Accidental Downer Ending

Woah woah woah woah, don't try and pull that Happily Ever After crap! Humanity went extinct! The planet is flooded, and the last Mega Man is stuck in space forever because Legends 3 is never gonna happen! That peaceful future Dr. Light fought so hard for turned out to be total bullshit! And if you think about it, it's all his fault! LOVE AND PEACE ARE LIES, GOD IS DEAD, AND WE'RE ALL TOTALLY (beep)ED!

—Boomstick, DEATH BATTLE! on Mega Man Legends 2's use on the trope.

The work ends, but on a very low note. The protagonist is caught in a situation that would surely kill them like a Bolivian Army Ending, or where The Bad Guy Wins, because the villain has escaped and/or succeeded in their evil plans (without being stopped), or even worse, there's No Ending at all. Sounds like a classic Downer Ending, right? Well, not exactly...

You see, the author had every intention of following up on the work, creating a continuation with a Sequel Hook that would have resolved the problem, hinting at a What Could Have Been, or engaging the audience in Wild Mass Guessing, only something got in the way. Perhaps the author died, or suffered extreme Executive Meddling that got the show cancelled, or the author simply didn't feel like finishing the story, couldn't finish the story, didn't know how to, or just plain forgot to. Maybe the creator moved to another company or started their own but the work is legally owned by the previous company, or the company that the creator was working for got dissolved yet their input is still owned by that defunct company or by another company that bought it. Or a combination thereof.

How the audience responds to this can vary. They might write fanfiction that continues the story, they might get disappointed that the story didn't finish, they might be alienated by the ending or... maybe they just move on.

Common in Dead Fics and Orphaned Series. This trope was especially common with several mystery shows of The New '10s that fell victim to The Chris Carter Effect. A(n obvious) Sub-Trope of Downer Ending and (if the work ends bleakly enough) Shoot the Shaggy Dog.

A Sub-Trope to Cut Short. Contrast to Torch the Franchise and Run when the Downer Ending is intentionally done to prevent the work from being continued in any way. Contrast to and can be subverted via Series Fauxnale, where a supposed Grand Finale has a Downer Ending but the work ends up getting renewed or continued in some way. Related to Esoteric Happy Ending and Cliffhanger Wall, though not to be confused with the former (where fridge logic creates a unintentional downer ending, or at the very least a bitter one). See also Left Hanging.

This is very Spoilered Rotten (as it's about the endings), that means that EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE listed in the subpages below is a spoiler by default and most (if not all) of them will be unmarked. YOU. HAVE. BEEN. WARNED.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Cannon Busters didn't get renewed for a second season, so the series ended with the season finale of Hilda dying to protect Prince Kelby, Kelby getting captured by the invading army right after reconciling with Sam, Bessie totaled so badly that no one is sure if they can repair her, and the rest of the cast stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Daimos was originally meant to run for 50 episodes, but TV Asahi forced the staff to reduce it to 44. The remaining episodes would have the humans and the Baam form an alliance, formally putting an end to the war. While Kazuya would act as a delegate from the human side, Erika would act as a delegate from the Baam side, being crowned their Queen. The Daimovic base would also help the Baam assimilate to Mars and make it their new home.^note However, in the anime, this never happens — the Earth-Baam war ends with a massacre at Olban's wedding, Raiza, Balbas and Margarete are killed, and Richter commits suicide to atone for starting the conflict. The anime ends on a bittersweet note as Kazuya and Erika reunite, while the remaining Baam are saved and welcomed as refugees on Earth.
Dangaioh episode 3 ends with Dangaioh destroyed, the team's mentor and Dangaioh's inventor dead, and the team floating in space inside life pods. A continuation was planned, but the staff struggled to figure out how to make one with how badly they'd written themselves into a corner, and most of them moved on to projects that were actually moving forward.
The Blue Water dub of Futari wa Pretty Cure ended on a major downer with Mepple and Mipple choosing to stay with the girls but remaining in a eternal sleep, never to wake up again... becuase the sequel season where they wake and the girls get their happy ending was never dubbed.
The original English dub of One Piece by 4Kids Entertainment ended when the Rainbow Mist arc ended, which segued into the next story arc by showing a ship from Skypiea about to fall on the Going Merry. Since this is the point where 4Kids lost the localization license to Funimation, the fandom likes to joke that, following the cliffhanger in this particular dub, the Straw Hat Pirates got hit by the falling ship and died.
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: This series has one of the most infamous Gainax Endings of all time. After the big final battle, The Stinger shows the gang returning to the chapel, Stocking questions what would happen if their weapons were to be used on angels, and following a nonchalant response from Panty, she stabs her in the back of the head and cuts her into 666 pieces. When questioned on why, she replies with a deadpan: "I'm sorry, but surprise I'm actually a demon." Walking off with a bag full of Panty's remains as the season ends on "To Be Continued In the Next Season." Said next season would not be announced for 12 years, and only by the succeeding studio.
Princess Tutu: In-Universe, the death of Drosselmeyer left his story, The Prince and the Raven, unfinished, with the Prince and Raven locked in a never-ending battle, playing the trope straight. However, both characters grew tired of this never-ending fighting and figured out how to leave the story, where the Prince shattered his heart to seal the Raven in the walls of the town. The series follows what happened next. It also later turns out Drosselmeyer meant for the ending to be tragic all along, so his surviving wouldn't have made much difference.

