As said on the main page, spoilers are unmarked.
- The final cases of the first three Ace Attorney games kinda end like this. Phoenix exposes the real killer and wins the day, but either his client or another suspect he was desperate to exonerate still ends up imprisoned for lying under oath and interfering with a crime scene. The third game is even worse, as Godot will also have to stand trial for his crime (assuming he even lives that long), and Maya Fey witnessed her own mother's death, but has to put on a strong face for Pearl's benefit. At least his spirit has joined those of Mia and her mother on the clouds of heaven, as described by one painting at the very end of the game.
- Amnesia: Memories oddly makes Shin's Good Ending feel this way. The heroine has regained her memories, but those memories include the knowledge that Toma was the one that caused her injuries and memory-loss. She and Shin plan to go to the zoo for a date, but Toma has turned himself in to atone for his crime. Amnesia LATER plays with this a bit more, as Toma is not prosecuted for his actions, but has chosen to leave town as a way to make up for what he's done to the heroine. But Shin and the heroine hold onto the hope that Toma will come back.
- Baldr Sky:
- Rain’s ending has Kou unknowingly killing Nanoha in stopping Assembler from activating. In the Ghost ending, Kou spends the rest of his life in self-delusion.
- Nanoha’s ending has Assembler being stopped but Chinatsu dying in an attempted kamikaze attack. In the "Dreamland" ending, Nanoha lost her body and the world war that has erupted has prevented Kou from finding a cloning facility to create a new body for Nanoha.
- Chinatsu’s ending has Masa dying and Ark Project occurring in order to save everyone. In the Entwined ending, Kou also lost most of his body.
- Aki’s ending has Gungnir stopped but Chinatsu is at least mentally destroyed from being connected to Tranquilizer. Dominion’s plan failed and Makoto also dies from the fight with Kou. In the Ark ending, Kou and Aki are living as wired ghosts.
- Even Sora’s ending has humanity being revived through nanomachines but only a number of people who became wired ghosts (along with Kou and Sora) from Neunzehn’s destruction of the world can be saved. Over tens of thousands years has also passed since then so the world has changed by a lot.
- Danganronpa:
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has one: The good ending features the six surviving students escaping, only to find the outside world ravaged by the Tragedy. Nevertheless, they decide to do their best to fix the world.
- Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: The Killing Game is ended and Shuichi, Maki and Himiko make it out alive, but all their friends are dead, they have no idea what the outside world is like, and their personalities and backstories were all fake (although they consider the possibility that Tsumugi was lying about that).
- In Daughter for Dessert, any “bad” or “neutral” ending with any available girl counts. Either it won’t last, or they’ll fail in their business ventures, but they’ll still have some happy memories.
- Even the “good” ending with Amanda qualifies. She is still together with protagonist, but they have to leave behind everything they know and start over due to Amanda’s pregnancy.
- After sitting through the credits for The Devil on G-String, you are treated to a Mood Whiplash epilogue. After surviving the chaotic incident he instigated in the climax, "Maou" pays Kyousuke and Haru a visit, which culminated in Haru chasing him and attempting to gun him down. Kyousuke intervened by killing Maou with his own gun, sparing Haru from the media attention and thus, protecting her future as a violinist. After spending 8 years in prison, he meets Haru and her daughter, and assumed that she got together with another person. The trope is then subverted when he asks how old the girl is, with her reply stunning him.I'm seven years old, daddy.
- Digital: A Love Story: Hooray, the Internet is saved! Because Emilia sacrificed herself to take down Reaper. At least the whole thing will be remembered.
- In Doki Doki Literature Club!, both the normal Downer Ending and the secret Happy Ending also have bittersweet shades.
- In the normal ending, Monika deletes the game from the inside so that no-one else will Go Mad from the Revelation that they are a video game character. The seemingly uncancellable horrible events from before have been undone by a Cosmic Retcon after the game could finally be restarted properly, which is a heck of a relief comparatively speaking, nobody has to suffer any more,note and the villain has been defeated and redeemed, but the happiest the characters can be is in painless oblivion. Monika herself, previously a tortured Yandere, expresses bittersweet happiness, gratitude and love to the player in her last letter.
