< Karma Houdini

Karma Houdini/Western Animation

  • Charles Montgomery Burns, from The Simpsons, is the character pictured with Satan in the page image. One of the most infamous examples of his karma evasion is the end of the chapter "Homer vs Dignity".
    • Ah yes, the episode where he exploits Homer's desperation for money by making the guy into a prank monkey to the point of having him dress up as a panda that gets raped by another panda. Remember, Burns is the guy who took over Springfield's television stations to try to make the residents take a teddy bear from a baby in "Rosebud", made employees who quit and later retake their jobs crawl through a narrow tunnel so that they can come out with Burns literally looking down on them in "Maggie Makes Three", sent vicious attack dogs after hungry children who try to steal food that Burns would have otherwise disposed of in "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", took advantage of legal loopholes that allowed him to steal from schools and wreck old folks' homes and then proceeded to block sunlight from Springfield until it took him getting SHOT for the device blocking said sunlight to be wrecked in "Who Shot Mr. Burns", and in "Curse of the Flying Hellfish" attempted to drown Bart for no apparent reason other than that Bart insulted him. And none of these evil deeds make any apparent dent in his prominence or power or wealth at all. Well, at least not permanent ones.
    • Lampshaded in another episode where Homer writes terribly cruel reviews of every restaurant in town. After foiling an assassination attempt, Homer and Lisa walk off into the sunset with Homer saying, "The important thing is, I didn't get my comeuppance, and I never will." Subverted immediately afterwards when he is shown surrounded by a mob of angry people, and as the credits roll we hear Homer getting beaten up as he wails "I'm finally getting my comeuppance!".
  • In one arc of Shadow Raiders, Femur steals the good guys' Battle Moons and get a lot of people killed, but isn't punished. In the series finale, they never do defeat The Beast, just send it far away, where it starts eating worlds again...
  • In All Dogs Go to Heaven, the entire family of canidae (dogs) are karma-dodgers. Carface (the Big Bad of the film) also ends up in paradise after he's offed, even though he flat-out murdered another dog, held an innocent child captive for weeks, and engaged in all other sorts of nasty business. The film states this is because dogs are naturally kind and loving, so they get a free pass.
    • Carface is actually dissatisfied with Heaven, meaning karma may have actually caught up with him after all.
    • Karma bites Carface hard in the sequel. It's revealed that he's The Mole for Satan himself and is Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves in the end, literally being dragged kicking and screaming into Hell.

Itchy: What do you know? And I thought All Dogs Go to Heaven.

  • Hey Arnold!: Sid and Stinky never get any comeuppance for telling everyone that a classmate wears bunny pajamas. Worse, they're regulars, and worst is that Arnold never harbors any resentment towards them for this. (Said pajama-clad classmate isn't so lucky... and neither is Arnold.)
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Bendy ("Everyone Knows It's Bendy") totally owns this category, followed a close second by Goofball ("Imposter's Home"). While the protagonist is immature and his nicer friend is not optimistic as opposed to the one of Camp Lazlo, fans dislike both episodes because of this.
    • Even worse is that Bendy was seen in the crowd scenes in the last episode, meaning he was never kicked out off screen...GOD HAS FORSAKEN US!
      • At least the writers of the show have apologized for the whole Bendy episode.
    • Half-averted in "Cheese A-Go-Go": Jackie Khones undeservedly wins a case against Madame Foster because Frankie arrived at the courthouse too late to testify, and is later responsible for everyone in the cast going to jail, though he himself is included. Hardly any less annoying nonetheless.
  • Lady Tremaine, from Cinderella, is one of the few Karma Houdinis in the Disney Animated Canon, who as a result of the original story's Disneyfication, pretty much gets away with making Cinderella's life a living Hell for twenty years...
    • The closest to punishment she ever got was being humiliated (along with Drizella) in front of the King and the local noblemen after the Fairly Godmother's wand she stole turns them into frogs and then, when reversing that spell, makes them wear Cinderella-like clothing, complete with brooms and all. Keep in mind that this happens in Cinderella III, which happens right after the end of the original Disney movie and has Lady Tremaine, aside of abusing the wand's magic, manipulating a remorseful Anastasia (who's been retconned into a Naive Everygirl) so she takes Cinderella's place with magic.
      • In the "original" Perrault version, the younger of the two stepsisters was much less of an evil bitch than the other one. Not to mention, there have been other interpretations of the stepsisters with one of them being either the lesser evil or not so bad.
        • In Kingdom Hearts, however, she gets blown up by an Unversed, along with the stepsisters.
  • In What's New, Scooby-Doo?, several villains were allowed to get away with what they did if their intentions were good and/or if "nobody got hurt." The most Egregious example was the Scooby Snack Monster, who, despite actively trying to kill several characters over the course of the episode, was pretty much forgiven instantly because she was trying to protect her father's factory.
    • There was also the roller ghoster. This one sabotaged theme park rides, and very nearly killed Shaggy and Scooby if they didn't manage to their slingshot sphere rolling away from that cliffside and got Fred, Velma and Daphne minced by the fan from the wind tunnel. She got away scott free because nobody was hurt from it, despite the fact that a lot of villains besides her have been convicted and hauled off for much less.
