Karma Houdini

S

Spottie D.

New member
A term popularized by TV Tropes, a karma houdini is a character who commits wrongdoing and gets away with it without any real punishment for his/her actions.

The biggest one that comes to mind is Mr. Krabs from Spongebob. I don't watch the show too often but I rarely see any episodes where he gets a true comeuppance for being a sleazeball.

Any others?
 
Huh? Mr. Krabs gets his comeuppance in many episodes.

Foster's Home had a couple of one-shot characters -- Bendy and Goofball McGee -- who were despised by many fans (myself included) exactly because of this. And then there was that awful episode where Madame Foster gets away with stealing the gang's tickets to an European vacation (talk about character assassination).
 
Whatever punishment he gets is relatively minor compared to, say, Squidward (who is often punished even when he's done nothing wrong at all). And some of the crap Krabs does definitely warrants a thrashing.
 
This is why TV Tropes is ridiculous in its grinding every little thing down and trying to name and categorize it. :)

Bad people not getting punished isn't some kind of obscure thing that needs a weird name. That's just reality, it happens every day. You could name just as many bad people who get away with it clean as don't, maybe more, and it's not surprising that cartoons reflect this.

The guys who make up this stuff for TV Tropes probably come back from the beach and talk about all the grains of sand they saw, and the large number of various individual trees in geographic proximity they passed on the way.
 
It's just more convenient and makes the thread title shorter than say "Jerk characters who get no comeuppance".



But animation is an escape from reality so jerk characters are, most of the time, punished for being a-holes. Sometimes this doesn't happen though thus the point of the thread.
 
Okay, Bendy I can understand (though judging by how he never showed up again, I think we can safely assume that Bloo convinced Mr. Harriman to expel him off-screen between episodes).

But Goofball? He messed around a bit in the house, but what did he do that was so destructibly bad that he needed to be punished for? :confused:
 
Where is everybody? Why the heck is this forum so empty at only 6:50 at night (eastern time)? The website is telling me that there's currently 130 members here so are they all using the bathroom? :shrug:
 
You're having a conniption because you didn't get fifty replies in an hour? Calm down.

Anyway.. Kelly, at the end of Monday's Stoked. Particularly irritating because pretty much everyone suffered except her.
 
When I wrote that, this whole forum was practically dead of activity for some weird reason, not just this thread. What can I say? I got a bit frustrated by it.

Getting back on topic, how about those three bullies from The Simpsons? When they finally got their asses kicked in the movie, that was immensly satisfying considering they usually get away scot free with their physical abuse.
 
What about when the twins from Whatever Happened to Robot Jones rigged RJ's Rubik cube so he couldn't solve it in time? They cheated and got away with it! To make things worse, they kept boasting their "victory" and calling him a loser until the end of the episode.
 
I think people actively avoid threads with barebones TVtropes titles a bit. You might get more responses if you phrased your question more creatively.
 
I wasn't aware people had such a damn problem with TV Tropes on this site. :shrug:

Whatever. Could a mod please change it to something more generic such as "Animated jerks who don't get a comeuppance"?
 
They sure do. They're nerds; categorizing is what nerds DO, because anything that can't be classified isn't worth knowing. They did it long before there was ever a TVTropes. You ever wonder why scientists make up long names for things that already have easier-to-say ones? This is why. It's a nerd thing.
 
On the other hand, your attitude could also be driving people away. Calm down and take it easy, sometimes threads can move slow. Filling it up with frustration isn't going to help.
 
We really need to stop talking about this. I don't want this thread to get closed but I still wouldn't mind if a Mod changed the title so we could put this issue to rest once and for all and move on with the original purpose of the thread.
 
Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, also Munsen (the older brother of "Gyro Robo") on Robot Chicken. Both characters are relentlessly jerky to those around them and never receive any kind of come uppance for being jerks. In some cases, they're even rewarded for their jerky behavior.
 
You mean Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney, and yeah, I can't stand them. I have a tremendous disdain for cartoon bullies in general, as I feel they're an overused and unnecessary cliche in entertainment, but I really can't stand the ones who just continually antagonize the protagonist(s) for no reason other than to generate conflict and never receive any comeuppance for their jerky behavior.

I've never seen The Simpsons Movie and probably never will, since I stopped caring about and following The Simpsons franchise some time ago, but it's good to know that those 3 jerks finally received some much needed and long overdue punishment.
 
Pinocchio was bad about this. Foulfellow never got arrested for scamming Pinocchio twice, The Coachman is still kidnapping children at the end, and, other than not being able to use Pinocchio as an attraction, Stromboli got away more or less unscathed. Monstro got some, but he's really just being a whale, not neccessarly a villain.
 
Back
Top