History BadFuture / ComicBooks

** The "Here Comes Tomorrow" storyline from the end of Grant Morrison's run on X-Men.

* ''ComicBook/DaredevilEndOfDays'': Not the darkest future of the Marvel Universe, with Spider-Man, the Punisher, and Nick Fury, among a few others, still around, but certainly not the brightest future, either. As if Bullseye finally triumphing over Daredevil and murdering him wasn’t bleak enough, it was also revealed that Daredevil crossed the MoralEventHorizon in the eyes of Hell’s Kitchen when he [[spoiler: killed Kingpin]]. And it’s not just Daredevil, Black Widow and the Fantastic Four are said to have died quite some time ago, the Avengers are nowhere to be found, groups of SHIELD Helicarriers patrol New York, Stark Tower is now an automated museum, the Falcon (Sam Wilson) is now the U.S President, which sounds good until you remember that the VP is named [[ComicBook/NormanOsborn Osborn]], and certain heroes have their legacies and names shilled, with things like Hulk Burgers, Hammer Insurance, and a kind of whiskey with Hawkeye’s name on it.

* ''ComicBook/TeenTitans'':
** In the "Titans Tomorrow" arc, [[FutureMeScaresMe the Titans themselves are the villains who took over]].
** There's also a storyline in the 90s involving a group of Titans going into the past to kill Donna Troy and prevent the birth of Lord Chaos. Lord Chaos created this dystopic world where he controls everything with drugs. That future was averted when his past self Robert Long was killed in a car accident.

* ''ComicBook/IJoker'' depicts a future where Gotham is ruled by a cultish religion centered around Batman.
* Waverider of the Creator/DCComics crossover series ''ComicBook/Armageddon2001'' traveled from the future of 2030 to find the superhero that will become the [[FallenHero Monarch]]. The Monarch rules the Earth with an iron fist and controls everything. This one subverts the premise by having a character from the bad future go back to the present, instead of sending present day characters to the future. Due to ExecutiveMeddling, the story was changed, originally Monarch was supposed to be [[spoiler: Captain Atom]] but in the finished version, he's [[spoiler: Hawk from Hawk and Dove]].

* ''ComicBook/TheNew52FuturesEnd'' event deals with not one but ''two'' bad futures, the second following on from the first. The first is set [[ExtyYearsFromPublication five years into "our" future]], where a lot of bad things have already happened, including a GreatOffscreenWar between two universes, several major superheroes being killed off, and Mr Terrific [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking has become]] [[TookALevelInJerkass a jerk]], and the second is set decades later, with Brother Eye having taken over the world with its OMAC drones.
* In the 75th issue of ''[[ComicBook/{{Shazam}} The Marvel Family]]'', the Sivana family invokes this by time-travelling to the then-future year 1960 and teaming up with the Plutonians to conquer all the other worlds - the only remaining free planet is Earth, and even then it's under siege from the Sivana armada. Luckily, the Marvels and their friend Dexter travel to 1960 to help the future inhabitants of Earth set up a space academy and fight back against the armada.
* ''ComicBook/BatmanBlackAndWhite'': The story "Legends", which revolves around a mother telling her son a bedtime story about a mythical hero of the distant past who rid the gothic city of all evils before disappearing once his duty was done, pans out at the end to reveal that Gotham in the far future has come under rule by a totalitarian regime. But the pointy-eared shadow descending on a militia thug in the last panel suggests it may not last...

