Darkest Hours in webcomics.
- Bittersweet Candy Bowl has December, when Mike tells Lucy just how he feels about her. Or does he? At the same time, Paulo is worried he is going to hurt his girlfriend due to his longtime crush on the now-free Lucy and Abbey finds out that his mother died years ago, after a brutal beating she received from his father. And then hid that she had died from her children, making Abbey feel like she had abandoned them instead.
- DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: After the fateful showdown with X, Dongtae reverted back to his original state, due to the loss of all his Dice from damage. He is also separated from Mio who seemingly breaks up with him, Eunju is missing, and the one new ally he had made decides to abandon him. On top of all of that, with X's disappearance, an AI GM of X has taken over and has put a bounty on every good main character left thus the entire city is hunting them down.
- Fifteen Minds: Near the end of Blue Moon Blossom, the bunny protagonist finds their parent turned to stone and touches them, themself turning to stone as they cry.
- El Goonish Shive: In the ninth part of the Sister II arc
Nanase futilely tries to talk to Abraham to convince him to spare Ellen's life but he cuts her fairy doll avatar down. This hurts her unimaginably as she can feel everything but she creates another avatar and tries again. Abraham thinks he is fighting puppets controlled by the elf he defeated earlier and refuses to even acknowledge what she is trying to tell him believing it to be trickery. Instead, he cuts the avatars down as fast as Nanase can create them each time causing her physical pain but she keeps trying over and over again. All this while every mortal being in the area who could possibly help her has either been put into a deep sleep by Abraham or is unaware of her plight. - Homestuck Act Five Act Two: Vriska kills Tavros. Eridan has a Face–Heel Turn, blinds Sollux, murders Feferi and Kanaya (she gets better), and dooms the troll species to extinction by destroying the Matriorb. Then Gamzee runs out of sopor pie, sobers up and goes Ax-Crazy, killing Equius and Nepeta. There is also that little matter of Jack Noir, who has so far killed Bro, John (also gets better), Rose (also gets better), the actual Dave (also gets better), an alternate Dave (does not get better), the dreamselves of every troll, Mom and Dad, wiped out the populations of three entire planets, and destroyed all fourteen planets of the trolls' Medium.
- The trolls are first introduced right in the middle of their Darkest Hour. They finally beat the game, and are going to claim their reward...when Jack shows up and starts killing everything, forcing the trolls to hide out on an asteroid and wait for death.
- Another one happens towards the end of Act Six Act Three. Three of the characters are on Derse, which initially seems fine... untile Draconian Dignitary activates the Red Miles, which end up killing Jane (who was doomed to be stuck on the moon anyway) and Roxy (who was seconds away from starting a new session). Lil' Sebastian manages to get Jake back to his island and sinks to the bottom of the ocean, leaving the boy unconscious. Dirk's dreamself loses consciousness in the process of saving Jake, and was scant seconds away from corpsesmooching Jane. Luckily, Dirk manages to activate Jane and Roxy's dreamselves while permanently becoming his own dreamself, and he and his robots ender the Medium. Seems fine, right? Too bad Caliborn wakes up, frees himself, and starts up his session while Lord English destroys an entire dreambubble full of dead Trolls and Humans.
- Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 4 tops all the previous examples. Nearly all the protagonists are dead, the entire incipisphere is wrecked, the few people who are alive have either crossed or are very close to crossing the Despair Event Horizon, the universe itself is suffering from glitch corruption due to Caliborn messing with the Act 6 cartridge.
- The Order of the Stick:
- Azure City, a major bastion of Good, is overrun by an army of hobgoblins. The goblin cleric and evil lich that command them thus get access to a gate holding a universe-devouring monstrosity. Most of the paladins are wiped out, and the strongest is taken prisoner. The survivors from the city are leaving on boats while trying to find a new place to settle. The leader of the heroes has been killed during the battle. The surviving team is separated and unable to contact each other. Oh, and that Gate? It gets destroyed during the battle. And while that may mean that the villains can't harness its powers, it now means that there's a gaping hole in reality and the seal containing the Snarl has been significantly weakened. On the bright side, O-Chul's capture allowed him to befriend the Monster in the Darkness, and seems to have started it down the path to a Heel–Face Turn, so some good came of this mess.
