Moral Event Horizon/Video Games

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• Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII is initially shown to be quite sympathetic despite Cloud's hatred of him. He saves the party at Shinra HQ and seems to be working against the Evil Corporation finding the Promised Land. Even during Cloud's flashback, when you discover that he's not entirely human (his Mom, Jenova is actually a feminine alien in a tank), he remains worthy of pity. But then he goes crazy and burns down Cloud's entire hometown, killing Cloud's mom and Tifa's dad among others, as well as almost killing the devastated Tifa when she lost it and tried to take revenge for her father. And if that wasn't enough of a horizon crossing for you and you're still somewhat willing to feel sorry for him due to the fact that his actions were committed out of a mental breakdown rather than genuine malice, there's always the part where he murders Aerith (also pictured at the right) pretty much For the Evulz. Now we must kill him with fire!
  • Let's not forget President Shinra and Heidegger ordering the destruction of an entire sector of Midgar just to get rid of some terrorists, also planning to pin the blame for it on said terrorists...and then not even rebuild the sector afterwards. The Turks (mainly Reno and Tseng) might have crossed the line too by actually carrying out this heinous order.
  • Then there's Scarlet leading mass murder via the complete destruction of the town of Coral.
  • And Hojo. Where do we start with Hojo? Injecting alien cells into his unborn child? Murdering Professor Gast right in front of his wife Ifalna and his child Aerith, whom he then kidnaps for horrible experiments? Doing more horrific experiments on Vincent, Zack and Cloud? Also being indirectly responsible for Sephiroth's descent into insanity as well as Sephiroth's aforementioned murder of Aerith? You might as well assume that he crossed the line right at very beginning of his career.
• In Final Fantasy VI, Kefka is introduced as more of a nuisance, but a general of the enemy Empire nonetheless. His clownish charm fades rather quickly, however, after he disobeys direct orders and poisons Doma's water supply. The situation up to that point: General Leo had Doma Castle besieged, and was likely to win in just a matter of time with minimal casualties. Some time after Kefka arrives, Leo is summoned back to Vector to meet with the Emperor. Now there's no one to stop Kefka from dumping deadly poison into the Doma River, killing absolutely everyone in the castle; men, women, children, and Imperial P.O.W's that he knew full well were still trapped inside. The kicker here, which cements this act as Kefka gleefully tapdancing and cackling his way across the Moral Event Horizon, is that the Empire was going to win anyway. There was absolutely no possible justification for this heinous war crime other than Kefka wanting to hear "the music of hundreds of voices screaming in unison".
  • And if there's still any glimmer of humanity at that point, it's all but lost when he murders his own Emperor, by kicking him off the Floating Continent (thus taking his role as the Big Bad) after having the Warring Triad use their powers to mortally wound Gestahl, to harness the power that created all magic and unleash destruction on the planet below, leaving countless dead, a city with only children left alive, and entire continents split apart and reshaped. Just because he could.
  • Really, he doesn't even last THAT long. The introduction alludes to him, and later shows him, controlling Terra with a Slave Crown and forcing her to burn HIS OWN SOLDIERS ALIVE! According to another Imperial Soldier, it was as many as 50 soldiers in mere moments. The man had maybe a few seconds of screen time before he's revealed to be a thoroughly terrible person without a shred of decency. No wonder the soldiers at the Doma base keep complaining about him, who in their right mind agrees to serve under someone like that?!
    • His only excuse, at all for all this? As an early magitek knight, the process very likely drove him insane. No, that doesn't cut it.
  • Emperor Gestahl, while not nearly as evil as his subordinate Kefka, still crosses the line when he is shown in a flashback to have orchestrated an invasion of the esper world. While the invasion ends in failure, at the end he discovers an infant half-esper, and rips the baby from her mother's arms, killing the woman in the process, while gloating about how he's going to subject her to a life of experimentation. Oh BOY.
• Psychonauts: As if Doctor Loboto wasn't bad enough, he crosses the Horizon by forcing Sheegor to steal more psychic brains for him by threatening to cook her pet turtle, Mr. Pokeylope (who, mind you, is extremely intelligent and has a brain the size of an average human), if she doesn't. The exact moment: "Well, maybe I'll just make a cup for myself."
  • "It's made of turtles. Turtles that YOU LOVE!"
  • What, and stealing the brains of psychic children and the instructors with a sneezing powder that is explicitly stated to be extremely painful, then putting them in psychic death tanks to take over the world wasn't crossing the line?
    • That crossed the line twice due to being shamelessly absurd standard-issue Mad Science. Something about threatening to cook Mr. Pokeylope was so much more personally cruel. The Moral Event Horizon is weird like that.
• In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, right after you decide to follow the Dark Side path, the game makes it plain what an ultimately depraved monster you have chosen to become by allowing you to Force Persuade Zaalbar to kill Mission, his best friend, because she refuses to either join you or run away to save herself, and she's too nice to be brainwashed into going Sith herself. And Bastila compliments you for it. Note to put it all in perspective: Mission is a 14-year-old orphan girl who by this point in the game has not only helped save your life at least twice, but whom you've taken under your wing as a surrogate daughter, and who at this point in time is the only member of your party still believing that you can be turned back to the Light Side. You get to hear her anguished cries of betrayal and disappointment as she dies.
  • The whole point of the game (on the light side path, at least) is that there IS NO moral event horizon - that NO ONE deserves to die, and that there is no point beyond which someone cannot be redeemed. The fact that the game forces you to callously kill Mission if you side with Bastila at the end kind of turns this into a Broken Aesop.
    • Or, that anyone can be redeemed - if they make the choice to do so. Slaughtering half your party and capping it off by cutting down the teenager who looks up to you as a parental figure pretty much means you've taken your Last Second Chance and spaced it.
      • Or not. What really breaks the Aesop is that the extra scene where Carth could convince you to pull Redemption Equals Death was removed.
• In Starcraft, there are a few. Arcturus Mengsk puts a psi-emitter on Tarsonis, having the entire planet killed by the Zerg, then leaves Sara Kerrigan to die by the hands of the Zerg after she held off the Protoss.
  • To elaborate, prior to Tarsonis, Mengsk has only used the psi-emitters on Confederate troops. Letting the Horde of Alien Locusts eat your enemies? That's a Kick the Dog for sure, but could be justifiable. Calling said Alien Locusts to a planet with not only military forces, but with hundreds of millions of innocents on it, and then sitting back and watching the slaughter? That's this trope. Kerrigan (very loyal to Arcturus) even calls him on it. Unfortunately, that causes him to decide that Kerrigan has outlived her usefulness, and leave her to the Zerg as well.
    • And, in Starcraft 2, guess what Raynor has now told EVERYONE? This is out, and Mengsk is now approaching 0% approval rating.
  • It's hard to say if Kerrigan crossed it due to the fact that it's unknown how much control she has after being turned into a Zerg, but Infested Kerrigan is when she betrays her allies and kills Fenix, just so she doesn't have to deal with him in the future (she also killed Duke, but he was an Asshole Victim.)
  • Samir Duran tricks DuGalle into thinking Alexei Stukov was a traitor, and leads DuGalle into having Stukov killed..
  • Not to mention Stukov and DuGalle's meeting at the beginning of Brood War, over a hapless terran base overrun by Zerg, brought there by the UED themselves! It's debatable whether it was the crossing of the UED into the event horizon, since they hadn't done anything else yet, but it certainly showed you they weren't fucking around. The Power of Rock didn't save THOSE marines...
• World of Warcraft/Warcraft III - "This city must be purged"
  • A better example would probably be taking up Frostmourne. Razing Stratholme was bad, but there was little that could be done otherwise. Frostmourne? He takes up a sword that he knows is cursed, saying all he wants is revenge. The ice shatters, and Muradin is hit by it as a direct result of Arthas' hatred and his own loyalty and then left to bleed to death in the snow. And he doesn't even care when he gets back to base.
  • "You lied to your men and betrayed the mercenaries who fought for you!" Stranding his own men in an icy wasteland and blaming and murdering the mercenaries he hired to do it show just how low Arthas will go in the pursuit of his revenge. Muradin is utterly disgusted by this, but due to his aforementioned loyalty, stays to help Arthas.
  • Neltharion, later known as Deathwing, crosses the Moral Event Horizon when he tricks the other Dragon Aspects into giving much of their power to the Dragon Soul, and then turns on them and kills nearly all the blue dragonflight. The rest of the Black Dragonflight crosses it with him in the eyes of the Red Dragonflight in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and the player is tasked with eliminating them in the Twilight Highlands. There was also the matter of him causing a massive earthquake that does enormous damage to Azeroth...
  • Malygos crosses the Moral Event Horizon when the player, after defeating one of his minions, finds a letter that reveals that he forced them to work for him under the threat of their family being killed. Like Deathwing, when Alexstrasza learns of his plans, she sadly decides that he is beyond redemption, and decides to kill him to save Azeroth.
  • Sylvanas Windrunner has crossed the line so many times that she plays double-dutch with it, and despite some Warcraft fans remaining loyal to her and claiming she hasn't done anything wrong because "it's for the good of her 'people'", many more have found her to be irredeemably evil. She has committed so many atrocities that it would actually be much easier to list what she hasn't done. She has: killed civilians, killed children, experimented on children with biological weapons, used biological weapons on civilian towns, committed genocide, disobeyed direct orders, reanimated the men that she has killed into more Forsaken, kidnapped, taken hostages, invaded foreign countries, framed a Forsaken man who may or may not have committed a crime and then tested biological weapons against him, mind-controlled a Death Knight (essentially a volunteer Horde warrior), used propaganda, and set herself up as the object of cult worship. If Sylvanas sees a line to be crossed, she gleefully cartwheels over it.
• Ace Attorney's Manfred Von Karma. He killed Edgeworth's father because he tarnished his perfect record, adopted Edgeworth, trained him to be a prosecutor, then SET HIM UP TO BE CONVICTED OF MURDER. Not to mention he was the prosecutor who was TRYING TO PROVE HIM GUILTY. He's probably already passed into the realm of Complete Monsterdom.
  • While we all knew Dahlia was a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing from the moment she popped up, her status as a monster wasn't fully confirmed until the flashback case where she convinces Terry Fawles (implied to be mentally disabled) into killing himself because he doubted that she loved him. This is after framing him for murdering her and later her sister.
