History Main / DramaBombFinale

* Episode 24 of ''Anime/OsomatsuSan'' sets one up, with the segment "Letter" being about almost all of the Matsuno brothers quitting their {{NEET}} lifestyle and moving out of their parents' house one by one to get jobs...except for Osomatsu himself, who stays behind and is clearly broken up about his brothers leaving. Then episode 25 [[spoiler:completely averts this when Osomatsu gets an invitation to play a baseball game and the rest of the brothers immediately quit their jobs and go back to the StatusQuo in order to participate. This is a GagSeries, after all]].

* ''DowntonAbbey'' appears to be making this officially a thing. The first series ended with the announcement of World War 1; the second series ended with [[spoiler:the arrest of Bates on the charge of murdering his obnoxious wife. The war itself was pretty anti-climactic and had little serious impact on the family that wasn't somehow reversed]]. The third [[spoiler:looks like it's going to avoid it, with Mary and Matthew blissfully welcoming their son, until Matthew dies in a car crash in the final moments.]]

* The last episode of the fifth season of ''CurbYourEnthusiasm'' ends with [[spoiler: Larry's death]]. It doesn't last, though.

* ''DokidokiSchoolHours'' ends with the realization that Mika might not be teaching anymore due to marriage...though falls on its face after the meeting.

* ''{{Coupling}}'' does a slightly different version of this. It's not a death, but a birth, the culmination of the pregnancy that's formed the basis for a lot of the comedy in the fourth and final series. But the final few minutes are played completely serious.
* Subverted on ''{{Everybody Loves Raymond}}''. A doctor announces that they are having trouble resuscitating Raymond after a very minor surgery, but seconds later he is completely fine. Debra then made everyone swear not to let Raymond's mother know about the near-death experience, since it would bring out the worst in her motherly overprotectiveness. The episode did have a little more emotion than usual, but otherwise it had the same tone as any other episode of the series.

Compare SuddenDownerEnding.

* ''{{Potemayo}}'' attempts to do this by revealing the back story of Sunao's mother in the second to last episode, as well as aming it seem that Potemayo and guchuko were dead in the final episode, although they turned out to be merely unconscious and recovered by the end of the last episode.

* The first installment of ''WastedYouth'' is basically ''VideoGame/{{Bully}}'' as a [[WebGames Flash Game]] with absurd situations, crude humor, and outlandish characters. Then after the main plot wraps up in [[ShaggyDogStory rather shaggy fashion]], [[spoiler: you discover the missing girl's corpse buried in a shallow grave on the sports field.]] Cue CliffHanger, credits, and some ''major'' MoodWhiplash.

* ''SoredemoMachiWaMawatteiru'' Does this by having hotori write a story, and then be hit by a truck while she is reading of her failure to get the story published. While there is still some humor in this episode, it still ultimately gets played in this way.

* ''[[MahouTsukaiNiTaisetsuNaKotoNatsuNoSora Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~]]'' is for the largest part a fairly lighthearted {{slice of life}} affair--until it is announced out of left field that Sora has a terminal heart condition, to which she succumbs after fulfilling her late father's wish.

* ''OuranHighSchoolHostClub'' ends this way. It's a comedic series, though a few episodes near the end had a more serious tone, but the second to last episode ends with a huge bomb being dropped on the audience(and the main characters!) and the last episode is full of drama.

* While FruitsBasket had its serious moments, it spent most of its run as a fluffy romance. In the final storyline, [[spoiler:Tohru falls off a cliff and is severely injured, prompting Kyo to seriously think about their relationship for the first time and admitting to himself he loves her.]]

* ''{{Lexx}},'' which had for the most part had been humor of the WTF variety, turned quite dramatic in the final episode, most notably [[spoiler: the death of the Lexx, Kai's return to life only to die, and the destruction of Earth]]. (Although to be fair, some of the show's subplots and backstories were kind of tragic to begin with.)

* The second season of ''HanaukyoMaidTai'' was particularly a victim of this. The maids and slice-of-life were abruptly destroyed by ACTION, FIGHTING, and other such things in the last couple episodes.

* The final episode of ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' shows a little of this, at least when the plane malfunctions.

* ''{{Dinosaurs}}''. It's a comedy series about dinosaurs that suddenly ends with a GreenAesop in which [[KillEmAll they all go extinct]].

* [[TheMovie The finale]] of ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'' has one of Eddy's scams backfire and seriously injure the neighborhood kids. It also shows [[spoiler: Eddy's older brother routinely abuses him, and the movie ends with the Eds finally being accepted by the other kids, with no SnapBack or ResetButton or anything.]]

* ''Series/{{Blackadder}}'' finished with everybody dying in series one, two, and four. The fourth, which until then had used life in the trenches for BlackComedy, did ''not'' play this for laughs. The over-patriotic George suddenly realizes "IDontWantToDie", Baldrick asks why they can't just go home, and Blackadder's desk-jockey rival is horrified to learn General Melchett's sending him to the front so he won't miss the fun.

* ''OjamajoDoremi'' has this as its series finale, and is pulled off quite well, considering it's ''Doremi herself'' that gets the HeroicBSOD...

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!!Warning: spoilers ahead!

* Season Two of WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic ends with a two-parter "A Canterlot Wedding", which involves [[spoiler: an army of [[{{Shapeshifting}} shapeshifting]] creatures invading Canterlot, easily defeating PhysicalGod Celestia and attempting to [[TakeOverTheWorld take over Equestria]].]]

[[quoteright:322:[[Webcomic/{{Shortpacked}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shortpacked-monkey.png]]]]

* Most of the light hearted SuperSentai series such as Goonger follow this trope. The darker ones however such as Changeman or Liveman are serious already so the finale episodes generally are of the same tone as the rest of the series.

** And then it spirals into utter insanity in the ''very'' last episode.

* ''Series/{{Blackadder}}'' finished with everybody dying in series one, two, and four. The fourth, which until then had used life in the trenches for BlackComedy, did ''not'' play this for laughs. The over-patriotic George suddenly realizes "IDontWantToDie", Baldrick asks why they can't all just go home, and Blackadder's desk-jockey archenemy is horrified to learn General Melchett's sending him to the front so he won't miss the fun.

This has been done in [[BritishSeries British shows]], where [[BritishBrevity a season might be six episodes]], and a series might be three seasons. ''{{Blackadder}} Goes Forth'' is an especially memorable example, which is all the more remarkable since it came from a series which had played the deaths of all the characters at the end for comedy in the first two seasons.

* ''Series/{{Blackadder}}'' finished with everybody dying in series one, two, and four. [[spoiler:Series four did not play it for laughs.]]