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"If I am dangling over a precipice and the hero reaches his hand down to me, I will not attempt to pull him down with me. I will allow him to rescue me, thank him properly, then return to the safety of my fortress and order his execution."
"Death by irony is always painful. Amateurs."
No matter how evil the villain is... the good guys can't just kill them. They're supposed to be pure and noble (or innocent). Having blood on their hands means they'd have to change genres and become Anti Heroes.
Having the villains just be arrested isn't as satisfying, either. Besides, they have the tendency to escape. Often, the villains are just too evil for such mundane measures. Plus, some part of the viewer wants Justice™ to be administered, but we don't trust human hands to administer it.
... so, the writers arrange for the villain to die in a manner that is completely their own fault. Or at least, not the hero's. Usually right in the act of attempting to kill the hero, for that extra karmic zing.
Note that this only applies if the villain is clearly human, or the show universe's nearest equivalent. If they change into some kind of monster, they are no longer protected by this trope.
More common in Western markets, as a result of heavy censorship and the general reluctance among writers to feature their character (usually in a show with a younger Demographic) doing such acts as killing, especially if they're underage. Occasionally known by the older demographic as "getting one's comuppance."
Karmic Death is an example of Death By Irony. Disney Villain Death and The Dog Bites Back are subtropes.
Compare Hoist By His Own Petard. See also Cruel Mercy. The Dog Shot First usually involves this. The Killer Becomes The Killed is a Crime And Punishment variant.
Examples
Anime
- Drifting Classroom Sekiya
- Often, a villain will be conveniently killed off by another villain. A majority of Sailor Moon's humanoid villains were killed by their superiors for failing once too often, or by other, envious members of the same Quirky Miniboss Squad. Said superiors usually changed into monsters for the season finale and thus could be blown to bits.
- Although not in the anime, in the manga of Elfen Lied you can see a small variant, Lucy (which can only be partially considered a villain, but not the Big Bad) ends dooming herself due the overuse of her own telekinetic powers, while she was agonizing as the result of utilizing her vectors to shoot down some bomber-fighters she asks Kouta to kill her, Kouta reluctantly agrees and executes Lucy to put an end to her misery.
- Shishio Makoto of Rurouni Kenshin suffers a Karmic Death, succumbing to a fatal condition that does not allow him to fight for more than 15 minutes at a time without overheating (and in this case, causing his body fats and oils to catch fire), just as his opponent Kenshin is lying exhausted and helpless on the floor. This is made even more karmic due to his wealth of fire-based attacks, and the series implies that his death is almost literally karmic; that "the era chose the one who should live."
- Although it's not quite the same thing, Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix masterpiece is rife with examples of karmic retribution. Consider the one in Strange Beings / Life: A woman, raised by her evil father as a warrior, learns that her father is dying but might yet be saved by a mysterious nun who lives on a remote island. She travels to the island to kill the nun. After killing the nun, she finds she can't leave the island, and circumstances cause her to pretend to be the nun for some travelers. She finally works out that time is flowing backward, and not only is she the nun, but she can look forward to a day when she gets killed by her own hand. Which will of course continue the cycle indefinitely, unless she can work off her sins through healing those who come to visit the nun. In other words, this is Karmic Death, or dying through one's own actions, a little more directly than most, and with a delay of over ten years between act and payback. Also notable in that by the time of death, the woman had learned her lesson and was no longer a villain type in the slightest.
- Standard way of tying up stories with murderers, con artists, etc. in Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service if they're not caught by the police. Insurance salesman killed by an unlikely probability, cryopreservation scammer frozen — whatever your sin, Narrative Causality has a death to suit.
- In School Days... The main character is a Casanova who has spent 90% of the series playing with the hearts and interests of several girls, becoming more and more of a Jerkass as the story advances. In the end, though, a girl who is supposedly expecting his baby snaps violently after he suggests she should have an abortion, and stabs him with a knife.
