Line #53 FromBadToWorse/Literature


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9	* Events going south very quickly when they had already been pretty bad is why ''Literature/AiNoKusabi'' ends as a {{Tragedy}} with at best a BittersweetEnding.
10	* The beginning of ''Literature/AmericanGods''. Having been in prison for three years, the protagonist gets out, only to find out his wife and best friend have died in a car crash. He later finds out that the car crashed because his wife was performing oral sex on his best friend while he was driving. Believe it or not, it gets worse: [[spoiler:later, the protagonist is crucified.]]
11	* In Creator/PhilipRoth's ''Literature/AmericanPastoral'', the main character's daughter goes from being a happy, loving child (albeit with a speech condition) to a viciously angry war protestor. Then she blows up a post office and kills a local doctor. Then she disappears. Then a crazy woman who claims to know her comes to her father and forces him to do everything from give her money to have sex with her if he wants to see his daughter again. Then she also disappears, and he doesn't see his daughter for five years. When he does, she's become a Jain and is starving herself to death. Then he finds out his wife is cheating on him and that his former lover had sheltered his daughter for half a week without telling him. Oh, and all this time the reader knows that his daughter is going to die before she reaches thirty.
12	* The ''Literature/BookOfJob'' in Jewish and Christian literature, illustrates the compounding tragic woes of an honest God-fearing farmer who loses everything: his health, his family, his reputation, his farm. Satan wagers with God that the only reason why Job is so humble is because God has granted him so much in his youth, and thus a wager was set forth that Satan can get Job to curse God. As it turns out, Job ends up cursing himself and wishing he was never born, but continues to uphold the fact that he has never denied God, even when his friends accuse him of doing so. After a rebuke from God that puts Job back into his proper place and perspective, Job repents, and God restores to him all that he lost.
13	* Voltaire's ''Literature/{{Candide}}'' is long stretches of this, with occasional respites of getting better so things can get worse again.
14	* ''Literature/ChaosWalking'':
15	** At the very end of ''The Knife of Never Letting Go'', [[spoiler:Viola is shot. With a bullet. From a gun]]. Then, when they finally reach the city they had been trying to reach throughout the entire book, it turns out [[spoiler:the army that had been chasing them got there first]]. Then the book ends.
16	** Used again in ''The Ask and the Answer''. [[spoiler:Sure, Viola and Todd just got done beating the crap out of President Prentiss. But there's still two armies fighting each other, one of which is led by someone that might be worse than Prentiss. Oh, then it turns out the alien Todd let escape earlier in the book went and gathered an army of its own. Three armies and no sign of a stop in violence to see. Then the book ends]].
17	* The ''Literature/ChungKuo'' series by David Wingrove takes this trope almost as far as it can go in regards to the human race. Over 8 books we get: a world wide clandestine civil war, which develops into open revolution, then open war that killed practically everyone on the Mars colony, followed by a ColonyDrop that leads to the utter collapse of all civilization in North America (when next we see them they are basically techno-tribes fighting wars killing millions for possession of North America). Next we have a plague that cripples Southern Europe, which is partly good because no one notices (outside the government of City Europe) that a quarter of a million people died when a storm hit France. Europe and Western Asia go to war with Africa. The rulers of South America, Australia, Africa and all of Asia are removed from power, causing civil wars there and the rise of Warlords. Civil War (notice the pattern?) breaks out in Europe and the ruling Emperor kills 20 million of his own people just to hold off the enemy, and only survives because the Warlords backstab the new Fuehrer of Europe. Then the [[BigBad leader]] of the original rebels returns from Pluto with 100 million copies of himself, killing half the human race. Then a plague breaks out at the end killing off basically 99.99% of the human race (which by this stage probably doesn't consist of many people)...and it gets even worse. Eventually, Earth returns to just being inhabited by plants and the only surviving humans were already leaving Earth 10 years before and colonized another planet..but only after some of them help [[AlternateUniverse another Earth]] from economic collapse even worse then their Earth did. All this because a General didn't do what he was told.
18	* In ''Literature/CodexAlera'', everything involving the Vord. Whenever the might of Alera's legions and citizenry gets unleashed against the Vord, something goes spectacularly wrong. Then the next major encounter involves even stronger Aleran forces in an even better position and something goes spectacularly wrong. Repeat until end of series. Most common forms: It turns out that the surviving Vord forces are three times the size of the dead ones, Takers arrive unexpectedly, the queen takes the field, and/or the Alerans are abruptly outflanked.
19	* In ''Literature/CoilingDragon'', Linley's actions as a young man opened a hole to a prison plane that permitted one [[PhysicalGod powerful being]] to escape, which directly leads [[spoiler:to the destruction of the kingdom's capital.]] Years later, when [[spoiler:more escape and begin murdering millions of people, Linley and others go to stop it. During the fight, an attack breaks open a second hole, which allows countless more, and some more powerful, gods to escape.]]
20	* ''The Commander's Daughter'' by J. Jakovlev starts with the heroine Valya, a 14-years-old girl, stuck in the Brest Fortress during the siege. The situation is pretty bleak from the beginning (the fortress is caught by a surprise attack, they are nearly out of of ammo, out of meals, even out of '''water'''), but at least people assume help is underway and the main army will reconnect with the fortress shortly. But then it is revealed that the army is pushed back 400 km and the German troops keep advancing, meaning no help, and escape proves blocked by Germans, meaning everybody inside (including Valya) is doomed. Then Valya's friends Dima and Mitja are killed and the end is imminent...
