Revenge by Proxy/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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: ???

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