"Woah woah woah woah, don't try and pull that Happily Ever After crap! Humanity went extinct! The planet is flooded, and the last Mega Man is stuck in space forever because Legends 3 is never gonna happen! That peaceful future Dr. Light fought so hard for turned out to be total bullshit!!"
The work ends, but on a very low note. The protagonist is caught in a situation that would surely kill them like a Bolivian Army Ending, or where The Bad Guy Wins, because the villain has escaped and/or succeeded in their evil plans (without being stopped), or even worse, there's No Ending at all. Sounds like a classic Downer Ending, right? Well, not exactly...
You see, the author had every intention of following up on the work, creating a continuation with a Sequel Hook that would have resolved the problem, hinting at a What Could Have Been, or engaging the audience in Wild Mass Guessing, only something got in the way. Perhaps the author died, or suffered extreme Executive Meddling that got the show cancelled, or the author simply didn't feel like finishing the story, couldn't finish the story, didn't know how to, or just plain forgot to. Maybe the creator moved to another company or started their own but the work is legally owned by the previous company, or the company that the creator was working for got dissolved yet their input is still owned by that defunct company or by another company that bought it. Or a combination thereof.
How the audience responds to this can vary. They might write fanfiction that continues the story, they might get disappointed that the story didn't finish, they might be alienated by the ending or... maybe they just move on.
In some cases, the author may simply leave a work in the hands of another (hopefully) worthy successor/understudy, but for whatever reason, they implement a Downer Ending where their predecessor would have done things differently. Whether or not this falls under the founding author's wilful approval, people can disagree over what elements shouldn't stray from the original recipe and what is fair game and evaluate a work based on the successor's competence, which sometimes strays into unfair or unreasonable demands to meet that group's expectations to duplicate a winning formula from before the change in command. In such cases, this trope tends to overlap with a Contested Sequel.
In the most extreme circumstances, a Downer Ending is reciprocal. When fans, haters, or both lay too much pressure at an author's feet, Creator Breakdown can ensue; and those who fought for a work to carry on ironically end up being responsible for the work's dissolution.
Common in Dead Fics and Orphaned Series. This trope was especially common with several mystery shows of The New '10s that fell victim to The Chris Carter Effect. A(n obvious) Sub-Trope of Downer Ending, Cut Short and (if the work ends bleakly enough) Shoot the Shaggy Dog.
Contrast to Torch the Franchise and Run when the Downer Ending is intentionally done to prevent the work from being continued in any way. Contrast to and can be subverted via Series Fauxnale, where a supposed Grand Finale has a Downer Ending but the work ends up getting renewed or continued in some way. Related to Allegedly Optimistic Ending and Cliffhanger Wall, though not to be confused with the former (where fridge logic creates a unintentional downer ending, or at the very least a bitter one). Not to be confused with Sudden Downer Ending. See also Left Hanging.
WARNING: This Ending Trope is Spoilered Rotten, meaning that EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE listed in the subpages below is a spoiler by default and most of them are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Berserk (1997): Due to the anime never adapting the rest of the original manga following the Golden Age Arc, the series ends with Griffith becoming Femto, the fifth member of the God Hand, after sacrificing all of his men to the Apostles, then him raping Casca into insanity in front of his former best friend Guts' very eyes (one of which gets clawed out), and with Guts (somehow) managing to escape while seemingly being the Sole Survivor of the massacre, leaving it unclear what he'd do next with all of his allies dead.
- Cannon Busters didn't get renewed for a second season, so the series ended with the season finale of Hilda dying to protect Prince Kelby, Kelby getting captured by the invading army right after reconciling with Sam, Bessie totaled so badly that no one is sure if they can repair her, and the rest of the cast stranded in the middle of nowhere.
- Captain Commando ends at the story's lowest point, where Big Bad Scumocide, having wiped out Zurch and Venice and its entire civilian population, dominates over Metro City by erecting a barrier around its gates and sending his right-hand man, Blood, to massacre the rioters, and Tina nowhere to be found. The manga was cancelled before a proper final confrontation with Scumocide could happen.
- Caramel Ringo by Utsumi Kousuke concludes its fifth and final volume with the Ninja Academy attended by the heroes Ringo, Ran and Hyakutenmaru was subjected to an ambush by the Evil Ninja clan and almost everyone massacred note despite the heroes' best efforts at fighting back, before the villainous clan's leader reveals himself to be Kasumi - Ringo's older brother whom Ringo idolizes, who turns out to have turned to the dark side after learning the truth that his parents were killed by his beloved mentor under the shogun's orders due to being defectors (before killing said mentor himself in a duel) and that the training Kasumi subjected to Ringo since childhood was a Secret Test of Character to hone Ringo into becoming his apprentice and one of the villains. When Ringo rejects Kasumi's We Can Rule Together deal, Kasumi promptly kills Ringo's mentor-slash-Parental Substitute academy senior, steals away Ringo's Love Interest, and takes off with a We Will Meet Again threat... in the manga's final panel. Turns out Utsumi Kousuke's career as a mangaka didn't really take off, Caramel Ringo was his last work (out of maybe 4) so that's where the story ends.
- Daimos was originally meant to run for 50 episodes, but TV Asahi forced the staff to reduce it to 44. The remaining episodes would have the humans and the Baam form an alliance, formally putting an end to the war. While Kazuya would act as a delegate from the human side, Erika would act as a delegate from the Baam side, being crowned their Queen. The Daimovic base would also help the Baam assimilate to Mars and make it their new home.note However, in the anime, this never happens — the Earth-Baam war ends with a massacre at Olban's wedding, Raiza, Balbas and Margarete are killed, and Richter commits suicide to atone for starting the conflict. The anime ends on a bittersweet note as Kazuya and Erika reunite, while the remaining Baam are saved and welcomed as refugees on Earth.
- Dangaioh episode 3 ends with Dangaioh destroyed, the team's mentor and Dangaioh's inventor dead, and the team floating in space inside life pods. A continuation was planned, but the staff struggled to figure out how to make one with how badly they'd written themselves into a corner, and most of them moved on to projects that were actually moving forward.
- The Blue Water dub of Futari wa Pretty Cure ended on a major downer with Mepple and Mipple choosing to stay with the girls but remaining in an eternal sleep, never to wake up again... because the sequel season where they wake up and the girls get their happy ending was never dubbed. The same goes for the German dub.
- GaoGaiGar FINAL ended with only the two kid characters surviving while all of the other protagonists were left trapped inside a collapsing universe with no hope of escape. This was intended to be followed up on almost immediately by Project Z, another animated project that would have featured said kid characters forming a new GGG and trying to rescue their predecessors, and the technical specs for Genesic GaoGaiGar included a method they could use to escape their predicament in preparation for this. However, Project Z was cancelled for undisclosed reasons, and would only see the light of day nearly twenty years later in the form of King of Kings: GaoGaiGar vs. Betterman, a novel which finally gave the characters their happy ending.
- The original English dub of One Piece by 4Kids Entertainment ended when the Rainbow Mist arc ended, which segued into the next story arc by showing a ship from Skypiea about to fall on the Going Merry
. Since this is the point where 4Kids lost the localization license to Funimation, the fandom likes to joke that, following the cliffhanger in this particular dub, the Straw Hat Pirates got hit by the falling ship and died.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: This series has one of the most infamous Gainax Endings of all time. After the big final battle, The Stinger shows the gang returning to the chapel, Stocking questions what would happen if their weapons were to be used on angels, and following a nonchalant response from Panty, she stabs her in the back of the head and cuts her into 666 pieces. When questioned on why, she replies with a deadpan: "I'm sorry, but surprise I'm actually a demon." Walking off with a bag full of Panty's remains as the season ends on "To Be Continued In the Next Season." Said next season would not be announced for 12 years, and only by the succeeding studio, which actually resolved the cliffhanger: Panty is put back together successfully, and Stocking turns out to have been made to think she’s a demon and isn’t actually one.
- Princess Tutu: In-Universe, the death of Drosselmeyer left his story, The Prince and the Raven, unfinished, with the Prince and Raven locked in a never-ending battle, playing the trope straight. However, both characters grew tired of this never-ending fighting and figured out how to leave the story, where the Prince shattered his heart to seal the Raven in the walls of the town. The series follows what happened next. It also later turns out Drosselmeyer meant for the ending to be tragic all along, so his surviving wouldn't have made much difference.
- This happens by accident in the English dub of Tamagotchi! that aired on Nine Network's 9Go! channel (then known as GO!) in Australia. The 26th episode ends with Mametchi, Memetchi, Kuchipatchi, Lovelitchi, and Telelin being sucked through a void by the Kuchipatchi of Truth into a jungle, making them lost. The plotline is resolved in the episode afterward, which explains that they were sent to the past and shows them being sent back to the present, but episode 26 was the last episode that was aired for the dub, making an unresolved Cliffhanger.
Comic Books
- The Falcon series, a planned comic book trilogy from Malaysian cartoonist Clayton Lam, ends in its second installment, the 2007 entry Falcon Wing. At its conclusion, the protagonist Jing is Dragged Off to Hell after a losing battle together with the titular Artifact of Doom, leading to Jing's new ally, Angel - who started developing feelings for Jing - rejecting her estranged father, Zion whom she had reunited with, and literally jumping into Hell's portal to find Jing and the Falcon's Wing. Cue Zion making a Skyward Scream in the last panel, with a tease telling readers to "stay tuned for the secrets of the Falcon Wing". Unfortunately, the comic failing to reach desirable sales, coupled with Clayton Lam's resignation and Gempak Starz's financial problems at the time ended the series right there.
