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Disproportionate Retribution

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"But that was two years ago!"
"Revenge is a dish best served with an extra helping."

In some situations, it makes sense to let the opponent know that if they so much as sneeze on someone you protect, it will cost them a limb. If you have tried an eye for an eye and it really didn't do anything except help sell eyepatches, the only way to stay alive is to be drastic. Pay back any offense tenfold, or even a hundredfold if necessary, until the survivors learn to stay away and/or do everything in their power to keep you in a good mood. It's a common tactic of militaries the world over, with some regimes (such as Nazi Germany) being infamous for it.

That said, the "Justice" these rivals have in mind is more akin to a brutal beatdown... well, most of the time it is an actual brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, supposed to culminate in the receiver's humiliation or death. Any attempt to get them to see the (all too obvious) truth, show mercy, or realize they're a step away from utterly ruining the receiver's life/committing murder will never succeed. It invariably takes the hero beating the rival, be it in a Cooking Duel or Good Old Fisticuffs, and proving Right Makes Might for the poor deluded soul to realize they were wrong all along, sometimes even coming around and realizing that Defeat Means Friendship.

Villains who claim that their bad past/circumstances led them to do this will likely make you realize that Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse.

All too often, these guys refuse to see reason. They promise that they'll come back to kill the hero, and shove his "mercy" and offer of friendship down his wind pipe. It might take the arrival of a plot significant character to clear things up and hand out some Epiphany Therapy to all involved.

This is not limited to the antagonist's side. God help you if that hero you've harmed has a Psycho Supporter. And all parties to a masquerade, good or bad, are often required to kill any poor schmuck who accidentally sees something he's not supposed to.

This could be what stops something from being an "act of justice" instead of an "act of vengeance". May be used as part of Cruel Mercy. A common habit for Lawful Stupid characters.

Intriguingly, while disproportionate can possibly mean underdoing it, you'll almost never see that happen.

Trope relations:

A Sister Trope to:

Compare:

  • Berserk Button: An insignificant slight causes a person to become extremely pissed off.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: If the retribution is Played for Laughs.
  • Cycle of Revenge: Where two parties endlessly invoke Disproportionate Retribution toward each other.
    • Feuding Families: Two families loathe one another to the point of being openly at war with each other.
  • Die for Our Ship: Fans bash characters solely for interfering with their preferred shipping.
  • Easy Road to Hell: Doing just one bad deed is heinous enough to condemn you to Hell.
  • Evil Is Petty: Villains doing assholish and cruel things just because they can.
  • Frivolous Lawsuit: Suing people over flagrantly trivial slights.
  • George Jetson Job Security: Losing your job for a trivial reason or no reason at all.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: A person that gets extremely angry at any perceived slight.
  • Irrational Hatred: Having it in for someone when there's no rational reason to despise them.
  • Karmic Overkill: Fans feel that a character's fate is too severe for what they did.
  • Lost Food Grievance: Intending to inflict violence on someone because they took, destroyed or ate food you were going to eat.
  • Make an Example of Them: Punishing someone to deter others.
  • Offing the Annoyance: Murdering someone for irritating you.
  • Revenge by Proxy: Getting back at those who wronged you by murdering, torturing, or otherwise doing harm to someone close to them.
  • Revenge Myopia: Someone tries to take revenge for something that they and/or their peers started.
  • RevengeSVP: Ruining parties and other social gatherings for not being invited to them.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Fans depict a character as crueler, more spiteful, and otherwise worse than they are in canon simply for not liking them.
  • Serious Business: Treating something more seriously than necessary.
  • Shoplift and Die: Shopkeepers killing anyone who tries to make off with their wares without paying.

Other: Contrast with Unishment (a punishment that isn't a punishment at all) and Restrained Revenge (paying back a slight with retribution that is less severe than what was intended before rather than forgive the person in question). Expect the character dishing this out to justify this no matter what anyone speaks against it. Expect someone (doesn't needs be the Only Sane Man) to be Disappointed by the Motive if the retribution is just that absurdly disproportional to the reason.

See also Pay Evil unto Evil, which is what this trope can result from when done wrong, and for more proportionate responses, Laser-Guided Karma.

Any real life examples, and we'll put your fingers through a meat grinder.


Examples:

Other examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Manhwa 
  • K from I Wish put a curse on his real name that will cause those that speak it unbearable harm... because some kid used to make fun of his name.

    Pinball 
  • In the infamous "Move Your Car" mode from Bally's Creature from the Black Lagoon, the player tries to blow up a huge van that is blocking his vision at a drive-in theater. Weapons include dynamite, a bazooka, a flamethrower, and an atomic bomb... but the van itself remains unscathed.
  • "Joe's Diner" from The Flintstones also invokes this, being a Spiritual Successor to "Move Your Car". An irate diner retaliates against the hapless drive-thru clerk with a punch in the face, followed by a grenade through the window.
  • Occurs throughout the Judge Dredd pinball, such as a civilian sentenced to a year in prison for flatulence.
  • In No Good Gofers, the "Cart Attack" round allows the player to attack Bud and Buzz — a pair of gophers — with missiles fired from a golf cart.

