Disproportionate Retribution/Film

"Bill: I... overreacted."
 * Law Abiding Citizen could have been called Disproportionate Retribution: The Movie. Clyde Shelton's (Gerard Butler) wife and child are murdered and the prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cuts a deal against Clyde's wishes, the result of which is that the accomplice gets the chair while the man who actually committed the murders gets to walk. Ten years later, Clyde wreaks revenge (including a bonus punishment for the already condemned man), then sets about destroying the entire US legal system, leaving Nick alive so that he can witness the devastating consequences of a decision he made ten years ago.
 * He also kills a lot of people who had little to nothing to do with the deal, including Nick's assistant.
 * Harry from the Spider-Man movies clearly knew what led to his father's end -- specifically, that he was the Green Goblin -- from the conclusion of the second film on, yet needed the majority of the third to forgive Peter for stopping a homicidal maniac... of course, multiple rounds of Easy Amnesia helped this along.
 * Also Eddie Brock in Spider-Man 3. Peter exposed Eddie's fraud against Spider-Man (which in itself was the result of Peter in the Venom Suit wrecking a camera that contained a legitimate picture of Venom Suit Spider-Man). Eddie's response? To go into a church and pray to God for Him to kill Peter. Then he got the Venom suit... Guess God doesn't like Spider-Man either. Which explains a lot, to be honest.
 * Lil Ze in City of God shot a member of his gang for irritating him with incessant talking.
 * This is the same Lil Ze who, after he asked a woman to dance at a club and she turned him down, . He's not much for restraint.
 * In Murder in the First Henri Young (Kevin Bacon) is sent to prison for stealing $5 from a post office to feed his hungry sister.
 * Unforgiven uses this a few times. A prostitute is left scarred for life after being slashed all over her face and body with a knife for laughing at a client. He and his companion are both assassinated by Will Munny for the deed, even though the slasher's companion was only marginally involved and felt remorse. Later, Munny's companion is killed, so he slaughters everyone in the bar displaying his body. Munny also did things like that before he retired: "Remember that drover I shot through the mouth and his teeth came out the back of his head? I think about him now and again. He didn't do anything to deserve to get shot, at least nothin' I could remember when I sobered up."
 * Chicago. One woman murdered her husband for popping gum. This might have just been the one thing on top of many others that made her snap, or she might simply be crazy.
 * In Trainspotting Begbie beats a man round the head with his pool cue. The man's crime? Eating his crisps loudly.
 * Syndrome in The Incredibles was basically just a geeky kid who wanted to be a super-sidekick using his gadgetry. After he's rather roughly dismissed by his hero, Mr. Incredible (who was trying to deal with multiple disasters at that particular moment, one of which had been caused by the kid's clumsy attempt to help, and was also on the verge of being late to his own wedding), he goes to the dark side and spends his life designing technology so he can kill off all the world's superheroes, take their place, and then eventually sell his inventions so that everyone can be super, depriving everyone of their uniqueness. He takes special glee in his attempts to kill/abduct Mr. Incredible's wife and kids.
 * Hancock likes to use this, particularly during his drunken super-Jerkass phase.
 * The Mask: Stanley, when wearing the mask, indulges in this trope a few times. Mechanics who price gouged him apparently get (In the original comic, the scene is much more violent and quite fatal.) In another scene, he honks a horn so loud at an impatient motorist that the car's windows all shatter.
 * Disney's version of Beauty and the Beast: "I'm going to transform you into a monster, and your entire household of innocent bystanders into sentient household appliances, and impose an arbitrary time limit on all of you because you don't give out handouts." Granted, she was disguised as a freezing old woman at the time, but honestly, would it have hurt her to at least leave the servants alone?
 * As another person pointed out on this wiki, he was also eleven at the time. Remember how the rose was supposed to die on the Beast's twenty-first birthday, and when Mrs. Potts said they'd been cursed for ten years? Yeah. Pretty disproportionate.
 * Gaston's opinion on Belle rejecting his advances: "Bah, Belle rejected me. I'm so humiliated! I'm going to forcibly get her father committed, blackmail her into marrying me, and - if that doesn't work - lead an angry mob to kill the guy she does like. Even if this guy has lost the will to live and won't fight back."
 * Hey, he would've gotten a cool monster head to add to his collection, too!
 * The Interquel The Enchanted Christmas introduced the castle decorator and several staff members who have unfortunately become ornaments. Because he dislikes Christmas and was actually cursed on that day, the Beast has them imprisoned in the attic. They couldn't have learned to do paperwork? Decorate for the New Year instead? Something?
