Cycles of Revenge in Video Games.
- The conflict between humans and Adepts in Azure Striker Gunvolt. Humans hate Adepts for their powers and the fact that Adepts have attempted to Take Over the World and have caused massive damage to it, and want to either kill them all or subject them to harsh experimentation to "control" them. Adepts hate humans for treating them like sub-humans, capturing and imprisoning them unjustly, experimenting on them to control them, or just trying to kill them for the crime of having powers, thus leading them to want to wipe humanity off the map and Take Over the World. Things are "relatively" peaceful now, but a few sparks on either side are all that's needed to start a full-out war again.
- Bleeding Sun: Yori seeks to defeat Ichiro, and on the neutral route, he's doing it both to preserve his family honor and seek revenge for his father. In both endings of the neutral route, Ichiro's son Genji will seek revenge against whoever kills his father. In the ending where Yori deals the finishing blow, Genji kills Kenzou and goes into hiding to look for an opportunity to kill Yori. In the ending where Haruki kills Ichirou, Haruki allows Genji to kill him in order to end the cycle.
- Played for (rather dark) laughs in Borderlands 2 with the feud between the Zaford and Hodunk families, who hire the Vault Hunter to carry out increasingly brutal attacks against each other, completely oblivious to the fact that their chosen agent is Playing Both Sides. It all ends with a final showdown between the clans, where the Vault Hunter throws their lot in with one side and aids them in completely wiping out their rivals. (Later games confirm that the BL2 Vault Hunters canonically sided with the Hodunks)
- Bravely Second touches upon this through Janne, who is more than willing to kill Othar's house (but not Othar himself as he hadn't done anything to him) for having masssacred his own house. Yew eventually asks Janne the futility of continuing the cycle of revenge if it's just going to continue happening with his actions giving no happy ending to either side. This finally convinces Janne to stop his own need for revenge and defects from the Glanz Empire.
- Invoked in the Burnout series, namely Revenge onward. It keeps track of everybody you've started a rivalry with, and rewards you for getting revenge or keeping your rival from doing so.
- Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Elen's idea of avenging his mother is punishing whoever he feels responsible with a Fantastic Nuke, which was used in the previous war. Perna calls out that he's just going to continue the suffering.
- The Nature of the Beast Quest in Dragon Age: Origins revolves around a vicious Cycle of Revenge. Long ago, a group of humans attacked the Dalish Elves in the Brecilian Forest, killing the son and raping the daughter (who was later Driven to Suicide upon learning that she was pregnant) of the elven Keeper Zathrian. In his rage and grief, Zathrian summoned a forest spirit and bound it in the body of a wolf using his own blood, creating Witherfang. Witherfang then cursed the humans, and turned them into the first werewolves. Centuries later, those humans' descendants are still cursed. Under the guidance of Witherfang (who gained sentience and intelligence as the Lady of the Forest), this new generation of werewolves are attacking the Dalish and spreading the curse to them, partly for revenge against Zathrian (who is still alive because he is bound to Witherfang) and partly because they are trying to force Zathrien to undo his curse. The werewolves believe they are being unfairly punished for their ancestors' crimes. Zathrian believes that their current actions prove that they are just as savage as their ancestors and deserve the curse no less. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide how this cycle is resolved.
- Even if you cure the werewolves and end the curse, the cycle threatens to perpetuate itself with Dalish elves who now want revenge on the former werewolves for killing members of their clan. Hawke can encounter the daughter of a Dalish hunter-turned werewolf in Dragon Age II who is threatening to murder one of these former werewolves. Hawke can choose to peacefully resolve the situation, leave the former werewolf to his fate, or kill the elf and her companions.
- This Trope also comes to play if you're a Human Noble. The Warden avenges his/her parents' murders by killing Arl Howe during the last 1/4 of the game. Later, in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, one of your first party member candidates is his son Nathaniel, who was about to assasinate the Warden as a revenge for his father's death, but got captured for trespassing before he had the chance to slip a dagger between his target's ribs. Part of Nathaniel's Character Development later on is cutting the cycle once he learns and understands what a bastard his father was and that he had it coming.
