Karma Overdose

The time has come for the Big Bad (or Jerkass or just whoever's in the wrong in the moment) to get their karma. However, the punishment is so bad that the audience (and potentially the characters in-universe) feel sorry for them.

Whether it be you feel the crime in question wasn't that bad or the punishment is that awful, you will feel that person got the short end of the stick.

Can overlap with Disproportionate Retribution, Alas, Poor Scrappy, Alas, Poor Villain, Unintentionally Sympathetic, and Jerkass Woobie.

Anime and Manga

 * Blood-C: With the reveal of the twist that You'd expect to feel perfectly content and satisfied about their deaths. However the show is so gory, that when they did beat the dust, some people couldn't help but feel a smidge of pity for them. That's not to mention the infamous 'bunny' scene, where several people who probably didn't know the extent of the experiment get slaughtered by bunny-looking elder barns in strange but cruel ways.
 * The twins, Nene and Nono, get this. For Nene, she's tripped by her own sister and stomped into bloody pulp by Dog. For Nono, her death was so brutal, some did feel sorry for her (for context: she's picked up, forcefully put into a split, then Dog starts to tear off her leg before finally eating her!).
 * Diavolo's fate at the end of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5:.
 * Sailor Moon
 * Esmeraude's death. She has been The Starscream, jealous that Dimande has eyes for only Neo-Queen Serenity. Still, she had some standards, empathized with Saffir about their concern for Dimande, and was not as bad as Wiseman or Rubeus. But then Wiseman tricks her into becoming a monster, and sics her on the Senshi. They have to kill her to protect themselves, and Sailor Moon gets a vision of her falling and screaming.
 * This is what Tellulu does to Mimete, the third member of the Witches Five. Sure, Mimete was not nice and stealing heart crystals long after the Witches Five had found the Holy Grail and gaslit Tellulu into thinking she was fired, but she did not deserve her ultimate fate: to be trapped in a machine utterly conscious. She uploads herself into the machine and prepares to fight the Senshi with a power upgrade, but Tellulu is holding the plug. She explains coldly that if she pulls it out, Mimete is trapped forever, and lets her beg for a few seconds before yanking it out of the outlet. Even the Senshi are horrified and can only watch helplessly as Mimete falls into the void screaming.

Comic Books

 * By the early 2020s, the Ant-Man Hank Pym has been reduced to be fused with Ultron, a creation he regretted, and being derided as a monster every time he makes an appearance on a Marvel Comics event or issue. Many feel that happened only because he accidentally slapped his wife Janet Van Dyne in a frenesi in a 70s Avengers issue, and Marvel writers are overexaggerating how much of a monster he is.
 * If you cross Dream in The Sandman, expect this to happen. Dream does not do halves when he enacts divine punishment. Some of his victims deserve it, like Brute and Glob being unmade for using a child to create their new Sandman, but for others it is Disproportionate Retribution. Delirium even calls him out for this when he hypocritically judges her for doing the same thing.
 * Alexander Burgess did keep Dream captive while demanding power, but mainly out of fear that Dream would punish him for his father imprisoning Dream in the first place.
 * Calliope takes pity on her former captor Richard Madoc after Dream curses him with an abundance of ideas that, but when Dream lifts the curse, He did deserve it, but as a result,

Fan Works

 * Generally, if there's a Ron the Death Eater that gets taken out/treated quite harshly and is a Base Breaker (Alas, Poor Scrappy can also feature here), the audience might think this.
 * A lot of Miraculous Ladybug deconstruction or hate fics (particularly the ones concerning Lila) have this reaction towards Miss Bustier's class. There's a good chance they'll have their whole lives ruined just because they didn't believe Marinette (who often turns into a Designated Hero). The person who typically gets this the worst is Adrien/Chat Noir.
 * In The Eliza Trilogy, the main cast lambast Draco for Sure,