Comic Books

The Falcon series, a planned comic book trilogy from Malaysian cartoonist Clayton Lam, ends in it's second installment, the 2007 entry Falcon Wing. At it's conclusion, the protagonist Jing is Dragged Off to Hell after a losing battle together with the titular Artifact of Doom, leading to Jing's new ally, Angel - who started developing feelings for Jing - rejecting her estranged father, Zion whom she had reunited with, and literally jumping into Hell's portal to find Jing and the Falcon's Wing. Cue Zion making a Skyward Scream, and the last panel with a tease telling readers to "stay tuned for the secrets of the Falcon Wing". Unfortunately, the comic failing to reach desirable sales, coupled with Clayton Lam's resignation and Gempak Starz's financial problems at the time ended the series right there.
Ferals ended with the wolves overall overpowering the army and the city nigh-destroyed, with an announcement that the story would be continued in a sequel series called Ferals: Unleashed scheduled for 2014. Even long after 2014 passed, there have been no future announcements for Unleashed.
O.M.A.C.: In Jack Kirby's 1974 run, issue 8 ends with the protagonist depowered and at the villain's mercy, while his helper, the sentient satellite Brother Eye, is left powerless after being trapped in a prison of molten space debris. Though the story was supposed to reach its grand finale in the following issue, Jack Kirby left DC for Marvel Comics before writing it, and the executives at the time decided that the comic's sales weren't good enough to warrant hiring a replacement. As a result, a new panel was hastily edited into the ending of issue 8, where the villain's lair is shown exploding, implying that the entirety of the main cast died.
Runaways had this happen twice:
- The third series was supposed to end with an alternate-universe version of Gert joining the team, but the series was cancelled halfway through the final arc, and thus instead ended with Chase quitting the team and then getting hit by a car and ending up in the emergency room, with his teammates having no idea where he is. A later appearance in Daken retconned that Chase somehow survived the accident, made a full recovery, and rejoined the team, and they all just refuse to talk about everything that happened in that arc.
- After months of dropping sales and with Rainbow Rowell having been tapped to write a new She-Hulk series, Runaways (Rainbow Rowell) ended with a Milestone Celebration. Having only one issue to resolve as many of the dangling plot threads as possible, the series ends with Chase being kidnapped by a version of Gert from the future, Karolina being taken away to space, ostensibly to be healed after losing her powers but unaware that her hosts plan to hand her over to her ex-fiancee Xavin, and the rest of the team feeling demoralized now that they've lost both The Heart and the Team Dad in a single night, while their former leader-turned-nemesis Alex Wilder is secretly monitoring them.
The original continuity of the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) series had to be rebooted due to lawsuit agreements. Pretty much every remaining plot thread is left hanging on a very dour note, the entire echidna race has been banished to another dimension by Thrash, Naugus still has large influence over Mobotropolis and has now possessed his assistant Geoffery, Antoine is still in a coma and Bunnie is MIA, NICOLE and Mina are left trying to alleviate the stigma the former has, Snively has been disowned by Hope and imprisoned by Eggman after a failed coup, and while Sally has been neutralized and is back in the Freedom Fighters' hands, she is still roboticized (and likely in a state difficult to reverse due to Eggman heavily modifying her). The only plot that gets some resolution is Sonic letting go of his grudge against Silver, which happens just before the Cosmic Retcon. Since this was the swan song for several characters under the copyright concern, needless to say they bowed out in the most miserable way possible, in favor of the new continuity that came after and would later be succeeded by IDW's game-based continuity.
Tintin: The last panels that Hergé drew prior to his death depict the titular reporter being marched away to be covered in liquid polyester and sold as a statue. Since Tintin and Alpha-Art has never been officially completed, this means that the album, and by extension the entirety of Tintin (in its official form, that is), ends on the hero being taken towards his execution. Various fan artists (such as Yves Rodier), however, have "finished" the unfinished storyline in the years after Hergé's death.

Fan Works

Chapter 2 of the The Brittas Empire fanfic Can You Forgive? ends with Linda coming up to Gavin and telling him that something, which seems to be rather awful judging by the blood she's covered in, has happened to Tim. The fic was deleted not long after that without any further updates. At least Chapter 1, which is set at a later period of time than Chapter 2, does show Tim as still alive, albeit separated from his boyfriend Gavin for reasons that will be forever unknown (to us).
The final chapters of Eiga Sentai Scanranger end on Kunio/Mikey/the former Yellow Scanner seeing through one of the villain’s Paper-Thin Disguise and fighting her, only to be arrested for assaulting what looked like an ordinary professor. Despite having two chapters after this to resolve this plotline, the author instead focused on Some silliness involving a second crossover with Jetman which barely brings up the plot, with the On the Next preview indicating that the immediate next chapter wouldn’t have resolved this.
Chapter 18 of the Arthur fanfic How to Break a Family ends with Arthur being sent to prison for murder. The author stopped updating the story after this point, leaving Arthur's ultimate fate a mystery.
In the Ghostbusters (1984) fanfic Personality Traits, it ends on Egon being split into five versions of himself. The story was meant to be how the other Ghostbusters made them back into one Egon, but the author never finished it.
Rugrats fanfics:
- One of the endings of The Babies who Floated into Space ends with Chuckie having blown up and Phil and Lil lost in space. However, Tommy meets a character who says he could save Chuckie by bringing Tommy to a planet called "Planet Death", where everyone is brought Back from the Dead. However, the story ends before it's determined if they reach Planet Death, because the author never got around to finishing the story.
- Sick Betty ends with everyone finding out that Betty is pregnant with septuplets and Phil and Lil expressing hope that their mother is all right. The story was never finished, so the readers don't find out what happens to Betty.
My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural is an odd case, where its unfinished state left it with an ambiguous ending—then after its cancellation, a crossover with another series confirmed the worst possible ending, only for a second crossover episode to retcon it into a happier resolution.
- In Camaraderie Is Supernatural proper, there was a subplot where Doctor Whooves recruits Pinkie Pie to help save Equestria from a coming alien invasion. But the series was abandoned before the alien invasion even began, leaving the outcome of Whooves' and Pinkie's mission completely up in the air.
- Then in the Scootertrix the Abridged episode "Trixie the Abridged", a magical accident teleports three Fourth-Wall Observer characters into the Camaraderie universe—where Equestria is now a barren wasteland. Dialogue explicitly confirms that Camaraderie's premature end is the reason why Whooves and Pinkie failed to save their Equestria. But then during the mega-crossover of Scootertrix: The Movie, Pinkie Pie from Camaradarie shows up herself, none the worse for wear. When others are confused by her survival, she explains that she and Whooves did eventually (as in, after 492 failed attempts) repel the alien invasion and save Equestria — and the barren wasteland from the previous episode was just one of the failed timelines, not the "main" Camaraderie universe.

