Disability in many works is often portrayed as something innately tragic and miserable. In many works, becoming disabled or being born disabled is considered something that is considered a terrible fate for both the disabled person and the their friends and family. One way this can manifest is by portraying disability as a form of karmic punishment for evil deeds.
Just as the Evil Cripple trope is often used as a way to symbolize a villain's inner corruption, a Karmic Disability is often used as a way to show that someone lives in misery. Sometimes a person's disability is meant to reflect the nature of their crimes, such as a bully becoming physically handicapped or a liar becoming mute. A person who is guilty of Bullying the Disabled might experience karma by becoming disabled themselves, typically gaining similar ones to the ones they bullied. Someone who's guilty of pretending to be disabled might become disabled for real. In stories where characters suffer multiple types of karma, they might have a disability be added on top of it. Sometimes the disability might be a result of their own actions, while other times it could be the result of their victims taking revenge on them.
In stories with supernatural elements, a person might suffer a Magically Induced Disability as a consequence of offending a being such as a witch, a fairy, or a deity who gives them a disability as a curse. If the metaphysics involve Reincarnation, a character being born with a disability might be the result of punishment for deeds done in a past life. Sometimes children being born disabled might be the result of parents committing evil.
The level of sympathy towards the villain tends to vary. In some cases the villain's disability will be treated as a sort of "Just Desserts", with their condition being a curse they deserve to live with. In other cases, their condition might be portrayed as something deserved, but pitiable rather than a source of mockery.
Sub-Trope of Laser-Guided Karma. See also Red Right Hand. Compare Karmic Injury, with which this trope can overlap, and Karmic STD. Also compare Amputative Sentencing, when disability is inflicted as a criminal punishment. Can be the result of Climactic Maiming. Rarely overlaps with Karmic Death, as stories that treat disability as karma typically treat living with one as the punishment. Compare and contrast Redemption Equals Affliction.
Because of the Unfortunate Implications of this trope (in which disability is associated with some kind of moral failing, which is obviously and patently untrue), and because it is a morality trope, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Because this trope often occurs at the end of a story, all spoilers will be unmarked.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Fullmetal Alchemist: A person who commits human transmutation, considered the ultimate sin for alchemists, is punished in this fashion by the Gate of Truth, being crippled in a manner that's typically related to whatever they had been trying to gain.
- Edward and Alphonse Elric, who had been trying to resurrect their mother, respectively lose their left leg and their entire body (and Ed then voluntarily sacrifices his right arm to give Al an artificial body).
- Izumi Curtis, who had tried to resurrect her stillborn child, loses her reproductive organs and a couple of others for good measure.
- Roy Mustang, a visionary driven by his desire to become Fuhrer, loses his eyesight. It's implied that the Gate of Truth let him keep his sightless eyes, rather than removing them entirely, due to him having been forced to commit human transmutation by the villains, rather than doing it of his own volition.
- Mobile Suit Victory Gundam: Katejina Loos commits many evil acts throughout the series, betraying the League Militaire in favor of the Zanscare Empire, being complicit in the Empire's atrocities, which include attempted genocide, and pretending to surrender to literally stab Uso in the back. At the end of the series, after the final battle, she survives, but is homeless, amnesiac, and blind as a result of brain damage during the battle.
- My Hero Academia: At the end of the Internship arc, Overhaul gets his prison transport knocked over, and has his arms destroyed by the League of Villains due to Overhaul being a Hypocrite who murdered one member of the League and maimed another. As his arms and hands are vital to the use of Overhaul's Quirk, this essentially renders him Quirkless, also making this an ironic punishment due to Overhaul's development of weaponry that can neutralize Quirks.
Comic Books
- Daredevil: Quite a few times has the assassin Bullseye been rendered crippled for his actions. For instance, following Civil War (2006), his Restraining Bolt is disabled during one Thunderbolts mission, allowing him to kill his handlers and attempt to kill minor hero American Eagle. Eagle not only beats the snot out of him, but when his Bolt is reactivated, the fall causes him to break his neck, leaving him alive but in a useless body.
