Darkest Hour: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

During the course of a [[Story Arc]], your characters can go places, have adventures, fight bad guys, and right wrongs. They've loved and lost and learned...and then something happens. Something that they never expected. The bad guys ''win''. The people ''turn against them''. [[The Hero]] ''[[Anyone Can Die|dies]]''.

{{Unmarked Spoilers}}

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* In ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', there's an entire episode devoted to this in the Cell Saga where Cell powers up a massive Kamehameha wave to destroy the Earth as a badly injured Gohan and the rest of Z warriors look on helplessly.

* In ''[[Pluto]]'', when all of the seven great robots of the world have been destroyed. Except for Atom, who may be insane at that point.

* [[20th Century Boys]]' darkest hour is at the end of the second arc, which sees an even crueller person donning the Friend mask, killing several million people, and [[Crapsack World|molding the world in his own image]], making all the protagonists work up till then all for nothing.]] After that, things start to eventually look up, starting with the return of the supposedly dead hero from the first third of the story.

** Another one is the Elric brothers' first meeting with Father and the aftermath. Basically, they've found out the horrible secret of their country and they're led to believe there's nothing they can do to stop it. One of the chapters in this arc is even called "Inside the Belly."

** As if that wasn't enough, the final showdown between Ala Alba and Kosmo Entelechia has gone wrong. Horribly, ''horribly'' wrong. Negi is incapacitated (bad), so the rest of the team pull off a daring rescue (good). Half the attacking group is turned to stone in the clusterfuck (bad), but at least they've stopped the world-ending ritual and stolen the artifact, rescued the princess and saved the world, right? [[It Got Worse|Uh, no]].

* One for every ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure]]'' part:

** Sesshoumaru's darkest hour occurs when he finally learns the truth about Tenseiga's origins and the real reason why he was given Meidou Zangetsuha, resulting in him believing that his father had been [[The Unfavorite|training Inuyasha to kill him.]] His [[Heroic BSOD]] is so blatant that even ''Myouga'' is desperate to help him. He's left so shaken that when [[Big Bad|Naraku]] attacks his group he doesn't even try to rescue them; Inuyasha ends up saving them while he watches from a distance. Nothing in the manga - not even Kagura's death or Rin's second death - has ever made him despair the way thinking his father hated him did.

* ''[[High School DxD]]'''s Darkest Hour occurs in the 11th volume when Opfus had 75% of her powers drained from her. Then they're trapped in an alternate dimension surrounded by grim reapers. They were able to destroy the statues and were already about to get out of that place when Opfus gets kidnapped by a newly-rebuilt Shalba Beelzebub, and Ise has to rescue her. {{spoiler|The volume ends with Ise getting hit with a [[Achilles' Heel|dragon-eater Samael blood coated]] on an arrow, leaving him to die in that place. That's not all however; Hades starts a war on the Underworld, Azazel's been accused of cooperating with terrorists even though he's the one who wanted peace in the first place, and every single member of the Occult Research Club suffering a [[Heroic BSOD]].}}

== Comic Books ==

* Among other incidents, unprecedented amounts of crap hit the fan at the end of chapter 100 of ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' - right in the middle of the Ultimate [[Cloning Blues|Clone Saga]]. To whit: Peter has already found at least one violently insane clone of himself and has tangled with a mysterious Spider Woman; Mary Jane has been kidnapped by another warped and insane clone of Peter who intends to transform her to make her "just like him" (and as of the last page of the chapter has apparently succeeded); Nick Fury has shown up outside Peter's house to arrest him with an army of "Spider Slayers"; Gwen Stacey has mysteriously returned from the dead, but panics and transforms into Carnage (the monster that killed her in the first place) when Fury shows up; Peter was forced to tell Aunt May his secret when she discovered him with Gwen, driving her lash out at him for lying to her all along and telling him she doesn't want to have anything more to do with him, before the repeated shocks (Gwen transforming into Carnage being the straw that broke the camel's back) cause her to have a heart attack; and Peter's supposedly long-dead father Richard Parker has apparently shown up, with Peter shocked to realize that May had known about him for a while and had kept Richard's return a secret. That's a LOT of crap to be going down at once and [[It Got Worse|it still has to get worse]] before it gets any better. And while I could say it all turns out alright, that would be what we call "a lie". ("Mostly alright" is about as close as we can get.)

* [[Final Crisis]] for entire DCU.

** ''[[Blackest Night]]'' followed immediately. And ''[[Infinite Crisis]]'' happened just a couple years ago too. It's been a pretty rough few years for the DCU.

* ''[[Dark Reign (comics)|Dark Reign]]'' for the [[Marvel Universe]].

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' season 5 leads up to this: despite defeating Apophis once and for all at the start of the season, one by one, Earth and its allies are targeted for destruction by Anubis; the Tollan are destroyed, the rebel Jaffa and Tok'ra are scattered, and Earth escapes a [[Colony Drop]] unscathed (barely). Anubis turns out to have Ancient technology that can rival the Asgard, and Thor gets his brain sucked out. Oh, and Daniel Jackson is dead. They're screwed, and the next season doesn't give them much more hope.

