Karma Overdose

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The time has come for the Big Bad (or Jerkass or just whoever's in the wrong in the moment) to get their karma, even more if it was long overdue. However, the punishment is so bad that the audience (and potentially the characters in-universe) feel sorry for them. Whether it be you feel the crime in question wasn't that bad or the punishment is that awful, you will feel that person got the short end of the stick.

Karma Overdose can overlap with Disproportionate Retribution, where someone does something awful for petty reasons but the reaction to that is only limited to the characters in-universe, not the audience. Karma Overdose doesn't care about what the characters think; it cares about what you as the audience member thinks. Karma Overdose is an Audience Reaction; Disproportionate Retribution is a plot element.

Also overlaps with Alas, Poor Scrappy, Alas, Poor Villain, Unintentionally Sympathetic, and Jerkass Woobie.

Examples of Karma Overdose include:

Anime and Manga

• Blood-C: With the reveal of the twist that Saya's whole mission was all a lie, that she was a Elder Barn and all her friends are actors, most of whom don't actually care about her. You'd expect to feel perfectly content and satisfied about their deaths. However the show is so gory, that when they did beat the dust, some people couldn't help but feel a smidge of pity for them. That's not to mention the infamous 'bunny' scene, where several people who probably didn't know the extent of the experiment get slaughtered by bunny-looking elder barns in strange but cruel ways.
  • The twins, Nene and Nono, get this. For Nene, she's tripped by her own sister and stomped into bloody pulp by Dog. For Nono, her death was so brutal, some did feel sorry for her (for context: she's picked up, forcefully put into a split, then Dog starts to tear off her leg before finally eating her!).
• Diavolo's fate at the end of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Being killed over and over again for eternity is perceived as this. He certainly has a high body count, but his deaths are so cruel, and apparently will last until the end of eternity, that some fans just think he deserved to just die instead of repeatedly being stuck through deadly situations.
• Sailor Moon
  • Esmeraude's death. She has been The Starscream, jealous that Dimande has eyes for only Neo-Queen Serenity. Still, she had some standards, empathized with Saffir about their concern for Dimande, and was not as bad as Wiseman or Rubeus. But then Wiseman tricks her into becoming a monster, and sics her on the Senshi. They have to kill her to protect themselves, and Sailor Moon gets a vision of her falling and screaming.
  • This is what Tellulu does to Mimete, the third member of the Witches Five. Sure, Mimete was not nice and stealing heart crystals long after the Witches Five had found the Holy Grail and gaslit Tellulu into thinking she was fired, but she did not deserve her ultimate fate: to be trapped in a machine utterly conscious. She uploads herself into the machine and prepares to fight the Senshi with a power upgrade, but Tellulu is holding the plug. She explains coldly that if she pulls it out, Mimete is trapped forever, and lets her beg for a few seconds before yanking it out of the outlet. Even the Senshi are horrified and can only watch helplessly as Mimete falls into the void screaming.
• Pokemon: In "Pokemon Fashion Flash":
  • Team Rocket falls victim to this. For once, they are starting a legit business with a beauty salon for Pokemon. Meowth serves as the manager while Jessie and James are the stylists. While a local breeder named Susie says they started a trend of dressing up Pokemon rather than focusing on the Pokemon's inner beauty and strength, Team Rocket is technically doing something legal. The trainers are the ones choosing to go to their salon. Jessie herself says she likes making the customers happy and doing art, as opposed to stealing Pokemon. Even when Misty comes, Jessie and James are happy to to make her over and only tie her up when Meowth blows their cover. Sure they mention they plan to kidnap rare Pokemon and were preparing to grill Misty for information on Pikachu, but the usual "blasting off" felt disproportionate.
  • Poor Misty suffers in this episode just because she thinks the "Salon Rocket" styles are cute. She even thinks that Psyduck may enjoy a makeover and takes him there, much to his confusion. As a result, she gets tied to a chair and receives a firespin to the face. Taking him was the right call, however, because Psyduck runs to get help from Ash and Brock due to the fact that his powers never work when he needs them. To add insult to injury, her makeup doesn't wash off at the end, and Ash has to hide his laughter.
• Many fans feels this ways towards main characters who get put into sexual misunderstandings due to how infamously brutal Pervert Revenge Mode can be (even MCs who were being perverts had gotten sympathy because it).

