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Misplaced Retribution / Western Animation

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Misplaced Retribution in Western Animation.

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    A-P 
  • American Dad!:
    • "Escape from Pearl Bailey" has Steve commit this on the three popular kids. After Steve's girlfriend is slandered and as a result loses her run for election, he gets revenge on the three he believes were the culprits (by having buffalo feces dropped on one, injecting a large amount of lard into one leg of the second, and giving the final one an STD). He then discovers that it was his friends who had slandered his girlfriend. When the whole school finds out Steve was responsible and confront him with a mob, Steve tries pinning the blame on his friends by saying he'd have never done it had they not framed the girls. The school isn't having it though, deciding to beat up his friends too for setting him on his revenge scheme.
    • Happens in "1600 Candles" after Francine accidentally causes the Smith family to forget Roger's 1600th birthday by using a classified CIA experiment to revert Steve to a toddler, causing him to become the center of the family's attention. Because of this, Roger blames Steve for making the family forget his birthday, assuming that Steve is at fault due to getting all the attention instead of Roger. As a result, Roger decides to pants Steve in the school dance while Francine manages to fully escape his wrath.
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • The Clock King goes after Gotham City mayor Hamilton Hill because years earlier, The Clock King (then Temple Fugate) was put out of business by a lawsuit brought by Hamilton Hill's law firm. While Hill wasn't specifically the lawyer representing the plaintiff, the Clock King does consider him completely responsible because Hill also suggested Fugate take his coffee break at a different time... which led to things going worse.
    • When one of Wayne Enterprises' directors makes a deal with a company responsible for deforestation in The Amazon Rainforest, Poison Ivy sets a trap for everyone she perceives responsible including Bruce Wayne himself who put a stop to it the second he found out. When he unwittingly sends Alfred in his place, Ivy tells her mooks to let him in, saying that someone has to pay for Wayne's "crimes".
  • Beavis and Butt-Head: In "Prank Call", Harry Sachz receives a bunch of prank calls by the titular characters and decides to get revenge on them. However, the two inadvertently end up directing him to Stewart's house, where he mistakes Mr. Stevenson as his prank caller and proceeds to give the latter a brutal Ass Shove.
    Sachz: Listen very carefully, funny man! If you ever, EVER call me again, I swear, I'll find you, wherever you are, and I'll GUT YOU!! But just to make sure you don't call me, I'm gonna stick your phone where you'll have an awful hard time dialing it!
  • Bob's Burgers: In "The Deepening", Teddy has an obsessive hatred for a mechanical shark featured in a movie he did an acting job on. He reveals why to Bob when they are about to confront it, how he used to be fit and tried hitting on an actress, but the shark operator caused the shark to knock into him and spill food all over them, ruining a possible relationship and causing Teddy to descend into a lifetime of overeating. Bob asks why Teddy isn't angry at the guy who operated the shark, since the shark is just a prop. Teddy realizes Bob has a point but begins to insist the shark made him do that.
  • Castlevania (2017): Whilst Dracula's rage and vengeance at the murder of Lisa, who was condemned as a witch by the Corrupt Church and burned at the stake, is very much justified, as Alucard points out; true justice would be targeting the ones directly responsible for Lisa's death, instead of exterminating the entire human race indiscriminately as Dracula seeks to do.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door: In "Operation: T.R.E.A.T.Y.", Chad Dickson (the former Numbuh 274) tries to murder main protagonist Nigel Uno (aka Numbuh 1) for being chosen as Earth's representative for the GKND. While it's understandable for Chad to be furious about being passed over for promotion considering all the sacrifices he made for the KND, trying to kill Nigel for it is both disproportionate and completely out of line, as Nigel had nothing to do with the decision, is completely unaware of the GKND, and isn't even aware he was up for promotion at all. Instead, all this serves to do is destroy what little chance Nigel and Chad had of reconciling their friendship.
  • Courage attempts to invoke this in one episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog when evil eggplants want to attack Muriel because she eats eggplants (non-sapient ones, but it doesn't matter to them). Courage dresses up like an eggplant and tries to convince the eggplants to attack the supermarkets instead, but his plan fails when they see through his disguise.
