Karma Houdini / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

Note: Before the end of The Hays Code, it was far less common for Films to feature a Karma Houdini as the first rule of the code was that "The villain must always get his comeuppance by the end of the movie," to make it clear that he should not be seen as a good role model for young, impressionable viewers. (This usually applied only to the Big Bad, as it would take far too much time showing every single one of the Mooks getting punished.) This, of course, doesn't mean that villainous Karma Houdinis didn't exist in movies from that time period. But they were much more of a rarity until the code was dissolved in The '60s.

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#-D

• 12 Angry Men: The real killer. Well, at least as far as we know, given that we never actually see him, and his fate isn't within the scope of the movie. Particularly, if the defendant is the killer (it is never proven that he isn't, only that the burden of proof wasn't met).
• 21: Cole Williams, the brutal casino security chief is the primary antagonist, who not only makes things very difficult for the protagonists but brutally beats caught card counters and steals millions in winnings from one of the characters, and his only penalty is loss of his job due to being made obsolete by computers. At the end of the film he is shown on vacation in Caribbean with his stolen millions.
• 21st Century Serial Killer: Charles, the serial killer whom Aaron wanted to learn from. He murders several people over the course of the film, and pins the blame for all their deaths on Aaron. The last we see of him, he's wooing a girl in another town, where he's likely to commit more murders.
• '71:
  • Captain Harris covers up Sergeant Lewis' attempt to murder Gary and their allegiance with the Protestant paramilitaries is not revealed.
  • Quinn is a terrorist and he conspires to kill Boyle, the older and less violent IRA leader, and yet he is the only one of the "Provos" to survive the movie; despite Boyle asking Harris to kill him, the Captain allows Quinn to live and makes him an ally. He also lets him know that Boyle wants him dead.
• 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 asleep, she 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.
• 300: The Ephors. We see Leonidas pay them a hefty sack of gold for their counsel against the Persian invasion and they claim their Oracle's prophecy prohibits Leonidas from fighting. This turns out to be a blatant lie as they told him this to sell out Sparta to the Persians for even more gold. As much as they deserve it, we never get to see the rotten old bastards be burned alive for this. Although, considering that what we see them do is part of a story told by Dilios, chances are that they were found out.
• Alien: Resurrection: Johner and Vriess were involved in the kidnapping of innocent people and delivering them to the military to be used as the hosts for the aliens. They both survive without consequence. Some of the scientists and soldiers themselves who carried out the project also escape.
• Alone With Her: After some illegal surveillance, a dognapping, and two murders, the film ends with the Villain Protagonist in a new town, picking a new girl to stalk.
• Amazing Grace and Chuck: Jeffries. The president and the campaigners know he was responsible for the bomb that killed Amazing but there is no evidence that would stick in court. The president orders him to divest himself of all his companies, stocks and shares, but he will probably transfer them into the names of members of his family and remain the person in real control. While the government agencies will watch him like a hawk for any missteps, after this president leaves office future administrations may be more lenient.
• American Beauty: Colonel Fitts murders Lester at the end of the film, but gets no comeuppance (at one point, the ending would’ve shifted blame to Jane and Ricky too).
• American Dreamz: Sally strings along her Dumb Is Good war veteran boyfriend, William, for popularity in the game, then cheats on him with Martin, the host (who incidentally has been subtly fixing things on her behalf). William and Martin both die, but she doesn't seem very affected by this, and she winds up becoming the new host of American Dreamz in the epilogue.
• Amsterdam (2022): The Committe of Five aren't charged with anything over their plot overthrow the US government, while Dillenbeck is smeared by them and court-martialed for exposing the conspiracy.
• Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy:
  • The Public News Anchor never got punished for pushing Veronica into the bear pit.
  • The motorcycle driver who punted Ron's dog Baxter over a bridge because Ron absentmindedly threw a burrito at him was never arrested for it.
  • Veronica herself also got away with sabotaging the teleprompter, which caused Ron to say the f word on air and got him fired but she was never fired for sabotaging the teleprompter while Ron got full blame.
• Arlington Road: Oliver Lang orchestrates the bombing of the FBI headquarters and frames his neighbour for it, the death of said neighbor and his girlfriend and the kidnapping of his neighbor'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.
• Arsenic and Old Lace: Dr. Einstein appears to get away scot free at the end of the movie, escaping in the confusion as his pal Jonathan gets arrested. He's an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain so it's not as glaring as some of the other examples.
• Back to the Future Part II: It's debatable whether or not Needles was punished for "chicken-daring" Marty into submitting the illegal fax which got him fired in the future 2015.
• The Badlanders: It's a Western remake of The Asphalt Jungle, in which the now-sympathetic heisters get away with it completely.
• The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans: Throughout the film, Terrence McDonagh steals drugs from his station's property room, bets money he doesn't have on college sports, robs people of their drugs, commits acts of Police Brutality against the elderly, extorts a young woman into having sex with him, extorts a college quarterback into going along with a point-shaving scheme, tips a drug kingpin off about a drug bust, and loses the key witness to a quintuple homicide. At the end of the film, he arranges for a group of gangsters who were trying to kill him to be killed by a different group of gangsters, gets the excessive force complaints against him dismissed, wins $10,000 betting on a single football game, gets his hands on a huge bag of uncut heroin, solves the quintuple homicide by Framing the Guilty Party, and is promoted to captain.
• The Bad Seed: Averted in the film version, after being played straight in the book and play (and in the 1985 Made-for-TV Movie), thanks to a Hays Code-inspired coda in which she gets struck by a random bolt of lightning.
• Bad Teacher: Elizabeth decides against getting a boob job in the end, but she still (presumably) keeps her job and gets away with her various crimes.
• Balibo: The Balibo Five and Roger East's killers respectively go unpunished.
• Barbarella: 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, angels have no memories.
• The Batman film series (1989-1997):
  • Most of the arch-villains do get what's coming to them (which isn't always necessarily death), but the Mooks have a nasty habit of getting away. This started in the 1989 film, when The Joker's black-hatted, black-jacketed henchmen get the heck out of there when the Batplane starts strafing what's left of the Joker's parade. We never see any of those guys again, except for the two or three who later show up in the Joker's getaway helicopter (and it can be implied those last ones just flew off after their boss fell off the ladder to his death). Sure, those goons were pretty incompetent (throughout the entire film they manage to kill only one person, a cop who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time), but they did freely associate themselves with a mass-murderer and laugh along with him through all the atrocities, so it's definitely troubling news that they managed to escape. Commissioner Gordon does assure everyone in the final scene that "our police have rounded up all of the Joker's men", but... how would Gordon know exactly how many men the Joker employed?
  • When the Batboat storms the Penguin's underground base in Batman Returns, the Poodle Lady, the Thin Clown, and several other members of the Red Triangle Gang decide there's no point in fighting anymore, and quietly slip away. And it's very likely they made good their escape, since the police never showed up and Batman was too busy settling his scores with the Penguin and Catwoman to bother with anyone else. So apparently the gang members never faced justice for multiple counts of kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, arson, grand theft automotive, general bullying, and — as Bruce Wayne puts it — "millions in property damage."
  • In Batman Forever, those weird, neon-colored street toughs Dick Grayson picks a fight with in the alley immediately scatter when Batman shows up, and make good their escape because Dick vents all his anger on Batman and the scene ends with Batman taking him home. The depressing implication is that those punks never got punished for gleefully attempting to rob (and possibly rape) that teenaged girl.
  • Batman & Robin has Spike, who races Barbara Wilson on motorcycles for some prize money; he has his homeboys help him cheat to win and casually directs some sexist remarks at Barbara. We never do learn what becomes of Spike... but since Dick Grayson had to drop out of the race to save Barbara from falling to her death from a bridge and all the other riders had wiped out earlier, it's almost certain that Spike not only never got his comeuppance for nearly causing two people to die due to his reckless antics, but won the race and pocketed the prize money.
• In Better Living Through Chemistry, Doug Varney gets away with stealing drugs from his pharmacy, and engineering Jack's murder, chiefly due to dumb luck and a better suspect dropping dead on his doorstep.
• Big Fan: Kind of Invoked on Paul's part. He refuses to sue Quantrell Bishop, or press criminal charges against him for beating him to the point he required hospitalization, because he doesn't want Quantrell to be kicked off the New York Giants football team, which would threaten the Giants' chances of winning the championship game. As a result, the worst Quantrell gets is a temporary suspension.
• By the end of Big Game, the mastermind behind the terrorist plot gets off scot-free, with everyone who knew about his involvement dead and no-one suspecting him of anything.
• The titular character of The Big Lebowski doesn't get in any legal trouble for all of the suffering he causes. His plans to get his trophy wife Bunny killed, frame the Dude for botching a hand-off that was already fake, and make off with a ton of money all ultimately don't work, but the law is protecting him due to Lebowski being a Villain with Good Publicity.
• In Bill, most of the villains literally walk away at the end, despite having been responsible for several deaths. Although the film is a silly comedy, it is sticking to historical-accuracy enough not to kill off characters who weren't killed in real life and so the Big Bad King Philip II of Spain obviously has to live. However his (fictional) henchmen, even his psychotic, torture-loving dragon Lope, just walk away with him and they all go home to Spain.
• Black Christmas (1974): Billy, the killer from the original, gets away with murdering 7 people and driving Jess insane. The remake however has him killed at the end.
• Blade Runner 2049: Although Niander Wallace's plans do get foiled and he loses his right-hand woman at the end of the movie, he himself is left largely untouched, and nothing's stopping him from opposing Deckard and the rebelling Replicants again at a later date.
