What The Hell Hero / Literature

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• Abominable: Jeremy calls out Blake on his and Timothy's Fantastic Racism against Finn the Phoenix. It doesn't help.
• The Acts of Caine are rife with this in all directions, given how nastily the Actors sent by the Studio act one they're on Overworld, and how much of a Jerkass Caine is. Notable ones in Blade of Tyshalle include the message sent by the dying primal regarding the HRVP infection, sections of Raithe's slow Breaking Speech to a captured Caine, and Caine and Kierendal ripping each other verbally after the HRVP outbreak in Ankhana. That last example is an interesting two-way example of this trope (Caine is the obvious protagonist, and Kierendal suspects she may be saving the Folk and the city from a Sociopathic Hero).
• Pretty much every main character in Animorphs has had several of these. The one calling them out on it — mostly in a sober, thoughtful fashion — is usually one of their own, commonly Cassie.
  • Jake defeats the Yeerks with a truly magnificent What the Hell, Hero? sequence. Erek the android calls him on it before he even starts, but he does it anyway. One of the major steps in the sequence is when he flushes the Yeerk pool in the orbital spaceship into space, killing tens of thousands of Yeerks in one shot. After the war is over, he gets accused of war crimes during a trial. In addition, recruiting the auxiliary Animorphs in the first place, all of whom are handicapped children because the Animorphs knew the Yeerks wouldn't bother to infest them, got a What the Hell, Hero? out of Cassie's dad.
  • A slightly less serious example, but still in and of itself a What the Hell, Hero? moment is when Tobias is at a dance with Rachel, in his human morph, and she tries to trap him in it so they can have a normal relationship. Tobias doesn't exactly call her out on it, because part of him isn't entirely convinced she wasn't right.
• The Bartimaeus Trilogy: Bartimaeus does this constantly to Nathaniel; it is practically the basis of their relationship. Sadly, Nathaniel rarely seems to get the point. This is especially ironic because Bartimaeus is a borderline Noble Demon and Nathaniel is ostensibly the Kid with the Leash. It is open to interpretation whether Bartimaeus actually cares, or just gets his kicks seeing Nathaniel squirm.
• In Below, Brenish goes off on Tibs for murdering Dex by letting an approaching danger sneak up on him. Tibs isn't having it, claims full justification, and throws it right back in Brenish's face—for which Brenish later chastises himself for beginning to think too much like their boss. Beware the Nice Ones, indeed.
• In A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe: Orna, a war orphan, discovers the Taitutian warship Harrow (which never came to her country's aid despite Taitu having a treaty with her people) was used as part of a magic ritual to kill her entire planet for arcane power, she immediately wants to attack Taitu with it. Boots calls her out on it.
  Boots: And no one can blame you for being so angry and being out of your mind. But you don't want to kill all those people. I can't believe that's how you really feel.
  Orna: And why not?
  Boots: Because if you did, you'd be just like the monsters who built this ship—and each and every person in this room would put you down like a dog.
• In the French short story "The Blanket," the main character, having fallen on hard financial times, considers sending his elderly father away on his wife’s advice, despite his father having done much for him, including paying a dowry to secure his marriage. He then sends his son to get a blanket for his father (the boy's grandfather) to use when he’s away, and the boy cuts the blanket in two, telling his father that the other half is for him when he gets old. The main character then realizes what he’s done and apologizes to his father.
• In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Simon Illyan, who is implicitly trusted by the Emperor, especially in matters of national security, conspires to help a group of foreigners steal priceless historical treasures, starting a course of events which results in the sinking of Imperial Security's headquarters. On finding out about this, more than one person's response is "What the hell, Simon?"
• The Cat Who... Series: In book #6 (The Cat Who Played Post Office), Qwill gives himself one at the end of the book. While his girlfriend Melinda is praising him for learning the truth about what happened to a missing servant girl, Qwill points out that by digging into the girl's disappearance, he caused those responsible for what happened to the girl to panic and kill three other women; if he'd stayed out of it, the killers would never have been brought to justice, but those women would still be alive.
• The Chronicles of Magravandias: The heroes of the story, such as they are, constantly disagree, do questionable to deplorable things, and argue with each other over who is less wrong.
• City of Light: Rahze's companions react this way when he kills a defenseless man in cold blood for striking him.
• Joseph Rosenberger's ultra-violent COBRA novel series often has its "heroes" — a group of secret operatives — crossing the Moral Event Horizon for the sake of a mission. In one of the books, a colleague challenges the team leader, Jon Skul, when Skul indicates that he needs to kill a police car full of cops in order to prevent them from interfering in a mission. Skul replies with a "put up or shut up" statement and proceeds to follow through with his plans.
