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Happy Ending Override - TV Tropes

  • ️Thu Sep 15 2011

"You can't have happy endings in sitcoms, not really, because if everyone's happy, the show would be over, and above all else, the show...has to keep going."

The Big Bad has been brought to a crushing end at the hands of The Hero, their Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and their trademark BFS. The Negative Space Wedgie that was threatening all of creation has been un-wedgied, the Sealed Evil in a Can has been safely disposed of, all the plot threads that were left hanging have been wrapped up nice and neat and everybody lives Happily Ever After.

And then the sequel happens.

It's inevitable: you can't have a story without conflict and chaos, and therefore you can't have a sequel set in a world that we last saw happy and peaceful without dropping a new horrible menace in the thick of things and letting them run amok. This, however, is taking things far beyond simple Status Quo Is God. We leave an idyllic paradise and come back to a Crapsack World: the Golden Age has rusted over, chivalry has been stabbed in the back, the peaceful kingdom has transformed into an evil empire (or invaded by it, or both) and everything that our protagonists fought so hard to save has been pillaged and murdered by time and writers. The shaggy dog was shot while we weren't looking. The world is not only substantially worse off than it was when we last saw it, but much of the time, it's even worse off than it was when the story first began.

This is the part where our heroes (assuming they're not dead, incapacitated or turned evil) fall to their knees and deliver their best Zero impression: "What were we fighting for?" The Guardian newspaper pointed out how depressingly common this trope has been through the 2010's, and gave such sequels the moniker of "bleakquel".

Full-Circle Revolution and the Cartwright Curse are typical means to this effect. For inversions, see Belated Happy Ending. Contrast Was It Really Worth It?, where the characters are made to feel the cost (usually personal) of their victory before the story ends, but the good which results is usually lasting. Compare Doomed by Canon, where the "sequel" story undoing the happy ending was written first. When this happens repeatedly over the course of a work or series, this may become a Yo-Yo Plot Point.

If this is done especially badly, many fans may well declare the sequel to have never happened.

See also Sudden Downer Ending, where the override happens before the sequel.

Not to be confused with Your Princess Is in Another Castle!, where not only is the ending unhappy, but it isn't actually an ending at all.

No Real Life Examples, Please!

As this is an Ending Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

Example subpages:

Other examples:

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Fan Works 

Crossovers

  • Abigail and the Rats of NIMH: While Once Upon a Forest ended on a bittersweet yet optimistic note, here it's made clear that Dapplewood is still suffering. Michelle's brush with death has left her Delicate and Sickly, with asthma and poor eyesight, and haunted by the deaths of her parents. Then scientists from NIMH show up, eager to investigate the cleanup crew's reports about Dapplewood's strangely advanced dwellings...
  • Avenger Goddess has a brief example of this when Natasha tells Tony how she and Diana once helped a neighbour realise that she had cancer in time to get treatment; a year after they moved away Natasha checked on that neighbour and found that she was run over by a bus, which she's never been able to bring herself to tell Diana about.
  • Ben 10: Reincario: Rather than allowing Lucario to be Together in Death with Sir Aaron as Pokémon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew implied, it's revealed that Sir Aaron sealing Lucario away effectively rendered him a wild Pokémon, meaning he's unable to stay with his master. Paradox thusly asks Arceus to let Lucario Reincarnate in Another World so that he won't spend his entire afterlife hopelessly lonely.
  • Digimon Adventure: Side Order: Gatomon bitterly notes that a lot of what the Digidestined fought for was ultimately rendered meaningless by the apocalypse that wiped out humanity and almost completely destroyed the Digital World in the process, though Eight assures her that Inklings and Octolings are still able to carry the torch left behind by humankind.
  • Infinity Train: Blossomverse:
  • Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger: In the Smuggler Route of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Player helps Nariel Pridence retrieve Nihilus' holocron safely. This fic reveals that shortly after they parted ways, Nihilus' ghost awoke and murdered her, setting her ship off course to a place where it'd eventually be found and looted by smugglers.
  • In Kimi No Na Iowa, the protagonists of Your Name successfully reunited... and then just months later, the Abyssals arrived, and Ayaka learned that she's the USS Iowa reborn in human form.
  • Lighting Candles reveals that the Guardians' victory had some nasty consequences: even without Pitch around, the Nightmares as just as hostile as ever... and now they don't have him keeping them in check and focused on their purpose.
  • A New World, A New Way: In Requiem from the Lostbelt, the arrival of the Lostbelts on the new Equestria threatens everything the ponies, Pokémon and former humans have created, especially since Chaldea is hellbent on wiping them out completely.
  • old light still slants through overrides the light-hearted and comical tone of Reborn's ending, which left off with Tsuna having to endure the shenanigans of Reborn's tutoring once more with all of his new friends. After becoming the boss of the Vongola, he attempts to return the organization to its vigilante roots, only for the rise of Quirks to throw the world into chaos as the Vongola desperately tried to maintain order. The Vongola ultimately lose and it's heavily implied that Tsuna witnessed the deaths of all of his loved ones, family members, and Guardians, including the death of his younger brother, who was only 19 at the time. With nothing left to live for, Tsuna becomes a Death Seeker and goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, indiscriminately slaughtering everyone he held responsible before finally dying himself and reincarnating as Izuku Midoriya. Filled with guilt and regret, Tsuna now acts as a Spirit Advisor to Izuku, coaching him on how to use his Dying Will Flames to become a Hero and prevent Izuku from going down the same path he did.
  • Storm on the Horizon takes the already Bittersweet Ending of Life Is Strange and presents it as a pure downer. When Max went back in time to let Chloe die and save Arcadia Bay, Chloe promised Max that, even though she may be dead, Max would still have the memories of the amazing week they spent together. Chloe was right, and Max came to regard those memories as a curse, spending the rest of her life knowing that that moment of happiness was cruelly yanked away by Chloe's fate. The agony caused her to start meddling with time again to find a way to save both Chloe and Arcadia Bay, with the only solution turning out to be her killing herself before she ever met Chloe. The act renders Max an immortal, ageless 18-year-old who can never meet Chloe again lest she cause an apocalyptic disaster, which is why Max highly suspects that meeting Chloe's daughter Elisabet Sobeck caused the Faro Plague.

