Shoot the Shaggy Dog/Video Games

""Once you beat the big badasses and clean out the moon base, you're supposed to win, aren't you? Aren't you? Where's your fat reward and ticket home? What the hell is this? It's not supposed to end this way!""
 * In The Darkness II, Jackie finally breaks through all of the lies and deceit of the Darkness to find After the credits, though, It Got Worse.
 * Both Left 4 Dead games can be considered this, depending on how you choose to interpret them. The first game was originally four unrelated campaigns, each meant to be a different "movie" that the characters were in, each of which ends in at least one of the characters surviving (assuming you beat the finale). However, later-released DLC filled in the time "between" two of the campaigns -- suggesting that the whole thing is pointless, because each time they're rescued, they only end up in the next campaign, no better off than they were before.
 * The Sacrifice has its share of Shoot The Shaggy Dog moments and aversions. The comics take place immediately after the crew is rescued by the military
 * The sequel makes this explicit -- the five campaigns are in definite chronological order, rather than being distinct "movies" like the first game -- and even taken as a whole might still end up shooting the shaggy dog. In the ending to the last campaign, the characters are evacuated by the military, but various things about the city in the last campaign suggest that the military may be killing off "carriers" (people who do not themselves become zombies when infected, but can spread the infection to uninfected people who will become zombies from it), which may include the player characters. An alternate interpretation has them being kept in isolated quarantine and being subjected to medical experiments in an attempt to find a cure, instead of just being killed off, because that's so much better.
 * Final Fantasy XIII-2: Arguably. Timey-wimey stuff cancels out the seemingly happy ending from Final Fantasy XIII. The plot of this game centers around Serah searching for her sister Lightning, who has vanished for no apparent reason. Various time paradoxes destroy progress made by the protagonists.
 * Terranigma. The main plot turns out to be one big Evil Plan on part of a dark god that made the hero revive a previously dead world, complete with human life... So that the dark god and its associates could conquer it. Once he finds out he's been the Unwitting Pawn the main character is reverted to a baby for trying to stop it, nearly killed by his own love interest and Exposition Fairy and just barely avoids death due to the sacrifice of his love interest. Then comes the part revealing that the new world and his own world exist in a cycle of death and rebirth where the rebirth of one world means the destruction of the old one: Foiling the plot and saving the new world from the dark god means he, and everyone he knows and loves from his own world, must die along with said god (and yes, thou must). This isn't the part that makes it an example of this trope, though. That would be the part where the hero turns out to be the Chosen One by the Powers That Be who run the worlds: He is reborn to do the exact same thing over and over again every time the cycle is repeated. And the cycle would only ever be broken if he failed. The game tops this off with the mother of all Mood Whiplash endings, where the protagonist is 'rewarded' with a final day in his pre-heroic existence together with all his friends and family, all blissfully ignorant of the fact that they will die at the end of it.
 * Possibly the biggest instance of a variation on this trope in a console RPG, however, can be found in the obscure Squaresoft game Live a Live (this is going to get a bit long). In the hidden Medieval chapter, the handsome knight Oersted gathers a crew of three other heroes to save the princess from the newly resurrected demon lord. . Poor guy. Is there any wonder he ?
 * Silent Hill 2: While escorting Maria in the hospital, if she gets killed (most easily during the Pyramid Head chase), it's a Nonstandard Game Over. However, all your hard work is apparently pointless, since she is scripted to die at the end of the chase sequence.
 * Subverted, since Nonetheless, Silent Hill absolutely LOVES this trope. Consider:
 * In Silent Hill 1, two endings
 * In Silent Hill 2, all endings
 * In Silent Hill 3, there is a Nonstandard Game Over where the protagonist and an ending where she
 * In Silent Hill 4, one ending kills both protagonists horribly, one ending kills one protagonist and the other is lucky to survive, and a third leads to
 * In Silent Hill Origins, one ending leaves the protagonist trapped in asylum-like surroundings and given sinister injections by mysterious hooded individuals, as well as.
 * And finally, in Silent Hill Homecoming, . Oh, sure, the series has a couple of happy endings, somewhere...
 * And then, the joke endings traditionally show the protagonists make it through all that only to be, rendering the whole nightmare they went through moot.
 * If you don't get the antidote for the zombie virus, every character's ending in Resident Evil Outbreak ends with them dying. The best you can hope for is a glorious death, taking out loads of zombies as you go -- and that sort of thing only occurs if you're playing the final level with a combination of characters that can't be set up anywhere but online. And since Capcom took their servers down as far as this game is concerned...
 * Taking out a bunch of zombies becomes pretty pointless too, when you remember that they would have just been destroyed when Raccoon City is nuked anyway.
