The Chain of Harm

Hurt people hurt other people (and cats).

Blackadder: It is the way of the world, Baldrick. The abused always kick downwards. I am annoyed, and so I kick the cat, the cat [loud squeak] pounces on the mouse, and finally, the mouse—
Baldrick: Argh!
Blackadder: Bites you on the behind.
Baldrick: And what do I do?
Blackadder: Nothing. You are last in God's great chain, Baldrick. Unless, of course, there's an earwig around here that you'd like to victimise.

— Blackadder the Third, "Nob and Nobility"

A very messed-up theory as a variant of typical karma. The basic premise of karma is: "Don't do something bad, because later on something bad will happen to you." This, on the other hand, is quite different.

A scenario: a man running a company is under a great deal of pressure from his superiors to produce the product faster. He's just been yelled at. Obviously, he can't talk back to his supervisor since he'd get fired, so what does he do? He chews out his normally best worker over something small. Well, the target man doesn't want to be known as a guy who beats his wife, so instead he shouts at her when something wrong happens. Because of this marital strife, she screams at her kid all the time. The kid, having no weaker human to take it out on, beats the family dog, which then bites the nearby cat. And so on. The strong attacks the weak, who turns around and gives similar treatment to the weaker, who then harms the next weaker in turn. That's only "fair", right?

Inspired by a dynamic that's often Truth in Television, this theory has a number of assumptions:

1. There may or may not be an original source (in the latter case, it is because the source is oddly cyclic, or the superiors in question are just an excuse used by a Jerkass boss (see Bad Boss and Mean Boss), doing this For the Evulz (or it's the superiors who are the evil ones).
2. Things often worsen when the effect changes species (the boy beating the dog, when the others simply shouted at their target).
3. The chain either loops back to its original source (going on from the previous scenario, after the dog bites the cat, the cat scratches the CEO's superiors), or ends with a designated scapegoat, which is then summarily killed.
4. The scapegoat in question is often not human and an animal viewed as a pest. In the above example, this would probably continue on from the dog, to cat, ending with a rat being killed. It's worse if the animal has some productive use (such as rats clearing the street of insects) since their normal prey will now come along with a vengeance.^note (Provided there isn't another predator, like a frog.)
5. If it doesn't end with the original cycle, this harm will continue until it degrades the quality of the world, or until it reaches the original abuser, who will then receive their punishment.
6. Occasionally the cycle can end with no one being killed and with the original abuser getting away with it, but in these cases, there are usually no pets involved, and it's done to demonstrate the cycle-breaking character's virtue and/or to make them more sympathetic (for instance, instead of beating the dog, the boy goes to his room and cries). In these situations, the character who breaks the cycle is generally the protagonist. If the protagonist doesn't break the cycle (for instance, the boy is the main character but he does beat the dog), expect them to feel guilty afterwards.

The act of abusing someone weaker or lower-ranking than you to displace frustrations because of similar treatment from someone stronger or higher-ranking than you is often known as Kicking the Dog, but that term has a different meaning on this wiki.

Contrast with Cycle of Revenge, which directly targets the person causing harm. Compare to Revenge by Proxy, Delegation Relay, and Troubled Abuser. Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting is an effort to avert or defy this. If you were looking for examples of people using chains to harm others, see Chain Pain.

See also Create Your Own Villain, when one or more of the victims goes bad and hurts others as a natural consequence.

Contrast with The Dog Bites Back, when the abused will give the abuser their Just Desserts, and He Who Fights Monsters, when said fighting back against other abusers devolves into hurting other people in the process.

See Freudian Excuse when this is used in a villain's backstory as an explanation for their behavior now. Sometimes played as An Aesop (e.g. "Don't be mean to someone because someone was mean to you, or it will go on forever").

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Black Clover: Hell runs on this trope. The Demon Lords are power-hungry scum who have imposed a Might Makes Right culture on their underlings, who are then encouraged to impose their bullying ways on their underlings, and so on, until whichever lucky demon gets summoned tries to influence the human suckers who summon them into becoming yet more power-hungry scum, which then leads to oppressive feudalism in the human world.
• A recurring theme in Fullmetal Alchemist is that going after constant vengeance just leads to an endless cycle of violence and the only way to break it is to change people instead of punishing them.
• Future Diary:
  • Yuno was repeatedly abused by her parents, which led her to murdering them and becoming similarly controlling towards Yukiteru.
  • Tsubaki was kept as a Sex Slave by her cult, and her motivation for becoming God is her wish to wipe everything out of existence except herself so she can never be hurt again. She also has Yukiteru restrained and gives him a Forceful Kiss, and it's implied it would have escalated into full-on rape if Yuno hadn't intervened.
• Great Teacher Onizuka: Anko's father physically abused her brother, who abused her, which led to her own abusive tendencies towards Noboru.
• Magical Girl Site: Kaname is Aya's Big Brother Bully who beats her up For the Evulz. It's later revealed the reason why is because his father beats him if he so much as gets a 98 on a test. He thinks Aya deserves to get beaten by him since his father never touches her.
• My Hero Academia: There's a very good reason Tomura Shigaraki, formerly Tenko Shimura, is what he is today: his father Kotaro hated heroes due to his mother Nana, mentor of the future All Might and wielder of All for One, sent him into the foster system and erased all records of their relationship to protect him after her husband was killed by a villain. So great was said hatred for heroes that he regularly abused the then-5-year-old Tenko for wanting to become one. The rest of his family being too afraid to stand up to Kotaro until it was too late, when Tenko's Quirk, Decay, awoke, and resulted in their accidental deaths as he cried for help. How does Kotaro respond to Tenko crying to him for help? He throws a weed whacker at him in hopes of knocking him out, leading to Tenko killing him and becoming an orphan. Everyone he comes across on the streets is too spooked to approach with a helping hand. Everyone, that is, except for All for One.^note And for extra irony, the killer of Tenko's grandmother Nana. And thus, one of the series' greatest villains is born.
  • Enji Todoroki, AKA Endeavor, not only caused his own wife and children to hate him because of his abuse and obsession to surpass All Might, but is also responsible for the creation of Dabi, who happens to be his firstborn son, Toya, who was thought to have been dead. When Toya was born, he had a very promising future and had a decent relationship with his father, but when it's revealed he also inherited his mother's resistance to freezing cold, rather than his father's resistance to scorching heat, meaning that he would burn himself whenever he used his flames, Enji was disappointed so he stopped training with Toya in order to protect him, but also had his wife Rei produce more children in order to create one who had the perfect mixture of fire and ice quirks. Needless to say, Toya did not take this well at all. He kept pushing himself and burning himself over and over, hoping to get his father's love and attention again, only for Enji to tell him to stop as it's for his own good, while he trained with Shoto, whom he considered to be the child he was looking for. Toya begged his father to meet him at Sekoto Park to show him his progress, but when he didn't, Toya lost control of his emotions and quirk, resulting in a forest fire that immolated his body. With this, Toya Todoroki died and Dabi, the monster fueled by hatred toward Enji Todooki, was born.
• In the backstory of Tokyo Ghoul, Ken Kaneki's mother worked herself to death trying to help his aunt, who took advantage of her and used her to get extra stuff with zero regards to her well-being. It's revealed in :re that Kaneki's mother would take out her rage on him, physically beating him, and neglect his needs while telling him that it's better to be an Extreme Doormat and take the pain than let others be hurt.

