History BullyingADragon / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/TheAddamsFamily''. Most people are just terrified, but there are some who are more antagonistic. They don't see the problem with being offensive to people who consider torture a nice activity for the whole family. Fortunately for them, the Addamses are very nice people. But then, there is their family motto... "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us."

* {{Subverted|Trope}} on ''Series/{{Angel}}''. Gwen is a young woman who can electrocute people by touching them with her bare skin. As a child, she was sent to a boarding school and is approached by a boy asking if she's "a freak". The audience braces itself... but he's not bullying her, just asking her an innocent question, and follows up with "you don't look like a freak." Unfortunately, he offers to share a toy car with her, and when she reaches out to take it, she ends up electrocuting him to death anyway.

* In the ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'' episode "Pandora" CowboyCop Detective Stabler has tracked down the pedophile Tassig in Prague, who [[TemptingFate mockingly suggests]] Stabler can't [[PoliceBrutality beat him up]] without permission from "this bitch" (the interpol agent accompanying him). Stabler [[NeckLift grabs him by the throat,]] lifts him so high that Tassig's head brushes against the light bulb dangling from the ceiling above them, and satisfyingly choke-slams him onto the desk behind him.

* ''Series/{{Daredevil|2015}}'': This is something Karen Page has a particularly bad habit of doing.
** In ''Series/{{The Punisher|2017}}'', she outright provokes and insults Lewis Wilson into gunning for her after he's already established himself as a dangerous domestic terrorist who referred to her directly by name in a manifesto. It's lampshaded by Frank, who calls it a terrible idea it was to provoke such a dangerous man into a response.
** In Season 3 of ''Daredevil'', she confronts Fisk with the actual hope that she'll make him angry enough to snap and try to kill her, and be put back in prison for it. She does so by taunting him with the details of how she killed James Wesley, a plan that almost certainly would've gotten her killed if Foggy hadn't shown up in time. Not only does Karen's plan not work, but Fisk orders Dex to kill her, and in Dex's attempts to do so, several other innocent people (including Father Lantom) get killed.

* In ''Series/TheFlash2014'', Eddie Thawne wants to assemble a police task force to capture the Flash, who he sees as responsible for the dangerous events in Central City. Problem is, The Flash has SuperSpeed. Eddie quickly realizes how out of his depth he is when he's beaten senseless by the speedster under the control of another metahuman, but he puts together his task force ''anyway''. It's only after The Flash saves him from the Reverse-Flash does he warm up to a partnership.

* ''Series/{{Gotham}}'' had Penguin's stepmother and stepsiblings tormenting him endlessly after the death of his father. This was despite the fact they knew he was a supposedly reformed criminal mastermind who had killed many people previously. [[spoiler: Oswald eventually snaps and kills them all in a particularly sadistic way, even for him, and they were so awful you don't even blame him.]]
** In Season 4, Penguin is on the other side of this. Penguin, Barbara, Tabitha, and Butch decide to threaten [[ComicBook/TheJoker Jeremiah Valeska]] in order to force him to hold the city ransom for fifty million dollars with his bombs. Sure, he is new to being a criminal at that point, and doesn't seem to be as unhinged as [[AxCrazy his brother]] at first, but by the time they decide to threaten him, he's already destroyed several skyscrapers and forced the evacuation of a major city. They really should have known that threatening him wouldn't go well for them. He simply pretends to go along with their demands before summarily attacking them with a rocket launcher.
** In Season 5, Jeremiah is again the target of this trope, but this time, it's because he's [[spoiler: apparently]] injured and unable to defend himself for a while. [[spoiler: To clarify, he fell into a vat of chemicals and spent ten years locked up in Arkham pretending to be comatose due to his injuries. Edward Nygma, who was a patient in Arkham during the same time period, encouraged other patients to draw on and stab Jeremiah just for the fun of it, and did it himself. It is therefore not surprising that after Jeremiah stops pretending to be comatose, he breaks Ed out of Arkham (while making him think that [[VillainousFriendship Oswald]] is responsible), and tricks him into committing a high-profile crime so that the police will be too distracted to stop [[MadBomber his own planned crimes.]] Since Ed was in the building where Jeremiah's bombs were supposed to go off, Jeremiah probably intended him to die with the heroes.]]

