This trope, which happens a lot in the less idealistic revenge stories, demonstrates the fundamental flaw in the common warping of the moral maxim "do unto others as you want others to do unto you" into "Do unto others what they did unto you".
The actual Golden Rule is about always attempting to look at things from the perspective of others, freely forgiving wrongs, and believing that no one should have to suffer at all, even if they deserve to. This warped form, however, takes this literally as Newtonian Equivalent Exchange "justice" or Call It Karma, not taking into account that acts of revenge/justice are not quantifiable laws of physics but social phenomena. Because of the complex web of genetic and social bonds that one forms over a lifetime, as well as the interactions between everyone entangled in that web, revenge might well begin with you but it most likely will not end with you. If he deserved to be treated how he treated you, his loved ones may also believe that you deserve to be treated like you treated him too. And yours may believe the same. And so on and so forth. It gets worse if it involves racism, fantastic or otherwise. The result of this is frequently what is called a Blood Feud
or a Vendetta.
Frequently in these stories, no side is completely wrong, no one is really right, both are very understandable, and such stories are usually painful to watch. Moral Myopia often deepens it, when both sides think that treating one of theirs is worth treating a dozen of the others, and so attempt to inflict that many torments and deaths in retribution. The escalating body count creates a vicious circle that spreads out like a virus, causing more and more casualties as it goes on, until it ends with one party (if not both of them) getting wiped out entirely or being stopped.
The Cycle of Revenge is one way to show that "two wrongs make a right" is a logically fallacious claim by deconstructing its use as justification for vengeance. It, more often than not, results in A Tragedy of Impulsiveness. Revenge Is Not Justice is often invoked to deter people from revenge or to call them out for following through with their revenge.
It's also very common in gangster stories, with the average gangster character avenging the death of a friend upon a rival gangster who may very well have had a similar motivation for his killing, as well as Romeo and Juliet-style Feuding Families stories. A lesser form of this tends to occur when two characters have a prank competition.
Very unfortunate Truth in Television, and Older Than Feudalism; the Lensman Arms Race and Serial Escalation of vengeance upon vengeance makes up much of the history of the human race, with examples like the infamous assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which triggered World War I which then fueled Germany's Roaring Rampage of Revenge in World War II, and blood feuds elsewhere that are still going on to this very day. Often, no one really remembers just what started it, but remained motivated by all the violence that followed, with each successive revenge motivating the victims or others connected to them to strike back at the one(s) who took the initial revenge.
A note on the "eye for an eye" maxim: many ethnologists believe that this wasn't a demand to go out and seek revenge, but rather a ban on inflicting Disproportionate Retribution (so if someone blinds you in one eye, you can only half-blind them back, and cannot justify torture or murder). According to this theory, those who laid down this rule believed that this limitation would ensure satisfaction of the Golden Rule for everyone and put a brake on the entropy of such vicious cycles.
According to another theory, espoused by Jewish rabbis, the Hebrew actually implies that monetary compensation can be given in place of the eye, with the amount of the compensation to be the same regardless of whose eye was harmed (hence, "eye for an eye"). Unfortunately, given human nature in general, people didn't much listen (especially when "monetary compensation" simply led to unjust instances of Screw the Rules, I Have Money!), and as a result — as Mahatma Gandhi, a well-known nonviolence activist, is supposed to have put it — "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
Kind of makes you wish someone, in an attempt to counter this cancerous mutation of the Golden Rule, learned to Turn the Other Cheek or ask for (and give) Forgiveness, or at least just deliver a Restrained Revenge. But it rarely works, as chances are you'll be punished anyway (for extra salt in the wounds, the enemy in question, especially if a Jerkass who deserved it, will continue their misdeeds unhampered, continuing to ruin the lives of people, you still being one of them). Or you could just exterminate the opposing party until there's no one left to want revenge on you. But it rarely works, because there's always a survivor. Or everyone can agree to only take revenge against the wrongdoing individual and to not avenge those who deserved what they got, but Moral Myopia and Poor Communication Kills tend to get in the way. Or as Romeo and Juliet proposed, we can try The Power of Love. But this rarely works either, so...