** Season ''four'' ended with such as well. Teal'c last seen being taken by Apophis' [[Dragon]]. Then, because of the effects of [[Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?|the sun blowing up]] on [[Subspace or Hyperspace|hyperspace windows]], the ship belonging to SG-1 is flung ''galaxies'' away, with zillions of years at maximum hyperspace between them and home. Just after that sank in, [[It Got Worse]]: Apophis comes through the same window and is ''literally'' right on top of them, his command ship docking with theirs the way theirs would dock with a pyramid.

** In the first episodes of season 3, the ''New Caprica'' arc. Most of the insurgency's leaders are held prisoner on the planet. The free ones, Saul, Anders and Galen are increasingly desperate, with Galen getting careless after Cally is arrested and Saul unhinged after being tortured. Starbuck is missing, held prisoner by Leoben and subjected to [[Mind Rape]] with no way to reach her husband or allies. On the Fleet, the two Battlestars are undermanned and have no viable means of penetrating the planetary defence. William and Lee are in increasing disagreement on what to do, feeling hopeless and unable to help the people they love.

* ''[[Lost]]'', season six, episode fourteen. The ep is called [[Lost/Recap/S06/E13 The Candidate|"The Candidate"]], but could very well have been called "Darkest Hour" instead. [[Big Bad|The Man in Black]] is in full-on [[Kill'Em All]] mode, '''four''' main characters are dead—including the only person capable of piloting the Ajira plane—and the submarine has been destroyed, meaning there's literally no way of getting off the Island.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' has the episode ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Hour of the Wolf]]'', where [[The Hero]] is dead after his [[Heroic Sacrifice]], but didn't even manage to kill [[The Dragon|Morden]]. Garibaldi has been captured by someone, the Vorlons are done with what little diplomacy they did before, the League is taking their cues from [[Dying Like Animals]], Londo sees his premonition of Shadow ships over Centauri Prime become true and Emperor Cartagia is planning on turning the Centauri homeworld into [[Omnicidal Maniac|a giant funeral pyre]] to light his way to [[A God Am I|godhood]]. The Vorlons and the Shadows haven't started shooting yet, but they've thrown out the rules of engagement so it's [[It Gets Worse|only a matter of time]].

* Without question the ''absolute'' darkest hour in [[Ludo]]'s rock opera ''The Broken Bride'' is when the Time Traveller is at the apocalypse and decides to destroy his Time Machine, marooning himself there and severing himself from his beloved wife forever, to release the only things that may have a chance at destroying the [[Zombie Apocalypse|zombie-making, soul-devouring]] Dragon: [[Crowning Music of Awesome|Pterodactyls.]]

* Shinedown references this in their song, "The Sound of Madness." Potentially subverted, though, as the following line gives a potential Hope Spot:

* ''The Manual'' ([[The KLF|the Timelords]]' guide to creating a #1 hit single, no money or talent necessary) tells its user to schedule a week in the recording studio actually creating the single, and warns that Tuesday will be wrecked by depression and self-doubt. The only solution is to press on: by Wednesday, everything should start to make sense again.

* Pretty much the point of Wednesday 13's song, "We All Die:"

== Theater ==

* ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'': "''[[No Good Deed Goes Unpunished]]! All helpful urges should be circumvented - no good deed goes unpunished! Sure, I meant well, well look at what well-meant did!''" [[Dead Little Sister]], [[Villain with Good Publicity]] as powerful as ever, {{spoiler|Beloved teacher reduced to bleating, love interest in chains and torment, and best friend is accomplice to all this.}}

* Two in ''[[Man of La Mancha]]'': One is for Aldonza, after being gang-raped by the muleteers. Then Don Quixote himself [[Heroic BSOD|suffers this after]] the Knight of the Mirrors breaks his spirit.

* [[Spring Awakening|Melchior comes home to find his]] love interest and their unborn child have been killed by a failed abortion, making it all his fault, and he's reminded that best friend committed suicide, and it's ''also his fault'', indirectly. And this is not helped in the original German play, when {{spoiler|the ghosts of his friends actually appear to ''try to make him commit suicide and join them.'' Some friends.}}

* ''[[Les Misérables (theatre)|Les Misérables]]'' has a Darkest Hour for each of its main characters, it seems. For instance, Fantine's beg: "''I never did no wrong / My daughter's close to dying / If there's a God above / He'd let me die instead.''"

** Actually, the Darkest Hour was [[It Got Worse|yet to come]]: the Continental Army was soundly thrashed in the initial engagements at New York, and the broken remnants fled across New Jersey desperately attempting to escape the British. It was this that prompted Tom Paine to write "These are the times that try men's souls...."

== Video Games ==