Comic Books

• One Archie Comics gag strip showed a bad mood being passed down when Mr. Weatherbee gets chewed out by the school superintendent. Mr. Weatherbee chews out Miss Grundy, Miss Grundy chews out Jughead, Jughead chews out his younger cousin Souphead, and Souphead chews out a stray dog. The punchline is that the dog encounters the superintendent (who greets it in a friendly manner) and chases him down the street, biting the seat of his pants.
• Asterix: In Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, Caesar berates and threatens Admiral Crustacius for losing a ship. Right after leaving Caesar, he immediately yells at his Vice-Admiral.
• The Incredible Hulk: Many of Bruce Banner's neuroses can be traced back to his horrifically abusive childhood at the hands of his father, Brian Banner, an unbalanced and mentally ill man who took out his paranoia, jealousy, and anger on his family… and whose own father, Bruce's grandfather, was just as bad and abused Brian horribly, causing Brian to grow up maladjusted and convinced he and his son were monsters. And Bruce's grandfather himself was the progeny of Robert Sterns, Bruce's great-grandfather, a man who let anger over a betrayal consume him and whose only interaction with Bruce's grandfather was kicking his wife out into the snow while she was pregnant with him. All in all, it's made clear that the Banner family's history is a long cycle of abuse being passed down from father to son, with each successive generation paying for the sins of their forefathers. And the cycle comes close to beginning anew when Bruce has a son of his own, only being broken when Bruce realizes that Skaar views him the same way he viewed Brian as a kid.
• Laika: Mikhail is a rude, unpleasant bully with a short temper, but a few glimpses into his life at home make it clear that his parents' harsh treatment of him is a big reason why.
  Mikhail: NOBODY LOVES ME! WHY SHOULD I LOVE THE DOG?!
• Acknowledging and overcoming this trope is the Central Theme of Middlewest: Dale’s father abused him, Dale tried to be better to the protagonist Abel but abused him after his wife walked out on him and Abel struggles to overcome his anger. Abel is successful and Dale has a Heel Realization and works to become a better person to try to rebuild his relationship with Abel.
• This trope kicks off the main plot of the Sin City story, "The Big Fat Kill." After having a run-in with Dwight McCarthy, the new boyfriend of the ex he'd been abusing, Jackie-Boy is on the receiving end of a vicious Freudian Threat and a Swirlie, which succeeds in driving him off. Unfortunately, Jackie-Boy doesn't take humiliation well, and he rounds up his boys and takes them out for a stroll, where he hopes to take his rage out on a woman. Unfortunately for Jackie-Boy and crew, they picked the wrong neighborhood to go trolling for women to take it out on. And unfortunately for the girls of Old Town, this asshole happens to be a hero cop, resulting in everything going straight to hell when they kill him.

Comic Strips

• One comic◊ has a manager yelling at his employee, the employee yelling at his wife, the wife yelling at their son, the son yelling at the cat, and the cat shanking the manager.
• Crabgrass: In this comic, after Janine tells Kyle to go do something, this makes him mad, so he pushes Kevin over. Angered, Kevin takes out his frustration on Krystal by ruining her tea party, which angers HER enough to kick over Kody's blocks, which angers Kody into pushing over Crumbs. Unlike his older siblings, however, he immediately feels sorry for what he did and gives the toy a hug.
• Seen in this Dilbert strip. A man calls his employee stupid, who calls his employee stupid, who calls his coffee mug stupid.
• For Better or for Worse illustrates this in several strips. One Sunday comic shows the trickle-down effect with a frustrated and exhausted Elly yelling at Michael over some slight, followed by him going after their dog Farley. Farley angrily barks at Elizabeth, who throws her stuffed Bun-Bun down as the punchline.
• At least two different Retail Sunday strips show how the frontline employees, the store manager and the district manager all deal with problems, while the Grumbel's CEO (the one mostly responsible for their situations) is either gloating about what he did or is inconvenienced by a minor problem that pales to what his underlings have to deal with.
• Vater und Sohn features one: Great-grandfather slaps grandfather, who in turn slaps father, who slaps son, whose reaction is not depicted. All of this is caused by the three younger ones ruining great-grandfather's photoshot and breaking a prop.

