History Main / CruelTwistEnding

** The GooseBumps episode "Calling All Creeps" plays with this. The main character flat out gives in to the villain's orders and turns his entire school into monsters because all throughout the story, he had been picked on by virtually everyone at school. Even as he was about to warn his classmates, they still made fun of him. The monsters had earlier promised he would be the kids' leader after the change, so he [[MoralEventHorizon allows it to happen]] [[RevengeBeforeReason out of revenge]]. Still a CruelTwistEnding for the main character's one friend and classmates, just not for ''him''.

** The GooseBumps episode "Calling All Creeps", big time. In it, the main character [[spoiler: flat out gives in to the villain's orders and turns his entire school into monsters; then it's implied that he will become one himself.]]
*** Not exactly. [[spoiler:The main character didn't give in. All throughout the story, he had been picked on by virtually everyone at school. Even as he was about to warn his classmates, they still made fun of him. The monsters had earlier promised he would be the kids' leader after the change, so he [[MoralEventHorizon allows it to happen]] [[RevengeBeforeReason out of revenge]]. Still a CruelTwistEnding for the main character's one friend and classmates, just not for him.]]

The CruelTwistEnding is basically the EvilCounterpart of the TwilightZoneTwist: in the latter, the twist is a form of divine justice, a bad thing happening to stop a bad person from [[LaserGuidedKarma getting away with it]] (or a good thing happening to someone who deserves it). In the former, it's just FinaglesLaw: the universe is a mean place and wants to hurt you. Often, a CruelTwistEnding is what happens when a writer attempts a TwilightZoneTwist, but fails to carry it off.

** The movie was based off of Philip K. Dick's "Second Variety", where [[spoiler:the girl the protagonist saved was actually one of the Second Variety robots]], but that story straddles the line between CruelTwistEnding and TwilightZoneTwist, with its closing revelation that [[spoiler:the robots, once they destroy humanity, are already preparing to destroy one another]].

** "The Human Factor": On the first ever colony on Ganymede, a robot suddenly rigs the reactor to blow up. The robot explains that since HumansAreBastards, its logical course of action is to destroy the colony and prevent humanity from expanding beyond Earth. The crew manages to deactivate the robot and save the reactor, though all but one die in the process. The survivor receives a message from Earth. WorldWarIII broke out, and nukes have wiped out a lot of the planet (including the survivor's family). A shuttle carrying the President and other officials is heading for Ganymede and will arrive in a few months. In despair, the survivor re-rigs the reactor to blow and turns the robot back on. He tells the robot it was right, then offers to play chess to pass the time until the colony is blown to kingdom come (though this one skirts TwilightZoneTwist a bit).
*** It turns into an outright CruelTwistEnding if you accept it as a true sequel to "Phobos Rising" instead of just another ClipShow episode attempting to [[ArcWelding Arc Weld]] unrelated episodes. Said previous episode had a true TwilightZoneTwist, as the Martian colonies destroyed each other thanks to rampant paranoia in the wake of a catastrophic event [[spoiler:that ended up with the two factions declaring a truce, and just to twist the knife in further, the general giving the news to the sole survivors of each colony tells them that all of Earth is looking to Martian colonies as a symbol and example of cooperation and solidarity]].

* Perhaps the best illustration of the difference between the two twists are two episodes of ''Series/TheTwilightZone'' with virtually the same plot: a man manages to apparently become the last man on Earth, and finds he finally has time to read all the books he wants -- until he breaks his glasses. It's the same twist in both episodes, but in one, the man is a general misanthrope who wills everyone else away, making his eventual fate karmic justice and a TwilightZoneTwist. In "Time Enough at Last", however, the man is a timid man who is ridiculed by his wife and boss for reading books, and who only survives a nuclear holocaust because he locked himself in a bank vault as the only way he could get some peace. In this case, the world just screws him over to be mean, making it an CruelTwistEnding.

** WordOfGod is that the original StarTrekDeepSpaceNine episode was specifically intended to mock Kirk by changing Kirk's triumph in the StarTrek "Mirror, Mirror" episode into an CruelTwistEnding, thereby vilifying Kirk as the man singularly responsible for ruining the lives of all humanity in another universe. Later episodes in the mirror universe de-emphasized (or ignored altogether) this motive, making it more of a TwilightZoneTwist and then more of a standard rebellion-against-alien-oppressors situation.

