Warning: As a Spoilered Rotten Ending Trope, EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE on this list is a spoiler by default. You Have Been Warned.
Sudden Downer Endings in Video Games.
- Age of Empires III details the rise of the Black family. The Warchiefs expansion pack ends in a shockingly downbeat way when Chayton Black allies with the Lakota and fights at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. He is never seen again after that and nobody knows if he is even still alive.
- Baba is You: You're playing along, solving mind-bending puzzles that feature cute, quirky characters and (mostly) colorful visuals, and then the secret ending happens, where you (as Baba) annihilate all of reality by making the simple rule "All is Done". Oh, and even the credits are messed up. Baba is Whoops.
- Bayonetta 3 isn’t exactly a light-hearted game by any means, but it still has this stylish and playful tone to it. That’s why it comes across as jarring when the game ends with Jeanne getting killed right before the climax, and Singularity actually breaking Bayonetta’s Umbrian Watch. Since Umbra Witches need that watch in order to survive, this means that her death is inevitable. Although Bayonetta does beat Singularity (with lots of struggling), she still ends up dying. Luka comforts her in her final moments as the two of them are Dragged Off to Hell. At the very least, Viola is still alive, and she takes the role as the next Bayonetta.
- BIT.TRIP FATE is a pretty dark game compared to the other games in the series, but the ending
takes the cake. Upon defeating Timbletot, CommanderVideo Turns Red, gets into position...and rams himself into the Timbletot, destroying him and killing himself. After the final point tally, CommandgirlVideo arrives at the site of the final battle, realizes what just happened, and sheds a Single Tear. - The ending to Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light, which had up to that point been a fairly normal, relatively upbeat (no major betrayals, no major massacres, nobody dies, etc.) RPG, can only be summarized by The Bad Guy Wins.
- The true ending of Braid. Open to interpretation, but it would appear that the princess was trying to escape from the protagonist to the antagonist, not the other way around. Or she's the atomic bomb. Either way, or both ways, she appears to explode, which is sort of hard to think of as a positive ending.
- In Broforce, using the fire button instead of the melee button when asked to shake the president's hand will result the main character killing the president and getting imprisoned because of it.
- Call of Duty: Ghosts: You completed your mission to kill Gabriel Rorke, blasting his train with a Kill Sat, knocking it into the ocean, shooting Rorke with a Hand Cannon, and leaving him to drown. You and your brother barely make it out alive, but you manage to swim back to shore. Congrats, you did it, so sit back and watch the ODIN satellite take care of whatever's left of the Federation... at least until you look to your right and see that Rorke actually managed to survive, at which points he knocks you and your brother out and drags you off to torture and brainwash you into evil.
- In Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, should Silas go through with his revenge after sniffing out one of the patrons as the man he's after, the whole thing ends tragically with everyone being horrified and Silas regrets the whole thing.
- In Cheesy, right after you defeat the final boss Cheesy throws the last ingredient into the magic pot, and then jumps inside it. He falls into a room filled by mouse traps; he looks around and shrugs. Then the screen goes black and you hear the mouse traps being activated and you hear him scream in pain.
- The Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn "Fun Park" bonus campaign is about the Brotherhood of Nod trying to take over an island that is populated with dinosaurs. The last mission changes things by suddenly having the player control the dinosaurs, who succeed in driving the Brotherhood out.
- Conker's Bad Fur Day. After a humorous South Park-styled adventure, Conker inadvertently becomes King of All the Lands. But at a price. His girlfriend, Berri, died before the final boss fight, and he fails to realize that he might've had a chance to bring her back to life. By the time he realizes it himself, it's too late, and it's highly implied that he's spiraling towards booze-filled self-destruction. In the original ending, things were a bit less...subtle. In the bar scene at the end, Conker was supposed to shoot himself in the head. The only reason this was changed was because the creators were planning on a sequel where he inadvertently becomes Emperor of the Known Universe...and also spends his riches, all of it, on alcohol.
