Johnny: I got shitty hearing.
Tony: [shoots Johnny in the kneecap] Now you got a shitty leg!
Johnny: [stabs Tony in the foot] So do you!
Tony: [shoots Johnny in the kneecap] Now you got a shitty leg!
Johnny: [stabs Tony in the foot] So do you!
Ever heard the phrase "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"? Well, sometimes this can be taken a bit more literally in fiction.
This trope is when a character is injured in a way similar or identical to how they injured another character. This usually occurs in one of these ways:
- A character inflicts an injury similar to one the other had inflicted during a fight or some other previous encounter in the story.
- The character avenges a third party by injuring their victimizer in a way similar to how the victimizer injured them.
- Through Laser-Guided Karma, a character winds up being injured in a way similar to how they injured another.
Karmic Death is the trope's logical extreme, whereby a character is killed either in the same way they injured or killed another, or as a result of their malicious action(s).
Sub-Trope of A Taste of Their Own Medicine and Laser-Guided Karma. Can sometimes overlap with the darker variant of Makes Us Even. Overlaps with Karmic Disability if the injury cripples someone. Compare Attack Reflector and Synchronization, which inflict the attack near-instantaneously on the original perpetrator. See also Symbolic Mutilation, which describes an injury which metaphorically fits some aspect of the character's personality or actions. These types of injuries are prime for Climactic Maiming.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bleach: Ichigo has a tendency to do this to his opponents who injured his friends. When Yammy and Ulquiorra first arrive in the World of the Living, Yammy dismembers Sado's armored right arm with no effort. Ichigo arrives at the scene, activates his Bankai immediately and cuts off Yammy's right arm effortlessly after confirming that Yammy was responsible for Sado's lost arm. In Hueco Mundo, on the rooftop of Las Noches, Ulquiorra rips off Ishida's left arm. The fully Hollowfied Ichigo, who acts out of instinct, cuts off Ulquiorra's left arm. Since this is Bleach, where losing limbs is rarely permanent, all four get better.
- My Hero Academia: A variation as the initial injury was due to indirect action. When he was a small child, Shoto Todoroki received a burn scar from his mother, who had a mental breakdown from the abuse of his father, Endeavor. In a fight with a High End Nomu, Endeavor receives a scar in the same place. Despite being worried about him possibly being killed on TV, Todoroki doesn't hesitate to make his dad suffer the irony that he will now always have a scar that's very similar to his, via one extremely sarcastic comment:
Todoroki: That's a nice scar you've got there. [slurps soba as loudly as possible]
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Mr. Ishtar was a horrid father whose cruel treatment of his son Marik included painfully carving the inscriptions of the Pharaoh's tomb onto his son's back as part of a ritual. When Marik's evil Split Personality emerged for the first time, he used the Millennium Rod to skin his father alive before killing him.
- Zatch Bell!: A variant in the battle between Rops & Apollo and Zeon & Dufoux. At one point, Apollo uses his body as a shield to protect Rops from a lightning spell, which burns his left shoulder. When Dufoux enters the fray, he effortlessly weaves around every attack Rops throws at him, except for one that he deliberately allows to strike his own left shoulder, bleeding badly but unflinching. Dufoux does it to implicitly emphasize to Apollo that, all other things equal, he and Zeon are just that much better.
Comic Books
- Batman:
- Batman: Black and White: In "Broken Nose", Alfred treats Bruce for the first broken nose he receives during his career as Batman. Bruce grumpily comments that he was beaten by Mabuse, a criminal in a self-made suit of armor (or, to use Batman's description, "a geek in a trash can"). After Alfred patches up both the wound and Bruce's ego, the Dark Knight tracks Mabuse down again, overpowers him, and, after the villain has surrendered, breaks his nose as well.
- Batman (Tom King): Bane, who was already famous for breaking Batman's back once, does it a second time in #10. Three issues later, Bane gets a taste of his own medicine, courtesy of Catwoman.
- Detective Comics: In issue #741, the Joker murders Sarah Gordon, Jim Gordon's second wife. Jim shoots the Joker in the kneecap, prompting the clown to jokingly comment that Jim has crippled him the same way the Joker crippled Barbara Gordon.
