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  • Albegas: Because Kids Are Cruel, Tetsuya was bullied a lot for being an orphan. A few beatings later thanks to his skill in martial arts, the bullying stopped.
  • Angel Densetsu: Ryoko is trying to have a nice, peaceful date with Kitano when some jerk tries to pick her up. When he gets grabby over her refusal, she curbstomps him. Once he wakes up again, he gets pissed off by the fact that a girl beat him up, and goes after her again. She curbstomps him again. The pattern repeats (even as his more sensible friends beg him to cut his losses) until he and his friends corner her and she trips and sprains her wrist. Then Kitano shows up...
  • Consort Lishu in The Apothecary Diaries is a target of constant bullying by many people, including her own staff. Early on, her poison taster tries to embarass her by switching out her food for something she was allergic to in a public function and her head lady-in-waiting has made a habit of stealing her things, and they could actually be executed for these. They keep their heads mainly because of her timid nature.
  • It occurs with a few twists in Attack on Titan. It's played straight when the paranoid military police officials openly discuss executing Eren directly in front of him shortly after his powers manifest. It's then somewhat subverted when Levi delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Eren, upon which they hilariously realize what could potentially happen if you engage in this trope. However, in a unique fashion, Levi not only lampshades this by pointing out their hypocrisy, but his engaging in this ultimately saves Eren, as it shows Eren can control his power, or that he can at least be incapacitated in the long run if the need arises, which was the best option they could hope for at the time.
    • Zeke can’t seem to avoid smugly and deliberately pissing off Levi multiple times over, either through passive-aggressive insults, condescension, and manipulation, even after the latter has proven to fully capable of carving him up like a turkey.
    • The endgame essentially states that this is the lesson the nation of Marley, (and later the world), finds out in that one REALLY shouldn’t persecute a race of people that can turn into an Eldritch Abomination.
  • It's generally regarded as suicide to tangle with Hotel Moscow from Black Lagoon. Staffed by ex-Russian soldiers and led by the utterly ruthless Balalaika, everyone knows to not mess with them. Hansel and Gretel did not know this, and were quickly shown the utter hell that decision can bring. Especially Hansel, who has his hand shot off and is left to bleed out, while Balalaika explains just what an idiot move it was.
  • Bleach:
    • When Luppi replaces Grimmjow as the Sixth Espada after Grimmjow has his arm cut off, he taunts Grimmjow about his former title. When Orihime restores Grimmjow's arm, the first thing he does is impale Luppi with it to get his old rank back.
    • After Chojiro is killed and his Bankai stolen by Driscoll Berci, Driscoll goes to Captain-Commander Yamamoto and taunts him with his dead lieutenant's Bankai before attempting to use it to kill him. An angry Yamamoto proceeds to shrug off the attack and incinerate him with Ryujin Jakka.
    • Abarai Renji provokes Ichigo during their training in the Urahara Shop to get him angry. Ichigo, depressed and terrified by his encounter with the Bounts, is fighting extremely feebly, and Renji taunts him about his weak fighting to get him to fight with a clear head again, as Renji knows Ichigo was willing to defeat all of the captains and lieutenants of the Gotei 13 (and he did defeat several of the ones he managed to encounter) just to rescue Rukia. Renji momentarily regrets being so successful.
  • Blue Exorcist:
    • Rin, the son of Satan and a human woman, always felt different from everyone else. Even before his full powers were unleashed, he had Super-Strength and other enhanced physical features. Because of these characteristics, other children picked on him and called him a demon. This resulted in Rin punching them in the face and giving them serious injuries.
    • That's not the stupidest thing they can do. See that shy, glasses wearing sickly kid over there? That's Rin's younger twin brother. Hurt him in any manner, and Rin will mop the floor with you. It stands even now. Though, this counts more as Bullying The Dragon's Brother.
  • A Certain Magical Index:
    • Accelerator is the strongest esper in the world, with absurd powers that make him literally untouchable. After he's defeated thanks to Touma's Anti-Magic ability, large gangs start regularly trying to attack him. They're so far beneath his contempt he doesn't even use his active abilities to fight them, yet despite the trail of twisted limbs he leaves behind him, they still attack. They also completely trash his apartment while he's away, but even that fails to get a rise out of him. In fact, the reason he goes along with the Level 6 project is to make himself so powerful that the very thought of challenging him would be ridiculous. He's been a target of dragon-bulliers all his life, to the point that flashbacks show him (as an 8-year-old child, mind) being assaulted by everything up to a tank division with air support. He knows he's not in any real danger from 99% of the people who try to kill him, but his greatest wish is that all these people would just leave him alone.
    • Mikoto, the third most powerful esper in existence, is often targeted by gangs of delinquents. Even if they don't recognize her personally, she is always wearing the uniform of a school that only includes Level 3 or higher Espers, who as a general rule it is unwise to mess with.
  • Code:Breaker: Yuuki, who can manipulate sound waves, tries to use their shared abusive pasts to reason with the poison (and other liquids — she hides her many scars under a thick layer of "makeup")-secreting Lily, to no avail.
  • In the first chapter of Codename: Sailor V, two of Minako's classmates say to her face that she has no chance with the sempai Higashi because she's too much of a tomboy, and get the stuff beaten out of the future Magical Girl Warrior. While this may count as Mugging the Monster as they may not know how strong she is, them repeating the comment and saying they'd like to see her cry just once while they're still lying down and with Minako still there is this trope — though thankfully she decides to not beat them up again.
  • In Claymore:
    • Regular folks tend to hate and fear the eponymous Warriors of the Organization which generally manifests as mutters, dark looks or giving them a wide berth. Which is only understandable considering that even the weakest of the Warriors is a badass Super-Soldier who has Implausible Fencing Powers, a Healing Factor and is strong enough to wield their signature claymore swords with just one hand. Then there are the geniuses who decide on trying to rape one. Luckily they chose Teresa of the Faint Smile who convinced most of them to back off. If they had chosen someone like Ophelia on the other hand...
