| 1 | %% |
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| 3 | %% These examples are listed in alphabetical order. |
| 4 | %% If adding an example, please insert it at the appropriate point, |
| 5 | %% don't just stick it at the end. |
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| 8 | KarmaHoudini in [[{{Series}} Live-Action TV]]. |
| 9 | ---- |
| 10 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 11 | |
| 12 | [[folder:#]] |
| 13 | * ''Series/ThirteenReasonsWhy'': |
| 14 | ** After Bryce and Monty suffered the terrible consequences of their acts in Season 3, [[SmugSnake Marcus Cole]] has become the only antagonist of the series who has not been exposed for his actions, partly because he was blackmailed by Cyrus and Tyler. He got away with attempted sexual assault, conspiracy, manipulation, sabotage, incrimination, and yet, his acts have not been exposed and his parents still believe that he is a model student. |
| 15 | ** Alex Standall became one in Season 3 after its revealed that he was the one who murdered Bryce. Instead of being caught and arrested, his friends help frame Monty, and even though his father already figured out he did it, he goes with the frame up and destroys evidence for his son. |
| 16 | * ''Series/TwentyFour'': |
| 17 | ** Mandy the assassin. In her very first appearance, she ''blows up an airliner full of civilians'', then follows it up by attempting to kill President Palmer (and almost succeeding) at the end of the second season. Then there's the video game, where Tony Almeida watches as she slashes the Governor of California's throat and walks off. She then goes on to execute a CTU field agent (and blow up an innocent couple in their car) in the fourth season before being subdued by Jack Bauer. Better yet, the government knows about all of her past crimes...so, what do they do? Give her full immunity for revealing Marwan's location. She gets to walk away scot-free. By the end of the series, she is the only recurring antagonist to remain at large. |
| 18 | ** Jonathan, the assassin from Season 1. He's last seen fleeing the scene after Jack wrecks the initial attempt to kill Senator Palmer, and never mentioned again. |
| 19 | ** How about Miles Papazian in Season 5? Not only did he impede Jack and Chloe several times and get Bill Buchanan fired from CTU, but he eventually switched sides to work for Charles Logan and helped him destroy evidence proving him responsible behind David Palmer's death that Jack had spent several episodes struggling to get, meaning he'd done it all for nothing. Miles then gets transferred to a nice new government job and the worst he gets is a slap in the face from his disgusted now-ex partner Karen Hayes. |
| 20 | ** Alan Wilson gets away with being one of the coordinators of the terrorist attacks in Days 7 and 5, being released without charge due to lack of evidence. Of course, he was also brutally tortured by Renee, so he didn't get off completely free. |
| 21 | [[/folder]] |
| 22 | |
| 23 | [[folder:A]] |
| 24 | * ''Series/{{Accused}}'': |
| 25 | ** In "Kenny's Story" Kenny's friends were equally guilty, but the only evidence against them is Kenny's confession, so the jury acquits them. |
| 26 | ** In "Alison's Story" Alison's husband isn't arrested for raping her, as she didn't report it, but is for other crimes. |
| 27 | ** In "Tina's Story" Tina's rapist is also not arrested for the same reasons. |
| 28 | * ''Series/Accused2023'': In "Jessie's Story" Kara faces no consequences for lying to her daughter and neighbor for years about their relationship, and Dominic faces no consequences for cheating on Andrea. |
| 29 | * ''Series/{{Alias}}'': |
| 30 | ** Mr. Sark. Every other villain on the show eventually either dies or suffers a FateWorseThanDeath, but the DistantFinale shows him still on the loose and still pulling capers, with no suggestion that he'll be stopped any time soon. |
| 31 | ** Olivia Reed never faces any consequences for her actions on screen, though one could argue losing her daughter could be one of them. |
| 32 | * ''Series/AmericanGothic1995'': Unsurprisingly, [[{{Satan}} Sheriff Buck]] is a Karma Houdini for the entire run of the series. Among the most notable things he gets away with are: killing Merlyn Temple ''in the very first episode'' and blackmailing his failed BastardUnderstudy Ben Healy to keep quiet about it; imprisoning, torturing, and eventually causing the death by neglect of an out-of-town reporter (complete with removing from his belongings the evidence that might convict Buck of various crimes, [[GoodIsImpotent all while Dr. Matt and Gail look on helplessly]]); tormenting Dr. Matt about his alcoholism, nearly getting him expelled at the hospital due to his tragic past, and eventually [[UnwittingPawn setting him up to look like an insane vigilante so he could be locked up in a mental ward]]; manipulating Gage Temple into killing Gail's parents (from which he escapes only by [[BrokenPedestal revealing to her how awful her parents really were]]); and summoning the spirit of the Boston Strangler to kill Merlyn ([[IdiotBall only to have him go after Gail as well]]). He even seems to win at the end of the series. This would be enough to constitute a DownerEnding and a reason to wash your hands of the show, if not for the suitably vague ending, [[TheEndOrIsIt which implies the victory might not be all it seems]], and how deliciously this ManipulativeBastard pulls most of this off. |
| 33 | * In the “Red Tide” storyline of Series/AmericanHorrorStory we have three of them, the chemist who made the pill that turns people into vampires, Ursula for distributing the pill and enabling vampires to exist statewide, and Alma for becoming a vampire, turning her mother into a mindless breed of vampire known as pale ones, and killing a bunch of people including her father, they all escape together with the profits they made. |
| 34 | * ''{{Series/Andromeda}}'': Used in a shining example of Administrivia/TropesAreNotBad as the focus of a meditation on the nature of justice. The titular ship returns to a planet where they helped a local RebelLeader overthrow a ruthless dictator. However, when they land on the planet, it turns out that between the purges of the former dictator's loyalists, the need to consolidate his grip on power and his own growing paranoia, the rebel became a worse dictator than the man he replaced, and the people demand that Dylan and his crew fix the problem. In the end, the dictator is overthrown and forced off the planet, power handed to the elected assembly that had, until then, been purely advisory, and the assembly promises to ensure that victims of the previous regime are compensated for their suffering. The rest of the episode is a debate between those who believe they need to hunt down the dictator and punish him for his misdeeds, and those who believe that justice has been served since the wrong is righted and the victims have achieved redress. |
| 35 | * ''Series/TheAndromedaStrain'': The head of the GovernmentConspiracy, Chuck, manages to avoid any repercussions for his actions, such as attempting to murder [[IntrepidReporter Nash]] and trying to get his hands on a sample of ThePlague that almost ends up causing the end of the world. |
| 36 | * Ernest T. Bass in ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'' was this -- for example in the episode "Ernest T. Bass Joins The Army", he throws a window-smashing temper tantrum after being turned away by the U.S. Army (because they met him), breaking out of jail several times in the process. In the end his punishment for this is... Andy discovers the reason he wanted to join the Army was to impress girls with a fancy uniform, so Andy gives him one of Barney's spare uniforms and sends him on his way. Ernest got this treatment whenever he appeared, really. Basically, he was good enough at picking locks to break out whenever he was put in jail, a skilled enough fighter that going hand-to-hand was never a viable option, and at the same time he wasn't evil enough to justify just shooting him. As a result the usual method of dealing with him was just to give him what he wanted so he'd go away. |
| 37 | * ''Series/{{Angel}}'': |
| 38 | ** Russell Winters in the pilot "[[Recap/AngelS01E01CityOf City Of...]]" openly brags about being a KarmaHoudini who can, as he puts it, "do whatever I want". Then Angel asks him "Can you fly?" Unlike some movie vampires, he can't, especially not in the sunlight. |
| 39 | ** Despite the horrors Wolfram and Hart commit, the Armageddon they have planned, the misery and devastation they have sowed, all of the team's efforts are only enough to inconvenience them, leading to a BolivianArmyEnding. To be clear, this refers to the Senior Partners and the organization as a whole, not individual employees. Almost every single evil employee ended up paying for their actions in one way or another. |
| 40 | ** Captain Atkinson in [[AC:"[[Recap/AngelS02E14TheThinDeadLine The Thin Dead Line]]" (2x14)]] raises a bunch of fallen cops as zombies and uses them to kill anyone remotely criminal or connected to criminals in any way. When the good guys get close to the truth, he sends the zombies to massacre everyone in a teen shelter just to cover his tracks. For the same reason, he shoots Angel. The idol he's using to do this is destroyed, but nothing much happens to him. He keeps his job, and lodges a complaint against Kate for "extra-official vigilantism", which leads to her being fired. |
| 41 | ** Gunn's old gang, from "[[Recap/AngelS03E03ThatOldGangOfMine That Old Gang of Mine]]". After murdering a good amount of completely innocent demons, ransacking a completely innocent demon bar where the demons inside can't even fight back, terrorizing a mentally ill girl and her friends, and still thinking that Angel is the evil one, what happens to them in the end? A few of their members get eaten in the climactic fight, and the rest just walk away to go kill more demons, with nary a {{Reason You Suck Speech}} from the main cast. |
| 42 | * ''Series/ANTFarm'': Lexi on a few occasions such as having Fletcher sabotage Chyna's performance with Jared knowing it would be too obvious if she did it herself. |
| 43 | ** Cameron once scared Olive with a fake story about a ghost haunting her locker to keep her away from him. When he is caught in the lie, he was not punished at all. |
| 44 | * ''Series/{{Arabela}}'': Princess Xenia takes advantage of her father's absence and forces the idyllic and bucolic Fairy Tale Kingdom to modernize by building factories with the help of her magic ring, forcing everybody to work in them and live in apartment blocks, regardless of how they feel about it. It doesn't help that she doesn't understand things like pollution, so she cheerfully requests that the beautiful forests and waters of the kingdom be filled with trash, and even has a factory specifically designed to convert perfectly good objects into trash. The fairy tale denizens are extremely unhappy with this, to the point where a couple of them attempt to steal her ring. They fail, and she is about to have the thieves' hands chopped off when a mob gathers in front of the palace. She angrily uses her ring to transform all of them into cars and leaves them to rust in front of the palace while she heads to the human world to eat at a nice restaurant. When her father returns, he uses the magic ring to bring everything and everybody back to normal, but does not say anything to Xenia. She doesn't get a single slap on the wrist for what she has done. And she's [[FridgeHorror next in line for the throne.]] |
| 45 | * ''Series/{{Arrow}}'': Senator Joseph Cray stages a hostage situation to assure his ascension to president and then attempts to kill his hostages after the Suicide Squad mistakenly attempts to rescue him. When his plan is thwarted, he simply bribes the hostages to remain silent and has Floyd Lawton, who sacrificed himself to save everybody, framed for what happened. |
| 46 | ** Two of the Longbow Hunters, Red and Honor, are never caught or killed. |
| 47 | [[/folder]] |
| 48 | |
| 49 | [[folder:B]] |
| 50 | * ''Series/BabylonFive'': The Vorlons and the Shadows spent thousands -- possibly millions -- of years manipulating the younger races into fighting their ideological war. Both were willing to (and did!) wipe out entire planets of civilians just to marginally weaken the other's position. And in the end... they get to leave the galaxy and happily reunite with the other First Ones. And they don't even have to clean up any of the messes they made first! |
| 51 | * ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'': |
| 52 | ** Gaius Baltar manages to avoid paying for numerous crimes, notably his part in the complete destruction of the Twelve Colonies. Throughout the show he continuously acts in [[DirtyCoward such a way]] that ''ensures'' viewer fantasies about pummeling the shifty little bastard, and has an implausible amount of sex with practically every woman in the show (Laura Roslin being an honorable exception) despite being an all-around weasel. He then manages to become the president of the fracking colonies despite the extremely noticeable handicap of wandering the halls talking to himself. Plus the religious cult set up around him by, you guessed it, hot young women. He even manages to get a HappilyEverAfter with Caprica!Six in the GrandFinale. |
| 53 | ** Caprica-Six deceives Baltar, who initially only thinks he's letting a hot blonde illicitly poke around in the Defense Mainframe to give her company an edge. She's fully aware her actions will lead to untold deaths (and was obviously conflicted, as shown by her mercy-killing a baby in the marketplace) but goes through with it anyway. Her attempt to make up for it failed spectacularly on New Caprica, leading to even more human suffering, though Cavil and Tigh shoulder a lot of the blame for that. She gets to spend life on Earth as a farmer with Baltar and his dreamy hair. |
| 54 | ** Cavil/One is personally responsible for eradicating two Cylon lines: Daniel/Seven out of [[CainAndAbel jealousy]] and D'Anna/Three because ''one of them'' was too close to remembering who the Final Five were and his role in why the other Skinjobs didn't remember. He instigated the Colonial Holocaust out of a twisted sense of justice for his Cylon ancestors, plus everything he did to Ellen and Saul Tigh. His fate? Goes the gun-in-mouth route when an attempt at a truce goes pear-shaped, with only Ellen explicitly knowing the full story. And she never tells anyone else, on screen. |
| 55 | ** Kara "Starbuck" Thrace in Season 4 causes Gaeta to lose his leg via Anders' gun because of a Leoben-inspired head trip, painting pictures on the bulkhead while the crew mutters mutinously behind her. She never seems sorry about the event, not even visiting him in sickbay. But then again, [[HumansAreBastards almost no one does]]. She even [[KickTheDog mocks him about it later]] (though in her defense, Gaeta instigates the argument). |
| 56 | ** Sharon Agathon regarding her murder of Natalie (odd, given the character's history). She does spend about an episode and a half in the brig, but that's hardly adequate punishment for the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed person. |
| 57 | * ''Series/{{Blackadder}}'': |
| 58 | ** ''The Black Adder'': Henry Tudor [[TheBadGuyWins takes the throne after Richard IV and his family all die]], and rewrites history in order to paint Richard III as a monster and make everyone think he won the Battle of Bosworth. |
| 59 | ** ''Blackadder II'': Prince Ludwig the Indestructible gets away with at least two counts of rape by deception, kidnapping Edmund and Melchett for ransom, killing the entire main cast and overthrowing the throne of England. |
| 60 | ** ''Blackadder the Third''. Unlike the first, second, and fourth incarnations of him, he rarely gets the punishment the world's biggest {{Jerkass}} should. He often takes advantage of his boss and the Prince of Wales, George, to escape karma at the last minute, even going so far as assuming his identity in the season finale. The modern and distant future Blackadders take after the third. |
| 61 | ** ''Blackadder Goes Forth'': Nothing at all happens to General 'Insanity' Melchett after all the other major characters (including SmugSnake Captain Darling) die in another attempted push. |
| 62 | * ''Series/TheBlacklist'': In "The Cyprus Agency (No. 64)", the villain of the week is busted for kidnapping women and putting them in artificially induced comas while he has them impregnated with IVF and their babies placed through his adoption agency, for a hefty profit, of course. It turns out that ''he'' is the father of all the babies in question, and his main motive was to leave his legacy in various homes. At the end, he's headed for prison, but he's perfectly happy, because unless his children all die without reproducing, he got what he wanted. |
| 63 | * ''Series/BlackScorpion'': Mayor Worth is a [[SleazyPolitician political example]]. Despite being the cause of most of the city's problems and the [[CreateYourOwnVillain reason]] for most of its super villains, he remains free ''and'' the mayor. It's even lampshaded. |
| 64 | -->'''Darcy: '''"Doesn't matter what happens, he ''always'' survives." |
| 65 | * Servalan in ''Series/BlakesSeven'', presumably. A corrupt and self-serving career officer who schemes her way into becoming [[PresidentEvil Federation President]] and commits numerous war crimes, including the genocide of planet Auron by introducing a deadly pathogen to them. Although she gets deposed, she remains at large and scheming to get back into power when we last see her: Indeed, she's the only major character who's definitely still alive as of the last episode. |
| 66 | * At the start of the eleventh season of ''Series/{{Bones}}'', a newly retired Agent Booth gets involved in a multimillion dollar heist in order to protect his brother from the latter's gambling debts. There are several murders at the scene and later deaths, and Booth ends up in the hospital (again. With a bullet wound. Again.) The episode ends with both Booth and Brennan realizing that they are simply not built for retirement. For Brennan, this isn't really a problem, but Booth ends up back in his old job at the FBI without any questions asked about his role in a series of felonies. |
| 67 | * In ''Series/TheBoys2019'', [[spoiler:WonderWomanWannabe Queen Maeve was a more neutral figure compared to IncorruptiblePurePureness Starlight, and had purely selfish motivations for joining [[CapeBusters the Boys' crusade]] against [[EvilInc Vought]]. As a result, in the season 3 finale she betrays them (save Butcher) for her RoaringRampageOfRevenge against Homelander and irresponsibly ''[[DestructiveSavior throws a can of nerve agent into the streets of New York]]''. [[SubvertedTrope In spite of the clear setup for]] a RedemptionEqualsDeath, she's given PlotArmor that allows her to survive ''two'' back-to-back fights against Supes leagues stronger than her that should have killed her outright, and gets a happy ending where she's PutOnABus with her spontaneously-reappearing girlfriend while [[WellIntentionedExtremist Butcher]] gets LaserGuidedKarma in the form of [[YourDaysAreNumbered brain cancer]]. According to WordOfGod the writers gave her special treatment because they wanted to PreserveYourGays.]] |
| 68 | * ''Series/TheBradyBunch'': [[https://www.hulu.com/watch/25ec0639-1224-4470-9de3-1137332bb665 Twice the Bradys]][[https://www.hulu.com/watch/07a5a000-5495-43e2-ba93-d653cc8eba84 have been kidnapped]], both times the kidnapper walks free with ill gotten-rewards. (A gold fortune in the first case, a museum wing named after him in the second.) |
| 69 | * ''Series/BrooklynNineNine'': |
