VideoGame.Detroit Become Human: Kara's storyline can end as this, as Alice can die just after they crossed the border to Canada. Kara can choose to either shut down herself or move on without Alice (which she does very reluctantly). Especially if the revolution otherwise succeeds, as in that case Kara could just as well have been able to hide in the city until things get resolved.
Anime.Under The Dog: "Shaggy Dog" Story: The OVA is ultimately this. Hana is killed by Anthea at the former's request before her Pandoraization rate becomes too high to continue protecting Nanase, resulting in Hana's family being killed. Her last words to Anthea are to continue protecting Nanase. However, when Anthea catches up with him it turns out he's not the kind of candidate they are looking for, so Anthea kills him as well, making all of the tragic events of the OVA completely and utterly pointless.
Webcomic.Cwens Quest: Cwen has spent most of her life plotting revenge against her father. While her previous accomplishments haven't been rendered entirely meaningless, the fact remains that her father's Jerkass behavior finally caught up to him shortly before she was ready to wreak her own vengeance.
CrapsackWorld.Comic Books: The world of Ruins, an alternate universe Anti-Marvels. Wolverine is dying of adamantium poisoning, Bruce Banner is a mass of tumors, the X-Men have all been imprisoned and experimented on by President Xavier, and Nick Fury is a crazy survivalist who was taught cannibalism by Captain America. After Phil Sheldon has investigated all this, trying to find out what's wrong with the world, he dies of radiation poisoning, because Peter Parker got a type of infectious cancer from his spider bite instead of superpowers. Would you be surprised to learn it was written by Warren Ellis?
Trivia.The Walking Dead 2010: According to Talking Dead, Otis was the one who found and corralled the undead Sophia into Hershel's barn, but Shane killed Otis before Otis knew of a missing girl in the group, meaning that the whole search and Daryl's near death was all for naught.
Film.The Skeleton Key: The heroes accomplish absolutely nothing, and in the end, they suffer the same fate as all the other victims.
Literature.Like Water For Chocolate: After waiting for Mama Elena and Rosaura to die and Esperanza to grow up and get married before they can be together, Pedro goes Out with a Bang and Tita is Driven to Suicide.
Recap.The Walking Dead S 10 E 12 Walk With Us: Earl kills himself by driving his head into a spike so that he won’t reanimate and endanger the kids in the cabin with him. Unfortunately, he failed to destroy his brain, and he reanimates later when the kids are all asleep. Thankfully, the very competent Judith is there to put him down, but nonetheless, poor Earl failed at what he was trying to do.
YMMV.Dragged Across Concrete: Broken Base: Kelly Summer's storyline, specifically her abrupt, tragic fate. It's either an effective and somber way of humanizing Vogelmann's victims and reinforcing the movie's incredibly bleak look at the consequences of crime, or it's a tacked-on and gratuitously cruel attempt at establishing the villains' cruelty that clogs up the runtime considering she is never addressed or referenced again following her death.
Series.Touch 2012: Subverted. Lucy, Martin, and Jake all succeed in rescuing Amelia from Aster Corps after spending half of Season 2 looking for her, but shortly afterwards, Lucy is killed, not Amelia.
Characters.Survivor Game Changers: Came back because of his Could Have Been A Contender situation in his first season. A big deal was made of his getting to show off his strategic chops. He was reunited with his close friend at the merge, as well as fellow alumna Debbie, only to be voted out third for being a threat.
YMMV.Mega Man Megamix: In Shadow Man's opinion, Blues' actions during The Greatest Enemy In History were far over the line. After Shadow Man, whose main trait until this point was loyalty to Dr. Wily's orders (he is a Ninja, after all), went against his orders to use the confusion of Roll telling both Mega-Men to stop fighting to rescue Copy Mega-Man and give him a fairly heartwarming talk about how he could become his own person with his own life, realizing that the whole thing was a Shoot the Shaggy Dog because Blues had set him up to commit suicide via Heroic Sacrifice was unforgivable.
ThatOneLevel.Action Adventure: Chapter 11: Keep Moving. One of your allies whom you just met takes a bullet before the level starts, and you are forced to spend the majority of it carrying him along, limiting your combat options to your pistol and preventing you from taking cover, all while being flanked from every vantage point you can see and with dwindling pistol ammo reserves on higher difficulties. Even more insulting, once you make it through this section, the game has the escortee killed off anyways by the Big Bad in a cutscene. Great.