- Ferals ended with the wolves overall overpowering the army and Salt Lake City nigh-destroyed, with an announcement that the story would be continued in a sequel series called Ferals: Unleashed scheduled for 2014. Even long after 2014 passed, Unleashed didn't come, and with Avatar Press losing activity altogether since 2019, it most likely never will.
- Dynamite Entertainment's Hercules Dynamite comic ends on a cliffhanger where the Sphinx, having absorbed the powers of the gods, effortlessly kills Hercules. A follow-up was planned but never materialized, ending Hercules (1997)'s continuation on quite the downer.
- Similarly, Nancy Drew (Dynamite)'s first arc ends with Nancy being arrested; the author's exclusive contract with Marvel Comics means a resolution is unlikely.
- Motor Crush ends with Domino Swift trapped in the future, learning her father has been enslaved by an evil corporation, and that her seeming reliance on the Crush drug is actually a symptom of her being an Artificial Human, who said megacorp has created numerous clones of. Though at least she reconciled with her ex. The comic ended abruptly after that due to one of the co-writers being accused of numerous cases of sexual harassment.
- Novas Aventuras de Megaman, a Brazilian comic based on the Mega Man series (and actually licensed by Capcom - despite being mostly In Name Only) infamously ends with most of Mega Man's allies obliterated by Dr. Wily's forces after a losing battle, Megaman finally inflicting a killing blow on Wily at the cost of losing his last ally, Roll, only to be stopped by the alien forces Wily is serving in the last minute, and new villain Mr. Holzenbein initiating what was supposed to be doomsday ("The End, of Everything!") in the final panel. Turns out writer José Pereira was fired after the executives found out he was planning to kill off the Mega Man cast, and the story discontinued from that point onwards.
- O.M.A.C.: In Jack Kirby's 1974 run, issue 8 ends with the protagonist depowered and at the villain's mercy, while his helper, the sentient satellite Brother Eye, is left powerless after being trapped in a prison of molten space debris. Though the story was supposed to reach its grand finale in the following issue, Jack Kirby left DC for Marvel Comics before writing it, and the executives at the time decided that the comic's sales weren't good enough to warrant hiring a replacement. As a result, a new panel was hastily edited into the ending of issue 8, where the villain's lair is shown exploding, implying that the entirety of the main cast died.
- Due to ending after issue #5, the 2018 Rainbow Brite comic series ends with Rainbow Brite, Red Flare, Patty, and Twinkle all trapped by Murky Dismal with no clear way to escape, along with the fact that the rest of the Color Guard was captured before the series began, leaving nothing standing in Murky’s path to draining all the color from the world.
- Runaways:
- The third series was supposed to end with an alternate-universe version of Gert joining the team, but the series was cancelled halfway through the final arc, and thus instead ended with Chase quitting the team and then getting hit by a car and ending up in the emergency room, with his teammates having no idea where he is. A later appearance in Daken retconned that Chase somehow survived the accident, made a full recovery, and rejoined the team, and they all just refuse to talk about everything that happened in that arc.
- After months of dropping sales and with Rainbow Rowell having been tapped to write a new She-Hulk series, Runaways (Rainbow Rowell) ended with a Milestone Celebration. Having only one issue to resolve as many of the dangling plot threads as possible, the series ends with Chase being kidnapped by a version of Gert from the future, Karolina being taken away to space, ostensibly to be healed after losing her powers but unaware that her hosts plan to hand her over to her ex-fiancee Xavin, and the rest of the team feeling demoralized now that they've lost both The Heart and the Team Dad in a single night, while their former leader-turned-nemesis Alex Wilder is secretly monitoring them.
- The original continuity of the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) series had to be rebooted due to lawsuit agreements. Pretty much every remaining plot thread is left hanging on a very dour note: the entire echidna race has been banished to another dimension by Thrash, Naugus still has large influence over Mobotropolis and has now possessed his assistant Geoffery, Antoine is still in a coma and Bunnie is MIA, NICOLE and Mina are left trying to alleviate the stigma the former has, Snively has been disowned by Hope and imprisoned by Eggman after a failed coup, and while Sally has been neutralized and is back in the Freedom Fighters' hands, she is still roboticized and likely in a state difficult to reverse due to Eggman heavily modifying her. The only plot that gets some resolution is Sonic letting go of his grudge against Silver, which happens just before the Cosmic Retcon. Since this was the swan song for several characters under the copyright concern, needless to say they bowed out in the most miserable way possible, in favor of the new continuity that came after and would later be succeeded by IDW's game-based continuity.
- Tintin: The last panels that Hergé drew prior to his death depict the titular reporter being marched away to be covered in liquid polyester and sold as a statue. Since Tintin and Alpha-Art has never been officially completed, this means that the album, and by extension the entirety of Tintin (in its official form, that is), ends on the hero being taken towards his execution. Various fan artists (such as Yves Rodier), however, have "finished" the unfinished storyline in the years after Hergé's death.
Fan Works
- The last chapter of Blood Raining Night ends with the main character's daughter being kidnapped by a stranger. It hasn't updated since 2014, leaving this plotline permanently unresolved.
- Chapter 2 of the The Brittas Empire fanfic Can You Forgive? ends with Linda coming up to Gavin and telling him that something, which seems to be rather awful judging by the blood she's covered in, has happened to Tim. The fic was deleted not long after that without any further updates. At least Chapter 1, which is set at a later period of time than Chapter 2, does show Tim as still alive, albeit separated from his boyfriend Gavin for reasons that will be forever unknown (to us).
- The final chapters of Eiga Sentai Scanranger end with Kunio/Mikey/the former Yellow Scanner seeing through one of the villain’s Paper-Thin Disguise and fighting her, only to be arrested for assaulting what looked like an ordinary professor. Despite having two chapters after this to resolve this plotline, the author instead focused on some silliness involving a second crossover with Jetman; which barely brings up the plot, with the On the Next preview indicating that the immediate next chapter wouldn’t have resolved this.
- EVA Sessions: You Can (Never) Trust: Due to Gob Hobblin stopping updating abruptly, the story ends on an annoying cliffhanger: most of the Children are severely traumatized after the latest Angel attacks, the psychotic and dangerous American pilot Samson Creed goes on stalking around the Geofront freely even after swearing to murder Asuka, the secret war between Seele and the mysterious shadow group goes on, catching innocents in the crossfire, and there is no end in sight for the war against the Angels.
- Formal Distraction ceased updating after eleven chapters. Since Chapter 11 is something of a Darkest Hour, this leaves the story to end on the unfortunate note of Anna engaged to her abusive boyfriend and both of the fic's planned romantic relationships on the rocks.
- Chapter 18 of the Arthur fanfic How to Break a Family ends with Arthur being sent to prison for murder after he finally gets revenge on D.W.'s kidnapper. The author stopped updating the story after this point, leaving D.W.'s ultimate fate a mystery.
- Despite being one of the most popular stories in the Inside Out fandom, Intercom hasn't been updated since 2016. As a result, the fanfic ends on an otherwise depressing cliffhanger, where Family Island falls apart, Riley becomes incredibly despondent to the real world, and Joy eventually discovers that her 12-year-old host is devising a plan to somehow stay in the mind world forever.
- Legacy of the Forgotten gets cut off at a very annoying point due to Gryphon suddenly losing interest on and willingness to continue the fic: a horde of eldritch monstrosities is about to overrun Akuro, the defenders of the castle are severely ill-equipped to handle it, they know they cannot count on the government's support, and their princess is unable to activate the only weapon capable to save them. As for the main character, Asuka has no clues of her missing mom's whereabouts, her friend Maisie has disappeared, and she hasn't yet learned how to get along with Shinji and Rei.
- My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural is an odd case, where its unfinished state left it with an ambiguous ending—then after its cancellation, a crossover with another series confirmed the worst possible ending, only for a second crossover episode to retcon it into a happier resolution.
- In Camaraderie Is Supernatural proper, there was a subplot where Doctor Whooves recruits Pinkie Pie to help save Equestria from a coming alien invasion. But the series was abandoned before the alien invasion even began, leaving the outcome of Whooves' and Pinkie's mission completely up in the air.
- Then in the Scootertrix the Abridged episode "Trixie the Abridged", a magical accident teleports three Fourth-Wall Observer characters into the Camaraderie universe—where Equestria is now a barren wasteland. Dialogue explicitly confirms that Camaraderie's premature end is the reason why Whooves and Pinkie failed to save their Equestria. But then during the mega-crossover of Scootertrix: The Movie, Pinkie Pie from Camaradarie shows up herself, none the worse for wear. When others are confused by her survival, she explains that she and Whooves did eventually (as in, after 492 failed attempts) repel the alien invasion and save Equestria — and the barren wasteland from the previous episode was just one of the failed timelines, not the "main" Camaraderie universe.
- The Ghostbusters (1984) fanfic Personality Traits ends with Egon being split into five versions of himself. The story was meant to be how the other Ghostbusters made them back into one Egon, but the author never finished it.