• In the Codex Alera series novel Captain's Fury, the First Lord has one of these when he awakens the Great Fury Kalarae prematurely causing the deaths of tens of thousands, to avoid tens of thousands of additional deaths. This provokes a What the Hell, Hero? from Amara and triggering that person's resignation. Of course her real problem seems to be not so much what Gaius has done but his involving her. Maybe she'd have been fine with it if she hadn't had to watch?
• The Count of Monte Cristo: The Count's revenge against Villefort goes farther than he intends when Villefort's innocent son gets poisoned by his own mother. Villefort acknowledges his own guilt but invokes this by showing the Count the grisly scene. Leads to a My God, What Have I Done? on the Count's part.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: Feyre doesn't put any thought into who else she'll hurt in her quest for revenge against Tamlin, which both Tamlin and Lucien are quick to call her on.
• In Jeff Long's The Descent, the bad guys (or one set of bad guys at any rate) are seeding the underworld with a deadly biological weapon to kill everything and later colonize it. Then at the novel's ending, the main character, who had been living with the degenerate troglodytes/demons for years, uses the dead Dragon's bioweapon trigger, effectively genociding most of them. Also doubles as Nice Job Breaking It, Hero because the big bad (YMMV. The demon king, at any rate) survives and is likely not happy about it.
• No one is really happy with anything John does in Dirge for Prester John, and he is often called out for his prejudice. Even Hiob, several centuries later, judges John for falling away from Christian teaching.
• Parodied in the Discworld novel Hogfather by Susan: "... and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero because no one asks inconvenient questions."
• Divergent:
  • Divergent:
    • Subverted when Al commits suicide following Tris's Rejected Apology. Four doesn't call Tris out for that, since her anger is reasonable given the circumstances, though he does ask if her anger at Al is useful after his death but for sticking out like a sore thumb and risking trouble.
    • Tris's dad calls her out for shooting Peter in the arm. Though she points out that, despite being Dauntless, he is cowardly and borderline psychopathic, and lives depended on it. She knows he will give in quickly once he is in pain.
  • In Insurgent, Tobias calls out Tris multiple times for being suicidal. In return, Tris calls out Tobias for being a hypocrite. He tells her that she's strong enough to take her scolding, but still tries to "protect" her. He insists she be open and honest with him, while still insisting on the right to keep his own secrets. He says he trusts her perceptiveness but refuses to listen to her warnings about people repeatedly. Thankfully, both of them get better. Eventually.
• The Divine Comedy: After going through Hell and climbing up a mountain of trials to meet his long-dead lover, our great hero is met with a stern, distant woman who reminds Dante that he forgot her after his death, chased women who lacked any of her goodness, and set himself on a self-destructive path in life despite all the good she did for him. She refuses to show him any kindness and reminds him of his failures until Dante bursts into tears.
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe: One short-story collections had a tale with an AI that could recharge itself off emotions, attempting to get enough power to send a message and prevent the destruction of the planet it was on. In the end, it decided that the best solution was to call the Doctor out on some of his less pleasant actions — such as abandoning his daughter on a relatively barbaric world and inciting a race to war to find his lost pen.
• In the Dreamblood Duology, Sunandi at one point asks how Ehiru and Nijiri can effectively live as hitmen. They in turn ask her how she can lie for a living.
• The Dresden Files:
  • There's a moment at the end of Fool Moon, the second novel, where he has to confront a pack of hexenwolves, or werewolves who use enchanted belts to change form. At this point, he's physically and magically exhausted. Having defeated one earlier and stolen his belt, he uses it and becomes a raging monster. His wake-up call moment comes when he sees his reporter girlfriend, and she's terrified of him.
  • In White Night:
    • Murph calls out Harry when he lets his temper get the better of him and he flings a fireball at a building. As Murph points out, Dresdenverse magic can only be done when you truly believe in what you're doing. This fact is the wake-up call Harry needed to realize Lasciel's shadow was influencing him.
    • In New Mexico, Ramírez tried the same. All he achieved was Harry's mercy, by execution, for the ghoul he'd been torturing. Harry himself remained cold and angry and terrifying.
  • In Small Favor Harry gives the Rage Against the Heavens variety for God's perceived inaction when Lucifer twice gives his earthly-bound minions access to Super Hellfire and all it seems God did was send two Knights of the Cross into action, and now one of those men is in the hospital fighting for his life. This catches the eye of a simple janitor, who states he can see how Harry could be angry, but that is because he doesn't see things like God does, from all angles at all times and all that could be, and perhaps where Lucifer was overt in his action, Heaven was subtle, giving someone the right hand at the right moment. Harry's own hand tingles and when Harry turns to the man the janitor is mysteriously gone. Harry realizes the mysterious magic he threw earlier in the book but had no idea what it was is linked to this. As it turns out, the janitor was Archangel Uriel and he bequeathed Harry Soulfire, the Fires of Creation, to balance the scales.
