Moral Event Horizon/Anime and Manga

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • As a Dark Fantasy series, Berserk has many villains that perform really sickening acts. Most of them are monsters in general, but in terms of crossing the Horizon, several characters stand out.
    • The choice to Sacrifice in general is a crossing of one's personal Moral Event Horizon. It entails taking the person or people you most love and killing them in the most nightmarish fashion imaginable, consigning them to a Cruel and Unusual Death at the hands of some of the most horrifying monsters ever to grace the pages of manga. This acts to cut you off from humanity and open yourself up to evil, facilitating your transformation into a demonic monster yourself. And as if this wasn't bad enough, it's also mentioned that those who get sacrificed in the creation of a demon not only die horribly, but their souls are condemned to an eternity in Hell. (Then again, considering the lack of mention of a heaven, it would appear that hell is the regular destination of pretty much everyone.)
      • Probably the biggest and most heinous example of this occurs during the Eclipse after Griffith crosses the Despair Event Horizon near the end of the Golden Age arc (which is about the point where the anime ends as well) and activates his Crimson Behelit. Griffith, Guts and everyone in the Band of the Hawk gets transported to the Nexus, a place that to mortal eyes looks downright Hellish, where the Godhand and pretty much every demon in the Berserk universe has gathered. Griffith, distraught over the destruction of his dream and wanting more than anything to have a second chance, does a truly malignant Face Heel Turn, choosing to sacrifice all of the Hawks in order to become the fifth member of the Godhand, Femto. And as if all this wasn't bad enough, Griffith then goes the extra mile across the Horizon with his very first act upon being incarnated as Femto, which is to brutally rape Casca to insanity right in front of Guts, who is being pinned down mere feet away from the act after he had just made the dire decision to chisel off his left arm in a last attempt to save her. This is the king of moral event horizons in this series, and anime and manga in general. After this, Griffith acting like a hero when he is reincarnated on Earth tends to be just a little bit ironic.
      • Particularly because the vessel that Griffith used for his reincarnation on Earth was Guts and Casca's child, which was conceived just before the Eclipse, but which was corrupted by what Griffith did to Casca as Femto. A kid that, had all of this not happened, would possibly have been Griffith's godson. Yeah.
    • Gambino, Guts's gruff mentor/father figure, loses all our sympathy after he sells Guts, who was just eight years old at the time, to a paedophile soldier named Donovan for three silver coins. Particularly when we learn Gambino's reason for it immediately before Guts kills him in self-defense—he called Guts "disgusting" and felt that he "can't be raised to be loyal like a dog," since Gambino blamed the kid for the death of his lover Shisu from the plague.
    • The King of Midland, who after ordering Griffith thrown in the dungeons and put to the torture for having sex with his daughter Princess Charlotte, tries to force himself on her out of madness. Charlotte just barely manages to fight him off, and the experience alienates her from her father, to the point where she won't even acknowledge him on his deathbed.
      • Don't forget how he basically orders the Band of the Hawk, a group that has done nothing but fight faithfully in his name, wiped out as punishment for Griffith's behavior, something they had nothing to do with, and sends a group of vicious killers (including a really nasty Apostle) after Guts and his friends after they rescue Griffith.
    • Inquisitor "Bloody Scripture" Mozgus is just as horrible as you'd expect a fanatical religious nutjob with too much power and not a shred of objectivity can get. While it's pretty obvious from the start that he's Bad News, when a band of starving refugees attempts to steal some of the ample foodstuffs sent to Mozgus and his retinue, he spots among them a woman with a starving infant. When she begs him to feed her child, he gently takes her along to his residence, lauding her courage and dedication. He sends away the child to be fed and cared for, then escorts her to a room while extolling the fact that while her intentions were good, she still has to expiate her sins... Then he opens the door, where we see the other refugees being horribly tortured, and the poor woman is dragged, stripped, and tied to another torture device over her increasingly frantic pleas... Then the door closes. It's as nightmarish as it sounds, if not more so.
      • Then you find out the kid dies anyway and I don't mean when Griffith is being reborn.
    • As bad as those are the worst has to be Emperor Ganishka. If you name it he has done it: ethnic cleansing, putting POWs on the front lines, wide spread torture, attempted rape (of Charlotte, again) to more horrifying examples like turning the Midland capitol into a city of death, using black magic to conjure evil spirits to fight for him forcing pregnant women into pits of chained apostles to produce demon soldiers who tear their way out of their still living mothers and finally using an artificial means to becoming an even more powerful demon that would destroy everything. All the while bragging about making the world into hell. He has not crossed the moral event horizon. He is the black hole causing it.
      • Just consider this: Post-Eclipse!Griffith went against him. And quite a bunch of fans actively cheered for him! How do you turn one of the most despicable bastards in the Berserkverse into an anti-hero? Pit him against this Adolf Hitler Expy!
    • During the Eclipse Slan a demon woman commenting on how delicious the whole ordeal of Casca getting raped by Griffith as Femto is while Guts is forced to watch. She even sounds like she's having an orgasm and sheds a tear of joy.
  • Elfen Lied: When the cruel kids from Lucy's childhood forced her to watch as they beat the puppy that she had started caring for to death, just to get any kind of reaction from her at all, they crossed the Moral Event Horizon to the point that Lucy snapping and murdering them all by making their heads a splode in a Beware the Nice Ones moment was almost too good for them.
    • Lucy herself, when she dismembers Nana after she has neutralized the threat she had posed. And let's not forget the brutal and unprovoked murder of Kouta's sister Kanae and his father in what's basically a hissy-fit of jealousy. For that, Lucy spent the rest of the series trying to be The Atoner to Kouta. Plenty of people thought that there could be no atonement for it.
      • Some would also include Lucy trying to kill Mayu after Mayu tried to save her life. Wow, what an ungrateful bitch!
  • Shion Sonozaki killing Satoko in the Meakashi-hen arc of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and forcing her sister Mion to watch. Even she admits that she's pretty much beyond all salvation at that point. Which is, in an odd way, why she decides to add two more corpses to the pile.
  • Tetsuo crossed one of these himself. Tired of having to be rescued by Kaneda and wanting independence, he felt ecstatic when he developed superpowers while in custody of the millitary. When Kaneda does arrive to rescue him, and military soldiers show up, he blows them away, hurting Kaneda in the process. Instead of showing any sympathy for him or sorrow for what happened to him whatsoever, he just laughed and said "Oh, that's right. I forgot you were there!" And boasted on how he won't need to be rescued anymore, even proceeding to attack Kaneda again... this time on purpose! Attacking your own friend with NO remorse!? That's just wrong.
    • And when I say he laughed, I mean that it was a MANIACAL CACKLE!
      • And just to drive home the point that he's too far gone to be saved, he later BRUTALLY murders his former friend Yamagata.
    • In the manga, Tetsuo's lieutenant crosses it by shooting Tetsuo's Morality Chain Kaori In the Back, for no good reason. She ends up bleeding to death in Tetsuo's arms.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion has Gendo Ikari, leader of NERV and Shinji's Jerkass father, cross the line when, following Shinji's refusal to destroy an Angel-possessed Evangelion Unit-03, he activates the Dummy-Plug system to carry out its destruction, nearly killing its pilot Toji Suzuhara, Shinji's classmate and friend in the process. All as his son is screaming at him to stop making him fight against his will and Gendo can clearly hear him over the transmission but does nothing. It's worse in the manga adaptation because Toji actually dies from the wounds that Shinji is made to inflict upon him.
    • While the Human Instrumentality Project is twisted enough, Keel Lorenz and the old men of SEELE truly cross the line in End of Evangelion when, having deemed NERV and the Eva Units past the point of use to them, they send the JSSDF to slaughter everyone at NERV Base, and also send in their own mass-produced EVA Units to kill Asuka, a 14 year old child, in a merciless and gruesome manner.
    • Naoko Akagi was a real piece of work to start with, but when she strangled the first Rei Ayanami, a small child, to death with her bare hands, in a jealous rage all because Rei had repeated unflattering words about Naoko that Gendo had said in front of her, she went over the line. And she seemed to recognize it, given what came next.
    • It's debatable if the Angels are even capable of crossing the MEH given their nature, but the last couple of Angels do some downright unforgivable things: Arael's notorious Mind Rape of Asuka in episode 22, Amishael's sexual penetration, Mind Screw Breaking Speech, and destruction of Rei II and Unit 0 in episode 23, and Adam/Lilith/Giant Naked Rei utterly breaking Shinji's psyche to the point where he sets Instrumentality in motion in End of Evangelion. And VERY arguably, Tabris/Kaworu befriending Shinji despite knowing that one would have to kill the other eventually played a big part in making that last one possible.
  • In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's second movie, Lagann-Hen, the Anti-Spiral analyzes and dissolves Nia... By mounting her naked body and grasping her with tentacles. At that point, he stopped being a Well-Intentioned Extremist and started looking like a reject from Legend of the Overfiend.
  • Gantz has its share of these folks:
    • Nishi, already established as a major-league Jerkass, eventually murders his entire class except for one girl, who had given him a love note.
      • Well, to be fair, it wasn't exactly unprovoked. That class had just tried to kill him by throwing him out of a window
    • Izumi disguises himself as a black man and goes on a shooting spree in a crowded train station, killing hundreds simply to provide players for Gantz and to set himself up to get back into the game.
      • He outdoes himself in Chapter 184 by killing Tae Kojima in front of Kei Kurono. Even though it was Gantz who ordered Tae's death, many members of the team outright refused to follow this mission. And what did Izumi say afterwards?! "Game over, huh?" WITH A SMIRK ON HIS FUCKING FACE. If that doesn't cement Izumi as a Complete Monster, nothing does.
    • Reika arguably crosses the line when unbeknownst to everyone else, she passes up the chance to revive a dead player and has Gantz create a duplicate of Kurono, simply because she couldn't get over him.
      • Debatable, since her making a clone of Kurono doesn't explicitly hurt anyone (except maybe the clone), and Old Man died happy.
        • Old Man died an horrible death, and despite being old and despite hallucinating about his lost wife before losing consciousness (not that he would have remembered that, if he was revived, anyway), he never ever said he was content to give up living. Unlike Sakata (who clearly asked NOT to be revived, should he die in a mission), Old Man never even thought about wanting to end it: he was a man full of energy and happy to be alive. On a side note, the Kurono "clone" is so traumatized that, when Reika confesses, that he's very close to killing her in retaliation (he doesn't, but he's still very shocked).
      • Take into account the large amount of evidence that Gantz doesn't revive people, he recreates them (with the possible exception of Tae Kojima, whom he pulled into his memory banks before she actually died). Whether or not the Old Man was brought back, the original would still likely be dead.
  • Perhaps Nakago of Fushigi Yuugi had crossed lots of these before and throughout the series, but the most jarring one is when Suboshi kills Tamahome's entire family, most of whom were children barely the age of ten, in what he believes is an act of revenge for his very much alive twin brother Amiboshi. It hurts even more when you realize that Tamahome had arrived just in time for his favorite, youngest sibling Yuiren to die in his arms, and that the second child Chuuei had tried to protect his siblings.