  • Speaking of Karma Houdinis in the Disney Animated Canon, Pinocchio's got three of 'em. Foulfellow and Gideon trick Pinocchio twice, first to send him to Stromboli (who lost his star attraction and his investment in Pinocchio when he escapes, so it can be assumed the karma bullet manages to get a decent hit on him), and later to Pleasure Island and The Coachman, who they're in cahoots with. Pleasure Island lures in and encourages boys to behave badly so they'll be transformed into jackasses and sold to salt mines as workers. Yeah, they turn children into slaves, wayward as they may be, and they NEVER get their comeuppance. Arguably tells an aesop that you can't simply defeat or get rid of temptations in life, you just learn not to be drawn in by them.
    • In the original book, the (unnamed) fox and cat end up as miserable street beggars; the cat who used to fake blindness really became blind, and the fox had to sell his tail. They beg Pinocchio to help them, but he essentially tells them "good riddance".
    • According to the book Mouse Under Glass that there was a planned idea that, while heading off to save Gepetto from Monstro, Pinocchio would run into Foulfellow and Gideon again. They try to convince Pinocchio that they can help him, but apparently the third time's the charm, because this time he doesn't listen to them, and when they attempt to chase him down, they get caught by the police.
    • There's also de SNES Pinocchio game where at the end of the Pleasure Island level you get to fight the Coachman and throw him off a cliff to a Disney Villain Death.
  • Woody Woodpecker would more often than not get away with a lot of the trouble he causes, especially in The Screwdriver. Occasionally averted in shorts like Ski For Two.
    • Toward the end of the series' run this trope became more and more averted. Hell, his last cartoon ever (Bye Bye Blackboard) ended with Woody being spanked for all the trouble he caused.
  • Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. In fact, Billy should probably be mentioned as well. It doesn't matter if he's dumb, it wouldn't stop him from being a Karma Houdini sometimes.
  • Futurama: Bender in "The Bird Bot of Ice-catraz". Not only does he act like a jackass throughout the entire episode and destroy the ecosystem of the penguins, he also turns penguins homicidal. And he gets away with it all. Of course, Farnsworth is as much to blame. Really, Bender does this all the time.
    • Lampshaded and subverted in "Three Hundred Big Boys", where Bender steals a cigar, and says "Ha! Le Grande Cigar is mine! And with absolutely no consequences!" while being watched on closed circuit camera. At the end of the episode, he remarks on how he hasn't learned a lesson; when the cops show up and start beating him, he shouts "Alright! Closure!"
    • Bender does this twice in "Spanish Fry":
      • Fry offers to let Bender sleep in his tent while camping in the woods, but Bender refuses. During the night, Bender changes his mind and (instead of taking Fry up on his offer) tricks Fry into leaving his tent. Fry is then abducted by aliens and has his nose stolen right off his face. The next morning when the others find Bender in Fry's tent and discover what happened to Fry, nobody blames Bender.
      • Later, when Fry gets his nose back, Bender makes things worse by convincing the alien to chop off Fry's penis instead (they wanted the nose for an aphrodisiac, thinking it's the human reproductive organ; Bender told them the truth). Neither Fry nor Leela ever blame Bender for giving Lrrr the idea.
    • Mom is also this. She's embezzled several billion from Fry, tried to conquer Earth, manufactures inefficient robots that contribute to global warming, has a dark matter monopoly, and keeps her billboards armed.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: Fire Lord Sozin murdered his best friend through inaction, led an almost complete genocide, drove a number of species towards extinction (the flying bison, the dragons, and the flying lemurs are down to a handful if that), burned at least one army and village to a crisp, and conquered a sizable chunk of Eurasia-sized Earth Kingdom in his life time. After all that, he... died peacefully in his sleep, at the age of 102, likely in the comfort of his palace, revered at large. And he got a comet named after him, a continued family-line on the throne, and a nation dedicated to his honor and wishes. He just barely began to regret his actions during the very end of his life. (So at least his conscience didn't let him off even if karma did)
    • Uncle Iroh is another, subtler example. Despite his spiritual turnaround following the death of his son, Iroh spent the majority of his life as an army officer in an imperialist army and even once joked about burning down the city of millions that he was trying to conquer in a protracted siege. Despite being the face of the enemy for decades as the heir to the throne, Iroh's past is never brought up in a negative light by the show and Iroh himself never expresses any regret for his actions as a soldier. He even ends up retiring to a teashop in the capital of Ba Sing Se. One wonders how that development affects the families of the Earth Kingdom soldiers who died in the siege he undertook.
      • One has to remember that his son died in said siege, he immediately abandoned it out of grief, and it thoroughly trashed his career. Karma bit him pretty bad, all things considered. He also fought against his former allies and helped take back the Earth Kingdom capital, making him The Atoner.
  • Fenkman from Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003: Agent Bishop, a Well-Intentioned Extremist anti-alien government agent who in his first appearance kidnaps the turtles, prolongs an invasion of Earth via inaction, and is revealed to have tortured turtle ally Leatherhead—and that's just the beginning—is not punished for it; in fact, as revealed in the show's sixth season, set one hundred years in the future, the long-lived Bishop eventually becomes President of the Galactic U.N. While karma plays around with him a bit during the course of the series—much to his chagrin, his actions accidentally endanger Earth more than once, and it is revealed that he loses his then-best friend sometime down the line—he himself gets off scot-free.
    • Of course, he does have that whole Heel Face Turn thing. I think even the TURTLES are a bit shocked when he suddenly reveals he's become a good guy, and is no longer racist...
    • Wait, did you know the episode, "Bishop's Gambit" is the only episode where Bishop has lost?
  • WITCH: Season two Big Bad Nerissa. She ends up trapped in a fantasy world. But since she doesn't know it and the fantasy is that of her getting everything she wanted...
    • At least she got what she deserved in the comic the series is based on. She was painfully obliterated by the very powers she wanted to take for herself.