    • And then, guess what? Those bandits soon come back to mess with her! They raid the town where Teresa left Clare with some Humans who would adopt her, Teresa goes back only to find the city on fire, the bandits killing and kidnapping the local inhabitants, and one of them even carrying around an unconscious, badly beaten Clare boasting how he will take "care" of her and noting how she's cute when she screams Teresa's name, all of this done right before Teresa's own eyes, firmly believing until the very end that Teresa would have not broken the rule that prohibit Claymores from harming Humans. The result of such unrepentant idiocy are a foregone conclusion.
  • In the first season of Darker than Black, humans who know about Contractors have a habit of telling Contractor employees how they think they are nothing but murderous scum who should be wiped out. Luckily for them, most Contractors just don't care, but this can get ridiculous when Huang is not only verbally abusing someone who can kill him instantly by touching him, but lifting him up by the front of his shirt and screaming in his face.
  • Played as Flaw Exploitation in the second episode of Death Note: How do you investigate a murderer who can kill you anywhere, anytime with a magic heart attack? Keep annoying him in the hopes he will try to kill you.
    • Also Light frequently bosses Ryuk, a God of Death, around. Ryuk puts up with it for a while because he thinks it's hilarious. And even so, Ryuk is only helpful insofar as he finds it hilarious; he outright won't help Light in numerous situations because it would be too easy.
    • Also there's the instance when Misa is contemplating killing Rem, another God of Death, in front of Rem. Rem puts up with it because she loves Misa.
    • There's also Mello yelling at Shidoh, another God of Death, but Shidoh seems to be too stupid to realize he could easily hurt or kill the "scary human."
  • Digimon Tamers:
    • A small but plot-relevant example is when Makuramon shows up during Beelzebumon's fight with Megidramon specifically to stomp on his Berserk Button by mocking him and calling him "pathetic" and "weak". Beelzebumon is a six-foot-tall leather-clad fallen angel who packs two shotguns, gets stronger everytime he kills someone and, coincidentally, needs a little boost in power to beat Megidramon. Makuramon is a monkey.
    • Impmon (Beelzebumon himself) did this to Devidramon much earlier while he was in a Digital Field. Once he broke out, Impmon wisely fled.
      • Impmon practically made a career out of this before he became Beezlemon. His role in any given episode was to show up and throw insults at the Tamers' Digimon, who even at rookie level were more than capable of kicking his ass, as Terriermon demonstrated once.
  • Don't Meddle with My Daughter!: After years of battling Athena, you'd think Blowjob would know by now that they shouldn't underestimate her. And yet...
    • In Chapter 2, they release a giant plant monster that targets women to feed off sexual energy. It captures Athena and rapes her, not knowing about her immense libido, until the energy released by her orgasm causes it to spontaneously explode.
    • The "MILF of Steel" epilogue begins with Athena being raped by her nemesis, Heavy Metal. He was so busy gloating about how he and his minions gang raped her 20 years ago, that it didn't occur to him that she could still fight back. Athena doesn't bother to stop him. Instead, she turns around to face him, tightens her legs around his waist, and crushes his spine — while he was still inside her. Owned.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Dragon Ball Z:
      • Kaio repeatedly explains the Dragon Team that they must not go near Frieza because he will kill them and then he will probably blow up a few planets out of spite. Nobody listens to him.
      • Frieza really, really has a bad habit of doing this, threatening the newly-christened Super Saiyan Goku to kill Gohan the same way he killed Krillin (which is what caused his Super Saiyan transformation in the first place), trying to take a potshot at Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Vegeta by calling him the "Prince of No One", and in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, he kills Paragus in an attempt to get an already berserk Broly to transform into a Super Saiyan... who proceeds to eventually beat Frieza to a bloody pulp for a full hour and probably would've died had it not been for Whis distracting him long enough for Gogeta to arrive.
        Frieza: Fine, then. I'll crush you into tiny pieces. The way I did that Earthling.
        Son Goku: "The way you did that Earthling? You mean Krillin!? YOU MEAN KRILLIN!?"
      • Ironically, destroying Planet Vegeta was Frieza's attempt to avoid this, as the Saiyans are Proud Warrior Race Guy personified, and though they didn't pose a threat to Frieza at the time, he feared their battle lust and unparalleled power growth. He even likened the destruction of the planet to killing a beast before it could wake up. Turned out he was right to do it, as the very next generation of Saiyans produced the individuals who defeated him.
      • Unlike his father who favored the carrot (cake), Babidi preferred to use the stick in controlling Buu. Whenever Buu showed some disobedience, Babidi would threaten to reseal the monster... Not realizing that Buu repeatedly flying recklessly and endangering his life was him trying to kill him without risking being resealed. This continued until Goku scolded Buu for letting such a weak coward order him around, leading Buu to figure out that he could just choke Babidi to keep him from pronouncing the sealing spell. Babidi died less than a minute after Goku left.
      • Then there's Dr. Gero, who repeatedly insulted and berated Androids 17 and 18, who were rebellious teenagers before he forcibly turned them into cyborgs. Cyborgs far stronger than he is, mind you. What happened to him was inevitable. And there's a double dose of Too Dumb to Live in this example. See, when Dr. Gero built 17 and 18, he realized how difficult they would be to control, and so came up with a new design for future androids that, while still strong, were more limited in their power. Sounds pretty smart, right? Except that he then rebuilt his own body, and used the deliberately weakened design on himself rather than the fully powered one that might've enabled him to stand up to 17 and 18 (or better yet, to not even need them in the first place). Yeah, he's a genius, alright.
      • Cell emotionally torments Gohan to fuel his desire to fight him at full power. It works, and Cell gets brutally beaten by a Super Saiyan 2 Gohan, and it's only the fact Gohan prolongs the fight that Cell manages to attempt to turn things around, which costs Goku his life to fix.
    • Dragon Ball Super:
      • A group of carjackers try to mug Goku. While there's no reason to assume that they'd know of Goku's accomplishments, they do witness him effortlessly pick up their truck (which they'd pretended to crash to get Goku to pull over). Despite that display of tremendous strength, they still try to mug him.