- This is repeatedly noted to be a recurring problem between mages and Templars. The few mages who would abuse their powers regardless lash out at the Templars. The Templars judge all mages by that example and lash out in kind. This causes otherwise reasonable mages to resent the Templars, making them lash out. Things repeated this way until it got to the point where things exploded both literally and metaphorically.
- Even if you cure the werewolves and end the curse, the cycle threatens to perpetuate itself with Dalish elves who now want revenge on the former werewolves for killing members of their clan. Hawke can encounter the daughter of a Dalish hunter-turned werewolf in Dragon Age II who is threatening to murder one of these former werewolves. Hawke can choose to peacefully resolve the situation, leave the former werewolf to his fate, or kill the elf and her companions.
- In Dwarf Fortress, tantrum spirals can involve this. A berserk dwarf will in some way anger another dwarf, whether by killing a loved one or destroying a valued possession, causing them to take revenge or go berserk themselves and repeat the pattern.
- Discussed by the peaceful Sahagin Clutchfather Novv in Final Fantasy XIV. Years past, he was a terrifying pirate with a known penchant for bloodshed. Returning from a raid, he found the vast majority of his children slaughtered, their bodies left in a pile by those seeking vengeance against him. Hitting the Despair Event Horizon, he realized his role in the cycle, and strove to end it. One of his surviving children, however, was all too happy to perpetuate it...
- This concept is the foundation of the plot in Final Fantasy XIV's first expansion, Heavensward. A thousand years ago, Ishgardians murdered Ratatoskr, one of the First Brood of dragons. This sent many of the dragons, particularly Ratatoskr's brood-brother Nidhogg, into a rage; they've spent the past thousand years extracting their revenge. This, in turn, has caused countless casualties for the Ishgardians, who have been lied to about the cause of the war, and now seek revenge on the dragons for their own fallen. This cycle is particularly seen with Estinien, a dragoon whose entire village was wiped out by Nidhogg. He's only able to come to peace and overcome Nidhogg's influence when, with the help of Alphinaud and the Warrior of Light, he realizes that his desire for revenge makes him no different than Nidhogg, and finally lets his anger go.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses: This is a major theme in the game, particularly on the Azure Moon route. In the backstory, Sothis massacred the Agarthans for attacking her in their hubris. This caused "those who slither in the dark," the last vestiges of Agartha, to take their own revenge through Nemesis by having him kill Sothis in her sleep and using the remains of Sothis to forge the Sword of the Creator. They then massacred Seiros' brethren, which resulted in her going to war with them and killing Nemesis. "Those who slither in the dark" retreated but continued to plot their revenge against Seiros and her church. To this end, they forge weapons and Crests, and much later, they experiment on Edelgard with Crests, kill her other siblings in the process, and convince her to seek revenge on the Church for promoting the Crest system (though she also intends to take revenge on them afterwards for their experiments once she no longer needs them). Dimitri becomes obsessed with revenge against her for her involvement with the people who murdered his family as a part of that goal (though he also erroneously concludes that she's directly involved in said slaughter when it's almost certain she was undergoing the experiments at the time). Dimitri only breaks the cycle on the Azure Moon route when the sister of an imperial general who died fighting Dimitri's army ends up killing Rodrigue while trying to avenge her brother, prompting Dimitri's Heel Realization.
- In Game of Thrones (Telltale), Maester Ortengryn lampshades this trope as the reason the Forresters and Whitehills hate each other.
