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Downer Ending
alt title(s): Downer Endings
Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get.
- The Player, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy.
- Joss Whedon

1. A finale to a movie, a TV series, a video game, or some other form of media that ends things on a low note, or in some other way that isn't quite happy. These tend to be rare, as there is overwhelming pressure to tie loose ends up in a "happy" way. Sometimes done as a way to assure that the show, once canceled, cannot be revived later (similar to the Grand Finale), but sometimes leaves the show on a Cliff Hanger.

2. A similarly low-key or unhappy ending to an episode of a normally "happy" series. Also rare, due to the same reasons as above. Sometimes used in an attempt to get Emmy nominations, or to at least surprise the viewer.

Sometimes, a Downer Ending can still conclude the character arcs in a very satisfying way, despite being dark. Sometimes, it can be overused to the point it's practically a Mandatory Twist Ending. If it comes out of nowhere or is the result of an Ass Pull then it may be the result of the writers summoning Diabolus Ex Machina. If enough people consider it fundamentally unjust, it may acquire the Dis Continuity label.

Kill Em All is a particularly cruel variation of this. If the ending mixes elements of happiness and Downer Ending, then it's a Bittersweet Ending. And if the whole adventure leading up to it turned out to be meaningless, then it's Shoot The Shaggy Dog.

See also Gainax Ending, World Half Empty, and Yank The Dogs Chain. Occasionally, part of a Tragedy. Sometimes a Foregone Conclusion, either because of a historical setting or if the work is a Prequel. Realisation of an Inferred Holocaust may turn even the most Tastes Like Diabetes "happy ending" into one. Downer Endings easily lead to Tear Jerker or Nightmare Fuel.

Oh, and Many Spoilers Ahead.

Examples:

Live Action TV
  • A Very Special Episode of The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air ended with Will, in hospital after a mugging, sobbing to himself after talking Carlton out of shooting the perpetrators in revenge.
    • Another episode ended with a crying Will being comforted by Uncle Phil after Will's worthless father once again let his son down.
  • In House, Dr. House usually makes a last minute diagnosis that saves the patient's life. Not so in "Wilson's Heart," where the patient was Amber, Wilson's girlfriend and former member of House's intern team. House figured out what was wrong with her, but there was nothing that could save her. Wilson woke her up for one final goodbye, and then she died. And if that wasn't enough, 13 finally gets the nerve to get a test done on herself, and it turns out she does have Huntington's disease, which gives her around twelve or so years to live, by her own estimation. Thank you, House, for making me dehydrate myself because of lack of tears.
  • Also, right before that episode of House, was the season finale of Bones, in which, even though Booth wasn't dead, it was revealed that Zach, one of the main characters, was Gormagon's (a cannibal serial killer) apprentice, having been duped by a much stronger personality and forced to kill. In the end, he realizes how wrong he was, tells them how to find Gormagon, pleads guilty, and is sent away to a mental correctional facility. And this from Bones, where the usual endings are light and fluffy.
    • In the series premier Zach reveals to the Jerk With A Heart Of Gold therapist/profiler that he didn't really kill anyone, but telling the truth would land him in actual jail, where he'd be toast.
  • The series finale of Seinfeld ends with all four main characters being branded anti-social misanthropic Jerkasses and sentenced to prison.
    • Of course, they deserved it. The real tragedy? They had apparently run out of things to talk about, and started to repeat the first conversation from the first episode.
    • To be fair, that sentence was Kramer's fault. He had to hop. He had to HOP ON THE PLANE!
  • The Scrubs episode "My Life in Four Cameras" sets the show in an ever-happy sitcom-environment for the second half: A man has been wrongly diagnosed and may live another 20 years, two main characters' relationship gets magically fixed and an employee on the brink of being fired may stay working at the hospital. This is dissolved with a hard cut near the end of the episode. The patient is dead, the relationship rather messed up, and the former employee - fired. JD explains that "around here, things don't end as neat and tidy as in sitcoms". There are many more examples in the series, but this has left an impression on this troper.
    • The one example that stands out in this troper's mind is "My Lunch". After a girl dies from an apparent OD, they discover that her organs could go to multiple patients who need new ones. However, its discovered that the donor actually died of rabies, which means that now each of the recipients have rabies too. At the end, all of the patients, including one who was a good friend of Dr. Cox's and who didn't need the organ immediately, died. This sends Cox over the edge and into a horrible depression. This is in stark contrast from earlier, happier plots, including JD trying to force Cox to have lunch with him and Elliot and Carla trying to help The Todd cope with his homosexuality only to discover that he's using the homosexuality to be close to the two girls - and is apparently bisexual, now ogling and making a pass at everyone.
    • Actually the episode also had a downer middle. The girl who died was not a faceless extra but recurring character Jill and it hit JD pretty hard.
    • Setting the stage was "My Old Lady", which opens with JD, Turk, and Elliot each getting a patient to deal with, with the narration saying that the statistic is one of three people who go into a hospital will die there. Turns out the statistic was wrong this time: all three patients die.
  • In the various Law And Order series, the prosecutors occasionally lose cases and sometimes win by the letter of the law while still being unable to correct a greater injustice and letting the offender get away with it. There have also been instances where living victims of crimes have committed suicide, regardless of the offender getting punished, or the victims or family members taking revenge on the criminal, thus becoming criminals themselves.
  • The Twilight Zone had a number of episodes with rather sad endings. "Time Enough at Last" is probably the most famous, and is (ironically) a perfect example of an Outer Limits Twist.
  • Space Above And Beyond had a Cliff Hanger downer ending where three of the major characters died and the remaining two are left feeling empty and unsure. The episode was still very satisfying.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess had a downer ending where the main character sacrifices herself. There was huge disagreement in the fan community as to whether or not this was appropriate for her character.
    • Don't worry, though! In the Dynamite comics, Gabrielle hit the Reset Button.
  • Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 2 ended with Buffy alienating her friends and her family, stabbing her lover through the chest with a sword and sending him to a Hell dimension, and then leaving town for places unknown. Season 5 ended with the death of Buffy.
  • Another Mutant Enemy production, Angel, ended the the series with one main character dead, another leaving to pursue a Life Of Normalcy, and all of the other main characters about to start a fight that will almost certainly result in most, if not all, of said characters suffering a painful and gruesome death. This ending also qualifies as a Bolivian Army Ending.
    • It has now been revealed in the official comic continuation that all of the remaining characters are alive, although some have gone through some...changes.
      • Wait, dying and having one's soul tied to the Evil Co-operation that you tried to destroy and now being forced to do their bidding counts as alive?
  • Blake's 7 ended its third and fourth (final) seasons with Cliff Hanger Downer Endings. Series 3 ended with the Liberator destroyed, the crew abandoned on a desolate planet and Blake revealed to be an illusion. Series 4 ended the series on a downer with Scorpio wrecked in a crash; Avon killing Blake (the real one this time); Vila, Tarrant, Dayna and Soolin all killed; and Avon, the last man standing, surrounded by heavily armed Federation troopers. Gunshots played over the start of the credits. (This was intended by writer Chris Boucher to be a Cliff Hanger; those actors who wanted to come back for a fifth series would turn out to be Not Quite Dead. However, the BBC decided not to commission another series.)
  • Red Dwarf ended its sixth season on a Downer Ending: the regular characters were killed one by one in a space battle with their future selves. The final image was of their craft, Starbug, exploding. However, because it was a Time Travel episode that ended in a severe Temporal Paradox, the next season was able to begin by assuming the timeline had been repaired by the explosion and it had all been undone.
  • Forever Knight ended its third and final season by killing off almost its entire cast in the last two episodes. Not only did the vampiric hero not achieve his wish of becoming human, but he ended up killing his girlfriend, and he finally begged for his master to stake him.
  • Black Adder ended every season with the death of at least one, and usually several, major characters, before "reviving" them in a new era for the next series. The final season, Blackadder Goes Forth, ends with most of the major characters being sent out into battle and presumably to their deaths, with the last shot fading slowly into a field of poppies.
  • Mortal Kombat Conquest was a TV series loosely based on the ultra-violent video games by the same name. It ended with the Big Bad (Shao Khan) killing ''everyone''.
  • The first season of The OC had a downer ending with Ryan and Seth leaving town and Marissa turning to drink.
  • The Sit Com Dinosaurs ended with an environmental responsibility message both depressing and Anvilicious. The final episode begins with the failure of a beetle swarm to show up and check the spread of a form of creeper vine because their breeding ground was destroyed to make a wax-fruit factory. The efforts of the Wesayso Corporation to fix things result in killing off most of the plant life on Earth and starting an ice age. The show ends with a sad instrumental piece playing over a shot of the Sinclairs' house being slowly buried in a snowdrift.
    • This Troper is of the opinion that if you don't cry at the final scene of this episode, you have no soul.
      • What if you can't cry because you'd much rather beat the crap out of whatever Writer On Board conceived of it?
      • Well in fairness, given that there are no dinosaurs around today, it was in a way a Foregone Conclusion...
  • The short-lived superhero series M.A.N.T.I.S. ended by having the hero and his love killed battling a dinosaur. (No Seriously). By then, there was no budget for a full-scale dinosaur, so they were effectively killed by falling trees. The final scenes have the sidekick narrating about how he buried the hero and dismantled his lair. This is one case where just canceling the series without a final episode would have been better.
    • Yes, folks, Sam Rami's attempt at a more realistic superhero was killed by an invisible dinosaur from another dimension.
  • Twin Peaks has an ending which seems to take fiendish delight in screwing over every likable member of the cast. For some viewers, this Anvilicious quality is brilliant, because the nihilistic 'moral' is very much in tune with the inaccessibility of the series itself.
  • The original version of The Office ended on quite a low note in its second series. Tim is rejected once again by the receptionist Dawn, who is leaving for America with her skinflint boyfriend, while David Brent has been made redundant and practically breaks down trying to make them take him back.
    • The series as a whole ends on a much more positive note after the two Christmas special episodes.
  • Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future ended with the death of a main character (and the abrupt end to an ongoing Ship Tease), along with the destruction of the heroes' base of operations. On Christmas Day, to boot.
  • The ending of the fifth series of Murphy's Law involves the police officer who Murphy had earlier saved killing herself and Murphy himself coming frighteningly close to pulling the trigger on himself.
  • Babylon 5 ends its first season with an assassination, and a major character on the station being shot in the back. The second season ends with the failure of the station to create peace, and the start of a major war. The third season ends with the main character literally leaping into a gargantuan abyss to escape the nuclear doom he's called down on himself (he's standing in the enemy's capital city). The fourth season was originally going to end with the main character surviving a mock execution to find out that his interrogation ordeal is beginning all over again... but due to potentially impending cancellation, that was moved up a few episodes, and that season ended on a more "up" note.
  • Veronica Mars ended with the titular character's reputation sullied by an online sex video, while her father faces prosecution for evidence tampering and probable defeat in the election for the county sheriff's office against an inept and crooked successor.
  • Hex. Since they'd already killed off the original main character, the last few episodes consisted of the main characters repeatedly screwing up, betraying each other, and narrowly failing to save the day. The finale involved one of the few surviving original cast members being used as a human sacrifice to bring about the end of the world while the heroes flee in terror and the big bad enjoys an orgy. Not that Hex was ever subtle, of course.
  • Quantum Leap: Sam makes a noble sacrifice, but this causes a temporal reaction that results in him never getting home.
  • Season three of M*A*S*H has the well-known, heartbreaking ending of 'I have a message. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake's plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors.'
  • Tour Of Duty ended with a surrounded Lt. Goldman and Sgt. Anderson calling down an artillery strike on their own position.