 * In the same film, Forte attempts to collapse the entire castle. The reason? Because Beast decided to rekindle his relationship with Belle and feel renewed hope at the prospect of becoming human again and ignore Forte's (selfish) attempts to dissuade him from Belle.
 * When you're a king or queen planning your daughter's christening, be sure you don't forget to send an invitation to Maleficent, the Queen of Nightmare Fuel (or in some fan's eyes, was until SHODAN showed up). No matter how uneasy you are to have her around the baby, you'll thank yourself when she doesn't barge in halfway through and condemn the child to die at the age of sixteen because you unintentionally insulted her. Then again, even if that did happen, it's also likely that Maleficent would have cursed her anyway for the heck of it.
 * This theme is subverted in Dealing With Dragons, when the princess Alianora was brought up to deliberately be thrown into princessy situations but none of them worked out properly. When she was born, her parents forgot to invite a wicked fairy, in the hopes of getting her a christening curse. Instead, when the fairy shows up she ends up eating cake and ice cream and dancing and ultimately has so much fun she forgives everyone and leave without cursing the princess.
 * Hannibal Lecter's taste for rude people.
 * American History X had
 * That's a highly questionable assumption. He knew Derek was a neo-Nazi and understandably had great resentment for him. Of course, he didn't know Derek was on the verge of reforming.
 * In Kill Bill:
 * Bill has the Bride's fiance and family-in-law slaughtered and the pregnant Bride beaten to within an inch of her life by his assassins before trying to finish her off with a bullet to the head. And all this because she "broke his heart" by running off on him upon learning that she was pregnant.

"Bill: Once upon a time in China, some believe around the year one double-aught three, the head priest of the White Lotus Clan, Pai Mei, was walking down the road, contemplating whatever it is that a man of Pai Mei's infinite power contemplates -- which is another way of saying "who knows?" -- when a Shaolin monk appeared, traveling in the opposite direction. As the monk and the priest crossed paths, Pai Mei, in a practically unfathomable display of generosity, gave the monk the slightest of nods. The nod was not returned. Now, was it the intention of the Shaolin monk to insult Pai Mei? Or did he just fail to see the generous social gesture? The motives of the monk remain unknown. What is known are the consequences. The next morning Pai Mei appeared at the Shaolin Temple and demanded of the Temple's head abbot that he offer Pai Mei his neck to repay the insult. The Abbot at first tried to console Pai Mei, only to find Pai Mei was...inconsolable. So began the massacre of the Shaolin Temple and all sixty of the monks inside at the fists of the White Lotus. And so began the legend of Pai Mei's Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique."
 * In the campfire flashback in Part 2, Bill tells the story of Pai Mei:

"Barbossa: "Punished we were, the lot of us! Disproportionate to our crimes!""
 * Pretty much any character played by Joe Pesci. In Casino his character Nicky Santoro stabs a guy a dozen times in the throat with a pen because he was rude. In Goodfellas his character Tommy DeVito beat a guy to death for mentioning how he used to shine shoes and then telling him to go get his shine box.
 * The scary part is that he was playing parts based on real people who were actually like that. The former event was purely fictional but the latter one actually happened in real life..
 * Tommy also shot a guy in the foot for not getting his drink order right. When he asks the same guy (whose foot is now in a cast) to get him a drink after-the-fact, the guy tells Tommy to go fuck himself. It does not end well for him.
 * In the Lindsay Lohan remake of The Parent Trap, two twins who do not yet know they are twins are fencing. Girl 1 accidentally pushes 2 into a water trough. 2 walks back to her cabin and changes and in total all damage done is that she spends 30 seconds being wet. She then gets her vengeance by winning a poker game (royal flush beating a straight flush), taking all of 1's allowance and winning an additional bet that forces her to skinny dip in an ice cold lake at night, inviting the whole camp who watch her about to dive nude while teasing her as much as possible, and then telling those girls to steal and hide her clothes. Ouch.
 * The retribution for the lake incident was to somehow move the offending twin and her roommates' beds and dressers onto the roof of their cabin. Words cannot describe the retribution for that.
 * But they can try. Offended twin goes into the other twin's room at night and booby traps the entire room. Any movement by the girls in the room would cause water balloons to fall from the ceiling, shaving cream and honey to coat everything, and to top it off, anyone unfortunate to open the door gets tarred and feathered. That unfortunate person happens to be the camp counselor. Hilarity Ensues.
 * Con Air character William "Billy Bedlam" Bedford: "He caught his wife in bed with another man, left them alone, drove four towns over to his wife's family's house. Killed her parents, her brothers, her sisters, even her dog."
