Karma Houdini/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • In L.A. Confidential, Edmund Exley's father was murdered by a man whose identity was never discovered. Exley gave him the name Rollo Tomasi and subsequently applied the name to anyone who pulls a Karma Houdini. Jack Vincennes invokes the name in order to trick the film's antagonist into unknowingly tipping his hand to Exley.
  • The eponymous Villain Protagonist Henry in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. He commits multiple murders along with his partner Otis and gets away with his crimes. His partner Otis isn't so lucky; he is killed by Henry for trying to rape Becky. Later, Henry kills Becky while fleeing the city.
  • The last time we see Jim Cunningham in Donnie Darko, he is crying in his house alone, with nobody aware of the kind of person he is. Everything else that happened as a result of Donnie's actions at the end of the film was for the better.
  • The Public News Anchor in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy who never got punished for pushing Veronica into the bear pit.
  • One of the finest examples is probably Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life, despite going against the Media Watchdogs' production code at the time (which stated that a villain must get his comeuppance, to make it clear that he should not be seen as a good role model for young, impressionable viewers). Is it any wonder that the Saturday Night Live sketch purporting to show the "lost ending" to the film, with George Bailey (Dana Carvey) and the townspeople bashing down Potter's door with Torches and Pitchforks and attacking him for screwing George over and faking his own paralysis, is considered one of the show's Crowning Moments of Funny - not to mention a Crowning Moment of Awesome for a true Asshole Victim?
    • That oh-so-satisfying SNL bit can be seen here.
    • Originally, Potter was to die of a heart attack, but director Frank Capra felt Clarence's commentary while watching this event made his character seem too macabre.
    • Arguably, the whole point of the movie is the importance of friends etc., and Potter never had any friends to begin with, so really he was suffering negative karma the whole time.
  • The other finest example is Noah Cross, the villain in Chinatown. Not only is he responsible for the murder of Hollis Mulwray, he also raped his own daughter, and at the end of the movie he's acquired custody of his daughter/granddaughter, who can expect some severe raping, and gets off completely scot-free. And Jake Gittes can do absolutely nothing about it. Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.
  • Keyser Soze alias Verbal Kint—he made up his entire, movie-length monologue of a backstory in the deposition room in The Usual Suspects, who simply walks away at the very end and drives away with Kobayashi.
  • In A Time to Kill, The Ku Klux Klan commit kidnapping, murder, arson among other things, but only two of them get arrested at the end of the movie.
  • Linda Fiorentino's Femme Fatale in The Last Seduction takes this to a whole other level, and she's the heroine (sort of).
    • If we're talking femmes fatales, Kathleen Turner in Body Heat has to be the gold standard.
  • In 40 Days and 40 Nights, Matt Sullivan (Josh Hartnett's character) is abstaining from sex for Lent. His ex-girlfriend, discovering this, and that there is a bet on about how long he can manage it goes to his house to attempt to seduce him. Finding him mentally completely out of it she rapes him. The ex-girlfriend collects her winnings and walks off into the sunset, leaving Matt having to beg his new girlfriend for forgiveness for 'cheating' on her. There is no mention of the ex-girlfriend being punished in any way.
  • In The Proposition, nothing bad happens to Eden Fletcher, one of the most horrifying Smug Snakes in all of film. This is a man who had a retarded 14-year old whipped to death.
    • Made even worse considering the sympathetic Captain Stanley is the one who the Burns Gang takes revenge on for the death of Mike Burns.
  • Irma Bunt from the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Not the most well-known choice. After all, she is the one who kills Tracy, James Bond's wife, so I can see why many people haven't seen the film, or if they have, attempt to forget about her. She and Blofeld provide the film with its Diabolus Ex Machina. It's not completely surprising that she's never seen (or even mentioned) in any of the other films in the series, though; the actress playing her, Isle Steppat, died mere months after the film was released.
  • Hannibal Lecter, what with getting away at the end of the movie and actually living happily ever after with Clarice in the book. This was definitely an example of an author growing overly enamored of their character, and thus many file it under Fanon Discontinuity.
  • The Frank Oz version of Little Shop of Horrors features Seymour, who ends up getting away with killing two people through inaction and gets a happy ending. The sympathetic nature of the character, and the fact that Seymour is not as directly responsible for the deaths as in the original play, makes it much more acceptable than many of the examples on this page. The pre-Executive Meddling ending used the play's The Bad Guy Wins version of the trope. Audrey II was a Karma Houdini in the original ending, but this was fully intentional (as part of The Bad Guy Wins) so it does not share the problems of the final product.