- In the special ending, Sayori gains Medium Awareness in Monika's place but does not go insane, so Monika doesn't have to delete the game. Sayori instead thanks the player and tearfully says goodbye because the game is ending, and it's implied the characters live on in their world more happily than they ever were, at least in whatever extent they even exist when the game is not running (if they don't go on existing independently, it's not really that different from the bad ending aside from tone). The goodbye is what's bittersweet, particularly when Sayori asks you to come visit sometime, but you know the only way to do that is to reset the game so that everything starts from the beginning and the characters are not going to be happy. What can be inferred of Monika's fate is even more bittersweet in the same way: she's found at least some kind of peace, and she can see those she cares about get a happy ending, but she can't take part in it. Reduced to a digital ghost, she can't rejoin her friends in the game world, nor be with the player she's in love with who's in the real world.
- Extra Case: My Girlfriend's Secrets: In the final ending, Marty and Sally manage to convince the latter's Split Personality, "Seira"/Shadow to stop trying to kill Marty. Marty also covers up all evidence of Shadow's serial killing in order to prevent Sally from being implicated. However, Sally still has to live with the guilt of all the murders Shadow committed and Marty lost much of his sanity due to the time loops. Sally is also disturbed by Marty's newfound ruthlessness and his unexplainable knowledge of Shadow's actions.
- A staple of Nasuverse original works:
- Tsukihime:
- In the True Ending for Arcueid's route, Arcueid technically survives, but after saying one last goodbye to Shiki, she leaves to sleep (or seal herself to her castle) to restrain her urges, presumably forever now that Roa is Deader than Dead. There is an unlockable "Good Ending" of debatable canon.
- The manga ending has Shiki find Arcueid (which is ambiguous to whatever it happened in a dream or not), perhaps to keep it consistent with sequels (which was Jossed as series of unconnected side stories (Melty Blood was even joked on "based of the non-existent Satsuki ending").
- Arcueid's is easily matched, bordering into Downer Ending, by the True Ending for Hisui's route, with Akiha killed by SHIKI, Kohaku (who plotted the whole thing) committing suicide, and Shiki and Hisui leaving the mansion.
- Likewise, both of Akiha's "good" endings are bittersweet. In one, Shiki saves Akiha's life by seeminglynote killing himself so that the lifeforce she lent him will return to her. In the other, Shiki can't kill himself, so Akiha lives out her life as an insane beast that feeds on his blood.
- Ciel's good ending is unambiguously happy, on the other hand, unless you're Ciel herself. Why? Because Arcueid cheerfully sticks around and decides to go for a threesome ending of sorts. Ciel is not happy about having to share in her good end. Shiki himself also spends much of his time figuring out how to keep Arcueid and Ciel from killing each other.
- Fate/stay night:
- All the endings that aren't outright downers are bittersweet, because just as Shirou's father warned him, he can't save everyone. In particular, either Saber or Ilya has to die, and in the only route where Sakura isn't left in the hands of her (horrifically) abusive grandfather (who might kill her), the only non-downer ending has both of them dying. The first route (which is the one followed by the anime) is the most bittersweet: Shirou wins the war, destroys the Grail, and avenges his father, but Saber is gone, and nothing can take her place in his heart. We're left to ponder what "continuation of the dream" Saber might be seeing, and to hope it'll bring them back together somehow.
- Made slightly less bittersweet in the Realta Nua ending. As Arturia (Saber) lies dying, Merlin visits her mentally and tells her that if her soul will wait forever; and if Shirou will look for her forever; they will meet again at the field of Avalon. He makes it perfectly clear that this is impossible. It happens. In other words, Saber will always, throughout time, for eternity, wait for Shirou, and that Shirou will always be trying to move towards Saber, to find her again. Pity that to unlock the ending you have to get ALL endings. And THEN you have to play the Fate route again.
- Tsukihime:
- Echo: The best you can hope for in nearly all routes (and explicitly stated to be the intention by the author), provided you don't get the outright bad endings.
- In Carl's route everyone trapped in the mansion makes it out alive and all four become good friends... but Leo, TJ & Flynn's lives are implied to be ruined by their experiences with the hysteria and Carl breaks off his romantic relationship with Chase.
- In Leo's route Chase makes peace with his ex, finds new love and escapes the town with the rest of his friends... but is still plagued by nightmares while Leo's life remains stagnant in Echo and he chooses to cut off contact with Chase entirely, although he is at least recovering from his obsession with their relationship.
