Woman Scorned

"Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd,

Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."
—William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697)

What's the only type of woman more dangerous than a Mama Bear? A woman who's been dumped, cheated on, or otherwise done wrong by her man (or, in some cases, merely thinks she's been). Especially if she's been hiding some sanity problems, and especially if she was a Clingy Jealous Girl. Otherwise Self Explanatory.

A villainess—particularly a queen -- may react in this manner when she has very little claim on the man. After all, It's All About Me. If the woman in question is part of an evil organisation, this may be her cue to pull a High Heel Face Turn.

Often referred to as a "bunny boiler," after the infamous scene with Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Almost Always Female, but male examples do exist.

Not to be confused with the Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, although the chances of overlap are ideal. When a character is deaded by said Woman Scorned, it's…well…Death by Woman Scorned.

Examples of Woman Scorned include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Zan Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei, Nozomu Itoshiki coldly "dumped" one of his students who mistakenly thought he had spent a nice, charming, romantic day at the beach with her a week before. The whole situation arose out of Zetsubou-sensei's paranoia of getting caught in just such a compromising situation with one (or all) of his young lady students: he used a body-double to avoid being the recipient of such unwanted attention, and the body-double proceeded not only to engage in uncharacteristic acts of charity but charmed the pants off of the cute Abiru Kobushi. A week later, when she approaches him at a festival for a little sweet "together time," he runs for it, leaving her in the dust. Poor Abiru is probably used to that sort of thing by now.
    • In the next episode, she participates in his murder along with Chiri and other female students of the class. He gets better, though.
      • And at the end of the episode she has "caught" him again with her bandages. No harm, no foul, I guess.
  • Kaede Fuyou in SHUFFLE!!, a sweet Unlucky Childhood Friend with hidden psychological problems coming from years ago who also snaps on her Genki Girl love rival and sempai, Asa Shigure.
    • Slightly subverted, since she actually sorta makes peace with Asa later.
  • Kyoko from Skip Beat! is a mild version, not acting directly against to the man who despised her, but instead building herself into a position where she can humiliate him more than anything she can do directly.
  • The point of School Days, a Deconstruction of the Tenchi Solution. Word to the wise: if you've got a Harem, just pick one.
    • If you guys are curious about what that meant... just watch the Grand Finale of the anime series. Or play the game and get the endings where Kotonoha either jumps to her death in front of Makoto and Sekai or uses a saw to murder Sekai. Or when Sekai kills Makoto herself.
  • In Elfen Lied, look at what happens to Kouta when he lies to Lucy...
  • Sakurako Sanjou from Hana Yori Dango. Because Domyouji made her life Hell as a child, she pulls off quite the revenge plot that includes plastic surgery, seducing him, almost killing his Plucky Girl of a love interest, etc. Sheeesh.
  • Genderflipped in Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Billy Katagiri took the departure of his girlfriend Lisa Kujoh aka Sumeragi Lee Noriega well in the second season very poorly. He got better, though
    • Also, when Louise Halevy learned that her former boyfriend Saji was in the 00 Raiser fighter during a skirmish, her reaction was... bleak. All indications are that she's pretty much resolved to kill him at this point. And she got better, too, but it was pretty close there for a minute.
  • Code Geass has Kallen at the very end of the series. She confesses to Lelouch with a deep and passionate kiss. He responds... well, not at all. And then he kidnaps all the world's leaders. She resolves to kill him with her own hands. For Love And Justice, of course.
  • When female Ranma ½ discovers that Ryoga (that had accidentally hit Ranma with a love rod) doesn't love him back, he transforms himself into a guy and starts to beat the crap out of Ryoga. Normally Ryoga is as equally skilled in Martial Arts as Ranma, but this time Ranma was in such a rage that Ryoga was forced to surrender...
  • Rumic Theatre's The Laughing Target. Wow, that was a SCARY one.
  • Gunslinger Girl. Cute Bruiser Henrietta, who has a major Big Brother Attraction towards her handler Guiseppe, recreates the incident where one of the other cyborg girls killed her own handler. This is chillingly summed up as: "She was making a subconscious threat -- if you don't love me, I'll kill you."
  • Sara Yuki from Dancougar, actually a heroic example of this, because the one who dumps her happens to be one hell of a Smug Snake working for the bad guys.
  • The World God Only Knows: Keima's mother when she thinks her husband is cheating on her, while Elsee is actually just making it up. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Haman Karn from Mobile Suit Z Gundam effectively defines this trope. It is revealed that she had been in a relationship with Char Aznable, a.k.a. Lt. Quattro in the past, the specifics of which are not provided. Whether there was an actual relationship between them or if she was just infatuated and had her hopes dashed, the whole (deleted) affair left her feeling jilted and has given her a few personality quirks, which manifest themselves rather prominently when she gives him her ultimatum. It comes as a crushing disappointment to her when he refuses to capitulate, and much to the detriment of the general public, she's not really particular about whom she subjects to her wrath.
  • Ichinensei ni Nacchattara: Iori's mom is still mad enough as it is about her former husband having cheated on her (leading to their divorce). When Iori claims to be his love child after she figures out his true identity, she's on the phone with a lawyer in seconds.
  • The reason for so many murders in Detective Conan.
    • In a strange (and funny) twist, Ran also got very tsuntsun when a young girl named Ryouko Akagi showed up in the doorstep of the office, falsely claiming to be Shinichi's girlfriend (the little boy she was babysitting had been kidnapped and Ryouko needed Shinichi's help, using the "girlfriend" claim as her cover).
  • While she wouldn't admit it, Haruhi gets pretty pissed when she catches Kyon messing around (not like that) with Mikuru. It doesn't end well. Except that it does. Sorta.
  • Mizumi, by Jareth, in Return to Labyrinth.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion, this trope is essentially the hat of the Akagi women. Both are snared by Gendo and both end up worse for it.
  • Sae of Peach Girl at times. And Momo to a lesser extent.
  • Sailor Moon: Minako fell in love with Hawk's Eye and Tiger's Eye (villains she attempted to involve in a threesome, but they were playing with her feelings). Sailor Venus opened a can of whoopass on them later.


