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3%% No natter and no ZERO CONTEXT EXAMPLES please.
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6!!WARNING: Every example listed below is an unmarked spoiler. Read at your own risk!
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8!!Works/authors with their own pages:
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10[[index]]
11* ''DownerEnding/FiveNightsAtFreddysFazbearFrights''
12* DownerEnding/StephenKing
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16!!Individual examples:
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21* By virtue of being rather cynical, Creator/{{Amoridere}}, more often than not, writes these:
22** ''Broken Gate'' ends shortly after resealing the gate, when Nezumi dies, feeling her emotions again for the first time in over 200-years, and her death is the last time her siblings, Tora and Miyako, see her again.
23** The poem ''$900'' ends with, from what's implied, the subject dying en-route to a hospital, as she couldn't afford to call an ambulance.
24** ''Beishang'' has the titular dying, while her father desperately tries to make amends and she being unable to express how she felt.
25** ''What He Couldn't Save'' has the father failing to cure and make amends with his terminally ill turned comatose daughter.
26* Creator/HilaireBelloc: The children's picture book ''Matilda Who Told Lies and Was Burnt to Death'' ends exactly how you think it ends. The author wrote a whole book full of such mock uplifting verse. Titles also included "Henry King, who Chewed Bits of String and was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies" and "George, Who played with a Dangerous Toy, and suffered a Catastrophe of considerable Dimensions" (subverted to the extent that George himself is one of the few to ''survive'' the catastrophe, albeit with a minor injury). Averted with "Charles Augustus Fortescue, Who Always Did what was Right, and so Accumulated an Immense Fortune".
27* Creator/RayBradbury seemed to have a thing for pulling this on occasion:
28** ''Literature/TheMartianChronicles'': Nearly all of these short stories have downer endings.
29*** The first expedition to Mars is offhandedly slaughtered by a dour Martian who believes that his wife is psychically cheating on him with the outsiders.
30*** The members of the second expedition end up being considered madmen and consigned to a looney bin, since Martians are psychics and capable of physically manifesting their hallucinations; and are eventually pronounced incurable and executed by the doctor -- who, when the "hallucinations" persist, considers himself contaminated with their insanity and kills himself.
31*** "Literature/MarsIsHeaven!": The explorers land on Mars and find [[NostalgiaHeaven all their deceased relatives, apparently alive and well]], until the captain of the ship realizes something was amiss, and the shapeshifting [[TelepathicSpacemen telepathic Martians]] go on a killing spree.
32*** Additional downer endings are Martians wiped out by human viruses, psychically tortured to death, committing suicide; as well as humans committing murder and suicide, with the majority eventually returning to Earth to be wiped out in a nuclear war. A few stories can be said to be upbeat, particularly the last; but only by comparison to the rest.
33** "Literature/AllSummerInADay": Taking place in a school on Venus, the planet has relentless non-stop rain except one day every 7 years. Every student present is native to the planet, except Margot, a girl who lived on Earth until her parents moved. She misses the Sun terribly and is weak and sickly. The other students, jealous that she's seen the Sun on Earth, bully her. The teacher leaves and, in her absence, the students lock Margot in a closet. The Sun finally comes out for the first time in 7 years, and the kids, completely forgetting her, run into the nice weather and are overjoyed. It starts raining again, and only once back inside do they remember Margot. Opening the closet they find a trembling, sobbing girl who missed her only chance at Sun that she desperately needed. The end.
34** ''Literature/ThereWillComeSoftRains'' is about an automated house that takes complete and total care of its inhabitants. However, it is unaware that the entire family has been killed by a nuclear bomb while outside working and playing. (It even goes into detail about how the remains of paint on the side of the house are shaped a little like people mowing the lawn, picking flowers, kids catching a ball, etc.) The sole survivor is the family dog, which soon dies, it's body heartlessly incinerated by the house which assumes it to be garbage. The house burns down in an accident that night, the flames damaging the computer and causing it to fly into an infinite loop, repeating the chores of the day over and over until it collapses into smoking rubble. The End.
35** ''[[http://mikejmoran.typepad.com/files/pedestrian-by-bradbury-1.pdf "The Pedestrian"]]'', the poor old man just wanted to go for an evening walk and ends up getting sent to an insane asylum by the last cop car in the city.
36%%** A great deal of Bradbury's short stories have Downer Endings. In the collection "The Stories of Ray Bradbury", for some reason each selected story is one tale of morbidity after another.
37%%** His short story collection "The Illustrated Man" similarly has many Downer Endings.
38* Many of Creator/RamseyCampbell's short stories end horribly.
39** In "Cold Print", the protagonist is able to sabotage [[Literature/CthulhuMythos Y'gonolac]]'s scheme, but the Elder God quickly pins him down and savagely murders him.
40** "The Brood": Blackband discovers the titular Brood has been assimilating homeless people into itself, and quickly becomes its next victim when he tries to kill it.
41** "Literature/TheChimney": The narrator's father burns to death, and his mother dies shortly after. The narrator realizes his father's corpse is the spitting image of his vision of Father Christmas, and speculates he somehow caused his father's death.
42* Len Deighton novels, with ''Mamista'' as Exhibit A: the main protagonist falls in love with a revolutionary, she gets wounded, on the run through the jungle she contracts gangrene, they split off from the main group. Two gunshots are heard.
43* Read [[Creator/ErnestHemingway Hemingway]]? There's even a joke about his writing: "Why did the chicken cross the road? To die. [[PartlyCloudyWithAChanceOfDeath In the rain]]. [[DyingAlone Alone]]." And that's no exaggeration. One of Hemingway's most critically acclaimed shorts, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", is a prime example. You can always tell who will die horribly in a Hemingway story - it's the one who is happiest.
44* Present in most of the FantasticComedy novels of Creator/TomHolt. ''Little People'' and ''In Your Dreams'' stand out as having especially (even gratuitously) depressing endings.
45** Tom Holt's novels set in antiquity (''Olympiad'', ''A Song for Nero'', ''Alexander at the World's End''). The narratives explores various ancient philosophies. For example, ''A Song For Nero'', which starts out as a relatively amusing story about two itinerant conmen having adventures all over the Roman Empire. And then in true Tom Holt fashion, everything falls apart about 3/4 of the way through the book. It's depressing.
46* Creator/FranzKafka:
47** ''Give It Up'' is about a man searching for the afterlife and being told that his quest is futile.
48** Kafka's ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'' features a main character who becomes a bug (literally "vermin") whose only escape from his life's horror is self destruction. With his usefulness as a breadwinner gone, his family ignores him and he dies a slow, painful death. Afterwards, his sister is marked for her money-making potential as a bride, indicating that the cycle will just continue. [[EpilepticTrees Some people think]] that Gregor was insane and hallucinating being a bug, noting that no character actually directly states that he really transformed. [[note]]The fanfic epilogue ''Re-metamorphosis'' (not printed in all editions) has Gregor turning back into a human at the very end of the book. Although it's still kind of a downer.[[/note]]
49** ''Der Prozess'' (''The Trial'') is so horribly depressing, it spawned the term "kafkaesque" to describe any situation that is utterly absurd and mindcrushing to anyone still sane (while everyone around you seems to accept it as natural, but doesn't tell you what is going on). The protagonist is being told he is accused of a crime but no-one he meets is willing to tell him what he is actually accused of, and when or where the trial will be, and he is stuck in a hopeless mire of bureaucracy and red tape that grows ever more grotesque.
50* Most of Donna Leon's books. While the commissario solves the crime, it turns out he can't prosecute the perpetrators because of their political backing or similar issues.
51* Creator/CormacMcCarthy:
52** ''Literature/BloodMeridian'' ends with every character in the posse dying, except for a figure which is either the villain or the protagonist, but more likely is the villain.
53** In ''Literature/NoCountryForOldMen'' the protagonist is killed by the Mexicans, and his wife is killed by Anton.
54* Nearly all of Creator/MichaelMoorcock's Eternal Champion books consist of grim stories of war and betrayal, followed by downer endings; most notably the Elric of Melnibone books. The Eternal Champion himself is doomed to find only strife and pain in all of his manifestations; too never be at peace, but eternally seperated from anything and everything he loves. Mercifully, only one incarnation, Erekose, is even remotely aware of this destiny; but he has enough {{Wangst}} about it to make up for the rest.
55** Corum Jhaelen Irsei has a BittersweetEnding in the ''Swords Trilogy'': he is still maimed, but his human lover is alive, not all his people were exterminated and are gradually recovering from the devastation, and the Lords of Law and Chaos are no longer able to meddle in mortals' lives.
56*** Averted in the ComicBook ''Michael Moorcock's Multiverse'' (scripted by Moorcock himself), in which the polarity of the Multiverse is reversed just long enough for Elric to avoid being absorbed into the Eternal Champion and instead absorb it into himself, thereby regaining control of his own destiny.
57* Creator/GeorgeOrwell seemed to like this trope:
58** In ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', after his "rehabilitation" in the Ministry of Love and betraying Julia to his own Fate Worse than Death, Winston callously and casually assists the Party's war department by allowing them to use his tactical mind through the medium of self-versed chess to economically distribute Oceania's forces in Africa more effectively. His love for Julia is nonexistent, and she reciprocates. After reading reports that the attacks he coordinated have succeeded, he forsakes his first and earliest childhood memory and replaces it with pure hot-blooded devotion to the truly-proved-meaningless cause of war on the Party's behalf. He ends his life — or imagines the end of his life — in stupid ecstasy, after confessing to crimes he did not commit in order to alleviate guilt from the Party (the same lie of which others partook at the start of the novel being the incitement of his intellectual rebellion), he finally professes unconditional love for Big Brother as he's shot through the back of the head. Perhaps the worst part of the ending is the fact that Winston's re-education is so successful that he actually mistakes it for a happy ending.
59--->''"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. '''He loved Big Brother.'''"''
60** In ''Literature/AnimalFarm'', after the tyrannical Mr Jones is overthrown, things at the farm improve for a while. But years down the line, the pigs who took over leadership start walking on two legs, carrying whips, working and starving the other animals to the bone, and in the end, they change the name of the farm from Animal Farm, the symbol of their triumph over humans, back to Manor Farm, as it was known before their revolution. The story concludes with the pigs meeting with humans, and the animals spying on them through a window are utterly unable to tell them apart. In short, the book ends with the animals [[FullCircleRevolution right back where they started]].
61** One of Orwell's early essays was titled "How the Poor Die".
62%%* For ultra-depressing, tear-jerking downer endings (and middles, and beginnings), though, there's nothing like Creator/EdgarAllanPoe.
63* French Canadian writer Creator/PatrickSenecal has got to be the king of downer endings:
64** ''5150 Elm Street'': The crazy father kills his little girl with a rifle, his wife hangs herself, the kid he was holding captive loses his mind is eventually found by the psychopath daughter, who proceeds to castrate him. And she manages to get away with it.
65** ''Oniria'': Everyone dies except for the main character and his psychopath "true" self.
66** ''Sur le Seuil'': The entire supporting cast is brutally murderer or commit suicide, taking with them a busload of innocents, and the main character is left tourmented for the rest of his life. And Evil lives on. Yay.
67** ''Le Vide'': Life is empty.
68** ''Literature/{{Aliss}}'': Bittersweet. Aliss is exiled from Wonderland, but manages to recover from her experience, find a husband and is expecting a baby. Later on, she tries to find the entrance to Wonderland again but cannot, concluding that it's because she "isn't running anymore". She doesn't know if she should be satisfied or depressed.
69* Virtually anything written by Creator/JohnSteinbeck. Not because he liked downer endings of course. He just loved inherently depressing subjects in the first place that couldn't end in anything but tragedy.
70** One example of his endings is ''Literature/OfMiceAndMen'' where George kills his partner Lennie, after they had spent most of the novella trying to survive the Great Depression. The book takes its title from a poem by Robert Burns, which mentions even the best schemes often going awry. Hence, it sets up a bleak situation with aspiring protagonists, then ends on a similarly bleak note.
71* Almost anything by Creator/JRRTolkien - and those which aren't downright downer endings, are BittersweetEnding at best.
72* Creator/OscarWilde:
73** [[http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/178/ ''The Nightingale and the Rose'']]. The poor bird... And that awful girl and not-so-worthy student don't deserve the noble bird's HeroicSacrifice. They are horrible people.
74** "Literature/TheHappyPrince". Or not so happy. He is horrible, he suffers, he improves and he dies young. The end.
75** ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'': Dorian stabs his painting. This kills him, reverting his body to its actual physical condition and restoring his image in the painting to its original beauty.
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79* ''Literature/TwentySixSixtySix'': Lola Amalfitano has another child, gets AIDS, and returns just long enough to see her husband and daughter, only to hitchhike out of town again.
