Follow TV Tropes

Following

Revenge Through Corruption

Go To

Instead of inflicting physical harm, the villain attacks the mind and soul. The intent is to get revenge on an enemy by making someone important to them evil, insane, under the control of the villain, hooked on drugs, or some other comparable effect — in essence, an engineered Face–Heel Turn or Face–Monster Turn. Victims may include friends, family, sidekicks, or even distant descendants. So long as the target's loved ones are shells of their former selves, then success is achieved.

A sexual example may take the form of corrupting the victim through seduction. The avenger often either seduces the target's Love Interest (or mother, sister, daughter, etc., especially if the target is male), or was the target's love interest and has "spite sex" with someone else close to the target after the breakup. A really twisted villain may rape the target's loved one; strictly speaking, that's an example of Revenge by Proxy more generally, but it can overlap with this trope if the story treats the victim as Defiled Forever and/or indulges in Victim-Blaming. In these sexually violent examples of the trope, if the victim is a love interest, the villain may follow the act with a Post-Rape Taunt along the lines of "I showed hernote  what a real man is," to emphasize that the target of revenge is now an Emasculated Cuckold.

A person that does this would probably be The Corrupter. See Face–Monster Turn and Mind Manipulation for a handy list of techniques that can be used to accomplish such an end. Compare Raised by Orcs and We Used to Be Friends. Contrast Evil Parents Want Good Kids.

Revenge Through Corruption is a subtrope of Revenge by Proxy and is related to Sins of Our Fathers. Sins of Our Fathers refers to revenge against the descendants of someone that is dead or missing. Revenge by Proxy refers to revenge by harming someone important to the living person instead of taking the option of going directly after the target of revenge. Revenge Through Corruption can overlap either trope. What distinguishes this trope is the method of revenge. Drug examples may fall under Forced Addiction if the victim isn't given a choice about being "corrupted".


Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • My Hero Academia: Tomura Shigaraki is the grandson of All Might's mentor, Nana Shimura, who All For One took in and raised to be a villain. Both as a means of obtaining a successor and as a final insult to his old enemy. He reveals this to All Might during their final battle to torture him, momentarily causing him to suffer a Heroic BSoD.

    Comic Books 
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search, it's revealed that Fire Lord Ozai's poor treatment of his son Zuko was mainly out of spite towards his wife Ursa for wishing that Zuko would never turn out like him, even going as far as claiming that Zuko was the bastard son of her ex-boyfriend. This mistreatment would continue through the animated series until Zuko betrayed his uncle and allegedly killed the Avatar. Upon hearing the news, Ozai uncharacteristically praises his son with respect, proud that Zuko broke his mother's wishes by being like his father, a fact that Zuko greatly regrets for the rest of the series and tries to atone for by turning against his father once he had enough.
  • Deathstroke was revealed to have done this to Cassandra Cain to explain her inexplicable Face–Heel Turn. After Nightwing broke Slade's control over his daughter Ravager, Slade wanted revenge by taking Batgirl away from the Bat Family. He tried to manipulate Cassandra into believing Batman and the rest of the family didn't actually care about her, citing how she'd basically been abandoned while Bruce, Dick and Tim went off on a soul-searching journey. It later turned out Slade was injecting Cassandra with the same drugs that drove Ravager insane, and was broken out of it when Robin gave her a serum that neutralized Slade's Psycho Serum.
  • In Superman & Batman: Generations, Lex Luthor manipulates Joel Kent into hating his family by stoking the inferiority complex he suffers over being the Muggle son of Superman.note  Joel ends up murdering his sister Kara on her wedding day, thanks to a Super-Empowering serum Luthor gave him...which was intentionally imperfect and results in Joel dying in his father's arms after Lex admits that he'd been lying to the young man all along.
  • In Tom Strong, a Nazi villainess raises Tom's son — fathered without his consent or knowledge — as a racist psychopath. Even worse, it sticks.
  • The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: In the past, Megatron recruited the-bot-who-would-be-Tarn into the Decepticons, shaping him into the head of the D.J.D. just to "prove a point" towards Optimus Prime. It goes more than a little horribly right, when Tarn's desire to hurt folk supersedes his fanatical loyalty to Megatron.
  • Over at DC Comics, Wildcat's enemy the Yellow Wasp kidnapped his son in order to do this, but ironically wound up alienating his own child, who allegedly killed them both.

