History KarmaHoudini / VideoGames

* ''VideoGame/ViewFromBelow'': Peter, the leader of the Pieties, [[spoiler:faces no consequences for not only leaving Melody to die, but also sacrificing his followers to the Crimson God and tricking mortals into fighting the Crimson God without a chance of winning. Even if the player returns to the Piety HQ after defeating the Crimson God, Peter is still pointlessly sacrificing blood to him]].

* ''VideoGame/ViewFromBelow'': Peter, the leader of the Pieties, [[spoiler:faces no consequences for not only leaving Melody to die, but also sacrificing his followers to the Crimson God and tricking mortals into fighting the Crimson God without a chance of winning. Even if the player returns to the Piety HQ after defeating the Crimson God, Peter is still pointlessly sacrificing blood to him]].

*** And finally, [[spoiler:even Eleanor, the DistressedDamsel in the game, can become a KarmaHoudini in the end. If Delta chooses to be a brutal villain, she will be influenced to become one, and harvest all the little sisters, kill her mother, and then as a final act, harvest Delta's mind against his will. She will then monologue about the world never seeing her coming.]]

* Unless you believe the Black Arms Invasion or the destruction of Prison Island, GUN from ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' never receives any form of punishment for [[spoiler:massacring hundreds of innocent people, including a ''child'', in cold blood, just to cover up a failed experiment they funded.]]

* ''{{VideoGame/Kindergarten}}'' and ''VideoGame/Kindergarten2'': Thanks to the game's GroundhogDayLoop, everything that happens in most of the games' routes goes unpunished, yet it's most notable in regards to the protagonist. No matter how many deaths you cause, you get away with it (and are, in fact, often rewarded). Even the OmegaEnding[=s=], which are shown to be the canonical endings and break you out of that day's loop, see you get away with [[spoiler:killing your principal via monster]] and [[spoiler:killing both your teachers and your new principal via stabbing, explosions, and [[ItMakesSenseInContext jackhammer to the giant monster eye]]]].

* One of the MultipleEndings of ''[[VideoGame/{{Contra}} Contra: Hard Corps]]'' has [[BigBad Colonel Bahamut]] escaping in a helicopter after the heroes defeat the Alien Cell.

** Lusamine from ''VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon'' [[spoiler:used Cosmog to open an Ultra Wormhole, released the Ultra Beasts that killed or injured many innocent people and Pokémon, as they wrecked every piece of civilized land in their path and nearly destroyed the rest of Alola. If you lose to her in a battle, she escapes to Ultra Space, still causing no end of trouble for everyone around her with seemingly no punishment whatsoever.]]

* In the terrorist campaign for ''[[VideoGame/PoliceQuest Police Quest: SWAT 2]]'', you play as Dante, TheDragon of the [[WesternTerrorists Five Eyes terrorist group]]. After a dozen missions filled with murder and kidnapping, the final mission sees you betrayed by your boss, and Dante escaping from SWAT on a private jet. Mocking the BigBad's obsession with haiku, Dante composes a poem of his own: "The criminal life / Isn't cool / I'll live my life / By the golden rule", and sets course to the nearest tropical island paradise.

* Astrid of ''VideoGame/{{Atelier}}'' is the Arland Trilogy (VideoGame/AtelierRorona, VideoGame/AtelierTotori, and VideoGame/AtelierMeruru)'s resident jerkass, pulling all kinds of mean pranks, intimidating the other cast members (most of which are pretty nice, friendly, likable people), and generally [[KickTheDog kicking the dog]]. This culminates in a pretty dangerous experiment on Rorona which [[FountainOfYouth turns her into an eternal ten year old]]. Her punishment for her behavior? What punishment? She always gets a one-up over the others.

** [[TokenEvilTeammate Elite Four]] Malva in ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' was TheQuisling for the ApocalypseCult Team Flare. Despite openly supporting someone who tried to enact a FinalSolution, she faces no repercussions and even continues to do so after his death, unlike in [[Anime/PokemonTheSeriesXY the anime]] where she becomes TheAtoner and turns herself in to the police.

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'', [[spoiler:Evice and Nascour]] lose any claims to KarmaHoudini privileges when Ho-oh shoots down their escape chopper, leaving them to go with Sherles and Johnson on the Party Van. The four Cipher Admins seem to get away scott free, however; they later appear as opponents in the Deep Colosseum, and what ultimately happens to them is unknown. (Except Miror B., who appears in the sequel.)

*** Downplayed on the Azure Moon route. [[spoiler:While you kill off some of their leaders, "those who slither in the dark" remain at large and in control of Shambhala and its javelins of light (assuming Thales made it possible for anyone else besides him to use them, which, knowing him, there's a good chance he didn't), and Dimitri only ever gets vague hints that there was another villainous organization who helped orchestrate the war.]]
** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriorsThreeHopes'', on the Golden Wildfire route, [[spoiler:Thales manages to stay off of Claude's radar for the entirety of the game, meaning he never gets punished for his grave crimes against Edelgard, her family, and the Empire. In a roundabout way, he even succeeds in his goal of getting Rhea killed, and [[InferredHolocaust can use his superweapons without fear of them being stopped]].]]

