Hope Spot

You can check out any time you like,
but you can never leave!

"They almost always run. If not too inconvenient, I let them. Hope can break a man, the thought that he's escaped. Safe. Only to find out his every action has been utterly futile."

— The Shadow, Dynamite The Shadow #8

A character is about to face utter defeat. Suddenly, he finds a glimmer of hope, a reservoir for strength, a possible way out, a ray of light, a Forgotten Superweapon or what have you… only for it to be crushed by the bad guys returning in force. Think of it as the opposite of Near-Villain Victory.

Hope spots can be used to add drama to an extended encounter with a villain and will often culminate with the hero getting up after a seemingly decisive blow. However, if handled poorly, they can detract from a story.

Subtropes include Diabolus ex Machina. In extreme versions, may presage a Cruel Twist Ending. The Kaizo Trap is a subtrope exclusive to video games. Your Princess Is in Another Castle! also counts as this when the heroes think that everything is over for them, but the villains escape and the heroes have to take them down again.

Note that this trope can be shaded by Values Dissonance: villains obviously wish to triumph (or at least come through in one piece) just as much as heroes do, so a Hope Spot for a villain also counts, no matter how much despair it would cause heroic characters.

Any visible sigh of relief? After escaping imminent peril? Take a Moment to Catch Your Death.

The direct opposite of Darkest Hour. Contrast with Tear Dryer. One reason why Hope Is Scary and why the Hope Bringer is not always welcome. The Hope Crusher loves engineering this sort of situation.

See also Yank the Dog's Chain.

Due to the bait-and-switch nature of this trope and how heavily it relies on the audience going in blind, expect spoilers.

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Examples

• Anime & Manga
• Fan Works
• Film — Live Action
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Webcomics

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• This commercial for HYBE's Astra: Knights of Veda has a large gathering of worshippers praying to Veda, the goddess of war, to save them from tyrannical dark powers. The contingent are elated to see the goddess herself descend from the heavens. However all she does is tell them to pick up the sword, her trivial blessings can't save them. The worshippers then wail in despair as Veda returns to the heavens. It gets worse as once she leaves, a massive demon is forming behind the grieving masses.

Animation

• Clinic: In the old man's final nightmare, he manages to draw a circle of protection in his own blood to save himself from the horde of demonic doctors. Then one of the nurses calls in the radiologist, who turns out to be a monstrous-looking android who, when his eyes are opened, unleashes an x-ray gaze that lets the other doctors get in and attack the patient.
• Mechamato: Amazeey lets Amato, Deep, MechaBot and Mara out of the library after the first challenge, and the first three celebrate upon escaping. Then Amazeey reveals that he turned the whole school into his maze.

Blogs

• The Tyrannosaur Chronicles:
  • Twice Traumador expects Professor Paradigm to bring forth an awesome weapon that will oneshot Dr. Spectre, but Paradigm instead takes out a digging awl or a scientific paper. Subverted in that in both cases Paradigm actually put these to good use. Double subverted with the digging awl. Even though Professor Paradigm succeeds in disarming Dr. Spectre, Dr. Spectre still beats him eventually.
  • Played straight with Professor Paradigm's timely arrival when Traumador is captured by two fossil poachers. Paradigm knocks out one poacher but is ambushed and handily defeated by the other.

Comic Books

• In one Archie strip, Mr. Weatherbee, carrying an extremely fragile and priceless antique rugby ball to a display room on a higher floor accidentally slips and sends the ball out a fourth-floor window. Cue Mr. Weatherbee lamenting he destroyed one of Riverdale High's oldest treasures, but it turns out on ground level Archie, Chuck and Reggie are having rugby practice, and being the best athlete, Archie makes a sprint... and catches the antique ball moments before it hits the floor. Cue Weatherbee giving a huge sigh of relief... until Archie reflexively lets out an "AWW-RIGHT!" before hurling the ball to the floor in a victory pose. And smashes it into dust.
  Archie: ...oops.
  Weatherbee: [facepalms while slumped against the window] ...oops. He said, oops!
• A Walk Through Hell: Driscoll seemingly wakes up in the middle of her wandering the warehouse in the middle of what looks like organized rooms designed to hold, drug and mislead people via puppetry and fake body parts. All of it could easily and rationally explain all the horrible sights as being done via drug hallucinations and hypnotism. But then she wakes up again and not only realizes it was all real but that now her torture is up next.
• Be Prepared: After two miserable weeks at OPPA, Vera is very much looking forward to going home. However, her mother informs her that she got the job she'd been studying for, and it will require her to be out of town for a few days. Since she can't afford a babysitter, Vera and Phillip will be staying at camp for another two weeks.
• The Best We Could Do: The author describes the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II as a "brief but hopeful" period in Vietnamese history, where the Việt Minh might have taken control and retooled Vietnam into a functional country had the French not arrived.
• Captain Gravity: During a film shoot, Shane Radcliffe, the actor playing the titular hero, keeps messing up his lines, resulting in them having to reshoot the scene 115 times. On the 115th take, he actually manages to get his lines down pat, giving C.F. Avery hope that they can shoot the scene... and then the cable holding Shane up goes slack.
• Earth 2 runs on the premise of the Golden Age DC superheroes reinterpreted as a new generation of heroes rising after Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman died battling the forces of Apokolips. Superman is twice hinted to still be alive after all, only for both hopes of his comeback to be dashed. Brutaal is initially set up as a Brainwashed and Crazy Superman, but ultimately crumbles to death and turns out to be a clone, while the real Superman is later revealed to be held prisoner so he can be used as a genetic source for creating more clones, but doesn't survive after the heroes rescue him.
• In The Goddamned, Cain regains his will to live after he saves a greatful Aga and her son Lodo, and he even considers staying with them... until Lodo's time as Noah's slave compels him to kill his mother, believing that she made him "weak".
• At the end of The Punisher: Born, set during the last days of the American involvement in The Vietnam War, Frank Castle and his Deuteragonist, Stevie Goodwin, are the only marines still standing during a furious attack of the NVA. When all seems lost, an F-4 Phantom suddenly roars over Goodwin, releasing napalm on the attackers. Other American planes follow the first one and, for a brief moment, Goodwin thinks that they have been saved as nothing could have survived the air attack. Then, a Vietnamese infantryman charges towards him through the flames, with a bayonet nested on the rifle.
• Two in Sunny Side Up:
  • Sunny is bored with no other children around in Gramps's retirement community. When Gramps mentions that the "girls" are visiting, Sunny is excited that other kids are visiting — and then learns they're two old ladies, Teezy and Ethel. She later meets the groundskeeper's son, Buzz, and has someone her own age to spend time with while visiting.
  • Gramps says the first several days that he has "big plans" for the day. Sunny first hopes this is a trip to Disney World, but it's instead trips to the grocery store, bank, and post office. which she all finds very boring. Her last days in Florida, he actually takes her, Buzz, and three other residents of his community to Disney World for the day.
• In Supergirl story Bizarrogirl, the Girl of Steel makes an army of Bizarro clones to fight Godship and its swarm off. At the beginning, it looks like her strategy is working... until the Godship's spawn starts ripping the Krypto-Bizarros apart.
  Supergirl: For the first few seconds, it seems like we might have a shot at winning this... but only the first few seconds. Even making super clones of Bizarro... they're still not powerful enough to win this fight.
• In Superman story War World Superman and Supergirl have to fight and destroy the eponymous planet-killer weapon, which has been seized by alien overlord Mongul. When they manage to knock Mongul out, they think they have won. It turns out that upon activation, Warworld's weapon systems operate automatically. So it keeps working. And now it is out of control.
• At the end of Watchmen, after Ozymandias explains their plan in detail, Nite Owl is glad they made it in time to stop the final phase, which would kill off half the population of New York. But then Ozymandias says this:
  Do it? Dan, I'm not a Republic Serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.
• In War of Kings the first Hope Spot occurs when the Starjammers and Gladiator help Lilandra regain her position as the Empress of the Shi-ar, so she could take command from Vulcan and end the destructive war with the Kree. And then she's shot to death by Razor. This proves a Despair Event Horizon for Black Bolt, which led to the second one – with him defeating Vulcan and Crystal convincing him not to detonate a bomb that would turn all life in the universe into Inhumans – after she neutralizes the Terrigen Crystals and they're going to leave, Vulcan attacked again, separating Black Bolt from Crystal and Lockjaw, right as they were teleporting. The bomb explodes, apparently killing both monarchs.
• Black Lanterns were exploiting this trope by making their victims feel hope, among other emotions, before killing them, so they can feed upon said hope.
• Sin City has a brutal one in the first act of That Yellow Bastard. John Hartigan has been stabbed in the back by his partner, is being framed for a crime he didn't commit and is getting beaten to a pulp while handcuffed to a chair. Suddenly, he finds the strength to snap the cuffs and pulverize his torturer... only for the readers to discover that it was just a fantasy.
• The "Everything Burns" crossover between The Mighty Thor and Journey into Mystery (Gillen) features a particularly cruel one. They've managed to save the Nine Realms from Surtur, Loki's got his BFF back (sort of), and Thor and Loki finally, finally can properly trust one another. Just in time for old Loki to force kid Loki into completely annihilating himself and allowing old Loki to take over his body.
• Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: The Decepticon Justice Division, five of the most violent and powerful Knight Templar agents in the army go up against six of the least competent Decepticons. The fight doesn't go well. At first, the Scavengers trick the leader, Tarn, into releasing Grimlock, who starts the fight out strong... and is beaten into submission (since the Scavengers could only get Grim up and about with drugs that quickly wear off). Flywheels is dragged into the chest of Tesarus, who is a massive shredding machine. Flywheels manages to stop his death by bracing himself with his feet (made fun of last issue), Tesarus acknowledges this, and flips him around, shredding him headfirst. Finally, Crankcase finds a Cybernought and brings the pain to the DJD, but they electrocute him and blow a hole through the Cybernought. The only reason the six, now five survive is that the one targeted accidentally fakes his death, and the DJD, being sticklers for following procedure, leave.
• In the second story-arc of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) Rainbow Dash uses a Sonic Rainboom to try and catch up to Rarity, who has been kidnapped by the Nightmare Forces. They vanish in a puff of smoke just before Rainbow can save her.
  • In #7, Spike seems to briefly get through to Nightmare Rarity, but she shakes it off and sics her Nightmare forces on the group.
• Poor X-23: Sarah Kinney gets fed up with the abuse heaped on her and decides to break her out and destroy the Facility? Turns out Rice contaminated her with the Trigger Scent and Laura kills her in a mindless rage. Laura finds her aunt and cousin, and begins to establish a happy family with them? Her aunt's boyfriend was a Facility plant who calls in Kimura. After finally being so beaten down by these experiences, Laura seeks out Logan to kill him and herself to end her pain, but Logan manages to talk her down and offer to help her put her life back together. And then Captain America shows up and arrests her. Just as she's beginning to really heal from all the trauma of her life, she gets kidnapped by Arcade and forced to fight other teenagers to the death for his amusement. And after escaping that and being taken to a hospital by Wolverine to recover from the ordeal, she somehow ends up tortured by Purifiers and wandering Miami in a temporary amnesiac state. Poor Laura cannot seem to catch a break.
• Runaways pulls this a few times:
  • After the Runaways encounter Cloak and Dagger and convince them that they're not the criminals that everyone is claiming them to be, Cloak and Dagger promise that they'll reach out to their friends in the superhero community to help clear the Runaways' names. At the end of the issue, the two are captured by the Pride and brainwashed into forgetting that they ever encountered the Runaways.
  • At the end of Brian K. Vaughan's last arc, the Runaways have successfully talked Chase out of a Face–Heel Turn and head back to the Hostel... only to find it's been taken over by Iron Man.
  • At the end of the very last issue, Chase is finally reunited with Gert, who inexplicably has Old Lace with her. Almost immediately after, he's hit by a car. Meanwhile, the other Runaways have no idea where the hell he is.
• The French graphic novel Arawn pulls these several times:
  • The main protagonist's love interest is kidnapped by his psychotic half-brother Math who demands that he hand him over his cauldron. He beats him in combat and tries to exchange her back by delivering to his allies safely. Unfortunately, as she is about to reach him, Math telekinetically calls his axe to free himself and grab her. And as if that wasn't enough, Math's allies had stolen Arawn's cauldron behind his back, allowing his enemies to take both his precious treasure and his beloved, who would later die in captivity.
  • Arawn is hit with this trope again when he enters a duel and deliberately hands his magic sword to his rival since the weapon is enchanted to not harm its owner. Unfortunately, the enchantment was removed and Arawn gets killed.
  • And finally after rising as a god, he learns that his blood can bring the dead back to life, which he first uses as a test on his fallen comrades that die in battle. He decides to then use it to bring his beloved Deirdre back to life... only to discover that her body was brought back as an Empty Shell and that her soul was long gone.
• In the climax of Earth X, Iron Man flies his greatest armor yet into battle against the Celestials. He’s brutally shot down by an energy blast, but crawls out of the wreckage and for a single triumphant moment he’s seemingly unharmed. Then he looks down and sees a huge shard of glass jutting out of his stomach. Then he falls over dead.
• Wonder Woman (Rebirth): It appears that Ares is willing to fight alongside Diana, as he renames himself a God of Justice. And then he goes off the deep end.
• Ultimate Marvel
  • The Ultimates: Bruce Banner has faced trial for the 852 people he killed as Hulk, and waits for the verdict. Fury shows up and says that he was acquitted, since the other Ultimates testified on his behalf about how he saved the world. Fury gives him champagne so they can celebrate. But then... Bruce blacks out from the drugged champagne, and they take him and put him on an abandoned aircraft carrier next to a one-megaton nuclear bomb. Becase if Fury told him he'd been found completely guilty, he risked Banner turning into Hulk right then and there.
  • Ultimate X Men: Twice in the Weapon X arc.
    • Nightcrawler doesn't say anything after being recaptured. Wraith then figures it out: he's thinking about teleporting to that plane passing in the sky. But he's exhausted himself during the escape (including his feat of teleporting alongside a snow vehicle), and can't do it. Wraith kicks him in the face and hauls him back inside.
    • Iceman starts thinking that there is no hope for them. Colossus then reminds him about Wolverine, who's still at large, and who Colossus is completely sure will come to the rescue... and then Sabertooth tells him Wolverine has just been captured.
• Astro City: The story-within-a-story about the Mock Turtle. The Mock Turtle was a Gadgeteer Genius who built a suit of Powered Armor for his employers, stole it after it was revealed he wouldn't be the one to pilot it, and was manipulated into a life of crime by a manipulative narcissist girlfriend. After escaping her influence and fleeing overseas to America, we see him sipping a beer and musing about how he's going to use his fresh start to build a better life for himself... and on the next page he has become the latest victim of a Serial Killer targeting supervillains.
• The Incredible Hulk (1968):
  • Al Milgrom's run makes a lot of the preceding John Byrne run one of these. Bruce and the Hulk are separated, but Bruce manages to patch things up with Betty and despite some severe interruptions from Betty's dad they manage to marry... then in Milgrom's run it turns out without one another Bruce and the Hulk will die. And without Bruce the Hulk is a mindless monster killing everything in its path. Oh, and the stress of all this? Causes Betty to start losing her mind.
  • During a fight between the Avengers and the now-mindless Hulk, She-Hulk intervenes to try and talk her cousin down. For a moment it looks like it's working. Then Hulk punches her off her feet.
• Guardians of the Galaxy:
  • As a result of the events of War of Kings, half the team gets transported into a series of bad futures, eventually learning the cause is Adam Warlock turning into the Magus, which is now overwriting every possible future. The time-lost team are rescued by Kang, who gives them a barely functioning Cosmic Cube which will give them a slim chance of killing Adam before he fully becomes the Magus. When they get there, Adam reveals that due to the means he used to fix the Fault, he's actually been the Magus for months.
  • The second series ends with the original Guardians of the Galaxy thinking the near-destruction of all reality has been fixed. Then it transpires the true temporal error wasn't the Magus at all, and the actual threat is about to happen. In the modern day, Peter Quill and Rocket Racoon have a beer after a fight with a completely invulnerable Thanos, and cheerfully figure "what's the worst that could happen?" The Thanos Imperative follows, which ends with Quill missing, Drax dead, and the Guardians broken up.
• A Death in the Family: Badly concussed but still alive, Robin frees both himself and his mother from their bondage. Knowing that he can't disarm the bomb, they go for the door instead, as Joker's goons have already fled to safety... only to find the door locked. Kaboom! Said Kaboom happens at the end of part 3, making readers wait until part 4 to see if Jason survives. Adding to the Hope Spot is Batman racing to the scene, only to arrive right when the bomb goes off.

