History Main / TrippyFinaleSyndrome

* ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'' pulls out all the special-effects stops and headache-inducing magical locations for its {{Final Battle}}s, despite the battle fields (in the first two seasons, at least) normally being pretty low-key.

* ''ShadowSkill'' ends with a bizarre near-death dream sequence involving giraffes and lions, with lots of Fauxlosophic dialogue. It's pretty clear what is going on, but the way they choose to illustrate it is decidedly trippy.
* The finale of ''RahXephon'' had several characters running around inside Yolteotl (something approximately like Nirvana) with lots of trippy symbolism whilst [[spoiler: Quon and Ayato]] tried to figure out how they wanted to retune the world.

* The GrandFinale of the first season of ''DarkerThanBlack'' was very clearly inspired by Evangelion. However, unlike Eva, they had the decency to give at least a little explanation. It's possible to piece together all the groups' motivations, even if the [[EldritchLocation Gate-induced]] MindScrew is totally incomprehensible.

* The ending of ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemist'' could be called an inversion of the trope. The ending takes place [[spoiler:in what the characters see as a strange alternate realty, but it's ''our'' reality, the real world during World War II. It's the rest of the series that takes place in the world full of magic and monsters.]]

* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion''. Not one, but ''two'' {{Gainax Ending}}s. ''The End of Evangelion'' contains several ''minutes'' of [[{{Blipvert}} images zipping by so fast they could be seizure-inducing]], many of them vaguely disturbing (the series had already had much shorter sequences like this). The series ended with a lot of [[ContemplateOurNavels navel-contemplation]], some of it trippy; the film basically had trippy graphics for most of the latter half.

* The finale of ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', "All Good Things...", has a modest version of this, featuring Q, and involving Picard being thrown back and forth between timelines from the past, present, and future. Of course, given that it's ''StarTrek'' we're talking about, trippiness is a relative concept, but it's particularly notable for the scope and complexity of its trippiness.

* The ending of ''Literature/Catch22'' goes into this significantly, elucidating an event that has been hinted at since the first chapter of the novel, but never before shown. We see a handful of flashbacks and gain the deepest insight into Yossarian's psyche yet.

* BattlestarGalactica was infamous for its DistantFinale that attracted as much anger as ThePrisoner.

* In the finale of the series "Series/TwinPeaks", the Black Lodge is represented exclusively through trippy dreamlike sequence, complete with strobe lights, maniacal screaming and a doppelgänger chase scene.

* The ''{{R-Type}}'' series' final stages got progressively trippier as the games went on. Most notable of all, a Bydo dimension filled with crystal-encased human fetuses, strands of [=DNA=], free-floating sperm the size of the ship, and fertilized ova... And that's not even mentioning the neutral ending of ''Final'', in which the screen-filling silhouettes of a man and a woman embrace and make love in the background.

* The otherwise conventional western ''{{Blueberry}}'' (aka ''Renegade'') ends with the hero and villain taking peyote and entering the spirit realm to do battle. The hero then has an epiphany that is visualized with trippy abstract images and Native American chanting. It has to be seen to be believed.

* The 1979 Disney science fiction film ''TheBlackHole'' ends with [[spoiler:the main characters passing through a black hole; the villain appears to merge with a robot who then becomes Lord of Hell, whilst the heroes either ascend to heaven or simply pass through a white hole into another part of the universe. And then the film ends.]]

* The 1974 ant thriller ''PhaseIV'' ends with [[spoiler:the surviving human characters - a man and a woman - apparently being captured by ants and forced to become the next stage of human evolution, or something along those lines.]]
* John Boorman's deranged post-apocalyptic sci-fi film ''{{Zardoz}}'' ends with [[spoiler:the main character and his wife growing old in timelapse, as their child grows up to adulthood, to no discernible cinematic purpose.]]
* ''TheQuietEarth'' (1985), a rare post-70s example, ends with the main character [[spoiler:seemingly transported to the moon of a distant ringed planet, or possibly the afterlife, or perhaps he remains where he is and the universe changes around him. It makes no sense. It wasn't meant to.]]

* TheTreeOfLife
* Film/EnterTheVoid

* Inverted in ''FutariWaPrettyCure'': after spending a couple of episodes in another dimension, the heroines ''return'' to the Garden of Rainbows (i.e. Earth) for the final battle.

* SerialExperimentsLain's [[spoiler:EndOfTheWorldSpecial]] had shades of this.

[[folder:Card Games]]
* The Invasion story arc from ''MagicTheGathering'' ends with "enemy" colors (white/black, blue/red, black/green, red/white, green/blue) being allies, an alternate win condition where all you have to do is have one creature of each color and one basic land of each basic land type, and ''the essence of Dominaria itself'' forming a tribe called Kavu. Also, Rath has become one with Dominaria; don't ask how that happened.
[[/folder]]

* The finale of ''VideoGame/{{Ys}} V: Lost Sand City of Kefin'' is quite mind-screwing, especially if you don't know Japanese.

* The "Great Dance" sequence at the end of C.S. Lewis' [[TheSpaceTrilogy Perelandra]], a trippy and colorful spiritual vision which takes a year and shows the protagonist the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything. (No, not the DouglasAdams book.)

