Times where Karma Houdini Warranties expired in Literature.
- In Bad Dreams by Kim Newman, one of the lesser antagonists is a corrupt policeman who murdered an Asian suspect while interrogating him for an invented crime; the novel ends before he's faced any definite consequences. Newman's next novel, Jago, reveals that he got away with it, but also has him sucked into the orbit of the far more dangerous Anthony Jago, resulting in his death.
- Ben Safford Mysteries: The Attending Physician features several corrupt, arrogant, greedy doctors who have been getting away with scamming Medicaid. They spend most of the book on the verge of panic due to documents about their crimes being leaked to people who sue them, putting their medical insurance (and their ability to operate professionally) in jeopardy.
- Bleach: Can't Fear Your Own World: This is how Tokinada dies - stabbed In the Back by a random nobody out for revenge, all because he didn't remember to close the door of the mansion behind him. Because Tokinada is such an irredeemable monster that everyone in the entire Soul Society hates him and wants to kill him, and all he had to do was give them the slightest opportunity. Cue Villainous Breakdown on his part as he realizes he's dying the most pointless death possible at the hands of someone of no consequence.
- A Certain Magical Index:
- Accelerator didn't quite go unpunished, but he might as well have. What happened? Beaten up and kicked out of a program he actually didn't want to participate in in the first place. What had he done? Killed ten thousand teenage (kinda) girls and planned to kill another ten thousand after that. So that people would quit messing with him. Maybe. After this, he pulls a Heel–Face Turn... and takes a bullet in the forehead in the process of saving the remaining ten thousand from going insane from a virus and being killed off. Permanent brain damage that leaves him unable to speak properly, use higher brain functions or motor control without outside assistance (which, ironically, comes from the other ten thousand girls he didn't kill). And then he went and Took a Level in Badass to levels of power beyond what he originally had before the accident, all fueled by his desire to keep being The Atoner.
- Othinus was hit with this big time too. Being one of the strongest characters in the series and a literal Physical God that only few figures had hopes of matching against, and she pretty much kicked the ass of everyone including Touma himself. Add the fact that she was the leader of a terrorist organization, is a Bad Boss to her subjects, tormented the lives of everyone that stood against her, succeeded in destroying the world, and finally tortured Touma to the point of successfully breaking him. The moment she pulls a Heel–Face Turn, her warranty immediately expires. The entire world wants her dead, she loses her power and is shrunk down to Fun Size, is forced to rely on people she once looked down on for protection, and catches a cold.
- Codex Alera:
- Lady Invidia Aquitaine, the sociopathic bitch responsible in one way or another for almost every problem in the series, has a drawn-out one, beginning with Fidelias shooting and nearly killing her in Captain's Fury. From then on to her death at Amara's hands, her life just keeps getting worse- she's forced to collaborate with the Vord because the Vord Queen provides her life support, with her dream of ruling Alera in ruins. Then Attis sets her on fire, and she's so badly burned she looks melted.
- Senator Armos, a Smug Snake General Ripper who believes A Million Is a Statistic, has a very satisfying case of this by the end of Captain's Fury. Turns out, Tavi is Gaius Octavian and thus has the right to challenge him to Juris Macto (a duel) over the horrific abuses he's perpetuated (including allowing mercenaries to terrorize civilians). And then his champion Navaris gets psychoanalyzed to death, removing his last chance at avoiding justice. Then he has a Villainous Breakdown and takes a camp follower hostage, but Fidelias has had a Heel–Face Turn in the meantime and snipes him with a poisoned balest bolt (and the camp follower turned out to be Invidia, mentioned above).
- Pope Boniface VII is portrayed in Dante's Inferno as thoroughly corrupt and evil, and even caused someone to get sent to Hell by claiming he controls who goes to Heaven. It's made very clear he will eventually go to Hell (specifically, the area in the eighth circle for Simonists.)
- The Elenium: Krager is an effective lieutenant to the villains in both the Elenium and Tamuli series, and avoids dying with the villains both times. However, his alcoholism worsens to the point that his mind is going and his liver is on the verge of failure. One of the main characters Lampshades that they don't need to worry about him because he's got at most a month to live.