Ace Attorney

Ben 10

  • Ben 10: Plumbers of Bellwood presents Omniverse as an Alternate Universe, and the Season Five premiere "Going Back in Time" crosses over with it, overriding Omniverse' original ending entirely when it blows up, killing all of its residents.

Danganronpa

The DCU

Disney Animated Canon

  • Darkest Destiny: In Tangled: The Series, Catalina has her lycanthropy largely under control, to the point that she's a Gentle Giant even while transformed. After being abducted by child rapists here, she winds up murdering them all, and has come to despise her curse and wants it gone at any cost.
  • Disney Princesses but they're Villains: A few scenarios serve as Continuations of the original movies, resulting in this:
    • Snow White inherits all of Queen Grimhilde's belongings, including the Magic Mirror, who gradually corrupts her into becoming an Evil Queen herself.
    • When Mirabel restores their gifts, Dolores is overwhelmed by the return of her Sensory Overload and has a Traumatic Superpower Awakening, gaining the ability to strip voices away from others.
  • A Marriage Of Convenience: Rather than being accepted after her powers are revealed, Elsa finds herself isolated socially and politically; her subjects are convinced she's a monster while Arendelle's former allies have largely severed or downgraded their ties. To prevent outright rebellion, she resorts to Altar Diplomacy, but the only one willing to parlay is the King of the Southern Isles, forcing her to marry Hans while Arendelle becomes a vassal state.
  • The Queens Admiral does this for Beauty and the Beast, as whatever peace and happiness the characters managed to achieve were undercut by the French Revolution, during which Adam (the Beast) lost his kingdom, his son, and almost all of his servants aside from Chip. The former prince Adam had since become a senile old man who eventually dies of heart attack when he got involved in the conflict that the main characters were involved in.
  • Take a Stand: In Star of Ceartais, Robyn is the only one of her litter who survived; the other three died due to Judy and Nick's genes mixing poorly. Not only is there still rampant discrimination between interspecies relationships, it's come coupled with rising classism, cruelty, and illegal activities that the ZPD can't keep up with.

Dragon Ball

The Fairly Oddparents

  • Happily Ever After does this with the Distant Finale of Channel Chasers, albeit at the end of the story. Shortly after Timmy says goodbye to his children before going to work, a new magical threat emerges, Timmy and Trixie are reminded of fairies, and they join their children with setting out to stop this threat, the story ending on a Cliffhanger where Cupid says the bonds of love have been broken.

Fallout

  • Children of the Atom: The Modus Operandi series has a Bittersweet Ending, as most of the named cast died in the process of stopping the super mutant invasion. Then Children of the Atom reveals that the Legion reached the Capitol Wasteland despite all of their efforts.

Grave of the Fireflies

  • Light of the Fireflies Trilogy: The epilogue reveals that the house Seita and his family moved into was destroyed during the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, falling apart before succumbing to the spreading fires.

Gundam

  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Paradox overrides the happy ending of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny given the presence of the story's Bad Future. Five years after the second war between the Earth Alliance and ZAFT, both the Atlantic Federation and the PLANTs are both embroiled in a civil war — the Atlantic Federation's reformed government against remnants of Blue Cosmos, and a three-way power struggle between the Clyne faction, Patrick Zala's, and Gilbert Durandal's respective remnant factions. The artificial intelligence JUNO was created in order to pacify these conflicts. However, because of its self-awareness and growing beyond its programming, it began to execute Protocol 37564, resulting in one of the deadliest cyberattacks in the Cosmic Era and JUNO ultimately succeeded in conquering the Earth and became its tyrannical ruler. JUNO would then set its sights on the PLANTs, by having one of its androids murder Kira Yamato and take on his physical appearance and allowing JUNO to hack into several ZAFT mobile suits, and among those hacked is the Destiny Gundam, Shinn Asuka's mobile suit, which is then rigged to self-destruct. Unfortunately, Shinn got trapped inside his Destiny, killing him when his MS exploded, resulting in a chain reaction that devastated all of the PLANT colonies. 70 years after the cyberattack, most of the main cast are already dead, with Lunamaria being the only known survivor, and three other stragglers travel back into the past to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