Literature.Jude The Obscure: Poor Jude. As a child, he thinks it would be better had he never been born, and by the end of the book, he may as well not have been. He never realises his dreams of going to the university at Christminster or entering the clergy, his children all pre-decease him, the girl he loves returns to her unhappy marriage with his former role model, and his wife is already eyeing her next conquest before his dead body has gone cold. Jude the obscure, indeed.
Film.Halloween Resurrection: Myers finally kills Laurie along with several Red Shirt characters, and he's still Not Quite Dead at the end.
YMMV.Texhnolyze: Angst Aversion: The main reason why a lot of people don't end up watching this show. It contains brutal violence, no entirely sympathetic characters, pretty much no humor or lighter moments whatsoever, one of the most bleak and cynical views of humanity to ever be portrayed in an anime series, and unabashedly heads towards one of the biggest Shoot the Shaggy Dog endings without ever promising otherwise. It's no wonder that when people read up on it consisting of all of these things, they don't want to put themselves through it.
Series.The Ranch 2016: An in-universe example. Heather tells the story of a calf she owned called Dairy Potter. The calf became very sick and nearly died, but Heather managed to nurse it back to health. Shortly afterward, the calf was killed by a mountain lion.
Literature.Slaughterhouse Five: Considering that Billy can see how everything ends, it's easy for him to take this view.
Funny.Frisky Dingo: Almost the entire episode in which the Xtacles attempt to pass Nearl off as Xander Crews, with the highlight being either "Elephant showers with their noses!", "It's complicated enough without all the evil twin bullshit having," or the entire Flowers For Algernon/Harrison Bergeron/Tom Bergeron/Agamemnon exchange."I'm gonna kill Babar!"
SelfDemonstrating.Doctor Doom: After she finally brought her father back and got reunited with her former lover, Doom killed Cassandra Lang, Kristoff Vernard's former best friend.
Film.Five Branded Women: Jovanka and Daniza accomplish nothing, Daniza being killed by the partisans and Jovanka implied to eventually die when the soldiers reach the trench.
VideoGame.Xolga And Mr Toko: The first series has a lot of these. First we have episode four, when despite the duo's efforts to prove him innocent, Ferris is found guilty of murder and imprisoned. Next we have episode six, that has Mr.Toko's friend Austin getting shot right after they both escape from the Organisation. Finally, the entire series seems to be one for Xolga after the pendant tells him that their human bodies have been 'eaten' by it and they're stuck in their current forms forever.
WebVideo.Super Eyepatch Wolf: This was his experience with Fear & Hunger. Across countless hours and countless deaths, John slowly comes to understand the dungeon and its obtuse, punishing mechanics more and more, and gradually uncovers secrets that help him to push forward further and further, until he ultimately finds himself standing before a glowing abyss in another plane of reality, from which emerges an unfathomable eldritch god. Roaring in defiance, he steels his beaten and broken body for one final battle... and the beast swats him aside with a single tentacle, killing him instantly and sending him right back to the title screen.
VisualNovel.Zero Time Dilemma: Kick the Dog: Subverted. For seemingly no other reason than to establish himself as a jerk, Delta murders Gab, the participants' dog companion, and presents his bloody corpse to them as good news. This does turn out to be a kindness however, because it's revealed that the protagonists must abandon this timeline minutes before the entire shelter is destroyed if they want to survive, and they (as well as the player) would otherwise be responsible for Gab's death. Though given Zero's vast resources it wouldn't have been impossible for him to build a way for Gab to escape, but that would require more compassion than Zero is capable of.
Recap.Doctor Who S 29 E 13 Last Of The Time Lords: The final fate of the entire human race at the end of the universe is despair and death. There was no Utopia. They turned inwards and turned themselves into mentally regressed heads in spheres; basically dead.
Anime.Dragon Ball Z The History Of Trunks: Heroic Sacrifice: Deconstructed. Gohan knocks out Trunks to prevent him from taking on the the Androids with himself and risk dying. But because he goes alone it makes it even easier for the Androids to kill Gohan, and he wasn't exactly putting up much a fight prior to confronting the Androids alone. And because Gohan dies, it only make the job of defeating the Androids an even more impossible task. And with no one to train Trunks anymore, it take years before Trunks feels strong enough through his own self training methods to take on the Androids again… and he still loses and very badly.
Film.Final Destination: Primal Fear: This film series is built around the fear of being hunted down by the Grim Reaper until he catches up to those who have escaped it and kills them in elaborate, agonizing ways. The inevitability of death is really emphasized because in this series, Death always wins and the protagonists' efforts to cheat it are entirely pointless in the end.