 * The entire first third of Summoner consisted of you going through great lengths to gather and destroy four magical rings on the advice of your Mentor (a renegade ex-Watcher) and the royal house of your homeland in order to become powerful enough to smash through Murod's Orenian army, free Orenia, and kill Murod. Unfortunately, it turns out that the king's brother and the queen were conspiring with Murod and broke the siege to let in the Orenian army, destroying the four rings actually releases the incredibly powerful demons imprisoned within them, one of your party members was a partially unknowing patsy for this scheme, and your mentor has actually been Possessed by the most powerful of the four demons from within one of the rings since the start of the game, meaning that your ENTIRE game up to this point has been nothing more than the fulfillment of the villains' Evil Plan. This is made more exasperating yet by a Sidequest earlier in the game which would have implicated the traitorous brother in an earlier crime if the NPC characters involved didn't screw up their part of the operation.
 * The ending to the original Doom had the Space Marine escaping from Hell and returning to Earth... only to find that the demons he had been fighting have already invaded. Cue the sequel.
 * The ending of the first episode wasn't a bad example as well. After killing the two bosses, the Barons of Hell, the only exit is through a teleporter and after taking it, you get killed by a bunch of monsters, and, no, god mode will not help you. And the debriefing text afterward is so meta:

""How long would this endless series of conflicts continue...""
 * The plot of Diablo revolves around a protagonist who seeks to stop the titular demon from destroying the town of Tristram, setting himself free from the cathedral, and leading his demonic hordes to destroy the world. In the end, he kills the demon (actually, his human host) and plunges the stone containing his soul into himself, with hopes that he will be able to contain the demon's power. All in all, a reasonable ending. Now, cut to the second game. It is revealed that he couldn't resist it. He became Diablo, destroyed Tristram, set himself free, and is now leading his demonic hordes to destroy the world. Well, crap. The manual to Diablo II: Lord of Destruction even points out how every time people thought it was over, the brothers just kept reemerging.
 * The expansion of the sequel isn't much better. You manage to smash Mephisto and Diablo's soulstones! Except that Baal is still left unchecked, and . By the time you catch up to and kill Baal, Tyrael comes down and notifies you that . All you can do is enter the portal he opens for you and wait for Diablo III (announced in 2008) One effect of destroying the Worldstone has been made clear: The previous location of the Arreat Summit on the world map is now labelled as the Arreat Crater. Ouch.
 * The video game version of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream was built with this in mind. There is only one way to win in any satisfying, "good ending" kind of way. Either you get all the characters to face their personal demons and die with dignity, after which four of them sacrifice their lives to give the fifth one a chance to defeat AM once and for all but must continue to forever roam AM's deceased mind to make sure it stays that way, or the lone survivor is turned into an immortal, hideous, miserable monster. And apparently Harlan Ellison, the original story's author, had initially objected to the good ending. And the part where the characters can die with dignity at all. In this sense, it's entirely true to the original story.
 * Kya Dark Lineage ended on what seemed to be a happy note with the heroine defeating the Big Bad and restoring peace to the alternate world... until the artifact that was supposed to take the heroine and her brother home dumps them in a desolate world where it's implied they're eaten by a monster. OK...
 * Chakan the Forever Man ended like this: Chakan, a soldier cursed with immortality until he destroyed all supernatural evil because he bested Death in a duel, never gets his final rest in any of the two final endings you can get. After he has 'rid the elemental and terrestrial planes of evil', Chakan impales himself with his own swords, only to be brought back to life by Death and mocked that, since there are countless planets in the universe that still have evil in them and he can never visit them all, his task will remain unfinished forever. You then duel Death. Be defeated, and Chakan will lament that his final rest can wait as he is still bound by his deal with Death. Defeat Death, and the game ends by showing you an hourglass that never empties: Death can't release you if you kill him. Either way, the plot Shoots the Shaggy Dog by not allowing Chakan to die at the end.
 * In an old Bullfrog game called Flood, you guide your character Quiffy through 42 levels of platform trouble and reach an ending animation where Quiffy climbs up a manhole to freedom and is immediately squashed by a truck. He deserved better.
 * This is the first half of the 4th Fire Emblem game, Genealogy of the Holy War. Everything starts going south for the main character, Sigurd  But don't worry, seventeen years later all their kids finish the job.
 * Along with the Replacement Scrappy and Mind Screw issues, this trope is perhaps another reason why Metal Gear Solid 2 received such venomous reactions. Everything that occurs only served to further the plans of the villains, the main character nothing but a pawn who isn't even sure if what he's experiencing is real anymore; and neither is the player for that matter.