Used poorly, this trope can come off as a False Dichotomy, suggesting that if someone kills your loved one then your options are to either kill their loved one or let the person who killed your loved one get away with it. In reality you can narrow your revenge only to the guilty party (i.e. if you kill my loved one then I'll kill you but spare your loved one). Of course then your enemy's loved ones might try Avenging the Villain. After all, if he was evil to you, it doesn't mean he may not have been loving to them.
See Best Served Cold, The Chain of Harm, Feuding Families, He Who Fights Monsters, Remember the Alamo!, Revenge Myopia, Roaring Rampage of Revenge, Then Let Me Be Evil, and You Killed My Father. Reciprocal altruism (and, indeed, friendship in general) is quite possibly the flip side of this coin. Sometimes overlaps with Chicken-and-Egg Paradox if there's no obvious reason for the cycle to have started in the first place.
Examples:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Films - Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Video Games
- Western Animation
- Real Life
- Big Finish Doctor Who: "Cold Vengeance": The Ice Warriors, defrosted 500 years after their war with the humans who settled the planet Enyo, seek revenge on their descendants, who don't even remember there was a war. The humans turn out to have been the aggressors, in equally misplaced vengeance for previous wars between humans and other groups of Ice Warriors.
- Doonesbury: The February 18, 2007 strip has an American soldier and an Iraqi soldier staking out a possible insurgent, with orders to capture him alive. However, the Iraqi soldier recognizes the insurgent and insists he must be killed, since a member of his family had killed a member of the soldier's family, and he is sworn to vengeance. When the American soldier asks when this happened, the Iraqi replies "1387".
American soldier: What is the MATTER with you people?!
- Cone Poem: "Evil Fucking Wizard" is sung from the perspective of a peasant who decides to confront and kill an evil wizard who's turned his chickens into rocks. After he finally kills the evil wizard, he decides to obtain the dead wizard's belongings and become an evil wizard himself, only to realize he's perpetuated a pointless cycle of revenge when he is eventually killed by a peasant he slighted by turning his pigs into stone.
With my final dying breath, I look over to the left
And I see that fucking peasant reaching for my wizard orb.
And as he ponders it with wonder, I realize my fatal blunder
For the evil wizard cycle will repeat forevermore! - Insane Clown Posse: Played straight in "Murder Go Round", which, contrary to popular belief, clearly isn't about a ride. It tells the story of a young hoodlum (played by Violent J) who is assaulted by a gang member, and decides to get him back, starting a gang of his own and killing his enemy and anybody who tries to avenge him. Eventually, he just starts killing people for the hell of it, including his best friend. It finally escalates to a gang war in which the hoodlum (running a street gang "fifty-five strong" and completely full of himself) is shot "twice in the forehead, twice in the back" and "twice in the eye", and only realizing in his dying moments how stupid and childish the whole endeavor was.
- Kimya Dawson: Subverted in "Hold My Hand." The narrator witnesses prolonged child abuse and neglect in two seperate families that a social worker either blatantly ignores or exacerbates, which the children suffer for. When she goes to the social worker to give her a piece of her mind, the woman mocks her for her supposed do-gooder attitude, to which the narrator responds that she'd like to kill her with a crowbar but won't because "the cycle of violence has to end somewhere."
- The Living Tombstone: The music video for "Cut The Cord" details this between two designers. It starts when one designer kicked the other, the protagonist, out, the protagonist then becomes their own up-and-coming designer getting touted as "The Next Big Thing" in a newspaper. The original designer gets jealous and sends some mannequin robots to sabatoge them by cutting up all their clothes. The protagonist then takes those cut up clothes and manages to make that the next fashion trend, then the protagonist makes their own mannequin robot army to fight them directly. After that fight the original designer's building is practically in ruins with broken robots all about, and the protagonist then makes an even bigger robot army to finish them off.
