Karmic Death / Live-Action Films

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#-G

• The Mind Screw movie 11:14, displayed in Anachronic Order, features among the many characters a teenage girl who is sleeping with two different young men without their knowledge. She pretends to be pregnant and tells each of them that she needs $500 to get an abortion. In reality, she intends to take their money and leave with a third man. Near the end of the movie, she's speaking to this person on her cellphone when one of the two young men calls for her attention, telling her that he got the money. She immediately crosses the street, only to stop in the middle of it to answer a call on her phone. Moments later, she's hit and killed by a speeding van filled with several of the film's other protagonists.
• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: Adam and Vadoma kill Abraham and Mary's son William. They are then killed by his parents' respective silver Tragic Keepsake.
• The Alien series:
  • Aliens: Weyland-Yutani Project Developer Carter J. Burke. Essentially got killed by the hell he indirectly unleashed on the colonists on the LV-426 Hadley's Hope Colony.
  • Alien: Resurrection: Dr. Wren subjected at least eight people to be victims to the facehuggers and have an alien embryo burst out of their chests. He dies by having a chestburster break its way through his own skull.
• In The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Wood Hite, a violent bully who threatens and insults Bob, laughs off his threats of a bullet in the head. Later he is shot in the head by Bob.
• In The Avengers (1998), Father and Mrs. Peel's clones were killed when their balloon exploded after it ran into the Wonderland Weather sign.
• In Back to the Future, a deleted scene shows Biff managed a rare two-for-one version of this kind of death. A future version of him travels back through time and gives a sports almanac to his teenage 1955 self, allowing a Bad Future timeline where he is the richest and most powerful man in the world, he's married to Lorraine and he was able to kill George McFly and cover it up with his police contacts. However it is later revealed in 1990's-A, Lorraine eventually got fed up of him mistreating her and shot him dead with the same gun he shot George with, so 2015 Biff goes poof.
• In Bats, McCabe is killed by his own creations while attempting to communicate with them.
• The second Battal Gazi film, Savulun Battal Gazi Geliyor, takes this to the extreme. The protagonist, Battal Gazi, finds out the villains had invaded his home, captured his father, and gang-raped his sister until she is Driven to Suicide. His response is to track down the villains responsible and kill them one by one... through the crotch. Such as impaling their testicles with a trident, shooting their schlong with a burning arrow, smashing their nuts with a cudgel, stabbing them between the legs with a keris, and shoving a pair of circular blades into both the testicles.
• The Black Cat: Poelzig is a Torture Technician with a habit of putting his victims up in glass cases as mementos. He ruins the life of main character Werdegast, who ultimately discovers that his daughter (whom he thought dead) was actually alive, as Poelzig's wife... and moments after he learns this, he finds her dead body. Enraged, and with nothing left to lose, Werdegast straps Poelzig to his own embalming rack, and the film ends as Werdegast begins skinning the man alive.
• In The Black Hole, The movie's main villain is crushed to death by debris as the ship is drawn into the eponymous black hole (hypermass), as his souless, evil robotic bodyguard Maximillian simply leaves the room despite his repeated pleas.
• The Book of Eli. Gary Oldman's character escapes with the book and a leg injury, only to learn that it's a Braille Bible and thus useless to him. He tries to get his blind concubine to translate, but she refuses also noting that she can smell a wound on him that has gone septic. With most of his men dead he witnesses the anarchy below and it is heavily implied his end comes from either the riots or his infection.
• In both Le Bossu and On Guard, Philippe de Gonzague eventually perishes by the Botte de Nevers, the very fencing move that was the Signature Move of the man he killed to usurp his wealth and get his widow, his cousin the Duke Philippe de Nevers. The fencing trick ends with the sword planted right between one's eyes.
• In Boy Eats Girl, Nathan, having escaped death by hanging with the aid of a magic spell, must poetically die by hanging at the end; although....
• Braveheart: The English lord who executes Murron by slitting her throat has his own throat slit by Wallace, using the same exact knife.
  • Mornay, whose Cavalry Betrayal at Falkirk results in Wallace's friend Campbell's death, is killed by Wallace using Campbell's Epic Flail.
• Adaptations of Carrie:
  • Carrie (1976) singles out Beta Bitch Norma Watson, who had a hand in rigging the votes to set the prank up and leading everyone in laughing at Carrie. The fire hose is turned directly on her, knocking her unconscious and preventing her from escaping. Miss Collins gets Death by Adaptation because of an added moment — where Sue sees the prank about to happen and tries to stop it, but Miss Collins assuming she's trying to cause trouble and throwing her out of the gym — and a basketball scoreboard crushes her. Margaret's death is also changed — where she now gets an impromptu crucifixion that also resembles the statue of St Sebastian in the prayer closet.
  • Carrie (2002): Tina is seen trying to slap people out of the way of the fire exits to get out first. Carrie then causes a basketball board to come undone and land on her. Kenny meanwhile led everyone in laughing at the prank, and the doors close on his hand to trap him there — unable to get to safety when Carrie electrocutes everyone via the water on the gym floor.
  • Carrie (2013): Heather proves Genre Savvy and guesses something horrible is about to happen, but Carrie spots her running to the exits and throws her face-first into the glass. Jackie tries to escape via the bleachers, so Carrie crushes them to bisect him. The Watson twins — who are strongly implied to be in on the prank — get knocked to the floor and held down while everyone tramples them to death. Tina finally is whipped with live electrical cords and set on fire.