- Rugrats fanfics:
- One of the endings of The Babies who Floated into Space ends with Chuckie having blown up and Phil and Lil lost in space. However, Tommy meets a character who says he could save Chuckie by bringing Tommy to a planet called "Planet Death", where everyone is brought Back from the Dead. However, the story ends before it's determined if they reach Planet Death, because the author never got around to finishing the story.
- Sick Betty ends with everyone finding out that Betty is pregnant with septuplets and Phil and Lil expressing hope that their mother is all right. The story was never finished, so the readers don't find out what happens to Betty.
- One of the endings of The Babies who Floated into Space
- The Shoebox Project: Though there's no Cliffhanger as the pre-canon setting makes the main beats a Foregone Conclusion, the final scene of the last added chapter deals with Peter's growing loneliness and resentment, and the way that it's exploited by Voldemort's forces to ultimately turn him against his friends. For an overall optimistic work, it's a jarringly dark note to end the series on.
- Chapter 3 of Star Light, Star Bright ends on the fairly ominous note of Irratino's tarot card reading for Logico ending on the Tower, and him hoping it means something else or the cards are wrong. While it's a Foregone Conclusion that they break off their friendship, Chapter 4 wouldn't come out for several months, and the author almost cancelled the fic in the interim. Ultimately, though, Chapter 4 would be completed by another author and finally released in September 2025, almost five months after Chapter 3. It still ends on a downer note, though it's at least intentional this time.
- The original run of Super Mario Bros. Z ended with most of the heroes being turned to stone and Basilisx poised to deliver a killing blow against Mario. Mark Haynes, the series' creator, intended to continue the story, but lost his motivation and abandoned the series. He would later post an unfinished video showing Luigi breaking free from his statue and saving Mario, but it still ended with Princess Peach in Bowser's clutches and Mecha Sonic free to continue his search for the Chaos Emeralds. With Haynes moving on to remaking SMBZ, a project that itself suffered severe Schedule Slip, it's unlikely the series will ever get a proper conclusion.
Films — Animation
- Toy Story 2 has an in-universe example with the old Show Within a Show Woody's Round-Up. The western puppet show ends with Woody running to save Jessie and Pete from exploding in a mineshaft. He rides on Bullseye and jumps a massive gorge, but the episode ends on a To Be Continued and the cliffhanger was never resolved. The show languished in antiquity until its characters became popular antiques in the modern day.
- Toy Story 5 has an in-universe example with the Bonnie playtime fantasy. The maid of honor was poisoned, and the murderer was never found because Bonnie abandoned playtime before it ended in an attempt to make friends. Bonnie's parents even asked who the murderer was, but it no longer matters to her.
Films — Live-Action
- The film adaptation of the Divergent trilogy, due to the final book, Allegiant being split into two movies, with part one flopping at the box office, ends up suffering this. Although the heroes do unveil the villainous Bureau to the world, the movie ends with them still around, and with no sequel ever coming, this will never be resolved.
- The Exorcist: Believer was intended to be the first movie in a trilogy, only for the sequels to be cancelled due to negative critical reviews and middling box office returns. As such, the movie ends on a very downbeat note, with Katherine Dragged Off to Hell and Angela having to live with the fact that Tony was perfectly willing to sacrifice her to try and save his own child.
- I Saw the TV Glow has an in-universe example of this as a major plot point. The Pink Opaque, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-like show that main characters Maddie and Owen bond over as teens in the '90s, is canceled at the Season 5 finale, which itself is a depressing Bolivian Army Cliffhanger featuring the Big Bad capturing the show's protagonists and preparing to bury them alive. When they reunite as adults, Maddie now believes that she and Owen are the aforementioned heroes of the show, that the show is the real world and their mundane reality is an illusory prison created for them by the villain, and they need to get back to the show's fantasy world so they can finally defeat him and give the series an actual ending. Owen believes she's simply lost her mind, but given that this is a Psychological Horror film, it's implied she might actually be right.
- The Long Good Friday ends with its protagonist Harold Shand being kidnapped and driven away to what is implied to be his pending execution. There were plans for a sequel which would have shown that Harold manages to survive and escape his kidnapping. Those plans never came to fruition, so the last we see of him is in this film's Bolivian Army Ending.
- The Sinister duology concludes with Deputy So-and-so thwarting Bughuul's cycle of corrupting children into murdering their families, and the demon Bughuul not happy about it, with the sequel ending with Bughuul suddenly appearing in front of the deputy before the credits roll (the deputy's fate is an Uncertain Doom moment). Plans for a third movie were considered but left in limbo until it's eventual cancellation, and with James Ransome's passing a decade after the second film's release the story (if not the entire series) concludes with Bughuul still at large, scot-free to resume his Family Extermination plans.
Literature
- The Dinosaur Lords: Because the author Died During Production, the last book ends with the protagonist's rapist remaining unpunished and her little sister abducted, the villains' schemes still active and a possible demonic invasion about to happen.
- Gwendalavir Universe: The final book, Crossed Souls, was meant to be the first book in a new trilogy. Unfortunately, author Pierre Boltero Died During Production in a motorcycle accident, leaving new protagonist Nawel Helianthas trapped in the Other's Death World. There is a slight ray of hope in that three people implied to be Destan, Elio, and Eryn from the previous novels are also there and she can meet up with them, but the ending is significantly bleaker than was likely intended.
- Maradonia and the Law of Blood, the last published Maradonia Saga book, ends with a cliffhanger where the protagonists are poisoned, slip into unconsciousness and then "deeper and deeper until they reach a very different place". Then the creators decided to focus on the film adaptation Maradonia and the Shadow Empire, which ended up being so horribly received that the Maradonia series as a whole was Quietly Cancelled and buried, so the last book Maradonia and the Battle for the Key was never released even though it had been promoted as available for sale.
- Mostly Harmless: Douglas Adams had somewhat of a self-confessed Creator Breakdown while writing the book, leading to its "Everybody Dies" Ending. He announced plans for another book to salvage the series, but died before he could write it. And Another Thing... was eventually written by Eoin Colfer to finish the series.
- Charles Dickens died midway through writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood, leaving the work unfinished and the culprit in Drood's murder (or even if the man is actually dead) unclear.
- Stuart Little ends before we find out if Margolo, the bird Stuart is looking for, gets found. The author had terrible health and wanted to finish the story before he died, and never made a follow-up after he recovered.
Live-Action TV
- Agent Carter: Season 2 ended with supporting character Jack Thompson getting shot and left for dead in his hotel room, the mysterious shooter grabbing a redacted file that Jack would have used to blackmail Peggy. note While a Season 3 was planned that would have followed up on this plot line, with the writers hinting Jack would have survived, ABC cancelled the series due to ratings, so Jack's fate is left completely unknown.
- Alcatraz was cancelled at the end of the first and only season after bad ratings. In the last episode, Hauser and Lucy discover the Warden's Time Machine on Alcatraz, which releases all of the hundreds of missing prisoners they hadn't caught yet at once, plunging San Francisco into criminal chaos. Meanwhile, Rebecca is fatally stabbed by Tommy and later flatlines in the hospital.
- ALF: The series finale ends with ALF being captured by the government to be experimented on, tortured, and eventually dissected. The writers had banked on one more season to resolve it, showing ALF getting into wacky hijinks in the military base to the frustration of the scientists trying to study him. NBC passed on it, effectively causing the relatively lighthearted sitcom to end with the implied death of its star... until Project: ALF came in six years later, that is.
- Alphas: Season 2 ended with the main villain of the series having partially succeeded in enacting his plan, and everyone in the train station (bar one) either unconscious or dead, before Syfy cancelled the series. Referenced by… The Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon struggles to deal with this cliffhanger in "The Closure Alternative" due to his general closure issues. In The Stinger, he finally manages to contact the creator Bruce Miller and badgers him into telling Sheldon how he would have resolved the cliffhanger, only for Sheldon to tell him it stinks and hang up.
- Arrested Development's final season after being Un-Cancelled ended by resolving the mystery that made up the prior season, revolving around the disappearance and presumed death of longtime family friend and enemy Lucille "2" Austero: she was actually dead, having apparently been murdered by resident Psychopathic Manchild Buster Bluth. By the time the second half of the season, including the finale, had been released on Netflix, public controversy among the cast had already put the continuation of the show in serious doubt, and the death of major player Jessica Walter two years later pretty much sealed the deal, leaving it unknown whether the storyline in question had any additional twists to reveal.
- Atlantis (2013) ended with the main villain Pasiphae returning from the dead and assuming control of Atlantis. There were plans for the show to continue, with the next season based around the myth of Jason and the Argonauts (which is set up in the final episode) - but, due to the show being cancelled, it still ends with Pasiphae winning and no guarantee of the heroes ever being able to defeat her.
- Barbara's final episode ended with a mysterious assailant, possibly one of her own friends and family, shooting Barbara. Did she survive? We'll never know, as the show was cancelled after that (although the opening suggests that she lived long enough to be taken to hospital).
- Birds of a Feather (1989): The 2020 Christmas Special had Sharon's absence from it be explained by the fact that she had been stranded on a cruise ship for months on end ever since COVID-19 broke out. The show was cancelled after that, making it unclear whether she managed to get off the boat or not (although she is revealed to have become Happily Married to one of the other customers on the ship).
- The Borrowers: This series, and The Return of the Borrowers were based on the first four books in the series. Continuity announcements at the end of the series hinted at a new series the following year, but this was never made. The series had the Bittersweet Ending of the family sailing down the river in their boat, not knowing where they will live next.
