Darkest Hours in fan works.
- Bring Me to Life hits its bleakest point in chapter 38 (fittingly titled "Exit Light, Enter The Night"). By the time the chapter is done, the First Evil and its Legion of Doom have inflicted horrible losses on the combined forces of the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations — Buffy and Angel suffer vicious No Holds Barred Beatdowns, the Hyperion is wrecked, over 60 Potentials are killed, and Willow has her magic drained — and stolen the Keystone, which is needed to complete the First's endgame goal of destroying all of reality. And this is all with Caleb waiting in the wings, ready to join the fight.
- Calvin & Hobbes: The Series' Season 3 finale "Thunderstorm" was already a Wham Episode in itself by introducing a competent villain, but the end of Part 5 takes the cake. The Earth is conquered by Thunderstorm, those Calvin knows are all captured, his clever Batman Gambit failed, and the MTM is dead.
Crossover
- In Fractured, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands crossover and its sequel Origins, this trope appears several times.
- In Fractured, the Citadel Council falls into fascism in attempts to fight the Reapers. Lilith's Heroic Sacrifice destroys the Reapers and also kills anyone who became what the Council sought to fight, bringing the darkness to an end.
- In Origins, the entire Council galaxy falls rapidly against the Flood. Every plan to thwart the Alien Invasion fails. However, it does bring allies from unexpected places.
- Kingdom Hearts: Cody's Story (Kingdom Hearts & Total Drama): The second visit to Disney Castle is full of this. Cody, Bridgett, Noah, and Lindsey all find out that Heather, Geoff, Gwen, Duncan, and Courtney have teamed up with Maleficent and the heartless. Which then ends with Cody nearly being killed by Duncan. The first trip to Hollow bastion also counts. As Cody not only loses the key blade to Duncan, but is attacked by Noah and Lindsey, who both are controlled by Maleficent.
- My Little Avengers (The Mighty Thor & My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic): Chapter 14 and roughly the first third of chapter 15 — Loki's Dark Avengers have managed to defeat the Avengers, and a threat on Pinkie Pie's life gets Big Macintosh to surrender Mjolnir and Thor's power to Loki, who proceeds to pervert the Power of Friendship to strip the other Avengers of their powers as well. The Dark Avengers then assault the royal palace, banishing Luna to the moon and taking a depowered Celestia prisoner, with Loki proclaiming himself the new ruler of Equestria. Fortunately, Big Mac gets a Rousing Speech from a ponified Stan Lee, and he proceeds to do the same to his teammates, using the real Power of Friendship to restore their powers. They then take the fight to Loki, setting the stage for the Final Battle.
- Turnabout Storm (Ace Attorney & My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic): There are two major dark hours:
- In Part 2, without enough time to prepare prior and while both mentally and physically exhausted, Phoenix struggles to keep standing against Trixie's firepower. This gets especially worse when in order to prevent the Judge from handing down an early guilty verdict on Rainbow Dash, he is forced to accuse Fluttershy of all ponies as a potential suspect, just to buy him more time. Not only is Phoenix visibly killing himself inside, he also alienates Twilight, risks losing his place as Rainbow's defense attorney, and Trixie continues to taunt him as she's winning all the same.
- Part 4 takes it one step further. When Phoenix and Twilight believed they had proven Rainbow Dash's innocence, Trixie questions the likelyhood of the scenario. With every other piece of evidence being shot down with little to no effort on Trixie's part, and the blackmailing issue being both indecisive and too dangerous, things have never looked bleaker. And then who should save the day, but Fluttershy!
- Ultrasonic (Miraculous Ladybug & Zootopia): By the end of Chapter 13, there are an army of Ultrasonic clones, all powered up by the Black Cat Miraculous, all ready to raze Zootopia to the ground if the Butterfly doesn't get what he wants, and the only people in position to stand in their way are Ladybug and Nick Wilde.
- Magical Orders and Thieving Angels
(Final Fantasy IX & Harry Potter): Just before the climax of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Zidane is trying to talk Harry and his friends out of walking into a probable trap at the Department of Mysteries, only to be interrupted by Hermione re-discovering the evidence she'd been sent that Zidane had been lying to them about his identity. She then uses Homenum Revelio to reveal that Zidane isn't even human, shattering their trust in him. Before Zidane can try to explain himself, Neville hits him with a Full Body Bind and they leave him behind. Fortunately, the spell does eventually wear off and he manages to catch up with them in time to help out in the Death Eaters' attack. Their subsequent conversation managed to persuade the group (Neville and Luna in particular) that he's still their friend and ally, but the fic sadly died before it could go any further.