Comic Books

• By the early 2020s, the Ant-Man Hank Pym has been reduced to be fused with Ultron, a creation he regretted, and being derided as a monster every time he makes an appearance on a Marvel Comics event or issue. Many feel that happened only because he accidentally slapped his wife Janet Van Dyne in a frenzy in a '70s Avengers issue, and Marvel writers are overexaggerating how much of a monster he is.
• If you cross Dream in The Sandman, expect this to happen. Dream does not do halves when he enacts divine punishment. Some of his victims deserve it, like Brute and Glob being unmade for using a child to create their new Sandman, but for others it is Disproportionate Retribution. Delirium even calls him out for this when he hypocritically judges her for doing the same thing.
  • Alexander Burgess did keep Dream captive while demanding power, but mainly out of fear that Dream would punish him for his father imprisoning Dream in the first place. Dream curses him to Eternal Waking, where he'd be trapped in nightmares forever.
  • Calliope takes pity on her former captor Richard Madoc after Dream curses him with an abundance of ideas that drives Richard to writing so much that he reduces his fingers to bones after using his blood to coat his walls, but when Dream lifts the curse, Richard has complete writer's block with no ideas. He did deserve it, but as a result, his hands are permanently damaged.
• This is why in Teen Titans, the Judas Contract arc did not age well. Slade aka Deathstroke hires a Mole, a runaway illegitimate royal named Terra, to infiltrate the Titans so he can sell them out to H.I.V.E. Why? Because he blamed them for their son Grant's death, which wasn't their fault, and wanted to complete Grant's contract. He also had a sexual relationship with her, a fifteen-year old, and maintain that she was the one who seduced him. Deathstroke got away with a slap on the wrist, but Terra died via a suicidal cave-in when she believed that Deathstroke betrayed her. Readers in the '90s and onwards were quick to point out that minors can't give consent. Later adaptations and reboots would make Slade the more evil one, and excise the sexual relationship since that would be grooming.

Fan Works

• Generally, if there's a Ron the Death Eater that gets taken out/treated quite harshly and is a Base Breaker (Alas, Poor Scrappy can also feature here), the audience might think this.
• A lot of Miraculous Ladybug deconstruction, revenge or hate fics (particularly the ones concerning Lila) have this reaction towards Miss Bustier's class. There's a good chance they'll have their whole lives ruined just because they didn't believe Marinette (who often turns into a Designated Hero). The person who typically gets this the worst is Adrien/Chat Noir, who tends to become the fic's Hate Sink.
• In The Eliza Trilogy, the main cast lambast Draco for convincing Fudge to give Diawna the Dementor's Kiss. Sure, Diawna tricked them into thinking she was Eliza back from the dead and committed at least one murder, while kidnapping most of the student body and several teachers, but as Harry puts it, the Kiss is a Fate Worse Than Death. And no one deserves that, not even someone like Diawna.
• In To Those Who Are Never Going Home^[context?] , the traitor who was feeding information to Those Who Slither in the Dark is viciously beaten, threatened, and very nearly tortured by his friends for his betrayal. While brutal, it's a fitting treatment for someone who willingly sold out his friends to a genocidal cult of Nazis By Any Other Name... except Ferdinand, the traitor, wasn't a willing defector at all. His wife was kidnapped and horribly tortured and subjected to inhumane experiments, and he was strong-armed into helping her kidnappers on threat of them killing her outright. Judas Iscariot he ain't, but even though they know the truth behind why he did it, it doesn't stop his "friends" from treating him like the scum of the earth.
• The Savior King, the Master Tactician, and the Queen of Liberation gives us a very rare fandom incarnation of Edelgard^[context?] that is treated like the selfish, arrogant, war-mongering despot that she is in canon, with her crimes and hypocrisy not being sugar-coated in the slightest. With that in mind, her poorly-thought out plan of helping the Agarthans so she can wipe them out from the inside completely blowing up in her face is a fitting humiliation. However, she isn't merely humiliated, but is instead captured, tortured, and forcibly transformed into a mindless, subservient monster completely robbed of her sentience by the people who destroyed her family and ruined her life as a child. Interestingly, while the author has admitted to hating her as a character, even she felt horrible about the fate she chose to write for Edelgard.