21	* The Creator/IainMBanks novel ''Literature/ConsiderPhlebas'' begins with Horza, the protagonist, manacled to the wall of a prison cell that is also a septic tank, and the sewage level is rising. He does get rescued just before drowning, but by a ship that ends up on the losing side of a space battle. Horza survives by being thrown out of the airlock of the doomed ship, to drift helplessly in a spacesuit with only a few hours of air left. He's rescued ''again'' -- by a crew of pirates who force him to fight one of their number to the death. Having survived this, he is allowed to join the crew . . . and has to help them carry out raids and heists that, due to the crew's incompetence, always fail and get some of them killed. And it just keeps going downhill from there.
22	* PlayedForLaughs and [[PlayedForDrama Drama]] in ''Literature/ConstanceVeritySavesTheWorld''. When rogue Siege Perilous agents attack Larry's estate just after bringing Connie there, he tries to assure everything is under control, only for everything to spiral.
23	--> '''Larry:''' Everything's under control. It's only one division that's having the issue.\
24	'''Connie:''' What division is that?\
25	'''Larry:''' Assassinations. We'll be fine. Just so long as they didn't send Scimitar.\
26	'''Apollonia:''' Scimitar has been identified leading the assault.\
27	'''Larry:''' It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Just so long as Hardcastle isn't here too.\
28	'''Apollonia:''' Lord Peril... ''[Holds up a picture of Hardcastle.]''\
29	'''Larry:''' It'll be fine. This facility is built to withstand a bomb blast. We already have reinforcements on the way. We only need to hold them off for half an hour. Forty-five minutes tops.\
30	'''Apollonia:''' Uh... sir, there are reports of preemptive strikes against--\
31	'''Larry:''' [[ObviouslyNotFine Fine. It'll be fine.]]
32	* Goto Dengo's whole ordeal in ''Literature/{{Cryptonomicon}}'', from when Americans attack until he meets up with his fellow Nipponese again. I mean, first the bombs, then the flaming oil everywhere, then the whole nearly dying of thirst and exhaustion thing, then the ''sharks'', then the ''other'' sharks, then the sharp coral, then the poisonous snake, then the ''cannibals'', then an Australian patrol, [[spoiler:then a death sentence for surrendering to the enemy]]...
33	* As Virgil says in ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'', as awful as the punishments of the sinners in hell already are, they will ''worsen'' after the Last Judgement.
34	* The Chaos War in the Literature/{{Dragonlance}} novels.
35	** And then it got worse when the Dragon Overlords showed up and enslaved Krynn.
36	*** And then the War of Souls happened, and it got even WORSE.
37	* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': Harry Dresden will usually start the story with a major, but not intractable, problem. Then he'll find out that some sort of absurdly dangerous magical group involved. Okay, that's going to make things tougher, but -- wait, there's ''another'' one? And they don't want him reaching his goal either? And now they're holding one of his friends hostage? And the whole city and probably eventually the rest of the world will be annihilated if he doesn't do something blatantly impossible? Ah, there we go, ''now'' it's a Creator/JimButcher novel. Taken up to eleven in ''[[WhamEpisode Changes]]'', where the entire universe and everything in it seems determined to [[TraumaCongaLine eviscerate his soul]].
38	** Based on the gradually changing tone of the series and commentary from the author the tendency for it to get worse in each individual novel is a microcosm for the series as a whole.
39	* ''Literature/TheEmpiriumTrilogy'': For both Rielle and Eliana in Kingsbane. Rielle starts out the book with many dissenters who accuse her of being the Blood Queen and finishes the book [[spoiler:mindlessly killing bodyguards on her way to join Corien]]. In Eliana's case, the mission to travel back in time to stop Rielle wasn't as easy as Simon had thought, and the consequences of her brief appearance in Old Celdaria changed several people and past events for the worse. [[spoiler: Then Simon reveals that he's been working for the Undying Empire this whole time and her once thought-to-be deceased father turns out to be the Emperor's Admiral.]]
40	* ''Literature/TheFallingKingdomsSeries'':
41	** One day, Cleo and a few of her friends go shopping at a small town in Paelsia. An escalation breaks out, ending with a local dead. Paelsia and Limeros seize this as a reason to go to war with Auranos, and everything goes downhill from there. [[spoiler:[[EarnYourHappyEnding It’s not until the end of the sixth book that things lift up.]]]]
42	* Maria's chapter in ''Literature/{{Fame}}''. It starts with her traveling to an unnamed Eastern country for a writer's conference, and ends with her [[spoiler: in slavery]], through a series of Kafkaesque misunderstandings.
43	* Creator/RobinHobb seems to love this trope as well, as a lot of her plots seem to centre around "What's the absolute worst thing that could happen to my main character?" Particularly in her ''Literature/{{Farseer}} Trilogy''.
44	* World War Two memoir ''The Forgotten Soldier'' by Guy Sajer: Sajer was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in summer 1942, and went into action as a truck driver on the Eastern Front in winter 1942-43, which was when Germany stopped winning. As you can imagine, this was not all sunshine and rainbows. Then, in an excess of enthusiasm, he volunteered for an elite infantry division. He finished retraining in time to go into action in summer 1943, which was when Germany started losing, and from then on it was downhill all the way to the end of the war.