- Clarice: By the Season 1 finale, Clarice Starling has been removed from the ViCAP team and gone rogue in order to stop The Conspiracy, and she still hasn't been reinstated by the time the closing credits roll. Meanwhile, in the flashback, she's last seen with a gun held to her head by a criminal gang. While it's a Foregone Conclusion that she escapes, the viewers don't find out exactly how she did it or how it shaped her as a person, and the series not being renewed for a second season ensured they never will.
- Chucky: The third season ends with Chucky and Tiffany getting away with destroying the White House and decapitating the government, with there seemingly being no one to stop them. The show was not renewed for a fourth season.
- Cowboy Bebop (2021): With the show prematurely cancelled, it ends on a Downer Ending: Spike and Jet having a falling out after Spike's syndicate past comes to light and the latter's daughter gets kidnapped to lure Spike into a trap. Faye leaves the Bebop to find her past. Vicious pulls off his coup as in the anime, but it's Julia who takes it over, and she's the one who shoots Spike out of a church window. The series ends with Spike all messed up and wounded, only to run into Ed who states she has a job for him before he passes out. And... that's it. Poor word of mouth from fans of the original anime scared Netflix into cancelling the show, meaning those that either did like it or those who were curious to see where the story was going were left hanging. This ending sullied the reputation of the live action show.
- Doctor Who: Averting this trope was the main reason John-Nathan Turner soundly vetoed the original final cliffhanger for "Trial of a Time Lord", which entailed The Doctor and The Valeyard last being seen falling into The Matrix locked in combat. Turner knew that such a spectacle would give Michael Grade the reason to cancel the show, as it looked like a final ending, even if that wasn't intended.
- Eternal Law: The first season ends with angel Zak giving into temptation and kissing Hannah, his human lover from his last manifestation, and the Doomsday Clock suddenly activating and beginning its countdown, indicating that Mr. Mountjoy has decided to destroy the world as punishment for Zak's relapse. The show wasn't renewed for a second season, so we're all but forced to assume that the Apocalypse happened.
- The Event follows the intertwining lives of several characters that are all propelled by plots of cover-ups of extraterrestrials among us, assassination attempts on the president and investigations in mysteriously disappearing loved ones — the show used an unusual amount of flash-backs and a few different timelines to develop its characters, but in doing so it also managed to confuse its creators, not to mention its audience which lost interest by the time the first season concluded — the second season was cancelled with no longer any hopes of resolving many of its mysteries.
- Flash Forward is about an event in which everyone on the planet blacks-out and have a vision of the future — just as the mystery of who caused the black-outs and what is their purpose and the future date in the vision is approaching... and the show was canceled after just one season because of dwindling numbers of viewers. Robert J. Sawyer, the writer on whose book the series was based on sent outlines to the writing team with ideas for the second season that never materialized.
- Golden Boy's first season finale ended on either Walter or his girlfriend being shot by her ex, the now-fugitive ex-deputy mayor. The series was cancelled afterwards due to poor ratings, giving it a de facto Bolivian Army Ending.
- Krypton: Baby Cor-Vex (later Jor-El) is kidnapped by Brainiac at the end of Season 2. Season 3 was cancelled.
- Legends of Tomorrow ended with the team captured by time police. It was supposed to be an end of season cliffhanger, but The CW unexpectedly cancelled the show. And it didn't get resolved in the show it spun off from, The Flash (2014), either.
- Mindhunter ended this way with season 2 — Bill Tench having come home from Atlanta only to discover his wife and their adopted child have moved away and left him alone. Holden Ford carrying the burden of futility for being unable to pin the 27 murders on their prime suspect. The series arch serial killer, BTK, still out there only getting more disturbing with each glimpse of him. While true that some elements of the story are a Foregone Conclusion, the Fandom, was left wondering about the Artistic License the creators have taken with the characters. Since 2020, the show has been teased for a potential 3rd season, it just hasn't materialized. Even David Fincher while acknowledging the series' critical acclaim has also remarked on Netflix's struggle to keep a movie quality series going. He did say "Maybe in five years" back in 2020, so who knows...
- Mortal Kombat: Conquest: Shao Kahn wins, killing everyone but Raiden, who is now his prisoner, and displays their personal items as proof they've been slain. A second season was planned in which the Elder Gods would have intervened, revived everyone, and killed and punished Shao Kahn, but this never happened due to TNT not renewing the series, effectively ending the show on a completely bleak note.
- My Name Is Earl had the final episode surrounding Earl trying to find the actual father of Dodge, his stepson he raised while married to Joy (she got him drunk and they married when she was 8 months pregnant). He spent a long time trying to decipher all of Joy's lies before doing a DNA test to prove her latest claim was false, when she shares the story of conception from a Halloween party Earl realized there was a Mistaken Identity and HE was Dodge's father (he wore an identical skeleton costume as someone else). But, adding to the drama was the DNA test indicated that Earl Jr was not Darnell's son. The last moment of the show has Joy in a panic saying "There is a logical explanation..." This major Sequel Hook and all the drama of Earl facing having a biological child and the mystery of Earl Jr's real father was included because creator Greg Garcia was given the go-ahead for season five, only for a negotiation breakdown between the production company and network to happen and the show was cancelled.
- My Own Worst Enemy: Due to being canceled after only nine episodes, the show ends with Playful Hacker Tony dead right before he was able to administer a cure for Edward and Henry's condition. Raymond's wife also caught him murdering an assassin who'd broken into their home, presumably leaving his life in shambles.
- The Other Kingdom's first season ends with Tristan revealing himself to be the lost fairy prince of Spartania, him being dragged back to Spartania by his father, and Astral being forced to make a choice between her world and the other world. The showrunners had banked on the series getting three more seasons to wrap up the story. Unfortunately, Nickelodeon decided to cancel it instead, leaving the series to end on a pretty tragic note.
- Quantum Leap:
- The original show was abruptly cancelled; and the final episode of the series was appended with the message that the protagonist, Sam Beckett (misspelled as "Becket" in the original airing) never returned home. There were plans for a sixth season, but they never got off the ground. Sequel Series Quantum Leap (2022) would later confirm that he has been gone for thirty years, and raised the hope of bringing him home again but made no progress before its own cancellation.
- Speaking of, Quantum Leap (2022) was similarly cancelled suddenly with its protagonist Ben Song still lost in time, but at least this one comes across more as a Bittersweet Ending where And the Adventure Continues by not making the claim that he's lost for good.
- Resident Evil (2022) ends with multiple plot threads unresolved, with the 2036 timeline featuring Billie kidnapping Jade's daughter and plans to meet with Ada Wong. Mixed reviews, backlash from fans of the video games and declining viewership caused Netflix to cancel the show after just one season. The death of Lance Reddick at age 60 in early 2023 also makes any followup unlikely.
- Sam & Cat: "#GettinWiggy" was the last episode produced before the show was cancelled, making it the show's unintentional finale. In it, Cat attacks a teen model while accompanying Dice on an audition in Arizona, convinced his beautiful hair is actually a wig, only to pull clumps of real hair out of the young man's scalp. The show's final scenes has Cat being arrested for assault and needing to be bailed out by her grandmother but Sam chooses to withhold the information because she prefers having the overly doting Nona as a roommate. The final scene of the series, and the final onscreen appearances of the two leads in the Nick-verse as a whole, has Sam betraying her friend for her own benefit, albeit now under the care of a parental figure who actually cares for her, while Cat is likely to be either imprisoned or, because she has a history of mental health issues, sentenced to an indefinite stay at a mental institution.
- Santa Clarita Diet: The show ends with Sheila biting Joel, intending to turn him into an undead so they could live their life together in eternity. Joel is dying from the bite, and we don't know if he ultimately dies or will wake up as an undead. This would have been resolved in a future season, but Netflix cancelled the series before that was greenlit.
- Scorpion: The last episode before the series was cancelled had the team breaking up into two competing companies.
- Son of Zorn: The first and last season ends with Zorn getting kidnapped by the forces of Volchazor, tied up and sent on a freighter to Zephyria. Lack of interest and critical panning led to a lack of renewal from FOX.
- The mid-90s SF series Space: Above and Beyond ran one full season, with the final episode intended as a cliffhanger: it ended with a failed peace conference (so the war will continue), one of the main characters dead, two more either dead or captured, a fourth severely injured in an explosion, and a very strong hint that the enemy "Chigs" never wanted the war in the first place. Then the series was canceled, so none of these plotlines ever got resolved.
- Stargate Universe: The last episode has the entire crew except Eli go into stasis in an attempt to survive the journey to the next galaxy, with their fate left unknown for the season three opener. Then the show got cancelled.
- Space Force: Season 2 ends with the team spotting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The show was then cancelled due to flagging ratings.
- Titus: In the season 3 finale, Titus goes crazy on an airplane after finding out his mother died and he and his friends are all Mistaken for Terrorist. While the other main characters get the charges dismissed, Titus is sent to a mental hospital just like his mother. While this was never intended to be the last episode, Christopher had pissed off the new Fox executive so severely that she cancelled the show.