* ''ComicBook/XMen'':
** The "ComicBook/DaysOfFuturePast" storyline ("This issue: Everyone Dies!", which, in the future, they did) acted as TropeCodifier and germinated a thousand similar plots in other {{superhero}} comics both related to and independent of the X-Men books.
** The "Here Comes Tomorrow" storyline from the end of Grant Morrison's run on X-Men.
** The spin-off title ''ComicBook/NewMutants'' did this several times, as one of the characters was a time-traveler with less than perfect control.
** It is telling that one of the ''nicest'' futures seen in X-Books was in the miniseries ''X-Men: The End'', where the school is reduced to a crater with most of the students still inside and half the X-Men die in battle with old enemies and alien invaders. The latter part is revealed to be an interview with [[spoiler:U.S. President Katherine Pryde]]. That's not even going into the aforementioned "Days of Future Past", or, in the [[WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries first animated series]], "Time Fugitives", where the initial efforts to prevent a disaster in the past lead to an even ''worse'' future.
** The world of ''ComicBook/EarthX'' falls under this trope ([[SlidingTimeScale sort of]]), and notably has Angel discuss the "Days of Future Past" storyline which is nearly its opposite. He suspects their attempts to avert that future actually made things worse. "Living our days in fears of futures now past is no way to live."
** The ''ComicBook/AgeOfApocalypse'' is ''not'' a bad future, since it's contemporaneous with the timeline of the story it spun off from, but it shares a large number of features, including a villain ruling the world, different loyalties than in the main timeline, cooler outfits, and generally being a CrapsackWorld. Apocalypse's ArchEnemy ComicBook/{{Cable}} does originate from a timeline 2,000 years in the future, one that is also ruled with an iron fist by Apocalypse.
** From the O5 X-Men’s perspective, the current era is this in ''ComicBook/AllNewXMen''. Mutants are even more feared and hated than they were in their time, their [[ComicBook/ProfessorX beloved mentor]] is dead (and turns out to have been secretly kind of a bastard), superheroes as a whole have degenerated into warring gangs of petty jerks, and the X-Men have been taken over by a [[ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} sociopathic asshole]]. Additionally, all their lives turned out to have really sucked: ComicBook/{{Cyclops|MarvelComics}} is a globally-reviled terrorist and all his friends hate him, [[ComicBook/JeanGrey Marvel Girl]] and her entire family are all dead, Angel has [[SuperpoweredEvilSide gone crazy]], ComicBook/{{Beast|MarvelComics}} turned into a monster and ComicBook/{{Iceman}} is [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking still in the closet]].
** In the ''ComicBook/NewXMen'' arc "Too Much Information", [[Characters/NewXMenAcademyX David Alleyne]] (Prodigy) asked Emma Frost to remove the mental block that prevented him from retaining the knowledge he absorbs telepathically. She does, and the comic skips ahead to David curing cancer and AIDS...at the cost of his friend Josh's life. Then it skips 18 years ahead to show David as [[DrunkWithPower President of the US]], who plans to [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans bring about world peace by destroying China]]. [[spoiler:It turns out to have all been a dream created by the combined powers of Emma and Dani Moonstar, based on David's own subconscious fears.]]
** ''ComicBook/XMen2019'' might very well be a lampshading of how often the X-Men seem to run into these. The very premise is founded on Moira having lived through nine timelines and seeing mutants being doomed in each of them.
* ''ComicBook/OldManLogan'': the ComicBook/RedSkull rules the world, all the heroes are either dead, in hiding, given up or just plain corrupt ([[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk the Hulk]] has become the vile patriarch of a sizeable clan of inbred cannibalistic deformed hick offspring), and the world is pretty much a PostApocalyptic wasteland.
* In a 2018 (note that year) ''ComicBook/CaptainAmerica'' storyline, Cap finds himself awakening from a block of ice into a ruined America. He's told by a resistance fighter that a mysterious figure set off nukes that wiped out heroes and then took control of the country, preying on the fear of the populace to take control. The elites rule while the rest wallow in filth. Walking around the ruins of the Lincoln Monument, Cap begins a speech on how he doesn't know "how many generations it took to tear down the American dream" but he's going to fix it. He starts to tell Liang about an "ancient document" called the Bill of Rights that can inspire them and he'll read it to them.
-->'''Liang''': Cap, we've heard of the Bill of Rights. How long do you think we were frozen? This is '''2025'''.
* In ''ComicBook/Marvel2099'', a Great Cataclysm killed off most of the Marvel superheroes nearly a century ago. The remaining world is a CyberPunk Hell where sickeningly corrupt {{MegaCorp}}s have replaced the government, allowing them to charge people subscriptions to police protection, overturn court decisions, or secretly feed their own employees addictive drugs to boost sales. ''Doctor Doom'' is the one who sets things aright.

* ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk'':
** In ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulkFutureImperfect'', the Hulk was once pulled into a bad future where, after a global nuclear war killed most of the world's superheroes, the Hulk himself, having renamed himself the Maestro, had taken over, having gone insane due to the massive amounts of radiation he absorbed during the war.
** ''ComicBook/ImmortalHulk'' features a particularly dark one: [[spoiler: Billions of years into the future, the Hulk (utterly controlled by [[TheAntiGod the One Below All]] after fully eating away Bruce and Devil Hulk) kills off Franklin Richards and Mr. Immortal to take the role of Galactus's successor. Becoming a true Breaker of Worlds, in issue #25 it succeeds in destroying all life in the next universe, leaving a dark, dead, utterly broken abyss where it resides entirely alone. The last living being in that universe tries to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong and avert this timeline... except they may only have created a StableTimeLoop.]]
* ''ComicBook/UncannyAvengers'': The Apocalypse Twins were raised in a potential future where the ComicBook/RedSkull succeeded in turning the world against mutants, leading to them being rounded up into concentration camps. And if it's anything like the Skull's StoryboardingTheApocalypse moment in Issue 4, this is just part of a plan to get the world to start sliding down the slippery slope into a fascistic PoliceState.

* The ''Rhythms of Darkness'' story in the Marvel ''ComicBook/{{The Transformers|Marvel}}'' comic. Cybertron has been devoured by Unicron, the Decepticons have turned the Americas into a hellish wasteland, and there are only a few Autobots still alive.
* The final issue of the ''Worst X-Man Ever'' miniseries takes place several years into the future after [[spoiler:Riches]] kills Xavier and leads mutantkind into enslaving humanity and ruling the world. The mutant supervillains manage to flourish (with the exception of [[spoiler:Magneto]], who is reduced to a CrazyHomelessPerson) while the surviving X-Men who tried to fight are either enslaved or have simply given up. When [[RealityWarper Miranda]] reveals that she's been using her power to ensure ComicBookTime and DeathIsCheap in the mainline universe, Bailey chews her out for allowing her homeworld to be reduced to a such a terrible place. [[spoiler:After Bailey uses his power to kill Riches, Miranda undoes the universe, having been waiting for her friend to have a "proper" conclusion to his story so that he can be immortalized in the form of a comic miniseries.]]
* In ''ComicBook/ZombiesChristmasCarol'' the vision the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows Scrooge is this. The majority of the population are undead with all their reasoning gone, the few remaining humans hold out futilely in Scrooge's empty house, Fred's whereabouts are unknown, Bob Cratchit is murdered by his zombified family, and an undead Scrooge rises to lead the zombies.
* 2016-2018's ''ComicBook/{{Thanos}}'' series has a possible future where he succeeded in wiping out nearly all life in the universe, became known as King Thanos. The last survivors are [[ComicBook/ThePunisher Frank Castle]] who had been turned into ComicBook/GhostRider and later a [[NinjaPirateRobotZombie Herald of Galactus]] that went GoneMadFromTheIsolation, the Hulk reduced to a pitiful wreck begging to be {{mercy kill}}ed and Silver Surfer, now known as the Fallen One. King Thanos enlists his younger self to kill him so he can be with Death, though not without a fight. Present-day Thanos beats his older self and seeing him beg to be killed disgusts him so much that he grants him CruelMercy, goes back in time and vows to never become like him, effectively erasing this timeline from existence.

* ''ComicBook/AvengersForever'': A plot-point is Immortus's actions over the decades being attempts to prevent these coming about. The team wind up in two different versions; a slightly different version of ''ComicBook/{{Killraven}}'', where there are a few superheroes fighting off the Martians, and an alternate version of the 31st century where the Avengers have become the army of an unstoppable expansionist human empire, the thing Immortus is trying to prevent, because otherwise his bosses, the Time Keepers, will wipe out humanity. [[spoiler:At the climax, the Avengers discover that in fact the chances of this future happening are less than forty-two percent.]]
* Speaking of ''ComicBook/{{Killraven}}'', when it first started it was one of these. Published in the 70s, it predicted that in 2001, the Martians would return for round 2, and win. Earth of the 2020s is a blasted wasteland, with mankind reduced to either to hiding or being cattle for the Martians. While most of the stories were a bit mum on whether it was the future of Marvel's characters, some made clear that yes, there were superheroes around once. Of course, then 2001 [[ComicBookTime came and went]] without any Martians at all, but other Marvel stories have shown there are alternate versions of Killraven's timeline out there, waiting to happen.