- That was only in the anime however. In the game's ending that was closest to that scene, she stabbed him because he decided to simply abandon her and go back to his old girlfriend. Of course, as he's crawling across the ground and bleeding to death, he becomes The Atoner and realizes the error of his ways, then dies.
- In Narutaru, one of the main character's best friends is bullied to truly monstrous extents by the local Libby Aki Honda and her Girl Posse. The peak of it is when Aki rapes the poor girl with a test tube. What does the victim do when she gets a shadow dragon? Well... she uses said dragon to kill all but one of them - and even the sole survivor gets her leg ripped off. Oh, and she kills other people too. And the one who gets the worst death of all is Aki herself, who gets the shadow dragon raping her with its clawed finger and then ripping her body in half. And then it gets worse. Much worse. The fact that this is even considered Karmic Death at all speaks volumes on just how completely messed up the world of Narutaru is.
- Dragonball Z is another prime example. Protagonist Goku seldom kills anyone. Many bad guys throughout the series are either killed by a superior bad guy, or reform and join Team Good, or end up killing themselves through Karmic Death.
- He's a lot less reserved in Dragonball, killing Old Piccolo by punching his way through his chest, and other choice actions.
- Yeah, in Dragonball he kills two Mooks that were creepily hitting on Bulma (probably with intent to rape), Goku showed up and killed them. When Bulma felt sorry for them and said they were only doing their jobs, Goku just laughed it off. He was 12.
- A sort of twisting of this trope comes with Freeza. It follows the trope at first, with Goku refusing to kill Freeza and Freeza lashing out at him behind his back, but the Karmic Death occurs when Goku turns around and destroys Freeza in his rage, no remorse. Though he doesn't actually die. He later returns as a cyborg, and goes to Earth to kill Goku's friends in vengeance. It is then where he meets his actual death, in the form of Trunks. A rather expanded Karmic Death.
- Such a brutal departure from more merciful kills by Dragon Ball characters. Trunks slices Frieza in half, then proceeds to slice those halves into even tinier bits, and he blows him to ashes with a ki blast.
- This is the point of almost EVERY story in Pet Shop Of Horrors.
- In the Full Metal Alchemist manga a weakened Pride decided to eat Gluttony.
- And in the anime, Dante is presumed eaten alive by the mindless monster she turned Gluttony into.
- Also from the anime Sloth, the Homunculus which could turn herself into water, was killed by being literally evaporated.
- In Gundam SEED Destiny Jona Roma Saran goes to war with Zaft forces and later dies in the battle he callously started - and in a manner completely bereft of dignity.
- In Code Geass, after confessing to being at war just so he could publicly kill people, Luciano Bradley dies. His killer even tossed his own sadistic Pre Ass Kicking One Liner back in his face right before doing him in. Oh yeah!
- Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds, Episode 37, when Divine sends Carly falling to her death. He immediately regrets it.
- Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be permanent...
- Shion Sonozaki in Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni (more exactly, the Meakashi-hen arc), after killing most of the cast disguised as Mion, her twin sister, falls to her death when the air gun holster that Mion always wears snags on the wall while Shion's scaling a building.
- In Death Note, users of the titular notes have a nasty tendency to end up killed by one. Actually, it's the only way they can be killed, which is slightly ironic as it's also their own murder weapon.
- Technically, it's not proven whether Mikami died by Death Note, but the rest follows true (indirectly, in Misa's case).
- Nena Trinity in Gundam 00 is killed by Louise Halevy, the daughter of the people whose wedding she blew up.
- Ali Al-Saachez dies at the hands of Lyle "Lockon Stratos" Dylandy, the twin younger brother of the original Lockon (Neil), whom he killed four years ago. Lyle (somewhat less revenge-driven than his brother) even tried to give him a Second Last Chance, but when Ali refused, he killed him.
- Let's not forget that he was the one who ordered the bombing that killed the Lockons' family as well.