- The Order experiences another major one not long after that. Roy is still dead and his body has been turned into a bone golem, Hayley is trapped in her old hometown of Greysky City while the Thieves' Guild is hunting her down, Belkar is dying due to the activation of his Mark of Justice, and Elan and Durkon are left alone after Vaarsuvius, who feels that it's a waste of time being around them, bitterly cuts ties and flies off alone, and is about to be approached by Qaar which will lead to a Deal with the Devil with far-reaching consequences.
- Another Darkest Hour happens when Girard's Gate is is destroyed. Vaarsuvius may have come to his/her senses, but he/she still owes his/her soul to the IFCC, who still seem interested in using him/her as a pawn. Durkon has been turned into a vampire, Belkar is a sneeze away from death, and there is only one more Gate protecting the world from a huge God-destroying Eldritch Abomination. Oh, yes, and the Big Bad knows exactly where that last gate is and has just teleported there, while the heroes have no method of transportation faster than walking.
- Romantically Apocalyptic: There’s a pretty long period of time that functions as this, with many events making it worse. The biomass integrates Snippy, so now he’s mentally trapped in his past, and physically trapped in this monstrosity. The biomass then finds Pilot, who Captain tells to rescue Snippy. He tries, and fails, and is integrated into the biomass too. So he’s also trapped in his mind. Then, a Hope Spot as the being known as the lifealope forms… but nope, it looks like the biomass is going to integrate or destroy it. And ANNET found Engineer and is going to kill him. For a comic that was previously just wacky humor, it takes a pretty dark turn.
- The end of Chapter 10 of The Sanity Circus. Attley is revealed to be a Scarecrow, and has taken mortal damage. Posey has abducted her. Steven has been beheaded. Dr. King is almost certainly dead. Fletch collapses to his knees, and Mrs. F crawls tragically out of Attley's abandoned hat.
- Schlock Mercenary has the aftermath of the Battle of Oisri. The Toughs' ship is destroyed with no prospect of another, a high-powered member has betrayed the company's trust, the UNS is angrier at them than ever, and Petey has decided that they aren't a force for good anymore and won't help them do anything but retire. All that's left of Tagon's Toughs is some bug hunt that Schlock wants to go on...
- Sluggy Freelance, as might be expected from such a plot-heavy series of its length, has at least three examples.
- The first is at the end of Chapter 12, when Gwynn is in an apparently irreversible coma, and Torg and Zoë are trapped in pre-Norman Britain in an Army of Darkness parody.
- The second, a pastiche of such moments in horror films, in chapter 32, after a group consisting of the majority of the storyline's surviving cast, including Torg and Bert, are ambushed and apparently killed in the space of a single strip. It would be just a one-strip fake-out like the one two chapters later, except that only Torg and Flaky - and not Bert - actually did survive.
- The third, and certainly most grim, is at the end of chapter 59: Oasis having crossed the Moral Event Horizon by apparently incinerating Riff and Zoë, Torg's optimistic certainty that they'd escaped to another dimension is defeated by his revelation that his memory of events was wrong, and that what seemed to be pessimistic babble by Gwynn was actually her presenting proof that Zoë, at least, was dead; cut to the alternate dimension Riff and Zoë had in fact escaped to to see Riff apparently be gunned down over Zoë's charred corpse, followed by a Filler arc of Kiki explaining to ZHOAS why you should accept when a likable character's been killed off. And just as Sasha was reintroduced.
- At the end of season one of Tower of God, this happens for both Bam and his team in different ways. Bam is betrayed by Rachel, debasing everything he worked for until now, because all he wanted was to be with her, which also destroyed a large part of his trusting nature, and for the team… well, the one that held it together died. Rak and Endorsi didn't even bother to show up for the announcement of death, but they all decided to help Rachel achieving her goals to cherish Bam's memory.
