Woman Scorned

Veronica still misses Archie. Her fists do not.

"Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."

— William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697)

What's the only type of woman more dangerous than a Mama Bear? A woman who's been dumped, cheated on, or otherwise done wrong by her significant other (or, in some cases, merely thinks she's been). Especially if she's been hiding some sanity problems, and especially if she was a Clingy Jealous Girl. Otherwise Self-Explanatory.

A villainess — particularly a queen — may react in this manner when she has very little claim on the other person. After all, It's All About Me. If the woman in question is part of an evil organisation, this may be her cue to pull a High-Heel–Face Turn.

Almost Always Female, but male examples do exist. Compare Green-Eyed Monster and Thriving Ex-Crush.

Not to be confused with the Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, although the chances of overlap are ideal. When a character is killed by said Woman Scorned, it's... well... Death by Woman Scorned, which crosses over with If I Can't Have You… and A Deadly Affair.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Sakurako Sanjou from Boys over Flowers. Because Domyouji made her life hell as a child, she pulls off quite the revenge plot that includes plastic surgery, seducing him, almost killing his Plucky Girl of a love interest, etc.
• Case Closed: In a strange (and funny) twist, Ran also gets very tsuntsun when a girl named Youko Akagi shows up at the doorstep of the office, falsely claiming to be Shinichi's girlfriend (the little boy she was babysitting had been kidnapped and Ryouko needed Shinichi's help, using the "girlfriend" claim as her cover).
• Code Geass has Kallen at the very end of the series. She confesses to Lelouch with a deep and passionate kiss, even though he kisses back, he stays silent afterward leading in a very sad goodbye scene.. And then he kidnaps all the world's leaders. She resolves to kill him with her own hands. For Love And Justice. (And also because she feels responsaible for helping him reaching this position.)
• Sara Yuki from Dancougar is actually a heroic example of this, because the one who dumps her happens to be a Smug Snake working for the bad guys.
• Death Note: In the Mello/Near arc, Light's college sweetheart and Kira supporter, Takada, threatens to kill him if he doesn't get rid of Misa, his longtime "girlfriend" of the series.
• In Gregory Horror Show, it's implied that the second season's Guest is this. Judgement Boy Gold brings up the fact that her former boyfriend, after she turned down his marriage proposal, got engaged to one of her best friends. Unlike the previous scenario the Judgement Boys bring up, he doesn't actually say what she did after that, but says that "her heart must have been very heavy indeed", implying that she killed him.
• Gundam:
  • When Louise Halevy learns that her former boyfriend Saji is in the 00 Raiser fighter during a skirmish, her reaction is... bleak. All indications are that she's resolved to kill him at this point. She gets better, but it was pretty close there for a minute.
  • Haman Karn from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam effectively defines this trope. It is revealed that she had been in a relationship with Char Aznable, a.k.a. Lt. Quattro in the past, the specifics of which are not provided. Whether there was an actual relationship between them or if she was just infatuated and had her hopes dashed, the whole (deleted) affair left her feeling jilted and has given her a few personality quirks, which manifest themselves rather prominently when she gives him her ultimatum. It comes as a crushing disappointment to her when he refuses to capitulate, and much to the detriment of the general public, she's not really particular about whom she subjects to her wrath.
  • Ennil El in After War Gundam X thinks she sees a kindred spirit in Garrod and starts Loving a Shadow in the belief that they both understand loss and abandonment. After actually meeting him, she sneaks into his room at night... unfortunately at a time when he's keyed up with justified paranoia, and he points a gun in her face. Ennil is incredibly hurt and vows revenge on him and his home ship, and spends much of the series thereafter allying herself with morally dubious factions so she can kill him for rejecting her. (She eventually gets over this through a combination of unwittingly befriending his crewmate and disgust over some of those allies.)
• While she wouldn't admit it, Haruhi from Haruhi Suzumiya gets pretty pissed when she catches Kyon messing around (not like that) with Mikuru. It doesn't end well. Except that it does. Sorta.
• Ichinensei Ni Nacchattara: Iori's mom is still mad enough as it is about her former husband having cheated on her (leading to their divorce). When Iori claims to be his love child after she figures out his true identity, she's on the phone with a lawyer in seconds.
• Rumic Theatre's The Laughing Target is widely regarded as one of the first modern examples of the yandere and for good reason. Asuza is protagonist Yuzuru Shiga's cousin, whom he was also set up to marry, but he forgot all about her after they spent a decade-plus apart, even finding himself a new girlfriend named Satomi. When Azusa comes back into Yuzuru's life and discovers this, she begins terrorizing Satomi with paranormal powers, murders her dog and ultimately tries to kill her, all to take Yuzuru back to herself. In the Original Video Animation, she even uses her dying strength to try once more to kill both Satomi and Yuzuru for betraying her.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • This trope is essentially the hat of the Akagi women. Both are snared by Gendo and both end up worse for it.
    • Naoko threatens Rei-I with spanking when the girl calls her an old hag. But when Rei reveals that Gendo calls her that behind her back along with statements that she's no longer useful to him, Naoko flips out and commits a murder-suicide, not knowing that the Rei she killed is expendable in the literal sense.
    • Ritsuko deludes herself that Gendo genuinely loves her instead of just having her as a mistress. When she's proven wrong, she incinerates the Rei clones and in End of Evangelion, she hacks the MAGI to remotely self-destruct it as a final "up yours"... only to have Naoko's woman personality in Casper-3 veto the order. Gendo instantly pulls a gun and kills her.
  • Asuka might count as well. One of her sore points is that Shinji always saves the day before her; when she's undergoing the Trope Namer of Mind Rape, Gendo forbids Shinji from going out and saving her. Later on, Rei gets into a pinch and with Asuka unable to pilot, Shinji is scrambled to assist but fails. Cue Asuka believing that Shinji let her suffer on purpose. Then comes End of Evangelion and she releases all her pent-up rage against the MP Evas, to spectacular effect — right before suffering one of the most Cruel And Unusual Deaths in the entire franchise. The confrontation between Shinji and Asuka that triggers Third Impact also falls under this. Shinji begs Asuka to help him in his moment of crisis, but due to his perceived betrayals, she first attacks and ultimately rejects him.
• The concept is Played for Laughs in One Piece as the women of Dressrosa are known to outright stab their men for just so much as looking at another woman.
• There is an episode of Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl where this is in play. In the episode "For the Love of Meowth", Meowth ends up falling in love with a random trainer's Glameow and has Jessie and James capture her to set up running off with her. After Meowth battles (surprisingly competently) for her paw against Jessie, James, Ash, Dawn, and Brock, Glameow evolves into Purugly, and her personality changes, turning Meowth off. When he tries to break the relationship, she retaliates by blasting him off with a Hyper Beam.
• In the backstory of Prétear, Takako turned against the Leafe Knights after she was rejected by Hayate and became the Princess of Disaster.
• When female Ramna from Ranma ½ discovers that Ryoga (that had accidentally hit Ranma with a love rod) doesn't love him back, he transforms himself into a guy and starts to beat the crap out of Ryoga. Normally Ryoga is equally skilled in martial arts as Ranma, but this time Ranma is in such a rage that Ryoga is forced to surrender.
• Akuha of Rosario + Vampire is Yandere for Moka. When she sees Tsukune and Moka together she gets pissed.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Minako fell in love with Hawk's Eye and Tiger's Eye (villains she attempted to involve in a threesome, but they were playing with her feelings). Sailor Venus opened a can of whoop-ass on them later.
  • Mimete targets one soap opera actor because his character broke up with someone on the show. Mimete got so angry that she threw the television and decided to steal his heart for "breaking hers".
  • Nehellenia desired Helios but when he refused her advances, she imprisoned his body in revenge and searched the world for his soul. Seeing him interact romantically with Chibiusa has also led Nehellenia to viciously attack both of them.
• Kaede Fuyou in SHUFFLE!!, a sweet Unlucky Childhood Friend with hidden psychological problems coming from years ago who also snaps on her Genki Girl love rival and sempai, Asa Shigure. Subverted, since she actually sorta makes peace with Asa later.
• Kyoko from Skip Beat! is a mild version, not acting directly against the man who despised her, but instead building herself into a position where she can humiliate him more than anything she can do directly.
• Urusei Yatsura:
  • Lum's default reaction to Ataru cheating on her is to blast him with lightning.
  • Carla, from the final arc, went so crazy when she heard her Childhood Friend Rupa was in an Arranged Marriage with Lum that she spent over a decade constantly attacking him with explosives and high-powered weaponry... this started when they were six years old. During the arc itself, she fights her way into Rupa's wedding, armed to the teeth, holds him at gunpoint, demands to know why he won't love her, and when he declares that he doesn't like her vows to kill him and then herself before opening fire.
• Gender inverted in Vampire Knight when Zero learns that Yuuki was a Pureblood vampire all this time. As a result, despite them working together in destroying Rido, he still vows to kill her.
• The World God Only Knows:
  • Keima's mother when she thinks her husband is cheating on her, while Elsee is actually just making it up. Hilarity Ensues. "She used to run with some kind of biker gang."
  • Chihiro appears to act like one after Keima dumps her in a very harsh way because she isn't a goddess host by telling Ayumi about his conquest plot at the worst possible moment out of either spite or misplaced concern. However, it's revealed that this is actually a ruse by her to get Ayumi to stop worrying about how Chihiro feels and focus exclusively on Keima as well as an attempt to make Keima act honestly.
• Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon: Inuyasha and Sesshomaru's unnamed father rejected Zero for Inuyasha's mother Izayoi. Since they are both dead, Zero takes her anger out on Inuyasha and Sesshomaru's families, saying if she cannot find happiness, they can't either and they will all suffer until they are dead. In contrast, Sesshomaru's mother, whom his father left for Izayoi while admitting she was jealous of Izayoi, did not attempt any revenge, and when she ran into Zero, she called her out on how crazy and petty she was acting.
• Zatch Bell! gives us Penny, who was madly in love with the title character and believed herself to be his true love. When Zatch failed to recognize her (due to his memory loss), she snapped, believing that he forgot about her (being unaware of his amnesia), and vowed to burn his book if it's the last thing she does.

Comic Books

• Agents of Atlas: Jimmy and his arch-nemesis's niece Su-Wan used to be tight back in the day, Su being torn between her love for Jimmy and her devotion to her uncle. In the modern day, she's reinvented herself as the Jade Claw, a dangerous international crime lord. Though she insists it's nothing to do with feeling abandoned by Jimmy (who didn't do it entirely on purpose - he was badly injured and physically restored to how he was in the 50s, memories included), it's pretty clear some of her motivation is basically revenge on being "dumped".
• An Archie Comics story from 1965 has Betty Cooper repeatedly trying to murder Archie after he breaks one too many dates with her. The story's title is "Woman Scorned".
  • Truthfully, poor Archie's got it bad in this department- being the center of one of the most famous love triangles of all time does tend to put you in a pretty tough spot. Not only does he frequently face the rage of whichever member of the duo he's not taking out at the time, but if he ever tries to Take a Third Option, you'd best get out of the way.
• In Barracuda, Fine Flame is a prostitute who is deeply in love with Raffy, who rejects her. Humiliated, she wants revenge: she helps the Spanish to take control of Puerto Blanco and become governor, using Raffy as bait.
• An early arc of Birds of Prey, which featured the first meeting of Black Canary and Huntress, revolved around the two of them tracking down the villain that seduced both of them in their civilian identities and then left them. Along the way they also team up with Catwoman, are kidnapped to the former Soviet Union, and Canary winds up facing Lady Shiva, one of the world's deadliest martial artists, for the first time.
  Oracle: You travelled five thousand miles. You hooked up with a loose cannon—possibly psychotic—vigilante who doesn't place much value on life...and a world-class felon. You stressed my network to the max. You faced the world's deadliest martial artist. All to get back at a guy who didn't call you the next day. Was it worth it?
  Black Canary: Yeah, it was.
• The Joker comes across as this in a very twisted and very rare male example in Death of the Family, where he guns for the Bat-Family both because he feels that they have made Batman weak and that they have distracted Batman from his real family: his rogues and him in particular.
• This is actually a recurring plot in the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, of all series, as whenever Brigitta McBridge decides that Scrooge has gone too far in his rejections she will get in this mindset. As this is still Disney, she doesn't try to harm him, but simply reminds him that she could be his most formidable economic rival if she only wanted by starting a business in direct competition with his latest project and giving him a desperate run for his money if not outright outselling it.
• Dr. Blink: Superhero Shrink: Dr. Blink's daughter Emma is at a club with her friends when they see the superhero Teen Crush. After he unceremoniously rejects her ("If you're not a super-hero or a super-model, I'm super-uninterested"), she shares his embarrassing private mental health issues with them.
• In The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones #15, smitten Pirate Girl Esmeralda Vasquez becomes this after Dr. Jones then turns down her offer to join her crew of Ruthless Modern Pirates. She then has him subjected to a Sand Necktie.
• In Gotham City Sirens #19-21, Harley Quinn goes after The Joker in Arkham for ruining her life. By the end, she has him cornered in his cell, dead to rights, and with a simple "I missed you" from Mr. J, all is forgiven. Hey, she isn't the Trope Namer of Mad Love for nothing.
• In the "Dead End Kids" arc of Runaways, all the shit that the team goes through is ultimately revealed to have been the result of the machinations of Lillie McGurty's older self, who never got over Victor's decision to return to the modern day instead of staying in the 1900s with her. To be fair, she seems more upset with her past self refusing to go to the modern day with him. The entire arc was her ultimately futile attempt to change her past self's decision.
• Scooter Girl: After Margaret tells all of Ashton's conquests that he's been seeing them all behind each other's backs, his popularity with them instantly plummets. The male students aren't too happy either to find out he'd slept with most of their girlfriends.
• Maxima in Superman comics, who regarded Superman's lack of interest in being her husband and Warlord of Almerac as a personal insult.
• In Teen Titans, Terra near the end of "The Judas Contract" goes crazy with her powers after she thinks Slade, her boss and lover, betrayed her. In reality, Slade's son Jericho had possessed him. Slade was actually too afraid of Terra to openly betray her like that — and given her reaction, his fear was perfectly justified. He clears up that he was possessed by Jericho, but Terra’s still angry at him because he had to beg Jericho to un-possess him, so she thinks he's "gone soft" on her. She then tries to kill everyone in the area, but she only succeeds in killing herself.
• Teen Titans Go!: Jinx isn't happy seeing her boyfriend Kid Flash flirt with other girls and she makes sure he knows it.◊
• Thorgal:
  • Shaniah, a teenage girl from Brek Zarith story arc, falls in love with the titular character and steals his horse once he rejects her and slaps her for insulting his wife. Later that night she is assaulted by a mysterious man who steals the horse. The next day a group of soldiers visits the village, looking for an escaped prisoner. Shaniah, making sure the prisoner looks like the guy she met yesterday, tells them that she saw him meeting with Thorgal, who gave him his horse, which leads to Thorgal being taken prisoner and starts chain of events that ends with the destruction of her entire village, death of everybody aside from her and Thorgal, including, as it seems then, Thorgal's wife, his Heroic BSoD, and later her sacrifice to save his wife's life.
  • Another one is Princess Syrane (incidentally the sister of the aforementioned mysterious man named Galathorn), who tries to bed Thorgal before he leaves her city to return to his wife and children. After he turns her down, she has her men cut down the mast of his boat to leave him wandering in the middle of the sea. Unlike Shaniah, she suffers no consequences for her actions.
• The Transformers (Marvel): In an issue, the queen of a race of Transformers-sized alien amazons is so impressed by Cloudburst (a Pretender with an organic shell that allowed him to pose as a giant human) that she decides to take him as her consort. When she finds out that he's a robot under his skin, she decides to take his head.
• Ultimate X Men: Mystique joined Magneto as a form of revenge against Professor X for dumping her for Emma Frost.
• X-Men: When Jean Grey, who at the time was a host for the Phoenix Force, caught her husband in bed with Emma Frost. It wasn't pretty.