  • Farscape loved Downer Endings. Season finales were always huge downers, and in fact, before the miniseries, the entire show ended with the baddies defeated, Aeryn telling John she's pregnant with his child, and then the televised equivalent of a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere swoops down and kills them both. Also notable was the episode "...Different Destinations", which brutally subverted Set Right What Once Went Wrong by having a whole monastery of nurse-nuns being slaughtered as a result of the main characters' actions. Ouch.
  • Goodnight Sweetheart ends with the protagonist being trapped in the past.
  • Are You Afraid Of The Dark had a few downer endings, for example "The Tale Of The Pinball Wizard", where Ross has apparently won the game, only to find that he's trapped in a pinball machine replica of the mall, doomed to play the game forever.
  • This Is Wonderland ends with Alice having to talk her sister into going to jail, James being left in critical condition with a stroke, which was strongly implied to kill him, and fan favourite Anil Sharma getting killed by gangsters. On the plus side, Elliot found true love. But there wasn't enough happiness to qualify as a Bittersweet Ending.
  • Battlestar Galactica's mid-season finale for Season Four is one of the most downer endings coming after the most uplifting: the fleet, allied with the rebel Cylons, finally find Earth and there is much celebration. That is until they land on Earth and find everything is a nuclear wasteland. All the characters stare out at the ruins of New York and the episode ends. The real tragedy? No new episodes until 2009.
    • It was some large city, but whether or not it was New York is yet to be confirmed.
  • The Wire loved these. The ending of the fourth season is particularly brutal, as only one of the four main kids introduced this season had a particularly happy ending in Namond, who was adopted by Colvin; conversely, Michael and Dukie end up working in the drug trade and Randy is stuck in a group home, despite Carver's efforts to keep him out, where he's beaten up in the final montage. Elsewhere, Bubbles accidentally kills his young protege and attempts suicide, Carcetti is made to look like an idiot by the governor of Maryland, and Bodie is killed after being seen getting into a car with Officer Mc Nulty, who seemed to have genuine respect for him and yet was inadvertently the reason for his demise.
    • And it gets worse for some characters in the fifth season. Butchie is tortured to death. Omar Little finally finds happiness in Puerto Rico but is lured back by Butchie's death and is then killed by maybe the least sympathetic character ever. Dukie is socially promoted out of middle school, but is so viciously bullied in high school that he drops out and starts shooting heroin. Michael is thought to be a snitch, so he is forced to leave Bug with a distant relative and take up Omar's old trade. Randy has become hard to the world in the group home. Johnny Fifty (from Season 2) is seen homeless. Gus the saintly newspaper editor is busted down to the copy desk while lying reporter Scott Templeton wins a Pulitzer prize. Carcetti actually wins the governorship after completely selling out, and promotes the backstabbing Rawls to state police commissioner. Daniels is promoted to Commissioner, but is blackmailed on the first day and forced to retire. Valchek is himself promoted to commissioner to replace him. The Greeks escape. The prosecution of Marlo collapses, and he walks free. Mc Nulty has alienated the two women who loved him and lost his job. And worst of all, Herc actually has a good job, working for the scumbag lawyer. There are some high points, but *damn*.
  • The new series of Doctor Who has ended every season finale with one of these. For the first three, however, it's tossed in something lighthearted in the very last scene to break up the Tear Jerker mood. The first season ended with the Ninth Doctor dying. The newly minted Tenth Doctor gives a (possibly vaguely unnerving) grin, but if you were a fan of Nine, there was no way you were smiling along with him. (Jack's face when he realizes he's being left behind is pretty damn heartbreaking, too). That ending looks practically cheerful next to the second season's finale, in which Rose is torn from the Doctor and trapped (seemingly forever) in an alternate universe against her will. Lots of sobbing, on the characters' and viewers' part, ensued. The episode's final scene is the arrival of Donna, which some found to be a badly timed mood breaker, while others welcomed the distraction. The third season ended with the Doctor mourning the loss of the Master, and then having the only friends he has left walk out on him. In the last scene, the Titanic crashes into the TARDIS. The fourth season ends with the Doctor, all alone, again. Jack, Martha, and Mickey walk off into the sunset together after a quick goodbye, Ten palms off his clone on Rose in the alternate universe because he can give her what the Doctor never can, and he quickly mindwipes Donna to prevent her from dying a horrible brain-frying death. It gets increasingly tragic, and the episode makes no effort to lighten the mood. It ends with a rain-soaked Doctor in his shirtsleeves, staring brokenly at nothing in his empty TARDIS. (sniff)
  • The episode of The King Of Queens "Inner Tube". After a cold-ridden Doug works up the guts to go to where Carrie's having her meeting and apologize to her, when he does, she throws water onto his face and venomously says "You make me sick!" (which is in sharp contrast to his Honeymooners fantasy where she gladly accepts his apology). On top of that, at the episode's end, they show him in a parody of the football movie Brian's Song with a voiceover that says "But when they think of him, it's not how he died that they remember - but how he lied. How he did lie!". When this troper and his mother saw this episode, we were left wondering if we were supposed to laugh (and thus my mom's introduction to one of my favorite sitcoms wasn't exactly a pleasant one).
    • While not as bad, the episode "Fight Schlub" didn't exactly end on a high note either. Even in Doug's fantasy, the IPS workers don't win the bar fight with the Priority Plus workers; as a matter of fact, some of the IPS guys don't even try to fight back (although to be fair, it was Doug's imagination). So in the end, the IPS guys don't get their restaurant back, Doug doesn't get his dignity back and he's left with a fear of bubble wrap (but it doesn't last long). To be fair again, it was sort of a dim episode, with Carrie's subplot serving to lighten the mood a bit.
      • And then there's the two-parter "Pregnant Pause". Carrie unexpectedly gets pregnant, so she and Doug frantically try to make plans for the baby, including Doug getting a second job as a limo driver, which quickly exhausts him. In the end, she miscarries. If there were a sadder way to end a season, that would be it.
