Revised Ending

""...Shaw explains how Liza ends not with Higgins but with Freddy and -- Shaw and Heaven forgive me! -- I am not certain he is right.""

- Alan Jay Lerner, note in a published edition of My Fair Lady

When it comes time for an author to wrap everything up, the final judgment on his ultimate creation hinges on the conclusion: an ending can make or break an entire work or series. So important is the ending, in fact, that it's especially subject to Executive Meddling and public influence.

The biggest problem arises when the author has already written and/or produced the final ending and executives or test audiences dislike it, most commonly due to it being a Downer Ending. They pressure the author to change the ending to one they think the public will like better, usually to a Happily Ever After. The author reluctantly complies and the ending is changed.

If the endings were radically different, what usually happens is that the original ending is revealed to the public in a later edition, and fans become split between favoring the original or revised ending. For some reason, Downer Endings are usually considered to be the better of the two (partly because they are more likely to be the original, and people get hung up on "the director's original vision" - and of course, True Art Is Angsty). But as was previously mentioned it can be the exact opposite as well.

Can be seen as a form of Author's Saving Throw if the Revised Ending was created to appease audiences.

Be warned, considering this trope is specifically about the endings to works, it should be painfully obvious that spoilers are going to occur.

Focus Group Ending is a subtrope. When the revised ending changes an ending that was already shown, it's also an Orwellian Retcon.

Anime and Manga

 * Neon Genesis Evangelion has what may be the most thorough revised ending, the final two episodes of the TV series being replaced by the movie End Of Evangelion. The original is notoriously incomprehensible; the movie is a Downer Ending. And the manga's ending, with what we have so far is setting things up for yet another mind fuck. And then there's Rebuild, which has some implications that it's not an Alternate Continuity.
 * The Big O had its ending revised numerous times before being broadcast, with the final product being subject to a request to be less conclusive than previous drafts, in case the network decided on a third series. It didn't, leaving the show with a Gainax Ending and no proper resolution.
 * Surprisingly, the anime adaptation of Full Moon o Sagashite had a more Bittersweet Ending compared to the original manga which had a true Happy Ending, given all the events and details of characters removed or changed in the anime.
 * The Movie version of Fist of the North Star had two different endings produced for it. The original theatrical ending (the same ending used in the Streamlined dub) was a Gecko Ending which featured Kenshiro losing the final fight against his elder brother Raoh, with his life spared due to holy child Lin's intervention. When the movie was released on VHS and Laserdisc in Japan, the ending was changed to have Kenshiro and Raoh end their fight in a stalemate (but is otherwise identical), which is closer how their first fight ended in the manga. For awhile the theatrical ending was not available in Japan until the movie's DVD release in 2008, leading to the common misconception among western fans that the revised ending was the original ending.
 * The manga adaptation of Breath of Fire IV actually had both minor and not-so-minor versions of this (fan speculation is that these may be a setup for a possible sequel). Among major changes (besides the incorporation of both of the Multiple Endings of the game in a "bad ending to good ending" storyline) are
 * The manga and novel versions of Gundam Wing end with the five Gundam Pilots going to Mars to aid in the terraformation project started by Relena; the TV series has them staying on Earth, and this is the ending that all the sequels follow. Gets a lampshade in the Yonkoma for the manga version of The Movie, where someone asks the manga-ka "I thought the boys went to Mars?" and he nervously fumbles and tries to change the subject.

Comic Books

 * The original ending of The Dark Phoenix Saga in X-Men had Phoenix Editor-in-chief Jim Shooter insisted that . The original ending was eventually published in Phoenix: The Untold Story.