Fairy Tales

• In the original version of Beauty and the Beast, the Prince's widowed mother goes off to fight a war and leaves a wicked fairy to help him rule. When the Prince comes of age, she tries to seduce him and turns him into a Beast when he refuses her advances.
• In The Hind in the Wood (also known as The White Doe), Prince Warrior breaks his engagement to the Black Princess when he falls in love with Princess Desiree. The Black Princess is furious due to the prince breaking his promise, and she seeks help to place a curse on Desiree.
• In the Child Ballad "Sir Aldingar", Sir Aldingar slanders the queen with charges of infidelity for having rebuffed his advances.

Fan Works

• Armada - The REAL Story: Played for Laughs; Optimus says Elita-One will go nuts if he can't find his missing feet, and tasks Hot Shot with searching for them before she flips out.
• Played for Laughs in Avatar: The Last Puppet Bender. Zuko has the paper-bag puppet version of his girlfriend Mai threaten to stab him if he dumps her again:
  Mai: Dump me again and I will mess you up! Stab stab stab stab stab.
• Burning Bridges, Building Confidence: Alya proves to be one after Nino breaks things off with her. Being akumatized into Revengance is one thing; even after she's cured, she continues harassing him, to the point that he has to take his little brother out the back of their apartment while she's banging on their front door.
• Crystal Affair has Princess Cadance. She is, to use an immense understatement, not so "loving and devoted" when you cheat on her. The best example comes after Spike tells her that Shining Armor wants to renew his wedding vows with her:
  Princess Cadence: Spike, you have exactly ten seconds to tell me why I shouldn't suffocate Shining in bed tonight!
• In Batman fanfic Dance with the Demons, Talia Al-Ghul is not happy that Batman is getting married to Catwoman instead of her, so she gets Catwoman poisoned to get her out of the way, but fails.
  Selina: You wanted to kill me. After I fought beside you, trusted you, twice. With my life. Talia, Talia. You claim to love my man. But I can't believe you know what the hell love really is. Not a bit of it.
  Talia Al Ghul: I do know what love is, you witch! I know because you broke my heart. And so did he!
• Disney Villain Songs (Lydia the Bard): This factors into several scenarios:
  • Ariel never learned that Vanessa was a disguised Ursula, or that she'd Brainwashed Eric into falling in love with her; as a result, she blames him for how she spent three years trapped in Ursula's grotto as a polyp, and is hellbent upon making all of humanity pay for her suffering.
  • Faced with Flynn's apparent betrayal seemingly proving that everything Mother Gothel claimed about the outside world was true, Rapunzel decides that before she returns to the tower, she wants to repay him for the lesson with death.
  • After Megara sacrificed herself pushing Hercules out of harm's way, he decided to leave her pinned under the pillar, betraying her just like her last love had. Her fury attracts Charon's attention, and he pulls her out of the River Styx and offers her a deal, teaching her how to steal godly powers for herself in exchange for a place as part of the pantheon she'll create after usurping the Olympians.
  • Ironically Downplayed with Anna; while discovering Hans' true colors does serve as the tipping point, her heart had already frozen to the point that she wasn't surprised by his betrayal, having recognized the red flags that her idealism originally blinded her to.
  • Cinderella was prevented from meeting with the Grand Duke, and is heartbroken when word reaches her that the prince has married somebody else, inspiring her to escape and seek revenge.
• Discussed in Evangelion 303. After Hikari and Toji get married despite Toji getting a lap dance during his bachelor party, Asuka tells Shinji exactly what she would do if he ever cheated on her.
• Between the events of Exiled and Gatecrash, Taylor was abducted by Heartbreaker and subjected to brainwashing until she was madly in love with him. He only wanted her to get at Dinah and had no intention of ever consummating his "relationship" with her. After learning this and realizing she would lose everything, Taylor resolved to destroy everything she loved personally, starting with Heartbreaker. His death was enough to mostly free her, though she didn't stop loving him.
• Cú Chulainn in Fate of the Clans has a history of really pissing off women. Three most notable cases when he was alive: He raped and got Aife pregnant so she sent his son out eight years later to meet his father but she set it up so Cú Chulainn would kill his only child, Morrigan who went after Cú Chulainn's life a few times simply because he refused to have sex with her, and Medb was the one who came up with the plot to kill him though it wasn't said in the story what he did to piss her off.
• The Flash Sentry Chronicles: Played for Laughs; after Twilight and Trixie realize that Flash is completely oblivious to both of them having feelings for him, they both respond by angrily beating him to a pulp, despite Twilight finally beginning to realize her feelings for him and Trixie having made plans to ask him out.
• In For His Own Sake, Naru Narusegawa gradually becomes this after getting dumped by Keitaro because she's an abusive and paranoid Spoiled Brat. At first she's incensed he would dump her and also a little upset that he did, but her stubborn pride only further destroys whatever slim chance they might've had for reconciliation. As Naru's life implodes from her poor choices, she starts irrationally blaming Keitaro for everything that's gone wrong, even things he had nothing to do with like her getting expelled from Tokyo University after assaulting the man who was going to be her career advisor. By the end of the story Naru's joined the other villains and is determined to make Keitaro suffer. By the very end, she shamelessly tries to tell Keitaro they should become a couple again after Granny Hina cuts her from her life and her immediate family refuse to take her back in after she viciously denounced them.
• In Heartbeat of the War God, Ashura is brought to his Superpowered Evil Side when he discovered Yasha with another woman. Though there's a good reason for the infidelity.
• In Imaginary Seas, Zoe still hasn't forgiven Heracles for taking her sword and essentially writing her out of history. Because of this, Riptide suffers a rank down in Heracles's hands, and calling upon her aid will likely end up making Zoe fire upon Heracles too.
• In Kara of Rokyn, Jara's reaction to being turned down by Kara is to beat her to a bloody pulp.
  —"I'm offering you a choice. If you take me, I'll go easy on you in the ring. If you don't—" She gave Kara as venomous a look as she'd ever seen, and the heroine replayed all the cliches she'd heard about a woman scorned.
• In Loved and Lost, Prince Jewelius starts a relationship of villainous affection with Queen Chrysalis as they strike a partnership to conquer Equestria on Princess Cadance and Shining Armor's wedding day. Even though Chrysalis is unable to drain love from Jewelius, she's genuinely surprised when he double-crosses her by helping Twilight Sparkle in exposing and defeating her so that he can take down all the other heroes and manipulate Twilight into giving him powerful heirs. When Chrysalis later questions why he betrayed her, he mocks her for thinking he'd let "a despicable animal" like her by his side. After she escapes from his dungeons, she tries to have revenge on him, and for that end, she instills in Twilight the first seeds of doubt regarding Jewelius and secretly helps the heroes in gaining an advantage over him. When the heroes have cornered Jewelius in the climax, Chrysalis appears and takes her revenge by ordering her Changelings to eat him alive.

Films — Animation

• Beautifully subverted in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. When the naive and desperate (and eponymous) Emily learns about Victoria Everglot, Victor Von Dort's arranged fiancee (whom he likes anyway), she's frustrated and mad because she sees Victoria as the obstacle to her freedom after 50 years of pain and sadness. She "gets lucky" when Victor believes he's lost Victoria to Barkis and agrees to a plan to kill himself and marry her... but when she sees Victoria sadly looking at her and Victor's upcoming wedding, Emily actually has a change of heart and gives up, saying that she was stealing Victoria's dream to fulfill her own. Her I Want My Beloved to Be Happy is what actually lets Emily gain true and eternal peace, releasing her soul.
• In The Incredibles, Helen, believing that Bob has been having an affair, punches out Mirage (thinking she's his mistress) while also trying to punch Bob as well (though he dodged it) and calls him "a lousy, lying, unfaithful creep" as he pulls her in for a kiss.
• Gender-inverted in Pocahontas. The eponymous character is betrothed forcefully by Chief Powhatan to marry his warrior Kocoum. When Kocoum spots Pocahontas and John Smith kissing, he becomes filled with rage and charges at Smith. Pocahontas attempts to break up the fight, but Kocoum throws her to the ground. Just when it seems that Kocoum has gotten the upper hand, Thomas shoots him.