Film

• Se7en: Theodore Allen is a drug dealer and a pederast, but the serial killer puts him through an awful fate of slowly starving on a bad you can't help but feel sorry for him, but any character actually manifesting an opinion of him show deep antipathy, from a cop who thinks he is dead initially and says he deserves it to a doctor who says he still deserves a eternity in Hell after going what is pretty much a hellish experience.
• Brave: The witch's spell did this to the prince in Elinor's story to Merida, the one who became Mor'du. It wasn't her intention, he still has some responsibility, and she admits in a spinoff short that she miscalculated, but it was still awful. He asked for the strength of ten men, so she gave him a spell that would turn him into a bear...but didn't tell him about the Curse Escape Clause where if he made up with his siblings, he would change back, or that after two days he would become a feral bear permanently. That might have been good to know before he lured his three brothers and their armies to a trap under the pretense that it was a truce, before activating the spell. The minute that the prince changed, rather than realize that he was in a bad situation, he killed all his brothers and their armies in cold blood, thinking he had won. Only... no one would follow a murderous bear into battle, so his army abandoned him. The two days passed, with the prince being unable to activate the Curse Escape Clause owing to his actions, and he became a feral bear who could not die. Elinor had to kill Mor'du to free the prince's soul, and he nods at her in thanks before ascending to the afterlife. The witch herself is so horrified at what she did that she refuses to do magic for Merida in the present until the latter offers to buy all her carvings.
• Little Shop of Horrors had to change the original ending for this reason. The stage show has Seymour sing about leaving Dr. Orin Scrivello to die by asphyxiation rather than shoot him, and tricks Mushnik into letting Audrey II eat him by lying that the day's receipts are "in the plant". In the movie, Seymour has Adaptational Heroism; he stares in shock as Orin suffocates, and he actually tries to warn Mushnik about Audrey II opening its maw to eat his boss and father-figure. His death in the original finale is a long-drawn Humiliation Conga. Hence, we got the Focus Group Ending where Seymour wins by sheer endurance against the plant.
• Can occur in a multitude of horror media depending on what they did, their age, how brutal their death was or how bad their fate was left.
• Midsommar: Christian is kind of a jerk, who is condescending to Dani (who would possibly be in a better place if he didn't take her there) and throws Josh under the bus when it's speculated he stole some of the cults' sacred texts. However, many thought he did not deserve to be paralyzed, sown up in a bear skin, and set on fire.
  • Similarly, Mark is a dick that talks rudely about Dani behind her back is disrespectful to the elders of the cults' ways, and did nothing to help Connie when she was most likely running from the cult. However, again, nobody wanted him to have his skin peeled off!
  • Lastly there is Josh, who is very uncaring towards Dani's feelings and ignored the elder's warnings to not take photos of the cult's sacred book. But once again, did not deserve to have have his head caved with by a mallet (the culprit being not other than Pelle) with the last thing he sees is Ulf (the elder Mark disrespected) wearing Mark's skin. Also not helping is the fact Word of God has confirmed the cult are in fact, racists.
• Ready or Not: Emile's kids. Granted, it isn't too hard to be mad at Georgie due to him shooting Grace. But they're still kids forced to play a dangerous game. No one wanted them to see them get blown up with the rest of the family. At best, we the audience are spared from seeing the gory details.
• Nope: Jupe's kids' prank towards OJ might have been in poor taste but that does not mean they deserved to sucked up and slowly left to digest in Jean Jacket's digestive tract.
• In V/H/S:
  • In the short, 'Second Honeymoon', Sam is far from being the ideal husband to Stephanie. He constantly puts pressure on her to allow him to film her without clothes, and when she refuses, he complains excessively. On top of that, he may be lying to her about who was at the door, and he even blames her when money goes missing from his wallet. His behavior towards her is generally passive-aggressive. However, despite all of this, some people found Stephanie's decision to murder him with her lesbian lover to be quite extreme. Many viewers suggested that she could have simply asked for a divorce instead.

