Moral Event Horizon crossings in Final Fantasy.
- In Final Fantasy II, after the party fails to stop the Dreadnought's completion, your next visit to several of the game's towns will be met with craters, damaged buildings, and NPCs mourning the loss of friends and family. This is when it becomes clear that the Emperor isn't kidding around, and he only goes farther from there.
- Final Fantasy IV played it straight not by Golbez, but by Dr. Lugae. Lugae turns Edge's parents into hideous monsters, and they decide to kill themselves in order to die before they lose their minds. It is notable that he did not do this on anyone's orders, but completely on his own. This act is considered so heinous that even Rubicante is furious and apologizes to Edge.
- Final Fantasy VI:
- Kefka is introduced as more of a nuisance, but a general of the enemy Empire nonetheless. His clownish charm fades rather quickly, however, after he disobeys direct orders and poisons Doma's water supply. The situation up to that point: General Leo had Doma Castle besieged, and was likely to win in just a matter of time with minimal casualties. Some time after Kefka arrives, Leo is summoned back to Vector to meet with the Emperor. Now there's no one to stop Kefka from dumping deadly poison into the Doma River, killing absolutely everyone in the castle; men, women, children, and Imperial P.O.W.'s that he knew full well were still trapped inside. The kicker here, which cements this act as Kefka gleefully tapdancing and cackling his way across the Moral Event Horizon, is that the Empire was going to win anyway. There was absolutely no possible justification for this heinous war crime other than Kefka wanting to hear "the music of hundreds of voices screaming in unison".
- His only excuse at all for all this? As an early magitek knight, the process very likely drove him insane. No, that doesn't cut it.
- Emperor Gestahl, while not nearly as crazy as his subordinate Kefka, still crosses the line when he is shown in a flashback to have orchestrated an invasion of the Esper world. While the invasion ends in failure, at the end he discovers an infant half-esper, and rips the baby from her mother's arms, killing the woman in the process, while gloating about how he's going to subject her to a life of experimentation. Oh BOY.
- Note that in the original SNES translation of the game, this is somewhat softened; Madonna actually asks Gestahl to take care of Terra (which doesn't explain the thwack he still gives her afterwards, however). This was most likely due to Nintendo's Never Say "Die" policy at the time rather than a change or error on Ted Woolsey's part.
- Kefka is introduced as more of a nuisance, but a general of the enemy Empire nonetheless. His clownish charm fades rather quickly, however, after he disobeys direct orders and poisons Doma's water supply. The situation up to that point: General Leo had Doma Castle besieged, and was likely to win in just a matter of time with minimal casualties. Some time after Kefka arrives, Leo is summoned back to Vector to meet with the Emperor. Now there's no one to stop Kefka from dumping deadly poison into the Doma River, killing absolutely everyone in the castle; men, women, children, and Imperial P.O.W.'s that he knew full well were still trapped inside. The kicker here, which cements this act as Kefka gleefully tapdancing and cackling his way across the Moral Event Horizon, is that the Empire was going to win anyway. There was absolutely no possible justification for this heinous war crime other than Kefka wanting to hear "the music of hundreds of voices screaming in unison".
- Final Fantasy VII:
- Sephiroth is initially shown to be quite sympathetic despite Cloud's hatred of him. He saves the party at Shinra HQ and seems to be working against the Evil Corporation finding the Promised Land. Even during Cloud's flashback, when you discover that he's not human (his Mom, Jenova, is actually a feminine alien in a tank), he remains worthy of pity. But then he goes crazy and burns down Cloud's hometown, killing Cloud's mom and Tifa's dad among others, as well as almost killing the devastated Tifa when she lost it and tried to take revenge for her father. And if that wasn't enough of an Event Horizon for you and you're still somewhat willing to feel sorry for him, there's always the part where he murders Aerith - after he failed to brainwash Cloud into doing the deed.
- President Shinra and Heidegger ordering the destruction of a sector of Midgar just to get rid of some terroristsnote . The Turks (mainly Reno and Tseng) might have crossed the line too by actually carrying out this heinous order.
- Then there's Scarlet leading mass murder via the complete destruction of the town of Coral.
- And Hojo. Where do we start with Hojo? Injecting alien cells into his unborn child? Murdering Professor Gast right in front of his wife Ifalna and his child Aerith, whom he then kidnaps for horrible experiments? Doing more horrific experiments on Vincent, Zack, and Cloud? Also being indirectly responsible for Sephiroth's descent into insanity as well as Sephiroth's aforementioned murder of Aerith? You might as well assume that he crossed the line right at the very beginning of his career. Taking the Expanded Universe into account, Hojo's life seems to consist of finding new lines to cross and gleefully leaping over them like he was practicing for the long jump.
- Not to mention his experiments not only gave Vincent the ability to turn into a vicious beast, a hulking monster, a Jason Voorhees Expy (with Hockey Mask and Chainsaw) and Chaos. Said experiments also made him immortal.
