Snicket Warning Label: Difference between revisions

This trope is named for the warning the "[[Literary Agent Hypothesis|author]]" of ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' gives at the beginning of each book, that the reader would likely be much happier if he read something else. [[Sugar Bowl|Perhaps about a happy little elf?]]

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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* The end of the 13th episode of [[Princess Tutu]] appears to be a bog-standard romantic happy ending to the series. Except it's only half finished. The (in-universe) author from beyond the grave gives off the warning.

* ''[[Saikano]]'''s fansub had a variant of this. Episode 10 ends with "A friendly warning from the team: This is the ending of happiness in ''[[Saikano]]''. If you would prefer the anime to have a happy end, consider stopping here and pretending there are no more episodes. Continuing will only bring misery and pain. You have been warned." at the bottom of the credits. [[It Got Worse|Boy howdy,]] [[Kill'Em All|are they right.]]

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* The "Season of Mists" story arc of ''[[The Sandman]]'' ends with a (fictional) [[G. K. Chesterton]] quotation about how any story can have a happy ending if you just stop reading in the right place—and if you want ''The Sandman'' to have a happy ending, that's not a bad place to stop reading.

== [[Film]] ==

* The film ''(500) Days Of Summer'' begins with the narrator stating "This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know up front, this is not a love story."

== [[Interactive Fiction]] ==

* A variant: Adam Cadre's ''Varicella'' has an [[Easter Egg]] which allows for the only even remotely happy ending in the game. One can have Primo Varicella dispose of all those horrible rivals, and then type WAKE UP to get an ending where the whole scenario is [[All Just a Dream]]. If you don't, then you're stuck with a [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] ending where Primo Varicella is tortured to death by the prince, whose nasty experiences at the hands of the rivals has caused him to cross the [[Moral Event Horizon]] himself and become a horrible, Caligula-like [[Complete Monster]] who, in addition to torturing Varicella, kills his own mother and starts bloody wars on other nations.

* The 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition game ''[[Deadline Enchanter]]'' (not to be confused with [[Infocom]] games of similar names) has a warning in it towards the end, where the text implies that completing your mission will result in the death of the being who sent you on the mission in the first place. You're then told that there won't be a happier ending, and that if you can't handle it, you should turn the game off and go do something else.

** Hardback copies of The Lightning Thief had this on the back of the book/as the blurb, telling the reader not to go on if the summary "made something stir inside of them".

* In the season 4 finale of "Dexter", Dexter {{spoiler|kills the trinity killer and goes home to pack for his honey moon with his wife, Rita and their three kids in Disney World only to find his son, Harrison in a pool of Rita's blood as she was killed by Trinity just before Dexter captured him.}}

* [[Friends|Phoebe Buffay]]'s mother would turn off movies like ''[[Old Yeller]]'', saying, "That's the end" before the sad ending, so Phoebe didn't know the ends to lots of sad movies. The films whose endings she finally discovered in that episode include ''Old Yeller'', ''Charlotte's Web'', ''Pride Of The Yankees'', among others. All of those films would probably count for this trope.

* Mike Rowe from [[Dirty Jobs]] has done this on occasion, such as during the episode on rendering, where a dead cow is lowered into a grinder where...

** "I don't ever want to tell you not to watch this show, but..."

== [[Video Games]] ==

** "The one that must not be seen" [[Brain Bleach|is certainly]] [[Fan Disservice|right.]]

* ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' (2008). Leave Elika deceased, honoring her [[Heroic Sacrifice]], or suffer the consequences.

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* In-universe example in the webcomic ''[[Krazy Larry]]''. Vicious misanthrope Larry idolizes [[How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (animation)|the Grinch]], so his friends go to great lengths to make sure he never sees the last five minutes of the TV special.

* Applied in the author comments in [http://mortifer.smackjeeves.com/comics/1017841/chapter-38-the-curtain-call/ this] chapter of Mortifer.

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[[Category:Ending Tropes]]