Film — Animated

• BoBoiBoy: The Movie: BoBoiBoy demands that he see his badly battered robotic friend, to which Bora Ra lets, allowing the boy to run past him towards Ochobot. Then Bora Ra smirks and teleports to whack BoBoiBoy from the left and right with his giant hammer.
• Cars 3: Lightning McQueen has spent the whole movie trying to get faster to keep up with the new generation of racers. After a montage of training with his mentor's mentor, he goes to do a final practice run with his younger trainer Cruz. McQueen actually surpasses her for the first time, and then Cruz zooms past him. It's a crushing moment of realization that all that effort still can't reverse time.
• After Cinderella does the improbable in a rousing work montage and meets Lady Tremaine's demands...Tremaine's daughters rip it to shreds while she's wearing it, mocking every part of her beloved handiwork. No Noble Demons here.
• Frozen (2013) has a meta example in the song Do You Want to Build a Snowman. Anna once again tries to connect with her sister after the deaths of their parents with the titular question and the meter of the song has room for Elsa to reply, but no such response comes.
  • The movie has more hope spots than you can shake a stick at. Right as Anna is about to convince Elsa to come back to the castle, the moment where Elsa is stunned by Hans telling her she isn't a monster and you think she'll accept things, the moment before Hans' single sentence of soul-crushing...
• Zig-zagged in The Incredibles. When Frozone realizes that Dash is in the Omnidroid v.10's line of fire during the climactic fight, he goes to provide assistance. He picks up the kid and starts speeding away while creating an ice path, reasoning that the robot can't swim when going across a deep lake. Unfortunately, the robot can still make a splash and jump into the water with no ill effects, knocking Dash out of Frozone's grip and the remote a few feet away. Fortunately, Violet uses her invisibility powers to steal the remote and get out of attack range.
• Kung Fu Panda:
  • During the climax, it seems that Shi-Fu managed to reach to his adoptive son turned evil Tai Lung by giving him a heartfelt apology for failing him as a teacher and confessing that he has always been proud of him and always loved him. For a brief moment, Tai Lung seems about to accept his apology, before choosing to reject it.
  • At the end of the climactic battle, Tai Lung gets a hope spot of his own, when he declares that Shifu couldn't possibly have taught Po the Wuxi Finger Hold. Po agrees, to Tai Lung's very brief relief, before clarifying that he actually figured it out himself.
• The LEGO Movie has a crushing hope spot whereby after the destruction of Cloud Cuckooland, Emmet has figured out a great plan by using his knowledge to help the others infiltrate Lord Business' tower. Everything is going according to plan right up until the last second where Emmet is about to put the Piece of Resistance on the Kragle, whereby the alarm bells ring, the entire group is arrested and sent to the Think Tank.
  • An even worse hope spot that is ultimately soul-crushing is the point where Vitruvius happens to be hanging around the Think Tank after his friends have all just been captured. After Lord Business sets his robots on him, he immediately destroys them swiftly afterwards. The moment doesn't last, however. Vitruvius turns to Emmet to say a few wise words, before being decapitated by a penny thrown by Lord Business. Just when you thought it could not get any worse, Vitruvius confesses he actually MADE UP the entire prophecy. The ensuing reactions by the group are heartbreaking, but the moment where Emmet is on the verge of crying and in a state of utter distress, his friends are being led away, and the camera cuts to Lord Business just gloating above him as he forces himself to look up at his twisted face of sadistic pleasure who responds with "Not so special now, huh?", will rip your heart to pieces. The swell in music that plays at the point of Vitruvius' death doesn't help to reflect both the hopelessness and helplessness of the situation. It's so soul-crushing, that even anticipating this will never fail to leave you in shock as you try to fathom what just happened.
  • When GCBC has a meeting with Lord Business after he narrowly misses capturing the Special, Lord Business reveals his masterplan of gluing the universe together with the fated Kragle. GCBC is reassured it won't be used on him, to his relief. However, due to the significance of his failure at his job and Lord Business' infamous hatred of imperfection, it barely lasts a few seconds just as Lord Business snarls (his face sells it really well) "I'll use it on your PARENTS!". It's difficult to forget the horror convincingly plastered across GCBC's face, especially considering he's so shocked he can barely react.
  • A spoiler heavy one- After Wyldstyle rallies the people to fight back against Lord Business' army, in the real world The Man Upstairs comes home and sees the creations his son Finn made, taking issue with them before reassembling them "properly". In the LEGO world, this is shown by the people being overwhelmed by Lord Business' forces.
• The Lion King:
  • In a villainous example, Evil Uncle Scar survives dramatically falling off a cliff after the Final Battle with the hero with relatively no injury, and then relaxes in relief at seeing his usually comedic henchmen approach him ("Ahh, my friends..."), only to be begging for his life moments later as they proceed to rip him apart for denouncing them in a cowardly episode that he thought that no one had heard or witnessed.
  • The stampede scene is a sequence of multiple Hope Spots. The stampede catches up to Simba.. but then Mufasa arrives, grabs Simba and drops him off on a safe ledge. Then he's dragged away by the stampede, vanishing out of Simba's sight. He jumps back and grabs a ledge.. which is a cue for Scar to show himself to Mufasa. Mufasa thinks that Scar's there to help him, only for Scar to commit his supreme act of evil by sinking his claws into Mufasa's paws and throwing him back in. After the stampede, as Simba is looking for Mufasa, you hear movement. Simba looks up saying "Dad?" and for half a second, you the viewer think that maybe it's not that bad. Then a wildebeest runs by. Then you see what it just jumped over.
• My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): The Mane Six minus Twilight manage to help Skystar have the best time ever, and convince Novo into helping them against the Storm King by giving them the Pearl of Transformation...then Twilight is caught trying to steal the pearl, resulting in the ponies banished.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: When Sally is trapped in Oogie Boogie's lair with Santa Claus, she is about to tell Oogie what will happen when Jack gets ahold of him, only to be interrupted by the Mayor's announcement of Jack's demise; subverted when Jack enters Oogie's lair for the climactic showdown between Jack and Oogie.
• The Princess and the Frog: Naveen has to kiss a true princess in order to break the spell. It can be any type of true princess — Charlotte in particular, is the princess of Mardi Gras, but only until Midnight when Mardi Gras is over. After a long Final Battle with Dr. Facilier and the Shadow Men, Charlotte is happy to kiss Naveen, both lean in and pucker, and just before their lips can touch... the clock strikes midnight.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The Ethical Bug experiences a very brief one when Jack starts talking about his wish. When Jack mentions that he will wish for the one thing that will truly make him happy, Ethical Bug asks what it is, very clearly hoping that this will be something he can latch on to and use to get through to Jack. Then Jack says that his wish is to have all the magic in the world so that no one else in the world can have any. That Jack is so willing to let his own men die to achieve this completely selfish desire is what finally convinces Ethical Bug that Jack can't be redeemed.
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. After Kenny's surgery, it briefly seems like everything is fine and he'll live through it, as the doctors calmly wake him up. Then they inform him that they accidentally replaced his heart with a baked potato and he's gonna die in roughly three seconds - which he does, just as the potato explodes in his chest. Then it gets worse as Kenny's soul is seemingly ascending to Heaven as harp music plays, but then Heavy Metal kicks in on the soundtrack and he plunges to Hell while James Hetfield sings about how he’s going to suffer. Sure, Kenny is ultimately allowed into Heaven after all for helping to defeat Saddam Hussein, but that still can't quite erase all the psychological anguish he was put through.
  • Another example is where it appears that Sheila has come to her senses after Kyle reasons with her, but decides to ignore it, and guns down Terrence and Phillip.
• In The Super Mario Bros. Movie Mario and Peach manage to convince Cranky Kong to bring the mighty Kong army in the war effort against Bowser, the all jump on karts on Rainbow Road... And are promptly ambushed by the Koopa, with the battle ending in the defeat of the Kongs.
  • One during that battle is when Mario and Donkey Kong crash the vehicle of the Koopa General, giving the Kongs the upper hand... Then the Koopa General comes Out of the Inferno and turns in the Blue Shell. Things go immediately downhill, starting with Mario and Donkey Kong's kart being destroyed.
• In Jessie's flashback in Toy Story 2, her owner Emily finds her under the bed where she had been lost for years, smiles at her, and drives her to the tire swing they used to play at... and then puts Jessie and her other Woody's Roundup Gang memorabilia in a donation box, and drives away as Jessie watches in horror.
• Toy Story 3. This film actually manages a two-in-one hope spot. After getting past the shredder, Rex sees a light at the end of the conveyor belt tunnel. For a moment, the crew thinks it's sunlight — then they realize that the conveyor belt is taking them to an incinerator. Then Woody and Buzz spot a button to shut off the machine and lift Lotso up to push it. However, he betrays them, and they go tumbling towards the inferno. Fortunately, the Aliens, who were thought to have died moments earlier, rescue them with a junkyard claw.
• Turning Red:
  • After Mei first transforms to a red panda, brushing her fur calms her down enough to turn her human. Then her surge of joy at being human again makes her transform again.
  • When the math teacher starts his lecture on the quadratic formula, Mei smiles and whips out pencil and notepaper like she always does. For just a moment she's in her comfort zone - no panda, no puberty problems, just her and something she loves to do. Then Miriam passes her a note: "Your mom's outside".
  • As Mei is racing home to hide her panda form after transforming at school, she leaps from a rooftop across the street from the family temple, aiming to land safely out of sight inside the temple wall. At first it looks like she's going to make it ... then she doesn't.
  • When Mei confronts her mother's kaiju-panda form at the concert, she's trying with all her might to convince Ming that "I'm not your little Mei-Mei anymore!", and that Ming needs to accept that whether she likes it or not. For a second Ming hesitates and it looks like maybe Mei got through... and then Ming comes back angrier than ever.
• Wakko's Wish: After coming home, Wakko reveals that he got a ha'penny, which could have put all of Acme Falls' problems to rest... Too bad Thaddeus Plotz, who serves as the town's tax collector, swipes it away as soon as he finds out about it, leaving the town miserable and penniless once more.