* ''{{Goosebumps}}'' stories made heavy usage of the CruelTwistEnding, while ''AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'' were more prone to the TwilightZoneTwist. It is perhaps the reason why the former is considered to be scarier.

** Even worse: in ''NightOfTheLivingDead'', it's deliberately left unclear whether the protagonist was actually mistaken for a zombie, or if the rednecks saving the day just saw a good opportunity to shoot a black guy without a fear of punishment.

* In ''TheMist'' the main characters leave the doomed grocery store in a car. When the car runs out of gas, the father [[spoiler: takes a pistol, and shoots EVERYONE IN THE CAR, including his own son. Out of bullets and unable to kill himself, he notices the mist dissipating, and hears a strange noise which turns out to be THE ENTIRE FUCKING ARMY WITH FLAMETHROWERS destroying the monsters. So, if he had waited literally one minute before killing everyone, they all would have survived.]]

** ''[=T-I-M=]'': A woman is badly wounded in an accident at home and begs her young son to call for medical help. However, he gives the operator the wrong name, and ends up being connected to the speaking clock (a recorded service.) He doesn't realize who he is talking to, and his mother lies dying on the floor unaware of what's really happening.

** ''The Mouse Hole'': In occupied France during WWII, an incompetent Resistance fighter known as "The Mouse" causes an innocent man to get shot by the Nazis. The Nazis soon arrive at the man's door, and his mother is forced to hide her wounded son inside the oven. However, the soldiers think she is actually hiding The Mouse in there, and light the fire. The Mouse gets away scot-free, blithely wondering why the chimney is suddenly alight.
** ''Hard to Get'' begins as a lightly comic story about an army officer trying and failing to seduce a beautiful woman in a restaurant. Then it's revealed they belong to a race of bloodsucking aliens that have taken over the earth, and their meal is a still-living human woman who has been tortured and trussed up to be served at the table.

** ''Marjorie's On Starlight'' ends with the ''nice'' little girl being thrown from her horse and run over by a steamroller, rather than her cruel and bullying stepsister.

* Very common in the short stories of Charles Birkin. A good example is ''The Lesson'', where a couple leave their young son with his uncle while they are hosting a party. The child ties up his uncle (who is drunk) and puts a plastic bag over the man's head to pretend he is an astronaut. When the parents find him, they are angry that he got drunk while taking care of their son. They decide to "teach him a lesson" by leaving him tied up while they go out - but then they get into a car accident. The badly wounded mother tries to tell hospital staff that the uncle needs help, but can only manage to say the word "bag", making the nurses think that she wants something from her handbag. Meanwhile, at home, the little boy is wondering why his uncle doesn't want to play any more ...

* The ending of ''Troll2'' was probably trying for this, but it ended up not really making any sense.

** "Gettysburg": A time traveler, who before caused a bittersweet, if not quite happy ending, along with KarmicDeath for an evil protagonist, sends three young men at a Battle of Gettysburg reenactment back to the actual battle. One of the young men was a Southern fanatic who thought the South should have won and the battle was glorious. Being in the real battle under an insane commander dying of meningitis disabuses him of the notion. The time traveler sought to teach him that {{Aesop}}, because otherwise he would shoot the first black U.S. President in 2013 when the president spoke at Gettysburg due to his Southern sympathies. The time traveler, however, dropped his device and the insane commander accidentally activated it, causing him to be transported to the future where he then shoots the president while he attempts to shoot the Lincoln reenactor.

The CruelTwistEnding is basically the EvilCounterpart of the TwilightZoneTwist: in the latter, the twist is a form of divine justice, a bad thing happening to stop a bad person from [[LaserGuidedKarma getting away with it]] (or a good thing happening to someone who deserves it). In the former, it's just FinaglesLaw: the universe is a mean place and wants to hurt you. Often, an CruelTwistEnding is what happens when a writer attempts a TwilightZoneTwist, but fails to carry it off.

** "Ripper": In Victorian London, a man goes on the trail of notorious serial killer JackTheRipper. He eventually discovers that the Ripper is actually an evil {{Body Surf}}ing alien. While it is in the body of an old woman, he fights and stabs it, only for the alien to exit the body and escape. The police arrive and arrest the protagonist, assuming that ''he'' is the Ripper. The alien, in a new body, visits the protagonist in the asylum and promises to find his family and kill them before leaving.