* ''ComicBook/TheTriganEmpire'' had a StoryArc in which a humble herdsman found himself in a BadFuture in which yet another treacherous military officer (where ''did'' they keep coming from?) had killed off the imperial family and become dictator. He later got home and had to prevent the BadFuture coming to pass (symbolic first gesture, uprooting a sapling that he had seen grown to a tree in the future).
* Alan Moore's ComicBook/{{Spawn}}[=/=]ComicBook/WildCATsWildStorm miniseries is entirely based on this trope. Spawn and the [=WildCATS=] get thrown into the future where the world is ruled by a tyrannical super-sorcerer and most of our heroes are secretly fighting against him. The twist is that Spawn himself turns out to be the tyrant, having been given the idea by visiting this future in the first place. Our heroes manage to undo the bad future when [[spoiler: Spawn finds out one of the resistance members is actually his ex-wife's daughter, and then she dies a moment later. Spawn promises to never let that happen, which undoes the timeline. But of course, it just means even MORE angst for ol' Spawny.]]
* [[ComicBook/SanjayAndCraig The comic adaptation of]] ''WesternAnimation/SanjayAndCraig'' kicked off with a plot where one was/would have been caused if Vijay [[MakesAsMuchSenseInContext let the titular characters eat other food than hot wings]]
* The UK ''ComicBook/SonicTheComic'' seemed to ''love'' playing with this.
** There's a strange example of this trope: early in the run the heroes find themselves transported TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, into a world where Robotnik now rules... and stay there, struggling for the majority of the rest of the comic's run to defeat and overthrow Robotnik.
** There's also a plot where Robotnik tried to make an evil Sonic clone, which ages way, ''way'' too fast. He still finds a use for it, though, by deliberately semi-invoking BadFuture, making it believe it's from a future where Sonic's overconfidence gets the resistance killed, and somehow came back to try and warn Sonic of what's coming.
** Other instances included a played straight BadFuture involving a race of Metal Sonics taking over, and a Bad Future-esque ''Present'' that came about by Robotnik managing to become a god, and [[ItsAWonderfulPlot deleting Sonic]] [[RetGone from history]].
* In ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'', we get glimpses of the time period Silver comes from (200 years after the time the main series is set in) - an unexplained disaster has destroyed almost the entire world, except a few scattered pockets of civilization, and Silver is constantly going back in time to try and find the cause of this disaster so that he can [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong undo it]]. At one point, he stumbled onto an AlternateUniverse that was an even ''worse'' BadFuture than his, one where Knuckles became the evil [[PhysicalGod Enerjak]] and killed almost everyone on the planet - main cast included - leaving only a handful of [[LaResistance rebels]] fighting him.
** As Silver's story progressed, we do find out what happened: a traitor against the Freedom Fighters finally killed the heroes and helped bring about the end of the world. However, because of how things went, no one knows who did so. Harvey Who ultimately helps Silver piece everything together: [[spoiler:It was Princess Sally, in her roboticized form of Mecha Sally, who killed the Freedom Fighters. There was no traitor - just that he had no idea what roboticization was.]]
** There's also the alternate future that Eggman -- originally Robo-Robotnik -- came from. Among other things, his last act before coming to Mobius Prime was to ''nuke'' the world.
** The ''[[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture X Years Later]]'' timeline, after being [[CosmicRetcon altered]] so that [[KnightTemplar King Shadow]] was in charge, became one of these.
* ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW'' also features Silver, so of course one of these is involved. In ''VideoGame/SonicForces'', he came back in time to prevent a future where the Eggman Empire rules the world. In Issue #8 he returns and reveals that now the future is even worse, as it's now ''utterly lifeless''. [[spoiler: Sonic eventually comes to the conclusion that this is a result of the [[ZombieApocalypse Metal Virus]] reaching its logical conclusion and breaking down everything it's infected.]]