Jokes

• A man prone to telling off-color stories is begged by his wife to behave at an upcoming party. At the party, the wife is happily chatting to other people when she hears her husband say "Stop me if you've heard this one... what's long, pink, and hard in the morning?" The wife is mortified, several people who know the husband cringe in sympathy... and he belts out the punchline: "The Times crossword!" The wife breathes a sigh of relief, people start laughing... the husband grins at his wife and yells from across the room, "Aren't you glad I didn't say "my dick!" ?"
• A joke used as a Take That! for any football team you dislike: A woman is standing at the window of her burning fifth-floor apartment, clutching her lapdog. The firefighters can't persuade her to let go of the dog to climb the ladder, so a strapping young man steps up to the building, identifies himself as the star player of [football team], and tells the woman to throw her dog down. The woman complies, the footballer plucks the dog out of the air, puts him safely on the ground to general applause... then backs up three feet and kicks off.

Music

• "Judgment Day" by Five Finger Death Punch has the lines: "Seems every time I think there's just a little bit of hope / Someone comes out swinging with a dead man's rope."
• ISMBOF's "Friendship in Tartarus: the Escape" lives up to its name, starting with some very heavy riffs that give the feeling of being in Hell, but around 3:15, the song switches to a more positive and happy riff (representing the "Escape" part of the song's title) before going back to the heavy riffs and ending.
• Of course you'd expect this with Joy Division, and they don't disappoint:
  • One song title, by itself, from their first album Unknown Pleasures, invokes this trope: "New Dawn Fades"
  • On their second album, Closer, there's "24 Hours":
    Oh how I realized how I wanted time,
    Put into perspective, tried so hard to find,
    Just for one moment I thought I'd found my way.
    Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away.

    Just for one moment I heard somebody call,
    Looked beyond the day in hand, there's nothing there at all.
• Life Of Agony's River Runs Red is a Concept Album about a teen dealing with issues like abuse, neglect, and suicidal thoughts - but the third to last track on the album, "Method of Groove", is actually something of a Pep-Talk Song where someone tells the protagonist to believe in himself and not give up on life. The message seems to have no impact, as the last proper song "The Stain Remains" is one of the bleakest on the album, and it segues into "Friday", an outro depicting his suicide attempt.
• The fourth and last movement of Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony, his last completed work, is a long slow stretch of mostly strings meant, many critics believe, to represent the finality of dying and silence. Near the very end, the symphony briefly quotes an upbeat earlier work of the composer's. It has been interpreted as suggesting that all this is not final, but essayist Lewis Thomas suggests it also could be read as a last breath escaping
• The Mechanisms sometimes use this trope on the way to their customary tragedies.
  • In Once Upon A Time In Space, Rose and Cinders embrace for "One perfect moment" before the Big Bad shoots Rose dead.
  • In High Noon Over Camelot, Arthur claims the GRAIL, allowing him to save Fort Galfridian alongside Lancelot and Guinevere... before Mordred shows up, kills Lancelot and Guinevere, and leaves Arthur the Sole Survivor of the station's destruction. The narration actually says "just this once, there could be a happy ending", which tends to cause audience laughter at live perfomances.
• "No Leaf Clover" by Metallica.
  ''Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel… was just a freight train coming your way.
• In "The Mystic Crystal" by Ninja Sex Party, Danny Sexbang realizes that he needs to defeat the evil Necromancer with love. He goes to hug him, and is immediately beaten to a pulp..
• Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota has "Juguetes Perdidos", from Luzbelito, a hopeful song in the tail end of a dark album:
  Cuando la noche es más oscura^note When the night is at its darkest
  se viene el día en tu corazón.^note the day comes into your heart
• ""Shia LaBeouf" Live": After evading murderer Shia LaBeouf, you're lost in the dark woods, but you spot a cottage with a light on. You move toward it hopefully, but the feeling goes away when you lose your leg to a bear trap and then discover that the cottage's occupant is your pursuer.
• At the end of "Lost" by Within Temptation, the protagonist seems to have saved the girl the song is about...but sadly, she's already dead, and they're unable to bring her around.
  Hope plays a wicked game with the mind...

Mythology And Religion

• Classical Mythology: In some versions of the myth of Sisyphus, the reason he keeps trying in vain to push the boulder up the hill is that he's been told if he manages to get it all the way to the top, he will be freed from Tartarus. Unfortunately for him, it always slips and rolls back down right before he gets to the top of the hill.

Opera

• A Hope Spot takes up much of the plot of Richard Wagner's The Valkyrie, with Siegmund first seeing the sword Nothung as literally a gleaming spot on an ash tree. (Of course, Wagner used a Leitmotif for this; interestingly, it first appears in the final scene of Das Rheingold with no connection to the sword, just a sudden surge of hope.)
  • In later productions of Rheingold, Wagner himself instructed his Wotan to salute Walhall with a sword left over from the Nibelung hoard: this almost certainly symbolizes Wotan's resolve to create a race of free heroes who will be able to regain the Ring and (he thinks!) prevent the fall of the gods.
• Act 2 of Puccini's Tosca ends with the eponymous heroine successfully extricating herself and her lover from the Scarpia Ultimatum. In Act 3, however, Scarpia turns out to have gone back on his word like the utter scumbag he is and Mario is executed with live ammo by the firing squad, and Tosca has to throw herself off a tower to escape arrest by the police for Scarpia's murder.
• In the very final scene of Catalani's La Wally, the title character's love interest, who had rejected her, finally follows her into the snowy mountains to confess his love to her. The two are reconciled, but at the last moment, he is killed by an avalanche, upon which she commits suicide.

Music Videos

• Miserable: After Pam/Vallerie starts eating the members of Lit guitarist Jeremy Popoff tries to hide behind a speaker, only to get spotted. After slurping him off the ground like a noodle she makes a face as if she might spit him out but instead she just spits out one of his white flame sneakers.

Podcasts

• The Magnus Archives: The beginning of the season 4 finale. After a season of being tormented by various Entities, slowly losing his humanity, and watching Martin lose himself to the Lonely, Jon manages to save Martin, and they escape together to a safehouse in the Scottish highlands. They spend three weeks relaxing without having to fight any avatars; Jon seems to have managed to remain human and avoid succumbing to the Beholding, and the two of them seem genuinely happy. And then Jon reads a statement... which is actually a booby trap created by Jonah Magnus, who mind-controls Jon into reading an incantation that manifests all of the Entities, completing the first ever successful ritual and effectively ending the world.
• Malevolent gives us a few scattered here and there, a notable recent example is in episode 26 where after having had a break down, Arthur gets a few moments to simply collect himself and eat. John allows him a few moments of silence, and all we the audience can hear is the crunching of an apple. There's also the season 3 finale, where after defeating the creature inside of the mines and freeing the townsfolk of Addison, Arthur and John steal a car and decide to head to New York to find The Order of the Fallen Star. Of course, this is then followed by the reveal that Wallace Larson is apparently host to another piece of the King in Yellow, and both are seeking revenge against our protagonists.