Fanfic

 * The infamously Dark Fic Cupcakes ends with Pinkie Pie horrifically killing Rainbow Dash and getting away with it, but has a lot of alternate endings, few, if any, by the original writer. These range from her moving on to the rest of her friends, it being a dream, it being a fanfic written by one of the characters, it being a play, Rainbow Dash breaking free and killing Pinkie Pie instead, and Rainbow Dash being rescued, but losing her wings. The All Just a Dream version has a great many versions, including one called Rocket To Insanity where the dream causes Rainbow Dash to eventually kill Pinkie Pie...which in turn has it's own Alternate Ending where she snaps out of it and gets Pinkie Pie to the hospital in time but has to earn forgiveness for it. Another psudo-Alternate Ending is The Light in the Darkness, wich goes with the All Just a Dream version and ends on a very heartwarming note (to the point it's been dubbed "the antithesis of Cupcakes") but it's vague on if this is a true one or not, despite the fact the author originally intended for it to be before being rewritten.

Film

 * Army of Darkness originally had a Downer/TwistEnding, in which . This was changed to a happier ending (through Executive Meddling), which does admittingly have a few more catchy OneLiners than that ending.
 * The original ending was retained in the film's international release.
 * The ending of the 1956 movie The Bad Seed was changed to conform with the Production Code, which required that "the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin". Thus Enfante Terrible Rhoda could not get away with her crimes like she did in the ending of the stage play, and the novel it was based on, in which
 * Blade Runner's original ending wasn't really a Downer Ending, but left a lot to the imagination, especially with the implication that the main character's love interest, an android, had only a few more years to live. Executives insisted that the ending be changed to an unambiguously happy one with the love interest turning out to have a long life after all. The film was restored back to its original vision in the Director's Cut DVD.
 * The edited-for-TV broadcast version of Brazil ended with the hero living happily ever after with his love interest. What television audiences didn't see was a scene cut out in which this win-all ending is revealed to be a delusion of the main character. (The American theatrical release has been Misblamed for this; its ending is identical to the European theatrical version, except with more footage of clouds.)
 * There's a book detailing the hard fight Terry Gilliam fought to have the original ending in all versions: The Battle for Brazil.
 * The theatrical release of The Butterfly Effect had a bittersweet "things are ok-ish but Evan and Kayleigh never knew each other and pass in the street with only a wistful sense of what might have been" ending. The director's cut.
 * The original Downer Ending to Clerks was changed to a Bittersweet Ending by removing the very last scene, which would have been the shooting of Dante. This meant that a whole lot of Foreshadowing went to waste. However, Clerks 2 and Clerks: The Animated Series would have been nullified by this original ending.
 * So that's where the ending of Red Skull shooting Captain America in the parody cartoon came from.
 * Infernal Affairs: In this Hong Kong cops-and-robbers movie, Andy Lau's character, a mole placed in the police by triads he betrayed, . However, an alternate ending was made for the theatrical releases in China, Singapore, and Malaysia, showing that . This, apparently, was to please the governments in those three countries stating.
 * In the American rendition of the movie, The Departed,.
 * The ending of the film The Descent was revised for the US release, with the director's approval. In the US version, In the original version,.
 * The sequel follows the ending of the US version.
 * Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an odd case. The original novel had an unambiguously happy ending, with the Pods fleeing Earth, the Pod People slowly dying off, and the town returning to normal. The first movie adaptation initially had a Downer Ending, with the hero hysterically screaming "You're next!" to oblivious highway drivers (and the audience) as truckloads of Pods are shipped all over the country. The execs didn't care for this ending, and slapped on a prologue and epilogue that showed the military discovering the threat, and preparing to fight back. Meanwhile, the 1978 and 1993 remakes had unambiguously Downer Endings and the 2007 remake restored the happy ending of the original book.
 * Little Shop of Horrors: The film adaptation of the musical originally had a Downer Ending . This was changed in Executive Meddling to a happy ending.
 * Sorta. It ends with a The End - or Is It? moment.
 * Director Frank Oz explained that in a play,  is no big deal, because it's obviously just a play and they  . In a movie it's much more real, and it felt like a crime to  . The stuff they shot for the original ending was pretty damn cool, though.
 * The movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist replaced the story's ambiguous ending with a soul crushing Shoot the Shaggy Dog ending. King has been quoting in saying that not only did he love the ending of the movie, but also that "everyone who spoils this ending should be hung from a noose until dead". Yes, King has issues.
 * Nightmare On Elm Street: Wes Craven planned for the original to have a happy ending, but this was changed by the executives, and the Downer Ending (where Nancy's mother is killed, and Nancy's own fate is left ambiguous) was created.
 * The 1932 version of Scarface featured an alternate ending to comply with the then-recently released Hays Production Code. In the original ending,, while in the Hays-approved ending,.