• In Suikoden V, the villains had toed the line between reasonable and malicious up until they sent assassins to wipe out the beavers, for no reason other than a desire to remove all ethnic diversity from the kingdom. After that, they were just plain evil.
  • And in Suikoden Tierkreis, the Religious Leader Valfred goes too far when he erases an entire country and his population, The Magedom of Janam, who was opposing to him, with Manaril and Shams' family inside it.
• Planescape: Torment. The game's plot revolves around the Nameless One trying to figure out exactly how you redeem yourself for committing one of these. Exactly what he did is never revealed, but it was sufficiently morally damning that a lifetime of nothing but saintly deeds could not make up for it, and in the end, he has no choice but to suffer penance for it in the Blood War. Except that in the end, he does have a choice -- he can end his existence entirely, or just continue eternal life in ignorance, instead of dying. The best ending of the game is the Nameless One choosing to pay his penance... because, in a way, choice can change the nature of a man.
  • The Practical Incarnation has his MEH on-screen, in one of the game's most emotionally affecting scenes.
    • Given the sorts of horrible things you can do within the game if you so choose, whatever your original crime was must have been really awful.
      • Probably he was the explorer who first mapped out the Lower Planes, the knowledge of which allowed the demons and devils to come into contact with one another, and started the Blood War in the first place.
• Spoofed in Armed and Dangerous: King George's men take over a retirement home. This is seen by everyone as a horrible act, while it was actually done because one of the heroes moved a sign.
• Dr. Suchong from BioShock (series) at first seems like a very slimy scientist with a Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate, but no worse than any of the other psychos running around Rapture. Then comes The Reveal audiodiary: "Break that sweet puppy's neck, would you kindly?". After that, his eventual Karmic Death is fully justified.
  • The game, meanwhile, will conclude that the player has crossed the line if you kill more than two Little Sisters. So, no, by the time Tennenbaum takes you in and says there may be hope for you yet, there isn't. Given that you're killing brainwashed little girls who can't help themselves, it's justified.
  • Nearly every major figure in Rapture can be said to have crossed the Moral Event Horizon. Steinman becoming the "Picasso" of cosmetic surgery, Cohen's definition of art, the whole Little Sister project... However, while Tenenbaum does do actions that could count as crossing the line (collaborating with the Nazi prison camp, letting ADAM research go on despite being fully aware of the consequences, the whole Little Sister thing...) she still manages to appear sympathetic as she becomes The Atoner of the game.
  • However, truly special mention must be made to Dr. Sofia Lamb of the sequel. The opening cutscene is you bringing your Little Sister, Eleanor Lamb around on a gathering expedition, and being attacked by a group of splicers as is normal. Then the good Doc Lamb shows up. after her minions cast Hypnotize on you, she forces you to shoot yourself in the head. While her daughter watches in increasing horror.
  • Possibly topped by what Sofia Lamb does to your buddy Augustus Sinclair. Capturing him and turning him into an Alpha-Series Big Daddy, except his mind is still awake and aware. During the last level, you have to work your way through the multiple defenses Sinclair's body has set up... all while Sinclair's mind/voice is radioing you, apologizing for everything, telling you to kill him, and saying he enjoyed the time spent helping you throughout the game. When you finally manage to take him down, he thanks you as he dies.
    • Her Moral Event Horizon may have come even earlier when Lamb smothers Eleanor with a pillow to put Delta in a coma or when she captures Mark Metzer, a character that a lot of fans liked due to his exploits on the viral marketing site "Something in the Sea" and forces him to become a Big Daddy. Which the player will almost certainly kill.
  • Stanley Pool is just as bad, in a horrible,fat toad sort of way. Not only does he turn Dionysus Park into a den of vice after being given control over the district, but he prevents Eleanor from reporting this by kidnapping her and giving her to the Little Sister program. Then, when Sofia escapes from prison, he decides silence any remaining witnesses by sabotaging the district's pressure systems, drowning just about everyone left in the area. Is it any wonder that getting the game's best ending requires you to kill the despicable jerk?
• In Fallout 3 the player can merrily trip over the Horizon by erasing the peaceful town of Megaton out of existence for a handful of caps and a room at Tenpenny Tower. Doing so will immediately sink your Karma meter to the lowest it can go -- earning you the attentions of the Gunslinger-esque Regulators -- and your pacifist father will have a very stern word to you about it later on in the story. Although this is if you choose to do it your Crowning Moment of Villainy, elsewhere in the game you may enslave children, feed a pack of lies to a gullible character which she will then publish as fact, sabotage your erstwhile home thus forcing your neighbours out into the hands of almost certain death, and finally poison your father's own project and consign the majority of the population of the Wasteland to painful death.
  • The effect of many of your evil actions is kinda ruined as you can erase the negative consequences of many such actions by giving water to beggars or donating to the church.
    • Actually, the very act of turning the purifier on gives you the same amount of positive karma as poisoning it does negative. So, for killing the entire wasteland population, the karma system just remains somewhat indifferent to you.
  • And that's just the player, too. For other line-crossers, there's Mister Burke for wanting to have Megaton blown sky-high despite being ordered to evacuate everyone, Dr. Braun for his entire Vault 112 set-up, Roy Phillips butchering every last human in Tenpenny Tower even if you convince Mr. Tenpenny to allow him to stay, and Colonel Autumn murdering an innocent scientist in cold blood just because James was taking too long to give him the Project Purity code.
• In Fallout: New Vegas the player can cross this. YMMV if the Moral Event Horizon goes to selling your friend into slavery, letting Mortimer, a high class cannibal, use one of your human companions as the main course of a banquet, or teaming up with the Powder Gangers to destroy Goodsprings and kill everyone in it, including the guy who saved your life. Or other things.
• The Locust from Gears of War were nasty in the first place, but just in case you thought that they might actually be justified in their extreme actions (as Myrrah continually tries to pass them off as being), they skip gleefully past the Moral Event Horizon in Gears Of War 2 where they're revealed to capture humans just so they can expose them to torture so nasty, the biggest Badass of a game series that's practically Made Of Badass commits suicide once he's freed.
  • The reason Tai commits suicide is his religion believes that the soul can leave the body before death, and this is what happened during the torture. After he was free, his body was soulless so Tai saw no point in having earthly remains.
  • Not even humans in the military, or humans who were armed. Every human they came across they either killed or tortured, and nobody knows why. The scene with Maria... well. It drives the point home.
• The Player can cross this in Armored Core: For Answer with the mission "Destroy Cradle 03"-- a mission that has you destroy 5 "Cradles", huge flying cities housing 20 Million people each. Your progress through the mission is kept track of by Old King saying how many people you have killed, ending with the staggering total of 100 Million. The next mission comes from a case of What the Hell, Hero?, and 4 of the game's major characters come after you in a final, semi-heroic last stand (5 on Hard Mode, with the 5th being the female lead of the game), that will, ultimately, because you are the main character after all, end with you coming out victorious, and as the game implies becoming a Complete Monster.
• Lieutenant Virgil from Xenosaga was a Jerkass from the start, but crosses the Moral Event Horizon when he blows up some Realians for no better reason than that there's some chance it might buy some time, and talks cheerfully about how he loves eating their flesh. When he dies shortly thereafter, Shion still cares, but the player most likely doesn't.
  • In the third game, his abject hatred of Realians and even his cannibalistic tendencies are made a bit more forgivable when you learn about his backstory with Febronia. His final scene in particular almost tips him into Jerkass Woobie territory...of course, Your Mileage May Vary
    • His cannibalism due to DME addiction may be a side effect of Febronia donating her organs to him.
  • Albedo. He kidnaps MOMO, proceeds to subject her to some horror involving self-mutilation and regeneration, then mind-rapes her to get the Y data. While doing so, he plants some kind of mind-bomb in her so that when the heroes try to get the Y data later, it more or less makes her mind asplode. And despite all this, he's still one of the most popular characters
• Another option for the player to cross the horizon: using a Planet Buster in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Using one will put you beyond redemption in the eyes of the rest of humanity (unless you repealed the UN Charter), and trigger a round of Gaia's Vengeance from an already contentious ecosystem. Made even more noticeable because not only will the Planet Buster obliterate its target, it will probably level the entire continent it hits, leaving nothing but a giant crater, as a personal reminder to everyone, and yourself, what a bastard you are.
  • Actually, repealing the UN Charter is not gonna save your hide. Everyone will still hate your guts and the planet will also still hate your guts. Lets just say that a Planet Buster will make anyone hate your guts (expect your own followers).
    • Depends. Without the Charter, it's VERY Possible to be liked enough to not have everyone hate you after a buster or two (or 27, Twenty-Freaking-Seven... on one turn.) With the Charter, you're screwed.
• Seedle's backstory revealed in the last episode of Makai Kingdom even has SEVERAL Overlords pissed with him. Put quick and dirty, he (an allegedly noble samurai) raped Salome (who fought back and killed him), and she was burned at the stake for slaying a hero; he thinks it's not enough.
• In The Darkness video game, the death of Jenny serves as a Moral Event Horizon for both Paulie Franchetti and The Darkness itself. Paulie for executing her and The Darkness for restraining you as you are Forced to Watch and sadistically joking about it all.

The Darkness: "Aww, what did they do to poor Jenny?"

• • That is, of course, assuming Paulie hasn't crossed it already by blowing up the orphanage where Jackie grew up with a rocket launcher. With the kids inside it. Out of spite.
• Lezard Valeth of Valkyrie Profile is one nasty piece of work and crosses the line many times (especially in the sequel/prequel), but very early on he crosses the Moral Event Horizon when he orchestrates the deaths of his former teacher, Lorenta, and her husband by giving the latter a potion that turns the drinker into a monster. Lorenta's husband begs her to kill him before he succumbs to its effect, but Lorenta can't bring herself to do it. He then turns into a monster and kills her. All of this was to draw the attention of the protagonist, Lenneth Valkyrie. Lezard claims he needed a sacrifice of lovers to lure the goddess to him and chose his former teacher because she and her husband had a "lifetime of love."
• In one of the background books in Morrowind, an axe-fighter named Ellabeth becomes part of a love triangle. She kidnaps her rival and leaves her in a room with three doors, telling her that one door will lead to freedom, another to the guy, and the third to a demon that will kill her. That's a nasty enough revenge, right? As the woman tries the doors, it turns out there is no demon: one door is the way out, and behind the others are the two halves of her boyfriend. It's called "The Third Door."
