Even Evil Has Standards/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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Examples of Even Evil Has Standards/Film include:

Animated Film

  • In Kung Fu Panda 2, Lord Shen's dragon refuses to fire on his own men and gets killed for it. Justified as wolves are pack animals, and will not kill their own.
  • Kaa in Disney's The Jungle Book might be after Mowgli to feed his hunger, but he despises how Shere Khan is after the boy merely because he exists. Not that he'd ever tell him that to his face.
  • In the sequel to The Lion King, Zira's own followers defected to Simba after Zira threatened to kill her own daughter for refusing to participate in Zira's second attack thanks to Kiara and Kovu's speech.
    • This scene in the original:

Zazu: (singing depressingly) Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows my sorrow...
Scar: Oh Zazu, do lighten up. Sing something with a little "bounce" in it.
Zazu: Ahem. It's a small world after all-
Scar: NO! Anything But That!

    • Also in the original, the hyenas become resentful of Scar's reign after he drives the Pride Lands into ruin and starvation. And after Scar is overthrown by Simba, the hyenas, having been inadvertently betrayed, use this as an opportunity to get back at him for it and satisfy their hunger all at the same time.
  • In Rango, The mayor is so corrupt that even Rattlesnake Jake, who claims to be "from hell itself" and is arguably a form of The Grim Reaper, does off with him. Rattlesnake Jake also mentions he hates liars.
    • The mayor despite being willing to Rango and Beans in a tank to drown tries to tell off Rattlesnake Jake for threatening to strangle Beans to death in his office. Also, the mayor's secretary Angelique looked visibly horrified when Rango and Beans were put into the tank to drown despite clearly not liking Beans.
  • In The Incredibles, Mirage might be willing to lure supers to their deaths, but when kids are on the plane targeted by missiles, she starts to have second thoughts.
    • Also, the fact that Syndrome was willing to let Mr. Incredible kill her (out of anger) even though he couldn't do it.
  • In Pinocchio "Honest" John is an anthropomorphic fox who isn't above robbery and murder but is horrified at the Coachman's proposition of sending kids off to Pleasure Island where they will be robbed of their humanity and forced into slavery doomed to hard labor for presumably the rest of their lives. And when the Coachman finishes explaining it all to them (even grinning menacingly for emphasis), Honest John and Gideon, the fox's anthropomorphic feline stooge, are both cowering in absolute terror.
    • Then they do it anyway to the title character, mainly because they're too scared to refuse the Coachman's proposition after that.
  • The main plot of Megamind features the titular villain becoming good to stop a villain he created from destroying the world.
  • In Tangled, the bartender sings a song describing some of the terrible things he's done (although he's repentant about it, as are most of the people in the Bad Guy Bar) but dislikes Flynn for his dream of being rich and entirely alone.


Live-Action Film

  • Towards the end of 12 Angry Men, Juror #10 is going off on a racist tirade because the defendant is black. The other jurors all slowly but surely turn their backs on him, including Juror #3, who was the most dead set of all the jurors on finding the defendant guilty.
  • In Demolition Man, the psychotic criminal Simon Phoenix would be a Complete Monster if not for the fact that he utterly fucking hates his employer, Doctor Cocteau, his belief in The Evils of Free Will, the fact that he has turned Southern California into sissy-land, and the utter restrictiveness of it all. The only reason he doesn't kill Cocteau at first is because he has a mental block preventing him from doing so, and he gets around it by ordering a Mook to kill Cocteau. And There Was Much Rejoicing.
  • In Boogie Nights Jack Horner does not object to the Colonel's affairs with 15 year old girls, but disowns him when it is revealed that he's been caught with nude photos of prepubescent children.
  • In Casablanca, Captain Renault, despite his Affably Evil charm, is a petty tyrant, a collaborator, a bribe-taker, apparently a serial rapist, and cheats at gambling among other qualities glossed over. But he finally decides at last that he is done with Nazis.
  • In The Rocketeer, gangster Eddie Valentine turns on the film's Big Bad, Neville Sinclair, after learning that Sinclair is working for the Nazis. As Eddie puts it, "I may not make an honest buck, but I'm 100% American!" followed by a hilarious scene with a mobster and an FBI agent firing at Nazis, looking at each other, shrugging, then going back to killing Nazis. This was also a moment of Truth in Television, since organized crime was possibly one of the biggest allies the American government and law enforcement had when it came to rooting out Nazi spies and collaborators. The mob hated the Nazis.
  • In Rashomon (based off the story In a Grove) the Samurai's version features the bandit horrified by the samurai's wife as she asks the bandit to kill her husband -- this is right after the bandit has raped said woman.
  • Tony "Scarface" Montana, gangster and druglord, refuses to kill women and children, and only kills "People dumb enough to fuck with him".
    • This extends to the video game, where attempting to attack civilians results in Tony outright refusing to do so out of principle. Interestingly enough, playing as the enforcer or assassin allows you to kill civilians.
  • Leon from Leon a.k.a. Léon: The Professional