• In City of Ember, the Mayor is eaten alive after locking himself in a room filled with food.
• This seems to be the preferred method of dispatching villains in The City of Lost Children.
  • The Octopus kill each other — they're conjoined twins, despite the singular name — due to mind control by the ringmaster they used to try to kill Miette.
  • Krank dies after his attempt to steal Miette's dreams goes wrong, and he sees himself as the children he abducts do — a nightmarish, arbitrarily cruel monster of a man. He wakes screaming from his dream, and the shock kills him.
  • And the inventor, after going murderously insane and deciding to violently correct the problems he's set in motion... ties himself to Krank's oil rig and lashes explosives to his body. He recovers his senses too late, and the explosives are detonated by a seagull.
• Cloud Atlas: Dr. Goose gets bludgeoned over the head with the money he was trying to steal.
• In Crank: High Voltage, Poon Dong, an elderly Triad boss who uses Organ Theft to prolong his own life, gets captured and has Chev's stolen heart extracted, killing him.
  Doc Miles: Confucius say: Karma's a bitch!
• The Dark Crystal:
  • SkekSo's situation and eventual death in the film is due entirely to his own actions, as his manipulation of the Darkening in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance causes him to rot and decay much faster than his fellow Skeksis.
  • SkekTek is pushed into the Crystal's pit, just like the Gruenak slave he murdered in Age of Resistance, by the animals he imprisoned and experimented on.
• In Daybreakers:
  • The vampire bureaucracy was treating humans like cattle; in the end head bureaucrat Charles Bromley ends up being slaughtered like one.
  • Also, the Vampires who eat Frankie immediately become human. Unfortunately for them, they do so within sight of a small army of starving vampires who subsequently devour them just as messily.
• Franklyn Madsen, the villain in Dead Again. He killed his victim by stabbing her to death with scissors, then ends up Impaled with Extreme Prejudice on a giant scissors sculpture.
• Death Warrant: The corrupt doctor who harvested the prisoners' organs is captured by the prisoners and implied to be killed by vivisection.
• Almost the whole point of the British World War I horror movie Deathwatch (2002). Every character who aids in torturing the lone German prisoner dies in a suitably horrible fashion (suffice to say, one can become very creative when it comes to barbed wire). The only character to survive the movie (and even then it's fairly ambiguous) is Charlie (because he tried to help the prisoner). Other characters get killed in a more traditional sense of karmic death, for instance, the Upper Class Twit officer being murdered by a particularly disgruntled (possibly deranged) trooper.
• In District 9, cruel and sadistic mercenary Koobus Venter survives pretty much everything... until the end where he finds himself surrounded by a pack of those Prawns he despises so much and which he killed by the dozens. He ends up ripped apart and eaten.
• Possibly, in Ella Enchanted. After Edgar's treachery is revealed, he gives his villain's rant, and then proceeds to place the crown that he poisoned on his own head. He has a half-second to realize his mistake before the poison takes effect. The Sudden Musical Ending shows Edgar alive but still reeling from the poison.
• Elysium:
  • Kruger, whose favorite method of killing people is blowing them up into gibs, gets torn apart by his own grenade.
  • Delacourt was killed by Kruger, the same psycho she hired.
• Fargo:
  • Carl Showalter's death could be seen as this.
  • Wade Gustafson's death even more so.
• Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: He's a minor character, but the unnamed warden in the Erkstag prison is a rather nasty piece of work, as he enjoys when his prisoners (who are hung upside down in their cells) are skewered and eaten alive by the giant manticore in the bottom of the pit once their lights give out, and then their remains are tossed up for the baby manticores to feast upon. When Newt and Theseus manage to escape the prison by the skin of their teeth (via a Portkey Dumbledore gave Newt), the warden comes down and his own light goes off, and he's last seen giving an Oh, Crap! face implying he's gonna suffer the same fate as his prisoners.
• In The Frighteners, the two main villains (one of which is already dead) are dragged into Hell by a giant worm. Awesome.
• Full Circle has an overbearing husband break into his separated wife's new house, only to promptly fall down some stairs and die.
• Gang Related: Detective Divinci ends up getting killed by Clyde David Dunner, a criminal whom he had previously arrested but walked free because Divinci switched the guns used as evidence to cover up his own complicity in an unrelated crime.
• Carl, the villain of Ghost (1990), dies after he swings a hanging hook at the hero, in a massively futile attempt to halt Patrick Swayze's ghostly offensive, smashes the window behind him, and ultimately winds up impaled on the very un-soft glass. And as if that wasn't enough, the film becomes terrifying. Carl only gets to experience his first few seconds in the afterlife on that plane before shadows boil out of everywhere and drag him off screaming to Oblivion or whatever hellhole or damnation the viewer can only imagine.
• Ghost Rider (2007): After taking the San Verganza contract and powering himself up with a thousand corrupt souls, Blackheart meets his end when Ghost Rider turns the Penance Stare upon him. It didn't work the first time due to the fact that Blackheart did not have a soul, but taking the contract had not only voided this immunity, but made him extra vulnerable. Whoops!
• G.I. Joe: Retaliation:
  • Firefly is killed by one of his own bug bombs.
  • Zartan murdered a female GI Joe member in front of Storm Shadow, a man who's disgusted with killing women in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and in this movie he later gets killed by the same man who he killed the woman in front of because he murdered his master.
