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{{trope}}
[[File:Ivan_kills_his_son_9441Ivan kills his son 9441.jpg|frame|[[wikipedia:File:REPIN Ivan Terrible%26Ivan&Ivan.jpg|Ivan the Terrible has just murdered his son in the heat of the moment]]. [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ivan_the_Terrible_%26_son_-_detail.jpg Look at his eyes. Look at them.]]
 
{{quote|''"The awful daring of a moment's surrender
which an age of prudence can never retract."''|'''[[T. S. Eliot]]''', ''[[The Waste Land]]''}}
 
Well-intentioned but misguided character -- verycharacter—very likely a [[Tragic Hero]] or [[Anti-Villain]]-- [[Oh Crap|comes to realize that]] [[What the Hell, Hero?|his actions have caused incredible damage]], [[Kick the Morality Pet|physical pain, emotional pain, or even loss of life]]. The usual line that comes after this is the title of the article (sometimes, without the "My God"). [[Tears of Remorse]] may accompany it.
 
Often the realization only comes when someone/something close to the person is hurt or destroyed. In quite a few cases, that "someone/something close" is the very entity he was trying to get rid of to begin with.
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* Sasuke in ''[[Naruto]]'' after finding out that {{spoiler|the brother he spent years trying to kill and finally succeeding did everything to protect him and Konoha and the Council ordered him to do it in the first place}}.
** Somewhat averted as {{spoiler|instead of vowing to honor his brother's sacrifice and give up killing or investigate the veracity of Madara's claims, Sasuke decides to go after Konoha and the elders responsible for ordering the death of his clan. [[Knight Templar|Danzou]] even [[What the Hell, Hero?|calls him out on this]] and tells him that he's wasting Itachi's sacrifice by attacking everyone and everything in anger.}}
** For a villainous example, in the 3rd ''[[Naruto]]'' film (''Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom'') the [[The Dragon|baddy]] Ishidate accidentally turns his employer--andemployer—and more importantly, paymaster--topaymaster—to stone. [[Oh Crap]].
** Sakura has this reaction when she realises what the promise she got out of Naruto did to him.
* ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'': It's discovered that [[Big Bad]] Ken Ichijouji, definitely an [[Evil Overlord]] with a [[0% Approval Rating]], never knew Digimon were sentient, thinking the Digital World to be a very, ''very'' realistic [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|video game]]. He gives this line once he finds out he's done real harm, and makes a [[Heel Face Turn]].
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== Comic Books ==
* ''Uncanny [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' #150 gives Magneto a moment of this when he nearly kills Kitty Pryde in anger; he realizes he's become just like the Nazis that killed his family, and--forand—for a span of almost a decade's worth of issues, at least--reconsidersleast—reconsiders his villainous career.
** In ''[[Astonishing X Men]],'' the team is attacked by one of the giant [[Humongous Mecha|Sentinels]] that murdered the population of Genosha. Kitty defeats it by [[Instant AI, Just Add Water|kicking it up to full sentience.]] Suddenly capable of comprehending what mass murder ''is,'' with a machine's ability to actually evaluate all those deaths individually rather than just as a vague statistic, it suffers a [[Villainous BSOD]] and flies away in horrified remorse.
* In his origin in ''Amazing Fantasy'' #15, [[Spider-Man]] has a classic one - [[Tears of Remorse]] and all - when he recognizes the burglar who murdered his uncle as the criminal he allowed to escape a page earlier.
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* ''[[Home Alone]]'': Kevin's mom, when she realizes she left Kevin at home while the family left for Paris.
** ''"What kind of a mother am I?"''
* ''[[V for Vendetta]]'': this phrase is written in the diary of Dr. Diana Stanton, who had tested the effects of experimental biological weapons on cultural minorities in a post-apocalyptic Britain. She realizes the error of her ways when confronted with an escaped test subject and the destruction of her work. For his part, V knows she feels this way and gives her some mercy {{spoiler|by killing her with a painless poison compared the gruesome [[Karmic Death|Karmic Deaths]]s he arranged for others}}. The actual line may or may not appear in the original graphic novel.
{{quote|'''Delia Surridge:''' [V gives her a rose] Are you going to kill me now?
'''V:''' I killed you 10 minutes ago. [shows her hypodermic needle] While you slept.
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** Which ''[[From a Certain Point of View]],'' he did...
** He also said "What have I done?" right after {{spoiler|saving Darth Sidious and killing Mace Windu.}} In both cases, it is followed not by any effort to [[Must Make Amends]] but instead by [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope]].
