Playing With / Revenge

Basic Trope: One character wrongs another in an extremely personal way, so the latter decides to pays back the former in spades.

• Straight:
  • After Nathan kills Alice, Bob sets out for Nathan’s blood, and will kill anyone who stands in his way.
  • The Dog Bites Back
• Exaggerated:
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge
  • Disproportionate Retribution
  • Cycle of Revenge
  • Nathan was a heartless monster who is proud of being an irredeemable bastard who regularly crosses the Moral Event Horizon on a daily basis, but the sheer brutality of the way Bob was retaliating against the former, made the latter just as sadistic and vicious as him.
  • Once he’s done with paying an eye for an eye, Bob will do the same to Nathan’s friends, family, his loved ones in general, his soldiers, generals, right hand men, guards, and the rest of the members of his Megacorp.
  • Bob decides to get revenge on everyone and everything whom has wronged him; The Policeman who gave him a ticket when he was 20, the dog who kept barking at him when he was a mailman, his boss and co-workers for driving him nuts, that one dude who beat him at Poker at the bar, Charleston for being his Sitcom Arch-Nemesis, etc.
  • Everyone who Nathan has horrifically wronged violently kills him.
  • Nathan orders his mooks to violently murder all of Bob’s loved ones, so Bob, a Wizard, casts a spell on Nathan that causes him to experience a Fate Worse than Death.
• Downplayed:
  • Nathan beats up Alice, so Bob beats Nathan up.
  • Nathan calls Bob a “Douchebag” so Bob calls Nathan an “Asshole”.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil for when it’s not necessarily that personal, but otherwise the same implications from this trope ties to that one.
• Justified:
  • It’s a Crapsack World where ruthlessness is allowed to roam free lest if someone does something about it.
  • Bob is an Anti-Hero.
  • Nathan has done so much shit to Bob to the point where Bob snapped.
  • Nathan is a Villain with Good Publicity who would’ve escaped punishment through bribery and/or connections, so Bob relies on Vigilante Justice instead of The Police.
  • Nathan has not only killed Alice, but thousands of innocent civilians as well. Pretty much everybody expected this to happen to Nathan due to the path this douchebag went.
  • Nathan killed Bob’s Morality Pet.
  • Bob wants to set an example for anyone who wishes to commit the same magnitude of evildoing.
  • Revenge is Sweet
• Inverted:
  • Because You Were Nice to Me/Karmic Jackpot: Bob does something good to Alice, so Alice does something good to him back.
  • Turn the Other Cheek
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished/The Farmer and the Viper
• Subverted:
  • 1.) When The Hero DI Scott interrogates the murder scene of Nathan, DCI Sheldon suggests that Bob must have done it due to Alice being on Nathan’s victim list AKA the record that reveals that Nathan was actually an Unrepentant, Sociopathic Murderer this whole time that randomly fell on the floor by chance. However, later on, it is revealed that Harold was the murderer.
  • 2.) When the policemen interrogate Bob about the slaughtering of Nathan on A. If the latter did it or not, and B. If A is answered “Yes”, on why Bob did it. Bob answers A with “Yes”, and B with the fact that Nathan was an “Amoral Man who has killed millions of innocents either For the Evulz or for selfish and/or monetary gain,” including his girlfriend, so he had to make Nathan pay for his crimes. One of the cops calls out Bob for being a Manipulative Liar and points out that Nathan would never do that because of how well Charlie knew him.
  • 3.) Considering the fact that Nathan was a Blackmailing, Abusive, Backstabbing, and extremely violent Loan Shark, you’d (and the investigators) expect the murderer to have a personal connection with him as to why the latter killed the former, but no. The “murderer” was actually a Gentleman Thief who plans to rob Nathan’s Megacorp and give it to the poor. He only shot Nathan just to avoid the police to get on his tail, but the chips were already down, and Nathan had already made the phone call.
  • 4.) Bob confronts Nathan on the Roof top with a Glock 17 ready to blow out the latter’s brains just like fireworks on The Fourth of July, but then refrains from the kill.