* ''Series/TheSandman2022'', "[[Recap/TheSandman2022S01E06TheSoundOfHerWings The Sound of Her Wings]]": Lady Johanna Constantine hears rumors that the Devil and the Wandering Jew meet at the White Horse Tavern every hundred years, so she crashes their next meeting with two street toughs in an attempt to beat their arcane secrets out of them. It goes about as well as you'd expect trying to mug two immortal beings to go.

* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'':
** Clark Kent was often bullied despite the fact that even without powers, he is still very buff and capable of punching people out.
** In the episode "[[Recap/SmallvilleS01E09Rogue Rogue]]", a DirtyCop who sees Clark using his powers uses that knowledge to blackmail him. Sure, Clark's ThouShaltNotKill philosophy prevents him from easily killing the guy with said powers, but he doesn't know that. All he knows is that Clark is tough enough to stop an out-of-control bus by stepping in front of it and strong enough to toss a generator across a room like a wad of paper. And yet, he keeps on provoking him and even threatening his family. [[spoiler:KarmicDeath took care of him.]]
** In "[[Recap/SmallvilleS08E15Infamous Infamous]]", [[MakingASplash Linda]] [[MeaningfulName Lake]] is dumb enough to try doing this to [[spoiler:Davis Bloome a.k.a. ''Doomsday''. The latter is quick to suffocate her to death]].

* ''Series/Supergirl2015'': In the tie-in comic series, made-of-diamond villain Facet spends months trying to ruin [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Kara]]'s life until Kara loses patience, takes her to the upper atmosphere and lets her go. Supergirl lampshades how dumb is to taunt someone who can ''fly'':
-->'''Supergirl:''' But here's the thing about messing with people who can fly when you can't... They choose how you land.

* ''Series/WonderWoman1975'': One of the Nazis' favorite pastimes in the WWII era of the show and a [[IdiotBall phenomenally bad idea]]. One of many, many examples comes from "The Richest Man in the World". Wonder Woman has finally figured out [[BigBad Dunfield]]'s plan and cornered his gang in their warehouse. She closes the door on them, smiles, and expects them to give up. Instead, they shoot at her. Whereupon she lays down one of the biggest [[CurbStompBattle beatdowns]] in the entire series.
-->'''Wonder Woman:''' You weren't really planning on leaving were you? ''[closes the door]'' I didn't think so.\\
''[Dunfield's [[{{Mooks}} thug]] pulls a gun and shoots at her to no effect]''\\
''[Wonder Woman steps forward visibly annoyed, and [[CurbStompBattle in under 2 minutes, she beats, rounds up, and captures the entire gang]]]''

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E88TheLastRitesOfJeffMyrtlebank The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank]]", a dead man revives in the middle of his funeral, which leads the townspeople to believe that his corpse was possessed by a demon. As the episode progresses, these people decide to attempt to force the young man out of town. He gets them to back down by invoking this very trope by stating that if he really is a demon, then they would have more sense to treat him nicely because he could really mess up their lives if he decided to.

* On ''Series/{{Bewitched}}'', the fact that Endora was a powerful sorceress rarely dissuaded Darrin from telling her off, even though quite a lot of the curses he suffered over the show's run happened as a result. Even worse were the few times he argued with Samantha's ''father'', who even Endora was afraid of. Justified in that Darrin knew full well that Sam's family hated him (or rather, hated the idea of him, a mortal, married to Samantha) and would be just as likely to zap him if he kept his mouth shut as if he spoke his mind.

** In "[[Recap/SmallvilleS08E15Infamous Infamous]]", [[MakingASplash Linda]] [[MeaningfulName Lake]] is dumb enough to try doing this to [[spoiler:Davis Bloome a.k.a. ''Doomsday''. The latter is quick to KickTheSonOfABitch]].

** In the episode "Rogue", a DirtyCop who sees Clark using his powers uses that knowledge to blackmail him. Sure, Clark's ThouShaltNotKill philosophy prevents him from easily killing the guy with said powers, but he doesn't know that. All he knows is that Clark is tough enough to stop an out-of-control bus by stepping in front of it and strong enough to toss a generator across a room like a wad of paper. And yet, he keeps on provoking him and even threatening his family. [[spoiler:KarmicDeath took care of him.]]
** In "Infamous", [[MakingASplash Linda]] [[MeaningfulName Lake]] is dumb enough to try doing this to [[spoiler:Davis Bloome a.k.a. ''Doomsday''. The latter is quick to KickTheSonOfABitch.]]

