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Disproportionate Retribution

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"But that was two years ago!"
"Revenge is a dish best served with an extra helping."
— Captain Young, Troops of Doom

In some situations, it makes sense to let the opponent know that if they so much as sneeze on someone you protect, it will cost them a limb. If you have tried an eye for an eye and it really didn't do anything except help sell eyepatches, the only way to stay alive is to be drastic. Pay back any offense tenfold, or even a hundredfold if necessary, until the survivors learn to stay away and/or do everything in their power to keep you in a good mood. It's a common tactic of militaries the world over, with some regimes (such as Nazi Germany) being infamous for it.

That said, the "Justice" these rivals have in mind is more akin to a brutal beatdown... well, most of the time it is an actual brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, supposed to culminate in the receiver's humiliation or death. Any attempt to get them to see the (all too obvious) truth, show mercy, or realize they're a step away from utterly ruining the receiver's life/committing murder will never succeed. It invariably takes the hero beating the rival, be it in a Cooking Duel or Good Old Fisticuffs, and proving Right Makes Might for the poor deluded soul to realize they were wrong all along, sometimes even coming around and realizing that Defeat Means Friendship.

Villains who claim that their bad past/circumstances led them to do this will likely make you realize that Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse.

All too often, these guys refuse to see reason. They promise that they'll come back to kill the hero, and shove his "mercy" and offer of friendship down his wind pipe. It might take the arrival of a plot significant character to clear things up and hand out some Epiphany Therapy to all involved.

This is not limited to the antagonist's side. God help you if that hero you've harmed has a Psycho Supporter. And all parties to a masquerade, good or bad, are often required to kill any poor schmuck who accidentally sees something he's not supposed to.

This could be what stops something from being an "act of justice" instead of an "act of vengeance". May be used as part of Cruel Mercy. A common habit for Lawful Stupid characters.

Intriguingly, while disproportionate can possibly mean underdoing it, you'll almost never see that happen.

Trope relations:

A Sister Trope to:

Compare:

Other: Contrast with Unishment (a punishment that isn't a punishment at all) and Restrained Revenge (paying back a slight with retribution that is less severe than what was intended before rather than forgive the person in question). Expect the character dishing this out to justify this no matter what anyone speaks against it. Expect someone (doesn't needs be the Only Sane Man) to be Disappointed by the Motive if the retribution is just that absurdly disproportional to the reason.

See also Pay Evil unto Evil, which is what this trope can result from when done wrong, and for more proportionate responses, Laser-Guided Karma.

Any real life examples, and we'll put your fingers through a meat grinder.

noreallife

Examples:

Other examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • A series of commercials for UK charity The Anti-Smoking Society showed people giving cigarettes to others who had annoyed them in some trivial way - "Encourage someone you hate to start smoking. Smoking kills." Apparently lung cancer and emphysema are perfectly justified punishment for such things as making a bitchy remark to a friend, kicking a football into someone's garden, or even a boyfriend "finishing" too early in bed.
  • Biggie Bear: Mr. Rabbit trespasses in Biggie Bear's garden. The latter beats him up and murders him via headshot in response.
  • The "Disrepectoids" ads for Capri Sun juice. Various kids are subjected to ridiculous Body Horror tortures, like having their hands and feet turned into whoopie cushions, having their entire body except their head deflate, and one kid being being turned into a dog's chew toy because they disrespect the pouch. Somehow, the kids get along pretty well in the online cartoons and the games. And there's a happy ending, too- a Grand Finale game was released that ended with them being turned back to normal.
  • This GameFly commercial features a video game store customer responding to getting only nine dollars for a game he's turning in by trashing the entirety of the store.
  • A rather mean-spirited example in a "Got Milk?" ad featuring Poppin' Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy. When the family learns he drank all the milk before the cookies were ready, they put him in the oven.
  • Two Infiniti commercials. In one, a man is pelted with a few snowballs by a neighbor, so he rolls a giant monster snowball that utterly destroys the neighbor's car. In the other, the same man is hit by a single snowball by the neighbor, so he calls his son and recruits all the children in the neighborhood to pummel the neighbor with snowballs as he gets out of his car.
  • Commercials for Jello Temptations revolve around parents punishing their children for eating their adult pudding. In one, the mother uses storytime as a not-so-veiled threat that she's going to make all her daughter's favorite things disappear forever because she stole her snack; another uses a campfire horror story about 'the Chocobeast' to terrorize her kids with her husband's help. A third involves an Imagine Spot where a boy thinks about how his parents will turn him out onto the streets if he dares eat their pudding.
    • Another one featured the parents talking to two little kids and telling them a story about a girl who took some Jello Temptations and fell into a pit with boogeymen and snakes and stayed there for a hundred years. The kids are visibly terrified.
    • Then there's Olive, who is forced into child labor by working in a coal mine for eating the pudding. Apparently Chocolate Temptations is looking to tap into the 'Abusive Parents who enjoy chocolate pudding' market.
  • The M&M's commercial where the Brown M&M knowingly sets up the Red M&M up for a situation in which he gets ripped apart (offscreen) in a scene that plays like a rape scene, most likely because he annoyed her by coming onto her.
  • The infamous "No Pressure" commercials for the 10:10 campaign, which had people (including children) getting blown up for not agreeing to take part.
  • Never Say No to Panda cheese or a giant, silent, terrifying panda will appear to ruin your day.
  • Japanese Sega Saturn spokesman Segata Sanshiro hunted down people who weren't playing the system, then beat them unconscious and left their battered bodies in piles as he walked away to find new targets. One commercial for "Bomberman Fight!!" showed Segata throwing an opponent into the air with such force that he exploded when he hit the ground twice.
    • He's kind enough to leave one console near the battered bodies of his victim so he doesn't have to go through them again in case they don't have enough money.
  • Do not park in the reserved parking space of the SSI Shredders president. "Get the memo yet, hippie?"
  • New commercials for a kind of macaroni and cheese features kids doing this to their parents for taking some of their mac and cheese. The punishments involve pawning their jewelry and golf clubs and getting them arrested; one kid simply takes all the pots and pans in the house with him on an overnight visit.
  • Spilling coffee is unforgivable.
  • Drink Wilkins Coffee, or a Kermit the Frog-like muppet will make your life a living hell.
  • A commercial for Heinz brand pickles showed an elegantly-dressed elderly woman upending an entire restaurant when the pickle served to her was a dull, soggy brand.
  • This Greek telecommunication company Wind ad suggests that no matter how good you have been otherwise, going to Hell is a perfectly justified punishment for paying your economy expensively.
  • There was a Skittles commercial that had three kids sitting on a rainbow thousands of feet in the air. When one kid suggests that the rainbow is just in their imagination, the rainbow reacts by opening a hole beneath him, causing him to drop to his death.
  • Messin' with Sasquatch: Some of Sasquatch's acts of revenge are this, like ripping off a person's arm over a joy buzzer brank.
  • This Texas DOT anti-littering PSA depicts a fighter plane about to strike a truck after the person driving threw some trash out the window.
  • One ad campaign for The General insurance company shows people getting kicked out of garage bands, abandoned by their friends in the woods, and disowned by their families for doing absolutely nothing but suggest they use The General for their insurance (but then having their family/friends coming back for them and apologizing after they used the company anyway and realized it really worked out for them).

    Comic Strips 
  • In Perry Bible Fellowship a guy gets punched by a bully and called a gay-wad for wearing a Unicorn Power shirt. The bully's punishment was to be stabbed through the stomach by a real unicorn.
  • One Garfield comic has Jon throwing Garfield through a window just because Garfield was messing around with his stupid outfit.
  • Bloom County aimed a few Take Thats at Mary Kay cosmetics around 1989 after its animal testing techniques were made public; in one series of them, the company's CEO ordered a one million dollar bounty on Opus (on his nose, specifically) because he wrote a letter to the editor saying that overly made-up women looked "ungodly". (However, she later agreed to end the bounty if he simply made an apology, which he did, being far too frightened to stand up for his comment.)
    • After Steve went vegan, one of his dates ended up doing this after he rejected her dinner.
    Date: Eat my stuffed artichoke.
    Steve: It's soaked in butter.
    Date: Eat the peas.
    Steve: They're squishy.
    Date: Eat lead. *click*
  • Peanuts:
    • In one storyline, the Environment Protection Agency, of all people, did this. When the Kite Eating Tree ate one of Charlie Brown's kites, he lost his temper and bit it. His "reward" for actually standing up for himself? The EPA threatened him with legal action! (Lucy's reaction? "Ten to one says they'll throw him in the slammer!") Poor Charlie Brown actually ran away from home to escape trouble (and briefly became a mentor to some little kids trying to form a baseball team), but fortunately, the tree eventually fell over in a thunderstorm, and with no evidence against him, he was able to go home.
    • In another storyline, Lucy kicks Linus out of the house and even disowns him from the family simply because he accidentally broke another one of her crayons. (When Charlie Brown finally asks why her parents allowed it, it turns out they were at the hospital, where Lucy's second brother, Rerun, is born, which Linus believes is Laser-Guided Karma for Lucy.)
  • In The Wizard of Id, the King is known to throw people in the dungeon (or even order them executed) for relatively minor crimes, but especially making fun of his diminutive size or calling him a "fink".
  • Alice has been know to commit cold-blooded murder several times in Dilbert for relatively minor things. She has rigged a paper shredder to kill a "sadistic nut", killed an annoying customer by dropping a computer on him from the roof, and killed the "corporate sadist" offscreen. In each case, these victims were killed for spreading rumors, chauvinistic remarks, or simply being annoying. (Even though few would blame her in-universe or out) Catbert claimed after one such incident that he hasn't considered discipline for any of this because for any of this because she "did not discriminate, sexually harass, steal or take drugs". He then gave her an award for her "cost-saving idea" of killing a co-worker. (She has also killed the PHB once, but most would agree that was not an example of this Trope.)
  • In several strips of FoxTrot, Paige will beat up her brother Jason for even his more innocent pranks.
  • Scary Gary: Leopold can and will attack people over minor offenses, like saying hello to him.
  • Madam & Eve uses the trope in this comic◊ with a supermarket cashier and an overly-long queue.

