Sudden Principled Stand

With all due respect, sir, I was not trained to murder the innocent.

—Phoebus in The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Things are not going well. Everyone around you gets more cynical and less caring for each day: It Gets Easier. What started out with good, or at least neutral, intentions, ends up more self-serving or antagonistic. The descent has been so slow and so drawn out in time that is has just crept up on everyone.

Then! Someone says "Enough!", usually surprising everyone around them, and makes them remember why they are really there, or what they used to be. This can be in a confrontation with someone in a position of authority, who finally is coming too close to dragging themselves and everyone else over the Moral Event Horizon, but it can be triggered by other factors as well. The Sudden Principled Stand can of course also be done with only two people present, the one giving the order and the one refusing.

The Sudden Principled Stand takes parts of its drama from its suddenness—it might very well be planned, but its execution comes as a surprise for the people around it, who earlier had been given no hint about it.

One common variation is that the principled stand hinges on a very minor technicality, in which case it is a Reconstruction of a one-off Obstructive Bureaucrat. Can also be combined with a Heel Face Turn, especially if late in the story. Earlier in a story, it can be used as an Establishing Character Moment, to establish a moral center, or establish a later conflict. The variant where the principles invoked are evil is of course possible, but likely uncommon.

Compare Neutral No Longer, Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right, Rage Breaking Point (where anger is handled this way).

Examples of Sudden Principled Stand include:

Anime and Manga

Luffy - the protagonist of One Piece - isn't a villain (even if he isn't exactly a hero) but his actions at the auction house during the Sabaody Archipelago Arc clearly qualify. The World Nobles are an untouchable privileged class, given anything and everything they want by the World Government. Harming them is a war crime. But when one of them - Charloss - assaults Hatchan - not the first atrocity Luffy had witnessed - the Straw Hats captain just didn't give a damn anymore, and gave Charloss the thrashing he deserved.
- AND, after he did so, Zorro comments that had Luffy not taught the guy a lesson, he would have. The rest of the crew follows suit, especially when Charloss' equally-jerkass father Roswald doesn't know when to quit:

Roswald: I'll teach you what happens when you assault us, the descendants of the world's creators!
Sanji: Hell if we care, bastard.

An even more poignant example happens during the Levely Arc. Charloss (who obviously didn't learn his lesson the first time) ordered two of his henchmen (a thug and the nefarious assassin Rob Lucci) tried to abduct Princess Shirahoshi simply For the Evulz, having the audacity to do so in front of the royal family and a crowd of citizens. King Neptune eventually decided he did not care about the law or his own safety, and was about to intervene, when to the surprise of everyone, Charloss' fellow World Noble Donquixote Mjosgard invoked the Trope himself, grabbing a club and clobbering Carloss with it, hard. Afterwards he made a public apology for his kinsman's atrocious behavior, and would be Shirahoshi's bodyguard for the rest of the arc. Note, by the way, that the reason Mjosgard had gone there in the first place was to reclaim his own escaped slaves, making this a Heel Realization for him as well. This act put him on the path of a Heel Face Turn that, a ten-year Time Skip later, he is still doing his best to maintain.

Comic Books

In the Black Orchid miniseries, the second Black Orchid, after one of Lex Luthor's operatives, Sterling, tracks her down to the Brazilian rainforest, refuses his ultimatum to accompany him peacefully to Lexcorp for anatomical study. Sterling orders his two Mooks to kill her with herbicide. However, awed by her beauty and that of the surrounding ecosystem, they refuse ("I--we've killed for you before. It's what we do. But not her. Not here."), and he returns to Metropolis empty-handed. Foreshadowed in that one of the mooks, en route, discusses what he's read about the endangered Amazon rainforests.

Film

In The Apartment there's Bud's climactic refusal to let Sheldrake use his apartment for a tryst with Fran after her suicide attempt.
Phoebus against Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as quoted above.
In Lion King 2 Vitani refuses to attack the Pridelanders even when ordered by Zira, because she was convinced by Kiara's heartwarming speech. In response, Zira threatened that Vitani would die as well. In turn, the rest of Zira's followers refused to attack the Pridelanders.
In Kung Fu Panda 2, Boss Wolf refuses to fire upon the heroes with his own men in the crossfire. Shen responds by killing him on the spot.

Literature

In the opening of The Shadow of the Lion, Abbot Sachs has, with the help of several Knight Templar, apprehended some children in a church, that he claims are enacting satanic rites. Erik reminds the knights that the kids are most likely innocent, have sanctuary in the church, and can only be removed by order of the parish priest. This sets up Erik as a moral center for the knights, and a conflict with the abbot.
The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold has several examples:
- In Falling Free, Bannerji doesn't refuse to fire at and destroy the ship that the Quaddies escape on per se, but he demands a proper work order, signed by the Hazardous Waste Management Officer, and with an Environmental Impact Assessment attached. This gives the ship time to escape.
- In Shards of Honor, when Sergeant Bothari refuses to rape Cordelia as per Admiral Vorrutyer's orders.