Literature

• Harry Potter:
  • What happened with Severus Snape, and it counts after Harry and the audience learn that Snape was a Double Agent who was truly sorry for serving Voldemort and switched sides when it killed his crush Lily Potter nee Evans. He killed Dumbledore, the greatest threat in Voldemort's existence. And how does Voldemort repay him? By siccing his poisonous snake on the man and leaving him to bleed out. Harry, who was mad at Snape for his betrayal and selling out half the prophecy to Voldemort in the first place, is horrified and tries to staunch the blood futilely.. Even worse is when Harry learns that Dumbledore was dying anyway due to a Horcrux curse, and asked Snape to give him a Mercy Kill when the time was right. Snape's fate was truly unjustified, even if he was a bully of a teacher and an asshole.
  • Fans disagree if Marietta Edgecombe deserved her fate in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. On the one hand, she did willingly sell out the D.A. after seven months of them learning Defense Spells, they had evaded Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad quite easily, and it was her fault that Dumbledore had to go on the run after he opted for Taking the Heat about the group. Everyone who isn't a Slytherin knows this, and not even Nice Girl Luna is willing to forgive Marietta for her stupidity. On the other hand, Marietta has permanent acne and scarring spelling out "S.N.E.A.K." that will get worse the more she talks, thanks to Hermione's jinx; not even Madam Pomfrey, who fixed a student's nose back on the year before, is able to fix it. To top it all off, the jinx didn't protect the D.A. members, just revealed in a cruel way who the traitors were. Marietta has to spend her remaining school years covering her face in scarves and balaclavas, with Cho being the only one forgiving her. Then Cho ditches her to join the second incarnation of the D.A.. Small wonder that a few readers felt bad for Marietta.
  • What happened to Barty Crouch Jr., no thanks to Cornelius Fudge. While Barty helped bring Voldemort back to power and nearly got Harry killed, he didn't deserve the Dementor's Kiss, courtesy of Fudge bringing a Dementor as a bodyguard. Not helping is that Fudge justifies that a "raving lunatic" is no big loss to the Wizarding World. McGonagall yells at him that Barty Crouch Jr. killed his father and a student, but also even a mentally ill criminal that can't stand trial shouldn't be losing their soul.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator both have it for the people that ignore Mr. Wonka's instructions:
  • Most of the naughty children cause their own fates, but some readers feel sorry for them. Augustus gets nearly drowned, burned, and cooked alive for drinking directly from the chocolate river and falling into it just as the pipes are collecting chocolate. Violet blows up into a blueberry by not spitting out the three-course gum after Wonka shouts at her to stop; even when deflated, she is still purple in the face. Then to add insult to injury, the Oompa-Loompas sing about how chewing gum is a very disgusting habit. Veruca gets pinned down by squirrels after trying to grab one, and barely avoids getting her head cracked open like a nut; she's then tossed down the garbage chute, along with her parents, and lands in garbage since the incinerator was not switched on that day. Mike is the stupidest by turning on the Wonka-TV camera and sending himself through the television, without considering that he would shrink. He ends up stretched excessively, though Wonka points out with his height, basketball scouts will be courting him.
  • Charlie's grandparents cause most of the trouble in the second book by sending the titular elevator into space with their panic about being forced to go to the factory. Later, they take too many of the Fountain of Youth Wonka-Vite pills that turns most of them into babies, and Grandma Georgina into a "minus" that is an unborn soul. Still, when they take the Wonka-Vite pills, and Wonka is forced to spray Georgina's soul with Vita-Wonk, it is sad to see Georgina traumatized at 538 years old saying that she remembers being a minus and in the dark. The grandparents also get restored to their old age, which felt a tad much considering one or two drops would have sufficed to give them the youth they desired.
• Disney Chills tends to invoke this for the protagonists that give into vices like envy or greed when dealing with classic Disney villains:
  • Shelley, to fit in with the in-crowd, tosses her coffee cups and trash in the ocean. That's one reason why Ursula doesn't like her, and Ursula is able to sucker her into a deal. Still, it is kinda sucky that after Shelley gives Ursula the trident that will make her queen of the ocean, Ursula still turns her into a goldfish because Ursula never agreed to change her back.
  • Malik rightfully calls out Jamal for making a deal with the "shadow man" aka Dr. Facilier to become popular and move out of his brother's spotlight. Their families warned them about the shadow man and his deals. Jamal, however, is truly remorseful and trying to do what he can to save his brother from becoming a permanent shadow. Turns out Dr. Facilier was never going to change Malik back, and turns Jamal into a shadow as soon as he obtains the amulet that allows him to take over New Orleans.

