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Roaring Rampage Of Revenge
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"When I woke up, I went on what the movie advertisements referred to as a roaring rampage of revenge. I roared. I rampaged. And I got bloody satisfaction."
Vengeance is mine saith the Lord but tonight He is going to damn well have to share.
She's making her list, she's checking it twice, and she's checking off your name after she's killed you, probably for making it personal. And in the above example she's even quoting her own movie poster blurb. But it's OK, you deserve it, because you're evil, kidnapped her child and you probably kicked the dog ( if not worse) as well. Either you're a minion or you're the Big Bad behind it all, but it doesn't matter in the end because either way, you're going down... and Joe or Jane Hero is going to be the one to do it, even if it means going down with you.
The Roaring Rampage Of Revenge differs from the standard Revenge plot in that our hero dispenses with the Machiavellian plotting that would define a classic revenge tale and goes straight to spilling bad blood, either in a single, violent Unstoppable Rage or Tranquil Fury-fueled rampage on the bad guy's home base, or a more methodical "working one's way up the food chain" from lesser foes to the bigger fish.
If the hero has a specific hit-list, this usually ends up as a Gotta Kill Them All situation as the hero hunts down and kills each bad guy on the list before moving on to the next. In most cases, the second to last bad guy on the hit-list is the Dragon for whichever Big Bad that the hero has saved for last, and is usually someone the hero has an especially personal beef with and/or is the most psychotic or otherwise hateworthy foe on the list aside from the Big Bad.
Alternately the reasoning is that the hero just has a single lead, and each lead gives him/her one more name or clue before they die.
Many such avengers may keep a Tragic Keepsake to remind them of their lost loved one or other reason that they're on this vendetta to begin with, although they may fall victim to Forgotten Fallen Friend if the quest goes on long enough.
Compare Last Stand, where the motives are frequently the same. May be a case of Revenge Before Reason.
Examples:
Anime
- Shion in Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni goes on a delayed one in her arc. She goes a bit far, by which we mean that even after she's killed a little girl who she promised to take care of, she doesn't stop, despite it having become obvious that her family knows nothing about Satoshi's disappearance - although what the rest of the Sonozaki family did to her is pretty damn horrible too.
- Slayers's Luke is generally a nice, if a bit snarky, guy. But hire assassins to kill the woman he is madly in love with, and then refuse to cure the poison on her? He might get a bit mad.
- Lucy from Elfen Lied has one of these against Kurama (and all of humanity for that matter).
- Suzaku from Code Geass goes on a very literal Roaring Rampage Of Revenge after the woman he loved, Princess Euphemia is killed, blasting through the battlefield, screaming like a madman as he cuts down anyone in his path. The show's Anti Hero protagonist, Lelouch, might also qualify since one of his goals is vengeance for his mother, but his is more like Magnificent Bastard Rampage of Revenge.
- He gets a much more traditional rampage after Shirley is murdered, going out of his way to slaughter everyone connected with the Geass - including unarmed scientists and children who are involved with the cult. And boy, does that bite him in the ass later.
- Before the Conviction arc focuses him, Guts of Berserk spends a year or so Walking The Earth as the Black Swordsman, hunting down and killing demonic Apostles and trying to get at Griffith, who betrayed him in a serious way during the Eclipse by sacrificing his friends, and then raping his girlfriend Casca right in front of him. Though his current objective is to Find The Cure for Casca's madness, he's still pissed off at Griffith, and in fact, his big recurring dilemma is that he has to choose between pursuing revenge and protecting what little he still has, which isn't exactly helped by the fact that he has a Superpowered Evil Side that wants him to kill Casca so that he can get back to his vendetta.
- In Planetes, Edle used to be married to a man who ended up selling her into prostitution. When the guy has the gall to call her and try to get back together, she shows up at his hotel room with an anchor launcher and threatens to shoot him with it.
- Parodied in Yotsuba&! after Yotsuba watches one too many Japanese gangster movies: she first takes out Dad and Jumbo with her water pistol, then switches personas and takes revenge by heading next door to shoot the neighbors, one by one, ending with Asagi.
- In Macross Frontier, Klan goes on one of these after Michel is killed defending her from Vajra.
- Scar goes on one of these in Fullmetal Alchemist when nearly his entire people, including all of his family are killed during the Ishval Massacre. His plan is to kill every State Alchemist he meets, including those not involved in the Ishval massacre. In both the anime and manga he eventually sees that what he is doing is wrong, and becomes something of The Atoner.
- Played with in Narutaru. After Hiroko Kaizuka winds up on the receiving end of Aki Honda and her Girl Posse's unspeakably cruel treatment and her emotionally-abusive dad separates her from her only friend Shiina, when Hiroko finally gets her hands on a Shadow Dragon, things get very bloody very quickly. The Shadow Dragon in question, Oni, maims and kills those who broke her so thoroughly very horribly, with the worst of it reserved for The Libby herself, raping her before tearing her body in half. But when Shiina finally catches up to Hiroko herself, she's disturbingly calm as Oni kidnaps and tortures Shiina's father in an attempt to break Shiina's bonds to her family and join her cause.
- And then Shiina eventually snaps, and it gets worse. Much worse.
- Rushuna Tendo trashes an entire castle full of armed guards to get to the Jester after she thinks he's killed one of her friends in Grenadier (she's still alive, of course, but in the manga she's not so lucky).
- Black Lagoon: Clumsy maid Roberta's master is killed at the start of the El Baile de la Muerte arc. Turns out she's an Implacable Man ex-FARC member. And she's really, really angry.
- Goldie Musou has one of these as her Start Of Darkness in Gunsmith Cats manga. Although she was a granddaughter of a Mafia Don, she was a decent human being, but after she found out her parents' death wasn't an accident, she used her extensive knowledge of chemistry to brainwash the family members of the killers, forcing them to kill their own families, and then killing them. By the time she was done she had lost her sense of empathy entirely, and started to consider all people toys or tools for her own amusement.
- In Death Note, after Light gets his memories back and Rem kills Watari and L for him every sinner he met while he had no memories of the Death Note is in BIG trouble when he gets out that pen and the Ominous Latin Chanting begins.
- This is what happens with Jacuzzi Splot should you be dumb enough to push him out of his normal Shrinking Violet Martyr Without A Cause personality (last time it happened, he went machine guns ablazin' and robbed eighteen speakeasies in one night, with tears streaming down his face). Of course, who you should really worry about is a certain redheaded conductor that does not take too kindly to the death of his mentor. When he finds out who did it, he decides to kill him, bathe himself in his blood, go after his friends, go after his friends' friends, and generally act like Nightmare Fuel incarnate for the next ten episodes or so.
- In Gintama, Takasugi Shinsuke constantly plots to completely destroy Japanese society in order to avenge his teacher's death and out of resentment for the growing alien influence in Japan, as he had once participated in a failed armed uprising to drive out those very same aliens.
- A misdirected one in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. After the Book of Darkness was awakened by the two Masked Men disguised as Nanoha and Fate playing Break The Cutie on Hayate, it was no surprise that its first task involved taking revenge by killing Nanoha and Fate.
- Perpetrated in Yu Gi Oh by Thief King Bakura, Spirit of the Millenium Ring way back in the day. Atem's father killed his entire village to make the millennium items. To get back, the Thief King made a deal with Zorc, and what we see of him in that era consists of going on a murderous rampage against Atem and his court. After stewing for a few millenia, he chills out and devotes most of his time to complex scheming and paying back the debt from his deal.