Film.Escape Room Tournament Of Champions: "Shaggy Dog" Story: Zoey and Ben have managed to escape Minos' escape rooms again, but at the very end, they end up in yet another escape room. One, in which, they may not escape from this time.
Characters.Big Brother 14: She was permanently evicted in the least amount of time of anybody to ever play the US run of the game. Not only did she do really bad in the first challenge, but Dan saw fit to evict her because she caused his team to come in last. Worse, it was implied that houseguests evicted before the coaches chose to formally enter the game would have a chance to be polled by America to re-enter or compete to re-enter, which was scrubbed due to the twist being accepted, leaving the person who was most eager to be in the house stuck at home until Finale Night and a huge demand for her to return to the game someday.
Characters.Fallout 76: "Shaggy Dog" Story: All of their efforts to rebuild West Virginia fail miserably due to the destruction of Charleston followed by the Scorched Plague. It would be a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story if not for the fact their vaccine against the Scorched Plague allows the Resident to stop them.
Literature.The Great Gatsby: Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy ends with her flatly rejecting him, thus rendering all of his work for nothing. And then he dies.
Film.I Shot Jesse James: Bob Ford never gets a chance to move on with his life, as his notorious reputation follows him wherever he goes. When he finally gets close to achieving what he wants, he loses the love of his life and dies in a gunfight.
Manga.Black Jack: Black Jack often cures patient with difficult to impossible cases, only for them to be killed in some other fashion.
SacrificialLion.Video Games: Eternal Darkness is loaded with characters who could at least be considered this — within the main cast, no less! The best cases can be made for Anthony and Paul, who get arguably the most unpleasant ends out of the Chosen — and while most of the others' contribute to an overarching cause in a way that's acknowledged in following chapters, the plot significance of theirs is debatable.
PapaWolf.Real Life: Leopoldo Narvaiz stabbed his ex girlfriend, 17 year old Shannon Mann, and her three siblings, 19 year old Jennifer, 15 year old Martha, and 11 year old Ernest, to death for refusing to rekindle a relationship. The siblings' father deliberately got himself arrested for an act of petty theft in order to kill him in jail, but Narvaiz was moved to death row by the time he was booked. Narvaiz was executed by the state of Texas a decade after the murders.
Characters.Arknights Nations N To Z: She angrily tells W she'll never give Reunion any information, shortly before she goes off in disguise to die fighting Rhodes Island, who was trying to rescue her in the first place. In the end, neither Reunion nor Rhodes Island got anything they wanted. It's such a "Shaggy Dog" Story that the sheer pointlessness of all the deaths caused by the Misha rescue attempt leaves Amiya extremely emotionally disturbed afterward.
Fanfic.Tales Of Termina: Link entered the lost woods to find Navi, by the time leaves he not only fails in finding her but ended up in a hellish time loop that took half a year to escape, greatly deteriorating his already damaged psyche.
Film.Funny Games: Not only do all the sympathetic characters die, but this is neither the first nor last time that this exact scenario has played out for the killers. What's more, the rewind trick suggests that the chances of any future targets to survive are next to zero.
Characters.Watchmen: All of his personality changes and different outlook on life is rendered meaningless as he's one of the millions killed by Ozymandias' plan.
Film.Dead Snow: The whole movie is full of defeated efforts leading to Total Party Kill.
YMMV.Milgram: Shidou is also a notable example. While many seem to resent the idea of forgiving him at all because 1. his crimes were premeditated unlike many others and 2. he may have caused the deaths of over 200 people (while most of the other prisoners had a much more limited scope), he also has a large fanbase that either find his motive tragic, sympathize with him because of his willingness to atone via the death punishment, or...think he's hot.
Characters.Super Comet After The Impact: All of his efforts to find his family lead to him dying alone at the edge of the impact crater. It’s unclear whether his family is even still alive.
VideoGame.Fate Unlimited Codes: Downer Ending: There are several of these, as well.Saber Alter's, for one: in the end, she personally killed Shirou and also somehow killed a physical manifestation of her un-corrupted side to allow Dark Sakura to take over the world/kill everything/whatever her objective would be after Shirou is dead. Kotomine's ending is just as bad. Sakura has one, as well. Bazett's is a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story. Dark Sakura's ending, which has her fully succumb to Angra Mainyu.
