No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' is all about this trope. Dr. Tenma saves the life of a young boy, who turns out to be the titular [[Complete Monster]], and spends the rest of the series paying for it. He also has a habit of risking capture to tend to others' wounds, even when he ''knows'' they're bad guys, and he eventually {{spoiler|gets caught by the police}} because he stopped to help a little kid who scraped his knee. [[The Woobie|Poor Tenma]].

* The reason [[Naruto|Nagato]] finally snapped and became Pain. Well, that and a bit of more general [[Cosmic Plaything]] status and a [[Dead Little Sister|dead best friend]] (whose corpse he preserved and rigged up as a zombie avatar of himself).

* {{spoiler|Annie}} spared Armin in ''[[Attack on Titan]]'' who then deduced she was {{spoiler|the female titan}}.

 

* ''[[Incredible Hulk]]'' is another series that springs from this trope, with Bruce Banner paying an even more personal cost for saving Rick Jones.

* [[Deadpool]]'s bad luck is compounded by his own insanity and [[Blue and Orange Morality|off kilter morality]]. He might do good, but even if he's acknowledged by the other heroes, instead of acceptance he'll receive a swift boot out of the city. Acceptance is all the guy really wants, which makes Wade's case even more tragic.

* In ''[[The Mighty Thor|Thor (Vol.5) #4]]'', Jane Foster - who at the time, has the powers and identity of Thor - is accosted by longtime Thor villain Absorbing Man, who laughs at the idea of a woman taking the hero's role. This comment causes Titania - his own wife and frequent accomplice - to slug him and knock him unconscious. Despite sparing Jane a difficult fight, Jane still smacks Titania across the face with Mjolnir and takes her in. ([[What the Hell, Hero?]])

 

* In the Third Movement of ''[[With Strings Attached]]'', the four encounter a colony of shrunken humans being used as a science project by aliens. They unshrink the humans and take 40 of them back to C'hou to start a new life. But [[Unwanted Rescue|the humans resent being removed from their universe]] and, among other things, steal the four's personal stuff after the four are whisked away to look for the third piece of the Vasyn.

* ''[[Pattycakes]]'': Dash would have preferred to keep napping, but went to see Fluttershy because she's a good friend; it got her [[Slipping a Mickey|mickey'd]], [[Mind Rape|mindraped]] and mentally regressed, roughly [[In That Order]].

 

* From Christopher Nolan's ''[[The Dark Knight Saga]]'':

** In ''The Dark Knight'' Sal Maroni explains to [[Batman]] that nobody will tell him where [[The Joker]] is because Batman has "[[Thou Shalt Not Kill|rules]]," while the Joker does not. In a choice between the two, it's healthier to make Batman mad to avoid pissing off the Joker than it would be the other way around.

* In ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]'', Captain John Miller's decision to spare Steamboat Willie comes back to bite him in the ass later on, {{spoiler|when the latter kills him}}.

 

* ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]'', by Harper Lee, where the whole story revolves around a good deed that is punished, namely the protagonist's father, a defense attorney, making the unpopular decision to defend a black man who has been falsely accused. Even more so the reason that the black man is in trouble in the first place was because he did a number of good deeds for a troubled young white woman because he felt pity for her.

* ''Justine'', by the [[Marquis de Sade]], is an incredibly over-the-top rendering of this trope, with the title character's virtue and good deeds rewarded with the worst kind of abuse and suffering throughout her life. And considering that the author's name is where we get the word "sadism," we have a clear picture of just how bad things get for her.

* [[The Dresden Files|Harry Dresden]] could be the poster child for this trope. No matter how many times he saves the world, no matter how many times he does the right thing, ''breaking even is coming out ahead for him''. And he doesn't come out ahead very often.

** And let's not forget poor {{spoiler|Murphy. }} In Proven Guilty, {{spoiler|she abandons an investigation to help Harry save a teenage girl who is the daughter of a [[Knight Templar]], by going through ''the heart of Winter itself'', with no guarentee that she'll come out alive, the odds stacked against her. She doesn't even hesitate to help. Her reward? A demotion, and a warning that she'll get fired if it happens again. }}

** And that girl he saved? The one his father was killed over because Drizz't didn't murder her? She grew up to be violently obsessed with the purple-eyed drow she saw on the day her family was killed, tracked him down, and forced Drizz't to kill her in self-defense when she tried to seek revenge on the man who saved her life for crimes he did not commit. Drizz't recognized her after she died.

