Tropes A to B (Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole, Arc Villain, Berserk Button, Beware the Silly One, Big Brother Instinct, Bowdlerise, Break the Cutie) | Tropes C to D (Call-Back, Chekhov's Gun, Cliffhanger, Combat Pragmatist, Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, Curb-Stomp Battle, Dark and Troubled Past, Deconstructed Character Archetype) | Tropes E to F (Early Installment Weirdness, Famous Last Words, Foreshadowing) | Tropes G to J (Hate Sink, Heart is an Awesome Power, Hypocrite) | Tropes K to M (Laser-Guided Karma, Logical Weakness, Mass "Oh, Crap!", Moral Myopia, Muscles Are Meaningless) | Tropes N to P (Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, Oh, Crap!, O.O.C. Is Serious Business) | Tropes Q to S (The Reveal, Shout-Out, Spanner in the Works, Superpower Lottery) | Tropes T to Z (Wham Episode, Wham Line)
Laser-Guided Karma is a running theme in One Piece. It may take decades or even centuries, but good deeds are always rewarded while bad deeds are punished. The Straw Hats in particular abide by this; if you are kind to them, they will return that kindness tenfold, but if you make them angry, you will only live to regret it. Take Rebecca from the Dressrosa arc, for example: she had been suffering for years under Doflamingo's rule, yet still had enough kindness in her heart to befriend a disguised Luffy and pay for his food. Luffy returns this kind gesture by saving her country, taking down Doflamingo, and reuniting her with her father and the rest of their family.
- Arlong, years before the main story started, began taking over villages and forced a young Nami to join his crew as cartographer. As a carrot, he promised that if Nami could raise the money, she could buy freedom for herself and her hometown. Jump to the present, Nami almost has the money she needs, but Arlong uses some Loophole Abuse in order to keep her in line. This causes Nami to break down, which gives the Straw Hats motivation to beat down Arlong's crew. If Arlong hadn't tried to cheat Nami, he wouldn't have lost his would-be empire.
- Bellamy. Had he not been such a nihilistic, unrepentant bully and pissed off Monkey D. Luffy, he wouldn't have ended up being punished by his own boss for disgracing the flag he sailed under. But at least he learned from it.
- Spandam. A complete Jerkass whose status as such was established years before the main storyline began, his abuse of Robin throughout the entire Enies Lobby arc had him positively begging for retribution. Robin's last act to him as the Straw Hats escape with her, considering as she does so all of the pain he had caused her, is clutching him so hard that his skeleton breaks in half. Beforehand, Franky, whose father figure died because of Spandam's efforts to locate the Pluton blueprints, burns the blueprints in front of him and then beats him up. But of course, this being One Piece, he survives and eventually becomes a member of CP-0 under Lucci's command.
- Charlos gets three doses of this in a well-deserved manner:
- Firstly, when attempting to buy Keimi, he gets Punched Across the Room by a furious Luffy who doesn't care even if the World Government is after him.
- Secondly, when Charlos attempts to kidnap Shirahoshi in front of her family, Mjosgard bashes his face in with his club and voids the kidnapping. Even worse for Charlos, he can't retaliate (unlike the above example) because the attacker is a fellow World Noble given carte-blanche by the World Government, and thus can face no consequences for attacking Charlos... aside from being judged and executed by the only World Noble capable of passing judge to others, commander of God's Knights Figarland Garling.
- Thirdly, when Charlos tries to kidnap Shirahoshi againnote , he's beaten by Leo and Sai. For extra karma, 1) Mjosgard declares he's willing to take the blame for it and tragically gets executed by Garling as stated above, 2) he explains to Fukaboshi that, unlike he, as royalty, can't attack a Celestial Dragon without consequencies to his country, as pirates, Sai and Leo doesn't have that limitation, and 3) Sai and Leo are members of Luffy's fleet, who become a Emperor not long after this, meaning neither CP0 nor the Marines can't touch them without direct orders from those abode them.
- Lampshaded in one cover arc; at one point of "Caribou's Kehihi in the New World", he abandons his brother to steal their ship and sail away from a Navy base. The next episode features Caribou being caught in a storm, with the episode title "Punished By the Heavens".