• Blame (2017): Melissa falsely accuses Mr. Woods of rape (though given his obvious attraction to Abigail, he's not completely sympathetic) and seemingly suffers no comeuppance for it. Ambiguous Ending aside, the fact that this is basically a modern version of The Crucible indicates the unlikelihood she was ever intended to be punished.
• Blame It on Rio: Valerie Harper's character. Granted, what her husband Michael Caine did was wrong, as were the actions of her sort-of-niece, Michelle Johnson. They shouldn't have been together, her age aside. But Harper started all this by cheating on Caine with Johnson's father, then keeping him at arm's length, always being angry with him. Yet she gets to glare, lecture, and sneer at everybody at the end. Caine screwed up by screwing the underage Johnson — given. But the film made it clear her sudden distance and anger based on her own wrong was what left him such a mess that he responded to the girl's seduction. Then again, Rhoda was another Karma Houdini.
• In Bloody Birthday while two of the three killer kids Curtis and Steven are arrested for their parts in the murders, the third kid Debbie escapes with her mother pretending to have been innocent and assuming a new identity, we see before the end credits that she has killed a mechanic and will likely continue her murder spree.
• The Book of Revelation: Daniel's rapists are not caught nor even identified in the film.
• Born Yesterday: Harry Brock, a Corrupt Corporate Executive, comes to Washington, D.C. to bribe some congressmen into passing a law that would give him and his cartel monopoly control of the international scrap iron market (quite a big deal so soon after World War II). When his fiancee and her new reporter boyfriend scheme to expose him, he slaps her around and threatens to have them both killed, with the fiancee mentioning to the reporter that it wouldn't be the first time he'd done it, either. Although the fiancee does eventually manage to make him back off by holding for ransom the assets he's signed over to her over the years as part of a tax dodge, he is never brought to account for the bribery, the assault, the murder he apparently committed, or any of the other crimes he has committed and she could testify about.
• The Bourne Series:
  • The Bourne Identity: Manheim makes his escape after killing Alexander Conklin and is never heard from again.
  • The Bourne Ultimatum: Paz disappears entirely after sparing Bourne.
  • The Bourne Legacy: Definitely the biggest example in the series, as Big Bad Eric Byer and all his associates get off scot-free with all their various crimes throughout the movie. With blame shifted to Pamela Landy, Noah Vosen and Ezra Kramer each possibly become this. That said, Byers has a My God, What Have I Done? moment in his final scene.
  • Jason Bourne: Though Robert Dewey and the Asset both get exactly what’s coming to them, Heather Lee, though an ambiguous figure, has her fate very much left up in the air at the conclusion of the film (likely for another one). Also, DI Edwin Russell, though painted more as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, has no consequences brought down upon him either and Bauman’s betrayal of Aaron Kalloor is also apparently never discovered.
• Breaking the Girls: Sara and Nina get away with two murders by pinning everything on Alex.
• Brokedown Palace:
  • Nick Parks/Skip never receives punishment for setting up Alice and Darlene, the girl who he also scammed (and in essence ruined her life) and for all anyone could know is still doing the same to other unsuspecting women.
  • The one inmate in the prison who got Alice in trouble by tricking her into taking fruit she wasn't allowed to touch and put roaches inside of her sleeping mat isn't punishment for her behavior.
  • The one guard who apparently was going to help Alice and Darlene escape from prison only to double-cross them has nothing of consequence happen to her.
• Cabin by the Lake and its sequel both end with the Villain Protagonist serial killer Stanley tracked down and stopped from completing his murder spree, but he stages his death and escapes in each film to continue doing it somewhere else. The sequel is especially bad about this: the Film Within a Film based on his crimes has become a major success with a sequel on the way, and even though he hasn't profited from it financially his crimes have become renowned the world over.
• Chinatown: Noah Cross, the villain. Not only is he responsible for the murder of Hollis Mulwray, he also raped his own daughter, and at the end of the movie he's acquired custody of his daughter/granddaughter, and gets off completely scot-free. And Jake Gittes can do absolutely nothing about it. However, the sequel, Two Jakes, does imply that Katherine may have killed him.
• Compulsion (2016): Sadie sees (or thinks she does) a young woman being killed ritually at the orgy. Everyone else denies it happened however. Naturally it turns out to be real, and Sadie is forced to attend another sacrifice, where the victim is her ex-boyfriend Thierry, while her current lover Francesca demands that she choose between them. Sadie refuses to sacrifice him, so he's killed by Francesca instead.
• Con Air: Most of the convicts get their comeuppance, except for Garland Greene, a notorious serial killer whose targets included children and is possibly the most depraved criminal on the plane.
• Chicago: Both Roxie and Velma get away with murder and become singing sensations. Billy lies to his client and abuses the justice system with no negative consequences to himself. And Mama Morton gets off scot-free for selling out both girls to each other. 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 some 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 approval.
• The Children's Hour: Nothing ever happens to Mary Tilford at the end for spreading lies that ended in her teachers losing their school, becoming nationally mocked, caused Karen's fiance to leave her, and resulted in Martha killing herself; as far as the audience knows, she doesn't even get the TV taken out of her room. At least her grandmother has the decency to develop what appears to be a guilt-induced, permanent half-swoon (and maybe even the vapors), but Mary seems to have no consequences at all.
• Chronicle: Richard Detmer, Andrew's alcoholic and abusive father. All we see from him throughout the film is nothing but him berating and attacking his own son. Even the death of his wife doesn't cover the sheer volume of bad karma he had accumulated, ESPECIALLY during his final scene with him and Andrew in the hospital, where he blames his son for his wife's death. Not that it wasn't being recorded on a camera the police installed, or that Andrew didn't then try to kill him by tossing him down from the hospital building (Matt caught him because he had just arrived and thought Andrew had simply lost his mind), he just disappears from the rest of the movie. There's actually enough evidence to imply that making it out alive is the only thing he's really getting away with.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Though given there's not much anyone could have done about it, the aliens kidnap people, holding them for 40 years, returning them unaged. They incite a psychological issue in people, destroying families (if Roy Neary's is a standard example). They terrify Barry's mother, abducting her son right out of her arms. All this and they get to leave with nary a complaining word from us humans.
• The Court Jester: Roderick, an abusive father and Dirty Old Man who ordered a Ruling Family Massacre, doesn't seem to suffer any worse punishment than the loss of his crown.
• El Crimen del Padre Amaro: Amaro, the eponymous character is a young Catholic priest who, upon arriving to a small town, first 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, provokes the firing of the author of said article and his girlfriend Amelia breaking up with him. He turns his father (who helped him in his investigation) into a pariah. It gets worse: 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, with the help of a woman he convinces the ENTIRE town that it was Amelia's former boyfriend who knocked her up and he was there trying to save her. The final scene has Amaro presiding over Amelia's funeral.
• Crimes and Misdemeanors is about a murderer who escapes any kind of punishment for his crime.
• Amy from Cuties, to a disturbing degree. She steals money from her struggling mother, frames an innocent man by posting a picture of her naked crotch from his phone (which she'd also stolen from him!) just to spite him, stabs a boy's palm with a pen and nearly drowns a girl to take her place in the dance competition. Her only comeuppance is that she feels bad for a few moments, if even that.
• Dark 2018: We see Mina kill her mom right after rising from the grave, but never see what happened to her mom's boyfriend who raped and murdered Mina.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • The Dark Knight: The Joker himself... probably. As revealed in the novelization of The Dark Knight Rises, he's not only a prisoner at Arkham, he has the place to himself. Or not, assuming he broke out somehow. We don't really know, and there's a 50-50 chance that we probably never will.
  • The Dark Knight Rises: Jonathan Crane, AKA Scarecrow is among the inmates Bane frees from Blackgate. He conducts several Kangaroo Courts and then vanishes. While it's possible the police caught him again or he was killed in the ensuing battle between the police and Bane's men, his ultimate fate is never revealed.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Man of Steel: Glen Woodburn, the Jerkass who sold Lois out to the military and declared that Superman should surrender to Zod because it is his fault the Kryptonians came to Earth, disappears for the rest of the movie.
  • Wonder Woman (2017): Dr. Poison receives absolutely no comeuppance for her role in developing the superweapon and killing the entire German high command, and is the only one of the film's villains to survive.
• Dear White People: Kurt assaults Lionel in front of witnesses, but isn't expelled or prosecuted (the fact that his father is the university president helps with the latter, but the former is left unexplained).
• Death Wish: The three punks whose actions send Paul Kersey into his Roaring Rampage of Revenge (referred to in the credits as "Freak #1", "Freak #2" and "Spraycan") are never brought to justice or killed. Kersey kills some street scum, but never those three. They're just street toughs; they'll probably end up dead by one of their own. This is averted in the four sequels where, if you're a villain, you're not leaving the movie alive.
• In Deewaar, a mine owner kidnaps the family of a union leader and threatens to kill them to force an end to a strike, and never gets any comeuppance.
• In Devil Times Five (1974), the five psychotic murderous children get away with murdering 8 people and it's implied that they will travel to different locations so they can kill more people.
• Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star: The title character leaves work during his shift valet parking, takes one of his customers' cars, and pisses off another driver who threatens him and writes down the license plate (Dickie isn't worried, since it's not his car and the windows are tinted). It turns out the car belongs to Rob Reiner, who gets attacked by the driver and needs a new kidney. Dickie's agent ends up donating a kidney in exchange for giving Dickie an audition. And Dickie ends up getting the part. Rob Reiner never even finds out that Dickie was responsible for what happened to him.