- A variation is the key story trope of Infinity Blade. The game starts off with the tyrannical God King killing one who opposes him. Then, some 20 years later, that man's son comes to avenge him — and after fighting through the God King's castle, also gets killed. And so on, and so on, until you either manage to kill the God King, or fight him to a standstill and agree to join him. In the former case, you've accomplished nothing except making some powerful new enemies who have no reason to hold the man who killed the God King in any higher regard than they held the God King. Then, you skip to the next in the bloodline avenging his father, because the game is built around this preconception. In the latter case, you find out the God King was one of the good guys — unlike the other Deathless, he doesn't think that being immortal gives him license to be a colossal jerk for no reason, and the whole exercise was The Plan to lure powerful warriors to his castle, where he'd either kill them to enhance his power or recruit them as his champion so he could take on the others. If that isn't pointless enough, the sequel reveals that your character wasn't actually avenging anyone in the first place. He's an amnesiac immortal, with each reincarnation believing his previous incarnation to be his dead father in need of avenging.
- The Killzone series sets this up. The feud between Helghan and the ISA goes back for generations, with the actions of the series being the Second Intersolar War.
- The Last of Us Part II: A big running theme in this game. The game starts with Ellie witnessing Joel’s death at the hands of Abby, the daughter of one of the fireflies that Joel killed in the first game. Ellie goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to avenge him, killing many of Abby’s friends in the process, which drives the latter to strike first. Ellie attempts to move on, but is unable to cope and decides to try once more to settle the score. It’s only after she has a flashback of Joel and realizes that Vengeance Feels Empty that she decides to spare Abby’s life, effectively breaking the cycle.
- While not always revenge-driven, a similar cycle occurs throughout the Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero series. Humans treat reploids as servants until Sigma, believing that reploids can achieve their true potential if they're taken out from under humanity's thumb, wages war against humanity. The resulting Maverick Wars and the sheer destruction they cause eventually leads to Dr. Weil believing that humans would be better off if reploids were robbed of their free will, leading to him corrupting the Mother Elf into the Dark Elf for that purpose and sparking the even more destructive Elf Wars, which ends in Weil being trapped in an immortal body and sent out to wander the wastelands he created for all eternity, giving him an unending hatred of both reploids and humans and ensuring that he'd be oppressing both when he finally came back into power. Meanwhile, Neo Arcadia, under Copy-X, oppressed reploids even harder than before in order to protect humanity, eventually leading to Elpizo seizing control of the Dark Elf in order to destroy humanity all over again.
- To some degree, the motivations of most of the principal players of the Metal Gear series are wrapped up in revenge upon revenge.
- Modern Warfare, in spades, occasionally lampshaded.
- Subverted in Kung Lao's ending of Mortal Kombat Gold; he attacks the Shokan Goro during a peace treaty signing as a ceremonial strike of revenge for Goro's brutal murder of his ancestor in an earlier MK tournament. Goro naturally believes that Lao is wanting to continue the fight for vengeance, but Lao tells him no, the attack was just to let the big lug know he hasn't forgotten what he did all those centuries ago, but is willing to put aside their differences for the sake of peace. Goro agrees, hinting that were his and Lao's ancestor's fates were reversed, Goro's own son would've likely been the one asking Lao (or his ancestor, since being Champion of MK gives you natural immortality) for peace.
- One sidequest in NieR: Automata revolves around this. A Resistance member is missing, and the player eventually finds their body, alongside a blood-soaked, still alive Machine Lifeform. After killing it, the player finds out that they both wanted revenge against each other, and once the player reports the Resistance member's death to their friend, she vows to destroy all Machine Lifeforms, and leaves the camp, weapon in hand, and is never seen again.
- No More Heroes: the final boss in the first game says as much without going into all the symbolism, but the second game does this even more. The first boss is Helter Skelter's younger brother who wants revenge. Matt Helms killed his parents as a ghost for leaving him in a burning house to die. Two assassins come back to fight you despite dying in the previous game. And the final boss, Jasper Batt Jr., has Bishop murdered at the start of the game out of revenge for Travis killing his father and two brothers in the side missions in the last game, something the player probably doesn't even remember. No More Heroes: Travis Strikes Again continues the theme by introducing Bad Man, the father of Bad Girl who's out for revenge for her death at Travis' hands.