Overlaps with GainaxEnding when it gets particularly [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic symbolic]]. Video games tend to make this an AmazingTechnicolorBattlefield. If the gameplay goes sour, it's DisappointingLastLevel.

See also FinalBossNewDimension.

* The final stages of ''[[MegaManX Mega Man X5]]'' are some sort of unexplained crystal holographic disco thing.

* ''{{Marathon}} Infinity''. The first two games were straightforward enough, albeit with a fair amount of ambiguity. ''Infinity'' goes balls-out, featuring multiple timelines, dream levels, some of the most surrealistic text terminals in the series, and an ending over which fans still speculate nearly 20 years later.

** The sequel, VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}, does this as well. You're in a cavern miles below the city, when...whoa! What's the deal with the dropoffs? And the animate crystals and balls of electricity flying around?

* ''PhantasyStarIV'' features an ethereal crystal world inhabited by a disembodied voice named LeRoof who arms you before sending you off to a huge hole in the ground, where you enter a twisty-backgrounded epileptic-rainbow maze to fight the personification of evil. PSOnline does a shorter version by having you arrive in a [[MoodWhiplash flower-filled field]] that quickly turns into a desolate wasteland when the BigBad arrives.

** And in Planescape, well... you skip around a bit, and end up in [[spoiler:The negative energy planes. Evil Tower of Shadows.]]

* Pretty much every single ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'' hack ever to some degree. Examples include VIP 2-5 (which have a ridiculously psychadelic looking rainbow coloured final level filled with random gimmicks), BrutalMario (second part of Bowser's Castle especially), VideoGame/AnSMWCProduction's void level, ASMT's void level and probably a whole lot of others.
* The finale's of ''VideoGame/{{Hellsinker}}'' are noticable for being incredibly surreal and wierd even by the game's standards.

** And in Planescape, well... you skip around a bit, and end up in [[spoiler: The negative energy planes. Evil Tower of Shadows.]]

* ''VideoGame/FearEffect''. It seems normal enough at first, and then suddenly it starts turning into a precursor to EternalDarkness....

** And in Planescape, well...you skip around a bit, and end up in [[spoiler: The negative energy planes. Evil tower of Shadows.]]

*** This is after traversing a road that assembles itself before your very feet, a giant chessboard, a roomful of stairways that would make Creator/MCEscher's head hurt, a lake of of blood, a broken time space warp connected via mirrors made of mercury, and a chamber made of purple flesh that is situated at the feet of a statue of a godlike figure so tall you can't even see its knees.

*** [[spoiler: Or it's part of dream Zanarkand, the construct of the Yu Yevon, who creates and possesses sin and has been explained a few minutes before ariving]]

* ''LegendOfTheSeeker'', the television adaptation of ''SwordOfTruth'', pulled a time travel stunt in the first season finally, then had a rather anticlimactic...grappling sequence for the previously DismantledMacGuffin between Richard and Darken Rahl.

* DannyBoyle took the final 20 minutes of ''Film/{{Sunshine}}'' in a decidedly unusual direction, with the soundtrack reaching a screeching cacophony and the camera struggling to focus on what's going on. No doubt meant to signify the laws of physics breaking down due to the ship's proximity to the sun, [[JustifiedTrope which was predicted]] earlier in the film.

* In ''Film/{{Labyrinth}}'', Sarah's final showdown with the Goblin King Jareth takes place in a room that looks like it came out of a painting by MCEscher. Toby is there, too, crawling around happily. As for the RaceAgainstTheClock, the hands on the clock are now spinning wildly out of control... then again, the whole movie was rather strange.

*** This is after traversing a road that assembles itself before your very feet, a giant chessboard, a roomful of stairways that would make MCEscher's head hurt, a lake of of blood, a broken time space warp connected via mirrors made of mercury, and a chamber made of purple flesh that is situated at the feet of a statue of a godlike figure so tall you can't even see its knees.

* In the finale of ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2'', Jaffar warps the Prince into a weird otherworld with giant chess pieces, Kryptonite crystals, and an MC Escher-esque battleground.

* FearEffect. It seems normal enough at first, and then suddenly it starts turning into a precursor to EternalDarkness....

* ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'''s final area before the final boss battle looks like a giant bizarre vagina, leading into a maze of tentacle-like pathways over a void. If that's not bad enough, said final boss battle [[AmazingTechnicolorBattlefield sure]] is.
** The final battle was in part inspired by the time the director walked into a porno movie when he was a kid.
*** Close enough, but if you check the facts it's an old-fashioned CSI-esque movie that starts (well, not immediately, but you get the point) with a close-up of the soon to be victim's face, suggesting a sex scene, we never see anything though. (and [[WordOfGod Itoi]] was a kid at the time, so he mis-interpreted it.)
**** Well, every single battle in the game has background graphics that're ripped straight out of a bad acid trip. And of course there's Moonside. But the final dungeon which you'll face the BigBad in really hits it home. Couple with weird monsters [[spoiler:OMG strange wooly robot and shadow monster attacking]] and bizarre weapons (yoyos, baseball bats, etc), and you have yourself an [[GRatedDrug acid trip without the acid]].