 * The most blatant example is probably taking Emma to the Shell A core to upload the virus to make GW bug out. You easily spend at least an hour on the entire ordeal, including killing Vamp for the second time, trudging your way through tedious underwater segments, sneaking Emma past several patrolling guards, and then doing a 5-minute long Sniping Mission to ensure Emma makes it to the end. If she dies through any of this, Game Over. If she makes it over to Shell A,
 * The basic plot of Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant goes like this: "There's a MacGuffin hidden on this planet. The Dark Savant is looking for it. Find it before he does, and don't let him have it." During the game's ending, after you've killed the Dark Savant and finally found the MacGuffin, the real Dark Savant shows up, hostage in hand, and demands that you hand it over in exchange for the girl you met earlier. The game actually lets you choose whether or not to hand it over, but if you decide to keep the MacGuffin, he just kills your party and takes it from your corpse. If you agree to the exchange, he gives you the girl, you give him the MacGuffin, and he goes off into space, with your characters in pursuit. Either way, you completely failed in your mission. Cue the sequel.
 * In I Wanna Be the Guy, if you don't move out of the way out of a slowly falling apple at the end of the ending sequence, you will actually die, which defeats the whole purpose of trying to be The Guy in the first place. Also, you have to fight The Guy all over again!
 * During the fight with The Guy to become The Guy, it is revealed that,  Geez...talk about pointless.
 * One possible ending in Shadow of Destiny has the main character
 * Even more so given that your character spent the entire game cheating death thanks to a time travelling device and the help of a Homunculus. After he finally comes to the bottom of it and deals with his assailant once and for all, he believes himself safe and hands back the time travelling device and parts ways with the Homunculus just before he is run over and no longer able to save himself...
 * Peasants Quest (a video game spin-off from Homestar Runner and parody of old Sierra games) -- The goal is to gather up everything needed to be allowed to go fight the dragon, Trogdor, and then get past the traps guarding the gate to his lair. If you fail, of course, you die. If you succeed...
 * Another Homestar example: the whole point of episode three of Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People, "Baddest Of The Bands", is to get cash to fix Strong Bad's broken FunMachine. Once repairs are finally paid for,  To quote Strong Bad himself, "What the crippity-crap!?"
 * In the Konquest mode of Mortal Kombat Armageddon, Taven and his brother Daegon are forced into hibernation for millennia by their parents in order for them to participate in a quest to stop The End of the World As We Know It. The quest ends up destroying his entire family, with Daegon being resurrected early and killing their parents and enslaving his guardian dragon for his clan, Taven's own dragon being killed to prevent his progress on the quest, and finally the brothers facing each other in Mortal Kombat (Taven wins, though he doesn't like it). And when he finally does complete the quest, not only does it not depower or destroy the entire cast, as the quest was supposed to upon completion, but it actually supercharges them, essentially causing Armageddon to happen faster instead of stopping it dead in its tracks.
 * The same thing effectively happens in the Konquest mode of Mortal Kombat Deception. In both cases, the protagonist falls prey to an Evil Plan thus creating the situation of the main game itself.
 * And then comes Mortal Kombat 9. Before being killed by Shao Kahn, Raiden sends a message to his self from MK1 in order to prevent the Armageddon, thus making the game to clear every event and effort of each of the past games, barring Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub Zero and Mortal Kombat Special Forces for being prequels.
 * Persona 2: Innocent Sin. The heroes fail to prevent the Big Bad from having his way and all of the Earth is destroyed aside from the city they live in which now hovers above the destroyed Earth. Maya, the Cool Big Sis, also dies because she gets stabbed by some crazy woman and all is lost. In return, the heroes get to rewind time so the event that started it all 10 years ago never happened. Of course this means all they did during the game was for no reason at all and it's pretty much just a big Game Over, please load your latest save (which was 10 years ago).
 * Persona 3's Bad Ending can be considered as an example of this trope.
 * Resistance 2.
 * The original Alien vs. Predator game had a particularly scary campaign for the squishy human Marine. Having fought your way through the infested colony and escaped to the unsurprisingly infested space station above the planet, having beaten the inevitable alien queen,
 * In an old Aliens 3 arcade shooter, the players take role of two prisoners fighting for survival as the Xenomorphs invade the prison. Finally, at the end, they run into the Weyland Yutani team sent in to retrieve Ripley. However, rescue is not high on their priorities and the Weyland Yutani thugs opt to just shoot the players instead.
 * At the end of Grand Theft Auto III, our hero is implied to have flipped out and literally shot the shaggy dog, i.e. Maria, who he went through all that trouble to rescue. This is one of the few times this is played for laughs.
 * The diamond subplot in Grand Theft Auto IV. Practically every criminal organization (and there are a lot) in the city gets involved in one way or another trying to steal a bag of diamonds the size of your fist. At the end of a long shootout, one of Bulagarin's men throws the bag into a passing truck full of mulch. Newspapers later report that the diamonds are found by a homeless man.
 * The homeless man is later shown in the ending of The Ballad of Gay Tony expansion pack, right after Luis lands in the park. He is later seen partying, though he strangely is still seen in his ragged dirty clothes.
