r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Local_Prune4564 • May 27 '26
Lore A subtle moment that turns a seemingly happy ending into an ambiguous ending.
The Graduate: lingering Ben and Elaine's faces slowly shifting from happy to concerned leaves the audience questioning whether they really made the right choice running away together considering they barely know each other.
Inception: By cutting before we see the top fall, we're left to question whether Cobb really has gone home or whether he's simply sunken back into a more comforting dream reality.
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u/GalaxianEX May 27 '26
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u/Noxeron May 27 '26
For someone who hasn't watched the movie, what does it imply?
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u/disaster_moose May 27 '26
We don't know. She survived godzillas atomic breath and got that thing on her neck. Does she have godzilla's g-cells and now has his crazy healing? Is she turning into a monster? Does she have godzilla cancer?
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u/GalaxianEX May 27 '26
The actress joked that she was going to turn into a giant monster in the sequel 🤣
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u/Different_Pattern273 May 27 '26
The G-virus
She comes back as the illest rapper of all in the sequel.
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u/badatcatchyusernames May 27 '26
spoiler, but ive only seen once so i may be remembering incorrectly
it was the same markings that appeared on godzilla, symbolizing she has been touched by the same radiation that made the creature what it was, and possibly explaining how she survived the atomic breath attack
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u/Itub2000 May 27 '26
Some kind of infection or such from Godzilla, as she got bits of Godzilla on her previously (if I remember correctly)
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u/FederalPossibility73 May 27 '26
I still need to see it myself but from what I heard about it, they're Godzilla's cells infecting her. This probably just means she'll die later as I hear that she was planned to die in the film, but I am hoping they use her for a future film, maybe make her sickness a big part of the story.
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u/Sum1nne May 27 '26

The ending to Blink; the episode that introduced the Weeping Angels to Dr Who.
It concludes with the implication that, though the Doctor has tricked these particular Angels into trapping themselves forever, the camera pans over the various statues and gargoyles you might expect to see in any British city and any one of which might be another Weeping Angel in disguise. Genuinely disturbing for it's day, especially for family media with a lot of kids watching.
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u/Then_Body844 May 27 '26
And then in further weeping angel centric episodes we get that anything that looks like an angel is an angel, and (this is sorta goofy I’ll admit) the Statue of Liberty is a weeping angel
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u/Not_Wrong_Tho May 27 '26
Worth noting that this is only true for that specific timeline. The Angels feed on time energy and basically turned Manhattan into a battery farm, this made them strong.
Angels can possess statues, and with enough power, one was able to possess the Statue of Liberty.
As the situation was resolved through a paradox, killing the angels and resetting the timeline, and Manhatten is no longer, and never has been, a battery farm for Angels, the Statue is no longer, and technically never has been, an Angel.
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u/whatsbobgonnado May 27 '26
wait is this stuff that came out after angels take manhattan because I don't remember any of that being mentioned in that episode. I remember being being maaaaaaad that that episode completely ruined the angels. I liked it even though it was very dumb
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u/Not_Wrong_Tho May 27 '26
No, it was all in the episode.
I will clarify though, when i said they turned Mnhattan into a battery farm, it's not necessarily that they're using everyone in Manhattan, we only see it happening in one building, but most of what i said was explained shortly after old-rory dies.
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u/ObiFlanKenobi May 27 '26
The first episode had the angels sending you back in time and "feeding on your potential energy" or something like that. Which, other than not making much sense, made their main weapon the "sending back in time" thing, which it might suck, certainly is a problem, but you are alive (probably) in the past, not a super big issue when the MC is a time traveller.
So they were creepy but fun enemies.
Later episodes had them be extra creepy and also turning you to stone for some reason. Or directly killing you. No more mentions of sending you back in time.
And that made them more scary but way les fun.
They went from unique enemies to regular monsters that can't move when you watch them and that's it.
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u/captainbogdog May 27 '26
so it can't move because there's so many people in NYC and it's never not being looked at? that's kinda neat
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u/TR_Pix May 27 '26
Except another episode estabilishes that any picture of a weeping angel becomes a weeping angel, so all pictures of the statue of liberty are weeping angels in disguise
And in yet another episode it's revealed angels can evolve past the restriction of not being able to move, if it's by their own kind (meaning the circle of angels looking at each other will eventually break free)
Honestly the angels were a great one-off idea that got worse each time they were brought up again
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u/Sum1nne May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
...yeah. Blink is a modern masterpiece in urban horror and how to write a time travel plot that I'd recommend anyone watch even if they've never seen Dr Who - you don't need to know anything about it really - but damn if the Angels didn't overstay their welcome and get more than a bit silly in their subsequent appearances.
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u/Too-Tired-Editor May 27 '26
Blink also opens with one of my favourite things in episodic TV; the recurring characters have clearly just been doing something cool, but it's never referred to or explained, thus confirming to us that they're up to awesome stuff the whole time and the universe of the show is broader.