    Fairy Tales 
  • In the original version of "Beauty and the Beast", the Beast threatens to kill a poor merchant for taking one of his roses as a gift for his youngest daughter unless he sends his daughter to live with him forever. Compare this to the Disney version where the Beast starts out as more of a Jerkass but only imprisons Maurice for trespassing as opposed to threatening him with murder.
  • In The Brothers Grimm fairy tale "The Dog and the Sparrow", the titular animals are friends. Then, the dog is driven over and killed by a carter, even though the sparrow warned him. So at first the sparrow pecks off the plug of the wine barrel the carter was transporting, wasting all the wine; then, he tries to peck out the eyes of the horses, the carter tries to kill him with his hoe, but hits the horse on its head instead, killing it. Repeat for all the wine barrels and horses. When the carter arrives at home, he sees that thousands of birds have eaten up the wheat in the attic. He wants to kill the sparrow with his hoe, but only manages to destroy his complete home. Yes, even the walls. Then he catches the sparrow and wants to swallow him, but the sparrow flutters up, the carter tells his wife to kill the sparrow with the hoe... but she kills him instead. The sparrow survives.
  • "The Frost, the Sun, and the Wind": The Sun and the Frost want to burn and freeze the traveler because he did not greet them on the road.
  • Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf". The protagonist is a vain, selfish and cruel young girl who tortures insects and uses the bread she's supposed to bring to her poor family as a stepping stone to avoid dirtying her shoes. Her punishment? Becoming a statue in Hell. And for bonus points, she is able to hear everything said on Earth about her. She stays in this state for a long time, until an angel starts to cry for her and sets her soul free.
  • "Hans the Hedgehog":
    • Han's dad. His son born different, so he treats him like crap and even wishes him dead.
    • The first king. A strange man does him a simple favour and demands he let him marry his daughter. The king is understandably upset about this, but did realy need to order his men to kill Hans on sight?
    • Then there's Hans himself, who combines this with Misplaced Retribution. The king's daughter refuses to marry Hans, and her father tells her she doesn't have to. Han's response? Kidnap and assault the daughter for her and her father's "falseness".
  • Subverted in the Brothers Grim's tale "Maid Maleen". The prince's bride does not want to show her ugly face in her wedding because she will want to get the attendants executed if they laugh at her, and it might plant the seeds of a future rebellion.
  • In "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", the title character rids the town of its rat infestation, but is then denied the gold he'd been promised in return for helping them. His response? The piper lures the townspeople's children away with his music, and their fate afterward varies depending on the version - but in almost every version, the townspeople never see their children again.
  • Prunella is imprisoned and given Impossible Tasks by a Wicked Witch because she took plums from a branch that extended over the road.
  • Rapunzel (not the Disney version) was taken from her parents as an infant because of this trope. According to the fairy tale, when Rapunzel's mother was pregnant, the family lived next door to a witch with a garden full of rampion (a kind of cabbage), which the mother was craving desperately. She finally made her husband go steal some for her, and he was caught by the witch. When he explained why he was stealing the rampion, she agreed to spare him, but demanded that they give her the baby as payment. Admittedly, it was pretty jerkish to steal the rampion instead of knocking on the door and asking to buy or barter some, but a baby is still a pretty hefty price to pay for salad greens. However, given the common cultural beliefs that an expecting mother's cravings ABSOLUTELY needed to be followed or else she and the baby might die, he probably didn't want to risk the witch being a Jerkass and refusing to give him any.
  • The Red Shoes, also by Andersen, is the story of a spoiled girl that wears her red shoes to church and vainly fawns over them. Her shoes are cursed to dance when she chooses to attend a lavish party after her adopted mother's death. The shoes continue to dance against her will on and on, even after her feet have been severed. An angel declares that she will dance even after she dies as a warning against vanity.
  • The story of Sleeping Beauty kicks off when a fairy is humiliated by not receiving an invitation to the royal christening. So she places a death curse on the infant.
  • Poor Snow White has her stepmother constantly trying to kill her; different versions offer assorted means of attempt, ranging from a poisoned comb to enchanted corset lacings, although the sympathetic huntsman and the poisoned apple are pretty universal. Why did the Queen want her stepdaughter killed? Because a magic mirror said Snow White was the more beautiful of the two.
    • In some versions of the story, the stepmother is even worse - any woman who the mirror told her was more beautiful than she was either got exiled from the country (if she was lucky) or was put to death. Eventually, the princess became the target.
    • And in the Grimm version of the story, the evil stepmother tells the huntsman to kill Snow White and bring her heart back so she can eat it.
    • It gets even worse; in the earliest versions, it was Snow White's actual mother, who was actually the one who wished for Snow White to be as beautiful as she was. Imagine your own mother, not a wicked stepmother, clamoring for your death because you're more beautiful than she is; something she herself asked for.
    • In the version they collected, the queen did not send her daughter to be killed; she drove into the forest, ordered her out to collect roses, and then ordered the carriage onward while she was gathering them.
  • In the tale The Witches and the Singing Mice, the three witches force the titular singing mice to bite children and put them into an eternal sleep because the children's parents refused their demands. Considering that the witches' demands included a hundred yards of black cloth by that evening, the parents were hardly refusing out of rudeness but due to the simple fact that it was impossible to achieve that task.

    Manhwa 
  • K from I Wish put a curse on his real name that will cause those that speak it unbearable harm... because some kid used to make fun of his name.