Professional Wrestling

• Probably the Trope Namer, as it is part of the vernacular of the business itself. Almost mandatory for every match as part of the storytelling aspect.
• Every wrestling match featuring Ricky Morton ever.
• Tend to be more prominent in matches where the good guy actually loses to the monster heel - with one of the best examples ever being the famous Sting vs. Vader series. Sting didn't win a match against Vader for eight months but managed to convince the audience each time that MAYBE he'd beat Vader, simply because he was seemingly the only person in the promotion who could even stay on the offence for more than a minute against Vader. The best of these occurred at the Great American Bash, where Sting gave Vader a fallaway slam... only for the fans, after exploding, to realise that the mere effort involved in lifting Vader was too much for Sting.
• A classic ladder match between Jeff Hardy and The Undertaker (then a heel with a LOT of heel heat, mostly for his Kick the Dog moment of making Jim Ross kiss Vince McMahon's ass a few months earlier) for the WWE Championship in 2002 featured several moments where even though everyone knew that Jeff Hardy had no chance to beat The Undertaker and get the title, he was so close to grabbing the belt that Willing Suspension of Disbelief kicked in and we all got ready to cheer our lungs out anyway.
  • A similar motif was used in a match featuring Triple H and Kaientai member Taka Michinoku, who would face off for the former's WWF Championship. Despite nearly all the fans knowing that Triple H had all but zero chance of losing his belt on free television to a jobber, several near falls in Taka's favor drove the crowd into a frenzy until Triple H was finally victorious with a Pedigree.
    • Also used in a Sunday Night Heat match, pitting then WWF Champion Kurt Angle against Crash Holly, the two made it look like Crash might get the upset victory about 6 times before Angle uncorked an Angle Slam and retained.
  • Used again in the classic Triple H vs Kane, "Mask vs Title" match, in which Kane would be forced to either defeat the champion and become champion himself, or unmask. All three of Triple H's Evolution stablemates attempted to interfere on his behalf, and Triple H even branded a sledgehammer to use to his advantage against Kane, but Kane fought off all the odds— commentator Jim Ross even stated that "Ain't nothin gonna stop Kane tonight!" Too bad he was wrong and Kane lost the match.
  • In a similar vein, Ring of Honor had Naomichi Marufuji vs. Nigel McGuinness for the Pro Wrestling NOAH GHC Heavyweight Championship, which Marufuji had only won a week before. Yes, it was obvious who was winning at the end…up until McGuinness rebounded off the ropes, sent his forearm into Marufuji's neck, and brought him down for a thisclosealmostthreecount.
• Essentially all of Takeshi Morishima vs. Bryan Danielson II, as the latter went into the match with an eyepatch, Morishima having fractured his left eye socket and detached the retina in their encounter mere weeks before.
• Tommy Dreamer built his career in ECW on this trope, especially his two-year long feud with Raven in the mid-90s: he lost every single match except their last one, but every time he'd come oh-so-close only for Raven to pull some kind of dirty trick and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
• The Miz vs. Randy Orton on the 11/22/10 edition of Raw. Orton had just suffered a brutal beatdown by The Nexus that injured his knee, and barely survived a title match with Wade Barrett thanks to John Cena's interference, only for The Miz to show up and cash in his Money in the Bank. Unlike most times the Money in the Bank is cashed in, Orton actually fought off The Miz pretty well, and many points in the match it looked like Orton would overcome the odds, and the fans cheered when it seemed he would actually pull off the win when he went for the RKO...only for The Miz to counter it into the Skull Crushing Finale for the pin and the title.
• Related to the above Alberto Del Rio's match against Dolph Ziggler for the WHC, Del Rio had just beaten Jack Swagger twice in 2 days and the second match around only for Ziggler to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase on a weakened Del Rio, Del Rio managed to hit his Enzuigiri and lock in his Cross Arm-Breaker to give hope that against all odds that Del Rio would retain, seconds before tapping out, Ziggler grabs Del Rio's injured foot causing Del Rio to stop the hold then Dolph Ziggler hits the Zig Zag for the 1-2-3 and the WHC.
• Eric Bischoff once ordered Maria Kanellis to face Kurt Angle. When the match begins, Angle declares that he doesn't care what Bischoff says, he's not going to hurt her. She's relieved and hugs him, then starts to leave...only for Angle to blindside her and give her a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that doesn't stop until John Cena comes to the rescue.
• Used brilliantly in a Cryme Tyme/ vs Chris Jericho and The Big Show match. After taking Jericho and Show's abuse all match, JTG finally gets the hot tag to his partner Shad, who comes in ready to raise hell... and gets knocked out and pinned by the Big Show with one punch
• After Daniel Bryan won the WWE title from John Cena SummerSlam 2013, Randy Orton threatened to cash in his Money in the Bank contract on him. However, Bryan, who had all the fans behind him, showed he was not vulnerable at all to a cash-in, and Orton was about to back out...only for Triple H to blindside Bryan with a Pedigree, invite Orton back into the ring, and have him cash-in for the title. Thus began the nightmare known as The Authority.

Sports

• On the final day of the 2011/12 English Premier League season, Manchester City and Manchester United were tied on points entering their final matches, with City hosting Queens Park Rangers and United away to Sunderland. United went 1-0 up early and held on to win rather easily. City started off going 1-0 up, before things went badly wrong with QPR scoring twice to take a 2-1 lead. As the game ticked closer to the 90th minute, it looked like United were going to win the title due to City slipping, only for City to score two goals inside the final five minutes to snatch the title away. The camera feed caught United players in the midst of celebration suddenly freezing with completely flabbergasted looks while Sunderland fans taunted them over City's comeback.
• VAR caused many moments like these for Pep Guardiola's Manchester City in 2019, from a goal being ruled out against Tottenham in the Champions League quarterfinal that would have seen them advance at Tottenham's expense to a decision that cost them a goal against Liverpool in the 2019 Premier League. Due to the nature of VAR, all of these decisions were made AFTER the goals had gone in and players had celebrated, only for it all to be called back.
• 2017 was a particularly bad year for the catch rule in the NFL overturning touchdowns, but two examples in particular stand out to most because of the long-term effects that the games they decided had.
  • The first was in Week 3, with the Detroit Lions facing the Atlanta Falcons, and they had been trailing the entire game. With 12 seconds left, it was 30-26 and as they were right near the Falcons' goal line, Golden Tate III appeared to score a touchdown getting his arms and the ball into the endzone, but he was hit by Falcons linebacker Brian Poole as he was making the catch. After review, the call was changed, with the verdict that he was short as he was touched down at the half a yard line. By rule, they would go back to a running clock, and because the Lions didn't have any timeouts left, there would be a 10-second runoff. And since there were only eight seconds left on the clock, by rule, the game was over. The significance of this was that the Lions' final record was 9-7, and the Falcons' was 10-6, allowing the latter to take the second Wild Card spot in the playoffs for the NFC. Therefore, that overturned touchdown literally cost the Lions the playoffs (along with their other losses, of course) and got the Falcons in.
  • The second was in Week 15 with the Steelers against the Patriots, who looked like they were finally going to beat them as they were leading 24-19, but with less than a minute left in regulation, the Patriots scored a touchdown and got the 2-point conversion, meaning the Steelers would have needed a touchdown to win at this point. After that, they were hit with two of these back to back.
    • The first was when they appeared to get by them and a pass was thrown to Jesse James, who stretched his way in for what appeared to be a touchdown. But like the above example, he too was touched down by Patriots defensive back Duran Harmon. And after review, the call was changed and declared incomplete, with the verdict being that "the receiver in the endzone did not survive the ground", erasing the score.
    • After that, the Steelers had two choices. One, attempt a field goal to try to bring the game into overtime. Two, attempt the touchdown again for the outright win. They chose the latter, and after two unsuccessful plays, they were intercepted and the Patriots regained the ball with six seconds left, allowing them to win. The significance behind this loss was that while both teams ended the season with 13-3 records, the Patriots were able to get the #1 seed because of this win, leaving the Steelers to face and get jumped by a big upset against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Had the Steelers won this game, they would have had a 14-2 record and would have had to face a rather weak Tennessee Titans team instead, making it more likely that they would have reached the AFC Championship game.
• In the 2017-18 season, Super Bowl LII was held in U.S. Bank Stadium, home to the Minnesota Vikings, who were the #2 seed in the NFC that season. After a miraculous triumph against the New Orleans Saints in the last seconds of their NFC divisional playoffs, the Vikings were going to the NFC championship for a shot at being the first team to play the Super Bowl in their home stadium (which would also mark their first appearance since the 1970s), as well as potentially acquiring their first Super Bowl title. Instead, the Vikings got thrashed 38-7 by the Philadelphia Eagles (despite scoring the first touchdown), who went to the Super Bowl and won their first title.
• The Detroit Lions' 2019 season started optimistically as they went 2-0-1 in their first 3 games. Despite a narrow loss to the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in week 4, things were still looking up. That is, until their week 6 Monday Night Football game against their division rival Green Bay Packers, when Lions defensive end Trey Flowers was incredulously penalized for "illegal use of hands to the face" twice by the officials, putting the Packers into position with a game-winning field goal. After that, the Lions went into a tailspin, winning only one more game (against the New York Giants in week 8) that season, and Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, who was having a record-setting season, was benched because of back injuries after their week 9 loss to the Oakland Raiders (making this the first time since 2010 that Stafford missed any playing time), and they ended with a demoralizing 3-12-1, their worst season since 2009.
• In the 2020 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals, Barcelona was being dominated by Bayern Munich and entered half-time losing 4-1. Early into the second half, Barcelona started fighting back with renewed energies, and managing to score a goal through Luis Suárez, putting the scores 2-4 and with a chance to equalise... only for Kimmich to score the fifth goal for Bayern six minutes later, and Barcelona's hopes were demolished. The match ended with a humiliating 8-2 defeat.
• After enduring a rough period in the early 2000s when they went into administration and were relegated from the Premier League, Leeds United qualified for the promotion playoffs in 2006 and beat Preston North End to face Watford in the final with the winner being promoted to the Premier League. Watford won 1-0 and in the following season, Leeds were relegated, went into administration again, and started the following season with a 15-point penalty.

Stand-Up Comedy

• In Like Totally, Dylan Moran goes into exquisite detail about one particular Hope Spot from a Hilariously Abusive Childhood:
  You'd be alone in the kitchen, the twilight would be dwindling and you could hear the far-off cries of the other children playing nearby, and you knew that you'd be alone in the kitchen because it was your special treat time where the jelly would come out just for you. And your mother would appear at your side, this vision of Laura-Ashley-print dress smelling of magnolias and biscuits, and she'd put the jelly in front of you; you would pull your chair in, and then the old-fashioned bar of ice-cream would come down, the one that had to be cut with a bread knife before the two sides were flanked with wafers. You would lift your little spoon up excitedly, to press it in and winkle out that first divot of black jelly...
  AND THEN THE CAGE WOULD COME DOWN!
  The cage with the Japanese Fighting Spiders inside.
  She would strike a match off her forearm and tell you to go and dance in the front room for money.
• John Mulaney tells of a time in his childhood when he and his friend went to a restaurant called the Salt and Pepper Diner and put enough money into the jukebox to play 21 songs in a row, then made all of them "What's New, Pussycat?"... except for #8, which they made "It's Not Unusual" purely to invoke a Hope Spot and make it that much worse for everyone when "What's New, Pussycat?" came on again.

