Misplaced Retribution in Video Games.
- In Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica, Luca for the longest time holds Lady Cloche responsible for the death of her younger sister. Cloche could not realistically have been responsible for that, considering she was only six or seven years old at the time and even though she's the head of state now, she has always been a puppet ruler who never made any real decisions. And even more so because Lady Cloche IS Luca's sister.
- In the Omega Ending for the Japanese version of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, Simon Orestes Cohen reveals that the Player Character, Nemo, is an Artificial Intelligence that he created to kill a Brain Upload of Abyssal Dision, because he blamed him for the death of Yoko Martha Inoue. However, it was actually General Resource who was responsible for Yoko’s death, as she was involved in the Night Raven Project that was unwittingly revealed by the test pilot, Rena Hiorse, in an interview at the age of nine.
- In Baldur's Gate, the Ironhand Gnomes were a clan of deep gnomes who allied with the Big Bad Sarevok, and were exiled from the titular city. A century later in Baldur's Gate III, their leader Wulbren mistakenly believes their rivals the Gondians were the ones who sided with Sarevok, and wants them exterminated as he's Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence.
- Chest: Prime Minister Andre threatens to ban all toilets in the kingdom if Zong doesn't defeat the Demon Lord, which would seriously inconvenience everyone and not just the hero.
- Used as part of the Final Boss battle in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex: during each phase after the Elementals attack Crash, Crunch becomes exhausted long enough for Crash to be able to shoot him with the Wumpa Bazooka. Crunch responds by punching Cortex into the arena, allowing Crash to attack him and chip off his health meter.
- Seen in the eighth installment of the Dark Parables, where the imprisoned sea goddess unleashes a Bolt of Divine Retribution against those responsible for her confinement. However, she also punishes the five completely innocent daughters of the king who captured her, turning them into mermaids.
- Dragon Age:
- In the first game, the creator of the werewolf curse did it to punish humanity because humans killed his children... but as the Lady of the Forest points out, not only are the humans he's targeting completely innocent of this particular crime (as the true killers were long dead by this point), the werewolves are also endangering a tribe of Dalish elves, who were not only as innocent as the human victims, but were probably also the victims of fantasy hate crimes at the top of being casualties to the curse itself.Lady of the Forest: The crimes against Zathrien's children were grave, but they were committed centuries ago by those who are long dead.
- The finale of Dragon Age II is kicked off this way. One of the player's mage companions commits a terrorist attack by blowing up the local chantry. In response, Knight-Commander Meredith immediately invokes the Rite of Annulment against the city's Circle of Magi. The problem with that logic is that the mage responsible for attack is an apostate who originates from a different Circle in a different country, which Meredith knows. Multiple people point out how insane Meredith's response was, but she wasn't deterred despite her actions being somewhat akin to blaming Liechtenstein for starting World War 2 on the grounds that they spoke German. When news of this reaches other circles, the obvious unfairness of the decision made several Circles revolt on the spot. Then it is revealed that there are cases of illegal enactment of the Rigit and the Chantry covers it up, such as the Annulment of Dairsmuid. The Circles which don't revolt immediately experience a chain reaction of mage protests and more restrictions from the templars until things reach a breaking point and descend into total war. And as revealed to the novels, the war finally started because the Seekers of the Truth has the cure for Tranquility and keeps it a secret from the Chantry and the mages, which becomes a final straw for the collapse of the Chantry's power in Thedas with both templars seceding from the Chantry's yoke and the mages finally have enough. All exactly as Anders planned to expose the Chantry's hypocrisy and corruption out open that Meredith falls in, hook, line, and sinker. The fallout from this one act of stupid revenge gives the Player Character one major headache to deal with in the next game, as they have to mediate between mages and templars.
- Sebastian lampshades this ("Why are we debating the Rite of Annulment when the person who did this is standing right here?"), but then threatens to go back to Starkhaven, build an army, and raze Kirkwall to the ground if Anders is spared, which makes absolutely no sense as both Hawke and Anders would be either dead or long gone in the time it would take for him to seize control of Starkhaven, raise an army, and march it to Kirkwall.
- In Inquisition if you made certain choices, Sebastian actually does raise an army to invade Kirkwall. It causes a minor conflict which you need to settle on the War Table. Though if you don't spare Anders, he'll instead ask for help getting humanitarian aid to Kirkwall.