      • Despite knowing Gohan is the Great Saiyaman, a superhero famous for beating up dozens of guys with machine guns, Barry Khan starts threatening to expose Gohan and shouting threats of sending paparazzi after Gohan and his family after Videl rejects him a second time. In response, Gohan politely tells him to stop or he will wake up Pan. Barry refuses to take the hint, snapping that Gohan's just a stuntman and can't tell him what to do while grabbing him by the collar; Gohan grabs onto him, rushes him at hypersonic-speed, and stops just before a wall, scaring the living daylights out of him, before once more politely telling him to leave.
  • In Durarara!!, people at Shizuo's school (both middle and high school) were not the most intelligent lot. This is evidenced by the fact that they thought picking on Shizuo Heiwajima was anything less than a phenomenally stupid idea. Even if they were being manipulated by Izaya, picking on a guy that can pick up street signs/vending machines/refrigerators (basically anything) and throw them at you and cannot only survive getting shot at point blank range but also act so casually about it, is a really bad idea. The guy can even get run over by a freaking truck and emerge unharmed.
  • Elfen Lied: When you're pinned down by Lucy with the ability to rip you to shreds with her crazy invisible psychic arms, it's probably a good idea NOT to antagonize her. When one character threatens to kill Lucy next time he sees her, she solves that problem...by gouging out the man's eyes. In other words, whatever you do, do NOT bully this tormented psychic girl.
  • During the Grand Magic Games arc in Fairy Tail, the members of Sabretooth keep doing this to a ridiculous extent. Whether it's Sting assuming he can beat Natsu despite seeing his strength and determination first-hand, Orga deciding that the best course of action would be to attack one of the Ten Wizard Saints head-on that days prior he witnessed surpassing his own MPF score twice over (granted, he did try to goad Jura into tanking one of his strongest attacks head-on, only for Jura to dodge the lightning before proceeding with his counter-attack), or Minerva kidnapping and torturing a mutual friend of her opponents despite knowing (and exploiting the fact) that the series runs on The Power of Friendship (granted, she was counting on them both beating each other down and leaving the victor easy pickings), they never seem to learn until they're eventually defeated (with the exception of Minerva, who just gets worse).
  • For reasons unknown, people challenge Kenshiro of Fist of the North Star even after he's just exploded someone's head. When the first Mook or batch of mooks provoke him, that could easily be explained as Mugging the Monster. When the second batch tries, having seen the first wave get turned into fountains of blood and body parts, then it slides right into this trope by virtue of them being Too Dumb to Live.
  • This shows up in Fruits Basket. Saki Hanajima (aka "Hana-chan"), one of the main character's friends, is rumored — correctly — to be capable of killing people with her thoughts. The reaction of her peers? "Let's bully her!" Luckily for them, she turns out to be one of The Fettered, but still... In fact, in grade school, she almost killed a boy after he forced her to eat a live newt to support the rumor of her being a witch. It came back to haunt her in middle school.
  • Anyone who tries to bully Sōsuke in Full Metal Panic!. Yeah, good idea trying to bully the boy that's carrying an automatic, who was seen sniping at people from the bushes, planting land mines around the school, and threw grenades at anyone who looked at him or Kaname funny. It's actually very surprising how many bullies try to antagonize the "weirdo military freak", considering how outwardly violent he is with everyone, along with how he gets away with any crime he commits.
  • Gamaran: Shown with Baian Maki: in a flashback he fights alone against ten swordsmen who mock his use of the naginata. Baian hits their leader in the face so hard that it snaps his neck and kills him.
  • Gate: When a mysterious "Gate" appears in the Ginza district of Modern Day Tokyo — Japan, a wave of classical roman/medieval troops proceeds to attack/slaughter the innocent civilians in it? Sure, go ahead. What could go wrong with that?
  • Great Teacher Onizuka: To test Onizuka's devotion to his students, Urumi throws a beer bottle at a Yakuza boss's head, picking a fight with his gang.
  • Early on in High School Debut, a bunch of seniors call out Haruna for spending so much time with Yoh after the two of them start dating. This is after she's subjected to some Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics by the girls in question. However, when they finally call her out on the school roof, they make the mistake of trying to make it physical by shoving Haruna. Keep in mind that Haruna was an Action Girl back in middle school and still regularly exercises and keeps up with her softball skills. So when they shove, she rolls up her sleeves and lets the girls know that, "if that's what it takes," she's more than willing to trade blows. She's in a four-on-one fight... and wins with just superficial scrapes on her face. Not only that, but in the next chapter, a flashback to her victory shows that at least two of the girls got injured when Haruna just tanked their blows.
  • I Got My Wish and Reincarnated as the Villainess (Last Boss)!: The kids at school are quick to accuse Elizabeth of cheating and spread rumors about her but after seeing her "fight" three boys after they take it physically, most of them are too afraid to do it to her face.
  • Inuyasha:
    • Lots of people screw with half-demons, despite the fact that many half-demons openly possess enough raw power to destroy everyone in the towns that scorn them. True, demons scorn them as well, but even the weakest demon is, generally, much stronger than a human — in other words, they have a decent chance of fighting back. Humans don't.
    • Shishinki was an absolute idiot to try inflicting an Heroic BSoD on Sesshoumaru. It did not end well for him.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable has an invoked example. Josuke's eyes are closed so he can't see Rohan's manga, as doing so would activate Rohan's Stand, Heaven's Door, which would put him at Rohan's mercy. To get Josuke to open his eyes, Rohan uses a page that he ripped from Koichi's memories to figure out a strategy. The plan he comes up with is intentionally hitting Josuke's Berserk Button by insulting his hair to focus all of his attention on him. It works...and then immediately backfires, as Josuke is so Blinded by Rage that he bypasses Heaven's Door and beats Rohan so badly that he has to take a hiatus from writing.
  • Kagerou Project: Several times across her long lifespan, Azami is attacked by humans. Humans who are well aware of her impressive set of magic powers, including the ability to make herself invisible to them, hypnotism and the ability to turn others into stone. While the final attack made on her does lead to her shutting herself up in another world, she still manages to kill all but one attacker — who she lets go to warn the others to never come back.