  • The short-lived ABC Dramedy Cupid relied on surprise Downer Endings during its short run as well.
  • It's nothing compared to the Outer Limits revival, where nearly every episode ends in soul-crushing gloom and despair. Humans Are Bastards, it's a Crapsack World, we get it, we get it..
    • One particularly crushing episode involved a group of four or five humans being put in special underground bunkers while the rest of humanity prepares to meet an alien race. The humans can only talk to each other, but live in their bunkers alone. Every six hours, an alarm goes off, and they have to push a button to prevent nuclear missiles from devastating the world in case humanity was wiped out by the aliens. The routine continues endlessly until one by one the humans in the other bunkers mysteriously get cut off, leaving the last guy alone with his thoughts. He slowly goes crazy, and finally resolves to let the missiles fly, convinced humanity has been wiped out by the aliens, until he's contacted by the general in charge of the program, who tells the protagonist that everything is fine, the aliens have been defeated, and they'll get him out of there soon. The protagonist accepts this, still marginally crazy, and deactivates the alarm time and time again, while the camera switches shots to show the general being mind controlled by an alien while the Capital building and all of Washington DC burns in the background. This troper has no idea what we're supposed to learn from that one.
  • The fourth season finale of Corner Gas had Brent selling Corner Gas, Davis being transferred to Woolverton and, saddest of all, Lacey moving back to Toronto. Fortunately, it was All Just A Dream.
  • Supernatural is a pretty miserable show anyway but there are still tons and tons of episodes that have downer endings. "Time On My Side" has Bela turning into a sobbing, terrified little girl as the hellhounds come to take her away, "Jus in Bello" - nearly everyone dies because their plan ended up not working on account of Lilith, "All Hell Breaks Loose - Part One" - After a Please Wake Up speech, Sam dies (he gets better) and Dean ends up sobbing on his brother's shoulder, "What Is And What Should Never Be" - Dean's in too much pain to believe Sam when he tells him what they do is worth it, "Heart" - Sam has to kill a sweet girl of the week because she's a dangerous werewolf, "Crossroad Blues" - Dean really, really wanted to make that deal to bring his Dad back, "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" - Dean's crying about their Dad's death and there's nothing Sam can say that would make it alright, "Everybody Loves A Clown" - Dean takes his frustration out on his beloved car with a crowbar and looks like he's going to break down any second. And, as a proper depressing finale, the second season premiere - "In My Time Of Dying" has John die while his sons look on helplessly. God, now I need a hug.
    • You'll need an even bigger one after seeing the season three finale, "No Rest for the Wicked": after spending the entire season trying to void Dean's contract with Lilith, they finally get a chance to kill her, but she escapes. Dean dies and goes to Hell. No, really. Talk about a seriously downer ending.
    • Supernatural loves to end its seasons on a downer. In season 1 Sam was frantically trying to drive his dad and brother to the hospital and discussing their next move when they were smashed by a semi, season 2 ends with Sam back from the dead, but only because Dean sold his soul and now only has one year to live and the final shot of season 3 shows Dean strung up by meathooks in hell while the sound of his screaming for Sam echoes over the closing credits.
  • How have we gone this long without mentioning CSI? I mean, they USUALLY get the badguy, but there's a fair number of episodes where things just go bad. Heck, they're some of the better ones. In particular, "Alter Boys" comes to mind- where they arrest one brother as a suspect in a double murder, find out his brother is the actual killer and he was just burying the bodies as he's easily manipulated, convince him to tell them about what happened with his brother to avoid jail (as he's convinced he simply couldn't make it in jail), then find themselves completely unable to provide concrete evidence against the brother; the bloodstain they find has flour caked into it enough to prevent DNA sampling, he's scratched the interior of his gun barrel so the markings won't match, and got his brother to handle the murder weapon. In the end, the actual killer walks free, the DA is pushing for death penalty on the one that's still in jail, and the brother in jail commits suicide by ripping open his wrists with his own incisors. Cue to anvil-dropping symbolism with Grissom looking at his hands covered in the suicide's blood. This troper had to sit in shock after watching that.

Anime and Manga
  • One of the classic manga downer endings was Go Nagai's Devilman, which ended with the main character losing everything and everyone he loved (including his girlfriend being savagely dismembered by a psychotic mob of humans), losing the final battle between his army of devilmen and Satan's army of demons and ending up ripped in half by Satan, who was really his best friend Ryou, and quite dead. And humanity probably got all but wiped out, although it doesn't go into great detail about that. The sequel series, Violence Jack was, if anything, even nastier.
  • Both exemplified and ultimately subverted by Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. Most of the individual arcs end with one of the main characters either brutally murdering or being murdered by one (or more) of their best friends, but the cycle of murders ultimately leads to a Good End for the main characters.
  • Given that it's about war orphans starving to death in 1945 Japan, Grave Of The Fireflies has not just a downer ending, but a downer beginning and a downer middle. There's ironically a ray of sunshine in the ending in that the two ghosts are reunited in the afterlife, but overall, the whole thing is the downer of downers.
    • Fortunately, however, fireflies also symbolize reincarnation.
  • Monster Rancher, an anime on Fox Kids TV, ended its second season with most of the cast sacrificing itself in a fight against the Big Bad. The main hero was sent back to Earth in shock. There was a third season where they were resurrected, but it was not shown on network TV.
  • Cowboy Bebop ended with the deaths of several secondary characters, one main character Put On A Bus, and the heavily implied death of another main character.
  • .hack//AI Buster, the novel and canonically first installment of the .hack// series, ends with Lycoris deleting herself and reincarnating as poisonous scenery.
  • The first episodes of Chrono Crusade suggested a more-or-less lighthearted comedy/action series, if with a few shocking parts. It ended with most of the cast either dead or mentally scarred for life and the Great Depression just around the corner. Azmaria's fate might have been enough to push it towards bittersweet, but Remington is metaphorically kicked between the legs when he sees that the villain survived, and is on his way to try and assassinate the Pope. End series.