  • 5.) Bob chases down Nathan in a vain attempt to make the latter pay for his crimes, but is inevitably halted by Nathan’s Right Hand Man, General Drake, and is killed in a fight with him before avenging the death of Alice and making Nathan face justice.
• Double Subverted:
  • 1.) When being forced to interrogated on why Harold did it, Harold comes out clean and reveals his secret of being a Private Bounty Hunter who was hired by Bob to gruesomely slaughter Nathan in the name of Revenge. Bob only hired him to avoid being brought to justice for Paying Evil Unto Evil.
  • 1.) Alternatively: Harold was also wronged by Nathan in some sort of cruel and malicious way, and thus, killed him.
  • 2.) The investigators were right on the fact that Bob was lying, but only partially, as Bob was exaggerating. In short, everything else Bob said about Nathan in his explanation for the crime was true.
  • 4.) So Bob tortures him alive without technically killing him.
  • 5.) And then, Diana, Bob’s Knight Templar Big Sister, sets out on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, even if it meant taking down all his personal guards and workers/employees there, including the CEO himself.
  • 5.) General Drake then realizes on how much of a dick his boss was, and kills Nathan for the latter’s sins.
• Parodied:
  • Nathan commits the heinous crime of stealing Bob’s books. So Bob gets back at Nathan by stealing Nathan’s books.
  • Bob gets “revenge” on Nathan by burning him alive, stabbing him to death, beats Nathan’s carcass into a bloody pulp, tips out his intestines, and horrifically tears his body into bloody pieces. Bonus points if Bob does this to Nathan for when the latter beat him at Chess.
• Zig-Zagged: Depending on his mood, sometimes Bob gets revenge, while at other times he doesn’t.
• Averted:
  • Despite his feelings, Bob decides to turn Nathan’s crimes into the authority, no bloodshed needed.
  • Nathan’s Jerkassery has nothing to do with his death.
  • Despite being responsible for Alice’s death, Nathan lives a happy, stress-free life without any repercussions of his actions whatsoever.
  • Bob’s motives of killing Nathan are never explained nor the latter’s character is brought into this at all.
• Enforced:
  • “We need an Anti-Villain. A Dark and Troubled Past and a sympathetic motivation for all the crimes they’re committing should do the trick.”
  • The creators wanted to avoid the Nominal Hero they added in their series to fall into Unintentionally Unsympathetic Designated Hero territory, so they decide to use this trope as his main motive for being on the side of good, as it is the most sympathetic non-standard hero goal there is.
  • The Author wanted to write a Tragedy.
  • Nathan is a Hate Sink, and so the producers wanted the fans to be satisfied for his inevitable downfall, conflicting with the original idea. The producers decide this is the best way to do it because Nathan getting his Laser-Guided Karma by suddenly having a random heart attack or just randomly being killed by something he didn’t cause in general out of the blue seemed cheesy.
• Lampshaded: “What comes around goes around, Nathan. You’ve something bad to me, so now I did something bad to you.
• Invoked: Nathan orders his personal army of Private Military Contractors to gruesomely slaughter every last of Bob’s loved ones so that the former can quickly drag the latter down to his level in terms of heinousness.
• Exploited:
  • Bob is a Sociopath who is looking for an excuse to commit heartless deeds against others whilst avoiding being seen as the evil villain he is by the public, so when Nathan inevitably does something bad to Bob, Bob does something bad to Nathan back and gets away with it due to the fact that the latter did something cruel to the former.
  • Emperor Evulz dresses his soldiers in the same metal armor of Nathan’s private guards in order to lure Bob into his Supervillain Lair as a trap.
• Defied:
  • Sweet or not, Bob decided not to get revenge because it’s dragging him down to Nathan’s level.
  • “How could you do such a thing, Bob?! You're just as bad as him!”
  • Knowing the ramifications of his actions, Nathan turns over a new leaf (Or at least fakes doing so to avoid retaliation from Bob) and reforms because there’s no point in punishing a changed man for his past crimes.
  • Nathan takes measures in place to execute everyone and everything who could potentially seek revenge for any of his evil deeds. Surprisingly, this ends up giving him a reputation as a man who slaughters entire continents just to be able to shoplift a candy bar from the store.