  • Kekkaishi: Gen's backstory is being picked on for being half-ayakashi. They throw mud at him and then act surprised when he throws a boulder.
  • In an early arc of Kyo Kara Maoh!, former Evil Chancellor Stoffel von Spitzweig tries to curry favor with the protagonist Yuuri (recently made Maou/Demon King) by kidnapping him. That's actually not the bullying part — Stoffel was only doing it so he could have a chance to talk to the kid alone, and treated him well while he was there. But when Yuuri's retainers naturally objected to this, in the pitched battle that followed Stoffel chose to target the most frail-looking of them: Gunter von Christ, known as not only a powerful magic-user but one of the best sword instructors in the kingdom. It'd be understandable to assume the ridiculously-pretty skinny one was a weakling if it was anyone else, but Stoffel should have known damn well what Gunter could do.
  • Happens to Robert Haydn in The Law of Ueki. Taunting a small child who can turn his arm into a six-foot cannon is not a good plan.
  • In The Legend of the Legendary Heroes, pretty much everyone hates and fears Cursed Eye bearers, which can do things like copy all magic used in front of them, dissolve people into dust, or any other number of fun activities. The main character, Ryner Lute, possesses the Alpha Stigma, which is the copying version. However, when an Alpha Stigma bearer is driven over the edge, they become homicidally insane and use all of that copied magic to tear the rest of the world a new one. People know this. And yet everyone insists on treating Cursed Eye bearers like crap until the inevitable happens.note 
  • The Misfit of Demon King Academy: Anos Voldigoad is insanely powerful and skilled. Some of his feats including disintegrating an opponent by snapping his fingers, then immediately resurrecting him over and over again, and ripping a castle out of the ground and hurling into the sky. Despite the fact that he is obviously way more powerful than most full-blooded demons, they still mock or antagonize him just because he's a human/demon hybrid.
  • Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid:
    • Saikawa ends up challenging some adults to a game of dodge ball, only to immediately realize that she got in way over her head. Fortunately, her best friend happened to be an actual dragon and got some other dragons to play in her stead.
    • Tohru, an actual dragon, confronts a trio of delinquents for loitering, having joined a neighborhood patrol. The tallest of the three retaliates by attempting to punch her lights out, only for her to casually dodge and then knock him out with a Finger Poke of Doom. The trio later return with their whole gang to get even with Tohru, sending their largest and strongest member on her... only for her to promptly send him flying with a single punch to the face before wiping out the rest of the gang with one kick. For extra irony, said big thug is named Ryuu (i.e. dragon), complete with a shirt with the kanji.
  • Monster: Professor Goedelitz tries to coerce Johan Liebert into leading his Neo-Nazi organization by holding his sister hostage. This gets him and his subordinates killed.
  • Monster Musume: There are a number of humans who enjoy antagonizing liminals (monsters). Pretty stupid, since the monster girls of the series can easily hurt people just by accident. Sure, strict laws mean liminals could be deported for harming humans by fighting back, but that's not going to save you if a pissed-off lamia decides to crush your spine or an angry centaur puts a hoof through your skull. Rachnera shows off just how dumb having blind faith that the law will protect you from retaliation multiple times, since unlike the rest of the main characters, she doesn't care about obeying the law.
  • In My Hero Academia, The Meta Liberation Army blackmail the League of Villains into rescuing their broker Giran, intending to kill their small group as an example with the entirety of their Deika City division or get tipped to the top Pro Heroes with their location. This ends up with the League physically stronger than before with absolutely none of them killed by the Army, several troops including one of their head members killed, Deika City destroyed, Re-Destro's legs getting amputated which causes a problem for him later on and ultimately Shigaraki is now the new head of the now-rebranded Paranormal Liberation Front.
  • Naruto: Let's see if we can't isolate and otherwise mentally and emotionally abuse a small child who has a giant fox-demon stuck in him, thus ensuring that he doesn't have a reason to keep said demon there. Let's do this even though, as far as we know, the few people in all of history able to defeat said demon are all long dead.
    • Goes double for your average smuck who attacks one of the demon hosts. Goes triple for the Kazekage, who has his son Gaara host a demon, and then tries to assassinate Gaara, someone who is for all intents and purposes, invincible. There's making a stupid choice, and there's just plain ought to know better.
    • In fact, pretty much every village treats their hosts like crap. It's semi-justified in that it's only been a few generations since the Tailed Beasts were first sealed, and so far nearly everyone who is a host for their entire life has lost control, gone insane, or betrayed their village; it's only assumed that they'll ALL be that way. Of course, no one points out that those hosts go bad largely because they were mistreated by their villages, and it's not until Naruto goes around knocking sense into his enemies, including the above-mentioned Gaara, that most of the world realizes "Oh, hey, they DON'T have to be despicable monstrosities?" The Hidden Cloud is the only village at the start of the series that actually treats their hosts well, and that's only after Killer B actually befriended his sealed demon.
    • There's also Naruto's mother, Kushina. When she first arrived in the Hidden Leaf as a kid, the other kids immediately took to mocking her for her red hair, despite her letting them know she was the first female Hokage, a position given only to those considered some of the strongest ninjas around. Within minutes, she flipped out and beat the living shit out of the bullies. One particular kid actually brought in his older brother to help him get revenge, and Kushina still kicked their asses.
    • It's not just Tailed Beast hosts, either. In The Last: Naruto the Movie, we see a group of bullies picking on Hinata for her eyes and calling her "Byakugan monster". While Hinata was 5 at the time, and therefore it was highly doubtful she could have fought back herself, she is still the heir to the Hyuuga clan, one of Konoha's most powerful and influential families. Bullying someone like that is simply asking for trouble.
  • Nononono: The top students of the General Curriculum despise Yuuta (actually Nono) for being an honor student despite being from the Sports Curriculum, in addition to being the most popular guy around. They decide to gang up on Nono while she's returning from her practice. Not only does she defeat them, but she humiliates their leader by giving him her barbell as a weapon... which he promptly drops on his foot, unable to handle the weight. Before that, convinced him the barbell wasn't too heavy... by swinging it with one hand.