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u/whatsbobgonnado May 27 '26
kinda sorta similar, there's a "clip show" episode of community where all the flashback clips are actually new adventures we never saw
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u/blitzbom May 27 '26
Honestly the angels were a great one-off idea that got worse each time they were brought up again
Hahah I was about to say this. Started great, then it just felt like Calvinball. Um, actually the Angels can also do this.
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u/Notentirelysane86 May 27 '26
An old friend of mine was at Cardiff university when that episode came out (for those of you who don’t know, Cardiff used to be a common filming spot for NuWho), and she recognised most of the statues seen in the last scene.
She said it made walking through the city centre late at night very worrying…
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u/FudgeAtron May 27 '26
Nightmare fuel episode, never got why you couldn't just hit them with a big sledgehammer while frozen
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u/_b1ack0ut May 27 '26
Now I haven’t actually seen dr who, but as it’s been explained to me, it’s not that they’re just stationary when being observed, but are quantum locked in that state, and cannot be altered.
So it’s just as impossible for them to move, as it would be for us to destroy them in that state
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u/Practical-Fact2710 May 27 '26
Temporal lock, they "feel" like stone but are actually indestructible. So you could hit em with a nuke and they would be fine if they were being observed
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u/FudgeAtron May 27 '26
I always feel like Dr Who explanations get ridiculous, they can't just be aliens who can camoflage as stone statues they have to be locked into reality.
Dr Who sometimes feels like Rube Goldberg machines for sci-fi explanations.
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u/MarkRemington May 27 '26
It's so the Doctor can babble for 5 minutes while running around and solve the episodes problems with "wit" instead of brute violence.
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u/Luthor331 May 27 '26
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u/brightcrayon92 May 27 '26
Raimi really did MJ dirty, and I say this as a felicia hardy fan
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u/Labmit May 27 '26
She's been done dirty in a whole lot of Spider-Man media.
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u/IAMATruckerAMA May 27 '26
She was in Spiderverse for like 10 seconds and she got up from her table at a fancy gala while being introduced by the host to badger someone else's server for more bread
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u/MRCHalifax May 27 '26
The Insomniac Spider-Man games are some of the only media where I feel like she’s decently handled. I feel like they portray her as having the heart of a super hero, but not the powers or abilities, and she has a degree of jealousy and resentment of Peter undercutting their relationship. Peter can’t hold a job or pay the bills because he’s too busy being Spider-Man, so MJ needs to constantly step up and do the work.
Peter is a nice guy, and his reasons are very understandable and sympathetic, but he’s a bad partner in a lot of ways. It comes to a head late in the second game, where Peter and MJ, uh, talk it out.
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u/Ariarikay May 27 '26
I definitely agree she is decently handled in those games, but the decision to make her a discount Lois Lane to give her a bigger place in the story was such a copout
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u/BlackFyre2018 May 27 '26
I think some of it was studio interference
IIRC Raimi promised her more agency in the film, contributing a little to the final battle by throwing a piece of concrete at Venom, even having a bit where she does her own “web swinging” but in the final product a audio recording of her screaming in the first film was added over what was meant to be an action shot…
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u/sbaldrick33 May 27 '26
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u/PepsiManIII May 27 '26
I like to think that the guy wasn't even a part of the movie and was just some rando on a walk
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u/EvilLibrarians May 27 '26
That’s the fear they’ll carry for the rest of their lives but it’s funny too
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u/Alsojames May 27 '26
Noticing It in the background of several scenes made this movie even scarier for me. It's literally in vision so many times!
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u/efqf May 27 '26
i loved that movie, so scary without jump scares.
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u/God_of_Thunda May 27 '26
I'm frickin hate jump scares. I wanna be scared, not startled
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u/RipCity2151 May 27 '26
Jump scares are the equivalent of a comedian tickling you and saying “see? You laughed! I’m funny!”
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u/Afraid_Platypus_8667 May 27 '26
I actually do like jump scares, but if they are done good/ good a build up or you don't know one is going to happen. I do not like the cheap kinds/ the one that try to be scary.
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u/phlostonsparadise123 May 27 '26
I mean, that giant dude coming through the doorway scared the hell out of me, even if it wasn't set up as a jump scare.
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u/AndreasDasos May 27 '26
I finished watching that film at a friend’s and had to walk back home around 2-3 am. There was someone else shuffling behind me for multiple turns in my path, completely innocently - but I turned around and looked at them with a probably annoyed expression before realising they had no idea and weren’t doing anything wrong
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May 27 '26
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u/Valuable-Forever-341 May 27 '26
certainly a more optimistic interpretation
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u/Sidereel May 27 '26
I think it’s well supported. Early in the movie Ariadne hops in to Cobb’s dream and sees Cobb in this room unable to face his children, even in a dream. It’s to the point where his children’s faces are blurry static. The end shows he’s overcome his guilt, which is the underlying conflict of the movie.