• Donnie Darko: The last time we see Jim Cunningham, he is crying in his house alone, with nobody aware of the kind of person he is. Everything else that happened as a result of Donnie's actions at the end of the film was for the better. However, the film's website carries his obituary, stating that he shot himself on a golf course... after disposing of all of his illicit materials, leaving the world unaware of his secrets. Also, the two psychotic bullies(it's heavily implied they were about to rape Donnie's girlfriend.) suffer no repercussions whatsoever.
• In Dracula Untold, Caligula, who's implied to be a far greater evil than Vlad, escapes and runs free in the world.
• Dune (2021): Despite being badly wounded by Leto's Heroic Sacrifice, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen manages to survive the events of the movie, though this is because the movie only covers the first half of the novel, and will most likely get his comeuppance in Part 2. Beast as well, who not only remains untouched throughout the film, but Paul never encounters or fights him despite the buildup.

E-L

• In Eighth Grade: Riley suffers no consequences for sexually harrassing the 13-year-old protagonist, Kayla, and giving her a nervous breakdown. She is so embarrassed she even begs him to keep it secret.
• Eight Legged Freaks: Wade, the corrupt mayor of the town. Apart from his general sleaziness, he also locks most of the townspeople in the mall, resulting in several of them being killed when it is overrun by the giant spiders, but he survives the film, the only comeuppance he receives being the loss of his beloved mall.
• Entrapment: The master thieves played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery pulled off a grand heist and escaped justice with the help of a crooked FBI agent.
• Exam: Despite their actions, it's suggested in the Invigilator's opening speech that neither White nor Brown will receive any punishment. Although, White has unknowingly just missed his chance of being cured of The Plague.
• Fallen: Azazel goes out of his way to kill innocents to torture Hobbes. After Hobbes finds a way to kill Azazel via noble sacrifice, Azazel escapes in the body of a cat.
• The Fate of the Furious: Cipher escaped in the climax and was never seen since. Deckard and Owen, the main villains of the previous films, were spared from punishment for their past crimes after joining Dom's crew.
  • She pulls this off again in F9. In the final battle, she attempts to attack Dom and his crew using a fighter jet, which Dom eventually destroys. It turns out that said fighter jet was actually a remote controlled drone, and after its destruction, she escapes the movie unscathed.
• First Girl I Loved: Cliff rapes Anne, Sasha and Sasha's mom falsely accuse her of sexual assault. None are punished for these things.
• The Flight of the Phoenix (1965): Sgt. Watson twice cowardly avoids going with his superior on potentially dangerous missions (first by faking a leg injury, then by bluntly refusing). When he finds Cpt. Harris nearly dead from dehydration after returning from one of said missions, he keeps it secret from the others, apparently hoping Harris will die before the others notice him. Then he makes sneering, mocking remarks after Harris dies. All he gets for this is a punch to the face by Cpt. Towns.
• Following: "Cobb" from Christopher Nolan's early film. He kills, manipulates others into setting themselves up as his fall guys, and disappears. The police don't even know he exists.
• A Fool There Was: The Vamp doesn't just break up her lover's marriage, she utterly destroys him, leaving him a hollow-eyed, alcoholic wreck. She even goes back, after she's bled him dry and left him for a new lover, and succeeds in ruining his reconciliation with his wife, For the Evulz. Not a goddamn thing happens to her.
• Forbidden Zone:
  • Ruth Henderson and her sailor boyfriend had got away with mistreating Squeezit.
  • The devil and the Mystic Knights of The Oingo Boingo never got punished for cutting of Squeezit's head, as well as the threatening to kill the princess.
• In Ford V Ferrari, Leo Beebe suggests to Ford that their three cars line up together to cross the finish line at the same time at Le Mans, possibly to stop Miles from winning. The Ford cars comply, which ends up costing Miles the win on a technicality. While Shelby does confront him on this, he can ultimately walk away happy with the result, both for himself and for the company.
• Free State of Jones: All of the Confederate officers and slave owners get off scot-free, having only to swear loyalty to the United States. Their former nemesis Lieutenant Barbour later becomes a judge, using this office to get former slaves into coerced "apprenticeships" that amount to slavery in all but name. Newt manages to buy Moses' son out of his.
• Full Metal Jacket: It's presumed the door gunner never is called out for essentially murdering innocent Vietnamese; he only appears in one scene and is never mentioned again.
• Funny Games: It uses this trope deliberately to subvert your expectations of horror films. The film involves the psychological and physical torture of a husband, wife and son by two sadistic young men. The two young men kill every member of the family one by one and receive no comeuppance. In one scene, the wife actually kills one of the psychos, but the other prevents the death of his partner by taking a remote control and rewinding the film to a point before his death happens. In the end, the dominant killer smirks triumphantly at the camera as he prepares to kill again.
• The Garbage Pail Kids Movie: The kids go to a bar called The Toughest Bar In The World where they punch out several guys for no apparent reason. And do they get punished for assaulting people? No. A patron compliments them for having guts and offers free drinks for everyone at the bar.
• G.I. Joe: Retaliation: Though his plan is foiled, Cobra Commander manages to escape justice. Also Storm Shadow, since he aided the Joes in ruining Cobra Commander's schemes and helping avenge his and Snake Eyes' master's murder, is allowed to walk away by Snake Eyes even though he murdered several Joes and innocent people in the first movie.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): The paramilitary eco-terrorists who deliberately woke Ghidorah and Rodan up so that they could kill millions, and who were then going to let Ghidorah kill off the whole Earth's biosphere in order to get rid of humanity; escape being killed or arrested at the end. The Stinger shows them still at large, and they'll likely go back into hiding now that their plan is over (for the time being).
• Goodfellas: Though he's one of the better (well, less worse) characters by far, Henry Hill is still a vicious criminal, yet one of the few characters in the movie not to get killed or go to jail in the end; instead he gets to live the rest of his days comfortably under witness protection. Though, as far as he's concerned, its a fate worse than death.
• Good Neighbors: Louise gets away with her murder seemingly with no one the wiser.
• Halloween Night: The killer, Chris Vale, kills several people throughout the movie and afterward, tricks the female protagonist into shooting the main character (her boyfriend) by putting his mask and clothes on him while she was blindfolded and escapes. He's last seen hitchhiking and driving off into the sunset after being picked up by a hipster, who at the sight of his horribly burned body, only says that he must've had a good Halloween.
• Happy Gilmore: The scene where Ben Stiller's sadistic orderly character gets thrown through a window by Happy 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 is even more jarring when juxtaposed with the fate of the movie's Big Bad, a Jerk Jock type who gets the crap beaten out of him by a mob of Happy's fans, led by the gargantuan Mr. Larson.
• Hater: Tomasz, the protagonist, nearly totally alienates the woman he has a crush on, antagonizes the powerful right-wing client funding his boss's hit operation on a political rival (for a pitiful amount in blackmail money as well), tries and fails to emotionally manipulate his boss to hide the true purpose of said blackmail funds (which is to pay for his False Flag Operation using a troubled young man as fall guy and patsy), and risks being shot or stabbed just to look like the hero in subduing said patsy when he attacks a political event. But in the end, because he successfully "heroically subdues the attacker", there is an outpouring of public affection for him, and his boss grudgingly agrees not to fire him or turn him in (she suspects he instigated the incident), and he even gets the girl in the end anyway.
• Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: The eponymous Villain Protagonist Henry. He commits multiple murders along with his partner Otis and gets away with his crimes. His partner Otis isn't so lucky; he is killed by Henry for trying to rape Becky. Later, Henry kills Becky while fleeing the city.
• The Hindenburg (1975): Vogel is quite the Hate Sink, showing cheerful awareness of Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews, relishing the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique, and indirectly contributing to every death in the disaster by hindering the people who could stop the bomb from going off. He manages to survive the disaster with only minor injuries.
• Hitch: Sara commits straight-up libel by wrecking Hitch's business and publicly humiliating his client just because she thinks he helped a jerk sleep with her best friend. The only comeuppance she gets is Hitch yelling at her in front of a crowd at a speed-dating event, and he later takes her back. After she screwed him more and more and even made him beg.
• In Holiday on the Buses, Jack ruins Blakey's relationship with Joan, which causes him to try to attack Stan and lose his job at Pontins but doesn't receive any form of punishment for his actions.
• Home Alone 3: Subverted when three out of four of the terrorists are captured by the police at the end, but it seems like their leader got away. However, it turns out he was just hiding inside a mini-igloo in the backyard when the snarly parrot exposes him.
• Horrible Bosses:
  • Julia is the only one of the bosses who didn't lose her job and she also didn't get arrested for sexually harassing Dale. She pretty much gets away with anything she does and nobody seems to judge her for it.
  • Nick, Dale and Kurt themselves have acted as criminals as they broke into their bosses' houses wanting them killed and even arranged a Faked Kidnapping to get their money back (which they initially planned to be a real kidnapping until Rex found out and decided to play along). They never actually get in trouble with the police and are somehow acknowledge as heroes despite being responsible for setting up the situation in the first place (although considering that the second movie ends with them becoming subordinates of Dave Harken...)
  • In the climax of the second film, Motherfucker Jones abandons Nick Dale and Kurt and steals the ransom money for himself. He got away scott free.
• House of Games: The heroine gets away with murder, and the other members of the con never face any repercussions for cheating her out of $80,000.