- The Tripods was a series of three books (later expanded to four) which told the story of a future Earth controlled by aliens, and a group of human rebels fighting against them. When the BBC adapted the series starting in 1984, they planned on adapting all three books. Unfortunately, BBC controller Michael Grade, who hated science fiction, cancelled the series before they could start the third book. The televised version now ends with what was supposed to be a cliffhanger: A Wham Shot that made it look as if the rebels had been discovered and destroyed.
- Twin Peaks has an ending which seems to take fiendish delight in screwing over every likable member of the cast. This was not intended to be the series' absolute finale, as a third season was planned, but after failing to regain its flagging viewership, the show was cancelled before it could be produced... Then it finally received a sequel series 25 years later, which tied up some of the loose ends, left others hanging, and ended on yet another downer note (although at least this time it was intentional).
- Tyrant (2014) ended in a resounding Downer Ending at the end of season 3, with all the dangling plot threads that were meant to be resolved in the next season setting up more conflict and bloodshed. Barry has become a dictator, his wife is now a Lady Macbeth, his two children are either dead or in critical condition, Barry has alienated everyone else he once called a friend, and most of the once well-intentioned rebels have become terrorists. Most likely, Barry was supposed to experience some form of Redemption Equals Death given how far he had fallen, but instead it's a depressing Full-Circle Revolution.
- Season two of Underground on WGN ended on a tense cliffhanger; escapee-turned-outlaw Rosalee had been captured by escapee-turned-slavecatcher Cato and was forced to leave her newborn child and recently rescued brother behind for her husband Noah to find. Cato had also captured the people in the sewing circle boarding house, including head of the circle and passing escapee Georgia. The last scene and hook consisted of Elizabeth being involved in the Raid on Harper's Ferry (John Brown's failed attempt at a slave revolt). However, the series was cancelled soon after that seasonnote and multiple attempts to find a new broadcast channel failed, meaning the series ends on a downer note with multiple recaptured escapees.
- Utopia (UK): The producers set out to make 3 seasons of the show, however, during season 2, a few episodes got rescheduled from Tuesday to Monday. A significant portion of viewers simply missed this rescheduling and gave up on the show leading to low viewing figures by the end of the second season. It all ended with Wilson having inherited the Mister Rabbit role and having all virus canisters in his possession. The producers did say that they intend to make a 3rd season at a later date, picking up a few years later In-Universe but the Covid pandemic might have thwarted even those plans possibly making a 3rd season only Harsher in Hindsight.
- V (2009) was cancelled midway through season two; the finale that should have been a cliffhanger ends with Diana dead and her coup against Anna a failure, Tyler being killed by fake-Lisa, Chad Decker exposed as a member of the 5th Column, and most crucially, Anna managing to bliss the entire population of Earth (save some resistance fighters in a bunker) by using Ryan's daughter as an amplifier. The last shot of the series is a panicking Erica futilely trying to snap Jack out of it while he and millions of New Yorkers stare up at the Visitor ships above.
- Westworld ends with most of the main cast dead and sentient life going extinct, no thanks to the Man in Black's Hate Plague. It's up to Dolores (a variant of her) to find a way for both humanity and hosts to coexist so that they can evolve into a new species by recreating the Westworld park from memory in the Sublime. Both Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy intended to have the fifth season as the finale to wrap up the story but HBO canceled the show, leaving several storylines unresolved.
Manhua
- Choukakou has been on indefinite hiatus since 2017, while Xia Da is engaging in legal battles to get her rights to the work back. While she does plan on finishing it, the place it has stopped at is… grim to say the least. Chang Ge has been discovered by her uncle's men, who want her dead to prevent any future political strife, and has been effectively checkmated so she will be forced to return to their territory, where she will either die or be made to languish in confinement. Additionally, it has been confirmed that, thanks to not treating her illness in a previous arc, her health is now bad enough that she won't live very long without proper care… which she almost certainly won't get. And the cherry on top is that she's about to be separated from Ashina Sun permanently, since her uncle's men are making her lie to him before they force her away. Change Ge might have some way to get out of the situation, but from what information readers have, it is really hard to see.
Toys
- BIONICLE: The central Myth Arc was resolved and wrapped up when the toyline was cancelled in 2010, but a large number of subplots and side stories were Left Hanging. Greg Farshtey continued to write and publish the online serials, which tended to end every chapter with a cliffhanger with the heroes in peril to be resolved in the next chapter. However, his busy schedule led him to stop writing for BIONICLE before the end of the year and eventually the website was taken down by LEGO, prematurely ending these serials before they could ever see completion. Therefore, The Yesterday Quest ends with Gelu, Chiara, Orde, and Zaria being hunted by Vorox, and The Powers That Be ends with Pohatu and Kopaka trapped on the Red Star while Velika is plotting to murder a bunch of other important characters.
Video Games
- Advent Rising ends with the entire human race dead and the main character stranded on a deserted planet. It was intended as the start of a trilogy, which presumably would've involved working to fix this, but poor reception killed any prospects of that.
- Due to ZapDramatic's Ambition series never receiving a proper conclusion, the last-published episode ends with Yale framed and imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit while the antagonists get off scot-free.
- Beyond Good & Evil ends with the revelation that Pey'j has been infected by a Domz parasite. Given that Beyond Good & Evil 2 would end up in Development Hell for the next two decades, with plans for it being a sequel scrapped in favor of telling a prequel story along the way, it's unlikely that fans are ever going to get a follow-up on this.
- In The Stinger of Call of Duty: Ghosts, somehow, with no explanation, Rorke survives what should be an unsurvivable situation and abducts Logan, dropping him into a pit in the Amazon to presumably undergo the same tortures that caused him to turn. Due to poor sales and other problems with the story, the next game in the series abandoned the Ghosts universe, and any future appearances of the characters have done nothing to explain what happened next in the plot.
- Darkest of Days ends on a very sour note: you learn why the Opposition was trying to meddle with history and what sort of bleak future you were safeguarding for the whole game. This was set up as a Sequel Hook, with both Morris and Dexter switching sides in the outro to help Strinko with his mission to prevent the Bad Future... except the sequel never happened, so the game ends with the realisation the players were doing their darnest to police a timeline that leads to a multi-billion genocide and with no sequel, it's never prevented.
- The Darkness II ends with Jackie rampaging through Hell to free Jenny, only for the latter to be taken over by the Angelus and escaping Hell, leaving Jackie and the Darkness stranded with no escape in sight. DLC for the game was planned that would have presumably followed up on this cliffhanger, but it was cancelled due to the game's poor sales.
- Dead Space 3 was a bizarre mix of this and Torch the Franchise and Run, with the Downer Ending being a result of the game not selling as well as needed to justify a Dead Space 4. Before 3 released, Electronic Arts stated that there would be no sequel unless the game sold over 5 million units, more than the first two games combined. Needless to say, the game fell far short of that mark. This may explain why the Awakened DLC ends with the Brethren Moons fully awakening and beginning their campaign of genocide on the galaxy, and there is literally nothing Isaac, Carver, or anyone can do to stop them, making further sequels all but impossible. Interestingly, there was a plan on what to do after the DLC, as explained in a Wha Happun? video by Matt McMuscles: it would have remnants of humanity aboard a flotilla and advance from there. Plans for a following 4th instalment were placed in Development Hell after 3 didn't sell as well as Electronic Arts had hoped. Visceral Games was then tagged to develop a brand new Star Wars single-player video game. In October 2017, EA shut down Visceral Games, which left the future of the Dead Space franchise in serious doubt. Those doubts continued until July 2021 when EA announced a remake of the first Dead Space for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S developed by Motive Studios, which would utilize the Frostbite engine. While the remake received positive reviews and won back those who were disappointed by the third game, it apparently didn't sell well enough for EA to consider more entries in the series, so it's safe to say that the franchise is well and truly buried.
- At least one ending of Disco Elysium states that Revachol is going to be consumed by nuclear fire in twenty years, and it will be up to Harrier to stop it. ZA/UM was the subject of a hostile takeover that resulted in the firing of the original creators of the setting and refusal to let them use it in any capacity, leading to a protracted legal dispute and a proper sequel to Disco Elysium becoming less likely by the day.
- Evolve: Post-release updates for the game started fleshing out the setting beyond "mercenaries hunt giant alien monsters". The canonical last update had a Bolivian Army Ending, where Shear is overrun by the Monsters and the Hunters are stranded on the planet with no hope of rescue, and only a post-credits coded message vaguely teasing more developments. Further updates were meant to flesh out the story and setting beyond this point, but the developers' contract with their publisher ended, taking the game's IP with it (with the servers also permanently shutting down in 2022), and only last-second Word of God statements clarified some plot points and diverging future timelines.
- Thanks to a bunch of bugs and Dummied Out elements with event flags of its Multiple Endings, Fallout 2 has a handful of very nasty endings for a few locations — and to make it all that worse, players trying to get the best outcome will get the worst one due to said bugs. This involves things like Gecko being brutally conquered by Vault City, Vault City itself being taken over by the NCR as second-class citizens and without any internal reform, the completely messed up ending for New Reno's Mob War disjoined from player actions or the desolation of Modoc. One of the main selling points of the Restoration Project mod is the fact it properly flags the end-game states — to the point there is a separate installation option that only fixes the endings to work properly and otherwise keeps the game unaffected.
