Throughout the world, there's few kinds of stories that are more universal than the story of a bully who gets his comeuppance.

You see it around the world in literature, film, professional wrestling, and it makes sense. It's relatable because no matter how strong you are, no matter how rich, how successful, there's probably been a time in your life where someone mistreated you and there just wasn't a whole lot you could do about it. But oftentimes, it seems like these feel good stories are relegated to the realm of fiction. Life often doesn't have a happy ending. Bad things happen to good people while others just get away with murder all the time. So whenever people get to see an example of someone sticking it to a bully in real life, they get a little excited. And one of the greatest examples of this happened nearly 15 years ago involving a couple of Australian schoolchildren.

Today, let's take a look at Casey Heynes aka The Zangief Kid.

In 2009, Reason magazine published an article by Greg Beato entitled, "Thank You, Your Honor, May I have Another?" In the article, he coins the term "Justice Porn," in this context, he's using the term to criticize the fake reality of courtroom TV shows like The People's Court. He compares these shows to Romper Room and Oprah. But in the years since his article, this term has gone to have a much different, much more positive connotation. People started to use the term "Justice Porn" to describe viral videos in which someone deserving gets their comeuppance — a bully; a criminal; some other bad actor — usually in the form of an ass beating.

Two years after Greg's article, the subreddit r/justiceporn was created to archive all these feel-good social media moments. All-time posts include things like:

• Those two guys who tried to fight a bouncer in Ireland, and it didn't work out for them
• A student who defended his teacher from another student who punched her, and of course...
• A story that I covered a while ago on the channel, the 8-Ball Jacket Guy.

Justice porn has been criticized as a way for people who really just want to watch fight videos to feel morally justified for it. But there's no denying the appeal of having an uplifting story to go along with your fight video.

Few internet fight videos have had the drama and intrigue of the story between two boys in Australia. On March 14th of 2011, a video was uploaded to YouTube entitled Child Finally Snaps After Being Bullied.

In the video, a small, skinny child walks up to a much larger kid and grabs him by the collar — he literally gets on his tippy toes to look him in the eye. And then a high-pitched, very Australian accent:

Larger Kid can barely finish his sentence before the smaller kid punches him in the face. The smaller kid gets stanced up in a boxing pose and starts doing these fake little jabs at the larger kid's belly, and then he goes for one real punch again — and it doesn't work out this time.

The big kid interrupts his punch and just grabs him by the waist, lifts him up in the air, and tosses him to the ground. Then, rather than continuing to beat his ass, the large feller just says fuck you and walks off. The bully limps around, and the person recording asks if he's okay, and he's not okay. Meanwhile, one of the bully's friends gets stanced up, and he's getting ready to fight, too, only for a girl to get between them and say he needs to back off or the same thing is going to happen to him.

Commenters, of course, are largely in support of the big boy, not only for standing up for himself, but because of the restraint he showed by first enduring multiple punches and then walking away as soon as the threat was neutralized, resisting the urge to beat on him further. People also praise the girl for getting involved and stopping further violence. Over the course of the day, the video starts to blow up, but YouTube takes it down for violating the community guidelines. This, of course, did nothing as people will just continued to repost the video. One of these mirrors also makes it to Reddit, where people are, of course, largely in support of the big boy.

I always love when I do these videos and you see comments that are like a time capsule of when they were made.

Because of his size and the way the counter attack resembles a Street Fighter command grapple, he's given the nickname: The Zangief Kid. Which, of course, also leads to several Street Fighter edits of the video. And eventually, even a Zangief Kid fighting game.

Honestly, the move more closely resembled Faarooq's finisher, The Dominator, but I guess that's a little more obscure than Zangief.

As the video spreads further, it makes its way to Facebook, and little by little, people who are actually familiar with the situation see the posts and comment on them. A parent of a child who went to the same school said that this bullying had been ongoing for years, and it finally came to its obvious conclusion. Several Facebook groups were being made showing support for this boy. One of them, which unfortunately has been archived, was made by one of the kid's best friends. This friend identified the Zangief Kid as Casey Heynes, and the school is a middle school in Australia called Chifley College Dunheved Campus. The creator of the group noted that, although Casey didn't have Facebook, he wanted to see what people thought the video. Word also starts to spread that as is typical of stupid school policies. Casey was punished and the other kid wasn't. But soon after, TMZ got a hold of the kid's family for clarification. According to their report, the attacker named Ritchard Gale received a 21-day suspension, but Casey did get four days, the reason being that he was violent as well.