Tabletop Games

• Vampire: The Masquerade features quite a few of these over the course of "Gehenna."
  • If players side with Saulot in "Fair Is Foul," they actually get within inches of accomplishing his goal of defeating Lilith and bringing down the wrath of God on Caine... right when the Tzimisce Antediluvian makes its move: Saulot is currently inhabiting the body of Tremere, and because Tremere achieved vampirism via Tzimisce blood, the Antediluvian can control him just like any other of its progeny. Cue Saulot exploding into a mass of ravenous tentacles and wrecking the entire scheme.
  • During the same scenario, the ghost of Abel appears on the scene in an attempt to redeem Caine, offering forgiveness to his cursed brother. Storytellers have the option of letting this stand as a Redemption Equals Death moment and allow the players to escape the massive battle royale that was about to happen... or turn it into a Hope Spot when Caine pulls a Redemption Rejection.
  • "The Crucible Of God" kicks off with a worldwide Masquerade breakdown. For a while it looks like The Unmasqued World might just be a peaceful one, with vampires briefly commanding a semi-affectionate celebrity status worldwide; some of the elders even believe that they can forge a lasting alliance with humanity if they can put the Sabbat down. Unfortunately, the whole thing falls apart when the media discovers the "cannibal camps" where elders try to dispel the Withering by feeding on younger vampires. From then on, it's a swift slide into a full-scale war between humans and vampires; worse still, the war is violent enough to wake the Antediluvians and destructive enough to ruin any opposition that might have prevented them from taking over the world.
  • Followers of Set players suffer one of these later in the same scenario. Having set out to bring Set back from the grave at long last, the majority of the clan and their mortal followers gather at Ombos, with all others joining in from hundreds of ancillary temples and shrines around the world; offerings are made, litanies are chanted, sacrifices are killed and crushed in presses - and then, at Ombos, a huge portal to the land of the dead opens. At that moment, Set himself appears before the gateway in the form of a vast serpent of purest shadow... aaaaand he can't get through. So he has to settle for making his children come to him and not the other way around; as a result, over the course of the next few nights, every single Setite on the planet commits suicide.
  • Later, players have the option of making an alliance with a rogue Antediluvian known only as "The Shaper." With the players' help, the Shaper successfully diablerizes a fellow Antediluvian, transcending vampirism to become a goddess; as she begins reshaping the city around her, she promises to reward her "servants" for their help, even promising to put an end to the Curse of Caine... and then Ennoia rises out of the earth and eats the Shaper alive.
  • Last but certainly not least, Tremere allies himself with the players in a particularly ambitious attempt to stop the War of the Antediluvians. Basically, with the players' help, he organizes a ritual that will place every Son of Adam on the planet under the Great Usurper's control; because vampires were once human, this will allow Tremere to send every last vampire on earth on a suicidal walk into the sunrise - with the exception of the coterie and Tremere himself. So, the ritual begins, all appears to be going well, the player characters feel a link being forged with every human being in the world, and Tremere opens his mouth to issue his orders... only for the Tzimisce Antediluvian to make its move. Again, Tremere stole immortality from Tzimisce vampires - meaning that the clan founder can control him just like the rest of its childer. Long story short, it seizes control of Tremere and uses the ritual to spread its essence to everyone on the planet, all but guaranteeing the Tzimisce's ultimate victory.
• Warhammer 40,000 has one in the background: a Tau world was about to be overrun by a Tyranid splinter fleet when a Necron fleet shows up and proceeds to vaporize everyone. The Tau, ecstatic at being saved and possibly inducting a new species into the Greater Good, sent a welcome party to greet the landing Necrons, who proceed to vaporize everyone.
• Talisman had one in its first (of many) expansion sets. The original game had the goal of achieving the "Crown of Command", which would allow you to attack the other players from a difficult to reach position until the player with the Crown was the last person standing. The expansion set had a handful of cards that you drew from to gain new goals. One of these was "The Dragon King", who you had to battle, but if you won you were so rich that you instantly won the game. Unfortunately, there was also "The Void", which if you drew meant that you were sucked into the Void and were out of the game, with the next person to reach the stack of cards drawing the next card.

Theatre

• Tennessee Williams, to a T. Whenever a character is about to achieve the desire that would redeem them and improve the Humiliation Conga they have called their lives thus far, it comes crashing down beautifully. Just ask Blanche (her white knight calls her too dirty to take to his mama!) or Laura (the Gentleman Caller even broke her favorite glass animal, the one thing that gave her joy.)
• The opening of the fifth door in Duke Bluebeard's Castle and its aftermath suggest a happy resolution, as Bluebeard's castle has been fully brightened and he asks Judith to stop and come to bed with him. Instead, Judith keeps going and opens the last two doors, and the tale ends in darkness.
• In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye has acquiesced to his two oldest daughters' unconventional marriages during inner monologues that follow a pattern: Reason why not, on the other hand, reason why, on the other hand, reason why not, on the other hand — okay, you can get married. So when the third daughter shows up with a Christian husband and the same inner monologue starts again, we have hope. But instead, this happens:
  Tevye: On the other hand . . . No, there is no other hand!
  • However, in the end when everyone is leaving Anatekva, there is a brief scene showing he may eventually forgive her.
• Cyrano de Bergerac:
  • Cyrano has two in his hope of winning Roxane’s love. His first Hope Spot lasts a night (between Act I and II) until he hears Roxane describe the guy she loves as “fair” in Act II Scene VI. The other lasts mere seconds (in Act IV Scene X, when he hears that Christian has been mortally wounded).
  • Christian has mere seconds of hope between Cyrano telling him Roxane probably loves him and the announcement that she is waiting for a love letter that Christian is incapable of writing at Act II Scene X. His second hope spot will be in Act IV scene X when he forces Cyrano to tell Roxane the truth about them Playing Cyrano (notice that he still had hope, and his Hope Spot endures for the rest of his life).
• The song "Leave Luanne" from 35MM: A Musical Exhibition is about a woman who's in an abusive relationship that she believes she can't get out of, until one night, she makes her escape by setting free her abusive husband's dog as a diversion, and swimming away through the bog and marshlands. At this point, the melody and mood of the song completely change as Luanne finally becomes free... until she reaches the river bank, and finds that her husband knew where'd she go, and got to the bank first. The next verse briefly describes Luanne committing suicide in despair as the song returns to its original sad tune.
• William Shakespeare:
  • In King Lear, Edgar returns in Act V to confront and defeat his scheming half-brother Edmund. Edmund, in an act of Villain's Dying Grace, confesses he signed the order for Cordelia's murder and the good guys rush off to save her. They are too late.
  • In Othello, the title character schemes together with Iago to murder Cassio, whom Iago asserts has had an affair with Othello's wife Desdemona. Othello meanwhile smothers his wife. Moments later, her handmaiden Emilia arrives, announces that Cassio has survived, and Desdemona revives for a moment to announce her innocence once more. She then dies before Emilia can reveal Iago's lies to Othello.
  • In Julius Caesar, after Caesar has met a tragic death at the conspirators' hands, Publius Cimber, who was facing banishment from Caesar, looks forward to the hope of freedom, until Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus mark him for execution in Act IV, Scene I.
• The Prince of Egypt: Ramses promises to let the Hebrews go if Moses stays with him as a brother once more. The Hebrews throw a dance to celebrate, before learning that their troubles have only begun...

Theme Parks

• After just narrowly surviving attacks by Bellatrix and security trolls in Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts, the riders are directed by a goblin into a room where it's said that they'll be safe. Voldemort and Bellatrix just so happen to blast their way into this room.
• In the JAWS ride, the boat's skipper attempts to evade the shark by going into a dark boathouse. Turns out the shark is able to get into the boathouse...
• Rides at Universal Studios seem to enjoy this. The Orlando version of Revenge of the Mummy has you escaping the mummy and going into the docking station to get off...and then the attendant gets her soul sucked out by Imhotep.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • ALL the time. When you think you've bested the prosecutor, he/she will smile smugly and pull a new witness or piece of information out. Hopefully, the tides can still be turned.
  • Probably the ultimate Hope Spot is one that goes so far as to become an inversion of Fission Mailed: in the second case of the third game, you've just proven your client innocent of a theft, caught the real thief, and even established (to satisfy his deluded insistence that he did it) that your client was somewhere else at the time. The judge has declared Not Guilty and you're in the customary post-case celebration scene, when the prosecutor comes in to arrest your client for a murder which took place at the same time as the theft- and you've just proven in court that he was at the scene of the crime when it happened. Oops.
  • While the outcome is something of a Foregone Conclusion, the fourth case of the third game has Mia about to get Terry Fawles on the stand, to testify against Dahlia Hawthorne, which Mia hopes will clear his name. Unfortunately, Dahlia has Terry make a Suicide Pact with her, and manipulates him into going through with it.
  • One that goes so far as to completely turn the premise of whole series on its head, in Dual Destinies case 4, and have the episode not resolve anything apart from that your client is innocent and the witness lied. You've just proven that your client couldn't possibly, under any circumstances, be the killer. But wait, the real murderer, and his actual actions haven't been found out. But that doesn't matter right now. The Judge hands down a not-guilty verdict...then suddenly Simon objects just before adjournment and demands that the fingerprint results on the lighter be read out. ...This creates one of the biggest wham lines in the ENTIRE SERIES. And the episode ends at that exact point, causing, for the first time in the franchise, the events of the case to be carried over to episode 5, where they're not completely resolved until near of the end.
    Blackquill: *Reading from report* "After a thorough analysis, the fingerprints... Were found to belong to Athena Cykes".
  • Often, Phoenix or the other protagonists will wait for a test done on a crucial piece of evidence, only for the results to seem inconclusive or cast suspicion on the innocent party. Then again, the protagonists tend to turn this around to their favor in the end.
  • Almost the entire first trial of episode 3 in Spirit of Justice is one big hope spot. It's a Locked Room Mystery, and you establish the existence of a third party with surprising ease... or so you think. Nahyuta quickly figures out that your supposed "third party" is a statue, but plays along until he can crush your hopes in the most painful way possible. Your client is then immediately found guilty. Way to be a dick, Nahyuta.
• Danganronpa: Monokuma, being the despair-obsessed Hope Crusher he is, loves to use this to truly induce despair in his victims:
  • The third case in each game always plays out with someone murdered, and then a second victim turning up soon after, just to give the players an unpleasant surprise when a body turns up and they think one of their favorite characters is safe for the time being.
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: Sakura Ogami's death. Her death was a suicide (an actual suicide, no overcomplicated assisted suicide,) so there isn't anyone to execute. But Monokuma reveals that he knew all along about the existence of Alter Ego, the AI Chihiro created to try and help the group escape, and that they were trying to keep hidden. And since he can't execute any of the students this time around... It's ultimately a subversion, though, as a copy of Alter Ego had already been uploaded to the school's network at that point.
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair:
    • Peko Pekoyama's and Chiaki Nanami's executions. The former has her under attack by an army of Monokuma samurai, but she manages to hold her own against them while Kuzuryuu rushes in to try and save her, until Pekoyama accidentally wounds him and the Monokuma samurai finish her off in the middle of her My God, What Have I Done? moment. The latter is more of a meta example, as the game keeps repeating general plot points from the previous game, and Chiaki's execution coincides with when Naegi was successfully rescued from his own execution. The game takes advantage of this by dragging it out for as long as possible, stacking Hope Spot on top of Hope Spot before finally executing her for real. Like Alter Ego, it doesn't stick due to her being an AI, but her survival status after the game's conclusion (which entailed the virtual reality program she was part of shutting down) is ambiguous at best.
    • Nagito Komaeda's death is a pretty sadistic use of this as well. It turns out that his murder was actually a very elaborate suicide (meaning no one is going to get executed,) and just when everyone is about to cast their vote, they realize that it was actually an assisted suicide, designed in such a way that the accomplice would have no idea they even killed someone, and that since the accomplice was the one who dealt the finishing blow, they are still guilty of the murder. The above-mentioned Chiaki winds up being the one who did it.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
    • Kirumi Tojo's execution. She attempts to escape from the school and avoid being executed, but she gets stopped by a lynch mob. Kirumi is then given a long, thorny vine which she climbs in order to escape. After getting viciously slashed by buzzsaws, she finds a hole glimmering with light...only to find out that there is no exit; it's just a child's drawing taped to the ceiling. The vine then snaps, and Kirumi falls to her death.
    • Near the end of Chapter 4, when it looks all but certain that Gonta Gokuhara is going to be convicted as the killer, Kaito Momota suddenly interjects that he has proof that the suspect must be innocent. He points out that Shuichi Saihara and Tsumugi Shirogane met the suspect outside the entrance of the mansion in the Virtual World, meaning he couldn't have been on the roof, where the murder happened. Shuichi is forced to crush everyone's hopes by pointing out that the killer could have used the roll of indestructible toilet paper found nearby to leave the crime scene.
    • A non-death example: In Chapter 5, the remaining students manage to make their way through the Despair Death Road thanks to Miu's electrohammers. They reach the school's exit, and the door to the outside world gets unlocked...but it turns out that the outside world isn't so lovely. The cutscene of the door opening also makes you think Kaito, Kiibo, and Tsumugi are going to be survivors...but later on in the chapter Kaito murders Kokichi and is then sent off to be executed, Tsumugi is revealed to be the Big Bad and is killed during the final execution, and Kiibo makes a Heroic Sacrifice by self-destructing in order to save the remaining students.
• In Double Homework, when Dennis starts blackmailing the protagonist over his role in the Barbarossa incident, Dr. Mosely quickly figures out what’s going on and offers the latter a way out: the two of them will work together to make a recording of Dennis saying something self-incriminating. However, when they are making the recording, Dennis reveals that he already has enough information on Dr. Mosely to blackmail her as well.
• In Princess Waltz, the fight between Liliana and Angela is essentially a series of Hope Spots for the former, that becomes all the more painful when Angela emerges victorious in the end.
• Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair has a subtle example that may not be obvious on a first playthrough. If you choose to have Raiko tell Kamen that she came to Rie's party (something the introverted Raiko would not normally be eager to attend) because of Kamen, Kamen will be surprised. Raiko will then tell Kamen that she was meaning to talk with Kamen about something, resulting in Kamen being overwhelmed with emotion... until Raiko asks what she did to earn Kamen's hostility, which disappoints Kamen. In post-game content, it is revealed that Raiko saved Kamen from being arrested for shoplifting four years prior, went on a trip with her family and came back a different person after her sister's death. Raiko has completely forgotten her meeting Kamen, and Kamen hoped she'd have remembered.
• Umineko: When They Cry is full of these, particularly in the later arcs.
  • During Kanon's epic battle with Lucifer, he finally manages to defeat even her stake form by blocking the blow and sacrificing his hand, pulling the stake out and seeming triumphantly victorious...until Beatrice's Literal Genie moment of saying she promised to spare him if he defeated all SEVEN Stakes of Purgatory. Cue appearance of the other 6 sisters.
    • Subverted when Genji steps in to give both Shannon and Kanon a Mercy Kill and spoil Beatrice's fun of torturing them.
  • EP 3: Rudolf and Kyrie manage to spectacularly defeat Belphegor and Leviathan...until Eva-Beatrice decides she's tired of using her predecessor's "second-hand furniture" and proceeds to summon the deadly Siesta Corps., which even Beato can't summon. Insert "oh fuck" moment here as their attempt to run away is beyond futile.
    • Then there's the Meta-Battle between Battler and Eva-Beatrice...
  • EP 4's fights between Jessica vs. Ronove and George vs. Gaap are pretty much nothing but hope spots in clear parody of the typical Shounen Manga format.
    • There's the escape of Kyrie's group from Kuwadorian. When they escaped, the Siestas have already rebooted and they start shooting them all down.
  • In Episode 6, Battler manages to outwit Erika's closed rooms by having the other five victims of the first twilight fake their deaths. Then it turns out Erika severed all of their heads beforehand, thus making it impossible for any of them to save Battler, and trapping him in a logic error. Eventually subverted.