- Loudness: S.D.I. references this in the context of the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction. The Cycle Of Revenge is about to take the world into a final nuclear war.
- Tommy Sands: "There Were Roses" is based on a true incident experienced by the author. A Protestant was murdered, and a Catholic was killed in retaliation. The two had been close friends.
- X Japan: The Performance Video for Week End is this, combined with Bolivian Army Ending and Everybody's Dead, Dave — everyone dies in a chain of murders and suicides, all connected to the deaths preceding them. Yoshiki's wordplay about the "end of a life" being "the end of the world" in the lyrics matches this as well — the end of the life is the end of that person's world, and if the Cycle Of Revenge kicks in, a chain of murder and suicide only grows and expands...
- The Bible:
- God marked Cain after he killed Abel to prevent anyone from killing him. Years later his grandson killed someone in self-defense, possibly as Revenge by Proxy.
- The story of Samson, from the Book of Judges, consists mainly of a Cycle of Revenge: at one point, within a few verses, a Philistine commander claims "We just want to do to him what he did to us" and Samson claims "I just want to do to them what they did to me."
- Discussed in The New Testament, when Jesus, in the Sermon of the Mount, rejects the practice of revenge in favor of Turn the Other Cheek:
Jesus: You have heard that it was said, "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth." But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even gentiles do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
- The inverse idea is generally espoused by the New Testament writers: we should love and forgive others, because God loves and has forgiven us. (Matthew 5:38-5:48)
- The Book of Mormon: Both of the major civilizations (Nephites and Jaredites) fell due to this, with the people becoming "drunk with anger" and continually chasing revenge until they were dead.
- Older Than Feudalism: The House of Pelops in Classical Mythology. The Oresteia by Aeschylus was written in response to this legend. It concludes with Orestes and Athena breaking the cycle once and for all by inventing the trial by jury. The jury finds Orestes innocent of matricide because mothers aren't actually related to their kids, and in response Athena calls off the Furies and lets Orestes go.
- King Agamemnon kills a deer in a sacred grove and boasts he is the best hunter. Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, orders a sacrifice of him for such a disrespectful statement, making him kill his daughter Iphigenia. After doing so, the king gets killed by his wife, Iphigenia's mother. She in turn gets killed by her own son for killing his father.
- As usual with Greek myths, there are actually several explanations why Artemis demanded Iphigenia's sacrifice, including one that was because Agamemnon's father had failed to sacrifice the first lamb of his flock to her, while according to Aischylos it was because two eagles (who symbolized Agamemnon and his brother Menelaos) had torn a pregnant hare to pieces, which enraged the goddess. And in the Iliad, Iphigenia wasn't sacrificed at all (Agamemnon offers the hands of all his three daughters, including an Iphianassa — widely believed to be a variant name of Iphigenia — in marriage to Achilles), while according to Euripides she was saved at the last moment and transported to Tauris (on the Crimea) to become a priestess at the local temple to Artemis...
- The story is further complicated by Klytaimnestra (Agamemnon's queen) hooking up with Aigisthos, murderer of Agamemnon's father Atreus, who wanted to get revenge on Agamemnon for driving his father Thyestes (Atreus' brother) into exile from Mycenae. (Because of an oracle, Thyestes had fathered Aigisthos by raping his own daughter Pelopia, in order to avenge his other children whom Atreus had killed). Aigisthos and Klytaemnestra together killed Agamemnon and Klytaemnestra for good measure also killed Agamemnon's prisoner/concubine Cassandra of Troy.note
- And all that came about from a curse on the House of Atreus from a man named Myrtilus, who Pelops killed after Myrtilus helped him murder King Oenomaus and marry his daughter Hippodameia to seize his kingdom. Granted, Myrtilus tried to rape Hippodameia, but Pelops still reneged on his promise to give Myrtilus half the kingdom.