* The death of [[NobleDemon The Raider]] creates one in ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'': his son is convinced it was all Paperinik's fault and swear to destroy him: fifteen years later Paperinik's SecretIdentity is revealed to the world and he is a ''wanted terrorist'', his hideout was bombed down,[[RobotGirl Lyla]] was deactivated, the TimePolice was shut down and its job given to a society at the order of [[TheSyndicate The Organization]]... and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Angus is running for President]].
** This is also the plot of issue 12. Thanks to the villain ([[spoiler:Geena]]), Donald becomes Eidolon's successor and supervises the development of droids; additionally, he influences the moral debate over droids' personhood, partially thanks to the influence of the aforementioned villain. Thing is, the villain wanted to create a ''Good'' Future 23rd century where droids and "biologicals" have equal rights; instead, the end result is a 23rd century where Droids widely display supremacist tendencies and a civil war is about to happen.
* In the ''Series/DoctorWho''/''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' crossover comic ''[[ComicBook/StarTrekTheNextGenerationDoctorWhoAssimilation2 Assimilation]]'' the 11th Doctor shows Picard that if the Cybermen take over the Borg they will end up assimilating all humanity.

* Played with in ''ComicBook/TransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye''; [[spoiler: Brainstorm traveling back in time]] creates an alternate timeline where the Functionist Council took over Cybertron, turning the planet into a dystopic police state where any class of Transformer that doesn't serve an overt purpose is either killed or exiled. However it's discovered that while Cybertron sucks in this reality, the rest of the universe is seemingly ''better'' than the main timeline, as the Great War never occurred. However this gets double-subverted; [[spoiler:The Functionist Council plan to make an army, and take their horror show to the rest of the universe.]]
* ''ComicBook/WarlordOfMars'' has a distant future where Mars was colonized by Earth forces that had terraformed the planet and enslaved the local natives with the resistance lead by [[BigGood John Carter]]'s distant descendant. This possible timeline is visited by Carter's wife Dejah, whose actions are implied to have solved the conflict and possibly prevented the timeline from existing in the first place.
* ''ComicBook/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesTheLastRonin'' is set 16 years after Karai’s son (and the Shredder’s grandson) Oroku Hiroto killed Casey Jones, Splinter, and all but one of the Turtles. In 2040, Hiroto and the Foot Clan rule New York City with an iron fist, April O'Neil has a prosthetic arm and leg and is the single mother to a [[spoiler: mutant]] daughter Casey Marie Jones, and the last surviving Turtle, the titular Last Ronin ([[spoiler: Michelangelo]]) returns to New York on a mission to avenge his murdered family, save New York City, and end the Foot Clan for good.

* ''ComicBook/HackSlash'' has a bad future that Cassie is warned of by a time-travelling witch, in which the USA has been completely overrun by slashers led by BigBad Akakios. The eponymous "Final" arc sees the events that would have caused this averted.

* ''[[ComicBook/GIJoeVsTheTransformers G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers II]]'' features a Bad Future where the Decepticons have wiped out most of humanity and the only remaining resistance comes from the Dreadnoks and a severely disfigured Duke who has lost most of his limbs.
* Parodied in one ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'' comic, where Spongebob's "living drinking straw sprinkler" comedy act leads to children injuring themselves while trying to imitate it, which in turn leads to straws being banned forever.

* ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy:'' Vol. 2 deals with several of these, usually involving the 31st century coming to a sudden and spectacular end. During ''War of Kings'', half the team gets bounced through several, eventually ending up in one ruled by the Universal Church of Truth. They get rescued by Kang the Conqueror, who informs them that because of events in the 21st century, ''every'' future is being overruled by one where the Magus has conquered the universe.

