History KarmaHoudini / Folklore

** In the Literature/BookOfJeremiah, Ishmael son of Nethaniah escapes with eight of his men after being defeated. [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] since one can assume he goes to Hell when he dies (for murdering Gedaliah, governor of Jerusalem).
** Same goes for Doeg the Edomite in the Literature/BooksOfSamuel, who killed a lot of priests.

* ''Literature/TheBible'':

** In the Literature/BookOfJeremiah, Ishmael son of Nethaniah escapes with eight of his men after being defeated. [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] since one can assume he goes to Hell when he dies.
** Same goes for Doeg the Edomite in the Literature/BooksOfSamuel.

*** For example, in one story King Midas has to judge who is the best musician, Apollo or Pan. Apollo punished him with having donkey ears merely for choosing Pan's music over his own.

** Medea first fell in love with Jason and helps him fulfilling the task her father gave to him. She used her magic to make her love reciprocal (Jason was already married to Hypsipyle in some versions). After she decided to flee with him, in order to delay her father, she killed her brother Absyrtus, cut his body into pieces, and strewed them on the road[[note]]This is DependingOnTheWriter; some versions say Absyrtus was an adult and had been pursuing her and Jason before being killed in self-defence[[/note]]. When she found out her husband was about to marry another girl, she killed the young woman (and by accident, the woman's father) and the children she had had with Jason. Later she also tried to poison Theseus, the son of Aegeus, who she'd married, and managed to escape once again. There is no known story of her being punished for all her crimes. For some authors, she died in Colchis and after her death ended in the Elysian Fields (the ''paradise'') where she married Achilles. Some versions like [[Theatre/{{Medea}} Euripides' play]] portrait Medea as a less evil person, where she only killed her brother through an accident, and Jason was a jerkass, who wanted to marry another woman.

*** There are a few times when some god goes too far and upsets [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority Zeus himself]], which pretty much always ends badly for them. Zeus himself is never punished by anyone.

KarmaHoudini in {{Mythology}}.

* In "Literature/TheLazySpinner" a husband only wants his wife to spin reels he needs. She being the lazy spinner of the title goes out of her way to trick him [[RuleOfThree three times]] that if he cuts wood for a reel he will die. Then when she tricks him again by telling him he must watch over some boiling yarn or it will turn into tow, when in reality she just put tow in the pot. He agrees to shut up afterwards on her lack of spinning leaving the lazy wife to have won the story entirely.
* The {{Jerkass}} king in "Literature/{{Rumpelstiltskin}}" who threatens to behead the miller's daughter unless she spins straw into gold. He gets the gold ''and'' the girl. Not to mention the miller himself, who boasted that his daughter could do it in the first place, simply because he wanted to sound important.

* There's the story about the knight who has to find out what women most desire. He has a year and a day to find out, or he will be executed, and eventually promises to do the next thing an old crone asks of him in return for the secret (they want power in their relationships). She demands he marry him, and it turns out that she can make herself young and beautiful again. He lets her choose whether she will be beautiful in the day or night (or, depending on the version, beautiful and unfaithful, or old and true), and in return gets a beautiful wife all the time. Why did he have to find out what women most desire? He raped a girl, and in return gets a beautiful wife for it. There was absolutely no other punishment besides "find out what we want most and you can live."
** A point of order on the above - this is specifically Chaucer's version of the tale. In the more traditional versions, the knight is questing to find the answer in order to save the life of King Arthur, who has agreed to discover what women most desire in exchange for not being murdered by a robber knight whose lands Arthur had confiscated.

* In the oldest version of "Literature/LittleRedRidingHood", the story ends with [[TheBadGuyWins the wolf eating Red and falling asleep]]. Another old version has her escape, but without the wolf being punished. It wasn't until the Brothers Grimm came along that the wolf got his comeuppance.

** ProtagonistCenteredMorality ensures that Israelites who massacre enemy civilians, take women as [[SexSlave Sex Slaves]] and do other things that would today be considered morally unconscionable go to Heaven without their actions ever being condemned by virtue of being God's chosen people.

* Literature/TheMahabharata:

* [[Creator/MadameDAulnoy Madame d'Aulnoy]]:
** The Yellow Dwarf and the Fairy of the Desert in Madame d'Aulnoy's FairyTale ''Literature/TheYellowDwarf'' get no comeuppance after they have led Princess Toutebelle and the King of the Gold Mines to their deaths.

* Literature/TheBible:

* "Literature/FrauTrude", being AnAesop about children being obedient to their parents, naturally ends with the titular witch [[DownerEnding killing the girl]].
* ''Literature/HopOMyThumb":
** [[VillainProtagonist Hop-o'-My-Thumb himself]] never faces any consequences for his {{Jerkass}}ery due to ProtagonistCentredMorality.

** Lycomedes of Scyros murders Theseus by shoving him off a cliff (granted, Theseus [[BlackAndGreyMorality is far from a morally upstanding person himself]]). No mention is made of the gods punishing him for this or someone else killing him, and his only other known mythological appearance (in the Trojan cycle) depicts him as a perfectly benevolent ruler.