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:- Felony Misdemeanor: Treating a relatively harmless misdeed as if it were a serious crime.
- Misplaced Retribution: The punishment is inflicted on the wrong people.
- Law of Disproportionate Response: Reacting to serious matters like they aren't that important and vice versa.
- Disproportionate Restitution: A means of apology doesn't come close to making up for what the person has done.
- Disproportionate Reward: A minor or major act of kindness is reacted to in this way.
- There Is No Kill like Overkill: The avenger won't let up even after the victim has stopped breathing.
Compare:
- Make an Example of Them: Punishing someone to deter others.
- George Jetson Job Security: Losing your job for a trivial reason or no reason at all.
- Revenge by Proxy: Getting back at those who wronged you by murdering, torturing, or otherwise doing harm to someone close to them.
- Serious Business: Treating something more seriously than necessary.
- RevengeSVP: Ruining parties and other social gatherings for not being invited to them.
- Shoplift and Die: Shopkeepers killing anyone who tries to make off with their wares without paying.
- Irrational Hatred: Having it in for someone when there's no rational reason to despise them.
- 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.
- Berserk Button: An insignificant slight causes a person to become extremely pissed off.
- Evil Is Petty: Villains doing assholish and cruel things just because they can.
- Die for Our Ship: Fans bash characters solely for interfering with their preferred shipping.
- 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.
- Easy Road to Hell: Doing just one bad deed is heinous enough to condemn you to Hell.
- Lost Food Grievance: Intending to inflict violence on someone because they took, destroyed or ate food you were going to eat.
- Frivolous Lawsuit: Suing people over flagrantly trivial slights.
- Revenge Myopia: Someone tries to take revenge for something that they and/or their peers started.
- Karmic Overkill: Fans feel that a character's fate is too severe for what they did.
- Comedic Sociopathy: If the retribution is played for laughs.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: A person that gets extremely angry at any perceived slight.
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:
- Advertising
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Comic Strips
- Fairy Tales
- Fan Works
- Film
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Music
- Myths & Religion
- Pinball
- Podcast
- Professional Wrestling
- Tabletop Games
- Theatre
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Web Original
- Western Animation
Other examples:
- 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.
"Oh, come on!"
- 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:
- In Carl, Principal Staffordshire is very prone to giving the students detention for anything they do, no matter how small or harmless it is.
- In Bowser's Koopalings Bowser Jr. literally has people killed or arrested under false charges if they do anything that pisses him off. Sometimes he even does it for kicks.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The "Lamar Roasts Franklin" meme from Grand Theft Auto V that saw a resurgence in 2020/21 has very nearly become its own universe, with Lamar even opening the Los Santos Institute of Roastology to teach entire classes of other fictional characters how to roast Franklin and his "yee-yee-ass" haircut. And the reason for all of this? Because Franklin wouldn't let Lamar come up in his crib.
If you don't like this stinger, it's time to RUN. The Navy SEALs are coming.