* In ''[[Honor Harrington|Honor Among Enemies]]'', Warner Caslet is the captain of a light cruiser in the navy of the People's Republic of Haven. Haven has recently suffered a coup d'etat and is now ruled by a vicious, bloodthirsty regime which not only [[You Have Failed Me...|kills the officers who fail in their assignments]], but shoots their families for good measure. When he is dispatched to the Silesian Confederacy as a scout for a commerce raiding operation that will prey on the merchant shipping of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, which Haven is at war with, he discovers a batch of home-grown pirates who are sadistic on a whole new level, capturing merchant ships even when they know they will not be able to take any captured cargo with them and torturing/raping the crew ''en masse''. Caslet manages to convince his [[The Political Officer|Peoples Commissioner]] that these pirates deserve to be caught, even if it is not in their orders to do so, and eventually tracks down their ship. However, the pirates are in the midst of capturing another freighter, and this one is a ''Manticoran'' ship, which Caslet has standing orders to capture himself. Caslet knows that there is a good chance that his ship will be destroyed if he decides to engage the pirates, and his own superiors might very well execute him on general principles if he risks his command to save a ship belonging to an enemy nation, but his personal integrity will not allow him to stand by and he again convinces his Commissioner to allow an intervention...[[Dramatic Irony|then the Manticoran "freighter" he was trying to save revealed that it was a disguised warship and ended up capturing]] ''[[Dramatic Irony|his]]'' [[Dramatic Irony|ship.]] He avoids his government's wrath over this due to a legal loophole (All the officers claimed that the Manticoran freighter was flying under Andermani colors at the time in their reports, and his orders stated he was to assist Andermani ships), only then to end up earning the personal displeasure of a dubiously sane member of the Committee of Public Safety for showing basic decency to prisoners of war.

* [[Harry Potter]]'s mom wouldn't have been able to preform the heroic sacrifice that brought about Voldemort's first downfall if Voldemort didn't give her the chance to stand aside in the first place.

 

* [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'s life runs on this trope. No matter what she does, the PTB find new ways to fuck with her.

** [[Angel]] has this happen as well, particularly in the 4th and 5th seasons.

* In the ''[[Monk]]'' episode "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies", the Graduate Student Julie Teeger (not to be confused with Natalie's daughter) ends up getting a package meant to be delivered to a housewife of the same name by mistake, and generously delivers it to the rightful receiver. Unfortunately, that package contained evidence that her husband, George Teeger, was unfaithful to her, and both the housewife and the grad student in return end up killed by the husband.

* A constant theme on ''[[The Wire]]'', particularly with regard to the Baltimore Police Department. Any police character who sticks his neck out to try to do some good ''will'' be [[Reassigned to Antarctica]], if not fired outright, for the sin of pissing off the bosses and/or the politicians.

 

== Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legend ==

* In some versions, Mordred of [[King Arthur|Arthurian legend]]. At the [[wikipedia:Battle of Camlann|Battle of Camlann]], Mordred {{spoiler|draws his sword in order to kill a serpent at Arthur's heel during peace negotiations}}, but Bedwyr sees this as an act of betrayal and calls for war. This ends with {{spoiler|Arthur and Mordred killing one another and Mordred being seen as a traitor forever}}.

 

* So common in ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' that it's rare to see anyone even ''try'' to do good deeds anymore. A quote from the [[Card-Carrying Villain|forces of Chaos]] Codex: "Let no good deed go unpunished, and let no evil deed go unrewarded."

 

** And to quote the Tin-Man: ''Holy Christ!''

 

* ''[[Star Wars]]: [[Knights of the Old Republic]] II''. If you give a beggar some money, Kreia's [[What the Hell, Hero?]] [[lampshade]]s the trope.