• Godzilla: The monsters aren't exempt from this. The Showa King Ghidorah is beaten to death by the same monsters he's been tormenting since 1964, Destroyah is incinerated and beaten to death after murdering Godzilla's son, and the Millienium Gigan is destroyed by his own weapons directly after burning Mothra alive.
  • Godzilla himself is a victim of this in Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!. He tries one last time to kill two humans with his atomic breath, not caring that a hole has been blasted into his throat with a special missile from the inside. As he charges up to fire, the hole widens, and the force of his own laser explodes him from the inside out.
  • Ebirah, Horror of the Deep: The terrorist group Red Bamboo manipulates the giant crustacean Ebirah as a guard dog to prevent any of their slaves from escaping by boat. Near the film's climax, the remaining slaves sabotage the repellant the Red Bamboo uses to protect their own warships. When the Red Bamboo's leadership tries to escape by boat, Ebirah immediately destroys it.
  • Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah has the human villains get killed by the very monster they tried to wipe out of existence. On top of that, the Heisei Godzilla only exists because they traveled back in time in the first place, making this a double dose of karma.
  • See the below folder for MonsterVerse examples.
• The Grey Zone: During the Auschwitz-Birkenau uprising, a random SS guard in the crematoria is killed by the Sonderkommando by shoving him into the ovens which the Nazis used to dispose of the Jewish corpses.

H-O

• Michael Horrigan's death at the climax of Halo: Nightfall — being eaten by feral Lekgolo worms — is well-deserved, considering he'd been an inexcusable jerkass to the ONI team's Sedran companions, then topped that by, in succession, using one of their prisoners as bait for the Lekgolo, turning on his CO Jameson Locke and leaving him to die, using his fellow traitor Greg Ramos as bait for the Lekgolo, and finally gunning down the other prisoner to stop him leaving him behind.
• In Hardcore Henry, Henry stumbles upon three corrupt cops preparing to rape a woman. One of them implies he's about to force her to give him oral sex by saying, "The gag reflex is psychological. It's all in your mind." Henry marches over and kicks the asses of the other two. Then he grabs the first one by the nuts and crushes them, then rams his own baton down his throat until he chokes to death.
• Haunted Horrifying Sounds From Beyond The Grave: Martin Stockdotter decided to record his mother's final moments, which were her making gasping noises in her hospital bed, and then flatlining, for his scary sounds album. He is then hanged to death, and his gasping, strangling noises are recorded to be used in that very album.
• The theatrical version of The Hobbit gives us the impression that Alfrid, who is not only a selfish and snobby jerk but is also the series' equivalent to Jar Jar Binks, is a Karma Houdini, as he seemingly escapes with a lot of gold. However, the Extended Edition shows us that he attempts to hide on a catapult, but a coin falls off him onto the catapult's trigger, which sends him flying into the mouth of a troll, who, by the way, was about to kill Gandalf, but this event causes both Alfrid and the troll to die of asphyxiation.
• This trope is endemic in the Indiana Jones films.
  • Three of the four movies end with the primary villain being undone by their own ambition when the artifact they've been searching for destroys them. Although not the best example of the trope in action, since in every movie Indy has few compunctions about killing bad guys left and right.
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Donovan chooses poorly and drinks from a false grail, leading to his Nightmare Fuel demise of aging rapidly to death. This is karmic payback for shooting Henry Sr. a little earlier. Meanwhile, Schneider pays the price for helping the Nazis. She attempts to steal the real grail out of the temple, which triggers a Cataclysm Climax. In a Take My Hand! moment, she reaches for the grail, but in a dash of karmic justice, it had landed literally inches outside her hand’s reach. She’s too greedy to give up when she’s so close, despite Indy losing his grip on her slippery gloved hand. Just as she’s about to get it, the glove pulls off and she falls to her death.
• In the Fade: Katja kills both her family's murderers using an improvised bomb, the same means that they used, along with herself.
• In Ip Man, the cruel Japanese Colonel Sato, who had shot Master Liu to death earlier for losing against Japanese fighters, eventually gets killed by a shot from his own gun after it is wrestled away from him.
• In The Island at the Top of the World, The Godi causes his own death by shooting a flaming arrow into the dirigible causing it to fall covered in flames. Especially ironic as he had been proclaiming the appearance of the airship as a portent of doom.
• Island of Death: After spending the entire film murdering innocent people in cruel and horrifying ways, Christopher gets what's coming to him when he's thrown into a lye pit and left there to dissolve.
• Doctor Moreau in Island of Lost Souls is vivisected alive by his "creations" (animals modified by vivisection).
• In the remake of I Spit on Your Grave Jennifer's killing of her rapists reflects a way they personally raped, tortured, and degraded her.
• In Jack the Giant Slayer Roderick is killed by Elmont after the former attempted to push the latter to his death out of the cave.
• James Bond films do this a lot, and often accompanied by a Bond One-Liner, of course.
  • A good example without a one-liner is General Orlov from Octopussy, the corrupt Soviet General Ripper who is gunned down by his own men as he tries to cross the German border because they believe he's a defector.
  • A rare serious example was in Licence to Kill, in which Bond asked Sanchez, "Don't you want to know why?", showing him a silver lighter — the wedding gift that Bond had given to Leiter and his wife, before Sanchez had her killed and Leiter maimed by a shark. Bond then set the oil-soaked Sanchez on fire with their wedding present.
• In Johnny Reno, Jess Yates might have escaped the final shootout, except he tripped, which resulted in him being shot by Reno. The object he tripped over? The noose he had earlier tried to lynch Joe Conners with.