*** Downplayed on the Azure Moon route. [[spoiler:While you kill off some of their leaders, "those who slither in the dark" remain at large and in control of Shambhala and its javelins of light, and Dimitri only ever gets vague hints that there was another villainous organization who helped orchestrate the war.]]
** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriorsThreeHopes'', on the Golden Wildfire route, [[spoiler:Thales manages to stay off of Claude's radar for the entirety of the game, meaning he never gets punished for his grave crimes against Edelgard, her family, and the Empire]].

* The antagonist of the second Videogame/DarkParables game spends his time capturing people who wander into the wrong part of the Black Forest of Germany and turning them into [[ForcedTransformation frogs]]. His "punishment" at the end of the game is [[spoiler:death - which is the very thing he's been ''wanting'' for centuries -- and a spectral reunion with his beloved first wife.]] It's bittersweet and very beautifully done, because he's an AntiVillain rather than a full-on bad guy, but still.

* In ''Videogame/HorizonZeroDawn'', [[spoiler: it's found out that one man from the past is the root of just about ALL the problems in the world. The world used to be very technologically advanced. Then Ted Faro, through his company Faro Automated Solutions, created robot soldiers that went haywire and wiped out all life on the planet. Faro also deleted the sum of human knowledge after deluding himself into thinking that knowledge will just lead to the same mistakes. Despite ''all this'', he was able to live out the rest of his life in Thebes, a bunker with provisions and amenities insulated from the robot soldiers he produced and the toxic environment they left behind.]]

* [[EvilPoacher The Poacher]] in ''Videogame/JadeCocoon''. You're told early on in the game that only Nagi women can purify cocoons to make the minions inside obey their master, and these women only do so for a cocoon master. The Poacher's just that: a poacher, so that means he ''literally has a Nagi woman held hostage'' and is forcing her to purify his cocoons for him. Koris even tells you this is what poachers do at the very beginning of the game. However, even though you fight him three times, [[spoiler:[[VillainExitStageLeft Levant literally just lets him run away each time he beats him.]]]]

* In ''VideoGame/MaxPayne 3'', you never get a chance to cap [[TheMafia Anthony DeMarco Sr.]] for all the grief he's put Max through. On the other hand, you did just kill his son and most of his army. Max just lets Serrano go back to being a killer [[spoiler: just half a day after watching him murder Mrs. Branco. In front of her sister]]. Whether or not this is justified ([[spoiler:Serrano may or may not have had his guts surgically removed and his friends and family turned into organ pulp]]) is unknown.

* Mercenary leader Kuben Blisk of the ''Videogame/{{Titanfall}}'' series ends up become this thanks to ''Videogame/ApexLegends''. Despite being a ruthless war criminal willing to kill civilians, ''Apex Legends'' reveals that he survived the events of the Frontier Wars and became commissioner of the Apex Games.

* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' gets one when it's revealed that said karma-escaping bastard is [[spoiler: '''YOU''']]. [[spoiler:The game makes it clear multiple times that you aren't the same person as Frisk, the PlayerCharacter. In short, you [[AmbiguousInnocence guide]] [[AmbiguousSituation or possess]] a child to do whatever you want, which can range from freeing the entire Underground to having them [[CrimeofSelfDefense defend]] [[KillingInSelfDefense themself]] at times to... commiting genocide on monsters. And if you do the last one, you sell a SOUL to the First Human]]. The worst thing that will happen to you is [[spoiler:the Fallen Human taking away your GoldenEnding by taking over at the very end. Congratulations, you doomed countless innocent monsters, sold a soul to a self-proclaimed '''demon''' and got away with all of it.]]

* ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'':

* In [[FanWorks/FiveNightsAtFreddy's a fan game]] for ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'', ''VideoGame/TheJoyOfCreationReborn'', specifically its ''Story Mode'': [[spoiler:[[BigBadDuumvirate Ignited Golden Freddy leads Michael in his venture to replace Scott Cawthon and live a normal life]]. However, Golden Freddy ''also'' brings his homicidal minions with him to the real world, which nearly end up killing everyone else in his family too. Golden Freddy has no issues with this consequence and is completely fine with letting it happen. In the final level,
Attic, he serves as the TrueFinalBoss, requiring the player to defeat him to complete the game. This only stops his haunting, however. Golden Freddy himself suffers nothing for making the family in question suffer, nor for enforcing a HouseFire to get rid of the evidence, due to being a spirit borne from fire, and he instead ends up killing Nick, the overarching protagonist and one of the family members who suffered, after baiting him to return back to the house 20 or so years later.]]