* The ''PowerpuffGirls'' fic ''Immortality Relapse'' which actually gave two OL twists, one for the first story ''FanFic/ImmortalitySyndrome'' and one for it own [[spoiler: The first comes midway though the story when Bubbles accidentally splashes some Antidote X on a revived Butch, this negates the murderous tenancies that came from being killed and revived when the puffs were recreated. But Bubbles goes into shock when she realizes in the first story they managed to subdue Buttercup that way and Buttercup was trying to warn them before she was killed again in hopes of fixing the problem.]] But that pales in comparison to [[spoiler: The ending when it looks like they had stopped Boomer from activating his doomsday machine. But he remains alive long enough to turn it on and kill everyone on the planet. Some last minute actions by the Professor allowed Bubble to be revived but she now the last living being alone on Earth.]]

* ''{{Count Yorga}}'' love these in its movies. Basically, despite all the heroes efforts and even killing the title character [[spoiler: They either find out too late that Yorga already turned the girl they're trying to save into a vampire and subsequently bitten. Or Become a vampire themselves in their rescue attempt and doom the damsel anyway to a life of undeath.]]
* ''Carnosaur''. The protagonists manage to defeat all the dinosaurs threatening their town and kill the mad scientist who unleashed them. [[spoiler: Government agents and soldiers burst in, execute them all, and burn the town to the ground to prevent news of the incident from spreading.]]

* The PlatypusComix story "Vess [=MacMeal=] Starring in: TheMoreYouKnow!" has an ending evoking those of cautionary stories written during the ColdWar. The comic traces the introduction of an electronic tablet called, "The Kimwon". As the tale progresses, the Kimwon develops new apps that do everything from streaming movies and TV shows, to scanning groceries, to synthesizing food. [[spoiler: These new apps eventually [[LuddWasRight take over all the Americans' jobs.]]]] If that doesn't sound bad enough, it also turns out [[spoiler: the Kimwon was invented by North Koreans as part of Kim Jong Il's plan to TakeOverTheWorld]]. If ''that'' doesn't sound bad enough, [[spoiler: Kim Jong Il also reveals that [[Film/SoylentGreen the Kimwon is made of people]]]]!

* The PlatypusComix story "Vess [=MacMeal=] Starring in: TheMoreYouKnow!" has an ending evoking those of cautionary stories written during the ColdWar. The story traces the introduction of an electronic tablet called, "The Kimwon". As the story progresses, the Kimwon develops new apps that do everything from streaming movies and TV shows, to scanning groceries, to synthesizing food. [[spoiler: These new apps eventually [[LuddWasRight take over all the Americans' jobs.]]]] If that doesn't sound bad enough, it also turns out [[spoiler: the Kimwon was invented by North Koreans as part of Kim Jong Il's plan to TakeOverTheWorld]]. If ''that'' doesn't sound bad enough, [[spoiler: Kim Jong Il also reveals that [[Film/SoylentGreen the Kimwon is made of people]]]]!

The CruelTwistEnding is basically the EvilCounterpart of the TwilightZoneTwist: in the latter, the twist is a form of divine justice, a bad thing happening to stop a bad person from [[LaserGuidedKarma getting away with it]] (or a good thing happening to someone who deserves it). In the former, it's just FinaglesLaw: the universe is a mean place and wants to hurt you. Often, an CruelLimitsEnding is what happens when a writer attempts a TwilightZoneTwist, but fails to carry it off.

*** It turns into an outright OuterLimitsTwist if you accept it as a true sequel to "Phobos Rising" instead of just another ClipShow episode attempting to [[ArcWelding Arc Weld]] unrelated episodes. Said previous episode had a true TwilightZoneTwist, as the Martian colonies destroyed each other thanks to rampant paranoia in the wake of a catastrophic event [[spoiler:that ended up with the two factions declaring a truce, and just to twist the knife in further, the general giving the news to the sole survivors of each colony tells them that all of Earth is looking to Martian colonies as a symbol and example of cooperation and solidarity]].

