Karmic Death / Western Animation

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• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang actually sits down and discusses this trope with Avatar Kyoshi, no doubt hoping his upcoming battle with Fire Lord Ozai could end the same way as her battle with Chin the Conqueror.
  Aang: But you didn't really kill Chin. Technically, he fell to his own doom because he was too stubborn to get out of the way.
  Kyoshi: Personally, I don't really see the difference. But I assure you, I would have done whatever it took to stop Chin.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold:
  • Joe Chill, killer of Bruce's parents, dies this way. It's lampshaded and justified soon afterwards:
    Phantom Stranger: Ultimately it was karma that delivered the final blow to Joe Chill. ...Funny how Chill just happened to be under that crumbling ceiling when it came down.
    Spectre: I wouldn't know anything about that...
  • Also, in the series finale, Batmite succeeds in getting the show cancelled for a Darker and Edgier one, but as a light-hearted and silly character, there's no room for him in the new show, and he is erased from existence.
• Duckman: In "They Craved Duckman's Brain," a doctor by chance discovers the Cure for Cancer buried within Duckman's brain. Duckman is then kidnapped by a depraved medical supplier, who plans to kill him so he can continue profiting off of the infinite money he's made off the disease. Later, while trying to chase Duckman down, he crashes into a truck full of cigarettes which catches fire, and inhaling all of the cigarette smoke causes him to waste away from cancer in mere seconds. To make it even more obvious, the brand of cigarettes was "Poetic Justice."
• In the DiC Entertainment G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero two-part episode "The Greatest Evil", the villain is a drug dealer called the Headman, who has caused grief for both G.I. Joe and Cobra because Falcon's addiction to his drug spark has driven a wedge between Falcon and his half-brother Duke, and a Cobra member's sister has fallen into a coma from overdosing on the drug. In the end, the Headman dies from overdosing on his own drug when he tries to expose the Joes and Cobra to lethal amounts of spark, only for Falcon to redirect the hose at the Headman the instant he fires.
• I ♡ Arlo: In the Season 1 finale "The Uncondemning", the Bog Lady receives her ultimate fate — for secretly protecting Arlo to the point she did not want him to leave the swamp, luring him back to the swamp and trying to force him to stay forever, and almost eating him and his friends alive — when Edmée blows up her shack right underneath her, causing her to sink and melt into nothingness.
• Infinity Train:
  • In Book 2, Agent Mace of the Mirror Police has been trying to grind down Mirror Tulip for going rogue. In "The Wasteland", Mirror Tulip kills Mace by grinding him against the wheels of the train.
  • In book three, this ends up Double Subverted. Simon is narrowly saved from falling into the train's wheels, the same method Simon murdered the lovable Denizen, Tuba. Simon repays mercy with treachery, kicking his savior Grace toward the wheels instead and ends up biting it for real when he's cornered by a Ghom, with Grace, recently saved by a bunch of origami birds she helped earlier, now totally unable to protect him a second time. Simon's death, while karmic and totally his own fault, is also played for tragedy as it in the end is a needless tragedy and a bitter conclusion to Simon's already troubled life.
• Most episodes of Jonny Quest TOS in which a villain died.
  • All of the examples in Hoist By His Own Petard except "Arctic Splashdown", "Mystery of the Lizard Men" and "Pirates from Below."
  • "Arctic Splashdown". While trying to murder Dr. Quest, the Big Bad is blown up by the Self-Destruct Mechanism of the rocket whose guidance control he was trying to steal.
  • "Riddle of the Gold":
    • An assassin named Ali is killed by a tiger released by the villains while trying to assassinate Dr. Quest.
    • The villain working for Dr. Zin is killed by the leopard pet of the man he murdered earlier.
  • "Calcutta Adventure". The enemy Mook pilot strafing the Quests is killed when his plane runs into some trees, has its wings ripped off and crashes.
  • "Shadow of the Condor". The Big Bad likes to shoot condors who live near his castle in the Andes. As he's trying to shoot down and kill Race Bannon in an aerial duel, a condor attacks his plane in revenge and causes him to crash into a mountainside.
  • "Turu the Terrible". The Big Bad is killed while trying to save the titular pteranodon he used to terrorize and enslave native workers.
  • "Monster in the Monastery". A group of Mooks masquerading as yeti (who tried to murder Jonny and Hadji) are killed by a real yeti who's angry about the impersonation.
