History RoaringRampageOfRevenge / RealLife

* When seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynzpan learned that his family had been deported from Germany by the Nazis along with many others, he responded by gunning down Ernst vom Rath, a German official who he had been seeing, as a form of protest against what the Nazis were doing. Unfortunately for Grynzpan, and for a great many Jews still living in Germany, [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom this was just the excuse the Nazis were looking for to launch the infamous pogrom known as ''Kristallnacht'', the Night of Broken Glass, in which the SA, the Hitler Youth, and various German citizens smashed the windows of Jewish businesses, ransacked Jewish homes, burned down synagogues, and arrested no fewer than 30,000 Jews all throughout Germany in what would prove to be the beginning of one of the worst genocides of human history.]]

* After the Rodney King beating and the subsequent trial and acquittal of those involved, several people took to the streets and began damaging everything in sight.

* Poet [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou Maya Angelou]] was raped at the age of nine by her mother's boyfriend, who was convicted of the assault but received only a paltry sentence. Four days after his release, her rapist was found murdered; no official charges were ever laid, but it's generally believed that her uncles killed him in retaliation for the rape. Unfortunately, [[RealityEnsues this action only traumatized Angelou further]]; feeling that her words (in identifying him as her rapist) had led to his death, she became mute and remained so for nearly five years.

* After ''Kampfgruppe'' Peiper murdered a number of civilians and American prisoners of war (the "Malmedy Massacre") during the Battle of the Bulge, the U.S. Army made it part of their battle plan to destroy Joachim Peiper and his unit (a battlegroup of the 1st SS Panzer Division). Peiper ended up walking back in deep snow to the main German lines with no tanks and about 770 men remaining. But that was only the beginning. He and a number of his men were then tried after the war for the murders, convicted, and sentenced to death. The sentences were commuted, and Peiper was released from prison at the end of 1956. He moved to France in 1972, but when his identity was revealed in a local newspaper in 1976, his house was burned down with him in it. The case remains open to this day, as even the nationality of his killers (who called themselves "The Avengers") was unknown; Peiper had been accused of similar deeds in both Italy and Russia, generally involving burning down villages.

* On a recon mission in WWII, [[https://www.badassoftheweek.com/major?rq=leo%20major Leo Major's]] best friend Willy was killed by Nazis. Leo responded by strapping [[MoreDakka three machine guns to his back]], grabbing a sack of grenades, and went [[UnstoppableRage on the warpath]], leaving a trail of destruction so great the Nazis [[OneManArmy were convinced they were fighting an entire attack force]]. He proceeded to bust down a door and kill four Nazi high commanders before burning down the Gestapo headquarters nearby. He proved to be [[ImplacableMan such an unstoppable killing machine,]] the entire Nazi garrison ''retreated''.

* The United States in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. What was intended as a decisive attack that would scare off American intervention from Japan's conquest of the Far East instead pissed off the "nation of shopkeepers", such that they were drowning the Japanese in men, ships, and planes even by 1943 (the war ended in 1945), [[TheTokyoFireball burned pretty much every major city on the islands to the ground]] and [[NukeEm blew two more clean off the map with experimental weapons]] before they were finished.
** Quite infamously the United States during the Spanish-American War. While there is scant evidence that the explosion that sank the battleship ''Maine'' was deliberate, America was itching for a chance to go to war and took that as the best excuse. The following CurbStompBattle saw Spain lose the last of its colonial possessions to the United States, and other European Powers finally started taking the Americans seriously on the international stage.
* In March of 1944, Chindit George Cairns was involved in attack on a Japanese-held hill. When a Japanese officer hacked off his arm with a katana, he went berserk, killed him, grabbed the katana in his remaining arm, and sprinted up the hill, cutting down any Japanese soldier that was anywhere near him. He left a trail of blood and dead and wounded Japanese in his wake until he fell over dead from blood loss, [[SarcasmMode or because his blood-rage became so potent that it literally overloaded his mortal body and caused his spirit to transcend into the personification of war.]] You decide.

* "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind" - [[GeneralRipper Air Chief Marshall "Bomber" Harris, Royal Air Force.]] The British were so pissed off at German bombing of their country that they focused on attacking at night to demoralize the population rather than follow the USAF's doctrine of using them as precision strikes against enemy factories and such.

* In the 1970s, the guerrilla group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia) kidnapped prominent landowner Jesús Castaño and demanded a ransom. When the proper amount wasn't paid, the group killed Jesús and left his body in the jungle. The man's sons, Carlos and Fidel, immediately swore revenge and formed the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_Self-Defenders_of_Córdoba_and_Urabá ACCU]]. They then went about slaughtering just about every single member of FARC they could find, burning entire villages that were living near Communist strongholds and putting to death anyone who had a remote connection to the group.