- Doctor Strange: Dr. Stephen Strange was a famed neurosurgeon who really only cared about the money, his care about his patients beginning and ending at the bill and refusing to help people who couldn't pay him. When he suffered a car accident that severely damaged his hands, they were ultimately saved from being amputated, but the nerve damage caused by it caused his hands to tremor, causing him to be unable to perform surgery again.
Fairy Tales
- Cinderella (Fairy Tale): In Aschenputtel, The Brothers Grimm version of the story, the wicked stepmother cuts off pieces of her daughters' feet to ensure the slipper fits them and one will be chosen by the prince. They struggle walking after this. And to make matters worse for them, they are attacked by birds that peck their eyes out and blind them.
Fan Works
- Climbing Out: Shortly after he comes to Earth and joins Team Prime, Ultra Magnus begins acting like a Drill Sergeant Nasty to everyone but Optimus Prime and Elita-One (and cruelly asks whether or not they should leave one Rumble at the mercy of the Decepticons). During his first mission with Leonidas, Ultra Magnus is ambushed by Shockwave and loses his hand. While Ratchet is able to make a prosthetic, Ultra Magnus still eats some Humble Pie and apologizes to the others for his behavior.
- The Dragon and the Butterfly: Much like in the movie example below, Toothless lost his tailfin when Hiccup shot him down. During his translated conversation with Antonio later, the dragon refers to it as being "permanently disfigured by an idiot". Hiccup falls off of Toothless' back during the fight with the Red Death, Toothless manages to save him... but not his lower left leg. Hiccup can't help but wonder if this was subtle revenge on the dragon's part.
- Exaggerated in The Last Firebender (sinistercinnamon); after Ozai burns Zuko for talking back, Agni decides that the only suitable punishment is to remove the bending ability from every firebender in existence, with Zuko being the only one to retain his abilities because he was an innocent victim. Naturally, Ozai blames Zuko for this.
- Spider-Ninja: In the chapter "Enemy Mine", Mysterio casts a spell on NYC's TV stations that puts whoever watches the TV (or any screen affected by the stations) into a state of catatonia. The Turtles, Spider-Ninja, and Nick Fury are forced to team up with one of the only other people unaffected: Shredder. While working together to find and bring down Mysterio, Shredder tries to lure Spider-Ninja to his side, having become fascinated by her sheer strength and power. When she tells him where to shove it, he begins attacking the group and signals Tiger Claw (a ruthless hunter who tried to kill the siblings earlier) to join the fight. Both of them end up losing due to karmic injuries: Tiger Claw is shot in the eye by Fury while Spider-Ninja accidentally burns Shredder's face when she throws a bottle at his head (not knowing it was a bottle of acid).
- Strange Potter: While going with Remus and Sirius to visit the Longbottoms, Doctor Strange walks in on Bellatrix Strange, Barty Crouch Jr, and two other Death Eaters torturing the Longbottoms with the Cruciatus Curse. Remus and Sirius manage to take out the other three while Strange faces Bellatrix head on. She lasts about fifteen seconds before Strange uses the Icy Tendrils of Icthalon on her. This not only leaves her practically inert for a few days, but she's left incontinent for several weeks. Since she tried to render two innocent people insane For the Evulz, she clearly deserved it.
Films — Animation
- How to Train Your Dragon: In the first film, Hiccup causes Toothless to lose his left tail fin, rendering him unable to fly. While Hiccup makes efforts to right this wrong by bonding with Toothless and creating a prosthetic for him so that he can fly again, Hiccup still ends up losing his left leg from the knee down in the final battle, mirroring Toothless's injury. The second film implies this karma may have been invoked by Toothless.