    Music 
  • The woman in Bruce Springsteen's "From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)" fatally shoots her lover and her only explanation is that "she couldn't stand the way he drove."
  • Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" is interpreted as this by some people. Though the song is supposed to be about revenge against a cheating boyfriend, some interpret the singer as actually being a paranoid woman who believes her boyfriend is cheating on her and destroys his car out of jealousy rather than any actual wrongdoing.
    • This same thing is done hilariously in the video for "Love You" by Jack Ingram. Her vandalism includes keying "love you" onto the hood, slashing the tires, beating the crap out of the body with a golf club, then finding a shotgun in the back and shooting out the rear window and windshield, probably destroying the interior too. The hilarious part? It was the wrong car.
    • Lily Allen's "Smile" had the singer's character pay people to beat him up, ruin his means of livelihood, mess up his apartment, and put laxatives in his coffee, while she pretends to be comforting. The lyrics indicates that while he had been cheating, they aren't even going out anymore.
    • Blue Cantrell's "Hit 'Em Up" has the singer's character sell all his possessions in a yard sale, then take her friends out on a shopping spree with his credit cards. Perhaps not as extreme as physical violence, but it's still pretty disproportionate to ruin a guy's credit over infidelity.
    • Jazmine Sullivan's "Bust Ya Windows" is similar to "Before He Cheats" in that it's about a woman who destroys her cheating boyfriend's car. Unlike "Before He Cheats", there's no alternate interpretation; the singer clearly says she saw her boyfriend in bed with someone else.
    • In the Garth Brooks song "Pappa Loved Momma", when long-haul trucker Pappa finds out that Momma's not only cheating on him, but has been for a while, his response is to kill her and her lover by driving through the motel room they are in with his semi-truck.
    • The role reversal is actually more common, with many examples of Murder Ballads where men kill both the woman cheating on him and the man she's cheating with.
      • Those usually aren't first person, though.
  • "The Watchmaker's Apprentice" by the Clockwork Quartet is about the titular apprentice being replaced at his job by a machine, and getting revenge on his miserly boss by creating a watch that messily kills a customer, frames the watchmaker, bankrupts his business and ruins him.
  • Voice Play's music video for their cover of This Is Halloween. You run out of candy on Halloween and you get turned into a monster.
  • Two instances in the music video for "Legend of Archery" by indie-rock band Driftless Pony Club . Sam (the bassist) gets kicked out of the band because his bass-playing wasn't up to snuff- Example 1. But then, Sam gets revenge by becoming a ninja and violently killing the other band members. Example 2.
  • D12's "Get My Gun" someone on the street asks for Eminem's autograph so he takes a magnum shoots the guy, his best friend and girlfriend.
  • Eminem in "Love The Way You Lie":
    If she ever tries to fuckin' leave again, I'ma tie her to the bed
    And set this house on fire
    • Eminem must have taken a cue from The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood." The girl takes him home then refuses to sleep with him, so he sets her apartment on fire!
  • In Green Jelly's "Three Little Pigs", The Big Bad Wolf blows down houses, and is called "The Little Piggy Slasher" but in the course of the song and video kills no one and is guilty of nothing other than destruction of property and putting lives in danger. However at the end, the little piggies are holed up completely safe in their concrete tri-level mansion and call 911, who send down Rambo without delay, who promptly guns down the unarmed wolf in cold blood as the wolf waves his hands in terror, obviously pleading for his life.
  • George Frederic Handel's punishment for playing out of tune during practice ranged from a deadpan snark to throwing a kettledrum at your head to grabbing you and threatening to throw you out of the window.
  • While Bad, Bad Leroy Brown in the Jim Croce song of the same name is hinted at being pretty bad and probably racked up some retribution points Karma, the worst things he actually does is be a snob about his money and look at a married woman, for which he gets the tar beaten out of him.
  • Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?
  • Knife Party's Internet Friends: "You blocked me on Facebook, and now you're going to die."
  • "MC Stephen Hawking" in All My Shootings Be Drivebys.
    You take an eye, and I'll take you motherf* cking head!
  • Megadeth has the song Headcrusher. It's never actually stated what the crime was, but it's a clear form of Cruel and Unusual Death. The video's different in concept, though.
  • Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder and Lead" is from the point of view of a woman about to murder her abusive boyfriend. However, the song in no way indicates that it's some "burning bed" scenario where she's trapped in an abusive relationship and this is the only way out. It sounds more like he just got rough with her once and she decided to kill him for it.
    • Another by Miranda Lambert. The MV for "Kerosene" has Miranda commit arson because her lover cheated on her.
  • Evillious Chronicles:
    • In "Evil Food Eater Conchita", Banica Conchita kills and eats her cook because she's angry at him for asking to be allowed to leave. The sequel song, "Drug of Gold" reveals this was actually not the case; her cook attempted a murder-suicide because he could not save her from her gluttony but only he died. Of course, one could interpret this as an example in and of itself, depending on whether you think Conchita was completely irredeemable or not.
    • In "Daughter of Evil", a princess is rejected by her crush in favour of a woman with green hair... so she invades the girl's home country and orders the deaths of all the green- haired women.
    • The punishment for entering the forest in "Capriccio Farce", as Gammon finds out...
    Servants: Kill him, eat him, if we can't, arrest him
    This insolent jackass who entered the forest!
    Master of the Court: Judge, judge, at any rate judge him
    Trial! Sentence! Death!
    • In "Gift of the Sleep Princess", the titular character, Margarita Blankenheim, poisons her husband, his mistress, her father and most of her hometown as vengeance for her husband's cheating and her general despair over her life.
  • The Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing: In "Margate Fhtagn", Nan insisted on coming on vacation and spends the entire time complaining about everything... so Pa tricks her into getting eaten by Cthulhu. The lingering question of how he knew what an Elder God was suggests he may have anticipated this when he planned the trip.
  • Owl City may be a likable nerd, but that doesn't help him in "Deer In The Headlights" where he gets maced just for saying Hello and later got a black eye and bloody nose from, apparently, another girl.
  • In Pepe Deluxé's Queen of the Wave, Mainin's love interest is stoned to death on false evidence. He responds by vowing vengeance against all mankind—and his machinations (somehow) lead to the watery destruction of Atlantis.
  • The Sentenced song "Vengeance is Mine" contains the line "Dozens of eyes for an eye", which seems slightly excessive, even for a band so depressed and angry they broke up by dragging a coffin all around Finland.
  • In the video for Shakira's "Don't Bother", Shakira sends her cheating boyfriend's car to the crusher.
    • "Objection!" has Shakira tying her cheating boyfriend (in this video) and the surgically-enhanced woman he's playing away with to dynamos, which spin off the machines they're attached to.
  • Allan Sherman's Streets of Miami is a parody of a wild west gunfighter ballad, wherein a Jewish lawyer shoots his partner dead for criticizing his taste in hotels.
  • Super Ghostbusters features two instances
    • After finding out the food at McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken contain food-poisoning ghosts, he calls the Ghostbusters and demands that they destroy the city.
    • The singer later tries to order "spooky spaghetti" at a spaghetti shop. This leads to the owner punching him in the dick, throwing him out onto the street and kicking him in the dick again.
  • Theory of a Deadman's "Little Smirk." In retaliation for coming home to find his lover cheating on him, he throws her naked out of the house, burns her possessions, takes her money, steals her car, and kidnaps her baby. As well as gloating that he'd do it all over again in an instant, presumably if she had more stuff to burn or babies to steal.
  • Weird Al's song "I'll Sue Ya". "I'll sue ya, I'll take all your money! I'll sue ya, if you even look at me funny!"
    • Another track from the same album, "Don't Download This Song". "It doesn't matter if you're a grandma / Or a seven year old girl / They'll treat you like the evil hardbitten criminal scum you are..."
    • In "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?", the singer stabs his boss in the face because he kept asking him to get some toner.
    • Turned the other way around in "Everything You Know Is Wrong", in which Saint Peter punishes the narrator for arriving at the Pearly Gates in a Nehru jacket in defiance of Heaven's dress code by giving him a room next to a noisy ice machine...FOREVER, and then running past every day screaming about how everything you know is wrong.
    • Then there's "I Remember Larry" in which Al recalls a recently deceased prankster and many of his misdeeds. These include pantsing him and taking pictures, dumping toxic waste on his lawn, late night prank phone calls, and cutting his car in half. The last verse reveals that Al killed Larry and left him in the woods.
  • The children's song Alouette. It's about plucking all the feathers off a lark as retribution for being woken up by its song.
  • The nursery song "Little Bunny Foo-Foo." The titular rabbit gets threatened with getting turned into a ghoul (in some versions, a worm or other unpleasant creature) if he doesn't quit hitting field mice. He doesn't. Goodbye, being cute and fuzzy, hello robbing graves (or general repulsiveness). In fairness, he is given multiple chances to change his ways. Further, as a rabbit is several times the mass of a field mouse, he is probably doing serious injury to the mice by bopping them on the head.
  • There seems to be a subgenre of music videos where a woman messes up a man for cheating on her. Makes one wonder why she doesn't just leave him, how stable she was in the first place, or what would happen if the roles were gender-reversed.
  • Qbomb: In HYPERPUNK, the singer goes to eradicate all life on Earth with a giant robot because people spread Malicious Slander about him and the music he made.
  • Some Rap feuds are like this.
    • Parodied in 30 Rock, where multiple rap personalities threaten to "eat [Tracy's] family" for slights like not being on a guest list or scuffing shoes... 20 years prior on a Nickelodeon show.
    • Lampshade Hanging in this line from Chris Rock's "No Sex (In the Champagne Room)":
    "If you go to a movie theater and someone steps on your foot, let it slide. Why spend the next 20 years in jail because someone smudged your Puma?"
    • Also shown in The Boondocks as one of the main reasons behind the so-called "nigga moment".
    • MC Hammer (yes that MC Hammer) once commissioned the Bloods (yes, those Bloods) to kill the rap group 3rd Bass for insulting his mother on their debut album. Rap mogul Russell Simmons managed to get the hit called off by getting Bloods leader Mike Concepcion a seat at the 1990 American Music Awards... next to Michael Jackson.
    • LL Cool J pretty much ended the career of promising rapper Canibus, simply because the rap veteran took what was supposed to be a compliment about his Mic tattoo on his arm as an insult.
  • In the video for Poets of the Fall's "Daze," leaving Hamartia the Monster Clown's Masquerade Ball without his by-your-leave gets the object of his jealousy and everything in Hamartia's vicinity torched like kindling.
  • Phil Harris' "The Thing" chronicles the Humiliation Conga of a man who, among other things, is kicked out of his home by his wife, almost has the cops tossed at him, becomes a homeless wanderer for the rest of his life and is sent to Hell when everybody else (even Saint Peter himself) become incredibly angry by the thing (which is never described, and is never called a thing -- every time the song gets to the word "thing", it does three drum beats instead. All we get is the reactions of people, which also includes a beggar that "will accept anything, he was a desperate men" running away when the man offers him the thing) the poor man is carrying along after finding it on the beach.
  • The singer in Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Gimme Three Steps" is nearly shot just for dancing with a woman.
  • "I'll Sink Manhattan" by They Might Be Giants is, in the words of John Flansburgh, "a song about falling in love with someone, falling out of love with that person, and then killing everyone in Manhattan".
  • Brief and Trunks' "Convenience Store" has the viewpoint character, a girl sneaking out of her house to go to the 24 hour convenience store, start making trouble for the cashier simply because he put her receipt and change in her hand in a slightly awkward way.
  • The Scopitone music video for Frankie Randall's "Yellow Haired Women" ends with the titular women being tied to the rear end of Randall's horse and being literally dragged into the sunset alongside him and his lover-just for lying about her hair color and being an excessive flirt.
  • Downplayed in the music video for Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter, where as she is riding a motorboat, the man riding with her creeps up and gets uncomfortably close to her, which prompts her to make a sharp turn that causes him to fall out of the boat. She then finds his wallet and uses his gold credit card to make purchases on the beach. Karma catches her at the end of the video when she's caught and arrested by the police and his wallet and gold card are brought back to him.
  • GZA in his song "Stay out of bars" from his debut album "Words from the Genius" features GZA being hit on by a woman who is later revealed to be trans by her deep voice. His response to this? Killing everyone in the bar by shooting them.