45	** PlayedForLaughs in ''Frozen Tides''. Magnus, [[spoiler:on a rush to search for Cleo]], is bucked off his horse and left to trudge through a blizzard at night. He starts to pray for the goddess to let him live so he can [[spoiler:make things right]]...and then hears a wolf howling, much to [[DeadpanSnarker his]] [[ThisIsGonnaSuck ire]].
46	* ''Literature/{{Germinal}}''. At the start of the book, the coal-miners are overworked, underpaid, and working under horrible conditions. Enter the protagonist, who convinces them to go on strike to improve their lot. Their failure is [[TearJerker more than just a little tragic.]]
47	* ''Literature/GirlsDontHit'': Joss notes that many clients seem to think killing somebody will get rid of their problems. Often however it just makes things worse, as now they can sometimes be charged with murder as well and get into even more trouble.
48	* John Steinbeck's work in general, but ''Literature/TheGrapesOfWrath'' in particular.
49	** Actually, ''Literature/TheGrapesOfWrath'' can be argued to end with a glimmer of hope. The previously self-centred Rose of Sharon uses her breast milk to feed a starving man, suggesting community can prevail where the land cannot, and that the nurturing power of women is the salvation of humanity.
50	* Author Creator/PeterFHamilton loves this trope.
51	** ''Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy'' introduces a party of colonists who begin building a village from scratch in a remote wilderness area of an undeveloped backwater planet. Unfortunately, the spot they've picked is just a short distance away from the secret base of a fugitive supervillain who likes to use MindControl to enslave people. Also, the colonists don't know that they've brought with them a group of Satanist rapists and serial killers. Then a freak accident opens a rift in the fabric of space, allowing the souls of the dead to return and possess the bodies of living human beings. The Possessed all have RealityWarper superpowers, which they use to capture more humans and summon more dead souls to possess ''them'', leading to a rapidly-expanding possession plague that spreads to hundreds of other planets before the Confederation realizes what's happening and begins trying to stop it. One of the first Possessed is the leader of the Satanist cell, who may in fact be the most evil person of the galaxy -- so terrifyingly sadistic that he drives his own possessing soul into a catatonic state, seizes control of his powers, and heads directly for Earth.
52	** The ''Literature/CommonwealthSaga'' begins with the discovery of a astronomical anomaly in a distant part of the galaxy. The starship sent to investigate it accidentally releases a truly nightmarish SealedEvilInACan: an [[OmnicidalManiac omnicidal]] HiveMind that humanity is utterly unprepared for. As the Commonwealth desperately tries to organize a defense against the invading alien hordes, it turns out that the enemy has [[ManchurianAgent sleeper agents]] everywhere, ensuring that every defensive strategy is betrayed or sabotaged, and every secret weapon the humans develop is immediately leaked to the enemy and used against them. Oh, and the characters who best understand the alien menace and how to fight it are discredited, fired from their jobs, and exiled (except for the ones who were already Most Wanted terrorists when the story began). By the end of the first book, the reader is thinking, "Man, the human race is ''screwed.''" In the second book, things get ''much worse''.
53	* The novel ''Literature/HardToBeAGod'' by Creator/StrugatskyBrothers starts by a nice, brave and kind character from a shiny {{Utopia}} being a on a medieval planet to study comparative history (Don't ask). The standard medieval world is bad enough, but then an EvilChancellor Reba usurps the power and goes all Pol Pot on educated people (where "educated" means everybody who can write his own name, unless he is an aristocrat; but even this is not a 100% protection). Then Reba [[spoiler: poisons the king and the prince and blames the protagonist on it.]] Then [[spoiler: hero's LoveInterest is [[KillTheCutie killed]], he [[BewareTheNiceOnes snaps]] and goes on RoaringRampageOfRevenge, at which point he is forcibly removed from this world, but his earlier thought indicate that because of his actions it will yet get worse on this world (because by killing all LawfulEvil {{Mooks}} he paved the way for ChaoticEvil barbarians).]] Oh, and he is now pretty much ostracized on Earth, too because of his actions...
54	* Creator/ThomasHardy adores this trope, especially in his later novels. "From Bad To Worse" could be an alternate title for ''Literature/JudeTheObscure''. [[ButtMonkey Jude]] begins his life as an unloved orphan, grows up to be tricked into marriage with a coarse woman who destroys any chance he has to reach intellectual fulfillment and then leaves him, and then falls in love with his cousin Sue, who proceeds to marry his mentor. Sue eventually runs away with Jude, but refuses to marry him, which (due to [[InherentInTheSystem Victorian morality]]) condemns them and their children to an endless cycle of transience and poverty. Their nine-year-old son pulls a murder-suicide, hanging himself and his siblings when he realizes Jude and Sue can't provide for them. Sue has a mental breakdown and leaves Jude for her first husband. Jude meets Sue privately to try to convince her to return, but finds that she blames her children's fate on her and Jude's sins and means to devote the rest of her life to religious penance. This completely obliterates any hope Jude has in both religion and humanity. His first wife then tricks him into remarrying her, just in time for him to get pneumonia and die. As a final kicker, he dies alone because his wife is out on a date with another man.
55	** ''Literature/TessOfTheDUrbervilles'' fits pretty well also. Every time you think things are going to get better for the title character, they only get much, much worse.