 * Terminator 2 featured an ending where Sarah Connor reflected on her experiences many years after the events of the movie, as she watches her son playing with his daughter at a park. James Cameron changed the ending because it didn't fit the dark, apocalyptic mood of the film.
 * Cameron has stated that the Dark Highway ending was a better for the film since it better represented the ambiguous nature of the future. The playground ending would imply that the future was now set, and thus deterministic.
 * Dawn of the Dead remake originally ended on an ambiguous bittersweet note; after test audiences complained, an additional, more pessimistic, sequence was filmed and interspersed through the credits.
 * The irony of all this is that the exact opposite happened with the original.
 * The movie version of Agnes of God flipped the ending of the play entirely.
 * The 2007 film I Am Legend has a particularly striking case of this. The original ending is far more in tune with the theme and morality of the book, clearly fits with the foreshadowing of the creatures' intelligence, and is in general a more original and though-provoking ending. However, test audiences apparently reacted poorly to it, so it was changed to a pretty standard Christ-like Heroic Sacrifice ending, complete with a fireball explosion (caused by a grenade of all things). This is an even more startling case as the original is not strictly a Downer Ending; it's simply ambiguous.
 * The cult classic zombie college film Night of the Creeps was originally supposed to end with a funny parody of standard horror movie The Stinger endings, with a zombie parasite seemingly escaping to cause more mayhem, only to be vacuumed up by alien zookeepers. Due to Executive Meddling, this was replaced in the final film with a more cliche The Stinger Downer Ending where an alien parasite suddenly jumps out of an infected dog at the camera, presumably zombifying the female love interest.
 * Averted by the 1963 X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes. In its theatrical release, the lead character ultimately blinds himself, because his super-eyesight has shown him the swirling madness that underlies reality. For years, rumors circulated that his self-mutilation was originally meant to be followed by the terrifying line: "I can still see!" The DVD commentary, however, reveals that this line was inserted as a spur-of-the-moment improvisation by director Roger Corman, who found it unsatisfying and opted to stick with the original script.
 * Both Lion King films have alternate, unproduced original endings. The first one would've had Scar throw Simba off Pride Rock, but Scar would then perish laughing hysterically as the flames consume Pride Rock. Simba survives, but doesn't get his revenge. In the final film, he ends up throwing Scar off of Pride Rock where the evil lion is eaten by his angry Hyena Mooks. The second film's original ending would've had Zira commit suicide by letting go of the cliff with the line "No...never..." in response to Kiara's attempts to save her life. In the real version, she simply slips and falls.
 * Aladdin had at least two alternate endings. Originally, it was supposed to end with a reprise of "Arabian Nights", which was later used in the second sequel, The King of Thieves. The second deleted ending starts with the reprise of "A Whole New World" as seen in the final movie, but then cuts to a sequence where the peddler from the beginning of the movie reveals himself to be the Genie. This is followed by a cruder version of the "made you look" gag from the final ending.
 * Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has an alternative ending, which consists of Scott getting with.
 * Transformers: Dark of the Moon's original ending can be read in the movie adaptations. According to those, The movie ending gives us a complete opposite scenario:
 * The Golden Compass was originally filmed to stay true to the book's ending, but executives didn't want a Downer Ending to launch a franchise, so scenes of Roger's death were cut and moved to the sequel that never happened.
 * National Treasure originally ended with the protagonists learning of a new treasure to search for. It was intended to be an And the Adventure Continues... ending, but test audiences assumed it as a Sequel Hook.
 * Referenced by director Kasi Lemmons on the commentary track of the director's cut of her film Eve's Bayou. The original ending was much more ambiguous, giving no final interpretation of the movie's central event, leaving the truth locked in the mind of a disabled character who witnessed the event (and was subsequently cut from the theatrical release.) Kasi laments that she did not have experience taking test audiences' judgments with a grain of salt so she thought she had no choice but to change the ending to something more satisfying, though she prefers the ambiguity.
 * Liloand Stitch was orginally going to end with the heroes stealing a passenger jet from an airport to save Lilo from Gantu, and destroying most of Honolulu while they are chasing each other, but because of what happened on 9/11, the airplane was replaced with a spaceship.
 * Referenced by director Kasi Lemmons on the commentary track of the director's cut of her film Eve's Bayou. The original ending was much more ambiguous, giving no final interpretation of the movie's central event, leaving the truth locked in the mind of a disabled character who witnessed the event (and was subsequently cut from the theatrical release.) Kasi laments that she did not have experience taking test audiences' judgments with a grain of salt so she thought she had no choice but to change the ending to something more satisfying, though she prefers the ambiguity.
 * Liloand Stitch was orginally going to end with the heroes stealing a passenger jet from an airport to save Lilo from Gantu, and destroying most of Honolulu while they are chasing each other, but because of what happened on 9/11, the airplane was replaced with a spaceship.