  • This one's arguable. Not because Ellabeth was enacting revenge for being wronged, but because, before leaving the girl to her fate, takes pity on the poor thing, points her to the correct door, and tells her to ignore the other two and just leave. Her advice is disregarded.
  • In the embellished historical account of Morrowind's war with the Empire, we get a plethora of bastards merrily hopping across the MEH. The Akaviri potentate and his son gleefully plot the absolute destruction of the Emperor and his minions, callously catching innocents in their web of intrigue, while they are at peace with the Empire. A deranged Khajiit lord sets Molag Bal, one of the most sinister and cruel Daedra Lords, on a helpless town because a bard from there had told him a depressing tale. Later on, to get revenge for Lord Vivec of Morrowind blacklisting him for incompetence, a mercenary manipulates a poor bereaved girl who had been trained in witchcraft into summoning Mehrunes Dagon to destroy the capital of Morrowind. The mad Empress has her own son assassinated, and the Emperor (after being tricked into believing that his concubine was an assassin), casually remarks to her that he's going to free her, but he thinks he'll have her innocent little sister brought in as her replacement.
• Outside of the literature within Morrowind, Lady Almalexia, one of the three mortal gods of the Morrowind Tribunal, goes insane with power and uses her reincarnated lover (whom she betrayed to his death the first time) to carry out her increasingly unsettling orders, and finally sends him off to murder one of the other members of the Tribunal based on sketchy evidence. When the player arrives, they find Sotha Sil already dead, and Almalexia arrives to try to murder you before going on to take care of Vivec so that she will be the sole ruler of the Temple.
• Depending on the player's choices in Devil Survivor, different people can end up crossing the line. One major example is Keisuke Takagi, who loses it after finding out that demons aren't the only threat in the lockdown and decides to deal with it by slaughtering anyone they judge irredeemable. Again, the player decides whether they've gone too far with their well-intentioned extremism, or if they want to pull them back from the brink.
• Lord Yuna of Breath of Fire 4 at first appears to be a simple officer of the Fou Empire's forces. He doesn't even appear to be as evil as some of the other members of the army (CoughRassoCough). Then you learn near the end of the game that not only did he kidnap Elina (as opposed to all the times he told your group that she was no longer in the Empire), but he has forcibly genetically modified her body into that of a god, though one rendered immobile because her organs grew large enough to consume an entire building. The worst part? The entire point of this operation was so that he could use her as a source of ammo for the Carronade, a Nightmare Fuel-ish weapon that typically sacrifices the life of a person to fire a devastating Hex shot that leaves entire cities uninhabitable. The more physical and emotional pain the victim is put through before being sacrificed and the closer their connection to the target, the stronger the hex. His aim was to make Elina immortal so he could brutally torture her without her dying so he could fire the strongest shot possible at her kingdom. After learning all that, there isn't a Breath of Fire fan that doesn't consider him a Complete Monster, especially since the game's ending hints that he goes on to create even MORE monstrosities like what he did to Elina.
• Wiseman from Baten Kaitos Origins crosses it in a big way when he kills everyone in Naos, an act so evil that Seph, perhaps the best example of a Blue Oni in the game up to this point, goes completely berserk. To the point where he makes a Deal with the Devil just so that he can personally kill Wiseman.
  • Shanath isn't any better in this regard. Even as someone who had been a major pain in the ass for pretty much the entire game, he manages to take it to a new level when he rips off Gena's wings. This pisses off Sagi to such a massive degree that when it is revealed later in the game that this wasn't Shanath's idea, but Quaestor Verus', it's treated as that character crossing the Moral Event Horizon as well. Yes, the same event counts for two different people.
• In the first game of the Trauma Center series, it's already pretty enraging the thought of a fanatic unknown organization, threatening the lives of the innocent and the main character's beloved ones with their parasites for no good reason. But wait until the last part of the game, when you discover that they were making their experiments with GUILT on innocent children they kidnapped around the world!Add this up to some calculation:considering the speed GUILT kills the host, and the fact that the children were being used as incubators, with highly concentrated strains of the parasites, imagine the sheer number of kids dead in the hands of Delphi and you have a good example of Fridge Horror.
• The Tales series is known for having sympathetic villains, so it's kind of shocking that Tales of Vesperia has two or three of the most vile, inhuman villains in the entire series.
  • First there is Ragou. The very first thing we learn about him is that he demands cripplingly high taxes from the people, and abducts the children of those unable to pay. Doesn't seem so bad, right? Well, then you learn that Not only does he kill the kids, he feeds some of the corpses to monsters and sells the rest in the black market. And his reason for doing this? He was bored.
  • And then there's Cumore. Was there ever Cumore. At first, he only seems like a Smug Snake, but then he tells Leblanc right to his face that the Schwann Brigade is weak for showing mercy. Sometime later, we discover that he has forced the people of Heliord in brutal labor camps very similar to WW 2 labor camps. All this is topped off when it's discovered that he's sent countless people on a literal suicide mission, including one of his own men because he didn't load a prisoner wagon fast enough.
  • One could argue that Alexei crossed the line worse than Ragou and Cumore. First, he's responsible for most (but not all) of the previous two's actions. That alone makes him pretty evil, but then he orchestrates an attack on Nordopolica and has Flynn, Harry Whitehorse (The Don's son) and the Hunting Blades take the fall. This leads to one major Guild leader being turned into a monster that the party has to kill, Flynn and his brigade shamed, and tensions in the Guild Union rising to a boiling point, leading to the Don committing honorable suicide in order to both save Harry and prevent a civil war. Oh, and then we learn that he resurrected Raven against his will and forced him to be his slave/errand boy. And then, as the icing of a very vile cake, he forces Raven to kidnap Estelle, and then proceeds to Mind Rape her to such a point that he'd give Neon Genesis Evangelion a run for its money. Did I mention that the Mind Rape was so horrible that Estelle eventually lost complete control of her body (but not her mind), essentially literally making her a puppet for Alexei to control? Yeah, Vesperia pulled no punches in regards to pure evil villains...
  • In Symphonia, Rodyle crosses the Moral Event Horizon when he floods a passageway full of escaping prisoners, killing them all, in order to prevent the heroes from reaching the Mana Cannon.
  • Grand Maestro Mohs from Tales of the Abyss crosses the line hard. First, he manipulates two nations into igniting a bloody, pointless war, knowing full well that the losses would be through the roof, just because a prophecy of questionable legitimacy said this might bring prosperity to his own nation. This is only the tip of the iceberg, though, as we later learn that He kidnapped Anise's parents, and threatened to have them killed if she didn't act as The Mole to the party. The absolute worst thing he did, however was forcing Anise to deliver her close friend Ion to him so he could murder him right in front of her. Oh, and Arietta, a member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad and another close friend of Ion and Anise, witnesses this as well and goes batshit insane because of it, forcing the party to kill her. Mohs, of course, doesn't care at all about this.
    • While he's not as reprehensible, the Big Bad Van Grants crosses this himself by using Luke--someone who truly looked up to him by the way--to destroy Akzeriuth.
• In In Famous the player is given a karma choice. Either destroy the Ray Sphere and become a hero to all, or activate the Ray Sphere and become so evil that you can never be redeemed. You become literally irredeemable: the Karma Meter sets to its most evil setting and sticks there permanently.
  • Similarly, Zeke crosses it when he attempts to use the Ray Sphere to give himself powers knowing it would kill thousands in the process, and then when it doesn't work he ditches Cole to join Kessler. He gets better in the sequel though.
  • Augustine from Infamous Second Son is pretty repulsive all around, with her first onscreen moment already putting her over this by dooming the entire Akomish tribe to die by forcing concrete to grow from within their organs and flesh, all because Delsin didn't answer her question the way she wanted him to.
• In Dead Rising, there is a rival photographer named Kent, who helps you learn to use the camera, and has photography contests with you, but in the last day, he ties up an innocent man, and was going to take a picture of the person "crossing into zombiehood". By the way, if you don't get there at a specific time, you'll find out he is not kidding.
  • Thankfully, the game lets you, in your metagame precognition, kill him before this even begins to happen...while he's giving you the tutorial on how to use your camera. The game still counts this as a Psychopath kill.
  • Really, there's a number of times where the various psychopaths cross this. We have Carlito's plan to ship infected orphans all across the United States to cause mass widespread outbreaks, Cletus shooting an innocent guy for getting too close to his gun store, as well as Jack and Roger Hall trying to shoot Frank West while knowing he poses no threat to them as well as forcing the youngest family member Thomas to fire at him as well.
  • In case if T.K. from the sequel didn't come off as vile enough for starting the Fortune City outbreak so he can loot the casinos, he makes sure you hate him when he captures Chuck's friend Stacey and daughter Katey and tries to lower them into a pit of zombies despite Chuck having given him Zombrex after being bitten!
• Kartikeya of Wild ARMs 5 seems at first your typical Psycho for Hire, first shown killing enemy troops after they'd already surrendered, nothing too special here. An element of It's Personal is introduced when Greg reveals that Kartikeya killed his wife and son for no real reason, but that's still on this side of the line. When Greg finally does confront him? Kartikeya has no idea who Greg is, and has to have the whole incident retold for him to remember it at all. The man brutally destroys lives so casually that there is simply no telling how many people he's murdered for a laugh. The Moral Event Horizon is now crossed.
• The Sorceress in Spyro: Year of the Dragon crossed the Moral Event Horizon when she reveals to Bianca that she doesn't want to keep the baby dragons in the Forgotten Realms to keep the magic alive, she wants to kill them all and take their wings for a spell to make her immortal.
  • "I don't have to kill them. It just stops them from wriggling too much."
• The Hamlet special forces unit from Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception unleashes a biochemical agent on the innocent city of Santa Elva in order to kill civilians. It's a bit hard to feel sympathetic for the Leasath military after that.
• LeChuck crosses it in a big way at the end of episode 4 of Tales of Monkey Island, when he stabs Guybrush in the stomach, killing him.
  • What makes this Moral Event Horizon even worse? He spent four episodes of the series, lying that he was reformed, then, when he got the chance, murdered the person who was starting to consider him a comrade.
  • Before then, his sadistic torture of Guybrush in the final areas of Monkey Island 2.