Hiccup: Well, crazy thing is... I'm actually the one who shot him down. Hey, it's okay, though. He got me back! Right, bud? You couldn't save all of me, could you? You just had to make it even. So... [lifts his metal leg] peg leg!
- Subverted in NIMONA (2023). When Ballister Boldheart supposedly killed the Queen, Ambrosius Goldenloin cut his arm off as he was escaping. The kingdom, all of whom think he did it on purpose, see him losing his arm as this trope. However, Ballister is innocent of the crime, and didn't truly deserve such a thing.
Films — Live-Action
- Doctor Strange (2016): At the beginning of the film, Dr. Stephen Strange, a rich, famous neurosurgeon, declines to operate on an old woman with advanced brain stem glioma because he thinks the operation has a low chance of success and he doesn't want to damage his reputation. Almost immediately afterwards, he gets into a car accident that severely injures his hands, ending his career.
- The Final: When the mean, bullying popular kids are being tortured by the outcasts, the womanizing football player Bradley is stabbed in the spine and paralyzed so he'll never again be able to have sex or play his favorite sport.
- Freaks: Directly inflicted by a group of disabled people (the titular "freaks") on their bigoted tormentor, no less. All movie, the vain, "normal" beauty Cleopatra schemes to marry and murder one of the performers. At the end of the film, after her murderous intentions have been revealed, the circus freaks corner her and mutilate her body. The end result is the "Chicken Lady"; a maimed, tongueless, one-eyed "freak" like them, forced to spend the rest of her life standing in front of gawking crowds.
- Freeway: Vanessa shoots Bob, the I-5 Killer — a predatory Serial Killer — several times in self-defense when he attempts to kill her. This results in him being paralyzed and needing to use a wheelchair and an oxygen tank. Though it doesn't stop him from killing Vanessa's grandmother, it does enable Vanessa to win in a physical fight against him and strangle him.
- Highwaymen: "Fargo" is a Serial Killer who runs over women in his car, which is then dismissed as random hit-and-runs. After seeing "Fargo" hit and kill his wife, James Cray pursues Fargo and runs him over, which paralyses him. It doesn't stop Fargo from adapting his car and continuing to kill women, though.
- Kingsman: At the end of the first movie, Charlie betrays the Kingsmen by joining Valentine, participating in the attempted genocide, and trying to kill Eggsy. Eggsy escapes him by shocking him with his electric ring and knocking him out, an act that saved his life yet crippled him by damaging Valentine's chip; when they all exploded, Charlie lost his arm instead of his head. He survived while everyone else, including his family, died, but was left with a missing limb as direct karma for attacking Eggsy. As a result, in Golden Circle, he's forced to use a detachable robot arm. While the arm itself gives him a lot of power, he loses his fights whenever its gone because he can't work without both arms. The loss of his arm also serves to reinforce his villainy, as he joins psychopathic drug queenpin Poppy, who provided him with the robot arm in the first place, entirely ditching any pretense of being a gentleman despite still claiming to be one.
- Run: Implied to be enforced by the ending; Diane kidnapped Chloe as a baby and poisoned her with unneeded medication to the point where she was unable to walk. Then, when Chloe was going off to college, Diane tried to hide her acceptance letter from her and drugged and imprisoned her. When Chloe finally escapes at the end, there's a decade-long Time Skip. Chloe visits Diane, now confined to a hospital bed. Chloe then feeds Diane one of the pills Diane used to give her, heavily implying that Chloe has given Diane A Taste of Their Own Medicine and inflicted the same disability on her as she did on Chloe.
Literature
- In The Adventures of Pinocchio the fox and cat con men pretended to be blind and lame to get sympathy. By the end of the story, they really were blind and lame.
- The Divine Comedy: Downplayed with the Terrace of Envy in Purgatorio; the envious have their eyes sewn shut because they took joy in seeing others' misfortune. However, being Purgatory and not Hell, the punishment isn't permanent and they will have their eyes reopened once they have been cleansed of their sins.
