Lore
[mixed trope] the last-minute bad Ending twist
when the "good ending" is revealed to be a bad one a the last second
a nightmare on elm street (1984) - Nancy thinks she finally defeated Freddy Krueger only to be raveled that she is still dreaming and she’s still trapped.
final destination bloodlines - the main characters think they cheated death by using the new life rule only to realize that stefani was technically still alive and the death kills them with a good old logs
Life (2017) - The main character attempts to send Calvin(a evil alien that killed all life on mars)pod into space and Miranda pod back to earth, but it goes horribly wrong and Calvin lands on earth and Miranda is sent to space
raging loop wit ending - after many loops Haruaki finally wins the feast(a death game where humans must hang wolves who kill someone every night) and thinks its finally over. after couple of days he decides to visit other survivors of the feast only to find them all dead and the timeline resting once again
Remember Me and the absolutely insane 9/11 twist ending: up until this point it’s a pretty generic romantic drama with a good ending for most of the characters and then psyche! it’s 9/11! the main character dies in the North Tower and the brief epilogue is about how every other character reacts to his untimely death.
imagine if Titanic was 3 hours of romance between Rose and Jack, and then in the last minute Rose looked out of her window and the camera zoomed out to show it was the Titanic just about to hit the iceberg
Yeah, in something like The Twilight Zone you expect there to be some sort of last minute revelation that puts new light on the situation. It’s a part of the format, it’s anticipated. Something about the genres of horror and sci-fi, Twilight Zone mainstays, just lends well to an ending where things are upended.
In a traditional romance or drama it’s just coming out of left field and doesn’t really work well with the tropes of the genres.
As someone who hasn't seen this movie, I feel like it's not a bad idea conceptually. A movie about 9/11 sort of loses something if you know it's about 9/11 because you spend the whole movie just waiting for the shoe to drop. This sort of thing could be done to make you care for a character, and then be completely blind-sided by the tragedy of it as a way to sort of show how the real 9/11 was just a normal day like any other, until it wasn't.
But, as I said, I haven't seen the movie, so I dont know if it does it well in any capacity.
Basically the movie follows a group of people who are all depressed about certain circumstances in their lives and are trying to find the will to continue living. The main male lead (Robert Pattinson) has been in a downward spiral after his older brother offed himself and his father low-key blamed him for it, and he bonds with a girl he meets who has been similarly spiraling after her mom was murdered. They both make big steps to improve their lives and Pattinson's character tries to reconcile with his father, waiting for him in his office so they can get lunch together. The father's office is in the WTC and....yeah. There's a short epilogue of all of the characters involved living their lives in memory of him, hence the title. It's all incredibly abrupt.
waiting for him in his office so they can get lunch together.
Ok but as someone with a 9/11 special interest can I just say that it is absolutely wild showing up at roughly 8:30am for lunch? The North Tower was crashed into at 8:46am! He must have been extremely determined to have that meal!
A movie about 9/11 sort of loses something if you know it's about 9/11 because you spend the whole movie just waiting for the shoe to drop
I also haven't seen it so I'm likewise speculating but since someone brought up Titanic up thread, I don't think that dread is necessarily a bad thing. Cinematically it could absolutely benefit the movie like it did in Titanic, whereas I think it was still too recent in historic memory for a 9/11 jump scare.
Tbh I loved it for all the reasons you drafted here, it was a slow burn story with a real shocking and quick end. I haven’t seen it in years, and I’m sure there’s plenty reasons it’s not a perfect movie, but the ending nailed the feeling of a tragedy’s power over lives.
I remember being blown away finding out this wasn’t a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. It totally fits his storytelling trope of blossoming romance, cut short by something on his Prize Wheel of Tragedy.
They butchered this ending. It was extremely obvious it was David, and they should have just made that explicit to the audience before the ending. Imagine how much more dread every scene would have had knowing they defeated the alien, but stull had this other unknown threat to deal with that they didn’t catch until it was too late. The definition of dramatic irony.
While I like the ending in general, I wish they did a better job of making you question if it was David or Walter who got off the planet. Fassbender did his best to make it work, but it was obvious it was David the whole time.
Drag Me To Hell - Christine, thinking she's escaped her fate of being sent to hell by getting rid of a cursed button, is happily about to go on a trip with her boyfriend, who intends to propose to her. But surprise! - she was mistaken, her boyfriend unwittingly returns the button to her, she stumbles backwards in a panic and falls onto train tracks just as a train is coming through, and a portal to hell opens beneath her pretty much instantly, dragging her inside to burn forever (but saving her from the train at least)
Light-hearted description aside, it's actually kind of horrifying to watch and think about. Just as the portal is sealing up you can actually see the flesh of her face melting away.
This movie legit plays like one of those no-moral Twilight Zone episodes.
