Paying evil unto evil in Fan Works.
Crossover
- All For Luz: With All For One's encouragement, Luz avenges her murdered teammates' deaths, including her First Friend Julia Wittebane, by brutally slaughtering their killers in her Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Afterwards, she's quite troubled by her lack of remorse for killing twenty people her own age.Shigaraki: Yes! Noceda, feed your anger! Feed your rage! Allow it to overcome you! Allow your emotions to take center stage! Find those who killed your friends, and do unto them that which they did to you!
- Assassin Among Heroes: The main character, Ritsu Ogawa, already believed that Pro-Heroes should be more willing to use lethal force against criminals, rather than sticking strictly to a Thou Shalt Not Kill policy. The First Hassan simply encouraged him, and gave him the abilities, the knowledge, and the training to act on it as the vigilante Villain Killer Shinigami.
- The Butcher Bird (One Piece & Tokyo Ghoul): Yoshimura Kaneki has no illusions about his monstrous nature, being a ghoul, but he sees himself as following this philosophy.
- Child of the Storm has Magneto, Loki, and Doctor Strange as the characters who are most willing to cross the line (Loki casually blinding Sabretooth, Magneto's creatively Cruel Mercy to the Winter Guard, and Doctor Strange's vengeance on Sinister), though many of the other adult characters - and even some of the younger ones - have dabbled in it. Wanda ends up melting Sinister - or one of his bodies, at least - alive when she catches up to him, and Asshole Victim or not, that's no small matter. However, it's portrayed as Dirty Business even when it's done for good reasons: in Loki and Magneto's cases, it's a demonstration that they're Reformed, but Not Tamed, in Doctor Strange's it's a demonstration that his air of harmless mischief is a mask for someone incredibly frightening, and in Wanda's, it underlines the recurring point that she's no different from her father, no matter what she might like to think. It's also portrayed as extremely disturbing/a sign of imminent mental breakdown when one of the younger characters touches on it.
- The Dimensional War, especially the second story, has the Resistance commit some brutal kills, and they even invade the home of the villains and kill all the high-ranking residents. To give you an idea, the fact that Lilith had a giant sword shoved into her mouth and the Cyberdemon, who killed many former Stormtroopers and crippled Rick, had his horn ripped off by a very pissed Finn and was stabbed in the eye with it were not the prime examples.
- Hearts Aflutter: What Ayano did to the Trio (killing their accomplices, torturing Maddie into an Empty Shell to kill Emma in front of Sophia) was certainly horrible, but considering how maliciously they abused her Love Interest Taylor, it's not like it wasn't unwarranted.
- My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator: The Slayer makes sure that all villains pay for their crimes in blood. What happened to the Steel Sabers shows what he intends to do to all villains.
- Zig-zagged in The Night Unfurls.
- The very premise of the story is the Good Hunter dishing out gory deaths, torture, and the occasional Mind Rape unto the Black Dogs, an Army of Thieves and Whores who Rape, Pillage, and Burn. There are times where he punishes Black Dog members legitimately or in a "less cruel" manner (e.g. executing traitors via hanging and burning their corpses afterward in Chapter 19 of the original), but those are exceptions.
- As a result of Eostia's enslavement of the dark elves, Olga believed that Humans Are the Real Monsters and declared war against the country. The war went on for centuries, and the situation has not improved since then.
- Kyril's methodology becomes a point of discussion in the Rebel Scum Arc and onwards, where the Hunter and his men crack down a rebellion by force (in other words, this trope Played Straight). Claudia is a vocal opponent of this trope, but the fact that Kyril and his associates have been delivering results with callous efficiency during the war means she is practically a minor obstacle. Other characters (e.g. Celestine, Lily) do not fully endorse it, yet, for the exact same reason, have to bear with it.
- In Steven Universe: and the Hunters of Arcadia, Jamie explains to Jasper that Gunmar and the Janus Order’s hold on him is under a Might Makes Right principle and he is merely “[offering] them the same courtesy” when he admits to finding a way to keep Gunmar out of power.
- A Triangle in the Stars (Gravity Falls & Steven Universe): Bill does this to Lars in Chapter Three after one too many insults. Mainly by having the little cloud above his head shock his ear and then rain on the young man. Steven doesn't take it well, unlike usual witness examples to Asshole Victim and this trope, which surprises and confuses the demon.
- Shadow of the Dragon: In chapter 18, when Satome kidnaps Tomoyo and tries to rape her, Sakura shows up just in time, kicks him through a wall, and allows the Mirror card to castrate him with glass shards. While Sakura is left guilt-ridden over her part in it, considering he had tried to rape both Tomoyo and Sakura previously, and is confirmed to have raped seven different girls in the next chapter, you won't feel bad for him: Meiling states outright that even if it wasn't the right thing to do, Satome certainly deserved it.