  • Nico Robin of One Piece was bullied by other children when she was young (who, when she retaliated, would go whine to their parents who chastise her. Of course, the kids were most likely lying as they picked on her first without provocation. Robin just wanted to be left alone) and abused by her aunt. I repeat, they bullied and abused a child who has the power to grow body parts wherever she wants, which, as she proves later when she single-handedly takes down about fifty Marines, is quite a dangerous and potentially deadly power.
    • It's usually Mugging the Monster when it comes to Shanks and Luffy. People rarely appreciate (or even believe) how strong these two are. Two notable examples, however, are Bellamy in the Skypiea arc and Hody Jones after the Time Skip. Bellamy assumed Luffy was a weakling because Luffy wouldn't fight back over a simple insult (he didn't see it as worth the trouble). Then, after Bellamy robbed Luffy's friends, he got Luffy's wanted poster, with a bounty that's almost double his own meager sum. He dismissed it as a fake. When Luffy came back to get what he stole, Bellamy still refused to accept the truth. Cue getting faceplanted with just one punch to the face.
    • Some pirates try to weasel out of paying the Galley-La shipwrights for repairs on their ship, and learn the hard way that the shipwrights also happen to be strong fighters.
    • Hody is an even more egregious example, because not only did he know Luffy had beaten Arlong, but knew his exact reputation right down to recent events and still decided to make an enemy of him. While he arguably could have beaten "Luffy as advertised" instead of "Took a Level in Badass Luffy", Luffy's mere reputation alone should have made him think twice.
    • A literal and double case of this happens in the Sabaody Archipelago arc with Saint Charlos, one of the World Nobles, a.k.a. the Celestial Dragons, living proof that Aristocrats Are Evil. See, about 99% of ordinary civilians familiar with the Celestial Dragons would gladly form into an angry mob and lynch them without a second of hesitation if they could, but you can't attack a Celestial Dragon, because if you do, they'll call an Admiral and a warship to come attack you. So, Saint Charlos decided to shoot one of Luffy's new friends and enslave him, but he was unaware of two little details when he pulled the trigger: the one he attacked was Luffy's friend, and Luffy does not care about consequences since he's already wanted by the World Government anyway. Attack his friends, and you're on the fast track to death's door, seen here.
    • The World Nobles in general are so convinced of their superiority over commoners that they'll continue to insist on it even when it makes no sense. The prime example is Saint Mjosgard, who, when some of his Fishman slaves escaped, went off to Fish-Man Island to demand that they be returned to him. He gets into a shipwreck along the way, which leaves him as the only survivor. Alone, injured, and with no way to contact the Admirals, he still feels the need to mouth off to the Fishmen, even though the World Government had every reason to think that he was already dead at that point, and the Fishmen could've done whatever they wanted to him without anyone ever knowing. It was only Queen Otohime's intervention that saved him from what would've likely been a very long and painful death. Not only that, but it also humbled Mjosgard and opened his eyes on how rotten he and the rest of the Nobles had become. He returns the favor by rescuing Otohime's daughter from Charlos.
    • Special mention goes to Don Krieg, who picks a fight with Dracule Mihawk, who'd previously reduced his armada of battleships and army of pirates into one badly trashed battleship and a severely reduced and half-dead crew, and then showed up just to finish off Krieg's last battleship purely out of boredom — Which he did with one swing of his giant sword.
    • Wow, Spandam! It sure was a great idea to frame CP9, seven of the deadliest assassins in the world, for the Enies Lobby disaster. It's not like they will want to go after your blood when they find out what you did to them! Oh...
    • Another, more minor example involving CP9: when Dragon-in-Chief Rob Lucci manages to overwhelm Luffy, Usopp challenges him. To put it in perspective, no antagonist before this had ever managed to beat Luffy when it was a question of who had the better Charles Atlas Superpower, having to use Logia or Paramecia powers if they didn't have some other kind of weapon. Lucci is superhuman, but it's completely related to brute force, and his Devil Fruit power only amplifies that strength by giving him the ability to turn into a leopard. And he managed to beat Luffy, who was lying down in a bloody mess. Usopp, easily the weakest member of the Straw Hats, starts taunting Lucci, culminating in calling him a scaredy-cat. Of course, he was only doing that to provoke Luffy into getting up and finishing the fight. It works.
    • Tashigi has a terrible habit of picking fights with people that are way out of her league, often ones that have powers that render her own abilities uselessnote , though it's not because she's overconfident or over-estimating her abilities: its mostly due to her Plucky Girl tendencies. It's affected her track record against named characters to the point that it even got her labeled a Faux Action Girl a couple times, even though her main problem is that, even after the Time Skip, she's only at the rank of Marine Captain, and, with only a couple exceptions, the Sorting Algorithm of Evil left them in the dust a long, long time ago (that being at Enies Lobby, where they were using Captains as Mooks).
    • Arguably the biggest example in terms of representative power levels in the series came in the first chapter, when the 8 million bounty mountain bandit Higuma bullied Shanks, who was formerly a member of Gold Roger's pirate crew, and in canon, is one of the Four Emperors, and easily on par with the Marine Admirals. It may be slightly justified in that Shanks showed no indication of such strength (he wasn't an Emperor until four years before the start of the series), that it was probably a secret that he was part of Roger's crew, and that reputations like that aren't typically known outside of the Grand Line.
    • Special mention also goes to the Fake Straw Hat Crew, who appeared on Sabaody Archipelago right when the real Straw Hats returned there as well. They manage to pick a fight with Luffy himself and get their asses handed to them by way of Emperor's haki. Their captain, "Triple-Tongued" Demaro Black, had a bounty of 26 million berry, which meant he was just some random nobody. (Luffy's first bounty was 30 million berry, to say nothing of his bounty after the timeskip at 400 million berry.)
