A Taste of Their Own Medicine

aka: A Taste Of His Own Medicine

"Tell this to the workers when they ask where their leader went. We, the soldiers of The National Liberation Front of America, in the name of the workers and all the oppressed of this imperialist country, have struck a fatal blow to the fascist police state. What better revolutionary example than to let their president perish in the inhuman dungeon of his own imperialist prison?"

— Message from the National Liberation Front of America, Escape from New York

A specific form of Revenge, where a person receives the same bad treatment that they showed/were going to show to others. While it may be the original victim who delivers the punishment, it can just as easily be a relative or even a complete stranger.

Superficially, this might look like Beat Them at Their Own Game, but they are motivated by different factors and have a different meaning to the plot:

• Beat Them at Their Own Game is a survival technique. The person who successfully does it has proven that he can do whatever the other person did just as well.
• A Taste Of Their Own Medicine is a type of Revenge. The person who successfully does it has demonstrated why the other person should follow The Golden Rule.

The two tropes occasionally overlap, but, in general, try to list an example as one or the other. If you're not sure which it is, ask yourself whether the primary motivator is survival or revenge.

Contrast Hoist by Their Own Petard, which is where a character's bad actions lead directly to their downfall, with no second-party intervention. Often a form of Pay Evil unto Evil. An Ironic Hell is the extreme version of this, where the sinners are punished with being the victim of (or making them horrified with) whatever crime they've done before. Can overlap with Laser-Guided Karma (or even go as far as Karmic Death) if the character's fate is similar to that of his victims. See also Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves, Who's Laughing Now?, which sometimes results from applying this trope, and Original Position Fallacy, the mindset of the likely victim (inequal treatment is reasonable and defensible as long as I don't come off worse). Please note that Selective Enforcement and Hypocrite can pop up if the sinner makes a big show out of it.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Bleach: In the manga, when Sado fights Yammy, the latter hits him so hard that the attack tears Sado's arm apart...twice. Then Ichigo arrives at the scene, sees what happened to Sado's arm, then he goes straight to cutting Yammy's arm off. The anime downplays the damage on Sado's arm significantly, which makes Ichigo's reaction look more like Disproportionate Retribution.
• Death Note: Though the exact circumstances vary depending on the adaptation, Light Yagami always dies as a result of Ryuk writing his name in the Death Note once it becomes clear he's completely run out of escape plans.
• Dragon Ball
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • Frieza's entire fighting style revolves around Cold-Blooded Torture, physically overwhelming his enemies with his power and making sure that they die in pain and despair, knowing that they never stood a chance against him. After Goku becomes a Super Saiyan, he spends most of the fight toying with and brutalizing Frieza just as Frieza had done to his victims, wanting to ensure that Frieza realized that even at full power, he never stood a chance against him. In the end, the only reason Goku tries to spare Frieza is because he felt that letting Frieza live with his pride ripped to shreds was a far worse punishment.
    • This was Dr. Gero's intention with creating the androids. After Goku destroyed the Red Ribbon Army, he wanted to create a fighter that could beat Goku on his terms and inspire the same sense of fear and dread he gave the army. Cell came the closest to doing this to Goku (if only because he was the second of Gero's creations who fought him), but even then, Goku never once displayed fear of Cell, no matter how much stronger he was than him, and died on his own terms.
    • The psychotic Androids 17 and 18 of Future Trunks' timeline spent twenty years rampaging across the Earth killing whoever and whenever they wanted For the Evulz, later ganging up on Future Gohan in the rain and brutally murdering him. When Future Trunks returns to that time, he wastes no time putting them in their place, stating outright that he's doing to them exactly what they did to Future Gohan and what they've been doing to the rest of the planet: making them feel completely outmatched, helpless, and afraid before killing them.
    • When Goku and Vegeta fuse into Vegito, the latter spends his entire fight with Super Buu toying with and brutalizing him, making sure the monster felt every moment of the pain and terror he dealt to Vegito's friends and all of his other victims.
      Vegito: It's not much fun being hunted down, is it, Majin Buu? Being hunted down just the way you hunted down our friends! Does it hurt?!
  • Dragon Ball GT: Baby is a Puppeteer Parasite who invades other people's bodies, laying eggs inside them to keep control of them and attacking them from the inside. Majuub tries to transform him using Majin Buu's Chocolate Beam, but Baby sends it back at him and devours him afterwards. However, it later turns out that Majuub deliberately let himself be changed and swallowed so he could attack Baby from the inside, incapacitating him with pain during his fight with Goku; Majuub even tells Baby that he's doing what Baby himself does to other people.
    Majuub: Isn't that how you operate, Baby?! You lay your eggs in people and attack them from the inside!
  • Dragon Ball Super:
    • The first time Beerus meets Goku, he effortlessly defeats the latter with a neck chop. Later, when Goku's recieved a new powerup and they fight on something resembling equal ground, Goku repeats the neck chop to Beerus, pointing out the time Beerus did it to him.
    • Not an intentionally invoked example, but Beerus loves to make mortals squirm and submit to him under the threat of destroying their entire planet if they don't do exactly what he wants (usually providing him with good enough food). Then his boss Zeno shows up and provokes the same terrified reaction from him without even trying.
• Great Teacher Onizuka: Onizuka punishes Anko and her friends for abusing Noboru by tying them up and pulling down their underwear, writing stuff on their butts, and taking photos to blackmail them, just like they did to Noboru.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Miyamoto relished turning people into paper when they show fear. Sure enough, Josuke exploits this very tactic on him and ends up turning him into a book.
  • JoJolion: When Jobin was a child, a bully tried to set him on fire, but he awakened Speed King and proceeded to heat up said bully's face to the point where he knocked him unconscious.
• Love Hina: In the 10th volume of the manga, Keitaro's little sister Kanako submits all of the Hinata's tenants to this to punish them for their constant abuse and mistreatment of Keitaro. She actually succeeds in driving the girls out of the house completely.
• Maria no Danzai: Maria seems to have a tendency for attacking her victims with the same kind of terror they inflict upon everyone else.
  • Tsubasa Kowase regularly uses blackmail to force docile girls to do his bidding. Maria lets him know what that feels like when, after confiscating and hacking into his smartphone, she anonymously sends him a video of himself masturbating along with a video from two years back where he and his friends are shown subjecting Kiritaka to their brand of Bully Brutality, and demands 3 million yen in exchange for not posting them on the internet.
    • Kowase regularly tries to drown people for shits and giggles. After Maria kidnaps him, she stuffs him in a Drowning Pit.
  • Kumiru Shikimi manipulates her fellow students to socially isolate people she doesn't like. She did this once to Kiritaka by planting her gym clothes in his bag and accusing him of stealing them; when she asked out loud if anyone could vouch for him, no one dared to step up, leaving her free to sadistically torment Kiri when no one was watching. Maria plays a reverse version of the trick on Kumiru by planting her gym clothes in Kinugawa's bag and making him late for class by talking to him for a few minutes, ensuring that he had an alibi. When Kinugawa finds Kumiru's gym clothes, he exasperatedly assumes she's trying to frame him up and calls her out for being so obvious, unaware that Kumiru is innocent this time but having no reason to believe it since he knows it's something she would do. When Kumiru once again asks for anyone to vouch for Kinugawa's innocence, Maria quickly steps up to explain that it couldn't have been him because he was with her at the time. Kumiru loses her patience and desperately tries to pin the blame on someone else out of habit, only to be given the cold shoulder by the entire class as she's exposed for the manipulative bitch that she is.
    • Kumiru also once forced Kiri to collect her keys from a box filled with thumbtacks using his mouth. Maria similarly forces her to retrieve her phone's SIM card using nothing but her mouth... from a box of razors. Kumiru succeeds, but is left with several cuts around her mouth.
    • In the very first chapter, Okaya sadistically forcefed cockroaches to Kiri while Kumiru recorded him. Her ultimate fate is being dropped down an empty well full of cockroaches and centipedes, which then proceed to crawl all over her and enter her orifices as she screams in terror.
• In Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace, 20 Faces serves this type of revenge. He was once a morally right police officer who, after the horrific mutilation and murder of his sister, did the same to the one who did it. The twist in this case but not the rest of his murders was that 20 Faces kept the murderer alive.
• Rebuild World: During the introduction of the Private Military Contractors ("hunters") Elena and Sara into the story, they’re ambushed by a group of male hunters turned to raiders out of desperation. After dropping a grenade while running past them, they take Elena hostage and demand Sara come out of cover. On her way towards them with her hands up, they demand Sara humiliatingly strip out of her clothing because it might be Powered Armor, before shooting her legs anyway. After the Unscrupulous Hero Akira intervenes, attacking those hunters out of hatred due to his trauma from being taken advantage of, one of the male hunters surrenders to him. Akira demands that he strip out of his clothing, then shoots him dead after he does so.
• A horrible version of this trope happens in Hiroko's revenge on Aki Honda and her Girl Posse from Shadow Star upon obtaining her Shadow Dragon. Said tormentors had previously abused her horribly, up to and including raping her with a test tube. So how does Hiro-chan pay them back for this? Upon getting her Shadow Dragon, she commences in completely tearing each of the posse apart, the only one she spares being the one who objected to Aki raping her. When she finally catches up to Aki herself? She has her raped with the Shadow Dragon's clawed finger, just before tearing her apart as well. By the time her vengeance is complete, Hiro-chan has gone into full Start of Darkness mode.
• Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie: During his fight with Chun Li, Vega makes the mistake of cutting her cheek then taunting her by licking the blood off his claw. Bad decision. She pays him back... with interest. First, by hitting him square in the face by throwing the couch at him, followed by repeatedly kicking his face with her Spinning Bird Kick, then pushes him back down on the floor by stepping on his chest, so she could plant her barefoot on his cheek and perform a full pirouette on his face! Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds (seen at 5:07-6:03).
• Tokyo Ghoul: When Kaneki is tortured by Yamori after being captured, he's forced to count down from 1000 by seven over and over to keep himself sane so he can feel each and every cut. When Kaneki accepts that he's a ghoul and beats Yamori in a fight, he pins him to the ground and forces him to count down the exact same way. Yamori had also made clear his intention to eat Kaneki after he finally snapped, and Kaneki takes care to remind him...
  "What's 1000 minus 7? ... Remember, you're the one who tried to eat me first. So you'll get what's coming to you when I eat you instead."