  • Nick Van Owen in The Lost World : Jurassic Park. It can be said that every death in that movie is either a direct result for his action (sabotaging the InGen camp) or indirect result (stealing t-rex's baby and rigging Roland Tembo's rifle) but he lives at the end without any contribution for the death of at least 17 people. Ok, most of the casualities are bad people, but they are still people. And the worst thing they did is try to capture dinos.
  • The original The Pink Panther ends with the good guy (Clouseau) stuck in prison after being falsely accused of stealing the eponymous diamond. The actual culprits - including Clouseau's adulterous wife - get to drive off into the sunset, laughing.
    • The culprits- Sir Charles Lytton, his nephew, Clouseau's now ex-wife, and others- do turn up in some of the sequels...and get away every single time, the smug bastards.
  • The eponymous characters of Natural Born Killers escape jail, kill a television personality (not that we mind...) on live TV, and walk off into the distance. Sure, an alternate ending showed that a fellow escapee kills them, but the ending of the movie as is implies that two infamous spree killers manage to live Happily Ever After.
  • In Con Air, most of the villains get their comeuppance, except for Garland Greene, a notorious serial killer who targets children and is possibly the most depraved criminal on the plane. Although he let a little girl live earlier in the film, so that's OK...
  • Senator Roark of Sin City. Apparently, the sequel will actually have Nancy going after him to give him his comeuppance.
  • Nikki in Odd Girl Out. At the end Vanessa has a shouting match with Stacy and declares that she has "nothing that I want" which prompts the rest of the students to applaud her. Nikki however is the far worse of the bullies in the movie and even started the bullying but by the end she never gets her comeuppance. It is implied that the bully clique disbands so that takes care of Tiffany's karma (she'll go back to being a wannabe) but Nikki appears to get away scott free. Hell she won't even have to see Vanessa again since they just graduated.
  • Oliver Lang from Arlington Road orchestrates the bombing of the FBI headquarters and frames his neighbour for it, the death of said neighbour and his girlfriend and the kidnapping of his neighbor's son and walks away unpunished to presumably repeat the process with another government building in a different city. It is also heavily implied he did something very similar before the start of the film's storyline.
  • Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs...almost. Listen closely to the last scene - it's very faint, but according to Quentin Tarantino, Pink is shouting at the cops who shot and arrested him.
    • Subverted in all of the endings of the Reservoir Dogs video game (Psycho: Gets killed, Neutral: Gets arrested, Professional: Gets away but he accidentally spills the diamonds.)
  • During the course of A Shock To The System, Michael Caine's Villain Protagonist pushes a hobo in front of an oncoming train, coldbloodedly murders his wife, seduces and drugs a coworker to use her as an alibi, blows up his Bad Boss (and an Innocent Bystander), and has a jolly good time doing it. In the end, he seduces the same coworker again to get her to turn over the only evidence implicating him, puts her on a bus, gets promoted to vice president of his company, and, in the final scene, murders a member of the board of directors for his job (and his corner office).
  • In the 1974 zombie film Sugar Hill, the eponymous character had caused several horrifying deaths of a criminal ring with sadistic satisfaction using mostly voodoo dolls and zombies. To top it off, she pays off her Deal with the Devil with a woman, implying the woman used as payment is taken to Hell and raped. And all of this as "justice" for her lover being killed.
  • The scene in Happy Gilmore where Ben Stiller's sadistic orderly character gets thrown through a window by Happy (and then presumably has the authorities sicced on him) was cut out of the final film for no apparent reason, leaving viewers who don't watch the special edition DVD with the impression that he gets to continue using his charges as slave labor. This is even more jarring when juxtaposed with the fate of the movie's Big Bad, a Jerk Jock type who's certainly mean, but whose comeuppance is rather harsh by anyone's standards (he gets the crap beaten out of him by a mob of Happy's fans, led by the gargantuan Mr. Larson).
  • Fagin and the Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's musical Oliver!
  • While not quite so serious as many of the other examples here, Peggy Brandt from The Mask wins Stanley Ipkiss' trust, makes him open up to her - and then instantly betrays him to Dorian Tyrell for a reward. Her only justification was "I just can't afford to lose my condo - you know how hard it is to find a decent apartment in this city!" Dorian gets flushed later on, along with all his goons... but Peggy just walks out the door with a suitcase of money, and is never heard from again.
    • Like with Happy Gilmore, her comeuppance --getting tossed into a printing press by Tyrell-- was cut from the movie but can be seen on the DVD.