56	*** If it weren't for the fact that "It Tessed" doesn't sound quite right, she could be the trope namer. It's pretty hard, without introducing supernatural elements, to imagine any way it could possibly have gotten even worse by the book's close, and the thing about Tess is that she ''never'' catches a break. She's not on a roller-coaster, where she goes down, then up, then down again, even if she eventually ends up at the bottom. It's all down. There's never a single tiny bump up anywhere. Angel Clare might seem like one, but [[spoiler:he's the start of the sharpest decline of all]]. At best, he's a brief plateau in her constant descent into suck. Although, to be fair, that was Thomas Hardy's point: no matter how hard you try, fate wins in the end.
57	** A Radio 4 PanelShow about literature once had a round "Things literary characters would never say". The winner was "Anyone in a Thomas Hardy novel: 'Things can only get better.'"
58	* This could be said for any number of the books in the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series, but ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire Goblet of Fire]]'' certainly qualifies. Near the end, [[spoiler:Harry and Cedric get through the myriad dangers of the Triwizard Tournament, only to not tie for the Triwizard Tournament, instead being transported to a place where Cedric gets promptly killed, Voldemort is restored to his body, Harry gets tortured repeatedly and nearly murdered. He finally escapes and the worst seems over... until Mad-Eye, a Death Eater in disguise, brings Harry up to his office and nearly kills him again.]]
59	** It also is the turning point of the series, which from that point on becomes DarkerAndEdgier with each book.
60	** Umbridge's presence in book 5. First she votes to get Harry expelled from Hogwarts during a disciplinary hearing, then she gets a job at Hogwarts and sets a curriculum that ensures that none of her students will learn jack shit about defense. Then she starts telling the students that the whole Voldemort coming back story is a lie. Then she starts giving out detentions for calling her out on this. Then it turns out her detentions are medieval torture. Then she gets a position as a High Inquisitor, allowing her to inspect and suspend teachers who don't conform to her opinions by leveraging enormous bias on them. Then she gets Fudge to pass decree after decree expanding her power more and more and more, until [[spoiler:she gets Dumbledore kicked out and becomes Headmistress. Then she passes more decrees, turning her from Headmistress to [[TyrantTakesTheHelm absolute tyrant]].]] Then she tries to throw Hagrid in Azkaban, and gets her lackeys to almost kill Professor [=McGonagall=]. Then she reveals that [[spoiler: she was the one who sicced Dementors on Harry last summer]], making her retroactively even worse than before. ''Then'' she tries to torture Harry for information. And that's leaving out what she does later, in the seventh and final book.
61	* In ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'', [[spoiler:[[DroppedABridgeOnHim Tom Navidson's meaningless death]]]] came after [[spoiler:[[MalevolentArchitecture the house started trying to eat everyone inside it]]]]. That came after [[spoiler:Will Navidson being stranded in the labyrinth for a week]], which was directly after [[spoiler:[[DiabolusExMachina Holloway blew Jed's head off]]]]. Really, it was a downward spiral of horrible moments.
62	* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' trilogy, basically. Everything just gets worse and worse until the very end of and the epilogue of the last book. The whole thing is a ''serious'' case of [[EarnYourHappyEnding Earn Your]] BittersweetEnding.
63	* In the the alternate history novel ''Literature/JoeSteele'', the titular character -- a version of Josef Stalin who was born and raised in the United States instead of Ukraine -- becomes President and slowly turns the country into a dictatorship. But, at the very least, he maintains a facade of democracy, with his cruelties being somewhat justified and nowhere near as bad as his OTL counterpart. But near the end of the novel, he literally drops dead in office, and the ensuing EvilPowerVacuum results in [[spoiler: J. Edgar Hoover seizing control of the country and turning it into an outright PoliceState.]]
64	* The Thai novel, ''The Judgment'' by Chart Korbjitti could be described as this. Malicious gossip proceeds to ruin the life of a guy who just wanted to do the right thing by taking care of his father's insane (or merely mentally retarded) widow. Cue a downward spiral into alcoholism, social ostracization, the death of the lead's principles, recurring illness, a beating from some angry villagers, being cheated of his life savings, and death that is contrasted with the village's modernization.
65	* The first half of ''Literature/TheJungle'' by Upton Sinclair is essentially this happening over and over again.
66	* Every novel by Creator/FranzKafka. Ever. Just when you think things can´t possibly get any worse for his ChewToy protagonist, things ''always do''.
67	* ''Literature/TheKillingStar'' begins with the destruction of the majority of humankind by a sneak assault by aliens. Things don't get much easier for the survivors.
68	* '''Theatre/KingLear.''' Not only does Cordelia, the only truly good female character die (sealing a HeelFaceDoorSlam by MagnificentBastard incarnate Edmund), the memory-impaired Lear himself dies ''holding her corpse'', while ''[[TearJerker remembering how he used to hold her as a baby]]'', and it his heavily implied that Cordelia's husband ''will commit suicide'' shortly after the play ends. It can be argued that the only reason ''any'' good characters survive in this play is because [[EvilerThanThou the villains all attempt to out-evil each other]], resulting in [[GambitPileup all of their plans collapsing in a spectacular way]].
69	** As opposed to other Shakespeare tragedies? For instance, try ''Titus Andronicus''. Short version: Titus's daughter gets raped, and her tongue cut out so she can't identify her attackers. She manages to reveal their identities to Titus by writing their names in the sand, but he can't do anything. One of his sons is accused, and Aaron tells Titus he can get him reprieved if Titus cuts off his own hand, which he does; then Aaron just says ILied. (Near this point, Titus ''bursts out laughing'' because he "has not another tear to shed"). The rapists then visit Titus to mock him, which finally causes him to snap; he bakes them in a pie, tricks their mother into eating them (to be fair, she had been complicit) and only then tells her what she has just eaten, leading to a final scene in which ''all the remaining characters kill each other'' except Lucius, a FlatCharacter whose sole function in the play is to exist so there will be ''someone'' left alive to punish Aaron.
