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Laser Guided Karma / Western Animation

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Laser-Guided Karma in Western Animation.

The following have their own pages:

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  • In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Dr. Robotnik's plan that came the closest to succeeding was in "Hero of the Year", when he has Wes Weasely convince Sonic to host an award ceremony and invite his allies, then Robotnik crashes the event and demands that Sonic allow himself to be put into a bathysphere and left at the bottom of the ocean in exchange for everyone else's safety. Of course, it turns out Robotnik lied and was planning to sink the yacht with everyone on it anyway. For helping him with the caper, Robotnik gives Wes his own shopping network, but his crucial mistake was attempting to outcon a Con Man; he didn't give Wes the freedom to broadcast and wrote their contract in disappearing ink, so Wes rescues Sonic to take revenge on Robotnik for stiffing him by humiliating Robotnik at his own award ceremony.
  • In the Adventure Time episode "You Made Me!", Lemongrab tortures several people in an electrical chamber, tries to KO his mom, spies on the citizens of the Candy Kingdom as they sleep, and assaults a baby. In his next episode, "Mystery Dungeon", he is KO'd by the Ice King, separated from his family (who are in the process of slowly starving to death, as is Lemongrab himself), brought to the Mystery Dungeon against his will, and is nearly killed when a giant monster squeezes out all of his blood.
  • In The Amazing World of Gumball, Gumball's neighbor's sociopathic wife suffers a car accident chain reaction after Darwin exclaims "Isn't there any justice in this universe?!" when he and Gumball try to expose what a monster she truly is and they end up getting caught instead.
  • Later episodes of The Angry Beavers had this happen to Norbert a lot as a result of his increasingly Jerkass behavior.
  • This trope is a common occurrence on Animaniacs, one example being when Pa Bear was exposed as a con man by Wakko Warner, after which he is raided for all his money by his dissatisfied customers.
  • Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force is incredibly and remorselessly rude, greedy, selfish, lazy, arrogant... and constantly abusive towards his roommate, Meatwad. Unlike most Jerkass characters from recent comedy cartoons, though, he receives this trope on a frequent basis.
  • On Archer, this is pretty much the driving force behind most of the bad things that happen to the characters. Sterling Archer himself stands out in that while he sometimes seems like a Karma Houdini, almost any time he is injured or a mission goes bad, it is because of his own actions, tendency to get distracted by trivial things while in dangerous situations, or penchant for antagonizing other people.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Sokka tries to stop Well-Intentioned Extremist Jet from robbing a harmless old man belonging to the hostile Fire Nation, and when later Jet attempts to destroy the village, Sokka is able to successfully evacuate it after the old man speaks out in his favor.
    • In her first proper appearance, Princess Azula tries to lure Zuko back to the Fire Nation by lying that their father has grown paranoid in court as a result of hearing of plots to overthrow him, and eagerly wishes for Zuko's return since family and loyalty have grown much more important to him. When Zuko finds out this isn't the case and Azula was really just playing his heartstrings to easily get him back as a prisoner, he is livid. This turns around in the series finale, where Azula is soon to be crowned Fire Lord but, as a result of several recent betrayals, she is actually succumbing to paranoia and has no one to fall back on.
    • During the Boiling Rock two-parter "The Boiling Rock, Part 1" and "The Boiling Rock, Part 2", one of the more mean-spirited prison guards bullies an inmate named Chit Sang by attacking him and forcing Chit Sang to firebend in self-defense, giving the guard justification to punish him since firebending is prohibited. After a botched escape plan, Chit Sang is ordered to identify the individual who came up with said escape plan (who Chit Sang mentions is a person disguised as a guard), and guess who he declares to be the imposter?
  • In the sequel, The Legend of Korra:
    • Avatar Korra accidentally injures a baby dragon bird and takes it back to its nest. In return, the parent dragon bird carries her to the spirit portal and later saves her from Unalaq.
    • Bolin always had sympathetic reasons for joining Kuvira, as she was restoring order to the Earth Kingdom and appeared to be improving the lives of the people there, and it looked like Kuvira was a better leader than Prince Wu. But despite this, he still ignores his brother Mako and girlfriend Opal's concerns and refuses to consider he was doing anything but improving lives. He even went as far as to lash out and mock Mako for not thinking Kuvira is a good leader, saying that he will change the world while Mako will kiss Wu's feet. And it also appears that Bolin never thought of Opal's reaction to him staying with Kuvira when she took power, despite Opal making it clear that she does not trust Kuvira or approve of him working with her. So him learning the hard way that the woman he idolizes is sending the people of the territories she's conquered to labor camps and dissenters are sent to "re-education" camps, and him realizing that he strained his relationships with his loved ones for nothing, can be considered karma. Bolin is painfully aware of how badly he misjudged Kuvira and goes to great lengths to help derail her plans. Mako easily forgives him and welcomes him back with open arms. Opal, however, is rightfully angry with Bolin and only forgives him when he helps rescue her family.
  • The bulldog from Bad Luck Blackie bullied that short's main character before being stalked by a black cat for it. The bulldog eventually turns the black cat white to give him a payback beatdown, then the main character cat paints himself black to save him and becomes the new black cat.
  • In the short film Balance, five men living on a platform floating in some sort of void start fighting over a music box. The last of these men, #23, ends up alone after kicking all of his fellows off, and with the way the music box is positioned, he's stuck in one spot, unable to move lest he disturb the balance.