    • Ditto for Mongul in Justice League Unlimited, who gets trapped in his own Lotus Eater Machine. Lampshaded when Batman comments that his fate is 'too good for him'.
  • The 1990s Batman the Animated Series made the Riddler into a Karma Houdini in his first episode. While Batman and Robin stopped him from killing the Corrupt Corporate Executive who had driven the Riddler to villainy in the first place, the Riddler still got away scot-free. Better yet, he got the satisfaction of knowing that the executive now suffered from a crippling paranoia of his return, which made for a pretty sweet consolation prize.
    • Superman the Animated Series, due to being Cut Short, ended with Lex Luthor never significantly punished for any of his schemes, along all his suspicions of Superman seemingly publicly vindicated. What's more, while Supes does give Darkseid a pretty brutal beating, in the end, he is still the ultimate ruler of Apokolips, his legions of subjects as devoted to him as ever.
    • This said, The DCAU mainly averts this, as by the end of Justice League Unlimited, we clearly see the vast majority of the setting's villains either killed by Luthor and his forces in the Secret Society, killed by Killer Frost (in hopes of impressing Luthor), or killed by Darkseid after his accidental resurrection, leaving only an odd dozen who ever make it back to earth. By the end of the final episode, both Luthor and Darkseid are engulfed by the anti-life equation, presumed dead (though Batman doesn't think it will last). That said, Atomic Skull, Bizarro, Cheetah, Evil Star, Giganta, Heat Wave, Killer Frost, Sinestro, Star Sapphire, Toyman, and Volcana are let off by the league with a five-minute head start. Interestingly, because of the Bat-Embargo most of Batman's rogues gallery avoids explosive decompression or anything beyond Arkham, though Batman Beyond shows the eventual (not pretty) fates of Bane, Mr. Freeze, Ra's Al Ghul, and The Joker.
      • Actually, Word of God says that Darkseid and Luthor became part of the Source Wall, which is made up of the bodies of would-be conquerors and curiosity seekers from all across the universe. So while it's still kinda a Karma Houdini, they're stuck there for the rest of eternity.
    • While Two-Face never showed up in Batman Beyond, his last appearance in The Animated Series wasn't very pretty. He's become the Judge, and apparently gone even crazier.
  • Another one from Disney: the Siamese Cats Are Mean from Lady and the Tramp, who completely disappear after getting Lady muzzled and kicked out of the house. At least their owner is implied to have done a Heel Face Turn at the end and stopped hating dogs so much. The original cut was apparently worse, with the cats being far more malicious. Meanwhile, the rat who attacks the baby towards the end and does get comeuppance was portrayed as a comic bumbler. Walt Disney himself insisted that their personalities be switched with the rat portrayed as sinister (which also added some much needed tension to the climax) and the cats portrayed as more mischievous than evil.
  • Family Guy does this a lot, especially with Stewie. However, that's not uncommon, being a series infamous for tangential gags and a tenuous sense of accountability at best. However, it does somewhat subvert this trope in "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing," where Peter blows up a children's hospital to get rid of an Anheuser-Busch beer ad. No more mention is made of the incident until the end, when his boss tells him he's going to jail. "You just blew up a children's hospital! You thought people would forget about that?" Although his only punishment is to go to jail "Until next Sunday at 9".
    • There was also "April in Quahog" where it is reported on the news that the world was going to end. As a result, there was panic and chaos across the world. In the end, it all turned out to be an April Fool's Joke played by the newscast. The news cast mysteriously vanishes after that without getting punished for all the trouble they caused.
    • The closest they get to receiving comeuppance is Brian calling them "You dicks!" However, in the season 10 premiere "And Then There Were Fewer", it could be said that karma finally caught up with them with Tom seemingly going to jail after being framed for murder by Diane and then Diane being shot by Stewie when she tried to kill Lois. Tom is back in the episode after that, but Diane is dead.
    • In the midst of that prank, Peter stated as his last words that he didn't like the kids. The rest of the episode follows Peter trying to win back the love of the children. After failing in all his attempts, he decides to bribe them with an Xbox 360 but doesn't even let them enjoy that as he hogs it for himself.
    • This is the reason why so many people despise the gay marriage episode (among other things) as well as Brian: Brian took the mayor hostage (who, earlier in the episode, illegalized gay marriage) and forced him to re-legalize it. Not only did Brian succeed, but he never got any punishment for this.
    • Glenn. Quagmire. Let's start with the fact that he once broke into another person's home and beat a resident for the horrid crime of unknowingly sleeping with his trans-gendered dad. Next up on the docket of sexual harassment is watching females changing or using the bathroom including videotaping. One-night stands birthing multiple children he has no intention of paying child-support for. Rape both of the 'regular' and statutory (Dear Diary: Jackpot) kind. He said that he has complied with Megan's Law, although that doesn't seem to have accomplished much. His punishment? Nothing, the main characters continue to associate with him and his multiple sexual diseases aren't harming his life in any significant way-oh, hey, he knowingly spreads STDS through omission of fact, and judging by his house, various gadgets-which assist/facilitate rape-and summer home he is not hard up for money. He even keeps his job as a pilot.
      • However in "Blind Ambition" when Quagmire was trying to spy on Lois using the toilet, he was caught and was actually arrested by the police (this could be the only time he was ever seen arrested for doing anything against the law involving sex) and it results in Lois, Loretta, and Bonnie joining forces to demand his eviction from the neighborhood, but Peter protests and tries to have him reformed. One of the methods involved putting a fan near his dong while looking at pictures of underwear models and the only way to prevent having an erection is to think of things that turn him off. I think this is punishment enough.
