The Villain Must Be Punished

Gordon: He tried to drive me mad.
Batman: Listen, the police are following right behind me... I'll stay here with you until they arrive.
Gordon: No! No, I'm okay! You have go after him! I want him brought in...and I want him brought in by the book! [...] We have to show him that our way works!

— The Killing Joke

This villain has kicked dogs, raped, pillaged, burned, and even cheated in online games. They have done horrible things and remained smug about it the whole time. So the heroes decide one very important thing:

Bringing this guy to justice, or making him pay for his crimes, is every bit as important as whatever major problems they're dealing with.

Stopping the villain's Evil Plan, saving the Damsel in Distress, or even saving the world just isn't enough anymore. For this to count as a victory, this villain must be humiliated, punished, and/or killed. An escape or evasion of consequences would make the heroes feel just as hollow or defeated as if the Evil Plan were never stopped in the first place. Either because the villain themself is so dangerous that their mere existence leaves everyone in danger, or because the heroes' personal sense of justice or belief in right-and-wrong cannot handle someone this evil not being given a fitting punishment. The Punishment Is the Crime? Not in this story it isn't!

Of course, "fitting" is relative here; some characters may just be satisfied with humiliation or getting a solid blow to the face. Some may see jail or prison as too easy, especially if it's accommodating, easy to leave, or possibly what the villain wanted all along, in which case they Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All. Some may not even be satisfied with the villain's death, unless they do it themselves or it's suitably painful or cruel, and may even want to inflict a Fate Worse than Death. Which of these is worst varies from work to work — some characters won't settle for anything less than death, while others may see living with humiliation or imprisonment as a Cruel Mercy.

Many examples may also include a Plot-Irrelevant Villain, whose plots and schemes don't actually affect the main conflict or help the Big Bad at all, but the heroes see as more deserving of punishment as the main villain themselves. Also of note is that whenever media is restricted by some sort of bureaucracy of Moral Guardians, such as The Hays Code or The Comics Code in the U.S., this often becomes a universally Enforced Trope whereas any onscreen villainy (or other "immoral" behavior) needs to have an onscreen punishment.

How this trope can play out delves into several extremes. It sometimes results in a massive In-Universe Catharsis, where the heroes (and the audience) are pleased to see justice done and those seeking righteous revenge satisfied. It can also be a Pyrrhic Victory, whereas the heroes have gotten their Revenge or at least didn't let the bad guy get away... but the harm they did can never be undone. And finally, it can result in a complete Downer Ending, whereas no one feels any satisfaction at all, whether because Vengeance Feels Empty or because the villain did indeed escape judgment.

Please note that this trope is NOT merely for instances where the villain(s) happen to be caught and punished. Or meet some sort of karmic comeuppance after their plan is thwarted. This trope is about characters who demand or strongly pursue retribution against a villain after said thwarting.

See also It's Personal, for one reason why the heroes may come to feel this way. Crossing the Moral Event Horizon is an effective way to make people feel this way about a villain. Video game examples that come after the plot has been resolved may be a Post-Final Boss.

This trope is the opposite of Revenge Is Not Justice, where characters feel that one does not have the right to do cruel things to cruel people. If an audience feels this has gone too far, see Karmic Overkill. Vigilante Injustice correlates with this trope because it involves a vigilante killing innocent people under the belief that they were guilty of a crime.