  • The Batman sees karma finally bite Chief Angel Rojas in the ass after two seasons of being a Pointy-Haired Boss and Bad Boss, in the second season finale, "Night and the City", after he cans Ellen Yin and uses her as bait to trap Batman. The problem for Rojas? This episode also marks the debut of Commissioner Gordon into the series and considering here, much like in other Batman incarnations as well as the NYPD, Commissioner outranks Chief and ol' Jimbo is the Trope Namer for The Commissioner Gordon, Jim catches Rojas attempting to rearrest Yin and tells Rojas to back off, forces him to reinstate Yin, and effectively ends Rojas's manhunt for Batman considering the last scene sees Jim and Bruce meet at the Batsignal. Given Rojas is never seen again after the episode, Gordon might've even fired him or forced him to resign shortly afterward.
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • The Joker is usually a Karma Houdini, but he got it good in "Beware the Creeper". He pushes Jack Ryder into a vat of chemicals after dosing him with laughing gas. Ryder comes back as The Creeper, who hits on Harley and eventually chases Joker through Gotham in a chase scene so wacky it ends with Joker yelling, "He's a lunatic!" and practically begging Batman for help, only to get arrested.
      • The Creeper wasn't the Joker's first comeuppance. In "Joker's Favor", he forced an ordinary man to beg for his life in exchange for a favor, stalked him when he skipped town, called in the favor for a meaningless task, and then left him to die anyways. That same man confronts him, knocks him down, and threatens to blow him up, forcing him to beg for Batman. Not to mention the various nutshots he received throughout the DCAU shows he appeared in.
      • In Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker he is killed by Tim Drake, the child he tortured, by means of his own "Bang!" Flag Gun. When he is revived and takes over Tim's body, the microchip he used for the deed, and the only thing keeping him in existence, is destroyed by his own joy buzzer.
    • After her vampish scheme to assassinate Harvey Dent fails Pamela Isley ends up incarcerated at Stonegate Penitentiary, the very prison which spurned her into targeting Dent in the first place.
  • Beavis And Butthead: For trying to destroy Anderson's things in "Roof", the pair end up trapped on his roof.
  • Ben 10: Hex raised Charmcaster to be evil and power-hungry, so for her to be so toward him even after he's put his evil and power-hungry ways behind him and wants her to do the same is admittedly pretty karmic.
  • The Boondocks:
    • Riley is playing a game of basketball where he got the center to run off crying by telling her that her parents were getting divorced and waiting until after her birthday to tell her, and she was replaced by an autistic kid. Said socially challenged child turns out to be a child prodigy at basketball.
    • Another example was Uncle Ruckus, after starting a fanatical branch of Christianity that said black people needed to repent for being black and they become white when they get to heaven, was Tempting Fate by declaring that if he wasn't correct, may God strike him down. God does. At the same time, this is positive Karma for Huey, who had spent the entirety of the episode trying to prove the innocence of a man on death row. The lightning strike jumping to a power pole knocks out the power on the electric chair for just long enough that the appeal proving him innocent comes through.
  • In Central Park, Season 1 "Live It Up Tonight", when Bitsy and Helen get locked inside a liquor storeroom, Bitsy decides to destroy all the liquor in the room because she believes it belongs to her competitor, the Dagmont Hotel, and convinces Helen to join her. After they get out and learn the auditor couldn't find any dirt on Owen, she decides to drown her sorrow with liquor until her staff tells her someone broke into their liquor storeroom and smashed all the bottles, making Bitsy and Helen realize they screwed up badly.
  • Dale gets a dose of karma in the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Kiwi's Big Adventure", in which he fakes breaking his toes in order to get attention from Gadget. But Chip isn't fooled and convinces the other Rangers to spy on Dale, revealing that there is nothing wrong with him. Towards the end, Dale breaks his toe for real when he kicks the crocodile which has been menacing the tribe of kiwis who stole the Ranger Plane and set the events of the episode in motion. As a result, he has to sit out a party held by the kiwis:
    It's not so fun when your toe is really broken.
  • The Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: B.U.T.T." has the Delightful Children from Down the Lane blackmail Numbuh One into quitting his team by having a robotic crab steal Numbuh One's swimming trunks and photograph his bare behind with the threat of having the picture included in the school yearbook if Numbuh One doesn't do as they say. When the other members of Sector V learn of what's going on, they give the Delightful Children their just deserts by yanking off their pants and skirts and photographing their butts.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog
    • Eustace always gets struck by this. Trying to keep a million-dollar slab stolen from King Ramses' crypt and refusing to give it up in "King Ramses' Curse"? He ends up part of the slab. Chopping down the titular magic tree after his unknowing abuse of its wish-granting abilities causes Muriel's head to swell up in "The Magic Tree of Nowhere"? The tree makes him suffer the same illness Muriel did moments after Courage cures her. Stealing the titular artifact in "The Forbidden Hat of Gold"? He disintegrates into ashes right when he puts it on. Just name any wrong thing he's done, because once he does it, you know there's no chance in hell he's getting away scot-free. He's literally karma's punching bag.
    • In the show's penultimate episode "Remembrance of Courage Past", the evil veterinarian that launched Courage's parents and several other dogs into space gets sent to space himself and beat up by the dogs offscreen.
  • In the short cartoon Creature from the Lake, Egomaniac Hunter Jack is prepared to take the credit for capturing the Creature, when it was his chubby, neurotic camera woman Shelby who knocked it out. Then the Creature regains consciousness and swallows Jack whole.