• In Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Count Saknussem tries to mislead and kill the heroes, but is eventually caught and sentenced to death. However, no one wants to kill him, so they take him along. Sometime after they reach the center of the earth, however, Saknussem eats Gertrude, Hans's duck. Shortly afterward, he falls against a boulder and is killed when several heavy rocks fall upon him.
• Jurassic Park:
  • In Jurassic Park (1993), Nedry sabotages all the security measures of the island and unleashes nearly all of the very dangerous dinosaurs to help cover his escape. He gets lost, crashes his jeep and eventually gets eaten by a Dilophosaurus.
    "Look! Play fetch! Play fetch! It's a stick! Stick, stupid! Play fetch! Ah, no wonder you're extinct. I'm gonna run you over when I come back down."
    • Also, earlier in the film when Nedry sabotages the security measures, the electric cars stop at the Tyrannosaurus rex paddock. Before the Tyrannosaurus breaks loose, Hammond's attorney, Donald Gennaro, runs out of one of the cars, leaving behind Tim and Lex Murphy to face the great beast alone. He hides in a bathroom and dies the undignified death of being eaten on the toilet by the Tyrannosaurus rex, who he abandoned the kids to.
  • In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Dieter Stark uses his taser to electroshock a tiny Compsognathus for no reason. They come back and get some revenge on him later. The movie also has Hammond's greedy nephew, Peter Ludlow, who ends up being killed by the baby Tyrannosaurus rex, who he captured along with the male Tyrannosaurus rex adult.
  • In Jurassic World, after spending the whole film planning to exploit her and her sisters for profit, Vic Hoskins meets his demise when Delta stalks him through the genetics labs and eventually corners and eviscerates him.
  • The Indominus rex spends the whole movie killing everyone, terrorizing the island and trying to establish itself as the biggest, baddest predator on the island. This leads to her own death by a much bigger, nastier predator. For bonus points, the formerly powerful, terrifying beast is reduced to kicking and screaming as she's dragged to her death by the Mosasaurus.
  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has more examples of poetic justice in action. First was with Ken Wheatley, an Egomaniac Hunter who habitually collects the teeth of prey creatures that he captures, as demonstrated with an innocent Stegosaurus. When he attempts to tranquilize the Indoraptor, it turns out that the Indoraptor was pretending to be tranquilized and kills Wheatley. Wheatley's death was even more undignified as he is seen sobbing in fear after his arm is torn off and before the Indoraptor finishes him off. The most prominent of all the karmic deaths in the film was with Eli Mills, the Big Bad who murdered Ben Lockwood in cold blood and held hostage Maisie and the dinosaurs. After a stampede of dinosaurs passes by him in which he is nearly trampled, he thinks he's in the clear, only to have the Tyrannosaurus rex and the Carnotaurus rip him in half while eating him.
• In Killing Zoe, Eric fucks up the heist, murders numerous civilians, and takes glee in spreading his AIDS. As he's about to murder his childhood friend, his gun jams. French police show up seconds later. At least six cops empty entire magazines from their machine guns into him, causing him to dance for nearly half a minute as he's torn apart by bullets. His infected blood is sprayed all over the place.
• In the ending of Kingsman: The Secret Service, every really corrupt politician in the world who was willing to sit in a bunker while the rest of the world destroyed itself outside in a psychotic rage, has their heads blown up by the implant installed in their necks by the Big Bad. All to the soothing sound of Pomp and Circumstance
• Kiss of the Damned: At the end, Maia is driving to the house at night after having gotten away with all her misdeeds, gets into a car accident, and wakes up the next day when the sun is out. She's killed before she can find shelter.
• In The Last Boy Scout, Marcone grabs what he thinks is the briefcase full of money out of the backseat of the car. But instead it contains the bomb that he meant to kill Sen. Baynard, and Marcone is blown up when he opens it.
• (Unintentionally?) inverted in the Korean movie The Last Day. In the final scenes, about everyone who displays some kind of altruism dies, often horribly, for having tried to save lives. Most of those who were only concerned with their own survival, well, survive.
• The Lone Ranger:
  • Latham Cole falls to his death, along with the several tons of silver and a locomotive, both of which his plan revolved around, which crush him to death.
  • Butch Cavendish and the Captain are killed when they're caught in a train collision. To paraphrase the Captain, they were with the railroad company.
• George Harvey in The Lovely Bones.
• The Loved Ones: Lola's father has his neck slashed by Brent with kitchen knifes and then falls under the hidden trap door, where the lobotomized former victims of Lola's eat his body.
• In Machete, Senator MacLaughlin is a racist bastard who encourages vigilantes to kill illegal immigrants and plans to build an electric fence on the U.S./Mexico border. In the end, some vigilantes mistake him for an immigrant (he was wearing tattered clothes and was trying to sneak away from people trying to kill him) and open fire on him. Wounded, he staggers into an electric fence. He even seems to be aware of it, and lets out a chuckle before he dies.
• Immortan Joe's death at the end of Mad Max: Fury Road is a very karmic one. Furiosa takes the chain from his breathing device and throws it into the wheel of his vehicle, ripping his face off. He's killed by the woman he kidnapped, with a chain that is symbolic of his own slave-owning ways and the mask that's been keeping him alive in the first place... and with his own vehicle, to boot.
