As long as the Earth exists, we'll always be partners.
- Soukichi's death, partly because how utterly out of nowhere it comes. He gets shot to death by Museum thugs and with his last actions puts his damaged fedora on his pupil Shotaro as said pupil screams in grief. On top of that, the Taboo Dopant busting through the floor causes his body to fall into the hole she made, preventing it from even being retrieved by his loved ones for a proper burial. Oh, and this also happens in Episode 1, before the show's been running for even a minute. The only thing keeping this from being a Downer Beginning is the fact that Shotaro and Philip become Double for the first time during this sequence and escape in a spectacular way before going on to be the absolute biggest thorn in Museum's side.
- The Bird Dopant arc (Episodes 17-18) lands some heavy blows. First, teenagers doing a direct injection of a Gaia Memory that is not meant for them AND without having a bio-communication port. Second, we learn that Kirihiko (Nasca Dopant, Gaia Memory Dealer) is suffering a slow death due to his memory achieving Level 2. Oh, the second shouldn't count? Then the third will change your mind: Shotaro as FangJoker tells him he is making the city he loves so much cry, and that is more than enough to have him go through a change of heart, to the point he helps Double eject and destroy the Bird Dopant's Gaia Memory and soon gives a present he promised to Shotaro (To those wondering: Fuuto's Mascot Keychain) and asked him to protect the city. And the fourth and last point is that he is killed by his very wife, Saeko, on top of the building, with the last minutes of his life alone, enjoying the winds that blesses the city.
- The entire damn thing of episode 48. First, you have the first (and possibly only) full appearance of the acoustic version of an ending song, in this case Cyclone Effect, playing over Shotaro and Philip's last (possible) scene together as Shotaro struggles to cancel the transformation for the last time. Then you have Philip fading away along with the Xtreme Memory, followed by Manly Tears, followed by everyone being depressed, followed by Shotaro getting a goodbye note/gift from Philip telling him to contuine protecting Futo, and for the preview, in order to avert Mood Whiplash, plays "Nobody's Perfect" instead of the opening theme.
- Their actions in the final episode seem to confirm it. They just revived Philip, see below
- Episode 49 does it again with Wakana performing a Gaia Impact in order to restore Philip by giving him her body. Inside the Xtreme Memory, we see the entire Sonozaki family reunite as they all say their final farewells to Philip before disappearing.
- On top of that, When Akira learns the truth about Philip, we see Shotaro despondently wandering over to one of his partner's whiteboards and find out he's been unable to erase the Charming Raven clue from it. Before the camera cuts back to Akira we clearly see Shotaro about to break down crying over the loss of his partner and best friend.
- Shotaro's seeming death is one of the cruelest Bait-and-Switch moments in Kamen Rider history. The moment itself happens right before a commercial break so, for at least a few agonizing minutes, children watching across Japan had to cope with the idea that both of their heroes were dead. Thankfully, the tears become happy when it's revealed in short order that Shotaro was saved by the Xtreme Memory and that Philip's back. It also unfortunately leads to the above moment of Wakana's Gaia Impact.
- Double Returns: Eternal has Daido coming upon the slaughtered Quark subjects he failed to save, a sight so horrific that he's Driven to Madness by it. After watching that, The Movie becomes a lot more of a Tear Jerker...
- What is just as sad that his Implied Love Interest, Mina, somehow survived the termination but he dies never knowing that she survived.
- Also, Daido and company all become very tragic in this. In their first appearance in "A to Z" they were presented as plain evil, and no tears were shed when it turns out they return to death if hit with a Maximum Drive. However, we find out here that they were all every bit as heroic as our main cast at first, but the NEVER process causes you to slowly lose your memories and they'd totally lost themselves by the present day, to be put down like rabid animals without a care since no one knew this. The end!
- The flashbacks in Episode 46. Seeing the Sonozaki clan as a genuinely happy family, knowing how far they've fallen is grueling.
- The Double half and ending of Movie War Core. If you watched Double Returns: Eternal and thought "how can it possibly get more depressing than this?!"...you ain't seen nothing yet. Narumi Soukichi/Kamen Rider Skull had quite a toll for it.
1. First things first, the enemy is Spider Dopant.
2. Second, that Dopant was Soukichi’s partner, Matsu.
3. Third, the Spider Dopant's special ability is the Spider Bombs that kill not the victim, but the person the victim loves most, transmitted by the victim's touch. Because of this, dozens of citizens are suddenly killed in front of, and at the touch of, the people who would suffer most from this happening, and Soukichi himself can never be with his daughter Akiko (it'll kill her) or his love interest Melissa (it'll kill him) again. Naturally, this all happened on Akiko's birthday. Oh, you know how most Monster of the Week effects have No Ontological Inertia? Not this Dopant. Once infected is forever infected, even with the Spider Memory destroyed (the Dopant memory isn't the one used in Shotaro's Spider Shock Gadget.). Let’s not forget that Soukichi also already made a promise to Akiko to be by her side when she gets married before he got infected.
The series itself isn't that depressing, but its post-series movies seem to keep trying to top the last in terms of soul-rendingness. Also, the series has several funny moments. Core has very few. We start with Akiko being merely sick of her fiancee and friends having to run off and do Rider duty and the whole thing descending into more and more despair. Does the scene with Soukichi's ghost at the end begin to make up for it? - Really one could look at nearly the whole show in this light. While it's relatively light on characters actually dying, it is at it's heart a Noir detective story so it's full of lies and betrayal and the worst of human nature. Nearly every case has at least one character who seems to be likable but ends up either being driven to madness by a Gaia Memory, or was actually a terrible person all along, or just makes poor choices that end up hurting people they care about and most end with Shotaro typing his report while musing about the darkness in people. It's actively rare for there to be a case to be a without at least one of the seeming sympathetic characters actually turning out to be the criminal to the horror of their friends and family and usually at least one character ends up walking away saddened or disappointed by the outcome.