Harry Potter

The Legend of Zelda

Miraculous Ladybug

  • Face The Truth serves as one for Two Letters, as Lila, who Marinette picked as her Sketchy Successor as part of her revenge against Paris, exposed all of Marinette's plot and crimes, including destroying the Rabbit Miraculous.This effectively makes every morally gray to black action Marinette did to secure her happy ending All for Nothing.
  • lies of attrition has an odd, self-inflicted variant of this. As the story begins with Adrien being given a Metaphorically True account of the final battle in "Re-Creation", and he is told that Monarque succeeded in making the Wish at the cost of Gabriel Agreste's life. Adrien has little desire for his controlling and abusive father to return, but views his sacrifice as wrong, and so he resolves to undo the Wish and bring him back, despite knowing that it will likely cost him his newfound freedom.

My Hero Academia

  • To Cross the Line ended on an optimistic note with reformed Anti-Villain Izuku officially joining Class 2A and hero society starting to change for the better with a focus on villain rehabilitation, thanks to the downfall of the corrupt HPSC president and replacement by Yokumiru Mera. The sequel, You Think You're a Hero zigzags the trope. By the time Izuku tries to go for his hero licence, the HPSC has fallen back into old habits after Mera was forced out of the job, and they refuse to accept that Izuku passed the licensing exam unless he agrees to endorse their policy of, as he describes it, "demonizing villains or propping up flashy heroes." Even seven years later, the HPSC still refer to him as "the villain Deku". That said, even without being a Pro Hero, Izuku has managed to do a lot of good in quirkless support and villain rehabilitation in those seven years, he's still Happily Married to Ochako, and he has enough support in the hero community to be hired by UA Principal Nezu to teach heroics to a class partially comprised of teenage former villains like he was. But this in turn leads to another Override: one of those villains is Kota Izumi, who has evidently lost whatever faith he had in heroics after it was restored by Izuku's rescue of him.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

  • Aftermath of the Games: Integration features two examples:
    • Firstly, most of the progress Sci-Twi made coping with what happened to her at the Friendship Games is negated when she unexpectedly gains magical powers, punching her Trauma Button HARD and ripping open old wounds.
    • Meanwhile, Princess Twilight grapples with her own guilt over how she [[Retgone Ret-Goned]] the original Starlight Glimmer out of reality by adopting her enemy's past self, worrying over how her adoptive daughter will react if she ever learns the truth, along with her fear that she'll still turn out like her past self.
  • Besides the Will of Evil effectively renders the events of It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door into one massive Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!, as Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Rarity inadvertently enabled an Eldritch Abomination to escape its seal and start wrecking havoc.
  • In Little Glimpses, it turns out that Twilight's timeline-hopping battle with Starlight Glimmer during "The Cutie Remark" triggered a Butterfly of Doom that led to Rainbow Dash losing her parents as a filly, overwriting the original series' timeline with the events of the fic.
  • Twilight's Bureaucracy: "Where the [REDACTED] Did I Go Wrong?" and "Celestia Goes Crazy and Stuff" both address the ones that surfaced in My Little Pony: A New Generation, causing the satirical series to adopt a darker tone.

The Owl House

  • In the Luz Clawthorne universe, the events of Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Atlantis: Milo's Return had a tragic outcome thanks to the survival of Helga Sinclair, who convinced the US government that the Atlanteans could not be trusted. As a result, Kida was forced to sink Atlantis once more, the expedition team was forced to go into hiding due to how they'd supported the Atlanteans, and Sinclair was lauded as a war hero, going on to run the Archangels alongside Angel.
  • Downplayed in What Comes Next?, which focuses on the residents of the Boiling Isles rebuilding their lives after Belos is finally dealt with.

Persona

  • This gets Downplayed in Marigolds: Akira's Flash Sideways visions of the original timeline reveal that aside from Futaba, the Phantom Thieves were generally struggling or dissatisfied with how their lives were turning out as adults. Morgana has it the worse, as they turned into an ordinary cat and wound up with bone cancer. Things only get worse in the original timeline when Maruki gains the powers of a god and attempts to thank Akira and the others by fulfilling their desires that way...

RWBY

  • In the Ruby and Nora story Attacks, the titular duo save the town of Muzukasi from robotic Grimm attacks after finding out that Harold White was behind them. In the very next story, Bloodsucker, Muzukasi was destroyed by the Aswang with Penwood the only survivor.

