Laser-Guided Karma in Animated Films.
- Implied in a rather politically incorrect manner in An American Tail, when the cats who've killed and eaten so many of New York's mice are chased onto a ship going to Hong Kong specifically.
- The Bad Guys (2022) features this prominently, with Mr. Wolf and Diane on the good side, and Professor Marmalade on the bad:
- During the dance at the charity gala, Mr. Wolf gives Diane her diamond ring back after stealing it earlier in the film, showing his commitment to being good. And when the Bad Guys are framed for stealing the meteorite, he tells her the location of their hideout and loot as proof of his good faith. The result: she's the only person to realize something's wrong, leading to her breaking them out of jail and helping them take down Marmalade.
- As for Diane, the whole reason Mr. Wolf reforms for real is because she bonds with him and reveals she really does want him and the gang to live better lives. When Marmalade turns the whole city against them, she becomes their sole supporter, breaking them out of jail and helping to stop Marmalade's plot. As a result, the gang stops her Heroic Sacrifice by turning themselves in, electing to keep her secret of being the Crimson Paw.
- Professor Marmalade is a deceptive, manipulative guinea pig who frames the gang for his own crime of stealing the Love Crater Meteorite as part of his big heist. He's defeated by being deceived and manipulated in turn by Mr. Snake, and he's arrested when framed as the Crimson Paw.
- One example not involving the three: after their fallout with Wolf, the rest of the Bad Guys return to their hideout to find everything ransacked and panic, giving them A Taste of Their Own Medicine due to their criminal history. Even Piranha points this out.Mr. Piranha: Now I understand what it feels like to have things stolen from you! I don't like it! I REALLY DON'T LIKE IT!!
- Balto: Steele refuses Balto's help to the point of attacking him and throwing him over a cliff, then abandons his team and their cargo of lifesaving medicine in the Alaskan wilderness while he runs home and paints himself as a hero who struggled against impossible odds just to make it back alive. However, his lies fall apart when Balto brings the team and the medicine back despite Steele's sabotage. Steele immediately goes from being top dog in town to a pariah, as everyone now knows what an arrogant, self-centered glory hound he is.
- Bambi: Not in the film itself, but a deleted scene shows that the careless hunters end up dying in the forest fire they started by leaving their campfire unattended.
- In The Batman vs. Dracula, when the Joker shocks Penguin and tosses him into the river, Penguin recovers just in time to see Batman swing after a retreating Joker. He nearly drops the trope name:Penguin: Instant karma, Joker!
- Disney's Beauty and the Beast:
- At the beginning of the film, a prince refuses to shelter an old beggar in his castle twice in a row; she turns out to be an enchantress who was giving him a Secret Test of Character and turns him into the titular Beast as punishment for his selfishness.
- Gaston spends most of the climax mercilessly attacking and taunting the Beast, who is too deep in a Heroic BSoD to even try to fight back. Then Belle returns, giving the Beast a Heroic Second Wind, and Gaston suddenly finds himself on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle. The only reason he gets out of it alive is because the Beast is just plain too decent to kill or seriously hurt him. Instead of getting out while he can, Gaston then stabs the Beast In the Back the moment his guard is down. However, the Beast then rears back in pain, knocking Gaston off of the steep roof and sending him plummeting to his death.
- A Bug's Life: For both the ants and the grasshoppers.
- Princess Atta and the Queen have no choice but to exile Flik and the other bugs once they learn that they were from the circus, despite the fact that they lied to Flik earlier about wanting him to find "warrior" bugs. The result: they're not present to deal with the grasshoppers when they arrive early and decide to take over, leaving all the ants completely at Hopper's mercy.
- Hopper pushes his luck too far once the fake bird is burned. He orders Thumper to beat Flik up in front of the entire colony to send a message about how weak they are. It backfires when Flik stands up and declares that ants don't serve grasshoppers even after he's almost been beaten into the ground. This rallies the whole ant colony together to oust Hopper and his gang for good.
- In Coco, Ernesto being crushed to death by a falling bell back in 1942 seems to be this for him after he deliberately poisoned the tequila his former music partner Héctor drank, then gained success by claiming to have written songs that were really composed by the man he murdered. Even better, after he gets tricked into making an Engineered Public Confession while in the Land of the Dead, he ends up trapped under another bell.
- Coraline: The "Other Mother", who claims children's souls for her to eat by sewing buttons into their eyes, has her own eye-buttons (which, unlike the buttons she puts in her victims, are evidently her real eyes) torn out at the climax courtesy of the Cat.
- The Emperor's New Groove: Happens a LOT to Kuzco, since he pretty much constantly asks for it. Falling down the bridge instantly after gloating about leaving Pacha there is a prime example.
- Frozen (2013): Prince Hans arrives in Arendelle with an idea to usurp its throne in order to prove himself to his Massive Numbered Siblings. He quickly formulates the plan when he meets the naive Princess Anna, using her loneliness and desperate longing for affection to manipulate her into accepting his marriage proposal; once they're married, he intends to murder her sister, Queen Elsa, so he can be the royal consort. He even gloats about it when he thinks it's all about to come to fruition — prior to this gloating, the audience has practically no reason to suspect him. But at the end, after his treachery is exposed, he gets punched by Anna for it before being exiled from Arendelle to be judged and punished by his own family.