  • "The Fraudulent Volcano". A group of enemy mooks flying in hover platforms ram into a cliff and blow up while trying to kill the Quests.
  • "House of the Seven Gargoyles". Dietrich (the dwarf masquerading as a gargoyle) is murdered by his boss Ivar.
• Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures: The antagonists of "Ndovu's Last Journey" are a couple of Evil Poachers who kill elephants for their tusks, as they're shown doing in the opening scene. They try to kill the old Honorable Elephant Ndovu for the same reason and are foiled several times by the Quest Team because Ndovu asked Jonny to escort him to the Elephant Graveyard so that he can die in peace. Following the Quest Team to the graveyard, the poachers plan to strike it rich with all the ivory of dead elephants and attempt to kill the entire Quest Team before Ndovu comes to the rescue and kills the two elephant killers by trampling one and throwing the other in the air, causing him to get impaled by a tusk.
• Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous: In "Happy Birthday, Eddie", Eddie gets devoured by the Indominus rex, shortly after he abandoned children and left them to their own fate. And, yes, his death indeed does happen on his birthday, to boot!
• Justice League:
  • During a battle with his brother Orm in the aquatic underground, Aquaman has Orm hanging off a frozen cliff, begging his brother to have mercy. After he said "You're weak! You're not fit to...(slips)" (Had the sentence have been finished, he would have likely said "rule"). Aquaman stares, walks up to Orm while he hanging on the cliff, extends his hand and... picks up his trident^note which Orm had stolen from him and had been using to try to kill him with during this whole fight, leaving Orm to fall to his death.
    Aquaman: I believe this is mine.
  • It's worth considering that Orm threatened Aquaman's son earlier. Clearly, that's one heck of a Berserk Button.
  • Another example (although Superman didn't know it at the time), was in "Twilight of the Gods", with Darkseid dying when Brainiac's home-base overloaded in his aim to search for the Anti-Life Equation. Superman probably wouldn't have thought this was fitting death given what he did to him in their last encounter. Darkseid, who took a received end of a Roaring Rampage of Revenge seemed to find Karma's decision quite funny since Superman didn't finish him off, and spited him in his last word(s):
    Darkseid: Loser.
• In the second season finale of King of the Hill, when Hank Hill is forced to work at Mega Lo Mart, Hank warns Mark Buckley, his niece's boyfriend, that he should properly carry propane tanks or they'll explode, which Buckley dismisses since Hank is a new worker despite Hank being older and having experience with propane tanks (plus out of pettiness since Hank disapproved of his niece's boyfriend). By the end of the episode, Buckley's carelessness not only gets him killed but also causes a big explosion that destroys Mega Lo Mart.
• The Legend of Korra: Unalaq is killed by the very same spiritbending technique he used throughout the second arc and considering everything he did up to that point (banishing Tonraq, putting Tonraq in jail, manipulating Korra, putting Jinora into a comatose state, treating his own son as a liability, destroying Korra's link with her past lives, nearly destroying the world, etc.), he definitely got what was coming to him.
  • In Season 3, the Earth Queen had been enslaving airbenders and eating baby sky bison. She is assassinated by Zaheer using airbending to asphyxiate her.
• Metalocalypse features a slimy PR lady-slash-cult leader get squished by the very comet she tried to kill everyone with.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends
  • In "The Glass Princess", the Raptorians get turned into glass after spending most of the serial manipulating their boss Porcina into turning others into glass.
  • Lavan ultimately meets his end when the Princess Ponies use the very magic wands he obsessed over obtaining the power of to reflect one of his energy blasts right back at him, blowing him to bits.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • King Sombra, twice. First in Part 2 of "The Crystal Empire", he meets the consequences for invading the Empire when Cadance and the ponies power up the Crystal Heart and restore the town, destroying him. He meets an even worse fate when he gets blasted by the mane ponies' friendship magic — without the Elements of Harmony — and disintegrates into nothingness.
  • In the infamous "The Mean 6", after everything the mane characters' negative clones did throughout their camping trip and unintentionally starting a feud amongst them, the Tree of Harmony rightfully punishes them by seeing right through the deception and draining the spell that gave them life.
  • In the Grand Finale, Tirek, Chrysalis and Cozy Glow receive the perfect punishment for taking over Equestria when the Princesses and Discord turn them to stone.