- Speaking of Bellamy, his boss Doflamingo got hit with this hard. When he was a child, Doflamingo murdered his well-meaning but misguided father. His brother hated him for it, joined the Marines, and infiltrated his crew, eventually preventing him from gaining the Op-Op fruit. Doflamingo promptly murders him, which causes Trafalgar Law (Doffy's former protege and the one his brother fed the fruit to, in order to save his life) to swear revenge, plotting his demise for the next thirteen years. All of this culminated in the Dressrosa arc, in which Doflamingo's criminal empire, the one he spent building for nearly his entire life, falls apart in a spectacular fashion over the course of a single day. Unlike Bellamy, Doflamingo fails to realize that if he had shown even the slightest shred of compassion in any of those instances, none of this would have happened.
- Another thing that helps throw Doflamingo's plans into turmoil was his plan to separate Luffy from Law by using his dead brother's Devil Fruit as bait for a trap since he knew Luffy wouldn't let anyone else have it without his approval. Unfortunately, Luffy has more than one brother, and that one is not as dead as previously thought. Said brother especially counts, because not only was he the only person Luffy would ever allow to have the fruit without second thought outside of members of his own crew, he also made it his specific goal to find that exact fruit, to not only honor their deceased brother but to also help protect Luffy.
- In a rare, positive example of this trope, Queen Otohime saving a Celestial Dragon from the Fishmen's wrath pays off ten years after her death: it's the very same Celestial Dragon she saved, the aforementioned Donquixote Mjosgard, that rescues her daughter from slavery without incurring an international incident and pledges his support to her kingdom.
- As another positive example, Trafalgar Law and his crew come to Marineford during a war of some of the most powerful crews and groups in the entire world, putting themselves at very real risk, just to rescue Monkey D. Luffy, a rival pirate they'd only met once, and they ultimately save his life and help him escape the Marines. Because of this, when they meet up again two years later, Luffy already likes Law and is more than happy to accept his offer of an alliance. During the course of said alliance, Luffy, Law, and their crews end up saving each other many more times, and Luffy is able to fulfill Law's main goal of Revenge against Donquixote Doflamingo—which he'd been plotting for half his life—by defeating Doflamingo and bringing down his whole empire, something that Law very likely would not have been able to accomplish on his own without their alliance.
- Orochi was a tyrant Shogun who ruled over Wano only for petty revenge and to destroy the people's lives who made his and his family's lives hell. Kaido's support bolstered him so much that he could legitimately get away with most of the atrocities he committed, causing him to go behind his benefactor's back and deal with the World Government for ships. Orochi also had a knack for You Have Failed Me and Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, which is how he betrayed and later murdered Yasu'ie, who took pity on Orochi and gave him protection, and basically how he came to be the Shogun of Wano in the first place. He also ordered the execution of to his knowledge Komurasaki, who tried to save a little girl from his wrath. This eventually led to Kaido deeming him untrustworthy for his plan for the world, leading to Kaido personally executing Orochi in front of Wano to make a statement, and also as a precaution against any betrayals plotted by Orochi. Orochi survives, however, and wants payback.
- However, it gets better: for all his backstabbing tendencies, he’s betrayed and killed by Kyoshiro (aka Denjiro), the only person he (ironically) trusted the most, after spending his lifetime by betraying everyone who showed him kindness, including Oden and Yasu'ie.
- Eustass Kid is one of the most violent pirates in the series, as demonstrated by his second appearance of beating up fleeing pirates from New World, deeming them weak to return. His return in Zou Arc has him beaten up and deemed too weak by Kaido.
- Also, his crimes are mostly forgotten by the Wano Arc as Luffy decides to team up with him to beat Kaido. After tag-teaming with Law to beat Big Mom, Kid arrogantly decides to face off against Shanks, deeming his fleet of allied crews unworthy of him due to them literally not able to survive New World without Shanks, and tries to kill them to draw Shanks's attention. Once he gets it, Shanks robs the Kid Pirates of their copied Poneglyphs and destroys their ship, ending Kid's ambitions to be Pirate King.
