History Main / PayEviluntoEvil

* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6''. Hiro had no problem against ordering Baymax to ''murder'' Yokai/[[spoiler:Professor Callaghan]] after the latter is revealed to have started the fire that killed Tadashi and [[KickTheDog insults Hiro for his grief]]. However, Hiro's friends stop his rampage and [[WhatTheHellHero call him out]] for breaking their ThouShallNotKill code. Baymax then [[ArmorPiercingQuestion asks Hiro if Yokai's death is what Tadashi would have wanted]] to make Hiro reconsider his actions, [[HeelRealization which succeeds]].

Welcome to a special kind of morality where otherwise evil actions are considered okay because [[AssholeVictim the victims deserved it]]. Like all tropes, this can played with any number of ways. It can be [[ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption played straight]], [[WhatTheHellHero defied]], [[JustifiedCriminal deconstructed]], or [[BlackAndGrayMorality left disquietingly gray]] depending on the author. This one's very common with {{Revenge}} stories in general, since revenge at its core is a viciously [[ItsPersonal personal]] case of Paying Evil Unto Evil, and when one is [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds broken to the core]] by the suffering brought by the evil, even a desperate RevengeByProxy becomes justifiable (or at least it will seem that way to the one taking revenge). Alternatively, the hero may use such tactics as part of a deliberate and calculated strategy to [[TerrorHero break the villains' morale]].

Welcome to a special kind of morality where otherwise evil actions are considered okay because [[AssholeVictim the victims deserved it]]. Like all tropes, this can played with any number of ways. It can be [[FamilyUnfriendlyAesop played straight]], [[WhatTheHellHero defied]], [[JustifiedCriminal deconstructed]], or [[BlackAndGrayMorality left disquietingly gray]] depending on the author. This one's very common with {{Revenge}} stories in general, since revenge at its core is a viciously [[ItsPersonal personal]] case of Paying Evil Unto Evil, and when one is [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds broken to the core]] by the suffering brought by the evil, even a desperate RevengeByProxy becomes justifiable (or at least it will seem that way to the one taking revenge). Alternatively, the hero may use such tactics as part of a deliberate and calculated strategy to [[TerrorHero break the villains' morale]].

* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6''. Hiro had no problem against ordering Baymax to ''murder'' Yokai/[[spoiler:Professor Callaghan]] after the latter is revealed to have started the fire that killed Tadashi and [[KickTheDog insults Hiro for his grief]]. However, Hiro's friends stop his rampage and [[WhatTheHellHero call him out]] for breaking their ThouShallNotKill code. Baymax then [[ArmorPiercingQuestion asks Hiro if Callaghan's death is what Tadashi would have wanted]] to make Hiro reconsider his actions, [[HeelRealization which succeeds]].

* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6''. Hiro had no problem against ordering Baymax to ''murder'' Yokai/[[spoiler:Professor Callaghan]] after the latter is revealed to have started the fire that killed Tadashi and [[KickTheDog insults Hiro for his grief]]. However, Hiro's friends stop his rampage and [[WhatTheHellHero call him out]] for breaking their ThouShallNotKillCode. Baymax then [[ArmorPiercingQuestion asks Hiro if Callaghan's death is what Tadashi would have wanted]] to make Hiro reconsider his actions, [[HeelRealization which succeeds]].

* ''WesternAnimation/ParaNorman'': [[spoiler:After being killed by the Puritans, Agatha Prenderghast (the supposed "witch") sentences them to have them walk around town as zombies so they could be attacked by the modern townspeople as vengeance. This becomes {{deconstructed|trope}} when Norman goes on to tell her that her actions are [[HeWhoFightsMonsters only making her come off as no better than them]], especially since they have been truly remorseful for what they've done and they've already been punished enough.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6'', Hiro has no problem ordering Baymax to ''murder'' Yokai/[[spoiler:Professor Callaghan]] after the latter is revealed to have started the fire that killed Tadashi and [[KickTheDog insults Hiro for his grief]].
-->'''Hiro:''' Baymax, destroy.
-->'''Baymax:''' My programming prevents me from injuring a human being.
-->'''Hiro:''' Not anymore.
-->''(Hiro removes Baymax’s healthcare chip and sets him on kill mode)''
-->'''Hiro:''' Do it, Baymax! Destroy him!
* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in ''WesternAnimation/ParaNorman''. [[spoiler:Agatha Prenderghast (the supposed "witch") had punished her executioners by having them walk around town and humiliated by the modern townsfolk as vengeance for killing her. However, Norman goes on to tell her that her actions are [[HeWhoFightsMonsters only making her come off as no better than them]], especially since they have been truly remorseful for what they've done and they've already been punished enough.]]

* Deconstructed in ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6'', in which Hiro goes on to have Baymax ''murder'' Yokai/[[spoiler:Professor Callaghan]] after the latter is revealed to have started the fire that killed Tadashi and [[KickTheDog insults Hiro for his grief]]. However, Hiro's friends stop his rampage, Baymax calls him out for his actions, and Hiro apologizes to Baymax for using him as a murder weapon.
* Another deconstruction occurs in ''WesternAnimation/ParaNorman'', in which [[spoiler:Agatha Prenderghast (the supposed "witch") punishes her executioners by having them walk around town and humiliated by the modern townsfolk as vengeance for killing her. However, Norman goes on to tell her that her actions are [[HeWhoFightsMonsters only making her come off as no better than them]], especially since they have been truly remorseful for what they've done and they've already been punished enough.]]

* ''WebAnimation/IfTheEmperorHadATextToSpeechDevice'': several interactions Leman Russ has with Dark Eldar ends with the Dark Eldar either dead or worse. As the Emperor himself {{Lampshades}}, the Dark Eldar are almost certainly the faction in ''Warhammer 40K'' who deserve ''any'' horrible fate that comes to them, and it is immensely satisfying to see the horrors of ''40K'' verse delivered to those who actually deserve them for once.

* Another deconstruction occurs in ''WesternAnimation/ParaNorman'', in which [[spoiler:Agatha Prenderghast (the supposed "witch") punish her executioners by having them walk around town and humiliated by the modern townsfolk as vengeance for killing her. Norman then goes on to tell her that her actions are [[HeWhoFightsMonsters only making her come off as no better than them]], especially since they have been truly remorseful for what they've done and they've already been punished enough.]]

