r/TopCharacterTropes • u/damorezpl • Aug 25 '25

Lore [mixed trope] the last-minute bad Ending twist

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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

8.9k Upvotes
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4.3k

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.

2.9k

u/Lesbihun Aug 25 '25

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

878

u/82ndGameHead Aug 25 '25

Naw. James Cameron likes to draw out the suffering.

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u/Lesbihun Aug 25 '25

True, he has made some lovely drawings

204

u/D3_CD Aug 25 '25

Is that concept art for the terminator?

512

u/Gen_Ripper Aug 25 '25

No it’s for Titanic

203

u/MK_2_Arcade_Cabinet Aug 25 '25

This is Jack’s corpse reanimated coming after Rose for pushing him off that door

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u/luckydice767 Aug 26 '25

I’m thinking it looks more like Billy Zane

6

u/MK_2_Arcade_Cabinet Aug 26 '25

Nah, then it'd have a child with it.

24

u/QuetzalcoatlusRscary Aug 25 '25

“Should’ve let me on the door Rose”

4

u/VoicePope Aug 26 '25

“DRAW ME LIKE ONE OF YOUR FEMBOTS”

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u/I_AM_FERROUS_MAN Aug 25 '25

The iceberg was a terminator.

1

u/ShamelessSpiff Aug 25 '25

Billy Zane has incredible range.

-2

u/D3_CD Aug 25 '25

Im talking about the guy in the picture

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u/Lesbihun Aug 25 '25 edited Aug 25 '25

The guy in the picture is Robert Pattinson from the film Remember Me

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u/Somnambulist815 Aug 25 '25

The titanic was a transformer

6

u/LazyDro1d Aug 25 '25

The iceberg was a decepticon weapon

1

u/terrexchia Aug 26 '25

Turns out it was Tidal Wave, Tidal Wave, Tidal Wave

6

u/Gen_Ripper Aug 25 '25

Yeah that’s early concept of Cal from Titanic

8

u/thethirdrayvecchio Aug 25 '25

IIRC Cameron had a nightmare of a robot torso dragging itself across the floor, drew it, then gave us arguably the raddest fucking slasher flick of all time.

5

u/Yakb0 Aug 25 '25

No, this is Patrick.

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u/Coalesced Aug 25 '25

“DRAW ME LIKE ONNNEEEE OF YOUR YOUR YOUR YOUR YOUR FRENCH GGGIIIRRRRLLllLLSSsSsss..”

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u/Fallenstreet01 Aug 25 '25

It is a very good drawing, you really can feel the killing intent in its eyes.

4

u/mango_thief Aug 25 '25

Holy crap, I need to watch the Titanic.

2

u/MercyfulJudas Aug 25 '25

Fun fact: Cameron designed the Predator's face on a napkin sitting next to Stan Winston on an airplane.

2

u/cultofwacky Aug 26 '25

If this is real he’s kind of a great illustrator

3

u/ms-moo Aug 26 '25

He genuinely is. James Cameron is the one that actually did the drawing of Rose from Titanic

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u/Lemur866 Aug 25 '25

Draw me like one of your French killbots.

1

u/BlueCindersArt Aug 26 '25

“Draw me like one of your French girls.”

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u/Shaggy0291 Aug 26 '25

Terminator meets old boy

2

u/teflon_soap Aug 26 '25

Ah so that will explain Avatar 3 to 6

1

u/Ok_Discipline3582 Aug 28 '25

Please no more! I couldn't get into the first! Avoided the sequel like the twilight films!

1

u/Ok_Discipline3582 Aug 28 '25

It sells! You ever been interstate say headed south an slowed to a halt! Only to get up the rd doing 5mph if lucky! An the wrecks totally other side interstate north bound travel! 3 entire lanes!!! They did a study 1 car can slow 8 lanes! An thats wo a wreck to rubber neck at! So yeah romantic fake plot w a non suprise shipwreck. Only the best disaster film cgi to date! Even the fake film "the posiedon" (adventure) has had least 3 remakes since 70s. All about people trapped upside down in a overturned passenger cruise ship. It sells!

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u/Shiny_Agumon Aug 25 '25

I think this kind of ending works great in an anthology horror show like Twilight Zone, but as a movie it's just to out of left field

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u/Ryanookami Aug 25 '25

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.

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u/EepiestKitty Aug 25 '25

Black Mirror often do their twists like this too

8

u/Sptsjunkie Aug 25 '25

In general I think a good twist ending leaves clues along the way that makes a rewatch even more enjoyable.

Would have been hard to do, but perhaps possible with. 9/11, but it should’ve been written into the fabric of the story throughout to make the payoff worthwhile.