Comic Books

  • When Jean Grey, who at the time was a host for the Phoenix Force, caught her husband in bed with Emma Frost. It wasn't pretty.
    • And before that, her clone, Madelyne Pryor. It took longer for her pain to turn to rage, but hoo boy, when it did...
  • In Teen Titans, Terra near the end of "The Judas Contract" goes crazy with her powers after she thinks Slade, her boss and lover, betrayed her. In reality, Slade's son Jericho had possessed him. Slade was actually too afraid of Terra to openly betray her like that—and given her reaction, his fear was perfectly justified. He clears up that he was possesed to Terra, but she's STILL angry at him because he had to beg Jericho to un-possess him, so Terra thinks he's "gone soft" on her. She then tries to kill everyone in the area; thankfully, she only succeeded in killing herself.
  • An early arc of Birds of Prey, which featured the first meeting of Black Canary and Huntress, revolved around the two of them tracking down the villain that seduced both of them in their civilian identities and then left them both. Along the way they also team-up with Catwoman, are kidnapped to the former Soviet Union, and Canary winds up facing Lady Shiva, one of the world's deadliest martial artists, for the first time.

Oracle: "You travelled five thousand miles. You hooked up with a loose cannon--possibly psychotic--vigilante who doesn't place much value on life...and a world class felon. You stressed my network to the max. You faced the world's deadliest martial artist. All to get back at a guy who didn't call you the next day. Was it worth it?"
Black Canary: "Yeah, it was."

  • Maxima is Superman comics, who regarded Superman's lack of interest in being Warlord of Almerac as a personal insult.
  • In Gotham City Sirens #19-21, Harley Quinn goes after The Joker in Arkham for ruining her life. By the end, she has him cornered in his cell dead to rights and with a simple "I missed you" from Mr. J all is forgiven. Hey, she isn't the Trope Namer of Mad Love for nothing.
  • Shaniah, teenage girl from Brek Zarith story arc of Thorgal series, falls in love with titular character and steals his horse once he rejects her and slaps her for insulting his wife. Later that night she is assaulted by a mysterious man, who steals the horse. The next day a group of soldiers visits the village, looking for a escaped prisoner. Shaniah, making sure prisoner looks like guy she meet yesterday, tells them that she saw him meeting with Thorgal, who gave him his horse, which leads to Thorgal being taken prisoner and starts chain of events that ends with the destruction of her entire village, death of everybody aside heer and Thorgal, including, as it seems then, Thorgal's wife, his Heroic BSOD and later her sacrifice to save his wife's life.
  • An Archie Comics story from 1965 has Betty Cooper repeatedly trying to murder Archie after he breaks one too many dates with her. The story's title, of course, is "Woman Scorned."