• The Ides of March: Presidential candidate, Governor Mike Morris, presents himself to the world as an honest, family man who will clean up dirty politics. Instead, he's a Manipulative Bastard who had a sexual affair with an Intern, driving her to commit suicide after he abandoned her. Not only does he not answer for this, he's able to convince the one guy who could expose him that politics is dirty and he needs to be just as dirty to survive. The guy continues to help Mike Morris become President.
• In a World…...: Dani cheats on her husband Moe. It's unclear how far she got, but we do know that it involved a roughly twenty-minute makeout session and an attempt to "put the tip in." Her cuckolded husband leaves with as much dignity as he can muster, and she finds herself wracked with guilt for most of the movie. By the end of the movie he takes her back. She must have given him a heartfelt apology, a grand romantic gesture, or made a serious promise to work on their relationship issues so that this sort of philandering will never happen again, right? Wrong. She does exactly nothing but mope, her sister records some of the moping and plays it for Moe, and this is enough for him to not only take her back no-questions-asked, but he performs a grand romantic gesture for her.
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Lao Che tries to cheat and murder Indiana Jones but gets away scot free.
• Inspector Gadget (1999): Dr. Claw averts this when he's arrested for murdering Dr. Artemus Bradford and attempting twice to murder John Brown, and it's stated in one novelization that he was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment and (as mentioned in the sequel) served with a bill of attainder. He does play this straight in Inspector Gadget 2, though; he tries to rob the entire Federal Reserve in Riverton, and what's the only punishment he gets? Gadget, G2, and Penny run him out of town at the climax of the film, with Claw swearing his usual threat: "I'll get you next time, Gadget... next time!"
• The International: Even though the CEO of the corrupt International Bank of Business and Credit is killed, the protagonists lose their only lead with his death and are unable to bring down the corrupt bank. In the credits, it's implied that the bank continues to run successfully despite the death of its CEO.
• Into the Woods:
  • Cinderella's Stepmother never gets her comeuppance for abusing her stepdaughter. While this is an issue in the original Grimm fairy tale, the original stage show rectifies this by implying the Royal family all starved to death in the woods. Here, their fate goes unmentioned.
  • Jack ultimately stole from the Giantess after she took care of him and killed her husband.
• Irréversible: Le Tenia. After his vicious rape and assault of Alex, Marcus and Pierre track him down to Club Rectum but they get into a fight with another man whom they mistake for Le Tenia while the real Le Tenia looks on with a smile several feet away.
• I Shot Jesse James: While the eponymous outlaw certainly doesn't escape punishment, his older brother Frank James does. Despite being as big a criminal as his brother Jesse, Frank manages to be acquitted of wrongdoing by a Colorado court and sets up the circumstances for Robert Ford's death.
• It's a Wonderful Life: Mr. Potter faces no repercussions for stealing the $8,000 from the Building and Loan, despite this going against The Hays Code in effect at the time. How it got through then is anyone's guess, but in case it didn't, the makers had a scene ready where he has a heart attack after failing to ruin George.
• Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit: The Greater-Scope Villain, Minister Sorokin, leaves the film unscathed while the Big Bad Cherevin is executed by the former.
• James Bond:
  • On Her Majesty's Secret Service: Irma Bunt, who kills Tracy, James Bond's wife. She and Blofeld provide the film with its Diabolus ex Machina. And yet, she's never seen (or even mentioned) in any of the other films in the series. This is because the actress playing her, Isle Steppat, died mere months after the film was released.
  • Live and Let Die: Despite seemingly being killed by Bond, Baron Samedi, who orchestrated the tribe's human sacrifices and told Kananga about Solitaire's betrayal, is shown to somehow still be alive in the final scene, implying that he really was Baron Samedi.
  • Licence to Kill: Joe Butcher, the chief drug cook and the Cartel bosses apart from Sanchez all manage to flee the drug lab after Bond sets it on fire, with no implication that any of them will be caught.
  • Tomorrow Never Dies: All Carver's media associates who help him stage crimes for reporting purposes disappear from the film after their meeting and are never exposed, and it's never established whether or not General Chang was punished for his role in Carver's plot.
  • Quantum of Solace: Haines and the other Quantum associates who attend the meeting at the performance of Tosca manage to escape after Bond breaks up the meeting. There was an Alternate Ending written where Bond begins to interrogate Haines, but this was altered, though it is alluded to in the video game.
• Jawbreaker: Marcie Fox gets away with her involvement of killing Liz Purr, while her friend Courtney suffers the consequences at the hands of her schoolmates.
• Jeepers Creepers 2: Jonny locks the other kids out of the bus, leaving them to fall prey to the Creeper, but ultimately ends up being one of only 5 confirmed survivors.
• Jumanji: Billy Jessup and his Gang of Bullies were never punished for beating up Alan and giving him a bloody lip at the start of the film.
• Jupiter Ascending: Titus Abrasax faces no consequences for his actions in the movie other than some mild damage to his clipper, although Caine does try to assure Jupiter that he'll receive his comeuppance via bureaucracy.
• Jurassic Park:
  • Dr. Lewis Dodgson in the first movie, the Biosyn geneticist who paid Nedry to steal dinosaur embryos, thus making the park go horribly wrong before it even opens, is never mentioned again after the single scene he's in. His only real punishment is not getting anything for the hefty initial fee he paid Nedry. 29 years later in Jurassic World Dominion, he's now the CEO of Biosyn and karma finally catches up to him when, after destroying the evidence of his most recent plan and attempting to escape, he becomes trapped when the power goes out and is killed by three of the same dinosaur that killed Nedry.
  • John Hammond, as lovable as he is, was responsible for much of what happened in the films. His stubborn refusal to kill the raptors, even after they killed a guard, results in Arnold's and Muldoon's deaths. His refusal to give Nedry a raise causes Nedry's betrayal and the incident at the park. And it was he who sent a group to Isla Sorna to sabotage the hunting party, resulting in their deaths.
  • Nick van Owen in The Lost World, who indirectly caused a number of deaths by stealing Roland's cartridges (preventing him from killing an attacking T-Rex) simply disappears from the film's final act.
    • The same applies to Trophy Hunter Roland Tembo, he is the one who shot the Buck Rex (after Van Owen stole his bullets) with a tranquillizer that allowed Ingen to take the Rex off-island and to subsequently rampage through San Diego. — He too disappears from the final act.
  • In Jurassic Park III, the Spinosaurus flees at the end of the final confrontation after it's burnt by fire.
  • In Jurassic World, while Hoskins gets ripped to shreds by one of the raptors he sought to weaponize, his colleague Henry Wu, who deliberately engineered the I. rex to be as dangerous as possible and cause a major incident, gets out of the island alive with his genetically enhanced dinosaur embryos.
  • In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom while Mills, Wheatley, Eversol and many of the goons are killed by the escaping dinosaurs, the last we see of Wu (who had at least received some minor karma for his involvement in the events of Jurassic World by loosing his doctorate) is knocked unconscious by Webb but likely got away again as we never see him afterwards. A few of the criminals participating in the auction are either attacked by the Stygimoloch or killed by the Indoraptor but many of them get away and escape the mansion and some of them even got away with a couple dinosaurs.
• Kingdom of Heaven: The movie features religious fanatics on both Crusader and Saracen sides. While all the fanatics on the Crusader side, including Guy de Lusignan, Raynald de Chatillon, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, get their comeuppance, the unnamed Mullah advising Saladin never does. He smirks when a Christian person is killed and expresses delight in murdering civillians, he just walks into conquered city with Saladin. If it wasn't for Saladin keeping him under control, all the characters on the Christian side would be dead.
• L.A. Confidential: Edmund Exley's father was murdered by a man whose identity was never discovered. Exley gave him the name Rollo Tomasi and subsequently applied the name to anyone who pulls a Karma Houdini. Jack Vincennes invokes the name in order to trick the film's antagonist into unknowingly tipping his hand to Exley.
• Lady Macbeth: Katherine kills three people (including an innocent child) and a horse. Not only does she avoids punishment, two more people might get executed due to being accused of her deeds (only one was involved).
• Last Action Hero: Lampshaded when the bad guy kills a random person in the street and realises that there are no police to stop him. For an actual example, the robber at the beginning, who admittedly lets Daniel free himself and leaves in exasperation when it turns out the house has almost nothing worth stealing.
• The Last Horror Movie: Max, the Serial Killer protagonist of the film. Not only does he get away with his murders; within the reality of the story, he also follows you home and kills you after you finish watching the movie.
• Last Night in Soho: Jocasta is an unapologetic, shallow Alpha Bitch who talks about Ellie behind her back, makes jokes about her mother's suicide, and may have even spiked her drink at the Halloween party. At the end of the movie, she receives no comeuppance for her cruelty, though there seems to be break between her and her two dorm mates, who are now friendly to Ellie. Although it could be partially subverted in the sense that Eloise has clearly become the star of the design school at the end of the movie. Jocasta is shown on the sidelines as a Green-Eyed Monster over the attention and praise Ellie is getting. She was supposed to hug Ellie and it was filmed that way, implying they became friends in the Time Skip, but test audiences disliked that.
• The Last Starfighter: The villain Xur ends up fleeing in an escape pod and is never seen again.
• Samantha Cole in Liar Liar cheated on her husband several times, it's hinted that she's not completely sure both her children are her husband's, and after Fletcher convinces her she's the victim, she becomes a complete jerkass who uses her children for emotional gain in court. And thanks to a technicality no one saw coming, she wins the case and gets the standard divorce settlement of half her husband's assets, over 10 million dollars, and decides to sue for sole custody of the kids to get even more money in child support and deny her husband the right to them. Her getting away with all this is actually a major plot point, when Fletcher realizes it's his fault she was able to do all this and succeed.
