Misplaced Retribution in Live-Action TV series.
- In 24 Day 8, this is why Jack murders Dana Walsh, as she was involved with the rogue members of the Russian government who eventually murdered his friend Renee Walker, even though by that point Dana had long since been imprisoned and had nothing to do with Renee's death.
- Accused (2023): In "Scott's Story", Scott is accosted by survivors of Devin's school shooting due to believing Scott bankrolled the entire situation, which is why Scott is on trial to begin with. In truth, while Scott knew Devin had intended to cause a shooting, he had tried to kill Devin to prevent it, but couldn't go through with it. He had gave Devin the money because his son told him it was for a trip for him to try and get better, and Scott wanted to have faith Devin that actually intended this.
- In Batwoman, the show's first villain is Elizabeth "Beth" Kane, sister to Kate Kane, who was abducted as a child and eventually adopts the name "Alice"; her abductor threatened that he would kill anyone who came to look for her if she called for help, and eventually defence contractor Catherine Hamilton faked test results to claim that Elizabeth was dead to try and help Beth's father move on as he and Kate were basically killing themselves trying to find her. The audience can sympathise with her anger towards Catherine for the original lie, but it's less fair for Alice to resent her sister and father for believing a very convincing lie from two independent parties who each had their reasons for wanting people to believe Beth was dead. It was eventually revealed that the "Alice" persona was created by a hypnotist to punish Beth by making her spend the rest of her life pursuing a pointless vendetta against the people who love her.
- Due to an Uncanny Family Resemblance, in one episode of Bewitched, Samantha is mistaken for her cousin Serina by a witch whose husband the latter had turned into a bird. Unfortunately, before Sam could clear up the misunderstanding, the witch banished her to 1886 New Orleans. Needless to say, Darrin is not pleased with Serina.
- Blue Bloods: In many different episodes Danny dumps on Erin for her telling him some law prevents him getting a piece of evidence that he needs to build his case. She's never doing anything more than just following the law, while he acts as if Erin is the source (she's lawmaker of New York state, apparently, in his mind). Erin appears to realize that it's pointless pointing this out and Danny's simply venting at her, so she just takes it.
- Buffyverse:
- In Buffy season 6. After skinning Warren alive out of revenge for his Accidental Murder of Tara, Willow proceeds to target his accomplices Jonathan and Andrew, who were both in jail at the time and had nothing to do with it. Though the Scoobies (sans Buffy) all rallied behind Willow en masse when she targeted Warren, they all agreed that Jonathan and Andrew don't deserve to die at all and work together to protect them.
- The Romani people that cursed Angel didn't really think his curse through. Angel has to spend all of eternity suffering for the crimes of Angelus? Liam was a womanizing jerk at worst, but Darla murdered him and a demon spent a century and change murdering and marauding with his face. Especially bad since the Curse Escape Clause they included eventually led to Angelus murdering the last descendant of their clan.
- Cheers:
- Several times through the series, Carla takes her anger out on random strangers, usually Cliff. At one point, she sprays him with water even though it was Woody who irritated her. "I have to work with him." is her justification.
- After being left behind by her boyfriend, Rebecca decides to wait tables at the bar. Any man who asks for a drink gets it thrown in their face for being a man.
- Cobra Kai: In season 2, when Miguel Diaz's new girlfriend Tory Nichols witnesses him cheat on her with Samantha LaRusso at a party, she decides to publicly assault Sam at school rather than do the rational thing and confront her boyfriend or walk away from him.
- Cold Case: A young boy is horribly abused in a group home. So when he grows up, does he track down those who abused him and/or those who let it happen? No. Instead, he selects completely innocent boys who bear only the vaguest resemblance to his former tormentors and kills them, putting them through the same abuse he suffered.
- Control Z: The "avenger" targets various people in horrific ways as payback for Luis' death, yet the only two people who can truly be blamed for his death are Gerry (who delivered the final blow during their fight), and the hacker (who set up the fight in the first place). Despite this, almost all of the avenger's victims are innocent in regards to Luis' death, and one of them is the deceased's own mother.