- Kirei, Zouken, and Gilgamesh do a lot of dirty deeds in Fate/Zero, and they not only get away unscathed but, in the case of Kirei and Gilgamesh, they get what they want. This warranty lasts for ten years, and they end up paying their debts in several gruesome ways.
- Go to Sleep (A Jeff the Killer Rewrite): Randy isn't arrested for causing Ben to drown as it was thought to be accidental. Getting bleach poured on Jeff and setting him on fire (although the fire was accidental), however, has Randy spend years in and out of jail for the assault after he outgrows JDC. Then Jeff and Ben get their revenge on Randy in the end.
- Gone Girl has an example that's both a Karma Houdini getting punished and the perpetrators going away scot-free. Amy has already faked her death to screw her husband's life and is hiding in a redneck community. Including a couple who suspect Amy is loaded with cash, assault her, and go away with all of her money. Then again, this forces the victims to a change of plans that lead to literally getting away with murder.
- In the Harry Potter books, Dolores Umbridge doesn't get much comeuppance for being a Sadist Teacher, a war criminal and an all-around Jerkass, even keeping her job at the Ministry of Magic after her reign of terror over Hogwarts. However, according to Word of God, she receives a life sentence in Azkaban for crimes against Muggle-borns after the events of the 7th book.
- Artemis Entreri from The Legend of Drizzt. He initially seems like a Karma Houdini, but karma catches up big-time in the sequel. He gets beaten up by his nemesis and shot with a sleeping dart, leaving him hanging by a tattered cloak from a rock spur. The person he treated so badly from the trilogy finds him and cuts the cloak. He survives, but winds up in a city full of people just like him and finds out how bad his lifestyle choice is, eventually triggering a Heel–Face Turn.
- In The Lovely Bones, the killer George Harvey gets away with his murder of the protagonist Susie at the beginning of the story and manages to successfully dispose of her body at the climax. It's also revealed that he's killed at least six other young girls prior to this. Towards the end, he once again attempts to hit on a much younger woman like he did with his previous victims only to be rejected. Immediately afterwards, an icicle from an overhead tree branch hits him on the shoulder causing him to slip and lose his balance and fall to his death from the top of the cliff he was on.
- Magical Girl Raising Project: After seven arcs of consistently causing problems and death for the sake of becoming the ruler of the Magical Kingdom, Red finally sees Big Bad Pythie Frederica die for good. Bonus points for her also killing off the First Lapis Lazuline in the process, granting closure for her those she manipulated into their deaths.
- Gwendolyn in the Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton spent the entirety of the series as the spoilt, lazy, unpopular Butt-Monkey of her form. In the 5th book, however, Gwen meets the new girl Maureen, a similarly spoilt and unpopular schoolgirl. Gwen takes a disliking to her, recognizing her own personality flaws in Maureen, and so makes amends to behave better. Unfortunately for her, the rest of the form is now fed up of dealing with Gwen's antics and takes no notice of her Character Development.
- The character development, however, goes to hell in the 6th book, and Gwen does eventually get her comeuppance. Her father falls very ill, and so she has to drop out of the prestigious Malory Towers to acquire an office job as she cares for her father.
- In the Monogatari series, Deshuu Kaiki seems to get away with scamming kids with little more than Koyomi's stern warning for him to never return. When he does return, he is implied to have gained some remorse over his past actions (not that he's going to admit it), so he goes out of his way to save Koyomi from a Snake God-influenced Nadeko and convince her to move on from her obsession with him, even if he has little to gain, or without the direct involvement of Kanbaru, the only person in town he has ever shown kindness to. And all it got him was a potentially fatal wound from one of the boys he scammed in the past.
- At some point between One Fat Summer and its sequel, Willie Rumson gets hit with this. Caught trying to burn down Dr. Kahn's house, his first appearance in the second book has him so pumped full of anti-psychotic medicine he can barely remember his own name. This makes him the perfect patsy when another character dabbles in arson.