The Smurfs

  • In the second story of Raven Child's The Smurfette Village series, the Smurfettes escape the volcanic destruction of their village with the help of the Smurfs and end up moving in with them in the Smurf Village, setting itself up for a Happily Ever After ending. By the time the third story's How We Got Here sequence starts, however, only ten of the Smurfs and Smurfettes survive the destruction of the Smurf Village due to a Synthetic Plague being unleashed upon all but those ten Smurfs who escaped.

Sonic the Hedgehog

  • The Furminator has Tails eventually come to terms with the revelation that he was an infiltration unit built by Robotnik. In Personality Crisis 2 - More than Machines, his crush on Zooey reignites his insecurities, which only get worse once she learns he's a robot, complicating his life even further.

Star Trek

  • Flaihhsam s'Spahkh has a throwaway mention that Ael t'Rllaillieu from the Rihannsu novels was assassinated at some point after becoming Empress of the Romulan Star Empire in the last book, which probably explains why her friendship with Kirk and the Enterprise crew hadn't led to a long-term thaw in relations with the Federation by Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Thomas & Friends

  • A Tarnished Alliance is set a few weeks after the events of Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure. Thomas and Ryan are now friends, the Harwick branchline has opened, Sailor John has been defeated, and Sir Topham Hatt has forgiven Thomas...only to show that Gordon shows zero remorse for the accident with the express coaches early in the film, and rejects both Thomas's apology and the alliance they once had.

Touken Ranbu

  • The 6th installment of the Tales of the Undiscovered Swords ends with Sasanoyuki on kiwame seemingly able to move on from his past. However, in the 8th fic which features him after the kiwame training, it's revealed that his self-hatred problem has gotten worse from being exposed to the past events again. He gets better in the end though.

Films — Animation 

  • The Angry Birds Movie 2: Red has been accepted by the other birds, but he still struggles with loneliness and abandonment issues and even fears that they might reject him again, and to add insult to injury, both the birds and the pigs are facing a new threat.
  • Aladdin (1992, Disney): The film ends with Jafar being tricked into becoming a genie and then being trapped inside a lamp, but Aladdin: The Return of Jafar reveals that Jafar escaped from his lamp and now wants revenge.
  • Daddy, I'm a Zombie: In the first movie, Isis returned to her time and lived a happy life. In the sequel, she comes back as a zombie and is killed by Piroska.
  • How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and its sequel revolved around humanity learning to live in harmony with dragons. However, the trilogy ended with Hiccup sending the dragons away for their own good after deciding that peaceful coexistence was impossible (in an attempt to be in line with the ending to the book series), and this ends up being a Broken Aesop in the Distant Finale How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming as it's shown that in their absence humans grew fearful of dragons once more and Hiccup almost sent his people right back to square one.
  • At the end of The Incredibles, it looks like the Parr family can finally come out of hiding after saving the city from Syndrome's Omidroid, and can now fight crime in public as a superhero family, but in the sequel, which picks up right where the previous film left off, it's revealed that superheroes are still illegal and one of the main goals of the film is to try and get the law changed. Even Violet getting a date with her crush, Tony, gets undone when Dicker erases his memory after he accidentally discovers her secret identity, making him forget all about her. Thankfully both of these are resolved by the end, restoring the happy ending for the saga.
  • My Little Pony: A New Generation is this to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, implied as being set many thousands of years later to the point that the events of the latter has faded into myth and legend and is considered ancient. Twilight Sparkle's golden age of friendship didn't last, the pony tribes are more divided than ever and magic is gone. Though The Magic Comes Back at the end and the world is beginning to heal.
  • A partial example in Toy Story 4. The Bittersweet Ending of Toy Story 3 saw the teenage Andy passing on his toys to little Bonnie, who seemed like she would play with them and love them as much as Andy had. In the sequel, this is true for most of the toys, but Bonnie has lost interest in Woody and ignores him. In the end, he accepts that she doesn't need him anymore and starts a new life as an ownerless toy with Bo Peep.
  • Wreck-It Ralph ends with Vanellope finally earning her place in Sugar Rush and becoming a popular player, while Ralph cherishes having a new friend who makes his job as a video game villain more bearable. The sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet, takes place six years later - Vanellope is now tired of Sugar Rush and finds it boring, accidentally gets it unplugged, and eventually abandons it for another game, while Ralph is forced to learn to give up his own happiness to allow for hers.