    • Fortunately, this is not the case in the manga version.
    • I liked the anime...most of them got 'beautiful deaths'. And Aion was defeated and prevented from causing even WORSE problems.
  • The first season of Magic Knight Rayearth ends with the protagonists discovering they were being manipulated for almost the entire series, essentially assisting the suicide of the very person they were meant to rescue and being sent home, traumatized.
  • In the film End Of Evangelion, the conclusion to Neon Genesis Evangelion, we're left with two mentally scarred adolescents lying on a beach as possibly the sole survivors of the Apocalypse. As a further bonus, they hate each other, so there's no chance for a revival of the species.
    • There's actually a bit of romantic subtext between Shinji and Asuka. Problem is, Asuka's an EPIC Tsundere and Shinji's an outright pussy.
      • Oh, there's plenty of romantic subtext, and long, drawn out, painful reasons why they don't act on it.
    • Your Mileage May Vary. It can also be considered the happiest ending possible given the situation; oh, sure, everyone's dead, but anyone who wants to live can come back, and any place not crushed by Lilith's desiccating corpse is pretty much fine, as evidenced by the cut when her head is seen falling with an undamaged city with clearly functional electric lighting in the foreground. As for the kids? Their mothers have essentially just talked everything over with them and told them to get their act together and live their lives how they see fit. The whole film is firmly grounded in absurdism, which tells you that no matter what the situation, and what Hobsonian choices you're faced with, you always have infinite variety of choices before you, and in a ultimately meaningless universe, one may create a meaning for oneself. Admittedly, it's somewhat of a stretch to herald the last line (kimochi warui — I feel sick/how pathetic) as a return to normality and happier times, but it's been done, and this troper is on the fence with that one.
    • If anything, the ending of the TV series is vastly more depressing: in End of Evangelion Shinji stands up for himself and his desires, and decides that he can exist with the pain that other people cause him, and he can accept people, thus distinguishing himself from the homogenized human soup and escaping the Lotus Eater Machine of human instrumentality, thereby inadvertently saving all of humanity from an eternity of slowly losing all their emotions and memories until nothing remains; in the original TV ending he instead breaks down and embraces the comforting, non-threatening world of instrumentality, essentially killing mankind in order to hide from true human interaction and pain, and learning very little in the process.
      • Although, there is the argument that the TV ending is in fact part of the movie ending fitting in between the sandbox scene and the kitchen scene, after which Shinji rejects instrumentality.
      • There's also the argument that the TV ending is the movie ending, as seen from within Shinji's head.
  • L/R Licensed by Royalty ended with at least one, if not both, of the main characters pointlessly dying within the literal last minute of the show. Much screaming and ranting from this editor ensued.
  • Texhnolyze, while maintaining an extremely dark and depressing atmosphere throughout the show, still manages to pull off one of the saddest Downer Endings imaginable (could also be classified as Kill Em All).
  • The Suzuka manga takes a sharp turn from what had previously been a Love Hina-esque Romantic Comedy after an unplanned pregnancy results in the couple contemplating an abortion before deciding against it, backing out of college and a promising career in track and field for the both of them so that the male protagonist may become a salaryman while the female stays home and cares for the baby. To top it off, the male protagonist's rival and the character who had perpetually played second banana to him in track go on to represent Japan in the Olympics. There's probably a moral in here somewhere.
  • Futari Wa Pretty Cure had a Downer Ending in theory, but by the time it aired, it was already well known to even the most oblivious viewer that the Oddly Named Sequel starting next week would have to start by waking Mepple, Mipple, and Porun back up.
  • Gilgamesh, itself an extremely dark and depressing show with overtones of hopelessness, has one of the most egregious, almost spiteful Downer Endings this editor has had the misfortune of witnessing. Kiyoko, having already lost everyone and everything she cared about, having been forced into debt, despair, and work as a call-girl by the very Countess supposedly trying to "save the world" whilst ruining the lives around her, and who in lonely desperation turned to a member of the opposing Gilgamesh who then impregnated her, dies after mutating into a birthing cocoon for the hybrid lifeform. In the climactic final battles against the twisted Enkidu, his cohorts, and the Gilgamesh forces, it's revealed that they're essentially unstoppable and un-killable. This leads to the Kill Em All deaths of pretty much everyone in the cast not already dead at this point. In the end, it's revealed that the TeaR organism responsible for the first near-apocalypse and which has instigated the horrible events of the story is actually a living manifestation of the Countess's own petty, dark, hateful, jealous, twisted heart, and that she's directly responsible for everything without realising it, despite ostensibly and ironically trying to fix it. Upon this revelation, she accepts the death of Humanity and allows TeaR to wipe out all life on Earth. To add insult to injury, in the odd, meta-void left behind, TeaR is then killed by the Gilgamesh spawn from the husk of what was left of Kiyoko, meaning that TeaR won't go on to recreate the planet in its image and it's all gone for good.
  • Death Note: The last episode in the anime could be considered a downer, as everything goes to hell (at least for the main character) pretty damn quick. The investigation team finally confirms that Light is Kira, he's shot several times by Matsuda (Light's Number 1 fan), and after limping away dies at the hands of Ryuk who fulfills his promise of one day writing Light's name in his Death Note. Then again, the entire series was dark and Light is a Villain Protagonist, so one could argue that he got what he deserved.
    • I really don't think one could argue anything else — though some do anyway.
      • The Live Action movie of Death Note ended worse, The first ending with the Death of Light's Girlfriend, who he actually had feelings for. The Last Name ending with Light being tricked into thinking that the Task Force had left to america, confronts his father for the second note, finds out L is alive, and is surrounded by the rest of the Task Force. L had wrote his own name in the Note, killing himself in the maximum number of days, so that way he couldn't be killed by Light or Rem. Light is killed by Ryuk's note, and his family is told by his father that Kira had killed him.