* In the 1970s, the guerrilla group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia) kidnapped prominent landowner Jesús Castaño and demanded a ransom. When the proper amount wasn't paid, the group killed Jesús and left his body in the jungle. The man's sons, Carlos and Fidel, immediately swore revenge and formed the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_Self-Defenders_of_Córdoba_and_Urabí ACCU]]. They then went about slaughtering just about every single member of FARC they could find, burning entire villages that were living near Communist strongholds and putting to death anyone who had a remote connection to the group.

* In the 1970s, the guerrilla group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia) kidnapped prominent landowner Jesus Castano and demanded a ransom. When the proper amount wasn't paid, the group killed Jesus and left his body in the jungle. The man's sons, Carlos and Fidel, immediately swore revenge and formed the ACUU. They then went about slaughtering just about every single member of FARC they could find, burning entire villages that were living near Communist strongholds and putting to death anyone who had a remote connection to the group.

** And the burning fire of Soviet vengeance only got hotter when the Red Army discovered the real reason why the Nazis wanted Russia and the fate that awaited every Slav had the Nazis actually won. With the deaths by starvation of a ''majority'' of Soviet [=POWs=] (along with millions of Soviet civilians) under the Nazi Hunger Plan, the ''Generalplan Ost'' scheme to replace the Slavic population with German colonists, and the discovery of the death camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz, the Great Patriotic War became more about the Slavic peoples' fighting for the right to ''exist''.

** And the burning fire of Soviet vengeance only got hotter when the Red Army discovered the real reason why the Nazis wanted Russia and the fate that awaited every Slav had the Nazis actually won. With the deaths by starvation of a ''majority'' of Soviet POWs (along with millions of Soviet civilians) under the Nazi Hunger Plan, the ''Generalplan Ost'' scheme to replace the Slavic population with German colonists, and the discovery of the death camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz, the Great Patriotic War became more about the Slavic peoples' fighting for the right to ''exist''.

** And the burning fire of Soviet vengeance only got hotter when the Red Army discovered the real reason why the Nazis wanted Russia and the fate that awaited every Slav had the Nazis actually won. With the discovery of Auschwitz, the Nazi ideology of ''lebensraum'' (living space), and the brutal tactic of the Hunger Plan, the Great Patriotic War became more about the Slavic peoples' fighting for the right to ''exist''.

* When Bashkirian Airways Tupolev 154 and DHL cargo Boeing 757 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Überlingen_mid-air_collision collided over Überlingen]], southern Germany in 2002, 74 people were killed. Among those were the wife and two children of Ossetian architect Vitaly Kaloyev. The accident was caused in part by air traffic control error; the flaw that caused the accident was a systemic issue more than a problem with any one man,[[note]]in fact, a similar accident had been narrowly averted a year earlier,[[/note]] but Kaloyev blamed the controller who had been on duty and hired a private investigator to find out who it was. It turned out to be a Danish man named Peter Nielsen. So [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Kaloyev Kaloyev tracked him down]] at his Zürich home on 24 February 2004 and ''stabbed him to death with a knife'' [[OhCrap in front of Nielsen's wife and three children]]. The Swiss police arrested him and he was tried and convicted for murder. He was released from prison on basis of insanity in November 2007 and banished from Switzerland. He received a hero's welcome home in Russia, and he was nominated as the Minister of Public Constructions in Ossetia.

* "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind" - [[GeneralRipper Air Chief Marshall "Bomber" Harris, Royal Air Force.]] He wasn't kidding. The reason the USAF bombed by day and the British at night? The USAF believed that the best use of bombers was precision strikes against German factories. The RAF believed that the fact that the factories were intact made no difference so long as the people that worked them got no sleep, had no homes, and were demoralized and depressed.

* While most movies hinge on this premise, this is ''not'' a good thing for most people to do or think of doing if a friend or family member gets raped/beaten/otherwise traumatized at the hands of others. Apart from the many obvious legal problems involved, since they're already terrified and vulnerable, [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness bloodthirsty rage from their previously non-threatening loved ones]] will usually freak the victim out ''even more''.