• Discussed: "It's a wonder on how Nathan is still alive, considering all the people with dead loved ones.”
• Conversed: “Why do the fans have such a problem with Bob attacking Nathan? I would've done the same thing if I was Bob."
• Deconstructed:
  • 1.) In addition for ordering one of his mooks to execute Alice, Nathan has done so many horrible things to Bob to the point where Bob decides that getting even with Nathan via killing him isn’t enough to satisfy him. This leads to Bob becoming just as much as, if not more of, a bloodthirsty and sadistic murderer than Nathan himself.
  • 2.) Revenge Is Not Justice: Bob killing Nathan leads to the former becoming a vigilante, which is outlawed by The Government, and thus, Bob is arrested for this. Bonus points if the obsession of revenge alienates the rest of Bob’s loved ones from him.
  • 3.) Cycle of Revenge: Nathan is a Villain with Good Publicity, and so when Bob inevitably kills him, his family plans to murder Bob, which soon escalates into the entire city of Tropeville getting revenge on each other, leaving Tropeville as a(n even worse) Crapsack World with little to no people who live there surviving.
  • 4.) Vengeance Feels Empty: Not only did Bob spent way too much time and energy on hating on Nathan to the point of becoming an extremely tired and apathetic Empty Shell once his revenge plan is done, but the revenge plan itself mortified Bob, and causes him to cross the Despair Event Horizon out of pure guilt and remorse of the gravity of his crimes. Eventually, Bob is Driven to Suicide.
  • 5.) Revenge Before Reason: After Emperor Evulz’s mooks kill Alice, Bob slaughters Evulz as well as a couple other of soldiers and generals who was standing in Bob’s way. However villain or not, Evulz was in charge of the village Bob lives in, and if he is dead, not only will the village of Tropeville become a Wretched Hive with a high criminal rate, but several greedy people end up having a civil war over who should be the new monarch, leading to several conflicts that could've been avoided if the monarch was never killed.
• Reconstructed:
  • 1.) But even if Bob Jumps off The Slippery Slope when getting his revenge on Nathan, no matter how much in a vicious fashion, Nathan still deserved it.
  • 2.) invokedBob is fine with being stuck in prison for the rest of his life all alone as along as Nathan can’t hurt anyone anymore, and thus, the city of Tropeville becomes a better place because of it.
  • 4.) Bob then remembers the horrors of what Nathan did to him including countless civilians that are so horrific, he eventually decides that Revenge is Sweet.
  • 4.) Alternatively: Bob really did deserve to fall into a deep depression due to on relying too much on Revenge by Proxy via harming lots of innocents, and becoming a just as bad of a person than Nathan in the process.
• Implied: In the Video Game, Murder in Tropeville City, some Easter Eggs reveal that Nathan, the murder victim on one of the levels of the game, is actually a Serial Killer, while Bob, the murderer of Nathan’s level, has a girlfriend named “Alice”, a name found on Nathan’s list of victims. However, during the ending cutscene, Bob’s motives are ambiguous despite him saying that he murdered Nathan just because he felt like it. It is unknown on whether it’s a case of revenge or an Asshole Victim.
• Played For Laughs: In a Sadist Show, Bob gets revenge on Nathan by killing him in a Black Comedy-esque fashion.
• Played For Drama: Nathan has done so many irredeemably evil crimes to Bob all for the sake of making the latter suffer. When Alice is inevitably slaughtered in an overly grotesque way, Bob snaps from all the torment Nathan gave him. His Morality Pet’s death lead to an Unstoppable Rage that knows no bounds, causing Bob to horrifically murder every personal guard of Nathan he can find, including (and especially) the big cheese himself. Nathan now realizes the seriousness of the situation…
• Played For Horror: See Played for Drama, but make the crimes Nathan commited against Bob much more scary and unforgivable, as well as cranking up the level of brutality Bob’s Roaring Rampage of Revenge is against Nathan and his guards, as well as Bob’s insanity to the point of becoming an even worse monster than Nathan by a long shot.

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This page assaulted the Laconic page, so let’s assault it in return on the Revenge page.

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