Trying Ubuntu, i fail.

No, they are not automatically removed in any distro I’m familiar with (Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo). Tools usually exist to remove orphaned dependencies though.

In all distros I’ve used, you can’t remove (required) dependencies out from under a package that needs them. It will either prompt the removal of all programs that depend on the package, or simply throw an error, requiring you to explicitly remove those packages too.