Asian Animation

• Doby & Disy: Said word-for-word by one of the characters in a Christmas Episode in Season 2, when the group discovers Caesar rigged a cage in front of his house to capture Santa and make off with his presents, with said cage capturing Panda (since he, Doby, and Disy are Subbing for Santa). The group decides to give Caesar his gift and punish him at the same time by trapping him in the same cage, using the gift as bait to lure him.

Comic Books

• The Adventures of the X-Men ends with the Dweller in Darkness, the resident Cthulhu expy who had just attempted to cause everyone in all of reality to succumb to fear with a Class Z Apocalypse How so he could feed on them, has his plans utterly foiled when Jean Grey uses her telepathic powers to encourage all living things to meet their end without fear. As the Dweller realizes this, he falls into despair... and it just so happens that his minion, D'Spayre, feeds on that particular emotion...
• Superman: A Golden Age story, The Blakely Mine Disaster, has Superman disguising himself as a miner and crashing a party hosted by Thornton Blakely, the uncaring coal mine owner who has been ignoring the plight of his employees. Thornton comes up with the idea of bringing his wealthy party guests into one of his mines to have him show off the safety features and has Superman lead them there. This causes Supes to create a cave-in to trap Thornton and his guests into the mine, given them a taste of what the miners suffer through every day when in Thornton's faulty mines.
  • One Silver Age comic sees Superman traveling to the Fifth Dimension and using his powers to prank Mr. Mxyzptlk the same way Mxy normally pranks him, while Mxy (who's running for mayor of his hometown) desperately tries to send Supes back home.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: When Atomia escapes from transformation island and tries attacking Paradise Island Queen Hippolyta calls on Aphrodite for help with the unrepentant cruel woman, who had forced people through machines which altered them physically and mentally to become her near mindless slaves. Aphrodite then makes it clear that just because she's friends with and supportive of a Perfect Pacifist People she's still an Olympian through and through when she permanently welds Atomia into a personality altering device that will force her to be kind for the rest of her life.
• X-Men: In X-Men #112, Magneto, who had previously been transformed into a baby by a scheme gone wrong, gives the X-Men a taste of the same (even though none of the captured X-Men were involved in his infantilization). He locks them into chairs that not only inhibit their powers but also disrupt their neurological functioning so that physically they're at the level of toddlers but they retain adult intelligence. He then leaves them to the care of Nanny, an android with a sickeningly sweet personality to care for them as if they were babies. ("Oh Beast, you've such marvelous silky fur. You are a joy to brush. I've an idea. Would you like bows for your hair? I'll see if I can find some.") His intention is that they will live out the rest of their lives in that state, and it is implied that they are trapped that way for several days if not weeks before escaping.

Comic Strips

• When Lucy from Peanuts dons one of Charlie Brown's shirts in a February 1959 Sunday strip, everyone has a big ol' belly laugh at her mocking impression of him. But when Charlie Brown himself sees what she's doing, he turns the tables on her with a single line, causing everyone to start laughing at her expense instead.
  Charlie Brown: (mimicking Lucy) Well, hello, there, Charlie Brown, you blockhead.

Fan Works

Crossovers

• Adopted Displaced: In The Merc with the Moth, Chrysalis is raised by Deadpool, granting her Medium Awareness, reality-warping abilities, and an incredible Healing Factor. In order to counter her, Princess Luna calls upon the Spartan-raised Pinkie Pie, who's just as capable of warping reality and knows infinite health cheats. While this leaves them locked in combat, both are totally okay with that.
• A Champion in Earth-Bet: Jack Slash's power grants him the insight necessary to Break Them by Talking with speeches and Armor-Piercing Questions. But his ability doesn't work against the Avatar, and when he still attempts to talk his way out of the situation, the Avatar distracts him by asking "What if I told you...", leaving the thought unfinished as he telekinetically strips Jack of all his tricks.
• Played for Laughs in Conduit of Central City when Wells quickly grows annoyed at Ace reading his mind and speaking his thoughts and calculations, with Cisco stating that's how it feels for the rest of them being around him.
• In Crosswinds of Fate, one of the ways many of Umbridge's peers at Hogwarts deal with her is by acting just as patronizing towards her as she is towards her students. Dumbledore also follows her around during her classes and inspections, claiming to be learning from her example.
• DigiXDangan has an unintentional example: Komaeda regularly relies upon his supernatural luck to tilt things in his favor. But one of his schemes gets foiled by Makoto having a stroke of good fortune.
• Everyday Life as a Superhero in Another World: Neo loves mocking her opponents while dodging all their attacks. But when she fights Peter, he's able to employ the exact same tactics against her, much to her mounting frustration.
• Infinity Train: Boiling Point has Boscha decide to teach the Apex what it feels like to be on the receiving end of their usual treatment, and since this Boscha's an Adaptational Badass who doubles as a Person of Mass Destruction, they get the message loud and clear.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail:
  • Throughout Act 1, Chloe refuses to reply to any of Goh's attempts to contact her, as in the past, he only ever offered her hollow excuses for not responding sooner. When she does finally answer, it's to let him know that she wants nothing to do with him anymore. This serves as a deconstruction, illustrating how it's difficult to maintain one's sense of scale when they feel victimized. While Goh had unintentionally made her feel neglected and unappreciated since they rarely spent time together, her two-week silence came after she boarded the Train, leaving him and everyone else to fear she had died. Once everyone involved gets a clearer look at the full picture, it's generally agreed that this was Disproportionate Retribution, with Chloe herself agreeing she went too far.
  • Yeardley, Sarah, and the bulk of Chloe's classmates loved bullying and harassing her, even gleefully bragging to her brother Parker about all the cruel things they did. During Act 2, the tables are turned when Parker gets his hands on the Unown, unleashing a series of horrific punishments.
• Lord of the Castle: Dr. Destiny, a Nightmare Weaver who sought to kill the Justice League by torturing them in their dreams, is ultimately trapped in a nightmare as a result of Alucard and the Librarian.
• In Of Wolves and Dragons, a string of various incidents cause many superstitious Northerners to believe the Old Gods are taking vengeance on those who have turned against them. The Northerners start to blame Catelyn Stark for bringing the Faith of the Seven to the North and incurring the Old Gods' wrath, causing the Stark Matron to become isolated and (privately) slandered, not unlike the treatment Jon Snow (who, incidentally, set off the above mentioned string of incidents, albeit not of his own free will) endured at Catelyn's hand.
• Strawberries and Lemons: After Garnet shows his jealous side when Sage showed an interest in Yang in a previous chapter, Team RWBY (but mostly Yang) continuously tease him for it. Later on, when Team RWBY meets Garnet's new friend Penny, Yang has to deal with her jealous side since Penny is being just as affectionate with Garnet as she usually is.
• Temporal Anomaly: Three has suffered a severe fall into madness, going so far as to experiment on her own citizens and turn them into monsters. After dealing with that issue, Sougo, in order to restore Three's sanity and morals, preforms a Mind Rape on her that has Three experience that very experimentation process done to her. It works.
• Happens to Stain in A Waterbending Quirk in a twofold manner. His Quirk lets him paralyze those he drinks the blood of, but here, he ends up a victim of bloodbending, courtesy of Katara, forcing him to endure similar pain that his victims underwent; additionally, his crippling of Tensei Iida makes his bloodbending experience far more karmic, as Tensei served as a genuine hero, shielding Katara from her actions due to her being a Fish out of Temporal Water (even after she attacked Endeavor) for no reason other than to help her, so Stain ends up looking like a self-righteous villain with his ranting against "fake heroes", something Katara brutally chews him out for.

