Misplaced Retribution in Literature.
- In Blue Valentine, Nicki Valentine's mother abuses her verbally and physically throughout her life in a frustrated expression of hurt and betrayal stemming from her husband's unfaithfulness. Since Nicki was born the same day as Quinn, her half-brother by Miss Halliday, Nicki's existence is a constant reminder of the affair.
- A Certain Magical Index:
- Accelerator's ward Last Order becomes gravely ill, so he frantically wanders everywhere and gets caught up in World War III while trying to find a way to cure her. While in a military convoy in Russia, he randomly runs into Touma Kamijou. Accelerator becomes enraged and attacks him, blaming him for being a hero yet not doing anything to help her. Touma defeats him and points out he can't be everywhere at once and didn't even know about Last Order's condition, and he was busy traveling to defeat the one who started the war. Touma adds he would have helped if he had just asked, and temporarily heals Last Order before giving instructions for a permanent cure.
- Shinka Kanou learns that his friend Frenda Seivelun was killed by Shizuri Mugino. Rather than target Mugino, he decides to blame and try to kill Touma Kamijou, because he is a hero yet didn't save her. Shiage Hamazura confronts him and calls bullshit on this reasoning. During the time that Frenda was killed, Touma was in another country working on preventing civil wars and invasions. Shiage offers to take the blame because he actually was in the area when the murder happened and actually knew Frenda, unlike Touma who had never even heard of her. Shinka eventually has a Heel Realization.
- The Curse of the Blue Figurine: Discussed in the later sequel The Drum, the Doll, and the Zombie, where Major Harrison Dixon confesses that when his wife was dying, he was so angry at such a senseless death that he wanted to hit something, but he couldn't — you can't hit back at cancer. When he went off to fight in Korea, he finally felt that he was hitting back, but after he was shot down and had recovered, he flew non-combat missions for a while, including evacuating the bodies of the dead and the wounded, and that's when he finally realized he hadn't been shooting at his wife's cancer — he'd been shooting at kids. And that realization is what made all his anger drop away.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
- In the first book, Manny cuts out a picture of a bikini-clad woman from one of Rodrick's magazines and takes it with him to preschool the following day. Who gets punished for this? Rodrick, despite the fact that he had no involvement in this scheme and it was Manny's fault for breaking into his room in the first place and doing that without anyone's knowledge.
- In Rodrick Rules, Greg recalls a time when he snitched on Rodrick for swearing. Greg spelled out the word for his mom and was punished for knowing how to spell a swear word, whilst Rodrick got away with it.
- In Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights #8 “Gumdrop Angel”, Angel is The Un-Favorite to her five-year-old stepsister, Ophelia, who is lavished with attention and gifts by Angel’s Gold Digger mother and Wicked Stepfather Myron. However, Ophelia is nice to her stepsister and never throws any tantrums, but Angel is too blinded by jealousy and resentment. When Myron refuses to pay for Angel to go to her dream school, Angel blames Ophelia for taking the spotlight and takes revenge by stealing and eating a special birthday treat given to the young girl. Sadly, this poorly-thought misguided revenge ultimately ends in her death.
- In Galaxy of Fear, the wraiths of Kiva spent their undeath cursing Mammon Hoole for their fate and clung to existence solely for the chance to make him pay. When they see evidence proving that Gog, Hoole's partner in the experiment was truly responsible, it takes a few seconds for the wraiths to accept that the man they hated all this time was innocent. Fortunately for them and unfortunately for Gog, their true murderer is in the same room with them, meaning they can still have their revenge.
- In The Grace Year, if a girl doesn't survive the year in the wilderness and no body is found for her family to claim, a younger sister may end being punished in her place by being banished to the outskirts of town. To add to the injustice, over there women's only way to survive is going to be prostitution.
- In The Great Gatsby, George Wilson murders Jay Gatsby because the latter's car was the one that ran over Myrtle, George's wife. However, Gatsby wasn't the one driving the car when the accident happened; it was Daisy Buchanan behind the wheel. Justified, as Tom very specifically only told George who owned the car and did not specify who was actually driving, thus implying—either accidentally or deliberately—that the two were the same. (Nick believes Tom's simply too insulated from the world by his wealth and privilege to realize this would put the person in question in danger. On the other hand, Tom does have a motive to lie...)
- Harry Potter:
- Severus Snape's hatred for James Potter, his childhood bully, quickly transferred itself to his son Harry once the boy started Hogwarts, causing him to be stricter towards him then any other student. The last book, however, reveals that the real reason has more to do with Snape being hopelessly in love with Harry's mother, Lily Evans, making Harry a constant reminder that the love of his life had married the man he loathed most of all.
- In yet another Snape example, he treats Neville Longbottom even worse because Neville was also a potential Chosen One, and had Voldemort marked him for death instead of Harry, Lily wouldn't have been killed.
- "My Dinner with Ares": Ogbunabali regales Ares about a time Fury Central sent him to reap Divine Punishment on a mortal for getting in a car accident with a demigod. When he does some digging, he finds out that not only was the demigod at fault for driving under the influence, but while the demigod made a full recovery thanks to his divine heritage, the mark had to walk with a limp because the accident broke his leg in three place. The only reason why Ogbunabali was sent after him was because the demigod's godly parent commissioned the hit. Ogbunabali was so ashamed of this, he falsified a report claiming that justice was served, knowing Fury Central is too bogged down to even bother looking into it.
