No Right Answer: Most Depressing Series Ending

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RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Dinosaurs vs Roseanne....

Shouldn't this have been a debate of "Most Depressing Series"? Hey-ooooooooooh! :p
 

Soxafloppin

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Jun 22, 2009
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Ladies and gentlemen I give you Mortal Kombat: Conquest.

Basically Shao Kahn gets pissed off and sends the shadow priests (Those purple robe, floaty, background guys from the games, who turn out to be uber powerful) to kill EVERYONE.

and they do, the end.

and yes I did just use spoilers for a series over 10 years old.
 

Darknacht

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May 13, 2009
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What about M*A*S*H the final episode involves one of the main characters having a psychotic break because while hiding from North Koreans he snaps at a mother to keep her baby quiet so she kills it so that the North Koreans would not hear it.
 

Grumpy Ginger

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Jul 9, 2012
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I can think of three Blackadder goes forth, Berserk which was just wow and Cowboy Bebop which I just finished watching
 

artanis_neravar

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Apr 18, 2011
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NameIsRobertPaulson said:
Azurian said:
FloodOne said:
bdcjacko said:
The final episode of Roseanne suck.

Plus it is a wildly believed fact that Jurrassic Bark is the most depressing episode of anything ever. (Though not a series finale)
No arguments there, Jurrasic Barks makes me tear up almost every time.
I agree it was sad the first time but after Bender's Big Score the scene losses impact.
Hence my vote for saddest American animation moment going to "Luck of the Fryish"

"I love you Phillip, and I always will..."

That is depressing.

Though saddest overall goes to Fullmetal Alchemist. Everyone knows the moment.
This part in FMA?
Chimera?

Luck of the Fryish was a much sadder episode than Jurassic Bark. "Named for his Uncle, to carry on his spirit." How could that not make you bawl?
 

vxicepickxv

Slayer of Bothan Spies
Sep 28, 2008
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I think I'm going to have to go with Quantum Leap's final episode. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, go watch it. It's a rather interesting series, and you can actually watch most of the series out of order.

?Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.?

The fact that the ending actually clashed with the entire theme of the series that was being built up over the course five seasons makes the ending come down on you like a ton of bricks.
 

Mortamus

The Talking Dead
May 18, 2012
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While not the actual ending to the series, Serenity was essentially the end. Not the actual ending mind you, but three scenes before it:

Every character throughout the series has added some particular flavor to the show. Wash was the heart of the group. The charming, silly, good guy that kept them all in good spirits. He made people laugh. He made you laugh. Then, right after his big shining moment in Serenity, BAM. Dead. Right there. No time to process how or why, only the cold truth that he's gone. We cried, yelled in anger, and felt our own hearts sink in one instant. No amount of the good that came after lifted that emotional weight. It was the signifying moment that the series was over, as it's heart was now gone.

This was honestly the most depressing ending of any series for me, not just Television.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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DVS BSTrD said:
Well after that, I'm sure glad My Little Pony is coming back this Friday :(
Just hope they don't make a two part ending out of "Big Apple Massacre" and "Cupcakes" as the finale when the series ends. :)

Infamous shock-fan fics, if you don't know them you might look them up, just understand what your getting into. The title of the former pretty much gets to the point, "Cupcakes" is more disturbing and well... let's just say the story does involve cupcakes.

-

I'll also say that I think shows that really have no ending or end with a cliffhanger before not being continued are worse than ones that have some kind of finality. I'll also say that the ending of a series should make sense within the context of the show, and should ultimatly be positive.

To be honest with you at least with "Dinosaurs" and "Roseanne" you know what happened. If you take something like say "The Sopranos" which was a non-ending, it's infinatly more annoying, and compounded by fanboys who run around saying you don't get it, and how much of a genius the guy doing the show was for ending it that way.
 

Riobux

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Apr 15, 2009
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I'm going with something completely different: Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes (both UK versions).

Life On Mars:
Okay, so for the entire series you had the ambiguous nature of if Sam Tyler is ever going to wake up from a coma he gets from being hit by a car (which propelled him into the 1970s). He spends the time making friends with the rest of his team and finding a girlfriend. He even helps his family from when he himself was a child in the 70s, which he's gone back to. However, in the final episode he discovers that to get out of the coma he must pretty much doom his friends and love-interest in the coma to a certain death via gang-members.

So he wakes up in the modern day, his love-interest from the modern day gone after she breaks up with Sam while he was in a coma and without any friends at all. During a meeting, he starts spacing out. Finally one of the people in the meeting mentions to him that he's bleeding. He looks down and realises he's just been pushing his thumb into his pen so hard that he caused himself to bleed, but never felt it at all. This relates back to a pub owner he talked to while in the coma who told him he'll be able to work out what is real and what isn't if he actually feels anything.