• Limitless: Eddie steals money and drugs from a dead guy, does drugs, encourages others to do drugs, directly causes the deaths of at least three people, cheats on his girlfriend, has sex with his landlord's wife, and in general does some somewhat shady business. And yet, Eddie's almost certainly going to be president one day.
• Little Shop of Horrors: The Frank Oz version features Seymour, who ends up getting away with killing two people through inaction and gets a happy ending. The sympathetic nature of the character, and the fact that Seymour is not as directly responsible for the deaths as in the original play, makes it much more acceptable than many of the examples on this page. The pre-Executive Meddling ending used the play's The Bad Guy Wins version of the trope, where Audrey II was the Karma Houdini.
• Little Sweetheart: For a nine year old who tricked the police, blackmailed and robbed two people, got one killed by the police to shut him up, tried to kill her only friend and blackmailed her brother, Thelma gets ice cream.
• The Losers: Max escapes in the climax after Clay chooses to deactivate a Snuke to save Los Angeles. He gets robbed on the way out, but he still got off pretty clean after everything he did in the film.
• Love And Bullets: Subverted with Joe Bomposa. When Detective Charlie Congers is taken off the case for leaving a trail of bodies in Switzerland and letting a key witness get killed, it looks as though Bomposa's going to get off scot free. Then Congers takes matters into his own hands, first by using a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on his accountant, Louis Monk, while Monk's in the pool and then by dropping off a casket supposedly containing the remains of the key witness while disguised as a hearse driver. Unknown to Bomposa and his men, the casket is booby-trapped, and everyone within its immediate vicinity is blown to bits as Congers drives away.

M-R

• Machete: Von Jackson's lieutenant manages to survive the raid on their compound to continue gunning down illegal Mexican immigrants. Albeit, this allows him to deliver a Karmic Death to corrupt senator John McLaughlin. Hey, lesser of two evils, anyone?
• Machete Kills: Luther Voz, despite being defeated in a sword fight by Machete and having his face badly burned and his plans foiled, manages to escape to space, freezing Luz in carbonite in the process.
• Mad Dog Morgan: The Hanging Judge Cobham is never punished for his abuse of power, and gets to dismember Morgan's corpse for macabre souvenirs.
• Sabrina in Madea's Big Happy Family. A Hate Sink and unrepentant Jerkass who's the ex-lover of Madea's great-grandnephew Byron. She seems to live to make Byron (more) miserable than what he is, as she lies and mostly tends to spend whatever child support money she gets on herself, and does everything to force Byron back into the drug dealing game in order to get more money (including getting him arrested for back child support, which also leads to him getting fired from his job, and humiliating him on Maury). After a "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Madea near the end of the film she gets her act together but still retains partial custody of their son she doesn't deserve.
• Mandalay: Nick, the owner of the "Jardin d'Orient" brothel, gets scot-free even after there's a police intervention. The police officers go searching for Tanya, one of the prostitutes and the main character, because of her increasing notoriety and refugee status.
• At the end of The Manhunt, Ethan Wayne gets his horses back, but none of the bad guys suffer any kind of punishment for their illegal actions: including Robeson, who stole the horses and perjured himself to send Wayne to prison; Forrest, who flogged him; and the warden, whose torturous treatment of Wayne in prison was blatantly illegal and could have killed him.
• Marcus: The eponymous character of the 2006 horror film gets away with his murders.
• The Mask: Peggy Brandt 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. The scene where Peggy got her comeuppance was cut from the final version (but available on the DVD). She was thrown into a printing press by Dorian and the audience sees her ground up and turned into newspaper print. The scene was actually cut because the test audience found it too violent and disturbing compared to the tone of the rest of the film.
  • Stanley also got away with robbing the bank and many other things he did while he was The Mask, because Dorian was blamed for all these things. (Though to be fair, Dorian's men were about to rob the bank, before The Mask beat them to it, and did later steal the money from Stanley's apartment. So it wouldn't be too inaccurate to pin the blame on Dorian.)
• 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, their unborn child, and her elderly neighbor (to make it look like a robbery gone bad) in cold blood and escaped justice. This ties into the main theme of the movie-luck is very, very important.
• Max Payne: Nicole Horne seems to get away unscathed despite her part in the plot, and after abandoning B.B. to his fate. However, the bonus scene after the ending credits imply that Nicole is Max Payne and Mona Sax's next target, and anyone who's played the games knows that Nicole does not survive what she did to Max's wife and little girl.
• Mean Girls: Janis, who, despite influencing and encouraging Cady to join the Plastics specifically to damage Regina, gets zero comeuppance when she reveals it to the entire crowd of girls following the revelation of the Burn Book. In fact, she gets applauded for it! Cady, in the meantime, is treated as a bitch by everyone because of what she's done, even though Janis admitted that she was the mastermind behind all of it.
• 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. This is actually the reason why you won't be able to find this film in the UK.
• Minis First Time: Mini, the Villain Protagonist. She seduces her stepfather, manipulates him into helping her drive her mother insane and kill her, makes him think he's being blackmailed, tricks him into beating a neighbor into a coma, and gets him thrown in jail for it. Not only does she get away with everything looking like an innocent victim; in the end, she gets voted valedictorian by her high school class, despite being a C student.
• Mission: Impossible film series:
  • Mission: Impossible: Max Mitsopolis, the arms dealer and Greater-Scope Villain who caused Jim Phelps's Face–Heel Turn, looks set to get her comeuppance at the end of the film when she's cornered by the CIA... only for her to successfully negotiate an agreement to stay out of jail, leaving her free at the end of the movie.
  • Mission: Impossible II: John C. McCloy murders Dr. Gradski by injecting him with Chimera in order to test its effectiveness. His punishment? He successfully gets a sample of Bellerophon to sell as a cure when Chimera is released, and is never seen again. Granted, his efforts are All for Nothing because Ambrose gets killed before he can release Chimera, but he doesn't actually get any kind of punishment.
  • Mission: Impossible – Fallout: Just like their mother in the original, Zola Mitsopolis and the White Widow manage to escape punishment for their criminal activities by forging a deal with the CIA. Also Erica Sloane, who is indirectly responsible for Hunley getting killed and Walker and Lane managing to escape the London safehouse, gets no punishment whatsoever.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail: The French people taunt King Arthur and his knights with offensive insults and catapult animals (and a trojan bunny) at them. And they have reached the Holy Grail at the Castle of Aaaarrrggghhh (however you spell that) before King Arthur and Sir Bedevere do, and prevent them from entering, thus directly defying God, whom King Arthur made clear was the one who set them on their quest. If only King Arthur hadn't killed that famous historian and gotten arrested for it at the end, he and his knights could have brought justice upon them.
• Mac from Mr. Deeds. He humiliates Deeds on multiple occasions and blows Babe's cover just because he can. NEVER gets any sort of punishment.
• The Muppets (2011):
  • Subverted by Tex Richman. He makes various uses of sabotage, acts like a complete jerk to The Muppets, causes property damage to The Muppet Theatre to win the deed... and then gets a bowling ball to the head just before the closing credits. It's implied following his subsequent Heel–Face Turn that the bowling ball managed to virtually lobotomize him to the point where he doesn't even remember that his head had previously been injured, giving a new meaning to the sub-headline describing what explicitly isn't the motivation for his change of heart. It's also implied that being hit by the bowling ball fixed the problem he had with not being able to laugh. It was mostly cut, but that was largely behind his hatred of the Muppets, not being able to laugh at them as a youth and being mocked for it.
  • The Muppets are karma houdinis for kidnapping Jack Black and forcing them to be their guest. The Muppets don't get arrested, as the audience thinks it's all part of the show, and Jack Black never even gets untied.
• Murder by Decree: Although Jack the Ripper is punished, the official higher-ups complicit in Annie Crook's imprisonment and the murders suffer none.
• A Murder of Crows: Thurmon Parks III, who'd murdered and raped a young woman, was acquitted after being retried on the charges following Lawson's being disbarred over openly denouncing him in the first trial after he'd learned Parks did it. Nothing happens to him in the film, he's alive, well and free by the end.
• Music (2021) has a subplot about a boy named Felix who is forced to take boxing lessons by his abusive father. The plot ends with Felix developing the courage to stand up to his father, only for his father to respond by flying into a rage and accidentally killing him. Afterwards, the plot point is completely dropped, so Felix's father never faces any consequences for anything he's done.
• Mystic River: Jimmy 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 his 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. Jimmy kills him anyway. For the rest of the movie, he does not get his comeuppance for the two murders. When he discovers that he killed an innocent man out of hastiness to get the culprit, he is deeply remorseful, but his wife convinces him that he did what he felt was right at the time. It is possible he may be brought to justice later, but it's never resolved in the story. Sean makes what appears to be a threatening gesture to Jimmy in the final scene, which implies that there is still plenty more conflict to come.
• The Nanny Diaries: Mr. X suffers no consequences when he sexually assaults Annie.
• Natural Born Killers: The eponymous characters 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 the ending of the movie as is implies that two infamous spree killers manage to live Happily Ever After.
• Neighbors:
  • Mac, egged on by Kelly, breaks the fraternity's water pipe, flooding their basement and causing thousands of dollars of property damage. The Radners would be looking at an extremely serious fine or even jail time, but luckily for them the cops never find out, likely because Delta Psi themselves don't want the police snooping around their house.