  • It's averted in Changes, when Harry agrees to become Queen Mab's Winter Knight. Everyone understands why he did what he did, and offer their moral support. Then it goes double for a substantial chunk of the next book, Ghost Story, which features Harry mentally applying a What the Hell, Hero? to himself for the lines he crossed in Changes. The other characters don't really get to do it until Cold Days.
  • Harry gives a few of these to Molly over the course of the series when she does something reckless, often when she's tried to once again Mind Rape someone despite being absolutely forbidden to do so (for extremely good reason) under pain of both her and Harry's deaths.
• The Elenium features a scene where Sparhawk wants to go kill Krager before he can cause more trouble, and it given this reaction from Aphrael, pointing out that if Sparhawk goes to do this, then Ehlana is left vulnerable to attack.
• In Emma by Jane Austen, Emma gets rebuked by Mr. Knightley because of her cruel behavior toward Miss Bates.
• The Empirium Trilogy: Eliana goes to an angelic commander, wanting to exchange the information she gathered about a nearby Red Crown hangout for her family's safety. The next morning, Red Crown ambushes the facility that Eliana went to, killing every prisoner they can find. Simon informs Eliana that the ambush they originally planned would've been to rescue those very same prisoners, but Red Crown can't let anyone who's seen Eliana live. Simon says all of this while the sound of shotguns go off in the background, forcing her to listen as each prisoner is killed.
• Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte has an example that also overlaps with What the Hell, Player?. Kobayashi mentions that in the Bad End of the Siegwald route of the Fictional Romance Game MagiKoi, Lieselotte's sisters will viciously tear into Fiene in their grief over Lieselotte's death, yelling that Fiene's happiness was bought with Lieselotte's pain and despair—Lieselotte was Siegwald's former fiancee who died from the despair arising from Siegwald dumping her in favour of Fiene.
• The Epic of Gilgamesh has one near the end, though it's more about arrogance than vile deeds. Having finally reached the ends of the earth, Gilgamesh asks the immortal man Utnapishtim how to never die. Utanpishtim gives a long and terrifying account of how he saved every living thing from a flood sent by an angry god by gathering them all in an ark^note the first recorded instance of the Deluge myth, which you may know better as Noah's Ark and enduring the subsequent terrors. For this, the other gods rewarded him and his wife with immortality. Then he says, paraphrased, "so what did you do to earn eternal life lately?"
• At the end of The Ethos Effect by L.E. Modesitt Jr., the hero is forced to decide whether it is permissible to kill many people now so that more can live peacefully in the future. He decides that it is, and decides to commit genocide on the new would-be Evil Empire, before it can become a threat to the rest of the galaxy. Some extremely pacifistic Sufficiently Advanced Aliens call him out on this, accusing him of misusing their technology. He argues with them, saying that no, he's not a deity, just a tool-using creature who used the biggest hammer he could find because nothing else could possibly do the job, complaining that they're too afraid of corrupting themselves to take sides when humans fight each other.
• In Fire and Hemlock, Polly desperately wants a question answered by her friend Tom, which he does not wants to answer. She then forces him to, using magic, ruining everything. He calls her out on it.
• Cathy and Chris are constantly demanding this of each other in Flowers in the Attic. Cathy because Chris is so easily duped by their mother, who is keeping them locked up. And Chris because Cathy is extremely critical of their mother, who is the only person they can rely on to take care of them.
• Gaunt's Ghosts: Gaunt manages to avoid shooting his own men despite it being his job ...most of the time. When he does attempt to fulfill his role as a commissar, it results in a confrontation with Doc Dorden. Oddly enough, whenever Gaunt does go into a WTH, H moment (drinking, giving up, etc.), it is normally Rawne, one of the most morally grey characters of the series that sets him back on the straight and narrow. Normally by being an utterly Magnificent Bastard.
• Ciaphas Cain: Cain gets one of these near the end of For the Emperor when he shoots a pair of troopers with no warning or provocation. The surrounding soldiers initially freak out, and then he explains his reasons.
• Isaac Asimov's "The Gentle Vultures": The human calls out the Hurrians for only acting after the war happens instead of helping to prevent it.
• GONE series:
  • Astrid Ellison is constantly on the receiving end of this, both by the characters and the fandom. Especially when she threw her brother out of a window. That spawned quite a reaction.
  • Dekka Talent gives one to Brianna in FEAR, and she raises some pretty good points too about her being selfish and having insane delusions of grandeur.
  • Diana Ladris LOVES giving these out. And she ain't pleasant about it, either.
  • Edilio Escobar is possibly better than anyone else at making Sam realize the implications of some of his actions, or inaction, as the case may be.
