Disproportionate Retribution/Video Games

"Bas Rudden (as himself) "Bas doesn't believe in an eye for an eye. Oh no, Bas believes in an eye for two eyes. Or maybe two eyes and an ear. Or two eyes, and an ear, and a spleen, and maybe a new shirt because this one is covered IN ENTRAILS!""
 * Fallout 3: Oh My God! The doctor just left the Vault! Oh! I know! I'll have his assistant killed, plunge the ENTIRE Vault into mayhem, cause many more deaths, forcefully interrogate my own daughter and sic my men to go shoot the doctor's child on sight! That'll show him!
 * On the other hand, the Overseer is a massive control freak and has a Vault-sized ego. The sheer act of opening the vault doors to leave must have insulted him so much he simply lost his shit.
 * Vault 101 is officially listed as one of the "Experiment" Vaults, the experiment being "Control freak Overseer with much more outright power than the other vaults".
 * Over in Fallout: New Vegas everyone sees what the NCR did to the Khans at Bitter-Springs. For those that don't know the Khans start harassing NCR caravans, the NCR then sends a massive army and kills most of them, many were unarmed and trying to run away.
 * Both games have examples of horribly disproportionate retribution by the AI. If you so much as take a TIN CAN from their property, some NPCs are prone to react with lethal force. And should you turn off the King's radio...a crime punishable by death by an entire gang.
 * The Khans actually led a Raider worthy campaign of attacking caravans. They didn't harass them, they annihilated them if they resisted and butchered NCR troops that fought back. The resulting Bitter-Springs battle was wiping out an enemy encampment: the massacre of Khan civilians was either a tragic error or a cruel order, but a lot of NCR troops that participated in it regret it. But gunning down opportunistic raiders? Just life in the Mojave.
 * Jeannie Mae Crawford really didn't like Boone's wife, because the girl thought Novac was a dump and wanted to take Boone to New Vegas instead. So she arranged to have both the girl and her unborn child sold into slavery to the Legion. Once you find out about it, it's immensely satisfying to arrange for her to be shot by Boone.
 * Letting people in Cavavans go if they don't fight counts as harassing in the Fallout world.
 * Red Dead Redemption: A somewhat heroic version of this:
 * Another example from this game comes at the very last mission Remember My Family.
 * In any Sim game, you can set your Sims on fire or drown them just for not getting to a specific area immediately.
 * More specifically, sometimes, completely at random, the sky will get annoyed at you for attempting to gaze upon it's clouds and drop a satellite on your Sim. This can happen the first time you do this.
 * Played for laughs in theThe Nameless Mod. In a side mission for the World Corp storyline, you have the option of helping Zero Presence assassinate a priest later in the game. The reason for the hit is because the priest has attempted to steal Zero's pork chops multiple times.
 * Luca Blight from Suikoden II thought that committing brutal and sadistic genocide to an entire nation would be proper retribution for
 * To be fair, such a thing would be extremely traumatic for a child, and the aftermath of that experience didn't help any:
 * Also, Luca was less than pleased to learn this.
 * Actually, But still, this actually removes the retribution from being disproportionate. I mean,  is not a small thing any person or their nation of responsibility can let go. Granted, Luca is an Ax Crazy Complete Monster, but what do you think caused him to be so?
 * Also, Jowston and Highland have been at war for years, and the current peace was as unlikely to last as the rest before it. Jowston basically stirred up war and were crazy enough to do something so heinous to one of the enemy's royals and were unlucky enough that the retaliation was headed by said royal's extremely traumatised, now crazy son.
 * Something similar happened with Nakago from Fushigi Yuugi.
 * In Mass Effect 3, according to Javik, games of chance were punishable by death in the Prothean Empire. However, Javik is a confirmed Troll, so take it with a grain of salt.
 * in Apollo Justice Ace Attorney hatches a plan to destroy 's life after , a high-profile client, snubs him after a game of cards in favor of the less-famous attorney. His nefarious scheme succeeds for the most part, but his failure to dispose of two vital witnesses (thanks to dumb luck) resulted in him having to keep a paranoiac eye on all the people involved for the next seven years, making this a Disproportionate Retribution not just for its effects on the intended victim (Killing a client that snubbed you? Seriously?), but also in terms of how much time and effort he spent on it.
 * In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, there is a Values Dissonance where the inhabitants of Apollo's country think that it's disproportionate that  in Borginia.
 * In the 4th case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney,
 * In Snatcher,
 * In Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko's responses are more or less proportionate to the wrongs inflicted, but one of the talk show hosts is not so discriminating.
 * In Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko's responses are more or less proportionate to the wrongs inflicted, but one of the talk show hosts is not so discriminating.

"Luso: You knifed nearly thirty guys over a spilled drink?! You're a threat to society!"