Literature
"Pip: I saw no shadow of another parting from her. (last line of revised ending)"
 * Charles Dickens' Great Expectations originally ended with Pip and Estella, who Pip had spent the entire book hopelessly in love with, meeting briefly and parting ways. Dickens gave his friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton a preview of the ending. Bulwer-Lytton disliked the Downer Ending and asked him to write a happier one for his readers. Dickens obliged and wrote a separate ending that reunited Pip with Estella, but left it up to the readers to decide if they were able to start a relationship or not. Unlike some other examples of this trope, Dickens himself was pleased with the new ending.


 * Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in "The Final Problem" to be able to focus on other literary projects. Public demand and mourning was so great that he eventually wrote a new short story that retconned Holmes' death as only a faked one and continued his adventures. (It didn't hurt that Watson Never Found the Body, either.)
 * A Clockwork Orange is an unusual case: the revised ending is actually the Downer Ending, and the "true" ending is more optimistic. The film adaptation was based on the revised ending (the American publication that cut out the last chapter), either because True Art Is Angsty, or, as is claimed, Stanley Kubrick had never seen the original until some time into production and when he did he didn't like it.
 * The supposed reason he didn't like it is that it's done in a way to show that Alex matures and grows out of his violent nature. It's a classical example of Teens Are Monsters and this whole thing was just a phase. Kubrick thought it completely removed the message of the story.
 * Robert A. Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars had an original ending intending it to be An Aesop about . The publisher made him use a revised ending . It was eventually published with both endings, which differ only on the last page.
 * H. G. Wells' story The Country of the Blind has an original and revised version which diverge at a point where the protagonist is going to agree to have his eyes removed to become a member of the titular society. In the original, he ditches his Jungle Princess fiance in the middle of the night and is implied to have died in his efforts to climb down a mountain back to civilization. In the revised version, he escapes with her and they have sighted children and live Happily Ever After.
 * Two of Stephen King's novels play with this: At the end of Black House and Dark Tower, King offers up a happy ending in the penultimate chapter, and then a warning that "if you like happy endings, stop reading here." The "real" ending in the last chapter is more of a downer.
 * The Dark Tower case is actually somewhat interesting: it's very much a Bittersweet Ending, but it fits Roland's character arc, and is suitably Mythic, as the series itself has been.
 * Christine's two endings work similarly, but without the warning.
 * Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native originally ended with the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve, Tamsin is left a widow and single parent and there are implications that Clym might be going insane. However popular demand encouraged Hardy to write a sixth volume in which Clym manages to pull through his depression and Diggory Ven marries Tamsin.
 * Captain Corelli's Mandolin has one of the most beautifully Bittersweet Endings: . The film disposed of this and had them reunited a few years later.
 * Older Than Feudalism: The Gospel of Mark seems to have originally ended with a report of the resurrection of Jesus; a later revision incorporated events up to the Ascension.
 * The deleted last chapter to Joan Lindsday's Picnic at Hanging Rock, which explains what happened to Miss McCraw, Marion, and Miranda, was first published in 1987. The reader discovers that
 * According to many scholars, the Happily Ever After ending to the Book of Job in the Bible was a revision by editors who wanted to make the moral of the story as clear as crystal.
 * Assuming you think someone's children can be "replaced" that is.
 * The ending of Alexey Tolstoy's The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (a.k.a. The Garin Death Ray) was revised two times. In the original serialized version, Zoe Montrose dies, captain Jansen lives, Magnificent Bastard Garin was a Karma Houdini. In the second version, Jansen dies, Garin and Zoe were a Karma Houdini, and the noves ends with a Sequel Hook. In the final edition Jansen dies, and Garin and Zoe were punished by Laser-Guided Karma.
 * Fans of Ted Dekker's Circle series were so unhappy with the conclusion of Green (which ends with the protagonist deliberately trapping himself in a seemingly unending Stable Time Loop) that Dekker wrote a new, "happier" ending for the series's compilation novel.

