[[SayonaraZetsubouSensei http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/MitamaMayoX.jpg]]
[[caption-width:260:Mayo [[KickTheDog abuses dogs]], [[HeroicSociopath burns down houses]], and even assaults others with a baseball bat before witnesses but never pays for her crimes. Why? [[ObviouslyEvil Looks]] ''[[ObviouslyEvil too]]'' [[ObviouslyEvil guilty]].]]

->''"I'm Homer Simpson! [[DrunkWithPower The most powerful]] [[NewJobEpisode food critic]] in town! And I'll '''never''' get my comeuppance - you hear me? [[TemptingFate NO COMEUPPANCE!]]"''

He's [[KickTheDog kicked the hero's dog]], [[IHaveYourWife abducted his family and held them hostage]], [[BadBoss abused the most sympathetic of his Woobie minions]], killed off the series' most popular EnsembleDarkhorse and invented a KillSat that [[PoweredByAForsakenChild uses babies as its primary fuel]], not to mention [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking jaywalking in front of a bus full of nuns]]. He's done just about every conceivable thing that would [[SmugSnake make an audience boo, hiss and hate him with the burning fire of a thousand Foreman Grills]]. So when the [[LaserGuidedKarma Karmic Hammer falls]] and the time for his comeuppance finally arrives, the audience is going to sit back and bask in the satisfaction that can only come from watching a Total Bastard [[HumiliationConga get what he so richly deserves]], up to and including [[KarmicDeath a highly ironic and gruesomely appropriate death]].

Only... that's not what happens. He ''doesn't'' get what he deserves. Instead, he thumbs his nose at the hero, dons his baby harp seal cape (made from baby harp seals he personally clubbed himself) and dashes off into the night scot-free. And this isn't a comic book villain, who has to escape so [[JokerImmunity he can come back and be thwarted by the hero time and time again]]. No. This is it. This is all there is to the story. The show is over. The book is finished. The author isn't going to write any more. The WordOfGod has been spoken.

He won't even suffer emotionally. LonelyAtTheTop? What's that? And no matter how hard he tried to seduce the LoveInterest, her running off with TheHero (or with SomeoneToRememberHimBy) will not trouble him at all; there are other women.

And there's nothing the fans can do about it, apart from kvetching about the character on a MessageBoard and writing [[RevengeFic snuff-fics]] that feature him getting what we feel the author ''should'' have given him, but (for some inconceivable reason) ''didn't''.

Now in cases where a KarmaHoudini ''doesn't'' totally get away scot free, you can expect any punishment meted out to him to be nothing more than a mild inconvenience -- not ''nearly'' what he deserved to get after all of the trouble he caused -- as when a GloryHound's causing massive casualties causes him to suffer, at worst, [[ReassignedToAntarctica Reassignment To Antarctica]].

In the more irritating cases of this trope, the KarmaHoudini has a sudden, last-second epiphany -- or is moved to commit a single heroic act that redeems him, allowing him a [[GetOutOfJailFreeCard free ticket to Freedom and/]][[RedemptionEqualsDeath or Heaven]], even though roughly 99.9987% of his life up to that point was spent using peasants for target practice. To add even more fuel to the fire, this trope can also be comboed with NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished.

Even more jarring if the villain is EasilyForgiven because DefeatMeansFriendship and goes on to become the SixthRanger.

Fans ''hate'' these characters ([[DracoInLeatherPants usually]]). Why else would any author bother writing them?

* Some do it to inject a bit of [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism realism]] into their work, realistic in their opinion at least.
* Sometimes the author worries that a punishment will make the villain sympathetic (and make the heroes look bad), or that it would look to silly to randomly punish villains (who could be unrelated to each other) in the end.
* Some authors have no choice but to allow a villain to escape with his crimes, if said villains are [[BasedOnATrueStory based on real life people who were themselves never brought to justice]]. (Some authors will attempt to placate the audience by having the villain undergo some kind of intangible punishment or loss not recordable by history, but many authors simply won't bother.)
* Some authors like creating {{Karma Houdini}}s and "[[DownerEnding evil wins]]" scenarios because they like being contrary and "[[DarkerAndEdgier edgy]]", and all TrueArtIsAngsty anyway. A gentler interpretation is that villains are more interesting than heroes and, despite their horrific actions, people will [[DeathNote root for]] [[SilenceOfTheLambs them anyway]].
* Some authors [[TheWesley simply grow enamored of particular characters, and don't want to see them punished or killed]] (even if the character ''did'' just happen to cook the heroine's button-cute little brother in a stew and serve it to her with a side of foie gras). These characters may also have a [[DracoInLeatherPants large portion of the fandom devoted to them in spite of their repulsive actions]], although if they commit acts that are especially heinous (like rape or child-killing), their pool of groupies may begin to shrink. (The author may ''still'' be on the character's side, however, in spite of everything they do.)
* Some {{Karma Houdini}}s are created by accident, by an author who got so focused on the heroes' part of the story or delivering a [[WriterOnBoard personal message]] to the audience/readers that they forgot to ''give'' the villain a proper comeuppance, thinking that aspect of the story was no longer important.
* In some cases, the story assumes [[NominalImportance only the main characters matter]]. Luke Skywalker ''can'' forgive Darth Vader and make it okay--if the only people who "count" as hurt by Darth Vader are Luke and his group. Citizen 999999 from some random planet, whose family Vader blew up, doesn't need to forgive Vader because he never appeared onscreen in the first place, so his losses aren't real.
* In some very ''rare'' cases, the author/filmmaker ''does'' write an appropriately grim death scene for the villainous character, but ExecutiveMeddling determines that it's too gruesome, hurts the flow of the narrative, makes the movie run on too long, etc. (This would make it less of a deliberate KarmaHoudini and more of a WhatHappenedToTheMouse situation.)

{{Karma Houdini}}s tend to be MagnificentBastard types since it takes a certain amount of smarts to give Karma the slip. Also, they're the kind of people who know just what it takes to get under a hero's -- and the audience's -- skin, and can manipulate them accordingly, [[SlaveToPR doing everything it takes to become as hateable as possible]]. However, some magnificent bastards are... well, magnificent enough for the viewer to ''want'' them to get away with it -- the HeroicSociopath is designed around eliciting this particular reaction from the audience. Whether or not a villain ''qualifies'' as a KarmaHoudini can be a purely subjective judgment of course, based on how a viewer feels about the villain's personality and crimes (and whether said crimes are viewed as [[ThisIsUnforgivable forgivable]] or not). It's also interesting to note that a lot of these characters also have [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney more money than God]].

This is the polar opposite to FateWorseThanDeath, HoistByHisOwnPetard, KarmicDeath, and GetOutOfJailFreeCard (the get-out-of-jail element is there, but without the card). Also not the same as DownerEnding, because the villain's plans are still foiled, but there's nothing to guarantee that they don't come back...

Villains be warned, though... this trope is [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] so often that it's not even worth noting unless it's played straight. It doesn't count unless the bad guy gets all the way to the end, scot-free. Further, trying to do a HeelFaceTurn after being a Karma Houdini usually results in the KarmaHoudiniWarranty being lost. See RedemptionEqualsDeath and DeathEqualsRedemption for typical results.

See also DracoInLeatherPants, perhaps an example of ''fans'' rationalizing this. IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim events most often lead to this. KarmicJackpot, KarmicDeath and, most of all perhaps, LaserGuidedKarma inverts this trope.
For the opposite of this, see TheChewToy, where a character does good things, or just nothing at all, and is rewarded with the universe smacking them in the face.

It may be worth noting that {{Karma}} is a very slow procress. It is so slow that good karma and bad karma bear their fruits when you know you have done something for it, but you do not know what. If you add {{Reincarnation}} to it, you subvert the Houdini part as it was just being realy slow. Look up any religion that teaches this: Hinduism, {{UsefulNotes/Buddhism}}, Jainism, Sikihism, variuos Panthan faiths, Sufiism, Kabbalah, {{UsefulNotes/Gnosticism}}, {{UsefulNotes/Scientology}}, etc...