Films — Animation

Toy Story 2 has an in-universe example with Woody's Round-Up. The western puppet show ends with Woody running to save Jessie and Pete from exploding in a mineshaft. He rides on Bullseye and jumps a massive gorge, but the episode ends on a To Be Continued. The cliffhanger never got resolved because the rise of "Space Toys" made Woody irrelevant. Or so we were told — a later scene shows that this claim was false, and the cliffhanger was resolved after all.

Literature

The Dinosaur Lords: Because the author Died During Production, the last book ends with the protagonist's rapist remaining unpunished and her little sister abducted, the villains' schemes still active and a possible demonic invasion about to happen.
Maradonia and the Law of Blood, the last published Maradonia Saga book, ends with a cliffhanger where the protagonists are poisoned, slip into unconsciousness and then "deeper and deeper until they reach a very different place". Then the creators decided to focus on the film adaptation Maradonia and the Shadow Empire, which ended up being so horribly received that the Maradonia series as a whole was Quietly Cancelled and buried, so the last book Maradonia and the Battle for the Key was never released even though it had been promoted as available for sale.
Mostly Harmless: Douglas Adams had somewhat of a self-confessed Creator Breakdown while writing the book, leading to its "Everybody Dies" Ending. He announced plans for another book to salvage the series, but died before he could write it. And Another Thing... was eventually written by Eoin Colfer to continue the series.
Charles Dickens died midway through writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood, leaving the work unfinished and the culprit in Drood's murder (or even if the man is actually dead) unclear.
Stuart Little ends before we find out if Margolo, the bird Stuart is looking for, gets found. The author was planning on writing a sequel, but he never did.