- Silent Sorrow, the final story in the Tamers Forever series. As it opens, Takato is already dying thanks to his Superpowered Evil Side overloading his body. Then, Shinjuku is invaded by a Digimon army led by Daemon, who is after the power of said evil side and is so insanely powerful that the only way anyone can even think to foil him is to let Takato escape to the digital world — so he can die before Daemon gets him.
- Better to Reign in Heaven, after the brief Hope Spot that occurs when the Lone Wanderer successfully breaks into Braun's inner sanctum with Tessa Dithers' help, the story abruptly yanks the rug out from under the heroes: not only does Braun successfully prevent the Lone Wanderer from using the Chinese Invasion Failsafe, but he also seals the house shut so that nobody will get the chance to use it again. Then he tortures both the Lone Wanderer and Tessa at length for daring to defy him, subjecting the former to several simulated deaths for more than a week... and then, after regressing the Lone Wanderer to infancy, decides to erase his mind so that he can be raised as the perfect Torture Technician. Fortunately, at the very moment all hope seems lost, Tessa is able to convince Braun that the Lone Wanderer might be able to serve him willingly if given a taste of real power, giving the two of them a second shot at saving the day.
- The Darkest hour is met in Besides the Will of Evil (A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic with some LoTR lore added), when the big bad has destroyed Canterlot; two of the mares that are supposed to help defeat him (Rarity and Rainbow Dash) are on his side; Applejack is out to get more allies; while Twilight abandons her friends and mentor, Princess Celestia; Pinkie Pie is clinically depressed because the dark lord bit her, and is infecting her with black goo. The only elements of harmony that are still thinking straight are Fluttershy and Applejack.
- Each story in the My Hostage, Not Yours series has one:
- My Hostage, Not Yours: Gaz is captured by the Valkians, who intend to use the LEECHY to conquer the Irkens.
- The Revenge of Player 2: Iggins manages to brainwash Gaz into being his slave, and intends to use her to kill Zim and Dib.
- The Inevitable Takeover: Zim and Gaz take control of the Earth; interesting variation, in that it's actually a high point for them, and a Darkest Hour for the other protagonists.
- Queen of All Oni seems to have hit the Darkest Hour as of Chapter 14. Not only has Jade gone completely off the deep end and cut what few ties she had left to her humanity, but she's also forcibly transformed and brainwashed Viper into her new General, gaining control of the Samurai Khan and regaining control of the Ninja Khan at the same time. Uncle and Tohru, sensing all this, admit that the balance has shifted in evil's favor.
- The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (DragonRand100) Darkest Hour is quite literally the name of the chapter when Castletown burns to the ground, in which Link nearly loses the will to keep going after he stumbles upon the body of a murdered child. He begs to go home and for the suffering to end but Navi manages to save him from giving up, just barely.
- Ace Savvy: A New Hope: Lincoln has one during Chapter 9 where his attempt to stop Tetherby ends horribly when Clyde is injured and he is branded a criminal. Lincoln nearly gives up but Jordan pulls him back into being a hero.
- Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race has has a few of these.
- Episode 11, chapter 8, is one, as is most of Episode 11, chapter 9.
- Episode 11, chapter 12, is this as Mega Man is critically injured. The entire chapter is everyone reacting to it and trying to help.
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Chapter 16 is about the darkest and edgiest chapter in this story, to the point that it left a couple readers feeling like all hope of Viv and San having a happy ending was lost. Viv and San are trapped with Ghidorah and MaNi/Elder Brother, who begin invoking Being Tortured Makes You Evil on Vivienne and succeed in permanently breaking something inside her, and Viv and San's current hybridized form including their heads is damaged by MaNi's actions.
- Equestria: A History Revealed: In the Battle of Canterlot, upon realizing that their initial retaking of the city was simply a Defensive Feint Trap by the enemy, and that they had returned in numbers three times their own, and are currently charging as the exhausted Equestrian army it seems as though all hope is lost. Princess Celestia makes a Rousing Speech and then they all fight valiantly in their apparent Last Stand. Luckily, they are able to overcome the enemy by some miracle, while most historians agree that this battle was a Near-Villain Victory.
- The Darkest Hour of the Pony POV Series Chaos Verse comes during the latter end of Discord: Complete Existence, as the Big Bad Nightmare Phobia transforms into an Eldritch Abomination by absorbing the Shadows of Oblivion, overpowers Discord and the Princesses, and begins emerging into the real world, causing every living thing to feel extreme, crippling pain.