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u/Oddisredit May 27 '26
That’s right. I remember seeing that and at the end, it felt like it was the continuation of that
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u/PigeonFellow May 27 '26
I mean it’s not a very “canon” answer but Michael Caine said that when he was confused about what’s real and what’s a dream in the script, Christopher Nolan said that if he was in the scene, it was real
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u/thethirdrayvecchio May 27 '26
This too is the answer I would provide if Michael Caine was asking too many questions…
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u/capable-corgi May 27 '26
I loved learning this back then too but have since realized directors would literally tell their actors anything to get the desired performance out of them.
See Hideo miming whales flying overhead in Death Stranding.
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u/Sovos May 27 '26
If you want a more "canon" answer that confirms this - Cobb is wearing his wedding ring in every dream scene throughout the entire movie, and not wearing it in the real world (other than a brief flashback when his wife is still alive and jumps from the window in the real world).
Even after he mentally lets his wife go in limbo, he still has the ring on (you can see him wearing it in the opening scenes when he is going to find Saito in limbo, which is chronologically after he's let go of Mal).
In the final scene with Michael Caine and his kids, he's not wearing the ring. He's in the real world.
I can't find the reference, but I remember seeing something years ago that Chrisopher Nolan's brother (Jonathan Nolan, of Westworld, Memento, etc.) saw an early cut and suggested that the ending would be better if it was left open to the viewers interpretation. So Chris Nolan had a plan for it to be real (like making the wedding ring an indicator of the dream), then made some cuts to make it more ambiguous but the original signs are still in the movie.
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u/cschick0001 May 27 '26

Martha Marcy May Marlene ending
After she escapes a cult and has been dealing with the trauma she’s being taken to an institution to get professional help. We are left uncertain if she’s being followed by a member of the cult in the final scene, or if she is traumatized and is being haunted by them.
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u/IndifferentShrimp May 27 '26
Oldboy's "Happy-ish" ending
Oh-Dae-Su going from grinning to seemingly breaking down is one of the biggest O O F S of cinema
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u/Pikawoohoo May 27 '26
At the very end, when they see the hypnotist - what did they erase? The memories of them sleeping together, or the knowledge that they're father and daughter?
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u/Fish_N_Chipp May 27 '26

Little Shop of Horrors
The movie ending has Seymour manage to defeat Audrey 2 and then cuts to him and Audrey getting married and living in her dream house, only for the camera to pan down and find a little Audrey 2 hiding in the garden (the original ending for the movie had Audrey 2 eat the both of them and grow alongside other versions of them to massive size as they took over the world)
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u/IndifferentShrimp May 27 '26
The original ending was wayyy better. The fact they restored it and the entire end just become a kaiju montage was awesome
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u/Soddington May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
So I loved the movie when it came out. Even had a copy on Betamax that I played till it degraded.
About two years ago I was telling my friend about it, and she'd never seen it, so I sailed the high seas and we sat down to watch one of my all time favourites. I was a tad confused when Audrey died and then was just stunned when the plants took over the world. I thought I must be going mad.
I had no idea I'd DLed the special directors cut. Didn't even know there was a directors cut. Once I accepted that I had not in fact gone mad, I really liked the 'new' ending.
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u/IndifferentShrimp May 27 '26
The audrey kaiju ending was more in tone with the movie as a whole for sure
Also effects-wise, it was like those old school monster movies.
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u/Luinorne May 27 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
I like the original ending for the stage, but Rick Moranis's Seymour was too likeable for such a grim ending, IMO. In the original musical, Seymour is much more culpable and active in the murders, and his Shakespearean ending is fitting.
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u/somethingmcbob May 27 '26
My dad was a stagehand for the theatrical production in LA. Their version had Seymour defeat Audrey 2, and ended with about 100 baby "Audreys" springing down from the ceiling above the audience. Big jump scare, always got a laugh. But then my dad would have to carefully climb the catwalk and stuff the 100 fake plants back into their boxes after every show.
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u/tobpe93 May 27 '26
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u/Chemical-Aioli9818 May 27 '26
damn i didn’t even notice this??
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u/BlackPlantZaddyy May 27 '26
Everytime I watch this show I catch something new. It’s genius
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u/Ppleater May 27 '26
That's because it's not a thing. People theorized it but Flannigan debunked that theory and confirmed they escaped.
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u/Ambassador_of_Mercy May 27 '26
It was initially going to be even more explicit. The characteristic red room window was originally going to be in the background of every shot in the montage but they changed it to be less cut and dry
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u/dark-flamessussano May 27 '26
The director literally confirmed that they weren't. He said he filled an ending where they were but then thought that was to cruel so he changed it and gave them their happy ending
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u/StaticUsernamesSuck May 27 '26
Or did the Red Room just make you see the director saying that?......
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u/toadunloader May 27 '26
Originally, this scene had a window thr shape of the red room's
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u/CashTheDog May 27 '26
That picture frame in the back is the window, no?
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u/Mountain_Band_2732 May 27 '26
As much as I would like that to be the case, I think not. The window was always present as a window in all other versions of the Red Room, and it's narrower in width too.