Films — Live-Action

• Andhadhun: When Manohar's wife finds out about his affair with Simi, she takes his gun and tries to kill him with it.
• Anne of the Indies: Anne goes from fairly pragmatic piracy to being obsessed with revenge after she discovers that Pierre's romancing of her was all a con and that Pierre is married. Her crew even notes that she is passing up perfectly good targets to pursue Pierre, where there is no profit.
• Attack of the 50 Foot Woman: Hell hath no fury like a Giant Woman scorned.
  Dr. Cushing: She will tear up the whole town until she finds Harry.
  Deputy Charlie: And then she'll tear up Harry.
• Barbarella: Barbarella rejects the advances of the Black Queen, who poises herself to throw a knife at Babs's back, but changes her mind at the last second, opting to set up a Scarpia Ultimatum instead.
• In Black Patch, Frenchy decides that his mistress Kitty is getting too smart for her own good, and beats her up before throwing her out. What he forgets is that she knows every part of his plan, and she goes directly to Helen Danner — the widow of the man he had murdered — and spills the beans.
• Lesbian version in Blue Is the Warmest Color: Emma is definitely not the forgiving type, and is frightening in her rage when she confronts Adèle after she sees her passionately kissing a male colleague.
• Jake's unnamed ex-fiancee in The Blues Brothers pursues him throughout the film, attacking with a variety of weapons including a machine gun, a flamethrower, and a rocket launcher, declaring that only his death will balance the dishonor he brought on her and on her family when he left her at the altar.
• In Captain America: The First Avenger, Peggy catches Steve being kissed by a blond secretary. To make things worse, Steve retorts/asks if she and Howard Stark are "fondue-ing". This leads to an awkward situation where Stark explains what fondue is ("Fondue is just cheese and bread, my friend.") and when testing if the Vibranium shield can withstand a handgun, Peggy aims at Steve's head. She forgives him later when she sees a picture of herself in Steve's compass during one of his operations, as if saying "this is for you."
• The Crush: Adrian, a 14-year-old girl, resorts to stalking and other disturbing behaviors when her crush Nick, the 28-year-old writer who is renting a room in her parents' house, does not return Adrian's interest.
• Cruz Diablo: Malvina, which causes her to hold a grudge against Marcela, to the point of giving her poison so she can kill herself.
• In Date with an Angel, Jim's fiancée Patty thinks he's left her for a new love. She does not deal with that well to the point where she comes after him with a gun.
• It's not immediately apparent, but The Deaths of Ian Stone is based around this. Medea and Ian loved each other and considered humans no more than food. Ian fell in love with Jenny, and everything that happens until the very end relates to Medea's attempts to kill Jenny and/or snap Ian out of it.
• Doctor in Love: After Dr. Barrington discovers a Lipstick Mark on Dr. Hare's cheek, she kisses Dr. Burke and dances with him to get back at him.
• In the Louis de Funès Fantômas movie, after the villain abducts his arch-nemesis Intrepid Reporter Fandor and his fiancée, he reveals to Fandor that he wanted to make her his concubine instead of his current one. Fandor stages an Engineered Public Confession, and she helps them escape, prompting Fandor to mention this trope. She is still evil and savvy though, so she disabled the brakes on the car she provided them.
• Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction is one of the most notorious examples. Alex hopes to turn her weekend fling with married Dan into something more, but when Dan makes it clear to Alex that their affair is just a one-time thing, Alex goes to increasingly disturbing lengths to destroy Dan's life. Up to and including boiling his daughter's pet rabbit in a pressure cooker!
• The Field Guide to Evil: In "The Cobbler's Lot", Princess Boglarka does not take kindly to learning that Tivadar has been unfaithful to her with a trio of nymphs, and does not let being dead prevent her from taking her revenge.
• Flodder 3: Daughter Kees runs into her karate teacher boyfriend making out with another girl at a party. She beats him up with the same moves that he taught her.
• The Frozen North: Buster Keaton's loyal and devoted wife is ignored by him. Later, when she finds her husband attacking their neighbor, she shoots Keaton in the back through the window.
• Used as the main motivation for a few (but not many) of the inmates in the Korean film Harmony.
• Iron Sky: Why did Vivian Wagner have herself made the captain of the space battleship USS George W. Bush? Not to simply fight Moon Nazis and save the Earth, but to exact revenge on Klaus Adler, who left her behind when he returned to the Moon — by fragging him from orbit together with his entire Supervillain Lair. Sounds quite sensible in a movie made by partly the same people as Star Wreck.
• Inversion: The Bride in Kill Bill could be seen as an example, but in fact the act that set her on her Roaring Rampage of Revenge in the first place fits the trope much better, and the El Paso wedding massacre was the work of a scorned man. As Bill tells the Bride in their final confrontation, "there are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard."
• In The Killer That Stalked New York, Sheila finds out that her husband Matt has been cheating on her with her sister Francie, and that the two of them were planning on running off with the profits from the diamond smuggling affair, cheating Sheila out of her share. After Sheila confronts Francie about this and the two of them suspect that Matt was probably planning on running off with the profits without either of them, Francie kills herself. Sheila then decides that she is going to kill Matt. As the narrator puts it, she has "the strength that comes when a woman has to settle a score with a man like Matt Krane".
• Left for Dead: When Preacher Man Mobius Lockhardt broke off his relationship with prostitute Martha Black to return to his pregnant wife, Martha was so incensed that she rounded up her fellow whores and they went on a killing spree. They murdered every man, woman, and child in Amnesty, saving Lockhardt's wife for last. They murdered her and her unborn child in front of Lockhardt's eyes.
• Liar Liar: Miranda starts the movie interested in Fletcher to the point of successfully seducing him into having office sex with her. However, she suddenly switches to hating him for the rest of the movie after Fletcher makes a hurtful comment about the sex they just had.
• Masters of the Universe: Evil-Lyn obviously deeply loves Skeletor but over the course of the film comes to realise he does not care for her and eventually abandons him, withdrawing her forces and dooming him to defeat.
• May: One of the driving forces behind May's descent into insanity is Adam dumping her, then finding out that her night together with Polly wasn't as meaningful as she'd thought it was.
• The plot of My Super Ex-Girlfriend revolves around a scorned super heroine. The Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male is Played for Laughs.
• The Black Widow villain of the Laurel and Hardy film Oliver the Eighth has this as her motivation - though played with in that she doesn't target the man who hurt her, but rather any who share his name.
  Jitters: Another Oliver? Is he to share the same fate as the other seven Olivers?
  Widow: And why not? It was an Oliver who first came into my life and double-crossed me. Left me on the eve of my wedding. And I've sworn to take revenge on every Oliver that crosses my path.
• Sukehime of Onmyōji (2001) is so hurt by being forgotten in favor of another of the emperor's wives that it leads her to become a demon, similar to some real beliefs of the Heian period. Though in Sukehime's case, this is caused or encouraged by the villain.
• Ophelia:
  • Gertrude slowly starts to turn against Claudius as she realizes he killed her first husband, poisoned her against her son and Ophelia, and betrayed her sister. After her son dies due to his machinations, she reaches her breaking point and stabs him to death with Hamlet's sword.
  • When Mechtild is told by Ophelia that Claudius, her former lover and the father of her stillborn son, was actually the one who orchestrated the townsfolk turning against her, she is so incensed she goes to Fortinbras's army as they're camped in the woods and helps them get into the castle undetected, even marching with the army into the throne room to confront Claudius.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • The goddess Calypso is called "a woman scorned, like which fury hell hath no." As the story goes, she gave Davy Jones the condition that if he did the job of the Captain of the Flying Dutchman for ten years — namely, ferrying the souls of those who died at sea to the other side — then they would be able to be together forever. However, she seems to be a very capricious goddess (not uncommon with sea deities actually) and was not at the designated meeting place after the ten years were up. This made Davy Jones (understandably) angry, and so he and the first Brethren Court bound her in a single human form, which turns out to be Tia Dalma. When the fourth Brethren Court finally release Calypso, she's more than a little ticked off and starts cursing at them in a foreign language while growing to be at least a hundred feet tall, before finally crumbling into an avalanche of rock crabs.
  • Angelica in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, whom Jack seduced in the past and then left behind. Things don't get any better when Jack uses the chalices to give a dying Angelica immortality rather than her father Blackbeard — whose life is sacrificed for hers — and then maroons her on an island with nothing but a pistol with a single bullet.
• In Scream 4, we hear a lot about a Noodle Incident in which Trevor declared his love for Jill, they had sex, and then he "just goes out with someone else". Jill absolutely refuses to forgive him, no matter how much he tries to apologize. And right after she reveals herself as the killer, she shoots Trevor in the groin as retaliation.
• She-Devil:
  • To sum it up: Never give a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the woman you are dumping for another who is prettier and wealthier; you may be giving your ex ideas.
  • And when you fire that secretary you've been sleeping with, change the friggin' passwords and have her hand in her keys!
• In Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), Tom's sister-in-law Rachel's wedding is revealed to have been a sham, as the entire thing was a setup by G.U.N. to capture Sonic. Understandably, she is not pleased about having tricked into a Fake Relationship and attempts to murder her fiance with a golf cart before he reveals his Romantic Fake–Real Turn, and holds the G.U.N. Commander at gunpoint.
• Star Trek: First Contact: The Borg Queen, oh so much. It's revealed that part of the plot was a revenge against Picard for not being her consort. When Picard offers to be her consort once again, she accepts, and practically giggles when Data won't leave that she has a new consort, and Picard is no longer needed. Except as a new Borg drone, that is.
• Swimfan: Madison Bell seduces high school swimming star Ben into an affair, then stalks him when he turns down her further advances (basically a revamped Fatal Attraction).
• Because Cecil B. DeMille didn't want to make God look like a jerk, he added the character Nefretiri to The Ten Commandments (1956). She was once betrothed to Moses but is now married to Rameses. When Moses returns, Nefretiri puts the moves on him, but is "spurned like a harlot in the street." She decides to get back at him by being the one who hardens Pharaoh's heart.
• The Terror of Tiny Town: Angry because Haines hit her and neglected her in favour of Nancy, Nita plants explosives in his cabin.
• Underworld: Blood Wars: After Marius reveals that he killed Michael Corvin (The love of Selene’s life And Eve’s father) by bleeding him dry like a kosher butcher and He has the gall To drink the last of Michael’s blood right in Selene’s face, No matter the fact that he’s bigger and probably stronger, Make no mistake this trope is on full display as Selene rips Marius’s spine out of his back.
• Angela Bassett's character from Waiting to Exhale, after getting dumped by her husband for another woman, pays him back by stuffing his very expensive wardrobe into his very expensive car and setting the whole shebang ablaze. The scene is also subversive of this trope: it's heavily implied that she's more angry with herself than her husband, putting her own career on hold to help him with his, putting up with an unhappy marriage for over 11 years, and not even getting the satisfaction of ending things on her own terms.
• Max Fairbanks in What's the Worst That Could Happen?. As a billionaire media tycoon Max has multiple mistresses and his secretary ends up being the one to turn state's evidence about his illegal business practices because Max continually blows off her offers for sex for his much younger Playmate of the Month girlfriend. When Max is arrested the secretary reveals that she is the one who turned him in and Max quotes the trope name.
• In the last story of Wild Tales, a bride learns during her wedding party that her husband has previously cheated on her. She then goes Drama Queen and ruins the party for everybody, sending her husband into a crying fit.
• In Written on the Wind, Marylee is not happy about Mitch turning down her advances. First, she successfully convinces Kyle that Mitch and Lucy are having an affair. When that leads to Kyle accidentally killing himself, she refuses to testify that it was an accident to clear Mitch of a murder charge. At least until she has a last-minute change of heart.
• X-Men: The Last Stand:
  • After Mystique is forcibly turned into a human, Magneto leaves her behind, not wanting anything to do with her now that she's no longer a mutant. In retaliation, she tells the government where Magneto is. She's even referred to as a woman scorned by the president.
    "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
  • Likewise, after being rescued by the X-Men, Jean Grey tries to sex Wolverine up. He refuses. Cue Superpowered Evil Side taking over.

Jokes

• A mechanic sees a newspaper ad selling a Porsche for 50$. Intrigued, he goes to try it out and finds absolutely no problems with it. So he asks the woman selling it:
  Lady, I gotta know: why're you selling a perfectly good Porsche for so little money?
  I found my husband was cheating with his secretary... He told me I could keep everything, as long as I sold the car and sent him the money.