    • Let's not forget that Nakago is STILL to blame for that one. While Suboshi was the one who killed Tamahome's siblings and dad, Nakago was the one who coldly suggested such actions as a "valid" revenge, clearly knowing that Suboshi had crossed the Despair Event Horizon after believing that he had lost the twin brother he adored and idolized, and that he was one step away from doing horrible things to get what he thought of as Revenge. Guess what, he did.
  • One Piece,
    • The World Government re-enacts the Massacre of the Innocents to find the child of Gold Roger. That and the following below, will probably earn what should be the good guys in the story, a likely overthrow which is probably going to happen if the series has a happy ending.
    • The third one was seen riding a man and kicking him the head for not going fast enough. When a doctor and a nurse were trying to get to the hospital to bring in an injured man when they should be bowing to him, the World Noble simply kicked the injured man to the ground. When he saw that the nurse was a beauty, he promptly named her his newest wife, and when her fiancee stood up to him, he shot him and dragged the crying nurse away.
      • Later, he wanted to buy Camie, just to see if a mermaid could out-swim his tank full of piranhas. And when Hachi arrive to try to save Camie and is exposed as not human, he shot Hachi, just because, and gleefully declared how he had shot a fishman in front of Camie and a whole audience and how he got this fishman for free.
      • The audience (excluding the pirates) were just as bad. They started laughing at Hachi and saying how thankful they were that someone had shot the monster.
    • Vice Admiral Onigumo. He has no problems about killing his subordinate and over a 1000 other marines as long as he kills manages to kill the pirates.
    • Admiral Akainu definitely takes the cake here. In his debut, he orders the destruction of a civilian ship, all because it might just contain an escaped archaeologist. He would then show up later to execute a lowly mook, after he saw how outclassed he was fighting with the upper class pirates and marines at Marineford, for just wanting to go home and be with his family.
    • Captain Kuro spent year after year after year posing as a man named Klahadore and serving as the butler to Kaya, whose father had supposedly saved his life and let him work there. Since Kaya's father passed away, Kuro became the closest thing Kaya had to a father figure, and the two of them did many things together. Turns out, Kuro was biding his time all for the day when he could kill Kaya and claim her inheritance money, which he'd use to retire from piracy for good. The real sick part? Killing Kaya wasn't truly necessary - Kuro wanted to do it for peace of mind, because he'd secretly hated Kaya all these years, finding tending to her whims to be degrading! And he tells this all right to Kaya's face when confronted about it, leading to a big Break the Cutie moment that rightfully enrages Usopp. It's no wonder Kuro is deemed irredeemable.
    • Arlong is far over the line. Even after we find out that he killed Nami's adoptive mother for not having the money to pay a toll that he just imposed on the town, it looks as if he's at least willing to let Nami work to buy her town back. So he lets her join his crew and work tirelessly for eight years to earn the 100 million beri that she needs to meet his price by going out and robbing pirates on the side. And then, when she only has one voyage's worth of money left to earn, he sends a corrupt Naval officer to steal all of the money she worked for eight years to collect. And when she confronts him about it, he has the gall to simply smile at her and ask "What promise did I break?". And then? He laughs.
    • The latest is practically the entire city of Goa: they arrange a pirate crew to burn down the massive junkyard next to the city and everyone living in it, as the sight of refuse and poverty could offend some visiting nobles. As if this isn't enough, they also trap the pirate crew in the firestorm outside the city walls, so they don't have to award them the noble titles they promised. They talk about all this as if it were a pleasant spring cleaning.
    • Hody Jones, a member of the Big Bad Duumvirate in the currently ongoing Fishman Island arc, proves himself to be even worse than Arlong! As if using a fishman as a human shield was bad enough (which was something Arlong never did, and even berated Luffy for doing so) since Hordy pretty much despises humans and fishmen who has compassion for the former, he takes over the kingdom with King Neptune hostage and decides to start killing all those who signed the signatures that Queen Otohime had worked for. Judging from her success, he's willing to kill thousands.
      • But wait, there's more! During the scene described above, Jones has the entire royal family in chains, and yells for everyone who is able to hear, with a bigass Slasher Smile in his face, that he was the one that murdered Otohime. Not only that, he tells that directly to Otohime's daughter, Princess Shirahoshi. However, when Shirahoshi reveals that she was already aware of Jones' guilt, he gets pissed off. It is at that point that you can be sure that all the preaching he has done up until that point is pretty much a lame excuse for wreaking chaos.
      • Oh, it gets even worse. Shortly after the above, he backstabs Van Der Decken, the other half of the Big Bad Duumvirate, and makes sure to time it so that his devil fruit power shuts off right when he needs it to. This wouldn't be much of a problem... if it weren't for the fact that Decken's devil fruit power was holding up an enormous ship over Fishman Island. That's right, folks, Hodi's going to wipe out Fishman Island for shits and giggles.
      • Speaking of which, Van Der Decken is no better than Hody. For one thing, he willingly partnered with Hody to overthrow Fishman Island's monarchy, with the side benefit of getting Shirahoshi for himself...and when Hachi (a former ally of Arlong, who Hodi held in high regard) tried to persuade them to call off their plans, what was Decken's response? He used his Devil Fruit ability to impale Hachi with arrows to the point of near-death. Oh, and let's not forget his willingness to flatten Fishman Island with a big frickin' boat just because he's a Stalker with a Crush.
    • For the longest time, even after it was revealed they ordered Ohara burned to the ground, some fans were willing to give the Five Elders a pass. After all, they were trying to protect the world from ancient weapons of mass destruction. Then came the ending of the Marineford Arc, in which they order the escape of many vicious criminals from Impel Down covered up, and it became apparent that they're more concerned with their own power and image than protecting the world. This one was so bad, Sengoku and Garp resigned on the spot rather than work for a government that would condone such things.
    • And then we have what is likely the true Big Bad of the series proper, Imu. Just looking at this... being is enough to assure most fans it is up to no good, but its cruelty is confirmed when it obliterates the entire nation of Lulusia simply to prevent Sabo (who has sought refuge there) from reporting Imu's existence. While the Five Elders at least showed some remorse for having to destroy Ohara - and at least did so as part of their overall goal of quashing information relating to the Void Century - Imu shows no emotion whatsoever for this act of genocide done simply to protect its pride. This becomes even worse when Sabo is discovered to be alive many episodes later, meaning this atrocity had been committed for nothing.
  • In Naruto, Sasuke Uchiha has clearly crossed the horizon, but being one of the primary protagonists makes it far less likely to stick. He's done morally questionable things like: attacking Killerbee (a man that has never wronged him), killing all the Samurai guarding the Kage Summit and abandoning Juugo and Suigetsu, but finally cemented it when he stabbed his very quirky but otherwise genuinely loyal teammate Karin (who is no saint herself, yet she's still a little sympathetic and, as mentioned, is truly loyal to, and in love with him) when Danzo took her hostage, just because the fact that she could be taken hostage made her a burden to him. Even though she survives the attack, Sasuke is all too willing to finish her off. Then he's willing to stab his former friend Sakura in the back when she shows up at the scene. Plus there's the whole "wipe out all of Konoha" thing, because he thinks the villagers' smiles are at the expense of his clan that was exterminated to stop them from performing a coup d'etat.
    • Then there's Tobi, whose most despicable acts include: his actions in the Uchiha Clan Massacre, where there was a very good chance that he was using its then-leader Fugaku (Itachi and Sasuke's father) and starting the Coup all in an attempt to get his former Clan killed off-and it works, since Konoha's elders were forced to kill them off using Itachi Uchiha against them. It is later revealed he killed the ANBU guards protecting the place where Kushina Uzumaki was giving birth, then killed Taji and Hiruzen's wife Biwako and took Naruto, who was only minutes old at the time hostage, threatening to kill the newborn unless Minato handed over the Kyuubi so he could attack the Hidden Leaf. He then tops himself again in the next chapter when he throws Naruto into the air before trying to stab him. Minato manages to grab Naruto before he can before noticing that Tobi had secretly stuck explosive tags to the blanket wrapped around Naruto. Minato gets rid of the blanket and manages to escape with Naruto, taking him to a safe place. Following that, there's a scene where Tobi extracts the Kyuubi from Kushina (who, keep in mind, just gave birth to Naruto) leaving her weak and almost powerless. He compliments her for staying alive even after the Kyuubi was taken out of her before saying "And who better to kill you than the Kyuubi" and attempting to have the demonic fox crush her. Fortunately, Minato saves her and teleports them to where Naruto is. Tobi leaves with the Kyuubi to attack the Leaf Village and Minato, who is more than a little angry at this point, goes after Tobi.
    • Kabuto Yakushi was always a very shady figure, but had not super crossed the MEH. Until now, when he's reviving many antagonists and other powerful warriors, to use them in his plans. This doesn't only include the Akatsuki members (save for Hidan), but Kages, Jinchuuriki, and at least half a dozen other extremely powerful ninja... all of them with emotional ties to actually living characters. Like, oh, Haku, Zabuza, Shikamaru's dead sensei Asuma, and Tsunade's dead boyfriend Dan, to start...? Not even Tobi, the Big Bad, likes such things...
      • And let's not forget what he does to Anko Mitarashi after defeating her in combat: using her as a a sort-of Barrier Maiden by keeping her alive and slowly draining her life away to absorb the rest of Orochimaru's power.
    • The Fourth Kazekage crosses the MEH with his treatment of his son, Gaara. He has a demon sealed into the boy at birth, completely isolates him from his family save for his uncle Yashamaru. Who he then orders to attempt to kill Gaara and tell him that he, the only person to ever love Gaara or show him kindness, and his mother hated him. Just to see what happens. Yashamaru did so against his will, and promptly killed himself to clinch it. And when the emotionally fragile, socially isolated child reacts badly to the fact that no one's ever loved him, he decides to have the kid murdered. No wonder Gaara turned out like he did, at least until Naruto intervened in his life. It's so bad that the Kazekage actually comes to admit that he was a total bastard after he's revived via Edo Tensei and Gaara dealed him a massive and magnificent call-out.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Envy. Oh sure, we'd known from his first appearance that he's evil and will kill you if it's amusing or he's ordered to, but one of two scenes becomes his Moral Event Horizon crossing, depending on who you are:
    • For some, he irreparably crossed the line when he killed Hughes after turning into his wife Gracia to keep him from striking back, and triggering some of the series' biggest Tear Jerkers.
    • And if that didn't do it for you, there's still no way you can put this guy in leather pants (at least not without people questioning your sanity) after he gleefully describes in the manga how he started the Ishbalan war by turning into a war-opposing soldier and shooting an innocent child. His absolutely cheerful description of the events that happened after he shot the child, how it ruined the life of the soldier he turned himself into, and how humans are so easy to manipulate revealed him for the monster he really is. What he said got Ed so angry that he punched Envy in the face so hard that Envy's face had to regenerate immediately afterwards.