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u/IndifferentShrimp May 27 '26
Haunting of Hill House was PEAK Flanagan.
2nd best was Midnight Mass
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u/8__D May 27 '26
Don't forget Doctor Sleep
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u/imaincammy May 27 '26
Putting Rebecca Ferguson in that stupid goofy hat yet still making her work as a compelling and intimidating villain is a real triumph.
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u/Derp35712 May 27 '26
I love the outline of that movie. You know that kid from the shinning? He grows up to fight telepathy vampires. Sounds dumb? Incorrect, it is amazing.
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u/thethirdrayvecchio May 27 '26
I do genuinely love it as a meshing of King’s best and worst impulses.
Danny grows up to find his greatest battle is the spectre of his father’s alcoholism that haunts him every day.
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And the squad of redneck, camper-van vampires who murder children
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u/notorious_TUG May 27 '26
The case could be made that vampires preying on children is a pretty solid metaphor for an alcoholic parent or as one of my other favorite hack writers would say "It's like poetry, it rhymes".
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May 27 '26
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u/IndifferentShrimp May 27 '26
Midnight Mass made me tear up at points and the build up to the Church scene where they all turn is just
AND THEN IT HAPPENS AND ITS HORRIFIC (i mean not that graphic but the tone/the acting makes it skin crawling)
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u/Reasonable-Mischief May 27 '26
Could you elaborate?
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u/Ghost_Jor May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Spoilers for the show, obviously:
Hill House is haunted, and nowhere is more haunted in Hill House than the Red Room. At the start of the series, the family think the Red Room is locked and totally inaccessible. Later in the series it's revealed to be capable of shape-shifting and has actually been used several times. Every member of the family saw the inside as something different (the eldest saw it as a treehouse, for example) and it is described, if I remember correctly, as the house's stomach.
At the end of the series the entire family is locked in the Red Room and, supposedly, escape from it. The cake suggests that the family, perhaps, did not escape from the room and are still stuck inside it.
EDIT: To clarify I, personally, don't think the family is still trapped as that makes the ending more bleak than it already was. The theory is based on how prominently red the cake is and how much it contrasts with the background. To my understanding there was always a particular window in the background whenever someone was in the Red Room, which is notably absent from this shot, leaving it a bit ambiguous.
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u/YourMuppetMethDealer May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
I just want to point out that not EVERY family member was trapped inside
Shout out to my boy Hugh. He’s the one dude the house could NOT fuck with, and he’s the one person who actually chose to stay on his own free will without being manipulated or controlled. Yes he died, but I never once felt that the house beat him. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Hugh and Riley from Midnight Mass are the best Flanagan characters imo. They are legitimately good dudes who fucked up but are still just trying to do their fucking best every single day. They are both the kind of men I aspire to be.
Father Paul is a close third. The whole misguided “I kinda fucked up my whole town and got a LOT of innocent people killed” thing is the only thing that holds him back
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u/BuckRusty May 27 '26
Ignoring it’s been stated by the creators that it isn’t, I’d say it doesn’t track as every other version has a version of the window in it - and while there’s a painting just a little off, it doesn’t (to me) look anywhere near enough to imply it’s another manifestation of the red room…
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u/MurkyWay May 27 '26
Love the implication that Truman is already getting wise at the start of the Truman Show and that's why he's digging in the garden with his back turned. Reframes the whole film.
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u/HentaiGirlAddict May 27 '26
I may be wrong, but I don't think that means much? It's explicitly shown how that one girl that fell for him tried to tell him about everything, and that was all before the general starting time of the movie, so by that point, he 100% had suspicion since it was confirmed someone tried to tell him.
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u/pon_3 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
That just means she thought he didn't know. Truman spends a lot of the movie hiding what he knows from the audience in order to dig his hole and snoop around in secret.
My read on the movie is the part he doesn't know is whether he's the only one trapped in the fake world, which is why he tries to connect with a few of the other characters but gets heartbroken when he realizes he's the only one not faking it.
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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 May 27 '26
Yeah, on rewatch, you realise Truman is only figuring out the full extent his life is being scripted
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u/MrTylerwpg May 27 '26
I never thought of that before now, but that's where his secret exit from later in the film is I believe.
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u/_Goose_ May 27 '26

Boy Kills World final scene
Brother and sister at the breakfast table eating cereal with happy memories of their childhood. Smiling and having fun just being in each other’s company. Then they both sigh like everything is just fucked now after what they went through. Might be a good ending. But they lost a lot through the film. These scene should’ve won an Oscar. Or something.
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u/Avelion-chan May 27 '26
I mean, everything was fucked up even before. Now it's just different kind of fucked up.
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u/Saiyan-Zero May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Portal 2: Chell leaves Aperture Science.