Film

  • Rat Race. Hell hath no fury like a woman with a helicopter.

Tracy Faucet: "I'm gonna ram this helicopter right down your throat!"

  • The plot of My Super Ex-Girlfriend revolves around a scorned super heroine.
  • Alex Forrest (played by Glenn Close) in Fatal Attraction.
  • Beautifully subverted in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. When the naive and desperate (and epononymous) Emily learns about Victoria Everglot, Victor Von Dort's arranged fiancee (whom he likes anyway), she's frustrated and mad because she sees Victoria as the obstacle to her freedom after 50 years of pain and sadness. She "gets lucky" when Victor believes he's lost Victoria to Paolo and agrees to a plan to kill himself and marry her...but when she sees Victoria sadly looking at her and Victor's upcoming wedding, Emily actually has a change of heart and gives up, saying she was stealing Victoria's dream to fulfill her own. And her I Want My Beloved to Be Happy is what actually lets Emily gain true and eternal peace, releasing her soul.
  • Used to eerie effect in Audition, wherein the female lead makes Glenn Close's Fatal Attraction look as perky and innocent as Elle Woods. "Say you'll love only me," indeed.
  • John Tucker Must Die involves three of these.
  • Inversion: The Bride in Kill Bill could be seen as an example, but in fact the act that set her on her Roaring Rampage of Revenge in the first place fits the trope much better, and the El Paso wedding massacre was the work of a scorned man. As Bill would tell the Bride in their final confrontation, "there are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard."
  • In Pirates of the Caribbean, the goddess Calypso is called "a woman scorned, like which fury hell hath no." As the story goes, she gave Davy Jones the condition that if he did the job of the Captain of the Flying Dutchman for ten years - namely, ferrying the souls of those who died at sea to the other side - then they would be able to be together forever. However, she seems to be a very capricious goddess(not uncommon with sea deities actually) and was not at the designated meeting place after the ten years were up. This made Davy Jones (understandably) angry and so he and the first Brethren Court bound her in a single human form, which turned out to be Tia Dalma. When the fourth Brethren Court finally released Calypso, she was more than a little ticked off and started cursing at them in a foreign language while growing to be at least a hundred feet tall, before finally crumbling into an avalanche of rock crabs.
    • It makes a bit more sense, though, when you remember that (as noted above)Calypso is the goddess of the sea, which by its very nature cannot be predictable. When she realized that showing up at a certain place and time would go against the unpredictable nature of the sea, she didn't come.
      • You do have to remember, though, that Davy isn't totally unjustified in his rage, either. Part of the contract was that after ten years, when he comes back, if his love is waiting for him, he can go free. So Calypso consciously screwed him over, just for the sake of her image.
    • Davy Jones could also count as a man scorned.
  • Mystique in X-Men 3: The Last Stand.
  • Jake's unnamed ex-fiancee in The Blues Brothers.
  • A Thin Line Between Love And Hate
  • It's not immediately apparent, but The Deaths of Ian Stone is based around this. Medea and Ian loved each other and considered humans no more than food. Ian fell in love with Jenny, and everything that happens until the very end relates to Medea's attempts to kill Jenny and/or snap Ian out of it.
  • In the Louis de Funes Fantomas movie, after the villain abducted his arch-nemesis Intrepid Reporter Fandor and his fiancee, he revealed to Fandor that he wanted to make her his concubine instead of his current one. Fandor staged an Engineered Public Confession, and she helped them escape prompting Fandor to mention this trope. She was still evil and Dangerously Genre Savvy though, so she disabled the brakes on the car she provided them.
  • She Devil. To sum it up: never give a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the woman you are dumping for another prettier and wealthier; you may be giving your ex ideas.
  • In Captain America: The First Avenger, Peggy catches Steve being kissed by a blond secretary. To make things worse, Steve retorts/asks if she and Howard Stark are "fondue-ing". This leads to an awkward situation where Stark explains what fondue was and when testing if the Vibranium shield could withstand a handgun, Peggy aims at Steve's head. She forgives him later when she sees a picture of her in Steve's compass during one of his operations, as if saying "this is for you."
  • In Scream 4, we hear a lot about a Noodle Incident in which Trevor declared his love for Jill, they had sex and then he "just goes out with someone else". Jill absolutely refuses to forgive him, no matter how much he tries to apologize. And right after she reveals herself as the killer, she shoots Trevor in the groin as retaliation.
  • In Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Medusa emphasizes to Percy that "I used to date your daddy", meaning Poseidon. Seeing as she's trying to kill Percy when she says it, she clearly doesn't remember it fondly, obviously because the relationship is the reason she was cursed to begin with.