    • Kaido's underling Jack, despite his absolutely monstrous strength, adamantine durability, and apparently limitless stamina, has a really bad habit of assuming that he's invincible and starting unreasonably difficult or outright impossible fights. His first fight against the Mink Tribe ends with his use of one of Caesar Clown's WMDs because the fight was a hopeless stalemate on both sides; from there, he went on to attempt to bail Doflamingo out as he was being transported to Impel Down despite being guarded by Sengoku, Fujitora, Tsuru, Maynard, and Bastille (which ended with him getting beaten to a pulp and losing a good deal of his fleet), and finished by attempting to kill Zunesha and take down all of Zou (read: picking a fight with an elephant the size of a country with a fleet that could fit on the tip of its trunk), which cost him his remaining fleet and has also left him stranded on the ocean floor. Jack is proof that unless you're truly inexorable, there will always be fights that you can't win, and punching outside your weight class will almost never turn out in your favor if you don't know when to back down.
    • Midway through the Wano arc, the World Government decides to abolish the Shichibukai/Seven Warlords of the Sea, thereby making the remaining members wanted pirates once again. The decision, while reasonable, is then followed by the Marines launching simultaneous assaults against all the said individuals. As Boa Hancock points out, since the targets had been chosen for their positions due to how strong they were, the Marines would have quite a fight on their hands.Only Edward Weevil was captured, and it took the intervention of Admiral Ryokugyu to facilitate so.
  • You'd think upon learning that Saitama of One-Punch Man has "the power of God in that body," as the Hero Association puts it, that people who learn this fact would leave him alone.
    • It doesn't discourage "Snake Fist" Snek from trying to haze Saitama to make him leave the superhero business on his first day officially on the job. All he gets for his trouble is buried up to his waist in the ground, headfirst, while Saitama doesn't even break stride. Fittingly, the anime adds Idiot Crows to the scene to let everyone know what kind of an impulsive dumbass Snake Fist was being.
    • Later on, Tanktop Tiger and Black Hole try to publicly defame Saitama after he destroys the meteor that would've annihilated cities and causes a lot of collateral damage anyway — when that doesn't work, they try to pretend to 'defend themselves' from his 'threatening stance' (really just him standing there confused) and jump him. They've seen this guy punch a meteor so hard that it exploded with the force of a nuclear explosion and they still challenge him in physical combat. Luckily for them, he merely slaps Tanktop Tiger over a building and then catches Tanktop Black Hole's punch and reduces him to a blubbering wreck while barely putting any pressure on it.
    • In the webcomic, we see that Fubuki was bullied as a child, despite having psychic powers. However, it was her sister who made the bullies pay for it.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • Ash Ketchum is an unarmed ten(?) year old boy who has never let the fact that a Legendary or armed criminal could reduce him to greasy paste stop him from chewing them out if need be. He even once yelled at Palkia, who just spent half the movie disintegrating space. And the first movie has Ash twice in a row futilely attempt to stop Mewtwo by punching him in the face. (Miraculously, Ash seems able to reason with these titans of the Pokémon world somehow and get them to back off... Most of the time.)
    • In the opposite direction, Ash is an experienced trainer by the time he begins his Johto journey, and one of the first people he meets is a hot-tempered rookie named Casey who challenges him to a battle for insulting her favorite baseball team and disregards his warning that a battle would be thoroughly one-sided. Even better, the Pokémon Ash uses is Charizard, an actual draconic Pokémon, while Casey only has a lineup of three freshly-acquired mons (including one she'd caught just a few minutes earlier). What ensues can't really be called a "battle", as Charizard barely has to attack at all in order to defeat Casey's Pokémon in less than two minutes.
    • For a mon-to-mon example, try the Advance Generation episode where Ash caught a Torkoal. Prior to being captured, said Torkoal is the target of literal bullying by Steel-types, which a Pokémon like Torkoal would have no problem againstnote .
    • Also, some newbie Pokemon on the team get jealous of Pikachu and try to antagonize him. Never mind that he is higher level than any of them (despite not evolving), and has powerful Shock and Awe abilities. Particularly dumb when Oshawott does it, given that he's a Water type, and thus takes double the hurt from electricity.
    • In Pokémon Generations, Lance runs an op with Gold to deal with Team Rocket in Mahogany Town. The Rockets all notice the intruders and walk out, swaggering with undue confidence as they approach Lance and deploy their tool-of-the-trade Pokemon. Problem: this is Lance and his Dragonite we're talking about. You can guess how this turns out.
  • Espers in Psychic Squad are treated with suspicion at best and as non-human scum at worst. So bad that one of said dragons will grow up to be the "Queen of Disaster" within the span of 10 years. The Children's previous handler, a representative from the education department, used shock collars on the girls in order to control them. She had a Freudian Excuse, though: her own mother was equally sadistic and would lock her up if she wasn't "perfect".
  • Ranma Saotome of Ranma ½ has his moment with Pantyhose Taro. Everybody briefly joins in on repeating his embarrassing name despite his repeated demands for them to shut up...and the fact that he's got a winged minotaur as a cursed form. Which had been kicking their butts for the last two episodes. Despite the fact that they are in a cave with a waterfall outside. Guess they knew it was five minutes before the end of the episode so the plot would be resolved somehow without their pulverization and in a way most likely involving the removal of Taro from their immediate locale.
    • Made worse in the manga, where the incident in question takes place about two and a half chapters before the end of that saga. Somewhat justified; the main characters of Ranma 1/2 are all, basically, idiots.
  • In Rebuild of Evangelion, Shinji does this after Asuka is nearly killed. Enraged by Gendo's actions, he begins to attack the headquarters while screaming abuse at his father. Gendo is willing to let Shinji do this until the power runs out... right up until Shinji claims Gendo has never lost anything. Ten seconds later, Shinji is unconscious, without Gendo even moving.
  • It's commonly interpreted that Nanami in Revolutionary Girl Utena has so much trouble with animals, and at one point actually turns into a cow because she bullied Anthy in episode 3, and as it turns out, Anthy is among other things the proverbial fairytale Witch. An attentive viewer quickly notices that majority of the side-episodes focusing on Nanami's Humiliation Conga show Anthy taking special interest in something related to the episode theme.
  • R.O.D the TV has Joker treat Paper Master Yomiko's grievances with little respect, ultimately trying to scare her off by showing her exactly what he's done to her love interest. He also does this in the middle of his organization's massive library/headquarters, when her power is the ability to control paper. The outcome, while tragic, is hardly surprising.