- Sasuke from Naruto. His reason for living was that he wanted to kill his Aloof Big Brother, Itachi, for murdering their clan. When Madara reveals that Itachi was ordered to kill the Uchiha by Konoha's higher-ups, Sasuke snaps and declares that his new goal is to destroy Konoha in order to avenge Itachi. Previously he had held back on killing or severely injuring bystanders; now he seems to just be attacking anybody and everything that gets in the way.
- Slayers Next had a scene close to the end, during an epic match against Chessmaster Phibrizzo, where Phibrizzo starts using what appear to be beads of life to kill the heroes one by one. When it comes to Amelia's turn, she predictably dies. In Zelgadiss's arms. Zelgadiss spends all of ten seconds trying to wake her up before he charges, attempting to fulfill this trope...of course, it's subverted, because guess who was next?
- Mahou Sensei Negima has Negi starting one of these when Kurt Godel reveals that he was the one responsible for the destruction of Negi's hometown.
- Goku has one of these in Dragon Ball. He'd been fighting the Red Ribbon Army for a while, but was never really antagonistic towards him. He just wanted to find his Grandpa's Dragon Ball, the RR army tried to stop him, so he kicked their ass. But when the Army hired Tao-Pai-Pai, the mercenary, to take out Goku, Tao killed the father of Goku's new friend. Goku eventually killed Tao and had his Dragon Ball, but he decided to find the rest of them so he could wish his ally back. So he stormed the Red Ribbon Army base, killed pretty much everyone there, took out the leader, and got the Dragon Balls and felled the terrorist army in one fell swoop.
- I Luv Halloween. After Mr. Kitty and Finch set a man's wife on fire, the man goes on a vicious rampage to hunt the evil, little trick-or-treaters down. He endures being attacked and bitten by a handful of zombies and set on fire until finally falling.
Comic Books
- This is pretty much the entire plot of The Crow. See Film below.
- Marv of Sin City goes on one of these when his lady of the night Goldie is murdered and he is framed for the crime.
- And in Sin City: Family Values, Dwight and Miho cut a swath through the Sin City Mafia to avenge the shooting of a prostitute.
- Wallace of Hell and Back also goes on one of these when Esther, the woman he saves from suicide, is kidnapped.
- In The Sandman, Hippolyta Hall sends the
Furies Kind Ones to attack the Dreaming because she thinks Morpheus killed her son.
- In all adaptations of The Punisher, the entire plot revolves around this, to the point where its less a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge and more of a Roaring Marathon of Revenge. In the comic, Frank Castle's family was killed when they stumbled upon a mob execution while having a picnic in a park. In revenge, Frank kills the people responsible and then goes on to kill all the other criminals he can find. In the movie, Frank was once in the FBI, and his family was specifically targeted.
- It may be worth noting that when that entry says "his family was specifically targeted", it means his entire family. The Big Bad's hit men attacked a Castle family reunion.
- The Incredible Hulk goes on one of these in the Cross Over World War Hulk.
- Marvel had recently retconned several of its main heroes into such utter douchebags that even though the Hulk was technically the villain of the story, most readers were rooting for him to smash the jerks.
- Besides The Punisher, Marvel's other resident revenger Wolverine has recently featured in some high spotlight revenge arcs:
- During the Civil War he mostly stayed neutral and instead took it upon himself to hunt down Nitro, the one responsible for the Stamford disaster, and make him pay for his sins.
- His biggest however has been in the Alternate Universe story "Old Man Logan," where after returning home to his family with the money needed to pay of their debtors, he finds them murdered by those he owes because "they were bored." He forsakes his fifty years of pacifism in order to exact some very 'bloody satisfaction' of his own. Given the reason he gave up snikting bubs in the first place, this is a pretty huge character shift.
- And don't forget about Matsu'o, who commissioned the murder of Logan's lover Mariko Every year on the anniversary of Mariko's death Logan cuts off a little bit more of Matsu'o, he's currently missing his right arm, right ear, nose and gall bladder.
- Near the end of the comic book series 52, Black Adam's wife and brother-in-law are killed. As it was the death of his first wife that caused his original fall from grace, it is unsurprising that the death of the second led to him going on on a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge, wiping out the country that harbored the murderers, and anybody else that stood in his way. It doesn't end well, though, as the nerdy Mad Scientists behind her death soundly kick his ass with SCIENCE.
- And when he escapes from that, he just declares bloody vengeance on the entire world, leading to the week long World War III.
- Abslom Daak, from the Doctor Who Magazine comics. Because they killed his lover (whose corpse, now cryogenically frozen, makes her into a literal woman in a refrigerator) he's gonna kill every last stinking Dalek in the galaxy. Implicitly, a bit of a lunkhead, which got made explicit when he got to meet the Doctor, who took the mickey out of him.
- In Jon Sable Freelance, Sable went on one of these after his family was murdered.
- Swamp Thing returns to earth after a forced exile. Step one is to kill the people responsible for his unexpected interstellar journey.
- The titular V has the titular vendetta in V For Vendetta, coldly eliminating everyone who worked at the camp where he was imprisoned, then moving on to overthrowing the government and killing everyone who was responsible for the very existence of said camp in the first place. Just before his work is done, he dies, and leaves the very last step and the cleaning up afterwards to Evey.
- Subverted in Fables. Flycatcher wants to go on one of these after remembering what the Empire's soldiers did to his family, but Boy Blue refuses to teach him the secrets of the Witching Cloak that would let him do this, because he doesn't want to corrupt the only truly innocent Fable left. Ironically, this leads to him taking out the Empire's most powerful magic source, and causing far more damage to the Empire's armies than he ever could have on a RROR without ever killing a single soul.
- After the death of Batman in Final Crisis, Superman returns to Bludhaven with a Roaring Rampage of Heat Vision, taking down as many of Darkseid's troops as he can see.
- The DC antihero Deadshot goes on one in the second half of his 1988 miniseries.
- "Put your hands on the table..."
- It's a double example, actually; he concludes another one in the first issue, when he finally finds and kills the last remaining guy who abused him in prison.
- The entire plot of the Luna brothers' The Sword is Dara Brighton's vengeance quest against the three demigod siblings who murdered her family.
- Ultimate Hawkeye goes on an especially inspiring one after his wife and kids are murdered and he is taken captive by a black ops team sent by Black Widow. As part of his escape he kills his guards with the fingernails he's torn off his own fingertips via his effectively superhuman ability to use anything as a lethal projectile. After killing an additional squad sent to subdue him, he takes their guns, grins into the security camera and tells the rest of the base, "Run."
Fanfic
Film
- In Kill Bill, the main protagonist goes on a rampage upon seeing anybody who betrayed her at her wedding rehearsal.
- Surprisingly, Kill Bill is not the Trope Namer: Tarantino used the phrase in a Shout Out to the blaxploitation classic Ebony, Ivory, and Jade.
- Kill Bill was inspired by the film and manga series Lady Snowblood, which is about Oyuki, a female assassin on her own Roaring Rampage Of Revenge for the murder of her mother's family and the rape of her mother. The mother had Oyuki in prison after killing the first of her four tormentors and being caught by the police, and before she died, she charged her daughter with taking vengeance upon the other three that she was unable to kill.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger's character John Matrix in Commando goes on one of these when his daughter is kidnapped. "Remember when I said I'll kill you last? I lied."
- Schwarzenegger also went on the Roaring Rampage in Raw Deal and Collateral Damage.
- Don't forget Conan The Barbarian.
- Taken: "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."