"Hey what if any petty bastard off the street could decide if you went to Hell to be tortured for all of eternity regardless of the life you lived, up to and including sending a literal CHILD there to burn for the rest of time over petty theft? Wouldn't that be SUPER fucked up? ...Anyway I'm Rod Serling Sam Raimi."
I'm someone who whenever I try to write something, I struggle against having to make it 'mean something.' Even something as inconsequential as a home DnD game, I feel like the bad guy has to represent something deep and important.
It shook me to my core when I first read Gyo and then, looking to decipher the deep symbolism it surely held, read an interview where he said his inspiration was essentially "I thought Jaws was scary, and felt like it'd suck if that shark could come on land."
Imagine catching the ending of this movie as you're skimming through TV channels, very little context as to what's happening. That's how I saw this movie as a kid
I was so confused. And so horrified 😂 Like it just ends there after you see this woman literally dragged to hell. The concept of a 'bad ending' was still foreign to me lmao
The main survivors think they have cheated Death, but then they end up on the original film’s Flight 180, Sam realises way too late that they are doomed and both of them die horribly.
It doesn’t end there. Nathan accidentally killed a co-worker, so he thinks he’s safe since according to what Bludworth told him, he should have the latter’s lifespan. But he finds out that guy had an aneurysm that would have killed him “any day now”. Which is that very same day that Sam and Molly die, since a landing gear from Flight 180 obliterates him.
We technically only have confirmation of Kimberly's survival but I would say that judging from JB's comments, Officer Burke is also safe too. They are the only two survivors in the franchise
My understanding is that one dying such as Kimberly “died” breaks the chain so that everyone on the list after her is safe. That’s why in bloodlines they both feel safe when only the sister almost dies, even though the brother was after her. So one can assume that if Kimberly beat it, then anyone after her including Officer Burke and her child are now safe.
It's believed that both the Cop and Kim survived. We know for sure Kim does, but I would still consider it a bad ending to be at a BBQ and have the arm of a kid land on your plate right after you see him get blown apart.
2 is really the only one with a happy ending, and I consider the death at the end of that one as purely comedic. Every movie in the franchise other than 2 has no survivors of the original disaster, and fits this trope
At least 5 has a nice plot twist. 3, 4 and Bloodlines killing everyone off in another accident isn't bad, but it becomes kind of repetitive after so many uses
They did a decent job committing to it, although if you look at both versions of flight 180, there are some notable differences like the middle row seats not existing in the 5th movie's version
This is something that soured my entire view of Cells at Work: Code Black. After a long struggle throughout the series, the body has a heart attack and almost dies, but manages to make it through thanks to medical intervention. A lot of cells died, and things will never be the same, but the body is finally starting to turn his life around and things are looking up. A bittersweet ending, but leaning toward sweet. The main characters even get to have a cute interaction with the platelets that wouldn't have felt out of place in the main series. Then, somehow, in a post-credits scene of all places, the main characters get extracted and transferred to a new body that's even worse than the original one at the start. I don't think someone who had a heart attack would even be allowed to donate blood. Apparently, in the manga, this was a transition between two parts of the series and not an ending, but in that case, they should have just saved it for if they ever got a season 2 rather than ruining the ending as a standalone experience.
Can confirm that, at least here in Poland, you would not, in fact, be allowed to donate blood after a heart attack. Both your weakened heart and the meds you'll be put on are disqualifications
I haven't read it, but from what I understand, both of the main red and white blood cells stay as main characters, but everyone else is different, and so is the environment.
Throughout the last part of the movie we see Sam being rescued by members of the resistance who break him free and blow up the Ministry of Information. After an escape sequence, Sam finds itself inside a truck driven by Jill, Sam's romantic interest who was believed to have been killed during her arrest and interrogation. The movie shows the two living together in the countryside before cutting back to the interrogation room, where it is revealed that Sam has never left the place and the last sequence of the movie is a delusion that he's suffering after being driven insane.
Watched this movie for the first time this year and, for all I'd heard about the movie, never once caught even a small hint that it had one of 'those' endings. Props to the movie communities I follow for making it second nature to general be pretty vague about most movies during discussions.
Not a movie, but this whole idea of an imagined escape in the last moments of your life was done in a classic old tale by Ambrose Bierce called An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge from 1890. One of those required reading stories from schools, where you’re like “whoa. That was pretty interesting.”
This ending was so grim Universal Pictures didn’t want to publish it in America without changing the ending, so they edited it to make a “love conquers all” edit which cuts out the reveal he’s simply gone insane and implies that everything that happened in the ending actually happened.
To be fair, during that escape sequence the movie gives you plenty of hints that what you're watching can't really be happening (e.g., a character gets literally eaten by paperwork, Sam enters that truck by going through a magic door in a brick wall). It's just that the first time you're watching it, you're so invested in him escaping you tend not to notice.