  • Subverted in Slayers with Zelgadis the chimera. Most regular humans either run away in fear or ridicule him for his appearance (and it's also worth noting that he's Nigh Invulnerable and a skilled sorcerer-swordsman), but he doesn't do a thing about it; rather, he either makes a snippy reply or he gets depressed. After he meets the other main characters, though, he begins to take some insults in stride. In the novels, it seemed that he played it straight in the beginning (as "Rezo's berserker"), but it's hinted that Rezo was influencing/manipulating him.
    • Played straight with most of the Mazoku/Monster race, as well as a few other creatures, such as Beastmen (the fifth novel and the scuffle between Beastman Dilgear and Zelgadis early on say it all).
    • Played very straight in the first episode of TV series 4. Lina is encountering some pirates, who at this point know that she is Lina Inverse, who has destroyed cities several times (one of them twice). While running away from her in fear, they for some reason decide to taunt her about her breast size, which they know is a Berserk Button. It doesn't end well, although fortunately the scene is meant as comedy, so they suffer Amusing Injuries rather than being killed.
  • The entire (literal) plot of Sohryuden Legend Of The Dragon Kings, which basically had the bad guys deliberately torment each of the four titular brothers to release their dragon nature, and then inevitably get their asses kicked by them when they did.
  • Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie: Fei Long and T. Hawk make the mistake of picking a fight with Ryu and Ken, respectively. Both end up regretting it in short order:
    • Ryu gets shoved into the ring, while he's in Hong Kong, simply for commenting on the fight he saw. Then his would-be opponent taunts him by grabbing his dogi and jostling him... Ryu drops him with a simple headbutt. Fei Long decides that's his cue to step in and doesn't take "no" for an answer. He ends up with a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder.
    • T. Hawk tries to gain fame and recognition by picking a fight with Ken, who tells him twice that he isn't interested. Then adds that Ryu was the only one capable of beating him, but T. Hawk doesn't listen. So Ken shows him why he should've:
      Ken: (pissed) "Watch out... when you ask for something... you MIGHT GET IT!! SHORYUKEN!!"
  • Sword Art Online:
    • Kirito becomes a victim of this during the Alicization arc. Even after Kirito beats him, PoH decides to mouth off to him, gloating that even if Kirito kills him in-game, he'll just keep coming after him and Asuna again and again until he finally kills them for real as payback. Of course, this bites him in the ass immediately afterwards, since Kirito proceeds to make sure that PoH is in no condition to come after them, ever again.
    • Even as early as the Aincrad arc, when Rosalia and her Titan's Hand guild decide to pick a fight with him, one of them recognizes him as "The Black Swordsman", but Rosalia dismisses it as she doesn't think someone from the clearing group would come back down to the floor they're currently at. They naturally pay for it.
  • In the Tales of Symphonia OVA, at one point, you see Presea lifelessly dragging what used to be a huge tree she chopped down through her village of Ozette as everyone in the village stares at her. All of a sudden, some little kid throws a rock at her and yells "Monster!" Uh, kid? You see that huge tree there? You're a heck of a lot lighter than it is.
  • A premise of Tekkaman Blade II, in which the events of Tekkaman Blade led to a segment of humanity gaining the power to become a sort of proto-Tekkaman. These "Primary Bodies" have partial Tekkaman powers, but are inexplicably persecuted, and twice during the series, the Primary Bodies revolt and try to convert themselves into full Tekkamen to take over the world.
    • In at least "Teknoman" (the English dubbed version of Tekkaman Blade), Ringo's constant attempts to pick fights with Blade in the first half-dozen or so episode could well count as this, seeing as how he's deliberately provoking someone he claims to consider unstable and whom he has seen effortlessly tear through dozens of Spider-Crabs (which are, themselves, killing machines capable of wiping out whole platoons of ordinary soldiers).
  • At the start of Tiger Mask, the title character is attacked first by a child and then by a knife wielding grown man. Tiger Mask is a wrestler in a world where Pro Wrestling Is Real, and at the start of the manga was a heel infamous for the beatings he inflicted on his opponents. While Tiger Mask is willing to forgive the child because he is, after all, a child and the son of one of Tiger Mask's previous victims, the knife wielder is not so lucky, and Tiger Mask uses how he beat him up as example on why you shouldn't try and imitate the child.
  • In TSUYOSHI - The One Nobody Can Win Against the Russian envoys have orders to bring Tsuyoshi to Russia, and even after he stops hiding his humongous killing intent and show for a moment how dangerous he is they proceed to kidnap him with a trap and bring him on a ship bound to Vladivostok, though they have the sense to pump him up with drugs, tie him to a bed with heavy duty restraints, and put two armed guards in the room. Then Tsuyoshi wakes up early, gets out of his restraints and shatters the balls of the guards before looking in the security camera and declaring he was going to kill them all... And the Russian fighters decided it would be a fun battle. And after Tsuyoshi annihilates two special force soldiers and steals a gun, they decide to go after him. The only one of the group to actually understand they're basically trying to get crippled for life is Teru, a Japanese Karateka that was tricked into joining them and remembers what happened when he fought with Tsuyoshi, and fears and respects Tsuyoshi too much to fight him when he ambushes him and Al Migero.
  • In The Ultimate Time Sweeper Mahoroba, the country of Dokoku repeatedly picks fights with the titular ship for no other reason they consider all the oceans their home waters (even calling their navy the Earth Navy) and the Mahoroba supposedly trespasses simply by existing, and they continue attacking in spite of being humiliated at every encounter while the Mahoroba's captain continues telling them "You aren't our enemy!". Eventually the Mahoroba reveals itself as an incredibly powerful space battleship capable of time travel, so Hellghost, the president of Dokoku, orders to leave it alone... And to investigate the remains of the battleship Musashi, when the one thing the captain of the Mahoroba told them not to do being to come too close to the ship. This finally gets the Mahoroba to strike first and make an outright threat, as they didn't consider Dokoku a threat but they won't forgive anyone messing with the Musashi.