Web Animation

• In the Eddsworld episode "Moving Targets", after the group botches their air drop from a helicopter, Tord lands on one side of a plank resting centrally on a steel drum. Edd, Matt, and Tom land on the other side. Tord eyes them nervously, fearing he'll be see-sawed into the air. Instead, the board obeys realistic physics and snaps, and he breathes a sigh of relief. Only to look up and scream as a completely gratuitous hippopotamus falls out of the sky on him.
• FreedomToons: Jordan Peterson makes an impassioned speech advocating for free speech as the music swells before a Record Needle Scratch cuts him off and a Canadian judge sentences him to electroshock therapy for his "horrible abuse of children" by using the wrong pronoun.
• In Mario Brothers, against all odds, Mario finds the 1-Up Mushroom to bring Luigi back to life. However, Luigi was dead too long for it to have any effect, and remains dead.
• Already trapped on an island and forced to kill their fellow students in Pyrrhic, Joshua and Hanako have joined forces, waiting on allying with Mary Jane, and ready to find a way to strike back against the experiment, but before this can really happen a grieving Marie shows up. Joshua, knowing what he did to Chase, tries to reason with her beforehand, but his attempts fail and she shoots at them, causing them to lose whatever advantage they had.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • The evil A.I. O'Malley is driven out of Caboose's Mind, everyone has their Radio turned off so he can't take over anyone else, leaving him to 'die'. The Camera hangs over the scenery for a while, with O'Malley's transmission/Bodysurf signal getting slower and weaker and finally fading completely. Then Doc (whom everyone forgot) calls command and O'Malley gets him.
  • At the end of Recreation, Simmons, Donut, and Lopez are cornered by the Meta when suddenly Agent Washington shows up. Simmons, knowing that Agent Washington fought the Meta during the previous season, thinks they're safe. Then Washington calmly orders the Meta to stand down instead of attacking it. Then he starts asking what the Red Team did to the Epsilon unit. Then he shoots Donut and Lopez.
  • The second to last episode of Season 13 has two. After finding out that the Freelancers have dealt with the Purge and killed Locus and Felix, the Reds and Blues know all they have to do to beat Charon's army once and for all is get to the top of the communication tower they've been fighting to get to and send Church's message to the UNSC. But when they get there, they find out that Locus and Felix aren't quite as dead as they thought, and want payback. After finally dealing with them for good, Church finally sends their distress signal to the UNSC. The people of Chorus cheer and General Kimball reports that a ship is already on its way! The episode ends with the arrival of the ship in question: the Big Bad's flagship the Staff of Charon.
    Chairman: YOU HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE.
• Robo-san and Wan-chan: Robo-san follows what looks like Wan-chan's footprints down a path, only to discover they were made by tiny rock creatures.
• RWBY:
  • In the Volume 3 finale, "End of the Beginning", Jaune has contacted Ruby and Weiss, begging them to save Pyrrha - she ran off to fight Cinder and knows it's a suicide mission. After figuring out she's on the CCT tower, Weiss sets up a series of glyphs for Ruby to run up like she did with the Nevermore ages ago. Ruby races up the tower as fast as she can... only to watch as Cinder disintegrates Pyrrha from the inside-out.
  • Pyrrha herself gets some good hits in on Cinder, catching her off-guard a number of times despite being far out of her league. Cinder's Oh, Crap! reactions at various points in the fight give the fleeting hope that she might pull through, especially if Ruby can reach her in time to help. Nope. Arrowed.

Web Original

• Caretaker: Reborn: At the end of Chapter 3, everybody but the psi-immune title character have been knocked unconscious by mental command, and even Caretaker has been rather thoroughly injured by a super-strong enemy. Said villains are just leaving when Caretaker takes a stand... and gets horribly, painfully demolished for his trouble.
• Channel Awesome:
  • A meta example. In a review of Dragonball Evolution, they were in despair until the final fight scene come. Paw almost say that the filmmakers were leaving the best to last, and then, the Kamehameha. That destroyed every last bit of hope they had.
  • The Nostalgia Chick had really hoped that a Meatloaf Actor Allusion joke had meant that Spice World had redeemed itself. But what did the next scene involve? ...aliens.
  • Kickassia has Santa Christ accidentally get shot and killed, horrifying all present. Then Bison realizes that since he is made up of the hopes and dreams of everyone, maybe, just maybe, if they believe hard enough he will return. Cue everyone putting aside their conflict to clasp hands and chant "We believe in Santa Christ!", along with a huge parade of the site's other contributors joining in. It fails. They end up dumping the body in a dumpster. Subverted in that he does return, just not right away.
  • Another meta example. Fans were concerned that the Critic really would be given up for good in To Boldly Flee, until it was announced that Doug Walker had signed on for more work with Blip, thus proving that he wasn't done making reviews just yet. The Critic was killed off/fused with the universe anyway, and Walker announced that he was finished doing Nostalgia Critic episodes (though he did have more reviews planned, just not with the character).
  • Demo Reel: "Blue Patches" ends with Donnie reassuring his new family that he's going to stop obsessing over his past (which includes a mom dead from suicide, a horrible acting career and lots of abuse) and be excited about the future. "The Review Must Go On" takes everybody away from him one by one, and it only gets worse from there.
• In the CollegeHumor sketch "Nicolas Cage's Agent", after the agent has tried and failed to stop Cage from picking terrible movie after terrible movie:
  Agent: (reading script) A man wakes up with his ass where his dick used to be, Cheech Marin as the voice of your ass, from the writer of Space Ass–
  Nic Cage: No!
  Agent: (relieved) Great, Nic, we'll pass on this, we'll get you something better, we–
  Nic Cage: Sorry, my dog was eating my shoelace. Whatever you just said, I'm in.
• The Fire Never Dies:
  • Theodore Roosevelt's presidential election in 1912 could potentially allow for progressive and labour reforms in America which could avert a potential socialist revolution. Unfortunately unlike in OTL, his assassin managed to kill him.
  • During the Second American Revolution, Republican Congressman Walter M. Chandler devised a 'Hail Mary' plan which may allow for a peaceful settlement with the Reds and end the Civil War with the United States of America intact and no further bloodshed. Unfortunately he and his fellow conspirators were caught by J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau of Investigation's General Intelligence Division before they could contact the Reds with it, ending even the slimmest possibility of peace.
  • Late in the Civil War, President Wilson had suffered a stroke, the Whites had failed to secure foreign aid, and the Reds had by then captured most of the country. At this juncture the US government had finally decided to stop delaying the inevitable and sent overtures to the Reds' leadership for a negotiated surrender. Then General William J. Simmons, leader of the Ku Klux Klan, launched a military coup and took over the leadership of the White forces in opposition to it, destroying not only any chance for a peaceful end of the war but also any remaining legitimacy of the US government.
• In Soylent Scrooge it seems like Inspector Bucket will be able to arrest Scrooge, but he has the law in his pocket and all of Bucket's efforts are for naught.
• John J. Reilly's half-serious future history Spenglers Future suggests, in its chapter on the present period, that Western civilization itself is passing through a Hope Spot on its way to a messy devolution, through wars and persecutions, into The Empire.
• Survival of the Fittest:
  • The Bobby Jacks vs. Ric Chee fight, in which the wire thin misfit Ric manages to hold off Scary Black Man Bobby, a professional boxer with little more than a stick for a significant length of time, even managing to pick himself up from a seemingly decisive blow. Bobby proceeds to violate the conditions he put on the fight by pulling out a concealed weapon and stabbing Ric, serving as something of a Kick the Dog moment. Not long afterwards, Bobby put Ric down for keeps.
  • John "the Riz" Rizzolo versus Emma Babineaux, who had a crush on him during high school. After a brief fight, Emma gets a hold of John's gun, but is unable to bring herself to kill him. John appears to have a change of heart when she tells him there may be a way to escape the game, and as the two of them embrace and kiss, John impales her with a sword before shooting her in the head.
  • Riz goes on to instigate ANOTHER hope spot when he tortures Laeil Burbank,cutting out her eye before setting the building they're in on fire and leaving her to die. She's soon after rescued by a couple of passers-by, including a former ally, who pull her from the burning building and patch her up. Just when it seems like she's going to make it, she goes into cardiac arrest from all the blood she lost and dies. This was even a Hope Spot in real life with many handlers wondering whether Laeil is going to die, she gets rescued, and with a ton of research on one handler's part into how to properly treat her injury, she gets bandaged up just in time to make a tearful Heel–Face Turn. Then she gets rolled.
• In Episode 46 of Welcome to Night Vale, the rebellion against StrexCorp was finally happening. But then no one else joined Tamika and her group of revolutionaries, so they were quickly captured and dealt with while the weather played.
• Worm:
  • The story has an incredibly cruel one. The protagonists manage to defeat the Slaughterhouse Nine and trap Jack in an inescapable time loop, seemingly saving the world... but in the next chapter, Scion, the most powerful being in the world, pulls a Face–Heel Turn thanks to Jack's "The Reason You Suck" Speech and annihilates Britain. And concludes that he likes the feeling.
  • And at the climax of the story, Taylor invokes the trope against Scion, giving him the illusion of being reunited with his counterpart before dashing his hopes to drive him to despair so that he would let himself be killed.

