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Kick the Son of a Bitch

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Kick the Son of a Bitch may refer to one of the following pages:

  • Asshole Victim: Something bad happens to a Jerkass or villain, and the result provokes catharsis instead of sympathy.
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: A villain does a morally ambiguous action that the hero will not do but benefits from.
  • Break the Haughty: A character who's a Jerkass, a Miles Gloriosus, or simply a character who's nothing but a prideful selfish jerk endures a Humiliation Conga that can (sometimes) knock them down a few pegs and lead to character development. If not, hey, the audience gets a little catharsis by seeing this person's dignity get put through the ringer.
  • Catharsis Factor: An Audience Reaction where satisfaction is felt when a character who was either a jerk or did terrible things gets punished.
  • Karmic Butt-Monkey: A villain or jerkass who happens to also be the Butt-Monkey.
  • Karmic Death: A villain dies in a manner that serves as a fitting punishment for their misdeeds and is completely their own fault.
  • Karmic Overkill: A character ends up suffering so horribly that even viewers who agree they deserved punishment think they got more than what was really deserved.
  • Kick the Dog: When a character does something evil, cruel or very mean for no apparent gain because the author wants to demonstrate that they are not a nice person and shift audience sympathy away from them.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: When bad things happen to bad people at opportune times and vice versa for good people.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Doing evil things to evil people is portrayed sympathetically.
  • Sympathetic Murderer: A character commits murder, but the narrative treats them sympathetically, often because the person they killed was thoroughly unpleasant.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: A character gets more sympathy from the audience than writers were expecting.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: A character the audience is supposed to sympathize with comes across as unsympathetic.

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