- No Umbrellas Allowed: At the end of Week 5, Junghan scams Bokho with a ticket to the Bunker of Freedom, and then brutally beats him up. Nari then avenges her friend by burning the Bunker and going after the Stabilizer. The following week, she goes missing because she gets Fixed as punishment. Towards the end of the game, Bokho recovers and later pushes the Stabilizer into the sea before jumping in himself, unless you tell him that you cured Nari with Prof. Choi's antidote.
- Red Dead Redemption II retroactively establishes that this has been going on in a small scale. Namely, first Dutch's gang kills Edgar Ross's partner-in-arms, Agent Milton. Years later, Ross forces John Marston, a former member of said gang, to kill or capture 3 other members of the gang that are still at large, before murdering John as well, avenging Milton and taking the credit for finally bringing the gang down. However, years later, John's son Jack hunts down and kills Ross for killing his father.
- Saints Row 2, as mentioned in other Revenge tropes, particularly the Brotherhood arc which is almost entirely fueled by increasingly brutal acts of revenge between the titular Saints and the Brotherhood. An interesting aversion by Johnny Gat, the most psychotic killer in both games; even though his Love Interest Aisha was slain, killing all the Ronin was more or less the same business it was before, just a little more personal. He definitely had motivation to go after the Ronin leader Shogo who caused her murder by his order, but he didn't personally seek Shogo out... and him "dealing" with Shogo came after the Ronin crashed Aisha's private funeral to kill the Boss and Gat. The other acts of revenge through the remaining arc hardly seem connected to each other.
- Happens in Shenmue with Ryo's father... boy howdy. As revealed in Shenmue II Iwao Hazuki allegedly murdered Sunming Zhao. Years later Sunming's son Longsun Zhao, now calling himself Lan Di, murders Iwao in front of his son Ryu Hazuki, setting off the events of the game as Ryu searches for his father's killer.
- In a warped way, this is what the Bogeyman embodies in Silent Hill: Downpour. The game's plot mainly revolves around this, the protagonist having murdered (or attempted to murder) another convict who (might have) murdered his son. That plot resolves with the warden of the prison being brutally beaten by a corrupt guard (or killed by the protagonist), which sets his police officer daughter against the protagonist. She can also go for the actual culprit, but all of these revenge attempts are all dependent on the player's actions throughout the story.
- Sometimes, the already twisted path of revenge is even more non-linear than normal, thanks to time-space anomalies and reincarnation, as is the case in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. One might invoke the wrath of another for avenging one's past self, while also unwittingly putting oneself on one's own hit list along the way somehow. That can't be good for the space-time continuum or anyone else involved!
- The entire point of cactus's short "art game" Space Fuck!. Two neighboring planets in space; every thirty years, on one of the planets, a warrior comes out of the tunnels where he lived his entire life, and finds ruins of a thriving city on the surface. A survivor tells him that a man from the other planet massacred everyone. The warrior decides to get revenge, hops into a ship that happens to be nearby, and flies to the other planet to massacre the inhabitants there. Then he descends into that planet's tunnels, meets a woman, and has a son with her. Thirty years later, the son comes out of the tunnels and finds ruins of a thriving city on the surface, and learns that a warrior from the other planet is responsible. He decides to get revenge on the other planet, flies over there and kills everyone, then descends into the tunnels where he meets a woman... After a couple iterations, the game outright announces: "Vicious Cycle".