    Podcasts 
  • Black Jack Justice:
    • "Payback" opens with Jack preparing to get even with the person responsible for him spending 30 days in jail by cleaning all of his guns. Noticing this, Trixie subverts the trope by selling Jack on much more proportionate retribution. By the end of it, the episode's killers are in jail, the client who'd screwed them over spent time in jail before being exonerated, and the judge who sent Jack to jail in the first place was made to look foolish. Jack's narration states that it all felt exactly like getting thirty days of his life back.
    • "The Dead Duck" features a price being put on Jack's head, much to Trixie's delight due to the bounty being hilariously small. The episode ends with the reveal that the price was never on Jack's head, but Trixie's. The job came from a would-be suitor Trixie had spurned. The comically small bounty was his life savings, which he dedicated to killing Trixie for turning him down.
  • JT from the Cool Kids Table game Bloody Mooney was only sent to detention for swearing at Keri and then getting punched by her. Though it's possible that, since it was an altercation between a guy and a girl, he was automatically assumed to be at fault regardless.
  • Mom Can't Cook!: Discussed in the episode on Horse Sense. While Andy and Luke agree that Michael's behaviour towards Tommy was bad, they think some of the "pranks" he gets pulled on him in return go way too far, as they're all potentially harmful.

    Web Animation 
  • Anon: Sure, Tucker pretending to be in love with Sam to sleep with her when they were teens was a dick move, but it certainly didn't warrant the twenty years of stalking and constant kidnapping that followed.
  • The first asdfmovie ends with a skit where a man makes a lame "you're gay" joke at another. In response, the other man stabs him through the chest with a sword.
  • Battle for Dream Island could probably have its own page. With it being a comedy show where the collective IQ of all 70+ characters is equivalent to that of a plastic spork, there's way too many examples to list (at least in one or two sittings).
    • One of the most extreme and iconic examples is when Leafy steals Dream Island from the winner, Firey, just because she died on his ferris wheel.
  • In the Grand Finale for Brawl of the Objects, Princess Diamond remarries a dragon called Gareth all because Emerald looked for her in the wrong places.
  • FreezeFlame:
  • GoAnimate videos where a person is Grounded will invoke this trope heavily. It doesn't matter how minor the offense is, expect the person being punished by being grounded for an impossibly long time. This is the start, though — many videos have shown the target being expelled from school for getting a math problem wrong, toys destroyed for Playing Sick and even outright killed.
  • In the Andrés Guerrero cartoon featuring itemLabel's Dinkle, Dinkle posts a chiptune on social media and is met with critics saying "strictly speaking, this is not a chiptune". Dinkle, being Dinkle, responds by brigading the critics with Sock Puppets and then kidnapping and killing twenty people, before going about his business like nothing happened.
  • Happy Tree Friends: While Sniffles is usually trying to eat the ants, they take measures far beyond self-defense by torturing and killing him as painfully and brutally as possible.
  • Helluva Boss: Evil peahen demon Stella is constantly trying to get her husband Stolas murdered for having an affair with an imp.
  • In the HourofPoop video "Friar's Rubbing Wood: Fall of Nottingham", Friar Tuck is ordered to publicly apologize for stealing an ice pop from a child and, upon refusing to do so, is sentenced to work for Electronic Arts before being insulted and humiliated in front of the whole town. In response, Tuck concocts an insidious plot to kill everyone in Nottingham that involves Black Magic, Human Sacrifice, and an Orbital Bombardment provided by the sun.
  • Isabelle Ruins Everything: Isabelle put Cyrus in jail because he didn't approve of what she was doing to the town. Reese didn't appreciate her husband being sent to jail, so she was sent to jail too. Apparently, several other villagers followed them.
  • Lobo (Webseries): Lobo frequently kills people who bother him.
  • The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: During “The Most Epic Superhero Origin Story Ever Told”, Ridiculously Epic nukes his band class for playing their instruments poorly.
  • RWBY:
    • In Volume 1, Jaune is being regularly bullied by Cardin everywhere he goes. Nora suggests breaking Cardin's legs in retribution.
    • Dr. Watts' motivation turned out to be this. Why is he working with Salem, master of the Creatures of Grimm who have menaced human society since its beginning, in her plan, which involves destroying humanity's greatest defenses against said Grimm in order to Take Over the World, and eventually ends up destroying an entire kingdom? He felt insulted that General Ironwood gave precedence to Pietro Polendina's work on Penny rather than his own Paladins. Keep in mind that he still received funding on the Paladins, which became a signature of the Kingdom of Atlas' armies. The only real insult was to his ego.
  • Zsdav Adventures: In A torony (The tower), an Evil Wizard gets invited by the king to lunch and they ask him to wash his hands, the wizard curses the king and turns him into a pig in response.

If you don't like this stinger, it's time to RUN. The Navy SEALs are coming.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Disproportionate Revenge, The Chicago Way

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J.W. Globwobbler Gets "Fired"

After Tom and Jerry wins The Fabulous Super Race, they were tied however which J.W. Globwobbler informs that their contract says they have to do the race all over again. They don't take this well and beat the living daylights out of him. J.W. then starts hazily rambling about how Hollywood is going to be good, earnest, family-friendly entertainment. The president of Hollywood's thinly-veiled Take That! response before vaporizing him and giving Irving his position as new head of Globwobbler Studios? "We can't have that kind of attitude in Hollywood." After spending most of the film being the beleaguered assistant to J.W., Irving finally gets the fame and glory that he deserves.

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