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35 Revenge Stories That Left People With A Bitter Aftertaste Instead Of A Petty Victory
Have you ever been so hurt by someone that you couldn't stop yourself from holding a grudge? Or perhaps even crafting a full-blown revenge plan just to get back at them.
The people from today's list have definitely been in such a place. And they even carried out their plans. Only it came back to bite them, as they realized that maybe they went too far...
More info: Reddit
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#1
My landlady decided to be nasty and keep my deposit just for spite. I called the fire department and reported that the 2 apartments in her house were not to fire code. She had to sell her house. I still feel bad about that even if it was the safe thing to do.
RELATED:
#2
So when we were kids, my little brother *loved* root beer. Had as many as mom would give him every day. When I was 10 & he was 8, he did something particularly annoying, and I pulled him into a room and told him, very seriously, that he had a drinking problem. He was super confused and didn't know what I meant. I told him, Craig, root beer is roots and BEER. And you always want more. You have a beer problem. Now, we didn't know until later, but my brother is *super* autistic, and he believed me very literally. About 6 or so years after that, we went to a family dinner at my mom's favorite Mexican restaurant and were ordering our drinks. My mom asked my brother why he didn't want the root beer, he used to love it? They have a really good one on tap. My poor, sweet brother loved at my mom so earnestly, and told her that he can't have root beers anymore because he used to have a dependency, so he can't ever have root beer again. My mom immediately knew that I was behind it, and I still haven't lived it down.
#3
I got tired of a classmate who would cheat by looking at my test. He was sort of a bully but I wasn’t a good target because I would fight back. I noticed that his math grades improved while sitting next to me and realized why…so next test, I just wrote all kinds of wrong answers, like off the way, he should have known they weren’t right…he jumps up and turns in his test. I smiled at him and erased all of my answer and wrote the correct ones. He got ZERO, and the teacher knew then something was up. He was subsequently made to do his tests alone in the corner of the room. Parents were called, the whole nine yards. I think he had to even repeat the class. I sort of felt bad that he got busted but fifth grade me was mean enough not to let it bother me for long, lol.
We, as people, are very emotional. Just as we discussed in this Bored Panda piece, we experience a lot of emotions of many kinds, which makes us rather intricate beings.
Besides a whole bouquet of emotions, which are technically short-lasting, we also live in various emotional states or states of mind. It’s kind of similar to emotion, only it’s more enduring and represents a broader mental disposition instead of a momentary feeling.
#4
Old roommate kept eating all my food, constantly, for almost a year. One of my greatest frustrations was him consuming all my almond milk before I got to have *any*. Now, after a really rough day I would come home and have a bowl of Cocoa Puffs or some other childish comfort food cereal, it was part of my process. I didn’t necessarily like almond milk, but it lasted a lot longer… and it was *mine*. Well, after months of discussing with him repeatedly who’s almond milk (and other food) he kept consuming, I just filled the container up with real milk, looked at the container, and said “the hell with that guy”, put it back in the fridge, and that was that.
A couple days later I come home from work and find the roommate on the floor doubled over whining and moaning and I’m pretty sure he went number 2 in his pants, I asked if he needed an ambulance, he said no, so I went to my room and put on headphones. Had no idea how bad lactarded people can hurt from it. I sorta felt bad, but also… literal months of warnings not to touch that bottle of almond milk. Also, the hell with that guy.
Sidebar - dude would eat my food and put the empty packages back… so I wouldn’t even know the food was gone until I picked up the packages to eat something. He wasn’t broke, (I offered help if he needed it), he just didn’t want to go to the store - which he told me, mid discussion about eating my food… while laughing about it.
Lukas (he/him, it/its) 3 hours ago
I'm sorry, lactarded? BP changes "shít his pants" to "He went number two in his pants" but a word based on a genuine slur is fine?
#5
As a wise old lady I used to work for once told me, "the best revenge is no revenge." Make them think your going to utterly embarass them, and do nothing. One of two things will happen, nothing or they will have a full blown panic attack.
I used this once on a former friend who tried to coerce my wife into sleeping with him. Btw my wife wouldn't give this fool the time of day. I let him know I knew and told him I was coming for him. He literally and legitimately had a full blown mental breakdown. I sat back and did nothing. Part of me feels bad for damaging him psychologically part of me doesn't, so idk how to feel anymore other than relief he is outta my life.