- Hilariously enough, depending on your Relationship Values, if you follow a specific series of steps and take Meredith's side, Hawke can end up helping to kill just about every mage in Kirkwall except for Anders, which really says a lot about how flimsy her justification is.
- In the first game, the creator of the werewolf curse did it to punish humanity because humans killed his children... but as the Lady of the Forest points out, not only are the humans he's targeting completely innocent of this particular crime (as the true killers were long dead by this point), the werewolves are also endangering a tribe of Dalish elves, who were not only as innocent as the human victims, but were probably also the victims of fantasy hate crimes at the top of being casualties to the curse itself.
- Fate/Grand Order: Boudica really hates the Romans and Nero in particular for invading her land, killing her people, and raping her daughters, really wanting to kill Nero. It turns out that Nero's generals committed those attrocities without her knowledge, and when Nero found out, she was horrified and had the generals punished.
- Hope of Final Fantasy XIII decides early on to kill Snow for the role he played in the death of his mother. Said role was attempting to stop the government from exiling a large group of people (including Hope and his mother) for tenuous-at-best reasons, his mother volunteering to help, and soldiers killing her even as Snow tried (but failed) to rescue her. Hope himself knows that he's blaming the wrong person. He just needs SOMEONE to blame as a way of motivating himself to survive the situation he's currently stuck in.
- Gunfighter: The Legend of Jesse James: In the sequel, Revenge of Jesse James, the main villain is Bob Younger, brother of Jesse's friend Cole Younger from the first game, who blames Jesse over Cole's death and repeatedly tries to kill Jesse, despite the fact that Jesse had NOTHING to do with Cole's death. For the full story: Cole was abducted by the villain Jack Carson's henchmen, and Jesse's attempt to rescue Cole didn't quite work out because despite saving Cole from being hung via Shoot the Rope, Cole still gets killed by Carson's lieutenant, Grizwald. Jesse later kills Grizwald, and later all of Carson's mooks, including Carson himself, and by the time Bob gets into the picture, considering everyone involved in Cole's demise are dead at this point, the only person he can pin the blame on is Jesse.
- Happens near the end of Hotline Miami: Wanting to avenge his girlfriend's death and kill the people who put out the hit, Jacket traces the phone calls to a Russian nightclub based on police evidence. While killing everyone there, he discovers the Russian mafia boss's hideout, leading to Jacket fighting and killing his two panthers, the boss's Bodyguard Babe and finally the big man himself (who offs himself before Jacket can finish the job). Not feeling completely satisfied, Jacket's revenge is finally finished when he shoots the boss's old wheelchair-bound Retired Monster father in the head. Only problem? The evidence at the police station was a Red Herring planted by the real perpetrators, 50 Blessings.
- Kirby: Triple Deluxe: At the end of Dededetour, Dark Meta Knight from Kirby & the Amazing Mirror emerges from the Dimension Mirror and attacks King Dedede on sight once released, despite Dedede being absent from that game and having no connection to his and Dark Mind's defeats. However, Dark Meta Knight was trapped in the mirror for a long time after the events of Amazing Mirror, fueling up with raw anger. As such, when Dedede finally encounters him, he had stewed enough anger inside of him to take his rage out on the king.
- In Mother 3, Fassad, in his "new" form attacks Lucas and his friends when they try to pull one of the seven needles, saying that they pushed him off Thunder Tower, even though his fall was actually caused by his own bad habit of leaving banana peels everywhere. The music that plays during the battle is even called Misplaced Retribution/Unfounded Revenge.
- In Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, after Abe pulls a lever, water will pour on a mudokon and he'll hit the mudokon next to him, then that mudokon will hit back and both start a fight until one of them dies. Abe can also invoke this trope by hitting a mudokon next to another one and then running away.
- Resident Evil 6: Derek Simmons transforms his girlfriend Carla Radames into a duplicate of Ada Wong, whom he is obsessed with to an absolutely disturbing degree. Carla decides to punish Simmons for this by causing yet another viral outbreak to throw the world into chaos and frame the real Ada for her crimes. Ada even says that if Carla had only gone after Simmons and left innocent people out of it, she would have helped her.