Mathilda: Do you "clean" anyone?
Léon: No women, no kids, that's the rules.

  • Played straight by Simon Gruber, the villain in Die Hard With a Vengeance, who plants fake bombs in Manhattan schools to distract the police from his daring Federal Reserve Bank robbery. Notice McLane's surprise and Simon's candid response on the quotes page.
  • Subverted in Lord of War, when gunrunner Yuri Orlov states that he drew the line at selling guns to Osama Bin Laden, but then qualifies the statement by saying it had nothing to do with moral standards, but rather the fact Osama's checks always bounced.
    • Also subverted when Simeon Weisz iterates his refusal to sell to any group with whose agenda he disagrees. When called out on the fact that he sold weapons to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War, he states that he wanted both sides to lose.
    • He also agrees to sell cocaine after some Aggressive Negotiations.
  • The absurd levels this can sometimes reach is pointed out in the film Nuremberg. A high-ranking Nazi official and the American soldier who's supposed to be guarding his cell discuss their respective childhoods, and the Nazi mentions how much he loved hunting with his father. The American asks if Hitler hunted at all, and the Nazi responds "No, the Führer considered killing animals unethical." Both burst out laughing.
  • In Muppet Treasure Island, the Villain Song "Professional Pirate" includes the line "I could have been a lawyer, but I just had too much heart."
    • The opening song "Shiver My Timbers" also says, in regard to Captain Flint and his crew, "The Devil himself would have to call them scum!".
  • In the 1939 film version of Beau Geste, Rasinoff, a Russian recruit of the French Foreign Legion, tells the Geste brothers he knows their sadistic Sergeant Markoff from a prison camp in Siberia, where Rasinoff was an inmate. Markoff was a guard at the camp but was "exiled for cruelty."
    • In the book he had served the Belgian Congo. That area at the time had been a famous scandal of colonial misgovernment, among other colonial powers.
  • In several James Bond movies, Bond works with a "criminal" who, despite being involved in murder, extortion, protection rackets, female slavery, smuggling, etc., is a good guy because he doesn't deal in drugs.
  • The Big Bad in The Rock, it turns out, was bluffing. Though his second-in-command thought he wasn't... Before the actual takeover, he's seen telling two children to tell their teacher they have to go back to the school Right. Now.
  • In Tombstone, one of the Cowboys drops his red sash and falls in with the Earp brothers after someone fires a gun into the Earp household, nearly killing one of the brothers' wives; he flat-out states that attacking defenseless women was something he simply couldn't stomach.
  • This concept is addressed in M, in which the child killer Hans Beckert gives a great, if unsuccessful, Shaming the Mob speech against the gangsters who want to lynch him. He's got severe mental problems; what's their excuse?
  • In Bruges plays with this trope. Two hitmen are sent to cool their heels in Belgium after one accidentally shoots a small boy during a hit. Their boss then tells the other one to kill him -- the boss is a family man who loves his children and would sooner kill himself than live with the knowledge he'd killed a child, and then he does indeed kill himself due to having blown the head off of a dwarf dressed as a child. There's also a scene of negotiations between in which they decide how best to move their gunfight to a place where a pregnant woman will not be endangered.
  • In Con Air, Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom may be the epitome of evil, but he draws the line at rape, and even warns serial rapist Johnny 23, "If your dick jumps out your pants, you jump off this plane."
  • An early version of Freddy vs. Jason had Jason defending a teenaged girl from Freddy because she was pregnant.
    • Speaking of Jason, he doesn't kill children or animals. This was actually a decision enforced by his prime actor, Kane Hodder. The fourth Friday the 13 th movie shows him attacking the child protagonist.
  • In the TMNT 2007 movie, near the end, when the five guardians tell the Foot Clan to work alongside them for power, Karai says that always keep their word, and that as such they work for Winters, not them.
  • Averted in The Usual Suspects. Keyser Soze comes home to find a rival gang raping his wife and holding her and his children hostage. What does he do? ( Allegedly) shoot his family himself, then kill the gang members, then kill their entire families and everyone they've ever known or done business with.
  • The Whole Nine Yards has hired hitman Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski refuse to divorce his former wife because, dammit, he believes in those vows ("til death do we part").
  • In the Adam Sandler Remake of The Longest Yard, Caretaker (Chris Rock) explains it like this to Paul Crewe (Sandler) in the Prison Cafeteria.