• Ninetails from Okami has all the marks of a very cool villain: sly, sneaky, Evil Counterpart to Ammy (even has his own Brush Techniques... with nine tails!) and an awe-striking battle. All of this is negated by it horribly murdering the innocent, beloved priestess Rao and stuffing her body down a well in order to deceive the populace, Ammy included. And then, once it had accomplished its goals, it drove Queen Himiko to her own death. Whereas other Demon Lords are traditional villains (Orochi at least let people live their own lives, provided they yielded the yearly sacrifice,) Ninetails is an irredeemable, hateful, Complete Monster.
• In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, General Shepherd's MEH crossing will undoubtedly go down as one of the most horrifying scenes in videogames, or any medium for that matter: A Big Damn Heroes moment turns into Shepherd revealing that he's been Evil All Along when he shoots the character you are playing as (Roach), shoots fan favorite Ghost in the face at point blank range for trying to respond, and has his black-coated troopers throw you and Ghost into a pit, pour kerosene all over your bodies while he watches, smoking a cigar, and then ignites the kerosene by throwing his lit cigar at it, burning you alive. Sure, in some ways, his plan means well, but this little moment nearly cemented his status as a Complete Monster. Thankfully, in the final battle, Soap tears out a knife stabbed into his chest - that Shepherd put there, mind you - and throws it right at the sorry guy's eye, killing him with an Eye Scream.
  • You, the player, cross the Moral Event Horizon during the famous level "No Russian". Masquerading as a Russian terrorist to infiltrate Makarov's gang, you and him march through an airport and slaughter hundreds of civilians with automatic weapons. General Shepherd tells you in the mission briefing "This will cost you a piece of yourself", and he is not joking. Even though you do have the option to not shoot the civilians (you can either not shoot at all or purposely shoot over their heads), it doesn't excuse the dozens of SWAT cops you gun down on your way out.
    • And the kicker is you can't even prevent the massacre by gunning down the terrorists instead, because doing so gives you a Nonstandard Game Over.
      • You can skip the level, though (even during the level itself), and the game reminds you of this several times leading up to the event itself.
  • Plus one in Black Ops, and how. During one of the Vietnam levels, you hear a recording cementing the bad guys as complete, irredeemable monsters, wherein one mentions the effectiveness of the evil phlebotinum Nova 6 on infants. And now I must scream.
  • Makarov crosses it multiple times - orchestrating and leading the "No Russian" bit above in MW2 counts, and he adds two more in the third game: unleashing a large-scale chemical weapon in major cities all over Europe, likely resulting in dozens of millions of civilians dead, and killing Kamarov and Soap in "Blood Brothers". That last one is considered Makarov's final point-of-no-return by Price, who proceeds to unleash a Roaring Rampage of Revenge that doesn't end until he has brutally killed Makarov with his bare hands (well, and a rope).
• Several characters in Fate/stay night cross this. Shinji Matou manages to do so in every route. In Fate, he does so when he attempts to kill everyone in his school in order to power his servant and in UBW, he does so when he attempts to rape Rin, whilst tied to a chair and totally helpless. However, with Heaven's Feel comes the revelation that he actually crossed it four years earlier, when he first began raping his sister, Sakura. Gilgamesh (arguably) crosses it when he kills Ilya in UBW. The best example, however, is Dark Sakura in the last bad end. She sets Rin up to experience her life with the Matous and notes that for her it's still only the first day, and she's already crying because she was a virgin. Even her lover Shirou (who previously was willing to do anything to save her) recognises that she has gone too far. This is especially notable because a slight change in circumstances (which she has no direct involvement in) allows her to be redeemed entirely.
  • Fitting with the Matou family, Zouken manages to surpas Shinji before even appearing onscreen (At least if you know the background). He's an immortal worm-mage who loves killing people and absorbing their bodies with his worms. He's the one that taught Shinji ethics and morals, therefore being the one responsible for Shinji being... well, the way he is. Did I mention that he placed several of his crest-worms inside Sakura when she was a child and laughs in when called out on it. These worms are responsible for turning her evil. He had planned on sacrificing her to Angra Mainyu in the fifth war. The writers try and make you feel some sympathy for him upon his death, but after all the horrifying junk he's done to EVERY character... Doesn't help that to actually beat him you must have finished two routes where he is never even discovered, much less forced to pay for what he's done.
    • The recent anime of Fate/Zero gives us a nice, high-def, high detail animated look at exactly what Zouken did to Sakura. It is totally and utterly sick and twisted.
• In Dragon Age: Origins, the dwarf Paragon Branka doesn't so much cross the horizon as she flies across it, laughing the whole way. We find out just how completely depraved and insane Branka is when it is revealed that in order to reach the Anvil of the Void, she sacrificed her entire house - three hundred plus dwarves - to the Darkspawn and allowed the women to be taken to become part of the Broodmother (a process that defines horror) just so she could have Darkspawn to throw at the traps surrounding the Anvil. The sole survivor, Hespith, explains it in simple terms:

Hespith: But the true abomination... is not that it occurred, but that it was allowed. Branka... my love... The Stone has punished me, dream friend. I am dying of something worse than death... Betrayal.

• • The stories of Flemeth indicate she crossed the line into irredeemability when she started stealing her daughters' bodies to prolong her own life.
• Super Robot Wars Original Generation kind of... subverts this. Wilhelm von Juergen might've come across sympathetic. He was only like, couldn't bear the thought of being unable to protect his family and humanity from aliens so he created a system that unites humanity by force. That may be stupid, but... good intentioned... wait a minute, what's that?! He just... killed Lamia out of cold blood, after he completely wrecked her physically, while she's battered and defenseless!? All right, he may not be hitting the Complete Monster status, but that's the last line of sympathy he can get. Forever, he shall be known as an unsympathetic Big Bad Wannabe.
  • Kyosuke's Evil Twin Beowulf crossed it big time during The Anime of the Game (Inspectors). His first on-screen appearance consist of him brutally slaying the Shadow Mirror version of Team SRX, ripping the SRX into pieces, and then killed a defenseless Ryusei Date stuck in the destroyed R-1. All with a Slasher Smile on his face. He never did that in the actual game and it does show that Beowulf is NOT heroic. At all.
    • Should be noted that Rai had already died during the Black Hole incident so someone else must've been piloting R-2.
• Now, murder is a pretty bad thing in Ghost Trick, but with Sissel on the job it's not a big deal until we find out how Alma, Jowd's wife and Camilla's mother, died. Camilla built a birthday contraption to surprise her when she turned on the lights, then hid in the cabinets. Yomiel then manipulated the contraption to kill Alma with an antique gun hanging nearby. Camilla saw her mother die in front of her, believed it was her own fault, and lost her father when he took the fall by confessing to the murder to protect her.
  • Commander Sith also takes one when he backstabs Yomiel by tricking his spirit into leaving his body for another part of the sub, removing the Temsik meteorite, and sinking the sub. This would condemn Yomiel to an eternity in crushing darkness, completely alone without even a body to move with. And his only reasoning is You Have Outlived Your Usefulness. Since we feel a little sorry for Yomiel by this point, it doesn't feel like karma.
• Kane and Lynch. Which character doesn't cross the Moral Event Horizon? Well, Lynch has the excuse that he's a complete psychopath, but even his psychotic episodes cross it.
  • The part where Lynch has a psychotic episode and shoots Yoko, effectively ensuring that Kane's family will be killed, definitely counts. Made even worse when, instead of apologizing or something, he refuses to take responsibility and yells at Kane for negotiating deals with the enemy.
• In Ocarina of Time it's hard to tell where Ganondorf crosses this line, but it's probably at trying to have several Gorons fed to a dragon as a "warning" to those who would oppose him. Sure, killing the Great Deku Tree to steal what it was keeping from him or deceiving the established authorities as a means of power are evil actions, but attempting to massacre several members of a peaceful tribe when he GETS his power is far worse.
  • Averted with Ganon in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, where he is far less evil than in some other games in the series. When Link and Zelda attack him, he grabs a hold of Zelda, raises his sword to cut her head off... and then changes his mind and slaps her. Granted, a man who's like eight feet tall hitting a girl in the face might be a moral event horizon for a minor character, but this is the Big Bad we're talking about. His decision to spare her costs him his life when she and Link then kill him.
    • During this same pre-battle scene, Ganondorf also explicitly tells Link he will spare him, as he only needs the Triforce piece the hero carries. Once he takes it, he combines it with his own and Zelda's, summoning the full Triforce to grant him one wish. And this wish? To raise the sunken Hyrule back up above the waves and let him rule it. You might have expected him to be all "yar har eternal shadow", but judging by his earlier speech he genuinely just wanted a nice country for his own people instead of the harsh desert he came from. It's not until the King of Hyrule shows up to steal the wish that Ganondorf goes truly Laughing Mad and Axe Crazy on the heroes.
  • Zant in Twilight Princess crossed this line in a similar manner when he executed Queen Rutela in front of the Zoras for standing up against the army of the Twilight Realm.
    • For some, it's the scene where he almost kills Midna by forcing one of the Light Spirits to attack her.
      • Zant's final nail in the coffin is the reveal that he enslaved the Twili in exchange for power, showing that he's more concerned with revenge than actually helping his own people.
      • And guess who gave him that power? Ganon. And since he was manipulating Zant's weak heart and mind from the start, then all of the abovementioned crossings are his fault.
  • Princess Hilda from A Link Between Worlds comes dangerously close to crossing this with her plan to steal Hyrule's triforce. While wanting to restore her world to it's former glory is admirable, dooming another world to die in the process makes her no better than Yuga.
    • Yuga, however, crosses this by doing the same thing, but with selfish intentions in mind by dooming both worlds to die for his greed, and manipulating Hilda into helping him do it.
• Kyoji Nanba of Racing Lagoon gets depressed as he's defeated by Sho Akasaki(you) and lose his chance to race in the Yokohama GP. He then takes a diablo-tuned car and gets himself killed.
• In Blaz Blue, both Terumi Yuuki and Relius Clover are already a fine pair of jerks, but they keep pushing and pushing beyond the horizon. At this point, it seems like they're competing in a "How far over the deep end can you go?" contest. At the moment, Terumi is winning this contest, if only for the fact that he's been around longer. However, what Relius lacks in quantity, he more than makes up for in sheer bastardry.
