Characters crossing the Despair Event Horizon in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Rainbow Dash comes dangerously close to crossing it in Ace Combat: The Equestrian War, but luckily, Medley manages to snap her out of her Heroic BSoD.
- In Aftermath: A Story of Blended Cliches
, Sailor Pluto deliberately engineered for Ranma to cross this to rebuild her. This has some dire repercussions. Fortunately, her fear trigger ends up snapping her out of it. - Children of an Elder God: Nyarlathotep tried to invoke this when he tried to make Asuka believe that everything she believed in was a lie. It nearly worked, because Asuka lost hope and wanted to burn everything and everyone down. Unfortunately for the horror, she decided she'd rather start with him.It was too much for her. She'd never wanted any of this. The flame washed out of her like a torrent; she heard the people behind her burst into flames and die, but she didn't care. If this was the world, she wanted to destroy it. Better that nothing exist, if the Outer Gods were all there was. Humanity would be better off dead.
Nylarathotep tried to speak, but her flames rushed through him, charring him to ash in an instant. But he wasn't dead. He would rise again, she knew, and that knowing infuriated her more.
She gathered her strength. This world would burn. Burn, burn, burn. If it burned hot enough, maybe she would die herself, and not have to live in it. - A Dovahkiin Spreads His Wings shows Lyanna Stark's last letter, and it's obvious she completely lost any will to live when her attempt to Marry for Love was used as the casus belli for a rebellion that devastated the Seven Kingdoms, caused most of her family (her father, oldest brother, husband, sister-wife and stepchildren) to gruesomely die and she couldn't even try to console herself with her unborn child's survival as she knew she would likely die to birth him.
- Fallout: Equestria: The Massacre at Littlehorn, which involved the slaughter of an entire school of foals, signaled the end of any peaceful solutions to the Great War and sent Celestia over the DEH, stepping down as ruler and letting Luna take over.
- And after the war, Raiders are ponies who have been driven over the DEH by the blasted, inhospitable Wastes, losing all hope in everything and simply becoming agents of the brutality of the Wastelands, killing, torturing, raping, any pony they get their hooves on.
- Fates Collide: After his lover went missing, Lancelot willingly became a Berserker, losing most of his ability to speak and reason, just to make the pain go away.
- Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Walter wishes to invoke this on Paul both because Paul let an Apex child drown without offering help and also because he is needed for a ritual and act as the component for "Despair". At this point in the story, Paul is just about to reach that horizon.
- Manehattan's Lone Guardian sees Leviathan, who is self-confident and focused on her goal of returning home to Neo Arcadia, dragged near the Horizon by a serious event. Her self-confidence is shattered, her goal is thrown into doubt, and she undergoes a severe nervous breakdown. Only intervention by her friends and allies prevents her from crossing the Horizon entirely.
- In My Poltergeist Report, Izuku stops just short of hitting this after learning that all of his efforts to become a hero were useless, his death was utterly pointless, and he was originally destined to live a boring, unfulfilling life as a police officer who would have little impact on the world at large. The only thing that keeps him from going Laughing Mad and diving right in is Botan's offer to give him a second chance at living.Izuku: (floating limply in mid-air) ...So it was all useless then. Kacchan was right to call me 'Deku'... I'm going to be carted off to who knows where and it was all for nothing. (chuckles lifelessly)
- Pataki Magi Helga Magica: Phoebe who is usually a rather calm and collected person in canon, falls to this, no thanks to the nature of her desperate wish in saving her parents from their burning house. After Phoebe's father died in hospital and her mother suffered from amnesia, added with her refusing to clean her tainted Soul Gem with Grief Seeds, her turning into a Witch is inevitable.Phoebe: I'm such a failure.
- In Stars Above, Kagami's going over this line will cause The End of the World as We Know It. In an Alternate Universe, it's already happened.
- In The Story to End All Stories, this happens to the heroes when they think they're about to die.
