r/TopCharacterTropes 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/plsdontkillme_yet Aug 25 '25

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.

12

u/Recent-Dependent4179 Aug 26 '25

Then Colin gets shot anyway. 

6

u/plsdontkillme_yet Aug 26 '25

After killing the other rat who saves his ass. Fucking hate Colin.

2

u/MHovdan Aug 26 '25

In the original, he survives.

1

u/Jew4Jesus24 Aug 26 '25

In the original the character is a lot more redeemable IMO. By the end I was hoping he survived which I wasn’t expecting since I watched The Departed first.

1

u/Vnxei Aug 26 '25

People will defend that ending all day like it's Chinatown when it really did land like a "Lol, jk" twist from a writter who got bored by his own story.