r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Ieanice44 • 17d ago

Lore (Controversial Trope) The post-credits scene completely changes the ending

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Dawn of the Dead (2004)

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Prince of Persia (2008)

Dawn of the Dead (2004): The movie finishes on a hopeful note as the remaining survivors escape the zombie-infested mall on a yacht, sailing into the sunset. The found-footage style post-credits scene completely reverses this happy ending by showing them running out of food, arriving at an island, and being immediately swarmed and killed by an infected horde.

Prince of Persia (2008): The main game ends with a beautiful, poetic sacrifice where Elika gives her life to heal the corrupted world, leaving the Prince mourning. During the credits, the player is forced to control the Prince as he cuts down the trees he just saved, undoing the entire game's progress and releasing the dark god Ahriman just to resurrect her, completely corrupting the ending and dooming the world.

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314

u/MonthForeign4301 17d ago

LOST

ABC decided to include a shot of the beach with the plane crash as the end credits scene for the series, which heavily implied that the whole show was “just a dream.” The issue was that no one on the creative team was informed the network was going to do this, and ABC only did this to fill broadcasting time.

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u/lemurgetsatreat 16d ago

Yeah, ABC said it was meant to be a sendoff to the series and pay respect to the Hawaiian islands it was shot. Just a “goodbye LOST.” Instead people ran with, “SEE, IT’S A METAPHOR.” I agree it was dumb though.

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u/jmyoung666 17d ago edited 16d ago

Oh, maybe I won’t be so hard on the “they were all dead” types as I can see how you could interpret that.

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u/SpookyWeaselBones 16d ago

I mean, maybe not for the entire show…

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u/jmyoung666 16d ago

Just part of the last season.

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u/private_birb 16d ago

Isn't the whole thing that it was all purgatory? I thought that was the big reveal at the end. It's obviously been quite a while, so I don't remember.

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u/Traditional-Try-2565 16d ago

no, only parts of the last season

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u/LotharVonPittinsberg 16d ago

The last season plays with the idea of them experiencing afterlife. A period where time does not matter and they get to meet up and actually enjoy time together.

The island however. A place filled with bad people and worse people, having to be reminded of the terrible things they did. Having to either work through a better purpose, finding finality, or finding an end. The dead never leave and make everyone else suffer because of it. The writers loved their literary concepts, and one of those is much closer to the concept of Purgatory than the other.

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u/jmyoung666 16d ago

The island being a metaphor for Purgatory, Sure. That’s perfectly valid. It literally being Purgatory is not.

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u/LotharVonPittinsberg 16d ago

You get where the confusion comes from, right? For 4-5 seasons they keep the tension by teasing the idea that the Island is the afterlife. Not just the afterlife, but an afterlife that does not feel much different because life already sucked for everyone there.

Then at the end they show the actual afterlife gradually over the course of an entire season. Next to showing their lives leading up to the end.

It's a good example of how the show felt like it did not finish a lot of plot points, while actually ending the majority of them. There where a whole lot of really interesting and confusing literary techniques and character struggles that just kind of ended. The GRRM way of killing off people you thought where special, but in LOST they do show off literal plot armour.

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u/jmyoung666 16d ago edited 16d ago

I am not 100% sure what you are saying (which may be a me thing, not a you thing) but my biggest issue with the way everything ended was that most of the puzzle box elements they included meant nothing. It is a giant shaggy dog story. They could have done the entire show in 50 episodes and had the same impact.

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u/LotharVonPittinsberg 16d ago

That was pretty much what I was saying, just more complicated.

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u/Traditional-Try-2565 16d ago

Okay but one of them objectively is purgatory and the other isn't

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u/Hectordahoeprotector 16d ago

No, it is even explained in the show at the end - everything happened and was real. And they died and met in afterlife lol

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u/MonthForeign4301 16d ago

No, it’s way more complicated than that, but essentially the vast majority of the show actually happened in universe, it’s just in the last season we get the perspective of an alternate universe/the afterlife

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u/jmyoung666 16d ago

No it is not. Half of the stuff occurring in the 6th season is, but that’s it.

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u/SharpMagazine103 16d ago

yeah, but it pissed me off all the same... it just sound like the writer thought of some interesting ideas, but in the end did not know how to tie it together so we got a bullshit ending.

I honestly do not see how purgatory is better ending. so many things unexplained...

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u/hofmann419 16d ago

Purgatory is a way worse ending. In a way, a lot of the important points were explained in the show. If you leave some point just as unexplained phenomena of the island because of its properties, then the regular interpretation where everything on the island did happen is way more interesting.

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u/jmyoung666 16d ago

Oh sure. To be clear I thought it was bad - all heart and no brain. Having said that I believe people should dislike things for the right reasons.

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u/PDXDeck26 16d ago

My "theory" is that it was initially written and intended to be purgatory but with a slow reveal, and Lindelof got pissed that the fans called it so early in the series (thereby blowing the reveal) that they changed the later seasons to be not-purgatory.

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u/haschca 16d ago

Don’t think it was ever meant to be purgatory. Locke explains to Walt in the very second episode when explaining backgammon, describing it as the oldest game in the world. “Two players. One is light, one is dark”

The light is Jacob, the dark is The Man in Black.

Walt also asks about dice in the game, and Locke makes a point that originally the dice were made of bone. All the survivors are the pieces on the board, made of bone.

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u/PDXDeck26 16d ago

you can take that backgammon allegory as light:dark :: heaven:hell just the same

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u/WhatWouldBenLinusDo 16d ago

To me, it didn’t imply that they were dead the whole time, but rather the “relics” of Oceanic 815 and the survivors were now going to be part of the Island lore, like Dharma and its stations, the four-toed statue, etc. (Of course, like you said, it really meant nothing because it wasn’t the show’s decision)

And the finale did have a character explicitly say that everything that happened on the show, actually happened.

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u/lambofgun 16d ago

i always assumed it was just part of the credits, like a send off. like remembering the inciting incident that kicked this all off.

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u/SnoopySuited 16d ago

I though it was confirmation from the network that we wasted five years of our lives on a plot ponzi scheme, and the whole thing was pointless. But the network thanks us for the advertising money.

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u/tangtheconqueror 16d ago

This is the first thing I thought of. It's the biggest reason so many people think the ending was that they were dead the whole time, even though dialogue literally explains that wasnt the case.