History Main / TheHunterBecomesTheHunted

[[caption-width-right:302:[[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Shh! Be vewy vewy quiet. I'm hunting humans! Hehehehe!]]]]

* Videogame/PacMan, whenever he gets a power pellet.

** In "WesternAnimation/HydeAndGoTweet", Tweety is turned into a giant, hideous monster after hiding in Dr. Jekyll's potion, and he proceeds to chase and terrify Sylvester.

* The African cape buffalo is considered to be the second-most dangerous large mammal in Africa (after the hippopotamus) in part for its habit of diving into cover when wounded, then doubling back to ambush its attacker.

* ''Series/KamenRiderGeats'' has the Jyamato become the hunters to the DGP participants' hunted after the DGP was hijacked by Beroba at the [[Recap/KamenRiderGeatsEp25LamentationITheJyamatoGrandPrix start]] of the "Lamentation" Arc.

* ''Series/KamenRiderGeats'' has the Jyamato become the hunters to the DGP participants' hunted after the DGP was hijacked by Beroba at the [[Recap/KamenRiderGeatsEp25LamentationIJyamatoGrandPrix start]] of the "Lamentation" Arc.

* ''Series/KamenRiderGeats'' has the Jyamato become the hunters to the DGP participants' hunted after the DGP was hijacked by Beroba at the start of the "Lamentation" Arc.

* ''Series/KamenRiderGeats'' has the Jyamato become the hunters to the DGP participants' hunted after the DGP was hijacked by Beroba, kickstarting the "Lamentation" Arc.

* The song "Conquest", by The White Stripes uses this theme symbolically.

* ''Fanfic/UnwelcomeStormsHunter'': [[WakeUpCallBoss Father Gascoigne]] shows [[NewMeat Taylor]] how it looks from the other end of the Hunt.

* ''VideoGame/TombRaider'': in the survivor trilogy reboot, Lara might very well end up like this, if the enemy is openly trying to kill her, while she hides and ambushes the mooks sent at her.

* In earlier chapters of ''Manga/AirGear'', Sleeping Forest is inferred as this with normal people as prey, other Storm Riders as the hunters, and the team Sleeping Forest is the forest itself who hunts back the hunters, as implied in this poem:
-->''The trees entangle their arms and stretch upward into the sky.\\
The budding leaves devour the light, adding depth to the forest's darkness.\\
The hunter does not notice the glare nor the claws of the beast biding in the darkness.\\
Tonight is the night when the hunter will be hunted.\\
This is the Sleeping Forest.''

* ''Terror Tale'' in Marvel Tales (1949 series) #133 (April 1953) is about a man captured by vampires who turns into a werewolf and kills them.

* ''Fanfic/{{Webwork}}'': Jade spends most of eight years in a demon dimension trying to avoid being eaten by all the other inhabitants. Near the end of her stay [[spoiler:and the completion of her transformation into a Spider-Demon]], she is the one doing the hunting and the others are scared to come near her.

-->'''Captain Aubrey:''' If he knew we were looking for him he could have easily stood to sea and passed well clear.
-->'''Maturin:''' Well perhaps he was looking for us.

** Played with all the time in seeing as Buffy is always a potential victim, but is, well...[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a vampire slayer.]]

* The ''Creator/NationalGeographicChannel'' Program Hunter Hunted catchphrase invokes this: "Who is the Hunter and Who is the Hunted?"

* The song "Razor Hoof", by High On Fire, is about a moose fighting a wolf and winning.

* The song "The Rabbit" by Jimmie Wayne is about a woman killing her abusive husband. The song's chorus contains the line "Mark my words, it ain't gonna be fun when the rabbit gets the gun." The song end ends the line "[[WesternAnimation/BugsBunny What's up NOW, Doc?]]"
* The song "[[https://lyricstranslate.com/en/un-lapin-rabbit.html Un Lapin]]" by Chantal Goya, about a rabbit who gets hold of a rifle and kills a hunter.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', it happens in every second, [[spoiler: especially when Djura or Eileen decided to hunt you.]]
* In ''Videogame/DarkestDungeon'', this is invoked when you fight the Collector, a nightmarish eldritch ''[[EldritchAbomination thing]]'' made up of [[BodyOfBodies a pile of severed heads wearing a yellow cloak.]] It has a chance to appear when your inventory is filled up past a certain point (when the party is battered and stressed from a long dungeon run) and apparently collects the heads of your slain party members to add to itself. However, you can in turn hunt the Collector for valuable gems and trinkets, and the [[{{Narrator}} Ancestor]] will invoke this trope if you kill it.

* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls''

* ''LightNovel/ReignOfTheSevenSpellblades'': {{Invoked}} by the StarterVillain in volume 1. Having learned of Richard Andrews's plan to settle his {{Stock Shonen Rival}}ry with Oliver Horn by challenging him and Nanao Hibiya to a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canned_hunt canned hunt]] of kobolds (their feud having gotten tangled up with a parallel conflict around [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman Katie Aalto's activism on behalf of nonhuman races]]), the villain smuggles a much more dangerous garuda into the arena. To drive the point home, they covertly project the message "See how it feels to be prey" onto the ceiling when the garuda makes its presence known.

This trope has roots as far back as Myth/GreekMythology, where a quite literal hunter, Actaeon, is transformed into a deer by Artemis and eventually torn apart by his own dogs.

* The opening scene of ''Film/MasterAndCommander'' has the ''HMS Surprise'' taken by surprise by the ''Acheron'', the French frigate they were sent to sink or capture. Worse, the ''Acheron'' is a newer, faster, stronger, and better-armed vessel, commanded by a captain just as determined to sink them.