• Griffin Ranger: Harrell, the Jerkass lead protagonist, does the one unforgivable thing for a griffin — he panics and kills an insane hanz (a Servant Race tightly allied with the griffins) that was trying to kill his partner Kwap, and compounds the mistake by killing Ranger Rekken, for whom the hanz was a servant — all because the Big Bad had Rekken's lifemate and chicks. To his credit, he immediately recognized that his shred-first-and-ask-questions-never approach just screwed both of them but good — and will come back to haunt him again and again later on.
• Grounded for All Eternity:
  • Malachi's squad call him out upon discovering that not only does he have a spark of creation, an object of near infinite possibilities, and didn't use it earlier to stop Parris, but that he was planning to use it to escape his responsibility as a future guardian of the Pit.
  • Malachi calls out the thrones for attempting to wipe out an entire town just to prevent Parris' influence from spreading.
• Harry Potter
  • Lupin calls out Harry in The Prisoner of Azkaban for sneaking into Hogsmeade, thereby disregarding all the effort everybody is making for his safety.
    I would have thought that what you have heard when the dementors draw near you would have had more of an effect on you. Your parents gave their lives to keep you alive, Harry. A poor way to repay them — gambling their sacrifice for a bag of magic tricks.
  • When Harry is self-wallowing in pity in Order of the Phoenix due to him thinking that he was possessed, Ginny calls him out on his selfishness, reminds him of her encounter with Tom Riddle/Voldemort, and proceeds to tell him that he was not possessed.
  • Harry mentally applies this trope to his dad in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. After entering one of Snape's memories, Harry is appalled to see his teenage father casually attack and humiliate Snape for fun in front of a crowd of people (something Harry had experienced himself several times).
  • Phineas' portrait gives Harry the treatment when he's about to flee at Christmas, taking his Chronic Hero Syndrome too far.
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we learn that back before Dumbledore was a hero, he was about to take his mentally ill sister with him, despite the dangers, to go off with Gellert Grindelwald on a mad chase for power and glory when his brother called him on it. The ensuing fight, and its tragic consequences, led Dumbledore to rethink his path and ultimately become the nearly universally admired man he was.
  • When Lupin decides to abandon his pregnant wife and unborn child (partly from fear and partly in order to protect them from the Fantastic Racism he experiences as a werewolf) and Harry, in a fit of anger, calls him a coward, says he's ashamed, and informs him that it's not what James would have wanted. Lupin, usually quite reasonable, comes to realize the error of his ways after a brief fit.
  • McGonagall to Harry, after he uses the Cruciatus curse, though that is more calling him out for being in a building where everybody wants him dead.
  • Snape gives one to Dumbledore when Dumbledore reveals that Harry, whom Snape has been protecting out of his love for Harry's mother, must die in order to defeat Voldemort. It wasn't that simple but Snape didn't know.
  • Dumbledore gives one of his own to Snape when he realizes that Snape is only worried about Lily being spared in Voldemort's attack and doesn't care if James and baby Harry are killed. Granted, he and James hated each other, but the murder of an innocent baby doesn't seem to bug him as long as he gets a chance to comfort the widow.
    Dumbledore: You disgust me. You do not care then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?
• Horatio Hornblower
  • Captain Hornblower is so irritated at being imposed on to transport Lady Barbara while his ship is bound for a dangerous battle that he starts to interrogate her on why she's even in Central America at all, and persists until she asks if he wants the name of her governess into the bargain. That pulls him up short.
  • Hornblower's affair with Marie Ladon, the daughter-in-law of the one man in France who would shelter British fugitives, ends as soon as spring arrives and it's time to leave. Marie takes this calmly, but she makes sure to share her assessment of his character—that he may be an easy man to love, but he seems to find it hard to love in return. Hornblower goes away profoundly disturbed by this observation.
• The Hunger Games: Katniss imposes this on herself a few times, most notably in Mockingjay when, after killing the unarmed woman, Katniss notes how she's graduated to killing unarmed civilians, and also notes in passing that she's become so accustomed to killing that she forgot all about taking the woman's life.
• Ward of Hurog is given one of those on several occasions, but among the most impressive moments is when he calls Oreg to him (using magic) after they have been separated for a time, and Oreg slowly materializes, clings to his legs and begs him not to leave again. The person who witnesses this wants to know what the hell Ward did to Oreg. It is nothing that Ward did, though — it is just that Oreg is magically bound to him by magic that's far older than Ward himself, and doesn't react well to being separated from him due to this.
• In Death series: Eve got this from Peabody in Ceremony In Death and Witness In Death. It made Eve feel bad. Eve, on her part, got to pull some epic ones with Don Webster in Judgment In Death and Karen Stowe in Betrayal In Death.
• Inheritance Cycle:
  • In Brisingr, Sloan finally calls out ostensibly heroic sociopath Eragon on his actions.