Literature

• In Alien in a Small Town, back in her days on the space station, Indira had been building toward a nervous breakdown for years. When her boyfriend of five years dumps her for a sexy android who Indira suspects is not even truly sentient, she suffers a truly monumental Freak Out that leads to her very nearly destroying the station. She stops herself in time, but it takes her years to get over the breakdown.
• The Astral Dawn universe has this trope. Hera grew tired of Zeus's wandering eye and adultery. She boldly declared that she would spend her time away from him in the same way he had spent his time away from her. This led to Hera intentionally giving into Agamemnon's advances. However, she unexpectedly fell in love with the high spirit she had only intended to use as a means of getting back at her husband.
• In the alternate-history classic Bring the Jubilee, the protagonist speculates after the fact that this was the real reason (or one of them) that his unstable Mad Scientist ex-lover let him use the time machine she invented: she fully expected him to screw things up back in the past, wiping out their present and leaving him stranded in a new timeline.
• Stephen King's Christine is probably the only example where the character in question is a Sentient Vehicle amongst humans. It is through her that her new owner Arnie becomes more self-aware and attractive and eventually gets a girlfriend. Let's just say Christine is not amused about the sudden competitor. It's also implied that this is the reason why she killed her first owner's wife: She wanted him all for herself.
• Wei Fen in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo is furious after finding out that her husband Li Yuan, the future T'ang (lord) of City Europe, has brought back the two servant girls that he slept with as an early teenager. It gets worse from there.
• This was thought to be the reason why Jeng Yah smashed a kerosene lamp over her ex-fiancé Soeraja's head at his wedding in Cigarette Girl. Subverted as the reason for her wrath was Soeraja leaking her cigarette formula to her business rival, Soedjagad.
• In Dragon Bones, there is Bastilla, who first seems to graciously accept the fact that Ward doesn't want to have casual sex with her. However, when he innocently talks to another woman (who fascinates him, but he doesn't tell that to anyone), she gets the idea that he deserves to be killed for preferring another woman to her. She later mind-controls one of Ward's companions into killing him. The companion is killed by Ward's brother before he can go through with it, and his death is mourned by everyone, except Bastilla.
• Dragonvarld: Bellona, Melisande's lover, thinks she left the monastery with a man. Convinced he's her lover, Bellona zealously hunts her down (as deserting it is forbidden) due to her perceived betrayal, but still has mixed feelings. She's relieved when the warriors under her fire arrows at Melisande but all still miss despite being expert shots, as they don't actually want to harm her either.
• The Earl Of Toulos and its variants, where two failed lovers accuse the empress of infidelity, going so far as to introduce a man into her bed to add evidence.
• Error of Judgement: The incriminating evidence against Prince comes from his nurse/mistress after she realizes he'll never leave his wife for her.
• In Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champion" story, when Iolinda is scorned because Ekrose has grown to truly love another, she refuses to order the Human armies to retreat in the face of vastly superior weaponry. The result of this is that Ekrose takes a grim responsibility to kill every last human on the planet.
• The Faerie Queene: It is a bad idea to be embracing another woman when your warrior-knight girlfriend is in the other room, because if she sees you, she will think long and hard about cutting you in twain. Thankfully for Sir Timias, Lady Britomart is righteous enough not to resort to wanton violence even if she (thinks) she's been cheated on, so she doesn't go threw with killing them (like she wants to).
• Fire & Blood: Criston Cole might be a rare male example, depending on what exactly went down with him and Princess Rhaenyra. They used to be lovers, and then something happened - either Cole rejecting her, or her rejecting him, and from that moment on Cole despised Rhaenyra so badly he helped her half-brother usurp Rhaenyra's crown, kickstarting a civil war.
• In a genre-flip, the Chivalric Romance Florence Of Rome has her refuse the advances of her brother-in-law, who then claims to his brother that she had tried to seduce him.
• In The Goblin Emperor, the woman Maia decided not to marry is angry not because she was in love with him (she doesn't even know him) but because she feels insulted that she wasn't chosen as the emperor's wife. Her family is implied to share the sentiment. The trope is averted with the former emperor's ex-wife, who was divorced for barrenness. Her family is not happy, but she is very reasonable about it and doesn't hold a grudge against Maia, even going as far as to warn him that he should now acknowledge her as the emperor's widow, as this would invalidate his own mother's marriage to the late emperor. He doesn't care. With arranged marriages being the norm in the setting, this trope is more about a family scorned.
• Phaidor in Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Gods of Mars. When John Carter manages to notice, he feels guilty that he might have given her some reason to believe he might reciprocate. He tells her of Dejah Thoris.
  "Dog," she hissed. "Dog of a blasphemer! Think you that Phaidor, daughter of Matai Shang, supplicates? She commands. What to her is your puny outer world passion for the vile creature you chose in your other life?"
• Hermione Granger from Harry Potter has moments of these with her future husband Ron Weasley more than once.
  • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, her reaction to him kissing his then-girlfriend Lavender Brown is to summon a flock of angry birds to attack him, later followed by vicious psychological warfare^note she goes out with Cormac, a better Quidditch player than Ron, coincidentally reminding him that she once went with an international Quidditch player.
    "Harry was left to ponder the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge."
  • Probably a lesser example than most of the ones on this page, but she tries to beat the crap out of him after he returns from his Achilles in His Tent moment in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. His reason for leaving boils down to two things: 1) worry for his family and 2) jealousy that Hermione's taking Harry's side during decisions/arguments. And being influenced by the Artifact of Doom. It's the second part that Hermione's pissed about, and it takes several days for her to forgive him for leaving (though she stops attacking him once Harry forces her to cool off from the initial anger).
• In House of Shards, Vanessa Runciter is a somewhat downplayed version. She's Drake Maijstral's ex, now working as an assistant for his chief rival, Geoff Fu George. Her animosity falls short of outright hatred, but she's very enthusiastic in trying to persuade Fu George to take actions that might humiliate Drake, even when they're not necessarily in Fu George's best interests. She's also quite ready to think the worst of Drake, and even ends up shooting him at one point, when she misunderstands a partly overheard conversation and thinks Drake has killed Fu George.
• A particularly terrifying variant appears in the sixth entry in the La Fuerza Series, Supers Anonymous. Upon finding her male best friend in bed with her girlfriend, Jackie created an illusion that drove them both insane.
• The Life And Loves Of A She Devil by Fay Wheldon (on which the movie She-Devil was based) is entirely this. Once dumped, the title character devotes herself to reaching a position to completely ruin her ex-husband and his mistress.
• The Lightlark Saga: It's revealed that Celeste, or rather Aurora, cast the curses because she was bitter that the Sunling king Egan - to whom she had been betrothed - left her for the Wildling ruler Violet, who was also Aurora's best friend. Aurora does admit that she only meant to curse her ex-fiance and friend, but she lost control of the magic and ended up cursing everybody, including her own people. As the caster of the curses, only she was spared.
• In Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, Yama does a gender-flip, turning from one of Sam's fiercest enemies to his most faithful supporter because his love was spurned for power by a woman among the gods. To be sure, Sam had observed that he had put his great talents at that side's service out of love for her, despite the unworthiness of the gods, so he had some natural affinity for the other side, but his reactions to her are strong and painful.
• In Midnight's Children, Saleem's father Ahmed was initially engaged to his aunt Alia. He ended up marrying her sister instead, and Saleem claims that Alia was consumed by bitterness as a result. When they move to Pakistan, she gets her revenge by infusing their food with her jealousy and bitterness, causing the cheerful family to rot from within. Interestingly, however, Saleem's only evidence for this is his supernatural ability to smell emotions, raising the possibility that Unreliable Narrator is in effect.
• In Moonlight Becomes You, it's revealed that Janice has found out that her husband, Malcolm, is planning on leaving her for his secretary. Although she hates him, she still fells betrayed that after sticking with him for twenty years he's just going to cast her aside, and plots to ruin him. She succeeds...only it works a little too well; Malcolm ends up committing suicide but not before uncovering a significant amount of dirt on Janice to get back at her.
• In the Chivalric Romance Olivier De Castile Et Artus D Algarbe, Olivier has to flee because his stepmother tried to seduce him and accused him of rape when she failed.
• Sidney Sheldon's breakthrough novel The Other Side Of Midnight has Noelle Page. She's a poor French girl wooed by American pilot Larry Douglas, who promises to return to her after he's called back to his duties — even giving her money for a wedding gown. She waits, finds out she's pregnant... and then tracks down his whereabouts and learns that he's The Casanova who never intends to return. This has extremely ugly consequences, starting with how she handles the baby issue; soon she's a Gold Digger model/actress and The Chessmaster set on ruining Larry's career and forcing him into working for her.
• In Anthony Berkeley's novel The Poisoned Chocolates Case, the true motive for the murder turns out to be that the murderer was one of Sir Eustace's mistresses, who had been genuinely in love with him and who he had intended to marry. She could cope with the marriage plans failing as long as the relationship continued, but when Sir Eustace fell out of love with her and in love with someone else, who he intended to marry, she decided to kill him and his new lover.
• Ruslan and Ludmila: Naina was spurned by Finn (after he himself cast a love spell over her), and she is absolutely furious and bent on revenge. She supports Farlaf just because the latter is the rival of Ruslan, who is helped by Finn.
• Dazil in Outcaste. The wife of a powerful Swordbearer Caste warlord, she is seduced by and falls in love with Jay. She is so distraught by what she sees as his eventual rejection of her that she turns him over to the authorities, having learned the secret of his origins in the course of their affair. But there is also a suggestion that she might have planned to seduce him from the outset, in order to get pregnant and avoid being "replaced" by her husband.
• In Stephen King's Rose Madder, Rosie McLendon starts out as an abused woman on the run from her psycho husband, and slowly works her way up to this... along with the help of a being who may or may not be the personification of female vengeance itself. I repay! is her declaration, and she most certainly does.
• In the Chivalric Romance Seven Sages Of Rome, the wife of the emperor tried to seduce her stepson; when he refused, she told her husband that he tried to rape her. He is saved by the title sages, who counter her stories of designing councilors with those of evil wives.
• The Shadows Between Us: Alessandra murdered her First Love Hektor after he revealed he didn't care about her and had already found another lover to replace her with. Contrary to her expectations, Kallias finds this hilarious when he learns about it and immediately pardons her. He arguably becomes even more attracted to her after learning this side of her than he was before.
• Sirena: The nymph Oenone, whose husband Paris abandoned her for Helen, asks the mermaids not to sink any of the Greek ships going to fight in The Trojan War because she wants Paris to be killed.
• In Sir Triamour, the steward tries to seduce the queen, is rejected, feigns that he was just testing her, and accuses her of adultery on her husband's return.
• In The Dresden Files novel Skin Game, the fallen angel Laschiel, having obtained a new host, seeks out Harry Dresden to take revenge on him for resisting her temptations. She even drops the trope-naming line during a prophetic Erotic Dream Harry has where his love interest Karrin Murphy turns into Laschiel mid-coitus and then shoots him in the head.
• Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen is all about Joey Perrone getting revenge on her husband Chaz, who pushed her into the Atlantic Ocean on a cruise. She takes full advantage of being presumed dead.
• Solar Pons: The murderer in "The Adventure of the Cloverdale Kennels" is a woman who murdered her ex-fiance who had broken off their engagement of several years and become engaged to another woman.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: After Jon Snow is forced to reveal that his "defection" to the Free Folk is just a ruse, his wildling lover, Ygritte, continuously tries to arrow him as he runs away from her.
• In the Star Trek novel Spock's World, the Vulcan secession crisis is engineered by T'Pring as revenge for Spock rejecting her in "Amok Time". If Vulcan seceded from the Federation, Spock would have to either give up his career and friends or go into exile. She describes this as ashv'cezh, a revenge worse than death.
• The Superteacher Project: Rosalie's divorced mother becomes infatuated with Mr. Aidact and becomes frustrated and vengeful when he seemingly blows her off during a date. The discovery that she's falling in love with a robot doesn't improve her temperament, and she seeks his firing.
• There Was No Secret Evil Fighting Organization has a platonic example. Kaburagi's extreme hatred of Ig is motivated largely by the fact that Kaburagi has always dreamed of having a cute animal sidekick, like the Magical Girl protagonists that she adores... but when the organization finally got one, it hated Kaburagi. After a while, her disappointment became resentment.
• The murderer in Towards Zero committed the crime in order to frame his ex-wife so that the latter would be hanged for it. This scheme was plotted as a revenge because she tried to divorce him for another man.
• In the Warhammer 40,000 Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitor's Hand, Cain comes face-to-face with a Slaaneshi sorceress who tried to seduce him and consume his soul some years earlier; he spurned her via lasbolts to the torso. In this case, though, said sorceress came back as a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh and was slightly miffed at the rude treatment he'd given her. Being a Greater Daemon, though, she wasn't too keen on anyone else either, though.
• Trapped on Draconica: Zarracka tried to seduce Tyrone, but he refused to cheat on Daniar, so she killed him and made it look like a suicide. When she tried the same on Kalak with similar success, she gave him hypothermia.
• In The Twilight Saga, Sam changed to werewolf form and ripped Emily's face off when she rejected him. For some far-fetched reason, she started a relationship with him after he visited her at the hospital and told her he was sorry. His ex-girlfriend, Leah, whom he left for Emily, is treated by the narrative as if she's a jealous bitch even though she behaves like a sane person, i.e. thinking and saying some nasty, bitter things about her ex rather than ripping faces off and the like. The Double Standard is quite obvious.
• In Two Little Girls in Blue, neither of Gregg Stanford's ex-wives have anything nice to say about him because of how he treated them. He cheated on Amy Lindcroft with Tina Olsen - her best friend - and revealed this shortly after Amy learned she was pregnant; the shock caused Amy to have a miscarriage and she needed an emergency hysterectomy. Tina later found out the hard way that Gregg only married her for her money and her father's business connections, divorcing him after he also cheated on her and wracked up phony expenses on her father's dollar. Tina and Amy both gleefully tell the FBI that Gregg knows Lucas Wohl through Tina (whom the FBI now know was involved in the kidnapping of twin sisters central to the plot) and that his pre-nuptial agreement with his current wife (who has been married more times than even Gregg) states he gets nothing if the marriage lasts less than seven years; with the seventh anniversary only weeks away, Gregg may be concerned his wife will file for divorce and be in desperate need of cash. Gregg cites this trope by name when questioned by the feds, trying to dismiss his exes as petty and vengeful. The agents themselves are more sympathetic to the women, especially Amy.
• Vanora in The Unbeheaded King. At one point she tries to pull a Wounded Gazelle Gambit (claiming that Jorian tried to rape her) in front of her current boyfriend, Boso. Later she admits in a drunken fit that she sold information of his whereabouts to some Xylarian mercenaries who go after him.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Lionblaze and Heathertail are friends until Dark River, where he breaks off their secret friendship. Things get ugly during Eclipse, where Lionblaze accuses Heathertail of telling her Clan about the tunnels between their Clans' territories and attacks her mentor Crowfeather in a fit of rage (which he regrets afterward). After their relationship/friendship dissolves because of this, Heathertail becomes bitterly angry at Lionblaze.
  • Mapleshade gets exiled from ThunderClan (along with her kits) after having an affair with a RiverClan cat. But when her kits drown, Appledusk leaves her for another she-cat. So Mapleshade kills him, nearly kills his new mate Reedshine, and kills two cats involved in her exile: another she-cat named Frecklewish and the ThunderClan medicine cat.
  • Gender inverted with Ashfur, who has had a huge grudge against Squirrelflight ever since she broke their relationship off. This results in him trying to murder Squirrelflight's father Firestar to make her experience pain, and he tries to kill her foster kits. But when Squirrelflight reveals that Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Hollyleaf aren't hers, he decides to humiliate her by revealing this bit of info at the Gathering.
• Wendy Nogard in Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger, who was dumped by a guy who couldn't get over the fact that she has a third ear. However, since the man who scorned her disappeared from her life forever, she takes out her anger on... everybody else she meets thereafter and dedicates her teaching career to making students feel as insecure and angry as she does.
• Lanfear in The Wheel of Time was dumped by the previous Dragon in favor of someone a little less power-hungry and is still pissed off 3,000 years later; now free of her imprisonment, she's gunning for his reincarnation, to either help and marry turn into her love slave or outright kill. When she finds out that she's been scorned again, people die horribly.