- Henry Grace, the unsub of the Criminal Minds episode "Masterpiece", was dumped by his fiancee and shunned by his peers after his brother William was exposed as a serial killer. Rather than get angry at his brother, Grace blames Rossi, who busted William, and decides to get revenge by targeting Rossi's BAU teammates.
- Displacement is a very common theme of the series overall—killers are often killing those who most remind them of who they're really angry at, whether because they're scared killing the real target first will get them caught or because the real target is already dead or otherwise out of reach. The "Dante's Inferno" killer is another good example; his targets were all men who he'd witnessed being angry or strict with their sons in the same way his own father was before the father died.
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: In "The Whole World Is Watching", John Walker brutally kills Nico for the death of Lemar Hoskins, which was actually caused by Karli. For bonus points, Karli killed Lemar by accident and was actually shocked over it.
- In one episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Carlton has no problem letting a music video be shot in the house while his parents are gone because if anything goes wrong, Uncle Phil would take it out on Will.
- This happens often enough that Will even lampshades it — in one instance, he sarcastically declares "This is all your fault, Will!" before Uncle Phil can say it, and in another, after Phil levies the accusation at him, snaps, "What is, the family theme?!", legitimately annoyed/angry at being blamed for everything that goes wrong in the Banks house.
- One time when Will was deserving of punishment, Phil decides to ground Hillary, note Carlton, and Ashley to force him to behave. True to form, they decide to get angry at Will for their father's utterly nonsensical actions. Granted, that was his plan to get Will stop acting the way he did.
- In The Remake of The Fugitive, Gerard's determination to capture Kimble stems from having lost his first wife. Problem is, Kimble's innocent and doesn't deserve such persecution. And even if he were guilty, he still isn't the one responsible for Gerard's wife's death.
- Grange Hill: In a mid 90's episode, a guy and a girl try to escape from a fire by climbing out of a window. She slips, falls to her death, her boyfriend blames the guy who was with her and spends the rest of the season stalking and harassing him. He eventually stops and apologizes (possibly since everyone was against his vendetta).
- In one episode of Green Acres, a flashback showed that Oliver used to have a garden outside his penthouse apartment. His mother, not approving of it, shoved the plants off the balcony, nearly falling on a police officer who was walking past the building. Somehow, Oliver and Lisa are the ones who end up going to jail.
- In Hawkeye, the reason Yelena Belova accepted a contract on Clint Barton is because she blamed him for Natasha's death. Thing is, Natasha died in a Heroic Sacrifice for the Soul Stone, and she actually fought Clint to do so (being heroes, they both wanted to sacrifice themselves for the other). Even when Clint tells her what happened, Yelena refuses to consider that Natasha's death was her own wish and not his fault. She eventually comes to terms with her grief for her surrogate sister and realized that she was only searching for someone to blame because she couldn't protect Natasha, and makes up with Clint.
- The Home Improvement episode "A House Divided" has everybody joining Benny in blaming Tim for Benny's house blowing up. However, it was actually Benny's fault because his house had a gas leak and he didn't unplug a lamp after Al told him to unplug all the electrical appliances, his reasoning being that the lamp only turns on when you clap - Tim, who didn't know about this, accidentally turned the lamp on by clapping. And yet Tim gets all the blame.
- Homicide: Life on the Street: Ben Roh uses bombs to kill everyone he blames for his father's murderer being declared innocent. He never actually goes after his father's killer and only after people who were just doing their jobs, such as the jury foreman, the defense attorney, the judge who upheld the verdict, and the prosecutor who lost the case. When Lewis questions him about why he never went after the killer directly, Ben replies he was saving the man for last.