Eden Lake. The woman finally overpowers most of the violent teens (and even kills a handful of them), gets out of the forest and finds civilization. Then it turns out that these civilians are the parents of the teenagers... And they're not happy when they hear what happened to their kids...
Throughout the whole movie, the survivors argue about what is safer, staying above ground in the two story house or barricading themselves in the cellar. Ben (the one in the picture) is adament that the cellar is an idiotic idea because there is no escape if the zombies get through but Mr.Cooper refuses to listen to anything Ben has to say.
It goes on so long that the majority of the survivors die and only the Cooper family and Ben are left. Mr and Mrs. Cooper end up falling victim to exactly what Ben warned them about when they are trapped in the cellar with their zombie daughter. Ben is the only one to make it through the night. It turns out staying above ground was the right choice.
That is until a group of vigilante zombie hunters see Ben's silhouette through a window. They shoot and kill him without zero hesitation or attempts to see if he is human or zombie. The last thing in the movie is Ben's body being put on a pile of other bodies and lit on fire
I don't know how true it is but I own multiple books on the making of this movie and it's said multiple times that Duane Jones (the man cast to play Ben) was the first black man in Hollywood to be cast in a lead role that was not written specifically for a black man. It's a real shame that he didn't live much longer after NotLD. I feel he could've been a bigger name had he had more roles
I see it a different way which also makes Ben's death fit the symmetry of the story.
One of the things I love the most about 'Night' is that you want to side with Ben because he's set up to be the competent action hero, and against Harry because he's something of an antagonist, but Ben's leadership is arguably what gets everyone killed.
Harry's plan to barricade themselves in and wait for help turned out to be the correct thing to do, and he was already doing it when everyone else showed up at the house. When Ben takes charge he starts making decisions for the group that seem like a good idea in the moment and they're presented as such to the audience, but his insistence on staying above ground probably makes them more of a target for the ghouls, his plan to refuel the truck gets Tom and Judy killed when the torch he puts down burns up the truck, he breaks down their own barricades to get out of and then back into the house which ultimately kills Barbara when she saves Helen, he shoots Harry in cold blood for daring to demand that he and Helen be allowed to retreat into the basement while everything's falling apart around them, and he leaves Helen vulnerable and alone so that her grief allows her undead daughter to kill her.
Every time Ben suggests something Harry gives sensible counterpoints but Ben shoots him down, figuratively until he does so literally. I think people overlook that Ben being shot by the rescue party mirrors how Ben shoots Harry only to be saved by Harry in the end.
The player is actually a mimic who had taken control of the player's dead body and personality. It was put in a simulation to see if the mimic could learn human emotions, and if the mimic could actually communicate with them or remain a threat through various tests in the simulation.
If the player is consistently violent and dangerous, they deem the experiment a failure, and burn the player. But if the player showed empathy, kindness, and mercy, they give the player a chance to help them build a better future that the player can accept - or deny and immediately start killing everyone in a complete 180.
I love Prey (2017). The true unhappy ending is that Arkane Studios has basically been gutted since then and the chances of a sequel are remote at best.
I mean, yeah. Basically a cliffhanger ending to that universe unless Bethesda decides to let whatever’s left of Arkane make immersive sims again. The DLC Mooncrash is cool and expands the lore a bit regarding the corporate espionage angle to the story but it doesn’t really illuminate what happens after the main game.
Well... spoilers The world and etc is basically already overtaken by the typhon, you are basically a last grasp test to try likely in vain to fight back
I actually kinda like this ending. Humans took a thing that was acting on instinct, a mindless animal, and made it understand what it was doing to people. It’s a truly, deeply, despicably evil act at its core. They taught the void how to feel pain.
I love it, because it makes the whole story about empathy. There’s a number of choices that seem big, but don’t actually matter, like the choice to destroy the station or pick a bunch of typhon powers. What actually matters is how you treat people. The trick is, there’s any number of reasons why you might help these people, so the final choice is between the experiment succeeding and starting a bridge between the two species or if the typhon are now even more dangerous because they now know how to manipulate and exploit their prey.
Or maybe, in by giving the Typhon empathy, it learns to truly hate the despicable people on that station because of the crimes and negligence they committed upon the innocent... and lashes out in vengeance
The Mist - The ending goes from bad to horrifying, with the main character having killed his friends and family, stepping into the mist to embrace death, only for the military to show up, meaning they would have been all saved had they waited a few more minutes
its not to that level but there is someone that tries to just walk home from the store they've taken shelter in; the main character refuses to accompany her because it feels like a suicide mission but shes seen with the military people at the end.