* On a recon mission in WWII, [[http://www.badassoftheweek.com/leomajor.html Leo Major's]] best friend Willy was killed by Nazis. Leo responded by strapping [[MoreDakka three machine guns to his back]], grabbing a sack of grenades, and went [[UnstoppableRage on the warpath]], leaving a trail of destruction so great the Nazis [[OneManArmy were convinced they were fighting an entire attack force]]. He proceeded to bust down a door and kill four Nazi high commanders before burning down the Gestapo headquarters nearby. He proved to be [[ImplacableMan such an unstoppable killing machine,]] the entire Nazi garrison ''retreated''.

* The United States in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
** Quite infamously the United States during the Spanish-American War.

* When 14th century French noblewoman Jeanne de Clisson's husband was betrayed by his best friend and executed for treason, she sold all the Clisson lands to buy a fleet of warships, painted them black and dyed the sails red, and made herself a pirate admiral who only attacked French ships. If she found any noblemen aboard, she would execute them by beheading, the same fate that ended her husband's life. But she would always leave at least one sailor alive, so she could send him off with a message -- "Tell the king of France that [[BadassBoast the Lioness of Brittany is coming for him]]." (She never did get to kill the king, but the aid she provided to the English side likely played a significant role in the English victory at Crecy, one of the most important battles of the Hundred Years' War.)

** As well as the failed revenge campaign of Pompey the Great's son, Sextus, against the Second Triumvirate of Octavian, Antony and Lepidus.
** Antony was not as vengeful as you might think. While it's true that Antony and Caesar were close friends for much of their lives as well as cousins they were not on particularly good terms when Caesar was assassinated. To compound matters everyone (including Antony) expected him to be Caesar's primary heir, but when the will was read Antony's name was not even mentioned. Plutarch went as far as to suggest that Antony knew about the plot and allowed it to happen, and for his part Antony actually pardoned the assassins at first. Though he famously denounced them as murderers during his eulogy of Caesar. (Octavian on the other hand epitomized this trope, going as far as to recruit an army and march on Rome while he was ''nineteen''.)

* When [[Series/CrocodileHunter Steve Irwin]] died, some Australians did not take his death well and condemned the stingrays, the creature that killed him (in self-defence). Thus, shortly after, the mutilated remains of several stingrays were found on Australian beaches: [[ExtremeMeleeRevenge dragged ashore with their tails symbolically hacked off, before being violently tortured to death.]] Irwin's friends took notice and condemned the mutilators, because [[FriendToAllLivingThings Irwin]] wouldn't have wanted a retribution on those who caused his death. In other words, the same animals that Steve Irwin dedicated his life to ''preserving''.

* 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 [[http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/phoolan_devi/7.html folk hero eventually elected to Parliament]]. Fictionalized as the film ''Bandit Queen''.
* When Queen Boudica's husband died, the Roman moneylender Seneca called in a debt of 40,000,000 sesterces (a debt the Iceni neither agreed to nor wanted). The men sent in to collect this debt also had Boudica flogged and raped her two daughters in front of her. In response Boudica rallied a massive army of rebel Celts and led a bloody crusade against the Romans occupying Britain. Before she was stopped, she massacred three of Britain's largest Roman cities, slaughtering at least 70,000 civilians in the process. It required three entire Roman legions to finally bring her down.
** That is, the first legion that tried it found itself outnumbered fifty to one at least, so no surprise at the result there (all the infantry were wiped out, some of the cavalry and the senior officers escaped). Boudica's last battle, the Battle of Watling Street, saw her faced by two legions, mustering about 5% of her own numbers. It was a complete CurbStompBattle, but not the way Boudica was hoping. Afterwards The Roman Legions - many of whom doubtlessly lost someone in Boudica's sackings and were pissed - took their own revenge. They completely cut her men to pieces, chased down those who tried to flee, and after the fight some of the Roman soldiers butchered the families of the rebels (they were brought out to watch the expected victory from a safe distance). After Boudica was DrivenToSuicide by her defeat, the Roman's forcibly relocated the remaining Iceni to a Romanized town and launched retaliatory attacks against the other tribes for good measure.

*** This was also the reason for Arminius betrayal. As a son of a Germanic chieftain he had been sent to Rome as a hostage and had been educated there, even reaching the rank of equites. But that did not change the fact that the Romans had taken him away from his family and stolen his life. Three Legions worth of Romans rather regreted that.

** This is one reason why you shouldn't [[ShootTheMessenger shoot the messenger. Especially Genghis Khan's messenger.]] It should be mentioned that it was a messenger of peace, and that Genghis Khan sent them messengers twice, basically giving them a second chance after killing his first messengers. After the second time, well, he destroyed them all.
** Though to be fair, kingdoms that ''did'' surrender to him usually had to endure a period of RapePillageAndBurn before the Mongol Hordes moved on, so its somewhat understandable that his emissaries weren't exactly popular.

