Karma Houdini/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Magus in Chrono Trigger. In one sequence, the player can be the bigger man and have Frog decide that killing him won't bring his dead friend back. While Magus can join your party at this point, no one ever thinks of asking if Magus can at least reverse the disfiguring curse he put on Frog. It may be that the only way to reverse the curse is to kill Magus, as only those endings where the heroes chose this option get this in the ending. Naturally he's not volunteering this option. However, the Playstation port has Frog becoming Glenn regardless of what you choose.
    • The DS Updated Rerelease clarifies one of Frog's lines to telling Magus point-blank he likes his new form. Accordingly, it also goes back to Frog reverting to his old body if Magus is killed.
  • Mr. Match (Hinoken) from Mega Man Battle Network joined the terrorist organization World Three twice. In the third game, he even tricks Lan into bombing the government's main HQ, something Lan angsts about. Yet he's still free in later games, and Fireman even shares his soul with Megaman as a powerup, appearing in every game (except 5 for some reason) including spin offs.
    • Seems Battle Network has a lot of these, especially in the second game. Pride nearly killed several foreign representatives; Dark/Dusk committed what amounted to an act of genocide. And yet nobody bats an eye when they show up as allies in the fifth game.
  • Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice has Super Hero Aurum in the Super Hero Mao ending. His punishment for all the bad stuff he did (some of it borderline Moral Event Horizon)? Serving Mao as Geoffrey. If the Raspberyl story is canon, then this ending is ALSO canon. BOO! This is massive contrast to his fate in the normal ending.** Gonna have to call a subversion on this one, largely on the grounds that Raspberyl was present during that ending, and considering her surprised reaction at seeing Geoffrey back in Mao's service during her story, and Mao himself stating that he effectively brainwashed Aurum back into it kinda kills the whole theory. Second off, during said ending, nearly everyone lambasts him over the fact that his entire two hundred year Xanatos Roulette failed, and that he basically made a better butler that he ever did a hero or villain, and for Aurum, who was looking to either be acknowledged as the greatest hero or to die a hero's death, being essentially goaded into this kind of servitude could possibly be as bad as, if not worse, than his fate in the normal ending.
  • Grom Hellscream from the Warcraft games. He was the first to drink demon blood and advocate everyone else doing it, he slaughtered countless humans, dwarves, and elves (and others) for fun, and then after getting redeemed still attacks some humans for no reason and drinks demon blood a second time knowing full well what it is. Sure, he has a Heroic Sacrifice at the end, but he gets idolized by the Horde despite his life being 90% evil, 10% good.
    • Well, he DID, y'know, free the orcs from the chains of slavery toward demons and all...
    • Sylvanas. She's under suspicion for the wrathgate (we don't know how much she knew), betrayed and murdered Garithos and his men, invaded Gilneas, nuked Southshore, waged a campaign of genocide on the Humans, manipulated the Horde (to join them in the first place in order to use them as tools), set herself up as an object of cult worship, employed the Val'kyr (which seems to be a case of "Even Chaos has standards" when seen by pragmatic Death Knight Thassarian), resurrected those who she killed against their will, experimented on her own citizens and children, used cruel and unusual punishment, was insubordinate when she defied orders not to use the plague, used biological weapons, taken hostages, killed civilians, shot and killed Liam Greymane, attempted to steal the Scythe of Elune to enslave the Worgen and make even more to make an even BIGGER army to do her bidding, and made some kind of deal with the devil to get the Val'kyr in the first place. Unfortunately, she's a Draco in Leather Pants (despite being an undead corpse) so a lot of fans, particularly Horde players, deny that she's evil and start bringing up things like moral nihilism when called on it.
      • Battle for Azeroth may be the place where she crosses the line, starting the eponymous conflict which has, thus far, left both Darnassus and Undercity destroyed; some players have already started to refer to her as "the Lich Queen", her support among them quickly eroding.
    • Trade Prince Gallywix. When Kezan is threatened by a volcanic eruption, he tricks the rest of the Bilgewater Cartel into giving him all their money and possessions to buy passage off the island, then enslaves them. On arrival in the Lost Isles, he enslaves them a second time. The player character has to almost kill him before he'll give up, but somehow after the dust settles Thrall decides to keep him in charge of the Cartel. His present whereabouts are unknown, but in Azshara he has a "pleasure palace" on top of a mountain with his face cut into it. Huh?
      • Again, Battle for Azeroth' may have at least taught him that he is not untouchable, with the Alliance wrecking the Pleasure Palace and forcing him to flee; still, he seems to now have a personal grudge against them, promising to send the player the bill for it.
  • Captain Qwark in Ratchet and Clank manages to do a pretty good job. Thanks to his status as Comic Relief, he manages to survive being both The Dragon and the Big Bad in the first and second games, respectively, doing galactic scale, off-screen damage. It's implied that millions were killed or kicked out of their homes. His punishment is mainly embarrassment, such as becoming a monkey temporarily, but he manages to become a hero again in the third game. He is even responsible for accidentally handing the fifth game badguy the MacGuffin, and he is now 100% in the clear.
    • Karma seems to have low accuracy with him. In Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time he does nothing wrong or even particularly cowardly throughout the whole game, and is more competent in helping Ratchet. His ending fate isn't much more pleasant than Going Commando, where he was the main villain.
  • Don Weaso in Conker's Bad Fur Day. He massacres several dozen uga bugas with Conker's help, then later betrays Conker for cash and murders Berri.....oh and he killed Paulie. Weaso's fate, he gets to run off safely with his ill-earned money. In comparison the Panther King and Ze professor suffer Karmic Deaths, and even Conker is punished for his greed and frequent sociopathy
  • Janos, the Prince of the Other World from The Black Heart. He is the one responsible for the corruption of the Other World, which was once beautiful, by causing endless wars to conquer lands that his father (the King, who was far too old and weak to stop him) gave willingly to others; he enslaved an entire species to be his soldiers, killed the King to gain his powers, framed Final when he stole the heart so Janos couldn't use it, wants to conquer all the other worlds through force and bloodshed, and ends up killing his own daughter, Ananzi, because she outlived her usefulness... and in the end, he succeeds in claiming back the Dark Heart, killing Final in the process, and acquires his father's powers.
  • Yuna from Breath of Fire IV turned Elina into a monster forcing her boyfriend to mercy-kill her, and is largely responsible for turning Big Bad Fou Lu into an Omnicidal Maniac. The game ends with him alive and well, and announcing his intention to do it all again.
    • Apparently the creators meant to include his death in the ending sequence but ran out of time[1], and thus it looks like he never got his just desserts.