Literature

  • Wei Fen in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo is furious after finding out that her husband Li Yuan, the future T'ang (lord) of City Europe, has brought back the two servant girls that he slept with as an early teenager. It gets worse from there.
  • Lanfear in The Wheel of Time is the subtrope Psycho Ex-Girlfriend. She was dumped by the previous Dragon in favor of someone a little less power-hungry and is still pissed off 3,000 years later; now free of her imprisonment, she's gunning for his reincarnation, to either help and marry turn into her love slave or outright kill. When she finds out that she's been replaced again, people die horribly.
  • In the backstory of His Dark Materials, John Parry refused the advances of the witch Juta Kamainen. She swore to kill him. After finally accomplishing that goal, she is told that he was just being faithful to his wife, and that she just stopped him from reuniting with his son Will who is destined to save the world, and possibly from giving said son some vital information. She promptly kills herself because of her rejected love and to escape Will, who is quite intimidating for his age.
  • In the Warhammer 40,000 Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitor's Hand, Cain comes face-to-face with a Slaaneshi sorceress who tried to seduce him and consume his soul some years earlier; he spurned her via lasbolts to the torso. In this case, though, said sorceress came back as a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh, and was slightly miffed at the rude treatment he'd given her.
    • Being a Greater Daemon, though, she wasn't too keen on anyone else either, though.
  • In Stephen King's Rose Madder, Rosie McLendon starts out as an abused woman on the run from her psycho husband, and slowly works her way up to this... along with the help of a being who may or may not be the personification of female vengeance itself. I repay! is her declaration, and she most certainly does.
  • A version, albeit mildly, appears in Catherine Alliott's The Old-Girl Network, when Serena feels scored after her boyfriend breaks up with her and gets into bed with Polly.
  • Phaidor in Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Gods of Mars. When John Carter manages to notice, he feels guilty that he might have given her some reason to believe he might reciprocate. He tells her of Dejah Thoris.

"Dog," she hissed. "Dog of a blasphemer! Think you that Phaidor, daughter of Matai Shang, supplicates? She commands. What to her is your puny outer world passion for the vile creature you chose in your other life?"

  • Sidney Sheldon's breakthrough novel The Other Side of Midnight has Noelle Page. She's a poor French girl wooed by American pilot Larry Douglas, who promises to return to her after he's called back to his duties—even giving her money for a wedding gown. She waits, finds out she's pregnant...and then tracks down his whereabouts and learns he's a Casanova who never intends to return. This has extremely ugly consequences, starting with how she handles the baby issue; soon she's a Gold Digger model/actress and a Chessmaster set on ruining Larry's career and forcing him into working for her.
  • Donia from Wicked Lovely, for Keenan. There's a reason the authour compares her to the Emilie Autumn song "I Want My Innocence Back".
  • Agatha Christie's Five Little Pigs is about a woman accused of murdering her husband for cheating on her. Turns out it was actually the husband's lover, when she found out he wasn't actually planning on leaving his wife.
  • Probably a lesser example than most of the ones on this page, but Hermione Granger basically tries to beat the crap out of Ron Weasley after he returns from his Achilles in His Tent moment. His reason for leaving basically boils down to two things: 1) worry for his family and 2) jealousy that Hermione's taking Harry's side during decisions/arguments. And being influenced by the Artifact of Doom. It's the second part that Hermione's pissed about, and it takes several days for her to forgive him for leaving (though she stops attacking him once Harry forces her to cool off from the initial anger).

"Harry was left to ponder the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge."