- Pact gives us... the Thorburns. For seven generations of practitioners, this family of diabolists fairly successfully avoided the accumulated bad karma playing with demons will hand you using every trick in their library to sidestep it. The problem is, the debt is now so large that it's not possible to avoid it any longer. As a result, the last and current generations are really feeling the hit — as the debt is a blood one. Even the ones who aren't actually practitioners and, therefore, know nothing about their history are being affected by it; for all that "Innocents" shouldn't be this badly involved. Which, is quite an achievement. Trying to get the family karma account back into the black without getting killed off too fast is the main aim of the protagonist, Blake, for most of the story. He doesn't wish to pass the whole, messy can of worms along to the unsuspecting... any more than he wanted it handed to him in the first place. Other families in Jacob's Bell would do well to take note: they're not immune to their various warranties (personal or communal), expiring, either.
- Its follow-up, Pale expands the concept significantly - a hallmark of a powerful practitioner is their ability to choose which consequences of their actions fall on them, and which on other people. Alexander Belanger, while nominally an Augur, has specialized into the accrual, manipulation, and inevitable venting of strife onto those around him. This warranty runs out when, fuming from a failed scheme, he attempts to enslave someone who has stumbled into a karmic windfall. The attention necessary to pull this off distracts him from one of the heroes' Other friends, who shoots him in the head to prevent the threat he poses from coming back.
- In Pride and Prejudice Lydia Bennet at first seems to be an outright Karma Houdini, as she receives no obvious comeuppance for nearly ruining her family by running away with Wickham, actually marries the soldier she always wanted and is constantly supported by her sisters. But the book's epilogue reveals that the couple are always spending more than they should and have to rely on her family's charity, who put up with the pair rather begrudgingly and prefer to have as little contact with Lydia as possible. And Wickham very soon loses whatever regard he had for her, meaning she's stuck in a loveless marriage with relatively little money, no way of getting free and no real prospects.
- The Chamber of the Ordeal likes to dole out this trope to Protector of the Small. Prospective Tortall knights can get away with a whole lot of crap as pages and squires, but if they wanna be knights they have to face the Chamber, which will make them suffer for their faults. Prospective knights who keep in the zone of 'normal person' to 'annoying jerk' will walk away severely shaken, but unhurt. Outright evil squires would be better off quitting while they're ahead, because losing all the money and time spent on training is a pittance compared to what the Chamber will do to you.
- Joren, a misogynist who led a posse of bullies against Keladry (the first woman to openly try for knighthood since it was legalized a decade prior) is discovered to have kidnapped Kel's maid because he knew the time it took Kel to save her would lead to her missing the squire exam and thus having to repeat her page years (it fails because the proctors understood that saving the maid was an excellent reason to miss the test and allowed Kel to retake it later). Joren admits it openly in court while mocking the king, the judge, and repeating his poisonous opinions about the place of women and commoners in society in the full knowledge that he can only be fined for the maid's missed work—even with all the ancillary charges the court can attach, it's no burden for his family. Worse, Kel has to lay aside her right to duel him as part of a deal with the king to get the law changed. Despite escaping the law with no major inconvenience, he couldn't avoid the Chamber. What it did to him is unknown, but his inflexibility and refusal to address his own flaws leads to him dying during the ordeal.
- Vinson, one of Joren's cronies, at one point assaulted and raped several peasant girls, getting away scot-free. The Chamber doled out karma by making him suffer every injury he gave the girls... repeatedly. Not even confessing the crime will make it stop.
- The afterlife in the world of Raybearer and Redemptor essentially enforces this trope on any deceased souls who wish to reach Core, the paradise and final resting place of the dead at the center of the Earth. Souls must join Egungun's Parade, following the guiding drum of the first human to ever die, but the length and difficulty of the journey increases depending on the evil one has committed in life, for with each step a soul will fully experience any pain (physical or psychological, out of malice or neglect) they caused another living creature, and must make their way through all of it in order to get to Core. Of course, no soul has to follow the Parade, and they can leave and join again at any time, but the alternative is an eternity aimlessly wandering the underworld as a shade.