*** Apparently that ''wasn't enough'' of an OuterLimitsTwist for the writers, so they continued it in a later episode just to squash any hope the viewers had. Due to the aforementioned episode, the aliens begin winning the war. In a last-ditch effort, humanity tries to surprise attack the alien homeworld with a planet-killing WMD. The fleet is ambushed and the ship carrying the device is crippled, and everyone is killed immediately or knocked unconscious and given a fatal dose of radiation which will kill them soon. The hero manages to unmask a traitor, get to the destination and drop the bomb before his ship can be boarded. Unfortunately, the ship had been ''turned around'' whilst everyone was unconscious - the hero has just heroically ensured that the bomb was dropped on Earth! (In a bit of possibly-intentional irony, the actor playing this poor sap was Wil "[[CreatorsPet Wesley Crusher]]" Wheaton.)

[[folder: Trope Namer]]
* The 90's revival of ''TheOuterLimits'' was particularly fond of this. Some notable examples: '''(Depressing spoilers ahead!)'''
** "Tempests": In order to save a space colony, a man must figure out which of the two realities he's switching between are real, the [[LotusEaterMachine seemingly perfect one]] or the darker one. He makes the "right" choice - and we find out that ''both'' worlds are {{Lotus Eater Machine}}s. His real situation is much worse, he's cocooned by giant spiders and slowly being eaten, and as a result of his failure everyone presumably dies.
** "The Deprogrammers": A group of humans beat alien brainwashing and eventually manage to take down the BigBad -- [[BatmanGambit just as a rival alien had arranged]], as it turns out. Once they've done his dirty work for him, they're turned into ''his'' {{Brainwashed}} slaves.
** "Hearts And Minds": A group of soldiers fight the good fight against bizarre invading insectoid beasts, only to find that the "medication" given to them by their leaders is making them see their actually-human enemies as bugs. They lay down their weapons and try to talk to the enemies... who promptly kill them all, being under the influence of similar drugs and seeing our protagonists as monsters.
** "Straight And Narrow": [[SchoolForScheming An exclusive private school]] brainwashes its students for use as mercenaries, similar to the movie ''DisturbingBehavior'', which it predates. The one student who is immune to the process manages to escape and tell authorities -- who prove to be alumni, and drag him back to undergo the procedure (now corrected to work on the likes of him) as the assassination he'd tried to prevent is successfully carried out.
** "Quality of Mercy": A captured space pilot comforts the girl he's imprisoned with when the aliens start turning her into one of them. To give her hope, he says there's a secret reserve force waiting to strike at the aliens. Just what she wanted to hear, because she was a spy, and they're changing her ''back'' into an alien.
*** Apparently that ''wasn't enough'' of an CruelLimitsEnding for the writers, so they continued it in a later episode just to squash any hope the viewers had. Due to the aforementioned episode, the aliens begin winning the war. In a last-ditch effort, humanity tries to surprise attack the alien homeworld with a planet-killing WMD. The fleet is ambushed and the ship carrying the device is crippled, and everyone is killed immediately or knocked unconscious and given a fatal dose of radiation which will kill them soon. The hero manages to unmask a traitor, get to the destination and drop the bomb before his ship can be boarded. Unfortunately, the ship had been ''turned around'' whilst everyone was unconscious - the hero has just heroically ensured that the bomb was dropped on Earth! (In a bit of possibly-intentional irony, the actor playing this poor sap was Wil "[[CreatorsPet Wesley Crusher]]" Wheaton.)
*** The sequel's title should also be noted - "The Light Brigade". Quite the MeaningfulName, isn't it?
** "Dead Man's Switch": A fleet of alien spaceships are seen heading toward Earth. Being GenreSavvy and knowing they might be evil, a Doomsday plan with a DeadManSwitch is prepared, with 5 people in individual bunkers sharing the responsibility to prevent the doomsday plan from being enacted (should it become unnecessary) by regularly pressing a button to keep the doomsday device from turning on. The 5 people in bunkers are slowly dying because of how poorly the bunkers were made. The brief hope for peace is extinguished when a second fleet of colonization ships is found and the button pressers lose all contact. They die in their separate bunkers one by one until the last one remains. He finally decides to let it happen when he gets a message from his commander telling him they defeated the aliens with a new weapon. He stops the DoomsdayDevice at the last second and is told to keep pushing the button until they can disarm it. The last scene shows the aliens who used the commander as a puppet eating his brains over the glowing red ruins of DC.
** "Mind Over Matter": A man creates an AI machine to reach into a female coma patient's mind to help wake her up. It's a living dream and he falls in love with her cute avatar in the dream. Occasionally during this therapy they are attacked by a grimy evil looking version of the woman he believes is the AI attempting to take over. In the end he strangles the evil woman. The patient then dies because the cute avatar was the AI all along.
*** This ''could'' be a justified but depressing {{Aesop}} about not assuming that physical beauty extends to spirit and personality.
** "[[TheBible In Our Own Image]]": An android programmed to be a soldier who wants to live a life of peace escapes from the lab and gets a ride from a random lady he carjacks. She helps him escape and attempt to get the items he needs to remove his safeguards and be free. At the last second before he's truly free, she reveals she was one of his programmers and shuts him down. She wanted to see what he could do before she stopped him. Unfortunately for her and humanity, he had identified her beforehand, turns himself back on, kills her, and starts a robot uprising.