  • It's revealed in the last book of the Codex Alera that this was the motivation for Princeps Septimus's murder. His father Sextus wanted to set him up with Invidia; Septimus, however, was having none of it and wound up marrying a commoner for love. Invidia did not take this well and arranged to have him assassinated as a consequence. Essentially, every problem in the entire series comes from the fact that Invidia is a poisonous, backstabbing bitch.
  • Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Justified big time with Julia Webster in the book Payback. Her husband Senator Webster slept around, got infected with AIDS, and then infected her with it! He didn't know he was infected, but the damage was done. Julia made sure he paid for that!
  • The Wayfarer Redemption's Faraday, who sacrificed two years of her life being married to a complete brute in order to save the life of her lover, Axis... while he was off cheating on her. Not only that, but when he came back he basically granted his new lover all the power and influence he would have given Faraday had he kept his promises to her. Oh, and he knows the entire extent of his jerkassery, but still somehow fails to make any sort of amends for his actions outside of a highly inadequate apology. Oh well. It was in the prophecy anyway. Faraday does get back at him for it eventually.
  • Wendy Nogard in Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger, except since the man who scorns her disappears from her life forever, she takes out her anger on... everybody else she meets thereafter.


Live Action TV

  • Nina Myers in 24 doesn't inform the Drazens that David Palmer is still alive until after (in all the non-US versions) she discovers that Teri Bauer is pregnant by Jack Bauer, whom Nina had an affair with. Then, she kills her. To quote Keith Topping on the matter:

"This is because what hell really hath no fury like, is The Other Woman finding out that her bloke's wife has just got herself a useful weapon in hanging onto him". (Italics in original)

  • In one episode of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace - appropriately titled "Hell Hath Fury," the lone female doctor felt unappreciated and wreaked havoc with her psychic powers. At the end, Dagless recounted what he'd learned: "Women get angry over the tiniest things. Tomorrow I'd tell her that her hair looked nice, or that she'd lost weight. Whichever's more believable."
  • In Rome Julius Caesar gets this treatment big time from Servilia when he ends their affair to go to Greece and put an end to the civil war. Servilia not only puts a number of curses on him, she actively conspires to murder him and enlists her own son to hold the knife. Pretty strong reaction, since he was married to someone else anyway and she knew he would have to fight in Greece at some point.
    • Her son (Brutus) points it was really about this trope after she mocked him saying he should get on his knees and beg to Ceasar since it worked so well for him in the past. He replied, 'But not you, huh? Perhaps you did not beg hard enough?'
  • Gender-reversed in CSI: Miami. When Calleigh dumps her officer boyfriend and gets him fired for using credit cards of the dead, he opens a website attacking her.
  • In Smallville, a stalker of Lex tries to kill him in revenge for breaking her heart after she cheated on her fiancee with him and didn't return her calls declaring her love for him or even acknowledge her in any way.
  • Played ridiculously straight on Robin Hood. Isabella is a perfectly sane, compassionate and intelligent woman...until the moment Robin dumps her, after which she instantly turns into a raving lunatic.
    • He doesn't even dump her. He simply refuses to abandon everything he has fought for and leave with her. He was probably willing to stay with her, if she chose to live in Sherwood.
  • Reaper: Dumping an ordinary woman is bad enough. Dumping a demoness who's got a crush on you and is really, really trying to overcome her murderous cannibalistic urges is criminally and suicidally insane!
  • Gender-reversed again in United States of Tara. Marshall, who is general one of the most stable characters on the show, sees his crush/maybe-boyfriend making out with his mother's alter ego. So he reveals his presence, yells at both of them, and returns a few hours later to burn down the shed.
  • Played in Supernatural with, of course, a huge amount of Ho Yay. In an episode when Dean tries to go over to Heaven, Castiel is NOT amused.

Castiel: I GAVE EVERYTHING TO YOU! AND THIS IS WHAT YOU GIVE TO ME?!

  • Happens when Castle doesn't call after returning from the Hamptons, Beckett is not happy. Neither are Ryan and Esposito, the former who nearly shot him before he was arrested by Beckett and angrily taken for questioning.

Beckett Why didn't you call, Castle?