- The Amstrad CPC version of Contra had the heroes defeating the evil Red Falcon and saving the Earth...but, by destroying Red Falcon, it activated a bomb which destroys the Earth anyway!
- Crush Crush is a silly, lighthearted Idle Dating Sim for most of its running time. Even when you accidentally create a Dark Portal that threatens to end all of reality, the game doesn't take it too seriously...until you finish the final girl's levels and she reveals to you that the only way to stop the portal from ending the world is for someone pure of heart to make a Heroic Sacrifice and you are given the choice of letting her sacrifice herself (which causes her to become permanently unavailable until the next time you reset the game) or sacrificing yourself instead (which causes an ending cutscene to play of all the girls weeping over your sacrifice). While neither ending prevents you from resetting the game and continuing to play it, both of them are surprisingly somber and basically force you to sacrifice something to be able to complete the game.
- In Cyberpunk 2077, if you die during "(Don't Fear) the Reaper", one of the endgame missions where you let your allies survive and you don't collaborate with Arasaka, no matter how much friendship have you developed, how much you getting along with others, many of them end up absolutely devastated upon hearing the news about your death (with few of them berating you for your unintentionally selfish decision and Stupid Sacrifice), even though you're doing a Suicide Mission on your own as Your Days Are Numbered.
- Dead Space 3: Awakened: After destroying the Tau Volantis moon, Isaac and Carver return to Earth only to find that the Brethren Moons got there first.
- DeathSpank is a comedic hack and slash RPG that prides itself in its wacky, lighthearted Monkey Island-esque humor. Then, at the end of the sequel, DeathSpank's closest ally and possible love interest goes batshit insane due to the Thongs of Power's corrupting power, and he must either let himself be killed to fuel her delusions of godhood or cut her down himself, which greatly troubles him as he mourns and buries her. Unlike literally the entire rest of the series, this is all treated as somber and tragic as possible. And the canonical choice? He kills her.
- The normal ending for Distorted Travesty 3 has Jerry and Claire defeat both Hexor and the Warmaster and proceed to bring down the Warship, only for Hex to have put a safeguard in both control consoles. Jeremy, Jerry, and Claire all perish when the Warship is destroyed, leaving Chao as the only survivor, and in the end, Hex got what he wanted, his own demise and that of Jeremy.
- Later, an unlockable epilogue was added which leads to a Golden Ending where Jeremy was able to push the Reset Button, sending things back before they stormed the Warship, destroy the Parasite controlling the Eldritch Abomination, who brings down the Warship on its own, and Jeremy manages to defeat Hex, resulting in a happy ending for everyone instead.
- Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter for the DS. Basically, all of the adorable Raposa in the village are killed, G-Rated style (they fade away). One of the characters, named Mike, fades away last. The voice of Mike's sister Heather is heard asking the Creator, the god-like figure in the game, to bring her brother back, which at first seems like a heartwarming moment. Then her message changes and she was really trying to say, "God, just bring back my little brother to me." It is now revealed that Mike and Heather are actually humans, and the whole story with the village of cute animals was All Just a Dream that Mike was having. It wasn't a regular dream, either; it turns out that Mike and his family were in a car crash, which killed his parents, injured his sister, and put him in a coma. note It took a couple of years for a sequel to come out, which made the ending more bittersweet (the Raposa did survive after all, it turns out).
- The End Times: Vermintide: Not present in the core game, but the update "Waylaid!" adds a Sequel Hook level in which the villain turns out to have survived his Disney Villain Death and kidnaps the heroes. It ends on a pessimistic note for both the heroes and the city of Ubersreik — the sequel opens with the heroes breaking free, but Ubersreik has fallen in their absence.
