Sandbox / Moral Event Horizon

Summary of definition

It has been decided that Moral Event Horizon shall be defined as a moment in a work where a villain is shown to irreversibly become more evil. Specific criteria are:

• Must be willfully crossed by those with moral agency.
• The deed alters the audience's perception of the character.
• The deed is outstandingly evil by the standards of the story.
• Those crossing the MEH need to retain presence / agency in the story long enough for the MEH to affect their portrayal.
• Only applies to individuals, not groups (unless small enough to judge each member individually), as groups lack individual moral agency and its individuals can vary in it.
• The deed must be played seriously and not comedically.
• Must be intentional by the narrative and only applies to intentional villains (if they weren't clearly intended as clear-cut villains before crossing, then they are afterward).
• Needs to be part of a work with a continuity (i.e no Negative Continuity)

New description

Named for the boundary around a black hole from which there is no escape once crossed, this trope uses the black hole as a metaphor for evil; the Moral Event Horizon refers to the evil deed to prove a particular character to be irredeemably evil. If the character wasn't a villain or wasn't played seriously by the story before, they now are. Note the word irredeemably. It is a demonstration of permanent evil. This is the moment which confirms that this character will always be a bad person.

While they may not have had a term such as this to define it, many authors clearly recognized it. Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land referred to it as being the result of an act that was "so bad, so black" that it was basically unforgivable. Meanwhile, multiple religions have the concept of "perdition," where those who have committed a truly unpardonable sin are irrevocably doomed to punishment in the afterlife. A common term for this trope is "crossing the line".

If a character crosses the line too often and extremely atrociously, then he's definitely this guy.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk: 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. 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.

Films — Animation

• Toy Story 3: Lotso had already established himself as a ruthless and unrepentant dog-kicking machine as he tortures and corrupts the toys during the movie, but irrevocably crosses the horizon when he pretends to try to turn off the Conveyor Belt of Doom leading to the incinerator, then leaves the other toys to their deaths with the remark "where's your kid now, sheriff?", complete with a mocking salute and evil smile. This after he pretended to be redeemed and after Woody and Buzz had just risked their lives to save him. So much for Rousseau being right this time, as is usually the case for Pixar.

Films — Live-Action

• The Social Network: Mark admired and defended Sean, but was visibly uncomfortable with his "interest" in a young intern working at Facebook. The fact that Sean's arrest at a college party involved several interns, all underage, was unforgivable and inexcusable to Mark for more than just PR reasons.

Literature

• Legacy of the Force: Jacen's transition into a Sith Lord is complete after he kills his Mara Jade Skywalker, his aunt. Despite killing his wife on accident, even Darth Vader never wanted his family dead, nor was he ever willing to kill them.

Live-Action TV

• Game of Thrones:
  • Cersei had made a lot of evil choices over the course of the show, but she solidifies herself as irredeemable in the Season 6 finale with the Green Trial, where she commits mass murder. Cersei blows up the Sept of Baelor with wildfire and not only kills all the Sparrows, but also her uncle, cousin, the entire Tyrell family save for Olenna, and dozens of innocent people.
  • The penultimate episode of the series gives us a major one. Having fully crossed the Despair Event Horizon after the death of her second dragon, the execution of her oldest remaining friend, betrayals from within her inner circle, and reaching a political and emotional impasse with the man she loves, Daenerys goes on a rampage and needlessly incinerates countless innocent men, women, and children throughout the streets of King's Landing. The carnage and horror the people suffer at both Dany's own hand and the cruelty of her rampaging soldiers is given great emphasis.

Western Animation

• Family Guy:
  • In The Big Bang Theory, Bertram tries to prevent Stewie's existence by going back in time and killing his ancestor, Leonardo da Vinci. This is bad, because Stewie accidentally caused the Big Bang. When Stewie warns him of this, he decides to kill da Vinci anyway. If it wasn't for My Own Grandpa, Bertram would have erased the entire universe and history itself.
    Bertram: "Worth it!"
  • Diane Simmons crossed it in "And Then There Were Fewer", when she kills several people, and then frames Tom Tucker, blaming him for her termination from Quahog 5 News. She takes it even further when she tries to kill Lois after an innocuous comment let Lois figure it out, though luckily, Stewie managed to shoot Diane with a Sniper Rifle before she could, leading to Diane falling off the cliffside into a watery grave.
  • Sheriff Nichols seems to be a jerkass sheriff at first, deciding to frame Peter Griffin and his friends so that they'll have to spend two weeks at a prison...but it quickly becomes apparent just how horrible he is when Peter discovers that he and the warden are never planning to let them go.
• South Park:
  • While Cartman was already a big jerk from the start, his exact moment of crossing the line is his Kansas City Shuffle against Scott Tenorman, after the latter discovers a familiar finger in his bowl of chili. He's done lots of evil things since, varying in their badness, but this was where it became clear that he was more than a Bratty Half-Pint and his selfishness posed an actual threat to others. Horrified, Kyle and Stan even acknowledge they should never piss him off again.^note They still piss him off afterwards, of course, but it's much easier to see that their teasing is justified instead of just being mean for fun.
    Cartman: Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, I made you eat your parents.
  • Randy's undeniably far past the line by the end of "Mexican Joker," when he brutally kills many people with explosives (specifically, he kills anyone growing marijuana in their gardens), because he wanted to have a monopoly on the local marijuana business. Unlike the other instances, Randy isn't reacting to a perceived threat nor is he simply acting as the metaphorical devil in the shoulder for someone else. He's directly murdering innocents for no reasons other than greed and spite. From this point on, he;s treated like a borderline Villain Protagonist whose family turns against him, and he commits even more violent acts for his business, which eventually lands him in jail.
  • Leslie Meyers crosses it in "Truth And Advertising" when she gives Jimmy Valmer, a handicapped kid, a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown after emotionally manipulating him, thus revealing herself to be a bad guy and by extension the Big Bad of season 19.
  • Skankhunt42 (real identity: Kyle's dad, Gerald) crossed it by cyberbullying every single woman he could find on social media, including a support group for breast cancer victims. This drives all the girls to take it out on the boys—who were just as outraged as they were—by permanently breaking up with them. And why he was being a cyberbully in the first place? He did it for fun! Even the other trolls (who at least have some Freudian Excuse to explain why they're lashing out at society through trolling) find him disgusting and feel he goes too far with his actions. And in "Members Only", any chance he could have had at redeeming himself is automatically destroyed when he frames Ike for all of his trolling.
• Total Drama:
  • Blaineley began as the egotistical but largely harmless co-host of Celebrity Manhunt and later the replacement host for Bridgette in the Aftermath special. Then in "Aftermath Aftermayhem," she forces Bridgette to take her place on a tour so Blainley can take her place as co-host permanently, leaving Bridgette stranded in freezing cold Siberia. This horrifies Geoff, who sings a brutal song mocking her. Almost everybody dislikes her (barring Owen, who has a crush on her) and she becomes The Chew Toy when she joins the season as a contestant, being put through serious physical pain to the amusement of everybody else.
  • In the Pahkitew Island finale Dave of all people crosses it by endangering both Sky and Shawn's well-being in order to win the money he and Jasmine were promised. But unlike Jasmine (who wants to use the money to build a cage-fighting flower shop), all he wanted the money for was to burn it in front of Sky to spite her all because he felt betrayed by her after he found out that she already had a boyfriend.