{{quote|'''Kreia:''' If you seek to aid everyone that suffers in the galaxy, you will only weaken yourself... and weaken them. It is the internal struggles, when fought and won on their own, that yield the strongest rewards. You stole that struggle from them, cheapened it. If you care for others, then dispense with pity and sacrifice and recognize the value in letting them fight their own battles. And when they triumph, they will be even stronger for the victory.}}

** Similarly, the woman who left him basically did it out of guilt for her part in Vincent's father's death when both were trying to research Chaos.

** Chaos in Dissidia was shown to be somewhat merciful to his minions, even unwilling to punish them if they disobey them. Unfortunately for him, this also results in most of the villains not being truly loyal to Chaos, to the extent that once he {{spoiler|offs Cosmos}}, they end up doing their own thing, abandoning Chaos, with only Garland remaining by Chaos' side.

* Subverted in ''[[Odin Sphere]]''. Gwendolyn (outside the battlefield) is actually a pretty kind and caring person. She exposes and eliminates a traitor and rescues her half-sister Velvet (despite her own feelings) to ease her father's pain. She suffers punishment for this—but the powers that be give karma the finger by manipulating destiny so that her magically induced punishment ends up being her perfect match, and these two are supposed to save the world.

* In ''[[Fate/stay night]]'', Emiya Shirou stays at school late to sweep the archery dojo as a favour to his friend Shinji. This gets him ''stabbed in the heart''. By Cúchulainn.

** Did you {{spoiler|rewrite the Heretic Geth}}? Congrats, you just made {{spoiler|getting the Geth and Quarians to make peace}} ''[[Luck-Based Mission|that]]'' much harder.

* Massive irony (and massive spoilers) in one possible ending of ''[[Heavy Rain]]''. If {{spoiler|the [[Big Bad]]}} selflessly saves a certain person's life, and {{spoiler|kills all the heroes}}, he'll appear to get away with it all in the end only to end up being killed by the one, completely unrelated person whose life he saved.

* In the backstory to ''[[Gears of War]]'', Dom testifies in Fenix's defense after he is charged with desertion for his ''entirely justified'' attempt to save his father. His "reward" is being demoted, facing public humiliation, and being hated by the top brass for "supporting a traitor".

* Similarly, in ''[[Resistance]]: Retribution'', James Grayson's reward for destroying ''26'' Chimera conversion facilities is...to be imprisoned and threatened with execution because he disobeyed ''one'' order.

** You also have Patches the Hyena, who every time you "help" him, he traps you with a horrible enemy, Satsuki, who if you're good offers you a quest to grab a sword where at the end he tries to kill you with it if you give it to him, tries to kill you to steal it if you don't, and just straight up tries to kill you if he see's you with it equipped, if you're bad, his evil version tries to kill you without even bothering with the quest, and of course there is the end of the game {{spoiler|where you get to be a Monumental, a living seal for the [[Big Bad|Old One]] until you die, assuming that the Maiden in Black was just doing the same routine as last time, though this is up for debate. Oh, this also means that all Soul Arts will be gone from the world.}}

* One of the main ways ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'' shows that it is depressing and cynical as hell is showing how nearly every good deed John performs ultimately amounts to nothing. {{spoiler|Help the desperate hooker make a new life for herself? Her pimp hunts her down and murders her. Help a Chinese immigrant get back to his lover? He dies of an opium overdose before he's even halfway there. Help a woman whose pregnant get funds from her illegitimate suitor? It turns out she's a con artist, and you just killed an innocent man (albeit in self defense) and left a distraught woman widowed...}}

* So at the beginning of ''[[Singularity]]'', an unstable time warp sends you back to 1955, right into the midst of a burning building and dying Soviet scientists. You find one man running for his life, only for the floor to collapse beneath him. Naturally, you grab his hand and carry him to safety. Oh, the catch? Turns out Dr. Demichev had cruelty to rival Stalin and because you saved him, the project he was working on went further than it ever had in the original history, giving him fantastic weapons that allowed him to take over the world. {{spoiler|And the only way to undo it is to go back in time and kill yourself. If you do so, it causes a [[Snap Back]] to the beginning of the game so you don't technically die... then you find out you're in an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union ''still'' rules the world, albeit with a (hopefully) much more benevolent person in charge.}}