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'':
** Saemon Havarian is only mildly villainous, but he's the most annoying character in terms of getting away with things. He keeps dumping his own troubles and enemies on you in both the original game and the expansion, and coming back and belittling what he did and acting like you're friends before doing it again, but you never get to take revenge successfully, even if you set the biggest thieves' guild in the country on him. Technically you ''can'' kill him and get his role later in the story to be replaced by someone else, it requires you being ready far in advance, making his comeuppance ''very'' tricky to do. The way he always gets away really fits the "Houdini" part -- and in this case it's just not karma he's eluding, but a pissed-off player character as well. Considering that even beings of godlike status often fall to the might of the PlayerCharacter, it's about equally impressive.
** A particularly grating example is Saerk. [[spoiler:In Anomen's personal quest, his sister gets murdered, and Saerk is the prime suspect. If you convince Anomen to go to the authorities, they tell you that there's not enough evidence to convict him. The ''good'' option to the quest (as well as the one that will allow Anomen to be knighted and become considerably more tolerable) is to convince Anomen not to pursue Saerk and to let bygones be bygones.]] Oh, and it doesn't stop there. [[spoiler:Sometime after Anomen is knighted, he learns not only that Saerk really ''was'' the murderer, but that now he's ''killed Anomen's father'' after the latter confronted him. Again, the ''good'' option is to convince Anomen not to kill him, saying that he'd be no better than his alcoholic father if he did. In summary, Saerk ruins Anomen's life, and the good option is to ''let him get away with it''.]]
* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'': The one enemy you can't do anything to is the [[OurDemonsAreDifferent cambion]] Mizora, TheDragon to the [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils archdevil]] Zariel and SmugSnake patron of your warlock Wyll. She spends the entirety of the game tormenting him and your other party member Karlach, but since she's under Zariel's protection she can't be harmed as she simply teleports back to {{Hell}} every time you try. You get one opportunity to kill her in Act II, but you can't actually act on it as it would result in Wyll being DraggedOffToHell due to the terms of his DealWithTheDevil. [[spoiler:To make matters worse, if you do the good ending of Wyll's questline and manage to sever his ties with her, she kills his father out of spite and [[TheThingThatWouldNotLeave continues to hang around your camp as if nothing happened]]. While exceedingly difficult, it ''is'' possible to outsmart her and save Wyll's father, but she makes it clear she'll simply keep trying once the dust settles.]]

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'':
** After the druid leader [[SixthRanger Halsin]] is kidnapped, his subordinate Kagha immediately pulls a TyrantTakesTheHelm and terrorizes the tiefling refugees they were hosting, [[WouldHurtAChild even threatening the life of one of their children]]. There's nothing a good-aligned player can do to her, as Halsin treats her with kid gloves once rescued and simply demotes her as he believes [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter she can change]] and she's too important to their community to exile. Attacking her results in a CivilWar that devastates the grove.
** The one enemy you can't do anything to is the [[OurDemonsAreDifferent cambion]] Mizora, TheDragon to the [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils archdevil]] Zariel and SmugSnake patron of your warlock Wyll. She spends the entirety of the game tormenting him and your other party member Karlach, but since she's under Zariel's protection she can't be harmed as she simply teleports back to {{Hell}} every time you try. You get one opportunity to kill her in Act II, but you can't actually act on it as it would result in Wyll being DraggedOffToHell due to the terms of his DealWithTheDevil. [[spoiler:To make matters worse, if you do the good ending of Wyll's questline and manage to sever his ties with her, she kills his father out of spite and [[TheThingThatWouldNotLeave continues to hang around your camp as if nothing happened]]. While exceedingly difficult, it ''is'' possible to outsmart her and save Wyll's father, but she makes it clear she'll simply keep trying once the dust settles.]]

* In ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'', the one enemy you can't do anything to is the [[OurDemonsAreDifferent cambion]] Mizora, TheDragon to the [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils archdevil]] Zariel and SmugSnake patron of your warlock Wyll. She spends the entirety of the game tormenting him and your other party member Karlach, but since she's under Zariel's protection she can't be harmed as she simply teleports back to {{Hell}} every time you try. You get one opportunity to kill her in Act II, but you can't actually act on it as it would result in Wyll being DraggedOffToHell due to the terms of his DealWithTheDevil. [[spoiler:To make matters worse, if you do the good ending of Wyll's questline and manage to sever his ties with her, she kills his father out of spite and [[TheThingThatWouldNotLeave continues to hang around your camp as if nothing happened]]. While exceedingly difficult, it ''is'' possible to outsmart her and save Wyll's father, but she makes it clear she'll simply keep trying once the dust settles.]]