- Going back even further, it's been suggested that part of the curse on Pelops and his descendants comes from the hubris of his father Tantalos, who originally murdered Pelops and tried to serve him in a stew to the gods (the Greek gods, for all their deubachery, generally despised Human Sacrifice). And then there was the fact that Tantalos had stolen the food of the gods and given it to his friends, along with telling them the gods' secrets. Disproportionate Retribution much?
- The Odyssey: The trope pops up. Odysseus kills the suitors for revenge in abusing his house's hospitality, refusing any form of payment. Their families in turn blame Odysseus for wiping out another generation of the nobles of Ithaca (the first died during the Trojan War) and want revenge. It threatens to spiral into a civil war of revenge until Athena drops down to declare the feuding over and threatens divine retribution on any who violate her orders.
- A quote commonly attributed to Confucius advises "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
- Warhammer: The Dwarfs are in one of these as their natural state. In fact, they're capable of maintaining one without the other party trying to continue it. It works like this: someone does something to wrong them, so they write it down in the Book of Grudges and resolve to take bloody vengeance when they can. While doing so, the people they're attacking defend themselves, killing at least one dwarf. Well, that dwarf also has to be avenged. The dwarfish language has no word for 'forgiveness'.
- Warhammer 40,000: The Ultramarines/Word Bearers enmity is predicated on this. The Ultramarines, acting under the Emperor's direct orders, destroyed a city the Word Bearers had converted to a centre of Emperor-worship, which the Emperor was not a fan of. Years later, in the early stages of the Horus Heresy, the Word Bearers responded by attempting to wipe out the Ultramarines to the last man, mingling a greater objective (victory for Horus) with some good old-fashioned revenge. Since then, the two Legions have taken every available chance to murder each other, even after the Ultramarines were divided into largely independent Chapters - there's a standing order from Guilliman dating back to the destruction of Calth during the Heresy that the bloodline of Lorgar is to be utterly exterminated. A major factor in this is that the Word Bearers chose to launch their attack after falsely offering Guilliman a chance to make amends for destroying Monarchia, something he had always had reservations about.
- In Fiddler on the Roof, after receiving an edict of eviction, one of the villagers suggests "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", to which Tevye retorts, "Very good! Then the whole world will be blind and toothless!"
- The Marriage of Figaro is a bloodless variation of this — characters in an endless cycle of messing with each other's heads in revenge for what they did earlier in the show.
- "The Oresteia'', one of the oldest surviving plays, is about a set of interconnected cycles of revenge that stretch across three generations and involve multiple deities on different sides. In the end, Athena has to be brought in to sort it all out.
- Shakespeare:
- Hamlet: There's some of this. In the course of avenging his father, Hamlet ends up with Laertes after him for killing his father (which was, ironically enough, an accident). Though Laertes going after Hamlet wasn't simply because Polonius was killed, but rather because Ophelia committed suicide not long after, having gone bat-shit crazy upon hearing of her father's death.
- Romeo and Juliet: The Capulets and the Montagues alternately avenge every death that the opposing family caused. It's been going on for so long that the two warring families have forgotten exactly who started it and over what. In fact, it's gotten so bad that the local prince has decreed that the next time one side starts something, the guilty party will be put to death — not that he's able to enforce it as stringently as he'd likenote . Only the deaths of the original Star-Crossed Lovers are enough to get both families to snap out of it.
- Titus Andronicus is one long and extremely bloody Cycle of Revenge between the title character and Tamora, the Queen of the Goths. And no, it does not end well for either side.
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has revenge as one of its main themes. Here, Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford sent Sweeney to Australia and ruined his life and family. As such, Sweeney spends the whole musical seeking to get back at them. While he finally succeeds, he kills Mrs. Lovett when he finds out she lied to him about his wife Lucy, the Beggar Woman he just killed. And finally, Sweeney gets killed by Tobias "Toby" Ragg for his own murder of Pirelli earlier in the show.