* ''[[Return to Krondor]]'' plays this straight, at the beginning of the game no less. You can tear down a sweatshop that uses children as labourers. Now while this may give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, it turns out that there are consequences. The owner of the sweatshop, Yusef, worked for Jazhara's uncle in Kesh. You will encounter Izmali assassins - ninja-like killers who will attack you with poisoned daggers. They were apparently paid by Jazhara's uncle to kill you for meddling in the affairs of Kesh. You will encounter a group of them in the third chapter of the game, and another group roughly halfway through the game. In the second last chapter, you will find a dead group of these assassins. If you search their bodies, you will find out in a letter written by Jazhara's uncle that {{spoiler|The Crawler, who Yusef was an agent for, pulled strings and is the one actually responsible for these assassins being sent in the first place. Jazhara's uncle is trying to tell her that he knows she was not meddling in the affairs of Kesh, and that there is little he can actually do, due to the Crawler being quite powerful and elusive.}} You can decide not to even investigate the sweatshop, and you will never be accosted by the Izmali assassins.

* ''Civilization 4'' has a random wartime event that tells you the enemy has shown unexpected mercy towards wounded prisoners of war, and that this could be a stepping stone towards negotiations for peace. The player then receives the option to either force a 10 turn peace treaty with a +1 bonus to the relations with the enemy civ, or continue the fight. The option to continue the fight actually says "No good deed shall go unpunished".

* Support nice old man Harrowmont to keep ruthless fratricidal bastard Bhelen off the throne of Orzammar in [[Dragon Age]]? Congratulations, Harrowmont gets assassinated within a year of his coronation and Orzammar is back to where it was before you intervened.

* In ''[[Dark Souls]]'' the "reward" for following through with the quest to link the First Flame is a horrible burning existence as the new Cinder. And it's doubtful how "good" this deed really is.

 

* ''[[Squid Row]]'': After Grace [[Lazy Bum|lets all the special orders accumulate]], and Randie clears them, the viciously unpleasant Grace get more hours.

 

* Bruno Bozzetto's ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeSzFtqLxQ4 "How to Drive: Yes and No"]''

* Agent Washington from ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' could be a poster child for this trope. He went against his orders to spare Agent South's life... and she shot him in the back as thanks (following orders from the same command as him, no less). After he returns to work, instead of receiving the support he needs to stop [[The Juggernaut|The Meta]], he gets saddled with bureaucracy and a team full of idiots. And after he takes down that military organization and puts a stop to its numerous unsanctioned experiments based on [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot|fragmented AIs]], he gets [[Arrested for Heroism|slapped with a number of criminal charges for his efforts]] (most notably, 7 counts of destruction of military property).

* In V4 of ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'', Luke Templeton talks Clio Gabriella out of committing suicide and generally helps her out. How does she repay him? By shooting him in the chest and head.

 

* There's a [[Donald Duck]] cartoon short where Donald gives an ant a bit of sugar out of kindness. In return for his good deed, the ants invade his house for more and eventually cause it to blow up, presumably killing Donald.

* In a similar vein, the episode "Can You Spare a Dime?" of ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' features Squidward quitting his job over a misunderstanding. When he ends up losing his house, Spongebob selflessly takes him into his own home, and takes care of him. Squidward "thanks" him by becoming a freeloader, forcing SpongeBob to wait on him hand and foot.

** And even more brutally three years earlier when he spoke out against sacrificing newly-recruited soldiers, and got burned and banished for it.

** And Haru in season 1, who saved an old guy from a cave using Earthbending, but was turned into the Fire Nation soldiers by said guy.

** Azula of all people [[Shipper on Deck|ships]] her brother and best friend together the result: {{spoiler|Mai pulls a [[High Heel Face Turn]] betrayed her for Zuko and that was just the [[Humiliation Conga|beginning]]}}

** Frank Grimes saves Homer from drinking a vial of acid, but smashes it against a wall. Burns chews out Grimes for wasting his precious acid ([[No OSHA Compliance|Though who keeps acid in the dining area?]]), and even worse, had he not saved Homer he might not have died.