Caretaker: You know, I've never seen one inmate walk in here and be unanimously hated by the entire population. I ain't never seen it.
Crewe: How'd I get so lucky?
Caretaker: Oh I ain't saying you did or you didn't. All I'm saying is that you could have robbed banks, sold dope or stole your grandmother's pension checks and none of us would have minded. But shaving points off of a football game, man, that's un-American.

"Soon you will see things more horrible than you can even imagine...
(cut to Clint Howard in drag and dancing barechested)
"...Well maybe not that horrible, but still pretty bad."

  • In Vantage Point, the terrorists driving an ambulance carrying the kidnapped President swerved to avoid hitting a girl crossing the road, flipping the ambulance, foiling their plot, and getting killed in the process. They had no qualms with killing throughout the movie, just not a child.
  • Mr. Goodkat of Lucky Number Slevin was a reputable and cold hearted assassin but even he would not kill a child. And he was given the assignment because no other assassin would do it either.
  • In Snatch, Bullet Tooth Tony, a tough guy who is ruthless when it comes to killing or torture is reluctant to hurt a dog when asked to cut it open to retrieve a diamond it swallowed.
    • Possibly a subversion. Tony is reluctant and voices disapproval over the act "It's not a fucking tin of baked beans, what do you mean open him up?!" he does eventually start to do it. The dog's life gets saved from Tony (and his boss Avi) mostly because someone else in the room admits that he has the diamond, and the dog didn't eat it.
  • In The Prophecy, the angel-turned-rogue Gabriel, as played by Christopher Walken, will, in his own words, wreak havoc on entire civilizations, kill babies while their mothers watch, and even (when he feels like it) rip the souls of out little girls...but he absolutely cannot stand to see people cry, or hear them use God's name in vain:

Watch it with that profanity!

  • The titular Reservoir Dogs have no qualms whatsoever about robbing a bank of thousands of dollars, and most of them feel only a vague dislike (yet no hesitation) for shooting innocent bystanders out of their way in the escape from the heist, but watch how they react to someone refusing to throw in a dollar for the waitress's tip at a restaurant. In fact, in keeping with the recurring theme in Tarantino's works of honor among thieves and scoundrels they seem to have a whole, elaborate code of ethics all their own which they euphemistically refer to as "professionalism".
    • Both White and Pink also display antipathy against Blonde for going on an unprovoked killing spree inside the jewellery store once the alarm went off. In Pink's case it seems like more Pragmatic Villainy (shooting someone who's not in your way is just more jail time if they catch you), but White seems to take the killing of "real people" personally.

Mr. White: What you're supposed to do is act like a fuckin' professional. A psychopath ain't a professional, you can't work with a psychopath. You don't know what those sick assholes are gonna do next. I mean, Jesus Christ, how old do you think that black girl was? Twenty? Maybe?
Mr. Pink: If that.