Batman

• The Redemption of Harley Quinn: Lyle Bolton uses the Mad Hatter's Mind Control technology to force Poison Ivy to striptease, and then asks what it's like to be in the same state as the victims of her pheromones.

Dungeons & Dragons

• Vow of Nudity: Haara, a slave of the Genasi Empire, secretly learned produce flame before she escaped because it was the Fire Genasi's signature spell and she wanted to later wield it against them.
  • After spending pretty much every fight hitting enemies in the crotch, Fiora suffers her own Groin Attack during a street brawl and immediately admits that she probably deserved it.

Harry Potter

• Against the Moon: After the Slytherins vandalize Remus' journal, Sirius and James make their inkwell explode, ruining their notes as well.

Historical Fiction

• In Chapter 33 of Sister Floriana Sister Isabel tries to rig a soccer game in her friends' favor by telling the opposing team that there are important stretches they've been missing out on. When they ask to know what the stretches are, she has them do tiring exercises and spins a yarn about how they're related to stretching. Unfortunately, they catch on to the fact she's improvising and make her team do exercises too, before easily winning the game.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

• Peter Parker's Field Trip (Of course it's to Stark Industries): One of the punishments Principal Morita was going to issue Peter was to have him write hand-written apology letters to all of his teachers and classmates for "lying". When it comes to light that not only did they not check the validity of Peter's internship contract with SI like they were supposed to, they destroyed the documents, Tony only agrees to let the school continue their field trip to his company if they provide proof that they did destroy the papers (for security reasons) and issues handwritten apologies to him, Peter and Pepper the day before the field trip.

Miraculous Ladybug

• CONSEQUENCES: In SINS OF THE PAST, Inquisitor promises Lila that he will let her go if she confesses to all her crimes. After she does so, he casually declares that he lied.
• Feralnette AU: Hawkmoth loves giving his victims Breaking Speeches to push them into akumatization. When he tries this on Marinette during the Enough Rope arc, however, she turns the tables by hitting him with an Armor-Piercing Question about what happened to Mayura, followed by a breaking speech of her own — one that forces him into a traumatic flashback that she witnesses thanks to his power of Transmission.
• the high road features Marinette taking Adrien and her other Fair Weather Friends' advice and 'taking the high road'... while dragging the rest of them along for the ride. The more that they get inconvenienced by her efforts to cater to Lila's every whim, the more they turn against Lila, eventually investigating her claims and realizing they've all been had.
• Jerk in Sheep's Clothing has this happen to both the class AND Adrien, although not as salty as other fics do, all courtesy of Henri LeRoi.
  • In the "Chameleon" episode, the class all flocked to Lila, and when Marinette tried to out her as a Consummate Liar, Lila turned the tables on her and got the whole class to assume Marinette was bullying her out of spite. When Henri transfers and starts dating Marinette, he manipulates things to push Alya to the back of the room. Whenever anyone in the class tries to stand up to him or show Marinette his true colors, he pulls the same game as Lila and twists things around to turn Marinette on her friends. Because Marinette has seen how nasty the class can be, and because Henri has treated her more like a friend than the others have lately, she believes him over them and accuses them of picking on her boyfriend.
  • Adrien, who has always had the bad trait of being too trusting of people, allows bad people to be close to him, even when there are many red flags alerting people of their true colors, while his real friends, namely Marinette, must sit back and watch said bad people take advantage of his too-trusting nature. Now, Adrien is the one watching Marinette get taken advantage of by Henri, who even threatens him in the bathroom just like Lila did to Marinette in "Chameleon".
• The Karma of Lies:
  • Adrien ignored Marinette's pleas to help her deal with Lila, as he simply did not care about how she was scamming their classmates and deliberately isolating her. After all, he presumed that since he already knew she was a Con Artist, he'd never fall for any of her tricks. After Lila successfully scams him, he expects Marinette to help him out, only to learn that she's Stopped Caring and is willing to let him cope with the consequences of his Betrayal by Inaction alone.
  • Similarly, the rest of the class shunned Marinette, taking her kindness and generosity completely for granted. Upon learning that their "everyday Ladybug" was the actual Ladybug all along, they're eager to accept her back with open arms and reap the rewards of being her friends... only for her to make clear that she's not interested in Fair-Weather Friends, letting them know how it feels to be brushed aside.
• LadyBugOut: At one point, Chat Noir declares that Ladybug needs to prove that she really doesn't have any feelings for him by accepting a Forceful Kiss. When she rebuffs him, he smugly claims that the only reason she pushed him away is that if she'd let him kiss her, she wouldn't have been able to 'hide her true feelings'. Later on, after Adrien's Secret Identity has been exposed, snuffing out her old crush for good, Marinette demonstrates just how childish and selfish his reasoning was by acting the same way he did. After pretending that she's going to make him kiss her in order to "prove" he doesn't really love her, she directly compares his behavior to how Chloé and Lila clung to him, helping him realize he'd made Ladybug feel just as trapped.
• Recommencer: When Mark is punished for bullying and misgendering Jay, he whines about how he didn't do anything wrong, because Jay totally deserved everything they got. Miss Desrosiers responds by insulting his faith, declaring that since he's Christian, that must mean that all the nastiest negative stereotypes and claims about those sorts apply to him. She barrages him until he's reduced to tears, forcing him to realize just how it feels to be slandered and attacked on such a personal level.
• In to lose someone, Marinette's former friends mistakenly believe that they're doing this to her, since Lila has convinced them that she's been bullying her. So they destroy her sketchbook, only to learn that they've actually inflicted this upon themselves: the only sketchbook she brings to school is the one filled with all the projects and designs she's made for them. She refuses to remake those designs for free, and Adrien notes that her work would cost thousands of dollars if commissioned. On top of this, it held all her notes as class president, including the contact information required for various school trips they were planning, meaning those will all have to be canceled as well. This leaves them all feeling miserable, much like she's been suffering ever since they started bullying her on Lila's say-so.
• In this collaborative work, Adrien attempts to convince his classmates that Marinette gave him an Indignant Slap for no reason, painting her as a bully in order to passive-aggressively punish her for not doing what he wanted. As more details come out, Marinette reveals how he'd previously told her that he knew Lila was lying, and Lila promptly uses his Exact Words against him, convincing Alya and most of the class that Adrien lied to Marinette about her being a liar in order to manipulate the other girl. Thus, Adrien finds himself as the one Made Out to Be a Jerkass instead.

My Hero Academia

• Apex Predator: Abhorrent Admirer Mineta usually stalks the girls at school, peeping at them in the shower and demanding he gropes their chests. As a result, all the girls in 1-A grow paranoid of him and take turns keeping a lookout whenever they are doing anything like changing their clothes. Izuku, who makes a Declaration of Protection towards anyone targeted by bullies in class long before even meeting the girls, decides it's perfectly acceptable to start stalking Mineta in return and make him paranoid.
• Apotheosis: After stealing Overhaul's Quirk, Izuku uses it to torture Overhaul to death, repeatedly destroying and rebuilding his body a hundred times. When Overhaul begs him to stop, Izuku retorts that if Eri was able to endure such treatment without so much as a whimper, Overhaul himself should be able to do the same.
• Dreamer has an accidental version when All for One attempts to steal Izumi's Quirk. Not only does she manage to pull it back at the last moment, she unwittingly steals some of his stolen Quirks as well in the process of reclaiming it.
• Ignited Spark: When Nine attempts to kill All Might via a bolt of lightning, Izuku interrupts by striking Nine with a lightning bolt of his own, which nails Nine straight in the chest and leaves the villain bedridden.
• In One for All and Eight for the Ninth, Izuku, the Vestiges, and Ennead inflict this upon All for One when they successfully damage his stockpile of stolen Quirks. Ultimately, twenty-three of All of One's Quirks are outright destroyed, while eleven more are stolen away.
• With Confidence: Izuku's classmates constantly bullied him for being Quirkless, insisting that he'd never be able to become a Pro Hero. Izuku turns this around when he takes control of their latest lesson and painstakingly points out their own flaws and failings — highlighting the weaknesses of their various Quirks and all the ways they've proven themselves to be less than heroic.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• Discordant: As The Trickster, Discord regularly relies upon misdirection and deception to pull off his plans. But Scootaloo manages to pull one over on him when she tricks him into focusing on her, believing that the packs she's carrying hold the Elements of Harmony. In reality, they're full of rocks — she gave the real Elements to Spike, having him deliver them safely to Twilight and the others while Discord is chasing her.
• In Loved and Lost, the disgraced and exiled heroes^note Celestia, Cadance, Shining Armor, the Mane Five (sans Twilight) and Spike sneak into Canterlot with the intention to redeem themselves by helping Twilight Sparkle. Unfortunately, Cadance is separated from the others and injured by her sociopathic cousin, Prince Jewelius while the others find Twilight. Twilight, having been manipulated by Jewelius to lose all trust in her friends, brother and mentor after they walked out on her at the wedding rehearsal for "upsetting" the false Cadance, mistakenly thinks Cadance (the only one of the exiles she hasn't stopped trusting) was injured because the others brought her to Canterlot before she could be reinstated. Angry and hurt, she chews her former loved ones out like her brother did with her. She then coldly leaves them at Commander Hildread's mercy to check on Cadance, just like they ditched her to check on the false Cadance, throwing the words they used back to them for a good measure and also as payback.

