"You people should be ashamed! Passing judgment on a child over a sports game! What have you people ever done?!"
— Marge's calling out of the town's population for nearly bullying her son to ATTEMPTED SUICIDE, all because he lost the Little League championship.
Disproportionate Retribution examples from The Simpsons.
- In "Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in 'The Curse of the Flying Hellfish'", when Burns takes old paintings from Abe Simpson at gunpoint, and Bart calls Burns a coward and an embarrassment to the name Hellfish, Burns points the gun at Bart's head; Abe says Burns can take the art, just not hurt the boy; Burns remarks that he would rather do both, and kicks Bart into the empty case so hard that it ends up falling into the water, and then Burns boats away, saying "so long, Sarge, see you at the reunion in November!" Seeing as how Burns could have taken the art without hurting the boy, trying to drown him was either in response to his insults or For the Evulz.
- Another good example is the Springfield–Shelbyville rivalry, summed up by Lisa in "Homer Loves Flanders":Lisa: They built a mini-mall, so we built an even bigger mini-mall. They made the world's largest pizza, so we burned down their city hall.
- In the "Treehouse of Horror VIII" story "The Homega Man", France nukes the city of Springfield because Mayor Quimby made a bad joke to the country about frog legs.
- Not just that, he refused to apologize for it as well.
Quimby: I bet I'll get blamed for this.- At the end of the next segment, "Fly vs Fly", Homer chases and tries to kill Bart with an ax simply because he used his transporter.
- Finally, at the end of "Easy-Bake Coven" Homer accuses Lisa of being a witch and sends an angry mob after her just because she pointed out that he was throwing eggs at their own house, to cover up for his stupidity.
- In the "Treehouse of Horror XVI" story "I've Grown A Costume On Your Face", Springfield holds a costume contest and a woman dressed as a witch won but was disqualified for being an actual witch (the prize had to go to someone who, technically, was wearing a costume). In retaliation, she cursed everyone into being whatever their costumes made them look like.
- Two examples in "You Kent Always Say What You Want":
- Ned Flanders' crusade to get Kent Brockman fired after Brockman swore on public television, even though Brockman apologized for it a few seconds later and nobody was watching the news when he swore. Ned even lampshaded it, when his sons asked him what he was doing. Even his children after hearing this think Ned needs something better to do with his time.Ned: Imploring people I never met to pressure a government with better things to do to punish a man who meant no harm for something nobody even saw! That's what I'm doing!''Rod: Daddy, we think you need a new mommy.
- Later in the same episode, Lindsay Naegle fired Brockman for having cocaine in his coffee, even when Brockman explained that it was Splenda, and it is also implied that she was using that as an excuse to fire him even when it was just out of anger for his swearing on the air. The FCC also gave the entire Channel 6 station a million-dollar fine just because Kent Brockman uttered a swear word. Sure, the swear was implied to be the worst one in the English language, but still, a million is far too much even for that.
- Ned Flanders' crusade to get Kent Brockman fired after Brockman swore on public television, even though Brockman apologized for it a few seconds later and nobody was watching the news when he swore. Ned even lampshaded it, when his sons asked him what he was doing. Even his children after hearing this think Ned needs something better to do with his time.
- In the early seasons, Skinner would give Bart a ridiculous amount of detention for offenses that don't need that much detention.
- In "Separate Vocations", it was 400 days detention over some answer books being stolen that he took the fall for (and Bart backtalking Skinner caused him to add another 200 days).
- In "The Boy Who Knew Too Much", Skinner gave Bart three months of detention for skipping a day of school, even though he admitted it to keep Freddie Quimby from going to prison (which he then increases to four months). Earlier in the episode, Skinner threatened him with an even worse punishment: sending him to the Christian military reform school.
- In "Bart's Girlfriend", Skinner gave Bart detention for pulling a harmless prank on Willie. On Sunday, off school grounds, and at a made-up event, with the intention of catching Bart pulling the prank (during what was essentially a sting operation). In other words, Skinner gave Bart detention just because he could.
- In "Krusty Gets Kancelled", Bette Midler completely despises the idea of people littering their streets. This was shown when Snake Jailbird tosses a can out his car window onto the highway that Midler just finished cleaning up, she responds by angrily chasing after him on foot, jumping onto his car, and throwing the can back in, which causes the car to swerve off the road and crash, leaving Snake injured. A second driver does the same thing, and Midler angrily simply tosses the can at the car, which causes the driver to lose control and careen into the nearby mountainside, but not before the driver vows revenge on Midler for this.Bette Midler: (disgusted at another driver throwing out a can on the highway) It's time to take out the trash. (angrily tosses the can at the driver's truck, causing him to lose control)
Driver: (angrily) I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS, MIDLER!!! (crashes into the mountainside) - "Itchy and Scratchy the Movie": Homer attempts to think up a way to discipline Bart properly for breaking Grandpa's dentures, and settles on allowing Grandpa to break Bart's actual teeth. However, Marge prevents this and instead settles in sending Bart to his room without supper.