- In TJ's route Chase kills Flynn in a tragic repeat of the past, it's ambiguous how TJ feels about him (and whatever it is, it's probably not romantic in any way) and the epilogue doesn't involve Chase or his friends at all, making his and the rest of the main gang's eventual fate ambiguous... aside from Flynn, who's implied to have become yet another one of the town's vengeful spirits, making the whole thing a full-on Downer Ending.
- In Flynn`s route it`s implied that most of the main cast survived the hysteria, but Flynn (who was possessed halfway through the route) has a supernatural experience that ends with him permanently turning into a monster some of his friends had seen in the past. Flynn/The Creature then goes back in time and encounters Daxton followed by a younger TJ and Jenna, where the latter twos previously mentioned scenes of witnessing the monster play out in the exact same way. Also, the optional epilogue reveals that Chase has been living alone for five years in the now abandoned Echo, with the rest of his friends presumably cutting ties with him after discovering he killed Sydney and his journalism career completely failing soon after, making the route also finish mostly at a Downer Ending.
- Green Green: Midori has to sacrifice her life force in order to save Yuusuke's life. Reiki then is willing to save Midori's life, but to do so she has to return to the 31st century. Worst still, the act of returning Midori to the future has wiped everyone's memory that she was there except for Yuusuke.
- Each of the character's good endings in Hakuouki are this. Chizuru and the romantic interest are together but The Shinsengumi are no more, the shogunate has fallen and most of their friends are dead. Okita's good ending is bittersweet even more so compared to the others given that he is still dying of tuberculosis and thus he and Chizuru only have a limited time together.
- Harmonia ends with Tipi and Shiona dying; however, Rei resolves to live on and find a world where humans and Phiroids can coexist peacefully.
- Heart of the Woods: Two of the Multiple Endings fall into this category, as does one of the unused endings, since Evelyn is defeated, but at the cost of one or more characters' lives, and one of the couples being broken up.
- "Sacrifice" (Madison/Abigail): If you choose "I'll make it up to you," Geladura returns to her true Fairy Queen form, and Maddie and Abigail are given normal, living human bodies, but Morgan sacrifices herself to kill Evelyn, resulting in Tara being completely emotionally devastated and depressed on the train ride home. She's also jealous of Maddie and Abigail's happiness, and hates herself for feeling this way. Maddie blames herself for this due to hesitating to kill Evelyn earlier, and thinks Tara hates her now, but Abigail assures her that she doesn't. As a result, there ends up being another rift between Tara and Madison, but Madison holds out hope that their relationship will mend in time.
- "Freedom" (Tara/Morgan): If you choose, "I'll keep Tara safe," or "One way or another, this ends tonight," Geladura sacrifices herself to kill Evelyn. Because of this, Maddie is now stuck as the Fairy's Queen thanks to the agreement they made earlier, and her, Abigail and the Fairies vanish from sight without even getting to say goodbye to Tara and Morgan. Tara goes into a grieving spiral and eventually informs her fan base and Maddie's family of her "Death", with the latter breaking off contact with her, while Morgan blames herself for all of this. Tara also quits Taranormal and moves on to other projects. Eventually they move out of Maddie's house due to painful memories, and the epilogue has Morgan getting accepted by Tara's family and the two of them getting married while Morgan internally thanks Maddie, Abigail and Geladura for making this possible.
- A planned third bad ending, mentioned in the art book, would have been something of a hybrid of the other two endings. Like in the Freedom ending, Geladura dies, and Madison would have to remain as Fairy Queen. However, Morgan would have volunteered to replace Madison, due to pointing out that Madison promised to give the fairies a queen, not to become one herself. The fairies would have accepted her, giving her enough time to say goodbye to Tara and her friends.
- Highway Blossoms has a happy ending, with Amber and Marina finding three out of four of the buried treasure and falling in love, but Next Exit has a more bittersweet ending. The main plot involves Marina dealing with her resentment of Amber treating her like more of a kid than an equal, and while Amber apologizes for this following an argument, they're both aware that the issue will take time to work out. The B-plot involves the other characters trying to celebrate Tess's birthday, and Tess trying to come to terms with her personal issues. In the end, Tess gets some nice presents, and while she starts to come to terms with herself, she still wants to be able to change and have a more normal range of emotions.