  • Danny Phantom: By trying to invite Danny's ghost half in order to un-invite human Danny and his friends in episode "Memory Blank", Paulina shows Danny just how selfish and callous she really is, and as a result, he realizes he took his own friends for granted and chooses not to go to her birthday party in the end as either form. It's also implied that this is the moment where Danny beings to lose interest in her, meaning that she pretty much ruined any chances she may have had with "her ghost boy" because of her actions.
  • In The Dating Guy, a Girl of the Week named Charity promises sexual favors to the boys if they let her win the contest for a free car. When they do so, she promptly reneges and drives off in the car. Not paying attention to the road, she promptly gets in a car accident.
  • In the Disney Short "The Ballad of Nessie", Nessie is kicked out of her original home by Mr. Macfroogal, a greedy land developer who paves over her pond and turns it into a mini-golf course. When the struggle to find a new home gets to be too much for Nessie, she cries so hard she fills a small valley with her tears, not only giving her a new home but flooding Macfroogal's golf course in the process.
  • Roger Klotz from Doug is often on the receiving end of this for being an asshole to others, which results in him either getting whatever punishment any authority figure gives him or taking the more hilarious embarrassments ever. Perhaps the most infamous example is the episode "Doug Didn't Do It", where he framed Doug for stealing one of Assistant Principal Bone's yodeling trophies and succeeds in getting him in major trouble, with his punishment being that he has to polish all of Mr. Bone's trophies after school. When Roger brags about this to Doug, he accidentally sets on the intercom button in the office and Mr. Bone, who heard the whole thing, punishes Roger instead, and now HE has to polish Bone's trophies after school.
    • Another example is "Doug Saves Roger" when Roger meets Mr. Bone's nephew, Percy Femur. Unlike Roger, who picked on and harassed Doug and other students out of childish mischief, Percy reveals himself to be a cruel bully and a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk who chose Roger as his favorite target. Ironically, it's Doug of all people who puts his own safety on the line to save him.
  • The Dragon Prince
    • For all the evil things that Lord Viren did, he gets exposed and imprisoned by Opeli for his crimes and even Aaravos couldn't do anything to save him.
      • In season 3, his mistreatment of Aanya, Soren, the Sunfire Elves, the people who didn't want to support him (Corvus, Opeli and some soldiers) come back to bite him. Aanya unites her army with Corvus, Opeli and the conscientious objectors and marches against Viren in the battle on Stormspire where they turn the tides. Soren's continuous mistreatment leads him to leave the army and join the princes, where he turns out to be a valuable asset. The Sunfire Elves, angered at the destruction of their home and queen, are even willing to join forces with humans to bring him down, creating an army that far surpasses his own. Furthermore, his decision to turn his army into Super Soldiers at the cost of their sanity bites him back when it turns out that they're now terrible at strategizing and are sloppy in battle.
  • Officer Deadbeat from Dr. Zitbag's Transylvania Pet Shop often got his comeuppance for trying to humiliate Dr. Zitbag or use underhanded methods to drive his pet shop out of business.
    • In "Bungle in the Jungle", he spreads rumors that Zitbag is afraid of cats after seeing him at the mercy of a pet named Frankenkitty who happened to be vicious when not fed enough. By the end of the episode, Deadbeat is frightened and chased away both by Frankenkitty and a Transylvanian tiger Zitbag befriended.
    • In "Ants in Your Pants", Dr. Zitbag discovers that Deadbeat hired his rival Professor Sherman Vermin to set up shop so that Zitbag would lose all his customers. He gets even by leaving Deadbeat and Vermin at the mercy of a bunch of vampire rats.
  • In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Where No Duck has Gone Before", Major Courage is so confident that he can escape Scrooge's reprisal that he feels safe gloating about the fact that he got away from the aliens right after refusing to go back to save Scrooge's nephews. He gets a shocking (for him) dose of retribution when Scrooge has him employed as a candy vendor at the new space museum. Worst of all, since the contract doesn't specify in what capacity Scrooge is required to employ him for the five years of his contract, Courage isn't allowed to bail out!
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy are ALWAYS falling victim to this. For example, when the Eds play a trick on Jimmy in "Tinker Ed", this leads to Sarah and Jimmy set up an elaborate trap for them to fall into, resulting in an embarrassing photo being taken of them in fairy-tale costumes which is promptly handed off to Kevin to show to the other kids.
    • Eddy alone is often the victim of this when he becomes an insufferable Jerkass, such as in the episode "Brother, Can You Spare an Ed?" when he made Ed spend Sarah's money she gave him to buy her and Jimmy fudge for jawbreakers instead, used his friends as toys for his scam to pay Sarah back, and tried to keep the money he was supposed to give to Sarah. He gets his just desserts in the end when he earns the same treatment he gave his friends in the episode.
    • In The Movie, however, the Ed-boys actually have this work for them in the end, when it turns out that Eddy's brother is a sadistic bastard who beats up on Eddy when the poor guy was just looking for protection from an angry mob. Funny how quickly said angry mob changes sides once they see that the person they're chasing isn't the biggest bad on the block.
  • The Fairly OddParents!:
    • In the episode "Dream Goat!", for bullying Timmy by constantly wedging him, Vicky is framed for being a goat-napper after Timmy frees Chompy from his pen and stays in jail for the whole episode. After Timmy finally tells the truth as to Chompy's disappearance and is grounded for five months as a result, Vicky still remains locked up, where, after the fact, Chompy even gives her a well-deserved wedgie.