| 70 | ** Throughout the entirety of the show, Gina Linetti constantly skips out on her job, makes unwarranted sexual comments about Terry, insults Amy, and endangers herself and others through her recklessness and self-centredness (such as in Yippee Kayak, where she risks the entire police force's safety in a literal hostage situation by trying to make a flamethrower after being warned multiple times not to do so). However, she never faces any lasting consequences for the way she treats people. In fact, after explaining the (always completely justified) reason for acting the way she was (she was stressed after having a child, she was too busy studying to go to work), people often apologize to ''her''. |
| 71 | ** Played with at the end of Season 6. Commissioner John Kelly is fired for instituting a massive illegal surveillance operation, but there's no mention of criminal charges or a civil suit, and he's better off in at least one way than before... |
| 72 | --->'''Raymond Holt''': I wonder what he's doing now. |
| 73 | --->'''Madeline Wuntch''': He's got a much higher paying job in the private sector. |
| 74 | --->'''Raymond Holt''': Yes, the world is horrible. |
| 75 | * ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': |
| 76 | ** Harmony, the soulless vampire has killed people, and betrays Angel in the end. But since she was so predictable about it and useful in an AffablyEvil way, he not only let her go but types up a written letter of recommendation (she was his secretary). In Season 8, this is even more pronounced. She outs the existence of vampires, becoming a worldwide celebrity and making vampires seem like good guys while the Slayer Organization was made out to be a Nazi-like group attempting to destroy the misunderstood demonkind. But because of Harmony's status, Buffy orders her army not to try and kill her, out of fear of making her a martyr, which essentially gives her a free pass to do whatever she wants. |
| 77 | ** A far worse example would be Drusilla. Even after killing slayer Kendra and forcibly turning Darla into a vampire again, she was never staked and is still at large as both series closed. |
| 78 | ** Willow -- she murdered Warren by skinning him alive, tried to kill Andrew and Jonathan despite them not being involved in Tara's death, as well as casually killing a warlock who sold her magic, then tried to ''destroy the world''. She was being influenced by dark magic at the time, but then, she absorbed it on purpose. Her punishment? A couple months in England learning to better use her world-destroying powers. Although her time in England was no vacation (intense therapy and formal training) and when she returned she is the first suspect when flaying bodies appear. However, as soon as she's cleared of that, she moves back into Buffy's house [[EasilyForgiven as if nothing happened]], with what little penance she served occurring entirely off-screen between seasons. |
| 79 | ** The First Evil. Being incorporeal and essentially a force of nature, it actually ''cannot'' be defeated. The only thing the Scoobies were able to do was to destroy the Hellmouth, eliminating The First Evil's army, [[AsLongAsthereIsEvil but not The First itself]]. Oh well. |
| 80 | ** Spike is more popular than the rest of the characters combined and people tend to forgive him everything, but he is arguably the most blatant example of this trope in the entire Buffyverse. Even before he was chipped Buffy let him walk away a few times for no reason (like in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E6Halloween Halloween]]"). Then he gets chipped and everyone is suddenly trusting this chip with their lives, never mind that the organization that made it soon proved to be both evil and incompetent. Willow actually comforts Spike for his "impotence" -- i.e. the inability to kill her! He starts killing people once more (against his will) in Season 7. |
| 81 | ** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E16Doppelgangland Doppelgandland]]", the protagonists go through considerable trouble to make vampire Willow into one of these. Even after she tries to murder dozens of innocent people, succeeding with a few, the Scooby gang just let her leave back to her own world, even giving goodbye hugs and advice to "try not to kill people". The hand of karma is swift in her case, as she gets staked seconds after her return, but not for the lack of trying. |
| 82 | ** Joyce, in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E2DeadMansParty Dead Man's Party]]", when she all but shrugs off the role her ultimatum played in Buffy running away. A revolting moment for a likable character. Yes, Buffy bears responsibility, even most of it. But to verbally crucify Buffy in front of people she can't talk about Slayer-stuff in front of, and give her own stupidity a pass? It helps, though, that afterwards, Joyce did try to be supportive about Buffy being the Slayer (even if Joyce wasn't always successful at it.) |
| 83 | ** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E22BecomingPart2 Becoming Part 2]]", Willow asks Xander to tell Buffy to buy some time while fighting Angelus, so that Willow can do the spell to return Angel's soul. Instead, when Xander catches up to Buffy, he says Willow's message is: "Kick his ass." Buffy ends up having to kill a re-ensouled Angel to save the world, which leads to a major HeroicBSOD. Xander's actions are only brought up once, years later, and even then he never suffers any consequences for not giving Buffy false hope. |
| 84 | ** "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E7OnceMoreWithFeeling Once More With Feeling]]" has Xander (more through foolishness than malice) summon a demon that danced several people to death and caused several unwanted confessions. |
| 85 | ** Halfway through Season 7, it is revealed that the First's attack on the line of Slayers is possible because the spell to bring Buffy back from the dead (ie from ''Heaven'') upset the natural order. This fact is never mentioned again, meaning Willow and Xander, the main instigators of the spell, never even find out that the multiple deaths are their fault. |
| 86 | ** Anya lampshades this when complaining about Buffy's treatment of her in a Season 7 episode, pointing out that Buffy's entire team was evil at one time. |
| 87 | ** Spike also lampshades this, pointing out that almost everyone has been evil at one point and that most of them get away with it after he starts BecomingTheCostume in a Season 6 Angel comic. |
| 88 | ** In [[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E18WhereTheWildThingsAre "Where The Wild Things Are"]], the Scooby Gang discover that Genevieve Holt was serially abusing the children placed in her care but the worst that happens to her is a brief scolding from Giles with no mention of reporting her to the police or social services. |
| 89 | * ''Series/BurnNotice'': In Season 2, an episode revolves around trying to extradite a criminal bastard in exile back to Haiti so he can answer for his crimes. He looted the nation's treasury and fled into hiding. Halfway through the episode, we learn that his dead father, also a criminal and a thief, is nowhere near as dead as suspected, but also escaped into hiding. While the target is apprehended and shipped off to Haiti, his equally guilty partner stays in hiding in the states and the best the heroes can do is try to point the authorities in the right direction so they can eventually do something about the situation. |
| 90 | [[/folder]] |
| 91 | |
| 92 | [[folder:C]] |
| 93 | * In the Netflix show ''Series/{{Cheat}}'', Michael gets basically no punishment for abandoning Sarah and Rose, causing the former to commit suicide and the latter to grow up with an AbusiveParent and then refuses to come clean to Leah and Angela about Rose's identity until he's backed into a corner. His wife does throw him out for a bit, but the final episode implies they're on their way to patching things up and Leah even introduces him to his grandson after stating previously she had no intention of forgiving him. |
| 94 | * ''Series/{{Chuck}}'': The BigBad for the last quarter of Season 4, Vivian Volkoff, is this. She's told she can meet with her father if she helps with a mission, but in the end Beckman doesn't hold up her end of the bargain. Most people would be pissed. Most people would also agree that taking over her [[EvilInc father's company]], hiring someone to blow up Castle, manipulating the team into retrieving a deadly weapon for her and then leaving them to die is a slight overreaction. After being told Chuck's parents were responsible for her father becoming Volkoff, she tries to kill Sarah to hurt Chuck. She hands over the cure in the end, but only after Chuck gives her a blank identity so that she can start a new life, meaning she not only suffers no retribution from Team Bartowski, but is guaranteed not to have to deal with any consequences from anyone else, either. |
| 95 | * ''Series/TheCloser'': Bill Croelick is a particularly odious example. He's a {{Sociopath}} with a DarkAndTroubledPast who's sexually aroused by [[ManOnFire burning women to death]], but gets off for a variety of reasons: first the only witness against him [=ODs=], then in both the cases where he's a suspect, the real murderer turns out to be [[FrameUp someone]] [[NotMeThisTime else]]. He's also a ManipulativeBastard who loves to harass Brenda and company while staying ''just'' within legal bounds. At least Brenda gets him to leave her jurisdiction and never return. |
| 96 | * ''Series/ColdCase'': |
| 97 | ** ''Very'' rare, and when it does occur, it's almost never the main perp. Examples are few and far between, but include the second killer in "Late Returns" (his devoted sister took the rap for both murders even though she only committed one), the victim's pedophile dad from "Fly Away" (statute of limitations was up, and while he appeared to have become TheAtoner over the years, the dude still [[{{Squick}} gave his eight-year-old gonorrhea]]), the crooked nun who sold babies on the black market in "The Good-bye Room" (only evidence against her was the tape-recorded testimony of a dead woman), and the black widow from "The Runaway Bunny" (the only person who could prove she did it, her stepdaughter, was being hidden away for her own safety; the woman even gives Lilly a wink and a smug grin as she leaves the station, knowing she's untouchable). |
| 98 | ** It is played straight a few times, usually in cases where the killer is already dead (after living a full life, given the time gap on some of these cases) by the time the team cracks the case. Also, in "Fireflies", the one episode where no one died, the man who shot a child in the head and left her for dead can't be punished because his crime, not being a murder, is past the statute of limitations. |
| 99 | * ''Series/ControlZ'': |
| 100 | ** Bruno never gets any punishment for his involvement with [[spoiler:Raúl]] as the hacker since he escaped from his lair, never to be seen again. |
| 101 | ** As both Quintanilla and Susana were unable to expel [[spoiler:Raúl]], due to him using their affair against both of them, he didn't get any kind of proper punishment for his actions of the hacker, allowing him to return to the school like nothing happened. Gerry even complained about this by pointing out that it is only his father, whose shady dealings were exposed, who ''is'' in jail and [[spoiler:Raúl]] himself managed to get off scot-free. |
| 102 | ** Aside from a brief suspension for beating [[spoiler:Raúl]] up constantly and getting himself forcefully removed from a nightclub, Pablo never gets called out by anyone for it, nor does he receive a harsh punishment for his aggressive behaviour. |
| 103 | * ''Series/CoronationStreet'': Gary Adams doesn't end up being prosecuted for grooming Sarah and is presumably free to do it again. |
| 104 | * ''Series/CriminalMinds'': |
| 105 | ** Averted in the show in general, since the protagonists live to defy this trope, 99% of the time; the main [=UnSub=] of the episode has gotten away with it a grand total of ''twice'' (in "Blood Relations" and "In the Woods"). Occasionally played straight with minor characters only tangentially related to the crime, however, a good example being the GeneralRipper responsible for the unsub's StartOfDarkness in "Dorado Falls." |
| 106 | ** This trope is acknowledged and averted in the episode "To Hell And Back." The FBI discovers the killer is a quadriplegic who manipulates his autistic brother into murdering people for medical experiments, and acknowledge this will sound like nonsense to a jury. Unfortunately for the killer, the brother of one of his victims, assisting the investigation, overhears this, grabs a shotgun, and blows the guy's head off as he lies bedridden and helpless. |
| 107 | ** The unidentified Skull Tattoo Man from "Awake" gets away, since the BAU don't even consider he could be real until the end. |
| 108 | ** Darlene Beckett, one of the killing team in "The Pact", escapes on a bus, leaving her partner to be arrested. |
| 109 | * ''Series/{{CSI}}'': The occasional villain, including... |
| 110 | ** A pair of {{Black Widow}}s who worked as a tag-team; one would marry a rich man and get in the will, then the other would poison him; they'd then move on to a new state and switch roles. They destroyed all the physical evidence, leaving investigators with only the word of the other as to which one did it, so the DA didn't even bother filing charges. |
| 111 | ** A man who murdered a woman who looked almost exactly like Sara; this one rankled Grissom quite a bit. |
| 112 | ** Another man who made sure all the evidence pointed to his brother, who was really only a GuiltRiddenAccomplice. |
| 113 | ** A serial rapist who murdered his last victim so she couldn't identify him, then fled the state. |
| 114 | ** A SerialKiller who managed to convince the jury she was only an accomplice; she did five years and was protected by double jeopardy. To make matters worse, the father of one of her victims goes to jail for beating her to the brink of death -- one only wishes he'd gotten the chance to finish before the cops pulled him off her. |
| 115 | ** A group of plane passengers who beat another passenger to death for attempting to open an escape hatch mid-flight. While it's true that doing so would doom the entire flight, meaning it was a clear case of self-defense (except for the part where they continue beating on him after he's down), Grissom points out that the man was sick, and none of the passengers or the flight attendants bothered to figure out what was wrong, assuming he was just a crazy jerk. Had at least one person done that, the whole situation would have been avoided. Once again, the DA refuses to press charges, claiming that a jury will never convict so many people. |
| 116 | ** Partly happens to a casino owner who hired a group of people to steal a valuable collection of Japanese artifacts (all fake) being displayed in his hotel and collect the insurance money. At the end, the CSI team figures out what happened, but all evidence is circumstantial, so neither the owner nor his accomplices are arrested. However, when Grissom is telling all this to the smug rich guy, he explains that he's going to turn this evidence over to his insurance company, whose standards of proof are far less strict, so he shouldn't expect a payment. Based on the guy's facial expression, he clearly did not expect this outcome. |
| 117 | [[/folder]] |
| 118 | |
| 119 | [[folder:D]] |
| 120 | * ''Series/DahmerMonsterTheJeffreyDahmerStory'': In the late episodes of the series, when Jeffrey's killings are exposed to the public, the two police officers who allowed him to take Konerak Sinthasophone back to his apartment, and ignored Glenda's calls, were suspended from the force for their actions by the chief. They were not happy, and planned to appeal. The appeal was successful, and they were welcomed back with open arms by their colleagues (sans the chief). They're also shown getting an award, and then making threatening calls to Konerak's family. |
| 121 | * ''Series/DarkDesire'': Esteban got away with his all crimes in the first season aside from obstructing justice as he managed to discredit or dispose of most evidence to show that he'd committed them. He serves only a short sentence for his single conviction. |
| 122 | * ''Series/DarkShadows'': Laura Collins, a phoenix-like being who appears every hundred years and then burns herself to death, preferring to take any offspring with her. She's prevented from killing her son David, but still presumably goes on to try again every hundred years. |
| 123 | * ''Series/{{Deadwood}}'': George Hearst is a hair-tearing example of the historical figure type of this trope; he has anyone who stands in his way of obtaining gold extorted or murdered, and forces the town to sell everything to him. He does have a token comeuppance of losing [[TheDragon Captain Turner]], but he's a pretty heartless prick when it comes to people anyway. His last act is to demand the death of Trixie, a whore who tried to assassinate him. Al murders Jen instead because he loves Trixie and knows Hearst won't be able to tell the difference between the bodies. When satisfied, he rides out of the town that he owns onto his next conquest. ''Then the series ends.'' |
| 124 | ** Deadwood fans had to wait ''thirteen years'', but did finally get to see Hearst be handed his KarmaHoudiniWarranty in the movie. Having his crimes exposed, being humiliated in front of the entire town, nearly getting beaten to death by the enraged towns folk, and finally being hauled off to jail for his crimes. |
| 125 | * ''Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration'': In Season 2, Paige is raped by Dean. After several incidents where he taunts her about the ordeal, she presses charges against him, but the trial doesn't take place until Season 4. However, Dean is found not guilty due to the lack of evidence. Paige gets a small measure of revenge by wrecking Dean's car by deliberately crashing Spinner's car into it. Also, Dean states that he does not get into a fraternity that he was pledging for because Paige had shown up at one of their parties and screams about Dean raping her. However, no real consequence is ever felt by Dean. |
| 126 | * ''Series/DesperateHousewives'': |
| 127 | ** The third season has Art Shepard. Lynette found his basement full of half naked boy pictures. Convinced he's a pedophile, she starts massive demonstrations. Art's sister Rebecca managed to dismiss Lynette's doubts then the latter came back to Art in order to apologize herself. After the stress causes Rebecca's death, Art confesses to Lynette that he really was a unrepentant pedophile and he was hiding his activities from his sister. At the end of the episode, he just leaves Wisteria Lane for a new neighborhood. Granted, it's not known whether he was telling the truth just then; he could have been lying about that for revenge on Lynette. Either way, one of them is a Karma Houdini. |
| 128 | ** Orson Hodge stalks Bree and even kills someone in the final season. When she rejects him, he sends evidence implicating her in a different murder (she only helped bury the body) to the police. He then disappears into the wind and is never brought to justice. |
| 129 | ** In a related instance, a cop who has it out for Bree doctors evidence to make it look like the murdered man was meeting up with her. He never gets his. |
| 130 | * Early on in ''Series/DesignatedSurvivor'', in the wake of prejudice due to the recent attack on the white house, Michigan police brutality kills a 17 year old boy because John Royce was indifferent to the extremism he had allowed in the state. He eventually cooperates with Tom to have police stand down and release everyone who was loosely imprisoned, but that does little to make up for the police brutality that killed the boy. At this point, neither John nor the police who were involved in the brutality have addressed or faced the accountability of how their actions wrongly killed an innocent. |
| 131 | * ''Series/{{Dexter}}'': |
| 132 | ** Dexter intentionally averts this trope. His victims are would-be Karma Houdinis, except Dexter gets 'em. |
