Shoot the Shaggy Dog/Western Animation

• When the Wind Blows charts the slow death from nuclear fallout of an elderly couple after a nuclear bomb goes off in England.
  • Originally a graphic novel (and also a Radio play). And of course their deaths are the Anvilicious point of the story, meant to show up the absurdity of the British Government's civil defence plans.
• Intentionally done in the pilot episode of Aeon Flux (actually drawn out into six two-minute shorts), in which the main character's guns-blazing assassination mission fails when she steps on a nail and falls to her death, her body and even her apartment being destroyed by her superiors, her assassination target dead by other means, and her entire shooting spree of a mission being futile.
  • The second season, dealing with the question "How do we do a sequel when the protagonist is dead?", turns this trope up to 11 by having her die (pointlessly) in every episode.
  • The continuity-less series kept the protagonist alive (mostly), but episodes often end with the trans-humanist Big Bad being right and when the protagonist is successful, she's successful in unwittingly destroying humanity.
• In the movie version of The Plague Dogs, the movie ends with the two dogs swimming out to sea and drowning after their fox friend had just sacrificed himself to give them time to escape; this wasn't how it was in the book--see above. The real kicker is that many people prefer the movie The Ugly Barnacle ugly barnacle]]. He was so ugly that everyone died. The end!"
• Family Guy's marijuana episode, however, it might have was done to make us hear about Seth's ways.
  • Also the OJ Simpson episode. After building up that they shouldn't just assume that OJ was really guilty, at the very end he stabs a couple people to death and runs off, ending with Peter saying "Oh, I guess he did do it then."
• Futurama's Jurassic Bark, especially from the dog POV. Fortunately, the dog gets unshot in Bender's Big Score.
  • Although he then gets literally shot by Bender's death ray to get "fast-fossilized".
• In one Looney Tunes segment ("8 Ball Bunny"), Bugs Bunny comes across a penguin. After swearing he would help the penguin get home (after regretting making him cry), he finds out that penguins come from the South Pole ("South Pole?! Ooh, I'm dyin'!"). He tries to help the penguin to the Antarctic, going through hell and high water to do so, only to find out when he finally gets there that this was a domesticated performing penguin who lived in Hoboken ("Hoboken?! Ooh, I'm dyin' again!"), and he just dragged him several thousand miles for nothing. It would be just a regular Shaggy Dog Story, except that the usually calm, impossible to beat Bugs suffers a mental breakdown because of it.
• This trope is cruelly used in the Private Snafu short "The Chow Hound", in which a bull gives his life to be turned into meat to be delivered to Snafu to feed him in order to fight the enemy. Unfortunately, Snafu has eaten so much already by the time the package arrives that he throws out the bull meat, such to the chagrin of the Bull's ghost.
• The "Transmutate" episode of Beast Wars: Transformers. A gentle, horribly misshapen, mentally feeble, bird-like Transformer is pursued by Silverbolt and Rampage because Silverbolt is the epitome of the Knight in Shining Armor archetype and wanted to protect her, while Rampage sees a kindred spirit because she was a twisted freak. In the end she tries to get between them with her shield when she sees them fighting, and gets destroyed.
• The South Park episode "Stanley's Cup", a Mighty Ducks parody which ends with a pee-wee ice hockey team being beaten bloody by a professional team, and their teammate dying of cancer. "Woodland Critter Christmas" also qualifies, to a lesser degree: the episode consists of a story written by Cartman in class for the sole purpose of saying Kyle died at the end.
  • And then those woodland critters turn out to be the most evil monsters ever created by anyone's imagination.
• Billy's Balloon by Don Hertzfeldt.
• The World's Smartest Dog.
• Quite a few Invader Zim episodes fit this trope.
  • "Zim Eats Waffles:" Dib uses a hidden camera to watch Zim's house all day to collect evidence. He watches him eat waffles and have pointless conversations for most of the episode. Finally, something worth recording happens, and then the army of cyborg zombies break in and destroy all of Dib's recording equipment. Dib goes to bed.
  • Bolognius Maximus: Zim and Dib have injected each other with bologna DNA. They're quickly turning into delicious bologna. They'll have to put aside their differences and work together to- too late. They're both giant pieces of bologna. Roll credits.
• The "Ballad of Magellan" episode of Animaniacs: "Whoopie-Ti-Yi-Yo, Farewell, Magellan. You almost made it, it's really not fair. Whoopie-Ti-Yi-Yo, oh Ghost of Magellan, the East Indies Islands were right over there."