Folklore 

  • In the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (ATU), some "complete" tale types may cross with others as their continuation. That is, after the happy ending with the hero or heroine marrying the princess or prince, respectively, the story continues with an antagonist trying to destroy their happiness. For example:
    • Cinderella (which is tale type ATU 510A, "Cinderella", a subtype of ATU 510, "The Persecuted Heroine"): its variants usually end after the shoe-fitting test and the heroine's marriage. However:
      • When it continues as tale type ATU 403, "The Black and the White Bride", the heroine is replaced by her stepsister and killed, depending on the variant. Fortunately, the heroine goes through a cycle of metamorphoses until she gains human form again and unmasks the impostor. Examples: Tấm Cám (Vietnam), Beauty and Pock Face (China).
      • When it continues as tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", the heroine gives birth to children of marvellous aspect, but either her stepsisters, her stepmother, or even her mother-in-law, take the children and throw them in the sea, replacing them for puppies and other animals, and her husband, ashamed, orders his wife to be imprisoned. Meanwhile, the children survive and, after a series of adventures, restore their mother.
    • In North African/Berber variants of tale type AaTh 451A, "The Sister Seeking her Nine Brothers" (after 2004, it was subsumed under type ATU 451, "The Maiden who Seeks her Brothers"), the heroine is the sister of seven brothers, goes on a journey to visit them, but a black servant trades places (and skintone/race) with her. At the end of the tale, the impostor is unmasked and punished, and the girl is reunited with her brothers. However:
      • If the tale segues into tale type ATU 709A, "The Sister of Nine Brothers", the girl searches for coal with a ghoul or other creature, who goes after her to devour her, but is defeated by the brothers. However, a body part of the ghoul (such as a nail) remains lodged in the girl's skin and she falls into a death-like sleep. She is eventually saved when her bier or coffin tumbles to the ground and dislodges the ghoul's nail, reviving her. Example: Udea and her Seven Brothers.
      • If the tale continues as type ATU 285B*, "Snake Enticed out of Man's Stomach", the heroine's sisters-in-law, jealous of the attention she is getting from her brothers, tricks the girl into eating a dish of snake eggs which hatch inside her.

Music 

  • In a-ha's music video to "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.", the video starts with the character from their "Take on Me" video turning back into a drawing and disappearing while the girl watches helplessly.
  • Greg Champion's "I Made a Hundred in the Backyard at Mum's" ends on a triumphant note with the narrator making a hundred. The P.O.V. Sequel, "I Hit that Wicket" by Ian Macnamara immediately reveals that he was bowled out by his brother, who seemingly got all the glory for breaking his streak.
  • "11 y 6" is a sweet love ballad by argentinian singer Fito Paez, about the romance between two little children (their ages form the title of the song). Five years later, and after a devastating personal tragedy, Paez released "El chico de la tapa", where it's revealed the girl has since died and the boy has become a delinquent.
  • The music video for Panic! at the Disco's "This is Gospel" has Brandon Urie's character—who might be dead, given that people are trying to stuff him in a coffin—escape and disappear into a white light, which many interpret as Heaven. The sequel video, "Emperor's New Clothes", reveals that it is Heaven...but then a trapdoor to Hell opens and he turns into a demon. Then again, he seems okay with it, and we later get "Say Amen" as a Prequel implying that he was Evil All Along...
  • The Charlie Daniels Band: "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" has Johnny foiling the Devil's attempt to steal his soul by decisively beating him in the fiddle contest. The sequel, "The Devil Came Back To Georgia", reveals that, after Johnny got older and fell out of practice, the Devil actually took him up on his ill-advised offer to "come on back here if you ever feel like trying again". We never find out whether Johnny was able to defeat the Devil a second time or not.
  • French song "Aurélie" by Colonel Reyel is about a pregnant 16 years old girl who decides to keep her baby and as a result her boyfriend leaves her and her parents kick her out. She then heavily struggles to find a job and a roof. The music video provides a happy ending with her boyfriend and her parents being back into her life to support her. In the Sequel Song "Aurélie 2" released in 2024, it turns out that her boyfriend left her for good not long after, and Aurélie has ever since struggled to find a man. She finally falls in love with a man named Alex. Unfortunately, Alex, after a passionate night, reveals his true colors and disfigures Aurélie who dies from the abuse.

Newspaper Comics 

  • The happy ending of Opus, in which Opus finally finds happiness in the pages of Goodnight Moon is overriden by the reboot comic revealing that the entire comic and the previous comic Outland were All Just a Dream.