| 133 | ** Zig-zagged in Season 4 with the Trinity Killer. After committing murder for 30 years and never getting caught, in the season finale he robs his family, takes his prized sports mobile, and escapes the police as he drives off into the sunset. Then Dexter captures him and he ends up on his killing table, but still has the final laugh as Dexter has no idea that Trinity had killed Rita earlier that day, making it impossible for Dexter to derive closure or get revenge since Trinity is already dead. |
| 134 | ** [[Characters/DexterDexterMorgan Dexter Morgan]]. While it's all in the service of the community (as he sees it) and while it gives him no end of trouble, he does kill people and avoid getting caught. He even got to pin most of his murders on Doakes. In the series finale, Dexter :fakes his death and starts a new life elsewhere, and his dark secrets are never even exposed. However, many fans consider the fact that he lost everyone he cared about and must spend the rest of his life in isolation a FateWorseThanDeath. It's eventually subverted in the miniseries ''Series/DexterNewBlood'' which has him return to killing and eventually being shot dead. |
| 135 | ** Marco Fuentes is still on the run, and Cira Manzon got away with setting Deb up to take the blame for his escape. |
| 136 | ** Jimmy Sensio, a voodoo serial killer and Dexter's first VictimOfTheWeek in Season 2, ends up being spared by Dexter because he's not ready to go back to killing just yet after murdering his brother in Season 1. |
| 137 | ** Hannah [=McKay=], Dexter's serial killer girlfriend, almost never gets any karma for her various evil actions due to Dexter always being willing to protect her. When Dexter eventually does turn her in, she escapes from prison, and the series finale sees her living happily in Argentina after Dexter helps her escape. |
| 138 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 139 | ** Back in the first season, (as in, ''[[TheSixties the first]]'' first season) when they drop in on [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E6TheAztecs "The Aztecs"]], the Bad Priest ends up in charge and the Good Priest is exiled. Also, the Doctor's fiancée gets her [[DownerEnding heart broken]]... Though the story is very aware of this and the story is meant to be a historical tragedy. |
| 140 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E2TheDalekInvasionOfEarth "The Dalek Invasion of Earth"]]: The two women in the woods who betray Barbara and Jenny to the Daleks for extra supplies don't suffer any consequences as a result and, given the Dalek occupation ended soon after, probably ended up a lot better off soon after. |
| 141 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E4TheRomans "The Romans"]]: Nero doesn't get punished for forcing a slave to drink poison and having Rome burned down, and Poppea is never exposed for trying to have Barbara assassinated. However, this is something of a ForegoneConclusion due to the fact that [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome both of them were real people]]. It's also not all that bad, as both Nero and Poppea eventually got their comeuppance in real life. |
| 142 | *** However, the same cannot be said for the slave trader Didius, who vanishes from the story after kidnapping Ian and Barbara and having them sold as slaves (unlike his partner Sevcheria, who reappears and eventually gets killed in the final episode). |
| 143 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan "The Daleks' Master Plan"]]: Karlton, Mavic Chen's right-hand man, is last seen preparing their army to take over from the Daleks once they have control of the solar system, and since no-one knew of his involvement probably got off scot free. Similarly, the Galactic Alliance who provided the Daleks with aid simply switch sides after the Daleks betray them and go off to warn their people. |
| 144 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E5TheMassacre "The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Eve"]]: Historical Karma Houdini Catherine de Merdici and her co-conspirators get clean away with arranging the attempted assassination of Admiral de Coligny, framing the Huguenots for the murder of the Abbot of Amboise, and inciting the massacre of French Protestants. |
| 145 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E8TheGunfighters "The Gunfighters"]]: Pa Clanton is not present at the climactic gunfight at the O.K. Corral and thus becomes the only villain to survive the events of the serial unscathed. |
| 146 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E1TheSmugglers "The Smugglers"]]: Squire Edwards, while not as loathsome as Captain Pike or Cherub, is still one of the leaders of the titular smuggling ring that Blake was looking for and yet seemingly ends up being let off by Blake after he helps to stop Pike at the end. |
| 147 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E8TheFacelessOnes "The Faceless Ones"]]: Blade and Spencer are responsible for the abduction of fifty thousand people in order to steal their identities, murder at least two people who come close to exposing them and make several attempts to kill the Doctor and his friends. After being forced into a corner by the Doctor, they [[BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork kill their leader]] and agree to release their prisoners, being let off with no punishment for their crimes except for having to revert to their previous identity-less state…and the Doctor suggests he might [[SaveTheVillain give them a cure for that]]. |
| 148 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E4TheKrotons "The Krotons"]]: Eelek takes advantage of the Krotons' deception to arrange a coup, plans an attack that will get his people killed, and ultimately betrays the Doctor and Zoe to the Krotons. Although rightful ruler Thara vows to get rid of him, he remains in power at the story's close. |
| 149 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E3TheClawsOfAxos "The Claws of Axos"]]: Self-serving politician Chinn has the UNIT personnel illegally arrested and attempts to keep the supposedly miraculous axonite for Britain's exclusive use. Although his superior warns him that he'll be forced to resign if anything goes wrong, he flees the destruction of Nuton with the others after the reasonable director has been killed. |
| 150 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E4ColonyInSpace "Colony in Space"]]: Captain Dent, leader of the IMC expedition to Uxarius. He commits a number of dirty tricks to force the colonists off the planet so he can exploit its minerals, including staging lizard attacks that get two colonists killed; having one of his men infiltrate the colony, kill their engineer and sabotage their power source; handcuffing prisoners to a bomb; and finally forcing all the colonists to leave the planet in a ship that will almost certainly explode (and does, although most of them got off before launch). His men are defeated at the end but Dent simply [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse disappears]] halfway through the last episode and is never seen to be punished. |
| 151 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E2PlanetOfEvil "Planet of Evil"]]: Professor Sorenson is a ReluctantMadScientist who tried to harvest anti-matter as a fuel source. In the process, he upset an anti-matter creature who wiped out his entire expedition bar him and then most of the rescue team that came to pick him up. He still insists his plan will save his people and make him famous, even though he's been infected by anti-matter and keeps turning into a ravening beast that kills most of the rest of the rescue team that came to pick him up. He pins the blame on the Doctor and Sarah, nearly getting them executed, and breaks a deal the Doctor made with the anti-matter creature by smuggling anti-matter on board their ship, nearly causing it to crash. In the end... he gets cured and gets to go home with the few people he hasn't got killed, with the Doctor setting him off on a different form of research so he'll probably end up famous and celebrated. |
| 152 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E6TheInvasionOfTime "The Invasion of Time"]]: Castellan Kelner collaborates with two sets of alien invaders, the Vardans and the Sontarans, and uses the situation to have his old rivals sent into exile. He is never seen to be punished and, since the Doctor made him Acting Deputy President, may even have succeeded him. (In the following season, the Doctor comments that he should have thrown the new President to the Sontarans when he had the chance.) |
| 153 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E4TheAndroidsOfTara "The Androids of Tara"]]: Count Grendel makes several attempts to kill true heir Prince Reynart, along with the Doctor and Romana, in his plan to become King of Tara, as well as holding second-in-line Strella prisoner and trying to force Romana and Reynart into marriage in order to inherit the claim to the throne. His plans fail but he pulls a VillainExitStageLeft. |
| 154 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E1TheLeisureHive "The Leisure Hive"]]: Pangol, the jingoistic leader of the Argolin, attempts to build an army of clones of himself in order to lead his people into war and destroys the Foamasi representative's ship in a failed attempt to kill him. He simply gets rejuvenated to a baby at the end, with no real suggestion that he won't pick up where he left off when he grows up again. |
| 155 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E5Enlightenment "Enlightenment"]]: Captain Wrack, the Black Guardian's agent among the Eternals, destroys several of her rivals' ships, killing their human crews, and attempts to have the Doctor thrown into space. She loses the race but it's made clear that any Eternal who does so simply transfers home. |
| 156 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E7TheTwinDilemma "The Twin Dilemma"]]: Mestor's main Jacondan ally, Noma, assists in the kidnapping of the Sylvest twins, sets the self-destruct of Azmael's safe house in an attempt to kill the Doctor and Peri, and leads a group of guards who attack the heroes, yet survives the story and disappears after Mestor dies. |
| 157 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E4TheUltimateFoe "Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe"]]: Although the Valeyard reappears in expanded media, he never appears again in the show after the episode's closing shot reveals that he's still alive. |
| 158 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E2TheHappinessPatrol "The Happiness Patrol"]]: Helen A's dictatorial regime sees thousands executed for the crime of being unhappy and the native population forced to live underground half-starved. The Doctor topples her but she receives no punishment other than her pet dying. |
| 159 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E11BoomTown "Boom Town"]]: Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, despite her plans to escape the Earth by destroying it and having killed multiple people to cover this up, still manages to get a good ending when she's [[RaiseHimRightThisTime reverted into an egg]] by looking into the heart of the TARDIS, giving her what she wanted all along: a second chance. |
| 160 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E11FearHer "Fear Her"]]: The Isolus never suffers any consequences for nearly trapping the Earth inside a drawing. |
| 161 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E1SmithAndJones "Smith and Jones"]]: Yes, the Judoon returned the hospital to Earth when they were done with it and gave Martha "compensation", but they murdered a man acting in perceived self-defence and nearly killed everyone else from oxygen starvation... and if the Doctor hadn't deactivated the sabotaged MRI, it would have flash-fried everyone on Earth. |
| 162 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E742 "42"]]: The [[GeniusLoci living sun]] is not defeated, as the main characters are only able to escape by giving it what it wants. Although the crew did take part of its substance first, they had no idea it was alive. |
| 163 | ** A few episodes have had the classic horror-movie "That creature is no threat to us!" character who immediately gets eaten or whatever, but often the Doctor saves the contrarians along with everyone else. [[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned "Voyage of the Damned"]] subverts it with a plot where nearly every likable character dies, but rude, unhelpful, selfish coward Rickston Slade not only survives the disaster, but turns out to have financially benefited from it. One character even comments on this to the Doctor, saying it's not fair, but you can't, and ''shouldn't'', be able to choose who lives and who dies. |
| 164 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E1PartnersInCrime "Partners in Crime"]]: The Adiposian First Family, who set up the whole scheme to kill one million humans and convert their body fat into more Adipose, successfully breed around ten thousand of the planned million babies (albeit with only one death as far as we know due to the Doctor's intervention) and leave in their spaceship with their new children after first disposing of their accomplice who was the one person who could implicate them in the scheme. |
| 165 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E15PlanetOfTheDead "Planet of the Dead"]]: ClassyCatBurglar Lady Christina, the episode's one-shot companion, has this trope double-subverted in her favour. First, before the police can stop the bus she's on, it goes through a wormhole to an alien planet. When the bus and its passengers get back to Earth, she's arrested by the police officer chasing her... but the Doctor decides to help her escape in the bus, now modified so it can fly. |
| 166 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E2TheBeastBelow "The Beast Below"]]: The secret police, who have fed people to the beast, face no punishment from the Queen when she finally realizes what they're doing. |
| 167 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler "Let's Kill Hitler"]] introduces a group dedicated to punishing these. They travel to the end of a war criminal's established timeline and torture them to death. Ironically, they become Karma Houdinis themselves. |
| 168 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E11TheGodComplex "The God Complex"]]: Gibbis exploits his species' cowardly nature to sell out his fellows trapped in the HellHotel with him. He releases Howie knowing full well this will lead to his death, then pleads for sympathy after the former dies. Apart from a stern lecture from the Doctor, he is the only non-main character to survive the ordeal. The Doctor even gives him a lift home! |
| 169 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E7TheRingsOfAkhaten "The Rings of Akhaten"]]: The Vigil, who sacrifice children to the Mummy in order to prevent Akhaten from awakening, are last seen [[VillainExitStageLeft teleporting away after the ritual fails]], leaving everyone else to die. |
| 170 | ** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E10JourneyToTheCentreOfTheTARDIS Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS]]": Bram and Gregor manipulate their amnesiac brother into believing that he's an android out of jealousy that he was chosen as captain over them, allowing them to use him like a slave and mistreat him for their own amusement. While he does eventually discover the truth, the literal ResetButton pushed at the end of the episode means this revelation is undone and the two of them are presumably free to continue exploiting their brother indefinitely. |
| 171 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E8MummyOnTheOrientExpress "Mummy on the Orient Express"]]: The Doctor solves the immediate problem, but the very ruthless and evil people who set the situation up go unidentified and unpunished. It's possible that this may be revisited at some point. But since the episode was in 2014 and [[AbortedArc it hasn't been mentioned since]], probably not. |
| 172 | ** Ashildr/Me (Creator/MaisieWilliams) from the Series 9 StoryArc. The Doctor saves the Viking lass from the grave in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E5TheGirlWhoDied "The Girl Who Died"]], but the only way he can do so also renders her functionally immortal. She becomes embittered and occasionally villainous as centuries pass thanks to TheFogOfAges, WhoWantsToLiveForever, and the Doctor's choice not to take her on as a companion lest they ''both'' become exemplars of ImmortalityImmorality, but he works to keep her on the right path, having faith that she isn't completely heartless. In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E10FaceTheRaven "Face the Raven"]] (set in 2015) she's a reluctant AntiVillain who agrees to trap the Doctor under threats from the Time Lords -- via a plot that ends up accidentally claiming his beloved Clara Oswald's life, which angers the Doctor even more than the betrayal does; it's only Clara's demands that keep him from destroying her and the trap street then and there. The grieving Doctor subsequently endures more-or-less solitary confinement and torture that induces a SanitySlippage; he escapes as a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds desperate to save Clara's life [[TheUnfettered by any means]]. In the process, he and Ashildr meet at the end of the universe's existence, she having outlived everything else. He's still bitter, she won't apologize or atone... yet rather than just leave her to die alone, he lets her follow him -- ''with no explanation'' -- onto TARDIS 2.0. In the denouement, the Doctor repents, is mind-wiped of his most important memories of Clara, and left alone with his old TARDIS. Ashildr becomes the now-functionally immortal Clara's companion in the second TARDIS, Clara completely forgiving her actions! Defenders argue she's a case of EarnYourHappyEnding because she was forced to endure TheSlowPath for eons thanks to the Doctor's good intentions going awry, but others feel she merely profited off of the Doctor's suffering and loss. |
| 173 | ** Bonnie the Zygon in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E8TheZygonInversion "The Zygon Inversion"]], who leads a vicious Zygon uprising against humanity which leads to the loss of several lives on both sides, but basically gets let go with a stern lecture from the Doctor. She even becomes the replacement second Osgood. This is arguably part of the point of the episode, however; while it might be pleasing to see her get some form of punishment to satisfy some idea of karma and justice, ultimately forgiveness is the healthier option and breaking the cycle of violence, resentment and retribution that the characters had all become locked in has to start somewhere. |
| 174 | *** [[PlotParallel It's also a contrast]] to the Doctor's subsequent unwillingness to forgive Ashildr/Me and the Time Lords in the Series 9 SeasonFinale (see above) in favor of getting {{Revenge}} upon the latter and trying to save Clara's life against all odds, which only causes sorrow for everyone until the Doctor, like Bonnie, gives up his quest and loses both Clara and his memories of her in the process. While neither the Doctor, Ashildr/Me, or the Time Lords explicitly seeks forgiveness from the other side(s) the cycle of cruelty is broken (for a while -- ''[[ComicBook/DoctorWhoSupremacyOfTheCybermen Supremacy of the Cybermen]]'' has Rassilon attempt {{Revenge}}, but a ResetButton is pushed at the end when it gets way out of hand). |
| 175 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWho2016CSTheReturnofDoctorMysterio "The Return of Doctor Mysterio"]]: While the episode ends with the Harmony Shoal's plan foiled and their headquarters occupied by [=UNIT=], the shoal member possessing Dr. Sim manages to escape in the body of a [=UNIT=] soldier in a clear setup for another appearance [[AbortedArc which was never followed up on.]] |
