No Good Deed Goes Unpunished/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The hero does something good, only to be "rewarded" with suffering.

  • Straight: Marcy rescues a Damsel in Distress from a monster. Unfortunately, this grabs the attention of the monster's master, who decides to punish her for her defiance...
  • Exaggerated: Marcy rescues a Damsel in Distress and escorts her home... only to learn that the village was trying to sacrifice her to protect themselves, and they aren't too pleased with her interference. She's attacked and arrested, and they plan to sacrifice her instead. Before they get the chance, however, the monster attacks first -- along with his master, looking for the one who defied him.
  • Justified: Marcy had good intentions, but wasn't aware of the full situation before acting, and has to deal with the consequences.
  • Inverted: Laser-Guided Karma
  • Subverted: Marcy is in turn rescued from the monster's master by the damsel she saved earlier.
  • Double Subverted: Although Marcy is rescued from the monster's master by the damsel, it turns out the damsel was just saving Marcy so she - actually a vampire - could drink Marcy's blood.
  • Parodied: Marcy finds a little girl wandering around lost, tries to help her find her parents, and is promptly accused of trying to kidnap her and run out of town.
  • Deconstructed: After suffering severe consequences for all her good deeds, Marcy finally gives up on the whole heroism thing, as it's just too hard and thankless.
    • The sense of morality and empathy itself was installed into the human psyche, so that their souls would be easier to be collected and tortured by the Eldritch Abomination who had been farming them.
  • Reconstructed: Marcy deals with the unfair consequences, reasoning that doing good is its own reward, and eventually earns her happy ending, but she still become cynical and bitter about the thanklessness.
  • Zig Zagged: Marcy is captured by the monster's master, and rescued by the damsel. It turns out the damsel is a vampire who plans to drink Marcy's blood - but this is only because she's grateful, and wants to give Marcy vampiric powers to assist in her fight against evil. After Marcy convinces her that this isn't what she wants, she joins up with Marcy, and the two defeat the evil master together. However, this draws the attention of The Man Behind the Man...
  • Averted: Marcy rescues a Damsel in Distress from a monster. She is given a reward by the damsel's thankful father, and sets off to perform more heroism.
  • Enforced: The writers are building up the the audience's sympathy for Marcy by having her get punished for doing the right thing.
  • Lampshaded: "Karma is a total bitch, Marcy. You'll see what I mean soon enough."
  • Invoked: "We want the show to be realistic and everyone knows that people are Ungrateful Bastards in Real Life, no exceptions."
  • Defied: "Well that's not being realistic. That's being fashionably cynical."
  • Discussed: "Marcy, doing something right attracts jealousy. Be careful when and how you do it. Sometimes not doing anything is the best thing to do."
  • Conversed: "Why must people always go after the one who did the right thing?"
  • Played For Laughs: Marcy saves a kitten from a tree, only to realize that the tree is the cat's home, and gets rewarded by getting scratched in the face.
  • Played For Drama: Marcy has been hiding people of an ethnicity that Emperor Evulz has declared Exclusively Evil and In Desperate Need Of Total Extermination, and some of Evulz' Mooks have discovered that she's saving lives.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished...no act of charity goes unresented.

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