Revenge by Proxy/Playing With
Basic Trope: A character kills the friend or relative of someone he wants revenge on.
- Straight: Jack accidentally killed Tom's wife, so Tom kills Jack's wife.
- Exaggerated: Tom kills everyone in Jack's family.
- Alternately, Tom kills Jack's third cousin twice removed.
- Or rather, Jack is dead so Tom kills his family.
- Justified: The victims were accomplices, or are wittingly profiting from the original crime.
- They both intended it. No one would expect it if they killed each other's wives.
- Killing Jack isn't an option, for whatever reason.
- Inverted: Avenging the Villain
- Tom seduces Jack's wife and she ends up divorcing Jack.
- Subverted: Tom actually wants to eliminate the characters because of a prophecy but without Jack realizing it.
- Double Subverted: On the other hand, he considers the Revenge part of the fun; he could have worked out another way around the Prophecy.
- Parodied: Tom starts killing people indiscriminately, thinking they're probably related to Jack somewhere along the line..
- Jack's wife is much stronger. Tom gets hospitalized trying to kill her.
- Deconstructed: Tom's plot is foiled -- and the saved characters sit about, in a place that Jack stole from Tom, eating food bought with money stolen from Tom, and talk about how much worse Tom was.
- Reconstructed: Then, actually, Tom had no right to the stuff in the first place.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Tom goes only to the culprit himself.
- Enforced: "We need a reason for Jack to go after Tom, and a Dead Little Sister is just the thing.."
- Lampshaded: "Okay, seriously, I'm the one who wronged you, so why are you going after someone else?"
- Invoked: "Because Death Is Too Good For You, that's why!"
- Defied: Tom sees and scorns the chance to kill the other character.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to Revenge by Proxy