| 176 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E2TheGhostMonument "The Ghost Monument"]]: Illin forces contestants who lose the Rally of the Twelve Galaxies to remain stranded on Desolation to eventually die while the winner is teleported off-world. As he never physically appears on Desolation, preferring to communicate with the contestants through holograms, he never recieves any form of retribution. |
| 177 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E4ArachnidsInTheUK "Arachnids in the UK"]]: CorruptCorporateExecutive Jack Robertson, whose shoddy business practices caused a GiantSpider infestation in Sheffield which led to the deaths of at least three people at the hands of the spiders receives no on-screen comeuppance for his actions. |
| 178 | *** It looks like karma will catch up with him in [[Recap/DoctorWho2021NYSRevolutionOfTheDaleks "Revolution of the Daleks"]] when he [[DirtyCoward allies himself with the Daleks to avoid extermination]], but the Doctor lets him off after he gives a weak excuse about [[BlatantLies "acting as a decoy"]] and [[TheBadGuyWins even allows him to take the credit for saving Earth, get a knighthood and restart his political career!]] |
| 179 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E6DemonsOfThePunjab "Demons of the Punjab"]]: Manish, who is responsible for all of the deaths in the episode, and his murderous pals never receive any punishment for their actions. |
| 180 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E1E2Spyfall "Spyfall"]]: [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Daniel Barton]] allies himself with TheMaster and helps him summon the Kasaavin to Earth, as well as getting them to kill his mother. In the end his plan is foiled after he's revealed himself to the public so you'd think he'd get caught, but he manages to make a run for it before anyone can process what's just happened and is last seen calling for an extraction team. |
| 181 | * ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}'': Alpha murdered a ton of people, rendered Ballard brain-dead and in the end Echo just lets him walk out? She should have just killed him then and there. That's the last we ever see of him. (Granted they may have been planning to resolve the Alpha plotline at a later time but couldn't because the show got canceled). Echo couldn't bring herself to kill him knowing that he had Ballard inside him. He does show up again in "Epitaph Two: Return", having undergone a HeelFaceTurn, but doesn't receive any comeuppance. |
| 182 | * ''Series/{{Dragnet}}'': In one episode, an apathetic jury acquits a burglar despite his obvious guilt. Fortunately, the burglar's return to LA and some new technology give the law a second chance. |
| 183 | * ''Series/DrakeAndJosh'': Megan Parker regularly fulfills this role, which is one of the main reasons she is considered TheScrappy of the show. The one time she was ''actually'' punished, it was a case of NotMeThisTime. |
| 184 | [[/folder]] |
| 185 | |
| 186 | [[folder:E]] |
| 187 | * ''Series/{{Eastenders}}'': Dean Wicks is acquitted of raping Linda at the end of his storyline and just walks away with no further punishment. |
| 188 | * ''Series/{{Emmerdale}}'': |
| 189 | ** Ross Barton has avoided a jail sentence or any kind of retribution of his nasty deeds, and yet his brothers Pete and Finn both have convictions against them despite being the better behaved brothers of the bunch. |
| 190 | ** Subverted with Derek Benrose. While he is infuriatingly acquitted of Lisa's rape, [[KarmaHoudiniWarranty he ends up being convicted of another rape he comitted and getting life in prison]]. |
| 191 | * ''Series/EnemyAtTheDoor'': Hauptmann von Bulow, the title character of the episode "The Prussian Officer", is successful in humiliating Reinicke, with terrible consequences for a number of innocent bystanders, and suffers no repercussions, not even a twinge of conscience. Reinicke's attempt at retribution just results in more humiliation for himself and leaves von Bulow even more self-satisfied. |
| 192 | * ''Series/EqualJustice'': The episode "In Confidence" sees a completely guilty murderer and rapist go free because of missing evidence, an eyewitness who can't remember what happened, and his attorney being unable to disclose a confession he gave him. |
| 193 | * ''Series/{{ER}}'': |
| 194 | ** Though Jen Greene commits not one [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking arson, murder, or jaywalking]], the controlling harpy of a wife of protagonist Dr. Mark Greene, certainly qualifies. From close to the beginning she makes it clear that it's her way or the highway in the Greene household, threatening to leave Mark and take their daughter when he stands up to her for a little of what ''he'' wants. ''Then'' it comes out she's boinking her filthy rich law partner -- after years of her hypocritically bitching about Mark's friendship with another woman -- following which ''she'' sues ''Mark'' for divorce, marries said filthy rich law partner, and proceeds to live a more comfortable life than Mark could in his wildest dreams. And as the final twist of the knife, it's heavily implied that after Mark's death she gets custody of the aforementioned daughter, whom she had neglected so badly said daughter turned to drugs. |
| 195 | ** Kerry Weaver. From Season 6 onward, she began to pull numerous duplicitous stunts in order to advance her career and never once incurred punishment for any of them, eventually becoming Chief of Staff. |
| 196 | * ''Series/EverybodyLovesRaymond'': This trope is most definitely in play when it comes to the wife, Debra. While it's true that her mother-in-law Marie was smug towards her, there really was no justification for her to treat her husband Ray the way she did, subjecting him to physical and verbal abuse on many occasions in the mid-to-later seasons of the show. On one occasion, she's annoyed at him and shoves him at full force into a bunch of bookshelves, so hard that the books actually fall off the shelves. On another occasion, she's irritated at him for making a joke about her food, so [[DisproportionateRetribution she pours piping hot marinara sauce -- right off the stove -- onto Ray's crotch.]] But perhaps the worst was the episode where we learn that Debra actually encourages Ray's own kids to make fun of him behind his back and see him as less of an authority figure. Throughout all this, ''Ray'' always ends up being the one to be humiliated in every episode, and keeps coming back to Debra, who maintains a rather smug attitude, bragging about her supposed superiority to Ray on many occasions. [[DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale If the roles had been reversed, and Ray treated Debra the way she treats him, it clearly would not fly.]] |
| 197 | * ''Series/LosExitososPells'': The Argentine series had a magnanimous writer: HappyEnding for all. For all the good guys, but also for all the bad guys. The evil assistant who wanted to rule the TV channel got a TV channel for her own, the journalist who wanted to replace the news presenter of the channel is in charge of the new channel news program... and the CorruptCorporateExecutive that was jailed. Last episode, the bad guy has been revealed as such, captured and held behind bars... [[TheEndOrIsIt the end?]] No! He was freed some months afterwards because of a legal technicism, and began a [[PresidentEvil political career]]. |
| 198 | [[/folder]] |
| 199 | |
| 200 | [[folder:F]] |
| 201 | * ''Series/FamilyMatters'' has a few examples of this. |
| 202 | ** Steve's bullies would often get away with what they did to him. And the audience would often even laugh at his misery, like for example that once when someone hung him by his suspenders from a hook on the wall! |
| 203 | ** In an episode when Laura tries to get more Black History in school, someone not only leaves her a note saying that she should "go back to Africa", but also writes a racial slur on her locker door. As far as we know, the person who did this was never caught. |
| 204 | ** And in another episode, a gang of girl thugs not only steal Laura's jacket by tearing it off her body and beating her, but they also actually shoot another girl because she refused to give them her new shoes. We never see these girls get any punishment. |
| 205 | *** They appear again in 3J's debut episode, tormenting Urkel. In this case, however, they actually ''do'' get some kind of comeuppance in that 3J gives them a $50 bill he stole from one of the girls' pockets without ever telling them that it was their own money. However, we never find out whether they caught on to this, making it a pretty anti-climactic comeuppance. |
| 206 | ** Also, Laura has had a string of loser boyfriends, but at least most haven't been disrespectful to her mother, save for one. In one episode, Laura brings a guy-of-the-week to meet Harriet, and he mistakenly confuses with her grandmother. An innocent mistake enough, yet when Laura corrects her, not only does JerkAss [=McNobody=] not apologize for the mistake, cry out "I'm gonna die!" and run out the door, but for the rest of the episode, everyone (including [[WhatTheHellHero Laura]]) treat Harriet like crap because she's bothered by this guy's comment to the point that she gets an "embarrassing" makeover. |
| 207 | * ''Series/{{Firefly}}'': Adelai "I Torture People to Death For Laughs" Niska manages to escape from ''Serenity's'' vengeful crew in "War Stories", a fact they lampshade with Inara telling Mal, "I just wish you'd killed that old bastard." Of course, it's entirely possible that Creator/JossWhedon intended for Niska to get his comeuppance later, but the show was massively ScrewedByTheNetwork before that could happen. |
| 208 | * ''Series/TheFlash2014'': [[Creator/ClancyBrown General Wade Eiling]] could also fit the trope. As a KnightTemplar, he uses national security as a justification for performing inhumane experiments on both animals and people, as well as the kidnapping and murder of anyone he deems a threat. While it's true that the Reverse-Flash ends up kidnapping him and giving him as a plaything for Grodd, who has a score to settle with Eiling for the above-mentioned experiments, and that Grodd uses MindControl to force Eiling to rob banks for him, he eventually ends up free of mind control and goes back to his command, albeit as the Flash's reluctant ally. |
| 209 | * ''Series/FoylesWar'': |
| 210 | ** This show is one of the ultimate sources of this trope; set during the UsefulNotes/SecondWorldWar, many of the murderers and criminals Foyle exposes are also somehow essential to the British war effort, and thus manage to wriggle out of punishment and get away with murder. In some cases, the British government actually actively helps them escape justice. This actually prompts Foyle to quit at the end of the fifth season, frustrated that too many people escape justice and use the war as an excuse. |
| 211 | ** Neatly played with in one episode -- the murderer, a prominent American businessman, manages to escape punishment because he is an essential figure in a movement to eventually bring the United States into the UsefulNotes/SecondWorldWar. Before he leaves for America, Foyle comes to see him off. The businessman gloatingly triumphs over Foyle, but is quickly cut down to size when Foyle informs him that he's only postponing justice, not escaping it; he's free because of the war, but the war will end one day, and when it does he'll still be a proven murderer -- and Foyle will bring him to justice then. And indeed, the episode that sees the end of WWII ends with Foyle boarding a ship to America. |
| 212 | ** And subverted in the first episode, in which the killer expects that Foyle will let him go because his work is essential to Britain's code-breaking efforts. Foyle arrests him anyway, reasoning that this isn't Nazi Germany and he doesn't get to decide who gets away with murder because of how important/vital they are. |
| 213 | * ''Series/{{Frasier}}'': Blaine, Lilith's brother. Established by Frasier early on as a con-man who has conned his way across several states and stolen from Frasier several times, he arrives in a wheelchair and is now a minister. After his followers give generously and Frasier finally trusts him enough to do the same, he escapes with the cash, leaving his empty wheelchair at Frasier's door as a final mocking sign that it had all been another con job. |
| 214 | * ''Series/AFrenchVillage'': Müller, a brutal SS officer who'd tortured and murdered French resistance fighters along with participating in massacres of Soviet Jews, escapes all charges. He's let off because the US wants information he has, and last seen [[ArgentinaIsNaziLand in Paraguay]], aiding the Paraguayan dictatorship in the same methods he had used to torture prisoners during the 1960s. |
| 215 | * ''Series/{{Friends}}'': |
| 216 | ** As revenge for a joke Chandler pulled on her in the fourth grade, Julia Roberts's character gets him to wear her panties for a date. She then gets him to strip off in the bathroom and runs off with his clothes -- which is the last she's ever heard of. One wonders if Jean Claude had done that to Monica or Rachel, [[DoubleStandard would he get away too]]? |
| 217 | ** Rachel actions ranges from revealing embarrassing secrets about Ross, ruining many of his relationships, stealing Monica's car, getting caught for driving over the speed limit and with an expired license, breaking Joey's chair, preventing Chandler and Monica from celebrating a romantic weekend, punching one of Joey's girlfriends and many more. Despite this, she rarely receives any punishment (aside from being embarrassed) and by the end of the series, she is the most successful person among the main casts. |
| 218 | * ''Series/FullHouse'': Michelle defines this trope. She always manages to turn it around to make it someone else's (usually uncle Jesse's) fault, although she alone is to blame...remember when she broke a dinosaur skeleton and managed to blame Jesse and Danny for it? And got no punishment at all? |
| 219 | [[/folder]] |
| 220 | |
| 221 | [[folder:G]] |
| 222 | * ''Series/GameOfThrones'': |
| 223 | ** In the series finale, Bronn of Blackwater walks out of the show getting exactly what he wants and suffers far less than any other character, walking away from battles without scars or lost limbs, going from lowly sellsword to Lord Paramount of Highgarden, effectively becoming a major league High Lord. This despite his mercenary service to the Lannisters, this despite playing a personal role in sacking, raiding and despoiling the Reach, the very territory he is granted to govern. And also being a fair-weather friend to Tyrion and Jaime and even threatening to kill both of them for the sake of money and power, Bronn receives zero comeuppance for his cutthroat actions and is given everything he wanted and more by Tyrion. |
| 224 | ** Grey Worm does not have to answer for his war crimes from the previous episode, and he and the remnants of the Targaryen army get to go back to Essos. The Dothraki and Northmen who participated are also unpunished. Grey Worm proceeded under Daenerys's orders, and given that Jon is sent to the Wall for her murder, it's implied she is reckoned as the legitimate monarch preceding Bran. Also, even though there are only a couple thousand Unsullied left, leaderless and dragonless, they are superior soldiers who would not be at all easy to get rid of. And any attempt to do so would likely cause the Iron Islands and Dorne to make a scene (they were loyal to Daenerys and hated the Crownlanders). |
| 225 | ** Despite being responsible for slaughtering numerous villages, being a part of a devastating assault on Castle Black, among other heinous crimes, Tormund Giantsbane is not only alive, well, and unpunished for his actions by the end of the series, he even becomes the (unofficial) leader of the Free Folk, and is gifted with Jon Snow's [[CanineCompanion Direwolf companion,]] Ghost. Of course, thousands of his people have also been killed in return, so take that as you will. |
| 226 | * ''Series/GilligansIsland'': |
| 227 | ** Several visitors to Gilligan's Island who know all about the Castaways do nothing to help them get rescued, including the Mosquitoes, Wrong-Way Feldman and Harold Hecuba. Hecuba even steals their idea for a musical Hamlet. None of these people suffer the slightest retribution for their callous treatment of the seven castaways. |
| 228 | ** Played with by the Russian cosmonauts, who were willing and able to help the castaways off the island...and into a Siberian gulag to keep them from telling the West about the Russian space mission landing thousands of miles off target. Probably the one instance where the Castaways worked to ''keep from'' being 'rescued'. |
| 229 | ** Justified by the Japanese sailor who landed his mini-sub on the island; he [[CloudCuckooLander thought that the war was still going on]] and [[IWillFightSomeMoreForever approached the American castaways accordingly]]. An attempt by Gilligan to sail the sub to Hawaii failed, but (unusually) through no fault of Gilligan's: the sub's controls were in Japanese and he was unable to operate it correctly as a result. |
| 230 | * ''Series/Goosebumps1995'': Karl, the villain of the three-part episode "[[Recap/Goosebumps1995S3E19E20E21Chillogy Chillogy]]". At the end the heroes believe that one of the miniature figures they're burning in the fireplace has to be Karl, but it turns out he escaped the destruction of Karlsville unharmed. The episode ends with him doing an EvilLaugh at his apparent luck. |
| 231 | * ''Series/GossipGirl'' Every character on fits in some way or another (except possibly Nate) but Dan Humphrey manages to stand out. He's emotionally abusive towards Serena, constantly making her feel like she's a bad person for being born on the Upper East Side, berating her every chance he gets and always reminding her that he is a good person and she isn't. With his best friend Vanessa he sabotages her chances of getting into Tish by falsely accusing her of getting her position by cheating, then cheats on her, dumps her, takes her back just so she will babysit his child by another woman while he runs after Serena and then spends the rest of that season making sure Vanessa knows that ''she'' is a bad person who doesn't deserve his friendship. When he's in love with Blair he lies to her and tries to get her to leave her fiancé over a situation Dan knows she's misunderstanding, then he humiliates her at her wedding by posting a video of her and Chuck and then puts the blame on ''Chuck''. Just to name a few selected highlights of his behavior. Then of course the finale reveals that he is Gossip Girl which means he's the person who's been stalking them, spying on them, violating their privacy by posting their secrets on his blog, including humiliating his own little sister by making a splash post about her losing her virginity to Chuck (just to name one example of posts where he screwed his sister over). What happens to Dan in the end? Everyone on the Upper East Side forgives him, welcomes him into their circle and he gets to marry Serena. |
| 232 | [[/folder]] |
| 233 | |
| 234 | [[folder:H]] |
| 235 | * ''Series/HawaiiFive0'': Ultimately subverted in in the case of Malia's brother/Chin's former brother in law Gabriel. Gabriel was a Karma Houdini for a long time after Chin got him out of a grand larceny rap. Malia asked Chin to intervene because she was worried that a record would dog him for the rest of his life, but escaping punishment led Gabriel to believe he was impervious to justice. He soon got away with killing Chin's father in a gang initiation gone wrong, became a powerful underworld figure on the mainland and was never convicted of a crime until 15 years later when Chin tied him to crimes old and new. |