  • Eragon then delivered his own What the Hell, Hero? to Sloan, calling him out for betraying his entire village to inhuman monsters whose primary diet consisted of humans as well as trusting them to keep their word when they kidnapped his "beloved daughter", who he ALSO sold out to them out of a petty grudge toward Eragon's cousin (who wished to marry her and wound up getting mauled by those abominations) as well as irrational superstition. He also murdered a night watchman in order to rat out his village to the Ra'zac.
  • Later, Elva calls out Eragon for his actions (namely, trying to cast a spell to more completely undo the enchantment he'd placed on her after she said she preferred to leave it as it was) by comparing him to Galbatorix. This seems to have more of an effect on him.
  • Perhaps the best WTTH? in Inheritance is the poor soldier Eragon and Arya meet on their way back to the Varden. "Why are you doing this, you're a monster!" he screams as he surrenders. Eragon still murders him because "he was a threat."
  • Eragon and Orik are definitely squicked when Angela the witch poisons the enemy soldiers. They see it as dishonorable; she sees it as just good strategy.
• Journey to Chaos:
  • In Mana Mutation Menace, Kasile gives Nolien a royal dressing down for knowingly setting off Dnnac Ledo's anti-ordercraft alarms, thus endangering the Medical Mana Mutation negotiations and potentially starting a war.
  • In Transcending Limitations, Eric is enraged by the Ordercrafter Hunters kidnapping human infants in Sueno. They see themselves as The Kindnappers and he sees someone separating a child from their parents.
  • In Transcending Limitations, Annala is struck and berated by Meza and then scolded by Sagart for launching depopulation arrows at ten towns as a Mercy Kill for the hopelessly mentally dominated people living there. Once she comes to her senses, she has a My God, What Have I Done?. Fortunately, her future self steps in and saves the towns.
• Knaves on Waves has pretty much everyone chewing out Trigger over his alliance with Carnage. Justified, considering his many atrocities.
• In The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell, Carter calls the Fairy Council out on how they were punishing a fairy who lost her temper and turned the wings of another fairy who was teasing her into prune leaves for a few seconds (and how they were ready to banish her), but they weren’t doing anything about the Trolls and Goblins enslaving people. Though they don’t show their shame, they all admit that he’s right, and the fairy is pardoned.
• In one of the Left Behind novels, a minor character who has been pretending to be a Christian but has secretly been lining his pockets at their expense and may be planning to betray them is tricked and cheated by the main characters, who are congratulating themselves about it when another minor character asks them almost literally the trope question. His point is that they've almost certainly doomed the guy to everlasting hellfire because he might eventually have repented and become a Christian for real, but after being cheated by them there's no way he will ever do so now. Given the general tone of the books (where "Christian" and "Good" are treated as essentially synonymous), this is rather surprising (and a bit of a Take That! to the reader, who was probably rejoicing along with the protagonists at their "victory").
• Loveless:
  • Jason calls Georgia out for using him as an experiment to see if she is straight, because he was hoping that his crush on her would be reciprocated, especially after he broke up with his abusive girlfriend.
  • Pip doesn't take Georgia and Rooney reluctantly kissing to see if Georgia is gay very well and leaves the Bailey Ball in a huff after she calls them out.
• Loyal Enemies has a moment that doubles as a 'what the hell'-moment for both participants. Shelena's mocking of Tairinn, Veres' dead girlfriend, finally makes him slap her in front of the entire tavern. Though he's got a good reason considering Shelena's behaviour is just plain distasteful, he goes ahead and slaps a woman in front of everyone despite her having a rather good point in questioning Tairinn's motives. The only thing in her defense is that she's drunk at that time and Veres is emotionally very invested in keeping Tairinn's name clean, seeing as he suffered through torture for it. Shelena is enraged enough to expect Veres to apologize but after thinking it through decides to take the first step.
• Quentin Coldwater gets generous lashings of this in The Magicians as his behavior turns more unpleasant and more reckless: the first two doses come from Alice, who is first enraged at him for cheating on her — enough to punch Quentin in the face — and secondly infuriated with the fact that he's growing dissatisfied with Fillory after all the time he spent wishing he could be there. Ember delivers the third dose when Quentin screws everything up and accidentally gives the Beast everything he wanted, wearily pointing out that Fillory isn't a playground where Quentin can play at being a hero.
• In The Malloreon, Garion gets a tongue-lashing from Belgarath after the thunderstorm he creates to stop the Mimbrate civil war ends up disrupting weather patterns across the continent and is told that magic shouldn't be used so recklessly.
• The Marvellous Land of Snergs: The King of the Snergs berates Gorbo for bringing Joe and Sylvia to their city instead of taking both kids back to the Miss Watkins' colony where they would be safe.