Web Videos

• In the Hopeless Boss Fight in Episode 102 of Critical Role, a paralyzed Vax is targeted by Delilah's Disintegrate, which Scanlan narrowly counters. For a few seconds, it looks like Vax is safe... then Vecna casts Disintegrate at him immediately afterwards, leaving him Killed Off for Real with no feasible means of resurrection.
  Vecna: I do hate leaving things unfinished.
• Daisy Brown adopts a cat and names it Strawberry in one video and she enjoys its company for a while. Then, when Alan drives her out of the house, Daisy realizes that she forgot to take Strawberry with her and books it back home as fast as she can. She doesn't make it in time, and the next video is her placing a flower on Strawberry's grave.
• After performing poorly in the first three races, DashieGames manages to barely get 1st place on the fourth and final race, hoping that would be enough to get at least 3rd place overall. However, when he finds out that he lost by 1 point, he doesn't take it very well.
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Dr. Horrible stands up satisfied. He survived his broken death ray's explosion and his archnemesis Captain Hammer has fled, utterly defeated, humiliated and broken. His victory is complete. Now Penny, the girl of his dreams, will be his. And then he turns around... and finds that Penny was caught in the explosion and is dying. Cue the truly Joss-level angst.
• Played for Laughs in Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
  Cell: Today, I am making an announcement.
  Krillin: Please be leaving the planet forever, please be leaving the planet forever, please be leaving the planet forever!
  Cell: I am leaving the planet forever!
  Krillin: WHOOHOO!
  Cell: After I blow it up!
  Krillin: OH, NO!
• The Funniest Minecraft Videos Ever: It seems like Tommy and Phil are going to reconcile in the "Rising Void mod"... only for Tommy to try and murder Phil soon after, ruining any chance at peace and turning the video's final act into a war between the two.
• Hellsing Ultimate Abridged:
  • In Episode 2, Jan Valentine gets one when he rushes into the boardroom, thinking he'll be able to slaughter Integra and the Council of Twelve after slipping past Walter and Seras. Upon opening the door, he finds himself staring down the barrels of thirteen anti-vampire guns before getting minced by bullets.
    Jan: Well, that's not fair at all.
    Integra: I'm sorry, we don't give a fuck.
  • In the preview to Episode 4, Enrico Maxwell delivers this line to a priest who was a spy for Millennium before having Heinkel execute him. Given that said priest was also a Pedophile Priest, this ends up being more heroic than other examples:
    Maxwell: Oh do not worry, father. I assure you, God is forgiving!
    Priest: Really? Oh, praise be to– [Heinkel holds him up at gunpoint]
    Maxwell: Just make sure to ask him when you get there.
  • Episode 7 has Pip downing Zorin with his pistol and then picking up Seras to walk off at the behest of his men. Just when you think they'll be able to escape, that hope gets yanked right out from under their feet in gruesome fashion.
    Pip: (thinking to himself) You've got ze girl... you've got your men... you've got a way out of zis living hell– (impaled through the back by...)
    Zorin: Vait your turn... I vasn't finished playing vith that yet!
    Jaffe: Holy shit! CAPTAIN, THAT GERMAN BITCH IS STILL ALIVE!!
    Hebert: Jaffe, why the fuck do I have to die with you?
  • Maxwell again in Episode 8, when he and his forces arrive at London, the civilians become hopeful, thinking that they will save them. Then we're reminded what kind of person Maxwell is:
    Maxwell: Yes, my fellow Christians... we have come to save you!
    Civilian: Hooray, it's the Catholic Church!
    Maxwell: FROM YOURSELVES!
    Civilian: Oh no, it's the Catholic Church...
• The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon:
  • This gives us a hope spot at the climax where, after thousands and thousands of beatings from a spoon-wielding demon, the poor victim finally finds the spoon breaking against his flesh. The demon unzips his hoodie to reveal dozens of more spoons.
  • In the sequel, "Save Jack: The Interactive Adventure", the Giant Magnet option. It is the only method that seems to work — until the demon pulls out a wooden spoon.
• Jet Lag: The Game: At the end of Season 1, Ben and Adam's car breaks down on the way to the Montana state capitol, but they don't receive a call from Sam and Brian, which makes them hopeful that the other team got stuck on their challenge and they thus still have a chance to win the last state. Unfortunately for them, it turns out that Sam and Brian did complete their challenge and was just waiting for them to arrive so that they could surprise them with the news.
• Marble Hornets Entry #76: Jessica has just been rescued from certain death by Hoody's Dynamic Entry and makes a run for it... but she runs the wrong way and is taken by the Operator.
• Party Crashers:
  • In Brent's Mario Party Raid Boss session^note (one player is given a full handicap of 5 Stars and the other three must work together to make them end the game in last place), Vernias manages to make Brent lose a Star via on the penultimate turn Chance Time, Nick uses a Golden Pipe to purchase a Star that Brent could've gotten with a high roll, and Sophist uses his Golden Pipe to visit a nearby Boo to steal Brent's last Star, thus putting him in last place. However, if he rolls a 2 or 3, Brent could land on Chance Time and go for swap Stars, thus putting him out of last place and netting himself the victory... He promptly rolls a 10.
  • In Mario Party 3's Woody Woods, Vernias allows Sophist to steal all his coins via Boo with the plan of using his Bowser Phone to get 50 coins on the final turn, putting him in 3rd place over Brent with 37. However, he accidentally botches this plan when he wins the next minigame and is now unable to get the coins from Bowser, leading to him using his Bowser Phone on Brent and getting Bowser's Coin Potluck, losing all of his coins and leaving Brent with 7. After a Battle Minigame leaves Brent with 14 coins and Vernias with 5, Vernias still has a chance to overtake Brent for 3rd so long as he wins the final minigame... only for the minigame in question to be a team minigame, with Brent on his team, making it impossible for him to get 3rd.
  • In "We uncovered a BROKEN Mario Party loophole...", Nick and Brent are at massive lead with 5 Stars to Sophist and Vernias' 0 near the end of the game. However, the latter team manage to aquire themselves a Golden Pipe, a Double Card, and a Capsule Ticket, meaning if they manage to land on the Star Space and use the Double Card to net themselves 4 Stars (as Toadette gives away 2 Stars during the last 3 turns), use the Golden Pipe on the final turn to possibly aquire 2 more Stars, and land on one of the two Event Spaces on the top of the board to possibly receive 2 Stars from the Caspule Machine, they could potentially make a big comeback with a whopping 8 Stars. But despite their efforts, they end up not obtaining a single Star, as Vernias misses the Star Space 4 times in a row, while Sophist only receives a meager 3 coins from the Capsule Machine.
• In Press Heart To Continue's 13th Episode of Undertale, when Dodger realizes Flowey is about to try and take over seconds before he appears.
  Dodger: ...This is too happy. This is going to go south... so fast.
• Episode 3 of Welcome Back, Potter ends with Voldemort dead and Jarry and Don going back to America while Stacey stays to help the Prime Minister rebuild. Then, three alternate "bizarro" versions of Harry, Ron and Hermione show up and proclaim that their universe is in violation of space-time laws for being "illegally derived from a preexisting universe" and they intend to shut it down. An exasperated Stacey goes to Jarry and Don to demand their aid yet again.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • In the second season finale, Aang intentionally enters the Avatar State for the first time to fight an army of Dai Li and save the capital city from takeover, seemingly a reflection of the outcome of previous season finale, only to be electrocuted by Azula — and right in the middle of the Transformation Sequence.
    • Earlier in the same episode, Katara raises the possibility of resolving Zuko's inner conflict by using her skills to heal Zuko's facial burns - the physical embodiment of his daddy issues. But then Azula walks in and offers an alternate path to daddy's good graces: turn on Katara and bring down the Avatar.
  • The episode immediately prior to the second season finale is essentially one big Hope Spot. In summary the heroes have finally won an audience with the Earth King and in the process have succeeded in exposing the Evil Chancellor Long Feng, which leads to him being arrested. They successfully deliver news about the Day of Black Sun and begin the process of preparing the invasion of the Fire Nation. In addition to that, they get the opportunity to reunite with family members, meet with mentors and help prepare for future successes. However the end of the episode shows that Long Feng's minions, the Dai Li, remain loyal to him in spite of his disgrace, Azula and her friends have succeeded in infiltrating Ba Sing Se by pretending to be allies of the Earth Kingdom, and in Toph's case, her opportunity to meet with her mother is a trap set up by the two men hired by her father to bring her back.
• Bojack Horseman:
  • Poor Herb. The man manages to beat cancer, and then he dies from a peanut allergy after crashing into a peanut truck because he was tweeting about beating cancer while driving.
  • Bradley H. Smith, who played the middle child on Horsing Around, was going to finally be successful in Hollywood after trying too hard to be the breakout of his first show. However, BoJack completely bailed on set and fell off the grid for months after Sarah-Lynn’s death.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • "Operation Turnip": Numbuh 3 calls in a Humongous Mecha she used during training to combat a huge turnip. Except that the turnip's much huger than "Hippity Hop", and the turnip takes a pre-emptive first strike against it. Result: Two minutes or so of wasted screentime.
  • The Sudden Downer Ending of the Grand Finale has an elderly Numbuh 5 getting a call from Numbuh 1.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show: During the climax, the Eds make it to where Eddy's Big Brother is just ahead of the rest of the kids and he seems like the Cool Big Bro Eddy has been talking about through the whole series. But then Eddy's Brother wants to play "Uncle" and beats up Eddy much to everyone's horror, showing that he's just a Big Brother Bully and part of the reason Eddy turned out the way he did.
• Futurama: Bender's fight against Destructor, right about when he says "It's Bendering time!".
• Gargoyles gives Goliath the chance to prevent Demona from becoming evil by using the Phoenix Gate to go back in time and give her a moving speech to warn her against betraying the clan. Unfortunately, the Phoenix Gate can't be used to change history and she reveals at the end that she let their castle get swarmed because of his warning. She'd interpreted his warning about betrayal as being a warning that the humans they guarded would betray them and that had always been the reason why she let them get killed. She became a villain after that when she realised that it had been Goliath's "little speech", and her response to it, was the reason she became an outcast from the clan.
• Gravity Falls:
  • In "A Tale of Two Stans", Stan gets one in a flashback when while his brother is giving him Journal 1, Ford asks him if he remembers their childhood dreams of sailing around the world, implying he wants to go with him, but then Ford tells Stan to take the Journal, go on a boat and stay away from him. Stan snaps, a fight breaks out, and Ford goes through the Portal and is missing for thirty years.
  • At first, the plan in "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls" goes off smoothly: Bill Cipher is distracted long enough for the strike team to get into his castle and rescue the rest of the town, and Ford is able to draw the 10-symbol zodiac circle, and get one person for each symbol to stand in the circle, giving them a way to defeat Bill. Then, just when it looks like it's going to work, Ford and Stan's bickering over the latter's grammar breaks the circle, and Bill, no longer distracted, destroys the drawing of the circle and imprisons most of the people making it up in tapestries.
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: In "Twin Beaks", Kipo spends most of the episode trying to convince Wolf to stay with her once they reach the shelter city instead of leaving. Just as Wolf agrees to stay, she discovers Kipo's Mute nature completely by accident and runs off before Kipo can explain herself.
• Justice League: The episode "For the Man who Has Everything" has a deeply cruel one for Batman. He gets stuck in a Lotus-Eater Machine dream by a parasite where he's a boy again on the night his parents are murdered, but then Thomas Wayne goes Papa Wolf, grabs the gun in the mugger's hand and starts kicking his ass. The real Batman has a blissful smile on his face during the whole thing. When Wonder Woman begins prying him free from the parasite, the dream falls apart and Bruce watches in horror and despair as his father loses his grip on the mugger's gun and is fatally shot.
• Moral Orel:
  • A literal example: ehile in the best of spirits himself, Reverend Putty has to do a sermon on — you guessed it — "Hope". He looks all over the church and sees everyone looking upset.^note over circumstances that have been revealed to the audience over the course of the season He remembers Orel Puppington, the town's residential religious Cheerful Child... only to see that Orel's just as glum as the rest of the room, with his leg in a cast. Putty alters his script so it reads "Hopeless". Subverted in the next episode, as Putty uses the disappearance of Jesus' body to affirm that, even when things are at their bleakest, something marvelous may be forthcoming.
  • The Christmas Episode (which was the first episode aired on Cartoon Network) used this as an Establishing Series Moment after a disastrous Christmas in which Clay storms out after a massive fight with Bloberta.
    Orel: There's still two minutes left in today. I know you can make this the best Christmas ever. I have faith in you!
    [Orel stands silently with his hands clasped, gazing up at the sky in rapturous silence, waiting for a miracle that never arrives]
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Happens in the Final Battle of "Friendship is Magic, Part 2: Elements of Harmony". Twilight Sparkle is facing off against Nightmare Moon alone after having been dragged away from her friends. She manages to trick her way past Nightmare Moon to the Elements of Harmony and tries to activate them, and seemingly manages to do so. Only for their power to fizzle out and Nightmare Moon to shatter them to pieces right in front of her. The truly devastated look on Twilight's face when this happens only serves to make the Hope Spot being crushed even more of a Tear Jerker. It doesn't last that long, but still!
  • Played for Laughs in "The Ticket Master". After Twilight is given a sandwich at the cafe, it begins raining, but Rainbow keeps the clouds open around her to keep her dry in return for the other ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala. Twilight doesn't return the favor and asks Rainbow to close up the cloud that instant. She complies, but just as Twilight is about to eat, she gets rained on and her sandwich is ruined (after all, she didn't even take one bite of it when Rainbow showed up!).
  • Happens again in "Over a Barrel". The residents of Appleoosa and the buffalo tribe are ready for an all-out war before Little Strongheart restrains Chief Thunderhooves, and it seems as if the fight is off and everything will be all right... but then Pinkie Pie launches into her song from before, angering the buffalo so much that it causes the fight to begin.
  • In "The Return of Harmony, Part 2", Twilight is finally able to locate the Elements of Harmony. Unfortunately, with the rest of her friends corrupted, it has absolutely no effect, and in turn this causes her to lose all hope and become corrupted as well. Fortunately, she breaks out of it later thanks to Celestia sending back her friendship reports.
  • There's another one in "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1". It looks like Twilight and Cadence (Queen Chrysalis in disguise) are going to make up when Cadence pats her on the head, but then "Cadence" pulls out a Slasher Smile and drops Twilight Sparkle into the caverns below Canterlot.
  • Again in "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 2"; the mane characters fend off the Changelings long enough and reach the building where the Elements of Harmony are kept, but they enter to find even more Changelings sweeping all around, and more hordes swoop in, and they have no choice but to surrender and are recaptured and taken back to the throne room.
  • In "The Crystal Empire - Part 2", Twilight runs through a doorway that she thinks leads to the crystal heart and instead finds herself in a world where she has failed her test and is being sent away by Princess Celestia. She snaps out of it thanks to Spike.
  • Played for Laughs in "Fame and Misfortune", the Mane Six manage to convince their bickering fans over not taking the friendship journal lessons properly that nobody is perfect, complete with a song-and-dance number, but then the fans go right back to arguing. Except for Toola Roola and Coconut Cream, the fillies from the beginning of the episode, who read the journal and truly understood the lessons unlike the other ponies, and they repair their friendship.
  • Both parts of "The Beginning of the End" have one in their climax.
    • In part one, the Mane Six have defeated Sombra and liberated the Crystal Empire once again. They return the Elements to the Tree of Harmony and start making plans to celebrate. Sombra turns out to have faked his defeat and followed Twilight to find the source of her powers. He then obliterates the Tree of Harmony, destroying the Elements for good.
    • In part two, Twilight succeeds in convincing Discord to defeat Sombra for her, which he starts to do by turning all of Sombra's magic blasts into balloons and butterflies. But then Sombra is clued in to the fact that Discord likes Fluttershy the best, and she's conveniently wide open, forcing Discord to take a blast of dark magic for her. This in turn, becomes a Hope Spot for Sombra. With Discord downed, he's convinced that he's the strongest being in Equestria, and grabs the Villain Ball long enough for Twilight to realize she no longer needs the Elements of Harmony to summon her rainbow friendship lasers. Sombra doesn't last long after that.
• The Simpsons:
  • Several of the main characters are trapped on an out-of-control solar-powered monorail train. Suddenly, there's an eclipse of the sun, the town is plunged into darkness, and the train comes to a gentle halt. Unfortunately, the eclipse lasts only a few seconds, exactly long enough for the characters to realize that they're safe before the sun returns — and as soon as it does, the train's out of control again.
  • A future episode did this where Bart pretended to be nice so he could date a charitable girl, the only drawback being that Milhouse got jealous of them together and told the girl about Bart's true nature. Bart begged the girl to stay with him, despite his nature, since he changed it for her. She's first seen angrily frowning, then smiles, thinking she'll be with him for the rest of the episode (like the other girls Bart dated for periods of time). But then, it goes back to the angry frown, and the next shot is of Bart crying, lamenting about how the girl broke up with him.
• Solar Opposites: Tim manages to free the wall people and win the heart of Cheryl. Except, it turns out to be a hallucination made by Tim as he's dying.
• South Park: In "HumancentiPad, just when it looks like Kyle might be surgically taken apart by doctors, it turns out to be a simulation by Steve Jobs to see if Kyle could read, and unfortunately, he didn't read it (not like Kyle could read, since his mouth is attached to a Japanese man's anus).
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Suds", one of Patrick's solutions for SpongeBob's sickness is to plug his holes with corks to prevent him from spewing any more bubbles, which causes him to swell up into a huge ball due to the resulting buildup. After Patrick and Sandy fight over who gets to care for him, SpongeBob ends up uncontrollably rolling down a hill toward the Krusty Krab. He stops just short of the building before he can smash into it, but then he sneezes and blows the place away.
  • In "Club SpongeBob", Squidward tries to escape the kelp forest, but becomes hopelessly lost and stricken with panic. He then suddenly becomes deliriously happy when he sees a light in the distance which he assumes is the edge of the forest. He races toward it...only to find himself back in the clearing where he started.
  • In "The Paper", Squidward tosses out a gum wrapper and gives it to SpongeBob, but grows jealous when he sees he can do all sorts of unique things with it. After trading him all his stuff, he takes the wrapper back, only to realize he cannot do all those things because he isn't creative and optimistic like SpongeBob is.
  • Played for Laughs in "Idiot Box": Squidward, in an attempt to drown out SpongeBob and Patrick playing pretend games with an empty cardboard box outside, turns on the TV. Unfortunately, every single channel is airing something involving boxes, bringing his mind back to the two friends' obnoxious playing. He finally thinks he's getting a break when he gets to a channel airing "championship boxing" ("I mean, it's not really about boxes...") ...only for the boxing match to be between two boxes ("...I give up.").
  • In "Best Day Ever", SpongeBob cannot get into Squidward's concert because he forgot his ticket; after trying several methods to break in, the usher eventually learns his name (Mrs. Puff said it when hiding in her purse), causing him to let him in anyway because he's on the VIP list. SpongeBob is then brought in to a seat next to his other friends...but the moment right when he sits down, the concert ends.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Toward the end of "Battle for Mewni", Toffee has been revived, Star is seemingly dead and Moon is no longer able to use her magic, meaning that her attempt to repeat the spell she defeated him with decades earlier is useless. Toffee approaches her menacingly...and then he freezes, eyes widened in shock. The camera pans out to show Marco's fist through Toffee's heart. But Toffee's Healing Factor is still in full effect, so the wound instantly regenerates and Toffee effortlessly tosses Marco into a wall.
• Steven Universe: Played with in regards to Steven's mother still being alive. Even though she gave up her physical form to birth him, several characters speculate that she's still alive in the Gem in his stomach, however they further speculate that bringing her back would come at the expense of Steven. The speculation comes to a head in the finale where his Gem is separated and morphs into his mother before ultimately morphing into a version of Steven. While it ultimately confirms that Steven is his own person separate from his mother it also confirms that Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond is well and truly dead and not coming back.
• In the ThunderCats (2011) episode "Omens Part Two" the invasion of Thundera is nearly foiled by Jaga's Clerics and King Claudus wielding the Sword of Omens. Then Mumm-Ra (disguised as Panthro) murders Claudus, and slays nearly all of the Clerics with a wave of dark magic.
• TRON: Uprising: Two episodes deal with Dr. Keller, a Reluctant Mad Scientist who at first helps the Occupation, but then runs after helping Beck stop her virus. The second Episode has her trying to run from the Occupation forces bearing down on her as she's stuck in a train, which soon spins out of control. After trying and failing to escape, she reluctantly goes back to the Occupation with Paige telling her she'll be pardoned, and she can help them once again. Tessler simply kills her when she gets back.
  • On a meta level - the whole series counts as this. We see Beck rise from low-grade (but gutsy) saboteur to a very impressive fighter and he seems to be succeeding in getting the citizens of Argon to revolt... but then Clu decides they're messing with his idea of perfection, and rolls in with a whole army of tanks, Recognizers, light-jets, and system guards to steamroll the city. And of course, Tron goes from badly wounded to healed and kicking butt... if you've seen TronLegacy, you know where that is going to lead.
• Wakfu:
  • In the Season 1 finale, Yugo and Adamai travel back in time through Nox's spell and believe they went back to a point where Sadlygrove was still alive, only to find out they were still a few minutes short.
  • This moment was also a Hope Spot for Nox himself, since he had gathered the largest storage of wakfu he could obtain plus his entire base was breaking down around him after barely winning against Yugo, meaning this was last, best shot of pulling off the 200-year time jump back to the past to save his family and prevent his own evil from ever plaguing the world. There had even been doubts he could even successfully do this without destroying the universe, and the joy at realizing time is reversing without imploding is clear in his voice as he starts rambling about how he's going to do things "right" this time...only to realize to his shock and disbelief he only gathered enough to go back 20 minutes, nullifying even his "victory" over the heroes and making him realize all the atrocities he committed were All for Nothing.
• What If…? (2021): The episode "What If... Zombies?!" has a pretty Cruel Twist Ending. After various hardships and losing quite a lot of survivors in the process, Spider-Man, Black Panther, and the disembodied head of Scott Lang are heading to Wakanda in order to use the Mind Infinity Stone to hopefully reverse the Zombie Apocalypse. T'Challa chose his home nation as the base for distributing the cure as it's an impenetrable fortress... until The Watcher informs us that not only have the zombies already over-taken Wakanda, but a zombified Thanos is waiting there too, wielding an almost-complete Infinity Gauntlet. And the heroes' arrival means they're unintentionally handing him the last Stone. Whoops.
• Near the ending of Winx Club S4 episode 24 Nabu manages to close the dark abyss that the Fairy Hunters had created to seal away the Earth fairies, but dies in the process. Bloom reminds Layla that they still have the Black Gift, which can be used to bring Nabu back to life. However, as soon as Layla takes out the Black Gift, Ogron steals it and wastes it on a dead flower.

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