- In Journey to the Dream Land, Serafim "Pimple" and Nonna "Muzzle" are Academic Alpha Bitch Villain with Good Publicity bullies, absolutely terrorizing the class but managing to stay on the teachers' good side by getting high marks and faking exemplary behavior in the adults' presence. Further on, they are revealed to be in league with Big Bad Klingzor who rules over nightmares and drug-induced hallucinations, and fight against the heroes during the latter's eponymous journey. However, after Klingzor is defeated, Pimple and Muzzle not merely lose their brilliant intellect but become mentally handicapped. The third bully in their gang, Edik "Imp", gets a Redemption Equals Death.
- Mr. Men: Some characters have a temporary magical disability inflicted on them, to cure them of their negative personality.
- Mr Uppity (Mr Snooty in North America) is made to shrink to a tiny size every time he is rude to somebody, which serves as a Parental Bonus of his big ego being cut down to size.
- In Little Miss Magic, Mr Happy complains that Mr Tickle is tickling anybody and everybody with his extraordinarily long arms, all the time. Little Miss Magic shrinks his arms so they are very short. She later restores them, on condition that he limits himself to one tickle a day.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Nurse Ratched is the cruel leader of the mental institution where the main characters are held. She uses verbal and emotional abuse to keep her patients in line, not caring how much they're hurt so long as they remain under her thumb, even giving misbehaving patients (such as MacMurphy) unnecessary electroshock therapy sessions. In the novel's climax, when Ratched causes Billy, a young man McMurphy befriended, to commit suicide and doesn't seem to care, McMurphy strangles her. He doesn't kill her (being restrained before he could), but he causes permanent damage to Ratched's throat and removes her ability to speak loudly (taking away her primary ability to abuse her patients). The patients all believe it was well-deserved, and don't fault McMurphy at all (though the same can't be said for the hospital staff).
- The Weight of Blood: Jules is the racist Chris expy who wore Blackface to taunt Maddy and then poured white paint on her after Jules's own prank got her banned from prom. During Maddy's massacre, Jules loses her arm.
- What Katy Did: Katy Carr starts the story as a reckless and disobedient girl. Her aunt tells her to stop playing on a swing, but Katy disobeys, falls when the swing breaks, and suffers a debilitating back injury that confines her to her bed for an extended period of time.
Live-Action TV
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents: In the episode "Strange Miracle", a man fakes being paralyzed from the waist down in an accident in order to collect on an insurance policy. He succeeds but doesn't want to spend his whole life in a wheelchair. His priest introduces him to a young girl who actually is paralyzed and has been making regular visits to a holy shrine hoping to be cured. The man decides to go to the shrine and fake a "miracle cure" for his paralysis. But when he gets there he becomes stricken by paralysis for real and the young girl is miraculously cured.
- Better Call Saul: Hector Salamanca suffers a heart attack that leaves him paralyzed and stuck in a wheelchair, after Nacho Varga switched his heart medicine with sugar pills, and Gus Fring put an end to his recovery therapy to prevent him from truly recovering. However as Hector was a very vicious and cruel cartel boss, and Nacho and Gus are presented as more sympathetic than him, with Nacho in particular having done it in order to protect his father, who had refused Hector's blood money and to allow his shop to be turned into a front for drug dealing, from Hector's reprisal, his crippling is treated as Laser-Guided Karma.
- Chicago Fire:
- Kevin Hadley used to be a firefighter assigned to Firehouse 51 before he was kicked out for reprehensible behavior. Developing a vendetta against the firehouse, Hadley committed a series of arsons against its members. Kelly Severide eventually notices the connections and suspects Hadley, leading the two to clash when Kelly catches him in the act of setting up another arson. In the scuffle, Kevin gets covered in flammable liquid that gets set on fire. As a result, Kevin gets severely burned but survives enough for him to be arrested. Now, while in prison, Hadley has burn scars down on at least the right half of his body, walks with a limp and is said to be in chronic pain.