- For the longest time, Half-Life 2's continuation in the form of a new game was in doubt, which was left with the add-on Episode Two ending with Eli Vance being killed by Combine Advisors. This had caused a stir that series writer Marc Laidlaw, after leaving Valve Corporation among many others, created fan fiction of his intended conclusion to the story — this spurred the modding community to spawn projects of their own Half-Life 3. As of 2020 there is Half-Life: Alyx but it only retconned a cliffhanger with another.
- Haven: Call of the King was originally envisioned as the first game of a trilogy, but the game doing poorly at market shuttered that and resulted in the series ending with the bad guy winning; Haven climbs a tower and rings a bell that is said to summon King Athellion to the position of the one who rung it, hoping for him to defeat Vetch. Haven's friend Chess, who was on Vetch's side the whole time, lures Haven away from the tower and into Vetch's clutches, letting him capture and kill Athellion. Haven then gets into a fight with Vetch, loses hard, and due to the tower's power preventing Haven from being killed, he's left to be chained to a rock forever while Vetch gets off scot-free and leaves to enslave everyone in the galaxy.
- Incredible Crisis: The Stinger shows that a metal globe in space hurtling towards Earth is about to crash into the main family's house, followed by To Be Continued text. A sequel was never made.
- Just Dance:
- 2024's story ended on a cliffhanger where Night Swan seemingly wins after brainwashing the Just Dancers sans Jack Rose, but, due to the story mode's believed unpopularity, future games have lacked any continuation, leaving it on a rather bleak ending.
- There was also the ending to the 2017 game mode "Just Dance Machine", which sees what is implied to be the aliens losing their ship's power source again, complete with a To Be Continued. The mode's story would never be bought up again, with its successor on 2018, "Dance Lab" having No Plot? No Problem!, though it's unknown if it was intended to be followed up.
- K.O.L.M.: Due to the Kickstarter for the third game failing to raise enough money, the series ends with Robbie and Sister falling right into Father's trap, with Sister now in Mother and Father's grasp and Robbie's fate unknown. At the very least, Word of God has revealed an outline of what would have followed, which is arguably still a Downer Ending, but not quite as bleak as K.O.L.M. 2's ending.
- Lego The Hobbit: Since the game was released before the third and final movie of the trilogy, The Battle of the Five Armies, the game's story mode covers the first two movies, An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug, the latter ending with Smaug escaping the Lonely Mountain and heading to lay waste to Lake Town, and Bard, the only person who can stop him, is imprisoned by the greedy Master and his cohorts, while Gandalf's side of the story ends with him on the ropes in a battle against Sauron, who is revealed to have coerced Azog into helping him. The Battle of the Five Armies was planned to be added to the story mode with DLC, but it ended up getting cancelled.
- Loom ends with the Pattern torn in two and the Weavers only able to protect one half, forced to leave the other half to Chaos and a bleak future. The game was envisioned as the first of a trilogy, with the sequels showing how the people left on Chaos' half fought back, but the sequels were never made.
- The last mission of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun involves Joseph Griffin and Phillip Bromley foiling the Big Bad Commander Shima's plans to loot ancient Asian tombs and sink an entire Japanese aircraft carrier and escape his trap, but their friend Ichiro Tanaka is dead, and Shima, along with his allies Borov and Kandler are still at large, and Joseph's brother Donnie is still captured. A sequel was planned that would conclude this story plot but the relatively poor sales of the game meant that the sequel would never be made. The important plot points are mentioned in a different game, Medal of Honor: Heroes.
- Mega Man:
- Mega Man Legends 2 ends with Roll and Tron trying and failing to make a space program to retrieve Mega Man, who's stuck on Elysium with Yuna (who's still in Roll's mom's body) and Sera (in Yuna's body), with the three potentially at the mercy of the Elder System, whose Reaverbots (or commands for the existing Reaverbots) may be more on the "Kill All Carbons" side than the Ancients we've seen. A decade later, fans were given the chance to give their input on the development of a prototype for a third game, but Capcom would ultimately decide against a full greenlight in 2011. And while the other Mega Man sub-series (Classic, X, Zero, ZX, Battle Network, and Star Force) would receive compilation rereleases in the years since, Legends has yet to receive such treatment, giving little indication that Capcom plans to revisit the series.
- Mega Man X8 ends with Axl seemingly infected or corrupted by the main villain's Last Breath Bullet. This was never mentioned in Mega Man X: Command Mission with Axl showing up just fine and there were no more X games after this.
- Mega Man ZX Advent has a secret epilogue for the hardest difficulty, where Master Thomas is revealed to be Evil All Along, a maniac who wants to remake the world just like Albert. The developer later revealed in a 2021 livestream that a sequel codenamed Rockman ZXC was indeed in development to resolve this, but Capcom cancelled it.
- Nocturne (1999)'s Playable Epilogue has Stranger entering Spookhouse headquarters to find it smashed open, with the body parts of most of the supporting cast strewn across the base (including Moloch, a super-powerful demon who was established to be The Juggernaut). He finds a message written in blood addressed personally to him essentially saying "we've finally found you, ha ha ha", then the game ends. Obviously, this was meant to be one hell of a Sequel Hook, which we ended up never getting thanks to the developers getting preoccupied with the BloodRayne series, then eventually folding before they could ever get around to picking up where that very painful cliffhanger left off.
- Prince of Persia (2008)'s epilogue DLC ends with Ahriman freed to destroy the world again and Elika abandoning the Prince forever in retaliation for his actions, leaving him to face Ahriman's wrath alone. A sequel was originally planned by the devs, but due to poor sales, this timeline of the series has never been picked up by them again.
- Rakenzarn Tales ended version 2 with the heroes having just barely fended off an attack by the Saint Lords, Noel on the verge of death by Deathstroke's hand and Kyuu having passed out. Then the game underwent one of several continuity reboots which pretty much changed the entire plot, ensuring that it will never been seen again. The game's creator did later release information on his DeviantArt page explaining how it would've concluded had the current version continued.
- Run Like Hell concludes with a Diabolus ex Machina where despite Nick's efforts to contain the Race's infestation by detonating the Forsetti Station, killing almost every alien monstrosity, it turns out the second Race Elite - the one using Nick's deceased Love Interest Samantha's body as a host - still managed to escape to Earth, has assimilated at least one city, and is ready to unleash her brood to Take Over the World. Then the credits roll. The game was indeed supposed to have a sequel, but it was scrapped in the last minute.
- Scourge: Outbreak ends with The Bad Guy Wins, where Dr. Reisbeck, escaping the events of Nogari Island, used the Scourge Queen to unleash an Apocalypse How turning the world's cities into monster-infested hellholes, and he's now hunting down the surviving heroes. Turns out the game was supposed to be the first installment of a franchise, but owing to the game's poor sales and Tragnarion Studios folding a year after, the franchise stops right there.
- Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time ends on a cliffhanger with Sly defeating Le Paradox, only for the skunk to steal his Paraglider, leaving him stuck on a crashing and going-haywire time zeppelin and resulting in him going missing, with the rest of the Cooper Gang having no idea where or when to look for him. The secret ending for 100% Completion reveals that Sly's been stranded in Ancient Egypt. Sanzaru Games intended to follow up on this with DLC, but for various reasons, they were unable to. And between Sanzaru Games being bought out by Facebook in 2020 and Sucker Punch Productions long since having moved on from the Sly Cooper series, seeing a resolution to this game's cliffhanger is unlikely to say the least.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood: After successfully defeating Imperator Ix and saving the universe, Sonic and co. return to Earth to find Eggman conquered the world in their absence. And then right as it looks like the Blue Cyclone is about to crash, Sonic, Tails, and Omega interrupt the scene with a credits roll. The game's title and Sequel Hook suggested that Sonic Chronicles was planned to be a full-fledged series, but BioWare becoming a part of Electronic Arts and closing down handheld game development prevented them from making a sequel. Poor sales and the Ken Penders lawsuit (though Sega won the case) killed any chance of it being put into the hands of anyone else, and the game has rarely been acknowledged by Sega since its release (and has since been declared non-canon).
- During the events of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II, the Little Planet ends up being transformed into the Death Egg Mk. II. At the end of the game, no matter how many Chaos Emeralds you collected throughout the game, the Death Egg Mk. II does not revert to its original state, as Sega has moved on from Sonic 4 since then. Amy's description during a Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter Takeover indicates it got better offscreen, while the official 2025 series timeline states that the Death Egg Mk. II was destroyed before the events of Sonic Adventure, though it doesn't clarify what happened to Little Planet itself.
- Steel Harbinger concludes with a Cliffhanger after Miranda Bowen destroys the alien core Final Boss; turns out despite her best efforts, the invaders still managed to break through humanity's last line of defense and kill off everyone on Miranda's side, including her father Dr. Bowen, with the last shot depicting Dr. Bowen dropping a locket containing Miranda's Precious Photo as the credits roll. A 2018 post from the game's former lead designer (who wishes to remain annonymous) reveals that a sequel was originally in the works and would've revolved around Miranda travelling across different planets to seek a way to restore the earth, but the entire design team was laid off in the last minute.
- Tales of Luminaria was planned to be an episodic anthology that gave twenty-one characters an eight-chapter story each, which would take about three years at a rate of one a week. It only lasted nine months, cutting off in the middle of the Chapter Twos. As its finale, it skipped ahead to the next major story beat planned: a flashback (from the perspective of most of the stories, anyway) to when Hugo turned on his friends and joined the enemy side (with the chapter revealing that he did so to protect them, but they don't know that).