- The Mariachi from Desperado takes on an entire town full of bad guys, including no fewer than two Bad Guy Bars, in order to get to Bucho, his own brother and apparent boss of the murderer of the woman he loved.
- Eric Draven from The Crow comes back from the dead in order to avenge not only his own death, but also the rape and murder of Shelly Webster, the woman he loved. After taking down the four guys involved in the actual crime, Draven then goes after Top Dollar, the mastermind, when his friend Sarah is kidnapped.
- Almost averted in the Clint Eastwood classic Hang 'Em High. Clint only wants to bring the men who almost killed him to justice. It's not his fault most of them decide to try and finish the job.
- In the revenge classic Death Wish, Paul Kersey, played by Charles Bronson, goes on a vigilante killing spree after his wife and daughter are raped by three out-and-out crazy punks, and the wife is beaten to death when she tries to call for assistance.
- And in Death Wish II, Kersey goes on another Roaring Rampage after his poor daughter gets raped again along with his Mexican maid, this time dying when she tries to escape her attackers.
- All the Death Wish movies (5 in total) are about Roaring Rampages. All by the same person. You'd think eventually he'd get locked up...
- The western Tombstone, in which Wyatt Earp swears to wipe out an entire band of outlaws who ambushed his brothers.
- Which is also a Real-life example as the historical Earp actually did do this - and very successfully too.
- Henri Lagardère in Le Bossu kills each of the murderers of his master, chasing them all over Europe.
- Both Major Henry West and Jim from 28 Days Later have some degree of this. Jim finds out the cure for the Infection/plan for repopulating England might have something to do with the only functioning ovaries in England at the moment — those of his love interest, Selena — and eventually snaps, not just fighting back but taking out the entire unit of West's men with cathartic brutality. One of Selena's more aggressive would-be rapists gets Lieutenant Mailer sicced on his ass, another of the same gets his eyes gouged in with Jim's thumbs and his head smashed into the wall. Jones, one of the first soldiers to realize what civilization without women would be like and part of Major West's justification for this, gets bayoneted through the stomach and left to die. The rest, presumably, fall to the Infected. Discovering this, Major West — already a few gas masks short of a supply tent — goes absolutely insane.
- Man On Fire has Denzel Washington('s character) going after anybody he knows has something to do with the ransom and tortures another name out of them before he moves onto the next.
- In the original book, he goes after everyone who profited from her death. Which happens to be the entire power structure (and anyone in his way) of the mafia. The movie toned down the body count, the reason for his revenge, and how utterly dangerous Creasy is.
- Which is impressive, as he comes off as very dangerous in the movie.
- The Sergio Leone classic Once Upon A Time In The West is just such a revenge story, with Charles Bronson playing a nameless drifter exacting revenge on Henry Fonda for killing his brother (in a particularly cold-blooded fashion).
- Lee Van Cleef played the avenger role alongside the Man With No Name in another Sergio Leone classic, For A Few Dollars More. Here, his target is El Indio, a notorious outlaw who gunned down his sister's lover and then raped her, leading to the sister taking her own life.
- The titular killer whale in Orca lives up to the killer part after whalers kill his mate and calf. Fear the Papa Wolf whale rage!
- Nothing will save you from Pumpkinhead.
- In the backstory of The Usual Suspects, semi-mythical criminal mastermind Keyser Soze is faced with other gangsters who try to take over his business by threatening to kill his family. Instead, he kills them himself, then the gangster's wives, children, friends and debtors and vanishes into legend.
- Ms .45 has a deaf woman going on one of these rampages after she was brutally raped twice.
- The last twenty minutes of Wanted.
- John Preston goes on a calmer version of this trope in the final scenes of Equilibrium after the woman he loves is executed by the Librian government and he is suckered into leading the resistance into a trap.
- Patrick Swayze does this at the end of Road House. The lesson? You can mess with a man's bar. You can threaten his life. But kill his mentor and father figure? Buy your cemetery plot now and save time.
- In Star Wars II, Anakin's one of these following his mother's death is a key part of his slide into The Dark Side. He butchers an entire encampment of Tusken Raiders, and goes down in their legends as a vengeful desert spirit.
- In Star Wars VI, Luke goes psycho on Vader for merely threatening to go after his sister Leia.
- One of these is the final act of The Dark Knight.
- If Maggie Gyllenhaal was my girlfriend, and someone killed her, I'd go nutsoid, too. Oh, yeah, and the thing with his face...
- The title character in Sweeney Todd, after failing to kill his intended target, Judge Turpin, has an epiphany that "they all deserve to die" and starts cutting throats indiscriminately.
- The Mel Gibson film Payback is about a dirty rotten scoundrel who goes on a rampage after being cheated out of his share of a heist. The amount? $70,000. One of his future victims upon finding out: "Hell, my suits are worth more than that!"
- The biker babe film Bury Me An Angel (1972) actually had the tagline "A howling hellcat humping a hot steel hog on a roaring rampage of revenge!" (which is probably where Tarantino got the line). Whether the film actually lives up to this tagline or not is another matter (one review
 suggests it doesn't).
- Gregoire de Fronsac, protagonist of Brotherhood of the Wolf, goes on one of these when Mani is killed by gypsies. Fronsac proceeds to enter the gypsies' stronghold and kill all of them in an Unstoppable Rage - without saying a word.
- Mel Gibson does it quite often. Mad Max, Braveheart, The Patriot.
- The Darkman films are based around this trope, with the titular character returning to take revenge on the mobsters that very nearly killed him.
- The film version of Max Payne had the titular character trying to avenge the death of his family at the hands of drug addicted felons. However, he doesn't go on an actual rampage until the last half hour, when he finds out the true identity of his family's killers.
- Arguably almost the entire plot of Quantum of Solace, since it focuses on James Bond's desire to bring Vesper's killers to justice.
- Averted in the end when he does NOT kill the one who is the most responsible for it, thus demonstrating that his objective was truly the movie title and not revenge.
- After a career featuring many such movies, Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. When a gang of thugs harass Walt's (Eastwood) friend Thao and rape his sister Sue, the audience (and Thao) are expecting some Old Testament retribution, but instead, Walt, a war veteran who understands the trauma of taking a life, tricks the thugs into murdering him, thus getting them all sent to jail for murder.
- In Get Carter, Michael Caine plays a vicious, sociopathic London gangster who investigates the suspicious death of his brother and turns his hometown into a bloodbath as he uncovers the truth.
- The Steven Soderbergh film The Limey is an homage to this trope and Get Carter in particular, as an English ex-con seeks the truth behind his daughter's death in L.A., only to discover he and the culprit are Not So Different, leading him to stay his hand.
- Subverted in, of all things, Repo! The Genetic Opera. Nathan Wallace figures out Rotti's plan to take his daughter away and gets off to a great start, taking out several machine-gun-toting cops with only his scalpels, and then is promptly taken down by Luigi Largo and the henchgirls. This is about the point he realises that he is in deep shit (and Rotti got upgraded from manipulative to magnificent.
- Such a rampage forms the basis of François Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black (1968), in which the titular bride systematically murders every one of the men who caused the death of the groom on her wedding day. Sound familiar?
- Chingachgook goes on one of these in The Last Of The Mohicans after Uncas is killed by Magua. He and Hawkeye plow through Magua's mooks, and Magua himself doesn't stand a chance against Papa Wolf.
- In First Blood, John Rambo spends the first half of the movie pursued by crooked cops and the National Guard. He spends this portion of the movie camping in the woods, far out of reach of his enemies and plotting to escape them. However, once they barricade him in a mine shaft and leave him for dead, he escapes, hijacks a truck and heads back into the town, where he takes out the entire main street with an M60.
