Basic Trope: A character experiences a bad misfortune due to his/her bad deeds.
- Straight:
- Alice ridicules Bob, damaging his feelings. Later, she becomes sick.
- Alice devises a scheme to publically humiliate Bob. Shortly after the scheme, she gets stripped naked in public.
- Exaggerated:
- Karmic Death.
- Alice plays a mean prank on Bob only to suffer Disproportionate Retribution.
- Alice, Damien, and Flynn put together a huge, high-budget smear campaign so that everyone will run Bob out of town because he lied about how tall he was once in the second grade. Shortly after its success, Damien's marriage grows turbulant and leads to a divorce, Flynn's career experiences a severe slump, Alice loses all her hair and gets hit by a car and hospitalized.
- Alice, a Complete Monster with absolutely no redeeming qualities at all who likes to cross the Moral Event Horizon gets put in a Fate Worse than Death.
- Alternatively: A Complete Monster is killed in a very cruel and painful way.
- Downplayed:
- Alice calls Bob a nasty name. As a result, she gets a sore throat that renders her unable to talk.
- While what Alice receives isn’t that much of a punishment for anyone else, it is a fitting repercussion and for her, a Fate Worse than Death.
- Alice calls Bob a Big Stupid Doo Doo Head only to get dope slapped later on.
- Alice’s punishment didn’t have any connections to her crimes and still would happened to her even if she wasn’t a jerkass.
- Justified:
- The world is ruled by a deity who sets the world under black and white rules, and is functioned to reward good and punish evil.
- Alice's plan to humiliate Bob involved her dyeing her hair, which ruined it and left her with no choice but to shave it all off, leaving her humiliated.
- Inverted:
- Alice performs a good action and gets rewarded for it.
- Alice performs a good action and gets punished for it.
- Alice performs a bad action and gets rewarded for it.
- Subverted: It seems that the audience is awaiting Alice's comeuppance, but she becomes repentant of her deed.
- Double Subverted: ...but that didn't stop karma from making her ill anyways.
- Parodied:
- Alice listens to violent Gangsta Rap. Her ears are profusely bleeding.
- Alice steals ice cream from a child. Later on, when she gets ice cream for herself, she learns that the local ice cream store has removed her favorite flavor and raised the prices for scoops.
- Alice makes a snarky remark at Bob and instantly drops dead without any possible explanation whatsoever.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is a Karma Houdini who gets away with all kinds of misdeeds, but eventually, she grows a heart, performs a Heel–Face Turn and goes clean. Unfortunately, in doing so, she's abandoned most of her normal "safeguards" and leaves herself vulnerable to all the people she's hurt over the years, who have varying reactions.
- Averted: Karma Houdini
- Enforced: "Alice always get away from her jerkassery. Let's punish her to please our audience."
- Lampshaded: "You got exactly what you deserved, Alice!"
- Invoked:
- Alice, who is regretful of the deed, is looking forward to having bad things to happen to her right away.
- A jerkass deity wants to rule the world just for the sake of punishing people for bad deeds since humanity is prone committing them.
- After being berated by Alice, Bob decides to take matters into his own hands...
- Revenge/Pay Evil unto Evil
- Exploited:
- A miserly Jarl refuses to tip a Wise Woman. The Wise Woman gets even by giving a hint to Odin to go for a visit in disguise to that Jarl. That Jarl has a habit of robbing his guests.
- Alice spies on others in hopes for them to do something bad so that she can get away with doing something bad to them and get away with it.
- Defied:
- “I don't believe in what goes around comes around. I believe that whatever happens, happens."
- Alice, worrying about karma catching up to her, decides to kill all people aware of her misdeeds. This gives her a reputation where she is willing to kill 5,000 people just because one of them saw her calling Bob an idiot.
- Discussed: "There's nothing more satisfying than to see people get what they deserve."
- Conversed: A viewer who watches Alice suffer her punishment screams out "Karma's a bitch! Huh, Alice?!".
- Implied: Offscreen Karma
- Deconstructed:
- Alice suffers karmic retribution, but this didn't stop others to celebrate it, especially when she actually is trying to atone for her actions. This proves that every character is no better than the other, and even worse, karma didn't bother to bite them all in the asses.
- If evil is punished and good is rewarded, than people avoid doing bad things only to avoid get punished instead of the guilt of doing so. Same for them doing the right thing not because of genuine goodness, but because of selfish motives thinking that they will be rewarded.
- Alice does something bad to one of Bob’s friends, so Bob does something bad to her. However, Alice calls out Bob, saying that he’s no different from her as both are willing to do bad things to others, and that he is still held accountable for his actions. Because of this, people view Bob as hypocrite for punishing Alice even though it was the right thing to do.
- Alice’s “Karma” is way too severe for what she’s done. Because of this, the viewers view Alice as more sympathetic than how the narrative portrays her, and the episode gets badly reviewed in the fandom for Alice’s unfair treatment.
- Reconstructed:
- The people who never let Alice forget her misdeeds and rejoice in her misery receive a vicious Shaming the Mob speech from an enraged bystander, who points out that in acting self-righteous and petty, they've become no better than Alice herself.
- But even if everyone is doing good deeds and avoid doing bad ones for selfish motivations, it’s a lot better than everyone doing bad deeds and avoid doing good ones.
- Played For Laughs: Alice is an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist in a Sadist Show who’s constantly receiving over the top punishments for her jerkassery.
- Played For Drama:
- Alice’s meanness is a coping mechanism ever since her grandma died. Being publicly humiliated for her acts of cruelty and everyone going all “You get what you deserve, Alice!” only deepened it as a result.
- Alas, Poor Villain/Jerkass Woobie: Yes, Alice may have been a terrible person who has done some pretty mean things in life but you can’t help but to feel sorry for her when she got punished.
Return to the main page to get your Just Desserts.
