Downer Beginning: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Arashi no Yoru ni]]'' begins with Mei's mother being ripped apart by a pack of wolves (she even bites off one of the alpha wolf's ears!) and telling her son to run away as she does so in what appears to be a very bleak beginning for an otherwise lighthearted tale about the friendship between a sheep and a wolf.

* The first episode of ''[[Texhnolyze]]'' concludes with the main character getting his right arm and his left leg cut off.

* [[Amakusa 1637]] begins with two of the main characters, Natsuki and Masaki, barely surviving to [[wikipedia:Great Hanshin Earthquake|the Great Hanshin Earthquake]] that destroyed Kobe. Natsuki is very emotionally scarred since not only Masaki is injured [[Diving Save|while trying to protect her]], but she's a first-hand witness to the destruction it caused to their hometown.

 

* ''[[The Dirty Dozen]]'' starts with a hanging scene. An American GI is being hanged in a British military prison from robbery and murder.

* ''[[Memento]]'': You see Leonard kill Teddy despite his protests, and then you have to spend the rest of the movie watching the poor guy interact with Leonard.

* ''[[Terminator 2]]'' films starts with Judgment Day, the nuclear war that ended human civilization, and continues with the killer machines fighting humans. Also, ''The Terminator'' starts with the [[Robot War]] itself, and ''Terminator 3'', by showing both flashes of the [[Robot War]] and how wrecked John Connor has become.

* The first ''[[X-Men 1]]'' movie starts in a concentration camp.

* One of the sequels to ''[[Gorky Park]]'', ''Havana Bay'', starts out with our hero going to Cuba to investigate the mysterious death of an old friend of his. He is shown to ''already'' be planning to [[Driven to Suicide|commit suicide]], because of the accidental death of {{spoiler|his wife, due to a lazy nurse not reading her medical chart to find she was allergic to penicillin.}} Of course, just as he's about to kill himself, he's interrupted by a hitman sent to kill him, who he instinctively uses his suicide weapon to kill in self defense. [[Humiliation Conga|Poor bastard can't even off himself without some mishap getting in his way.]]

* In the first book of ''[[The Night Angel Trilogy]]'', before any of the action has even started, twelve-year-old Azoth's guild leader dies, making the [[Complete Monster]] Rat the new leader. Rat then threatens Azoth with homelessness, {{spoiler|kidnaps and rapes his best friend, Jarl, and mutilates Doll Girl.}}

* ''[[The Graveyard Book]]'' begins with the murder of Bod's family.

* ''The Land of Oblivion'' begins with heroine's brother dying in a freak accident.

* ''[[Off Armageddon Reef]]'' opens with the last human fleet preparing for a battle they know they will lose against a foe that has exterminated all human colonies and they know will do the same to Earth itself.

 

 

* ''[[Firefly]]'' opens with the Independents losing a major battle in the civil war, and the [[Despair Event Horizon]] for the main character.

* ''[[Law and Order SVU]]'' episodes tend to start with a really gruesome intro where some random citizen stumbles over someone who just got traumatized or murdered.

* ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'' begins with the Cylons nuking the Twelve Colonies and killing nearly 50 billion people.

* ''[[24]]'' begins with terrorista [[Depraved Bisexual|Mandy]] bombing a passenger plane.

* ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'': It starts with [[La Résistance]] being oppressed by the Neo Arcadian forces as they run away. Several of the [[Red Shirt|Red Shirts]] get [[Body Horror|cut in half]] by the [[Giant Mook|Golems]]. As Zero is [[Sealed Badass in a Can|unsealed]], only Ciel was alive.

* ''[[Iji]]'' begins with the [[Apocalypse How|Alpha Strike]].

** ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'' begins with the Reapers, whose arrival Shepard has spent the first two games delaying, finally appearing en masse and invading Earth (having already blown through both batarian space and most of the human Alliance's defenses). Shepard has no choice but to get the hell out of dodge and start rallying his / her allies.

* In ''[[Dragon Age|Dragon Age: Origins]]'', all of the eponymous origin stories end with the player character being forced to leave their old life behind to join the Grey Wardens. [[Doomed Hometown|Oftentimes, there is no more old life to return to.]] This is followed by a catastrophic battle at Ostagar which results in the death of all but two of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden. Since the Wardens are the only ones capable of defeating the Blight, by the time the [[Opening the Sandbox|sandbox opens]], Ferelden is considered to be on the verge of destruction.

* ''[[Saints Row]] 2'' starts off on a positive note, with the main character of the previous game turning out to be alive. Then you find out they've been in a coma for 5 years in a high-security prison's medical wing. Things only get worse from there, as you discover that the plan to destroy the Row in the name of urban renewal and gentrification that was seemingly thwarted at the end of the last game was instead pulled off by Ultor, and the Saints have collapsed -- and in their absence, three gangs even worse than the original set have sprung up to the take their place. Finally, it becomes quickly obvious in this game that Ultor ''is'' the same one from ''[[Red Faction]]'' -- they're just getting started, and they're already easily worse than all the gangs from both games combined. So... yeah. The game ''really'' doesn't start off cheerfully.

* ''[[Mortal Kombat 9]]'' picks up where ''[[Mortal Kombat Armageddon|Armageddon]]'' left off. ''Everyone is dead'' with few exceptions; Taven ascended to godhood (as seen in his Arcade Ladder and Konquest Mode endings), the Shinnok seen in battle was [[Actually a Doombot|a clone sent by the real Shinnok]], Liu Kang's spirit is somewhere, and Raiden and Shao Kahn are seen dueling on top of Argus' Pyramid in a battle where Kahn ''clearly'' has the advantage. With Shao Kahn poised to rule all the realms and his allies dead, Raiden [[Fling a Light Into the Future|sends a telepathic message to]] [[Mortal Kombat (video game)|his younger self from the first game]] [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|in the hopes that Armageddon can be prevented]].

* ''[[Nie R]]''. The prologue takes place in the ruins of an abandoned city. Nier is forced to make a [[Deal with the Devil]] to protect his sister/daughter Yonah from the Shades that are hunting them. Only after driving them off does Nier realize that Yonah also tried to make the deal to help him -- but in her case it failed and she is now slowly dying. The prologue ends with Nier desperately screaming for someone, ''anyone'', to help him save Yonah.

* ''[[Halo]]'' opens with your starship, on the run from the Covenant who have just obliterated a major human colony and the last thing between them and Earth, crashing.

* ''[[Titan A.E.]]'' begins with another race [[Final Solution|destroying planet Earth]].

* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]''. The opening narration basically tells us that the world has been at war ''for a hundred years'', an entire, unique people (core to the very balance of the world itself) has been ''wiped out entirely'' and that the forces of good have been ''losing'' the entire time. Even worse, the [[Physical God|Avatar]], who is supposed to bring balance to the world (due to the unique ability to master all four elements, among other abilities) has been missing since the beginning of the war. The next scene is the reawakening of the Avatar (a 12 year old boy, and the [[Last of His Kind]]). [[Back From the Brink]] indeed.

* The ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S2 E26 A Canterlot Wedding Part 2|A Canterlot Wedding Part 2]]", has Twilight Sparkle, already disgraced by her unproven {{spoiler|(But ultimately correct, after a fashion)}} accusations of about Cadence, abducted into an abandoned mine by her and merciless taunted by the villain about she is going to be there forever, helpless to stop the plot. However, the villain makes one fatal mistake that allows Twilight to discover both the truth and a true friend that enables them to save the day.