  • Took a bit longer than usual to kick in, but happens in Frasier when Maris asks Niles to reconcile with her just before they finalize their divorce. When Niles rejects her, she promptly hires a team of lawyers to launch an investigation in order to bankrupt him and make his life hell purely out of spite, since Maris was a millionaire who had been perfectly happy with her settlement before this incident.
  • This is the in-universe reason for why Charlie Harper isn't on Two and A Half Men anymore. He proposed to Rose, they went to Paris, and she caught him with another woman, so she pushed him in front of a train.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Into the Woods"). Buffy discovers her "nice guy" boyfriend Riley Finn has been visiting vampire prostitutes. She burns down the building where the act took place, massacres the vampire-pimp's gang when they're foolish enough to attack her and—after initially letting the vampire-prostitute go—throws a wooden spear into her back as she's running away.

Music

  • The Scottish folk ballad "The Brown Girl".

I'll dance upon your grave for twelvemonth and a day
 I'll do as much for you as any maiden may
I'll make you rue the very day that you were born
I'm a bonny brown girl.

  • PJ Harvey's song "Rid Of Me" is a textbook example of what a wronged woman is thinking:

I'll tie your legs
 Keep you against my chest
You're not rid of me
No you're not rid of me
I'll make you lick my injuries
I'm gonna twist your head off see
'Til you say don't you wish you never never met her!

My life's in jeopardy
 Murdered in cold blood is what I'm gonna be
I ain't been home since Friday night
And now my wife is coming after me...

  • In Vocaloid's The Tailor Shop of Enbizaka, the tailor sees her lover with three different girls on separate occasions. She kills them and takes their clothing/accessories, thinking that this was the kind of girl her lover liked. It turns out that her "lover" had never met her before and the three women she killed were his wife and two children. She then kills him too, offended that he didn't recognize her.
  • In the music video for Vanilla Ninja's song "Liar", a girl discovers that her motorcross-champion boyfriend has been cheating on her. So she runs over his bike. With a monster truck.
  • Rapper Left Eye from 90's girl group TLC infamously burned down the Atlanta mansion of her boyfriend, football player Andre Rison, when she thought he was cheating on her. The media "fire"storm led to record sales of TLC's 1995 album, CrazySexyCool. Surprisingly, they kept an on-and-off relationship until her death in 2002.
  • The Pretty Reckless: Taylor outright states she kills her man for cheating on her despite the fact he was good in the sack.
  • In the music video for "10 Seconds" Jazmine Sullivan ties her cheating boyfriend to a chair with a bomb strapped to it. Seen here. Curiously, in the song itself she gives him 10 seconds to take his things and leave. It doesn't really matter though as it was all a dream.


Myth And Legend

  • Ultimate example: Medea (See Discussion). When her husband Jason deserted her for another woman, she killed his new fiancee and the fiancee's father with a golden robe laced with poison, and then put every one of her children by Jason to the sword. Keep in mind the play depicts her as the sympathetic, wronged party. After all, Medea betrayed her father and was in turn exiled from her home, murdered her brother and scattered his body to the ocean (desecrating his grave), and used all her magic arts to help Jason, including tricking an innocent set of princesses into killing their father. Not to mention that Jason's patron who watched over him was Hera (known to the Romans as Juno), the queen of the goddesses and ruler over wives, marriages, and fidelity. He owed both ladies better than that. The ancient Greeks were BIG on revenge, so a classical Greek woman scorned would logically be even worse than the garden variety.
    • Hera herself was another good example. Pretty much all of Zeus' lovers and bastard children ended up tasting her wrath in one way or another, with Herakles being her favoured target.
  • Ur Example: Ishtar in The Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh scorned her because he knew sleeping with a goddess, especially this goddess, always ends the same way -- Death by Sex. It was a no-win situation.
  • Queen Dido in The Aeneid, who prophesied that her and Aeneas' people would meet again in war (the Punic Wars—her future, Virgil's past). Particularly tragic in that it's made fairly obvious that he'd have stayed with her if he'd had the choice.
  • Izanami of Shinto fame, who was abandoned in Yomi (the underworld) by her husband. Followed by Izanami sending demons to kill him. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. When said woman literally owns hell, you are boned.
    • To drive home the point...Izanami invented DEATH just to screw with her husband. He has to create more life than she takes just to prevent The End of the World as We Know It.
    • To be fair, Izanagi went to Yomi to rescue his wife, and only ran from her when he saw that she had become a vermin-infested undead.
  • Brünnhilde from Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Not enough that her husband, Siegfried, completely forgot her due to a love potion and married Gutrune, he also kidnapped her in the form of Gunther, for said man G was too much of a coward to cross the Circle Of Fire. Then the double marriage occurs. Brunnhilde is a little angry, makes a super big scandal, forces Siegfried into a false vow and then conspires with Hagen to kill him. When she finds out Siegfried was innocent and mistaken, it's too late. A good reason for a badass soliloquy and apocalypse, isn't it?

