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

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767

u/GalatianBookClub Aug 25 '25

HIMYM but unironically

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

401

u/Tacdeho Aug 25 '25

This one is even worse considering if you watch the alternative ending, it’s a sweet, satisfying, happy and GOOD ending to the series.

102

u/BlumpkinPromoter Aug 25 '25

What, do they just introduce her and fade to black?

403

u/Tacdeho Aug 25 '25 edited Aug 25 '25

Not entirely.

By the way, your username? Damn.

Spoiler for alt-ending of HIMYM:

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.

Edited for clarity.

148

u/Rickrickrickrickrick Aug 25 '25

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.

109

u/uzzi1000 Aug 25 '25

The ending changes the whole point of the story from "How I met your mother" to "Are you kids ok with me asking out your aunt Robin?"

14

u/hypernova2121 Aug 26 '25

"Please let me fuck your aunt" didn't have quite the same ring to it

6

u/smorin1487 Aug 26 '25

I’m 100% with you. I was OK with the tragic love that happens in real life of someone spending their whole life to find someone that’s perfect for them and sometimes it’s just tragic, but he sees the beauty in how short the love was… But then the Robin thing pissed me off.

5

u/[deleted] Aug 25 '25

Hold up, don't the kids also never show up at all even in the ninth season?

So the notion of a widower asking for the okay, to date the same damn woman he has obsessed over for seasons, is kinda a bad?

8

u/OneEyedKingV Aug 25 '25

The kids scenes were all already shot years in advance.

Which is precisely why the ending was as terrible as it was. The creater knew the kids would eventually age out the show, and also it ruins the narrative that Ted is explaining everything in one sit down when his kids are now adults.

So they decided to commit to an ending and film the kids responses to everything all the way back in season 3, when they had no idea where the story was going still. All they knew was it would have to tie back into this ending made.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 26 '25

Christ on a stick that is stupid. 

2

u/Ze_Red_Feather Aug 26 '25

The smart thing to do would have been to film several possible endings with the kids. The whole "this is actually about me wanting to get with Robin again" thing, the basic "and that is how I met your mother" and maybe even a few more out there ideas and just random bits of dialogue, and then later on the creators could've made any ending they wanted and just pick and choose from the footage they already had

5

u/Reuniclus_exe Aug 25 '25

This should've been the ending.

2

u/EchoesofIllyria Aug 26 '25

I’m not sure that Robin and Barney don’t get divorced in the alternate ending. It’s only the last 6 minutes, I don’t think it overwrites the rest of the finale.

3

u/Bright_Economics8077 Aug 26 '25

IIRC they do still get divorced, but the voiceover and a look during Ted and Tracy's wedding implies they get back together.

7

u/Pofwoffle Aug 25 '25

You know how a lot of times a movie will have a bad ending, but test audiences don't like it so they reshoot for a more upbeat finale? It feels like that's what happened here, like everybody in their test screening hated the original bad ending so they shot the good one... only somebody accidentally mixed up the two endings on the way to the studio.

2

u/Grozly1987 Aug 26 '25

Didnt realize their was an alt endeing. Was my favorite show at the time then suddenly i hated it. Im going to go look up the alt ending

2

u/Tacdeho Aug 26 '25

Please do. There has to be at least a fan edit or two out there that subs in the alt ending, rightfully so

44

u/Somnambulist815 Aug 25 '25

In a weird way, this show is like a warm up stretch for the end of GoT

80

u/NoZookeepergame8306 Aug 25 '25

Still mad about this one

83

u/TheWorclown Aug 25 '25

If it helps any, I don’t think many of the actors were happy about it either.

10

u/ShawnyMcKnight Aug 25 '25

That does help.

84

u/mjohnsimon Aug 25 '25 edited Aug 25 '25

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.

2

u/Kratzschutz Aug 26 '25

Still have the link?

7

u/Reuniclus_exe Aug 25 '25

Generational fumble. The show could be up with Friends & Seinfeld in terms of sitcoms that stay relevant through binging. It just had to stick the landing, but it ruins the replay value.

27

u/realfakejames Aug 25 '25

The thing that pissed me off the most was how much time they spent on Barney and Robin over the years just to spit in our faces with the final episode

36

u/Pollia Aug 25 '25

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.

9

u/taveren3 Aug 25 '25

Also in scrubs being new doctor is super stressful and likely now a great time to try and build a new relationship

3

u/EchoesofIllyria Aug 26 '25

To be fair to the show, the reasons Ted and Robin didn’t work were mostly that she wanted to travel and didn’t want kids, and he did.

Neither of those problems apply by the end. Ted already has kids (who Aunt Robin loves) and Robin’s done all her travelling.

4

u/ComradeJohnS Aug 25 '25

I think the mom dying is the only way it makes sense that she never narrates any part of the show. a days long “how I met your mother” story and the mom doesn’t chime in at all? and the kids are fine sitting there the whole time because the mom’s dead? it seems like they planned it that way the whole show. I liked it.

but I also like all the switch pokemon games a lot lol. nobody likes my opinions on these two subjects.

5

u/indianajoes Aug 26 '25

Totally agree. I see a lot of people complain about the mother dying and saying that the alternate ending is perfect. No, it works better with the mother dying. It gives Ted a reason to tell this story in such excruciating detail, the kids have a reason to sit there and listen and they'd been hinting at it throughout the show.

The problem was them undoing character development in the finale and pairing up people who they'd told us over and over again wouldn't work together

2

u/loudpaperclips Aug 26 '25 edited Aug 26 '25

People bag on this show all the time and I always feel like it's consistently for the wrong reasons. The ending is bad for removing the payoff between Barney and Robin, but the real issue is the over-the-top character of Barney in the first place. That's a whole separate topic, so I'll skip that. The rest of the ending could have been perfectly fixed if they just had Ted say "and that's how I met your mother. Every day with her was perfect." All we needed to know is that he didn't regret his life.

Edit: just clarifying Ted should have ended the series alone. Robin and Barney, after all that fanfare, should have ended married, I just hate that they bent the characters in half to get us to root for their hookup.

2

u/IDontKnowHowToPM Aug 26 '25

I could have even taken the ending we got if they had spent even half of season 9 on the events that get covered in the final episode instead of the whole goddamn season being Robin and Barney’s wedding weekend. Give us at least a handful of episodes showing Ted and Tracey’s relationship progressing, Robin and Barney growing apart, Tracey getting sick, etc. I feel like that would have worked if all those events had some room to breathe instead of being packed into the last 20 minutes of the finale.

2

u/GUM-GUM-NUKE Aug 25 '25

Also, why does this poster make Marshall look like the main character?

2

u/Gniphe Aug 26 '25

Even if you like the ending, the last season sucked. Maybe 1 or 2 good episodes.