.

Television

  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    • "The Well" has an example in Ward's flashbacks; turns out his Dark and Troubled Past had something to do with his older brother Christian crossing the MEH at his expense. "Throw him the rope, and I'll throw you in there, too."
    • An In-Universe example in "Girl in the Flower Dress": Skye decides Miles crossed the MEH by selling Chan Ho Yin out to Centipede for a million dollars. This on top of hacking S.H.I.E.L.D. against her orders. Chan Ho Yin may be a tool, but this revelation made Miles come across as a bigger tool and perhaps irreparably lowered Skye's opinion of Miles.
    • Edison Po when he insists on torturing Coulson's memories of his death out of him. Even Raina wasn't pleased that he would resort to potentially deadly torture.
    • Having had his In-Universe crossing point in the previous episode with his manipulation of Seth and Donnie, Ian Quinn definitely crosses it in "T.R.A.C.K.S." when he shoots Skye and then later gloats about it to Coulson. Even before this happens, we can see he has an extremely callous attitude toward Mike Peterson, viewing him as little more than a weapon.
    • Lorelei forces a husband to murder his own wife simply because she can and then later rapes Ward whilst he's under her control. However, she makes it clear she crossed it many centuries ago, when she gloats to Sif about making her lover a "pet" and using him as a Sex Slave. She even forced to Sif to kill him in the end. It's made clear she's done all this and more countless times over her very long life.
    • Garrett is clearly over the MEH by the time he's revealed to be the Clairvoyant. Even his most visible crossing point, provoking Ward into shooting an actor he set up to pose as the Clairvoyant, happens before he's implied to have been the Clairvoyant all along. More generally, he crossed the MEH with his spy game against his own organization. He crossed it at least fifteen years before the series began, he targeted Ward, made him think that he was going to protect him (Ward had burned down the house with his abusive brother inside and his parents wanted him tried as an adult), before dumping him in the woods for six months with very little except the clothes on his back and a dog called Buddy. He later ordered Ward to kill the dog because caring about anything is a weakness. And if even all that wasn't bad enough for you, his ultimate crossing point comes when he orders Ward to kill Fitz and Simmons.
    • Daniel Whitehall is already over the line in the present day, having crossed it when he experimented with the Obelisk on human beings, performed an operation to make himself youthful again 44 years later at the cost of the life of the sole survivor, and contributed to the first TV-14 rating of the series in a significant fashion. And even before the vivisection was revealed, he crossed it by brainwashing Kara Palamas, an act that led directly to her being stuck with May's face for much of the series, her loss of identity, and, ultimately, her death by friendly fire.
    • Agent Calderon, the Token Evil Teammate for "Real S.H.I.E.L.D.", crosses it in "One Door Closes" by going over Bobbi's head and trying to kill Skye rather than take her alive as Bobbi had insisted.
    • What Nick Fury did to revive deceased S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson is considered this by some. The full circumstances aren't exactly clear, but it ended with Fury siphoning some kind of drug out of a decomposing alien corpse.
    • Towards the end of Season 2, we start to see just how nasty Jiaying has become since Whitehall vivisected her. If killing Gonzales and attacking her own city with a stolen S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet to manipulate her people into starting a war wasn't enough, murdering Raina and executing helpless prisoners in cold blood, plus planning to effectively doing this to anybody who stands in her way (even if it's her own daughter), confirms without a doubt how far beyond redemption she is.
    • Any sympathy you may have had for Ward up to that point evaporates in "S.O.S." when not only does he brutally torture Bobbi Morse and plans on killing her, but then he changes that plan to instead setting a trap so that the person who comes to rescue her (most likely Hunter) will get shot to death instead, and Bobbi will have to helplessly watch it happen. He cements it in "Closure" when he murders Rosalind Price with a cheap long-range shot and taunts Coulson about it over the phone. Now, It's Personal between him and Coulson, and if there was any possibility of turning back by that point, that went out the window at that very moment.
    • Even Simmons has one, albeit a personal one, which she crosses by attempting to frag Ward with a cheap shot, which Ward wastes no time criticizing as something the Simmons he knew wouldn't have done. More tellingly, this marks the moment where Simmons abandons her "totally nonviolent" personification, a moment foreshadowed in some earlier episodes during Season 2.
    • Hive has a number of possible crossing points, but its willingness to let Daisy be completely drained of her blood is horribly callous, even by Hive's standards. If that didn't do it for you, wait until he's satisfied with the Primitive strain of the Inhuman virus. All of his other actions could be explained as an extremely zealous ambition to unify the world, but by having no issue in completely throwing out humanity's minds in favor of obedient brute slaves makes it clear that he's only in it for power and deluding himself.