- Too many to count in The Unity Saga. In fact, the Empire systematically imposes these on a number of Starfleet officers and others.
Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
- In Chrysalis, the Queen of the Crowns shoves Zach over the line. He is Forced to Watch as she tortures his team in front of him and faking an execution of Niko while he is kept in a well-appointed prison. He attempts suicide. She forces her medical staff to keep him alive, explicitly stating that he's not going to do anything unless she wishes it. The final blow is a Battle in the Center of the Mind where she brutally overpowers him by pointing out his failure to save his wife, the League, or his Rangers. To save what little is left of his sanity, he goes into an Angst Coma.
- Frozen Hearts (Red Witch): Simon crosses this twice in his lifetime.
- The first is when Betty canceled her engagement and left him after he becomes insane after he put on the crown with Damon stating that Simon has lost his job and is under complete depression.
- The second is when the Ice King regains the memories of his life as a human and he begins seeing himself as a monster for driving away his fiancee to the point that when he gets captured by the humans, he began calling Bubblegum and everyone Gunter, with PB even proclaiming that the Ice King himself has lost the will to live.
- All Assorted Animorphs AUs: This is implied to happen to Jake in "What if they were caught during their first mission?". He's difficult to contain in the Yeerk Pool at first, but the complaints stop when his Yeerk uses his body to morph into a Lerdethak and eats forty Leerans.
- Aang and Co. seem to be nearing this after Zuko and Azula attack the Western Air Temple in The Masks We Wear (Avatar: The Last Airbender).
- Still Stand in the Sun: Some of the older waterbenders break down in despair when they see an eight-year-old Katara brought into the Fire Nation prison to rot alongside them.
- In Alabaster Orchestra, Ichigo is driven to this by the truth of his mother's death, the destruction of his Shinigami powers, and mental torture from Gremmy.
- So many characters in Winter War have either crossed the line or are dangerously close, it's almost impossible to keep track. Far too understandable, given the Trauma Conga Line that is their world.
- BloodRayne: Chronicles of Blood: Rayne comes close to crossing it in Origins chapter 21, after Ophelia shows her illusions of her family and implants it in her head that they secretly hated her. Then she recalls her mother's Dying Declaration of Love and snaps out of it.
- In The One With The Angelic Face, after witnessing Angela (the female version of Angel in this reality) both take Angelus back into herself and literally walk into Hell to save her, Buffy is left in a near-catatonic state while she hides out in Angela’s old apartment, barely eating without Willow’s prompting, grieving how she never managed to tell Angela she loved her.
- In the fan-made prequel VN Clannad: The Past Path, which focuses on Tomoya's father Nayouki, all the bad endings result in him crossing the horizon in various ways, from resigning himself to his status as a Hikikomori to sexually harassing a female character. A particularly sadistic version of this occurs late in the game, wherein he's married his wife, had his son, lost his wife, and then killed himself because you didn't make him talk to his mother at a key decision point just before he left town.
- Finally crossed by Mao in Code Geass: Mao of the Deliverance after a Trauma Conga Line that would have made anyone else give up a long, long time ago, and which he rides all the way through The Last Dance.
- Point of Divergence: Pekoyama crosses it after Kuzuryuu dies as she failed as his bodyguard, in addition to her being in love with him. She's just barely pulled back from it, both mentally and literally.
- At the start of Psalm of the Lark, Harley hits this when Batgirl breaks the news of the Joker's death. With the Joker dead and her criminal history, Harley decides that she's better off dead. Barbara quickly snaps her out of it.
- L is implied to have crossed this in Story of the Century by the end: he gets what he set after in the beginning--to solve the case and to have Kira executed--but he loses Watari, as well as the Worthy Opponent he had and the friend he could have had in Light, Misa's friendship, the task force's trust and respect, and of course his own life. A girl he liked leaves him hating his guts so much that her last words to him are a long and vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech in which she all but outright states that she hates him, and he spends the rest of his days cooped up in HQ all alone. His unusually graceful response to her speech is heart-wrenching, even to her; more so when it's implied that he was already aware of how badly he'd screwed up before she lashed out at him...