• The Maze Runner: At one point in The Scorch Trials, Teresa psychologically and physically tortures Thomas to a severe extent, because WICKED had requested her to do so, and she believed it was for the best. When Thomas recovers from the ordeal, he is understandably angry at Teresa, especially since she didn't try to find another way to go about things, as Thomas and his friends had on many occasions. Teresa believes she has nothing to apologize for, due to being ordered to make the hard choice between letting WICKED murder him or hurting him emotionally herself. She gets annoyed at Thomas because he resents the way she treated him. Teresa acts like nothing happened and tries to continue their budding young romance, even kissing Thomas to shut him up. Thomas calls her out on her behavior and is completely turned off to her for the rest of the series.
• Nightfall (Series): Myra makes some naive choices and misses an opportunity to kill Prince Vladimir. Franka has no problem calling her out.
• In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith joins what he thinks is the resistance movement against "Big Brother." The supposed leader of the resistance, O'Brien, questions him on what he's willing to do for the movement. Smith agrees to everything O'Brien asks, including rape, murder, arson, terrorism, and even throwing sulfuric acid into an innocent child's face. Later on when it is revealed that O'Brien is a double agent working for Big Brother, he plays a tape of Smith confessing to this in order to destroy Smith's claims of moral superiority.
• In Of Fear and Faith, Phenix has called out North on a couple occasions due to the latter’s tendency to jump to extremes. However, North has far more conviction than Phenix does and often turns this around on him.
• A handful of times in the Rizzoli & Isles series, Jane Rizzoli gets called out on her Irrational Hatred of beautiful women (which is out of jealousy that she herself is average looking). In particular, her first partner Thomas Moore adds a dash of Brutal Honesty to this when he suggests that what really turns men off isn't her plain looks, but her brusque and abrasive personality.
  "What guy is going to like you when even YOU don't like yourself?"
• Primal Warrior Draco Azul: In the short story "Reminiscence" Ekchuah berates Eric for having killed the very merchants he was supposed to have been protecting during his simulated battle with Hunhau and Uacmitun Ahau, thereby crippling the Mayan civilization. When Eric protests it was just a simulation, Ekchuah coldly states that if Eric can't learn to control his recklessness and prioritize minimizing collateral damage over winning at any cost then he's no better than the enemies they go up against.
• The Salvation War takes time to note the problems the war against Heaven and Hell are going to cause. The first battlefield is now littered with tons unexploded shells, Earth's economy is a wreck, and people were shocked by the beating they gave to the demons.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events, when the orphans are forced to burn down a hotel to survive, they wonder if they are really the "good guys" after all. To elaborate they have been framed for murder again and Olaf threatens to poison every person in the building. Sunny suggests the burning and reluctantly Violet and Klaus comply wondering what Sunny's plan was since they had to worry both about getting out of this sticky situation alive and about saving all those people from the Medusoid Mycelium. They do it mostly to themselves but Justice Strauss also phrases it, even though she comes across as very naive. They then use the elevator to warn as many people as possible and Sunny reveals that she did this as a way to warn that it was no longer safe there.
  • In The Wide Window, the orphans briefly give Aunt Josephine one when she offers to let Olaf have them if he wants, so long as he lets her live.
  • At the end of The Vile Village, Hector finally overcomes his fear of stuffed crow hats to call out the village elders for their horrible treatment of the orphans, pointing out that the children have had nothing but poor treatment since their parents died, that the village was called upon to take care of them, and instead they just used the children as cheap labor. Of course, the village elders are only "heroes" in the sense that they aren't affiliated with Olaf...
• Lucy from The Sex Lives Of Siamese Twins saves two homeless men from being killed by a deranged gunman and is hailed as an instant hero by the media. This quickly changes once it's revealed that she, in reality, saved two serial pedophiles from a broken victim of child sexual abuse.
• Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: The book Payback had Jack giving Nikki this after suffering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from three men with gold shields sent by Charles. Shortly afterwards, Nikki gives one to Charles. In Sweet Revenge, Jack gives this to Nikki over the Vigilantes trying to get revenge on Rosemary Hershey by driving her literally insane!
• Skulduggery Pleasant: Valkyrie gets this from Fletcher on a number of things in Death Bringer. It even makes her pause and consider her actions. For a moment.
• A Song of Ice and Fire probably contains a couple, but first to mind is Sandor Clegane's deeply satisfying rebuttal to the accusations that the seemingly-oh-so-noble Brotherhood Without Banners lays against him. "I'm the same as you. The only difference is, I don't lie about what I am. So kill me, but don't call me a murderer while you stand there telling each other that your shit don't stink. You hear me?"
  • An earlier one is when Varys tells the imprisoned Ned Stark that his Honor Before Reason has caused a lot of damage that would have been avoided if he had simply chosen one of the several less honourable options he had been presented with.