  Shining Armor: Twily-
  Twilight: And you can forget about me calling you my BBBFF anymore! In fact, I don't even have a brother. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check on the princess.
  Celestia: Twilight, I-
  Twilight: You have a lot to think about.

  • Jewelius himself ends up on the receiving end of this trope thanks to Queen Chrysalis, whom he'd teamed up with to bring about Canterlot's invasion before double-crossing and imprisoning her and the Changeling army. His dismissal of them as insignificant in the grand scheme of things resulted in him calling Chrysalis a "despicable animal" and planning to enslave and treat her and the Changelings as if they were wild beasts, which may explain why he didn't worry as much about them as he should've when they later escaped his dungeons. So when Chrysalis and her forces corner Jewelius during his failed attempt to wipe out Ponyville and he begs her to spare him, she coldly reminds him of what he'd called her earlier before commanding the Changelings to dispose of him the way a pack of wild animals would.

Naruto

• Played for Horror in It Wasn't A Kindness. A time-displaced Sasuke finds himself back in Konoha after attempting to take his own life following Itachi's death. Though he initially keeps the Awful Truth of what happened in the original timeline to himself, Sasuke ultimately decides to inflict this upon Itachi by destroying Konoha. When confronted about his intentions, he throws his brother's own reasoning back in his face, gleefully declaring that he'll "protect" him by destroying Konoha and all that it symbolizes.
• The Kakashi Way features Sasuke deciding to deal with his unexpected temporal displacement by taking a page from Kakashi's book and trolling people. Including Kakashi himself. When they finally meet for the first time, 'Indra' even tells Kakashi outright that he's doing so, considering one of the ways he's inconvenienced him to have been a 'happy accident'.
  • Hiruzen considers doing this to 'Indra' in turn, musing that while he can't actually make him the next Hokage, he's sorely tempted to propose doing so just to see how he'd react and that it would be worth the joke just to troll him back.
• Misrecognition has Kakashi confront Itachi and use his own sharingan to show him visions of how miserable Sasuke has been thanks to his older brother's actions. Including Sasuke's attempt to let Naruto kill him in their last fight. Just to twist the knife further, he ensures that this is the last thing Itachi sees before he rips his eyes out.

Pokémon

• Chosen One's Adventure with Legendaries: One of Butch and Cassidy's schemes involves amplifying a Drowzee's powers in order to hypnotize and control other Pokémon. Then Ash's Lampent evolves into Chandelure, using Hypnosis on them instead.

Thomas & Friends

• In O Mother, Where Art Thou?, Thomas is shocked, disappointed and worried when he learns that Emily has left Sodor for an adventure, then realises that this must be how she feels whenever he leaves Sodor to travel the world.

Total Drama

• Monster Chronicles: While he's blackmailing him, Cedric takes great pleasure in picking on Duncan and tormenting him much like the latter would do to Harold in canon. Chris even lampshades this at one point.
  Chris:I thought I hit a gold mine with that kiss back in London! With the hate Duncan's been getting lately with 75% of the fan base, seeing him on the other side of the punch will totally be ratings central! I just wish there wasn't a wanted criminal holding us all hostage.

Worm

• Another Way: After Hookwolf cuts off Marquis' head while he's still alive, awake, and aware of what's going on, Claire makes certain to return the favor, inflicting the exact same fate onto Hookwolf.
• A Darker Path: Atropos' power, Path to Ending, has a very nasty flair for the dramatic, and she uses that to ensure every death she causes has as much showmanship as possible to make herself more intimidating.
  • Oni Lee, whose power is teleporting and leaving a clone made of ash behind to (a) avoid damage and (b) act as a repeated suicide bomber, gets killed when Atropos steals an ash clone's gun and shoots Oni Lee before the weapon turns to ash.
  • Coil, with his duplicity and two-faced nature, and whose power is to "duplicate" timelines based on a binary decision, is hanged in one timeline with a coil of rope and then quickly killed in the other with two cuts to the throat.
  • Kaiser, who can produce metal in any form (including blades) from every surface he can see, gets killed when he's stabbed through the eye with a sword Atropos stole from him (which, for extra Irony, had once belonged to Kaiser Wilhelm I).
  • The Dragonslayers (who take advantage of their access to Dragon's code to make themselves invisible to her and steal her stuff) are killed when Atropos hacks into their suits to spoof their sensors and trick them into attacking Lung (see below).
  • Lung, who can transform into a fiery dragon that burns everything with his flames, gets to horribly burn from the inside when Atropos pushes containers with fluoroantimonic acid into his injuries before he can regenerate.
  • Skidmark is a drug pusher, so Atropos had initially planned to kill him with an overdose, but she settles for sabotaging Squealer's vehicle so that it will literally turn him into a skidmark over a long stretch of road.
  • Contessa has the Path to Victory, which lets her plan out a series of steps that will lead her to a favored conclusion. Path to Ending is able to plan around her, and Contessa finds herself with a gun to the face when she attempts to intimidate Atropos.

Film — Live-Action

• Batman Begins:
  • Batman quips 'Taste of your own medicine, Doctor?' as he gives Scarecrow a dose of the same fear-inducing toxin that Scarecrow had previously used to attack both Batman and Rachel.
  • In a villainous example, the League of Shadows burns down Wayne Manor towards the end of the film, in retaliation for Bruce blowing up their headquarters after he betrayed them. The League's leader comments "Justice is balance. You burned my home and left me for dead; consider us even."
• In The Body (2012), Jaime poisons Álex with the same toxin the latter killed Mayka with.
• Cat's Eye: In "The Ledge" segment, a crime boss with a fondness for gambling knows that his wife is having an affair with another man. He kidnaps the man and makes him an offer: if he successfully navigates the very tiny ledge outside his penthouse apartment, he gets his wife and a briefcase full of money; if not, he'll be framed for drug possession. The protagonist wins the bet after several close calls, only for the boss to give him the money and his wife's head. This enrages him so much that after taking out his guard, he makes the boss the same offer to navigate the ledge in exchange for his life. He's not so lucky and falls to his death pretty quickly.
• When Django takes his vengeance upon the Brittle Brothers in Django Unchained, the big highlight of that vengeance is Django, after gunning down Big John, taking Big John's whip to Roger, one of the other brothers who had personally used it on Broomhilda, just before killing the guy with his own gun.
• In Dredd, Ma-Ma has three rival drug-dealers killed at the start of the film by dosing them with Slo-Mo (a Fantastic Drug which makes the user experience everything in slow-motion) before throwing them from the top of the Peach Trees complex. When Dredd has her cornered at the end of the film, he decides to execute her throwing her through the window of her penthouse on Peach Trees' top floor... and when he finds her stash of Slo-Mo, he forces her to take a dose so she can experience the fall exactly the same way her victims did.
• The inciting event in Escape from New York. A rebellion group against the dystopian America hijacks Airforce One to crash into New York, a walled off Penal Colony where the country's worst is dumped. They leave the president here to fend for himself, so he'll know what it's like for the country's undesirables.
• In Ever After, when Danielle de Barbarac's father dies, her step mother, the Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent, demotes her to servant, forces her to sleep on the floor next to a chimney, which earns her the moniker "Cinderella," and beats her when she undermines her authority. Later, after she humiliates Danielle at the Royal Ball, she sells her into slavery to pay off a debt. At the end, the Baroness is stripped of her title by the Queen, and sentenced to be shipped off to an American colony. Danielle, who made up with the prince and married him, speaks up for the Baroness, and asks the queen to show her the same level of compassion that the Baroness showed her. Cut to the Baroness and her wicked daughter working in a laundry.
• The ending of The Heiress, in which Catherine inflicts the same amount of cruelty upon Morris as he inflicted upon her. First he left her on the night of their wedding, then years later when they meet again she did the same with him as a form of revenge.
• In Lucky Number Slevin, the mobster known as "The Boss" orders a hit on Yitzchok the Fairy, the son of a rival mobster known as "The Rabbi", because he suspects the Rabbi of ordering a hit on his own son. At the end of the film, Slevin murders both the Boss and the Rabbi by suffocating them with plastic bags, the same way they killed his father.
• In The Philadelphia Story, Tracy pretends not to know that Mike and Liz are reporters and grills them about their personal lives, just as they were planning to do to her.
• During the climax of the first Scream movie, Sidney escapes and hides from the ghost face killers, Billy and Stu and uses their own phone call games to taunt them that the police are on their way. They don't take it well. She then proceeds to stab the killer while wearing their own Ghostface costume.
  Sidney: (Using the voice changer) We're going to play a little game. It's called...
  Sidney: (normal voice) ...guess who just phoned the police and reported your sorry motherfucking ass!
• The final scene of The Stepford Wives remake shows the no-longer-enslaved titular ladies dealing with their husbands this way.
• Trading Places revolves around Billy Ray Valentine, a Black two bit Con Man from the ghetto, and Lois Winthorpe III, a classist, racist yuppie who has Valentine arrested after they accidentally bump into one another. The Duke brothers, wanting to settle a $1.00 bet over Nature vs. Nurture, have them unwillingly and unknowingly swap lives, turning Valentine into a wealthy commodities broker, while they have Winthorpe's assets frozen, leaving destitute and living with Ophelia, a street walker that decided to take him on. Valentine overhears about their experiment and bet, and how the Dukes agree not to rehire Winthorpe after he drunkenly invaded the Christmas party, and they'll get rid of Valentine shortly after he, unknowingly, helps them corner the frozen orange juice market through insider trading because they don't want some one like him in the company. With this information, he teams up with Winthorpe, Opehelia, and Coleman, Winthorpe's butler, to take down the Duke brothers, and while they get rich on the frozen orange juice futures, the Dukes lose everything, which leads to this exchange:
  Randolph Duke: How could you do this to us after everything we've done for you?
  Valentine: Oh see, I made Louis a bet here. Louis bet me that we couldn't both get rich and put you on the poor house at the same time. He didn't think we can do it. I won.
  Winthorpe: I lost. One dollar.