This is a potential Ending Trope, so beware of unmarked spoilers below!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball Z: After foiling Frieza's attempts at taking the Dragon Balls and wishing for immortality, a very, very enraged Super Saiyan Goku tells his friends to leave him on the dying planet Namek with Frieza so that the two can finish their cataclysmic fight. Goku makes it clear that merely thwarting Frieza isn't enough for him anymore, nor is merely winning the fight. He must fight the racist, smug, completely heartless dictator while at the peak of their powers to prove to Frieza just how inferior he really was, despite all his friends' pleas that Goku just leave the exploding planet and Frieza to his fate. Frieza himself feels the same way; when Goku is convinced that Frieza has run out of steam and now poses no threat to him whatsoever, Frieza makes several attempts to kill Goku, as his pride cannot allow the Saiyan to live anymore. Not only do his attempts fail, but Frieza cuts himself in half with his own attacks and has to beg for his life… and even then makes one last attempt to kill Goku, forcing Goku to blast him with enough energy to almost kill Frieza before trying to find a way off of Namek before it explodes.
  • Deconstructed hard during the Cell Saga. After Cell pushes Gohan into an Unstoppable Rage for the sake of unleashing his hidden power and getting a Worthy Opponent, he gets his wish; Gohan ascends to Super Saiyan 2 and beats Cell to a pulp, but when Gohan has the chance to end it, he refuses despite Goku screaming at him to finish it before Cell gets desperate purely because he felt Cell hadn't suffered enough for his crimes. This bites him in the ass big time when Cell is driven to a Villainous Breakdown and tries to blow up the Earth, forcing Goku to sacrifice himself to save the world. On top of it all, Cell is able to regenerate From a Single Cell and return stronger than ever thanks to his Saiyan genes, and Gohan knows he has only himself to blame for it all.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Team Rocket are rather easily blasted off after their latest scheme is foiled. On occasions, this isn't done by mere effect of defeat or when they try to escape, the protagonists will often be incensed enough by their antics to sic their Pokémon's nastiest attacks onto them until they finally are sent flying. This often got defied in Best Wishes where Team Rocket were often savvy enough to use jetpacks to avoid punishment, or Sun and Moon where Bewear would often bail them out just in time.
  • Grings Kodai, the Big Bad of Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions, is shown throughout the film to be an utterly vile scumbag, repeatedly subjecting Zorua to Electric Torture to keep Zoroark in line, triggering the death of all plantlife in Crown City by absorbing the Time Ripple purely for his own interests, and openly admitting he only cares about himself and as long as he gets what he wants, it's all Worth It. Ash and co. are generally content with foiling the villain's scheme and leaving them to be arrested, but Kodai is so monstrous that they pull no punches making him suffer, tricking him into an Evil Gloating session about his plan so they can record it, sending him on a non-fatal fall off a stadium balcony, and then ensure he's awake and surrounded by all of Crown City as they broadcast the aforementioned Evil Gloating on his own TV station, pretty much forcing him to watch his public humiliation.

Comic Books

• The Killing Joke: After Batman rescues Commissioner Gordon, thwarting the Joker's attempt to drive him mad and prove that anyone could go insane after just "one bad day", a sympathetic Batman offers to stay behind with Gordon until the police arrive to take him into safety. But Gordon refuses and demands that Batman go after the Joker, who needs to brought in "By the Book" to prove that people can be better than that. Interestingly a milder display of this sentiment, as Gordon doesn't want to hurt the Joker in ways equally horrible to his acts, as much as he wants to hurt him by becoming the moral winners and proving to him how hollow and pointless his ideology is.
• This is the entire shtick of The Punisher. It's his name, after all. Unlike heroes like Spider-Man or The Avengers, he doesn't content himself with just stopping criminals, he wants to make them pay for their crimes with their lives (he'll even go so far as to get himself jailed just to kill the criminal he's after).
• In the The Sandman spin-offs The Thessaliad and Thessaly: Witch for Hire, Thessaly takes any threats to her person very seriously, and as such, doles out harsh punishments to those who threaten. In The first miniseries, four death gods attempt to kill her in the hopes of claiming her soul, and for their troubles, she kills one of them and gives the other three a Fate Worse than Death. In Witch for Hire, an ancient degenerate sics a powerful, seemingly unkillable monster on her. After dispatching the monster, she tracks down her would-be enemy and puts a curse on him that causes him to immediately be consumed from the inside out by beetles.

Fan Works

• Connecting the Dots: This is a source of conflict between the Justice League and the heroes of the Naruto universe. The former have a rule against killing, while the latter come from a universe where killing villains is the norm and are surprised by how lax the League are when it comes to punishing villains. This gets brought up in aftermath of the final battle with Luthor where Sasuke tries to kill him after he has been stripped of his powers.

Films — Animation

• Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: After Terry foils the Joker's plans, an annoyed Joker bemoans that the "fun's over" and disheartedly tries to leave, telling Batman "see you around". However, Terry refuses to let the Joker go and says it's not over until he takes the Joker in. The Joker, still seeing Terry as a pretender to the Batman title and not a threat, merely laughs and knocks Terry around a bit, deciding to humor him with a fight. Terry locks the two of them inside the room and throws the Joker off his game by trading barbs and insults, which the original Batman never did. Once the Joker has become blinded by rage and thinks he has Terry at his mercy, Terry takes one of the Joker's own joybuzzers and electrocutes him, destroying the mind-control chip that allowed the Joker to possess Tim Drake, thus not only ending the Joker's threat (seemingly for good) but finally allowing the traumatized Tim a chance at some closure.