Since this trope deals with the ultimate fate of villains, there are '''{{Spoiler}}s Ahoy'''...
----
!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]
* Every villain in SailorMoon who is redeemed is either [[RedemptionEqualsDeath killed]] or becomes a friend of the senshi. Ali and En, specifically, drain the energy of countless people (including kids) and attempt to kill everyone on Earth, but get away with it because they were just trying to survive--although they weren't shy about being cruel in doing so.
* [[BigBad Kagakagari Takaya]] from ''AsuraCryin''. Just look at the heinous things he did at the last episode, and he just goes away while leaving our heroes IN DESPAIR!!!
* Dakki from ''HoushinEngi'' devoured human beings for seemingly no reason, stopped someone from being executed just to build a burning pillar to use on said person, invites people to parties and then sics tigers on them, turned a guy's son into hamburger and had said guy eat it (the guy later starved to death), and in general made things miserable for the inhabitants of Ancient China. But the worst she did was [[spoiler:plot with a godlike entity who's been manipulating the history of the Earth for centuries in order to serve her own interests.]] What happens to her? [[spoiler:she takes control of the body of said godlike entity and uses it to become the Great Mother and merge with the Earth]]. Talk about Karma.
* Nakago from ''FushigiYuugi''. Sure, he gets a hole punched through him at the end, but [[WordOfGod Yuu Watase has expressly stated]] that he went to heaven to be with his mother and beloved immediately afterwards. So he slaughters hundreds, psychologically tortures the heroes, abuses his underlings, goads his minions into killing children and he gets a free ticket to Heaven because his actions were caused by [[FreudianExcuse a bad childhood]]? Boo.
** Mayo from ''Eikoden'', although ostensibly the hero, nearly erases Miaka from existence, steals her unborn child, and turns people within the Universe of the Four Gods against her, all because Miaka was marrying the person Mayo had a crush on. She really doesn't get any comeuppance for it because she had a bad home life and she even gets to go home scott free.
* Aion from ''ChronoCrusade'' definitely falls into this trope. He screws over everyone, human or demon, who has ever dealt with him, kidnaps and manipulates the heroes' family members, (leaving one of them dead and another brain-damaged), turns Heaven and Hell upside down and hypnotizes the heroine into attacking the love of her life. And not only does he get to live at the end, but his plan to disrupt human life and bring about discord and suffering actually succeeds.
** Very much the former, and AnAesop on human darkness. He is actually killed and defeated, but [[AsLongAsThereIsEvil revived by humanity's greed, prejudice, and hate]].
*** Not in the manga he didn't. While admittedly we never actually see him die - the last we see of him is the opening charge of the final fight between him and Chrono - the story's epilogue shows that the world kept on going, and Chrono survived the battle.
* Count Cagliostro and Lorenza Feliciani (Robespierre's minions) seemed to get off very lightly at the end of ''LeChevalierDEon'', considering they killed a dozen people and turned many more into mercury-filled zombies. (Of course, these characters, like most characters in that series, were based on real-life people, so an onscreen comeuppance wouldn't have been in keeping with *cough* "[[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory historical accuracy]]".)
* Griffith from ''{{Berserk}}'' sacrificed his hand-picked military unit he had ever since he was a teenager, raped his best friend's love interest in front of him (this after said best friend went out of his way to rescue Griffith from a dungeon he was rotting in for over a year) and his reward at the end of it all was to [[spoiler:become a literal God and claim his own kingdom after killing the previous ruler (and said kingdom loves him to death).]] What the Fuck doesn't even begin to describe it.
** That's because the anime [[GeckoEnding ends prematurely]]. He ''may'' get his in the manga. [[WorldHalfEmpty Maybe.]]
*** More than twenty volumes later, his star is still rising! Even after the people of the kingdom see him leading an army of ''demons''. Come ON, people!
** Oh, and was it mentioned that the rape [[spoiler: corrupted the unborn child of his best friend and his love interest? Of which Griffith would have been the godfather of?]] And that he later used [[spoiler: the body of said child to be reborn into the world?]]
* Pegasus in ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'', who not only [[SchrodingersCat lives]] but returns as a valuable ally in the OddlyNamedSequel. The most acknowledgment given to his kidnapping people and stealing their souls (and causing all the trouble connected to Duel Monsters by inventing the very game and messing with magic he shouldn't have been messing with) was some mistrust early in the fourth season. It's implied that the cast let off him for his {{Necromantic}} goals; LoveMakesYouEvil, after all. As ''YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'' puts it, "I was just misguided! I didn't know what I was doing!"
** It's actually {{Lampshaded}} in ''YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'' in the following converstion:
--->'''Tea''': It turns out that Pegasus was just trying to bring back his dead wife. I guess that ''kinda'' makes up for all the horrible stuff he put us through.
--->'''Yugi''': Not really.
** Anime only. In the original manga, he's [[spoiler:killed by Bakura at the end of the Duelist Kingdom arc.]]
** Of course, Kaiba got off even easier than Pegasus, and anyone who has seen the "lost episodes" knows that he was even more screwed up, building a theme park where he could ''legally murder people'' and all.
*** Well, in the manga at least, Yugi did MindRape him after Kaiba's defeat in said theme park...
**** This happens in both animes as well. This is in episode 24 of the Toei Animations one (commonly known as "Season 0" or "Shadow Games" even though it's a completely unaffiliated) and in the first episode of the Nihon Ad Systems anime (the 224-episode one, generally referred to as "Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters").
*** He's also far less sadistic in the Duel Monsters anime, where all he did was force Yugi's grandfather to duel him, defeat him and rip up his Blue Eyes card (the heart attack was primarily the result of the holograms, not the penalty game). He did not 1) use morally dubious tactics to get his Blue Eyes cards, 2) put Yugi and his friends through life-threatening situations or 3) use a Penalty Game on Mokuba.
** Perhaps the biggest KarmaHoudini ''ever'' was also from ''Yu-Gi-Oh'', that being Dartz, the insane king of Atlantis. He ruined three innocent people's lives, brainwashed the female lead, sucked out countless people's souls, framed Kaiba's father for the destruction of a country, goaded his own [[TheDragon Dragon]] into basically killing himself and then immediately afterward drained the life from the three most harmless members of the cast, summoned an evil god, and was hinted to be responsible for ''every evil event in history.'' His comeuppance? [[spoiler: Going back to a restored Atlantis to live forever with his family.]] WHAT?
** Kagemaru, the first BigBad in YugiohGX, vied for the Sacred Beasts to feel young again, world domination being a bonus. His only punishment is having to be carried off to a hospital as the result of a bear hug during the conversation after his plan was thwarted. This was arguably because no one would feel right punishing an insanely old and feeble man who probably doesn't have long to live anyway.
** '''''YUBEL''''' -- once Judai remembers the nature of their past lives, he completely forgives her for everything she put him, his allies, and 12 dimensions through because of her [[StalkerWithACrush obsession with him]]. Albeit he blamed himself for her mental state, she had been corrupted by the Light of Destruction (turning her more dangerous), and reconciling was the best way to beat her at the time. [[spoiler: He also took responsibility by taking her soul inside himself and thus prevented her from causing any further harm while her mind healed.]]
*** And remember, she was already prone to DisproportionateRetribution ''before'' she got corrupted. It's why she got shot into space in the first place.
* Rimelda of ''{{Madlax}}'' kills off or is responsible for the deaths of the most likable members of the cast, including [[spoiler:Madlax's apparent romantic interest, Vanessa]]. Not only does she survive in the end, but [[spoiler:she gets together with Madlax]]. Presumably Bee Train was trying to replicate their success with ''{{Noir}}''.
* Despite ostensibly being one of the "good guys" throughout 2/3 of the series ''{{Mai-Otome}}'', [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Nina Wang]], who is the poster child for LoveMakesYouEvil and fits into about several dozen other tropes, pulls a selfish, spoiled, bratty FaceHeelTurn that borders on CharacterDerailment. She willingly and freely betrays everything she's ever stood for, tosses her morals and decency aside, murders her best friend, attempts to murder several of her other good friends, aids TheEmpire in conquering the world, and almost single-handedly completes 90% of a plan to bring about TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. Her excuse? She's a little cranky that her father (yes, they're not related by blood, but he's still her FATHER) refuses to see her as a woman and fell in love with her friend instead of her. She continues down this path even after her father, the only thing she cares about, basically DIES (he later lived, but she didn't know...) trying to stop it. Her outcome at the end of the series? Happily ever after, never answering for anything she caused or even having to face anyone or anything from her old life to remind or accuse her, taking advantage of her father's amnesia to make him fall in love with her for real this time.
** Which is not to forget that throughout the course of the ''{{Mai-Otome}}'' anime, PsychoLesbian / SmugSnake Tomoe has amassed for herself a pretty long rap sheet: assault, vandalism, attempted murder, kidnapping, blackmail, [[spoiler:attempted rape... of a ''high-ranking school official'']], aiding and abetting terrorists, and at one point openly declared that she intended to kill anyone who stood in her way (read: ''everyone''), and has shown no remorse for any of it. She never receives any sort of formal punishment, and the only retribution she gets for this is a few broken bones after falling out of the sky... which ''barely'' counts as a slap on the wrist compared to the lives she tried to ruin. She comes back in ''{{Mai-Otome Zwei}}'' clean as a whistle, presumably to do the same things all over again.
* Nagi is not only arguably the main villain of ''{{Mai-HiME}}'' (even though TheManBehindTheMan was technically more powerful than him), but is directly responsible for everything the characters go through. He survives unscathed and mostly unconfronted for this, admits to the entire thing being a riotously entertaining good time, and happily ''takes Mashiro'' (one of the supporting characters) ''with him'' to his home... wherever. In fact, ''Mai-[=HiME=] is infamous for the amount of KarmaHoudini in it -- the only villain who actually receives punishment is the Obsidian Lord, while everyone else skates away scot free including a PsychoLesbian mass murdering rapist, a rapist who rapes a nun, the nun herself who betrays and leads the death of several people, and a few other homicidal schoolgirls of varying degrees of insanity. Several people thought it was a huge WallBanger.
* In the ''ElfenLied'' anime, Lucy is a relentless killing machine who effortlessly kills innocent people--also children, and not only the ones who killed her dog. She still gets the sympathy of the male protagonist, even after he finds out that she is the one who slaughtered his father and [[DeadLittleSister his sister Kanae]]. At the very end it is hinted that she also survived her [[BolivianArmyEnding clash with the military]].
** This only applies to the anime; in the manga, Kouta ''never'' forgives Lucy for killing his family.
** Also, some people interpret the ending as [[spoiler: Lucy's mind died... but Nyu's mind survived.]]
** At the end of the anime, the Director of the Institution is revealed to be quite a bit of a Karma Houdini himself.
*** Anime only, though; [[spoiler: in the manga, Lucy kills him.]]
** In the manga, [[spoiler: she does die, Nyu too ;_;]]
** [[spoiler:He doesn't forgive Lucy, but he does forgive ''Nyu''. Or at least, he won't send her away. Basically, 'It'd be nice if you, you know, stopped killing people and blaming it on instinct. He doesn't seem to be holding a grudge when they die, either.]]
* Schwarz of ''WeissKreuz'' were most likely allowed to become Karma Houdinis, despite being the [[EvilCounterpart Evil Counterparts]] of the protagonists and perpetrating quite a lot of carnage, by virtue of gaining enough of a fan following to become {{Ensemble Dark Horse}}s. Sequel series ''Weiss Kreuz: Glühen'' sees two of them recast to some extent as {{Heroic Sociopath}}s and one more performing an arguable HeelFaceTurn, but none of them have been redeemed or seen any justice for their various acts of villainy.
** ''Farfarello.'' The [[FourIsDeath fourth]] member of Schwarz. He's arguably the worst of them all; aside of everything else, he accidentally killed [[spoiler:Ouka]], purposefully killed [[spoiler:his mother]] and [[spoiler:Tot (although she got better)]], and his ultimate fate? Apparently, he [[spoiler:quits being an assassin and lives happily ever after with his girlfriend]]. [[CareerKillers Weiss]] is ''specifically ordered'' to assassinate Farfarello, and Schwarz [[CurbStompBattle curb stomps]] them within an inch of their lives. What the ''hell''?
* In ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha A's'', the [[ArtifactOfDoom Book of Darkness]] decides to kill Nanoha and trap Hayate and Fate in [[LotusEaterMachine eternal dreams]]. The one responsible for setting up the whole thing turns out to be [[spoiler:Gil Graham]]. That person's fate at the end? [[spoiler:Retiring back in his home country of England, Earth, with his two familiars to keep him company]]. He thought it was [[IDidWhatIHadToDo the only way]] to get rid of the [[ClingyMacGuffin Book of Darkness]] once and for all. It took Nanoha's over-powered ten-member party, ''which included the current master of the book'' plus the [[WaveMotionGun Arc-en-Ciel]] to [[strike:finally destroy]] temporarily regain control of it.
** It's heavily implied in ''[=StrikerS=]'' that Admiral Graham's "retirement" is part of a coverup to keep the whole incident quiet. That said, the entire upper echelons of the TSAB appear to be borderline {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s; the Jail Scaglietti incident resulted from a [[ThirtyXanatosPileup Xanatos Fenderbender]] between the TSAB ruling council, the ground forces, and Jail himself.
** Perhaps a more troubling example is the above character's accomplices, [[spoiler:the Lieze twins]], who, in order to activate the Book Of Darkness, [[spoiler:absorb Shamal and Signum's linker cores, beat up Zafira to do the same to him, and then finish off Vita in front of Hayate while disguised as Nanoha and Fate]]. While all the people in question get better, ''no one'' brings up what happened or proposes any punishment for the responsible parties.
* Many of the villains in ''OnePiece'', despite getting the tar beat out of them by Luffy, manage to still come off this way through their chapter-opening mini-arcs. As examples: [[AGodAmI Mad would-be God Enel]] manages to go on a fantastic journey that proves some of his insane delusions right, while the evil ex-King Wapol manages to become wealthy, famous, married to Miss Universe, and all around better off than he was when he was king and actively oppressing people.
** Of course, thankfully to some Tropers, that's only in the manga. The anime leaves out most of these cover-story anecdotes and, for dramatic effect, usually makes it seem more apparent that the Straw-Hat Pirates' enemies die rather violent deaths. The only real exceptions are Buggy, who's more comic relief than danger, and Kuro & Don Krieg, who are completely insignificant at this point in time.
*** Kuro didn't escape karma in either version; he hated being a pirate and since Kaya knows who he really is Luffy essentially condemned him to being one again. The anime adds an extra bit where he's shown to be back at sea, brooding and miserable.
**** Although it's a bit odd that his crew seemingly follows him again, since he planned on killing all of them to keep his secret safe.
** Of course, by now the anime was forced to say explicitly that Arlong still lives (in prison), and Crocodile has reappeared in custody of the World Government, being confined in [[TheAlcatraz Impel Down]]...
** It's worth noting that while it's a case of Karma Houdini for some of the villains, others get character development and become better people through ThePowerOfFriendship. Furthermore, a few were [[PunchClockVillain Punch Clock Villains]] to begin with and find a better life for themselves once the BigBad they used to work for has been defeated.
* Mayuri Kurotsuchi from ''{{Bleach}}'' is a deranged MadScientist, who loves performing horrible experiments on living subjects. During his brief appearances, he has been shown routinely abusing his daughter and assistant, turning subordinates into living bombs without their knowledge and was revealed to have arranged the deaths of Uryū Ishada's grandfather and entire clan, in order to study them by torturing them to death in terrifying ways. He does so while remaining a high-ranking member of a basically good organization and his crimes are never publicly revealed, nor does he suffer any lasting consequence for them. Yes, Uryū did once try to kill him by blasting a gaping hole through his chest, right after he was taunted with a photograph of his grandfather, but [[IGotBetter he gets better]] – only to return to save and consequently bully the aforementioned character for ''comic relief.''
* Keel Lorenz, the NietzscheWannabe BigBad from ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'', [[spoiler:not only gets to see his delusions come to pass, but we get to see him reacting with sadistic glee as he is assimilated into the "perfect being" that he has created. Though his actions were implied to have been reversed by the end of the movie, we never do see him get his comeuppance.]]
* [[StalkerWithACrush Taisuke Sawanaga]] in ''SchoolDays''. He [[spoiler:[[RapeAsDrama rapes]] his crush Kotonoha (or at least, takes advantage/bypasses her ''very'' frail state of mind) during the SchoolFestival]] and the worst he gets is a broken heart. Not ''that'' broken, either.
** [[TheLibby Otome Katou]]'s [[GirlPosse so-called "friends"]] (Natsumi, Minami and Kumi) who cruelly bully Kotonoha, [[spoiler:bring [[{{Bokukko}} Sekai's friend Nanami]] to tears and ruin her reputation at school by showing a tape featuring her sex scene with her boyfriend/sempai]] ''and'' [[spoiler: have sex with Makoto just ForTheLulz, despite knowing their "friend" Otome is also sleeping with him]] get clean away too.
** It looks like Taisuke is, if anything, even ''worse'' in the [=PS2=] game extension. [[spoiler: In the extended version of Sekai's Yandere ending (the one where she's pregnant and kills Makoto), Kotonoha strongly hints that Sekai's child (born few after the murder, taken care of by Sekai's mother [[PromotionToParent and Kotonoha herself]] since [[MissingMom the traumatised Sekai has disappeared]]) is not only Taisuke's child, but may have been conceived through rape as well ]].
* In the manga of ''ThePrinceOfTennis,'' [[{{Tykebomb}} Akaya Kirihara]] is never directly punished for his highly violent play. In the TV series, [[spoiler: he ''does'' get chastisement from An and Ryoma, ''does'' say he wants to change and gets [[HoistByHisOwnPetard a taste of his own medicine]] (sorta) via playing ''another'' Tykebomb, Kevin Smith]], but the developments in the OAV have rendered that [[DisContinuity void]]. [[spoiler: The only punishment Kirihara received was indirect: Rikkaidai loses in the finals... but he wins ''his'' doubles match, injuring one of his rivals and almost inducing a similar UnstoppableRage on the other.]] What have we said about [[BrokenAesop "violence isn't allowed in-courts and those who use it are always punished"]], huh?
* Akito of ''FruitsBasket'', in spite of spending most of the manga series being nigh-on AxCrazy and making the lives of every member of the Zodiac as miserable as possible at every opportunity, [[spoiler: gets a last-minute redemption story via Tohru and ends up ''friends'' with her, Uotani and Hanajima, with Shigure as her lover]].
** Then again, that's kinda the point of having [[TheMessiah Tohru]] [[{{Pollyanna}} Honda]] as the main character. The fact that [[spoiler:Akito herself [[HeelRealization realizes how horrific she's been]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone questions whether she's redeemable at all]], and is the one who ultimately and willingly frees the Zodiac]] are points in his favor.
**Shigure also gets away with his various manipulations, and jerkassery, [[spoiler: getting Akito in the end to boot]]
* In both the anime and manga versions of ''{{Monster}}'', [[spoiler: Johan is ''twice'' saved by Dr. Tenma after being shot in the head. Despite the fact that he's an unrepentant mass murderer and sadist, his sister Nina forgives him for all he's done. In the end it's implied that he's awoken from a coma and is again roaming free to do whatever he pleases.]]
** Justifiable, though. [[spoiler: If Tenma hadn't saved him, it would have been something a moral victory for Johan anyway, as Tenma would have been forced to admit that not all lives are equal. Nina forgives him because she feels that if she had done so at the beginning of the series, when he killed the Lieberts, none of the awfulness would have followed.]]
** Also, let's not forget that [[spoiler: he ''did'' get shot in the head twice.]] For most bad guys, that would be just comeuppance. On the other hand, [[CompleteMonster this is Johan we're talking about...]]
* All [[BigBad Haruki Kusakabe]] gets for his horrendous acts in ''[[{{MartianSuccessorNadesico}} Nadesico]]'' [[spoiler:(including his framing Tsukumo as a traitor and having him killed, and subsequently putting Akito, Yurika and Lapis through all kinds of horrific experiments in the name of his [[TakeOverTheWorld ambitions]])]] is... imprisonment, which is kinda mild all things considered. He [[spoiler:gave up on his own terms, too... suggesting that he may have more to his plans]]. Maybe he would have gotten his comeuppance had the movie trilogy been done.
* The resident PsychoForHire Yazan Gable in ''[[{{ZetaGundam}} Zeta Gundam]]'', notorious for being the most cruel and immoral of the Titans, [[spoiler:gets away scott-free even after [[TheHero Camille]] completely dismantles his Mobile Suit]]. Although he ''does'' [[spoiler:seem to meet his doom in [[{{ZZGundam}} the sequel]], viewers never get to actually ''see'' his demise, which suggests that he may have cheated death once again]]. Hey, Yazan is not known as [[FanNickname "the Immortal Cockroach"]] for nothing!
** [[spoiler: Yazan makes a [[http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/193/yazanep27ko0.png brief cameo]] in episode 27, and while unnamed, his identity is later confirmed in Gundam Ace]]. "Immortal Cockroach", indeed.
** If this troper recalls correctly, [[spoiler: that building gets destroyed. So he dies anyways.]]
** Brilliantly subverted in GundamX. [[spoiler: The Frost brothers survive their last fight with Garrod, Olba is unharmed and Shagia is as much wheelchair-bound.]] However... [[spoiler: Their survival, technically, is the ''worse'' thing that could've ever happened to them, since they wanted an universe submerged in war and hate, where Newtypes would be outcasts.. but now Earthians and Spacenoids live in absolute peace and the Newtypes are a part of it]].
** Also played with in ''{{Gundam 00}}'', where Andrei [[spoiler:survived the final battle even if he crossed the MoralEventHorizon by voluntarily killing his own father Sergei in a fit of rage]]. However, [[spoiler:after his last heart-to-heart with Marie he has actually realized what he has done, and the prospect of living with his own terrible guilt for his actions, unable to forgive himself and knowing that his love for his MissingMom robbed him of forgiving his DisapparedDad, sounds like [[FateWorseThanDeath a much more fitting punishment]] for the series' [[TheScrappy Scrappy]].]]
* Despite being a SuperRobot OVA series, ''Dangaioh'' is heavily on the cynical side of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism... and ''loves'' Karma Houdinis! To drive the point home, the main villain of the show ([[BigBad Garimos]], leader of a population of parasitic beings who depopulate planets to fatten themselves) never gets punished for his crimes. Another villain, the psychotic cyborg [[BloodKnight Gil Barg]], [[spoiler:dies in the first OVA, but is then resurrected as an even worse AxCrazy murderer, thus making his comeuppance null and void]].
* ''GlassFleet'''s ManipulativeBastard Vetti Sforza uses his allies as tools and turns against them when they've served their purposes, is responsible for the deaths of Michel's father and brother, [[spoiler: seduced if not actually raped his foster mother in order to get her to kill his foster father and then murdered her once she'd done it,]] [[spoiler:drugs and apparently rapes Michel]], and even [[spoiler:kills Cleo, his own twin brother, while Cleo is trying to save the world]]. He states up-front that all of his efforts are for the sole purpose of prolonging his own life. Not only does he never receive any particular comeuppance, he ends up [[spoiler:receiving instant and total redemption courtesy of some last-minute EpiphanyTherapy with Cleo's spirit]], and becomes [[spoiler:the rightful leader of the entire galaxy, with Michel's apparent ungrudging support]].
* ''{{Gankutsuou}}'' has Andrea Cavalcanti who spent most of the show carrying out his revenge against his own parents. This includes poisoning his father, having sex with his own mother and trying to rape his half-sister Eugenie, without the slightest hint of having a conscience. In the last episode we learn that he escaped prison and is living as a criminal.
* He's not a villain for very long, but after Koga of ''{{Inuyasha}}'' makes his HeelFaceTurn, everyone seems to forget that he made his introduction to the series by feeding an entire village to his pet wolves. Then again, villages get destroyed so often in that series, they may have genuinely forgotten...
** Um... what do you mean 'not a villain for very long'? He's STILL a villain! Need I remind you of the horrible way he treats Inuyasha and the creepy way he stalks Kagome? That counts as being a villain!
* ''{{Vandread}}'' has Rabat, more of an HonestJohn, but later on he says that he deliberately leads Harvest Fleets to wipe out potential dangers in return for them sparing him. And before that, deceiving the Nirvana's crew, trying to steal Hibiki's mech, and then beating him senseless whilst lecturing him on 'using his own words' despite his own deceit and greed, before escaping. Despite helping out later on, it's a wonder he doesn't receive some sort of misfortune for his actions.
** To be fair, the Nirvana's crew did try to rob him blind after his first encounter with them, but he got away. By the second time they got him, they were busy with other matters, he returned on his own to return Hibiki, and he escaped mostly unnoticed, and the third time he helped them again.
* Akabane Kuroudo in the ''GetBackers'' manga.
* Team Rocket of ''{{Pokemon}}''. Ash and Co. may send them blasting off in [[OverusedRunningGag every single godddamned episode]], but considering they've actually spent the entire series stalking a bunch of kids, attempting to kidnap said kid's best friends and physically assaulting them unprovoked, they actually get off quite easy.
** Not to mention Paul so far, I like a good rival as much as the next person BUT C'MON. This guy abuses his pokemon just for strength, ignores them if they don't do as he says, badmouths Ash at every turn (just because he beat him a few times) and doesn't seem to learn ANYTHING even when it told to his face. Seriously what's up?!
** And don't even get me started on Hunter J.
*** Karma finally caught up [[spoiler:Hunter J is supposedly KilledOffForReal by a well placed Future Sight from Uxie and Mespirit, which struck her ship, making it crash into Lake Valor and exploding. She would have to be a literal Houdini to make it out of that.]]
* Cain from the ''TrinityBlood'' anime, was pulling the strings behind all those events and...he get away at the end. WTF?!
** Not so much Karma Houdini as DiabolusExMachina by way of AuthorExistenceFailure.
* Any of the abusers from ''Mai-chan's Daily Life''. (This is not a manga for the weak at heart. Seriously.) Because Mai and Kizuna can regenerate from anything short of total cellular destruction, they are constantly being mutilated throughout their lives as slaves, with nary a shred of payback in sight. The sole exception is the American-looking president of country "A", either because he crossed the line with baby mutilation or because he pissed off the proprietress. Kaede-san is NOT to be messed with.
* At the end of CodeGeass, [[spoiler:many of the people in the wedding photo, including most of the Black Knights, who, with the exception of Kallen and a few others, had earlier betrayed Lelouch in favor of [[MagnificentBastard Schneizel]] and his slanted accounts, most notably Ohgi, who not only receives no punishment for his actions but is rewarded for it as he became Prime Minister of Japan in spite of his own incompetence and double standards (Issues with being used as a pawn? He used Kallen as one to draw out Lelouch, and nearly had her shot down with him. Issues with Lelouch keeping secrets? Didn't apply to Ohgi and his tryst with Viletta, who he nearly allowed to kill him while he still had responsibilities with the Black Knights, nearly abandoning the latter in the process. Why he wasn't called out for any of this is way beyond this troper.)]], his bride Villetta Nu, who apparently wasn't 100% truthful in her part of the testimony either when she informed Ohgi of Geass and Lelouch's usage thereof, and various surviving Britannian soldiers, including [[LadyofWar Princess Cornelia li Britannia]], who in the real world would no doubt be tried for their war crimes. Compare and contrast to the [[spoiler:[[HeroicSacrifice heroic atonements]] of Lelouch and Suzaku for their sins and mistakes throughout the course of the series that left them dead to the world: literally dead in Lelouch's case, and [[FateWorseThanDeath figuratively]] in Suzaku's.]]
** [[spoiler:The Black Knights are debatable, though. They may have betrayed Zero in the last episodes, but considering everything they had to go through before to stay loyal and help him reach his goals, they should at least deserve a peaceful life after all. Also no one can seriously blame them for reaching the wrong conclusion in such a fucked up situation.]]
*** [[spoiler:And even that is debatable, with Ohgi and Villetta being indisputable, since they were at the crux of it. The Knights didn't just betray Lelouch, but also the UFN with the under the table deal for Japan, which would have left the rest of the member states up the creek without a paddle, and also lied that Zero was dead. Xing-ke and Kaguya called them on these the following episode.]]
* Ryuk from ''DeathNote'' was the catalyst for several years' worth of murders, simply because he was "bored." At the end, [[spoiler:he just goes back to the Shinigami world from whence he came, with nothing to stop him from returning to the human world and causing another murderous streak. It doesn't help that the only way a Shingami can die is by using a Death Note to save the life of a human,]] something Ryuk would never do.
** It's revealed in the graphic encyclopedia Death Note: How to Read 13 that there is more than one way a Shinigami can die; for example, although they need to kill humans with a Death Note to survive, killing humans WITHOUT a Death Note is an unpardonable offense that will get them killed. But..., since the Death Note universe is a pretty big CrapsackWorld, it's logical that there would be a few Karma Houdinis around, so everything else is right.
** Potentially Near, if you believe that he [[spoiler:wrote Mikami's name in the Death Note. Matsuda]] seems to feel that way.
* Momoko from ''TelepathyShoujoRan'' has quite a history of atrocious behavior throughout the series, ranging from putting masses of people under mind control up to getting a woman killed so she can get her hands on some special plant. At one point she also plays a major part in an effort to [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt eradicate all of mankind]]. Her fate? She gets to bring her grandmother flowers in the hospital. That ought to teach her.
* In a way, the Major from ''{{Hellsing}}''. Even though he is eventually defeated, the Major dies with no regrets and a smile on his face because he had achieved his dream of instigating and fighting a grand war.
** It's hard to write an ending for him that makes sense and makes him feel like he really 'lost' when you consider his motivations. Goal: Kill people. Lots and lots of them. Threat level without killing people: 0
* The PsychoLesbian Duo from ''StrawberryPanic'' got away with attempting to wreck a school play, messing around with the Etoile Elections, and two separate cases of AttemptedRape. Kaname takes this one step further by [[spoiler: pretty much using Momomi to get closer to Amane, her real crush...''and they got back together in the finale''.]] To a lesser extent, Shizuma gets away with pretty much messing around with every attractive student in the school.
* Seo Kaoru from ''{{Sekirei}}'' nearly forces Tsukiumi to submit to him as her Ashikabi, closely equivalent to some form of rape in this series considering how much a connection Sekirei have to their Ashikabi, moments after Tsukiumi had found the man she was "supposed" to bind to. Luckily Minato stops him, but this troper is still bothered that nobody called him out on it.
** Given how he gives up on it the moment Minato asks him not to, this troper suspects he was merely acting that way to make Tsukiumi consider Minato as her Ashikabi. Also, his own Sekirei ''do'' call him out on it, high-voltage style.
*** While Kaoru's a dumbass, he's not really malicious. Hell, I think he's one of the few people in the series who aren't complete douchebags
** Though compared to some of the other characters, he's a positive saint... though none of them qualify since there's still time for them (that psycho Karasuba, those two asshole Ashikabi of the South and East, Minaka himself, to a lesser extent Uzume and Minato's sister and mother) to get their comeuppance.
* Gauron from ''FullMetalPanic''. He's a sadomasochistic terrorist [[MemeticMolester paedophile]] that goes around mass-murdering people ForTheEvulz, even going as far as to order the complete destruction of a huge city just to get his kicks from seeing Sousuke [[spoiler: one last time]]. His ending? [[spoiler: He manages to get the satisfaction of seeing Sousuke's hurt face when he lies to him that [[MurderTheHypotenuse he had Kaname killed]], ''and'' manages to get the death (a sort of "consummation" of his relationship with Sousuke) he always wanted by having Sousuke kill him]]. Not to mention that he had two beautiful girls that adored him taking care of his every need and were willing to die for him. I mean, sure he [[spoiler: had his limbs eaten by sharks]], but heck, the guy is so [[TooKinkyToTorture hardcore]] that he didn't even seem to mind it that much.
** And Sousuke probably looks like a complete KarmaHoudini to everyone from his school. He points loaded guns at people (and sometimes even ''shoots'' at them), places landmines and bombs everywhere, destroys people's private property without remorse, makes threats filled with killer intent, and pretty much violates every single law possible. When people expect for him to be punished or kicked out of school, all his actions are ignored by the head of the school. Why? Because Mithril [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney makes HUGE donations to her]] for allowing him to attend school there. Karma Houdini indeed.
* [[spoiler:Tsukiko]] from ''ParanoiaAgent'' [[spoiler:destroys most of Tokyo because of her mental instability. Her fate? She walks the streets two years later]] as if nothing ever happened.
** But that's obviously the result of a severe mental illness, and the Japanese needed to learn their lesson and grow up. That's the whole Aesop behind the story.
* ''TheTwelveKingdoms'' has [[spoiler:Yuka]] and [[spoiler:Kouya]], both of whom are EasilyForgiven.
* Asuham Boone from ''OvermanKingGainer''. Towards the end of the series, his obsession with getting back at Gain for the whole mess with Asuham's sister Karin degenerates to the point where Asuham willingly manipulates Cynthia and a lot of his underlings (not to mention President Munt himself) in order to awaken the Overdevil, an EldritchAbomination capable of destroying the world. He never seemed hesitant nor regretful about it... and all that happens to him is that he gets his Dominator shot down and gets a WhatWereYouThinking speech from Karin herself (who had come to terms with the fact that Gain's relationship with her wouldn't have lasted). Not much of a punishment, huh? Understandable in that YoshiyukiTomino had come out of his problems with depression and was producing lighter and more idealistic shows... but still, some thought that letting Asuham go like that, after all the crap he pulled, was a WallBanger.
* Rau Le Crueset from ''GundamSEED'', OmnicidalManiac and NietzscheWannabe (although many would consider him a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds). Dying at Kira and the Freedom's hands [[spoiler:after killing Fllay]] was not much of a punishment for him, considering Creuset was also a DeathSeeker. So, in the end, he got what he wanted, and was [[HannibalLecture Hannibal Lecturing]] the hero from beginning to end. Some have theorized that Crueset [[spoiler:shot down Fllay's shuttle]] ''exactly'' because he wanted Kira to be enraged enough to kill him...
* Genpou Saji in IkkiTousen. He [[MagnificentBastard orchestrated everything]] and somehow no one feels compelled to harness their rage and kick the crap out of him. If he had an actual reason to be forgiven, or had some further development later then it would work, but he's let go like he never did anything. Saji's appearance in Great Guardians doesn't fix things.
** Strongly subverted in the manga, where his manipulations are not only generally well-intentioned and far less damaging, [[spoiler: they eventually ''do'' get him killed by Hakufu. This, in fact, [[XanatosFuneral is even part of his plan]], which he thinks of [[DeathSeeker as his due comeuppance]].]]
** And wasn't he given a somewhat more sympathetic role in Great Guardians, [[spoiler: by having him show genuine concern and love towards the ''real'' Saji Genpou, retaking his places as Ouin Shishi (Wang Yun) and de-brainwashing Ryoufu]]? That's not 100% enough to redeem him, but it's far from simple handwaving.
* In ''TokyoBabylon'', [[spoiler: Seishirou Sakurazuka]] is this, managing to walk away at the end of the series with nothing more than a lost eye (which is lost willingly, by the way) after killing one main character and horribly breaking another, in addition to many other murders he himself claims to have comitted. [[spoiler: It's not until ''{{Main/X1999}}'' that he finally gets some karmic retribution, but considering that even then he dies on ''his'' terms by what amounts to assisted suicide...]]
* ''FrankenFran'' is better-known for its particularly vicious LaserGuidedKarma... [[spoiler: but the villain of Chapter 21 manages to pull this off. Not only does the greedy, self-serving, abusive child molester live, but he manages to get a job at an amusement park where he'll be surrounded by children. The sum total of his "punishment" is that he's trapped in a living mascot costume... which will only make it easier for him to find victims. Fran is too much of a {{Cloudcuckoolander}} to see anything more than slightly odd about just how happy he is with this outcome.]]
* In ''HeatGuyJ'', Daisuke's older brother (and boss), Shun [[spoiler: stages a ''coup d'etat'' and tries to enforce martial law in Judoh, but gets granted amnesty because of the good things he'd done leading up to that as the police chief]]
* The BigBad of ''{{Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni}}'', [[spoiler:Miyo Takano, doesn't seem to be en route for any punishment any time soon, especially since she has an alibi that she's suffering from the local HatePlague, despite some truly horrible actions throughout the series. It got so bad that this normally forgiving Troper desperately wanted her to succumb to LV. 5 Hinamizawa Syndrome and claw her throat out. And to make it worse, she's saved from this at the ''last minute.'']]
* ''{{Doubt}}'' has a massive one in [[spoiler:Rei. Who orchestrated the entire event, is shown to have done it at least once before, and comes out from it all with everyone who knows the truth dead and the only survivor hypnotized, psychotic, and ripe to take all the blame while she dances of scott free to do it again gloating all the way.]]
* Sae from PeachGirl. She does do some make-goods, and she encounters some serious setbacks and heartache, particularly in the manga sequel/spinoff, Sae's Story. But the pain she puts Momo through - at one point threatening to disgrace her on an international level, just so Toji will break up with her, and making Momo believe she's been raped - means that she should have had some kind of beatdown. Note that the classmates she tricks early in the series to hate Momo are ready to hold Momo down and maybe hit her, but no such brutality is even mentioned when Sae is majorly exposed. She doesn't do a complete Houdini, except when the level of her actions is taken into account. Her pain with Ryo was largely self-inflicted, so it really doesn't balance the scales.