Live-Action TV

Agent Carter: Season 2 ended with supporting character Jack Thompson getting shot and left for dead in his hotel room, the mysterious shooter grabbing a redacted file that Jack would have used to blackmail Peggy. ^note While a Season 3 was planned that would have followed up on this plot line, with the writers hinting Jack would have survived, ABC cancelled the series due to ratings, so Jack's fate is left completely unknown.
Alcatraz was cancelled at the end of the first and only season after bad ratings. In the last episode, Hauser and Lucy discover the Warden's Time Machine on Alcatraz, which releases all of the hundreds of missing prisoners they hadn't caught yet at once, plunging San Francisco into criminal chaos. Meanwhile, Rebecca is fatally stabbed by Tommy and later flatlines in the hospital.
ALF: The series finale ends with ALF being captured by the government to be experimented on, tortured, and eventually dissected. The writers had banked on one more season to resolve it, showing ALF getting into wacky hijinks in the military base to the frustration of the scientists trying to study him. NBC passed on it, effectively causing the relatively lighthearted sitcom to end with the implied death of its star... until Project: ALF came in six years later, that is.
Alphas: Season 2 ended with the main villain of the series having partially succeeded in enacting his plan, and everyone in the train station (bar one) either unconscious or dead, before Syfy cancelled the series. Referenced by... The Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon struggles to deal with this cliffhanger in "The Closure Alternative" due to his general closure issues. In The Stinger, he finally manages to contact the creator Bruce Miller and badgers him into telling Sheldon how he would have resolved the cliffhanger, only for Sheldon to tell him it stinks and hang up.
Arrested Development's final season after being Un-Cancelled ended by resolving the mystery that made up the prior season, revolving around the disappearance and presumed death of longtime family friend and enemy Lucille "2" Austero: she was actually dead, having apparently been murdered by resident Psychopathic Manchild Buster Bluth. By the time the second half of the season, including the finale, had been released on Netflix, public controversy among the cast had already put the continuation of the show in serious doubt, and the death of major player Jessica Walter two years later pretty much sealed the deal, leaving it unknown whether the storyline in question had any additional twists to reveal.
Barbara's final episode ended with a mysterious assailant, possibly one of her own friends and family, shooting Barbara. Did she survive? We'll never know, as the show was cancelled after that (although the opening suggests that she lived long enough to be taken to hospital).
Birds of a Feather: The 2020 Christmas Special had Sharon's absence from it be explained by the fact that she had been stranded on a cruise ship for months on end ever since COVID-19 broke out. The show was cancelled after that, making it unclear whether she managed to get off the boat or not (although she is revealed to have become Happily Married to one of the other customers on the ship).
The Borrowers: This series, and The Return of the Borrowers were based on the first four books in the series. Continuity announcements at the end of the series hinted at a new series the following year, but this was never made. The series had the Bittersweet Ending of the family sailing down the river in their boat, not knowing where they will live next.
Clarice ends with one of these, both in the present and in the flashback. By the final episode of its first and only season, Clarice Startling had been removed from the ViCAP team and goes rogue in order to stop The Conspiracy, and by the time the closing credits roll, she's still not been reinstated. In the flashback, we last see a young Clarice with a gun held to her head by a criminal gang; while she obviously escapes, otherwise neither Silence of the Lambs nor this series happen, we don't learn exactly how she did it, or how it shaped her as a person. And we never will, since the series was never picked up for a Season 2.
Cowboy Bebop (2021): With the show prematurely cancelled, it ends on a Downer Ending: Spike and Jet having a falling out after Spike's syndicate past comes to light and the latter's daughter gets kidnapped to lure Spike into a trap. Faye leaves the Bebop to find her past. Vicious pulls off his coup as in the anime, but it's Julia who takes it over, and she's the one who shoots Spike out of a church window. The series ends with Spike all messed up and wounded, only to run into Ed who states she has a job for him before he passes out. And... that's it. Poor word of mouth from fans of the original anime scared Netflix into cancelling the show, meaning those that either did like it or those who were curious to see where the story was going were left hanging. This ending sullied the reputation of the live action show.
Doctor Who: Averting this trope was the main reason John-Nathan Turner soundly vetoed the original final cliffhanger for "Trial of a Time Lord", which entailed The Doctor and The Valeyard last being seen falling into The Matrix locked in combat. Turner knew that such a spectacle would give Michael Grade the reason to cancel the show, as it looked like a final ending, even if that wasn't intended.
Eternal Law: The first season ends with angel Zak giving into temptation and kissing Hannah, his human lover from his last manifestation, and the Doomsday Clock suddenly activating and beginning its countdown, indicating that Mr. Mountjoy has decided to destroy the world as punishment for Zak's relapse. The show wasn't renewed for a second season, so we're all but forced to assume that the Apocalypse happened.
The Event follows the intertwining lives of several characters that are all propelled by plots of cover-ups of extraterrestrials among us, assassination attempts on the president and investigations in mysteriously disappearing loved ones — the show used an unusual amount of flash-backs and a few different timelines to develop its characters, but in doing so it also managed to confuse its creators, not to mention its audience which lost interest by the time the first season concluded — the second season was cancelled with no longer any hopes of resolving many of its mysteries.
Flash Forward is about an event in which everyone on the planet blacks-out and have a vision of the future — just as the mystery of who caused the black-outs and what is their purpose and the future date in the vision is approaching... and the show was canceled after just one season because of dwindling numbers of viewers. Robert J. Sawyer, the writer on whose book the series was based on sent outlines to the writing team with ideas for the second season that never materialized.
Golden Boy's first season finale ended on either Walter or his girlfriend being shot by her ex, the now-fugitive ex-deputy mayor. The series was cancelled afterwards due to poor ratings, giving it a de facto Bolivian Army Ending.
Legends of Tomorrow ended with the team captured by time police. It was supposed to be an end of season cliffhanger, but The CW unexpectedly cancelled the show. And it didn't get resolved in the show it spun off from, The Flash (2014), either.
Mindhunter, ended this way with season 2 — Bill Tench having come home from Atlanta only to discover his wife and their adopted child have moved away and left him alone. Holden Ford carrying the burden of futility for being unable to pin the 27 murders on their prime suspect. The series arch serial killer, BTK, still out there only getting more disturbing with each glimpse of him. While true that some elements of the story are a Foregone Conclusion, the Fandom, was left wondering about the Artistic License the creators have taken with the characters. Since 2020, the show has been teased for a potential 3rd season, it just hasn't materialized. Even David Fincher while acknowledging the series' critical acclaim has also remarked on Netflix's struggle to keep a movie quality series going. He did say "Maybe in five years" back in 2020, so who knows...
Mortal Kombat: Conquest: Shao Kahn wins, killing everyone but Raiden, who is now his prisoner, and displays their personal items as proof they've been slain. A second season was planned in which the Elder Gods would have intervened, revived everyone, and killed and punished Shao Kahn, but this never happened due to TNT not renewing the series, effectively ending the show on a completely bleak note.
The original Quantum Leap was cancelled abruptly and the final episode of the series was appended with the message that the protagonist, Sam Beckett (misspelled as "Becket" in the original airing) never returned home. There were plans for a sixth season, but they never got off the ground. Sequel Series Quantum Leap (2022) would later pick up this plot thread, but as of this writing no progress has been made and Sam has been gone for thirty years.
Resident Evil (2022) ends with multiple plot threads unresolved, with the 2036 timeline featuring Billie kidnapping Jade's daughter and plans to meet with Ada Wong. Mixed reviews, backlash from fans of the video games and declining viewership caused Netflix to cancel the show after just one season. The death of Lance Reddick at age 60 in early 2023 also makes any followup unlikely.
Santa Clarita Diet: The show ends with Sheila biting Joel, intending to turn him into an undead so they could live their life together in eternity. Joel is dying from the bite, and we don't know if he ultimately dies or will wake up as an undead. This would have been resolved in a future season, but Netflix cancelled the series before that was greenlit.
Scorpion: The last episode before the series was cancelled had the team breaking up into two competing companies.
Son of Zorn: The first and last season ends with Zorn getting kidnapped by the forces of Volchazor, tied up and sent on a freighter to Zephyria. Lack of interest and critical panning led to a lack of renewal from FOX.
The mid-90s SF series Space: Above and Beyond ran one full season, with the final episode intended as a cliffhanger: it ended with a failed peace conference (so the war will continue), one of the main characters dead, two more either dead or captured, a fourth severely injured in an explosion, and a very strong hint that the enemy "Chigs" never wanted the war in the first place. Then the series was canceled, so none of these plotlines ever got resolved.
Space Force: Season 2 ends with the team spotting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The show was then cancelled due to flagging ratings.
Twin Peaks has an ending which seems to take fiendish delight in screwing over every likable member of the cast. This was not intended to be the series' absolute finale, as a third season was planned, but after failing to regain its flagging viewership, the show was cancelled before it could be produced... Then it finally received a sequel series 25 years later, which tied up some of the loose ends, left others hanging, and ended on yet another downer note (although at least this time it was intentional).
Tyrant (2014) ended in a resounding Downer Ending at the end of season 3, with all the dangling plot threads that were meant to be resolved in the next season setting up more conflict and bloodshed. Barry has become a dictator, his wife is now a Lady Macbeth, his two children are either dead or in critical condition, Barry has alienated everyone else he once called a friend, and most of the once well-intentioned rebels have become terrorists. Most likely, Barry was supposed to experience some form of Redemption Equals Death given how far he had fallen, but instead it's a depressing Full-Circle Revolution.
Season two of Underground on WGN ended on a tense cliffhanger; escapee-turned-outlaw Rosalee had been captured by escapee-turned-slavecatcher Cato and was forced to leave her newborn child and recently rescued brother behind for her husband Noah to find. Cato had also captured the people in the sewing circle boarding house, including head of the circle and passing escapee Georgia. The last scene and hook consisted of Elizabeth being involved in the Raid on Harper's Ferry (John Brown's failed attempt at a slave revolt). However, the series was cancelled soon after that season^note and multiple attempts to find a new broadcast channel failed, meaning the series ends on a downer note with multiple recaptured escapees.
Utopia: The producers set out to make 3 seasons of the show, however, during season 2, a few episodes got rescheduled from Tuesday to Monday. A significant portion of viewers simply missed this rescheduling and gave up on the show leading to low viewing figures by the end of the second season. It all ended with Wilson having inherited the Mister Rabbit role and having all virus canisters in his possession. The producers did say that they intend to make a 3rd season at a later date, picking up a few years later In-Universe but the Covid pandemic might have thwarted even those plans possibly making a 3rd season only Harsher in Hindsight.
V (2009) was cancelled midway through season two; the finale that should have been a cliffhanger ends with Diana dead and her coup against Anna a failure, Tyler being killed by fake-Lisa, Chad Decker exposed as a member of the 5th Column, and most crucially, Anna managing to bliss the entire population of Earth (save some resistance fighters in a bunker) by using Ryan's daughter as an amplifier. The last shot of the series is a panicking Erica futilely trying to snap Jack out of it while he and millions of New Yorkers stare up at the Visitor ships above.
Westworld ends with most of the main cast dead and sentient life going extinct, no thanks to the Man in Black's Hate Plague. It's up to Dolores (a variant of her) to find a way for both humanity and hosts to coexist so that they can evolve into a new species by recreating the Westworld park from memory in the Sublime. Both Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy intended to have the fifth season as the finale to wrap up the story but HBO canceled the show, leaving several storylines unresolved.