- From The Itchy & Scratchy Show:
- In "You Kent Always Say What You Want" (according to Krusty's narrative), Itchy built a trap involving a lady made of dynamite for Scratchy, and later juggled his three remaining body parts (his head, his heart, and his leg). In the words of Krusty: "That's what you get for, I don't know, messing with my wife."
- According to a Simpsons Comic, Itchy and Scratchy went to Preschool together, the teacher was a cat and loved Scratchy praising him all the time, and being very nasty to Itchy simply for being, and as she put it, a "Disgusting Rat" no matter how much Itchy tried to get the teacher to like him, she was very hateful towards him. This is why he brutally murders Scratchy over and over and over.
- Another episode demonstrates that if you ever detract from the violence in which Itchy and Scratchy traditionally engage for one episode, you're in dead meat. Poochie infamously learned this the hard way.
- "The Boys of Bummer" contains probably one of the worst examples in fiction. When Bart screws up at a baseball game and costs Springfield the Little League Championship (which he pretty much singlehandedly got them to in the first place), everyone makes him pay dearly, even forcing Homer, who was willing to stand by him, to stand by them (only Marge, Lisa, and debatably Maggie stood by him). It drives poor Bart to attempt suicide. Despite this, the citizens keep on at it even while Bart is comatose. Fortunately, Marge set things straight, even pointing out the fact that the town was labeled the "meanest town in America" and they were proud to put it on a billboard.
- "The Good, the Sad and the Drugly": After Bart forgets to visit Milhouse during his suspension due to spending time with Jenny, Milhouse invades Bart and follows him everywhere, trying to force his anger into his life as harsh as possible, though Bart apologized. Finally, Milhouse corners him, forcing Bart to admit to Jenny that he is not who she thinks he is. This ends up with Jenny dumping Bart and leaving him a crying mess.
- The "Treehouse of Horror IV" story "Terror at 5½ Feet" has Bart trying to warn everyone about the gremlin on the side of the bus, sabotaging the vehicle. Even though he's eventually proven to be right (and gets rid of the gremlin himself,) Skinner still decides his conduct was unacceptable, and naturally, a suitable punishment would be for him to spend the rest of his life in an insane asylum.
- Many detention examples in the "Nightmare Cafeteria" segment of "Treehouse of Horror V"
- Edna sends Bart to detention just for turning his desk backward.
- Skinner put Yellow Weasel in detention just for making a paper airplane.
- The teachers soon start finding any excuse to send the students to detention, where they are killed and then cooked to be turned into their lunch. It says a lot when Edna happily sends Wendell to detention just because his pencil fell off his desk due to his terrified trembling.
- In "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood" Moe kicks Hans Moleman out of the bar and threatens him with a knife for not using a coaster.
- In "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", Sideshow Bob tried to nuke Springfield because he didn't like the way television was dominating people's lives. One of his reasons was that he used to be an actor on a kids' show, and claimed that his "foolish capering destroyed more young minds than syphilis and pinball combined". Still, it was a rather poor excuse.
- In "A Tale of Two Springfields", Homer attempts to blow up a city hall full of people because the phone company introduced a new area code. His attempt only failed because Bart mis-wired his explosive vest. The same episode has Homer building a wall dividing Springfield between the area code locations, and the Springfieldians escalating the situation by treating those who are their literal neighbors like foreign intruders, just because they have different area codes.
- "My Mother the Carjacker" has Homer confessing to burning down a blood bank because they tried to impose a 'one complimentary cookie only' limit on him.
- "The Bart Wants What It Wants" started with Homer stealing the Olympic torch so that the Olympics would stop getting in the way of his favorite shows.
- In "Two Bad Neighbors", Bart and Homer begin an Escalating War against former President George H.W. Bush that involves shooting bottle rockets at his house and gluing a comical wig onto his head all because Bush spanked Bart. Very lightly. As punishment for destroying his memoirs.
- In the episode "On a Clear Day, I Can't See My Sister", after Bart plays some pranks on Lisa during a field trip, she serves him with a restraining order and later starts abusing said restraining order to torture Bart via a device she uses to poke him and kick him out of the places she is in (it's also implied that he has permanent nerve damage because of the number of times Lisa has poked him). Eventually, Bart's forced to eat his lunch outside in the rain, be taught by Groundskeeper Willie in a tool shed and sleep on the edge of the property. At one point, as a compromise to Marge asking her to lift the restraining order, Lisa says that if she can remember three moments where Bart was nice to her, she'll do it (and she can't, no matter how hard she tries). Bear in mind that Marge decides to ask her because she is worried about Bart starting to lose his sanity as a result of being forced to sleep outside — Lisa's answer makes clear that turning her brother into a crazy homeless man that acts like a wild dog is not enough punishment in her book.