  • When Stannis pulls off a Big Damn Heroes at the Wall, he says that Davos made him realise that, even though it might not benefit him, it was his duty as a prospective king to save his kingdom. Regrettably, the readers only hear a summary of what was said, and don't actually get to see the speech in its entirety.
  • Arianne and Doran Martell give this to each other after the former has nearly gotten an innocent girl killed and started a war in a scheme to claim her birthright, which she only started because the latter's apparent passivity and secretive nature gave her good reason to think she had to force the people of Dorne into action. The result of this reciprocal What-The-Hell-Hero-ing is that they mutually acknowledge their own faults, heal the breakdown of communications, and reconcile enough to work together.
• Lucas Trask in Space Viking by H. Beam Piper has an internal one when he's talking with an eight-year-old princess and wonders how many of the people killed in his raids earlier in the book had been children.
• In Chekov's story in the Star Trek: The Original Series book Kobayashi Maru, he gets called out for his actions during a training exercise where the cadets are told the scenario is one where one of them was a traitor. Chekov's solution, which is what he imagines his hero, Captain Kirk, would do? Stun all the other cadets, including the ones who had allied with him, to make sure he wouldn't be taken out by the traitor. No cadet actually had been designated as a traitor; the exercise was to see how they dealt with a situation that could cause paranoia. (Kirk's solution had been to get everyone to cooperate.)
  • Mackenzie Calhoun from the Star Trek: New Frontier series got a doozy of speech from his first officer when he ran the Kobayashi Maru test when she disagreed with his solution: destroy the Maru, on the basis that if the ship was a trap, the explosion would damage the Klingon ship and, it is was a genuine distress call, he would be saving the crew from torture and execution at the hands of the Klingons while buying his ship time to escape. Amusingly enough, the first officer also got a speech for failing to obey his orders during the test.
• In Star Trek: Articles of the Federation, President Bacco gives two of these speeches. The first is when she condemns the Federation Council for considering renewing trade agreements with Aligar, a culture whose exports are prepared by slave labourers — she later apologises for her behaviour. The second time, she points out the disturbing implications in the actions of Admiral Ross after the truth about his role in deposing President Zife comes to light. She notes that not only did he take it upon himself to remove the President from power, but in his public support for Bacco he also used his influence to encourage the ascension of a leader he personally preferred.
• In Star Trek: Destiny, Geordi La Forge gives Captain Picard this when he decides that the best way to beat the Borg is to use thalaron weaponry, a weapon so deadly people died to stop it from being used. Geordi specifically points out that he wasn't going to sully Data's memory to use a weapon he gave his life for to prevent being used — when he goes to object to Picard, he's not doing the 'I want it on the record that I protest this action' spiel we'd seen done many times, he outright refuses to do it, telling Picard that he can relieve him of duty and court-martial him for it, but he will under absolutely no circumstances develop or utilize ANY thalaron weapons.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Before the Storm had Luke being called out on boasting about destroying the Death Star, the accuser pointing out the deaths of the million people onboard. Of course, Luke points out that the Death Star was a planet-killing superweapon.
  • In Wraith Squadron, the Wraiths pull a prank that gets a cantina full of people to think that one of their female Human pilots is married to their Gammorrean pilot. Falynn is highly offended and doesn't find this funny, but then Piggy stops her, asks if she'd react like this if the prank had involved, say, Face instead of him, and she immediately realizes that she's being speciesist, realizes that it is funny and apologizes, and they play along with what the cantina thinks, Holding Hands like young marrieds.
  • Karen Traviss's Republic Commando Series provide a chance for various characters to call this on the Jedi, the ostensible good guys of the Star Wars universe, for taking a conveniently provided army of 'living slaves' who have been 'tortuously abused' since birth and using them as 'cannon fodder' for a war in which the soldiers have no stake.
  • A twofer in the person of Kyp Durron. Durron destroys an entire inhabited solar system while Drunk on the Dark Side, and when he sobers up Luke takes him in with no questions asked. Luke is called out for this by Corran Horn and his own future wife Mara later on, while Durron hears about it for the rest of his life.
• In Jedi Apprentice, young Obi-Wan decides to leave the Jedi in a To Be Lawful or Good situation, then regrets it because of the tragedy that ensues. The calling-out is twofold:
  • When Obi-Wan decides to come back, everyone in the Jedi lets him have it for being impulsive, disobeying orders, causing all Masters to question the loyalty of their own Padawans, and leaving Qui-Gon in particular when he already had one apprentice leave him (and become the Arc Villain, no less). This goes on for two and a half books until Qui-Gon finally accepts him back.
  • Yoda and Tahl admonish Qui-Gon for essentially giving Obi-Wan a Sadistic Choice to either abandon his friends, who had helped them when trying to rescue Tahl in the first place and were trying to end a generations-long bloodbath or leave the Jedi entirely.