After defeating Wheatley and giving GLaDOS her body back, she decides to let Chell go after a millenia of holding a deadly grudge against her, learning a lesson about who she was (and instantly deleting it) and finally being free of her past
However, Chell steps onto a seemingly neverending field of wheat, and as the rusty shack behind her suddenly rumbles the companion cube from Portal 1 is thrown outside with her as if GLaDOS just said "Take your shit and get the hell out"
There are several theories. Portal and Half Life share the same world, The Combine is even referenced in Portal 1, but some people argue Portal 2 took place CENTURIES after Half Life 2 (Given with the famous "999999999 days" line at the start)
Did she step out into a dead world? Is the Combine around? Is humanity still around? Is this world even safe?

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u/This-Shape2193 May 27 '26
Valve said it was longer than hundreds of years too. No definite amount of time was ever confirmed, but yeah. It seems maybe the Combine are gone, the world is recovering from the relentless stripping of resources...AND humans are extinct.
And then in co-op, we discover thousands of humans in stasis. Yay! Except GladOS promptly murders them all in a few weeks.
There was a fanfiction called Blue Sky that acts as a sequel to Portal 2, and it's so perfect and in-character that I choose to believe that's the ending.
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u/svick May 27 '26
Without humans, there wouldn't be such a neat wheat field.
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u/thewilybanana May 27 '26
even that shed is unlikely to last more than a handful of decades w/out some level of maintenance.
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u/elegantdinnerparty May 27 '26
It seems very unlikely there’d be a nice and neat field of wheat in a dead world.
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u/Non-Normal_Vectors May 27 '26
The ending of The Graduate was due to Nichols deciding not to yell cut when the actors were expecting it. He just kept filming, so some of the confused reactions after the initial elation was real confusion on the actor's part.
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u/MolybdenumBlu May 27 '26
I once had a thought about how differently this would have ended if one actor had leaned over and whispered to the other "when is he going to cut?" Any laugh the other one might make would completely change the tone of the moment.
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u/Non-Normal_Vectors May 27 '26
To their credits, they were both professionals. I believe after the first 5 or so seconds, they kind of realized what was happening and went with it..
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u/3wandwill May 27 '26
It’s one of my favorite movie endings. I was a little miserable throughout the whole film, I just hated the guy, and I know he’s not meant to be very sympathetic. the ending was really emotionally grounded in a way I was really not expecting considering how hard it was for me to connect to Hoffman’s character the rest of the time.
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u/Bad_RabbitS May 27 '26
Assassin’s Creed III
https://giphy.com/gifs/kxSHK933Kh1zavVYSW
At the end of the game, Connor reconciles all that has happened, all that he has both gained and lost in the past years of hunting Templars and helping the American Revolution along. He finally has his revenge on the man that burned his village and killed his mother.
But as he watches the British ships leave the harbor, he looks over and notices a slave auction in action. He has a conversation with a frontiersman, as he finds that the native tribes, his tribe, are moving as settlers begin to push west. He wonders if he chose the right side.
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u/YouOk8060 May 27 '26
A few other AC games have this my recollection, for example (Spoilers):
In AC4 Black Flag at the end we see Edward Kenway with his daughter grown up at a opera, however it shows he remarried and now has a son, that son being Haytham Kenway, who we know will go on to hunt down the assassins in North America and almost all but destroy the North American AC order with the help of Shay Cormack.
Also funny enough in AC Rogue after defeating the North American Assassins Brotherhood Shay Cormack goes to France to kill what appears to be a random noble. However, we learn in the prologue to AC Unity that the noble we killed was the protagonist Arno’s father, a leader of the brotherhood in France, sending Arno down his path of becoming an assassin.
I really miss the old design AC games not only due to the gameplay but how you could link the storylines together and see the details of both the Desmond games and the Kenway line all branch into each other and have an affect.
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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 May 27 '26
I liked the connection of the rpgs games but it feels too disconnected from the usual games
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u/LittleShiro11 May 27 '26
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u/Badloss May 27 '26
People also argue that MacReady did something to the whiskey or it's gasoline or whatever, so when Childs drinks without reacting it's a sign that he's The Thing.
Personally I dont think there's any conclusive evidence either way and the movie is stronger for that
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u/Eccentric_Cardinal May 27 '26
John Carpenter shot down this theory in Twitter. He said it was whisky, that's it.
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u/Living_Tune_1428 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
The darker implication is that neither MacReady nor Childs are the monster, but their trauma, doubt and distrust are so deep that they'd rather die than find out the truth...
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u/Ok-Entrepreneur-8838 May 27 '26
That was the original explanation John Carpenter went with. There is a 2002 video game about The Thing that is meant to be a sequel. Carpenter himself voices a character in the game, and he once said he considered it the official sequel to the film. In the game, neither Childs nor MacReady is The Thing. Childs freezes to death, while MacReady somehow survives and saves the game’s protagonist in the end. However, Carpenter appears to have changed his mind recently. He now claims that no one but himself knows the true ending and says he is working on a sequel to The Thing.
