People Share the Most Epic Moments of Karmic Payback They’ve Ever Witnessed

January 8, 2019 | Josh Mendelssohn

People Share the Most Epic Moments of Karmic Payback They’ve Ever Witnessed


They say that what goes around comes around, and these people learned that the hard way.

There’s nothing quite as epic as witnessing someone being a jerk, only to then be sabotaged by their own horrible behavior before our very eyes. Justice is a very sweet feeling, and no one knows this more than victims who have witnessed their adversaries getting hoisted by their own petard.

Here are 43 stories about awesomely satisfying cases of instant karma.


43. Dad Humor

My dad tried to fart on me and he pooped himself.

Instant Karma factsMax Pixel

42. Hold My Calls

I was at a touristy place at the top of a big cliff. People were hanging around at the top, just enjoying the view, and this one guy was eating a sandwich while staring at his phone.

After he was done, he couldn't be bothered to find a trash can. He went to throw the sandwich wrappings off the cliff, but got his hands confused and hurled his phone off the cliff instead.

Instant Karma factsPixabay

41. Poetic Justice

A dirtbag snatched an elderly lady’s purse—and got run over by a befuddled 80-year-old man while trying to flee.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

40. Nice Try!

Two of my friends and I were playing Monopoly sometime around freshman year of high school. One of my friends owned all the railroads, meaning any player who landed on a railroad would pay him $200.

The entire game felt like I was just moving my token from railroad to railroad, paying my friend each time, having no opportunity to buy properties. I was getting super frustrated.

On my next roll, I quickly calculate which space I was going to land on as I start to move my token, and lo and behold, I was going to land on another freaking railroad. I gracefully cheat and slide past the railroad, plopping my piece on the next space, Chance.

The chance card read something as follows: "Move token to nearest railroad. Pay owner twice the amount."

I lost my mind.

Instant Karma factsFlickr

39. Curb Your Enthusiasm

I was walking down the street and a Porsche gunned it to make a left turn in front of me at the entrance of a gas station. He missed hitting me by about a foot. Turns out he cut it too close. He immediately hit the curb and tore his front bumper off.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

38. Doorman

A person tried to shove past me in the hallway. Immediately after, a door opened up into the hallway and slammed him in the face.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

37. Let’s Talk About the Wheel Problem

A cyclist flipped me off because I wasn't sharing the road enough, despite the cycling lane to his right. In doing so, he rode right into a pothole and bent his front wheel.

Instant Karma factsPxHere

36. He Honked Right Into That One...

A lifted pickup truck with one of those train horns was driving aggressively through morning work traffic and honking at people who got in his way. He did it to an unmarked sheriff’s car and promptly got himself pulled over.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

35. Bumper to Bumper

I was driving in the slow lane. A guy rushes up to my bumper and starts tailgating me. He honks his horn and flashes his lights. When I don't move, he goes around me. Once he passes my car, so does a state trooper with his lights on.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

34. You Really Dodged a Bullet There

I was working at a trampoline park which had two different dodgeball areas—one for kids 12 and under, another for those 13 and up. An annoying little kid kept trying to sneak into the 13 and up game, running around, breaking rules, and basically being a pain. We couldn't really do much about it.

Eventually, I just let him sneak in—and not a moment later, he got smacked beautifully in the face with a rubber ball. It actually sent him flying back a couple feet.

He wasn't so keen to play with the older kids after that.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

33. All You Can’t Eat

My dog tried to eat my sushi while I went away from the table for a second. I came back to missing wasabi—and a very disgusted-looking dog.

Instant Karma factsWikimedia Commons

32. Car-ma

This jerk cut into my lane, forcing me to brake hard. I honked and he turned around in his car, while still driving, to flip me off. Because of this, he didn't see the car in front of him stopping at a red light and crashed directly into it. I had a lot of fun telling the police what had happened.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

31. Be Careful What You Wish For

This one happened to me. I was 16 years old, a junior in high school. In my English class, I got into an argument with a classmate. It got pretty heated and I ended up saying, “I hope you get into a car accident.”

Later that evening, I was driving my aunt around and got into a car accident. With a parked car. That’s karma.