** "Nightmare": A team for special mission is captured and interrogated on their mission to place a DoomsdayDevice on their foe's home planet. The aliens are interrogating them about the mission and the device and attempting to reverse engineer the device. The creator is one of the persons being interrogated, and in going over how the device is triggered activates it with an override to prevent it from being disarmed. At this point it's revealed it's all been an elaborate simulation to see how they would stand up under stress and they've been on Earth the entire time. Since they've trained so hard with the bomb they had to use the real bomb with an inactive trigger to simulate it correctly. The creator noticed and fixed it as part of her manual override. EarthShatteringKaboom.
*** This example shows the contrast between the original series and the revival. "Nightmare" is a remake of an episode from the original series which had a similar plot with the "it was a simulation" twist at the end, but didn't have the whole thing with the bomb.
** "The Surrogate": A woman becomes a surrogate to a family via a private medical facility. She joins a support group for surrogate mothers there and becomes suspicious. Standard TownWithADarkSecret plot, right? Suspecting her baby will be a monster or something else she contacts an FBI agent who at first thinks she's crazy. The actual babies are never seen, and the surrogate mothers don't like to talk about them afterwards. When the big day comes and the FBI agent busts in to stop the evil birth... Only to discover the entire thing was a breeding operation for aliens. The alien's birth occurs when the alien growing in her womb eats all of her except her skin. And it's still hungry for more, ending with the FBI agent getting eaten too.
** "Gettysburg": A time traveler, who before caused a bittersweet, if not quite happy ending, along with KarmicDeath for an evil protagonist, sends three young men at a Battle of Gettysburg reenactment back to the actual battle. One of the young men was a Southern fanatic who thought the South should have won and the battle was glorious. Being in the real battle under an insane commander dying of meningitis disabuses him of the notion. The time traveler sought to teach him that {{Aesop}}, because otherwise he would shoot the first black U.S. President in 2013 when the president spoke at Gettysburg due to his Southern sympathies. The time traveler, however, dropped his device and the insane commander accidentally activated it, causing him to be transported to the future where he then shoots the president while he attempts to shoot the Lincoln reenactor.
** "A New Life": This episode's premise may remind some readers of Shaymalan's ''{{The Village}}''. Two married couples join a cult that resembles Puritanism, because their lives have become unfulfilling. The problem is, no one remembered how they reached the forest they were brought to, because the cult leader knocked everyone unconscious en route. At first, the protagonist seemed okay with his new life until the cult leader borrows his child and brands him. After the protagonist gets his son back, he panics and convinces his wife to flee from the village with him. Soon, they realize the forest's edge is blocked by a force field, and stay on the run, but their branded child was used as a tracking device. As a result, the couple was discovered by the cult leader and captured. For fleeing, the protagonist would be executed, so he helped convince his male friend (played by Jeremy Sisto) to help him escape and de-activate the force field. The plan goes well at first until the two of them find a teleporter. The protagonist's volunteers to enter, while his friend protects his wife. After entering the teleporter, the protagonist was transported to a dark room with several robed people. The people in robes? Oh they're aliens. They also claim that the forest is ''inside a spaceship'', they've already left Earth, and they plan to use religion to encourage people to breed for the next 500 years...which is when they'll reach their destination and use the humans as ''slave labor''. Of course, the protagonist gets killed for knowing too much, though his partner met a grisly end. The cult leader [[NightmareFuel burns him at the stake]] to urge people not to rebel. Even better? His wife watches him get roasted.
** "Breaking Point": A guy makes a time machine and travels a few days into the future, but finds out his wife is dead. Horrified, he returns to the present and tries to protect and warn her. His wife refuses to believe his stories of time travel, and eventually, he loses his temper and accidentally kills her. Anguished, declaring himself a monster, he decides she would have been better off without him, so he travels back to the day they met and kills his past self before he met her, erasing himself from existence. It was all for nothing. In the new timeline, it turned out that his wife had been contemplating suicide and meeting him that fateful day had saved her.
** "First Anniversary": Two best friends are both married to kind, loving women who look like supermodels, so they think life is good. But one day, one of them goes nuts, claims that the women are monsters, then commits suicide. After the funeral, his friend is baffled, until he starts to feel revulsion whenever he's around the girls (when he tries to kiss his wife, he smells and tastes something nasty). He fears that he's losing his mind, until the girls feel they have no choice but to confess. They are really aliens that crash landed on Earth. Since they can't leave, they decided to blend in and live the rest of their lives peacefully as human women. The reason his friend called them monsters and that he's feeling disgusted by them is that prolonged contact with them causes the person to develop an immunity to their {{Glamour}}. His wife tries to persuade him that no matter what they look like, they are still the nice women they befriended and fell in love with. Sadly, when he becomes completely immune to the illusion, [[BrownNote their true form is so hideous]] that [[GoMadFromTheRevelation he suffers a complete mental breakdown]]. The women move on and seduce two new guys, meaning the cycle will repeat itself roughly once a year.