Manhua

Choukakou has been on indefinite hiatus since 2017, while Xia Da is engaging in legal battles to get her rights to the work back. While she does plan on finishing it, the place it has stopped at is… grim to say the least. Chang Ge has been discovered by her uncle's men, who want her dead to prevent any future political strife, and has been effectively checkmated so she will be forced to return to their territory, where she will either die or be made to languish in confinement. Additionally, it has been confirmed that, thanks to not treating her illness in a previous arc, her health is now bad enough that she won't live very long without proper care… which she almost certainly won't get. And the cherry on top is that she's about to be separated from Ashina Sun permanently, since her uncle's men are making her lie to him before they force her away. Change Ge might have some way to get out of the situation, but from what information readers have, it is really hard to see.

Video Games

Beyond Good & Evil ends with the revelation that Pey'j has been infected by a Domz parasite. Given that Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been in Development Hell for over twenty years and is a prequel on top of that, it's unlikely we're going to get follow-up on this.
In The Stinger of Call of Duty: Ghosts, somehow, with no explanation, Rorke survives what should be an unsurvivable situation and abducts Logan, dropping him into a pit in the Amazon to presumably undergo the same tortures that caused him to turn. Due to poor sales and other problems with the story, the next game in the series abandoned the Ghosts universe, and any future appearances of the characters have done nothing to explain what happened next in the plot.
Darkest of Days ends on a very sour note: you learn why the Opposition was trying to meddle with history and what sort of bleak future you were safeguarding for the whole game. This was set up as a Sequel Hook, with both Morris and Dexter switching sides in the outro to help Strinko with his mission to prevent the Bad Future... except the sequel never happened, so the game ends with the realisation the players were doing their darnest to police a timeline that leads to a multi-billion genocide and with no sequel, it's never prevented.
Dead Space 3 was a bizarre mix of this and Torch the Franchise and Run, with the Downer Ending being a result of the game not selling as well as needed to justify Dead Space 4 release. Before 3 released, Electronic Arts stated that there would be no sequel unless the game sold over 5 million units, more than the first two games combined. Needless to say, the game fell far short of that mark. This may explain why the Awakened DLC ends with the Brethren Moons fully awakening and beginning their campaign of genocide on the galaxy, and there is literally nothing Isaac, Carver, or anyone can do to stop them, making further sequels all but impossible. Interestingly, there was a plan on what to do after the DLC, as explained in a Wha Happun? video by Matt McMuscles: it would have remnants of humanity aboard a flotilla and advance from there. Plans for a following 4th instalment were placed in Development Hell after 3 didn't sell as well as Electronic Arts had hoped. Visceral Games was then tagged to develop a brand new Star Wars single-player video game. In October 2017, EA shut down Visceral Games, which left the future of the Dead Space franchise in serious doubt. Those doubts continued until July 2021 when EA announced a remake of the first Dead Space for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S developed by Motive Studios, which would utilize the Frostbite engine.
At least one ending of Disco Elysium states that Revachol is going to be consumed by nuclear fire in twenty years, and it will be up to Harrier to stop it. ZA/UM was the subject of a hostile takeover that resulted in the firing of the original creators of the setting and refusal to let them use it in any capacity, leading to a protracted legal dispute and a proper sequel to Disco Elysium becoming less likely by the day.
Evolve: Post-release updates for the game started fleshing out the setting beyond "mercenaries hunt giant alien monsters". The canonical last update had a Bolivian Army Ending, where Shear is overrun by the Monsters and the Hunters are stranded on the planet with no hope of rescue, and only a post-credits coded message vaguely teasing more developments. Further updates were meant to flesh out the story and setting beyond this point, but the developers' contract with their publisher ended, taking the game's IP with it (with the servers also permanently shutting down in 2022), and only last-second Word of God statements clarified some plot points and diverging future timelines.
Thanks to a bunch of bugs and Dummied Out elements with event flags of its Multiple Endings, Fallout 2 has a handful of very nasty endings for a few locations - and to make it all that worse, players trying to get the best outcome will get the worst one due to said bugs. This involves things like Gecko being brutally conquered by Vault City, Vault City itself being taken over by the NCR as second-class citizens and without any internal reform, the completely messed up ending for New Reno's Mob War disjoined from player actions or the desolation of Modoc. One of the main selling points of the Restoration Project mod is the fact it properly flags the end-game states - to the point there is a separate installation option that only fixes the endings to work properly and otherwise keeps the game unaffected.
For the longest time, Half-Life 2's continuation in the form of a new game was in doubt, which was left with the add-on Episode Two ending with Eli Vance being killed by Combine Advisors. This had caused a stir that series writer Mark Laidlaw, after leaving Valve Corporation among many others, created fan fiction of his intended conclusion to the story — this spurred the modding community to spawn projects of their own Half-Life 3. As of 2020 there is Half-Life: Alyx but it only retconned a cliffhanger with another.
Haven: Call of the King ends with poor Haven having been outplanned by Vetch and Chess, who was on his side the whole time, and, with the king he had called to save the people dead at Vetch's hand, he is left to be chained to a rock forever while Vetch presumably conquers the whole galaxy. While a sequel would have seen him escape somehow, no sequel ever came, and there is very little interest in reviving the franchise.
Hero's ending has the protagonist Alex made a Heroic Sacrifice to launch the villain into the Prism gate and straight into the alien planet that they originate from. What was meant to be a Sequel Hook of possibly Alex and their possible love interests exploring their origin planet and finding a way back to Earth is cut short when Pixelberry cancelled the planned sequel book.
Incredible Crisis: The Stinger shows that a metal globe in space hurtling towards Earth is about to crash into the main family's house, followed by To Be Continued text. A sequel was never made.
