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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.
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. The Killer Becomes The Killed is a Crime And Punishment variant.
Examples:
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 mortal shell.
- 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.
Anime
- 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.
- This is the point of almost EVERY story in Pet Shop Of Horrors.
- Not in the anime, but 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.
- In Gundam Seed Destiny Jona Roma Saran goes to war with Zaft forces and later dies in the battle he callously started.
- In Code Geass after confessing to being at war just so he could publicly kill people Luciano Bradley dies.
- Shion in Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, 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 scaling a building.
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 Governer 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 Governer 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 BBEG 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.
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 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.
- A half-hearted attempt in Batman Begins: "I won't kill you...but I don't have to save you." Yeah, Batsy, that one falls under the category of "the bullets killed him."
- Uh, it would only really count as that if Batman put him on the runaway train in the first place. It was more Hoist By His Own Petard since the guy was the one that caused the whole runaway train situation in the first place.
- Not true, the Big Bad may have gotten the train moving, but Batman was the one that disabled the throttle.
- That was all Ra's, buddy.
- How morally dissonant.
- 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.
- 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.
- Partially 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.
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.
- Somewhat subverted 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 (the National Underwater and Marine Agency) series 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 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.
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.
Video Games
- 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.
Web Comics
- 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.
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.
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