- Marvel Universe:
- New Warriors: The origin of Night Thrasher and Midnight's Fire's enmity has Fire slashing Night Thrasher across the face as revenge for getting the latter's sister shot and crippled. When they fight in the present, Thrasher slashes Midnight's Fire across the face in return.
- Wolverine: Cyber, one of Wolverine's enemies, once ripped out his eye, an act which left the Canadian mutant with a great fear of Cyber. Eventually, Logan overcomes his fear of Cyber and gets his revenge by ripping out the latter's eye.
Fan Fiction
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Ichi a.k.a. Eldest Brother, the middle head of Ghidorah, suffers a karmic injury. He was responsible for viciously causing Vivienne's first death and founding her post-revival PTSD by deliberately swallowing her alive during Ghidorah's awakening in Antarctica, and in the Final Battle at the climax, Ichi gets force-fed a "bunker-buster" bomb which blows up his neck from the inside-out.
- Fairy May Cry: Erza stabs Arkham in the leg, just as he did to his own daughter Lady.
- Forever Red: The Novel
: Andros cuts off Steelon's legs as revenge for Steelon crushing Ashley's spine and costing her the ability to walk.
- Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily: Grace Monroe stabbed an innocent denizen in the back of the head with her knife and gave no fucks about it. Two stories later in Infinity Train: Voyage of Wisteria, her death is by the hands of a denizen stabbing her (in the stomach).
- The Mountain and the Wolf: The Wolf repeatedly, but unintentionally, inflicts Karmic Injuries on his enemies. Justified since he's sacrificing them to the Chaos gods (of rage, hedonism, betrayal, and decay respectively) and tries to make the victim's death match the intended god:
- The Mountain has his skull burst as he did to Elia Martell.
- Ramsay Bolton is flayed alive as his House is famous for, and emasculated as he did to Theon.
- Petyr Baelish is (literally and figuratively) backstabbed after being told he'd be spared.
- Euron Greyjoy is silenced not by ripping his tongue out as he did to his crew but by being held underwater until he drowns.
- The (zombified) Mountain gets an eye stabbed, just as it had gouged out one of Sandor's eyes.
- Stormwolf Adventures:
- Kylo realizes that to really earn Rey's trust he has to put her happiness before his, so he acts like Finn and stalls a Grim Reaper to give her time. As a result, the Reaper does to him what he did to Finn, slashing his back once pressured too much.
- Kor cuts off Jannah's right hand, so Finn cuts off his.
Films — Animation
- Coraline: The "Other Mother", who claims children's souls for her to eat by sewing buttons into their eyes, has her own eye-buttons (which, unlike the buttons she puts in her victims, are evidently her real eyes) forcibly torn out at the climax courtesy of the Cat.
- How to Train Your Dragon (2010): Early in the movie, Hiccup's dragon snare trap disables Toothless by damaging his left tail fin, requiring Hiccup to invent a device to help him fly again. At the end of the movie, Toothless saves "most of" Hiccup from dragon fire, but he loses his left foot and part of his leg and requires a prosthetic of his own. This shot in particular highlights the parallels. In How to Train Your Dragon 2, Hiccup (teasingly) suggests Toothless did it on purpose:
Hiccup: Right, bud? You couldn’t save all of me, could you? You just had to make it even. So, peg leg!
- The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Early on, SpongeBob accidentally steps on Plankton. Later, when SpongeBob and Patrick run into Dennis, the hitman sent by Plankton, he tells them that "for some reason Plankton wanted me to step on you." He's about to do just that when Dennis gets stepped on himself by the Greater-Scope Villain, the Cyclops from Shell City (who appears to have done so accidentally as well).
Films — Live-Action
- Battle Royale: In the beginning flashback of the film, Nobu slashes his teacher, Kitano, in the rear, causing him to quit his job. During the program, Kitano gets to exact his revenge by slashing Nobu when he tries to attack Kitano.