Literature

• Aesop tells the story of a traveling con man who dupes people into buying his "magical elixir" that's supposed to cure anything and everything that ails them. When he falls ill, he is medicated with his own product which he knows will not work. And this is where we get "a taste of his own medicine."
• Burglar Bill: Bill learns how it feels to have someone break into your house and steal from you. Likewise, Betty learns how it feels to have someone take something precious from you.
• In the Mortal Engines series, towards the end of Infernal Devices Tom attempts to rescue Fishcake from Brighton during an attack by the Green Storm, but Hester flies their airship away and leaves Fishcake to fend for himself. Fishcake spends most of A Darkling Plain brooding over ways to get revenge on them for leaving him behind, but when he reunites with them at Erdene Tezh, he settles on hijacking their airship and leaving them stranded.
• In The Tin Woodsman of Oz the protagonists are captured by a giantess Evil Sorceress named Mrs. Yoop who uses her transformation magic to turn Polychrom into a canary, the Tin Woodman into a tin owl, the Scarecrow into a stuffed brown bear, and Woot the Wanderer into a green monkey. Eventually, the entourage is rescued, and Ozma is able to reverse the spell on everyone except Woot; the Green Monkey spell is irreversible and can only be transferred to someone else. Mrs. Yoop had earlier expressed great confidence in the fact that any transformation she creates will be permanent, but even after Ozma is able to undo the first three, the Princess reveals that the sorceress must have been entirely certain that the green monkey enchantment could not be broken even before she attempted it. Solving two problems at once, Ozma decides to punish Yoop by transferring the spell to her.

Live-Action TV

• Played literally in American Gothic (1995). Caleb Temple cites the trope to a doctor who poisoned Sheriff Buck. When we next see the doctor, he's choking to death from an overdose of pills that Caleb has somehow forced him to eat.
• The A-Team, "It's a Desert Out There". When the Scorpions fall into the trap the A-Team laid for them, Hannibal explicitly mentions their leader punching Max, and punches him in the same place.
• Breaking Bad:
  • After Skyler discovers that Walt has been cooking meth to pay the bills, Walt justifies all his dangerous criminal ventures to her by insisting that he's doing it for the sake of their family, much to her increasing incredulousness and decreasing patience. Eventually, the consequences of Walt's actions catch up to him, and he's forced to flee across the country with his family. However, when he goes to collect the money needed to buy new identities, he finds most of it is gone, Skyler gave it to her ex-boss and ex-lover Ted (not for any sentimental reasons, however). Skyler pleads with Walt, saying she did it "for the family". The sick irony of the situation is apparently not lost on Walt, as he immediately screams and goes Laughing Mad (although the fact they're all marked for death by some very dangerous people and have no way to escape might also have something to do with it).
  • Throughout season 5, Jack and his Neo-Nazi gang make a Signature Move out of ambushing their enemies and overwhelming them with sheer gunfire, killing Declan's crew plus Gomez and Hank with surprise attacks. In the series finale, Walt turns their own trick on them, luring them to a meeting under the pretense of presenting them with a more efficient way to cook meth before wiping out the gang with a mounted machine gun hidden in the trunk of his car.
• CSI: NY: In "Vigilante," a serial rapist is found bound, gagged and injured in the same manner as he had done to his victims, complete with the gag being a purple cloth. Only difference? He's dead. The "vigilante" turns out to be someone avenging the survivors.
• Doctor Who:
  • The villain in "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos", Tzim-Sha/Tim Shaw, keeps his prisoners and trophies from his "hunts" in stasis chambers that preserve them in a state somewhere between life and death. At the end of the episode, Graham and Ryan opt to seal him in one of his own stasis chambers in a display of Cruel Mercy, with Graham quoting the trope name as he prepares the chamber.
  • The Grand Serpent, one of the villains in the six-part episode "Flux", has this happen to him twice in "Chapter 6: The Vanquishers":
    • He tries to interrogate the Doctor with a torture device, only for the Doctor to escape and trap him in the same device instead, quoting the trope name at him as she does so.
    • An earlier part reveals that a soldier named Vinder discovered a plan to assassinate the family of one of the Grand Serpent's political rivals and tried to blow the whistle, and the Grand Serpent retaliated by ruining Vinder's career and having him exiled to be the only crew member of an isolated watch post at the edge of the universe. Vinder eventually gets revenge by forcing the Grand Serpent through a portal that leaves him stranded on a solitary astaroid devoid of any contact with civilisation.
• Season 2 of Hannibal provides a horrifying example. After tormenting, murdering, and publicly displaying countless victims, Hannibal gets a taste of his own medicine in Mukozuke. Matthew Brown tortures and nearly kills Hannibal, and had Brown succeeded, Hannibal's corpse would have been on public display. Hannibal is narrowly rescued by Jack and Alana, neither of whom realize that he is a serial killer like his tormentor.
• How I Met Your Mother: In "The Slutty Pumpkin Returns", Robin gets revenge on Barney for constantly mocking Canada by revealing that he himself is a quarter Canadian.
• Imposters focuses on Maddie, a professional con artist who specializes in marrying a rich person and then taking them for almost all they're worth. While prepping her latest mark, she does get close to the handsome Patrick and falls for him, meeting his family and working hard to win him over. But three of Maddie's past marks/exes (Ezra, Richard and Jules) have tracked her down and want their money back. At a party to celebrate her "birthday," Maddie is shocked when Ezra shows up, posing as her big brother with Jules his girlfriend and Richard one of the bartenders. It's obvious the trio are getting a total kick out of this as Maddie is working hard not to freak out.
  • A major turn in the next episode is the trio revealing that Patrick is actually an FBI agent who's been working all this time to sucker Maddie in so she can give up the guy she works for. After finding this out, Maddie is kicking herself that she fell for exactly the same tricks ("accidental" first meeting, fake family, playing hard to get, staging a breakup) that she's used on her own marks. Her trio of exes, meanwhile, get some pleasure seeing Maddie get the same treatment she gave to them.
• LazyTown: In one early episode of the series, Robbie Rotten uses remote-controlled boots to control the movements of Sportacus's once he puts them on. However, near the end when the tech-savvy Pixel gets the remote and launches the boots off, he gets Robbie to put them on himself and sends him clumsily walking home with his own invention.
• Happens a lot on Leverage, as the team will often use the mark's own corrupt tactics against them and ruin them exactly the way they've ruined so many other people.
• In the season 3 finale of Revenge (2011), Emily has the woman responsible for committing her as a child committed as payback: Victoria Grayson. Best Served Cold, indeed.
• Seinfeld:
  • Lampshaded in an episode in which Kramer's Girl of the Week repeatedly heckles Jerry during his set while a reporter is in the audience. Jerry can't bring himself to insult her back since she's Kramer's girlfriend and Kramer is sitting right there next to her, so his show completely bombs and the reporter slams him in his article. Later, George brings up how comedians always ask hecklers "How would you like it if I went to where you work and heckled you?" and encourages Jerry to do it for real. He goes to her office and heckles her mercilessly until she runs out in tears. Kramer is angry at him for it, but a fellow comedian praises Jerry for his courage, comparing him to Rosa Parks.
  • In another episode, Jerry gives a telemarketer a taste of his own medicine.
    Jerry: Oh, gee, I can't talk right now. Why don't you give me your home number and I'll call you later?
    Telemarketer: Uh... well, I'm sorry, we're not allowed to do that.
    Jerry: Oh, I guess you don't want people calling you at home.
    Telemarketer: No...
    Jerry: Well, now you know how I feel. [hangs up]
• In Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Illustrious Client, Baron Gruner is left horribly disfigured after one of his former mistresses, Kitty Winter, attacks him with vitriol. The Granada Television adaptation portrays this as a revenge attack for an earlier incident in which the Baron had himself used vitriol to attack Kitty, leaving nasty scars on her neck and chest.
  Kitty: Be done by, as you did to me.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Dominion isn't above infecting a whole species (Teplans) with a plague. In the final season, it's revealed that Section 31 infected the Changelings (ruling race of the Dominion) with a plague.
• The 1989 mini-series Twist of Fate has SS Colonel Helmut von Schrader, realizing the war is lost, hitting upon the wild idea of getting plastic surgery and a new identity as Jewish prisoner Benjamin Grossman. The plan is for him to be sent to a low-level prison hospital in an area the Allies will reach in a few weeks. However, when the Allies attack earlier than expected, the train holding von Schrader is rerouted. Thus, the former SS colonel finds himself spending the last year of the war in the hellish Belsen concentration camp, getting exactly the same type of brutality and horrible conditions he's put countless Jewish prisoners through.
• Young Sheldon: In "A Docent, a Little Lady and a Bouncer Named Dalton", Sheldon is fired from being a docent at the railroad museum for his usual habit of being a know-it-all. Constance tries to show him what it's like by droning on about knitting. Instead of being bored by it, however, Sheldon finds it fascinating.