** "The Grid": A man on a roadtrip stops at another city and finds that an evil organization has installed the buildings with antennas that emit a mind-controlling signal as a sort of TakeOverTheWorld plot. Since the protagonist is immune, the brainwashed citizens are ordered to kill him. He escapes and returns to his hometown, intending to call the cops, only to find more antennas. His brainwashed wife shoots him.
** "The Human Factor": On the first ever colony on Ganymede, a robot suddenly rigs the reactor to blow up. The robot explains that since HumansAreBastards, its logical course of action is to destroy the colony and prevent humanity from expanding beyond Earth. The crew manages to deactivate the robot and save the reactor, though all but one die in the process. The survivor receives a message from Earth. WorldWarIII broke out, and nukes have wiped out a lot of the planet (including the survivor's family). A shuttle carrying the President and other officials is heading for Ganymede and will arrive in a few months. In despair, the survivor re-rigs the reactor to blow and turns the robot back on. He tells the robot it was right, then offers to play chess to pass the time until the colony is blown to kingdom come (though this one skirts TwilightZoneTwist a bit).
*** It turns into an outright CruelTwistEnding if you accept it as a true sequel to "Phobos Rising" instead of just another ClipShow episode attempting to [[ArcWelding Arc Weld]] unrelated episodes. Said previous episode had a true TwilightZoneTwist, as the Martian colonies destroyed each other thanks to rampant paranoia in the wake of a catastrophic event [[spoiler:that ended up with the two factions declaring a truce, and just to twist the knife in further, the general giving the news to the sole survivors of each colony tells them that all of Earth is looking to Martian colonies as a symbol and example of cooperation and solidarity]].
** "Ripper": In Victorian London, a man goes on the trail of notorious serial killer JackTheRipper. He eventually discovers that the Ripper is actually an evil {{Body Surf}}ing alien. While it is in the body of an old woman, he fights and stabs it, only for the alien to exit the body and escape. The police arrive and arrest the protagonist, assuming that ''he'' is the Ripper. The alien, in a new body, visits the protagonist in the asylum and promises to find his family and kill them before leaving.
** "Blank Slate": A man with amnesia is pursued by mysterious agents for the device he's carrying. A woman is caught up in the events and teams up with the man. While on the run, they slowly fall in love. Unfortunately, when his memories come back, it turns out that he was working with the bad guys before. [[AmnesiacDissonance Reverting to his original evil personality]], he betrays the woman and returns the device.
** "Birthright": The protagonist believes he has thwarted an alien invasion... only for the taxi driver to reveal himself as one of them and capture him. The infiltration was more widespread than he thought.
** "The Voice of Reason": A man appears before a government committee to warn them about alien infiltrators. They dismiss him as a nut. Suspecting the official who opposes him the loudest is an infiltrator, the man shoots and kills him, hoping to expose his alien nature. The official was human and a complete {{muggle}}, and the man is arrested. ''Nearly everyone else'' in the committee is an alien, and they silently thank the man for [[NiceJobBreakingItHero getting rid of that guy, allowing them to take full control and further their invasion plans]].
** "A Special Edition": A guy appears on a talk show to present evidence that the government is performing illegal cloning experiments. The government cuts off their signal and sends armed thugs into the studio. The guy, cast, and crew try to escape, but are eventually captured. A clone of the guy appears and gives a fraudulent report that "disproves" the guy's evidence. The clone mocks the protagonists, claiming that the masses are stupid sheep who believe anything they hear, so his fraudulent report is already making them forget the truth. The guy, cast, and crew are all shot to death by the clone.
** "Human Trials": A group of soldiers sign up for a top secret mission. To "weed out the wimps", the soldiers are placed in virtual reality simulations (the kind where you can feel everything) of battles, natural disasters, etc. Those who die, crack, or give up in the simulations are eliminated and sent home. In the end, only one soldier makes it. After the round of congratulations, he eagerly asks what his mission is. He is then informed that there was no mission; ForScience, they were looking for someone really tough so that they could use him as a guinea pig to test the limits of human endurance and willpower. He is forcibly plugged back into virtual reality and subjected to nightmarish tortures as the technicians and military officials look on with LackOfEmpathy.
** "Manifest Destiny": A spaceship investigates a distress call from an abandoned spaceship. While exploring it, the crew begins to grow paranoid and insane, one by one. The doctor tries to figure out what is going on, but is too late and succumbs as well. The alien virus that caused this is unknowingly sent to Earth.
** And Many More....
[[/folder]]