- Jojos Bizarre Adventure loves this:
- Part 2: Cars is granted immortality in every sense of the word; he uses his newfound evolution powers to transform himself into stone to avoid a volcanic eruption, but the force of the blast launches him into space, where he is unable to change back or stop himself from moving. He eventually shuts down mentally, now a hunk of stone travelling endlessly.
- Part 3: Dio is killed thanks to Jotaro's time stop ability, which Dio had been using against others to intimidate and kill.
- Part 4: Yoshikage Kira's good luck finally runs out as he is struck and killed by an ambulance hich a bystander had called to help him. When he tries to drag the spirit of one of his murder victims to hell with him, he is stopped by a group of otherworldly hands...which is the body part what Kira had taken from his victims.
- Part 5 Diavolo unintentionlly helps Giornio get the Requiem arrow, which upgrades his stand into one that can negate any action taken by an opponent...an ability almost identical to Diavolo's own King Crimson stand, which can erase a section of time and allows limited precognative abilities. When Diavolo is killed by the new stand, he is forced to experience death for eternity, unable to see when it's coming, each and every time.
- Part 6: Pucci's own Whitesnake stand allowed Emporio to gain Weather Report's stand, allowing him to finally defeat Pucci and save the new universe.
- Folken Lacour de Fanel in Vision Of Escaflowne. After his Heel Face Turn, Folken tries to attack his ex-boss Dornkirk, but the sword he uses breaks in two and the tip injures Folken fatally by impaling him in the chest. It doesn't help that the Zaibach has a machine that actually uses karma and destiny as its fuel.
- In Fushigi Yuugi, Suboshi tries to kill Tamahome and Miaka, but his own weapon rebounds and plunges through his chest while the ghosts of Tamahome's family hold him in place. Suboshi had brutally murdered the family earlier in the series, making this doubly karmic.
- In Romeox Juliet, Lord Montague kills one of his allies and friends in front of his son. Said son goes insane and later stabs Montague to death.
Comic Books
- Comic/film example: Spider-Man. Spidey, infuriated over his girlfriend's death/near-death (depending on which version you're reading/watching), has the Green Goblin on the ropes when the villain reveals that he is Spider-Man's friend's father. As GG apologizes, he sets up his glider behind our hero. Spidey jumps out of the way at the last second and the blade on the glider's tip impales the Goblin, killing him. For now.
- The Governor from The Walking Dead suffers one of these at the conclusion of the "Made to Suffer" arc. After the remainder of his troops have finally broken into the good guys' sanctuary, scattering them to the wind and killing over half of them, one of his soldiers, at his urging, shoots a fleeing survivor...the main characters' wife and infant daughter. Upon discovering the Governor made her kill a baby, she empties her shotgun into the back of his head. The entire squad of soldiers get Karmic Deaths as well, as they're implied to be overwhelmed by zombies a moment later.
- Long-running newspaper comic Dick Tracy makes karmic deaths of villains one of it's defining features. But as of late, the strip has become a surreal series of storylines that are basically long, Rube Goldberg-like marches to see what gruesome end awaits the villain of the story. To the point where Dick and crew will abandon police procedure and common sense (and occasionally, the laws of physics) to facilitate said karmic fate. As in the current storyline, where the Big Bad Evil Guy gets torn apart by his own attack dogs after losing his protective whistle; all the while, it never occurs to Dick or his crew to shoot the damn dogs until LONG after the villain is a literal dog's dinner.
- In the final issue of Atomic Robo And the Dogs of War, the second half takes a time skip to the 70's when Robo finally finds Otto Skorzeny after looking for him since WWII. He goads Robo, claiming that he had personally killed Nikola Tesla, Robo's creator, and stolen his ideas. Robo takes a gun, aims it at him, and . . . points it away, and tells skorzeny that he already knows he's dying of cancer, and instead of giving him a quick soldier's death, He'll leave skorzeny to die alone and painfully from his cancer.