70	** To quote the Player in ''Theatre/RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead'', "The bad end unhappily, and the good unluckily. That is what tragedy ''means''."
71	* ''Literature/KnavesOnWaves'' has our protagonists attempting to traverse a narrow channel of water, suspended over a bottomless void. Then an enemy fleet decides to attack.
72	* The entire plot of ''The Legacy of Heorot'' and ''Beowulf's Children'', written by Creator/LarryNiven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steve Barnes. The story begins with a bunch of Earth's best and brightest on a ship headed to a new planet for a colonization project. It's only after they arrive that they find out that the cryogenics they used during the long trip caused ice crystals to form in their brains. So a bunch of Earth's best and brightest are stuck on an alien world -- and they all have brain damage to various degrees.
73	** Things go worse for the first time when people start to vanish, and the colonists think that a murderer is in their midst. They blame the IgnoredExpert, and leave him drugged and strapped to a table when the local wildlife comes calling: a deadly predator with SuperSpeed which is dubbed a grendel. The expert is understandably pissed, but a colonist woman tracks him down and plies him with sex to come back and kill it.
74	** Then they discover that the "fish" (which they call samlon) they've been eating are actually [[spoiler:''baby grendels'': like some species of frogs, they change gender as they mature, and the mothers tend to eat their own young when there's nothing else around. When colonists introduced Earth fish, they provided an additional food source, permitting more samlon to mature into vicious and hungry adults... and then they killed '''all''' the adult grendels, permitting '''''every single samlon''''' to become a grendel! The colonists only survive by realizing that adult grendels ''hate'' each other, meaning recorded calls and grendel blood drive them into self-destructive frenzies.]]
75	** And this is just the first book. Things somehow get much worse in the sequel after a rather peaceful TimeSkip [[spoiler:thanks to a twisted MagnificentBastard and a huge swarm of flesh-eating [[BeeBeeGun bees]] with SuperSpeed. Yup, flesh-eating bees with SuperSpeed. Thankfully things do get better in the end.]]
76	* Creator/WilliamTenn's satirical short story "The Liberation of Earth" details how two warring groups of aliens keep trading control of the eponymous planet back and forth, causing more and more damage in the process. When the two species' battle finally shifts to another solar system, they leave behind a handful of ragged human survivors scrabbling on a pear-shaped atmosphere-depleted burnt-out husk.
77	* ''Literature/LittleMushroom'' starts in a CrapsackWorld AfterTheEnd where mutated animals roam the land and the remaining humans scrape on by in two human bases where anyone suspected of having mutated into a xenogenic gets shot dead on the spot, and things just keep on getting worse and worse for the humans for the vast majority of the story. First, the Northern Base's Outer City gets invaded by the mutated animals and the survivors have to flee to the Main City, only for the artificial magnetic poles that were keeping the Earth somewhat stable to temporarily shut down after the other human base gets invaded by the mutated animals, forcing the characters to hole up in an even smaller portion of the Main City with dwindling resources. Then it's discovered that not only are the human mutations capable of occurring without any physical contact, but the mutations are happening with ''inorganic materials'' too all over the world. Surprisingly, the story still manages to pull off an ending that, while [[BittersweetEnding bittersweet]], is still more optimistic than pessimistic about the fate of humanity.
78	* In the novel ''The Mark Of The Beast'', the main character is an immortal werewolf who's lived for so long he's forgotten who he was and cannot escape from the curse of turning into a fierce werewolf during each full moon. Becoming a werewolf is heavily implied to be due to divine punishment, and as we learn the man's backstory it's apparent he deserved every single year of the punishment he received. Living so long that he's alive when man develops interstellar travel, he decided he's sneak aboard a spaceship going to another planet. No more moon, no more curse. Right? The day after he arrives he wakes up and is being interrogated by the police because he was found at the scene of a very brutal murder. It never occurred to him that the ship could be bound for a planet with multiple moons, ''and at least one of them is full every night.''
79	* This is pretty much the story of the [[Literature/MistBorn Mistborn Trilogy]]. No matter what happens, until the VERY end of the series, things get worse. Even if the good guys win. Heck, ''[[NiceJobBreakingItHero especially]]'' [[NiceJobBreakingItHero if the good guys win]]. Oh, and this is a series that starts with the world as an ash-covered wasteland under the millennium-long tyrannical rule of the seemingly immortal Lord Ruler.
80	* Literature/TheNameOfTheRose has a gradually increasing body count...and then the main setting [[spoiler: burns to the ground.]]
81	* In ''Literature/{{Night}}'' by Elie Wiesel, Elie is a Jew during the Holocaust. He gets taken to a ghetto, then a cattle train, then a concentration camp then another... And that's not the half of it.
82	** At least he survived. For a lot of Jews in similar situations, it got even worse than it got for Wiesel.
83	** Bear deeply in mind though that in no way is that a bittersweet ending. [[spoiler: Elie discovers his dehumanized figure in the mirror.]]