Fan Works

• Alya and the Harem Reality: Tomoe's parents subjected her to Training from Hell, which she in turn inflicts upon her own daughter Kagami. Though it's implied that she's actually kinder about it, such as employing rubber bullets with Kagami while she was forced to train with real ones.
• Children of Time: James Moriarty had to deal with an abusive father, a mother who was eventually lost, and a bullying brother, all of whom passed the chain down to him. From there, it was transferred to Holmes, who takes out some of his own frustrations upon Watson and Beth — both of whom prove vital in bringing about Moriarty's demise.
• In Cosmic Warriors this is inverted, where the villain takes out his frustration on the innocent. In the first chapter, Jadeite causes a nearby helicopter to explode after his hunt for the Silver Crystal is being interfered with by Tuxedo Mask.
• Danny Phantom: A Trip to Tomobiki: Ran's mother was convinced by her own Abusive Parent that she was a "bad girl", so she punishes Ran for supposedly being a "bad girl" as well. When Ran looks through her family album, she realizes that this chain of harm goes back for several generations of mothers and daughters, all the way to a distant ancestor who abused her daughter due to being stressed from her work... but said daughter mistook it for Tough Love.
• Forgiveness is the Attribute of the Strong: This trope dominates All for One's personal life. He was abused by a father with overly high expectations of him and a mother with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (towards his brother) who liked to accuse him of being a monster. He had to take over protecting his brother when they were young, but when they'd grown up and his brother started to have a life away from All for One, All for One resorted to poisoning him much like their mother had done to stop him from leaving. And later, when he had a child of his own, he made sure said child was weak and quirkless to stop him from trying to leave, and when the child (Izuku) inevitably still did want to have a life outside of a Gilded Cage, All for One started poisoning him too. All for One's younger self, upon time traveling to the present and seeing how he turned out, is utterly horrified.
  Small for One: I have become my mother?!
• Played With in The Games Tent: After Bradley's beloved teacher Professor Henley hits him with a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech, forcing Bradley to realize that the man he idolized only cares about sucking up to the Silts, he forces Oblina to go through a similar moment of disillusionment, giving her a paperback book filled with information about some of humanity's greatest atrocities. However, this is also an example of being Cruel to Be Kind: originally, he'd given her a history textbook that was Written by the Winners, intentionally omitting or glossing over many of those same acts. After what happened with Henley, Bradley realized that he didn't want to deceive her in the same way his professor had tricked him, wanting to teach her the full truth about humanity even if that meant upsetting her.
• Hail To The Queen eventually reveals that Odalia's parents were just as domineering as she became towards Amity, to the point that Odalia seriously considered running away, but was too terrified of the potential repercussions if they managed to track her down.
• Life of Pets: "Don't Worry, Be Angry" reveals that Walt has a Dark and Troubled Past: he was knocked out of his tree by a rock thrown by a man annoyed by his singing, which led to him being terrorized by an angry dog and a group of cats, then got separated from his friend and another bird who were both injured trying to save his life, unable to find out whether they survived the incident because Lincoln found him and brought him back to the Loud House to be nursed back to health. When Charles and Cliff call him "bird-for-brains", he's reminded of what happened and takes out his anger and grief upon them, also hurting Geo in the process.
• A Running Theme in Natural Selection is how abuse can be a corruptive force. Ragyo's cruel treatment of her children has turned them against each other, as well as poisoning their every interaction with others to the point that all of Honnouji is impacted, thanks to Ryuko lashing out against the citizens in turn.
• Defied by Olive in Olive's Last Partner in regards to telling Otto about Oscar being her former partner. She's afraid that she'll hurt him the same way that Oscar hurt her, which in turn would lead him to hurt either her (as her current partner) or possibly another agent. He does manage to find out eventually, though, in the sequel story Ships Ahoy!.
• One for All and Eight for the Ninth: Defied by Hisashi Midoriya. Despite having a Disappeared Dad and neglectful mother who eventually foisted him off on her relatives, who then in turn dumped him into the foster system, he decided against taking out his temper upon his child. In fact, he decided it was better to leave his family and provide for them through child support, even if that meant never seeing his ex-wife Inko or his son ever again.
• Opposite Day: In two of the fanfic's Multiple Endings, Sunny refuses to punish Hero and Mari for how they hurt him, believing that doing so would just lead to more pain and suffering in the future. He also attributes the abuse he received at Mari's hands to how they witnessed their mother physically abusing their father, who coped with the pain through heavy drinking.
• The Outside has a subtle one. When she was young, Ragyo's mollycoddled a chronically ill Satsuki and Soichiro encouraged her to go outside, leading to the asthma attack, then their parents' fight, before the two split, with Soichiro dying after that, which in turn led to Satsuki being agoraphobic, overprotective, somewhat neglectful, and borderline psychologically abusive to her little sister Ryuuko, keeping her confined indoors, which in turn made Ryuuko dependent on her, more naive (than a preteen would be), and more vulnerable to dangers, along with more prone to sneak around her rules, which got her hurt and later on removed from Satsuki's care.
• Past & Future: Victoria abuses Bruno and Camilo because she dealt with a life on the streets and a string of Domestic Abusers as past boyfriends, leaving her convinced that "sometimes you just need the sense knocked into you".
• Raise: After how her father Jacques has treated both her mother Willow and all of his children, Weiss believes that making any kind of concession or admitting fault in any fashion would mean she's letting others walk all over her. Thus, she acts as a complete Control Freak towards Jaune.
• Reignfall: The Blacks have been assassins for hundreds of years, with every generation putting their kids through the same Training from Hell and horribly abusive upbringing that they went through in order to teach them the trade. Marcus gloats to his son that Mercury is only continuing the cycle by killing him.
• The Sun Will Come Up And The Seasons Will Change: Irene, Dana’s and Mary’s relationships to each other are a cycle of abuse and heartbreak: Irene physically and emotionally abused Dana, even as an adult. Dana struggled to break free despite Irene harassing her. Eventually, her desperation to be perfect and seen as better resulted in her becoming Irene and abusing Mary. Mary in turn starts realizing this when she uses some of Dana’s verbal abuse during an argument with Vic. Mary is at first desperate for Dana’s love and approval, but the events of Chapter 12 result in her deciding to stop making herself miserable for something she’ll never get, and washes her hands of Dana
• Three Can Keep a Secret has this as a Running Theme: all of the main cast are coping with the damage dealt by past generations and parental figures. For the Pines, this goes back at least four generations, and it's implied that family holidays are an incredibly stressful time, with a significant amount of the family simply not showing up because it's not worth dealing with their Big, Screwed-Up Family.
• In the For Better or for Worse fanfiction The Unauthorized Litougraphies of the Patterson Family, Elly, and Michael are the direct products of one: Barclay emotionally abused Marian, Marian feared Elly turning into him, which resulted in her emotionally abusing Elly and pitting her against her brother Phil. Elly in turn neglected and emotionally abused Michael and his sisters and pitted them against each other. Michael starts doing the same to Meredith and Robin, but he has a Heel Realization and goes to family therapy with the kids and Deanna and breaks the chain as a result.
• Vow of Nudity: Consciously averted by Spectra (a changeling with a history of mistreatment) when she's forced to choose whether she should reveal her professor's secret (harboring a enemy soldier under her classroom) to the university. She ultimately decides, despite her misgivings, that she's going to give her the benefit of the doubt and keep her secret, simply because she refuses to perpetuate the cycle of mistrust she's all-too-frequently experienced from the other side.

