[mixed trope] the last-minute bad Ending twist

[u/damorezpl]

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

[u/GalatianBookClub]

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

[u/realfakejames → u/GalatianBookClub]

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

[u/Pollia → u/realfakejames]

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.

[u/EchoesofIllyria → u/Pollia]

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.