    • Let's not forget Shou Tucker. He is so twisted that he turned his own five-year-old daughter Nina into a chimera by fusing her with their pet dog Alexander, creating a horrible abomination whose entire life consisted of pain that would later have to be mercy-killed by Scar. While the main reason he did this is because he was being pressured that without "interesting" results from his experiments, the government would kick him out, Tucker later admits that he "didn't have a reason", and eventually would have gotten around to doing it just to prove he could. Apparently, this isn't the first time Tucker did that either - he also transformed his wife into a chimera, and she succumbed to Death by Despair.
    • "Doctor Goldtooth" from the manga spends most of his screentime crossing the Moral Event Horizon. He's responsible for experimenting on people to make human-based homunculi; except for the one who became Wrath/King Bradley, all of the subjects died or were rendered mindless and used as Elite Mooks, and he later slits Riza's throat in an attempt to force Roy Mustang to open the gate. He does so without any remorse or regard for human life, and it's thus very satisfying to see him being impaled from behind by Pride while he boasts about Wrath's skill as one of his creations.
    • Father from the manga and second anime wiped out the nation of Xerxes just so he could absorb half the souls and gain a body.
    • Dante, the Big Bad of the first anime, who creates and maintains a military dictatorship and has her minions, the homunculi, go around stirring up conflicts and encouraging people to engage in forbidden alchemy and human sacrifice — all for one goal, to create the magic stone that will allow her to keep on living forever. Not to mention there's how she kidnaps Ed's friend Rose and her baby, pretty much brainwashing the already mentally-broken Rose into an Empty Shell that will be her host.
    • Pride from the first anime plows right through the Moral Event Horizon at the end of the series when he remorselessly strangles his son Selim to death for bringing his remains (having no idea what they really were) to him during his battle with Roy.
  • Sosuke Aizen from Bleach has had many of these. The most recent, and arguably the worst of them all? Using his powers to fool Hitsugaya into thinking he's stabbing him...when in reality, the one he's stabbing is Momo Hinamori, Aizen's own ex-lieutenant, as well as the person Hitsugaya has sworn to protect. Hitsugaya's horrified screams as the illusion breaks and sees what he has done to Momo are EPIC. So brilliant. So cruel. Guess he'll still have his leather pants on, though.
    • Many readers consider Mayuri Kurotsuchi to have crossed the horizon when he tortured Ishida's grandfather to death along with over 2000 other Quincy, and then showed Ishida a photo of his grandfather's corpse. Keep in mind that he had no idea of Ishida's relationship with his grandfather at that point, he just showed the photograph to him to taunt him.
      • And he's still outdone by his even more Evil Counterpart, Szayel Aporro Ganz. Not only he takes delight on torturing Renji and the aforementioned Ishida slowly and painfully, but when Kurotsuchi and his lieutenant Nemu arrive to face him, just as Kurotsuchi is about to defeat him he grabs a captured Nemu, rapes her with tentacles to forcibly impregnate her, and kills the poor girl (one of the biggest Woobies on the whole Bleach, natch) after emerging from her body, leaving an empty husk. This is so squicky and cruel that a good part of the fandom saw the Fate Worse Than Death that Kurotsuchi dealt to him as something to cheer for.
      • Yammy was always an ass, but he really crossed the line when he killed the nurse that reattached his arm.
      • Nnoitra does this when he hints he intends to rape Orihime at some point (he stuck his fingers deep in her mouth in the manga for crying out loud), and in the backstory, his hatred towards Nel led him to collaborate with Szayel so he could take away her powers because he was jealous of her for being stronger than him and then he kicks her out of Hueco Mundo. Not to mention, he immobilized Orihime and forced her to watch as he has his subordinate Tesla beat Ichigo to death. Thanks to a Big Damn Heroes moment by Kenpachi, however, Ichigo is safe and Orihime heals him.
      • We also have Big Bad Duumvirate Tsukishima and Ginjo conspiring to cross the MEH with each other's help. The first brainwashes almost everyone Ichigo cares for to turn them against him and break him in body, mind and soul, and the other sets up a Memory Gambit that involves erasing his own memories of being an enemy, to get close to Ichigo and train him up until it's the moment to break him. Horrible and brilliant at the same time.
        • Made even worse/better/etc. when Orihime and Chad start to shake off said brainwashing. This is what happens, as Tsukishima takes his Mind Rape of them even further and to the point of almost killing them. Eeeeeugh. That one was so un-needed that Ginjo told him to cut it... bringing up Fridge Horror as he strongly implies that Tsukishima has either killed or tortured his victims into almost insanity before.
      • Subverted in the case of Yukio. He gleefully claimed to have crossed this via driving his parents to suicide, but Hitsugaya quickly deduces (and shows!) that he wasn't as heartfelt and happy about it as he believed, driving Yukio to defend his parents and to a Villainous Breakdown.
      • The Big Bad of the final arc, Yhwach, crossed it in his backstory. In order to augment his own power, Yhwach power-drained and thus killed off the "Gemischt" and "Echt" Quincies regarded as "impure".
  • Freezing has Louis L. Bridgette, the leading female's half brother. Sure, it was sick that as a kid, he had a creepy fondness for touching Satella that led her to having severe issues, and everybody in the forums were clamoring for his castration. But now? His obsession with her has exploded to the point he rapes another woman just because she looks like Satella. Seriously, WTF.
    • Mark Spencer, the head of the Chevalier and overseer of the E-Pandora project. He deems the E-Pandoras as something that can be easily replaced and tortures Elizabeth simply because she tried to fight against this injustice.
  • Several Pretty Cure villains "parked in the red zone":
    • In Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, Lord Akudaikahn freezes the Kiryuu twins in time and condemns their bodies to the bottom of the drink, and Gooyan betrays his master, revealing himself to be the main villain.
    • In Yes! Pretty Cure 5, Girinma turns a memento of Urara's dead mother into a Kowaina.
    • In Fresh Pretty Cure, Cline kills Setsuna just because she ultimately saw Love as a true friend, and Northa tries brainwashing Setsuna back into Labyrinth, pressing Love's Berserk Button in the process.
    • In Heartcatch Pretty Cure, Dune turns the entire world into a desert.
    • In Suite Pretty Cure, Mephisto subverts this when he brainwashes Siren just as she's about to see the light. Turns out, he had literally lost control of himself because of Noise brainwashing him, as revealed in episode 36, and Noise was the one that crossed the MEH with Mephisto's act.
  • Light Yagami of Death Note has his at varying points in the story, his first coming very early in the story when he kills Lind L. Tailor. They just get more and more extreme until after Kiyomi Takada, his former girlfriend and now follower, kills Mello. She calls him from Mello's truck, naked, crying and terrified. He coldly tells her to continue writing as many names as she can, and hangs up. Then, as the task force is driving to find her, Light writes on the piece in his watch that the poor girl dies by burning to death, so that all the evidence is destroyed. If Light still had fans by that point, they were gone after that.
    • Horrifyingly, no, they weren't. Some rabid fans even LIKED to see him kill Takada. Others simply agreed with his morality and methods.
    • An argument can be made that he crossed it even earlier, when he started killing people already facing legal justice for their crimes. At the beginning he was intervening in crimes in progress (specifically, hostage-taking and sexual assault), and cleaning up after the justice system's failures a'la Dexter is somewhat forgivable, but negating its successes and attempting to make the entire criminal justice system completely worthless is doing more harm than good.
    • Special mention needs to go to what Light does to Naomi Misora because this is a) The first time he murders a character that is unambiguously good and still have the nerve to childishly gloat about it. b) He forces her to commit suicide, possibly while she is aware of the fact she is being supernaturally controlled but no longer capable of resisting it. and c) Her parents will never find out what happened to their daughter. Seriously, Light got away lightly by being killed off quickly, even in the manga.
    • When his father Souchiro is on his deathbed, does Light care? Nope, he just wants to know Mello's real name.
    • In the Live Action Adaptation, Light crosses this (in addition to some of the above examples) either in the first movie, when he wrote his girlfriend Shiori's name in the Death Note and set her to be killed by Naomi Misora, or in the second one, where he wrote his father Soichirou's name. Even Misa thought he went too far on the latter one and cried when it happened.
  • Quite a few Yu Yu Hakusho villains have fun crossing the horizon, some of them being Complete Monsters. Three of them are particularly extreme examples, though all of them get what's coming to them.
    • Gonzo Tarukane had Yukina belittled and tortured just to produce the valuable gems her race produces. And gets killed by Younger Toguro.
    • Suzaku commanded all the humans under his control to hunt down and kill Keiko, then tortured Yusuke and forced him to watch Keiko and Botan get nearly killed. Yusuke nearly gives up his life energy to kill him.
    • The first super example is Elder Toguro, who happens to cross the MEH twice. The first time, he brutally impaled Kuwabara over and over again, slammed him to the floor from extreme heights, then attempted to break his psyche by using his morphing powers to recreate a sickeningly twisted version of Genkai's death right in front of Kuwabara, who didn't know. The second time is when he took control of Makihara AKA Gourmet (who ate him under orders of his boss Sensui), with Makihara losing control and sanity at a rapid pace, then forced Makihara to kill himself while he was still conscious, and took insane pleasure in doing it. Luckily he got what he deserved thanks to Kurama. Elder Toguro, who is immortal, will suffer his worst nightmares for eternity.
    • The second of the extreme examples is Mukuro's stepfather, who had her fitted with cybernetics to make her a sex slave at birth, raping her since she was a child until she poured acid on herself to make herself undesirable and escaped. He also gets what he deserves, due to a combined effort between Kurama and Hiei. He is attached to a parasitic plant that will paralyze him and regenerate any wounds that he receives, and is given to Mukuro to torture whenever she wants as revenge for what he did.
      • There's a third extreme example we're forgetting. Remember Dr Ichigaki? If you don't, let me remind you: First, he poisons a famous martial artist in such a way that everyone believes he'll die of an almost untreatable illness. Second, when his desperate disciples ask for the cure, he promises to cure them only if they become his guinea pigs for an experiment and his team for the Tournament... but deep down he has already decided not to keep his promise. Third, he brainwashes and transforms the disciples into pretty much heartless zombies, placing a... THING on their backs that is killing them slowly and keeping them under his thumb, and under his influence the three beat Kuwabara savagely, unable to do anything. Therefore, it's a HUGE relief to see Genkai managing to save the three guys, and then Ichigaki trying to pump himself with drugs to become a super fighter and getting satisfyingly curbstomped by Yusuke.
  • A good example of a dog-raping that pushes you over the Despair Event Horizon is when thugs break into your house and murder your entire family, which is exactly what happens to Yurippe in a flashback in episode 2 of Angel Beats!.
    • Yuri herself almost crosses the line in the manga by killing all the students, starting with the first graders. The scary thing is, she would've done so then and there had Hinata not intervened before the first murder was supposed to take place.
  • Almost everyone in School Days crosses this at one point or another.
    • Makoto Itou: Pick your poison, but one good choice is tongue-kissing Kotonoha in front of Sekai just to hammer the point home that they're through... when she's (apparently) pregnant with his baby!
    • Sekai Saionji: Murdering Makoto in the bloodiest way possible, natch. Of course, it only counts because the way it's carried out it's basically Disproportionate Retribution for being a major asshole for much of the series. Other than that, it's more forgivable than the others' atrocities, since at least she has an excuse for it (see the spoiler for Makoto's MEH for more on that).