Live-Action TV

• Black Mirror:
  • Another debatable example. In White Bear, it's revealed Victoria is an accomplice to her boyfriend burning a child alive while she filmed it. You'd think that would automatically make everything the others put her through okay (and indeed some people do agree hence the debatable part). However, she's forced to painfully lose her memories and go through the terrifying scenario of being chased down by hunters before it being revealed to be a show for the audience, which she has to go through all over again and the fact her amnesiac self genuinely seems to feel bad for her actions made some people think her punishment was going much too far.
  • "White Christmas" shows that if a criminal cannot serve their time, the government will create a digital clone called a cookie and make them suffer the punishment instead. Sure, some of them are murderers, but the clones had nothing to do with the original crime.
  • "Black Museum" shows different criminals having their conscious minds put on display in digital copies, while visitors pay admission to the owner. They consented in all the cases, but some were coerced for money or to take care of their families.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • What happened with Amy. She was a Nice Girl who got into witchcraft, implying that her abusive mother still had a hold on her despite living with her much kinder father. Then in season three, due to some bad luck, she turns herself into a rat to save herself from being burned at the stake (long story), but can't change herself back. Neither can the Scoobies. It takes Willow receiving a power boost in season 6 to change Amy back to human, and they judge her for being a little off-kilter since it's been four years in-universe. Amy herself gets called out for her actions, namely by enabling Willow's addiction to black magic, but she points out the Scoobies forgive each other all the time. After Willow refuses to be friends with her, Amy pulls a Face Heel Turn and helps save Warren Mears from Willow's flaying of him.

Newspaper Comics

• Calvin and Hobbes, sometimes this happens to Calvin. Sure, he is a brat, and doesn't want to admit that behaving once in a while would get him out of trouble, but you can't blame him for lashing out in some cases.
  • Rosalyn intimidates Calvin because she locked him up in the garage during her debut for some unknown infraction, and she often demands payments in advance from his parents for the next babysitting appointment. Yet because she is the only babysitter that will look after him, owing to Calvin's chaotic behavior, his parents put up with it and order Calvin to behave so she doesn't bleed them dry. During one babysitting night, the worst Calvin did was pounce on Rosalyn while dressed up as Stupendous Man, before running outside and sneaking into his bedroom window using a tree, changing into his pajamas and getting into bed. Calvin reasonably pointed out that he went to bed of his own volition, so Rosalyn couldn't punish him. She made him write a confession of what he did, and showed it to his parents. Thing is she was on the phone with her boyfriend at the time, and for Calvin that was pretty mild.
• For Better or For Worse: Readers felt bad for April when she blamed herself for Farley's death. Her family didn't dispute this at all, despite the fact that she was just a toddler at the time, and berated her for going near a dangerous area alone. Here is the thing: April was a toddler. Neither of her parents was paying attention to her when she wanted to go outside, and took a long time to realize she was missing. Nearly drowning was an accident, and Farley was an old dog as it was. No one tells April that Farley's heart stopping due to diving in after her was not her fault; instead they talk about how everyone dies eventually.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

• Some of the punishments that God would inflict upon those who incur His wrath in The Bible's old testament are famous for disturbing non-believers and believers alike due to just how excessively brutal they are. Famous examples include Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt for looking back while the city of Sodom burned, two bears tearing apart a group of youths who were heckling the prophet Elisha, and flooding the entire earth and killing most life on it due to the wickedness in mankind's hearts. While Values Dissonance is at play here, it doesn't stop moments like these from being a major point of contention in religious and philosophical debates.