- The 1996 point-and-click Adventure Game Fable (no relation to the more famous game series from the 2000s) originally had an ending which reveals that the entire story was indeed a "fable"... told by a delusional murderous criminal in a prison cell. It was such a sudden shift from the game's otherwise humorous nature that many players found it incredibly unpleasant, to the point where the publisher ended up changing the ending post-release, though international versions still contain the original ending. What's worse, a bit of Fridge Logic could tell you that the original ending pretty much explains all the Anachronism Stew throughout the game...
- In Chapter 1 of FAITH: The Unholy Trinity, Ending 1 where John chooses to Mercy Kill the possessed Amy results in him being suddenly pulled over by a spontaneously-appearing police officer in the middle of The Lost Woods and arrested for her murder.
- Fantasy Zone is a weird and silly Cute 'em Up that involves a sentient space ship called Opa-Opa who has to stop the planet Menon from stealing other planet's money to build a giant army and find out who is responsible by shooting cute, bizarre looking enemies. In the end, it turns out that Opa-Opa's long-lost dad is responsible, and Opa kills him and saves the Fantasy Zone, but wonders if it was worth it. The end, begin a new loop.
- Fire Emblem:
- In Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, certain characters get bad endings for little reason. Est, for example, feels guilty over her uselessness forcing her husband Abel to commit a Face–Heel Turn to protect her, and leaves him without saying a word.
- Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade talks about what happened to all the characters after the ending. All of them turn out pretty okay getting married and whatnot...oh except for Canas who dies along with his wife in a snowstorm. Nino also disappears and leave two children behind since either she or her husband is wanted by assassins. Both are actually Foregone Conclusions if one has played Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, but nobody except Japan would know this at the game's release.
- Downplayed in Fire Emblem Engage with Alfred. In his solo ending, his terminal illness flares up and kills him shortly after the game's events. However, it's noted that while his reign was brief, it was fruitful and he did manage to accomplish good with what little time he had.
- Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. You die. Admittedly, the game is one of the darkest in the franchise (if not the darkest), but it's typically quite happy. To make matters worse you die suddenly and rather young (likely in your 50s or 60s).
- House of Ashes has one ending that sees the heroes of the game survive the night after spending it fighting monsters almost nonstop, make it back to the surface, only to all die in the final five minutes as they wait for evac because those same monsters overwhelmed them at the last second.
- The Conquest ending to the otherwise giggles-and-rainbows game Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 has Nepgear taking the lives of the 7 other CPUs, including her own sister, in the most heartwrenchingly depressing death scenes you can imagine.
- Haydee has three possible endings, and none of them is a happy one. The "Escape" ending, however, is the most cruel one : Haydee manages to reach the last room of the complex, her freedom is seemingly inches away... Then the door she came through closes shut behind her. And the door leading outside is still locked, meaning Haydee is now trapped inside that room, with no way out, until she dies.
- Iron Helix: After destroying the Obrian, the player character goes to Starbase Amethyst, only to immediately get detained, interrogated, and tortured by Admiral Arboc, who was helping them throughout the game, but now is demanding to know how much the protagonist knows about "Project: Iron Helix". For some reason, this cutscene is only in the Sega CD version. In the Mac and PC versions, the game simply ends with the player character being summoned to Starbase Amethyst, leaving their fate ambiguous.
- More of a Sudden Bittersweet Ending but Klonoa: Door to Phantomile reveals at the end that Klonoa came from another world and his entire life in this world was a lie made by the good guys (including Huepow) to stop the Big Bad. Nevertheless his adoptive grandfather is still dead, and he and Huepow must be separated for good as the world is returned to normal.
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky has a short Playable Epilogue where your two permanent party members, Estelle and Joshua, enjoy the Queen's birthday festivities after defeating the final boss and preventing the villain's coup. They've also individually worked up the resolve to talk to each other about their romantic feelings for each other. Then recurring character Professor Alba appears to talk to Joshua while he's waiting for Estelle, and he reveals that he's The Man Behind the Man and part of a shadowy evil organization called Ouroboros, Joshua used to be a member and assassin until he failed to kill Estelle's father and Alba, whose real name is Weissmann the Faceless, wiped his memory and has used him as a spy and puppet for the last five years, and everything the heroes did was just furthering his own plan. Joshua later confesses it all to Estelle, drugs her with a kiss and tells her to forget about him, and runs away. Cue end credits.