* John "Liver-Eating" Johnson. Mountain man in the American west, Crow Indians killed his pregnant wife. He proceeded to spend the next twenty five years hunting down the Crow, killing them, taking a bite out of their livers and spitting it out, declaring it unfit to eat as an insult. After amassing a body count of roughly forty, the Crows finally decided to make peace with him, inviting him into the tribe and making him an honorary chieftain.
* Prior to becoming one of the victims in the Wonderland Murders, Ron Launius was a mercenary and a drug dealer who was a suspect in over two dozen murder cases, but could never be convicted because of the sudden deaths of so many of the witnesses. He once made a trip to Mexico to buy from members of a drug cartel, but they instead robbed him and held his wife for ransom. Launius robbed two banks to pay his wife's ransom, then killed the kidnappers anyway. He also killed the men who had set up the deal.

* The Barbary Pirates demanded tribute from a certain [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks obscure new nation]] on the grounds that NobodyEverComplainedBefore. The result was that the [[ThisMeansWar US Navy]] came after them and spent several years beating on them. During the UsefulNotes/WarOf1812 the Barbary Pirates went back to their old tricks and afterwards the US Navy returned and gave them another whaling.[[note]]This is where "the shores of Tripoli" in the [[SemperFi Marine Corps]] anthem comes from, being the place where the Corps saw its first action overseas and kicked pirate ass.[[/note]] At this the British decided that the colonials had a pretty good idea going, peace having broken out in Europe. So they sent the [[OhCrap Royal Navy]] after them. Having their own beef with them and seeing the pirates finally weak, [[RuleOfThree the Kingdom of Sardinia attacked them too]]. Finally after all that was done, the French simply landed and conquered the whole area.

* After Prince Igor of Kiev was killed by the tribe of Drevlians, they sent 20 ambassadors to his widow, Princess Olga, to convince her to marry their Prince Mal. She buried them alive. After that she asked Mal to send his best men to help her on her journey to him. She invited them to the bathhouse, locked them up and set the building on fire. Then she invited some more Drevlians to her husband's funeral, and, after they were drunken, killed about 5,000 of them. And then Olga went to war against them, and defeated them, and burned down their capital Iskorosten.

* "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind" - [[GeneralRipper Air Chief Marshall "Bomber" Harris, Royal Air Force.]] He wasn't kidding. The reason the USAF bombed by day and the British at night? The USAF believed that the best use of bombers was precision strikes against German factories. The RAF believed that the fact that the factories were intact made no difference so long as the people that worked them got no sleep, had no homes, and were demoralized and depressed.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Southern_California_shootings Christopher Dorner]], after having been dismissed from the LAPD, went on one, posting a long, rambling manifesto, in which he named specific officers he wanted to kill, killed the daughter of the attorney who represented him at the hearing where he was dismissed, as well as her fiancé, before killing a police officer and running up to Big Bear mountain range, where he killed another officer, and holed himself up in a cabin. Then the police themselves got in on the act, deciding [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan the Klingons were wrong and revenge is a dish best served]] ''piping hot'', they set the cabin on fire with the intention of watching him burn alive (the Sheriff officially denied this, of course, but few believe it), [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled though in the end he shot himself to deny them the satisfaction]].
* The entire [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusitanian_War Lusitanian War]] was a big rampage of revenge against the increasingly expansionist Roman Republic. When Rome pretended to make peace with the tired Lusitanians over war and land, only to slaughter 10,000 men women and children, huge numbers of them spent the next 3 years randomly attacking Roman territories and allies but slowly failing. Just as it looked like Rome would wipe out the last resisting warriors, a survivor named [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viriathus Viriathus]] of that same earlier massacre reminded them of why they had been fighting. Knowing how Romans fought, he managed to save the several thousand cornered warriors without a loss, leading to a renewed 8 year leadership of revenge against Rome. His leadership caused so much distress in Rome that other tribes rebelled, and the recruitment rate in Rome dropped, especially after three legions were lost in the war against the Lusitanians alone. However, the trope is somewhat subverted in that eventually he later spared an army of Romans for peace, knowing that over time, the war would simply drain his peoples' numbers, only for the peace treaty to be reneged and himself assassinated. Ironically enough his death triggered another brief rampage or revenge, but without his leadership it failed. Adding to the confusion, the Romans ended up making peace later by giving this tribe exactly what they asked for before this entire mess began: fertile land.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa Pancho Villa]] himself went on this trope after his war effort against a corrupt Mexican government was virtually starved by an US presidential ban of aid to his forces. He found himself so embittered that he raided a train and had its 18 US occupants stripped naked and executed. Villa later also lead 500 men to raid Columbus, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Columbus_(1916) New Mexico]] for supplies and not only attempted to look, but willingly attacked anyone on site with his men, setting homes on fire. Unfortunately for his men, they were beaten back with high losses. The US President and his people were not pleased, and sent a 4,800 man strong army to hunt him down. Though they never suceeded in catching Villa himself, they did manage almost entirely dismantle his revolution.