Theatre

• If Hamilton weren't based on real-life events, some fates of the main characters may occur this way:
  • Philip Hamilton challenges George Eaker to a duel for insulting his father. He then goes Oh Crap when he talks with his father about how he can get out of this with his life and honor intact, since negotiations and peace talks failed. Alexander tells him to delope his shot, and if George is a man of honor, then he won't fire either. In the musical, George shoots Philip before they even reach ten paces, and Philip dies after several hours of agony and apologizing to his parents, while suffering from an infected wound.
  • Aaron Burr truly does want to improve America, like the other revolutionaries. The reason why he's hesitant is that as an orphan with parents who were accomplished, he has more to lose. He also is a Doting Parent to his daughter Theodosia, and truly respects Hamilton as a friend and a rival. As he puts it at the end, shooting Alexander during their duel ruined Burr's life despite Burr's terrified justifications, and he regrets it.

Video Games

• Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: Some fans hold this perspective regarding the fates of the enemy Glamrock animatronics. In the storyline, these animatronics are last shown being harshly damaged, with their components being utilized to enhance Glamrock Freddy. Although their primary objective was to murder Gregory and they have seemingly taken other children in the past, it is important to note that they were reprogrammed by Vanny and are not entirely acting of their own accord. Numerous fans express a desire for an option to either release or repair these animatronics.

Web Original

• Helluva Boss:
  • Moxie is horrified that he inflicted this on the titular "Murder Family". After he kills the target, the mother, he proceeds to turn in the serial-killing father and children to the human police. The human police blows up the house with the family still inside. That was a bit much.
  • "Loo Loo Land" has Blitzo jeopardize IMP's bodyguard gig because he gets in a fistfight with Robo-Fizzarolli, a robotic duplicate of his former childhood friend and current entertainment rival. Sure, Robo-Fizzarolli was not nice and goaded Blitzo by reminding him of how much of a failure he used to be in the circus. Blitzo, however, escalated things by firing at Robo-Fizz with a machine gun and fighting with him head on. It only ends with Loo Loo Land on fire and a robotic dragon eating up Robo-Fizzarolli. Moxie naturally calls out Blitzo for being so stupid and leaving Stolas and his daughter vulnerable to kidnappers. They were pretty lucky said kidnappers were so incompetent that Stolas could take care of them without a problem.
  • The Cherubs might've been pains in the neck for I.M.P to deal with, but some couldn't help but think them getting exiled from heaven was a bit too much (especially since the old guy they were trying to save dying was in fact an accident).
  • Similarly, yes, Chaz was a bit scrummy and obnoxious for his own good. Yes, lying about being rich to a mob boss is very stupid. But a good chunk of the audience thought his implied death was too far (even if again, it's realistic considering the circumstances).