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83* Iain M. Banks's ''Literature/AgainstADarkBackground''. The protagonist saves herself at the end by killing the BigBad, who is also her last surviving relative. Before this, everyone she cares about, and in fact every single main character (and most of the secondary ones), and has been killed, all because of her.
84* ''Literature/AlexRider'': ''Scorpia'' ends with Alex being shot by a sniper and, apparently dead. The only way to know he survives is from the fact that the series continues for four books.
85* ''Literature/AllQuietOnTheWesternFront'' (''Im Westen nichts Neues'') by Erich Maria Remarque. After seeing his friends killed off one by one, a German soldier during WWI progressively loses interest in life. In the final chapter, he comments that peace is coming soon, but he does not see the future as bright and shining with hope, feeling that he has no aims left in life and that his generation will be different and misunderstood. When he finally dies at the end of the novel, the situation report from the frontline states, "All is Quiet on the Western Front," symbolizing the cheapness of human life in war.
86* ''Literature/AnAmericanTragedy'': Clyde Griffiths' mother fails to get a stay on Clyde's execution and he dies. (Assuming that you have any sympathy for Clyde by this point in the story, that is).
87* In ''Literature/{{Angelfall}}'', Paige is recovered and can walk again, but now she is an inhuman monster feeding on people. Penryn is badly wounded and is brought back to Obi's camp. Raffe got wings sewn back on, only they aren't his, they're Beliel's bat-like wings, marking him as an outcast.
88* Harry Martinson's space epic ''Literature/{{Aniara}}''. After 24 years, the last passenger onboard the mighty goldonder ''Aniara'' is dead, and the spaceship has become a speeding sarcophagus in the deep space.
89* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'': Sure, they ended the Yeerk invasion, but Rachel dies. Tom dies at Jake's command, having never been freed from his Yeerk, and Jake is depressed. Tobias leaves to live his life as a hawk. Marco's life is bittersweet shallow. Cassie gets her dream job, but never ends up with Jake. Ax becomes a war hero, but ends up getting assimilated into the Borg. And presumably, everyone but Cassie dies in the BolivianArmyEnding.
90* ''Literature/ArtemisFowl: The Atlantis Complex'' has Artemis contract a mental condition of the same name that usually only strikes magical beings, but he has contracted it due to his abosorbing a small amount of magic, with horrific symptoms. Well, the team (Holly, Artemis, Butler, Juliet, Mulch, and Foaly) take down Turnball Root and save Atlantis. Sounds good right? But there's two HUGE problems: Opal Koboi's past self (long story) is still in the future, and Artemis STILL has Atlantis Complex.
91-->'''Artemis:''' I was a broken boy and you fixed me. Thank you.
92* Kate Chopin's ''Literature/TheAwakening'' has protagonist Edna committing suicide when, among other things, she realizes there's no way to reconcile her sense of self with the social expectations of her period. She drowns herself in the ocean, which is especially poignant as learning to swim was the one time Edna derived satisfaction or a sense of freedom from just about anything. Of course, Edna was an incredibly controversial character at the time period, so many readers were SATISFIED when she offed herself.
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96* ''Literature/{{Beachwalker}}'' ends with the protagonist losing her beloved patient, then dying herself shortly afterward. Made slightly less sad by the ambiguous sensation of fingers closing around her hand just as she dies, implying that they are TogetherInDeath.
97* ''Beggars Ride'' by Nancy Kress, last book of ''Literature/BeggarsInSpain'' trilogy, ends in one of these. the Supersleepless are all dead(though samples of their sperm and eggs survive), most of the Sleepless die when Sanctuary is destroyed unreconciled with the Sleepers(though its better than if they had survived unreconciled), last bookd panacea(the Cell Cleaner which makes a person immune to almost all diseases, cancers, arthritis, skin blemishes, etc. as well as allowing said person to subsist on skin contact with dirt and sunlight) is unavailable to future generations, and an engineered virus(which is able to work around the Cell Cleaner) has infected a significant part of the population with a disease that causes a fear of novelty(worst than it sounds).
98* ''Literature/TheBluestEye'' ends with the main character, a little girl, being raped by her father, becoming pregnant, and turning insane. She is ostracized by the entire town, including her two former friends who blame themselves. Her only friends plant some flowers in hope that the baby will be born safely. The flowers don't grow. The end.
99* Fred Saberhagen generally liked happy endings, but ''Mindsword's Story'', the sixth book in his ''[[Literature/BookOfSwords Books of Lost Swords]]'' series, had a huge downer ending. Yes, the primary antagonist Prince Murat has been defeated and killed, but Vilkata and Akbar, who were both much more evil than Murat, are both still at large, the former with the [[MindRape Mindsword]] and the latter with [[InfinityPlusOneSword Shieldbreaker]]; Princess Kristin has had her legs shattered, crippling her, and she maintains that she is still in love with Murat, long after the Mindsword's powers should have worn off, and she insists that she has divorced Mark, meaning that he is no longer the Prince Consort of Tasavalta, leaving the principality with a huge political crisis. At the end of the novel, Mark is left standing in the rain, wondering what, exactly, he had won.
100* ''Literature/BootCamp2007'' The teenaged protagonist has [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie succumbed]] to the camp's harsh laws and become [[SociopathicSoldier exactly what they wanted him to become.]] Rhue specifically stated that he used ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' as a muster. Made even worse by the fact that his parents are now finally ready to accept him as he is... and then they found him in this state.
101* ''Literature/TheBoyInTheStripedPyjamas'' ends with the two main characters Bruno and Shmuel being gassed in the Auschwitz concentration camp while completely unaware of what's going to happen to them. What makes it even worse is the fact that Bruno was only in the camp to help Shmuel find his father who is "missing", even though it's clear to the reader that he's implied to be actually dead. And then there's the epilogue, where Bruno's father Ralf (the Nazi commander in charge of the camp) somehow figures out what happened to his son (who's been missing ''for the past year'') before Soviet soldiers show up to the camp and take him out. Considering this takes place at Auschwitz, it's [[JustifiedTrope justified]].
102* ''Literature/TheBoyWithTheCuckooClockHeart'': After revealing to Miss Acacia who he really was after waking up from a coma, she is unsurprisingly angered by the reveal, as she thought Jack was dead and had already moved on from him, going as far as marrying Joe, who she isn't in love with. Because of this, she tells Jack that as far as she's concerned, "[[TheUnperson he no longer exists]]", and leaves. In the WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue, it is revealed that realizing that he has finally lost the love of his life turned Jack into what is described as "[[HeroicBSOD the ghost of his former self]]", becoming a depressed person and going back to his childhood home, which is now tended by Anna and Luna because Madeleine died; there, Arthur reveals to him that he only needed the clock for the first months of his life, but that Madeleine grew so attached to him that she didn't remove it so he would never leave her.
103* Used greatly in Aldous Huxley's ''Literature/BraveNewWorld'' in which the decoy protagonist Bernard learns the hard way the costs of popularity and gets banished [maybe killed if you don't believe Mustapha Mond] for being an individualist. The real protagonist actually wants to leave but isn't allowed to and gives in, ultimately shaming the poor guy to the point of hanging himself.
104* ''Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf'':
105** ''Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens'': ''Zero Hour'' ends when the parents are found by their daughter, who is leading the Martian invaders to them because she thinks life will be a lot more fun when she doesn't have adults spoiling it.
106** ''Bruce Coville's Book of Nightmares'': [[spoiler: ''The Fat Man'' features a pair of teenage boys investigating the title character to find out the truth about him. Neither survives the attempt.]]
107** ''Bruce Coville's Book of Ghosts II'':
108*** In ''Soul Survivor'', the possessing ghost expels the soul of the man he's been possessing into a dolphin at an aquarium... only to discover that his host can't swim. The former human is trapped in the dolphin's body, and the ghost escapes to find another permanent host -- the reader.
109*** ''A Cry in the Night'' has the main character being successfully tricked into entering the lair of a ghost who has been consuming children and stealing their voices to lure other kids into his clutches for decades. The story's end has that boy's voice being used to ensnare two new victims.
110* ''Literature/BurntShadows'' ends with the protagonist's son being (unjustly) detained as a terrorist, leaving her completely alone in the world.
111* ''Literature/TheButcherBoy'': Francie loses his remaining sanity after Joe distances from him. He brutally kills Mrs Nugent with a bolt gun, dismembering her corpse. He's captured and sent to a mental hospital where he writes memoirs about the murder and he attempts to forge a friendship with an inmate similar to the one he had with Joe. The film adaptation has a more positive ending, with him regaining his sanity years later.
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115* In the memoir book ''Captain of My Soul'' by Whitney G Williams, the eponymous character not only fails to get into the desired sorority of her choice (due to the sorority being on suspension for two years for hazing), but she and the other girls she attempted to pledge with are social pariahs of their college due to the sorority members telling everybody about how they snitched on the "[=TETs=] (Theta Eta Thetas)" for their hazing towards the prospective members. Whitney does attempt to make it into a BittersweetEnding by saying that the sorority shouldn’t define anybody, and it is not necessary to join a sorority to be the best version of you.
116* ''Literature/CaseyAtTheBat''. The final line of the poem: "But there was no joy in Mudville...Mighty Casey had struck out." It was really his own fault for being a SmugSnake and a show off, getting the first two strikes on purpose.
117* ''Literature/ChildhoodsEnd'', by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. The Overlords cannot join with the Overmind, and are instead remembered as the "devils" who "exterminated" countless other intelligent species by uplifting them until they (the species) can evolve and join the Overmind. And that's just the Overlords. All of the children in the world AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence by gaining a psychic powers and developing into a HiveMind. No other children are born so humanity goes crazy and kills itself. Eventually the children join the Overmind by turning the rest of the planet into energy, killing the last human in the process. Sure the Overlords are jealous about not being able to join the Overmind, but anyone who is a fan of individuality and not a fan of AssimilationPlot is going to have a hard time seeing what is so great about it.
118* ''Literature/TheChocolateWar'' ends with the hero beaten senseless in a fixed fight, the villain being given MORE influence, the only adult who isn't evil is useless, the school hating the hero, and the hero ends the book with an internal monologue on the pointlessness of ever trying to defy a cruel system, and urging his sidekick to just bow down to the school's bully-based dictatorship. Looking at the back jacket, in the sequel, things get worse. At the end of the sequel a more villainous leader takes over the school gang, but there is hope things will change because the hero of the previous book is coming back to school and it is heavily implied he will continue to stand up to said gang.
119* The main character of ''Literature/ACivilAction'' is a lawyer who files a wrongful death lawsuit against two corporations, accusing them of having dumped toxic chemicals into the water supply of a town, causing the death of a number of children. He then loses the lawsuit against one of the companies and settles the case with the other for far less than his expenses in pursuing it. At the end of the trial, he has become a wreck of a man, his legal practice is in shambles and he is completely broke. Moreover, the families of the victims sue him, claiming that he overcharged them for the expenses of the trial. Finally, he will spend years appealing against the verdict, suffering a string of humiliating rebuffs. The FilmOfTheBook [[LighterAndSofter manages to be less bleak]] by giving him a sort of moral victory and omitting some of the aforementioned details.
120* The short science fiction story "Literature/TheColdEquations" is famous for its Downer Ending: there really isn't a way to save the girl, and she goes out the airlock willingly so the spaceship doesn't crash.
121* ''Literature/{{Cilva}}'': Alala's parents die. She dies. And Zoticus is thrown into one of the most grueling battles of the conflict, with no end in sight.
122* ''Literature/TheCollectorJohnFowles'': The beautiful and good Miranda could never escape from her horrible imprisonment. She dies a painful death, and her kidnapper Frederick is zooming in on future victim who looks just like her, only she's of lower social standing, so he thinks there is a chance that she will fall for him this time.
123* ''Literature/ElConquistador'' ends that way, in a similar way than many Real Life Examples of Argentinian heroes[[note]]although Quetza is actually Aztec, the writer is Argentinian, so... [[/note]]: the hero is demoted, mocked and no one believes his warnings about the dangerous people across the sea.
124* James A. Michener's collection ''Creatures of the Kingdom'', which includes segments from six of his novels and one original story, has more than half of its sixteen stories end this way, as the animal character that the story is focused on either dies or loses a family member.
125** ''Diplodocus, the Dinosaur'' (originally from ''Centennial''): The title character, mortally wounded, goes back into the swamp and dies.
126** ''A Miracle of Evolution'' (originally from ''Centennial''): Covers the evolution of the horse, and follows the life of one in particular, ending in his being killed by wolves, just as his mate and colt had.
127** ''Matriarch, the Woolly Mammoth'' (originally from ''Alaska''): Ends with the mammoths encountering the humans who kill one and will eventually drive the species to extinction.