  • The 2000 remake of Carrie sees Carrie survive and get smuggled out of the jurisdiction by a sympathetic Susan after killing hundreds of people. The film makes it clear that she doesn't remember her massacre but jarringly she doesn't exactly seem too remorseful.
  • The adaptation of Max Payne. Nicole Horne seems to get away unscathed despite her part in the plot, and after abandoning B.B. to his fate.
  • Funny Games uses this trope deliberately to subvert your expectations of horror films. The film involves the psychological and physical torture of a husband, wife and son by two sadistic young men. The two young men kill every member of the family one by one and receive no comeuppance. In one scene, the wife actually kills one of the psychos, but the other prevents the death of his partner by taking a remote control and literally rewinding the film to a point before his death happens. In the end, the dominant killer smirks triumphantly at the camera as he prepares to kill again.
  • The villain of Oldboy, Lee Woo-Jin, kills himself at the end of the movie, but not out of guilt for having Oh Dae-Su kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years, hypnotically manipulating Oh Dae-Su and his daughter Mi-Do into falling in love, killing Oh Dae-Su's wife and best friend (and framing Oh Dae-Su for his wife's death), and many more acts of bastardy--no, it's just that, having exacted revenge from Oh Dae-Su for spreading a rumor that Lee Woo-Jin had been having sex with his sister--which he had been, by the way, he's got no real reason to live any more. To say that his death isn't particularly satisfying is an understatement.
  • This trope is the very essence of the Mexican film El Crimen del Padre Amaro, Amaro, the eponymous character is a young Catholic priest who upon arriving to a small town first he successfully blackmails the director of a local newspaper into withdrawing an article that exposed the friendship of the local priest with a notorious drug lord this provokes the firing of the author of said article, his girlfriend Amelia breaking up with him, and turning his father (who helped him in his investigation) into a pariah, it gets worse: Amaro then seduces Amelia (despite her being just a teenager) and impregnates her, fearing for his career's future and his reputation among townspeople he takes Amelia to an illegal abortion clinic where due to a malpractice she starts bleeding uncontrollably and dies in his arms, despite this with the help of a woman he convinces the ENTIRE town that it was Amelia's former boyfriend the one who knocked her up and he was there trying to save her. The final scene has Amaro presiding over Amelia's funeral.
  • Chicago. Both Roxie and Velma get away with murder, literally, and become singing sensations. Billy lies to his client and abuses the justice system with no negative consequences to himself. And Mama Morten gets off scot free for selling out both girls to each other. Note that the whole point of the play/film is making a satire of a social system that allows such things to happen. (The original play was Ripped from the Headlines, and the "not guilty" verdict agreed with a Real Life case the author reported on herself.)
    • On the DVD commentary, the director mentions some fans who theorize that the last scene of Roxie and Velma making a hit show together is just another one of Roxie's fantasies like most of the other musical numbers, and they're really condemned to lives of complete poverty and obscurity. He more or less gives it approval.
  • The Thomas Crown Affair. In both versions of the movie (1968 and 1999), the eponymous Billionaire gets away scot-free with his art thievery. In the remake, the woman assigned to tracking him down runs off with him as well.
    • On a related note, since the remake stars Pierce Brosnan, a similar occurrence happens in The Tailor Of Panama, except the spy used the cover of starting a war to become an eccentric millionaire. In the novel, the habitually lying tailor whom he used as a 'source' to ignite said war between the US and much of Latin America, is unable to stop the war. Hollywood attempted to tone down the Karma Houdini-ness by lowering the amount of terrible consequences which happen due to the tailor's wild story spinning to secret agent Osnard, but still comes off as a dog-raping Smug Snake. It takes awhile however, to realise just what he was doing to get his money, as both Osnard and Brosnan are so Affably Evil you have to let it sink in that they've just started a war which will cause just as many deaths as the Drug War, all for $20 million and some additional assets. And he accomplished all this while blacklisted and without any resources! If there's ever a sequel, he has nowhere to go but up! (now there's an interesting dual role to fix the Houdini...Brosnan-Bond on the trail of Osnard.)
  • The Skeleton KeyIn New Orleans in the 1930s, a voodoo priest and his wife tired of being servants. They used their voodoo to switch bodies with their masters' two young children, who, "caught" performing a strange ritual on their young masters, were promptly hanged. Approximately 60 years later they commit Grand Theft Me on their (Caucasian) caretaker and lawyer; at the end of the film their old bodies - with the young people now trapped inside - appear to be paralyzed and about to be taken to an institution while their new bodies get to inherit their "employers" property and assets. The kicker is that they used the caretaker's ignorance of voodoo to basically perform the soul-switching spell on herself (the lawyer was "turned" before they hired the caretaker). Their only punishment is that, once again, they fail to get proper black bodies because the local black population also practices voodoo and they'd quickly figure out what was going on.