* In ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'', the one enemy you can't do anything to is the [[OurDemonsAreDifferent cambion]] Mizora, TheDragon to the [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils archdevil]] Zariel and patron of your warlock Wyll. She spends the entirety of the game tormenting him and your other party member Karlach, but since she's under Zariel's protection she can't be harmed as she simply teleports back to {{Hell}} every time you try. You get one opportunity to kill her in Act II, but you can't actually act on it as it would result in Wyll being DraggedOffToHell due to the terms of his DealWithTheDevil. [[spoiler:To make matters worse, if you do the good ending of Wyll's questline and manage to sever his ties with her, she kills his father out of spite and [[TheThingThatWouldNotLeave continues to hang around your camp as if nothing happened]].]]

* ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars Days of Ruin'' has the civilians, who [[spoiler:pushed Isabella out of their group -- and while their own survival was at stake, they should know long by this point that Isabella isn't selfish, but ''they never say anything about her being one of Caulder's "children" '''or''' that Caulder will bomb them to death if he doesn't get Isabella'']]. They never get punished for it at all aside from dealing with the AfterTheEnd setting that Will and company also have to.
* In ''VideoGame/AdventureQuestWorlds'':

* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'':
** [[BigBad William Afton]], [[note]]or if you prefer, "Purple Guy"[[/note]] who murdered six to possibly even eleven children. Despite everything he's done, and because he framed an innocent man for the crimes and that he always covers his tracks, ''the police never caught him and he went off scot-free.'' Eventually revoked in [[VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys3 the third game]], where the souls of those murdered children finally get a hold of him, giving him no other option than to run into the Spring Bonnie suit he used to murder them. [[CruelAndUnusualDeath This]] leads to him [[TheReveal becoming]] Springtrap 30 years later. Invoked further in the final game where [[spoiler:he is finally killed in a fire deliberately set by someone implied to be his old business partner, and whose daughter he killed]]. Played straight as of ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddysVRHelpWanted'', he's at his strongest since his pre-Springtrap days, having a follower.

** PlayedForLaughs in the entire series with [[ButtMonkey Johnny Sasaki who, despite taking part in ''two'' terrorist armed uprisings that threatened the very world, he was somehow able to get off scot-free and join, of all things, ''a US Army Criminal Investigation Department'' special forces team called Rat Patrol 01 in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots''. Knowing Johnny, a whole lot of dumb luck was probably involved.

* Porky Minch from ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}''. He kidnaps little girls, steals your helicopter, and ultimately [[spoiler:you fight him alongside [[BigBad Giygas]]]]. And when you finally stop his villainy? He teleports away through time, and you don't see him again until the sequel, and there he's not any less of a KarmaHoudini there, either. He spends his entire life corrupting the world in an effort to make it more fun for himself, using advanced technology to live a sort of toy life, but never really gets taken to task for it. [[spoiler:He ends up sealed inside his Absolutely Safe Capsule, which will keep him alive and unharmed for eternity. It's supposed to be a variant on AndIMustScream, but he seems happy enough with it in the end; being so desperate to prolong his own childhood, gloating about escaping punishment forever and being protected within the safety of an artificial womb isn't really all that bad, or even all that different from the way he was living before.]]

** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' has Colonel Cassandra Moore, a GeneralRipper and TokenEvilTeammate to the NCR. She's a HateSink with a haughty "my way or the highway" attitude and a "shoot first ask questions never" tactical mindset that leads to her bullying her ReasonableAuthorityFigure comrades, but the player can't have her punished in any way if they're siding with the NCR. And if they side against the NCR, she disappears entirely from the game.
*** Because reputation matters more than karma, you won't suffer consequences for stealing or stealthy assassins as long as you don't get caught.

** When Mob Boss Bruto Cadaverini found out his MafiaPrincess granddaughter, [[spoiler:Viola Cadaverini]], was injured in a car accident, he forced the other driver, small time criminal Furio Tigre, to pay for Viola's million dollar operation, [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse or else]]. This actions causes Tigre and [[spoiler:Viola Cadaverini(who had become infatuated with Tigre)]] to murder a man and frame an innocent woman for murder to pay off the debt, thus making Bruno [[GreaterScopeVillain responsible for the entire case]]. Despite this, Bruno remains at large at the story ends with no punishment, the police admitting they can't touch him. To a lesser extent, Viola is let off pretty easily for being part of Tigre's frame up plan.

** The sequel does show a bit of comeuppance: [[spoiler:in Deathsmiles II's TrueFinalBoss sequence, he gets inadvertently yanked back into Gilverado and is beaten up yet again by Dior's Angels. Given that he '''hates''' Gilverado, being trapped there once again is definitely a punishment for the guy, and his chances of escape are next to nil this time, given that he can only open the portal on All Hallow's Eve and the Angels are probably going to make very sure to keep an eye on him around that time.]]