- Played more tragically with Jimmy Borrelli. In his last episode, Jimmy, who's still in a bad place emotionally following the death of his brother, leading him to blame his chief, Wallace Boden, becomes insubordinate and belligerent towards the other firefighters. It comes to a head when Jimmy disobeys an order at the site of a traffic accident and is caught in a fire blast. He survives, but the blast left him with burns across his face and cost him his left eye, effectively ending his career as a firefighter.
- Desperate Housewives:
- Gloria Hodge walks with a cane after injuring her hip while burying Monique, Orson's mistress that she killed. While downplayed here, the trope is later used to its full extent when she falls off the roof of the van de Kamp home after turning on her co-conspirator Alma, abandoning her, and trying to kill both Bree and Orson. She has a stroke from the fall, which leaves her entirely locked in. After finding out that Gloria killed his father and Monique, and exhibited limitless control over his life, Orson takes pleasure in turning her head towards him so she can watch him walk away.
- Played with by Carlos's blindness. He was a Corrupt Corporate Executive before, and his disability required he and Gaby to work and take up a far lowlier form of living than he did. Even though he was cured within half a season (after a five-year Time Skip), it still left him a nicer and more considerate person, for a while, anyway.
- The Haunting Hour: In "The Red Dress", a girl named Jamie wants to buy a beautiful dress from a thrift shop owned by a blind woman named Abigail, but she can't afford it. Jamie wants the dress so badly that she sneaks into the shop at night and steals it. Abigail then haunts Jamie and keeps telling her she has to pay. In the end, Abigail punishes Jamie by stealing her eyesight, leaving Jamie blind like Abigail was.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In "Alien," Sean is a 12-year-old boy who bullies a younger girl named Emma for having two moms, sexually harassing her and even giving her a Traumatic Haircut to "make her look like a dyke". She ends up stabbing him in the spine with scissors, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
- In the M*A*S*H episode "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", Hawkeye ends up blinded after his eyes are scorched whilst lighting a stove. Frank Burns, who is a frequent Asshole Victim to Hawkeye's jokes/pranks, believes that this trope has been invoked: Hawkeye can't operate if he can't see, meaning he can't insult Frank's skills in the operating room and logicks himself into thinking he may be the Chief Surgeon while Hawkeye's recovering. The trope ends up subverted: Hawkeye not only recovers by the end of the episode, but he takes his temporary blindness in stride and can still help in the OR by listening to what the surgeons can tell him and outright smelling that a patient has a bleed they hadn't found yet.
- In the Night Gallery episode "The Miracle at Camafeo," a Con Man fakes being paralyzed to get an insurance payout and travels to a shrine to pretend that he's been healed, so that he can have the money and his mobility. When he walks smugly out, his sight is removed and given to a young blind boy.
- Person of Interest: Harold taught the Machine to ignore ordinary homicides and only alert the government to terrorist attacks. Nathan couldn't live with that, so he secretly programmed the Machine to send him the irrelevant numbers. When Harold found out, he shut down Nathan's operation, just as the Machine was about to warn him about an attempt on Nathan's life. When the explosion that killed Nathan caused Harold a spinal injury that made him walk with a limp, Harold chose not to get the surgery to repair it, considering it his penance.
- You (2018): Mr Mooney is Joe's abusive father figure who locked him in the cage under the bookstore for days to punish him. In the present day, he is paralysed, locked-in, and mute, apparently from a stroke.
Mythology & Religion
- The Book of Mormon: Korihor's preaching that belief in God is foolishness, and the church is corrupt and greedy, leads large numbers of people away. When he confronts the high priest and challenges him to show a sign of God's power, the high priest points out that it might not be such a good request, but when Korihor continues to insist, the high priest curses him with muteness, "that thou shalt never open thy mouth any more, that thou shalt not deceive this people any more."