Lego The Hobbit: Since the game was released before the third and final movie of the trilogy, The Battle of the Five Armies, the game's story mode covers the first two movies, An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug, the latter ending with Smaug escaping the Lonely Mountain and heading to lay waste to Lake Town, and Bard, the only person who can stop him, is imprisoned by the greedy Master and his cohorts, while Gandalf's side of the story ends with him on the ropes in a battle against Sauron, who is revealed to have coerced Azog into helping him. The Battle of the Five Armies was planned to be added to the story mode with DLC, but it ended up getting cancelled.
Loom ends with the Pattern torn in two and the Weavers only able to protect one half, forced to leave the other half to Chaos and a bleak future. The game was envisioned as the first of a trilogy, with the sequels showing how the people left on Chaos' half fought back, but the sequels were never made.
The last mission of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun involves Joseph Griffin and Phillip Bromley foiling the Big Bad Commander Shima's plans to loot ancient Asian tombs and sink an entire Japanese aircraft carrier and escape his trap, but their friend Ichiro Tanaka is dead, and Shima, along with his allies Borov and Kandler are still at large, and Joseph's brother Donnie is still captured. A sequel was planned that would conclude this story plot but the relatively poor sales of the game meant that the sequel would never be made. The important plot points are mentioned in a different game, Medal of Honor: Heroes.
Mega Man Legends 2 has Roll and Tron trying and failing to make a space program to retrieve Mega Man, who's stuck on Elysium with Yuna (who's still in Roll's mom's body) and Sera (in Yuna's body) and the three of them are most likely at the mercy of the Elder System, whose Reaverbots (or commands for the existing Reaverbots) may be more on the "Kill All Carbons" side than the Ancients we've seen. A third game was originally announced for the 3DS, but was subsequently cancelled in 2011, with no plans for it to ever be revived. And while the other Mega Man series (Classic, X, Zero, ZX, and Battle Network) all got compilation rereleases, Legends has never received such treatment, giving little indication that Capcom plans to revisit the series.
Mega Man X8 ends with Axl seemingly infected or corrupted by the main villain's Last Breath Bullet. This was never mentioned in Command Mission and there were no more X games after this.
Nocturne (1999)'s Playable Epilogue has Stranger entering Spookhouse headquarters to find it smashed open, with the body parts of most of the supporting cast strewn across the base (including Moloch, a super-powerful demon who was established to be The Juggernaut). He finds a message written in blood addressed personally to him essentially saying "we've finally found you, ha ha ha", then the game ends. Obviously, this was meant to be one hell of a Sequel Hook, which we ended up never getting thanks to the developers getting preoccupied with the Bloodrayne series, then eventually folding before they could ever get around to picking up where that very painful cliffhanger left off.
Prince of Persia (2008) epilogue DLC ends with Ahriman freed to destroy the world again and Elika abandoning the Prince forever in retaliation for his actions, leaving him to face Ahriman's wrath alone. A sequel was originally planned by the devs, but due to poor sales, this timeline of the series has never been picked up by them again.
Rakenzarn Tales ended version 2 with the heroes having just barely fended off an attack by the Saint Lords, Noel on the verge of death by Deathstroke's hand and Kyuu having passed out. Then the game underwent one of several continuity reboots which pretty much changed the entire plot, ensuring that it will never been seen again. The game's creator did later release information on his DeviantArt page explaining how it would've concluded had the current version continued.
Scourge: Outbreak ends with The Bad Guy Wins, where Dr. Reisbeck, escaping the events of Nogari Island, used the Scourge Queen to unleash an Apocalypse How turning the world's cities into monster-infested hellholes, and he's now hunting down the surviving heroes. Turns out the game was supposed to be the first installment of a franchise, but owing to the game's poor sales and Tragnarion Studios folding a year after, the franchise stops right there.
Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood: After successfully defeating Ix and saving the universe, Sonic and co. return to Earth to find Eggman conquered the world in their absence. And then right as it looks like the Blue Cyclone is about to crash, Sonic, Tails, and Omega interrupt the scene with a credits roll. The game's title and Sequel Hook suggested that Sonic Chronicles was planned to be a full-fledged series, but BioWare becoming a part of Electronic Arts and closing down handheld game development prevented them from making a sequel. Poor sales and the Ken Penders lawsuit (though Sega won the case) killed any chance of it being put into the hands of anyone else, and the game has rarely been acknowledged by Sega since its release (and has since been declared non-canon).
- During the events of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II, the Little Planet ends up being transformed into the Death Egg Mk. II. At the end of the game, no matter how many Chaos Emeralds you collected throughout the game, the Death Egg Mk. II does not revert to its original state, as Sega had moved on from Sonic 4 since then, and the franchise has yet to address the Little Planet's fate.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time ends on a major cliffhanger with Sly missing after the final battle with Le Paradox. The secret ending for 100% Completion reveals that he's stranded in Ancient Egypt. Sanzaru Games intended to follow up on this with DLC, but thanks to various reasons, they were unable to. And with Sanzaru Games being bought out by Facebook in 2020, seeing a resolution to this game's cliffhanger is unlikely to say the least.
Tales of Luminaria was planned to be an episodic anthology that gave twenty-one characters an eight-chapter story each, which would take about three years at a rate of one a week. It only lasted nine months, cutting off in the middle of the Chapter Twos. As its finale, it skipped ahead to the next major story beat planned: a flashback (from the perspective of most of the stories, anyway) to when Hugo turned on his friends and joined the enemy side (with the chapter revealing that he did so to protect them, but they don't know that).
Them's Fightin' Herds: The announcement that the story mode would not be completed sees the first chapter ending with Arizona gotten her tail kicked by either Oleander or Fred, had a Longma Orb stolen by them, having no idea what to make of the hieroglyphs in the temple and at a complete loss on what to do next.
Unreal Tournament III finished with a Bolivian Army Ending where Reaper, having lost his entire team (with his sister dying on his hands), is surrounded by Necris Phayder soldiers ready to gun him down, with him being ready to fight for his life. The game was released in 2007, and its Expansion Pack was composed solely of an extra bunch of maps, neither of which solve anything in the SP mode. The next game in the series was a failed Continuity Reboot. And in December 2022, the entire series got delisted from all stores.

