Well, [Wanda] finally got the nerve to file for divorce;
She let the law take it from there
But Earl walked right through that restraining order
And put her in intensive care.
Right away Mary Anne flew in from Atlanta
On a red eye midnight flight
She held Wanda's hand and they worked out a plan,
And it didn't take 'em long to decide...
That Earl had to die.
She let the law take it from there
But Earl walked right through that restraining order
And put her in intensive care.
Right away Mary Anne flew in from Atlanta
On a red eye midnight flight
She held Wanda's hand and they worked out a plan,
And it didn't take 'em long to decide...
That Earl had to die.
— The Chicks, "Goodbye Earl"
Maybe he cheated on all of them and flirted with their mothers for good measure. Maybe he's a rapist needing some justice that the law can't or won't provide. Maybe he's just a Jerkass, and the girls have all had enough of him. Whatever he did or may be planning on doing, these ladies won't let him get away with it. They unite, and, with The Power of Sisterhood, bring this man down.
Results may vary, depending on how sympathetic the man in the equation is. If he turns out to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, expect the revenge scheme to be portrayed negatively, or at least crossing a line. If he turns out to be an unrepentant scumbag, however, this revenge will be just what he deserves — and more.
No Real Life Examples, Please! Compare Wife-Basher Basher; I'm a Man; I Can't Help It; Good Adultery, Bad Adultery; Domestic Abuse, and Revenge Against Men. Can sometimes result in an Alliance of Revenge. Subtrope to The Power of Sisterhood, a bond between women based on concerns, shared experiences, and support used to overcome adversity and hardship.
Examples:
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Anime And Manga
- In Aggretsuko, after Retsuko finally opens up to Washimi and Goro about her frustrations with Director Ton, Washimi uses her position as the assistant to the boss to get Ton reprimanded.
- In Dandadan, during the Kozuka Knives Arc, a high school girl named Kouki is blackmailed by Coach Murakami, who obtained an exploitative photo of her, into attacking Momo Ayase for her psychic powers. Momo and friends learn of her plight and offer to help her which leads to Aira and Rin taking part to rescue Kouki when Murakami leads them into a trap at school. They even get an unofficial helper with local teacher Miss Adachi who's being exploited by Murakami to financially support her ill mother. She went along and proves instrumental in stripping the perverted pig of his powers.
- In Sailor Moon, the girls rally together to take down Jadeite not only since he's been stealing energy from the public but also for making sexist comments about women. The episode is appropriately titled Girls Unite! The End of Jadeite.
- In SPY×FAMILY, this gets played for laughs in a Spy Wars episode, where Bondman promises love and a happy life to every woman he encounters, be they his long-term allies, random thugs that try to harm him, or even the daughter of the Big Bad. They all join him until it's a harem, but end up realizing that he won't commit to any one of them, so they bond together and beat the snot out of him for stringing them along.
Comic Books
- Volume 4 of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen pits Mina Murray and currently female Orlando, and their new partner Emma Night, against the misogynistic, sexually predatory James Bond.
- In The Order (2007), the Black Dahlias were originally a girl gang devoted to beating up pimps and rapists in order to protect women. After one of their former members, Mulholland, became a member of the Order, they became dedicated to hunting down and killing members of the Order.
- The Pro has the titular prostitute and later superhero get revenge on an evil client by organizing a conga line of fellow prostitutes, each wielding a comically oversized dildo or other angular object far too large to fit in his rectum.
- The Punisher MAX:
- A moral inversion in the Widowmaker arc, where the widows of several criminals killed by Frank team up in order to avenge their husbands. It almost works, but it turns out a woman (the sister of one of the widows) had survived their attempt to murder her and has come back for her own revenge.
- One arc has Frank bust a Snuff Film ring where the star splits the unfortunate girls open with his Gag Penis. After Frank neutralizes him, the surviving girls fall on him with a vengeance.
- Scott Pilgrim: Downplayed. In Vol. 6, several Ramonas gang up against Gideon, although they technically don't fight him. Only one Ramona does, and it's ''the'' Ramona.
Fan Works
- The Discworld of A.A. Pessimal sees a neologism added to the impressive lexicon used by Assassins as a euphemism for "murder". A team of Lady Assassins has arisen who are perfectly happy to accept professional contracts and to bank the money afterwards. Except that they really don't give a stuff about the official reason for taking out the contract. The Marriage Guidance Counsellors will take a contract if the client is known to be a rapist, an abusive husband, a child molester, or a wife-beater. Their unique form of "marriage guidance" adds a lot of job satisfaction to their careers as well as leaving the world a little bit cleaner afterwards.
