Laser-Guided Karma: Difference between revisions

[[File:karma 9861.jpg|link=Fallout|frame|The relationship of cause and effect in ''[[Fallout]]'' stops just short of [[Bolt of Divine Retribution]]. But the cat's relatives ''will'' send mercenaries after your blood.]]

 

 

While in [[Real Life]] there is rarely a direct and easily traced relation between actions and their subsequent reward or punishment, in fiction the connection is usually a lot more... ''direct''. Help an old lady across the street? [[Chekhov's Gunman|Several chapters later]], [[Retired Badass|she'll turn out to be an elite ex-commando]] [[Storming the Castle|who will gladly help you storm the Big Bad's castle]]. [[Kick the Dog|Kick the little dog that's barking at you?]] [[The Dog Bites Back|The dog will sniff you out and lead the heroes right to your]] [[Supervillain Lair]].

 

'''For sake of trope differentiation, examples should be limited to bad karma, heroic or villainous, and when an opponent's "good karma" combines to double wham the antagonist.'''

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* Cell and Frieza from ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' are perfect examples. Thier own actions always come back to bite them in the ass. Cell is a fine example of the most stupid [[Kick the Dog]] to give himself a strong opponent, oopsie. Then we have Frieza, the victim of the age old trope, the [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy]]. Hhis plan to stop the coming of the Super Saiyan might have worked, if he'd just finished Goku off quickly instead of attacking Piccolo and killing Krillin just so he could show everyone he was STILL a [[Complete Monster]]. Talk about a bad case of [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain]] for him.

* [[The Juggernaut|Mr Don]] in ''[[Eyeshield 21]]'' had earlier used [[Blood Knight|Gaou]] as his punching bag and ran [[The Ace|Yamato]] out of Notre Dame. In the Japan vs. America game, those two are the first who end up beating him for the first time.

* Wyald of ''[[Berserk]]'' is a [[The Hedonist|hedonistic]] Apostle who is after the Band of the Hawk and Griffith in particular on orders from the King of Midland and has a [[Horny Devils|particular delight in raping people]]. {{spoiler|When he tries to do this to Guts' [[Love Interest]] Casca, Guts almost kills him despite being half-dead and "[[Sin City|takes his weapon away from him]]" in [[Groin Attack|graphic fashion]]}}. Things only get worse for Wyald when {{spoiler|Zodd shows up to teach him a very painful lesson about trying to get in the way of Griffith's destiny as a [[Big Bad|Godhand]] and [[Half the Man He Used To Be|rips him in half]] for his trouble}}.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* In Scrooge and Flintheart's second confrontation for determining who was the world's richest duck, they convert all their holdings into silver dollars and will have the piles measured. Glomgold, worried he might lose, tries to cheat by purchasing a special liquid that can shrink things with the goal of using it to shrink Scrooge's pile of money. His plan is thwarted, and he ultimately loses...by the same amount of silver dollars that he spent to buy the juice

* In one issue early in his time as ''[[The Flash]]'', Wally West expresses contempt for a homeless man who seeks shelter in his apartment building. Then ''he's'' evicted, and thanks to various other misfortunes (his credit cards being inexplicably declined, his superspeed shorting out from hunger, losing both his luggage and his mother) he's reduced to eating pretzels from mud puddles in less than a day and getting the same amount of scorn from passersby (one of who dropped that pretzel in the puddle to see if he was desperate enough to eat it). It eventually turns out that it's all due to machinations from aliens who were deliberately putting him under stress.

 

* The final outcome that awaits Carter Burke in ''[[Aliens]]'' is this in spades.

* In "No Country For Old Men", Anton Chigurh murders the innocent wife of the protagonist even after she argues with him that he has no reason to kill her. As soon as he drives off, he gets hit by a car.

*** Lockhart, who takes credit for other people's achievements then erases their memories. He {{spoiler|gets his memory erased (accidentally) by ''himself'' towards the end of ''Chamber of Secrets''}}.