  • Variable Geo: Yuuki's first match was nearly her last, after making the mistake of sexually harassing Satomi, who happens to have one of the highest spirit levels on record. Satomi warns her to knock it off and fight her seriously, but when Yuuki decides to steal a kiss, Satomi's patience reaches its limit. She unleashes her ultimate attacknote , incinerating the ring and Yuuki along with it. Yuuki gets singed with 2nd degree burns all over her body and is hospitalized afterward (seen at 22:37-23:03 here).
  • The trio of “heroes” in Villainess Level 99 think it’s a fantastic idea to keep antagonizing Yumiella Dolkness. This is despite the fact that she effortlessly knocked one of them across a training ground with a wooden sword, disintegrated a supposedly difficult to destroy target in front of one, and let the third witness her summoning a freaking black hole large enough to block the sun. They may not realize that she’s the hidden Super Boss of their world, but you’d think seeing those feats would give them pause anyway.
  • The nameless extras that populate many parts of Violinist Of Hamelin world are guilty of this trope as charged. You would think that the normal reaction, upon learning, that the dude in the hat right next to you is supposed to be The Antichrist and single-handedly massacred half a town worth of people when he was only ten, should be fear and trying to get away/not to piss him off. Nope, not in this manga.
  • ViVid Strike! has this as part of Rinne's backstory. The fighting club full of Alpha Bitches decided to make her their bullying target after Rinne turned down their offer to join their club and they learned that she was adopted. This, despite the reason that they were offering her to join their club was due to them learning that Rinne has the physical stats of a national-level athlete. When they eventually pushed things too far by beating her to unconsciousness so she wasn't able to make it to her beloved grandfather's side before he died, Rinne made them suffer dearly the following day, casually snapping the arm of one and busting the other two's heads open against the lockers.
  • In The Voynich Hotel, even after being told by Ashkelon to watch his step around her, Holon taunts Helena about the diminished state of the Mothers when she confronts him after he dismembers Berna. She smashes him across the room and then snaps off his remaining horn in contempt as he lies stunned and bloodied. He only saves himself from getting killed by agreeing to close down his hotel and become a guest at the Voynich.
  • This trope is the whole reason that Nagi Naoe in Weiß Kreuz is a member of Schwarz. He was ostracized and tormented as a child due to his telekinetic powers.
  • Pretty much the entire plot of Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest so far if you switch "Dragon" with "Werewolf". To be fair, the people bullying Inugami don't know that he's actually a super powerful werewolf at first. But when the first thing you see a guy do is to make his opponent stab himself with nothing but Deadly Dodging, your first thought should not be to try ganging up on him. When the second thing you see him do is break someone's hand with his face (the guy punching him hurt himself since Inugami is Made of Iron) and you still want to fight him, you've officially become Too Dumb to Live. Later, when Inugami does reveal his true self to Big Bad Haguro Daoh, Daoh becomes crazily obsessed with him (since Inugami caused Daoh, a bonafide emotionless sociopath, to feel a real emotion for the first time in his life: gut-wrenching fear) and deliberately provokes him in the hopes of getting Inugami to acknowledge him as a Worthy Opponent.
  • In Yona of the Dawn, the "guardians" of the Blue Dragon isolate the bearers because of a curse that they themselves made up. Luckily for them, the dragons have either been ashamed of themselves or, like Sinha, are kind enough to forgive them.
    • The extra chapter "Fly" confirms that the Green Dragon's village is the same way. While the Blue Dragon villagers were scared of the dragon's eyes and had forgotten the history of the power after two thousand years, the Green Dragon village was razed by people wanting the power of the Green Dragon for themselves, and the villagers reacted by chaining and imprisoning the Green Dragon so that no one would know of his existence. Jaeha finally escaped when his predecessor grew too weak to stop him. While he resented the previous Green Dragon, Garou, for beating him up and capturing him, he also recognized that Garou suffered as much as he did, and seemed to respect Garou for never attacking the villagers. Jaeha offered to carry Garou with him when ran away, but Garou chose instead to hold back the villagers shooting arrows at Jaeha.
    • In the latest arc, Kouren has imprisoned the four dragons (and Yoon) and threatened to execute or torture them if Yona doesn't negotiate peace with Soo-won. Never mind that the dragons refused to fight back to avoid provoking a war, or that they could kill off everyone if they so pleased, let's just beat and neglect the legendary dragons. Why not.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Examples from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
      • Duel Academy is full of people like this who think that Jaden is a wimp simply because the red jacket signifies the Slifer Dorm. No matter how many Eldritch Abominations he defeats and Shadow Duels he survives throughout the series, the rich upperclassmen never seem to learn.
      • In the dub, Chazz had to deal with a guy like this too shortly after being demoted to Osiris, despite formerly being one of the few competent members of the Obelisk dorm. The guy's name in the dub was "Reginald van Howell III"; a more generic name for a spoiled rich kid there ain't, and his deck was barely better than a Warrior Toolbox. Interestingly, in the original version the kid actually looked up to Manjoume.
    • In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, it's justified for Kinomiya Kodo, a profiler duelist who becomes Aki's opponent during Fortune Cup Semifinals in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. He is tasked by Goodwin to awaken Aki's potential as one of the Signers so he opts to taunt Aki, a person who can make duel effects reality to the point of harming her opponents, with her horrible past experience with her power or by simply calling her witch who don't belong in society despite knowing what the consequence is (to be fair, he analyzed Aki's dueling style beforehand and came up with a way to counter Aki's ace monster effect so he is confident that he will win). She pays him back dearly by defeating and badly hurting him by the end of their duel.
    • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Sora incessantly mocks Shun Kurosaki during their duel, calling his Xyz monsters worthless and even confessing that he's a member of the force that invaded Kurosaki's homeland and turned it into a war zone For the Evulz. Even when Shun keeps countering his moves and dealing massive damage to him, he doesn't let up. Yuya even asked if Sora was out of his mind and asked him to stop provoking him. Sora paid for it when Kurosaki's Raid Raptors — Revolution Falcon carpet bombed the entire battlefield to the ground and made a building fall on him.


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