      • Adding insult to injury: in the recent manga adaptation, they also went with the ending as scripted in the game. Meaning Yuna is a Karma Houdini twice over. (Considering material not in the game but in the artbook was explicitly used in the manga, and also considering that Mag Garden is in no fear of going bankrupt (nor is Capcom right now)...this is an even more explicit version than in the original game the manga is based off of.
  • Even though the Ace Attorney protagonist's job is to find the guilty and absolve the innocent, a few people slip through the cracks.
    • In the second Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game, De Killer is an assassin for hire who kills the fourth case's victim in addition to (presumably) many others in the past. He kidnaps and threatens to kill Maya if you don't acquit his client, and then gives testimony in court via radio to try to pin the crime on someone innocent. He gets off scot free.
      • The way the story is structured, he kinda has to remain free in order to give the testimony by radio and to be able to threaten Engarde when it is revealed Engarde videotaped him to blackmail him. Also, although he is "free" at the end of the case, the police and Interpol are actively tracking him, now with Engarde's video to assist them.
      • Although given his appearance in the Investigations 2 trailer, his reprieve may not last forever...
    • In the third game, Ron DeLite, a.k.a. Mask* DeMasque the Gentleman Thief. While he didn't commit the murder, he did commit four incidences of grand theft. When he was framed for a fifth, he was put on trial - and found Not Guilty with the help of Phoenix Wright - for all of them. And due to the court's "Double Jeopardy" law (you can't be put on trial for the same crime twice) this means that he remains unpunished even after his crimes are publicly exposed. In the epilogue, he explains that he quit stealing and became a security consultant along with his wife Desiree - along with a side business of selling plans to criminals. He comments, rather accurately, that "Sometimes I think maybe we're the worst criminals..." But since he's a Gentleman Thief, he's supposed to get away with it.
      • Of course, the whole reason that case even happened is that Ron got caught by Luke Atmey on his very first crime, indicating his crime-planning abilities completely suck. So by selling his crimes to other criminals, he may actually be making up for his past actions by lowering the crime rate...
      • Also one might consider the terror of getting caught, arrested, and nearly convicted of murder to be fit punishment for a relatively minor crime.
    • This theme is completely reversed in the fifth game. The Yatagarasu or rather Detective Badd, the last remaining part of the Yatagarasu, turns himself in to Gumshoe after the arrest of Shih-na/Yew and the revelation that they and Faraday were the Yatagarasu team. He even seems as if he meant to be arrested the entire time and was only waiting for the capture of Yew before "retiring".
    • Some of the prosecutors in the first three games fall under this as well.
      • Miles Edgeworth begins as a bitter rival, but eventually grows into one of the series' protagonists, eventually even stepping in for Phoenix in one case, and getting his very own spinoff game. This is mainly due to his Heel Face Turn halfway through the first game, when he decides that Prosecuting should be about the truth rather than winning. But what people forget is that until then he was a perfectionist, known as the "Demon Prosecutor", who would do anything for a guilty verdict and never lost a case in his life, meaning he must have gotten plenty of innocent people convicted and possibly sentenced to death. Now while you can claim "well they may have gotten innocent people convicted" of any prosecutor, it's the fact Edgeworth was using underhanded tactics like witness manipulation to get his verdicts that makes this dubious.
        • In the Ace Attorney Case Files manga, he gets confronted with the results of his actions when the son of Jose Montoya confronts him about prosecuting his father, leading to him being convicted and dying in jail, then tries to stab Edgeworth (but accidentally hits Edgeworth's cast, as his arm is conveniently broken at the time). Even though the boy admits that his father was guilty (but only as an unwilling accomplice), Edgeworth admits that "it doesn't change the fact that a boy lost his father".
    • Viola Cadaverini suffered no legal repercussions for helping to frame an innocent woman for murder and continues working as a loan shark. Justified as, well, she's a Mafia Princess.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics have The Church of Glabados. Who get away with hiding the truth that the saints they worship are actually Demons responsible for much of the strife in the game. They even kill Orran Durai, one of the few good guys left after the war as a heretic because he published a paper detailing the truth of the war. It takes 400 years before the truth is exposed.
  • Albedo from Xenosaga certainly applies. Throughout the trilogy, he manages to Mind Rape MOMO twice, abuse and mercilessly torture and kill the Kirschwassers, kill many with Proto Merkabah, torture Jr. by giving him various visions of the past involving Jr.'s dead love interest Sakura, and manipulate many in his selfish desire for his goals. What is this goal? To make Jr. hate him so he can be killed. And he actually does succeed. Jr. gets pissed and offs him. Then Jr. CRIES after the guy who decimated so many lives is finally killed off. But that's not the end of it. Albedo is then revived by Wilheim as a testament, and gains uber powers. He just toys around with the party until near the end, when he, for the first time ever, actually manages to try to do something helpful for the party when he tries to stop Yuriev from merging with the Zohar and becoming all invincible and such. However, Gaignun, the third dude in their power trio, who had spent all of episode III possessed by Yuriev, intercepts and allows Albedo to merge with Jr.'s consciousness as it was originally when they were born. This is all Albedo ever wanted, and he goes to sleep blissfully inside Jr. The most enraging part about all this is that whenever Albedo manages to top himself in evil, Jr. gets pissed at him for about 5 minutes before Albedo gets defeated by the party, and then Jr. instantly turns into a whimpering dog that begs Albedo not to leave him. Even MOMO sympathizes with him, even after he basically had his way with her. What.The.Hell.
    • Given that he is actually insane, rather than just mad with power due to the fact that as a child he learned he was just a weapon, though unlike his brother, who he thought he would be there for him forever due to be conjoined at birth, he would literally live until the end of time itself, he might get a pass on this one. It's likely that he attempted suicide several times after he found out the truth, and found out that only his brother was created in a way that could kill him. How did he discover this? By touching the mind of an Eldrich Abomination, of course. He didn't slip down a slope so much as get shoved off a cliff. As for Junior, he actually blamed himself for what happened (as he was the one who broke the news that Albedo was immortal, he didn't try to keep him from slipping away afterwards, and he was right next to him when U-DO touched him), and generally wanted his brother to be right again. As for MOMO, it's questionable whether it was remnant memories from her past of the sane Albedo, pity for a man who had lost everything from the start, or given that she knows the feeling of being part of a world yet feeling seperate herself.
  • Final Fight ends with the Big Bad plummeting to his death, but most members of the Mad Gears, don't seem to be punished at all. Future games show that Hugo is making it big in pro wrestling, Poison is his manager, EDI.E is still on the Metro City police force, Rolento and Sodom are both working as mercenaries, and Abigail, J, Axl and Roxy started a auto-body shop. All this despite being accomplices to the whole kidnapping-extortion scheme.