    • The Watchdogs (or whoever happens to be pulling their strings) cross it in "Uprising" by engineering an Inhuman witch hunt with EMPs in places with Inhumans in them and a massive frameup. The EMPs, by the way, come to New York at the worst possible moment: when Simmons and Dr. Radcliffe have to stop May's heart to reboot her brain, at a critical moment where her life is in extremely serious danger due to the nature of the operation (thankfully, she manages to survive thanks to a last-minute intervention courtesy of Dr. Radcliffe's LMD companion).
    • James crosses it when he sells out his fellow Inhumans to the Watchdogs.
    • Senator Nadeer nearly crosses it when she orders the Watchdogs to kill her own brother, before he talks her out of it. Then she jumps right over it at the end of the episode, killing him herself after he reveals his powers. If even then you still sympathized with her (after all, he would've done the same to her if she was the one who had become an Inhuman, and she knew that perfectly well—in fact, they had promised each other in the wake of their mother's death at the hands of the Chitauri), you most definitely didn't after she teamed up with Dr. Radcliffe to humiliate S.H.I.E.L.D. in a public hearing, nearly causing the aftermath of "out of the shadows and into the light" all over again.
    • Aida's multiple atrocities could count, but as she repeatedly argues she was only doing what she was programmed to. Once she gains free-will though, she definitely crosses it when she responds to Fitz's rejection of her by violently attacking him, and trying to teleport them both away while loudly declaring her plans to rape him. Fitz is saved this fate, though, but this leads her to decide that making the Framework world a reality would be suitable revenge for his rejection.
    • In the Framework, Fitz is depicted as a Mad Scientist who gleefully crosses the MEH whenever Inhumans and subversives are involved, and this incarnation cements himself as an utterly depraved bastard by murdering Agnes in cold blood, if his tests on Inhumans didn't do so by that point. If that didn't do it, ordering an airstrike on a reeducation camp building full of children most definitely would have.
    • General Hale crosses it when she shoots her subordinates Evans and Lucas in cold blood.
    • Voss goes over by murdering Robin to prevent her from telling Daisy how S.H.I.E.L.D. can get to their own time.
    • Gideon Malick subjecting his own HYDRA men to the Terrigen fish oil pills without them knowing so either those who were Inhuman would have powers or those who didn't would die, at least in-series. But as awful as that is, nearly having the nuclear missile destroy New York in The Avengers while on the World Council puts his crossing long before he was even on the show.
  • Agent Carter
    • Dr. Fennhoff/"Ivchenko", first when he hypnotizes Agent Yauch into committing suicide just to cover his own tracks, and then blows past it when he hypnotizes Dooley into locking away Peggy and Jarvis, gets him to steal Item 17 from the SSR's lab, and then finishes Dooley off by forcing him to put an exploding vest on himself in an attempt to wreck the SSR's offices entirely. And shortly after this he takes it even further when he and Dottie use the stolen Item 17 to unleash a Hate Plague on a crowded movie theater and locks the door, causing everyone to go into a homicidal rage and kill each other. And he was going to do a repeat performance of that last one on everyone in Times Square.
    • Whitney Frost has made crossing this line her signature in Season 2. Most of the crossings are explainable as covering her tracks or removing an equally bad person, but the one that is indisputably inexcusable is when she shoots Ana just to delay Peggy from chasing her, sterilizing her permanently in the process.
  • Agatha Harkness from WandaVision killed Sparky the dog and doing it purely to upset Wanda. Even for a centuries-old witch seeking to psychologically manipulate Wanda to gain access to her powers, that's just cold.
  • The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Karli Morgenthau, who had previously been wholly sympathetic in her actions, crosses this in "Power Broker" when she casually car-bombs a building full of restrained, unarmed GRC staff in a supply compound. This, along with her subsequent descent, leave even her comrades taken aback.
  • Runaways (2017):
    • Brandon and Lucas cross it when they try to rape an unconscious Karolina.
    • Leslie crosses it in the eyes of many with her murder of Molly's parents.
    • Jonah crossed it when he revealed that he killed Amy Minoru because he was worried she found out about the PRIDE's plans. This prompts the rest of the PRIDE to consider turning on him.
    • Tina sails right over the line in Season 2 when she cruelly chokes Graciela to death, despite being able to easily dispatch her non-lethally. If that wasn't enough, then attacking her own daughter and her friends and nearly drowning Molly in frozen water surely is. Even Nico can't tolerate her anymore after this.
    • Catherine crosses it when she murders Darius and frames him for the murder of Destiny Gonzales. Worse than that is her absolutely unapologetic attitude afterward. Even her husband is appalled. Later she even orders a hit on Darius' kid cousin Livvie when she comes close to uncover everything.
  • Daredevil (2015):