 * In the "Deconstruction" mission of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, C.J. finds out that some construction workers have been calling his sister Kendl a hooker. C.J.'s response is to head over to the construction plant to "teach them some respect." How does he do this? He smashes up their portables with a bulldozer, and then traps the foreman in his own porta-potty, pushes it into a hole in the ground with the poor bastard still inside, and then commandeers a cement mixer and uses it to bury him alive. And all the while he's doing that last bit, the poor guy is screaming "OH GOD, WHY?!" Woah, C.J., I know you care about your sis a great deal, but that was cold.
 * The worse part? Kendl really does dress like a hooker.
 * In fact, one of the first time you see Kendl in a cutscene, she's arguing with her other brother who tells her that she "dresses like a God damn hooker"
 * In Emily Enough the eponymous character has all rights to her story stolen in a scheme where she was promised release from the asylum she was held in as bait.
 * Arguably, the titular hero from Max Payne is guilty of this, though to be fair, he was really only after three people (four, if you include Gognitti), and everyone else just didn't have the sense to get out of the way.
 * Karma really is a bitch in the darkside ending of The Force Unleashed.  Considering how you get away scot free in other morality Star Wars games such as Knights of the Old Republic, it does seem like Starkiller is something of the universe's Butt Monkey.
 * In the first disk of Final Fantasy VII, the rebel group AVALANCHE infiltrates and destroys two Mako Reactors. AVALANCHE consists of Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie. SIX PEOPLE. What does the Shinra Corporation do? Destroy an entire sector of the city. THEY DESTROYED AN ENTIRE SECTOR OF A CITY TO KILL A GROUP WITH SIX PEOPLE.
 * And they failed to kill half of the group. Indeed, at least 2 of the 3 were killed by Shin-Ra soldiers before the plate came down (As they tried to prevent Shin-Ra sabotaging the plate support).
 * It's worse than that. Barret had taken over the reigns of AVALANCHE because his hometown was burned down by Shinra... because one of thier reactors there exploded and there was ONE person in the town who had been against the reactor being built, and he WASN'T EVEN HOME AT THE TIME. So if you trace it back far enough and take the total death and destruction totals into account, the Shinra corporation killed several villages worth of people because one man once said that Mako reactors were a bad idea. JEEZ LOUISE!
 * Shinra didn't destroy the sector to kill six people. They did it to blame Avalanche to curtail any public support for that group or any similar ones. It's heavy handed, but if Shinra didn't get plunged into chaos immediately afterwards, it wouldn't solely have been as retribution.
 * Let's not forget Sephiroth himself. "I was born because of a Shinra experiment? Whelp, time to go on an omnicidal rampage, smash a meteor into the earth, and absorb millions of innocent souls to become a god."
 * Whatever you do, do not steal a slice of cake from Kirby. He will hunt you down and kill devour you.
 * While YMMV some argue "Kingdom Hearts II" has this for some of the Nobodies, but with special emphasis on Demyx whose crime was... trying not to fight.
 * In The Legend of Zelda games, pigs and chickens tend to overreact to Link hitting them: They suddenly become some sort of rampaging super farm animal and hunt you down. And inevitably, kill you.
 * If you steal from the shopkeeper in The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening, get ready to be hadoken'd to death if you dare re-enter the shop.
 * If you steal from Trill's shop in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, he will peck you to death if you come back.
 * "You DARE bring LIGHT into my LAIR?! YOU MUST DIE!"
 * Mao of Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice claims to kill people who eat their eggs with salt and pepper instead of hot sauce, and also wants to kill his dad for accidentally breaking his Slaystation Portable, making him lose 40,000,000 hours of gameplay time.
 * There's also Laharl from Disgaea, he appears in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories  and if you beat him in the first battle he BLOWS UP the world.
 * Fable II has assassination missions where the reasons for the assassinations include "He thinks he's so funny", "very overdue library book", "selling chocolates half-eaten", and "random draw for the week."
 * Similar to the above example, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter has a number of extremely harsh sentences for minor offenses. As the bounty hunter Jango Fett, the player runs through a handful of locations tracking down bounties or sources of information in his overall mission. Mixed in with the enemies and bystanders are minor bounties, wanted dead, alive, or either. Some of them are real scum: murder, arson, kidnapping, political assassination, etc. Some are not: bounties that are wanted dead (including those wanted dead or alive) include a Gamorrean who killed the animal he threw as part of a competition, a Jawa who is begging outside of a shop owner's store, a Gran who painted slang on some transports, and perhaps the best example yet: a death sentence posted by Sebulba on a man for betting against Sebulba in a podrace.
 * Dwarf Fortress kobolds are considered by much of the fanbase to be woobies, because their main reason for living is to wander into your fortress and pilfer a few things. The main response of your dwarves? Rip them in half. The imports/exports screen explains that they offer "petty annoyance" in return for "death". Someone here is getting shafted.