* One particularly horrific version appears in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[Past Doctor Adventures]] novel ''Festival of Death'', in which a character wipes out a species as research into how they are able to resurrect at the beginning of their lives with memories of how the last one went, in the hope of doing this and saving his parents from a shuttle accident. {{spoiler|He succeeds, and [[And I Must Scream|learns he can only watch, not interfere with what's happened]], essentially forcing him to watch all the tragedies and atrocities of his life an ''infinite'' number of times.}}

* ''Walter The Weremouse'', by John Dashney, works on this trope. Walter Wampler stops on his way home from work to help an old woman who's struggling with her grocery bags, and when they've been successfully trucked home she reveals that it was actually a [[Secret Test of Character]]; she appears to people who don't even have the opportunity for potential (much like Walter, whose life is at such a dead end that occasionally people forget he exists), and if they pass her test, she gives them a special cheese that, aside from being the most delicious cheese anyone's ever tasted, gives them just enough of a shove that they can make their lives go much better, but will have unpleasant consequences if eaten after midnight (hence why the book is called Walter ''the Weremouse'').

* Although Artemis Entreri was a [[Karma Houdini]] ''[[The Icewind Dale Trilogy]]'', taking Regis captive and cutting off two of his fingers, karma catches up to him shortly after. In ''[[Legacy of the Drow Series|The Legacy]]'' he tortures Regis even more, to goad Drizzt into fighting for his friend's life. But when it's all said and done, Entreri ends up badly injured and hanging from a cliff by his torn cloak. He is stuck in that position for over a day before he is found...by Regis. Regis taunts the helpless Entreri, takes several of his possessions, wonders aloud if he should bring help for the assassin...then decides that he's not feeling too merciful, and cuts the last remaining strands of Entreri's cloak, causing him to fall. {{spoiler|And while Entreri does survive this, he winds up stuck in Menzoberranzan, and he is absolutely ''miserable'' there.}}

* In Tom Kratman's ''Caliphate'', an amoral, self-centered pedophile with [[Complete Monster|no redeeming qualities whatsoever]] is working for the book's bad guys to create a [[The Virus|super-virus]]. When he along with the child slaves being used for both test subjects and his personal gratification are rescued by the protagonist team, two of the children he abused use a shoelace and pencil to create a tourniquet they use to kill him by strangulation.

* In O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation", safecracker Jimmy Valentine tries to make a new life for himself as "Ralph Spencer" after pulling a few jobs, but his nemesis police officer Ben Price tracks him down. During Ben's visit, a little girl gets herself locked in the bank vault. Jimmy puts his safecracking abilities to good use by rescuing the little girl, confirming his identity to Ben beyond a doubt. But when Jimmy resigns himself to being arrested, Ben pretends not to know him and says goodbye to "Mr. Spencer".

* In ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' , Tigerstar has been maniuplating events for a while in order to become [[Thunder Clan]]'s leader. He got set a trap for Bluestar at the edge of the Thunderpath with the intention of killing her, but Cinderpelt ended up investigating the Thunderpath and getting hit by a car, which permanantly damaged one of her legs and dashed her hopes of ever being a Warrior. Before that, in Into The Wild, he killed Redtail, [[Thunder Clan]]'s deputy at the time. Not many moons after that, he learned that Ravenpaw, his apprentice saw what happened, and [[Tiger Star]] planned to kill him to make sure he stayed silent. In Forest of Secrets, he led a group of rouges in an attack against [[Thunder Clan]], and he surely would've killed Bluestar if Firestar hadn't been present. In A Dangerous Path, he led a pack of dogs to Snakerocks, which ended up killing one apprentice and disfiguring another. It all came to a head In Darkest hour when he wanted to unite the clans as one(which is a lot worse than it sounds) under his leadership. He managed to get [[River Clan]] to join "[[Lion Clan]]" and tried to get Graystripe's kits killed by having Stonefur, Bluestar's son, to kill them. When Stonefur refused, he sic'd Darkstripe on him, and when it looked like Darkstripe was going to lose, Tigerstar got another one of his followers to kill Stonefur. And after his betrayal, Bluestar completely lost her mind, which made her stop caring about her Clan. While his death at the hands of Scourge wasn't one that any sane cat would wish on another, you have to admit that after all that happened he really deserved to die. In fact, Tigerstar was so despised, that his son carried the suspicions of his Clanmates.