Music

• Takeaki Wada's Vocaloid song "Chururira Chururira Daddadda!" features a girl who wants to be the last person standing in her class, so she systematically picks off her classmates one by one by getting them into trouble for various acts of misconduct. When she finds that she really has no more classmates to tattle on, she decides to turn on the teacher and get them in trouble too. The manga anthology that came with Diary of Underage Observation, the Concept Album that features this song, later reveals that she was herself ratted on by a power hungry girl much like her, who recorded her admitting to her selfish tattling. In the end, she is thrown out and made to look like all of the classmates she mocked.

Mythology and Religion

• In Classical Mythology:
  • Theseus encountered a bandit called Sinis who killed travellers by bending two pine trees and tying his victims between them. Theseus killed Sinis by binding him between his own pine trees. When he met another robber called Sciron who forced travellers to wash his feet and then kicked them over a cliff to be eaten by a monstrous turtle, Theseus fed him to his own turtle. Finally, he met a robber named Procrustes. Procrustes would invite weary travelers to spend the night but would always claim the bed was either too long or too short for his guest. If the bed was too short he would cut the traveller's limbs until they fit. If the bed was too long he would stretch his victim's limbs until they fit. If the bed was just the right size he would secretly swap it for his other bed in order to cut or stretch the victim anyway. Theseus cut off his feet and head with his own saw.
  • King Diomedes of Thrace fed his mares with human flesh; Heracles wrestled him into the mares' manger.
• The Bible: Happens to the Unmerciful Servant in Matthew 18:21-35. The servant was forgiven by his master to whom he owed a debt, but has one of his colleagues thrown in jail for failing to repay a small debt. His master, outraged, throws him in jail, reasoning that if the servant can't show mercy to others, he deserves no mercy himself.

Professional Wrestling

• A frequent tactic used by face wrestlers when getting the upper hand on heels ... using the same cheating tactics to wear down and/or defeat the Monster Heels and others, such as using a signature weapon or illegal move.
• Gorilla Monsoon: One of his signature lines — "Turnabout is fair play" — was used when a face used a bad guy's weapon or cheating tactic against him.
• At a 2007 Real Quality Wrestling show, Cheerleader Melissa accidentally severed the tendons in Sweet Saraya's leg on a pop can that had been left on the floor, nearly taking it off her leg. Five years later in another country, Melissa was SHIMMER's Champion, till Saraya decided to put an end to her reign, by targeting her knee
• Dramatic Dream Team: Akira Tozawa got so fed up with Danshoku Dino, he tried to out gay him...he failed but Dino was thrown off his game for a little bit.

Puppet Shows

• In one episode of Sesame Street, David teases Big Bird about having an imaginary friend (the episode aired before Snuffy was revealed to be real). Then David gets a call from a friend that Big Bird has never seen before, and Big Bird accuses David of making him up. After spending the entire episode trying to convince Big Bird that his friend is real, David realises that this must be how Big Bird feels when people refuse to believe him about Snuffy.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Subverted in in the case of Chaos cultists, especially the Slaaneshi ones: while they are among the most skilled torturers in the galaxy, it's not so much torture they get off on as it is sensation of any kind, including pain and defeat.
  • Similarly, defeating a Khornate in battle is giving them exactly what they want, Nurglites consider receiving diseases a gift (which is why they work so hard to spread them around), and Tzeentchians serve a god of backstabbers.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: In a Pensieve Flashback, Ann attempted to get Ryan out of a dangerous gang, when the members assaulted her, the act prompted Amok to materialize within Ann and she took down the gang members. Unfortunately, she lost control and attacked Ryan as well, slashing his eye in the process.
• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney gives us this in the tutorial case, no less. Phoenix Wright, having acquired shades of Jade-Colored Glasses after getting disbarred for being tricked into presenting forged evidence, decides to return the favor to the one responsible: Kristoph Gavin. The result? Phoenix's new protege, Apollo Justice, unknowingly ends up getting Kristoph convicted of murder by, you guessed it, presenting forged evidence.
• In Dishonored, the Golden Cat mission has Corvo being tasked with assassinating the Curtis and Morgan Pendleton, Corvo's co-conspirator Treavor Pendleton's twins older brothers, and corrupt members of parliament members who are also close allies with Hiram Burrows, the Lord Regent. However, Slackjaw, leader of the Bottle Street Gang, makes Corvo a deal: get him the combination to the Art Dealer's safe, and he'll use his contacts to get rid of the Pendleton Twins without killing them. Taking the non-lethal route, will result in Slackjaw telling Corvo that the Pendleton Twins own several mines where people are forced to work in inhumane conditions for the sake and wealth of the Pendletons, and Slackjaw says he intends to kidnap the twins, shave their heads, cut off their tongues, and ship them off to one the Pendleton's own mines to show them how it feels to toil in such conditions.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In Oblivion, Malacath the Daedra Prince asks you to free some ogres that have been enslaved by a minor noble named Drad and are being used to mine ore. When the ogres are freed, they take control of Drad's estate by force and make him grow crops for them.
  • In Night Falls on Sentinel, an in-universe short story in the series, the assassin Jomic describes his signature Pressure Point technique to a potential client. The 'client' in question is actually a knight with a warrant for Jomic's arrest, who subdues Jomic and then decides to use his own pressure points in order to torture him.
• In-Universe, this is Sebastian Castellanos' opinion about the fate of the Ax-Crazy serial killer, torturer and Mad Scientist Ruvik in The Evil Within, who winds up as a Brain in a Jar trapped within his own mindscape-manipulating STEM machine, after brutally torturing and killing hundreds of others by connecting them to the same device. This helps him resist Ruvik's attempts to invoke sympathy for his past and his plight.
• Fallen London: Each main quest of the overarching game (Ambition) ends with a Master of the Bazaar getting their ass handed to them for exploiting London:
  • Nemesis: Mister Cups is either financially ruined and scarred or sent to hell because they murdered your beloved, as well as six others, for the purpose of writing their revenge stories - he got one hell of a revenge story, alright.
  • Light Fingers: Mister Fires uses his sweatshop labor wealth to commission the creation of a monster which can force people to randomly fall in love with one another. In one ending, you exploit and steal his magnum opus, just as he exploited and stole from London for decades. In another, he ends up falling in love with the thing and can't bear to end it when it leads a revolution against him.
  • Bag A Legend: Mister Veils put a bounty on himself so he'd have free reign to terrorize and hunt down the citizens of London. You blow him up into his component parts and hunt their weakened selves one by one.
  • Heart's Desire: Mister Pages and the other Masters created a poker game called The Marvelous with extremely high stakes to con players into giving up everything, including supernatural elements within their souls. In all endings, Mister Pages is beaten by a monkey. Again. In one ending, you let the monkey win, which then cons the Masters and uses the prize to ensure the game can never be played again, destroying the Masters' entertainment.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, The Legion attacks the NCR outpost at Searchlight by opening up an old radioactive waste dump within the town, turning Searchlight into an irradiated wasteland. In one quest you can undertake for the NCR, you have the option of destroying a Legion outpost at Cottonwood Cove by finding a toxic waste transport vehicle on a cliff overlooking the cove and making it dump its cargo into the outpost below. If you choose this option, the quest-giver compliments you on your sense of irony.
• Fire Emblem Fates: Selena decides to act overly flirtatious towards Laslow in their B Support to teach him a lesson about how his own flirting makes women uncomfortable (and thus dislike him).
• In Heroes of Might and Magic IV, the necromancer Gauldoth is wrongfully accused of being a child-murderer by the citizens of Vitross, and a town guard named Mardor tries to have him Burned at the Stake. Gauldoth flees from Vitross, but returns several months later with an army which he uses to besiege and capture the town. He makes sure Mardor is captured alive during the siege, and has him burned to death.
• During the Duel of Wits in Kings Quest (2015), your opponent will try and trick you into drinking a goblet of hypnotic potion which will allow him to make your first move for you and forcing you to play at disadvantage for the rest of the game. However, it's possible to trick him into drinking the potion, choosing his first move and putting him on the back foot instead (though it isn't required to win the duel).
• Garrus from the Mass Effect series enjoys finding ironic ways to inflict this trope on criminals if the situation presents itself. His ways include sabotaging an environment suit worn by a saboteur and setting it to suffocate him, giving a drug dealer a lethal overdose of their own product, and offing a serial killer with a specialist knowledge of viruses with an infection (the target was a Quarian). Subverted towards Saleon, a doctor who ran an illegal organ-cloning business; Garrus had a plan to kill him by harvesting his organs, but settles for simply shooting him when they finally meet.
• Played for Laughs in Papers, Please. One of the scripted migrants is a former checkpoint inspector himself. If you find a discrepancy in his papers and deny him entry, his only comment before he leaves is a quiet, "So this is what it feels like."
• River City Girls: The song "Bully" with the title and talking about fighting a bully seems like a Bully Hunter dishing out what they took.
  Kill the lights, gonna fight, don't you hassle me
  on this ride.
  Feel the spite, won't play nice, don't you bully me,
  You'll want to run and hide.
  The impact of your style
  has faded.
  You dish it out, let's see
  if you can take it!
• Killbane in Saints Row: The Third is a Masked Luchador who was once part of a tag-team with Angel de la Muerte, but got sick of his partner being more popular than him and publicly unmasked him; Luchadors see losing their masks as a Fate Worse than Death, and Angel immediately retired from the ring and ended up a recluse. When The Boss and Angel take on Killbane during the Murderbrawl event, you're given the option of taking his mask after he's been defeated.