- What makes his reply even sadder is that it sounds like a callback to his declaration when he meets the task force earlier on in canon that Justice Will Prevail and that he would "win the war" in spite of being childish and a sore loser. But this time, he's essentially admitting that the opposite happened BECAUSE he was being childish, just around the time the task force take Erin home and leave him for good.
- Occurs a few times in The Lion King Adventures:
- Simba loses all hope after the death of his parents and the destruction of the Pride Lands in Series Four. He gets over it, though.
- Similarly, he loses hope again in The End when the Writer kills all of his friends, including the love of his life, Nala.
- Haiba for a brief while after he murders Tama.
- Simba loses all hope after the death of his parents and the destruction of the Pride Lands in Series Four. He gets over it, though.
- In Savior of Demons, The Arcos Special has Frieza crossing his after witnessing a Saiyan brutally kill a pregnant Arcosian woman...and then smash her egg. He goes from Thousand-Yard Stare to Laughing Mad very quickly.
- In Fairy Tail: Dawn of Darkness, Lucy has been infected for two stories by an entity virus that has left her with only negative emotions near the end of Dawn of Darkness and it's also killing her. It doesn't help that she was hunted down throughout Isle of The Dragons and during Dawn of Darkness people kept making comments about it but wouldn't tell her anything. Lucy is left with so much despair that she tries to kill her friends because she doesn't want to be left alone when she dies. Luckily, Natsu and the others are able to get her to fight back against the entity and Natsu literally knocks it out of her.
- Unfortunately, Lucy continues to suffer from the aftereffects of the event, both physical and psychological, during Final Chapters. She is getting better on the psychological part as the story goes on.
- Unfortunately, Lucy continues to suffer from the aftereffects of the event, both physical and psychological, during Final Chapters
- In Passing Days, Vy constantly runs the risk of losing all hope from the fighting she has to do to combat Goetia and the Foreign God, not helped by her Workaholic tendencies worsening her All-Loving Heroine personality. The Ooku event and many chapters taking place in Part 2 highlight the risk, especially with the increased stakes and many of the villains shooting an Armor-Piercing Question that already shake her weakened self that comes with processing the trauma of such situations in the first place. It is why the Servants work as hard as they can to prevent Vy from breaking down in despair, both out of the want to live another day and out of the desire to help Vy be legitimately happy with them after she gave them so much in Part 1.
- Everywhere at the End of Funk: Boyfriend reaches this near the end of Week 6. As Hating Simulator starts glitching around him, he makes note of the static and compares it to the state of his own mind. By this point, he has begun to regress into Post-Awareness, fully aware that he is losing memory of those he loves and will eventually die from his dementia, yet he accepts his fate.
- As bad as things got in Hiccup the Useless, Hiccup was only able to keep himself together with Toothless not abandoning him. It wasn't until Stoick and the others tried taking him away and giving him to Snotlout do things Go Horribly Wrong and Hiccup attempts suicide by slitting his wrists.
- As bad as his life becomes, Hiccup in Lost Boy usually finds something that helps him endure, whether it is knowing that his aunt and uncle would have wanted him to survive or when he knows that Stoick cares for him. It is not until his friends are forced to ignore him under Berk law due to his Outcast brand and Stoick accusing him of being everything the village says about him after happening upon Snotlout raping him does he cut his own wrists, all hope finally spent from his body.
- Mercury does this at the end of From the ashes a fire shall be woken after Kligharrah dies. As seen later, this made him lose his will to live, but not before vowing to correct the world that had taken Kilgharrah from him. As seen subsequently in Phoenix-fire, this means trouble for the rest of the world.
- In For the Glory of Irk, Voel spirals into depression after being forced on the run by the Control Brains and ending up hiding out in Zim's base on Earth, alternating between being too sullen to do anything and snapping angrily at everyone around him. Eventually, however, the other Irkens get through to him and snap him out of it, and convince him to start fighting back to reclaim his throne.
