http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AssholeVictim

Arthur Branch, Law & Order You know, this case reminds me of something a wise old country lawyer once said. He said, "You know the first question you ask in any murder case? 'Did the victim deserve to die?'"

Normally when something bad happens to an individual you feel some degree of pity for them. But then when that person is a Jerkass, when horrible things happen to them it's less sympathy and more satisfaction. They may not be directly responsible for THIS particular misfortune, as that would be Laser-Guided Karma, but their behavior means something like this was going to happen eventually. This can range from the victim merely being a dick to being a far worse criminal than the person he or she is a victim to.

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In other words, when a corpse-shaped or victim-shaped hole in the plot is filled with a character who is in some way sufficiently repugnant, the audience feeling bad about their death/victimization is unlikely.note Note that the character doesn't have to die, just that they be victimized in some way beyond their control (if it was because of their own actions, then they're not examples); in some cases, "victim-shaped hole" can mean "victim of non-violent theft".

This trope can show up for a variety of reasons, but a common one is to make the criminal (or Non-Malicious Monster) into a Sympathetic Murderer. This is especially likely if the Asshole Victim's dickery is what motivated the criminal to commit the crime in the first place. This often occurs in works that feature an Anti-Hero or Villain Protagonist; their victims are such horrible people that the protagonist looks heroic by comparison, and/or Start of Darkness stories will have the protagonist's first victims be terrible people so they don't lose audience sympathy at the beginning of the tale.

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Further, there are structural reasons for engaging in this trope: Given that, in many of these situations, the story requires either a Victim of the Week or an early death to make clear the stakes, putting an asshole of some variety in the corpse-shaped hole in your plot brings up less of the "Tonight, someone will be killed for your entertainment" Fridge Logic.

See Who Murdered the Asshole? when an entire murder mystery revolves around the investigation of who killed an Asshole Victim. Compare Pay Evil unto Evil, where otherwise evil actions are portrayed as OK as long as the victims deserve it. Conversely, someone may protest If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him. Kick the Son of a Bitch is when the bad guy is genuinely malicious and without a sympathetic motivation in the slightest, but their victim just happened to be an asshole. May be combined with Mugging the Monster when the victim of this trope does not realize that the person he or she is trying to bully is more than capable of defending himself/herself.

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Contrast Alas, Poor Villain, when a bad guys death/downfall is portrayed in a sympathetic light. Though in recent years, clever writers have found ways to overlap the two.

Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves is a variation, where the traitor becomes an Asshole Victim.

While the Real Life violent deaths of certain dictators and certain kinds of criminals might qualify for this trope, which ones qualified and which ones didn't would be endlessly debated, depending on your perspective, so we kindly ask that you refrain from adding any real life examples.

All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples:

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One of the early Got Milk? commercials (this one ) starts with a business executive sadistically firing someone over his cell phone as he crosses the street. He's promptly hit by a truck and goes to "heaven" with all the cookies he could want, but all the milk cartons are empty. Guess where he is...

Fairy Tales

Esben and the Witch has Sir Red, who tries repeatedly to get Esben's brothers executed by lying that they told him they could fetch a wonderful or magical item (a dove with feathers of gold, a boar with bristles of silver and gold, a lamp that shines brightly enough to light seven kingdoms, a coverlet that is the most beautiful in the world, and if touched, sounds loudly enough to be heard in eight kingdoms). Sir Red is Hanged in the end, "for his wickedness... and so he got the end he deserved." The brothers are assholes, but not victims, while the witch's daughters are guilty of nothing more than being her daughters.

has Sir Red, who tries repeatedly to get Esben's brothers executed by lying that they told him they could fetch a wonderful or magical item (a dove with feathers of gold, a boar with bristles of silver and gold, a lamp that shines brightly enough to light seven kingdoms, a coverlet that is the most beautiful in the world, and if touched, sounds loudly enough to be heard in eight kingdoms). Sir Red is Hanged in the end, "for his wickedness... and so he got the end he deserved." The brothers are assholes, but not victims, while the witch's daughters are guilty of nothing more than being her daughters. Wicked stepmothers and stepsisters generally tend to be this, unless the heroine is kind enough to have them pardoned.