  • Berserk ends with the hero and all his friends being transported to Hell, where each of them is picked off one by one by a whole mess of things out of pure nightmare until only the hero and his love interest are left. Then the hero's arm gets caught in a demon's jaws and he's forced to chisel it off with a broken sword in order to save his love interest, only to get held down and lose his right eye as he's forced to watch as the love interest is raped by his former best friend, who has become a demonic god. The manga continues the story after this, but the anime ends there. Never watch the last episode of Berserk if you're feeling depressed.
    • In Berserk Abridged, before the series' version of the last episodes the author makes a few comments about his own feelings on the ending. His version has Griffith choosing to refuse the God Hand's deal, the gang healing him with some medicine that they had previously and everyone getting a happy ending, much to the anger of Zodd.
    • In case you do make this rather common mistake, this troper recommends to watch the very first episode again right after.
  • Weiss Kreuz Gluhen ends with Sena and his long-lost mother both dead, Omi having sacrificed what was left of his innocence in order to fully establish himself as the head of the morally dubious Takatori family, Ken in prison, Yoji amnesiac and lacking most of his personality, and Aya apparently bleeding to death on a city sidewalk from a gut wound while the many pedestrians walking past take no notice.
  • Saikano has one of the most depressing finales ever: despite Chise's efforts, the world ends and the only survivor is apparently Shuuji. Chise herself becomes a tiny ball of light and the viewer is left with the impression that hope is utterly lost for good.
  • Air undoubtedly qualifies, the final episodes follow Misuzu's excruciating battle to remain cheerful through bouts of extreme pain, ending with her death in the arms of Haruko. For those who paid close attention to the mythology of the Anime and the Game, there is still hope: The curse of Kannabi No Mikoto, Misuzu's first previous life, can be broken if one earns true love and happiness, which she does through Yukito and Haruko. So although she may have died breaking the curse, her next life will be free of it, and free to pursue happiness - if she has a next life, that is. It's All There In The Manual, hence strictly speaking it's a Bittersweet Ending with an uplifting and hopeful note - if it were not for the fact that the anime's ending is still rather ambiguous, even with the manual in hand. And of course, for poor grieving Haruko it all doesn't make one shred of a difference.
  • The end of Wolf's Rain could be seen as a subversion of this: even though every sympathetic character in the series dies tragically and the world ends, the wolves' actions ensure that the world starts again and the wolves are reincarnated as humans. The jury is still out on whether this constitutes a happy ending.
  • By the end of Space Runaway Ideon, over half of the cast has been killed with many of the surviving protagonists expressing a rather bleak pessimism about their fates. Eventually, the series ends when the anime's title robot is destroyed along with the surviving cast members.
    • Of course, that's nothing compared to the fact that everyone in the entire universe died. Or did they? The ending was very surreal and sort of left up to the interpretation of the viewer whether anyone had truly "died" in the end.
  • The first season finale of Code Geass: the protagonist, Lelouch, has just been forced to kill his beloved half-sister because his own Evil Eye went haywire and drove her Ax Crazy, going on a rampage killing all the Japanese people she can see just when the series was about to make a brighter turn (the Japanese were about to have equal rights with their conquerors, and Lelouch was about to ally himself with the cause). As he leads his forces into battle with The Empire, he finds out that an agent of the Emperor has kidnapped his younger sister, the person for whom he's doing all this. In the process of going to rescue her, he loses his army and C.C., his closest ally, his trusted bodyguard Kallen has her faith in him badly shaken, and to cap it all off he ends up in an almost surely fatal Mexican standoff with his former best friend Suzaku, who now despises and wants to kill Lelouch because said half-sister was his girlfriend. It all ends with the two friends leveling their guns at one another.
    • The second season makes it even more of a downer by showing what happened immediately afterwards: Suzaku beats Lelouch senseless, Kallen runs away rather than doing anything to help, and Lelouch is dragged before the Emperor, who laughs in his face before giving him False Memories via Mind Rape, all in order to lure C.C. out. He spends an entire year living under these altered memories until C.C. returns and undoes the damage. Of course, since this is just the beginning of the second season, things start looking up quickly.
      • Define 'up.' This is Code Geass, the series where The Universe does everything in its power to screw over the protagonist in every/any way possible. Every time anything looks 'up' a minimum of three other things are required to go wrong to counter the 'up' within two episodes.
      • The only good thing about R2's ending is that Lelouch accomplishes his goal and the world does become peaceful. Still a downer because in order for this to happen, Lelouch must be killed by Suzaku, who must forever don the mask of Zero... not to mention the people who finally figure out his plan too late, especially his dear sister. With the rumored death of both Lelouch and Xingke the world is now in the hands of three people Nunnaly, Suzaku, and Ougi, and things are very likely to be hard for the three of them.
  • Diabolo ends with the main character, Ren, killing his evil best friend and cousin, then committing suicide-by-cop. There are only two characters left standing by the last page, and they're side characters: a prosititute and a guy with six months to live.
  • Minky Momo: Classic magical girl anime from the 1980s, Minky Momo, ends with Momo, the main character, and princess of the Land of Dreams, being run over by a truck. She dies rather anticlimactically. However, she is reborn later as a human, but by then, the show's over.
  • Witchblade features the Witchblade breaking down and slowly destroying Masane's body (which it doesn't do in the Original version), and when she finally dies, her daughter's only indication that she died is a tiny shell made from Masane's remains.
  • Franken Fran stars apprentice Mad Scientist Fran (who looks like a cross between Sally Ragdoll and Terra) who can perform miracle surgeries, but seems to be unheeding of the consequences. Of course, this being a "Little Shop Of Horrors"-style manga, a downer ending is all but guranteed. For instance, Fran's emergency surgery on a girl who just rejected a homely boy saves her life, teaches her humility and the power of love, restores her body, brings the two of them closer, and suddenly transforms her into a giant praying mantis who eats her boyfriend the first moment they're alone. To the girl's credit, she did seem to like him for who he is and not how he'd taste. It's also an Outer Limits Twist, as well..