  • Despite being a Sadist Show, Family Guy believes in this trope. Lois falls victim to this from her family members, like Meg verbally calling her out to the point she cried and Chris calling her a bitch. Connie falls victim to this when Chris made her unpopular (and when she made fun of Meg for going to the prom with Brian, with Brian calling her out on making fun of Meg by pointing out that the reason she does that is that she developed sexually earlier than Meg did and takes out all of her low self-esteem on an innocent victim), and Peter falls victim to this at times for all the idiotic and/or jerkass things he's done (one episode had him stand trial for blowing up a children's hospital). Inverted when he gets charged with a jail sentence...'til next Sunday night at 9:00.note 
    • In "He's Too Sexy for His Fat", when Chris starts dieting in an attempt to lose weight and hates it, Stewie mocks him and later ends up developing an eating disorder and becoming obese himself.
    • The most infamous example involved Quagmire's sister's abusive boyfriend, Jeff. After emotionally, verbally, and physically abusing her, Quagmire, Peter, and Joe all hatch up a plan to kill him. It backfires, and Jeff proceeds to assault Peter and Joe before trying to kill Quagmire. When it looks like he's won, Quagmire gets in a car and murders him with it. Easily among the darkest, and most satisfying moments of the show.
    • Even Quagmire gets some of this trope when he hooks up with a woman who has an even more voracious sexual appetite than him and ends up kidnapped, held as her sex slave, and tortured for her amusement until the gang finds and rescues him. With the exception of the latter, these are no worse than the things he routinely does to women.
    • Carter Pewterschmidt FINALLY is completely humiliated in "Christmas Guy".
    • In "It's A Trap!" at the end of the battle of Endor, Chewie (portrayed by Brian) shows up in AT-ST and he indiscriminately blasts a squirrel, a butterfly, and a hummingbird. When he spots a beehive that he surmises must have taken months to build, he blasts it, with predictable results.
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
    • In the episode "The Sweet Stench of Success", Bloo became a deodorant mascot under Kip Snip, an amoral manager who overworked him, made him live under sub-optimal conditions, and tricked him into signing adoption papers so he couldn't go back to Foster's. When his friends came to rescue him, Bloo admitted on live TV that the deodorant didn't actually work. Kip, as a result, snapped and added that it actually made people smell worse, then was promptly arrested for false advertising.
    • In "The Buck Swaps Here", the gang went to an outdoor flea market where a pickpocket was filching money from people, eventually pocketing a $100 bill that fell into Eduardo's hands. Meanwhile, Bloo wanted to spend the money on a $300 cobra statue and wasn't above using underhanded methods to foot the other $200. At the episode's climax, they're both arrested and the pickpocket accidentally breaks the statue when he sits down in the paddy wagon after it got stuck to his butt, though the rest of the gang apparently bailed Bloo out.
  • On Garfield and Friends, Jon's cousin's genius son gets a variation of this and Karma Houdini: On one hand, he gets off scot-free for framing Garfield twice. On the other hand, Garfield manages to get some revenge on the kid despite being scolded and shamed by Jon: when Jon tells him to go apologize to the sadistic inventor, Garfield instead sneaks in and grabs the remote to his Do-Anything Robot. At the end of the episode, we see the robot forcefully making the kid spin around like a ballerina, with Garfield noting the kid made such good work that the robot's battery is likely to last at least three days.
  • Pete on Goof Troop suffers this constantly. Sometimes he will try to do something selfish and end up having to deal with the consequences of his selfish action gone wrong. Other times he'll try to manipulate Goofy, only to have that backfire in a way that causes more problems than it solves. Treating his son as a lesser being can often lead to the boy getting either some sort of passive-aggressive revenge or aid from outside sources (if not the universe itself, which has actively guilt-tripped him about it via bus ads). And in any episodes he appears to be, if only slightly, a Karma Houdini? There's another episode matching it somewhere where out of context he looks like a harmless Chew Toy.
  • Happened to Preston Northwest in the finale of Gravity Falls, where he went bankrupt after investing all his fortune in the Weirdmageddon. He was forced to sell his mansion in order to preserve his wealth.
  • In one episode of Hey Arnold!, we're introduced to Councilman Gladhand, who is shown to care more about the perks of his lofty position than actually doing anything with it, and his attempts at improvements are decidedly slapdash; his solution to a massive pothole outside Mr. Green's store is putting a plywood board over it that obviously can't support the full weight of a car and immediately splits in two when driven over. After Mr. Green runs him out of office, the episode ends with the now jobless Gladhand falling into said pothole.
  • The Mickey MouseWorks short "Future Mania", which originally aired as part of the House of Mouse episode "House of Genius", had Ludwig Von Drake attempt to show Goofy, Donald, and Mickey visions of the future with his invention the Future Viewer to show them how their lives will be better with the advanced technology that will come. Unfortunately, the demonstrations prove to be more trouble than they are worth. For example, Donald's nephews are used to power their uncle's entertainment system, but they eventually get bored and go back to pestering their uncle. Mickey also gets the short end of the stick when a needlessly complicated attempt to talk to Minnie ends with her breaking up with him after he sees her in a towel by accident and is wrongly accused of leaving her for a mousedroid. Fed up with the Bungling Inventor's blunders, Goofy, Mickey, and Donald then hook Ludwig up to the machine, and he initially enjoys having a fast car and a duck gynoid with him until his car goes too fast and the duck gynoid becomes unnecessarily clingy to him.