The Viceroy threw his recently arrived replacement in jail, scrapped together 18 ships for a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Diu punitive expedition]], and sailed off for some bloody revenge. The Gujarat governor of Diu sent him a messenger, to whom he basically replied that he was going to Diu to kick the ass of the guys who killed his son and of those who helped them, and that if the Mamluks were gone by the time he arrived, then all his fury would fall on the city alone...\\

The city was garrisoned and forced to pay a hefty indemnification, but the Mamluk prisoners were hanged, burned alive or tied to the [[LudicrousGibs mouths of the cannons and blown to pieces]].

* In the 1970s, the guerrila group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia) kidnapped prominent landowner Jesus Castano and demanded a ransom. When the proper amount wasn't paid, the group killed Jesus and left his body in the jungle. The man's sons, Carlos and Fidel, immediately swore revenge and formed the ACUU. They then went about slaughtering just about every single member of FARC they could find, burning entire villages that were living near Communist strongholds and putting to death anyone who had a remote connection to the group.
* The Romans were infamous for what they did to allies that betrayed them, or subjects that rebelled, and did not surrender in time when the Romans came for them. Here's the two most infamous occasions:

** The Romans first came to Judaea when the Jews called them in as protectors, and were comprehensibly ''pissed'' when they rebelled. When the Romans were finished, ''over one million Jews'' had been killed, 97,000 others were sold as slaves, most of the others had left Judaea, and Jerusalem had been ''completely'' destroyed save for a single wall of the Temple.
* The UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire was the continuation of the eastern half of the Roman Empire, and just like their colleagues in the west you provoked them at your own peril. Best shown by what happened in the last Roman-Persian War: thanks to the Byzantine being weakened by infighting, attacks from Bulgars and Avars and starting the war under Phocas, the ''worst'' of the Byzantine emperors, the Persians of the Sassanid dynasty were overrunning the Byzantine empire, the situation being so bad that Heraclius, who had become emperor after personally killing Phocas, was considering moving the capital to Carthage to rule on the oversea territories only when Persian emperor Khosrau II sent him a most offensive letter[[note]]"Khosrau, greatest of Gods, and master of the earth, to Heraclius, his vile and insensate slave. Why do you still refuse to submit to our rule, and call yourself a king? Have I not destroyed the Greeks? You say that you trust in your God. Why has he not delivered out of my hand Caesarea, Jerusalem, and Alexandria? And shall I not also destroy Constantinople? But I will pardon your faults if you submit to me, and come hither with your wife and children; and I will give you lands, vineyards, and olive groves, and look upon you with a kindly aspect. Do not deceive yourself with vain hope in that Christ, who was not able to save himself from the Jews, who killed him by nailing him to a cross. Even if you take refuge in the depths of the sea, I will stretch out my hand and take you, whether you will or no."[[/note]], at which point the ''entire'' population of the Byzantine Empire became willing to all sacrifices to make the Persians pay, and they did: when the Persians surrendered, the frontier was back where it was at the start of the war, the Persian military was barely holding on, a Byzantine army led personally by Heraclius had stopped short of the Persian capital, Khosrau had been assassinated and replaced by one of his least favourite sons, and the death of the latter plunged the Persian Empire into civil war.

* While most movies hinge on this premise, this is ''not'' a good thing for most people to do or think of doing if a friend or family member gets raped/beaten/otherwise traumatized at the hands of others. Apart from the many obvious legal problems involved, since they're already terrified and vulnerable, [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness bloodthirsty rage from their previously nonthreatening loved ones]] will usually freak the victim out ''even more''.