- The Incredibles:
- Huph refuses to let Bob stop a mugging going on outside the office. In his fury, Bob throws Huph through a series of walls which lands him in hospital. This gets Bob immediately fired.
- Thanks to Syndrome's Kick the Dog moment, his Dragon Mirage does a High-Heel–Face Turn in favor of the merciful Mr. Incredible.
- Mirage encounters a downplayed version. She was fully complicit with Syndrome's Project Kronus that led many supers to their deaths. After her Heel–Face Turn, she frees Mr. Incredible from his restraints only to immediately face his grief-filled wrath that nearly ends her life. She is spared only because she reveals that Mr. Incredible's family is alive and even then she receives a punch in the face from Helen.
- In Inside Out, when presented with a memory retrieval chute that can instantly return her to Headquarters, Joy abandons Sadness rather than risk her corrupting the core memories by proximity, and because "Riley needs to be happy". This act of betrayal directly leads to Joy being plunged into the memory dump when the memory chute is damaged.
- When they first meet in the climax of Kung Fu Panda, Tai Lung, mocking Po's weight, goes "What are you doing to do, sit on me?" This is also Tempting Fate as, during the stairway tumble, Po does land ass first on Tai Lung's face at one point.
- In Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas, when Mickey interferes with Pete conning a poor family into buying a badly-made 10-foot tall Christmas tree, Pete takes the money he would've gotten out of Mickey's paycheck, leaving Mickey broke, before literally throwing Mickey and Pluto off the lot. He then proceeds to put his cigar in the same back pocket with Mickey's money, which burns his butt and causes him to run into and ignite the buckets of highly flammable glue he used to make the trees, sending him into the sky and causing flaming shrapnel to fall down and burn the lot to the ground.
- Strange Magic: The unnamed girl with whom Roland cheats on Marianne. Since Marianne is the princess of their kingdom and is getting publicly married to Roland, the girl is a knowing home-wrecker. The film punishes her by having her be influenced by a Love Potion into loving a frog. note
- Thunder and the House of Magic: After failing to sell his uncle's house, Daniel continues his business elsewhere by helping an old lady sell her home. The kicker? She's a Crazy Cat Lady with tons and tons of cats living in her home. Before he can escape, he's practically swarmed by them and his allergies kick in to overdrive.
- Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats: Snerdly's final attempt to rid himself of Benny is disguising him as a dog and having him send to the pound. When that fails and he tries to escape using the disguise, he ends off getting send to the pound instead.
- Toy Story:
- In Toy Story 2, Al McWhiggen steals Woody from an innocent family out of greed and selfishness and intended to sell the "Woody's Round-Up" collection to a Japanese museum for millions. He ends up getting zilch due to the toys escaping the luggage they were thrown in, losing his chance at getting rich and the rest of his collection in one fell swoop.Al: (seen crying during a commercial after Hamm accidentally changes the channel after losing the Buzz Lightyear videogame Rex played earlier) Welcome to Al's Toy Barn. We've got the lowest prices in town. Everything for a buck-buck-buck! (bursts into tears)
Hamm: Well! I guess crime doesn't pay! - In Toy Story 3, Lotso leaves the toys to die in a garbage incinerator after Woody and Buzz save him from the shredder. For a moment, it looks like he's going to be a Karma Houdini, as Woody tells the others that "he's not worth it" upon escaping. But then Lotso is found by a Cloudcuckoolander garbageman who straps him to the front of his truck and drives off with him.
- In Toy Story 2, Al McWhiggen steals Woody from an innocent family out of greed and selfishness and intended to sell the "Woody's Round-Up" collection to a Japanese museum for millions. He ends up getting zilch due to the toys escaping the luggage they were thrown in, losing his chance at getting rich and the rest of his collection in one fell swoop.
- Turning Red: Deconstructed with Tyler. His Birthday Party Gone Wrong is his own fault. He tries to appear cool but everyone is bored until Mei shows off the panda. Then when he attempts to bully her into continuing the entertainment, showing No Sympathy when she says she needs time alone, Mei pounces on him and roars in his face. All he can do is cry and say that he's sorry. However, he is still a 13-year old boy who suffered scratches and bruises from the assault, and could've ended up a lot worse had Mei's mother not shown up at that moment. Even Mei, who has every right to be mad at him, is ashamed of what she did to him.
- Walking with Dinosaurs: Scowler attacks and beats up his brother Patchi, nastily tells him he's out of the herd, and leaves him to die while preventing Juniper, to help him, coldly telling her "I don't have a brother" when she calls him out for it. All for leading said herd from drowning in a frozen lake, which Scowler himself led them into. Afterwards, Scowler leads the herd into Ambush Alley and attempts to flee from the Gorgosaurus, only to be caught by Gorgon and mauled to near death while the herd abandons him, leaving him to die just as he did with Patchi. But before Gorgon can finish Scowler off, a returned Patchi rallies the herd into fighting against Gorgon and his pack, leading to a repentant and humbled Scowler surrendering his leadership to him (after getting very loudly roared at by him).