Web Animation

Counterspell: The first (which ended up being the only released) season ends with Draegara summoning Dredge and plummeting the world into darkness. Due to the series not being renewed for a second season like planned along with the channel is was initially hosted on shutting down, this is where the series ended.
The first, and only episode of Team Four Star's Attack on Titan Abridged ended with Eren being eaten by a Titan as Armin tried unsuccessfully to save him.

Webcomics

Klonoa: Dream Traveller of Noctis Sol: Due to the comic's host website, ShiftyLook, getting shut down before the story got very far, the comic ended with two of Klonoa's Brainwashed and Crazy friends, along with Klonoa's Evil Counterpart, jumping in to attack Klonoa.
An In-Universe example in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: One comic shows kids watching a show about drugs where "Strung-Out Sammy" tells them how great drugs are... but since Intervention Isaac didn't show up, the show ended there.
Super Effective: Since the webcomic went on hiatus in 2018 and was declared cancelled in 2020 by creator Scott Ramsoomair, the last comic shows Red fainting after all of his Pokémon are knocked out in battle. He wakes up in a tub of ice with two lines of stitches down the sides of his body and a note taped to his chest that reads "See a Poké Center."

Web Video

Season one of TitansGrave: The Ashes of Valkana ends with the party defeating Prophet Dhawan in battle, only to learn that all they've done is pulled a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero and freed her from being Sealed Evil in a Can, with an implication that she's about to restart the war that led to her being imprisoned in the first place. A second season was presumably going to involve the party working to fix this, but the fact that Game Master Wil Wheaton and parent company Geek & Sundry have had a legal falling out since then makes a resolution unlikely.
The second season of Tribe Twelve ends with the video Facade, where Noah Maxwell has just escaped his fake house and the Observer, but is no closer to escaping the Eldritch Location boardwalk he's trapped in. The reason for the series' premature end is due the creator of the show being exposed as a sexual predator who groomed minors over the course of the 2010s, and later Unpersoned himself from the internet shortly afterward.

