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Marvel Universe


  • The Avengers:
    • In Avengers Annual #10, Carol Danvers a.k.a. Ms. Marvel gives the Avengers an epic verbal beating regarding the events of the infamous Avengers #200.note  Witness it here in all its glory. And consider that this takes place at a point when Carol had lost her memories and was getting them put back together by Professor X, with the result that while she remembered what happened, she no longer had the emotional attachment to them—they were basically the equivalent of what she'd seen on TV. And she still reacted with that much rage. One can only imagine what would have happened had her mind been completely intact.
    • There was a big one concerning The Avengers with the storyline Operation: Galactic Storm when a group of Avengers decide the Kree Supreme Intelligence just couldn't live anymore and executed him for unleashing a bomb meant to jump-start Kree evolution (by wiping out most of their population). This would lead to a number of other moments that dovetailed into the dissolution of the Avengers West Coast team.
  • A nonverbal one occurs in the mini Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter. Bill has decided to take fatal revenge on Galactus for destroying the remnants of his people by destroying planets marked for his consumption with weapons confiscated from an intergalactic arms dealer. One race insists that they will fight Galactus rather than evacuate, but Bill (rather than let them go through a suicidal last stand) is convinced by said arms dealer to infect them with a bio-war agent and use the cure to blackmail them into leaving. They do so, but when next he tries to pick up his enchanted hammer Stormbreaker... he cannot.
  • In one of the Black Widow graphic novels, Natalia encounters two thugs, and she warns them that if they don't stand down neither will ever walk again. She kills one and renders the second unconscious. The What the Hell, Hero moment occurs after she proceeds to fulfil her promise by breaking the back of the unconscious survivor, causing a male companion to have a Squick moment which she shrugs off.
  • Captain America gives one to Cyclops at the end of Avengers vs. X-Men after the latter tries to Spin the restoration of the mutant populace into a victory, despite the damage caused by the entire fight.
    • Cap is on the receiving end of one from Daredevil at the end of Target X, when he goes Inspector Javert on X-23. Matt flat-out tells Steve off for potentially ruining Laura's last chance at a normal life by tracking her down and arresting her just as Wolverine is offering to take her to the Xavier school to help her cope with the hell she's been put through by the Facility, and warns him that S.H.I.E.L.D. will just use Laura the way the Facility did and won't care about bringing her to justice for the killings she performed. It takes until Steve has Laura at the entrance of a S.H.I.E.L.D. installation before it finally sinks in that Matt was right.
    • Also, back in a certain old issue, a What If? issue... Cap gives a worldwide WTHH to the country of America after becoming a totalitarian state led by an impostor Cap. "America is a piece of trash", he said...
    • Spider-Man delivers one with a left hook in anger following the entire Superior Spider Man debacle after finding out his old friend Flash Thompson was Agent Venom. Cap uses it to realize that Peter's back in the saddle.
  • Fantastic Four:
    • In Issue #55, Reed immobilizes Ben after the latter went on a jealous Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Silver Surfer after he saw him hanging out with Alicia, and gives one of the biggest dressing-downs of his entire career.
      Reed: I thought you were in love with Alicia... But instead, you've left her crying her eyes out! Now listen, Ben... We've been friends for years... I'd give my life for you... and you know it! But you big, blister-brained baboon, if you don't apologize to him for acting like a misanthropic MADMAN, I'll show you what clobbering really means!
    • Reed gets called out by Sue for deliberately placing his son into a vegetative state. Granted, it was to keep his powers from going out of control and possibly preventing the destruction of every living being in the solar system, but this act disgusted his teammates enough for them to leave the team. Ben Grimm even says that it was "the end of the Fantastic Four."
  • The Illuminati got this a lot. To recap:
    • Black Panther thought the idea of the organization itself was a terrible one and refused to be a part of it.
    • Uatu gave one to Reed Richards for reuniting the Infinity Gems.
    • From within their own ranks, there's Namor chewing the group out after everyone but him and Professor Xaviernote  decided launching the Hulk into space was a good idea and was right about the Hulk coming back pissed off — and even when he did get wind of this, Xavier said he would be in favor of a temporary exile to allow Banner to cure himself, but not the permanent one the others opted for.
    • On the flip side, the others called out Namor when they learned via the Beyonder blabbing about it that Namor still has thoughts about taking over the surface world.