      • In the manga, killing Kotonoha and then taunting Makoto when he finds out. In that one, she has next-to-no excuse.
    • Kotonoha Katsura: Double murder (probably), plus the contents of her bag... Makoto's head.
    • Taisuke Sawanaga: Raping Kotonoha during the School Festival, taking advantage of her Heroic BSOD.
    • Natsumi Koizumi, Kumi Mouri, and Minami Obuchi: Taking advantage of a school tradition to tape couples have sex... and then show the footage to the whole school, just for the lulz. The victims include: Sekai's friend Nanami, who gets taped and exposed by them while having sex with her sempai and boyfriend and has her reputation completely ruined among the other students., and their supposed friend Otome who is seen having sex with Makoto in that same place (which lets Sekai know that Makoto's cheating on her now), AND whose feelings they then ignore again by having sex with Makoto just for the hell of it, right after the whole festival mess..
  • In Wolf Guy Wolfen Crest Haguro Dou manipulates the younger Kuroda into going Columbine on half the student body out of vengeance against Inugami for his brother's death. Using weapons from his family gun cellar. The kicker? His brother died because HAGURO pulled his life-support.
    • Also, Haguro beat his subordinate Chiba within an inch of his life, biting off his tongue, and then raping him for good measure to the point that Chiba ends up dying from a combination of ruptured organs, blood loss, and broken ribs. Thankfully, Inugami gave Chiba some of his blood which ended up bringing Chiba back to life. Why did Haguro do such a thing? Because Chiba ended up encountering Inugami out on the streets and talked to him for maybe 15 minutes when Haguro wasn't around. Haguro is Yandere for Inugami's werewolf form, you see.
    • He and his goons gangraped Aoshika (a teacher who ends up falling in love with Inugami, and became his Morality Chain) while recording it so that Inugami can see, practically talking to the camera (and, therefore, to Inugami) through the entire thing in the hopes that Inugami (who left due to Haguro's actions) will come back to him.
      • No, he didn't only rape her. Haguro also gave Aoshika a Psycho Serum that warped her mind so throughly that she enjoyed her own rape. All to break her further and have "revenge" on her for daring to attract Inugami's attention. No wonder she thinks she's been Defiled Forever and it takes Inugami a LOT to give her back a little bit of hope.
    • Haguro also fired an MGL-140, which is a semi-automatic grenade launcher, at the school. Thus committing the SECOND school shooting of the series. The attack hospitalizes Aoshika, and she later identifies him as the shooter. Long story short, there's a very good reason Haguro is considered a Complete Monster.
    • While minor compared to her "boyfriend" Haguro, Ryuuko Kounuma also crossed the MEH via selling out Aoshika to Haguro in her wish to not be used as a bait for Inugami, in what can be easily interpreted as making sure Aoshika will be either super-broken or dead as retaliation for Inugami liking her more than Ryuuko.
    • And then there's when Haguro tries to kill Aoshika because he thinks Inugami's too good for her right after practically ruining her life with the abovementioned gangrape and when Inugami shows up to stop this, Haguro slices off Inugami's fingers, eats them, and gets a boner for managing to hurt him, before slicing off his arm and attempting to kill Inugami.
  • Vamdemon/Myostismon was the Digimon series's first Really Big Bad. If his string of Kick the Dog moments - he tortures and kills his Mooks, he captured Tailmon/Gatomon when she set out looking for her partner on her own and literally whipped her into a Child Soldier, he has his followers invade the entire city of Tokyo and kidnap its children to weed out the eighth Chosen One, and that's for starters - don't gradually nudge him over the Moral Event Horizon, then Wizardmon's child-scarring death - taking an attack meant to kill Tailmon and Hikari, by the way - certainly does. It makes it downright beautiful when the fact that Vamdemon just made it extra personal to Tailmon and, by extension, Hikari triggers Tailmon's evolving into Angewomon and impaling him with an arrow. Even that doesn't stop him, however, and he gets even worse.
    • Piedmon crossed the line multiple times over. Genocide against the Digital Guardians, skewering poor Chumon, massacring Primary Village (which is filled with Digi-eggs of baby Digimon), turning the kids and their Digimon into keychains, and trying to outright murder the two youngest children by cutting the rope they were climbing are all things he did and took sadistic joy in doing.
    • While he wasn't as bad as Myotismon or Piedmon, Puppetmon crossed his MEH when he threatened to kill Yamato if Takeru didn't come with him...and then tried to kill the kid with a freaking gun. And if that one's arguable, then killing one of his own underlings who was begging him to take him with him is definitely going beyond the pale.
    • Machinedramon's pretty vile too. His most likely MEH moment was killing the hoard of Numemon that were trying to protect Kari by blasting them all.
  • If you think all that's bad, you haven't seen Digimon Savers. Take Yamaki, multiply his hatred of Digimon by a thousand (or more), take away his guilt, and then add in a bloodthirsty desire to kill all Digimon (not just the ones that form in the Real World) and take over the world by threatening to have the Real World and the Digital World collide, thereby destroying both. Then you have Kurata.
    • To put it in even more perspective, Well-Intentioned Extremist Yamaki, while trying to force the Digimon out of the Real World, came up with a method that probably killed them. He then used it, realized in utter horror that he had basically made it worse, and not long after did a Heel Face Turn. Smug Snake Kurata specifically made a machine to destroy Digimon permanently and then used it. Upon realizing that he had made it worse, he made it even worse.
    • Kouki from the same series had no qualms about holding an entire city hostage, not caring about the thousands of lives lost. His comrade Nanami kills Digimon out of a desire to fill a lonely void in her heart, and his other comrade Ivan is doing it to get money for his family. Kouki? Does it For the Evulz.
    • MetalPhantomon also crossed it by using the DATS agents' worst fears and memories against them in order to suck out their life energy. Thomas got it particularly bad.
  • In Digimon Tamers, Beelzemon stepped right on to the MEH, particularly in Takato's eyes, when he destroyed Leomon. If Gallantmon had been allowed to finish Beelzemon off at the end of their fight, we'd probably have thought him to be beyond redemption. But when Juri asks Gallantmon to spare him since she doesn't want anybody else to die, he does a Heel Face Turn and becomes The Atoner.
    • Yamaki spent a lot of time walking along the line, too. He had an innocent Digimon tortured to death for information, coldly says that Digimon are "just a bunch of numbers" and thus morals don't apply to them, and tries to destroy every Digimon in the world including the heroes twice. Like Beelzemon, he has a My God, What Have I Done?, backs away from the line, and undergoes a Heel Face Turn.
      • What, no D-Reaper? While it was just doing it's duty in the digital world, it crossed the line when it followed the heroes back to the real world, possessed and mind-fucked a depressed little girl , emotionally tortured said girl to make her even more miserable, and fed off her misery. Unlike the above two examples, there is no redemption for this thing.
  • Charon from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure accomplishes this before he even shows up, by ordering some of his Mooks to suicide bomb the Pokémon League tournament.
  • In Pokémon Special, Ghetsis was already on the line due to having raised his own son N to be brainwashed against humanity all so that he could be a puppet in his Evil Plan, but his moment officially comes after Black has defeated N. He admits to having never loved his "decorative ornament" of a son (he has a pleasant smile on his face as he says this), then tries to have Black silenced by sicking a team of Pokemon specially trained to counter Black's team so that he's left defenseless on him and intends to have Black and all his Pokemon burn alive in flames, then after he's lost the battle, he uses his associate's Pokemon to ensure that Black gets sealed inside the Light Stone while he makes his escape, mocking him as he does so! This cemented Ghetsis' status as the vilest villain of the series to date.
  • The story of the film takes absolutely no effort to hide that Kodai from Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions is a Complete Monster, but the point he really crosses this may vary from person to person. However, the most likely is when he freaking electrocutes a baby right in front of its mother. Unlike the other horrific things he did, this is really the first time he's shown doing something terrible that didn't have anything to do with his plan, as Zoroark stopped attacking the moment she saw he had Zorua. He even comes right out and says he enjoyed it directly after that. He probably didn't know at the time that absorbing the Time Ripple would wither the plant life of Crown City completely, but he sure doesn't give one fuck if it happens again. Furthermore, he MURDERS ZOROARK IN FRONT OF HER SON (she got better) and choked out Celebi! That said, his Humiliation Conga was extremely cathartic.
    • Paul from the anime itself also crossed the line. For those who don't understand, he's gone through at least three regions discarding Pokemon that fail to live up to his standards, however flimsy the excuse would be (even in comparison to how he started, which was his brother shifting gears into becoming a full-time Breeder after choking to Pyramid King Brandon). He also has little sympathy or tolerance for failure in combat, displayed in his first onscreen battle with a Starly he released after said fight anyway! It particularly crystallized during the infamous Tag Tournament, where Paul had all his other Pokemon assault Chimchar the night before the final round, had Chimchar use attacks with no regard to friendly fire during the actual battle, refused to have it healed prior to the battle, ragequit when Zangoose came out to play, and released Chimchar afterwards, who predictably ran crying to Ash.
    • Cyrus from Diamond and Pearl arc of Pokemon anime crosses this line is when he orders Mars to blow up Iron Island, which is full of Pokemon and people living there just to prove a point about interfering with Team Galactic's great designs- sporting a Slasher Smile whilst giving that order.
      • His entire plan to destroy the universe and remake in his own image and measures he takes to accomplish it (like attack on Celestic Town or aforementioned Iron Island) qualifies for him.
    • Pokémon Hunter J is always a Complete Monster in all of her appearances, but in the "Pokémon Ranger and the Kidnapped Riolu" two-parter she really shows her cruelty when she tries to murder Ash, (a 10 year old boy), several times. First she orders her Salamence to burn the surrounding forest and fire Hyper Beam directly at him, then has her Drapion squeeze him tightly, and finally ejects him from her ship at great height. She also says that she wanted to punish Ash personally and took pleasure in trying to kill him and everytime she attacks Ash she is shown with a Slasher Smile.
    • Damian, Ash's Charmander's former trainer was already mastering Kick the Dog by abandoning Charmander after promising he'd come back, and then bragging about this to his friends. But he crossed the MEH when he refused to come back for Charmander when it began to rain and Brock straight up told him that rain would make Charmander's tail flame go out and it would die.
      • Similarly, Tepig's former trainer Shamus abandoned Tepig by tying him to a post and leaving him behind at the Battle Club. While a nasty action to take, he had told Tepig that he felt it was for Tepig's own good that he not be his Pokemon anymore and that he was remorseful for having to do it. But then we find out that it was all a big lie and Shamus was actually happy to be rid of a weakling Pokemon. And the kicker? He claims to have done this same routine on other Pokemon that he deemed too weak to bother training!
    • Lord Ghetsis of Team Plasma in the Episode N arc of Best Wishes crosses the line when he orders a mind-controlled Reshiram to incinerate everyone currently at the White Ruins...which included several members of his own team! Team Rocket even calls this out as being self-centered and deplorable.
