No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Difference between revisions
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* This happens frequently to the title character of ''[[Kaiji]]'', almost to the point of being the theme of the show.
** His situation starts with him cosigning on a loan for a friend. Months later, this turns out to be a loan from the [[Yakuza]], who show up on Kaiji's doorstep to collect on the loan when said friend disappears. (Funnily enough, he trashes a nice car out of frustration just before this. It turns out to be a yakuza car... and he suffers no punishment at all.)
** He gets an offer to go onto a ship and gamble for one night for a chance to clear this debt. After getting scammed multiple times in multiple ways, he decides to team up with his friend (who apparently didn't disappear after all...) and another man down on his luck to give him a better chance of winning the gamble. Early on, he meets the conditions to leave the ship with his debt cleared, but he refuses to leave until he's helped his two team members do the same. By the end of the allowed time for the gamble, he gets the other two to meet the conditions while losing his own advantage and being taken as a
** He convinces someone else to "buy" him back and then takes back the extra cash his friends were trying to keep. He then uses this cash to "buy" back another scam victim out of sympathy. It turns out that this arrangement has a few strings attached, sending him into even greater debt than before.
** He's later abducted by the yakuza again and presented with a race for enough money to cover his new debt three times over. He only gets this money if he finishes first or second. The race is a footrace across a thin iron bar. With a potentially fatal and definitely very painful elevation. There are three times as many contestants as iron bars. Pushing other contestants down is not only allowed, but encouraged, and there's one guy in front of him. The one guy in front of him is slow as hell, but he refuses to push. The guy behind him catches up and isn't so nice... Luckily, he manages to grab the bar and pull himself back up, being disqualified but not injured.
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* [[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.
** After everything he does in the
* 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}}.
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* The ''[[Sin City]]'' story "That Yellow Bastard" is this trope in a nutshell. All Detective John Hartigan wants to do is close his one unsolved case and stop a [[Serial Killer]] who likes to [[Complete Monster|rape little girls and slash them to ribbons]] and put his ass away so that he can finally retire in peace. Said sick fuck happens to be the son of a powerful and ruthless U.S. Senator, one who will not stand for anyone messing with him, no matter how justified it is. As a result, Hartigan pays dearly for saving Nancy Callahan, the eleven-year-old girl slated to become the monster's next victim. Good lord, does he pay dearly. Said corrupt senator pays to have Hartigan's heart fixed, and then sets him up to take the fall for raping the girl (who didn't even get raped). Worse, he has to let his wife think he's the [[Complete Monster]] everyone says he is, because she'll be killed if he ever claims innocence. There's a special circle in Hell reserved specifically for the Roark family, but years later when Nancy is in trouble again Hartigan does get revenge by castrating Junior (again, and with his ''bare hands'') {{spoiler|before killing him and succumbing to his own wounds}}.
* In ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' Vol. 3 #19 (February 1986): "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished", a group of Legionaires are forced to deal with the menace that the Sun-Eater they destroyed was intended to stop.
* 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]]
* 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.
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** Trip quotes the saying in ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]'''s "The Andorian Incident". The good deed in this case is paying a visit to a remote Vulcan monastery... which happens to have been taken over by Andorians, and the away team's arrival makes the situation even worse.
*** Except it results in them getting Commander Shran as an ally, which [[With Friends Like These...|despite the problems he causes]] does Earth a lot of good in the long run. The act has serious consequences for T'Pol's career however.
* One episode of ''[[Frasier]]'' has the title character question whether it's good to be a Good Samaritan on the basis of how frequently his attempts to do good have backfired on him (note that the parable itself is ''not'' an
* In ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'', Ned attempts to undo the revenge taken by Chuck and Olive on Balsam's Bittersweets and gets arrested for murder as a result.
** And once, when he was still a kid, he climbed up a tree for a kindergarten class to show them baby birds...but they were all dead. So he revived them, and showed the birds to the class...Then they decided to show him the three baby woodpeckers that they were going to release that day...
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* As settings, both ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'' and ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' love this. Do a good deed? Well, it'll cost you a pound of flesh ''and'' probably [[World Half Empty|not greatly impact things anyway]]. Do the easy bad deed instead? Get rewarded with power/riches/expediency, but dinged by the [[Karma Meter]]. Do option 1 enough times and you'll get killed or ground to a masochistic paste. Do option 2 enough times and you'll destroy yourself. Do half and half and live a quasi-happy/angsty life... for a time. Try to live in happy ignorance and apathy, and somebody else will ding your [[Karma Meter]] ''for you'' when you aren't looking.
* So common in ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' 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."
* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' adventure ''A Hot Day in L'Trel'' in Dungeon magazine #44. After the [[PC
** How is this [http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202426887859 different from real life?]
*** The PC's have the option to [[Heroic Comedic Sociopath|kill her out of spite and with a few well placed diplomacy checks, bluffs or intimidation, get off scotfree?]]
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** 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 [[
* 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}}
* Colette from ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' qualifies. Always nice to people, yet fate seems to hate her for no reason.
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** 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.
* [[Super Mario Bros.|Luigi]], though this is played for comedic purposes since he's become a [[Chew Toy]].
* 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
* 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.
** Also, {{spoiler|Archer. His entire ''life'' turned out to be one big example of this trope as a result of his blind devotion to his ideals, and he keeps on doing it even after death.}}
** In ''Fate/Zero'' the only thing {{spoiler|Kayneth}} did which could be considered an act of kindness--{{spoiler|giving up at the Grail War (with it his only chance to restore his pride and damaged body) to save his fiancee's life}}
* In the ''good'' ending for ''[[Phantasy Star]] Portable'', {{spoiler|you and your partner's reward for saving the galaxy is being discharged from the Guardians and being branded traitors because your partner was an unknowing (not to mention ''unwilling'') pawn in the [[Big Bad]]'s scheme and you refused to leave her behind.}} Is it any wonder [[Hero with Bad Publicity|the Guardians aren't very well liked in part 3?]]
* In ''[[Shadow Hearts]]: From the New World'', we learn that the main antagonist is hero Johnny Garland's older sister, who [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrificed her mind and memory]] to bring him [[Back From the Dead]]. She ends up wandering the land in a silent, amnesiac daze, slaughters the innocent, loses her love interest and fails to revive him, and the final battle against her is fixed so that Johnny is [[Moral Dissonance|the one to kill her]]. Given what she had become, this could be seen as a [[Mercy Kill]].
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* 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.
* It is illegal (operating a taxi without a license) in some cities to advertise a free service giving people a free ride home if they had too much to drink. This is because being able to get a drunk person into your car to take where you want is a wonderful opportunity for the less-than-generous, but it also causes people to drive when they really shouldn't.
* The fact that Good Samaritan Laws exist in the US 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
** 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.
* A grown man helping a child who is lost [[Paedo Hunt|can get you marked as a sex offender]] and ruin your life.
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