  • Terumi:
    • created the Black Beast that ravaged the world for years, joined the Six Heroes to defeat it when he realized it couldn't be controlled... then betrayed them and killed Nine, Kokonoe's mother, when she learned about his involvement in the Black Beast's creation.
    • burned down the orphanage where Ragna and his siblings were living, kidnapped Ragna's sister, Saya, possessed Ragna's brother, Jin and, through him, cut off Ragna's right arm, and ate Jin's memories; finishing the ordeal by murdering Nine's sister, Mercury, who had been running the orphanage.
    • uses Litchi's desperation to cure Arakune, as well as her own worsening condition, to encourage her into a reluctant Face Heel Turn.
    • Mind Rapes Noel and pushes her into the Cauldron in order to forcibly make her turn into Mu-12, Sword of the Godslayer: Kusanagi, using her negative emotions to amplify her hatred for mankind and give her a reason to destroy it, the world and the Master Unit: Amaterasu. Oh, and not before painfully revealing the truth of her origins and her inhumanity to psychologically torture her. Just because.
    • mocks a blind Tsubaki and tells her that all of the things that have happened to her are basically her own fault, and in another ending, plays unmercifully on her jealousy of Noel to pit her against both Noel, her best friend, and Jin, her one true love. Oh, and we're nowhere near finished yet. In Tsubaki's bad ending, she dies from overuse of the Izayoi, and he laughs at her. In the Wheel of Fortune drama CD, he does this again when she dies, and also kicks her dead body.
    • Then there's Carl's bad ending in CS, where Hazama rips Ada apart while a helpless Carl cries and begs for him to stop. Hazama then picks up Carl by his collar, delivers a brutal Hannibal Lecture to him, and ends by killing Carl by tossing him into the Cauldron. It's non-canon, but still.
    • He also sacrifices hundreds of NOL personnel when he makes Mu-12. And this is just in his story mode's opening cutscene.
    • taunts an immobilized, humiliated and injured Rachel by kicking her in the face.
  • Relius:
    • Transformed his own daughter Nirvana into a Nox, and left her half-finished with Carl, leaving them to fend for themselves. This is also knowing full-well that she's actively eating Carl's emotions and driving him into madness.
    • Using the knowledge gained during his experiments on his daughter, he transformed his wife into a Nox like Nirvana and uses it as his personal battle-doll.
    • In Tager's bad ending, Relius horribly tortures him and then kills him to power up Ignis.
    • Last but not least, there's Makoto's bad ending. Trust us, you will hate him after seeing it. He subjects Makoto to slow and brutal Mind Rape, reducing Makoto to pleading, screaming and sobbing to get him to stop. He ends up extracting her soul to make another Nox.
    • Let's not forget his Astral Finish. Most characters either kill or knock out the opponent. Relius? He captures the enemy, drags him to a facility where he ties him up and closes the door behind him, implying he's about to perform more of his horrific experiments. The special quotes not reserved for Hazama indicate that he's got worse in mind for the recipients.
  • Also, Kokonoe's experiments on Lambda and her hand in the creation of Ignis are seen as crossing the Moral Event Horizon.
• In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Colonel Volgin crosses this right after he's introduced. The Boss gave him two Davy Crockett portable nuclear warheads as a "gift" when she defected, and he decides to take one on a test-drive, blowing up the research facility (where thousands of his own countrymen were still stationed) while Ocelot clings to his arm, begging him not to. When one of the greatest Magnificent Jerk-faced Jerks in history thinks you've gone so far over the line that he's begging you to stop, you know you've crossed the line big time.
  • Even Volgin is small time compared to the one behind most of the Metal Gear Solid series, Major Zero. Although his status as a villain is only revealed in the final (for that storyline anyways) game, when it is the implications of so much of what this man has done becomes apparent. Not only did he create a shadow organization meant to control every facet of human life, but he created a system meant to completely subjugate and ultimately enslave humanity in a cyclical hell of controlled military conflict for generations to come, simply because he felt sour about bitter differences between himself and Big Boss. And on top of that, he attempted to destroy and manipulate his former friend with a variety of despicable tactics, such as threatening and manipulating a Costa Rican-American girl to become a crazed agent and saboteur in order to destroy Big Boss' reputation. It was also enough to cause Kazuhira Miller, who briefly with Zero as a means to expand MSF, to have implied to quit working with him out of disgust for nearly ruining MSF. It's uncertain where exactly Zero crossed that moral event horizon, but he certainly did. So did most of Big Boss' former "friends", save Ocelot and EVA.
  • In Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, it's revealed that Hot Coldman set up what happened in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. In other words, he's the reason The Boss got killed because he feared her growing influence. Basically, he's behind one of the biggest Tear Jerkers in video game history and even being indirectly responsible for Major Zero's fall as well. Worse is that he shows absolutely no remorse for what he did, and even a little glee. If that's not enough, he also instigates a nuclear apocalypse again, and it is implied that he was the one responsible for the butchered A Is in 4 (Coldman makes some statements that parallel the A Is forsaking The Boss's will when developing the War Economy.).
  • Vamp in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty crosses it when he murders Otacon's sister, Emma, with a knife through her back.
  • In the first Metal Gear Solid, Liquid Snake is pretty much an evil son-of-a-bitch from the beginning, but the kid gloves are off when it's revealed that he was impersonating Master Miller after having him killed.
• Strega does this throughout the game. Chidori is the only one who manages to pull a Heel Face Turn (and even she dies as a result). Takaya is the worst of the three killing one of the most beloved characters in the game. Oh, and did I mention that said beloved character is also a major Stoic Woobie?.
• After all the killing he is responsible for, Black Doom has the balls to proclaim himself a savior of humanity, intent on saving people from their own errors.
  • How is he going to save humanity do you ask? By paralyzing the planet with nerve gas from his comet so that his spawn can leisurely eat their way through the entire biosphere, that's how!
• Fuminori Sakisaka, if he decides he has no qualms with eating human meat. Just listen to him when Kouji comments to him on his cell phone about becoming "quite the meat eater":

Fuminori: "Actually, I've only killed one so far", Fuminori replies unapologetically, with perfect cheerfulness. "I've taken apart three or four, though. I've gotten pretty good at cutting the tendons and draining the blood and such."

• Umineko no Naku Koro ni has The Witches' Tanabata for Bernkastel. You initially assume that because of her own back story she'd be sympathetic to the protagonists. Then you learn in that story that she basically ruined Ange's entire life, just so Ange could die later on in front of Battler. Then she mocks you, the player, and says that's just what you wanted to see! At that point, many players wanted to see her get sent back to the Groundhog Day Loop... or worse.
  • Screw you, Erika! The exact moment for most people differs, but if you haven't felt she crossed it before, there's a line she says in the 6th Episode that hurls her across this line:

Erika: "I dashed all over the mansion, visited all the 'crime' scenes, and...completely severed their heads... All five people I killed......were very much alive and faithfully playing dead until the moment I killed them."

• Pokémon Black and White: Ghetsis, Ghetsis, Ghetsis... why, oh why, did you have to base your parenting off of Super Hero Aurum? You neglected your own boy, left him amongst abused Pokemon to fuck up his perception of the world, raised him to believe Pokemon should be separated from humans, and gave him control over a group that only knew of his ideal. We don't blame you for leaving the kid amongst those Pokemon - Prof. Rowan once went that route for his studies, and Sapphire chose to live amongst them of her own will - but what we DO blame you for is most of the rest. But that you'd abandon your kid after his failure to perform, call him a blasphemy upon mankind for the very way you raised him, and basically go against everything you ever taught him (which you never really believed in) just for self-profit? Yeah... you can rot in jail for the rest of your life, Hell is too good for you.
  • How about what he gets up to in the sequel? He has Kyurem in his possession, has it placed inside a machine and tortured so that it's power can be channeled through the Plasma freeze cannon, which Team Plasma uses to freeze over half of Unova. Ghetsis' plan is to threaten to freeze the entire region in order to extort power and control from the masses terrified for their lives and health. To keep Kyurem in line and make it comply with Team Plasma's acts of terrorism, he physically and mentally tortures it with the Mind Control technology in his cane. When he takes Kyurem to the Giant Chasm in order to boost it's power, the player character interferes. So what does Ghetsis decide to do? Order Kyurem to attack the Kid Hero directly with a Glaciate attack, intending to freeze him/her alive or to death. So not only is he showing he Would Hurt a Child, but he's not even bothering to follow the conduct of Pokemon battles, preferring to have his super-powered monster lay a direct fatal attack on the kid! And he hopes that he/she will die in a state of despair and hopelessness, knowing that they've failed and he has won. This above all shows that Ghetsis is a sadistic freak of nature.
    • Ghetsis is basically running neck-in-neck with the heads of the Cipher syndicate conspiracy for the title of biggest human Complete Monster in the franchise both in terms of horrific deeds (which we're discussing here) and the potential for the continuation of such horrific deeds. See the main Pokémon Colosseum page for the further gruesome details on Cipher's many sins.
  • Also in the running would be Purple Eyes from Pokémon Ranger Guardian Signs. Before we even learn he exists, he's beaten Rand within an inch of his life and kidnapped both his wife and daughter. Later, he beats the daughter up, too! He kept getting worse up until he thought it would be a good idea to bark orders at Arceus - at which point he dearly paid for it.
  • From Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Darkrai has a few opportunities, the earliest being orchestrating the planet's paralysis, making the future a frozen, endless night, with insane Pokemon and which is ruled by Primal Dialga, and the one way to stop the paralysis would cause all life from the future to disappear.
  • While he's far from qualifying as a Complete Monster, Maxie was just shy of crossing this in Pokémon Emerald when he attacks the Mossdeep Space Station with the intention of making off with a bunch of rocket fuel and dumping it all in Mt. Chimney. Given that Mt. Chimney is in close proximity to Lavaridge and Fallarbor Towns as well as several routes filled with trainers, countless innocent people would have died just because Maxie decided to throw a temper tantrum after his plans were shot to hell- not that Archie's ended up any better.
  • In the Hoenn remakes, Aqua Admin Matt or Magma Admin Courtney (Depending on the game that you're playing) are willing to cross this in the Delta episode by attempting to blow up a rocket filled with enough energy to end the world out of anger and spite towards the player character for foiling their bosses' plans.