    Myths and Religion 
  • Beti-Pahuin Mythology:
    • Akoma Mba's brother-in-law lost his head for offering him seven chickens and four ducks. This gift was way too small for someone of his stature, so he killed him.
    • Andome Ella visited his cousin Akoma Mba bearing a smorgasbord of treasures and presents. Akoma Mba was insulted by this implication he was poor, so he brutally murdered him with the help of Medang Boro. Akoma Mba was even more embarrassed by the fact that he needed help after seven days of fighting. (To be fair, Andome Ella was also attempting to assert power over Akoma)
    • Zong Midzi considered heavy breathing to be an unforgivable offense and decided to try killing Angone Zok over that.
    • Engouang Ondo was angry that the ugly old sorceress Eleng Akena wasn’t able to maintain her beautiful form for very long so he decided strangulation was an appropriate response.
  • The Bible:
    • Cain treacherously murders his brother Abel, lies about the murder to God, and as a result is cursed and marked for life. With the earth left cursed to drink Abel's blood, Cain is no longer able to farm the land. However, God does not want anyone to murder Cain either, so he "Then the LORD said to him, 'Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.' And the LORD put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him."
    • Cain's descendant Lamech killed a man for hurting him, and another young man for striking him, claiming that "If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold." (Genesis 4:23-24)
    • Like several vengeful passages from the Torah, this one is turned on its head by Jesus. "Then Peter came up and said to him, 'Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.'"
    • Onan, the second son of Judah, married Tamar, but when they consummated their union, he pulled out and ejaculated on the ground. God killed him for doing that.
    • During the Book of Exodus, the Israelites are wandering the desert and beg for water, so God instructs Moses to strike a boulder with his staff once to turn it into a spring. However, Moses either strikes the rock twice, claims sole credit for the feat instead of giving credit to God, or a combination of the two. As a result, God tells Moses that he will not live long enough to enter the Promised Land.
    • In Book of Judges, the Philistines bind Samson, gouge out his eyes, and make him entertain them. (This was after he had already killed thirty Philistines in order to steal their clothes, "struck down" 1,000 Philistines who were sent to capture him, burned Philistine crops, and killed members of the Philistines who were ruling over his people on other occasions.) He asks for strength, saying, "let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes." He then performs a suicide attack in which he pushes apart the pillars holding up a building with 3,000 men and women on the roof, "So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life."
    • In Books of Kings, the prophet Elisha is mocked for being bald by some local youths. Rude, sure, but God summoning two she-bears to kill (or at the very least maim) 42 of said youths might have been overreacting just a tad... Though it should be noted that "Bald-head" was also a far worse insult to an Israelite at the time than it sounds to modern ears. It was practically a curse. Also, the "youths" at the time were likely teenagers ("laboring in the fields") and the "stones" they threw were more akin to bricks. So it was less little kids calling him names and more a gang of young toughs telling him "You don't belong here, Jew-boy."
    • Then there's Haman, resident Evil Chancellor to the king of Persia. Mordecai refuses to bow to him. Haman attempts to perform genocide on the Jews for this insult.
    • A man gathers wood on the sabbath. This counts as work, so he's stoned to death.
    • A lot of the sins in the Bible can all be punished pretty harshly. You can stone a child to death for being disobedient, or be punished for wearing mixed fabrics or planting two crops in the same field. Though, said punishments are only shown in a decent light in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Paul says that these old Jewish laws are no longer required, since Christ died to save us from that (such as his reprimanding of the Galatians in Galatians 3). Jews today recognize those laws are somewhat outré. The Talmud has made the application of those laws almost impossible to put into practice (i.e. requiring four witnesses, requiring the offendant to express his intention, etc.), as the Rabbis knew that Draconian justice did more harm than good for the general adherence to the law.
    • A greedy couple named Ananias and Sapphira sold their land to donate to the Church, but kept some of the money for themselves and lied that they gave all of it. When it became known, they dropped dead.
  • Classical Mythology:
    • Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to man. This allows mankind to create civilization, which Zeus didn't want, so he's chained to a rock for eternity. Every day, an eagle pecks out his liver, which regrows every night. This goes on for thousands of years until Heracles, with Zeus's permission, kills the eagle and rescues him.
      • It's a little bit more complicated than that. Zeus orders that humans make sacrifices to the Gods, but demands that they give up all the usable parts. Prometheus, upset that his creations are getting treated this way, comes up with a plan: he has the humans slaughter a cow and divide it into two bags; one contains all the meat with a layer of gristle on top, while the other contains the offal with a layer of fat on top. Zeus naturally picks the better-looking bag, meaning humans get the meat and the Gods get the garbage parts. Angrily, Zeus declares "Man shall have his steak, but he shall eat it raw!" and takes fire away from them. Prometheus sneaks into Mount Olympus and steals the fire back, which is why he got the aforementioned punishment. The disproportionate retribution comes from Zeus' ensuing punishment of humanity, which often goes unmentioned in most tellings.
      • Another version is that Zeus was initially angry at Prometheus for giving Man fire, but relented when Man starts sacrificing to the gods themselves. Prometheus didn't like Man giving up the best fruits of their labor, even of their own volition, and so comes up with the aforementioned plan. This gets him punished for essentially teaching Man to cheat the gods.
    • Witness Apollo, who was challenged to a contest of music by a satyr named Marsyas. When it was determined by the Muses who were overseeing the competition that both were equal, Apollo, in a total dick move, decreed they play and sing at the same time. As Apollo played the lyre, this was easy to do. Marsyas could not do this as he only knew how to use the flute and could not sing at the same time. Naturally, Apollo was declared the winner. He proceeded to flay Marsyas alive for his hubris in challenging a god.
      • A similar story has Pan challenge Apollo to a musical contest with the same (or at least similar) instruments. Of the overseeing judges, all of them voted for Apollo but one—King Midas. Apollo decided that Midas's ears "were too small to hear properly" if he preferred a reed flute to a lyre, and gave him donkey ears in response.
      • Apollo also played a role in the fame of Cassandra. Apollo gifted her with the ability to see the future, but when he tried to seduce her, she refused him, so he cursed her so that her prophecies would never be believed. In other versions Cassandra had become a priestess of Apollo but left the temple and neglected her duties as such, with the same extreme punishment.
    • A woman named Arachne who fancied herself a better weaver than the goddess Athena. Athena challenged her to a competition, and it turns out Arachne was indeed the better one (or at lest equally as good as the goddess). This pissed off Athena sufficiently that she turned Arachne into a spider, so that she would spend the rest of her days doing nothing but weave. In other versions of the story, Athena bests Arachne using her divine powers, and turns Arachne into a spider only after Arachne kills herself in despair.
      • Some versions of this claim that in the contest, Arachne weaved a tapestry mocking the various foolish acts and infidelities of the gods. So whether it was losing, being mocked, or being shown up AND mocked, Athena was pretty angry about the entire thing and tore down the tapestry, causing Arachne to kill herself. Afterwards, Athena turned her dead body into a spider, though whether for punishment or out of some remorse, the story varies.
      • Another version says that Athena was upset but still not pissed off, and actually wanted to warn Arachne that she was too proud for her own good. (Pride being one of the worst sins that humans could commit against the gods). So she disguised herself as an old woman and tried to have a pep-talk with Arachne herself, but Arachne spurned Athena's warnings and boasted again about her skills. Only THEN Athena got pissed enough to enact the trope.
    • Probably the most hard-done of all was Medusa and her two sisters Euryale and Stheno, the gorgons. Some versions of her story have them being turned from beautiful maidens into hideous monsters by an angry Athena because Medusa, a priestess in Athena's temple, had sex with Poseidon. Disproportionate? It gets worse in other tellings, in which Poseidon actually raped Medusa.
      • That's only in the Metamorphosis by Ovid. In the original myth, Medusa and her sisters were always monsters, and daughters of two of the worst sea monsters at that. They never were intended to be sympathetic.
    • Also, speaking of sea monsters... an innocent princess named Andromeda was Chained to a Rock and almost Fed to the Beast. Why? Because her mother Queen Cassiopeia was dumb enough to boast that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids, and that pissed the HELL out of Poseidon who was married to one of them (Amphitrite).
    • Niobe (half-goddess) thought it unfair that the goddess Leto was honoured more than her because, among other things, Leto had only one son and one daughter, while Niobe had seven of each. In an extra-dickish move, even by Greek God standards, Leto has her son Apollo kill all her completely innocent sons and her daughter Artemis kill all her completely innocent daughters (except one in some versions of the story). For extra cruelty, the daughters are killed right in front of their mother. The real reason Niobe should be honoured more than Leto is that Niobe was not a complete dick.
    • Tiresias gets a variety of these, depending on the story. In one story, he's punished for hitting two copulating snakes with his stick by getting turned into a woman. He's later blinded when he contradicts Hera by saying that women enjoy sex ten times as much as men. In another version, Athena blinds him when he accidentally sees her bathing, and his legendary powers of foresight were her way of apologizing since she couldn't undo the effects.
    • In probably the ultimate example of Pervert Revenge Mode in Greek mythology, Artemis turns the hunter Actaeon, who accidentally stumbled upon her naked, into a stag and has his own hunting dogs rip him to pieces.
      • Said hunter was looking at her with the thought of having sex with her, consent questionable in some versions. Another hunter who found her bathing, a boy named Siproites, was turned into a girl.
    • The Trojan War was (ostensibly) started because Helen of Troy ran off with Paris. The Greeks commence a ten-year siege of Troy, and eventually sack the city, enslave all the women, and kill off the men. Values Dissonance factors in here, because the Greeks took the law of hospitality very seriously. Also, many of Helen's former suitors swore to do just this if she should be kidnapped.
      • Even worse. The entire mess began when Eris, the goddess of discord, wasn't invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis (later parents of Achilles). Taking the long game, Eris created a golden apple that said "To the fairest" and tossed into the midst of Aphrodite, Athena and Hera. After some squabbling it eventually fell to the Trojan prince Paris to judge which of them the apple belonged to. Paris was undecided, so the three tried to bribe him: Athena offered wisdom, skill in battle and great ability to fight; Hera, dominion over all of Asia, and Aphrodite the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris picked Aphrodite, earning himself the enmity of the other two goddesses and their devotion to seeing his home destroyed. All because Eris wasn't invited to a wedding.
      • Some versions of the myth have Helen kidnapped by Paris instead of running away with him so the Retribution is somewhat understandable. Granted, killing thousands of innocent civilians still fits into this.
    • After Achilles kills Hector for having killed his cousin and "best friend" Patroclus, he strings up the corpse and rides it around the city a number of times, then refuses to give it up for a proper burial. This was seen as being somewhat beyond the pale, and Achilles should have laid his retribution to rest once he'd killed Hector. It takes King Priam's stirring pleas to get Achilles to relent enough to let the grieving father buy the dead body back in exchange for a huge ransom.
    • Aphrodite, goddess of love, cursed Theseus' second wife, Phaedra, to fall in love with Theseus' son by his first wife, Hippolytus. After he rejected her, she committed suicide and claimed in her note that Hippolytus had raped her. Theseus laid his own curse on Hippolytus, who refused to tell the truth in honoring an oath not to reveal that Phaedra had come on to him, resulting in Poseidon killing Hippolytus. Why did Aphrodite cause this to happen? Because Hippolytus chose to worship Artemis instead of her.
      • Occasionally for being asexual too, which tied into the worship of Artemis. Eros once cause a shepherd boy named Hymnus to fall in love with the nymph Nicaea, who was a follower of Artemis. After she rejected his advances (which were preceded by Hymnus stealing all of her stuff) he goaded her into killing him so that he wouldn't have to experience the pain of unrequited love. In revenge, Eros and Aphrodite conspired to have Nicaea raped by Dionysus.
    • While trying to prevent the birth of Heracles, Hera was deceived by Alcmene's servant Galanthis into thinking Heracles had already been born. Hera subsequently turned Galanthis into a weasel for tricking her.
    • Not to be outdone, Gaia instigated a fair number of the divine conflicts, usually as escalation from a previous conflict. In revenge for Zeus' overthrow of her children, the Titans, Gaia gave birth to the Giants by Uranus and Typhon by Tartarus and turned them loose on him, never mind that Cronus was guilty of the exact same crimes he had killed his own father for and that she helped Cronus and the other Titans overthrow Uranus.
    • Aphrodite decided that she had a beef with a mortal Princess named Psyche and decided to make her fall in love with something disgusting (varying from a monster to an old man) for the simple crime of Psyche being called more beautiful than Aphrodite. It only went all wrong when Eros (who Aphrodite had sent to shoot Psyche with one of his love arrows) accidentally stabbed himself with one of his own arrows, having been startled by Psyche's beauty.
    • Aura, a minor goddess associated with the wind, once suggested that Artemis might not be a virgin. In response Artemis made Nemesis instigate Aura's rape by Dionysus.
    • Some tellings of the tale of Medea of Colchis end not with Medea deliberately burning her children alive, but with Zeus attempting to seduce her. After she rejected his advances, Hera congratulated Medea for turning her husband away, and offered to burn away the mortality of Medea's children. She lied. Medea's children were burned alive in the flame of Hera's temple just because Zeus approached Medea.
    • Lara, one of the minor Goddesses of Death in the Roman Pantheon, used to be a quite cheery and lively nymph. That, until, according to the different versions of the myth, she either warned her sister Juturna and the goddess Juno about Jupiter's plan to rape her, or told Juno about a long-standing affair between her husband Jupiter and Juturna. In both versions, Jupiter saw fit to banish her to Hell, but just for added safety had her tongue cut out first. And just because this wasn't enough, Jupiter had Lara escorted to Hell by her son Mercury, and when Lara tried to bargain for at least her freedom, Mercury just raped her on the spot, thus giving birth to the minor gods of streets.
    • The Sphinx plagued Thebes for years by eating locals and travelers there who could not solve her riddles.
  • In Egyptian Mythology, one of the Pyramid Texts claimed that the reason Set murdered Osiris, dismembered his body, and usurped his throne was because Osiris kicked Set once. Seriously.
  • Norse Mythology:
    • Loki's son, Narfi, was killed for Loki's crimes, meaning he hadn't done anything to deserve it. Kvasir turned his brother Vali into a wolf that killed him and then used his entrails to chain Loki to a rock until Ragnarok.
    • Loki tricked Baldr's blind brother Hodr into shooting Baldr with a sharp projectile, which killed Baldr. In response to this Odin lay with the giantess Rindr, who gave birth to Vali, who grew up in a single day and killed Hodr, even though Hodr was manipulated into killing his brother.
  • In Slavic Mythology, Veles, god of water, magic, earth, and the underworld, had a habit of stealing things from Perun, the god of thunder, fire, and mountains. Every time this happened, Perun's response was to chase Veles and blast him with lightning. And anything that Veles attempted to hide behind also got zapped, up to and including houses and people. Granted, the stuff Veles stole from Perun included his cattle (very important back then), his wife, and his son.
  • Buddhism: The Koans in Zen Buddhism are mental exercises to learn thinking out of the box and overcoming the limitations of conventional thinking. Some are just a short sentence, while others are short stories which very often feature highly disproportionate acts of violence to make the absurdity of the situation more obvious and remind the pupils not to think of it as an actual event.
  • The Fair Folk were prone to brutally avenging slights so minor that their victims were often completely unaware that they had done anything wrong in the first place.
  • In several religions that believe in Karma, it's said that any negative karma will come back to the offender 7 or more times worse. Some, like Hinduism, don't even require that you intend to commit sins, either. Just being in contact with ritually unclean things is negative karma.