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Mythology and Religion

Older Than Feudalism: In Classical Mythology this is a reoccurring theme. Ouranos and Kronos lose any sympathy points when they are brutally overthrown due to their treatment of their kids. The Olympians often punished mortals for being complete assholes, but were not limited to this. Hercules was known for his rages involving lots of death. What sets him apart from some other Greek heroes is the victim usually loses some sympathy by cheating Hercules or being a complete asshole. Herc usually accepted punishment when he was in the wrong.

Norse Mythology is often very brutal with Grey-and-Gray Morality. The gods usually come off slightly better by the giants who were being massive assholes first. In one version of one story, the gods make a bet a giant to build a wall for Valhalla under a certain time limit, and put Freya, the goddess of love, up for stakes. When they realize that his very strong horse is helping him enough that he's likely to win, they... don't actually do anything. But then the giant decides that he should get the sun and the moon as winnings too, and that prompts the gods to tamper with the contest, and they slay the giant after he loses the bet. (In another version the sun and moon were part of the original deal.)

The Bible: Amnon and Absalom both fall under this heading. The former raped his half-brother Absalom's (half?) sister Tamar. Since his father David evidently felt his own philandering had undercut any authority he had to punish Amnon for this, Absalom eventually took matters into his own hands and had his men assassinate Amnon during a banquet. Drunk on his success, Absalom later rebelled against David, whose Token Evil Teammate Joab managed to catch Absalom at a vulnerable moment and kill him. As the final link in this chain of treachery and murder, David's heir Solomon, in accord with David's instructions on his deathbed, later put Joab to death at his earliest legal opportunity. Many later kings qualified, including (but by no means limited to): Nadab, Elah, Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, and Pekah of Israel; Joash and Amon of Judah; Sennacherib of Assyria; and Co-Regent Belshazzar of Bablyon. Jehoram of Judah, whom God struck down with some kind of intestinal plague (possibly cholera). As noted in Chronicles, his death was "...to no one's regret..." The earlier books feature entire cities' worth of Asshole Victims, most notably Sodom, Gomorrah, and Amalek. In the case of the first two, the two messengers from God could only find six people among their populations who weren't complete scum. The Amalekites were a culture of bandits who followed behind the Israelites during the whole "forty years wandering the desert" thing and picked off the children and elderly for the heck of it. Later, their civilizations were reduced to skidmarks on the pavement (err, desert) by Israel. The Book of Esther doesn't tell us much about Vashti, except that she refused to obey her husband, King Ahasuerus, and thus lost her crown; we don't even know what happened to her, though most people assume that he had her executed. While this has invited sympathy and even feminist interpretations in modern times, the actual Jewish legends about Vashti paint her as a petty tyrant who forced her Jewish slaves to strip naked and work on the Sabbath. In some versions she refused to obey Ahasuerus' summons out of vanity, having been stricken by some sort of disfigurement as a divine punishment. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus Himself challenges this thinking when there were present at that time some who told Him of the Galileans whose blood Pontius Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. To that, He said, Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all men living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. (Luke 13:2-5) In the final judgment in the Book of Revelation, those whose names are not found written in the Book of Life are pretty much considered this by God for their rebellion against Him, whether passively or actively, and will be cast into the Lake of Fire.



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Sick Sad World: Child rapist Roman Polanski is listed among Ted Bundy's would-be victims. It's also mentioned Polanski cheated on his pregnant wife.

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Tabletop Games

Subverted in Nobilis: one example of play in the second edition rulebook involved an attack on the concept of Treachery that relied on warping reality so that a nice person who had been murdered by her boyfriend retroactively became an Asshole Victim. This would, apparently, have undermined Treachery by mixing in justice where it wasn't supposed to be, undermining reality itself. (Excrucians are frequently nice people, but one must never take that to mean they're good people.)