• The Owl House: Befitting his parasitical nature and need to manipulate others or get their aid somehow to proceed in his plans, when Emperor Belos is finally ripped off the Titan's heart and left bereft of any power, all he can resort to is shapeshifting back into his original human form as Philip and pathetically trying to claim that his actions were the result of being cursed by dark magic. It fools nobody, and Luz doesn't even bother to respond to him. With his glamour and body falling to pieces in the boiling rain, all he can do is rant at her that killing him like this will only make her as evil as the witches. He is then promptly shut up and finished off for good by said 'evil' witches themselves, helplessly stomped into muddy paste underfoot by the woman who is greatly hinted to be descended from Caleb and Evelyn, the son of the mythical being he pretended to be a messenger for, and his latest possession victim, scarred from his control.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998), "Knock It Off" features one-shot villain Dick Hardly, who mass-produces shoddy clones of the Girls for financial gain. When confronted by the girls, he literally swallows an entire bottle of Chemical X, turning him into a monster. He is soon afterward killed when his clones turn against him and his factory falls on top of him.
• The Quack Pack episode "Cat and Louse" featured an antagonist named Andre Demouche, an animal trainer and jewel thief who was very abusive to the cats he trained. At the end of the episode, the cats he mistreated kill him offscreen, with Huey shutting the door on the villain and assuring the audience that they don't need to see what's happening.
• Megabyte in ReBoot had this happen to him in Season 3, though he ended up Not Quite Dead in Season 4. After being spared by Matrix Megabyte tries to escape to the Supercomputer, but Mouse changes the portal's destination to the Web, which is supposed to be fatal to viruses. Megabyte had previously sent Bob to the Web back in Season 2, so being sent to the Web himself is an ironic end, had he not survived via Retcon.
• Rick and Morty: In "Unmortricken", after Rick Prime killed Rick C-137's Diane and Beth just to spite him, later killed every iteration of Diane in the entire multiverse just to spite many other Ricks, does the same to Slow Mobius, killed Original Jerry and many other victims, and ruined countless lives largely for his own amusement, he's finally defeated by the main duo and Evil Morty, culminating in Rick brutally beating Rick Prime to death with his bare hands, until his face is left as nothing more than a bloody pulp.
• In the finale of Samurai Jack, Aku gets a fittingly karmic demise in double doses.
  • Future Aku meets his end when his daughter Ashi uses her newly awakened powers, which were intended to be used to kill Jack, to send Jack back to the past and enable him to kill Aku, resulting in Future Aku being erased from existence. He was also close to victory before his chance at winning was snatched away from him at the last minute, a suitable comeuppance for when he taunted Jack after destroying the last time portal in front of him.
  • Past Aku ends up killed by Jack when the samurai returns from the future, where Aku sent him to in the first place. With all the years of experience Jack obtained from being trapped in the future, he easily overpowers Aku. What makes Past Aku's final fate especially karmic is that he ends up dying the same way as many of his victims: completely terrified while faced against an opponent far too strong for him to so much as scratch, let alone defeat.
• Ben Ravencroft of Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost gets Dragged Off to Hell by Sarah Ravencroft, the actual titular villain, which he himself summoned.
• The South Park episode "Reverse Cowgirl", has Clyde's mom being a bitch about her son leaving the toilet seat up. When Clyde once again leaves the seat up, guess what happens.
• In the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "The Stars at Night", this happens twice:
  • The first is Vice Admiral Les Buenamigo who is killed by his own creation, the Texas-class USS Aledo trying to order its now-murderous and rebellious AI to destroy the Cerritos to cover up his crimes.
  • In turn, the entire Texas-class is done in by the California-class ships they were meant to replace, two by the Cerritos and the last by the entire California fleet.
• In the Star Wars Rebels episode "Twin Suns", Darth Maul and Obi-Wan Kenobi meet for the first time since the Clone Wars and decide to shift to the stances they used when they fought on Naboo all the way back in The Phantom Menace. Maul attempts to deliver the same killing blow he performed on Qui-Gon Jinn. Obi-Wan is prepared, counters and slashes him, delivering the killing blow.
• In the series finale of Transformers: Prime, "Deadlock," Megatron is killed by Bumblebee, the same 'bot that he muted, possessed, and whose human partner he nearly killed. Furthermore, his former victim regained his voice when the Omega Lock restored him from death, with said temporary death also being Megatron's doing.

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