 * Hitch. The title character's love interest Sara has a friend who slept with a guy who dumped her the morning after. On the way out the door, he makes an offhand comment, "Date doctor my ass." Sara makes it her mission to find the date doctor and expose him, blaming him for enabling the scumbag to use her friend.  And then Hitch takes her back.
 * For those who aren't aware,
 * And that friend of hers? A shallow moron who was repeatedly told this guy was probably a scumbag from the beginning. Why is she even concerned with this?
 * The second adaptation of The Punisher. When the Big Bad's son is killed during a bust that Frank took part in, he and his wife decide to take his revenge by killing Frank's entire extended family. This becomes worse when you realize that Frank wasn't the one who shot him, and he was only shot because he was stupid enough to pull a gun out when he had a dozen SWAT surrounding him.
 * The Usual Suspects. In response to an attack on his family and the murder of his son, the Big Bad's response is to.
 * In the horror film Darkness Falls, the monster is the "original" Tooth Fairy that the stories are based on, and she'll kill any child who sees her at work. The movie's tagline was "An Eye For an Eye. Your Life For a Tooth..."
 * In Oldboy, Oh Dae-Su is abducted off the street and held prisoner for 15 years while his family is murdered and he is blamed for it. When he is finally released, he learns that
 * And of course, the classic line from The Untouchables: "You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"
 * It's actually subverted in The Untouchables. In context, it's not about unreasonable retaliation; it's advice to escalate first if escalation is inevitable.
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Captain Teague, Keeper of the Code, shoots Sri Sumbhajee's spokesman mid-sentence for merely conveying his master's dissent for following the code.
 * Barbossa sees the curse on him and his crew as this.
 * Barbossa sees the curse on him and his crew as this.

"Terry: I'm gonna charge them interest. A lot of interest. Night Fox: ...is that fair? Terry: I hope not."
 * Barbossa saying "disproportionate" should count as comic relief, much like his "disinclination to acquiesce to your request... means No."
 * In Serial Mom, most of the murders committed by the protagonist, Beverly Sutphin, were done for entirely inane reasons. For example, beating a woman to death because she wore white shoes after Labor Day.
 * In Drag Me to Hell, an old gypsy woman gets back at the main character for denying her a loan extension by cursing her to Hell for all eternity. It should also be noted that the loan extension she was denied was her third extension, implying that she never even bothered to pay off her previous two loan extensions before and thus ended up got her just desserts by not being granted a third one.
 * The movie opens with a ten-year-old being condemned simply for stealing a gypsy necklace - one that the parents returned as quickly as possible.
 * The old gypsy doesn't just curse her. First, she somehow sneaks into the girl's locked car and viciously assaults her, even ripping the girl's ear. Only then does she curse her.
 * In fact, when the girl finds out that she can, she can't seem to bring herself to do it, even to her Jerkass coworker. She does, however,
 * Star Trek's Nero decides to wait 25 years for Spock to come through the same black hole that pulled him into the past, makes Spock watch (Countdown's backstory doesn't count as the film's writers have established it as non-canon material).
 * To be fair, Nero didn't have a choice in terms of waiting. After the ramming of the Kelvin, the Narada was seriously damaged when the Klingon fleet arrived. Nero and his crew spent the next 25 years on Rura Penthe. Only then an opportunity presented itself to stage an escape. This is all in a deleted scene. Had Spock arrived while Nero was in prison, he would've been fine.
 * In Friday the 13 th: A New Beginning the psychotic Vic brutally murders manchild Joey with an axe due to finding him too talkative.
 * In the Oceans Eleven remake Danny Ocean and his band of thieves are afraid of their target, Terry Benedict, because of his reputation for disproportionate retribution: the story the thieves tell is that he not only terrorized the guy he caught but bankrupted his brother's tractor dealership too, which goes against the band of thieves' casino-owning ally's sense of justice: "In the old days they'd just whack you." The sequel shows Terry and his thugs turning up at one of the Malloy brothers' wedding and threatening them in front of their family.
 * The sequel in general, really.
 * The sequel in general, really.

"Big Trouble-Maker: Do you got any idea what we're gonna do to you if we find one itty bitty scratch on them? Any idea? Shep: Let me guess, you're gonna pound my face, break every bone in my body, then you're gonna drag my body down a gravel road, and feed my remains to a wart hog. Is that about right? Big Trouble-Maker: What, are you nuts? This is the 90's, we're gonna sue you."
 * The third film may or may not be about this. Willie Bank tricks their friend Ruben (even though Danny warned Ruben this may happen), causing the latter to have a heart attack. As a result, they bankrupt the guy and steal what he loves most - his diamond awards. And being a Jerkass that he is, Bank doesn't have any friends who'd be willing to go against Danny and his crew. Apparently, their code requires them to first give the target a chance to redeem himself and pay back what he owes Ruben. However, this crime is supposedly so heinous that some team members don't want to give Bank this option (which he ends up refusing anyway).