      • While murder is never right, Brian and Stewie getting away cleanly with their actions in "Road to the North Pole" was deplorable. Trying to take over Santa's role, they kill a man, beat up the wife, and gag the daughter, leaving them all tied up. They leave as the cops come with Stewie acknowledging what they did for what it was, a home invasion. The fact that they receive the Christmas gifts they wanted only adds insult to injury.
    • And the most recent example is Penelope, essentially Stewie's female counterpart.
  • Kim Possible
    • In the Homecoming episode, Bonnie cheats her way into being the Queen (who should've been Kim) and kisses Ron right in front of Kim's eyes, and then spends the entire episode just whining. Apparently, her punishment is a cute boyfriend in her own league. Bah... She does get hers in the finale, sort of: She finds out that because she skipped too many classes during her senior year, she can't graduate until she makes it up in summer school.
    • Played straight with Cyrus Bortle and Jack Hench. Bortle is a freaking mad scientist who invents the most hideous devices on the show. If used even semi-realistically instead of as Rule of Funny, they would be Nightmare Fuel level - such as Mind Control where the person knows they are being controlled and understands their actions, but cannot override the control. He remains unpunished, even though he is shown selling his devices in random auctions. Jack Hench is basically the "supplier" of evil technology to the Big Bads but is never arrested or punished for it.
  • Mertle from Lilo & Stitch: The Series most of the time, in fact she was responsible for a loss in a dog contest to Lilo AND ended up winning it after she sabotaged Lilo's chances in one episode (She put caffeine in his water bottle. Causing Stitch to go nuts during his turn when it was fed to him). Though she relinquished the trophy when Lilo and Stitch helped save her pet (which was one of the experiments). Still her snobbish attitude never changes throughout the series, even in the fourth movie finale.
  • The Kangaroo in Horton Hears a Who! constantly calls for the destruction of the speck Horton insists an entire civilization exists on for only the vaguest of authoritarian reasons. She even continues calling for the speck's destruction after the Whos demonstrate undeniably that they exist. Yet seconds later Horton's giving her a cookie and all is forgiven.
  • Angelica from Rugrats usually gets punished for her bad actions. But in the All Grown Up! episode "Petition This!", she tries to stop a petition by Kimi to ban cellphones at school for VERY selfish reasons, manipulates Chuckie into helping her, tries to force Chuckie to wear contact lenses against his will, pretends to get food poisoning from the cookies that Kimi was handing out to ruin her support, breaks into Tommy's house to steal embarrassing photos to humiliate Kimi and destroy her petition chances, which leads to Chuckie and Kimi's relationship almost being destroyed. She gets no comeuppance whatsoever.
    • However, in all fairness, Kimi's petition to ban cellphones was already flawed from the beginning as it is. She never once considered how Chuckie felt when she forced him to work on the anniversary poem, forced him to put up flyers on everyone's lockers, and when she smeared her own campaign when she shifted from the issue just to bring up embarrassing facts about him. In fact, neither of the parents do anything about their conflict, other than say, "It's what we get for sending them to public school". Kimi also fails to consider how important cellphones actually are, especially during emergencies.
      • In addition to one example of her Karma Houdini, while she has given others flak about their own errors, she seems to have always gotten of scot-free when it came to hers. In "Memoirs of a Finster" not only does she leave Chuckie to fend for himself when they each had to a family tree project, but she went as far as to leave him and his father out of her family tree and say that she wasn't a real Finster. No comeuppance there. In "Trading Places", when she was upset the her biological father didn't send her anything for Children's Day, she takes her anger out on everyone else, including a random mailman. While you can sympathize for her in this situation, she still receives no comeuppance.
    • Getting back to the issue with Angelica, this was actually a large part of her character concept: the idea that sometimes life just isn't fair, and you just have to learn to deal with that. As the show became more popular and Angelica developed more, she began to see more consequences for her behavior, but as the primary antagonist of the show, part of what made her such an awful villain was the idea that she could get away with it.
      • On that note, when she gets comeuppance in the original series, it's usually because the scam she set up to mess with the babies' heads ends up messing with her own as well.
      • However, while Angelica became more sympathetic, one character who has yet any true comeuppance is Savannah Shane, a girl who is far more evil than Angelica has ever been, even since preschool.
  • Captain Hero of Drawn Together has destroyed an entire planet, caused the deaths of thousands on innocent people on Earth, and has also raped a few people (including his own parents). Yet the only time has ever been punished was when he was caught with a photo of his naked teenaged self.
  • Biff and Buzz of that Tom and Jerry racing movie get Gorthan to an ice pole, screwing him over. Then when Gorthan complains as he drifts away on the iceberg he is stuck on, the two of them just pass him off as a sore loser. They are never reprimanded at all for this.
    • Near the beginning, a scientist contestant is disintegrated when Biff and Buzz mess around with his engine. All of the contestants who aren't Tom and Jerry die because the producer decided to extend the race further and further due to ratings. Said producer starts to cultivate a conscience - unwillingly, but it doesn't matter; the second he does, his boss shows up, turns him into dust, and promotes the producer's assistant. In Tom and Jerry's world, you only survive for as long as you're a karma Houdini.
  • Digeri Dingo from Taz-Mania, but only in certain episodes like "Friends For Strife" and "Doubting Dingo".