  • Barbarella: the Black Queen is saved by the angel in the end, despite her actions as a tyrant and her repeated attempts to kill Barbarella and the angel both. Because, as Pygar explains, angels have no memories.
  • Arsenic and Old Lace: Dr. Einstein appears to get away scot free at the end of the movie, escaping in the confusion as his pal Jonathan gets arrested. Of course, he's an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain so it's not as glaring as some of the other examples.
  • In Serial Mom, Beverly Sutphin, the protagonist commits seven murders over the course of the movie. When she is arrested and put on trial, she wins the case and gets off scot-free!
    • And then promptly murders again, for someone in the courtroom is wearing white after Labor Day!
  • Lampshaded in Last Action Hero when the bad guy kills a random person in the street and realises that there are no police to stop him.
  • Every villain from the Spy Kids movies.
  • This happens and is lampshaded in the flashback backstory in Secondhand Lions. After being thwarted by Uncle Hubb for a second time, the evil Sheikh doesn't come after him again...because he gets distracted by finding oil and becoming one of the richest men in the world. As the lead character puts it: "The bad guy gets filthy rich? What the heck kind of story ends that way?"
  • Scarface is of the Black and Gray Morality slant (Although Evil vs. Evil might fit here), true. But the evil-er villain, Alejandro Sosa, has Tony and the rest of his allies killed with a bunch of hired thugs and an assassin (the latter from In the Back), not even giving Tony the chance to lose in a climactic fight between the two of them.
    • If it's any consolation, in the video game remake Tony survives the assassination attempt, kills the assassin like a punk, and eventually makes his way to Bolivia to ice Sosa personally.
  • Gavin Elster in Vertigo. In some countries, a final scene was tacked on mentioning that he'd been arrested.
  • Averted in the film version of The Bad Seed, after being played straight in the book and play (and in the 1985 Made for TV Movie), thanks to a Production-code inspired coda in which she gets struck by a random bolt of lightning.
  • Speaking of bad seeds, nothing ever happens to Mary Tilford at the end of The Children's Hour; as far as the audience knows, she doesn't even get the TV taken out of her room. At least her grandmother has the decency to develop what appears to be a guilt-induced, permanent half-swoon (and maybe even the vapors), but Mary seems to have no consequences at all.
  • The eponymous character in Mr. Brooks is a serial killer who is never caught.
  • In Swordfish, John Travolta and Halle Berry's characters fake their own deaths and get away rich, evading justice.
    • There is an alternate ending where they get away, only to discover that Hugh Jackman's character stole all of the money electronically, leaving them with nothing. Of course, they aren't really all that upset about it.
  • Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley killed some people to assume a new identity and enrich himself thoroughly. In the sequels, he killed to protect his new life, and sometimes as favors for others. He never faced justice.
  • In Match Point, the protagonist had an affair and his wife never found out about it. When his mistress got in the way of his happiness, he murdered her in cold blood and escaped justice.
    • Similarly, Crimes And Misdemeanors -- also by Woody Allen -- is about a murderer who escapes any kind of punishment for his crime.
  • In Mikey, despite murdering 8 people (including a five year old girl) and torturing and killing several animals, the title character doesn't get his comeuppance at the end of the film. Instead he runs off and fakes his death so people won't come looking for him, and assumes a new identity and a new foster family. This is actually the reason why you won't be able to find this film in the UK.
  • Master thieves in Entrapment played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery pulled off a grand heist and escaped justice with the help of a crooked FBI agent.
  • Lock, Shock and Barrel from The Nightmare Before Christmas get no comeuppance at all for bringing Santa to Oogie Boogie, even though Jack specifically told them not to. Jack doesn't even do anything when they throw snowballs at his face, he just smiles.
    • It should be noted that they are children after all, and it is also implied that they served Oogie Boogie out of fear rather than out of a desire to do evil. Furthermore, this is Halloween Town, morals, values, and cultural norms are focused around scaring people and causing chaos, so they're just following the standard.
      • Though it's implied that Halloweentown doesn't like people getting hurt, and Lock, Shock and Barrel seem to be overly joyful at the idea of torturing Santa in their star number...
    • Furthermore, Tim Burton originally had a scene where Jack, on his way to rescue Sandy Claws and Sally, gives them exactly what's coming to them. It was sadly cut for timing reasons.