** In ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', "The Man Trap", Spock slaps around an alien that has previously shown the ability to overpower him. It was {{justified|Trope}} in that he was trying to prove that [[ShapeShifting it wasn't who it looked like]] and was therefore willing to take the risks involved.

*** Picard, while not quite bullying Q, is still not nearly as polite as he ought to be to an omnipotent being who, on one occasion, responded to Picard's words by hurling the ''Enterprise'' into the path of the Borg.

*** In the episode "Profit and Loss", Gul Toran decides to manipulate Garak into doing his dirty work for him (killing the dissident fugitives that are on the station, an act Garak disapproves of) by dangling the carrot of ending Garak's exile in front of him. Once Garak has corralled the dissidents (and Quark who was helping them), Toran intervenes intending to take the sole credit and mocks Garak with the news that Garak's exile will never end and certainly not with any trivial act such as this. Considering Garak was one of the highest-ranked agents of the Obsidian Order prior to his exile, which made him one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the whole of Cardassia (and Toran ''knew'' this), Toran's attempt to manipulate and then betray Garak was the most foolish, suicidal act of his life. Not only does Garak promptly kill Toran for his audacity, but he then helps the dissidents secure their escape and freedom from Cardassia.
*** In the episode "Chimera", two Klingons tried to stab a ''Changeling''. Not only were they attempting to stab a giant amorphous liquid being, the Changeling summoned a sword much larger than knives. Even worse, directly before this incident, the changeling had taken the form of fog that covered the entire promenade. You think he might be a little out of your league, guys?
*** Justified in "Valiant". The Red Squad cadets use the titular USS ''Valiant'', a small ''Defiant''-class starship, to attack a much larger and more heavily armed Dominion battleship because they believe they've found a vulnerability in the battleship's design that they can exploit. [[spoiler:They're dead wrong.]]
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': The episode "Scorpion" features the Borg attempting to assimilate species 8472. Unfortunately for them, 8472 obliterates fifteen Borg cubes in self-defense, prompting the Borg to accept assistance from ''Voyager''.

* ''Series/{{Supergirl|2015}}'': In the tie-in comic series, made-of-diamond villain Facet spends months trying to ruin [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Kara]]'s life until Kara loses patience, takes her to the upper atmosphere and lets her go. Supergirl lampshades how dumb is to taunt someone who can ''fly'':

* In ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E88TheLastRitesOfJeffMyrtlebank The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank]]", a dead man revives in the middle of his funeral, which leads the townspeople to believe that his corpse was possessed by a demon. As the episode progresses, these people decide to attempt to force the young man out of town. He gets them to back down by invoking this very trope by stating that if he really is a demon, then they would have more sense to treat him nicely because he could really mess up their lives if he decided to.
* ''Series/TheUmbrellaAcademy'': [[spoiler: Leonard.]] Oh, holy hell, [[spoiler: Leonard. Once Vanya has discovered his manipulations, he tries to gain her sympathy. That fails. His next step, rather than ''running for the hills'', is to ''call her useless, ordinary, and not special''. You know, the things she's been called her entire life. HE KNOWS WHAT SHE CAN DO. He knows she is incredibly powerful. Who on earth would think that insulting the woman who can throw three fully grown men into the wall ''accidentally'' would be a good idea?]] And, as expected...
-->[[spoiler:'''Leonard:''']] No. No, not to me, [[spoiler: Vanya]]. Please. Please.

* ''Series/{{Wonder Woman|1975}}'': One of the Nazis' favorite pastimes in the WWII era of the show and a [[IdiotBall phenomenally bad idea]]. One of many, many examples comes from "The Richest Man in the World". Wonder Woman has finally figured out [[BigBad Dunfield]]'s plan and cornered his gang in their warehouse. She closes the door on them, smiles, and expects them to give up. Instead, they shoot at her. Whereupon she lays down one of the biggest [[CurbStompBattle beatdowns]] in the entire series.