** It is telling that one of the ''nicest'' futures seen in X-Books was in the miniseries ''X-Men: The End'', where the school is reduced to a crater with most of the students still inside and half the X-Men die in battle with old enemies and alien invaders. The latter part is revealed to be an interview with [[spoiler:U.S. President Katherine Pryde]]. That's not even going into the aforementioned "Days of Future Past", or, in the [[WesternAnimation/XMen first animated series]], "Time Fugitives", where the initial efforts to prevent a disaster in the past lead to an even ''worse'' future.

* ''ComicBook/OldManLogan'': the ComicBook/RedSkull rules the world, all the heroes are either dead, in hiding, given up or just plain corrupt ([[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk the Hulk]] has become the vile patriarch of a sizeable clan of inbred cannibalistic deformed hick offspring), and the world is pretty much a PostApocalyptic wasteland.

* The ComicBook/IncredibleHulk was once pulled into a bad future where, after a global nuclear war killed most of the world's superheroes, the Hulk himself, having renamed himself the Maestro, had taken over, having gone insane due to the massive amounts of radiation he absorbed during the war.

** In the ''ComicBook/NewXMen'' limited arc "Too Much Information", [[Characters/NewXMenAcademyX David Alleyne]] (Prodigy) asked Emma Frost to remove the mental block that prevented him from retaining the knowledge he absorbs telepathically. She does, and the comic skips ahead to David curing cancer and AIDS...at the cost of his friend Josh's life. Then it skips 18 years ahead to show David as [[DrunkWithPower President of the US]], who plans to [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans bring about world peace by destroying China]]. [[spoiler:It turns out to have all been a dream created by the combined powers of Emma and Dani Moonstar, based on David's own subconscious fears.]]

* 2016-2018's ''ComicBook/{{Thanos}}'' series has a possible future where he succeeded in wiping out nearly all life in the universe, became known as King Thanos. The last survivors are [[ComicBook/ThePunisher Frank Castle]] who had been turned into ComicBook/GhostRider and later a [[NinjaPirateRobotZombie Herald of Galactus]] that went GoneMadFromTheIsolation, the Hulk reduced to a pitiful wreck begging to be {{mercy kill}}ed and Silver Surfer, now known as the Fallen One. King Thanos enlists his younger self to kill him so he can be with Death, though not without a fight. Present-day Thanos beats his older self and seeing him beg to be killed disgusts him so much that he grants him CruelMercy, goes back in time and vows to never become like him effectively erasing this timeline from existence.

* In ''ComicBook/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesTheLastRonin'' is set 16 years after Karai’s son (and the Shredder’s grandson) Oroku Hiroto killed Casey Jones, Splinter, and all but one of the Turtles. In 2040, Hiroto and the Foot Clan rule New York City with an iron fist, April O'Neil has a prosthetic arm and leg and is the single mother to a [[spoiler: mutant]] daughter Casey Marie Jones, and the last surviving Turtle, the titular Last Ronin ([[spoiler: Michelangelo]]) returns to New York on a mission to avenge his murdered family, save New York City, and end the Foot Clan for good.

* Waverider of the Creator/DCComics crossover series ''ComicBook/{{Armageddon 2001}}'' traveled from the future of 2030 to find the superhero that will become the [[FallenHero Monarch]]. The Monarch rules the Earth with an iron fist and controls everything. This one subverts the premise by having a character from the bad future go back to the present, instead of sending present day characters to the future. Due to ExecutiveMeddling, the story was changed, originally Monarch was supposed to be [[spoiler: Captain Atom]] but in the finished version, he's [[spoiler: Hawk from Hawk and Dove]].

* ''Comicbook/XMen'':

** From the O5 X-Men’s perspective, the current era is this in ''ComicBook/AllNewXMen''. Mutants are even more feared and hated than they were in their time, their [[Comicbook/ProfessorX beloved mentor]] is dead (and turns out to have been secretly kind of a bastard), superheroes as a whole have degenerated into warring gangs of petty jerks, and the X-Men have been taken over by a [[ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} sociopathic asshole]]. Additionally, all their lives turned out to have really sucked: Comicbook/{{Cyclops|MarvelComics}} is a globally-reviled terrorist and all his friends hate him, [[Comicbook/JeanGrey Marvel Girl]] and her entire family are all dead, Angel has [[SuperpoweredEvilSide gone crazy]], Comicbook/{{Beast|MarvelComics}} turned into a monster and ComicBook/{{Iceman}} is [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking still in the closet]].