Western Animation

Elliott from Earth: The show was cut short after only 16 episodes, and the last one ends with Elliott's mom and his best friend Mo accidentally reactivating the rock that transported them to the Centrium, sending both away to an unknown place while Elliott remains behind on the Centrium, all alone.
Exo Squad ends abruptly with a mysterious spaceship (implied to be the aliens alluded to on the Mars arc) showing up out of nowhere and making Pluto and its colony disappear, leaving J.T stranded in space, watching helplessly as it flies toward Earth. Meanwhile, Nara starts to turn more plant-like as a long-term result of her encounter with Dr. Ketzer, with her fate being unknown.
Final Space: Season 3 ended on a particularly downer fate, with Ash taking Mooncake and using him to free Invictus, leaving him free to wreck havoc on the universe. It was not long after this that the show was canceled and written off for taxes, although the creator, Olan Rogers, does intend to finish the series through a graphic novel.
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Has an In-Universe example in "The Schlubs". Grim is watching a series called "My Troubled Pony", which is stated by Mandy that it was cancelled and that it has No Ending. It ends on a grim cliffhanger with the protagonist falling into a volcano before it cuts to a "The end?" screen, devastating Grim. In the credits sequence of this episode, Billy is paid to make his own ending to the series as Mandy had bought the company behind it, which Grim wanted to do.
Inside Job (2021): The season turned series finale "Appleton" has Reagan stuck between taking a new position among the Robes, or leaving the shadow government behind entirely to follow her boyfriend Ron, who wants to move to the titular town, wipe their memories, and start anew. She runs a variety of simulations to see she can have both. Despite being in love with Ron, Reagan cannot see a happy future where she can balance her passion for her work and her life with Ron. She lets Ron wipe his own mind, but leaves without wiping her own so he can find a happy life with someone else. She ends the season unhappy and unsure of her future, with a cliffhanger implying the Robes will take advantage of her new position. A second season was originally greenlit to follow up on this, but Netflix took it back and cancelled the series.
Martha Speaks features an In-Universe example in "Dogs from Space" — Danny used to love a particular comic series as a kid, but it got cancelled before he could find out what happened to the protagonist.
M.O.D.O.K. (2021): The last episode ended with M.O.D.O.K. allowing Anomoly to kill his family so that he could successfully take over the world. Unhappy with the aftermath, he tortures Anomoly with intent on finding a way to bring them back before killing him while declaring intent to find a way to have it all. Due to poor performance in both views and feedback, the show was not renewed for a second season.
The final episode of My Life as a Teenage Robot, "Turncoats", centers around Wakeman having to fight her XJ robots after being hijacked by Dr. Locus. Jenny and Wakeman defeat Locus, but the final shot of the episode, and consquentially the entire series, is of Wakeman being swallowed by a tiger. A Web novel that continued the series came out in 2023 ... 17 years later.
The fourth and final season of Paradise PD ended on a cliffhanger in which the Big Bad kidnaps Randal and Karen's baby to gain immortality and flies away with him. This is lampshaded in the closing credits, since the writers weren't aware that the episode would be the series finale when it was written. As a double-whammy, they initially planned to wrap the series up through a crossover episode in the second season of Farzar... which was later cancelled, leaving both series up in the air.
ReBoot: The creators went into season four expecting at least five seasons, only to be abruptly cancelled. As a result, the show concludes with Megabyte winning and taking over the Principal Office, gleefully informing the heroes that he's going to hunt them all down. Tony Jay's death in 2006 didn't help either. The continuation series Reboot The Guardian Code deciding to completely ignore not just that cliffhanger, but also everything after the original's first season only made it worse.
Silver Surfer: The Animated Series: Possibly the ultimate example of this trope, as the show ends with Thanos destroying the entire universe! It was supposed to get resolved in a second season, but unfortunately, the show was unexpectedly cancelled.
This fate befell Sonic Underground twofold. The original cartoon series follows Sonic and his two siblings learning to work in harmony so they can reunite with their mother and take back Mobius from Doctor Robotnik, but by the end of the series, they're no closer to their goal. The plan was to produce a finale movie if Underground was successful, but the series flopped and was cancelled after only one season. After a decade of silence however, it was announced that they would finally get a resolution in the Sonic Universe side-series of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). Unfortunately, after years of postponing and hemming and hawing from Archie about when the story would arrive, Archie Comics would end up completely divorced from Sonic the Hedgehog after lengthy and costly legal battles and Sonic Underground would (among other unresolved storylines as mentioned in Comic Book) again be denied any sort of closure since the new IDW series of comics deal near-exclusively with the video game continuity with no inclination of visiting anything to do with any of the classic cartoons.
Spider-Man cartoons from the 1990s to the late 2000s accidentally developed a habit of suffering this.
- Spider-Man Unlimited's final episode depicts Spider-Man, his allies in the Resistance, and Venom and Carnage, all rounded up by the High Evolutionary and his generals to eliminate them all once and for all. Despite getting free, receiving back-up for independent allies, and looking like it was going to be a free-for-all showdown the High Evolutionary, the final scene has Venom and Carnage reveal that the symbiotes' master plan has begun, while hundreds of symbiote spawn rain down all over the city. The show's cancellation would lead to this being one of the most brutal endings in a Spider-Man cartoon. Then to add further insult to injury, Spider-Verse had Unlimited Spidey and the Knights of Wundagore killed off by Daemos of the Inheritors.
- Spider-Man: The New Animated Series was cancelled at the end of its first season, resulting in it having a brutal Downer Ending in which Spider-Man accidentally injures his girlfriend Indy, leaving her in a coma she may never wake from, and subsequently kills the villains responsible, with both events leaving him viewed as a criminal in the eyes of the city and his relationships with MJ and Harry in tatters. The last scene is Peter deciding he's done being Spider-Man and tossing his costume into the Hudson River before walking off into the sunset, alone and broken.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man: Despite many Spider-Man fans considering this show to have the best depiction of Peter Parker ever put on TV, the show was canceled after its second season due to contract issues with Disney. Once Disney had the rights to put Spider-Man on TV, Sony could no longer continue producing Spectacular. As such, the series ends on a bittersweet and sad note: Spider-Man defeated the Goblin (now revealed to be Norman Osborn) and kept everyone safe, but this causes Harry to hate Spider-Man; and Peter in turn is wracked with guilt over killing Norman and leaving Harry without a father. Even worse, Peter's personal life is now at its lowest point as he had painfully dumped Liz to be with Gwen, but Harry is now manipulating Gwen into staying with him. Eddie Brock is still in prison, and Black Cat hates Spidey for making her father stay in prison by guilt tripping him. In short, Peter is mostly alone. Meanwhile, due to Curt being blackmailed by Miles Warren, the Connors are forced to leave the lab and relocate to Florida, leaving the lab to Warren, whom they don't trust, and the last scene reveals that Norman somehow survived the explosion as he boards a plane and will very likely continue his evil doing. Word of God released a list of things that would have made it into the show, including the introduction of the Carnage symbiote, the death of Captain Stacy, Mary Jane and Peter becoming a couple, etc. The closest fans would get to an official continuation was the show's version of Peter making a cameo appearance in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, complete with Josh Keaton reprising his role for the first time in years, which also revealed that Captain Stacy died at some point after the ending.
The two-part series finale of Superman: The Animated Series was intended to be the start of a new season where Superman has to regain the public's trust in him after he was Brainwashed and Crazy into becoming Darkseid's minion, but due to Bruce Timm and Paul Dini deciding to move onto Batman Beyond, this plotline was left unresolved until Justice League.

Accidental Downer Ending

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