• Suffered by Vic in The Man from Laramie as he is shot at by Apaches with the very rifles he and Dave had previously sold to them.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe
  • In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, HYDRA's plan is to use three S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarriers to kill anyone who is or ever could be a threat to them. Captain America and company change the targeting systems on the Helicarriers so that they shoot each other down. The look of utter horror on a controller's face when he realizes it is a sight to behold.
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, Proxima Midnight taunts Wanda about how she and Vision will die alone. Proxima not only is killed on the battlefield by getting thrown in line of one of her own army's machines by Wanda, her husband Corvus is killed much later by Vision way off in the forest. On top of that, while both Vision and Wanda die too they were able to die together.
    • A rare heroic example occurs in the same movie. After finding out that Thanos already killed Gamora, Peter Quill (aka Star Lord) attacks Thanos while he was subdued by Mantis before the rest of the heroes could remove the Infinity Gauntlet off Thanos's arm. After Thanos successfully obtains all the Infinity Stones and initiates the Decimation Snap, Quill, who ended up handing Thanos victory earlier, ends up being disintegrated along with Mantis and Drax.
  • In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos, who'd sought to use the Infinity Gauntlet to disintegrate half the life in the universe, ends up getting disintegrated when Tony Stark uses the Gauntlet against Thanos and the Black Order.
    • It happens in the present as well. Just prior to using the Gauntlet, Thanos taunts Thor, who had wounded but did not kill him, "You should have gone for the head." Sure enough, Thor decapitates him the next time they meet. "I went for the head."
• In Masters of the Universe, He-Man finally destroyed Skeletor's source of power, his troops are beaten, etc. He tells Skeletor that it's over, and He-Man turns his back to Skeletor. Skeletor replies, "...yes... for you!", pulls out a hidden sword and attempts to run He-Man through. He-Man dodges in the nick of time, and Skeletor falls down a handy bottomless pit. (Subverted: Skeletor lives via Stinger.) ^note An episode of Justice League Unlimited homaged this, with the hero and villain of the week reenacting this almost exactly.
• In Men in Black, Edgar the Bug kidnaps Dr. Laurel Weaver with the intent of taking her with him so he can eat her. In the end, he's ultimately destroyed by none other than Laurel herself, who blows him to kingdom come with J's MIB gun.
• At the end of the dark comedy Miss Nobody, the Villain Protagonist lampshades this after realizing she's just taken a fatal dose of the poisoned water she had intended to use earlier on a colleague whom she'd suspected of being the person blackmailing her over murdering her way up the corporate ladder. She had poisoned one of the jugs in his personal supply, but never got around to disposing of it after the blackmailer turned out to be someone else. So in the end, when the jug in the water cooler in the office which she has as a result of her murders runs out and her assistant raids the colleague's supply for a replacement, he unknowingly selects the poisoned jug.
• MonsterVerse:
  • Kong: Skull Island: Preston Packard's mad obsession with killing Kong — putting the lives of all the rest of the cast in danger and threatening to cause the Skullcrawlers to become an unchecked threat to the world — directly leads to Kong squashing him flat after Packard injures him with napalm in an effort to kill him. The biggest Skullcrawler Ramarak attempts to eat Weaver out of Kong's hand, but taking Kong's entire arm into his gullet enables Kong to finish the monster off by tearing out its innards.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): King Ghidorah, after killing Mothra, nearly succeeding in torturing Godzilla to death, and killing pretty much all human life he encounters just For the Evulz and attempting to end the vast majority of life on Earth for his own desires; suffers a merciless Rasputinian Death at the hands Burning Godzilla who's empowered by Mothra's ashes (and implicitly by her spirit). What's more, the very humans who Ghidorah was gleefully exterminating are responsible for distracting Ghidorah from finishing Godzilla off before the latter could go Burning mode because Ghidorah's omnicidal intentions have just made him a complete Conflict Killer for most of the human cast and the benevolent Titans.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong:
    • Walter Simmons and Ren Serizawa are building Mechagodzilla as part of a Muggle Power agenda to kill Godzilla and then enslave or exterminate all the other Titans, and what's worse is that they're knowingly causing Godzilla's rampages on populated areas which are claiming lives all for the sake of their own Engineered Heroics, and even worse that they were actually stupid and arrogant enough to use King Ghidorah's Not Quite Dead skull as the core BRAIN component for a Mecha they intended to be unstoppable. Once Mechagodzilla goes rogue courtesy of Ghidorah's subconsciousness hijacking it, it kills them, the two villains reaping what they sow and paying with their lives for their sheer hubris and all the deaths and destruction they deliberately caused.
    • Maia Simmons' betrayal of Team Kong causes Kong to recognize her as an enemy (honestly it's just surprising that she forget Kong was standing right there when she threatened the team). In an even stupider move, she in a blind panic orders her HEAV's pilot to shoot at Kong to get him out of their way, at which point an aggravated Kong grabs their HEAV and crushes it.
• The Mummy hung a lampshade on this: Evie tells Beni that people like him always meet an unfortunate end. Sure enough, he does — as the heroes are making their getaway from Hamunaptra, Beni's greed gets him trapped in the treasure room and then Eaten Alive by scarabs. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
  • The Mummy Returns: While a tragic end for the villain, Imhotep's final death mirrors his Lack of Empathy for others. He is a man who not only endured And I Must Scream for thousands of years but saw everyone else as either an obstacle or a pawn and condemned many people to horrible deaths, all for the sake of one woman who he believed was his eternal soulmate... who it turns out would abandon him for dead to save her own sorry hide, calling into question whether she ever truly loved him at all.