- Classical Mythology: Tiresias was a Blind Seer whose disability was inflicted (depending on the version) either by Athena for his Outdoor Bath Peeping (and she gave him prophetic abilities to make up for it when she realized he truly hadn't intended to look at her naked); or for backing Zeus in an argument with Hera (and Zeus gave him the gift of prophecy as compensation for his wife blinding him). Tiresias was also turned into a woman for seven years (which may or may not count as a disability) as punishment for killing a pair of mating snakes.
- The Four Gospels: In John 9, when Jesus and his disciples meet a blind man, the disciples assume that his blindness must be a punishment from God either because of his or his parents sins. Jesus himself clarifies that this isn't the case, with the blind man's purpose being to allow the works of God be manifested, which Jesus demonstrates by curing the man of his blindness.
- The Talmud: According to Mishna Pe'ah 8:9, said in the context of receiving charity: "He who is not lame, blind, or limp, yet pretends to be one of these, will not die of old age until he is like one of these".
Tabletop Games
- Chronicles of Darkness:
- 1st Edition uses a combined Karma/Sanity Meter, so every loss of Morality (or a Splat's equivalent) has a chance to inflict a Derangement that can only be cured by recouping the loss. Derangements range from inconveniences to profound handicaps, depending on the triggering incident and the character's overall Morality.
- In the book Mysterious Places, the Whispering Wood traps people who have morally lost their way and subjects them to transformations and disabilities based on the Seven Deadly Sins. The most notable victims of this process were a band of circus folk who murdered their Freak Show as scapegoats for being trapped in the woods, only to end up manifesting similar disabilities to their victims: the proud Repulsive Ringmaster who led the massacre went blind, the greedy manager sprouted useless vestigial limbs, the vain and wasteful acrobat turned morbidly obese, and so on.
- Pathfinder: Sarenrae is mentioned to inflict blindness on followers who displease her, though how long the blindness lasts depends on the severity of the sin, with it only lasting a few moments for minor sins, while major wrongdoings earn a lifetime of blindness.
- Wagadu Chronicles: Inverted, the inhabitants of Wagadu all descended from a higher plane of existence, the Lore Book mentions that people who were crippled in the higher plane tend to get some kind of Disability Superpower to make up for it.
Video Games
- Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: This is the ultimate fate of Mihaly Shilage, a pilot who finds purpose in life by flying the skies. After his final battle with Trigger, even though he survived the battle, the toll of flying fighter craft well into his twilight years has left him bedridden for the remainder of his life. While Mihaly considers it a Fate Worse than Death, Avril disagrees, as she believes that this will allow him to spend the remainder of his time with his granddaughters.
- Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls: Implied to happen to Monaca at the story's end. After being revealed to have pretended to be unable to walk for sympathy points, her entire lower body is crushed under debris. She is never shown standing in her next canonical appearance in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, suggesting that she is now genuinely unable to walk.
- Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes: Glaz and Palitz, a war criminal sniper pair that Big Boss is tasked with assassinating, are revealed to have a glass eye and prosthetic finger respectively if he instead takes them alive, which were self-inflicted injuries caused by their war crime-related PTSD.
Web Animation
- The Cyanide & Happiness Show: In the episode "Gym Class", we see a high school gym teacher set up an obstacle course for his students. A mean student mocks his paraplegic classmate Susie by telling her to go first; surprisingly, she actually takes up his offer, and blazes through the obstacle course epically. The mean student, desperate to show her up, goes next, only to injure himself so badly that he ends up in a wheelchair just like her.
- Manga-Waido: In "My parents started ignoring after my accident until one day...