| 236 | * ''Series/HenryDanger'': In "Cave the Date", the Man Cave is turned into a secret restaurant so Charlotte can have a dinner date with Jack Swagger, but then Piper posts a selfie with Jack in the background, causing various tourists to crash the place. Piper is not punished for ruining Charlotte's date and gets off scot-free. |
| 237 | * In 1968-1970 western drama ''Series/HereComeTheBrides'', the Christmas episode had a couple of innocent but frustrating ones. When a baby is set to be born to a couple who have suffered through a couple of crib deaths, two young girls in the town become concerned because they believe a baby born on Christmas will suffer and die by Easter, just like Jesus did. With this InsaneTrollLogic under their belt, they kidnap the newborn and attempt to smuggle it to San Francisco (the show was set in Seattle) where the grownups won't know he's a Christmas baby. In the end, they are convinced the grownups are actually worried about the baby, and so swap it out with the statue of the infant Jesus from the church nativity display, where it is found and returned to its parents. When the epilogue comes, the girls are standing smiling by the baby's crib, and the mother even asks them to train the baby's father in changing the diapers, which they did while they had you know, STOLEN her child? The parents were grieving; the townsfolk were spooked and shaken, with even the rational protagonist wondering if this was a sign to give up on the then-growing town, with his usual antagonist urging calm, despite his stake in seeing the protagonists fail. Yet for all this, there is no scene or mention of the girls being punished or chastised or even corrected on their unique interpretation of the Gospels. |
| 238 | * ''Series/{{Hermes e Renato}}'': The character Joselito in the Brazilian comedy show. He bullies anything that moves (including his mother), but never is punished! |
| 239 | * ''Series/{{Heroes}}'': |
| 240 | ** Sylar's continued survival defeats the entire purpose of the first season arc. In the third season premiere, he obtained Claire's power ''without killing her'' -- admittedly when Sylar got her power in the alternate timeline of Season 1's "Five Years Gone" we never saw her dead (and it's [[Film/{{Scream}} not the last time this would happen]] to someone played by Creator/HaydenPanettiere), but it still kind of makes the whole "save the cheerleader, save the world" thing [[ShaggyDogStory a little pointless]]. |
| 241 | ** As "The Wall", we can probably remove Sylar from the Karma Houdini list. Several years (relative time) of complete and utter isolation? When solitary confinement can be used as a means of torture just over the course of days? And when you add in the fact that they listed his single worst fear as being alone forever and then having his arch-rival stuck in his head? Yeah, we can argue Sylar is getting his payback. |
| 242 | * ''Series/HigherGround'': Scott's stepmother gets away with repeatedly raping him as she managed to make it look like Scott liked her and just made it up when she'd rejected him. |
| 243 | * ''Series/{{Highlander}}: The Series'': |
| 244 | ** There's an episode starring Joan Jett as an immortal named Felicia Martin on the run from a brutal hunter named Devereaux...it later turns out she's a remorseless murderer who, centuries earlier, killed Devereaux's wife and baby son. How does this end? She beheads the guy trying to avenge his family, reveals that to get someone's trust and murder their loved ones to throw them off their game is her MO and fights hero Duncan [=MacLeod=]. He wins...and spares her life at his idiot sidekick's request. She lives and we never hear from her again, despite immortals portrayed far more sympathetically losing their heads when they murder just one person as opposed to the hundreds Felicia has presumably slaughtered. |
| 245 | ** The immortal Kenneth, who appears 9-years-old. His MO is getting people to take him in and beheading them when their guard is down. If anyone gets in his way, he murders them, human or no. After betraying everyone and attempting to kill the heroes...he gets threatened by his teacher/foster mother and waltzes out of town, no punishment. Granted, losing her hurts him, but still. |
| 246 | * ''Series/{{Hollyoaks}}'': [[SerialKiller Silas Blissett]] escapes from the police yet again at the end of his most recent storyline. |
| 247 | * [[{{Yandere}} Rintaro Aida]] in ''Series/{{Homeroom}}'' has his perverted stalking of Sachiko Sakurai exposed and is forced to leave his teaching job, but gets away and goes into hiding without facing any prosecution for his crimes. It's PlayedWith though in that he's now living a pretty miserable life as a worker in a dump, which is a far cry from his previous job where he was a HotTeacher who was loved by nearly every female student in the school, and he's shown to be neurotic and unable to move on from Sakurai, now taking [[{{Irony}} the same drugs he once used on her]] just to fall asleep at night. Oh, and Sakurai is now also a Yandere stalking ''him'', which means he [[TheBadGuyWins technically succeeded]] at getting her to love him, he just isn't aware of it. |
| 248 | * ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'': The cops have to watch a lot of murders go fre. |
| 249 | ** Annabella Wilgis is a fundamentalist serial killer who murders eight women, but she manages to get a lighter sentence at a mental institution by pretending to have multiple personalities. Not only that, but she's able to get a hefty sum from the city government when they agree to settle a lawsuit she filed against the police out of court. |
| 250 | ** In "A Model Citizen", in spite of Lewis and Bolander proving that he had ordered the death of Sam Thorne, Sinclair manages to get a light sentence when he makes a deal with the DEA, which also makes it impossible to prosecute him for the aforementioned murder. Lewis also notes that [[GreaterScopeVillain Sinclair's boss and the head of the Cali Cartel]] is completely untouched by the whole situation, and will likely continue profiting off the drug trade unless the DEA extradited them. |
| 251 | ** [[AmbiguousSituation If he really did kill Adena Watson]], Risley Tucker is able to walk away after Pembleton and Bayliss fail to get him to confess with no charges pressed against him. |
| 252 | ** When an unstable Bayliss pulls a gun on a clerk for refusing to let him buy some beer because he was a few cents short, Pembleton prevents him from getting arrested by promising that Bayliss will work as the clerk's security guard for the next few weeks. |
| 253 | ** In "Hate Crime", the two skinheads go on the run immediately after [[HomophobicHateCrime killing a man who they]] [[MistakenForGay (wrongfully)]] [[HomophobicHateCrime believed was gay]]. While Pembleton and Bayliss are able to determine their identities and out a warrant out for their arrest, the episode ends with them still at large and likely being harbored by a white suprematist gang. |
| 254 | ** In the finale, serial killer Luke Ryland manages to walk away from his trial scot-free and vows to continue killing in another city. Bayliss snaps, resigns his commission, and kills Ryland in cold blood. |
| 255 | * ''Series/{{House}}'': |
| 256 | ** House is the poster child. The man can't go an episode without doing something that would cause any normal doctor to get arrested [=and/or=] his medical license revoked. That being said, he ''has'' been physically assaulted by patients, their relatives, and even his own fellows, and once he was even shot in his office. |
| 257 | ** The man who shot House was never caught, nor were the real reasons behind it ever revealed. |
| 258 | ** The cannibal serial killer whom the team treated also escaped punishment and was never heard from again. |
| 259 | ** Michael Tritter uses a sick and blatantly illegal mixture of bribery and coercion on Wilson and House's fellows, doesn't keep his word regarding a plea bargain, and doesn't even get a slap on the wrist. |
| 260 | ** Edward Vogler "donates" $100 million to PPTH with the proviso that he become chairman of the board. He immediately set out to make the hospital a place to unethically test drugs from his pharmaceutical company. Besides that, he's a complete tyrant who makes irrational and capricious demands. In the end, he demands that the board fire House, or he walks and takes his money (notice the quotes around "donates" earlier?). This requires an unanimous vote, and Wilson votes no. Then Vogler demands the rest of the board fire Wilson, same threat. They don't, and he leaves. He suffers no consequences for it all. |
| 261 | * ''Series/HouseOfAnubis'': [[TheDragon Vera]] did a series of terrible things to the students and even some of the other staff, like Jasper and Trudy. She acted as Rufus's second, as well as Victor's most trusted ally, which resulted in her playing both sides and hurting Sibuna in numerous ways. However, her last scene just involved her walking off screen. This meant that while the other villains of the season, Rufus and Senkhara, both got their karmic punishments, she disappeared entirely and thus got off scot-free. |
| 262 | * ''Series/HouseOfCardsUK'': |
| 263 | ** The TV adaptation switches out the book's ending of a [[RedemptionEqualsDeath redemptive suicide]] for the MagnificentBastard Francis Urquhart, in exchange for his murdering the unlikely love interest, and going on to be Prime Minister for two more series. |
| 264 | ** The author tried again in the sequel; in the novel ''To Play the King'', Urquhart is Prime Minister but is still ultimately defeated at the end. In the TV adaptation, Urquhart comes out unquestionably on top. |
| 265 | ** And curiously, the positions were reversed in the final installment, ''The Final Cut''; in both, Urquhart is assassinated, but in the TV adaptation Urquhart's fate is portrayed as being entirely out of his hands and stage-managed by his wife and bodyguard, thus rendering Urquhart impotent and powerless against forces outside of his control. In the novel, however, Urquhart is aware of what is happening but knowingly meets his fate in order to secure his enduring legacy, thus proving his {{Magnificent Bastard}}ness without doubt by allowing him to have the last laugh against his critics and enemies by ending his life on his own terms and, for all his sins, as a much-beloved and admired martyr. |
| 266 | * ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' |
| 267 | ** Barney is the biggest example. He does horrible things to woman all the time (lying to them, abandoning them, stealing from them, etc.) He also tends to act as a {{Jerkass}} in front of everyone (including his own friends) and even [[ManipulativeBastard manipulated them on several instances]]; yet he never seems to receive any comeuppance for his actions. |
| 268 | ** Lily breaks Ted up with numerous girlfriends, and the most she gets is a telling off. Tends to happen whenever she does something wrong. |
| 269 | *** Also, she racked up a huge amount of credit card debt by compulsively buying designer clothes, forcing Marshall to take a corporate job he hated to help pay off her debt. Everybody (including Marshall) forgave her quickly for this. To make things even worse, when Marshall suggested that Lily sell some of her designer clothes to help pay the bills, she actually had the nerve to get mad at him. |
| 270 | ** It might be because Ted is the narrator, and is therefore a little bitter, but the impression is certainly there that Tony, the man for whom Stella left Ted at the altar, took the notable points of Ted and Stella's relationship and twisted them to make Ted (or 'Jed') appear a petty, egocentric asshole in his movie "The Wedding Bride". This paints Stella as the houdini as well given that most of the details could only have come from her. In a series that generally gives characters what they deserve, this grates. |
| 271 | ** In an episode Marshall is tricked by a boy who traps him on the roof and steals his cellphone. So he gives a party in Marshall's house, sexting an oblivious Lily, and at the end, he gets money from her before she discovers what happened. |
| 272 | [[/folder]] |
| 273 | |
| 274 | [[folder:I]] |
| 275 | * ''Series/TheIndianDetective'': David Marlowe gets away with everything by claiming at the end of the first season that he didn't realize Gopal was such a criminal. Not only that, but he alerts the Nigerian gangster who sent the heroin that Doug is the one who stopped it getting to Canada. |
| 276 | * ''Series/{{Intelligence 2006}}'': Lots of characters get away with their evil deeds, but Ted Altman is actually rewarded for his villainy as the series goes on. |
| 277 | [[/folder]] |
| 278 | |
| 279 | [[folder:J]] |
| 280 | * ''Series/{{JAG}}'': Mostly played straight with Navy lawyer Harmon Rabb, Jr. While he would do several heroic deeds that often passed with little official recognition, just as often he committed many acts that should have gotten him court-martialed or at least ended his military career. One instance had him shoot up the ceiling of a courtroom with a sub-machine gun (an evidence item, no less). This instance saw him getting chewed out by his boss and the judge, but that was pretty much it; he wasn't even removed as counsel. In another example he picked a fistfight with opposing counsel in a foreign country in front of reporters, leading to a major injury to a coworker who tried to stop them. Despite the implications of this significant public embarrassment to the United States, the USN, and JAG corps, his "punishment" was to [[LetsYouAndHimFight fight his rival without any interference]], which is exactly what he wanted in the first place. |
| 281 | ** The worst instance, however, would have to be the third season episode "Death Watch". Harm decided to hunt down an officer he believed had killed a friend of his, force him to confess, and kill him in cold blood. Sure enough, Harm finds him, backs him against the edge of a port dock at gunpoint, and gets his "confession". Before Harm can shoot him, however, the frightened officer is startled by the arrival of Mac (whose actress played the victim in the first season) and topples over the edge and is crushed to death between a ship and the dock. The police and others arrive in short order and Mac asks Harm whether he was really going to kill the officer, to which Harm replies that now they'll never know. EXCEPT HE DID KILL HIM. If not for Harm's incredibly illegal interrogation by forcing him into a very dangerous spot in fear of his life, the officer would be alive. Not only that, he was legally an innocent man as nothing had been proven against him in a court of law and his unwitnessed confession at gunpoint means less than nothing. In fact, absolutely nothing Harm (a sworn servant of the law) did was legal, and he had motive, means, clear pre-meditation, and even witnesses to the murder. Even if Harm somehow beat murder charges, and he wouldn't, his career would absolutely be over. Instead, [[MakesAsMuchSenseInContext Harm makes out with Mac a little while cops swarm the crime scene]], the incident is treated as though the officer died in a freak accident, and the whole thing is never mentioned again. |
| 282 | [[/folder]] |
| 283 | |
| 284 | [[folder:K]] |
| 285 | * ''Franchise/KamenRider'': |
| 286 | ** Toru Hojo from ''Series/KamenRiderAgito'' feels like one. He spends the whole series trying to one up his rival Sumiko Ozawa, manipulating his superiors and being an all around jerkass towards the protagonists, with the occasional PetTheDog moment squeezed in between. The series ends with him realizing he might have feelings for Sumiko. |
| 287 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderHibiki'' has Kyousuke Kiriya, who was introduced to the series to be TheRival to Asumu, as ExecutiveMeddling thought this was what the series needed to attract more viewers. From the moment he is introduced he spends all of his time being a completely disagreeable jerkass to Asumu. When he and Asumu were training under Hibiki to become Oni themselves, Kyousuke tried to prove he is the better man, using manipulating and deceit. What makes him a KarmaHoudini is that he actually gets his wish and is seen transforming into an Oni during the epilogue. |
| 288 | ** The biggest KarmaHoudini of the franchise might as well be DJ Sagara/Helheim forest of ''Series/KamenRiderGaim''. Helheim is an EldritchAbomination forest that takes over worlds by replacing the existing plant life. The fruits on its plants are poisonous and will turn everyone who eats it into mindless monsters, which in the long run wipes out entire species, replacing them with its own. After Helheim is done wiping out a civilization, it goes to another planet to start the cycle again. When the series starts, Helheim has set its sights to humanity. What makes Helheim such a vicious antagonist, is because it is revealed to be sentient. It actively toys with whatever race is its victim. Knowing full well how power could corrupt everyone but the purest of souls, it purposefully hides a golden fruit, which gives whoever eats it into a PhysicalGod, essentially allowing him or her to stop Helheim from taking over the planet. The reason for this is because Helheim enjoys seeing people fight over such power. The reason why Helheim is a KarmaHoudini, is because after the crisis on earth is averted, it simply went to another planet to start all over. |
| 289 | ** [[BigBad Evolto]] in ''Series/KamenRiderBuild'', an [[AliensAreBastards alien warmonger]] responsible for wiping out all life on a OnceGreenMars who [[ManipulativeBastard manipulates]] everyone in order to obtain the power to unlock his [[OneWingedAngel ultimate form]] and cause TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt as he did with Mars. All while he is tormenting anyone he comes across just for [[ForTheEvulz funzies]]. He receives a ''very'' satisfying death in the final episode after many (sometimes fatally) failed attempts to destroy or at very least contain him, but then NEW WORLD [[DirectToDVD V-Cinema]] reveals that a piece of him survived in [[TheLancer Ryuga Banjou]]. After [[EnemyMine forming an alliance with the heroes]] to defeat his AxCrazy [[StrongerSibling older brother]] Killbas, Evolto bids farewell to Team Build and leaves Earth to go out into space, getting away despite being one of the most {{sadist}}ic and [[OmnicidalManiac destructive]] villains in the entire franchise. The worst part is that he somehow achieves his [[OneWingedAngel Feverflow]] form at the end, meaning not only he avoids retribution for his crimes, [[TheBadGuyWins he got nearly everything he wanted]]. Though it's somewhat justified in that the heroes were too weak to face Evolto at that moment and Evolto had decided to leave the Earth alone for now; plus most of Evolto's atrocities were undone by the ResetButtonEnding anyway. |
| 290 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderZeroOne'' zig-zags this trope with [[MegaCorp ZAIA Enterprise]]'s Gai Amatsu/Kamen Rider Thouser. Despite being the effective GreaterScopeVillain of the show responsible for corrupting the [[BigBad Ark]] and sabotaging Daybreak Town [[AIIsACrapshoot Satellite]], after pulling an abrupt HeelFaceTurn in the final arc Gai gets off without receiving any true retribution for what he did. That's not even getting to the other stuff he does throughout the series, which includes using AI chips to remove the free will of the members of [[GovernmentAgencyOfFiction A.I.M.S.]], deliberately hacking innocent [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot HumaGears]] into [[MonsterOfTheWeek Magia]] in order to demonize them, and attempting to brainwash all the users of the [=ZAIASpec=] into going on a rampage just so he can use it to drum up sales for the Raid-Riser. While Gai isn't forgiven by the heroes immediately, and loses his position as CEO of ZAIA Japan at the end, considering all the deaths he caused (of both human and [=HumaGear=]), Gai basically gets off scot-free when he should be facing jailtime for third-degree murder, at the very least. |