84	* While it happens seriously in ''The Literature/{{Nightside}}'' on numerous occasions, it's also played for laughs in an early book. John Taylor is looking for Suzie Shooter in order to get her assistance. He finds her raiding a compound of UFO survivors to get a bounty who took refuge with them. When he enters the building...
85	-->A voice spoke up from behind the barricade. "Oh, great, now it's John bloody Taylor. Okay, which of you idiots pissed ''him'' off?!?"
86	* ''Literature/TheObsidianChronicles'': Arlian loses his entire family along with everyone else he'd known at the beginning of the first book when his village is destroyed by an angry dragon. Then scavengers come and enslave him after finding him alone out in the ruins.
87	* ''Literature/OneOfUsIsLying'': the circumstances that lead to the Bayview Four being murder suspects. Addy, Bronwen, Cooper, Nate and Simon are pranked into getting detention by having phones planted in their bags. A rearending incident outside the window makes the teacher leave the room to help. Simon drinks his water and has an allergic reaction. Nate and Bronwen search his bag, only to find his Epi-Pen is missing. Cooper runs to the nurse's office, only to find ''those'' Epi-Pens are missing too. As a result, the paramedics are unable to save Simon and he dies. The police don't believe for one second that any of the above is a coincidence and decide that one of them must be the killer. Then it turns out Simon had dirt on each of them ready to post...
88	* Creator/MikeResnick does this to the Nth level in his books ''Paradise'', ''Purgatory'', and ''Inferno'' (which he admits are based upon the histories of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Uganda, respectively). Particularly appalling is the ending of ''Purgatory,'' where [[spoiler: a tree which was an historic landmark for the natives is chopped down for firewood.]]
89	* ''[[Literature/JoesWorld The Philosophical Strangler]]'' has a chapter entitled "Too Disgusting to Title" followed by one entitled "It Gets Worse". Both are accurate. The chapters chronicle the heroes descent through Hell. The next chapter, they enter The Place Even Worse Than Hell. Yes, that's its official name.
90	* ''Literature/{{Push}}'': Poor Precious, her life is [[TraumaCongaLine a long series of things getting worse and worse]] until they're a tiny bit better at the end. And then comes the sequel, which opens with [[spoiler:Precious dying of AIDS]] and gets worse [[spoiler: for her son Abdul, who goes into foster care where he's raped and beaten until he becomes an abusive rapist himself]].
91	* The first half of ''Literature/RedStormRising'' by Creator/TomClancy is a laundry list of bad news for NATO. First, the Soviets launch a MacrossMissileMassacre against the outpost on Iceland, resulting in a FiveManBand situation for the Americans. Two chapters later, a NATO carrier strike force falls victim to BombersOnTheScreen. To top it off, by Chapter 28, the DirtyCommunists make a strategic breakthrough in the town of Alfeld, West Germany. Fortunately, that book ends happily when General Colonel Alekseyev refuses to help unleash UsefulNotes/MnogoNukes after the Red Army fails to make progress.
92	* ''Literature/TheReluctantKing'': Vindium went from a mad king who killed most of his associates, to the First Consul of a supposed "republic" who killed ''anyone who disagreed with him''.
93	* Hubert Selby's ''Literature/RequiemForADream''. In fact, he was probably thinking "How could I possibly make this worse?" the entire time writing the book.
94	** On the DVDCommentary for TheFilmOfTheBook, director Darren Aronofsky recalls a conversation he had with Selby during the planning phase. Aronofsky asked if [[spoiler:Harry]] was supposed to survive the end of the novel. Selby's response: "Of course he lives. He has to suffer more."
95	* The state of the known universe in Creator/AlastairReynolds's ''Literature/RevelationSpace'' trilogy. Everything was fine and dandy in the golden age of nanotechnology, then the Melding Plague showed up and ruined ''everything''. [[spoiler: Then the Inhibitors showed up and started hunting down humanity. And then the Greenfly terraformers were released, which will devour the '''entire universe''']]
96	** Also applies to the state of the Nostalgia for Infinity; at the beginning of the trilogy, most of the ship is exposed to vacuum, radioactive, and full of malfunctioning defense automatons. Amazingly, it goes From Bad to Worse. [[spoiler: Like how TheCaptain becomes one with the ship via a strain of the Melding Plague, causing the ship to turn into a giant flying Captain, with organic goop covering it. Then it/He gets cut to bits at the end of the trilogy]].
97	* ''Literature/TheRunelords: World Binder'' is about how things go wrong for both its entire series and the world it is set in because of the efforts of TheChosenOne. Things continually get worse for the protagonists,too - [[spoiler:the climactic battle at the end]] meticulously crushes the hopes of the entire human race. Only a small incidental detail prevents it from becoming an utter DownerEnding.
98	* The ''Literature/SeafortSaga'' can be described as "Anvil drops on Seafort. Anvil drops on Seafort. Two anvils drop on Seafort. Giant anvil drops on Seafort..."
99	* There really isn't a whole lot else in ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents''. Seriously. The SnicketWarningLabel has its name for a reason.
100	* A rather big part of the ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' can be called this -- although sometimes [[HopeSpot it got better for brief periods of time]], the inability of the Noldor to defeat Morgoth was a ForegoneConclusion. Perhaps the best example of within the overall work is the story of Túrin Turambar, which invokes just about every doomed hero trope in existence.
101	* While good things ''do'' occasionally happen in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', when bad things happen, they do so in the very worst possible way. And the same goes for characters that do bad things.