Western Animation

• Arthur:
  • "Arthur's Big Hit"'s Aesop is "what goes around comes around", and Arthur being punched is treated as something he deserved to take, but he was already punished by his parents.
  • "Thanks A Lot, Binky" has this for the title character. (One could argue it was his guilty conscience over fighting with his mom, but still.) Binky gets his friends suspended when he reports Rattles and Slink doing a potentially dangerous stunt; he goes to bed resentful. Cue an Opinion-Changing Dream where a dream figure on a motorcycle named Stan shows Binky that you don't do nice things to be appreciated, but because they are nice things. He then accuses Binky of not appreciating his mother, and showing an Alternative Timeline where Binky's parents are neglectful, using his college fund to go on a cruise and leave him in the house with no food. Binky wakes up, panicking, sees everything is normal, and writes his mom a thank-you card.
• South Park: In a Broken Base kind of way, some think Eric Cartman potentially ending up homeless in the future is this.
• In the much-hated episode of The Loud House "No Such Luck," Lincoln tricks the family into thinking he's bad luck to avoid attending their scheduled events and have some time to himself. Yes, Lincoln doing this was wrong. However, as the episode goes on, the family goes too far in trying to avoid him. Them making him sleep outside is what got this reaction the most.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has suffered from quite a few of these:
  • "Boast Busters": For as obnoxious and rude as she was, many people thought Trixie having her home accidentally smashed by the Ursa Major (actually Minor) was a bit too much. While Twilight Sparkle rightly chided Snips and Snails for luring the baby into Ponyville after she manages to send it home with a huge bottle of milk and a sleeping spell, she doesn't do anything to help Trixie when the latter runs off into the night.
  • "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well": This despised episode has one of the more infamous examples of this happening. Rainbow Dash is in over her head with fame, so her friends decide to dress up as the hero Mare Do Well. However, we see everyone disregarding Rainbow Dash and how much it hurts her to be alone, making Rainbow Unintentionally Sympathetic. Many had wished her friends had at least had try talking to Rainbow before concocting the plan to upstage her. Even fans that did think Rainbow needed this lesson either thought this was too cruel or that it was a horrible execution.
  • Another infamous example with "Ponyville Confidential". Diamond Tiara has the CMC go out and publish embarrassing/not true headlines of everypony. Not that this isn't a bad thing, however the CMC (i.e children) getting ostracized by everyone (including the Mane Six and their own families, with only Rarity seemingly being the only one to try thinking to be rational about it) gained the trio several sympathy points by the fandom. Not helping was Diamond Tiara was the one orchestrating the whole event, blackmailing the trio when they tried to get out of it (which, by the way, is never called out on) and Featherweight is the one that listened in on and took the embarrassing photos/secrets.
  • "Scare Master" (though this is more of a Broken Base than the previous RD example): Yes, this episode shows Rainbow not having a care about anyone with her pranking thus setting her up for karma. However, some thought the whole town pretending to be cookie-invested zombies just to get back at her for a few pranks was a bit much.
• The Owl House: In "Witches Before Wizards," Adeghast the wizards trick Luz into going on a fake fantasy quest, because her witch teacher Eda the Owl Lady is his rival potions seller. He knows Eda would come to rescue Luz, and sees it as the perfect trap to get rid of her. Once Luz rescues herself, Eda and King, Adeghast becomes a tiny, helpless cephalopod. Eda proceeds to eat him, much to Luz's disgust. Then again, it is Eda.
• Looney Tunes: Some of the classic shorts have this:
  • In "The Wearing of the Grin," Porky Pig is a little rude for demanding shelter at a castle where Seamus the groundskeeper warns him about leprechauns. Still, the leprechauns in question falsely accuse Porky of wanting to steal their pot of gold and sentence him to wearing "green shoes" that make him dance for as long as he wears them. Not to mention that Porky was tired from traveling and drenched from the rain; you can't blame him for saying he just wants a bed for the night.
  • One short had Daffy trying to break into Hollywood, Daffy-Duck style, and become the star of his own pictures while Bugs was already a star. He eventually gets a part... as Bugs Bunny's stunt double. Cue the Humiliation Conga, thanks to the casting director tricking him. Daffy understandably gets furious, more so when he finally gets to star in a picture as himself, and it's about duck hunting season.
• Danny Phantom: Danny sometimes suffers this when he abuses his powers in front of the wrong person:
  • A haunted locker activated an anti-bullying ghost. The ghost happened to catch Danny playing a prank on Dash and mistook him for a bully. Cue a Grand Theft Me and Danny being trapped in the ghost's body in the 1950s. Thing is that Dash started it, and often gets away with his crimes.