** [[Matt Stover]]'s [[Novelization]] wisely leaves out the [[Big No]], adds a fleeting moment of [[Never My Fault]], and rather than throwing a tantrum has him ''immediately try to kill Sidious''--but—but he's lost so much of his power that he can only destroy droids and equipment, he can't even touch Sidious--andSidious—and in the end he doesn't want to, because now this is all he has left. The only person who will understand, and forgive, and gather him up.
** He also seems to have an unspoken moment before he finally decides he [[Must Make Amends]] and intervenes to prevent Darth Sidious from killing his son in ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'', [[Death Equals Redemption|redeeming himself]] in the process.
* In ''[[The Mummy Trilogy|The Mummy 1999]]'', at the first sign of Imhotep's resurrection; a spontaneous plague of locusts; the Egyptologists says, "What have we done?" as he's covered with the damn things.
* This happens on two different occasions in ''[[What's Eating Gilbert Grape]]''. At the beginning of the movie, Arnie - the mentally challenged young man - kills a grasshopper by beheading it, and then cries to Gilbert about it. Later on in the movie, Gilbert loses his cool - leading him to slap Arnie around, after being so protective of him.
* [[Gene Wilder]] gets one in ''[[Young Frankenstein]]''. On the DVD commentary, Brooks says this was to keep the film in the structure of classic Yiddish theater, where act two always ends with either "What have I done?" or "She's pregnant!"
* In ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (film)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'', Sweeney gets one of these -- inthese—in musical form -- afterform—after he {{spoiler|discovers that the beggar woman he killed was his wife Lucy}}.
* Hilariously subverted in ''A Dog's Breakfast''. Patrick wants to kill his future brother-in-law, Ryan. Ryan offers to help him chop wood by holding the wood steady for him. Patrick lifts his axe up, clearly intending to render Ryan in two. We cut to a shot of the woods just as we hear a dull ''thunk'', complete with blood curdling scream. We then cut back to Patrick's face who whispers: ''"What have I done?"''.....only to watch him collapse in pain as we realise that he's actually hit ''himself'' in the leg with the axe's handle by accident.
* ''[[Planet of the Apes]]'' has a [[Humans Are Bastards|"What have ''you'' done?"]] moment: "So we finally, really did it. YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"
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* ''[[The Terminator|Terminator 2]]'' does this (but doesn't say it) to [[Action Mom|Sarah Connor]]. After spending the majority of the movie as a ''fundamentally'' screwed-up person, she tries to murder a man, not because of anything he's done, but based on what he ''will'' do in the future. Everything from her attitude during the "hunt" to the weapon she uses is <s> eerily</s> ''terrifyingly'' similar to the T-800's targeting of her in the original film. It's only when she's holding the gun to his head, in front of his terrified, sobbing wife and son, that she starts to realize [[He Who Fights Monsters|exactly what her fear of the future has done to her]].
* ''[[Wall Street]]'': Bud Fox's father is the union manager for an airport which [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Gordon Gekko]] intends to buy, using Bud's help to seal the deal. Bud has one of these moments after realizing that {{spoiler|Gekko is in fact going to fire the workers he [[You Said You Would Let Them Go|said he would let stay]]}}.
* In ''[[Schindler's List]]'', Oskar Schindler, having turned down a request by a Jew to accept two of her relatives for not being skilled manufacturers and yelling to Itzhak Stern about how popular his factory is becoming as a "haven", calms down, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a slip reading "Perlman"--the—the very same name attached to those he had just turned down. He reads the name, realizing his mistake, and has Stern make sure the two are brought to the factory, presumably to start training in manufacturing before becoming full-fledged workers.
* Verbatim in ''[[The Rock]]'' after {{spoiler|Goodspeed and Mason pull General Hummel out of the mess with Frye and Darrow. Hummel relents using the trope word for word before telling Goodspeed the location of the last rocket ("Lower lighthouse!").}}
* In the made-for-tv ''Elvis Meets Nixon'', it's 1970, and Elvis has snuck out of Graceland, out on his own for the first time in over a decade. He has fond memories of LA's Sunset Strip, but when he gets there he's appalled to find it overrun with hippies and head shops where his records are back in the 'golden oldies' section. A hippie recognizes Elvis and excitedly tells how he changed his life - in an irony worthy of [[The Twilight Zone]], he points out that Elvis's spirit of rebellion created the counterculture. Elvis is horrified.