* Another deconstruction occurs in ''Film/ParaNorman'', in which [[spoiler:Agatha Prenderghast (the supposed "witch") punish her executioners by having them walk around town and humiliated by the modern townsfolk as vengeance for killing her. Norman then goes on to tell her that her actions are [[HeWhoFightsMonsters only making her come off as no better than them]], especially since they have been truly remorseful for what they've done and they've been punished enough.]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'' sometimes got a WhatTheHellHero or NotSoDifferent speech for messing with the bullies in his school with his ghost powers. This rarely lasted more than an episode. The first of these amounting to a B-plot aesop about judging people. The [[MonsterOfTheWeek ghost of the week]] showed up while Danny was getting his revenge on the Jock/Bully Dash, and jumps to the conclusion that ''Danny'' is the bully, irresponsibly using his powers to torment an undeserving victim. Ghost proceeds to expel Danny to a Ghost Zone area with the main plot being Danny trying to escape, while the B-plot had Possesed!Danny subtly using his powers to help and befriend Dash, who didn't act so terrible while this was going on.
* On ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', Katara uses this logic to defend her theft of a Waterbending scroll: "Stealing is wrong... [[SpoofAesop unless it's from pirates]]." Toph later uses the same rationale for cheating in a crooked gambling game: "Hey, I only cheated because ''he'' was cheating. I cheated a cheater. What's wrong with that?" The kids '''''never''''' learn any [[AnAesop aesop]] contradicting this.
** This was also implied to be what Katara used to justify the use of Bloodbending -- a technique explicitly played up to be terrible and bad and ultimate evil yadda yadda yadda -- on a Fire Nation soldier because she thought he was the one who murdered her mother in cold blood. Only it wasn't him it turns out. Oops.
*** The episode which introduced bloodbending itself actually plays with this trope. The definitely-evil waterbender who created the technique forces Katara to learn it despite her hesitation about the moral consequences:
--->'''Katara''': I don't know if I want that kind of power...\\
'''Hama''': The choice is not yours. The power exists... and it's your duty to use the gifts you've been given to win this war. Katara, they tried to wipe us out, our entire culture...your mother!
** Regarding "The Southern Raiders", Katara hunts down Yon Rha initially intending to kill him. She does not do so, but ''only'' because she decides he is a detestable, pathetic piece of work who is NotWorthKilling.
** Similarly, in ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', "The Revelation" episode shows Amon Debending the Leaders of the gangs in the city. These people have used their bending to make the people fear them, and he's giving them what they deserve. Ultimately though, this is a subversion, and is really a KickTheSonOfABitch, as he's willing to take the bending away from anyone for having it, regardless of whether they're good or evil. He debent the gangsters first so more people would see him as the good-guy and follow him.
* Matrix, from the third and fourth seasons of ''WesternAnimation/ReBoot'', tends towards this. Immediately after his age-up, he was a Type IV AntiHero who believed that all viruses should be eradicated. Later in the season, he cooled down a bit, even [[spoiler:sparing Megabyte's life at the end]].
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'', Timmy eventually wishes Vicky was young enough for him to be her babysitter so he could get his revenge, doing the exact same kind of things she did to him to her. Now if Vicky had actually been the same person she was as an adult, it'd have been well deserved... but it feels awful because she's at an age where she wasn't evil and is just a poor five year old girl. This further backfires when Vicky gets Cosmo and Wanda due to how bad Timmy made her feel and uses them to take her own revenge on him. Ultimately, Timmy learns his [[AnAesop Aesop]] and decides, before returning her to normal, [[Heartwarming/TheFairlyOddParents to give her a great day.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' seems considerably fond of this trope. "22 Short Films About Springfield" ends with a grown man Nelson made fun of pulling down Nelson's pants, ordering him to walk down the street with his pants down, telling everyone on the street that now is their chance to make fun of Nelson, and everyone in town pointing and laughing at him at the same time. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And then Bart and Milhouse pour ketchup and mustard on Nelson's face.]] Although you can't really say they are doing it to punish Nelson or out of a sense of feeling morally superior to him. Just before that, they had been pouring ketchup and mustard on passing cars.
* Miss Martian in season 2 of ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' gains a disturbing habit of [[MindRape mind raping]] her opponents to gain information, leaving them catatonic. While she justifies herself with this logic, it becomes harder to defend once it's revealed [[spoiler: she tried to do something similar to her boyfriend Superboy, in order to make him forget that he had a problem with her behavior. And it proceeds to bite her in the ass hard in 2x10, when she lobotomizes Aqualad for killing Artemis, and in the process finds out that he is a ReverseMole who faked Artemis' death to bring her undercover with him. She mindraped one of her closest friends, and most likely doomed Artemis' cover as well. Cue HeroicBSOD]].
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': In [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E19PuttingYourHoofDown "Putting Your Hoof Down"]], the episode involves Fluttershy smacking a bunch of jerkass ponies who attempted to take advantage of or abuse her. This is subverted in that Fluttershy's collision with the jerkass ponies she came across is considered a very bad thing. Her neighbors might have been unfair to her, yes. But her desire to get her assertiveness and her eagerness to fight back with others who push her around is portrayed as alarming nonetheless. Also, fans are expected to understand that her UnstoppableRage is [[DisproportionateRetribution extremely disproportionate]] and results in her playing some serious JerkassBall.
** However, there does seem to be '''some''' trace of this trope present. Her sticking up against Mr. Greenhooves is considered understandable while the sticking of the mailpony in the mailbox is not.
* ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'': Anytime [[TheDitz Meatwad]] gets his revenge on [[{{Jerkass}} Master Shake]] counts as this. Whilst he can get [[NightmareFuel pretty disturbing]] about it, it's kinda hard to feel sorry for Shake given [[KickTheDog the crap]] he puts Meatwad through.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/CourageTheCowardlyDog'' episode "The Shadow of Courage", a nasty old rich guy has just fired his butler [[DisproportionateRetribution for saying he can't just buy the moon]]. Then [[LaserGuidedKarma the old man has a heart attack]], and the butler just walks away whistling jauntily instead of answering his pleas for help, leaving his former employer for dead.
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': In the episode "Gettin' Twiggy with It," when [[TheBully Mitch Mitchelson]] is allowed to take Twiggy, the class pet hamster, home for the weekend only to cruelly torture her; this leads to Twiggy getting mutated by radioactive waste after Mitch flushes her down the toilet, after which she promptly goes after Mitch for revenge. Having known that he would mistreat Twiggy and personally been there when he flushed her, the girls are so disgusted with Mitch that they're fully prepared to just let Twiggy eat him, even catching him and trying to personally ''{{throw|EmToTheWolves}}'' [[ThrowEmToTheWolves him to her]]. When Mitch begs them for mercy, however, they opt instead to place him in a giant hamster wheel and have Twiggy chase him in an endless cycle.
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'':
** Wendy beats the tar out of Cartman for mocking breast cancer. This has been one of the few times that Cartman actually gets a real punishment for many things he has done in his life.
** Full circle example in in "Scott Tenorman Must Die" in which Cartman is bullied mercilessly by Eight Grader Scott Tenorman, leading him to take revenge to a very macabre level. To put it lightly, Cartman [[IAteWhat tricked Scott into eating his parents]] [[ImAHumanitarian in the form of a bowl of chili]]. [[DisproportionateRetribution All because Cartman just wanted his $16.12.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/MrPickles'' features an evil dog that brutally murders or captures and tortures bad people.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' episode "Bismuth", Steven accidentally releases Bismuth, a Gem who was kept bubbled in the pocket dimension in Lion's mane. Bismuth seems friendly, and as the Crystal Gems' UltimateBlacksmith provides a few upgrades to the team's equipment. But then Steven learns why Bismuth was bubbled in the first place: [[spoiler: [[WellIntentionedExtremist Bismuth]] wanted to use her new secret weapon, the Breaking Point, to shatter the Diamond Authority and anyone loyal to them. Since shattering is a FateWorseThanDeath to Gems, Rose Quartz was against it, and the two came to blows. When [[AllLovingHero Steven]] is naturally against the Breaking Point as well, Bismuth [[WithUsOrAgainstUs snaps and attacks him]]]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* This is the rationale everyone has for setting [[spoiler:Dr. Insano]] on WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic in ''WebVideo/{{Kickassia}}''. Notably, [[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment Spoony]] and [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall Linkara]] disagreed. Spoony because he [[spoiler: [[JekyllAndHyde WAS]] Insano]], and Linkara...well:
-->'''Angry Joe:''' Sometimes the best way to deal with a madman is to send in another madman...\\
'''Linkara:''' [[LampshadeHanging That is a stupid plan!]]\\
'''Angry Joe:''' A stupid plan, for a stupid man!\\
'''Linkara:''' [[Funny/{{Kickassia}} Are you high?!]]
* In the ''Literature/BridgeToTerabithia'' movie review, the WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic doesn't generally like bullying but also is against using violence to respond to bullying. That said, when the bully in the movie [[spoiler:made a joke about the protagonist's best friend dying tragically, the protagonist lost it and attacked the bully]] and the Critic approved.
* ''Literature/TheKindnessOfDevils'': Hardestadt Delac and his allies almost ''always'' kill the villains--sometimes in very brutal fashions. That being said, nearly every major villain is a HateSink and/or someone who desires to kill thousands, millions, or eradicate all life on earth. Whenever these villains perish, it's nothing but cathartic.
* Speaking of Spoony, WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick raped him two years after he raped her because she wanted revenge.
* In ''Literature/{{Worm}}'', [[SociopathicHero Shadow Stalker]] repeatedly attempted to kill [[JustifiedCriminal Grue]] for no other reason than that his powers countered hers, had killed before, attempted to give the same treatment to [[VillainProtagonist Skitter]] before the Undersiders caught her, and [[spoiler:in her civilian identity, tormented and bullied Taylor almost to the point of suicide and gave her a TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening]]. So, when [[PeoplePuppets Regent]] mind-controlled her into ruining her relationship with her family and faking an attempted suicide, sending her to Juvie for violating her probation, nobody really minded. Later, Regent permanently enslaves the mass-murdering supervillain Shatterbird, and treats her in ways that his more moral teammate Skitter finds extremely discomfitting, but he and Tattletale argue that, since Shatterbird has murdered entire ''cities'' worth of people, she deserves whatever she gets.
* ''Literature/{{Legatum}}'':
** ''Literature/TheGreenWanderer'' has Marrox encountering a werewolf raping another werewolf. He doesn't even attempt to subdue her; he immediately creeps behind the rapist and snaps her neck.
** ''Literature/TheRoadToHell'' has Harvon and Shurrmvin banding together to start a rebellion in Kosslivo. Chapter 7 shows them and their four allies massacring an entire battalion of (mostly) unarmed orcs who just got done slaughtering a peaceful community of ogres.
** ''Literature/ScrambledEgg'' has Sonya and Tanya seeking out criminals and other sinners in the world and slaying them in an attempt to bring peace in the world.
* Done fairly goofily in [[http://skippyslist.com/2010/11/19/the-battalion-dance-2/ this]] annotation to Literature/SkippysList.
-->'''Skippy:''' I examined my options carefully. I didn’t own a suit. I certainly wasn’t going to buy one. I wasn’t particularly interested in renting a tux. Well, technically I was allowed to wear a dress. A female interrogator in my unit offered to let me borrow a pretty green sequined number that she owned. The way I figured it, if my chain of command was going to spend an evening making me uncomfortable and awkward, the least I could do was return the favor.
* ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': This is the ''official school policy'' for someone who violates the Accords (the agreement establishing the school's neutrality and establishing the rules about protecting the student body) in general, and especially for anyone reckless enough to dare attack, threaten, or blackmail a student's family in order to get at the student and/or the school.
** In 2006, when an evil cult tries to blackmail a student by threatening the families of her friends at school, Headmistress Carson calls the alumni association, and suddenly all of the superhero alumni are looking the other way while the supervillain alumni take action (one of whom, Dr. Diabolik, stated that a [[AscendedMeme 'measured response' to this would be 'something on the order of orbital bombardment']]). By the end of that week, the group was almost entirely liquidated and their assets taken as booty.
** Prior to this, the last case of something like this occurred in 1996; the Serbian terrorists responsible were made the senior project of that year, and of the members of the group ''still living'', every last damn one of them was on life support...and profusely grateful to be in jail.
** Outside of the Whateley school policy, there is also the Syndicate, which has very precise rules on where the actual ''lines'' are. Cross those lines, and not only will a supervillain be unable to draw from the world's largest bevy of resources, but they'll get explicitly targeted by those ''with'' those resources -- such as when Dr. Diabolik went after the Purifier. The Syndicate also doesn't typically interfere with grudges between two parties, but that's a different kettle of fish.
* In the test logs for [[Wiki/SCPFoundation SCP-682]], a "guest researcher" notes that 682 was friendly toward 053, a young girl who usually makes everyone around her incredible hostile. Instead of going to the obvious conclusion, that 053's anomalous properties affected 682 differently, that 682's warped world view made it see 053 as a friend, or that 682 attacking the girl would only hurt it in the long run, the guest researcher instead tested to see if other children might have a similar effect on it. [[WouldHurtAChild They]] [[DeathOfAChild don't]]. [[{{Jerkass}} Dr. Clef]] throws the guest researcher into 682's chamber personally.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* Pretty much the standard response for Chuck a.k.a. WebComic/WeaponBrown. Among his more notable accomplishments is tearing off the cybernetic limbs off his old tormentor Croc, brutally beating and torturing him for a bit, then [[UpToEleven shoving him ass-first onto a flamethrower and firing it]], and cutting out Dr. Van Pelt's tongue and watching her try to beg for mercy without it.
* In ''Webcomic/LookingForGroup'', Richard the Undead Warlock embodies this trope. He can turn the tide of pretty much any battle, is lord of his own legion of undead villagers (ones he most likely killed himself), slaughters indiscriminately, eats babies (even once being placed into a nursery by a woman mistaking him for a child after he was shrunk, which he is later removed from and asks why he had to leave the buffet with lamenting women in the background), and he would fit AlwaysChaoticEvil perfectly if not for the fact that he does have a few moments where a softer personality shows up, if only for a moment, and the fact that the majority of the slaughtering he does is to help the Heroes win the war against their BigBad, even going out of his way to ensure the survival of his allies despite constantly saying that he's only along for the fun of killing. [[spoiler:Richard rescues Cale'Anon, cauterizing a mortal wound in his throat with fire to keep the elf from bleeding to death, carrying him down a mountainside, slaughtering a massively fat Black Dwarf, slicing the dwarf open, putting Cale inside it, sealing it shut again, and encasing the dwarf in a massive block of ice in order to protect Cale from a massive wave of hot lava that was rushing towards them from the mountainside, simply standing outside the block of ice and waiting for the wave to hit him rather than trying to save himself, as seen [[http://www.lfgcomic.com/page/281 here]]]].
* ''Reflected'' in ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'' [[http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0064.html Episode 64]]:
-->'''Qui-Gon:''' We'll have to find some money somehow. What's my character's alignment again? <...>\\
'''GM:''' LawfulGood. In theory.\\
'''Qui-Gon:''' Right. So if we rob people, we should make sure they're gangsters first.
* Oasis from ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' adopts this practice when she becomes Podunkton's resident vigilante. Most characters in this storyline have at least a couple moments where they're uneasy about Oasis's casual attitude towards murdering criminals, but considering her history as a {{Brainwashed}} assassin and {{Yandere}}, this is still seen as a step in the right direction.
* Being based on ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' addresses this. It's notable that usually the heroes don't go "kill evil and take their stuff", as a general rule. They have a quest to kill a very evil person, and have to fight and kill said evil person's minions. When resident HeroicComedicSociopath Belkar mentions it, the others look at him strangely.
** An interesting case occurs across nearly the whole comic's run. Early in the comic, the party comes across a black dragon, considered AlwaysChaoticEvil due to its [[ColorCodedForYourConvenience chromatic nature]], and Vaarsuvius kills it. Shortly afterward, paladin Miko's essentially confirms it's okay to kill black dragons. Much later, however, the vengeful, grieving [[MamaBear mother of the dragon]] attempts to kill Vaarsuvius's children. In retaliation, Vaarsuvius casts a spell that kills everyone related to that dragon. V later [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0842.html learns]] that [[spoiler:the spell murdered hundreds of innocents, including the defenders of one of the gates holding the world together]]. The overall message being, no, you shouldn't just kill things because they're listed as "evil" in the book.
** The prequel book ''On the Origin of [=PC=]s'' has an interesting subversion of this: Roy and Durkon meet up when they're with an adventuring party that's supposed to wipe out a group of unruly orcs. Roy manages to deduce that the orcs are just rowdy music fans in town for a concert, and decides to spare them... much to the chagrin of his party, who wanted the XP. That's when he and Durkon decide they really need to part ways with the rest of the party]].
** Also an example of this in the prequel ''Recap/StartOfDarkness''. Since the goblin race is supposedly "Always Chaotic Evil", normally good and honest paladins burn and pillage a goblin town without a second thought. This starts Redcloak on his quest to control the god-destroying, soul-eating Snarl, which later leads to him conquering those paladins' city. In essence, the Paladins raid the goblins to protect the gate and to gain strength to do that better, and the goblins raid the humans to keep from being EXP fodder for life. It's a Two-Way-Vicious-Cycle of pay evil unto evil. They each attack the other because its what the other does to them and to ensure their own survival.
** {{Exploited|Trope}} by Haley when she has to fight her old fellow ThievesGuild members. She remarks first that she knows everyone there, so this will be difficult ... then realizes...
--->''"...everyone I grew up with is an asshole. That's George at the top of the stairs. He [[DomesticAbuse beats his wife]]. [[CallingYourAttacks Full attack]]!"''
* ''WebComic/AxeCop'': The title character devotes most of his time to cleaving the skulls of "bad guys". Enforced in that the author is six-years old. Also, he can tell good guys from bad guys by their front kicks.
* ''Webcomic/{{Goblins}}'' has done a fair job of pulling up the monster view of this trope. The start of the comic features a goblin "war camp", but it is eventually revealed that the camp was established simply to distract heroes and keep them from going deeper into the forest and discovering the village where the women and children live.
** When the Fortuneteller confronts Forgath, she manages to point out to him the horror being inflicted on the goblins. For a brief moment, Forgath realizes that their actions are even more evil than the goblins who had simply been arguing about various things in their camp. Then Fortuneteller ruins it...
** Minmax also throws [[spoiler:Dellyn Goblinslayer]] through the bar window before picking a fight with him. Then immediately at the end of their fight, [[spoiler:Goblinslayer is stabbed to death by Kin, whom he spent his time raping]].
** An alternate universe Dellyn killed Kin and tortured Forgath to death. Minmax found a magic orb that let him see what happened to them, and then tortured Dellyn with the exact same methods in one go. Dellyn made it through all of Kin's torture and six of Forgath's before dying.
* Jessica tries to do this to Tess in ''Webcomic/BittersweetCandyBowl'', using the "fact" that she's a whore [[spoiler: (a rumor created by Tess two years before the present time; Jessica was, in fact, a virgin)]] to seduce Tess's love interest Paulo, going on a date with him and finally [[http://www.bittersweetcandybowl.com/c55/p11.html having sex with him in the bathroom of a dance club]]. It backfires on her though, as she gets no satisfaction out of it and in the end feels like a whore [[spoiler: - a real one]].
* [[HornyDevils Ame]] from ''Webcomic/HeartCore'' hopes to gather food for both herself and her sister by tearing out the hearts of a couple of would be muggers/rapists, thinking that there would be no consequences if she only harvested and killed criminals. [[RealityEnsues She was wrong,]] leading to both a [[HunterOfHisOwnKind demonic demon hunter]] and [[ThePaladin a paladin]] being assigned to find her.
* In ''WebComic/StrongFemaleProtagonist'', a webcomic dealing a teenage ex-superhero (Allison, aka Mega-Girl) wrestling with questions about the efficacy and ethics of traditional superheroism, [[spoiler: Moonshadow]] is of this view, and takes to killing rapists who escape justice under the law. Allison admits she'd ''like'' to Pay Evil Unto Evil sometimes, but recognizes it's wrong.
* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'': What [[spoiler:Colette]] does to [[spoiler:Beausoleil]] after he murders her father is undeniably brutal, but there's no question that he deserved every second of it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/AliceMadnessReturns'': After Alice finds out that [[BigBad Dr. Angus Bumby]] has been trying to erase her memories of the housefire that killed her family ''because he caused it,'' as well as discovering that before he set the fire he crept into her sister's room and raped her, AND has been selling young children off into human trafficking with no remorse after wiping their mind of all memories, ''AND'' was trying to do the same thing to Alice, what does she do? Push him in front of a train, of course.
* ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'': The game spends quite a bit of time showing that ComicBook/ThePenguin is a {{Sadist}}ic BadBoss who throws people in a shark tank and puts both living and dead people on display in a museum for shits and giggles. When Mr. Freeze, who was one such "exhibit," breaks free and gets his PoweredArmor back with Batman's help, he gets his revenge by immediately crushing Penguin's hand, which Batman had earlier broken, underfoot until Batman forces him to back off, and then locks him in one of the display cases. It's quite satisfying, really.
* The demon Marduk from ''VideoGame/{{Sacrifice}}'' takes this trope to spectacular extremes. He was created as the embodiment of evil by an (unknown) higher power, and charged with punishing anyone evil enough to [[DealWithTheDevil summon him]] by destroying their entire world. He describes his task as destroying "all that is a reflection of myself".
* ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'' lends itself to this very well. Main characters in both games are set upon by gangs, [[CorruptChurch overzealous religious authorities]], and [[AristocratsAreEvil amoral aristocrats]], and while murdering EVERYONE will net a player the worst ending, the main targets of each level are open to both LaserGuidedKarma and alternatively straight-up murder depending on the player's choice.
* VideoGame/SlyCooper steals from other thieves and gives to himself and his friends. He doesn't seem to ''do'' anything with his money, though; it was mostly for bragging rights. It's also the ancestral family trade; the fourth game ''[[VideoGame/SlyCooperThievesInTime Thieves In Time]]'' shows that his family has been stealing from other criminals from at least the Ice Age onward.
** Compare ''Manga/KaitouSaintTail'' who only stole already stolen items to give them back to their rightful owners. She was honestly worried enough about this trope to ''pray to God'' before each mission to assure Him and herself she wasn't doing this for bad reasons.
** Or compare aversion ''Anime/LupinIII'', who has no self-illusions about what he does. He steals from ''everyone'', it's just that bad people tend to have more money.
** To paraphrase Sly on the subject, it's more fun stealing from master criminals in their heavily fortified lairs than from Joe Blow down the street. There is no honor in breaking into Mr. Blow's house, because it's too easy and he won't have any valuables worth the time and effort.
*** To be fair to the guy, he spends most of the games stealing back things people stole from him - his family's book, the Clockwerk body, and his family fortune. Sly's gang usually donates their money to charitable organizations.
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':
** [[PlayingWithATrope Played straight]] throughout the series. A good portion of the games are spent slaughtering enemy [=NPCs=] and taking their stuff, leaving their cold and looted corpses behind. Doing so won't make you infamous in the slightest. This is even Lampshaded early in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]''. The local tavern owner in the FirstTown tells you that you're free to increase your skills on bandits, but if you try that on townsfolk it's called murder. He then points you in the direction of the closest bandit hideout. The guards will also tell you that outlaws legally have no rights, and you can deal with them as painfully as you want. Also lampshaded in ''Oblivion'' by the Countess of Leyawin: she says to go ahead and kill any outlaws you find and take their stuff: everybody on the right side of the law wins.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'' has an "Infamy" tracker which goes up when you perform "evil" acts. Becoming the leader of the ThievesGuild or [[MurderInc Dark]] [[ReligionOfEvil Brotherhood]] naturally cause it to go up. However, slaughtering bandits, necromancers, and the like by the thousands won't increase your Infamy in the slightest, even when stealing ''a single key'' gives infamy points.
Justified in that the law in these games is as amoral and arbitrary as in real life. [[CrapsackWorld The setting renders questions of morality somewhat meaningless]], since there is basically no way to NOT screw somebody over. Nobody cares if the bandits are evil (usually they aren't), or if you are being good. They just care if you're upholding the law.
* Same in ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade''. Attacking Travellers or Lords generally brings you in trouble with their government except if they're enemies to begin with, but all kinds of bandits, looters and raiders are free to be killed or knocked unconscious and then sold into slavery. They provide a good source of money and experience and most adventurers that have not (yet) sworn allegiance to a kingdom will likely spend all day bandit-hunting. It also happens between kingdoms, raiding, killing travelling farmers and merchants is ok as long as they belong to the enemy side, while of course every Calradian kingdom believes to be the only one with a justified claim to the throne, so the others are obviously evil impostors.
* Aribeth's actions in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights'' are more of [[BlackAndGrayMorality pay evil unto very questionable]], but the idea is there.
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'' - This is the source of all of [[VigilanteMan Yuri's]] instances of awesome. Also, all the people he kills were cruel to begin with, and probably deserved worse.
** Also subject to a bit of WhatTheHellHero.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' [[spoiler: Wheatley]] pulls this during his descent into villainy when he [[spoiler: turns [=GLaDOS=] into [[ItMakesSenseInContext a potato]]]].
* In some games with a KarmaMeter (''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'' immediately comes to mind), killing {{Mooks}} gives Good points. Even unprovoked killings.
** You can kill bandits while they're asleep and it's considered "Good", but killing their leader is "Evil".
*** ''VideoGame/FableII'' solved the problem: killing bandits or anyone else in self-defense (if they're hostile, you're killing in self-defense) doesn't change your morality at all. Unprovoked killings (if you had to ''make'' them hostile by punching them in the face) are evil. Morality is much more static than fluid this time around.
** Lucian is such an evil and vile character Rose is urging you to do this. Yes, you can, or if you wait too long, the series bastard Reaver does it for you. Pay evil unto evil indeed.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'':
** During his travels, Link can encounter Bokoblin camps, where they’ll happily dance about and chat among themselves. He can then slaughter them all, harvest their body parts, and raid their camp for their weapons, food, and loot before going on his merry way. Granted, the Bokoblins are also minions of [[EldritchAbomination Calamity Ganon]] who will immediately try to kill Link the moment they see him.
* ''Franchise/MassEffect'':
** Many of the Renegade options the player can take involve Shepard, the main character of the first trilogy, being a total bastard to other bastards. Several times, people are [[spoiler:outright shot in the head or otherwise have their lives ruined]], though they are usually very bad people to begin with. Or [[RunningGag very annoying reporters]].
** ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'':
*** This is how Garrus operated during his career on Omega. While he at least took pains to prevent civilian casualties, it's telling that most of his Shadow Broker dossier lists particularly [[DeathByIrony ironic]] kills of assorted gang leaders, drug dealers, gunrunners and serial killers.
*** Two of your other squadmates present contrasting viewpoints on it. Mordin Solus, a black ops agent-turned-MD, comments in response to a helper criticizing him for his nonchalant killing of several gangsters that threatened his clinic on Omega with the comment, "Lots of ways to help people. Sometimes heal patients; sometimes execute dangerous people. Either way helps." In contrast, assassin Thane Krios is known for praying for his own soul after assassinations, and remarks to Shepard that "Removing evil from the world is not the same as creating good."
** ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'' occasionally presents Ryder with similar options, such as a QuickTimeEvent to kill an already-disarmed kett boss mid-sentence during a cutscene. Also, after Sloane Kelly arrived on kett-occupied Kadara, she and the other Exiles butchered the kett on-planet; your first sight after docking in Kadara Port is of a kett head on a pike.
* The ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series:
** Ruthlessly subverted in ''VideoGame/Fallout1''. Attempt to kill [[ImAHumanitarian the enterprising businessman]] Iguana Bob, and the entire town - including the heavily armed Police Force, the local Mob and visiting caravan drivers - turn hostile and try to retaliate. Your karma meter is also penalized if you choose to spare Bob's life and instead blackmail him over his secret. The secret, I might add, that no one will believe, and over which they will try to kill ''you'' for acting directly!
** In ''VideoGame/Fallout2'', killing bandits raises your Karma meter, which is fair enough. It also goes up when you kill drug dealers and pimps, which still makes sense[[note]]Though if you get caught, [[AllianceMeter other people of their faction]] will attack you, and killing them generally ''will'' lower your karma.[[/note]]. But killing ''prostitutes'' also raises the Karma meter--not by much, [[DisposableSexWorker but damn]]! It's kinda funny that a character is revered as a great hero for killing masses of whores. Jack the Ripper: Hero of the Wasteland!
** ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' provides good karma and good items for gunning down Evil characters, even if it's done in cold blood. Since the definition of evil is... [[BlackAndGrayMorality rather loose]]... in the local universe, this can lead to some interesting interactions. Where stealing scrap material loses KarmaMeter points, and taking a [[ChainsawGood Ripper]] to a friendly NPC's head can provide points.
*** It's especially odd that you gain karma from killing Mr. Tenpenny for two reasons: One, that you can do it with no provocation and completely in cold blood and two, [[spoiler:near as one can tell, if you convince the residents to let the ghouls in, you find out that Tenpenny does not condone the morally reprehensible prejudices he allows, he's just oblivious to them, though this may apply less to Megaton]]. (Also, please note these "morally reprehensible prejudices" turn out in this specific case to be fully justified.) The problem with this quest is that while the resident's "morally reprehensible prejudices" do become justified, your killing of [[spoiler:Roy Phillips]] is not due to him being flagged as a "''Good Karma''" character despite being an utter bastard when you learn the truth[[note]]That is, if you get caught. You can complete the quest, get the useful rewards, and then kill Roy with a stealth headshot and a Stealth Boy, preventing the people from being massacred.[[/note]] Thanks a lot Three Dog!
*** You can also slaughter the entire town of Paradise Falls, a town of slavers. Not only will you not be penalized, you'll actually ''gain karma'' for some of the people you kill. Possibly justified in that almost nobody in the setting likes slavers.
*** This trope is also played 100% straight, in ''Fallout 3'', ''New Vegas'', and ''Fallout 4'' in the case of Raiders. The laundry list: Kidnapping, banditry, torturing people literally to death, desecrating corpses to the point they aren't always recognizable as human any more, and sexually assaulting the people they capture--just to name a few. Oh, and to even be considered for joining their ranks? You have to prove you're at least as bad as they are. No wonder waltzing in and methodically murdering every last resident of a Raider camp, then stealing everything that isn't bolted down, is never considered a bad thing.
*** There are limits to what you can do to Raiders in Fallout 3 without accruing negative karma, though. Specifically, [[SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil enslaving them with the Mesmetron.]]
*** It should be noted that in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' you can also get a perk that gives you a bonus for killing ''good'' characters. It's also one of the few games that punishes ''either'' side of the karma line. If you're evil, the Regulators come after you; if you're good, criminals start hiring the Talon Mercenaries to hunt you down. In a roundabout way, you are "rewarded" for being Good by having Talon hit squads to kill you with their mid-level gear of Combat Armor... which is much better than the Regulator's "Cowboy" gear of leather dusters.
** In ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', Vulpes Inculta butchers the town of Nipton for being a WretchedHive filled with bastards willing to sell each other out after the citizens failed a SecretTestOfCharacter he put on. In fact Vulpes is so much a believer of this trope, that if you tell him his acts are unforgiveable, he outright tells you to kill him if you truly think he's evil. (Which can be a [[BullyingADragon Bullying The Dragon]] moment for him if you started with the Mercenary Pack with the overpowered grenade launcher and armor for that point of the game.)
*** The Legion destroyed the NCR garrison at Searchlight by opening casks of radioactive waste being stored there, turning the soldiers into ghouls. The leader of the survivors asks the Courier to destroy the Legion slaver camp and ferry terminal at Cottonwood Cove in retaliation. If you chose to do this by dumping a truckload of radioactive barrels onto the camp, he will comment on the irony of it, even more so if [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain you are a girl]].
*** In Fallout: New Vegas's DLC ''Honest Hearts'', this is [[spoiler: [[TheAtoner Joshua Graham]]'s]] plan for dealing with the invading White Legs tribe in Zion. Towards the people of New Canaan and the tribes they help, he's a man trying to atone for his past sins and prove that he is no longer [[spoiler: the Malpais Legate]]. To the White Legs, he might as well still be, as evidenced by his general KillEmAll policy, executing them on their knees, and stabbing their heads on pikes as examples.
*** Annoyingly, the gameplay in ''New Vegas'' still gives you positive karma for ''killing'' evil people but '''stealing''' loses you karma proportional to the in-game value of the object unless the ''entire faction'' you're stealing from is evil (which is pretty much just the Powder Gangers, Fiends, and assorted raiders--but ''not'' the Legion).
** Not a part of the gameplay of ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' due to the absence of KarmaMeter, but still present in various storylines and [=NPCs=]:
*** Pickman has a lovely art gallery in downtown Boston. An art gallery full of paintings done in blood, dismembered body parts, and corpses. It turns out Pickman is a serial killer; however, his target of choice are the murderous and bloodthirsty raiders, a faction known for laying waste to anything they come across. If you save Pickman from the raiders and let him go free, not only will he give you a knife as a thank you present, but raider corpses will turn up at random in the Commonwealth with his signature notes on them.
*** In ''Wasteland Workshop DLC'', you can use cages to capture the Gunners and Raiders and then shove a pet ''[[CurbStompBattle Deathclaw]]'' to let them duel each other.
* Happened in ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2'', although it's not so much as pay evil onto evil as [[GreyAndGrayMorality pay evil onto greyness.]] Maero gets his revenge for [[spoiler:unintentionally getting tattooed with nuclear acid set up by the main character by torturing Carlos and having the player MercyKill him]]. The main character gets him back by [[spoiler:kidnapping his girlfriend, Jessica, stuffing her into the trunk of a car, and using it as fodder in a monster truck rally that Maero is in, with Jessica still in the trunk. She doesn't survive]].
