Basic Trope: A character suffers a cruel but well-deserved death or punishment.
- Straight: Claire kidnaps Peter and holds him for ransom, threatening to kill him if it's not paid. Nobody really feels sorry for Peter, as he was an arrogant Jerk Jock who loved lording his money and status over others, so the kidnapping comes off as taking him down a much-needed peg.
- Exaggerated:
- Peter is horrifically murdered by Claire. However, he was hated so much that even the people who didn't have anything to do with the murder say "I didn't kill him, but only because somebody else beat me to it." This may make figuring out who did kill them more challenging.
- Peter suffers some sort of Fate Worse than Death. However, Peter was a Complete Monster of a villain without any likable or redeeming qualities whatsoever, so everyone is relieved and throws a party when it happens.
- A show with a World of Jerkass ends with an "Everybody Dies" Ending.
- Karmic Butt-Monkey
- A group of people are slaughtered, and each one tries to survive at the expense of their fellow victims, or at least show no concern.
- Downplayed:
- Peter was a Very Punchable Man. You can see where this goes.
- Peter was a slightly mean-spirited practical joker. Everybody laughs at him when he falls for one himself.
- Peter may have been a Jerk Jock, but Even Evil Has Loved Ones and at least a few people mourn him when he's killed.
- Pay Evil unto Evil, in which the victim isn't necessarily killed, but with all the same implications applied to this trope.
- Peter was a loathsome man and people have no problem pointing it out, but they are still (understandably) horrified at the fact that someone who lived within their community was killed in cold blood.
- Justified:
- If you're that much of a bastard to everyone, eventually you're going to find yourself Mugging the Monster.
- Claire kidnapped Peter and killed him during her Roaring Rampage of Revenge because she had enough of him being a Karma Houdini.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves
- Inverted:
- Peter was a saintly man, and Claire murdering him was her Moral Event Horizon.
- Claire is a Card-Carrying Villainess who specifically targets innocents like Peter.
- Despite being a murderer, you can still sympathize with Claire.
- Alice, an innocent and naive girl, became Killin' Claire's first victim and a showcase of the latter's ruthlessness.
- Bob, a brave and friendly guy, goes down against Killin' Claire while covering the escape of his friends.
- Although Peter was rather mean and insensitive as well as too eager to flaunt his power, the sheer brutality of the way he was slain garners some sympathy for him from others.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth
- Jerkass Woobie
- The fact Claire killed Peter is presented as Claire Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, especially with the "meh" face she had the whole time. The fact Peter was an asshole is only brought up as "this guy made it too easy for her to decide to kill him — and I fear who will get it next time, because It Gets Easier."
- Subverted:
- Peter was Secretly Dying anyway, and was only acting as a jerk so no one would be sad when he died. He actually had a Hidden Heart of Gold.
- Peter may have acted like a bastard in his personal life, but he was also incorruptible and used his fortune to help clean up poverty and crime. Claire kidnapped him out of vengeance because he wouldn't accept a bribe to look the other way in the face of her human trafficking ring.
- We follow, in flashback, a private detective who is describing to the District Attorney the events leading up to "the murder of P. Boddy". Peter Boddy is shown to be a blackmailer and gigantic jerkwad... but it's his almost saintly brother, Paul Boddy, who gets murdered.
- The fact Peter was an asshole is a Red Herring. The movie spends ninety-nine minutes showcasing a parade of increasingly unhinged people with equally absurdly gleeful reactions to Peter's death that all scream "potential killer"... and then the final clue comes to light and it turns that the woman who killed him only wanted his ultra-rare movie memorabilia and doesn't seem to understand why people hated him that much. The fact the investigators (and the audience) wasted so much time expecting "Peter made someone finally snap" to be the motive is actually kind of sobering.
- Peter dies in a horrific way, which leads to his mercenaries orchestrating Cycles of Revenge on Claire's family.
- Despite Pete being an asshole, it's made clear that many people cared about him and he didn't deserve to die for his sins.
- Double Subverted:
- But that’s just the story his wife tells everyone. In truth, there was nothing redeemable about him.
- Peter may be a bastard, but he never takes bribes... because he's a Serial Killer and a bribery investigation would uncover his crimes.
- ...And then it later turns out that Paul was the actual mastermind behind Peter's blackmail schemes, and forced Peter to cover for him with emotional manipulation.