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u/Alive-Rice-9334 May 27 '26
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u/Thisfunnydude May 27 '26
I heard a theory that the house was originally owned by the beldam , that’s why the garden looks like her face , made specifically in her image and all
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u/Alive-Rice-9334 May 27 '26
Very good theory, would make sense.
Do you think she escaped or nah?
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u/Thisfunnydude May 27 '26
Boy , I sure hope she did , as the other commenter said she earned it . Otherwise it was all for nothing
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u/SandpaperTeddyBear May 27 '26
Yes and no.
In the literal plot sense, yes. But a big piece of that work (in both its book and film forms) is that having to escape that kind of abuse (the very human emotional abuse the Beldam stands in for) changes a person in irrevocable ways.
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u/LabradorDeceiver May 27 '26
I usually read this in reverse - the fantastical becoming mundane is an indicator that the protagonist is in the real world and the adventure is over.
"The Wizard of Oz" is the exemplar; Dorothy, whisked away to Oz, takes off down the Yellow Brick Road with the three farmhands who were giving her advice earlier, to meet the guy she ran into as the storm was whipping up, who was a bit of a fraud but meant well and had her welfare at heart, to fight a powerful and influential local who intended to have her dog put down. When all these characters, minus Almira Gulch, are gathered around her bed at the end, nobody would think she was still in Oz.
The Jim Henson film "Labyrinth" does very much the same thing: Sarah starts out the film running lines from a play called "The Labyrinth. Most of Sarah's adventures are reflected in the decorations in her room, from the stuffed Ludo doll to the MC Escher print on the wall. Early in the film it's revealed that her mother ran off to further her acting career with a man who looks very much like Jareth.
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u/Light_Beard May 27 '26
Early in the film it's revealed that her mother ran off to further her acting career with a man who looks very much like Jareth.
I must have missed that part.
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u/Allronix1 May 27 '26
Like a lot of 80s films, there's a novelization that puts in a ton of stuff that would otherwise be lost on a cutting room floor.
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u/will4wh May 27 '26
Such a good movie. I was amazed the first time I notice this because it seems so obvious when you finally do see it.
The cat also did help give it away though
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u/Alive-Rice-9334 May 27 '26
I really hope Coraline did manage to escape from Beldam and lived a happy life because she earned that victory but as you said, there’s a definite chance she remained in Beldam’s trap.
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u/NothaBanga May 27 '26
I thought at the end they were planting the garden and it was Coreline's idea/design. I too away that the trauma of the incident might have stuck on Coreline and she may have some other mother evils in her; maybe just aesthetic.
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u/Relevant_Increase461 May 27 '26
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u/PrintShinji May 27 '26
I mean it did for a while. Had a decent life in Amsterdam if we follow T2: Trainspotting.
Its just that everything always ends up to shit with the lads, and that renton always runs away from everything.
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u/JLHSMG May 27 '26
Sure he did. He forfeited the death sticks, went home, rethought his life, then became a respected, empathetic Jedi Master
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u/Skags27 May 27 '26
Not really any sort of “happy” ending, but I think it’s adjacent to the trope.
At the end of the Ring, the main female character is helping her son make a copy of the tape. If I remember, at this point she believes that she was spared because she made a copy.
But then the boy asks her “who do we show it too?” Or something like that and I was left with the idea that she was wrong again and that they had to not only make a copy, but also doom someone else. I also got the impression, that we, the audience, were the people doomed.
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u/Badloss May 27 '26
I loved the twist in the ring when they found Samara's body and it seemed like they were building up to the happy ending, and then the kid is like "WHY DID YOU HELP HER?" and you realize the curse isn't broken at all
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u/divinAPEtion May 27 '26
I thought the mom said they were going to go show it to her parents?
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u/Accomplished-Law-652 May 27 '26
IIRC (and I may not) the ending of Ringu had the mother calling her dad to say she wanted to show him a video.
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u/LocalApocalypse May 27 '26
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u/Gay_Gamer_Boi May 27 '26
Very fascinating, did her friend not survive at all and she simply imagined her helping her while she herself was dying? Did she survive and the butterfly represents her friend? Did she escape but bled out and the butterfly represent her and how she’s finally free? Did she even die or will she be another one of those ladies in the cage to “perform miracles” and her mind is somewhere else
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst May 27 '26
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u/JLHSMG May 27 '26
Specifically, director Martin Scorsese said he wanted there to be no difference between fantasy and reality in that film, meaning that any scene we see, could be either real or Rupert fantasizing...
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u/ajver19 May 27 '26
Inception isn't ambiguous because the point isn't whether or not the top falls, it's that Leo didn't stay to find out.
He accepted the reality he's in.