 * Infocom used this trope at least twice.
 * In Infidel, the Player Character solves an ancient pyramid's brutal riddles, defuses its Death Traps, and opens the treasure sarcophagus in the Burial Chamber... This is arguably justified, as the Player Character is a greedy, lying fool, but is that really a consolation after solving so many Expert-level puzzles?
 * Trinity tops this. It's a 1986 Time Travel game that begins with your narrow escape from a nuclear holocaust, which surely implies that your goal is to prevent World War III. And you do eventually make it to the site of the first atom bomb test... While you do, the final line emphasizes that,
 * Until The Great Politics Mess Up, this is how a lot of people felt for real.
 * In Adam Cadre's Varicella, Player Character Primo Varicella's goal is to become Regent to the royal prince. Most players will need many, many playthroughs against a frustratingly tight time limit to eliminate Varicella's homicidal rivals. Your reward for pulling this feat off is  There are other endings, all grim, save for an Easter Egg. Given the dreary setting, in which everybody's some combination of "evil," "crazy," and "victim," the shaggy dog's death might have been inevitable.
 * Even the happy Easter Egg ending is a combination of
 * Jinxter.  Computer Gaming World labeled this one of the top fifteen worst game endings of all time.
 * Tenchu 4.
 * The ending of the Hierarchy Campaign in Universe At War. Orlok is betrayed and killed, his rebellion accomplishing absolutely nothing except getting the Masari prince captured -- even the major characters he apparently killed during his campaign turn up alive and well when it switches over to the Masari.
 * In part two of Chapter 9 in Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus, The GUARDIANS are looking for a young Beast boy infected with the SEED-virus to give him the vaccine before the AMF CASTs kill him. However
 * In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time,
 * In the "Sisters" mode of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. Since it's a prequel to the storyline of the main game, the ending doesn't surprise anyone who's unlocked it, but it's still a kick in the teeth.  Fortunately things get better in the main story.
 * Activision's Apocalypse. At the end, Trey has defeated the Four Horsemen, and confronts the Big Bad Reverend himself. But before Trey can take him down, the Rev blasts him with lightning and transforms Trey into one of the demons.
 * Chrono Cross retroactively does this to Chrono Trigger, by revealing that
 * Both ports of Trigger released since Cross also added extra cutscenes to further emphasize this fact:
 * Certainly not the case.  Civilization gets an extra   years directly because of Triggers character's actions.
 * Probably less shaggy then most, but the Dream Chronicles series of puzzle games have this sort of ending. You spend the whole game looking for your kidnapped husband and child, and at the end  It's not the worst and these problems are quickly fixed in the next game, but it's annoying.
 * The game Cyber-Lip is a Contra-style action side-scroller developed by Neo Geo. The story appears to be fairly run-of-the-mill throughout: the President orders two Bad Dudes to find and destroy the titular Cyber-Lip, a military supercomputer that's gone mad and destroyed a good portion of the Earth with its deadly army of cyborgs. Throughout the game you receive briefings from the President after each level on where to progress next. Once you reach the final level and destroy the Cyber-Lip once and for all, you receive a message from the President congratulating you on a job well done. Seems obligatory enough, being an arcade shoot-'em-up and all... until the player is suddenly hit with a Cruel Twist Ending when it is revealed that  The End! No sequel was ever made, nor announced, and it is highly unlikely that one will ever be made, so as far as anyone knows, this marks the end of the heroes' feckless, fruitless battle. Now, just imagine the reactions of the people who spent quarter after quarter to get to the end of this game and defeat the final boss, only for their efforts to be greeted with THAT.
 * That may be also considered a Bolivian Army Ending, intentionally left hanging.
 * Baten Kaitos Origins has the story of Seph and his Nakama. First they try to save the village of Rasalas from Wiseman, only to arrive too late to do anything. Then they try to negotiate with Wiseman, who uses the opportunity to and simultaneously prove to them that they were completely powerless against him. This is something that Seph takes to heart after he discovers the results of the aforementioned act, and he decides to . Once they return, they find that . As they are fighting through the aforementioned group to get to Wiseman, the Children of the Earth see the "senseless slaughter" they are inflicting, and decide to fix the problem by . Which they succeed in doing, thus allowing Wiseman to escape completely unharmed. And the best part? . Sucks to be those guys, huh?
 * In Dreamfall, none of the game's three protagonists manages to achieve their objectives. Although main character Zo Ã« Castillo manages to prevent a societal and technological collapse in Stark, she fails at her mission to stop WATICorp from releasing the Dreamer and proves unable to rescue her ex-boyfriend--worse still, she is placed in a permanent coma. Over in Arcadia, April Ryan is unable to prevent the Azadi Empire from completing their Evil Tower of Ominousness, or even figure out what it's for, and is left for dead. The third protagonist, Azadi apostle Kian Alvane, is arrested for treason by the empire just after he decides to try to convince its leaders of the error of their ways. While some or most of these may end up being reversed if or when the game receives a sequel, calling the game's ending a downer would be a gross understatement.