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* In ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'', Jim strikes a little girl for not listening to him when he told her to close the door. It turns out she couldn't listen ''at all''. She was deaf.
* In ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'', Rand has one {{spoiler|when he almost kills his father during a heated argument in ''The Gathering Storm''. Quite a few of his friends have been telling him in book after book that he's [[What the Hell, Hero?|going too far in his actions and losing it]], but it doesn't sink in until this confrontation}}.
* In [[John C. Wright]]'s ''[[The Golden Oecumene|The Golden Age]]'', Helion tells Phaethon his origin: he had been a character in a scenario who [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds|destroyed a planet]]. His [[My God, What Have I Done?]] reaction caused him to brood over questions of existence, and the brooding caused him to [[Instant AI, Just Add Water|become a self-aware personality]], no longer just a character.
* In [[Aaron Allston]]'s ''[[Galatea in 2-D]]'', the hero [[Cold-Blooded Torture|tortures]] one of the villain's mooks to try to get information from another. He slackens off without getting everything he wanted, realizing that she didn't know anything and that he was invoking [[What Measure Is a Mook?]]. That thought horrifies him -- [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|just because they were]] [[Art Initiates Life|two paintings who came to life]], and whom the villain had sent to kill him didn't mean torturing them was all right. {{spoiler|In the end, the villain is killed, but the hero tells the mooks that if they stay out of his way, he won't bother them.}}
* Appears near the end of [[Jean De Florette]] for Papet. {{spoiler|He discovers that Jean, the man who he had ruined in the first part of the duology, was actually his son. Florette hadn't rejected him, as he thought, but was pregnant and had tried to move on when he didn't respond to her letter (a letter he obviously never received). Watching the look on Papet's face when this fact sinks in will quickly show the viewer why this movie launched Yves Montand to worldwide critical acclaim.}}
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* In [[Adrian Tchaikovsky]]'s ''[[Shadows of the Apt|Dragonfly Falling]]'', Fenise asks "What have I done?" as she realizes why she won't kill Thalric.
* In L. Jagi Lamplighter's ''[[Prospero's Daughter|Prospero Lost]]'', Miranda leads a boat that is pursuing hers on a route that ends with his crashing and dying. In ''Prospero In Hell'', she learns he wasn't an enemy. Nearly has [[Tears of Remorse]].
* ''[[Discworld]]'': Carrot has one of these moments in ''[[Discworld/Men At Arms|Men At Arms]]''. He spends the night with Angua, and wakes to find {{spoiler|a large wolf in the room (she's a werewolf)}}. She runs away, and shortly after Carrot finds out exactly what just happened, he realizes that the first thing he did when he saw {{spoiler|"the wolf"}} was ''[[My God, What Have I Done?|reach for his sword]]''.
* [[The Atoner|Jean Valjean]] of [[Les Misérables]] has a [[Heroic Blue Screen of Death]] based on this trope after he robbed a child. The robbing happened right after his encounter with [[The Messiah|Bishop Myriel]], who gave him a second chance at freedom after Valjean betrayed the Bishop's trust and robbed from him. The combination of these two events cause a guilt trip several pages long.
* Tsion Ben-Judah's reaction in in the [[Left Behind]] book ''Desecration'' when he realizes he has given away the location of where the Israeli Jews would flee to according to what the [[Book of Revelation]] says about the matter (the deserted city of Petra), fearing that he has messed up God's plan. He gets some reassurance from one of the Tribulation Force members that God may have intended for Tsion to let slip the location of where the Jews would flee to in order to lure Nicolae Carpathia's forces into a trap God has set up for them, which is all according to the Word of God.
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** And Sharon (Boomer) {{spoiler|who has a change of heart when she sees the experiments being done on Athena's daughter}}.
** And Baltar, when he learns that he gave the Cylons information that helped them to kill billions of people.
** Let's not forget the ''original'' [[My God, What Have I Done?]] moment, when Boomer finally 'regains consciousness' and sees the aftermath of her actions in the Season 1 finale. And the thematic continuation, the Season 4 premiere has {{spoiler|Tigh experience a sort of 'waking nightmare' where he imagines the consequences of not owning up to the horrible truth of what he believes himself to be -- killing Adama -- and is horrified by the thought}}.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':
** The Fifth Doctor had a few of these moments. Notably, check out [[Doctor Who/Recap/S21/E01 Warriors of the Deep|Warriors of the Deep]].