• In the climax of The Night of a Thousand Cats, Hugo gets devoured by the very same animals he had been feeding his victims to.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master has this happen to Freddy Krueger himself. Although he's been killed before multiple times and never truly stays dead, this one is particularly laced with karmic irony. Throughout the series, he tends to kill his teenage victims in a cruel, mocking way that uses their own dreams or insecurities against them and traps them inside his own body as damned souls that make him even stronger. In addition, the previous movie had the teenagers gain dream powers to fight back, but Freddy would typically just give them the illusion of a fighting chance before going in for the kill. When he faces off against Final Girl Alice Johnson at the end, who had gained the powers of her fallen friends, he did his usual routine of letting her whale on him before fighting back, assuming even she wasn't a real threat. He was wrong. Alice uses a mirror to reflect his evil powers back at him, giving his trapped victims free reign to break free and rip him apart from the inside out. Effectively, it was his turn to be on the receiving end of one of his cruel dream deaths. Many fans find this cathartically satisfying enough to prefer this over his actual, more anticlimactic final death in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.
• Subverted in No Country for Old Men. Near the end of the movie, "ultimate badass" Anton Chigurh is leaving his last victim's house when he gets hit by a car. Despite this, he maliciously survives with an open arm fracture and some broken ribs, and manages to escape the scene, and, although heavily injured, can walk into the proverbial sunset. The implication is of course that his Implacable Man status doesn't just come from pure skill, but also quite a bit from pure dumb luck.
• No Retreat, No Surrender 2: The main villain, Colonel Yuri, is a sadist who enjoys beating up helpless prisoners and throwing them into a crocodile pit in his compound, and tries to kill Scott's girlfriend Sulin by lowering her into the pit, even telling her how slow and painful her death will be because she will be eaten "feet-first". In the final rescue and battle, Yuri gets flung by Scott into the same crocodile pit. With an exploding jeep, for good measure.
• In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Klansman Dan Teague, played by John Goodman, is crushed to death when a burning cross falls on top of him. Sheriff Cooley's death by drowning can be seen as a metatextual example, as well, considering his counterpart in The Odyssey is the sea god Poseidon.
• The demise of the crime boss Komtuan in Ong-Bak possibly epitomizes the concept of karmic death. You don't get much more karmic than being crushed under the falling head of a giant Buddha statue, which Komtuan was trying to remove and sell.

P-Z

• A voiceover at the end of Picnic at Hanging Rock tells us that Mrs. Appleyard dies while attempting to climb the rock. Even more karmic in Joan Lindsay's novel: Mrs. Appleyard falls and smashes her skull open when she sees a horrific vision of a gruesomely disfigured Sara.
• In The Pit and the Pendulum, the adulterous Elizabeth conspires to break her husband Nicholas by fooling him into thinking he entombed her prematurely. She in fact drives him to murderous insanity leading to the film's closing reveal where is Elizabeth is still alive and unable to cry out in the iron maiden as the torture chamber is locked. Forever. And nobody will miss her, because she faked her own death earlier. ^note Fridge Logic kicks in when you notice her hands are free to pull off her gag, but the shock reveal makes it easy to overlook this.
• Two in Pitch Black.
  • Paris panics and runs away, which disables the best light source and screws over the entire group. He is killed very quickly afterwards.
  • Johns is willing to kill anyone else in the group, even Jack, to distract the creatures so he can escape. Riddick wounds him instead, letting him be the distraction.
• One of the most blatant and cringe-worthy uses of this trope occurs in The Postman, where near the end of the film, Kevin Costner's character has already defeated the villain, has the option to kill him, but refuses because he's just too damned nice. Naturally, the villain draws a hidden gun and is blown away by his former trusted lieutenant and his own stupidity.
• In Prometheus, Weyland wanted to meet the Engineers so that he could get immortality, and was willing to sacrifice the crew of the Prometheus to get it. Unfortunately for him, the surviving Engineer he meets is offended by his arrogant request and opts instead to kill him with a single blow to the head.
• Hilariously subverted in Punisher: War Zone, in a scene where the cops are careful and diligent about arresting and restraining a captured mobster, only for Castle to unceremoniously blow his head off half a second later.
  Special Agent Paul Budiansky: GOD DAMN IT, CASTLE!
• Push:
  • Nick's final battle with Victor, The Dragon. He gets a chance to kill him but doesn't, for unknown reasons. Victor is killed seconds later by a Bleeder though.
  • Earlier in the film, Carver kills one of his goons by ordering him to shoot himself, and then Pushing a memory saying the gun is empty. At the end, Kira kills him the exact same way.
• Raising Arizona: Leonard Smalls puts Hi in a bear hug to weaken him up before shooting him. Hi spends this time gripping at Smalls' jacket, where Smalls keeps his grenades. Smalls knocks Hi to the ground, pulls out his twin twin-barreled shotguns, and cocks all four hammers. Hi holds up his hand in a "have mercy" gesture. That's when Smalls notices the hand grenade pin around Hi's finger. You can figure out the rest.
• Though not technically the main villain, Dr. Worley from Return to Oz uses an electro therapy machine to damage his patients' minds, and he will then lock them in the cellar. He nearly does this to Dorothy, but the power goes out at the last second. Later, Ozma helps Dorothy escape, resulting in Dorothy getting back to the Land of Oz. While she is away, Dr. Worley's clinic is hit by lightning and burns to the ground. Everyone is rescued, but Dr. Worley runs back into the fire to rescue his machines, and thus seals his fate.