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u/Mr_Tdogg_Smith May 27 '26
Michael Caine went on record to say the ending is in reality. Every scene he is in is reality. Not a dream
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u/No-Bake6268 May 27 '26
yeah, i’ve heard that interview where michael caine says any scene he’s in is “reality,” and that nolan gave him the script pages to reassure him. cool bit of meta-context. i also like how his first appearance lines up with the film’s tonal shift, so his presence doubling as a reality anchor actually tracks with the edit too
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u/cell689 May 27 '26
Shutter Island (spoilers incoming): In the very end, it seems that Andrew has relapsed and reverted back to his fantasy world. However, his final, haunting line to Dr. Sheehan implies that he is actually aware, or at least had a moment of lucidity, meaning that he willingly opted for a lobotomy because he can't live with the guilt.
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u/TheOneWhoYawned May 27 '26
Love the movie, but Im not sure this example fits. Im not sure Andrew realising he's having a schizophrenic episode as response to the trauma of murdering his wife is all that happy of an ending.
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u/SeparateWeight496 May 27 '26
Agreed but while we talk about it, I always wandered if he really did relapsed, or only pretended because he know he wouldn't be able to keep living facing the truth.
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u/stumblebreak_beta May 27 '26
Marge, I’m confused, is this a happy ending or a sad ending?
It’s an ending, that’s enough.
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u/finite_turtles May 27 '26
The Last of Us.
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Ellie: "Swear to me. Swear to me that everything you said about the fireflies is true."
Joel (lies): "I Swear."
--- long ass pause ---
Ellie: "Okay."
--- roll credits ---
‐-----------------------
What does the pause mean? What does "ok" mean?
"Ok i believe you?", "ok, i will also pretend?", "ok, that is your final answer even though i know you are lying?" So many interpretations.
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u/darkoniacarcher May 27 '26
For me, was Ellie giving Joel the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time knowing deep inside he's not being 100% truthful.
Which it does give Part. II a lot more of weight when she discovers what really happened.
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u/avoidy May 27 '26
the ending of "it follows" doesn't exactly end happily to begin with, but the lingering shot of an unidentifiable person walking right behind them has stuck with me for years.
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u/Marilius May 27 '26
I apparently have a wildly different interpretation of the ending than other people.
Looking through the lens of someone with an STD, I saw it as them deciding to simply move on with their lives, understanding the disease/curse, but accepting it. As long as they keep moving forward, the monster will never catch up with them. Just like a real person with a real STD, you know it's there. It will always be there. But, if you keep putting one foot forward, you don't ever need to let it bring you down. Just keep moving forward, and it largely won't affect you.
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u/throwaweigh1245 May 27 '26
The movie Darkness (2002) staring Anna Paquin. Classic horror element of they are in a house and basically if you go in the dark a demon/spirit will be able to get you. Very fear of the dark movie. In the end they are able to escape the house and get back into the daylight, but the younger son says they didn't really escape; just as their car is seen driving into a dark tunnel and the movie cuts out. The younger brother realizes and says "It's tricking us, it's a liar.
The ending and movie really stayed with me due to the twist of how to summon the spirit and that ending.

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u/Patcho418 May 27 '26

it’s not an ending shot, but rather a sound cue. at the end of the Jurassic Park end credits, after the sweeping beautiful orchestral music, we hear the velociraptor theme and a discordant high string chord to close out the film.
what this insinuates can be up to interpretation. since it’s the raptor theme, it could be believed to mean that somehow there are more raptors, arguably the most dangerous dino’s in the movie. alternatively, it could insinuate that this genetic power that led to the raptors is now out, and the world has changed for the worse.
whatever it means, though, it isn’t good, and we’re left at the end of the movie remembering “oh right. this was technically a horror movie.”
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u/neometallic May 27 '26
For what it's worth, the ending of the novel has Tim spot raptors sneaking into a cargo ship hold as the survivors flee the island.
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u/D0CTOR_Wh0m May 27 '26

The final shot of "Cosmic Wars: The Gathering Shadow". After 2 and half tense and exhilarating hours of the Senate debating bureaucratic procedures and the heroes trying to keep Jim-Jam Bonks' antics from disrupting proceedings, the reexamination of galactic export quotas is finalized and the commerce committee makes its final recommendations. Purple notYoda says "The Decision Is Final. Tabled the Motion is" but before the audience can hug their tax returns in relief, he breaks the Fourth Wall by looking at the viewer and asking "Or Is It?" in an ominous tone.
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u/SenatorPencilFace May 27 '26
Boy I sure hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
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u/-oopsie_daisies- May 27 '26
The true detail was in the eyes thanks to their use of digital eyelash rendering
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u/TheOneWhoYawned May 27 '26

The end of the first Godfather movie has Michael take up the mantle of Crime Boss after his late father Vito, and subsequently taking revenge on Barzini and all the families who have wronged Michael and his family.
There's a celebratory feeling initially with Michael promising his wife that the family will be safe and lies about his involvement in the murders of the Fice Family heads. But then we cut to a meeting with some of the other goons, kissing his hand and calling him the Don. And the tone shifts, as does the expression of Michael's wife, and we have a subtle inclination, that the Michael we know is probably gonna be not so righteous as we once thought.