- Inverted in one of the alternate endings to "Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part Two" where the culprit turned out to be Smithers. Burns punishes Smithers' murder attempt by giving him a 5% pay cut, to which Smithers is utterly dismayed.
- In "Fear of Flying", Homer is barred from Moe's for screwing the top loose of the sugar shaker, causing the bartender to pour too much into his coffee. The other barflies had Moe bitten by a snake and set his clothes alight, both of which he saw the funny side of.
- In "The Boy Who Knew Too Much", Mayor Quimby's nephew Freddie is put on trial for brutally assaulting a chef for not saying 'chowder' properly. He even threatens to kill his lawyer (and then everyone in the courtroom, especially those on the jury) in the middle of the trial for doing the same thing. Eventually subverted, though, as all Freddie Quimby did was snatch a bottle of wine from the chef, and all his injuries were accidental on account of the chef being clumsy on a legendary scale. A Deleted Scene has him trying to assault the chef for real right on the steps of the courtroom, after he was declared innocent and, yes, because the chef still can't say "chowder" as Quimby wants.
- Within the same episode, Homer swears that he will make sure that Quimby ends up in jail because he was summoned to perform Jury Duty — the irony then is that he becomes a Rogue Juror and votes Quimby "not guilty" because the deadlock would allow him to spend the night in a five-star hotel with free HBO.
- In "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?", Homer becomes a food critic and starts giving everywhere he eats bad reviews as his gimmick. This results in the cooks trying to MURDER Homer over it with poisoned food, then chasing him down with the clear intent to kill him when that doesn't work.
- In "Whacking Day", Bart is kicked out of a Christian school within a minute, with the teacher and the entire class chasing him, for singing a rude playground song about how beans are "the musical fruit".
- In "Homer at the Bat", Steve Sax is pulled over by the Springfield police, and once he gives his license to Wiggum which shows he's from New York, he's arrested for just about every unsolved crime in New York City for no particular reason (although perhaps the boys were still bitter about losing to the Power Plant at softball earlier in the episode). And according to a Continuity Nod in "Springfield of Dreams", Sax is still under investigation 25 years later.
- In "Marge in Chains", Marge forgets to pay for a bottle of cheap bourbon at the Kwik-E-Mart (she was too exhausted from dealing with her sick family for several days to notice it was in her pocket). She apologizes for that and makes clear she will pay immediately. Apu calls the cops on her (which arrives with multiple officers that point their guns at her like she was a psychotic thief) and she's put through trial and then placed in jail. The rest of the townspeople treat her like a drunken maniac — and as a matter of fact, it's because of this that they lie in court and take Helen Lovejoy's slander as iron-clad proof to declare her guilty.
- In another notable instance of The Lopsided Arm of the Law, "The Monkey Suit" has Chief Wiggum and his crew manhandling and threatening eight-year-old Lisa Simpson at gunpoint for teaching evolution (which was recently outlawed) on school grounds. Lisa even points out to Wiggum there are much worse crimes going on, and when Wiggum witnesses Snake Jailbird shooting people across the street on top of Kwik-E-Mart, he... does nothing about it.
- "Homie the Clown" sees the local Mafia willing to kill Krusty, wherever he is on the planet, over his gambling debts. The size of his debt? $48 — which he casually pays off and even receives change.
- In "Pygmoelian," Moe wins a bartending contest and gets his photo on a promotional Duff Beer calendar, but the company deems him too ugly and sends out the calendar with a big sticker over his face. He takes out his annoyance by tracking down mascot Duffman at his home and slapping a huge sticker over his face, which Duffman apparently can't remove, leaving him to suffocate.note "Duffman can't breathe! Oh no! Ohhh..."
- In The Simpsons Movie, Springfield is imprisoned in a giant glass dome after Homer pollutes the lake with his pig silo. Once the townspeople find out, they form an angry mob and not only burn their house down, but try to murder his entire family, despite saying they wanted Homer alone at first.
- In “A Star is Burns”, Rainer Wolfcastle performs stand-up comedy. When the audience tells him that his jokes suck, he proceeds to fire a machine gun at them and blow them up with a grenade.
- In “Hell House,” for taking Pride in his child’s work, Hibbert gets killed by being crushed between two cars, since Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sinsnote .