  • Most action based animated series from the '80s-'90s has the main villain not have his comeuppance. The series gets canceled before there's a final episode, offing the villain would prevent a sequel or spinoff, and the villain can't be killed in a kid's show, leaving the villain to be last seen in a non-resolution episode, imprisoned in a way where they'll probably escape, or transformed into something relatively harmless. Examples:
  • Cartman in South Park is a frequent offender. A lot of the time, he gets his, but he tends to avoid comeuppance when he crosses the Moral Event Horizon (Scott Tenorman, ginger kids, trying to kill his mother, and infecting Kyle with HIV are examples of this).
    • His much-repressed conscience stopped him from killing his mother, Kyle breaks many of his prized possessions for the HIV incident, and some Laser-Guided Karma came out of the first two examples as of "201". A more straight example would be in the midget subplot of "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", in which the midget Cartman laughs at and degrades is made to look like a fool and Cartman never gets any comeuppance for his behavior. The end of "Toilet Paper" is another prime example: genuinely penitent Stan and Kyle receive all of the blame and the brunt of the punishment for a scheme that was (an entirely unapologetic) Cartman's idea.
    • Of course "Toilet Paper" plays with this, as Cartman genuinely thinks he has been punished and learnt his lesson and tries to give an awkward aesop, much to Kyle's annoyance.

Cartman: I've learnt that even if you don't get in trouble now, you can get caught later.
Kyle: Oh god.
Cartman: At first I didn't feel bad but now I feel terrible.
Kyle: You just feel bad for yourself because you got a week's detention.
Cartman: Right, so I guess what I learnt today is...
Kyle: Oh stop it, Cartman. You didn't learn anything. Not a Goddamn thing!

    • It happens again in "Breast Cancer Show Ever". Fed up with Cartman's behaviour, Wendy challenges him to a fight and ultimately succeeds in beating him to a bloody pulp, leaving him in the playground surrounded by onlookers, crying about losing his standing amongst his friends and that no-one thinks he's cool anymore. This would normally be a very satisfying aversion of this trope, except that all the other guys in his class then make comments about how they never thought he was cool, that they've always hated him and basically nothing's changed, resulting in Cartman's own warped reasoning leading him to believe that the only reason they'd say such things would be to make him feel better, and therefore they must still think he's cool, effectively meaning he doesn't learn any lesson whatsoever from the whole experience. Oh, and it's pretty much implied that Wendy then gets punished by her parents for fighting at school and "bullying" Cartman, due to one of Cartman's earlier attempts at getting out of the fight. (Although it's clear she doesn't give a damn by this point whether she gets in trouble or not. But Cartman still learns nothing.)
    • "Cash For Gold" apparently lets Cartman get away with ripping off old people on crappy jewelry when he copies home shopping networks. While the shopping network host gets his comeuppance, (and how!) Cartman evades any consequence for his actions.
    • No one said Sheila Broflovski? Like Cartman said, she is indeed a bitch in The Movie where she is responsible for the war with countless American and Canadian casualties over a TV show, refused to negotiate, and killed Terrence and Phillip despite her son's warnings and the fact Ike is Canadian himself. It Got Better but her only comeuppance was that she was proven wrong.
      • Sheila is a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Being proven wrong is the worse kind of comeuppance for the archetype.
      • Further, Kenny's wish at the end restores everything to how it was before the war began, and she pats Terrance and Phillip on the shoulder during the reprise of the opening song Mountain Town, indicating that she has (for the moment, anyway) seen the error of her ways.
    • Best illustrated by the ending of "Ginger Kids":

Kyle: You are such a manipulative asshole.
Cartman: (cheerily) Yes, but I'm not going to die!

    • Butters' parents should also qualify. They could, at best, be described as Well-Intentioned Extremist's, but most of the time they seem to be downright abusive. Whenever Butters does, well uh anything, he gets grounded, berated, and even beaten on some occasions, and nobody seems to ever draw attention to their abusive tendencies. The only possible comeuppance they ever got was in "My Future Self n' Me" where after they hired an actor to portray future Butters, Cartman arranged it to have poop smeared all over their walls in a form of revenge (he ran a revenge business in that episode). Then they show up and one would assume they would strike at Butters for this but oddly enough, the poop smeared at their walls made them believe they REALLY are being punished for what they did to Butters involving the actor and they apologized for that.
    • And don't forget Sergeant Harrison Yates, the police chief of South Park. He runs an entire station full of corrupt cops, and apparently has some grudge against any black man wealthier than he is. So he (and the rest of the South Park police) organize them to be framed for bogus crimes by planting evidence. Even worse, he doesn't seem to give a damn whenever there's any real crime in South Park. In "The Jeffersons" he even tried to have Michael Jefferson/Jackson arrested, and only decided not to when he found out Mr. Jackson was going to give away all his money. He has yet to receive any real comeuppance for his corruption.
  • In The Little Drummer Boy the two thieves who kill Aaron's parents and burn down their stables are never caught.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Mr. Krabs is the biggest one on the show. His cheapness that should get him arrested-he normally gets off scot-free with both of his employees. Biggest example is when he poisons his customers serving a 'Spongy Patty', he gets arrested but not sentenced because the Judge forgets his duty to punish scum like Krabs. (Actually, Krabs bribed him)
    • And SQUIDWARD ended up being the one paying for it.
    • Spongebob can also be a big one as well. An example being in a short that involves Mrs. Puff attempting to cover "Boat Smarts". Being the reckless driver he is, Spongebob causes a crash, and a big accident on the road. Instead of apologizing or feeling bad, he chastises Squidward and Mrs. Puff, claims they forgot their boat smarts, and drives off laughing without punishment.