Tabletop RPG

  • Lillith from Exalted. OK, not so much "scorned", as "mentally tortured into schizophrenia" and not so much "villainess" as "flies into an understandable rage when her husband is mentioned", but she acts the same as one.
    • A Lillith also appears in "Fair is Foul," one of Vampire: The Masquerade's Gehenna scenarios. The backstory given tells us that Lillith taught Caine the vampiric Disciplines, and then he left her to run Enoch and sire the Second Generation. Lillith then became "Mother of Monsters" and comes to town to call out Caine, and she does so in a spectacular manner.
  • Scion: Ragnarok rewrites the Norse myths of Ragnarok into one of these. The myths surrounding Balder's death are suddenly broken in half because Nanna, Balder's wife, is furious at how Fate is kicking her around. She goes so far as to disguise herself as Thokk, whose refusal to weep for Balder traps him in Helheim. Loki himself is thrown for a loop.
  • Lady Malys from the Dark Eldar in Warhammer 40,000. Scorned by Asdrubael Vect, she wandered into the webway, potentially beat the Laughing God (or some other powerful, unknown entity) in a game of wills, tore out his heart, and replaced her own with it. Now she commands one of the stronger Kabals of Commoragh and is possibly the only person able to kill Vect (something she yearns to do) and is completely immune to psychic powers, as well as being able to see into the near future.
  • Forgotten Realms history had Eleedra Nathchant, the Magister from 407 to 409 DR. She won the title in a duel with her predecessor, as usual, but for some reason decided to accomplish her goals via seducing rulers up and down the Sword Coast and influencing them. The problem was that she had a habit of killing those less than receptive to her advances. Which couldn't possibly create a healthy atmosphere, and led to her own death. Also, she enthusiastically played a magic cheerleader rather than hiding or, say, improving her personal defences ­— like most Magisters do, since it's obvious that challengers will come for them. Eventually, one of the frightened lords in question sent a mercenary wizard to attend the arranged meeting in his stead, and Eleedra was ill-prepared for a duel, so the next day there was the new Magister. Ironically, that was Eldrus Wands.

Theater

  • The Cell Block Tango from Chicago. In this number, a series of murderesses fit into this category as they each in turn explain the horrendous crimes their men committed to them and how they each murdered said men. But, unlike some other examples, the womens' murders weren't always justified (i.e, stabbed him to death because he suspected her of cheating, shot in the head several times for popping gum too loud, etc.)
    • And the two lead females- Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly- also fit into this category, but their crimes were on the same moral wavelength as the previously mentioned murderesses.
  • Spoofed with Donna Donna in PDQ Bach's opera The Abduction of Figaro.

Video Games

  • This is almost a staple of dating sims, especially on the dodgier ones. For example, in Hitomi My Stepsister, if you show interest in Hitomi while on the route of the very unstable Yoko, she stabs you to death, even when you really weren't cheating on her.
  • A cut ending scene from Knights of the Old Republic 2 would have had whichever Love Interest you didn't express an interest in attack the other with a lightsaber.
  • Also, both of the main female characters on School Days fit this trope to a T. Depending on the ending, Makoto, the main character, can be stabbed and killed by Sekai, Sekai herself may be killed by the poor Kotonoha, or Kotonoha may be Driven to Suicide while destroying Makoto and Sekai's relationship. All of this because the main character is an unrepenting cheating Casanova.
  • In the Indie Adventure Game The Marionette, 'Alice' turns out to be the real name of a woman who was one of the main character's models who became obsessed with him after he scorned her.
  • Ophelia from Brutal Legend.
  • In Super Robot Wars J, the female protagonist turns into this halfway through when you encounter the vanguard-leader of The Fury, Al-Van Lunks... because, as it turns out, he's her ex-boyfriend, whom she believed to have died in a military research accident years back, along with several of her friends. The revelation that he's non-human quickly leads to the conclusion that the 'accident' was sabotage, and while the whole 'trying to wipe out humanity' thing has a lot to do with it, it's clear that the protagonist is motivated mainly by a desire for revenge over the man who betrayed and lied to her. What's worse than a Woman Scorned? A scorned woman with a Humongous Mecha...
  • Adele from Arc Rise Fantasia goes absolutely nuts when she awakens as the Diva of Real. Since Arc chose Imaginal already, that means she and Arc can never be together. When Arc summons Simmah to block an attack from Girtab and Adele is hurt in the process, she takes this as proof that Arc doesn't care about her anymore. She spends the rest of the game trying to kill Arc for "wronging" her. This case is a little crazier than most, since the object of her affection had absolutely no idea she felt that way about him since she never admitted her feelings.
  • The Love Shockers from Jet Set Radio are a gang of these. Quoth DJ Professor K, "Love broke their hearts, and now they're looking to do some breaking of their own!"