- In It's not the Raptor DNA, it is eventually revealed that this is the reason Elise went on a rampage across Jurassic World.
- The Ronless Factor opens with Ron being killed in a car crash, which sends Kim through a range of emotional extremes. By the time of Ron's funeral, she is shown thinking about how she wishes she could find the driver of the car that caused the crash and tear him apart until he feels as incomplete as she does, and this is before she learns that the driver was a hired killer rather than the crash being a terrible accident. While she doesn't outright make an attempt, Kim even admits at one point that she actually contemplated killing herself to join Ron after she first heard the news, explaining that she just felt lost without him. It takes learning that Ron's ghost is still around and trying to help for Kim to get back to herself in time to thwart the plans of the people responsible for his death.
- In Revenge Road, Hikaru returns to Japan for an audition as a last effort to get Kyosuke to notice her, and then seemingly meets Kyosuke, who appears to have grown distant from Madoka, there. She fails the audition and learns that the Kyosuke she was with was a fake, then snaps and kills Kyosuke and Madoka.
- In Blind Man's Bluff, Nick very, very nearly crosses this when he believes that Ellis was tortured to death by Jerry. He's in such deep grief over that that he has a brief shutdown.
- In Out of the Dead Land, seeing Steve be killed causes Bucky to become so hollow with despair that he agrees to let HYDRA take him into custody again to mind-wipe the pain away and even fights off Natasha and Sam when they try to prevent him from doing it. It turns out that Bucky has more heroic spirit than Zola was counting on, however, and he summons the resolve to take down Zola and his robot army for once and for all even before he learns that Steve isn't actually dead.
- The Villain Protagonist of The Council Era endured this when he witnessed his wife's death on a news network. As part of his grief, he destroyed his entire clutch, except one, who soon after hatched. When the same soldiers who killed his wife, and were searching for him (he'd gone AWOL) surrounded his home, Tyrin threatened to kill his one hatched child and then himself. There's also a potential Alternate Character Interpretation that his criminal actions in the story are because he's caught in a state of perpetual despair following his wife's death, and is taking it out on the world.
- In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, ProtoMan crosses this post episode 10 due to torture, becoming a shell of his old self. Mega Man crosses it in episode 11, chapter 8, shattered over the trauma he's suffered.
- Mayura Marinette: After becoming Hated by All thanks to Lila/Ladybug maliciously slandering her name, Marinette is Trapped in Villainy by Gabriel, who further manipulates her by pretending to be the only one left in her life who cares about her. She clings to that lifeline for all it's worth... until she overhears him arguing with Nathalie, revealing that he only gave her the Peacock Pin because he considers her completely disposable. This helps push Marinette completely over the edge and into a Superpower Meltdown that broadcasts her misery to all of Paris.
- Adrien falls into this in the first chapter of Not Always Sunshine. First his classmates don't immediately believe that Lila had threatened Marinette and had been sexually assaulting him. Then when they try to report Lila's assault, the police don't want to take action since his father heard about it and didn't take action, and they are afraid of taking action against him. As he leaves the station, he sees Lila watching and knows she will make a lie that will lead Gabriel to pull him out of school and keep him locked in their home. In panic, he runs off and ends up on a subway track with a train approaching him. Adrien ends up so consumed by despair that he was willing to let himself be hit and end it all if Marinette didn't tackle him out of the track in time.
- In Revolt of the Akuma, Marinette, battling depression after Lila turns her classmates against her, discovers that the two people she thought she could trust, Luka and Kagami have (seemingly) betrayed her to Hawkmoth (it's actually a Fake Defector plan, but neither thought to tell this to Ladybug). Marinette barely has the time to renounce to the Earrings before she gets Akumatized.
- Sins of the Past opens with Lila Rossi successfully turning all of Marinette's friends against her. When Marinette attempts to expose Lila's true nature, she gets called a bully by Adrien for attempting to reveal the truth. Then one of Hawkmoth's akumatizing butterflies finds her...