| 291 | *** What makes him particularly egregious example is that both [[Series/KamenRiderGaim Sagara]] and [[Series/KamenRiderBuild Evolto]] mentioned above are indestructible EldritchAbomination[=s=] in a LovecraftLite story. The options to fight them had to be limited to start with. Gai Amatsu only needed a PlotArmor and a FreudianExcuse to ensure noone will ever try to move from suggesting a punishment to actually delivering it. |
| 292 | * ''Series/TheKillPoint'': Mr. Pig manages to escape out of the city while avoiding the police, and ends up collecting the money he and his fellow robbers stole from a Canadian bank. |
| 293 | * A milder case in ''Series/KimsConvenience'', but Kimchee never got caught stealing smartphones in his youth and his current life appears unaffected; in contrast, his friend Jung was usually caught by police for his incidents and ends up getting kicked out by his father after attempting to steal money from their store, leading Jung to never finish high school and have other people wary of him even after cleaning up. |
| 294 | [[/folder]] |
| 295 | |
| 296 | [[folder:L]] |
| 297 | * ''Series/LawAndOrder'': |
| 298 | ** Several of the defendants manage to wriggle out of well-deserved punishments. Uncoincidentally, most of those who do are [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney filthy rich]]. Some of the lead characters from the D.A and the NYPD are also examples of this. |
| 299 | ** One notable example of a defendant getting away with their crimes is the episode where a Doctor murders his mistress because she was pregnant with his child, but he still wouldn't leave his wife for her. The twist comes in, when its revealed that not only did the wife know her husband was cheating on her with the mistress and several other women, she doesn't care, and considers wives who do care about affairs weak and pathetic. During the trial, she pretends to act fed up with her husband and destorys his alibi when testifying, only to change her testemony and claim she was lying out of spite because of the affiars. It confuses the jury, which was her plan, and the husband is found not guity of murder. |
| 300 | ** In episode "[[Recap/LawAndOrderS6E9BloodLibel Blood Libel]]", The defense tries to claim that Sabloff was trying to make Kovax (who they claim is the real murderer) into this as part of a "[[DoesntTrustThoseGuys Jewish conspiracy]]". The prosecution, however, immediately shows that Kovax was indeed fired for a much lesser crime than murder, selling grades to students. |
| 301 | ** On the D.A side: Jack [=McCoy=] spends his time as a prosecuting attorney bending the laws of ethics and sometime breaking them to get his suspect convicted. As a result, he has gone in front of the displinary board more than once, but never loses his law of practice or face any other punishment, even after one of his partners he worked with, Jamie Ross, left because she couldn't put up with his methods and later snitched on him to the board. Furthermore, he would get promoted to run the D.A's office in the later seasons of the show. |
| 302 | |
| 303 | |
| 304 | * ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' doesn't let this happen often. If a criminal does get off, they're usually going to have a VigilanteExecution performed on them five seconds later. |
| 305 | ** In "Sick", Billy Tripley, a rich alleged pedophile isn't punished because the ''other'' villains' actions make the case impossible to prosecute. The episode actually ends with the frustrated squad vowing to get him eventually, but the story was never revisited. |
| 306 | ** A good (and not rich) [=SVU=] example is Darius Parker. He sets up ThePlan to seek revenge on his family and ensure that he gets away with at least one murder. He still fully expects to go to jail, but he knows he won't get nearly as much time as he should. In the end he is found not guilty and walks away scot-free. That said, it was a PyrrhicVictory, as revelations from the trial -- namely that Darius was a product of father/daughter rape -- left Darius even more emotionally screwed up than before. |
| 307 | ** Another example is in "Valentine's Day" when the supposed victim is accused of using sex to lure an unsuspecting male into setting up a false kidnapping, so she could collect the ransom money herself. During a break in the court case, we see her approach one of the jury members in a stairwell, and surprise surprise, the case ends in a mistrial due to a hung jury. The ADA subsequently tells the squad that her boss probably won't let her pursue the case any further, as the evidence is a sketchy at best and the defendant is too sympathetic. |
| 308 | ** In "Dissonant Voices" a couple of teenage girls frame their singing coach for sexual assault of minors by using their younger brothers as pawns and after the coach loses his job, has his name dragged through the mud, and spends a few days at Rikers because he couldn't make bail, the girls basically get off-scot free aside from a year of probation. |
| 309 | ** A couple's daughter was kidnapped, so they adopted another little girl, dressed her in the original daughter's clothes, dyed her hair, gave her plastic surgery, implanted her with a tracking chip, all in an effort to have a ReplacementGoldfish that would never leave her mother's sight again. The end of the episode has the SVU detectives bringing the original daughter home, while the adopted daughter is promptly forgotten, still mutilated, and no one cares. |
| 310 | ** Subverted in "Svengali". When a celebrity serial killer gets an obsessed fan to commit murder for publicity and his sick pleasure he believes he'll get off scot free. He ends up being moved to extreme isolation, unable to communicate with his fans, or leave his cell for more than an hour a day for the rest of his life. |
| 311 | ** In "Hardwired", Eva Banks rams her car into another woman's car (while the other woman's child was in the passenger seat) then gets out of her car to physically assault the woman. Her reason: the woman accused her son of sexual assault. When its discovered that Eva's husband molested her son, she stabbed him while he was in handcuffs being led away by police. Not only do the detectives ensure that Eva faces no punishment, Olivia teaches her how to walk away with all of her husband's money. |
| 312 | ** In "Info Wars", an angry mob assaults a speaker at a college campus and one of them manages to violate her with a sign. After arresting the most likely culprit the detectives spend the rest of the episode harassing another potential suspect, and in the end [[NoEnding both of them end up walking free without anyone being sure who really did it.]] |
| 313 | ** "Spooked" ends with the killer being released because she's a CIA agent. |
| 314 | ** Ingrid Block from "Confidential" conceals Richard Morgan's murder of Renee Simmons and helps him frame an innocent man. In the end, she gets acquitted of all charges, successfully gets someone else to kill Morgan and is last heard of making sure the guy who killed him gets acquitted as well. |
| 315 | ** Played with in the episode "Execution". The main antagonist, a serial killer and rapist awaiting execution, is beaten up by his guards and ends up on a ventilator. Straightforward defeat, right? Except this turns out to have been his plan all along: he arranged a situation where his guards would be forced to severely injure him, thus meaning he would have to be hospitalized, delaying his execution indefinitely. |
| 316 | ** Also applies to one of the main characters: Elliot Stabler routinely (as in nearly once an episode if not more) assaulted suspects, engaged in what qualified as extortion or blackmail to coerce information or compliance out of victims or witnesses and even led his co-workers into becoming co-conspirators in covering up his many many felonies yet manages to leave the unit and retire without ever being held accountable for his long history of criminal behavior. |
| 317 | * ''Series/TheLeagueOfGentlemen'': Hilary Briss escapes to the Caribbean with no punishment whatever for [[TakeOurWordForIt whatever it was he was doing]], although the BigDamnMovie of vague canonicity eventually averts this with RedemptionEqualsDeath. Similarly, we have Papa Lazarou, who never pays in the slightest for any of the horrifying stuff he did (except in the 2018 live show, in which Edward goes after him and blows up his wife mine). |
| 318 | * ''Series/LessonsInChemistry'': The priest who runs St. Luke's is never shown to be punished for forcing the orphans in his care to operate an illegal distillery nor for [[spoiler: deliberately obstructing the efforts of Calvin Evans' birth mother to locate her son.]] |
| 319 | %%* ''Series/{{Leverage}}'': [[SmugSnake Sterling.]] [[WordOfGod Never.]] [[KarmaHoudini Loses.]] |
| 320 | * ''Series/{{Lost}}'': |
| 321 | ** Benjamin Linus's body count from "The Man Behind the Curtain" ALONE was at least a couple dozen, shot Locke and left him for dead in the same pit that the aforementioned dead bodies were unceremoniously dumped, and actually KILLED Locke (but he comes back to life). His punishment has been the occasional beating, but he's always been forgiven (somehow). |
| 322 | ** Principal Reynolds in the episode "Dr. Linus" lets his school fall into disrepair, carries on an inappropriate relationship with the school nurse, and threatens to ruin Alex's future. He's not punished for any of this. |
| 323 | [[/folder]] |
| 324 | |
| 325 | [[folder:M]] |
| 326 | * ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'': The entire family with respect to Malcolm: |
| 327 | ** Reese can steal Malcolm’s girlfriend and nobody cares, but when Malcolm steals Reese’s he’s a horrible person. |
| 328 | ** The family can get tired of Malcolm and exclude him from their activities but it’s not fair that Malcolm spends more time with his friends and takes their side over his own brother. |
| 329 | ** Lois forces Malcolm to do multiple extracurricular activities and extra work as well as help his brothers do their work but when all that work takes up his time he gets punished for it. |
| 330 | ** Lois and Hal agreed to stop smoking together. When she found out that he hid a bunch of cigarettes throughout the house she threatened that if she found any she would force him to eat them. Yet she smokes everyday during her lunch break. |
| 331 | ** Malcolm was willing to tank his grade despite the fact that Reese viciously beat him. |
| 332 | * ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'' has a rather fine example in Al Bundy's lazy, whiny bitch of a wife, Peg. In spite of some of the examples of her utter usefulness and horrible acts including ruining her husband's rare moments of joy and success out of spite, jealousy or just plain idiocy, feeding her family toxic food, breaking the law on many occasions (while letting someone else take the fall for her) and being complicit in ''killing a man'', the times she receives any actual karma are few and far between. |
| 333 | ** Then there's also her [[FatBitch mother]], the woman who taught Peg everything she knows. As little karma as her daughter receives, she gets even less. Special mention also goes out to Seven, a manipulative brat relative of Peg's that was forced onto the family (and the show itself). Due to Peg's protection of him and the [[YoungestChildWins immunity he had for being so young]], he never had to answer for any of his actions. Understandably, [[TheScrappy the fans don't like him very much.]] |
| 334 | * ''Series/{{MASH}}'': |
| 335 | ** The exit story of Major Frank Burns is so horrible -- for everybody save himself. After acting as the ultimate jerk for five seasons, he got promoted and got his own command -- stateside!!! |
| 336 | ** Amusingly, the exit story of Burns in the book and movie is '''also''' an example of sorts, in the other direction. After Hawkeye, Trapper, and Duke pester him into flipping out and trying to kill them, Captain Burns gets hauled away in a straitjacket. After that, Colonel Blake calls them in, tells them flat out that he knows what they did, but the only disciplinary action he's going to give them is not making Trapper chief surgeon for another week because it would look bad. Mostly because he can't afford to lose more people who actually know what they're doing, granted... |
| 337 | ** The docs are knowingly taking advantage of this trope, which was TruthInTelevision. MASH doctors didn't care if they got black marks on their records, because they would always be able to find work once they got home, because their skills were valuable enough to guarantee job security. For the same reason, the Army tolerated a lot from them. Pretty much the only thing that the Army could do that they'd care about was put them in prison, so they just had to know where the line was and stop short of it. Hawkeye, Trapper, BJ, and Charles got away with all kinds of crap during the course of the show, not just because they were doctors, but because they were the best. |
| 338 | ** Horace Baldwin gets away with his AttemptedRape of Margaret Houlihan and subsequent attempts to get her arrested over it, escaping in a jeep once exposed. |
| 339 | * ''Series/TheMentalist'': Jane himself. In almost every episode, he pulls outrageous stunts that leave Lisbon doing damage control and would be a gold mine for any defense lawyer -- but somehow the bad guy never goes free, and Jane is never punished. The worst example to date is Jane's outright murder of Timothy Carter, who he believed was Red John. Not only was he acquitted by jury nullification, he quickly realized Carter HADN'T been Red John after all. It's not a big surprise that this doesn't bother Jane much; what upsets viewers is that ''Lisbon'' knows, and it doesn't seem to bother her either. |
| 340 | ** He also gets off scot-free for killing the real Red John. At first, Abbott tried to prevent this, but he ended up giving in because he needed Jane and Jane (knowing this) held out for immunity. |
| 341 | *** Abbott gets one as well, with Jane's help, near the end of the series. |
| 342 | %%* ''Series/{{Mom}}'': The mugger who stole Christy's rent money; Claudia and Butch, Violet's father. |
| 343 | * In the ''Series/{{Monk}}'' episode "Mr. Monk and the Bully", Roderick Brody, the guy who bullied Monk in high school, is rich, successful, having a hot wife, and believes all the cruel things he did to him were nothing more than dumb jokes on his part. And worse of all, he wasn't the killer -- though he nearly got framed up by his wife's identical twin. |
| 344 | * ''Series/TheMonkees'': In the episode "The Picture Frame", the boys get off the hook for the robbery they were FilmFelons for, but the real crooks aren't shown getting in trouble for it in the end. |
| 345 | * This frequently happens in ''Series/MurderSheWrote'' with RedHerring characters who have unsavoury secrets; once it turns out they ''didn't'' do the actual murder, they often disappear from the story entirely, although occasionally the final scene will mention them getting a comeuppance in passing. In "Evidence of Malice", a woman who has been engaged in extremely unethical business practices, including shifting blame onto the guy she's dating, helps Jessica expose the killer, but there's no further mention of her own activities, or even whether the guy in question found out about it and how he reacted (he does learn she lied about her past, but when we leave him, he's more confused than anything else, and never speaks to her on-screen again.) |
| 346 | * ''Series/MurdochMysteries'': |
| 347 | ** The killer in the episode "Belly Speaker". It's not the only time an episode doesn't end with the perpetrator being brought to justice, but usually they're either {{Sympathetic Murderer}}s or recurring foes who get caught eventually. The murderer in this one was not the former, and (given this was back in Season 1) shows no signs of being the latter. |
| 348 | ** At the end of the episode "The Lady Vanishes", Murdoch is frustrated to find that, having unravelled a particularly unpleasant and bizarre conspiracy, he is completely unable to prove that anyone involved actually broke the law, as such. |
| 349 | ** The killer in "The Devil Wears Whalebone" is arrested at the end, but with a lack of conclusive evidence and no confession Murdoch notes it's unlikely a jury will convict her. |
| 350 | * ''Series/MyNameIsEarl'': |
| 351 | ** A subversion: While making up for a bathroom robbery, Earl has to work at a fast food restaurant where the boss is a distinct KarmaHoudini. He has a successful life, a beautiful devoted wife, a beautiful devoted mistress, many awards, and is successfully embezzling a fortune out of the store, whose employees he routinely tortures for petty mistakes. Earl is horrified that karma has not punished him yet, but is sure it will eventually. When it becomes apparent that karma is not going to punish him and he continues to push Earl's buttons, Earl snaps and punches him in the face, knocking him out. Karma swoops in and while he's in the hospital both women visit him at the same time and find out about each other. The wife destroys all his trophies and awards and in the process finds out about his embezzling and reports it, sending him to jail, and allowing the man Earl was trying to help in the first place, become the new manager and everybody is happy. Debatably, Karma was trying to teach Earl that he can't just rely on karma to fix everything all the time, but the only lesson Earl learned was that karma could use his fist as a weapon. |
| 352 | ** Interestingly enough, Earl himself is one. [[LaserGuidedKarma Even though Karma makes a few jabs at him when he neglects parts of his list,]] he rarely gets prosecuted for any crimes he commits during his redemption journey. Karma just might be on his side if it means he can continue crossing things off his list. |
| 353 | [[/folder]] |
| 354 | |
| 355 | [[folder:N]] |
| 356 | * ''Series/NaturallySadie'': In the episode "A Nose is a Nose", whoever posted Sadie's article about comparing Bonnie Beckham's nose to a Long Nosed Bandicoot and spread it around school is never revealed. |
| 357 | * ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' has a few, befitting its genre: |
| 358 | ** "Defiance" features a girl who fakes her own kidnapping for complex political reasons -- which turns into a real kidnapping/ransom scenario that leaves one of her professors dead. She gets off without punishment because her father is a foreign diplomat who knows which strings to pull. {{Lampshaded}} by Ziva at the end. |
| 359 | ** In "SWAK," [=DiNozzo=] almost dies of pneumonic plague because of a girl's FalseRapeAccusation (for which she's not shown to be punished). ([[ItMakesSenseInContext It's a complicated story.]]) |
| 360 | * ''Series/NCISNewOrleans'': Dwayne Pride has, as is typical for shows like this: Beaten up suspects to get confessions, used excessive force, abused his power, stonewalled the agents of other agencies, and so forth. For instance, he outright kidnaps, beats up, and threatens with death Mayor Hamilton at the end of Season 3 and unlawfully kills one of Hamilton's goons. The end of Season 4 has Pride supposedly called out on all this and a full investigation launched, but it turns out to be a conspiracy to destroy him that has absolutely nothing to do with anything Pride has actually done and is dropped. Ultimately Pride gets away scot free with his actions and even ends up being promoted and not in the KickedUpstairs fashion. |
| 361 | * ''Series/NipTuck'': The Carver, a masked serial rapist who disfigures his victims after raping them, and once kills a woman. Most of the third season revolved around catching the Carver. The Carver's last appearance was lounging around on a beach with his [[VillainousIncest girlfriend/sister]], looking for their next victim. |
| 362 | ** Eden completely gets away with attempted murder, and goes off to live her life as a porn star. |