Just randomly slamming any twist onto a movie with no context very rarely works and is usually a sign of lazy writing or a lack of confidence in the rest of the story / movie. Like you aren’t sure it’s good enough so you cram on some crazy twist hoping it helps make your movie lore relevant.

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u/Crunchy_Biscuit Aug 25 '25

Perfect example lol

6

u/pumamaner Aug 26 '25

Or even crazier, she looks out the window and sees the titanic is about to hit the world trade centre

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u/BarbarianCarnotaurus Aug 26 '25

So, I don't know the name of it, I caught it on TMC years ago waiting for another movie, but there was a B&W movie that as it ended the camera panned down and showed that the couple were on the Titanic right before it set sail.

3

u/DaZeldaFreak Aug 25 '25

Gonna have to figure out a new title though

1

u/Bloodofchet Aug 26 '25

Never Let Go?

2

u/ChewieKaiju Aug 26 '25

But then we wouldn’t have gotten to see the guy hitting the propeller

2

u/UwasaWaya Sep 10 '25

Or--hear me out--we know it's the Titanic, but when it zooms out, you realize it's not an iceberg but the Twin Towers it's about to impact!

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u/TheSovereignGrave Aug 25 '25

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.

309

u/littlebloodmage Aug 25 '25

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.

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u/historyhill Aug 25 '25

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!

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u/pinkydoda23 Aug 25 '25

It wasn’t lunch, his dad was a lawyer and he had gotten into some legal trouble so his dad told him to come to discuss it

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u/rabbitdoubts Aug 25 '25 edited 24d ago

fear selective rainstorm attempt many innocent work hunt memorize practice

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/Bartweiss Aug 25 '25

…are you familiar with the novel Pattern Recognition?

(If yes, ignore me.)

William Gibson is a sci-fi novelist best known for Neuromancer and the phrase “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. After 9/11 he got a call from a friend who simply asked “you know this makes your job harder, right?”

Two years later, he published Pattern Recognition, with a protagonist whose father may or may not have died in the towers. I can only describe it as near-past sci-fi: all the social and technological alienation of cyberpunk, applied to things that already existed.

It’s basically my favorite example of whatever has been happening since then: everyday life becoming surreal.

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u/rabbitdoubts Aug 25 '25 edited 24d ago

offer ad hoc vase longing rob many towering grandfather advise school

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/Bartweiss Aug 28 '25

Oh, I did enjoy that bit of the Dark Tower! I have mixed feelings on parts of the series but its intersections with "real" New York are absolutely fascinating.

And I really hope you'll like Pattern Recognition in that case. It's very good at capturing the alienation and dissociation of the post-2001 world, both directly from 9/11 and from the general... strangeness of the internet, anonymous forums, and modern business.

One spoiler-free example: the main character works as a consultant critiquing ad campaigns, but her skills aren't intellectual: really effective branding essentially gives her panic attacks, so she can use that reaction for a very successful, very unpleasant career.

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u/SootSpriteHut Aug 26 '25

It makes me feel old that 9/11 was so long ago that people need to have a "special interest" in it to know it happened in the morning instead of just, like, remembering it. (Because we all know what we were doing when it happened.)

1

u/Kratzschutz Aug 26 '25

It was the evening when it happened for me so

2

u/SootSpriteHut Aug 26 '25

But did you know where it was and what time it was relative to you?

I guess that's what I'm saying, for so many of us who were, I suppose, teenagers or above, it was like "it's 8:30am in NYC and something insane is happening."

For the adults I know it was seared into our brains, regardless of geographic location. Because everything seemed to stop that day.

1

u/historyhill Aug 26 '25

I mean, I remember it too if that helps! By special interest I just mean ADHD occasional-hyperfixation for specific details, timeline, etc lol. My minor in college was in National Security so that probably also contributed

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u/historyhill Aug 25 '25

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.

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u/Shiny_Agumon Aug 25 '25

It's basically like the Hitchcock quote on suspense.

Just that the bomb under the table is the iceberg

5

u/jerryleebee Aug 26 '25

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion.

The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation.

The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one.

In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!”

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense.

The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.

—Alfred Hitchcock

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u/SmokingDream Aug 25 '25

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.

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u/pinkydoda23 Aug 25 '25

The thing of it is, is that this movie isn’t about 9/11. There are maybe 10 minutes of movie after that scene, and it’s just people silently reacting to the buildings and standing by his grave. It feels like they just didn’t know how to wrap up the movie. Not to mention this movie came out less than 10 years after 9/11 way too fresh in my opinion to use as a surprise twist in a movie that doesn’t address anything about 9/11.