Films — Animation

• The Ant Bully: The basis of the initial plot: A bully and his followers torture Lucas, and Lucas takes out his frustration on a colony of ants.
  Bully: What are you gonna do about it? Nothing. 'Cause I'm big, and you're small.
• The narrator of The Tale of Despereaux sums up this trope in the closing lines:
  So, you could call all of this a big misunderstanding if you wanted to. A king was hurt, so he hurt a rat. And a rat was hurt, so he hurt a princess. And a princess was hurt, so she hurt a servant girl without even meaning to do it. And that servant had been hurting for so long, that almost nothing could make her feel better. But was it a mistake, or was it just good luck? Because the servant girl went back to her farm. And the jailer finally found his princess. And the king found something stronger than grief. And the mice finally got rid of their fear. And the people of Dor lived side-by-side with their rats...all except one, who went back to sea and felt a cool breeze each morning, and the sun on his face every afternoon. And we'd tell you that they all lived Happily Ever After, but...what fun is that?
• Turning Red:
  • An example of unintentional harm being passed along. Ming winds up putting her own daughter under the same stifling expectations that her own mother did.
  • Inverted in the climax. After being forgiven for her betrayal by her friends, Mei repays that debt by extending a hand of caring and understanding to her traumatized mother. That support gives Ming the inner strength she needs to apologize to her mother for losing control and scarring Wu so long ago.

Films — Live-Action

• In Avengers: Endgame, it's revealed that Howard's father used to be physically abusive to him, meaning that he likely learned and perpetuated his own troubled childhood. It is hinted that like Tony, he did try to be a better parent even if he didn't fully succeed.
  • Endgame also shows that in the timeskip, Tony's had a five-year-old daughter and that despite all the lingering trauma of his life, he's shaped up and become a doting father. The implication seems to be that seeing Peter's tragic death at the end of Infinity War helped him finally succeed at Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting, and devote himself entirely into being a dad. When Peter's life is restored at the end of the film, Tony runs forward and hugs him, showing a display of affection and sincerity he never was able to manage before.
• The first scene of the Danny Kaye vehicle The Inspector General ends with a city hall official physically taking out his frustrations by slapping a subordinate. Which causes him to slap his subordinate. Then that man leaves the building, gets into an argument, and slaps a passing farmer. The farmer, at the bottom of the chain, slaps his donkey.
• In Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Heather is surprised to learn that the protagonists, who she'd resented at school, were, in turn, looked down on by the "A group". She's delighted to learn that she herself had consistently made another girl at school feel miserable.
• In a weird partial example there's the relationship between Tony Stark and Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Howard Stark was neglectful and distant toward his son, and they were on bad terms when Howard died. The emotional baggage is partly why Tony grew up into a selfish hedonist before he was Iron Man. Now that Tony is taking on Peter as a protege, he's making a conscious effort to avert this trope, albeit with mixed success. He falls into some of his dad's old trappings (communicates with Peter almost exclusively through conference calls or his assistants, is hard to reach when Peter needs him, condescends and insults him constantly, is harsh and unforgiving of failure), but also breaks out of things and manages to be a fair mentor at times (takes the time to listen to all of Peter's messages, intervenes immediately if he's ever in serious trouble, shows concern for his safety and well-being, and is appreciative and complimentary of Peter when he does things right).
  Tony: (Calling up Peter to congratulate him) My Dad didn't give me a lot of emotional support, so I'm trying to break the cycle of neglect.

Literature

• The Berenstain Bears: Tuffy beats up Sister Bear, but then it turns out to be because her parents are abusive. Sister Bear doesn't hurt someone weaker, though; instead she punches Tuffy.
• Good Omens has Crowley rely on this, having shut down mobile phone service in London for several minutes during busy hour, which he expects to produce a lot of angry executives who take it out on subordinates and so on. He views it as a much more efficient method of spreading pain and misery than the usual demon nobles' gradual corruption of righteous or powerful individuals, something that none of them are able to understand or appreciate.
• In the Polish novel Lalka, the protagonist is visiting large stables. The stable owner gets angry at one of his underlings and chews him out. A moment later, the protagonist sees a stable boy running out onto the street and kicking a Jewish kid.
• In Midnight Tides, book five of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, Uruth, who as the Emperor's mother has a very high standing among the women of her tribe, scolds said Emperor's wife for acting foolishly. Since Mayen cannot talk back, she takes it out on her slave Feather Witch by beating the latter. Feather Witch is unable to deal with the situation in any other way and in turn, takes her frustration out verbally on fellow slave Udinaas, who's even lower than her in social status by being not only a slave but also an Indebted. The trope is then, however, defied by Udinaas who is fully aware of what is happening and quietly informs Feather Witch that he's not her doormat. Not anymore, anyway.
• Marshall Karp's The Rabbit Factory has Kilcullen explicitly refer to this trope, albeit as the Hierarchy of Pain, justifying it by pointing out that their main case is a high profile one, meaning that people higher up the chain expect results fast, and so he has to lean on the main characters to make it happen. Keep in mind that this is after he reveals that he took his bowling ball out to the shooting range and used it as a target.
• The ending of Ratburger reveals that the reason Tina Trotts calls Zoe names and salivates on her head is because her father yelled at her. Luckily, Zoe does not continue the cycle.
• In Stranger in a Strange Land, this trope, exhibited by monkeys in a zoo, causes Michael Smith to laugh for the first time and allows him to start to understand humanity.
• Nan Balat Davar in The Stormlight Archive releases the stress caused by his father's abuse by pulling the legs off small animals.