- In the sequel, Rambo: First Blood Part II, he starts out on a mission into a prison camp where he was held to rescue POWs. His partner on the mission is a Vietnamese woman named Co. Along the course of the journey they fall in love, and just after they decide to go back to America together as husband and wife she is brutally shot down. Rambo goes fucking insane. While in the first half he only killed what was necessary, after his love is killed he hunts down and brutalizes every mook he can get his knife in. His momento? A headband fashioned from her dress. An already personal mission is made even more personal, and he completes it after killing every single mook.
- In the fourth installment (the best of the four in this troper's opinion, he does this at the end of the film in a way that would have made Dr. Richard Gatling proud.
- After Master Liu is killed in Ip Man, the titular pugilist goes on a short-lived one of these. He calls for ten judoka to fight and Curb Stomps the lot. Even the last one, who's clearly unwilling to fight on, goes down hard. After Ip Man's done, you can see him trembling slightly as he comes out of Tranquil Fury. You get the feeling that if he thought he had a chance he would have gone after the murderer himself. The Japanese fighters' apparent Mook Chivalry may be justifiable if you believe that martial artists can sense intent, as Ip Man's state of mind would have given him enough violent intent to make his opponents hesitant about bumrushing him.
- In the movie Rolling Vengeance, after the drunken rednecks who work at the local brewery kill the hero's mother and sister, they get off because no one could actually prove that they had killed them (when the mother and sister tried to pass them, they threw beer on the windshield of their car and effectively ran them into an oncoming rig by not allowing them to get back into the right lane). Following this, his father is put in the hospital after the same rednecks throw a cinderblock off an overpass into the window of his rig, causing him to wreck. Again no one can prove that it was the drunken redneck family who did this. The Son, who has been building a monster truck for the upcoming rally (he was doing it mainly just to make his family proud), fires up his welder and armor-plates the truck, A-Team style, and adds a auger from a post hold digger to the front. He then proceeds to drive up behind the offenders and use the auger to rip their vehicles apart before either wrecking them or running them over.
- In She Devil, Roseanne Barr plays Ruth Patchett, a woman abandoned by her husband for a younger, prettier, and wealthier woman. Her response? To systematically destroy every part of his life bit by bit taking everything he has until he is left broken, alone, and in jail. While she is at it she adds a layer of delightful hell to the woman who he left her for as well in the process.
- In 300, when the Captain's son gets beheaded by a charging Persian cavalryman, he literally cuts a complete swathe through the Persian assault to reach his son's corpse. The other Spartans drag him back behind their lines before he can get himself killed. It's something of a literal example, since his cries are said to terrify the Persian horde.
- Navajo Joe. When a group of lowlife renegade cowboys kill and scalp his whole tribe, including his wife, let's just say it doesn't turn out very good for 'em.
- Brad Pitt's character, Louis, in Interview With A Vampire goes on a doozy of one after Claudia is turned to ashes by Antonio Banderas' vampires.
- Tank Girl. After DeeTee is killed, the other Rippers attack and slaughter large numbers of Water and Power troops.
- In Law Abiding Citizen, Clyde Shelton's "people to be killed horribly" list includes the two guys who killed his wife and daughter. And their lawyer. And the judge from the trial. And the D.A. And most of the people in the D.A.'s office. And the Mayor, City Council, and police brass of Philadelphia.
- Most of the plot to Goemon revolves around this, when the titular character plots to assassinate Hideyoshi. It becomes a very literal rampage of revenge when Hideyoshi boils his childhood friend Saizou, and his son, ALIVE, and he becomes the most epic One Man Army in recent movie history. He then tops himself shortly after by fighting two armies by himself, taking out one with relative ease, and only stopping on the second after his former master slowed him down, as well as his decision to withdraw his killing blow on the general when he got his chance.
- In Snatch, Complete Monster gangster Bricktop has secured Irish Traveler and bare-knuckle boxing champion Mickey's cooperation in a rigged fight by having his mother's caravan set on fire while she's still in it. It occurs to Mickey's allies that he appears to be cooperating rather mildly, under the circumstances... until the night of the fight. When it's revealed that as well as putting money himself to win the fight and winning it, thus ripping Bricktop off completely, he and his fellow Travellers have arranged an ambush in which they bloodily wipe out pretty much all of Bricktop's organisation, including Bricktop himself. As Turkish notes:
It had occurred to me that the gypsy had taken the death of his mother rather lightly. But for every reaction there's a reaction. And a pikey reaction is quite a fucking thing.
- Chan-Wook Park's "Revenge Trilogy" does not share any plot or characters, but are all based on roaring rampages of revenge, ultimately displaying their futility.
- Sympathey For Mr Vengeance features two rampages colliding after a well-intentioned kidnapping results in tragedy.
- Old Boy features a man trapped in a hotel room for 15 years, only to be released without explanation. As he starts his roaring rampage to uncover the culprit, he learns that his imprisonment was itself motivated by revenge.
- Lady Vengeance features a woman who carefully orchestrates vengeance on a murderer who betrayed her and caused her to be imprisoned for a crime she did not commit.
- Tallahassee in Zombieland devotes the rest of his life to this after the zombies kill his
dog son.
Greek Mythology
- Pissing off Heracles was unfortunately very easy to do, and never a good idea. Among his many other deeds, Heracles is known for exacting horrific revenges on a number of Greek kings who crossed him. Whether it was King Augeas refusing to pay the cattle he owed Heracles for his cleaning out Augeas's stables, King Neleus refusing to purify Heracles after he killed a man in anger, or King Laomedon trying to get out of paying Heracles the magical horses he owed Heracles for killing the monster that threatened his kingdom, all three of them were eventually invaded by Heracles and his army and slaughtered for crossing him.
- Ahem. There was this poem? About this sulky bloke? First word in the original Greek is 'wrath'? Here's a tip, folks: when your unstoppable demigod foe has withdrawn from the battle... don't kill his boyfriend. To be fair to Hector, Patroclus had deliberately dressed in Achilles' armor to trick and demoralize the Trojan forces, and he and the Myrmidons had single-handedly (single-forcedly?) chased said Trojan forces up the beach to the walls of Troy and were about to storm the city itself - but when Patroclus was finally struck down, ignorance and self-defense didn't stop Achilles from clogging Troy's river with half its army, flipping off the angry god of said river, killing the other half of the army, then calling Hector out, chasing him down, brutally killing him, and desecrating the hell out of his corpse.
- This one is rife with relationship tropage. If you read Achilles and Patroclus as being Just Friends, it's simply Its Personal. If you subscribe to the Ho Yay theory, it's also Love Makes You Crazy, obviously, plus Patroclus falling victim to the Mentor Occupational Hazard (as the older, wiser partner in the pederastic pairing), making Achilles's rampage an instance of the classic moment in The Heros Journey where the death of the mentor is the impetus for the student to strike out on his own — in this case, by flipping out.
Literature
- In The First Law spin-off book Best Served Cold, the main character Monzcarro Murcatto gets...a tad carried away. One of the people on the list she literally smashes their head in with her bare hands.
- Also calm is Kirth Gersen, the protagonist of the Demon Princes series by Jack Vance, who was raised by his grandfather to have no goal in life other than to find and kill the five so-called Demon Princes, pirates and criminal masterminds who were responsible for the destruction of the colony world from which Kirth and his grandfather were the sole survivors. The ending has Kirth lapsing into bleak, bleak depression upon the death of his last target - raised his entire life for only one purpose, now that he's completed it he has no purpose at all.