- Final Fantasy VIII: For most of the first disk, you're told that Ultimecia is an evil sorceress from the future who has come to enslave all of humanity, but it seems to be soldier propaganda for a target who happens to be employed by a dictator. Then Ultimecia outright murders the dictator on live television, steps up as the new dictator, and egomaniacally laughs at the partially-hypnotized audience that they're worshiping the very monster their culture reviled. She parades across the main road while the player watches in horror as the citizens of the dictatorship mindlessly cheer and worship their literal evil overlord.
- Judge Bergan's rampage on Mt Bur-Omisace in Final Fantasy XII, in which Imperial troops murder unarmed refugees, their guards, and priests indiscriminately, and follow up by killing the Gran Kiltias Anastasis. Putting Bergan down like a rabid dog immediately after finding out is very satisfying.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- Teledji crosses it when he orders the assassination of Sultana Nanamo and attempts to frame the Warrior of Light for it, and then gloating about it in front of her loyal general Raubahn. His sheer gall gets him bisected.
- Ilberd aside from conspiring with Teledji for his act above, also crosses the line by sending a bunch of Ala Mihgan rebels on a False Flag Operation to assault the Garlean defensive wall, only to have them all massacred so that their sacrifice and dying prayers would fuel the summoning of a Primal that would destroy everything.
- Vauthry is already a repulsive dictator who constantly interferes with the heroes attempts to slay the Lightwardens and save The First. However, the moment everyone definitely decides that Vauthry needs to go is when they find out the meol he feeds Kholusia with is made from Sin Eater flesh, which not only allows him to enslave those who consume it, but also dooms them to slowly die and become Sin Eaters themselves, who are eventually harvested to perpetuate the cycle.
- Valens crosses it already with the creation of the Weapon Project, a series of superweapons designed to horrifically and painfully kill the pilot by overwriting them into a Clone by Conversion. However, he somehow manages to make it worse by forcing Gaius's adoptive children to be the pilots knowing that they'll die painfully in the process just to spite a man he envies, on top all the abuse he heaps on them anyway.
- Hermes, after crossing the Despair Event Horizon crosses the Moral one as well, by attempting to erase the memories of everyone in Kitisis Hyperborea, himself included, so that nobody would be able to stop Meteion from ending all life in the universe.
- Where to start with Athena? There's her mutating the keywards of Pandæmonium into insane hydrid monsters. There's also her trying to infect her husband's soul with her mad desires. Yet still, there's her harvesting the souls of the Lifestream in order to become a god. The key reveal though, that leads everyone in-universe to conclude that there was never any good in her was that she crippled her own son's magic potential in order to encourage him to be more reliant on her, which in a magic-focused society like the Ancients' is basically akin to breaking his legs so that he'll rely on her to push around his wheelchair, and on top of that instilled an unnatural dependency on her in his soul in order to better groom him into an ideal test subject. And to top it all off, when her plans fall through, she attempts to destroy the Lifestream in an act of petty vengeance.
- Final Fantasy XV gives us Ardyn Izunia. Most of the characters only see this character as a creepy one, but not one they consider a Big Bad. That is, until he stabs Lunafreya when she's at her weakest when trying to reason with Leviathan in Altissia, the other characters helpless to do anything about it.
- And DLC gives him some pre-Jumping Off the Slippery Slope sympathy when it's revealed the Top God intentionally made Ardyn an Anti-Christ, and outright ordered his brother to betray him, with all the death and chaos Ardyn would cause premeditated, just so he would have a convenient means of turning a loose horde of monsters with varying motivations into a unified, destructive, but vulnerable Keystone Army. Up until that point, there was no confirmation that the gods saw humans as their puppets.
- Final Fantasy XVI:
- Anabella Rosfield crosses it by betraying her husband to the Empire, and then selling her eldest son into slavery due to viewing him as nothing more than a stain on her reputation.
- Hugo Kupka's attack on the Hideaway is where he crosses the point to being completely irredeemable, a place acting as a refuge for Bearers fleeing slavery. To hammer it home, Clive Rosfield then spends the next five years looking for an opportunity to assassinate Kupka.
- Barnabas Tharmr arrives at the point of no return when he allows his entire kingdom to be turned in Akashic beasts, depriving them of their free will and sentience.
- Ultima is already over the horizon by the time he first appears, being the cruel Top God of Valisthea who only created humanity so that his vessel Mythos would be created, and then intending on destroying all of them once he had claimed Mythos.
- Final Fantasy Tactics has Argath Thadalfus, who at first appears to merely be a classist Jerkass until he casually kills Tietra when an enemy tried to use her as a Human Shield.
- Gerrith Barrington from the same game is far worse: he razes Rapha and Marach's village and kidnaps them to raise for the purpose of using them to claim the Throne of Ivalice for himself. If that doesn't push him into irredeemable evil territory, his sexual abuse of Rapha definitely does. He's essentially the Ghetsis Harmonia of Final Fantasy, only worse.
- Hashmal is responsible for all of the bloodshed in the conflict, just to revive the fallen Ultima. He also turns his host body Folmarv Tengille into an abusive father who murdered his own son, massacred an entire castle, and kidnapped Alma so that he could use her as a host body for Ultima. He then decides to resurrect the recently deceased Zalbaag and force him to fight Ramza.