Professional Wrestling 

  • The result of the "First Blood End of an Era" match between reigning WWF Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin and challenger The Undertaker with babyface Austin's main event career and heel Vince McMahon's grip on the organization on the line. Austin triumphed and per the stipulation, Vine was ousted as chairman, ending one of the most gripping wrestling feuds of all time and allowing Austin to move on from the McMahon rivalry. Two and a half months later, having lost the WWF championship, Austin used his controlling influence to reinstate Vince so he could be granted another main event title shot against Triple H. While initially a babyface feuding with Triple H, Vince eventually turned heel again in 2000, costing The Rock the WWF championship in the main event of Wrestlemania 2000 and reconciled with Triple H, while Austin spent the duration of that year out with a severe neck injury. When he returned from injury and finally reclaimed the title, Austin turned his back on the fans and actually aligned himself with McMahon and Triple H during the spring of 2001.
  • The 2001 Survivor Series event saw the World Wrestling Federation defeat World Championship Wrestling in a 'winner take all' main event where the losing organization would be dissolved. The next night on RAW, with the famous Monday Night Wars now firmly behind them, WWF World Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin turned babyface once again, The Rock had control of the World Heavyweight Championship, and Ric Flair was made a partial co-owner of the organization, but Vince McMahon and The Undertaker both turned heel the same night too. While Flair intended for Austin and Rock to meet at the December Vengeance event where both would fight to unify the championships, Vince persuaded Flair to make it a tournament and inserted heel challengers Chris Jericho and Kurt Angle into the mix. Vince ultimately got not just the literal last laugh on WCW, but on Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock as well, as both men would lose their world titles to Chris Jericho on the same night, ending two of his Attitude Era rivalries in one fell swoop and in triumph. You don't cross the boss!
  • The final Pay Per View under the World Wrestling Federation name, Backlash 2002, saw Hulkamania run wild once more with Hulk Hogan defeating Triple H to claim the Undisputed WWF Championship, fittingly ending the WWF on a high note with arguably the champion that put the organization on the map. The same night, The Undertaker defeated Steve Austin to become the number one contender, and the following month at the first Pay Per View under the World Wrestling Entertainment brand name, Undertaker would defeat Hogan for the title with a little assistance from Vince McMahon. This would be Hogan's last ever world title reign in any organization.
  • The 2014 Survivor Series event saw The Authority forced to disband after losing the main event- only for Seth Rollins to reinstate the faction literally five weeks later, allowing them to cause even more misery for another two years. Their final disbanding was more of an Anti-Climax.
  • The 2023 Two-Night spectacular Wrestlemania 39 concluded its first evening with Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens toppling their arch-rivals The Usos and winning the Unified World Tag Team championships, putting an end to over two years of dominance by the heel tag team, and teasing the inevitable collapse of their dominant faction The Bloodline to fans. However, by the end of night two, despite last minute intervention by Sami and Kevin, the Usos are able to repel them and help Roman Reigns defeat Cody Rhodes to retain the Undisputed Universal Heavyweight Championship, ensuring the Bloodline remained at the top of the mountain. It wouldn’t be until five months later that the Usos finally quit the Bloodline- but Roman still has their brother Solo under his wing. And even then, that only lasted for three months before Jimmy rejoined them anyway.

Puppet Shows 

  • Show Within a Show example in the Dinosaurs episode, "Working Girl"; in the trailer for Exploding Cop II, the titular character puts his life back together by replacing all of his loved ones who were killed in the first movie, only for those people to get killed, too. He was all right about it, though, until he found out that the supermarket didn't have any peanut butter.

Radio 

  • Bleak Expectations actually pulls this off as a running gag. Every season ends with Pip victorious over his archnemesis, Mr. Gently Benevolent, but wouldn'tcha know, the evil old Gently just won't stay defeated. Or dead. This is lampshaded with the titles of the season openers and enders: 1) "A Childhood Cruelly Kippered"/"A Life Smashed, Then Happily Restored a Bit"; 2) "A Happy Life Cruelly Re-Kippered"/"A Happy Life Broken Then Mended a Bit"; 3) "A Lovely Life Re-Kippered Again Once More"/"Lives Lost, Wrecked, Ruined and Redeemed"; 4) "A Tolerable Life De-Happified"/"A Life Destroyed Then Repaired and Rehappied" 5) "A Pleasant Yet Dull Life Re-Evilled"/"A Loved-Up Life Potentially Totally Annihilated"
  • The second series of Undone actually uses the promise of this as a Sequel Hook, telling us that despite the apparent happy ending to S2, within a year one character in the episode would be dead and Undone would be destroyed. Series 3 follows through with it.

Theatre 

  • Annie Warbucks, the rarely-performed sequel to Annie, opens exactly where the original show ended, with Annie Happily Adopted by Daddy Warbucks on Christmas morning. But then it's revealed that Warbucks can't legally adopt Annie without a wife, which leads to a complicated adventure plot that involves Warbucks searching for a bride and facing financial difficulties, villains plotting to trick him into a marriage and then murder him, and Annie running away from home. Eventually, though, a new happy ending arrives, with Warbucks and Grace Farrell finally having a Relationship Upgrade and deciding to adopt all of Annie's friends from the orphanage too.
  • Beaumarchais's Figaro trilogy (most famous for its first two parts being put to music by Mozart and Rossini) does it in both the second and the third installments.
    • The Barber of Seville ends with Count Almaviva marrying his beloved Rosina and everyone rejoicing. Flash forward several years, and Count Almaviva is an arrogant, oppressive husband who is madly jealous of his wife but sleeps with servant girls himself, and his new target is Susanna, the bride of his loyal valet Figaro. But by the end of The Marriage of Figaro the Count has been taught a lesson, his and Rosina’s marriage is saved, and now everyone gets a happy ending, right?
    • Well, flash forward twenty more years to The Guilty Mother: the Count and Rosina's only son (as in, the only child they really had together) has been killed in a duel, Cherubino, the adorable Kid-anova, has likewise been killed, in battle, but not before having a one-night stand with the Countess and getting her pregnant, and now his son Leon is being passed off as the Count's, but the Count has serious doubts about the paternity and is disdainful of Leon. And the Count himself has also forgotten what he learned in the previous play and has in the meanwhile fathered an illegitimate daughter and now passes her off as his ward.
  • In Henry V, The Hero "gets the girl" at the end—a princess, no less!—the play ends with a wedding and a peace treaty, the long war seems to be over, the two kingdoms of England and France will be united into one realm—"That English may as French, French Englishmen, Receive each other". Then the Chorus reminds us of what happened next:

    This star of England: Fortune made his sword;
    By which the world's best garden be achieved,
    And of it left his son imperial lord.
    Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King
    Of France and England, did this king succeed;
    Whose state so many had the managing,
    That they lost France and made his England bleed:
    Which oft our stage hath shown; and, for their sake,
    In your fair minds let this acceptance take.