- Regardless, he still died and was an asshole, even if those two weren’t related.
- Turns out the Private Military Contractors were Unwitting Pawns for Peter, and they are tired of him.
- Those who loved Peter eventually admit that they were somewhat expecting this to happen sooner or later because of the path this jackass went down and tried to prepare for the inevitable moment they heard the news, but it didn't worked when the chips came down.
- Parodied:
- The police are all geared up to hunt for Claire, but when they learn that Peter was the victim, they immediately abandon their efforts.
- The police investigate the case... in order to congratulate Claire for kidnapping Peter and getting him out of everyone's hair.
- Peter's funeral is actually a celebration party. There is even a banner hanging on a wall which reads, "Congrats for Dying, Asshole!"
- Claire is caught by the police for kidnapping Peter, but instead of going to jail, she's rewarded with a 2-week tropical vacation. Everyone involved in the law refers to this as a "shortened sentence" due to "partial bail on the house" and an "inconvenient lack of vacancies anywhere else."
- Claire puts laxatives in Peter's food, making him a literal asshole victim.
- Zig Zagged: Peter looked like a gigantic jerkwad, but he donated a lot of time and money to a charity... which he was using to funnel money back into his own pockets, but only so he could fund the Littlest Cancer Patient's surgery... so he could continue to extort his family for money. And in the end, none of this is what got him killed; he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the killer expresses joy upon learning just who they killed.
- Averted:
- The murder victim was clearly just in the wrong place at the wrong time (for example, a security guard who walks in on a robbery, or Peter was just Victim Number Seven Thousand of the Peter Slayer's killing spree), and their character is never brought into it.
- Peter is kidnapped, but his attitude had nothing to do with it and the police hunt for him as they would for anyone else — everyone is equal before the law, after all.
- Despite being an asshole, Peter never gets punished.
- Peter is a decent guy who is nice to everyone and even when he is angry, it's not without good reason. So Alice had killed him just because he was freaked out by her actions and she thought he is a jerk nobody will miss.
- Enforced:
- "Claire is supposed to be a sympathetic character, but that can't very well be the case if she kidnaps another sympathetic character, no matter the motive. Let's have him kidnap Peter instead- he's rich enough to serve her purposes, and a total asshole."
- "Claire is an important fully developed character, we need to give her a plausible motive."
- Lampshaded:
- "Peter got kidnapped? Well, with how he flaunted his money and rubbed everyone's faces in it, I'm just surprised it didn't happen sooner."
- "So he's dead? And nothing of value was lost."
- Invoked: Entitled Bastard.
- Exploited: John realizes that his brother Peter is with the Les Collaborateurs, with a habit of blackmailing dangerous people. He immediately takes out a life insurance policy on him and moves far enough away that when he gets what he has coming, it won't affect him.
- Defied:
- After a close shave, Peter realizes his wrongdoing and takes steps to make himself a better person.
- Peter puts measures in place that will leave people suffering a billion-fold times more after he is dead than when he is alive (say, a stash of some bioweapons with a trigger linked to his heart rate monitor and set to go off upon his pulse stopping for more than a minute). When he is inevitably murdered, the response is not to celebrate his death but rather decry the assassin's stupidity.
- As much of an asshole as he was, Peter is still a human being, and there are still people who would be saddened by his death. Claire is told that if she kills Peter just because he was a jerkass, then she's no better than he is.
- Implied: No one shows up at Peter's funeral, other than the ones who organized it.
- Discussed:
- Conversed: "Are the victims on this show always a huge asshole?"
- Deconstructed:
- Nobody liked Peter because he was such a Jerk Jock. Peter really had No Social Skills and didn't know how to interact with people in a healthy manner, which made him suicidal and reckless, which in turn, gave Claire her needed opening.
- Claire targeted Peter because he was an asshole, but she wasn't thinking of doing the people around her any favors. Instead, her goal was to be able to get away more easily (or get a reduced sentence) by manipulating the police and jury's lack of sympathy for Peter.
- Peter may have been an utterly unlikable piece of shit, but it swiftly becomes obvious that even then, he didn't deserve that.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones. Peter may have been an asshole, but his death still devastated his family.