* In the Second World War, after [[CurbStompBattle the Battle of the Denmark Strait]], in which the German battleship ''Bismarck'' sank the HMS ''Hood'' with a single salvo, UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill gave a single order: sink the ''Bismarck''. The entire Royal Navy took the ''Hood'''s sinking personally and so every RN ship in the Atlantic and some from the Mediterranean were directed to find and sink the ''Bismarck'' at any cost. They proceeded to chase her down and [[DeathByAThousandCuts disable her rudder, then her bridge and fire control]], leaving her a wreck that was scuttled by her own crew. Afterwords, the professionalism of the RN took over again and Admiral John Tovey, commander of the British Home Fleet and the guy in charge of the search for the ''Bismarck'', remarked [[WorthyOpponent "The Bismarck had put up a most gallant fight against impossible odds worthy of the old days of the Imperial German Navy, and she went down with her colours flying"]].
* Poet [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou Maya Angelou]] was raped at the age of nine by her mother's boyfriend, who was convicted of the assault but recieved only a paltry sentence. Four days after his release, her rapist was found murdered; no official charges were ever laid, but it's generally believed that her uncles killed him in retaliation for the rape. Unfortunately, [[RealityEnsues this action only traumatized Angelou further]]; feeling that her words (in identifying him as her rapist) had led to his death, she became mute and remained so for nearly five years.

*** However; Even Emperor Nero was disgusted the overkill of the Roman soldiers and had two of the guys responsible for starting the whole thing (the broken promises to Boudicca's late husband, King Prasutagus [[note]]...who was fine with being under Rome but only under certain circumstances that benefitted both[[/note]] heavy taxation and the unneccessary rape and whipping of Boudicca and her daughters) [[note]]Gaius Suetonius Paulinus and Catus Deicianus[[/note]], sacked and replaced by more reasonable officials [[note]]A small bit of consolation for 'Team Boudicca'. Had Suetonius and Catus done the right thing, honored the agreement with Prasutagus and treated Boudica and her daughters with respect, there wouldn't have been a violent rebellion in which Badass Queen Boudica trashed several settlements and a Roman legion. Thus; At least the two Roman guys behind the mess got punished.[[note]].

*** However; Even Emperor Nero was disgusted the overkill of the Roman soldiers and had the two guys responsible for starting the whole thing (the broken promises to Boudicca's late husband, King Prasutagus [[note]]...who was fine with being under Rome but only under certain circumstances that benefitted both[[/note]] heavy taxation and the unneccessary rape and whipping of Boudicca and her daughters) [[note]]Gaius Suetonius Paulinus and Catus Deicianus[[/note]], sacked and replaced by more reasonable officials [[note]]A small bit of consolation for 'Team Boudicca'. Had Suetonius and Catus done the right thing, honored the agreement with Prasutagus and treated Boudica and her daughters with respect, there wouldn't have been a violent rebellion in which Badass Queen Boudica trashed several settlements and a Roman legion. Thus; At least the two Roman guys behind the mess got punished.[[note]].

* When [[Series/CrocodileHunter Steve Irwin]] died, some Australians did not take his death well and condemned the stingrays, the creature that killed him (in self-defence). Thus, shortly after, several mutilated stingrays were found near some of Australian beaches. Irwin's friends took notice and condemned the mutilators, because Irwin wouldn't have wanted a retribution on those who caused his death. You know... the same animals that Steve Irwin dedicated his life to preserving.

* In March of 1944, Chindit George Cairns was involved in attack on a Japanese-held hill. When a Japanese officer hacked off his arm with a katana, he went berserk, killed him, grabbed the katana in his remaining arm, and sprinted up the hill, cutting down any Japanese soldier that was anywhere near him. He left a trail of blood and dead and wounded Japanese in his wake until he fell over dead. From blood loss from his severed arm.

* [[AwesomeMcCoolName Buford Pusser]] was a sheriff in Tennessee who was riding with his wife to a call when a car pulled up and fired on them, killing her and critically wounding him. He [[OneManArmy single-handedly killed every man]] and then went on to wage a war on moonshining, illegal gambling, and several other criminal activities in his county before dying in a car accident. This man was so awesome that not [[Film/WalkingTall1973 one,]] but ''[[Film/WalkingTall2004 two]]'' movies were made based on his story, the second of which starred Wrestling/DwayneJohnson.