- Turning Point: While plenty of vampires like hunting and/or making chattle of innocent people, Dracula has made it his modus-operandi to hunt people who have it coming, Vampire Hunters being the easiest to find. While Lisa would prefer he didn't kill at all, she much prefers that he keeps his rage towards self-defense.
- At one point in the manga's Tartaros Arc, Kyouka captures Erza and subjects her to Cold-Blooded Torture in Chapters 365-366 and 368. Erza breaks out in Chapter 371 and at the start of Chapter 372, has a perfect opportunity to torture Kyouka back, but didn't. In a fanfiction that
rewrites Chapter 372, she does. Sometimes with worse methods.- A fanfiction rewriting Chapter 321 has Erza giving Minerva the same treatment. Her methods of punishing Minerva for brutalizing Lucy, stabbing Kagura, and torturing Milliana involve dismembering Minerva, gouging her eyes out, and eating her fingers! She even violated Minerva with a sword!
- A fanfiction rewriting Chapter
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon):
- Whereas Godzilla is a "Protector" Titan and Ghidorah is a "Destroyer", the Two Beings, One Body Monster X is uniquely classified as an "Executioner": though they're mostly benevolent towards humans and firmly on the heroes' side, they're utterly brutal, merciless, even outright sadistic towards their enemies when they're not held back.
- It's also revealed that in Ghidorah's backstory, the three-headed monster was operating on this mentality when it first committed planetary genocide, before Slowly Slipping Into Evil over billions of years turned it into the gleefully-malicious Omnicidal Maniac we know it as.
- In Invader Zim: The Series, most of the villains end up switching sides or simply being defeated. However, the Irken Zoburg - a Mad Scientist with a long, long list of Kick the Dog moments - is dealt a Fate Worse than Death: he's crucified to a rocket and launched into orbit, where his pressurized armor will ensure he stays alive long enough to starve to death. This would be considered a Moral Event Horizon for the protagonist responsible, except that Zoburg's last act prior to this was to torture said protagonist's little brother to death (purely For the Evulz), so he's excused for taking his revenge.
- The Ultimate Evil:
- When Valerie discovers Shendu has savagely beaten Hak Foo to a broken pulp in retribution for the latter previously going against orders and beating Valerie to near-death, Valerie can't find it in herself to feel anything other than satisfaction at the horrible state Hak Foo has been left in, much as she's appalled with herself for that.
- When Daolon Wong shoots Valerie to have revenge on Shendu, the latter brutally kills Wong in utter fury.
- Door-stopper rewrite fic Of Sheep and Battle Chicken's Sara Ying Shepard, full stop. We are introduced to her using black-nano bio-warfare weapons against slavers. Her reaction to The Illusive Man suggesting co-operation with Aria to extract Archangel from Omega is "What part of sic semper sceleratus [Thus ever to criminals] sounds fucking optional to you, Harper?"
- Dad Villain AU: Hawkmoth won, and made his Wish to "save Emelie" from the consequences of her own actions in the pettiest way possible, redirecting the magical backlash from her using the broken Peacock Pin onto Ladybug and her loved ones. After learning about this from Nooroo, Tom decides to use the Butterfly Brooch to become Viceroy with the intent of tracking the former supervillain down and making him pay for his crimes.
- Two Letters: After spending two years as Ladybug, Marinette takes this attitude towards the people of Paris, seeing them as a bunch of entitled and Ungrateful Bastards who took her completely for granted. She deliberately selected a Sketchy Successor to become "the hero Paris wanted and deserved", and repeatedly makes clear that she's Stopped Caring about helping others.
- Mastermind: Rise of Anarchy sees the League of Villains paying a visit to Aldera Middle School, which Izuku (aka Mastermind) attended, and destroying it, killing all the staff.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum: Sgt. Viktor Kraber is notorious for inflicting a Cruel and Unusual Death on his targets, gleefully torturing them and other sadistic acts. His targets however, are PER operatives and Ponies, who routinely commit terrorism by using the potion to transform their targets into Newfoals. In particular, his own children were the victim of such a terrorist attack. Nobody seems to be too upset about this.
- Feral World: Before escaping the city, Spike decides to give his power suit a few "test runs" by blowing up both of Surf & Turf's respective cars, destroying Flintheart's house with a falling tree, savagely beating Rumble to a pulp and leaving him in a trash can, did the same to Hoops, Dumbbell, and Score and even broke their wings for good measure. Was all that unnecessarily petty and cruel? Probably, but they all had it coming. Surf and Turf were a pair of pampered Alpha Bitches who look down on Spike, Flintheart was a racially biased Stern Teacher (bordering on Sadist Teacher) who lets the other students gang up on Spike but punishes him when he tries to defend himself, Rumble was a Jerkass who constantly badmouthed Spike and humanity as a whole and never gets punished for it, and Hoops, Dumbbell, and Score are barbaric bullies who treat Spike as their personal punching bag on a regular basis. So, it's hard to feel sorry for any of them. Even Rainbow Dash commented (At least regarding the bully trio and Flintheart) that they kinda deserved it.