* [[Roald Dahl]]'s ''The Enormous Crocodile''. The title character's misdeeds towards other animals throughout the book backfire on him big time, and devious attempts to eat kids are thwarted at every turn. {{He ends up being [[Hurl It Into the Sun|thrown into the Sun]] by the elephant he bit earlier}}.

 

* The premise of ''[[My Name Is Earl]]''. Not just laser guided, a karma satellite orbital attack grid is aimed at the cast of characters.

* On ''[[Tosh.0]]'' this trope is invoked in a Web Redemption, when a video shows a man attempting to do a complicated slam dunk falls into a garbage can immediately after littering. In his words "that would be some fast-acting karma."

* Russell Hantz on ''Survivor: Redemption Island'' set off a [[Chain Reaction]] of karma for his tribe. He might have been able to get away with some of his old tricks in ''Heroes vs. Villains,'' back when he was an unknown quantity. Not this season (which began through a dare from Rob). Ran the exact same play in the exact same way, which triggered the no-less stupid decision to throw an immunity challenge while only two players ahead. He was the first one gone from the tribe, with the rest following in short order.

* In ''[[Big Brother]]'', Jeff pretty much spends the ''entire'' game trash-talking the newbies and calling them "Floaters". (Ignoring, of course that [[Double Standard|his girlfriend Jordan was doing the exact same stuff they were yet somehow got away with it.]]) After he thinks getting rid of their apparent leader will cause them to [[Decapitated Army|run around recklessly and give him]] [[Executive Meddling|the easy win he was promised]]), one of his supposed goons decides to start playing the game for herself and decides to join the newbies in getting him out. When him and his partners fail to win Head of Household ''and'' Veto, guess who's sent out the door?

* The [[Malcolm in the Middle]] episode ''Malcolm Defends Reese'': Mr. Herkabe, not wanting his title of "highest GPA ever" stripped by Malcolm, has his brother Reese publically humiliated in front of the class, and when Malcolm tries to stick up to Reese, he ends up risking to fail his class, and thus not get the highest GPA ever in order to keep Reese from being humiliated again. After Mr. Herkabe lets slip that he failed Gym, his title is automatically stripped, and he has to retake PE as a student. And to add insult to his (rather deserving) injury, he has to take it the exact same PE Class as Reese, who takes sweet revenge on Herkabe by absolutely creaming him at Dodgeball.

** Hal has also been victim to this at least twice. Once where his earlier claim that the nads were easy pickings when playing basketball with his sons resulted in him being hit in the crotch, another time was in the episode ''Red Dress''. He ended up burning Lois's red dress that she intended to wear for their anniversary. As a consequence, he ended up having his anniversary dinner all by himself while waiting for Lois, and presumably burn the house while completely drunk in Lois and the kid's absence.

* Used quite frequently on [[The King of Queens]] anytime Doug or Carrie (or both) come up with a selfish scheme to benefit themselves. A good example: in the episode ''Buy Curious'' an elderly neighbor dies and Carrie convinces Doug to buy her house for a small sum then "flip it" to make a larger profit. However, it costs them too much to make repairs to it, theuy inadvently insult an African couple who attempt to buy it, and are forced to sell it to Lou Ferrigno (whom they had forced away from the house, despite him only tending the plants)for much less then they paid for it.

* Gregory House of ''[[House]]'' sometimes finds his underhanded actions will undermine the very goal he was aiming to achieve. Perhaps one of the most poignant instances was when he plugged up various sewage mains at the hospital as a result of his anger at {{spoiler|Wilson deciding not to seek cancer treatment}}. When he finally accepts the decision and resolves to enjoy what time he has left with {{spoiler|Wilson}}, he's jailed for felony vandalism as a result of flooding the hospital and loses that remaining time.

 

== Mythology ==

** The moral of these stories? ''Don't piss off the Greek gods''.

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' {{spoiler|the exact moment Cloney tries to bite off Aylee's head, Torg chops Cloney's head right off}}.