• In Victory of Eagles, Captain Laurence is sent to take a group of dragons and interfere with French foragers, thus disrupting Napoleon's supply lines, and is told to "give no quarter", meaning that if any Frenchmen try to surrender...too bad. Eventually another character shows up and says, "Laurence, what are you doing?" Unusually optimistically for this trope, this is, in fact, enough to get Laurence to stop.
• In The Underland Chronicles, Luxa gets called out more than once on her behaviour.
• Helga delivers a few of these in Unique. Don't ever discharge your firearm in her presence without confirming your target, and don't ever tell her to trust the government.
• Wendy, heroine of John C. Wright's War of the Dreaming, calls out her husband for killing an innocent person through his Deal with the Devil. Trying to atone for this forms the base of Raven's character arc.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Foxleap's plan to save a group of cats from a hawk goes wrong and one Tribe cat gets killed. One Tribe cat scolds him harshly for not listening when he was told to not interfere.
  • Also, Echosong did not approve of Leafstar driving Billystorm out of the gorge and had to spell it out for her.
  • In The Sun Trail, Clear Sky calls out Gray Wing for killing Fox...though HE was the one to tell Fox to attack him. Later, Gray Wing calls Clear Sky out for banishing Jagged Peak from the community and refusing to take in his son Thunder.
  • Squirrelflight calls out anyone who messes with or insults Leafpool. The cats she yells at include Brambleclaw, Ashfur, Jayfeather, and Lionblaze.
• In the third book of The Wheel of Time, Mat infiltrates the best-defended fortress in the world by himself to save the three Action Girls. They basically kick dirt in his face as thanks. Several books later, a few other female characters call two of them on it and force them to apologize.
  • In the twelfth book, Rand balefires an entire friggin' castle in order to kill ONE (count 'em, ONE) of his enemies. And we never even see her body, so there's no proof it actually worked. It was at about this point other characters began to take a lot more notice of just how goddamn insane he'd gotten. Later in the same book he almost rains lightning down on an army of potential allies simply because they got highhanded (in such a way that invoked his irrational fear of being confined which had been caused a few books earlier) but manages to be talked down with another comment invoking this trope. Given Rand had access to destroy the world and was by this point overcome with paranoia, rage, and schizophrenia, it is little wonder people waited until he was at the very limit before they really started calling him on such tendencies (which had been building for many books as his breakdown and psychosis developed).
• In When Twilight Burns, Victoria runs away and doesn't save people who are getting attacked by vampires because those people had put her in jail and were trying to get her killed. Max chews her out for this, though it might not be so bad because at least one of those people was probably in league with the vampires.
• In Worm:
  • Interlude 2 has Panacea calling out Glory Girl for using excessive force during her fights.
  • Skitter gives Charlotte a rather brutal one for her Bystander Syndrome in regards to her trigger event.
  • Chapter 18.3 has Clockblocker listing just how many bad things Skitter has done, that despite being claimed for the greater good, had farther-reaching terrible consequences.
  • Speck 30.1 has Tattletale calling Taylor out on her inability to trust her friends and her tendency to approach negotiation by holding a figurative gun to people's heads.
• In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy had spent the beginning of the story leaving a bad impression to Elizabeth. He's unsociable, appears to actively get in the way of his friend and her sister's romance, and from the account of a Mr. Wickham, seems to have prevented this man from receiving an inheritance. The final straw is when Darcy, proposing to Elizabeth, seems to emphasize her lower status more than the proposal itself. She angrily confronts all of this to him, calling him proud and selfish.
  • This is soon followed by, upon receiving a letter from Mr. Darcy explaining his side of the story and the truth of the matter, Elizabeth then has to confront herself about her own prejudice against him blinding her to consider other perspectives from her own.
• In Beren and Lúthien, Thingol is not pleased to hear that his daughter Lúthien has fallen in love with a mortal, and not even one with a kingdom. He asks his prospective son-in-law Beren to steal a Silmaril, all three of which are currently in possession of the Big Bad God of Evil. Beren proceeds to give him one of these, which is a pretty gutsy move considering that Thingol is the most powerful elf in Middle Earth at this point in time. Since, you know, Lúthien is a person whose worth should not be equated to a fancy gemstone. The speech doesn't have much effect however, unfortunately for Thingol.
• In Ascendance of a Bookworm, Lutz gets angry at Myne for digging in the forest area after specifically promising her father that when she got there she would just rest before going home so that she didn't push herself too hard and get sick again. Since her father was only thinking of her wellbeing Lutz is upset at how little Myne's word is worth.
• In Rose of Rapture the heroine is a devoted Yorkist and loyalist to Richard III, but even she is shocked by Richard's brutal execution of Will Hastings.

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