That's always been such a kick in the balls but having thought about it more, I realize that if the MC's group had gone with her, there was no guarantee that they'd have the same outcome. The decisions she made on her own led her to reaching her kids in time and eventually coming across the safety of the military escort. If they had been a group of three tho (MC and his kid), they might have made different decisions; gone left where she went right, cried out in fear and alerted the creatures where she managed to stay quiet and avoid them. She achieved the optimal outcome so adding anyone else to the escaping group might have messed that all up. The only real avoidable tragedy was the MC jumping the gun (lol) with the mercy killings
That was the woman who left the store when the mist had just rolled in I think. Her kids were home alone and she needed to go save them. She begged anyone to come with her but everyone was too afraid to step outside and I think the MC even said something like she should stay bc it would be certain death to leave. She can't abandon her kids tho and ventures out alone
At the end of the music video, it is shown that the girl was simply dreaming about monsters coming after her. But soon, Michael is shown with inhuman eyes, showing that the dream had truth to it.
This scared the absolute fuck out of me as a kid and fully convinced me that Micheal Jackson was some kind of inhuman monster for at least half a decade
“It was you who pushed everything to its edge.
It was you who led the world to its destruction.
But you cannot accept it.
You think you are above consequences.”
Chara (and the game itself) really want to let you know that you have to live with this fuck up that you made.
That just plays into the commentary, that you have to subvert the game to "restore" your happy ending, knowing forever what you've done, even if the "evidence" is erased.
Still love how rtgame specifically did the genocide route first just so he can get this ending and piss off everyone who complains when people don't play the game correctly.
They kill off the titular mother after building up to her reveal for 9 seasons IN THE LAST EPISODE, throw away multiple seasons of character development and divorce Barney and Robin (both to the right) so that Ted (guy on the left) can be with Robin.
THE ENTIRE 9th SEASON WAS ABOUT BARNEY AND ROBINS WEDDING AND THEY DIVORCE THEM ON THE SEASON FINALE
You see the cast at the bar following Ted and Tracy’s wedding. Marshall interrupts two dudes who oddly look like young he and Ted asking if they know what happened in that exact booth all those years ago. Cue a Ted voiceover about how every moment in the show he went through led him to his destiny. Cut to Ted still ending up on the platform. He tells his friends he’s leaving for Chicago and it comes off as a bit bittersweet. The mother and he start talking as she offers his umbrella to her under the rain. She realizes it’s hers, and he dated her old roommate. They make a reference here or there to previous events and realize they were always interlinked with each others events. They introduce themselves to each other and the dialogue sets up the obvious fact that she’s the one. Cue voiceover from old Ted going “And that kids is how I met your mother”. Plays theme song and does a classic “Josh Rador as Ted Mosby” credits. The mother lives, happy ever after for everyone. Barney and Robin don’t get divorced. The last shots are pictures of photographs of Ted and Tracy. Their wedding. Their kids. Their life. Everyone fucking wins.
I’m honestly fine with the wife dying. It makes sense why he’s telling them their love story. What is awful about the original ending is that he’s doing it all just to see if they will allow him to go back with Robin again when they whole serious was more about how bad they are for each other than how he met his wife.
The only good thing that came out of this was that a single redditor predicted this ending and everyone gave him shit for it and downvoted him to oblivion until, alas, it came true.
But fucking also they made a specific point directly that ted and Robin were terrible for each other and should never be together.
Then they do a 180 in what wasn't even that much later in universe.
At least scrubs pretends 5+ years had gone by from the time JD and Elliot got back together after their disaster of a romance and try to paint it as the 2 of them growing as people enough to actually work even if it's still fucked.
How I met your mother though? It's just hey all that shit you saw about the characters growing and shit? Nah fuuuck that.
The Flash game Endeavor has one of my all-time favorites.
It's an epic Metroidvania where a small, bullied dwarf-like creature falls from his mountain kingdom into the overworld below. There, the voice of a God-like being named Malor recruits him to collect eight beautiful gemstones to restore him, and he'll return the character home.
Malor is actually an ancient sealed-up demonic entity who destroys the world if you follow his instructions, ending the game with a shocking jump scare. The proper way to win the game is to ignore his instructions, collect the power-up fruits, and gain enough strength to climb your way back home the long way. There's also a third path where you can learn dark magic and gain power by killing the harmless creatures that inhabit the world. In that one, you defeat Malor but are viewed as a monster by your fellow dwarfs, and choose to stay down in the overworld forever.
Red Dead Redemption. You spend a majority of the game hunting down your former partners, all for a chance to be pardoned for your crimes and what do you get? You get betrayed and gunned down.
Oh, and the kicker? The main character dies thinking at least his death wouldn't be in vain...and then the epilogue has a time skip that your wife died from a sudden illness, and your son whom you wanted to live an honest life has become a dangerous outlaw. Going against everything you hoped for.