  • Dr. Katsuragi of Sakura Gari is pretty fond of doing this. Not only is he a disgusting pedophile, he drugs, rapes and tortures Masataka (this includes whipping him and sticking a household object up his anus right after raping him) and holds his hand in boiling hot tea because of his jealousy over Masataka being the one Souma loves (when he loves Souma to an insane degree himself) and he beats his Woobie wife Asayo. Oh, and in the backstory he also persuaded Souma (who was angry with his abusive stepmother, Sakurako) into wanting to kill her: he drugged Sakurako when she was taking a bath, took Souma there and told him to kill her as revenge for his abuse, and when Souma couldn't go through with it he grabbed Souma's hand, put the knife forcefully in it and forcibly made him cut Sakurako's wrists, effectively killing her. Then, he rapes Souma almost in the spot. When Souma confronts Katsuragi on his rape and torture of Masataka, Katsuragi denies the accusation and tries to seduce Souma. He acts uninterested and mentions Masataka's name, so Katsuragi actually grabs Souma by the throat and tries to strangle him. And then karma meets up with him Spectacularly.
  • Blood+: Diva crosses it when she rapes Saya's younger brother Riku so that she can bear his child, and then kills him.
  • Hellsing: Zorin Blitz crosses it when she lays siege to the Hellsing Mansion with her forces, mind rapes Seras by delving deep into Seras' memories, forcing her to relive her painful childhood, where she had to watch her parents be murdered by gangsters and her mother's corpse being raped. While Seras is trapped in the illusion, Zorin hacks off her arm, stabs her through the back, and cuts her eyes. Bernadotte and his two remaining squad members arrive and manage to temporarily disable Zorin by shooting her multiple times and Bernadotte tries to escape with the badly wounded Seras, but Zorin kills him by stabbing him through the back with her scythe. To top it all off as Seras cradles Pip's dead body and cries for him Zorin mocks Pip calling him an "insect" and prepares to kill Seras and her fellow team members. This was enough to provoke Seras into absolutely curb stomping Zorin and her forces to death.
    • The burglars from Seras's past definitely crossed the MEH. Seras, who seems a cheerful and upbeat girl for most of the manga, has a rather dark and disturbing backstory, which seems to have happened when she was very young. It consists of her father being murdered by burglars, her mother hiding her in a cupboard to protect her, and her mother's subsequent murder by the same burglars. Seras tries to exact revenge by stabbing one of the guys in the eye with a fork. She gets shot for doing so and one of the perpetrators proceed to rape her mother's corpse, due to it being "still warm". In full view of Seras who lies on the ground bleeding profusely watching it happen and unable to do anything to stop it.
      • And Enrico Maxwell's got one too! When he started slaughtering the innocent people of London, even his trusted Alexander Anderson considered him to be an absolute lunitic.
  • Gankutsuou: Arguably, when the Count kills Franz by mistake while trying to kill Albert in a brutal and gory way in front of his mom. The fact that Albert and Franz are barely more than children doesn't help. Interestingly, this marks a significant difference with the novel, where Mercedes not only knows about his plan to fight Albert in a duel, but begs him and eventually convinces him to spare her son
    • Let's not forget Andrea Calvacanti trying to rape his own half-sister Eugenie, then seducing and bedding his own mother and finally poisoning his father. And then getting away with everything like a Karma Houdini should.
    • And Heloïse Villefort. She seems perfectly normal in her first few appearances, with a warm motherly appearance and pleasant smile. She is the stepmother of Valentine and is the second wife of the crown prosecutor Villefort. She is the biological mother of her young son Edward, from her first marriage; however, Valentine is to inherit all of the fortune, leaving her stepmother jealous because Edward doesn’t get a single penny. So when the Count seduces her and innocently introduces her to toxicology and gives her a deadly ring which releases a deadly poison Heloïse becomes murderous and tries to poison Valentine and her husband, as well as inadvertently almost poisoning Albert and poisoning one of the servants of the Villefort household. And she does all this while maintaining her angelic motherly facade up till near the end of the series when her husband finds out what she's been doing and points out that she's nothing more than a murderous insane woman. She tries to deny his accusations before she breaks down and collapses to the ground, finally giving in to her insanity. Her husband then puts her in an insane asylum for the rest of her life. Not to mention the scene where she masturbated while thinking of the Count and the poison ring he gave her; in essence, she was also getting off to the thought of killing her stepdaughter and husband.
  • The Defence Minister of Simulacrum in Simoun desecrating the corpse of an enemy priestess, having his goons rough up Yun and mock her religious devotion when she objects, overruling the heads of the Simulacran church to deny Mamiina a proper funeral, and trying to prevent the sibyllae from giving their fallen friend the most basic memorial service possible, all within the space of two and a half episodes. When it comes to tension between religion and laïcité, Simoun knows what side its bread is buttered.
  • Swordfish does this a few times in Under Grant Hotel but the most notable example would have to be him basically raping his lover Sen to almost death when Sen said something that annoyed him.
  • Highschool of the Dead has quite a few, but some of the worst offenders are from the secondary and tertiary characters. One incident sees two Red Shirts, Misuzu Ichijo and Toshimi Niki, running through the halls of their zombie-infested school, Holding Hands together and saying they'll survive together because they're BFFs. Not even five seconds later, Toshimi literally runs into a horde of zombies and begs Misuzu to pull her away from them, only to have her hand remorselessly pried off. As Misuzu watches Toshimi get devoured, she stumbles back into another group of zombies behind her, and her head is crushed just as quickly. Although in the anime, she may have regretted her action just before her own death.
    • A better example would be the nutjob who went crazy (and even explicitly admitted to being a psycho) after being forced to kill his entire family when they got bitten. That doesn't excuse the fact that afterward, he tried to kill both Takashi and Rei (and rape the latter) at a gas station. Satisfying doesn't even begin to describe how Takashi deals with the bastard.
    • Oh, and don't get me started on Shidou and his followers. And while Shidou's father isn't as complete a monster as his son (who admitted to wanting to destroy the entire Shidou line, himself included), he still gets his MEH when he instructs his son to rig Rei's grades, knowing full well that Shidou would do anything to make a student's life miserable (is it any wonder that Kohta snapped and yelled at him before he, Saeko, Saya, and Shizuka escaped from the Orgybus?).
    • Even the protagonists themselves have stated that they're willing to cross it if that's what it takes to survive as long as they can. Takashi and Saeko themselves have already crossed the MEH in their own respective personal opinions: Takashi, when he killed Hisashi partly out of jealousy over Rei; Saeko, by using herself to bait a would-be rapist into getting brutally and viciously attacked by her. Rei herself comes close when she's given the opportunity to summarily execute Shido at the Takagi mansion, but she ultimately averts this when she decides he's Not Worth Killing.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! Dartz from the DOMA arc reached his Moral Event Horizon when he started killing off the protagonists, but the most horrifying example and crossing of his MEH is when the identities of the Mirror soldiers are revealed to be everyone's favorite characters: Joey, Mai, Yugi, and Pegasus. From then on, he used them as frikin' HUMAN SHIELDS. This was a true Kick the Dog moment to not only the remaining protagonists, but the entire fanbase as well. This Troper knows a few people who broke down crying because of this act.
    • Pegasus himself, though just as tragic as his anime counterpart, lost the sympathy of several readers of the manga when he telekinetically forced Bandit Keith to commit suicide, and would have fully crossed the line if Bandit Keith wasn't an Asshole Victim who was threatening Pegasus' life moments before. The anime changed this to simply having Keith dumped into the sea in a classic No One Could Survive That, and wouldn't you know it, he does.
      • His treatment of the Kaiba brothers might have already put him over the line. Even Yugi determined that This Is Unforgivable!
    • Another from the manga is the entire Death-T arc for Seto Kaiba. From hiring a Serial Killer who exclusively kills children to kill Yugi and his friends, to abandoning his brother, ostensibly his Morality Pet, to go catatonic from a penalty game, it's no wonder Yugi punished him by shattering his soul to pieces and rebuilding it from scratch: if he hadn't, there'd be no redemption for the scumbag. The later, Anti Heroic Kaiba who would be more familiar to those who saw the anime first is thus a completely different person.
    • Dark Marik immediately crossed the horizon when he tried to stab his foster brother in his sleep, and then proceeded to lay down a brutal, psyche-damaging Mind Rape to Mai in their duel.
    • Dark Bakura crossed the line with his plan to resurrect Zorc into the mortal world in the final arc, hoping to kill everyone and cast the entire world into darkness and destruction.
  • Zane Truesdale (Ryou Marufuji) in the second season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX crosses the line after donning his Dark Kaiser persona when he electrocutes and almost kills his little brother Syrus (Shou) in a duel, never giving a damn about doing that, only about winning.
  • In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, possibly the most ludicrous example on this page is that the Shimon Family is condemned by many of the fanbase after Mizuno Kaoru hospitalizes Yamamoto, potentially crippling him. Mind you, it's the whole family that's condemned, not just Kaoru. And considering that Yamamoto is a main character, he's most definitely going to get better so it's pretty unreasonable for so many fans to say that the Shimon Family should die.
    • Fortunately for them, the entire group is pretty much a team of Draco in Leather Pants, all of them having their own loyal fanbase who still loves them. Some of the fans who want them dead have admitted that they'll likely come crawling back to them after they (presumably) befriend the main characters.
  • If Redda didn't cross this line when he manipulated Zaha into doing his bidding, he Kicked the Dog big time when he seized Rokuna hostage, demanded the Monster Items from Mondo while holding a fake Rokuna at swordpoint, put her inside the Terror Dragon's neck, and ordered the dragon to suck most of Mondo's monster friends into a black hole. Mondo, being a usually cheerful 11 year old, ends up suicidal from his feelings of loss and failure. About Rokuna, it would've been bad enough if he just slaughtered her outright, but the way she would have died if Mondo and Zaha failed to save her would have been the most horrific way to die anyone could imagine.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha always does her best to understand and even help her enemies, and after StrikerS, the cast is comprised almost entirely of ex-foes. That being said, when there's a character that can't be befriended, they really can't be befriended. Precia Testarossa crosses the line by mercilessly beating her 9-year-old daughter into a state of near-unconsciousness, and then later crushes her only reason for living. Twice.
    • In season 3, Jail was completely fine with anything, so long as it justified his research into cyborg bioweapons. Although he never explicitly crossed the line, his tendency to laugh maniacally while watching people suffer put him past redemption, even by Nanoha standards. Quattro, however, did cross the line when she strapped an innocent child up and tortured her into almost insanity to power her Cool Starship, and then forced her to try and kill her adoptive mother with her bare hands, while taunting them both. Quattro was punished accordingly.
      • Jail actually gets to cross the MEH when we learn the real reason why he treated the Numbers right. His escape route in the event of things going horribly wrong involved impregnating the Numbers Cyborgs, some of whom were made using his own genetic material and all of whom he had raised as his own daughters, with rapidly-growing clones carrying copies of his mind. Eeeeeeew. And let's not forget his really cruel attempt to Break Them by Talking with Fate either, taunting her with her memories of Precia's already mentioned MEH crossings and accusing her of being Not So Different.
    • In Force, Cypha crosses the Moral Event Horizon by admitting to killing dozens of civilians without any hint of remorse.