    Fan Works 
  • Bound Destinies Trilogy: Majora once ruled over the land of Termina as its Demon King, warping the hearts of most of its residents so that they worshipped them. When they were defeated, they corrupted Terminus's hero into the Fierce Deity and set them to rampage across Termina. When Link steps in and tries to stop it, Majora lets the Deity die and attempts to corrupt Link in the same fashion.
  • The Bridge: Aside from wanting to use her for her magical potential, the Windigos think using Sci-Twi, the Element of Magic in the human world, as their vessel of destruction is a good way to spite Harmony.
  • Unknowingly Inverted in Conversations with a Cryptid: Toshinori/All Might met up with All For One's son, Izuku and helped them become a hero, very much against their father's wishes. Not only did he make him the next holder of One For all, he became Izuku's father in all but genetics.
  • A common plotline in Miraculous Ladybug fanworks involves Lila convincing several of Marinette's friends to turn upon their "everyday Ladybug". In the most extreme cases, the whole class is either actively bullying her or simply not doing anything to try and stop it.
  • In Scattered to the Winds, Magica schemes to do this with Webby by raising her as her own and turning her against the McDuck family, not realizing that Webby isn't directly related to Scrooge, being Mrs. Beasley's granddaughter.
  • Ultimate Spider-Woman: Jack O' Lantern attempts to use a combination of Mind Rape and More than Mind Control to accomplish this with Spider-Woman, wanting to destroy their sense of identity and mold them into his heir as a supervillain.

    Films — Animation 
  • The Incredibles: After the Parrs foil his scheme with the Omnidroid, Syndrome kidnaps Jack-Jack Parr, intending to raise him as a future sidekick.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Satan in The Devil's Advocate intends to undermine the law and let the criminals run unpunished "until the stench of it rises so high it chokes the whole fucking lot of them!"
  • Hook: Hook tries to punish Peter by turning his son Jack evil.
  • The Karate Kid:
    • The Karate Kid Part III: After being humiliated by Daniel and Mr. Miyagi and losing Cobra Kai, John Kreese turns to his millionaire friend Terry Silver for help. Silver approaches Daniel pretending to be a middle-class karate expert looking to renovate Cobra Kai, putting himself in a position to help Daniel when Mike Barnes, who Silver has recruited to beat Daniel in the All-Valley, begins attacking Daniel. When Mr. Miyagi refuses to help Daniel train for the tournament (seeing it as a frivolous exercise just to compete, as opposed to training for a purpose), Silver takes over as Daniel's coach. His purpose is three-fold: to put Daniel through heavy pain via harsh training methods, like punching and kicking hardwood targets; to corrupt him by promoting a far more aggressive attitude towards fighting, and to teach him specific moves and techniques that Barnes will have knowledge of beforehand so that he can easily counter them in the tournament.
    • Cobra Kai: Kreese does this himself in season 3, where he recruits Daniel's student, Johnny's son Robby Keene, while Robby is doing time in juvie for injuring Miguel Diaz. First, Kreese takes advantage of Robby feeling abandoned by his father (who blew off a juvie visit to be with Miguel's family) and by Daniel (who turned Robby in), visits Robby, and encourages him to adapt a "strike first" mentality against a gang of bullies who are picking on him. When Robby uses Kreese's wisdom to defeat the bullies, he gains more appreciation for Kreese's abilities, so after getting out of juvie, he goes to Cobra Kai after first burning bridges with Sam (who cheated on him with Miguel before the school fight). Here, Kreese does the final stages of corruption by having Tory talk Robby into tagging along as the students steal a snake from the zoo as tribute for their sensei. Robby ensures the mission succeeds after Kyler nearly bungles the whole plan, earning him credibility in the eyes of the other Cobra Kai students, ensuring Robby will want to stay because they're providing the familial unit (and Kreese the parental affections) he craves. Then in season 4, Kreese recruits Silver to help train Robby, Tory and the other Cobras for the next All-Valley Tournament.
  • Double Subverted by Bill in Kill Bill, who kidnaps the child of his recent ex-lover and leaves her for dead only to give the child a perfectly happy, normal upbringing. note  Then the bride comes, and since she's going to corrupt the kid anyway, he unloads a revolver in their general direction. Possibly as a way of cutting ties before mommy dearest stabs out daddy's heart, but that's enough permanent psychological abuse to get her in the nuthouse.
  • Played With in Sky High (2005) where the Big Bad plans to turn the heroes themselves into children again and raise them to be evil.
  • Star Wars: Ben Solo's turn to the Dark Side of the Force was orchestrated by Snoke and Palpatine, albeit indirectly, to break Luke Skywalker's dream of rebuilding the Jedi Order, as well as payback for turning Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker back to the Light Side. To put it in perspective, Ben's corruption started even when he was in his mother, Leia Organa Skywalker's womb!
  • TRON: Legacy: Probably a factor in why Clu decided to twist Tron into Rinzler instead of just kill him outright.. It might also explain the "something special" in mind for Quorra.
  • In both West of Zanzibar (1928) and the remake Kongo (1932), the Evil Cripple protagonist does this by taking the daughter of the man who stole his wife and crippled him, and turning her into an alcoholic prostitute. Or so he thinks.