- Daredevil (2003): During their fight, Bullseye impales Elektra's hand with her own sai. Daredevil defeats Bullseye and avenges Elektra by maneuvering the assassin's hands into the path of a sniper's bullet, damaging them severely. A post-credits scene shows Bullseye is still able to use his fingers to throw a syringe at a fly that's bothering him while he's hospitalized.
- The Drama: Emma describes blood pouring from her ear while she was practising to shoot up her school, which overlaps in the Karmic Disability of her deafness.
- Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire: When Skar King first meets Kong, he sizes Kong up and notices his prosthetic tooth. He laughs at it and forces all his guards and slaves to laugh along with him. During the Final Battle, Kong sucker punches Skar King, dislodging one of his teeth. Kong then takes the opportunity to have a chuckle at the Laser-Guided Karma.
- The Killer (1989): The events that led to Ah Jong going on his last job and Wong Hoi turning against him began when Ah Jong accidentally blinded Jenny with the muzzle flash of his gun during the opening shootout. In the finale, Wong Hoi shoots Ah Jong in the eyes.
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park: Originally, the baby Tyrannosaurus' broken leg was going to caused by Ludlow stumbling drunk and tripping onto the infant, but it ended up being a Deleted Scene. This would've set up the baby's father snapping Ludlow's leg in the climax, softening him up for the baby to teach it how to hunt live prey.
- The Princess Bride: When Inigo finally catches up with Count Rugen, before the coup de grâce, Inigo slashes Rugen's cheeks the same way Rugen did to him as a child. Before that, Rugen gets a couple of nonlethal stabs in from Inigo deflecting his sword, and Inigo retaliates and stabs Rugen in the same places less than a minute later.
- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: During their final battle, the Sheriff slashes Robin across the chin as payback for the scar on the cheek Robin gave him earlier.
- Star Wars:
- Luke Skywalker loses his right hand during his lightsaber duel with Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. In Return of the Jedi, Luke returns the favor by cutting off Vader's right hand during their rematch in the emperor's throne room.
- Exaggerated between Anakin Skywalker and Count Dooku. In Attack of the Clones, Dooku cuts off Anakin's arm during their duel. In their rematch in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin cuts off both of Dooku's hands before decapitating him.
- Thank You for Smoking: The film adaptation has a version of this that nearly leads to a Karmic Death: Nick Naylor gets kidnapped, and as retribution for his stalwart lobbying for the tobacco company, gets countless nicotine patches put on him to make him overdose. Miraculously (and ironically), Nick survives thanks to having built up resistance from a lifetime of smoking. Where karma ends up coming into play is that regardless, this gives him nicotine hypersensitivity that forces him to quit smoking or risk immediate death, forcing him to confront the lies he sells to people on smoking being a choice, consciously dodging around the fact that his actions are indirectly pushing tobacco onto them.
- Wrath of Man: When Hargreaves, the Villain Protagonist finally encounters the man who murdered his son, he tells him the list of bullet wounds the man inflicted on his son and shoots him in those exact spots before leaving him to die slowly.
Literature
- The Horse and His Boy: A lion attacks Aravis and, unusually, only claws her back instead of mauling her. Aslan later explains that it was his doing: Aravis had drugged a slave to escape her family, and Aravis' injuries match the beating the slave got for falling asleep.
Aslan: You needed to know what it felt like.
- In the Ranger's Apprentice book Erak's Ransom, one of the villains, Yusil, sends some of Selethan's party for whom he has no use into the desert with too little water and no boots to protect their feet. After he and the cruel Tualaghi raiders he leads are defeated, Selethan remembers and insists the captured raiders walk without boots (though, being one of the heroes, he gives them enough water).
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Downplayed with Jaime Lannister: at the start of the series, Jaime pushes Bran Stark off a ledge, rendering him paraplegic. Later on, Jaime also suffers an injury that leaves him disabled for life, albeit from the loss of his hand rather than his legs.
- Lord Tywin Lannister conspires with House Frey to orchestrate the downfall of House Stark at the Red Wedding, which leads to Robb Stark being fatally shot with numerous arrows and crossbow bolts fired at him by the Frey henchmen. Tywin later dies from being shot by a crossbow fired by his son Tyrion, and right in the groin while on the toilet.