," Yuua was an arrogant model that condescended to girls that were not as pretty as her, including her younger sister Miyu. However, one day in her college life, she was hit by a car and had one of her legs amputated. Because of her accident, she has to step down from her modeling career and her parents, who previously paid attention to her because of her career, turn their attention to the previously unpopular sister. While staying with her aunt for disability accessibility, she runs into her old classmates and they sneer at her disability, even claiming that it's "karma." Her traumatic experience humbles her and she returns to becoming a top model with a prosthetic leg.
- MoniRobo: In "My brother's boss bullied him just because he was in a wheelchair", the Professor concocts a plan to get back at Osamu by planting a single-use shock cushion on his chair in revenge for pushing Wataru down the stairs. It paralyzes him from the waist down for one month, but he uses it as an excuse to slack off at work rather than to understand life from Wataru's perspective as a paraplegic man. When the CEO fires Osamu for his laziness once the effect wears off, he tries to push Wataru off the stairs once more, but Wataru turns the tables by using the brakes fitted into his wheelchair by the Professor, causing Osamu to fall down the stairs and end up paraplegic for real.
- Revenge Films: Stories where the antagonist bullies the protagonist for having a physical disability may have them suffer the same handicap at the end as punishment.
- "Passed out after falling while pregnant, waking up in hospital…": Melanie's mother-in-law bullied and shamed her for having a prosthetic leg and even tricked her into miscarrying because she didn't want a disabled grandchild like her, but when her son Skyler forced her to pay compensation, the mother-in-law started overeating until she developed diabetes, causing her to lose a leg, just like the daughter-in-law she bullied.
- "When I got injured on the job and became unemployed, my wife left me for a musician": After her musician boyfriend lost his contract with a major label because of his five-timing and she became a pariah for leaving the OP because of being disabled from a work injury, Karen is last seen walking in crutches and a cast on one of her legs, effectively becoming "useless" as she thought her husband was. To add to the irony, Karen falls over from seeing him strolling with his new girlfriend.
- "Passed out after falling while pregnant, waking up in hospital…"
Web Original
- Fluffy Pony: "Pillowing" is a Deadly Euphemism that means to amputate all four of a fluffy's legs, turning it into a "pillowfluff." This is a favorite tactic of abusers and usually a form of pointless cruelty, but it is sometimes presented as karmic justice for a fluffy who has done something really bad, like a mother who has killed one of her own foals.
Western Animation
- Amphibia: A rare self-inflicted version; after Sprig reading Leif's letter to him triggers a Heel Realization, Andrias lets Anne hit him with a powerful blast. This reveals that Andrias, to live for as long as he has, has gotten cybernetic replacements for many of his body parts. When the Core is officially defeated and he's imprisoned by Amphibia's new government, Andrias is seen still without the arm and leg he lost to Anne, and with cataracts in his eyes. The showrunners confirmed that Andrias refused any more cybernetic body parts, deciding it was time to grow old and meet his end naturally.
- Batman Beyond: Shriek, in his titular debut episode, was willing to work as a hitman for Derek Powers using his sound manipulation technology. During his fight against Batman, Terry uses Shriek's own technology against him, which results in him becoming permanently deaf, and requiring special technology to be able to hear.
- Family Guy:
- In "Joe's Revenge", Joe shoots Bobby Briggs in the knees as payback for when Bobby did the same to him years ago, planning on making him deal with the struggles of being disabled like Joe had to endure. Subverted when Bobby instead bleeds out and dies from his wounds.
- The episode "No Meals on Wheels" has Peter opening up a restaurant which at first struggles. But it starts to gain business after Joe invites all his friends (all of them wheelchair users) into the restaurant. But after seeing Joe and his friends as "uncool", he refuses their business. Joe and his friends get their revenge after they team up together and form Crippletron. After a fight, Crippletron falls on Peter, he becomes disabled himself where he too needs a wheelchair. This gives him a Heel Realization and he goes to make amends with Joe. Of course, since the show runs on Negative Continuity, Peter has use of his legs again by the next episode.