"She's Commodore Vorkosigan's prisoner. Sir."

Deryni Checkmate: The day after the Curia excommunicated Morgan and Duncan, its leaders, Archbishops Loris and Corrigan, tried to push through an Interdict on Morgan's duchy as well. The previously neutral Bishop Cardiel spoke against the measure, precipitating a schism within the Church. Cardiel argued that it was unjust to punish the people of Corwyn for the actions of its duke and left open the possibility that Morgan and Duncan were morally innocent. The conflict escalated as other bishops, including Arilan and Tolliver (Corwyn's bishop) joined in, accusing Loris of supporting a rebellion against the king and promoting genocide against the Deryni.
The entire plot of 1812: The Arkansas War hinges on this trope, in that the United States is forced to address slavery in the 1820s instead of the 1850s, and in a far more direct way. It's not too sudden, but then it involves an entire nation.
In Son of the Black Sword the protagonist Ashok Vadal spend most of the first book as an unflinching enforcer of Lok's harsh, merciless, quasi-religious Law and its Fantastic Caste System that reduces a fourth of the population to non-human stats as Casteless. Even after he learns he himself is one of the non-human casteless that was brainwashed into thinking he was more and sent to die in order to remove his bond to one of the few remaining Ancestor Blades, then framed for mass murder and treason despite being legally non-human and the land's most wanted criminal he's still a true believer in the Law, only able to survive due to a contradiction of being ordered to break the Law. What finally prompts Ashok to stand for anything other than the Law is when, reminded of his young self from re-emerging memories, he shows charity to casteless children and an overseer, thinking it's theft, tries to kill them as thieves. When the overseer points out this is within the Law, Ashok admits this is correct, but ceases to care as he crushes the man's body with his bare hands. Naturally No Good Deed Goes Unpunished as this blows his cover and provides an excuse to attempt culling the local castless to prepare for a harsh winter.

Live Action TV

In Torchwood: Miracle Day, Cpl. Coltrane starts off as little more than Colin Maloney's cringing accomplice as he murders Dr. Juarez by demonstrating the true purpose of the modules. In episode 6, however, he shows up just in time to shoot Maloney when he's trying to kill Esther.

Cpl. Coltrane: "This has got to stop!"

A form of this occurs in "The West Wing." In the 6th season, a conservative Senator is trying to attach a rider banning gay marriage to a budget bill. Toby is looking to rally support, and goes to the Vice President, Bob Russell, for a statement of support. Russell, who is widely regarded as an idiot, mildly corrupt, and a bit of an opportunist, surprises Toby by refusing. Russell states that he has a gay nephew, but is against gay marriage because "it could set back progress fifty years." Bartlet eventually convinces the Senator to drop the amendment on the budget bill.

Western Animation

Lion-O from ThunderCats (2011) takes one against a blood thirsty mob and his own father.
Gillecomgain from Gargoyles is a rare villainous example: He had no compunctions about killing Macbeth's father or marrying Macbeth's girlfriend (both on Prince Duncan's orders), but when Duncan ordered him to assassinate Macbeth himself as well, he refused for pragmatic rather than moral reasons: "Nay, milord. Macbeth is an heir to the crown, and much beloved by the people; besides, it might lead to some uncomfortable questions about his father's demise... and who demanded it."
In Amphibia, the point during the Final Battle that cements King Andrias's long-overdue Heel Face Turn. Aldrich (his rotten father) whispers to him to save the Core from the heroines, promising forgiveness and the privilege of joining the Core if he does. (One episode previous, Aldrich had disowned him for his initial failure, stating he’d never be allowed to join it.) At first, Andrias seems to comply, activating his backup regiment of Mecha Mooks - but then it becomes clear he’s doing so to give the heroines backup:

Aldrich: What are you doing?
Andrias: What I should have done years ago, standing up to you!

Real Life

Many pundits have stated that one of the biggest reasons the Green Bay Sweep (part of a larger plan orchestrated by supporters of Donald Trump to overturn the Election of 2020) failed was a result of then Vice President Mike Pence (a key factor in the plan) wanting no part of it and refusing to cooperate with the plot and refusing to acknowledge fake electors and false documents as legitimate. Although, Pence also has quite a lot of his detractors who claim it was less a matter of principles and more a matter of him "chickening out".
- Many also apply this Trope to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom was also allegedly pressured into falsifying data to change the results, but refused to do so.