  • Jackie Chan Adventures:
    • Daolon Wong suffers several cases. After stripping people of their sight, hearing, and speech in "The Good, the Bad, the Blind, the Deaf and the Mute", he loses all three of them. He vanquished Chi Master Fong, but he ends up being repeatedly humiliated and ultimately stripped of his magic by Fong's apprentice. In his last appearance, he's dragged off to be interrogated by the past versions of the Enforcers, the same ones whose present versions he enslaved and abused during the third season.
    • After trespassing into the Lotus Temple for his own personal gains, the Old Monk fails to leave before sunrise, so he's trapped inside (and probably becomes the new guardian monster). Nonetheless, it's clear that he managed to somehow escape the Temple, since he makes a cameo appearance in the later episode "Antler Action" along with several other episodic villains.
  • An episode of Johnny Test was devoted to karma. Johnny insulted a man with a "glandular problem" that made him look fat by calling him fat. Thanks to testing a muscle-enhancing bar for Bling-Bling Boy, Johnny gets the same problem and is insulted by the same man as earlier. Throughout the episode, Dukey keeps telling him to do good deeds, but Johnny doesn't believe in karma...things keep going bad for Johnny until he finally does a good deed, triggering a series of events that returned him to normal. Bling-Bling also tried to help Johnny return to normal, and ultimately became a pop star.
  • Kim Possible has this happen to Bonnie Rockwaller a few times:
    • In "Car Alarm", she mocks Kim's hand-me-down car. Near the end of the episode, her own fancy car gets trashed, twice: the first time while Kim, Ron, Rufus and Jim and Tim (AKA the Tweebs) are chasing Motor Ed and Shego in the Kepler, and the second time with the Tweebs' grappling beam.
    • In the Grand Finale "Graduation: Part 2" is revealed that she was the only senior in Middleton High who wasn't graduating because she blew off classes in the last week of school and missed an important quiz, forcing her to attend summer school.
  • King of the Hill:
    • One episode has Hank, his friends, and Bobby sneaking into a luxury box during a football game (that they even got in from scalper tickets), posing as a former player on the opposite team. When the coach is knocked out, Hank is mistaken for the player and called to make a play for their team. He deliberately makes a terrible play in an attempt to make the opposing team lose... but this results in them winning instead, and has to go through even more humiliation by wearing jerseys of the other team and getting in a convoy with them after various incidents.
    • John Redcorn is paying for his affair with Dale's wife Nancy by having to watch from the side as his son is raised by a complete moron, although Dale is actually an incredibly loving father even if he's a conspiracy freak. By the time the affair with Nancy ended though, it's pretty clear that even though John Redcorn is the biological father, Joseph is Dale's son regardless, and saying anything now wouldn't change that.
    • In "Strangeness on a Train," Dale takes great pride in Peggy having horrible birthdays. When Peggy arranges for a Disco -themed murder-mystery dinner party on a train ride, Dale anticipates it becoming yet another lousy Peggy Hill birthday. When it does happen (due to Luanne accidentally revealing the murder victim before the train even pulls out of the station, the refrigeration going out (and ruining the planned dinner and cake), the train traveling through dry counties (meaning no alcoholic beverages), and Hank and Peggy having sex in the train's restroom leading to Khan trying to match up the couple's feet with the footprints on the mirror), Dale initially enjoys it and tries to fuel Peggy's misery. But when everyone gets kicked off the train (Hank distracted everyone from the mystery by scaring the engineer into stopping the train), Dale notices how upset Peggy really is and starts to genuinely feel sorry for her...
      "This is Peggy Hill's worst birthday ever. I should feel on top of the world, yet I'm not. I feel strangely hollow inside."
  • In LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures, Naare attempts to use the Kyber Saber to dethrone Palpatine and conquer the galaxy but is once again outsmarted by Rowan. She's later found by Graballa the Hutt and imprisoned in carbonite.
  • In the Little Dogs on the Prairie music video for the song "Cheaters Never Really Win" from the end of the short "Cheating", Hollister spills marbles on the ground to cause Gilroy to slip and fall during a sack race. Immediately afterwards, he gets stuck in cement that Patterson poured on the ground to impede him.
  • Happens in Lola & Virginia where the Rich Bitch Virginia always gets her comeuppance in the end.
  • Looney Tunes
  • In the Mickey Mouse (2013) short "No Service", Mickey and Donald draw straws, or in this case feathers, to decide which of them will wear all the clothes necessary to follow the Snack Shack's dress code. After deliberately making it so that Mickey gets the smallest feather, Donald takes all of Mickey's clothes, forcing him to be naked in public while desperately trying to hide from the approaching Minnie and Daisy. As if that wasn't enough, Donald also makes fun of Mickey for his predicament (and hates it when Mickey taunts him back). In the end, Donald gets his comeuppance when he is kicked out of the restaurant for trying to pay for the food with Mickey's I.D. and is left naked when Mickey takes his clothes in addition to reclaiming his own. Daisy rejects him for being nude in public and he ends up chased and laughed at by The Freelance Shame Squad while Mickey gets to go on a picnic with Minnie and Daisy.