- Jackie Chan Adventures: "The Good, the Bad, the Blind, the Deaf and the Mute" has Daolon Wong attempt to use a relic resembling the three wise monkeys in Asian culture to inflict disabilities worldwide, with the Dark Chi Wizard making Tohru, Jade, and Jackie blind, deaf, and mute respectively. Uncle is able to break the spell, undoing all the inflictions while making Daolon blind, deaf, and mute.
- Miraculous Ladybug: In season 3, Nathalie's excessive use of the Peacock Miraculous for evil purposes severely damages her health, eventually leaving her unable to walk without the use of a powered exoskeleton. Even after giving up the Miraculous, her health continues to deteriorate until she falls into coma at the end of season 5. Luckily for her, Gabriel has a sudden attack of conscience and uses the Ultimate Power to completely restore her at the cost of his and Emilie's lives.
- Discussed in the season 1 finale of The Owl House, where the Emperor tells the populace that the Titan took away Eda's ability to use magic as punishment for going against the coven system. In reality, it was just a natural consequence of her curse and he's just making it all up as a PR stunt.
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Shadow Weaver, back when she was Light Spinner and a teacher at Mystacor, tried to get her fellow sorcerers to see that the Horde's forces were endangering Etheria, and that they needed to start experimenting with more powerful magic to defend Mystacor. The others refused, stating that the magic she wanted to use was far too dangerous. She ended up working on the spells anyway, using her top student, Micah, as her assistant. When they cast the spell, an innocent professor was killed and the magical backlash left irreparable scars on Light Spinner's face. This is why, as Shadow Weaver, she always wears a mask.
- South Park: Discussed in episode "Krazy Kripples"; Jimmy's parents mention that they used to bully disabled people when they were younger, and believe that their son Jimmy being born with disabilities is a punishment from God. It is unknown if that's true, though considering the universe in South Park, it may be a possibility. However, it's been made clear that Jimmy's parents learned their lesson about treating people with disabilities with kindness and are ashamed of their former behavior.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): After he fails Shredder and the Kraang too many times, Stockman is sent to Dimension X to be disintegrated. However, an accident results in Stockman instead becoming a fly mutant. This is likely karma working in both directions: while Stockman did do rather nefarious things under Shredder (necessitating some form of punishment), he started out as a well-meaning scientist who was recruited by the wrong person. He considers his mutant form a severe disability (despite the fact that he can now fly and has far more physcial ability than before) and does all he can to either get revenge on those who hurt him or turn himself human again.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): Every time Baxter Stockman fails to kill the Turtles, he is severely beaten by the Shredder. Throughout season one, each appearance has him showing up with more and more grievous injuries: punishments both from Shredder for failing him and from the universe for choosing the path of evil.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012):
- Xever Montes has been a thief since early childhood, and a minion/student of Shredder's since the crimelord bailed him out of prison. Throughout the first half of season one, the human happily takes part in schemes that endanger the Turtles and innocent people (including taking a blind restaurant owner hostage for daring to befriend the Turtles). Karma comes for him when he's doused with mutagen, turning him into a fish mutant and taking away his ability to walk and breath air. He needs a special breathing apparatus and robotic legs simply to go about his day.
- Oroku Saki set Hamato Yoshi and Tang Shen's house on fire as a means of trying to kill Yoshi and force Tang Shen to marry him. The ensuing battle not only resulted in Tang Shen's death, but the fire left Oroku Saki blind in one eye with a severely burned face. For this reason, he refuses to be seen without his kabuto.
- Transformers: Prime: In the "Operation: Bumblebee" two-parter, Bumblebee's T-cog, the part that allows Cybertronians to transform, is stolen by MECH. Starscream spends the majority of part 2 Bullying the Disabled, which makes it all the more karmic when MECH decide to steal his T-cog after Bumblebee reclaims his own from MECH and has it restored by Ratchet. Starscream is forced to spend the majority of Season 2 being unable to transform or fly as a result.