#6
A band once wrote a diss track about me. As a lark, I made a video for it and claimed their band name as a domain to host it. I shared it to Petty Revenge and then Reddit doxxed the band. Felt awful.
One of these emotional states a person can find themselves in is a grudge. This encompasses feelings of anger, resentment, bitterness, and other negativities, usually towards others who have wronged or hurt you. It can develop after something has happened or because you’re perceiving someone as against you – you know, human psychology is tricky.
The reason why we hold grudges is simply that we’re wired to do so. Yet, some folks are more prone to it than others. Typically, they are those who feel a need for self-protection and use grudges as tools for that. Some even do that without fully realizing it.
#7
A while ago I posted how I made the mistake of renting out to a friend and his mom for barely more than what the place was costing me every year. They did several thousand dollars in damage and when I was able to finally kick them out they of course left in a complete mess since they were slobs.
Anyways the fact that I was able to kick them out put them into debt that they cant possibly afford, before we even go through the process of adding the repairs to the bill. The unexpected result is that one of my former friend's siblings got dragged into it and is facing the same thing I had to deal with and is a contributing factor to them being on the brink of losing their home that they renovated from the ground up.
#8
My friend was on the bus waiting to leave school. Younger kid was being mouthy and pissing people off so my friend said something along the lines of “God, your parents must hate you”.
Turns out the kid was an orphan….
#9
When I was in my late teens, I was newly involved with a girl who cheated on me, so I went out of my way to get involved with her childhood best friend. I ended up hurting both of them, and permanently ending their relationship (as far as I know). I've always seriously regretted the whole thing, because it was so unnecessary and immature of me to act like that when I should have just let it go and moved on.
Since it’s a natural thing to feel, it doesn’t mean it has to be a big deal. Unless it starts negatively affecting both the person feeling it and the person they’re feeling it towards.
They might start lashing out in minor ways, like taking someone’s preferred seat, not including them on a group text, not noticing a new haircut, and things like that. But it can also manifest in more major ways, like a person coming up with a full-blown revenge plan.
#10
It wasn’t me personally, rather it was my housemate during University days. My housemate got upset because our other housemate was supposedly using her shampoo. In revenge, she swapped the contents of the shampoo bottle with…. Hair removal cream.
I was aghast when she told me what she’d done, but by then it was too late.
BrownEyedGrrl 4 hours ago
I've never understood how someone could use hair removal cream thinking it's shampoo. That stuff STINKS!
#11
A friend slept with my girlfriend, so I punched him in the face. Only thing was she was crazy and he had never been with a girl before
She put us both through the ringer of psychological, manipulative and sometime physical mistreatment.
Afterwards he told me, “After what she put me through a punch in the face is nothing to what she did to us both.” I felt the most guilt for just introducing them at that point.
#12
Every sibling on here has at least one story where you def didn’t mean to push them/hit them/throw that thing *that* hard.
Granted, just as the grudge itself, the urge for revenge is also natural to us. People of all cultures exhibit signs of revenge, and even some animals, like chimpanzees and elephants, do too. It stems from our ancestors’ desire to maintain order.
When inappropriate behavior, such as aggression or crime, was met with revenge, the original perpetrator was discouraged from committing such a thing again.
#13
During my divorce, my ex had a friend who was constantly talking trash, sending me DMs full of vulgarity, sharing stories about who she's out hooking up with my ex, and sent me a video of her and my ex drinking and driving while calling me names.
So I compiled all of it, sent it to her son's father and he used it to get full custody of their son. She now sees him once a month and pays enough child support which forced her to move back to her parents house.
I finally replied to her DMs telling me I ruined her life, with a picture of her ex and I with our sons together at a baseball game, saying, "Guess I see your son more than you do now."
She attempted to hurt herself a couple months later, where she was then 5150'd and forced into a 72 hour hold.
Think I won that one.