    • At some point they leave Ooogie Boogie's lair and bring back help to rescue Jack and Sally.

Lock, Shock and Barrel: Here he is! Alive! Just like we said!

  • In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors initially appears to be one of these; the time loop enables him to do whatever he wants whenever he wants to whoever he wants without ever having to face the consequences. Unfortunately for him, it eventually becomes apparent that the time loop is his punishment. Right around the point he starts repeatedly killing himself, in fact. The movie then becomes about him seeking redemption for his past behaviour.
  • In Mystic River Sean Penn's character had previous murdered a person who got him in jail. He paid the man's family $500 per month in his stead and avoided justice for it. Later, he coerces a former friend Dave into confessing to the murder of his daughter. He promises to let Dave go if he confesses. Dave is innocent of the charge but confesses anyway to save his life. Penn's character kills him anyway. For the rest of the movie, he does not get his comeuppance for the two murders. It is possible he may be brought to justice later, but it's never resolved in the story.
    • Of course, Kevin Bacon's character makes what appears to be a threatening gesture to Penn's character in the final scene, which implies that there is still plenty more conflict to come.
  • In Perfect Stranger, Halle Berry's character turns out to have murdered at least three people and successfully framed one of the murders on an innocent man, getting away with it all in the end. Whether this character gets their comeuppance later off screen is left open to interpretation.
  • In The International, even though the CEO of the corrupt International Bank of Business and Credit is killed, the protagonists lose their only lead with his death and are unable to bring down the corrupt bank. In the credits, it's implied that the bank continues to run successfully despite the death of its CEO.
  • The original Silent Night, Deadly Night begins with a criminal in a Santa suit robbing a store, nonchalantly killing the clerk, and later attacking Billy's parents, killing them in front of him (shooting his father, and slitting his mother's throat after trying to rape her). This, coupled with other factors, leads to Billy and his brother, Ricky, both going insane, and as far as we know, the Santa killer was never caught.
  • The Player: Hollywood studio executive Griffin Mill murders an unsuccessful screenwriter, then steals his girlfriend. He corrupts an artistic film into a simple, conformist, Lowest Common Denominator movie for the sake of profit. He abandons one of the few virtuous characters in the movie, a character who put her faith in Griffin, allowing her to be fired, and leaves her sobbing in the middle of the street (with a broken heel), because he'd rather be with his wife in his big house. Yes, the wife is the writer's girlfriend, now heavily pregnant with Griffin's child.
  • Lynette from An Officer and a Gentleman. She fakes being pregnant in hopes of marrying Sid, a Navy Aviator in training. When Sid quits the program to marry her, she dumps him, leading him to commit suicide. Yet at the end of the movie, her worst fate is to cheer on her friend, who's being carried off in the arms of another aviator.
  • Doubly subverted in the film version of A Series of Unfortunate Events. At first, Count Olaf brags to the entire audience about the fact that he was legally wedded to an unwilling teenage girl before their very eyes. Then, we see the paper burst into flames, then hear that he is being sent to trial and a "what if?" scenario presents him being forced to endure all he put the children through. All is happy, right? Sadly, Lemony Snickett then narrates that what really happened was that Olaf escaped and is still out there.
    • In the book series, Count Olaf is eventually killed.
  • In Pick Up On South Street, Richard Widmark is a pickpocket who accidentally steals a wallet containing microfilm that a gang of Dirty Communists are smuggling out of the country. When the cops pull him in, he tries to goad one into hitting him in order to get the man suspended. When they offer him immunity for the film, he decides to sell it back to the spies instead. When the girl from whom he stole the film (who turns out to be a Minion with an F In Evil) comes to get it back, he alternates between seducing her and slapping her around. Even when the commies murder his best friend in cold blood, he's still willing to sell the film to them, which would have gotten him killed, had the girl not knocked him out and taken it to the cops. And what's his comeuppance for being such an unrepentant louse? He gets the girl and rides off into the sunset scott-free...but not before dropping by the police station to rub the head cop's nose in it.
  • Cole Williams, the brutal casino security chief from |21 is the primary antagonist, who not only makes things very difficult for the protagonists but brutally beats caught card counters and steals millions in winnings from one of the characters, and his only penalty is loss of his job due to being made obsolete by computers. At the end of the film he is shown on vacation in Caribbean with his stolen millions.
  • "Cobb" from Christopher Nolan's early film Following. He kills, manipulates others into setting themselves up as his fall guys, and disappears. The police don't even know he exists.