* Nabiki Tendo from RanmaOneHalf. Avaricious and almost totally devoid of morals when it comes down to getting some cash. Routinely takes sleazy photos of her sister's GenderBender fiance, against his will, and sells them to all the hornballs at school- and perhaps all over Tokyo. Also prone to selling information about him to his various other would-be love interests, which means they usually end up ruining the rare romantic moments Ranma and Akane get together. She frequently goes on dates with guys where she makes them buy her lots of food and/or expensive presents, then blackmails them into giving her more money. She has been willing to work for crooks like the Gambling King and Principal Kuno, but displayed no loyalty to them whatsoever. Once repeatedly let slip hints about Ranma's true identity around his mother, despite knowing that it was very possible she would have called him to fulfil a {{Seppuku}} pledge if she found out he was BlessedWithSuck to change genders with cold and hot water, and then demanded 500 yen (which this troper thinks equates to roughly $5) in exchange for stopping. Ruined her sister's wedding by inviting all of their rivals in the belief that they would bring presents of money that she could pocket. Does she ever get even called out on this, let alone punished? No. Even when Ranma was forced to save her after she was foolish enough to try and auction him off to his other fiancees, having evidently forgetten that they become NeutralEvil {{Jerkass}}es when Ranma is involved, she didn't feel even the slightest bit guilty.
* Enemy generals in {{Utawarerumono}} are excused of any war crimes when their leader is defeated and simply jump ship and join the heroes.
* Almost all of the villains in ''BlackCat'' do not die or suffer any permanent injury. Some are never even defeated or fought. Only one member of the Apostle of the Star dies. Some undergo a HeelFaceTurn. Creed is defeated but spared and actually saved by Train, in spite of the things he had done. Even the [[ManBehindTheMan leaders of Chronos]] who turn out to be pulling the strings are never defeated.
* In ''HeroicAge'' all of the antagonists from the Silver Tribe and Nodos have [[HeelFaceTurn heel face turns]] and avoid karmic death, including the ones that killed thousands of people.
* Care to guess the ultimate fate of Goldie Musou, the main antagonist of ''GunsmithCats'', a brainwashing, drug-dealing PsychoLesbian crimelord? [[spoiler:She ends up in a happy, consensual relationship with Misty Brown, a protagonist she once kidnapped and [[RapeAsLove presumably raped]]. And she doesn't even quit being a drug-dealing crimelord, albeit a less psychotic one.]] [[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer I Am Not Making This Up]].
* In the first season of ''ShakuganNoShana'' the anime, Ball Masque (the main villains) do not get their comeuppance.
* Chaos Choir's leaders and main villains (and WellIntentionedExtremist) in ''ElementalGelade'' were beaten in combat but were not punished for their villainy.
* In the ''Shangri-La'' anime, Nagiko and Tarsian instituted a system of [[spoiler:child sacrifice]] yet are never called to account for this and are seen flying off together scott free in the last episode.
* Nina Purpleton in {{Gundam 0083}} is partially responsible for the success of the colony drop, stabs Kou in the back (after lots of tedious relationship development setting them up as a couple that culminated shortly before this) by running back to her old boyfriend (who happens to be Gato, one of the major villains) and then ''pointing a gun at him'' to ''protect'' the villain, and this on top of being a bitch to Kou for most of the series. And not only does she get off scott-free in the end, she has the audacity to ''smile'' at Kou in the epilogue!
** SuperRobotWars actually fixes this somewhat, but those don't really count...
* Accelerator in ToAruMajutsuNoIndex killed ten thousand innocent people in the name of an experiment and an unknown but undoubtedly large number before that, though they were admittedly less so. Punishment? A hit to his ego and being punched a few times. At least until he voided the KarmaHoudiniWarranty, anyway...
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* Even given the comic book creed of JokerImmunity, Lex Luthor in ''Comicbook/{{Superman}}'' comics during his CorruptCorporateExecutive period seemed to be made of Teflon - no matter what he did, it was impossible for Superman or anyone to pin anything on him.
* ''{{Watchmen}}'', in which [[spoiler:the WellIntentionedExtremist literally commits a massive act of unadulterated ''[[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans mass murder]]'' and not only gets away with it scot-free, but is actually aided in covering it up by the heroes if only because to expose the scheme would endanger the world even more.]] Although it's left open to interpretation whether or not his plan will ultimately succeed.
** In the film adaption he at least gets given a damn good beating from Dan and a lecture on why his actions were wrong.
* [[strike:Superman-Prime]] Superboy-Prime, who helped trigger the InfiniteCrisis, killed Superboy, killed Superman-2, joined forces with the Sinestro Corps, and is currently running around the Multiverse committing genocide for no good reason, is a perfect example of this.
** In fact, all indications are that Superboy-Prime will be redeemed by Superman and the LegionOfSuperHeroes in the current ''Legion of Three Worlds'' event.
*** Doesn't happen. However, one can be divided on if his fate is appropriate karmic justice.
**** He doesn't commit genocide (since that part of ''Countdown'' [[CanonDiscontinuity may or may not have ever happened]], everything else is dead on). Given his fate at the end, and what his whole goal was along, it is karmic justice. Just remember, not everyone gets a KarmicDeath as punishment for their sins.
* In ''{{Comicbook/Miracleman}}'', the murderous sociopath Kid Miracleman not only escapes justice for all the [[NightmareFuel horrific]] atrocities he perpetrated, but [[spoiler: it's his innocent and tortured human alter ego Johnny Bates that ultimately [[ShootTheDog pays the price]] for his crimes]]. (Although this effectively [[spoiler:leaves him locked for the rest of eternity in a form of stasis that leaves him still conscious]].)
* In Mark Waid's grisly mini-series ''{{Empire}}'', supervillain Golgoth rules all humanity with an iron fist ([[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor yet finds it's not everything he thought it'd be]]). Even as his problems mount, though, [[LaResistance the Resistance]] finds itself abandoned by its allies and betrayed from within (their fancy new weapons don't work). Oops. Golgoth manages to snap out of his funk long enough to personally crush the last embers of freedom. He ''is'' forced to [[spoiler:snap his daughter's neck after seeing how his lifestyle has turned her into a monster]], but this probably counts as the token loss.
* Crazy Harry of ''FunkyWinkerbean'': He's managed to skate through both {{Time Skip}}s in relative happiness (a good job, hot wife, healthy daughter), ducking the ''bad'' karma the rest of the cast seems to [[DeusAngstMachina soak up like sponges]].
** Questionable example, since he's also one of the more likeable characters in the strip.
* In the ''Comicbook/FantasticFour/PowerPack'' mini, Jack Power does the following: reveals the team's secret identities; runs away from home; incites Frankin Richards to run away with him, a course of action that ultimately gets him possessed by Doctor Doom; gets his entire family grounded; runs off ''again''; then gets his older brother Alex grounded ''again'' for something that was Jack's fault. Alex's attempts to reprimand him are presented as harsh and unfair, and the idea that Jack could tell their parents that the whole mess was his fault and take the blame is never raised.
* Recently in ''{{Daredevil}}'', Lawrence Cranston aka Mr. Fear turns the hero's life upside-down once again, using special drugs to turn Murdock's wife, a reformed friend, and most of the criminals in Hell's Kitchen into fearless, psychopathic killers. With Cranston having already killed the associate who helped him make the antidote for his drugs, Murdock is unable to cure his wife of her madness, and because he needs Cranston's confession to clear her name, he is denied the satisfaction of doing anything worse to him. And to top it all off, Cranston just uses his powers within Ryker's Island to make himself into a veritable superstar amongst both inmates and guards alike (with females [=COs=] literally throwing themselves at him), promising to eventually walk out of prison just as easily as he went in so that he can once again make life hell for Murdock.
* In WillEisner's graphic novel, "A Contract With God", one of the stories focuses on the super of the tenant where the stories take place/centered around. While the super is a middle-aged, balding man with a somewhat bad attitude and a possibly unfriendly dog, he is played in a horrible con. While in his room (the walls of which are covered with pornographic pinups), the niece of one of his tenants enters his room, and offers to show him her panties for a nickel (the setting is in the 1950's) and asks if she can give the dog a treat. While the super's back is turned, the girl (who is twelve years old!) grabs his cashbox and poisons his dog to death. When the super catches up with the girl, she screams rape and everyone sees and the tenants call the police. When the police come for the super, he kills himself and everyone calls him a creep. The last scene we see is the girl counting the money she just stole, not a look of remorse on her face. It's a great story and everything and was probably written to spite the ComicsCode, [[SoYeah but still...]]
* The ''{{Tintin}}'' comics had two: thief Max Bird and [[CorruptCorporateExecutive corrupt oil executive]] Trickler. Max Bird threatened to torture Tintin for information and attempted to murder somebody. However, even though he was arrested, he manages to escape jail and, other than a brief mention, is never heard from again. After manipulating two {{Banana Republic}}s to go to war over oil, working with an arms dealer selling weapons to both sides, framing Tintin for treason, and arranging him to be executed without trial, Trickler gets no serious comeuppance other than the embarrassment that the region he started a war over didn't have any oil at all. It was possible that karma would have caught up with Trickler in a later chapter, but [[AuthorExistenceFailure Hergé died before it could be completed]].
* ''TheBeano'', which was originally published by stern Dundonian Presbyterians, had a rule that all the NaughtyIsGood characters that filled the pages ''had'' to be [[CantGetAwayWithNuthin punished at the end of the strip]]. For some reason, this never seemed to apply to Minnie the Minx, and that strip was all the better for it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* One of the finest examples is probably Mr. Potter from ''ItsAWonderfulLife'', despite going against the MediaWatchdogs' production code at the time (which stated that a villain ''must'' get his comeuppance, to make it clear that he should not be imitated). Is it any wonder that the ''SaturdayNightLive'' skit ([[http://www.metacafe.com/watch/hl-4972379/saturday_night_live_its_a_wonderful_life_lost_ending_season_12/ found here]]) where George Bailey and the townspeople bash down his door with TorchesAndPitchforks and then jump on his body is one of their most popular? (Originally, he was to [[KarmicDeath die of a heart attack]], but Capra felt Clarence's commentary while watching this event made his character seem too macabre.)
* The other finest example is [[spoiler: Noah Cross]], the villain in ''{{Chinatown}}''. Not only is he responsible for the murder of Hollis Mulwray, he also [[spoiler: raped his own daughter, and at the end of the movie he's acquired custody of his daughter/granddaughter, who can expect some severe raping]], and gets off completely scot-free.
* [[StarWars Darth Vader]]. Despite his RedemptionEqualsDeath, it still leaves a bad taste in some people's mouths that he got to be a happy glowy force ghost after twenty-odd years of evil. The exact nature of his redemption is a hot subject of debate for fans.
** In the StarWarsExpandedUniverse it's made clear that the rest of the galaxy doesn't think the sacrifice made up for everything. Leia Organa, when confronted with her father's spirit, pretty much outlines the issue, though by the end of the book she, if not forgives, then grudgingly admits that if he wants to watch over her, she'll allow it.
* In ''PointBreak'', Patrick Swayze plays a cocky bank robber who has no qualms about killing anybody who gets in his way, and whose "redeeming quality" is just a passion for surfing. In the end, he gets away with his stolen fortune to Australia, where he plans to die in a blaze of glory catching the most dangerous wave in the world -- then Keanu Reeves tracks him down and catches him! Yay! Prison for life and an end to all his dreams, right? ...No, he appeals to Keanu (who he has tried to kill several times and whose partner he shot dead) to let him go, and Keanu does. Swayze dies, but exactly as he'd always wanted to.
* Linda Fiorentino's FemmeFatale in ''The Last Seduction'' takes this to a whole other level, and she's the ''[[VillainProtagonist heroine]]''!
** If we're talking femmes fatales, Kathleen Turner in ''Body Heat'' has to be the gold standard.
* In ''40 Days and 40 Nights'', Matt Sullivan (Josh Hartnett's character) is abstaining from sex for Lent. His ex-girlfriend, discovering this, and that there is a bet on about how long he can manage it goes to his house to attempt to seduce him. Finding him mentally completely out of it she [[RapeAsComedy rapes him]]. The ex-girlfriend collects her winnings and walks off into the sunset, leaving Matt having to beg his new girlfriend for forgiveness for 'cheating' on her. There is no mention of the ex-girlfriend being punished in any way.
** This may be because RapeIsOkWhenItIsFemaleOnMale.
* In ''TheProposition'', nothing bad happens to Eden Fletcher, one of the most horrifying {{Smug Snake}}s in all of film. This is a man who had a retarded 14-year old whipped to death.
* Keyser Soze from ''TheUsualSuspects''. ''How'' he gets away with everything is [[TheUsualSuspectsEnding rather mind-boggling]].
** Ultimately he fails though, as the whole operation was to kill a witness, and although he manages that he leaves another witness behind to testify against him.
* [[ParkerLewisFerrisBueller Ferris Bueller]] in ''FerrisBuellersDayOff''. Even though he skipped school, got his friends into a lot of trouble, and had a not-insignificant role in the eventual trashing of his best friend's dad's priceless car (along with the general amount of trouble and blatant rule-flouting he engages in over the course of the day), he receives not a single jot of punishment or inconvenience for any of it - on the contrary, everyone absolutely ''adores'' him.
** This troper disagrees, saying that people only got into trouble when they tried to interfere with his exploits, which harmed nobody. He never actually tries to pin anything on anybody. In fact he does everything in his considerable power to try and ensure that nobody gets into trouble. It is only other people's own attempts to visit him with karma that cause trouble. True, the car DOES get wrecked, but that turns out to be a moment of truth for the other character, which makes it okay. And He's definitely Not a Villain. Just what every teenage kid wants to be. Someone who can break the rules and have fun, and always gets away with it. And yes, Parker Lewis is similar, except that he always escapes punishment through VERY clever planning.
* [[SilenceOfTheLambs Hannibal Lecter]], what with [[spoiler: getting away at the end of the movie]] and [[spoiler: actually living happily ever after with Clarice in the book]]. This was definitely an example of an author growing overly enamored of their character, and thus many file it under DisContinuity.
** I believe it was in the introduction to the book ''Hannibal'' where Thomas Harris so much as admits that his character has gotten out of his control and taken on a life of his own. He even goes so far as to say he never planned to write any more books after writing ''The Silence of the Lambs'' but the character of Hannibal demanded it of him. How much of the introduction might be attributed to the author intentionally building up the story is left to the reader to decide, but it's certainly played very straight. (Considering Dr. Lecter's popularity after the movie ''The Silence of the Lambs'' and that he was created to be clever, brilliant, charming and charismatic, it wouldn't be at all surprising if Mr. Harris did in fact feel that way.)
* The Frank Oz version of ''LittleShopOfHorrors'' features Seymour, who ends up getting away with multiple murder and gets a happy ending. The sympathetic nature of the character, however, makes it much more acceptable than many of the examples on this page. Notable for how the original pre-ExecutiveMeddling ending (the one used in the stage version) does indeed feature the DownerEnding of Audrey II eating Seymour and Audrey, and taking over the world.
** The movie version also changed it so Seymour does not outright commit murder (that we know for sure about, anyway); [[spoiler:Scrivello]]'s death becomes an accident as much his fault as Seymour's, for example.
* The original ''ThePinkPanther'' ends with the good guy (Clouseau) stuck in prison after being falsely accused of stealing the titular diamond. The actual culprits - including [[TheUnfairSex Clouseau's adulterous wife]] - get to drive off into the sunset, laughing.
** It is noteworthy, however, that the ''original'' protagonist in the first ''Pink Panther'' movie was actually the jewel thief Sir Charles Lytton (aka "The Phantom"). Clouseau was supposed to be ''the bad guy''. Peter Sellers' brilliant portrayal of Clouseau, as well as the tendency of the "original" "[[DesignatedHero good guys]]" to gang up on him caused the audience to sympathise with Clouseau instead, and Clouseau became the focus of the series.
** Also the fact that Clouseau was the only major character on the side of law and order. It should be noted that Sir Charles and his entourage do turn up in a couple of the sequels...and get away every time, the smug bastards.
* Caledon Hockley in ''{{Titanic}}''. All we get is a mention that he eventually shot himself during TheGreatDepression. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson dies in the sinking of the Titanic. Essentially, the wrong hypotenuse of the LoveTriangle was left alive. Of course then Rose mentions he lost everything in the 1929 stock market crash, and it was reported he put a pistol in his mouth.
** The first class men who went into the lifeboats were historically kicked out of polite society, never to hold up their head in the presence of gentleman.
* The titular characters of ''NaturalBornKillers'' [[spoiler: escape jail, kill a television personality (not that we mind...) on live TV, and walk off into the distance]]. Sure, an alternate ending showed that a fellow escapee kills them, but [[spoiler:the ending of the movie as is implies that two infamous spree killers manage to live HappilyEverAfter.]]
* In ''ConAir'', most of the villains get their comeuppance, [[spoiler: except for Garland Greene, a notorious serial killer who targets children and is possibly the most depraved criminal on the plane. Although he let a little girl live earlier in the film, so that's OK...]]
** To this troper, the film seemed to imply that [[spoiler: Greene's encounter with the little girl somehow cured him, so while he still has past crimes to atone for, he wouldn't be committing any more. After all, if the girl hadn't "cured" him, would he have left her unscathed? Unlike Cyrus, he doesn't seem like the EvenEvilHasStandards type.]]
* Senator Roark of ''SinCity''. Apparently, the sequel will actually have [[spoiler: Nancy going after him to give him his comeuppance]].
** If they ever make the damn thing.
* Oliver Lang from ''ArlingtonRoad'' [[spoiler: orchestrates the bombing of the FBI headquarters and frames his neighbour for it, the death of said neighbour and his girlfriend and the kidnapping of his neighbour's son and walks away unpunished to presumably repeat the process with another government building in a different city.]] It is also heavily implied he did something very similar before the start of the film's storyline.
* Yuri Orlov from ''Lord of War'' manages to escape prosecution and jail time for his crimes, which include selling weapons to dictators and militant groups, because he acts as a [[PlausibleDeniability proxy for the United States government]]. However, he seems fairly devastated by what his actions have done to his life and his family. By the end, he seems like an addict who can't stop, however much he wants to, rather than the SmugSnake he was earlier in the movie.
* [[spoiler: Mr. Pink]] in ''ReservoirDogs''...almost. Listen closely to the last scene - it's very faint, but according to [[WordOfGod Quentin Tarantino]], [[spoiler:Pink is shouting at the cops who shot and arrested him.]]
*** Subverted in all of the endings of the ''ReservoirDogs'' video game [[spoiler: (Psycho: Gets killed, Neutral: Gets arrested, Professional: Gets away but he accidentally spills the diamonds.)]]
* During the course of ''AShockToTheSystem'', Michael Caine's VillainProtagonist pushes a hobo in front of an oncoming train, coldbloodedly murders his wife, seduces and drugs a coworker to use her as an alibi, blows up his BadBoss (and an InnocentBystander), and has a jolly good time doing it. In the end, he [[spoiler:seduces the same coworker again to get her to turn over the only evidence implicating him, [[PutOnABus puts her on a bus]], gets promoted to vice president of his company, and, in the final scene, murders a member of the board of directors for his job (and his corner office).]]
* In the 1974 zombie film ''Sugar Hill'', the titular character had caused several horrifying deaths of a criminal ring with sadistic satisfaction using mostly voodoo dolls and zombies. To top it off, she pays off her [[DealWithTheDevil Deal With The Devil]] with a woman, implying the woman used as payment is taken to Hell and ''raped''. And all of this as "justice" for her lover being killed.
* The scene in ''Happy Gilmore'' where Ben Stiller's sadistic orderly character gets thrown through a window by Happy (and then presumably has the authorities sicced on him) was cut out of the final film for no apparent reason, leaving viewers who don't watch the special edition DVD with the impression that he gets to continue using his charges as slave labor.
** This troper saw the cut scene included when it was shown on television.
* In ''Drillbit Taylor'', the big punishment for the bully's numerous acts of torture and actual, intentional attempted murder (in front of the police, no less) is being sent back to his parents in Hong Kong. If Drillbit hadn't interfered, he would have killed at least one kid in full view of the police and he just got sent back to his parents. He was legally an adult at this point, BTW.
** In the same movie, the stepfather of one of the main characters proudly recounts his days of bullying others in high school and chastises said main character for standing up for someone who was being harassed. The stepfather never regrets his actions nor admits that he is wrong, despite basically encouraging his own son to be a jerk.
* Fagin and the Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's musical ''Oliver!''
** Although they are both portrayed much more positively in this version than in any other, basically as AffablyEvil [[AntiVillain Anti Villains]] and Fagin ''does'' [[spoiler: wind up losing all the ill gotten gains he's accumulated over the years]].
* While not quite so serious as many of the other examples here, Peggy Brandt from ''TheMask'' wins Stanley Ipkiss' trust, makes him open up to her - and then instantly betrays him to Dorian Tyrell for a reward. Her only justification was "I just can't afford to lose my condo - you know how hard it is to find a decent apartment in this city!" Dorian gets flushed later on, along with all his goons... but Peggy just walks out the door with a suitcase of money, and is never heard from again.
** [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse The scene was trimmed]]. The DVD reveals that Dorian knocks her into the printing press where she is killed. We then see newspapers coming out of the machine ''with her blood as the ink'', and with the headline being about her tragic "accidental" death. It was considered too gruesome and stricken from the final cut.
** What's even stranger is that in ''The Mask Animated Series'' Peggy is one of Stanley's few friends. [[DisContinuity Of course The Animated Series is based around Stanley keeping The Mask and never hooking up with Cameron Diaz's character...]]
** She had no idea Dorian Tyrell planned to kill (or even hurt) Stanley: she apparently thought that Tyrell just wanted to take the mask from him. Remember her YouSaidYouWouldLetThemGo bit with Tyrell:
-->Peggy: You told me you wouldn't hurt him!
-->Tyrell: ILied.
* The 2000 remake of ''{{Carrie}}'' sees Carrie survive and get smuggled out of the jurisdiction by a sympathetic Susan after killing hundreds of people. The film makes it clear that she doesn't remember her massacre but jarringly she doesn't exactly seem too remorseful.
** However, the ending does imply that she will be haunted by the guilt of her actions for the rest of her life, as seen by the nightmares she gets.
*** You know, I have a hard time feeling sorry for the people Carrie killed in all adaptations. They were the worst kind of teenagers, and she was going through hell. Hell, her own mother ''tried killing her''. Sorry, I think she should have survived so she could have had a normal, happy life, you know, earning it. Carrie is one of the ultimate [[woobie]]s and you feel sorry for what she suffered.
****Yes, because every single one of the students in her school were horrible monsters who deserved to die. Oh, you'd never met the girl? You only laughed in the back of the room because everyone else was and you're kind of a nerd and didn't want to seem stupid? You just came to the dance because your mom made you? Sorry! You get to die too! Come on, this is bullshit. Very few people deserve to die for bullying and even then, I really doubt every one of the dozens of people she killed were her tormentors. Carrie was abused, yes, but that is no justification for killing people. Just ask the victims of Columbine.
* The adaptation of ''MaxPayne''. [[spoiler: Nicole Horne seems to get away unscathed despite her part in the plot, and after abandoning B.B. to his fate.]]
** However, the after credit sequence implies that she will be Max's next target.
*** Which is a blatant {{Sequel Hook}}, since [[spoiler: in the game Max ends up bringing down an antenna tower on Horne's helicopter as it tries to take off from the Aesir Building in the middle of the worst winter New York has ''ever'' experienced; the helicopter and the landing platform goes through [[StuffBlowingUp a nice crash and burn on the long way down]]. In fact the opening introduction of the game starts off with Max narrating the immediate aftermath of that event just before recounting everything that lead him up to that point (i.e. the game proper).]]
* ''FunnyGames'' uses this trope deliberately to subvert our expectations of horror films. The film involves the psychological and physical torture of a husband, wife and son by two sadistic young men. It's hard to say more without spoilers so...[[spoiler: the two young men kill every member of the family one by one and receive no comeuppance. In one scene the wife kills one of the psychos, but the other prevents the death of his partner by taking a remote control and literally rewinding the film to a point before his death happens. The film intends to show that violence is evil regardless of whether it occurs to good or evil people.]]
* This arguably happens in ''{{Se7en}}''. The villain John Doe is killed, but this hardly seems a comeuppance since his intention all along was that he was to be killed. Also, he dies instantly from a gunshot to the head, avoiding the suffering he put his victims through.
* Arguably, the companies in ''A Civil Action''. Just like the real-life case, the judge [[spoiler: rules that, of the two companies that have been dumping chemicals in the water and killing kids with leukemia, one is acquitted and the other pays only about $8 million, most of which goes to the lawyers. Sure, Jan got the EPA to investigate and force them to contribute $68 million to cleanup and payments for the victims' families, but that's a small price to pay for such large companies, and far, far less than the amount they would have had to pay if they were both found guilty during the trial]].
* This trope is the very essence of the Mexican film ''El Crimen del Padre Amaro'', Amaro, the titular character is a young Catholic priest who upon arriving to a small town [[spoiler: first he successfully blackmails the director of a local newspaper into withdrawing an article that exposed the friendship of the local priest with a notorious drug lord]] this provokes [[spoiler: the firing of the author of said article, his girlfriend Amelia breaking up with him, and turning his father (who helped him in his investigation) into a pariah]], it gets worse: [[spoiler: Amaro then seduces Amelia (despite her being just a teenager) and impregnates her, fearing for his career's future and his reputation among townspeople he takes Amelia to an illegal abortion clinic where due to a malpractice she starts bleeding uncontrollably and dies in his arms,]] despite this [[spoiler: with the help of a woman he convinces the ENTIRE town that it was Amelia's former boyfriend the one who knocked her up and he was there trying to save her. The final scene has Amaro presiding over Amelia's funeral.]]
* ''Chicago''. [[spoiler: Both Roxie and Velma get away with murder, literally, and become singing sensations. Billy lies to his client and abuses the justice system with no negative consequences to himself. And Mama Morten gets off scot free for selling out both girls to each other.]] Note that the whole point of the play/film is making a satire of a social system that allows such things to happen.
** On the DVD commentary, the director mentions somes fans who theorize that the last scene of Roxie and Velma making a hit show together is just another one of Roxie's fantasies like most of the other musical numbers, and they're really condemned to lives of complete poverty and obscurity. He more or less gives it a {{Sure Why Not}}.
* ''The Thomas Crown Affair''. In both versions of the movie (1968 and 1999), the titular [[EccentricMillionaire Eccentric]] [[strike:Millionaire]] [[EccentricMillionaire Billionaire]] gets away scot-free with his art thievery. In the remake, the woman assigned to tracking him down [[HighHeelFaceTurn runs off with him as well]].
** On a related note, since the remake stars Pierce Brosnan, a similar occurrence happens in The Tailor of Panama, except the spy used the cover of starting a war to become an eccentric millionaire. In the novel, the habitually lying tailor whom he used as a 'source' to ignite said war between the US and much of Latin America, is unable to stop the war. Hollywood attempted to tone down the Karma Houdini-ness by lowering the amount of terrible consequences which happen due to the tailor's wild story spinning to secret agent Osnard, but still comes off as a [[MoralEventHorizon dog-raping]] SmugSnake. It takes awhile however, to realise just what he was doing to get his money, as both Osnard and Brosnan are so AffablyEvil you have to let it sink in that they've just started a war which will cause just as many deaths as the Drug War, all for $20 million and some additional assets. And he accomplished all this while blacklisted and without any resources! If there's ever a sequel, he has nowhere to go but up! (now there's an interesting dual role to fix the houdini...Brosnan-Bond on the trail of Osnard.)
* ''Skeleton Key'' (I think that's the name): [[spoiler: In New Orleans in the 1930s, a voodoo priest and his wife tired of being servants. They used their voodoo to [[BodySnatcher switch bodies]] with their masters' two young children, who, "caught" performing a strange ritual on their young masters, were promptly hanged. Approximately 60 years later they commit Grand Theft Me on their (Caucasian) caretaker and lawyer; at the end of the film their old bodies - with the young people now trapped inside - appear to be paralyzed and about to be taken to an institution while their new bodies get to inherit their "employers" property and assets. The kicker is that they used the caretaker's ignorance of voodoo to basically perform the soul-switching spell on herself (the lawyer was "turned" before they hired the caretaker). Their only punishment is that, once again, they fail to get proper black bodies because the local black population also practices voodoo and they'd quickly figure out what was going on.]]
** This troper likes to think that [[spoiler: A) the caretaker's BlackBestFriend (who knows about voodoo) was clued in that ''something'' was wrong when her young friend briefly spoke like the old woman, and/or B) the dangerous couple at the very least lost their house to hurricane Katrina, which happened not too long after the movie was released.]] Interestingly, I got the feeling that if the film been from the Karma Houdinis' point of view the audience would probably be [[MagnificentBastard cheering for them.]]
* ''Barbarella'': [[spoiler: the Black Queen is saved by the angel in the end, despite her actions as a tyrant and her repeated attempts to kill Barbarella and the angel both. Because, as Pygar explains, [[FridgeLogic angels have no memories]].]]
* ''ArsenicAndOldLace'': Dr. Einstein [[spoiler:appears to get away scot free at the end of the movie, escaping in the confusion as his pal Jonathan gets arrested]]. Of course, he's an IneffectualSympatheticVillain so it's not as glaring as some of the other examples.
* In ''Serial Mom'', Beverly Sutphin, the protagonist commits seven murders over the course of the movie. When she is arrested and put on trial, she wins the case and gets off scott-free!
** And then promptly murders again, for someone in the courtroom is wearing white after labor day!
* {{Lampshaded}} in ''The Last Action Hero'' when the bad guy kills a random person in the street and realises that there are no police to stop him.
* Every villain from the SpyKids movies.
** That's because [[spoiler: they all become {{Woobie}}s and/or do [[HeelFaceTurn Heel Face Turns]] by the end]].
*** Well, the ''real'' BigBad of the first movie and his girlfriend were just plain defeated.
* This happens and is lampshaded in the flashback backstory in ''Secondhand Lions''. After being thwarted by Uncle Hubb for a second time, the evil Sheikh doesn't come after him again...because he gets distracted by finding oil and becoming one of the richest men in the world. As the lead character puts it: "The bad guy gets filthy rich? What the heck kind of story ends that way?"
* In Hilary Duff's "A Cinderella Story" has a lot:
** TheLibby Shelby and her lackeys put on a mean skit at a pep rally making fun of the heroine, leading up to the whole school calling her "Diner Girl." Realistically, they would have been expelled, but they get away with it.
** Sam's friends at the diner virtually condone her abuse, and Rhonda is the only one who actually does anything (loaning her a dress, but not calling social services or sticking up for her), but she still considers them her allies.
** [[WickedStepmother Fiona]] and her daughters deserved a lot worse than simply having to work as waitresses; Sam kind of deserved a better happy ending.
*** Fiona should have been arrested for hiding legal documents (the will and the acceptance letter.)
** Austin's friends picked on Sam and one of them won a scholarship.
* ''{{Scarface}}'' is of the BlackAndGrayMorality slant, true. But the evil-er villain, Alejandro Sosa, has Tony and the rest of his allies killed with a bunch of hired thugs and an assassin (the latter from InTheBack), not even giving Tony the chance to lose in a climactic fight between the two of them.
* [[spoiler: Gavin Elster]] in ''Vertigo''. In some countries, a final scene was tacked on mentioning that he'd been arrested.
* Averted in the film version of ''The Bad Seed'', after being played straight in the book and play, thanks to a Production-code inspired coda in which [[spoiler: she gets struck by a random bolt of lightning]].
* Subverted in ''InglouriousBasterds''. Hans Landa does manage to [[spoiler:strike a deal with the Allies where he gets credit as a DefectorFromDecadence and a house in Nantucket amongst other things for not screwing up the Basterds' plot to blow up the cinema. [[HeroicSociopath Aldo]] however, while willing to accept all of the above cannot accept a Nazi out of uniform and living amongst others so he proceeds to kill off Landa's communications officer (stating he's been chewed out before) and carves a swastika into Landa's forehead (his normal way of dealing with Nazis he leaves alive), declaring it [[MadArtist his masterpiece]].]]
** Indeed, a large part of what made the ending so satisfying was that [[spoiler: Aldo took Landa's attempted Karma Houdini, denied it to him, and proceeded to pull one off on his own. It's heavily implied at the end that the two surviving Basterds will never have to face any consequences for betraying and mutilating Landa.]]
** Speaking of which the Basterds commit horrible war crimes on very clearly {{Punch Clock Villain}}s but because they're on the winning team will never face a trial [[spoiler: of course all but two of them are dead SoYeah]]
* The titular character in ''Mr. Brooks'' is a serial killer who is never caught.
* In ''{{Swordfish}}'', John Travolta and Halle Berry's characters fake their own deaths and get away rich, evading justice.
* Tom Ripley in ''The Talented Mr. Ripley'' killed some people to assume a new idea and enrich himself thoroughly. In the sequels, he killed to protect his new life, and sometimes as favors for others. He never faced justice.
* In ''Match Point'', the protagonist had an affair and his wife never found out about it. When his mistress got in the way of his happiness, he murdered her in cold blood and escaped justice.
** Similarly, ''Crimes and Misdemeanors'' -- also by Woody Allen -- is about a murderer who escapes any kind of punishment for his crime.
* In {{Mikey}} despite murdering 8 people including a five year old girl and torturing and killing several animals the title character doesn't get his comeuppance at the end of the film instead he runs off and fakes his death so people won't come looking for him, and assumes a new identity and a new foster family.
* Master thieves in ''{{Entrapment}}'' played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery pulled off a grand heist and escaped justice with the help of a crooked FBI agent.
* Lock, Shock and Barrel from ''TheNightmareBeforeChristmas'' get no comeuppance at all for bringing Santa to Oogie Boogie, even though Jack specifically told them not to. Jack doesn't even do anything when they throw snowballs at his face, he just smiles.
** It should be noted that they are children afterall, and it is also implied that they served Oogie Boogie out of fear rather than out of a desire to do evil. Futhermore, this is Halloween Town, morals, values, and cultural norms are focused around scaring people and causing chaos, so they're just following the standard.
** Furthermore, TimBurton originally had a scene where Jack, on his way to rescue Sandy Claws and Sally, [[HoistByHisOwnPetard gives them]] [[HumiliationConga exactly what's]] [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome coming to]] [[CrowningMomentOfFunny them]]. It was sadly cut for timing reasons.
** At some point they leave Ooogie Boogie's lair and bring back help to rescue Jack and Sally.
-->Lock, Shock and Barrel: Here he is! Alive! Just like we said!
** in ''Film/GroundhogDay'', Phil Connors initially appears to be one of these; the time loop enables him to do whatever he wants whenever he wants to whoever he wants without ever having to face the consequences. Unfortunately for him, it eventually becomes apparent that the time loop ''is'' his punishment. [[DespairEventHorizon Right around the point he starts repeatedly killing himself, in fact]]. The movie then becomes about him seeking redemption for his past behaviour.
* In ''MysticRiver'' Sean Penn's character had previous murdered a person who got him in jail. He paid the man's family $500 per month in his stead and avoided justice for it. Later, he coerces a former friend Dave into confessing to the murder of his daughter. He promises to let Dave go if he confesses. Dave is innocent of the charge but confesses anyway to save his life. Penn's character kills him anyway. For the rest of the movie, he does not get his comeuppance for the two murders. It is possible he may be brought to justice later, but it's never resolved in the story.
* In ''PerfectStranger'', [[Halle Berry's]] character turns out to have murdered at least three people and successfully framed one of the murders on an innocent man, getting away with it all in the end. Whether this character gets their comeuppance later off screen is left open to interpretation.
* Daniel Plainview is a [[JerkAss jerk]] in ''ThereWillBeBlood. He cons many people and is responsible for some accidents that cause losses of life. In the end he kills a minister with his own hands and also shoots a man who claimed to be his brother. The credits roll before anyone even tries to bring him to justice.
[[/folder]]


