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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Difference between revisions
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We all know that [[Karma]] can be a bitch, but sometimes it's a total [[Jerkass]]. It's not enough that the bad guy is a [[Karma Houdini]]. It's not enough that the good guy [[Can't Get Away With Nuthin']]. It's not even enough that he's a [[Butt Monkey]] or [[Chew Toy]], put through the wringer for no reason, not to mention having to deal with [[The Call Knows Where You Live|The Call Knowing Where He Lives]], a [[Clingy MacGuffin]] and being constantly threatened with [[Death By Pragmatism]] if he dares respond to a problem in the way a normal person would and should. No, sometimes fate isn't satisfied until disaster befalls the good guy purely as a result of his ''doing the right thing''.
If this happens because the hero helps people who are ungrateful, it can be a case of [[All of the Other Reindeer]] or [[The Farmer and the Viper]]. More often, helping out exposes the hero to some other danger, like the wrath of a villain whose plans were disrupted by said good deed, or the wrath of a populace that is opposed to the method of said helping out, such as in many [[Burn the Witch]] stories that involve actual witches, or being [[Arrested for Heroism]].
Not every hero can handle this, and if it happens often enough or particularly badly enough, a hero may very well [[Fallen Hero|fall]]. If they stick it through even to the end, knowing what's coming to them, it shows [[What You Are in the Dark|who they are in the dark.]]
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** Had he not also spared Villetta in the second episode, he could have avoided many, many problems.
* In ''[[Rave Master]]'', because a woman named Aciela used magic to create a parallel world where [[The End of the World as We Know It|humanity didn't go extinct]], her each and every descended is [[Cosmic Plaything|doomed to a life of misery and]] [[Doom Magnet|loneliness]].
* In ''[[Okane ga Nai]]'', Ayase kindly help a hurt and soaked Kanou, giving him shelter and words of comfort. Four years later, he gets ''owned'' (literally) by the very same Kanou, who begins the renewal of their relationship by raping him and subsequently taking control of every aspect of his life. This is not played quite positively, but it's not played entirely negatively, either. Presumably because it (and Ayase's incredible level of pathetic) are supposed to be titillating, since it is [[Hentai]].
* [[Butt Monkey|Crona]] from ''[[Soul Eater]]''. The epitome of this trope when [[Ambiguous Gender|s/he]] {{spoiler|joins Shibusen but is forced to spy on them by his/her [[Jerkass]] mother, Medusa}}
* In ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'', Yusuke is a teen delinquent, always in trouble, being told he'll never amount to anything (and starting to believe it). One day, he sees a little boy chasing a ball into the street, and rushes out to stop him without a second thought. He gets killed as a result. The worst part is if Yusuke had not pushed the kid out of the way, the kid would have been perfectly fine. Because Yusuke 'saved' him, he got some scrapes. Though eventually dying turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to Yusuke, since he gets better.
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* Accelerator from ''[[To Aru Majutsu no Index]]'' suffers brain damage via a bullet to the head the first time he uses his powers to save rather than hurt someone.
** Not to mention Touma himself, who almost always winds up in the hospital after helping someone. His first attempt at helping someone? {{spoiler|Lost his memories}}.
* Valiant efforts and good intentions don't usually turn out so well for people in ''[[Gantz]]''. The series starts off with two of the main characters (one of them against his will) helping a drunk homeless man who had stumbled onto the subway tracks. They manage to get him onto the platform, and are subsequently hit by a train.
* In the manga and second adaptation ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', Winry's parents, two medics that worked to save the lives of several injured Ishbalans in the genocide, were killed by {{spoiler|Scar}}, after bandaging him up and treating his wounds. When Winry finds out, [[Break the Cutie|she immediately loses it]].
** Also, when Armstrong finds two Ishbalan women and try to allow them a way to escape, they don't get far before they are incinerated by [[Ax Crazy|Kimblee]] right in front of him. This sends him into a ''massive'' [[Heroic BSOD]].
* In ''[[Macross Frontier]]'', super popular [[Idol Singer]] Sheryl Nome, befriends a young girl Ranka Lee, who also wants to become a singer, and encourages her to do so, including offering a co place at her show. Not long after that, Ranka becomes the new celebrity, and Sheryl finds herself forgotten and deserted by both her fans and her [[Complete Monster|agent.]]. Her CDs land in bargain bin, [[It Got Worse|and her posters are thrown into rubbish to make place for Ranka's]]. Then it gets [[Subverted Trope]] '''hard''' as {{spoiler|Ranka [[Laser-Guided Karma|saves Sheryl from her illness and helps her defeat said]] [[Big Bad|agent.]] Oh, and Sheryl regains her popularity too...}}
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* In ''[[The Long Halloween]]'' Thomas Wayne saved the life of Carmine Falcone, since he's a doctor first and foremost dedicated to saving lives, and rebuffed Carmine's father's attempts to bribe him to keep the incident quiet. When this incident came to light years later it cast suspicion on Thomas' son Bruce. Harvey Dent -- [[The Resenter|already resentful of Bruce Wayne's wealth]] -- thought this incident was proof that the Falcones and Waynes had underhanded connections. Bruce even wonders if Gotham would have been better off if his father had put aside compassion and let Carmine die.