Film
- Disney movies do this a lot. They've done it enough to get their own subtrope. To name a few examples:
- The Evil Queen in Snow White And The Seven Dwarves fell off a cliff trying to push a rock onto the Seven Dwarves.
- Gaston of Beauty And The Beast fell off of the castle after one final attack on the Beast. (This coming after the Beast spared his life.)
- Tarzan's Clayton fell off a tree trying to shoot the good guys, and was strangled by vines.
- McLeech, the villainous poacher in The Rescuers Down Under, seemed to avoid his karmic death by escaping a pack of crocodiles, only to be swept over the Inevitable Waterfall seconds later.
- Scar from The Lion King is killed by the hyenas that he threw under the bus while pleading for his life to be spared.
- Subverted in The Emperors New Groove, in which Yzma, accidentally transformed into a kitten and trying to get the potion that'll turn the main character human again, falls off a high building, gets launched back up by a trampoline (which so happened to be mistakenly delivered to the palace and assembled by the delivery man minutes before), and is last seen forcibly conscripted into a Cub Scouts parody, headed by her own henchman, getting taught how to speak in squirrel. AND she's still a kitten.
- At the climax of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Judge Claude Frollo raises his sword to strike the defenseless heroes, bellowing, "And He shall smite the wicked, and plunge them into the fiery pit!!" Three guesses what happens next...
- After his attempt to use his army of undead soldiers reanimated by the titular Black Cauldron is thwarted, The Horned King is sucked into the Cauldron himself.
- 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.
- 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, as his souless, evil robotic bodyguard Maximillian simply leaves the room despite his repeated pleas.
- In the He Man And The Masters Of The Universe movie, He-Man finally destroyed Skeletor's source of power, his troops are beaten, etc. Because he's ''such a good guy'', 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.
- The remake of The Mummy hung a lampshade on this: Evie tells Beni that people like him always meet an unfortunate end. He does.
- The demise of the crime boss Komtuan in Ong Bak possibly epitomizes the concept of karmic death, as he is crushed under the falling head of a giant Buddha statue, which he was trying to remove and sell. You don't get much more karmic than that.
- Carl, the villain of the Ghost movie, 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 dumps Nightmare Fuel into the mix. Carl gets to experience his first few seconds in the afterlife before shadows boil out of everywhere and drag him off screaming to Oblivion or whatever hellhole or damnation the view can only imagine.
- Averted in Anastasia, not only does the titular heroine get to save herself and her Distressed Damsel boyfriend, she does so by actually killing the villain. No she doesn't shoot or stab him, but she crushes the reliquary which is keeping Rasputin alive and knows exactly what she's doing as she does it.
- Considering he was already a decaying corpse at the time (albeit one that could talk, feel pain, and sing a nifty musical number), this really isn't all that bold.
- Averted in The Incredibles (along with many other superhero / family movie tropes), where Mr. Incredible chucks a car at Syndrome with full intent to kill. Syndrome dodges the car, but as a result gets sucked into the air intake of a jet engine.
- Although this is also something of Hoist By His Own Petard, as Syndrome's death was caused by his insistence on wearing a cape, despite the well-known impracticality of such a costume choice (it tends to snag on fast-moving objects).
- The B-Movie The Sadist goes to rather extreme lengths for this. Out of nowhere, the villain falls into an abandoned well which is quicly revealed to be inhabited by dozens of poisonous snakes.
- 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. But he just stands back up again, treats his broken arm and walks into the proverbial sunset as if nothing happened.
- In the film version of Sweeney Todd, 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 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.
- 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.
- 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 ring and lashes explosives to his body. He recovers his senses too late, and the explosives are detonated by a seagull.