  • And while she may have had good intentions at heart, Zinnia undeniably crosses the line in the Delta Episode as well. She'd touched upon it beforehand by helping either Archie or Maxie (again, it depends on the game that you're playing) in unleashing a vicious primal legendary Pokémon that could wipe out all life so she could summon Rayquaza, knowing full well what they were capable of. For her actual crossing, there's when she destroys the Link Cable that was intended to transport the meteor that was on a crash course for Earth to another area, dooming the world once more because she wants to use Rayquaza to destroy the meteor instead. Keep in mind that if the player didn't happen to be at Sky Pillar with her and didn't happen to possess the ability to control and mega evolve Rayquaza, the planet was doomed just because Zinnia allowed her arrogant, prideful, and stubborn nature get in the way.
  • Let's not forget Cyrus from Gen IV, whose plan was literally to control the powers of time/space and use them to wipe out the entire universe and all life in it so that he could then become a deity and recreate reality as he saw fit, which would be a reality without spirit, meaning all living creatures would now exist with no emotions, free thought, or free will. Granted he believed this to be in humanity's best interest, but it's still a sick and horrifying goal that he wanted to force on others. The lengths he took in the name of this goal were not pretty either, especially his plan with the Galactic Bomb and the torture of the three lake Pokemon in order to create the Red Chain. This is what set the standards for villainy in every subsequent game.
    • Mad Scientist Charon, who was in charge of making the Red Chain, shares in that last one. And he had his own terrible plan to use Heatran's destructive powers to terrorize entire civilizations in order to extort money from them that thankfully never took off thanks to the player character's interference. His true crossing might be in backstory details, since his journals suggest that he had discovered and befriended Rotom when he was a child, but when he grew older, more greedy and cynical, he used Rotom for little more than research and experiments, ultimately discarding it once he was done. In the present day, Charon thinks of nothing but himself and his own gaining of money, power, and status.
  • In the original games, some random Rocket grunts (One of which may be Rocket Executive Proton as far as Pokémon Special is concerned) crossed it on behalf of their organization by killing a Marowak (who you later fight to appease its soul) that was defending its child from Team Rocket's skull-harvesting operation. The Rockets aren't really nice to begin with, but the Marowak's murder shows just how low they will stoop to achieve their goals.
  • And of course, we have Lysandre from X and Y, whose main goal can pretty much be summed up by starting up an ancient superweapon and wiping out all life on the planet, leaving the world to be populated only by himself and like-minded people in his organization because he views most of the planet's inhabitants as ugly and unworthy of living in his ideal world. You don't want to die? Good luck shelling out the completely ridiculous amount of money he charges for a Team Flare membership!
  • Though she's ultimately a Tragic Villain (and a subverted Complete Monster), Lusamine comes dangerously close to crossing the line in Pokemon Sun and Moon by torturing Cosmog into opening the Ultra Wormholes, resulting in an alien invasion that threatens all of Alola.
• Speaking of Super Hero Aurum, let's not let him off the hook, shall we? He kills demons and Overlords just for who they are, his latest being the Gentle Giant in charge of Evil Academy, taking over as the butler for said Overlord's son, messing up his perception of the human world, and all of that just so he can have a new Overlord to add to his record. Just to be certain Mao doesn't relapse, he sets an Obvious Trap for the princess he's escorting, just to make certain her "hero" bodyguard (also his number one fan) triggers it and dies instead to drive home that Humans Are Bastards and the good ones wind up dead. Let me repeat myself - he messes up one kid and gets another killed just for the prospect of remaining the Super Hero, to stroke his own ego. I think this quote sums up everything...

Raspberyl: What kind of nerves do you have?! It's beyond honor student level.

• In literally the first scene of Suikoden II where we see Luca Blight, he has just crossed the MEH when finished massacring almost all the members of a Youth Brigade camp (basically fantasy Boy Scouts) so that he can frame a neighboring country for the deed and get the people's support for a campaign of slaughter, rape, and pillage. And he only gets worse from there.
• In Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, choosing the evil decisions lead to some pretty mean acts against to the characters around you. But one thing that can particularly make the Web-Head cross the line is the dark option against Symbiote Wolverine: Spider-Man rips the Symbiote in half. With Wolverine attached to it. Let us repeat that: Spider-Man can cross this by RIPPING WOLVERINE IN HALF.
• The "Children of Tarrone" in the eighth mission of SWAT 4. Seems like your standard doomsday cult until you get to the basement and find that they willingly killed their children and tore up the concrete floor to bury them.
• Ansem ( actually Xehanort) definitely crossed this line in the original Kingdom Hearts when it was revealed that he experimented on living people just For Science!. And it was outright stated that the experiments caused their hearts to collapse! Keep in mind that in this series, hearts are basically a Captain Ersatz for souls. So essentially, his experiments caused people's frickin' souls to collapse! That he's using the Heartless born of these experiments in a plot to cast the entire universe into darkness is only icing on the cake.
• The space combat simulator X-Wing: Alliance had a richer plot and cast of characters than its predecessors, particularly a subplot involving the protagonist Ace Azzameen's family. When Ace is new to piloting for his father Tomaas' shipping company, he helps out with a covert delivery of bacta to the wounded soldiers from Hoth, only for the Empire to show up and destroy the freighter that Ace's father and eldest brother were on. Their uncle Anton helps them escape to the Rebel Alliance. Near the end of the game, Anton gives them information that indicates that Tomaas and Galin are alive on an Imperial prison station. When the Azzameen children go to rescue them, Imperial ships arrive to capture them. They learn that their dear Uncle Anton not only set them up, but told the Empire about Tomaas' bacta run way back when. To recap, the man sold his own brother and niece and nephews out to the Empire, all because he figured Tomaas' dealings with rebels would ruin their business.
• Harlan Wade from F.E.A.R. indisputably crosses the MEH when he sends his pre-teen daughter into the lab of the company that he works for so that they can conduct experiments on her psychic abilities. Later on, Wade decides to place Alma in a permanent coma and have her impregnated with the hope of creating first a super-soldier, then a psychic commander of a battalion of mindless soldiers. Finally, he just has the plug pulled on her. The Big Bad's murderous rage that leaves dozens or hundreds of civilians dead is a bit understandable after you learn all of this.
• Right in the first level of Singularity, you read some notes and hear recordings that suggest that the Big Bad had done some highly unethical things in the 50s. But all of that is off screen and only (strongly) implied. When you meet him at the end of the level, your partner demands to be treated according to the Geneva convention and to see someone from the United States embassy. The Big Bad coldly shoots him in the face]
• Prototype has the real Alex Mercer cross this the moment he unleashed the Blacklight virus on Manhattan just because he is cornered at Penn Station by Blackwatch. The virus itself, born from his death when it animated his corpse, is horror-struck by the sheer vindictiveness he displayed.
• In Dragon Age II, Anders crosses the line when he blows up the Kirkwall Chantry, killing the Grand Cleric and many other innocent people in order to destroy any chance of compromise between the Circle and the Templars.
  • Then Meredith followed him when she used it as an excuse to annul a Circle of Magi that Anders never even belonged to. Just like he knew she would.
  • Then Orsino crosses it when he reveals that he knew about and protected the Serial Killer blood mage Quentin. While he downplays his crime in the Mage path, he is wholly unrepentant in the Templar path about being complicit in the deaths of several innocent women including Hawke's mother Leandra. He even uses the fruits of Quentin's research to turn himself into a literal monster after the reveal.
  • Due to the game's Grey and Gray Morality, a lot of Hawke's actions have some sort of justification. However, there is absolutely no excuse for selling Fenris back to his Complete Monster master, especially since he had been your loyal comrade for seven years. It's so awful that almost all of your companions will call you out on it.
• Return to Krondor starts off with Bear and his pirates killing off a ship full of priests to steal treasure and one special object. If this does not qualify as a Moral Event Horizon, then the next few parts will. Bear attacks a bar and kills a young barmaid (it may have been worse than that), leaving the bar owner without a daughter. He attacks a jail just so he can personally kill a small-time pirate who decided he needed to get out of the business. He cut down half the Krondorian guard squad. The guard captain is Bear's cousin. The guard captain wants to keep that fact a secret and he really wants to take Bear down. He sets an orphanage on fire when he is unable to escape the city through the gates. He escapes through the sewer, tearing through the Mockers (the Guild of Thieves) who got in the way. Bear accomplished all this in the first couple of levels. Of course, it seems that he that he not only crossed the Moral Event Horizon before the events of the game, but he sprinted through it and never looked back.
• Ephidel having cute-as-a-button Leila butchered in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword, and watching it with that perpetually-irritating smug grin on his face, and then leaving her corpse in plain sight for the heroes to find as a way of taunting them! Interestingly enough, he just gave the order; the character who actually did the butchering, a Tyke Bomb raised from infancy into a brutal killer, through a Heel Face Turn ends up as one of the most sympathetic in the game!
  • Not to mention, there's what Ephidel did do before to Lord Hausen...
  • Let's not forget Sonia murdering her husband in cold blood after mocking his devotion to her, making the revelation that she killed Nino's real parents, that she never had any care or love whatsoever toward Nino, and then attempting to kill Nino herself. When the aforementioned "butcher" witnesses such stuff, this is the push he needs for his Heel Face Turn.
  • And then it's followed by Nergal giving a kidnapped Ninian a brutal Hannibal Lecture in which he browbeats and verbally abuses her into reverting to her Dragon form, setting her loose so she would be slain by Eliwood without him knowing it (and under the control of the Durandal sword, made for killing dragons), and then not only revealing it to Eliwood as Ninian agonizes in his arms, but laughing about it. Did we mention that it's all but stated that Ninian is his long-lost daughter? Not even the fact that he lost his memories is good enough to get him off the hook for that, considering his glee when he tells Eliwood that he's fatally injured the girl who loved him.
  • And then we have King Desmond of Bern, who orders the Black Fang to carry out the murder of his own son and heir Zephiel, due to hating how the child of his much hated wife Hellene is the one able to inherit the throne instead of his favorite child Guinevere. Is there any wonder that Zephiel and Guinevere's relationship, until then friendly and cute, would be broken beyond belief after the embittered Zephiel grows into a faithless Social Darwinist?
• Curtis Blackburn of Killer7 is a murderous sociopath, but hey, you're playing as a group of assassins. Then you see what he did to his ex-partner Pedro as punishment for getting in his way, and suddenly he becomes the worst person in the entire game.