- Kahlan's Con Dar (Blood Rage), in which she gains the power to throw lightning bolts in addition to her normal domination power and can only be used to defend or avenge Richard, definitely qualifies.
- In the Star Trek novel Vendetta, Delcara mixes it up with the 1701-D crew because she wants revenge on The Borg, and her weapon of choice will take out a lot of innocents along the way.
- In Woken Furies Takeshi Kovacs' former girlfriend falls afoul of a patriarchial cult who remove her cortical stack, eventually resulting in her Final Death. When he finds out, he goes to the village and kills every single person who was an adult at the time, in his words, "Every single person who could have done something and instead chose to not." Then he goes on a global crusade, killing every single priest of the religion, cutting their neocortical recorder stacks out, downloading their minds into swamp panthers, and forcing them to fight to the death. When we meet him, it's implied that he's been doing it for a couple of years. Yeah.
- Kovacs makes something of a habit of this. In Altered Carbon he returns to a shady medical lab where he had been loaded into a virtual reality and tortured to death. He kills the pimp who sold him out, everyone who worked at the brothel the pimp ran, and everyone at the medical lab with the exception of the boss whose stack was removed for later "interrogation".
- Oh yeah, and in Broken Angels he ends up killing each and every single member of the mercenary company he was working with, even though he was severely injured and a few days away from death by radiation poisoning. Takeshi Kovacs is a bit of a BadAss, to be sure.
- Shakespeare's Hamlet, naturally. Granted, his hit list only has one name on it, but he very quickly demonstrates that he doesn't mind knocking off a bystander or two to get to him, and the body count simply becomes heinous by the end of the play.
- The titular character of the Samurai Cat books, Miaowara Tomokato, is on this kind of journey to kill the men who murdered his master. In the process, he runs amok through parodies of just about everything, including Disneyland, Star Wars, and others.
- A more tragic example is the title character of the poem The Highwayman. It doesn't go so well, as he's immediately gunned down by King George's soldiers.
- The horrifying irony being that she'd shot herself (they'd tied her up with a musket to her breast and her finger on the trigger) to warn him off and save him in the first place.
- In the 12th century poem The Nibelungenlied, Kriemhild's husband Siegfried is murdered by her jealous brother and she is forced to marry King Etzel the Hun. Kriemhild corners her brothers at the wedding feast; however the brothers were forewarned by supernatural signs and fought back like madmen all night, resulting in a seven chapter long bloodbath. At the same time, Kriemhild turns into a complete psycho, sending more and more men into the hall and ordering the feasting hall to be burned down, and finally has her revenge as she decapitates her husband's killer personally. By the end, Etzel (who is based on Attila the Hun, no less) is completely terrified of her.
- Very common among pretty much all 'men's adventure/action' novels no matter the time period; there has to be a contract stipulation somewhere proclaiming said novels must have a scene in which the hero embarks on a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge for some reason for another, even for something as trivial as misplacing his car keys. Especially common in 'spy' and 'detective' genres as the hero meets a new girl in every book and winds up getting her killed. (James Bond being the poster boy for that sort of thing.) Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan also seems to have trouble keeping innocent bystanders alive, but since he's like the black ops version of The Punisher (and in fact was the inspiration for the original Punisher) he too is pretty much on a Roaring Marathon.
- Redwall has a good few, perhaps the most obsessively vengeful being Grath Longfletch.
- Meh. She was surpassed by Lonna Bowstripe a few books back.
- The first line of the first sequel, Mattimeo, is a rather quiet, but powerful one of these: "Orlando the Axe was following The Fox." It was echoed in the later book Eulalia!, with "Gorath the Flame was following his Fate."
- The Count of Monte Cristo takes this trope to its extremes, with the Count literally taking decades to slowly destroy the enemies who destroyed him.
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Only In Death, Eszrah goes on one. Believing himself dishonored by living after Gaunt's death, he does the only thing he can — a rampage in which he kills as many as he can with Gaunt's sword before he dies. That is, until he finds Gaunt alive.
- In Tarzan the Untamed, Tarzan goes on one of these after his home is burned down by invading German troops, and, as he believes, his wife Jane is killed.
- The entire premise of David Weber's In Fury Born. Having one of the Ancient Greek Furies involved is usually a fair indicator.
- Drizzt Do'Urden in the Hunter's Blades Trilogy, in his Heroic Sociopath alternate personality The Hunter.
- David Valentine of the Vampire Earth series has a few. When his love interest in the first book gets kidnapped, he butchers the man who did it and his bodyguard, then proceeds to head into one of the most dangerous cities in the world. He gets the girl out, too, taking quite a few people (and Reapers). In fact, the entire series seems to be mini-Roaring Rampages of Revenge focused on an individual level contained within the papa-daddy of them all, his goal of exterminating every fucking vampire on Earth.
- Sam Vimes in Thud! has a bit of a delayed one after some dwarves threaten his son. (They tried to threaten his wife. She was with her dragons. It didn't end well — for the dwarves, that is.) Near the end of the book he slaughters quite a few of them, and barely stops himself (with some help) from killing their leaders so that he could ARREST them. Which just makes him that much more badass.
- Daine from the Immortals series by Tamora Pierce does the whole roaring rampage of revenge thing, taking down an entire city in the process.
- While almost every book from the Wheel Of Time series has someone taking revenge for something the notable ones that spring to my mind are in the first book when Lews Therin takes revenge on himself for killing his entire family when he was insane by drawing on the Power until he eventually kills himself and reshapes the earth he's standing on for miles. The second is after Aviendha's temporary death in The Fires of Heaven—Rand sees her body and proceeds to rip open a path to the World of Dreams, kill anything in his path without care for who or what they are (Nynaeve, his big sister figure from childhood, sees him from a distance and thinks he's gone insane. One of the Forsaken (THE most evil people in the series except for the Dark One, cowers at the sight of him) and when he finally finds Rahvin, the man responsible for Aviendha's death, uses balefire, a technique not even used by the Forsaken, to erase him from the pattern and turn back time, remarking that he doesn't care if he's unraveled the world as long as Aviendha is alive. Yeah, you don't mess with Rand's girls.
- In all versions of Carrie, the telekinetic title character engages in this trope after a horrific prank at her prom ruins the happiest moment of her torturous life and kills her date, culminating in setting the gym on fire and leaving everyone inside to burn alive. And it doesn't end there, either. In the book and the remake film, she levels most of the town, too.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire, Arya Stark eventually develops a to-kill list when bit by little bit, her father is murdered in front of her, friends killed and/or tortured and beaten bloody time and time again as a servant in Harrendal, and has already managed to fill a portion of her kill quota. The worst part? She's nine.
- In The Drawing Of The Three, book 2 of The Dark Tower series, Eddie Dean goes utterly insane and dispatches several nasties with Roland's gun. Naked, no less.
- In Chris Roberson's Warhammer 40000 Imperial Fists novel Sons of Dorn, Captain Taelos wants to atone for his failure by a "Warrior's Pilgrimage." He is refused the honor (for now) and sent to collect aspirants. At the end, he adds the dead from his last mission to his tally to atone for, subtracts those whose lives he has saved, and feels honored by the duty of collecting aspirants.