  • Miraculous Ladybug: If a character becomes akumatized because someone was a jerk to them, then the jerk will generally receive karma when the akumatized person goes after them for revenge. This is lampshaded by Cat Noir in the Season 3 episode "Silencer", where he briefly wonders if they should let the titular villain get his revenge on the resident scumbag Bob Roth before purifying the akuma. (Although Ladybug shoots him down, she and Cat Noir do end up taking their own action against Roth after Silencer is defeated.)
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Near the end of "Three's a Crowd", Discord turns out to have been Playing Sick as part of a prank/Secret Test of Character on Twilight Sparkle. Then a tatzlwurm sneezes on him, and Discord is sick for real at the end of the episode.
      Applejack: I don't wanna go sayin' you got what you deserved...
      Rarity: Well, I have no trouble saying it. You got what you deserved!
    • In "Twilight's, Kingdom Part 2" Discord stabs the rest of Equestria in the back siding with Lord Tirek. Tirek, after convincing Discord he was an ally and a friend, stabs him in the back. This seems to cause Discord to have a true Heel Realization.
      • Likewise, Tirek going back on his word to share Equestria with Discord. The medallion was meant to be a sign of trust between him and Discord. When he doesn't uphold the symbolism of such, it shows Discord the error of his ways and gives Twilight the very thing needed to beat him.
    • In "A Canterlot Wedding", Celestia ignored Twilight's warnings about Cadence, who was really Queen Chrysalis in disguise. This gave Chrysalis the time she needed to absorb enough love from Shining Armor, giving her the strength to overpower Celestia. Chrysalis is defeated by Shining Armor and Cadence, with the same love she claimed to live off of.
    • In "The Crystal Empire", after enslaving the Crystal Empire many years ago, King Sombra is finally defeated for good by the Crystal Heart being returned to its rightful place.
    • This happens in the Season 6 finale, "To Where and Back Again" where Thorax, a changeling who was heroic in comparison to the evil Queen Chrysalis, returns to the Changeling hive and through his heroic ways, reforms the Changelings while overthrowing Chrysalis.
  • Moville Mysteries: "The Novelty Kid" centers around Norman, a greedy jerk who always swindles people out of their money and refuses to pay them back even when he has more than enough to do so. At the end of the episode, he is turned into a "Zombie Slave Boy" and is sold as a product being sold by the Ace Novelty company he tried to swindle (and failed).
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: In "Know Your Mom", Brandon the bear can't wait the fifteen minutes until his lunch break, so he talks K.O. out of giving a macaroni-decorated card to his mom, just so he can eat the macaroni himself. Lampshaded by his co-worker A Real Magic Skeleton at the end, when Brandon gets sick from eating raw macaroni:
    Brandon: Why is this happening to me?!
    Real Magic Skeleton: Your actions have consequences.
  • In Phineas and Ferb, a show that thrives on contrived coincidences, if Doofenshmirtz doesn't do anything particularly malicious in an episode, he'll usually get a happy ending along with the other characters. In short, he would get his consequences in the end if he, for the very least, tries to plan something.
    • Likewise, Candace's Butt-Monkey status is often the result of her trying to bust her brothers, or just being generally mean. When she doesn't try to bust them and either doesn't bother them or joins their adventures, things often go right for her, or in some cases, the only one who ever gets punished is Candace herself. Easily the best example of this is "My Sweet Ride" where not only does she get a new car that Phineas and Ferb trick out for her, it wins first prize at the car show and she gets a nice moment with Jeremy.
  • Pingu: In "Pingu and the Organ Grinder" a thin penguin refuses to help the titular organ grinder but as thanks to him looking up at the sky, when he realizes there's water; it's already too late.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998) has instances of these with the heroes and villains receiving them:
  • The Raccoons:
  • In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Whole Lotta Shakin'", Zerk keeps bothering Jet, Sean, and Sydney to no end via Jet's smartwatch. At the end of the episode, Zerk annoys Jet again, and gets what he deserves after Jet throws the smartwatch into the vastness of space.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Cheese Rush Days", Ren and Stimpy are prospectors hunting for blue cheese. When they strike the mother lode, Ren gets greedy and tries to steal it for himself, trapping Stimpy in the mine in the process. It turns out the cheese Ren found was low-fat "fool's cheese", and Stimpy is rescued by a prospector who helps him find a huge nugget of the real thing.
  • Done in a Robot Chicken episode where Billy Joel insults the patrons of the bar he plays at through song, especially one individual whose wife Joel reveals he's sleeping with; he also claims the novel that the guy's writing will fail horribly. As Billy leaves for the night, said person stabs him repeatedly and kills him. Then gets a call from his agent that his book is a hit, meaning he can leave his blue-collar job. And that his wife died from an STD. The man happily hangs up and shouts "POETIC JUSTICE!".
  • Rocko's Modern Life:
    • This sort of thing happens to Ed Bighead on a regular basis:
      • In "Canned", he attempts to sabotage Rocko (who he tried to make think he was offering Rocko a job at Conglom-O) by putting him in precarious situations as a "test subject", only to have every scheme backfire on him and Ed himself ends up getting the short end of the stick every time. His final attempt consists of having a herd of mad giraffes run over Rocko, only for Ed himself to get trampled by the herd instead, thanks to the Mad Giraffe Repellant Rocko was given seconds before they were released.
      • "Keeping Up with the Bigheads" is about him trying to get Rocko's house condemned and hauled off out of spite. In Rocko and Heffer's attempts to fix up the place, they cause a chain reaction that results in the accidental release of the bugs that Ed had imprisoned, who then retaliate by ravaging the Bigheads' house, which gets condemned instead.