- Terraria Calamity ceased development before a boss fight with Yharim was added. As a result, despite him wanting the player to kill him, you never get the chance to meet and kill him, leaving him a depressed man for the rest of his life (and a Karma Houdini indirectly), whilst the world the two inhabit remains a Crapsack World for a long time to come.
- Them's Fightin' Herds: The announcement that the story mode would not be completed sees the first chapter ending with Arizona gotten her tail kicked by either Oleander or Fred, had a Longma Orb stolen by them, having no idea what to make of the hieroglyphs in the temple and at a complete loss on what to do next.
- Unreal Tournament III finished with a Bolivian Army Ending where Reaper, having lost his entire team (with his sister dying on his hands), is surrounded by Necris Phayder soldiers ready to gun him down, with him being ready to fight for his life. The game was released in 2007, and its Expansion Pack was composed solely of an extra bunch of maps, neither of which solve anything in the SP mode. The next game in the series was a failed Continuity Reboot. And in December 2022, the entire series got delisted from all stores.
- The first part of Wasted Youth ends on a grim cliffhanger in which the Player Character and Dave discover Annabelle's dead body buried on the football field. The game was intended to have a second part to resolve the cliffhanger, only for it to fall into Development Hell.
- The Wolf Among Us: The digital comic adaptation deviates from the game in two ways. Firstly, the Crooked Man escapes imprisonment in Fabletown (which was not something that was even possible in the original game), and secondly, it removes the Ambiguous Ending by having the Crooked Man kidnap Nerissa, who is all but stated to have been Faith transfigured by a glamour, something that was only implied in the original narrative. Given that Season 2 hasn't manifested in almost six years since its announcement, even if the comic is canon, we're not getting answers for what happened anytime soon.
Visual Novels
- Hero's ending has the protagonist Alex make a Heroic Sacrifice to launch the villain into the Prism gate and straight into the alien planet that they originate from. What was meant to be a Sequel Hook of possibly Alex and their possible love interests exploring their origin planet and finding a way back to Earth was cut short when Pixelberry cancelled the planned sequel book.
Web Animation
- Counterspell: The first (which ended up being the only released) season ends with Draegara summoning Dredge and plummeting the world into darkness. Due to the series not being renewed for a second season like planned along with the channel is was initially hosted on shutting down, this is where the series ended.
- The first, and only episode of TeamFourStar's Attack on Titan Abridged ended with Eren being eaten by a Titan as Armin tried unsuccessfully to save him.
- While RWBY Volume 9 itself has a Surprisingly Happy Ending where the main characters escape the Ever After to find the various countries gathered at Vacuo, the closure of Rooster Teeth means the series as a whole still ends on the dire note of the Big Bad having destroyed two kingdoms and having two of the artifacts required to destroy the world. Even worse is that Justice League × RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen, which may or may not be canon, establishes a Time Dilation between Remnant and the DC Universe, with a Year Inside, Hour Outside and Team RWBY’s disappearance again spelt doom for its people (assuming that Remnant was taken out by Anti-Matter waves). The show has since been picked up by Viz Media, so with any luck, this will be subverted.
Webcomics
- Klonoa: Dream Traveller of Noctis Sol: Due to the comic's host website, ShiftyLook, getting shut down before the story got very far, the comic ended with two of Klonoa's Brainwashed and Crazy friends, along with Klonoa's Evil Counterpart, jumping in to attack Klonoa.
- Due to some in-the-way issues in regards with illustrating, the last new addition to Nebula (at least going forth, having been uploaded two years before Nebula Lux, which took place sometime around the first chapters) as of 2025 has showed us Pluto undergoing an (implicitly painful) Eldritch Transformation by his new "friend" after watching someone like himself get offed by Sun, who's planet friends are left injured and sick from their attacker's Agony Beam, and Mars' trust in Sun becoming just as beyond repair as his body and face.
- Rainbow Skies Forever: Year Two was ultimately cancelled due to a lack of funding, so the comic ends with Ashley sobbing after losing her mother and having to kill her corrupted father in self-defense. It would eventually get a Fully Absorbed Finale in Ennui GO!, where she goes back in time to prevent Akihiro's Start of Darkness, preventing all the tragedies that befell her family at the cost of her original timeline self being Ret-Gone.
- An In-Universe example in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: One comic shows kids watching a show about drugs where "Strung-Out Sammy" tells them how great drugs are... but since Intervention Isaac didn't show up, the show ended there.
- Super Effective: Since the webcomic went on hiatus in 2018 and was declared cancelled in 2020 by creator Scott Ramsoomair, the last comic shows Red fainting after all of his Pokémon are knocked out in battle. He wakes up in a tub of ice with two lines of stitches down the sides of his body and a note taped to his chest that reads "See a Poké Center." Though the series ended up resuming in 2024, revealing that the prior scenario was All Just a Dream Red is having as he’s abducted by a Gengar.
- When Curiosity Met Insanity: It's not harsh enough to be an outright downer, but due to the comic going dormant and no longer updating after 2015, the story ends on the ambiguous and bittersweet note of Reginald giving up on his courtship of Alice at her request and going through an emotional slump over it.
- Zoophobia: The story was originally supposed to be several arcs long about Cameron finding her way in Safe Haven, but due to Vivienne Medrano cancelling the comic after only 6 chapters, it instead just ends with Cameron trapped in Safe Haven permanently still not entirely happy.
Web Video
- Season one of TitansGrave: The Ashes of Valkana ends with the party defeating Prophet Dhawan in battle, only to learn that all they've done is pulled a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! and freed her from being Sealed Evil in a Can, with an implication that she's about to restart the war that led to her being imprisoned in the first place. A second season was presumably going to involve the party working to fix this, but the fact that Game Master Wil Wheaton and parent company Geek & Sundry have had a legal falling out since then makes a resolution unlikely.
- The second season of Tribe Twelve ends with the video Facade, where Noah Maxwell has just escaped his fake house and the Observer, but is no closer to escaping the Eldritch Location boardwalk he's trapped in. The series ended right then and there after the creator of the show, Adam Rosner, was exposed as a sexual predator who groomed minors throughout the 2010s. Rosner would disappear from the Internet shortly afterward.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: The final episode "The Inquisition" ends with a crack opening inside Elmore Junior High, revealing the Void. This causes series antagonist Rob to fall in as the floor beneath him disappears. The last thing viewers see is a freeze frame of Rob falling into the Void. The show wouldn’t be revived until a few years later as The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball, and the question of what happened to Rob wouldn't be answered until the episode "The Rewrite".
- Beast Wars: The French and Vietnamese markets elected to not dub and air the third season of the show, meaning that the show ended with the second season finale's cliffhanger wherein Beast Era Megatron apparently succeeded in destroying G1 Optimus Prime and destroying time and history to ensure a Decepticon and Predacon victory.
- Cleopatra in Space clearly had plans that went beyond its initial 26 episode order, but no new episodes were ordered. As such, the show ends with the main villain Octavian taking over Mayet, Yosira being captured, and everyone leaving Pyramid only to be stranded in space when fuel runs out.
- Clone High has the distinction of ending on this trope not once, but twice. The original 2002-2003 run ended with all of the clones trapped in a freezer just as Abe is about to confess his feelings for Joan. That would have been it if not for the Revival on HBO Max twenty years later, with the clones finally thawing out. Sadly, in a case of History Repeats, the revival ended on another cliffhanger as a nuclear missile is about to strike on the cast while Joan confesses her love for Abe. HBO Max cancelled the show afterwards in July 2024 due to having lost interest in the series, and it seems unlikely that the show will ever continue after this.
- Elliott from Earth: The show was cut short after only 16 episodes; with the last one ending with Elliott's mom and his best friend Mo accidentally reactivating the rock that transported them to the Centrium, sending both away to an unknown place while Elliott remains behind on the Centrium, all alone.
- Exo Squad ends abruptly with a mysterious spaceship (implied to be the aliens alluded to on the Mars arc) showing up out of nowhere and making Pluto and its colony disappear, leaving J.T stranded in space, watching helplessly as it flies toward Earth. Meanwhile, Nara starts to turn more plant-like as a long-term result of her encounter with Dr. Ketzer, with her fate being unknown.
- Final Space: Season 3 ended on a particularly downer fate, with Ash, now fully broken and corrupted by Invictus manipulating her into blaming the Team Squad for everything bad that's happened to her and her family, taking Mooncake and using him to free Invictus, leaving him free to wreck havoc on the universe. It was not long after this that the show was canceled and written off for taxes, although the creator, Olan Rogers, does intend to finish the series through a graphic novel. That novel does resolve the ending- the Team Squad are able to defeat and destroy Invictus, freeing Ash from his control, and she makes amends to the others.
- Galactik Football ends its third season with Micro-Ice, Mei, the kids of Club Galactik and one of the recurring reporters getting beamed into deep space by a Holodeck Malfunction. Since the show wasn’t picked up for a 4th season, their fate is unknown.
- Good Times: Black Again ends with Junior being shot by an unknown gunman and his fate left unclear. Universally negative reception from critics and audiences, combined with low viewership, prompted Netflix to cancel the show after a single season.
