Basic Trope: The universe rewards and punishes characters based on the morality of their actions or non-actions, during their Earthly lives.
- Straight:
- Alice cheats on an important test. When she actually has to use the skill that was being tested, she's completely clueless.
- Alice holds the door for someone carrying a large load of boxes and bags. The person rewards Alice with the MacGuffin she's been seeking.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice goes to a party, wearing a slinky dress, and gets raped.
- Alice holds the door for someone carrying a large load of boxes and bags. An hour later, Publisher's Clearinghouse shows up at her house, with a giant novelty check for $10 million.
- Downplayed:
- Alice holds the door for someone, who quickly says "Thank you," and continues on their way. Minutes later, she finds a $1 bill.
- Alice insults someone, and they stop talking to her.
- Justified: Actions have consequences, good and bad.
- Inverted:
- Alice is rewarded or punished for her actions/non-actions during her life as a whole, when she dies and gets to the afterlife.
- Alice robs a bank and gets rewarded for it.
- Alice gives away all her disposable income to charity and is framed for a crime.
- Subverted:
- Alice holds the door for someone, but doesn't even get a "thank you."
- Alice has a long List of Transgressions to her name as of middle age, that she's never really been punished for.
- Alice gets sick from eating a sandwich. It's a mundane case of food poisoning.
- Double Subverted:
- Later, she wins $100 on a scratch ticket.
- She looks back on her life so far (maybe following a Near-Death Experience), and realizes that quite possibly the reason her life isn't so great, or is missing something, is that she's been such a lowlife.
- She wasn't supposed to eat that sandwich, according to her religious beliefs.
- Parodied: Alice is a Cosmic Plaything to an Incredibly Inconvenient Deity.
- Zig-Zagged: Sometimes, Alice gets away with misdeeds or gets rewarded for good deeds, other times not.
- Averted: Alice is a Karma Houdini.
- Enforced: Black-and-White Morality, Can't Get Away with Nuthin', Compressed Vice, Compressed Virtue, In Mysterious Ways, Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Alice's Morality Pet or Morality Chain has a direct line to the gods and doesn't hesitate to use it.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: The Gods Must Be Lazy.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: If Karma is dependent on an individual's actions/morality, what's stopping people from doing bad things to each other, and claim that if their victim hasn't done anything wrong, surely they wouldn't be a victim in the first place?