 * Sharin no Kuni: the opening of the game has the main character witness female trainee get shot through the head for arriving late to an exam, and that's just the beginning.
 * What's worse is that she really should have known that would happen. Everyone undergoing that training is supposed to have been living with that threat for years.
 * The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Oblivion both have guards that react to all crimes by impaling or hacking the criminals into the small pieces, regardless of whether you committed senseless mass murder or stole a clay pot barely worth one gold.
 * What makes this even more aggravating is that if you even accidentally pick up said clay pot, they will hunt you down.
 * It's even worse since the guards are ridiculously Psychic Powers, any offense committed will have scores of Legion troopers from all over the city, and wilderness suddenly alerted of your wrong doings and chasing you down. Then there's the fact you can't even evade them, they always know exactly where you are, and they're everywhere.
 * To be fair, that's only if you resist arrest rather than paying a fine or submitting to jail time. Then again this inverts it somewhat, since you can literally buy your way out of murder when you're rich enough.
 * Interestingly enough, if you 'Resist Arrest' then immediately yield (hold block and activate), you can get away with a high enough Speed.
 * There is also a mod (Reener's Guard Overhaul) which fixes all issues with the Guards, and as such could turn this into an inversion/aversion.
 * Committing any act of thievery, no matter how small, makes you little more than a criminal scum. Champion of Cyrodiil? Hero of Kvatch? Meaningless compared to that clay pot you just stole.
 * Probably by accident.
 * And who could forget the Ordinators in Morrowind? Woe betide anyone who wears one of their helmets in their presence.
 * Though on the other hand, Vivec has been left an Ordinator mass-graveyard several times because one of them showed exceptionally poor judgement in calling the Nerevarine "scum". For that matter, the "Outlander" insults wore rather thin rather quickly too. A side-effect of being NPCs in a world where the player-character can effectively gain godlike powers with little effort.
 * In Morrowind you can get kicked out of a few organisations by simply trying to rest in a wrong bed, sometimes permanently! Especially annoying with Tribunal Temple.
 * Also, a book found in Oblivion talks about a bard who made a comedic ballad about a certain general. How did the general react? He had the bard mounted on the front of a battering ram being used in a castle attack!
 * Ares tricking Kratos into killing his family sort of snowballs into most of the gods being brutally murdered and essentially plunging the entire planet into an uninhabitable wasteland.
 * Really, Ares' dickery only snowballs into a brutal battle that probably levels half of Athens, which was going to be destroyed anyway. Zeus killing Kratos results in the rest (which is still Disproportionate Retribution, mind you).
 * Tower Madness: The Greys are trying to abduct your sheep so they can make a new scarf for their emperor. Your response? Zapping them, frying them, blowing them up, and even nuking them, including the emperor himself! All because they wanted some wool without paying for it, but still...
 * Saint's Row 2's Brotherhood missions, full stop. Worse, it's pure tit-for-tat Disproportionate Retribution. From peace talks where Maero, the Brotherhood leader, offers Boss a 20/80 split out of respect for his accomplishments (as well as a realistic appraisal of the situation in light of Boss' fall from grace,) Boss basically spits in his face and declares war over the implied insult. Boss opens by injecting Maero's tattoo ink with radioactive waste, Maero escalates by dragging Boss' second-in-command to death behind his gang's trucks, Boss then ruins Maero's rocker friend's career by burning his hand with a pyrotechnics display and locking Maero's girl in the trunk of her own car, then putting it last in a line of cars Maero would later crush with his monster truck. He even stays to gloat, tossing Maero the keys to the car just as the ganglord recognizes it. And all of this only comprises about half of the Brotherhood missions.
 * Final Fantasy Tactics A2 has a mission involving this. The Lang Bros. (back when they were with the Arbiters of Death) were enjoying drinks at a bar when something causes the drink to spill. One of the brothers ganked the guy responsible, and when others came to restrain them, they subsequently got slashed. Then the Arbiters of Death themselves got involved, and were shanked for their efforts. All of this gone over in detail to Clan Gully. There's Serious Business and then there's this.

"Bartender: (To Sam) It's for you, McGruff. Sam: (To Max) "McGruff"? Did you hear what he just called me? I hate that! Let's sneak into his room at night and drain all the fluids out of his body."
 * In Jet Set Radio Future, the response for some errant graffiti is initially little more than police shakedown. Just a few levels later, though, the police
 * In between chapters, DJ Professor K tells a story of how Captain Hayashi freaked out and trashed a patrol car. And why, you may ask? Because he sent another officer to get his favorite mint candy, and came back with coffee flavored instead.
 * There once was a man named Count Bleck. When he was young, his father had his fiancé assassinated. So he decided to use a forbidden book to destroy all of existence. The end.
 * If you shoplift in a Sierra game, the shopkeeper will kill you.