Live-Action TV

• Discussed (and simultaneously played out) in Blackadder the Third. Blackadder abuses a cat, the cat abuses a mouse, and the mouse abuses ... Baldrick.
• In Game of Thrones, Tyrion, who suffered merciless mocking as a dwarf, admits that the only time he felt like part of the family growing up was by making fun of their mentally disabled cousin Orson. (And Orson mostly amused himself by smashing beetles.)
• In the Korean Drama The Grand Chef, used on (at least) two occasions. The first is when a nearby butcher turns in Lee Sung-Chan (the protagonist) for selling goods nearby his store, when it turns out later he's getting harassed by local thugs. The second involves Min-Woo (the Big Bad of sorts of the show) getting forced to kneel by a chef he previously fired, and later taking it out on one of his underlings.
• In How I Met Your Mother, this is known as the Chain of Screaming. When someone screams at a subordinate, the subordinate must scream at someone lower, who in turn screams at someone else, and so on until someone screams at the original screamer and the cycle is complete. Marshall's attempts to break the chain do not go as well as he hoped— as it turns out, the restaurant owner he tried to yell at was part of his own chain, and yelled at Marshall in part because the owner's wife had yelled at him earlier.
• This becomes a major theme in the final story arc of Kamen Rider Zero-One. We had long known that Corrupt Corporate Executive Amatsu Gai had manipulated an Artificial Intelligence to turn it malicious in order to sabotage and take petty revenge on a business rival, leading to the creation of the robot terrorist cell MetsubouJinrai.net; and that Gai and MetsubouJinrai had both abused and ruined several other lives since. But now we learn that Gai had himself suffered abuse as a child; and on the other end of the chain, MetsubouJinrai's leader Horobi finally pisses off Nice Guy Aruto enough that the two start engaging in a mutual Cycle of Revenge. The final conflict of the series isn't having to defeat a Big Bad, but trying to get Horobi and Aruto to break the chain of abuse before they spark a full-scale war.
• Comes up frequently in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, usually along the lines of a former abuse victim abusing another child. The examples in this series are often more complicated than most because there's often a significant delay between each link in the chain, as this sort of thing is not about lashing out in the moment but rather the long-term damage of the abuse warping their moral compass.
  • In one episode, a former abuse victim refuses to have anything to do with his infant son for fear of this trope: the older boy who raped him was in turn being abused by a sports coach, and the victim was terrified that the abuse had left him with "a switch waiting to flip" that would make him become an abuser the way his own abuser did. The detectives help him to see that what he fears is not inevitable, and at the end of the episode, he holds his baby for the first time.
• An episode of Cold Case, "The Plan", also cites this. When the killer confesses, it's not because he's remorseful about his actions—killing the pedophile Sadist Teacher who'd molested him and several classmates, it's because he himself was beginning to look at young boys inappropriately and wanted to be locked up before he could act on his impulses.
• In M*A*S*H, a chain of favors suddenly reverses into this when a favor is unfulfilled. It might be taken as people simply abandoning deals that Hawkeye is now unable to hold up his end of, but they're rather spiteful about it. Hot Lips tears up Klinger's discharge papers, Klinger takes his hair dryer back from Nurse Murphy, Murphy cruelly rejects Radar when he shows up for their date, Radar takes back the cake he procured for Frank's birthday party, Hot Lips announces she is going to file her report disparaging Henry to a general she slept with, Henry rescinds the pass to Tokyo for the dentist, who refuses to work on Sergeant Zale's tooth, who now won't replace Hawkeye's holey boots.
• Played for Black Comedy in a Saturday Night Live sketch where a Mad Scientist named Roy (played by Dwayne Johnson) presents the "World's Most Evil Invention" to the International Mad Scientist Society. Whereas his colleagues invented a Shrink Ray and a Freeze Ray to steal or destroy the world's monuments, Roy invented the Robo-Chomo, a child-molesting robot that horrifies everyone in attendance. When one of them asks just how one goes about building a child-molesting robot, Roy explains that you start by building a regular robot, then molesting it and hoping that it continues the cycle.
• In an episode of Scrubs, J.D. witnesses Dr. Cox getting humiliated by Jordan and decides to make a quick exit, saying "Anger like this has a way of being passed on to whoever's closest." As soon as he's out of the room, Carla comes in to ask for Cox's help. He angrily snaps at her, she gets angry and snaps at Turk, and so on. Ironically, the chain eventually reaches J.D. anyway.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Changeling race had been subject to persecution, abuse, and murder due to mistrust from "solid" monoforms that they met in their travels across the galaxy. Eventually, the Changelings would form the Dominion in order to take over the galaxy and, through a combination of trauma from the persecution they faced and their innate nature as Control Freaks, impose their order on those they conquer, exterminating all who resist. The only monoform lifeforms they show any true kindness for are the Jem'Hadar, their Undyingly Loyal genetically-engineered soldiers; and the Vorta, who protected a Changeling from other monoforms and, as way of thanks, were uplifted to serve as the Changelings' adjutants.
• In Succession, this could be the entire idea of the show, and of Waystar-Royco themselves. Every single person needs someone to punch down at: Logan tries to keep his children close so he can belittle them; Shiv marries Tom at least in part because she knows he's so far out of his depth that he'll put up with her treating him badly (though he finally snaps back at her in Season 2); this is even why Tom helps Greg get his job, so he's no longer on the lowest rung of the family ladder.
• The season 4 finale of Young Sheldon features a Chain of Harm. After Missy suffers heartbreak over Marcus dumping her and Mary has a bad day at work, the two of them bring their conflicts home and it quickly spreads to the rest of the family getting mad and insulting each other. The Adult Sheldon narrator compares it to a bunch of pool table balls hitting each other. Georgie ends up being the only one not affected by it, coming home to witness the arguing and just being confused by what is going on, with nobody dragging him into it.