[[folder: Literature ]]

* Judge Holden, of ''Blood Meridian'' by Cormac [=McCarthy=]. He is probably the worst CompleteMonster in fiction, or one of them.
* Long John Silver of ''TreasureIsland'' fame. Disney doesn't seem to remember it, but he escaped scott free with an entire chest of treasure, and was never caught. Not bad, for a month's murder and betrayal. As Dr. Livesay puts it, "I can almost find it in my heart to hope he makes it."
** Oddly, the {{Muppet}} [[Main/MuppetTreasureIsland adaption]] of the story averts this. [[spoiler: Silver escapes with a part of the treasure, but unfortunately for him, he just happened to choose the leaky lifeboat. His boat sinks with the treasure on it and he ends up stranded on Treasure Island with only the inhabitants for company.]]
* While Assef from ''The Kite Runner'' does end up losing his eye by the slingshot of Sohrab, the son of Hassan, who he both raped, which was also a threat not carried out by Hassan. However, it is never said he is actually killed, despite being a sadist, child-molester and racist who's mowed down an entire room of Hazaras more than once, which he recalls the first time [[EvilFeelsGood with relish.]]
* Even before Long John, Victor Hugo used this trope in ''LesMiserables'' by having the evil Thenardier not only go free, but use the money Marius gave him to become a slave trader in the United States. This example definitely fits the first reason for having a KarmaHoudini, sending a message that despite the ultimate happy ending, evil tends to triumph.
** Two other characters responsible for messing up Fantine's life, the poet who gets her pregnant and abandons her and Bamatabois, the politician who assaults her after she becomes a prostitute, have nothing bad happen to them, and Hugo discusses how both of them consider their behavior nothing more than [[DoubleStandard good-humoured fun]].
* Victor Hugo included another KarmaHoudini in ''TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'' in the character of Phoebus, a womanizing soldier who suffers no ill effects after allowing the woman who supposedly "killed" him to hang for the crime. Most film adaptations of the story have him meet a more "karmically proper" fate (and Disney's animated adaptation actually turns him into a hero who [[AdaptationDecay gets the girl in the end]].)
* Seems Hugo loved Karma Houdinis. Because ''Rigoletto'' is based on a theater piece by him named "The King is having fun", and the King of France (Duke of Mantua in the opera) also never gets his comeuppance for what he does to Blanche/Gilda, who *also* dies there for being a LoveMartyr.
** Well, we should remember that Hugo was an uncompromising supporter of the republic, an anti-clericalist and an opponent of the death penalty: so the [[TheHunchbackOfNotreDame hunchback]] is a case of [[AuthorOnBoard writer on board]] (France sucked when kings ruled, the church is utterly rotten and death penalty is a perversion which only kills innocent): except that 1. Hugo was so good at writing that the story flows well despite his [[{{Anvilicious}} heavy-handed arguments]] 2. People have forgiven how much [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped controversial]] his views were in the 1830's. As for the miserable ones, Hugo wrote it in ''exile'', after the man who got elected president [[PussInBoots with his help]] abolished the second French republic: Hugo was [[CreatorBreakdown bitter]] at the time.
** Another Hugo example : he wrote a poem, ''Sultan Murad'', which is a long description of murders, genocides and other bloodsheds perpretated by Murad. At the end, Murad goes to heaven for having shown pity for a pig dying in front of a butcher's shop.
* Children's books in which the main antagonist receives little-to-no comeuppance for their crimes tend to be at the top of "most frequently banned" lists. ''TheChocolateWar'' and ''Blubber'' are two that immediately spring to mind.
** Have you seen my tailypo?
* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in ''ThePrincessBride''. "Nobody kills Humperdinck. He lives." However, Humperdinck's fate is a bit more like a FateWorseThanDeath, as it is suggested that living in the shadow of his own cowardice is his punishment.
* As well written as it was, the victory of Steve Stirling's notorious {{dystopia}} the Domination of the Draka at the end of ''The Stone Dogs'' earned its WallBanger status in the eyes of many. It didn't help that an the ending was facilitated by handing the IdiotBall to an otherwise brilliant deep cover agent.
* Count Olaf from ''ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' beat Klaus, tried to force Violet to marry him, burned down several houses, committed an awful lot of murder, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking stole 27 cakes]], and various other nasty things it would take too long to list here. His eventual death was one of the saddest parts of the series, and the Baudelaires visit his grave sometimes. He was probably too silly a villain for anything more brutal than [[spoiler: the harpoon to the gut that he got]] to happen to him, though.
* Anton Chigurh from the film/novel ''NoCountryForOldMen''. Over the course of the book, he kills [[spoiler: a cop, a guy who had a car he wanted, several dozen Mexican drugrunners, a harmless old woman who happened to be in the wrong place, a hotel clerk who happened to be on shift when he showed up, the hitman with a heart of gold, some more Mexicans, and the protagonist's wife. He also blows up a car just outside a pharmacy, so he can rip off some medical supplies to fix his leg.]] His punishment? [[spoiler: A broken arm]]. Granted, this all was the point of the story's message, but still.
* Anybody who has read ''AmericanPsycho'' will know that the exploits of AxCrazy SerialKiller Patrick Bateman are some of the most sadistic and gruesome atrocities ever depicted in literature, yet in the end, because of the emotional emptiness of everyone around him, he received no comeuppance, even after ''admitting'' his crimes to his lawyer. It is implied that this is exactly what Patrick didn't want, however, and in the end, even his horrific crimes leave him with nothing but emptiness and despair.
** Then again, Bateman is just so fucked in the head that it's entirely possible that all those horrific murders never actually took place. For all we know, he just imagined the whole thing.
*** Word of God says Bateman did indeed do the crimes but it was the shallowness and greed of those surrounding him (all representing what the author felt was wrong with the 80s) that let him get away with it.
* Flannery O'Connor's ''A Good Man is Hard to Find'' created quite a shock with readers when the villain "The Misfit" [[spoiler: murders an entire family in cold blood with no consequences whatsoever (physically anyway)]].
* Medea from Greek mythology and [[{{Medea}} the play by Euripides]]. After many, ''many'' acts of murder ([[spoiler: including her blameless younger brother in a cold-blooded attempt to get away]]) she is rescued from death by the gods and spirited away to become a queen in Athens. Oh, and she ended up married to Achilles in the afterlife.
** Though if some myths are to be believed, she may have had to share Achilles with as many as 4 other women. For a woman with jealousy issues, this just might be punishment enough.
* The Malfoys of the ''HarryPotter'' books, despite being on Voldemort's side of the war for most of the series, [[spoiler:manage to avoid imprisonment or retribution of any kind due to Narcissa's HeelFaceTurn at the end of Deathly Hallows.]]
** The Malfoys didn't need retribution really- they learnt their lesson without help from anyone else. They went in over their heads when it came to serving Voldemort, to the point where their lives (including their teenage son's) were at risk. Their punishment was simply them wanting to get out of the life they'd got into but not being able to. In the sixth and seventh books in particular it's made blindingly clear that they don't really believe in what they are being asked to do and are regretting joining the Death Eaters want, and in the latter part of the final battle, Harry himself realises that the Malfoys had stopped caring about the outcome of the fight altogether and just wanted to find their son safe and sound. They were probably just as relieved as anyone else when Voldemort was finally done away with, and unless they grab a seriously bad IdiotBall in a crappy FanFic somewhere, it's unlikely that they'll be joining up with anymore AxCrazy Dictators.
***So what if they regretted their actions? They still deserved some sort of punishment for helping to kill people and try to take over the world.
**** This Troper believes that what the above poster meant was that the guilt and fear that the Malfoys went through ''was'' a punishment. Not to mention the fact that all three went under horrific psychological abuse at the hands of Voldemort. Draco was forced to torture people and was sent on a suicide mission [[spoiler:to kill Dumbledore]] in book six, which Voldemort had absolutely no doubt he would fail at, giving him a chance to kill the boy and thus furthur punish Lucius (who was the one Voldemort was actually upset with). Lucius himself spent time in Azkaban which seemed to ruin his health and Narcissa was forced to watch as all this happened to her beloved husband and son (not as extreme granted, but then this Troper doesn't seem to recall if she herself committed crimes for the Death Eaters or was merely a spectator).
** The Dursleys, after more that a decade of child abuse directed at Harry, should have gotten a jail cell rather then their magically protected and downright amicable exit in the last book.
*** Arguably, Dudley gets retribution in the form of the Dementor attack in book five. Rowling said that it made him see himself as others saw him (which was his worst fear) and she also stated that he and Harry kept an uneasy friendship post-DH. Book seven also showed that he was grateful to Harry for saving him and for once expressed concern over his cousin.
*** Regarding the Malfoys, I believe WordOfGod stated that Lucius' health starts to fail after the end of Book 7. Also, I think being held captive in their own mansion by ultra-{{Yandere}} Bellatrix for over a year combined with the constant threat of YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness be some sort of punishment?
**** This troper interpreted the fact that their involvement with Voldemort had some very severe consequences for their son to be their punishment.
** In ''Half Blood Prince'', Harry's outraged to learn that Umbridge is still working at the Ministry after everything she pulled in ''Order of the Phoenix''. The series ends without any indication that justice has or will catch up to her. One of the first questions Rowling was asked after ''Deathly Hallows'' was released was essentially asking for assurance that Umbridge didn't KarmaHoudini. (WordOfGod: She didn't. She's in Azkaban.)
* Bertolt Brecht's ''Threepenny Opera'' has one of the greatest Karma Houdinis ever, as the VillainProtagonist Macheath who is a rapist and mass murderer is not only reprieved at the end of the play, but also receives a title of nobility and accompanying castle, as well as a life-long pension.
* Unusually for a JohnGrisham novel, the villain of ''The Appeal'' is an astoundingly successful example. Carl Trudeau gets away with [[spoiler:dumping carcinogens into the water supply of a poor Mississippi town, rigging an election to avoid having to pay damages for said dumping, bankrupting the (arguably) main characters, and purposefully running his company into the ground so he can buy the stock while it's cheap and then make billions when the lawsuits for the illegal dumping are dismissed and the stock rises in value. The novel ends with him being worth $3 billion, and contemplating how to make it into $6 billion]]. He's most definitely a MagnificentBastard.
* In ''{{Dracula}}'', [[spoiler: the eponymous character]] [[GoOutWithASmile smiles before dying]] and his killers realise he's now in heaven. However, Mina Harker, who describes the death, says that [[spoiler:she's "glad" that he has finally found "peace." Lucy Westenra]] undergoes a similar transformation when she truly dies -- killing vampires [[spoiler:restores the souls to God]], apparently.
* Motley in ''PerdidoStreetStation'' by ChinaMieville. After being, through greed and irresponsibility, one of the primary causes of the near-destruction of the city, and [[spoiler: raping and torturing the protagonist's girlfriend halfway to insanity (what sent her all the way wasn't entirely his fault)]] he gets off scot-free apart from [[spoiler: having the statue he was forcing her to make of him destroyed.]]
* In the ''StarWars'' novels, Thrackan Sal-Solo, a relative of Han, pulls this multiple times, becoming a dictator, betraying various groups (including the ''entire Republic''), etc., and still manages to be ''voted'' back into power. Repeatedly. Even the characters begin to notice his Teflon reputation... until, in the middle of yet another cycle of evil dictatorship, Han Solo, Boba Fett, and Mirta Gev ([[spoiler:Fett's granddaughter]]) walk into his office and [[JustShootHim shoot him]]. Finally.
** Initially used in the ''JediAcademyTrilogy''. Powerful Jedi trainee Kyp Durron [[MindRape wiped the mind]] of a scientist who had worked on an indestructible superweapon, fished said indestructible superweapon out of [[HurlItIntoTheSun the heart of a gas giant]] and used it to cause a supernova that killed everyone on a fairly populous planet, then went back to Jedi training with hardly a word against him because he had supposedly been possessed by an ancient Sith ghost and had almost killed himself flinging the superweapon into a black hole. Repeatedly subverted in later books, where just about everyone calls him on it to the point where he is TheAtoner who can NeverLiveItDown.
*** ''I, Jedi'', a sort of FixFic trying to make sense of the Jedi Academy Trilogy, takes the destruction of that planet in which AMillionIsAStatistic and makes Force Sensitives feel it so personally that the main character sees it as a MoralEventHorizon. He leaves after Kyp returns to the academy, pointing out that if Kyp had actually been possessed he would have killed Luke outright rather than bothering with little complicated schemes. He also calls out the scientist who helped with the superweapon - in the trilogy she just gets to walk free because she supposedly thought all her projects had benign uses - saying that the code names like "Sun Crusher", "World Devastator", and "''Death Star''" should have clued her in, and how much work would it have taken to program something that would keep these things from being useable on inhabited planets? Since the book has to follow along the events of the trilogy, it seems like the protagonist is the only one at the time who sees these things, though.
**** Strangely, some of the science for those last two does sound like it could have fooled her, if she hadn't, you know, knew what they were calling them. Quite efficient mining vehicles they could be, especially in the Warhammer universe! (as they'd be underpowered and thus useless as frontline weaponry.) Heck, the devastator really was just an overpowered Tim Allen version of an already massive mining vehicle it sounded like.
**** Qwi's a bit more excusable than she sounds on account of the fact she had been ''almost totally brainwashed'' to serve the Empire unquestionably. It was only when she was making something that couldn't possibly be construed as a mining machine (Sun Crusher) and had some outside influence from Han that the conditioning slipped.
* In any HarryTurtledove book, odds are about 50/50 as to whether the nastier characters will be punished or not. This is partly for realism and partly because many of his characters can't be easily quantified as good or evil. Perhaps the most egregious is his ''Worldwar'' series, where AdolfHitler gets to die of natural causes.
** [[spoiler: Then Germany is nuked to hell and back in 1964.]]
** [[spoiler:Averted beautifully in the Confederacy Wins storyline, How Few Remains on. This is with Kimball being revealed as the one who sunk the US Destroyer after WW1. The US government doesn't do anything, and then the wife of one of the crewman of the destroyer comes down and kills him. Of course if her escape is a Karma Houdini...]]
* The abusive, murderous husband in Holly Lisle's ''Midnight Rain'' [[spoiler:does get what's coming to him, but his wealthy family, who switched him with another guy in a coma to fake his death and aid and abet his stalking of the main character, gets off.]]
* Subverted in ''WarAndPeace''. For the most part, Anatole gets away with [[BreakTheCutie Breaking The Cutie]] halfway in the book. He's PutOnABus for a while to the extent that the reader thinks he's exited the stage for good, but then he comes back [[spoiler:in one scene after the Battle of Borodino, in a hospital, having his leg painfully amputated]]. So he doesn't get off scot free, but it's not quite a GetOutOfJailFreeCard. Just a bit of ''schadenfreude'' to make the reader feel better.
** Anatol's pal Dolokhov, an icy, Badass amoral jerk prone to ChaoticEvil actions, is a Karma Houdini though. After a lifetime of mischief and general unpleasantness, he even becomes something a hero of the Russian resistance against Napoleon. Well, he ''does'' get shot in a duel in the book's first part, but he eventually recovers.
* The eponymous villain of the ''Fantomas'' novels, delights in committing extremely brutal and sadistic crimes for seemingly no reason at all. Despite the heroes' efforts, he escapes justice, every time.
* SherlockHolmes is beaten by a Karma Houdini in ''A Case of Identity''. Holmes, having figured out his game, has confronted the culprit at Baker Street, and he admits his guilt but notes that the law cannot touch him. Holmes is forced to let him go, though not without the slight consolation of wiping the sneer off his face by threatening him with a whip.
** In the case above, the criminal's main crime (which brings Holmes in) is to pretend to be someone else, get engaged to someone, and then leave her at the altar. Ironically, in the story ''The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton'', Holmes himself gets engaged to a woman simply to get information from her, then dumps her. The only punishment of any sort he gets is a mildly shocked response from Watson.
* Luciferous in ''The Algebraist'' not only gets away after being scared off by the Dwellers and seeing a fleet of ships coming in to retake the star system that he just took over, but the hero never even meets the villain! In the end the villain becomes rather irrelevant to the story despite being what initially sets it off.
* [[spoiler: D'Artagnan]] and [[spoiler: the Cardinal]] walk off happily into the sunset together at the end of the original TheThreeMusketeers. [[{{HonoreDB}} This troper]] was [[GenreBlind sure]] at least one would get properly punished.
** ''Vicomte de Bragelonne'' has two examples: King Louis XIV steals the [[UnluckyChildhoodFriend hero]]'s [[TheIngenue girlfriend]], causing him to [[spoiler:commit SuicideByCop, which in turn causes Athos (his father) to die in sympathy with him]]. The King then goes on to dump said girlfriend, live happily ever after and become an important historical figure.
*** In the same novel, [[TheChessmaster Aramis]] scams [[BoisterousBruiser Porthos]] into helping him carry out a complicated scheme to put the King's twin brother on the throne (letting Porthos think they're helping the real King). They're discovered and forced to flee, and [[spoiler:Porthos dies when a cave collapses. A few years later, Aramis is back in France as a Spanish diplomat and treated with all honour, even by the King.]]
* The two swindlers from ''The Emperor's New Clothes'' left the story with everything that they stole from the emperor, without so much as loosing a single sweat from it all. Really, they just left the story filthy rich.
** Because they are the good guys, punishing the king for his pride, and the court for their fearfulness. In most versions, they are even genuine heroes.
* Variation: General Ebeso in ''Heroic Proportions'' [[spoiler: dies in his sleep after a brutal reign and would have been one, but janitor fakes an assassination on the toilet, making him a mockery in death.]]
* In DanAbnett's {{Eisenhorn}} novel ''Malleus'', Osma brings accusations against Eisenhorn that force him to go rogue. [[spoiler: Although they are thoroughly refuse, Osma never even apologizes for the accusations against Eisenhorn and is elected master even after they have been refuted. He does get himself killed at the end of ''Hereticus'', though.]]
** Considering this is a universe in which Imperial ''government policy'' states "Negotiation is surrender", this isn't surprising.
* In Dostoyevsky's ''The Possessed'', Petr Stepanovic, CompleteMonster, SmugSnake and ManipulativeBastard, [[spoiler: causes the death and/or the ruin of the great majority of the other characters, both the positive and the negative ones, either directly or indirectly; by the end of the book, he is basically the only one who gets away from the massacre totally unscathed, happy and successful.]]
* [[TheBible Delilah]] a) is only Samson's lover because she gets paid by the Philistines; b) nags him like a mother-in-law to tell her how he can be robbed of his godlike strength; c) actually attempts several of the fake methods he gives her; and d) eventually cuts off all his hair and sics the Philistines on him. All this without getting dumped by Samson or even killed in his final CrowningMomentofAwesome. Not to mention she walks away with thousands of shekels of silver (worth millions today) for her trouble.
** Right after that is the story of the Danites, who marched into Micah's home, stole his silver and threatened him with death for protesting, then marched into the city of Laish and massacred the inhabitants, taking it for themselves. They lived the happily for the next couple of hundred years, meaning the perpetrators clean got away with it.
*** I guess, considering that these are Bible stories, we're supposed to take consolation in assuming that the perpetrators all went to Hell for their crimes, unless it specifically says that they didn't. I wouldn't know, since I don't read the Bible.
*** This Troper likes to think that there is such thing as an afterlife, so people who get away with their crimes in this life get their punishment in the next. But that's just how I see things.
*** Except that there are no straight references to afterlife in the Old Testament, as the concepts of Heaven and Hell were only fairly recently formed during the New Testament, and still rather fluid in definition. Every time God wants to punish somebody in the Old Testament, He simply kills them in brutal ways - no references to suffering after death.
*** About the silver, there might have been justice, since, considering the similarity in amount, the silver stolen from Micah could easily have been the ''very same silver given to Delilah'', and she could have been his mother. And since it was given for betraying a Danite... Who else should have it?
* In ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'', there's no comeuppance for Simon Legree, the cruel, despicable slavemaster who ultimately has Tom killed. This was deliberate -- slaveowners in the Deep South ''could'' do basically whatever they wanted at the time, and Stowe wanted to outrage the reader. The poet Vachel Lindsay took this one step further in his poem "[[http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/9459/ Simon Legree]]": Legree goes to Hell, but he and Satan hit it off so well that they party together for eternity. On the other hand, the 1927 movie -- in a classic case of both updating a story for modern sensibilities and CompletelyMissingThePoint -- has Tom's ghost haunt Legree to his death.
* George Wickham from ''PrideAndPrejudice'' by JaneAusten. He [[spoiler: once tried to seduce Darcy's underage sister in revenge for not giving him more money after he wasted his inheritance, slanders Darcy's name in Hertfordshire, seduces Elizabeth's younger sister Lydia, and runs off with her to London with no intention of marrying her. This being VictorianBritain, when even rumors of premarital sex could ruin a woman's reputation forever.]] His comeuppance? [[spoiler: He gets paid a ton of money to marry her, above and beyond her dowry plus all of his debts in Hertfordshire and Brighton paid off. He gets away completely scot-free; the only thing that could possibly be considered a punishment is that Lydia seems like she'd be a pretty annoying wife.]]
** In PrideAndPrejudiceAndZombies, he doesn't really get off scot-free, [[spoiler: for he's paralyzed for life in a "carriage accident".]]
*** Which is actually [[spoiler: Darcy beating the shit out of him.]]
** Although it's also been suggested that, whilst his 'punishment' seemingly isn't that harsh, things aren't actually that great for him: [[spoiler: he's KickedUpstairs to a go-nowhere post in an inconsequential battalion in the army which completely stymies any future hopes for advancement; Darcy holds all his debts and is willing to call them in, so any hint of his previous misbehaviour means the dogs get set on him -- goodbye carefree hedonistic life of fun; and he's trapped for life in a loveless marriage with Lydia, the aforementioned annoying wife, whom he ''can't'' mistreat or abandon without Darcy bringing everything crashing down on top of him. This means that his main desires and motivations -- fun, advancement, an independent income and women -- have all been denied to him in some way]]. TheBBC television adaptation [[spoiler: also suggests he becomes an alcoholic.]]
** The Bollywood adaptation ''Bride and Prejudice'' does give him some retribution. After finding out that Wickham got Darcy's younger sister pregnant and abandoned her and is now dating Lakhi (the Lydia character), Lalita (the Lizzy character) and Darcy chase him down and punch him in a movie theatre. When Wickham tearfully shouts to Lalita that he actually loved her the whole time, Lakhi gives him a second punch to the nose.
* The ''ApprenticeAdept'' series has a few:
** Adept Red in the original trilogy. Though we find out later that [[spoiler: The Oracle, itself, had set her on the path of destruction via a [[JediTruth carefully worded]] prophecy]], she's still directly responsible for several murders (including Stile's Phaze self, Adept Blue, her own Proton self, plus Stile's best friend, Hulk) and the knee injuries that ended his horse racing career. This in addition to being one of the nastier Adepts around. Her fate... Exile from Phaze after losing to Stile in [[TournamentArc a Great Game match]], her crimes completely unaddressed.
** Adepts/Citizens Purple and Tan in the second trilogy. Betrayed their own allies at the end of ''Unicorn Point'' in a grab for power (after they'd basically won) and in the process freed up the good guys to bring their trump card ([[DeusExMachina The Platinum Flute]]) into play, causing their entire side to lose to Stile and his allies. Inexplicably still alive, but imprisoned, in ''Phaze Doubt'' - they gleefully turn on their own to collaborate with the invading Hectare. When the [[XanatosRoulette great plan]] to thwart the invasion is pulled off and Tan and Purple are called to account for their crimes... They both get exiled. Not even so much as a restraining bolt on their still potent magic powers.
* Although he does make a HeelFaceTurn in the end, Popov of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six manages to score a deal for immunity after staging a series of terrorist attacks that see half the titular special ops team gunned down by PIRA members and a crippled girl murdered on live television. He also keeps all the money he was paid to stage these attacks (and gets a gold mine to boot). Even though the one attack he wasn't responsible for was the one where the little cancer-ridden girl in a wheelchair was murdered.
* Les Farley from Phillip Roth's ''The Human Stain'' gets away with the murder of his ex-wife and her lover. However as the portions of the book shown from his perspective suggest that he will never recover from his psychological scars due to his experiences in Vietnam it's hard to see him as a gloating victor.
* [[EvilOverlord Wyrn]] of {{Elantris}} is a justified example on several levels- while he is responsible for almost all of the turmoil of the book, he accomplishes this through agents and his only appearance on page is a cameo. Also, BrandonSanderson still plans on someday writing a sequel, so preserving his BigBad was rather important. The [[CompleteMonster villain who actually ''does'' the evil deeds in question]], though, gets a nice KarmicDeath courtesy of the resident MagnificentBastard.
* ''Mercilessly and brutally'' subverted with each and every victim in [[Literature/AndThenThereWereNone And Then There Were None]], since they ''do'' manage at first to avoid their comeuppance... only to have Karma ''bitchslap'' every single one of them [[NightmareFuelUnleaded in the most vicious manners]], all of them related to their crimes. [[spoiler: The murderer may or may not be an example of this, depending on whether the reader thinks his actions were justified.]]
* The little girl in ''The Bad Seed.'' Not in the movie version, however, thank you very much Hayes Code.
* In the FatherBrown story "The Sins of Prince Saradine", the title character pulls off a brilliant one of these by [[spoiler: manipulating his two enemies so that one of them kills the other believing it to be him, and gets executed without ever finding out he was wrong.]]
* Lord Pumphrey of the Sharpe series. Seemingly a fun, cool chap who does what he has to do for the crown of England. Then he [[spoiler: ruthlessly has Sharpe's girlfriend and her father's throats cut.]] When confronted about this in the latest Sharpe book, he mockingly tells Sharpe he's not sorry in the least and skips out with no retribution in the slightest. Many readers hope he's to get his in future books as he sure deserves it.
* In ''TheWarlordChronicles'' by Bernard Cornwell, (author of the Sharpe series above) most of the various bad guys get a KarmicDeath of some sort, but several get off scot free, such as the Saxon King Cerdic and his champion Liofa. More significantly, [[spoiler:the oily, treacherous, [[CorruptChurch Corrupt Clergyman]] Sansum never gets any payback that sticks to him after betraying every side in 3 books, and ends the last book by ordering the protagonist and narrator to perform a LastStand against the oncoming Saxon invaders in order to cover Sansum's retreat]].
** Well, Cerdic is a historical figure, so little could be done there. At least his forces were shattered at the Battle of Badon Hill and his ambition destroyed.
* In Kerrelyn Sparks' vampire romance ''The Undead Next Door'', Heather's ex-husband is a total dick. He's condescending, constantly calls his ex-wife a whore, belittles her, and is emotionally abusive. He is put under mind control so that he thinks he's a cockroach every time he curses her. In the end, though, he learns nothing from the experience but the mind control is lifted ''so he can spend weekends with his five-year-old-daughter.'' *WallBanger*