      • In "Zanzibar!", he sees no problem dumping waste in populated areas and sings a song about how little he cares about the environment. Another song later in the episode warns not to pollute or "you'll get what you deserve"; at the end when Ed is angry over Conglom-O making him clean up O-Town, he still doesn't care about the environment and sings a sarcastic reprise of the citizens' song about recycling, which ends with him spraying a can of aerosol into the air. The resulting CFCs eat a hole in the ozone layer and he gets burned by a blast of radiation.
      • In "Ed Good, Rocko Bad", he runs for city dog catcher against Rocko and creates a smear campaign to demonize him. In the end, Ed wins in a landslide, but the job ends up being reduced to a janitor at a dog amusement park.
    • To a lesser extent, two Bad Bosses have had this happen to them:
      • Rocko's former boss, Mr. Dupette, at the end of "Canned", after he ruthlessly fired him from Super-Lot-O Comics, then Rocko soon gets a new job at Kind-of-a-Lot-O Comics. After Mr. Bighead tried numerous attempts to off Rocko with his tests, Rocko remembers the gene-enhancing gum he gave him earlier shortly after he gets his new job and hands it over to Dupette when he arrives at the store for a pack of comics and gum. The moment Dupette samples the gum, his head ends up sprouting a beehive, and along with being stung like crazy, crashing his car in the process, he is also chased by the herd of mad giraffes Ed released on Rocko earlier.
      • Rocko's current boss, Mr. Smitty, in "Commuted Sentence". It is revealed he lives next door to his place of business, backing into a parking space Rocko wanted and making him park in a bad area of town, then has the gall to chew him out for being late. When Rocko's car is towed, he is forced to use public transportation to get to work on time and raise the money to release it from impoundment or else Smitty will fire him. In the end, Smitty does fire Rocko when he finally arrives on time after showing up late several times, but then, his car gets impounded when the space it was in becomes a new tow-away zone. Guess who was operating the tow truck at the time?
        Rocko: Hi, Mr. Smitty! I got a new job!
  • The Rotten Ralph episode "Ralph's Super Duper Bloopers" has Ralph film and humiliate Sarah and her parents so that he can send the tape to Blunders and Bloopers as an entry in their video contest. When it occurs to him that Sarah and her parents will be mad at him for exploiting their misfortunes, he tries to get the tape back from the television studio by sneaking past the security guard while dressed like a clown. Ralph instead gets humiliated and kicked off the premises, the footage recorded by the security cameras ultimately becoming the winning entry of the video contest.
  • Angelica Pickles of Rugrats gets hit with this. However, how she gets hit with this depends on if Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, and Lil are involved in what she's doing. If the babies are involved in any way, then, yes, she'll get hit with this. However, she's been shown to pull the wool over her parents and the other grown-ups' eyes easily and incidents involving Suzie solely tend to have things go in Angelica's favor.
  • A relatively minor example from an episode of The Simpsons, when Homer taunts Bart for his joining the Junior Campers:
    Homer: How was jerk practice, boy? Did they teach you how to sing to trees and build crappy furniture out of useless wooden logs? Huh? [The chair that Homer is sitting on collapses] D'oh! Stupid poetic justice!
    • A rather less minor example happens in "Marge vs. the Monorail", to the conman Lyle Lanley. He's sold crummy, overpriced monorails to such towns as Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and after pulling his scam in Springfield he bolts on a plane to Tahiti. There's just one problem: the flight has a brief stop-over in North Haverbrook... where an angry mob awaits.
    • In a segment in "22 Short Films About Springfield", Nelson Muntz decides to make fun of Ian, a very tall man who has to put his head between his knees as he drives his car. Ian, who certainly doesn’t like being made fun of, chases Nelson down, and after giving him a stern lecture, pulls down Nelson’s pants and forces him to walk down the street while blowing kisses and waving while the other townsfolk laugh at him. As a final piece of karma, Bart and Milhouse squirt condiments on Nelson when they see him like this.
      • Note, Nelson had also laughed at Lisa's haircut when she stepped out of the hair salon. When Ian comes looking for him, Lisa points out Nelson's hiding place.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Dangerous Debt", while on the run, Ahsoka and the Martez sisters run into a hungry Gotal begging for credits, only for Rafa to rudely brush him off. Moments later, the beggar runs into the Pykes and sells them out.
  • Star Wars Rebels: In "Zero Hour", Admiral Konstantine disobeys Grand Admiral Thrawn's orders to keep his Interdictor cruiser in the back, and pays for it with his life when Commander Sato and two of his bridge crew ram the Phoenix Home into Konstantine's interdictor.
  • Tom and Jerry has Jerry provoking Tom for little to no reason at all and almost never gets punished for it, but one rare exception occurs in "The Million Dollar Cat", where Tom got tired of Jerry's shenanigans and attacked him even if doing so would cost him a million-dollar inheritance.
    Tom: Gee, I'm throwin' away a million dollars... BUT I'M HAPPY!
    • Especially noticeable since Jerry had been pestering Tom because he knew the cat couldn't fight back.
    • Actually this happened to Jerry on a deceptively frequent basis, especially in the later Hanna-Barbera shorts. At least a dozen instances where Jerry provoked Tom first or took his retribution to vindictive extremes, Tom would get the last laugh. Cases both characters were as bad as each other often ended in a stalemate. Similar odd cases Tom made a truce with Jerry often gave him a Karmic Jackpot.
