Darkest Hours in web original media.
- Critical Role: In the final arc of Campaign 2, the Mighty Nein have been working for weeks to stop Lucien's plan from coming to fruition, and potentially save their friend Mollymauk, whose body Lucien is currently inhabiting. After defeating Lucien, Caleb starts to cast Raise Dead on the corpse, Yasha, Beau and Jester each make a heartfelt speech to Molly begging him to return... and then Matt rolls a natural 1 on the resurrection die, meaning the ritual fails. The Nein immediately sink into despair as they numbly begin to wrap Molly's body and prepare to bury him, as Caduceus, on a whim, casts Divine Intervention... Which succeeds, giving them another roll on the resurrection die, which this time is a 12, enough to bring Molly back to life.
- In Chrono Hustle #10, the main characters start out in the custody of the TRD, before being transferred to the TDD for mind-wipes. They manage to escape to 1942, but in the process, one of the characters is killed, one is gravely injured and, before he is able to receive proper medical attention, they are immediately arrested by Nazis, thus ending the first volume.
- Cobra Kai: Second-season finale "No Mercy," on the first day of school at West Valley High, erupts into a flat-out Mob War between Cobra Kai and Miyagi-do. One representative of each dojo is hospitalized (Sam, for three lines worth of stitches where Tory's spiked bracelet caught her; Miguel, after Robby knocks him over the railing several feet onto the lobby stairway). As a result, Daniel (at Amanda’s urging) is forced to close down the Miyagi-Do dojo and stop teaching karate having failed to uphold his late sensei’s philosophy. Johnny has been disowned by Carmen in the wake of Miguel's life-threatening injury. Worse, he learns that Kreese usurped the dojo — and almost all of its students — while the war was brewing, putting him right back down to ground zero.
- Minecraft Utopia: When Luiz activates hardcore mode. The aliens imminent attack, the chaos being instaured in Utopia 1, and people dying, it makes Uto1!Lggj and Uto1!Apuh decide to complete a portal that would supposedly take them to a safe place, allowing a restart. It goes horribly wrong.
- Minilife TV: The Season 4 episode "The Final Match" ends with the X-Team seizing the 28th Legondo World Martial Arts Tournament and planning to execute the fighters of the tournament while also planning to kill the staff and reporters held hostage if anybody tries to stop them.
- Robo-san and Wan-chan: When it seems like Robo-san has no hope of ever finding Wan-chan, he picks up his frisbee and throws it before sitting down to mope about the situation.
- RWBY:
- Volume 3's climax brings together strands of plot that have existed ever since the pilot episode to reveal just how dangerous the Creatures of Grimm can be, how precarious Vale's situation now is, and just how evil humans and Faunus are capable of being to each other. Cinder obtains the Fall Maiden's full powers, and kills both Amber and Pyrrha. Roman dies, Neo and Ozpin are MIA, Adam stabs Blake and severs Yang's arm. Beacon and the CCT are in ruins, a Grimm Wyvern is frozen on the Tower but still attracting Grimm, and Team RWBY is forced to split and go their separate ways; Blake is on the run, Weiss is dragged home by her overbearing father and Yang is bedridden with depression. The Female Narrator is revealed to be the Big Bad; even as Ruby and Team JNR begin their journey to Haven to know what is going on, the Big Bad announces her intention to destroy all hope, that it's the beginning of the end and Ruby is the key to her victory, and that she cannot wait to see Ozpin burn.
- Volume 8 is a spiral into horror for everyone in the Kingdom of Atlas. With Salem's Grimm army assaulting both cities in a war of attrition, some of the heroes struggle to cope with the magnitude of what's facing them. Oscar uses a one-shot ability that Ozpin had been preparing for millennia to buy the kingdom just a few hours grace from Salem's threat, only for the heroes to discover the hard way that the remaining villains have stepped into the temporary void she leaves behind. With Ironwood threatening to bomb Mantle if the Winter Maiden doesn't surrender to him and Cinder successfully eavesdropping on the heroes' plan to save the kingdom's inhabitants, the result of the emergency evacuation results in the entire kingdom being destroyed, Team RWBY and Jaune being lost to The Void Between The Worlds, Penny dying, the refugees being stranded in the middle of the harsh Vacuan desert instead of the outskirts of the City of Vacuo, and Salem ending up with two Relics. Although the ending is not entirely without hope, all the heroes are experiencing their darkest moments since the end of Volume 3.
- There Will Be Brawl - the butchers are still on the loose, Princess Peach is still missing, and to make matters worse, Kirby has escaped from jail.
- Welcome to Night Vale:
- Episode 47 in its entirety. Cecil is nowhere to be seen. Carlos is now trapped in the house that does not exist since his scientists have been arrested. Tamika has been captured. Lauren and Kevin have taken over the radio station and re-decorated it to make it "more like home." And to add insult to injury, the citizens of Night Vale have now been herded into an "eternal picnic" (or rather, internment camp) where they are to stay and work, and never leave. Night Vale has also become a part of the Greater Desert Bluffs Metropolitan Area.
- Topped with the two-part season 4 finale. The Good Boy has taken over the town, along with his army of Strangers, and confirms that he is Satan, and that the Strangers are former humans, twisted beyond recognition by torture in the caverns of Hell. His only desire is to destroy everything. He cannot be reasoned with, for reasons are among the things he seeks to destroy. The Community Calendar says simply that the entire week has been cancelled, and the horoscopes say only that "the stars have gone silent" — either to protect us from the knowledge of what will happen, or because even they don't know. Even after The Good Boy retreats and the Strangers are restored to human form, nobody is sure how they were defeated, and it's heavily implied that there isn't a reason, and they could return just as suddenly and without reason at any moment.
- And even that is topped by episode 110. The collapse of reality, initiated by Huntokar altering time to save Night Vale from nuclear war in 1983, is completing itself. The sky has been replaced by a giant hole. The five-headed dragons are rampaging and setting the city on fire. Most of the few people left in Night Vale have given up on the town, and are retreating into visions from more pleasant alternate realities. The situation gets so dire that, for the first time in the series, Cecil almost doesn't bother with the Weather report and simply signs off "goodbye, Night Vale" rather than his usual "good night". Fortunately, he comes up with an idea immediately after.
- Whateley Universe example: the story "Christmas Elves". One chapter ends with Fey trapped and powerless in a magical circle so she can be mindslaved, Shroud gone, and Generator locked to a table and stabbed through the heart so hard that the athame goes through her and is stuck in the table.