  • In one of the paths on the visual novel Crescendo, the heroine of that path will be gang-raped, and no matter what the player does, the rapists fail to get any comeuppance at all. The heroine even makes him promise not to report the incident to the police. One can only assume that the rapists continued into the sunset twirling their mustaches and giving each other high fives.
    • The worst part: they're never even named, and we've seen Ryo fight off three nameless guys before (breaking one's arm in the process). The best we can assume is a bit of impromptu off-screen justice for the guy who's appeared more than once.
  • Genesis in Final Fantasy VII, who manages to get away alive, and ends up still running around doing whatever... after killing everyone in his hometown, even his own parents, turned the people who defected with him into monsters, and started a completely pointless war. Also, being directly responsible for Sephiroth.
  • Subversion: the Super Robot Taisen series is an idealistic franchise... and therefore, even villains who got away scot-free in their series do not escape the hand of karma. Just to make a point, in episodes with Nadesico the player is either allowed to kill off Kusakabe (Impact, MX, J), or his plans are screwed up to the point where he is unable to go on and found the Martian Successors (A, R). The same thing happens to Garimos and Gil Barg from Dangaioh (see above), who are actually killed in the Super Robot Wars Compact 2 trilogy and its remake Super Robot Wars Compact 2. Hard to escape a Karmic Death when you have to deal with a band of Hot-Blooded heroes who have an habit of Punching Out Cthulhu.
    • Certain major antagonists such as Bian Zoldark and Maier von Branstein are regarded with a certain degree of respect after they are killed. This may be partly due to the fact that they are related to some of the protagonists.
      • Something of a subversion, several characters seem intent on punishing themselves for things that no one else blames them for. For example Elzam von Branstien/Rätsel Feinschmecker takes the blame for the "Elpis incident". A group of terrorists, lead by Archibald Grims, took Elzam's wife Cattleya as a hostage to guarantee his escape. When he remotely opened the docking bay door allowing her to return to the colony interior he also released a highly potent toxic gas. Elzam was faced with the choice of either destroying the section of the colony that she was on or allowing the gas to poison the colonists. Despite the fact that she was already fatally poisoned he felt terribly guilty for destroying the docking bay to save the rest of the colony.
        • All subverted with Asakim since killing him will give him what he wanted. This makes life even harder for Setsuko since she had to bear the brunt of the abuse while he and Rand act like buddies most of the time. At least until something thinks of a way to take him out like Earth in a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fashion
    • On the other hand, some villains who did die in their series can be convinced in Super Robot Wars to make a Heel Face Turn. For example, would-be Evil Overlord Haman Karn, who in the Gundam ZZ died after, among other things, killing millions via a Colony Drop, can be recruited. Because she has a crush on one of the protagonists. Granted, they're usually made less evil than they were in their series to facilitate this, but still.
  • In the Dawn of War Expansions, Warboss Gorgutz constantly loses to the enemy army but when backed to a corner always has an escape plan and manages to get off the planet while his army is getting killed by the enemy.
  • Pokémon:
    • In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon 2, Team Skull (as always, consisting entirely of poison Pokemon) constantly provides conflict, going out of their way to hurt or discredit the main characters while scheming to steal various valuables for themselves. In a later dungeon, they mug the heroes and run off with an item that is necessary to resolve a particularly significant crisis, only to be ambushed by an unrelated group later in the dungeon. Once the main characters show up, the Skuntank leader pretends to accidentally drop the item, allowing the heroes to reclaim it. After the heroes leave, a conversation raises the possibility that this one act may have redeemed everything evil they had done up to that point. Are there any players out there that buy this?
      • Darkrai as well. After manipulating legendary Pokemon, causing the planet's paralysis (until it was stopped), putting Azurill in an endless nightmare and almost making the main characters commit suicide, all that happens is he loses his memories and gets to more or less start a new life.
    • Malva in Pokémon X and Y. A commander of Team Flare (whom, it seems, was Dragon Her Feet while the confrontation with Lysandre was going on) is never punished at all for her role as an accomplice to the planned genocide. She is still a member of the Elite Four and still a well-known newscaster, getting away scott-free with no consequences. And she hasn't reformed either, telling the protagonist she'd burn him to a crisp if she thought she could get away with it, the threats becoming even worse in subsequent matches.
  • YOU! Yes, you, in Knights of the Old Republic. Most of the characters who travel with you are Lightsided but will mostly only be slightly annoyed if you decided to kill random innocent beings for no reason. Juhani, Carth, Mission and Jolee turn against you if you finally declare your intent to take over the entire galaxy, but up to that point, you literally get away with murder.
    • Not only that, but if you do choose the Light Side ending (even if it's for all the wrong reasons), you turn lightsided. Apparently slaughtering your way through everyone else in the game is cool as long as you really want to beat the crap out of a traitorous party member.
    • This is taken even further in the sequel game and various peripheral media. Regardless of whether or not the player indicates their character took the Light Side ending in the last game, everyone speaks of him in the most glowing praise conceivable as having done no wrong before, during, or after the events of the first game. An Omniscient Morality License is invoked by Word of God which causes him to border on Marty Stu territory.
    • This has been scaled back significantly in the lead-up media for Star Wars: The Old Republic, in particular Revan. There were some significant consequences as to Revan's actions both during his redemption and after he married Bastilla, putting him into a far weaker position when he hunted down the Sith Emperor.
  • You! Yes, you, in Jade Empire. It's entirely possible to spend the first 99% of the game breaking people, hurting things, framing innocents, helping slavers, kicking puppies (you can actually kick puppies if you're evil enough)... and then at the very end of the game, decide that godlike power isn't worth dooming the world to a slow, lingering death. Your alignment shoots up to 90% Good, all your allies forgive you (even though you've magically bound them to your will) and everybody lives happily ever after. Except Wild Flower. Because you shattered her mind. To let a sadistic demon take it over. You horrible bastard.
    • Not only that, but considering the Way of the Closed Fist is more about "facing one's challenges head on, challenging one's station in life, and working to become self-reliant" rather than just being evil, it's entirely possible that you decided to finally kill the Water Dragon, thus screwing over the land's water supply for all the wrong reasons.