- The conflict between the Inklings and Octarians in Splatoon resembles this. Rising tides caused the Octarians to wage war with the Inklings over the remaining territories. The Octarians nearly won, but due to a careless plug that deactivated their Great Octoweapons, they were unable to stop the Inkling retaliation. The Octarians were driven into underground domes, which slowly began to deteriorate over the next century. Embittered by their defeat as well as facing an energy crisis, the Octarians plot their revenge with Zapfish thefts and the eventual invasion of Inkopolis. Their actions only led to the formation of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, an Inkling militia dedicated to take back the Zapfish and tear the Octarian forces apart. The Central Theme of Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion is breaking this cycle, with Agent 8 and the other Octolings abandoning DJ Octavio's quest for revenge, and the Inklings dropping old prejudices to share their culture and home with their former rivals.
- This happens twice in Star Trek Online.
- The first involves the Iconians and the Romulans. The Iconians return after a 200,000 year disappearance and prepare to take over the galaxy. This ultimately forces the Player Character and a few others to go back in time to the day the Iconians disappeared to make sure they all die. However, you find out that the Iconians are actually pretty good and decide to help them survive… except for former Romulan emperor Sela, who is seeking revenge for the Hobus Supernova and the destruction of Romulus and Remus. She attacks and kills a few Iconians, leading to one Iconian, T'Ket, to vow revenge for their deaths… which Sela realizes too late that meant that she caused Hobus!
- The second involved the Tholians and the Na'kuhl''. Time traveling Na'kuhl attack and massacre a Tholian colony 2270, though the Federation is able to prove innocence in this attack when two ships get caught up in it. 140 years later, they're able to spring a time travelling trap on Kal Dano to steal the Tox Uthot and use it to destroy the Na'kuhl's sun. This sets off the Na'kuhl's desire to tear through time in revenge… which sends them to 2270 to attack the Tholians.
- The Star Wars extended universe, including Knights of the Old Republic, is chock-full of these kinds of vendettas.
- Most of which get subverted to some degree or another, at least in the first Knights of the Old Republic game. Jagi wanted to take revenge on Canderous for allegedly abandoning his men during a battle to seize a tactical advantage. When facing down Jagi, one of the options is to point out that Canderous probably saved a lot more lives by breaking from the battle plan. Jagi commits suicide when he realizes that Canderous's actions were perfectly acceptable under the code of the Mandalorians.
- Bastila and her estranged mother, Helena, have a chilly reunion on Tatooine. Helena then requests that you go out to the desert to retrieve her late father's holocron. When you do retrieve it, Bastila is tempted to keep it just to spite her mother. Turns out that Bastila's father was treasure-hunting to fund the dying Helena's medical treatment.
- If you're inclined towards Darkness, you can encourage Mission to abandon her deadbeat brother to the Exchange (organized crime) in revenge for him abandoning her on Taris.
- Juhani brings up this trope when talking about her past, how "Those who had been wronged saw their chance at revenge. The oppressed became the new generation of oppressors" after the Jedi left Taris to fight more battles against the Mandalorians, bitterly lamenting that "the non-humans were never treated well in either case." There's also some cut dialogue for Juhani where she admits that she still hates and fears Mandalorians for committing genocide against her people, and voices her disapproval of Canderous among the crew. In one of the options, you can propose she go and kill him. She is still enough of a Jedi to balk at the idea of cold-blooded murder. However, when you meet up with Xor, a mercenary who participated in the Cathar genocide, and who later murdered Juhani's father in a bar fight and tried to buy her as a slave, those with darker tendencies can cheerfully encourage her to skewer the jerk on her lightsaber.