** ''ComicBook/JonathanHickmansXMen'' might very well be a lampshading of how often the X-Men seem to run into these. The very premise is founded on Moira having lived through nine timelines and seeing mutants being doomed in each of them.

* At one point in an [[Comicbook/TheAvengers Avengers]] and Comicbook/PowerPack crossover, the Pack gets thrown into one of these by Kang, where they meet badass-looking future versions of themselves.

* In ''ComicBook/JusticeLeague2018'', Lex Luthor travels one million years into the future and learns that he's become a DarkMessiah, with all of humanity following his philosophy of personal empowerment and embracing one's inner self rather than aspiring to be something better. As a result, he created a VillainWorld where [[HumansAreBastards mankind embraced the worst aspects of human nature]] and subjugated the rest of the universe, [[CardCarryingVillain literally calling their way of life "Doom"]]. [[NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist To Luthor, this is a paradise]] and his only issue with it is the fact that [[DeadArtistsAreBetter nobody appreciated his ideas in his time]], which he [[LegionOfDoom immediately attempts to correct]].

** From the O5 X-Men’s perspective, the current era is this in ''ComicBook/AllNewXMen''. Mutants are even more feared and hated than they were in their time, their [[Comicbook/ProfessorX beloved mentor]] is dead (and turns out to have been secretly kind of a bastard), superheroes as a whole have degenerated into warring gangs of petty jerks, and the X-Men have been taken over by a [[ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} sociopathic asshole]]. Additionally, all their lives turned out to have really sucked: Comicbook/{{Cyclops}} is a globally-reviled terrorist and all his friends hate him, [[Comicbook/JeanGrey Marvel Girl]] and her entire family are all dead, Angel has [[SuperpoweredEvilSide gone crazy]], Comicbook/{{Beast|MarvelComics}} turned into a monster and ComicBook/{{Iceman}} is [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking still in the closet]].

* The ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica had one where a group of Nazi supervillains used a device called "The Great Darkness Engine" to rob all metahumans except their own of their powers and set up a planetary barrier to prevent any alien allies from coming to the rescue. They swiftly take over the world, put most of their enemies in concentration camps and institute a Fourth Reich. Its only thanks to a long-term resistance plan from inside the camps by the surviving Justice Society and Justice League that the future is undone. Only Mr Terrific, who was sent back in time to prevent the ambush that let the Nazis win, remembers the Bad Future.

* ''ComicBook/TheNew52FuturesEnd'' event deals with not one but ''two'' bad futures, the second following on from the first. The first is set [[ExtyYearsFromNow five years into "our" future]], where a lot of bad things have already happened, including a GreatOffscreenWar between two universes, several major superheroes being killed off, and Mr Terrific [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking has become]] [[TookALevelInJerkass a jerk]], and the second is set decades later, with Brother Eye having taken over the world with its OMAC drones.

* In the ''ComicBook/GrantMorrisonsJLA'' story "Rock of Ages", destroying the eponymous rock results in a Bad Future where "Darkseid is". (In complete control of Earth and slowly rooting out the survivors, having laid waste to New Genesis, that is.)

* The ''Rhythms of Darkness'' story in the Marvel ''ComicBook/TheTransformers'' comic. Cybertron has been devoured by Unicron, the Decepticons have turned the Americas into a hellish wasteland, and there are only a few Autobots still alive.

** From the O5 X-Men’s perspective, the current era is this in ''ComicBook/AllNewXMen''. Mutants are even more feared and hated than they were in their time, their [[Comicbook/ProfessorX beloved mentor]] is dead (and turns out to have been secretly kind of a bastard), superheroes as a whole have degenerated into warring gangs of petty jerks, and the X-Men have been taken over by a [[ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} sociopathic asshole]]. Additionally, all their lives turned out to have really sucked: Comicbook/{{Cyclops}} is a globally-reviled terrorist and all his friends hate him, [[Comicbook/JeanGrey Marvel Girl]] and her entire family are all dead, Angel has [[SuperpoweredEvilSide gone crazy]], Comicbook/{{Beast}} turned into a monster and ComicBook/{{Iceman}} is [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking still in the closet]].