- Dreaming Treat, part five of the Lonely Wolf Treat series, is a heartwarming story where Mochi and Treat start a garden together and Moxie helps Treat work out her romantic feelings. In the end, Treat finally admits her feelings to Mochi and becomes an Official Throuple with her and Moxie... and then finds out that some wolf-hating vandal came by and wrecked Mochi's garden while they were away.
- If you get all the Chalices and get the best ending in Medi Evil II, Dan and Kiya go back to the 1300s in the time machine, only to arrive at Zarok's lair. Then a Wham Shot reveals that the One-Winged Angel monster Zarok has Palethorn's face, and the creature lunges at the camera, implying that Dan and Kiya were eaten. It crosses into Diabolus ex Machina and Gainax Ending territory, maybe it was meant to be a Sequel Hook but it's exceedingly unlikely we'll get one at this point.
- The various books in Odin Sphere give each of the playable characters relatively happy endings, with Velvet making progress in trying to avert Armageddon. Then Armageddon happens anyway, and everyone dies except for four of the five main characters. Things get better after that, but the sudden swerve towards the sadistically cruel can be surprising.
- The original ending of Portal was moderately happy, with the player successfully defeating the Mad AI GLaDoS and escaping from the facility. However, in the patch released shortly before Portal 2, an unseen robot is heard, and it drags Chell back into the nightmarish Aperture Science Facility.
- The best ending of Prey (2017) implies that you made the best out of a terrible situation. You rescued the humans that could be saved, you defeated an unexpected and terrible foe and have evidence on the wrongdoings of an Evil, Inc.. And then it turns out it's all been a simulation! The bad guys won, or at least have infested Earth. Morgan, and likely everyone you 'saved' were likely Dead All Along, and you are a monster dreaming of being a human who can slaughter any remaining hope of humanity's survival right at the last moment. Yeesh.
- The Quarry: If you didn't collect enough evidence of the werewolves' existence, the post-credits stinger reveals that the surviving teens are now in custody and facing murder charges on account of the people who were killed in the events of the story.
- Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction appears to end on a happy note. Tachyon and Slag are defeated, the Cragmites are permanently banished again, and Polaris is now free from the former's tyranny. But then the Zoni reappear and kidnap Clank, taking him back to their home where he is put into a coma. Ratchet and the rest of the cast, even Qwark and Rusty Pete, are left standing in silent horror just before the fade out to the credits.
- Reah: Face the Unknown ends with a final encounter with the phantom Alchemist, who delivers an ominous speech that blows away anything presumed about the player's reason for ever coming to the planet, Reah. Everything the player had seen from the beginning was actually made up by the Alchemist, as part of his "cybernetic dream", and that the alchemist wasn't just a ghost, but some kind of AI. Furthermore, the player has already come along the path he took before, hence why everyone along the way knew him. It's implied that the alchemist had wiped the player's memory, and used him as a test subject of sorts for some kind of experiment. And on top of it all, the alchemist intends to keep using this person for as many times as he sees fit. The player character normally talks a lot, but in this scene, he has no words to say. After the alchemist stops talking, the game then abruptly turns to a "GAME OVER" screen, and no possible alternate endings exist for this game.
- Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse is a comedy Lovecraft Lite that, while Darker and Edgier than the previous games, is still very lighthearted and playful. The ending involves Max being Killed Off for Real.
- The Narrator's clear and unmistakeable announcement that it would happen should have removed the 'suddenly' qualifier, but that was taken with a hearty dose of Like You Would Really Do It, leaving the shock when it actually did happen.