  • At the end of Nick of Time the Big Bad behind the assassination plot gets away.
  • In Pay It Forward as far as we know the two bullies are not punished for murdering Trevor.
  • The eponymous character of 2006 horror film Marcus gets away with his murders, but it's not particularly irritating, since all but one of his victims are ridiculously unlikeable.
  • Mini, the Villain Protagonist of Mini's First Time. She seduces her stepfather, manipulates him into helping her drive her mother insane and kill her, makes him think he's being blackmailed, tricks him into beating a neighbor into a coma, and gets him thrown in jail for it. Not only does she get away with everything looking like an innocent victim; in the end, she gets voted valedictorian by her high school class, despite being a C student.
  • After some illegal surveillance, a dognapping, and two murders, Alone With Her ends with the Villain Protagonist in a new town, picking a new girl to stalk.
  • Lilith[1] in Evil Angel. Any time someone flatlines and is resuscitated, she can take over their body. So in the end, she just walks away in her new body to wreak more chaos For the Evulz, and there's nothing the protagonist can do about it.
  • Max, the Serial Killer protagonist of the The Last Horror Movie. Not only does he get away with his murders; within the reality of the story, he also follows you home and kills you after you finish watching the movie.
  • The killer in and narrator of The Last Broadcast.
  • A rare comedic example (and political commentary) in The Other Guys. Big Bad Pamela Boardman (indirectly) drives the entire plot. In the end, she gets a federal bailout for being too big to fail, while her Dragon and Middle Management Mook both end up going to jail.
  • The Ephors in the film 300. We see Leonidas pay them a hefty sack of gold for their counsel against the Persian invasion and they claim their Oracle's prophecy prohibits Leonidas from fighting. This turns out to be a blatant lie as they told him this to sell out Sparta to the Persians for even more gold. As much as they deserve it, we never get to see the rotten old bastards be burned alive for this.
    • Although, considering that what we see them do is part of a story told by Dilios, chances are that they were found out.
  • In Death Wish, the three punks whose actions send Paul Kersey into his Roaring Rampage of Revenge (referred to in the credits as "Freak #1", "Freak #2" and "Spraycan") are never brought to justice or killed. Kersey kills some street scum, but never those three (although, since one of them is Seth Brundle maybe they hopped into his telepad and went to another city). This is averted in the the four sequels where, if you're a villain, you're not leaving the movie alive.
  • The killer, Chris Vale, from the movie Halloween Night kills several people throughout the movie and afterward, tricks the female protagonist into shooting the main character (her boyfriend) by putting his mask and clothes on him while she was blindfolded and escapes. He's last seen hitchhiking and driving off into the sunset after being picked up by a hipster, who at the sight of his horribly burned body, only says that he must've had a good Halloween.
  • Most of the villains in Disney's adaptation of Pinocchio; Stromboli, the Coachman, and Foulfellow and Gideon simply walk offscreen and are never seen again (for the latter two, it helps that they really didn't like what Coachman was insinuating when he mentioned that the boys will never return home... AS BOYS!!!!!!!!!--not that they were unwilling to tempt fate, but you gotta give them credit for their doubts at that moment). The only ones who get any sort of consequences for their behaviour are Monstro and Lampwick, both of which are cases of Disproportionate Retribution. Lampwick gets turned into a donkey for encouraging Pinocchio in delinquent behaviour, and Monstro can't really be said to be a "villain" anyway as he's a whale and thus couldn't be expected to know any better.
  • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Lao Che tries to cheat and murder Indiana Jones but gets away scot free.
  • The gang from Ocean's Eleven and its sequels, outside of a brief spot in jail in the second film, never see any real retribution for their crimes. However, that's more attributable to Rule of Cool than anything.
  • Andy from The Devil Wears Prada. She cheats on her boyfriend in France with a man she's been flirting with in France, then immediately goes back home to him and gets her dream job.

Actually not as simple as that, since she broke up with her boyfriend before going to France, and their relationship had been strained for a while even before that

  • The French people from Monty Python and the Holy Grail are prime examples; they taunt King Arthur and his knights with offensive insults and catapult animals (and a trojan bunny) at them. And they have reached the Holy Grail at the Castle of Aaaarrrggghhh (however you spell that) before King Arthur and Sir Bedevere do, and prevent them from entering, thus directly defying God, whom King Arthur made clear was the one who set them on their quest. If only King Arthur hadn't killed that famous historian and gotten arrested for it at the end, he and his knights could have brought justice upon them. The frustrating part is, if the grail does give eternal life as it does in Indiana Jones, these guys won't even burn in hell until the machines take over the world.