- October Daye:
- Rayseline blames Toby for failing to save her and her mother from being kidnapped and tortured, ignoring the fact that this was because Toby was turned into a fish for 14 years. She even allies with Oleander de Merelands, who kidnapped her in the first place, just to get revenge on Toby. There's definitely some Being Tortured Makes You Evil going on there, too. Eventually Raysel gets better, after being in a coma for a while and getting her blood adjusted so her body stops fighting itself, and stops blaming Toby for everything.
- Manuel blames Toby for Dare's death when she was trying to save her, and allies with Oleander and Rayseline to get revenge.
- Parallel World Pharmacy: Veron reveals the reason why he hates Falma and keeps trying to get his pharmacy closed down is because a pharmacist refused to treat his son back when his family was poor, leading to his death. This is even though Falma is the exact opposite of that crooked pharmacist since he freely provides service to everyone regardless of their social status. Plus, Veron has become the head of the Pharmacy Guild and is doing similar practices to that crooked pharmacist.
- In Qualia the Purple, Hatou torments Alice in several timelines in consequence of Yukari's death. Alice never meant for it to happen. Quite the opposite, she truly believed JAUNT would be able to protect Yukari.
- Very common in The Railway Series. Because Rev Awdry didn't want to make railwaymen look foolish, the locomotive characters are usually blamed for whatever goes wrong on the railway. Unfortunately, by doing this, the railwaymen look not only foolish, but get off scot-free with endangering lives.
- In Percy and the Trousers, Percy crashes into some luggage, but the porters were just as much to blame for not keeping an eye on the track.
- In Paint Pots & Queens, the painter loses his footing, spilling his paint, and he blames Henry.
- In The Twin Engines, the Fat Controller rips into the twins for accidents that aren't even their fault (for Donald, crashing into a signalbox and for Douglas, being late due to The Spiteful Brake Van putting on his brakes).
- In Thomas Comes To Breakfast, the Fat Controller blames Thomas for crashing into a stationmaster's house, even though it was the cleaner fiddling with his controls.
- Also in Percy's Predicament, the trucks cause Percy to crash into a brake van, his driver and fireman can't stop him in time and the Fat Controller still blames Percy.
- In Wrong Road, the Fat Controller blames Gordon for the mix up, even though it was the fireman's fault for starting the train before everything was ready.
- In Buffer Bashing, Donald crashes into some buffers, but the Fat Controller knew it wasn't his fault since he couldn't stop in time. But when Douglas does the same, the Fat Controller scolds him.
- In the Redwall book Mattimeo, Slagar the Cruel kidnaps Redwall's children to sell as slaves because he blames Matthias and the other inhabitants of the Abbey for his disfigurement. However, Redwall took in and cared for Slagar (then known as Chickenhound) when he was badly injured. In return for their kindness, he stole from them and murdered the elderly Methuselah. He was in the act of running away from the rightfully angry Redwallers when he encountered the venomous snake Asmodeus, who bit his face and mangled it. Everything that happened came as a result of his villainous ways, and the Redwallers were responsible for none of it.
- In The Rising of the Shield Hero, King Aultcray of Melromarc goes out of his way to make things harder for Naofumi simply because he's the Shield Hero. Later chapters reveal that Aultcray has a hatred for Demi-Humans, because an extremist group of Demi-Humans took his little sister away, and all Demi-Humans worship the Shield Hero as their god note . So Aultcray basically vents his anger on someone who not only didn't personally slight him, but also had absolutely no idea of why he was being treated like crap in the first place.
- In Diane Duane's novel Spock's World, the Big Bad's motive is revenge on Spock for a death in the family...except that an outsider would probably say it's not his fault at all.
- Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle has Hayes Vi Arcadia, who wants to take revenge on the people who usurped her side of the family and stole her birthright as princess of the Holy Arcadia Empire. She outlives the perpetrators by centuries due to a currently unknown method, so she settles for not only plotting the deaths of the modern-day imperial family but also plotting to conquer the entire Kingdom of Atismata. When the new kingdom understandably chooses to fight back and refuse her demands, she decides to resort to genocide.
- Under Suspicion:
- In I've Got You Under My Skin, Blue Eyes wants to kill the Moran family because he blames Laurie's father Leo for ruining his life by arresting him for drunk driving decades ago; he wants to get revenge by killing Leo's entire family, who had nothing to do with the situation. That's not even getting into how he ruined his own life by making one poor decision after another, plus Leo was only doing his job by charging him with driving under the influence.
- In You Don't Own Me, Willie Hayes wants to get revenge on Alex for helping Carl Newman - who ruined his livelihood, eventually resulting in his wife and son leaving him - get acquitted (at most, Alex defended Newman in court, with it being pointed out that the prosecution botched the case and even Alex was surprised Newman got off). Willie decides to accomplish this by stalking and killing Alex's fiancee Laurie, who has nothing to do with the situation at all.
- Les Voyageurs Sans Souci: Subverted. Queen of birds Seraphine Alavolette assumes humans must be behind Golden Eagle's disappearance, so they deserve to be punished until her dear friend is back. However, Golden Eagle disappeared because Big Crow -Alavolette's own court wizard- and his flock attempted to murder her. In fact, Golden Eagle by found by a hermit who tried to cure her, so Alavolette would be wrong to blame humans...if it were not for the fact that Golden Eagle was captured by a hunter as the hermit was away and sold to a circus.