128** ''Portrait of Rufous'' (originally from ''Centennial''): Ends with the death of the title bison after he's become an outcast from his herd.
129** ''The Beaver'' (originally from ''Centennial''): ends with the title character losing her mate and any chance at having any more children beyond the single litter she already had.
130** ''The Eagle and the Snake'' (originally from ''Centennial''): follows a rattlesnake, and ends with it being killed by a human; the sub-segment ''Epilogue: The Death of Elly Zahm'' ends with the title character (and her unborn child) being killed by a different rattlesnake.
131** ''The Hyena'' (originally from ''The Covenant''): The title character dies before he and his human companion can return to the man's home.
132** ''Nerka the Salmon'' (originally from ''Alaska''): Follows the life cycle of a single Sockeye salmon, from his birth to his death after spawning.
133** ''Jimmy the Crab'' (originally from ''Chesapeake''): Ends with the deaths of the title character and his mate as they couple; their deaths are due to a hurricane having caused massive flooding, and the floodwater carried a great deal of sewage with it into the Chesapeake Bay where the two crabs lived, poisoning its waters and the majority of its wildlife.
134* ''Literature/CretanChronicles'': After an adventure spanning three entire books, Altheus returns to Athens, only to find his home destroyed by the Trojans, his mother missing, and the Gods have disowned him, where he must embark on another quest ''minutes'' after completing his own. But thousands of miles away in the Isle of Minos, Altheus' daughter had matured enough to set off on another quest after her father. The End.
135* The ending of ''Literature/{{Cujo}}'': The title monster dog is finally killed, but tragically poor Tad dies of heat stroke.
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139* In ''Literature/DarknessAtNoon'', not only is there the ForegoneConclusion of the protagonist being shot as a traitor, but rather than die in silence he willingly confesses in a show trial to the false charges brought against him.
140* Almost every ending to every book in ''[[Literature/DeptfordMice The Deptford Mice]]'' trilogy and its prequels is a downer, most notably...
141** ''The Final Reckoning'': Audrey's friend Oswald and [[StarCrossedLovers true love]] Piccadilly have both been killed, and she [[PassingTheTorch has become the new Starwife]] [[ButThouMust essentially against her will]]. However, she ''did'' come to accept the position because she realised YouCantFightFate.
142** ''The Oaken Throne'': All the evil has been defeated and everyone is celebrating. Though Ysabelle had previously rejected her love Vesper, she has come to her senses, deciding to give up the Starwifeship and run away with him as he wanted her to. She excitedly runs to find him, but during the brief period she left him alone, Vesper has been killed and the book ends with Ysabelle sobbing over his body.
143** ''Thomas'': The evil Mother Lotus puts Thomas into a trance, causing him to throw his best friend Woodget (who cannot swim) into the ocean. When Thomas awakens from the trance, he realises what he has done and is filled with remorse. In the epilogue, it is revealed that Woodget was rescued by [[OurSirensAreDifferent the siren Zenna]] whose song gave him amnesia. He was brought to the City of Hara in India and became the new Holy One. Thomas [[DarkAndTroubledPast continues to live with guilt]] due to the mistaken belief that he killed Woodget.
144* The [[Literature/{{Deryni}} Deryni novel]] ''The Bishop's Heir'' ends with Kelson Haldane kneeling and holding his bride Sidana of Meara -- his ''dead'' bride Sidana, murdered during the wedding ceremony by her brother Llewellyn, who was playing the role of her father to give away the bride.
145* ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'':
146** ''Dog Days'' ends with Greg and Rowley's friendship temporarily in shambles and Greg's vacation being absolutely atrocious.
147** In ''The Long Haul'', Greg's parents lose their credit cards and wallets at a water park. After everything is sorted out, Greg finds the key to the locker where they were and wonders what he should do with it: accept the consequences, blame Rodrick for it, or flush it down the toilet. He compares it to ''Literature/ChooseYourOwnAdventure'' books and, as he explains earlier in the book, he always seems to make the wrong choices and get the bad endings.
148--->'''Greg:''' And whichever way I go from here, it's hard to see this story having a happy ending.
149** In ''The Getaway'', the Heffleys' vacation to Isla de Corales is ruined by [[ContrivedCoincidence Contrived Coincidences]] and bad luck; Rodrick is left with severe sunburns and finds out his new girlfriend is cheating on him, Manny loses all of the animals he tried to take home as pets, the resort is left in shambles, and the Heffleys have been banned from Isla de Corales, which is now trying to actively track them down, meaning Frank and Susan can't return to the place they had their honeymoon for some time. The only one who gets what they want, ironically, is Greg, who briefly gets to swim with the dolphins, the thing he wanted to do the most, while fleeing from the local police and to add salt to the wound, ''The Meltdown'' reveals this led to the Pig running away.
150* ''Literature/{{Diaspora}}'': After unknown billions of years spent hunting through trillions of alternate universes, Paolo and Yatima utterly fail to find the Transmuters. They have no way home and realize that humanity would have evolved beyond all recognition in their absence anyway, so Paolo commits suicide and Yatima retreats into a virtual reality to study mathematics for all eternity.
151* Much like the ''Goosebumps'' series, the ''Literature/DisneyChills'' series is fond of these.
152** The first book ends with Ursula victorious, Shelly fully transformed into a fish, her parents grieving and Enrique having lost his memories of what happened, and it's implied Shelly will be given to her fish-killing little brother as a pet.
153** The second book ends with Dr. Facilier as mayor of New Orleans, Jamal and Malik's parents not remembering they had kids at all, and Jamal and Malik stuck as shadows that will slowly disappear from existence.
154* Creator/WilliamGibson and Creator/MichaelSwanwick's short story "Dogfight". The protagonist succeeds at his ultimate objective (defeating the local champion of a holographic, mentally-controlled battle game featuring WWI fighter planes), but immediately afterwards realizes [[PyrrhicVictory the price he paid to do so was too high]]: stealing a piece of game-breaking technology from his only friend to give himself an advantage (psychologically scarring her in the process, due to a chastity implant her parents gave her that gives her a crippling fear of being touched by men) and alienating himself from the rest of the bar's patrons by robbing the game's champion (a quadriplegic war veteran) of the only pleasure left in his life. What good is a victory when you have no one to share it with?
155* ''Literature/ADogOfFlanders'': Nello is born as a poor orphan who lives with his grandfather. He wants to win a drawing contest to gain some money, but loses. Then his grandpa dies and he is homeless. He finally goes to the cathedral of Antwerp, where he freezes to death in front of a large painting by Creator/PeterPaulRubens.
156%%* Creator/MarkTwain's short story [[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3174 A Dog's Tale]]. "Poor little doggie, you saved ''his'' child."
157* In ''Literature/DownToASunlessSea'', everyone in the world has died in a nuclear war except a few hundred survivors in Antarctica. Then, in one version of the ending (it was published in two different versions), the Earth's axis tilts, Antarctica is no longer circumpolar, the radiation gets there too, and everyone else dies.
158* Chuck Klosterman's debut novel, ''Literature/DowntownOwl''. 2 out of 3 of the main characters focused on are killed in a deadly blizzard...and they're both rather young. The one that survives is well around in his late 70s early 80s. And it also includes a fake newspaper article explaining how nearly half of Owl's population was killed (about 800 live in Owl).
159* ''Literature/DreambloodDuology'': ''The Killing Moon'', the first volume, ends with Nijiri gathering[[note]]that is, killing him by sending his soul into Ina-Karekh[[/note]] his beloved mentor Ehiru because the latter has become a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Reaper]] and Gujaareh being conquered by the Kisuati in the name of saving the people of Gujaareh from their own religion.
160* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' aren't the happiest books in the world, but book 11, ''Literature/TurnCoat'', ends on a really depressing note. Sure, they found the traitor on the Council, but the whole thing was a set up to get the Black Council's guy on the Senior Council. Morgan, who was a JerkAss but a completely loyal one, is dead. Anastasia Luccio, the woman Harry has been dating, turns out to have been [[MindControl mentally coerced]] by the spy into the relationship in order to keep an eye on Harry. And Harry's half-brother, Thomas, has given into his vampire side after being tortured by the skin-walker and fed humans by it, and has returned to the White Court. [[note]](And the next book starts from there and goes downhill fast.)[[/note]]
161* ''Literature/DucklingUgly:'' Cara has become inhumanly beautiful like she always wanted and gotten her revenge on the townspeople of Flock's Rest who made her life hell by turning them into hideous monsters, but has paid an equally hideous price for it. She gets kicked out of the town, becomes a WalkingWasteland who sucks the beauty out of everything she touches, and has nowhere in the world to go and no idea how to return to the paradise of De Leon. She is consigned to WalkingTheEarth trying to find it again, [[RayOfHopeEnding and until that day comes]], she will be cursed to bring ruin, ugliness, and despair everywhere she goes.
162* In the short story "The Dumpster", a young girl lives with a horrible family: father is a fat, lazy slob who punches old ladies, mother is a shrieking, vain harpy who hates on her daughter, brother is a high-school drop-out who beats kids up and runs over cats (on purpose). The girl is the only decent member of them all. One day, a giant dumpster appears in their yard, and the girl later sees her family go inside and be taken away. At first, she's happy, because she's free of the family's horrible reputation and free of the [[AbusiveParents emotional abuse]] they heap onto her, and the same magic dumpster gives her a ''new'' family. But it turns out the new family is creepy as hell while still being "perfect", and the girl is now forced to get perfect grades, look perfect, do her chores ''perfectly'', and if she makes one little tiny mistake, the dumpster will take her away too. The poor kid is reduced to a terrified, blank-faced slave, possibly forever. And for no damn reason.
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166* "Literature/TheEcho": The boy protagonist loses girl's friendship forever without gaining anything, and the girl, after [[BreakTheCutie being broken]], loses her innocence along with her BlitheSpirit properties, becoming sad and distrustful. And they never met again.
167* Conn Iggulden's ''Literature/{{Emperor}}'' series has quite the downer ending. Then again, the novels are about Julius Caesar and his friendship with Brutus, so it was hard not to see it coming.
168** The second novel in the tetralogy also has a downer ending, with Caesar's wife being murdered and Caesar himself being sent to Spain, having to leave his daughter behind.
169* ''Enter the ComicBook/XMen'', a Random House children's book adaptation of the "Night of the Sentinels" two-part pilot of the ''WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries'' inexplicably has the second half of Part 2 AdaptedOut, ending with Jubilee kidnapped, Morph dead, Beast arrested, and Wolverine having his powers drained by Rogue when he attempts to go back for the latter two.
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173* Chris Wooding's experimental novel ''Literature/TheFade.'' Eskaran assassin Orna bursts in on her master making a deal with a Gurtan official who enslaved her as a child and kills both of them. Then she reads the papers they were signing and discovers they were signing peace treaties to end the war between the two nations (on the grounds that both are getting pretty sick of it) and realizes she's just messed everything up, big time. As such the Eskaran forces are lured into a trap and ambushed, the appetite for a long and costly war returns, Orna is forced to live on the run from assassins (because she knows too much) and gives up any hope of reuniting with her son. Orna's only hope is to go to the surface of the planet and find the Sun People she befriended earlier in the novel- but given the two suns of this world are opposite each other at this time of year (meaning no night), her chances of reaching them before the suns vaporizes her is slim to none.
174* Despite saving Irena from Grantorto at the end of ''Literature/TheFaerieQueene'''s fifth book, Artegall is shunned when he returns to Faerieland thanks to Envy, Detraction, and the Blatant Beast.
175* M.T. Anderson's {{Dystopian}} future novel ''Literature/Feed2002'' ends with the protagonist watching over his completely brain dead girlfriend. That's bad enough, but it's also implied that shortly after the end of the book American society will collapse and then be wiped out by an [[TheFederation angry alliance of all the other countries in the world.]]
176* Rohinton Mistry's ''Literature/AFineBalance''. After years of struggle for the four protagonists, when their hard work finally starts paying off and everything is looking up for them... Mistry completely ruins it for them, leaving them in a situation worse than the one that they started with, proving one and for all that [[CrapsackWorld life is out to get you]].
177* ''Literature/FlowersForAlgernon'' in spades. The whole book itself was pretty DeusAngstMachina, but by the end when have to watch as Charlie goes back to becoming mentally handicapped, writhing in pain and dread all the way, you seriously wonder why the book doesn't burst into flames. [[FridgeHorror To make matters worse]], the book ends with with Charlie's final journal entry apparently being cut off at the end (some editions have the final letter trailing into a line that goes off the page, while others [[NothingIsScarier make the final pages completely blank]]), implying that he either died or regressed to the point of being even more disabled than he was at the beginning.
178* ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'': Victor's family are all killed by the creature. Victor himself dies of illness after months of pursuing his foe. The creature is last seen racked with guilt and heading off to the North Pole to commit suicide.
179* ''Literature/FrothOnTheDaydream''. Alise kills the philosopher Jean-Sol Partre because he [[DisproportionateRetribution refused to stop publishing his books]] (her motivation is the fact that her husband Chick spends too much attention and money on the books). She also burns libraries close to her and is killed in the flames. The police kills Chick because of his [[DisproportionateRetribution failure to pay taxes.]] The once rich and popular Colin has impoverished himself trying to cure his sick wife of her illness, but [[ShaggyDogStory she dies anyway]]. Now ruined, Colin can't pay the high price for her funeral and is harassed during it. Colin's pet mouse can't handle seeing Colin as sad as he is and is DrivenToSuicide. Colin himself is alive in the end (with nothing left to live for), but considering that Chick was killed because he didn't pay taxes and that Colin is now disliked and poor.
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183* ''Literature/TheGardenOfEveningMists'': Yun Ling was never able to design a Japanese garden in memory of Yun Hong. She outlives all of her friends except Frederik, and never had any lovers after Aritomo's death. And she's suffering from steadily-worsening aphasia that will soon leave her unable to communicate or understand.
184* ''Literature/TheGenocides'' by Creator/ThomasMDisch ends with a chapter of FauxlosophicalNarration pondering the extinction of humanity.
185* ''Literature/GentlemanBastard'': ''The Lies of Locke Lamora''. While Locke and his best friend Jean escape, they are never allowed back in Camorra, the rest of the Gentlemen Bastards die, Locke is severely wounded, Jean is wounded, they're both exposed and possibly on the run from the law, and every friend (and enemy) they had in Camorra is currently dead due to their actions, both in the (pointless) nobleman con and the Grey King job. Among the most shocking of these is when the crime boss' daughter, who ''wasn't even involved in the mob war'' is shoved into a funeral casket full of horse urine and drowned. Locke even gets in a jab.
186-->'''Locke:''' So this is what victory feels like?\
187'''Jean:''' Yeah.\
188'''Locke:''' Well, it fucking sucks.
189* ''Literature/GoAskAlice''. At first you think it is going to be a happy ending with the main character changing her life for the better. But then in the epilogue, you find out that she died three weeks later of an overdose. Total wham ending. Claiming it's a real deal real life diary, but at least [[http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/askalice.asp it didn't really happen]].
190* ''Literature/TheGoBetween''. One character is dead by his own hand, another is faced with a loveless marriage of convenience, and the central character is emotionally scarred for life to the extent that he will be unable to form meaningful relationships.
191* ''Literature/TheGodfather''. Michael reasserts the Corleone family's dominance with a RoaringRampageOfRevenge at the cost of his soul.
192* Happens a lot in books in the ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' series, befitting a middle-grade horror series.
193** ''Literature/WerewolfSkin'': The hero's friend turns out to be a werewolf and bites him, either cursing or outright killing him.
194** ''Literature/HowToKillAMonster'': The protagonists somewhat unintentionally kill a monster and end up trapped in the swamps surrounded by the monster's relatives.
195** ''Literature/TheCurseOfCampColdLake'': The story ends with Sarah's imminent death by snakebite at Briana's hands, so they can be ghost buddies forever.
196** ''Literature/TheHauntedSchool'': The protagonists escape Grayworld with help from Thalia, but can't save her and the other trapped students. They return to the school dance in time for a class picture, where they discover ''way'' too late that the photographer is the same one who sent the class of 1947 to Grayworld. He snaps the picture, presumably trapping them for good and stealing Bellwood's children all over again.
197** ''Literature/SonOfSlappy'': Jackson is unable to defeat Slappy and he gets banned from the Youth Center he works for. And then he finds out his sister was working for Slappy the whole time and the book ends with Slappy taking control over him again.
198* Scott Fitzgerald's novel ''Literature/TheGreatGatsby'' goes downhill rapidly in the climax as a series of unfortunate circumstances occur: Daisy Buchanan accidentally drives over Myrtle in Gatsby's car, Tom convincing Myrtle's husband that Gatsby was the driver, causing him to murder the depressed Gatsby, and then shoot himself. Daisy and Tom return to their extravagant lifestyle, leaving Nick all alone to wonder what in the world happened. Hardly anyone attends Gatsby's funeral and Nick reflects on how much rich people suck and how Gatsby was stuck in the past the entire time.
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202* ''Literature/HandleWithCare'' ends with Charlotte winning her wrongful birth lawsuit and getting all the money she'll ever need to care for ill daughter Willow. She's also lost all her friends and driven herself into near-complete isolation save for her family, and has indirectly done the same thing to older daughter Amelia, who developed issues with cutting and bulimia as a result of the novel's events. Piper, Charlotte's former best friend and ob-gyn whom she sued, loses her confidence because of the lawsuit and so loses her career. And younger daughter Willow, the center of the entire plot, drowns in the backyard pond, essentially rendering the entire lawsuit pointless.
203* ''Literature/HarryPotter''
204** ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire The Goblet of Fire]]'' marks the first time Voldemort scores a victory, managing to gain a huge advantage over the forces of good and traumatizing Harry in the process.
205** ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix The Order of the Phoenix]]'' ends with the death of Sirius, a major character, plunging Harry into a deep grief as everyone fears the impending Second Wizarding War.
206** ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince'', which ends with Dumbledore dead; Snape apparently evil and definitely a killer; Bill Weasley permanently scarred right before his wedding; and Harry, Ron, and Hermione dropping out of school to finish what Dumbledore started, knowing how slim their chances are. Harry even breaks off his new relationship with Ginny.
207* Marcus Pitcaithly's ''Literature/TheHerewardTrilogy'' offers THREE of them. The first book ends with the main rebel army defeated and Hereward fleeing back to the Fens; the second, with his Danish allies being bought off and abandoning him; and he dies in the third.
208* ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'':
209** In the fifth book, ''Literature/MostlyHarmless'', all of the main characters died (except Zaphod, who was never mentioned again after the end of the third book) in an explosion that resulted in Earth being destroyed in all possible realities. Rather jarring in a series that was mostly lighthearted comedy, if not above a little black humor. Reportedly, Creator/DouglasAdams was considering writing a sixth book to end on a lighter note, but - rather depressingly - died before he managed to complete it, or even change it from its ''Literature/DirkGently'' origins.
210** Fit the Twenty-Sixth of the Quintessential Series of [[Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1978 the radio broadcast]] presents a different ending from Mostly Harmless; in it, most of the main characters reappear at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, including Fenchurch and Marvin. Fitting that Adams, who loved to change the story for each format, would create two wildly different endings. Adams didn't write the episode - all the episodes from Fit the Thirteeenth / Tertiary Phase onward are posthumous adaptations of the books. The revised ending may or may not have been derived from Adams' notes.
211** ''Literature/AndAnotherThing'' was written by Eoin Colfer in which most of the main characters again survive - not in the same way, although there is a MythologyGag reference to it. The ending of the sixth book itself is fairly happy, if a little, um, [[GainaxEnding gainaxy]]…
212* The ending of ''Literature/TheHollowBoy'', has Lucy choose to leave Lockwood and Co. because she feels that her unique talents put the group in danger. It's enough to put George off his cake.
213* Literature/HonorHarrington, despite often being viewed as an InvincibleHero, loses quite a bit when it counts.
214** ''Field of Dishonor'' ends on the field of dishonor with Honor killing Pavel Young and (temporarily) ruining her career in politics and in the Manticoran Navy.
215** ''At All Costs'' features the largest battle in Human history, with the knowledge that even their 'win' doesn't mean a thing. No one lost their shipyards and the reasons for the war hasn't changed. 2 million dead and the War just got going with the only chance for meaningful peace up in flames.
216** ''Storm from the Shadows'': The war with the Solarian League is starting in truth and even though Manticore has better technology the Mesan Alignment is about to take out their shipyards. Worse the SL may not view it as a real war, making Manticore look bad to all potential allies if they do the deep strikes needed to win a real war, and No one knows Mesa has infiltrated everyone. Oh and a fleet of 100 [=SDs=] is about to hit the lightly defended capital of the Quadrant.
217* ''Literature/HoratioHornblower'' series:
218** ''Ship of the Line'' has a downer ending: The ''Sutherland'' is heavily damaged, forcing Horatio to surrender, Bush has lost his leg, and both of them are prisoners of war.
219** ''Lord Hornblower''. Hornblower's mission was a success and he was raised to the peerage because of it, but Bush, the closest person Horatio had to a friend, dies in the process. Then when Napoleon escapes and Horatio tries to escape, he fails, and in the process loses his mistress. Only news of the Battle of Waterloo saved him from dying again.
220** ''Hornblower and the Atropos'' ends with Hornblower's ship being taken away to placate the King of Sicily, a full-grown RoyalBrat who would turn on the Brits if they didn't give it to him. Although Lord Collingwood tries to soften the blow by promising that Hornblower will get a ship of the line when he returns to England, Hornblower arrives to find that his two children are dying of smallpox.
221* ''[[Literature/HowToTrainYourDragon How To Steal A Dragon's Sword]]'' ends with Hiccup on the run from both dragons and vikings, having been (along with Stoick) driven out of the Hairy Hooligan tribe, with only Toothless, the Windwalker and the Wodinfang for company. Also, the dragons have turned on the vikings and are subsequently are at war, [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Alvin the Treacherous]] is ''king'' of the various viking clans and has almost all of the [[MacGuffin various items]] that Hiccup had accumulated over his previous escapades, and [[JerkJock Snotlout]] is now chief of the Hooligans. Compared to the rest of the endings in the series, it's pretty jarring.
222* ''Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'', in which Esmeralda is hanged, and Quasimodo goes down to ''die with her freaking corpse''.
223* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': ''Mockingjay'': Primrose dies, as well as some of Katniss's friends and allies, one of whom had recently been married. Katniss murders the President who took over and is deemed insane. What pushes it into somewhat [[BittersweetEnding upbeat realm]] is that Katniss marries Peeta and they have kids.
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227* ''Literature/IAmLegend'': All of Neville's efforts are for naught, as the vampires have evolved to the point that they can stave off the more feral urges of their affliction and have even developed a new society. This means many of the vampires Neville had killed were, in fact, innocent people and he will never be accepted in the society because of this. The only silver lining comes from Ruth giving him a suicide pill to end his life peacefully before the vampires have him executed, but he will forever be remembered as a monster.
228* ''Literature/IAmTheCheese''. TAPE [=OZK016=]: The final advisory states that because Adam is the final link between Adam's father and File Data 865–01, he recommends that Adam be confined in the facilities until his termination is approved, or until he "obliterates".
229* ''Literature/IDontWantToKillYou'': Brooke is alive, but she's badly traumatized, Agent Ostler's comments imply that most of the deaths could have been avoided if John had let her help, and he discovers he still has a heart just in time to lose his first love and then his mother, to someone he brought into town.
230%%* ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream''. Just see [[AndIMustScream the trope]] named after it.
231* ''Literature/TheIliad'' ends with Hector's funeral--sure, they got the body back, but you're just treated to another funeral of people ripping their hair out in misery.
232* We find out all the events of ''Literature/ImThinkingOfEndingThings'' were just the dying fantasy of the janitor who has taken his own life.
233* Dan Brown's ''Literature/{{Inferno|2013}}'', surprisingly, has one. The villain succeeded in spreading the [[SterilityPlague virus]], which cause more than one third of the world infertile. The world's birthing rate have been rapidly decreasing, to the point of population decline even without the virus. The virus was constructed to be untreatable and able to pass down as genetic trait, resulting into a ChildlessDystopia.
234* The novelette "Literature/ElInquisidorDeMexico" ends with Duarte dying at the stake and Sara dying soon afterwards from her burns.
235* The King novel ''Literature/{{IT}}'' has a pretty depressing ending. The main characters, who were very close as children but then forgot all about each other (except for Mike Hanlon, who stayed behind to keep a watch over the town), return to Derry and reunite only to defeat the monster at the cost of two out of seven friends dying. Those who survive begin to forget each other again, even Mike. Though not part of It itself, later works such as ''Literature/TheTommyknockers'' and especially ''Literature/{{Dreamcatcher}}'' hint that Pennywise ([or one of its offspring) LIVES.