** Additionally, near the end of the storyline dealing with the Ronin, [[spoiler: Johnny Gat]] takes revenge for the murder of [[spoiler: his girlfriend, Aisha,]] by [[spoiler: beating, humiliating, and locking the man who ordered her murder in the coffin and burying him alive]]. This game ''loves'' this trope. Let's put that into clearer perspective: [[spoiler: Johnny is a kill-crazy psycho who would've killed Shougo without being given a reason, but at that moment was in mourning at Aisha's ''funeral in progress'', and even gave Shougo a chance to leave. Shougo insisted on disrupting the service to scoff at and provoke Johnny, so I doubt anyone had any pity for him when he got put into the ground right then and there]].
* The main villain of ''VideoGame/CondemnedCriminalOrigins'' is a serial killer who hunts down and kills other killers with their own methods.
* Normally killing when in cold blood in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'' gives a hit to your [[KarmaMeter honor]] but there are a few times when it will actually give you a boost. There are three encounters with the Klan where you can kill them for a gain in honor each time (though they kill themselves by accident if left to their own devices). A stranger mission involves helping a man who Arthur thinks got his house foreclosed on because he got screwed over by the railroad company, he's actually an old slave catcher who gives you an honor boost for killing at the end of the mission. There's a eugenics supporter in the HubCity of Saint Denis whom you can kill in broad daylight for an honor boost with absolutely no consequences, even with police officers standing on every corner. If you decide to put him on the back of your horse for a more creative death outside his street corner (such as feeding him to an alligator or dropping him into a canyon), no one wil stop you either and you get an honor boost when he dies.
* Agent 47 o f ''VideoGame/{{Hitman}}'' is paid almost always to kill evil criminals of some sorts. The reason stated is that The Agency finds more profit in global stability than just being paid by random criminals to whack philanthropists.
** At other times, though, it gets a little dicey: at the conclusion of ''[[VideoGame/HitmanContracts Contracts]]'' [[spoiler: he assassinates a French police officer, as he believes that the man in question knows too much about him]]. Similarly, at the end of ''[[VideoGame/HitmanBloodMoney Blood Money]]'', [[spoiler: Agent 47 is revived from apparent death during his funeral, and kills ''everyone'' present at the funeral, including an innocent priest and a journalist (although in fairness, the journalist had been provided with a great deal of information about him)]].
** Officially he is sent to take down bad people, but anyone who compromises his identity to said underworld connections is also fair game.
** ''[[VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution Absolution]]'' definitely cements 47 as one who personally embraces this philosophy: sure, [[ShootTheDog he gunned down]] [[spoiler: Diana Burnwood ([[FakingTheDead except, not really]])]] at the start of the game, but the rest of the game has him going rogue [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight to save Victoria]] from both [[MurderInc the ICA]] and [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Blake Industries]], while still willing to murder their key figures to protect her.
* This trope is the central premise of ''VideoGame/{{Bully}}'', where Jimmy Hopkins, the new student at the worst school in the country, strives to stop the rampant bullying and create order between the cliques.
* Nazis, bloodsuckers, and murdering thugs are the stock enemies of ''VideoGame/{{Bloodrayne}}'', and Rayne often expresses her satisfaction with slaughtering them in the most graphically gory ways possible.
* In ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity'', blowing up ships and conquering planets doesn't make you very well liked by the surrounding systems (unless it's by an opposing faction.) Meanwhile, conquering {{Space Pirate|s}} worlds and bases then demanding they pay you tribute; nobody cares (pirates attack you regardless,) and one of the few 100% reliable ways to boost your KarmaMeter with every faction is to shoot pirates and take their stuff. Curiously nobody demands that the System Lord try to shut down said pirates.
** Still, dominating entire worlds is such a notoriously evil act in ''EV'' that no matter who the planet once belonged to and where you are now, you'll always have to fend off [[BountyHunter Bounty Hunters]].
** The third game features a story example. The [[AllThereInTheManual Auroran preamble]] discusses a disgraced Heraani warrior named Turo'mar, also known as "The Claimer" or the ''[[YouAreTheTranslatedForeignWord Tharakoodesh]]'', who kills those who attack the innocent. He leaves the headless corpse behind with the message,
---> Thus die those who attack the innocent. Death's harvest is rich with the blood of cowards, and the virtuous have the strength to reap it. The claimer is here. Take heed...
*** It also features the so-called Pirate storyline. It centres around you leading a renewed Association of Free Traders, who only pirate ''actual'' pirates (they do, however, smuggle things).
* ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' has a mission called "Bully the Bullies" in LethalLavaLand. You bully them by pushing them into the lava, which is essentially the only way to kill them. Perhaps a literal example, since this is exactly what they're trying to do to you (their shoves don't cause damage - just a little knockback and stun).
* In ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} IV'', if an area remains in the shroud long enough, there is a chance that a barbarian civilization will form there. This will have cities, farms, etc. There's absolutely no way to make peace or trade with these groups, the only solution to the hostile raids is to wipe them off the Earth. Although occasionally if the city is large enough you can merely conquer them instead.
** Some of the more extensive and complex mods allow these barbarian civilizations to eventually mature into "minor" civilizations, and then into full-on civilizations, enabling trade and diplomacy with them. However, they still need to be left alone long enough to ''reach'' that stage, and not everyone is willing to let new empires spring up on their doorstep...
* ''VideoGame/GodOfWar'' ''is'' this trope, thanks to some extreme characterization of the Greek gods.
* ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'': The Blue Rogues fit the "noble pirate" archetype, and steal from two rigidly defined categories: 1) people who are extremely rich, with varying amounts of consideration for the potential for financial ruin and bodily harm given based on how moral the rich person is; and 2) Black Pirates. Category 2 fits under this trope as Black Pirates are sky pirates like Blue Rogues, but rob indiscriminately and tend to leave a trail of pain and suffering in their wake.
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''-the Knights of the Ebon Blade certainly qualify.
** To elaborate and clarify, the Knights Of The Ebon Blade are [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Death Knights]], soulless quasi-undead killing machines that the [[BigBad Lich King]] so well designed that they ''literally feel pain unless they are killing something''. Once they freed themselves from the Lich King's control, they didn't regain their souls and become moral warriors again. They just turned all of their power and malice ''back towards the Lich King''.
** Demon hunters certainly fall into this trope as well. They fight demons by using their own demonic magic against them, even to the point of having physical traits like horns. The difference between the demons and the demon hunters is that the former wouldn't stop at nothing to destroy all creation, while the latter would sacrifice everything to save it, even if it means to be [[MindRape tormented by the demons they hate for eternity]] while borrowing their power to slay other demons.
** Warlocks also fall into this. They wield corrupting fel magic, but they wield it in defense of Azeroth (especially against demons and the Burning Legion) and try their best to not become corrupted by it.
** This, along with {{DisproportionateRetribution}} are the tropes that keep the Alliance/Horde conflict going. While the Alliance is somewhat less likely than the Horde to invoke the trope, they frequently use it as a casus belli once the Horde has acted. While the Horde is more likely to engage in {{DisproportionateRetribution}}, the Alliance is more likely to just do bad things because it's in their interest (which the Horde sometimes uses as a casus belli).
*** For example: During the Cataclysm the Alliance sneakily tried to grab land in Kalimdor in violation of a standing treaty with the Horde, with help from the supposedly neutral city of Theramore. Warchief Garrosh Hellscream decided to answer this by bombing Theramore after tricking leaders of the Alliance into setting up a defense against a ground attack on the city. He used a magical bomb that not only destroyed buildings and killed many people but also made the area uninhabitable: sort of equivalent to a nuke. During this attack, the leader of Dalaran was killed and Jaina Proudmoore-the erstwhile leader of Theramore-filled his position. After finding out that the Sunreaver mages from Dalaran were partially responsible for the bomb, Jaina turned on them. She killed many of them and imprisoned many more. Jaina and the leader of the Sunreavers come face to face later: and almost come to blows. They are only stopped by the arrival of a very fed up Taran Zhu who tells them both to stop invoking this trope and go home.
* ''[[VideoGame/LegacyofKain Blood Omen]]'' features an odd play on this; the main character ''is'' the evil being payed unto evil; he was created and turned into a monster to be set on the Circle of Nine, a group of insane wizards that were slowly destroying the world.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Overlord}}'', you beat up seven alleged heroes who have fallen to the seven deadly sins thanks to the BigBad, who was a hero before.
* ''Lightning Warrior Raidy'' features an erotic version of this with the boss battles in both games. Raidy always encounters level bosses in the middle of sexually tormenting a kidnapped NPC in a variety of ways; if she loses the ensuing boss battle, the game over sequence features the boss subjecting Raidy to this treatment, but if Raidy wins, she gives them a taste of their own medicine.
* In ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic 2'' characters who entered certain valleys could discover peaceful goblin villages. They could then choose to attack them and slaughter them all, likely leaving any surviving children who hid from your murderous rampage orphans who will vow vengeance upon humanity for your actions; but since they're monsters and you're heroes it's okay!
* Alec Mason in ''VideoGame/RedFaction Guerrilla'' spends most of the game causing property damage in the hundreds of millions, bombing industrial centers and troop barracks, and breaking many, many people in half through sledgehammer-induced blunt force trauma. There's no disguising the fact that he's functionally a terrorist...except that he's facing off the oppressive, thuggish, and violent EDF, who harass and abuse workers, shoot miners with little provocation, who finally pushed the [[RefusalOfTheCall initially reluctant]] Alec to join the Red Faction after an EDF gunship [[ItsPersonal killed his younger brother.]] The entire game really boils down to a RoaringRampageOfRevenge led by Alec Mason against the EDF to avenge Daniel.
* Many sidequests in ''VideoGame/TheGodfather 2'' involve you dealing injury to the person or property of those who have done injustice against the quest-givers.
* While the Suikoden series is famous for the GreyAndGrayMorality of most of its villains, ''VideoGame/SuikodenV'' gives us [[spoiler: Salum Barows, who is a corrupt and self-serving politician who incited riots, stole a national treasure, and tried to coerce the Prince into making his own nation just to assassinate him later. While he's left humiliated during the game, he's still around and could cause problems in the future. There is great catharsis when Sialeeds blasts him with [[ThePowerOfTheSun the Twilight Rune]]]].
* This turns out to have been the BigBad's motivation in ''[[VisualNovel/AceAttorneyInvestigations Ace Attorney Investigations 2]]''. No player really mourned [[spoiler: Di-Jun Huang's double]] after finding out what he did. You even kinda admire the BigBad for helping put [[spoiler: Blaise Debeste]] behind bars. On the other hand, the assassin Sirhan [[spoiler: considers threatening Patricia Roland's family]] as a case of this, but to the player it comes off as KickTheSonOfABitch since at the time they don't know [[spoiler: she was involved in a presidential assassination]] and falls into the Deconstruction category as [[spoiler: Patricia is driven flat-out insane from being ProperlyParanoid to the point where it's hard not to feel sorry for her]].
* In ''VideoGame/GoneHome'' the reason the house has been ransacked turns out to be that [[spoiler:Sam pawned everything of value she could get her hands on to finance her elopement with her girlfriend, which she feels completely justified in doing thanks to her parents' passive-aggressive reaction to her coming out as a lesbian (though the years of implied ParentalFavoritism toward her older sister Katie may have also had something to do with it)]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'''s [[MissionControl Fleet Intelligence]] very calmly states that the captain of a captured vessel was apparently tortured to death, with good reason: [[spoiler:He was part of the fleet responsible for [[AtmosphereAbuse devastating]] [[DoomedHometown Kharak.]]]]
--> '''Fleet Intelligence''': ''The subject did not survive interrogation.''
* Heavily implied, though never confirmed in ''VisualNovel/HotelDuskRoom215'', in regards to [[spoiler:Robert Evans. Dunning is told that he'll never have to deal with Robert again at one point six months prior to the game. Kyle theorizes that his ex-partner Bradley, who knew Robert was a member of the organization that killed Bradley's sister Mila and kidnapped Dunning's daughter Jenny, killed him in retribution]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' is basically this: you go out, you slaughter an entire town, grab the loot. Repeat. And you are the good(-ish?) guy, but you're only ever put up against psycho bandits or amoral corporations who've both done significantly worse.
* In ''VideoGame/StarCraftIIHeartOfTheSwarm'', basically the entire plot is motivated by [[AntiHero Kerrigan]]'s desire to personally end the life of ManipulativeBastard Arcturus Mengsk for a shocking variety of crimes against her in particular and the sector in general. (Short list: he [[MoralEventHorizon fed her homeworld]] and four billion citizens to [[BugWar the zerg invasion]], [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness betrayed her]] in the same battle, leading to her [[TheCorruption being infested]], tried to kill her multiple times, tried to capture her for experimentation when she was de-infested, and [[spoiler:claimed to have]] executed her lover.) Even the composer can't argue with the necessity; the track for the final battle is fittingly titled "[[AssholeVictim He Had It Coming]]".
* In one of the Ork's after-action epilogues in ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'': ''Soulstorm'', the Orks deliver some measure of karma on the captured Dark Eldar by inventing a new sport which involves trapping the Dark Eldar warriors in their own slave cages and seeing how far they can throw them in the moon's reduced gravity.
* Leliana of the ''Franchise/DragonAge'' series subscribes hard to this. Torture and rape leads to her executing the guard captain responsible, and her personal quest involves hunting down the woman who betrayed her and even if let go Leliana does not let this drop. She tries to kill The Warden if The Urn of Sacred Ashes is defiled, and that's just the [[VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins first game]]. [[VideoGame/DragonAgeII The second]] she can be seen eliminating threats to Thedas and her reputation for this trope has her both revered and feared.[[VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition The third]] can begin with her threatening assassination of the Inquisitor's family and murdering the son of a magister maddened with grief, and it gets better when she tries to go behind Josephine's back and plot murder on those who threaten her, or should the Duchess die take up the offer of her remains performing community service by warning off other threats.
* Dr. Luis, the antagonist of ''VideoGame/SouthOfReal'', spent the entirety of the main character's childhood [[PlayingWithSyringes experimenting on his own adopted children.]] Sure, Luis was trying to weaponize the kids and use them to stop TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. And sure, he's become a DeathSeeker by the time the game rolls around. But there's no reason to forgive him, whatever his reasons. [[spoiler:And there are no consequences for taking him out either.]]
* In ''VideoGame/SoulNomadAndTheWorldEaters'', Trish has this adoptive father named Hawthorne that she looks out for. At one point, the bandit queen Shauna kidnaps him, and when Trish finds them again, Shauna proceeds to grill him on his past before slitting his throat in full view of Trish. While one can't help to feel for the girl, it'd be easier to sympathize with Hawthorne if [[spoiler:Shauna hadn't revealed via said interrogation that he was a serial rapist of the worst kind, of whom Trish would have been the latest victim. And this is in the Normal path; she's too late to stop the rape in the Demon Path]].
* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' features a vampire assassin first met while she is retelling a story about how she used a man's apparent sexual attraction and desire for her to lure him in before killing him. With the context being that [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld she has the body of a ten year-old girl.]]
* ''VideoGame/HauntingStarringPolterguy'': Poltergeist Polterguy thinks the best thing is to haunt the Sardini Family's houses to teach them a lesson.
* You can do some truly brutal things to the bad guys in ''VideoGame/WolfensteinTheNewOrder'', but you're doing it to the [[StupidJetpackHitler magitech]] [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazis]] [[AlternateHistory who took over the world]]. And trust us, [[CrapsackWorld they haven't made it a nice world, either.]]
** After the halfway point of the campaign, Anya will read excerpts from her cousin Ramona's diary, which states that soon after her boyfriend was summarily executed by Nazi soldiers, [[HoneyTrap she started picking up random Nazis and leading them to their deaths,]] and at one point she [[spoiler: becomes pregnant, and once aborts the "Nazi" baby]] and continues her killing spree like nothing happened.
* This is an alternate version of ComicBook/{{Superman}}'s philosophy after he was tricked by ComicBook/TheJoker into nuking Metropolis and killing his own wife ComicBook/LoisLane in ''VideoGame/InjusticeGodsAmongUs''. He vowed to no longer stand by and watch, and except for Batman, most of the Justice League supported this policy of abandoning the ThouShaltNotKill rule, transforming them into the Regime. But as time went by, this policy [[HeWhoFightsMonsters slowly]] made [[KnightTemplar them]] NotSoDifferent from the criminals and villains they fought for so long. By the end of the game, the Flash [[HeelRealization begins to]] [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realize how]] far Superman has fallen [[spoiler:after noticing the corrupt Man of Steel [[WouldHurtAChild kill Shazam]] in cold blood just for questioning his policies post-Metropolis.]] In [[VideoGame/Injustice2 the sequel]], the Regime's WellIntentionedExtremist stance on crime hasn't changed despite most of its members defecting to other factions, on the run or being incarcerated, and they plan to restore their tyrannical order once ComicBook/{{Brainiac}} is dealt with.
* This is the LAST thing you'd expect from the VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog series, let alone its titular character, but Sonic actually does step into this in ''VideoGame/SonicAndTheSecretRings''. In the ending, Sonic forces Erazor Djinn to grant his three wishes (Which were the antithesis to what Erazor wanted, and it's implied that it physically hurt Erazor when Sonic used Erazor's lamp to force the genie to grant said wishes), with Sonic's third wish being [[AndIMustScream for Erazor to be sealed away in his lamp forever.]] To go one step further, Sonic then throws said lamp into a pit of lava. If Erazor Djinn hadn't proven himself to be utterly irredeemable, this would definitely come off as uncharacteristically cruel for Sonic.
* Hell is bad, but [[OneManArmy the Doom Slayer]] is worse, as ''VideoGame/Doom2016'' demonstrates. The game's backstory outright states the Doom Slayer has been brutalizing and butchering the demons such an ungodly length of time that ''they'' are collectively pissing terrified of ''him''. Being demons of the classic 'corrupt mortals, scourge worlds, spread suffering' variety, they deserve every bit of violence they receive at the hands of [[UnstoppableRage one spectacularly furious man]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' has the Word of Blake, who broke a centuries long NuclearWeaponsTaboo...on civilians. All the other factions in the Inner Sphere proceeded to break the same taboo and nuke them back.
** The ilKhan Bret Andrews of Clan Steel Viper instigated the Wars of Reaving, which pitted the Clans against each other, and killed the Star Adder Khan N'Buta in a fit of rage. This was the last straw for the Clans, and the Star Adder saKhan Banacek killed Bret, and the remaining Clans annihilated the Steel Vipers.
* A published ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' adventure, ''Digging Up a Dead God'', has the players playing Nazis on an archaeological expedition. Given that it's [=CoC=], and it's almost guaranteed to kill or drive the characters insane by the end, well... Most people would say there's no group more deserving of a horrible ending.
* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' has had "Kill Evil and Take Their Stuff" as a motto for ''decades.'' And sometimes it's not even ''that'' discriminating.
** The Grey Guard prestige class is built entirely around permitting paladins to make exceptions to their code of conduct for the sake of fighting greater evils.
** The Gothic D&D setting ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' encourages [=DMs=] to curtail the 'Stab and Loot' mentality, and downplays this trope with the use of Powers Checks (a sort of KarmaMeter). It's merely downplayed because said checks are easier to succeed at if you actually paid evil unto ''evil'' (DisproportionateRetribution is still a very bad idea). Within the setting, [[HunterOfMonsters Van Richten]], the resident Expert Monster Hunter, strongly advises against [[VanHelsingHateCrimes indiscriminately slaughtering]] every creature that opposes them (Lycanthropes could be cured). Ironically, he himself has done this at least once: his origin story includes setting flesh-eating zombies on the tribe of Vistani who kidnapped his son and sold him to a vampire for their own personal profit. (He [[DoomMagnet paid for that one]] for most the rest of his life, though.)
** The ''Book of Exalted Deeds'', the Good-themed companion to the ''Book of Vile Darkness'', was notorious for this. For example, the ''Book of Vile Darkness'' contained several poisons, with notes that using poison is an evil and dishonorable act. The ''Book of Exalted Deeds'' then contained several "ravages" - even nastier poisons, some with dramatically horrific effects - and notes that they are fine for Good people to use, because they only work on Evil beings.
** This is the whole concept of the 5e Paladin's Oath of Vengeance.
* The basic focus of ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'', as with its D&D precursor, is to visit unfortunate ends on evildoers, then abscond with their gold and magic items. However, using spells and actions considered evil on evil targets is still itself considered an evil act, so there's still a line before becoming a villain yourself.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'', Green Sun Princes can use this as a loophole to act as something resembling heroes. The terms of their servitude to the Yozis state that they absolutely ''have'' to behave in an appropriately evil manner... but the terms say nothing about ''who they have to target.'' They can solely target people as bad or worse than they are, and as long as they're [[EvilIsHammy sufficiently]] [[ContractualGenreBlindness villainous]] in dispatching them, it doesn't risk Torment. The net result being that they're [[DarkIsNotEvil no better or worse]] than any other Exalt, or totally deluded monsters, [[DependingOnTheWriter depending on the campaign]].
** Renegade [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Abyssals]] also deal in this, since their curse forces them to [[EnemyToAllLivingThings kill living things]], without specifying which ones.
* The ''[[TabletopGame/{{Champions}} HERO System]]'' supplement ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Dark Champions]]'' is built around this.
* ''TabletopGame/HunterTheVigil'' has Aegis Kai Doru, a group of hunters who kill magic-users and take their artifacts so that it's easier to kill ''more'' magic-users (and sometimes werewolves). The book contains a lengthy section on how to deal with the KarmaMeter in light of goals like that.
** Forget about the Greek Indiana Jones. ''Hunters'' are the only people who can modify their Moral Code to justify about everything they do, as long as it's in the light of the hunt. The text example has "murdering someone" replaced with "letting a [[TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening witch/warlock]] loose". This only makes paying evil unto evil far, far easier for them than other denizens of shadow.
** Elsewhere in the TabletopGame/ChroniclesOfDarkness, the Free Council of ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'' have a particular line in this. The Council's BadassCreed has three key principles: "Democracy seeks the truth, hierarchy fosters the Lie"; "Humanity is magical; human works have arcane secrets"; and "Destroy the followers of the Lie" ("The Lie" refers to the barrier between [[{{Muggles}} Sleepers]] and magic). That third one can cause certain ''issues'', however. Because the Council are a radical order with sympathies for mages outside the Pentacle, and they have looser definitions of what behaviour is and is not acceptable in many issues, it's easy to get away with BlackMagic within the Council if you only use the darker arts on [[ArchEnemy the Seers of the Throne]] - whereas Left-Handed Legacies that concentrate on mistreating Sleepers [[BerserkButton are punished harshly]].
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' likes this one, though it must be noted that the setting already runs on BlackAndGrayMorality. The Imperium and Chaos both enjoy sacrificing innocents -- the former sacrifice to the Emperor, the latter to the Chaos Gods, to name one example.
** Generally speaking, though, those who run the Imperium want their citizens to die fighting, even if victory on a given field is impossible, so that they can [[TakingYouWithMe take down as many Renegades, Xenos, or Heretics as they can with their last breaths]]. Though they do regularly sacrifice hundreds of Pskyers a year to give power to the life-support-reliant Emperor, many of them would've threatened humanity had they been allowed to live.
** The Forces of Chaos, on the other hand, sacrifice innocents in order to grant the favor of the Dark Gods so they can go on world-molesting crusades, or in particularly evil moments, ''for fun''. However, some Chaos Space Marine players use this to make their army out to be less evil, since the Emperor himself did some pretty nasty things while establishing the Imperium, and that the society itself is very oppressive. From that perspective, the Imperium has to go for the better of mankind.
*** This perspective spawned the RPG spinoff ''TabletopGame/BlackCrusade''.
** The Literature/HorusHeresy, as the titular novels show, can really be seen as the Traitor Legions doing this to the Emperor for all the crap he did unto them first. Notable examples include snatching Angron away from a LastStand and leaving the closest thing he had to a family to die (whilst having ample options for saving them all), slaughtering an entire world just to emphasize his demand that Lorgar StopWorshippingMe, and refusing to listen to Magnus's warnings about the building CivilWar and siccing [[MagicIsEvil Leman Russ]] and his followers onto Magnus's world.
** Speaking of, the Primarch of the Night Lords, Konrad Curze, lived and breathed this trope. His homeworld was a nightmarish city planet where violence and anarchy reigned. How did he bring law and order to the planet? Simple! By becoming an ultra-grimdark version of Franchise/{{Batman}} and ComicBook/ThePunisher and brutally murdering every other evil scumbag until the sewers were jammed with their body parts. [[CrapsackWorld He was still considered an improvement over his predecessors]].
* In the ''TableTopGame/{{Planescape}}'' campaign setting, one of Sigil's factions (gangs united by a common philosophy) are the Mercykillers (nickname: [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast "The Red Death"]]), militants who believe TheMultiverse is inherently flawed with sin and that perfection can only be obtained by purifying your sins through just punishment. As their name implies, they do not believe in the concept of 'mercy' and any evil is to be punished, violently. They run Sigil's prison system and deal with executions. Crossing them is generally considered a poor idea.
** The spin-off game ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'' features Vhailor, a member of the Mercykillers considered fanatical even by his faction's standards. His belief in Justice (capital letter included) is so strong it's allowed him to postpone his own death because there are still lawbreakers to punish.
* Zigzagged in ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'', in that, whilst some "Gray Hats" are so dark it's outright stated that it's a matter of ''when'', not ''if'', they will [[HeWhoFightsMonsters become villains themselves]], the game still lets some surprisingly dark characters play the good guys.
** Throughout all three lines, there's the Harrowed; a RevenantZombie with a demonic EnemyWithin who can never be removed because it's the source of the Harrowed's undeath, meaning every time they go to sleep, they may end up unable to stop themselves from committing murder and mayhem.
** In the classic game, there's the Huckster, a wizard who literally makes a DealWithTheDevil every single time he casts a spell.
** The classic game also rules for a magic using [[ReligionIsMagic priest]] who derives his powers from either Myth/{{Aztec|Mythology}} BloodMagic or Anahuac (a syncretic mixture of Aztec faith and Catholicism).
** Then there's the Rogue Whatley, who practices BloodMagic.
** The playable vampire is one of those "damnation is inescapable" Gray Hats mentioned above.
** Another comes from ''Hell on Earth'', where the Anti-Templar draws upon the powers of the [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse Reckoners]]. Ironically, many people consider the Anti-Templars ''better'' people than the Templars they oppose, even if they do end up corrupted, since [[BadPowersGoodPeople the Anti-Templers both believe they are weakening the Reckoners by leeching away their power and only want that power to protect as many people as possible]], whilst the [[MeaningfulName Templars]] are known for being [[KnightTemplar extremely judgmental and self-righteous]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Myths & Religion]]
* ''Literature/TheBible'':
** [[Literature/BookOfExodus Book of Joshua]] tells how the Israelites conquered the land of Canaan and killed or enslaved the native peoples. It was justified by them evidently worshipping pagan gods--by practicing child sacrifice and being sexually immoral. Later, this punishment was applied to the Israelites themselves [[{{Irony}} for the very same crimes]].
*** Around 400 years prior to the conquest, Noah has made a prophecy in ''Literature/BookOfGenesis'' in which Canaan, the descendants of Ham will be cursed for Ham exposing Noah's nakedness, while Shem covered his nakedness and shame and will one day become Canaan's conqueror. It is up to debate whether the prophecy of punishments is for a case of SinsOfOurFathers or for their unrepentance [[AlwaysChaoticEvil even with hundreds of years given]].
** While staying in the borders of Shechem, a city-state, the son of the lord of the city raped Dinah, a daughter of Jacob who was visiting with some of the town girls. The two fathers hammered out an agreement between them so that the two would wed to try and put the situation behind them. Two of Jacobs elder sons, Simeon and Levi, however, [[BigBrotherInstinct took offense to the rape]] and slaughtered the entire male population in retaliation. When confronted by an irate Jacob, who was worried about other city states sending out warriors to kill the entire clan, Simeon and Levi [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight pretty much told him to screw himself]].
*** "Should he treat our sister as a harlot?!"
** Sodom and Gomorrah. The Ten Plagues. The Flood. Samson killing 3,000 Philistines. The slaughter after the Israelites were found worshipping idols (though this one's debatable, as God actually didn't give Moses any instruction to do that, and it may have had more to do with putting down a revolt.)
** The (executed) command to kill every Midianite male (regardless of age) and every Midianite female who wasn't a virgin. (Presumably, the few who were virgins ended up concubines as instructed in Deuteronomy 21:10-14.) The Old Testament God was really into this trope.
*** One of the reasons King Saul lost God's favor was because [[PunishedForSympathy he refused to slaughter all of the Amalekites, women and children included]], despite God's decree that the entire nation of Amalek be wiped from the earth on account of them having raided the Israelites for hundreds of years.
** King David's daughter Tamar was raped by one of her brother's half-brothers Amnon. When David refused to take action, her brother Absalom ultimately took matters into his own hands and ordered his men to kill Amnon.
** King David made Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, his mistress. When Bathsheba became pregnant, David called Uriah's troop back to the capital in the hopes that Uriah would sleep with Bathsheba so that the scandal would be hidden. Uriah was such a loyal soldier that he bunked down with his men instead, since it was unfair for him to go home when they couldn't. [[UriahGambit So David arranged for Uriah to die on the battlefield and took Bathsheba into his household]]. As punishment for his evil deeds, David's first son by Bathsheba fell ill and died after seven days and Absalom declared war on him.
** Moses sent twelve scouts into the land of Israel. Ten of them came back with a report that the people living there were unbeatable, and despite the protests of the other two spies, the Israelites formed a mob and turned on Moses and Aaron. After saving them, God decreed that the Israelites would never set foot in the Promised Land until after every adult—-except the two good spies-—who left Egypt had died. He then afflicted the other ten spies with a very painful and fatal illness.
** In the Scroll of Esther, Haman plotted to have all of the Jews in the Persian Empire killed. Instead, after Esther exposes Haman's plot, he and his sons (who were never mentioned as having been part of the plot) were [[HoistByHisOwnPetard hung on the gallows he had built for the Jews]].
** Averted in the Literature/BookOfJonah. Jonah actually gets rather upset that God forgave the people of Nineveh. God explains that, unlike the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Ninevites took the warning seriously and repented sincerely, so He wasn't about to go killing a bunch of innocents along with the guilty when there wasn't any need.
** In Chapter 34 of Genesis, Jacob's only daughter Dinah was violated by a [[StalkerWithACrush Shechemite prince.]] Simon and Levi, her [[KnightTemplarBigBrother brothers]], sat down with their father when the prince and his father came by offering a lavish bride-price. They lied and said they'd only agree to the marriage if the Shechemite men agreed to be circumcised like them, which they did. When the men were incapacitated after the surgery, Jacob's sons (without his knowledge) went into the Shechemite village and [[DisproportionateRetribution slaughtered every male they could find]] before bringing Dinah home (along with everyone and everything else they managed to plunder). Jacob [[WhatTheHellHero called them out]] on this, fearing for his tribe's safety. Their [[RapeAndRevenge justification]] was "Should we have let him use her for a whore?"
** And this is what the Lord says: If the innocent must suffer, how much more must you? You will not go unpunished! You must drink from this cup of judgment! For I have sworn by my own name," says the Lord-Jeremiah 49:12
** Averted in the Literature/BookOfProverbs. Chapter 20, Verse 22: "Do not take vengeance against evil, but wait for the Lord and He will avenge you."
** And strongly condemned by the New Testament. As the {{Trope Namer|s}} for TurnTheOtherCheek, in Literature/TheFourGospels UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} preaches nonviolence, even remonstrating Peter for attacking a Roman soldier to ''defend'' Him.
* The idea behind "an eye for an eye" was to limit what you could do in response to someone who wronged you. According to Hammurabi, the guy who codified the idea in the first place, this was to [[UnbuiltTrope prevent the old-fashioned method of redressing a wrong]]...in that, in the old, bad days, if someone did a wrong to you, whether it was murder a loved one, rape your favorite daughter, steal your cattle, or insult you, you and your strongest male relatives would go out and kill the offender, then slaughter their entire clan before they could do the same to you. So, by making the law "an eye for an eye," [[RestrainedRevenge you cannot take more than what you lost]].
** This comes into play in ''Film/TheGodfather''. Vito refuses to kill the boys who attacked Bonasera's daughter because she was not killed. As Vito himself puts it, "that would not be justice." He does have his men brutally beat the boys and put them in the hospital, though.