  • Haibane Renmei ends with the main protagonist departing the world in which the story takes place and heading off, alone, into a realm of which absolutely nothing is known, except that nobody ever returns. That the entire story is, in essence, a build-up to this moment doesn't make it any less heart-wrenching. This troper shed a tear.
    • Um. Did you watch the end of Haibane Renmei? Reki certainly wasn't the main protagonist (Rakka was) and the alternative outcome was an eternity trapped in what is heavily implied to be Puragtory, separated from everyone she knew and loved and endlessly tormented by her own raging feelings of self-loathing. It was certainly a Bittersweet Ending, but if you consider it a Downer Ending in the way you described then I feel you've missed the point of the series somewhat.
  • Tsukihime has these in about half of its routes, especially in the True Ends.
    • Arcueid, continually losing her power, in the end leaves her lover behind and goes back to eternal sleep in her castle, forever dreaming of her times spent with him.
    • Akiha's route ends with the protagonist killing himself to restore her sanity, though it is hinted in the fandisc sequel that he might still be alive. Her normal ending simply has her spending the rest of her life as a mindless bloodsucker.
      • Actually, the story "A story of the Evening" that's on the fandisc, outright states he lives.
    • Hisui's ends with her sister Kohaku, the mastermind behind most of the game's events, killing herself in guilt and to let Hisui live in peace.
    • The Epilogue, taking place after any (or all) of the routes, has the protagonist once again meeting the woman who taught him to value life. He thanks her for all she had done; during their talk, it is revealed that the protagonist will only have a few years left to live, less if he continues to use his Mystic Eyes.
      • Well......This Troper felt very happy after the Epilogue. Because it sort of gives a sense of happiness in that the protagonist has conciously done something good with his Mystic Eyes and therefore has enjoyed his life rather than be sad with it.
  • The plot of Fate/stay night revolves around There Can Be Only One, so most of the cast are killed off one way or another. Only the Unlimited Blade Works route is exempt.
    • Fate ends with Saber (Gender Bender King Arthur) and Shiro winning the Grail War, but because they won, Saber must now disappear. The last thing she says to him before she goes is, "I love you." She then wakes up back in her own timeline, fatally wounded and moved from the battlefield by Bedivere; she asks him if it was possible to see the same dream if she fell asleep again. She instructs him to return Excalibur to the lake, and after he does, finally dies.The last line goes to Bedivere: "Are you seeing it, King Arthur? The continuation of your dream...?"
    • Heaven's Feel "short" Ending has Shiro defeating Black Saber with his Deadly Upgrade, but his mind is destroyed from going Beyond The Impossible. The Normal Ending has Shiro accomplish his task of destroying the corrupted Grail, but again, he dies from overload, and Sakura spends the rest of her life waiting for him to return (he doesn't).
      • There is an even earlier ending where Sakura becomes evil and psychotic, forcing Shiro to choose between his ideals (saving the lives of others) and the one he loves (mass-murderer). If the player chooses the ideals, Sakura's death emotionally unsettled Rin; it is implied that the War ends with Shiro, having become another Emiya Kiritsugu, killing all the remaining Masters (including Ilya and Rin) and destroying the Grail. Really, most of the longer and more complex Bad Ends can be considered Downer Endings, considering that the story takes place in a Multiverse.
  • Narutaru, the anime, had No Ending. In the manga, however... Every character got their own little downer ending, for one thing, but it all culminated when everyone in the entire world dies except for Shiina and Mamiko, both of whom are pregnant. The briefest glimmer of hope is given in the final pages, which show Shiina's daughter and Mamiko's son, in an Adam And Eve Plot.
  • Zeta Gundam.
  • At the end of Angel Cop, All the main and secondary characters are dead, Japan's government doesn't change at all despite our heroes' efforts, and it's headed toward a complete economic collapse.
  • Often referred to as one of Yoshiyuki "Kill Em All" Tomino's happier endings, the ending of Heavy Metal L-Gaim isn't an upper to any significant degree, even if everyone kind of screws themselves over in reality. Sure, all the heroes live, but the villain succeeds in his plan to kill the main characters family off by causing irreperable brain damage to the hero's little sister, and in a bit of a stupid move on his part, he goes to live alone with her on some planet away from everyone else in the team. Meanwhile, neither Love Interest gets the nod, the best friend and the fairy sidekick may think they are dying of radiation poisoning and leave the group to wander alone somewhere, and even the dude who does the Heel Face Turn doesn't get to be with the one he loves.
  • Junji Ito's Uzumaki. Everybody succumbs to the curse of the spiral. Everybody. And it'll keep happening, again and again...
  • Despite the fact that the mood in the School Days anime starts very happy and then gradually goes downhill, the ending is still a big shock when the pregnant Sekai kills the male protagonist Makoto with a knife, then gets slaughtered brutally by her rival Kotonoha, who slices her open with a hacksaw to see if she's really pregnant. Kotonoha then carries Makoto's head around on her sailing trip. Brrrr! "Nice boat", indeed.
    • Likely the only positive thing about this ending is that Makoto, here a dimwitted and lecherous scumbag who uses the girls around him for his own pleasure gets what he deserves.
  • Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~ ends with protagonist Sora returning to her hometown and succumbing to her heart condition. This is especially egregious since she seemed to be mostly fine for the largest part of the series.
  • The third season of the Sailor Moon could qualify for this trope. Particularly at the end when Sailor Moon tries to give Mistress 9 the Holy Grail, thinking it's Hotaru who needs it to overcome the demon. It isn't, unfortunately. Said Grail gets fed to Pharoah 90 who proceeds to start the world and tossing senshi around like salad. Then Hotaru finally overcomes Mistress 9 and becomes Sailor Saturn....and proceeds to enter Pharoah 90's force field in order to kill it. Sailor Moon manages to power up and follow her into the offscreen battle...only to return from the battle badly hurt and with a reincarnated baby Hotaru, looking rather...shellshocked to say the least. On top of that, Not only is the Grail never recovered, but Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune come back the next episode to kick her ass as a last test, and once they fully accept Moon as their leader, they have to leave and Hotaru is taken away.