    • It's implied in the script that Hans Landa's reasons for sparing Shanonna in Inglorious Basterds is due to this trope, as he apparently has personal moral problems with killing someone when their back is turned.
  • In Hook (which I believe takes a page, no pun intended, from a reference in the original book), Captain Hook has no problem with any immorality per se except exercising "bad form", although he does go against his own rule somewhat out of anger and desperation at one point, so you could argue that it doesn't count.
  • In Five Minutes to Live (aka Door-to-Door Maniac), a young Johnny Cash (yes, THAT Johnny Cash) stars as a cruel, sadistic robber/murderer. Near the end of the film, he has a standoff with the police and he believes that they accidentally killed his child hostage (they didn't, the kid was just playing dead). Cash's character immediately becomes enraged and starts firing wildly at the police, screaming at them for having dared to kill a child. When he's gunned down, his last words before dying are "they killed a kid".
  • Flyboys features a dogfight around the middle of the movie. One of the men of the squadron is shot down but manages to land safely. He is then strafed and killed by a German flyer. When the pilot comes back up with the rest of his squadron, the Red Baron... er, Black Falcon, who led the attack, shakes his head. It's justified, considering that he had a book of morals that he thought all Germans should follow. Attacking downed pilots who can't fight back was one of them. Another example is a dogfight almost immediately after that part. One of the pilots, Rawlings, manages to stick with the Black Falcon through a series of evasive maneuvers, even when the Falcon attempts to lose him by flying right over a church. Rawlings is able to stick with him, and though his gun jams, the Falcon spares his life because he was good enough to not lose him. In this case Falcon is less "evil" and more on the opposite side, but is still shown as having stricter standards than his comrades.
  • In Pickup On South Street, a pickpocket steals a wallet containing stolen microfilm that a ring of communist spies are trying to spirit out of the country. Instead of destroying the film or turning it in to the cops for immunity, he tries to sell it back to the spies for a big payoff. This shocks even his fellow lowlifes, one of whom remarks, "Even in our crummy business, you have to draw the line somewhere."
  • The Predator isn't above stacking the odds in its favor when it hunts the most dangerous game. However, they do not go after helpless victims. This extends to unborn children, as shown in Predator 2, when the Predator refuses to kill an armed, competent, but pregnant police officer. For some it extends past that, to "worthy prey"; in Alien vs. Predator, the "protagonist" Predator ignored the man dying of cancer even as the man attacked him until it became impossible to do so.
  • In Out of Sight, as bank robber Jack Foley is locked into a trunk with US Marshal Karen Sisco, he assures her that he isn't going to rape her. "I've never done that in my life." Additionally, he makes a point of never using a weapon during any of his robberies, not wanting to harm anyone, and at the end of the film, he goes out of his way to stop his fellow robbers from raping a woman, knowing full well that doing so could prevent him from escaping and cost him his freedom.
  • In the film version of Annie, Miss Hannigan makes the orphan girls's lives miserable, engineers and fully participates in the plan to kidnap Annie and scam Daddy Warbucks out of a large sum of money, but she's horrified when her brother makes it clear that he intends to kill the little girl and immediately tries to protect her. This was a significant difference from the original play, where Miss Hannigan makes clear that she still supports the plan even after the scam artist in question reveals his plan to kill her.
  • In the 1986 film version of Little Shop of Horrors, sadistic dentist Orin Scrivello (Steve Martin) gets a patient named Arthur Denton (Bill Murray). Scrivello's schtick is that he does unnecessary procedures with little to no anesthesia, causing his patients immense pain, which he enjoys. Unfortunately, Denton is masochistic, so Scrivello's tools give him orgasmic pleasure. Disgusted (though he probably just resents the fact that he was robbed of his own sadistic pleasure), Schrivello kicks Denton out of his office. He then says to himself:

"Goddamn sicko."