- Kara no Shoujo's best endings are bittersweet at best. Yes, Reiji lives and the murders stop but most of the cast is dead including (normally) Toko. And the ending she lives in is a downer ending. The ones that are bittersweet instead of downers are the ones where he catches Rokushiki and is impied to start a relationship with either Kyoko or Hatsune.
- A couple of the endings in Katawa Shoujo:
- Hanako's "Friend" ending results in Hisao and Hanako sharing a simple dinner and a nice chess game... but never developing their relationship past mutual friendship. It's also implied that this sort of relationship will eventually prove self-destructive, since Hisao will put Hanako's needs ahead of his own. Compare the bad ending, in which Hanako explodes at Hisao for pitying her and orders him out of her room, which is implied to result in her permanently cutting ties with Hisao (and possibly Lilly).
- Shizune's Good Ending can be interpreted as this. It has Shizune, Misha and Hisao preparing to go their separate ways on the eve of graduation while vowing to remain friends and to see each other again one day. They even take a picture doing the Musketeer pose at the gates. It's not explicitly said that they're forced to completely separate, though, and it's said in the game that it could really go in any direction.
- Lilly's bad ending can also be interpreted as this. Hanako has finally come out of her shell and is making friends on her own, Hisao has found a new direction in his life and a good future ahead of him, but the woman he loves leaves forever for Scotland, to live with her family who she barely even knows, likely spending the rest of her days unhappy, ending up as Star-Crossed Lovers.
- Kindred Spirits on the Roof has a mostly happy ending with a hint of sadness. After spending six months playing "Yuri Cupid" to get lesbian couples together to help a pair of ghosts, Sachi and Miyu have Their First Time, Yuna succeeds in her mission. All of the couples she's helping- Seina and Miki, Sasa and Umi, Kiri and Tsukuyo, Youka and Aki, and Matsuri and Miyu- have gotten together(or in Matsuri and Miyu's case, the two have reconciled). Hina realizes that she has feelings for Yuna, who, in turn, confesses, and the two allow Sachi and Miyu to consummate their relationship, at which point Sachi and Miyu move on. The two ghosts leave the world feeling fulfilled, but Yuna is sad to see them go, having come to see them as her friends.
- In both the Good and Family Endings of Melody, the protagonist and title character are in a happy relationship, but Melody has missed her chance to become a big music star.
- In the freeware Visual Novel Narcissu, emotionless, Delicate and Sickly Setsumi escapes her bleak existence of hospitalizations and discharges, experiences life on the open road, and finds a little bit of happiness for the first time- then promptly kills herself. It's implied that the unnamed protagonist (also ill) doesn't last much longer.
- In Nightshade, the Good Endings for Chojiro and Gekkamaru notably come at the price of Enju's Koga friends dying and later discovering that their deaths were basically for nothing. And with the exception of Kuroyuki's route, in all the other Good Endings, Enju is still considered a dangerous criminal who had murdered Hideyoshi and even after defeating her pursuers, she is unable to clear her name and thus can never return home to the Koga village.
- No Case Should Remain Unsolved: Kim Seowon is dead through no-one's fault, but Choi Seowon is perfectly fine. And while Song Minyeong spent years in a mental institution, there are people willing to help her and she does get better, eventually.
- Many of Piofiore: Fated Memories best endings are this. Special mention going to Orlok's in which after finding out his entire upbringing was a lie he's kills Dante in order to save himself and Liliana and the two flee Burlone for safety.
- The "Agent" endings of Queen's Gambit run in this direction: not as good as the "Super Spy" endings but better than the "Rookie" and "Nightmare" endings. The villain's plots are mostly foiled but not without cost; Shield and her love interest go on about their lives and still have feelings for each other, but they can't necessarily be together and just try to maintain as much of a relationship as they can given the obstacles.
- Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair has this with the good ending. By the end of the night, Momoko has killed Hiro, left Kotoba to die in the breaker room, then hanged herself in order to frame Kamen for the deaths. However, Raiko manages to help clear Kamen's name, preventing her or anyone else from being wrongfully accused, and as a result, starts to become friends with Kamen. In the best variation of the ending, if you saved Kotoba, it's revealed that while he has permanent scars from the fire, he survives the ordeal.Rie: I guess even good things can be born from tragedies, huh?