Instant Karma factsShuttersock

30. Till Things Went Wrong

I overheard an admin at work boasting that she could easily skew the numbers on the tills to make it appear as though so-and-so's till was short. Now, I'm not a snitch, but I'm also not gonna let some kid get thrown under the bus cause of some jerk. The next day, I went to my boss to report it. Soon after, I see the admin nearly in tears, claiming the boss 'stabbed her in the back.' She had just been moved to a lousy department where she's visibly stressed and drowning in the workload every day. Perhaps an even better punishment than firing would have been, I think.

Instant Karma factsPxHere

29. I Hope She Was Thirsty!

I used to be a zookeeper.

This obnoxious woman was making fun of our llama for looking ugly. The llama was a rescue who had just had corrective jaw surgery.

The woman pointed and laughed at our llama.

The llama spat directly into her mouth.

I gave the llama a treat and told her that she was a good girl.

Instant Karma factsPixnio

28. Not All Karma is Bad Karma

One time, I smiled at someone walking by, then I saw them smile at somebody, who then smiled at somebody else. It was like a happy karma train.

Instant Karma factsFlickr

27. I Have a Feeling He Didn’t Get It…

A random guy was a total jerk to me at a cafe. A few days later, I interviewed him for a job.

Instant Karma factsPxHere

26. Birdbrain

My older sister and I didn't get along well growing up. One day, we were both coming home on a city bus. As we approached our stop, I got up and moved toward the door. As it opened, my sister aggressively shoved past me to get off first. The second she stepped off she was nailed full on by a load of seagull poop dropping from the sky. This was over 50 years ago and it still makes me smile.

Instant Karma factsPixabay

25. Vindicated

My dad was driving back from the shore when traffic got really bad. About a mile ahead, there was an accident that had brought traffic to a crawl. My dad decides to be patient about it. Others weren’t so patient. People began driving on the shoulder in order to get ahead of the traffic. This pissed my dad off. We all know how this goes. We do the right thing and are punished for it, whereas these jerks are skipping in front of traffic and will probably get away with it. He thought about following this stream of cars onto the shoulder, but he decided he’d do the right thing and wait.

As he got closer, he saw two cops in a parking lot. One cop was directing all of the shoulder drivers into the parking lot, while the other wrote all of those drivers tickets. He describes it as one of the most satisfying things he’s ever seen.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

24. Shouldering the Burden

I had just walked into a crowded bar with my friend back when we were in our early 20s. We make our way around the entrance handrails and BAM—this dude smashes his shoulder into mine knocking me back. Thinking it was just an accident caused by a crowded bar, I start to recover—when this dude throws his shoulder into me again. Before I can even begin to react to the second more aggressive hit, this monstrosity of a bouncer watching the whole things go down, picks the guy up and literally throws him out the exit doors.

It all happened in a matter of five seconds. I don’t think any other person in that bar, nor my friend, even saw it go down.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

23. Coming Through!

There’s a pedestrian crossing the street. Everyone stops for him except one guy in the last lane—who blasts his horn and blows through the intersection, nearly running the pedestrian over. There was an unmarked police car right behind him that immediately pulled him over.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

22. Special Delivery

A dude I worked with doing pizza delivery hit my bumper and scratched it in the parking lot. A customer called him out on it. He denied it and went on with his delivery. On that delivery, he was T-boned and his car was totaled. Had he come into the store to tell me and apologize, I would have forgiven it. Instead, he had to pay $500 for my new bumper paint job, and he lost his car.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

21. Weak at the Knees

I banged my knee on the corner of a hotel bed and my husband was laughing his head off while brushing his teeth in the bathroom. As soon as he walked out of the bathroom, his hit his knee the exact same way and I got to laugh my head off right back at him.

Instant Karma factsMax Pixel

20. Dealing the Final Blow

In high school, I had a kid punch me for no reason. I would have punched him back, but the principal AND the resource officer had literally just walked around the corner and seen it happen.

He was expelled and we never saw him again.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

19. Trouble With His Trunk

My boyfriend has a big GMC. One winter it was really snowy and a bunch of cars had gone into the ditch.

Because he's a nice guy, he was spending his day pulling people out for free. At one point, while he was helping someone, some jerk FLEW by him—wailing on the horn and flipping him off out the window.

He got done pulling the car out and headed up the road in the direction that the jerk had gone. A mile up the road, they found him standing outside of his car, which was now plowed into a giant tree.