  • "I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a Goddamn percentage!"
  • In Suicide Kings, Charlie Barrett, an ex-mob boss who once had an enemy and his family fed to their own dogs, is highly offended by someone lying to their friends.
    • Also, in an alternate ending, he refused to kill a woman.
  • In King of New York, the title character, a drug lord, excuses the murders of his rivals by claiming that they engaged in even less savory business practices than he did, like human trafficking and child prostitution.
  • In Batman Begins, Jonathan Crane might show signs of this in comparison to the other main villains of the movie, depending on how you interpret some of the dialogue. Examples include:
    • When Crane warns Falcone that Rachel Dawes isn't likely to be bought off, Falcone says there is an answer to that too, and Crane says "I don't want to know." Falcone, for his part, is skeptical that Crane may have any qualms about this, cynically replying "Yeah you do."
    • Also, when Ducard (aka Ra's Al Ghul) explains his plan for poisoning Gotham, he adds that Crane went along with the plan under the impression that the idea was to hold the city for ransom. If you were to assume Ducard meant that, and assume that the implication of this was that Crane was more okay with "threatening to poison people as a means of profit" than "actually poisoning them," then this would indicate that Crane has standards in comparison to Ducard. Even then, that is not saying much, and it could just as easily be because there's no money in Ducard's plan.
    • In The Dark Knight Saga, following Rachel's death mobster Sal Maroni becomes fed up with the violence the Joker has unleashed and gives up the Joker's location to Commissioner Gordon. It is also subtly implied that Maroni did not really wish to hire the Joker in the first place.
    • In the opening scene to the movie, the Joker has his own henchmen killed during a heist on a mob bank as soon as their part of the heist is complete. The mobster who tries to fend them off is disgusted with their actions, and reminisces about the good old days when criminals still believed in honor and respect.
    • The Chechen, who previously was the most eager to hire the Joker, turns against him upon hearing his next Hannibal Lecture about how "this city deserves a better class of criminal." Unfortunately, his former men don't have such standards.
    • Joker himself invokes this trope when giving a What the Hell, Hero? speech to Batman, although given his Complete Monster status (which he is both fully aware and proud of), it's debatable how seriously he should be taken:

--Joker: You let five people die. Then you let Dent take your place. Even to a guy like me, that's cold.

  • Brazilian horror film icon Zé do Caixão, AKA Coffin Joe in other countries, is a complete sadist whose hideous acts include murder, torture and rape. Surprisingly however, he is utterly disgusted with the idea of violence being used on children, as he believes they are only the gracious thing that mankind has to offer. This even guaranteed him a Villainous BSOD in one film when he learns that one of the girls he kidnapped and murdered earlier was pregnant.
  • Treadstone is supposed to have transformed Jason Bourne into the ultimate assassin, but the climax of the first film reveals that he failed an assignment because he couldn't bring himself to shoot a father while his kids were watching, possibly because killing the man in front of his children would mean that he'd have to kill the kids too because they'd be witnesses. Notably, the second film reveals that he had no such compunction against killing a target and his wife and making it look like a murder-suicide.
  • General Miura from Ip Man shows his displeasure with Smug Snake Colonel Sato's shooting of Master Liu by holding Sato's pistol to the man's own head and threatening to pull the trigger if he does something similar again.
  • John Lee in The Replacement Killers gets himself in trouble with crime leader Terence Wei after developing a conscience in time to prevent him from completing the third assignment, killing a police officer's adolescent son with the officer/father hugging him.
  • The crazed policeman neighbor in Lakeview Terrace does everything in his power to bully and terrorize his young, newlywed neighbors out of a deep seated dislike of their mixed-race marriage. However, when he realizes that he's inadvertently put them in a situation where one of them is likely to be killed, he's sane enough to know things have gone too far and quickly rushes over to rectify things. He loses major points, though, because a few weeks later he ends up putting himself in a situation where he has to kill the neighbors he just saved or be exposed for his crimes.
  • In Austin Powers In Goldmember, Dr. Evil, despite having the name "Evil" in his name and also living up to his name, seemed completely disturbed by Goldmember when meeting him in person, once even hesitating in shock, slowly moving towards him and then saying "how about "no!"" when Goldmember asks if he could paint Nigel Power's doodle gold, and was overall disgusted by Goldmember eating his own skin. Similarly, after he, or rather, Scott Evil, kills a Japanese businessman because the latter wanted a bonus, although he starts his evil laugh, he quickly becomes quite disturbed when Scott was more exhilarated by the death, telling him to stop, as it's "creeping [him] out."
    • In the previous film, The Spy Who Shagged Me, he also gets the heebie-jeebies at Fat Bastard's desire to eat Mini Me.

Fat Bastard: Tell ya what, you keep the money and the mojo and I'll have the baby. *smacks lips*
Dr. Evil: Riiiiight.

