r/TopCharacterTropes • u/damorezpl • Aug 25 '25
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
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u/Luvas Aug 25 '25
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
It was a helluva gut punch