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The Ending Changes Everything: Difference between revisions
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The Gordian Knot of [[Twist Ending|Twist Endings]].
When [[The Ending Changes Everything]], it calls into question exactly how much of what you've seen was actually real. A charitable director (or one who wants to show off how clever the script is) might give you a [[Once More,
In other words, it [[Up to Eleven|one-ups]] [[Gainax Ending]].
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== Anime & Manga ==
* In ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro
** ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro
** ''Umineko'' Episodes 4 and 6, in particular, reveal that certain completely mundane-seeming scenes we've been shown in previous Episodes {{spoiler|were in fact complete lies}}.
*** {{spoiler|With Episode 8, most of what came before (specifically Episodes 3 thru 6) is revealed to be the result of amnesiac Battler trying to figure out what happened... maybe? Or was that not the truth as well...?}}
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Panty
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* ''[[Matchstick Men]]''. Obviously, most of the film is a con. But when did it start? How much of it was planned, how much improvised? And just how much affection do Frank and "Angela" have for Roy? The film suggests answers for some of those questions, but some of them we just have to guess about.
* The 2003 movie ''[[Basic]]'' is a gigantic case of this, complete with multiple revisions and multiple suspects changing their stories and giving differing flashbacks along the way.
* ''[[
** It's implied she committed suicide because she couldn't deal with Leonard's amnesia.
* French film ''Belle de Jour'': a switch between reality and fantasy is usually indicated by a ringing bell, but there is much debate about how much of it is actually happening.
* ''[[eXistenZ]]'', about an extremely realistic virtual-reality experience that goes awry, takes the [[All Just a Dream]] ending and twists it until it snaps and becomes this.
* The Jet Li movie ''[[Hero (
* Likewise the movie ''[[House of Flying Daggers]]''. In its final half hour, each individual character reveals each other individual character, all of them in roles they hadn't seemed to fill for most of the movie. The only character, amusingly, who's been somewhat honest the whole way through, is the one who's supposed to be the one conning others.
* The 2006 film ''[[Irresistible]]'': You don't know if Mara ([[Emily Blunt]]) was in fact Sophie's (Susan Sarandon) prodigal daughter, or if she just stole the identity of her best friend Kate (who bears a closer resemblance to Sophie and her other daughters).
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* [[David Lynch]]'s ''[[Mulholland Drive]]''. In a [[Mind Screw|mind-screwy]] way, anyhow.
* ''[[Rashomon]]'', which inspired ''[[The Usual Suspects]]'', is the [[Trope Maker]].
* ''[[Witness for
* ''[[Fight Club]]'' is another one of the films that set in motion the popularity of the perception altering twist in popular culture.
* ''[[Primer]]''. The second act of the film involves the use of very limited [[Time Travel]]; in the third act Abe learns that his friend Aaron has ''already'' used the time machine to change the past. So during the entire aforementioned second act, Aaron had actually been Aaron-from-a-week-in-the-future, manipulating current events for his own ends.
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* ''[[Life of Pi]]'' by Yann Martel tells the story of a boy on a lifeboat after a shipwreck along with a fully-grown tiger and includes other bizarre occurrences. At the end he gives an alternate, somewhat more depressing but less fantastic version of events to the people he's telling the story too, leaving it to them (and us) to decide which to believe. The in-story listeners believe {{spoiler|the story with the tiger}}.
* Tim O'Brien uses a similar device several of his Vietnam War novels, notably ''Going After Cacciato'' and ''The Things They Carried''.
* ''[[
* William Gibson's and Bruce Sterling's ''[[The Difference Engine]]'' has a fairly interesting twist of this kind, although it doesn't really call into question previous events so much as ''how'' the reader was perceiving them. {{spoiler|The reader's point-of-view was the perspective of an AI in the Alternate History's future analyzing past events to learn how it came about.}} Everything - the titles of the chapters, the structure of the writing (which seems stilted, almost bureaucratic at times), the descriptions of the world - it all plays into it.
* [[
* In Ian R. MacLeod's short story "The Camping Wainwrights," the father of the titular family is established as a sociopathic subtle abuser who does bizarre things like breaking the family's possessions for no reason, keeping his wife and children miserable and terrified. At the end, he gets what he deserves. Then it is revealed that {{spoiler|the narrator's sister performed at least one of the mysterious acts of cruelty that were blamed on the father, raising the possibility that he may have been an innocent scapegoat of the family's general dysfunction.}}
* In ''[[The Murder of Roger Ackroyd]]'' by [[
* ''[[Dirk
* [[An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge]] is a short story that manages this. It's pretty easy to find and not very long. Go check it out.
* ''[[Odd Thomas]]'' throws a twist in the last few pages that negates the previous few chapters, or at least our interpretations of them. His girlfriend Stormy was actually a ghost, having died in an explosion, and the interactions he'd had with her were wishful thinking on his part.