 * In Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse,
 * They also torture Leonard and then keep him tied up in their cupboard feeding him only spiders for two seasons for stealing a sandwich.
 * From the comics:


 * In Chu Lip, if you get three crime stamps (for smoking, being seen naked, and theft), you get chained to a wall crucifix-style, in a locked cell buried beneath the Graveyard, with people treating it as if you've died.
 * In Monkey Island 2 Le Chucks Revenge, the game (nearly) ends with Guybrush maiming LeChuck and pulling his mask off Scooby-Doo style to reveal...his brother, Chucky! You can ask him one of two questions regarding his motivation for hunting and torturing you relentlessly across two games. One of the questions garners the response that when you were both children, you stepped on and broke his favorite toy.
 * One of the major quests in Dragon Age: Origins involves an ancient curse that a vengeful elven leader inflicted on humans. After his son was tortured and murdered by humans and his daughter raped (and subsequently committed suicide), Zathrian was understandably enraged and sought justice. He, creating a savage creature that attacked and infected the responsible humans with lycanthropy. However, the curse lasted indefinitely and spread to many innocent humans, and even the original criminals probably didn't deserve two hundred years of unbearable suffering.
 * In the sequel it is played a little more straight in the end game after, and in response to a single mage who wasn't even part of the local circle's actions, Meredith orders   Sebastian even asks why it's necessary when the real criminal is right there.
 * Sebastian falls deep into this trope himself. If you refuse to kill  even though his real problem is with   Not So Different indeed.
 * It can even be said that  intentionally invoked this.
 * In the first game, one of the major quests involves a dispute over the dwarven crown between Lord Harrowmont and Prince Bhelen. If the player chooses to help Bhelen become king, then Harrowmont is executed. While a dick move, it is explainable in that Bhelen needed to solidify his power base...except that Bhelen didn't stop there. The sequel reveals that Bhelen ordered that Harrowmont's entire family be killed as well. Only one survived and fled the country, dodging Bhelen's assassins at every turn.
 * In Galactic Civilizations, there's some background history about a race called the Xendar. Manipulated by another race, they attacked a Human colony world - a minor one. The Humans retaliated with an all-out galactic campaign of destruction that all but annihilated the entirety of the Xendar race.
 * In Liberal Crime Squad, when death penalty laws goes Arch-Conservative, any crime is punished by death penalty. Murder. Arson. Kidnapping. Assault. Vandalism. Disturbing the peace. Loitering. And if you add Arch-Conservative police regulations law, the death penalty is no longer applied, because the Death Squads will execute any criminal caught on the spot. Without trial.
 * Eagle Eye Mysteries: The Original, Book 2, "Case of the Crazy Compass": slips a magnet into Alex Hane's backpack right before Alex is scheduled to go into the woods with his exploring club. Said magnet is so powerful that it disrupts Alex's compass badly enough to get him lost in the woods for hours, in the process ruining his chance to get a good grade for his explorer club and also (in hindsight) exposing him to the inherent dangers that come with being lost in the woods--and  did that with full knowledge that Alex would be going into the woods. And his reason for all this?.
 * In Homeworld, the protagonist race builds a mothership, takes it on a test drive, and comes home to find their planet incinerated and 300,000,000 people dead. Why? They violated a 4000 year old ban on interstellar travel, which they weren't even aware of.
 * I'm sorry, but if they can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs... I don't know, apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all.
 * In a special movie for Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops Plus, a Yellow Genome Soldier ends up winning a race despite the fact that not only was the race meant for GA-KOs and not humans, but he was supposed to act as a referee/race starter. Campbell and Raiden, under Old Snake's command, then repaid him by shooting two RPG-7s at him while he was savoring the victory.
 * Angry Birds forces this trope into being, but that's somewhat the point, since the pigs stole the birds' eggs.
 * Even more so in the animations, where when a mosquito touches one of the eggs, the red bird crushes it to death. Repeatedly. In an additional animation, a butterfly simply brushes an egg...and gets crushed to death.
 * Remember, the adorable kid from Professor Layton and the Unwound Future? Yes, I'm talking about the one
 * In Sonic Generations, Time Eater absolutely hates Sonic and wants to kill him. To do this, it sets out to destroy time from 1991 to the present, leaving this 20-year stretch as a sterile void.
 * In one of the scenarios in Wargame: European Escalation, an East German Border Guard defects to West Germany. He kills two of his fellow border guards in the escape. East Germany wants him back. West Germany says no. Enter World War 3, stage East.
 * In Brass Restoration, an employee of a book store Ryo enters in Kouri's route points a gun at his head and attempts to kill him for not buying anything and for talking.
 * In Saints Row the Third, Zimo's
 * In Brass Restoration, an employee of a book store Ryo enters in Kouri's route points a gun at his head and attempts to kill him for not buying anything and for talking.
 * In Saints Row the Third, Zimo's