#14
Only child of a single parent here. We moved a lot. Went to grammar school for a year with a kid who made my life miserable. We moved away. Eventually moved back to the area for 8th grade. My math teacher paired me with a kid who wasn’t doing well. It was my former nemesis. He didn’t remember me. I intentionally taught him incorrectly. He ended up failing 8th grade math and didn’t advance to high school with everyone else.
Edit: Folks asking how he made my life miserable. He was a big kid. I was not. We lived in the same apartment complex at first. I was just the focus of his dimwitted primate dominance game - nothing new or particularly interesting.
#15
I was in Grade 8, we had this new kid named Caleb move to our town. He came from a rough home in a different city and had been sent to live with is aunt and uncle in our small little town. Anyways, he managed to fit in pretty well and became friends with most of the boys in fairly short order.
So, one day at recess, all the boys are playing basketball outside on a cement pad with hoops at either end. Caleb, hoping to show off how tough he is, decides to start not playing by the rules. He's committing hard fouls, literally punching other kids in the arm when they went up for shots, he missed one time and punched a kid in the face. And he says "what, we're playing by street rules?". A couple days later, he's still doing this and still using the same excuses. We've all told him to stop and play normal, but he won't.
So I decide it's time to teach him a lesson. I get the ball right under the hoop, fake like I'm going up for the shot to get him off his feet. Then I bend at the hips and get really low. His knees basically come in contact with my side and he does a full flip and lands flat on his tushy. I stand back up, make my shot, and say "street rules, right?". It's at this point I notice he's actually in quite a lot of pain. Turns out he broke his tailbone. But when he recovered, you better dang well believe he played basketball by the rules.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 4 hours ago (edited)
Years ago when I was a little kid, my entire family went up to the mountains during the winter for vacation. My much-older cousins and older sister said that I could go sledding with them, then they ditched me purposefully, running away with all the sleds and laughing. I chased after them crying, slipped on the icy road, fell badly, and broke my tailbone. I can tell you that it is quite a painful injury, because EVERY movement hurts, sitting hurts, standing hurts, etc. and it's not like you can get your entire bútt put into a cast to help it heal XD
Yet, revenge isn’t always the right answer. Some say it’s because revenge tends to perpetuate a cycle of pain instead of giving closure, healing the grudge. Also, while it might be satisfying to cause pain for someone who hurt you, the post-revenge period might not be as sweet. You see, a vengeful person might be filled with remorse and guilt, especially if the vengeance was rather macabre.
Like in cases when a plan turns out to be way more hurtful than initially intended, just like in stories from today’s list. Maybe you have any similar ones yourself? Our comment section is always open!
#16
So I’m a bigger guy and my friend would always call me fat and I did some digging into him and eventually I found out his mom is gone. So he would call me fat all the time so one time I had enough and made comments about how his mom was gone and mine was still alive. I didn’t realize how much it hurt him as he didn’t come to school for a few weeks. A few weeks later he comes back I say sorry and help him with homework and now we are one good terms.
#17
I systematically destroyed a girl who keyed my car and slashed my tires. She cheated with my best friends boyfriend. I told. So she keyed my car and slashed all four tires
so.
I got her on video admitting to it. Then had her arrested. Informed her employer. Got a restraining order- so she got evicted (we lived in the same building). She came screaming at me in public- so I pressed charges. Because she shoved me (on camera at a coffee shop) and had that restraining order- she got time in prison. idk if it's revenge? I pretty much just pushed for legal consequences. When asked if I would accept lesser charges for her- I said no.
EDIT: spelling.
#18
This kid named Ben kept winning at stuff. He was smart with math. I was jealous because my parents really wanted me to be good at math and I had a very difficult time with it. He also got to be patrol captain and even though I applied I didn’t get to be one. I was a short kid, like third shortest in the class. It was elementary school so people care about that. So we had this exercise where we practiced compliments. I said to Ben “I like you because you make me feel tall!” He cried.
It was his birthday.
Sorry, Ben, I hope you don’t remember that.
#19
My high school art teacher was snappy and very rude. Let's call her Mrs. B. Mrs. B also had her very own clique of "talented" students. Basically, if she didn't like your art, she didn't like you. Such energy was directed towards my friends and me. I didn't take too kindly to this.