- Twig: Baron Richmond stabs Sy in the eye when they first meet. "In Sheep's Clothing" has Sy get his revenge by using poison stored within that very same eye to paralyze him, before giving him an overdose of Wyvern via an injection right through the eye.
Live-Action TV
- The A-Team: In "It's a Desert Out There", when the Scorpions fall into the trap the A-Team laid for them, Hannibal explicitly mentions their leader punching Max and punches him in the same place.
- One episode of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction features a manager of a hack comic who proved to be funnier than his client. After an accident his client caused, one of the manager's legs had to be amputated. In spite of this, the man persevered as a successful comic, but not before his client dumped him and even mocked his injury, saying that he can be a "sit-down comic". Sometime later, the former client has run into a stroke of bad luck, including unexplained, severe leg pain that eventually led to said leg being amputated.
- The Boys (2019): "The Instant White-Hot Wild" has two examples.
- During the climactic fight, Maeve has her eye gouged out by Homelander, who had previously (in "Good For the Soul") mentioned a mission in Albany where she saved a girl from her violent father by flicking a pen into his eyeball.
- Maeve stabs Homelander in the ear, hearkening back to when he ruptured the eardrums of a blind superhero who auditioned for a spot on The Seven in "The Big Ride".
Video Games
- Final Fantasy VIII: The opening cutscene depicts a duel between Squall and Seifer. At the duel's conclusion, Seifer inflicts a small cut on Squall's face above the latter's nose, only for Squall to strike Seifer in a similar spot in return.
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: The Jetstream DLC reveals that this is how Sam Rodrigues lost his arm, requiring him to get a cybernetic replacement. During their fight, Sam manages to slice off Senator Armstrong's arm. Thanks to his Nanomachines, Armstrong isn't deterred by this at all and simply uses the sharpened edge of his stump to impale Sam's arm. To add insult to injury, Armstrong simply reattaches his own arm, an option Sam doesn't have.
- Mortal Kombat 9: Ermac destroys Jax's arms in the game's story mode, requiring the Special Forces major to get cybernetic replacements. While Jax doesn't get to maim Ermac in story mode, a player can inflict a Karmic Injury on Ermac during a match using either Jax or Sheeva whose fatalities involve ripping off the opponents' arms.
- Saints Row 1: Tanya Winters and Anthony "Big Tony" Green have taken Johnny Gat and the Player Character captive. Johnny doesn't hesitate to openly insult Tanya and Tony to their faces, despite Tony furiously ordering him to shut up. Tony promptly punishes Johnny by unloading a shotgun into his left knee, whereupon Johnny retaliates by sticking a knife into Tony's foot.
Web Animation
- MoniRobo: In "My brother's boss bullied him just because he was in a wheelchair", the Professor concocts a plan to get back at Osamu by planting a single-use shock cushion on his chair in revenge for pushing Wataru down the stairs. It paralyzed him from the waist down for one month, but he used it as an excuse to slack off at work rather than to understand life from Wataru's perspective as a paraplegic man. When the CEO fired Osamu for his laziness once the effect wore off, he tried to push Wataru off the stairs once more, but he turned the tables on the bastard by using the brakes fitted into his wheelchair by the Professor, causing him to fall down the stairs and end up paraplegic for real.
- Revenge Films: While the antagonist is not the one causing the injury, stories where they bully the protagonist for having a physical disability may have them suffer the same handicap at the end as punishment.
- "Passed out after falling while pregnant, waking up in hospital…": Melanie's mother-in-law bullied and shamed her for having a prosthetic leg and even tricked her into miscarrying because she didn't want a disabled grandchild like her, but when her son Skyler forced her to pay compensation the hag started overeating until she developed diabetes, causing her to lose a leg, just like the daughter-in-law she bullied.
- "When I got injured on the job and became unemployed, my wife left me for a musician": After her musician boyfriend lost his contract with a major label because of his five-timing and she became a pariah for leaving the OP because of being disabled from a work injury, Karen is last seen walking in crutches and a cast on one of her legs, effectively becoming "useless" as she thought her husband was. To add to the irony, Karen falls over from seeing him strolling with his new girlfriend.
