My God What Have I Done / Webcomics

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• During the Great Outdoor Fight arc of Achewood, Ray is attacked by country-western singer Cody Travis, and retaliates by ripping his face off. In the following strip, he looks at his blood-soaked hands and vomits.
• Axe Cop once killed a mermaid because it was making an angry face, so he assumed it was hostile. He has this reaction after he learns that for merpeople, "mean" and "nice" facial expressions are the other way around, which means he actually killed a good guy by mistake. The merpeople also had this reaction upon learning that they had been using the wrong facial expressions for so long.
• The Bikini Bottom Horror: One of the Patricks has this reaction when he realizes that Spongebob wasn't aware of the secret behind the Krabby Patty Secret Formula, and that he ultimately killed him for no reason.
• Bronze Skin Inc.: Patricia after she angrily tosses the coatis into the horizon. Fortunately, they landed safely.
• Done (to a degree) in response to backlash about Sixx drugging Laura without her knowledge in Collar 6.
• In Commander Kitty, the de-programmed Fortiscue has this reaction once he realizes what his creation has done.
• In El Goonish Shive, after Abraham is persuaded by Nanase that Ellen is a person not a monster he realizes he got very close to killing an innocent person.
• Erika and the Princes in Distress : King Parfait reacts this way when a pastry from Egg-White snaps him out of his hypnotised state, reminding him that he promised his wife to take care of the son he is now attempting to assassinate.
• In Girl Genius, it appears that Prince Aaronev Sturmvoraus seems to have had one of these as his daughter is dying, if Tarvek's flashback is accurate. Of course, considering that she is in this condition because he had just tried unsuccessfully to overwrite his daughter's mind with the mind of his Evil Overlord / possible lover, the sympathy one might feel for him is abated some.
• Goblins: Minmax has this reaction when, in a desperate attempt to make Kin remember their bond of trust, he grabs her slave leash (which forces her to do the bidding of whoever's holding it) and triggers her crippling PTSD. Though he doesn't say the words, his face has this exact expression, and he doesn't recover for several pages:
  Minmax: Did... did you tell her I'm sorry?
  Forgath: Yeah.
  Minmax: Well... well, do you think I should go talk to her?
  Forgath: I don't think that'd be a good idea.
  Minmax: Well did you tell her I'm sorry? ...Did you tell her I'm sorry?
• The Greenhouse: Demons need their anchors for more than just food. Their anchors stabilize them, give them the capacity for thoughts beyond slaking their thirst on vulnerable souls. When Red is severed from Mica, she goes straight for the easiest source of food around: Love Interest Liv. Once she's bound to a new pseudo-anchor and regains sentience, she's utterly horrified, and starts burning through all her remaining energy so that she can make her frantic apologies audible.
• Anthony Carver in Gunnerkrigg Court reacts in this manner when, in the chapter "Annie and the Fire" describing the events of the chapter "Divine" from his viewpoint. He made a desperate deal to try and bring back the soul of his late wife at the cost of his right hand, but he was ignorant of the connection between mother and daughter. The end result is his realizing, too late and to his horror, that bringing back Surma would come at Antimony's expense. He expresses gratitude that he was stopped before it went too far.
• Gunshow: After the strip "On Fire" became a popular meme, KC Green made a followup called "This is Not Fine", in which the dog suddenly comes to his senses and desperately tries to put out the fire in his house while berating himself for letting it last so long and get so bad. The final panels show him sitting in his fire-damaged house with his face in his hands, wracked with regret.
• Vriska in Homestuck goes through this when she realizes that her actions have resulted in the deaths of most, if not all, of the people she ever considered friends.
  • Terezi has two examples: once in a subdued manner ( in a dream chat with Aranea over her decision to kill Vriska) and later on says the phrase word for word ( when Gamzee snaps out of his mind control in the midst of her very bloody Big Damn Heroes moment against him and begs her to stop stabbing him).
• I'm the Grim Reaper: Scarlet has such a moment when she snaps out of her demon state to find out that not only did she massacre an entire alleyway of non-sinners, she stabbed Chase.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Galatea can be infuriatingly arrogant, but any situation that makes her feel she's acting like the abusive scientist who raised her will bring her knees in remorse.
• Irregular Webcomic!: Han Solo's gun goes off accidentally, killing Greedo.
  Han: Greedo, old pal! Are you okay?! Greedo? Don't fool around with me, buddy... Oh no!!!
• Kimchi Cuddles: Kimchi herself, after hitting her sort-of-metamour Anja.
• Megatokyo has a non-physical example from Kimiko, in what could be one of the most emotional points in the comic. After a long, emotionally draining night in which Piro smashes multiple perverts' cameras as they attempt to get upskirt pictures of her, she tears into him at the train station accusing him of trying to play the hero in order to get laid. His single sentence answer makes her break down completely as she realises that she may have just nuked everything they had between them in a single emotional outburst.
  Kimiko: Couldn't wait to come down and "save" me! Save me from myself and my pathetic delusions, score some points by beating up a bunch of weak, pathetic fanboys...You probably even thought it'd help you get laid tonight! *Turns around to to face Piro and pauses*
  Piro: I didn't deserve that. *The train door closes between them*
• Metompsychosis Union: Tilo freaks out a bit after disabling the flotation for the corporate commune, since it sinks the whole thing killing an untold number of civilians. It wasn't the result he was trying for, as he tried to enable the flotation devices after breaking it from OPAL's control, but it failed and he was working under pressure while his teammates were being shot at. He may also be freaking out that he made it look like someone else was the hacker responsible, thus framing them for the disaster.