- Invoked in one episode of iCarly when Freddie's teacher meets Spencer at the school. She hated Spencer when he was a student, but since he's an adult, she can't punish Spencer. Instead, she doles out punishments to Freddie until Spencer leaves the building. Freddie has to throw Spencer out before he could be expelled.
- Jessica Jones (2015):
- In "AKA 1,000 Cuts", a group of people (among them Jessica's neighbor Robyn, whose brother Ruben killed himself in Jessica's apartment on Kilgrave's orders) affected by Kilgrave's powers has been formed. When Jessica manages to capture Kilgrave, tie him down, and prevent him from using his powers, Robyn gets the group to attack Jessica, blaming her for everything Kilgrave has done, and free Kilgrave. The resulting fracas leads to Kilgrave getting away and recapturing his father, the group of Kilgrave survivors nearly killing themselves on his orders, and Hope Schlottman committing suicide.
- In "AKA 99 Friends", Jessica is hired by Audrey Eastman, a woman who ostensibly suspects her husband is cheating on her and wants Jessica to follow him. As it turns out, she wants to kill Jessica. Audrey's mother was killed in the Incident, and she blames the "gifted", instead of, you know, the aliens that were attacking the city while the Avengers were trying to save as many people as possible. This is before the fact that Jessica didn't even participate in that battle.
- Kenan & Kel: In "The April Fools", the Rockmores plan to attack Kenan with ice cream and hot fudge for a prank that was Kel's doing and of which Kenan had no knowledge. Even worse, the prank wasn't even meant for Roger.
- NUMB3RS:
- In "Judgement Day", the widow of a murdered cop kills the wife of the judge who presided over the murder trial, because the judge didn't give the killer the death penalty and she consequently blames him for the damage that her husband's murder did to her family. As opposed to, say, blaming the murderer.
- The killer in "Traffic" has this on multiple levels. First off, he was injured in a hit-and-run and consequently had no concrete person to blame for his own misfortune, so he displaced that rage by identifying with people who had suffered similar injuries and then taking revenge for those incidents. And secondly, he didn't just target people who directly caused accidents, but rather pretty much anyone who was involved other than the injury victims themselves — his targets included accident witnesses and even a tow truck driver.
- Law & Order:
- Jack McCoy's zealous prosecution of a drunk driver who killed three people — the man's actions are reprehensible, certainly, and fully deserving of a harsh prison term, but McCoy tries to prosecute the crime as the intentional murder of three people, even suppressing evidence that the man was drunk. It soon becomes obvious that his actions are motivated by the fact that the drunk driver who killed his lover Claire received a light sentence.
- "Suicide Box", the episode on which the below mentioned Law & Order: UK example was based. However, the perp was much younger (14) and the victim survived with only an injured arm.
- Law & Order: UK: Matt Devlin is killed in a drive-by shooting by a young man looking for revenge on the police for their poor handling of the investigation of his brother's murder, a screw-up he believed was racially-motivated. Problem is, not only was Matt not a bigot, he had nothing to do with the case (and probably would've been steaming mad about it). What's worse, the killer had an idea of who his brother's murderer was (a local drug dealer who may have been lying to gain street cred)—why not go after him or one of the cops who DID botch the case?
- The Lost Girl episode "Fae Day" sees brothers Liam and Sean learn that they have been in conflict with each other for the last few decades because of this; Sean genuinely thought that Liam stole money from the family's businesses and Liam thought everyone was blaming him for no reason. In reality, the money was stolen by their father to cover his gambling debts, he didn't expect his sons to discover the missing money, and he felt that he couldn't tell the truth without ruining his reputation.
- Madan Senki Ryukendo: Koichi Shiranami, Madan Fighter Ryujino, spent a whole decade believing that Chief Amachi was responsible for the magical explosion that killed his parents. However, after learning that the man was innocent, and had in fact saved his life, Koichi eventually found the true culprit, Bloodspray Baron Bloody, and vowed to send him to Hell.