  • In The Man From Nowhere, Ramrowan is happy to slay anyone -- except young Soo-Mi. Ramrowan not only spares her, but kills one of his comrades and takes his eyes to pass off as hers for proof of the kill. And then, when defeated by Cha, Ramrowan does not reveal his mercy or bargain for his life, which is kind of awesome.
  • Mad Dog from Hard Boiled refuses to shoot a room full of helpless hospital patients, or allow his boss to do it.
  • In Mother, Jugs and Speed, Mother asks why a hamburger stand owner always give him his mayonnaise on the side. The owner responds that he's cheated on his wife and beaten his kids; but putting mayonnaise on a hamburger is a sin that Mother alone will have to answer to God for.
  • In Prizzi's Honor, Irene Walker, an assassin, plans out a hit that involves distracting a bodyguard by tossing a baby (actually a doll) and getting him to catch it while she pulls out her gun in the meantime. When the plan is carried out, the bodyguard ignores the "baby" and immediately pulls out his own gun. Afterward, Irene comments that this behavior was disgusting, since if it had been a real baby, it would have been crippled.
  • In Avatar the greedy prospectors who are perfectly willing to drive an indigenous tribe off their home and demolish it to get to the deposits of precious Unobtanium beneath it, and dismiss the possibly disastrous environmental ramifications of their actions, but still spend quite a lot of time and effort to persuade the tribe to leave peacefully, and even when they do resort to violence, they take measures to minimize the casualties among the civilians, and the Corrupt Corporate Executive has a My God, What Have I Done? moment when faced with the results of his General Ripper's plan. This is the same executive, mind you, who earlier seemed irritated that PR concerns forced him to try and negotiate with the "monkeys". It's possible he didn't really see them as really sentient until that point.
  • In The Skulls, the Big Bad who has been terrorizing the film's protagonist expresses disgust at a co-conspirator's choice of a lover, even while freely admitting to his own extramarital activities, "Good lord, man, she's only 19"!. He then uses the information to blackmail him when the other man also displays this trope and develops a conscience about the horrible things they've done.
  • From The Petrified Forest. Duke Mantee, world famous killer and gangster, thinks Alan is a rat for telling Gabrielle's grandfather to "die and do the world some good." "Talkin' to an old man like that..."
  • In Batman Returns one of the Penguin's Mooks objects to his plans of killing the first-borns.

Fat Clown: Penguin... I mean, killing sleeping children. Isn't that a little, uh...
Penguin (grabbing an umbrella and shooting him): No! It's a lot "uh"!

  • In GoldenEye, Xenia's orgasmic massacre of the Severnaya satellite control center's staff shocks even corrupt General Ourumov.
  • Jason believes this about Robert in Mystery Team, making a speech about how he doesn't have it in him to kill teenagers. He has it in him
  • In Kurosawa's Ran, Kurogane is perfectly willing to help his lord Jiro murder and backstab his way to power, but draws the line at the murder of his first wife Lady Sue simply to appease Lady Kaede.
  • In Star Trek III the Search For Spock, Klingon Commander Kruge shoots his gunner after he accidentally destroys the USS Grissom and calls it "a lucky shot", because he wanted prisoners. He even calls his gunner an "animal" afterwards.
  • In All Through the Night, when gangster/gambler Gloves Donahue (Humphrey Bogart) confronts Nazi Franz Ebbing (Conrad Veidt), they have the following exchange:

Franz Ebbing: It's a great pity, Mr. Donahue, that you and I should oppose each other. We have so much in common.
Gloves Donahue: Yeah? How's that?
Ebbing: You are a man of action. You take what you want, and so do we. You have no respect for democracy - neither do we. It's clear we should be allies.
Gloves Donahue: It's clear you're screwy. I've been a registered Democrat ever since I could vote. I may not be Model Citizen Number One, but I pay my taxes, wait for traffic lights, and buy 24 tickets to the Policeman's Ball. Brother, don't get me mixed up in no league that rubs out innocent bakers.

  • Inception: While "evil" may be a strong word for what's really more along the lines of "morally ambiguous," one telling moment of Cobb's characterization is that though he had just been shown spying on dreams, when offered a chance to shoot the guy who sold him out he said "that's not the way I deal with things."
  • In Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans, the title character will lie, cheat, steal, do drugs, sexually abuse young women, plant evidence, and even commit acts of Police Brutality against the elderly, but he absolutely draws the line at murder.
  • The following immortal exchange from Arsenic and Old Lace:

Mortimer: Aunt Abbey, how can I believe you? There are twelve men down in the cellar and you admit you poisoned them!
Aunt Abbey: Yes, I did! But you don't think I'd stoop to telling a fib?!