Live-Action TV

• Nina Myers in 24 doesn't inform the Drazens that David Palmer is still alive until after (in all the non-US versions) she discovers that Teri Bauer is pregnant by Jack Bauer, whom Nina had an affair with. Then, she kills her. To quote Keith Topping on the matter:
  Keith: This is because what hell really hath no fury like, is The Other Woman finding out that her bloke's wife has just got herself a useful weapon in hanging onto him.
• Invoked as a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "Beginning of the End" when Skye is confronting The Mole:
  Ward: You're not gonna kill us with the bomb. You'd go, too.
  Skye: No. I have a weapon much better than a bomb, that will absolutely destroy you.
  Ward: And why's that?
  Skye: Because you slept with her. And she's really pissed off.
  [cue Dynamic Entry via flying kick from May]
• Andor: Bix's jealous boyfriend Timm thinks she's seeing her ex Cassian on the side so he turns Cassian in for killing two corrupt rent-a-cops, even though authorities had nothing tying Cassian to the crime. This leads to multiple deaths and atrocities.
• Battlestar Galactica (1978): Upon seeing Starbuck with another woman in a Viper launch bay, Athena vents steam from the catapults on him.
• In The Boys (2019), Adaptational Jerkass Soldier Boy was despised by the rest of his team, especially his girlfriend the Crimson Countess for openly cheating on her, which led to her selling him out to the Russians and telling everyone he was dead.
• The Brittas Empire: In "Surviving Christmas", a mix-up in Christmas cards leads Helen to believe that Brittas is cheating on her with Carole. This pisses her off so much that she tries to kill Carole during their whole time on a survival trip in Wales.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In "Into the Woods", Buffy discovers her boyfriend Riley Finn has been visiting vampire prostitutes. She burns down the building where the act took place, massacres the vampire-pimp's gang when they're foolish enough to attack her, and — after initially letting the vampire-prostitute go — throws a wooden spear into her back as she's running away.
  • Anya, in her days as a demon, was known as the Patron Saint for Women Scorned. When a woman was heartbroken, she would appear to her and grant her a wish, usually to torture the man in unimaginable ways. One time, a girl wished the guys who played her along, broke her heart, and humiliated her knew what it was to have their hearts ripped out and broken. Anya takes it a little too literally. She was also an example of this herself as she turned her philandering husband into a troll, an act that caught the attention of the demon that offered her the role of a vengeance demon.
• When Castle doesn't call after returning from the Hamptons, Beckett is not happy. Neither are Ryan and Esposito, the former of whom nearly shoots him before he's arrested by Beckett and angrily taken for questioning.
  Beckett: Why didn't you call, Castle?
• Charité at War: Nazi nurse Christel has only once been taken out on a date by Otto, and he never followed it up with anything, but she falls in love with him nonetheless and asks him — before the entire hospital staff, no less — to get engaged before he has to return to the front. Otto brusquely turns her down, saying that if she was out for a widow's pension, she's not going to get one through him, although his reasons probably revolve more around his boyfriend Martin. After that, Christel denounces him and Martin to the Nazis, willingly accepting their persecution and the threat of a concentration camp.
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton: Frannie became lovers with her aristocratic white mistress Marguerite, though a poor black Jamaican servant herself who was Born into Slavery.
• Gender-reversed in CSI: Miami. When Calleigh dumps her officer boyfriend and gets him fired for using the credit cards of the dead, he opens a website attacking her.
• Dexter: When the titular character chooses Rita over Lila, the latter loses it. She abducts Rita's children, locks them in her apartment, and sets the place on fire with the kids inside to show him the terrible choice he made. Dexter saves them in time, though. Then he tracks her down to another country and poisons her.
• Frasier:
  • Took a bit longer than usual to kick in, but happens when Maris asks Niles to reconcile with her just before they finalize their divorce. When Niles rejects her, she promptly hires a team of lawyers to drag out the divorce proceedings in order to bankrupt him and make his life hell. This is purely out of spite since Maris was a millionaire who had been perfectly happy with her settlement before this incident.
  • Niles's second wife Mel becomes this after Niles leaves her for Daphne three days after they eloped. Whatever genuine affection she had for him disappears and she forces him through several weeks of pretending to still be married to her (so she can save face in front of her friends) before she'll agree to file for divorce. She eventually demands he humiliate himself in public so people will think he "drove" her away. Niles finally snaps and demands the divorce after Mel accepts a New Year's invitation for them while standing in front of Daphne.
• More like a "pre-teen scorned" in an episode of Full House. Singer Tommy Paige performs a song for Stephanie at her birthday party, and she thinks this makes him her boyfriend. So she's not too happy when she sees Tommy kissing DJ, making her think that her older sister is trying to steal Tommy from her. She tries to get revenge by showing Tommy embarrassing pictures of DJ, including one of her when she had the mumps and one of her drooling in her sleep. The two sisters soon make amends with each other after finding out that Tommy already has a girlfriend.
• Game of Thrones: Tyrion falls in love with Camp Follower Shae, but when his father threatens to hang her, he has to Break Her Heart to Save Her to force her to leave King's Landing. Shae retaliates by giving false testimony at his trial. Unlike her book counterpart, show!Shae really seems to care for Tyrion, so it's harder to believe she'd just turn on him for money. She took his break-up very hard, so it's not too much of a stretch to think she's trying to get back at him. Well, that, and Tywin/Cersei probably threatened her. When Tyrion unexpectedly finds Shae in his father's bed, the two immediately try to kill each other, with Tyrion strangling her using a gold neck chain he gave her as a gift.
• In one episode of Garth Marenghis Darkplace — appropriately titled "Hell Hath Fury" — the lone female doctor feels unappreciated and wreaks havoc with her psychic powers. At the end, Dagless recounts what he's learned: "Women get angry over the tiniest things. Tomorrow I'd tell her that her hair looked nice, or that she'd lost weight. Whichever's more believable."
• In The George Lopez Show Benny quotes the page comment in the episode "Prescription for Trouble" in reference to Carmen playing the Distracted by the Sexy trope against her cheating boyfriend, Jason.
• Surprisingly enough (given that this series centers around ladies, romance, and plotting against each other), Gossip Girl plays this straight mostly with male examples.
  • First is, as spelled out by the narrator herself, Chuck Bass scorned in the first season. When Blair discards him to get back with Nate, Chuck ruins her social life and new relationship in revenge.
  • Four seasons later, prince Louis finally loses his patience with (again) Blair when he's humiliated because of her on their wedding day and informs her with a Slasher Smile that she's now trapped in a loveless marriage charade and if she tries to break out of it or misbehave, she's got to pay an enormous "dowry". Blair herself, otherwise a goddess of revenge of this series, has never actively gone after a lover directly because of the scorn, usually destroying or Slut-Shaming the other woman instead.
• The Handmaid's Tale: Commander Putnam's wife asks that he suffer the most severe punishment. While couched in concern over the fate of his soul, it's not hard to read this as revenge after he cheated on her.
• Hand of God: There's a particularly vicious example in Anne, who hired some men to rape her lover's wife when he broke up with her.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Barney is slapped by women he's been hitting on with no explanation until he learns from Lily that there's a blonde woman who has been telling his targets not to trust him. This prompts him and the rest of the gang to have an absurd and nonsensical guessing game on "who's that woman that Barney scorned", and at Lily's urging, he has to apologize to her. Though they get the identity wrong at the end of the episode, a few episodes later it's revealed that it's Abby (played by Britney Spears) who has been warning women about Barney.
  • Barney used Ted's name and profession to hit on women and then left a prepared farewell letter when he duked out. Except that he used his real name on the signature, which got the woman confused on who the hell Barney was, and a few episodes later it's revealed that she made a hate website about Ted for dumping her. Well, we now know that Barney hooked up with a Yandere and got away with it by pinning it on Ted.
  • In Season 8, Ted dates Jeanette, who turns out to be his stalker, and despite knowing this, he still goes for it until he decides to break up with her. As expected, Jeanette doesn't take it very well and goes to his apartment and sets his things on fire and throws them on the street.
• Subverted with Princess Mithian on Merlin. Despite being flirted with and essentially led on by Arthur for a number of days, she doesn't hold it against him when he breaks off their engagement due to his enduring love for Guinevere — in fact, she seems rather moved by his devotion to her.
• Reaper: Dumping an ordinary woman is bad enough. Dumping a demoness who's got a crush on you and is really, really trying to overcome her murderous cannibalistic urges is criminally and suicidally insane.
• Reboot (2022): Subverted. After hearing that his mother Susan hooked up with Clay, Zack warns the latter that sheonce smashed a guy's windshield after a relationship ended badly. This makes Clay fear ending things with her. However, she graciously accepts the end of the fling and even clarifies that the windshield story was a coverup — she had actually smashed the windshield while having an intense orgasm in the car, but she couldn't tell her son and neighbors that.
• Played ridiculously straight on Robin Hood. Isabella is a perfectly sane, compassionate, and intelligent woman... until the moment Robin dumps her, after which she instantly turns into a raving lunatic. He doesn't even dump her. He simply refuses to abandon everything he has fought for and leave with her. He was probably willing to stay with her if she chose to live in Sherwood.
• In Rome, Julius Caesar gets this treatment big time from Servilia when he ends their affair to go to Greece and put an end to the civil war. Servilia not only puts a number of curses on him, she actively conspires to murder him and enlists her own son to hold the knife. Pretty strong reaction, since he was married to someone else anyway and she knew he would have to fight in Greece at some point. Her son (Brutus) mentions this trope after Servilia mocks him by saying he should get on his knees and beg to Caesar since it worked so well for him in the past. He replies, "But not you, huh? Perhaps you did not beg hard enough?"
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Aunt Hilda tends to inflict gruesome fates on men who displease her.
  • In the first season Hilda explains to Sabrina that you can't use your powers to make someone love you, but you can use them to imprison someone in a ring for not loving you. She holds up her ring and sure enough Sabrina sees a young man in Renaissance Era clothing trapped within the stone. He begs Hilda to release him but she callously ignores his pleas and seems content to keep him there indefinately.
  • In Dummy For Love Hilda goes on a date with a man who doesn't listen to her named Randy. Once she gets home she whips up a spell that will make him a "better listener". The next morning Randy wakes up and to his great distress he discovers that he now has ears all over his head.
• In the Belgian cop show Salamander, Karin Rasenberg is a bored rich woman in the highest stratum of political life. Viewed only as a Trophy Wife and both neglected and scorned by an abusive husband, she sets about betraying him to Gerardi. But when Gerardi cannot go through with sleeping with her so as to extract more evidence, the rejected Karin takes revenge on him too.
• Saved by the Bell: The New Class has Maria spend the whole episode "Maria's Revenge" being this. First she acts cold towards Tony upon their initial encounter at Bayside because he stood her up in their own junior prom years ago, causing her to be the only girl without a date, and then she exacts revenge on him by spreading rumors about him after he promises to talk to her at the Max but fails to show up. It's only near the end of the episode, after being convinced to hear him out, that Maria mellows out and warms up to him, especially after Tony finally gets to explain to her what happened.^note He failed to show up at the Max because he was being interviewed for a job there and the process ran much longer than he thought. As for the junior prom, Tony had to wear his brother's outfit because his family couldn't afford a new one for him. Unfortunately for him, the outfit didn't fit him, and he became too self-conscious about it when he showed up at the school to let anyone else — Maria included — see him in such a state, so he left.
• Scandal: When Becky, Huck's girlfriend, finds out that he plans to take her down, she responds by murdering the entire family that Huck considers very dear to him.
• Scoundrels (2010): Valerie is very pissed off when she finds out Logan slept with Patty Hong behind her back. When she dumps him she hands him a bill for all the tutoring that helped him pass the bar, plus interest for every year she "wasted" on him.
• Smallville:
  • In "Zero", Amanda Rothman is revealed to have shot and killed her fiancé Jude when she finds him at Club Zero with other women.
  • In "Lineage", we learn about Rachel Dunleavy, a nurse hired by Lionel when his wife's heart condition whom eventually had an affair with Lionel, resulting in a son named Lucas whom Lionel took to be raised somewhere else while she was placed in a psychiatric ward. She comes back to Smallville years later with a beef against Lionel.
  • In "Bound", a stalker of Lex tries to kill him in revenge for breaking her heart after she cheated on her fiancee with him and he didn't return her calls declaring her love for him or even acknowledge her in any way.
• Played in Supernatural with a huge amount of Ho Yay. In an episode when Dean tries to go over to Heaven, Castiel is not amused.
  "I GAVE EVERYTHING TO YOU! AND THIS IS WHAT YOU GIVE TO ME?!"
• Gender-reverse in United States of Tara. Marshall, who is generally one of the most stable characters on the show, sees his crush/maybe-boyfriend making out with his mother's alter ego. So he reveals his presence, yells at both of them, and returns a few hours later to burn down the shed.
• On The Wonder Years, Kevin learns the hard way about a woman scorned when he breaks up with Becky Slater, whom he had only dated in an attempt to make Winnie jealous. Not only does she punch him (several times) hard enough to knock him out, she tells everyone at school what he said about them behind their backs. Becky would then go on to hold a massive grudge against Kevin during all of their time at junior high.
• In the Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea, Armando and his friend/fellow executive, Mario, device a plan where Armando would woo Betty, his secretary, and use her knowledge of business and economics to scam their way to the top of the company that belongs to his parents. Armando is at first disgusted at the prospect of dating "ugly Betty" but agrees to it since he'll be at the top of the company and she already has a crush on him. Betty is ecstatic that such a handsome man is interested in her, loves the thrill of being his mistress, and daydreams of Armando breaking his engagement for her. Armando eventually feels a mutual attraction to Betty, and begins feeling conflicted over the affair and the fact that Betty is his and Mario's Unwitting Pawn. While rummaging through his office, Betty finds a letter from Mario detailing his plan to Armando, and once the acquisition is complete, Armando will dump Betty, fire her, and take care of any other loose ends. Betty is devastated and begins to reject Armando, who becomes angry and depressed because she keeps spurning him. During an important board meeting, Betty comes clean and exposes Armando and Mario's scam, reveals that she is the mysterious woman Armando's having an affair with and will resign as soon as the meeting adjourns. When Armando confronts Betty about her betrayal, she snaps back that she found out about how they used her for their own personal gain, and when he says that he's fallen in love with her, she angrily tells him that she's come to hate him, as he's no different than all the people who mocked her for their own sick amusement.
• In season three of You, Love murders Natalie after finding out that her husband Joe may have been cheating on her with the latter. When Joe becomes obsesses with Marienne, Love considers murdering her too. After Joe officially announces that he wants to divorce Love, Love paralyzes and later attempts to kill him. It's found out that she also paralyzed (and accidentally killed) her first husband James when he tried to divorce her.