- And when it comes to subverting this trope, Carth's the master. His primary motive for 3/4 of the game is to get revenge on his former mentor (and to a lesser extent, all Sith) for destroying his homeworld, killing his wife, and training his teenage son as a Dark Jedi. When he finally kills Saul, Saul uses his last breath to take revenge on Carth by announcing his friend (if you play male) or lover (if you play female) is none other than Darth Revan! After the last Star Map is found, Carth admits that revenge didn't give him any peace, and that he can no longer hate you, despite what you have done as Revan. With a female Player Character, he elaborates further, saying that his promise to protect you has given him a new reason to live.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: This fuels a lot of the Bounty Hunter storyline. Tarro Blood kills the Hunter's mentor, Braden, and the first act is spent hunting his ass down while fulfilling Braden's dream to have the Great Hunt (a Mandalorian-sponsored bounty hunting tournament) won by his stable. (Blood killed Braden to try and eliminate the stable from competition). Unfortunately, Blood and the last target of the Great Hunt (a Jedi Master) are on a Republic warship. Either way, Blood and the Jedi are dead by the Hunter's actions...which causes the Jedi Master's best friend (the Jedi Order's battlemaster), to declare revenge on the Hunter, resorting to framing the Hunter for a laundry list of trumped-up charges (their own crimes would have been sufficient), sending out squads of soldiers and other Jedi after the Hunter, and killing off the Hunter's friends and contacts.
- In the John Woo game Stranglehold, Tequila gets pissed at Wong for turning his partner against him, having Billie killed, and then kidnapping Teko, leading to the Cowboy Cop seeking vengeance upon him. Wong in turn hates Tequila's guts, which is why he didn't want him and Billie together to begin with, and he wants revenge himself on Tequila for killing his son Johnny Wong from Hard Boiled, who was behind the attack that killed his partner in the beginning of the movie and was very much an utter psycho deserving of death.
- Subverted in Tales of Legendia. Near the end of Chloe's character quest in her confrontation with Stingle, the man who killed her parents to get money for his sick daughter, she is all but willing to kill him... until his daughter, whom she had grown close to at that point, picks up her father's sword, swearing to protect her father and take revenge upon Chloe if she kills him, helping to snap Chloe out of her growing Knight Templar attitude.
- Tekken:
- This is the overarching theme of the series in addition to the family infighting of the Mishima bloodline. The first game started with Heihachi Mishima throwing a young Kazuya off the ravine but survived which only awakened his Devil Gene, and ended with the now-adult Kazuya throwing his own father on the cliff. Then again, the fall wasn't enough to kill Heihachi, and returned in the second game to reclaim what's rightfully his; and after defeating Kazuya, he throws him again, this time at a volcano.
- Four games later, Jin Kazama would later go on to become the head of the Mishima Zaibatsu and start World War III, with several characters in the series roster want him dead. This also turned out to be his plan to draw out Azazel, the supposed to progenitor of the Devil Gene. Jin plans to take Azazel down with him. However, it only made the situation go From Bad to Worse. Azazel was never truly dead, Zafina had to seal the entity into herself. This makes Jin's actions completely meaningless, not helped by the fact that he's already a wanted man.
- Tekken 7 has this trope coming at full circle, in addition to Kazuya and Heihachi pulling a smear campaign on each other's companies in the story mode, we also find out that Heihachi's killing of his own wife, Kazumi actually kickstarted the entire series, after finding out that she carries the Devil Gene and feared that his son inherited the Devil Gene as well. The father and son feud would culminate in a fight to the death, and Kazuya won, and ultimately repeated what Heihachi did to him in 2, by throwing his lifeless body into a volcano.
- Tekken 8 is about breaking the cycle of hatred. Jin faces the devil within him and acknowledged how destructive his path of anger and hatred towards his own Devil Gene and the Mishimas was. In his final confrontation against Kazuya, he decided to use his powers to protect what's precious to him and not outright kill his own father. After defeating Kazuya, Jin simply spares his own father rather than repeat the act of being thrown off the cliff or volcano like what Kazuya and Heihachi did to one another. Should the player purposely lose to Kazuya, he will once again throw Jin off the cliff, and the cycle of hatred will stick. Though even if Jin wins, the cycle isn't completely broken, because Reina is there to continue the cycle after unlocking her own Devil form.
- Throughout the early parts of Tales of Symphonia, Lloyd gets pissed off at the way Desians treat humans. Kratos implies (in typical Tales fashion) that there's an underlying reason. There is: once they get to Tethe'alla, they learn that the half-elves there are victims of particularly cruel discrimination.
