< Karma Houdini
Karma Houdini/Web Comics
- In Gaming Guardians, Ultima wipes out whole cities, kidnaps, maims and replaces Randarch, tortures Radical both physically and psychologically - yet while Radical still sees Ultima as her Evil Twin, everyone else seems to be ready to let her join the GG after her Heel Face Turn.
- Broat, Big Bad of Get Medieval, ends up the favorite of the Emperor of China, and a very successful silk smuggler.
- In Exploitation Now!, a mad scientist eventually becomes the protagonist and ultimately survives at the end of the comic with only one dead friend as punishment for all she did back when the comic was still wacky: murdering, stealing, hacking, war starting (and masturbating as she watches news reports of the death toll), and mutation, all inflicted upon the innocent masses (and later, government black-ops, but they deserved it).
- In Looking for Group, the undead warlock Richard whimsically and casually conducts any kind of psychotic and murderous pranks as a matter of course, quite often as comic relief. The only time he gets his comeuppance is when he's tried by a demonic court for not being evil enough, and even then, he 'adjourns' that court at his own leisure and proceeds to mutilate every participant.
- Samantha in Penny and Aggie' has been a bitter paranoid racist who has yet to receive anything worse than a night in the hospital due to too much laxative despite her active roles in drugging and sabotaging other people out of sheer insanity.
- Stan was key to the Popsicle debacle and has yet to feel the effect of karma in any big sense, though it is implied he feels guilt. He also had no real fallout from using the Pen-Ags to support his run for school president, only to throw them all under the bus. He's implied to feel small amounts of guilt, but the comic ended with him apparently completely successful in everything he ever wanted. The main cast still mostly hates the guy, but he hasn't suffered any repercussions for it.
- Meg got a bad hit in the past where her reputation was ruined, but has yet to receive any retribution for anything done in the popsicle storyline. Or anything else done since the comic began.
- Tharqa, who generally did horrible things to other characters in the strip yet received no comeuppance in the long run - though at the school reunion shown in the epilog, she's implied to still have no friends and the people she does meet all hate her.
- A minor one, but Aggie pointed out Brandi during the 'Who Kidnapped Cyndi' storyline, citing an incident where Brandi knocked out a racist classmate and circumstantial evidence. She turned out to be completely wrong, but never gets called out on it and never suffers a bad relationship with Brandi or Penny because of it.
- In the Jack Chick tracts, virtually anyone can get out of going to hell with a last-minute repentance and declaration of faith regardless of their crimes up until then (although, as he often points out, you're already going to hell). There are quite a few examples of Karma Houdini, on a different level, though.
- In "Gomez Is Coming," Ricky Valdez suffers no consequences for killing the titular Gomez's younger brother while firing randomly into a crowd after he converts.
- In "Lisa," the father doesn't suffer any legal consequences for molesting Lisa. The backlash over this storyline led to the tract being pulled from circulation.
- In one tract, a man is saved from the death penalty after murdering someone with a club because his mother arranges for the guards to kill her in his place. Yeah.
- The Light Warriors of 8-Bit Theater. After 9 years of murder, theft and horrible atrocities, the comics ends with them no better and no worse than when it began. Except Thief, who is now the King of Elfland. Although Black Mage is still Black Mage, and still has to stay with Fighter, so that could be seen as punishment enough.
- Also, King Steve presumably stays in power.
- In Sluggy Freelance, evil masterminds Crushestro and Monicruel are abandoned by their forces and left on a south pacific island.... and quickly realize they have everything needed for a happy retirement on a tropical island. And in today's strip, Crushestro's wife arrives, complete with goons. She's not happy.
- In Schlock Mercenary, every time the Toughs have thrown something at General Xinchub that makes it looks like he'll get the screwing over he deserves, he turns it around in his favor to put him back in power. Not even death has stopped him from finding an angle from which he can personally profit.
- In Christian Humber Reloaded, Vash rarely gets any punishment for his crimes, and goes to prison for only around five years for killing Soku and her family, beore being released to hunt down convicts. Eventually, the police refuse to go after him because of how powerful he is.
- Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell takes this trope literally--Ella's parents accumulated enough good karma that several murders wouldn't be enough to send her to hell. So far, we've mostly seen her commit theft, which she can presumably keep up indefinitely. Contrast to Darwin, who made one horrible, horrible mistake that he can't escape.
- Liz from Cool Cat Studios epilogue "Best Laid Plans". Liz deliberately projects a persona of a sexy, mysterious woman so she can emotionally protect herself and lets her lovers come up with their own visions of her, and then dumps them without a second thought because they don't know 'the real her'. She knowingly sleeps with women who are cheating on their husbands because 'it's not her problem', tries to worm her way into a relationship with Sophia and Belinda when both of their relationships hit temporary rough-spots (because she loves Belinda and thought Sophia would be close enough to Belinda) and basically acts like a self-absorbed asshole. And yet she's given a tearful send-off without so much of a word about the horrible manipulative things she did to the people who cared about her.
- Technically, Lyle Phipps, from Great is a Karma Houdini. Early on, he kills a man in a drunken brawl, and the incident is almost immediately forgotten about because everything in the beginning of the comic is Played for Laughs.
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