    Literature 
  • The Dresden Files: A Fallen Angel throws an Artifact of Doom where he knows the child of one of his enemies might pick it up. If the child were to pick it up, they would fall victim to Demonic Possession.
  • From the New World: Squealer's scheme is to raise a human child to believe it's a monster rat so it can use its psychic powers to kill other humans.
  • Harry Potter: Remus Lupin was turned into a werewolf by Fenrir Greyback, who had a feud with Lupin's father. However, Lupin isn't dangerous unless he's actually a wolf. Greyback is also quite fond of kidnapping children after biting them, then raising them to hate normal humans, so it's likely he's played the trope completely straight in some cases.
  • The Hunger Games - the Capitol punishes the Districts by making their children killers (and praising them for it by turning them into celebrities!)
  • This is the entire plot of Mark Twain's The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg. The titular town prides itself on its honesty and righteousness, but somehow manages to insult an unknown passing stranger who decides to get his revenge by shattering their pride. To that end, he sets up a trap involving a huge unclaimed fortune and manipulates many of the townsfolk into dishonestly trying to claim it for themselves only to then expose their dishonesty, proving how venal, selfish and hypocritical they are underneath their self-righteousness.
    Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.
  • Paradise Lost depicts this as Satan's motive for corrupting humanity — revenge against God; Revenge by Proxy is intended to follow, as he intends for corruption to lead to physical suffering.
  • Inverted in The Scarlet Letter. Chillingworth comes to town to get revenge on Dimmesdale for having an affair with Hester. He accomplishes this by befriending the man and indulging in a lot of not-so-accidental Oblivious Guilt Slinging to torture Dimmesdale's soul. This works brilliantly. When Hester finally confronts him and points out that surely he's had enough vengeance, he retorts that Dimmesdale "has but increased the debt", since Chillingsworth's pathological obsession with revenge has corrupted him, making him even more bitter and twisted, and even affecting him physically. Poor Dimmesdale never even finds out what's going on.
  • The Silmarillion: This is Sauron's plan for avenging the exile of his master, Melkor. He tricks the elves (mostly Celebrimbor) into creating three of the Rings of Power, while creating the remaining 15 rings himself and gifting them to the lords of Men and Dwarves. The rings were not only tied to the corrupting influence of Sauron's own One Ring, but were filled with such stupendous power that the Elves became thoroughly reliant on them to preserve Middle-Earth.
  • Star Wars Legends: Sith seek to turn Jedi to their way of thinking and Jedi seek to turn Sith against one another. Neither side prevails for very long, and anyone trying to Take a Third Option (like Darth Traya) gets destroyed in the crossfire.
  • Urban Dragon: In Aglaeca, the Contessa targets Arkay despite the fact that they'd never even met before, in order to get revenge upon the Order in this fashion.
  • Warrior Cats: Mapleshade's seeming favorite method of getting revenge is to try to corrupt cats in the Clans she feels betrayed by (she was a ThunderClan cat who was exiled for having kits with a RiverClan cat, but after the kits drowned he shunned her and she became Clan-less). For instance in Crookedstar's Promise, she is trying very hard to turn future RiverClan leader Crookedstar to the dark side. Likewise, in the Omen of the Stars arc, she tries to groom alienated ThunderClan cats into turning against their Clan.
  • The Wheel of Time: A group of male mages in the Age of Legends defeated the forces of the Dark One, a God of Evil, by sealing him outside Creation; in a parting shot, the Dark One corrupted the male component of the Background Magic Field. The group immediately went insane, followed by every other male mage on the planet, and their rampage ended the Age and caused the Breaking of the World; ever since, male mages are doomed to go insane and eventually rot alive. Until The Chosen One decides to fix things.
  • Wuthering Heights - Part of Heathcliff's revenge on Hindley Earnshaw includes treating Hindley's son Hareton exactly the way Hindley treated Heathcliff in hopes of making Hareton grow up as twisted as Heathcliff himself.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Angel:
    • Holtz gets revenge on Angelus for turning his daughter into a vampire by kidnapping Angel's son Connor and raising him to believe his father is evil.
    • This is also the Senior Partners' stated reason for giving Angel control of Wolfram & Hart's LA branch. The chance to prevent major acts of evil done by the firm and to use its immense resources against other demonic threats is just too good to pass up, but the catch is that Angel still has to keep the branch running, with all that means in cooperating with shady people and making constant moral compromises.
  • Babylon 5: Centauri Emperor Londo Mollari, who was being controlled by the Drakh through a Puppeteer Parasite, gave President Sheridan a gift intended for Sheridan's future offspring. The gift had another Puppeteer Parasite hidden within it.
  • Charmed had a rather interesting variation. Piper's son Wyatt from the future turned evil and wanted to take his toddler self and raise him(self) evil.
  • Doctor Who:
    • In series 6, where the Silence kidnap Amy and Rory's part Time Lord daughter when she's a baby, with the intention of bringing her up to be a weapon effective against the Doctor. However, this proves unsuccessful.
    • Of course, the Mistress proves to be better than most of the Doctor's foes at this. Crafting a Cyberman army? Doable. Crafting it out of the Doctor's deceased friends and allies - including the Brigadier - and handing the controls over to the Doctor as a twisted "birthday present" of an army he could use to defeat all the evil in the universe? That's just cold.
  • In an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a district attorney's privileged son is suspected of committing murder, and the detectives suspect the attorney is trying to protect him, because his father happens to be an infamous criminal and they believe the attorney might be corrupt. Turns out the attorney dedicated his life to living crime-free and rejected his criminal father. He was simply being a father and giving his son the benefit of the doubt. In the end, it's revealed that the attorney's criminal father got his revenge by corrupting his grandson from prison, convincing him to become a criminal and rejecting his father for being weak. Once the attorney realizes this, he disowns his son and lets the detectives arrest him for murder.
  • Luke Cage (2016): When Mariah is arrested at the end of Season 2 and just before dying in prison she wills that control of Harlem's Paradise — the symbolic seat of power for Harlem's criminal underworld — be handed over to Luke. She explains that she's counting on him trying to control and minimize crime from the inside, only to find himself being seduced and changed by the power.
  • In My Name, Mu-jin manipulates Ji-woo in this fashion, pitting her against Cha Gi-ho and his team as a way of getting revenge upon the late Yoon Dong-hoon.
  • On NCIS, Serial Rapist and killer Kyle Boone tries to do this to Gibbs, with the aim of getting Gibbs pissed enough to murder him and ruin his own life. He fails.
  • In Once Upon a Time, Cora, one of the show's most evil characters hands down, attempted this against Snow White just because she hated Snow's mother Eva. Once Snow's mother was dying (from something Cora caused in the first place), Cora disguised herself as the Blue Fairy and offered Snow a magic candle to save her life - by sacrificing another person's. Either way, Cora would get something she wanted—either Eva died, or Eva lived but Snow was corrupted. Snow refused to save Eva at the cost of someone else's life, and when she did eventually darken her heart by using the candle to save Rumplestiltskin many years later, it was to kill Cora herself, so Cora wasn't in a position to enjoy revenge through corruption.
  • Walker, Texas Ranger: One episode had a young boy (who happened to be the latest Reincarnation of a Dalai Lama-esque figure) be kidnapped. The perpetrator is crime boss who himself is reincarnated from a man who had quarreled with the previous Lama, and swore revenge in his next life. The current Lama's mentor speculates that the crime boss's end goal is this: the Lama's path to true enlightenment and Nirvana requires him to a life of purity and goodness, meaning that if he were tempted towards evil, all that work would be undone.