[[folder:Pinballs]]
* According to ''Pinball/AttackFromMars,'' the proper response to a [[AlienInvasion Martian invasion]] is to steal their ships and bomb Mars to hell. And then [[WizardMode Rule the Universe,]] if you so desire.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/{{Dexter}}'' is a serial murderer who only kills other murderers. He identifies himself as a monster though.
* ''Series/{{Revenge}}'' sees Emily Thorne bankrupting, humiliating, burning down the homes of and otherwise disgracing the various crooks who framed her father for terrorism.
* Detective Chester Lake of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' has a long-time grudge against a fellow police officer whom he knew was guilty of the rape of two illegal immigrants, but he could never prove it. When they're finally able to take him to trial, the jury is deadlocked and he walks. Chester goes and murders the man himself and puts up no fight when taken in.
* Omar Little of ''Series/TheWire'' is a renowned stick-up man who only robs from people involved in the drug trade. The police pretty much turn a blind eye to this.
* A mild version of this happens in the opening for the ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' episode "Shindig," where Mal pickpockets the cash off a smug, proud, self-admitted slave dealer during a game of pool. The slave dealer isn't supposed to notice until he goes for his next round of drinks, but it turns out he's a ''very'' good drinker, and that [[BarBrawl leads to....]]
** The entire series of ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' is one big example. The main characters spend the entire first season robbing almost anybody, so long as that person is TheGovernment, corporate supporters of the government, slavers, or anybody else not approved of by the main characters.
** Mal probably puts it best in The Train Job, when he decides not to do the job he was hired to do and wants to return the money to his employer:
--> '''Mal:''' "We're not thieves." ''{{beat}}'' "Okay, we are thieves. Point is, we're not taking what's his."
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'':
** Mirri Maz Duur, having been asked by Daenerys to save her Dothraki husband Khal Drogo's life with her BloodMagic, instead performs a ritual that leaves him a SoullessShell and kills the Khal's unborn son in Daenerys' womb. Mirri is a slave to Daenerys because Khal Drogo's warriors had massacred Mirri's village for plunder and amusement, during which she herself had been raped by three of the Khal's men before she was "rescued". And his son was prophesied to be even worse; [[DarkMessiah "The Stallion That Mounts The World"]], the Khal who would spread the Dothraki's RapePillageAndBurn reign from Essos to Westeros.
-->'''Mirri Maz Duur:''' He would have been the Stallion who Mounts the World. [[ScrewDestiny Now he will burn no cities. Now he will trample no nations into dust.]]
** [[{{sadist}} Ramsay Bolton]] [[spoiler:gets the [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown ever-loving shit beat out of him]] by [[HeroicBastard Jon Snow]] for [[RelativeButton murdering Jon's younger brother Rickon, raping his younger sister Sansa]], and for all the sheer, utter hell and torture Ramsay has inflicted. Jon only calms down when he sees his sister Sansa, whose presence prompts Jon not to go too far -- for both his sake and so Sansa can provide a KarmicDeath to Ramsay, which she does by feeding Ramsay to his own dogs]].
** After witnessing evil men getting away with committing some of the worst atrocities in the series, Arya starts taking justice into her own hands. She clearly becomes a darker character every time she kills, but it's compensated for by the fact that most of them deserve it.
*** She makes a start on avenging Robb's murder in "Mhysa" by flat-out wrecking a Frey camp with Sandor and personally stabbing to death the Frey soldier responsible for desecrating her brother's corpse. This marks the first time she kills a person since the first season, and her first deliberate kill of an adult.
*** Later, she earns two more adult kills in "Two Swords": Polliver, the Clegane footman who killed Lommy and stole her sword, and one of his men. She kills the former in the exact same way as his most prominent victim, down to repeating his words during the deed. Later, in "Mockingbird", she murders Rorge, the prisoner who'd threatened to "fuck her bloody", without a second's hesitation, once he adds himself to her list.
*** In the Season 5 finale, she finally avenges Syrio (and Sansa, unknowingly) by brutally murdering Meryn Trant, who is revealed to be a paedophile who gets off on beating little girls.
*** In season 6, [[spoiler:she gets revenge on Walder Frey for his part in the brutal massacre of her mother and one of her older brothers, Robb. She kills two of Walder Frey's sons and has them baked into a pie, which she feeds to an unknowing Walder -- before Arya reveals to a horrified Walder that his sons are in the pie and she finishes him by slitting his throat. The first scene of season 7 has her pose as Walder and throw a feast for all the Freys, then wipe out the entire house with poisoned wine. It should be noted that Arya made a point of telling all the exclusively female servers and the young female guests there that they were not to be allowed any wine, thereby sparing innocents.]]
** When Joffrey Baratheon and Tywin Lannister are murdered in cold blood, their killers clearly cross a moral line, but their victims are such {{Jerk Ass}}es that it's hard not to cheer them on. Particularly the latter case, whose [[{{Patricide}} murderer]], Tyrion, his own son, had [[TheDogBitesBack finally retaliated]] after [[AbusiveParents years of parental abuse]] and [[OffingTheOffspring being sentenced to an execution by him]] from which he had just escaped.
** Downplayed. When Robin Arryn throws a fit and destroys Sansa's snow replica of Winterfell, she slaps him so hard she knocks him to the ground. Although Sansa might have been the one who escalated the altercation to begin with, Littlefinger blithely remarks afterward [[SpoiledBrat that Robin had it coming his entire life]].
** Brienne does this, further evidencing the darker take on her character in comparison to that in the books, in which she had never killed a man before. She seems to have no issue doing this when a trio of rapist Stark soldiers confront her and Jaime on the way to King's Landing, absolutely wrecking two of them before killing the ringleader by ''driving her sword through his crotch'', making a point of killing him as slowly and painfully as possible.
--> '''Brienne:''' Two quick deaths. ''(castration)''
** Jaime Lannister gained infamy as the [[TheOathbreaker Kingslayer]] for stabbing Mad King Aerys, whom he was sworn to defend, in the back. [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing No tears were shed]] over the pyromaniac's demise.
** Daenerys Targaryen is a firm believer in this:
*** When Daenerys and her army march on the slaver city of Meereen, the city's Masters taunt her by [[WouldHurtAChild crucifying a slave child]] at every milepost for ''one hundred and sixty-three miles''. When she takes the city, a [[TranquilFury deathly calm]] Daenerys orders [[KarmicDeath one hundred and sixty-three Masters to be crucified in the streets.]] [[spoiler:However, it later turns out that at least one of the people she crucified had opposed the child-killings, which she regrets.]]
*** She rounds up the heads of Meereen's most noble houses in "Kill the Boy"... then has one of them burned alive and torn to shreds by her dragons, while the other noblemen are forced to watch. She doesn't even care who is innocent by that point... But then again, were ''any'' of them?
*** The Lannisters rob and loot the Reach of its wealth and food, and brazenly take out her allies. So she responds by more or less massacring their army with the Dothraki and Drogon, charbroiling most of the soldiers.
*** Daenerys's love of this trope takes a turn for the ironic in the series finale. [[spoiler:After a [[BreakTheCutie series of traumatic events]], Daenerys' long-tested sanity finally breaks and she goes on the rampage on the back of her dragon, destroying most of the city of King's Landing and massacring its ''surrendered'' population. Afterwards, her former advisor Tyrion Lannister talks to Jon Snow about her behavior. Tyrion lampshades that part of Daenerys's willingness to do what she did was because of her fervent belief both in this trope and in the fact that [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality she is the hero, in her mind]] -- and she won't stop killing until she realizes her perfect world. Tyrion urges a reluctant Jon that despite his love for Daenerys, [[SadisticChoice he must kill Daenerys to save everyone else]] from her reign of terror. Jon pleads with Daenerys not to continue with the destruction but Daenerys justifies it as necessary and [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans firmly believes it is the only way to build a better world]]. Consequently, Jon [[KillTheOnesYouLove fatally stabs her]] to end her madness before she can cause even more death and destruction.]]
* ''Series/ICarly'': In "iReunite With Missy", Missy broke Sam's cellphone on purpose and offered to buy her a new one. When Missy wins the 6-month cruise, given up by Freddie to get rid of Missy, Carly asks Sam how Missy could still compensate for her phone. Sam then reveals that she stole Missy's phone.
* Michael of the TV show ''Series/BurnNotice'' [[WeHelpTheHelpless helps the victims]] of evil by assisting them in gaining protection against their oppressors. Sometimes, his methods involve conning and/or leading to the arrest of the villain, but often, his plots end with the death of the villain through his machinations/at his hands.
* Jarod on ''Series/ThePretender'' is fond of this, often putting villians in the same situation they did to someone else. Note that he puts them into a less lethal/physically harmful version of what they've done to one of their victims--- they just don't know it. In Jared's case, it's much more about inflicting psychological damage on them as they believe they're about to suffer the same fate of someone they've wronged before being taken in by the authorities.
* While Mr Chapel of ''Series/VengeanceUnlimited'' doesn't kill, he can completely ruin the life of some of his "victims", including two that he had branded as insane. Chapel often doesn't go out of his way to get people killed, it's a result of the show's formula. If people survived his scams it would quickly get around that he's not who he says he is. There are also times when he really is trying to make sure they die, though.
* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'':
** Davis Bloome was more or less forced into this; he has a choice between killing a couple criminals every so often and doing nothing (which allows his SuperpoweredEvilSide to take over and massacre a bunch of innocents).
** In "Sacrifice", Zod gets a small one when he throws [[ManipulativeBitch Waller]] about twenty feet but Clark stops him from killing her. Although the fans rooted for Zod on this one.
* Happens a few times in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', though they're usually forced into it by the bad guys. One example: In order to save D'Argo's son (and 9,999 other slaves), our heroes plan to rob a bank, justifying their actions by saying it's a "shadow depository", i.e., where bad guys hide the stuff they steal.
* ''Series/SledgeHammer'' is a CowboyCop who doesn't hesitate to use the violent criminal scum's own violent criminal methods against them... to the consternation of Captain Trunk.
* At some points in ''Series/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'', it can be argued that [[AlphaBitch Libby]] was the victim of bullying from Sabrina instead of the other way around. After all, being a RealityWarper gives you an unfair advantage. However, Sabrina seemed to mature past this - most of her later morally questionable uses of magic against Libby were based on trying to redress wrongs or make Libby a better person, instead of simply hurting Libby. Sometimes she even used it to do something nice for Libby, even knowing that Libby would most likely never know about it and certainly wouldn't return the favor if she did. (For example, in "Sabrina Claus", she has to take over for Santa Claus and her gift to Libby is to use magic to make Libby's AnnoyingYoungerSibling be nice to her. Possibly still morally questionable, depending on how you feel about magically influencing the free will of a child.)
* The main characters of ''Series/{{Hustle}}'' only con the corrupt and the greedy. In one episode, they even call off a con when it becomes clear their supposedly evil target is reforming. (That said, they still don't intentionally engage in any action that will physically hurt anyone, evil or not.)
* ''Series/{{Leverage}}'' does almost exactly the same thing.
* ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'': The titular detective realizes that he has no other choice but to kill Magnusson for both John ''and'' Mary, but ''especially'' [[OnlyFriend John]] since Magnusson knew he was a pressure point for him, and that he ''genuinely cared for him.''
* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'':
** Done deliberately by a particularly GenreSavvy Benjamin Sisko when he's chasing down the traitorous Starfleet officer, Eddington. After Eddington poisons a Cardassian settled-planet with a chemical only dangerous to Cardassians thus forcing them to evacuate, Sisko, invoking ''Literature/LesMiserables'' since Eddington had called him InspectorJavert, forces Eddington to make a HeroicSacrifice by doing the same thing to a human-settled planet occupied by the [[LaResistance Maquis]] and threatening to keep doing it unless Eddington surrendered.
** Garak once tried to commit genocide on the Founders' home world by gaining access to ''Defiant's'' weapons systems. Had he succeeded, he may have averted the war altogether.
** Though portrayed sympathetically, the show does not dispute that Kira (and the [[LaResistance Bajoran Resistance]] in general) resorted to terrorism against the Cardassians during the occupation. Murder, bombings, and other acts of random violence were common, and they weren't choosy about their targets. Though Kira isn't proud of her violent past, neither does she apologize for it.
* ''Series/ChicagoPD'' invokes the trope, with Voight and Al acknowledging privately that they have murdered at least one perp rather than arresting him. Averted in episode two when Voight plans to murder the drug lord who kidnapped Antonio's son. Played in full with the man who murders Voight's son. Other members of the unit have also become more physical than regulations allow, usually to elicit information on a case.
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'':
** Few mourned, and many cheered, when [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Dark Willow]] flayed Warren Mears alive. Those that refrained from cheering did so not out of sympathy for Warren, but concern for Willow (except for those who thought Willow had already crossed the Moral Event Horizon by repeatedly mind-raping and raping Tara).
** After Spike gets his RestrainingBolt, Buffy enjoys herself taunting him over his 'impotence' and beating him up for fun and information (until Spike declares he's fallen in love with her, and Buffy comes to the belated realisation that doing this to a CombatSadomasochist is a sexual come-on).
* ''Series/{{Angel}}'' had a terrific example in Season 2. After coming across his archenemies from Wolfram & Hart being held hostage by Darla and Dru, Angel stands contemplative for a moment. Wolfram & Hart is an evil organisation with absolutely no qualms about murdering innocent people. Rather than save them, Angel locks the door and lets the vamps go to work. The formerly unflappable Holland Manners is terrified and begs, "People are going to die," to which Angel responds, "[[IronicEcho And yet somehow I just can't seem to care]]." Whilst harrowing in a sense, it doesn't stop seeing them get their karma from being wholly satisfying.
* ''Series/TwentyFour'': If they're someone who's royally pissed him off or killed somebody close to him and there's no longer any need to keep them alive, Jack Bauer has absolutely no problem taking vengeance into his own hands. One particularly stand-out moment occurs in the final season where he's torturing the man who earlier killed [[spoiler:Renee Walker]], and the bastard refuses to break, even bragging about the murder. When Jack learns that the guy swallowed something that has some potentially crucial information he could use on it, Jack proceeds to ''cut the guy's stomach open and empty it to obtain what he swallowed.'' Even though what Jack's doing [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope is]] [[MoralEventHorizon horrible]], for a total prick like this one can't help but at least smirk a little.
** In the ''Live Another Day'' miniseries, there are two excellent moments of outright executing {{Big Bad}}s who were no longer needed. Not in combat, not to stop them from killing someone else - if you're the kind of person who feels the need to shoot missiles into the middle of London to avenge your (equally horrible terrorist) husband, Jack Bauer sees no problem with [[DestinationDefenestration sending you through a window to your messy demise]].
* ''Series/CSIMiami'': Occasionally, Horatio Caine gives a little bit more "justice" than the law allows. In "To Kill A Predator", he gives a savage beating to a child predator for "Resisting Arrest" (when he was doing nothing but standing there). And in "Wheels Up", it's implied he does the same to an abusive boyfriend of the victim of the week; while the guy didn't kill her, a byproduct of that abuse (a healing fragment of a previous broken rib) is what ultimately killed her.
* In ''Series/{{CSINY}}'', this is the core of both Luke Blade in season 3 and Leonard Brooks in season 9.
* In ''Series/OnceUponATime'', Snow White (of all people) pulls off this trope. Her wicked stepmother's even ''more'' evil mother Cora admitted to killing Snow's mom by magic, threw Snow's old nanny to her death right in front of her [[ItAmusedMe For The Lulz]], and cheerfully admits her whole goal is to obtain the dagger of the Dark One so she would become a completely invincible force of power. Regina (the stepmother) has made Snow's life (and everyone else's) life a living hell for the last 30 years. So, when she [[spoiler: casts a death curse on Cora's heart (she stores it separately) and ''tricks'' Regina into putting it back]]...Well, it's a little hard ''not'' to be both horrified at Snow's actions, but also believe the parties she paid evil unto richly deserved it.
* This is more or less the plot of the first season of ''Series/{{Arrow}}''. Oliver Queen is trying to atone for his father's crimes by "cleaning up his list", and he's not afraid to kill in the process. Also invoked with "The Undertaking"; during the episode of the same name, the conspiracy group "Tempest" are shown in flashback psyching themselves up to go along with the plan to [[KillThePoor level the Glades and kill or drive off the low-income people living there]] by reminding themselves of the tragedies they have suffered at the hands of Glades residents, so as to convince themselves that, in terms of conventional philanthropy, ItIsBeyondSaving. One member mentions his daughter was gang-raped until she was left catatonic when she made the mistake of visiting a nightclub in the area. The BigBad of the first season, Dark Arrow, lost his wife because she was stabbed by a mugger on her way home from the free clinic she ran there and [[ApatheticCitizens none of the people who saw her lying in the street bleeding out could be bothered to help in any way]].
* ''Series/PersonOfInterest'': In a flashback in "The Devil's Share", Detective Fusco, a reformed DirtyCop who now works with the heroes, got his StartOfDarkness when he gunned down a drug dealer in cold blood. Said drug dealer had previously [[CopKiller killed an off-duty rookie]].
** The same episode ends with [[spoiler:Simmons, the BigBad who murdered Carter after she upended his whole corrupt organisation, arrested and in hospital, because the protagonists ultimately decided to do what Carter would have wanted instead of seeking revenge for her death. But who is this, waiting in the shadows of the hospital room when Simmons wakes up? Why, it's [[AffablyEvil Elias]], the mafia don whose life Carter saved last season. And here's his henchman Scarface, with a garotte]].
** Ex-assassins Reese and Shaw also somewhat fit this belief; though they generally try and avoid lethal force, they aren't exactly bothered when they do.
* In ''Series/TheWalkingDead'': Try to [[spoiler:rape Carl]] in front of Rick and you are going to die painfully, he'll make sure to make it '''[[http://youtu.be/VNzgDgdmRK4 very]]''' painfully.
* Deconstructed in ''Series/TheBlacklist''. One of the villains of the week is a serial killer called the Deer Hunter who tracks down and murders abusive husbands and boyfriends. The Deer Hunter claims that she's doing this, as well as helping the abused women, but Liz calls her out and rips apart her whole HannibalLecture, pointing out that the ''real'' reason she's killing is simple bloodlust and desire for dominance, with the abusive men thing just being an excuse to help her sleep at night. The fact that the Deer Hunter killed one of the innocent women she was "protecting" in retribution for going to the police pretty clearly shows this statement to be correct.
** Played straight earlier in the season, episode 7 of season 2, with Samar Navabi's execution of the Scimitar, a well known terrorist and murderer who only a few hours previous had kidnapped two of her teammates and, later, a completely innocent woman, after he taunted Navabi that she wasn't going to kill him.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The Doctor has been implied to have done this on occasion (to the point where he disowned an entire incarnation who he believed did it). In "Face the Raven", when he is betrayed and faced with [[spoiler: the imminent death of his companion]], the Doctor threatens to do this to the [[spoiler: immortal Ashildr]] and a street of alien refugees (some of whom are innocents, all hiding from mankind) using a mixture of enemy races and paramilitary forces. Only a plea from his soon-to-be-lost best friend stops him carrying through with it.
--->'''The Doctor:''' I'll bring UNIT, I'll bring the Zygons, give me a minute, I'll bring the Daleks and the Cybermen. You will save [[spoiler:Clara]], and you will do it now or I will rain hell on you for the rest of time.
** The Doctor is subsequently forced to undergo ColdBloodedTorture in a lonely, gigantic torture chamber in "Heaven Sent". In the SeasonFinale "Hell Bent" he has escaped, but he is also now an insane WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds. When he confronts the party who captured and tormented him ([[spoiler: Rassilon, leader of '''the Doctor's own people''']]) he shocks everyone by [[spoiler: bloodlessly overthrowing him and banishing him and his underlings from Gallifrey to wherever they can find a home...if any such place exists at that point in time]]. Other characters who know him well accuse him of this trope and DisproportionateRetribution, with a side helping of NoSympathyForGrudgeholders.
** Against the Family of Blood -- who is implied to have taken over the bodies of innocent people and at best induced AndIMustScream on them, at worst killed them before inhabiting their bodies -- the audience is shown through the very somber and withdrawn monologue of the brother -- a 180° turn from his self-assured and victorious tone a moment ago -- what the Doctor did to them, including dropping the mother into the event horizon of a collapsing dwarf star, trapping the sister in every mirror ever, and setting the brother, frozen in time, to watch over England's fields for all eternity.
* It's hard to believe that Bulk and Skull were bullies after all the humiliation given to them constantly for about the five original seasons of ''Franchise/PowerRangers''. The good guys never used their powers explicitly other than dodge attacks, but they did laugh at them a lot in the freeze shot that ended episodes. They were pretty bad in the first season (both in the sense of not being nice, but also just not good at being bullies), but later on they got better.
* Pretty much the mission statement of the characters of ''Series/TheUnit'' who are regularly depicted carrying out assassinations and murders against terrorists or anyone supporting them. Perhaps spotlighted by one episode in which one of the team suffers a crisis of conscience only to finally decide he actually enjoyed killing people, an attitude his superior officer states is ''actually necessary'' to do what they do.
* In the ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' episode "[[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS2E5AHenInTheWolfHouse A Hen in the Wolf House]]", [[ReverseMole Simmons]] plants her Comicbook/{{SHIELD}} message pad in her Comicbook/{{HYDRA}} partner's desk, to avoid being outed as a spy, leading to said partner being dragged off for [[ColdBloodedTorture interrogation]]. While he was [[AffablyEvil friendly]] to Simmmons, he's still a member of [[NebulousEvilOrganisation HYDRA]] who thought the idea of HYDRA using a weapon to kill millions of innocent people was [[KickTheDog "pretty cool"]].
* ''Series/MillionYenWomen'': After two of the women get killed, one of the remaining women cooperates with the former employee of one of the victims to take down the killer.
* In the controversial ''Series/{{House}}'' episode "The Tyrant," House and his team have to treat [[TheGeneralissimo General Dibala]], the dictator of a fictional African country, after he was struck with a mysterious ailment while in New York for a UN meeting. After he gleefully describes how he's going to kick off a genocide when he gets back home, Chase kills him by deliberately misdiagnosing him and prescribing a treatment he knows will be fatal.
* Deconstructed in the penultimate episode of Season 10 of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', [[spoiler: Dean]] massacres the Styne Family (or rather, their American Branch) in revenge for [[spoiler: Charlie's death]], but it's made clear that [[spoiler: Dean]] is one step away from crossing the MoralEventHorizon as a result of how merciless and ruthless he was.
* ''Series/RoboCopPrimeDirectives'' in part details Murphy's backstory before his transfer to Metro West and becoming a cyborg in ''Film/RoboCop1987''. Before his transfer and meeting Lewis, Murphy was partners with a man named John Cable at Metro South, a partnership that ended when a call to deal with a dog causes them to chance upon The Motor City Mangler, a [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalistic]] SerialKiller who targets young women. The cause for the partnership ending? After the Mangler took him hostage and tried to kill both him and Murphy, Cable grabbed his gun--and proceeded to shoot the Mangler dead.
* Sabrina Spellman from ''Series/ChillingAdventuresOfSabrina'' uses her magic more often to punish those who do evil. So far, most of their opponents were [[BarbaricBully bullys]].
* ''Series/TheBoys2019'':
** Hughie's motivation throughout the story, to pay A-Train back for killing the girl he loved whatever the cost.
** [[spoiler: Butcher's motivation too. He hates Homelander with a fiery passion.]]
[[/folder]]