Webcomics

• In Drowtales, Ariel's Ax-Crazy half-sister Kalki attacks her and cuts off her arm. When Ariel finally corners Kalki, having just been told that her shapeshifting powers allow her Appendage Assimilation from any victim related to her, she promptly decides to get her arm back by stealing Kalki's.
• Goblins:
  • When Thaco was a prisoner of Dellyn Goblinslayer, Dellyn cut off one of Thaco's ears, and had it framed and displayed as a trophy on the walls of his quarters. When Thaco defeats Dellyn in a duel and has him at his mercy, he cuts off Dellyn's ear...then throws it away in a display of both Cruel Mercy and But for Me, It Was Tuesday.
  • An Alternate Universe version of Dellyn tortured and killed Forgath and Kin, only to be captured by their comrade, Minmax. Minmax used a crystal ball to teach himself Dellyn's torture techniques, and used them to torture Dellyn to death.
• Subverted in The Order of the Stick by Belkar and Miko, after Belkar trolls Miko by getting a restraining order which prevents her from using her Detect Evil ability against him. Miko attempts to retaliate by getting a restraining order to prevent Belkar from hurting her horse...which Belkar ignores because, unlike Miko, he only cares about the law when he can exploit it to his benefit.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: In the prologue, Michael Madsen is shown being an arrogant Deadpan Snarker to his boss over the phone. Later, when Michael acts rudely to finding out the ferry he's riding is not going to be making its return trip due to sudden governmental travel restrictions, the waitress sent to deal with him chews him out by being an arrogant Deadpan Snarker.

Web Original

• Cobra Kai: Yasmine gets a huge kick out of cyber-bullying (especially with regards to Aisha's build relative to her own). But the shoe winds up on the other foot when Aisha unleashes a frontal wedgie on her and the clip goes viral.
• In both Dragon Ball Z Abridged and canon, Piccolo has Goku distract Raditz while he charges up his Makankosappo/Special Beam Cannon, and later Goku has Piccolo distract Freeza while he charges up a Spirit Bomb. The difference is that the abridged series plays it up as this trope, complete with both singing Mahna Mahna while charging up.
  Piccolo: Did you just... hold a grudge?
• In Mystery Skulls Animated, Lewis' revenge for his death at the hands of Arthur (possession of the murderer notwithstanding) is putting him through the exact same circumstances as he originally died. He recreates the cave where the fatal incident occurred, and forces Arthur to retrace his steps so he can fall to his death. Unfortunately, it gets a little more 1:1 than Lewis would like — neither of them realized what they were doing when they went through with it until it was too late, and he experiences the exact same immediate guilt over his actions that Arthur did.
• Noob: La Croisée des Destins: Ash regularly seems to show genuine support to Gaea's enterprise, only to be asked to be paid for that support later. Gaea has been shown doing similar things to her guildmates and other acquaintances to get in-game currency from them in previous installments of the franchise.