* Alan Moore's ComicBook/{{Spawn}}[=/=]ComicBook/WildCATs miniseries is entirely based on this trope. Spawn and the [=WildCATS=] get thrown into the future where the world is ruled by a tyrannical super-sorcerer and most of our heroes are secretly fighting against him. The twist is that Spawn himself turns out to be the tyrant, having been given the idea by visiting this future in the first place. Our heroes manage to undo the bad future when [[spoiler: Spawn finds out one of the resistance members is actually his ex-wife's daughter, and then she dies a moment later. Spawn promises to never let that happen, which undoes the timeline. But of course, it just means even MORE angst for ol' Spawny.]]

* Parodied in one ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'', where Spongebob's "living drinking straw sprinkler" comedy act leads to children injuring themselves while trying to imitate it, which in turn leads to straws being banned forever.

* ''[[ComicBook/GIJoeVsTheTransformers G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers II]]'' features a Bad Future where the Decepticons have wiped out most of humanity and the only remaining resistance comes from the Dreadnoks and a severely disfigured Duke who has lost most of his limbs.

* ''[[ComicBook/GIJoeVsTheTransformers G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers II]]'' features a Bad Future where the Decepticons have wiped out most of humanity and the only remaining resistance comes from the Dreadnoks and a severely disfigured Duke.

** From the O5 X-Men’s perspective, the current era is this in ''ComicBook/AllNewXMen''. Mutants are even more feared and hated than they were in their time, their [[Comicbook/ProfessorX beloved mentor]] is dead (and turns out to have been secretly kind of a bastard), superheroes as a whole have degenerated into warring gangs of petty jerks, and the X-Men have been taken over by a [[Franchise/{{Wolverine}} sociopathic asshole]]. Additionally, all their lives turned out to have really sucked: Comicbook/{{Cyclops}} is a globally-reviled terrorist and all his friends hate him, [[Comicbook/JeanGrey Marvel Girl]] and her entire family are all dead, Angel has [[SuperpoweredEvilSide gone crazy]], Comicbook/{{Beast}} turned into a monster and ComicBook/{{Iceman}} is [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking still in the closet]].

* ''ComicBook/TeenTitans'' (the comic) does this in the "Titans Tomorrow" arc, in which [[FutureMeScaresMe the Titans themselves are the villains who took over]].

* The ComicBook/New52 run on Animal Man and Swamp Thing deals with this in their Rotworld Arc. Where Swampy and Animal Man are baited into travelling into the rot and come out years later to a world taken over by Rotlings with gruesome and grim showings of how the heroes of the world unaffiliated with the powers of the Red and Green (and a few exceptions) were unable to prevent the spread of the Rot around the world and were turned into monsters themselves.

* In the [[ComicBook/TheSupermanAdventures Superman Adventures]] comic "Yesterday's Man of Tomorrow", Mxy convinces Superboy that this will result if he tries to become a superhero (alleging that he will become a KnightTemplar). Unsurprisingly, this is the result when the young Kryptonian is convinced and exiles himself from Earth.
* DC's [[ComicBook/TheNew52FuturesEnd Future's End]] event deals with not one but ''two'' bad futures, the second following on from the first. The first is set [[ExtyYearsFromNow five years into "our" future]], where a lot of bad things have already happened, including a GreatOffscreenWar between two universes, several major superheroes being killed off, and Mr Terrific [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking has become]] [[TookALevelInJerkass a jerk]], and the second is set decades later, with Brother Eye having taken over the world with its OMAC drones.

** There's also a storyline in the 90s involving a group of Titans going into the past to kill Donna Troy and prevent the birth of Lord Chaos. Lord Chaos created this dystopic world where he controls everything with drugs.