Films — Live-Action

• Django Unchained: Calvin Candie is apparently willing to sell Brunhilde to Schulz and Django... except that he insists that Schulz, who is utterly disgusted by his brutality and racism, shake his hand on the deal. Schulz refuses to let Candie get away with his monstrous actions and shoots him dead, leading to Schulz being ventilated, Django and Brunhilde nearly getting killed, and the eventual mass murder by Django of all Candie's surviving relatives and employees, plus Steven. According to Word of God, Calvin genuinely wasn't planning any further treachery and would have allowed Django, Schulz, and Brunhilde to leave peacefully.
• Inglourious Basterds:
  • At the end of the film, the Axis is doomed to be defeated swiftly by the Allies thanks to the Nazi Hans Landa selling out the top leadership in exchange for his own pardon. However, Lt. Aldo Raines is unwilling to let Landa go on with his life scot-free after everything he's done, so he breaks the rules and carves a swastika onto Landa's face, scarring him with the mark of a Nazi for life.
  • In a meta-sense, the film itself can be considered this trope, as it imagines an alternate history for World War II where Adolf Hitler was killed in revenge by Jews instead of committing suicide before any of the Allies could reach him.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: During the final battle against the mechanical Ultron, both Tony and Vision repeatedly remind their teammates that they have to destroy every Ultron body, not even letting a single one escape. Because even a single Ultron is too dangerous to leave alive (for example, he could still find a way to launch Earth's nuclear missiles and eradicate the human race). Fortunately for the heroes, when one last Ultron robot does manage to sneak away, the robotic Vision knows about it and tracks it down... destroying it and ending the threat once and for all.
  • Avengers: Infinity War: Thor's overriding goal is exacting personal revenge on Thanos for massacring his people and brutally killing Loki in front of him. This leads to the film's Downer Ending as Thor puts this goal over the need to end the threat quickly, opting not to kill Thanos outright, but to seriously wound him and deliver a Pre-Mortem One-Liner, so that Thanos will know that it was Thor who beat him. As a result, Thanos still has enough strength to wipe out half the universe and teleport to safety.
• The Neverending Story: When Atreyu meets Gmork, he learns that the wolf is the servant of the Nothing and on a mission to kill him, but doesn't know who he's talking to. Atreyu decides to reveal his identity and fight him anyway, deciding that even if his quest has failed then he'll at least take Gmork with him.
• Planet of the Apes
  • Rise of the Planet of the Apes: When Jacobs is trapped in a wrecked helicopter, he's no longer a threat and if he had been saved, he would most likely be smart enough to leave the apes alone after they overpowered him. Caesar decides not to save him and, as expected of Koba, the latter kills him.
  • War for the Planet of the Apes: Even after Caesar is able to free the apes from the Alpha-Omega slave camp and knowing the Colonel is being pursued by the Army, Caesar stays behind to execute the Colonel himself in revenge for his family's deaths; subverted when he discovers the Colonel has been infected with simian flu and is mentally degrading. Caesar instead allows him to commit suicide.
• RoboCop: After remembering who he really is, the title character tracks down the gang that murdered him, arresting all of them until he learns that Dick Jones was the mastermind behind the gang's crimes. Failing to arrest Jones thanks to his fourth programmed directive prevents him from arresting a senior OCP officer, Jones manages to free them all and then send them to kill him. RoboCop instead kills each of them one-by-one and explicitly tells Clarence Boddicker after he attempts a fake surrender that he refuses to arrest him again. He then tracks down Jones again, exposes his crime in front of the OCP Board, and then kills him after the Old Man fires him.
• Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith: Zigzagged. Anakin wants Palpatine to face trial, partly because he wants him alive to save Padmé. Mace Windu and the rest of the Jedi are adamant to have Palpatine killed because it's too dangerous to keep him alive, with his war crimes and absolute control over the Republic.
• Undercover Brother: The Brotherhood foils The Man's plan to use General Warren Boutwell and James Brown to destroy the black community. When Mr. Feather tries to flee his secret base, Undercover Brother insists on going after him to stop The Man from getting another chance. The Man does escape, but Mr. Feather is killed by Undercover Brother.
• Discussed in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Bolivar Trask has already killed several mutants (Professor Charles Xavier's first students from the previous movie, no less) with his experiments, so Mystique insists he needs to pay with his life for what he's done. But Xavier tries to dissuade her from killing Trask because he's learned (thanks to a time-traveling Logan) that it will do more harm than good. Killing Trask will make him a martyr, seemingly legitimize his paranoia against mutants, and ultimately lead to a Bad Future where killer robots are driving mutantkind to extinction. At the climax, Mystique finally comes around to Xavier's point of view and spares Trask's life at the last minute. Then she finds another way to punish and discredit him: getting him arrested for trying to sell his technology to North Vietnam.