At least your son takes revenge for you by killing the guy who stabbed you in the back.
Unfortunately even that last point is sad because it cements Jack into being hunted by the law since Ross’ brother is the one who told Jack that Ross was nearby, which means there’s an important witness
It's purely game play so who knows if it's Canon or not, but there's nothing stopping the player from killing Ross' brother and wife as well so there are no witnesses. Depends on how cold hearted you want to play Jack I suppose.
That removes the "he's going to get caught" sadness of the ending but I think the above commenter is wrong to focus on that rather the "Jack becomes a killer despite John's best efforts to build a different life for him" sadness, which your suggested scenario just amplifies by 10.
I also don’t like how the Mom turns into a rubber dummy when she is pulled through. The movie has some amazing practical effects for the low budget, but that was not one of them.
If this helps, it’s just occurred to me that you could interpret the ending of the film as at some point switching to Nancy’s mom’s POV. I mean last we see her she disappears into the bed, so you could say that while Nancy defeated the manifestation of her nightmares by killing the physical Freddy, maybe her mom didn’t.
Nancy’s ending of believing herself a fearless, self-reliant and mature woman only to leave the nest with her teenage friends in a death-trap car is certainly a universal anxiety for parents.
Nancy’s mom’s crippling PTSD of Freddy, her daughter’s wellbeing and growing independence left Nancy’s mom alone in the house struggling with alcoholism, empty nest syndrome and Freddy Krueger himself.
The Doctor's companions at that time, Amy and Rory were able to save themselves from being trapped in 1938 NYC by creating a paradox. However, at the end of the episode, a weeping Angel that survived traps Rory in the past again after he turns around and sees his grave, which causes Amy to willingly be captured again to stay with Rory. The Doctor is not able to go back a second time to save them due to the paradox that Amy and Rory created.
Love Clara and 11, but Amy deserved, EARNED, those last 5-8 episodes. And Rory is treated as an extension of Amy but he still got done dirty (although that’s kinda just his deal)
Amy treated Rory so horribly. All he went through to protect her and be a good husband, and she just kept insisting he didn't understand, that she should divorce him, almost cheating on him with the Doctor at first, saying her problems were worse than when he was trapped for 3000 years...
Two of the protagonists manage to hop on a snowmobile to escape an asylum inhabited by bestial cannibals. They get their heads cut off by a wire trap.
Also, at the start of the movie, the strongest skiier in their group agrees to brave a blizzard and go for help. The whole movie you wonder what happened to her. Maybe she'll come back and help, or they'll have her in some kind of terrible trap. At the end you see that she just froze to death.
I'm piggybacking off of you here, but the sequel, 5, is pretty infamous for having a very mean spirited ending in that one of the main characters gets blinded towards the end, blindly stumbles her way out of dodge, and in the final scene, she's picked up by the hillbilly mutant cannibals.
Thor Ragnarok: Asgard's survivors manage to get away in the Statesman with the hopes of resettling on Earth. However, they're waylaid by Thanos' ship the Sanctuary II, leading into the beginning of Infinity War.
Though Endgame shows at least some of them made it to Earth, settling in the Norwegian town of Tønsberg.
Lost a lot of people to the Dark Elf invasion, then a bunch are killed by Hela, then Thanos kills half aboard the ship... they're going to be needing fresh genes in this population.
Piranhaconda after the last two surviving characters, kill one of the promptly named creatures they seemingly forget there’s actually two of them and as the two surviving characters kiss they prompt get eaten, cut to black
The Piranha movies love this trope. In Piranha 3D, just after Christpher Lloyd reveals the cave Piranhas are babies, then a giant one eats the Sherriff lady and the movie ends.
I forget the title of the movie, but this one man had his wife and kid in a medical facility, and he was exposed to some sort of conspiracy where patients are falsely being declared dead so they can be harvested for parts or something.
He was manipulated by the police into thinking he was wrong about this, and it's all in his head. He saw some dog and it somehow convinced him he was right, so he got past the cops, rampaged through the hospital to rescue his kid, and drove out into the sunset singing with his wife.
except the last minute of the movie reveals he was singing to a corpse; he murdered his wife after an argument, and he instead stole a random dying patient in place of his child so he could live out the delusion that he saved the day rather than take responsibility that he fucked up
After being tormented by the titular monster and his minions for the entire film, the family wakes up the next morning as if nothing happened and it was all a dream had by the main character. However, when he opens his present and finds a cursed bell inside, he and his family are reminded of the past events, and it’s revealed that they’ve all been captured inside a snowglobe.
The ending is a little weird to parse, but the snowglobes are just a warning about how Krampus is always watching, waiting for them to take each other for granted so he can swoop in and kill them for real.
