WARNING: Nearly every example is a spoiler. Read at your own risk!
- The conclusion of the story They Sit So Still, in The Dawn Chapel, though the whole story is a crescendo of despair.
- All but one of the main cast die at the end of The Last Days of FOXHOUND. Given that the characters in question are the villains in the original game, it was pretty much inevitable.
- The Bong Cheon Dong Ghost has an Downer Ending in the second comic. The main character dies, and is found dead at the train station.
- Cashmere Sky: Volume One ends in this manner. After turning down Lockridge's proposal to help sustain the poisonous fog that's taken over most of the world, Abram is swiftly killed before he can do anything to expose them, devastating his family. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that Abram had the foresight to inform Archer about his findings beforehand and advising him to continue his investigation discreetly.
- Concerned, with the subtitle "The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman", is another example. The main character ends up falling off the top of the citadel, and still survives. However, he realizes the only reason he hasn't died thanks to his own to stupidity is the fact that he has an in-game cheat activated, and turns it off without thinking about the consequences. It turns out that rebel medics were only a few minutes away, and they proclaim him "Totally Dead".
- The webcomic minus. is a subversion: it suddenly ends with the title character resurrecting every person and animal that ever died, which cause everyone that was resurrected and already alive to be crushed by the lack of space. However it's noted that they're nothing especially sad about it as that just means everyone become ghost and they all just go on with their lives and the Earth is made into a theme park by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that the ghosts visit.. After a bit of Fridge Logic you also realize that, for all we know the title character could have changed things back or done pretty much anything after the strip ended at some point.
- Sluggy Freelance has this at the end of its last couple storylines. First, Zoe dies, and now Riff realizes that he's in a hell-world that his own dimensional counterpart has made, rules, and enforces, and decides rather than fight, he opts to join the rest of the citizens in drugged idiocy.
- He got better and rejoined the resistance once he found out that the real mastermind is Doctor Shlock's alternate, and not his.
- In The Order of the Stick's prequel book "Start of Darkness", Redcloak's brother Right-Eye's family is killed by adventurers, spurring Right-Eye to betray Xykon, leading Redcloak to kill Right-Eye in a loyalty test by Xykon, Dorukan is killed and has his soul trapped by Xykon, and Xykon convinces Redcloak that he either has to accept he killed his brother for nothing or work for Xykon until his plan is finished. There hasn't been any real comeuppence yet, either.
- The Azure City arc (War and XPs) ends badly too
. The Order is split, Roy is dead, Azure City is burning and occupied by the villains, the fleet hasn't enough supplies and Kubota still plotting against Hinjo (with intact strength) with an ally with a red and black speech bubble.
- The Azure City arc (War and XPs) ends badly too
- xkcd:
- #701. Cueball attempts to make a graph-based valentine using measurements of his feelings for his significant other. However, the graph trends downwards, so he sends the valentine as a break-up message with the graph going through a heart. You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
- Also #695 which portrays the fate of an anthropomorphized version of NASA's Spirit rover. Even more poignant given that contact was lost with Rover in 2010 and despite many attempts, there has been no success at regaining contact as of April 2011.Day 1328 of 90Spirit: "Sandstorm. Power dying. But a good rover would keep going. A good rover, like they wanted."Day 1944 of 90Spirit: "Oh, no. I'm stuck. Did I do a good job? Do I get to come home? Guys?"
- #701.
- Many episodes of Nuzlocke Comics ends with one of Ruby's Pokemon dying despite it being a comedy otherwise. Additionally, Steven ends Ruby's journey by killing his final four Pokemon, with his starter being the last to die.
- Falcon Twin opens with Mika being stabbed by Sydney, then jumps back to show how things got to that point. After a succession of tragedies, with Mika becoming progressively more miserable, the comic finally catches up to that point, her friend Treska finds her... then runs off, leaving Mika to spend her last moments believing she'd been abandoned. Comic over.
- Eva Wilson's story arc in Our Little Adventure.
- Narrowly avoided with Bittersweet Candy Bowl. The comic was originally supposed to end with Lucy committing suicide and Mike breaking down when he realizes that he really did care about her after all, but fan input has convinced the author to continue the story.
- My Mama's A Weeaboo ends with the protagonist finally rebelling against the titular abusive mother (who has manipulated her and treated her like an accessory her whole life), and subsequently being drugged up on psychiatric meds so that she can't protest as her mother drags her back into her old life. Complete with a snide message from the mother on the last page of her diary.
- El Goonish Shive the Death Sentence arc- Grace spends the entire arc trying to save the life of a feral pig that's going to be killed because it's dangerous. Unfortunately, despite her being able to communicate with it, the pig doesn't appreciate her efforts and is killed by Raven when it attacks her.
- Cosmic Dash features a double-issue story arc involving a galaxy-wide search for tech stolen from Galacti Corp and ends with the crew losing their ship and livelihood by protecting their cargo from space pirates and a mysterious mercenary.
- Sorcery 101: Danny's best friend gets abruptly killed. Danny has to fake his death, meaning he can't see his daughter or surviving friends again; he's stuck traveling with the amoral Jerkass vampire Seth because he'll die if Seth dies. The last page is a dark callback to the cheerful first page, now with Danny looking dejectedly at his spellbook in a dark room.
- The end of Chapter Nine of Beneath the Clouds. The exorcism ceremony fails. Masako is forced to banish the living spirit of her father, killing him. The Emperor is dead and fires are ravaging the city. Juro and Eiji are a lauging stock at court and have no choice but to return to Hitachi with nothing to help their family's fight against the Kiyohara.They also have no idea what happened to Masako,and Juro has searched for her for weeks.
- The original webcomic the manga, Shishunki Bitter Change, was based on ends on a very depressing note for the two lead characters subjected to a "Freaky Friday" Flip. Yuuta, in Yui's body, becomes distracted by the realization he has a crush on Tachibana and fails to notice the deteriorating mental state of Yui, in Yuuta's body. Post-Time Skip, it's revealed that Yui had passed away, heavily implied to have committed suicide, and Yuuta ultimately continues living in her body, growing up to become a wife and a mother, all the while lamenting to Kazuma that he felt he could have done more if he was mature enough to understand Yui at the time.
- Kaiten Mutenmaru: "Princess of the Deep Sea" from City of Radiance ends with Sick corrupting Umimi, one of Mutenmaru's companions, at her lowest into the monster Sissela Siren.
- #Killstagram: At the end of the first season, Remi is rescued from being murdered by Doha, but she swears at her rescuers to not kill him. This is caught on video and spread across the internet, and her followers turn against her and say she should kill herself. She does so by slitting her wrist in the hospital.
- "Twintails" by Elizabeth Thach concerns Tammy and her titular character who she uses as an Escapist Character. When she's encouraged to pitch Twintails and get it published, her office dismisses it and leaves her Too Upset to Create — only for her to find out that they eventually stole her idea and aired it anyway. And right as she's about to get the attention of her boyfriend about the plagiarism, she bends over a loose rooftop railing and falls to her death.