    Pinball 
  • In the infamous "Move Your Car" mode from Bally's Creature from the Black Lagoon, the player tries to blow up a huge van that is blocking his vision at a drive-in theater. Weapons include dynamite, a bazooka, a flamethrower, and an atomic bomb... but the van itself remains unscathed.
  • "Joe's Diner" from The Flintstones also invokes this, being a Spiritual Successor to "Move Your Car". An irate diner retaliates against the hapless drive-thru clerk with a punch in the face, followed by a grenade through the window.
  • Occurs throughout the Judge Dredd pinball, such as a civilian sentenced to a year in prison for flatulence.
  • In No Good Gofers, the "Cart Attack" round allows the player to attack Bud and Buzz — a pair of gophers — with missiles fired from a golf cart.

    Podcasts 
  • Black Jack Justice:
    • "Payback" opens with Jack preparing to get even with the person responsible for him spending 30 days in jail by cleaning all of his guns. Noticing this, Trixie subverts the trope by selling Jack on much more proportionate retribution. By the end of it, the episode's killers are in jail, the client who'd screwed them over spent time in jail before being exonerated, and the judge who sent Jack to jail in the first place was made to look foolish. Jack's narration states that it all felt exactly like getting thirty days of his life back.
    • "The Dead Duck" features a price being put on Jack's head, much to Trixie's delight due to the bounty being hilariously small. The episode ends with the reveal that the price was never on Jack's head, but Trixie's. The job came from a would-be suitor Trixie had spurned. The comically small bounty was his life savings, which he dedicated to killing Trixie for turning him down.
  • JT from the Cool Kids Table game Bloody Mooney was only sent to detention for swearing at Keri and then getting punched by her. Though it's possible that, since it was an altercation between a guy and a girl, he was automatically assumed to be at fault regardless.
  • Mom Can't Cook!: Discussed in the episode on Horse Sense. While Andy and Luke agree that Michael's behaviour towards Tommy was bad, they think some of the "pranks" he gets pulled on him in return go way too far, as they're all potentially harmful.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • This is, of course, an important part of Professional Wrestling, with the Heels often giving out brutal punishment after losing a match.
    • On a related note, in the older territory days, when kayfabe was far stronger and 99 percent of fans wholly believed wrestling was as real as boxing, the very best heels were often able to invoke this with the fans: they would get local crowds so riled up (by beating up some guy they liked, remember) that they would push past booing/throwing garbage and go right to mob mentality and would attempt to literally murder the heels. Old-time wrestlers and managers from the 50's to the 70's would often tell stories about being stabbed or slashed, having acid thrown on them, and having the ring surrounded by masses of people and having to fight their way to the back with chairs.note 
  • During a match between Chris Benoit and Mark Henry, Chris managed to lock the Crippler Crossface on the big guy. After Mark escaped from the hold, he proceeded to pummel Chris, then lock him in a camel clutch, while at the same time, choking him with the ring rope. He got disqualified for using the rope, but he refused to break the hold, even after Benoit gave Blood from the Mouth. When the referee and security finally got Mark off him, Mark was screaming, "He hurt me! He hurt me!" The Crippler Crossface hurts, but Jesus Christ.
    • Happens again when Sheamus beats him. Despite being furious that no one had been able to put up a good fight against him, the fact that Sheamus actually defeated him sends Henry into a berserk rage. He pretty much tries to maim Sheamus (though due to Sheamus still having a lot of fight left in him, he fails).
  • Chris Jericho received some pretty violent beatdowns from newcomer Fandango in early 2013 for his mockery of the latter's name (something he tends to be a stickler about, even insisting on correcting people after he's taken a beating). This went onto spark a match at WrestleMania, which Jericho actually ended up losing.
  • Starting in May 2012, Raw General Manager John Laurinaitis has been making Big Show's life a living hell just because Show made fun of his voice, even after Show apologized. On the May 14, 2012 episode of Raw, Show got on his hands and knees and begged for forgiveness, but Laurinaitis fired him anyways. Thankfully, John Cena calls him out BIG time. Unfortunately for Cena, Laurinaitis was able to able to manipulate Show to joining his side by convincing him that nobody really cared about him being fired, and promising him immunity from firing if he helped him beat Cena at Over The Limit and save his GM job.
  • And we can't forget the late 2000 feud between Kane and Chris Jericho which was basically two months of Kane beating the piss out of Jericho at every single turn. Why? Because Jericho accidentally spilled coffee on Kane at the catering table.
    • To be fair, Jericho did then make a snarky comment about hoping Kane wasn't burned. Given Kane's history, well... And Disproportionate Retribution was always sorta Kane's schtick.
  • At WCW WrestleWar 91, WCW United States Heavyweight Champion Lex Luger defended the title against Dan Spivey. After the match, "The Russian Nightmare" Nikita Koloff attacked Luger and ranted about wanting revenge for a match between Koloff and Luger from 1987.
    • That's nothing compared to veteran manager "Playboy" Gary Hart (no relation to the former U.S. Senator) sending Homicide and Low Ki to attack Terry Funk at Major League Wrestling's Reloaded Tour 2004, January 10, 2004, out of revenge for Funk having lost the "I Quit" match to Ric Flair at NWA Clash of the Champions IX, on November 15, 1989.
  • In a later October 2006 episode of Raw, Maria Kanellis accidentally spilled coffee on Eric Bischoff's shirt. His response: You will wrestle Umaga or you will be fired. Needless to say, Maria was seriously injured, and the only thing that saved her from being the hottest woman ever to be laid to rest in her hometown's cemetery was John Cena running in to run Umaga off.
    • This actually happened about a year earlier when Maria just asked an innocent question to a seething Bischoff who ordered her to be in a match with Kurt Angle. She got hit with a brutal Angle Slam before, once again, John Cena came to save the day. It should also mention that Eric had more than enough reasons to get Maria some payback: she pretty much chewed him out over his control over Raw in a way that no one expected: using a very extensive vocabulary (her character at the time was The Ditz) and pretty much stated "Bischoff's been causing chaos in RAW and he should be fired."
  • Maven. The Undertaker. Royal Rumble 2002. Seriously, one can understand Taker being pissed at being eliminated in the RR by a dropkick from behind, but that was largely his fault for not paying attention, and it REALLY didn't warrant the horrifying beatdown he spent the next twenty minutes doling out on poor Maven's sorry carcass, including plowing him headfirst through a popcorn machine's glass.
  • In 2009, Randy Orton made it his goal in life to not only beat Triple H for the WWE Championship but to systematically destroy every member of HHH's wife's family aka the McMahons. He punts her father Vince McMahon and her brother Shane McMahon, RKO's her (and then all but rapes her while she's unconscious), and eventually beats HHH and punts him too. Why? Because HHH kicked Orton out of Evolution five years earlier.
    • Which was DR in itself; the night prior (SummerSlam 2004), Orton faced then WWE World Heavyweight Champion Chris Benoit in a title match, and won. You'd think HHH would be proud of him. The problem? Orton's victory had derailed HHH's big plan, which was for Orton to soften the champ up so that Triple H could swoop in, finish off a weakened Benoit, and take the title for himself. So what does HHH do? He tricks Orton into celebrating in the middle of the ring, only to turn on him and subject him to a brutal 3-on-1 beatdown before kicking him out of Evolution and, a few weeks later, taking the title anyway.
    • Lesson of the story: Triple H and Randy Orton are not good people, and if you cross them in any way, they will give you hell. Just ask them. About themselves, or each other.
  • In the original ECW, Raven dedicated his entire life to destroying Tommy Dreamer in every way possible — injuring him in any way he could, either by himself or sending members of his Nest to do it for him, all because Tommy had been mean to Beulah McGillicutty when she was the fat girl at summer camp.note 
  • Razor Ramon used to exact brutal vengeance whenever someone broke his toothpick.
  • Early in his 1985 WWF run, to help get him over as a dirty, foul-mouthed heel with an itchy trigger-finger temper, Terry Funk beat up ring announcer/attendant Mel Phillips, bruising his ribs and tearing all his clothes off. Phillips' crime: putting on Funk's cowboy hat as he collected it before Funk's match; his hands were full with Funk's other gear.
  • The October 10, 2006 episode of WWE's ECW show featured an "Extreme Strip Poker" competition involving a mix of Divas from WWE Raw, WWE Smackdown and ECW. After each girl is in their underwear (and one is topless but using Hand-or-Object Underwear), Candice Michelle loses a match. She looks like she is about to go topless but she stops. Maria then asks if she is embarrassed. And, just for that one comment, she is stripped completely naked on national TV by the first who claimed she "cheated".
    • Right before stripping Maria, Candice mocked her for her inane Non Sequitur "I love ponies!" when the other Divas had been verbally drooling over John Cena and Batista earlier on the show.
  • The ROH "Ring Of Homicide" angle, where the titular Homicide when on a quest of revenge, which mostly involved stabbing with a fork everyone who so much as annoyed him.
  • In 2015, James Storm asked Mickie James, who had announced her retirement to raise her son, not to retire and to join his stable. When she declined, he threw her into the path of a train.
  • Brock Lesnar violently destroys both Rey Mysterio and his son Dominick with multiple F-5's and suplexs. Why did he do this? All because Rey had snatched the microphone from Lesnar's hand, even though Lesnar had interrupted him in the first place and had snatched the microphone from Rey's hand first.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Canonically happens quite a bit in the BattleTech universe. The Kentares Massacre and the Word of Blake's Jihad are just two major infamous examples (the former historical, the latter rather more recent) that virtually anyone in the setting could immediately name.
  • Dungeons & Dragons examples:
    • The Draconomicon states that even good dragons are prone to this. Any disrespect, even if it appears minor or an individual case, is magnified when made towards a dragon due to lesser mortals not knowing their place and their long life where they associate it with a long series of insults.
    • There are also marids, genies of elemental water. Apparently, offending one in any way is a crime in their society if you aren't a marid. (And they barely tolerate being offended by other marids.) Of course, they're such incredible egotists that every one of them (that is not an exaggeration) has at least some title of nobility, if not royalty.
    • In the Ravenloft setting, the gothic Powers That Be in control of the place love answering pleas for vengeance — but freely disregard the scale of the supposed wrong. A lot of the campaigns revolve around some greedy or prideful person successfully calling down a curse of undeath or torment on someone for an imagined slight or trivial grievance.
    • The Forgotten Realms campaign setting has this, combined with a Self-Inflicted Hell. Did you worship an evil god because it was the culturally accepted thing to do where you came from? Then you're going to that God's hell, even if you never really did anything evil or you never even knew of a good god you could worship. And it won't be pleasant ('cause none of the evil god have pleasant afterlives for their followers, making one wonder how they get followers at all. Worship me! And win eternal torment). Were you an atheist? Then once you die you get to spend a LONG time having your soul slowly destroyed, becoming part of a wall, gradually losing your memories and personality till there's nothing left.
    • The Drow goddess, Kiaransalee, is the Goddess of Disproportionate Vengeance
    • The Demon prince Graz'zt is probably the least likely demon lord to rip you apart just for existing, even opening his layers of the abyss for trade. Mention that he actually fell in love with Iggwilv, that Malcanthet turned him down, or call his domain "The Little Hells", and he will feed you to the predatory plants in his gardens.
    • One sample adventure in the Heroes of Horror sourcebook, "For Hate's sake", is made of this trope. Growing up, Samuel (one of the primary villains of the adventure) was that guy who always held a grudge. Eventually he became a priest of the god of this trope himself. He then began taking revenge on all his childhood grudges (granted it's implied that MOST of these didn't involve murder). He eventually becomes complacent...so his god pulls a Poisonous Friend and summons a ghost to take revenge for him, and this time it ALWAYS involves murder. Samuel goes mad with guilt and ends up pleading with the ghost to stop, only to be (depending on their actions) killed by the PCs, with the DM leading them to believe Samuel is the one responsible (which given that his god is also playing this trope for Samuel becoming complacent, he is, in a way).
  • Exalted:
    • Aspect Book: Fire uses this trope to establish how bad the Realm's Decadent Court is. Peleps Dananchina, a noble of the Realm, responds to being called "stereotypical" by setting fire to the speaker's toys. And the revenge taken for that is even more disproportionate.
    Peleps Damanchina: (narrating) She didn’t try to insult me again. She did try to assassinate me, but that was an entirely different matter.
    • In Aspect Book: Air, a monk of the Realm destroys an entire tavern because its logo violated Realm doctrine.
  • In the Iron Kingdoms RPG, this is why smart people don't take up crime in the Protectorate of Menoth. A fundamentalist theocracy, the Protectorate has incredibly brutal laws. No less than eleven crimes out of fourteen can earn burning at the stake in the Protectorate, including improper speech, the more elaborate forms of theft, smuggling, tax evasion, counterfeiting and destruction of currency. Drunkenness can earn you a trip to the torture chamber.
  • Mummy: The Curse: This is why you do not steal the Relics of the Arisen-neither they nor their gods take kindly to tomb robbers, so a dormant one will likely be brought out of stasis, and he will find you. Fun Fact: The Empire of Irem didn't really have a concept of forgiveness, only revenge.
  • Player Characters in Nobilis are bound by the Sevenfold Precept. Harming innocents is against the law, but if anyone harms you, you are allowed to repay it sevenfold. And (at least in Second Edition), Lord Entropy includes under the definition of "harm" accepting insults from a mortal, or simply accepting an order from one. Because it diminishes a Noble's miraculous nature.
    • In Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, Entropy's son, Entropy II, has set as one of the laws of his Evil World that none can be harmed more than three times as much as they deserve. (Why not "exactly as they deserve"? Because to Entropy II's mind, that can result in a rather nasty form of "you deserved that". Better to have a situation that evokes some sympathy.)
  • There are three different ways described to play Paranoia: Classic, Straight, and Zap. In Straight games, with a realistic Alpha Complex, punishments for minor crimes are dystopian but sensible (public shaming, fines). In Classic punishment is largely random, and in Zap the punishment for anything is summary execution.
  • This is part of the reason why the Dwarfs in Warhammer Fantasy are A: part of the "Gray" side of its Black-and-Gray Morality, and B: a dying race. They honor Revenge Before Reason to the point they are Too Dumb to Live, being willing to do things like get into a war that sees dozens of their own people dead and raze a castle that they spent years building to the ground because the guy who paid them was two and a half pennies short in his dozen wagonloads of gold payment.
    • The best example for the Dwarfs is the War of Vengeance, also called the War of the Beard by the Elves. It all started when the Dark Elf raiders disguised as High Elves attacked some Dwarf traders. High King Gotrek demanded compensation from the High Elves, but the arrogant Elf king Caledor II refused and had the Dwarf ambassador's beard shaved, causing Gotrek to declare all out war on the High Elves. Shaving a Dwarf's beard is considered so insulting the Dwarf is required to take the Slayers oath and likely also kill you in the time between. The resulting war shattered the two Empires, and it ended with Caledor's death at the hands of Gotrek, who took the Phoenix crown as compensation, and the High Elves being forced to withdraw from their colonies in the Old World to defend Ulthuan from the Dark Elves.
    • In the Total War: Warhammer video game, Grudges are a gameplay mechanic for the Dwarfs, basically being timed missions that the Dwarfs need to fulfil or they begin to suffer public order penalties. One Grudge requires you to send a saboteur to punish a neighbouring rival Dwarf clan, which depending on your relation can result in a war. Why? Because the clan stole away a halfling cook who served under High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer himself and made an apparently delicious nutty fig pudding that the king was fond of. Because as bad as it is that the End Times are upon us and the Old World is being reduced to a burning hellscape, we simply cannot allow the halfling pudding affront to go unanswered, can we? Another Grudge involves starting a war with the Vampire Counts because they killed a bunch of Dawi merchants and used their reanimated bodies to act in a play called "Stoutheart Beardcomber and the Ostlander's Wife": Sure, the death of innocent Dawi must be repaid in blood (or whatever Vampires shed), but the high priority of the Grudge is implied to be because the play was absolutely terrible.
    • Prince Sigvald once burned down an Imperial City. The reason? He didn't like the taste of their wine. Granted, though, Sigvald is a champion of one of the Chaos Gods, and the Chaos Marauders fully intend on destroying all life on the planet...
  • Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution
    • If you turn down a recruitment offer from The Shop, Escaton, Abraxis, Aleph, or The Red Orchestra, they will either kill you, forcibly abduct you, or ruin your life until you have no other choice but to change your mind.
    • Harry's punishments in Broken Things are extremely harsh and are handed out for doing things like talking out of turn, requesting to be called by his name instead of subject number, and not answering questions quickly enough while under extreme duress.
    • Rose is rude to her captors in the beginning of Captured. They respond by sedating her, shaving her head, taking away her piercings, and doing laser removal on her tattoos.
  • The Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40,000 uses this for everything. A few examples:
    • The Steel Cobras Space Marine chapter worshipped the Emperor as an animal totem. The penalty for following the Imperial state religion in the wrong way? They were duly excommunicated, and any Imperial force to see a Steel Cobra is permitted, nay required, to shoot on sight and leave asking questions to the Inquisition.
      • All this while every single Marine chapter worships the Emperor in a way not sanctioned by the Ecclesiarchy, and some are much weirder than the Steel Cobras without being censured. Even worse, Space Marines don't have to worship the Emperor (as the geneseed comes from the Emperor), they just have to be loyal to him, and some Chapters are rather open about it.
      • All this just shows that all it takes to accuse a Space Marine chapter of heresy is one dumb Inqusitor and some bad luck. Even First Founding chapters are not immune to this as Months of Shame show.
    • The Carcharodons chapter of Space Marines◊ are in love with this. After gaining control of the enemy's holdings (the Tranquility system) at the end of the Badab War, they exterminated every single person who was not of recruitable age, and forced the rest to fight to the death to determine which of the tiny percentage of survivors would get to join their chapter. After that, they stripped the system of all useful resources and vanished.
    • The Black Templars Space Marines, upon learning that a few people on a planet had purchased alien equipment from traders, proceeded to massacre a significant chunk of the population. Even the Imperium usually limits the punishment for this to jail time.
    • Subverted with Exterminatus. You'd think blasting the planet into an unusable wasteland is a bit much, but it's only supposed to be used if Chaos or Tyranid forces have overwhelmed a planet to a point where it isn't worth taking it back (Chaos corrupts everything and the 'nids eat everything and thus can lose billions and still have a net gain, so blowing up the surface of the planet will keep them from consuming anything usable) and yes, even the Imperium has its limits for throwing men into the meat grinder. Though given how utterly dystopian the setting is, someone, somewhere no doubt has used it for less than proper or sane reasons.
      • There is, in that a planet got exterminated because the taxes paid didn't round up and thus the Inquisition assumed they had started worshipping Chaos. Oooops...
      • There is an Inquisitorial Ordo whose job is to pass judgment on whether or not the Exterminatus committed was justified. In more than 90% of cases the Exterminatus is declared a mistake and an Inquisitor who ordered it is stripped of his/her rank and executed.
    • Imperial Guard Commissars are known particularly for their application of BLAM (fatal gunshot) in dealing with insubordination, heresy or uniform violation among hapless troops. This varies, but only the most suicidal of commissars ever engage in hapless murder of their own ranks. Bolt Shells cost to much to be wasted on a single Guardsmen who mis-tied his laces, and it's not uncommon for such Commissars to suffer from "Friendly Fire" in the next engagement.
      • The Imperium has also been known to send entire regiments with a mandate to burn the planet if strictly necessary, because someone bought a Tau-made crop harvester.
      • Of course that's partially justified since if that crop harvester had been bought from certain other illegal sources it would cause anyone who took a bite of the crops to turn to Chaos, mutate, or get stricken with a particularly virulent Nurgle disease. If someone gets away with purchasing from the Tau they'll keep buying from other xenos until they get a Chaos artifact in a shipment.
      • See the above about flip-flopping. The Imperium has also been known to tolerate — or at least turn a blind eye to — limited trading with the Tau Empire provided it's kept low-key. So...Depending on the Writer.
      • Less Depending on the Writer and more Depending on the Inquisitor. The Inquisition is a vast organization, and they vary pretty wildly in what they'll tolerate. Some, such as Gideon Ravenor of Dan Abnett's Ravenor Trilogy, will flat out ignore some xenos if they have better things to do; others will torture you on vague suspicions (most of them are in the fluff, as they don't tend to make relatable protagonists, or good inquisitors for that matter).
    • Any member of the Inquisition can and will dispense these at a moment's notice depending on their mood, temperment, boredom, paranoia, or a combination of both. Inquisitor Lord Karamazov famously roasted a young preacher. His crime? Thorian inquisitors, Karamazov's peers, thought the preacher might have been the Emperor reincarnated. The boy had otherwise done nothing wrong. note 
      • Karamazov usually roasts people for far less. In his court, everyone found guilty is sentenced to death. Everyone found innocent is sentenced to death too because they wasted his time by appearing guilty while having done nothing wrong.
    • Woe befall anyone who crosses the Dark Angels' path. Their Interrogator-Chaplains extract confessions from suspected Fallen Angels with brutal torture. If you deny you are one, they will call you a liar then continue to torture you until you do confess, or kill you if they think it's pointless. If you confess you are one (even falsely) they will accept the apology, then kill you.
    • A number of alien races abandoned and betrayed humanity at the beginning of the Age of Strife. The Emperor's response was to attempt to exterminate every single alien race in a galaxy-spanning campaign of genocide. While it wasn't, at least according to Imperial sources, the only role of the Great Crusade, there are certainly a lot of alien races in the Horus Heresy novels who you won't see on the tabletop...
    • /tg/ created the Necron Lord Assholetep, "An aeons old automaton king... with the petulant impatience and obnoxious tantrums of a 7-year-old child." Anecdotes regarding Assholetep state that he will obliterate entire sectors over comically trivial slights.
    • The Adeptus Custodes are authorised to summarily execute anyone who even so much as be a minor nuisance to them.
  • The Europans' general schtick in Rocket Age. They bombed Io back into the stone age (they consider this merciful), engaged in a genocidal war with the Jovians when they began using space flight, driving them into hiding, as well as constantly threatening Earth with disintegration.
  • Sentinels of the Multiverse: Fanatic is a hero, but she earned that name through her tendency to be a little eager to use her sword on "the wicked". It's just as well that she's in the Prime Wardens, who mostly deal with significant threats to the world like Grand Warlord Voss or Akash'Bhuta; the other heroes have a policy of never, ever calling on Fanatic to help with bank robberies or other crimes that don't merit instant execution.
  • In Shadowrun, most MegaCorps will engage in Pragmatic Villainy, accepting Shadowruns against them as a cost of doing business as long as the runners don't leave them with a huge pile of death benefits to be paid out, huge property damage or getting caught by the news and publicly embarrassing them. However, there are a few exceptions to this general rule:
    • Reveal (or worse, practice) Aztechnology blood rituals or steal a set of the Renraku Red Samurai armor and both companies might call down a Thor Shot on your head, which is basically a big ball of welded-together space debris hitting with the force of a nuke from pure kinetic force, without any nasty fallout.
    • If you accept a job from Saeder-Krupp, you better complete it perfectly or the Great Dragon Lofwyr, CEO of Saeder-Krupp, will make you his next meal.
    • Mitsuhama Computer Technologies, which started out as a legal front company for the Yakuza, has the so-called "Zero Zone" policy due to their screwed up perception of honor and takes all Shadowruns against them personally. In response, runners generally don't care about collateral damage when running against MCT, as survival becomes the #1 priority.
  • The Splinter has this as a possible character origin. Were you caught in possession of books or associating with certain groups? You might get sent to play the game, which is an almost certain death sentence.