Theatre

 * The play Liliom ends with the dead protagonist being escorted back to purgatory after striking his widow. For the musical adaptation, Carousel, Oscar Hammerstein made this Downer Ending into a Bittersweet Ending by having the protagonist stick around for one more scene, in which his daughter graduates and the entire cast sings a reprise of "You'll Never Walk Alone." Ferenc Molnar, author of Liliom, saw this Revised Ending and approved of it.
 * Oklahoma! has a Happily Ever After ending. The non-musical source play, Green Grow The Lilacs, has a more ambiguous ending, with Curly still awaiting trial for murder.
 * Eliza comes back to Higgins at the end of My Fair Lady. Alan Jay Lerner borrowed this final scene from Gabriel Pascal's (non-musical) film of Pygmalion, which managed to create this Revised Ending (which Shaw loathed) by recycling earlier lines, to get around the contractual stipulation that every single line of dialogue would be written by Shaw (and credited to him).
 * Worth noting that the original cast of the play didn't like Shaw's ending either and subverted it as much as they could. Henry and Eliza would take their curtain call together, posed as if they were bride and groom.
 * And Then There Were None. In Agatha Christie's original novel, When she adapted the work for the theatre, she felt the book's Downer Ending was unsuitable for the stage, and revised the plot so that  All of the numerous film versions, with the exception of the Russian version, have retained the changed ending of the play.
 * This in part because the solution in the Downer Ending is revealed in a posthumous letter discovered several months later. Having the solution just be read out to the audience really is bad theatre.
 * This is not the only time Christie changed the ending of one of her works when adapting it for the stage. In the stage version of Appointment With Death,
 * Assuming these are the same characters, the PC game
 * The musical Show Boat reunites Magnolia and her grown daughter Kim with Ravenal and Captain Andy for the final curtain. At the end of Edna Ferber's novel, Captain Andy and Parthy have both died, and Ravenal is Put on a Bus for good. Of the three film versions, only the first (mostly silent) one includes the deaths of Captain Andy and Parthy, and even that reunites Ravenal and Magnolia. The 1936 movie version has a variation on the stage ending (not a surprise, as Oscar Hammerstein adapted it himself); the 1951 version has a completely original ending which brings together Ravenal, Magnolia, Kim (still a child), Captain Andy, Parthy and even Julie.
 * The book version of Wicked ends with an absurdly bleak Downer Ending. In the musical?
 * In fiction: A key part of Hey Arnold!, "Eugene, Eugene" has Eugene horrified that the guy producing his school's musical has changed a perfectly good Happy Ending into a downer which is at odds with the play's message.
 * In the original ending of Henrik Ibsen's A Dolls House, Nora leaves her stifling marriage with Torvald. This was so controversial in the late 19th century that Ibsen, a Norwegian, was persuaded to write a new ending for the German productions in which she is reminded of her duties as a mother. Don't get him wrong, he hated it. Later he would openly refer to the alternate ending as "a barbaric act of violence towards the play. Its use is absolutely contrary to my wishes, and I hope that it will not be used by many German theatres."
 * So why did he write it? According to a letter from Ibsen to a Danish newspaper, a lack of intellectual property laws meant that Scandanavian plays were at risk of disastrous 'adaptation' when performed in other countries. "I prefer," Ibsen stated, "to commit such violence myself, rather than surrender my works to treatment... by less careful and less skilful hands than my own."
 * In-story example: In Man of La Mancha, Cervantes declares his story finished after Don Quixote's defeat and humiliation by Dr. Carrasco. The Governor declares the ending unsatisfying, but Cervantes begs to "have a little more time" to continue the tale before he is sent off to the Inquisition. (And indeed, the ending the fictional Cervantes invents differs from what the real Cervantes wrote.)
 * Pippin is occasionally produced with the alternate ending: instead of a few spoken lines between Catherine and Pippin, Theo starts singing "Corner of the Sky" and the Leading Player and the musical accompaniment return.
 * The ending of Mussorgsky' opera Boris Godunov was drastically revised in the 1870s, with the final act rewritten in two scenes, retaining from the original final scene only the Simpleton's entrance and lament.
 * The original play version of Jack Heifner's Vanities ended with the dissolution of the characters' friendship, but The Musical included a fourth scene where they patch things up.