 * In Swordfish, John Travolta's character explains that this is the entire point of the secret government organization he works for. Whenever someone commits an act of terrorism, their organization responds with an extremely escalated response. This is done so terrorists will think twice before striking, lest they find themselves at war with a shadow organization fully willing to vaporize entire towns in response to a few dead American hostages.
 * The ending of Extract. Sure, the neighbor was annoying and talked too much, but
 * Natural causes; take it up with the screenwriter.
 * Rat Race has some. Taxi driver lost some money after a botched football game. When the referee of said game enters his cab, the driver goes into the desert, takes the referee's shoes and socks and abandons him there. Cheating on a helicopter pilot leads to this. And God helps you don't buy a squirrel.
 * Subverted in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Pee-wee hitchhikes with a guy on the run from the law, and helps him sneak through a police roadblock. When asked what his crime was, he begins to talk about doing something terrible with a knife, then realizes that he's frightening Pee-wee, so he claims that he cut the tag off his mattress. The naive Pee-wee nods in sympathy, saying, "I always thought that was the dumbest law."
 * Probably the only funny joke in Suburban Commando parodies this trope:

"...This mustn't register on an emotional level. First, distract target. Then block his blind jab. Counter with cross to left cheek. Discombobulate. Dazed, he'll attempt wild haymaker. Employ elbow block and body shot. Block feral left. Weaken right jaw. Now fracture. Break cracked ribs. Traumatize solar plexus. Dislocate jaw entirely. Heel kick to diaphragm. In summary, ears ringing, jaw fractured, three ribs cracked, four broken. Diaphragm hemorrhaging. Physical recovery: six weeks. Full psychological recovery: six months. Capacity to spit at back of head: neutralized."
 * The Saw saga is full of these.
 * Do NOT spit on Sherlock Holmes in a boxing match. Especially after he's willingly conceded the fight. There are consequences.

"My wife took her to the old family farm and drowned her in the well. I felt a simple time-out would have been sufficient."
 * Phone Booth is essentially a depiction of one of these.
 * Apparently, the thing the protagonist is guilty of that deserves death is... almost cheating on his wife.
 * So is She Devil.
 * Faces of Death IV depicts a Russian peasant being drawn and quartered by horses for tax evasion.
 * In Rushmore, the protagonist Max Fischer shoots The Bully, Magnus Buchan, in the ear with a bb gun and tells him that they are now even. The bully responds, quite menacingly, "Not for long, kemosabe!"
 * Used for humor in Scary Movie 3 when the architect (played by the late George Carlin) described Tabitha's punishment:

"Thor: So you take the world I love as recompense for your imagined slights?"
 * The Mouse King from the animated film The Nutcracker Prince believes the Nutcracker crushed and bent his tail on purpose, not knowing it was an accident, thus wanting vengeance. He also gets bitter on Clara for not only stopping him from burning the nutcracker, but mostly for injuring his tail.
 * Professor Ratigan of The Great Mouse Detective feeds a well meaning drunk minion to his pet cat for calling him the world's greatest rat.
 * Bruce Almighty. A punk that harasses Bruce gets hunted down and raped. With a monkey. Twice. Considering that at this point Bruce could have done pretty much anything else, the fact he chose to rape the man...
 * Depends on your definition of "rape". The man specifically said "When monkeys come outta my butt." On the other hand, having it go back was rather harsh on both Man and Monkey.
 * Those poor thieves in Home Alone. Especially the second movie.
 * In Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, main human Dalas' little brother delivers pizza to a girl he likes. Her boyfriend is inside and jokes about the uniform with his friends; he jokes back 'I guess who ordered the sausage lovers pizza', insinuating that he's gay with his friends. His retaliation is to follow him out of the house, beat the shit out of him, and throw his keys into a sewer, meaning he has to walk home and use the window to get in. Point, its implied that the reason Dalas was in Jail was beating this guy up as retribution for something he did, but still for the incident it was a little cold.
 * Have you ever wondered why the crime-rate in Sanford is so low but the accident-rate is so high?
 * Horton of Horton Hears a Who! is outcast, tied down, and caged by the animals in the jungle he lives in, and his clover is taken away and nearly tossed into boiling mud, all because he thinks that some people live on a speck that is located on the clover. How unforgivable, because, Think of the Children!
 * The eponymous Mystery Team has harassed an old man for twelve years for being cranky.
 * The titular premise of the Australian movie Alexandra's Project is a wildly disproportionate revenge scheme.