Films — Live-Action
- The film 9 to 5 is all about this. The three women plot to harm Dabney Coleman's character but do a feminist Heel–Face Turn in front of his boss to make him look better.
- In Act of Vengeance, five victims of the same Serial Rapist meet during a lineup at the police station. Deciding that Police Are Useless, they team up to initially start warning other women, and then move to attacking sexual predators and then to hunting the rapist who attacked them.
- Every version of Black Christmas is about a sorority that has to take down a creepy, murderous stalker. The Black Christmas (2019) in particular was advertised with the sisters actively taking up arms against their tormentor.
- Death Proof's main villain is Stuntman Mike, a bastard of a Serial Killer who murders women by means of his "death proof" car. After the first group of girls are killed off this way, a second, more badass group of girls band together to take revenge on him and ultimately take the bastard down.
- The Hairy Bird: In 1963, a group of students at an all-girls school hatch a plot to get a lecherous male teacher fired.
- In the Halloween segment of the anthology movie Holidays, a trio of porn actresses who are sick of their Bad Boss' mistreatment of them take creative revenge on him.
- Hustlers is about a group of strippers who, struggling financially after the 2008 recession, decide to team up and form a hustle drugging clients and stealing from them. They explicitly target corrupt Wall Street traders, rapists, and garden variety douchebags. This moves into Deconstruction when a sympathetic man with an autistic son is Ramona's latest victim, leaving Destiny disgusted with her. In the present-day portions, Destiny says that what they did was wrong, despite their sympathetic reasons.
- John Tucker Must Die: As a result of Jerk Jock John Tucker having three girlfriends at once without any of them knowing, the three of them team up with the protagonist Kate so she can pretend to fall in love with him and break his heart. It backfires when she really does fall in love with him but still goes through with the plan anyway to help her new friends get their revenge.
- The Other Woman (2014): A woman discovers that the man she's dating is not only married but is seeing a second woman on the side. The three women get together to get revenge on the guy, especially after finding out that he's setting up his wife to take the fall for his shady business dealings.
- In Switch, three ex-lovers of Steve Brooks team up to kill him at the beginning. Then he comes back from Heaven as a woman.
Literature
- The Fixfire gang of Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang are a Five-Girl Band punishing sexual harassers in their neighbourhood.
- The Girl on the Train: It's revealed that Tom is the murderer of Megan, with whom he'd been cheating on his wife Anna and after he'd spent years gaslighting Rachel. The two of them murder him in the house, Anna's testimony exonerating Rachel of any wrongdoing (as Tom was trying to kill her).
- In the climax of Speak, the protagonist Melinda finds herself facing off against the senior Jerk Jock who had raped her before the start of the school year trying to attack her again as retribution for indirectly exposing him as a predator. This time, however, she's able to fight back and manages to scream loudly enough to summon the girls' lacrosse team, who bust the door open and fight him off.
- Gender flipped in That Was Then... This Is Now. Angela recruits a boy to beat Ponyboy up after he rejects her advances, which results in Mark getting a bottle cracked over his head. Mark and Bryon team up to get revenge by first getting her drunk and then cutting off all her hair while she's passed out.
Live-Action TV
- 8 Simple Rules has a non-violent version. Bridget is being hit on as a lifeguard by a Handsome Lech (who is at least a decade older; she's seventeen) and summons three little swimmers who look up to her to tell him to back off.
- The first episode of Agent Carter has Peggy seeing an obnoxious customer harassing her new friend Angie at the diner the latter works at. She physically threatens him into finding a new place to eat and leaving Angie a generous tip.
- In American Horror Story: Freak Show a young woman named Pepper is physically turned into a "freak" by her own father after he discovers her to be in a relationship with Paul the Illustrated Seal. Feeling sympathy and outrage for her tragedy, Desiree Dupree rallies her and the other freak women (Legless Suzi and Amazon Eve) to capture her abusive father so they can tar and feather him.