  • Teddy would also be facing several serious charges for his air bag prank, including theft, breaking & entering and battery, but Mac never bothers to report it because Police Are Useless.
  • Kelly, who launched a firework directly into a police cruiser.
• Nick of Time: At the end, the Big Bad behind the assassination plot gets away.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street: Defied. If it wasn't for neglect of police procedure resulting in a guilty man going free, the career of one of the most notorious villains in slasher film history may stopped before it truly began. When Freddy Krueger was a human child murderer, police searched his home and found the bodies of several of his victims. Here's the thing: they had never obtained a warrant or any other document giving them a legal right to make the search, so the charges were dropped, and he went free. This led to Freddy being killed by an angry lynch mob and him making a Deal with the Devil, turning him into a demonic monster that would be responsible for countless more deaths, all of which would have been avoided if the police had done their jobs right.
• No Country for Old Men: Anton Chigurh has gotten his money and murdered countless people, and just when he escapes... he gets blindsided, his arm so broken, the bone protrudes from the skin. But he still manages to escape.
• No God, No Master: None of the bombers were ever punished for their crimes, nor did Palmer and Hoover have to face any consequences over the violations of people's civil rights.
• Ocean's Eleven: The gang from this movie and its sequels, outside of a brief spot in jail in the second film, never see any real retribution for their crimes. However, that's more attributable to Rule of Cool than anything.
• Odd Girl Out: Nikki. At the end Vanessa has a shouting match with Stacy and declares that she has "nothing that I want" which prompts the rest of the students to applaud her. Nikki however is the far worse of the bullies in the movie and started the bullying but by the end she never gets her comeuppance. It is implied that the bully clique disbands so that takes care of Tiffany's karma (she'll go back to being a wannabe) but Nikki appears to get away scot-free. She won't even have to see Vanessa again since they just graduated.
• An Officer and a Gentleman: Lynette fakes being pregnant in hopes of marrying Sid, a Navy Aviator in training. When Sid quits the program to marry her, she dumps him, leading him to commit suicide. Yet at the end of the movie, her worst fate is to cheer on her friend, who's being carried off in the arms of another aviator. The guilt of what she's done supposedly adds on to that too.
• Oldboy (2003): Played with. The villain, Lee Woo-Jin, kills himself at the end of the movie, but not out of guilt for having Oh Dae-Su kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years, hypnotically manipulating Oh Dae-Su and his daughter Mi-Do into falling in love, killing Oh Dae-Su's wife and best friend (and framing Oh Dae-Su for his wife's death), and many more acts of bastard y— no, it's just that, having exacted revenge from Oh Dae-Su for spreading a rumor that Lee Woo-Jin had been having sex with his sister — which he had been, by the way, he's got no real reason to live anymore. To say that his death isn't particularly satisfying is an understatement.
• The Other Guys: A rare comedic example (and political commentary). Big Bad Pamela Boardman (indirectly) drives the entire plot. In the end, she gets a federal bailout for being too big to fail, while her Dragon and Middle-Management Mook both end up going to jail.
• The Parent Trap (1961) and The Parent Trap (1998): In both versions of the film, the parents lied to their daughters for most of their lives, and had their friends and relatives lie to them too, about the existence of each other. Their father and mother moved to separate parts of the country (separate countries in the remake, as in the original novel) and selfishly hoarded the child they had custody of, all so they wouldn't have to see or hear from one another. For that matter, if the girls hadn't learned about each other on their own, it was made clear the parents would've gone on lying. Yet the parents don't receive any kind of punishment for the objectification of their children, and instead they remarry and the family is united.
• In Parking (1985), Dominique Daniel gets away with supplying the drugs that led to Eurydice's overdose and with killing Orpheus at the end.
• Paulie: The family comedy has the titular parrot getting abducted by a criminal named Benny and forced to commit crimes for him. When one robbery goes wrong, Paulie is caught while Benny abandons him and gets away clean.
• Pay It Forward: As far as we know the two bullies are not punished for murdering Trevor.
• Perfect Harmony: Paul's general assholery tips over into assaulting Marc and then Taylor while wearing a KKK outfit, beating the latter so badly that Taylor is confined to a bed. True, Paul doesn't get to take Taylor's place singing lead at graduation, but he receives no real punishment, and no one even finds out what he did.
  • Shelby also took part in terrorizing Marc so badly he had to be sent home, and likewise gets no karmic justice for it.
• Perfect Stranger: 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 her comeuppance later off screen is left open to interpretation.
• The Phantom of the Opera (1962): Lord Ambrose D'Arcy is a total Jerkass who stole the music of poor composer Professor Petrie (who later would become the Phantom) and claimed it as his own. D'Arcy never receives any punishment for his crimes. The closest thing to a comeuppance he gets is a fright when he takes the Phantom's mask off and sees his disfigured face.
• Phone Booth: Stu survives the ordeal and reconnects with his wife, but the Caller himself escapes in the end after killing several people. He inconspicuously visits a medicated Stu just before leaving, threatening to kill him if he doesn't remain a newly upstanding man, and even tells him he doesn't have to thank him for everything he did for Stu. He takes his dissassembled sniper rifle with him, hinting he'll do all of it again somewhere else.
• Pickup on South Street: Richard Widmark is a pickpocket who accidentally steals a wallet containing microfilm that a gang of Dirty Communists are smuggling out of the country. When the cops pull him in, he tries to goad one into hitting him in order to get the man suspended. When they offer him immunity for the film, he decides to sell it back to the spies instead. When the girl from whom he stole the film (who turns out to be a Minion with an F in Evil) comes to get it back, he alternates between seducing her and slapping her around. Even when the commies murder his best friend in cold blood, he's still willing to sell the film to them, which would have gotten him killed, had the girl not knocked him out and taken it to the cops. And what's his comeuppance for being such an unrepentant louse? He gets the girl and rides off into the sunset scot-free...but not before dropping by the police station to rub the head cop's nose in it.
• The Pink Panther: The original film ends with the good guy (Clouseau) stuck in prison after being falsely accused of stealing the eponymous diamond. The actual culprits — including Clouseau's adulterous wife — get to drive off into the sunset, laughing. The culprits — Sir Charles Lytton, his nephew, Clouseau's now ex-wife, and others — do turn up in some of the sequels...and get away every single time, the smug bastards. And the reason they get off scot-free? The princess who owns the Pink Panther knows that Lytton tried to steal it, but she doesn't want him to go to jail, so she herself frames Clouseau at the last possible moment!
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: The surviving crewmen of the Flying Dutchman turn into humans and perform Heel–Face Turn. While the movie implies that they were just regular people who sold their souls to Davy Jones, they did express sadism and delight in the actions they have committed. Prime example would be Jimmy Legs who took pleasure in whipping fellow crewmen and was described as "prides himself on cleaving flesh from bone".
• At the end of The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), Francisco and Dr. Huesos suffer no punishment for their part in the tortures and murders (and Francisco even implies that the tortures and killings are just going to start all over again). Gomez also survives, albeit disfigured.
• The Player: Hollywood studio executive Griffin Mill murders an unsuccessful screenwriter, then steals his girlfriend. He corrupts an artistic film into a simple, conformist, Lowest Common Denominator movie for the sake of profit. He abandons one of the few virtuous characters in the movie, a character who put her faith in Griffin, allowing her to be fired, and leaves her sobbing in the middle of the street (with a broken heel), because he'd rather be with his wife in his big house. Yes, the wife is the writer's girlfriend, now heavily pregnant with Griffin's child.
• Bodhi in Point Break (1991). While his final fate is left ambiguous, Utah still lets him go anyway.
• At the end of Prairie Fever, crooked gambler, abusive husband and (arguably) murderer Monte rides off unpunished for all of his evil deeds. He even gets to keep all of his ill-gotten gains.
• President's Day: Nothing happens to the teacher who sexually harassed Joanna and had her arrested when she fought back. He's a backstory character and never even shows up in the film proper.
• Presumed Innocent: Sabitch's decision to not turn in his wife for Carolyn's murder means that she'll get away scot free. Subverted in the sequel novel Innocent which involves an investigation into her death.
• Another subversion with Primal Fear: The injustice of Aaron Stampler escaping the law for the things he's done is dealt with in the sequel novels. Show of Evil has him Faking the Dead while Reign in Hell gives him a pyrrhic death, though the book then ends with him getting a Pyrrhic Victory.
• The Proposition: Nothing bad happens to Eden Fletcher, one of the most horrifying Smug Snakes in all of film. This is a man who had a mentally disabled 14-year-old whipped to death. Made even worse considering the sympathetic Captain Stanley is the one who the Burns Gang takes revenge on for the death of Mike Burns.
• The Purge: By the rules of The Purge, anyone who commits a crime during the 12 hours will become exactly this. Unless someone takes advantage of the Purge to commit a crime against them.
  • For a specific example, Grace and the other neighbours spend the film trying to kill the Sandins. Aside from one who gets killed by the stranger, they all survive due to Mary deciding to spare them because there's already been enough killing. That said, Grace does get her face smashed in by Mary when she tries to go for a gun.
• The Purge: Anarchy: The bikers who go around kidnapping people and selling them to wealthy people to be Purged get away, Lorraine succeeds in killing her sister and survives the ensuing shootout, the unnamed rich family get away with buying Eva's father in order to kill him. Leo also spares the woman who organizes the Purging of the people the bikers kidnap, although as he leaves her behind she could have been killed by La Résistance along with the other rich people.