 * In Hot Fuzz, most of the murder victims were killed for making incredibly minor infractions. For example, the newspaper editor was killed because he had a habit of making typos, and the actress was killed because she had an annoying laugh.
 * The ending text in I Love You Phillip Morris pretty much states this is the reason for Steven's unprecedentedly harsh sentence: his ability to fake his own death from AIDS was an embarrassment to the State of Texas and to Governor George Bush, plus the prosecuting DA was the sister in law of one of the men Steven conned. Which might explain why Steven got a life sentence with a 23-hour a day lockup for fraud and prison escapes. A LOT of fraud and MANY prison escapes, but really? Harsh, dude.
 * In the original Clash of the Titans, both Zeus and Thetis order not only the deaths of those they feel have wronged them, but also the deaths of the entire populations of the cities that they ruled over, apparently just to drive the point home.
 * In Buffalo '66, the main character plans to shoot and kill an ex-football player. The reason? The main character made a huge bet on a Super Bowl game which said football player lost. He then went to prison for five years since he resorted to crime to pay off his gambling debt.
 * In Dogma, Loki has just finished killing the corrupt corporate executives (finks, to him) that he spent a good 5 minutes ranting at, for nearly unspeakable sins. He offers Ms. Price gum, and tells her she has nothing to fear. He then points a gun at her face, and reminds her that she didn't say "God bless you" when he sneezed. He gets called off, but reminds her twice that she got off lucky.
 * There's also Bartleby's and Loki's entire plot in the movie, as well as what CAUSED it. See, angels were never given free will, so when Loki at one point questions God whether a proclaimed judgement might be a little excessive and resigns as the Angel of Death, thanks to Bartleby egging him on while they were drunk, God strips them of their semi-divinity and banishes them to Wisconsin forever. (Note that this is a few centuries before even the Native Americans get a chance to show up.) So their plot? Abuse a loophole in Catholic doctrine that would get them back into heaven! The downside is that this would destroy Creation. As in, everything. To quote the Metatron, "Was Wisconsin really that bad?"
 * A graphic designer shows Millennium a series of new logos to choose from. Millennium refuses to use one logo but soon changes its mind. The designer's response? He files a lawsuit that could potentially ban several of its films, including Drive Angry, Elephant White, Conan the Barbarian 2011 (already facing a ban due to a separate ongoing lawsuit filed by Stan Lee Media on the grounds that they technically still own the rights to Conan because the deal that led to Conan Sales Company and then Paradox Entertainment, the film's producer, acquiring the rights to the franchise was never valid due to SLM's bankruptcy protection), Trespass, and The Son Of No One, as well as a few other future Millennium productions, just for using the logo in question.
 * In Problem Child, during the opening montage of young Junior being passed by from parents to parents (after annoying the previous ones enough that they just drop him off to other houses and run off), one of his current adoptive fathers steps on his toys (namely one that looks like a construction bulldozer), to which Junior responds to by getting in a real bulldozer and completely annihilating the trailer.
 * La Piel que Habito is Disproportionate Retribution: The Movie. Yes, the guy had had sex with his daughter who then went insane and  but  '', not to mention using him   and trapping him in more ways than one more than earned him.
 * In Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, the biker who's accidentally pelted by Ron's burrito
 * In War, Inc., Hauser asks some kids for directions. They demand candy as payment. Hauser explains that he doesn't have candy, but gives them a lot of money. Later, Hauser finds his truck is on fire. One of the kids yells, "Next time, bring some candy, asshole!" and flips him off before running away.
 * In Spaceballs, parodying the scenes in Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader telekinetically strangles his men for their failures in battle, Dark Helmet laser-castrates his men for the most trivial of mistakes.
 * God Bless America. Take more than one space when parking your car? Talk loudly with your friends in the theater? Make an ass of yourself on national television? Frank and Roxy will come for your blood.
 * The Crimson Bolt from Super isn't the most balanced individual in the world - one of his first acts against "crime" is to teach a couple not to queue jump outside a cinema. By hitting them in the face with a pipe wrench.
 * In the 2010 Alice in Wonderland, The Red Queen demands one of her servant's head gets cut off... for stealing her tart.
 * The short film Pencil Face. Girl uses a magic pensil for selfish wishes like a kite and a cake. Girl gets
 * Loki's plot to take control of Earth in The Avengers is largely driven by jealousy and resentment towards his brother Thor, as well as rage at being deceived about . He wants to subjugate the entire population of Earth--a planet which Thor treasures and protects--thereby wiping out many of the people that Thor cares about. In addition, Loki feels that he was cheated out of his rightful place as the ruler of Asgard.