- In Twilight, we find out that Rosalie's record is almost as clean as Carlisle's. She went on one of these after being turned into a vampire, against the guys who raped and murdered her in the first place. Among them was her fiance, whom she saved for last, and then wore a wedding dress to kill. Especially considering her normal characterization, generally cited as her Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
Live Action TV
- The Wire does this twice, both times with Omar — the usual culprit behind the few over-the-top tropes in the series. The first time is played straight, with Omar shaking up the entire Barksdale organization as revenge for the murder of his boyfriend, with Avon Barksdale himself narrowly escaping by luck alone. The second time can be seen as a subversion, as the audience goes into the season expecting Omar to work his usual magic on the people who killed his friend, but he ends up failing miserably and dying in a spectacularly pointless and meaningless fashion.
- In Lost's most recent flashforwards, Ben Linus appears to be on a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge (with Sayid's help) avenging Alex and Nadia. Ben even has a list.
- 24: Jack's daughter escapes, and the villains still want to lure Jack in, so they have The Mole tell him that his daughter's body had been found. Seriously. Bad. Idea. Jack comes in, all right — both guns blazing — and doesn't leave a single one alive, including the (surrendering) Big Bad. We all know about the Mama Bear, but don't mess with a Papa Wolf, either. Especially not one that's having the longest day of his life (well, one of the several longest days of his life, anyway).
- Still, Jack can't hold a candle to Tony in season seven, avenging the murder of his wife and unborn son.
- But in Tony's case, it was more of a traditional Revenge plot—he never went on a "rampage" since all his crimes were only meant to maintain his cover long enough to gain an audience with the villain.
- The Babylon 5 universe contains at least four rampages of revenge.
- The Earth-Minbari War was more or less this trope turned Up To Eleven: the Minbari had a Gotta Kill Them All rampage (on the scale of a major and horrific interstellar war!) against Earthforce for killing the Minbari leader. ('No Mercy')
- Delenn's Tranquil Fury annihilation of a Drakh's fleet and a colony ship, prompted after the Drakh destroyed several civilian ships and a White Star. ('End This')
- Ivanova's 'God Sent Me' Unstoppable Rage against Earthforce for capturing Sheridan.
- In Crusade, the Drakh's attack against Earth in retaliation (?) for the retreat of the Shadows.
- This was described as a revenge attack but the justifying logic is weak because Earth played no role in the Shadow war. The Drakh attack may be nothing more than a Monster Of The Week style assault driven by no logical rationale.
- Maybe not Earth, but Earth LINGS certainly played an important role, and destroying Earth would certainly have been a powerful revenge against Sheridan and the others.
- In Rome Vorenus and Pullo go on one of these when Vorenus thinks his children have been killed. A very, very, very short rampage, because Pullo and Vorenus are There Is No Kill Like Over Kill personified.
- Not to forget what Vorenus does to the slavers when he discovers that they are alive and were sold to them. This most glorious of Roaring Rampages was magnificently topped off with a man-tears approved moment when Vorenus embraces the illegitimate son of his dearly departed wife and her adulterer.
- In Battlestar Galactica, Laura Roslin very nearly has one of these after Tom Zarek tells her Admiral Adama has been killed (he hasn't) and she should surrender.
- "No. Not now, not ever, do you hear me? I will use every cannon, every bomb, every bullet, every weapon I have down to my own eyeteeth to END YOU! I swear it! I'M COMING FOR ALL OF YOU!"
- The best part of that entire sequence was Adama's "oh shit oh shit gotta call off my girlfriend now oh shit" face after he took back CIC.
- Heroes: Matt Parkman seeks revenge against Danko for murdering his girlfriend, Daphne Millbrook. Parkman does so by telepathically forcing Danko to divulge his true identity and the fact that he kills for a living to his unsuspecting girlfriend, Alena. Parkman then points his gun at Alena, but cannot bring himself to shoot her.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Dark Willow.
- Isabelle Tyler from The 4400 goest batsh!t insane and kills every member of the NOVA Group she can find because Daniel Armand gave Shawn schizophrenia.
- In Forever Knight, a child vampire shows up and starts slaughtering those in LaCroix's inner circle. Urs and Vachon bite the dust, with Nick next on the list, before we find out that she's actually LaCroix's mortal daughter from when he was a Roman named Lucius; she was saved from death by being turned into a vampire, and she then turned LaCroix into a vampire so that he could survive the destruction of Pompeii. He nearly killed her and sealed her remains in a tomb, but she survived and is looking to pay him back for his betrayal. Check out the series page for the full story.
- In the third season summer finale of Burn Notice, Strickler sells out Fiona to Irish terrorists to get Michael back into the FBI's good graces. After a lengthy Hannibal Lecture about how Fiona is weighing him down, nothing about this is clean, and how he's got to stop living in the past, Michael grits out "Fiona is not my past" and shoots Strickler in the chest. He and Sam then go in guns blazing and save Fiona.
- Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. In the second season finale of NCIS, Agent Catelin Todd is murdered by turncoat Mossad agent Ari Haswari. Even though he was intending to track down and kill Ari before this for his previous actions, Gibbs loses it and goes after him full-bore in the two-part third season opener.
- In the fourth season of Las Vegas, Ed Deline's daughter Delinda is kidnapped and held for ransom by a Smug Snake calling himself "Mr. Chips"(you know, since Ed runs a casino, and casinos gamble with chips...). Ed pays the ransom in exchange for Delinda's release, but Chips doublecrosses and nearly kills Ed, making Ed very cranky. Oh, by they way, Ed used to be the CIA's head of counter-intelligence, and his right hand man Danny McCoy, Delinda's boyfriend, is a decorated Marine Lieutenant with two bad tours of duty in Iraq under his belt. Suffice to say that Chips and his men don't get a chance to regret their duplicity.
- Any fans of Star Trek The Next Generation remember who the Husnock are? Or should I say,were? Killing a mans' wife is bad,especially if said man has power rivaling one of the Q.
Music
- The Promise by Dutch symphonic metal band Within Temptation. A woman's lover/husband is murdered, so she takes it upon herself to hunt down and kill everybody involved in his death. One particular line gives me a chill every time I hear it: "I'll make them bleed down at my feet."
- This reminds me of another symphonic-metal track by Angtoria. The song in question, Six Feet Under, while not necessarily implying a R Ro R itself, certainly implies the singer might want one and is likely the sentiment accompanying or driving many of the R Ro Rs listed on this page. Whoever is the intended recipient of the lyrics "I'll dance on your grave until my feet bleed, six feet under's where you'll rot," followed by "We'll spit on your grave until your soul screams, six feet under's not deep enough" is quite likely deserving of a R Ro R, at least in the songwriter's eyes.
- Chevelle's The Red. It's not completely clear, but it certainly sounds like it. For you estimation:
They said 'Freak', when you're singled out / The Red / Well it filters through/ So lay down, the threat is real / When his sight goes red again.
- It's telling you to get out of the way when he gets angry! It sounds really clear to me!
- Am I Evil? is the bloody revenge driven epic by Diamond Head, memorably covered by Metallica. After the burning of the main character's mother as a witch, he goes on a quest to brutally murder and torture everyone he can that was involved. And even very early on he understands that in doing so he has become the very type of monster that he is hunting. Eventually he succeeds but loses himself in the process.
- The fifth song on The Protomen's original CD "Vengeance" is basically where Megaman heads on a beeline for Wily's fortress and tears through virtually every robot there on his very own Roaring Rampage of Revenge for Wily having killed his brother before him, Protoman. Actually it turns out Protoman was reconstructed by Wily later and turned evil. Uhm, woah.
Send me the best you've got/Send me your strongest machine
The fight my brother fought/Here, now, will end with me
Is this the best you've got?/Is this your strongest machine?