• The Purge: Election Year: Edwidge Owens loses the election but doesn't actually get punished for his participation in the NFAA's crimes.
• Repo! The Genetic Opera: The Largo kids, Luigi, Pavi, and Amber, despite being a Serial Killer, a rapist, and a general huge bitch respectively, actually end up coming out of the movie better off than they were before, as their father, the Big Bad, dies, and they take control of his MegaCorp. This may be acceptable because, as vile as they are they're the comic relief.
• Reservoir Dogs: Subverted with Mr. Pink. Earlier, he shot a bunch of cops during the robbery and evades the violent fall-out between the other gangsters by hiding in a corner, then appears to escape the movie unharmed with the satchel of diamonds. Listen closely to the last scene — it's very faint, but according to Quentin Tarantino, Pink is shouting at the cops who shot and arrested him. Averted in all of the endings of the video game (Psycho: Gets killed, Neutral: Gets arrested, Professional: Gets away but he accidentally spills the diamonds.)
• Richie Richs Christmas Wish: Reggie got a remote control and control the sleigh. He caused the sleigh to crash and framed Richie Rich for it. Richie believed the whole accident was his fault and he didn't know it was Reggie. He got away with it.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Riff-Raff and Magenta. Magenta makes meals out of people and Riff-Raff kills three people, two of them completely innocent, and they end up being praised by The Mentor for it!
• In R.O.T.O.R., nearly everyone who directly contributed to the Killer Robot going berserk escapes without repercussions. The only people who suffer are innocent bystanders and the two most competent and noble scientists.

S-Z

• Saw:
  • The franchise features numerous subversions and aversions.
    • John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, has the goal of making his victims accountable for their misdeeds by putting them in life-threatening situations that require them to mutilate themselves or kill someone else in order to survive the traps they get put in. In other words, the games John makes have the purpose of preventing his victims (or "subjects", as he calls them) from becoming Karma Houdinis.
    • Ironically, John became a Karma Houdini himself for the first two films, as he has murdered, crippled and traumatized many people through his games, yet he was never brought to trial or convicted for his crimes. This is because he has baffled the police countless times, as he figured out numerous ways to outsmart them and lure them into his games. In Saw II, he deliberately allows the police to apprehend him in order to test his next victim Eric Matthews, who does beat him up badly when he sees his teenage son Daniel being endangered in the Nerve Gas House. Saw III is the film where full-on karma finally gets to John, namely by getting killed by his latest victim Jeff Denlon, even though this leads the latter to fail his first trial as the correct option was to "forgive" John. Played with in that John had already pulled numerous elaborate plans in motion that were meant to continue after his anticipating death, which affect the plot of the following films and succeed for the most part.
    • Mark Hoffman, the Jigsaw apprentice who takes John's place in the following films up to Saw 3D. While the games he makes on his own almost always involve unsympathetic victims who have to do even more difficult tasks than those of John's, he runs the ones John had planned to exploit the Jigsaw legacy (which he took over after meddling Jeff's trial in Saw III by blackmailing Amanda Young, John's most favored apprentice at the time, into disappointing him), directly kills numerous police and FBI personnel, attempts to frame Peter Straham for his crimes, and even murders John's ex-wife Jill Tuck. The climax of Saw 3D makes it seem as if Hoffman was going to get away with all of his crimes at first, but in the end, John manages to outsmart Hoffman with the final task he gave to his more minor accomplice Lawrence Gordon: lock Hoffman in the Bathroom from the first three films and leave him there to die.
    • Bobby Dagen, one of the protagonists of Saw 3D. Although he lied about being a survivor of one of Jigsaw's traps simply to become rich and famous, he survives his trial (which was the last one Hoffman ran) with only a few injuries. That being said, his incompetence at successfully completing most of the traps lead to the deaths of his staff, best friend and wife, and in all likelihood his career would be over with him being exposed as a fraud.
  • However, it's currently played straight with the killers from the latest two films, Logan Nelson and William Schenk, both of whom manage to succeed in their plans without relevant obstacles and get away with them for the screentime they had thus far. Of course, most of their targets were Asshole Victims who previously harmed them in some way and hadn't gotten their comeuppance until they killed them.
  • Also played straight with Brit and Mallick, two of the victims of the Fatal Five's trial from Saw V. Despite being involved in an arson and the fact that Hoffman left evidence of it at the scene for the FBI to find, both are walking free by the time of Saw 3D with no apparent legal punishment whatsoever.
• Scarface (1983): The Evil Versus Evil slant, with Tony Montana as A Lighter Shade of Black, 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 In the Back), not even giving Tony the chance to lose in a climactic fight between the two of them. In the video game remake Tony survives the assassination attempt, kills the assassin like a punk, and eventually makes his way to Bolivia to ice Sosa personally.
• Secondhand Lions: This happens and is lampshaded in the flashback backstory. 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?"
• Secret Window: The film version. After Mort murders his ex-wife and her new husband, he succesfully disposes of the bodies. He continues to live in the town while the locals are terrified of him and gets away with his crimes because the police can't prove anything without solid evidence, but the sherrif makes it pretty clear that he damn well knows what Mort did.
• 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 scot-free! And then promptly murders again, for someone in the courtroom is wearing white after Labor Day!
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: Double subverted in The Film of the Book. At first, Count Olaf brags to the audience how he was legally wedded to an unwilling teenage girl before their very eyes. Then, we see the paper burst into flames, then hear that he is being sent to trial and a "what if?" scenario presents him being forced to endure all he put the children through. All is happy, right? Sadly, Lemony Snickett then narrates that what really happened was that Olaf escaped and is still out there. In the book series, Count Olaf is eventually killed. But it took thirteen books....
• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: Professor James Moriarty's right hand man Former Colonel Sebastian Moran escapes after killing the assassin who failed to kill Germany's Prime Minister during a peace summit.
• A Shock to the System: During the course of the film, Michael Caine's Villain Protagonist 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 Bad Boss (and an Innocent Bystander), and has a jolly good time doing it. In the end, he seduces the same coworker again to get her to turn over the only evidence implicating him, 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).
• The Silence of the Lambs: Hannibal Lecter at the end of Hannibal, what with getting away at the end of the movie and actually living happily ever after with Clarice in the book.
  • In the movie version, he still escapes, even though he has to chop off his hand to do so. When Anthony Hopkins was asked where he believes the villain is, he thought likely some tropical island someplace that he had no intention of ever leaving.
• Silent Night, Deadly Night: The original film begins with a criminal in a Santa suit robbing a store, nonchalantly killing the clerk, and later attacking Billy's parents, killing them in front of him (shooting his father, and slitting his mother's throat after trying to rape her). This, coupled with other factors, leads to Billy and his brother, Ricky, both going insane, and as far as we know, the Santa killer was never caught.
• Sin City: Senator Roark escapes unharmed, although his legacy has been destroyed with Junior's death at Hartigan's hands. Subverted in the sequel when Nancy kills Roark.
• The Skeleton Key: In New Orleans in the 1930s, a voodoo priest and his wife tired of being servants. They used their voodoo to 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 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.
• While Mysterio in Spider-Man: Far From Home gets (supposedly?) killed at the end of the movie, the rest of his crew managed to successfully escape from the commotion with the heroes being none the wiser about any of them. Heck at the end of the movie, they even managed to incriminate Peter as the villain and expose his identity to the whole world by submitting a heavily altered footage to live television - which in the next movie ruins the life of Peter and those close to him, while lots of people hail Mysterio as a hero.
• Spotlight: Cardinal Law covers up ninety different Pedophile Priest cases, and gets promoted after the scandal is revealed.
• Star Trek: Generations: Its been pointed out that due to the way the Nexus works (time has no meaning inside of it thus allowing you to live perpetually in perfect bliss), the Soran that destroyed Veridian and killed hundreds of millions of people in order to get into it is actually still in there as we see with the afterimage of Guinan. All Picard and Kirk did was technically kill someone else named Soran. In other words, he got absolutely everything he wanted, and will do so for the rest of eternity.
• Sugar Hill (1974): In the zombie film, the eponymous 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 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.
• Super 8: 'Cooper' never did much, just killed 3 people at the least and stole a bunch of other shit. After it becomes apparent that he's....technically the good guy in this situation, he's very easily forgiven.
• Suspect: The two young men who robbed Kathleen of her Christmas gifts and mother's necklace in the opening never received any comeuppance.
• Swordfish: Covert operative Gabriel Sheer and his associate Ginger (or whatever their real names were) fake their own deaths and get away rich, evading justice. There is an alternate ending where they get away, only to discover that Stanley stole all of the money electronically, leaving them with nothing. They aren't really all that upset about it.
• Sword of the Assassin: The apparent Big Bad, Empress Thai Hau, isn't killed despite several people being out to get her. In fact, at the end of the movie, the protagonist has killed most of the people plotting against her, and delivered to her a document that was the greatest threat to her rule. The only punishment she receives is a mild talking to, which considering she ordered the execution of both his family as well as his love interest's is incredibly mild.
• The Tailor of Panama: The spy who manipulates the protagonist 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 dog-raping Smug Snake. It takes awhile however, to realise just what he was doing to get his money, as both Osnard and Brosnan are so Affably Evil 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!
• The Talented Mr. Ripley: Villain Protagonist Tom Ripley killed some people to assume a new identity and enrich himself thoroughly. In the sequels, he killed to protect his new life, and sometimes as favors for others. He never faced justice.
• The Thomas Crown Affair: In both versions of the movie (1968 and 1999), the eponymous Eccentric Billionaire gets away scot-free with his art thievery. In the remake, the woman assigned to tracking him down runs off with him as well.