  • The hijackers in the King of the Hill Series Finale "Sirloin With Love?" They were never caught nor mentioned again.
    • The three rebellious teenagers who blew up the car lot are also never caught.
      • Two of the teens show up at the end of the episode when Bobby goes shopping for a new game console; in order to keep Hank from recognizing them they give Bobby a giant discount, implying that this is their "punishment".
    • No King of the Hill karma houdini-ness can be mentioned without addressing one Buck Strickland. Karma seems to just ignore this mans existence. He has gotten away with several felonies, is a drunk, steals, cheats on his wife, and rarely receives punishment for his actions. This isn't helped by Hank's borderline worship of the man. He also frequently bets employees, company money, and once an entire branch of his company on card games. His punishment for being such a horrible business man? Getting inducted into the propane "Hall of Flame" the highest honor one working in propane can achieve. And, his most egregious example of being a karma houdini? Admitting in front of Hank, everyone, a sheriff, and a freaking Texas Ranger that he tried framing Hank for the murder of his mistress, to protect his wife The mistress accidentally shot herself. Hank's reaction? To sheepishly rub the back of his head, and say he would have done the same thing!
      • Hank does recognize that Buck is far from perfect,[1] but is immensely loyal because Buck gave him his current job. That said, in another episode Buck gets Bobby wrapped up in his gambling, and when Hank comes in to save the day, he lets a thug punch Buck in the face, and then makes him ride back to Arlen in the bed of his pickup truck; the last shot of the episode is him shivering and trying to bundle up for warmth with his golf equipment.
  • In the Ben 10 Alien Force episode "Be-Knighted" it is revealed that for 1,000 years the Forever Knights have been acquiring increasingly dangerous weapons to kill a draconic alien just because. The dragon eventually escapes but thanks to Ben it decides not to give the Forever Knights their well deserved comeuppance. And it turns out that now the Forever Knights want to go the Dragon's home planet to commit genocide of the entire race.
    • And the sequel series has Will Harrangue, who builds a giant robot with his face on it and uses it to shoot missiles at the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument on live TV. He's never punished. The worst that can be said is that he spent a fuck-ton of money on it (way more than he should logically have), but this hasn't affected his career at all.
  • The titular character in Invader Zim, though occasionally getting dealt a bad hand every now and again, has gotten away with some pretty crazy shit throughout the course of the series including but not limited to harvesting the organs of innocent school children and ripping out the eyeballs of a child who merely desired his friendship because said child was a nuisance.
    • Making Dib often being blamed for whatever Zim did (as in the Zit episode or the Pilot).
  • Squirrel Boy played with this. Rodney, after realizing that he is one of these, he makes a job out of taking responsibility for other's people's misbehavior, since he wouldn't receive punishment anyway.
  • In the Christmas Episode of Metalocalypse, Dr. Rockso, who's been toeing the Moral Event Horizon on and off throughout the series, finally crosses the line when he hocks Toki's Christmas presents for cocaine money and ruined Murderface's Christmas Special by declaring that he does cocaine while getting a handjob from Skwisgaar's mom. The reason he falls here is while Toki was planning to give him what for, Murderface's grandmother ran into a cross, making it crash on them both.
  • Ken and the rest of Lotso’s gang in Toy Story 3 (arguably all of the toys in the butterfly room). Sure, they most likely did it out of fear, but the cold honest truth is that they still tricked new toys into going into the caterpillar room, knowing full well that they would be trapped there and get broken. The only reason Ken makes a Heel Face Turn is because of Barbie. He probably would have continued to not care if it hadn’t been for her presence, yet he’s the one who becomes in charge when Lotso is gone. The only butterfly room toy who had a good excuse for getting away with what he did was Big Baby. He was lied to by Lotso and honestly didn’t really realize how bad the things he was doing were (being a baby and all).
    • However the expression on their faces after Lotso shows his true self shows had actually believed what Lotso had told them about owners and they switch to the side of Buzz and Woody.
      • To hammer this home, special teams of toys are set up to pacify the caterpillar room after Ken reforms the place. Most of Lotso's former gang are on these teams, and thanks to personnel rotation they're quite content with the job.
  • Murdoc from Gorillaz. During the first phase he was, among others, said to have kidnapped Russel to make him join the band, repeatedly heavily damaged 2D (one of these "accidents" resulted in leaving him in a coma and fracturing his eyeballs) and drove away both of the girlfriends 2D had had from him (although the Paula incident was one of the few things Murdoc didn't get away with - Russel broke his nose in five different places). In phase two, he attempted to take credit for creating the Demon Days album, in reality composed entirely by Noodle. He had also surgically replaced most of his internal organs with 2D's, as to lengthen his life span. Phase three proves him to be a Complete Monster - looking back very fondly at it, he spoke of having burned down Kong Studios himself, then blaming it on a bunch of kids, thus sending them to jail. 2D's ident reveals that someone probably working for Murdoc chloroformed him (who wasn't very eager about making a new Gorillaz album), shipped him to Plastic Beach in a suitcase, locked him in an underwater room and has had him watched by a whale ever since (2D has a case of cetaphobia, a fear of whales). No justice has been served to him whatsoever, although the Boogieman/Sun Moon Stars seems to have some business to settle down with him...