** Supposedly, the reason the Drevlians killed Igor is because, after coming with a large force to take the yearly tribute, he got greedy and came back with a token force to take even more. Seeing their chance, the Drevlians easily overcame his bodyguards, tied him to two bent tree trunks, and let go. They, obviously, didn't think about the consequences.
* Some scholars believe the Viking Age was kickstarted as revenge for Charlemagne's wars on the Saxons.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Southern_California_shootings Christopher Dorner]], after having been dismissed from the LAPD, went on one, posting a long, rambling manifesto, in which he named specific officers he wanted to kill, killed the daughter of the attorney who represented him at the hearing where he was dismissed, as well as her fiancé, before killing a police officer and running up to Big Bear mountain range, where he killed another officer, and holed himself up in a cabin. Then the police themselves got in on the act, deciding [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan the Klingons were wrong and revenge is a dish best served]] ''piping hot'', they set the cabin on fire with the intention of watching him burn alive (the Sheriff officially denied this, of course, but few believe it), [[BettertoDieThanBeKilled though in the end he shot himself to deny them the satisfaction]].
* The entire [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusitanian_War Lusitanian War]] was a big rampage of revenge against the increasingly expansionist Roman Republic. When Rome pretended to make peace with the tired Lusitanians over war and land, only to slaughter 10,000 men women and children, huge numbers of them spent the next 3 years randomly attacking Roman territories and allies but slowly failing. Just as it looked like Rome would wipe out the last resisting warriors, a survivor named [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viriathus Viriathus]] of that same earlier massacre reminded them of why they had been fighting. Knowing how Romans fought, he managed to save the several thousand cornered warriors without a loss, leading to a renewed 8 year leadership of revenge against Rome. His leadership caused so much distress in Rome that other tribes rebelled, and he recruitment rate in Rome dropped, especially after three legions were lost in the war against the Lusitanians alone. However, the trope is somewhat subverted in that eventually he later spared an army of Romans for peace, knowing that over time, the war would simply drain his peoples numbers, only for the peace treaty to be reneged and himself assassinated. Ironically enough his death triggered another brief rampage or revenge, but without his leadership it failed. Adding to the confusion, the Romans ended up making peace later by giving this tribe exactly what they asked for before this entire mess began: fertile land.
* Adolf Hitler considered World War 2 as revenge against Europe for the Treaty of Versailles.

** During the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Second Punic Wars]], the Greek city-states of Sicily, allied with Rome, switched sides after [[CurbStompBattle the Carthaginian triumph at Cannae]]. Rome replied sending against them the survivors of Cannae led by their best general, Marcellus, who razed two cities and then started besieging Syracuse while his troops sent raiding parties. The Sicilians were not impressed, especially as the Romans were failing against Syracuse's walls and Archimedes' inventions... And then the Romans broke through, [[RapePillageAndBurn sacked and demolished the city, and slaughtered anyone but those who could be useful, raped and/or enslaved (and some of those categories too, as Archimedes was mistaken for an old fool and killed)]]. Sicily became a Roman province as soon as the other city-states were informed of what had just happened.

* King Abdullah II of UsefulNotes/{{Jordan}}, also a career [[UsefulNotes/WarriorsOfDesertWinds military officer]], definitely qualifies. Near the end of 2016, ISIS captured a Jordanian pilot who was shot down during airstrikes against the group's capital in Syria, wanting to trade him for a woman imprisoned in the country for helping plan a suicide bombing in which 60 people died. After Jordan turned ISIS down, they burned the pilot alive and posted the video online. Abdullah was in Washington attending a meeting with a [[SemperFi US Marine]] when he found out what ISIS had done. According to the Marine, the King immediately launched into Creator/ClintEastwood's revenge speech from ''Film/{{Unforgiven}}'', and that his only concern was that he wouldn't have enough fuel and munitions to take out ISIS. When he returned to Jordan, he had the female prisoner ISIS wanted to exchange publicly hanged. That was followed by the execution of a man arrested for plotting to bring ISIS to the country. The King then went to the family of the murdered pilot to personally express condolences and promise revenge. Then came the first of a series of airstrikes against ISIS leadership. Reports out of Jordan indicated that the King himself flew the lead aircraft, though the government officially denied it.
* In the Second World War, after [[CurbStompBattle the Battle of the Denmark Strait]], in which the German battleship ''Bismarck'' sank the HMS ''Hood'' with a single salvo, Winston Churchill gave a single order: sink the ''Bismarck''. The entire Royal Navy took the ''Hood'''s sinking personally and so every RN ship in the Atlantic and some from the Mediterranean were directed to find and sink the ''Bismarck'' at any cost. They proceeded to chase her down and [[DeathByAThousandCuts disable her rudder, then her bridge and fire control]], leaving her a wreck that was scuttled by her own crew. Afterwords, the professionalism of the RN took over again and Admiral John Tovey, commander of the British Home Fleet and the guy in charge of the search for the ''Bismarck'', remarked [[WorthyOpponent "The Bismarck had put up a most gallant fight against impossible odds worthy of the old days of the Imperial German Navy, and she went down with her colours flying"]].