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239* In ''Literature/JohnnyGotHisGun'' by Dalton Trumbo, the protagonist Joe Bonham is introduced as an American soldier who has left behind his family and loving girlfriend in order to enlist in the army during World War I. In the opening scenes he awakens in a hospital bed after being hit by an artillery round. He gradually realizes that he has lost all of his mobility and his senses except for touch, and that he has lost his arms, legs, eyes, nose, ears, tongue, both jaws and all of his face. But his mind functions perfectly, [[AndIMustScream leaving him a prisoner in his own body]]. The doctors have given him a tracheotomy so he can't suffocate, taking away his ability to kill himself. He attempts to talk to the doctors using Morse code in order to communicate his desire to die, and being denied that, to be shown around the country as an example of the horrors of war so that young men won't do as he did. Then they strap his head down so he can't "talk." Oh yeah, then he resumes going insane, something which was temporarily halted when he learned he could communicate in some way. It is more or less explicitly said that this is how he will live out the rest of his life. Then, to stop him from freaking out the nurses, they drug him with pain-killers. It ends as he slowly sinks into a haze.
240* ''Literature/JudeTheObscure'' by Thomas Hardy. Jude dies alone, abandoned by the woman he loves, all three of his young children dead in a murder/suicide, while his wife who tricks him into remarrying him is off flirting with someone else.
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244* ''Literature/KnowledgeOfAngels'': Palinor is killed, Amara has gone off to live a life of isolation, and an Aclaran fleet is coming to punish the island for Palinor's death.
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248* ''Literature/LadyMyLifeAsABitch'' ends with Lady trying to be accepted by her family, which seems to lightly work, until her older sister Julie convinces them otherwise. Lady is then rejected by them, with her family coming to the conclusion that she's a mad dog, and call the police to have her taken away and euthanised. Before the police come though, Lady escapes with encouragement from Mitch and Fella, herself having taken on a light view of HumansAreBastards, and runs off with them. She's stuck as a dog ''forever'', and earlier in the book when she just lived life as a dog, Lady lost herself, forgetting all human life and its memories, which is probably going to happen ''again''. Oh, and Terry's still around, turning people into dogs if they (accidentally or not) get him angry, with no cure.
249* Shel Silverstein's ''Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back'' is about a lion who learns how to use a gun, and ends up travelling to America and becoming a celebrity. [[CelebrityIsOverrated He quickly tires of big city life]], and a CreatorCameo of "Uncle Shelly" suggests he go on a vacation to relax. Lafcadio ends up going on safari in Africa, where his hunting group runs into his old lion pack. Suddenly torn between his lion friends and his human friends, poor Lafcadio is overcome by existential doubt, and proceeds to throw down his gun and wander off into the African wilderness, never to be heard from again.
250* ''Literature/LaughingWinds'' by Rose Christo ends with the four remaining friends at the concentration camp being put into a gas chamber. Annika watches her friends die one by one, and is powerless to do anything about it, until only she is left, grieving, afraid, and for the first time completely alone. She wavers between hope and fear and grief, but feels as if her friends have returned to comfort her as she too succumbs to the gas, although she admits she's not sure if its just a trick of her mind or not, and she can't see anything, but either way it's not enough to lift it to a Bittersweet ending.
251* ''Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt'':
252** ''Literature/{{Transitions}}'': ''The Pirate King'' by R.A. Salvatore. Duerdermont is dead, BigBad [[SmugSnake Kensidan]] is now king of the city, and plans to turn into a town of kidnappers, art thieves, and any other criminal you can think of. The Lich Archmage was defeated by [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Robillard]], but he just retreats to his phylactery, which is in the hands of his Lich apprentice. Drizzt and Regis can do nothing to help the city, and leave to try and solve a mage civil war from earlier in the book. Even the upcoming ''The Ghost King'' cannot solve all these problems.
253** The last book of ''Literature/{{Transitions}}'', ''The Ghost King'', ends with Cadderly becoming the new Ghost King to save his friends, Catti-brie and Regis dead from the effects of the Spellplague, Bruenor depressed over the loss of his adoptive daughter and friend and Drizzt emotionally dead over the death of his wife.
254* Of all authors the usually optimistic and genial Creator/BillBryson managed a major downer with ''The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid''. It is mostly a very cheerful, nostalgic autobiography about DesMoines in the 1950s and 1960s but the final chapter is something of a Tearjerker as the fates of people and places are recalled; Bill Bryson Sr. died in 1986, school {{Buttmonkey}} 'Milton Milton' died in the 1991 Gulf War, Bryson's soon-to-be-gay school friend Jed Mattes died from cancer. Nearly all of the shops, diners, and other hangouts featured in the book end up closed and bulldozed, the city's elm trees all die off, the amusement park is now an empty lot. The last line is "What a wonderful world it was. We won’t see its likes again, I’m afraid."
255* The novel ''Literature/TheLightInTheForest'' ends with the main character, a white boy who was kidnapped and raised by an Indian tribe, being rejected by his tribe after he stops them from ambushing a band of white settlers. His adoptive father convinces the tribe not to burn him at the stake, [[CruelMercy but "merely" banishes him,]] telling him that he is no longer Indian and not his son anymore. He can't return to his Indian family, and a previous attempt to bring him back into white society ended in failure, so he has nowhere to go.
256* Gerhardt Hauptmann's short story ''Lineman Thiel'' (Bahnwaerter Thiel) is a bit of a downer all the way through, as a widower named Thiel learns his son is being abused by his domineering second wife. Towards the end, that same son is killed by a train. It seems like the story is about to have a bittersweet ending, as the death of her stepson seems to have changed his wife for the better. Instead, Thiel loses it, slits her throat, murders their daughter and is committed to a mental asylum.
257* Alan Hollinghurst's ''Literature/TheLineOfBeauty'' ends with one of the main character's loves dead and one of them near death. He is kicked out of the house where he has lived in for the last four years. His best friend feels betrayed by him, and his other friend has betrayed him. In addition, he probably has AIDS.
258* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's short story "The Long Watch", which ends with a HeroicSacrifice and the hero's death site so contaminated with radiation from the disassembled nuclear bombs that it takes ten years before men in radiation suits can retrieve him for [[DueToTheDead a hero's funeral]] in a lead-lined casket.
259* ''Literature/TheLordOfBembibre'': Beatriz dies from sickness, and in his grief, her lover Álvaro gives away his properties, leaves his homeland and lives like a hermit monk till his death. Meanwhile, the Order of the Temple, of which he was a proud member, is persecuted until its utter destruction and disbanded, guaranteeing their members will be regarded as a den of bloodthirsty, superstitious fanatics by future generations.
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263* ''Literature/MalgudiDays''
264** The ending of ''Iswaran'', the [[CharacterTitle titular character]] of which is a boy who toiled over studies but failed to pass his college entrance exams for nine consecutive years, and was made a mockery of by his family and whole village, who had abandoned all faith in him. Convinced he had failed the tenth time as well, he decides to kill himself by jumping into a river and writes a suicide note... but walks to the hall to check the results before doing it. He had not only passed, but passed with '''second-degree honors'''. Sounds like EarnYourHappyEnding? In his ecstasy about moving to university, he jumps into the river anyway, and his corpse and note are found the next day. To make it worse, he had lied about what his index number was earlier, making his worst nightmare come true: nobody may know that he graduated with honors and everyone will think he died a failure.
265* ''Literature/MasterOfManyTreasures'' by Mary Brown. At first it seems like we're going to get a perfectly happy ending; the main character's section of the book ends with her going off to get her happy ending with the love of her life that she's spent two years searching for. Then you reach the epilogue, and another character takes over to reveal that immediately afterward she was burned alive by dragons.
266* ''Literature/{{Metro 2033}}'' ends with Artyom finding out that he's literally 'TheChosenOne', who is meant to serve as a bridge between mankind and the Dark Ones, so that both species can work together to create a brighter future. All throughout the book the Dark Ones were only trying to get in contact with the humans, not attack them. However... In the midst of this revalation the Dark Ones are all destroyed by missiles, ([[NiceJobBreakingItHero all thanks to Artyom's help]] prior to his findings), and a [[BreakTheCutie broken]] and despondent Artyom heads back to the Metro. And just to top it off, his adoptive father is most likely dead, and [[YouCantGoHomeAgain he can't go home]] due to the future destruction of a tunnel to [=VDNkh=] (which is essentially death for a station).
267* Pretty much ''every single story'' in ''Literature/TheMidnightLibrary'' series. Doubly so if the protagonist is [[KillTheCutie particularly likable.]]
268** "The Cat Lady" has Chloe try to make amends to the strange old cat lady when she accidentally kills one of her cats. She forgives the girl...but transforms her into a cat as a replacement. She tries to escape and get back to human form, only to be killed by a cruel kid with a rock.
269** In "Liar" shy, lonely Lauren creates a popular, outgoing online persona called Jennifer, who becomes insanely popular around school. It soon turns out Jennifer has become real, and she eventually takes over her creator's life with Lauren becoming imaginary. To rub salt in the wound, Jennifer hugs "her" dad while Lauren looks on, now only a figment of Jennifer's imagination.
270** "Dream Demon" ends with Alfie thinking he's escaped the ghostly monk who [[DreamWalker stalked his dreams]]....only to discover that he doesn't enter through your dreams, but captured images. And his grandma just brought over a painting he did of the monk's abbey. The monk strangles the kid.
271** "Killing Time" has the main character set off to uncover the mystery of who poisoned her friend and later, a dog she wanted to adopt. Just when she thinks the killer's been foiled, she discovers she was the killer all along by somehow ''winking''-right after she winks at her reflection.
272** "Carnival Dance" has Martina yank off the mask of Ah Puch that's apparently possessing her friend Adam...but then realizes Ah Puch isn't inhabiting Adam, but their other friend Sam. The death god than unleashes his power at the annual parade and prepares to lay waste to humanity.
273* Creator/GeorgeEliot's ''Literature/TheMillOnTheFloss'' ends with Tom and Maggie Tulliver drowning unexpectedly in a flood.
274* Very Kafkaesque is Nathan Englander's ''Literature/TheMinistryOfSpecialCases''. The humourous tone becomes crueler and crueler as the quest of the central couple to find their only son, who has been taken in by the secret police, is presented as an absurd farce. By the end, they can choose to believe the testimony of one man who claims all the missing young people were drugged and pushed from an aeroplane into the sea to drown. Or they can go on trying and dealing with the arbitrary bureaucracy fruitlessly, forever, in search of their boy. They choose different approaches and not even their previously loving marriage survives the book.
275* ''Literature/TheMonsterOfLakeLametrie'' is about a man named Edward Framingham who has his brain placed in the body of an ''[[StockNessMonster Elasmosaurus]]'' by Dr. James [=McLennegan=]. In the end, Framingham [[DeathOfPersonality loses his human mind]] and kills [=McLennegan=], before being shot to death by soldiers.
276* ''Literature/MurderAtColefaxManor'': Asides from TheManyDeathsOfYou: you can find the cult, report it to your superiors, and conduct a raid, only for the police to come up with no evidence against Lord Colefax, which leads you to get counter-sued, which in turn leads to you ending up jobless and penniless on the street, with no-one believing your story.
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280* Roy Hobbs strikes out at the end of ''Literature/TheNatural''. This gets inverted big time in Creator/RobertRedford's film adaptation.
281* ''Literature/NeverLetMeGo'' ends with both of Kathy's only friends "completing" (read: dying from having too many of their vital organs removed), leaving her alone as she prepares to also becoming a living donor.
282* ''Literature/{{Night}}'' by Elie Wiesel ends with Elie looking at himself in the mirror and seeing something that looks like a corpse. And he's already lost his home, most of his family, and his possessions. And gone through the Holocaust as a Jew.
283* ''Literature/NightOfTheAssholes'': Right after believing that they have escaped, Todd accidentally gets turned into an asshole with a crowd of them having been hiding out of sight. Asshole!Todd calmly explains to her that assholes have taken over the Earth and have been capturing any non-assholes left unwilling to convert to be captured and used as slaves and fodder for the new world order. He offers her a chance to live on as a slave and she declines. The wave of assholes all surround her, she allows her anger to take hold and becomes an asshole.
284* ''Literature/NightOfTheFreaks'': The only two police officers looking into the murders are both killed by Willie and Scabby. Heather and her friends go to Willie's freakshow to find Linda and the others, only to discover they're already dead. After Heather's remaining friends are also murdered and Heather is captured by Willie and his group, she ''almost'' escapes in a truck, but crashes and is surrounded by Willie and the freaks. [[BreedingSlave Knowing the fate that awaits her]], Heather takes a shotgun and blows her brains out.
285* ''Literature/NightmareAlley'' contains a notorious downer ending as the super manipulative, ambitious and crooked main character Stan finally gets his comeuppance. After his con against the wealthy auto tycoon Ezra Grindle goes horribly wrong and his lover Lilith reveals her true colors and threatens to lock him up in an institution, he is forced to go on the run from Grindle's hired hitmen and he gradually falls into depression and alcoholism, sinking even lower still when he discovers that Lilith has wed Grindle through a newspaper article. His lowest point comes when right at the end of the novel, a carnival owner offers to give him temporary work as a sideshow geek, the one thing that Stan could ''never'' envision sinking as low as.