* Deconstructed in ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6'', in which Hiro goes on to have Baymax ''murder'' Yokai/[[spoiler:Professor Callaghan]] after the latter is revealed to have started the fire that killed Tadashi and [[KickTheDog insults Hiro for his grief]]. However, Hiro's friends stop his rampage, Baymax calls him out for his actions, and Hiro apologizes to Baymax for using him as a murder weapon.

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'':
** Jake, before flushing the Pool into space, decides that Yeerks are subhuman parasites who deserve nothing but cold, frozen death: "They could've stayed home, I thought. No one had asked them to come to Earth. No more than they deserved. Aliens. Parasites. Subhuman."
** Also, Marco isn't very good at hiding the fact that he takes pleasure from killing Yeerks. In #19, he tells Cassie, "You don't make peace with parasites. You don't turn them around. You bury them." It eventually subsides, though, as part of Marco's CharacterDevelopment; over the course of the series he becomes much less emotional, which makes him a more effective strategist.
* Admittedly, some of Carrie White's classmates in ''Literature/{{Carrie}}'' had treated her very badly. However, her vengeance on them was probably, in quite a few individual cases, well beyond what they had actually deserved.
** And when she goes on to bring Armageddon to the rest of the town, well...
** It's worth noting, however, that Creator/StephenKing never depicts her revenge as being justified; instead her actions are considered [[DisproportionateRetribution extremely disproportionate]].
** Her [[FreudianExcuse abusive upbringing]] hasn't really encouraged a sense of moral distinction, especially when her mother was AxCrazy to begin with.
* In ''Literature/{{Chrysalis}}'', the Terran seeks to scour the Xunvir and their host worlds into total extinction and uninhabitability, just as they did to Earth. They try to retain a measure of their humanity, but after [[spoiler:a crushing loss that decimates their army and nearly kills them]], they find themself edging closer and closer to evil.
* Literature/{{Raffles}} is AffablyEvil, but he still [[EvenEvilHasStandards draws the line]]...while he's normally not one for murder, he comes close to killing a blackmailer, and after his return, has no remorse for inadvertently causing the deaths of some Camorra men who'd captured him.
* Arguably Heathcliff from ''Literature/WutheringHeights'' begins like this. When he returns to Yorkshire after Catherine's wedding, the first thing he does is swindle his alcoholic foster brother Hindley out of ownership of the house. While Heathcliff's later actions are inexcusable, many readers will argue that Hindley deserved what he got for having turned him into a servant and thwarting his love affair with Catherine in the first place.
* In Creator/TomClancy's ''[[Literature/JackRyan Without Remorse]]'', John Kelly is an ex-Navy SEAL who falls for an ex-prostitute/drug mule and rehabilitates her, only to see her raped and murdered by her former pimp. He spends the next year hunting down and brutally executing the entire drug ring, working his way up the chain one pusher/pimp at a time. This comes to the attention of the CIA, who are simultaneously recruiting him for a Vietnam rescue mission; when they find out what he did, they arrange for his "Kelly" identity to die in an apparent suicide, and they give him a new identity as "John Clark". Much later in the series, the President of the United States pardons him.
* The later Literature/SwordOfTruth books feature, among other things, the hero leading a charge ''through'' peace protesters with, essentially, this justification (said protesters, it should be noted, were guarding an army of monsters, but Richard could have made an ''effort'' to TakeAThirdOption), and sending his army to attack cities and other settlements that are supporting the Imperial Order, basically a strategy of total war. The justification given is that it would be impossible to beat the Order in a straight up fight, since they're outnumbered 100 to 1. Richard notably orders his troops '''''not''''' to kill civilians if it can be avoided, but that they should still make them afraid of the D'Haran troops.
* In ''Literature/FantasticMrFox'', the eponymous hero is nearly hunted down by Mr. Boggis, Mr. Bunce, and Mr. Bean for simply providing food from his family, which is by stealing. The three men decide to use heavy equipment to further succeed in eliminating the fox and his family, not to mention half the countryside of good land (and every other animal, as well)! What does Mr. Fox do? He and his children dig and tunnel their way to each of the three men's farms and steal from them, [[Series/HogansHeroes Stalag 13-style]]... while the three nasty farmers wait around the hole where the fox is supposed to pop up at!
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'':
** In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', the Imperius and Cruciatus curses. When they're first introduced, it's stated that using these curses wins the caster a one-way ticket to Azkaban, and Barty Crouch is portrayed in a bad light for authorizing the Aurors to use the spells ''in exactly the same way the heroes eventually do''. It's just a ''little'' disconcerting to see, for example, [=McGonagall=] tossing around Imperius because she couldn't be bothered picking up two wands herself. The use is seen as somewhat morally ambiguous, and it functions as a slow buildup -- with Harry having used two of the three "Unforgivable Curses" by the climax of the book, it's reasonable to expect he'd use the last one, the Killing Curse, to finish off Voldemort. [[spoiler: He doesn't. Voldemort dies as a result of his own actions.]]
** Gryffindors also take the opportunity to pay evil unto the oft-deserving Slytherins. James and Sirius bully the racist and dark-magic-obsessed Snape, and Hagrid and Fred and George punish Harry's bullying cousin Dudley with jinxes, although Arthur Weasley doesn't find his sons' behavior funny. Also, Sirius treats Kreacher quite nastily, an odd case as Kreacher is one of the most unlikable victims in the series, but also served as one of the examples where the good perpetrator was seriously criticized for his bad actions, because Sirius is in a position of authority over Kreacher (Kreacher, as a house elf, is magically impelled to obey him).
** Hermione hexes the girl who sold out the DA, and in doing so left Hogwarts under the control of a sadistic teacher who tortured children, by raising pimples on her forehead which spell out that she's a traitor, and last for several months at the least. Creator/JKRowling confirmed that Marietta's pimples faded but left a few scars. Hermione ''also'' lures said sadistic teacher into being attacked by centaurs, although admittedly that went further than Hermione had originally intended. She also blackmails Rita Skeeter for writing a false article that caused Hermione to be showered with hate mail. Don't mess with Hermione Granger -- she's got a ruthless side.
* The Literature/SherlockHolmes story "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Devil%27s_Foot The Adventure of the Devil's Foot]]". Holmes lets the murderer go free when he realizes what a monster the victim was.
** Conan Doyle uses this trope several times, when his sympathies lie with the criminal rather than the victim. Other stories that use it include "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Abbey_Grange The Adventure of the Abbey Grange]]" (The murdered husband habitually battered his wife) and "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Charles_Augustus_Milverton The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton]]" (because he knows who the killer is, why Milverton was murdered, and that he was a blackmailer of the vilest sort, he declines to even assist the police).
*** Actually in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange", you could make a pretty fair case for self-defense.
*** In the Milverton case, Holmes himself was Paying Evil Unto Evil--at the moment the crime was committed, he and Watson were in the middle of burgling Milverton's house to get rid of his blackmail material. Holmes knows who the murderer is, but revealing her identity would mean revealing that he too was very much on the wrong side of the law.
** Then there's "The Speckled Band", where Holmes's actions mean that the murderer and would-be double murderer ends up getting HoistByHisOwnPetard. He says he won't let it affect him too much.
** Another time Holmes himself attempts this is in the story "The Five Orange Pips", in which Holmes, after identifying the murderer, sends him the same death threat that had been sent to all of his victims. However, before Holmes can actually carry out the threat, the murderer dies in a storm at sea.
* Creator/AgathaChristie used this in her novel ''[[Literature/AndThenThereWereNone Ten Little Indians]]'' (and all of its other titles) and in all of its adaptations. The murderer who kills most (or all) of the villainous characters on the Island is [[spoiler: a HangingJudge]] a psychopath who decided to only harm the guilty.
* This plot is interestingly played with in the Literature/{{Ripliad}} novel ''Ripley Under Water''. While the book follows a sort of PsychoForHire terrorizing a murderer and career criminal, Ripley the [[VillainProtagonist "hero"]] is the murderer and career criminal and the story is told in a way that he comes across as a sympathetic victim while his tormentor is the villain of the novel.
* One of this trope's best examples occurs in the Literature/HerculePoirot novel ''Literature/MurderOnTheOrientExpress.'' It turns out that the [[AssholeVictim victim]] had been guilty of the kidnapping and murder of a small child years before. Poirot not only declines to turn [[ItWasHisSled the murderer]] over to the police, he offered a theory of how the murderer escaped the train which was as plausible as it was false.
* In both the book and the film adaptation of ''Literature/LetTheRightOneIn'', a gang of teens finds out the hard way that the price of bullying a vampire's best friend is being literally torn to shreds.
* In Literature/TheDresdenFiles, the perception of such things as a first step on the Slippery Slope is the main reason for the uncompromising reaction of the White Council to breaches of the Laws of Magic -- sure, that guy you just killed may have been a bad guy, but killing with magic changes the soul, and they think it'll make you want to do it again... Whether this is justified or not is one of the major questions of the series -- particularly as Harry himself murdered his EvilMentor Jason Du Mourne prior to the series's beginning.
** Harry Dresden does this in basically every book. Most of the time, it comes off as morally upright; Harry has been known to ask villains to surrender when said villain has summoned demons and sent them against Harry and his friends. In the third book, however, vampires kidnap his girlfriend and he torches the entire building -- including quite a few of the bums and teenagers the vampires were keeping around as snacks. Harry angsts over this quite a bit, especially due to the "Law of Three" (anything you do with magic supposedly returns threefold). [[KnightInShiningArmor Michael]] reassures him with a quote that's on the quote page. It helps, to a point.
*** Beating Cassius with a bat, and several books later impaling [[spoiler:the Red King]]'s eyes before setting them on fire. Both had it coming to them, and the latter was a monster beyond description.
*** In a training camp in New Mexico two children were killed and eaten by a ghoul. He severed the ghoul that did it in half, set the fat and nerves of its upper body on fire, like a candle, and threw it down a mineshaft. He then returned to the captured ghouls who surrendered to him and told him where to find the children in exchange for being allowed to live, and buried one of them up to its neck, melted the ghoul's face and melted the sand around it into glass, then poured a trail of orange juice from its head to a fire ant nest. He let the other ghoul go, minus an arm and a leg, to carry the warning. In this instance though, it's established later that he was slightly DrunkOnTheDarkSide at the time (there was a fallen angel in his head influencing his actions and empowering his spells with hellfire).
* In the third book of the ''Literature/InheritanceCycle'', the main character Eragon does some pretty heinous things. He wipes out what is apparently the last of a dying race, {{Mind Rape}}s a {{Jerkass}} from his hometown who stabbed his friends and family in the back (literally with one guy) and mercilessly slaughters a group of conscripted soldiers who were JustFollowingOrders. His feelings on each of the separate matters...vary.
** He feels no guilt at all for wiping out the Ra’zac, seeing them as nothing more than a race of monsters. Which is not ''quite'' true. They’re undoubtedly evil, but that’s at least partially due to BlueAndOrangeMorality. The last one's death showed that it was at least capable of feeling sadness, but it showed no remorse for all the people it and its family had killed over the years.
*** In regards to the Ra'zac, they could never coexist with humans unless one of two things happen: either they would need to find a new food source, or the humans would have to agree that they are allowed to feed on humans.
** His feelings on {{Mind Rap|e}}ing [[{{Jerkass}} Sloan]] is...not a shining example of morality. The dude was an AssholeVictim and KnightTemplarParent who chose to betray his peers (and murder one of them) when his daughter didn’t obey him. But he pretty much [[RewardedAsATraitorDeserves got what he had coming to him]] [[ColdBloodedTorture at the hands of the Ra’zac]]. Eragon feels no guilt at all for piling the MindRape on top of the torture, starvation, and [[EyeScream blinding]] he had already suffered.
*** However, he gave said {{Jerkass}} a chance improve his life and remove the MindRape, if he can genuinely change. The fact that he gets to live in a magical forest and the elves will tend to his every need changes this into StupidGood.
** On the other hand Eragon ''does'' feel guilty for slaughtering the conscripted soldiers. Not enough to spare their lives, but he honestly regrets having to kill them. From his perspective, it’s somewhere between ShootTheDog and IDidWhatIHadToDo, since the conscripts are magically bound to report his presence.
* ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' comes off as a rather well-done example. The fighters usually try to repel or turn the bad guys, not kill them outright. In fact, for the most part, the only deaths in the series are:
** The BigBad [[KickTheDog Kicking The Dog]].
** [[HijackedByGanon The Big Bad being killed by a Bigger Bad]].
** The Big Bad being killed by an AntiHero ([[BloodKnight usually a badger]]).
** The heroes killing a snake (snakes are AlwaysChaoticEvil).
* In the [[Literature/TheSaint Saint]] stories by Leslie Charteris, the title character targeted criminals and other evil characters for justice, including sometimes killing them.
* The Travis [=McGee=] novels by John D. [=MacDonald=]. [=McGee=] goes after the worst of the worst, and, though he's only supposed to get back stolen/defrauded property, he often ends up killing his targets.
** Travis is quite aware of this trope and works hard to [[AvertedTrope avert it whenever possible]]; in almost every case, he kills strictly in self-defense and his narration usually remarks that ItNeverGetsAnyEasier. In one instance, when he has to kill several people who are part of a terrorist group who would kill him in a second if he didn't agree to help them, he eliminates them all and suffers a HeroicBSOD immediately afterward.
* Literature/ArtemisFowl may no longer be a VillainProtagonist, but he still commits crimes against criminals.
* In various parts of the ''Inferno,'' Dante kicks, beats, or swindles the damned souls, always with the approval of his guide Virgil. Justified (in the context of the poem, at least) in that the victims genuinely ''are'' damned souls who have been condemned by God for their sins, and ''pitying'' them would be an act of ''impiety''.
* Subverted in ''Literature/TheHobbit'', which quite possibly was the most important act in the series. [[spoiler: After getting away from Gollum using the Ring to become invisible, Bilbo has a perfect chance to kill Gollum for trying to kill and eat him after losing the riddle game... But chooses not to after realizing what a miserable life the creature had.]]
* Played straight in ''[[Literature/GentlemanBastard Red Seas Under Red Skies]]''. When Locke needs to commit a very public bit of villainy, [[spoiler: he heads straight for the disgustingly decadent Salon Corbeau and sacks the city]].
* Corwin of ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' describes his attitude at one point:
--> In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I am a part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. I sometimes fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils. I destroy [them] when I find them, and on that Great Day ... when the world is completely cleansed of evil, then I, too, will go down into darkness, swallowing curses... But whatever... Until that time, I shall not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.
* In ''Literature/ShutterIsland'', one of the things that haunts Teddy is the massacre of the surrendered guards at the death camp. He basically says that it was sheer murder what they did, but the press called them heroes for it because it was Nazis.
* Jenna receives a lecture about the importance of doing this in the ''Literature/GreatAltaSaga'', but still refuses because, well, she's seventeen and has lived a fairly sheltered life up until that point. As a result, one of her best friends is killed.
* Fully justified in ''Film/TheGodfather''. While the two boys that savagely beat Bonasera's daughter to the point that "she will never be beautiful again" are implied to get what they deserve in the movie, the novel goes into detail. It would fall under ExtremeMeleeRevenge, except that that requires the revenge to go well beyond what is deserved, and there's little doubt that these two deserved every bit of it. Skipping over the details, the young men are said to need several months of hospital care and extensive reconstructive surgery.
** Subverted in later chapters, when Michael goes to Sicily and sees the end result of an ''entire society'' dedicated to this. This is a huge part of what drives his attempts to drive the Corleone Family into legitimate enterprises.
* File this one under OlderThanTheyThink: One of the stories in Creator/RudyardKipling's ''Literature/StalkyAndCo'' (published in the 19th century) involves the hero and his pals taking on the school bullies... at the suggestion of their ''priest''.
* Lisbeth Salander from Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy. She started this as a child when being assaulted by a boy far bigger and stronger than herself. On a following day, she took revenge by hitting him with a baseball bat. When her guardian rapes her, she has her revenge by incapacitating him with a taser, torturing him, and forcing him to watch the recording of her rape. She then threatens to make the recording public unless he arranges for her to have permanent control over her money. Finally, she tattoos "I am a sadistic pig, a pervert and a rapist" in large letters on his torso. [[spoiler:She's also revealed to have set her abusive father on fire (hence aforementioned court-ordered guardianship), and in the book proper she simply sits and watches as the villain burns to death in his car after crashing during a CarChase with Lisbeth.]]
* {{Retcon}}ned with Lestat in the Creator/AnneRice [[Literature/TheVampireChronicles Vampire Chronicles]] novels where we find out later that the only people he's ever outright killed have been evil people of some sort.
* In ''The Oathbreakers'', from the Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar series, Kethry works a powerful sorcery that gathers the combined rage of her mercenary company and uses it to punish the rapist/murderer of their former captain in a massively Karmic way. She specifically states that the magic is as close to evil as it's possible to get and she has to walk a very fine line between just retribution and cold-blooded vengeance, lest she fall to TheDarkSide in the process.
** Talia from the original ''Arrows'' trilogy did something similar. When she discovered a man who had raped and abused his stepdaughter, she used her empathy powers to trap him in the worst of his stepdaughter's memories, forcing him to experience what he did to her over and over. She did set things up so that it would end if he truly felt guilt for what he'd done, but the fact remains that she pulled an almost literal MindRape.
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': This trope is common to cultures and religions on both sides of the Narrow Sea. The North of Westeros on both sides of the Wall even codifies it in explicit language -- to deliberately not seek the active revenge of wrongs done to you is to anger the Old Gods and bring ruin to you and yours. This attitude tends to feed back into bloody cycles of violence without the Starks or other lords regularly stomping out fires.
** The Mereenese Grand Masters welcome Daenerys by [[spoiler:nailing a bunch of disemboweled slave children on columns beside the road with their fingers pointing to Mereen]]. Later, [[spoiler:they end up the same way on the main square of Mereen]]. (In the TV series at least, her advisers suggest this may not be the wisest course, and sure enough it's later pointed out to her that one of the guys she did this had spent his life working to improve the lot of the slaves, lampshading the negative side of the trope.)
** In ''A Storm of Swords'', Vargo Hoat, leader of the Brave Companions, a foreign band of mercenaries whose whole strategy can be summed up as [[RapePillageAndBurn terrorize the smallfolk and inflict atrocity after atrocity on their enemies]], finds himself abandoned by Roose Bolton and Tywin Lannister, the man whose son he maimed. [[spoiler:He ends up being tortured to death, having his limbs cut off slowly and fed back to him over a span of weeks by the Mountain.]]
** Speaking of the Mountain, Gregor Clegane. Another monster in Lord Tywin's arsenal, the 8-foot giant set off to rampage across the Riverlands, leading to more [[RapePillageAndBurn devastation at Lannister hands.]] Became infamous during the Sack of King's Landing, when he [[WouldHurtAChild killed the infant heir]] to the Targaryen kings, then brutally [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil raped and murdered the mother]], Elia of Dorne. [[spoiler: After defeating Oberyn, Elia's vengeful brother in a duel, he slowly succumbs to Oberyn's poisoned spear, which tormented him over the span of several weeks, leading to his exceptionally gruesome death.]]
** In ''Dances With Dragons'' Wyman Manderly [[spoiler:secretly kills three Freys and cooks them into three huge pies to serve to the Boltons and Freys]], as vengeance for their role in the Red Wedding.
* In the Creator/DaleBrown novel ''Wings of Fire'', Chris Wohl's killing of [[spoiler: Pavel Kazakov, two stabs to the diaphragm that fill his lungs with blood, followed by a stab-and-slash to the throat]], is vicious by any objective standard, but considering the evil scum he was doing it to...
** In ''Executive Intent'', after Somali pirates attack a Chinese vessel, the Chinese [[DisproportionateRetribution carry out a massive aerial and amphibious assault and takeover]]. [[AcceptableTargets But nobody likes Somali pirates so that's okay.]] One character even compares it to a BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork moment, noting that the Chinese had spared the rest of the world doing what everyone had secretly wanted but couldn't bring themselves to do.
* In ''Literature/RainbowSix'', one of the Basque separatists [[spoiler: kills a LittlestCancerPatient on live TV.]] Homer initially isn't allowed to take the shot because of fears that [[NiceJobBreakingItHero the plan will be screwed up]]; when he does get to take it, he goes for a liver-shot that will make the separatist die slowly and painfully. Ding gives him a perfunctory dressing-down afterwards, but no one is ''really'' complaining.
%% * Maybe not evil ''per se'', but Extirpon's means of dealing with the scumbags he battles is pretty extreme, being a RealityWarper and all. Probably the best example of him crossing a line is when he slits a child rapist's throat and then makes a large container appear out of nowhere in the apartment. He promptly locks his victim in the container, then floods it to drown him. Turns out, the victim was the same guy that had [[StuffedIntoTheFridge drowned and later decapitated one of Extirpon's past lovers]]. This is ''after'' forcing the {{Mooks}} to cough up [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes green mambas]], which bite and kill them.
* Literature/SisterhoodSeries by Creator/FernMichaels: Overuse of this trope combined with DisproportionateRetribution is a major cause in making villains UnintentionallySympathetic. ''Vendetta'' has the Sisterhood capture the Chinese ambassador's son who drunkenly killed Barbara Rutledge and her unborn child in a hit and run, and was not punished due to DiplomaticImpunity. They punish him for this by ''skinning him alive''. He was a creep and not a nice guy, but he simply did not deserve ''that'' level of punishment.
* In Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast'', the Burroughs' discover an AlternateHistory United States who's justice system is based on "[[Literature/TheBible An Eye for an Eye]]". Someone who's careless driving caused another person to lose a leg has his leg removed and has to wait the exact time his victim did before medical help will proceed to help him. Murderers are killed, arsonists are burned to death and it is suggested that rapists are raped (somehow).
* North from ''Literature/OfFearAndFaith'' is a firm believer in this, often bringing him into conflict with Phenix, who is [[ThouShaltNotKill much more merciful]].
* Literature/JackReacher is a firm believer in this, which is the main thing that keeps him a sympathetic protagonist; while he frequently kills people in cold blood (Lee Child himself describes it as murder in interviews), they're all human traffickers, paedophiles, and serial killers.
* ''Literature/BrownsPineRidgeStories'': Defied in the fourth story. The young Gary wants [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge retribution]] for [[spoiler: Ole Strawberry's Death]], but his father quickly rebukes him stating that it is the duty of the Justice system to try and punish the offenders.
* A politicized kobold gets to put the case against "delving and discovery" (i.e. dungeon raiding) in ''Literature/TalesOfMU''. Magisterius University does, of course, have a big D&D faculty.
* ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'' - One of the antagonists of the novel, Porfiry, works as a police officer and interrogator, which usually would qualify as a good-aligned job. As you further witness this officer's tactics in catching criminals, you see him commit to bribery, thievery, death-threats, and psychological torture to force an admission. Furthermore, he seems to actually enjoy it, toying with amateur criminals like a cat torturing a wounded mouse. The justification, of course, being that the victim of this was a murderer, and therefore deserves it.
* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': Discussed all the way through ''Literature/{{Mockingjay}}'', and reaches its culmination when [[spoiler: President Coin suggests either executing all Capitol citizens or forcing their children into the Games]].
* A large part of the ''Literature/{{Honorverse}}'' is a conscious deliberation on the concept, its reasons and outcomes, with the overall tone that it is somewhat satisfactory, but ultimately counterproductive approach, that ''might'' have its uses, but generally not worth it and is best avoided.
** The [[MeaningfulName Public Safety Committee]] revolt in the Haven Republic has had a [[WellIntentionedExtremist genuinely noble goal]] of overthrowing [[SleazyPolitician the corrupt and cretinous Legislaturalist regime]], but just as [[UsefulNotes/FrenchRevolution its historical prototype]] [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized slipped into a bloody tyranny]] ''really fast'' largely because its perpetrators couldn't keep themselves from taking their {{revenge}} on the Legislaturalists, and it kinda went downhill from there.
*** [[TheProfessor W.E.B. du Havel]] lampshades this later, noting in his lecture to the other characters [[InfoDump and the readers]] that this is the reason that the most post-revolutionary systems quickly fail or at least devolve into the civil wars: most revolutionary movements are created in a response to [[ThisIsUnforgivable some intolerable condition of regime]], and are more concentrated on ''fighting it'' than the rather technical needs of ''[[SoWhatDoWeDoNow governing]]'' the post-revolutionary society that resulted from their victory.
** Jeremy X, a former Mesan slave and the leader of the [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters anti-Mesan group Audubon Ballroon]], is described in-universe as a man who does Very Bad Things to the Very Bad People, and is an extremely ambivalent figure to say the least. He's at least sees where this could lead and later "settles down" a bit [[spoiler: Minister of War for Torch, where Berry Zilwicky exerts a moderating influence on him]].
** Havenite secret agent [[MemeticBadass Victor Cachat]] is a man that thinks entirely ''nothing'' on this concept[[note]]And indeed is noted in-universe as one of the very few men [[TheUnfettered able to kill and torture at the proverbial drop of a hat]], and then go on to have a lunch with his girlfriend with nary a second thought.[[/note]], but that's exactly the thing that makes him the scariest sonuvabitch in the whole Galaxy. After all, his ''true'' introductory short story is named "Fanatic" for a reason. Though it also helps that this ability is, in reality, a sort of a SuperpoweredEvilSide for Cachat, and it takes ''a lot'' to make him slip into it, while he is generally a nice, fair, and downright {{adorkable}} young man of somewhat naive upbringing and a strong moral compass.
** Manticoran commodore Sir Aivars Terekhov has long struggled with conflicting feelings of [[TheChainsOfCommanding his responsibility before his nation and his subordinates]], SurvivorGuilt borne from his early defeat [[FailureKnight where he thought he failed them]], and the ruthlessness growing out of them; until he met [[InsaneAdmiral brigadier Francisca Yucel]], late of Solarian Gendamerie, in ''The Shadow of Freedom'', and had the sort of epiphany that the GoodIsNotSoft and ''sometimes'' it is okay to be TheUnfettered, so long as people like this exist.
* ''Literature/OneNationUnderJupiter'': Diagoras pummels Odia after seeing the things she'd been doing at Camp Piety.
* ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'' operates on this trope. While the original novel presents the count's acts as heroics of a MagnificentBastard, as some [[Anime/{{Gankutsuou}} adaptations]] play them straight, pointing out that the innocent lives destroyed as collateral make the Count no less evil than the ex-friends he seeks revenge on.
* Kvothe of ''Literature/TheNameOfTheWind'' is singled out for public embarrassment by a petty professor; Kvothe uses this to justify public magical assault of that professor.
* ''Literature/TheCrimsonShadow'': Oliver justifies his stealing from rich merchants this way, as they've grown rich by collaborating with the evil King Greensparrow who rules over their people.
* Karsa Orlong, a VillainProtagonist and walking BarbarianHero {{deconstruction}} from the ''Literature/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'', is not an innocent boy scout himself, but he is quite fond of dishing out [[KarmicDeath karmic deaths]] to paedophiles and slavers indiscriminately, since he finds their practices ''appalling''. When he learns that the High Mage Bidithal raped Felisin Younger, he [[spoiler:rips off his privates and shoves them down his throat]].
* ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'' has captain Negri, chief of Imperial Security, whose job was assassinating people who wanted to assassinate the emperor.
* In Creator/SeaburyQuinn's [[OccultDetective Jules De Grandin series]], the title character often deals with various very awful people in ''truly'' brutal fashion. Like the {{Necromancer}} in one story who uses his [[ZombieMooks undead slaves]] as [[ILoveTheDead concubines]] and later has them[[WouldHurtAChild murder a three-year-old]]. De Grandin ends up trying to arrest him alongside a local cop, but he [[ExactWords "fell down the stairs and broke his neck."]] [[CowboyCop The officer adds "He had to do it twice, the first time wasn't enough."]]
* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in the ''Creator/SophieHannah'' novel The Carrier, concerning a mystery about why Tim Breary confesses to murdering his wife Francine, but claims he doesn't know why he did it. [[spoiler: It turns out that it was actually Francine's caretaker, Lauren, who decided to [[MercyKill put Francine out of her misery]] because Tim and his two best friends, Kerry and Dan, were endlessly abusing Francine, who had a stroke and was bedridden, unable to move or speak and justified it to themselves because of Francine's former DomesticAbuse towards Tim that [[DrivenToSuicide culminated in Tim trying to kill himself]]. When Gabrielle, the story's protagonist and Tim's former {{Love Interest|s}}, discovers this, she realises Tim takes the fall for Lauren because he realises that he was basically torturing a victim who could not fight back and, regardless of her treatment of him, realises that he had no way of verifying Francine was the same person after having her stroke and that he'd become no better than his former abuser and thus, unworthy of Gabby's love.]]
* Zack, the central character of ''Literature/TheMentalState'', has two approaches to dealing with bad people. If they are redeemable, he will impose a barbaric amount of tough-love on them until they see sense and hopefully pull a HeelFaceTurn. If they are irredeemable, he will simply delight in turning all of their friends against them and torturing them. Believing that it is better to let his victims suffer indefinitely, he only ever kills one person over the course of the story, and only because they were psychotic and well beyond the point of saving.
* In the ''Literature/SonjaBlue'' series, Blue is a [[HunterOfHisOwnKind vampire-hunting vampire]] whose ultimate quest is to find and destroy the Master vampire who created her, and changed/ruined her life forever.
* In ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'', this is the philosophy of the protagonist, [[VigilanteMan John Rumford]]. He and his fellow vigilantes do not object to [[TarAndFeathers tarring and feathering]] a corrupt judge, lynching {{Sociopathic Soldier}}s or otherwise paying the bad guys back in kind.
* ''Literature/ProjectTau'':
** Kata, when he [[spoiler:kills Mason]] for taking him prisoner and reducing him to the level of an animal.
** Averted with Tau, who does [[spoiler:kill Dennison]] but doesn't take any real pleasure in it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