 * Obs Cure II: Mei spends the first half of the game trying to track down her twin sister Jun and save her. When she finally tracks her down,  Things go downhill from there.
 * In many video games, a Nonstandard Game Over, as well as Have a Nice Death and The Many Deaths of You can be considered a Shoot the Shaggy Dog ending, especially if they put considerable effort into it. Then again, so can an ordinary, generic game over, if you think about the consequences before retrying.
 * At least the "Path of Darkness" ending to Alone in The Dark. If you shoot Sarah, Lucifer's Evil Plan fully succeeds, and the possessed Carnby opens the gates of hell, heralding The End of the World As We Know It. Earlier, it is said "Lucifer's failure is also his reincarnation".
 * In Super Robot Wars Original Generations (read: NOT Gaiden yet), we have a mechanical dog who eventually develops and feels like an actual dog. After spending through hardships that affirms that it has emotions and is like a real person, er, dog, it is captured and was about to turned back into a mindless machine again. Thankfully, the dog gained an iron will and it was able to escape that predicatement and was on the verge of being rescued... only to be shot down dead. What's the point of having an iron will and all those hardships if in the end, it just dies like that? It seriously makes her whole development, and the buildup that leads to its iron will escape completely pointless. Thankfully, OG Gaiden deals with the continuation and is now trying to resuscitate the dead shaggy dog. That dog's name? Lamia Loveless.
 * The ending of Yume Nikki likely qualifies....
 * Played straight in Batman Arkham Asylum. At two points in the game you're required to save
 * Poor, poor Charlie... His death was a Foregone Conclusion (in Street Fighter II, Guile's motivation was that Bison killed Charlie. Charlie's debut game was a Prequel with no Guile in sight). Charlie can never win. In Street Fighter Alpha, he thinks he's defeated M. Bison, but Bison comes from behind and kills him. In Street Fighter Alpha 2, a Remaquel of the original Alpha, he gets knocked off a waterfall in Venezuela, but only after getting shot by a Shadaloo helicopter. In the non-canon Marvel Super Heroes VS Street Fighter, he's been given a Face Heel Turn and works for Shadaloo. Somehow, in Street Fighter Alpha 3, he's alive and well. This time, he actually manages to beat M. Bison...but Capcom fixed that by adding Guile to the home ports of the game and declaring his ending canon canon. In his ending, Charlie infiltrates M. Bison's base with Guile and Chun-Li, and while Guile and Chun-Li escape, the base self-destructs, killing Charlie and Bison both. What's worse is that Bison came back, while Charlie has been Killed Off for Real (or not, since Capcom loves Retconning this series).
 * At this point it seems likely, but definitely don't bet the dojo on it. Don't forget that Gouken, who was killed before the first game, and whose death was a huge turning point and defining moment for no fewer than three major characters, was brought back. And Rose. And shouldn't Gen have gently shuffled off long before now?
 * In the Twisted Metal series, competitors fight in a massive demolition derby with missiles, blowing up opposing cars, monuments, and cities with abandon. The prize? A wish granted by competition organizer Calypso, who wavers between Literal Genie and Jackass Genie. It rarely ends well, though occasionally someone will wise up and turn down the wish.
 * The Futurama video game ends like this, as the playable characters' reviving device is destroyed, and they, who have traveled back in time to prevent the beginning of the game, are crushed shortly afterward by the final boss. And then, just when it looks like their actions had prevented the professor from selling the company, Mom offers him the sombrero he was wearing at the start of the game. Return to the first scene.
 * Dead Rising ends this way as well. The protagonist, Frank West, enters a shopping mall that later becomes overrun with zombies. Frank can go around the mall, gathering information on the outbreak and/or save the remaining survivors. But then again, there is the sequel.
 * Some of the first game's other endings didn't use this trope (many people who die from plot live). Said sequel make all of Chuck's efforts for nothing if you fail to get the conditions for Ending S. Endings F-B all end with Chuck and Katey dying with no chance of escape despite everything you've done. Ending A leads into Dead Rising Case West, so you survive there, at least.
 * Driver 3: Tanner shoots Jericho, but spares his life. Then Jericho gets back up and shoots Tanner, who is last seen flatlining, the doctors attempting CPR. The game wasn't received so well, then there was the In Name Only Parallel Lines, which was the final nail in the coffin. RIP Driver.