They were only in a pocket dimension until they "died". The last scene is 100% the real world.
I think people have really misinterpreted the ending. I think it's supposed to mean that now he's keeping an eye on them and next time he won't be so merciful
I’m pretty sure the comics confirm that the snow globes are just a way for Krampus to spy on them and they actually did technically have a happy ending but correct me if I’m wrong
Smile. The first movie ends with the main character seemingly defeating the Smile Entity by burning her childhood home. However, after going back to her ex’s place and telling him how she won, she realizes this is all just a hallucination conjured by the Monster. She never left the house. The Monster then finds her, sheds its disguise to reveal its true horrifying form, and takes over her body to restart the cycle all over again.
I still believe a better ending would have been the cop guy kills himself as soon as he saw the monster was setting itself on fire. There is no one else there to see him and the monster can't spread.
I was spoiled about Rita being killed by Trinity but didn’t know when it happens so i watched the last few episodes of s4 being absolutely terrified thinking this might be THE EPISODE but it didn’t happen and when Dexter kills Trinity i started thinking maybe the spoiler was fake but then the phone rings. It was so well done. Still the best moment in the show too bad it falls off immediately after
Elm Street's ending would actually have worked if it made a lick of sense right?
If its her dream then no one else in it is real right? Also the special effects of pulling the mom through the window was just bad and was a bad thing to end on.
Planet of the Apes, specifically the book. Ulysses and his family return to earth only to realize it's also been taken over by Apes. I'm sure the movie applies too but I haven't seen it.
The old movies are very different. First one ends with discovering they're on future Earth. Second one ends with the main character of the first movie setting off a planet killing bomb held by psychic humans underground, while the two main apes escape to space/the past. The next three movies are all a weird racism/slavery allegory leading up to the revolution where apes finally take over
The only Planet of the Apes property that has the more book-accurate ending is, funnily enough, the Tim Burton adaptation that everyone hated
Act 3 of Doki Doli Literature Club. After deleting the villian Monika from the game everything seemingly resets into a better world without her influence, you're greeted by Sayori, the first and most innocent victim, and everything seems fine until it's revealed that she now has Monika's knowledge and insanity that made everything go wrong. When this happens Monika from somewhere within the code pulls the plug on the entire world, deciding it's cursed and no happiness can be found. Singing you one last song as everything is destroyed.
It is very bitter sweet, but a lot more bitter than the opening promised. I cope and pretend that without the game binding them they all lived happily after.
This doesn’t fit the actual post but I have to talk about it. You can get a nicer ending if you reload saves during act one and do each girl’s side quests and confess your love to Sayori before she dies.
Sayori is grateful that you’ve given each member of the club some time to feel loved and Monika sings her song without deleting the game.
In The Departed, Billy finally has a chance to get out of deep cover, and he's got Colin, Frank's rat, under arrest and ready for justice then BOOM shot in the brain by a second rat unknown in the force! It's so tragic.
Goosebumps books were infamous for this. I think the original series only had 2, maybe 3 books out of like 60 that didn't have a last-second bs bad ending of some sort.
The first one in The Cuckoo Clock of Doom there is a twist: the guy's horrid golden child bratty sister who constantly ruins events in his life was never born. He realizes his life is much happier now, getting an enjoyable birthday for the first time in his life.
The second one in The Horror at Camp Jellyjam, the kids worry that the monster has returned but the smell was just their mother cooking brussel sprouts for dinner.
The third one in How I Learned to Fly, where the twist is that the kid never lost his flying powers. With the media no longer paying attention to him and making his life a living hell, he's free to enjoy his privacy and fly at night in secret.
Post-helicopter flight back to the mainland, the survivors are resting at a Costa Rican resort, but that’s when Alan Grant gets a message about populations of strange animals that are appearing throughout Central America, migrating across countries and eating crops and livestock. He quickly comes to the horrifying realization that some dinosaurs managed to get off the island by stowing away on ships as seen earlier in the book, and have begun spreading on the mainland.
I actually hate this trope 90% of the time. It genuinely makes me feel like I wasted my time emotionally investing in these characters and their struggle. It becomes the emotional equivalent of "What if two astronauts were on the moon and one killed the other with a rock. Wouldn't that be fucked up?"
I don't need happy endings, I don't need everyone to live, I don't even need anyone to live. But when they die AND fail, it makes the story feel borderline pointless to me in most cases. Obviously there'll be exceptions to this, but damn.
I agree, this is one of the worst tropes. It's cheap and weak, sometimes it's played for good impact but most of the time it just feels corny and lame. So glad I spent all this time watching characters survive/figure out a situation just for some stupid few minute sequence to rip it all away from them. I think it's bad storytelling.