- Peter was a king who overtaxes commoners, drafts them into his military under threats of treason, and forces his daughter into an Arranged Marriage with a man ready to exercise Marital Rape License. This results in someone assassinating the king to end his abuses of power. However, asshole or not, Peter was the guy in charge of the kingdom, and there ends up being a power vacuum that drags the kingdom into a civil war over who should be his successor, leading to several casualties that could've been avoided had the king not been killed.
- When the policemen interrogate those suspected on the murder of Peter, they continually use the fact that he was a loathsome man to probe the suspects' reactions. However much the other people may have wished some karmic retribution to fall upon him, they are all horrified by the thought that someone went as far as to commit murder and even more horrified that the police thinks they would have done it and are tossing their dislike of Peter back to their faces as the reason they could have done it.
- Claire receives No Sympathy from everyone for killing Peter, even from people who hated him, and she is still punished for murdering him. The fact that she tries to justify murdering Peter by saying he had it coming makes her look like a sociopathic monster, and thus, a Hypocrite and no better than Peter.
- Claire murdered Peter in a revenge after an event that caused her to enter Despair Event Horizon, knowing Peter caused the murder of her relatives/friends. However, even after she murdered him in cold blood, she became even more devastated and such, she locked herself out from the society.
- Peter may have done some asshole things in life but people going all "meh" and/or celebrating the fact Peter died makes them look like much bigger assholes. Certain additional contextual details concerning Peter (ex. Peter was an Enfante Terrible) may just make things worse for them (ex. they are celebrating the Death of a Child) in the eyes of the general audience.
- Claire dismissing Peter as an asshole and nothing more kind of made her miss some facts about Peter that blind-side her when she tries to execute her plan. Turns out that you can't thrive as an asshole without having some skills.
- Claire dismissed Peter as an asshole when she began to create her scheme, and focused too much on the "if he tries to talk to the police he will be seen as an acceptable target/his complaint will be taken as a Cassandra Truth" angle. Much to her eventual peril, she overlooked that a man like Peter is much more prone to striking back against anything that is a threat, and she just placed him in a "I have nothing left to lose" mind set.
- Claire purposely targets assholes, but the requirements for who she considers one becomes lower over time, with even the pettiest thing causing Claire to target them. In addition, she becomes a Misanthrope Supreme, unable to connect with anyone because she believes everyone is an irredeemable asshole.
- Reconstructed:
- Peter's suicidal tendencies also stem from knowing that he deserves to die in something like this, so he decides to at least go down fighting by taking Claire with him. Even if he fails with that last part, Claire will still be charged for murder. Something the authorities can't just ignore.
- The villain caused a situation where someone is to be killed. Out of remorse, he sets it up so that he became the victim so innocents are safe.
- People learn to differentiate between killers who take it upon themselves to punish Karma Houdinis, and those who merely want to gain said status to do what they want. As a result, the Judicial System adapts, considering the circumstances and context of crimes to better decide on a fitting sentence.
- The victim is revealed to have been a much worse person than people originally thought, having simply hidden their most heinous actions from the public; the disproportionate punishment seems more fitting upon knowing this.
- It's revealed that other methods to stop the victim's bad deeds were used but failed (as the victim would use bribes, connections or blackmail to get away and repeat the process); killing them was a last resort to end their actions.
- The avenger is doing it more out of family duty than any sincere affection.
- When the civil war is done and dealt with, the new king is much nicer, and can learn from Peter's mistakes to avoid being killed in a similar manner. The reign of this new king ends up being better for the kingdom in the long term, and the bloodshed of the years in-between was an acceptable price.
- She still is right that Peter is an asshole Quisling and once she manages to adjust after the initial shock, she manages to exploit his Jerkasssery as she originally planned.
- Played For Laughs:
- Someone kills Peter in almost every episode.
- Claire kills Peter in a Comedic Sociopathy episode.
- Played For Drama: The investigator is trying to do his due diligence as a sworn agent of law enforcement, but everybody's hatred of Peter not only makes them dismiss the murder but they go out of their way to destroy the investigator's life because he has the gall to try to (in a way) protect an asshole.
- Played For Horror: Peter the asshole is one more tally in the body count of the Asshole Annihilator and people are willing to look the other way regarding him and the other two hundred men killed through the country and the million to come (up to and including killing the investigator trying to stop him) because they were/are/will be all assholes.
Yeah, officer, I wanted that Asshole Victim dead, but someone else beat me to it.