- FreedomToons: "Rioting: Only Ok When We Do It!" shows Democrats and Republicans repeatedly resorting to violence in response to the other side's rioting while utterly refusing to condemn their own side until they finally destroy the Earth.
- Red vs. Blue: Invoked by Temple, in a desperate attempt save himself, after the Reds and Blues have defeated him and Tucker's about to Finish Him!, saying that if he does this, Temple's friends will just keep this going. Tucker simply asks "What friends?", as all his allies were either dead or captured at that point. Luckily for him, Carolina manages to talk Tucker out of killing him.
- Girl Genius: Played with by the cast and their Parental Substitutes: the cycle tries to roll on, and is promptly... not exactly broken, more like derailed.
- Homestuck: This is a central theme of the "Hivebent" arc, especially when it comes to Vriska and her dealings with Terezi, Tavros, and Aradia. Make Her Pay.
- In chronological order: Vriska cripples Tavros by knocking him off a cliff, Aradia sends ghosts to torment her, Vriska mind-controls Aradia's boyfriend into killing her, Terezi informs Doc Scratch about one of his items currently owned by Vriska — which he then explodes, blinding Vriska's special eye and severing an arm; Vriska then pulls a three-step mind-control reacharound to make Terezi stare into the sun and go blind. It all happens in immediate succession. Some time later, after Tavros, with whom everything started, has apparently forgiven her, Aradia (now a ghost inhabiting a robot) delivers a near-fatal beatdown to Vriska. After Vriska awakes as her dream-self, Terezi slaps her, ending the cycle.
- Some time later, Tavros decides that Vriska must be stopped (after more Kick the Dog moments from her) and attacks her, getting irrevocably killed in retaliation. Terezi finds his body and immediately deduces who did it, starting the cycle anew.
- The cycle is finally broken when Terezi kills Vriska to stop her from following a course of action that would doom all the other trolls.
- It is then revealed that the cycle began earlier than that. As in, during their ancestors' time.
- The Order of the Stick:
- The conflict between the Sapphire Guard (an order of Lawful Good Paladins) and the allegedly Always Chaotic Evil goblin races is a perfect example of this. The story makes it abundantly clear that both sides are at fault, but that the destruction of Azure City at the hands of Redcloak's hobgoblin horde is a direct consequence of the Azurites' arrogance in engaging in a preemptive genocidal crusade. For his part, Redcloak is only too happy to continue the cycle of atrocities.
- Vaarsuvius also gets some quality time with this trope in the arc with the vengeful black dragon and goes straight to the Final Solution to end it. Unfortunately, this comes at the price of owing his/her soul to some fiends who don't plan to wait for his/her death to collect, and s/he still gets hunted by agents of Tiamat, the goddess of vengeance and chromatic dragons, who is less than pleased about a full quarter of the black dragon population getting wiped out of existence thanks to V. Oh, and those "extreme steps"? They killed off a plot-relevant family of NPC guardians, leaving one of the Gates defenseless. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!.
- Pet Foolery: One comic deconstructs the cycle of revenge in that the pain inflicted during revenge is often more than the original pain inflicted, compounded by the victims' biased perception. This can easily lead to the cycle escalating something harmless into something bloody and wasteful. In the comic, Elven and Orcish scholars work out their history backwards to find the root cause of their 2,000 years of warfare, only to find out it all started with the Orc King pranking the Elf Queen into sitting on an egg.
- xkcd: "Mobius Battle" features a short comic in which one figure kicks a ball at another's head and laughs. The idea is that, since it works in mirror image too, it can be drawn on a transparent strip that can be formed into a Möbius stripnote , and then you can keep scrolling it forward until you're on the other side of the original stripnote and the role of the figures (based on which side they stand on) is reversed. This will go on for as long as you keep moving forward along the strip, with the figures forever kicking the ball at each other.
