20 Movie Characters Who Never Got The Comeuppance They Deserved

Although some of its jokes have aged poorly, Trading Places is still a delightful comedy classic to this day. In it, a wealthy young banker named Louis Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd) and a homeless hustler named Billy Valentine (Eddie Murphy) trade places as part of a complicated bet, in order to determine how well they'll function in different social circumstances.

One of the great things about Trading Places is that it really gives the antagonists their just desserts. The central bet is organized by Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche, both brilliant), two of the most entertainingly hateful comedy villains ever. They get wonderful comeuppance as Winthorpe and Valentine bankrupt them, while their murderous hitman Clarence Beeks (Paul Gleason) is left caged up with a gorilla being shipped to Africa. 

Nevertheless, there's another unpleasant character the film unfortunately forgets, and that's Penelope Witherspoon (Kristin Holby), the grand-niece of the Dukes, who's engaged to Winthorpe at the start of the film. She cruelly rejects and dumps him when circumstances change, showing she's just as shallow and selfish as her great-uncles are. 

She ultimately disappears from the movie, and this has always felt like a missed opportunity. By the end, Winthorpe has begun a romance with a prostitute named Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis). It would've been great if she'd tried to get Louis to take her back once he became rich again, only to be rejected, or something like that.