  • Danny Phantom: In "Mystery Meat", Dash is angry at Danny because the school's cafeteria now serves food made from grass and soil, resulting in him being served mud pies made from real mud (or topsoil, as Sam claims it to be). Despite the change being made at Sam's suggestion, he orders Danny to eat the mud pies in front of everyone due to him being friends with Sam.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy: Sometimes a different Ed or both other Eds facing the consequences of another's actions.
    • In "My Fair Ed", the kids hold Edd responsible for the trouble Ed and Eddy cause, saying if he doesn't stop their shenanigans, he'll pay the price.
    • In "Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy's Boo Haw Haw", Ed goes around beating up people, thanks to getting hallucinations from watching several monster movies. However, it's Edd and Eddy who get beaten up instead; Ed himself is unharmed.
    • In "All Eds Are Off", Ed contaminates the pool with gravy and Eddy receives detention for it instead.
    • In "Smile for the Ed" Eddy gets a week's detention for impersonating the principal, which Edd actually did (though Edd was trying to help).
    • In "A Fistful of Ed", after Eddy keeps insulting, taunting, and pelting Jimmy with endless hot dogs, Jimmy explodes and gives Edd a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
    • This was actually lampshaded and deconstructed in "For Your Ed Only" when Sarah writes in her diary that Ed and Eddy deserved what she gave them and that she knows that Edd is almost always the innocent one, but as she states, "Give those cute ones an inch, and they'll take a mile."
  • The Fairly OddParents!:
    • In "Blondas Have More Fun", Jorgen blamed Wanda for Timmy's reckless and dangerous stunt wishes when it was Cosmo who was granting them.
    • In "Boys in the Band", Timmy's Mom threatened on TV to take her aggression out on Timmy if Chip Skylark didn't show up to the concert she and Timmy's Dad were at note . His dad advises him to run.
  • Family Guy:
  • Final Space:
    • Todd H. Watson (aka Hushfluffles) blames Gary Goodspeed for the deaths of his family when Earth was practically ripped apart and was dragged into Final Space, even though Gary and the Team Squad were actively trying to save the Earth.
    • Hilariously zig-zagged between Gary and the de Winters. At first they want Gary dead after finding out early in the show in the worst way possible through him that the family matriarch is dead, even though Gary wasn't the one who killed and skinned her. In Season 2, it turns out that their vendetta against Gary is somewhat well-founded, as Gary did via time travel shenanigans accidentally cause the matriarch's death via heart attack when she found out through him that her own father had died and been skinned.
    • After Ash makes a Face–Heel Turn and is subsequently corrupted by Invictus' influence, she, now murderously sadistic and vindictive, decides to play dirty and get back at Gary for all her personal losses she perceives him as being responsible for via Revenge by Proxy. On Mooncake: violently draining his powers, and possibly killing him or at least leaving him separated across dimensions from Gary.
  • Harley Quinn (2019): Played for Laughs when Doctor Psycho is explaining his Origin Story and the joy he felt after watching a Ferris wheel he was told he was too short to ride as a child collapse and kill all the occupants. He then closes with "And that's why I hate women," baffling Darkseid.
  • Invader Zim: In the episode "Battle of the Planets", Tallest Purple orders someone Thrown Out the Airlock for not remembering Zim ruining Operation Impending Doom I. His response afterward:
    Purple: That was the wrong guy but... that's okay! I think everyone gets the point!
  • Johnny Test: Invoked in "Johnny's New Baby Sisters" where Hugh said that Johnny would be held accountable for any further transformation experiments the twins performed. No sooner did his parents leave than his sisters turned themselves into babies as part of a scheme to win over the neighborhood hottie.
  • This was the theme of the Looney Tunes cartoon "A Pest in the House". Every time bellhop Daffy disrupts the rest of a disgruntled hotel guest, he punches the manager, Elmer Fudd, in the nose. At the end of the cartoon, when Daffy works the guest up into his greatest rage, Elmer promotes Daffy to manager while taking over as bellhop. The guest still punches Elmer in the nose.