• The Mass Effect series tends strongly towards ambiguity, but there are still some cases where a line to ultimate unredeemable evil is crossed.
  • Even though he can be seen as not entirely responsible for his actions in Mass Effect, one optional dialog reveals that Saren crossed the line a long time before any of that. He once destroyed an entire colony with thousands of dead just to make it look like Anderson's fault because he didn't want a human to join the Specters.
  • The Collectors in Mass Effect 2 are pretty evil but most of the time they simply emotionlessly capture paralyzed humans and bring them to their ships. But at their home base, they wake them up and dissolve them with acid while alive to harvest their organic components as a building material for a new Reaper. The Collectors aren't really the ones responsible, however. Harbinger, the Reaper controlling them was.
  • In Overlord, Dr. Gavin Archer forced his own autistic brother to take part in a traumatic experiment. Then again, he is shown in Mass Effect 3 to have defected from Cerberus, and also made sure to destroy what was left of Project Overlord in the process. He also out and out told the Illusive Man that, "if he wanted the devil, all he had to do was look in the mirror
  • Cerberus has shown to be completely ruthless in their research projects throughout all the games, which often resulted in heavy casualties from escaped experiments, and they were never above murdering anyone who started to know too much about their activities. But in Mass Effect 3, they drop all pretense and secrecy and straight out murder any witnesses. But the final line is on Sanctuary where they set up a refugee camp to get new supplies of humans to be turned into mind-controlled cyborg soldiers. Everyone who doesn't fit the specifications gets turned into Husks to become live targets for new anti-reaper weapons.
    • Kai Leng has a fair number of candidates. Killing the Salarian Councilor, or alternatively, Thane or Kirrahe, and later saying that whoever he did kill "died like a coward". He also possibly kills Miranda and rubs Thessia's fall in Shepard's face. By the time all of this has happened, everyone is happy to see him run through with an Omni-Blade
      • Assuming he didn't already cross it in the novels...
  • Another example from the third game: Quarian Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema is willing to destroy the geth dreadnought despite the fact that Shepard and Tali / Xen are still aboard, and later can potentially doom his entire race all because of how much he wants to destroy the geth.
  • Even a pure Renegade Shepard seems to have definitely crossed this line by Mass Effect 3. Fans of the series will argue over how evil his/her questionable deeds over the first two games were (the usual list includes killing Wrex, the Rachni Queen, Gianna Parasini, Aresh, and Samara, and leaving civilians to vaporize/burn to death in order to get Balak/Vido Santiago). However, all of those things could be seen as least somewhat justified, both by in-universe characters and by players. What really seems completely monstrous and unjustifiable in the third game is if Shepard murders Mordin/Padok Wiks to sabotage the cure for the genophage if Wrex is the clan leader (or, to a lesser extent, if Wreav is the clan leader and Eve survives). To make matter worse, if Wrex is the clan leader, he will confront Shepard about it later. Shepard will attempt to lie to his face and either kill him or have C-Sec gun him down. After all of that, even Shepard seems to think he/she crossed the line.
• Baldur's Gate: Irenicus would have been just unlikeable for torturing you in his lab. When he casually murders (and in at least one case, defiles the corpse of) two party members from the previous game and leaves you to walk through a dungeon complex full of people he's experimented on and left sealed in vats with only madness to keep them company, he becomes The Guy You Really Want To Kill.
• In Portal 2 Cave Johnson's posthumous Moral Event Horizon uploading his secretary Caroline's mind into Glados against her will was actually Dummied Out because Cave Johnson's voice actor found the lines too disturbing.
  • Arguably, Wheatley had one when he throws Potat OS into the elevator, then beats you down into old Aperture.
    • Another potential Moral Event Horizon, if that one didn't do it for you, is The Part Where He Kills You.
    • Or earlier, when Wheatley starts testing you, despite all your plans for escape.
• Therese Voerman from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines Crosses this when after you become an inconvenience to her, attempts to murder you and her sister, Jeanette. Her excuse for Jeanette? She was a slut. You can help her step back from the edge, though, although it takes a ridiculously high persuasion check. Or you could convince Jeanette to kill Therese instead, although she feels genuinely remorseful. Although, she might have crossed it way, way, way before then...
  • This is a weird one, since Therese and Jeanette are split personalities that were created when Therese/Jeanette was turned into a Malkavian. They aren't sisters, they are the same person.
• In the first installment of the Eagle Eye Mysteries Edutainment Game, during Book 2's version of "Case of the Crazy Compass," the mystery's guilty party (Dave Grant) slips a powerful magnet into Alex Hane's backpack; this has the effect of severely messing up Alex's compass while he's out in the woods with the rest of his Explorer Trek club, causing him to get lost for hours and being potentially put at risk of experiencing the very real dangers associated with getting lost in the woods--and the perp put the magnet in the backpack knowing that Alex and his group would be going into the woods. It becomes even worse when you learn the motive for the act, as well (because Alex's science project had earlier beaten Dave's special project on magnetism) and it's especially telling that the character doesn't show up in any subsequent cases in the game's linear order.
• In Red Dead Redemption, Edgar Ross, when he's first seen in the opening cutscene, merely seems to be a bureaucrat making John hunt down his former gang members. When you finally get ahold of Escuella in Mexico, he definitely seems to be an awful individual, especially since he is the one imprisoning John's family. When dealing with him personally in Blackwater, he continues to build his Jerkass points for every second he's onscreen, constantly insulting and mocking John, and at one point shoving a gun into John's stomach just to remind him that he can do whatever he wants, and John can't do a thing about it. However, once John takes care of all of the former outlaws he ran with, Ross lets him go, and John is finally allowed to return back to his family, who is unharmed. But... when he really crosses the line is when he orders the army to assault Marston's farm, culminating in John's death. Before this point, he was simply a thoroughly unlikable man who hated John. After this, he crossed the line.
• In Myst IV: Revelation, Sirrus kidnaps Yeesha for Grand Theft Me purposes and boasts to her of his plan.
  • Nekisahloth--that's his shoulder skin Esher used to link--is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds until the murder of Willow Engberg.
  • In the novel Book of D'ni, Ymur is another Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds until he tries to become the new Master, in the same barbaric vein as the Terahnee enslaved ahrotantee.
  • Saavedro--and you--can cross the Moral Event Horizon in various endings of Myst III: Exile. If you lower the outer shield when Saavedro says to, he says "time to keep my end of the bargain"--and throws the fucking Releeshahn Book away before setting off. Later, if you get the Book from him, you have the option of leaving him trapped with no way out. Atrus calls you out if you do this.
• You wouldn't expect this from Dwarf Fortress, would you? After all, the game practically runs on Video Game Cruelty Potential crossing the line twice. But apparently "mermaid farming" -- building a pool system for captive wild merfolk so you can steal and air-drown their babies for their valuable bone materials -- was too much for the game's creator, who massively devalued merbone in his next update so the practice would stop.
• Megatron In Transformers:War for Cybertron he warns the Autobots to leave Cybertron or be destroyed, and when the Autobots began leaving the Cybertron in spaceships, he has Trypticon blast them out of the atmosphere for no reason what so ever.
• Killzone Stahl who uses POWs as test subjects for his Petrusite experiments, or shooting an ISA prisoner just to show what its like in Helghast. Then he destroys the Helghan fleet with his Petrusite weapons to show that he's in charge now, and plans to use it on Earth and possibly every other colonized world.
• This happens in Mega Man Zero 3, when Copy X and Weil destroy a human residential area to capture the Dark Elf. Though Weil was Obviously Evil upon his introduction, Copy X's previous actions were a bit more morally ambiguous up until now. At this point, Harpuia can't stand it anymore and defects from Neo Arcadia. A bit later, when Copy X and Weil contact the resistance to cooperate, Ciel cites this event as why they can't be trusted.
  • In the classic series, Dr. Wily has a few moments of this. First, he kidnaps Kalinka Cossack and forces her father to serve him in 4. Later, he creates the Roboenza virus and holds the world hostage for the cure in 10. He DEFINITELY crosses this posthumously in the X series, by creating the highly destructive Zero and the Zero Virus, as if he can't rule the world, he'll destroy it instead, leading to innumerably tragedy in the process. In the dubiously canonical Rockman Strategy, he decides he just wants to destroy the world outright as well.
  • The X series has Sigma cross this by spreading his Virus around to infect innocent Reploids. This also applies to the one-off enemy groups; for example, the Repliforce builds a space station with the power to potentially destroy the entire planet. While groups like Repliforce are more criminally negligent than truly malevolent, Sigma's henchmen are more culpable for this trope. Vile tries to crush an inexperienced, helpless X simply because he believes he's weak, and the X-Hunters hold Zero's body parts for ransom.
  • Due to the prescence of free will in the series, even a few "standard" Mavericks get one;
    • Silver Horns in Command Mission brutally tortures Massismo to death and keeps his rotting torso as a trophy. He threatens to kill every other prisoner if Nana doesn't comply to him.
    • Magma Dragoon drops the Sky Lagoon colony, resulting in the Repliforce War (and many future conflicts by proxy) just to fight X and Zero. While he does try to apologize to Zero, it's clearly too late, and he returns in the boss rush and in X's story as an unrepentantly destructive monster.
    • Jet Stingray, in retaliation, goes on to destroy a whole city, the first sign Repliforce wasn't as innocent as it seemed.
• In Silent Hill 3, Claudia crosses this when she has Harry killed. She certainly seems to think so, as she straight-up tells Heather that she doesn't expect to have a place in the paradise she's trying to create.

"For the pain that I've caused you, I deserve no mercy. Even if it was to save mankind, it was too deep a sin."

• In Skies of Arcadia, Lord Galcian gains the ability destroy any or all of the lands underneath the Six Moons. To display his newfound power, he summons the Rains of Destruction from the Yellow Moon. What is underneath the Yellow Moon? Valua, the most technologically advanced land in Arcadia, and it just so happens to be Galcian's home land as well! Galcian figured that if the most powerful country in the world could be reduced to ashes in no time, the rest would fall to him. What is amazing about this is that the Valuan army, the army of the country that he just wiped off the map continue to stick with him as Galcian is that much of a Magnificent Bastard.