• In Ring of Fear, O'Malley dies at the teeth and claws of the tiger he has spent the movie tormenting when he frees it from its cage to create havoc while he escapes from the circus.
• In Road House (1989), the evil Brad Wesley basically runs the town the movie is set in, forcing the local businessmen to pay him and trashing their shops if they refuse. In the final showdown with Dalton, it's not Swayze who kills him (as the latter did, graphically, to his Dragon Jimmy), but the aforementioned business owners, filling him with enough lead to take down a bear. Can also overlap with The Dog Bites Back or Adaptational Self-Defense.
• The Running Man: Damon Killian, host of the top-rated TV series "The Running Man" (wherein political criminals must earn a chance at a full pardon by evading "stalkers" out to kill them) is exposed as a fraud by the film's main protagonist... then sent into his own game zone (via a rocket sled) — the same place where every other contestant had died so brutally -– to meet his fate.
• The B-Movie The Sadist goes to rather extreme lengths for this. Out of nowhere, the villain falls into an abandoned well which is quickly revealed to be inhabited by dozens of poisonous snakes.
• In the film adaptation of Clive Cussler's Sahara (2005), the villain responsible for contaminating much of Mali's drinking water with toxic waste appears to have slipped away from punishment, until it is implied that the CIA has secretly replaced his bottled water with the very same contaminated water. (This happens in the book too.)
• In Saw 3D, Mark Hoffman is captured by Dr. Lawrence Gordon and left to die as punishment for killing Jill Tuck. "Game over."
• In Scarface (1983), Frank Lopez, angered at protagonist Tony Montana for making a deal with rival Alejandro Sosa without his approval and attempting to steal his mistress Elvira from him, sends a group of hitmen to a nightclub to kill Tony. Tony ends up surviving the ambush and, immediately suspecting Frank was behind it, confronts him. When Frank confesses to ordering the hit, he pleads with Tony to spare him since he didn't take out the hit himself. Tony, leaving this in mind, agrees not to kill him, and promptly tells Manny to do the job since he wanted Frank to suffer the fate Tony almost met.
• The first segment of horror anthology Scary or Die is about a couple of racist rednecks who kidnap Mexican immigrants, drag them out to the desert near the border, and kill them. After they do this to their latest victims, everyone they've ever killed rise up as zombies and kill them.
• Scream VI: The film opens with a pair of Ghostface killers, Jason and Greg, starting their killing spree in New York. Jason murders his Film Studies teacher (Laura) and goes back home to his apartment...only to find Greg dismembered, and then he gets slaughtered by another Ghostface. Ghostface even calls back to how Jason described Laura after her murder:
  "Do you feel like an animal, Jason? Like meat?"
• In The Shawshank Redemption, Warden Norton has what can be considered a Karmic Death. Once Andy rats him out, we see a close-up of one of the Warden's wall decorations, it says "His Judgment Cometh, and that right soon." Moments later he shoots himself through the head rather than be arrested. Red later gives us the all-satisfying line; "I like to think the last thing that went through [Norton's] head, other than that bullet, was to wonder how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him."
• Shaun of the Dead: In a panicked state, David begins to unlock the pub doors despite a horde of zombies being on the other side. The horde could have easily killed the main characters but he's instead torn apart by those zombies and only succeeds in infecting Ed. If David wanted Shaun to be killed by the zombie in the garden, then it's pretty cathartic how he's dismembered by zombies as Shaun tries to save him.
• In Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (2009), Lord Blackwood dies by hanging (from a chain from the top of the unfinished Tower Bridge; of course he'd attempted to kill Holmes after Holmes had spared his life from almost certain death seconds before). Furthermore, the plot hinges on him cheating death at the gallows and escaping his much-deserved execution for murder at the beginning. Guess Karma wasn't too thrilled at him for that...
• In the first Spider-Man film, Peter discovers that Norman Osborn is the Green Goblin and hesitates. Osborn takes advantage of the momentary weakness to try and kill him, but Peter dodges the attack and Osborn ends up getting stabbed by his own glider.
• The wuxia The Spirit of the Sword has it's main villain, the Hell Fire Master, whose preferred method of killing his victims is by setting on fire through his fire-breathing staff. His eventual fate involves him being impaled by his own staff, at which point he gets set alight and is roasted to death.
• Star Wars:
  • The first film had Tarkin refusing to evacuate the Death Star arrogantly believing there is no chance whatsoever that the Death Star will be destroyed and he'll die on it. Guess what happens!
  • At the end of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader kills Emperor Palpatine while Palpatine is trying to kill his son.
  • Also, Anakin Skywalker's transition to Darth Vader is marked by Palpatine using Force Lightning to make Mace Windu fall to his death, while Vader's return to the light side/being Anakin is marked by Vader sending Palpatine to fall to his death. Even better: Palpatine was using Force Lightning to kill Luke, and Vader's act stops him.
  • Also in ROTJ, Jabba the Hutt gets strangled to death by Leia with the chain he was using to keep her enslaved.
  • At the end of Rogue One, Director Krennic is killed by a blast from the Death Star, the very weapon he spent decades building. For bonus points, the super laser hits him directly.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:
  • The deranged and abusive asylum owner Mr. Fogg is left to the care of his "children", who quickly turn upon him and tear him to pieces. It's much more poetic (if much less awesome) than the stage play, where Johanna shoots him.