• My Deepest Secret: After Yohan brings up Emma's Dark and Troubled Past and tells her he did a background check on her, driving the poor girl to tears in the process, he's genuinely remorseful and realizes how badly he screwed up.
• In Oglaf, a bunch of villagers approach the Thaumaturge asking her to save them from an evil army of Jerkass goblins. The Thaumaturge claims that evil is relative but jerkassery is not, so she agrees to help them. After the Thaumaturge has incinerated the goblins, the villagers react in a way that makes her realize that they were the true jerkasses all along.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • A rare villain example, where The Dragon Redcloak comes to regret using hobgoblins as cannon fodder because of his prejudices. "Oh my God... I'm turning into XYKON! What have I let myself do?"
  • In the prequel book Start of Darkness, Redcloak goes through a more tragic use of this trope after he kills his brother.
  • There is a more obscure example in this strip; after Xykon uses a Symbol of Insanity to cause all the paladins to massacre each other, the last one standing recovers and cries, "Oh Twelve Gods... what have I done?" then commits seppuku whatever Azurites call ritual suicide.
  • Vaarsuvius's expression upon realizing the Familicide spell killed off Girard Draketooth's entire lineage is the non-verbal epitome of this trope. V has a verbal one in the next strip at the discovery of just how many people Familicide killed due to the way the spell works.
  • Very early in the strip, Elan pretends to be a wizard and spouted many nonsensical words. Vaarsuvius flips out and harshly insults the bard, causing him to run away crying. Immediately, Vaarsuvius feels awful, and Haley wastes no time chewing the elf out. The two make up in the next strip.
  • Roy has a moment during the Wooden Forest arc, where he decides to not rescue Elan from the bandits because he is just really fed up with dealing with Elan's stupidity. The rest of the team calls him out on this and goes to rescue Elan themselves. A couple hours later, Roy realizes that he can't abandon a teammate to an unknown fate for his own convenience and still call himself Good; that his morals require him to protect and help those weaker than himself, however dumb and annoying they may be. He goes back and helps out with the rescue (good thing too, because the rest of the Order had pretty well botched it). He's told later that if he hadn't had this realization on his own, then regardless of what happened to Elan and the rest of the Order Roy would have permanently lost a place in the Lawful Good afterlife and been placed in True Neutral.
• Panthera's Jason has developed a tendency to slip into this. To be fair to him, he talked his boss into giving his little sister the same shapeshifting powers he has himself... only for things to take a sudden turn for the worst when Ari reveals that he's the very man they have been trying to hunt down and attempts to kill them. The one who kills him off is Onca/Taylor, who utterly freaked out four days earlier at the very idea that her big brother might have killed a person. Ten days after that, they find out that some of the world's leading scientists have no idea how they're still alive and they're going to wither and die in less than thirty years. Cut to the North Korea story arc, where Gyeoknoho comes pretty damn close to finishing his sister off partially because this time, Jason has no idea how he's supposed to come up with a plan to eliminate it. Is it any wonder that Jason is skirting the edge of Heroic BSoD right now?
• Part 1 of the Penny Arcade story arc Ripped From Today's Headlines has Tycho feeling bad for accidentally killing his wife.
• Sluggy Freelance
  • Parodied in "Vampires".
  Riff: Thanks to all the damage you did to the truck, we've lost another day! Instead of being able to free Torg and Zoë under the cover of daylight, we'll be lucky to make it in time at all. And that doesn't bother you."
  Bun-bun: "Nope."
  Riff: "Now we'll never make it home in time for the season premier of Baywatch..."
  Bun-bun: What have I done?"
  • Happens in a subtle manner when Torg realizes that he messed up the security computer systems and released a bunch of bad stuff. Torg was inside the No-Fun lab and blew up their server. This causes a bio-weapon mutagen to be released. This may or may not turn the entire dimension into a hell like realm full of demon like creatures
  • Occurs again later when Riff says that future Torg will do bad stuff like cause the Research and Development War or turn this dimension into hell. More like "what will I have done", but still.
• In Strays, when Feral realized he was trying to choke Meela. (He had pushed her out of the bed earlier. With this, he goes and sleeps in the corner.)
• Texts from Superheroes: Clark says he feels "sick with guilt" after realizing that his secret use of x-ray vision killed Jimmy and is currently killing Lois.
• In Thog Infinitron, the aliens (Opians) that gave Thog his powers finally realize that Thog's cybernetics are not inborn, and are in fact due to their medical intervention to save his life.
  Tertaladrol: We're going to be sent to the dung mines of Guanolon IV, aren't we...
• unOrdinary: John is horrified by just how badly he's injured his classmates, but with the Authorities having messed with his mind and trapped him mentally in the past and his own furious resistance to taking credit for his own actions he takes a long time to accept this. He doesn't want to feel any guilt or responsibility for hospitalizing his classmates, and living in a society that is fine with the strong regularly beating the weak makes his increasingly violent denials of guilt while blaming his classmates for their misfortune easier. When he's finally forced to confront his past, and current, actions he's horrified and calls himself an nonredeemable monster even if he still doesn't trust or care for his classmates.
• Unsounded: Duane realizes that he's done something inexcusable in letting the Aldish soldiers into the shrine, an action he considered righteous until he saw the bloody consequences. When Sette tries to apologize to him for forcing him to stay in the shrine of a religion he finds heretical he stops her and says he cannot bear to hear, nor deserves, an apology given what he's wrought.

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