* ''{{Goosebumps}}'' stories made heavy usage of the OuterLimitsTwist, while ''AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'' were more prone to the TwilightZoneTwist. It is perhaps the reason why the former is considered to be scarier.

*** Not exactly. [[spoiler:The main character didn't give in. All throughout the story, he had been picked on by virtually everyone at school. Even as he was about to warn his classmates, they still made fun of him. The monsters had earlier promised he would be the kids' leader after the change, so he [[MoralEventHorizon allows it to happen]] [[RevengeBeforeReason out of revenge]]. Still an OuterLimitsTwist for the main character's one friend and classmates, just not for him.]]

* ''Series/FearItself'' heavily favored the OuterLimitsTwist route during its short run:

The CruelTwistEnding is basically the EvilCounterpart of the TwilightZoneTwist: in the latter, the twist is a form of divine justice, a bad thing happening to stop a bad person from [[LaserGuidedKarma getting away with it]] (or a good thing happening to someone who deserves it). In the former, it's just FinaglesLaw: the universe is a mean place and wants to hurt you. Often, an OuterLimitsTwist is what happens when a writer attempts a TwilightZoneTwist, but fails to carry it off.

Most common in [[GenreAnthology genre anthologies]] with a darker tone than ''Series/TheTwilightZone'': ''TalesOfTheUnexpected'', ''TalesFromTheDarkside'', ''{{Monsters}}'', ''One Step Beyond'', etc. Technically, the name might be something of a misnomer, since ''TheOuterLimits'' and ''TheTwilightZone'' both did both kinds of TwistEnding, but in general, the former did tend toward this kind, while the latter tended toward the TwilightZoneTwist. (It also has the advantage of giving these related twists related names.) Also, let it be noted that the ''OuterLimits'' {{Revival}} used this trope much more often than the original.

* As the trope name suggests, the 90's revival of ''TheOuterLimits'' was particularly fond of this. Some notable examples: '''(Depressing spoilers ahead!)'''

*** Apparently that ''wasn't enough'' of an OuterLimitsTwist for the writers, so they continued it in a later episode just to squash any hope the viewers had. Due to the aforementioned episode, the aliens begin winning the war. In a last-ditch effort, humanity tries to surprise attack the alien homeworld with a planet-killing WMD. The fleet is ambushed and the ship carrying the device is crippled, and everyone is killed immediately or knocked unconscious and given a fatal dose of radiation which will kill them soon. The hero manages to unmask a traitor, get to the destination and drop the bomb before his ship can be boarded. Unfortunately, the ship had been ''turned around'' whilst everyone was unconscious - the hero has just heroically ensured that the bomb was dropped on Earth! (In a bit of possibly-intentional irony, the actor playing this poor sap was Wil "[[CreatorsPet Wesley Crusher]]" Wheaton.)