Western Animation

• Used several times in Brickleberry. For instance, Malloy has been attacked in the groin at least twice, which is something he's done to Steve multiple times.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • In "Operation: L.I.C.E.", Numbuh 5 infiltrates the Delightful Children from Down the Lane's mansion to steal tortilla chips for Sector V's nacho cheese dinner instead of having to go to the deli around the corner. On her way out, Numbuh 5 loses her hat, but manages to recover it before the door she escaped through closes, but it's not really her real hat; the Delightful Children stole the real one and swapped it out with a hat infested with mutated hair-eating lice that start to multiply like crazy, setting the whole plot into motion. After Sector V exterminates the mutated lice from their treehouse with nacho cheese, they get even with the Delightful Children by stealing Lenny's football helmet and swapping it out with one infested with lice.
  • "Operation: F.A.S.T.-F.O.O.D." has Numbuh 3 celebrating her birthday, and as per Kids Next Door tradition, whatever wish she makes, her teammates have to grant, and the wish she has made is to lead a mission. The mission being she has to get fast food at a restaurant called Burger Frenzy. The restaurant is actually run by the greedy Chester, and his latest moneymaking scheme is making burgers out of children and selling them to sharks. He almost does this to Numbuh 3, who manages to escape before she was served to a family of sharks the rest of her teammates chase after when they think she's about to become dinner, and at which point, she puts Chester through the burger-creation machine he put her in earlier.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "A Twist of Ed", the Eds are tired of the Kanker Sisters constantly harassing them and assaulting them with kisses. Double D eventually figures out they can get rid of them for good by using Reverse Psychology, as he puts it "in order to defeat our enemy, we must become our enemy." So he and Ed spend most of the episode successfully scaring away the Kankers by pretending to have fallen in love with them, and harassing them with unwanted affection the same way they have done to them. Unfortunately, the Kankers realize what the Eds are doing when Eddy is too nervous to flirt with them, and use "Reverse-Reverse Psychology" to lure the Eds into a trap by pretending to still be scared of them, and reestablish "dominance" against their "boyfriends" with another unwanted make-out session.
• In one episode of Family Guy, Peter's nemesis James Woods steals Peter's ID, assumes his identity and takes his place in the family, leaving him homeless. Peter gets revenge by using a forged ID to assume Woods' identity, then makes a completely tasteless film (a comedy about 9/11, with David Spade as the voice of the plane) that ruins his acting career.
• In Garfield and Friends, the following instances involve Garfield constantly attempting to mail the cute kitten, Nermal, to Abu Dhabi:
  • In "First Class Feline", Jon, Odie, and Nermal decide to teach Garfield a lesson by substituting Nermal with a stuffed cat doll in the package and making Garfield's favorite meal but saying they can't eat without Nermal. Unfortunately, they underestimated the lengths Garfield would go for food as he chased after the package all the way to the central post office. When Garfield learned of the trick, he decided to turn the tables by using the stuffed cat (after painting its tail to look like his own) to make them think he mailed himself to Abu Dhabi.
  • Near the end of the episode "Cute for Loot", Garfield poses as a cute kitten to get free food from an old man. Unfortunately for him, the old man had a large cat who deals with cute kittens the same way Garfield does, and mails him to Abu Dhabi.
• When Scrooge McDuck becomes the owner of the House of Mouse for an evening, the club's quality takes a nosedive with his ridiculous budget cuts. Mickey and the gang try to turn the tables on the tightwad by making absurd cuts of their own. But they grossly underestimate the old gander. He sees right through their ploy, and explains to their faces why it won't work before doubling-down on their double-down:
  Scrooge: You thought you'd give me a taste of me own medicine, eh? Well I LOVE the taste of me own medicine! Especially when it's free!
• Invincible: The Flaxan empire that shows up out of nowhere to kill indiscriminately meets an emissary from a warlike alien empire who shows up out of nowhere to kill them all indiscriminately. They fail to learn the lesson.
• Kaeloo: At the end of Episode 65, Kaeloo, Stumpy and Quack Quack chase Mr. Cat around with weapons and try to beat him up.
• The King of the Hill episode "After the Mold Rush" has Hank do this to a couple of dishonest mold inspectors who ordered an inconveniently timed and unnecessary extermination at his house by getting certified as a mold inspector himself and doing an inspection of their houses, implicitly threatening to put them through the same hassle they put him through unless they call off the extermination they ordered for him. For good measure, he uses the mold detector right next to Bill's shoeless, fungus-infested feet, just to be sure he got a positive reading.
• In the Disney short, "Lonesome Ghosts", a quarter of ghosts lure ghost exterminators Mickey, Donald, and Goofy to their abandoned mansion to scare them silly. When their antics end up getting the trio covered in molasses and flour, they mistake them for ghosts, freak out and flee for the hills.
  Donald: So you can't take it, you big sissies!
• Used regularly by Looney Tunes protagonists such as Bugs Bunny Perhaps most directly in "Rabbit Fire", after Elmer Fudd spends the whole short hunting Bugs and Daffy Duck, a new poster reveals it is "Elmer Season", with a very worried Elmer evading the two, now with hunting garb and rifles.
  • Another Elmer-related example is in "Ant Pasted". In this cartoon, he deliberately throws lit firecrackers at an ant nest because their complaints amused him and starting a war against them when they retaliate. At the end, the ants blow him up with his own fireworks (which are leaking and creating a trail), which is implied to have killed him.
  • In Duck Amuck, Daffy is tormented by the animator of the cartoon, who turns out to be Bugs. The sequel short Rabbit Rampage, has Bugs himself the victim of the animator's pranks. Bugs resultantly knows from the get-go that he will get as little mercy from the animator as he gave Daffy and repeatedly tries to escape. Amusingly the animator isn't Daffy getting revenge, but Elmer being the assiliant of this trope for once.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Honest Apple", Rarity hires Applejack to be a judge for her fashion show because of her reputation for honesty, but the only thing she's honest about is her hatred of fashion, and she ends up driving away several designers with her much-too-brutal honesty when she calls fashion Ridiculous. With her show in jeopardy, Rarity tries to show Applejack how honesty can be hurtful when she takes her to a pony named Strawberry Sunrise, who flippantly badmouths apples to her face.
    Rarity: Applejack, why are you so angry? It's just Strawberry's honest opinion. What's wrong with that?
    Applejack: Well, that's fine if she doesn't like 'em, but if she knew how hard we work to make our apples perfect, maybe she wouldn't be so mean about—(realization) Ohhhhhh...Oh boy.
  • In "A Trivial Pursuit", after Twilight intentionally gets Pinkie Pie disqualified from a game of Trivia Trot due to seeing her as a threat to her winning streak, she gets paired up with Sunburst, who wants to preserve his "correct answers" record. In so doing, he refuses to let Twilight answer questions, causing her to accuse him of trying to get her disqualified...which makes her realize she had done the exact same thing to Pinkie.
• Throughout the first two seasons of The Owl House, Big Bad Emperor Belos shows himself to be a serial backstabber who manipulates countless people into helping him—including the main character Luz—only to then renege on the deals he made with them and toss them aside once he no longer needs them, all to pull off his Evil Plan of branding every witch in the Boiling Isles with a coven sigil and kill them with the Draining Spell to exterminate all witchkind. In the season 2 finale, Luz turns the tables on him by doing these same things: to convince him not to go through with petrifying her, she promises to give him something she knows he wants and needs in exchange for him sparing her and her friends. He agrees and undoes the petrification (though almost certainly not planning on actually sparing her friends in the end)...which gives her the chance she needs to put a coven sigil brand on him to try to force him to undo the Draining Spell.
• The Patrick Star Show: At the end of "Bubble Bass Reviews", Patrick and Squidina respond to Bubble Bass's harsh review by making a series reviewing his show. In the process, they make a bunch of jokes showing off what a pathetic Fat Slob he is. Bubble Bass runs away screaming from it.
• Peppa Pig: Happens literally in “Pedro’s Cough.” When Pedro Pony comes to playgroup with a mild cough, Dr. Brown Bear is called in to administer his special cough syrup to the children. Ironically, the syrup actually works, but tastes dreadful (described by one character as “an old shoe full of jam”). Dr. Brown Bear boasts that he never gets ill because he eats an apple a day, but Pedro’s cough turns out to be more contagious than anyone accounted for, and eventually infects all of the grown-ups as well, including Dr. Brown Bear himself. Once he is given his own medicine, he also proclaims it to be absolutely disgusting.
• An aversion on The Simpsons despite the trope name being dropped verbatim as Homer watches the Thanksgiving parade.
  Announcer 1: And here comes our friend: Bullwinkle J. Moose.
  Homer: Heh heh heh, Bullwinkle's antler sprung a leak!
  Announcer 2: Uh-oh, looks like ol' Bullwinkle's finally gotten a taste of his own medicine!
  Announcer 1: He certainly did, Bill.
  Announcer 2: Wait, what did... did what I just say make sense?
  Announcer 1: Well... no, not really.
  Announcer 2: Boy, now I know how the Pilgrims felt!
  Announcer 1: ...What are you talking about, Bill?!
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series:
  • Upon becoming Venom, Eddie Brock launches a campaign of psychological warfare against Spider-Man in-between beating him up, stalking Mary Jane, trying to publicly unmask him, and going so far as to show up at Peter's house to charm his Aunt May. Spidey ultimately defeats Venom by using his own tactics against him, exploiting Brock's anger and bitterness at being fired from the Daily Bugle to lure him to a shuttle launch, with the roar of the rocket forcing the symbiote off Eddie and leaving him powerless.
  Spider-Man: He'll never stop torturing me! I've got to fight... and I know just the way to do it.
  • Used for a Start of Darkness with the show's main villain. Wilson Fisk tried to win his father's approval by assisting him with illegal activities, only for the older man to abandon him to the cops with the comment "Sacrifices must be made." Fisk used his time in prison to get in shape and built a massive criminal empire of his own when he got out, becoming the Kingpin. As his final revenge, he had his minions track down his father, who begged forgiveness, only for Kingpin to kill him with the same ruthlessness and lack of compassion that he had learned from him.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In the episode "Krusty Towers," Mr. Krabs turns the Krusty Krab into the titular hotel, with the policy "We shall never deny a guest, even the most ridiculous request". Patrick becomes the first guest and makes multiple ridiculous and unreasonable requests. When Squidward complains, Mr. Krabs outright tells him that the policy ensures that Patrick can be as unreasonable as he wants. Eventually, Squidward gets sick of it and quits...only to immediately return as a guest so he can force Mr. Krabs to fulfill his outrageous demands. However, when his antics go too far and end up sending him, Mr. Krabs, Spongebob, and Patrick to the hospital, Krabs ends up getting the last laugh when he, after seeing the expensive medical bill, sends the boys (including Patrick, who doesn't even work for him) to medical school with plans to turn the Krusty Krab into a hospital.
  • At the end of "Accidents Will Happen", Squidward has to spend the rest of his workday pampering Mr. Krabs after the latter did so to him after being Caught on Tape faking an on-the-job injury and sleeping on the job culminating in the accident.
  • "Breath of Fresh Squidward" is an accidental version, as an electric fence fries Squidward's brain and flips his personality around from The Eeyore to The Pollyanna. Throughout the episode, SpongeBob has to deal with Squidward constantly bothering him with unwanted affection, in the exact same ways which he would normally bother Squidward. It proves to be too much for him, and he eventually snaps at Squidward to go away. Fortunately for him, Squidward inadvertently touches the same fence and turns back to his usual self.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: In "Born to be Riled", the third and final short of the episode "The Buster Bunny Bunch", Babs' classmates become offended by her impersonations of them and retaliate by impersonating her.
• A literal example in an episode of Totally Spies! called "Passion Patties", when the spies force the villain of the episode to drink a vial of the highly-concentrated sugar extract that was the main ingredient in the cookies she invented (the titular "passion patties"). The episode's villain blimps up within seconds of drinking her extract straight up.
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Nothing to Fear", Scarecrow is exposed to his own fear gas. He cowers in terror before Batman (appearing to Scarecrow as a Man-Bat-like monster), who mocks him for being unable to take his own medicine.

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