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- In Beneath The Sun's Surface, Princess Celestia crosses it when she's abducted by a group of conspirators ponies with the intention of using her body as a vessel for Nightmare Moon and fake her death to make sure no one goes to rescue her. Held against her will inside a basement, poor Celestia is brutally tortured on a daily basis. Convinced that Princess Luna is behind the conspiracy (Note: she isn't), Celestia suffers nightmares of her sister torturing her out of pure enjoyment before killing her. It gets to the point that she ends up having a seizure that leaves her temporarily blind and starts beging for her captors to kill her. She eventually breaks free, mercilessly kill her captors, which she then regrets, escapes and goes into hiding.That is not true; I did give up. After I had those seizures, I was completely blind because... well, once more; trying to remember things properly, the doctor said that Stallion had bruised the vision part of my brain, so for a long time I couldn't see anything. I... I remember waking up on the couch upstairs and finding my way to the bathroom to throw up... and I remember that the Stallion had woken up and come to see what I was doing. He brought me a blanket... a-and I asked him for one last favor; for him to h-hit me between the eyes as m-many times as he could so that I would... so that I would die.
- Poor TCB!Big Macintosh in The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum. His grandmother died, his homeland went to war, his sister suddenly turned into a genocidal murderess, he was forced to accept the use of Technically-Living Zombie slave labor on his farm, and much of his family isn't on speaking terms with each other.I'm tired of it all, tired of whatever it is that's happened to Equestria. I've seen too much happen to Equestria to call it the same land I grew up in, and it's hollowed me out like an old Nightmare Night pumpkin.
I want my sister back and all I have is a monster with her face, a damn caricature that looks for all the world like her but has none of her soul inside. I want to tell her how I feel but I cower away like a foal away from her eyes. Eyes that no longer have that stubborn but warm love and care; just hatred and wrath for anything that goes against Queen Celestia and the so-called 'greater family and herd'. - In The Death of Princess Luna, Princess Celestia and Luna suffer this; the former suffering this having seen Luna's fake body in the Everfree Forest, and Luna thinking that nopony would save her from her captors planning to execute her. This is all averted when Twilight Sparkle and her friends find and rescue Luna and present her to Celestia, creating a heartwarming and tearful reunion.
- A Future of Friendship, a History of Hate: In Episode 5, Scootaloo ends up in a Heroic BSoD after her wish ends up blowing up in her face, at which point said BSOD releases the woebeghoul from the Tear of Covet, and allows it to consume her to power itself on her sorrow while it destroys Ponyville. When she realizes it's all her fault, she crosses the horizon, giving up and even saying it would be better if she was never born. It takes a Big Damn Heroes moment and Rousing Speech from Rainbow Dash to bring her back to normal and together they destroy the woebeghoul.
- Inner Demons: Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy both shoot past it after Queen!Twilight Sparkle cements her Face–Heel Turn by using them in a Sadistic Choice against Rainbow Dash. In Fluttershy's case, it's so bad that she actually attempts to kill herself.
- In The Lost Element, James is driven over the line after experiencing Discord's corruption of all his friends, while not knowing that they could be restored. While at first he is merely confused by the behavior of his friends, he then starts to worry. He finally loses it when Fluttershy makes an ultimatum where she will leave him for not being tough enough if he doesn't punch himself in the face with his strength boosting gauntlets on, and then make a cut in his neck using his sword. This causes him to not just break down, but to all but go insane, tricking Discord into a dual to the death where he dismembers Discord, eats his wings, rips the Elements of Harmony out of his chest, and generally kicks the utter humanity out of him until he is dead. Due to earlier events, all his friends see it and James finally has his moment of sorrow. This is made even worse by the fact that the author put the story on hiatus right after this chapter was completed, stating that he would continue the fanfiction once he was finished an alternate ending fic where James succumbs to his wounds after the battle.