  • As a Hitman with a Heart Leddo from The Alzheimers Case refuses to kill a child and swears that he won't let anybody do it. Harm to a child, to him, is one of the worst things a person could do.
  • In the Bond movie Licence to Kill, the villain insists on paying the corrupt DEA agent who broke him out of prison, despite his henchman scoffing at the idea. "I gave this man my word". This is someone whom we've seen beat his unfaithful girlfriend, murder her lover, had a man's wife raped and murdered, and at the time of this discussion, is preparing to torture the man himself.
  • In Kill Bill Vol. 1 Bill forbids Elle from killing The Bride while she is unconscious in a hospital bed because "That would lower us."
    • Bill's brother is willing to admit that they crossed the line when they tried to assassinate The Bride. Though he also hold her accountable for breaking Bill's heart.
  • In The Social Network, Mark felt that Sean's treatment of Eduardo after the latter gets fired from the company as going too far. He was also disgusted when he heard that Sean was partying and doing drugs with underaged interns.
  • In X Men the Last Stand, Magneto reacts with horror when he notices that Phoenix is about to kill Charles Xavier. In addition, when Pyro indicates that he would have killed Xavier if Magneto commanded him to do so, Magneto immediately rebukes him for the comment, telling him that his greatest regret was Xavier's death.
  • In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, one of the legends about the pearl is that it's captain was "so evil that Hell itself spat him back out." Though, of course, this turned out not to be true.
  • Even for a Complete Monster likeFilm/TheWomanInBlack, stealing the souls of Arthur and his son after they are hit by a train, especially after the former tried his very best to appease her, would be stooping below Haman's level.
  • Meta-example: Audition features a gruesome torture sequence that disturbed Rob Zombie so much that he walked out of the theater. To give this a bit of perspective see the pages for House of 1000 Corpses and The Devils Rejects.
  • Reminding us that this isn't about levels of evil, Cheyenne from Once Upon a Time in the West refuses to kill priests, then clarifies that he means Catholic priests.
  • In A Fish Called Wanda, even the sociopathic Otto seems put off by Ken's plan to kill an old lady. Although his main motivation is that he wants her alive so that her eyewitness testimony will keep George incarcerated, his statement "wasting old ladies isn't nice" possibly suggests that he considers such an act below his standards.
  • In Smokin Aces, hitman and Torture Technician Pasquale Acosta is forced to kill the hotel's Chief of Security in order to get to his mark, Buddy Israel. Despite ruthless torture being Acosta's main gimmick, he goes out of his way to kill the Chief painlessly, and holds and comforts him as he dies, all because the Chief was not the person he was hired to kill. Acosta even tells the Chief to close his eyes before he dies, so his killer's face won't have to be the last thing he sees.
  • Unforgiven: At the very end of the movie, William Munny brutally kills several men, but when a writer asks him who did he chose first, (in an effort to romanticize the brutal events that Munny committed) he rejects him by threatening with death. All the players in the movie were eager to justify their Disproportionate Retribution but Munny: He knows that he did evil things once and he’s doing evil things now, and that for that he will go to hell. He will not try to hide that from himself or anyone else.
  • In Small Soldiers the Commando Elite may be homocidal war toys but they were also programmed with the personalities of heroic, loyal, brave and honourable soldiers. Chip Hazard in particular is an excellent leader. Which means they just won't give up.
  • In The Godfather, Don Vito Corleone believes that his political connections, which regard gambling as "a harmless vice", will abandon the Family if they learn that hard drugs like heroin are being sold. Even after they agree to the trade, the Dons refuse to allow the drugs into schools or to be sold to children.
  • Played straight in The Fifth Element when the priest saves Zorg from choking, for which he agrees to spare the priest's life.
  • Sister Act: In the climax, Vince's two goons, Joey and Willy, are very reluctant to kill Dolores because they can't get it out of their heads that they're about to shoot a nun - something they just can't do. The fact that she continues to pray during the whole ordeal, combined Reverend Mother's insistence that she did, indeed find God while at the convent (which may have been true, actually), only made it harder for them. Eventually they tell her to take the habit off so she won't look like a nun, which might have worked—but then she manages to catch them off guard, slug them both in the stomachs, and make a break for it.
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