* When seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynzpan learned that his family had been deported from Germany by the Nazis along with many others, he responded by gunning down Ernst vom Rath, a German official who he had been seeing, as a form of protest against what the Nazis were doing. Unfortunately for Grynzpan, and for a great many Jews still living in Germany, this was just the excuse the Nazis were looking for to launch the infamous pogrom known as ''Kristallnacht'', the Night of Broken Glass, in which the SA and the Hitler Youth smashed the windows of Jewish businesses, ransacked Jewish homes, burned down synagogues, and arrested no fewer than 30,000 Jews all throughout Germany in what would prove to be the beginning of one of the worst genocides of human history.

* When Bashkirian Airways Tupolev 154 and DHL cargo Boeing 757 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Überlingen_mid-air_collision collided over Überlingen]], southern Germany in 2002, 74 people were killed. Among those were the wife and two children of Ossetian architect Vitaly Kaloyev. The accident was caused in part by air traffic control error; the flaw that caused the accident was a systemic issue more than a problem with any one man[[note]]in fact, a similar accident had been narrowly averted a year earlier[[/note]], but Kaloyev blamed the controller who had been on duty and hired a private investigator to find out who it was. It turned out to be a Danish man named Peter Nielsen. So [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Kaloyev Kaloyev tracked him down]] at his Zürich home on 24 February 2004 and ''stabbed him to death with a knife'' [[OhCrap in front of Nielsen's wife and three children]]. The Swiss police arrested him and he was tried and convicted for murder. He was released from prison on basis of insanity in November 2007 and banished from Switzerland. He received a hero's welcome home in Russia, and he was nominated as the Minister of Public Constructions in Ossetia.

* When Bashkirian Airways Tupolev 154 and DHL cargo Boeing 757 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Überlingen_mid-air_collision collided over Überlingen]], southern Germany in 2002, 74 people were killed. Among those were the wife and two children of Ossetian architect Vitaly Kaloyev. The accident was caused in part by air traffic control error; the flaw that caused the accident was a systemic issue more than a problem with any one man, but Kaloyev blamed the controller who had been on duty and hired a private investigator to find out who it was. It turned out to be a Danish man named Peter Nielsen. So [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Kaloyev Kaloyev tracked him down]] at his Zürich home on 24 February 2004 and ''stabbed him to death with a knife'' [[OhCrap in front of Nielsen's wife and three children]]. The Swiss police arrested him and he was tried and convicted for murder. He was released from prison on basis of insanity in November 2007 and banished from Switzerland. He received a hero's welcome home in Russia, and he was nominated as the Minister of Public Constructions in Ossetia.

* When Bashkirian Airways Tupolev 154 and DHL cargo Boeing 757 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Überlingen_mid-air_collision collided over Überlingen]], southern Germany in 2002, 74 people were killed. Among those were wife and two kids of Ossetian architect Vitaly Kaloyev. The accident was due to flight control error (That's only partially true, there was the Bashkirian's pilots failure to follow TCAS) Kaloyev hired a private investigator to find out the individual flight controller who had been at job at that fateful night. It turned out to be a Danish man named Peter Nielsen. So [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Kaloyev Kaloyev tracked him down]], and ''stabbed him to death with a knife'' [[OhCrap in front of Nielsen's wife and three children]] at his Zürich home on 24 February 2004. The Swiss police tracked him and he was sentenced for murder. He was released from prison on basis of insanity in November 2007 and banished from Switzerland. He received a hero's welcome home in Russia, and he was nominated as the Minister of Public Constructions in Ossetia.

* Kristallnacht was seen as this by the German people.

* The entire [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusitanian_War Lusitanian War]] was a big rampage of revenge against the increasingly expansionist Roman Republic. When Rome pretended to make peace with the tired Lusitanians over war and land, only to slaughter 10,000 men women and children. Huge numbers of them spent the next 3 years randomly attacking Roman territories and allies but slowly failing. Just as it looked like Rome would wipe out the last resisting warriors, a survivor named [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viriathus Viriathus]] of that same earlier massacre reminded them of why they had been fighting. Knowing how Romans fought, he managed to save the several thousand cornered warriors without a loss, leading to a renewed 8 year leadership of revenge against Rome. His leadership caused so much distress in Rome that other tribes rebelled, The recruitment rate in Rome dropped, especially after three legions were lost in the war against the Lusitanians alone. However, the trope is somewhat subverted in that eventually he later spared an army of Romans for peace, knowing that over time, the war would simply drain his peoples numbers, only for the peace treaty to be reneged and himself assassinated. Ironically enough his death triggered another brief rampage or revenge but without his leadership it failed. Adding to the confusion, the Roman's ended up making peace later by giving this tribe exactly what they asked for before this entire mess began, fertile land.