Disproportionate Retribution / Batman: The Animated Series

• The Joker was guilty of this on more or less a regular basis:
  • "The Laughing Fish": The Joker introduces his "smile" toxin into the fish supply of Gotham Harbor, hoping to trademark the red-lipped, grinning ichthyoids and sell them in supermarkets. When told that he cannot trademark fish, he retaliates by carrying out an elaborate scheme to murder everyone in the Gotham City patent office until he gets his way. Lampshaded in the episode itself.
    Mr. Francis: Why is this happening to me? I've never done anything to this Joker. I'm just a paper pusher, I can't change the laws. I'm harmless.
    Batman: And in his sick mind, that's the joke, Mr. Francis.
  • "The Joker's Wild": An entrepreneur opens a casino in Gotham City based on the Joker's likeness and gimmicks. Joker is so incensed that a complete stranger would try to "cash in on [his] image" that he plots to blow the casino up. Ironically, the entire point of the entrepreneur cashing in on Joker's image was that he wanted Joker to come and trash the place. The entire place was set up for an insurance scam. Too bad for him, the Joker eventually decided he would rather kill the guy and run the place himself...
  • "Be a Clown": Mayor Hamilton Hill (who despises Batman) appears on television claiming that Batman and the Joker are equally as bad. Joker finds this comparison so insulting that (disguised as a party clown) he crashes a birthday party held at the mayor's estate for his son, Jordan, and attempts to blow up Jordan's birthday party (along with all the guests) with a stick of dynamite in the cake.
  • "Make 'Em Laugh": Bitter about being disqualified from an annual stand-up comedy competition (because he hadn't registered as a competitor), the Joker steals some mind-control implants from the Mad Hatter, kidnaps the three comedians who serve as judges in the annual competition, fits them with the implants and warps them into becoming costumed criminals who attempt reckless capers (with one of the brainwashed judges winding up in the hospital after falling off a ledge) and replaces the judges with his own men just so he can win the trophy. Batman puts it well: "Only you would ruin three lives for a silly piece of tin."

    Joker: It's not about the piece of tin! It's about the title!

  • But the most extreme example had to be that depicted in "Joker's Favor": After rudely cutting off another motorist on the freeway, Joker is yelled at by that motorist and retaliates by forcing the other man off the road and chasing him into the woods, threatening to kill him when he catches him. The man begs for his life, and Joker agrees to spare him if he will perform "a favor" for Joker sometime in the future. The man promptly changes his name and relocates his family to Ohio, but Joker obsessively stalks him and finally tracks him down, forcing him to honor the favor owed to him. Once the man has done this favor (which makes him an unwitting accessory to the attempted assassination of Commissioner Gordon), Joker tries to do him in for good. When the man survives and finally works up the nerve to confront his tormentor, Joker threatens to kill his family. All this because of a minor altercation on the freeway.
    Charlie Collins: Exactly at what point did I become life's punching bag?
  • Inverted in "The Last Laugh", after Batman destroys the Joker's pet robot, Captain Clown (which Joker considers murder, since Captain Clown was his best friend). Joker retaliates by.... dumping a forklift full of smelly garbage right on top of Batman.
  • And then there's "Mad Love", essentially an animated retelling of a one-off centered around the trope Don't Explain the Joke. Eventually, Joker gets fed up when Harley traps Batman, then explains how she was using one of his plans to get him. How does he react? By shoving her through a window with a gigantic swordfish taxidermy, causing her to fall nearly to her death.
    Joker: And don't call me "puddin".
• In "Critters", Farmer Brown take revenge against Gotham not just for shutting down his projects and forcing him and his daughter to go broke, but for calling his experiments "monsters".
• Temple Fugate developed an obsessive, murderous grudge against Mayor Hamilton Hill in his self-titled episode... because when he was a lawyer, Hill suggested Fugate take his coffee break at a park to help him relax for a lawsuit against his company, which resulted in a series of accidents making him late, which resulted in him losing the suit. Fugate ultimately reveals that the people who sued his company were represented by Hill's law firm, and thus he believes that Hill was intentionally trying to sabotage him. While from an outside perspective, it's still a huge, disproportionate leap of logic, from his point of view he's taking his justified revenge.
  • What plants this example firmly in Disproportionate Retribution territory is the fact that for Fugate, it wasn't even about losing the suit; taking Hill's advice made him late.
• Poison Ivy has gotten in on this, too:
  • In her introductory episode, "Pretty Poison", she tries to kill Harvey Dent for building a corrections facility on top of a field containing a flower that was endangered. There is no evidence he knew about the endangered flower. She saved the flower before trying to kill him, anyway. Maybe he should've done an ecological survey to check for endangered species and done an environmental impact statement before starting construction, but she could've tried telling him there was an endangered flower before he started building to see if he would alter his plans in response.
  • She gets another one in "Eternal Youth" when she runs a spa and send out invitations to millionaires who have done some environmental wrong, turning them into living plants with her treatment. She targets Bruce, whose company was planning on tearing down a forest for building space... except Bruce had found out and stopped the plans long beforehand and she never bothered to look further into this. What's more, when Bruce lets his butler Alfred and Alfred's girlfriend go in his place as a vacation, Ivy figures she'll make do with him because someone has to be punished.
• In one hilarious scene in "Fear of Victory", Batman intercepts a telegram believing that it is a fear-toxin laced letter sent by Scarecrow to make the recipient unable to play at his best. It's just an ordinary telegram, and the delivery boy comes to the conclusion that Batman was lying in wait for him because he double-parked.
• In "Harley and Ivy", Harley Quinn, annoyed at a trio of frat-boy types who were rudely leering at her and Ivy, blew up their car with a grenade launcher as they ran for their lives.
• It’s very subtle, but any time anyone slights the Ventriloquist, Scarface will strike him with this:
  • At "Read My Lips" Batman uses a Neck Lift on the Ventriloquist as part as his Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique. Some scenes later, Batman is Lured Into A Death Trap made of Spikes of Doom.
  • At ''Catwalk'', Selina Kyle is kidnapped into a car only to meet the Ventriloquist and Scarface. Amused by the Laughably Evil duo, she cannot stop laughing and even tries to mimic the ventriloquist act. Scarface offers Selina a job and she accepts it. Later at the episode, the Catwoman will find that it was a Frameup, that she was merely a Unwitting Pawn from the very beginning and now she is a wanted felon, effectively ruining her life.
  • At ''Double Talk'', the Ventriloquist Just Got Out Of Arkham and wants to reform. His old gang, Mugsy and Rhino, put a Gaslighting on him in an attempt of Breaking Out the Boss. At the climax, Mugsy and Rhino are Lured Into A Death Trap by Scarface.