Video Games

 * The ending of Snatcher on the PC-88 and MSX2 was a rather dark one, with many of Gillian's allies dead and the Snatcher menace still a lingering threat. This was because the ending was actually the climax before the real ending - the development of the game was behind schedule and the game's third and final act had to be excluded. When Snatcher was remade for the PC-Engine years later, the actual intended ending was included. A very different version of the ending was already featured in the previous RPG remake SD Snatcher.
 * The arcade version of Double Dragon II: The Revenge ends with Billy Lee's girlfriend, Marian, still dead after being killed by the Big Bad at the opening intro. The NES adaptation on the other hand, features a different ending in which she comes back to life after defeating the True Final Boss, a nameless martial artist who wasn't in the arcade version.
 * After finishing all three routes of the PlayStation 2 Realta Nua version of Fate/stay night, a Last Episode is opened up, which offers a happy conclusion to the
 * This was done without regard for plausibility or consistency with the rest of the story. Fujimura in the bonus Tiger Dojo still points out that getting everyone to survive their experiences just doesn't make a realistic ending.
 * To be fair, they DIDN'T survive their experiences. That's why it's also Died Happily Ever After, Together in Death and I Will Wait for You. And it is perfectly consistent with the related route (Fate).
 * One of the proposed endings for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: Guns of the Patriots had Solid Snake and his sidekick Otacon being convicted for terrorism and executed by the government. The ending was vetoed by Kojima's staff before it was even produced; it's been described as a full on revolt. The ending theme "Here to You", a song about two real-life anarchists executed for murder who were believed to be innocent, is an allusion to the proposed ending.
 * The PlayStation 2 port of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni replaced the happy-ending Matsuribayashi-hen(Festival Music Chapter) with the Bittersweet Ending Miotsukushi-hen(Canal Drying Chapter). The main plot of each differs wildly, but come to similar conclusions, with one MAJOR difference. Matsuribayashi focused Miotsukushi, on the other hand, had
 * The 2005 King Kong movie games have an alternate ending as an unlockable extra, in which  The last level of the actual game may count, as Kong can smash many more of the attacking biplanes than he ever could in the film.
 * The 1996 point-and-click Adventure Game Fable (no relation to the more famous game series from 2000s) originally had an ending which reveals that . For obvious reasons, especially considering the game's overall humorous nature, such a conclusion did not go over well with the players -- this Let's Play video has a mild example of what happens if you weren't prepared for it. The US game publisher naturally freaked out and managed to get the developers to change the ending, but apparently not before the original version got an international release. The new ending, while feeling slightly rushed, was generally seen as an improvement anyway. What's worse, a bit of Fridge Logic could tell you that the original ending pretty much explains all the Anachronism Stew throughout the game...

Web Comics

 * One episode of Mountain Time offers 2 alternate endings, as the author anticipated that readers might find the original one rather unhappy. The alternates aren't exactly cheery, though...