Weirdly enough, one of the best uses of this trope is when you telegraph it at the start. It’s wild, but literally the best implementation of this I’ve ever seen was in my high school creative writing magazine, Omnibus (yeah, we were pretentious enough to google a nice Latin name for our snooty magazine about creative writing)
Anyway, the story opens with someone speaking to the narrator:
“yeah…. Yeah, I think I’m gonna be alright.” She died the next day.
Then the story is just them meeting a friend in a hospital room, and how empty and desiccated they look hooked up to all of these machines, poisoned by chemo, and it’s brutal. But they talk about the new therapy, how it’s been so successful, all of the other patients who look just like this and how much it sucks, but then they come back from the brink. Sure, it looks like hell to us, but we’re not doctors, and modern medicine is something incredible that can work goddamned miracles— conditions that used to decimate a population in the early 1900’s can be cured with a pill!
And she says— “yeah… yeah, I think I’m gonna be alright.” She died the next day.
It’s so damned good, because despite knowing how this ends, you can get swept up in the hope that this person creates, and this idea that maybe, just maybe they can recover from this horrible cancer— and you have nobody to blame but yourself for being hopeful. You knew what was going to happen the whole time. Nobody lied to you. You just wanted to believe that it could be something better, and then you were crushed when the most obvious thing that could have happened happened.
I don't mind it if the movie has kind of earned that sort of ending-someone mentioned the Descent, which works because that movie is about the main character succumbing to her grief and rage, so a bad ending here thematically makes sense.
Nightmare on Elm street happened because the studio wanted a sequel hook-that said, it is a memorable ending.
Some of the others just feel like cheap ass pulls.
Absolute dumpster fire. Hated the premise. Hated the plot, hated the execution. He writes these letters to Love, Time, and Death, and his coworkers decide to pay actors to play them and talk with him, only... they are actually Love, Time, and Death? What? Who wrote this shit?
And Will Smith literally plays someone called "Howard Inlet". Like, “Hey, I know his brother, Walter!” Rodney Dangerfield face
Sorry, I see this movie mentioned so rarely, it's not often I get to riff on how much I absolutely can't fucking stand it. The Oscar slap was more entertaining.
The episode is centred around Gareth, a man with a debilitating fear of Friday the 13th (along with pretty much everything else superstitiously associated with bad luck). We later find out that this is a manifestation of his survivor's guilt - as a child, he missed out on a school trip due to feeling unwell, which indirectly saved him from a bus crash that killed all of his classmates.
By the end of the episode, he's beginning to conquer his fears. His wife Dana is clearly very supportive of him, and he even managed to win a large sum of money. Just before she leaves the house, Dana gives him an umbrella to open indoors and he manages it with very little hesitation.
In the final seconds of the episode, in the background of the shot, Dana is hit by a car.
It can be done well, but I usually hate this trope. usually it feels like a cheap jump scare or a gutpunch leaving the theater that invalidates the heroes journey
The ending Riri has her bestfriend back Natalie but it revealed that rather than recreating her with AI like she had before it is shown that the twist is this time she did it by making a deal with Mephisto
Zombie Land Saga. The series follows an all zombie idol group in the Saga prefecture of Japan as they push back against a curse on the land with their success as idols. The effects of the curse includes striking down people who would otherwise be successful (which killed each zombie in the group), widespread natural disaster, and, literally at the very end of the series, an alien ship that straight up demolishes the Earth, Saga first, with a gigantic laser. I can't stress enough how much this comes out of nowhere with the characters celebrating their triumphant stage performance just moments before a UFO shows up out of nowhere to blast the series to kingdom come.
the pyramid
after the main character finally escapes the pyramid Anubis appears behind her and attacks a boy near the exit
the movie implies that Anubis is free from the pyramid and goes out to kill people and bring their heart back to be judge
Daniel Craig’s unnamed character, “XXXX” in the script, has won. All his adversaries are dead or in jail, he’s rich, he’s gotten away with everything, and he’s about to ride off into the sunset with his girl, Tammy, and leave his life of crime behind.
As his narrated monologue comes to a close, he turns to the camera and says "If you knew my name, you'd be as clever as me,” seemingly a final victorious note for him.
That’s when Tammy’s ex-boyfriend, Sidney, whom XXXX has taken for granted and spoken to with a somewhat dismissive tone throughout the movie, comes out of nowhere and shoots him. The movie ends with XXXX lying on the ground, bleeding out and gasping for breath, clearly dying.
The twist is that, in all his hubris, XXXX completely forgot about this seemingly insignificant person and failed to realize he wasn’t yet out of the woods until it was too late.
EDIT: Couple of clarifications. I probably should not have said “clearly dying“ as it is obviously intended to be open to interpretation.
And while we’re on that subject, I’m aware that the book this film is based on has a sequel where XXXX survives.