  • Mandy of Totally Spies! is a frequent victim of this, but she does get away with it on some occasions.
    • In "Silicon Valley Girls", she is appointed judge of the student court and gives the girls the punishment of picking up trash on school grounds when they fail to meet the school dress code. However, by the end of the episode, she utterly fails to enforce the dress code and is kicked off the student court, at which point she is given the girls' previous punishment.
    • "Malled" had her try to plant a bottle of perfume in Clover's purse in order to frame her for shoplifting, but by the end of the episode, when the girls are taken to the mall's security office to resolve the issue, Mandy was proven guilty and sentenced to two weeks on the store's cleaning crew, thanks to Jerry tapping into the mall's security footage and catching everything on video.
  • Transformers: Prime:
    • Starscream gets this fairly often. His manipulation of events leading up to the Predacon genocide, as well as his treatment of the three Predacons in the series (Predaking throughout the third season, Darksteel and Skylynx in "Predacons Rising") culminates in the trio cornering him in a confined space in the finale. What happens to Starscream isn't shown, but it most likely wasn't pleasant and Robots in Disguise implies he barely escaped with his life.
    • Happens to Silas in "The Human Factor" - when his plan to curry favor with Megatron and gain entry into the Decepticons fails, he is dragged off by Vehicons so he can be dissected by Breakdown's old buffing pal Knock Out, much like Silas did to the Cybertronians that he encountered.
    • Airachnid also gets hit with this. In "Metal Attraction", her stated goal for getting the polarity gauntlet is to have an edge if the Decepticons try to force her to rejoin — by the end of the episode, she's been magnetized to Breakdown, who takes her back to Megatron as a consolation prize, forcing her to rejoin. In "Armada", she uses a legion of Insecticons to try and take down Megatron, which releases them from stasis pods, but during her fight with Arcee, she accidentally triggers one of those pods and is promptly put into stasis. She's infected with vampirism in "Thirst" by Breakdown (or rather Silas piloting his corpse), whom she killed in "Crossfire".
  • The Vampirina episode "April Ghoul's Day" is a lighthearted example, but it's still there. The episode has Vee and the Hauntley family pull pranks on Poppy and Bridget on April Ghoul's Day. They at first don't mind, but they take issue with how they're the only ones getting pranked. As such, Vee apologizes for what happened when they talk it out. The last few minutes of the episode have Vee help Poppy and Bridget pull pranks on the family, with everyone apologizing. Vee is later pranked when being chased by a pink windup toy they put out, but she doesn't mind them doing this.
  • Wakfu:
    • The Mmmmmmmmmmporg claims to have sold his soul to Gobbowl, but it may have just been a saying. He's ultimately defeated when two younger players join forces to blast him with the ultimate Gobbowl technique.
    • After an entire season of betraying everyone he allies himself with including his brothers Yugo and Adamaï, the definitive blow that defeats Qilby comes from his beloved sister, the one being in all existence he thought he could trust.
  • Wander over Yonder: In the episode "The Fugitive", Wander and Sylvia are trying to escape a planet occupied by Lord Hater, but Wander keeps accidentally thwarting Sylvia's attempts to escape by helping random civilians. Eventually, Sylvia has Wander promise not to help people anymore, but at that point, Hater's minions realize they can draw Wander out by intentionally causing problems to invoke his Chronic Hero Syndrome. It works, but as the two of them are being led away, everyone who Wander assisted turns up and helps the two of them get off the planet.
    Sylvia: What just happened?
    Wander: See, that's the other nice thing about helping folks. Sometimes, they help you right back!
  • The king in Wat's Pig did not do his part to protect the kingdom from the invaders, so he needs to help his family farm in their new cottage home (where Wat was raised). Cue the Rain.
  • We Bare Bears:
    • After the way Nom Nom acted throughout "Panda's Sneeze", Ice Bear's malfunctioning robot arrives at the cuteness contest, destroys the trophy, and kidnaps Nom Nom.
    • In "Ralph", after Ralph ditches Charlie for trying to save some human hikers Ralph tried to kill as part of a Deadly Prank, Ralph gets his comeuppance when he gets attacked by a nest of snakes.
  • In Xiaolin Showdown the monks choose to save a little old lady, letting the villains get away with the "Bird of Paradise." Guess what the little old lady turns out to be.
  • In The X's episode "To Err is Truman", after pulling a prank planting bombs in the X house's toilets, Truman tries to prove he can behave so he can go to a water park with the rest of the family, or else he'll be sent to mime camp. However, Tuesday (wanting Truman out of her hair) and Homebase (wanting revenge for the toilet bomb prank) repeatedly try to get him to misbehave, but all their attempts fail. Tuesday finally decides to pull the toilet bomb prank Truman pulled earlier in the episode and frame him for it, and Homebase disables the cameras so Tuesday wouldn't get caught. Although Homebase does catch Truman taking the X-Jet for a joyride, he didn't really record anything due to the cameras being deactivated. Eventually, Tuesday is caught by their parents and sent to mime camp herself.
  • Zig the hyena of Zig & Sharko is constantly trying to eat Marina the mermaid, who is completely oblivious to his ravenous intentions. Luckily for her, her best friend Sharko (who is indeed a large, muscular shark), is always there to protect her, usually by punching and pounding Zig, as well as other physically violent actions that more than likely cause the furry fellow large amounts of pain.

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