Visual Novels 

  • Danganronpa 3 ended with Ryota Mitarai's plan to brainwash what's left of the world stopped thanks to the Future Foundation and the former Remnants of Despair, and Makoto Naegi founds a new Hope's Peak Academy as the world starts to rebuild. Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony initially seems to have no relation to that timeline, leaving its happy ending intact while its own universe deals with the extinction of humanity by a disease-carrying meteor shower. However, it then proceeds to subvert and then has a double subversion: it's initially "revealed" that the extinction of humanity occurred during the time of Naegi's rebuilt Hope's Peak Academy, wiping away his and his friends' efforts for good...only for it to be established that both the universe of the earlier games and the universe of V3 are in-universe fictional stories, and that they originally were going to be separate universes before the mastermind had to quickly retcon them to be related. In the end, whether you believe the ending to be overridden depends on your own personal interpretation of whether Tsumugi Shirogane's hasty modifications to the in-universe Hope's Peak canon count as canon to the Hope's Peak media released in real life.
  • Kajiri Kamui Kagura is this to the ending of the Marie route of Dies Irae. Several thousand years after in the ending Marie aka Tasogare took the Throne and became the fifth Heaven, watching over reality with Ren aka Yato until she and the other Gods were killed by Hajun usurping the Throne. Hajun starts to destroy all of reality until Yato, the only one to survive due to having the series strongest defense power and Hajun almost not noticing him barely managed to stop the complete manifestation of Hajuns Law with his time stop. This continues for eight thousand years until the arrival of the Eastern Expedition, who start their journey to oppose Yato and Hajun.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations might have ended on a bittersweet note (what with Maya's long lost mother dying and Godot going to jail for it, all because of Morgan and Dahlia's actions), but it ultimately wraps up the original trilogy quite nicely, with all main characters being given a proper closure...that is until Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney came, revealing that Phoenix had been disbarred a few weeks after the events of Trials and Tribulations (also having a rather strong case of Same Character, But Different). To make matters worse, the only other returning character from the original trilogy is Ema Skye (there's also the Judge, if you want to count THAT), who was originally not in Phoenix's arc until the DS remake and the English localization, and Took a Level in Jerkass from her previous appearance. It's pretty telling that the following entries in the franchise, Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, reversed the disbarment plotline and went out of their way to reference the original trilogy and bring back its characters.
  • Raging Loop has a Bittersweet Ending Override on the Wit route. This route's Feast of the Yomi-Purging has left eight people dead in Yasumizu... but Haruaki and Rikako are an Official Couple, Meiko is on her way back to her parents (or, failing that, foster parents that will take care of her), and everyone else is able to live the rest of their days in peace. And then Haruaki returns to Yasumizu after a few days away and finds that in that time, Rikako committed suicide and everybody else killed each other, with Haruaki himself dying not long after.
  • Winged Cloud's Sakura Beach ends with Seiji realizing how Ayumi and Momoko feel about him and he shares a kiss with both of them, implying he begins a relationship with them both. Sakura Beach 2, however, reverts Seiji back to his old self with him as dense as ever, with him even saying he never kissed them before.

Web Animation 

  • The final episode of Battle for Dream Island has Leafy and Firey fly off into the sunset. When the second season begins, Leafy is running away from the other contestants. The fourth season explains that the two crashed and then Leafy ran away.
    • In the final episode of Battle For BFB, the two of them having made up, go and find their own island together. Only for that to be ruined come Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two, where although they found their island as shown by the 8th episode, the 13th episode has One send a storm to it, with Leafy dissapearing, either dead or captured by One, leaving Fiery all alone (until he encounters 8-Ball two episodes later).
  • The Madness Combat series seemed to end on a happy note at the end of Madness Combat 10: Abrogation with the Auditor being seemingly destroyed until seven years later when Madness Combat 11: Expurgation was released and Hank and Sanford have to fight a revived Tricky. Things seem to be going well up until the end when Hank and Sanford seemingly die and the Auditor comes Back from the Dead, now with apparently no one to oppose him.
  • Red vs. Blue inverted this with a Downer Ending Override: season 16 seemed to end in a way that The Bad Guy Wins, as the Reds and Blues managed to create the Time Crash that would allow him to take over the universe...and then the season 17 opener reveals the villain could not free himself to fulfill those plans, as a timely strike by a magic hammer trapped him in a forcefield-like prison.
  • Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers: The Genesis Arc ends with Zero being seemingly destroyed before he can end the SMG4 universe, albeit Axol was sadly killed in the process. Come the Revelations Arc, and it turns out Zero isn't dead after all, as he split into the two beings he was originally, with the evil one, Niles, becoming a Spirit Advisor to Melony who gets her to unlock her Fierce Deity powers and takes control of her in order to open the God Box and reenact his plan. Fortunately, things turn out all right in the end, with the God Box destroyed and Niles dying — though it sadly comes at the cost of the death of the good half of Zero going with him.