  • The Loud House: Deconstructed in the episode "Save the Date", where Bobby breaks up with Lori when Lincoln hurts his sister's feelings despite Lori having nothing to do with it. It becomes clear he doesn't want to when he has to do it again later in the episode, and he is just as overjoyed as Lori when Lincoln publicly makes up with Ronnie Anne so they can get back together.
  • In one episode of ¡Mucha Lucha! when Rikochet was in detention, the Headmistress kept adding to his time because the mariachi band with him wouldn't stop singing.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998)
    • In the episode "Paste Makes Waste", when a bullied kid named Elmer Sglue mutates into a giant monster after being ruthlessly teased and bullied by Buttercup and the other kids, Blossom and Bubbles initially refuse to help Buttercup fight him, telling her outright that she and the other bullies deserve it for how they treated Elmer. They quickly change their minds when Elmer proceeds to attack Ms. Keane, who had nothing to do with the bullying, and proceeds to rampage through Townsville.
    • In the episode "Collect Her", the girls blame each other for their missing belongings when it was actually Lenny who stole them.

    R-Y 
  • Regular Show:
    • In the episode "Firework Run", when Muscle Man accidentally sets off the Fourth of July fireworks, Benson threatens to fire Mordecai, Rigby and Hi-Five Ghost alongside him for it even though none of the three had anything to do with it.
    • In "Really Real Wrestling", Benson immediately fires Mordecai and Rigby when they get back to the park after having snuck out instead of watching Pops, even though they'd gone after Pops who was supposed to be in bed and snuck out first. While he does go back on his action, Benson still purely blames the two main characters even after Pops (mostly) explains that he was the one being irresponsible.
  • Rick and Morty: In the episode "Lawnmower Dog", Jerry demands that Rick find a way to make the family dog smarter, but since he has no authority over Rick, he threatens to ground Morty so Rick can't bring him to help on his latest adventure. Fortunately for Morty, Rick already had a device for just such an occasion.
  • The Simpsons:
    • In the early episode "Moaning Lisa", Lisa is in such a depressed state that the school takes notice and sends a note home to her parents, and even then out of worry rather than her being in trouble. Homer's so used to Bart being in trouble with the school instead that in response he punishes his son anyway by making him vacuum the entire house, despite Bart not doing anything wrong. Bart understandably is less than pleased with this and also makes sure to vacuum up a deck of Homer's playing cards in retaliation.
    • In "Wild Barts Can't Be Broken", Homer and his friends go on a drunken stupor and ransack Springfield Elementary. Chief Wiggum automatically assumes it was kids and imposes an excessive curfew, which Homer applauds because he was too drunk to remember. Naturally, the kids are righteously upset and spend most of the episode finding ways to get back at their parents or other adults.
    • In "Rosebud", The Ramones perform at Mr. Burn's birthday, but they insult him. Burns, who failed to recognize them orders to have The Rolling Stones killed.
    • In "My Sister, My Sitter", the 911 operator ignores Lisa's call because Bart made a bunch of prank calls beforehand.
      911 operator: Simpson? Look, we've already been out there tonight for a sister-ectomy, a case of severe butt rot and a leprechaun bite. How dumb do you think we are?
    • In "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story", Moe's story-within-the-story reveals that Springfield's recidivist criminal Snake Jailbird used to be an Adventure Archaeologist until he came into Moe's Tavern. After Moe steals his Mayan coins, sparking his Start of Darkness, Snake declares "I'll take my revenge on society — by which, I mean convenience stores."
  • South Park:
  • Spider-Man: The Animated Series: J. Jonah Jameson eventually reveals one reason why he antagonizes Spider-Man is that his wife was murdered by a masked gunman, causing him to have a hatred of people who wear masks. Spider-Man is sympathetic to his loss, but points out how ridiculous this is since he had nothing to do with his wife's death.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • In "Karate Choppers", Mr. Krabs orders SpongeBob to give up his obsession with karate for good, or he's fired. As SpongeBob is leaving the Krusty Krab, contemplating how to break the news to Sandy, Sandy herself comes in and starts attacking him, dismissing SpongeBob's attempts to explain what Krabs said. Mr. Krabs comes out at that exact moment and sees it, and despite the fact that SpongeBob was literally standing there doing absolutely nothing while Sandy was trying to instigate, singles out SpongeBob and fires him on the spot. He takes it back after Sandy explains the situation and agrees to give up karate as well.