286* ''Literature/NoBeastSoFierce'': During a botched bank robbery heist, Aaron is arrested and Jerry is killed. Max murders Willy, believing he had snitched on them, only to realize that it had been his wife who had done so. Allison becomes disgusted at Max's crimes and violent nature, so he decides to leave her behind to protect her and flees the country. The book ends with a suicidal Max deciding to return to the US, unable to live a normal life and too immersed in crime to ever do anything different.
287* ''Literature/NoLongerHuman'': Despite all of his suicide attempts, Yozo ultimately survives. However, he is no happier than before, and lives a lonely existence, completely estranged from humanity, after his release from a mental hospital. Despite still being young, he looks much older due to the toll taken by all his stress and suffering. He describes himself as "disqualified from being human." The manga is worse, with Yōzō trapped in an abusive marriage, with a son implied to be the reincarnation of the boy from middle school that haunts him, looking like he's 90, and catatonic at the mere age of 39.
288* ''Literature/NobodyLivesForever1990'' by Edna Buchanan: Poor Dusty gets brutally murdered by a psychopathic madwoman for no good reason. Jim, in the depths of despair over the injustice of it all, gives into temptation in a moment of weakness; he immediately repents of what he did, and resolves to return the money he stole, only to drop dead of a heart attack and have his body looted by a mob of the people he's spent his life serving and protecting. Laurel finally discovers that she has multiple personality disorder, and finally has the chance to get the psychological help she needs, but her most psychopathic personality, Alex, takes over and breaks out of the facility where she/they were being held, only to be shot and killed by Laurel's fiance Jim; the Alex and Harriet personalities deserved to die, and the Marilyn personality was no sweetheart, but the Jennie personality, as well as the main personality Laurel, were both innocent, and the only reason Laurel was mad in the first place was because she was horribly abused as a child. Jim, the only survivor, loses Dusty, the woman he really loves, without ever having the chance to apologize to her, he loses his best friend Jim, he loses his career, he probably can't ever show his face in the neighborhood that was his home for his whole life, and he has to shoot his fiancee. This is a ''sad'' ending.
289* ''Literature/NotesFromUnderground'' ends when, after finding the [[HookerWithAHeartOfGold one person who doesn't hate him]], the Underground Man retreats from society once again, sullen and depressed from the whole experience, having had a mutual experience of HumansAreBastards.
290%%* ''Literature/NuklearAge'' by Creator/BrianClevinger. It was so bad that in lieu of an author's afterword, the author had an apology.
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294* "Literature/AnOccurrenceAtOwlCreekBridge" by Creator/AmbroseBierce. A soldier is hanged, but escapes after falling into the water and finds his family. Just kidding! The whole story was a fantasy that took place between the time he was hanged and his neck was broken. His fantasy might have meant he died happy.
295* In ''Literature/OnTheBeach'', following a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR the northern hemisphere is dead, and all the survivors in the southern hemisphere are going to be dead from radiation sickness in six months. Still, at least the Australian Government is thoughtfully handing out suicide pills, eh?
296* In ''Literature/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude'', Amaranta Úrsula Buendía and her nephew Aureliano Babilonia concieve a child that seems to be destined to avoid the tragedy that has chased the Buendía family throughout the whole story; however, Amaranta Úrsula dies after giving birth, the child is eaten by ants because Aureliano got drunk to drown his sorrows and forgot to look after him, and the entire town of Macondo is destroyed by a tornado.
297* The third book in the ''Literature/OrigamiYoda'' series. The Fortune Wookiee is revealed as a fake made by Sara, and the terrible [=FunTime=] program is already set to be instated by Rabbski at the beginning of January. In addition, Tommy has no idea what to do about the impending [=FunTime=] program.
298* ''Literature/{{Oroonoko}}'': The main characters are enslaved, taken from their homeland to Surinam, and separated. The titular character starts a slave revolt, but when it fails he [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled kills his love interest]] and is later killed.
299* ''Literature/{{Outsourced}}'' ends with Isaac Fisher, having finally stood up to Felix and gaining some level of understanding with his sister regarding his gender reassignment surgery, going alone to face his former employers. It turns out that he was a service clone made by his original to make him money for his own gender reassignment surgery, because of the lack of laws protecting clone rights. What follows is a scene mimicking the very first source of drama in the book.
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303* Creator/ChinaMieville's ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation'': it is revealed that Isaac's girlfriend Lin is still alive, and he's reunited with her just long enough for her mind to be partially destroyed by the last slake moth, leaving her a slobbering near-vegetable. All of the other people whose minds were drained by the slake moths are lost causes. It is revealed that Yagharek's mysterious crime that caused him to be exiled from garuda society and have his wings torn out is rape, and even though the female garuda that was raped very pointedly tells Isaac to not judge Yagharek, Isaac refuses to help him. The book ends with Yagharek pulling out his feathers and smashing his beak, so as to appear "human". He encounters Jack Half-a-Prayer, who extends out his hand, inviting him to join his gang. It's important to note that Yagharek's victim also asks Isaac not to help Yagharek to escape his punishment.
304* Anthony Berkeley's novel ''Literature/ThePoisonedChocolatesCase'': The murderer may have only succeeded in killing one of her intended victims, not both, but she has successfully destroyed Sir Eustace's life (and Mr Bendix's) by killing the woman they loved, which completes her mission of personal revenge. The Crimes Circle know what happened, but the book ends with the murderer coolly strolling out of their meeting after telling them that they likely won't be able to prove anything, and the sleuth who figured it out has to admit that she's right, he can't prove it. The Crimes Circle are completely at a loss for what to do, and everything seems to indicate that the murderer will go free and unpunished for her crime.
305* The ''Literature/PopolVuh'', book of belief of the Qechua (descendants of the Maya) and one of the few complete documents about Myth/MayanMythology and history, has one of THE most downer endings, especially within context. Basically, the whole book tells the history of creation as written in Mayan myths, along with the adventures of heroic archetypes Ixbalanque and Hunahpu, the creation of the Qechua empire and the bloodline of kings. Then the writer, an anonymous Indian that wrote the book after the conquest, finishes with: "And this was the existence of the Qichés, for now the (original) Popol Vuh of the kings can't be seen, as it has disappeared. And so, all those of Qiché are gone." The whole culture basically went to hell shortly thereafter.
306* ''Literature/PostMortem2022'': After Ralph discovers he was the SerialKiller who killed entire families after murdering the guy who almost killed him, he decides to embrace this and kills Officer Miller. We are then told he went on to kill even more people before being locked up and declared insane.
307%%* ''Literature/ThePowerOfFive'': ''Evil Star'', and ''Necropolis''. ''Nightrise'', less so.
308* George Macdonald's ''The Princess and Curdie'', the sequel to ''Literature/ThePrincessAndTheGoblin'', seems to end on a positive note, with Curdie saving Gwyntystorm, and with Curdie and Irene getting married. However, the book takes a turn for the worse when it is revealed that the couple never has children, so after the two die, a new king is elected. The new king is greedy for gold and forces the people to mine for gold under the city. When the mine is depleted, the king reduces the golden pillars that hold up Gwyntystorm, thus they become too fragile to hold up the city. One day at noon, the reduced pillars cannot support the hill anymore and break, destroying Gwyntystorm and killing everyone inside of it.
309* The second book in ''Literature/ThePrincessSeries'', ''The Mermaid's Madness''. The princesses discover that the mermaid princess Lirea, who attacked the Queen with a magic soul sucking knife and is trying to start a war between merpeople and humans, is not the real villain of the story. She has been under the influence of a spell cast by her grandmother Morveren that is slowly driving her mad. Morveren is killed and the spell broken but the experience has left Lirea's mind shattered. She is now confined to a tower by the sea with only the occasional visit from her sister to help her recover. Also, the queen they were trying to save, as a result of the attack she now only has a little over a year to live. They stopped the war but thats about the only good to come from this.
310* ''Literature/PrivatePeaceful'' by Michael Morpurgo ends with all of the cast who went to battle dead apart from Tommo, and as it's stated that he's going to the Somme it can be inferred that he's going to die as well.
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314* Creator/JoeHill's {{novella}} ''Loaded'', from ''Literature/StrangeWeather'', revolves around a mall cop who is propped up as a hero after supposedly stopping a murderer at a mall, even though he actually killed an innocent bystander and her baby and then murdered a witness who could've fingered him. His story gradually comes undone thanks to a journalist's investigating, and he snaps and ends up killing almost a dozen people, including his ex-wife and son (although his death was an accident) and with the implied murder of the journalist and her daughter.
315* ''Literature/RendezvousWithRama'': ''Rama Revealed'' ends with Nicole des Jardins dying painfully of a heart problem. She decides to refuse help and die rather then burdening her family. Nicole sees her daughter, an octospider, her husband and a genocidal dictator die then fades out.
316* ''Literature/TheReckoning'' ends with the widow of the murder victim taking his murderer's property with the help of an AmoralAttorney, the murderer's wife dying of suicide at his gravesite, his sister on the brink of death in New Orleans, and his children vowing to never again set foot in Clanton due to all the hell their BigScrewedUpFamily had to endure over the wife's fling with a black servant.
317* The ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' novel ''Martin the Warrior'' has one of the biggest {{Downer Ending}}s ever seen in a book for children. (Technically it's a BittersweetEnding because the BigBad of the book has been defeated, but that's not enough to rescue it from Downer Ending territory. Not by a long way.) The titular hero, blaming himself for the death of his girlfriend in battle, goes into exile and tries to forget she existed.
318* The ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries'' is like this, with the DistantFinale basically meaning the universe is doomed to be utterly stripped of life by rogue Von Neumann machines. A post-release interview turned it into an EsotericHappyEnding, with Reynolds stating that the ending was "actually quite optimistic".
319* ''Literature/TheRing'''s ending is bad enough (the ex-husband dies, and the curse is never going to stop), but if you want real bleakness, try the sequel (book and movie) ''Rasen''. Not only do the surviving characters of ''Ring'' die, but the curse turns out to be a hell of a lot worse than we thought. Everyone in the world is going to die -- and some will give birth to copies of Sadako first. She will be all that's left of humanity. (The third book, ''Loop'', confirms that this has happened, but also turns the whole series on its head [[AllJustADream in a way that renders the Downer Ending almost moot]].)
320* ''Literature/RowleyJeffersonsAwesomeFriendlySpookyStories'' has a couple stories that end sadly.
321** ''Ghost Friend'': Rusty’s grades are lowered dramatically and can’t get a job or wife because Gabe had bothered him so much he couldn’t focus on a single thing.
322** ''The Nap'': Aunt Fannie dies at the beginning of Summer vacation and none of her family realized it until the week was halfway over.
323** ''The Stain'': Robbie accidentally triggers his dad's allergy to strawberry, causing the previously-defeated [[ItMakesSenseInContext strawberry stain]] to reappear on his crisp white shirt.
324** ''The Invasion'': A UFO appears above Fairville. The citizens decide to be nice to the aliens because that worked with the zombies, and the aliens kill the humans and zombies, taking over the city.
325* ''Literature/RoysBedoys'': “Don’t Share Personal Items, Roys Bedoys!” ends with both of the Bedoys brothers sick.
326* ''Literature/RumbleFish'': The Motorcycle Boy finally goes crazy and is killed by the police while vandalizing a pet store to free the animals in it. Rusty is arrested and sent away to reformatory. The only bright spot is that it's implied that reformatory did actually rehabilitate Rusty.
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330* ''Literature/SadakoAndTheThousandPaperCranes'' ends with Sadako growing weaker and dying in the hospital, though it's a ForegoneConclusion.
331* Several examples in the many tales of ''Literature/ScaryStoriesToTellInTheDark'':
332** "The Bride". The titular bride dies [[AndIMustScream trapped inside of a trunk]] while playing hide-and-seek, and no one manages to find her until years later when a maid stumbles upon her by accident. By that point, she is merely a skeleton.
333** "Bess" mixes this with CruelTwistEnding. John Nicholas is a raiser of horses, and one of those horses, the titular Bess, has just been put down. But that's not the real downer--the downer is when John pats Bess's skull, and he gets fatally bitten by a snake living inside of the skull.
334* Creator/PhilipKDick's short story ''Second Variety'' ends with the main character bleeding out as the first of many homicidal robots exits the Earth's atmosphere towards humanity's final holdout on the moon, using a rocket and coordinates which he unwittingly provided to it. His only solace comes from noticing that the robot carried an EMP grenade - once they wipe out humankind, they just might avenge our race by killing each other.