* While fairy tales almost always punish the villains (in methods ranging from death to banishment to servitude), there are a number of MoralDissonance moments with the protagonists. A typical example is a snooby princess who doesn't want to mary the tailor or peasant man who comes courting, so she invents impossible tasks clearly meant to kill him in the process (or threatens death if he can't do them). Still, the guy will succeed and ''proceed to marry the girl'', despite the fact that she clearly hates him. This is shown in the original version of the Frog Prince, where the princess promises to take a frog to be her friend should it rescue her ball from the pond. She then breaks her promise, only keeps it after her father forces her too, and chooses to hurl the frog against the wall rather than let it curl up in her bed with her. Strangely, this turns the frog back into a prince and he ''still'' wants her as a wife.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* On ''StarTrekEnterprise'', DesignatedHero Captain Archer allows ''an entire race to die'' at one point in the name of non-interference and then becomes the President of the Federation.
** That's nothing; [[StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Sisko]] personally rendered an entire Maquis colony uninhabitable with chemical weapons and started a war between the Romulans and the Dominion, [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence and then he became a GOD!]]
*** What Sisko did weren't Karma Houdinis. He was responding to a Maquis Colony's biological weapons attack on a Cardassian Colony (which only made it habitable to those of the Federation's races) and knew he had to become a 'villain' to defeat the traitor and terrorist who viewed himself as the hero. Said Maquis Colony had ample time to evac, and they settled on former Cardie colony while the former Cardie Colonist settled on theirs. And frankly, the Romulans needed to get into the War with the Dominion.
** Also in [[StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]], Quark gets away with all his deeds, including arms dealership, because he helps the good guys... sometimes.
** Let's not forget [[StarTrekTheNextGeneration Picard]], who's generally considered the most moral of Trek's captains, even though depending on the writer, he's willing to let whole species die rather than violate the Prime Directive. [[StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Kirk]] or [[StarTrekVoyager Janeway]] would have saved the Boraalans in "Homeward" without blinking.
*** Janeway certainly has plenty of actions to answer for in this troper's opinion, never being called out for bringing back Neelix the Scrappy and Tuvok at the expense of the genuinely likeable Tuvix who openly stated he "Did not want to die" by ''deactivating the Doctor'' after [[WhatTheHellHero he called her on her course of action]] certainly counts. Additionally Kirk and Janeway were acknowledged to have operated outside the Federation's sphere of influence while Picard would certainly have had to answer to higher-ups for any actions he took that contradicted Federation protocols.
* Several of the defendants on ''LawAndOrder'' manage to wriggle out of well-deserved punishments. Not uncoincidentally, most of those who do are [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney filthy rich]]. TruthInTelevision, sadly.
** Jack [=McCoy=] can also be considered a KarmaHoudini himself. He continually skirts and occasionally [[CourtroomAntic jumps over the line of legal ethics, engaging in selective prosecution, jury tampering, withholding evidence and reneging on plea deals]] throughout the series, but is rarely sanctioned or reprimanded in any official way. Jack is also a DesignatedHero (in the opinion of some) and one of the principals. [[SoYeah So ultimately...]]
*** At least [=McCoy=] [[WhatTheHellHero gets called on his actions]] (Usually in response to one of his WriterOnBoard rants). Mike Cutter gets no such upbraiding for his often case-destroying antics, other than the occasional smart-ass remark from [=McCoy=] when one of his tactics blows up in his face.
** ''SVU'' doesn't let this happen often. If a criminal does get off, they're going to have a VigilanteExecution performed on them five seconds later.
*** Actually, it does happen in SVU. Usually with rich folk as well. Perhaps not as common as the other L&O's, but it does happen plenty of times.
* Harmony the soul-less vampire from ''AngelTheSeries'' thinks nothing of killing people, and even 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.)
** A far worse example from the Buffyverse 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.
** About Harmony though, she talked a lot about killing, but we never actually see her kill, she's actually pretty bad at it and couldn't even fight Xander. Also, to be fair, she tried to redeem herself.
** Russel Winters in the ''Angel'' pilot "City Of..." openly brags about being a KarmaHoudini. Then Angel asks him "Can you fly?" [[spoiler: Unlike some movie vampires, he can't, especially not in the sunlight.]]
** Andrew Wells is an arguable example. His list of crimes include being a willing member of Warren's Trio in Season 6, being willing to abandon Jonathan in one scheme, denying any responsibility throughout the whole arc, and [[spoiler: ''stabbing Jonathan in the back'' in Season 7 in a ritual that could have unleashed a caveman vampire apocalypse if Jonathan hadn't been anemic. He was tricked into doing this though]]. But while he doesn't suffer much direct punishment for it, he is forced to confront what he did by Buffy and feels horrible about it, and he works to redeem himself by helping the crew against The First Evil in whatever way he can.
*** He may escape any kind of legal, or physical punishment, but he becomes ''everyone's'' ButtMonkey after his HeelFaceTurn. [[spoiler: Also remember that when push came to shove, Warren was the only one really committed to [[KickTheDog kicking the dog]].]]
** I'm amazed Willow hasn't been mentioned yet - she murdered Warren by skinning him alive, tried to kill Andrew and Jonathan despite them being less guilty, as well as casually killing a warlock who sold her magic, then tried to ''destroy the world''. Her punishment? A couple months in England learning to better use her world-destroying powers.
*** It's a lot better for everyone involved to have her extraordinary abilities under control and serving the forces of good, don't you think? Besides, BTVS is filled chockfull of moral ambiguity all the time, despite the premise being the war between good and evil. It's hard to find a character that this trope ''doesn't'' apply to, on one level or another. It's that kind of show.
*** Besides, Warren ''really'' had it coming, as he killed Tara and Katrina, and tried multiple times to kill Buffy, plus it was his idea to ditch Jonathan.
* In the ''[[{{MASH}} M*A*S*H]]'' series, 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!!!
** Amusingly, the exit story of Major Burns in the 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, Major 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...
* ''FoylesWar'' is one of the ultimate sources of this trope; set during the 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 entirely and literally get away with murder. In some cases, the British government actually actively helps them escape justice. [[spoiler: 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.]]
** 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 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 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.
** Of course, this is largely an example of TruthInTelevision. Many Nazi scientists, notably Wernher von Braun, were pardoned by both sides of the Cold War in return for their expertise.
* Colonel Maybourne in ''{{Stargate SG-1}}''. 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 his deception was exposed (by SG-1, of course), his people left their "King Arkhan I" in power anyway.
** To be fair, Maybourne turned out to be a pretty decent king anyways, and he wasn't "exposed" by SG-1; he confessed and apologized for lying. His people still served him because apparently he was a ''good'' king, despite lying.
** It is also implied that he's not that evil and generally wants to help the planet too. (Example: "Foothold")
** And Jack did get to shoot him before he got shipped off to the Tok'ra.
** It helps that Maybourne went from being a cowardly JerkAss and ObstructiveBureaucrat to being an amusing LovableTraitor that hedges into MagnificentBastard territory. Besides, next to Simmons, Maybourne is positively cuddly.
* The titular ''{{Dexter}}'' averts this trope. His victims are would be {{Karma Houdini}}s, except Dexter gets 'em. Dexter himself (at least for season 1) seems pretty Houdinistic, though.
* The TV adaptation of ''HouseOfCards'' switches out the book's ending of a [[RedemptionEqualsDeath redemptive suicide]] for the {{Magnificent Bastard}} Francis Urquhart, in exchange for his murdering the unlikely love interest, and going on to be Prime Minister for two more series.
** 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.
** And curiously, the positions were reversed in the final installment, ''The Final Cut''; [[spoiler: in both, Urquhart is assassinated, but]] in the TV adaptation Urquhart's fate is portrayed as being entirely out of his hands [[spoiler: 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 [[spoiler: by ending his life on his own terms and, for all his sins, as a much-beloved and admired martyr.]]
* Subverted in ''{{The Wire}}'': After everything he's been responsible for over the past three seasons, [[spoiler: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 it turns out that [[spoiler:he can't imagine any other life, so this is actually a fitting punishment for him]].
** Played straight with [[spoiler:Stan Valchek]], the most useless and venal character in a useless and venal hierarchy.
** ''{{The Wire}}'' seems to be 50/50 with its Karma victims. While the above is 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.
* Happens on at least two occasions in ''StarTrekVoyager'': Both the Akritirians in "The Chute" and the unnamed alien from "Persistence of Vision" come off none the worse for their crimes. (Some have also applied this label to the main character, Captain Janeway, for her alleged LawfulStupid behavior over the course of the series.)
* In the episode of ''TheKingOfQueens'' "Inner Tube" (the one with the DownerEnding), Carrie throws water onto Doug's face and chews him out. Subsequent episodes never show her remorseful for this or Doug forgiving her.
* Unsurprisingly, [[{{Satan}} Sheriff Buck]] of ''AmericanGothic'' is a KarmaHoudini 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 [[spoiler: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 [[spoiler:[[XanatosGambit setting him up to look like an insane vigilante so he could be locked up in a mental ward]]]]; manipulating Gage Temple into [[spoiler: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, [[OrIsIt which implies the victory might not be all it seems]], and how deliciously this MagnificentBastard pulls most of this off.
* HBO's ''{{OZ}}'', being tilted toward the cynical side of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism, had several unrepentent 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 scott-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.
* Sylar on ''Series/{{Heroes}}''. His continued survival defeats the entire purpose of the first season arc, there are newer and better villains on the show such as Adam Monroe, and the only person who seems to think that his presence continues to be necessary is [[TheWesley creator Tim Kring]]. Fans in general are sick of him and his continued survival. [[spoiler: Third season promos show him obtaining Claire's power ''without killing her'']], which kind of makes the whole "save the cheerleader, save the world" thing [[ShaggyDogStory kind of pointless]].
** Also, he [[spoiler: had some ability (Empathic Mimicry) used on him that forced him to feel all the pain he's caused other people. Which is a lot. Sure, he's not dead, but he's definitely suffered for his crimes.]]
*** Doesn't count. He doesn't suffer permanent consequences, and is right back to being, well, Sylar.
*** He didn't have an ability used on him. It was revealed that he had ANOTHER ability that [[spoiler: allowed him to copy a person's powers through empathy, like his nemesis Peter Petrelli.]] And since he immediately started using THAT ability to steal powers in a more subtle way when he had to, it REALLY doesn't count. Particularly since they're now ignoring the pain he is supposed to feel from using that power that way.
** It became a full blown ShaggyDogStory in Chapter Three (first half of Season 3) when [[spoiler: Sylar discovered he had the ability to steal powers through Empathy AND through cutting people's heads open to look at their brains, trying to reform and getting a girlfriend. Then we had a nonsensical flashback episode which dismissed any culpability Sylar had for any of his past crimes since he was pushed into killing more people by his current girlfriend (Elle Bishop) and by Noah "HRG" Bennet.]] Of course all of this was {{Ret Con}}ned by the end of the chapter and Sylar [[spoiler: killed Elle, went back to his wicked ways with even MORE power and was dead for about five minutes before being brought back, fresh as a daisy for Chapter 4]]
** And then Sylar received full-blown JokerImmunity in Chapter Four (second half of Season 3) when [[spoiler: he suddenly went back to his Season One motivation of wanting to be the most special person in the world and/or President of the USA after spending half the season angsting over his biological father. Newly motivated, he picked up even more superpowers, gaining the ability to become anyone using a combination of shape-shifting and the power to instantly learn the history of anything and anyone by touching them. He somehow convinced the violent, anti-social and anti-mutant government-sponsored assassin heading the US Government's "specials containment team" to partner up with him.]]
*** And even though his plan ultimately failed, Sylar was STILL saved after the two most manipulative XanatosGambit planners on the show (Noah Bennet and Angela Petrelli) proved unable to think of any better plan to disable the government's anti-mutant programs than to [[spoiler: try and convince Matt Parkman (one of the last people in the world who should have any sympathy for Sylar) to use his telepathic powers to make Sylar think he is a now deceased Nathan Petrelli. Any suspense over how long Sylar might be contained was spoiled after the Chapter 5 preview revealed that "Nathan" still had access to Sylar's power to understand things and that he "just didn't feel like himself".]]
* Despite his HeelFaceTurn, Paul Kellerman from ''{{Prison Break}}'' arguably has too much blood in his past to deserve what is probably one of the sweetest ends a character from that series can get, and this is without having needed to go through nearly as much adversity as the rest of the cast.
** He dies, and he technically undoes the conspiracy by proving Lincoln innocent, which kind of undid the pain he caused.
** T-Bag also counts. While he may not have gotten the "classy" end that he really wanted, the fact remains that almost all of his villainous peers got what's coming to them in one form or another, while he gets to go back to the relative comfort of his Fox River lifestyle that he basked in the start of the series. The fact that he ultimately outlives [[spoiler: Michael Scofield]] is a testament to this injustice.
*** The movie resolves this nicely. T-Bag is left to rot in solitary confinement for the remainder of his life and is last seen screaming Scofield's name. Karma hit him hard.
*** The movie (aka episodes 23-24) is a ''prequel'', explaining what happened in the 4 years that was skipped in the flash forward. T-Bag was shown in the yard hanging with his minions in the future, so the solitary confinement was probably temporary.
** And then there's Lincoln Burrows. Say what you will about [[spoiler: Christina Rose]], but her assessment on Michael Scofield's misguided love for his brother was more or less spot-on. A career trouble-maker that started the whole mess to begin with, constantly drags his brother into his nefarious affairs and has him fix it, an unabashed JerkAss, and ultimately gets an arguably undeserved happy ending at the expense of the person he owes it to.
*** In fairness the entire reason he got into trouble in the first place was because he tried to help his brother (the reason he took the job that resulted in him getting framed was because he put himself in massive debt in order to pay for Michael's Education. Finding this out is what causes Michael to try to help him when originally Michael was willing to let him die). Plus he had been framed for murder, and people who undergo that sort of deserve some happy ending.
* In ''{{Babylon 5}}'' 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!
** Though to be fair, who'd have ''wanted'' them to stick around even a moment longer to do that? Plus, we never really see that 'happy reunion', so just what happened to them after they left the galaxy and the series is mostly a matter of conjecture.
** Also the Minbari, who launch a genocidal war that nearly wipes out humanity only to go all, "Oops, sorry about that," and stop just before frying Earth. [[spoiler: Delenn too, for casting the deciding vote that starts the war in the first place. ]]
* The series ''Ivanhoe'' did this a lot. For instance, the first episode features an ashen-faced necromancer type who goes around murdering women and extracting their bones by a [[{{Squick}} squickful]] arcane process, leaving their flesh behind. He is doing this to try to resurrect his late wife, because he is ''lonely''. Eventually he has enough bones, and succeeds in raising his wife in the form of a nine-foot-tall bone monster with a ''tail''. Instead of utterly freaking out at this, she goes along with him on the final stage - the abduction and sacrifice of a princess - during which she smashes her way into a fortified castle and wipes out most of the castle guard single-handed. Finally, Ivanhoe and his companions track down the necromancer and his one-boney-wife-army, and stop them. And their spirits leave their bodies, are reunited in their original forms, before zipping up, presumably to heaven. ''There ain't no justice'' - not in this series, anyway.
* In season 2 of ''DegrassiTheNextGeneration'', Paige 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.
** Unfortunately, this is a case of TruthInTelevision, as it is rather rare for a rape victim to see their rapist get convicted.
* Jean Paul in ''TheWestWing''. Introduced in season four as Zoe's new boyfriend, 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, where he slips Zoe a roofie, possibly as part of a plan for terrorists to kidnap her. He's never seen again after this, besides a brief mention that he's stonewalling in telling the authorities anything. This may be due to Aaron Sorkin leaving the show, and the new producer trying to avoid his old storylines.
* Servalan in ''[[BlakesSeven Blake's 7]]'', presumably.
* In ''DoctorWho'' (the classic series) back in the first season, when they drop in on The Aztecs, the Bad Priest ends up in charge and the Good Priest is exiled. Also, the Doctor's girlfriend gets her heart broken...
** Well, Bad Priest was maintaining the historical status quo — human sacrifices, that is — which Barbara tried to change. For his time, he was rather normal than bad, and the ending, though sad, is inevitable: it's forbidden to change the past. Doctor, on the other hand, really messed things up with his marriage which makes him a kind of Karma Houdini this time.
** In season 14, "The Hand of Fear" arc, Eldrad hypnotizes and almost kills Sarah, then causes one person to attack the Doctor (and get killed) and another to go into the core to get roasted. All to cause the reactor meltdown and use the energy to regenerate himself. What does the doctor say? "It's scared, let's help it get home!" Eventually Eldrad [[spoiler:gets what he deserves]], but it seems like Doctor never blamed him for two deaths, not mentioning scaring Sarah and destroying a power plant.
*** Sarah even went as far as to say something like "I rather liked her but couldn't stand [[spoiler:him]], as if Eldrad only became villainous towards the end.
** Planet of the Dead. Oh God, Planet of the Dead. Lady Christina, an unrepentant thief, who has no motive for her crimes other than doing them for the lulz, manages to get off the hook just because she can shove her tongue down the Doctor's throat. This troper cheered when the Doctor [[spoiler:refused to take her with him]], but then grimaced when [[spoiler:he freed her from the police car]]. Seriously, police don't arrest jewel thieves just to be spoilsports, you know!
*** Justified by the fact that "the Doctor's" TARDIS isn't strictly his. He stole it and was perpetually on the run from the Timelords. He is, in fact, one of their greatest criminals.
*** A crime he committed, what, 900 years ago? Hardly comparable to Christina who goes around stealing things for the lulz.
*** The Master, after hearing how the time war ended, hints that the Doctor may be responsible for the extinction of their race. The Doctor neither confirms nor denys this.
** Arguably, the Master is like this. The Doctor often treats him as a friendly antagonist , despite the fact he's tried to destroy the world countless times and has [[spoiler:literally destroyed a third of the universe]]. If you and Hitler were the last two men of a certain race alive, would you burst into tears when ''he'' died?
** Rickston Slade from "Voyage of the Damned". All throughout the episode, all he seemed to do was whine, make rude comments about the other passengers (especially the genuinely nice couple, Morvin and Foon Van Hoff), and generally do ''nothing'' to help out. The real kicker though? At the end of episode [[spoiler:he actually '''''ends up benefitting''''' from all the death and destruction]]. Another character even [[LampshadeHanging comments on this]].
*** It was also a rather poignant comment on the concept of KarmicDeath: yes he was a jerk, but who are we to say that he deserved to die more than the others?
* Arguably, [[{{Torchwood}} Captain Jack]] is a milder version of this trope. He's never a villain, but is constantly indulging in morally gray activities and doesn't ever seem to pay directly for what he does. He ends up in multiple potentially RedemptionEqualsDeath situations, and not only survives, but is granted immortality. On {{Torchwood}}, he hides evidence of crimes, hides missing people from their families, kills people/aliens when it obviously isn't necessary, takes out his Gwen-related angst on other members of the team, tries to force members of his team to kill people they love when he can't bring himself to kill his psychotic brother Grey, and chooses saving severed hands over young girls being held hostage. But somehow, on his own show, he is always treated as if he's a freakin' saint. If something bad does happen to him, it's to show ''just how strong and cool he is'', and he usually gets over torture/disappointment/torture pretty fast.
*** [[spoiler: Ianto's death]] might have been a bit of extremely sick, twisted karma that Jack had a long time coming. [[spoiler: Grey's being evil]] and just [[spoiler: a lot of the torture in CoE in general]] probably count as well. He's hardly avoiding getting kicked around by misfortune these days.
**** Not to mention [[spoiler: having to kill his own grandson to save the rest of the children on Earth]].
** Denise in ''Children of Earth''. The politician who [[spoiler: suggested that the elite protect their own and select the lowest achieving schools]] gets to be in charge at the end.
* Megan on ''DrakeAndJosh'', which is just one reason [[TheWesley many fans hate her guts]].
* ''{{CSI}}'' had an episode dealing with the murder of an unpleasant TV star, where the [=CSIs=] figure out the murderer is another actress on the show. When confronted, however, the actress gives a DangerouslyGenreSavvy speech about the crime show genre, and points out that the [=CSIs=] don't have any real evidence, and if they're hoping for her to panic and confess based on their circumstantial evidence then they're highly mistaken. She then walks away scot free, with the closing line being Brass telling Grissom "Forget it Grissom, it's Burbank." The whole episode was one big in-joke about TV shows in general.
* In the re-imagined ''BattlestarGalactica'', Gauis Baltar managed to avoid truly paying for his numerous crimes (his hand in the complete destruction of the Twelve Colonies for starters), despite him continuing to act in [[DirtyCoward such a way]] that ''ensures'' the viewer fantasies about pummeling the shifty little bastard. The man even manages [[spoiler: to get a HappilyEverAfter with Caprica!Six in the GrandFinale.]] The writers tried to give him some redemptive actions in the final episodes, but it was (far) too little, too late for this troper.
** [[YourMileageMayVary One could argue]] that the amount of time he spent in season three being [[spoiler: imprisoned and tortured]] on one ship or another was fair enough comeuppance, and his eventual attempts to ''not'' be a dirty coward got him on [[RedemptionEarnsLife karma's good side]].
*** He also in fact spent the whole series wrestling with his issues and finding some genuine CharacterDevelopment while still being a bit of a jerk (whose genius inevitably led to vast consequences, positive and negative, as a result) at the end of it all. As the show spent so much time focusing on Baltar and his fractured psyche, he also managed to retain some measure of sympathy even as he yet again inadvertently messed up hugely because of his huge flaws.
**** His personal journey was moving to many other viewers even knowing he was a shifty little bastard and the cause of much suffering, but also responsible for saving humanity many times as well, and even ended up a pseudo-decent person. At heart Baltar represented the extremes of humanity so perfectly, and though most never learned what he had done, he suffered so much mental and physical torment, and there was really nothing more one could do to him. They just had to move on and deal with their lives. Still a Houdini though in some respects.
**** It's worth pointing out that just because Baltar [[spoiler: arrived on Earth]] safe and sound doesn't necessarily mean he got to live a peaceful long life and die at a ripe old age. The life of a forager or lonely hermit farmer on [[spoiler: the prehistoric African savannah]] probably wouldn't have been exactly safe; it's entirely possible he got mauled to death by a lion, died of a disease, ran afoul of a [[CannibalTribe cannibal tribe]] or otherwise got into a fight with some [[spoiler: Earth-native humans]] and got run through with a spear, or recieved some other gruesome comeuppance shortly after the writers stopped paying attention to what was happening to him. I've heard a couple of fans gleefully speculating about the possible grim fates that disliked characters might have met in the grim darkness of [[spoiler: the 148th millenium BCE]]...
** [[{{Freezer}} This troper]] would argue that Cavil/One qualifies. Personally responsible for wiping out two entire Cylon lines (Seven/Daniel 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). Instigated the Colonial Holocaust out of a twisted sense of justice for his Cylon ancestors. Not to mention the stuff he did to Ellen and Saul Tigh. His fate? [[spoiler: Goes the [[MemeticMutation An Hero]] route when an attempt at a truce goes pear-shaped - with all his crimes still hidden.]]
* Barney from ''{{How I Met Your Mother}}'' can be horrible to the numerous women he sleeps with (He stole someone's car and left her alone in the woods, got another girl arrested for trespassing and probably sold a woman on another occasion), but almost never gets what he deserves. When karma does punch Barney in the face, he doesn't really care. The only lesson he ever learns is "I'm awesome".
* A subversion worth mentioning occurs in MyNameIsEarl. 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.
** What's the difference?
* Benjamin Linus on ''{{Lost}}''. His 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 recently [[spoiler: actually KILLED Locke (but he comes back to life)]]. His punishment has been the occasional beating, but he's always been forgiven (somehow).
** Beatings in ''{{Lost}}'' are the equivalent of a slap of the wrist, considering that many of the characters have died horrible, horrible deaths, some of which include being buried alive, blown up while holding sticks of dynamite, shot down with flaming arrows, presumably eaten by a mysterious smoky monster, being blown up in a massive tanker explosion, getting accidentally shot while being pretty, and getting blown up. For some reason, explosions tend to happen a lot on that island.
* George Hearst in {{Deadwood}} is a hair-tearing example of the [[ButItReallyHappened historical figure type]] of this trope; he is a textbook CompleteMonster who has anyone who stands in his way of obtaining gold extorted or murdered, and forces the town to sell pretty much 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. [[spoiler: 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.''
* ''{{House}}''. Seriously, how does a topic about being a terrible human being and avoiding the negative consequences from it not mention the poster child? Any real doctor who behaved like that would be arrested. Seriously, he does something illegal or at least wildly unethical in every episode. And the drug use. And he treats everyone like crap 99.999% of the time, and they him still treat him like TheWoobie. What does he have to do to gain people's ire, intentionally let patients die? Oh wait...
** In addition to being the Doctor From Hell, House is also the Boss From Hell, much more than Michael Scott could ever be.
** This is partially {{Lampshaded}} in an earlier episode when House is told (I forget if it was Cuddy or the Admin who tells him) that the reason Princeton-Plainsboro could afford a doctor of his caliber is that House's rep is so bad that none of the bigger medical centers will touch him.
** He doesn't escape karma so much as not care, getting shot, punched, [[spoiler: going bonkers]].
* ''OneLifeToLive'' has 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...
** 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'' paralyzed for the rest of [[strike: his life]] [[SoapOperaDisease the season]], and got a slap-on-the-wrist rehab deal. This kid has a bright future ahead of him!
* ''{{Highlander}} the Series'' had 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.
** Other example: 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 just about 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.
* The cops on ''[[{{HomicideLifeOnTheStreet}} Homicide: Life on the Street]]'' often had to watch murderers they brought in escape punishment. In the finale, another Karma Houdini goes free, and it's the last straw for Tim Bayliss, who [[spoiler:resigns his commission and kills the criminal]].
* Vic Mackey on ''TheShield'', although YourMileageMayVary. [[spoiler: Vic Mackey ''is'' stuck in a sort of personal hell for the next several years. However, his personal hell consists of a $62,000 a year desk job where he will write boring reports and be loathed by his coworkers. Meanwhile, his subordinates all end up dead or in prison.]]
** Only if you consider death or jail proper karmic payback: Many will consider the fact that [[spoiler: his reputation as a good, if rough, cop is in flaming pieces, the few friends he had that aren't dead or in jail now loathe him, his wife and kids went into witness protection to hide from him, and maintaining a job he hates is all that stands between him and an instant life sentence]] a sufficient Option 2.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Music ]]

