History Main / CameBackWithAVengeance

* ''Anime/CodeGeass'': After being disowned from the royal family of Britannia following the assassination of his mother and his sister being blinded and crippled, Lelouch stumbles upon a mysterious woman who gifts him with a MagicalEye, which culminates in him assuming the identity of Zero and joining a group of rebels plotting to overthrow the empire. His quest for revenge leads to him going up against his own childhood friend and causing innocent lives to be ruined or ended by the crossfire, among other consequences.

* ''Film/{{Deadpool|2016}}'': The film has almost the same plot as ''Darkman'', but with a quirky sense of humor. Hitman for hire Wade Wilson is disfigured and driven insane by an experimental cancer treatment at the hands of the evil gangster Ajax, and he sets out in a new full-body costume to both build up his mercenary career and take down Ajax's empire, while eventually reuniting with his fiancee Vanessa. [[spoiler:Unlike ''Darkman'', he's successful.]]

* The TropeCodifier is, as mentioned above, ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo''. Naive young sailor Edmond Dantes is thrown into a penal colony due to the machinations of a FalseFriend and various other ambitious miscreants. He learns of a great treasure from his cellmate, escapes after several years of captivity by faking his own death, and returns to his hometown as the fabulously wealthy and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo in order to take his revenge on the men who destroyed his life, only to encounter serious complications in the discovery that their kids are, generally speaking, nice young people who don't deserve to be tied up in his vengeance on their families.

* In ''Literature/APrisonerOfBirth'', the protagonist gets framed by the antagonists (a group which calls themselves [[Literature/TheThreeMusketeers The Musketeers]] and ironically are fans of Creator/AlexandreDumas's works) for a murder one of the committed. In prison, he meets a rich IdenticalStranger, who becomes his friend. When the latter is murdered, the former [[FakingTheDead takes his place]], and when released from prison he takes revenge on the antagonists.

* The titular V of ''ComicBook/VForVendetta'' was an inmate at Larkhill Resettlement Camp, one of many extermination camps run by Norsefire, a fascist dictatorship that rules Great Britain. V was one of a group of prisoners that were subjected to horrific medical experimentation, which resulted in the deaths of all the prisoners except him. The experiments gave V the physical abilities of an Olympic athlete in addition to a genius-level intellect. V eventually destroys Larkhill with a bomb of his own creation and dons a Guy Fawkes mask and costume. V spends the next five years planning revenge against Norsefire while building his secret base which he names "The Shadow Gallery". He also kills the surviving personnel of Larkhill, making each murder look like an accident. In a twist, we never do find out who V was ''before'' Larkhill -- but all signs point to him having been a random innocent targeted by their cruelty.

* ''{{Film/Darkman}}'' is a prime example of the BodyHorror variation on the plot. Dr. Peyton Westlake is never sent to prison or captured by the men who destroyed his life, but he's horrifically burned and left with almost nothing of his former lab, and then subjected to medical torture by an unrelated group of doctors when he's found as an unrecognizable husk of himself. His brilliance is undiminished, however, and he uses his skills at disguise and post-torture insensitivity to pain to systematically destroy the gangsters who ruined his life and now both court and threaten his former fiancee under his new persona as the titular AntiHero.
* ''{{Film/Deadpool}}'' has almost the same plot as ''Darkman'', but with a quirky sense of humor. Hitman for hire Wade Wilson is disfigured and driven insane by an experimental cancer treatment at the hands of the evil gangster Ajax, and he sets out in a new full-body costume to both build up his mercenary career and take down Ajax's empire, while eventually reuniting with his fiancee Vanessa. [[spoiler:Unlike ''Darkman'', he's successful.]]

* ''Literature/Vendetta1886'' by Creator/MarieCorelli compresses the plot into the result of only one night, with Fabio Romani experiencing RapidAging after being MistakenForDead and stumbling on the discovery that his wife and best friend were all too eager to see him gone. He takes on a new identity to get his revenge on them.

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[[caption-width-right:350:[[Film/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet From family man to murderous avenger.]]]]When Creator/AlexandreDumas wrote ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'' in the early 1840s, he codified an archetypal revenge story that follows particular beats:

* ''{{Series/Revenge}}'' is one big love letter to this trope and ''The Count of Monte Cristo''. Amanda Clarke returns to her old Hamptons neighborhood after reinventing herself as Emily Thorne in order to get back at the people who tore her away from her father as a child after setting him up as the fall guy for their own criminal actions.