  • Deconstructed with the Dark Danny special. Due to bad luck, Danny ends up with a booklet of answers for a career exam thanks to a ghost altercation and despite himself is tempted to use it; Vice-Principal Lancer pegs him as a prime suspect and demands that Jazz encourage Danny to return the packet. As Vlad and Dark Danny reveal to Prime Danny, if he cheats on the test, Lancer will summon the Fentons to the Nasty Burger to show what their son's future will be, right when it's on the verge of exploding. Tucker and Sam also get caught in the blast due to arriving to give Danny moral support for Lancer's punishment; when they find this out, Tucker asks why they are punished for Danny's mistake. Vlad takes in a traumatized and guilty Danny, who asks Vlad to remove his ghost powers permanently. This ended up depowering Vlad, killing Danny's human side, and creating Dark Danny. Thing is that the minute Prime Danny gets wind of all this, he declares that he will never become the monster Dark Danny is, meaning Dark Danny takes matters into his own hands by trapping Prime Danny in the future and impersonating his past self to ensure his family and friends die. If not for Jazz's quick-thinking and Clockwork pulling a Big Damn Heroes, he would have succeeded.
  • Ghost Writer gets called out for inflicting this on Danny in the Christmas special. Danny destroys his finished manuscript while blowing off Christmas stress in the Ghost Zone. He apologizes, only to laugh when he finds out Ghost Writer was doing a Christmas poem. As punishment, Ghost Writer traps him in a poem where the whole town turns against Danny Phantom and blames the "ghost boy" for holiday presents going missing. Then he summons Danny's enemies... who promptly reveal they have a Christmas truce and are mad that Ghost Writer broke it. They toss Ghost Writer's ass in ghost jail, help Danny return the presents, and allow him to finish the poem to break the spell. Audiences were quick to note that Danny had a legitimate reason for hating Christmas because his parents have an embarrassing fight every year about if Santa is real, to the point that they let a dog pee on him when he was a baby because they were too busy arguing. Ergo, Danny didn't have to learn a lesson but his parents spend the holiday still arguing.
• Steven Universe:
  • "Fusion Cuisine" ostensibly ends happily that Connie's parents accept the Gems as Steven's guardians when they ground him for running away with Connie. Thing is they say no television for 1,000 years, when the reason why Steven ran away was because the dinner stressed out Connie after her parents said she couldn't see her best friend anymore. Season 2 addresses this, when the Cool Kids call out the Gems for forgetting that Steven may be one of them, but he's still a child, and Garnet rescinds the punishment.
  • The Ruby Squad were Punch Clock Villains in season three, doing a reconnaissance mission to retrieve Jasper. Steven tricks them with a Snipe Hunt while Amethyst pretends to be Jasper after the latter is corrupted, and the Gems push them into outer space. While Steven promises to rescue them in season four, he never gets the chance; Navy eventually has to steal the ship back by tricking Steven into thinking she wanted to stay on Earth. It felt a bit much considering that Eyeball was the only one that tried to kill Steven.
• Total Drama:
  • After manipulating his way through the game, in both endings of World Tour, Alejandro gets kneed in shin by the one girl he actually had feelings for and send down the mountain. However in a after episode spot, it's revealed he's horribly burnt and stuck inside a robot suit unable to talk until 'All Stars', that made some ease up on him.
  • Similarly, Scott of 'Revenge of the Island' schemed his way through the game and constantly got his team to purposefully lose. He finally gets karma when he's eliminated, being sent catapulted with Fang. However, when he is sent back for the finale, he is in a trauma suit. There's a scene where all the other contestants just laugh at him while a tear falls from his eye, this scene is seen by many as very cruel and unsettling. This (as well as him being a Designated Monkey in All-Stars) made many feel sorry for him.
  • Gwen was allegedly more in the wrong for kissing Duncan while he was still dating Courtney, which partly led to her elimination in season three. Cue the Humiliation Conga and the entire world hating her. Here is the thing: Gwen was genuinely remorseful and torn up over it, to the point that she returned in All-Stars not for the prize, but to apologize to Courtney and atone for her actions. There was a reason why it was hard to feel sympathy for Courtney when; while she was fairly reasonable in season one, showing a soft side behind her competitive nature, in season two she went off-the-rails, to the point that she fought dirty when wrestling Duncan.
  • On the other hand, Courtney, despite being a very divisive character, faced a significant amount of criticism for her humiliation in the episode "Sundae Muddy Sundae". Initially, everything seemed to be going well for her until Mal stumbled upon a list she had made earlier, leading to a rapid downfall. She not only loses the support of both Scott and Gwen, but her sundae also becomes a target for sabotage (including a bird vomiting on it). To make matters worse, it is revealed that the contestants have to eat their own sundaes, and Courtney struggles to do it. Consequently, she is eliminated, with only Scott showing any sign of missing her. The most heartbreaking moment occurs in the after-episode spot, where Courtney finds herself surrounded by sharks and offers them her unappetizing ice cream. However, instead of accepting it, the sharks vomit on her, leaving poor Courtney in tears. This episode has garnered significant dislike from many viewers due to the treatment of Courtney.