- The Powers of Harmony: The story's Darkest Hour starts in Chapter 21, continues in Chapter 22, and is firmly cemented in Chapter 23. Cetus manages to seal Celestia in the sun and steal her body, while allowing Eclipse to possess Rarity. Between the two of them, they then curbstomp the rest of the Mane Six and their allies, even managing to kill Grovi, Strauss, and Elo in the process. In order to keep the heroes alive long enough to become strong enough to defeat them, Luna is forced to scatter them around the world.
- Towards the end of Princess Trixie Sparkle, all the heroes have been captured, Astelle has The Alicorn Amulet that gives back her full power, she has convinced Trixie to join her and used her magic to give them both more powerful forms, and there seems to be nothing stopping Astelle from destroying magic as they know it and pretty much everypony is heading towards the Despair Event Horizon. Things seem just a little bleak.
- In the Dark Fic Echoes of the Dark, Neptune gets transported to a Mirror Universe where the CPUs are Always Chaotic Evil dictators. She decides to save the nations from the evil CPUs and prevent the Candidates from being corrupted by Fearicite. This brings her much suffering and hardships, but the Lastation arc is the worst so far. Neptune and her allies get captured on behalf of Kei, turned into Heroes With Bad Publicity, and subjected to Cold-Blooded Torture, Noire (who it turns out is not evil, just a Knight Templar Straw Nihilist who believes that Humans Are Bastards) gets Brought Down to Normal by Kei destroying her power source, Neptune gets infected by Fearicite by a Mad Scientist and has to fight off an Enemy Within or she'll Jump Off The Slippery Slope herself, and the Candidates (including Noire's sister Uni), as well as Uni's Robot Buddy Steamax, are tortured, Mind Raped, and Brainwashed to show Undying Loyalty to Kei (which is a major Trauma Button for Neptune due to her Greatest Failure*). Chapter 59 ends with Neptune and her allies tied up (with Neptune still being naked due to the aforementioned torture) and seconds away from being publically executed by the Candidates. They are saved at the last second when it turns out Steamax managed to break free of the reprogamming due to his Undying Loyalty to Noire, and was only pretending to still be reprogammed so he could perform a Big Damn Heroes save. Noire manages to break the Power Nullifiers placed on her and Neptune, as well as draw out most of the Fearicite corrupting Neptune and use it to power herself up (since it was the remnants of Noire's Fearicite power source that was used to infect Neptune to begin with), which leads to an extended "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight against the Candidates. Neptune and her allies are eventually able to free the Candidates and defeat Kei and her forces, but at a cost: Noire dies by way of Heroic Sacrifice to prevent a falling airship from wiping out all of Lastation, and it is revealed that Kei - a normal human - had become corrupted by studying the Fearicite, meaning that not only is nobody safe from becoming just as bad as Kei, but the Fearicite's very existence is the reason this dimension is such a Crapsack World - the Fearicite has ben slowly corrupting every one for the past sixty years since its arrival.
- Sonic X: Dark Chaos: Episode 75 is even titled "Resurrection of Darkness". The final battle between the Angels and Demons begins, with both Maledict and Jesus Christ battling each other. The entire Milky Way Galaxy is in ruins, Sonic's allies have been wiped out, the Blue Typhoon has been wrecked, and the Galaxy Crusher is about to wipe out the remnants of Milky Way in an instant. And just to top it all off, Dark Tails appears and uses the Chaos Emeralds to become a god - putting the fate of the entire universe on the line.
- Clash of the Elements: The end of Chapter 49 of Part 1. All the heroes are down for the count, Rosalina has fallen after proving unable to deal with Joe Dark after he went into his Griffon Form, the Genesis Samurais are all dead, the Dark King managed to set up a widespread wave of destruction across the planet during his brief moment of possession, Alex Whiter has had his subconsciousness destroyed, and Joe Dark is just about ready to destroy the Origin Temple, unaware that his attack will actually annihilate the rest of the planet too...
Unsorted
- In the roleplay game In the Beginning, There Was Man, all of Mankind faces its Darkest Hour as the Legions of Chaos Undivided sets out to destroy the God Emperor of Mankind and enslave all of Humanity for the Dark Gods of Chaos. Throughout the Galaxy the Imperium is buckling under the pressure of 14000 years of War as Orks, Necrons, Tyranids and Chaos destroy four of the five Segmentums in their unending appetite for destruction. All that's left is Terra and the God Emperor.