* BobDylan's song ''The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll'' tells the story of a wealthy white man who kills a poor black woman in 1960s Baltimore, and receives a six-month sentence in punishment. It's [[TruthInTelevision based on a true story]].
* "Karma Chameleon" by Culture Club.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Newspaper Comics ]]
* Both Dogbert from ''{{Dilbert}}'' and Rat from ''PearlsBeforeSwine'' frequently do terrible things for their own gain and/or amusement and rarely suffer any punishment for their actions. Of course, this is [[RuleOfFunny played for laughs]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Professional Wrestling ]]

* During the buildup to Wrestlemania IXX, Triple H was moved into a quick feud with Booker T. Seeing as most Wrestlemania feuds tend to have months, sometimes even years to develop, Triple H needed to get some quick heat. What he does is say some pretty racist things to get some cheap heat for their buildup. Come Wrestlemania does Booker T take the title from him? No, he gets beaten.
* In a RealLife example, WWE superstar Edge had an affair Lita, the then girlfriend to Matt Hardy, this that was later revealed to the public. What was Edge, who was married at the time, comeuppance? Why, having him him and Lita trounce Matt Hardy [[{{Kayfabe}} in a feud based on the actual action]]. Then he would go on to be a multiple world champion while Matt was the ECW champion for five seconds.
**To be fair Edge and Lita did help Matt get his job back(Matt was fired for talking about the whole thing on his site).

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Radio ]]

* Hercules Grytpype-Thynne in ''TheGoonShow'' would generally never sustain any comeuppance for using Neddie as a fall guy in his schemes. For example, after faking a disease outbreak in ''Lurgi Strikes Britain'', he and Moriarty disappear while Neddie becomes a wanted criminal ([[FreakOut and goes mad...]] [[CloudCuckoolander OK, madder]]). Granted, sometimes he ''does'' have something bad happen, such as ''Tales of Old Dartmoor'' (in which he ends up inside Dartmoor Prison as it sinks into the ocean...[[ItMakesSenseInContext yeah, it's a weird show]]), but they are vastly outnumbered by the ones where he gets off scot-free.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]
* Unfortunately all too common. Notably, [[NaziGermany Josef Mengele]] and the entire crew of [[MoralEventHorizon Unit 731]] (if you're interested, look it up, but bring some BrainBleach.) The latter sold their...research to the US and got off pretty much scot-free, even continuing jobs in ordinary medical fields after the war. [[SoYeah So...yeah]].
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Brian_Deneke Brian Deneke murder]]. a fight between the Jock and Punk cliques, and one of the punks was killed by one of the jocks, who was arrested, in a court of law was declared not guilty ''mainly because of his status and appearance''. This justice-loving troper was enraged beyond all belief, with her faith in the court system disrupted, and another notch added to her [[HumansAreBastards "Humans are Bastards"]] belief. To quote the webcomic {{Megatokyo}}: "What we have here is a failure of conscience."
** If it's any consolation, the jock, his brother, and his father fucked up his lucky break. The father and brother both ended up on probation, and the jock went to prison in 2001 for violating probation and underage drinking. He got out on parole in 2006 and his term expires this year though. So while it is still just a very light slap on the wrist, karma hasn't forgotten him.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Balcerzak John fucking Balcerzak]]. The man essentially handed one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims back to him, despite the protests of the two women who ''found the child in the first place.'' Later, he and his partner were caught making homophobic remarks about "reuniting the lovers." His punishment? Forced suspension (which he fought to have overturned, and received), followed by being elected president of the Milwaukee police association, during which he was cited for failing to protect officers working overtime, and failing to support an officer who was accused of homicide and later shot himself. Also, managed to defeat a recall election seeking to remove him from office.
* Tucker Max, whose life is a long line of {{Jerkass}}ery and WackyFratboyHijinx. Published a book on his escapades (aptly titled "''I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell''"), which is now being made into a movie.
* According to [[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.154974?page=1 this]], a teenage rapist was ''let off'' because his victim's parents ''forgave him'', and turned around and ''raped someone else shortly afterward.'' This troper (and everyone else commenting about the topic) were outraged, shocked, and disgusted. There is no justice...
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Religion ]]
* According to some Christian sects, Jesus Christ [[InvertedTrope inverts]] this trope by ostensibly allowing ''all of humanity'' to become a Karma Houdini via [[HeroicSacrifice his sacrifice]].
** Mainline Protestants generally believe that once someone has become a Protestant, they will never be punished by God for anything they do afterwards. Martin Luther himself said people who commit murder would not go to Hell. Universalists believe everyone will go to Heaven.
** Aversion: Catholics believe in Purgatory, where people who have been forgiven for past sins still have to suffer for it, although not forever, for the sake of growth. At the same time, people who die having committed unrepented mortal sins (sins of a serious nature) actually deserve Hell.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Theatre ]]