  • While many of the villains in Dragonball Z do some pretty horrific things, Frieza may just top them all, between his genocide of nearly the entire Saiyan race (and later, temporarily, the entire Namekian race) and his murders of Dende and Krillin, the former of whom was a child, and the latter of which sets off Goku's Super Saiyan transformation, leading to Frieza's undoing.
    • The anime added one of these that wasn't in the manga. In a very early appearance, Vegeta deposes the evil dictator of an alien planet. Now, that's hardly evil, but it turns out he did it purely to screw with the planet's inhabitants by giving them a Hope Spot, because the very next thing he does is wipe out the entire alien race. This became a problem when, over two years after the episode aired, the writer of the original manga had that same character pull a Heel Face Turn. Now, there was no way the anime staff could've known this, but it ended up making his redemption seem entirely unbelievable to many people who had only seen the anime.
    • Cell crossed it with the absorption of innocent people, slowly absorbing Android 18, destroying populated islands, sicking his clones on the Z fighters, and smashing Android 16's head in, killing him and thus earning the subsequent beatdown from Gohan.
    • Super Buu going on his genocidal Human Extinction Attack in which he destroys every last human on Earth. Kid Buu tops this by destroying the planet itself!
  • In the Liar Game, manga, Yokoya kills his two pet mice. Until then he could have just been someone with a traumatic childhood or someone really evil, but then he just becomes a complete monster.
  • Grace O'Connor in Macross Frontier has a number of candidates, with conducting painful, potentially instantly fatal, and certainly eventually fatal experiments on a seven year old girl probably close to the top of the list. Made worse when they call the little girl Subject Fairy-Nine and Fridge Logic sets in with "Wait, what happened to fairies one through eight?" Even then one of the drama CDs suggests an opening for redemption with Grace when she realizes that in the ten years she spent practically raising that girl (The girl's name is spoiler:Sheryl Nome) she's developed strong feelings for her, no longer just "Fairy-Nine" but "her little fairy". She decides that the feelings will get in the way of their plan, so she deletes them with cybernetics in one of the most subtle crossings of the Moral Event Horizon ever.
  • The Twelve Kingdoms has more than one person, specially the sen-nin or immortals, cross a few of these:
    • King Chuutatsu: Being cynical and upholding the rules didn't make him evil. There WAS lots of corruption in Hou, after all, and as a former government officer he knew that well. Slaughtering around 10% of the population over minor offenses, and then more after his kirin fell sick in an attempt to make things even? THAT is what made him an asshole.
    • Queen Kekai: Her and Chuutatsu's daughter had a nice little friend, so sweet and elegant! And wait, was she better at everything than the Princess? How dared she! So Kekai got her out of the way.... by falsely accusing her mother of accepting bribes, thus tricking her husband the King into having both mother and daughter executed. THAT would teach them!
    • Governor Atsuyu: He had a subordinate named Kouya, who also was the master of a certain demon. But when said kid had some people killed and eaten and was then horrified at what he had done... what did Atsuyu do? He told Kouya it's okay and had him "groomed" into a bastard who'd kill his enemies for him while he made himself look all saintly! Eeeeh...
    • Riyo: At some point, she took a girl from Hourai who couldn't speak the language and was completely lost... Why, Riyo immediately started humiliating Suzu by re-naming her "Mokurin" ("Fool" in the local language) and abused her psychologically and physically for 100 years straight! "Punishing her for her sins", indeed.
    • Shokou: He admitted he was in For the Evulz, and as such he oppressed the place he was in charge of as Governor. And not only he manipulated a kid from Hourai (who happened to be both a friend of Youko and Yuka's boyfriend) and kidnapped Old Retainer Enho (with his guards murdering his maid Rangyaku too, and the maddened Hourai kid shooting her brother Keikei almost to death), but he also intentionally ran a blinded kid named Seishuu over with his carriage, killing him, and pretty much laughed about it. What the....
    • The King of Kou: Okay, this one was insecure about the taika-led kingdoms like En, and then two taika girls with potential to become the Queen of Kei arrived. What did he do? He manipulated Yuka to pit her against Youko, playing on her feelings of insecurity for his benefit. And once Yuka lost against Youko, he immediately tried to kill Youko himself. No, just no.
  • Soul Eater: While she had committed some other terrible acts before this point, Medusa's Moral Event Horizon is generally cited as when she claimed that Crona, who she had been abusing and experimenting on for her plan to resurrect an Eldritch Abomination, is really her child. It Got Worse. Also, Giriko jumped over the line when he tried to rape Maka in the book of Eibon, when she's at her lowest point; previously, he was just another of the ineffectual minor villains.
    • Despite his pre-Face-Heel-Turn-reveal murder of BJ and moment of sadistic enjoyment at Kid's pain, Justin could have been seen as redeemable, especially since it was strongly hinted that Clown had something to do with his betrayal. However after he killed Tezca who deceived DWMA and put his life on line to offer a chance to return on top of friendship, it was pretty clear that Justin was not coming back to the good side. He even got a permanently burning flame on his face from the fight, in a chapter named Hellfire.
  • Kyubey, the Weasel Mascot from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, has many candidates for that moment. Take your pick!
    • In episode 6, he reveals a very important bit of information about the 'being a Puella Magi' gig, that he had been keeping to himself all that time. That bit of info being, that becoming a Puella Magi involves having your soul ripped and turned into a phylactery.
    • In episode 7, he manipulates Sayaka's soul gem so that she feels excruciating physical pain.
    • In episode 8, he mocks Homura's attempts of screwing Madoka's 'destiny' of becoming a Puella Magi. Should be noted that this is considered to be the most horrible destiny in the universe.
    • He outright states, at the end of episode 8, that the fate of a Puella Magi is, ultimately, to become a witch. He shows no remorse for sending young girls to this fate. Then he reveals in episode 9 that turning Puella Magi into witches was always part of his plan.
    • He gives Kyoko false hopes by not giving clear answers to her question about Sayaka's transformation into a witch being reversible, which results in Kyoko dying. He later on recognizes that he did this on purpose, so that Homura had to either risk fighting the upcoming Walpurgisnacht alone, or letting Madoka become a Puella Magi, thus pretty much letting him press the "I WIN" button.
    • In episode 10 in an alternate timeline reveals Madoka defeated the Walpurgisnacht and became a witch herself that was powerful enough to wipe out the entire planet, but does Kyubey care? Nope. There's a reason that Danbooru (site ads NSFW) has an entire image pool called "Everybody hates Kyubey."
    • And then, in episode 12, Madoka pushes him through a Moral White Hole and rewrites him to be a more moral and less creepy creature, thus subverting this in the most jawdroppingly awesome way ever, while still giving the sucker a good kick in the balls by denying him his prize of yummy despair to eat, and binding him to her very will so he won't hurt anyone anymore.
    • And in the tie-in manga Puella Magi Kazumi Magica, it turns out that Incubators like Kyubey can purify Soul Gems, preventing them from becoming witches. Kyubey kept this from the protagonists for the entire anime!
      • And just to twist the knife, Kazumi Magica gets Hijacked By Kyubey. So there's this girl named Yuuri who made a wish to save her friend Airi. She then overuses her magic helping people, becomes a witch, and is killed by a team of magical girls. What does Kyubey do then? He simply tells all of this to Airi, who goes off the deep end and becomes the Big Bad of the series and eventually a witch herself. Just as Kyubey wanted.
    • For all of Kyuubey's crossings, in Oriko Magica Oriko Mikuni and Kirika Kure also have their MEH moments. The two worse are: both of them releasing a Charlotte-like witch in the cast's school, which eats Kazuko-sensei alive and then slaughters many other innocent students. and Oriko killing Madoka via impaling her in the torso with a piece of a just-killed witch... and sai witch is Kirika herself.
      • Though to be fair... they were trying to save the world. As the above MEH's point out, if Madoka becomes a magical girl, Everything Dies.
        • However, killing Madoka was absolutely unnecessary at that point, given that all the other Magi had found out the truth and come to accept it, and would have told Madoka everything, which would have removed any motivation she might have had for making a contract. She did it likely out of spite at Mami, Kyouko, Yuma and especially Homura for ruining her plans.
  • Deconstructed in Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? by Yoruno, who makes it his goal to cross the MEH enough to provoke Eu into killing him. He succeeds at the end of episode 11; before Eu kills him, he reveals that his last wish is to be reincarnated as a penguin, because he likes penguins.
  • In Muhyo and Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation, the final revelation that puts Teeki over the Moral Event Horizon is the revelation that he was responsible for Enchu's mother's death, causing his Start of Darkness and thus most of the conflict in the story. To a lesser extent, his responsibility for Rio's mother dying also applies.
  • The Mobile Suit Gundam series has TONS of them:
    • In Mobile Suit Gundam, Degwin Zabi compares his older son Ghiren to Adolf Hitler and takes it as a compliment. In return, Ghiren fires a massive colony-based laser at his dad when he attempts to broker for peace. His sister, Kycillia, returns the favor by shooting him in the head.
    • Ginias Saharin of Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team has his MEH when he kills his commanders after realizing leaving Earth means ending the Apsalus Project.
      • Also Captain Isan Ryer. One of many who think Zeon are monsters, when Aina Saharin asks for a brief cease fire to get wounded soldiers out of the battlefield, he gives it... then has a GM Sniper set up and destroy the Zanzibar transport they were on! He demands that the deserted Shiro be executed on the spot and gloats to Kojima that he'd never be able to move up in the ranks and be always out in the field. It's probably a good thing he gets it in the end when the Apsalus blasts his base.
    • Anaval Gato of Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory has his when he fires the GP-02A's Atomic Bazooka.
    • The Titans of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam doesn't show their MEH on-screen, but it's just as horrendous: the 30 Bunch Incident, where they pump a colony full of poisonous G3 gas just to quell a riot. The Federation joins suit when they refuse to indict them, leading to the formation of the AEUG.
    • Haman Karn of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ reaches hers when she drops a colony on Dublin, Ireland.
      • Which also was the MEH crossing for the person in charge of it: ex Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Mashmyer Cello. And for Rakan Dakaran, who openly participated in that one and then killed Hayato Kobayashi.
    • Char Aznable reaches his in Chars Counterattack by dropping Fifth Luna on Tibet.
      • He didn't reach it until CCA? A vocal number of fans think he reached it within the first ten episodes of "Mobile Suit Gundam" when he stabbed Garma in the back after years of leading him on to believe they were best friends. What he did to Kycillia later in the series wasn't exactly classy either.
      • Char also crossed it by cruelly manipulating his teenaged subordinates Quess Paraya and Gyunei Guss's feelings for his own purposes in CCA. So Quess has a crush on Char while Gyunei has one on Quess? Char gives the emotionally/mentally unstable and thus easy to manipulate Quess false hopes about her being the only woman he loves and cares for (despite his own feelings for Lalah Sune and his current relationship with his subordinate/lover Nanai), then behind Quess's back he tells the recently pumped-up Gyunei that he should take Quess off his hands and have a shot at her after the next battle—without any regards to their own mental/emotional states. (And lest we forget: Gyunei was an Artificial Newtype raised by Char after a Colony Drop, and Quess had just become one via having her own borner Newtype talents artificially enhanced, with all the horrifying health and mental problems implied). It works as well as it's expected.
