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.

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.

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 frenesi 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
• 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, he 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 BrokenBase 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.