    Theatre 
  • Threatened in As You Like It, when Touchstone finds out that someone else (a simple, non-threatening peasant) likes Audrey:
    "...abandon the society of this female, or, clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better understanding, diest; or, to wit I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death, thy liberty into bondage: I will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado, or in steel; I will bandy with thee in faction; I will o'errun thee with policy; I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways: therefore tremble and depart!"
  • From Chicago:
    Liz: So, I said to him, I said, "You pop that gum one more time..." And he did. So I took the shotgun off the wall and I fired two warning shots...into his head!
    • Really, almost every woman's justification in "The Cell Block Tango" is an example of it. Person being the slightest bit of an asshole and/or cheating on you? Murder him. (The one possible exception- among the actual murderers, anyway- is June, whose husband relentlessly accused her of "screwin' the milkman". Even if she was [and there's nothing to indicate things one way or another], his reaction sounds downright abusive in its own right. Stabbing him to death may well have been a release from dealing with Wilbur's crap for years.)
  • Invoked in The Children's Hour. Enfant Terrible Mary blackmails Rosalie by saying she'll reveal that she stole a classmate's bracelet and that the police will put her in jail for decades for stealing.
  • Cyrano de Bergerac: This play deconstructs this trope by showing us the kind of personality and mindset of the people that use it:
  • In "Lonesome West" by Martin McDonagh, it is revealed that the father of the two main characters mocked Coleman's haircut. In response Coleman grabbed the shotgun and shot his father in the head.
  • In Macbeth, one of the witches causes a sailor to be shipwrecked tossed about in a horrible storm... because his wife wouldn't give the witch a roasted chestnut. (The text explicitly says that the boat won't sink, possibly due to some kind of limitation on the witches' powers, but the sailor will have a thoroughly miserable time of it.)
  • Gilbert and Sullivan
    • The Mikado: most sentences for committing crimes tend toward the Cool and Unusual Punishment variety, and a lot of them are pretty excessive (Snake Oil Salesmen get all their teeth extracted by amateur dentists). Also, flirting is punishable by death, for some reason.
    • The Pirates of Penzance: The pirates are all orphans, and have a policy of never plundering from other orphans. General Stanley tells them that he is an orphan. This is "a terrible story" (a lie). When the pirates discover they have been decieved, they sing "we seek a penalty fifty-fold, for General Stanley's story".
  • Iago seeks to destroy his superior, the Moorish general Othello, both personally and professionally by convincing him that his loving wife is actually unfaithful. Iago can't decide on why he's getting revenge, since he offers up several conflicting rationalizations. Ultimately, Iago destroys Othello simply because he doesn't like him.. He ruins Cassio's reputation and tried to have him assassinated, mentally destroys Othello and causes him to murder his wife, then kill himself. Because he was passed over for a promotion.
  • The title character in The Phantom of the Opera murders stagehand Joseph Buquet when the opera managers refuse to give his beloved Christine the lead role in the opera, despite the fact that they stopped the show and made a point of announcing that the pause was so that Christine could step into the part. Later, incensed at Christine's betrayal (with absolutely zero thought to the fact that his behavior has terrified her), he drops a massive chandelier into the audience, where it would have likely injured or killed numerous people, including Christine.
  • One could argue that both Shylock's "pound of flesh" contract and the punishments inflicted upon him at the end of the play are both examples of this trope.
  • Basically the entire play of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Let's see if I can get this in order:
    • Titus has come back to Rome victorious from war with the Goths. He ritually sacrifices the eldest son of their queen, Tamora.
    • Titus randomly shanks one of his sons for questioning him.
    • Tamora has Bassianus (brother to the emperor and the future husband of Titus's daughter, Lavinia) buried alive, framing two of Titus's sons.
    • Aaron the Moor has Titus's daughter (who's really done nothing) Lavinia raped and mutilated (so she can't tell who did it) by Chiron and Demetrius (sons of his lover the empress Tamora), because Titus had their elder brother killed.
    • And then Titus finds out, kills the two brothers and makes them into a pie and serves it to the empress, Tamora (their mother). This play is just totally messed up.
  • Westeros: An American Musical: After Robb breaks his promise to marry a Frey daughter, the family he slighted in the process responds by killing him while he's a guest in their house. Tyrion is appropriately schocked when he finds out about the event.