- Steins;Gate true ending has Rintaro preventing both of the Bad Futures and Mayuri and Kurisu's deaths. Unfortunately, Rintaro had to make many sacrifices to get here: none of the other Lab Members remember any of their experience together, Daru's Kid from the Future, Suzuha, disappeared because of the Time Paradox created by the new timeline, Faris/Akiha's dad is dead in this timeline, Lukako had to give up being a girl and go back to being a boy, and SERN and the Committee of 300 are presumably still standing, plotting to recuperate their losses, and continuing their attempts to Take Over the World, while Moeka and Yuugo/Mister Braun are implied to still be under their thumb. But it is hinted that the members might not have completely forgotten their memories, as shown when Rintaro met Kurisu again in Akihabara and she still had memories of the nicknames Rintaro gave to her, later material shows that Suzuka is eventually born, Faris has accepted her loss (and Linear Bounded Phenogram indicates he somehow survived), Lukako has come to accept themself for who they are, and Moeka and Yuugo have a nice, quiet life working at the Braun Tube workshop, with Yuugo fully able to tend to his daughter Nae. On top of that, Kurisu's abusive, scumbag father Shoucihi/Nakabachi is last shown going to jail for stabbing Rintaro.
- When They Cry:
- While the endings of most of Higurashi: When They Cry are downers and its original ending is relatively straightforwardly happy, there are a few arcs that opt for this type of ending instead. In the Silhouette Arc and the Demon-Exposing Arc it's based on, Natsumi is talked down from her murderous rampages and marries Akira, but she still killed her whole family and will be haunted for the rest of her life by that. In a secondary ending to the entire series, the Canal-Drying Arc, everyone makes it through June 1983, except for Hanyuu, who is killed by Takano. In the anime version of the Atonement Arc, Rena is talked down from killing all of her classmates, gets treatment, and makes it past June of 1983, but all of her friends died in the Gas Disaster the day after, and Rena remains haunted by her own actions and what happened after.
- Depending on which side of the fantasy fence you sit on for the possible endings of Umineko: When They Cry, the final fate of all the cast members is either this, where the Metaworld is real and Battler is reunited in death there with Beatrice and his whole family or a downer, where the whole thing is just made up as a way for an amnesiac Battler to sort out his own thoughts about the Rokkenjima incident. Still, no matter which viewpoint you take, it doesn't change the fact that by the end of the series, almost everyone who was on Rokkenjima is dead.
- All of Wildfire's endings are either this or a Downer Ending in War: 13th Day for a reason. To be exact, the entire game is Wildfire's Dying Dream.Ambrosia: If you have your best friend, you will lose your lover. If you have your lover, you will lose your best friend.
- All of the endings in the Coda section of White Album 2. Even Setsuna's True End, the closest thing in the game that could be considered a traditional Happily Ever After ending, still hints that not all things are right behind the scenes.
- Yandere Chan: The only good ending in the whole game is this. Mia's mental instability is discovered and she's being treated, no one died in the process, and the main character still loves her. However, it's noted that Mia will probably never be healthy enough to leave the mental asylum, and the main character seems to be putting their life on hold just to be with her. The rest of the endings result in your bloody demise.
- Several games of the Yarudora series contain a few Bittersweet Endings, even in their best Endings.
- Kisetsu o Dakishimete: No matter which storyline you go and no matter what you do, the main heroine, Mayu, won't resurrect and thus you won't be able to become a couple with her. The best you can do for her, is to help her recover her memories and Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence; and for you, thanks to her help and the quest you shared with her, it's either realizing you love Tomoko and get a Relationship Upgrade with her, or find a new love in Mayu's sister Mami or with your neighbour the Sexy Lady.
- Sampaguita: Don't expect coming out unscathed of saving Maria from the Yakuza's clutches by storming their headquarters with Boy and pals, as there's only two possible outcomes: either being jailed for gunning down the Yakuza boss who was trying to shoot Maria; or being killed by said Yakuza boss by protecting Maria with your body. However, after those events, you'll discover (either after you've served your 5-years jail time and reunited with Maria in her native Philippines, or after awakening as a ghost 2 years after your death), to your joy, that Maria had become pregnant with your kid during the time you were living together, and gave birth to a little boy.
- ClockUp's more serious, cynical, Darker and Edgier games (i.e. Euphoria, Fraternite, Maggot Baits) thrive on this trope, to put it simply. And sometimes, this is the only kind of One True End.