Video Games
  • Half Life 2, Episode 2 ended with Eli Vance getting brainsucked by tentacled Advisors while his daughter and a helpless Gordon Freeman watch, horrified. Fade To Black with her weeping over his body.
    • Some could say that Half-Life: Blue Shift is the only game in the franchise with a happy ending, as Barney and three other scientists manage to escape Black Mesa before the place detonates.
    • The games have endings that are somewhere between Downer Ending and Bittersweet Ending — in each installment the Big Bad is destroyed or at least thwarted, but right after that (or as a consequence of that) things just get worse. Well, they have to do something to keep the series going...
    • The original series? For Half-Life and its expansion, Opposing Force, Gordon is placed into statis as some sort of mercenary by the G-Man, and Adrian is apparently frozen for eternity, respectively.
  • Halo 3 ends with Master Chief and Cortana floating helplessly in deep space.
    • Actually it's a Bittersweet Ending; since "the fight is finished", and the Covenant and the Flood are no more, although MC is marooned in intergalactic space, years away from being found, and presumed dead. Thus the book is pretty much closed.
      • The Legendary ending shows the wrecked ship drifting toward an unknown planet, a sort of Cliff Hanger that may never be resolved.
  • Kingdom Hearts ends the first game with Riku trapped behind the door to darkness, Kairi separated from Sora, and Sora's party at the footsteps of "Castle Oblivion", which would become the setting for Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories.
  • XIII, the cel-shaded first person shooter based on the first half of the comic series of the same, ends with a Cliff Hanger after The Reveal of the conspirator, with the protagonist in an impending doom situation. Due to poor sales, the developers declined to adapt the rest of the story in game format.
  • Call Of Duty 4 ends the Prologue Act with The player in the shoes of President Al-Fulani, watching his nation collapse all around him as he's dragged off to be executed. Act I ends with the player's helicopter getting caught in the blast radius of a nuke bomb detonation; the player survives the crash long enough to stand up several times, painfully crawl to the downed helo exit ramp, and THEN die. And in the final mission, Every single member of the player's squad except the CO is executed while wounded and unable to retaliate. Its even worse because all of these guys had just saved the world and reinforcements are literally seconds away from saving the day.
  • Games in the Grand Theft Auto series have mostly had victorious endings, ranging from "Okay, there's no corrupt cop trying to ruin our lives any more, we're fine" to "I rule all of Vice City now! Mwa ha ha ha haaa!". Grand Theft Auto IV, however, has a darker and more sincere narrative, and ends with Niko's cousin/best friend being accidentally shot dead at his own wedding; Niko gets his revenge, but it doesn't make him feel better. There is an alternate ending, though... in which Niko's girlfriend gets killed instead at the same wedding. Yayyy.
    • Of course, the alternate ending is a bit happier as at least Niko still has Roman, whereas in the other one, Roman is dead and Kate has left Niko. Still, neither ending is very happy. Maybe that's why this troper loves the game so much.
    • You also forgot GTA:Advance You learn that your partner in crime Vinnie who was planning to get out of Liberty City with you never had such intentions. He apparently croaks early on, but was planning to eliminate you so you dont get caught up to him. You managed to kill him and escape from Liberty, but not without seeing 8-ball get arrested, the first contact aside from 8-ball killed, and Cisco, a Cartel dealer who you were friends with, crossed the heart of the Yazkua lady after apparently sleeping with her. A real bittersweet ending indeed
  • The Castlevania series' bad endings:
    • In Harmony of Dissonance, if you defeat Maxim in Castle B, but without the JB and MK Bracelets equipped, Maxim and Lydie both die. This is in contrast to the best ending, where Maxim and Lydie both live to tell the story...well, except Juste's opposed to telling the story to Lydie.
    • The Dawn of Sorrow bad end is possibly one of the worst: Despite overcoming his Superpowered Evil Side the first time in Aria, Soma could succumb to his dark side by failing to hold onto a Love Token Mina gives him, making it a very, very cruel and ironic ending considering the circumstances.
  • Fallout has the player character get the Vault its needed water chip, and save the world from The Master, but he'll still get exiled at the end, as the Vault's denizens are now terrified of him. The clip of him dejectedly walking back into the wastes afterwards while the Ink Spot's "Maybe" plays in the background is a pretty powerful scene. In an alternative ending (depending on the player character traits chosen at the beginning, or the character's alignment, or the player's ability to press the "initiate combat" button before the Overseer walks away), the player responds to this rejection by killing his boss in a violent fashion. It's almost alright, though; the intelligent Death Claws that moved into the Vault sometime between the first and second games built a little memorial for him.
    • The Death Claws don't make it, though... unless you manage a lightning quick playthrough in game time.
  • Terranigma ends with the lead character ceasing to exist because he destroyed the evil entity that was the source of his life. He is 'rewarded' for this by The Powers That Be by being allowed one last day in his pre-heroic life along with his old friends - all of whom will cease to exist along with him - before dying. The credits are superimposed over the last dream of the protagonist as he fades away.
I thought that the after the credits bit implies that he still exists in some form.
  • Any of the Suikoden games, unless you have recruited the 108 Stars of Destiny.
  • You want a REAL videogame Downer Ending? You beat Digimon World 3, and what do you get? Only a FMV of the end boss exploding, its wreckage falling down to Earth like pretty shooting stars, and then the credits roll... with a catchy end song over an ugly background. And that's it. For a game based around Level Grinding (but quite fun) the end is... something of Gainax proportions.
    • At least in the PAL version you can continue playing after the end boss, but if you haven't collected the Lost Forever</