* If Elsa from ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'' harms someone with malicious intent, it's pretty much safe to say they had it coming. Just ask the Duke of Weselton and his henchmen, who draw first blood and provoke her into an UnstoppableRage against them. Not a particularly bright move on their parts, considering [[AnIcePerson what Elsa is]].

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/BatmanReturns'', ComicBook/{{Catwoman}} electrocutes [[HateSink Max]] [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Shreck]] to death with a taser in his mouth. She also beats up and slashes up the face of a mugger/rapist earlier in the movie on her first night out as a vigilante.
* ''Film/KillBill:'' This is kind of The Bride's thing.
* In ''{{Film/Goodfellas}}'', Henry confronts a man who harassed and hit his future wife and [[PistolWhipping pistol-whips]] him until blood starts flowing.
* ''Film/TheHungerGamesMockingjay'' part 2 has [[TheLancer the Lancer]] going that path when he answers to the proposal to spare the enemy's civilians.
-->'''Gale:''' "That's a luxury we weren't given. It doesn't matter [that they are civilians]. Even if they are civilians just mopping floors, they are helping the enemy. If they have to die, I can live with that."
* ''Film/TheToxicAvenger'':
** Played straight with our hero, Toxie. He's one of the kindest beings you could ever meet, unless you are a villain. He has a girlfriend, eventual wife, that he is very devoted to. And he does things as big as saving lives to helping someone open a jar or cross the street. But if you're an enemy, [[GoodIsNotNice he'll kill you in a way that makes Freddy Krueger seem nice]]. One example being he holds a robber down by the neck, pours milk and whipped cream into his mouth, then turns on the blender and blends his throat -making a human milkshake.
** He saves Sweetie Honey in ''Film/CitizenToxieTheToxicAvengerIV'' from being raped by brutally killing the rapists. He rips out Tex's tongue, [[AndShowItToYou shows it to him]], and throws it on Dex's face. As Tex screams in pain, Toxie lifts him up and breaks his neck by slamming him into a ceiling. Dex and Lex are then killed by Toxie using his trusty mop. Afterward, he goes to comfort Sweetie, asking if she's ok, telling her the men won't hurt her anymore, and holds her hand while offering to take her to his shack so she could call someone to take her home.
* ''Film/LittleSweetheart'' gives us an example of evil paying evil on to evil back and forth, or at least trying. Thelma blackmails Robert without knowing he was a bank robber, and later on, he roughs up the person he thought it was (her older brother) before the brother explains the truth. He then plans to scare the shit out of Thelma (but not harm her, she's only 9), but the cops get in the way.
* A common perception of [[KnightTemplar Sheriff Wydell]]'s actions towards the {{Villain Protagonist}}s of ''Film/TheDevilsRejects''. Yes, what Wydell did was to embrace HeWhoFightsMonsters to {{anvilicious}} extremes, but, on the other hand, the people he was [[ColdBloodedTorture horrifically abusing and butchering]] had a years-long, if not decades-long, history of torture, rape and serial murder.
* In ''Film/DeadMansShoes'', the AntiHero Richard comes back to his town to take bloody revenge on the people who bullied his brother when they were younger, [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge killing them brutally one by one.]] The film is interspersed with disturbing flashbacks showing what they did, any of which could explain the extent of Richard's fury, culminating in the most horrific: [[spoiler:they drive him out into the country, literally torture him and abandon him with a rope around his neck that he uses to hang himself. The brother, who had appeared as a character throughout the film, was DeadAllAlong]]. However, whilst the bullies were indeed monstrous, we're not entirely expected to agree with Richard's actions -- and in the final scene, Richard acknowledges that the things he's done have been terrible.
* In ''Film/{{Dogville}}'', a woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado town. In exchange, she agrees to work for them. As a search visits town, however, they force her to do more chores within the same time, for less pay. The townspeople then start treating her like a slave, eventually escalating their abuse of her, up to and including rape. Unfortunately for them, [[spoiler:she turns out to be the daughter of a mob boss -- and the townspeople have lost all chance of her forgiveness]].
* ''Film/TheBoondockSaints'' believe in this. It's arguable whether their actions and success are a result of divine intervention or just plain dumb luck -- but either way, you ''do not mess'' with the [=MacManus=] brothers.
* Creator/ClintEastwood:
** ''Film/TheGoodTheBadAndTheUgly'': Blondie is only "the Good" because he shows some mercy (and most of his ruthless acts are retaliation...).
** ''Film/HighPlainsDrifter'' is an entire movie devoted to this trope.
** If you find yourself in a movie where Eastwood's character [[TheNameless doesn't have a name]], you should probably run like hell.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'': This is most of Anakin's Dark actions in the prequels. In ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'', he kills the Sand People who kidnapped, beat, tortured, and quite probably raped his mother. What keeps it from being justified is that he killed all of them, women and children included. He later takes down Dooku at the start of ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'', which would have been completely justified, except Dooku was almost-literally [[JustForPun unarmed]]. The moral of this, however, is that this trope is a ''bad thing'' and is part of what leads Anakin to TheDarkSide.
* What Jigsaw perceives to be his ''modus operandi'' in the ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' series. Of course, when you're taking people who don't appreciate their lives and killing them with methods of steadily escalating atrocity, maybe the message doesn't come across so clearly.
* Part of the premise of ''Film/LawAbidingCitizen''. Particularly when Clyde Shelton dismembers Clarence Darby, who killed his family.
* In ''Film/MadMax1'', Max [[spoiler: gives Johnny the Boy a LifeOrLimbDecision, handcuffing his ankle to a wrecked vehicle and setting a crude time-delay fuse. It's all a part of his RoaringRampageOfRevenge]].
* In Creator/JohnWayne's ''Film/TheCowboys'', the evil guy is [[spoiler:finally defeated by the young boys. Instead of just shooting him dead (as he deserved), the boys leave him attached to a horse by the ankle and send the horse off running, with him dragging on the ground (which he deserved just as much)]].
* ''Film/WildWildWest'': Dr. Arless Loveless is [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain a racist bigot who is constantly making racial slurs and jokes]] against Creator/WillSmith's Jim West. He's also lost his entire body below the waist, so James West responds by making "short" jokes about him.
* The protagonist of ''Film/GrossePointeBlank'' uses this as justification for his career as a hitman. He comments that the files on most of his targets read like a demon's resume, and says "If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there." [[DeconstructedTrope This gets deconstructed for him when he discovers]] [[spoiler:his last intended target is his former flame's dad, who is about to testify about faulty seat-belts killing people in accidents. It's enough to make him decide he wants no part of the business anymore]].
* The ''Film/InglouriousBasterds'' would be tried for war crimes and hanged for what they did in France. Such crimes include but are not limited to: murdering soldiers, beating them to death with baseball bats, scalping their corpses, permanently scarring survivors for life, shooting into crowds of unarmed citizens, and suicide bombing a crowded theater. However, it's all okay, [[AcceptablePoliticalTargets because they're committing all these atrocious acts on the Nazis!]]
* Much of ''Film/XMenFirstClass'' is composed of Erik (later Magneto) doing this. He's Jewish, as a child he and his family are sent to Auschwitz, and a Nazi there (who we later find out is the mutant Sebastian Shaw) murders Erik's mother when Erik is unable to use his (latent) powers. As an adult, the first part of the film has Erik hunting down, torturing and murdering Nazis and their supporters. At the end of the movie he gives Shaw a very KarmicDeath - the film clearly intends it to be a JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope moment, but Shaw's such a madman that much of the audience is inclined to cheer Erik on for doing it, especially as there's also little reason to believe Shaw could be safely captured. And ''then'' the US and Soviet militaries try to murder the mutants who just saved them from nuclear war, and Erik turns their missiles back on them. Paying evil to evil is basically his personal philosophy, contrasting with Charles' pay-good-unto-evil-and-maybe-they'll-have-a-change-of-heart ethos (and influenced by the fact that Erik's seen a lot more of evil than [[WideEyedIdealist Charles has at this point]]), and it's a substantial part of what ultimately separates them.
* The book and movie ''Film/ATimeToKill'' are about a father who kills the two men who raped his ten-year-old daughter, [[MoralDissonance before they have even been brought to trial]]. He was afraid that they would be acquitted, despite being caught red-handed, because they were white and his daughter was black. It was set in the DeepSouth, after all. The daughter's father throughout expresses no remorse, even loudly declaring in court, "Yes they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in hell!"
-->'''Lucien Wilbanks''' (to Defense counsel Brigance): If you win this case, justice will prevail. But if you lose, justice will also prevail. Now that is a strange case.
* [[SubvertedTrope Subverted rather well]] in ''[[Film/TheMagnificentSeven1960 The Magnificent Seven]]'': [[{{Bandito}} Calvera]], the movie's BigBad, who corners the seven and lets them go by taking their weapons and riding them out of town. His justification? An old Mexican quote: "A thief who steals from another thief is pardoned for a hundred years." Of course, he assumed that they were just HiredGuns who'd [[NotSoDifferent skip town the moment they were paid...]] By the end of the film, Calvera finds his assumptions were [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold very]], [[WeHelpTheHelpless very]], [[EvilCannotComprehendGood wrong]].
* In the MadeForTV movie ''Outrage!'' (1986), Creator/RobertPreston (yes, of ''Film/TheMusicMan'') plays the father of a woman who is raped and murdered, by a man who ends up getting away with the crime on a technicality. After this incident causes his wife so much grief that she dies, he hunts down the man and shoots him dead, then calmly drives to the police station and turns himself in.
* ''Film/{{Taken}}'' is 90 minutes of this. In most other films, the protagonist doing things like jamming rusty nails into a villain's thighs and then leaving them to be electrocuted to death would be something that [[MoralEventHorizon disgusts the audience into reviling said protagonist]]. But when said villain is a human trafficker who kidnaps teenage girls, addicts them to drugs and then sells them to be prostitutes and sex slaves and is [[PapaWolf planning to do so to the protagonist's daughter]], you find yourself cheering instead.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** ''Film/StarTrek2009'': Averted. Nero has just spent the whole time running around slaughtering everyone in his path and blowing up a planet on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. That doesn't stop Kirk from offering to save him and his men when the ''Narada'' is being disintegrated into an artificially-created NegativeSpaceWedgie (Spock, who was personally targeted by this revenge, finds the offer logical but hates it). Nero declines the offer, whereupon Kirk orders the ''Enterprise'' to hasten/ensure his passing.
** Near the end of ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'', Picard has managed to keep the Son'a leader Ru'afo off his back long enough to trigger the self-destruct of the {{Phlebotinum}} collector. The ''Enterprise'', the sensors of which have been depicted moments earlier as sensitive enough to identify a lone Klingon on an entire battleship, flies past the exploding collector and beams off Picard... but not Ru'afo, who must have been detected when the transporter operator scanned the collector to locate Picard.
* This is the premise of ''Film/{{Paparazzi}}'', with a celebrity going on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge against a trio of cartoonishly evil {{Paparazzi}} who put his wife and son in the hospital, including orchestrating a SuicideByCop scenario and directly murdering another one off-screen. The guy in charge of investigating all this even secretly roots for whoever's doing it (though he still has to bring him in because, of course, he's breaking the law,) and in the end [[spoiler: the guy viciously beats the final {{Paparazzi}} and manages to frame him for all the murders while he gets off scot free]].
* While the main philosophy in ''Film/{{Swordfish}}'' is the idea that a few innocent casualties are OK if you stop a greater evil, it is heavily implied that Gabriel Shear is a terrorist who only targets terrorists who are plotting against the U.S.
* In ''Film/TransformersDarkOfTheMoon'' the Wreckers tore a Decepticon pilot limb from limb, said Con was vaporizing civilians for several seconds before.
* In ''Film/LetTheRightOneIn'', the bullies who have tormented Oskar throughout the movie are joined by the older brother of one of them who plans to force Oskar to stay underwater for three whole minutes in the school swimming pool -if he can't, they'll cut Oskar's eye out with a knife. After a minute of this, Eli crashes into the swimming pool through the skylight and literally rips them apart. The audience never considers Eli to be evil for doing this. She was saving Oskar's life and the bullies had previously shown themselves to be sadistic bullies who enjoyed hurting Owen simply because they could.
* Teaser posters for the American film version of ''[[Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo]]'' feature the tagline [[http://www-movieline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/girlwithdragontattoouk.jpg "Evil Shall With Evil Be Expelled"]].
* ''Film/TheDarkKnight'': ComicBook/TwoFace's entire M.O. becomes this after [[spoiler:Rachel Dawes' death]]. As a WellIntentionedExtremist, he starts out by [[spoiler:shooting [[DirtyCop Det. Michael Wuertz]]]].
* In ''Film/{{Dogma}}'', as the Angel of Death, this was Loki's role. He throws down his fiery sword after disagreeing with God on who deserves to die and is cast out of Heaven. Upon Bartleby's finding a way back in, he returns to his role with gusto.
* It's implied at the end of ''Film/{{The Collect|or}}ion'' that Arkin [[spoiler:is gonna return the favor back at The Collector himself after all the hell he went through due to said killer's hands after setting him on fire, finding out he escaped, learning his past, tracking him down thanks to his new knowledge and ambushing The Collector in his own home]].
* Played for laughs in ''Film/TrueLies'' when Harry is under the influence of a {{truth serum|s}}.
--> '''Helen:''' Have you ever killed anyone?\\
'''Harry:''' Yeah, but they were all bad.
* Film/{{Sartana}} does this to all the evil men he's ever encountered. The series even hints that he's a supernatural spirit of vengeance because of how often he takes down bad guys.
* In ''{{Film/Goldeneye}}'', Valentin tells Bond a story about the Lienz Cossacks, who worked with the Nazi government against the Soviets during the Second World War, then helped the British against the Nazis when it became obvious the Nazis were going to lose. After the war, the British government handed the Cossacks over to Stalin, and many of them died in the gulags. Bond claims it was "not exactly our finest hour", and while Valentin agrees, he considers the Cossacks ruthless people who got what they deserved.
* ''Film/ISpitOnYourGrave'', one of the most infamous RapeAndRevenge films of all time, is about a woman taking violent revenge upon her rapists.
* ''Film/DriveAngry'': John Milton slaughters the cultists en masse and shows no mercy towards them, [[spoiler:especially their leader Jonah King, whom he erases from existence with the Godkiller and uses his skull to drink some beer from]]. The villains are ''really'' bad to make this serviceable. These people are a baby-sacrificing cult, and King is a sadistic rapist, murderer and power-tripping maniac.
* ''Film/{{Unfriended}}'': Laura Barns was DrivenToSuicide after having a humiliating video of her uploaded to Website/YouTube and suffering bullying and harassment. When her vengeful spirit goes after her tormentors, she drives them to [[CruelAndUnusualDeath Cruel and Unusual Suicides]].
* In ''Film/SlumdogMillionaire'', Salim's first villainous action is his cold-blooded VigilanteExecution of crime boss, pimp, and [[WouldHurtAChild child-abuser]] Maman.
* In ''Film/IShotJesseJames'', Robert Ford shoots UsefulNotes/JesseJames, an infamous killer and outlaw, InTheBack.
* {{Discussed|Trope}} in ''Film/TheHitmansBodyguard''. Darius Kincaid is a ProfessionalKiller, but he only takes contracts on other criminals. He contrasts this with Michael Bryce, a professional bodyguard who protects rich underworld figures from their enemies, [[ArmorPiercingQuestion asking him which job is really the less moral]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* [[{{JerkAss}} Bill]] does this to [[AssholeVictim Lars]] in Chapter Three of ''Fanfic/ATriangleInTheStars'' after one too many insults. [[spoiler: [[DisproportionateRetribution Mainly by having the little cloud above his head shock his ear and then rain on the young man.]]]] [[AllLovingHero Steven]] doesn't take it well, unlike usual witness examples to AssholeVictim and [[SubvertedTrope this trope]], which surprises and confuses the demon.
* ''Fanfic/ChildOfTheStorm'' has Magneto, Loki, and Doctor Strange as the characters who are most willing to cross the line (Loki casually blinding Sabretooth, Magneto's creatively CruelMercy to the Winter Guard, and Doctor Strange's , though many of the adult characters - and even some of the younger ones - have dabbled in it. Wanda ends up ''melting'' [[spoiler: Sinister - or one of his bodies, at least -]] ''alive'' when she catches up to him, and AssholeVictim or not, that's no small matter. However, it's portrayed as DirtyBusiness even when it's done for good reasons: in Loki and Magneto's cases, it's a demonstration that they're ReformedButNotTamed, in Doctor Strange's it's a demonstration that his air of harmless mischief is a mask for [[BewareTheSillyOnes someone incredibly frightening,]] and in Wanda's, it underlines the recurring point that she's NotSoDifferent from her father, no matter what she might like to think. It's also portrayed as extremely disturbing/a sign of imminent mental breakdown when one of the younger characters touches on it.
* ''[[Fanfic/DeliverUsFromEvilSeries Mortality]]'' has Watson [[DeadlyDoctor coldly interrogating]] a criminal for his friend's whereabouts, most likely ''killing'' the criminal and [[NightmareFuel remorselessly killing Smith]]. Granted, he ''did'' [[ColdBloodedTorture torture Holmes with an inch of his life]] and [[TooDumbToLive gloat over the guy while he's dying.]]
* ''Fanfic/NobodyDies'' has Rei (yes, ''[[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion that]]'' Rei) executing very cruel tricks on people who mess with her friends. Other than her love of blackmail, her most cruel thing was to film Kyoko Zeppelin getting it on with her ex-husband in a storage closet during the school dance then put the footage on Youtube. And [[MagnificentBastard Yui]] [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking forbid taking it down]]. Why? The bitch [[ForTheEvulz ruined her daughter's happiest moment in life out of sadism]]. Rei had to be specifically ordered to leave Kyoko alone when it looked like as if she was regularly beating Asuka (even though no one liked this order one bit, Misato had to be physically restrained from issuing a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown). It helps that everyone is scared shitless of Rei and she knows it very well.
-->'''Rei''': Asuka is my friend and if you touch her... ''(psychotic grin)'' I touch you. 'Kay?
* In the fanfic ARSENAL, the three troubleshooters hired by Gendo to retake control of NERV are punished for the horrific actions they performed (the least of which being murdering dozens of civilians evacuating Tokyo-3 on the eve of an Angel attack) in horrifying ways. Quite a few fans were disquieted by their punishments, considering them too brutal.
* Rose Potter has this philosophy in the MarySue fic ''The Girl Who Lived''.
* In ''FanFic/InvaderZimTheSeries'', most of the villains end up [[HeelFaceTurn switching sides]] or simply being defeated. However, the Irken Zoburg - a MadScientist with a long, ''long'' list of KickTheDog moments - is dealt a FateWorseThanDeath: [[spoiler: he's crucified to a rocket and launched into orbit, where his pressurized armor will ensure he [[AndIMustScream stays alive long enough to starve to death]]]]. This would be considered a MoralEventHorizon for the protagonist responsible, except that Zoburg's last act prior to this was to torture said protagonist's little brother to death (purely ForTheEvulz), so he's excused for taking his revenge.
* ''FanFic/TheImmortalGame'': Twilight Sparkle's brutal execution of [[TheDragon General Esteem]] borders on the MoralEventHorizon, but considering that the latter willingly sold out the entire world to [[BigBad Titan]], [[spoiler: is the one who turned Twilight into [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Nihilus]], and just confessed to killing and ''eating'' Spike[[note]] though this turns out to be a final spiteful lie[[/note]],]] it was probably still better than he deserved.
* The Nameless Passenger from the ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'' is a {{Deconstruct|edTrope}}ion of the this trope. It is out for {{Revenge}} on Discord and wants to make him pay for everything he's done and believes crimes can't be forgiven. This leads it to extend this belief to his ''minions'', the majority of which are brainwashed or otherwise unwilling, and try to convince Twilight to kill them. [[spoiler:It turns out she's actually Nightmare Paradox, Twilight's [[FutureMeScaresMe potential future]] SuperpoweredEvilSide and the true BigBad of [[BadFuture Dark World]]. She'd managed to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong and decided before the CosmicRetcon took full effect to go Nightmare and make Discord pay for all the suffering he'd caused her and her friends while torturing them for a thousand years by crucifying him with flaming chains then burning him to death from the inside out with {{Hellfire}} that burns hotter the more unrepentant sins the victim has (considering this was Discord in the first cycle, when he was at the height of his AxCrazy sadism, that's a lot). [[StartOfDarkness Unfortunately, by the time she'd killed him]], she decided [[HeWhoFightsMonsters he hadn't suffered enough]] and to trap him in a GroundhogDayLoop IronicHell to punish him for all eternity, not caring how many innocents suffer and are erased from existence in the process (the entire population of Dark World several ''billion'' times over).]]
* At one point in the Tartaros Arc in ''Manga/FairyTail'', [[spoiler: Kyouka captures Erza and subjects her to ColdBloodedTorture in Chapters 365-366 and 368. Erza breaks out in Chapter 371 and at the start of Chapter 372, has a perfect opportunity to torture Kyouka back, but didn't]]. In a [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10791036/1/What-Chapter-372-of-Fairy-Tail-should-have-been fanfiction that]] [[http://mrshoneydew.deviantart.com/art/What-Chapter-372-of-Fairy-Tail-Should-Have-Been-524338116 rewrites Chapter 372]], she ''[[RonTheDeathEater does]]''. Sometimes with [[DisproportionateRetribution worse methods]].
** A fanfiction rewriting [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12742112/1/What-Chapter-321-of-Fairy-Tail-should-have-been Chapter]] [[https://www.deviantart.com/mrshoneydew/art/What-Chapter-321-of-Fairy-Tail-should-have-been--717497308 321 has Erza]] giving Minerva the same treatment. Her methods of punishing Minerva for brutalizing Lucy, stabbing Kagura, and torturing Milliana involve dismembering Minerva, gouging her eyes out, and eating her fingers! She even violated Minerva with a sword!
* Hit with a DeconReconSwitch in ''Fanfic/TheWrongReflection''. Captain Kanril Eleya is in an EnemyMine situation with the Klingon-Cardassian Allianc, which includes her own MirrorUniverse counterpart. When Captain Kanril stops Dal Kanril's fellows from summarily executing some Terran [=POWs=], Dal Kanril uses this trope as justification (the Terrans had committed atrocities against the Bajorans). Captain Kanril points out this just perpetuates the CycleOfRevenge--"what does doing the same thing to ''them'' solve?!"--and grants political asylum to the other prisoners... except for the one that really ''was'' guilty of war crimes.
* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' door-stopper rewrite fic [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8019901/1/Of-Sheep-and-Battle-Chicken Of Sheep and Battle Chicken's]] Sara Ying Shepard, full stop. We are introduced to her using black-nano bio-warfare weapons against slavers. Her reaction to The Illusive Man suggesting co-operation with Aria to extract Archangel from Omega is "What part of ''sic semper sceleratus'' [Thus ever to criminals] sounds fucking optional to you, Harper?"
* ''FanFic/ANewChanceSeries'': Latios has no pity for Pokemon poachers and seeks to brutally punish. [[DeconstructedTrope However, this only scares the hell out of everybody]], especially [[AllLovingHero Ash]], who has no such vengeful tendencies. Pikachu eventually [[WhatTheHellHero tells him off]] when his desire for vengeance makes him forget how Ash would feel. [[spoiler: Eventually, Latios ''disobeys'' Ash and murders a Pokemon poacher behind his back. Officer Jenny, horrified by all this, decides Latios is too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely, and had one of Latios' friends not erased her memory, he would have been arrested.]]
* ''Fanfic/PokemonResetBloodlines'' features Belladonna Tyrian, a girl whose main rule in life seems to be this. Case in point, [[spoiler: she sets up an elaborate plan to kill the father of one of his girlfriends [[IHaveNoSon for having disowned her]].]] She later encounters Ash, who questions this attitude, and she in turn asks him if he has ever felt anger over someone he cares about being hurt and a desire to punish that person. Ash then recalls the time he fought [[TheRival Paul]] and almost flew into a full-blown rage [[spoiler: because [[ATwinkleInTheSky he blasted Primeape into the sky]] possibly with fatal results,]] and he realizes they're NotSoDifferent.
* ''FanFic/ShadowOfTheDragon'': In chapter 18, when Satome kidnaps Tomoyo and tries to rape her, Sakura shows up just in time, kicks him through a wall, and allows the Mirror card to castrate him with glass shards. While Sakura is left guilt-ridden over her part in it, considering he had tried to rape both Tomoyo and Sakura previously, and is confirmed to have raped seven different girls in the next chapter, you won't feel bad for him: Meiling states outright that even if it wasn't the right thing to do, Satome certainly deserved it.
* ''FanFic/RosarioVampireBrightestDarkness'':
** In Act II, Dark's murder of Miyabi Fujisaki is [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill ridiculously over the top and brutal]], but considering the fact that Miyabi enslaved Mizore's hometown, [[SexualExtortion extorted Mizore for sex in exchange for sparing her mother's life]] [[ILied before ordering Tsurara's execution anyway]], and [[PostRapeTaunt openly gloated about raping Mizore to Tsukune and co.'s faces]], it's hard to feel any sympathy for him; despite being horrified at Dark's brutality, Tsukune and the others unanimously agree that Miyabi [[AssholeVictim deserved every second of it]]. Kurumu sums it up best:
--->'''Kurumu''': Pay the price, you asshole!
** In Act V chapter 37, Ceal does this to the original dark Falla, ripping out her remaining eye with her bare hands. Brutal, yes, but considering that the dark Falla had lured her younger sister to her demise out of spite, destroyed her entire kingdom and species in a fit of rage over being denied the chance to become queen, used Kyouko as an UnwittingPawn to dupe Luna into restoring her magic, and gleefully ripped her GoodCounterpart to shreds with her bare hands while laughing about it before trying to kill Kyouko and going on a psychotic rampage through a human city, she gets absolutely NoSympathy in-universe and out. Leon states outright that the dark Falla had such a thing coming to her, and Apoch and Astreal declare she deserves even worse.
* In ''Fanfic/StevenUniverseAndTheHuntersOfArcadia'', Jamie explains to Jasper that Gunmar and the Janus Order’s hold on him is under a MightMakesRight principle and he is merely “[offering] them the same courtesy” when he admits to finding a way to keep Gunmar out of power.
* ''Fanfic/TheWarOfTheMasters'': The Moab Confederacy under First Minister Elizabeth Tran enacts a policy of torture and extrajudicial murder of its enemies, paying no heed to such niceties as international borders or the feelings of their primary ally the Klingon Empire while they do it. Considering this policy is mainly directed at SpacePirates and [[SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil the Orion Syndicate]] and follows decades of raids against various border planets including pre-independence Moab, even some of the Starfleet characters sympathize. Though in ''Fanfic/DontSayGoodbyeFarewell'', Lieutenant al-Qahtani points out there's a practical problem with the policy, in that it encourages the slavers to [[ThrownOutTheAirlock dump their cargo]] to hide the evidence.
* In contrast with the strict ThouShaltNotKill rule of the forest Clans, the city "Clan" [=BloodClan=] goes with this rule in ''Fanfic/BloodRustyAU''. If attacked by enemies, they fight to kill and almost never leave survivors. Rusty is initially horrified at killing cats but quickly grows desensitized and begins to think the other cats deserved to be killed.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* This is the justification of Comicbook/ThePunisher, who brutally guns down criminals. How this is received depends on where in the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the comic he's appearing in is. But one thing's for sure. If he has you on his list, he will kick you when you are down. And shoot you. And throw a grenade on you. And push you in front of a moving subway train. And pull out all your teeth while you're tied to a dentist's chair. And run you over with his car, then back up and run you over again. And hook your balls up to a car battery, turn the ignition key until you've shit all over yourself, and then turn the key some more. If you're on his list, you deserve everything he does to you. So don't get on Frank's list.
** The [[Comicbook/ThePunisherMAX MAX]] arc "The Slavers" is one of the more infamous examples of this trope. In it, Castle's fighting a group of war criminals turned human traffickers who do horrible, horrible things to their captives. When Castle finds one of the three ringleaders of the operation, he douses the guy with fuel and burns him alive. Let's just say Castle spends the rest of the arc using other inventive methods to mete out payback.
*** The other two ringleaders (one of which is the fuel-doused one's son) were also disposed of in very graphic ways. The woman responsible for the more practical aspects (such as having the girls raped for twenty-four hours so they don't even think of rebelling) was thrown against a shatterproof window face-first multiple times till ''the window frame broke'', [[DestinationDefenestration making her do a swan dive many stories high.]] The son ended up getting drugged, dragged out into the wilderness, his stomach slit open, and hung from his own entrails on a tree branch. [[spoiler:Then Frank '''WOKE HIM UP''' before letting him bleed out.]]
*** "It had been a long, long time since I hated anyone the way I hated them."
** Lampshaded in "Comicbook/WelcomeBackFrank", where a victim that he left helpless in a gasoline-doused house is screaming that he's no different from her. The Punisher turns back to the mansion with a grenade, calmly replies "Tell me something I don't know," and pulls the pin.
** Nicky Cavella digs up the Punisher's family and pisses on their bones, believing this will enrage Frank and make him easier to kill. Instead, Frank hits every Mafia operation ''even harder'' until Cavella is abandoned by his own troops, realizing how useless he is, and Frank leaves him to die over several days of a gutshot wound. During Frank's rampage, the city is torn between letting Frank do his thing and actually upholding the law, and settle for reburying Frank's family (Cavella gets taken out quickly after).
* On the DC side of things, ComicBook/TheSpectre is pretty much the poster boy for this trope. Depending on the writer, it's usually somewhere between "implied" and "outright stated, there on page 2" that the Spectre is the embodiment of the wrath of God, and he's usually more than willing to outright torture people that "deserve it." In the darker arcs, it's made clear that as far as the Spectre is concerned, ''everybody'' "deserves it" (in the "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" sense) and he's actually ''holding/being held back'' most of the time.
* Played with Franchise/{{Batman}}, [[TerrorHero surprisingly.]] His MO involves terrorizing criminals and pummeling them within an inch of their lives, but he (generally) refuses to kill, and he does indeed have a very strong belief in justice, and believes that you can't fix the system if you yourself are hindering it. Of course, this all depends on the writer. Sometimes he's a borderline outlaw who doesn't give a damn about the law, and will even beat the hell out of petty criminals. But other times he will having varying levels of tolerance towards certain criminals. Two contrasting examples would be ''ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand'' and ''[[YetAnotherChristmasCarol Noel.]]'' Particularly notable is the example of [[YouKilledMyFather Joe Chill]]: On one occasion, Batman scared him to almost lunacy, and after revealing his secret identity to him, he brought his gun to him so he would [[DrivenToSuicide blow his own brains out]] before the other criminals would kill him in retaliation.
* [[ComicBook/RedHood Jason Todd]] tended toward this attitude during [[RecklessSidekick his career as Robin]]. Since he came {{back from the|Dead}} {{dead|Sidekick}}, he's denied Batman's ThouShaltNotKill rule and considers himself [[TheUnfettered Batman as he should be.]]
** This is shown even more in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanUnderTheRedHood''. It starts with Joker beating Jason senselessly with a crowbar, and then killing him with a bomb. It ends with Jason beating Joker back with a crowbar, and then attempting to kill ''him'' with a bomb!
--->'''Jason:''' I'm not talking about killing Penguin, or Scarecrow, or Dent... I'm talking about ''him''. '''Just ''him!''''' And doing it because... he took me away from you.
** Shortly prior to the end of his career as Robin, Jason encounters a rapist who had [[spoiler:driven one of his victims to commit suicide. The rapist then fell to his death; it is heavily implied that Jason pushed him]].
** The Storyline ''Red Hood: The Lost Days'' has numerous examples of this trope. At various points in the book Jason [[spoiler:poisons a trafficker, leaves a bomb maker tied to a large time bomb, douses the Joker in gasoline, and brutally murders each criminal he hires to train him]].
* Every time ComicBook/{{Magneto}} clashes with anti-mutant hate groups. Magneto is Jewish and survived the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. The ComicBook/RedSkull is a Nazi. While working together during ''ComicBook/ActsOfVengeance'', Magneto decided to get some revenge on the Red Skull, beating the living crap out of him and leaving him in a SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere with some jugs of water and his own thoughts.
* So according to Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}, when [[Franchise/TheFlash Bart Allen]] [[spoiler:ended his tenure as the Flash by dying]], Wally West [[spoiler:reappeared and took down Bart's nemesis]] Inertia. The punishment? [[spoiler:[[AndIMustScream Wally froze Inertia in time, but left his mind running. Then he stuck him on display in the Flash Museum, forcing Inertia to forever STARE at statues of Bart.]]]] How is that NOT cruel and unusual?
** Wally later had an ''internal'' WhatTheHellHero moment, when he thought about what he'd done.
* Marv of ''ComicBook/SinCity'' inflicts on various criminals horrible torture which would maybe even make [[Series/TwentyFour Jack Bauer]] sick. He's kind of like Series/{{Dexter}} in being a pretty messed up person himself. But when the SociopathicHero brutally tortures and dismembers the bad guys, few readers will shed a tear. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in the [[Film/SinCity film]], when Marv remarks "I love hitmen. No matter what you do to them, you don't feel bad."
* Rorschach from ''Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}'' has this as his MO, although he ranks sex along with murder on the scale of morality, and proceeds to break a guy's fingers just for calling attention to the fact that he is, uh, hygienically challenged.