  • You can also let a number of NPCs in Mass Effect get away scot free for various crimes. However, occasionally this will work out for the better. Helena Blake, a crime lord from the first game, asks you to kill two rivals for her and then return to her base for the reward. You can either take your credits, arrest her (she resists and you have to kill her), or convince her to disband her gang. If you ask her to disband it, she turns up in ME2 working as a social worker on Omega. Similarly, Rana Thanoptis, who was working on indoctrination for Saren in the first game, turns up in Warlord Okeer's base on Korlus, ostensibly to help the krogan. She's not too sucessful.
    • But probably the worst one is Balak in the paragon route for the "Bring Down the Sky" DLC.
      • Worse, it's revealed in the second game's news feeds that the son of a bitch is STILL at large. If that fact is not a huge kick to the gut for Paragon players, I don't what is...
    • Dr. Gavin Archer in the Overlord DLC. Sure he gets pistol-whipped by Paragon Shepard but everyone agrees that he deserved a lot more.
    • Vido Santiago in Zaheed's loyalty mission. The man who stole the Blue Suns from Zaheed, and turned it into an completely immoral merc group who give you endless trouble during the game, and Vido is able to easily invoke We Have Reserves with his recruitment skills. Picking Paragon will let him escape unharmed. Sure, you can pick Renegade and watch Zaheed light the guy on fire, but it means letting Zaheed cross his Moral Event Horizon.
      • Not to mention Vido is a major reason why Zaeed has become such a pyscho. He shot Zaeed in the head and... well, you do the math. Point is, Vido's caused a lot of damage in many more ways than one...
    • The third game resolves some (but not all) of these: Rana Thanoptis wasn't just working for Saren, she was indoctrinated. If she survives to the third game, she kills a bunch of asari military officers before committing suicide in custody. Balak shows up again, and you can either kill him or ask for his help; it's your decision whether justice is worth more than the help of batarian fleet he will bring. And Gavin Archer shows up, sincerely rmorseful over his actions and helping the Alliance against Cerberus. Whether or not that's enough is up to you.
  • You! Yes, you, in The Elder Scrolls Four: Oblivion. Doesn't matter if you are the leader of the Thieves' Guild and the kingpin of all crime, an assassin for the Dark Brotherhood who has committed a series of cold-blooded murders across Cyrodiil, someone who has done every dark and dirty deed for the various Daedra Princes, or a bloodthirsty psychopath who kills people indiscriminately in the streets, at the end, you're still hailed as the hero and savior of the Oblivion crisis. Even better, with the Knights of the Nine expansion, you can easily wipe out all of your Infamy just by doing a pilgrimage to nine wayshrines. Even the gods forgive your crimes!
    • Worse yet, in Skyrim, the player (as Sheogorath) confirms that all the aforementioned deeds were canon. Given what kind of character the player becomes in said quests, that's one hell of a Houdini. Especially given that it confirms that your ultimate fate was becoming a god.
      • To be fair Becoming the Prince of MADNESS was probably for the best out of all the Princes he could have became.
  • Morcalavin in Heretic II, the villain of the story. One of the Precursors, who botched a spell to make his race Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and became a power-mad Evil Overlord creating a plague that turns people into rabid zombies or mind-controlled slaves. At the end of the game, you learn that the way to rid the world of the plague is to fix the spell, allowing Morcalavin to become indeed a god. Even though he's magically cured of his madness, it's still a bit annoying that he is rewarded rather than punished for his crimes...
  • The G-Man in Half-Life is probably karma-proof as well as bulletproof. Although since nobody has any idea who he is or what the heck he's even doing, he might not be deserving of karma payback. For all anyone knows he's keeping things from getting even worse even if he is using morally ambiguous methods.
  • Subverted in Tales of Vesperia had minor villains Ragou and Cumore. Ragou basically oppressed his subjects and fed the ones that couldn't pay to his pet monsters. Cumore, in the search for Pharaoh, drafted innocent civilians into what amounted as a suicide mission. However, their positions and wealth guaranteed that they wouldn't be touched by the law. It looks like they'll get away with everything until Yuri hunts them down and murders them.
    • Played straight, however, with Dedecchi, the Aque Blastia thief. This is fixed in the Play Station 3 version, where a new optional event allows the party to capture him.
  • Asch from Tales of the Abyss. In the beginning of the game, he slaughters around 140 Malkuth soldiers onboard the Tartarus, tries to outright kill the party numerous times (though his main target is Luke, when you first meet him, he makes a comment about how Jade is difficult to kill), and takes control of Luke in order to try and make him attack (and presumably kill) Tear. Yet, just because he's against Van and starts to cooperate (little by little) with the party later on, all is forgiven and nobody mentions the massive amounts of people he willingly, purposefully slaughtered (instead preferring to berate Luke for the people he accidentally killed).
    • Tales of the Abyss is LOUSY with these, especially in your own party. EVERYONE in your group except Natalia knows something that could have possibly prevented the disaster at Akzeriuth, yet NO ONE tells Luke, they then have the balls to berate him when all of them KNOW he has the mind of a 7 year old in a 17 year old's body. Among them, special mention has to go to Jade, who could have prevented it all, but was too lazy to bother, Guy, who is actively and freely helping the main antagonist Vahn, and Anise who has been spying the whole time, caused Ion's death, could have prevented it by taking advantage of the fact you could have rescued her parents who were taken hostage MANY times, and even has the nerve to slap someone who called her out on it. Of course none of them have to make penance for their actions or hypocrisy.
  • Reaver from Fable 2. When you first meet him, he seems like a pompous yet somewhat awesome pirate king. Then he asks you to do a little favor for him: secure a sacrifice to the Shadow Court so that he can remain young and beautiful beyond his natural years. It's a choice between making some poor young girl who got lost the sacrifice or willingly giving up some of your own youth and beauty. You can't kill him, though, because he's necessary to take down the Big Bad.
    • And the above is just the tip of the iceberg. Reaver is personally responsible for the demise of Oakvale, and was busy selling the protagonist to the Big Bad while he/she was off performing the aforementioned favour. He also kills off a certain comic relief character, though that might count as an act of goodness to some.
    • He returns in the third game as a highly successful Corrupt Corporate Executive who owns environmentally disastrous factories that run on child labor. Not only does he avoid comeuppance, he usually ends up making a profit somehow whether or not you agree with his decisions. Not to mention that, in all probability, he's been rolling like this for three hundred years.
  • A particularly bad one appears in the first Golden Sun. The "evil thief" Dodonpa, who kidnapped a wealthy merchant with the intention of sending repeated ransom demands and who is trash-talked by most people in the village he runs, appears in a sidequest in which he sics a monster on the heroes, then is trapped under it when he tries to stab them in the back while they're distracted. At the urging of the merchant - who witnessed all of this - the heroes move the monster off of Dodonpa and forgive him for attacking them. His ultimate sentence is to replace the merchant in his dungeon cell, to which his underlings have a key, and receive no treatment for his twisted ankle.