102	** The Stark family motto ("Winter is coming") is an acknowledgment of how peculiarly applicable this trope seems to be to the inhabitants of the Seven Kingdoms.
103	** And this is particularly true for Stark family itself. Look at their history through the series: the first major event in the first book is Bran (son #2) getting thrown out of the window, barely surviving but leaving him crippled for the rest of his life. Then the family splits: Ned (the father) goes to King's Landing with his daughters to serve as King's Hand while Catelyn (the mother) stays in Winterfell with their sons. In King's Landing, Ned's naivete and sense of justice lead to his own execution. His daughter Sansa, quickly [[BreakTheCutie shaken out of her naive and idealistic view of the world]], is forced to endure physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her former fiancee, then-Crown-Prince-now-King -- who turns out to be a sadistic prick fond of torture and murder. Younger daughter Arya manages to escape King's Landing only to see her friends and mentor getting killed and getting captured twice. Meanwhile, Robb (son #1), leaving his younger two brothers behind in Winterfell, leads his army south hoping to liberate his father from prison. After a series of hard-won battles, he is betrayed and killed by his supposed allies, along with his mother and most of his army. Two young Starks -- Bran and Rickon -- left in Winterfell, get to see their home razed, their people killed and are forced into fleeing. As of ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'', [[spoiler: Bran and Rickon are still in hiding, [[BrokenBird Arya]] is training to become an elite assassin, Sansa is kidnapped by a creepy MagnificentBastard who can't decide whether he wants to be her father figure or her [[MayDecemberRomance lover]], while Catelyn is resurrected as [[CameBackWrong a ruthless person focused solely on revenge]]]].
104	** Their rivals, the Lannisters, have started bumping into this since ''Literature/AStormOfSwords''. First, their king, Joffrey, is poisoned during his own wedding. Then Tywin, their lord, is assassinated by his son Tyrion after he pushes the latter's buttons too many times. Cersei takes over after him, screws up royally, and ends up bankrupting the Seven Kingdoms and tarnishing the Lannisters' reputation. Just as her relatively saner uncle Kevan tries to steer the ship, he gets murdered by Varys. Ironically, the wheels start to fall off their respective and collective rollercoasters right after the Starks have all but been destroyed.
105	** Meereen as of the end of ''A Dance with Dragons''. First, the queen, Daenerys Targaryen, goes AWOL after taming her dragon Drogon. Then the Sons of the Harpy intensify their attacks towards her supporters. Then Yunkai begins their siege of the city. Then the remaining dragons are set loose and terrorize everyone, friend or foe. ''Then'' Yunkai catapults corpses with dysentery over the wall...
106	** Westeros and Essos get in on this, both, as a whole. One has sustained dynastic turmoil that leads to repeated cycles of civil war and outright uncertainty (particularly recently) in its one major, single political entity. That's... pretty bad. But, it's [[ZombieApocalypse nothing compared to what is building up on that country's northern border]] while almost nobody is paying attention thanks to the latest internal spat. And, Essos is always a roiling political game between many different City States and would-be Empires all playing for high-stakes in a slavery-based economy. With the [[TheMagicComesBack advent of baby dragons]] and other [[OutsideContextProblem Outside Context Problems]], as well as Westerosi and [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Shadow Lands]] influences now thrown into the volatile mix, just to stir everything up even more. "Hell" and "hand-baskets" spring to mind.
107	** As context: nothing new is happening in Sothoryos (that anybody knows about) -- mainly because it starts the series in a state best described as "good luck even ''finding'' a way to get this [[DeathWorld messed-up, highly active, urbanisation-resistent biome]] any [[EverythingTryingToKillYou worse to live in for bog-standard humanoids than it already is]]". Everybody else has yet to get as close to rock bottom for sustainable civilization as this continent has managed, but it just ''sitting'' there on the map makes for mute testimony of what depths of biological horror it is entirely possible to reach if you drop the ball once too often in this world. Because... people did live there. Once. In many cities. A very long time ago. And it has been that way for hundreds of years; a non-Targaryen dragonlord (that is, before the Doom of Valyria), once attempted a three-year excursion to Sothoryos by riding a dragon, but didn't find anything beyond endless jungles, deserts, and mountains.
108	* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'':
109	** The first book of contains strong hints that this is going to happen, especially at the very end when [[spoiler:[[HarbingerOfImpendingDoom Talanel, the Lost Herald]] shows up at the gates of Kholinar warning of a new Desolation.]].
110	** When Adolin and Kaladin are discussing what to do if the assassin in white attacks them while they're out in the field, Kaladin says that it should be easier because he'll be unable to use his GravityMaster powers to create his normal chaos. Adolin points out that outside he'll just be able to outright fly. It keeps getting worse; Kaladin argues that the army's archers will be able to counter this, but when he does attack he does so during an unexpected highstorm, making archers useless. Oh, and outside his ability to temporarily take people out of the fight by reversing their gravity so they stick to the ceiling morphs into being able to take people out in a much more permanent way with less effort, because it doesn't take nearly as much power to make someone fall into the sky high enough to not survive falling back down.
111	* This trope is pretty much the bread and butter of the ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' series. Each book somehow gets progressively worse, despite the first book starting with all of creation being on the brink of oblivion. Terry Goodkind is almost [[{{Squick}} disturbingly]] fond of the trope.
