Playing With / Bully Brutality

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Basic Trope: Bullies severely injure their victims.

• Straight: Marcus beats up Danny so badly that he is sent to the hospital.
• Exaggerated:
  • Marcus literally bullies Danny 24/7. On top of breaking him in half at school, he breaks into Danny's bedroom (and the occasional hospital stay) to either bludgeon him to a pulp in his bed or leave behind threats to keep quiet.
  • Marcus injures Danny by beating him in the head, choking him, and breaking every bone in his body.
  • Practically every classmate beats up and tortures Danny to death.
  • Marcus runs Danny over with his car and posts the video on YouTube to humiliate him.
  • Marcus and his friends make it their personal mission to bully Danny for the rest of his life. By the time they escalate to actually lethal stuff, it is by pulling the cord of ninety-year-old Danny's life-support unit.
  • Marcus beats up Danny, one of the teachers.
  • Marcus pushes Danny off a skyscraper and onto a massive pile of ignited tables.
• Downplayed:
  • Marcus pulls many humiliating pranks on Danny, with the implication that if Danny does not comply with said pranks Marcus will resort to violence.
  • Marcus "only" cyber-bullies Danny, but it is such an unrelenting campaign of sending messages/hacking accounts/destroying Danny's good standing with the community/shutting down options for Danny to live a good life that Danny would seriously prefer Marcus to break his legs with a baseball bat - at least that is once and done.
• Justified:
  • Marcus thrives on violence on those who can't defend themselves.
  • Marcus is a sociopath and doesn't care if his actions cause other people serious harm.
  • Marcus's parents actively taught him to be a brutal bully, delighting in watching their son brutalize other kids.
• Inverted:
  • School Bullying Is Harmless
  • Danny (or perhaps his Violently Protective Girlfriend Summer) beats up Marcus to a bloody pulp.
• Subverted: Danny comes home with a black eye and you expect him to say that the school bullies beat him, but instead he walked into a pole.
• Double Subverted: He walked into a pole because he was dizzy from what the school bullies did to him earlier.
• Parodied:
  • An entire hospital wing is labeled: "VICTIMS OF MARCUS", which is even worse than what some of the emergency wing has.
  • We cut between Marcus beginning his average afternoon beating of nerds and him walking back into the school when recess ends and the sea of injured nerds spreading as far as the eye can see.
  • Marcus curb-stomps a truckload of nerds with sudden kung fu leet skillz and the Epic Riff finale of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" playing in the background.
  • The police won't do anything to stop Marcus's bullying. Not because they think School Bullying Is Harmless, not because Marcus is eleven years old and the law tends to apply kid gloves when they deal with hoodlums of that age, but because Marcus would tear them apart.
• Zig Zagged: Danny and Marcus are fighting and one of them gets a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, but after the fight it's revealed that the one who got the beatdown was Marcus, but the fight happens after Marcus broke one leg of Danny's brother, but all is a story that Danny is doing.
• Averted:
  • Marcus keeps his bullying of Danny limited to name-calling and playing harmless but humiliating pranks on him, and he never takes it further than that.
  • No bullying takes place, physical or otherwise.
• Lampshaded: "Marcus is not a common bully, he will not dope slap you, swirl you and make wedgies, he will beat you to a bloody pulp and maybe he will do more if he woke up feeling like it. If you can, avoid him at all costs."
• Invoked: Marcus talks about how bad will beat Danny
• Exploited:
  • Jhon makes Danny fight against Marcus to incapacite him.
  • Marcus has heard of the local Expy of Bully Beatdown and wants to throw down with a champion MMA fighter so bad… auditioning is pretty easy for him, too…
• Defied:
  • Marcus knows he'll get in trouble if he beats up Danny too badly, so he doesn't... He opts for psychological abuse instead.
  • When Violently Protective Girlfriend Summer isn't enough to beat Marcus, when even the designated Bully Hunter Claire can't take him down, Danny calls upon the one person who just might top Marcus in terms of this trope: Edward Evulz. Where Marcus might opt for a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, Edward can, will, and has already done the act of tearing out your heart and showing it to you as it slowly ebbs away. The mere mention of him alone is enough to make Marcus reconsider bullying Danny.
• Discussed: "God damn it Marcus! What did that kid do for a beat up as bad as that?!"
• Conversed: "Hope Danny's OK. Marcus should rot in jail for nearly killing that poor kid!"
• Deconstructed:
  • The beating was so brutal that the other bullies who pick on Danny were disgusted with Marcus. Not only is he expelled from school, but he is also sentenced to juvenile jail.
  • The school's reputation takes a nosedive once word gets out that they did nothing to stop Marcus, and many students are pulled out, while authorities investigate them for letting Marcus run rampant.
  • The other students band together and attack Marcus with full intent to maim/kill, thinking that he deserves it.
  • Marcus himself thinks he went too far into his bullying and gets overwhelmed with guilt.
• Reconstructed:
  • For a given value of it... the horror Marcus brought to Danny and that criminal record means that he becomes The Dreaded amongst the student body. When the new student is apparently turned into Marcus's new toy, all the other students can do is pray for his soul.
  • Again for a given value of it... Marcus manages to kill many of the students before going down or, worse yet, manages to successfully fend off the attack. Now knowing that his targets deserve whatever comes to them, and the rest of the student body now knowing that Marcus is an unstoppable badass, his brutality becomes even worse and people accept that, together or alone, he can kill them all any time he wants.
• Implied: Marcus is going to attack Danny. Ambulance Cut with Danny extremely beaten.
• Played For Drama:
  • Danny is left with head injuries at the hands of Marcus, and the students watch in delight. As he is in the hospital bed being treated for his injuries, he is contemplating revenge against Marcus. A few weeks later, Marcus is beating up another student, until Danny arrives with a steel pipe (or worse yet, a gun), and Marcus knows what's going to happen to him...
  • Usually, Marcus would be stopped as a bully if there is a moment wherein all of the "weaklings" stand up as an army and demonstrate that Marcus just cannot take them all on. But Marcus is such a psychotic Blood Knight that he will pummel or even kill as many members of this "army" as he can before going down, and has no problem demonstrating that. If the options are to be slaughtered alone or together, how the heck is it a good idea to stand up against him?
  • If we use Rape as Drama, then the last two examples of exaggeration counts as this.
• Played For Horror:
  • The Series Establishing Moment is Marcus picking up Danny and tossing him into a wood-chipper, feet first, and stomping down on his face and pushing him inside while laughing like the Joker as Danny tries in vain to stop it, even pleading for help. And thus Marcus establishes himself as something even more incredibly vile than your average bully.
  • Danny arriving to school with a gun and shooting Marcus dead is already horrifying enough… and then we get a montage of the things Marcus has done to Danny (with the extreme implication that he has done it to other kids and he will be the Predecessor Villain to any atrocities they decide to do). The X-rated things he did to Danny.