    • A less serious case is Briggs, one of the main antagonists in the second game, battling Felix's team, stealing Plot Coupons and having his grandmother sic a boss on them. He doesn't get a proper hint of redemption until the third game, where he aids Matthew's party into fleeing from Belinsk, losing his life in the process.And up until them, he had been keeping up with the pirate trade.
  • The chief antagonist of Psychonauts, Coach Oleander, gets off with naught but basically having to say to the campers "Sorry I had you all kidnapped and your brains removed to power my weapons of mass destruction." He even gets all his psychological daddy issues magically resolved by Raz. His accomplice on the other hand falls out of a high tower to a probably very messy death.
    • Well, it IS hinted that Mikhail and Maloof, the local 'mob', wired his car to explode
  • Most villains in the Pokémon games. Their actions range from running a nationwide criminal empire (Giovanni), to unleashing and attempting to control a rampaging titan with the power to either create continents or expand the oceans (Maxie and Archie), to attempting to hijack either the avatar of time or space to destroy the universe and remake it in typical A God Am I fashion (Cyrus). Neither them nor their associates, willing or not, suffer any repercussions.
    • In a special HG/SS event, Giovanni is possibly no longer a Karma Houdini. Celebi takes you back in time to after Giovanni was defeated by Red. He goes into hiding in order to become stronger and revive Team Rocket one day, abandoning his son Silver in the process. When you find him, he gets upset and battles you. After defeat, Giovanni goes berserk, having been defeated by another kid, and disappears forever.
    • Ghetsis in Pokémon Black and White is a major subversion. Although he is arrested in the end, it is heavily implied that he is later rescued by Dark Trinity. However, let's think on this for a moment. Team Plasma has been utterly defeated. N is a good guy now. His plan to use Zekrom/Reshiram to rule the world has been completely ruined. Yes, he escapes the authorities, but with only the Shadow Triad at his side, it will be very hard, if not impossible, for him to fully recover from his loss and regain the power he once had. Essentially, he escapes imprisonment, but is still a ruined man. A fitting end for a Complete Monster like him. His Villainous Breakdown also heavily implies he's lost his sanity as well, making any hope of a come back all but impossible.
    • In Pokémon Colosseum, Evice and Nascour lose any claims to Karma Houdini privileges when Ho-oh shoots down their escape chopper, leaving them to go with Sherles and Johnson on the Party Van. Ardos, on the other hand, is the big one. His father, Greevil, chose to side with Eldes, the other son, and accept arrest instead of blowing up Citadark Isle with you on it. Even after this, Ardos appears as an opponent in the Orre Colosseum and makes clear his intent to rebuild Cipher; both by giving Michael a warning that he will be watched and branding him as "Cipher's Biggest Enemy". This is the guy who could have gotten away, killed you and the rest of his group from the safety of his chopper, and reconstructed Cipher for absolute dominion in the following months, and has likely backed up all the vital data on Cipher's Shadow Pokemon research. Let that sink in for a second.
  • Star Sapphire, being the most sensible of the Three Mischievous Fairies, manages to avoid most of the punishments her fellow pranksters undergo when their antics backfire.
  • In the DS Video Game Remake of Dragon Quest IV, the main villain Psaro slaughters your Beloved Peasant Village just like in the original; and a number of other hideous crimes as well, and that's even before his Morality Chain is killed. Yet you can resurrect said Morality Chain and ...return in time? after the end of the game to save his soul from becoming a One-Winged Angel. And then he joins your party to kill the demon who "tricked" him into declaring genocide on the human race.
    • Also, the hero's childhood friend comes Back from the Dead in the ending, but not anyone else of the party.. Apparently to justify the above.
    • But the true Karma Houdini is actually The Zenithian Lord. The overgrown lizard who kills your father and makes your mother an outcast prisoner for the crime of falling in love and fathering the hero who would save the world, yet these actions are completely ignored.
  • Saemon Havarian in Baldur's Gate II 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' in the country on him. 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 Player Character, it's about equally impressive.
    • A particularly grating example is Saerk from the second game. 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. Sometime after Anomen is knighted, he learns noy 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 basically ruins Anomen's entire life, and the good option is to let him get away with it.
  • In Grand Theft Auto, basically every Player Character. CJ from San Andreas sticks out in my mind most because he's presented as more of an Anti-Hero than a Villain Protagonist. Going by the story mode he murders plenty of people who didn't deserve it. [2] What happens to him at the end? "Let's go get something to eat!"
    • This is also the series in which you can avoid an arrest warrant for mass murder by entering a save house, so it happens to players many times every game.
    • Even during normal gameplay, a player can kill hundreds of people, cause chaos across the city, the worst that can happen to you is that you get caught by the police or "get wasted". Does this result in a highly publicized trial of the most violent criminal in the city's history? No, you'll probably just lose your weapons and a bit of money.
      • Could be justified in the sense that every GTA game has government and law enforcement so corrupt beyond repair that the people in charge don't care if you murder a few dozen people. Although if you start attacking the police, expect that warrant meter to shoot up very quickly.
    • In San Andres once you get the police girlfriend and nurse girlfriend you are no longer at risk of losing your weapons. Then as soon as you are released from jail your cop girl hands you all your wondrous tools of death.
  • Rowd from Suikoden II. It is true that he is a Glory Hound that seeks a better life for his ill sister. However, with his methods to achieve it, including helping Luca Blight slaughter the Unicorn Brigade that he led... because the job didn't pay enough, or even trying to kill the hero and Jowy so he can get promoted... we never know how he ends up, as he vanishes from the story after Jowy becomes the King of Highland.
  • Suikoden III has Albert Silverberg. He is responsible, directly or indirectly, for pretty much every single bad thing that happens in the game. And why is he orchestrating the lead-up to a meaningless war, then partially derailing it, after the lives and societies of thousands of people have been shattered? Just to prove that he can do it. The reward for victory for everyone else is that they get to live another day. Albert? Gets exactly what he wanted, a cushy position miles away from the land he almost destroyed. This man is absolutely infuriating to quite a few players.
  • Suikoden IV has the elves of Na-Nal. They aren't pleased that the human islanders struck a deal with the Kooluk, so they manipulate matters and spark off a massacre, which the Elven elder gloats about. Ironically, the heroes stopping the massacre before it spreads too far probably caused their karma evasion, as once the Kooluk finished killing off the human natives, they likely would've moved to the elves next...