- My dad just saw a film but doesn't know the name, but it uses this: A voodoo lady turns a guy into a rat; some guy makes a cookie version of the voodoo lady but doesn't use it, and the cookie falls on the floor; at the end, when it appears that the voodoo lady is going to get away with things, she suddenly collapses - the guy-turned-into-rat is eating the cookie's head.
- Not a movie, but an episode from Tales of the Darkside, Baker's Dozen.
- 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.
- The Shawshank Redemption 's 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 ever got the best of him.
- In The Frighteners, The movie's two main villains, One of which is already dead, are dragged into Hell by a giant worm. Awesome.
- 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.
Literature
- In The Lord Of The Rings, Saruman is killed by much-abused servant Wormtongue, and Gollum falls into the volcano by dancing too exuberantly. In The Film Of The Book, the former was entirely cut from the film and only viewable on the extended DVD.
- Used straight by the film adaptation. Gollum goes over the edge while struggling with Frodo for the Ring rather than simply a misstep.
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort, through a lengthily-explained property of the eponymous Applied Phlebotinum, finds the definitively un-blockable Killing Curse blocked and turned against himself.
- And thus, the man who sought above all else to be powerful, notorious, and feared dies with a thud.
- The villains in the NUMA Series (the National Underwater and Marine Agency) of books written by Clive Cussler tend to die this way. The person who wanted immortality and nearly flooded the oceans with a very hard to kill Gorgonweed ended up killing herself by taking the potion meant to give her because someone she had killed had messed with it making sure that anyone that drank all three of the shots needed for immotality would die from it. One person who wanted to destroy the world's fish trade with mutant fish was eaten by his own creations A third person wanted to control the world's water and ended up dying by drowning, but the place where she was ended up blowing up so that may have killed her instead.
- In Jack London's The Sea Wolf, Wolf Larsen is struck by a migraine while trying to steal the protagonist's lady love. The migraine is a symptom of the brain injury that leaves him paralyzed and eventually kills him, while the protagonist and lady love stay at his bedside and spoon-feed him.
- Bertha Mason's death in Jane Eyre by fire is very karmic since she started it in the first place and Mr. Rochester went back in to get her as well.
- In Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, Briar Cudeon is attacked by Opal Koboi after the latter learned he was planning to kill her off after taking over. She then rammed him into plasma, where he was fried
- In Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son, Carker dies by accidentally stepping back into the path of an onrushing (and symbolic) train—right in front of a horrified Mr. Dombey.
- Near the end of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, the appalling Mr. Grandcourt finally meets his end when he falls off a boat and, unable to swim, asks his wife to throw him a rope. She hesitates just a moment too long...
- Ellis Peters manages to wrap up a judicial duel with a Karmic Death in "One Corpse Too Many". Hugh dropped his sword after disarming Adam, choosing to continue the fight dagger-against-dagger. When Adam went for Hugh's sword, Hugh tackled him. In the ensuing wrestling match, Adam rolled onto his own dagger and died.
- In The Raven in the Foregate, the new priest lacks the critical virtues of charity and humility. He pronounces a naïve penitent irredeemable and under wrath, and she drowns herself in the millpond. On Christmas Eve, only a few weeks after arriving, he accidentally hits himself with his own staff and falls into the same millpond. The one witness considers him to be under God's wrath.
Live Action TV
- In the second-season Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Go Fish", the coach who has been dosing the swim team with steroids that are turning them into Gill Monsters is devoured by his own creations — convenient, given Buffy's absolute refusal to kill normal humans.
- A less Hoist By His Own Petard-esque example happens in Xander's Day In The Limelight episode, to the Zombie Jock who swears cold-served revenge... before abruptly getting eaten by a werewolf.
- Mentioned but avoided in the finale of Season 5, where Giles points out that since Buffy is a hero, she could never kill in cold blood, but he is not a hero, and proceeds to suffocate the Big Bad, while she is trapped inside her mortal and innocent shell.