| 363 | * ''Series/NurseJackie'' follows the life of a nurse coping with situations her drug addiction and professional struggles bring into her personal life. Her amazing ability to maintain the integrity of her relationships despite the chaos in her life prevents her from feeling the consequences of her actions. At least until Season 4, and even then it's not as bad as it could be. |
| 364 | [[/folder]] |
| 365 | |
| 366 | [[folder:O]] |
| 367 | * ''Series/OneLifeToLive'': |
| 368 | ** Todd, whose rap sheet includes three separate rapes, multiple kidnappings, a bombing he tried to pin on someone else, setting another bomb ''at a police station'', and baby theft. No, he's not in jail. And he's just got his kids back... |
| 369 | ** And then there's Cole, who had just barely turned 18 and was still in HighSchool when he got high and caused a car crash that left ''the son of the police chief and the DA'' paraplegic ([[SoapOperaDisease only for a few months, as it turned out]]) and got a slap-on-the-wrist rehab deal. This kid has a bright future ahead of him! |
| 370 | * ''Series/TheOrville'': Darulio aka "Papa Smurf". He was already not all that sympathetic, as he was introduced as "the other man" that incited the protagonists' divorce. He was an alien with [[LivingAphrodisiac powerful pheromones]] and a vague at best concept of sexual consent, who [[CultureJustifiesAnything doesn't see anything wrong with inducing people to sleep with him]], [[BlueAndOrangeMorality since his culture apparently views refusing sexual advances as rude]]. Even though he's of a profession that studies alien cultures (archaeologist) and has been off-world a long time, long enough to know better. By the time he walks off the ship, he's committed four rapes (two directly, two RapeByProxy), utterly ruined the diplomatic negotiations the ship was supposed to conduct by incapacitating three of the senior staff. Said diplomatic breakdown causes a armed conflict. Several ships are destroyed (implying hundreds of lives lost), and almost gets The ''Orville'' itself blasted to atoms in the crossfire. Oh, and the PlotIncitingInfidelity that was the death blow for the protagonists' failed marriage? [[CerebusRetcon That might have been an act of rape, too.]] And at the end of it all, he walks off the ship with a shrug and words to the effect of "shit happens". |
| 371 | * ''Series/{{Oz}}'', being tilted toward the cynical side of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism, had several unrepentant criminals escape any kind of justice for their evil deeds. Notably, Jason Cramer got his murder rap overturned (he'd decapitated his lover and mailed the guy's body via [=FedEx=]) and waltzed out of the prison scot-free. Conversely, genuinely repentant Miguel Alvarez runs afoul of the vindictive head of the parole board who tells him to his face that he will ''never'' be paroled though they will continue to go through the motions every year. |
| 372 | [[/folder]] |
| 373 | |
| 374 | [[folder:P]] |
| 375 | * An interesting case on ''Series/PairOfKings'' as Lanny is constantly trying to get rid of his cousins so he can become king of their island nation. His plans fail but he gets away with punishment because his cousins are not only [[UnknownRival oblivious to his scheming]] but consider Lanny a goofy friend trying to help. Rather than enjoy his lack of punishment, Lanny is instead infuriated that he's not even recognized as a threat. |
| 376 | * ''Series/PamAndTommy'': While Rand has to deal with the consequences of his criminal actions, his partner-in-crime Miltie steals their money and escapes any retribution or commeuppance by [[RunForTheBorder moving to Amsterdam]], spending the next several years on an uninterrupted HookersAndBlow binge. |
| 377 | * ''Series/{{Pandora}}'': By the end of Season 2, Meredith Lucas is still alive and hunting down the good guys. |
| 378 | * ''Series/PeakyBlinders'': |
| 379 | ** Darby Sabini is unlike most major antagonists in that he comes out of his conflict with the Shelby's alive and still at the head of his empire, albeit with his operations weakened somewhat and some of his territory lost. |
| 380 | ** Alfie Solomons. No matter how many times he betrays Tommy, including doing deals with Sabini and Changretta, framing Arthur for murder and giving information to the Economic League that results in Tommy's son being kidnapped, he always somehow gets welcomed back into the fold and keeps working with Tommy like nothing happened. Even when Tommy finally has enough of him in season four and seemingly shoots him dead, he turns up alive the next season having survived the shot and peacefully retired with Tommy forgiving him yet again. |
| 381 | ** Oswald Mosley and Jimmy [=McCavern=] survive the attempt on their lives by the Shelby's thanks to the intervention of the IRA. While Tommy spends the next season taking on Mosley's plans, he never gets to directly take revenge on Mosley (a ForegoneConclusion due to the RealLife Oswald Mosley not dying until 1980) while Jimmy, previously a major antagonist to the family, [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse simply disappears from the story]]. |
| 382 | * ''Series/PerryMason2020'': Holcomb never face any consequences for his many crimes (that ranged from tampering with evidence to murder). |
| 383 | * Demetrius Harris from ''Playmakers'' fits the bill. He implicates a person for a murder that his friend committed, is a drug addict, dumps a girl at a hospital who is overdosing, and steals pain medication from a cancer patient he is visiting. Yet he never sees the consequences of his actions and his transgressions are overlooked by the team owner, who wants him to be the face of the franchise. |
| 384 | * Played straight and inverted almost constantly in ''Series/ThePractice''. If the firm is defending a psychopath, they'll almost always get him off; if it's clear someone is innocent, you can bet they're going to jail. |
| 385 | * Throughout ''Series/ProvenInnocent'', Gore Bellows is constantly warned that he may ruin his career if he again goes after Madeline Scott for the murder of Rosemary Lynch and fails to convict her, with Bellows certain that she was guilty of the crime in her teens even after Madeline was cleared following a decade in prison. At the end of "In Defense of Madeline Scott", although the trial ends with Madeline being fully cleared and the true killer exposed as one of Bellows' campaign supporters, Bellows manages to turn that twist in his favor by killing the man in a manner that is staged as a suicide and exaggerating his emotional investment in the situation to atone for his 'mistake', thus regaining the campaign support he might have lost. |
| 386 | * In an episode of ''Series/{{Psych}}'', Creator/TimCurry played a Nigel Saint-Nigel, a snarky judge in a singing competition (ala Creator/SimonCowell) whose co-star, [[WhiteDwarfStarleete a has been singer]], tried to kill him because he got fed up with Nigel's verbal abuse. Despite saving his life, when Sean and Gus made it very far into the competition out of their own merit, and not just because they wer under cover, Nigel very rudely dismissed them from the show by deliverings some very stinging insults on their singing and dacing. Cue end credits. |
| 387 | [[/folder]] |
| 388 | |
| 389 | [[folder:S]] |
| 390 | * ''Series/SavedByTheBell'': |
| 391 | ** A plot point in the episode "The Lisa Card". Lisa charges over $300 on her father's credit card and spends the episode terrified of how he'll react. He actually takes it fine and doesn't punish her. However after two days of living in fear, Lisa actually begged him to punish her. She ends up having to take a waitress job to pay the money back (and that's after all her clothes have been sold as well). |
| 392 | ** Zack gets away with a lot of sociopathic behavior. Belding gives him detention for attempting to sell the school to the Japanese. |
| 393 | ** Kelly has her fair share. On the occasions where she is to blame for her and Zack's ruined relationships it's played straight that what she did was wrong. However when they get back together, it's all white washed. |
| 394 | * The ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' GrandFinale ''would'' have been a subversion of this trope, as the [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist main characters]] were {{Jerkass}}es cruising their way through life with no comeuppance whatsoever until finally receiving it in the finale...had said comeuppance not come at the hands of the minor and one-shot characters from the series, [[EvilVersusEvil many of whom being even ''bigger'']] {{Jerkass}}es [[EvilVersusEvil than the main characters]]. |
| 395 | * ''Series/SesameStreet'': |
| 396 | ** Cookie Monster often eats other peoples cookies (or other foods, and often even eats other people's [[ExtremeOmnivore non-edible property]]) but rarely gets in trouble for it (aside from sometimes being yelled at or disciplined a little). Rare instances where he does face consequences for his action are times when he was [[NotMeThisTime wrongfully accused]] (such as in ''The Cookie Thief'' special). |
| 397 | ** Count Von Count often annoys people with his counting and thunder and lightning, sometimes even inconveniencing people in such ways as getting a job as an elevator operator, only to force people to take the stairs while he rides it and counts the floors. Like Cookie Monster, he usually wins. |
| 398 | ** In many street scenes, no matter how Elmo behaves, he gets his way no matter what. |
| 399 | * ''Series/TheShadowLine'': Happens to several major villains. Gatehouse, Patterson, Jay Wratten, Ratallack and Lia Honey not only all remain at large at the end of the series, they're all in better positions than when they started and are ready to start over with a new incarnation of Counterpoint. |
| 400 | * For the first six seasons of ''Series/TheShield'', Vic Mackey was a master of this. No matter who he robbed, who he killed, the gang wars he set off, the countless cases he ruined, the innumerable ways he broke the law, he managed to avoid being caught, being found out, being prosecuted and such. In the series finale, it looks like Vic is about to get away with it again as he cuts a deal with the Feds, confessing his mountain of misdeeds without any chance of prosecution ''and'' getting a cushy FBI job out of it as well... |
| 401 | ** And then it's ''completely subverted'': his best friend Shane kills his own wife, son and himself. Vic's wife cuts her own deal to get away from him, filing for divorce and making it clear Vic will never see their children again. And instead of being back on the streets in the thick of the action, Vic learns that his new "job" is actually ''probation'' as an office drone, with his new boss breathing down his neck every single day for three years (after which the immunity deal becomes irrevocable) and quite obviously goading him into doing something to break the deal and get sent right to jail. And if, by some miracle, Vic does complete the probation? Then the FBI is going to cut him loose, with his record known to one and all, and thus no law enforcement agency is going to dare accept such an infamously {{dirty cop}} ever again. The show ends with Vic, the master of Karma Houdini, stuck in his own private IronicHell. On his own. |
| 402 | ** Played straight with David Aceveda, who by the end of the series has faced no repercussions and is on track to become mayor. |
| 403 | ** Diro Kesakian escapes back to Germany at the end of her arc. |
| 404 | * ''Series/SixFeetUnder'': |
| 405 | ** Anyone who is responsible for the BodyOfTheWeek is never seen facing any punishment. The worst cases are homophobic teenagers who assault a gay couple (killing one of them), a burglar who shoots the man he is robbing (which was completely pointless, since the victim was tied and gagged, and the bastard could have simply wore a mask to hide his identity), and the AlphaBitch owning the caretaking company opposing the Fishers, who kills a bystander with a golf ball, without ever noticing it. [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse None of them are seen caught, and just leave the show]]. |
| 406 | ** Also Jake, the creepy hitchhiker. Sure, he gets caught, but he traumatized David by beating, drugging, stalking, and almost killing him. For the rest of the series, David is still scattered by the event and even seeing Jake in jail (who doesn’t seem very annoyed by his condition) doesn’t make him feel better. |
| 407 | * ''Series/{{Smallville}}'': |
| 408 | ** It looked like Karma had finally caught up with Lex Luthor in Season 8, when ComicBook/GreenArrow blew him up, but as of the GrandFinale, he's been resurrected, regained all his old holdings, and is set to become PresidentEvil at some point in the future. |
| 409 | ** Oliver Queen; after it is revealed in Season 6 episode "Reunion" that he indirectly caused the death of a classmate that he bullied in high school and no one except Lex (who's ''even more'' responsible) calls him out on it, not even Clark. He does imply that his crime-fighting career is partly an attempt to atone for this, making this a sort of Self-Guided Karma. |
| 410 | * ''Series/TheSopranos'': |
| 411 | ** Tony Soprano's EvilMatriarch Livia gets off scot-free for trying to have him killed and [[AbusiveParents generally making his entire life a living hell]], dying peacefully in her sleep. |
| 412 | ** VillainOfTheWeek Jesus Rossi never faces any comeuppance for raping TheShrink Dr. Melfi thanks to PoliceAreUseless and IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim. |
| 413 | ** By the end of the show, Tony's underboss Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri, has not only never at any point faced any real comeuppance for his numerous crimes and generally boorish and unpleasant behavior, he has also gotten away scot-free with the problems his attempts to curry favor with the Lupertazzi Family caused for Tony and the [=DiMeo=] Family along the way (Tony did suspect his hand in the situation, but was ultimately forced to let to go due to being unable to find any evidence against him). In fact, pretty much everything is looking up for Paulie, with Tony having to reshuffle the [=DiMeo=] Family's hierarchy in the wake of the recent MobWar with the Lupertazzi Family, and giving him a big promotion in the process. The only real downside Paulie sees to the whole arrangement is his own supersitous worries about the crew he has been set to lead is cursed. |
| 414 | * In ''Series/SquidGame'', all the bad guys, except for a handful of guards, get away scot-free. [[TheDogWasTheMastermind Il-nam]], the game's creator, dies in the final episode, but it's of a brain tumor at an old age, and he never faces justice for his crimes. |
| 415 | * ''Series/StargateSG1'': Colonel Maybourne is initially introduced as a corrupt shadowy figure and the primary opponent of the SGC on Earth, he quickly suffered {{Flanderization}} and finally, after facing a court martial, fleeing to Russia and leaking information about the Stargate program, being brought back, facing a death sentence, being taken out of prison by O'Neill, being put back, escaping, helping SG-1, tricking SG-1 into taking him off-world, being brought back and then exiled by the Tok'ra... he eventually led a primitive nation claiming to be a prophet. And then, even after he confessed and apologized for lying, his people left their "King Arkhan I" in power anyway. To be fair, Maybourne turned out to be a pretty decent king anyways; his people still served him because apparently he was a ''good'' king, despite lying. |
| 416 | * ''Series/Stargirl2020'': Ito was involved with making biological weapons Imperial Japan used to murder thousands of Chinese civilians. However, while he was listed as executed for these crimes in 1947 Ito somehow escaped while moving on into even ''more'' twisted work. |
| 417 | * General ''Franchise/StarTrek'' examples: |
| 418 | ** Q. About half the time, his insane pranks on Starfleet crews have no consequences for him; it seems the Continuum stopped bothering to discipline him after TNG's third season. |
| 419 | ** Just as a rule, the Prime Directive tends to get in the way of karma; often, the moral of the story is how Starfleet ''has'' to walk away because to do otherwise would mean interfering in another culture. |
| 420 | * ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': |
| 421 | ** Vulcan ambassador T'Pel who was really a Romulan spy called Sub-Commander Selok in "Data's Day". |
| 422 | ** Armus' punishment for the murder of Tasha Yar is...being left alone again. Admittedly, this seems to be hell for him, but he's no worse off for his encounter with the Enterprise. |
| 423 | ** The episode "First Contact" has Krola, the loud-mouthed, paranoid defense minister who tries to kill himself and make it look like Riker shot him. Unbeknownst to him, the phaser is set to stun. He doesn't die, and while the chancellor knows what really happened, he asks the Enterprise to leave like Krola wanted. |
| 424 | ** In the episode "The Survivors" it eventually transpires that an immortal superalien named Kevin [[DisproportionateRetribution accidentally, in a moment of pure rage, killed all fifty billion members]] of the race that killed his (human) wife. He feels bad about it but not bad enough that he doesn't create a fantasy version of his wife to carry on as if it never happened. In the circumstances, though, it's understandable that Picard's response is to go "Yikes" and get as far away from him as possible. At the same time, we are not shown any other superbeings (e.g. the Q Continuum, Organians) punishing him for this. |
| 425 | ** In "The Mind's Eye", the Romulan Subcommander Taibak suffers no comeuppance for torturing and brainwashing Geordi La Forge into becoming a ManchurianAgent that nearly sparks a war between the Federation and the Klingons. |
| 426 | ** This seems to be a trait of Romulans: Mirok, the Romulan from "The Next Phase", attempts to destroy the ''Enterprise'', after they've ''saved his ship'', so they don't inform the Federation of the new cloaking device he was testing. He fails, naturally, but by that point he's halfway home and no action is taken against him. |
| 427 | ** The subspace aliens in "Schisms" get no comeuppance for abducting and performing inhumane experiments on numerous members of the ''Enterprise'' crew. |
| 428 | * ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': |
| 429 | ** Shapeshifters are good at shifting away from consequences. The ruthless and evil Founders of the Dominion are cured at the end of the series; their power in the Gamma Quadrant is unbroken, and there's nothing to stop them from invading again. Meanwhile, Odo faces no professional consequences for collaborating with the Dominion during their occupation of [=DS9=], and the only personal consequence is a long talk with Kira. |
| 430 | ** Many of Sisko's choices come back to haunt him, but two of his most outrageous never do. In "For the Uniform", he ''poisons an entire planet'' and isn't punished for it.[[note]]This isn't as bad as it sounds. No one is hurt; the planet is just rendered uninhabitable to humans, and it's tit for tat, since they did something similar to a planet inhabited by Cardassians.[[/note]] In "In the Pale Moonlight", he tricks the Romulans into an alliance; his original, Starfleet-approved plan is about to fail, but Garak saves it with cruder and decidedly ''unapproved'' methods (which Ben should've seen coming a mile away). No punishment from Starfleet here either. Moreover, as far as we know in canon, the Romulans never find out -- and they would be ''livid'' if they ever did -- so the whole Federation is a Karma Houdini on this one. |
| 431 | *** Similarly, Admiral Ross takes part in a Section 31 operation to set up a Romulan senator to be sacked, probably imprisoned, and possibly murdered in order to get another senator, who's TheMole, on an important committee so he can make sure the Romulans stay in the war. |