  • Benny, Gnomeo's friend in Gnomeo and Juliet manages to get away scot-free despite committing credit card fraud to buy a $20,000 lawnmower, destroying two entire gardens and nearly inadvertently killing the main characters of the film. He even gets a love interest during the Dance Party Ending.
  • In Born Yesterday, Harry Brock, a Corrupt Corporate Executive, comes to Washington, D.C. to bribe some congressmen into passing a law that would give him and his cartel monopoly control of the international scrap iron market (quite a big deal so soon after World War II). When his fiancee and her new reporter boyfriend scheme to expose him, he slaps her around and threatens to have them both killed, with the fiancee mentioning to the reporter that it wouldn't be the first time he'd done it, either. Although the fiancee does eventually manage to make him back off by holding for ransom the assets he's signed over to her over the years as part of a tax dodge, he is never brought to account for the bribery, the assault, the murder he apparently committed, or any of the other crimes he has committed and she could testify about.
  • Subverted in Inglorious Basterds. Resident Complete Monster Col. Hans Lander uncovers the Basterds' plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but rather than outing it arranges a deal with the Allies to do nothing on condition that they grant him complete immunity to all war crimes, as well as a nice beach property and a comfortable pension - in other words, your classic Karma Houdini ending for a purely superficial Heel Face Turn. The catch? None in the actual deal, just that the Basterds don't give much of a crap about honouring it and, whilst they don't kill him, do decide to shoot his subordinate and then carve a swastika into his head. Of course, it's still probably less than he deserved, but it's something anyway.
  • In Limitless, Eddie steals money and drugs from a dead guy, does drugs, encourages others to do drugs, directly causes the deaths of at least three people, cheats on his girlfriend, has sex with his landlord's wife, and in general does some somewhat shady business. And yet, Eddie's almost certainly going to be president one day.
    • p.s. he killed a man and drank his blood.
  • Iceman from Top Gun. He was responsible Goose's death and yet it is Maverick who faces a board of inquiry instead of him. You. Have. Got. To. Be. Shitting. Me.
  • Machete- Several members of Vaughn Jackson's border patrol militia (including his lieutenant)manage to survive the raid on their compound to continue gunning down illegal Mexican immigrants. Albeit, this allows them to deliver a Karmic Death to corrupt senator John Mc Laughlin. Hey, lesser of two evils, anyone?
    • Also, Torrez's hench-woman, having beheaded Machete's wife on his order and threatened to do the same to Agent Sartana, gets to simply walk away without anyone so much as taking a pot shot at her. And Osiris, the hitman responsible for Padre's death, gets away without a scratch as well.
  • Junior from the Problem Child films. Seriously, this kid gets away with things that would at least get normal people a savage beating or at worst arrested and put away for a very long time for a whole litany of crimes. The idea that this kid can almost maim people with very little retribution or consequences can be kinda jarring when one thinks about it.
  • X-Men: The Last Stand- Magneto not only manages to escape any legal action for his many crimes against humanity, it's also implied that the mutant cure isn't permanent and he'll eventually get his powers back.
  • Greg in Mystery Team.
  • Thanks to Spared by the Adaptation, Peter Pettigrew in Harry Potter. Reportedly, this is because his come-uppance in the books was considered so disturbing that doing it justice on-screen would've resulted in an R rating.
    • Even if he survived Dobbi's attack, it's hard to imagine Voldemort would have forgiven his negligence.
  • Gordon Gekko, an outright Villain Protagonist in Wall Street, did get his comeuppance at the end of the first movie. To the tune of over a decade in jail. In the second movie, he's released, and seems to be making amends for being such a Jerkass...until he abruptly betrays everyone who was trying to give him a second chance, mostly his neglected and jaded (thanks to him no less) daughter. So after putting the other main characters through emotional (and economic) hell, the last five minutes of the movie decide to see him get his family back and inexplicably end with everyone happy and content.
  • Though given there's not much anyone could have done about it, the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind kidnap people, holding them for 40 years, returning them unaged. They incite a psychological issue in people, destroying familys (If Roy Neary's is a standard example). They terrify the hell out of Barry's mother, abducting her son right out of her arms. All this and they get to leave with nary a complaining word from us humans.
  • Billy the killer from the original Black Christmas gets away with murdering 7 people and driving Jess insane, the remake however has him killed at the end.