Literature

• In the Discworld novel Feet of Clay, Commander Vimes despairs of the true culprit behind the book's main crime, the vampire historian, Dragon King of Arms ever seeing justice, eventually electing to indulge in a bit of light arson, burning the family trees and coats of arms that represented centuries of obsessive passion for the vampire, hurting him in ways far beyond what mere physical harm could do.
• Harry Potter: Discussed in the conclusion of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Sirius becomes furious that Harry wouldn't let him kill Peter Pettigrew, reminding Harry that the entire reason Harry is an orphan in the first place is Pettigrew selling out Harry's parents to Voldemort. Harry agrees but says killing him isn't what his father would have wanted and handing him over to the Dementors is more of Cruel Mercy. Dumbledore also says Harry did the right thing even though it ultimately resulted in Pettigrew's escape, as this has created a magical bond between Harry and Pettigrew. This is probably looking at the silver lining as his escape is responsible for a drastic change in the story and a lot of tragedy. And yet, it indeed works against Voldemort four books later.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: In "The Family of Blood", Ten, who is usually a very pacifistic Doctor loathing pointless violence, holds nothing back when punishing the Family. As they hunted him and Martha across the universe and attacked a school of innocent boys, turned said boys into unwitting soldiers, and destroyed his one chance at living a normal human life, he isn't exactly feeling lenient. As a result, after he defeats them all, he punishes them all by subjecting each of them to a Fate Worse than Death, giving them eternal life in a torturous scenario. Sister, for example, is forced to live a lonely existence trapped behind every single mirror in existence.
• Downplayed in Kamen Rider Wizard. Haruto's main motive for fighting Gremlin is to stop him from killing anyone else and to recover the Philosopher's Stone so Koyomi's soul can rest in peace, but it's alluded to (particularly in their final exchange) that at least part of it was him wanting to make Gremlin pay for murdering Koyomi.
• Leverage: The Leverage team don't just help victims of rich and powerful people, they also make it so that the villains are incapable of harming anyone else again, either by having them sent to prison, robbing them of their money and resources or publicly embarrassing them.

Theatre

• At the midpoint of Hamlet, Hamlet has a chance to kill Claudius at prayer while he's vulnerable and unaware, avenging Claudius's murder of his father. Instead, he worries that killing him while he's praying would only send Claudius's soul straight to heaven despite his crimes, and decides he has to wait until he can be certain Claudius will go to hell. This proves to be his Tragic Mistake.