** To provide some context, he'd gone into an apparently-random dive bar to try and get information out of the patrons, and the crack about his hygiene was why he picked on that ''particular'' guy. (This worked about as well as you might expect.)
** And in his monologues he implies that this is his ''standard'' method for gathering information: walk into some underworld dive, and break bones of random people until someone confesses ''something''.
** Rorscharch's shifting inkblot mask also symbolically adds to this, with his mask being a direct representation of how he sees the world: through an extreme filter of Black and White. In his words, "there is no bullshit grey", a crime is a crime no matter how small and must be rightfully punished.
** Granted the guy ''is'' AxCrazy, so we're not supposed to think it's okay.
** The clearest example is the incident that drives Rorschach AxCrazy. [[spoiler: He tracks a child abductor to his home, only to find out that the abductor has murdered the little girl he kidnapped, chopped her corpse into pieces, and fed the remains to his dogs. Rorschach responds by killing the dogs, waiting for the kidnapper to return home, throwing his dead dogs at him, beating him half to death, then handcuffing him in place and killing him as he screams for mercy and begs to simply be arrested (the method differs here; in the comic, he burns the house down, cooking the man alive, while in the movie, he simply splits the guy's head open repeatedly with the same meat cleaver as he growls, "''Men'' get arrested, ''dogs'' get '''put down'''!")]]
* In ''ComicBook/{{Miracleman}}'', Johnny Bates performs his final transformation into Kid Miracleman while being raped by a bully, then spends about three seconds paying evil unto evil before paying evil unto just about everyone else.
* One of the Comicbook/GhostRider's powers is the penance stare; he can cause a villain exactly as much pain as the villain has inflicted upon innocents. Usually, this ends up [[MindRape leaving the villain catatonic]].
* Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} does this to [[spoiler: Bullseye]] when he attacks Hell's Kitchen again. His solution? Break his arms and impale him with a sai. Also functions as a KarmicDeath after what happened with ComicBook/{{Elektra}}, who wields sai as her WeaponOfChoice.
* Back in the 1970s comics, Franchise/{{Superman}} in his Clark Kent persona had a co-worker named Steve Lombard, who was a little bit of a bully, generally in the form of "practical jokes" such as using a fountain pen to spray ink all over someone's face. For reasons one hopes are obvious, they tended to backfire when he attempted to pull them on Clark (or anyone else when Clark was around). Not very high on the evil scale, of course, but without Steve's initial malicious intent Superman would have quickly come to look like a first-class jerk.
** A more serious version appears in ''ComicBook/SupermanBirthright'', after Superman intervenes in a school shooting and tracks down the dealer who illegally sold guns to the perpetrators:
--->'''Superman:''' One minute ago, I saw a little girl screaming because she was staring down the barrel of a gun. She was nine, and she will remember it for the rest of her life.\\
''He fires a gun at the dealer, [[BulletCatch catching the bullet]] [[SuperSpeed just in time]].''\\
'''Superman:''' Now you will, too.
* In ''ComicBook/AmericanVampire'', you have [[spoiler: Pearl's revenge on the Hollywood Coven]]. Not to mention what [[spoiler: Hattie]] ends up doing to the vamps keeping her prisoner...
* What is considered ComicBook/{{Cyclops}}' MoralEventHorizon by many is when he formed ComicBook/XForce to do this. To provide context, following ''Decimation'', the Purifiers had started a war against what was left of the world's mutants, almost all of whom had taken refuge in the X-Mansion. They started by attacking the children, brutally murdering many and causing a lot of pain to many more, driving Dust to question her faith. When ComicBook/{{Hope|Summers}} was born and people realized that she was the mutant Messiah, The Purifiers decided to kill her, so Cyclops formed X-Force and sent them out to stop them, any means necessary. The team basically goes around killing madmen who pose great risk to the rest of the mutant population or humanity in general. Once Mutant births start happening again and people start developing mutant powers following the death of Purifier leader Bastion, Cyclops disbands them so they can go back to the way things were. Many still consider this a dick move of his, but in retrospect, had he not done this, many more would have died and the Purifiers may have in fact killed them all. InUniverse, however, many still dislike him doing this, but that dislike mostly boils down to him not telling anyone about it and recruiting relative innocents (along with someone [[DefusingTheTykeBomb being actively rehabilitated]]) for the wetwork.
* In the NinetiesAntiHero version, ComicBook/{{Morbius}} the Living Vampire uses this as a solution to slake his bloodthirst, figuring that if he needs to kill, he'll kill serious criminals.
* V from ''ComicBook/VForVendetta'' personally murders every single staff member of the concentration camp where he was imprisoned, as well as a few other people, and commits terrorist attacks against the fascist regime that has taken over Britain. The moral ambiguity does not go unmentioned, but the people who he kills are honestly very bad people.
* ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'' likes to use this to justify his many, many murders--and the way he tortures his victims beforehand. Sometimes, it [[AssholeVictim really is justified]], in the cases of a [[PapaWolf paedophile]] and a [[EvenEvilHasStandards rapist]]. Sometimes, it's because [[ComicalOverreacting he got called a mean name]] or [[DisproportionateRetribution hates someone's tie]]. Sometimes, he accidentally grabs a legitimately good person [[IgnoredEpiphany and kills him anyway]]. He's not exactly sane, though readers [[VillainProtagonist somehow]] end up rooting for him anyway (or just [[BlackComedy laughing]] at [[HumansAreBastards the carnage]]).
* Deconstructed in ''Franchise/GreenLantern'': Amon Sur fled from the ''ComicBook/SinestroCorpsWar'' and went to the recently deceased Green Lantern Ke'Haan's home world, killing his family. The Green Lantern Laira, who was in love with Ke'Haan, killed Amon when he smugly surrendered. She is promptly arrested, because, bastard or no, she murdered a surrendering enemy in cold blood, and the Lanterns realized now that with the rings authorized for lethal force, they could easily abuse their power like she did.
* In the ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse this is the modus operandi of Paperinik (Donald's superhero/antihero alter ego). Even if he stops well short of killing or crippling, Duckburg's entire criminal underworld is absolutely ''terrified'' of him because of the savage and humiliating beatings he inflicts whatever criminal is stupid enough to resist... And at the same time rely on him as a protector from anyone, hero or otherwise, that goes overboard, as Paperinik will then turn his attention on ''them''.
** ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'' has Xadhoom. The Evronians pulled a WeComeInPeaceShootToKill on her homeworld and made her [[LastOfHisKind The Last of Her Kind]] while she was away performing the experiment that made her a {{Physical God}}dess. Since then she roamed the galaxy searching and killing any Evronian she could find in the most painful and humiliating way she could think of, not stopping even before Evronian spores (basically their ''fetuses''). Her rampage ended only when she had already exterminated untold billions of Evronians, destroyed both their homeworld and the worldship that had brought to safety the Emperor and the Senate, and only because she had discovered and saved the last remnants of her race (as some of her people had survived, she considered bringing the Evronians to the brink of extinction as settling their score). Then, just before her HeroicSacrifice, she [[MagnificentBastard settled events in motion to make the surviving Evronians believe she was still around and would finish the job if they looked funny at the surviving Xerbians]].
* The post-ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis version of ComicBook/{{Checkmate}} began on this note, with the supposedly heroic organization, which included a DarkerAndEdgier version of the JLA eye candy character Fire, committing cold-blooded killings against the terrorist organization KOBRA. This is in fact a major plot element of the first story arc, as traditionalist characters such as the original Franchise/GreenLantern tended to call Checkmate up on this. Afterwards, however, this aspect of the organization faded into the background and later issues tended not to focus on the "wet work" aspect of Checkmate.
* ''ComicBook/TheTransformersIDW'':
** Deconstructed in ''ComicBook/TheTransformersLastStandOfTheWreckers'': The Wreckers fight Squadron X, a team of dangerous and deadly Decepticons, and defeat them. When Prowl tells them that they have to let them go because the battle was on a protected planet, Impactor walks into their cell, and shoots them all in the head when they're restrained. He's arrested and sent to a maximum security prison. His protege Springer testifies against him, and later when he tries to defend himself, Springer tells him "They deserved to die, but you didn't deserve to kill them." Roadbuster reveals that the team approved of his actions, but they were afraid of prison time, so they pretended to agree with Springer.
** Further deconstructed in ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'' by the same author. First Aid suffers an emotional breakdown after invoking this trope on [[spoiler: Pharma]], showing that the average person is ill-suited to such violence. Whirl engages in this from time to time, but it's always used to show how dangerously unhinged he is, such as when he brutally murders an unarmed gangster out of nowhere in retaliation for crimes the guy's bosses committed.
* ComicBook/{{X 23}}'s whole life has revolved around this:
** This was also an incidental reason for her creation in the first place: While many of the Facility's clients for her services were certainly bad men (among the bidders shown in one conference are Mr. Sinister, ComicBook/DoctorDoom, and the freakin' ''ComicBook/RedSkull''), many of her targets ended up being rather bad men (dictators, drug czars, etc.) as well. Sarah also uses her [[spoiler: to track down and murder the serial killer who abducted her niece]], while [[spoiler: Rice sending her to kill Sutter crosses over with KickTheSonOfABitch, as Sutter may not have abused her himself, but he sure as hell enabled everything]].
** Though she was bred to be an emotionless killing machine and racked up a body count in the ''hundreds'' by the time she was a teenager, she was also horrifically tortured and abused by the Facility, the organization which created her. Her mother, the geneticist who created her, finally had enough, and [[TheDogBitesBack turned Laura loose against them]]. Dialog in ''Target X'' suggests that she slaughtered everyone in the installation housing her. This would mean not just the surgical head, (who Laura beat to death bare-handed over '''''ten fucking minutes''''') guards and scientists, but the receptionists, janitorial staff. ''Everyone''. Of course, this ''was'' an organization that performed human experimentation, sold Laura's services to people like ''the Kingpin'', and were preparing to breed an ''army'' of clones to sell to anyone with the cash.
** After her escape, Laura's cold detachment towards killing and torturing her enemies means she does this ''a lot'' when her friends and teammates are unwilling to do so themselves, which except when she's serving on X-Force (a whole ''team'' of X-Men like Franchise/{{Wolverine}} who are willing to pay evil unto evil) is pretty much all the time. Not that she doesn't [[WhatTheHellHero get called out on her methods]].
* ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'' has no problem going after villains using similar tactics, as among other things, the Midnighter smashed a ship into they invaded another universe's Earth and destroyed that countries Italy to cripple an invading force after an attempted invasion, and had a scene where Midnighter confronts the man who is implied to have raped Apollo and it's similarly implied Midnighter was going to use a jackhammer to return the favor.
* Prior to the 2000s, the island nation of Genosha in ''ComicBook/XMen'' was a brutal place that enslaved its mutant population and treated them horribly. This ultimately led to its downfall in the 1993 "Bloodties" event, when the malevolent Fabian Cortez was able to play on lingering resentment amongst the mutant populace - newly freed after "X-Tinction" - to provoke them to a bloody rebellion. When ComicBook/{{Magneto}} was given dominion over the still war-wracked island in 1999's "Magneto Rex", he sat back and encouraged the mutants to exterminate and expel all of Genosha's native human population, who had profited so much from the misery of its mutants.
* In ''Comicbook/InfiniteCrisis'', the bad guys use the radiation-powered supervillain Chemo to reduce the entire city of Bludhaven to a bombed-out wasteland. Bludhaven just so happens to be one of the most corrupt cities in the US (even worse than '''''Gotham'''''), and its destruction is immediately preceded by scenes of how horrible virtually everyone in it is, including a panel of the mayor taking bribes from supervillains.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* ''Anime/EighteenIf'': In his journey across the DreamLand, Haruto finds that the Witch Mana has been killing people in her dreams, [[YourMindMakesItReal which has the effect of killing them in the real world]]. Thing is, Mana's victims are the same people who killed her family ForTheEvulz and got light sentences for being minors. When he catches up to Mana, he doesn't even attempt to stop her, he even helps her kill the last man when he attempts to fight back and even expresses his intention to use the dream world as a new way to kill people. Haruto even comes to the realization that killing those people is the only way Mana will get closure for her family's death.
* ''Manga/AkameGaKill'' follows a group of assassins who only kill people who have proven to be guilty of crimes not punished by the corrupt government they live under, such as human trafficking, murder, torture, and human experimentation. They do not sugar coat what they do. They are murderers, killers, and sinners, and in no way, shape, or form are they the good guys, even if what they do is good. They are also perfectly willing to kill anyone they have to, including guards, servants, and relatives of the people they kill, even if they are loosely connected to the crime. They also ''only'' kill those they have been paid to, and many of their clients work themselves to death raising the money.
** In the manga version, [[spoiler: Everyone in the Imperial Capital gets to do this to Prime Minister Honest, the corrupt ruler of the Empire. They have him tied down and take turns ripping him apart one piece at a time, making Honest feel the pain of all the people he's made suffer under his reign]]. In the anime version, [[spoiler: Leone brutally beats Honest to death herself, slowly and painfully]].
** [[spoiler: Akame does this to Izou of Wild Hunt as he is dying from a wound she inflicted on him. Said katana wielder is a mass murderer was responsible for killing a fellow Night Raid member. So when Izou asks Akame to take his katana, she responds by cutting his chest open while he's down, brutally refusing his final request. It's very cathartic]].
* The titular Manga/{{Akumetsu}}'s modus operandi. Corrupt politicians get buried in bridges, injected with tainted medicine, thrown off buildings, shot, or just hacked to death with an axe.
** So much NightmareFuel. The last 'normal' Akumetsu he does involves entombing alive an old guy whose sin was apparently not being corrupt or evil or twisted but ''really liking highways'', and building unnecessary ones with public monies. Not only that, the old guy doesn't even get the chance to go out in privacy, he has to deal with a camera and a smirking Akumetsu [[spoiler:who's just going to have his consciousness copied into a new body when he dies, and so isn't actually sacrificing much]]. Good thing the yakuza weighed in at this point.
** The axe guy, on the other hand, was repulsive in every possible way, and made a pretty good debut. Given our viewpoint character was the first-day-as-a-teen-prostitute girl he was making lick his sweaty feet when Akumetsu came in, we were ''so'' glad to see his head split.
* Eren in ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', when he kills the first two traffickers that kidnapped Mikasa. It establishes that Eren was never completely pacifistic, but the victims really had it coming to them. By the way, Eren was ''seven'' when this happened.
-->''I merely put down some rabid dogs. Sometimes they just happen to look like people.''
* In ''LightNovel/{{Baccano}}'', two separate gangs try to take over the same train independently, and neither side is worried about innocent casualties (the black suits were actually planning to kill everyone whether their demands are met or not). [[spoiler:[[UnscrupulousHero Claire Stanfield]]]] proceeds to kill them all in some of the most gruesome ways possible -- but he remains one of the most popular characters in the series.
* ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'': Guts does terrible, terrible things to those he kills. Said things are TheLegionsOfHell, humans who sold themselves to the lords of Hell, or ''worse''. It's hard not to cheer.
* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'':
** Mayuri, while [[SociopathicHero barely qualifying as a hero]], has a couple of moments. He kills Szayel by using him as a test subject for a drug that makes Szayel feel like he's experiencing a slow, agonizing death over centuries. Despite Szayel's torture of Renji and Uryuu and his forcible impregnation of Nemu, Mayuri feels Szayel's cardinal sin is to seek, and claim to have found, perfection -- for which he believes a torturous death via an experimental drug is an acceptable way to die.
** Giselle Gewelle is an abusive, sadistic troll who gleefully transforms people into her zombie slaves. Mayuri, using the blood of his Arrancar zombies, actually reprograms Giselle's zombies into ''his'' zombies, which then turn on her and impale her with extreme prejudice.
* ''Manga/{{Bokurano}}'' has [[spoiler:Chizuru]] slaughtering her rapists with [[HumongousMecha Zearth's]] lasers. While they had it coming, she goes straight into KickTheDog territory when she notices that one of her attackers is carrying his young daughter and [[WouldHurtAChild vaporizes him anyway, presumably killing the kid as well]].
* After he [[spoiler:stops killing clones en masse in a "level up" experiment]], Accelerator from ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'' pretty much decides on this when dealing with anyone he sees harming innocent people, usually ending in a swift or painful death, and he holds little remorse for it.
* As Ogami Rei's motto states in ''Manga/CodeBreaker'', "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, evil for evil".
* In ''Anime/CodeGeass'', [[WellIntentionedExtremist Lelouch]] has moments of this. The first and foremost example of this is how he turns a terrorist group into rebels with good publicity by convincing them to attack anyone who abuses power, as opposed to simply attacking the government and letting Britannian casualties fall where they would (as they had in the past).
** Lelouch has an infamous line in the second series: "I commit evil to fight the greater evil!". However, he ''is'' willing to commit {{hypocri|te}}sy on this regard if it will serve the interest of his goal.
** Charles zi Britannia doing this to [[spoiler:V. V. by taking his code and leaving him to die may look like a case of KickTheSonOfABitch, but it reveals itself as this trope upon the revelation that V. V. was the one who killed Marianne, and Charles was finally getting back at him for that and all of his other lies]].
* ''Manga/DeathNote'': Light Yagami murders dozens of people on a daily basis in spasms of Unholy Satanic Glee because they're criminals...or someone said they're criminals. It [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope goes downhill from there]].
** L locks people up in solitary confinement and uses sensory deprivation on them for months on end in order to get a confession, and he has few qualms about letting a few dozen people die in order to catch his man (although when presented with a less objectionable option, he did accept it with enthusiasm of [[MindScrew an undetermined sincerity level]]).
** Teru Mikami believed this even without the super-temptation book of WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer. When he got one, he [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope did something similar to Light]].
* Masaru and [=ShineGreymon=] from ''Anime/DigimonSavers'' finish off [[BigBad Kurata]] as he's pleading for his life. Normally, trying to kill someone who is begging you for mercy is a sign you're either a villain or at best, an AntiHero. However, when that someone is the biggest bastard in the history of ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'', circumstances are different -- all his friends cheered him on and told him to kick Kurata's ass.
* ''Manga/DragonBall'':
** Goku was merciless towards his enemies when he was a child. If you harmed his friends, someone he liked, or just got him mad enough, he paid it back with violent retribution, not really caring if he ended up killing or crippling the person. If you, god-forbid, actually killed someone he cared about, then your life was practically forfeit. He hunted down and killed Demon King Piccolo and all his children after they murdered his best friend, Krillin, and father figure, Master Roshi. Although Goku is much more chill as an adult, some of this attitude still remains. This can be seen with his fight against Frieza. Frieza's entire fighting style is [[ColdBloodedTorture torturing people to death]] by physically overwhelming them with his power and [[DespairEventHorizon pushing them to utter despair]] by making them die knowing that they never stood a chance against him. After Goku becomes a Super Saiyan, he spends almost the entire fight toying with and brutalizing Frieza just as he had done to his victims. The ''only'' reason why Goku tries to spare Frieza is because he sees letting Frieza [[CruelMercy live with his pride shattered is the cruelest punishment possible]].
** His son, Gohan, wholly embraces this mindset after becoming a Super Saiyan 2. He didn't just want to beat Cell, [[ColdBloodedTorture he wanted to torture the Bio-Android to death and have him die in despair]] for the crimes he committed. [[spoiler:[[NiceJobBreakingItHero It backfires]] when Cell [[RageQuit decides to blow himself and the Earth up]], which not only makes Goku [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifice himself to relocate Cell]], it lets Cell [[CameBackStrong come back strong enough to challenge Gohan]] and [[HeroKiller kill Trunks on the side]]. [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone And Gohan very much realizes it's his fault]]]]. Thankfully, Gohan turns it around when he manages to destroy Cell in the final battle.
** After becoming mostly good, Piccolo takes up this mantle. He will kill his enemies without hesitation and will sometimes do it in a most brutal manner, such as cutting Doctor Gero's hand off and slicing Babidi in half.
** Vegeta was essentially this trope incarnate during the Namek and Frieza sagas. When he wasn’t searching for the Dragon Balls to become immortal, he was assassinating Frieza’s henchmen left and right, who were every bit the asshole he was if not more so. Jeice and Android 19 stand out as some of his cruelest murders; while both deserved their fates, they spent their last moments begging for their life and running away in terror respectively.
** When he returns to the future much stronger after the Cell Games, Future Trunks subjects the future Androids 17 and 18, two {{Robotic Psychopath}}s who rampaged across the Earth for twenty years killing whoever and whenever they wanted, to this. He even states outright that he's doing to them ''exactly'' what they did to Future Gohan, his mentor/surrogate brother: making them feel completely outmatched, helpless, and afraid before killing them.
** The Tuffles were reduced to near-extinction by the Saiyans in the aftermath of the Saiyan-Tuffle war, forcing them to throw away their morality for survival and revenge against the Saiyans. As a result, the last two survivors of the Tuffle race, Doctor Raichi and Baby, are utterly dedicated to total genocide of the Saiyans as a necessary goal to the revival of the Tuffle race.
** In ''[[Anime/DragonBallSuper Super]]'', there's Beerus' execution of [[spoiler: Zamasu]]. It is one of the [[CruelAndUnusualDeath cruelest deaths]] in the series, given how Beerus slowly atomized him to the point that [[spoiler: Zamasu]] is left screaming in anguish, [[FridgeLogic even with his head gone]]. However, given that [[spoiler: Zamasu tried to kill his master and was happy to hear that his future counterpart has been murdering mortals in the future]], it's hard to feel sympathy for him.
* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'':
** Scar's mission upon gaining his alchemic right arm from his brother is to use alchemy itself ([[LoopholeAbuse stopping at the second out of the three stages, Destroy, so as to not go against his religious beliefs]]) to kill all the State Alchemists in vengeance for the mass genocide they committed against the Ishvalan people.
** This is the comeuppance of Envy. [[spoiler: He's slowly and methodically tortured by Roy Mustang, and despite him completely deserving the pain he goes through, it's still unnerving to see Mustang like this. Roy is ultimately subject to the WhatTheHellHero treatment from all his nearby allies that shames him out of taking the final blow.]]
* Togusa in ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex: 2nd Gig'' tries, but fails, to defend a woman from her cyborg boyfriend while off-duty. During the subsequent trial, the man's lawyer attempts to make Togusa look bad by [[WoundedGazelleGambit claiming Togusa acted out of hatred for cyborgs]]. Following the trial, the lawyer and the convict get into a serious car accident, which is implied to have been set up by Section 9.
* ''LightNovel/GoblinSlayer'' features the titular goblins, a OneGenderRace of violent, depraved sadists with no redeeming qualities who burn down villages and rape women to death, who in turn are brutally butchered by the dozens by the titular Goblin Slayer, who has no qualms with ''literally'' [[WouldHurtAChild bashing in the brains of goblin babies]] just to ensure that none of them will [[YouKilledMyFather live to consider avenging their families]].
* ''Anime/HellGirl'' runs on this trope. For the most part, the people getting sent to Hell are AssholeVictims and are sent by someone they tormented.
* Alucard in ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}'' (the TV version) fits... maybe until near the end. Not so much in the manga and OVA where he's a little less discriminating (as some hapless SWAT soldiers find out).
* Invoked by Yuu from ''Manga/{{Holyland}}'' before he [[spoiler:fights Taka in Masaki's stead]]. "All I know is that I will answer malice... with violence."
* The premise of ''Manga/{{Kurosagi}}'' is about a man who commits fraud to cheat, humiliate and otherwise destroy people who had defrauded others first. Likewise, his WorthyOpponent is a large-scale swindler who goes after "rotten" companies that ruin its employees' lives.
* In ''Anime/MaiOtome'', [[{{Yandere}} Tomoe]] was probably the most evil character in the series, up to arranging an AttemptedRape on [[TheHero Arika]] because she saw her as a threat to her True Love for [[SchoolgirlLesbians Shizuru]]. [[spoiler: When Tomoe finally [[FaceHeelTurn joined the enemy]], she was "rewarded" with Shizuru as a SexSlave, a job which Shizuru not only wanted ([[GambitRoulette because it put her where she needed to be for the]] GrandFinale) but thoroughly enjoyed while she had it.]] When it came time for the finale, Shizuru openly told Tomoe that, [[WasItAllALie yes, she'd been using Tomoe the whole way, and maybe that would teach Tomoe not to play with people's emotions.]] If Tomoe had been an ounce less evil, that would have come across as undeniably vile behavior.
* Thoroughly deconstructed in ''Anime/{{Monster}}'', although it is played straight in the first couple of episodes when Tenma, in a fit of rage, declares that his superiors should die. [[IWishedYouWereDead They indeed do so]], whereupon the trope is deconstructed since it is the audience, not the characters, who wholeheartedly [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing approve]] of the act.
* ''LightNovel/{{Overlord}}'':
** Ainz, after {{No Sell}}ing Clementine's attacks, [[spoiler:grabs her and slowly bearhugs her to death as payback for her killing of the Swords of Darkness, especially [[CruelAndUnusualDeath torturing Ninya to death]]]]. Given her nature and actions, it's rather cathartic to see her helplessly struggle against her impending doom against an enemy she can't possibly defeat ([[DeathByIrony something she herself enjoyed forcing on others]]).
** Also applies to the soldiers attacking Carne Village who seemed to have no problem slaughtering unarmed civilians... until Ainz shows up and [[CurbStompBattle destroys them all]].
** Sebas' raid on the Eight Fingers brothel, in which he punches a man to death (said man was in the habit of beating prostitutes to death) and later disintegrates their enforcers in less than ten seconds. The surviving Eight Fingers are allowed to continue living as Nazarick's agents... after they go through a little light torture in the form of having their organs eaten by cockroaches from the inside, healed by magic, then having their organs eaten by cockroaches from the inside, healed by magic, and so on. After the ordeal, not only are they incapable of eating solid food, they wouldn't dream of disobeying Nazarick but also make sure ''no one else'' in their organization gives Nazarick cause to apply the same treatment to them.
** Viciously subverted during the Invaders arc, where we're introduced to the Workers (adventurers who take on less legal but more rewarding jobs) and the entirely reasonable and sympathetic motivations for why they agreed to investigate a newly-discovered ruin called Nazarick. Unfortunately, Momon takes them at their word when [[OnlyInItForTheMoney they simply reply "Money" as their motivation]], and what follows is a relentlessly brutal MookHorrorShow starring the laughably outmatched workers (even the TokenEvilTeammate suffers a death that is merely humiliating rather than horrifyingly painful or sentenced to be tortured for what's left of their lives).
** The Crown Prince attacks Carne when they refuse to let him in (so he won't see they now have goblins and ogres working alongside them). As he's already considered a waste of oxygen by his own allies, no one mourns when he ends up killed by a goblin army and Lupusregina.
* In ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'', Ash and friends are normally perfectly content to allow the BigBad to be quietly arrested, but in dealing with Grings Kodai, the BigBad of ''Anime/PokemonZoroarkMasterOfIllusions'', they, and even the cops, arranged for him to watch as his EvilGloating is broadcast live on his own TV station, pretty much forcing him to watch his public humiliation. While harsh for them, Kodai was an absolute [[TheSociopath sociopath]] who [[spoiler:committed the anime's first true murder of a Pokémon]] and ''electrocuted a '''baby''''' right in front of its mother with no remorse.
* ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagicaTheMovieRebellion'' ends with [[spoiler:Kyubey being beat up to pulp after his experiment goes wrong, before becoming Homura's servant by the end of the movie]].
* Very occasionally done in ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf''. It's full of {{Jerkass}} characters, so there's rarely a shortage of [[AssholeVictim asshole victims]], but very few actually practice this MO, mind you. Ranma is the straightest example and once, he mastered the [[CounterAttack Hiryuu Shoten-Ha]] to use against [[EvilOldFolks Happousai]]. Mousse, Kuno, Principal Kuno, and Gosunkugi all charge into the battle to beat on Ranma; nice guy that he is, Ranma hesitates to use his new attack out of concern they'll all be caught in the massive blast. ''Then'' he remembers how the same four characters had earlier viciously ganged up on him when he was too weak to defend himself. He promptly launches the attack.
* In ''Anime/RurouniKenshin'', the philosophy of HistoricalDomainCharacter Saito Hajime, "Aku Soku Zan", can be loosely translated as "Slay Evil Immediately". A great many evildoers that crossed him didn't survive the experience. Though he himself is more of a NobleDemon, not wholly on the heroes' sides. At the beginning of the series, he's a police officer with apparently a covert license to kill, offing a corrupt official. He's like a saner Kurogasa, really, without the nihilism. (The real Saitou spent a considerable period with the police, but he appears to have been quite an ordinary member of the force.)
* In ''AudioPlay/SaintBeast'', purging angels is about the worst thing you can do to them, and [[PhysicalGod Zeus]] does it to make heaven pure.
* [[HotBlooded Kazuma]] in ''Anime/{{Scryed}}'' at times, particularly after [[spoiler:Kimishima is killed]] and he decides to go wreck the nearest unit with a [=HOLY=] emblem on it.
* ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'':
** A perfect moment of this occurs in the climax of the Fairy Dance arc. Kirito's ColdBloodedTorture of Sugou/Oberon is undoubtedly cruel and drawn-out, considering the fact that Kirito [[YourMindMakesItReal set the Pain Absorber to zero to ensure Sugou would feel it all]] before [[AnArmAndALeg killing Sugou's in-game]] [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe avatar]] [[EyeScream so]] [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice brutally]] that Sugou is left [[WoundThatWillNotHeal permanently injured in real life]]. However, given that Sugou had kidnapped 300 SAO survivors to perform inhumane MindControl experiments on them and had [[AttemptedRape sexually assaulted Asuna]] [[ForcedToWatch right in front of Kirito]] mere seconds before, there's no denying he deserved every second of it. Kirito himself openly admits that, after all the atrocities Sugou has committed, he [[IRegretNothing doesn't regret what he did to him for a second]].
** Then there's the climax of the Alicization arc, where he [[spoiler:subjects [=PoH=] to a FateWorseThanDeath, trapping him in a tree and leaving him to rot in Underworld, a VR that runs on YearInsideHourOutside, for [[AndIMustScream the rest of his life]]. Cruel, but considering the fact that [=PoH=] founded [[PlayerKilling Laughing Coffin]], thus making him both directly and indirectly responsible for all the horrible things its members did, gleefully beat up Kirito while he was paralyzed and incapable of fighting back right in front of Asuna and the others, and swore he wouldn't stop coming after Kirito and Asuna until he [[SlashedThroat slit their throats]] and [[AndShowItToYou ripped their hearts out]], he gets absolutely no sympathy from the readers.]]
* Lunatic from ''Anime/TigerAndBunny'' is a big subscriber to this philosophy, and will even kill criminals who have already been arrested and/or imprisoned if he decides they're sufficiently heinous. [[spoiler:On the other hand, his sense of honor is strong enough that he goes out of his way to protect Kotetsu when the latter is falsely accused of murder.]]
* ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'': Kaneki develops this mentality after enduring ten days of ColdBloodedTorture at the hands of the psychotic Ghoul Yamori and escaping, starting when he beats Yamori into submission, eats his kagune, and leaves him to the mercy of the CCG.
-->'''Kaneki''': Remember, you're the one that tried to eat me first. So, you'll get what's coming to you... [[EatTheCamera when I eat you instead]].
* In ''Manga/{{Toriko}}'', Zebra of the Four Emperors was imprisoned for life for single-handedly hunting 26 different species to extinction. However, we later find out that they all messed up the ecosystems they were in, and quite possibly they were vicious, mindless living weapons sent there by an enemy. He [[SociopathicHero doesn't exactly do this intentionally]], though.
* The basic premise of the assassin organization ''Anime/WeissKreuz'' is to commit sinful murders to "deny these evil beasts their tomorrows." (Almost subverted, however, since the organization is extremely indifferent, and barely better than the villains it sends our assassins to kill.)
* ''Manga/UchiNoMusumeNiTeODasuNa'': In chapter 16, Hana explains that the Japanese government had Zenovia shot down, as she descended to Earth. After capturing her, government officials had her [[CreateYourOwnVillain repeatedly gang raped]] by supervillains and extracted her ovum each time she was impregnated, until they had an army of super beings. Zenovia was eventually rescued and turned against all of humanity [[RapeAndRevenge for what was done to her.]]
* Zig-zagged in ''Manga/YuGiOh'', especially in the early installments, back when the series was still intended to be a horror story and Yami Yugi was a dark avenger, taking on a variety of bullies and crooks on the behalf of Yugi and his friends, frequently with [[DisproportionateRetribution Penalty Games]]. It's ambiguous whether any of them died from the treatment, but more than one would be hospitalised. The adults are usually either too powerless to help, and the police don't seem to exist. This character habit is later toned down when the move towards tournament arcs takes precedence, and the character needed to evolve from an anti-hero to a generally mysterious hero. Bakura later points out in Millennium World that the Millennium Items themselves are a compass between good and evil, and can corrupt the people trying to use them to do 'justice' of any sort. The one exception to this treatment is Kaiba -- Yami's second penalty game is designed to give him a spiritual rehabilitation, after some effort.
* ''Anime/YuGiOhArcV'' plays with and discusses this trope. Several AntiHero protagonists follow this trope, and while the main character is morally opposed, he has a SuperPoweredEvilSide that plays this straight. Occasionally when there's a particularly obvious example, the protagonists will usually have an inner monologue or talk with each other about what happened and how they think the situation should have been handled.
[[/folder]]