Webcomics 

  • CaptainHoers' webcomic Ask Firestarter Spitfire was a slice of life comic about the titular character working through grief, and ended with her becoming a healthier woman and even having a kid. A perfectly nice ending... made tragic by his seemingly unrelated comic, The Sunjackers, set in a world where the sun vanishes and life on the planet is teetering on extinction. While focusing on different characters, we eventually see the distant future of Spitfire and her child, where she spends years believing them dead and their dreams of space travel are crushed by the planetary crisis.
  • This happens in the It's Walky! paid subscription strips, as heavily lampshaded by Willis in The Rant to the rerun strips:

    Yeah, that’s right! You thought Sal and Jason were happy at the end of It's Walky! Yeah, well, but then you paid me to draw more story, and so whoops they broke up! That’ll show you to help me pay my bills!!!!!

  • Surviving Romance: A literal in-universe example is what kickstarts the main plot. Instead of the original ending of the novel with love confession and happily ever after Chaerin receives a zombie apocalypse by virus outbreak.

Web Original 

  • Atop the Fourth Wall: After Linkara defeats his evil robot counterpart (actually Pollo from another universe), it's revealed that Mechakara wasn't the only one who escaped into Linkara's universe. And the other person who did? Lord Vyce, an all-powerful Multiversal Conqueror who makes Mechakara look weak by comparison. But at least Linkara is able to defeat Vyce. Except he learns that the reason Vyce was out conquering universes was to protect them from The Entity, an Eldritch Abomination bent on consuming universes and make everyone in them disappear forever. Lewis stated in an interview that he wanted to keep invoking this trope with bigger and bigger threats, but couldn't come up with anything stronger than a god, so he switched to character-driven story arcs instead.
  • Homestuck ended with the main characters able to create a new, utopia world with the troll and human races revived, living with carapaces and consorts as well. Most of the villains are definitely dead, and it seems like the Big Bad's fate is sealed. The Homestuck Epilogues expands on this, and reveals that it's not the closed and happy ending it seems: The Prologue and both timelines imply that Alternate Calliope's black hole wiped out almost all of Paradox Space, apart from Earth C in the "Candy" timeline. One timeline deconstructs the idea of the characters growing old and starting families, most notably by having Jane turn in to a fascist dictator, forcing Jake into a relationship with her, and starting a war. The other timeline has John, the protagonist, getting killed from Lord English's poison while Dirk takes up the mantle as the next major antagonist.
  • POWCreations: Downplayed and more of a Bittersweet Ending Override. The original Rats SMP ends with the mischief bring ousted from the Mansion and fleeing into the woods in the midwinter after the safety of their original home in the Rattic was compromised, but they left a good legacy for most of the Mansion and Grandmother Icraga hoped that they would still be able to support each other as True Companions. The sequel series, Rats: In Paris, then takes over with the statement that the Mansion mischief ended up separating again during their escape into the snowy woods, and only about half of them made it to Paris to reunite of their own accords, though some of the other Mansion rats were retrospectively stated by Word of God to live out their own happy endings.
  • SCP Foundation: SCP-2519 does this to two sapient machine SCPs, SCP-2412 and SCP-629. When the composition is played for them, they become inefficient and broken. 629 becomes outright murderous and even though the page states the effects only last for as long as the song is played, it also states the symptoms can recur. These two SCPs will never be the same.
  • The SuperMarioLogan episode, "Jeffy's Parents!" ends with Jeffy promising Mario he'll be good if Mario adopts him so he doesn't have to live with Nancy, his biological mother who is an unattractive alcoholic prostitute who purposely abandoned him on Mario's doorstep, and Mario officially adopting him. Come Jeffy's next appearance, "Inside Jeffy!", Jeffy's back to his usual selfish, temperamental, misbehaved self who continues to make Mario's life miserable.
  • Limited Run Games's LRG3 2023 video presentation had a Framing Device where LRG's co-founder and CEO Josh Fairhurst travels back in time to hold a press conference at E3 1995 so he can bring E3 2023 into existence and save the Electronic Entertainment Expo. At the end of the presentation, he succeeds in his goal. The LRG3 2024 presentation picks up directly where the previous year's presentation left off and shows Josh travelling to 2024 and discovering E3 is still gone, complete with a Shout-Out to Chrono Trigger. In this case, Real Life Writes the Plot, as it had been announced that there will not be any E3 expos anymore.