TearJerker.Inscryption: Your last game with Magnificus isn't much better either. At the start, he seems to blame you for what is happening to Inscryption, calling you out while issuing an epic last challenge of wits against his opponent. He puts out other bombastic speeches, accusing you of not caring about his world being erased, while the game crumbles and breaks down around you... and then, by the end of the fight, it's shown that this is (possibly) an act: Similar to Leshy, Magnificus wanted to give the player one last game before being erased, and spends his last moments struggling to desperately shake your hand, but he is deleted in front of you before he's near enough to do that.
WesternAnimation.Bilby: Fortunately subverted. It looks like the bilby's journey was All for Nothing when the albatross chick is snatched by an eagle - but the bilby gets dangerous and rescues the chick from the predator.
Film.The Tracey Fragments: A scene near the end seems to strongly imply that Sonny drowned in a nearby lake while Tracey was hooking up with Billy, rendering her whole journey to find him completely pointless.
Characters.Black Mirror Men Against Fire: Stripe does uncover the truth about the roaches, but has his memory erased and goes back to murdering them, meaning that he ends up exactly as he was at the beginning of the episode.
YMMV.Why Charlie Brown Why: If you want to think of a reason why Janice doesn’t return after this, it's possible she didn't actually overcome her cancer. The ending is somewhat ambiguous about this: it may be that the reason Janice's hair has grown back isn't because her cancer is in remission, but that her and her family decided to end treatment and let the disease take its course rather than prolonging her pain.
Funny.Achievement Hunter GTAV 2013 To 2015: Gavin's repeated stealing of Michael's dump truck, which eventually results in Gavin crashing his helicopter, leaving the truck floating in the air. Once it finally returns to earth, Gavin and an incredibly frustrated Michael, attempt to drive the immense truck through a series of narrow, winding streets to their destination, only for Gavin to run over Michael and the truck to inexplicably blow up.
VideoGame.Batman Arkham City: Shooting Superman: Some of the Penguin's goons mention offhand that Cobblepot dangled one of his hostages over a pit of rats, but for some reason the guy managed to last days without being harmed. It makes sense knowing that one of his prisoners was Otis Flannegan, a.k.a. "Ratcatcher". Eventually, Penguin lost patience and dropped him into Tiny's tank instead.
Characters.Elena Of Avalor Civilians: Skewed Priorities: He and Mateo are too preoccupied with catching up with each other on magic techniques to the point of singing a song, ignoring that he was running out of time to create a potion that would free him from his disintegrating book. They manage to free him in time... although he ends up dead afterwards anyways, so maybe he and Mateo had a point this time.
Characters.Pokemon Desolation: Him killing off Kuiki/Keegan. While it's unclear how he felt towards them and it's possible to read their actions as somewhat sympathetically, he still basically stole Keegan's life away from him, threw him away when he didn't need him anymore, let him be other people's problem for years, and then killed him off the second it was beneficial for him to do so.
Film.The Beastmaster: Jerkass: King Zed towards Dar, until he realized he's the son he lost. But then Maax kills him, spoiling any potential reunion.
Literature.Reds A Revolutionary Timeline: Inspired by his cautious optimism towards Red America, George Orwell's stories are less soul-crushingly depressing. The Last Man in Europe, this timeline's version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, becomes less of a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story as Winston Smith escapes to America and witnesses a debate in Times Square.
Literature.Hungover And Handcuffed: Mina spends the entirety of "Matamoros" trying to prevent a murder that's more or less inevitable by the time the story starts.
LateToTheTragedy.Video Games: Dead Space 3 has you arriving very late indeed, 200 years after the first expedition team to reach Tau Volantis. That team was even later, discovering the remains of an alien civilization wiped out millions of years ago. Dead Space 3's DLC, Awakened focuses on Isaac and Carver trying to get back to Earth to warn of the impending party by the Brethren Moons. They arrive, find absolutely ''no'' radio traffic from Earth, and the Brethren Moons showing themselves.
Farscape.Tropes D To G: Everybody's Dead, Dave: The ending to "Different Destinations". What's worse, it's the heroes' fault due to changing history, and just to twist the knife, the "everybody" in question was a monastery full of NURSES. With kids.
YMMV.Chrono Cross: FATE: "Now eliminating Prometheus." Prometheus is better known as Robo, your Robot Buddy party member from Chrono Trigger. Now, up until that one scene in Chronopolis, Robo had not appeared in Chrono Cross at all. He was not mentioned at all. None of your party members have any way of knowing who he is. He appears out of nowhere, delivers two or three lines of dialogue, and is killed, while Chrono Cross's cast is probably wondering who this robotic voice is and why they should care. His death basically serves solely to piss off any Chrono Trigger fans who picked up the sequel, which is part of why some of those who liked the former have issues with the latter.