Music

• The Scottish folk ballad "The Brown Girl".
  I'll dance upon your grave for twelvemonth and a day
  I'll do as much for you as any maiden may
  I'll make you rue the very day that you were born
  I'm a bonny brown girl.
• "The Dark Lady" concerns the titular Sapient Ship. Every night, the ship's captain, the pirate Baron LaBonne, makes a toast to the ship, calling it his one true love. Unfortunately, when the captain announces his upcoming marriage, starts making toasts to his bride-to-be Carlotta, and calls her his one true love rather than the ship, the Dark Lady takes this as a betrayal and elects to murder all of them by steering itself into a storm and then binding their souls to itself as ghosts that are compelled to drink a toast in the Dark Lady's honor every night.
  And every night the Baron must drink a toast
  And say, "Here's to our lovely lady host
  My one true love"
  "Hear, hear!" the ghost crew replies
  And the Dark Lady smiles
• In the music video for Beast in Black's "Sweet True Lies", upon finding out that her husband is seeing another woman behind her back, the main character heads over to the dance club where he and she are at to let him have it, publicly calling him out on his shit, breaking up with him on the spot, and turning the other woman against him in the process.
• Blu Cantrell's "Hit 'Em Up Style" deals with a woman taking revenge on her unfaithful husband by draining him of all his financial and physical assets. The song also encourages women to take similar actions to punish unfaithful men.
  Hey ladies, when ya man wanna get buck wild
  Just go back and hit 'em up style
  Get your hands on his cash and
  Spend it to the last dime for all the hard times
  Oh, when you go, then everything goes
  From the crib to the ride and the clothes
  So you better let 'em know that
  If he mess up, you gotta hit 'em up
• In the Evillious Chronicles' The Tailor Shop of Enbizaka, the tailor sees her lover with three different girls on separate occasions. She kills them and takes their clothing/accessories, thinking that this was the kind of girl her lover liked. It turns out that her "lover" had never met her before and the three women she killed were his wife and two children. She then kills him too, offended that he didn't recognize her.
• PJ Harvey's song "Rid of Me" is a textbook example of what a wronged woman is thinking:
  I'll tie your legs
  Keep you against my chest
  You're not rid of me
  No you're not rid of me
  I'll make you lick my injuries
  I'm gonna twist your head off see
  'Til you say don't you wish you never never met her!
• Kelis's "Caught Out There": She discovers that her partner is having an affair, and the video implies that her reaction is to violently attack him. It eventually builds to her possibly killing his partner with a gun, and perhaps the other woman he cheated on her with.
• Jazmine Sullivan:
  • In the music video for "10 Seconds" Jazmine Sullivan ties her cheating boyfriend to a chair with a bomb strapped to it. Seen here. Curiously, in the song itself, she gives him 10 seconds to take his things and leave. It doesn't really matter though as it was all a dream.
  • The song "Bust Your Windows", also by Sullivan, is about a woman who destroys her boyfriend's car after discovering him cheating.
• Carrie Underwood has revenge by vandalism "Before He Cheats":
  Well I dug my key into the side
  Of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive
  Carved my name into his leather seats
  Took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights
  Slashed a hole in all four tires
  Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats
• In the music video for Vanilla Ninja's song "Liar", a girl discovers that her motorcross-champion boyfriend has been cheating on her. So she runs over his bike. With a monster truck.
• The Who's "My Wife":
  My life's in jeopardy
  Murdered in cold blood is what I'm gonna be
  I ain't been home since Friday night
  And now my wife is comin' after me...
• Eminem's "Without Me" starts with Slim Shady being woken up by a call from Dr. Dre. A woman, Kiana™, wakes up next to him, and then another woman, Jenna™ wakes up on the other side of the bed. Kiana™ was somehow unaware that she was just in a threesome, and with a single punch takes out Shady and Jenna™.
• William Taylor, a sea shanty describing a young woman who was to be soon married to the eponymous William Taylor, but Taylor was called to duty and sent away on a ship. His fiancée pulled a Sweet Polly Oliver and boarded a man o' war in search of her soon-to-be. She performed her duties on the ship as was needed, even engaging in battle where - somehow - the buttons on her shirt popped off and her breasts were bared. After surviving the battle, the Captain asks her her reason for being there. She tells him her reason, and the Captain says, "wake up in the morning, you'll find him with his new lover." She took it well. Two pistols, one for each of 'em. Debates on whether or not the Captain was on her side. He probably was, considering she lived through a battle.

Myths & Religion

• Queen Dido in The Aeneid, who prophesies that her and Aeneas's people will meet again in war (the Punic Wars — her future, Virgil's past). Particularly tragic in that it's made fairly obvious that he'd have stayed with her if he'd had the choice.
• The Morrigan, triple goddess of birth, death, and war in Celtic Mythology, is notorious for visiting misfortune and ruin upon those who reject or fail to notice her. Cu Chulainn, who either fails to recognize her or rejects her depending on the myth, is one famous victim of her resultant revenge, though Cu being a consummate badass, he does not make this easy for her.
• This trope is Older Than Dirt in Classical Mythology:
  • Hera, wife of the supreme Greek god Zeus, was the goddess of women and marriage. Being married to Zeus, everything she does in almost all the stories she appears in is a reaction to his latest escapades. Being unable to go against the king of the gods directly, she usually vents her anger on anyone remotely connected to his case of unfaithfulness. Obviously, his various offspring gain her ire the most, hence why she's usually the Big Bad in most Hercules stories. One myth says that she did strike against her husband directly once, getting the other Olympians to help by ambushing him while he slept, binding him with a hundred ropes and putting his weapons well out of reach. This attempted coup may have actually worked, but it had two serious flaws: First, once they had done this, they all argued among themselves over who the new ruler should be. This distracted them from the second flaw: some gods were still loyal to Zeus, like Theitis, a minor goddess of the sea. While not powerful enough to challenge the other Olympians, she traveled into Tartarus to appeal to Briareus the Hecatonchire for help. The hundred-handed giant quickly untied Zeus, and Hera's coup ended quickly, resulting in a punishment that would seriously make her think twice about doing it again: bound from the edge of the heavens from her wrists with anvils chained to her ankles to weigh her down, with Zeus promising an even worse punishment to anyone who helped her. He eventually released her, but this did prevent any future attempt at a coup.
  • Upon the birth of Gaia's children the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires, Uranus hid them in a secret place within Gaia, causing her great pain. So she conspired with her son Cronus to chop off his testicles in revenge. OUCH!
  • Bellerophon was staying with Proetus of Tiryns when Proetus's wife attempted to seduce him, and then claimed Bellerophon had ravished her when he refused. Sacred Hospitality meant Proetus had to try less straightforward means of killing him.
  • Phaedra tried to seduce her stepson Hippolytus. When he refused, she claimed to her husband Theusus that he had tried to rape her.
• Ur-Example: Ishtar in The Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh scorns her because he knows sleeping with a goddess, especially this goddess, always ends the same way — death. It's a no-win situation, though Gil certainly doesn't do himself any favors by bringing up all her past lovers and their fates to her face.
• Japanese Mythology:
  • Izanami of Shinto fame, who was abandoned in Yomi (the underworld) by her husband. Followed by Izanami sending demons to kill him. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. When said woman owns hell, you are boned. To drive home the point... Izanami invented DEATH just to screw with her husband. He has to create more life than she takes just to prevent The End of the World as We Know It. It should be noted that Izanagi went to Yomi to rescue his wife, and only ran from her when he saw that she had become a vermin-infested undead.
  • On a wider scale, Japan has a whole category of vengeful spirits heavily associated with this trope, and no shortage of specific examples within that category, seemingly just to remind its entire populace that if you piss off a woman, any woman, and you do not pacify her grudge before her demise, then she'll make Hell wait for her spirit until she has exacted her vengeance upon the living.
• In Pacific Mythology, the Ali'i (chief) Aiwohikupua gets engaged to Hinaikamalama, despite being already engaged to a chiefess named Laieikawai back home in Kahiki. ^note Usually understood to be Tahiti, but could actually be anywhere in Polynesia that isn't Hawaii. The two of them eventually have a bad argument, and he sails off to have some space and calm down. He meets Poliahu, and the two fall in Love at First Sight. When it's revealed that he's already engaged to two women, Poliahu gives him a What the Hell, Hero?... but then agrees to release him from his vows on the condition that he break off those engagements and marry her. He agrees, and the two trade capes to seal their agreement. So Aiwohikupua sails home and breaks off his engagement to Laieikawai and prepares for the wedding to Poliahu. When he sails back to Hawai'i to bring back his bride, he remembers his feelings for Hinaikamalama and sets off to find her. The two reconcile, and he runs off with her. Poliahu finds out about this, and attacks Hinaikamalama with chills and fever, and does the same to Aiwohikupua when he goes to talk to her. Eventually, Hinaikamalama leaves Aiwohikupua, and Poliahu heads back to her home on Mauna Kea alone. And in all this, the truth about Aiwohikupua's philandering and dishonesty came out, and he loses his Ali'i status and becomes Persona Non Grata because of his transgressions.
  As the Ancient Hawaiians say, don't lie to or cheat on your partner, or you'll end up alone.
• The Bible: Book of Genesis talks about Joseph, who is sold into slavery by his brothers and attracts the attention of his master's wife. She attempts to seduce him multiple times, which eventually causes him to run away. Afterwards, she tells her husband that Joseph tried to rape her, and he gets thrown into prison.
• The Mahabharata: Bhisma abducted three sisters, Amba, Ambika, and Ambalika so they could be married off to his half-brother, King Vichitravirya of Kuru. While Ambika and Ambalika consented the match, Amba was already in love with another man, Salva, and decided to slip away to elope with him. However, Salva rejected her because he felt Bhisma already won over her fair and square. She dejectedly returned to her original engagement to Vichitravirya, only for him to reject her as well because now he knew she was in love with someone else. Finally, she begged Bhisma to marry her, which fell on deaf ears because he already swore a Vow of Celibacy (the same vow that made him concede the throne to Vichitravirya, his younger brother). Furious at being dumped by three different men, Amba swore revenge against Bhisma for kidnapping her and triggering a chain of events that led to her misery. Eventually, after torturous meditation, Shiva granted her wish. Upon death, she was reborn as Shikhandi, a warrior woman/man who joined the Pandavas against the Kauravas during the Kurukshetra War, where she helped Arjuna slay Bhishma, thus fulfilling her revenge.
  • When Arjuna visits Heaven to obtain divine weapons for the upcoming Kurukshetra war, an Apsara (nymph) comes onto him. Arjuna rebuffs her advances, because the same nymph had slept with a forefather of his; thereby making him the nymph’s greatest great great grandson. He tells her, “I’m like a son to you.” The nymph, scorned, huffs “Then you’ll be a little boy from now on!” And curses Arjuna to be as impotent as a pre-pubescent boy. Luckily, Indra, the king of the gods and Arjuna’s divine father intervenes and makes it such that the impotence curse lasts for a year only, and Arjuna can choose the year. He makes use of this curse during the year that the Pandavas must spend incognito, to become a eunuch who teaches a young Princess the art of song and dance.

Pinballs

• Implied in America's Most Haunted by Samuel Salazar's tombstone, which reads "His wife Lisa tore him apart."

Pro Wrestling

• ECW had the famous case of the Beulah McGillicutty/Tommy Dreamer/Francine love triangle, which unfortunately couldn't be taken to its full potential due to the injuries the promotion tended to rack up. Specifically, it started with Raven and Beulah as the vengeful nerds bullied by Tommy, until Beulah ended up falling for him while Francine was the minion of Raven's minion who fell for Tommy while Beulah was on a leave of absence from ECW. But then Tommy left Francine and went back to Beulah... and Francine's wrath would be felt even after the company tanked through its many reunion shows, though by the time of TNA's she had seemingly gotten over going after them.
• Vickie Guerrero towards Edge after he proposed to her but then attempted to cheat on her with their wedding planner, Alicia Fox. Guerrero got her revenge by siccing The Undertaker on Edge but then had a My God, What Have I Done? moment when Undertaker beat Edge way worse than she wanted him too, allowing Edge to then successfully blame the whole thing on Fox and allow the relapse of the Romantic Plot Tumor that was their marriage.
• Jacqueline and Terri Runnels got together to torment Marc Mero and Goldust after being dumped by them. But then they turned their attentions toward all men in general, trying to screw up the friendship of D'Lo Brown and Mark Henry for no reason than their own amusement and recruiting Ken Shamrock's sister Ryan to their cause.
• Ivelisse Vélez towards Jeremiah Crane in Lucha Underground. First he entered the Temple after she told him not to, to save her from Marty The Moth Martinez and La Mariposa. Then Catrina seduced him away from Velez. Then he beat Velez with a hammer after she defeated Catrina in a match. Velez ended up interfering in a grave consequences match that resulted in Crane getting killed!

Tabletop Games

• Lilith from "Fair is Foul", one of Vampire: The Masquerade's Gehenna scenarios. The backstory given tells us that Lilith taught Caine the vampiric Disciplines, and then he left her to run Enoch and sire the Second Generation. Lilith then became "Mother of Monsters" and comes to town to call out Caine, and she does so in a spectacular manner.
• Lady Malys from the Dark Eldar in Warhammer 40,000. Scorned by Asdrubael Vect, she wandered into the webway, potentially beat the Laughing God (or some other powerful, unknown entity) in a game of wills, tore out his heart, and replaced her own with it. Now she commands one of the stronger Kabals of Commoragh, is possibly the only person able to kill Vect (something she yearns to do), and is completely immune to psychic powers, as well as being able to see into the near future.