• It's very easy to hate Admiral Greyfield in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, although the clincher is when Forsythe, the honorable general of the enemy Lazurian Army, surrenders to him and takes responsibility for all of the bad things his troops have done. Greyfield's reaction? He kills Forsythe and captures his army, threatening to execute them all. Soon afterward, when he finds out that Brenner is helping the Lazurians escape from captivity, Greyfield carpet bombs his position, killing Brenner and all of the surrounding soldiers in his area (including many of Greyfield's own New Rubinelle forces.
• Mushihime-sama Futari brings us Queen Larsa, who goes pretty much psycho-insane after learning that her older son Aki has been killed, and sends her army out to kill Reco, who accidentally murdered him in the previous game. Sounds like typical Mama Bear tyrant fare. Then there's her younger son, Palm, who, while understandably upset by his brother's death, believes Reco to be a good person and that Aki's death wasn't her fault. How does Larsa react to this? She disowns him and leaves him to die. And tells him he can be replaced. If you make it to her as Palm, she tries to kill him--although she is a Shmup final boss, that she would try to kill her own son--at FULL STRENGTH, no less--says something about how she cares for anyone other than Aki.
• The Covenant from the Halo series have murdered BILLIONS. For an In-Game crossing, the entirety of Halo: Reach is probably it, particularly during the mission Exodus when they shoot down a ship that had 600 innocent people on it. After that, no one wonders why people have fun killing the alien jerks.
  • In Halo: Combat Evolved, 343 Guilty Spark is a Well-Intentioned Extremist (with emphasis on extreme), however, at the end of Halo 3, Spark goes Complete Monster and murders Sgt. Johnson.
• In Command & Conquer: Red Alert, the very first cutscene for the Soviets has Stalin and his cronies casually discussing the effects of Saren nerve gas on a village of alleged dissidents. Then just to remind you that you're one of the bad guys as well, your first mission is to kill the villagers who escaped said gassing.
  • While in the second game, the Soviets are more quirky, they cross this line in the Allied campaign when General Vladimir nukes the city of Chicago, just as you won the city back.
• In Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising, each squad has a Corruption meter, and which goes up with evil actions and down with good actions (or penance). When a squad reaches the maximum level of corruption they become "Lost to the Dark Gods" and are irredeemably evil, regardless of actions including killing a greater daemon and saving sub-sector Aurelia again. Doing this results in a change of endings depending on how corrupt you became. The five endings are: 100% pure, become the Brother-Captain of the 4th Company, pure, become marked as a renegade by the chapter like Gabriel Angelos, Neutral, be banished to the Eye of Terror for 100 years, and on survival you may be allowed to return, Evil be executed by Gabriel Angelos for heresy, 100% Evil, become a Chaos Lord for the Black Legion.
• The Conduit ends with Adams setting of the self-destruct in his base after you infiltrate it. In the sequel, we find that the explosion has destroyed D.C. and even has Adams joke about how your family was in the area. Whilst commenting on how radiation is an unpleasant way to die. Jerk.
• In Terraria, the player character. In order to progress to the endgame, you must summon a boss in the Underworld, and in order to do so, you must murder the Guide with the Guide Voodoo Doll. As of 1.1, it's clear that death is not cheap for the non player character allies, as when they die they are not resurrected, but rather replaced, and thus this amounts to murdering the Guide simply to progress in the game.
  • YMMV as to weather that counts as a crossing. Because you do kill the guide, but there are a few factors to consider. It's left pretty open ended as to weather the guide is willing to die to release the hallow, not knowing what's going on, and the fact that the summoning might be a total accident. Also, as the crulest you can be at the moment is killing the guide, a generally less helpful character if you have your crafting charts down, is the worst the player could do.
  • If it turns out there was one person behind skeletron, wall of flesh, and the other monsters they would automatically cross the moral event horizon, due to just how much they screwed up people.
• There are several opportunities for the player to achieve this in the classic RPG Arcanum. One involves siding with Kerghan in the finale, which immediately causes any good-aligned party members to accuse you of being a traitorous bastard and attack you. Kerghan then tasks you with killing off his demonic competition in The Void, before finally helping you wipe out all life in Arcanum. Depressing stuff indeed.
• Did you fail to collect all the chaos emeralds at the end of the Game Gear version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2? If so, then Tails will be held prisoner indefinitely by Dr. Robotnik, where he will presumably be killed, or worse. Definitely not something we'd expect from the Robotnik we know from the games.
  • That, or torturing Sonic for six months in Forces. That game also has him try and drop an artificial sun to outright destroy the world when he's on his last nerve.
  • Tikal's father Pachacamac crosses it in Sonic Adventure, although he doesn't quite become a Complete Monster from it. Through the flashbacks we are told that he wanted to use the Master Emerald to turn his city into a utopia. To get it he storms the Emerald shrine with his soldiers, slaughtering the Chao there and even attacking Tikal when she tries to stop him. He ends up getting himself and his men killed by Chaos by doing this but also corrupts Chaos, causing him to become bitter and filled with hatred towards all life. It's pretty heavily implied that he's actually doing all this to use the Master Emerald as a weapon and build a Great Echidna Empire.
  • His rival Ix does it by dropping Angel Island on his loyal soldier Shade.
  • Black Doom did this by using a paralyzing nerve gas on the earth so he could feed its population to the larvae of his species.
  • Erazor crosses it murdering his girlfriend/sister/daughter Shahra before Sonic's very eyes.
• Saints Row has several of these criss-crossing one another, on both your side and the side of the enemy gangs and police. Julius blowing you up. Shogo ordering the interrogation and death of Aisha. Johnny Gat burying Shogo alive for it. Mareo and Jessica having Carlos strapped to the back bumper of a truck and dragged through the street face-first. Mr. Sunshine getting everyone's attention by macheteing some poor bastard in the back as he listened to music. Dexter selling out to Ultor and trying to kill you numerous times. Mr. Sharp killing Lin. STAG staging a terrorist incident then trying to blow up Steelport. Killbane snapping Kiki's neck right in front of her twin sister. But the Boss, being the player character, gets the most. The Boss kills Jessica by making her boyfriend mistakenly drive a monster truck over a car she is trapped in, crippled the hand of a musician and tattoo artist who's only guilt was by association, manipulated an otherwise innocent Donny over the course of two games, shoots Julius, gets involved in human trafficking, has the option of weaponizing a zombie virus and can in one game ending take over a city and make it secede from the United States, which will no doubt bring retribution down on everyone they know and the innocent civilians living there. These are not nice people we are dealing with, here.
• In the beginning of Kirby Mass Attack, Necrodeus appears and crosses the line by delivering a Curb Stomp Battle to Kirby by splitting him into 10 completely defenseless Kirbys (Yikes!), and then proceeding to murder almost every Kirby and leaving only one to survive this massacre by following his heart (Literally!), which also counts as a scene of Nightmare Fuel. What else would you expect to set off the story of the game?
• Soul Nomad and The World Eaters is a case where the protagonist crosses it more than once.
• Command & Conquer Generals the GLA's crowning moral event horizon is them using bio weapon on China's cities.
• In Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, this is used as a game mechanic. Deciding whether Shantae's nemesis Risky Boots has crossed over the line using the Tinkerbrain to rule over the Genie Realm determines what ending you get. Pursue her and attack to get the bad ending, but show mercy to her for the good ending. In her non-canon DLC episode, it's even worse, as she ends up MURDERING SHANTAE in the end.
  • Canonically, however, Risky isn't seen as having crossed it, as seen in Seven Sirens.
    • On the other hand, The Pirate Master killed hundreds of Genies before being sealed away.
• The Danganronpa series has more than a few to go around:
  • All of the rival characters bar Byakuya Togami get this.
    • Super Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - Nagito Komaeda crosses it when he threatens to blow up the island with a bomb, killing everyone there, and then sets up an elaborate suicide trap and tricks the innocent Chiaki Nanami into helping him out. Earlier on, he bombed a gymnasium just to skip classes.
    • New Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - Kokichi Ouma manages to be even worse when he tricks Gonta Gokuhara, the nicest character remaining after the untimely death of Kaede Akamatsu (more on that below), into murdering Miu Iruma. Those two were his biggest allies in this situation. His next plan is to try and get Maki Harukawa to kill him and then sets up an unsolvable murder that nearly gets Kaito Momota executed (he succumbs to his lung cancer before it can be carried out).
  • This also applies to the Big Bads of the series. Overarching Villain Junko Enoshima seems to view crossing it as a sport. She first brutally murders Chiaki Nanami with an elaborate death trap and then uses the footage to convert her friends in Class 77-B into Ultimate Despairs. Later, she skewers her own sister, the one person who had Undying Loyalty towards her, in order to fake her own death and then uses her mangled corpse to try and frame Kyoko Kirigiri and Makoto Naegi.
    • New Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - Tsumugi Shirogane slides over it when she kills two birds with one stone by bludgeoning Rantaro Amami to death and framing Kaede Akamatsu for it, leading to Kaede being executed in an extremely brutal and bloody manner.
    • Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls - Monaca Towa leaps over it by sending an army of Monokumas to kill her entire family (though her older brother Haiji kinda had it coming due to him being an unabashed paedophile and a Big Brother Bully to Monaca)... and then she reveals that her true plan is to turn Komaru Naegi into Junko Enoshima's successor.
  • A few other characters have crossed it as well:
    • Super Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: While it doesn't happen in the main story, Teruteru Hanamura's free-time events reveal the nasty depths he's willing to plumb behind his cheerful, chubby-cheeked exterior. He reveals he doesn't actually care about his siblings, and then he drugs Hajime Hinata to try and have his way with him. Unlike with poor Mikan below, it's not even due to Junko's machinations, meaning it's likely his true self.
      • Mikan Tsumiki crosses it when she garrotes an unconscious Ibuki Mioda with a piece of rope and then has her death made up to look like a suicide. Ultimately, it turns out that, due to Junko's machinations, they were ALL like that, but it's still pretty harsh.
    • New Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: Korekiyo Shinguji's heartless brutality and lack of redeeming traits rivals some of the Big Bads and even exceeds others. After stabbing Angie Yonaga to death, he decides to murder Tenko Chabashira purely out of spite. The reason he killed them? He's trying to murder 100 women as gifts for his deceased sister, whom he has a romantic, even sexual, attraction to. Monokuma himself is grossed out by this. This even goes beyond the main story, as during one of his free-time events, he tries to rape Shuichi.