Disproportionate Retribution/Fairy Tales


 * In The Brothers Grimm fairy tale "The Dog and the Sparrow", the titular animals are friends. Then, the dog is driven over and killed by a carter, even though the sparrow warned him. So at first the sparrow pecks off the plug of the wine barrel the carter was transporting, wasting all the wine; then, he tries to peck out the eyes of the horses, the carter tries to kill him with his hoe, but hits the horse on its head instead, killing it. Repeat for all the wine barrels and horses. When the carter arrives at home, he sees that thousands of birds have eaten up the wheat in the attic. He wants to kill the sparrow with his hoe, but only manages to destroy his complete home. Yes, even the walls. Then he catches the sparrow and wants to swallow him, but the sparrow flutters up, the carter tells his wife to kill the sparrow with the hoe... but she kills him instead. The sparrow survives.
 * Poor Snow White has her stepmother constantly trying to kill her; different versions offer assorted means of attempt, ranging from a poisoned comb to enchanted corset lacings, although the sympathetic huntsman and the poisoned apple are pretty universal. Why did the Queen want her stepdaughter killed? Because a magic mirror said Snow White was the more beautiful of the two.
 * In some versions of the story, the stepmother is even more of a Complete Monster - any woman who the mirror told her was more beautiful than she was either got exiled from the country (if she was lucky) or was put to death. Eventually, the princess became the target.
 * And in the Grimm version of the story, the evil stepmother tells the huntsman to kill Snow White and bring her heart back so she can eat it.
 * Rapunzel (not the Disney version) was taken from her parents as an infant because of this trope. According to the fairy tale, when Rapunzel's mother was pregnant, the family lived next door to a witch with a garden full of rampion (a kind of cabbage), which the mother was craving desperately. She finally made her husband go steal some for her, and he was caught by the witch. When he explained why he was stealing the rampion, she agreed to spare him, but demanded that they give her the baby as payment. Admittedly, it was pretty jerkish to steal the rampion instead of knocking on the door and asking to buy or barter some, but a baby is still a pretty hefty price to pay for salad greens.
 * Hans Christian Andersen's story The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf. The protagonist is a vain, selfish and cruel young girl who tortures insects and uses the bread she's supposed to bring to her poor family as a stepping stone to avoid dirtying her shoes. Her punishment? Becoming a statue in Hell. And for bonus points, she is able to hear everything heard on Earth about her.