    Web Animation 
  • Anon: Sure, Tucker pretending to be in love with Sam to sleep with her when they were teens was a dick move, but it certainly didn't warrant the twenty years of stalking and constant kidnapping that followed.
  • The first asdfmovie ends with a skit where a man makes a lame "you're gay" joke at another. In response, the other man stabs him through the chest with a sword.
    "Oh, come on!"
  • Battle for Dream Island could probably have its own page. With it being a comedy show where the collective IQ of all 70+ characters is equivalent to that of a plastic spork, there's way too many examples to list (at least in one or two sittings).
    • One of the most extreme and iconic examples is when Leafy steals Dream Island from the winner, Firey, just because she died on his ferris wheel.
  • In the Grand Finale for Brawl of the Objects, Princess Diamond remarries a dragon called Gareth all because Emerald looked for her in the wrong places.
  • FreezeFlame:
  • GoAnimate videos where a person is Grounded will invoke this trope heavily. It doesn't matter how minor the offense is, expect the person being punished by being grounded for an impossibly long time. This is the start, though — many videos have shown the target being expelled from school for getting a math problem wrong, toys destroyed for Playing Sick and even outright killed.
  • In the Andrés Guerrero cartoon featuring itemLabel's Dinkle, Dinkle posts a chiptune on social media and is met with critics saying "strictly speaking, this is not a chiptune". Dinkle, being Dinkle, responds by brigading the critics with Sock Puppets and then kidnapping and killing twenty people, before going about his business like nothing happened.
  • Happy Tree Friends: While Sniffles is usually trying to eat the ants, they take measures far beyond self-defense by torturing and killing him as painfully and brutally as possible.
  • Helluva Boss: Evil peahen demon Stella is constantly trying to get her husband Stolas murdered for having an affair with an imp.
  • In the HourofPoop video "Friar's Rubbing Wood: Fall of Nottingham", Friar Tuck is ordered to publicly apologize for stealing an ice pop from a child and, upon refusing to do so, is sentenced to work for Electronic Arts before being insulted and humiliated in front of the whole town. In response, Tuck concocts an insidious plot to kill everyone in Nottingham that involves Black Magic, Human Sacrifice, and an Orbital Bombardment provided by the sun.
  • Isabelle Ruins Everything: Isabelle put Cyrus in jail because he didn't approve of what she was doing to the town. Reese didn't appreciate her husband being sent to jail, so she was sent to jail too. Apparently, several other villagers followed them.
  • Lobo (Webseries): Lobo frequently kills people who bother him.
  • The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: During “The Most Epic Superhero Origin Story Ever Told”, Ridiculously Epic nukes his band class for playing their instruments poorly.
  • RWBY:
    • In Volume 1, Jaune is being regularly bullied by Cardin everywhere he goes. Nora suggests breaking Cardin's legs in retribution.
    • Dr. Watts' motivation turned out to be this. Why is he working with Salem, master of the Creatures of Grimm who have menaced human society since its beginning, in her plan, which involves destroying humanity's greatest defenses against said Grimm in order to Take Over the World, and eventually ends up destroying an entire kingdom? He felt insulted that General Ironwood gave precedence to Pietro Polendina's work on Penny rather than his own Paladins. Keep in mind that he still received funding on the Paladins, which became a signature of the Kingdom of Atlas' armies. The only real insult was to his ego.
  • Wolf Song: The Movie: Alador calls out Cobalt for retreating during a 1v1 battle.. in front of his superior no less. Cobalt’s response: to violently attack and later to have Alador brutally tortured to death
  • Zsdav Adventures: In A torony (The tower), an Evil Wizard gets invited by the king to lunch and they ask him to wash his hands, the wizard curses the king and turns him into a pig in response.
If you don't like this stinger, it's time to RUN. The Navy SEALs are coming.

 
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J.W. Globwobbler Gets "Fired"

After Tom and Jerry wins The Fabulous Super Race, they were tied however which J.W. Globwobbler informs that their contract says they have to do the race all over again. They don't take this well and beat the living daylights out of him. J.W. then starts hazily rambling about how Hollywood is going to be good, earnest, family-friendly entertainment. The president of Hollywood's thinly-veiled Take That! response before vaporizing him and giving Irving his position as new head of Globwobbler Studios? "We can't have that kind of attitude in Hollywood." After spending most of the film being the beleaguered assistant to J.W., Irving finally gets the fame and glory that he deserves.

Windows Vista

"Gullible" on t...

Breakfast

Bloody May

Minecraft Steve...

Underwear Felony

Breaking the Ic...

Stiff Beauty Di...

Blasphemy = Ann...

The Interpreter

Full of Rats an...

Lucy Throws Lin...

Stalking over B...

Mario Does Pran...

Waking Mihawk f...

Death over a se...

You'll Be Sorry

Did You Just La...

Mr. Cat the Eco...

Killing Villain...

Woke Peeps = Ar...

Debbie's Victims

The Bedfellows

Doragory Kills ...

Elevator Become...

Michael DeSanta

Coal This Year

Testophobia

"Eh?"

Boy, is he strict!

Angry Ms. Ackerman

Don't butt.

Generalissimo R...

No Children = B...

Ike Gets Stocked

"I'm not fat; I...

Carly gets a B

Refusing Dylan'...

Moon Sees Debbi...

"Oh, I've Waste...

Fast Foodie

Jingle Bells, B...

Trigger Warning

Captain Hook

Crime in Dracon...

O Holy Night

The Simpsons Ride

Deok-su's Retri...

Rob

Alternative Title(s): Disproportionate Revenge, The Chicago Way

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J.W. Globwobbler Gets "Fired"

After Tom and Jerry wins The Fabulous Super Race, they were tied however which J.W. Globwobbler informs that their contract says they have to do the race all over again. They don't take this well and beat the living daylights out of him. J.W. then starts hazily rambling about how Hollywood is going to be good, earnest, family-friendly entertainment. The president of Hollywood's thinly-veiled Take That! response before vaporizing him and giving Irving his position as new head of Globwobbler Studios? "We can't have that kind of attitude in Hollywood." After spending most of the film being the beleaguered assistant to J.W., Irving finally gets the fame and glory that he deserves.

How well does it match the trope?

4.82 (11 votes)

Example of:

Main / DisproportionateRetribution

Media sources:

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J.W. Globwobble...

Windows Vista

"Gullible" on t...

Breakfast

Bloody May

Minecraft Steve...

Underwear Felony

Breaking the Ic...

Stiff Beauty Di...

Blasphemy = Ann...

The Interpreter

Full of Rats an...

Lucy Throws Lin...

Stalking over B...

Mario Does Pran...

Waking Mihawk f...

Death over a se...

You'll Be Sorry

Did You Just La...

Mr. Cat the Eco...

Killing Villain...

Woke Peeps = Ar...

Debbie's Victims

The Bedfellows

Doragory Kills ...

Elevator Become...

Michael DeSanta

Coal This Year

Testophobia

"Eh?"

Boy, is he strict!

Angry Ms. Ackerman

Don't butt.

Generalissimo R...

No Children = B...

Ike Gets Stocked

"I'm not fat; I...

Carly gets a B

Refusing Dylan'...

Moon Sees Debbi...

"Oh, I've Waste...

Fast Foodie

Jingle Bells, B...

Trigger Warning

Captain Hook

Crime in Dracon...

O Holy Night

The Simpsons Ride

Deok-su's Retri...

Rob