      • Gyunei himself isn't a saint, either, and he ends up crossing the MEH as well. At some point he defeats and captures Amuro's wingman and the local Action Girl Kayra Su, forcibly pulling her outta her cockpit and keeping her hostage in his Jagd Doga's hand. He then stages a Hostage Situation to try getting Amuro and the Nu Gundam to surrender; when the funnels of the Nu accidentally react to Amuro's anger over it, Gyunei uses the Doga's hand to crush Kayra to death, then tosses her lifeless body aside like it's nothing. Amuro, understandably, is fucking PISSED at that.
    • Ulube Ishikawa and Dr. Mikamura have theirs in Mobile Fighter G Gundam when they attempt to capture the Devil Gundam for their own uses. When the end result of all of this leads to Dr. Mikamura's innocent daughter Rain becoming the Devil Gundam's core , the second in the list ends up having a Heel Realization and, having been shot by the gleeful Ulube, with his dying breath he begs Domon to save his daughter and releases Domon's father's capsule, which allows Domon's friends to rescue him.
    • The Frost Brothers of After War Gundam X probably reach theirs after killing off a group of people in an attempt to awaken their Newtype abilities. When they do with one person, they kill him as well out of sheer jealousy.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED has PLENTY here. Yzak Joule after he kills a shuttle full of civilians, Captain Sutherland and the Earth Alliance in general by nuking their base with a lot of their allies in it, ZAFT soldiers killing POWs after said incident, Muruta Azrael after convincing the EA to fit N-Jammer Cancelers onto their nuclear missiles and promptly launching them into every hole within the meteor base Boaz... Patrick Zala's is kinda hard to pin down, though there are three good candidates - killing off the Moderates within ZAFT (including Lacus Clyne's father) because of JOSH-A's failure, shooting and having his son Athrun arrested soon after or attempting to fire GENESIS on the Earth.
    • Continued on Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. Lord Djibril sends the Destroy Gundam to attack European cities because they won't follow Blue Cosmos. Then comes his plan on using Requiem on PLANT colonies.
    • And we may have a winner here with Ali Al-Saachez from Mobile Suit Gundam 00. he starts of by recruiting Kurdish kids to become jihadist fighters. The only requirement for joining is that they murder their parents first. Then he send several of them out into the world to do suicide bombings. And when things go sour, he just packs up and leaves them to be crushed by the enemy mobile suits. The fact that he did not give a damn about the cause is just icing on the cake, so to speak. And this is all before the story even started, where he gets many, many more opportunities to show what a dick he really is.
      • Not too far behind Ali we find the A-laws, who have no trouble at all with firing their orbital Wave Motion Gun at a solar elevator, to kill the rebelling forces inside, the 60.000 civillian witnesses, and the hundreds of thousands of people living below who will be crushed by the falling debris, just to prevent the populace from learning of their previous misdeeds.
      • Also, he may have crossed it again in the light novels, if you believe that his abuse of Nena Trinity was not just physical, but sexual.
      • Nena Trinity doesn't mess around with crossing the line as well. Out of boredom and hatred to those not playing by Trinity's rules, she vaporized an entire wedding in Spain (Louise Halevy was the only known survivor). With her Lack of Empathy and having zero regret over this incident, it's clear Nena's not going to be redeemed or forgiven for this any time soon.
    • Not to be left out, Gundam AGE has Desil Galette crossing the line in episode 14: for manipulating and then killing Yurin for the sake of defeating Flit, then justifying it by saying that her life didn't matter, she was nothing more than another weapon/toy for him to use, and that her involvement and death just served to make things more fun! All this from a 7-year-old child. These events lead to most of the fandom screaming for his blood.
      • Would you believe that AGE is the first Gundam series to have its main protagonist (Flit Asuno) cross the line? In Episode 28, when the Prime Minister was making negotiations with Vagan so they'd reach a compromise to prevent the total destruction of both sides, Flit stops them. He has the Minister arrested and executed for treason and he purges anyone with any Vagan sympathies or ties in the Federation. And then he reveals his entire goal is the complete and utter genocide of Vagan! If he hasn't already jumped off the slippery slope then, he certainly has now.
      • The Third Generation wastes no time by making Zeheart Galette go over the horizon in Episode 30. His squadron takes out most of the Federal Force grunt suits. But instead of shelling military targets, he orders his carrier to erase the civilian sections off of Kio's hometown, wiping out most of the city's population before Kio finally stops the shelling. All of this is not just unexpected from someone like Zeheart, who once was a Nice Guy and Anti-Villain, it also reinforces Flit's unhealthy hatred for Vagan.
  • Liang Qi from Canaan has plenty of these, indeed. The better candidates are her repeated abuse of both her Love Martyr Cummings and cute little Yunyun, her brutal beatdown of Maria Oosawa... and specially throwing Hyakko through the Despair Event Horizon via tricking her into killing her savior and love Santana, and then mocking Hyakko's grief gleefully.
  • Chapter 239 of Fairy Tail: it was rather obvious from the very beginning that Ultear was evil, but she really clinched it in this chapter by attempting to murder an unconscious and helpless Juvia. To be fair, it's not the action in itself that's bad, but rather the reasoning behind it. Up until now, no matter how cold-hearted, Ultear's actions were all for the sake of reaching her goals; this time, she was doing it merely out of spite towards Gray. However, it should be noted that she thought that Gray became the Replacement Goldfish for her mother.
    • Raven Tail cheap shots Wendy and Charle, then one member threatens to harm a six year old.
    • Sabertooth's master Gemma, kicks out Yukino for losing a match and that's after he threw a wine glass and ordered her to strip. As if that's not enough, he then later almost erases Lecter, simply because of the fact that a cat is wearing the Sabertooth mark.
    • Minerva, after fighting Erza and Kagura for a while, reveals that she's taken their mutual friend Millianna hostage in order to force them to fight each other. After Kagura is essentially defeated, and prepares to surrender to Erza, Minerva stabs Kagura from behind to claim the points for herself, and reveals that she tortured Millianna while she was waiting.
    • Invel Yura of the Spriggan 12 crosses it when he forces Gray and Juvia to fight each other to the death, hoping that Gray, by killing a comrade will awaken his inner darkness and kill E.N.D. (who happens to be Gray's friend/rival Natsu), an action that forces Juvia to perform a Heroic Suicide, since she doesn't want to kill Gray or have him live with the guilt of killing her).
  • Inverted by Haruhi Suzumiya in the second light novel, when she and Tsuruya spike Mikuru's drink merely for the sake of realism during the shoot for her Z-grade movie, despite all the risks it could bring to Mikuru's health. Of course, when Kyon realizes Haruhi's reason for doing it, it's a Berserk Button and nearly earns her a punch in the face... which subsequently leads to her Heel Realization when she realizes that she's doing it wrong (especially in the anime, where we have her staring away from Kyon in remorse and with tears in her eyes) and then to Character Development on her part for the better. As for Tsuruya herself, she only subverts this by virtue of being clueless about Haruhi's intentions, as she agreed to help Haruhi put tequila in Mikuru's drink under the assumption that Haruhi wants to improve Mikuru's acting.
    • The two most evil Anti-SOS Brigade members seriously cross it in the two-part "Surprise Of Haruhi Suzumiya". Kuyo crosses it either in Vol. 1 when she tries to assassinate Kyon, prompting Asakura to protect him, or in Vol. 2 when she crucifies Haruhi in mid-air on Fujiwara's orders (she might have even crossed it by infecting Yuki with that bug that had been plaguing her for the last several installments, as revealed in Vol. 1), and Fujiwara, up until this point presnting himself as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, becomes a batshit-insane Knight Templar with his attempt on Haruhi's life--a blatant act of attempted Deicide--at the climax of Vol. 2.
    • Kuyo may subvert this with her Blue and Orange Morality. She (and the entity behind her) is simply so alien in personality that she makes Nagato look like a normal human being. If anyone in the SOS Brigade has crossed it for sure, it's Fujiwara.
  • Averted by Pino in Gunslinger Girl. Right when he's about to kill Aurora for walking in on his plans one too many times, Flanca warns him to refrain from doing so. Played straight, however, by Ski Mask Guy in chapter 83 just for being the only one present besides Jose when Henrietta's bad memories of her family's death return because of him and Jose's the only one left alive present. This leads to both Henrietta and Jose dying within minutes of the resulting Freak-Out, if not seconds. Dante himself is well beyond the MEH by the time he offed Enrica, her parents, and Jean's girlfriend with a single car bomb, and it's also implied due to Ski Mask Guy's presence at the Battle of Turin that Dante was also behind the murder of Henrietta's family. He's blackened his heart so much, he doesn't even qualify for Complete Monster status. His last evil act? Only Rico offing her own handler could finally put an end to Dante once and for all.
  • One of the main villains of Sonic X's third season is a Metarex commander named Black Narcissus, who is so fascinated by Sonic's speed and strength that he wants to learn their secrets, and to do just that, he sets up two Metarex prototypes, Silver and Gold, to test him. And as a special treat, he even knocks out Chris Thorndyke, then captures and tortures him and Cosmo to use them as bait to lure Sonic to him in order to execute his plan to test him. The fact that he did such crap to Cosmo and Chris (who may be The Scrappy, but still doesn't deserve that) leads to Sonic's Unstoppable Rage and triggers his transformation into his Super-Powered Evil Side. It's a good thing Dr. Eggman and his followers came to help calm things down - not only does Eggman convince Sonic to cease his anger, he even admits that he can't stand torturing people when he says to him, "It's one thing to take them prisoner and threaten them but when you actually hurt somebody, that's going too far." Damn... when the Big Bad denounces your tactics to the protagonist, you know you've crossed the MEH.
  • Kaede Sakura in Kämpfer is implied in episodes 10 and 11 to have a Split Personality. Her Super-Powered Evil Side had already made herself known as callous by siding with the Moderators, but when she brainwashes Mikoto and pits her against her own friends, the Purple Betrayers, in episode 13 (episode 1 of the OVA), you realize Kaede ain't coming back from the MEH.
  • Allegedly crossed by the high school basketball team captain by propositioning a minor, which sets the plot of Ro-Kyu-Bu! in motion as the entire team gets punished for his alleged crime (which hasn't been proven as of the current episode), forcing the main character to coach a girls' basketball team consisting of grade-schoolers in an example of misplaced Laser-Guided Karma at work.
  • Sora Takeuchi from Air Gear proved himself an as asshole when he threatened to physically harm his ex-girlfriend Rika Noyamano --who is also pregnant with his own child.
    • It Gets Worse: He brainwashes Rika and sends her out to attack Kilik and the Sleeping Forest team, knowing that he won't exactly attack a pregnant woman who's out to beat him up -- and who also happens to be their ex leaderess. It takes Kilik a massive gambit to stop Rika without harming her and the baby inside of her, then release the team's full power on Sora himself. And then Sora counterattacks.
  • Peach Girl: Kairi has a trio of obsessive clingy jealous girls who once attacked Momo and threatened to set her on fire if she continued taking up Kairi's attention.