- In Alta Mar, Clara and Natalia team up against Natalia's husband Anibal, who repeatedly abuses Natalia and rapes Clara. First, Natalia poisons Anibal, but he discovers it before the poison takes effect and attacks her. Clara rushes to help Natalia, and as they fight him off, they end up killing him. Deconstructed brutally: as the ship's detective finds them out, the level-headed and cynical Natalia pays him for silence and puts the blame solely on Clara, saying the latter had a consensual affair with Anibal and murdered him when he refused to continue it. As even Clara’s boyfriend is taken in and dumps her, Clara kills herself.
- An episode of Cold Case, "Justice", featured Serial Rapist Mike Delaney being cornered by his victims. However, it was the younger brother of one of them who killed him. They had Mike dead to rights with a revolver, but he managed to fake being afraid so well that they decided he was Not Worth Killing.
- There's a CSI: NY episode where the Victims of the Week turn out to be rapists who dodged conviction. The perps turn out to be a small team of women, including a lawyer who used to defend men like this in court, going vigilante. There are many moments throughout the episode where the CSIs question if they should even be going after them.
- In a Clip Show episode of Due South, the Asshole Victim is targeted by his wife and the three women he's cheating on her with (they all go to the same gym).
- Subverted in Friends when Rachel and her friend Mindy discover that Rachel's former fiancé has been two-timing them both. They unite to get back at him, but Mindy eventually can't go through with it, and the episode ends with her and Barry attempting to repair their relationship. Rachel ends up a bridesmaid at their wedding, though they eventually divorce off-screen.
- House of Anubis: The aptly named "Anubis Sisterhood" was a group made for the girls of the house to overcome their problems, especially male-related ones, and have girl time. So, when it was revealed that Jerome had cheated on Mara with Willow, they, along with Joy, worked together under the name of the sisterhood to get their revenge on him. First, they simply humiliate him, but Mara insists on more punishment and makes Joy pretend to love him in order to break his heart later on. Ultimately ends up a bad thing; Jerome, having truly fallen for Joy, is utterly crushed when he hears this, and Joy herself had become the mask, ending up crushed as well.
- In one Murder, She Wrote episode, the most likely suspects for murdering the asshole are his wife, who he's cheating on, and the other woman, who he's using. It's not until Jessica sees a picture of them as friends before he came between them that she realises they did it together.
- The Pact: The main women are going for this when they drunkenly prank Jack after they prevent him from trying to rape Tish at the work party. They weren't expecting Tamsin to kill him.
- In the first-season finale of Preacher (2016), having learned that God has abandoned the Earth and they are all probably going to Hell anyway, the preteen girls of Annville all team up to castrate and murder the pedophile bus driver.
- Veronica Mars: Deconstructed in the third season. A recurring subplot during the Hearst College Rapist case involves Straw Feminist Sinister Sorority Lilith House, who take umbrage with the Pi Sigma Sigma Fiendish Fraternity (for their sexually objectifying Wacky Fratboy Hijinx; Lilith House strongly suspects that the rapist is a PiSig, and that the frat is covering for him) and a campus humour magazine (which tends towards Vulgar Humor and Black Comedy Rape). While they initially try to go through the administration to get these groups disbanded, when that fails they invoke (or attempt to invoke) this trope: first by sexually violating the Pi Sigma Sigma president with a plastic egg, and next by faking the rape of one of their members and accusing the magazine of inspiring it. Veronica tears them a new one, pointing out that they haven't actually changed anything they cared about, they contributed to the problem by committing a sexual assault, wasted resources that could have been investigating the actual rapist, and (by publicly faking a rape case) made it less likely that genuine victims will be believed.
Music
- The Chicks gave us "Goodbye Earl" (back when they were still the Dixie Chicks), a Murder Ballad about a woman killing her abusive husband with help from her childhood friend.
- In the music video of "Ugly Heart" by G.R.L., the five singers are arrested at a tattoo parlor. At the end of the song, which is about a beautiful man who romantically wronged one or more women, it's revealed that they've tattooed the word "ugly" on his face multiple times.
- Carrie Underwood has the Revenge Ballad "Two Black Cadillacs", where two women on opposite ends of a cheating triangle join forces to get rid of the guy who was lying to the both of them, only meeting face to face at his funeral after the deed is done.
Professional Wrestling
- Dean Malenko had an arrogant sleaze gimmick in 1999 and ended up facing Ivory and Jacqueline in a handicap match to get his comeuppance.
- Santino Marella was acting like a chauvinist and mistreating his girlfriend Maria for wanting to pose for Playboy. This eventually culminated in the entire female roster coming down to the ring to beat him up.