- Lara Croft and Werner Von Croy use the trope on each other throughout Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and the final chapter in Tomb Raider Chronicles. Teenage Lara goes on an expedition with Von Croy and is forced to leave him behind when his tampering with the Iris artifact causes the area to collapse and traps him. Von Croy is rescued some time later and keeps the artifact while being bitter towards Lara, who he thinks abandoned him. Lara then infiltrates Von Croy's research building and steals the Iris artifact from him. This in turn causes Von Croy (several years later) to seek revenge by hiring mercenaries to stop or kill Lara in Egypt so that he can claim the Amulet of Set (succeeding), and then he goes on to capture Lara's friend, holding him hostage in exchange for the Armor of Horus. After Lara's apparent demise when the pyramid she is in collapses as Von Croy watches in horror, Lara escapes some time later in The Angel of Darkness and is angry at Von Croy for leaving her back in Eygpt. The entire cycle of revenge is finally broken when a third party unrelated to the two characters kills Von Croy.
- In the eighth Touhou Project game, Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night, we're introduced to Kaguya Houraisan and Fujiwara no Mokou. Both want to kill each other as revenge for the numerous previous successful attempts on each other's lives — they're completely immortal, and can regenerate even if their bodies are entirely destroyed. And it all started when Kaguya rejected Mokou's father's marriage proposal, 1300 years ago. The interesting thing about this rivalry is that neither participant particularly wants it to end. Mokou is explicitly mentioned to have lost the plot for a couple of centuries back there and it's heavily hinted that the bitter rivalry is presently the only thing keeping her sane. As for Kaguya? Well, she doesn't want the rivalry to end because Mokou is just too much fun. If she and Mokou didn't keep coming up with new ways to kill each other, she'd grow bored.
- The single-player campaign of Tribes: Vengeance, true to its subtitle, is driven almost entirely by someone's desire for revenge and the protagonists are rotated all the time.
- The reason behind the Alliance and the Horde being more or less openly at war in World of Warcraft after being allies at the end of Warcraft III. Some people just couldn't get over the fact that the enemy they had fought for so long wasn't an enemy anymore.
- On PvP servers, you can easily experience a Cycle of Revenge first-hand.
- A similar issue exists between two Outland factions, the Aldor and the Scryer. While they both are part of the same alliance, players are forced to choose between the two.
- Camp Taurajo in the Southern Barrens becomes the start of one. The Alliance sacks Taurajo, the Horde responds by killing the General who carried out the attack, and the other Alliance leaders swear vengeance on the Horde for the assassination. Ironically, General Hawthorne was trying to avoid civilian casualties because he didn't want a Cycle of Revenge, but didn't factor in the quillboar who were mortal enemies of the Tauren.
- It's also hinted he didn't count on the rabidly anti-Horde ambassador. The Ambassador's interest in the Horde's desire for revenge, the easily located spy with an itinerary for the General's journey, and the speed with which a replacement is found are too convenient. This Cycle was planned.
- Taran Zhu, leader of the Shado-Pan, calls both sides out on this in the latest patch:Taran Zhu: ENOUGH!! There will be no more bloodshed today. I see now why your Alliance and Horde cannot stop fighting. Every reprisal is itself an act of aggression, and every act of aggression triggers immediate reprisal. [...] SILENCE! YOU must break the cycle. It ends TODAY. Here. The cycle ends when you, Regent Lord, and you, Lady Proudmoore, turn from one another. And walk. Away.
- Deconstructed in Wolf's Gang. After learning that Ralph's reason for killing the Dark Lord was revenge, just like his reason for wanting to kill Ralph, Wolfgang realizes that monsters and humans have been killing each other senselessly in a cycle of revenge for centuries without even remembering who started it. The two of them then promise to finally have the two races put everything behind them and work together from then on.