Film

 * Se7en: Theodore Allen is a drug dealer and a pederast, but the serial killer puts him through an awful fate of slowly starving on a bad you can't help but feel sorry for him, but any character actually manifesting an opinion of him show deep antipathy, from a cop who thinks he is dead initially and says he deserves it to a doctor who says he still deserves a eternity in Hell after going what is pretty much a hellish experience.
 * Brave: The witch's spell did this to the prince in Elinor's story to Merida, the one who . It wasn't her intention, he still has some responsibility, and she admits in a spinoff short that she miscalculated, but it was still awful. He asked for the strength of ten men, so she gave him a spell that would turn him into a bear...but didn't tell him about the Curse Escape Clause where if he made up with his siblings, he would change back, or that after two days he would become a feral bear permanently. That might have been good to know before he lured his three brothers and their armies to a trap under the pretense that it was a truce, before activating the spell. The minute that the prince changed, rather than realize that he was in a bad situation, he killed all his brothers and their armies in cold blood, thinking he had won. Only... no one would follow a murderous bear into battle, so his army abandoned him. The two days passed, with the prince being unable to activate the Curse Escape Clause owing to his actions, and he became a feral bear who could not die. The witch herself is so horrified at what she did that she refuses to do magic for Merida in the present until the latter offers to buy all her carvings.

Live-Action TV

 * Black Mirror:
 * Another debatable example. In White Bear, it's revealed Angela . You'd think that would automatically make everything the people put her through okay (and indeed some people do agree hence the debatable part). However, she's and the fact her amnesiac self  made some people think her punishment was going much too far.

Web Original

 * Helluva Boss:
 * Moxie is horrified that he inflicted this on the titular "Murder Family". After he kills the target, the mother, he proceeds to turn in the serial-killing father and children to the human police. The human police blows up the house with the family still inside. That was a bit much.
 * The Cherubs might've been pains in the neck for I.M.P to deal with, but some couldn't help but think them getting exiled from heaven was a bit too much (especially since the old guy they were trying to save dying was in fact an accident).
 * Similarly, yes, Chaz was a bit scrummy and obnoxious for his own good. Yes, lying about being rich to a mob boss is very stupid. But a good chunk of the audience thought his implied death was too far (even if again, it's realistic considering the circumstances).

Western Animation

 * Arthur: Arthur's Big Hit's aesop is "what goes around comes around", and Arthur being punched is treated as something he deserved to take, but he was already punished by his parents.
 * South Park: In a Broken Base kind of way, some think Eric Cartman potentially ending up homeless in the future is this.
 * In the much-hated episode of The Loud House "No Such Luck," Lincoln tricks the family into thinking he's bad luck to avoid attending their scheduled events and have some time to himself. Yes, Lincoln doing this was wrong. However, as the episode goes on, the family goes too far in trying to avoid him. Them making him sleep outside is what got this reaction the most.
 * My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has suffered from quite a few of these:
 * "Boast Busters": For as obnoxious and rude as she was, many people thought Trixie having her home accidentally smashed by the Ursa Major (actually Minor) was a bit too much. While Twilight Sparkle rightly chided Snips and Snails for luring the baby into Ponyville after she manages to send it home with a huge bottle of milk and a sleeping spell, she doesn't do anything to help Trixie when the latter runs off into the night.
 * "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well": This despised episode has one of the more infamous examples of this happening. Rainbow Dash is in over her head with fame, so her friends decide to dress up as the hero Mare Do Well. However, we see everyone disregarding Rainbow Dash and how much it hurts her to be alone, making Rainbow Unintentionally Sympathetic. Many had wished her friends had at least had try talking to Rainbow before concocting the plan to upstage her. Even fans that did think Rainbow needed this lesson either thought this was too cruel or that it was a horrible execution.
 * Another infamous example with "Ponyville Confidential". Diamond Tiara has the CMC go out and publish embarrassing/not true headlines of everypony. Not that this isn't a bad thing, however the CMC (i.e children) getting ostracized by everyone (including the Mane Six and their own families, with only Rarity seemingly being the only one to try thinking to be rational about it) gained the trio several sympathy points by the fandom. Not helping was Diamond Tiara was the one orchestrating the whole event, blackmailing the trio when they tried to get out of it (which, by the way, is never called out on) and Featherweight is the one that listened in on and took the embarrassing photos/secrets.
 * "Scare Master" (though this is more of a Broken Base than the previous RD example): Yes, this episode shows Rainbow not having a care about anyone with her pranking thus setting her up for karma. However, some thought the whole town pretending to be cookie-invested zombies just to get back at her for a few pranks was a bit much.