* Just about every time a superhero [[Save the Villain|Saves The Villain]]. The villain rarely ever appreciates the effort or does a [[Heel Face Turn]]. It just means the villain will live to make life hell for everyone else another day.
* In the first issue of ''[[Ultimate X-Men]]'', Bobby uses his ice powers to save a ''large'' group of people from a falling sentinel. He gets a bottle thrown at his head for doing so, since it just outed him as a mutant. Hell, the entire premise of X-Men is that they fight to save a world that hates and fears them, resulting in basically this.
** Similarly, During Ultimatum, a lot of the X-Men die to stop Magneto, and the ones who survived did just as much. Mutants were just as effected by the attacks as everyone else, and most tried to stop it. Afterwords, mutants are being openly hunted by the goverment, the level of abuse they get has increased, and even thought mutants like Kitty Pryde risked their lives to help the public during the attacks, her peers are all bullying her and even report her to the goverment which causes them to come looking for her.
* ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' ends with Spidey throwing all he has to stop the Ultimate Five, which ends with his death via a truck explosion.
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== Fan Works ==
* 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.
* [[Summer Days and Evening Flames]]: Starfall puts his racism against griffins aside long enough to rescue Gilda from several criminals, freeing her from her bonds and defending her form would-be lethal blows. Although he did kill one (in defense of another), he was still arrested due to "vigilantism" by not being reinstated into the guard yet.
* ''[[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]].
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** In ''[[Batman Begins]]'', when Bruce went out of his way to save his mentor, he learns later he was {{spoiler|Genocidal Knight Templar Ra's Al Ghul, and that in doing so he nearly destroys Gotham. And in fact, it is revealed that this is exactly the sort of work the League of Shadows (i.e. the clan of ninjas Bruce had been training under) [[Ancient Conspiracy|had been doing for centuries]], including ''sacking Rome'' and ''spreading the Black Plague''.}}
* In ''[[The Professional]]'', saving Mathilda is what eventually gets Leon killed... [[Go Out with a Smile|but he was never happier.]]
* ''[[No Country for Old Men]]''. Llewelyn Moss would have gotten away with stealing the drug cash if he hadn't gone back to give water to a dying man.
* In ''[[Snake Eyes]]'', Nicolas Cage plays a [[Dirty Cop|sleazy corrupt cop]] who suddenly finds his conscience when he uncovers and subsequently tries to prevent a plot to assassinate a political whistleblower. {{spoiler|He succeeds, and in the epilogue he is initially hailed as a hero, but winds up going to jail after the extra publicity shines a light on his shady past.}}
* ''[[Mean Girls]]'': when Cady goes to apologize to all the people she's hurt, she includes her math teacher "Mrs. Norbury, who's living proof that no good deed goes unpunished".
* Another [[Lindsay Lohan]] movie, ''Georgia Rule'', gets outright literal in here: Mormon Harlan gets to Georgia's house to fetch her grand-daughter Rachel (who performed oral sex on him on a canoe) to convince her to get to his actual girlfriend together with him to release him for his sins. When Georgia yells at him that it wasn't a big deal, but just a blowjob, and Georgia comes into the scene in a severely shocked manner, Rachel just responses that ''[[Lampshade Hanging|"no good deed goes unpunished"]]''.
* The plot of ''[[Dragonheart]]'' is kicked off when Draco agrees to give half his heart to save the dying prince...who then grows up into a [[Complete Monster]] who terrorizes the entire kingdom and can't be killed unless Draco himself dies.
* Eddie Carr from ''[[Jurassic Park|The Lost World]]'' tries to save Ian, Sarah, and Nick and gets eaten by two Tyrannosaurus Rexes for his trouble.
* In ''[[Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs]]'', Flint is ostracized in the town because his inventions always [[Bungling Inventor|fail spectacularly]], which is a shame, since most of the things he invented were made with the intent of helping people out. Even when he invents something that does end up working, saves the town from a depression, and gets him the love and respect he always wanted, it still manages to [[Go Horribly Wrong]] in the end, threatening to destroy the whole world.
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* ''[[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.
* Happens ''constantly'' to Jon Snow in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. Actually happens to just about everyone in his family for that matter. And most people in Westeros.
* In [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[Neverwhere]]'', Richard helps out a homeless person and becomes an [[Unperson]] for his trouble.
* Elphaba in the book version of ''[[Wicked (novel)|Wicked]]'' starts out trying to do good. She ends up getting killed off for real by the end of the book because of it. (The musical version has much more family friendly ending for her though she's still blamed for everything)
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* [[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. }}
* In ''[[The Bible]]'', [[The Messiah|Jesus]] resurrects the dead, feeds the hungry, heals the sick and disabled, teaches the way of the right and has done no wrong. He becomes hated by the Pharisees and is put on the cross.
