Karma Houdini/Professional Wrestling


 * During the buildup to Wrestlemania XIX, Triple H was moved into a quick feud with Booker T. Seeing as most Wrestlemania feuds tend to have months, sometimes even years to develop, Triple H needed to get some quick heat. What he does is say some pretty racist things to get some cheap heat for their buildup. Come Wrestlemania does Booker T take the title from him? No, he gets beaten.
 * Hell, just Triple H in general. Back in the 10/10/05 episode of Raw, after having betrayed his mentor Ric Flair, Triple H, then the most hated heel in the company, walked in to the rest of the roster glaring at him, and The Big Show promising that he'd get what was coming to him one day. Only...he never did. He eventually won the crowd's respect, becoming face by default, and would go on to be one of WWE's most popular babyfaces. And those times where he got close to actually getting his, like Randy Orton attacking him and his family, or Sheamus nearly ending his career, the crowd was still on Triple H's side, AND he would end up coming back from it both times.
 * This pretty much comes with the territory in the kayfabe world of wrestling, where There Are No Police (well, most of the time) and the most powerful heels are free to do practically whatever they want because everyone - including so-called authority figures - is terrified of their retribution.
 * As of the 5/14/10 edition of Smackdown!, Drew McIntyre is officially this. On the 5/7 episode, he beat Matt Hardy (Matt seems to get a lot of this, doesn't he?) so badly that GM Theodore Long stripped him of the Intercontinental Championship and fired him. Karmic justice, right? Wrong. The very next week, Drew interrupts Kofi Kingston's celebration of winning said title in an impromptu tournament and basically announces that Mr. McMahon had not only re-hired him, but given him the title back as well, quite literally taking it right out of Kingston's hands. All this means that McIntyre nearly ended Matt's career and got off completely scot-free. As if being a Creator's Pet wasn't bad enough...
 * To note, Drew is Mr. McMahon's favorite on-screen for doing such things while also constantly dealing with Teddy trying to do his job right. His gimmick basically is fact he IS a Creator's Pet.
 * Doesn't apply to Drew anymore since even Vince McMahon seems to have caught on that he's not getting over at all, as his push is pretty much gone, and he was recently deported (kayfabe, although it was based on a real life issue involving his work visa).
 * He abused and tormented Ted DiBiase Jr. & Cody Rhodes for over a year, injured people placing them out of action, attacked HHH's wife Stephanie McMahon, stealing kiss from her as well right in front of him and......Randy Orton is now treated like a face. Despite being the most anti-social person in WWE, Orton receives cheers now because of his leather pants. Worst yet when Edge even called him and fans on this and it was ignored as RKO chanted through the arena.
 * Just a reminder, but when Orton beat down HHH and the McMahon's, even though it was portrayed as crossing the Moral Event Horizon, the fans were going absolutely mental. He got probably one of the biggest pops of the year when he attacked Stephanie.
 * Did none of the bookers remember Stone Cold Steve Austin and how he got over at all during that angle?
 * Also keep in mind he fell victim to numerous beatdowns at the hands of HHH, was hated by every wrestler including the higher ups due to obvious reasons (which naturally came into play in stipulations such as Lumberjack matches) and later had his Legacy teammates double cross him. He got a face turn sure, but to say he faced zero consequences isn't particularly true.
 * Orton punted then Heavyweight Champion, CM Punk in the head, causing (keyfabe) injuries that forced him to forfeit the title. Years later when Punk actually calls him out on this, Punk had switched heel a while back, and Orton has turned face (without really being any less evil), so Punk gets booed for wanting rather justified revenge and Orton is cheered whenever he uses the same head-punting move on members of Punk's group. Orton actually said he wants to legitimately paralyze Punk and the crowd cheered him for this. Orton so far is not only a Karma Houdini, but the crowd actually supports him getting away with it.
 * What mitigates this is the fact that while Orton is putting the Nexus members on the shelf and getting sick pleasure out of doing it, Punk hasn't done anything particularly villainous during their feud. The worst thing he did was lead Mason Ryan and David Otunga in a 3-on-1 beatdown of Orton backstage, but by this point, Orton had already injured two of the Nexus members, making it sort of a Kick the Son of a Bitch. Before that, the entire 5-man Nexus attacked Orton, but this was the beginning of the feud, and Punk was still looking for revenge when it was partially justified.
 * Kane got one in the summer of 2009. He kidnapped and tortured The Great Khali's "brother," Ranjin Singh, and launched some sneak attacks on Khali himself to boot. You'd think that Kane was definitely cruising for a comeuppance, but afterward he defeated Khali in pay-per-view matches twice. And just to make things even more aggravating, Kane turned face soon afterward. Of course, this could just be because WWE fans honestly like Kane more than they do Khali.
 * Though after his feud with The Undertaker in 2010, Kane soon got his when Edge did some torturous things against Kane and his father Paul Bearer... In that case, what goes around actually did come back around.
 * And, of course, Stone Cold Steve Austin was the ultimate Jerk Sue during his time in WWE, getting away with beating up all kinds of people just because he didn't like them or to get a cheap laugh.
 * The JBL-Finlay feud was a good example of this. JBL handcuffs Finlay to a cage so Vince and JBL can beat down Hornswoggle. Then a few weeks later he attacks Hornswoggle in the hospital. After that they had little contact until their match at Wrestlemania 24, where JBL threw a garbage can into Hornswoggle and beat Finlay clean. Could be Hilarious in Hindsight considering how annoying the Hornswoggle character got eventually.
 * Subverted with Paul Heyman at the end of the Invasion storyline where on the following Raw he appears at the color commentary both with JR, bragging about getting away with being a part of the whole WCW/ECW alliance. Then, Vince McMahon calls him to the ring, fires him, and replaces him with the returning Jerry Lawler.
 * During the late 90s early 2000s, the Big Bossman had a bad heel run where being a karma houdini seemed to be pretty much his gimmick. Outside the ring he did all sorts of horrible things, such as cook Al Snow's dog and feed it to him and disrupt the funeral of The Big Show's father. Inside the ring, most of his matches, win lose or draw, ended with him handcuffing his opponent to the ropes and beating him with a nightstick. He never got paid back in kind. The worst thing that happened to him was that Big Show won the blowoff match in their feud in short order.