 * Or maybe not. Driver 5 is in the works which will carry on this plot line:
 * Pirated copies of Earthbound give us a meta-example. You play through the game, which ends up being almost exactly the same (more enemies, though) and, once you get to the final boss,
 * Valkyrie Profile Covenant of the Plume. Admittedly it's the Bad End, but still- the hero devotes his entire life to taking revenge on the Valkyrie for killing his father, making a Deal With the Devil and crossing the Moral Event Horizon to do so. Ignore for a second the fact that the Valkyrie only escorts the souls of those already dead to Valhalla, the Norse warrior's heaven. He finally achieves his goal, but then  To add insult to injury, the epilogue reveals that
 * Halo: Combat Evolved has several moments like this. At the end of the first chapter, John dramatically rescues a marine who trips and nearly misses the last lifeboat; unfortunately, all the marines on board die in the crash anyway. At the end of what is arguably the third mission with the objective of finding/rescuing Captain Keyes, it turns out that he was already part of the proto-Gravemind. The goal of the second chapter, and side-objectives several times throughout the rest of the game, is to rescue groups of marines so that they can be evacuated to a safer part of the ring, which is destroyed at the end of the game leaving no survivors (later retconned to a single dropship of survivors).
 * In Reach, Jorge sacrifices himself to destroy the Covenant carrier... only for an entire fleet to emerge from slipspace.
 * Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2. Roxas's best friend, who has spent the entire game trying to figure out her purpose and later defy the purpose Organization XIII have engineered for her At least you knew (most) of it was coming, if you played the games in the order they were released.
 * Divinity 2. In the end, it turns out you have been manipulated by the villain's girlfriend the entire game. You end up resurrecting her, making the villain invincible, and then find yourself imprisoned in some sort of crystal, alive and conscious to watch the world you tried to save burn. That's not even to mention what this does to the already trashed reputation of the dragon knights from their last accidental betrayal of mankind. It's probably a good thing you are the last one.
 * Bio Shock had an ARG for the sequel called 'Something in the Sea' who's main character became well-liked enough to be placed in the game. Many a fan cheered when they saw Mark Meltzer's first audio diary in the game recording his heroic efforts to rescue his kidnapped daughter.
 * Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, DS version. All that trouble you had to go through, and  Cue Anger Montage
 * The in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Everything that  does, from  is all rendered moot as you evacuate ., and, eventually, you. This is done to drive home the point that war is (if you consider the actions that you just took in the campaign) pointless. General Shepard comments on this in the sequel: "50,000 of my men died in the blink of an eye, and the world just fuckin' watched."
 * Somewhat disputable. It's fairly heavily implied that Al-Asad had the resources to dominate the Middle East  and (given the implications of that) heavily devastate all opponents. If nothing else, Jackson and his allies managed to dismantle Al-Asad's army to the point where   Still an utterly tragic Pyrrhic Victory, but still vastly preferable to the alternative.
 * In the sequel, this trope returns in spades. Private Allen Later, Ghost and Roach are dispatched to gather proof that Private Allen was innocent
 * Suikoden Tierkreis doesn't require the death of this particular Dog, but it certainly tries to bait the player into it. All but two Dialogue Trees in the game end with you taking the same path you would anyway, one repeats endlessly until you make the right choices . . . and one
 * Knights of the Old Republic starts on the planet Taris, which has several side quests such as helping innocent people escape from bounty hunters (or killing them) and finding a cure for the rakghoul disease. As soon as you leave Taris, Malak fires on the planet from orbit and kills everyone. Even the Hope Spot you ear playing light side is turned into a twisted joke by the MMO. The Outcasts found their Promised land, and survived for a few generations, only to be picked off by rakghouls, disease, starvation, and finished off by toxic waste. Then again, the MMO is Bio Ware post-Dragon Age, so No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
 * Oh, and the Shaggy Dog is used for target practice well after that. The second planet you visit, with its nice peaceful farms is nuked by Malak. In the Crapsack World of the sequel, Exile goes back to find everyone lays the blame for it squarely on the Jedi...even Exile, who wasn't even there.
 * The MMO's backstory ultimately turns the dog into a bloody pulp: Revan and Exile leave everyone and everything they loved behind to wait and wonder (Bastila is left knocked up, starting a line that eventually results in Satele Shan) with no answers or closure. Meanwhile, they go charging in to fight an entire kriffing empire alone. Exile is at least killed outright, but Revan isn't so "fortunate". Oh, and the Sith come back and burn the Republic anyway, meaning it was pretty much all for nothing.
 * Well, it is possible that Revan and Exile delayed the True Sith from invading for about a few hundred years. So there efforts may have amounted to something.
 * Associated media actual implies this is the case. Revan and the Exile's attack on the Empire convinces the Sith Emperor to postpone his plans significantly and Revan's It eventually allows a new generation of heroes to rise and face the Empire.
 * Killzone 2. All the ISA's sacrifices have apparently been for naught, as they are about to be annihilated by the Helghast's reserve fleet. Well, there is the threequel.