- The Immortal Game: Twilight Sparkle's brutal execution of General Esteem borders on the Moral Event Horizon, but considering that the latter willingly sold out the entire world to Titan, is the one who turned Twilight into Nihilus, and just confessed to killing and eating Spikenote , it was probably still better than he deserved.
- The Nameless Passenger from the Pony POV Series is a Deconstruction of the this trope. It is out for Revenge on Discord and wants to make him pay for everything he's done and believes crimes can't be forgiven. This leads it to extend this belief to his minions, the majority of which are brainwashed or otherwise unwilling, and try to convince Twilight to kill them. It turns out she's actually Nightmare Paradox, Twilight's potential future Superpowered Evil Side and the true Big Bad of Dark World. She'd managed to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and decided before the Cosmic Retcon took full effect to go Nightmare and make Discord pay for all the suffering he'd caused her and her friends while torturing them for a thousand years by crucifying him with flaming chains then burning him to death from the inside out with Hellfire that burns hotter the more unrepentant sins the victim has (considering this was Discord in the first cycle, when he was at the height of his Ax-Crazy sadism, that's a lot). Unfortunately, by the time she'd killed him, she decided he hadn't suffered enough and to trap him in a "Groundhog Day" Loop Ironic Hell to punish him for all eternity, not caring how many innocents suffer and are erased from existence in the process (the entire population of Dark World several billion times over).
- In the fanfic ARSENAL, the three troubleshooters hired by Gendo to retake control of NERV are punished for the horrific actions they performed (the least of which being murdering dozens of civilians evacuating Tokyo-3 on the eve of an Angel attack) in horrifying ways. Quite a few fans were disquieted by their punishments, considering them too brutal.
- Nobody Dies has Rei executing very cruel tricks on people who mess with her friends. Other than her love of blackmail, her most cruel thing was to film Kyoko Zeppelin getting it on with her ex-husband in a storage closet during the school dance then put the footage on Youtube. And Yui forbid taking it down. Why? The bitch ruined her daughter's happiest moment in life out of sadism. Rei had to be specifically ordered to leave Kyoko alone when it looked like as if she was regularly beating Asuka (even though no one liked this order one bit, Misato had to be physically restrained from issuing a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown). It helps that everyone is scared shitless of Rei and she knows it very well.Rei: Asuka is my friend and if you touch her... (psychotic grin) I touch you. 'Kay?
- A New Chance Series: Latios has no pity for Pokemon poachers and seeks to brutally punish them. However, this only scares the hell out of everybody, especially Ash, who has no such vengeful tendencies. Pikachu eventually tells him off when his desire for vengeance makes him forget how Ash would feel. Eventually, Latios disobeys Ash and murders a Pokemon poacher behind his back. Officer Jenny, horrified by all this, decides Latios is too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely, and had one of Latios' friends not erased her memory, he would have been arrested.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines features Belladonna Tyrian, a girl whose main rule in life seems to be this. Case in point, she sets up an elaborate plan to kill the father of one of his girlfriends for having disowned her. She later encounters Ash, who questions this attitude, and she in turn asks him if he has ever felt anger over someone he cares about being hurt and a desire to punish that person. Ash then recalls the time he fought Paul and almost flew into a full-blown rage because he blasted Primeape into the sky possibly with fatal results, and he realizes they're not that different.
- Old West: After Benjamin Hares viciously beats Grace, Rattlesnake Jake repays him for this by killing him in a deliciously brutal manner.
- Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness:
- In Act II, Dark's murder of Miyabi Fujisaki is ridiculously over the top and brutal, but considering the fact that Miyabi enslaved Mizore's hometown, extorted Mizore for sex in exchange for sparing her mother's life before ordering Tsurara's execution anyway, and openly gloated about raping Mizore to Tsukune and co.'s faces, it's hard to feel any sympathy for him; despite being horrified at Dark's brutality, Tsukune and the others unanimously agree that Miyabi deserved every second of it. Kurumu sums it up best:Kurumu: Pay the price, you asshole!