Now with one powershot/You'll see what vengeance means
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' song "Crow Jane" (not much connection to the Skip James song of the same name) is about a woman who gets gang-raped by a bunch of miners from the local town. So she stocks up on guns and kills them all.
Professional Wrestling
- In one memorable episode of WWF Monday Night Raw, Stone Cold Steve Austin used guerrilla tactics to eliminate the members of DeGeneration X, then Vince McMahon's goon squad, one at a time. He eventually trapped Vince himself in the ring, threatening his boss' life with a gun before revealing it to be a prop, as when he "fired" it, a flag popped out reading, "Bang! 3:16". This didn't stop Vince from completely wetting his pants, however.
- Randy Orton has punted Vince McMahon and Shane McMahon. He's DDT'd Stephanie McMahon and then kissed her in front of her husband. So what does said husband Triple H do? Grabs his sledgehammer and goes on a rampage that is still going on today.
- Randy Orton (along with then-tag-team partner Edge) was also the victim of a Shawn Michaels RROR. Orton and Edge, along with an inopportune quad tear have taken out Triple H, and they're not exactly shy in telling everyone so. Shawn pulls Hunter's sledgehammer out from under the ring and proceeds to kick the everloving hell out of them.
Video Games
- Reivier Wirt of Quintessence - The Blighted Venom goes on a killing rampage after his wife supposedly dies. Complete with Hidden Eyes.
- The title character of Max Payne also goes on one of these after his partner, Alex Balder is killed and and he is framed for it. He starts with Jack Lupino, the guy he considers responsible, moves on to Lupino's boss, Punchinello, and then sets his sights on Nicole Horne when it's discovered that she was behind not only Alex's murder and the frame up (pulled off by dirty cop and Dragon B.B.), but also the murder of Max's wife and baby girl by V-head junkies three years ago.
- And Max Payne 2 picks up before he starts his rampage. It isn't until the 3rd and final chapter of the game that he goes from reactionary, self-defense killing to actively hunting down those who wronged him. And everybody dies.
- Despite the fact that he is probably one of the most reprehensible villains in video game history, Luca Blight from Suikoden II arguably could use this as justification for his actions.
- Works for me; it's the only humanizing quality about what would otherwise be an almost cartoonishly evil villain.
- After his wife, his son, and his king (along with almost everyone else in Doma castle) are killed by Kefka's poison, Cyan of Final Fantasy VI rampages through the Imperial camp. Partly subverted in that Sabin and Shadow come to Cyan's aid and the three end up escaping from the camp.
- Delita's reaction to his sister's murder in Final Fantasy Tactics.
- It is to be noted while he acts that way towards the immediate person who dealt the killing blow, his revenge on the corrupt society behind the killing was much more... planned.
- Argath has a less subtle version which crosses the moral Event Horizon. After being ressurrected by the Lucavi, he loudly declares to Ramza that he's going to kill all of the lower class, presumably in part to get back at Delita for killing him.
- In Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth learns the "truth" that he's a descendent of the ancients, then goes berserk & burns down the town of Nibelheim. He later learns the truth behind the "truth," but continues with his plan to become a God, transfering "descendent of the Ancients" to "descendent of Jenova." A good deal of his actions—which also become his downfall—are also that he wants to get revenge on Cloud for defeating him in a fairly humiliating fashion.
- Although he remains chillingly calm about it, the remake of Ninja Gaiden is all about Ryu Hayabusa putting his blade through the many minions of the Vigoor Empire that razed his village and killed off almost all of his kin.
- Most of whom die because they're in the way.
- In Super Robot Wars, after finding out that the Fury basically obliterated everything near her in the beginning of the series, Calvina Coulange in Super Robot Wars Judgment fell into this trope, intensely hating every Furies she came across and mercilessly slaughtering all Furies that come across her, but she didn't do it with a roar. She later made one exception, though.
- Also, Fallen Hero Tempest, whose family were killed by the EFA screwing up, and who has joined the Divine Crusaders not to protect the world from aliens or build an empire, but simply to hurt the EFA. As it happens, he doesn't give a damn about the "list", attempting to kill a fourteen-year-old girl despite noting that she was the same age as his daughter would have been.
- The vampire Raziel is brutally mutilated, rebuked, and tossed into oblivion in Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver... but that's just how the story starts. Once he gets back up, Raziel gets to work his way up through his younger brothers, leading straight up to Kain himself.
- "Cinderella was not simply an ill-used ninny who married well, forgave her tormentors, and lived happily ever after. She was innocent, she was abused, she was harmed. HER PAIN SHOULD BE PAID FOR!"
- F.E.A.R. is just one looooooooooooooooooooooooong example of being on the other side of this trope. Alma is a very unhappy girl.
- Shadow's response to Maria's death in the Sonic The Hedgehog series. First against humanity (stopped by Amy), then in the true ending of Shadow The Hedgehog directed against Black Doom. In his Crowning Moment Of Awesome he doesn't stop with killing Black Doom. No, he proceeds to massacre the entire Black Arms army to a man with the Eclipse Canon.
- Kirby Squeak Squad. Cake is stolen? Go beat up Dedede! Dedede doesn't have the cake, but some thieves do? Go beat them up!
- In the DOS game Traffic Department 2142, the main character Lt. Velasquez has been on one of these ever since her father was killed. As the game goes on, her hatred builds, sending her on a downward spiral towards the Moral Event Horizon, before she finally "finds peace" in the form of even her being too tired of killing to go on doing it.
- Seeking revenge for the death of his daughter, Tellah in Final Fantasy IV tries to kill Golbez with meteo even though casting this powerful spell means Tellah's own death.
- This isn't this trope, but simple revenge. Tellah doesn't gun for all of Golbez's minions and try to blast every last one of the Red Wings out of existence in a gory show. He wants Golbez's head on a pike, commits a Heroic Sacrifice to try to destroy Golbez, and fails hardcore since Golbez survives with his Plot Armor. Tellah's Plotline Death is setting up a double subversion of The Only One Allowed To Defeat You, since he fails, Cecil is set up as the one who should defeat Golbez, and then in The Reveal Golbez survives because he was being controlled by the Eldritch Abomination.
- How could anybody here leave out Final Fight?
- Presumably the reason behind No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Travis Touchdown rejoins the UAA for the purpose of avenging his friend's death (the one who would get your motorcycle for you in the first game. This being Travis, he doesn't have too many friends, so it's kind of a blow. Also, in No More Heroes, precision killing is simply not an option, regardless of motivation.
- Starcraft's Sarah Kerrigan, over a dozen planets later and she's still getting warmed up. Well, there goes the universe!
- Wha? No mention of Kratos from God of War, the guy practically the embodiment of Roaring Rampageof Revenge. Even the Greek Gods aren't exempt from it!
- Hell, they're the TARGETS.
- The actual good ending to Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest tells you that Lillian did this.
- Ramon Solano, the Big Bad of Mercenaries 2, might have come out on top, had he not pulled a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on the player merc, triggering a rampage across Venezuela that results in countless VZ casualties, billions of dollars in property damage, one destroyed castle, a few leveled cities, and two nuclear strikes.
- Starkiller from the final stage of Force Unleashed. Betray him once as part of some huge-ass Xanatos Gambit to take out the Emperor, he'll forgive and continue to serve you. Betrey him again to get all the Emperor's enemies (and Starkiller's friends and allies) into one place to conveniently capture and present to the Emperor for execution, and it doesn't matter if you're one of the most powerful Sith Lords ever on a battle fortress the size of a moon with ten-thousand mooks guarding you, the good ending will earn you the most savage beating in Jedi history. The bad ending? Much worse.