 * The old Amiga game onEscapee has a doozy. The main character has been sucked onto an alien world, survived untold dangers, and has met up with some fellow humans. All he has to do is deal with an alien blocking the hangar controls, and they can fly on out of there.
 * That sounds like more of a non-shaggy Downer Ending or maybe Bittersweet Ending.
 * At least one of the endings in Gunstar Super Heroes has the entire Gunstar team dying pointlessly.
 * This happens twice in Dragon Quest V. While your character is a child traveling with your father Pankraz, you get the assignment to rescue the incredibly bratty Prince Harry. After going through the tunnel complex where he's held, you find and release him... Later on, you get married and have children - but the day after your wife gives birth, she is kidnapped!
 * Robotron 2084 is an Endless Game that can't technically be won, then the sequel, Blaster retroactively shoots the shaggy dog, since it is revealed that the last human family has in fact been killed.
 * The fifth ending of Drakengard, which is only unlocked after One Hundred Percent Completion (keep that in mind). After spending the entire game trying -- and failing -- to protect the seals that will prevent The End of the World As We Know It (all of whom are destroyed off-screen no matter what you do), Caim and Angelus manage to face down Manah. Before anyone can do anything, Manah is crushed and killed by her own brother, causing the destruction of the fortress you were all in that kills Caim's sister, Furiae (again off-screen). Manah's death and the destruction of the seals and Barrier Maiden angers The Watchers, who decide to enter the world and destroy it. After losing the rest of the party against The Watchers in a series of Senseless Sacrifices, Caim and Angelus engage the leader of the Watchers and both of them are transported into another dimension for a climactic final showdown... The 'other dimension' turns out to be modern-day Tokyo. After a grueling Bonus Boss fight, the Watcher leader finally gives up the ghost. At which point Caim and Angelus are instantly and anticlimactically shot down and killed by a JSDF jet fighter in the closing cutscene. DRAKENGARD!
 * It Gets Worse. These events cause the magical plague that nearly destroys humanity in Nie R.
 * And in the sequel to the first ending of Drakengard, Drakengard 2, also does this in its Ending A.
 * The ending to Red Dead Redemption.
 * The Adult Swim flash game Corporate Climber goes somewhere between this, Promoted from "peon" steadily on upwards, you're often given dubiously ethical tasks (for instance, as a CFO you're ordered to "Cook the books" by throwing them into a fire.) As a board member your only assignment is to "Live it up," but once you're promoted to president you
 * Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors: Ending 5, "Knife".
 * Not just that ending. Ending 6, "Submarine", You walk into the main hall, and see
 * If the "Safe" ending hasn't been cleared beforehand, then the "True" ending (which is otherwise the Golden Ending) ends with
 * One Chance: Possibly the most depressing game ever. The best ending you can hope for is only dying. And you can't play again until you empty your cookies folder.
 * Mondo Medicals. You wander through the corridors (of the eponymous facility?), solving your way past mind-boggling obstacles and generally being confused and creeped out, and at the end - instead of any answers at all - you get.
 * In Radiant Silvergun, our heroes are powerless to stop the Stone-Like from wiping out human kind. The Creator robot creates clones of Buster and Reanna, but dies before he can warn them of the future. Thus, humanity is doomed to repeat the cycle, and will never learn the error of their ways.
 * The Play Station FPS Codename: Tenka: The main character is an honest citizen who has worked many years to get off a ravaged Earth, only to find that the colony he has chosen is run by a Mega Corp that use its inhabitants to manufacturate mindless war cyborgs. He narrowly escapes being turned into one and wages war with the guidance of a rogue AI in order to escape the colony. After destroying countless assets of the Mega Corp, his "reward" is being killed by the AI, who no longer needs him.
 * The ending of Uşas (for the MSX) involves the two protagonists placing the four jewels they painstakingly fought to obtain on the forehead of the statue of the titular goddess only for it to obliterate our protagonists with a nuclear explosion. In the Japanese version, it was explained as an artifact of an ancient civilisation and that it's switch was the jewels. There is no such explaination in the PAL version.
 * FEAR 2: Project Origin ends with three of Michael Beckett's teammates dead, one missing and presumed dead, one mortally wounded, and Beckett himself trapped with the Big Bad Alma in the very machine meant to destroy her-which has been turned off by Corrupt Corporate Executive Genevieve Aristide in an attempt to curry favor from her superiors by capturing Alma. To add insult to injury, Alma then rapes Beckett and conceives a child who is implied to be just as powerful as its mother, possibly setting the stage for The End of the World As We Know It.
 * Canabalt: No matter how far or fast you run, the only thing waiting for you is failure and death. There's no escape, and nothing to run to.
 * Similarly, Robot Unicorn Attack.
