Basic Trope: A Downer Ending comes to finish an otherwise happy story, or what seems to look like a Happy Ending turns out to be a Downer Ending.
- Straight: Hiro, Darcy, Jackson, Charlotte and Ruby successfully defeat Emperor Evulz against the odds... but during the fight, Evulz poisoned Darcy, and the others search desperately for a cure, until they finally accept that it's hopeless. Darcy dies shortly after.
- Exaggerated:
- Evulz poisoned all of the Five-Man Band, and they all die a horribly slow and painful death. Then, Shadow seizes this chance to carry out Evulz' goals, creating The End of the World as We Know It. In other words, our heroes didn't come close to stopping it — they just delayed it.
- Up until this point, the story was a Sugar Bowl full of Sweet Dreams Fuel. However, the ending is horrible, twisted and terrifying induced, not even comparable to anything that happened prior.
- Alice kils Solaris using the Sword of Wrath but The Corruption results in a Face–Heel Turn and she becomes worse than Solaris.
- Darcy's death causes a chain reaction in which Charlotte is Driven to Suicide, and she jumps off the Blood-Face Cliff which awakens the evil spirit of Dth'gtha which rains lightning down from the clouds and causes the entire world to flood blood.
- The last part of the story turns into a Shoot the Shaggy Dog
- Downplayed: A Sudden Bittersweet Ending.
- Justified: The characters never knew about a powerful villain that shows up at the last minute as Diabolus ex Machina.
- Inverted:
- The story starts with a Downer Beginning, and never gets any darker after that.
- The ending looks like it's going to be a Downer Ending, and then we get a Surprisingly Happy Ending.
- Earn Your Happy Ending
- Subverted: But then they do manage to cure Darcy, at the last minute.
- Double Subverted: Darcy then sets out to search for his parents, of whom he was seperated from at the start of the story. Turns out they didn't survive Evulz' reign.
- Parodied:
- Hiro eats the last cookie and Darcy acts like everyone he knew is dead.
- Alice mentions how she suspected that something bad would happen in the ending. Her clothes disappear and there’s a Smash Cut to the credits before everyone realises she’s naked.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: There is a perfectly proportionate Happy Ending (or Bittersweet Ending or Downer Ending, whatever have you).
- Enforced:
- Executive Meddling forced the writers to make a Downer Ending because, True Art Is Angsty.
- There would have been a lot of Fridge Horror, if they hadn't ended the story on this downer note.
- The actor's on set death came without warning and forced the producers to rewrite the ending accordingly as it was too late to recast the role.
- Lampshaded: "I knew something would come along to twist this ending!".
- Invoked: The writers put in the Downer Ending for one last twist and/or shock value.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Everything that follows the defeat of Evulz is just a tornado of bad news, leading our heroes to wonder if defeating Evulz even mattered in the end, as The End of the World as We Know It still happens.
- Reconstructed: It's time for one final showdown with The Grim Reaper, and the victory of the battle ends up saving the world for good, and everything else is happily resolved.
The world is saved! Back to Sudden Downer Ending - whoops, I just pressed the doomsday button.