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* The [[wikipedia:St. Elsewhere#Final episode|final scene]] of the final episode of ''[[St Elsewhere]]'' showed such a radically different interpretation of the major characters it opens the possibility that the entire series was an in-story delusion. One series writer [[wikipedia:Tommy Westphall#The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis|deduced]] through [[Canon Welding]] that "90% of all television" is a subplot of a ''St. Elsewhere'' episode.
* One particularly impressive example is the ''[[CSI]]'' episode "Got Murder?". After finding that a dismembered body belongs to the estranged ex-wife of a man who had been accused of her murder several years earlier, the investigators discover that that man's daughter is pregnant, and find evidence that he was molesting her. Just as their case starts to look watertight -- that he killed his wife when she returned to find him in bed with their daughter -- the truth comes out: it's just a [[wikipedia:False pregnancy|hysterical pregnancy.]] The daughter killed her mom for threatening her fantasy life. Dad had no idea what the heck was going on.
** Another episode ends with the perp(?) delivering this [[Mind Screw|immortal line]] - "I swear to God it's the truth... even if it never happened."<ref>Which, it should be noted, is a [[Shout-Out]] to ''[[One Flew Over the
* ''[[Nowhere Man]]'', an early UPN drama, was about a man who was [[Unperson|UnPersoned]] over a compromising photograph of U.S. Soldiers executing Third World peasants. He traveled the country trying to unravel the conspiracy that was behind his erasure and reclaim his old life. After twenty-odd episodes of [[Mind Screw]] and conflicting explanations about why the photo was important, the finale closed with [[The Reveal]] that his old life never existed. He was really a government agent that had been captured by the conspiracy and implanted with false memories, and his entire cross-country odyssey had been a test of how much of the lie he would believe. This may have been intended to lead into a second season, but it was never produced.
* In all places, the family sitcom [[
* The final episode of ''[[Roseanne]]'', in which {{spoiler|it's revealed that all of the show's characters are simply altered versions of the real people in Roseanne's life.}}
** And further that {{spoiler|a number of key events and facts were altered... including that the 'real' Roseanne's husband ''died'' of the heart attack Dan survived.}}
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== Videogames ==
* ''[[Braid]]'s'' story is allegorical and, while open to interpretation, is seemingly about a man trying to salvage the relationship with the love of his life. The last level features {{spoiler|Tim and the Princess running from a knight who is seemingly out to steal her from him. At the end of the level you then rewind time - revealing that you were actually seeing the events in reverse, and that the knight was trying to save her from the obsessed Tim.}} The [[Guide Dang It|extremely well-hidden]] secret ending offers a few more clues about the plot: while still open to interpretation, {{spoiler|the game is seemingly an allegory for the development of nuclear weapons. Tim is a scientist, and the Princess is the split atom.}} [[Word of God]] says that it is up to the reader to decide what the story is really about.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty]]'' ends in a gigantic [[Gainax Ending]], the idea being that the player reason out how much of the plot was real or not (to fit in with the game's [[Aesop]] that the inability to interpret things for yourself is very bad). It probably overdid it a bit.
** See [[
** Also the Ending of ''Metal Gear Solid 3'': After having defeated the [[Big Bad]], killed his traitorous mentor, averted World War 3, recovered the secret microchip, and retreating to a remote hut with the triple agent love interest, Snake wakes up the next morning to only find a tape record explaining that said love interest was a quadruple agent who was supposed to murder him and would have done so, but being unable to refuse the last wish of his mentor he killed who wasn't really a traitor but was chosen as the Fall Girl to give her life to cover up an even greater government conspiracy. And she also stole the microchip while he was asleep. Not that the last part would make a difference, since [[Gambit Pileup|another quadruple agent had switched the real chip for a fake one]].
* The worst ending of [[Silent Hill]] has it reveal that the entire game is a dying dream of Harry's, who died in the car crash at the beginning of the introduction.
* At the End of ''[[Silent Hill: Shattered Memories]]'' it's revealed that the player has been controlling a fantasy version of protagonist Harry Mason, created by his daughter Cheryl to cope with his sudden death years before. This would seem to imply that the entire game is taking place in her head, but several throw-away events scattered throughout could be taken to imply that Cheryl's fantasy is somehow interacting with the real world. Ultimately the player is left unsure as to how much, if any, of the game's previous events really took place, or whether any of the people Harry meets on his journey actually existed.
* Similarly, the ending of ''[[Silent Hill: Downpour]]'' has the reveal of whether or not Murphy killed his mentor, and the worst ending revealed that he killed his son as well. That dramatically changes the entire game beforehand, where you believe that the child molester Murphy hunted down was responsible.
* ''[[Monkey Island 2:
** Is Guybrush just a little boy dreaming of being a pirate? In that case, all that happened up to this point was just the imagination of a kid.
** Was the "child in an amusement park" part a trick by LeChuck, an effort to trap Guybrush in a [[Lotus Eater Machine]]?
** Did Guybrush somehow trigger Big Whoop and end up in another world? Was it when he fell down the chasm?
*** The third game in the series seems to indicate that the second theory is true. Note, however, that the third game wasn’t made by original creator Ron Gilbert. We still don’t know what his plans for Monkey Island 3 were.
* '''[[
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