My boyfriend honked his horn, waved, and kept driving. The dude just hung his head like a scolded dog.

Truly beautiful.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

18. On the Road Again

A few years ago now, there were terrible gales of wind in my town. At the place where I worked, there seemed to be a funnel effect due to the size of the building and narrow streets which made the wind even stronger, to the point where you could almost lean backward as you walked—which you had to do to stop yourself from being pushed forward.

Well, one time I came out of work, walked down the road in the strong winds to the corner, and the wind picked up something crazy and practically fired me out around the corner.

Unbeknownst to me, there was an old woman coming the other way. She saw me just randomly fly out from around the corner and looked at me like I was a prize idiot just messing around. I looked back to see her reach this corner, where the wind was still blowing strong—and it sent her flying out into the middle of the road. Luckily nothing was coming at the time.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

17. Call Me On the Cell Phone

Some stupid kid in middle school kept trying to steal my cell phone. Our school had a rule that you couldn't have your phone out in class. The teacher left the classroom for a second to have a brief word with an administrator, and the idiot took the opportunity to grab my phone. The teacher came back in a moment later and caught him red-handed with (my) phone out. She wouldn't believe it wasn't his phone. He got detention.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

16. Die Last Laugh

Quite recently, we got our tests back in German. One of my classmates had only studied the night before and got 1.5/10. Classmate 2—who was the nerdy type, always studying 2 weeks in advance—just stood and laughed at him. That is, until he got his own test back. He got a 1/10. He's still not over it…

Instant Karma factsPxHere

15. Going Downtown

I passed a slow car on a back road who was going too slow. This lady then proceeded to follow me all the way to my house and cut me off at the last second, causing me to hit her. I called the cops. All the while, this crazy lady is in my face talking about beating me up.

When the cop shows up, he confirms that there’s no damage to her car. He takes our licenses and when he hands mine back, he tells me that there was a warrant out for her arrest and if not for this incident, they might not have been able to find her. I waved at her as she got arrested.

Instant Karma factsMax Pixel

14. A Decisive Post

I got punched in the face by my cousin. I was 14 years old at the time and he was 8. He yelled “I am invincible!” and held his fists up to assert his dominance.

And then he turned 180 degrees, right into a wooden support post in our basement.

He sat down covering his face and starting crying. I was trying to maintain a concerned and worried look but couldn’t hold back my laughter.

Instant Karma factsGetty Images

13. Dressed for Success

I walked in the day of performance reviews at work, dressed quite a bit nicer than usual. My coworker, dressed like normal in a T-shirt and jeans, says "You don't need to dress up, they make those decisions before the meeting."

Guess who got a promotion and guess who didn't!

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

12. Swing Batter Batter

I was playing in a beer league slow pitch softball game once. The backstop of this field was a big chain link fenced half dome that extended out over home plate. The batter was mouthing off about how he was gonna hit it towards the pitcher on purpose because he was mad that our team was steamrolling his. He proceeds to pop the first pitch straight up. The ball hits a metal pole on that half dome, comes straight back down, and cracks him in the top on his head. Hard. He falls to the ground, pops back up, walks back to the dugout, puts all his stuff away, and leaves for the parking lot.

We think he went and cried in his car.

Instant Karma factsMax Pixel

11. Out to Lunch

My dad kept getting his lunch stolen at work. One day, he got my mother to get the spiciest hot sauce on the market and put it on his sandwich. Lo and behold, the guy who stole it was looking red as a hot iron.

They fired the guy and my dad got to eat his lunch again.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

10. Ending The Cycle

My friend was giving me a ride home. While we were sitting at a red light, a motorcyclist starts zipping between the lanes to get to the front, almost causing an accident in the turning lane and almost taking off my friend's mirror.

The car in front of us turned out to be an undercover cop car. When we started driving again, we immediately saw the motorcyclist pulled over under the overpass.

Instant Karma factsMax Pixel

9. The Cat’s Out of the Bag

I'm on the NYC subway. A guy elbows me out of the way to get into the turnstile first, yelling vaguely that he "has a train to catch."

We both turn the corner and there is a team of cops set up near a folding table doing random bag inspections. Which one of us do you think got chosen to have his bag searched for the next two minutes while the other walked leisurely away and onto the train?