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* Duncan on ''[[Highlander (TV series)|Highlander]]'' after he {{spoiler|killed Richie in a demon-induced haze}}
* In Season 4 of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', Samuel has this reaction after {{spoiler|murdering his brother, Joseph.}} He may or may not quote this trope by name, as Robert Knepper's well-done emotional performance makes it unclear whether he's saying "What have I done", or if he's begging {{spoiler|Joseph}} to "Hold on".
* In the ''[[Charmed]]'' episode "We're Off to See the Wizard", Phoebe utters this almost verbatim after using pyrokinesis -- anpyrokinesis—an upper-level demonic power -- onpower—on Cole's new personal assistant.
* In ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|Mash]]'', Father Mulcahey once impulsively punched out an unruly patient who hit him first during triage, when any delays in the selection process can cost lives. While the rest of the staff agree he was entitled, Father Mulcahey was kicking himself for some time afterward.
** Hawkeye has this in the episode "Fallen Idol." He sends Radar to Seoul to "sew a few wild oats", and Radar subsequently gets wounded by enemy fire en route.
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* Subverted with another "What have YOU done" in ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] IV: Oblivion'', when Lucien Lachance reveals that {{spoiler|you've been killing the ''wrong'' people.}}
* Happens at the very first event of [[Fahrenheit (2005 video game)]], the main character, after coming to his sense, realized that he is holding a knife, blood dripping from his clothes, and a dead man lying right next to his feet, stabbed many wounds to the chest.
* This is a subtext of the game ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]''. Any time the protagonist kills one of the Colossi {{spoiler|the death scene is dramatic and sad to drive home the fact that ''you'' are the one invading and killing, and the Colossi were living their lives peacefully, bothering no one.}} Many people felt ''exactly'' [[My God, What Have I Done?]] after they killed the thirteenth Colossus, specifically: a majestic creature that doesn't attack, can barely defend itself, and doesn't even approach the player in any way.
* Similar to ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]'', ''[[Far Cry|Far Cry 2]]'' seems to be designed to eat away at the player until they realise just how many people they're butchering and what a monster they are, resulting in a [[My God, What Have I Done?|My God, What am I doing?]] moment.
* Kastor in ''[[Age of Mythology]]'', after {{spoiler|blindly following Krios's hidden plan of releasing the Titans}}.
* [[The Woobie|Oichi]] from ''[[Sengoku Basara]]'', after {{spoiler|being [[Break the Cutie|driven insane]] by her [[Yandere (disambiguation)|husband's death]] and her [[You Bastard|brother]] [[Oda Nobunaga|Nobunaga]]'s evil ways, goes on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]], killing her [[Kill'Em All|brother and all his subordinates]]. Afterwards, she briefly comes to her senses, realizes what she has done and bursts into tears... only to die when [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|the roof caves in on her]].}}
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* In ''[[Tactics Ogre]]'', some of the leaders' death quotes might invoke this to the player. You kill a person who seems to just be a named Mook...then an optional battle (If you wanna recruit one of the characters) has a woman who wants revenge because you killed her husband. After you beat her, she reveals she's ''pregnant''. Another person laments that he won't be able to get medicine for his sick daughter.
** The PSP version also has a wizard who fights you in chapter two who wants revenge on Denam. What for? A boss you fought in chapter one was his twin brother.
* Raiden has a massive [[My God, What Have I Done?]] moment in ''[[Mortal Kombat]] 9'', {{spoiler|after he accidentally fries Liu Kang to death in self defense}}.
* King [[A Father to His Men|Volechek]] in ''[[Golden Sun: Dark Dawn]]'' has this moment. When he realizes the [[Superweapon Surprise|ancient tower]] he got the heroes to reactivate was really going to cause an [[Total Eclipse of the Plot|eclipse]] that [[Apocalypse How|summoned hoards of monsters]] on half of the globe. Did we mention his kingdom was in the middle of it?
** And in the game before that, ''The Lost Age'', {{spoiler|The [[Final Boss]] the heroes killed turns out to be Isaac's father and Felix and Jenna's parents. This causes Jenna to have a complete emotional breakdown, knowing that not only her parents are going to die soon, but she was the one who did the horrible deed. To be fair, the Wise One did this trick to test the resolve of the heroes and the Golden Sun event winds up reviving the parents. Even then, Jenna is still shaken up by the whole ordeal.}}
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== Visual Novels ==
* Part of the meltdown of {{spoiler|Acro}} in ''[[Ace Attorney]]''. You don't actually see the moment onscreen but the aftereffects are obvious during his breakdown. {{spoiler|In attempting to murder Regina he accidentally killed her father, to whom Acro and his brother owed everything.}} As [[Sympathetic Murderer|Sympathetic Murderers]]s go he's high on the list.