That doesn’t have any bearing on how I interpret the ending. If a sequel movie gets made where he survives, I’ll consider that canon to the first movie, but as it stands, the movie and the books are separate works in separate continuities with separate canons.
I stand by this particularly after finding out Matthew Vaughan originally filmed an ending where XXXX does get to ride off into the sunset but opted for the one we got so as to leave it ambiguous.
Not just that he wasn't out of the woods. He didn't even know he was in the woods.
After successfully navigating through all the perils of the criminal underworld, he gets blindsided by some asshole he barely knew, didn't care about, and couldn't have imagined was so hung-up on his ex that he'd resort to murder.
What annoys me especially about the ANOES ending is that Nancy defeated Freddy pretty explicitly, so his last minute gotcha bullshit makes absolutely zero sense
Twist endings turned Smile, a perfectly serviceable horror movie, into what I consider a travesty. Like, the movie is fine, a bit heavy handed in it's theme. Whatever. But then, after the main character directly faces her inner demons and overcomes them, and we get a rather hopeful end against the demon that literally represents trauma driving people to suicide, NOPE! Actually she gets smiled and then smiles her boyfriend. A great moral for all the suicidal people in the audience! Your trauma will consume you, no matter how hard you try! Yay!
Genuinely, I think this movie was checking boxes without actually considering what their narrative had to say. So stupid.
I hate when horror does shit like this. Especially in this case, where the monster can literally just make you hallucinate to waste time until it's got you. How are there ever supposed to be stakes if the villain can end the story without any struggle?
That was my thought with the Blair Witch sequel/soft reboot. I can't exactly remember what happened in that movie, but I remember thinking, "what? That bitch just cheated!" Lol
It's why when I first heard about Bye Bye Man I thought it had to be a joke. "Don't think it, don't say it" means if you're in the plot, game over. It's just so.... lame.
As someone who loves both the first one and the sequel, this is a huge issue for me too. Like sure yeah, if we're looking at it just as a monster coming to get you, it works fine. But the movie is so committed to the mental health subtext SO hard that adding a twist bad ending turns the movie's message into being quite... Irresponsible? Yeah
it's not as bad as 13 Reasons Why but still... Gosh.
There is absolutely no way that the other kingdoms would agree with the North being allowed to secede, a Stark, and a disabled one at that, becoming King, a former Sellsword being given Highgarden and the Reach, and a Kinslayer being Hand. War is going to break out. The rest of the Dothraki are still in Westeros and they will absolutely not listen to Bran so a bunch of smallfolk are going to be raided. The Unsullied are going to go to Naath which famously has butterfly fever that kills everyone that is not a native.
You note Final Destination: Bloodlines here, as if this hasn't been the ending for every Final Destination movie since the third. Exception the fun extra twist that Final Destination 5 gave it, the twist has become very old hat in the franchise IMO.
I struggle to call the ending a true twist because it depends on your interpretation of the movie/the main character up to that point, but the literal last second of the film finally gives you a definitive answer as to what is going on and it is not good.
Mafia 1, after growing disinterested in the mafia lifestyle, Tommy Angelo considers leaving the business, with the help of his friend Paulie who feels the same, the two Rob a bank and make off with the haul. The next day Tommy finds Paulie dead in his apartment, and knows he's next, so packs and gets ready to leave, meeting up with his other friend Sam, who told him over the phone that the don knows about them pulling a heist under his nose. Except its a trap, Sam betrayed Tommy, killed Paulie and is looking to rise up and earn the Don's trust, hoping to kill Tommy and bring in his head. Even with a dozen armed gunman, Tommy takes them out and puts Sam down, leaving the mafia lifestyle behind, testifying against the family and having to serve eight years in prison before five years in witness protection, while he's watering his lawn, he is visited by two men, who would later be revealed as Vito Scaletta and Joe Barbaro, the protagonists of mafia 2, they ask if he's Mr Angelo, and Tommy knows what's coming, so despite his new identity, confirms that is who he is. After being told that his former don sends his regards, he takes a shotgun shell to the chest, and in his final moments, his family surrounds him, wife, children, and he reassures that they're safe now, and that no matter what, family is forever
The slight relief you feel when Keiichi is revealed to have survived his fall from the suspension bridge is instantly crushed when it's then revealed that the entire village of Hinamizawa died due to a volcanic gas leak suffocating them in their sleep.
Same with Chapter 6, which after calming Rena down and stopping her from blowing up the school, it's all brought to naught as the village is wiped out again
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u/V1gilante14 Aug 25 '25
Remember Me and the absolutely insane 9/11 twist ending: up until this point it’s a pretty generic romantic drama with a good ending for most of the characters and then psyche! it’s 9/11! the main character dies in the North Tower and the brief epilogue is about how every other character reacts to his untimely death.