335* ''Literature/TheSchoolForGoodMothers'': Even after Frida spends a year on the eponymous school, the family court judge terminates her parental rights. She and her parents are not allowed ANY contact with her daughter Harriet until she turns 18, and even then, only if Harriet seeks her out. Weeks later, when her ex Gust (Harriet's father, who does have custody) and his new wife are at the ER dealing with their son's medical emergency, she begs the friend caring for Harriet for an hour alone. When he heads out, Frida runs away with Harriet, knowing full well an Amber Alert will be issued and she will get caught and put in jail and not caring, figuring whatever time she gets with her daughter will be worth it. Not to mention that the school itself is set up for parents to fail no matter what they do, so ''none'' of them are likely to see their children again.
336* Donna Tartt's ''Literature/TheSecretHistory'' ends with two members of a close knit group of six friends dead, and the rest with ruined lives. The only hope present is in the form of an ambiguous dream presented at the very end.
337* ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'': Optional in some books, in which the author [[SnicketWarningLabel suggests]] to stop reading and imagine an ending better than the real one.
338* John Brunner's ''Literature/TheSheepLookUp'' concerns environmental collapse and its consequences. By the time you get to the end of the novel, you realize that everyone -- the good, the bad, rich, poor, the characters you've come to despise and the characters you've come cheer for -- every one is dead, or dead and worse, and the scariest thing about the novel is that, as noted by Creator/WilliamGibson, of all speculative fiction written, this 1972 novel comes the absolute closest to dead-on predicting the world we live in... right now.
339* The last book of the Literature/SienkiewiczTrilogy, ''Mr Wolodjyowski'', ends with the main character dead, along with several of his companions, and part of Poland ceded to the enemy. It is especially tragic for his wife, as the book deals with their relationship, which is very loving. This is in stark contrast to two earlier books in the trilogy, ''With Fire and Sword'' and ''The Deluge'', both which see the lead couples get reunited and also end with victorious battles. It was a historical novel and we know what happens next: the country steadily goes into disarray eventually leading up to the Partitions and being wiped off the map for over a century.
340* ''Literature/TheSisterVerseAndTheTalonsOfRuin'' has this in arguably all three acts. The first ends with John being reincarnated into another hellish life; the second has Exoniga running away to join the darklings, and Ethan dying after being used as a pawn in the greater war; and the third sees John rescued, only for the villain to annihilate him from existence after he stopped entertaining it.
341* ''Literature/SmallWorldTabithaKingNovel'': Lucy's children are shrunk by the minimizer. There is no way to reverse the process, and the only person in the world who understand how the minimizer works -- Roger -- has also been shrunk. Nick and Lucy volunteer to be shrunk as well in order to care for the children, while Nick's aging father will tend to the tiny family's needs. However, there is a {{ray of hope|Ending}}, as Roger is being supplied with the necessary equipment to research and develop a device that might restore them all, and the book's final line implies that either he was successful or at least that the tiny group managed to live a happy life together regardless.
342* ''Literature/SonsAndLovers'': Mrs. Morel dies and Paul can't relate to anyone anymore. He walks the cold streets wishing for death.
343* ''Literature/TheSorcererOfTheWildeeps'': The book ends with what looks like an AmbiguousEnding, but upon closer inspection it's heavily implied that Isa dies at the hands of the second jukiere because he is, for a split second, distracted by Demane arriving at the scene, and [[TheMedic Demane]] is unable to heal him. So Demane has to stay back at the Wildeeps until he has tracked down and killed the remaining jukiere, possibly also dying himself in the process, as the first, older jukiere already took almost all he had to kill. And he has to deal with feeling responsible for his lover's death.
344* ''Literature/TheSoundAndTheFury'': The Compsons, a noble family with a proud Southern Heritage, completely destroys itself within two generations.
345* The third book of the ''Literature/Spaceforce2012'' series, ''Oblivion'', ends with the BigBad getting clean away, the newly-wed OfficialCouple forcibly separated and forbidden to contact each other, and the pleasure planet Fantasia, where the novel is set, blasted into space atoms.
346* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'':
347** ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'': The last scenes of the second book, ''Dark Force Rising'', are less down than most examples, more on the par of the ''Franchise/StarWars'' movies, where things look bad but the surviving heroes are determined. After a hard battle and ''three'' BigDamnHeroes moments, the New Republic is barely, just barely able to survive an Imperial trap. The New Republic and the Empire had been in a race of sorts to get to the long-lost ''Katana'' fleet of heavy Dreadnaughts, and in the aftermath of the battle the heroes find that while they'd been fighting among ''Katana'' fleet Dreadnaughts, there were only fifteen there. Out of ''two hundred''. YouAreTooLate, indeed. The heroes try to console themselves, saying that the Empire is strapped for crews and won't be able to scrape together four hundred thousand people to crew the Dreadnaughts anytime soon. And then they take a look at the bodies of the Imperials they just killed. They are all clones. Meaning that the Empire has found a new stock of Spaarti cylinders, and it ''won't'' take years to find and train crews. Maybe only months. Maybe not even that long. ThisIsGonnaSuck.
348** ''Literature/OutboundFlight'' is this or bittersweet. No one clearly, unambiguously good is around at the end of the novel--the only essentially good main characters either left back in the first half or died in a HeroicSacrifice that preserves the last fifty survivors of Outbound Flight, which originally had fifty thousand people on it. The woman who sacrificed herself got another character to [[ThePromise promise]] her that he'd send back a message to her brother, who hated her. And from the [[AnachronicOrder previously-published sequel]] ''Survivor's Quest'', we know that those survivors and their descendants curse that woman's name for abandoning them, that [[TheGreatestStoryNeverTold no one ever learns what she did]], and that the man she extracted a promise from set up a criminal organization and didn't so much as think about her request for fifty years. Damn, Lorana, [[TheWoobie you got the short end of the stick]].
349* ''Stories of Your Life and Others'' by Ted Chiang includes "Hell Is the Absence Of God". A skeptic and cripple who despises God on account of all the horrible misfortunes in his life is struck by a genuine BeamOfEnlightenment, which makes him love God unconditionally and supposedly guarantees his entrance to Heaven... and then moments later he dies and is arbitrarily sent to Hell, where the titular absence of God inflicts constant MindRape on his now deity-loving psyche... forever. ''Stories of Your Life and Others'' contains the short "Division by Zero," which you can read for free [[http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/division/full/ here.]] Though this could more be considered a downer book, and is especially disturbing if you've studied a maths-based subject to any extent.
350* ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde'' definitely qualifies. As we find out at the end, the Hyde personality wins, and Jekyll spends his last hour before permanently turning into Hyde writing down the case from his perspective and hoping he finishes it before he transforms, as Hyde would likely destroy it. Then, rather than live life as a murderous monster, he commits suicide. Layton is also dead of fright, leaving Utterson alone to pick up the pieces.
351* ''Literature/TheStranger'' ends with the protagonist, having shot a random guy for no apparent reason, being guillotined for the murder, never showing any remorse or giving any explanation for his crime. Well, it's Creator/AlbertCamus, [[{{Absurdism}} what did you expect?]]
352* ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'': ''Soul of the Fire'' is singularly the most depressing book of the series, and ends with Kahlan having been beaten to death (and resuscitated by Richard) and losing their child, nearly every other sympathetic character dead, and Richard having been handed the most brutal defeat yet in the series as the Anders vote against him and are conquered handily by the Order.
353* Jaqueline Carey's duology, ''Literature/TheSundering'', in which all but one of the protagonists end up slain after having their stronghold sacked, and the last survivor is the crippled one.
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357* There's a picture book for small children called ''[[Literature/TadpolesPromise Tadpole's Promise]]''. It's about a tadpole who falls in love with a caterpillar. ''She was his beautiful rainbow, and he was her shiny black pearl''. But she makes him promise he'll never change, and of course he starts growing legs. So she leaves him, and cries to herself to sleep in a cocoon. When she wakes up, she's a butterfly, realises people can't help changing, and flies off to look for him and forgive him. He's now a frog, and not recognising her he '''swallows her whole''' and then sits there sadly remembering his beautiful rainbow.
358%% * The Canadian novel ''Tent Of Blue'' by Rachel Preston, though it borderlines with NoEnding…
359* In ''Literature/ATerribleVengeance'', DarkerAndEdgier than most of Creator/NikolaiGogol's works, the ending is not a bit happier than the rest of the story. Katerina's husband, her little child and Katerina herself have been killed by the Sorcerer. The Sorcerer, meanwhile, has been killed by Ivan, in revenge for Ivan's murder by his ancestor Petro. Petro and all his descendants up to and including the Sorcerer are doomed to AFateWorseThanDeath. Ivan, though he was an innocent victim of Petro's treachery, likewise gets AFateWorseThanDeath for demanding such a horrible revenge.
360* Émile Zola's ''Literature/ThereseRaquin'' ends with the title character and her lover going mad and committing suicide. Her aunt dies shortly after with no one to take care of her.
361* ''Literature/{{Thirsty}}'' has the main character going insane (and [[HorrorHunger thirsty]]) after realizing his entire life was arranged to carry out a plan by an EldritchAbomination.
362* ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium'':
363** Tolkien's ''Literature/TheChildrenOfHurin'' (and the condensed version of the same story found in ''Literature/TheSilmarillion''). Húrin and his brother Huor fight in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, where Huor dies and Húrin is taken prisoner by [[EvilOverlord Morgoth]]. Húrin refuses to tell Morgoth the location of a nearby [[HiddenElfVillage Hidden Elf Kingdom]], so Morgoth curses his family, and forces Húrin to watch the [[DeusAngstMachina unfolding misfortune]] playing out on Túrin, his son, and Túrin's sister Niënor. By the time the story ends, Túrin has killed his best friend accidentally, taken a kingdown to its fall, failed to save his girlfriend, and unknowingly [[BrotherSisterIncest married Niënor]]. When she finds out, Niënor throws herself off a cliff (whilst pregnant with Túrin's child). Túrin kills himself with his sword. His father, no longer a prisoner, accidentally leads the enemy to the city he had tried to protect in the battle, and then he and his wife find their children's tomb; soon after she dies of grief. Húrin tries to avenge his children's death but only succeeds in bringing down a curse on ''another'' [[HiddenElfVillage Hidden Elf Kingdom]] which will soon lead to "The Fall of Gondolin", and is finally told by [[OurAngelsAreDifferent Melian]] that he's only helping Morgoth with his actions, and he kills himself. The End.
364** "Quenta Silmarillion". Finwë's family ends up entirely wiped out after he gets killed by Morgoth, who then steals the Silmarils. His eldest son Fëanor leading a BadassArmy on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge to retrieve the Silmarils that ends up killing him, six of his sons, the surviving one (Maglor) spent wandering the shores of the world singing in despair. His second eldest son Fingolfin and his three children Fingon, Turgon and Aredhel all get killed achieving nothing. His third son Finarfin survives, but four out of his five children get killed (although Finrod dies saving the aforementioned Beren). There are 3 of the 5 great battles against Morgoth that end in tragedy: The Battle of the Sudden Flame: Everyone Burns, The Battle of Unnumbered Tears: Everyone Dies, and the Final Battle The War of Wrath: Everything Gets Destroyed. The Battle of Unnumbered Tears gets special mention though: it's the first coalition of all the races together to fight Morgoth, and the greatest army seen so far in the world outside of the gods. It gets crushed so badly and so many people die that Morgoth literally makes a hill out of the corpses. Worst is that they never had a chance: the only power strong enough to defeat Morgoth was the Valar, who sunk Beleriand in the process. By the end of the First Age, the only names characters left alive (out of a cast of several dozen immortal elves) are Galadriel (Finarfin's daughter), her husband Celeborn, Elrond and Elros (Turgon's grandchildren), Gil-galad (Fingon's son), Círdan, and Fëanor's grandson Celebrimbor (who eventually gets killed by and used as a banner by Sauron, not necessarily in that order, either.) Oh yeah, and Gil-galad dies overthrowing Sauron.
365** "The Fall of Gondolin" has the [[HiddenElfVillage Hidden Elf City]] of Gondolin being destroyed, along with many of its inhabitants, including the King Turgon and many of the Elf Houses. There is some consolation in some of the inhabitants, Turgon's daughter Idril, her husband Tuor, and their son Earendil escaping, but it is still a huge tragedy.
366** Akallabeth has the Island of Numenor, inhabited by the greatest race of men to have ever lived, being corrupted by Sauron and finally being destroyed when its King attacks Valinor. Elendil leads nine ships to Middle-Earth as this happens but it is still a terrible tragedy.