But in any case, they know that Casey was happy to see all the support he'd received online, and more support was yet to come.

I think that a lot of people in their childhoods have at some point run afoul of stupid school policies regarding fights. So even just four days rubbed people the wrong way.

What was he supposed to do? Just let himself keep getting punched until he gets knocked out? You could actually die that way. At that point, if it's life or death, fuck a school policy.

If they wanted him to not defend himself, where's any of the teachers? Where's any adult at all? So in response to this, 4chan users would embark upon a letter writing campaign to the school. Some of the 4chan posters tried to keep it cordial and appealed to the school administrator's reason.

But, more commonly, and in more typical /b/ fashion, there is a form letter that was shared a lot, and this one poked fun at the school administrators and made threats.

In the following days, Casey's story continues to gain momentum: People on YouTube are making reaction videos, it's getting mainstream coverage, they're talking about him on The View.

Then the next week, the Australian TV show, A Current Affair, would interview Casey, who they refer to as a "Hero to Millions." In the interview, he gives a play-by-play of the video and what was going on in his head. He also corroborates that he'd been targeted for bullying for years, and all of his friends abandoned him lest they be bullied, too.

His father had no idea what was going on at school, and he fully supported his child's actions. He's also heartbroken that he couldn't be there to help him.

The A Current Affair interviewer is visibly taken aback as Casey mentions that the abuse had gotten so bad that he considered suicide. But thankfully, his older sister, who was more familiar with the situation, had helped him get through it. When they asked why he thought this happened, Casey responded that it's because he never fights back, making this video an even more satisfying story. It's like a full story arc unfolding in under a minute.

His sister put it well:

Of course, no matter how cut and dry this may seem, there's always two sides to the story. Soon after, Ritchard Gale, as well as his friend who recorded the video, would get an interview to tell their side of the story.

Ritchard and his anonymous friend, who also received the suspension, both claimed that it was actually Casey instigating the ongoing bullying, saying he called him gay slurs and whatnot. It was just Ritchard's bad luck that this was the time someone happened to be filming. They also accused Casey's mom of being the one who spread the video after the school administrator sent it to her.

The interviewer questions Ritchard about rumors that he was posting further threats on Facebook to Casey, but it appeared the account was actually a fake one impersonating Ritchard. Ritchard insisted that he was actually very sorry, and he penned a handwritten apology letter, but he also requested that Casey apologize to him.

Unsurprisingly, this interview did not shift things in Ritchard's favor — in fact, it might have made things a little bit worse for himself. With people now having gotten a closer look at him on TV, a lot were quick to point out the boys' rodent-like features.

Encyclopedia Dramatica described them as the Mighty Casey and the Lowly Rat. Making matters worse, at one point, it was reported by The Telegraph that Ritchard's mother demanded an apology from Casey. She would later demand they retract the story, saying that she had actually said she demanded her son to apologize, and that she'd always raised her kids to walk away from fights. A few months later in May, Casey get to experience the full breadth of his popularity in real life. It was then that Justin Bieber would have Casey, who was perhaps a bit surprisingly a fan of his, join him on stage to promote an anti-bullying message. Casey walks out and he gets a massive pop.

A Current Affair also recorded them speaking a bit backstage. Bieber spoke a bit about bullying that he experienced in school, and it's actually kinda the funniest humblebrag ever:

In fairness to Bieber, though — and he didn't dare frame it this way at the time — but truthfully speaking, at this period in time, Justin Bieber might have actually been the most bullied person on the planet. Like, all the hate people historically had for Barney the Dinosaur and the band Hansen, that all suddenly got thrust upon Justin Bieber. It's actually insane to think about how much people hated this child. Even now, today in 2025, there's probably going to be people who are mad that I said something even remotely positive about Bieber.

Unlike a lot of viral video celebrities, Casey Heynes didn't try to pull a perfect-game-Homer with his fame. He mostly just faded gracefully back into obscurity along with his viral moment.

A few years after the incident, it was reported that Casey had been involved in anti-bullying organizations into adulthood. And aside from a few unverified sightings in public, this was the last that the Internet at large have heard of the Zangief Kid, Casey Heynes.