  • The Garfield Show, "King Nermal": Everyone's favorite orange cat has discovered that Nermal has been faking an injury to get him to treat him royally. He and Odie attempt to expose his fakery many times, but they end up coming across to Jon as being mean to Nermal for no reason, prompting him to throw the two out of the house while it was raining outside. When Garfield and Odie finally pulled off Nermal's fake bandages, Jon believed it to mean Nermal had fully healed. Angrily, Garfield yells, "This isn't over! You're gonna need more bandages when I'm done with you"... Garfield and Odie are the ones who end up needing more bandages after tripping down the stairs over Nermal's bandages that fell off while they were chasing him. To add insult to (literal) injury, Jon says Liz won't allow them to use their jaws for a month, thus precluding them from trying Jon's lasagna, and they also having Nermal nurse them, upon which Nermal promptly eats Jon's lasagna. Oh, joy.
    • Given the number of times Garfield himself has gotten away with abusing Nermal in the past, this may be intended as Who's Laughing Now?.
  • Miss Hattie in Despicable Me runs an Orphanage of Fear, forcing her charges to sell cookies and putting them in the "Box of Shame" if they fail to meet their quota or rebel in any way. She receives no punishment whatsoever.
    • Not to mention Vector's father, the Bank President who was actually the true mastermind behind what Vector was doing. It comes off as sort of ironic that the truly evil villains are the ones that get off scotfree.
  • Megabyte Beagle in the "Super DuckTales (1987)" serial is a straight example crossed with What Happened to the Mouse?. This guy takes control of the Gizmosuit and makes Gizmoduck the Beagles' unwilling servant, but after Huey, Dewey, and Louie come to Gizmoduck's rescue, switching his remote with that of a toy, Megabyte drops out of the story.
    • Talking about DuckTales (1987), one episode featured Flintheart Glomgold framing Scrooge McDuck with art theft and his only punishment was having to keep a portrait of Scrooge over his fireplace for fifteen years. And that's just to mention what's proven against him.
    • Ma Beagle got away with everything except forging evidence of being Scrooge's wife.
      • Actually, she was arrested with her sons at the end of "New Gizmo Kids on the Block."
  • Baron from the Flashback Episode of Sym-Bionic Titan, who constantly insults Lance since the latter just lost his dad, constantly bullies him and gets him into trouble and even threatens his life in the process near the end, and for the most part gets off scot free by comparison. One can only hope he eventually got devoured by an intergalactic alien abomination.
    • With the show's cancellation, Big Bad General Madula was left unbeaten and, thusly, unpunished for his countless crimes. WHY?!?
  • Every single character from Tom Goes to the Mayor who isn't Tom Peters. The most egregious examples of this include Joy Peters, Gibbons and the Mayor himself. All this bad karma created by the near totality of the cast has to go somewhere, and that somewhere happens to be Tom, who will be repeatedly humiliated and imprisoned with no sense of proportion to his actual offenses if there was any at all. Most often he will instead be the one who gets wronged and yet everyone will accuse him of criminal behavior and intention (such as getting his "Rats Off To You!" shirt design stolen). Tom Peters is in fact the whipping boy for No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
  • Chuck Jones' 1945 Looney Tunes short "Fresh Airedale" involves a housecat who repeatedly takes the blame for things that are done by the evil family dog. The entire cartoon sets up audience expectations of a final comeuppance that never comes.
  • Ashley A, and her Girl Posse, (hey, that rhymes!) from Recess. They exploit Gus's Honor Before Reason approach by tricking him into a "jinx" such that he doesn't talk at all, just to toy with him for their own amusement. When Gus holds back from talking at all, even to the point where the school staff is threatening to take him to the police station over it, they STILL enjoy causing him to get into this kind of trouble. Eventually it's announced that Gus was jinxed, and the main characters retaliate against the Girl Posse by tricking them into a jinx. However, the episode ends there, and if you just think about the logic of the episode, you will realize there's no way in the world that Girl Posse has the "honour" within them to obey said "jinx."
    • Well to be fair the Ashleys do get plenty of comeuppance in later episodes; Mikey moons them, Spinelli beats them in a beauty pageant, Ashley A gets temporarily kicked out of the clique, their flag gets torn up, and Spinelli drops mud on them.
  • Mark Morgan and Gregory Swofford in Transformers Generation 1. They unleashed the Hate Plague just to spite the Transformers. It spreads all over Cybertron, Earth, and the rest of the galaxy, threatening to destroy all life. And they apparently get off with just saying sorry.
  • Zig-zagged in Angela Anaconda. Nanette Manoir often gets away with all sorts of shit she should at least get called out on...however the teacher tends to be on her side and sometimes even punishes Angela. Heck, any respectable school would yell at Mrs. Brinks for some of the stuff she does.
    • Fortunately Nanette isn't that lucky with Dr. Yamagata.
    • And there are occasions even Mrs. Brinks wouldn't let Nanette go unpunished. One of them being when Angela and Nanette unknowingly became pen pals and Nanette wrote unflattering comments about Mrs. Brinks. Another was when Mrs. Brinks learned Nanette doesn't keep the good behavior stars she gives her. Not to mention when Nanette was tricked into confessing a wrongdoing in front of her classmates and their parents. Mrs. Brinks wouldn't let the parents become witnesses to her favoritism.
      • In one episode, Angela and Nanette were in charge of the school shop, Angela got punished when 33 cents were missing. When it was later revealed it was Nanette's fault, Mrs. Brinks wouldn't give Nanette the punishment she gave Angela, believing Nanette made an innocent mistake but was at least fair enough to offer Angela some sort of compensation for the unjust punishment. Angela was made Nanette's boss in the running of the shop.
  • Wizard Kelly of The Proud Family is very similar to Mr Burns in that he gets away with the most flagrant violations because he's famous and rich.