- "Passed out after falling while pregnant, waking up in hospital…"
Webcomics
- Goblins: When Thaco was a prisoner of Dellyn Goblinslayer, Dellyn cut off one of Thaco's ears and had it framed as a trophy. When Thaco defeats Dellyn in a duel and has him at his mercy, he cuts off Dellyn's ear and throws it away in a display of both Cruel Mercy and But for Me, It Was Tuesday.
- I Will Not Return To My Family: Diana frames Letitia of wounding her wrist as a means to kick her out of the family, even gloating as she reveals this plan to Irene. Several chapters later, Diana trips on the stairs and injured her wrist for real.
Western Animation
- Arthur: In "Arthur's Big Hit", Arthur punches D.W. in the arm because she broke his toy airplane despite being told not to. Later in that episode, Binky punches Arthur in the face, leading to Arthur learning the episode's aesop about violence.
- Darkwing Duck: Invoked by Darkwing in "Just Us Justice Ducks". While he's confronting Bushroot and Liquidator, Stegmutt turns up, and Liquidator convinces him they're playing "let's pretend" and Darkwing is on fire. Bushroot enthusiastically goes along with it, telling Stegmutt to "put out the Darkwing", which leads to Darkwing being smashed vigorously into the ground several times. During the final confrontation with the Fearsome Five, Stegmutt grabs Bushroot, but is at a loss about what to do next, given that he's never fought a supervillain before. Three guesses what Darkwing suggests he do, and the first two don't count.
Darkwing: It's easy, Stegmutt. Let's pretend Mr. Bushroot is on fire!
Bushroot: [eyes widening] Uh oh! - The Fairly OddParents!: In "Mr. Right!", Francis tries picking on Timmy and gets met with a scorpion sting, multiple stings from a wasps nest, and a large pro wrestler (from previous episodes) who all proceed to give him a beating. However Francis gets his revenge at the end when he knocks on Timmy's door and shows up with a jar of scorpions, a wasps nest, and his new girlfriend, the same wrestler who got turned female due to Timmy's past wishes. Cue beatdown.
- Family Guy: "Joe's Revenge" reveals that Joe lost his ability to walk when he was shot multiple times in the legs by a criminal named Bobby Briggs. Near the end of the episode, Joe returns the favour by shooting Briggs in the legs. However, one of Joe's shots hit a femoral artery, causing Briggs to bleed to death.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Moral Decay", Buttercup, planning to save up for a new punching bag, learns after accidentally knocking one of Bubbles's teeth out that she can get money from the tooth fairy, and starts knocking villains' teeth out. She builds up an impressive stash of dollar coins, but after one day of no crime, she becomes too impatient and starts breaking their teeth unprovoked. Her sisters and the villains all agree it shouldn't be like this, and she needs to be taught a lesson. The two girls then send Buttercup to the museum so that the villains can beat the crap out of her. The next scene at the dentist office reveals that she has lost a good chunk of her teeth from the beating, not to mention the Professor found her stash and used it to pay her dental bills.
Buttercup: [frightened] Uh, girls, uh... a little help here?
Blossom: Sorry, Buttercup, you know what they say; an eye for an eye...
Bubbles: [lisping] And a tooth for a tooth! - Seis Manos: As a child, Silencio had his tongue cut out by El Balde who also killed Silencio's parents. The adult Silencio gets his revenge by shoving a burning stick through El Balde's mouth before killing him by shoving his face into a coal fire.
- The Simpsons: Discussed in "Black Eyed, Please". Ned punches Homer in the eye, but then feels guilty, so he tries to invoke it by convincing Homer to hit him back. Homer, however, refuses in order to be the "better man".
- Skull Island (2023): During the Final Battle, Kong gouges out half of the Big Bad the Kraken's eyes by stabbing it with the shipwreck of the Once Upon a Maritime — the ship which the Kraken sunk while sadistically massacring the crew For the Evulz in the series' premiere.