- Not innocent. He was perfectly willing to let Glory destroy the world so he could go on living. He had it coming
- Not-technically-death-example: Catherine Madison, who tried to curse her daughter into being stuck in a cheerleading trophy, and accidentally cursed herself there instead.
- Hilariously done in the Doctor Who spoof "The Curse of Fatal Death", where the Master falls down a pit into a vast and disgusting sewer network. Three times. He doesn't exactly die, but it's still pretty bad.
- Numerous Doctor Who villains are finished off by this trope, most likely due to the Doctor being a Technical Pacifist. Notable examples include Davros killed by his newly-created Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks (extra points for Davros pleading to his creations in the same way that the Doctor was pleading to Davros earlier), and the Master killed by his physically and mentally abused wife in Last of the Time Lords.
- Subverted in Stargate Atlantis episode, "The Prodigal." At the climax of the episode, the half-Wraith Big Bad Michael is hanging by his fingers from a very high point on Atlantis. This troper assumed Teyla would reach a hand down to help Michael in spite of everything he's done to the galaxy, he tries to pull her over the edge and gets Karmic Death. Instead, Teyla kicks his hands loose and he falls to his death. He had threatened her son and the entire city with the self-destruct.
- Although many victims in CSI suffer karmic deaths, a particular favourite of this Troper was in "Ending Happy" where the abusive bouncer Lorenzo "Happy" Morales survived being hit over the head with a club, poisoned (twice) and shot (all arguably deserved) - but ultimately died from falling off the chair (and into a swimming pool) that he had failed to fix.
- Sanford Harris on Fringe. Gloriously.
- Phil on Lost punched Juliet in an attempt to make Sawyer talk during an interrogation. Later, as all hell breaks lose during an electromagnetic incident, he gets impaled by a flying metal bar.
- Several in all seasons of Primeval, the most notable pair being S3 where Christine gets chomped by a future predator after getting into a pissing match with Helen over who is the bigger Jerk Ass (unfortunately Helen is not only a Jerk Ass, but a Complete Monster as well), and Helen herself finds the punishment for trying to Ret Gone humanity is death by velociraptor.
Video Games
- In Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, the entire game has the the PC running around Los Angeles searching for a Sarcophagus that supposedly contains an ancient and unbelievably powerful vampire. This is done on the orders of Prince LaCroix, who desires to diablerize the slumbering Ancient and effectively nick all it's awesome, god-like powers. In the end, it turns out that the sarcophagus he had lied, cheated, back-stabbed and manipulated to get does not contain an Ancient vampire, but half a tonne of C4. Your imagination can probably draw an accurate picture of what happens next.
- In Bioshock, Doctor Suchong suffers a remarkably appropriate death. While pondering how to further improve the imprinting of the Big Daddies' programming to protect the Little Sisters, he gets annoyed by one of the little girls. Eventually, he loses his temper and slaps her. Jack finds his corpse, impaled on his own desk by a Big Daddy's drill.
- In Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, there is a option to dish out a karmic death. In the penultimate mission, the protagonist and antagonist are locked in a Mexican Standoff. The antagonist attempts to coax the protagonist to join him by holstering his weapon saying he "wouldn't shoot an old friend." You can either shoot him in the face or holster your own weapon. Holstering your weapon leads the antagonist to try and kill you anyway, only to be outmaneuvered and stabbed.
- Valkyria Chronicles delivers satisfying ends to the morally corrupt characters of the story.
- The final boss of Disaster: Day of Crisis, Evans, meets his end... At the hands of his own colonel, who actually survived being shot by Evans. Awesome.
- In Resident Evil 5, Corrupt Corporate Executive and Evilutionary Biologist, Excella Gione is exposed by Albert Wesker to the very virus she had planned to spread across the world. No more genetically compatible than her own experimental test subjects, Excella erupts into a hideous morass of mindless maggot-like creatures.