| 432 | ** Intendant Kira, in spades. Throughout her appearances, she's portrayed as a monster who commits casual murder for the flimsiest of reasons, takes pleasure in enslaving other races and generally seeks power for its own sake without really showing loyalty to anyone. She's taken prisoner by both sides at various points but never stays locked up for long. Her last appearance sees her once more escaping unharmed while every other villain is killed or captured. Then again, it ''is'' the MirrorUniverse, where our rules for karma don't necessarily apply. |
| 433 | ** A specific example from the season 2 episode "Invasive Procedures": During a space-storm, the station is mostly evacuted. Quark helps a band of mercenaries come aboard illegally, having practically no idea what they are after. It then turns out that they want to [[spoiler: murder Jadzia Dax to take her Symbiont]] - and very nearly do. When the staff finds out about Quark's involvement, Kira tells him that he's "through" for this act, but by the next episode StatusQuoIsGod and Quark is right back to operating the bar like nothing had happened. |
| 434 | * ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': The title ship is alone and often outgunned, so sometimes they just can't do anything about the bad guys. Examples: |
| 435 | ** Both the Akritirians in "The Chute" and the unnamed alien from "Persistence of Vision" come off none the worse for their crimes. |
| 436 | ** Verin and the other colonists in "Friendship One" get a free radiation-poisoning cure and are left alone... despite having ''murdered a popular recurring character in cold blood''. Whilst it's certainly true that an entire planet shouldn't be punished for the actions of their leader, it frustrates that no-one is held accountable. |
| 437 | ** The Vidiians get away with stealing Neelix's lungs, and follow it up by abducting three crewmembers, experimenting on one, using them all as slave workers, and ''murdering'' one of them (the [[RedShirt non-regular]]). The Kazon are one thing, but ''Voyager'' is just no match for these guys -- Janeway has to cut her losses. (They do at least do their best to make it right for Neelix, but they never so much as sincerely apologize for the other incident.) |
| 438 | ** Partly the case for the two Ferengi, who ended up in the Delta Quadrant by way of an unstable wormhole back in ''TNG''. They set themselves up as the prophesied Sages of a primitive civilization, reshaping it to Ferengi standards and profiting immensely. At the end of the episode, not only do they prevent the ''Voyager'' from returning home through that same wormhole, but they end up going through it themselves. While it's true that they want to go back to the planet and rule the people, the people are sick and tired of them and would likely try to burn them at the stake again. Yep, they're alive and get to go home, while ''Voyager'' has to take the long way back. (Then again, we don't actually know [[FridgeHorror where the wormhole took them...]]) |
| 439 | ** Voyager seemingly dooms an alien civilization when they destroy a dangerous energy particle which is also their last hope. They destroy the particles and research, return the scientist, and the aliens just give up pursuit and leave. To be fair, it's the Omega particle, which can destroy subspace and is pretty much impossible to control. If the aliens had continued, they'd almost certainly have blown up their own planet as well as wiping out FTL travel for most of the quadrant. It's possible they finally understood what they were messing with and let the matter drop. Also, it's so dangerous that Janeway is legally required to destroy the stuff to the point that the PrimeDirective is suspended for the duration. |
| 440 | ** Janeway never faces any real consequences for her alliance with the Borg (which left a huge threat intact and got at least one species assimilated). Instead she got a new crew member and ten thousand light years closer to home out of the deal. The one attempt at revenge (by the last of said species) ends with Voyager escaping and in possession of a powerful new FTL system that later gets them even closer to home. |
| 441 | * ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': Silik's boss from the future, who's behind all sorts of mischief, is last seen doing just fine in the Season 2 finale. |
| 442 | ** Archer never faces any legal consequences beyond a slap on the wrist for his various actions in the Expanse. Some what subverted in that while his bosses accept why he did what he did Archer isn't going to be forgiving himself any time soon. |
| 443 | * ''Series/StepByStep'' had an episode, where JT and Cody were tricked into signing over the rights to their TV show to a network. But as they had legally signed a contract, they couldn't do anything about it. And to make the whole thing even worse, they were even unable to get any money from the deal! |
| 444 | * ''Series/{{Survivor}}'': Russel has gone through at least two seasons making CombatPragmatist up to eleven. He ''admits'' acting the bad guy deliberately. Some of the first few things he did when he originally joined was burn one guy's socks and empty the camp's water supply so that one started to wonder that why didn't they [[JustEatGilligan just send him to home after the first chance]]. They did that to [[EnsembleDarkhorse Yau]]-[[CombatPragmatist Man]] on his second attempt, even though the guy at least had some shades of being nice! Also, Russell is a millionaire who joined because he wanted to practically tell everyone that he's an evil bastard. The only thing that allows us to put a real person here is the fact that [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential we don't really know if he's evil in real life, too]]. |
| 445 | * ''Series/{{Swarm}}'': Subverted. While it's easy to believe that Dre is still at large by the end of the series due to the season's bizarre ending, the previous episode does show Dre's mugshot and Detective Greene's excitement to finally meet her. |
| 446 | [[/folder]] |
| 447 | |
| 448 | [[folder:T]] |
| 449 | * ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'': The Guidance Counsellor in Series 1, who is heavily implied to have been sleeping with Jordan, thus being responsible for her deciding to commit suicide afterwards. In fact, most of his interaction with the other girls at the school has a very sinister vibe to it, so she might not have been the only one. Due to it being an Aborted Arc, we never know if he got found out or not. |
| 450 | * ''Series/TheThreeStooges'': In ''You Nazty Spy'', the Stooges get eaten by lions for [[PuttingOnTheReich turning Moronika into a fascist dictatorship]]. But the [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Corrupt Corporate Executives]] [[GreaterScopeVillain who put them up to it]] [[{{Greed}} in order to sell more weapons]] get away with seemingly no consequences. {{Averted|Trope}} in the alternate version of the episode, ''I'll Never Heil Again'', where the executives are seen living in squalor and they admit facilitating the Stooges' rise to power was a horrible decision that they never should have made. |
| 451 | * ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'': |
| 452 | ** The Fairies in "Small Worlds" end up being given exactly what they want and allowed to leave with their kidnapped child after murdering several people, on account of [[InvincibleVillain being so powerful that Torchwood can't possibly hope to take them on.]] |
| 453 | ** Bilis Manger escapes in his final TV appearance after summoning Abaddon. He reappears in some expanded universe material of dubious canonicity, but never gets a proper comeuppance there either. |
| 454 | ** The people in "Meat" who were harvesting the meat of a live alien. They cut off slabs of the alien's meat while the alien was still alive just so that they could profit from it. Their punishment? They had their memories erased and were allowed to return to their normal lives. As Jack remarks, what else could they do? |
| 455 | ** ''[[Series/TorchwoodChildrenOfEarth Children of Earth]]'': Denise, the politician who suggested that the elite protect their own and select the lowest achieving schools, gets to be in charge at the end. |
| 456 | * ''Series/{{True Blood}}'': Bill gets hit with this trope hard by the end of Season 6: Regardless of whether or not you think he was BrainwashedAndCrazy during Seasons 5-6 or had some degree of agency and made choices on his own accord, the fact is that Bill committed a number of punishable offenses (murder, rape, terrorism, human trafficking, etc) that should have resulted in the FBI showing up at his front door to arrest him and Bill serving a life sentence in prison. Some of the highlights include ordering the bombings of the True Blood factories when he was Chancellor (which killed several innocent workers), sanctioning a human trafficking ring in the Authority where humans were kept naked in cells until they were brought out to be raped, drained, and disposed of, ordering sheriffs to turn humans into vampires to increase their ranks, plotting with the other members of the Authority for vampires to conquer humans, killing several of the Chancellors (like Salome and Kibwe) to get his hands on Lilith's blood, trying to force Jessica into turning Jason into a vampire against his will, refusing to help Sam when he comes to rescue Emma and even attempting to murder Sam in cold-blood because he knows too much, destroying the Authority (which was the heart of the vampire government) and killing anyone else who remained in the building, murdering an innocent blood prostitute in an extremely gruesome manner, luring Andy's 4 young faerie girls into his house to experiment with their blood (which indirectly leads to 3 of their deaths), killing the governor of Louisiana (who was an AssholeVictim, but was still a high-ranking government official regardless), and was largely responsible for the deterioration of vampire/human relationships by the end of the show. Even prior to what happened in Seasons 5-6, Bill had a history of committing vile atrocities: He spent 70 years torturing, raping, draining, and killing humans with Lorena, he then left her and went to be a part of a sadistic nest of vampires (Diane, Liam, and Malcolm) for an undisclosed amount of time, he worked as Queen Sophie Anne's personal procurer for 35 years (which leads to some [[HumanTraffickers icky implications]] about what his job entailed), and he got into a relationship with Sookie by allowing two psychos to beat the shit out of her so he could pretend to play hero, drug her with his blood, manipulate her into falling in love with him, and later attempt to murder Eric and Pam to cover up his secrets so that Sookie would never find out what he did. Not only does Bill fail to face any consequences for his actions (nor does he face any legal repercussions for the damage he caused and the lives he destroyed), but he gets EasilyForgiven by the show and by the other characters while also getting back into a relationship with Sookie in the last season despite everything he did to her. In recent years, this has caused Bill to be viewed as TheScrappy by many fans. |
| 457 | * ''Series/TwoAndAHalfMen'': |
| 458 | ** Judith Harper was a complete bitch, who still managed to almost always get what she wanted. The show even started with her getting tired of Alan, despite that he had clearly been a good husband, and bluntly kicking him out of the house, that he alone had paid for over the years. And she was not only allowed to keep said house, but she was also granted an extremely high alimony, leaving Alan to live off his much richer brother Charlie. And still, Judith had the nerve to demand even more money from Alan for her car insurance or their son's class trips, and to start complaining about every woman Alan dated, despite how she herself dated plenty of men. She also helped Alan's second ex-wife to get him screwed in yet another divorce, and when she herself got re-married, she also started treating her second husband like crap when she got tired of him. And despite all this, nothing really bad ever happened to Judith. |
| 459 | ** Evelyn is a narcissist that abused Charlie and Alan growing up and still abuses them to this day and has caused the death of two of her ex-husbands (One by food poisoning, the other committed suicide) and caused the death of a cockatoo that she owned. She's never gotten any comeuppance for any of this. |
| 460 | ** Charlie [[strike:a lot]] [[strike: most]] all of the time too (Well, until he went to Paris, that is). |
| 461 | *** This was actually addressed in the episode "Release the Dogs" where Alan goes through a lot of stress and angst over how Charlie seemed to have everything easy and coast by in life, never receiving punishment for his terribleness. By the end of the episode, it's hilariously subverted when after Charlie promised Jake the he wouldn't date Jake's crush's mother yet did so anyway, Jake with some help from Rose pours a bucket of slime over Charlie's head, has him jump over the balcony and crash into the beach, and then get chased after by police hounds. |
| 462 | *** Charlie at the very least has the odd moment as TheChewToy and is implied to have several psychological dents from his perverted lifestyle. |
| 463 | ** When Alan runs a Ponzi scheme on his family and friends, he manages to get enough money from Rose to pay everyone back before they find out what he did. |
| 464 | ** It's heavily implied that Rose murdered Charlie, and made it look like an accident. Alan and Berta both realize this, and Alan casually tells it to several people, but nobody does anything about it. In fact, fast forward a year & not only is Rose still walking free, but it turns out she's started stalking Walden too. She doesn't even have any reason to, she just does it for no reason. It's implied that she's even stalked Jake. |
| 465 | *** Rose is actually a walking KarmaHoudini, given that she stalks Charlie endlessly since their one night stand, despite Charlie having a restraining order against her. She's superglued his testicles, breaks into his house constantly and various other actions and this is all PlayedForLaughs. |
| 466 | ** Alan's lawyer in "No sniffing, no whining". Despite commiting malpractice repeatedly when drawing up Alan and Judith's divorce settlement, she isn't even reported to the Bar Association (in RealLife, Alan could sue and report her to the Bar). |
| 467 | ** Sophie also applies, though by the time the GrandFinale comes along, all those that did bad things have either been punished or they don't have a lot to look forward to as they now live a pathetic existence. Even though Judith has a check from Jake in the finale, she's absolutely alone with nobody in her life. While Sophie becomes a queen in the finale, it's possible that if her husband grows tired and weary of her, he'll have her executed. No one in this show really got off unscathed or scot free. |
| 468 | [[/folder]] |
| 469 | |
| 470 | [[folder:U]] |
| 471 | * ''Series/UltramanMebius'': Mitsuhiko Hirukawa is a [[JerkAss gossip journalist who tries to ruin GUYS's reputation in certain episodes]] to willing to [[DirtyCoward kill both Mirai and his date]] [[AssholeVictim just so he can escape Yapool's realm]]. All of this finally came to a head when he [[TookALevelInJerkass admitted to the world that Mirai and Ultraman Mebius are both the same being]] right before Alien Emperor [[AlienInvasion was beginning his invasion on Earth]]. |
| 472 | [[/folder]] |
| 473 | |
| 474 | [[folder:V]] |
| 475 | * ''Series/{{Vikings}}'' has Kenelm, the brother of Princess Kwenthrith who continously raped her when she was ''12 years old'', and not only wasn't punished for his crime, but eventually he was declared a saint by the Pope. |
| 476 | [[/folder]] |
| 477 | |
| 478 | [[folder:W]] |
| 479 | * ''Series/WallenbergAHerosStory'': Eichmann escapes to Argentina where he lives until the 1960s. |
| 480 | * ''Series/TheWestWing'': Jean Paul is introduced in Season 4 as Zoe's new boyfriend from France, he spends a lot of it acting like a smug rich bastard. Things get taken up a notch in the season's second to last episode, when he slips Zoe a roofie after her graduation, either part of his genius plan to date rape the president's daughter, or to aid terrorists that later kidnap her. After he's nearly beaten to within a inch of his life by an enraged Charlie, he's never seen again after, besides a brief mention that he's stonewalling the authorities with info about his dealer, or possible connection to the terrorists. This may be due to Aaron Sorkin leaving the show, and the new producer trying to avoid his old storylines. |
| 481 | * ''Series/WhenTheySeeUs'': None of the law enforcement officials were punished for their misconduct. |
| 482 | * ''Series/TheWire'' seems to be 50/50 with its Karma victims. While the below are probably the best example for the series, there are numerous other complete ''bastards'' (criminal or otherwise) who get away scot free. Life goes on, presumably is the message. |
| 483 | ** After everything he's been responsible for over the last three seasons, Marlo avoids a jail sentence entirely and gets to keep all his money and connections, with the seemingly minor stipulation that he's not allowed to return to dealing drugs on the streets...but subverted when it turns out that he can't imagine any other life, so this is actually a fitting punishment for him. His last scene has him practically escaping a fancy party just to pick a fight with two random gangbangers outside, a man who lives for street cred alone in streets that don't even know who he is. |
| 484 | ** Played straight with Stan Valchek, the most useless and venal character in a useless and venal hierarchy. He ends up Commissioner. |
| 485 | ** Scott Templeton. Even though he fabricated quotes and information about the supposed serial killer roaming around Baltimore in Season 5, and though almost everyone involved knows he's lying ([=McNulty=] asks how the lie will benefit Templeton in the end, and it's implied the Baltimore Sun brass know what he did but are intentionally looking the other way), he not only gets away with it but receives a prestigious award for his work. |
| 486 | * ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'': |
| 487 | ** Alex flip-flops around this trope. While in some episodes she escapes retribution, she is punished quite a bit. |
| 488 | ** Max, on the other hand, is now made of this trope. Hmm... make things harder for your older brother to win the family wizard contest by taking a book with every single type of monster in existence, release all of these monsters into New York City -- and when all of the other Monster Hunters are killed by the hordes of monsters (not to mention God knows how many normal people), not a word is said or anything done to Max. Hell, they were going to take away Alex's powers FOREVER for turning her parents and a teacher into guinea pigs... but Max is probably considered not to be in the running for the contest, anyway. |
| 489 | * ''Series/WonderWoman1975'': This happens a lot. If someone is participating in a crime and seems to not really want to do it, or better yet does anything to thwart the rest of the criminals, they will never be punished at the end for the crimes they committed. Also some villains escaped: Mariposa in "Screaming Javelins", Count Cagliostro in "Diana's Disappearing Act", and... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Gault's brain]] in "Gault's Brain". |
| 490 | [[/folder]] |
| 491 | |
| 492 | |
| 493 | [[folder:Y]] |
| 494 | * ''Series/YesMinister'': |
| 495 | -->'''Hacker:''' In private industry, if you screw things up, you get the boot; in the civil service, if you screw things up, ''I'' get the boot. |
| 496 | [[/folder]] |
| 497 |
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