- Arcueid's kill list: #1: Roa whenever possible and as much as possible until he stays dead, damnit. #2: Dead Apostle Ancestors, so another 20 or so on the list. #3: Normal Dead Apostles, Demon Lords, people like the Church who get in her way. Kohaku's hero status is rather debatable but her targets go like this: Makihasa (done) Akiha and SHIKI (done in two out of five possible endings, SHIKI in all of them. Then maybe Shiki and anyone else related to the Tohno family she can think of.
- Prototype. To quote Alex Mercer: "NOTHING CAN PROTECT YOU! NOT MEN! NOT WEAPONS! NOT ARMOR!". And the guy about to get consumed? Was a jerkass, but definitely not at the top of Alex's hit list.
- An early mission of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars involves driving through the turf of rival dealers while your employer opens up on everybody with a machine gun in retaliation for stolen business. Oh, and a previous mission involves tracking down someone who cheated him and cutting his heart out. So Yeah.
- In Half-Life 2, Gordon Freeman enters the enemy base, alone, at the end of the game. All his weapons are taken from him, except for the Gravity Gun, which becomes ultra-powered and capable of even grabbing enemy soldiers. All his friends have been captured. The entire end-game segment lets the player go berserk on the enemy with the Gravity Gun, torturing and maiming them in every way imaginable, while Dr. Breen, his old supervisor, calls him worthless.
- Its very likely the entirety of the next episode will be like this for the PLAYERS considering Eli's death at the end of Episode 2.
- The final escape in Super Metroid follows Mother Brain destroying the Metroid Larva, which was trying to protect Samus in the first place. After it dies, it gives her the Hyper Beam, an insanely-powered, wall-piercing rainbow gun. So Samus, after being thrown around by Mother Brain like a chew toy, goes on a rampage against it and then on the entire base.
- Heavenly Sword has Nariko going on one of these when King Bohan kidnaps her father. She literally tears through his entire army to get at him.
- You do NOT mess with Yuka's flowers. Your life will become VERY short.
- In Xenogears, Id goes on one of these after the villians try to kill the woman he...well, he doesn't exactly love her, but he considers her to be his. He ends up destroying an entire floating city and causing the deaths of at least thousands of innocent people.
- Tekken newcomer Miguel had a sister whom he adored (to a very creepy degree). Of course, she's gone and died on her wedding day, and since the Mishima Zaibatsu is to blame, Miguel is now out to ruin Jin Kazama's shit.
- Take every nightmare you suffered as a child that was induced by a Disney film. Chernabog, the mountain demon from Fantasia. Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Anything Disney did to make you need that nightlight as a kid...take it all, go play Kingdom Hearts, and savor your revenge.
- And while we're on the topic of Kingdom Hearts, Roxas in 358/2 Days. He was forced to kill and absorb one of his best friend for the last year, so ends up going on a One Man Army invasion of the entire World That Never Was to set Kingdom Hearts free and put Organization XIII in their place, easily taking out Neo Shadows in a single hit. And throughout all of this his memories of Xion are fading, to the point that when he begins his battle with Riku he only remembers his best friend as "her".
- Viking Battle For Asgard: They just start piling up very quickly. Rakan joins Hel in destroying the world because Freya spruned him, Skarin goes on his own by fighting his way (offscreen) to Fenrir and releasing him when Freya essentially enslaves him, and Fenrir himself gets one against the Gods for chaining him up in the first place.
- Wet: Rubi is set up by Rupert Pelham, who is in charge of a global drug ring, to take the fall for killing William Ackers's son. How does she get even? This is the page for Roaring Rampage Of Revenge, what do you think?
- The exact words of the trope name are used by the narrator of House Of The Dead: Overkill when describing Varla's motivation. (Her brother turned himself into a monster while trying to kill Papa Caesar, so she wants Papa Caesar dead. The heroes are the ones who actually killed her brother, but it was a I Cannot Self Terminate, so they don't get the blame.)
- Ezio from Assassin's Creed II starts out with the family business of killing people in revenge for the death of his father and two brothers. Then it extends to that family's bosses, and their bosses, right up and into the Ancient Conspiracy central to the game.
- The Godfather game is essentially one of these for player character Aldo Trapani. Don Emilio Barzini had your father killed. You get recruited as a Corleone hatchetman. It's convenient that the Corleone goals of taking over NYC and crushing the other four families align with your own.
- In Sins Of A Solar Empire you have an entire star nation going on a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge; the Advent. You see, the Advent's ancestors were a religious order on a remote desert planet that was experimenting with cybernetic implants and Psychic Powers in an attempt to unite humanity in a peaceful coexistent society when they were found by the Trade Order. The Xenophobic Trade Order, which decided the Advent were too different to coexist with the rest of human society. So they exiled the Advent into deep space without first taking away or destroying their psychic and cybernetic research. Predictably, the Advent continue to develop those technologies and build a formidable empire with a large fleet of some very powerful warships outside Trader space; all the while brooding over their mistreatment and exile. A few generations later the first Advent fleets cross back into Trader space intent on reclaiming their homeworld and punishing the Trade Order (now known as the Trader Emergency Coalation-TEC).
- In Breath Of Fire IV, when it looks lik Fou-lu might falls in love with a peasant girl and seen that there are decent humans in the world...before he's forced to run away and Mami was captured, tortured and sacrificed as a thermoneuclear fuel for the Carronade, because her love for him will make it stronger. After surviving the blast, Fou-lu saw Mami's bell fell from the sky and landed near him. Understandably, he's royally pissed off.
Web Comics
Web Original
- Adam Dodd of season one of Survival Of The Fittest swears vengeance against Cody Jensen after Cody's definitive crossing of the Moral Event Horizon, raping and murdering his friend Madelaine Shirohara and accidentally killing his love interest, Amanda Jones, in the middle of trying to kill Sidney Crosby. After drifting for a while in a Heroic BSOD, Adam takes down everyone who tries to kill him one by one, and when Adam and Cody finally face off, Adam fulfills his vow of vengeance by putting a sword through Cody and then carving the word "rapist" into his chest.
Real Life
- Octavian Caesar and Marc Antony ruthlessly hunting down the Tyrannicides of Julius Caesar, making this Older Than Feudalism.
- As well as the failed revenge campaign of Pompey the Great's son, Sextus, against the Second Triumvirate of Octavian, Antony and Lepidus.
- Following the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israel's Mossad launched several operations to kill as many Palestinian operatives as they could find information on who may or may not have been associated with the attack.
- There was also Operation Nemesis (named after the Greek Goddess of divine retribution) carried out by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, which was payback for the Armenian Genocide. For more information, look here.
- When Steve Irwin died, some Australians DID not take his death well and condemned the stingrays, the creature that killed him (in SELF DEFENSE). Thus, shortly after, several mutilated stingrays were found near some of Australian beaches. Irwin's friends took notice and condemned the mutilators, because no way in heavens that Irwin wants a retribution on those who caused his death.
- Remember Pearl Harbor...
- After being gang raped by villagers incited by the upper-caste man who killed her lover, the Thakur Sri Ram, Phoolan Devi put together her own gang of bandits and avenged reports of rape and abuse through castration and dismemberment of the perpetrators. Based on reports that Sri Ram could be found in one of those villages, she returned with her gang and, in frustration at not being able to find him, executed 22 Thakur men, turning her into India's most wanted but also a folk hero eventually elected to Parliament. Fictionalized as the film Bandit Queen.
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