So, he leaves the meeting and goes out onto the roof for a quick breather. Finally, he gets an idea. He runs as fast as he can and jumps from the building, so he may not only be with his coma-friends and love-interest but to save their lives. Meanwhile, it's hinted that Sam dies due to this.

Ashes To Ashes
The main character, Alex, gets shot by someone. She falls into a coma and continues to be desperate to wake up to see her child. Turns out that at the end, not only she is actually dead, thus she will never see her young daughter ever again, but so are the rest of the cast (including some of Sam's friends from Life On Mars). That even the main big bad-arse gov' of the unit Gene Hunt actually got killed, but unlike the others he didn't remain his true form. He actually goes from someone who was about 20 in real life and a wimpy small thin man, to a 30-40 year old man who is an absolute bad-arse. That the purgatory for police officers are for people to realise what faults in their personality that caused them to die, and then they succeed over their own personal faults to go to the other side. That Gene Hunt is pretty much designing purgatory in the image of what makes him happy, and it's his task to deal with the fallen and lost police-officers on their path to contentment with who they are and then onto the after-life.

Both are really insane endings, but they're depressing just for the insanity of it all.

Also, House MD:
Everything in the final ending where House is not sure if to die or escape, up to when it's revealed House got out alive. It would of been an excellent ending, and a very depressing one, had House properly died. It also would of felt so right.
 

Furrama

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Jul 24, 2008
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Wolf's Rain. Well, if you understand what's going on anyway. Most don't because the allegory goes over most non Japanese people's heads, so it's just a bunch of pictures that haven't much context. But it does. And it's depressing.
 

FrozenCones

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Dec 31, 2009
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C117 said:
In my opinion, Blackadder Goes Forth had the most depressing ending of all. Considering the entire rest of the series had been a funny, snarky comedy, the ending to the very last season takes a very depressing turn.

In the last episode, it is finally time for the final push over the top and and out of the trenches. Captain Blackadder desperately tries to get out, only to have his last attempts end in failure, Captain Darling is sent to the front by General Melchett as a "gift", when he wants nothing more than to stay OUT of the trenches, and Lieutenant George is very gung-ho about it all... until about five minutes before they are all going over the top, when he suddenly realizes that he too is scared by the prospect of dying. The last we ever see of them is when they charge out of the trenches, into the enemy's gunfire, with the theme slowly and melancholy playing in the background, before the whole scene dissolves into a field of poppies. No credits whatsoever, The End.

Now, I haven't seen either Dinosaurs or Roseanne, so I can't judge those, but still. The ending of Blackadder is just so depressing...
I couldn't agree with you more with the Blackadder finale.

"Rather hoped I'd get through the whole show, go back to work at Pratt and Sons, keep wicket for the Croydon Gentlemen, marry Doris. Made a note in my diary on the way here. Simply says: "Bugger"."
 

RTK1576

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Aug 4, 2009
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I never actually watched the ending to Dinosaurs, and the first time I learned of it was on Cracked (I somehow missed it, go figure), but while it does strike me as the most depressing ending to any show I know of, it also strikes me as entirely fitting.

Light-hearted show? Yes, but it was also a show with heavy social commentary. From sexual harrassment to mocking our dependency on television to the deplorable use of religion as a tool to make money, Dinosaurs used all those animatronics to make a point or two. Sometimes the best way to get under people's defenses is to trick them into believing they're watching something harmless.

I rememeber an old Disney cartoon based on the Chicken Little story, where a clever fox uses rumors, mass hysteria, and a guilible sap (Chicken "the sky is falling" Little) to steer an entire farm's worth of fowl into a cave, where he planned on devouring them at his leisure.

Do they escape? No. The fox won and kills them all (yeesh, it was a dark ending for a Disney cartoon). The point of the cartoon was to teach a moral about the dangers of rumors and getting caught up in panic and fear. It was there to teach us a lesson, not the characters.

Dinosaurs was the same way. The ending was to remind US of our potential future, not the dinosaurs. Pretty brave, I'd say.
 

00slash00

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Dec 29, 2009
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you watched rosanne for 9 years? i couldnt even make it through one episode, she annoyed the crap out of me
 

00slash00

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Dec 29, 2009
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Therumancer said:
"Cupcakes" is more disturbing and well... let's just say the story does involve cupcakes.
cupcakes is actually why i started watching the show...sort of. when i originally asked about it someone told me to check out cupcakes. i googled it and pinkie pies cupcake song was the first thing that came up so thats what i thought they meant. it wasnt until halfway through the first season that i realized they had been talking about something completely different and i have no intention of ever finding out what i missed
 

piclemaniscool

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Dec 19, 2008
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I still think Teen Titans had the saddest ending. Now THAT was an ending that felt like it shot someone you loved in the face. The title of the last episode (as well as the end lines) were not a message to the characters of the show, but the audience of (probably) still children. "Things change," AKA, "we're done. Grow up and get over it."