- In The Rising of the Shield Hero, King Aultcray Melromarc and his daughter Princess Malty spend the entire first story arc screwing over Naofumi, getting him accused of crimes he didn't commit, and hampering his progression through the use of their positions of power. They continue to get away with it until Queen Mirelia returns from aboard and immediately puts her foot down. The backlash of their actions is so great that it had to be contained in a mini-arc. The king, however, is given a Freudian Excuse for his actions and will eventually pull a Heel–Face Turn. Things for Malty instead will only get worse and worse.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events: Though many of Count Olaf's schemes are thwarted, he always manages to escape punishment and go on to torment the Baudelaires again, making their lives Hell all for the sake of acquiring their fortune. His streak finally comes to an end in the final book, when Olaf is harpooned by Ishmael and exposed to the toxic Medusoid Mycelium he had planned to threaten his enemies with. Despite eating an apple that contained a cure to the Mycelium, Olaf was nonetheless mortally wounded and succumbs to the injury, realizing that all of his plans have been foiled, he has nothing left to live for, having lost everyone close to him, and he has no chance of obtaining the Baudelaire fortune.
- Snuff: The slave-holding, drug-peddling Gravid Rust is exiled in comfort rather than executed because he's an aristocrat and his victims are trolls (a Fantastic Underclass) and goblins (legally vermin). However, the embassy in his place of exile employs a clerk with a singular interest in venomous spiders...
- In Supreme Commander (loosely based on the original XCOM), the alien who has been largely responsible for much of the grief in the novel manages to escape the base into the ocean, while also killing one of the POV characters. Then the alien runs afoul of a shark. Whoops.
- Sword Art Online:
- During the Phantom Bullet arc, Endou and her Girl Posse take advantage of Shino to throw wild parties at her home. They're ultimately arrested for breaking and entering after a neighbor files a noise complaint on Shino's home because of her antics, and Shino refuses to cover for her. However, after the GGO fiasco, the three return and threaten Shino with a gun, in Japan while Shino is under surveillance because of Red Eyes Xaxa's "parting message"; she fails to disengage the safety, upon which Shino disarms her, shows her where she went wrong, and takes a perfect shot at a can before casually handing the gun back and walking away, leaving Endou stunned on her knees.
- Progressive has an example of the "sorry for his actions" type in Nezha the blacksmith. He helps his guildmates scam people out of their weapons and sell them so that they can keep pace with the rest of the "clearers," since they'd fallen behind while trying to help Nezha (who's essentially legally blind in-game as a result of a Full-Dive Nonconformity). Eventually, Kirito and Asuna see through his trick, and he's nearly Driven to Suicide out of guilt, but they convince him to reallocate his skills to help others. By switching some skills around so that he no longer has smithing, Nezha is able to master the chakram, and helps save the clearers from the boss of the second floor. Afterward, someone notices that Nezha has a rare weapon and asks about it, leading to Nezha's crimes being exposed and him nearly being killed for (supposedly) indirectly causing someone's death, until his guildmates take responsibility. The guild is forced to sell their ill-gotten equipment, thus putting them back to square one.
- The surviving members of the Laughing Coffin guild, all of whom gleefully killed other players despite full knowledge that doing so would kill them in real life, all get off scot-free for their actions in SAO because all the blame for any deaths was placed on Akihiko Kayaba. Several of their members return in later arcs to menace Kirito again, and karma finally catches up to them: XaXa and Johnny Black are arrested and incarcerated after perpetrating the Death Gun incident (although the latter escapes justice long enough to attack and nearly kill Kirito in real life), and PoH himself is subjected to a Karmic Death by Kirito.
- In Worm, Emma Barnes initially gets away with torturing Taylor... then she returns after Taylor has gone through character development that left her far more badass. As such, Emma not only sees her attempts to humiliate Taylor fail to faze her, but she also ends up getting so angry that she lashes out, which hurts her position with the new principal. And it only gets worse once Alec gets involved.