TearJerker.Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Lichtendahl attempts a Heroic Sacrifice to save Christina. .. but it doesn't work, since not only is she fatally injured as well, but the Ptolemy bridge explodes right after that, completely erasing any chance of survival. Honestly, that episode becomes a sobfest just four minutes in, what with Haro going "Feldt, I'm sorry; Feldt, I'm sorry", and a grieving Feldt tearfully saying that it needn't apologize because what happened to Lockon wasn't its fault.
ShaggyDogStory.Comic Books: 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank: The kids manage to break into the bank and steal thousands of dollars, only to be caught by the cops after a car chase sends their getaway van into the river. And one of the cops accidentally shot Berger, which is implied to lead to his death. And then it turns out the bad guys robbed an entirely different bank, without Paige's dad. Honestly, it might as well be Shoot the Shaggy Dog, though most of the characters survive.
Awesome.Watchmen: It's more than that. As Rorschach brings him round to his nihilistic way of thinking, only then does he start to help people. It's incredible, really. The psychologist's wife was literally threatening to leave him on the spot when he stopped to help that girl, his life is more or less ruined, and yet he still just has to stop and help. Picking up genuine heroism from a psychopathic Anti-Hero might seem odd, but what do you know? And then Ozymandias' plan gets everyone involved blown up anyway. Ouch.
DownerEnding.Anime And Manga: The circus arc in particular was a major downer ending, as nearly everyone involved except Baron Kelvin and the doctor were sympathetic characters, and turned out to have done Kelvin's bidding and died for nothing.
VideoGame.Lollipop Chainsaw: The three survivors you rescue during the game's prologue end up dying and turning into zombies anyway after the helicopter they are on crashes.
Characters.Ru Pauls Drag Race Season 6: After being continuously told to bring more glamour and to not use camp as a crutch, come the hip-hop episode Milk struts the runway in a mermaid dress to appeal to the judges' aesthetic...and gets sent home anyway.
YMMV.Red Hood Arsenal: Base-Breaking Character: The inclusion of Joker's Daughter has fans divided on whether or not Lobdell can made anything good come out of her character. It doesn't help that both Jason and Roy are also Base Breakers in their own right, given that they're nothing like their pre-New52 counterparts. Some fans thought that Lobdell did a decent job with the character, giving her a redemption arc. Until it was revealed to be a trick, and a case of Shoot the Shaggy Dog.
TearJerker.Long Road To Friendship: It gets worse when Twilight tells Sunset to "please leave her alone, " and again, Sunset has to do it. Sunset even notes that by trying to avoid breaking Twilight's heart, she'd done just that. All that time finally coming to grips with her feelings, and Sunset threw it away.
Film.Resident Evil The Final Chapter: Part of Isaac's plan to hit the survivors of Raccoon City involves luring zombies to it by dragging live humans behind his armored vehicles. The last one is a woman that he releases, letting her run to the gates, giving Alice and Claire a shot at saving her, so they open the gates and pick off all the zombies behind her as best as they can. Isaacs waits till the gates are open and they've played their hand, whereupon he has the woman shot dead.
Characters.Once Upon A Time Lands Without Magic: His search for his father. Turns out Regina killed him shortly after he ran away. His whole mission turns out to be as well, as his mission to destroy magic was really just him being manipulated the whole time to deliver Henry to Peter Pan, and he then gets killed for his troubles.
Film.Centurion: Dwindling Party: Only Dias, Bothos, and Thax make it to Hadrian's Wall. Dias implicitly calls Thax out on his treachery, and Thax is killed in their ensuing struggle. Bothos is shot with an arrow by the Romans, who mistake him for a Pict, killing him. So Dias is the only one who makes it inside. Not that it matters anyways because the Romans try to kill him after all that to keep the fate of the Ninth Legion a secret. For a full rundown:Tarak: Shot in the back by Vortix and Aeron. Leonidas: Speared through the head by Etain. Macros: Leg cut by Thax, who leaves him to the wolves. Brick: Speared by Etain. He proceeds to spear himself even further to kill the Pict behind him.