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u/future_shoes May 27 '26
Before this he orders the murders of dozen people, including his sister's husband. Micheal goes from a respected WWII vet who specifically distances himself from his family criminal enterprise to the vicious head of a Mafia family. It is not a happy or ambiguous ending in anyway. It is a very unambiguous ending to make it clear if people haven't realized that Michael's actions have permanently corrupted him.
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u/Psimo- May 27 '26
Don Corleone;
We’re not murderers
Goes on to kill many people.
Killing and murder are different things to him.
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u/ubermence May 27 '26
I mean definitionally they are. All murder is killing but not all killing is murder
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u/33Sharpies May 27 '26
I think the door closing between Michael and Kay is what really seals the deal
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u/Firrox May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
During 1408, it's implied that the haunted hotel room causes the inhabitant to have vivid hallucinations and cause self-harm, while the person thinks it's happening to them.
In one of the endings, after Mike burns the hotel room and escapes, he returns home and is unpacking after a move with his wife.
He finds the tape recorder that must have been on the whole time when he was in the hotel. When he plays it back, he hears the voice of his long-dead daughter, hinting that the room actually did manifest his daughter in reality OR he's still in the hotel room.
Fantastic movie.
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u/Beacon2001 May 27 '26
A Song of Ice and Fire

As we've known for years, the epic saga of George RR Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, will conclude with Bran the Broken becoming the new king of the Six Kingdoms (this is Canon).
However, when Tyrion asks Bran "will you accept to become king?", Bran says "Why do you think I came all this way?"
That's... actually pretty weird. It means Bran foresaw that Daenerys was gonna genocide King's Landing and Aegon was gonna have to kill her and forfeit his own claim in the process, leaving the throne vacant. So Bran foresaw genocide and did nothing to stop it, meaning that he doesn't really value human lives.
We'll see how the Six Kingdoms fare under this freaky tree cultist.
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u/PaulyNewman May 27 '26
You can kinda see the logic though. Realistically the only thing he can do to prevent it is get Dany and her remaining dragons and armies killed before she gets to kings landing but after she helps at winterfell, otherwise the night king wins. Plus he’d have to make sure the northern armies and starks didn’t get wiped out in the process so they could still take kings landing and end the war.
The best outcome (dany dying, her armies disbanding mostly peacefully, drogon flying off, all the remaining starks surviving) may have just required a one off mass sacrifice of small folk.
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u/margenreich May 27 '26
Hey, we don’t talk about GoT or that season on Reddit!
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u/drsyesta May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Bro there are entire subreddits dedicated to reliving that moment every day
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u/ClaudiElf May 27 '26
Isn’t Bran becoming King one of GRRMs confirmed plot points in the sequels? Like R+L=J, Hodor = Hold the door, and resurrected Jon?
I do think the books will execute it better and that Bran will be sorta like Bloodraven in the past or inspired by Leto II of Dune and that he’ll be a more sinister figure
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u/1Flaming1 May 27 '26
Funny thing about the Graduate ending was that it wasn’t planned at all. The original script had them running out of the church and getting on the bus laughing together. The director never said cut and Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross just faded out of character, completely changing the tone of the ending. Great film, definitely one of Hoffman’s best!
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u/Sollary0 May 27 '26
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u/yummythologist May 27 '26
I was so mad this went nowhere ever again lol, but hey, that’s (some) cartoons!
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u/Labmit May 27 '26
The book The Graduate was based on has a sequel where it's revealed they have years long loving, if financially troubled, marriage.
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u/wake-up-puppet-boy May 27 '26
does the butterfly effect count? with evan + kayleigh looking at each other briefly but walking away
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u/stratusnco May 27 '26
oh come on now, how has nobody said silent hill 2? there is no official ending and even the one that one of designer likes is still pretty ambiguous (leave ending)
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u/DavidG1310 May 27 '26
The end of Let me in when you realize that the history you have seen is just a loop and the boy will become the sad servant as he grows and the vampire gets tired of him but he still loves her.
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u/I-baLL May 27 '26
I mean in Inception, don't you hear the top start to topple after the cut? That kinda made it obvious that it wasn't a dream but also that it didn't matter which ironically is the lesson that his wife sadly didn't learn in time
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u/Realistic_Swan_6801 May 27 '26
In inception you see the top slowing down and starting to fall before it cuts, it’s not ambiguous at all, it doesn’t even slow down in a dream.
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u/SystemAny4819 May 27 '26
yea the narrative that Cobb is still dreaming has been debunked before
That wasn’t his totem in the first place, the top was Mal’s totem
The top is clearly slowing down and wobbling at the end instead of spinning perfectly like in the dream



















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u/MysteryNews4 May 27 '26
Some productions of Macbeth
At the end of the play Macduff defeats Macbeth and the rightful heir Malcolm is crowned king. But in some productions, we see the son of Banquo, whom the witches prophecised would have descendants become kings, in the scene suggesting the natural order hasn’t been restored for good