* ''[[A Loonatics Tale]]'': Not a villainous example, but certainly notable: Dr. Chester is mean to everyone, and the degree to which he is mean is in inverse proportion to how much they need someone to be nice to them (so to his bosses, he's merely surly, but to Dr. Qubert or his own patients, he's actively derisive and hostile). As a result nothing ever goes his way-machines won't work, his bosses wonder why they hired his useless butt, and his coworkers have nothing nice to say either to or about him.

** Also worth noting is the [[Children Are Cruel|children]] at Hesters summer camp who could have saved themselves some future therapy bills and mental trauma had they been actually 'nice' to Hester, as it stands their hazing of the red headed witch is directly linked to their terrorizing by a vampire.

* In ''[[Dead Winter]]'', Arlen insists on kicking Liz, Alice, Monday, and Lou out of his shelter (in the middle of a [[Zombie Apocalypse]])--and as if that wasn't dickish enough, he also steals the keys to Lou's van. Then the hitman Sixgun comes looking for Monday, and the van out front convinces him that Monday is inside the shelter. Arlen attempts to bar Sixgun's entrance, and just gets shot.

** [[Too Dumb to Live|He pulled a gun on an assassin who styles himself after the outlaws of the old west.]] If he didn't wave his weapon around as a phallic totem of authority all the time, he'd probably still be alive.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

** [[Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged|Lanipator]] gets hit twice with this during part 3 of Blood Harvest. At one point Takahata has been incapped and [[Kaiser Neko]] asks if anyone wants to help him. Lani just says he's shooting Taka. A Charger then attacks Lani. Later, Ganxingba gets trapped by fire and Lani decides to throw a gas can and a propane tank to make it worse. He's then grabbed by a smoker. In both instances he calls it karma.

* In the Yogscast ''[[Minecraft]]'' [[Machinima]], Simon jokingly sets fire to the Yogcave, then stands around yakking while Lewis panics trying to put the flames out. Moments later, Simon is "accidentally" knocked into a deep underground pit. He climbs out and promptly burns to death. Later, when he's respawned and the fire's gone out, he wanders out the back door... and triggers a booby trap and blows up.

''([[Crowning Moment of Funny|Josh almost immediately dies]])'' }}

* While she's too oblivious to see it as such, [[The Nostalgia Chick]] has got her disregard for the privacy of others thrown back at her a few times, like [[Obscurus Lupa]] [[It Makes Sense in Context|hiding in her bed]] or Nella popping up next to her out of nowhere.

* Happens sometimes in the [[Darwin Awards]]. For instance, this man [http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-01.html tried to steal from a collection plate, ran outside onto a highway, and was killed by a bus]. That's pretty instant karma right there.

* The effect is, as stated above, nearly impossible to substantiate in [[Real Life]], but Instant Karma is a recurring observation for many transplant-natives to places like Greenwich Village in Manhattan, The French Quarter in New Orleans, and the Haight-Ashbury of San Francisco. This is explored in fiction, but with less regularity than it's become a recurring topic in [[Real Life]] conversations.

* Lakers player Andrew Bynum put a major hit on Gerald Wallace in a game in late January 2009, a hit that caused Wallace to get a broken rib and a collapsed lung. In Bynum's very next game, he got into a collision with Kobe Bryant, which caused Bynum to have a major MCL tear which put him out for 8–12 weeks, the amount of time [[Broken Base|some NBA fans]] believe he should've been suspended for the hit on Wallace.

* During the filming of ''[[Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song]]'', director Melvin Van Peebles had his 13-year old son, Mario, shoot a scene as a young Sweetback. The scene was where Sweetback lost his virginity to a old hooker. [[Fan Disservice|It was as disturbing as it sounds]] - especially since Mario's skinny frame made him look all of 9. Trying to shoot this scene today would've resulted in a vice raid and a nice long talk with Child Services - at a minimum. Instant Karma got Melvin when he caught gonorrhea during his own (un-simulated) sex scene during the same filming.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOEEk01OCFY Another example] from the NHL in which during a match, player Steve Sullivan was hit in the face with a teammates stick causing a cut across his nose. Cue a fan heckling Steve as he skates off. Two short handed goals by Sullivan later, the opposing teams goalie Patrick Roy tries to clear the puck, only to have it go over the glass and hit the same heckler in the forehead. Bonus points for the man's female friend (who is covering his cut with a cloth) giving Steve a thumbs up as he skates by with a few words of his own.