* Archer from ''[[Fate/stay night|Fate Stay Night]]'' as revealed in UBW route. {{spoiler|He is trying to kill Shirou, himself from past, because he wants to prevent him making a pact with world to protect people, because it'll only make him one who kills some to save many.}}
* One of the extended bad endings in the [[PlayStation 2]] version of ''[[School Days]]'' has {{spoiler|Kotonoha murder Sekai in cold blood and then offer herself to Makoto, who was watching. Makoto's horrified reaction causes Kotonoha to realize what she has done, and she breaks down in tears.}}
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** King Kai gets one too, after realizing that sending Goku home has resulted in him being all alone again. When Bubbles, Gregory and Bojack try to comfort him, he tells them to shut up.
* In ''[[Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog]]'', [[Villain Protagonist]] Dr. Horrible has one of these moments as he kneels over the body of his would-be [[Love Interest]], Penny, the innocent victim of his exploding [[Death Ray]]. The closing song, "Everything You Ever", is both a celebration of his triumphant victory and a dirge for his lost hope.
* [[The Nostalgia Critic]] is pretty broken up about shooting his childhood icon, [[Mary Poppins]], when she didn't explain all the [[Plot Hole|Plot Holes]]s in ''[[Quest for Camelot]]''.
** He looked crushed in ''[[Kickassia]]'' right after he accidentally shoots {{spoiler|Santa Christ}}.
* She'd never admit it verbally, but [[The Nostalgia Chick]] draped her dead BFF's ''[[Star Trek]]'' shirt over a nearby chair in guilty memorial of the Kirk vs. Picard fight that got her killed.
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'''Pinky''': Uh huh. Narf! But I'm afraid my secret playhouse will never be the same... (''he had landed on top of it''.)
'''Brain''': Oh, it's all my fault. This obsession with taking over the world is causing me to hurt the ones I... [[Last-Second Word Swap|tolerate]]. }}
** This event prompts Brain to go to an organization called Megalomaniacs Anonymous in an attempt to get over his obsession with world domination. In a subversion, he decides in the end to return to his quest, since it's actually "a mission of mercy" -- if—if he ruled the world, it would be a better place for everyone.
*** This ties in with a subdued, implied [[Mind Screw]] of the series: {{spoiler|the title song only promised that "one is a genius, the other insane" but never stated which was which}}.
* An episode of ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'' features a robot clone of Batman that seeks to kill Batman and take his place. Once he (apparently) succeeds at this, he goes through an existential crisis since the real Batman [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|wouldn't kill anyone.]] He cries out "What have I done? I've taken a life!" and proceeds to smash the console evil supercomputer HARDAC was attempting to use in its evil ploy, both stopping the program and electrocuting himself, prompting the real Batman (who was hiding on a conveniently placed cliff crag) to wonder if his robot duplicate actually had a soul.
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** Twilight has one in ''A Canterlot Wedding'' when everyone calls her out on calling Cadence evil. {{spoiler|The twist is that it wasn't really Cadence at all, but an imposter posing as her.}}
* A comedic version happens in ''[[Animaniacs]]'' short 'Temporary Insanity', twice to Mr. Plotz. The first time is when he realizes that instead of calling a temp agency, he's called the Warners and told them he needs help in the office while his secretary is out sick. The second time is when he ''agrees' to the Warners helping him out. [[Hilarity Ensues|Needless to say, his fears do not go unwarranted.]]
* In an episode of the ''[[Krazy Kat]]'' animated series, Krazy is [[Born Lucky]], and Ignatz is jealous and wants her luck for himself. Then he comes up with the perfect solution--hesolution—he'll give her some [[Cement Shoes]], get her to sign her luck away to him, then dump her underwater. Only after he's already done this does he have this reaction and dive underwater to save her.
{{quote|"I must have been insane!"}}
* In the ''[[He-Man and the Masters of the Universe]]'' episode "The Problem With Power", Skeletor tricks He-Man into believing he's killed an innocent bystander (really a minion who was [[Faking the Dead]]) with his carelessness. In the [[Heroic BSOD]] that follows, He-Man retires. Fortunately, Orko finds out about the trick, and tells He-Man.