** Also, Ned Flanders attempted to be kind by allowing two female college students to stay while they sleep and work on their studies. How do they repay him? By using the room he rented out to them as a studio for a soft-core video site, sexy slumber party. Similarly in the same episode, Flanders attempts to be a good neighbor to his town and to Homer, but his attempts at good deeds are repaid by Homer leaking the video to the whole town, as well as the town cheering on the girls when he evicts them, and mocking him behind their backs.

** Bart, as the Shadow Knight, decides to do a good deed and sacrifice two thirds of his life to resurrect an elf, Marge, although Marge tends to Bart, the same can't be said for the rest of the characters, deciding that his action meant he was easy pickings, and decided to take advantage of his weakened state by brutally slaughtering him.

** When Homer [[Flowers for Algernon Syndrome|became smart]] he sends a safety report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This leads to everyone losing their jobs.

* Buttons from ''[[Animaniacs]]'' embodies this trope. Every episode has Mindy getting out of her harness or crib etc, and causing Buttons to go and save her, [[Badly-Battered Babysitter|going through absolute hell in the process]]. And at the end of every short the [[Adults Are Useless|parents]] scolds him every [[Precision F-Strike|FUCKING TIME!!]] Well, at least Mindy comforts him. He gets {{spoiler|praised and rewarded for his dedication and loyalty in [[The Movie]]}}, however.

* An episode of ''[[Adventure Time]]'' where Finn shares his food with a man who turns out to be a wizard. The wizard turns him into a giant foot for his kindness. The moral that this wizard was trying to teach Finn? [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|People are jerks and you shouldn't help them.]]

* Batman always follows through with [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|one rule]] when dealing with the Joker, sometimes even saving the latter. Come ''[[Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker]]'', and the flashback that ensued, Batman most likely will wish he hadn't followed that rule knowing that Batman was in a way responsible for the Joker's most horrific (as well as final) act.

* ''[[X-Men: Evolution]]'' has the end of season 2: The sentinel is released, and by sticking around to fight it, the mutants are forced to reveal themselves, causing mass witch hunting and prejudice against them, even after they prove that they weren't responsible for the Sentinel and were the good guys there. Then, as the end of the series proves, the same thing happens when {{spoiler|They defeat Apocalypse, and its revealed that mutant hatred will continue, more, and more powerful, sentinels will be built and used, one of their closest allies will be consumed by darkness, and at least two of them will be noticibly missing in the future line up. Hey, at least Magneto will become good and the Brotherhood will join SHIELD, but since it was SHIELD who were placed in charge of Sentinel production in the present, that might not be a good thing.}}

 

* One example is that of Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, a homeless man in [[New York City]] who attacked a mugger that was robbing a woman and succeeded in driving him off and allowing her to flee. He was stabbed for his troubles and bled to death on the sidewalk while about two dozen people walked by.

* Additionally, [[Dirty Cop|crooked]], [[Police Are Useless|lazy cops]] have been known to pin crimes on the people who called them just because they are having a difficult time finding the real criminal. Calling the cops and, as a consequence, being asked to testify in court as a witness can make them a target.

* The fact that Good Samaritan Laws exist in North America is a result of this. There are cases where a person tried to sue the person who performed CPR or the Heimlich Maneuver on them. In some cases this is because the good samaritan may performed life-saving technique wrong, injuring the victim even more than they already are, while certain other life-saving procedures result in injuries even when done correctly.<ref>one example being CPR, [[CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable|which tends to result in broken ribs]]</ref> Because of events like this, people hesitate to help someone that is in trouble, fearing they will be punished for just trying to help out or hurt the victim even more.

** In some emergencies, it really ''is'' preferable that non-experts not get involved, because they ''will'' either doom the victim or become new victims themselves. Drowning is a classic example. Don't jump into the water to rescue a swimmer in distress if you don't know what you're doing.

* The trope name is frequently quoted by ''[[Judge Judy]]'', in cases where the plaintiff got screwed over by trying to help someone (usually by lending money to a deadbeat).

* Read headlines at [[Fark]].com and you'll eventually come across many of these.