- In Act V chapter 37, Ceal does this to the original dark Falla, ripping out her remaining eye with her bare hands. Brutal, yes, but considering that the dark Falla had lured her younger sister to her demise out of spite, destroyed her entire kingdom and species in a fit of rage over being denied the chance to become queen, used Kyouko as an Unwitting Pawn to dupe Luna into restoring her magic, and gleefully ripped her Good Counterpart to shreds with her bare hands while laughing about it before trying to kill Kyouko and going on a psychotic rampage through a human city, she gets absolutely No Sympathy in-universe and out. Leon states outright that the dark Falla had such a thing coming to her, and Apoch and Astreal declare she deserves even worse.
- In Act II, Dark's murder of Miyabi Fujisaki is ridiculously over the top and brutal, but considering the fact that Miyabi enslaved Mizore's hometown, extorted Mizore for sex in exchange for sparing her mother's life before ordering Tsurara's execution anyway, and openly gloated about raping Mizore to Tsukune and co.'s faces, it's hard to feel any sympathy for him; despite being horrified at Dark's brutality, Tsukune and the others unanimously agree that Miyabi deserved every second of it. Kurumu sums it up best:
- Mortality has Watson coldly interrogating a criminal for his friend's whereabouts, most likely killing the criminal and remorselessly killing Smith. Granted, he did torture Holmes with an inch of his life and gloat over the guy while he's dying.
- Discussed in the Star Trek: Voyager fanfic Distortion after the crew recapture rogue Ensign Anne Rudbeck, a former Maquis who intended to basically hand Seven of Nine over to a species who were decimated by the Borg in exchange for Rudbeck getting a ship that could take her back to Earth. While Starfleet doesn’t have the death penalty, Tuvok notes that any one of Rudbeck’s crimes, which include basically slave trading and endangering Voyager, would earn her life in a Federation prison back in the Alpha Quadrant; the fact that Rudbeck was guilty of so many such crimes, coupled with their inability to hold her indefinitely on Voyager, prompted Tuvok to at least suggest the death penalty even if he doesn’t agree with it in principle.
- Hit with a Decon-Recon Switch in The Wrong Reflection. Captain Kanril Eleya is in an Enemy Mine situation with the Klingon-Cardassian Allianc, which includes her own Mirror Universe counterpart. When Captain Kanril stops Dal Kanril's fellows from summarily executing some Terran POWs, Dal Kanril uses this trope as justification (the Terrans had committed atrocities against the Bajorans). Captain Kanril points out this just perpetuates the Cycle of Revenge—"what does doing the same thing to them solve?!"—and grants political asylum to the other prisoners... except for the one that really was guilty of war crimes.
- The War of the Masters: The Moab Confederacy under First Minister Elizabeth Tran enacts a policy of torture and extrajudicial murder of its enemies, paying no heed to such niceties as international borders or the feelings of their primary ally the Klingon Empire while they do it. Considering this policy is mainly directed at Space Pirates and the Orion Syndicate and follows decades of raids against various border planets including pre-independence Moab, even some of the Starfleet characters sympathize. Though in Don't Say Goodbye, Farewell, Lieutenant al-Qahtani points out there's a practical problem with the policy, in that it encourages the slavers to dump their cargo to hide the evidence.
- In Wilhuff Tarkin, Hero of the Rebellion, Tarkin reacts to the existence of Project Starscream with measures ranging from having Cornelius Evazan executed twelve times to inflicting a planet with Base Delta Zero Orbital Bombardment. All of it is warranted (Cornelius Evazan having been sentenced to death on twelve different systems - for different crimes than his involvement in Project Starscream - and the planet ate people)
- Better Bones AU: Hollyleaf no longer kills Ashfur due to her canon motivations, that is because he would reveal her and her siblings' secret parentage). This is because, if Ashfur tried to reveal the secret as it would no do good since Squirrelflight would just tell everyone about his attempted murders and discredit him. Instead, she kills him as revenge for him trying to kill her and her siblings.
- In contrast with the strict Thou Shalt Not Kill rule of the forest Clans, the city "Clan" BloodClan goes with this rule in Blood! Rusty AU. If attacked by enemies, they fight to kill and almost never leave survivors. Rusty is initially horrified at killing cats, but quickly grows desensitized and begins to think the other cats deserved to be killed.
- In Mauling Snarks, Slaughterhouse Nine are mostly decent people with unfortunate mental and power-related issues that drive them to murder and violence. In order to deal with these urges, they usually go after the worst of criminals that escaped justice, especially if they hurt those the Nine care about. This typically results in the offender being tortured, murdered, mutilated, and/or experimented on, but those people usually have done the same if not worse to innocents, so they arguably deserve it.
- In Risk It All, Ren decides to end the threat Black Mask poses permanently by turning the latter's internal organs into chunky salsa while keeping him alive with Thou Shalt Not Kill. It's not pretty or particularly heroic, but he considers it the better alternative to sending him to a Cardboard Prison.