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== Real Life ==
* The page image is of [[Imperial Russia|Tsar]] Ivan IV the Terrible holding the body of his son, the Tsarevich (heir apparent) Ivan. The Tsar decided that his son's his pregnant wife was too immoderately dressed (or something), and the younger Ivan jumped in to defend her; in a fit of rage, the Tsar proceeded to beat down on his son with his scepter. Heavily. But when Tsar Ivan realized that his son was ''almost dead'', he started kissing him and trying to stop the bleeding, crying, "May I be damned! I've killed my son! I've killed my son!". His son regained consciousness long enough to deliver some [[Tear Jerker]] last words, and then remained comatose until dying a few days later--duringlater—during which his father remained awake for long hours praying constantly for a miracle.
* Captain Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the ''Enola Gay'', watched the city of Hiroshima disappear in an atomic blast. Some members of the crew would claim that Lewis was at first caught up in the moment and yelled, "My God, would you look at that sonofabitch go!", but after he calmed down, Lewis wrote in his log, "My God, what have we done?" (The rest of the crew maintained that they [[I Did What I Had to Do|did what they had to do]]).
** As he watched the first atomic test ever at the Trinity site:
{{quote|I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." [[My God, What Have I Done?|I suppose we all thought that, one way or another]].|'''J. Robert Oppenheimer''', Scientific Director, Manhattan Project}}
** Likewise:
{{quote|Now we are all sons of bitches.|'''Kenneth Bainbridge''', Trinity Test Director, Manhattan Project}}
** On the topic of [[WW 2]], the Marines having arrived on Okinawa, experienced no resistance from the Japanese. This had the marines extremely on edge, especially the first night since the Japanese were infamous for night attacks (especially of the Banzai Charge nature). Unfortunately that night, a convoy of Okinawan civilians were fleeing the Japanese. [[Tragic Mistake|The Marines thinking it was a Banzai Charge...]] [[My God, What Have I Done?|This trope was the reaction of the Marines.]]
* [[wikipedia:Ashoka the Great|Ashoka the Great]], emperor of India in the 3rd century BC, is said to have uttered this line after a bloody military campaign and then converted to Buddhism and never waged war again. That's right, [[Older Than Feudalism]].
* Alfred Nobel developed dynamite in order to make the nitroglycerin used for mining, quarrying and construction safer to use. Instead it became widely employed as a weapon, to the point that a paper mistakenly published his obituary on the occasion of his brother Ludvig's death, with the title "The merchant of death is dead". His personal fortune at the time of his death was approximately 250 million dollars in today's money. He bequeathed ''0.5%'' to his family, and the rest to the newly founded Nobel foundation. He also specified that race and nationality was not to be a factor in choosing recipients, which caused a major stir at the time. (The prize committee made good on this specification relatively quickly, giving the Literature Prize to Indian [[wikipedia:Rabindranath Tagore|Rabindranath Tagore]] in 1914.)
* Sociologist Robert Putnam was so horrified by the results of a study he performed that among other things suggested that racially diverse societies caused individuals to become more isolated that he almost didn't publish it. [http://www.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/communitysurvey/results3.html He did eventually]. When criticized about witholding his findings he explained that he was terrified his work would be used by racist organizations to justify their hatred.
* When the hysteria died down following the Salem witch trials, the people of Salem went straight to [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2051&version=KJV Psalm 51].
* A classic sports example of this happened when Lawrence Taylor gruesomely (but inadvertently) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8SZOqc6Pk broke Joe Theismann's leg]. As soon as it happened, Taylor -- knownTaylor—known then as a vicious defensive player and a bit of a trash-talker -- immediatelytalker—immediately and frantically called to the sidelines for the medical staff to come and help Theismann, knowing that he'd inflicted an exceptionally serious injury. Indeed, it ended Theismann's career.
* A rather literal example is HMS Beagle captain Robert FitzRoy, who was a fundamentalist Christian creationist. He regretted being part of the Beagle expedition that led to Darwin publishing On The Origin Of Species, thereby indirectly contributing to the development of the theory of evolution, which contradicted [[The Bible]]'s account of creation( though now it's thought to be one valid interpritation by some, including the Vatican). It may have contributed to the depression and anxiety later in life that ultimately led to him [[Driven to Suicide|committing suicide]].
* A common reaction by people when they kill someone, especially the first time. The degree of trauma depends on a number of factors, such as group participation (squads, teams, etc), range (greater distance = more detachment), emotions and weapons used.
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