- What Have You Done: Twilight does this after her friends abandon her at the Canterlot Wedding rehearsal; unlike canon, Chrysalis simply leaves Twilight there, deciding she's already been dealt with due to her despair. In her grief, Twilight leaves the wedding and frees Discord. The rest of the Mane Six, along with her mother, subsequently discover that her Element of Magic has turned pitch black.
- In A Growing Affection, Minato's death pushes Gouki from avoiding the ninja world and helping the civilians who live nearby, to deciding to take over the world and enslave all ninjas to his will, so he can force them to put the rest of the world first.
- Naru-Hina Chronicles: Hinata reaches hers in the nine days after the raid on Seireiko's base in the Nation of Steel, with Naruto thought dead. She cannot care for herself, or even eat, just lie in bed and cry. Fortunately, Naruto is tougher than a little bomb blast.
- Son of the Sannin has it for Yakumo Kurama, Kurenai's former student, when her genjutsu abilities unleashed out of control and accidentally caused her to set her house on fire and kill her parents. This left her an easy prey for Danzo Shimura to step in and "save" her (read: offer her the means to control her powers in exchange for turning into one of his puppet agents in Root). She later came to regret her decision with all the horrible things Danzo forced her to do, but was desperate enough that she felt she had no other choice. Thankfully, Kurenai manages to bring her back.
- In chapter 4 of Take Two, Round Two by Third Fang, Naruto has a dream with this beauty of a speech.There was a saying that to truly test a person's mettle, give them power... however this is not the only way. Give them the ability to change. To influence. To affect others... Then take it all away. Make them watch the world turn in all its cruel glory. Ensure that they cannot look anywhere else or run. Make them realize how helpless they truly are to stop things when it mattered, that it would continue even if they could move as they wished... And then free them... And let them fall. It makes one wonder, if they do ever manage to get back up after crashing to the earth that they thought they knew so well... What broke from the impact... What was broken before they ever landed? better still... Did they ever realize they were still falling when they finally did land?
- The Child of Love: In chapter 5 Asuka is so confused and so frightened of her feelings and of Shinji she can not take it anymore and decides killing herself.
- In Evangelion 303, Asuka goes through this. After Unit-04's crash and Jessika's death Asuka was wrecked with survivor guilt. Then, during the NF-14 test she learnt that she could not yet reuniting with Jessika. She did not get the acceptance that she longed for, and she nearly died. Her mood got worst and she attempted to commit suicide. When it did not work either, she ran away.
- Ghosts of Evangelion: Asuka crosses this after running from Kyoto: Misato failed her again, her nightly nightmares didn't stop or abate and her shrink attempted to rape her. She felt hopeless enough to try to kill herself.
- HERZ: Shinji crossed it seven years before the beginning of the story when Asuka was about to leave and he thought she hated him and did not want to see him ever again. He wrote a suicide note to her and another to Misato and slit his wrists.
- The One I Love Is...:
- Asuka. After several close calls (in episode 6 when she thought she had lost Shinji and in episode 9 after her Mind Rape), Asuka crosses the line in episode 10: she has been completely beaten, humiliated and even Mind Raped, she knows she will be replaced soon, and regards herself as an utter and completely worthless failure. After Rei's death the only thing keeping her from falling apart is Shinji loving her. But then it turns out that Rei has survived, Asuka thinks Shinji has chosen Rei over her, and she can not bear it anymore. She runs away, leaving a goodbye note, and slits her wrists.
- Shinji was on the brink of crossing it after Kaoru's death. Then the Geofront was invaded, Misato got shot, Asuka's Unit 02 got butchered and eaten by the MP-Evas and Shinji thought he had nothing left.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide: Shinji crosses it when the Emerald Tablet mortally wounds Asuka out of spite.He knew, somewhere deep inside, that Asuka was not answering because she couldn't. His dreams, his hopes, and everything else he wished for the future simply ebbed away, leaving behind only an empty vacuum.