    • In "Shanghaied", when SpongeBob and Patrick keep jumping off the Flying Dutchman's ship, only to keep landing back on it, the Dutchman asks if they're going to keep doing it. When Patrick responds "Maybe", the Dutchman blasts Squidward with a ball of fire (again).
    • In "Bubble Buddy", after SpongeBob and the titular bubble unintentionally cause everyone on the beach grief and trouble, they form an angry mob and tip over the lifeguard tower to vent... followed by deciding to attack the lifeguard who did nothing. Fortunately, Squidward convinces them to focus the senseless violence against SpongeBob and Bubble Buddy instead.
    • In "Patty Hype", after SpongeBob's Pretty Patties dye the people who ate them different colors, they take their vengeance out on Mr. Krabs because he was the current owner of the stand selling the patties, even though SpongeBob was the one who came up with and sold them the patties in the first place. Of course, Mr. Krabs did deserve it, but for entirely different reasons.
    • In "The Bully", SpongeBob is on the run from his new classmate, who has threatened to "kick [his] butt". As he runs past a city block, he screams and points in the general direction of the bully, but the people around him think he's referring to a polite old man, and beat the old man up accordingly.
      SpongeBob: (As he is running for his life) OUTTA MY WAY! OUTTA MY WAY! CAN'T YOU SEE HE'S GONNA KICK MY BUTT?!
      (Citizens turn around to see an elderly fish)
      Elderly Fish: Hi there, young people! Nice day today!
      Harold: So, you like kicking butts, do ya?! Well, we'll show you, old man!
      (Citizens rush to beat down the elderly fish)
    • In "Someone's in the Kitchen with Sandy", Sandy is arrested by the police for indecent exposure, even though Plankton was the one who stole her fur for his latest scheme.
  • In the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "Trusted Sources", a reporter goes around the Cerritos, interviewing some of the crew. After interviewing Mariner, the reporter has a change of heart and Mariner is accused of ruining the Cerritos's reputation by Captain Freeman and punishes her by sending her to Starbase 80. To Freeman's shock and horror, Mariner was the Only Sane Man, singing the praises of the ship and her crew while it was everyone else on the ship who made the ship look bad and it is made to look like Freeman punished Mariner because of her kindness. By the time Freeman tries to apologize to Mariner, Mariner has resigned from Starfleet and no one knows where she disappeared to.
  • In Summer Camp Island, when Hedgehog rampages through the camp after turning into a werewolf, Susie punishes everyone else by canceling lunch for the day.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The Shredder's immense capacity for hatred seems to stem from an inability to accept his own failures and bad actions as simple misfortune and mistakes. Instead he blames everything on Splinter. shown when he blames Splinter for Tang Shen's death, despite being the one who initiated the assault that took her life, and blaming him again for Karai's mutation, despite having put the girl in danger in the first place. Saki is utterly convinced that Splinter is the cause for all the suffering and misfortune he endures, and considers anyone linked to Splinter to be just as guilty. He believes that anyone who has contributed to his misfortunes should pay with their lives.
  • Thomas & Friends:
    • In the episode "Trust Thomas", James angrily bumps the Troublesome Trucks because he has to do Percy's work while he's away at the harbor, but after the trucks find out that Thomas agreed to do James' work, even though James was Playing Sick, they decide to play tricks on Thomas instead since "one engine is as good as another".
    • In general, the Troublesome Trucks always get away with causing the accidents the steam engines suffer, such as causing James to crash into a field on his first day, but the engines always get reprimanded by the Fat Controller for them.
    • The show frequently shows railwaymen screwing up, causing no end of crashes and delays. But of course, the engines will nearly always be blamed for it. In "Thomas Comes To Breakfast", for example, Thomas crashed through the station master's house because a cleaner had fiddled with his controls but the Fat Controller still scolds Thomas for it.
    • In "One Good Turn", everyone blames Bill and Ben for the incident with the turntable, when the narrator very clearly said that it was the foreman's mistake.