    Music 
  • The theme of the song "Mordred's Lullaby" by Heather Dale: Morgana is raising Mordred as a villain in order to satisfy her own desire for vengeance against Arthur and Guinevere.

    Tabletop Games 
  • One story from Werewolf: The Apocalypse included Iolani Darkmoon, the abused human wife of a werewolf. No one in her community would help her (because they were all afraid of her werewolf husband), so when she got pregnant, she sought help from and gave her child to the Black Spiral Dancers, evil werewolves who have been corrupted by the Wyrm. She knows that the Dancers will raise her son as one of them and he will become the enemy of everything the normal werewolves fight for. At this point, she believes its inevitable that he will end up fighting his father, and which ever of them wins, Iolani's revenge will be complete.

    Video Games 
  • Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls: This turns out to be the end goal of the Evil Plan: Monaca aiming to get revenge on Makoto for instigating Junko's downfall by corrupting his sister Komaru into a successor to Junko.
  • One of the reasons Malak turns Bastila into his apprentice in Knights of the Old Republic is to spite Revan for undergoing Heel–Face Brainwashing.
  • Resident Evil 5: Wesker has hated Chris Redfield for years and wants revenge against him. So when he captures Jill Valentine, Chris's True Companion and possible Love Interest, instead of just killing her he makes her Brainwashed and Crazy and sends her to attack Chris.
  • Tira of the Soul Series actually gets a double on this trope, first using her nemesis Sophitia's Mama Bear nature to manipulate her into serving Soul Edge because Sophitia's daughter Pyrrha will die without Soul Edge's power. Sophitia is unable to prevent Siegfried from destroying Nightmare, Soul Edge's incarnation, and has to commit suicide to save Pyrrha with the last piece of Soul Edge lodged in her heart. Years later, Tira does it again by becoming an Evil Mentor to Pyrrha, who goes on to willingly become the newest host of Soul Edge. Strangely, the light novel that details Sophitia's demise leaves it ambiguous if Tira ignored Sophitia's last request to keep Pyrrha safe, or if she tried to make Pyrrha into an insanely powerful Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds as a way to honor that request.

    Visual Novels 
  • Manfred von Karma of the Ace Attorney series suffers a single penalty in his otherwise unblemished career as a prosecutor. He murders the attorney who penalized him, Gregory Edgeworth, and completes his revenge by raising his son Miles as a ruthless prosecutor who wants to see every defendant convicted. Unfortunately for him, Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey undo all his years of planning and helps Miles Edgeworth become an honest prosecutor who eventually dedicates himself to cleaning out the Prosecutor's Office.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker - The Joker kidnaps Tim Drake and turns him into a mini-Joker with the full intent of using him to torment Batman. He even implants a backup of his own personality on a magic micro chip implanted in Tim just so he can make a comeback forty years on.
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers: In "The Conqueror", Gaia's Evil Counterpart, Zarm, arrives, posing as a benevolent alien and corrupting most of the team with rhetoric and outright mental manipulation. Although getting the older team members on his side helps Zarm's general goal of spreading destruction, the fact that he taunts Gaia with the fact that "her Planeteers" are now following him implies that another purpose for this (if not the main one) is to strike at Gaia for whatever unspecified thing made him angry at her.
  • Demona is able to do this to Brooklyn in Gargoyles to get revenge against Goliath. She convinces Brooklyn that Goliath's belief in Gargoyles and Humans co-existing in peace is a pipe dream and she can cast a spell to force him deal with reality. Instead, she cast a control spell making Goliath her slave. Thanks to quick thinking by Elisa Maza, the spell gets broken, but it becomes a personal Old Shame, and Once Done, Never Forgotten moment for Brooklyn throughout the whole series and he never forgives Demona for it.
  • Spider-Man: The Animated Series - Tombstone forms a street gang of teenage thugs to help him steal tech for the Silvermane family and makes a point of recruiting the son of Robbie Robertson whom Tombstone blames for letting him get caught robbing a grocery store in their youth and taking the fall (starting him down a life of crime). When Robbie confronts him, Tombstone takes great pleasure in showing him the video feed of his son robbing the facility and leaving his fingerprints everywhere.
  • Totally Spies!; the three-part Blaine Arc was about recurring villain Geraldine Husk and a revenge plot against Clover, whom she blamed for her first defeat and arrest. (Despite the fact that said defeat happened because she turned Clover into a brainwashed cyborg to use against the other heroines). The first part was fooling a male spy named Blaine into believing Clover was a criminal who had to be eliminated; when this failed, she set in motion several projects bent on making Clover miserable and ruining her reputation, saving the lethal blow for last; she bought the members-only spa Clover belonged to, then opened it to the public, and bought Clover's favorite boutique and vegetarian restaurant, turning them into a thrift shop and steakhouse. Then she framed Clover for plagiarizing Sam's report, stealing Alex's car and trashing it, and stealing classified WOOHP weaponry, getting her suspended by Jerry. Her one flaw was underestimating Clover's intelligence; she realized the incidents were related, as did the other heroines once Geraldine's escape was reported. Thus, the final part of the villain's plan (kidnapping and killing Clover) didn't go as planned, and she was beaten again.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Snowball hits where it hurts

Snowball decides on the best way to hurt Brain: by turning Pinky against him.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (3 votes)

Example of:

Main / RevengeThroughCorruption

Media sources:

Report