Awesome.Sports: First Test of the 2013 Ashes series. Ashton Agar is 19 years old, on debut, the last man in, has just watched his team implode, and has only a struggling, out of form batsman for support. What does he do? Plays like a seasoned pro and drags his team back into the game by scoring 98 of the best, breaking half a dozen world records in the process.note Australia still lost the Test, though by only 14 runs instead of the possible three-figure margin by which they would have lost without Agar's first innings.
AdaptationExpansion.Anime And Manga: The Japanese Nanniichuan story, in the manga, ends up a complete bust when Ranma and Ryoga break into a waterline. In the anime, they uncover a strange urn that leads to the next two episodes being an extended Fetch Quest that ultimately ends in... an entirely different Shoot the Shaggy Dog ending.
Film.The Dead Dont Die: None of the characters or plot lines really develop into much, and almost everyone dies.
VideoGame.One Chance: The whole game. Even if you make a cure everyone except you and your daughter are dead, making it unlikely you two will last much longer.
Funny.Camp Camp: The episode ends with Cameron ordering the assassination of his body double, then defecting to Russia in a submarine that emerges from the lake. Cameron: None of you saw me here... Do svidaniya, campers! Max: (Beat) Fucking waste of a Saturday.
Literature.The Tomorrow Series: The final book, The Other Side Of Dawn ends with the enemy nation being allowed to keep a large portion of the land they have invaded, so while the survivors can move back to Wirrawee, they are now right on the border, and the whole group had effectively been fighting (and dying) for very little.
Characters.God Of War Series Normal Humans: He glided and climbed for what seems to be thousands (if not millions) of miles to the surface from the abysm of the Universe in order to change his fate. Only to fall from the bridge when he thought he could stop Kratos and fall back into the abyss.
VideoGame.Shin Megami Tensei I: Heel Realization: Neither the Law nor Chaos Hero realize that their ideologies might be flawed until right before you kill them— at which point the Law Hero realizes he's simply God's Unwitting Pawn instead of The Chosen One, and the Chaos Hero realizes that his quest for power was mostly pointless since you overpowered him regardless.
Characters.Mass Effect 2 Council Space NP Cs: His project turns into this. Almost everyone associated with the project gets killed. Legion reveals the majority of the geth have no interest in another war, and Legion himself is perfectly happy to communicate voluntarily with humans. So in the end, everything that Gavin put David through was pointless. This is especially evident if you play the mission after recruiting Legion. If Shepard never did the Project Overlord DLC, Archer reveals the area had to be nuked to stop David.
Recap.Bojack Horseman S 6 E 08 A Quick One While Hes Away: Gina didn't want the circumstances of BoJack strangling her revealed to the press because she feared that controversy would end up overshadowing her career. In the present, she's actually suffered PTSD from that event, and her lashing out at co-stars and directors alike has now earned her a reputation as being difficult to work with because nobody knows what happened.
Recap.Babylon Berlin S 4 E 12: The Reichswehr document ends up with the NKVD, leaving Katelbach and his editor stuck in jail.
VideoGame.Alone In The Dark: At least the "Path of Darkness" ending to the 2008 game. If you shoot Sarah, Lucifer's Evil Plan fully succeeds, and the possessed Carnby opens the gates of hell, heralding The End of the World as We Know It. Earlier, it is said "Lucifer's failure is also his reincarnation".
Manga.Shadow Star: The anime adaptation. Most of the cast goes insane and dies in a generally unsatisfying fashion, except for the main character and the vaguely established villains, who vanish off the face of the earth around episode 10. Most of the plot points are Left Hanging, and noone seems to care much. The description that 'nothing much has happened except that a few ineffectual people has died' fits the story like a glove, although this is because the anime only covers the first half of the manga, cutting off right before things start to get really bad. The manga, incidentally, may also count as this.
ComicStrip.Funky Winkerbean: Lisa's death. The author made it clear almost a year before the plot line resolved that it was going to end with her death, so enduring a year of Lisa not knowing, getting a few false hopes, and then wasting away in hospice, was excruciating. Bull's encephalopathy from a history of football injuries has recently been fodder for awkward "jokes" about him being forgetful or quirky, which would possibly be chuckle-worthy if not for the fact that they're the direct result of severe brain trauma. And just like Lisa's fate it's been confirmed, months in advance, that Bull's story will end tragically, this time by suicide. Here We Go Again!!
Funny.Proton Jon Livestreams: In Duck Game, one of the minigames requires each player to climb up to the top of a screen and grab a weapon to kill the other players. Jon is able to get to the top first and grabs a gun, but kills himself right afterwards thanks to his finger slipping. He is not amused.