Music

• The traditional Jewish song "One Little Goat" starts with the goat (that Father bought for two zuz) and ends with God killing the Angel of Death.
• Pink Floyd: This is one of the central themes in The Wall. The schoolmaster's wife hits and humiliates the schoolmaster; the schoolmaster hits and humiliates the kids he is supposed to educate; the kids take it out on the younger ones. This is made explicit in The Movie: in "The Trial", the schoolmaster is depicted as a puppet that the wife beats, causing it to strike a smaller puppet representing Pink.
• Discussed and defied in "Mean" by Taylor Swift: The narrator speculates that their tormentor was abused once, then declares that they won't turn out like them.
• tool's "Prison Sex" is about this. The first verse is the narrator remembering sexual abuse at the hands of his parent, and the second verse switches to the viewpoint of abuser, with eerily similar wording. Some have taken this to mean the victim in first verse becomes the perpetrator in the second verse.
• One verse in Your Favorite Martian's "Trauma Song" sums up the chain very concisely.
  My grandpa got his...ass whooped,
  So my dad got his...ass whooped,
  And that's why I got my...ass whooped—
  Did anybody else get beat?

Mythology & Religion

• Another reason the original Jesus story, and the Messianic Archetype in general, is so powerful. We have the Roman government, which is hated as a general rule, taking it out on its subjects (which includes the nation of Judea). The Jewish leaders in turn as kings and Temple officials exert authority on their subjects, and basically, everyone is miserable from this trickle-down. Finally, at the end of this cycle, you have this healer/prophet who is used as a scapegoat. Rather than deny it, he takes the punishment.
• This is, in essence, how bad karma works in Buddhism, although it's explicitly outlined that it will bite you in the ass one day.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III:
  • Astarion's vampiric master, Cazador, is an abusive, power-mad sadist who takes delight in torturing his thralls, with his thralls being unable to retaliate due to his control over them. This changes when Astarion becomes infected with a mind flayer tadpole that removes many of his weaknesses, including Cazador's control over him. When Astarion learns of Cazador's plan to become a Vampire Ascendant, he plans to usurp the ritual for himself, specifically so he can Never Be Hurt Again. If the player helps Astarion become a Vampire Ascendant, he ends up becoming Drunk on the Dark Side and, himself, turns into an abusive, power-mad sadist. Conversely, convincing Astarion to not go through with the ritual will see the cycle of abuse broken, as Astarion goes on in the Playable Epilogue to become a good guy (relatively speaking).
  • In Cazador's crypt, you can find the skull of Vellioth, Cazador's former master. Reading its memories reveals that Vellioth was a similarly cruel bastard to Cazador; when Cazador tried to contact an old friend, Vellioth forced him to watch as he bled said friend dry, and when Cazador tried to kill him, Vellioth sentenced him to eleven years of impalement — not for the murder attempt, but for failure.
  • Barbarian Hero Karlach's Arch-Enemy Lord Gortash sold her in a Deal with the Devil that saw her Dragged Off to Hell and conscripted into the Blood War. Late in the game you discover that Gortash went through the same thing as a child, having been sold by his parents to a warlock who's later revealed to have been Raphael, who treated him as a servant in Hell. Karlach lampshades this trope, noting that people who've been fucked over by life feel they have no choice but to "fuck back". Although it's Zig-Zagged by Gortash's mother's claims that he was simply born evil, but even if it were true their actions didn't help matters.
• This idea forms much of the plot of The Brains And The Brawn: Former Mayor James P. Ravena used his son Gale as slave labor, leading Gale to abuse his girlfriend and new mayor Jeanne and bring her into his revenge plot- and Jeanne herself, having been bullied in the past as well, takes her pain out on the citizens of Ravena, especially Brains, her favorite target.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition: A major part of Sera's character is that being an elf raised by humans meant that she got the Fantastic Racism both coming and going, which made her hate her species doubly- first from Internalized Categorism, and second because no other elf would accept her because she was adopted by a human. This has unfortunately led Sera to be abusive in turn to other elves out of payback and sour grapes. An elf Inquisitor, even one who's played as an All-Loving Hero who accepts Sera unconditionally, has a much harder time befriending and romancing Sera than a human, dwarf, or Qunari, and it's much easier to lose her approval as an elf, with Sera accepting dissenting opinions from everyone but elves. She laughs at the reveal that most of what the elves think of their culture is Based on a Great Big Lie (potentially in front of an elf Inquisitor who's just learned that nearly everything they'd ever been taught as a child was wrong) because to Sera, the Dalish elves being proven wrong means that they were also wrong to choose their culture over her. Thankfully, she grows out of this in Trespasser, which takes place two years later.
• Fallen London: The Chain of Being represents the social hierarchy of the entire universe, from the lowliest rat to the gods themselves. In truth, it's little more than an excuse for the constantly bickering stars to wage wars against each other in secret by venting their frustrations down the chain. Even the 'main character' of Fallen London, the grandmaster of the Bazaar, hypocritically tries to allow beings of different hierarchies to live as one while also bullying and demeaning the minions and lovers on the lower end of their chain. The game's main questline is about whether to reform the chain or break it entirely.
• The plot of Misao turns out to have been caused by this: Mr. Kurata's own mistreatment as a teenager causes him to abuse and eventually kill Misao, which causes her to abuse and kill her bullies in turn when she comes back as a Vengeful Ghost.
• In No More Heroes, it's implied Travis joins the UAA and it's assassin tournament out of grief over his murdered parents the parents his half-sister Jeane killed after their father abused her, continuing the cycle even farther. His rampage involves him killing the executives of Pizza Butt, which becomes Jasper Batt's motivation for killing Travis' best friend Bishop which in turn causes Travis to rejoin the UAA in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle for the sole purpose of killing Jasper. In addition, the events of the first game have inspired others to join the UAA, continuing the cycle there. Travis finally wises up near the end of 2, even saying "vengeance begets vengeance" before declaring he'll use his status as the No 1 assassin to destroy the UAA to break the cycle of violence. He succeeds... for a few years.
• A central theme in OMORI, which explores how a tragic event can spiral and keep spiraling if people don't support each other and stand against it. Mari's death led to Sunny becoming a deeply depressed hikikomori; without his support, Basil also turns into an anxious, reclusive wreck. Hero yells at his little brother Kel out of grief and shuts out anything with a connection to Mari, and that, as well as their parents obviously favoring Hero, led to Kel withdrawing from his family and friends out of feelings of worthlessness. Audrey, unable to comprehend why her former friends have all seemingly abandoned her, is furious and eventually becomes the leader of the local gang of bullies, picking on the weak—including Basil, making him worse. It's not until Kel finally steps up and makes an effort to draw Sunny out of his despair that healing can truly begin, and the game's worst endings require Sunny to actively reject every opportunity to seek out and support his friends.
• In Red Dead Redemption, Abraham Reyes describes the sorry state of his country in a private conversation and suggests that the apparent Big Bad of his own struggle, Colonel Allende, is not actually fully responsible for everything that's happening. In sharp contrast to his rather vacuous public speeches, he says that the spiralling cruelty of government troops is a result of this trope. Unfortunately, this uncharacteristically reflective moment gets derailed rather suddenly when he compares it to "a father who beats his son, so his son takes the dog outside and rapes it." Marston wondering why such a specific example might occur to Reyes puts something of a damper on any more meaningful discussion between them.
• In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords, when visiting the Wretched Hive of Nar Shaddaa a beggar approaches you and asks for help. If a Dark Side Player Character is rude and drives him off, your Evil Mentor Kreia takes the opportunity to teach you about how every action has a reaction (and that you should exploit this) by showing you how your cruelty inspired him to be cruel in turn as he mugs another beggar.
• In The Works of Mercy, the protagonist has a brief discussion with his father in what appears to be the afterlife. The dialogue options allude to the father being abusive, but he insists he was just copying his own father — before pointing out that the protagonist themselves broke their daughter's arm.