- In The Second Try, Shinji and Asuka are forced to this line a second time; the latter when going against Arael again, the former when he thinks Asuka is dead. Thankfully, this gets averted both times.
- In the Oneiroi Series, Redcloak rockets past it when his insane daughter rapes and kills him.
- Pokémon: The Lost Child: After Magmar's village is destroyed and his friends and family are killed, he ends up sinking into a horrible state where he is constantly reliving what happened and just running.
- The Mars Gaiden sidestory of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has this for the title character. She had endured years of abuse at the hands of her uncle and aunt, but her breaking point is when they kill her only friend, Kibou, and plan to use her as a scapegoat to kill Mars as well. This is what ultimately drives her to join Cyrus and Team Galactic.
- In Pokémon Strangled Red, Steven never recovers from losing his Charizard, Miki."His precious Miki was apparently dead, and with her, so died a part of him. His Pokédex, the other Pokémon, his badges, his fame, all of it, he threw it away."
- Chapter 14 of Pokéumans largely concerns Brandon crossing this after the death of a very close friend and then slowly coming back over it.
- Implied in Pokémon Tarnished Gold, with the story’s Framing Device being an email sent by someone with the address Hope_abandoned.
- In Bonds Left Unbroken, Desmond goes past it when his family is killed under the command of his father of all people.
- Par for the course in A History of Magic; if all the examples were listed we'd be here all day, so let's look at the one unique one that happened in the post-Madoka world. Homura kills Mitsuko in cold blood after she murdered Madoka's younger brother. Homura could not forgive herself for killing a fellow Magi, and believed herself beyond redemption. Had this been a pre-Madoka world, Homura would have become a witch. For most magi in the post-Madoka world, they'd just disappear. Homura becomes an Angel, a witch who retains her memories of her past life.
- In To the Stars, in the Post-Madoka future during the Battle of Epsilon Eridani the magical girls and the normal human soldiers defending the colony world were brutally savaged by the aliens, and were about to cross the DEH, but avoided doing so when Homura Akemi, ironically, crossed her own: As her Soul Gem was practically pure-black from magic exhaustion, she pretty much resigned herself to die, something she was actually looking to since it means reuniting with Madoka. Except Madoka didn't want Homura to die, and so the latter was denied her wish, which pushed her over the edge, turned her normally angelic wings into dark-twisted wings as seen at the end of PMMM, and practically wins the battle by herself, and goes into self-exile afterwards.
- In the pro wrestling story A Ring of Their Own, this is the reason given for Molly Holly's retirement from WWE in 2005 (the story takes place in the kayfabe world) after getting her head shaved at WrestleMania 20 plus the losing streak and humiliation conga she went through afterwards. Only after a substantial amount of arm-twisting from her best friend, Ivory, does she agree to come out of retirement and join the new all-women wrestling company, the FWF.
- RWBY: Reckoning: After being called out for wearing the uniform of the White Fang, Darrel accidentally reveals the truth about himself. He reflects on the changes to the plot, and deduces that they all lead back to his presence. Coupled with the fact that Kimba had taken him from his home, without any guarantee he could return, and thrown him into Remnant for a war no one knows or cares about... well, put simply, he finally crumbles.
- Annette in The Racket-Rotter Chronicles gets her ultimate one after The Builder throws her in a cell with the stuffed corpse of Samira, her daughter. Though her encounter with the Julian clones and meeting zombie!Shark might count as lesser event horizons.
- By the Fire's Light: Jared Holloway despairs that he'll never be free of the Slender Man, ultimately taking his own life.
- My Time Of Dying revolves around this, with Scourge the Hedgehog continually teetering on the brink of suicidal depression as he battles between Then Let Me Be Evil and Sonic's insistence that You Are Better Than You Think You Are. The story is ongoing and it's not certain whether he will succumb or not.