  • And in both the film and stage versions, Sweeney Todd himself is killed by a minor character — a young boy Mrs. Lovett took in, who goes insane after discovering what the meat pies are really made of. And he's killed using the very same razor that Sweeney used to kill so many people.
  • And Mrs. Lovett gets thrown into and burned alive inside the oven where she baked her cannibalistic meat pies.
• The title character in Tamara loves to play with her victim's insecurities and deficiencies before inflicting gruesome Psychic Assisted Suicides on them. Roger, who did nothing while the rest of the group (minus Chloe) agreed to cover up Tamara's death, kills himself in a manner referencing the Three Wise Monkeys. Her father, a man who loved the bottle more than his (now ex-)wife, eats a glass beer bottle that tears apart his mouth, throat, and esophagus from the inside.
• Ted Bundy: At his execution Ted notices that the guard pulling the lever is a woman. His victims as a serial killer were exclusively young women.
• This Is the End: Jonah gets possessed by a demon and later burnt to death after praying death upon Jay.
• Film/Thursday: The police officer at the start of the film is given a free coffee by the killers, and he leaves the convenience store. However, his greed makes him return to claim a free pastry (there is an offer giving customers who purchase a coffee a free pastry). Even though he clearly didn't buy the coffee in the first place, he returns to demand a pastry, and is killed by Nick & Dallas this time around.
• In Tomorrow Never Dies, a memorable One-Scene Wonder baddie named Dr. Kaufman is a professional assassin who uses his professor-level knowledge of forensic medicine to Make It Look Like an Accident. His original plan was to kill poor Paris and then kill Bond in a way that makes it look like Bond committed a Murder-Suicide. Bond overpowers Kaufman and then makes the professor shoot himself in the head, turning Kaufman into the victim of his own plan and covering up Bond's tracks instead.
• Transformers: Blackout was the first Decepticon that the United States Military encountered: having downed one of their military Helicopters which he assumed the form of for infiltration. After entering the Qatar Air Base; he goes on a rampage killing the soldiers stationed there after failing to get info on where either Megatron or the AllSpark are located. He then unleashes Scorponok to track down any survivors. At the end of the film, William Lennox and his squad of USAF Marines that were stationed at Qatar and had fought tooth-and-nail against Scorponok to return to the states managed to deal the killing blow to Blackout.
• Transformers: Age of Extinction: Harold Attinger was an unnoticed CIA agent who founded Cemetery Wind to wipe out Transformers and replace them with man-made version to appeal his xenophobic paranoia and greed. He's killed in his failed attempt to murder Cade Yeager by Optimus Prime. Fittingly, although Optimus swore revenge on his fallen comrades, he barely paid any attention to Attinger when he shot him.
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon:
  • Dylan Gould's fate. He reactivates the Control Pillar of the Decepticons' Space Bridge — despite Sam Witwicky trying to reason with him — in order to bring Cybertron near Earth (he was promised that he would be spared after the rest of humanity was enslaved, and also possibly be given the role of humanity's "CEO"). Later on, Sam hits him with a metal bar, causing him to lose his balance. He eventually collides with the Pillar's energy beam, and is ultimately electrocuted to death, all the while screaming in pain.
  • Earlier, Sentinel Prime wounds Ironhide and then executes him point blank despite his plea for him not to. At the end, a wounded Sentinel is executed point blank by Optimus Prime despite his plea for him not to.
• Jonas in Twister stole the main character's invention to study tornadoes. Of course, he ends up getting killed by one.
• At the end of Unconscious, León dies to a Falling Chandelier of Doom that was knocked down by a ricocheting bullet he himself fired, in a failed attempt to assassinate Sigmund Freud.
• The Walking Dead (1936): Having just killed John Ellman for the second time, Nolan and Loder suffer a High-Voltage Death when they crash their car and power lines fall on it. this is karmic because it was their Frame-Up that sent Ellman to the electric chair in the first place.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Judge Doom is killed by the same 'Dip' that he is planning on using to kill all the other cartoons. While Eddie Valiant has no qualms about killing the guy responsible for the death of his brother, the death that Doom suffers is a total accident that would have never happened if he had not invented 'dip' to begin with, or if he hadn't sidestepped the punching glove launched at him, which accidentally hit the 'dip' release valve which subsequently melted Doom.
• Willy's Wonderland:
  • Sheriff Lund gets bisected by Willy when she tries to feed the Janitor to him. Also, her two accomplices, Tex and Jed, get blown up by Siren Sara.
  • Cammy Chameleon gets a Neck Snap by the Janitor, the same method she used against her previous victims.
  • Knighty Knight gets decapitated with his own sword.
• X-Men Film Series
  • In X2: X-Men United, Mitchell Laurio is killed by the prisoner he hated and abused.
  • In X-Men: First Class, Magneto kills Shaw by telemagnetically pushing a coin through his brain. It was the very same coin that Erik was commanded to move as a child to prevent Schmidt from killing his mother; Erik failed and Shaw shot his mother. Magneto even gives an Ironic Echo of what Schmidt said to taunt his victim.
• In Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, Shayowteewah — the chief of the Tulpani — dunks intruders into his realm in molten gold; turning them into gold statues. During the battle in the Collapsing Lair, he attempts to push the Pecos Kid into the pool of liquid gold, only to overbalance and fall into the pool himself, and be transformed into a gold statue.
• In Zatoichi at the Blood Fest (1973). Ichi slashed his way through mooks to get to the rice merchant, who exploited farmers. After he decided to let him go, the merchant slipped on spilled rice and fell on a katana — and the pointy end was up.

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