Webcomics

  • Lampshaded in Order of the Stick when the demonic Sabine confronts her boyfriend Nale - the strip title was "Hell Hath Exactly As Much Fury."
    • Of course, that was for refusing to let her in on a human sacrifice rather than regular cheating. She is an incarnation of illicit sex, after all.
  • Nerf Now - The BLU Sniper really should have checked what day it was before he brutally turned down the RED Demo-tan. He spends the next few days getting glued back together in hell.
  • Girl Genius has an amusing flashback about a problem caused by one of the old Heterodynes, which was named "the Great Saint Valentine's Day Riot. Apparently it caused long-lasting structural damage - which is an impressive achievement in the castle that can reshape itself by making its bricks fly around.

Web Original

Western Animation

Linus: You've heard about fury in a woman scorned, haven't you?
Charlie Brown: Yes, I guess I have.
Linus: Well, that's nothing compared to the fury of a woman who has been cheated out of tricks-or-treats.

  • In Futurama: Bender's Big Score, the Planet Express crew is being attacked by yeti... until Leela runs at them shouting, "Don't mess with me! I just got dumped!" and the yeti run away in terror.
    • Earlier in the episode "Mother's Day", Mom led a robot rebellion which her sons put down to the remaining ill effects of this trope,

Walt: Hell hath no fury like the vast robot armies of a woman scorned!

  • When the modulators in the Kim Possible episode "Emotion Sickness" were destroyed, they left Kim and Shego in an unstoppable angry state, just moments after Ron and Drakken had dumped them. Considering that Kim and Shego are (mostly) the strongest people in the show and that Ron and Drakken are (at least until the Grand Finale) much weaker than them, Ron and Drakken got really scared...
    • Technically, Kim was the only one who was dumped. Drakken didn't do anything to deserve Shego's anger.
  • Superman the Animated Series: Superman] got on the wrong end of a particularly pissed-off warrior queen named Maxima.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door: Lizzie in "Operation: D.A.T.E."
  • Harley Quinn beats up The Joker in an episode of Batman the Animated Series after disguising herself as a police woman. The basis behind the attack was he abandoned her, leaving her to get caught instead, then promptly replaced her when he found out he got a fortune left to him. A bit of a CMOA for the Harley Quinn character.
  • Mai from Avatar: The Last Airbender is not happy when Zuko, not wanting to drag her into a life of treason, breaks up with her to go join the Avatar. She does end up saving his life and getting thrown in prison for betraying Azula, and they're later reunited in one of the series' greatest Crowning Moments of Heartwarming.
    • Mentioned in The Legend of Korra, where Chief Bei Fong once tried to have Pema arrested after winning over her old boyfriend Tenzin.
  • The Martian Queen in the Duck Dodgers episode ""The Queen Is Wild", who seeks revenge on Dodgers for rejecting her in "To Love A Duck". Dodgers, being Dodgers, has completely forgotten the entire incident.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures: Fifi LaFume in How I Spent My Vacation. After Johnny Pew gives the autograph that was meant for Fifi to Bimbette, Johnny suffers the wrath of one very, VERY angry Fifi.
  • Mordecai and Rigby from Regular Show learn the hard way that dumping Starla, is a really bad idea. A really bad idea.
  • Hayley Smith on American Dad whenever she gets dumped goes on an Unstoppable Rage.
    This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.