  • American Dad actually discusses this trope, with Roger claiming that he can get away with anything because he's so lovable. Stan ends up as a juror in a trial for one of Roger's aliases (accused of running a sweatshop). It's blatantly obvious that he's guilty, but he manages to manipulate and charm everyone except for Stan, who forces the other jurors to vote guilty; when the verdict is announced the judge runs out of the courtroom crying and the jurors act like Stan killed their puppies. The rest of the episode turns into a parody of The Fugitive.
    • Roger in particular manages to utilize this trope over and over in the series, facing near zero consequences for enslaving orphans, faking a marriage for the sake of blender, several implied cases of theft and murder, and abusing, manipulating and placing his adoptive family in horrific situations over and over (along with at least once trying to outright kill them). Stan and to an extent the rest of the Smiths sometimes lean into this trope as well, but are much more likely to see the error of his ways.
    • Perhaps due to being a very minor character, Stelio Kontos, Stan's childhood bully, ends up being called in by Steve to beat up Stan when the latter plays the bully to toughen up Steve. The thing is, Stelio was responsible for Stan's misguided lesson in the first place, and we never see Stelio having suffered any of his deserved comeuppance.
  • Norman Osborn in The Spectacular Spider-Man. In the first episode he has stolen the design for Adrian Toomes' flying technology, denied him a deal and basically made it so that Toomes has no way to make money off his invention. he verbally abuses Dr. Otto Octavious and his son; he also is responsible for creating most of the series super villains. What really takes the cake and makes him a Complete Monster? he breaks his son's leg to frame said son for being the Green Goblin, and turned out to be the one who blew up Dr. Octavious, making him become Dr. Octopus. He also started a gang war over the information on how to create an army of Rhinos, and made millions risk free. So at the end of the series when his identity is revealed and he apparently dies, does he get his comeuppings? Nope; turns out he faked his death and is now going on an airplane to lay low for a while, while his son (who believes Norman wasn't in control of himself as the Green Goblin) vows vengeance on Spider-Man and his identity was never revealed to the police. That is not even a full list of his evil deeds in the series, and he still gets away with little more than a minor inconvenience.
  • In the Mega Man episode "Bad Day At Peril Park", a corrupted park attendant robot is never even found out as working for Dr. Wily, and she isn't defeated or punished.
  • Magneto from X-Men Evolution. He not only attempted to murder all humans and make mutants the dominant species and then publicly revealed the existence of mutants to the world which led to most mutants suffering discrimination and harassment from humans, but was also an incredibly abusive father. He manipulated his son, constantly putting him in danger to further his schemes, and Mind Raped his daughter into believing he was a caring and loving father to her after he left her at an abusive asylum when she was a child, which left her an extremely violent and emotionally unstable girl prior to the Mind Rape. At the end of the series, in a Where Are They Now sequence, he's revealed to have been redeemed and evidently becomes a teacher at Xavier's Academy with few to no repercussions for his actions.
  • To draw yet another one from the Disney Animated Canon, The Fox and the Hound (film)''s Amos Slade terrorizes an old woman and her pet to the point where she must abandon it, breaks into a game preserve, starts a fire there, and shoots an animal on said preserve. And what does he get? A broken leg and a girlfriend.
    • The broken leg came from a bear attack, which evens the score a little bit. He also gets a bit of Laser-Guided Karma in the short term: he gets caught in his own bear trap, the ones he scattered all over the preserve.
  • In Arthur, D.W. once wantonly destroys his airplane, but doesn't get visibly punished for it. She was punched for it, but we're supposed to see this as a What the Hell, Hero? moment, not Laser-Guided Karma.
  • Skinny from Dumbo, whose mocking of the title elephant actually caused his mother to attack the boy. Rather than punishing the boy, the Ringmaster decided to punish Dumbo's mother, by having several circus workers tie her down and then drag her away to be locked up, letting Skinny get away with his troubles!
  • Lockdown from Transformers Animated, who keeps 'trophies' of his prey, is the reason Ratchet had to wipe Arcee's mind, killed his (and Prowl's mentor), and in his final appearance in the series he escapes scott-free from the Autobots... and then the series was cancelled. Hmm.
  • Elmyra from Tiny Toon Adventures. Annoying, Creator's Pet, and never gets punishment for her torturing of animals (Including the main cast). Probably the most infamous example of her karma evasion is "Out of Odor", in which she still manages to capture Fifi LaFume despite Fifi regaining her stink after it being removed by tomato juice and washing the tomato juice off in a car wash.
  • Razoul, the Captain of the Guard in Aladdin, throws the hero off a cliff to certain death because Jafar paid him to eliminate the rival. This was when Aladdin was still disguised, so it wasn't even that Razoul was enacting vigilante justice on the thief he'd been trying to catch for years. Nevertheless, though Jafar gets his comeuppance at the end of the movie, Razoul not only escapes justice but retains his position throughout the two sequels.
  • A Robot Chicken sketch involves an Atheist ending up in heaven. There he discovers several people who shouldn't be in heaven but got there anyway. The following lists were: His uncle (Because the Catholic Church is into THAT sort of things the uncle did, the Monster Clown serial killer who got into heaven simply because he repented at the last second, a literal Knight Templar who slaughtered countless people for the lord, and even Adolf Hitler.

Hitler: I'm just as surprised as you are.

    • Later on, the atheist told the angel about the hypocrisy and mentions how a serial killer got into heaven simply because he repents.
  1. ↑ In one episode he refers to Bobby putting out a "Mr. Strickland fire" and adds "A couple hundred more and you'll be tied with me"
This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.