- Merlin: King Odin tries to kill Arthur (twice!) because Arthur bested his son in a Duel to the Death. As Arthur tells it, the young, inexperienced prince challenged Arthur and Arthur could not refuse due to the knights' code. Arthur even (unsuccessfully, obviously) tried to convince the boy to withdraw his challenge.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: In Seasons 8-10, Pearl continues to subject Mike and the robots to bad movies as revenge for the death of her son, Dr. Forrester - despite the fact that not only did Mike have nothing to do with Forrester's death, but Pearl is the one who killed him, because she didn't get around to raising him better after he turned into a Star Baby.
- Ari David, the first Big Bad on NCIS, targeted Gibbs' team, vowed to make his life a living hell, and murdered Caitlin Todd because Gibbs just happens to remind him of Ari's father, the head of Mossad.
- The Big Bad of season 9 also suffers from this problem. His son was investigated by Gibbs in the past and transferred to another ship as punishment for his crimes... only the ship was later attacked by terrorists who killed him who exploited a design flaw. Instead of blaming the terrorists, he instead blames Gibbs and the Navy for his son's death and exploits two unknown flaws for extra chaos.
- Once Upon a Time: Regina's antagonism towards Snow White is very much this - the young Princess Snow, who had just lost her own mother, was manipulated by Regina's abusive mother Cora into revealing Regina's secret romance with her family's stable boy, Daniel. Cora soon murdered Daniel in front of Regina, leading to Regina devoting her life to gaining vengeance against Snow for this betrayal, even to the extent of occasionally allying with Cora to do so.
- Even if one concedes that Snow White bears some responsibility for her mistake (making Regina's actions toward her Disproportionate Retribution), everyone else that Regina curses had nothing to do with it.
- A season 4 episode even lampshades it when Regina says Emma should forgive her parents for lying to her and Emma retorts, "This from the woman who spent half her life punishing everyone around her for an eight-year-old not able to keep a secret."
- Revolution:
- "No Quarter" has Private Richards beat up Danny Matheson over the death of his best friend Templeton back in "Pilot". It's true that Danny pulled a crossbow on Templeton, but Templeton shot first. It's true that Danny shot Templeton with his crossbow, but one of the villagers named Caleb shot and killed Templeton. Clearly, Richards is after people who are indirectly responsible for the death.
- "The Longest Day" has Rachel Matheson reveal that she only wants to turn the power back on so the other factions will kill Sebastian Monroe, and she'll get her revenge for her son's death back in "The Stand". Earlier, Rachel tries to kill Major Tom Neville over her son's death, and had to be talked out of it by Charlie Matheson in "The Song Remains the Same". Rachel tries to go into Monroe's tent and blow them up with a live grenade in "Clue". "Children of Men" had Monroe himself say that he wasn't even there when she reveals why she's out to kill him. The thing is he's right, because one of Monroe's helicopters was firing wildly and Danny got caught in the crossfire. It wasn't like Monroe killed Danny personally.
- Smallville: Jonathan Kent holds a grudge against Lionel Luthor, so he treats his son Lex like dirt no matter how nice he is or how good of a friend he is to Clark.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: The episode "The Survivors", where members of an alien race kill a human who was married to a powerful being. In retaliation, this being kills the entire race, all fifty billion of them. He acted in a moment of rage and was horrified by what he'd done.
- Stranger Things: Jason decides Eddie is responsible for his girlfriend's murder and gathers up his friends to go lynch him for it, attacking Eddie's friends to get them to say where he is even though they have no clue. Even though Eddie is innocent and his friends are unaware of his connection to Jason's girlfriend, Jason later riles up other concerned townsfolk by saying the D & D club is responsible for the murders in town after Lucas misleads him and flees rather than be implicated in his planned murder of Eddie.
- Young Sheldon: In S1 E7 "A Brisket, Voodoo, and Cannonball Run", Georgie is grounded for eavesdropping on his parents arguing over Connie's treatment of George, when it was actually Missy who did it.