  • In Freedom Fighters, the Big Bad, General Tartarin, actually does get his comeuppance midway through the game. He is replaced by The Mole, Colonel Bulba, who betrays your organization, has your allies killed/captured, and tries to have you taken out (it's implied he sent you to kill Tartarin so he could grab all the glory). But you never get the opportunity to put a bullet in his brainpan.
  • In Xenogears, the main antagonist, Krelian is never fought or killed. He had been responsible for many heinous crimes but was never brought to justice.
  • The Komato in Iji. They commit genocide of one entire alien species, attempt genocide of another (humans), and guess who dies? The one who repented.
  • Shichiou and April in Princess Waltz. The first gets a sort of half assed 'forever in death with my beloved, who is not holding a grudge ending. The second might be a god and just sort of skips merrily away at the end after reviving Pigeon. Then again, she didn't really do anything particularly bad either.
  • Leasath commanding officer Diego Gaspar Navarro from Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception doesn't get caught and brought to justice, and while he fails to overrun Aurelia or sell his beloved Fenrir superfighters, part of his Xanatos Gambit still plays out as the conflict gives a boost to Leasath's military-industrial complex.
    • It's actually averted in a second ending. If the player completes all the missions, he's murdered by an angry mob of his own citizens.
  • In BioShock (series) 2, we have Sofia Lamb, who has been presented as, at the very best, a Knight Templar who believes that elimination of free will is the only way to save mankind, and at worst, a Complete Monster who does things like forcing a father to commit suicide in front of his daughter. In the neutral/evil endings, Eleanor kills Sofia Lamb, stating she is beyond redemption and needs to die. However, in the good ending, Eleanor states that the philosophy that people are beyond redemption is at the core of Sofia's philosophy and rejects this, saving Sofia's life.
    • Your Mileage May Vary, of course, as Sofia's survival is hardly a victory. Her plans to create a Utopia were ruined, all her servants and the cult she built to fulfill her plans were killed by her own hands in a childish tantrum and, of course, the weapon she was going to use to bring her Utopia about, her own daughter Eleanor, has probably rejected her for Delta and probably goes on to make the world a better place after his sacrifice, very different from what her mother wished. Considering this facts, Eleanor condemns her mother to a life of regret and/or disappointment, as she realizes she lost everything she tried to achieve forever and has to see her daughter, whom she tried to turn into her tool, ditching her and her beliefs and going on to disrespect her dreams. And she can't do anything to stop her daughter, as Eleanor possess enough power from Plasmids to burn Sofia into cinders. In the end, Sofia's survival is her punishment.
    • Still Andrew Ryan, the first game's Big Bad, who had his own war crimes got his punishment in an ironic way (not just transliteraly), but was never given a tiny chance of redemption by anyone. Sofia on the other hand was left without a scar considering all the people that died on her command; including Mark Melter from the Tear Jerker story There is something in the sea.
  • Villains in the Nancy Drew games often pull a Karma Houdini, particularly when their attacks against Nancy herself are concerned. In Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon, the villain deliberately causes a cave-in to trap Nancy and leaves her to die, yet the only punishment mentioned is that the culprit's credit cards are taken away. Likewise, villains who'd tried to drown, strangle, and/or burn Nancy alive wind up going to jail for robbery.
    • Averted with Rentaro, though. Depending on what you do, he is either Fired and never heard from again (Implied to have gone off elsewhere) or basically loses his chance at his love interest but gets to keep his job anyways. Even though it was one of his inventions that almost drowned Nancy, it was an accident as he had no intentions of harming any guests, just scaring them off.
  • Advance Wars Days of Ruin has the civilians, who 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 After the End setting that Will and company also have to.
  • Unless you believe the Black Arms Invasion or the destruction of Prison Island, GUN from Sonic the Hedgehog never receives any form of punishment for massacring hundreds of innocent people, including a child, in cold blood, just to cover up a failed experiment they funded.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Vladimir Makarov, one of the main villains in the game and a terrorist who massacred hundreds of civilians in a Russian airport, kills Joseph Allen (the player) and then pins the blame for this massacre on him in order to incite a war between Russia and the U.S. The war is then taken to American shores where a further catastrophic loss of life occurs. He is never killed or captured during the game's plot and his fate is unknown.
    • Modern Warfare 3, however, gives you the opportunity to settle scores.
  • Jitterbug, the Big Bad of Cave shooter Death Smiles is a pretty strong example. He's directly responsible for the demons rampaging throughout Gilverado, as he had been opening portals to the demon world with the intent to create a portal back to the real world. In the end he is not punished for his actions, nor is he repentant in any way. He gets exactly what he wanted, and is allowed to leave for the real world where he can go back to being a cold-hearted Corrupt Corporate Executive. The only bad thing that ever happens to him in the entire game is getting eaten by a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere that came out of one of the portals he'd opened. This does not kill him, and depending on the version you're playing, and depending on how well you've done, it may only piss him off.
    • The sequel does show a bit of comeuppance: in Deathsmiles II's True Final Boss sequence, he gets inadvertantly 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.
  • Invoked in Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Jun became Joker due to his anger over the perceived notion that Tatsuya and co never received punishment for almost killing his close friend Maya years ago.
    • But at the same time, Nyarlathotep gets away with it and basically forces the herores to give up their friendship. But by the end of its other part, Eternal Punishment, He gets what's coming to him, even though Tatsuya and Katsuya don't get to be with Maya.
  • Metal Gear Acid 2 has a Karma Houdini in the form of General Wiseman, AKA, the Complete Monster of the story. Even though he was arrested in the story, his reaction in the ending heavily implies that he intends to get out of jail sooner or later in some way, shape, or form.
  • Beldam from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, a Dragon with an Agenda willingly executed an Eldritch Abomination's plan to be released by manipulated the Big Bad, Grodus and the heroes into opening the titular door. She also told Grodus that after he released the Shadow Queen, she was bound to obey the one who freed her. The second he tries this, said Queen lets him know this was a lie, and blows him to bits. After the Queen is defeated? Beldam appologizes for abusing her sister Vivian and promises to never do it again. This is the last we hear of her.
  • The titular Postal Dude from Postal, and especially 2, who murders countless people including innocents, slaughters all the employees of a rival gaming company just for being part of the company, murders an entire task force of ATF agents, butchers numerous animals and activists, completely wipes out much of the US Army and the Taliban/al-Qaeda (including Osama bin Laden!), steals money from a bank, and urinates on people and makes them vomit, all while making somewhat psychotic remarks with a sense of fun. He then blows up the entire town of Paradise, killing everyone still in the city along with the Army forces dispatched there, and what happens to him? He and his dog get away scot free. Luckily, this is all played for laughs, which keeps his actions from being taken too seriously.
