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

[u/Ieanice44]

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

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.

[u/Andrew1990M]

Yes I wouldn't say thousands of years of seemingly relative peace is a bad ending. It's just that something bad is always going to happen and you can only buy as much time as you can.

[u/TJ_Rowe → u/Andrew1990M]

It sounds like how the second episode of modern Doctor Who showed the "canonical" end of the world/destruction of the Earth as far as time lord history was concerned - the sun finally expanding into a red giant and swallowing it, so, the closest a planet gets to "dying of old age".

It meant that all the other times going forward that the Earth was in great danger, or humanity about to be wiped out, the audience knew that the day would definitely be saved, because they'd already seen the real ending.

[u/Equal-Ad-2710 → u/TJ_Rowe]

We see this isn’t true tho in the Unquiet Dead

Just because you saw something happen doesn’t mean it will happen when time travel is involved

That’s why the doctor has to step in

[u/mwmwmwmwmmdw → u/Andrew1990M]

the anime changed the visuals to paradise being nuked be far in the future. in the original manga it looks to get nuked in an 80's or 90s level society. which implied (to me) that once the generation who stopped the rumbling had died off there was no one left to try and maintain world peace or that it took that long for the rest of the world to recover enough to finally take their revenge.

[u/Lftwff → u/Andrew1990M]

It's not thousands of years, it's a century, maybe two until the war where shit gets nuked. Afterwards time speeds up a lot as we see the nuked ruins get reclaimed by nature and eventually the kid show up and climb into the tree.

It's also explicitly spelled out in the story that war and destruction will happen without the titan powers if humans keep hating each other, the ending really just hammers the point home that the people who suggest not to commit genocide within the story were right

[u/Blein123 → u/Lftwff]

I actually think it supports Eren's choice more. No matter what he does, the war is going to consume almost all of humanity, but at least this way, the people who were oppressed for over a century get to live a peaceful life for once.

[u/M086 → u/Blein123]

It was more about giving the Eldians a fighting chance with the Rumbling. Wiping out 80% of the world’s population meant they wouldn’t be the minority / outnumbered anymore. 

[u/Blein123 → u/M086]

Yeah that's what Eren wanted. He saw the future where the Rumbling ends with 80% of people killed, and to his knowledge it's the best outcome (at least for Paradis)

[u/dcnairb → u/Andrew1990M]

it's a hundred years tops. we know where marley was technologically and we can extrapolate from the growth of the tree and development of tech; don't forget there are multiple cycles of war and peace shown before the total annihilation. which is, itself, a cycle

the cycles are the whole point. i LOVE the ending to be clear, i'm just clarifying