 * In stark contrast to the rest of the Suikoden series' normal endings, the normal ending for Suikoden 2 ends with Riou losing everything he ever cared for (his hometown, his sister and his best friend, the latter by his own hand), all his victories rendered hollow, and forced into a position he never asked for nor wanted as a figurehead ruler. The game ends with the not so subtle implication that Riou becomes a broken, bitter man whose status will likely be taken advantage of by ambitious advisers and generals...after all, what point was there to stop Luca and the Beast Rune, if in the end you become far worse off than you were before?
 * The ending of Do Don Pachi DaiFukkatsu. Next EXY went back in time in order to destroy the DonPachi Corps and prevent the events of DoDonPachi dai ou jou from happening. But in doing so, she ends up causing the events of DOJ--Colonel Longhena is appointed the commander of DonPachi, and the Blissful Death Wars happen anyway. Simply put, the entire plot of DFK was absolutely pointless.
 * Similarly, Robot Unicorn Attack.
 * In stark contrast to the rest of the Suikoden series' normal endings, the normal ending for Suikoden 2 ends with Riou losing everything he ever cared for (his hometown, his sister and his best friend, the latter by his own hand), all his victories rendered hollow, and forced into a position he never asked for nor wanted as a figurehead ruler. The game ends with the not so subtle implication that Riou becomes a broken, bitter man whose status will likely be taken advantage of by ambitious advisers and generals...after all, what point was there to stop Luca and the Beast Rune, if in the end you become far worse off than you were before?
 * The ending of Do Don Pachi DaiFukkatsu. Next EXY went back in time in order to destroy the DonPachi Corps and prevent the events of DoDonPachi dai ou jou from happening. But in doing so, she ends up causing the events of DOJ--Colonel Longhena is appointed the commander of DonPachi, and the Blissful Death Wars happen anyway. Simply put, the entire plot of DFK was absolutely pointless.


 * Dead Island pulls this
 * The "Relinquish" Bad End in Vacant Sky, which requires completing the final dungeon without your other party members and minus a few skill upgrades you'd normally get right before entering, a task far harder than obtaining either of the "good" endings. Auria, but not before Nothing is done to stop ; not only is this the only ending where that happens but it would in fact fail to happen had you lost the game anywhere except the final boss, as the villain's plan . But wait, there's more! This is also the only one of the three main endings in which  does not die and nothing at all is done to even slow down the Virad menace, and it's likely that . That's what you get for intentionally violating the story's Aesop.
 * An In-Universe example happens in The World Ends With You - Neku wins his first Game, Shiki is picked to come back to life, and everything is happy.... but, really, you didn't expect the game to be that easy to win, did you? Not only can Neku not come back to life because only one person may be reborn each Game, The Conductor explains that because Shiki became the most important thing in the world to Neku, she's been taken as his Entry Fee. Everything Neku worked for during the first Week is negated. It gets even worse when, at the end of the second Week, The Conductor uses an equally trumped-up excuse to not only take away Neku's victory, but make it as if the second Week never even happened.  Neku even lampshades this at one point during the third Week, where he's given up on the Game entirely - he tells Beat that even if he won, Kitaniji would just come up with a stupid excuse to disqualify him. When, after the last events of the game, The Reveal (and a doozy it was), and, he believes everything to have been in vain, he wakes up in the exact manner he does at the beginning of each Game, in the Scramble, leading to believe he has to play again. His literal "What the HELL!?" is big enough to have almost become a meme in itself.
 * In Shadow of the Colossus.
 * To be fair, Wander was able to survive on fruit throughout the game and
 * This is part of James Vega's backstory in Mass Effect 3. On a mission against the Collectors (the big threat from the previous game) gone FUBAR, he had to choose between keeping his team alive or getting out with intel the Alliance could use to stop the Collectors once and for all. He chose the intel, only for Shepard's team to take out the Collectors themselves before any good could come of it.
 * The biggest complaint about the third game's controversial ending is that it's perceived as this. After the story of one human's choices shaping a galaxy, interactions between diverse sentient races, the development of relationships between people, etc. Then the last fifteen minutes of the third game in the series becomes narratively disjointed, limiting player options, and give a generally unexplained ending, the most optimistic interpretation of which leaves.
 * That said,
 * Fragile Dreams has the protagonist searching for the first survivor he's seen since setting out, find out there's others elsewhere in the world, stop a second apocalypse, and then go off to look for the survivors with the girl he spent most of the game chasing after. The last part is ruined because a narration from the older protagonist reveals that said girl died before him and he is alone when he dies.
 * Conkers Bad Fur Day. All the titular character wanted to do was go home. He ends up going through hell, and, at one point, his girlfriend is kidnapped. Then, when he finally finds her again,  Then, just to add insult to injury,   Even after becoming the king and basically ruling over the entire land, it's easy to see why he's so bitter over the whole thing.