  • In the Perfect Crime ending of Heavy Rain, all of the heroes and witnesses are killed or otherwise incapacitated and all evidence is destroyed. The game concludes with the complete and utter triumph of the Origami Killer.
  • This is discussed in Persona 4 (see the Quotes page for the conversation) regarding Namatame. This is a Double Aversion. The first aversion comes in the fact that soon after, you get the option to kill Namatame, though it's not recommended as the second comes with the fact that he wasn't the killer all along.
  • Jupis from "Rogue Galaxy", he throws a conceited temper tantrum after losing his job, (admittedly for something he didn't do, but still...) takes the factory he worked at hostage, (on a planet that practically sustains itself on said products produced) turns the robots working there into killbots, threatened the lives of anyone who tried to enter said factory, including the beloved Dr. Pocchacio, tried to kill your group when you go in to defuse the situation, attacked you with a giant killer robot, and what happens afterwards??? Nothing. He escapes, sneaks onto your ship and gains the love of the overweight captain and crew due to his cooking skills and kinda forces his way into your group.
  • Bill Hawks in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future was responsible for an explosion 10 years ago from a failed time travel experiment that he ran prematurely for his corporate sponsors. In spite of the failure, he receives a fortune and goes on to become Prime Minister. At the end of the game, although he gets kidnapped by Clive and Dmitri, Layton still saves him anyway, and he clearly regrets nothing that he's done.
  • In Kid Icarus: Uprising, Viridi doesn't get what she deserves for having slaughtered thousands of humans. You do fight her forces, but she never gets punished for it. It becomes more aggravating when she doesn't even admit that her fight against Hades brought an alien invasion into the world to ransack the earth.
  • In one of the endings to Amnesia the Dark Descent, Baron Alexander pretty much succeeds in his master plan, thus completely getting away with manipulating and mentally torturing Daniel, betraying and torturing Agrippa, and killing god knows how many innocent people.
    • In the other ends, Daniel may be considered this for those who don't consider his panic over the Shadow of the Orb and/or his aforementioned manipulation by the Baron to be adequate excuses for his own role in the Baron's ritual murders.
  • Duke Oliver in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. He does get his comeuppance apparently in Path of Radiance, but Dawn reveals that he survived, and returns to fight against you again. The Houdini part of this comes in if you recruit him, where he becomes the only one of the Senators to survive, and indeed is said to just continue on much as he was before in the epilogue.
  • In Star Fox 64, when you shoot a Star Wolf team members ship enough for the power to be "Down," like Fox's wingmates (but not Fox), their ships are crippled and are forced to abort. On Fortuna, you need to send all of them packing before the timer for the bomb at the base runs out. If any of them aren't too cripple to keep fighting, they get away victorious rather than being forced to abort and Fox takes care of the bomb. If you take the path to Bolse afterwards, whichever Star Wolf team member is "Down," they sit out of the level. Before destroying the satellite, you need to defeat whichever Star Wolf member is active and send them packing.
    • Whether you go to Venom 2 from Area 6 with or without going to Fortuna first, you will face the Star Wolf team with new ships, as if their old ones were irreparable. They also have cyborg-ish prosthetics presumably from piloting critically damaged ships. You must also cripple them and force them to abort before heading to face Andross. They will all return fully recovered in Star Fox Assault with a new member, Panther Caruso.
    • One thing to note is that Star Wolf aren't exactly villains (outside of Andrew and Pigma), they're just mercenaries, not different from Star Fox- just on the other side.
  • Roy Earle, the Jerkass Dirty Cop of L.A. Noire, has reported Cole's affair with Elsa to the media, and gets away scot-free. He is later seen in Cole's funeral pretending to be his friend, much to Elsa's outrage.
    • He does worse than ratting on his partner. For this information, the corrupt players in the Suburban Redevelopment Fund--a cruel con to offer housing for war veterans and then make a ton of money when a freeway is built through the development area--make him a member of their scheme. A lot of people die for this, and most of the men responsible are arrested, but Earle manages to completely evade the axe.
  • Olympia, from Etrian Odyssey 3: The Drowned City. This is the person who was responsible for the deaths of countless adventurers in order to keep the Deep City hidden. In addition, she attempted to kill your own party on at least two seperate occasions. In both the Deep City and True endings, she gets away scott-free with absolutely no ill consequences whatsoever, and even in the Armoroad ending, she gets better.
  • Shinji gets away scot free in Kara no Shoujo in several endings. He even casually hands off Toko's body to a kid on the train before just disappearing from the story. However, he is revealed as a pretty tragic figure around that time, so some readers may feel he doesn't deserve to be punished so long as he stops.
  • The antagonist of the second Dark Parables game spends his time capturing people who wander into the wrong part of the Black Forest of Germany and turning them into frogs. His "punishment" at the end of the game is 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 Anti-Villain rather than a full-on bad guy, but still.
  • The games Fahrenheit (2005 video game) and it's Spiritual Successor Heavy Rain has some villains like The Oracle and the Origami Killer respectively, depending on your choice.
  • Porky Minch from EarthBound and Mother 3 may qualify. In Earthbound, he kidnaps little girls, steals your helicopter, and ultimately you fight him alongside Giygas. And when you finally stop his villainy? He teleports away through time, and you never see him again. But then... he gets turned Up to Eleven in Mother 3, wherein he messes up the environment and animals of the Nowhere Islands, brainwashes the population of said islands, kills Lucas's mother, turns Lucas's brother into a cyborg, and uses him in an attempt to destroy the entire world (or what's left of it, anyway). When you defeat him in the penultimate boss battle, he seals himself in a device called the Absolutely Safe Capsule, which makes it impossible to ever hurt him; he will live forever. Karma Houdini indeed.
    • BUT he cannot get out of the capsule or interact with the outside world in any way, Word of God has said he will be in that capsule forever, as he is immortal. Not that he cares.
  • Double Switch: Elizabeth is very much a Karma Houdini. Why? Well, she took a hefty bribe from mobsters to let them find Brutus, and she had to have known that they were going to murder him, one of her own tenants. She did not try to protect the tenants from a secret society, mobsters, and Eddie. In fact, she actually prevented two tenants from leaving the building when they were trying to escape Eddie. No one chews her out for her actions, not even at the end of the game.
  • The Player himself in Overlord, it's stated by Word of God that every Overlord winds up in the abyss eventually, the first Overlord goes there willingly and takes over, it seems a bit far-fetched that the ruler of the underworld would have to play by its rules and be a victim. This also retroactively affects his son, the protagonist of the second game, as the first one was, canonically, an Anti-Hero at best, and probably wouldn't allow his kin to suffer.