So, I joined her AP art class, which was a fast-track way to become one of her favorites. Now, Mrs. B had a habit of divulging all of her dirty laundry to her favorites because they were her 'friends'. She was telling minors things that no student/child should know about their teacher, like the details of her divorce or how she was involved with a married man.
I gathered all of these details from the last semester of my junior year of high school to the end of the 1st semester of my senior year. This was when I told my Spanish teacher, Mrs. J. Mrs. J didn't like Mrs. B, so the principal was obviously informed. By the end of the day every teacher, student, and faculty member were told one way or another. Mrs. B's reputation had been ruined and she had been forced to resign.
I have no regrets.
#20
Not quite revenge but in third grade I was talking to a boy and thought he was cute but also annoying. I tossed some glitter up at his face, and some went in his eye. Yeah, really horrible thing to do and he was seriously hurt. I believed for years that glitter was tiny pieces of glass because of how it affected him and how everyone around us responded.
#21
First, let me just say I was a very angry young man in high school. I'm no longer quite so angry. I'm not sure why, but this one kid seemed to have fun pushing people off the walk in the outdoor hallways in between periods. He'd wait until just before the bell rang and then push you right into a mud puddle. He got me twice. I noticed that this guy walked to school, like myself. We went in opposite directions, but I knew his neighborhood and I knew the path he'd have to take. I went on up ahead and found a shovel on a back porch. I waited for him to come around the corner and then I hit him right in the small of the back with the flat of the shovel. He went down to his knees and I kicked him so he was lying flat on the ground. I put the blade of the shovel on the back of his neck and told him if he did it again I'd cut off his head and throw it in the canal. He avoided me at school after that and I saw less and less of him until one day I realized I just didn't see him around at all anymore.
I'm not quite sure what I intended beyond getting him to stop messing with me, but I suspect I did way more than that.
#22
Way less serious, but back in middle school me and this girl would always pull pranks on each other. The day before she splashed water on me, so I decided to get back at her. I found out that she really hates it when people talk about bugs and stuff during lunch. So I got 2 of my homies on board and sat near her and talked about bugs, frying them, eating them, etc; to get on her nerves.
Turns out she REALLY doesn't like them, and went outside and vomited a little. I apologized. She also didn't tell the teacher, cause we had a silent agreement that unless the prank got too bad we wouldn't tell on each other. Fun days.
#23
This is a story my mom would *never* let me live down, even though I was still quite young at the time and barely remember it
For context: I was always a really quiet, nice, and polite kid. One day in daycare, I and the other kids were all doing some arts and crafts, and I asked the girl next to me to pass me a certain crayon.
According to the workers at the daycare, she was apparently quite mean in telling me "no". So apparently after a moments silence, I just ... grabbed the nearest (safety) scissors and just *snipped off a bit of her hair*. Then I just grabbed the crayon and went on like nothing happened, while she sat there in shock.
I still don't know what came over me that day, but my mom always tells me that she got a call that day with from the workers, who were trying hard not to laugh when they told her that I just casually and out of nowhere cut this girls hair like it was nothing. In hindsight it wasn't really funny, but I guess the juxtaposition of that behavior coming from me was surprising.
I do feel bad about it though.
#24
Back in 2004 when I was 25 a guy I was dating cheated on me multiple times and when I found out he tried to make it seem like it was my fault he cheated because I put on 15 lbs when I had to take steroids for lymes disease.
I was so mad I posted his # on the men seeking men section on Craigslist with a title that said "If you want a good time call me. "
Our mutual friend said he received so many calls when he was at work he got fired.
Oops.
#25
Girl at school kept telling her friends my sister was easy. I "accidentally" spilled chili on her new shirt. Turns out her gram had just died and they had went shopping for that shirt together like the week before, making it the last thing she ever gave her.
She was out of school for about a month for personal stuff...
And... Tbf, my sister was/is a complete easy woman.
#26
We had one person in our group in University who was not pulling his weight. He would submit things translated from different languages that were not in English, he would submit them without any references and he would never attend meetings. Looking back he was probably just out of his means but it didn't feel like he was even trying.
My group decided, on a day he didn't come to class to (we assume) purposefully avoid a meeting we had planned for right after, to tell him we had had a very large test that day he had missed. We just sent some messages in the group chat saying "that was a hard test" and "does anyone know how much that was weighted? I know I failed."