** Proverbs 17:13 denounces this:
{{quote|Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house.}}
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== [[Theater]] ==
* Elphaba, the protagonist in the Broadway musical ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'', finally has enough of her misfortunes during the song "No Good Deed," quoted above. By the time the musical number occurs, every major act of kindness or benevolence Elphaba's ever tried has blown up in her face. One of the more [[Egregious]] examples came when {{spoiler|her enchanting of her crippled sister Nessarose's jeweled shoes enabled Nessa to walk, just in time to have her heart broken by the man she loved, and in a jealous rage, snatch up the very same book that gave her the use of her legs and use it to cast a horrible curse on him, which Elphaba could only save him from by turning him into the Tin Man.}}
** And to quote the Tin-Man: ''Holy Christ!''
{{quote|It's due to her I'm made of tin, her spell made this occur. And for once I'm glad I'm heartless, I'll be heartless killing her!}}
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** The speech is punctuated by the beggar being beaten up for the money ''you'' gave him, and even if you choose the dark side option and send the beggar away, [[Cruelty Is the Only Option|he gets beaten up anyway by the guy you just threatened]].
* The ending of the original ''[[Fallout]]'' is a pretty stunning invocation of this trope. You've saved your Vault and the entire wasteland, but {{spoiler|when you try to return home the Overseer exiles you so your story doesn't inspire other Vault dwellers to leave}}.
** ''[[Fallout 3]]'' quotes the original's ending almost word-for-word when you finish the "Trouble on the Home Front" quest. By leaving Vault 101 at the beginning of the game you've sparked a civil war between a faction that wants to leave and another that's convinced the Vault is the only safe place in the world. You can stop the bloodshed and bring the conflict to a peaceful resolution, even get your childhood friend chosen as the new Overseer, but {{spoiler|she'll ask that you leave because your presence is dangerously disruptive}}.
*** Tenpenny Tower. So you've talked the bigoted inhabitants around around and convinced them to let the ghouls move in, everyone is quite content, and you leave whistling a happy tune. Then you return a few days later and {{spoiler|all the humans are dead}}. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]].
*** If your karma is too high, you will be hunted down by [[Bounty Hunter|Talon Company mercenaries]], who said you have 1000 caps on your head. Inverted if you are evil as well, as you will be hunted down the same way by the [[Vigilante Man|Regulators]].
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* Played for comedic purposes in ''[[Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice]]'' during the Almaz ending. He was right to stop Mao, but ends up losing everything for it. Possibly a case where [[Yank the Dog's Chain]] went too far.
** Taken to extremes in ''[[Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten]]'' with Artina's death being caused by her healing someone. The recipient becomes an [[Omnicidal Maniac]] as a result of said death.
* Deconstructed in ''[[Castlevania]]'' with Lisa, who was burned at the stake for practicing medicine. Dracula does NOT take this well and resumes his war with humanity.
* Ramza in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' is one of the only legitimately good people in the story. His run of bad luck starts when he tries to help a desperate squire ([[The Scrappy|Argath]]) rescue his Lord and Ramza's own brother subtly suggests how to go about it, which leaves his home at Eagrose undefended when the Corpse Brigade comes by to kidnap his best friend's sister. When the ''entire world'' is full of [[Jerkass|jerkasses]], ''not'' being a [[Jerkass]] is ''asking'' for trouble. For Ramza to actually go around telling all the Jerk Asses to knock it off? Super trouble. In addition, Ramza is arguably ''one of the only people who survives'' (he either directly or indirectly ''killed'' a good amount of everyone else), and he's eventually vindicated by history, albeit hundreds of years later.
* Happens in spades to Norman Jayden from ''[[Heavy Rain]]''. {{spoiler|If he goes to the warehouse to save Shaun, he slowly succumbs to his addiction to ARI and inability to differentiate it from reality}}
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** 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.
* [[Hero Antagonist|Dib]] from ''[[Invader Zim]],'' constantly. Perhaps most obvious in "Room With a Moose," where the kids mock, wedgy and ostracize him as he tries to warn them about Zim, and then has to ''use'' their cruel treatment of him to save their lives.
* 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.
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== Real Life ==
* One example is that of Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, a homeless man in NYC 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.
* And when it comes gang violence, anyone who is a potential witness will either not call the cops or refuse to testify in court, fearing that the gang member's allies will hunt them and/or their family/friends down for revenge. Street gangs knew about this and some have started to wear shirts with the phrase "Don't Snitch" (or a variation of it) on them to intimidate people into keeping quiet.
* Whistleblowers. You typically lose your job, can't easily find another with your status, and this is the best case scenario without legal repercussions or death threats.
* [[wikipedia:Oliver Sipple|Oliver Sipple]] saved President Gerald Ford. The resulting media frenzy over his heroic act outed him as a gay veteran, leading to estrangement from his conservative family and numerous unsuccessful lawsuits to the media.
* A Mexican illegal alien while crossing the border stops to help a boy and his mother victims of a car crash, he gets detained and deported.
* It is illegal in some states to top off parking meters in front of cars that don't belong to you, since it deprives the city of the money from a parking ticket.
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[[Category:Morality Tropes]]
[[Category:Cynicism Tropes]]
[[Category:Orphaned/Sandbox/Depressing Tropes]]▼
[[Category:Sour Grapes Tropes]]
[[Category:No Good Deed Goes Unpunished]]
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