All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
One of the hallmarks of the Gorn-filled, Total Party Kill-loving series like Crossed is its bleak endings. When one of the taglines of the series is, "There is no hope," what do you expect?
- At the end of Volume One, everyone but Cindy, Stan, and their dog is dead. Although the last survivors go down fighting hard, they do go down. The trio who wind up dying in the last issue are also the three most sympathetic characters in the entire damned story.
- Psychopath ends with Amanda running off into the rainy night with a bleeding arm stump, her fate uncertain, and Harold rededicated to his quest to "bring Lori back" by infecting another survivor someday. Though Harold doesn't escape unscathed either, as Amanda manages to bite off his lips as she escapes. Harold then sews his lips back onto his face, though one wonders what sorts of health issues might crop up from that. For all that we know, Harold might already be a dead man walking... As Harry points out in The Fatal Englishman, in the age of the Crossed, minor wounds and injuries can be death sentences by themselves.
- Badlands:
- The first arc, Of the World in Its Becoming ends with everyone dead or infected.
- The second arc, Homo Superior, ends with Leon and Greg dead, Ashley and Ashlynn infected, and Steve about to infect herself.
- The third ends with Edmund finally putting his fears behind him and saving a girl from the Crossed, only to get murdered by her that night.
- The fourth ends with Philly, the policewoman's niece, being the only named character (and possibly the only one in town) who survives. She is last seen rowing down the river away from an overrun Samarkand to an unknown fate. Gideon's mansion also falls to the Crossed horde with Gideon himself getting horribly mutilated and infected by his vengeful clients, while Clooney, like Steve in Homo Superior, infects himself on purpose and brutally murders his girlfriend.
- Quisling ends with Oliver destroying the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker and turning himself into a Crossed to deny Smokey from gaining access to the bunker's information. Smokey, in an extreme fit of rage, kills Oliver and all his Crossed followers before making for Florida, presumably to find Ashley and Ashlynn as he read from Oliver's journal regarding them.
- American Quitters ends with Errol getting badly wounded by Javi (whom he still manages to kill nevertheless) and then overdosing on the ultimate high before being torn apart by the Crossed, Frank disguising himself as a Crossed to infiltrate the horde and getting killed fulfilling Errol's revenge, and Elena being torn apart by her infected relatives on the island that was supposed to be a refuge. "And no lesson was learned" indeed.
- In Gore Angels Emiko is forced to kill her parents, along with Cody and Nathalie, after they've been infected by Al the Chemist (who also gets killed by her). She then releases Ryan because he "was only being true to his nature" when he led her to being gangraped. The last we see of him, he is chased by a pack of Crossed. Satoshi's fate is left unknown as Emiko loses contact with him when the internet goes down, though his fate is later revealed in Five Bloody Fingers. Finally, she commits suicide with her sword in order to avoid getting killed or becoming Crossed herself.
- In The Thin Red Line, the UK's Patient Zero finally succumbs to the infection after resisting it and its violent impulses throughout the arc and gets shot by Harry, likely losing any hope of finding an answer or a cure. Moreover, while nuclear armageddon is averted the medical team is infected off-panel and Gordon Brown is killed.
- In Five Bloody Fingers Hazuki gets infected, and she, Satoshi, their three friends and her father's lion are trapped by hordes of Crossed. Two days later, with food and water running out, the remaining four decide to infect themselves with Hazuki's blood before charging outside and going down fighting the other Crossed.
- Homo Tortor ends with Washington discovering that Lion's story was essentially a fanfiction created by the infected professor he was searching for. Shortly after this realization, Washington and Warren are captured and become the first victims of the professor's new Homo Tortor based civilization, with the former proclaimed the First Child as he is tortured and sacrificed.
- Issue 61 ends with Haven destroyed, Esperanza getting Mercy Killed by Jane and Jane giving up and infecting herself with Esperanza's brother's blood.
- Grave New World ends with several characters murdering each other out of spite before the Crossed show up and kill almost everyone. The ship's doctor gives the captain a "Reason You Suck" Speech before committing suicide, leaving the captain alone on the overrun island.
- Shrink ends with the psychologist willingly letting his brother infect him after his girlfriend gets killed by the Crossed upon storming off after learning the psychologist molested his brother as kids.
- Breakdown concludes with Amanda realizing she's killed the entire group of survivors she'd intended to protect due to her growing insanity. She then seals herself inside the walls of the cabin, planning to stay there until she either dies or regains her sanity.
- Conquers All ends with the revelation that Serena was Dead All Along and in fact killed herself days ago. Matthias has made this journey before, but every time he does, upon learning the truth he overdoses on ketamine, goes on a rampage and blacks out, waking up with no memory and restarting his futile search for Serena.
- Cody's storyline in the final Badlands arc ends with all of the people from his bunker and from the other bunkers that he led Smokey to killed or infected, his attempt to help the other prisoners escape failing (yet he still manages to cause chaos in Smokyville and destroys Smokey's work) and his last thoughts being that Judas had nothing on him in terms of betrayal while Smokey and the twins homestead is still standing and operational, just without Smokey running it. Furthermore, Villain Protagonist Smokey's dreams of creating a Crossed society are crushed yet again (although this isn't exactly a bad thing from humanity's POV).
- Both Crossed Annuals end on a downer note. The first one ends by revealing Jackson was totally wrong about Magda's research since the 1980's creating the Crossed. She was designing a weapon that wouldn't work. Additionally, Magda was Dead All Along and the person he thought was her was a male researcher who Jackson ends up killing anyway out of bitterness at the world for being too complicated. The second Crossed Annual ends with Isaac about to be killed either by the elderly Crossed woman who had saved him from the rest of the horde mere minutes before or by another Crossed gang he might have run into - we never find out the truth.
- Lockdown ends with Jesse and Otis escaping the main prison building... only to discover more Crossed outside. With nowhere to go, they choose to stand and go down fighting. Probably.