Visual Novels

• Boyfriend To Death: Ren's arc throughout the two games involves him growing up from Strade's abused manservant to an unstable abuser in his own right. By The Price of Flesh, Ren is now gleefully committing livestreamed torture and murder, which Strade could've easily subjected him to in his youth.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, it's mentioned that the way humans in general deal with hatred is by pushing it onto another person, and it's explicitly stated that Maria is special because she is able to find happiness and break the cycle. Unfortunately, even she can be pushed too far.

Web Animation

• MoniRobo: Makiko was abused by her own parents and married a kind man, but when her own daughter Sakura was born, she started abusing her as well and started neglecting her in favor of her son Masato.
• RWBY: Much of the series can be summarized as people abusing their power to hurt others, whether they know it or not.
  • Most notably, the Gods' questionable treatment of Salem (who also already had to deal with having an Abusive Parent) is part of what motivates her to become the Big Bad (the other reason being she went Ax-Crazy from The Corruption), taking out her anger and hatred for her fate on humanity and her former lover. She initially claims that it's because the new, magicless humans are inferior, though after Ozma's betrayal, her reasoning shifts to destroying humanity because humanity is what matters most to Ozma — it's the best way to hurt him. This also indicates she just wanted to hurt humanity in the first place because they were the only people outside of her family whom she could vent out her frustrations on. Cue the in-fighting in humanity over how to stop Salem… otherwise known as the entire show.
  • Salem's abusive mentorship of Cinder Fall (who is based on Cinderella and is shown in Volume 8 to also hail from a background of abuse) clearly frightens and intimidates Cinder… who sees Salem as a role model for empowerment and tries to emulate her, most noticeably on Emerald. Emerald is unable to realize her situation is abnormal and abusive because she doesn't have anything else to compare her current position to.
  • The Gods' harmful (and unresolved) mistakes cause a significant chain of harm in another of their worlds. Namely, their homeworld. The brothers created the Curious Cat to heal and the Jabberwocker to kill, but when the Jabberwalker worked too well and devoured the souls it destroyed, the brothers fought and argued against each other over their mistakes, and they eventually resolved their conflict by neglecting their children. The brothers' 'parent' decided the best thing it could do was set the brothers free to build new worlds - which was also a horrible mistake, as the Jabberwalker hadn't been dealt with and the Cat had unforeseen flaws that grew with neglect. Eventually, the Cat snapped and became obsessed with learning everything, even if they had to vivisect a little brat to get started. Had they not been dealt with, they could have become an even greater threat than Salem. Their manipulative actions also cause the adventurer Alyx to grow paranoid, driving her to poison Jaune out of a perceived betrayal. Jaune grows fearful of watching others die as a result, and spends most of his life protecting a small group of artists. Eventually, those same artists realize he stopped being their 'hero' and became their jailer.

Webcomics

• The Water Phoenix King posits a world where the chain of harm is a divine mandate; the world's Karma system, Tamantha, is an artificial metaphysical construct created by a Mad God who believed in Black-and-White Insanity. Every time someone breaks the rules, the entire world pays the price with curses and monsters, under the Insane Troll Logic that the higher castes would see the curses ravaging their country and either collectively punish the lower castes for their insubordination, or suffer horrifying consequences for their actions along with thousands of innocent lower caste members. Naturally, people subject to this system develop a rebellious streak, which causes more monsters and disasters to show up, and so on. To show just how badly this system runs, the god who created Tamantha died moments after it started running, and Disproportionate Retribution left the entire world in constant war until a human managed to commit deicide, which the system retaliated by turning the planet into a Crapsack World. It's up to the anti-heroic protagonists to turn Tamantha into a smoldering ruin.
• The Greenhouse: Avery's father physically and verbally abuses her, and has been doing so all her life. She tries to control her lover Mica in the same way. Mica lashes out against her friend and Love Interest Liv, who ends the chain for now by sticking around anyway, forgiving Mica and receiving her apology.

Web Video

• The Maggie Mae Fish essay "Superman Saves The Cat" concerns this trope and proposes that Superman in Superman: The Movie, beyond also rescuing the Cat Up a Tree, is attempting to defy this trope by showing humanity and understanding and teaching the girl not to pay harm done to her forward on those weaker than her.