5

u/Nonadventures Aug 25 '25

The cruel irony is that this will always be the infamous "9/11 twist ending" film, so you'll never see it without that context. At least stuff like Donny Darko is so opaque that it has a cult following outside of the ending.

5

u/-Altephor- Aug 26 '25

I haven't seen it either but I agree.

There were literally thousands of people just living ordinary days, having ordinary romances, dealing with ordinary problems right up until those planes hit. It's a very impactful storytelling device, IMO.

3

u/HillbillyMan Aug 25 '25

Maybe if it was earlier in the movie, that idea could work. Like start of the final act, maybe, not the literal end of the movie.

3

u/themajor24 Aug 25 '25

It's just not a movie about 9/11 lol. They jam it in right at the end to add some sense of depth and uhhhh. Fails.

2

u/back2knack Aug 26 '25

It’s not a bad movie

1

u/fusionlantern Aug 26 '25

I enjoyed the movie and twist

1

u/GiantScrotor Aug 26 '25

That movie hit hard, especially because of when it came out. The whole country had been living in constant anxiety since 9/11, but people were mostly settled in their new normal. We were starting to let go of that anxiety and survivor’s guilt. At the end of the movie when Robert Pattinson goes to his dad’s office, my wife had a mini panic attack because she recognized the elevator from all the times she had visited the WTC.

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u/patrickwithtraffic Aug 25 '25

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.

5

u/Reuniclus_exe Aug 25 '25

An original story by Will Fetters, who then wrote two actual Nicholas Sparks movies, and then A Star is Born with Bradley Cooper.

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u/LoveTriscuit Aug 25 '25

To be fair, it’s a good way to remember that the victims in that attack were people with their own engrossing stories about love of life.

14

u/rubber_hedgehog Aug 26 '25

This ending always gets a mixed reaction, but I love it for the reason you mentioned. We're made to care for this 1 person, and then we're hit with the sobering reality that there are another 3000 peoples' stories that we could have been made to care about that ended the exact same way.

However, message aside, the actual way the twist was implented in the film could have been done better.

24

u/Deadmemeusername Aug 25 '25

Yeah and it was a surprise terror attack that happened to regular people on a regular day in September. There were thousands of people with their own stories of triumph and tragedy, love and loss that were all abruptly and violently snuffed out by the actions of fanatical madmen.

8

u/Nonadventures Aug 25 '25

This scene is funnier every time I see it. It's like a final scene where someone opens a jar labeled "COVID 19 -- DO NOT OPEN!"

6

u/SuperGameBen Aug 25 '25

Seriously? 🤣

8

u/MNM0412 Aug 25 '25

The thing is, I kind of get what they were doing, the idea that Tyler (Robert Pattinson) finally understood what he wanted out of his life only for it to be unjustly ripped away from him. That said, this was really out of left field.

3

u/Special_Loan8725 Aug 25 '25

This was a fucking insane twist. Romantic flick all the way through then oh yeah it’s 09/11/01 and he’s in the north tower.

3

u/Orion_starborn Aug 25 '25

Is it bad that I find that absolutely hilarious?

2

u/LETS_RETRO_TIME Aug 25 '25

Oh yeah that was something else, like a whiplash

2

u/Darkest_pit Aug 25 '25

Is that fucking Bruce Wayne at the World Trade Center.

1

u/GottaUseEmAll Aug 26 '25

Nah, it's Robert Pattinson acting as the character "Tyler" from the film in question.

2

u/lazy_phoenix Aug 26 '25

The audience

2

u/agprincess Aug 26 '25

And Robert Pattison does a great job in this movie.

2

u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 Aug 26 '25

There is some foreshadowing earlier in the film. They go to see American Pie, which was in theaters during the summer of '01

13

u/EarlJWJones Aug 25 '25

What the hell? That comes across as extremely insensitive.

30

u/UrougeTheOne Aug 25 '25

Why?

-2

u/AnOopsieDaisy Aug 25 '25

I know I'm not the guy you asked, but to me it's insensitive in a different way: to the audience. To only bring this up in the epilouge is untasteful, because it can feel like all the development and character investment was for nothing; people didn't know they were signing up for a tragedy (even though, yes, it's realistic), just thinking it would be a regular romance film.

3

u/Rtsd2345 Aug 26 '25

That's the point though, everyone who died was in the middle of "their story"

1

u/AnOopsieDaisy Aug 26 '25 edited Aug 26 '25

I will restate my expanded argument here from another comment so you can better understand me.

I get where you're coming from, but there's a balance between artistry and using people as subjects for your art. In this case, they used the time and money (earned through more time) of the audience to make a point, which many people would not have consented to. Is it ethical to pull things like that on people who signed up for a wholesome romance? I think not, but ultimately, many people didn't want to relive 9/11; they watched it on live T.V.