* At LLF's fourth Anniversary show Polly Star, who had been voted "bitch of the year", ended up on the receiving end of her usual strategies in the second fall of her [[HumiliatingWager hair vs hair]] match against Nikki Roxx after having dominated the first, culminating in the fans roaring in approval when Roxx hit ButtMonkey referee Mulato (known for his bias against [[{{Xenophobe}} foreigners]]) in the {{groin|attack}} with a pipe and Star took the blame, giving Roxx the third fall by {{disqualification|inducedvictory}}.
* No one in Wrestling/RingOfHonor really liked "Red Poison" [[Wrestling/HunterJohnston Delirious]], especially not his use of said red poison which restricted the airways of those he applied it too. Since his main targets were the [=Hangm3n=], who had in fact hung Delirious after stapling his mask to his head, and thus inspired the "Red Poison" rampage, most times people simply looked the otherway.

* At LLF's fourth Anniversary show Polly Star, who had been voted "bitch of the year", ended up on the receiving end of her usual strategies in the second fall of her hair vs hair match against Nikki Roxx after having dominated the first, culminating in the fans roaring in approval when Roxx hit ButtMonkey referee Mulato (known for his bias against foreigners) in the {{groin|attack}} with a pipe and Star took the blame, giving Roxx the third fall by {{disqualification|inducedvictory}}.