  • Sylvia Ganush in Drag Me to Hell dies before she can receive any comeuppance for effectively murdering somebody over a bank loan. This is subverted when you realize how evil she established herself as earlier in her handling of a case involving a stolen gypsy necklace and a 10-year-old boy, which will remind you that even if she did succeed at murdering the protagonist (which she did), she'd definitely find herself in a lower circle (most likely Judecca, that icy spot in Level IX that's reserved for traitors to benefactors, and failing that, definitely Level VII, outer ring, at the very least) than the protagonist would.
  • The Shawshank Redemption: Andy Dufrense gets out of Shawshank prison, getting back at Warden Norton and Capt. Byron Hadley for their mistreatment, and Red gets released from Shawshank too, but Elmo Blatch, the man who really murdered Andy's wife and her adulterous partner, has nothing happen to him, as far as we know.
  • Throughout Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans, Terrence McDonagh steals drugs from his station's property room, bets money he doesn't have on college sports, robs people of their drugs, commits acts of Police Brutality against the elderly, extorts a young woman into having sex with him, extorts a college quarterback into going along with a point-shaving scheme, tips a drug kingpin off about a drug bust, and loses the key witness to a quintuple homicide. At the end of the film, he arranges for a group of gangsters who were trying to kill him to be killed by a different group of gangsters, gets the excessive force complaints against him dismissed, wins $10,000 betting on a single football game, gets his hands on a huge bag of uncut heroin, solves the quintuple homicide by Framing the Guilty Party, and is promoted to captain.
  • The cab driver from Rat Race, who maroons Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character in the desert, probably to die, just because he made a highly unpopular call in a football game.
  • Dr. Claw in Inspector Gadget averts this when he's arrested for murdering Dr. Artemus Bradford and attempting twice to murder John Brown, and it's stated in one novelization that he was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment and (as mentioned in the sequel) served with a bill of attainder. He does play this straight in the second film, though; he tries to rob the entire Federal Reserve in Riverton, and what's the only punishment he gets? Gadget, G2, and Penny run him out of town at the climax of the film, with Claw swearing his usual threat: "I'll get you next time, Gadget... next time!"
  • Tex Richman in The Muppets. He makes various uses of sabotage, acts like a complete jerk to The Muppets, causes property damage to The Muppet Theatre to win the deed...and gets away with everything. Not even a bowling ball to the head and a Heel Face Turn can explain how the hell no one saw through his dirty deeds (and shouldn't there be a clause somewhere in the deed against using sabotage to gain the theatre?).
  • Joseph Mason a.k.a. Machine Gun Joe, from the 2008 Death Race remake.
  • The Largo kids, Luigi, Pavi, and Amber, from Repo! The Genetic Opera, despite being a Serial Killer, a rapist, and a general huge bitch respectively, actually end up coming out of the movie better off than they were before, as their father, the Big Bad, dies, and they take control of his Mega Corp. This may be acceptable because, as vile as they are they're the comic relief.
  • Riff-Raff and Magenta from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Magenta makes meals out of people and Riff-Raff kills three people, two of them completely innocent, and they end up being praised by The Mentor for it!
  • Maid in Manhattan has an example that turns her into a Designated Hero. Steph is pretty much responsible for the whole mess Marissa ends up in. When they are cleaning Caroline's room, she is the one who takes out her clothes and pretty much won't leave Caroline alone until she tries them on. Then when Chris Marshall comes to the room, it's Steph who calls Marissa "Caroline" and starts off the whole mistaken identity plot. Then when Marissa is already in over her head with the whole situation, Steph submits a management application for her without telling her. When Marissa is eventually caught for impersonating Caroline she is fired from the hotel and is forced to endure hordes of paparazzi for months. Steph meanwhile is never called out on anything and doesn't accept responsibility for what she has done. Does she resign in atonement? Nope, and the end implies she gets promoted in Marissa's new hotel.
  • The family comedy Paulie has the titular parrot getting abducted by a criminal named Benny and forced to commit crimes for him. When one robbery goes wrong, Paulie is caught while Benny abandons him and gets away clean.
  • Walter Peck, the Hate Sink Obstructive Bureaucrat who nearly caused the apocalypse due to his skepticism and petty grudges in Ghostbusters seems to have gotten no punishment whatsoever, as in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire he's actually become Mayor of New York City, still a petty, vindictive man and a thorn in the heroes' side. Indeed, at the end of the movie, the only real comeuppance he receives is having to admit on live TV that they saved the world; seeing as his same grudges agains them are what caused the crisis and nearly doomed the world a second time, it seems remarkably lenient.
  1. ↑ the one from Jewish mythology
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