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

8. Who Is Teaching Who This Lesson Again?

I was driving on the freeway one day and needed to get over. I checked to make sure it was clear, signaled, and changed lanes. I didn't realize there was an Escalade coming up behind at over 100 mph in that lane. He was going so fast that the lane had looked clear when I checked one second earlier.

The Escalade decided to teach me a lesson by acting like it wasn't going to stop and plow into me. There were now cars on both sides of me so I couldn't swerve out of the way. So the Escalade screams up until the last possible second and then hits the brakes hard so he matches my speed about a foot away from my bumper. While this is happening, I'm freaking out and wobbling the car ‘cause I think I'm going to get creamed.

The cop that was one lane over and two cars back immediately flipped on his lights and pulled them over. That was quite a roller coaster ride of emotions.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

7. The Waterworks Begin

I’m jumpy and frighten easily. As a result, my wife enjoys jumping out and scaring me.

So earlier this week, I’m getting a cup of water and she decides to scare me again. Not expecting her at all, I jump so violently that I throw my water right at her and she gets totally soaked.

Instant Karma factsPexels

6. Slapstick Revenge

One time when driving to work, a car started tailgating me—doing the speed up/slow down thing. I look in my rear-view mirror and see a girl in the passenger seat yelling at him. The car speeds up to my bumper one more time. I look in my mirror again, getting ready to flip him off. Then I see the girl absolutely slapping the driver silly. He backed off and stopped tailgating me.

Instant Karma factsPxHere

5. Snowball Fight

So it's winter and everything is covered in snow. I'm going home from a friend’s place and I see my shoelace is untied. I grab a nearby tree so I can maintain my balance while I put the shoelace inside my shoe. Immediately after grabbing a tree, a ton of snow falls on my head. A woman that was walking behind me starts laughing. Then, right after she walks by me, she slips on the ice and falls down. I had a good laugh of revenge.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

4. Next Time, Appreciate the Legwork

When I was still in architecture school, a professor gave the class an exercise. One student came up with a project with a lot of ramps for disabled people. The professor started laughing and asked her to remove them because no one will use them. A month or so later, he lost his leg.

Instant Karma factsPixabay

3. Spinning Out of Control

I hit my girlfriend in the forehead with a spinning fidget spinner. She chased me, I jumped on my bed, and my ceiling fan smacked the living snot out of me.

She was on the floor laughing for a solid five minutes.

I am a firm believer in karma now...or maybe just idiocy on my part.

Instant Karma factsFlickr

2. Spaghetti and Idiots

During my lunch break at work a few years ago, I ran over to this convenience store that sold a few deli items and also had a lunch of the day special. That day it was spaghetti.

I walked into the store and headed to the back to the coolers to grab a drink. I start walking over to the line that was formed to grab lunch. This older woman, who was talking to a woman not even close to the line, saw me walking and literally strong-armed me to get in front of me. She full on shoulder checked me. The cashier saw it and looked at me. I just shook my head as if to not call her out on it.

She gets two orders of spaghetti. I then pay for my food and walk out the door.

As I'm walking to my truck, I hear a loud "OOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFF". I turn around and this woman is planked on the ground with spaghetti and meat sauce all over her white shirt.

Instant Karma factsShutterstock

1. Gaslighting

A few years back, I was traveling on the interstate to meet some friends who attended a different college than I did for a weekend.

On the way there, I’m in the right-hand lane minding my own business, when a car tries to cut me off. No big deal, right? Except that she ended up clipping my bumper and running me off the road. The other driver keeps on going along her merry way, while I’m on the shoulder attempting to contact the local police to report an accident.

Five minutes later, a state trooper pulls up behind me and asks what happened. I explain the situation, describe the other vehicle, and include a partial license plate number. He asked if my car was still drivable. After confirming that it was, he said, “Just follow me up to this next exit—I got a call about a driver who is out of gas and needs assistance.”

We pull up to the next exit just shy of a gas station. Sure enough, it was the other party in my hit and run. She tried to deny that anything occurred, but the trooper looked at my front bumper damage and her back end damage, assessed that the paint colors matched, and checked that her plate had the partial information I had gathered as she sped away.

Turns out, the girl had no insurance and no license. She gets hauled off to jail on a hit-and-run, all because she couldn’t slow her butt down and be a decent driver.

Instant Karma factsPxHere

Sources: Reddit, ,


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