- Rise of the Third Power: In her final encounter, Selene sics her crew on the town and allows them to harass the townsfolk just to hunt down Rowan, who destroyed her ships.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- In Sonic Adventure 2, Professor Gerald, understandably grieving for the death of his granddaughter, went insane and blamed all of humanity for her demise and used his final days alive to commit a mass genocide rather than, you know, rightfully blame G.U.N. who stupidly thought it was a good idea to shoot a twelve year old girl in the first place. And of course, G.U.N. over-reacted because Gerald was committing high treason by working with an alien conqueror to create a super-soldier. Shadow nearly followed through with Gerald's plan too, at least until Amy set him on the right track.
- In Shadow the Hedgehog, the reason the G.U.N. Commander hates Shadow so much is because he was Maria's friend on the Space Colony ARK, and G.U.N. considered Professor Gerald's creation of him too dangerous, causing G.U.N. to shut down the ARK, arrest Gerald, and kill Maria and the scientists. He blames Shadow for Maria's death just for being created rather than blaming Gerald for creating him, or G.U.N. for actually shooting Maria.
- In Tales of Symphonia, the motivation of the Big Bad, Mithos Yggdrasil, turns out to be this trope. He was discriminated against as a half-elf. But instead of seeking retribution only on the humans who actually discriminated against him, he set a plan in motion that would make the entire human race suffer for a thousand years. This included treating humans as cattle, implementing a "Chosen" system that resulted in misery for those chosen, causing two worlds to have to share mana so one is always suffering, making people suffer to power up Exspheres, etc. This is to say nothing of how his army of Desians, all half-elves of course, are a massive driving reason in why humans and now even elves utterly despise half-elves even to this day. As Lloyd puts it, Mithos took his own pain and forced it on everybody else.
- A heroic example occurs in Tales of the Abyss. After living under house arrest as long as he can remember and being forced to participate in a series of life-threatening diplomatic activities, Luke is told by his master Van that he can win the freedom he desires by saving the people of an endangered mining town. When he arrives, Van forces Luke to use his power to destroy the town instead. The rest of the party immediately start treating Luke like he's at fault for everything and even abandon him, despite the fact that they know he was being deceived, gave Luke no reason to trust any of them over the master he had known for years, and that several of them were intentionally withholding information from him that could have prevented everything had they chosen to share it.
- In Tales of Legendia, when soldiers from Gadoria attempt to interfere with the Ferines' Rite of Accession, Mauritz decides to evoke a Traumatic Superpower Awakening on Shirley to awaken her powers as the Merines by letting Fenimore get killed by the soldiers. When Senel and the group arrive and realize what has happened, Walter begins to blame Senel for her death, despite knowing how he was stopped by Mauritz mid-attempt of disposing of the soldiers. This is due to his petty jealousy against Senel for being so close to Shirley.
- In Until Dawn:
- Victor Milgram (aka The Psycho) wants to kill the Washingtons (Hannah, Beth and Josh) due to their parents causing him to lose his job as a janitor. Reasonable, if disproportionate. It just so happens that he'll also kill their 7 friends as well out of petty spite. Subverted, as he's actually one of the Washington children; more specifically, Josh - see below for details about how he falls into this trope.
- Josh's plan targeted Sam and Chris (and a lesser degree, Ashley) as the brunt of the pranks, all three who were not as responsible compared to the others in the mean-spirited prank that lead to Hannah's death. Sam tried to stop it, Chris was passed out drunk and not involved at all, and while Ashley was part of the prank, but for the most part just an observer. However, it is possible as Sam and Chris were Josh's closest friends, Josh either felt most betrayed by them or he was projecting his own self-loathing and blame onto them that he wasn't able to help his sisters.
- Considering the native belief that the mountain is protected by animal spirits, the consequences of harming nature can come off as this. Chris shooting a squirrel? Sam is the one who gets attacked by a bird, preventing her from escaping the Psycho later, despite her berating Chris for the act. Throw a snowball at a bird? Jessica and Mike nearly get impaled by an icicle, even though Jessica was sincerely sorry and Mike had nothing to do with it. If the player chooses to harm nature in every way (including the above situations), it's poor Matt who will have to deal with an aggressive deer despite not being involved in any of the earlier situations.