* The Duke in Verdi's opera ''Rigoletto''.
* Alberich in RichardWagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' is the BigBad, yet somehow manages to not get killed; he's nowhere seen in the KillEmAll ending of ''Götterdämmerung''. It's debatable if he survived that long, however: an indefinite amount of time passes between ''Siegfried'' and ''Götterdämmerung'', and Alberich's only scene in the latter is him appearing as a dream-like vision to his son Hagen. One could easily interpret this as him being a SpiritAdvisor already dead of old age, but Wagner (who relied heavily on the extended InfoDump) never says anything about what happened to him after he was last heard laughing in ''Siegfried''.
** Which, incidentally, is also the current status of ''DoctorWho'''s [[spoiler:Master]].
* Jigger in ''{{Carousel}}''. "He got away."
* Jim Conley in ''Parade.'' [[spoiler:He rapes and murders a girl, but Leo Frank takes the fall for it and is eventually lynched. Also, Conley testifies against Frank in court.]]
* Cinderella's Stepmother in ''IntoTheWoods''. While her daughters get blinded by pigeons, she, who is probably the most responsible for Cinderella's misery, makes it through the show more or less intact.
** However, it is strongly implied in the finale that [[spoiler:she, along with her husband and daughters, got lost in the woods and starved to death. Not such a Houdini after all..]]
** And there are the princes, both of whom [[spoiler:abandon their wives to be slaughtered by the giantess (one actually is, AND no mention is ever made of her two children surviving the attack on the castle.) One prince seduces a married woman, and when she learns her lesson, [[RedemptionEqualsDeath she promptly dies.]] The princes both wind up with new women by the ending.]]
* In the Musical "Little Shop of Horror", Audrey II is an alien plant that convinces meek Seymour to kill people for him. Despite the play being a comedy, Audrey II not only survives at the end of the play, but gets away with his alien invasion. The Frank Oz adaptation originally had this ending, but test audiences found it too sad and it was replaced with a happy ending where Seymour kills Audrey II.
* At the end of ''RomeoAndJuliet'', despite the Prince's declaration that "All are punished", Friar Lawrence has nothing bad happen to him personally. The Prince forgives his involvement with Romeo and Juilet's secret marriage and their other scheming because he had good intentions. And this is a play in which [[DiabolusExMachina Fate]] has it in for just about everybody else.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* Magus in ''ChronoTrigger''. In one sequence, the player can be the bigger man and have Frog decide that [[NotWorthKilling killing him won't bring his dead friend back]]. While Magus can join your party at this point, no one ever thinks of asking if Magus can at least [[CurseIsFoiledAgain reverse the disfiguring curse]] he put on Frog. It may be that the only way to reverse the curse is to ''kill'' Magus, as only those endings where the heroes chose this option get this in the ending. Naturally he's not volunteering this option. However, the Playstation port has Frog becoming Glenn regardless of what you choose.
** Also, at one point when Magus mocks Frog, Frog ''thanks'' him for the "[[CursedWithAwesome curse]]".
*** Well really, if he was normal, he wouldn't be able to use half of his techs, he wouldn't have been able to [[SuperDrowningSkills swim across the river in 600 A.D]] to attack Magus' army, and the frog body probably makes him more agile or something.
**** Also, the queen seems quite taken with his new form. Turns an old fairy tale on its head nicely it does!
* Mr. Match (Hinoken) from ''MegaManBattleNetwork'' joined [[TheSyndicate the terrorist organization World Three]] twice. In the third game, he even tricks Lan into bombing the government's main HQ, something Lan angsts about. Yet he's still free in later games, and Fireman even shares his soul with Megaman as a powerup, appearing in every game (except 5 for some reason) including spin offs.
** Seems ''Battle Network'' has a lot of these, especially in the second game. Pride nearly killed several foreign representatives; Dark/Dusk committed what amounted to an act of genocide. And yet nobody bats an eye when they show up as allies in the fifth game.
** Fortunately, returning Navis in 6 are controlled by relatives of the former owners (barring Match), as for the Navis things still stand though.
* Subverted in ''{{Disgaea}}'': After brainwashing Jennifer and assisting in an unprovoked invasion of the Netherworld, Kurtis pulls a HeroicSacrifice and appears to get off scot-free with an all-expense paid trip to Heaven... until you get the next chapter of course, where it turns that the PowersThatBe decided that he wasn't going anywhere until he's done some serious community service. And by community service, we mean they turned him into a [[EverythingsBetterWithPenguins demon penguin]] and hired him out to do gut wrenching and dangerous labor for minimum wage -- and to the people he wronged, no less. The afterlife's kinda funny like that.
** The real KarmaHoudini in this series is Super Hero Aurum in the Super Hero Mao ending. His punishment for all the bad stuff he did (some of it borderline MoralEventHorizon)? Serving Mao as Geoffrey. If the Raspberyl story is canon, then this ending is ALSO canon. BOO! This is massive contrast to [[AndIMustScream his fate]] in the normal ending.
*** Just because Geoffrey returns in Raspberyl Mode doesn't mean the Super Hero Mao ending is canon. Remember that Raspberyl was there when Aurum said that he'd be Geoffrey again in the Super Hero Mao ending, yet she was surprised to see him back in Raspberyl Mode. It's more likely that Geoffrey's return is a result of Mao's experimentation on Aurum. Mao himself says Geoffrey was brainwashed into being more loyal.
*** Wouldn't being brainwashed [[IronicHell to be the loyal servant of the very person you wanted to kill]] be a significant punishment?
* In a fashion, Arthas from ''{{Warcraft}}'': While objectively his comeuppance is probably being saved for a World of Warcraft expansion or some other future product, prerelease advertisements for the Frozen Throne expansion challenged the player with the line "if death couldn't stop him, can you?" Instead of allowing a chance to do so, the player is forced to help him get what he wants.
** Players will get the pleasure of offing him at the climax of ''Wrath of the Lich King.'' But keep in mind that by "climax" Blizzard means "the final patch before the ''next'' expansion is released," so that probably won't be until some time in 2010...
*** WordOfGod states that Arthas himself no longer exists, there is only the Lich King. An official quest in game confirms this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
**** [[spoiler: Not really, according to the Rise of the Lich King novel Ner'zul did try to merge with Arthas in the latter's mind, but Arthas "killed" Ner'zul and is now the dominant one.]]
** Player characters are pretty awful, too. There are plenty of quests where one can go around slaying innocents...
** Possibly lampshaded in one Outland quest. A Horde leader demands that an entire race of bird-people surrender, but the bird-leader refuses, declaring that he is enlightened, no longer a crazy person like the other members of his race, and he goes to live in a huge city/sanctuary, where he is protected by enormously powerful creatures and the army that fights for them. The Horde leader backs down, of course.
** Garrosh Hellscream. He insults, threatens and provokes anyone he doesn't like at any given opportunity. This includes the king of his race's most hated enemies at a diplomatic meeting, and a neutral party at a neutral sanctuary. And Thrall does nothing about it.
*** [[Itgetsworse]] [[spoiler: Garrosh exiles all non-Orc and non-Tauren from Ogrimmar.]]
* Don't forget about Grom Hellscream. He was the first to drink demon blood and advocate everyone else doing it, he slaughtered countless humans, dwarves, and elves (and others) for fun, and then after getting redeemed still attacks some humans for no reason and drinks demon blood a second time knowing full well what it is. Sure, he has a HeroicSacrifice at the end, but he gets idolized by the Horde despite his life being 90% evil, 10% good.
* Then there is Kerrigan from ''{{Starcraft}}'', while in this troper's nothing more then sweet payback with a side of benefits. She was still a KarmaHoudini. One can only hope Raynor can transcend to a god or all is lost. Then again, most of Starcraft's cast were of BlackAndGreyMorality so it is just another day at office.
** This troper enjoyed the change of pace, and had pretty much worn tired of the rest of the cast anyway. If they reverse her victory using anything other than a deus ex machina return of the Xel'Naga, consider my interest in this series over forever Blizzard!
* Captain Qwark in ''RatchetAndClank'' manages to do a pretty good job. Thanks to his status as Comic Relief, he manages to survive being both the {{Dragon}} and the BigBad in the first and second games, respectively, doing galactic scale, [[OffstageVillainy off-screen damage]]. It's implied that millions were killed or kicked out of their homes. His punishment is mainly embarrassment, such as [[BalefulPolymorph becoming a monkey temporarily]], but he manages to become a hero again in the third game. He is even responsible for accidentally handing the fifth game badguy the MacGuffin, and he is now 100% in the clear.
* Yuna from ''BreathOfFire IV'' turned Elina into a monster forcing her boyfriend to mercy-kill her, and is largely responsible for turning BigBad Fou Lu into an OmnicidalManiac. The game ends with him alive and well, and announcing his intention to do it all again.
**Apparently the creators meant to include his death in the ending sequence but ran out of time, and thus it looks like he never got his just desserts.
* In the second ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' game, [[spoiler:De Killer is an [[CareerKillers assassin for hire]] who kills the fourth case's victim in addition to (presumably) many others in the past. He kidnaps and threatens to kill Maya if you don't acquit his client, and then gives testimony in court via radio to try to pin the crime on someone innocent. He gets off scot free.]]
** And in the third game, [[spoiler: Ron [=DeLite=], a.k.a. [=Mask*DeMasque=] the GentlemanThief]]. While he didn't commit the murder, he ''did'' [[spoiler: commit four incidences of grand theft. When he was framed for a fifth, he was put on trial - and found Not Guilty with the help of Phoenix Wright - for ''all'' of them. And due to the court's warped version of the "Double Jeopardy" law (you can't be put on trial for the same crime twice) this means that he remains unpunished even after his crimes are publicly exposed]]. In the epilogue, he explains that [[spoiler: he quit stealing and became a security consultant along with his wife Dee - along with a side business of ''selling plans to criminals''. He comments, rather accurately, that "Sometimes I think maybe we're the worst criminals..."]] But since he's [[spoiler:a GentlemanThief]], he's ''supposed'' to get away with it.
*** Of course, [[spoiler: the whole reason that case even happened is that Ron got caught by Luke Atmey on his very first crime, indicating his crime-planning abilities completely suck. So by selling his crimes to other criminals, he may actually be making up for his past actions by lowering the crime rate...]]
** Pick a Prosecutor from the first three games who isn't called Winstron Payne or [[spoiler:Manfred von Karma]].
*** Miles Edgeworth begins as a bitter rival, but eventually grows into one of the series' protagonists, eventually even [[spoiler:stepping in for Phoenix]] in one case, and getting his very own spinoff game. This is mainly due to his [[spoiler:HeelFaceTurn halfway through the first game, when he decides that Prosecuting should be about the truth rather than winning]]. But what people forget is that until then he was a perfectionist, known as the "Demon Prosecutor", who would do anything for a guilty verdict and ''never lost a case in his life''. Not so bad? Remember, in the Phoenix Wright universe the death penalty is given out willy nilly for ''any'' murder. Now just think of all the innocent people that Edgeworth would have got sentenced to death before Phoenix came along... This is even worse when one remembers that in the first case where they come head to head, it is [[spoiler:Phoenix himself]] that Edgeworth is trying his hardest to get killed.
**** Let's not forget that Edgeworth pulls yet another one of these when he gets a slap on the wrist for ''the exact same thing Phoenix later gets'' '''disbarred''' ''for doing'' '''once''', when Edgeworth's implied to have forged evidence several times (and even does so in 1-2, presumably, with that suspicious update to Mia's autopsy report).
** Franziska von Karma is just as bad, yet unlike Edgeworth she is ''unrepentant''. She never relents from her desire to keep a perfect record, even when she knows that the client cannot possibly be guilty. When she turns up as one of Phoenix and Edgeworth's gang of chums in the third game she ''still'' obsesses over her desire to "crush" them... But in the end they all waltz off into the sunset together!
*** I think we're supposed to take that as her wanting to beat them fair and square, with the defendant being genuinely guilty.
** Perhaps the worst case is Godot, however. In the final case, [[spoiler: he is found guilty of murder. Now, this murder is justified, and the player is supposed to feel a little guilty that he is sentenced to death, just as Maya is. And this troper did, a bit. Yet then ''Godot himself'' points something out: it could have been Pearl he murdered accidentally. Now, imagining how different the ending scene would have been if this was the case made it difficult to buy Godot's sentence as a tragedy from that point on. He willingly shoved a giant sword into what could have been a little girl, and yet at the end Maya suddenly decides he's the nicest bloke in the world, and he turns up as a grinning ghost alongside Mia in the final screen... Riiiight...]].
*** He also could've [[spoiler: stopped the entire thing by burning the letter, and/or warning Phoenix about the plot. But he didn't, because he wanted to appear like a hero. Some plus points for honesty, but there's no way everyone can forgive him so easily; it's mostly his fault.]]
* ''FinalFantasyTactics'' appears to play this straight, but then subverts it: [[spoiler:Delita, who got away with manipulating half the nobles into killing the other half, used his best friend as a blunt weapon, and manipulated his Queen in order to ascend to the throne himself. And depending on your interpretation of the ending, all of the living people who could have outed him for it are all dead. However, just after the credits roll, he gets a comeuppance in that the woman he manipulated, who the plot reveals he did genuinely care for in his own twisted way, stabs him in the chest and he is forced to kill her in self-defense. The game ends with him staggering around before dropping to his knees and mournfully questioning whether it was worth it. He either died or he lost everything to get where he was and was completely alone.]]
** A better choice for Karma Houdini is [[spoiler:The Church of Glabados. Who get away with hiding the truth that the saints they worship are actually [[OmnicidalManiac Demons]] responsible for much of the strife in the game. They even kill Orran Durai, one of the few good guys left after the war as a heretic because he published a paper detailing the truth of the war. It takes 400 years before the truth is exposed.]]
* Albedo from ''{{Xenosaga}}'' certainly applies. Throughout the trilogy, he manages to [[spoiler: MindRape MOMO twice, abuse and mercilessly torture and kill the Kirschwassers, kill many with Proto Merkabah, torture Jr. by giving him various visions of the past involving Jr,'s dead love interest Sakura,]] and manipulate many in his selfish desire for his goals. What is this goal? To ''make Jr. hate him so he can be killed.'' And he actually does succeed. Jr. gets pissed and offs him. Then Jr. CRIES after the guy who decimated so many lives is finally killed off. But that's not the end of it. [[spoiler: Albedo is then revived by Wilheim as a testament, and gains uber powers. He just toys around with the party until near the end, when he, for the first time ''ever'', actually manages to try to do something helpful for the party when he tries to stop Yuriev from merging with the Zohar and becoming all invincible and such. However, Gaignun, the third dude in their power trio, who had spent all of episode III possessed by Yuriev, intercepts and allows Albedo to merge with Jr.'s consciousness as it was originally when they were born. This is all Albedo ever wanted, and he goes to sleep blissfully inside Jr.]] The most enraging part about all this is that whenever Albedo manages to top himself in evil, Jr. gets pissed at him for about 5 minutes before Albedo gets defeated by the party, and then Jr. instantly turns into a whimpering dog that begs Albedo not to leave him. Even ''MOMO'' sympathizes with him, even after he basically had his way with her. What.The.Hell.
* In one of the paths on the visual novel ''{{Crescendo}}'', the heroine of that path will be gang-raped, and no matter what the player does, the rapists fail to get any comeuppance at all. The heroine even makes him promise not to report the incident to the police. One can only assume that the rapists continued into the sunset twirling their mustaches and giving each other high fives.
** Since this is a Japanese [[{{hentai}} H-Game]] it's pretty standard fare, and she's lucky [[NaughtyTentacles worse things]] didn't happen.
* A debatable karma Houdini from ''FinalFantasyVIII'' is [[spoiler: Seifer]]. He [[spoiler: tortures Squall and abducts Rinoa after his FaceHeelTurn]]. Even after it becomes evident that he's being used, he still continues. One could argue that what he did wasn't quite ''that'' bad, however.
** Oh really? [[spoiler: Torture and abduction]] are not that bad?
** To be fair the game never explicitly mentions how much Seifer was willingly being used. It was obvious there was some [[BrainwashedAndCrazy brainwashing]] involved which might have been responsible for the former. Certainly by the time of [[spoiler:the abduction of Rinoa]] it's made pretty obvious that Seifer at that point was brainwashed.
** [[spoiler:A more certain one is Genesis, who manages to get away alive, and ends up still running around doing whatever...After being directly responsible for SEPHIROTH!]]
*** It's unlikely he ever intended to turn Sephiroth like that, rather than just try to make a point of them being the same. How Sephiroth reacted was hardly something anyone could have foreseen. More important is that he killed everyone in his own hometown, including his own parents, turned the people who defected with him into monsters and started a completely pointless war.
*** Sephiroth himself is a bit of a KarmaHoudini as well. He's done terrible things to the planet and thousands of people directly or indirectly [[spoiler: but he has yet to properly die within the continuity. All the times he has been defeated thus far, though he suffers pain, he never expresses remorse or understanding of his wrong doings and always seems to be able to revive himself.]]
**** By the time at which the original game begins, Sephiroth's personality consists entirely of being generically evil enough to choose to be an OmnicidalManiac and of being cool beyond all reason. There is no Anakin Skywalker left within him, and he will never appear weak, so he can never repent. He does basically suffer the standard karmic comeuppance for his actions in being defeated and destroyed, but has inevitably proven too cool to stay down at least once...
* Subversion: the ''[[{{SuperRobotWars}} Super Robot Taisen]]'' series is an idealistic franchise... and therefore, even villains who got away scot-free in their series do not escape the hand of karma. Just to make a point, in episodes with ''[[{{MartianSuccessorNadesico}} Nadesico]]'' [[spoiler:the player is either allowed to kill off Kusakabe (Impact, MX, J), or his plans are screwed up to the point where he is unable to go on and found the Martian Successors (A, R)]]. The same thing happens to Garimos and Gil Barg from ''Dangaioh'' (see below), [[spoiler:who are actually killed in Impact]]. Hard to escape a KarmicDeath when you have to deal with a band of HotBlooded heroes who have an habit of [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu Punching Out Cthulhu]].
** Certain major antagonists such as [[WellIntentionedExtremist Bian Zoldark and Maier von Branstein]] are regarded with a certain degree of respect [[spoiler:after they are killed]]. This may be partly due to the fact that they are [[spoiler:related to some of the protagonists]].
*** Something of a subversion, several characters seem intent on punishing themselves for things that ''no one else blames them for''. For example Elzam von Branstien/[[spoiler:Rätsel Feinschmecker]] takes the blame for the "Elpis incident". [[spoiler:A group of terrorists, lead by [[PsychoForHire Archibald Grims]], took Elzam’s wife Cattleya as a hostage to guarantee his escape. When he remotely opened the docking bay door allowing her to return to the colony interior he also released a highly potent toxic gas. Elzam was faced with the choice of either destroying the section of the colony that she was on or allowing the gas to poison the colonists. Despite the fact that she was already fatally poisoned he felt terribly guilty for destroying the docking bay to save the rest of the colony.]]
**** All subverted with Asakim since killing him will give him what he wanted. This makes life even harder for Setsuko since she had to bear the brunt of the abuse while he and Rand act like buddies most of the time.
***** At least until something thinks of a way to take him out like Earth in a Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy fashion
* On the other hand, some villains who ''did'' die in their series can be convinced in ''SuperRobotWars'' to make a HeelFaceTurn. For example, [[spoiler:would-be EvilOverlord Haman Karn, who in the ''GundamZZ'' died after, among other things, killing millions via a ColonyDrop, can be recruited. Because she has a crush on one of the protagonists.]] Granted, they're usually made less evil than they were in their series to facilitate this, but still.
****** Blame that on the [[VictoryGundam Zanscare Empire]] devoid of anyone that wasn't a CompleteMonster, at least in Super Robot Wars Destiny. Sometimes, [[HeWhoFightsMonsters she who fights monsters]] doesn't have the time to become one herself.
* In the ''DawnOfWar'' Expansions, Warboss Gorgutz constantly loses to the enemy army but when backed to a corner always has an escape plan and manages to get off the planet while his army is getting killed by the enemy.
** He is a blood axe, that explains why he runs away rather then go down fighting. Besides Orks are natural pests, so he has to come back and pester the races duking it out.
* In ''PokemonMysteryDungeon 2'', Team Skull (as always, consisting entirely of [[AlwaysChaoticEvil poison Pokemon]]) constantly provides conflict, going out of their way to hurt or discredit the main characters while scheming to steal various valuables for themselves. In a later dungeon, they mug the heroes and run off with an item that is necessary to resolve a particularly significant crisis, only to be ambushed by an unrelated group later in the dungeon. Once the main characters show up, the Skuntank leader pretends to accidentally drop the item, allowing the heroes to reclaim it. After the heroes leave, a conversation raises the possibility that this one act may have redeemed everything evil they had done up to that point. Are there any players out there that buy this?
** On the brighter side, [[spoiler:Drowzee]] makes a genuine HeelFaceTurn, and it's hard to lump him into this trope.
* YOU! Yes, you, in ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic''. Most of the characters who travel with you are Lightsided but will mostly only be slightly annoyed if you decided to kill random innocent beings for no reason. Juhani, Carth, Mission and Jolee turn against you if you finally declare your intent to take over the entire galaxy, but up to that point, you literally get away with murder.
** Not only that, but if you do choose the Light Side ending (even if it's for all the wrong reasons), you turn lightsided. Apparently slaughtering your way through everyone else in the game is cool as long as you ''really'' want to beat the crap out of a traitorous party member.
** This is taken even further in the sequel game and various peripheral media. Regardless of whether or not the player indicates their character took the Light Side ending in the last game, everyone speaks of him in the most glowing praise conceivable as having done no wrong before, during, or after the events of the first game. An OmniscientMoralityLicense is invoked by WordOfGod which causes him to border on MartyStu territory.
* You! Yes, you, in ''JadeEmpire''. It's entirely possible to spend the first 99% of the game breaking people, hurting things, framing innocents, helping slavers, kicking puppies (you can actually kick puppies if you're evil enough)... and ''then'' at the very end of the game, decide that godlike power isn't worth dooming the world to a slow, lingering death. Your alignment shoots up to 90% Good, all your allies forgive you (even though you've magically bound them to your will) and everybody lives happily ever after. Except Wild Flower. Because you shattered her mind. To let a sadistic demon take it over. You horrible bastard.
* You! Yes, you, in MassEffect. You can spend the game as a massive JerkAss intimidating and using your gun for diplomacy, but at the end of the game you're still going to be the saviour of the galaxy and a shining example of humanity one way or the other. Even if you choose to let the council die and admit you were looking for a way to get rid of them to bring humans into power, everything is justified by you [[IDidWhatIHadToDo doing what had to be done]].
* Morcalavin in ''{{Heretic}} II'', the villain of the story. One of the {{Precursors}}, who botched a spell to make his race AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence and became a power-mad EvilOverlord creating a plague that turns people into rabid zombies or mind-controlled slaves. At the end of the game, you learn that the way to rid the world of the plague is to fix the spell, allowing Morcalavin to become indeed a god. Even though he's magically cured of his madness, it's still a bit annoying that he is rewarded rather than punished for his crimes...
* The G-Man in ''HalfLife'' is probably karma-proof as well as bulletproof.
** Since nobody has any [[PowersThatBe idea]] [[MysteriousWatcher who]] [[MysteriousProtector he]] [[{{MIB}} is]] or what the heck he's even doing, he might not be deserving of karma payback. For all anyone knows he's [[ChaoticGood keeping things from getting even worse]] even if he is using [[IDidWhatIHadToDo morally ambiguous]] methods.
** I consider the only being the only character in the series that dwells inside the UncannyValley punishment enough for his crimes. Whatever they may be.
* Subverted in ''TalesOfVesperia'' had minor villains Ragou and Cumore. Ragou basically oppressed his subjects and fed the ones that couldn't pay to his pet monsters. Cumore, in the search for Pharaoh, drafted innocent civilians into what amounted as a suicide mission. However, their positions and wealth guaranteed that they wouldn't be touched by the law. It looks like they'll get away with everything until [[spoiler:Yuri [[VigilanteExecution hunts them down and murders them]].]]

** Played straight, however, with [[spoiler: Dedecchi, the Aque Blastia thief]]. This is fixed in the PS3 version, where a new optional event allows the party to capture him. Arguably, not that I sympathised any with Cumore or Ragou, with [[spoiler: Yuri himself]].
** I was surprised how quickly [[spoiler: Raven]] was forgiven after [[spoiler: he brought Estelle straight to Alexei and then fought the party. While he does save you, it was his fault that you didn't get out of the building sooner.]] Yet after a few knocks on the head, everybody just lets [[spoiler: him]] back in the party.
* Reaver from ''{{Fable}} 2''. When you first meet him, he seems like a pompous yet somewhat awesome pirate king. Then he asks you to do a little favor for him: [[spoiler:secure a sacrifice to the Shadow Court so that he can remain young and beautiful beyond his natural years. It's a choice between making some poor young girl who got lost the sacrifice or willingly giving up some of your own youth and beauty.]] You can't kill him, though, because he's necessary to take down the BigBad. This troper has faint hopes for a downloadable content chapter where you get to beat the seven shades of shit out of him.
** And the above is just the tip of the ice berg. Reaver is personally responsible for the demise of Oakvale, and was busy selling the protagonist to the BigBad while he/she was off performing the aformentioned favour. He also kills off a certain comic relief character, though that might count as an act of goodness to some.
*** Not to this troper! [[spoiler: BARNUUUUUUUUUM!]]
* A particularly bad one appears in the first ''GoldenSun''. The "evil thief" Dodonpa, who kidnapped a wealthy merchant with the intention of sending repeated ransom demands and who is trash-talked by most people in the village he runs, appears in a sidequest in which he sics a monster on the heroes, then is trapped under it when he tries to stab them in the back while they're distracted. At the urging of the merchant - who witnessed all of this - the heroes move the monster off of Dodonpa and forgive him for attacking them. His ultimate sentence is to replace the merchant in his dungeon cell, to which his underlings have a key, and receive no treatment for his twisted ankle.
* The chief antagonist of ''{{Psychonauts}}'', [[spoiler: Coach Oleander]], gets off with naught but basically having to say to the campers "Sorry I [[spoiler: had you all kidnapped and your brains removed to power my weapons of mass destruction.]]" He even gets all his psychological [[FreudianExcuse daddy issues]] magically resolved by Raz. His accomplice on the other hand falls out of a high tower to a probably very messy death.
** Well, it IS hinted that [[spoiler:Mikhail and Maloof, the local 'mob', wired his car to explode]]
* Every single villain in the ''{{Pokemon}}'' games. Their actions range from running a nationwide criminal empire (Giovanni), to unleashing and attempting to control a rampaging titan with the power to either create continents or expand the oceans (Maxie and Archer), to attempting to hijack either the avatar of time or space to ''destroy the universe'' and remake it in typical AGodAmI fashion (Cyrus). Neither them nor their associates, willing or not, suffer any repercussions.
** Except, of course, ''being defeated by a ten year old''. And considering the size of the ego these villains have, humiliation of that sort is more than a little slap on the wrist.
** At least Giovanni, Maxie, and Archie pull a HeelFaceTurn at the end of their respective scenarios, and Neo Team Rocket is permanently disbanded after the Radio Tower incident. Cyrus, after being defeated, merely states in no uncertain terms that he will find some way to become a god, and vanishes.
** Not to mention that Cyrus blew up a lake filled with magikarp that most likely died because they couldn't breath. And as said above, after beating him he just goes away. Where are the police? Oh, here he comes but he isn't strong enough to do anything.
* [[AllThereInTheManual Star Sapphire]], being the smartest of the [[TouhouProject Three Mischievous Fairies]], manages to avoid most of the punishments her fellow pranksters undergo when their antics backfire.
* In the DS VideoGameRemake of ''DragonQuestIV'', the main villain Psaro slaughters your BelovedPeasantVillage just like in the original; and a number of other hideous crimes as well, and that's even before his MoralityChain is killed. Yet you can resurrect said MoralityChain and ...return in time? after the end of the game to save his soul from becoming a OneWingedAngel. And then he joins your party to kill the demon who "tricked" him into declaring genocide on the human race.
** Also, the hero's childhood friend comes BackFromTheDead in the ending, but not anyone else of the party.. Apparently to justify the above. (Help me out here, does this happen in the original NES version?)
*** In the original NES version she does come back to life.
** Speaking of Karma Houdini, don't forget the Master Dragon from the same game. If you pay close attention to the BackStory, he killed the Hero's Human Father, separated him/her from his/her mother, and forbid her from ever revealing who she was to him/her. Of course he's supposed to be a GOOD GUY, so he has reasons for this right? It's because the Hero's father was human.
* Saemon Havarian in ''BaldursGate II'' is only mildly villainous, but he's the most annoying character in terms of getting away with things. He keeps dumping his own troubles and enemies on you in both the original game and the expansion, and coming back and belittling what he did and acting like you're friends before doing it again, but you never get to take revenge successfully, even if you set the biggest thieves' in the country on him. The way he always gets away really fits the "Houdini" part - and in this case it's just not karma he's eluding, but a pissed-off player character as well. Considering that even beings of godlike status often fall to the might of the PlayerCharacter, it's about equally impressive.
** Saemon can die in Brynnlaw when you're fighting the Pirate Lord. If he does, however, you can't leave the island by boat and must go to the Underdark directly taking a portal on Spellhold, but doing so skips the Sahuagin city completely. Since Saemon plays an important role in Throne of Baal, I don't know if his death is permanent, however.
*** Presumably, he [[IGotBetter gets better]], like several characters whom the player may or may not have killed in BG 1 did in BG 2, and lampshades this if you ask him about it.
* In ''GrandTheftAuto'', basically every PlayerCharacter. CJ from ''San Andreas'' sticks out in my mind most because he's presented as more of an AntiHero than a VillainProtagonist. Going by the story mode he murders plenty of people who didn't deserve it.[[hottip:*:Like the manager and his girlfriend that get murdered over ''rap lyrics'']] What happens to him at the end? [[spoiler: "Let's go get something to eat!"]]
** This is also the series in which you can avoid an arrest warrant for mass murder by entering a save house, so it happens to players many times every game.
*** PAH! Real GTA Ironmen use ONLY the police bribes for normal play!
** Even during normal gameplay, a player can kill hundreds of people, cause chaos across the city, the worst that can happen to you is that you get caught by the police or "get wasted". Does this result in a highly publicized trial of the most violent criminal in the city's history? No, you'll probably just lose your weapons and a bit of money.
* Rowd from ''SuikodenII''. It is true that he is a GloryHound that seeks a better life for his ill sister. However, with his methods to achieve it, including helping Luca Blight slaughter the Unicorn Brigade that he led... ''because the job didn't pay enough'', or even trying to kill the hero and Jowy so he can get promoted... we never know how he ends up, as he vanishes from the story after [[spoiler:Jowy becomes the King of Highland]]. Sources say that he finally got what he wants and lives a quiet life with his sister, but let's hope she's dead by his karma.
** Technically Jowy himself also fits this trope. After his [[spoiler:defection to the enemies side he orchestrates the defeat of Luca with Leon and ultimately helps the heroes defeat him. You would naturally be thinking at this point how does this qualify for this trope? However it's what he does next that makes him fit this trope. Ultimately instead of agreeing to make peace with the Hero he decides to carry on with the war causing countless more deaths - ironically since the war carried on for a while he probably in the end caused more deaths of innocent people than Luca who had [[AllThereInTheManual reasons for hating the protagonists]] though this still does not excuse his crimes. Ultimately Jowy can meet his end at the end of the game but the best ending and the one regarded as canon has him carrying on travelling with the Hero and Nanami as if nothing had ever happened]].
** ''SuikodenIV'' has the elves of Na-Nal. They aren't pleased that the ''human'' islanders struck a deal with the Kooluk, so they manipulate matters and spark off a ''massacre'', which the Elven elder gloats about. Ironically, the heroes stopping the massacre before it spreads too far probably ''caused'' their karma evasion, as once the Kooluk finished killing off the human natives, they likely would've moved to the elves next...
* In ''FreedomFighters'', the BigBad, General Tartarin, actually does get his comeuppance midway through the game. He is replaced by TheMole, Colonel Bulba, who betrays your organization, has your allies killed/captured, and tries to have you taken out (it's implied he sent you to kill Tartarin so he could grab all the glory). But you never get the opportunity to put a bullet in his brainpan.
* Pretty much every villain in the ''TouhouProject'' series qualifies. Doesn't matter if they covered Gensokyo in red mist (Remilia), stole the season of spring with the intent of reviving a demonic cherry tree (Yuyuko), spread themselves through all of Gensokyo as a mist to get people drunk and attract oni (Suika), stole the entire moon (Kaguya), stole all of the humans' faith--including that of the Hakurei Shrine--to establish themselves as the primary gods of Gensokyo (the Moriya crew) or even ''tried to incinerate all of Gensokyo'' (Utsuho). At the end of their respective games they're all happily drinking tea with Reimu without even so much as a slap on the wrist for what they've done, and in some cases (Remilia and Suika) they even become friends with Reimu.
** This troper can't say anything for the others, but Suika was just lonely because humanity had forgotten her (there's a whole damn song about it on Touhou's CrowningMusicOfAwesome page) and only two other Oni are active, and all she did was cause everyone to party a lot...
* In ''{{Xenogears}}'', the main antagonist, Krelian is never fought or killed. He had been responsible for many heinous crimes but was never brought to justice.
* The Komato in ''{{Iji}}''. They commit genocide of one entire alien species, attempt genocide of another (humans), and guess who dies? ''The one who repented.''
** That's because RedemptionEqualsDeath.
* [[spoiler:Shichiou and April]] in PrincessWaltz. [[spoiler:The first gets a sort of half assed 'forever in death with my beloved, who is not holding a grudge ending. The second might be a god and just sort of skips merrily away at the end after reviving Pigeon. Then again, she didn't really do anything particularly ''bad'' either.]]
* Leasath commanding officer Diego Gaspar Navarro from ''AceCombat X: Skies of Deception'' doesn't get caught and brought to justice, and while he fails to overrun Aurelia or sell his beloved Fenrir superfighters, part of his XanatosGambit still plays out as the conflict gives a boost to Leasath's military-industrial complex.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