367* Creator/JohnBrunner's novel ''Literature/TotalEclipse'' is mostly an old-fashioned novel about an archaeological expedition to an alien world, albeit with Earth civilisation in a tumultuous state. The scientists solve the puzzle and contact Earth ... to discover that civilisation back home has collapsed. They try to establish a colony on the new world ... and [[RocksFallEveryoneDies everyone dies of an unstoppable illness]].
368* Creator/HarryHarrison's ''Literature/ToTheStars'': ''Homeworld'' ends with the protagonist being captured by StateSec and sentenced to be sent to an off-world colony where he can't cause any trouble. His sister (whose husband is the one who captures him) is told he's dead. His LoveInterest, a BadassIsraeli operative, chooses to take the SuicideByCop way out rather than be captured. To top it off, he finds out that it's a SenselessSacrifice, since StateSec already know everything. Luckily, the two sequels end up a little better.
369* The first two books of ''Literature/TheTribe'' end on a sour note.
370** "Homeroom Headhunters" ends with Spencer taking the fall for The Tribe's prank on Greenfield Middle School's Christmas assembly, and being expelled when he refuses to reveal the identities of the real perpetrators.
371** "Camp Cannibal" ends with Spencer realizing his parents didn't come with all the other campers' parents to Camp New Leaf to see if he was alright, and deciding to run away into the woods, despite Sully pleading him not to.
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375* ''Literature/UndeadOnArrival''. Glen Novak finds out that his former student was responsible for getting him bitten by a zombie, and after the kid tearfully apologizes, Novak blows his head off and kills himself.
376* ''Literature/{{Undine}}'': Huldbrand betrays Undine by marrying Bertalda, Undine kills him and then turns into a stream that encircles his grave, eternally embracing him.
377* ''Literature/TheUnknownSoldier'': This novel follows the journey of a Finnish machine gun platoon in the Continuation War between Finland and Russia 1941-1944. It's a tale of years of suffering, fear and death, with [[AnyoneCanDie character after character dropping from the company]]. Only one of the most central characters survive the war. What they got out of it? Spoilers: the Soviet Union was on the winning side of [=WW2=]. So the characters labored, hoped, feared, suffered and died for absolutely nothing.
378* ''Literature/Utopia58'': All of Kay's friends and allies perish or get captured during their quest to find Zion. During said quest, they discover Zion is in complete ruins, along with a majority of the world. Kay gets captured, is tortured for months, and finds out that Ellie--his girlfriend and alleged rebel--was manipulating him the whole time so she could send the White Army to kill all the rebels. Shortly afterwards, Kay and the remaining rebels are stoned at a public execution.
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382* Knut Hamsun's novel ''Literature/Victoria1898'' is about a miller's son, Johannes, who falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy landowner, Victoria. She has to marry a lieutenant to save the troubled family economy. At the end, when it looks like Johannes and Victoria might finally get to live out their love, she [[DiabolusExMachina suddenly]] dies of tuberculosis.
383* ''Literature/TheVirginSuicides'': The girls do commit suicide, and their parents don't seem to understand they were partly responsible. All the surviving boys can do is examine the tragedy with hindsight.
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387* ''Literature/TheWake'' ends disturbingly; Buccmaster has a complete [[VillainousBreakdown mental breakdown]], hallucinates, [[ExtremeMeleeRevenge kills Grimcell]] for [[OnlySaneMan daring to disagree with his plans]] and then runs off into the forest in a fit of rage. He abandons his group, who are all [[TheBadGuysWin slaughtered by Norman soldiers]].
388* C.L Werner's ''Palace of the Plague Lord'', a ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' novel, has one of the bleakest endings ever written. The protagonist, Einarr Steelfist, has travelled to the eponymous Plague Lord's Palace with his fellowship, including the woman he is falling in love with, and his goal is to steal an ancient artefact of Tzeentch back from the Plague Lord and in exchange his village and wife will be resurrected. His entire fellowship dies in very brutal and gory ways, and their souls are damned to Nurgle's domain, and he himself discovers that he has been tricked by a Daemon into stealing a Nurglite artefact so that Tzeentch can bribe Nurgle with it for support in the coming Storm of Chaos, a war that will see hundreds of thousands dead, and Einarr is no longer useful especially after he tries to blackmail the Daemon by refusing to hand over the artefact, needless to say the Daemon doesn't react well. He is then sent back to the moment when he should have died, and his soul is trapped in the Bloodbeast along with the souls of every one in his village, and they are forever damned to be a part of the Bloodbeast and serve Khorne. To cap off this immense tragedy Einarr's last act before being absorbed fully into the mass of souls that are trapped in the Bloodbeast is to push out to his past self and try to warn him, but he cannot speak and his past self dismisses it as a hallucination and goes off to fight the Bloodbeast where he will die, Tzeentch will save him and the entire thing will begin again. The moral of the story, don't demand anything of the Dark Gods.
389* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''
390** The novel ''Eldar Prophecy'' features a civil war on an Eldar craftword. Every sympathetic character is killed off over the course of the novel, until finally the Designated Hero kills the villain... and then, in the last two pages, the Man Behind The Man steps forward and reveals that everything has gone according to plan, and they can feed the souls of all the Eldar who died to Slaanesh so that the entire craftword will be pulled into the Warp.
391** In the novel ''Farseer'' by William King, the protagonist decides to help the soul of the titular farseer so he doesn't get eaten by Slaanesh, since he's grown to trust the guy over the course of the book. Said farseer then takes over his body, imitating him so well that ''his friends can't even tell it's not him'', with the protagonist fully conscious and aware of his situation, and then the farseer takes them on a mission [[SequelHook that will probably get them all killed]]. We will never know.
392** ''Fire Warrior'' ends with Kais, with the help of Space Marine Ardias and a few Crisis Suits defeats the forces of Chaos. However, he ends up mentally broken and horrendously traumatized from his experiences.
393** The Literature/ShiraCalpurnia novel ''Legacy'' ends with all sides that were trying to lay claim to Hoyyon Phrax's Rogue Trader charter stymied (and two of those essentially annihilated), the charter itself apparently lost in space, and Calpurnia disgraced and facing the end of her career (if not worse) over the spectacular brouhaha the whole thing culminated in, the last of which is left vague but made clear in the opening chapters of the next novel.
394** Creator/GrahamMcNeill's ''Storm of Iron''. The Iron Warriors won, all the Imperial Fist Space Marines and Jouran Imperial Guard are dead or enslaved, and all the gene-seed is winging its way to Abaddon the Despoiler for his 13th Black Crusade. Guardsman Hawke is the only real survivor. See his ''[[Literature/{{Ultramarines}} Dead Sky Black Sun]]'' for more.
395** In Creator/JamesSwallow's novel ''[[Literature/BloodAngels Deus Encarmine]]'', Rafen is forced to [[ThePromise pledge himself]] to Arkio as the reincarnated Sanguinius. Which is the point at which he realizes that they will meet at some point and one will die. And Arkio is not merely a fellow Blood Angel but his brother. Though this being a two-part series, this has shades of a CliffHanger.
396** In Gav Thorpe's novel ''Angels of Darkness'', Boreas comes to the conclusion that the man he tortured and interrogated (and condemned to a FateWorseThanDeath) was right: the Dark Angels have committed themselves to the wrong path. He convinces the Dark Angels with him to remain in a hermetically sealed fortress, so they will not release a fatal virus on the planet, even though [[HeroicSacrifice they will die themselves]], but he knows the message he sends to the other Dark Angels will not convince them. Rather than face what they could do when desperate for air and food, [[DrivenToSuicide they all commit suicide together]].
397** Creator/JohnLeCarre's novels. Even when the characters win, it's still a downer. The end of ''The Russia House'' is somber but hopeful, and ''Single & Single'' has an almost unequivocally positive ending.
398** Intrinsic to the Literature/HorusHeresy series, as they [[DoomedByCanon are filling in]] the tragic 40K BackStory. Some just foreshadow evil, but the sad endings include:
399*** Creator/GrahamMcNeill's ''False Gods'': Horus assassinates two people, revealing his choice.
400*** Ben Counter's ''Galaxy In Flames'': A full-blown TheBadGuyWins, with the only consolation being that the good guys are not all DyingAlone.
401*** Creator/GrahamMcNeill's ''Fulgrim'': In a battle full of treachery, Fulgrim kills Ferrus Manus; consumed by guilt, Fulgrim is tricked into letting a daemon possess him. It traps him, aware of all that happens and unable to act, for all time. Horus is horrified and declares that he will figure out a way to rescue Fulgrim and deal with the daemon -- after his revolt.
402*** Creator/DanAbnett's ''[[Literature/HorusHeresy Legion]]''. Let us count the ways. The Alpha Legion turns traitor to ensure Chaos destroys itself by eliminating humanity itself. The Imperial Guard they brought with them are either killed when they blow up their ships or doomed to die a horrible death on the planet itself. John Grammaticus [[DrivenToSuicide commits suicide by throwing himself out of an airlock]] because his best friend and his lover have betrayed him and he has doomed humanity to extinction. Oh, and all of this doesn't ''prevent'' the vision the Cabal have seen, [[SenselessSacrifice it]] ''[[SelfFulfillingProphecy ensures]]'' it.
403*** Creator/GrahamMcNeill's ''Battle for the Abyss'': All of the heroes in the book die, many hating one another's guts after being relatively strong comrades to begin with. Almost all of them die pointless deaths, attempting just to slow down the planet killer they are trying to destroy. It takes an utterly suicidal attack to finally successfully board the ship, in which more than half of the remaining loyalists are killed or forced to turn their guns on one another by psychers. In their final moments they just about manage to succeed. Why is this a downer ending rather than a [[BittersweetEnding bitter one]]? No one will ever know of their actions, no one will remember their names or recall anything they did. They lost everything and had everything they were destroyed. Their ''victory'' was giving one loyalist legion a ''very'' slim chance at surviving a massed sneak attack by two traitor ones.
404*** ''The Damnation of Pythos'' is grim even by Horus Heresy standards. The good guys only achieve one minor victory, by destroying a handful of Emperor's Children ships. Then they get wiped out to the last man by daemons ''they unleashed'', and their last desperate message is filed away and ignored.
405* Not too common in Literature/WarriorCats, but in one [[Literature/WarriorCatsNovellas novella]], ''Cloudstar's Journey'', the main character's home is destroyed, he is permanently separated from his mate and kits, he entirely loses his faith in [=StarClan=], and he and his entire Clan are banished from the forest. There's also ''Hawkwing's Journey'': the modern [=SkyClan=] has been driven from the gorge, and most of the Clan is dead, missing, or have left. Echosong did eventually receive another prophecy to lead them toward the other Clans, but it's only a tiny spot of hope after the Clan has lost so much.
406* ''Literature/WhiteBimBlackEar'' by Gavriil Troyepolsky. A little dog's search for his master, who's been taken to hospital for heart problems. After many breathtaking and exciting adventures, encounters with kind and evil people, the dog dies a miserable death just before his master finds him.
407* The Chinese zeitgeist novel ''Literature/WolfTotem'' ends with the protagonist killing the wolf he raised from infancy with a shovel. After he maims it by clipping the points of its fangs off, ensuring that it can never survive in the wild. And after he lets it suffer for three days from a mortal throat wound caused by an iron chain, just because he can't bring himself to kill it. And it gets better! Due to the wholesale slaughter of Mongolian wolves, the grassland is overgrazed, succumbs to desertification twenty years later, and Beijing suffers its first ever sandstorm.
408* [[ZigZaggingTrope Zigzagged]] in the kids' book ''Wolves''. It's about a rabbit who borrows a book about wolves from the library (which is cleverly presented as a book within the book) and reads it while walking home...being followed by a wolf. He gets to the bit about wolves eating rabbits, the wolf rears up behind him...and the next page is just the back cover of the book, scratched and bitten to shreds. The author then presents a happier ending for sensitive readers, where the wolf is a vegetarian. But then the last page shows letters piling up unanswered on the rabbit's doormat, including a late notice from the library. It's genuinely depressing.
409* ''Literature/TheWomensRoom'' by Marilyn French is not as extreme as some, but it's not exactly happy either. Although some of the group - Iso, Clarissa and Kyla - do get relatively happy endings, others don't. Lily is, as far as we're aware, still in a mental institution. Grete is unhappy in her relationship. Chris's fate remains unknown, Val is dead, and Mira spends most of her time outside of work wandering around on beaches. And one only wonders what happened to all the abandoned housewives in the first part of the novel.
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413* The second book in ''Literature/ZeroSight'' ends with the victory of the villain, the loss of two teammates and the separation of the main couple because the girl has to face the consequences of breaking the laws of her kin to protect the boy.
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