A shroud's preferred victim in Anathema is almost certainly this, at least from that individual shroud's perspective. Especially considering that killing a preferred victim actually increases your will to live.

A background paragraph in Warhammer concerns a duel between a Chaos Champion named Gharad the Ox and an Imperial Elector Count. As the Champion appeared to be winning, the townsfolk (mostly the women) started cheering him on rather than the Count. After his victory, Gharad left the town intact, feeling "obscurely pleased". Sometimes, Beastmen are born to human parents. The parents sadly, are often horrified by their child's appearance, leave them in the woods. There they are sometimes found and raised by Beastmen themselves, who often kill the parents. The downside? The kid usually grows up to be as cruel and violent as their fellow Beastmen.

There's a bunch of these in the book for Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution. A racist bully is telekinetically slammed into a locker so hard he has to be hospitalized. An alpha bitch dies of an overdose. A manipulative bastard working for a shadowy government agency is pushed off the top of a stage. A child molester is burned to death. An entire building full of torture technicians is killed by the poor kid they were experimenting on. Someone who works for the same organization as said torture technicians is brutally maimed by an esper that they were trying to torture/brainwash into submission.

In Warhammer 40,000, Slaanesh claims all unprotected Eldar souls upon death and subjects them to indescribable torments. It's a little hard to feel sorry for the Eldar Empire since it was their murderous depravity that spawned Slaanesh in the first place. The Craftworld and Exodite Eldar are sympathetic since they were the few Eldar who rejected the hedonism of the rest of the Empire. Indeed, their physical and metaphorical distance from that mess is the reason they survived the initial massacre when Slaanesh was born. The Dark Eldar on the other hand have sunk even further into depravity, placating Slaanesh with the souls and suffering of their victims just so they can have their cake and eat it too. If anyone truly deserved to become Slaanesh's plaything for eternity, it's the Dark Eldar. Pretty much anytime Chaos forces turn on each other is an example of this trope. The best example is the Battle of Skalathrax, where the World Eaters were fighting the Emperor's Children. The cold caused a lull in the fighting, until Kharn (later known as the Betrayer) of the World Eaters took a flamer and started setting both sides on fire. Before you start feeling bad about the Emperor's Children, they worship Slaanesh as well.

Inverted in Kill Doctor Lucky. Dr. Lucky is stated to be a great guy that you all hate for petty reasons.

In BattleTech one of the first worlds struck by the Clans were ruled by a pair of bandit kingdoms. The Barony of Strang who's leader is a descendant of a Rim Worlds Republic commander, and Santander's Killers who are a band of ruthless pirates who are a constant menace to the Inner Sphere. The Clans did everyone a favor in wiping them out.

One of the cruelest canon fates in all roleplaying is accorded to Duke Rowan Darkwood in Planescape. Darkwood learns that he can use a specific soul trapped in a crystal as a weapon against the Lady of Pain, allowing him to take her place. It's a deception by the Lady herself; the spell actually traps the user's soul in a crystal and sends it back in time. Darkwood casts the spell, annihilating the soul in the crystal, and is catapulted back in time to endure centuries of torment... torment that will only end when his past self annihilates his soul in order to trap himself in the first place. Although the text doesn't point it out, this is the Lady's little joke; Duke Darkwood constantly proclaimed himself a self-made man, so she provided him a self-made doom.

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Toys

Beast Wars: Uprising: The Builder Council, to a mech (save one who left early) get killed in the finale, by their own apocalyptic weapon. For extra Laser-Guided Karma, they were only in a position to be killed because they'd put themselves out in the open to gloat. And given the whole Crapsack World nature of the setting is almost entirely their fault... yeah, they got it coming.

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And a good riddance, too!