Video Games

• Banjo-Kazooie: After beating Gruntilda in a quiz, the witch releases Tootie. However, even though Grunty's plot to steal her beauty has been thwarted and the heroes have returned home to relax, Tootie demands Banjo and Kazooie to march back up and defeat the witch once and for all. After beating Gruntilda and trapping her under a boulder, that's when the heroes are allowed to relax until the sequel.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Delta Force's rescue of the Russian President from the Ultranationalists means the war Russia has launched against America and Europe is able to be brought to a close, putting a halt to Vladimir Makarov's dreams of Russian world domination. For Price and Yuri, it isn't enough, and several months after war's end, the final mission sees them go on a personal mission to Dubai to find and kill Makarov.
• Diablo III: In the Reaper of Souls expansion, at one point the story reveals that Adria, who had betrayed the heroes in the game's third act and sacrificed her daughter Leah to resurrect Diablo as the Prime Evil, is alive and is also seeking the whereabouts of the expansion's Big Bad, Malthael. The player's character, regardless of class or gender, will become nigh-obsessed with killing her to avenge Leah, to the point that an NPC has to tag along on the quest to find Adria so he can needle the player's character about getting the information about Malthael first.
• Honkai: Star Rail: At the end of Bailu's Companion Quest, you finally meet with Liangmu, the beloved of Banxia, who had since become mara-struck, forcing the Trailblazer to put her out of her misery. Taking Liangmu to her body reveals he never cared for Banxia, only using her to gain the Elixir of Immortality. when Bailu speaks of healing him, as per her promise to Banxia, the player can offer to give Liangmu a beating first. What follows is the Trailblazer giving him an off-screen beating before Bailu heals him. She even gives him uncontrollable hiccups for 30 years as further punishment.
• Mass Effect: Most Loyalty Missions invoke this trope, as the entire point of them is that there is some sort of unresolved issue that is preventing a squadmate from focusing entirely on the mission, such as a loved one that needs help, an old nemesis that needs to be dealt with...or both. Of special note is Garrus, whose Loyalty Missions in both 1 and 2 involve bringing to justice a criminal whom Garrus utterly despises. In both cases, however, the Paragon option is to prevent Garrus from killing the perp (and in the latter case, said perp has already had a Heel–Face Turn and promises to make amends, which he does in the third game).
• Persona:
  • Persona 4: In the game's bad ending, the Investigation Team manage to rescue Nanako from the TV World, but in critical and worsening condition. The culprit who tossed her into the world, Taro Namatame, has also been captured and is recovering himself. The Team is so angry about what said culprit has seemingly done, not just to Nanako, but to all of the other victims (including most people on the Team themselves), that they decide to invoke brutal, fatal justice themselves because even though the case is "solved", they refuse to let him live. And Nanako herself unfortunately dies as well. Averted if the player rejects the idea and then makes correct dialogue options, whereupon Nanako turns out okay, and the Team realizes that there must be another culprit since the facts don't add up.
  • Persona 5: Joker and Ryuji are hesitant to act against Kamoshida because they're worried about the effects that stealing his Treasure will have on him. But once a female student that Kamoshida abused (and possibly raped, though the game doesn't explicitly confirm it) tries to kill herself in front of the whole school, they decide that Kamoshida needs to be punished for what he's done, not just stopped. Ann even goes so far as to consider deliberately killing him, though she stops because she decides that being forced to live with the knowledge and guilt of his crimes would be worse.
• Sniper Elite III: During the final mission, Karl manages to blow up Project Seuche and destroy the entire facility where the superweapon is being built. The Big Bad, General Franz Vahlen, is revealed to have survived the facility's destruction, albeit injured and buried under a heavy pile of rubble. Knowing he's pretty much beaten, he asks Karl to help him out and take him prisoner. Karl, having read what he had planned on doing and how he had killed his own men for petty reasons, elects to shoot the General with a bullet that belonged to his late friend Brauer instead, with Karl still clearly grieving over his friend's death earlier in the campaign.
• Sonic Adventure: Despite Sonic (seemingly) defeating Eggman's latest scheme using Chaos and the Egg Carrier a few points early in his campaign, he still pursues Eggman all the way to his Final Egg base for one last showdown. Some unused dialogue before the Egg Viper boss makes it clear that Sonic is out to make sure Eggman goes down and stays down this time, a sentiment quite mutual with Eggman, who is still fuming from all of Sonic's previous interferences (an exchange that was paraphrased in the Sonic X adaptation).
  Eggman: How dare you, Sonic! You continue to always, always, always stand in my way! And this time you destroyed the Egg Carrier, you defeated Chaos, and now you're even leading my base into ruin! In that case, I'll show you the ace in my sleeve... This time you're finished, Sonic!
  Sonic: This time I'll make you realize... that no matter how many times you try, NO WAY! You will always fail!

Western Animation

• The Dreamstone: A key reason the Urpneys constantly try to back out of Zordrak and Urpgor's schemes is that they knew the heroes have a Good Is Not Soft disposition towards stealing the stone, often beating them up, pranking them, or setting Albert onto them no matter if they are defeated, retreating, or surrendering. Perhaps because the Urpneys often prove more eager to quit than do any actual villainy, later episodes tend to subvert this treatment, along with at least one instance it backfires on the heroes and lets the Urpneys get some payback on them.
• Justice League: In the episode "Twilight", the League has barely escaped a trap set by Darkseid and Brainiac, with Brainiac set to detonate and take everything in the vicinity with him. Darkseid tries to make his escape but is cut off by Superman, who tells him that he intends for Darkseid to die in the explosion. The two fight until Batman arrives and tries to convince Superman to flee, but Superman knocks Batman away and makes it clear he intends to stay and ensure Darkseid dies. Batman then uses a Mother Box to pull himself, Superman, and Orion to safety, as Superman shouts "NO!"; back on Earth, Batman tries to assure an angry Superman that Darkseid couldn't have survived that blast, but Superman bitterly tells Batman that he's "not always right".^note This is also in reference to the fact that Batman and the rest of the League decided to help Darkseid against Brainiac earlier against Superman's protests, only to find out that the two villains were leading them all into a trap.
• The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest: In the episode "Thoughtscape", Dr. Quest has had enough of Dr. Surd's repeated attempts to harm his family and declares his intent to stop it once and for all. Surd cheats, and it looks as though he's going to get away yet again. But he made the mistake of conducting his plot in Jessie Bannon's head, and now that she's free of his control, she finishes him off once and for all by stripping him of the program that allowed him mobility in Quest World, locking him out from returning to his own body. Surd becomes effectively crippled in Cyberspace, in an And I Must Scream punishment.

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