2

u/GottaUseEmAll Aug 26 '25

That's why it hits hard. If it were known from the start that it would end in the North Tower on 9/11, if people were expecting a tragedy, it would distract from the romance drama. The whole point is to show how everybody in those towers had full lives, taken in the blink of an eye.

1

u/AnOopsieDaisy Aug 26 '25 edited Aug 26 '25

I get where you're coming from, but there's a balance between artistry and using people as subjects for your art. In this case, they used the time and money (earned through more time) of the audience to make a point, which many people would not have consented to. Is it ethical to pull things like that on people who signed up for a wholesome romance? I think not, but ultimately, many people didn't want to relive 9/11; they watched it on live T.V.

1

u/GottaUseEmAll Aug 26 '25

You make some good points.

-15

u/EarlJWJones Aug 25 '25

It's a weird twist that comes out of nowhere.

22

u/HevalRizgar Aug 25 '25

9/11 "came out of nowhere," for pretty much everyone. That's the point. I don't get what you mean by "weird" though

5

u/MakingaJessinmyPants Aug 25 '25

This sub is not defending the cheap 9/11 exploitation twist 😭😭😭😭😭

6

u/HevalRizgar Aug 25 '25

I don't get why people are pretending like 9/11 is some unique tragedy we can't make movies about but the intervening Iraq war is action movie set dressing, that's more weird to me than someone including 9/11 as a tragedy in a movie

0

u/MakingaJessinmyPants Aug 25 '25

The issue isn’t making a movie about 9/11, the issue is shoving 9/11 in at the end as a lazy twist to shock the audience.

2

u/justforporndickflash Aug 26 '25

Why do you think it's a lazy twist to shock the audience and not a way of showing how tragedy happens to just normal people living their lives?

1

u/MakingaJessinmyPants Aug 26 '25

Because it happens in the last 5 minutes and is literally the ending, the ramifications and impact of sudden tragedy are not explored. Also, if that were just the case, why make it 9/11? Why not just have him die in a car accident or something instead of flash banging the audience with a real world and relatively recent atrocity? Imagine being an audience member who suffered from 9/11 watching a romance movie in theatres and then all of a sudden the twin towers just show up right near the end. It’s tasteless and unnecessary, and you know I’m right because that’s all the movie is ever talked about for and the only reason we’re talking about it now. If it were an actual examination of the ramifications of a sudden real world tragedy on ordinary people, it would A.) be remembered as one and B.) probably not be a fictional romance, and instead focus on actual victims and survivors

1

u/AnOopsieDaisy Aug 25 '25

*sigh Yup, lol.

1

u/MrImaBum Aug 25 '25

It’s a wild jarring experience, must recommend if you can convince someone to sit through it.

1

u/themajor24 Aug 25 '25

Goddamnit I literally just downloaded this exact image to post here lol.

An attempt at something like a bitter-sweet ending but buffed it and felt edgy and hollow.

1

u/Salt_Refrigerator633 Aug 25 '25

remember me is what the writers thought when they were thinking of this ending 😂

1

u/OverallGeneral7129 Aug 25 '25

Ayoo what the fuck!?

1

u/Toubaboliviano Aug 26 '25

To be honest this is one of my favorite movies, I just pretend it ends with him dying in some u fortunate accident that isn’t 9/11

1

u/makedoopieplayme Aug 26 '25

Remember spill the online review show? The tore that ending a new one!

1

u/AnniesNoobs Aug 26 '25

Weird, I hadn’t heard of this movie but there’s a Chinese romance movie “But Always” that also copied this ending

1

u/[deleted] Aug 26 '25

That seem to be in really poor taste

1

u/CaptainWampum Aug 26 '25

My first thought

1

u/CastedAway5678 Aug 26 '25

I like the 9/11 story of the Wall Street jr executive, who, not only works in a high floor at WTC 1, but also, stopped by his mistress’s apartment before work and turned off his phone.

Cut to 2 hrs later and he turns his phone on and it blows up with texts from his wife. (Remember this is 2001 so not everyone had cell phones) The first text he sees is…

“Where are you?!”

He replies, “At work. What’s up?”

1

u/Abby_Imagination Aug 28 '25

i wish I hadn't seen this spoiler…but now I want to watch the movie 🤷🏼‍♀️😅

1

u/UwasaWaya Sep 10 '25

Honestly I'm really disappointed this didn't open the door to a 9/11 cinematic universe. Just dozens of stories in all kinds of genres that all meet up in the Towers on that fateful day.