  • Thunder Cats 2011: Pumyra is actually a reanimated servant of Mumm-Ra, out for revenge on Lion-O, whom she blames for her death and the enslavement of the cats. She shows no such resentment to the same mummy who attacked Thundera, the same attack that killed her and caused the cats to be enslaved.
  • In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Hogwild Hamton", Egghead afflicts Pressure Point damage to Hamton (and eventually demolishes his house) because of the noise Plucky's party was causing, even when it was Plucky who slammed the door in his face and was rude to him when he asked for the noise to stop.
  • In one episode of The Tom and Jerry Show, Spike beats up Tom and Jerry for the insults the Interactive Narrator made about him.
    • In fact, most of the Tom and Jerry shorts that feature Spike invoke this, since they would involve Jerry riling him up and pinning the blame on Tom, so he would freely escape whenever Tom chased him.
  • Utilized multiple times in the first season of Total Drama:
    • In one episode, when the Killer Bass were forced to wake up Duncan (who had given a threat of injury if his nap was disturbed) in order to win the current event, Duncan immediately snapped at Harold, even though it was Courtney who made the decision to wake him up.
    • In another one, Harold gets revenge on Duncan for bullying him by rigging the votes and getting Courtney eliminated because he had a crush on her.
    • In yet another episode of the season, when Eva returned to the island, she randomly accused Bridgette of backstabbing her and getting her voted off, despite the fact that her entire team voted her off for being a raging maniac.
      • In the same episode, Duncan votes for Heather mistakenly believing her to be behind Courtney's elimination when it was actually Harold.
  • It's easier to list all of the villains in Totally Spies! who don't fall under this trope. For example, there's Eugene Snit from the Season 2 episode "Matchmaker". His girlfriend dumped him on Valentine's Day the year before, so he decided to get revenge by installing dating booths that helped him to gather information on a girl's ideal boyfriend in Beverly Hills High. He then used a holographic disguise device that allowed him to change into that ideal boyfriend. Then he seduced all the girls at Beverly Hill High and stood them up by not showing up to the dance to break their hearts. So instead of seducing his ex-girlfriend and breaking up with her to break her heart, Eugene decides to seduce and break the hearts of a bunch of girls that had nothing to do with his breakup. What made this worse is that he did not even go to Beverly Hills High; his school is the Institute for Gifted Teens. While it still would have been petty and cruel, it would have made more sense for him to seduce and break the hearts of the girls at his own school.
  • Transformers:
    • The Transformers: Omega Supreme's vendetta against the Constructicons turns out to be this. Long ago, he was a close friend of the group, until Megatron used his new Robo-Smasher to brainwash them into making a Face–Heel Turn and destroying Crystal City. Devastated by this, Omega vowed revenge on...the Constructicons (who, remember, were the victims of brainwashing) instead of Megatron, the real culprit.
    • Transformers: Prime:
      • Dreadwing wants to kill Optimus for killing his brother, even though it was Bumblebee who did the deed.
      • Played for Laughs at one point. Right after Predaking sabotages the communications dish with his savage might, Megatron goes on to blame Starscream for the dish being broken. Debatably zig-zagged, as Predaking breaking the dish was directly caused by Starscream bullying and incompetently provoking him.
  • Goblins in Trollhunters will severely punish whoever kills one of their own, but are also not very good at linking cause and effect; when one is killed by a truck, they take their vengeance out on the truck instead of the driver. Jim trips Nomura, causing her to land on a goblin and kill it, and they take their vengeance out on her instead of him.
  • What If...?: In one episode, Hank Pym kills the Avengers in revenge for his daughter's death as a SHIELD agent. The Avenger candidates he killed had nothing to do with that (it's implied the Winter Soldier was the culprit), and Thor wasn't even a candidate at the time, he just wanted to make Nick Fury suffer. This bites him in the ass when Loki shows up on Earth, none too happy that his brother was killed on the off-chance it might piss off someone he didn't even know.
  • Defied in Young Justice (2010). When the real Roy Harper is rescued from being a Human Popsicle by his clone, the original acknowledges that although his clone might be an easy target for his anger, said clone didn't ask to be born, spend five years trying to rescue him, and can't really be held to blame for the situation. Green Arrow, on the other hand...

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