* In ''Gaming Guardians'', Ultima wipes out whole cities, kidnaps, maims and replaces Randarch, tortures Radical both physically and psychologically - yet while Radical still sees Ultima as her EvilTwin, everyone else seems to be ready to let her join the GG after her HeelFaceTurn.
* Ethan of ''CtrlAltDel''. Seriously, considering how violent he gets, his friends still continue to room with him, his fiancée adores him no matter how basely he tries to grab her chest, his boss never bats an eye when Ethan skips work or refuses to pay for merchandise from his own job, and he only managed to get arrested ''once'', but never suffered anything worse than a night in jail, despite having been depicted going on multiple violent rampages. In fact, the worse thing that's ever happened to him had nothing to do with his actions, and that was his fiancée's ConvenientMiscarriage.
** Probably because he's not necessarily a ''bad'' guy, just a [[MrViceGuy very, very flawed]] one.
** Don't forget that he now OWNS the video game store.
*** It has given him some problems, though, as he's not really any good at running it. His attempts at trying to make it work have resulted in having to work long hours and learn new real-world things, which he doesn't take well.
* Rayne of ''LeastICouldDo''. No matter what loathsome thing he does, the rest of the cast is rarely even ''mad'' at him come the next strips. [[RefugeInAudacity Supposedly this is funny.]]
* Broat, BigBad of ''GetMedieval'', ends up the favorite of the Emperor of China, and a ''very'' successful silk smuggler.
* In the world of ''[[http://www.crowfeathers.net Crowfeathers]]'', hero and villain alike are reunited with their loved ones after death. That's the way it works there.
* In ''Exploitation Now!'', a mad scientist eventually becomes the protagonist and ultimately survives at the end of the comic with only one dead friend as punishment for all she did [[CerebusSyndrome back when the comic was still wacky]]: murdering, stealing, hacking, war starting [[CrossesTheLineTwice (and masturbating as she watches news reports of the death toll)]], and mutation, all inflicted upon the innocent masses (and later, [[KnightOfCerebus government black-ops]], but they deserved it).
* In ''LookingForGroup'', the undead warlock Richard whimsically and casually conducts any kind of psychotic and murderous pranks as a matter of course, quite often as comic relief. The only time he gets his comeuppance is when he's tried by a demonic court for not being evil enough, and even then, he 'adjourns' that court at his own leisure and proceeds to mutilate every participant.
** He's a KarmaHoudini even with the fanbase. Every time he crosses the MoralEventHorizon, he [[CrossesTheLineTwice crosses it twice]], and he's loved more every time he does it.
* Karen in ''PennyAndAggie'' thinks of her boyfriend Marshall as her 'greatest achievement', gives him a handjob against his will in the shower, starts a smear campaign against Penny that includes Penny's friend Sara being outed as a lesbian and accusing Penny and Sara as rapists, tries to 'out' a boy for being a Muslim, makes Aggie contemplate suicide after crushing her for getting her heart broken, cheats on her boyfriend and much more. Her only comeuppance so far is getting her hair yanked by one of her cronies, having her 'Party Queen' image ruined and then dumped by her boyfriend. It's devastating to her, but not quite enough considering that she could have ruined many people's lives for the sake of her own ego.
** Also, Cyndi, one of Karen's 'accomplices' and the one who pushed one of Penny's friends into an eating disorder and shows sadistic glee about humiliating others. She was given 'immunity' in return for her help of taking down Karen, and has currently gotten away scott-free ... but maybe only for now.
* Parodied in ''InWilysDefense''. [[spoiler:The ending shows that Freeze Man's punishment for his rampage was being turned into a Met. Several people in-comic were upset at this lenient punishment, but no one cared what they thought.]]
* In the JackChick tracts, virtually anyone can get out of going to hell with a last-minute repentance and declaration of faith regardless of their crimes up until then (although, as he often points out, you're already going to hell). There are quite a few examples of KarmaHoudini, on a different level, though.
** In "Gomez Is Coming," Ricky Valdez suffers no consequences for killing the titular Gomez's younger brother while firing randomly into a crowd after he converts.
** In "Lisa," the father doesn't suffer any legal consequences for molesting Lisa.
* Quain'tana from ''Drowtales'' abused her daughter Syphile so cruelly and horrifically that the trauma turned Syphile nihilistic and almost as bad as she is. She never gets any sort of punishment for this. In fact, [[MoralDissonance she's almost always portrayed as a heroine and Syphile's the one who'se treated as being in the wrong, both instory and out.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]

* Arguably, the eponymous [[VillainProtagonist protagonist]] of ''DrHorriblesSingAlongBlog''. Arguable because, [[spoiler: while he does escape retribution for his crimes and joins the Evil League of Evil, the death of Penny renders it all [[PyrrhicVillainy rather hollow]].]]
** ThisTroper sees it pretty hard to argue that Dr. Horrible can even begin to qualify as this. He was mainly portrayed as a WellIntentionedExtremist, with none of his crimes ever putting anyone in danger; well, until [[HeroAntagonist Captain Hammer]] pushed him one too many times. The death of Penny was completely unintentional, and more Hammer's fault than his own. In fact, most of the opinions that this troper hears are that Horrible ended up far ''worse'' off than he deserved.
* ''SurvivalOfTheFittest''. The BigBad Danya, who, so far, has managed to avoid any serious repercussions for his crimes (although he was injured once) is definitely one of these. Arguably certain villains also avoid getting their just desserts, experiencing relatively peaceful deaths as opposed to the violent slaughter they visited on their victims.
* In the WhateleyUniverse, one of the most evil villains we have met so far is Dr. Emil Hammond, a normal who has experimented on and tortured mutants for decades. He was captured, but in a huge 'OJ Trial', his super-expensive legal team (hired by the mutant-hating Goodkind family) not only gets him off but makes it look as if some evil mutant supervillain has been framing the poor man. He gets hired by the Goodkinds as a researcher, and when fourteen-year-old Trevor Goodkind manifests as a mutant, Hammond tortures the kid for days. In another story, we see that Hammond has an entire lab devoted to agonizing experiments on teenaged mutants. Punishment so far? None at all. He has a bigger lab.
** So far, anyway. The overall plot has advanced about one semester out of what seem to be a planned four years; it may be a bit early to claim Houdini-hood for villains who simply haven't gotten their comeuppance just ''yet''.
* The most [[TVTropesWikiDrinkingGame egregious]] example by far is [[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/195918 Dad]], who was able to avoid having to face the consequences for his inexplicable acts of random violence...[[AutobotsRockOut by rocking out really hard]]. [[spoiler: Also, his head caught on fire again. Seriously, what's up with that?]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* ''HeyArnold'': Sid and Stinky never get any comeuppance for telling everyone that a classmate wears bunny pajamas. Worse, they're regulars, and worst is that Arnold never harbors any resentment towards them for this. (This editor remembers seeing them on the same go-kart team in a later episode.)
* ''FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'': Bendy ("Everyone Knows It's Bendy") totally owns this category, followed a close second by Goofball ("Imposter's Home"). While the protagonist is [[BrattyHalfPint immature]] and [[MoralityPet his nicer friend]] is not optimistic as opposed to the one of ''CampLazlo'', fans dislike both episodes because of this.
* Lady Tremaine, from ''{{Cinderella}}'', is one of the few Karma Houdinis in the DisneyAnimatedCanon, who as a result of the original story's {{Disneyfication}}, pretty much gets away with making Cinderella's life a living Hell for twenty years...
** The closest to punishment she ever got was [[spoiler: being humiliated (along with Drusilla) in front of the King and the local noblemen after the Fairly Godmother's wand she stole turns them into frogs and then, when reversing that spell, makes them wear Cinderella-like clothing, complete with brooms and all. Keep in mind that this happens in ''Cinderella III''', which happens right after the end of the original Disney movie and has Lady Tremaine, aside of abusing the wand's magic, manipulating a remorseful Anastasia (who's been retconned into a NaiveEverygirl) so she takes Cinderella's place with magic.]]
*** To be fair, in the "original" Perrault version, the younger of the two stepsisters ''was'' [[spoiler: much less of an evil bitch than the other one]].[[http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault06.html]]
* In WhatsNewScoobyDoo, several villains were allowed to get away with what they did if [[WellIntentionedExtremist their intentions were good]] and/or if "nobody got hurt." The most egregious example was the Scooby Snack Monster, who, despite actively trying to ''kill'' several characters over the course of the episode, was pretty much forgiven instantly because she was trying to protect her father's factory.
* Speaking of Karma Houdinis in the DisneyAnimatedCanon, {{Pinocchio}}'s got three of 'em. Foulfellow and Gideon trick Pinocchio twice, first to send him to Stromboli (who lost his star attraction and his investment in Pinocchio when he escapes, so it can be assumed the karma bullet manages to get a decent hit on him), and later to Pleasure Island and The Coachman, who they're in cahoots with. Pleasure Island lures in and encourages boys to behave badly so they'll be [[TransformationTrauma transformed into jackasses]] and sold to salt mines as workers. Yeah, they turn children into slaves, wayward as they may be, and they NEVER get their comeuppance.
** In the original book, the (unnamed) fox and cat end up as [[spoiler:miserable street beggars; the cat who used to fake blindness really became blind, and the fox had to sell his tail.]] They beg Pinocchio to help them, but he essentially tells them "good riddance".
** This troper read in the book ''Mouse Under Glass'' that there was a planned idea that, while heading off to save Gepetto from Monstro, Pinocchio would run into Foulfellow and Gideon again. They try to convince Pinocchio that they can help him, but apparently [[RuleOfThree the third time's the charm]], because this time he doesn't listen to them, and when they attempt to chase him down, they get caught by the police. I wish they had gotten to keep that scene in.
* Mandy from ''TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy''. In fact, Billy should probably be mentioned as well. It doesn't matter if he's dumb, it wouldn't stop him from being a Karma Houdini sometimes.
* While we're talking about CartoonNetwork shows, let's add the kids of ''EdEddNEddy'' to the list, especially Kevin, who does things like abuse Eddy's privacy (involving his middle name) in "Your Ed Here", and interfere with Eddy's attempts at getting at good school picture in "Smile for the Ed". There's also the fact that the kids feel justified in abusing the largely innocent Edd (whose only crime is being a milquetoast who lets himself get roped into Eddy's schemes) and Ed (whose only crime is [[CloudCuckoolander his weak grasp on reality]]) just as much as Eddy. And in "A Town Called Ed", after Eddy tries to get even with the kids for snubbing him, his plans are turned against him and all the other kids come out and ''literally'' laugh at his misfortune.
* ''{{Futurama}}'': Bender in "The Bird Bot of Ice-catraz". Not only does he act like a jackass throughout the entire episode and destroy the ecosystem of the penguins, he also turns penguins homicidal. And he gets away with it all. Of course, Farnsworth is as much to blame. Really, Bender does this '''[[HeroicSociopath all the time]]'''.
** Lampshaded and subverted in "Three Hundred Big Boys", where Bender steals a cigar, and says "Ha! Le Grande Cigar is mine! And with absolutely no consequences!" while being watched on closed circuit camera. At the end of the episode, he remarks on how he hasn't learned a lesson; when the cops show up and start beating him, he shouts "Alright! Closure!"
* ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'': [[spoiler:Fire Lord Sozin]] murdered his best friend through inaction, led an [[LastOfHisKind almost complete genocide]], drove a number of species towards extinction ([[spoiler:the flying bison, the dragons, and the flying lemurs are down to a handful if that]]), burned at least one army and village to a crisp, and conquered a sizable chunk of Eurasia-sized Earth Kingdom in his life time. After all that, he... died peacefully in his sleep, ''[[MethuselahSyndrome at the age of 102]]'', likely in the comfort of his palace, revered at large. ''And'' he got a comet named after him, a continued family-line on the throne, and a nation dedicated to his honor and wishes. He just barely began to regret his actions during the very end of his life. (So at least his conscience didn't let him off even if karma did)
** He never did find the new Avatar, though, essentially wasting the rest of his life searching for him.
* David Xanatos in ''{{Gargoyles}}'': even after his HeelFaceTurn, the fact remains that he barely got a lick of retribution for all the things he's done, and is apparently still hurting people - just not the main cast anymore.
** This Troper considers the attempted kidnapping of his son by [[TheFairFolk Oberon and Titania]] to be rather more than a lick of retribution, and WordOfGod agrees:
-->''And yet Elisa "Wouldn't want his karma." What goes around comes around. All that arrogance, had to receive some comeuppance. (Can anyone say Oberon?)''
** Come to think of it, Oberon himself is more of a Karma Houdini than Xanatos.
* Fenkman from ''Whatever Happened To Robot Jones?''
* ''[[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles']]'' Agent Bishop, a [[WellIntentionedExtremist well-intentioned]] anti-alien government agent who in his first appearance kidnaps the turtles, prolongs an invasion of Earth via inaction, and is revealed to have tortured turtle ally Leatherhead--and that's just the beginning--is not punished for it; in fact, as revealed in the show's sixth season, set one hundred years in the future, the [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld long-lived]] Bishop eventually becomes ''President of the [[TheFederation Galactic U.N.]]''. While karma plays around with him a bit during the course of the series--much to his chagrin, his actions accidentally endanger Earth more than once, and it is revealed that he loses his then-best friend sometime down the line--he himself gets off scot-free.
** Of course, he does have that whole HeelFaceTurn thing. I think even the TURTLES are a bit shocked when he suddenly reveals he's become a good guy, and is no longer racist...
* ''{{WITCH}}'': Season two BigBad Nerissa. She ends up [[spoiler:[[LotusEaterMachine trapped in a fantasy world]]]]. But since she doesn't know it and the fantasy is that of her getting ''everything'' she wanted...
** At least she got what she deserved in the comic the series is based on. She was painfully obliterated by the very powers she wanted to take for herself.
** Ditto for Mongol in ''JusticeLeagueUnlimited'', who gets trapped in his own LotusEaterMachine. Lampshaded when Batman comments that his fate is 'too good for him'.
* [[BatmantheAnimatedSeries The 1990s Batman cartoon]] made the Riddler into a Karma Houdini in his first episode. While Batman and Robin stopped him from killing the {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}} who had driven the Riddler to villainy in the first place, the Riddler still got away scot-free. Better yet, he got the satisfaction of knowing that the executive now suffered from a crippling paranoia of his return, which made for a pretty sweet consolation prize.
** ''SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'', due to being CutShort, ended with Lex Luthor never significantly punished for any of his schemes, along all his suspicions of Superman seemingly publically vindicated. What's more, while Supes does give Darkseid a pretty brutal beating, in the end, he is still the ultimate ruler of Apokolips, his legions of subjects as devoted to him as ever.
** This said, TheDCAU mainly averts this, as by the end of ''JusticeLeagueUnlimited'', we clearly see the vast majority of the setting's villains either killed by Luthor and his forces in the Secret Society, killed by Killer Frost (in hopes of impressing Luthor) or killed by Darkseid after his accidental resurrection, leaving only an odd dozen who ever make it back to earth. By the end of the final episode, both Luthor and Darkseid are engulfed by the anti-life equation, presumed dead (though Batman [[GenreSavvy doesn't think it will last]]). That said, Atomic Skull, Bizarro, Cheetah, Evil Star, Giganta, Heat Wave, Killer Frost, Sinestro, Star Sapphire, Toyman and Volcana are let off by the league with a five-minute head start. Interestingly, because of the [[ExecutiveMeddling Bat-Embargo]] most of Batman's rogues gallery avoids explosive decompression or anything beyond Arkham, though ''BatmanBeyond'' shows the eventual (not pretty) fates of Mr. Freeze, Bane, Ra's Al Ghul and The Joker.
* Another one from Disney: the Siamese cats from ''Lady and the Tramp'', who completely disappear after getting Lady muzzled and kicked out of the house. At least their owner is implied to have done a {{Heel Face Turn}} at the end and stopped hating dogs so much. The original cut was apparently worse, with the cats being far more malicious. Meanwhile, the rat who attacks the baby towards the end and does get comuppance was portrayed as a comic bumbler. Walt Disney himself insisted that their personalities be switched with the rat portrayed as sinister (which also added some much needed tension to the climax) and the cats portrayed as more mischievous than evil.
* For a series infamous for tangential gags and a tenuous sense of accountability at best, ''FamilyGuy'' [[SubvertedTrope somewhat subverts]] this trope in "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing," where Peter [[spoiler:blows up a children's hospital to get rid of an Anheuser-Busch beer ad.]] No more mention is made of the incident until the end, when his boss tells him [[spoiler:he's going to jail. "You just blew up a children's hospital! You thought people would ''forget'' about that?"]] Although his only punishment is to go to jail "[[MediumAwareness Until next Sunday at 9]]".
* In the Homecoming episode of ''KimPossible'', Bonnie cheats her way into being the Queen (who should've been Kim) and kisses Ron right in front of Kim's eyes, and then spends the entire episode just whining. Apparently, her punishment is a cute boyfriend in her own league. Bah...
** She does get hers in the [[GrandFinale finale]], sort of: [[spoiler: She finds out that because she skipped too many classes during her senior year, she can't graduate until she makes it up in summer school.]]
*** Played straight with Cyrus Bortle and Jack Hench. Bortle is a freaking mad scientist who invents the most hideous devices on the show. If used even semi-realistically instead of as RuleOfFunny, they would be HighOctaneNightmareFuel level - such as Mind Control where the person knows they are being controlled and understands their actions, but cannot override the control. He remains unpunished, even though he is shown selling his devices in [[AuctionOfEvil random auctions]]. Jack Hench is basically the "supplier" of evil technology to the [[BigBad Big Bad's]] but is never arrested or punished for it.
* [[TheSimpsons Bart]] is often able to get away with this, usually at the expense of Homer. [[RuleOfFunny It is usually funny though.]]
* Mertle from ''{{Lilo and Stitch the Series}}'' most of the time, in fact she was responsible for a loss in a dog contest to Lilo AND ended up winning it after she sabotaged Lilo's chances in one episode (She put caffeine in his water bottle. Causing Stitch to go nuts during his turn when it was fed to him). Though she relinquished the trophy when Lilo and Stitch helped save her pet (which was one of the experiments). Still her snobbish attitude never changes throughout the series, even in the fourth movie finale.
* The Kangaroo in ''{{Horton Hears a Who}}'' constantly calls for the destruction of the speck Horton insists an entire civilization exists on for only the vaguest of authoritarian reasons. She even continues calling for the speck's destruction after the Whos demonstrate undeniably that they exist. Yet seconds later Horton's giving her a cookie and all is forgiven.
* Angelica from ''{{Rugrats}}'' usually gets punished for her bad actions. But in the ''All Grown Up'' episode "Petition This!", she tries to stop a petition by Kimi to ban cellphones at school for VERY selfish reasons, manipulates Chuckie into helping her, tries to force Chuckie to wear contact lenses against his will, pretends to get food poising from the cookies that Kimi was handing out to ruin her support, ''breaks into Tommy's house to steal embarrassing photos to humiliate Kimi and destroy her petition chances'', which leads to Chuckie and Kimi's relationship almost being destroyed. She gets no comeuppance whatsoever.
* Captain Hero of ''DrawnTogether'' has destroyed an entire planet, caused the deaths of thousands on innocent people on Earth, and has also raped a few people (including his own parents). Yet the only time has ever been punished was when he was caught with a photo of his naked teenaged self.
* Jerry of ''TomAndJerry'' tends to provoke Tom into battle, and gets away with it unscathed. In one episode, he [[spoiler: gets Tom and Spike kicked out of their house and becomes the new house pet, and is shown to have stolen a large amount of food from the owners.]] And people are supposed to like Jerry.
** Not to mention the French Revolution episode where Tom is happily minding his own business, Jerry and his cousin come along and cause chaos and [[spoiler: right at the end they guillotine Tom - despite their having been in the wrong the whole time - and]] they get away with it completely.
*** There are rare times Tom does get him back though
** Jerry isn't the only one. Biff and Buzz of that racing movie get [[DarkIsNotEvil Gorthan]] to an ice pole, screwing him over. Then when Gorthan complains as he drifts away on the iceberg he is stuck on, the two of them ''just pass him off as a sore loser''. They are ''never'' reprimanded at all for this.
* In one arc of ''ShadowRaiders'', [[TokenEvilTeammate Femur]] steals the good guys' Battle Moons and get a lot of people killed, but isn't punished. [[spoiler: In the series finale, they never do defeat [[PlanetEater The Beast]], just send it far away, where it starts eating worlds again...]]
* Digeri Dingo from TazMania, but only in certain episodes like "Friends For Strife" and "Doubting Dingo".
* Nearly every action based animated series from the 80's-90's has the main villain not have his comeuppance. The series gets canceled before there's a final episode, offing the villain would prevent a sequel or spinoff, and the villain can't be killed in a kid's show, leaving the villain to be last seen in a non-resolution episode, imprisoned in a way where they'll probably escape, or transformed into something relatively harmless. Skeletor, Hordack, Mumm-Ra, Ganon, Cobra Commander, Shredder, Dr. Paradigm/Pyranoid, Mon-Star, Galvatron, Venger, anyone from Pirates of Dark Water, Captain Planet, and extends to live action serials like Captain Power and Land of the Lost (1991), and almost every sci-fi series on FOX.
* Cartman in ''SouthPark'' is a frequent offender. A lot of the time, he gets his, but he tends to avoid comeuppance when he crosses the MoralEventHorizon (the Scott Tenerman, ginger kid, trying to kill his mother, HIV, and hospital attack are examples of this).
* While Kevin and Sarah are the obvious choices from {{Ed Edd n Eddy}}, it could be argued that TheMovie did this to [[spoiler:''the Edds themselves.'' After years of pulling countless scams and pranks on the other kids, several of which caused some of the kids to get seriously injured, they're instantly forgiven and beloved by all simply because Eddy had a JerkAss brother? What?]] YourMileageMayVary though.
** Aww c'mon, the guys got way worse in the TV show more often then not ''even when it wasn't their fault''. They were [[spoiler:due for a happy ending at least]].
*** Agreed. The aesop of the movie is faulty, but [[spoiler:after the bull the Eds took, especially in [[WallBanger episodes like "A Town Called Ed"]], [[MasterKnight this troper]] isn't complaining]].
* ''TheIncredibles'': As Syndrome's right-hand woman, Mirage played an active part in helping to hunt down and kill dozens of superheroes, and later sending the [=OmniDroid=] to threaten the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people. But nothing happens to her. The last we see of her is at the launchpad, helping the Parrs reach the [=OmniDroid=] in time to stop it.
*Peggy Hill, quite possibly the biggest example of a non-violent person getting these. She purposefully reminds her son of nightmares he had to spite him, accuses her husband of being racist solely so she can enjoy a double standard, and taunts her son minutes after a breakup, and suffers no consequences for any of those. It gets even worse when she does get called on what she does. She sabotages her niece's boyfriend so he fails his GED test, and after Hank being angry for a couple seconds all blame for failing is on the boyfriend. She loses $1,000 to a con man, gets it back through a plan with a million in one chance of working that basically boils down to "break down a hotel wall and steal money" and extensively brags about it.
* So far, [[StarWarsTheCloneWars Cad Bane]] has murdered at least two Jedi, killed countless clones and Senate Guards, held a group of Republic Senators hostage (killing one of them), freed a Hutt crime lord, stole a holocron containing sensitive data, and threatened to kill Anakin Skywalker's Padawan...all over the course of just three episodes. And he got away with it. ''All of it''. And, the biggest setback he's suffered so far is losing a few expendable starships and droids.
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