Theater

• In Dido, Queen of Carthage, as in the myth it's based on, Dido pronounces a Dying Curse on Aeneas after he abandons her to go in search of his destiny.
• Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni spends the first act of the opera in this role, having been seduced and abandoned by the Don and planning to hunt him down and kill him. In the second act, though, her feelings for him get the better of her and she becomes a Love Martyr instead.
• Medea: When her husband Jason deserts her for another woman, she kills his new fiancee and the fiancee's father (this one by accident: he was trying to save her and failed) with a golden robe laced with poison, and then puts every one of her children by Jason to the sword, before letting him live with it. To make this even worse, Medea is The Medic. And to make it even worse, Hera, being both the protector of Jason, the divinity called to witness his oath to Medea and the one who got them together in the first place, is the one supposed to punish him, but the goddess of the Women Scorned couldn't find anything worse to inflict on him. The best she can come up with is to take back all the favors from her to him, and efficiently leading Jason to lose all his glory as a hero and be reduced to a beggar until his death.
  • And that's a later version, that was restricted to Corinth before Euripides made it famous. The other version is even more terrifying: while in that it's the Corinthians who kill the children for delivering the poisoned robe, Medea had already set the city on fire because the new fiancee's father happened to be the king of Corinth (or by accident: a variant says that the poison set the fiancee on fire and the father made it spread in the vain attempt to save her), and when she left the city was hit by an earthquake. She still left Jason alive to suffer, and Hera still failed to find something worse to punish him with.
• The title character of Bellini's opera Norma. Her former lover, Pollione, abandons her and their two children for the younger and more beautiful temple virgin, Adalgisa. Needless to say, Norma, an intensely passionate and fiery Druid priestess, is not amused and curses them both.
• Fleur de Lys in Notre-Dame de Paris is this. She is in love with Captain Phoebus, but he is a womanizer, and cheats on her with Esmeralda. Her final song and one solo, "La Monture", is the song version of this trope. She says she will take him back if he agrees to hang Esmeralda. He does.

Video Games

• Adele from Arc Rise Fantasia goes absolutely nuts when she awakens as the Diva of Real. Since Arc chose Imaginal already, that means she and Arc can never be together. When Arc summons Simmah to block an attack from Girtab and Adele is hurt in the process, she takes this as proof that Arc doesn't care about her anymore. She spends the rest of the game trying to kill Arc for "wronging" her. This case is a little crazier than most since the object of her affection had absolutely no idea she felt that way about him since she never admitted her feelings.
• In The Dead Case, the church ghost hates men because she remembers thinking her husband was cheating on her before she died. It turns out there's more going on — her husband had been a Serial Killer and she'd found out (granted, he killed his female victims out of a twisted belief that they'd be part of his personal harem in the afterlife, so she wasn't totally off the mark). When she remembers this, she is furious.
• Gender inverted and later subverted in Devil May Cry when Dante learns that Trish, his guide to Mallet Island, is really working for Mundus and sends Nightmare to attack him in Mission 20. After its defeat, Dante saves her life but still does not take it well and he vows to kill her if they cross paths again. Trish had a significant change of heart after hearing this and decides to return the favor by betraying Mundus instead. She's Easily Forgiven by Dante and they become partners in the demon-slaying business ever since.
• Fate/stay night: Medea (Caster) was one in the backstory, following her famous mythological counterpart, but it was even worse here. Apparently she never wanted to be with Jason at all, and Aphrodite brainwashed her into loving him. So when Jason proved unfaithful and Medea broke free of the brainwashing, she was pissed. She destroyed everything remotely related to their marriage and swore off men completely. When she was summoned for the Grail War, she quickly killed her original Master, but was soon found by Souichirou, who saved her. She fell in love with him, and resolved to find a way to stay in this time period forever so that they could be together.
• Lady Hilda in Final Fantasy IX. When she discovered that her husband, Regent Cid, had cheated on her, she used magic to turn him into an oglop (a type of bug) and he was left that way for quite a while because she ended up getting kidnapped. After she's finally found, she turns him back into a human, but not before threatening to turn him into a hedgehog pie (a type of monster) if he ever cheats again.
• The Love Shockers from Jet Set Radio are a gang of these. Quoth DJ Professor K, "Love broke their hearts, and now they're looking to do some breaking of their own!"
• Cindy from Kindergarten is angry with her classmate Billy, who broke up with her for unspecified reasons (though the fact that she's an Alpha Bitch in the making who herself goes through boyfriends like tissues probably had something to do with it). However, he disappeared mysteriously after the fact, leaving her unable to take revenge on him directly. Instead, she's resorted to bullying his sister Lily as a proxy.
• A cut ending scene from Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords would have had whichever Love Interest you didn't express an interest in attack the other with a lightsaber.
• In the indie Adventure Game The Marionette, "Alice" turns out to be the real name of a woman who was one of the main character's models and became obsessed with him after he scorned her.
• Persona 5: Cheating on your Love Interest will result in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Valentine's Day where every girl you two-timed smashes you into the ground, all at once.
• This is the reason for all the chaos and near-end-of-the-world in Resident Evil 6. Big Bad Carla Radames felt betrayed by her lover Simmons because he took advantage of her feelings so he could alter her appearance and brainwash her so she would look and act like Ada Wong. When she regained control, she wasn't happy. One of the main reasons for her plan is to humiliate and crush Simmons and irreversibly destroy the world balance he cares so much about.
• Rise of the Third Power: The pirate captain, Selene, used to be a couple with Rowan, but one day, he took off her one of her ships while drunk. The next time she sees him, she immediately offers a large bounty to any pirate who kills him. She only relents when Corrina uses her diary to blackmail her. Later on, she refuses to form an Enemy Mine with Rowan against Arkadya and continues to attack him even after the party spares her life. She's also willing to sic her crew on the citizens of Angelico and cause damage to the city if it means killing Rowan. After her defeat, she attempts to blow up her own ship and tearfully states how hurt she was by his betrayal.
• Both of the main female characters on School Days fit this trope to a T. Depending on the ending, Makoto, the main character, can be stabbed and killed by Sekai, Sekai herself may be killed by the poor Kotonoha, or Kotonoha may be Driven to Suicide while destroying Makoto and Sekai's relationship. All of this because the main character is an unrepenting cheating Casanova.
• StarCraft: Sarah Kerrigan. Hooo boy, Sarah Kerrigan. Making vengeance seems very easy when you have Horde of Alien Locusts at your disposal. Slightly subverted in that her infestation makes her not only bitch to Mengsk but to everyone else. Double Subversion when it is revealed that even after her de-infestation, she still holds a very deep grudge against Mengsk. To be fair, she did kill Mengsk's father, but that wasn't out of malice, she just did her job. And Mengsk did said he forgives her, too.
• In Super Robot Wars Judgment, the female protagonist turns into this halfway through when you encounter the vanguard-leader of The Fury, Al-Van Lunks... because, as it turns out, he's her ex-boyfriend, whom she believed to have died in a military research accident years back, along with several of her friends. The revelation that he's non-human quickly leads to the conclusion that the "accident" was sabotage, and while the whole "trying to wipe out humanity" thing has a lot to do with it, it's clear that the protagonist is motivated mainly by a desire for revenge over the man who betrayed and lied to her. What's worse than a Woman Scorned? A scorned woman with a Humongous Mecha...
• Undertale has an interesting take on the trope that doesn't involve cheating or any type of affair. Toriel and Asgore were Happily Married until a tragic event claimed the lives of their two children (one born by blood and the other a human adopted by them). Asgore flew into a fit of grief and rage and declared war on humanity since humans were the ones that killed their flesh and blood. To get revenge on the humans, Asgore planned to wait for seven humans to fall down to the underground where he and his people lived so he could take their souls, become extremely powerful, and destroy the barrier that separates the humans and the monsters. Toriel was extremely angry at Asgore for taking the coward's way out since his lack of taking the initiative would cause his people to suffer by waiting for a miracle, and Asgore needed just one human soul to pass through the barrier, where he could've gotten six more souls and gone through with the plan. It is also hinted that Toriel might have been angry with Asgore for wanting to harm humans since she didn't help him with his plan. In the tail end of the pacifist route, Toriel sees Asgore again and she's still not ready to speak to him, though the ending implies that the two of them might be working things out.
• Played for Laughs in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as one sidequest has Geralt and Triss rescue a nobleman magically trapped in a statue by his former lover, the Vain Sorceress Lytta Neyd, for being unfaithful. He laments the unfairness of it all, as she slept around even more than he did which The Casanova Geralt can personally attest to.
• The True Ends of Yanderella are a result of one girl not receiving the stuffed bunny. She feels rejected by Yatarou and kills the other girl before turning her psychotic rage against him, demanding that he reload the game and make the correct choice.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: Stella is shown to be extremely violent and loud when discovering that her husband Stolas has been cheating on her with Blitzo the imp. So bad, in fact, that she was willing to put out a hit on him.
• Gender-inverted in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device by Kitten. When Shadowsun left him, he became the chief advocate for murdering her entire species. He even offers to go on a one-man crusade against them.
• RWBY: When Salem's lover dies from a fatal sickness, she petitions the gods to bring him back from the dead, thereby setting off a chain of events that leads to a cycle of pain and suffering that has spanned thousands of years. Cursed by the gods for trying to defy death, she turns humanity against them and is further cursed. When the God of Light sends her lover, Ozma, back to the world of the living with a divine mission to redeem humanity in the eyes of the gods, he warns Ozma that Salem is no longer the woman he fell in love with. Ozma defies this warning to reunite with Salem, telling her only that he wishes to unite humanity in peace. Only when he learns that she wants to wipe out humanity and replace them with her own descendants does Ozma realise what she's become; he attempts to smuggle their four children to safety, but is caught in the act. Enraged by Ozma's betrayal, Salem attacks; the ensuing battle destroys everything and, while Salem and Ozma are immortal, their children do not survive. Ever since that night, Salem and Ozma have been locked in a Secret War, where his attempts to save humanity are constantly thwarted by her attempts to destroy it.

Webcomics

• Kill Six Billion Demons: In the story "Aesma and the Red-Eyed King", the crazy goddess Aesma falls for the Generic Doomsday Villain the Red-Eyed King. He disingenuously promises to marry her if she frees him and helps him become even more unstoppable. Once he's ready to go on his Omnicidal Maniac rampage with her help, he ignores her. Since he's now a One-Man Army against other gods, the only thing that can stop him is when Aesma finally understands he's been using her and, basically, hits him with bigger and bigger objects; a Colony Drop makes him falter, and when she's about to hit him with the entire universe, he surrenders.
• Ménage à 3: Wannabe Femme Fatale Sonya is infatuated with Zii after their brief fling, and eventually gets her back for a while — but then the unthinking Zii dumps her in favor of DiDi. So after a whole lot of tears, Sonya turns up on Zii's doorstep with a view to throwing Zii's cat Lita in Zii's face and quitting Zii's band. Unfortunately, resident Butt-Monkey Gary answers the door and gets hit by both Lita and Sonya's prepared speech instead, but the intent was clear. Sonya's next move is to go off and join the band led by Zii's long-time enemy Angel, and the pair of them then poach the third member of Zii's band, Yuki. It seems likely at first that the fury will continue, but with the end of the comic's run looming, Sonya instead finds a new girlfriend and goes off to Europe with her.
• Casey and Andy: Casey turns down a fury for a date causing her to do something awful to him in revenge. Satan comments that that's to much even for her causing Andy to quip that Hell hath no woman like a fury scorned.
• The Order of the Stick: The trope is lampshaded when the demonic Sabine confronts her boyfriend Nale in War and XPs — the strip title is "Hell Hath Exactly As Much Fury." However, that was for refusing to let her in on a human sacrifice rather than regular cheating, about which she does not give a damn. She is an incarnation of illicit sex, after all.
• Pixie Trix Comix: Zadie is so annoyed to discover that her boyfriend has cheated on her that not only does she dump him, but her feelings on the topic become a recurrent feature of her character. She engages in a Fake-Out Make-Out with the nerdy Aaron when her ex shows up in the same coffee shop, she fantasizes about learning wrestling skills so she can beat him up, and she looks very angry when she hears of another woman being cheated on.
• Sluggy Freelance: Riff attempts to cheat on his current girlfriend, Gwynn, with Zoe. The result is Gwynn delving into Black Magic and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. She eventually makes a Deal with the Devil with the god of destruction, allowing him to destroy the world in return for killing Riff first.

Web Videos

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: It is implied that Evil League of Evil member Fury Leika is a woman of this type.
• Harim's ex-boyfriend from IN-SEOUL 2 brags to his friends about how easily he tricked Harim into dating him just to get into her pants and prove to his friends how easy she is in a restaurant gathering. She learns about this, and just as he's talking trash about her, she shoves his friends aside, grabs a scoop, and beats him up with it after making it clear that she's the one who dumped him, not the opposite. Even the police sympathize with her after they find out the whole story.
  Harim: I told you I won't be patient anymore! [continues punching him in the face]
• In the Liam Kyle Sullivan video "Text Message Break Up", Kelly's boyfriend breaks up with her via aforementioned text message (Spelled "I am braking up with you"). This pisses her off so much that she heads to the club her boyfriend's at, with her vampire best friend Heather along with her, and angrily confronts him on such a dick move.
  Kelly: You couldn't do it in person! You had to text message breakup, you fuck up! Oh my God, I wanna throw up! You couldn't even spell "break" right! B-R-A-K-E that's for your car, dummy!