- Summer Rae and Layla had a 2014 feud after Fandango dumped Summer as his partner and replaced her with Layla. After weeks of Cat Fights and squabbles over him, they ultimately decided to team up and form a tag team called the Slayers. They would interfere in his matches for weeks, causing him losses.
Theatre
- In the Soviet television play based on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Ali Baba's wife Zainab and Qasim's widow Fatima become the ones to defeat the robber leader Hassan together. Zainab gets him drunk and Fatima kills him. Technically, there are 38 more robbers, but they are such idiots that Fatima disposes of them within seconds, and only Hassan is really dangerous.
- The Merry Wives of Windsor is about Sir John Falstaff attempting to seduce two married ladies, Mistress Page and Mistress Ford. Neither is impressed by him, so they conspire to subject him to a succession of practical jokes.
- Six: The Musical starts off as a pop concert where the six titular queens and ex-wives compete over who had the worst time with Henry VIII, but it's later revealed that the competition is fake. In the end, the six titular queens kick Henry VIII out of the narrative, singing the ending song "Six" as an act of defiance to history, reaffirming their own personal identities, and solidarity.
Video Games
- Silent Hill f: "The Great Space Invasion!" has Hinako, Rinko and Sakuko (the main three female characters) attacking Shu after he confesses to knowing when they started wearing bras, declaring him to be "an enemy to all women".
Webcomics
- Olympic Dames sees a group of pregnant high-school girls getting together in unusual circumstances. They attract the unpleasant and deeply weird Cyril, a fetishist who gets off on images of pregnant women's bodies; none of the girls are thrilled to realise that his motivation is to get pictures of them for a pregnancy-fetish website, and he is soon cast out of the group.
Western Animation
- In the Bob's Burgers episode "Better Off Sled", Logan and his friends take over the Belcher kids' favorite sledding spot. To get it back, the Belchers get the help of Regular-Sized Rudy's cousin Mandy, whom Logan mocked when both were kids. Later, Mandy gathers all the varsity girl athletes of whom Logan had made fun for some sweet payback.
- "V for Valentine-detta", Tina is down in the dumps after being rejected by her crush Jimmy Jr. Linda, Louise and their limo driver Nat convince her to crash his date with another girl named Becky when they spot them at a nearby restaurant. Though Tina refuses when she realizes she would be hurting Becky who didn't deserve it, the women go through with dropping stink bombs after Jimmy Jr breaks up with Becky, leaving her in tears. They even bring Becky to join them on their Valentine's Day outing.
- Futurama in the episode "A Bicylops Made For Two" Leela meets a man, Alcazar, who appears to be another member of her mysterious unknown alien race that she's been searching for her entire life since being abandoned as a baby. He convinces her to marry him despite the fact that he's a jerk after telling her that they are both the last of their kind. However after Bender and Fry uncover he's done this to four other alien women, they arrange to have all the brides turn up at the ceremony and Alcazar is revealed to be a shapeshifter who is conning them all... so Leela and the other brides beat him up.
- In the Johnny Bravo episode "The Sensitive Male!", Johnny gets dating advice from the titular Sensitive Male, who demonstrates his techniques by wooing several women throughout the episode. In the end, he makes the mistake of admitting out loud (in song!) that he's just faking being sensitive and telling women what they want to hear... only to be overheard by the women he wooed earlier. They promptly tie him up and carry him off, presumably to punish him for toying with their hearts.
- A villainous example occurs in Miraculous Ladybug during Season 3's "Felix". The titular character is Adrien's identical cousin who takes the opportunity to disguise himself as his cousin so he can send a slanderous video to his friends. Sensing their emotional turmoil, Hawk Moth uses the opportunity to akumatize three of them (Alya, Rose and Jueleka) into becoming their villainous alter egos so they can take revenge on Adrien and later Felix after seeing them together.
- In the episode "Sex Drive" of Spicy City, the Mad Scientist Otaku abducts sex workers, drains their consciousnesses, reworks them to be obedient, and then sells them as VR sex programs. One, Virus, is turned into a Cyborg because Otaku needs someone to run a few errands for him. She gets restored to her old self by rookie cop Nisa and in turn returns all her colleagues' minds to their bodies. Armed to the teeth, they wait for Otaku, who doesn't yet know that he's been thwarted, to come back.