• A Time to Kill: The Ku Klux Klan commit kidnapping, murder, arson among other things, but only two of them get arrested at the end of the movie. The Grand Dragon does get killed during a public rally.
• Titanic (1997): Subverted. Cal survives the sinking of the titular ship and receives no justice for his abuse of Rose and attempted murder of Jack. However, Rose states in the epilogue that Cal committed suicide 17 years later when he is utterly ruined by the Great Depression, which could be seen as very-delayed justice if the Heart of the Ocean could've saved his fortune had Rose not accidentally stolen it.
  • The same fate applies the other major antagonists in the film, Rose her mother loses her chance of keeping her status and luxurious lifestyle and Ismay loses his reputation. This is reflected in a deleted scene showing Ismay as a black sheep amongst the survivors, whilst Ruth is desperately looking for her daughter in the crowd.
• Tommy Boy: Tommy's stepmom Beverly, who is revealed to be not only a con artist, but also a polygamist, gets off scot-free at the end and seems to snag Tommy's rival Ray Zalinsky as a possible new mark (even though Zalinsky already knows she's married). Her actual husband Paul goes to jail for his crimes, while nothing happens to Beverly for aiding and abetting him.
• Top Gun: Iceman was responsible for Goose's death, and yet it is Maverick who faces a board of inquiry instead of him. Thankfully, he's not an Idiot Houdini, as he at least recognizes how serious the fallout is and feels sorry for pushing Maverick dangerously close to the Despair Event Horizon.
• Tragedy Girls: Not only do Sadie and McKayla get away with their killing spree, they get the fame and recognition they've been wanting the whole movie, with no one the wiser to their true nature.
• Train: Unlike the rest of the villains, the soldiers who rape (and presumably kill) Claire escape without punishment, as they are not on the train when Alex sets fire to it.
• Transcendence: Bree has committed terrorist acts, orchestrated multiple murders, kidnaps Max and threatens to kill him if Will doesn't kill himself-she doesn't get so much as a wrist-slap as far as the movie tells us.
• Transformers: The Last Knight: Despite the constant threat that The Decepticons pose to Humanity across all previous films, with the latest being the destruction of Chicago; its' revealed that unlike their Autobot counterparts who were being actively hunted and gunned down by groups like Cemetery Wind and later the various governments of Earth aside from Cuba at every opportunity: The Decepticons presented in the film were instead shown to have simply been arrested by the Humans and sent to Prison, where all but Berserker were given a pardon at the behest of Megatron whom they were released into the custody of.
• Trick 'r Treat:
  • Sam is never stopped from tormenting and killing violators of Halloween tradition.
  • The werewolf ladies get away with their ritualistic murder of a bunch of guys.
  • The parents of the children of the Schoolbus Massacre never get their comeuppance, even though they paid a bus driver to kill their kids because the parents couldn't handle raising mentally unstable children. Only the bus driver gets attacked by the ghosts of the children.
• Trouble in Paradise: The protagonists are crooks and don't get caught. At the time. This was a violation of The Hays Code and caused the film to be withdrawn from circulation and was not seen again until 1968.
• Troy:
  • While Prince Paris dies in the story of Troy he gets off scot free here. He steals King Menelaus' wife Helen starting a war that causes the death of thousands including his brother and the sack of Troy. He watches most of it from the sidelines and in the end gets away after killing Achilles.
  • Bigger example would be lots of Greek soldiers who by the end of the movie, Rape, Pillage, and Burn Troy, and while their leader gets killed, majority of the military survives and arguably returns home.
• Ultraman Gaia: The Battle In Hyperspace: Already a bully to the main character, Tsutomu, Hiroshi actually wished for TWO monsters (Satan-Bizorm and King of Mons) to attack Japan in hopes of having them kill Gamu/Ultraman Gaia, but when you think about it, those two monsters (ESPECIALLY King of Mons) have probably killed thousands of innocent lives in his neighborhood, and the damage worth would cost over millions. Granted for King of Mons's case, this is partially Justified, as a wish-granting orb was corrupting Hiroshi and making him act evil. But in the case of Satan-Bizorm, he was fully aware of his actions and he brought him to the real world purely to smite Tsutomu. To further rub salt in this trope, by the end of the movie, Hiroshi winds up becoming friends with Tsutomu!
• Upstream Color: The thief who stole the life savings of a dozen victims under the effects of hypnosis, leaving them destitute and under the impression that they had a psychotic breakdown, never gets confronted and doesn't suffer any consequences save losing the means to hypnotize any more victims.
• The Usual Suspects: Keyser Soze alias Verbal Kint simply walks away and drives off with Kobayashi.
• Valentine:
  • Depending on how sympathetic he is, Jeremy Melton/Adam Carr succeeds in taking revenge on the girls who framed him, covers his tracks by framing the initial person who framed him, and patches things up with his girlfriend.
  • Since most of the unpleasant characters are killed throughout the film, egotistical artist and card-carrying sleazeball Max Raimi stands out because he leaves completely unharmed.
• Vertigo: Gavin Elster. In some countries, a final scene was tacked on mentioning that he'd been arrested.
• Von Ryan's Express has two examples.
  • Fascist Italian officer Major Battaglia is sadist and a Smug Snake who forces captive British and American prisoners live under horrific conditions and punishes dissent with time spent in a sweatbox, which has killed many P.O.W.s. When the camp is liberated Ryan talks Fincham out of murdering Battaglia in revenge. As "thanks," Battaglia sells the P.O.W.s and his own former second-in-command out to the SS later on, and never gets any comeuppance.
  • At the end of the movie, SS officer Colonel Gortz shoots the fleeing Ryan in the back but like Battaglia survives the movie, his only comeuppance being slightly grumpy when the P.O.W.s get away.
• Wall Street: Gordon Gekko, an outright villain in the original, did get his comeuppance at the end of the first movie. To the tune of over a decade in jail. In the second movie, he's released, and seems to be making amends for being such a Jerkass...until he abruptly betrays everyone who was trying to give him a second chance, mostly his neglected and jaded (thanks to him no less) daughter. So after putting the other main characters through emotional (and economic) hell, the last 5 minutes of the movie decide to see him get his family back and inexplicably end with everyone happy and content.
• We're the Millers:
  • The street gang that robbed Cassie and David at the start of the film never faced any repercussions.
  • Possibly Rose's ex-boyfriend as Rose mentions that he abandoned her and maxed out her credit card which is the reason why she was evicted and broke.
• The White Orchid: The White Orchid, a murderer and con artist, gets away at the end.
• Wicked Little Things: Edmond Carlton is cleared of all charges related to the mining disaster he ordered, which led to the deaths of several children. Said children come back as vengeance zombies, but Carlton skips town before they can kill him, and is long dead by the time the main story begins. His comeuppance is wrought upon one of his descendants.
• The Wicker Man
  • The whole island tribe in the 2006 remake gets away with capturing, horribly torturing and eventually murdering the "Chosen Ones", and even indoctrinating the protagonist's own daughter into starting the sacrificial pyre. In The Stinger, we see them going about on their business as if nothing had happened.
  • The 1973 original seems like it has this on the surface... Howie points out to Lord Summerisle that if the crops fail again, the villagers will turn on him and make him the next sacrifice. Summerisle's expression seems to imply a comeuppance is just around the corner.
• Wild River: Racist thug Bailey is ultimately forced to stop his beatdown of Chuck but isn't humiliated, arrested, or really thwarted in any way and just leaves casually.
• Wizards of the Demon Sword: The Slave Master gets away with participating in the Sex Slave trade, barring a few moments of comedic humiliation.
• X-Men Film Series
  • X-Men: The Last Stand: Magneto is last seen, supposedly broken, sitting in a San Francisco park playing chess. Presumably during the confusion at the end of the battle of Alcatraz he managed to slip away, instead of going back to prison to pay for all the death and mayhem he caused. The end of the movie implies his depowering won't even be permanent, making this even more of an example. However, his elderly self in X-Men: Days of Future Past is shown to be a more heroic character, so something big enough must've happened to him or his ego that between that film and The Wolverine, he may have been seeking ways to make amends for his past sins.
  • X-Men: First Class: About half of the Hellfire Club get off scot-free in the end. William Stryker Sr. also faces no consequences for unlawful actions (keeping Emma Frost in a secret prison) and the unethical and horribly unwise decision to have both the Soviets and the Americans bombard the Cuban shore to get rid of mutants despite one of their own human agents being located there (both actions are things that even John McCone, who was a certified jerk, called him out on).
    • In the sequel, Emma, Azazel, Riptide, and Angel Salvadore all fall victim to a Bus Crash.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past: Nixon and his cabinet were perfectly happy for Trask to build an army of robots capable of genocide. The worst they get is a bit of a scare from Magneto's attack. Yes, they changed their mind, but they went along with a guy planning genocide right until their own lives were saved by mutants. (They don't even arrest Trask for torture and vivisection, just for selling military secrets.)
  • X-Men: Apocalypse:
    • Magneto again. Under Apocalypse's orders, he seizes what seems to be Earth's entire magnetic field, causing worldwide destruction and death. By the end of the movie, he's again on good terms with Charles and apparently his name is now being cleansed because he helped fight Apocalypse.
    • At the end of the Final Battle, Psylocke sneaks away undetected by the X-Men.
    • William Stryker escapes after Wolverine's rampage.
• In Film/Hounddog, Wooden's Boy suffers no consequences for raping Lewellen.

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