- In Episode 74 of Sonic X: Dark Chaos, it's revealed that Tsali crossed the horizon when he was forcibly roboticized by his adopted father Luke the Seedrian to cap off his Break the Cutie backstory. This torture broke what little was left of his sanity and hope; he slaughtered the entire Seedrian race in revenge, made a literal Deal with the Devil, and started the Metarex War.
- All of the main characters pretty much hit this after Episode 73, especially Knuckles and Cosmo. Only Tails regenerating himself with his Shroud parasites pulls them back.
- Dark Oak crosses this in Episode 64 after his fleet is utterly annihilated and his primary command center is destroyed. He spends the rest of the story in a drawn-out Villainous Breakdown until he meets Sonic in Episode 72.
- Sonic X: Eternal Angel is a far more realistic situation of what would happen to Tails after Cosmo's death. Rather than suddenly getting better like in Episode 78, he spirals into depression, shuts himself out from his own friends, and even starts cutting himself out of sheer guilt and self-hatred from how he killed Cosmo. Tails becomes so consumed with grief and despair that he eventually attempts to commit suicide.
- In Future Shock, Kara was already teetering on the edge at the start, but goes fully over it during the Fendra Arc, whereing Fendra illegally uses Kara's DNA to seed a child, which Kara has to marry Fendra to be able to acknowledge under Kryptonian law. This leads to her going across the horizon and using a time-courier to go back to the dying days of Krypton and just wait out the end of the world. Even after rescue, she never fully recovers.
- A Very Kara Christmas: Invoked by Dick Wilson when he explains why he is worried about Linda Lee: people who have lost their beloved ones face a far higher suicide risk during Christmas.Dick Wilson: Linda, it's like this. Christmas is the big time of the year when everybody's supposed to be happy. Santa Claus is comin' to town, ho-ho-ho, all the candy canes and stuff under the tree and Sears catalogs and people freezin' their rear ends off out caroling. So everybody's supposed to love each other and all those good vibes just floating around. But sometimes, if you don't feel the good vibes, that makes it so much worse. Depression increases at Christmas. The fact that it's near the shortest day of the year doesn't help much. Suicides go up. You know what I'm sayin'?
- In The End of Ends, Beast Boy crosses it sometime after running away, which prompts the Dark Prognosticus to come and lend him his power...
- In Chapter 10 of Gensokyo 20XXI, Yukari's reached this when her search for Ran, Chen, and Flandre left her empty handed, leaving her heartbroken and so upset with herself that not only did she feel she was unable to return to Reimu (to whom she had left behind to make sure she won't be captured) her frozen tears enclosed her in a cocoon of ice and she remained in that state for a couple of chapters, stating she was entombed in her cocoon of ice for a long time. Be noted in said chapter, she also figured Reimu probably died during the time she was searching for Ran, Chen, and Flandre, meaning she felt she had nothing to go back to.
- In Imperfect Metamorphosis, Reimu crosses the horizon after Yuuka kills Marisa.
- In Touhou Ibunshu: Remixed Cherry Blossom, Reimu and Marisa die and go to Hakugyokuro. Marisa weathers the experience better, but Reimu collapses into a pile of self-loathing at the events, having lost her life in a way that made a mockery of her most cherished beliefs. By the time Sakuya reaches them and arranges for their resurrection, she briefly has to confront a maddened shrine maiden that at that point has embraced the worst aspects of her personality. Even after the debacle ends, Reimu walls herself off her closest friends, unwilling to even begin talking about the experience. It takes Yukari's intervention via Suika to break the cycle.
- In Touhou Tonari, this is what happens to Yuyuko when she realises that her power has grown so powerful that it may kill Yukari and it eventually lead to her suicide.
- Vampire mate bonds and werewolf imprinting are said to be strong enough to cause this in Luminosity. The actual trope is commonly avoided, as the vampire either commits suicide offscreen or becomes The Unfettered, but when Edward thinks that he's lost Bella, all he does is ask to die.
- The plot of Decks Fall Everyone Dies takes place after the worst possible thing that could happen to the Yu-Gi-Oh world: the fall of Card Games.