- In With Strings Attached, the four return triumphantly with the third piece of the Vasyn, only to find the first two pieces missing and almost everything taken from the house. Tracking down their stuff, they end up in the ruined city of Ehndris, where they learn that Brox found a spell to restore monsters to Baravada—something they did not want to have happen. They're betrayed by their best Baravadan friend; John and Paul are kidnapped and put under the control of the baddies, while George and Ringo are neutralized and can do nothing to help. The Fans are nowhere to be found. And the topper is that Ringo is startled into teleporting hundreds of miles away, leaving George alone, surrounded by bloodthirsty revolutionaries, and utterly powerless.
- In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, the four find themselves rudderless and on the run, having been rejected and nearly depowered and imprisoned for no apparent reason by the Circle. They have absolutely no good option to pursue, and it's looking like they'll never get home. And Paul, having had to go to high strength and badly injure someone, is experiencing a Heroic BSoD and is all set to give up his magic to the Taxman in a few days.
- The 15th chapter of a different Crossover fanfic, Ace Combat: The Equestrian War certainly fits. The griffins manage to seize Canterlot and the castle becomes the only save area. Many ponies were injured during their raid, some died. Tornado Swirl and Overdrive lost every one of their wingmates, the Stingray squadron was wiped out completely, Blueberry died a Cruel and Unusual Death and Carrot Top dies in Derpy's arms, much to her despair. The situation is so crushing that even Cloud Kicker bursts into tears!
- Inner Demons: The prophecy refers to the Queen of Darkness' reign as "Equestria's darkest hour". That said, there are two moments that possibly qualify:
- Relatively early on, when Twilight succumbs to the Darkness, crosses the Moral Event Horizon, and declares herself ruler of Equestria, before beginning a campaign to crush the rest of the Mane Six and any of their potential allies. It takes a long time for things to start to get better after this.
- Closer to the end of the story, the setup for the Final Battle — Queen!Twilight has a Villainous Breakdown as a result of Trixie's death, ascends to alicorn-hood, and declares her intention to unleash the hordes of Tartarus and destroy Equestria.
- Fairy Without Wings delivers a particularly chilling one during its survival horroresque arc Unistrad. At the end of chapter 42, we have a lycan Kallen, an evil Mirajane, suspicious vampires, eternal night, cursed artifacts, and worst of all...a hairy Lucy.
- The quote at the end of that chapter said it all
The dreams are gone. Midnight has come. Darkness is our new kingdom.- The trope comes into effect yet again for the 100th chapter. Margaret corrupts the Tenrou Tree—she makes it work for Grimoire Heart as opposed to Fairy Tail—and Erza is the only one within spitting distance of stopping her and is the only one with the power to do so that isn't preoccupied or unconscious.
- Not to be outdone by previous examples, chapter 191, appropriately titled Ultimate Despair, has the closest the series has come thus far to a Near-Villain Victory and really brings about a sense of hopelessness and dread with even main characters looking like they're about to bite it until Natsu comes from the future and punches Mordred in the face, once again sparking the light of hope in everyone. The narration even lampshades this example saying how just when things are at their darkest, light will eventually seep through.
- In Zero 2: A Revision Chapter 50 is the peak of this moment as the Digidestined are trapped in the Digital World, unable to return to the Real World no thanks to Darkheart's constant attacks on the Digidestined, being absorbed into him every time they confronted. At this point, only Kari, TK, Shaun, Angewomon, and Paildramon are not absorbed by him. Meanwhile, Odaiba is entrapped in a massive four-way war between the forces of Umbradevimon, Demon, Gravemon, and the survivors of Odaiba with thousands of people being either killed or possessed by the Spores.
- The aversion of this is actually a plot point in Belated Battleships. It is eventually revealed that the reason why no American warship came back before Jersey was because it was not yet the US's darkest hour. For Britain and Japan, both island nations dependent on the sea for their continued survival, the Abyssals cutting off sea trade was an existential threat that their ships of old returned to stave off. In contrast, as a continent-spanning nation with vast hinterlands to call on, the USA losing access to the sea would not be the same kind of deathblow. As a result, the old fleet had no such impetus to return.
- Child of the Storm has Chapter 74, which is fittingly titled "Darkest Hour". Following up on their worldwide attacks in the preceding chapters which crippled most of the agencies that could oppose them (and caused the deaths of King T'Chaka, Arthur Weasley, and Luna Lovegood), HYDRA launch another attack that results in Thor being rendered comatose, Steve, Tony and Bruce being captured, and Avengers Tower being destroyed. This thus leaves Lucius Malfoy in the position of effective ruler of the world.
- Discussed in the epilogue of Eugenesis; after the absolute hell the Autobots and Decepticons go through, Hosehead wonders if the events of the story were the “Darkest Hour” prophecies always seem to foresee and things are looking up from here. Red Alert wearily remarks that the Darkest Hour will be the next one. “It’s always the next one”.
- Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society: Holy shit, the end of season 2 (comprising of "Insert Epic Space Opera Here" and "Insert Descent Into Hell Here"). We're introduced to the newest Sovereign, Divinity—none other than an Immaculated Phoenixia. She insta-kills the Star Wars fandom's most recent Sue along with his ship's entire crew because he got irritating, then proceeds to start flaying the present Society members alive. All the while, even more agents are fighting a losing dogfight outside, and the Society barely escapes alive when the Counter Guardians intervene, actually getting wounded in the process. And then it turns out that all the Star Wars fandom events were a distraction for Runoa to sneak into the Library! While nigh upon the entire Society is hospitalized, however, Divinity decides that she wants to follow her own plans, and sends the entire Library into stasis. Harriet and Emily barely escape the event with Adrian in tow, and spend TWO YEARS on the run trying to find a way to free the Library.
- Hellsister Trilogy: At the climax of The Apokolips Agenda arc, Darkseid speaks the Anti-Life Equation, effectively wiping out Free Will across the universe. He would have enslaved literally everyone forever if Supergirl hadn't hypnotized D'reema into speaking the Life Equation before the mind-control took hold of everybody.
- It happens in Entities of Emotion when Spike is manipulated into becoming Ophidian's host and abducting Rarity and Applebloom, and the Negative Entities have captured their Positive counterparts and occupied Canterlot.
- ''Megami no Hanabira: Day 5 ends with the girls at their lowest point: they've learned that the Flock, the organization with the best hope of stopping the outbreak, is itself responsible for causing the outbreak to begin with: if they were to be stopped, the demons would win, but if they win, they'd be able to manipulate all of humanity into giving them whatever they wanted in exchange for protection from 'freak' demon outbreaks. On top of that, the Flock's got Archangels; obscenely powerful angels that effortlessly stomp all over any Tamer in their path, meaning the have no real way of fighting back against the Flock if it came down to it. To make matters worse, Mai, their leader and one of the strongest Tamers on the crew, has been captured or killed by the Flock, and to top it all off the food that the girls have struggled to reclaim from the Yakuza gets stolen all over again in the time they're away. The girls are outnumbered, outgunned, outmaneuvered and left with absolutely nothing of substance: if by sheer dumb luck Risa's and Miya's consciences hadn't won out and they hadn't decided to return some of the food they had stolen, the Flock would have won...or so it seemed: turns out Lucifer was in control of the situation the whole time and it was the Flock who didn't have a prayer of winning, even if the girls failed.
- In The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum and its Continuity Reboot Spectrum, this is the general situation for Earth. The barrier has covered about one-third of the Earth's surface (and has started to make landfall on the USA, which provides much of the backbone of humanity's war effort), humanity has lost close to 2 billion people (either to death or to ponification), the daily assaults of the Solar Empire wreck havoc on the world, the Apocalypse Anarchy is just as much a problem as the war itself, and a general feeling of utter hopelessness has gripped much of the population. By the time Prime Equestria finds them, the humans were pretty close to giving up altogether and seriously floating the idea of pulling a Taking You with Me move by artificially inducing an eruption in the Yellowstone caldera to at least stick it to the Solar Empire.
- Here There Be Monsters: By the end of the ninth chapter, the Marvel Family and the Squadron of Justice have been defeated an imprisoned, and two members of the Monster Society of Evil are carving a path of destruction through North America. The situation has gotten so critical the President is considering to drop a nuke on USA soil.Captain Marvel felt as though his muscles were cramped, as well they might be. The Marvelium bonds had held him prisoner for a good while, now. The knowledge that Junior and Mary were his fellow prisoners, and that the other heroes of Earth had tried and failed to rescue them, wasn't contributing to his peace of mind.
All of it, every last bit of it, at the hands of Sivana. His enemies given power beyond his own, and his homeworld threatened with conquest. Or destruction.
But was there a way to escape? Could there, possibly, be a way to manage a break from these bonds, a stilling of the ray above him? - The Frozen Heart's Star: In Chapter 11, Dream Land was invaded by all the ice and snow and everyone was also under attack by everything that could possibly kill them... with no Kirby here to save them this time since he was already overtaken by his own frozen heart at that time! Even trying to fight back became futile, like, take for instance Chef Kawasaki when he gets captured while trying to throw a spicy-looking soup at those weird creatures that freezes hearts with eye contact! If absolutely no-one other than Kirby came to save the day, both Dream Land and Planet Popstar would've ended up in a new Ice Age with pretty much everyone completely frozen to death!