- In Dead Space Kendra, after crossing the Moral Event Horizon several times and revealing Isaac's going insane, steals the ersatz Artifact Of Doom that was stopping the Cosmic Horror from it's base, thereby nullifying it's power. Not five minutes later, said Cosmic Horror smashes her into paste.
- In God of War , Ares is killed by the very man he hoped to make into his Ultimate Warrior, Kratos. Who was tricked into killing his own wife and daughter, the only two people he ever loved, by Ares.
Web Comics
- In anti-HEROES
 , the lich, Finx, lampshades this moments before his demise.
- The Fat Guard who tortured poor Fluffles in Goblins.
- The Wotch: Natasha Dahlet of DOLLY is turned into a dolly.
- In Sam And Fuzzy, Mr. Blank is finally killed when he is hit by the corpse of Mr. Black, which he had murdered in cold blood previously and looses his footing while trying to climb onto a flying building.
- The titular business of Suicide For Hire runs on helping people bring karmic deaths onto themselves.
Web Original
- Jack O'Connor of Survival Of The Fittest cheats in a Ten Paces And Turn duel, only to find his opponent (Adam Dodd) had been walking down a slope (something of a Deus Ex Machina). Jack shooting early allows Adam time to find his aim and fatally wound Jack to win the fight and v1. This also apparently makes the fact that Adam was planning on cheating okay simply because Jack tried it earlier.
- Laeil Burbank's first kill (and, in fact, first scene in V3,) involves her torturing her helpless cousin, leaving him begging for mercy before killing. Of course, it's only fitting that her death involves a helpless Laeil getting horribly tortured and left to die, also begging for mercy.
- It's also a rare case of a Karmic Death where one can feel sympathy for the victim, mostly because her cousin was a dickweed, she had something of a temporary Morality Pet in both Jimmy Trejo and Eddie Sullivan, and the guy who tortured her, JR Rizzolo, was a Complete Monster. And there's also her tragic Back Story...
- In another example, rapist and literal lady-killer Adam Reeves has a two-for-one when he gets his nuts blown off right before his death at the hands of Alexis Machina.
- The Protectors Of The Plot Continuum love these.
Western Animation
- My Little Pony, In "The Glass Princess", the Raptorians get turned into glass.
- The Powerpuff Girls, "Knock It Off" features a one-shot character 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 factory falls on top of him.
- Metalocalypse features a slimy PR lady-slash-cult leader get squished by the very comet she tried to kill everyone with.
- 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.
- After turning out to be Not Quite Dead toward the end of Barbie And The Diamond Castle, Lydia attempts to turn the heroines to stone with a magic spell, only for the spell to be turned on her instead.
- 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.
- "The 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 title 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.
- Played straight in the unedited version of Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker, in which the Joker is fatally shot by a young Tim Drake, temporarily unhinged by the Joker's mental and physical tortures. Largely averted in the edited-for-kiddies version, where his death is a not-very-ironic accident.
Real Life
- After holding the MV Sirius Star captive for two months, Somalian pirates left the ship with their ransom money. Due to the amount of money onboard, one of their boats capsized, drowning six of the pirates. Proof that greed is dangerous.
- Arguably the most ghoulish example on this entire page is the case of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Stalin had maintained his grip on power for more than three decades by terrifying everyone around him. On March 1, 1953, Stalin stayed up drinking with his goons until about 3 or 4 AM, at which time he went to bed. When Stalin didn't come out at his usual hour, people began to get concerned, but they left him alone since they were under strict orders not to disturb him and too freaking terrified of his wrath to risk going in to check on him. By the time one of his cronies finally mustered enough nerve to see what was going on, it was 10 PM of the next day and Stalin was dying of a stroke. Stalin lay for almost a full day, helpless and alone. Had his stooges checked on him, they might have been able to get the doctors in on time, but as it was Stalin's own brutal tactics kept his thugs from saving his sorry hide. If that isn't Poetic Justice, this troper doesn't know what is.
- It's also freaking hillarious.
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