  • In Honoo no Alpen Rose, Count Germont is a complete Jerkass and Stalker with a Crush to Jeudi. He truly clinches it when he murders her and Lundi's friend Hans via shooting him In the Back in the Swiss/Austrian border.
  • Ren Sohma from Fruits Basket actually crossed this before the story took place, by threatening to have an abortion if she wasn't allowed to raise her baby as a male. That baby? She'd become Akito Sohma, the Big Bad of the story. The factors that make this even worse than Akito's constant puppy punting (which include many acts that qualify as borderline MEH crossing themselves) are: the extremely petty reasoning behind it (jealousy and hatred towards her unborn daughter due to how happy her huband Akira was about becoming a father) as and how forcibly raising Akito as a male would be Akito's Start of Darkness as well as the beginning of Ren's ceaseless abuse against her, eventually driving Aito to become the Manipulative Bitch Yandere that we Love to Hate. In few, Ren's horribly selfish and cruel action was actually the reason behind, like, almost all of the terrible crap that would befall the Sohma clan as a whole. Mind you, Akito is NOT an angel, and yet in perspective she comes off as a lesser evil since it's Ren who poisoned her with a good part of the hatred she spills towards others.
  • For some, Fukiko Ichinomiya from Oniisama e... crosses this in the manga, when she deals an horrifyingly cruel Hannibal Lecture to her half-sister and Love Martyr Rei Asaka, basically smashing her already non-existant self-worth and stability into tiny little pieces. It's so bad that Rei commits suicide almost immediately afterwards, and it had to be removed from the anime version.
  • In Mawaru Penguindrum, Sanetoshi had done plenty of shit before episode 23, but he seriously crossed the MEH not just by being the one who "killed" Momoka via transforming her in the two Penguin Hats when she tried to stop him (thus causing a good part of the events of the series to take place), but by first strengthening Kanba's Face Heel Turn via forcing him to see Masako die and then reviving her while promising to do the same to Himari if he destroys the world for him and then by setting up Ringo to be seriously injured and mocking her as she was burning to almost death, in his quest to destroy the Destiny Diary.
    • Some people believe that the Face Heel Turned Kanba also crossed the line by becoming the KIGA leader and orchestrating the Teddydrum bombings and by participating in Sanetoshi's almost murder of Ringo to destroy the Diary.
  • Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: While none of the YAMI masters are good guys to begin with (Affably Evil, at best), resident Pencak Silat master Silcardo Jenazad is a very special case of bastard. In order to get a replacement for his slain disciple (who he'd killed himself via avalanche several arcs earlier for basically disrespecting their martial art), he tricks Akira Hongo, YAMI's "God Fist," into almost killing Kenichi while the other man is locked in a duel with Sakaki AND while both men are fighting even while unconscious. He pulls this off by radiating enough killing intent from behind Hongo so that the latter will instinctively lash out in self-defense and inadvertently murder Kenichi, who's right behind him at that point, in the process. And then after that happens he takes advantage of Miu's chaotic state of mind, caused by her thinking Kenichi's dead (when in fact he's survived, but just barely), kidnaps her and systematically brainwashes her into becoming a killing machine with no memories or emotion.
    • And just in case you don't think the above moment is despicable enough for him to have crossed the horizon, what he does in subsequent chapters should be concrete enough evidence that he's beyond any chance of forgiveness: he aggressively pits the Brainwashed and Crazy Miu against Kenichi in a fight to the death, with the expectation that Jenazad's brainwashing of Miu will be fully and finally completed when Miu kills Kenichi, or as he terms it "destroying the last piece of her heart" so that his control over her will be absolute. And for every attempt Kenichi makes to snap Miu out of the brainwashing (and any moment Miu appears to remember who Kenichi is), Jenazad urges her more and more to press on and kill the boy. It takes Kenichi taking a third option via smashing the helmet that Miu is wearing to have Jenazad's mind control of her snap..
  • In Umineko no Naku Koro ni Rosa Ushiromiya either seriously kicks the puppy or downright crosses this when she rips Sakutaro in half. Though it seemed minor at first, you would recall that she gave Maria the stuffed lion in the first place, and that Maria considered (or made) him real, and that he was probably her only friend. She also "kills" one of the Siesta sisters, though inadvertently when she threw her on the ground. And often at times where she slaps Maria. Yes, you should show your child discipline, but when you take it too far, it is just abuse. And she often claims to have to go to work, but in reality, she goes to spend the night with one of her boyfriends—leaving she would often leave Maria home alone, often to the point where she would have to go out and get her own food. She even left one boyfriend when he told her to spend her time with her daughter. But what ultimately made her cross the horizon would have to be when she told Maria that she never loved her and wished for her to have died, so that she would have a happy life. She even tells her to go to Hell. Though, given her status as a Tragic Villain, a victim of abuse and bullying from her own siblings and her father (which Rudolf actually aknowledges), the local Chew Toy, or most likely just stressed at work, she might subvert this trope. Though, you wouldn't forget that Beatrice was disgusted by her behavior.
    • She actually does, because Rosa is the very strange case of an abusive mother doubling as Mama Bear. In EP-2, she faces the goat servants on her own to protect herself and Maria, taking them with pens to the eyes and shotguns; in Episode 8 of the game, she shoves a rifle down Erika's throat when she mocks Maria and tells her that her mom will abandon her. Not to mention, several of the episodes described here happen in different timelines (and the one described at the end happens only in EP-4), thus how abusive or nurturing she is can seriously vary depending on which EP we're talking of.
    • Eva-Beatrice crosses this when she repeatedly murders both Rosa and Maria, purely for her own amusement, and in very creatively cruel ways. She really crossed it when she was supposed to murder a person once in the Twilight. She actually gets so bad that, again, Beatrice is squicked out and disagrees with her.
    • But, now it's time to talk about the Big Bad herself, Beatrice. In one of the episodes, she feeds Rosa the body parts of her siblings, and forcefully tries to have her eat her own daughter's head! Now since Maria is supposed to be her Morality Pet, this comes as just as jarring. Not to mention that she also got a salad out of Eva's tongues by repeatedly ressurecting her, and then cutting out her tongue, and that she lied to Battler that she saying that she turned good, and that she probably planned on creating Eva-Beatrice, and the effects that it would have, because she knew that Battler would try to help her, and that he would've signed a contract with her if Ange had not intervened. And in another episode, when Battler became her furniture, she strips him naked and makes him wear a collar, and then gives him "The Reason You Suck" Speech, and then has the goat butlers maul him to death. Though, like Rosa, she might have a Freudian Excuse, or just avoids this list by her Pet the Dog moments with Maria.
      • ... And as mentioned above, it heavily depends on which EP we're talking about. The deal with Rosa and the "dinner" is from EP2, while the majority of the Pet the Dog moments with Maria happen in posterior EP's.
    • Bernkastel does truly horrible things, but in EP7, she shows Lion Ushiromiya the miracle of his/her existence, and then proceeds to force Lion and Ange to watch a horrible scenario in which Ange's parents are the murderers. Ange is unable to handle this, and as such she is once again torn to pieces. When Lion tries to give Bernkastel a What the Hell, Hero? speech, Bernkastel shows Lion his/her eventual fate- being massacred along with the rest of the family on October 4 and 5, just like in all the other universes. Bernkastel laughs at Lion's fate, and she is unwilling to let Lion escape.
    • Kinzo also crossed it when it was revealed that Yasu, aka the real persona of Beatrice, Shannon and Kanon is actually his child fathered on his own daughter Beatrice, who he kept isolated and eventually raped because she resembled her mother, Kinzo's deceased mistress. Can you say "Just like Noah Cross"? Good.
  • Let's not forget the main villain of Inuyasha, Naraku. It could easily be said that Naraku never crossed the MEH, because he never was out of it to begin with. In fact, his very first act was to Use his shape shifting abilities to attack and nearly kill Kikiyo while posing as Inuyasha, then pose as Kikyo and make Inuyasha think Kikiyo was trying to kill him, all leading to Inuyasha getting pinned to a tree and Kikyo dying hating Inuyasha. It's not shown what he does between this and 50 years until the series starts, but it can't have been pretty.
    • Not to mention, there's what he did to Kohaku and Sango. More exactly, brainwashing Kohaku into killing his father and the other Tajiya as well as seriously injuring Sango, then removing the brainwashing for a second so he woud go all "My God, What Have I Done?" towards the still alive Sango, and then getting Kohaku killed. Only to bring him Back from the Dead as his amnesiac Tyke Bomb. Made worse when he gives Sango a Hope Spot of giving Kohaku back to her if she brings him the Tetsusaiga... and then trapping both Kohaku and Sango in a poisonous space to kill them.
    • He ain't the only one, either. Shiori's grandfather crosses it to a horrifying degree twice: first, when he killed his own son aka Shiori's Hot Dad for daring to bear a Half-Human Hybrid child and try defending humans, and second when he tricks Shiori into protecting him with her Barrier Warrior skills, knowing that she's hesitant about his plan of killing everyone in her village despite their shabby treatment of her and her mother -- and once she doubts him, he mocks her heavily.
  • Mykage, the Big Bad of Aquarion Evol, crossed the line big time when he murdered the very sympathetic Anti-Villain Jin for having had an Heel Face Turn in Episode 13. Or, alternatively, he crossed it for emotionally manipulating Zessica and pulling a Grand Theft Me on her.
  • Sailor Moon has a few Moral Event Horizon crossings. In the first season, for example, Queen Beryl crosses it by killing Zoicite, showing absolutely no remorse nor shred of willingness to relent despite Kunzite's attempt to take the blame for Zoicite's loose-cannon attempt on Tuxedo Mask's life.
    • In the second season, Rubeus crossed it via his extremely cruel and abusive treatment of Cooan, the member from the Quirky Miniboss Squad who loves him, in which he first mocks her over losing to the Sailor Senshi, then gives her an explosive MacGuffin and orders her to practically kill herself for him. The poor girl goes into a full-blown Villainous Breakdown at that, and only Rei's compassion and efforts keep her from commiting suicide. And for worse, after Cooan and Bertier have their Heel Face Turns, he goes even further than that by getting their eldest sister Petz Brainwashed and Crazy with another MacGuffin, and then leaving her and the remaining sister Kadaveras to die when the MacGuffin overloads.
    • Wiseman crosses this when he corrupts the well-meaning yet extreme goals of the Black Moon people and their leader Diamando. Unlike Rubeus, Saphir eventually got wise to Wiseman's act, but Wiseman kills him just as he's about to show Dirmando the light as well. Dirmando is not amused. And then it's clinched when he kidnaps Chibi-Usa when in a particularly low point, then giving her Fake Memories and forcibly infusing her with black energy, which turns her into Black Lady.
    • In the third season, Telulu crosses it with how she deals with Mimet. To put it in perspective, Sailor Moon herself is horrified to see one of her nemesis being dealt with in such a callous fashion. Damn... when a hero is mortified by the death of a villain (who could've killed the good guys, including him/her, with a single blow, mind you) at the hands of another villain, you know the killer in question has crossed a line.
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