- There was also a last-minute, post-credits inversion of this trope didn't so much negate the Downer Ending as even it out to Bittersweet Ending. The Max that died was still the same one who had been with Sam since "Chariot of the Gods", when time travel copies of Sam and Max was created. And if the Max who joined with Sam at the end was the "real" one, then that would mean the real Sam had died during his adventures elsewhere.
- These events are mentioned in Poker Night 2. Strangely, Max confirms Sam's version of the events instead of his own.
- Shovel Knight prequel King of Cards' downer ending was intended, but the story of this sole adventure makes it fall into this trope. After having united all of the kingdoms behind him, defeated the Enchantress and broken her spell on his companions, King Knight decides to betray them and to enter in the Order of No Quarter, to their dismay. The final cutscene, where he is the Puppet King of Pridemoor Keep, is ambiguous, but saddening in both cases: is he mourning his companions and his mother, or is he happy to get what he always wanted? Shovel Knight's entrance in the throne room is only the last straw.
- Sly 2: Band of Thieves ends this way. Granted, the Big Bad is finally gone for good (both of them) and Sly gets away in the end, but the gang disbands due to Bentley getting crippled for good during the fight and Murray blaming himself for it. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves' first chapter is the three coming back together and confronting their lingering feelings from that disaster.
- Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time becomes a Downer Ending when Penelope betrays the Cooper Gang for her own selfish gain (but escapes prison and continues sending postcards to her now-ex Bentley), Sly disappears without a trace and the Bad Guy nearly wins. The secret ending reveals that Sly is alive in Ancient Egypt, setting up a sequel which has yet to be announced.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- The Bad Ending to the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit), in which Sonic fails to get all the Chaos Emeralds before fighting Silver Sonic, and is punished for it by not completing his adventure, and instead showing a montage of him running from the middle of the day into the dead of night while the credits roll. The bad part? When he stops running, he looks up into the sky and sees Tails's face in the sky (compared to both of them in the good ending), implying that Eggman now has him a prisoner forever. Despite Word of God confirming otherwise, many players who saw this thought this display meant Tails was dead.
- In Sonic Battle, after spending the entire game learning, forming strong friendships, and growing more powerful, with the player watching Emerl grow from babyhood to a mature young robot, Eggman overloads him with power and makes him go crazy. You then play as Sonic to kill him. The game ends on Sonic and Shadow lamenting the tragic turn of events whilst Tails comforts a devastated Cream.
- Tales of Xillia 2 is one of the goofier games in the Tales series, but features one of the darkest endings. In the Julius Ending, you decide not to fight your corrupted brother, and instead protect him against your party members, killing them all and in the end leaving him corrupted with no hope for a cure and humanity doomed. Luckily, much like the above-mentioned Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 which shares a similar ending, you have to choose to do it.
- Ultima:
- Ultima V ends this way; the Avatar returns to Earth to discover that his house has been robbed while he was away saving Lord British. This was apparently done to drive home the moral that the path of virtue is its own reward.
- Ultima VIII has the Avatar doing some very unethical things to get out of Pagan and return to Britannia. In the end, he succeeds but arrives in a burning wasteland with a giant statue of the Guardian looming overhead.
- If you complete a Gotta Kill Them All run in Undertale, both variants of the Golden Ending gain a Stinger that transforms them from ordinary happy endings into bad ones. After completing the Gotta Kill Them All run, the world is destroyed, and you have to sell your SOUL to the Fallen Child to get it back. The added stinger strongly implies that they intend to use that SOUL to take control of the Player Character and go and Gotta Kill Them All again without you.
- In Word Realms, you're trying to save the local village from a monstrosity called Lord Nightmare before he can come to full power. The art style is very cartoony, combat consists of making bad puns at your opponent, and dialogue is generally very genre-savvy bordering on fourth-wall-breaking. If you lose to Lord Nightmare when you fight - and you probably will, unless you know the trick - the rest of the game is very bleak, leading to an ending where you either unwittingly destroy half the town, leaving it in ruins, or unwittingly destroy half the town and murder almost everyone living there.