One look at the course outline and you could see we had not had a test. He dropped the class the next day.
#27
My brother is 7 years older than me (female). He was always way too rough and wild with me. One time when I was 6 and he was 13, we were playing cops and robbers. I was the cop and thought, “Now I’M the boss!” So I took that opportunity to put him in jail- which was in the basement- by Sparta kicking him square in the back from the top of the stairs.
He had to jump to catch himself so he didn’t break his neck. His foot hurt for several days but my mom told him to walk it off. Yeah… he broke his foot. I still feel bad about it.
#28
There was a co-worker who bought a new car when gas prices were high and he constantly bragged about how much money he was saving and how great his gas mileage was. A co-worker decided to play a prank and each day he snuck out to the parking lot and secretly topped off his gas tank.
The daily bragging continued and after about two weeks we stopped secretly adding gas to his new car. Suddenly he stopped bragging about his gas mileage and how much money he was saving.
After another couple of weeks, we asked him for an update on the car. He told us he sold it because it was a piece of garbage and his gas mileage decreased drastically.
We never told him about the prank.
-- Update --
First off, for my European friends, gas and petrol are the same thing, so yes we adding petrol.
Many people have indicated that this prank was replicated in a series called Tacoma FD. We pulled this prank circa 2005 at an automotive design center with a large parking lot. It was a team effort to find the car in the massive parking lot each day, then have someone sneak out and top off the gas. The parking lot was huge, about 500 cars. We used a 5-gallon safety can which had a metal spout that fit nicely into filler tube of the gas tank, and I would say we added less than 1-gallon per day. The safety can could also be stored in the trunk of my car without it sloshing or smelling up the car with gas fumes.
If anyone has a link to the TV show where this happened, I would like to share it with my old friends. Thank you for the great discussion.
Apatheist Account2 3 hours ago
Bob Monkhouse told a joke about doing this around 30 years ago, before this story allegedly happened.
#29
My sister was being a jerk to me as a kid, so when I next gave her a glass of milk, I put some kernels of corn in it, thinking it would gross her out. It didn't.
It choked her.
Cut to me giving my kid sister the Heimlich, and apologizing for years after.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 4 hours ago
OP was a kid, but THIS is why "food" pranks are NEVER funny and are ALWAYS dangerous. If you're old enough to know better, please don't ever pull a food/drink-related prank on anyone.
#30
A man followed my mum home from her work, a bar about 20 minutes away in foot. He followed her into the house almost breaking the door, and exposed himself in the living room. I was upstairs at the time so I only heard, but when she said "put that dang thing away and get out of my house" I picked up a hatchet from my stepdad's tools and ran downstairs telling him that in 10 seconds he's gonna be out of my house, or he's gonna be without a thing.
He ran, tripped over the doorframe and knocked himself out cold on the driveway. Blood coming out of his ears, the works. Mum told me to call my stepdad who was at his friend's house and they both came running to get rid of him. Last I heard, he was deaf in his left ear and blind in his left eye from an unexplained head injury🤔.
Mel in Georgia 2 hours ago
What the heck is that thing around the guy's head in the picture? Some sort of weird AI interpretation of a bandaged head?
#31
I put a fly in my little sisters rice when I was 10. She stared to cry because she *hates* bugs and is downright terrified of them. I felt so so bad watching her cry. To this day she won’t even eat rice anymore.
Edit: To be fair she did throw my diary in the toilet, but I probably deserved it because I was a little rascal.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 4 hours ago
Was the fly dead? Did OP catch a live fly? I have so many questions. Most of them are fly-related. XD
#32
In high school, a buddy jumped onto the hood of my car as I was heading towards the exit of the parking lot. I asked him to get off, he demanded a ride to his car. I obliged, but I stopped b rather abruptly to "encourage" him off of my hood. He broke his arm on the landing. Still feel bad about that one, and this was back in like 98 or 99.