    • The Hulk himself, even beyond the whole "kicking him off the planet without his consent" deal, blamed them for the destruction on Sakarr wrought by Miek's tampering of the engine and even then, they still effectively tossed the Hulk off as someone else's problem.
    • The general public got in on it too when The Hulk's return involved an open mic night for civilians to vent their grievances over actions the group took.
      The Hulk: Don't like it, do you? It's not fair. Not the whole story. You have excuses. Explanations. You're innocent. These people don't know what really happened. They don't know what's in your heart. Now you know how it feels.
  • Iron Man:
    • Armor Wars was a storyline-long one for Tony. Tony goes overboard when he finds out someone stole his tech to upgrade various villains — and winds up pissing most everyone he knows off in going outside the law. S.H.I.E.L.D., unaware Tony's Iron Man at this point, hires Tony to hunt down Iron Man and the government creates Firepower to stop him. The West Coast Avengers toss Tony out on his ass and Tony's relationship with Steve Rogers (then operating as "the Captain") was strained, Steve even returning a vibranium shield Tony made for him, coming to realize it was a bribe to keep him out of the way.
    • Spider-Man ends up being so disturbed by Iron Man's morally dubious actions (such as imprisoning non-registered superhumans indefinitely without trial) during Marvel's Civil War (2006) crossover that he defects from the pro-Registration side to the anti-Registration side.
    • Currently, it seems Marvel has just lined up characters so everybody can have a shot at this, including Iron Man's old teammates Thor who both needed an ass-kicking scene early in his new series to establish that he's as powerful and had a very legitimate beef with Stark) and the real Hank Pym.
    • Hulk also gave one to Tony and the other members of the Illuminati during World War Hulk. Hulk wanted revenge on the Illuminati for trying to exile him to a supposedly peaceful world, though in reality he ended up on a very hostile world which he eventually brought peace to and found happiness on, only to have the very ship that brought him there explode, ruining the planet and killing his new wife. This was subject to a very blatant Author's Saving Throw when it was revealed that the ship couldn't have possibly ravaged a planet itself by exploding; rather, one of Hulk's allies had tampered with the ship's core, resulting in the aforementioned catastrophe. While this is seemingly meant to absolve the Illuminati of their crimes, the fact remains that their original plan failed horribly, resulting in them more-or-less making the Hulk someone else's problem while at the same time handing the means to creating an Earth-Shattering Kaboom to those same persons in the same package. If we think about it, most of the Illuminati have their moments of that. Not so long ago, Black Bolt gets one about his plan to end a cosmic war from all his family, advisors, and Vulcan himself.
  • The Punisher gets called out by almost every hero (and a few villains) he comes across.
    • The Punisher also dishes these out, as he's prone to ask heroes how many people have been killed by supervillains in their respective rogues galleries because they didn't have the courage (in his opinion) to put an end to them once and for all. From Frank's perspective, the heroes have to take some of the blame for these deaths. Frank sees the world in extremely black-and-white terms.
  • During the last arc of Runaways, Nico got a brief one from Molly for using magic to force Klara, who's been injured and badly traumatized, to stop crying. Molly compares it to the way that her own parents used to use their mental abilities to force her to fall asleep.
  • Shang-Chi: In early stories, Shang-Chi's ally Black Jack Tarr consistently referred to him as "Chinaman" rather than by his name. He gets called out on this several times, with Shang-Chi finally losing patience, cutting through the excuses and telling him to drop it for good in the 2002 series.
  • Spider-Man:
    • In The Death of Jean DeWolff storyline, Matt Murdock serves as a public defender to a group of thugs who assaulted and robbed an old man who was friends with Spider-Man's Aunt May. Spider-Man, as Peter Parker, confronts Matt and asks him how he can look at himself in the mirror. Matt, who is blind, jokingly responds, "It's a challenge". This leads to Peter getting a "What the hell" response from his Aunt May for his rudeness. A later scene with Matt and a judge does suggest that Matt thinks Peter had a point. Peter later gets another one from Daredevil when he almost kills the Sin-Eater.