* A rare case of MMA Instant Karma, but by former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans' own admission, he was actually in the process of taunting Lyoto Machida (or reassuring himself) by attempting to say "you hit like a bitch," only to be cut off by a looping right hook from Machida made all the more effective by Evans' open mouth.

* [http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/03/25/lions-lunch-on-poacher-115875-22137406/ Hunter setting illegal snares is chased off of game preserve by hippos and eaten by lions.]

* One German agent in Istanbul during [[World War II]] was being more of a bother than the [[Emniyet]] preferred. So the [[Emniyet]] sent a man to go up to him and say, "We have discovered that you are Jewish..."

* From ''[[60 Minutes]]'': A bank tried to take away a woman's house by using forged documents. Unfortunately for the bank, said woman was [[Awesome By Analysis|a lawyer and fraud/forgery expert who trains FBI agents]]. It didn't help that the bank(s) did things like putting in the wrong date, occasionally listing the target as '''"BOGUS ACQUISITION"''', and hiring a sweatshop's worth of people to sign the same name to hundreds of documents. However it [[Karma Houdini|ultimately might not matter]] since it'd be too expensive to fight all these cases and the government is thinking of putting aside billions to make the homeowners settle.

* Adolf Eichmann, who came up with and implemented the idea of incinerating concentration camp victims, including Jews, was himself consigned to the flames by the Jews after being hanged for his crimes. His ashes were then scattered over the Mediterranean from an Israeli police boat.

** Ironically, Hitler doesn't count; he had killed himself in his bunker, and his own men burned him and his wife (who had also killed herself) in a funeral pyre at his own request.

*** He did use prussic acid to kill himself, however. Prussic acid was manufactured by I.G Farben and Degussa under the trade name Zyklon-B. Maybe Hitler was [[Genre Savvy]] enough to realize that what goes around, comes around, and the [[Gas Chamber]]s would soon come back to haunt him anyway, so he decided to take such a haunting literally himself by taking the same poison Eichmann suggested be used to gas the Jews to death with...

* Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died of a heart attack on 10 December 2006 ([[wikipedia:Human Rights Day|Human Rights Day]]). It was also the 84th birthday of his wife Lucia Hiriart.

* [[Lindsay Lohan]]'s father Michael was convicted of sexually and physically assaulting his ex-girlfriend Kate Majors and somehow managed to avoid getting a jail sentence, getting sentenced to four months of anger management instead, which many people were angry at. Soon, Michael was scheduled for emergency heart surgery due to chest pains, and the surgery would up being delayed after blood clots were found in his lung.

* During the European-Ottoman conflicts it was common for [[Pirates]] to raid peaceful villages for slaves. When one was captured his probable fate would be to be [[Galley Slave|hauling an oar himself]].

* The Cabin Boy Thomas Pellew was captured by Barbary Pirates and [[Made a Slave]]. Later he escaped. His descendent Edward Pellew would return to the same place, [[Gunboat Diplomacy|with two dozen ships of the line]].

* During a regular-season [[Ice Hockey|NHL game]] in December 2010, the Anaheim Ducks' Bobby Ryan had his stick stolen from him by Minnesota Wild player Mikko Koivu. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmi8CR2sxXA Later on that same play], {{spoiler|Ryan steals Koivu's stick and scores with it. [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Keep in mind that Koivu is right-handed, and Ryan is left-handed.]]}}

* When this [http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/09/04/convicted-rapist-fears-he-got-hiv-from-his-victim/ British man] was convicted of rape, he also learn that [[From Bad to Worse|his victim happens to be HIV-Positive]].

* This [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3csLrtuEIM man] threw bricks at a man with two German Shepherds, at this Moroccan market area. The Shepherd dogs respond by attacking the guy, who it coming.

* This video has cases of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a35-nQ1qmxc instant karma].

* Just type "pranks gone wrong", and you'll be able to sees a host of videos of [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|pranks ending badly]]

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{{reflist}}

[[Category:Villain Ball]]

[[Category:Wish Fulfillment]]

[[Category:Karma]]

[[Category:Stock Aesops]]