  She then proceeds to forward the text to everyone at the club, unanimously getting every man and woman there, alongside the nearby NSA agent listening in and comedienne Margaret Cho, to agree that he's the absolute fucking worst. After Kelly sings about her boyfriend stiffing her twelve hundred dollars, their bad sex, and how he likes playing with his asshole in the shower, her grandmother shows up and whacks him in the head with a frying pan.

Western Animation

• In All Hail King Julien, King Julien falls for a girl that's just his type and proposes to her. He immediately gets cold feet about it but doesn't get around to voicing this until the two are at the altar, turning a fun-loving party girl into one of his most dangerous enemies.
• Hayley Smith on American Dad! whenever she gets dumped goes into an Unstoppable Rage.
• The Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise:
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Mai is not happy when Zuko, not wanting to drag her into a life of treason, breaks up with her to go join the Avatar. She does end up saving his life and getting thrown in prison for betraying Azula and they're later reunited.
    • Katara's a mild version. After Jet betrays her, when she sees him next she's the last to trust him. Her objections are reasonable, and she does get better when he proves that he's a good guy now, but when Katara is the one being the most militant...
    • Azula decides that a great bonding exercise for the team after the events of "The Beach" would be to burn down her almost boyfriend's beach house.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • It's mentioned that Chief Lin Beifong once tried to have Pema arrested after winning over her old boyfriend Tenzin. Later, after Mako and Korra break up, the later earthbending his desk into the ceiling, Lin implies that she trashed Air Temple Island after Tenzin broke up with her.
    • Bolin leaves the manipulative Eska at the altar, so she tries to chase him across the sea. He is only able to escape her because Varrick's ship has extra speed, added so he could escape a similar situation. Oddly enough they make up and she breaks up the relationship later on.
• This trope is very common in the DC Animated Universe (which is unsurprising considering the source material).
  • The Justice League Unlimited episode "Alive!" and its accompanying DVD commentary imply that Tala made sure that Darkseid was revived instead of Braniac, as one final "screw you" to Lex.
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • Harley Quinn beats up The Joker in the episode "Joker's Millions" after disguising herself as a policewoman. The basis behind the attack was he abandoned her, leaving her to get caught instead, then promptly replaced her when he found out he got a fortune left to him. Harley also attacks the Joker in "Trial" after finding out that he'd finked on her in hopes of getting a better deal for himself.
    • After Batman saves Catwoman's life, she kisses him, but he pushes her away. She says he can't deny there's something between them, which he admits there is — the law. She reacts with composure and maturity... As in she throws him off a building.
  • Superman: The Animated Series: Superman gets on the wrong end of a particularly pissed-off warrior queen named Maxima.
  • Batman Beyond:
    • One example is from "Terry's Friend Dates a Robot": Cynthia, the robot girlfriend in question, was programmed to be 100% devoted to Howard, meaning she's so possessive that she'll attempt to murder anyone who gets between her and Howard. She's so strong and fast that not even Batman is able to take her down, and he was ripping through other synthoids with little effort. The only reason she's able to be stopped is that Howard drops the Let's Just Be Friends line, causing her to get so angry that she literally explodes.
    • A male example in the episode "April Moon": Dr. Corso provides weaponized cyborg upgrades to a criminal gang who are holding his wife hostage. It turned out that she's in on it and is cheating on him with the gang leader. In the final scene, the gang leader (who doesn't know that the doctor found out the truth) comes in for more surgery...
• In the Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: S.N.O.W.I.N.G.", fourth grade president Jimmy forces his classmates to return to school on a snow day for an assembly where he will crown his queen. Jimmy's devoted secretary Anna fully believes that she will be that queen, due in no small part to how flirty he is to her. When she discovers that he is actually in love with Lizzie (Numbuh 1's girlfriend), Anna is heartbroken and betrays Jimmy by giving crucial assistance to the Kids Next Door so they can defeat him.
• The Martian Queen in the Duck Dodgers episode "The Queen Is Wild", who seeks revenge on Dodgers for rejecting her in "To Love A Duck". Dodgers, being Dodgers, has completely forgotten the entire incident.
  Martian Queen: But now, I will have my richly deserved revenge. I will humiliate Duck Dodgers, as he humiliated me. And when the wretch begs for mercy, he will receive naught but the heel of my foot, and my laugh of bitter contempt.
• El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera:
  • Black Cuervo was Manny's Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, with him once spending an episode fake-dating her so he could relay inside information on her family's supervillain activities to his dad. When she finds out, she demands to know why she should forgive him, to which he replies that he'll let her win this battle. Being who she is, Cuervo gets outraged enough to give him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • Cuervo's entire family was made up of Spicy Latinas seeking revenge on the Riveras for dumping them. The matriarch Lady Gobbler was an especially severe case as Puma Loco ditched her at the altar.
  • The Big Bad Sartana of the Dead was also ditched by Puma Loco at the altar, triggering her Start of Darkness.
• In The Fairly OddParents!, Timmy finally gets to go out with Trixie by wishing they were the only two people on Earth. Unfortunately, she soon begins to go crazy and wants him to adore her as much as hundreds of boys. Creeped out, Timmy decides to break off their relationship (by chewing off his arm). Unfortunately, she goes even crazier and tries to kill him before Cosmo and Wanda unwish everything.
• Futurama:
  • In the episode "Mother's Day", Mom leads a robot rebellion which her sons put down to the remaining ill effects of her failed relationship with Professor Farnsworth.
    Walt: Hell hath no fury like the vast robot armies of a woman scorned!
  • In Bender's Big Score, the Planet Express crew is being attacked by yeti... until Leela runs at them shouting, "Don't mess with me! I just got dumped!" and the yeti run away in terror.
• Harley Quinn (2019): At first, she puts up with a LOT of physical and emotional abuse from the Joker, even forgiving him for leaving her to rot in Arkham for a year. Then, Ivy and Riddler trick the Joker into explicitly revealing that he never really cared about Harley at all, and Harley takes this about as well as any insane person would.
• Lila becomes this in Helga's dream in the Hey Arnold! episode "Married". She keeps trying to win Arnold back despite Arnold being married to Helga, going as far as becoming a terrorist and kidnapping Arnold.
• In an episode of Jumanji: The Animated Series, Judy thinks that a boy she has a crush on is going to ask her to the upcoming dance, only for him to ask her to do his homework, since getting a low grade will result in him getting grounded and not being able to ask another girl he likes to the dance, and casually mention that he wouldn't ask Judy to the dance because she's "a brain." After an adventure with Alan in the titular board game, she hands the boy his homework assignment right before class, and when their teacher hands them back their assignment, she tells Judy that she did another great job on her homework, while her former crush gets a failing grade, and misses his chance to go out with the girl he likes.
• When the controls for the Moodulators in the Kim Possible episode "Emotion Sickness" are destroyed, they leave Kim and Shego in an unstoppable angry state, just moments after Ron and Drakken had "abandoned" them (i.e. Ron gave Kim a Let's Just Be Friends talk and Drakken left Shego in the middle of a Moodulator-induced crying jag). This leads to Kim and Shego taking out their rage on Ron and Drakken, respectively... much to their alarm considering how utterly outclassed they are in fighting ability.
• Martin Mystery: In the episode "Shriek from Beyond", Diana accuses Rolf of being the real monster instead of the siren who's been terrorizing the town after hearing the story between the two: When he was younger, Rolf fell in love with the siren, but discarded her after growing bored. When he heard her vow for vengeance, Rolf trapped her in a block of ice to avoid her wrath. After spending 50 years imprisoned, she escaped and began attacking the town looking for her former love.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The episode Make New Friends but Keep Discord has a gender-flipped example. Discord becomes outraged when Fluttershy opts not to take him to the Grand Galloping Gala in favor her new friend Tree Hugger. He retaliates by bringing the Smooze, a Blob Monster that grows when it eats shiny objects, to the party. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Parodied in the season 1 finale The Best Night Ever where Rarity tries to pursue the affections of Celestia's nephew Prince Blueblood. The problem? He's a Royal Brat who treats her like a servent rather than a lady throughout the episode. Rarity tries to take in stride at first, but when Blueblood uses her as a Human Shield from a falling cake, he sees that Tartarus has no fury like a Rarity mistreated.
• Briefly alluded to as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in The Owl House episode "Through the Looking Glass Ruins" when Luz is doing some research at the library, as one of the autocomplete suggestions in the crystal ball she's using is "hexes for exes".
• Parodied in the Peanuts Halloween Special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, after Sally flips out at Linus for convincing her that the Great Pumpkin exists:
  Linus: You've heard about fury in a woman scorned, haven't you?
  Charlie Brown: Yes, I guess I have.
  Linus: Well, that's nothing compared to the fury of a woman who has been cheated out of tricks-or-treats.
• Mordecai and Rigby from Regular Show learn the hard way that dumping Starla is a really bad idea. A really, really bad idea.
• Manjula, Apu's wife, from The Simpsons. When she discovers that Apu once had an affair with the lady who refills the Squishees, she kicks him out of the house. With some help from the Simpson family, Manjula eventually agrees to give Apu another chance after he completes an often-vengeful list of bizarre grueling tasks fashioned by her, such as performing My Fair Lady with the octuplets. It receives a nod in a later episode as they're seen leaving a marriage counselor and Manjula seems to have mostly forgiven him... by elbowing him hard in the gut instead of in the face.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Fifi LaFume in How I Spent My Vacation. After Johnny Pew gives the autograph that was meant for Fifi to Bimbette, Johnny suffers the wrath of one very, very angry Fifi.
• A major plot thread in the latter half of Total Drama: World Tour focuses on Courtney's vendetta against her boyfriend Duncan and friend Gwen after finding out that the two kissed.
• Totally Spies!: In, “Evil Bouquets Are So Passé”, the villain of the week was super-botanist Viola Vanderfleet, who genetically engineered Man Eating Plants who shot poison specifically to paralyze all the guys who dumped her. Her bitterness over being scorned is so deep, she actually wants to do the same to every single man on the planet as some twisted vengeance against the opposite sex.
• In World of Winx, we have the Queen of the World of Dreams, who was once a fairy named Tinkerbell. Yes, that Tinkerbell. After Peter Pan left her, she began to curse the land, turning it into a nightmarish place.

Real Life

• This trope set in motion a three-year criminal case in the UK involving politician Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce. The two had been happily married for 26 years, and then, in 2010, it came out that Huhne had been having an affair with his aide Carina Trimingham.
  • So Pryce revealed to the papers that someone had taken speeding points for Huhne back in 2003 (so he wouldn't get a driving ban), which amounts to obstruction of justice in Britain. So, when the police checked their records to work out who had taken the rap for Huhne, they discovered that person was none other than Pryce herself. As a result, in 2012, Huhne and Pryce were both charged (with Huhne resigning his Cabinet position) after an investigation. In February 2013, Huhne plead guilty to the offence - whilst Pryce didn't, claiming the defence of marital coercion ^note (In other words, by virtue of being the wife in their relationship, she could claim that her husband forced her into committing criminal acts. Note that UK courts are traditionally quite lenient towards most women in this situation, but it's usually only accepted as a mitigating factor for someone who's pleaded guilty, not as a defence in and of itself. The marital coercion defence was abolished shortly after the trial for this exact reason.). The judge didn't buy it and found her guilty as well. Both were sentenced to 8 months in prison. The judge of the case actually (almost explicitly) invoked this trope.
  • Pryce wasn't the only scorned woman in this whole mess. Her friend Constance Briscoe, a high-profile lawyer and occasional judge, had seen her two prior relationships break up because her partners had cheated on her, and so she decided to help Pryce out, figuring that if she couldn't directly get revenge on her former partners, she could help Pryce get revenge on Huhne, which she did by helping her put the story together and then acting as a go-between with the press. While Briscoe hadn't broken any laws by doing this, it was nonetheless highly ethically suspect behaviour that would have hurt her legal career, and so she later denied having played any part in getting the story out. It naturally didn't take long for the police to see through the holes in her story, and so she also got charged with obstruction of justice, ending up with a prison sentence as long as Huhne and Pryce's sentences combined.
• Chyna was so bitter over what happened at the end of her time in the WWE, and especially over what happened between her, Stephanie McMahon, and Triple H, that she based an entire porno on it fifteen years later, along with making numerous threats to them in bizarre YouTube videos.
• Rapper Left Eye from 90's girl group TLC infamously burned down the mansion of her boyfriend, football player Andre Rison, in 1994 when she thought he was cheating on her. And because there's No Such Thing as Bad Publicity, the media firestorm that followed led to record sales of TLC's 1995 album, CrazySexyCool. According to TLC's Behind the Music episode, she hadn't intended to burn down the whole house, just the pairs of women's shoes she found that weren't in her size. She burned them in the bathtub, but the tub melted (she'd done something previously with teddy bears, which scorched the original marble tub and required it to be replaced with fiberglass), and it was hot enough to ignite the wooden beams underneath, and everything went to hell from there. Surprisingly, she and Rison kept an on-and-off relationship until her death in 2002.
• Hiroshi Tanahashi's rising wrestling career was almost put to an end when his girlfriend stabbed him with a knife after he ended his relationship with her, landing him in the hospital. However, sympathy from the fangirls breathed new life into him after he recovered and blew him to the top of the pro wrestling universe.

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