Western Animation

• In Adventure Time, we see this chain demonstrated in "Evergreen": Urgence Evergreen is a jerk who mistreats his servant Gunther. In turn, Gunther takes out his frustrations on his pet Nina, slapping her away when she gets in the way of what he's doing.
• The Apple & Onion episode "Apple's in Trouble" has the protagonists try to find out why Cheesesteak is bullying Apple, only to find a "classic chain reaction". Cheesesteak is mistreated by his boss Fried Shrimp, who is yelled at by Birthday Cake, who is upset that she isn't being catered by Turkey Leg, who is dealing with rats that disobeyed Gingerbread, whose dancing is disrupted by Root Beer Float, who is stressed out by Lemon Drop, who was upset when Apple scolded her.
  • ...for messing up the duo's money counting, to which she somehow didn't have to own up.
• Played for Comedy in Avatar: The Last Airbender. During a (fake) argument, Katara insults Sokka by calling his ears big. Afterwards, Sokka says, "Momo, you have some big ears."
• The Horseman family from BoJack Horseman. Joseph Sugarman made horribly abusive decisions, which led to Beatrice being abusive and BoJack becoming a self-loathing mess who himself takes his struggles with feelings of depression and inadequacy out on others.
• In The Boondocks, this is why Uncle Ruckus is the way he is. Nelly, Ruckus's paternal grandmother, abused her son relentlessly when he was young. When said son grew up and had a family of his own, he abused the young Uncle Ruckus in the same way.
• One episode of God, the Devil and Bob deals with the death of Bob's verbally abusive and emotionally neglectful father. After finding out he went to heaven, Bob demands justification from God. God elaborates that there is a "line of punches" passed from father to son going all the way back to Adam and Cain. Even though his father was no saint, the trick was "passing on a softer punch", as Bob's grandfather was relatively worse. In turn, Bob realizes he hasn't been the best father to his own son, so he learns to forgive his father and be a better one to his son.
• In Hazbin Hotel, Hell takes the form of a Vice City where the dead have little choice but to embrace their worst qualities that landed them there in the first place. If you somehow weren't a terrible person when sent to Hell, chances are you'll become one due to the toxic cesspit Hell lends itself to being. Anti-Anti-Christ Charlie's parents genuinely loving her and raising her well, warts and all, are a major factor into her being an exception to the rule, on top of being a native-born demon. Conversely, Lucifer once attempted to do the same for his subjects, but after spending millennia being forced to bear witness to the absolute worst humanity had to offer he stopped caring and let them turn his kingdom into a self-reinforcing pit of misery.
• Kaeloo: Mr. Cat was abused by his two older brothers, causing him to run away from home and end up in Smileyland. Once in Smileyland, he became a bully and started taking out his frustrations on Quack-Quack with the same kind of physical violence his brothers used on him.
• On King of the Hill, it's shown that Cotton was emotionally abusive to Hank for not living up to his (damn near psychotic) idea of what a man should be. While Hank himself does love Bobby and wants to raise him right, he's still pretty hard on him for not living up to his (not nearly as insane but still pretty uptight) idea of what a man should be.
• Clay Puppington's backstory from Moral Orel. As a child, Clay accidentally killed his mother by causing her to suffer a heart attack. At first, his father Arthur responded by giving him the cold shoulder, but Clay would continually provoke his father into physically abusing him because it was the only way he could get his father's attention. As an adult, Clay abuses his own son Orel, believing that if Orel will grow up to be like him, it will vindicate his own awful behavior. Orel ultimately defies the trope, as he refuses to sink to Clay's level and in the Distant Finale, he's shown to be a loving father to his own family.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: The Horde is largely built on a structure of callousness, indifference, cruelty, and suffering flowing down the chain. Horde Prime callously discarded Hordak; Hordak maintains a similar indifference to any underling who fails him. Shadow Weaver, one such underling, then raises two children abusively; one, Adora, manages to find a way out of the toxic environment and becomes The Hero (albeit with a huge Guilt Complex), while the other, Catra, remains and continues to lash out at others and subjects Adora to sustained physical and emotional abuse after her defection. And even the reasonably functional ones, like Scorpia and Lonnie, who sat out most of that, don't have any objection to abusing Kyle.
• The "Homer choking Bart" bit from The Simpsons is hinted to be a generational thing. We've seen Abe choke Homer before (along with pretty severe verbal and emotional abuse, up to advising him to take rides from strangers) and Abe is implied to have gotten it from his own father, and on and on.
• Near the end of Steven Universe: Future, one of these is described as being the cause of everyone's suffering throughout Future and the rest of the series. Specifically, White Diamond has an It's All My Fault moment, and admits that being a Bad Boss and domineering older family member towards both Yellow and Blue Diamond in turn lead to them being abusive towards Pink Diamond. Pink faking her shattering at the hands of "Rose Quartz" caused her to abandon Spinel, who takes it out on Steven and the Crystal Gems millennia later, and also left Pearl with some likely psychological trauma that followed her for almost as long until she was finally able to open up about it. This also lead Steven to develop C-PTSD, because of the trauma and pressure he was exposed to throughout the original series and movie. All of this pain and suffering, along with the mistakes he made during the epilogue, ended up having him a spectacular meltdown, as he accidentally corrupts himself and transforms into a Kaiju-like rampaging monster.
• The Venture Bros. goes into detail about how Doc Venture's youth as a boy adventure severely screwed him up, even though he still drags his boys along for similar adventures. Such an occurrence was lampshaded in this series recap.
  Henchman 21: That's the vicious circle, people do this!

Real Life

• The great-grandchild of L. Ron Hubbard exposed in a poem the damage his great-grandfather inflicted on the grandchildren and great-grandchildren he never met with threats to his son, the patriarch of the family, and how when the poet tries to explain to psychiatrists that mental illness does run in his family via the leader of a cult, they accuse him of delusions and compromise his credibility.
• Prince Harry cited wanting to break this as one of the reasons he left the royal family and took his own family to America, not wanting to parrot the cold, distant Parental Favoritism / The Unfavorite parenting that he'd been subjected to simply for being the second-born, noting that his father himself dealt with this growing up, even though he was the heir to the throne.

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