    • Fisk crosses him whenever he hurts innocent people. He was the one who orchestrated the murder of Elena Cardenas and the bombing against the Russian Mafia, which cost the lives of some innocent people who lived nearby. He also killed Julie Barnes, Dex’s morality chain, just so he could continue to have Dec as a loyal attack dog.
    • Nobu crosses it in the second season when he abducts kids and drains their blood.
    • In the third season, Vanessa finally crosses the line upon ordering Ray Nadeem's death, eliminating any doubt of her being no better than Fisk.
    • Dex killing the old lady who had bought the "Rabbit in a Snowstorm" painting. Fisk had let her keep it and didn't order Dex to do this, but Dex does it anyway because in his warped mind he thinks that Fisk will actually be pleased with him for doing it. However Fisk did nurture Dex wanting to please him partially by killing Julie. Of course, that's if you are one who doesn't think Dex already crossed the line when he killed Father Lantom in the course of trying to kill Karen at the church.
  • Jessica Jones (2015):
    • If Simpson murdering Clemmons didn't cross this line, then him trying to kill Jessica simply because she didn't kill Kilgrave earlier should.
    • If Kilgrave's actions before the start of the series don't count, then he definitely crossed it when, to spite Jess, he takes Trish and threatens to make her into his slave, just like he did to Jess. He even acknowledges that he'll be raping her again-and-again, and would have Trish kill herself if she ever saw Jess again.
      • He crossed it in the very first episode when he orders Hope to shoot her parents in cold blood, and that's discounting the supposition that the only reason he did anything at all to Hope was to advertise to Jessica that he was back. And, of course, that's completely discounting everything he did before the series started, which was pretty vile.
    • Sallinger torturing and murdering Dorothy certainly qualifies, with even haters of that character agreeing that she didn't deserve that.
    • Trish has many possible moments during Season 3, but when she tries to kill her own sister in the finale that is the point where even she herself realizes that she is the bad guy.
  • Luke Cage (2016):
    • Mariah's killing of Cottonmouth, while brutal, was in retaliation for a very ugly and uncalled-for remark. The list of villains who haven't killed for less can be counted on one hand, and it's questionable whether the act was intentional. But personally ordering the completely innocent Candace's assassination showed that she had inherited the role Mama Mabel had held years ago.
    • Mariah pretty much crosses the line with everyone in season 2 after she orders a restaurant full of innocent people killed and personally kills Anansi by burning him alive. Even Shades is completely taken aback by the brutality and that's when the heroes and other villains come to the realization that she needs to be stopped at all costs.
  • Iron Fist (2017):
  • The Defenders (2017):
  • The Punisher (2017):
    • William Rawlins crossed it with the massacre of Central Park, resulting in the death of dozens of innocents, children included.
    • Billy Russo probably crossed it well before the start of the series proper, when he worked with "Agent Orange" with full knowledge of exactly what was going on. He almost certainly crosses it when he sets Frank up to be taken out by pretending to be his friend and offer him safe passage out of the country, or when he uses his ANVIL goons to ambush Frank, or when he kills Sam. But he definitively crosses it when after Sam's death, he comforts a grieving Madani in her bathtub, gently wiping the blood he spilled off of her.
    • As soon as Lewis bombed and murdered several innocent people, it was clear that he was FUBAR.
    • For much of Season 2, it's unclear just how much Dr. Dumont knows about what Billy's been doing, leaving open the possibility that she could find out and turn on him. That goes out the window when she comes up with the idea to murder three innocent women and make Frank think he did it, something even Billy has regrets about afterward while she coldly says "I didn't know them."
  • Loki (2021): Miss Minutes crosses the line when she has Dox and her followers crushed by the Time Cube device while smiling sadistically.

Other media

  • What If…? (2021):
    • In Episode 3, Hank Pym, driven mad by the death of his daughter during a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission, crosses the line when he decides to take his anger out on several unrelated superheroes and willingly screws over the entirety of Earth just to get revenge on S.H.I.E.L.D. and Fury for putting Hope In Harm's Way. He justifies the assassination of all of the Avengers by saying Fury would have led them to their own deaths and made them fight the battles Fury was too much of a Dirty Coward to fight himself.
    • In Episode 5, Zombie Survivor Vision crossed this when he sacrificed many innocent people to feed the zombified Wanda Maximoff. Black Panther was his latest victim, and it seems he removes each of their limbs before killing them. Vision himself thinks he crossed the line, and commits suicide.
    • In Episode 8, Infinity Ultron crosses it when he destroys all life on Earth except for Clint and Natasha. They decide to receive help from HYDRA mad scientist Arnim Zola to combat him, viewing him as far less evil and dangerous than Ultron. Ultron also decides to take his omnicide spree across the entire multiverse when he discovers its existence which leads to Uatu breaking his non interference vow to stop this monster.

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