All of Simon Phoenix's hostages get killed in the building's explosion at the beginning of the film in 1996. In 2032, Phoenix admits to Spartan that he killed them beforehand.
John Spartan getting cryogenically frozen. It becomes even worse when he reveals later in the movie he was aware the entire time, and he even saw his wife pounding her fists against his ice prison while being unable to do anything about it. Even Cocteau himself was aghast with this revelation.
The S.A.P.D. officers' reaction when they see the first MurderDeathKills committed by Phoenix during his escape. None of them have ever witnessed anything like it before, and the horrified grief shown on their faces looks like that of a child who's just lost someone close to them for the first time.
Simon Phoenix in general. Especially since he's free to spread all the chaos and violence he wants in a pacifist and disarmed utopian society.
The gruesome way he kills the cryoprison's warden, removing one of his eyes with a pen and uses it on an eye scanner to escape. Arguably worse, that the warden wasn't killed in the attack. He's left to suffer for who knows how many agonized minutes before finally dying in front of the security camera.
There's something very intimidating about that intense Death Glare he gives to Spartan during the Ironic Echo exchange in their final fight. As much fun as he usually is to watch (for a vicious criminal), when Phoenix wants to be suitably scary, he's pretty goddamned good at it.
His death. John Spartan causes everything in contact with the cryoprison's ground to freeze, Phoenix included. Then he catches the prison's crane just in time, and kicks Phoenix's head off his frozen body, which then shatters on the ground.
As cryoprisoners are conscious while frozen, there's a chance that Phoenix would have been aware of his head coming off.
Although the movie plays it in a comedic light, there's something unsettling about life in San Angeles. Most people seem to be relatively content with their lives, but one still has to realize that there are strict rules and regulations regarding how one is to conduct themselves, at least according to Cocteau's perspective. As the plot continues, it becomes even more apparent that Cocteau is a power-hungry tyrant who seeks to solidify his power by eliminating Edgar Friendly and his Scraps (who are literally people who rejected Cocteau's idea of "utopia" that have been reduced to living in the depths of the city and stealing food just to survive), and completing his vision of a perfect, "pure" utopia. The implications of this are pretty terrifying, given how stripped of humanity and almost robotic and eerily "pleasant" people are already, and clearly enough to piss even Phoenix off, making it a bit of a welcome relief when Phoenix orders one of his men to kill Cocteau to prevent the tyrant's vision from becoming reality.
Edgar's description of the Sadistic Choice the people of San Angeles are subject to.
Edgar Friendly: You wanna live on top, you gotta live Cocteau's way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here, maybe starve to death.
Earle isn't much better than Cocteau, he just has less power. When Spartan is unthawed, he wants to know what happened to his wife and daughter. Huxley manages to tell him his wife was killed and Earle interrupts before he can find out what happened to his daughter, showing zero sympathy despite his belief he's more civilized than Spartan.
What Spartan sees when he has virtual sex with Huxley. While the future may have found a way to eliminate STDs, they've managed to make sex even more risky for the photosensitive.
The reason why only no-contact sex is permitted: after the AIDS epidemic, there emerged two new STDs that were even worse (which Huxley refers to as NRS and UBT). We aren't provided with any details about those diseases, but considering that this movie was made at the height of the AIDS epidemic (and all its associated fears and horrors) when protected sex was still encouraged, you have to wonder just how bad they were.