- The Blackrock Chronicles: First, Sjin attempts to steal from Duncan, who attacks Sjin in retaliation, leading to a massive Tekkit Server war that destroyed pretty much everyone's game. The plot of Rythian's series then involves him heading out to get revenge against both Duncan and Sjin. Duncan, fearing Rythian's warmongering, traps him in a forcefield and builds a nuke under his castle, while Sjin kidnaps their Dinosaur, and it all just escalates from there…
- Channel Awesome: The fake feud between The Nostalgia Critic and The Angry Video Game Nerd was like this at first as both countered perceived slights, before turning into a general hatred that culminated in a decisive final battle. Twice, actually. It's all a joke, so that much is deliberate. The feud has been settled and started up again twice as well, finally being settled for good (for now at least) in To Boldly Flee.
- Dream SMP: This is a recurring occurrence, as characters resort to more and more violent methods to seek retribution to those that have wronged them, which tends to result in wars and disasters that drag the entire server into the messes created.
- Early in the history of the server, Ponk pranked Sapnap and messed with his house for unknown reasons. This caused Sapnap to burn down Ponk's lemon tree in retaliation, where the fire spread to the point of almost destroying the entire tree. Enraged, Ponk allied himself with Alyssa and dragged Tommy and Tubbo, who had just joined the server, into the conflict. This ultimately cultivated into a series of skirmishes that led to Dream stealing Tommy's music discs Cat and Mellohi, kicking off the Disc Saga (which spanned over six months overall) and shaping Dream and Tommy's interactions and relationship with each other for the rest of the server's history.
- After Sapnap accidentally kills Niki's fox Fungi, Fundy, who gifted her the fox, encourages her to kill Sapnap's pet fox Skechers in revenge, despite Niki initially accepting Sapnap's apology for the animal murder. Sapnap then retaliated by killing the Enderman that lived in Fundy's house, Leonard, and took and burned the diamond block on Fungi's grave. This eventually escalates into the First Pet War.
- Technoblade setting off two Withers to destroy the ruins of L'Manburg during the Manburg-Pogtopia War encouraged the Butcher Army to go after and execute him (among many other factors). After Techno survives and escapes the execution (with help from Dream), he vows revenge and teams up with Dream to nuke L'Manburg to bedrock in the Doomsday War, causing multiple members of the server to lose their homes and pets, and Jack Manifold to lose his last canon life (though he brings himself Back from the Dead eventually).
- Later in "Las Nevadas" Episode 4, when Quackity tries to teach Slimecicle "Seek successful revenge because if you fail, the consequences are going to be bitter", Slime rebounds on him, talking about the destructive nature of the Cycle of Revenge he has observed while being Really 700 Years Old and asking him if it was worth it. Having developed a Revenge Before Reason-esque mentality for a period of time, Quackity eventually admits that it's not, and is heavily implied to have taken this reflection to heart after their conversation, though it doesn't take until the series finale and a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for this to sink in.
- Past Life SMP: Due to a rule amendment explicitly allowing players inflicted with the Boogeyman cursenote to remain loyal to their factions, any Boogeyman kill can quickly escalate into revenge-killings by their victim's allies, particularly if they are also inflicted with the curse. On Day 2, Scott kills Jimmy as the Boogeyman, which leads to Jimmy's ally Joel killing him shortly afterwards as he's also a Boogeyman… which is immediately followed by Scott's ally Etho (not cursed) killing Joel in revenge as well.
- Whateley Universe: In the second Jobe story, Jobe and Counterpoint get into a cycle of revenge at Superhero School Whateley Academy. Jobe wins a sparring match in aikido class, but he does it with poisons (Jobe starts the story with human strength and speed, just talent as a bio-devisor, while Counterpoint has strength, speed, a telekinetic shield, and any other powers he wants to copy). Counterpoint can't let it go, since he's some sort of incarnation of Ares. He gets some muscle to help him pound Jobe. Jobe can't let it go, since he's the crown prince of Karedonia (his father is a supervillain) and has obligations to make sure people know he can't be pushed around. At the end of the story, they are both in the hospital, and at least one of them might be hospitalized for a long time. And they haven't given up their grudges.