112	** In the first book, only the entirety of the world is at stake. In the second book, ''reality itself'' comes close to being destroyed. Then back to merely worrying about the fate of the world. Then the world again. Then the world ''again''. Then reality. Then the world. Then reality ''and'' the world. And of course Richard and Kahlan are constantly in mortal danger.
113	* The Book and Movie versions of ''Film/{{Sybil}}'' should have been entitled ''Sybil: It got worse''.
114	* "From Bad to Worse" pretty much sums up the whole of Ian Irvine's [[Literature/TheThreeWorldsCycle Three Worlds]] series, giving him scope to end every book (even some at the end of supposedly self-contained series) with a ridiculously hopeless-seeming CliffHanger. [[MauveShirt Mauve Shirts]] get killed off at random, plans fail, main characters get ambushed, captured, tortured and horrifically injured; it's not an Ian Irvine book if someone isn't trying to scale a frozen, razor-sharp mountain ridge with at least two broken limbs and losing blood by the minute, while being pursued by vicious soldiers with some sort of Secret Art-powered flying machine,and he's still doing.
115	* In the future world described in ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'', the human race has degenerated into Morlocks and Eloi. In the even more distant futures, Morlocks and Eloi have disappeared, along with all other forms of vertebrate life. Little is left but an endless ocean, a dying sun and a bitter wind. And a creepy flapping thing that comes after you.
116	** The flappy thing has been theorized to be [[http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/9/eisenstein9art.htm the final devolution of humans]]. In the book's defense, the existence of TimeTravel at least makes it more hopeful than some universes.
117	* ''Literature/TheUnderlandChronicles'' can be summed up like this.
118	* David Gerrold's ''Literature/TheWarAgainstTheChtorr'' series depicts a decimated and squabbling humanity fighting a pretty hopeless war against a voracious invading alien ecosystem.
119	* In the novel ''Wither'', scientists know that many people die each year of various diseases such as cancer. They alter everyone's DNA so that future generations will never suffer from these diseases. This works fine for the first generation, after that [[spoiler: all males who are born die at the age of 25, all females at age 20.]]
120	* ''The Women of Brewster Place'' could have been titled ''DiabolusExMachina: The Novel''. The author sure worked hard thinking up terrible things to inflict on her characters, and ''nothing'' good ever happens without [[YankTheDogsChain immediately being subverted in the cruellest way]].
121	* Some of the more dystopic and CrapsackWorld settings hosted in Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom may count. And then there's ''Literature/AWorldOfLaughterAWorldOfTears.''
122	** Such as the worst of them all, ''Literature/ForAllTime''. This series delights in dragging things downward every five minutes. D-Day fails, Stalinists take over most of Eurasia, nuclear weapons are used like hand grenades, and the USSR-PRC war kills over 600 million people. When ''Canada'' is sufficiently militaristic and paranoid to have its own H-bomb program and the 1980 US Presidential Election is between [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones Jim Jones]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Manson Charles Manson]], you know the world isn't doing so well.
123	* ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' starts off with a severely-bullied and lonely [[SociallyAwkwardHero young girl]] who has a power over bugs and seeks to escape from her horrible life by becoming one of the city's many superheroes. Somewhat fittingly, she shows interest in "[[LampshadeHanging turning negatives into positives]]" when she heads out on her first-ever costumed excursion and single-handedly defeats a well-armed gang and one of the strongest supervillains in the city, then infiltrates another gang of supervillains intending to be TheMole. Good start, right? Well, then [[spoiler:she starts BecomingTheMask, a {{Kaiju}} attacks her city, a superhero, a group of serial killers, her own boss, and an EldritchAbomination all try to kill her (and, in some cases, more or less everyone around), new Kaijus start to appear and accelerate the [[ApocalypseHow world's progressive destruction]], and finally [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien the being responsible for superpowers]] decides that helping humanity is boring and starts [[OmnicidalManiac killing everyone in the multiverse]]]]. So...yeah, things go pretty downhill [[EarnYourHappyEnding before getting back to "not so bad"]].
124	** [[spoiler:In the words of one of the comments on the second-to-last chapter: "Honestly though this series has to be tied with ''When They Cry'' for the title of 'It Got Worse--The Series'."]]
125	* ''Literature/XeeleeSequence'' is this on a ''cosmic scale''. The multiverse is dying due to the fact that the Photino Birds outnumber everyone else, forcing the titular Xeelee to construct literature's largest evacuation story. For the humans, they were occupied ''twice'' by hostile aliens, with the second being so horrific it created a cross-generational PTSD where every piece of human culture, history and society was wiped clean (Not even the fossil records survived). After gaining their independence, humanity descended into the walking insane asylum called the Interim Coalition of Governance, arguably one of the most vile and evil human polities ever written into fiction. After 20,000 years of non-stop warfare and galactic-scale genocides, the Coalition collapsed as the Xeelee finally left the Milky Way, splintering into multiple competing human and posthuman civilizations, each as horrid as each other. This kin war created so many offshoots of humanity - all built for warfare - that it nearly destroyed the human race, until an apotheosis emerged. There are aliens all around the universe, why don't we exterminate ''all of them'' so we could prolong our own existence and prevent further civil wars? And mass ''universal xenocides'' we did. Until we got the Xeelee's attention, who would unceremoniously curbstomp humanity back into the stone age, forcing 99% of humanity to ''freeze to death'' as every single human colony save for Earth, had their suns covered by ''sextillions'' of Xeelee Flowers.
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Context FromBadToWorse / Literature