    • From the first game, your jester, who is the quicket to jump ship when your predecessor shows up to take control back and later attempts to summon the fallen God, fleeing first and giving a taunting gesture when the portal closes just after he gets out through it. He's not present in the second game however, so he may have been given comeuppance at some point offscreen.
  • For all its emphasis on Grey and Grey Morality, Dragon Age: Origins loves to pit the PC against some truly despicable bad guys ( Bronka, The Tevinter Slavers, Bann Vaughan) and give the PC the option of letting them go on with their evil business, usually for some money or a nifty bonus. For all of BioWare's emphasis on story arc and character, they know the marketing value of Video Game Cruelty Potential.
  • A minor example, but an example nonetheless. At the beginning of Skyward Sword, it's blatantly obvious that Groose and his two goons attacked and imprisoned Link's Loftwing so that he wouldn't be able to participate in the race that determines who gets promoted to senior class in the Knight Academy. And even when that doesn't work, they still cheat during the actual race, despite having been explicitly told that interfering with other competitors is prohibited. And yet, as far as anyone can tell, neither Groose nor his lackeys got in any kind of trouble for the things they did.
    • Groose pretty thoroughly redeems himself later in the story, and his lackeys aren't shown to be causing any more trouble after he's left Skyloft. It's heavily implied they all live on to lead productive and decent lives.
  • In Adventure Quest Worlds, Sek Duat uses Zhoom and the hero to find the lamp containing Saahir, the Djinn that's said to be able to defeat Tibicenas, the eighth Lord of Chaos. Then he slips away and makes his way to the lamp's resting place and the hero and Zhoom fight him to get it. Sek Duat "kills off" both of them and gets the lamp, and just to make sure nobody else gets it, he causes a cave-in in case the two were to miraculously climb back up. Unknown to him, Zhoom slipped him the Dreamdust, which causes the lamp he claimed to be replaced by a rock, causing him to think he had won. This is the last we see of him in AQ Worlds.
    • Kimberly Freeman, the real sixth Lord of Chaos, counts as well. To be fair, she was Brainwashed and Crazy, and after she is free from the Chaos tune that Drakath sang to her, she asks the hero if he / she wants to participate with her band, and they perform in the same way they were before being freed by him / her, this time with no Chaos tune controlling them and the hero performing alongside them.
  • Kirby Super Star gives us quite an example in Captain Vul. He makes sure the piloting of the Halberd runs smoothly, but when Kirby invades the Halberd, Vul becomes violently obsessed and will do anything to kill him - even destroy his own ship. After Kirby destroys the reactor, of course, Vul panics and decides he would rather live than go down with the Halberd. He is the first to evacuate the doomed airship, and is never seen again.
  • In the Fate and Unlimited Blade Works routes of Fate/stay night, the protagonist never even finds out about Zouken Matou, and he is presumably still torturing Sakura, which is one of the primary reasons fans consider those routes to have Bittersweet Endings.
  • Isabela in Dragon Age 2. Her selfishness forces the Qunari to stay at Kirkwall for years, causing numerous conflicts between them and the inhabitants of the city and ultimately leading to a full-scale war that kills hundreds if not thousands of Kirkwall's guards and citizens. Even when there was still time to prevent the conflict, Isabella stole the object of the Qunari's mission and ran off with it. Even if she comes back later and turns it in to the Qunari Arishok, it's too late to undo the damage. And no matter what choices are made, she never gets any kind of comeuppance for the ruin that she caused (if she is handed over to the Arishok, it is believed that she escapes their boat two days later).
  • Sam and Max Spade from Fable II, who repeatedly misuse a highly dangerous necromantic tome and summon undead monsters that proceed to kill innocent bystanders. The brothers aren't intending to cause trouble or get people killed, but it frequently happens and they never learn, nor are they ever punished for the lives lost.
  • Recurring Boss Vanessa from Luminous Arc is set up this way, constantly being asked to join the other Witches permanently after a handful of Enemy Mine encounters, despite having killed who-knows-how-many human researchers on her solo quest for Plot Coupons. Also, it gets subverted when when her rather complex motivations are spelled out. The deaths attributed to her turn out to be due to the project they were working on going out of control. Vanessa was in the right place at the right time and simply took off with the Lapistier during the chaos, and the Church pinned the deaths on her in propaganda. Vanessa forced her fights with the protagonists since she (correctly) assumed the human party calling the shots was too full of Fantastic Racism to hear her version of events and would have fought her anyway, and resented the other Witches for being passive enough for things to get as out of hand as they did. Proven innocent and with the Witches pushed into action, she has nothing to apologize for and happily joins.
  • From Tomb Raider, well… Lara Croft. Granted, she has indeed gotten into a lot of trouble for what she does, but while killing mooks is usually unavoidable in games like this, Lara’s kill count - which often includes civilians and endangered animal species - makes one wonder why she isn’t incarcerated at the Colorado Supermax. Some of the terrible things she’s done in her long career that she has never been punished for include:
    • Nobody has ever denied that Lara is a thief (the name of the franchise is Tomb Raider, after all) but as Tomb Raider II shows, she has stolen artifacts that are protected by the UNESCO convention (this is a violation of an international treaty, by the way) boldly displaying these spoils at Croft Manor.
    • Tomb Raider III: Breaking into Area 51 and killing several soldiers, none of whom ever did anything bad to her, haphazardly launching a missile in the process.
    • Also in Tomb Raider III; Breaking into the Museum of Natural History, probably killing several guards, who again, never did a thing to harm her in their lives (it’s possible to complete the mission without killing anyone, but difficult) all to simply gain embalming fluid. Seriously, there must have been an easier way to get that.
    • Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Stole a cursed dagger; in her defense, she stole it so Trinity wouldn’t get it, but the warning of what would happen if anyone laid hands on it were in plain sight all around the temple, and the nearby village was destroyed by a tsunami as a result. And Trinity wound up getting it anyway.
    • In Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, she broke into the Louvre, probably murdering at least one security guard (again, it’s possible not to, but difficult), and while they are looking for her this time, it isn’t personal. Her reasons why? Not to steal art, but obtain a security code.
    • And in the original game she, well, she destroyed Atlantis. Okay, in all fairness, she did so to prevent The End of the World as We Know It, but in hindsight, you have to wonder whether such a drastic action was truly necessary.

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  1. ↑ the game was rushed to production due to fears of a possible Capcom bankruptcy
  2. ↑ Like the manager and his girlfriend that get murdered over rap lyrics
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