- The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Has an In-Universe example in "The Schlubs". Grim is watching a series called "My Troubled Pony", which is stated by Mandy that it was cancelled and that it has No Ending. It ends on a grim cliffhanger with the protagonist falling into a volcano before it cuts to a "The end?" screen, devastating Grim. In the credits sequence of this episode, Billy is paid to make his own ending to the series as Mandy had bought the company behind it, which Grim wanted to do. Billy, being Billy, gives it a Gainax Ending where the protagonist re-incarnates into a dragon that serves chocolates.
- Hailey's On It!: Due to a second season not being greenlit, the show ends with Scott finally realizing Hailey's feelings for him at the school dance. However, as she's decided to not allow the list to dictate her life after so many failed attempts, she chooses to date Sanjay instead, causing a massive time glitch in the process that forces Beta to reveal list item #143 to Scott right as the episode ends and leaving the fate of the world uncertain.
- Inside Job (2021): The season turned series finale "Appleton" has Reagan stuck between taking a new position among the Robes, or leaving the shadow government behind entirely to follow her boyfriend Ron, who wants to move to the titular town, wipe their memories, and start anew. She runs a variety of simulations to see if she can have both. Despite being in love with Ron, Reagan cannot see a happy future where she can balance her passion for her work and her life with Ron. She lets Ron wipe his own mind, but leaves without wiping her own so he can find a happy life with someone else. She ends the season unhappy and unsure of her future, with a cliffhanger implying the Robes will take advantage of her new position. A second season was originally greenlit to follow up on this, but Netflix took it back and cancelled the series.
- The season 1 finale of Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart titled "Strange Bedfellows" ends with an already pain-ridden Mao Mao screaming as Badgerclops attempts to create a new cast with duct tape, as he cannot go back to the hospital after breaking all of his bones to save himself from the giant cement-filed pothole that he and Orangasnake got stuck into; and all of this is Played for Laughs. The show was Quietly Cancelled after this, leaving it to end on a painful note.
- Martha Speaks features an In-Universe example in "Dogs from Space" — Danny used to love a particular comic series as a kid, but it got cancelled before he could find out what happened to the protagonist.
- M.O.D.O.K. (2021): The last episode ended with M.O.D.O.K. allowing Anomoly to kill his family so that he could successfully take over the world. Unhappy with the aftermath, he tortures Anomoly with intent on finding a way to bring them back before killing him while declaring intent to find a way to have it all. Due to poor performance in both views and feedback, the show was not renewed for a second season.
- The Midnight Gospel's cancellation before its planned second season means the show ends with Clancy and his dog seemingly dying when his Multiverse Simulator blows up; even though it contradicts Death's prediction that Clancy will die in his swivel chair.
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: The final episode, "Turncoats", centers around Dr. Wakeman having to fight her XJ robots after they've been hijacked by Dr. Locus. Jenny and Wakeman manage to defeat Locus, but the episode (and consequentially, the entire series) ends with Wakeman being swallowed by a tiger. It would be several years before the story was properly resolved in a web novel.
- The fourth and final season of Paradise PD ended on a cliffhanger in which the Big Bad kidnaps Randal and Karen's baby to gain immortality and flies away with him. This is lampshaded in the closing credits, since the writers weren't aware that the episode would be the series finale when it was written. As a double-whammy, they initially planned to wrap the series up through a crossover episode in the second season of Farzar. However, the latter ended up being cancelled after the first season, leaving both series up in the air.
- Planet Sheen: The series ended with Sheen no closer to returning to Earth. Nickelodeon losing interest in the franchise as a result of its poor performance means he'll probably be there forever without any of his friends or family knowing.
- The Prince (2021): The first season finale ends on a cliffhanger, with Kevin delivering poisoned tarts to The British Royal Family. The show was cancelled several months later due to poor reception, leaving the ultimate fates of the royal family unknown.
- ReBoot: The creators went into season four expecting at least five seasons, only to be abruptly cancelled. As a result, the show concludes with Megabyte winning and taking over the Principal Office, gleefully informing the heroes that he's going to hunt them all down. Tony Jay's death in 2006 didn't help either. The continuation series ReBoot: The Guardian Code deciding to completely ignore not just that cliffhanger, but also everything after the original's first season only made it worse.
- Silver Surfer: The Animated Series: Possibly the most extreme example of this trope, as the show ends with Thanos destroying the entire universe! It was supposed to get resolved in a second season, but unfortunately, the show was unexpectedly cancelled.
- The Smurfs (1981): Season 9 opens with seventeen of the smurfs getting lost in time after attempting to return a baby Triceratops that had been trapped inside ice back to its proper era. The final episode, "Hearts 'N Smurfs", sees them using The Power of Love to purge Azrael and Gargamel's descendants of evil, then continuing their quest to return home... without ever actually making it back, as the series was canceled by NBC.
- This fate befell Sonic Underground twofold. The original cartoon series follows Sonic and his two siblings learning to work in harmony so they can reunite with their mother and take back Mobius from Doctor Robotnik, but by the end of the series, they're no closer to their goal. The plan was to produce a finale movie if Underground was successful, but the series flopped and was cancelled after only one season. After a decade of silence, however, it was announced that they would finally get a resolution in the Sonic Universe side-series of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). Unfortunately, after years of postponing and hemming and hawing from Archie about when the story would arrive, Archie Comics would first be given a mandate that they could only use characters from the games or the second cartoon, and then end up completely divorced from Sonic the Hedgehog after lengthy and costly legal battles and Sonic Underground would (among other unresolved storylines as mentioned in Comic Book) again be denied any closure since the new IDW series of comics deal near-exclusively with the video game continuity with no inclination of visiting anything to do with any of the classic cartoons.
- Spider-Man cartoons from the 1990s to the late 2000s accidentally developed a habit of suffering this.
- Spider-Man Unlimited (1999)'s final episode depicts Spider-Man, his allies in the Resistance, and Venom and Carnage, all rounded up by the High Evolutionary and his generals to eliminate them all once and for all. Despite getting free, receiving back-up from independent allies, and looking like it was going to be a free-for-all showdown with the High Evolutionary, the final scene has Venom and Carnage reveal that the symbiotes' master plan has begun, while hundreds of symbiote spawn rain down all over the city. The show's cancellation would make this one of the most brutal endings in a Spider-Man cartoon.
- Spider-Man: The New Animated Series was cancelled at the end of its first season, resulting in it having a brutal Downer Ending in which Spider-Man accidentally injures his girlfriend Indy, leaving her in a coma she may never wake from, and subsequently kills the villains responsible, with both events leaving him viewed as a criminal in the eyes of the city and his relationships with MJ and Harry in tatters. The last scene is Peter deciding he's done being Spider-Man and tossing his costume into the Hudson River before walking off into the sunset, alone and broken.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man: Despite many Spider-Man fans considering this show to have the best depiction of Peter Parker ever put on TV, the show was canceled after its second season due to contract issues with Disney. Once Disney had the rights to put Spider-Man on TV, Sony could no longer continue producing Spectacular. As such, the series ends on a bittersweet and sad note: Spider-Man defeated the Goblin (now revealed to be Norman Osborn) and kept everyone safe, but this causes Harry to hate Spider-Man; and Peter in turn is wracked with guilt over killing Norman and leaving Harry without a father. Even worse, Peter's personal life is now at its lowest point as he had painfully dumped Liz to be with Gwen, but Harry is now manipulating Gwen into staying with him. Eddie Brock is still in prison, and Black Cat hates Spidey for making her father stay in prison by guilt-tripping him. In short, Peter is mostly alone. Meanwhile, due to Curt being blackmailed by Miles Warren, the Connors are forced to leave the lab and relocate to Florida, leaving the lab to Warren, whom they don't trust, and the last scene reveals that Norman somehow survived the explosion as he boards a plane and will very likely continue his evil doing. Word of God released a list of things that would have made it into the show, including the introduction of the Carnage symbiote, the death of Captain Stacy, Mary Jane and Peter becoming a couple, etc. The closest fans would get to an official continuation was the show's version of Peter making a cameo appearance in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, complete with Josh Keaton reprising his role for the first time in years, which also revealed that Captain Stacy died at some point after the ending.
- The two-part series finale of Superman: The Animated Series was intended to be the start of a new season where Superman has to regain the public's trust in him after he was Brainwashed and Crazy into becoming Darkseid's minion, but due to Bruce Timm and Paul Dini deciding to move onto Batman Beyond, this plotline was left unresolved until Justice League.
- A regional version with Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! ending after its second season in many European territories, thus concluding on the infamously bleak episode "I, Chiro". And what is notable is that the episode actually concluded a lot of plot threads that had been set up and featured a grand final battle. This made it so that if you didn't know there was more, you'd very much believe it was the true ending of the series.
- Japan elected to not air the third season of Transformers: Prime and replace it with an original series. This resulted in the series ending in Japan with the cliffhanger of the Decepticons attacking the Autobot base. Things got edited to make for a more ambiguous ending with series cutting off at Optimus about to destroy the Groundbridge as the Nemesis prepares to open fire on the base, removing the more unambiguous Downer Ending of the season, but it's still left with things not looking great for Optimus or the other Autobots and humans who have fled across the country to escape.
- Velma ended with a Halloween Special that, while resolving the second season's Cliffhanger ending from several months prior, itself concludes with its own cliffhanger wherein Fred is possessed by an evil audiobook with ulterior motives. The series was canceled in favor of Warner Bros. wanting to move on to other Scooby-Doo projects.