#33
Once in high school, my best friend lend the school book from me, because she wanted to copy the important pages and she couldn't find hers. After that she told me she gave it back to me and I just lost it somewhere. (She definitely did NOT) since it wasn't her problem, she didn't bother searching with me. (Spoiler: I never saw that book again)
Fast forward, exams coming up. It's like 3 weeks before and I don't have a book to learn with. I remembered I was still mad that she lost my book. Under pressure I took her book out of her backpack and took it home.At first I just wanted to copy the whole book and give it back without her noticing (again Spoiler: I did not)
We didn't really have a good relationship then, because she would get mad at me for days and talk to me when she didn't understand sth and I was sick of it.
To get to the point: She failed the exam.
(She started asking me about the book 3 days before the test, apparently she didn't notice it was missing for 3 whole weeks)
Still have mixed feelings about this and I kinda feel bad because I could have just bought a new one. She was kinda toxic at the end tho. ( they were like 40 Dollars or sth , = expensive ,but still).
#34
I wasn’t cool in junior high. Evan was in most of my classes and he wasn’t cool either, but apparently he thought that I was lame enough that I would be a viable target. He would mock me at any opportunity (and there were plenty, I was a weird kid). I remember he liked to lick his hand and smear it over my locker. Disgusting.
So now for the revenge. Evan had a reputation for being a nerd, and he liked to brag about how smart he was, how he was a math wiz, etc. For each class, all of the student grades were posted for on a tack board. Each student had a ‘unique number’ assigned to them. To find your grade you first had to find your number, and the grade for each exam and class project was posted next to it. I realized at some point that my unique number had my birth month and day in the middle, with random numbers before and after. A friend confirmed that their number also included their birthday. Evan made the mistake of mentioning one day that his birthday was on St. Patrick’s day. You can probably see where this is going.
One day in math class we got one of our exams back. Evan saw my grade and started laughing at me, calling me stupid for ‘only’ getting an B+. He wanted to know, how did I do so badly on a test that was so easy? I asked him what he got on the test.
“A+”, he told me smugly.
“Yeah?” I said, “Let’s see it then.”
But he wouldn’t show me his paper. He had conveniently already sorted it away in a folder.
I decided to see what his grade was for myself. I marched over to the grade board, and searched for the student number with 317 in it (St. Patrick’s day). I found it. And next to the number— D’s, F’s, more D’s.
I announced to the class that you can just use someone’s birthday to figure out their number and grade. I locked eyes with Evan and began listing each of his grades out loud like the horrible s**t that I am. I still remember the look on his face. Abject horror which quickly morphed into a broken, hopeless expression. And then he started crying and left the classroom.
This kid wasn’t cool, he wasn’t attractive. All he had was his intelligence— or the lie about it, anyway. Now he had nothing, and on top of that he cried openly in class. The kid never lived it down (not as long as I knew him anyway, which truthfully was only another year or so). I only got a stern talking-to for what I had done, but Evan got ridiculed for the rest of the time he went to that school. I don’t think I realized the full scope of what I had done until I was older. We were both losers just trying to make it through junior high without too much emotional damage, and I had to nuke this kid over some snarky comment that didn’t really mean much of anything at the end of the day.
#35
I only had one nerf gun for most of my childhood, since my parents didn't like me playing with toy guns. The one I had was a small pistol that was the size of my hand, but actually shot pretty hard for a nerf gun. Hard enough to sting for a while, *maybe* bruise if it hit a sensitive area close enough.
Anyway, I brought this gun to my friend's birthday party in elementary school since he wanted to have a nerf fight. Being outgunned by everyone there, my plan was centered around ambushes. The birthday boy had pelted me before running away to get more bullets, so I wanted to get him next. He's crouched down by a tree, waiting to shoot another kid, and his back is to me. I pulled the trigger at the back of his neck, when he turns around.
I hit him right in the pupil with the full force of my hard-hitting pistol. He was understandably bawling afterwards, and decked me while holding his eye. The other kids saw what was going on and tried to back him up but the host's parents broke it up and took care of their son. I didn't get any cake, he told me to get lost for the sleepover part, and wouldn't talk to me for a week.
Now, I just thought he was being a jerk in the moment, but apparently the morning after the party his eye still hurt and he couldn't quite see clearly out of the eye I hit him in because it was swollen. His parents took him to a doctor. Turns out I bruised his eye, and he got some kind of medication or smth to help with the swelling. Yeah, I definitely deserved what he did to me.
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