*** It turns into an outright OuterLimitsTwist if you accept it as a true sequel to "Phobos Rising" instead of just another ClipShow episode attempting to [[ArcWelding Arc Weld]] unrelated episodes. Said previous episode had a true TwilightZoneTwist, as the Martian colonies destroyed each other thanks to rampant paranoia in the wake of a catastrophic event [[spoiler:that ended up with the two factions declaring a truce, and just to twist the knife in further, the general giving the news to the sole survivors of each colony tells them that all of Earth is looking to Martian colonies as a symbol and example of cooperation and solidarity]].

* ''ParanoiaAgent''. Just one example: [[spoiler: was it really necessary to ''kill'' Kozuka just to prove he wasn't [[{{Woolseyism}} Shonen Bat/Lil' Slugger]]? Maybe, maybe not. But he would've committed suicide anyway.]] Have a nice day!

** The movie was based off of Philip K. Dick's "Second Variety", where [[spoiler:the girl the protagonist saved was actually one of the Second Variety robots]], but that story straddles the line between OuterLimitsTwist and TwilightZoneTwist, with its closing revelation that [[spoiler:the robots, once they destroy humanity, are already preparing to destroy one another]].

** However, guy did manage to save the world from an extraterrestrial conspiracy on his own. Takes a bit of the sting out of it, and it was set up everywhere in the story, and obviously by the title.
* HansChristianAndersen's ''The Shadow''. Probably not the best example since there is no huge twist in the story, only a series of small ones as it's heading towards the Downer Ending, but it definitely belongs to the Outer Limits school of storytelling.

* In the short story collection, ''The Dark Side of the Earth'', every single story [[spoiler:except for the last one]] ends with an Outer Limits ending. The story ''Silent Pursuit'' easily takes the cake: The lead detective rides the subway one night and, out of sheer luck, sees the murderer knocking a woman unconscious on the last train. He races to get there before he can get off and a fistfight ensues, culminating in the detective throwing the murderer out of the window and into the river. He helps the victim up and, when they get off the train, they are surrounded by policemen pointing their guns at him and ordering him to let her go. Because the real murderer is dead in the river, the woman is unconscious, and he can provide no genuine alibis for the dates of the other murders, all present evidence points to him being the real murderer; and he will never be able to prove otherwise.

* Perhaps the best illustration of the difference between the two twists are two episodes of ''TheTwilightZone'' with virtually the same plot: a man manages to apparently become the last man on Earth, and finds he finally has time to read all the books he wants -- until he breaks his glasses. It's the same twist in both episodes, but in one, the man is a general misanthrope who wills everyone else away, making his eventual fate karmic justice and a TwilightZoneTwist. In "Time Enough at Last", however, the man is a timid man who is ridiculed by his wife and boss for reading books, and who only survives a nuclear holocaust because he locked himself in a bank vault as the only way he could get some peace. In this case, the world just screws him over to be mean, making it an OuterLimitsTwist. Ironically enough, despite being an episode of ''TheTwilightZone'', this is possibly even more of an OuterLimitsTwist than many episodes of ''TheOuterLimits'' were.
** ''{{Futurama}}'' specifically references how cruel "Time Enough At Last" is by taking a parody of the episode to comically extreme lengths (e.g. his head eventually falls off) after which Bender comments that he was "cursed by his own hubris".

** WordOfGod is that the original StarTrekDeepSpaceNine episode was specifically intended to mock Kirk by changing Kirk's triumph in the StarTrek "Mirror, Mirror" episode into an OuterLimitsTwist, thereby vilifying Kirk as the man singularly responsible for ruining the lives of all humanity in another universe. Later episodes in the mirror universe de-emphasized (or ignored altogether) this motive, making it more of a TwilightZoneTwist and then more of a standard rebellion-against-alien-oppressors situation.

The OuterLimitsTwist is basically the EvilCounterpart of the TwilightZoneTwist: in the latter, the twist is a form of divine justice, a bad thing happening to stop a bad person from [[LaserGuidedKarma getting away with it]] (or a good thing happening to someone who deserves it). In the former, it's just FinaglesLaw: the universe is a mean place and wants to hurt you. Often, an OuterLimitsTwist is what happens when a writer attempts a TwilightZoneTwist, but fails to carry it off.