    • The fact that he kept all that Dr. Octopus gained him when he bodyjacked Peter comes back to bite him in the ass in the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man (2018), when Peter is accused of stealing Ock's work. Since he can't reveal the truth without outing himself as Spider-Man, Peter loses his new job at the Daily Bugle and strains his relationship wih his Aunt May. Peter even concedes that he should've canceled his own degree and shut down Parker Industries.
  • Happens several times in the Squadron Supreme limited series, as the Squadron continue their efforts to take over the world. Most of the callouts are given by Blackhawk, but Amphibian gets in a few licks too.
  • Thor's hammer, Mjölnir, manages to give Thor one during the storyline The Reigning: Only the Pure of Heart can lift the hammer, and Thor lost this ability after going into a Knight Templar spiral.
  • It happens almost at every issue of the Thunderbolts. Which is to be expected: having heroes who have been villains all their life up to 5 minutes ago, and heroes who are former villains playing the hero thing for completely wrong reasons (because of the action, because the government forces them to, because everybody else in the gang is doing it), they will almost never manage things as the steady heroes would do. The first team had Jolt to point those things out to them; as time passes, this role is done by the first Thunderbolts to the new recruits, by the actual heroes who join the team (such as Vantage, Nighthawk, or Captain Marvel), or by other characters that happen to be next to them.
  • War of Kings: Many, many characters have this reaction towards Black Bolt's Assimilation Plot. Then it got worse - he gets one from VULCAN!
  • What if? Annihilation has Nova delivering one to EVERY earthbound superhero involved in Civil War for allowing the superhuman registration act to split them so violently and for letting their pointless conflict distract them from their job to protect.
  • X-Men:
    • In Uncanny X-Force, Deadpool openly states that Fantomex killing Kid!Apocalypse was wrong. While Fantomex was the one who pulled the trigger Deadpool is upset that the team he joined supposedly to help make the world a better place crossed one of the few lines he never crossed as an amoral mercenary. Years later in Uncanny Avengers, Captain America finds out about this from Thor and reads Wolverine the riot act for allowing it to happen in the first place. He later admits to the Wasp that his judgement in chewing out Wolverine wasn't in the right — it's assumed that he's having some sort of awkward trauma after being stuck in Armin Zola's Dimension Z for ten years and came back with four days having only passed.
    • Cyclops has given one to Magik in New Mutants, on the account of the fact that in her personal vendetta against Elder Gods she manipulated her friends and teammates, almost got them killed and risked the destruction of reality itself without second thought and probably would do that again if she had to, which is the reason why they cannot trust her anymore and she must be restrained, until she'll prove herself not to be danger to the team and all mutants on island. Later, through it happens off-panel, Colossus clearly has told Scott what he thinks about not only the whole idea of restraining his sister but also the fact that he has took most dangerous members of the team to take her down in case she wouldn't accept his terms and send everybody who are emotionally attached to her, one way or another, on a mission, so they wouldn't interfere.
      Dani, about Peter's discussion with Scott: There was a lot of shouting.
      • In X-Men's main series this is followed by Kitty tearing Peter a new one for trying to justify Illyana's behavior and not accepting that she is not as innocent as she used to be. Then Peter gives Scott another one again, for planning to make Illyana the new avatar of Cyttorak, a.k.a. The Juggernaut but Scott lists several arguments at his defense. And then Kitty gives one to Peter again, for becoming the new Juggernaut. Also, Cyclops gives one to Mayor Sinclair for planning to destroy Utopia in the case the X-Men won't stop Juggernaut.
      • Fellow New Mutant Sunspot received an intense call-out from the team after he accidentally used his Super-Strength on Cannonball during a football game, giving Cannonball a concussion that could've been fatal. He's so ashamed with himself that he temporarily quits the team.
  • Parodied when mutants have to team up with the Future Foundation and this exchange occures:
    Wolverine: Never thought I would see you guys throw in with a guy like Doom.
    The Thing: Oh yeah? Was that Magneto I saw sitting at the conference table?
    • X-23 herself gets this quite a bit. She was raised to be a ruthless, emotionless killing machine, and her cold detachment arguably does make her an even better killer than Logan himself. Needless to say, this conflicts significantly with Laura's friends and teammates in the X-Men, and she gets this a lot over her willingness to kill and use the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique. By the time of her solo series, her participation in X-Force has strained her relationships with many of the younger X-Men, and Surge especially delivers some pretty scathing criticism of Laura's involvement.

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